Phillip Peterson: The Dark Ship

“We’re losing pressure in sections one and four. Some of the holes are too big to be sealed off by the gel between the fuselage sections,” Green reported.

“We’ll worry about that later. Carry on!”

“One of the antimatter stores must have been hit, too. The voltage in Penning Trap Five is falling.”

“Falling? How fast?” Irons asked.

“Too fast! If it carries on like this, it’ll be down to zero in five minutes.”

“Anything else?”

“Some damage to non-critical systems.”

“Hyperspace drive?”

“Appears to be undamaged.”

Appears ...

“OK. Send your men to the Penning trap! Weapon system officer!”

“Sir?”

“Release the bomb!”

“Yes, Sir,” Castle said. “Bomb released.”

“Lieutenant Rutherford, initiate evasive maneuver!”

Jeff was pushed down into his seat again as Joanne fired the engines. At least the main engine had survived the attack, otherwise they would have crashed onto the target planet along with the bomb.

“What about the other ships?” Irons asked.

“I’ve heard from the Boston. They’ve released their bomb, too,” Owl said. “I can see they’ve started their evasive maneuver.”

“And the Spider?”

“Disappeared. I’m receiving the typical gamma blast of an antimatter explosion.”

“Shit! A piece of that wall of scrap metal must have hit the antimatter tanks.”

“At least we got two of the bombs to hit the target,” Irons said without any emotion in his voice. “Let’s hope they’re not duds.”

Despite the engines working at full capacity, the blue dot of Acheron-4 was still right in front of them in the cockpit windows. But it had become much brighter since the perihelion maneuver.

“Thirty seconds,” Joanne said. “Point seven five million miles.”

Suddenly there was a loud bang and Jeff was thrown against his console. An alarm siren whined.

“Status!” Irons demanded.

“The portside engine pod’s gone!” Green shouted. “It’s just disappeared.”

That meant they’d lost half of their positioning capabilities.

“The sensor is picking up traces of uranium and thorium,” Finni said. “They must have shot at us with a particle accelerator!”

“The particle beam can have only just brushed us, otherwise the Charon would be history,” Jeff said. In a briefing, intelligence service had said it was unlikely for a base of this size to have particle weapons. But it wouldn’t have been the first time the powers-that-be had got it wrong. They’d been lucky. Jeff only hoped they would pass Acheron-4 before the enemy could recharge its accelerators.

“The Boston has disappeared from the radar,” Finni shrieked.

Jesus Christ!

That meant Acheron-4 had two particle accelerators.

Green suddenly groaned loudly.

“Lieutenant Green?” Irons asked.

Jeff turned around to look at him. The engineer was squirming in his seat, his hands pressing against the helmet of his spacesuit.

“Lieutenant Green!” Irons repeated, then turned to Jeff. “What’s wrong with him?”

Another groan from Green. “My head. My head is about to explode,” he whimpered.

“They’re attacking with psycho rays,” Irons said.

Jeff swallowed. It was the latest development in the Alliance’s weapons market. The rebels tried to influence the human brain with alternating magnetic fields. Depending on the strength of the transmitter, they could control people from afar or drive them crazy. Luckily, the deflective shields in their combat suits offered a certain amount of protection. Green’s shield device must have been damaged. He was screaming as if someone was drilling a hole in his skull.

“Hang in there, Lieutenant Green,” Irons said. “Just a few more seconds, then it’ll pass.”

“Passing over the target in ten seconds,” Joanne reported.

Acheron-4 had changed from a tiny blue dot to a blue marble. The marble expanded rapidly into a gigantic sphere. It looked as if they were hurtling right into the planet.

We’re not going to make it!

Had they miscalculated the evasive maneuver?

But the maneuver was going as planned. They passed the planet, which according to Jeff’s HUD was fifty miles away. There was a brief flickering in front of the windows as the Charon raced through the edges of the atmosphere and the nitrogen atoms turned into plasma.

Then they were through, and the engine shut off again.

Jeff knew what was coming next and closed his eyes.

The light seemed to penetrate straight through the cabin wall and his closed eyelids, as if their spaceship was made out of transparent paper. It only lasted a second, then the light was gone again. Jeff opened his eyes and switched his monitor to the rear cameras.

Where the blue planet Acheron-4 had been a moment ago, a yellow sun was now blazing. As it expanded, its color changed to a reddish hue. The Quagma bombs had hit their target. Acheron-4 no longer existed.

“Target destroyed!” Jeff reported to his commander.

Five bombers had started out on this mission. Only the Charon had survived the attack, badly damaged. As shocked as they were at the loss of their sister ships, they were incredibly relieved to have survived themselves.

Green had stopped screaming. But he was breathing heavily. “I thought I was going to die,” he moaned.

Jeff recalled how entire corps had been killed in psycho-weapon attacks before a counteragent had been found. He shuddered. He hoped he’d never have to go through that himself.

“Radio operator!” Irons ordered. “Send a message to the base. Tell them: target destroyed.”

It took a few seconds for Finni to answer. “Hyperradio failed.”

“Then use the backup system,” Jeff said.

“That was in the portside engine pod,” Finni replied. “This spaceship won’t be able to transmit any more superluminal messages.”

“Lieutenant Green,” Irons said. “What’s with the antimatter storage?”

“The voltage in cell five has stabilized again. The air outlet in the fuselage could also be plugged.”

“Good. Anything else?”

Green hesitated before answering. “Reactor one has failed completely. Positioning and radio are damaged. The electrical systems are reporting faults in almost every subsystem.”

“And what about the hyperdrive?”

“The Casimir converter appears to be undamaged, but we’ll only know if it’s still able to build a horizon once we get to the entry point.”

“Then let’s hope for the best.” Irons turned around in his seat. “How long to the entry point?”

“We’ll be far enough away from Acheron in about five minutes,” Joanne said.

“Good. We’ll remain on combat alert until we’re in hyperspace.

Jeff looked at the holoscreen, which gave him a view of what lay behind them. The gas cloud of the destroyed planet was still glowing blood-red. The Quagma bombs had done a thorough job. Jeff wondered how many people had been on the base. The intelligence service hadn’t been able to say exactly—apparently anything between an emergency crew of twenty to a deployment point with several thousand infantrymen was possible. Maybe Jeff would find out once this damned war was over. He wondered how many more planets would be reduced to dust by Quagma bombs in the meantime. He closed his eyes as it occurred to him that if they reached the Delta Quadrant, their next target might be an inhabited planet. Then he would be responsible for the deaths of millions, or even billions, of people. Needless to say, it was not what he wanted but he knew there was no other way of advancing on Delphi. If they overlooked even a single base, the enemy would come at them from behind. And after all, the Alliance hadn’t had any scruples, either, in wiping out Deneb-6 in a surprise attack.