Star Force: Secession (SF13) Read online

  1

  March 18, 2109

  “Dan, wake up! We have to move now!”

  Vice Admiral Waikford blinked open his eyes and found himself looking up at the face of his XO, then a massive jab of pain manifested itself in his forehead. He reached up towards the spot but Carolyn caught his hand before it could reach his head.

  “You have a concussion, at least,” she said as another explosion rocked the station. “I’ve got the bleeding stopped, but we have to move.”

  With an effort she pulled him up to his feet and dipped her head underneath one of his shoulders.

  “Report,” Waikford ordered meekly, still unsure of his surroundings.

  “The fleet’s broken and what’s left of the enemy is pounding the station. We have to evacuate,” she said, walking him down an empty hall with bits of ceiling panel lying about. When they turned the corner they ran into a closed pressure door.

  “Damn it,” Captain Kerber swore, having to think fast. With a none too subtle tug she redirected the American fleet commander down a side hallway, half dragging him onward.

  “Clark?” Waikford inquired, grimacing against the obvious head wound obscured beneath a hastily applied bandage circling his head like a bloody halo.

  “Dead,” Carolyn said as they were both thrown off their feet and into the wall by a sudden lurch.

  With a sinking feeling in her gut, the Captain in charge of the US Navy defense station knew the power to the rotational spur had just been cut, meaning the large rotating disc they were in was going to slow down and eventually leave them in zero g.

  “Hurry,” she insisted, dragging Waikford on.

  “Who’s taken command?”

  “Dan, it’s over. The fleet’s gone. There’s nothing left to command.”

  “How?” he asked, aghast.

  “Later,” she said, finally finding the hallway she wanted. “I’ve ordered the station evacuated. We’re one of the last ones left and we need to get off before the British blow our asses to pieces.”

  Coming to a closed transparent door on their right, Carolyn pressed the activation button and the access way to the escape pods ground open. At the far end of the narrow hall was an identical door, one that showed a mix of broken station pieces and stars on the opposite side. The hull breach was the reason the other hallway had been locked down, preventing their access.

  Most of the 36 escape pods were already gone, but three remained and Carolyn pulled the Admiral into the nearest one, then climbed in after him. Reaching up, she sealed the hatch behind them in the cramped circular pod while Dan pulled himself against the padded wall and sat down, clumsily finding the seat belt and connecting it to the appropriate receptacle. There were six such seats arrayed around the perimeter of the pod, with a small table/control console in the center.

  Carolyn stood on top of the table, making sure that the inner hatch located in the ceiling was truly secure, then she hopped down and took a seat, powering up the pod’s internal life support systems with a few key presses. Strapping herself in, she hit the release and waited.

  On the outside ring of the 8th disc in the ‘coin stack’ military defense station an armored panel blew off explosive bolts and cleared a short access tube from which the teardrop-shaped escape pod rolled out, propelled by the centrifugal force of the still spinning disc. Its straight-line trajectory moved it slowly away from the besieged station and at approximately a right angle from the debris field that contained the 106 warship hulks from the recent naval engagement.

  Twelve British ships had survived, including one of their carriers, which had refueled its fighters twice already, sending them back in with more missiles to pick away at the station while the command ship sat safely at a distance. Up closer, the other eleven warships pounded away at the American base with cannons, having long since expended all of their missiles. Chunk after chunk of the rotating discs broke off from the station, but the sheer size of the construct and the thick armor plating covering it were making it truly difficult to kill…but without any remaining opposition from the American fleet its death was all but inevitable.

  Bringing up a small video relay on the pod’s tabletop, Carolyn swiveled the exterior camera around to give them a view of what was happening to the slowly shrinking station as a fighter zipped by, causing the Captain’s heart to skip a beat, but it didn’t fire at the pod, too concerned with other targets.

  As the entirety of the station finally filled the viewscreen, Carolyn’s breath caught in her throat. She’d known the lower weapons batteries had been taken offline early on, but she hadn’t realized that most of those levels had been completely sheared off from the station. She glanced around to see if she could location them, but they weren’t in camera range and she knew it would be stupid to activate the pod’s active radar…their staying alive required them to stay hidden, as much as possible, as their limited momentum swung them free of the station’s death throws.

  Some return fire from the battle station was still evident. Apparently her evacuation order hadn’t been heeded by everyone and some of the top mounted turrets were still slugging it out with a pair of cruisers, one of which had a satisfying hull breach along the port flank, but other than that the station was completely nonresponsive. The mass of weaponry that had been activated when the battle began had been completely ravaged during the course of the fighting, and it looked like this time the British weren’t interested in capturing the American facility. They appeared intent to utterly destroy it.

  Carolyn was fortunate that they hadn’t flown off the station and into one of the attacking ships or debris in the area, given that their launch vector had been entirely random. From their pod’s passive sensors they could track the transponders on all the ships and fighters, and it appeared they were going to clear the battlefield without incident. There was a distress signal button underneath a panel on the tabletop that would alert their fleet to their position, but she held off activating it, hoping to get farther away from the British before doing so.

  She wasn’t completely sure whether or not they could hope for retrieval, given what had just happened to their fleet, but she also didn’t like the idea of the angry British making target practice of their pod, so she held off activating it.

  “Anyone else?” the Admiral asked.

  Carolyn shook her head, with her loose hair flying every which way in the zero g. “There’s no way of knowing.”

  “Use the comm panel,” he suggested, pointing to a section of the tabletop.

  “I didn’t want to give away our position.”

  “We won’t last very long if someone doesn’t know to come get us,” he argued, his voice weak.

  “I don’t think we have any ships in the area,” she said, knowing well that meant a death sentence. “Do you want me to signal the British and ask if they will accept our surrender?”

  “No…there’s…another option,” he said, his breath seeming to escape his lungs with every word. “Code prompt...zero…zero…ten.”

  Carolyn activated the pod’s comm gear and input the code, recognizing it as a Star Force prompt. “You think they’ll respond?”

  “They always…watch…and…pick up…survivors.”

  Carolyn dug under the table and pulled open a small panel, revealing an assortment of survival supplies. Her hand brushed across a small metallic case of foodstuffs but she pushed it aside, looking for the med kit. A moment later she found it attached by velcro to the back wall in the small cubicle and pulled it free and out onto her lap, where she held it down with one hand while flipping the lid open with the other. All the items were secured inside so they wouldn’t float off, including a series of medication vials.

  The Cap
tain pulled out one in particular and gently solicited one of the tiny anti-trauma pills, then snapped the lid back on and returned it to its appropriate slot in the kit.

  “Take this,” she said, passing him the stabilization pill. It was designed to reduce bodily functions enough to prolong the treatability window for injuries, in this case being the Admiral’s head wound. Hopefully it would slow any internal swelling and give his body time to heal…or reach a medic, which seemed overly optimistic right now.

  “Water,” he said after grabbing the tiny blue disc from her outstretched hand.

  “Right,” she said, silently cursing herself for forgetting. She dug back down into the supply cubicle and found several clear bottles, then passed one over to him. With an effort, he got the pill down then continued to sip on the straw periodically, saying nothing and looking like he was having a hard time remaining conscious.

  “What happened?” he asked after a few silent minutes.

  “To the fleet or you?”

  “Both.”

  “The bridge took a hit…I’m not sure how. Maybe an internal ricochet from a hull breach. All I know is the side wall blew out and you took a chunk to the head and passed out. There was a slow atmospheric leak, but we got it patched up long enough to see our fleet get massacred.”

  The Admiral’s eyes focused on Carolyn, demanding more of an answer.

  “When the enemy fighters swarmed the fleet, Admiral Clark moved out to engage the carriers,” she said regretfully.

  “Idiot!” Waikford cursed. “That’s just what they wanted.”

  “Well they got it,” she confirmed, agreeing with his sentiment. The Captain had had a very intense discussion over the subject with Clark when he decided to leave the defensive sphere around her station and taking her weaponry out of the fight. “We had an 8 ship edge, along with more tonnage, but it wasn’t enough. They picked the fleet apart then moved on the station. They lost most of their fleet in the process, I made sure we made them pay for it, but their surviving ships are tearing apart the station. On the up side, I think they’re too busy to notice our pods.”

  “You said we were the last off?”

  “More or less. It took a lot of time to get your bleeding stopped, and I wasn’t going to move you leaking through the corridors. You would have bled out by now.”

  “Feels like…I already have,” Waikford admitted. “Were the other escape pods…launched?”

  “Yes.”

  “We need to find them and…link up to maximize…our chances.”

  “We’re not picking up any transponders.”

  “They’re probably running dark…until…they get further away. We have to act…before that.”

  “Alright,” Carolyn said, reconfiguring the comm to send out two periodic signals…the one to Star Force that cycled every 10 minutes, and the low power signal specifically designated for pod to pod location. It would cycle every 30 seconds, offering a slight ping that would show up on other pods’ passive sensors.

  “Nothing,” she reported after five minutes of waiting.

  “Add your designator…and if that doesn’t work…add mine.”

  The Captain bit on her lip awkwardly. Adding a designator would mean she’d be broadcasting that this pod contained a high ranking officer rather than just the odd crewman. If the British were monitoring, it’d paint a big bull’s eye on their pod for the enemy fighters to target.

  Then again, if they just waited and did nothing the fighters could come around and kill them anyway. Belatedly she agreed with the Admiral’s logic, figuring they might as well control what part of their destiny they could, rather than sit around and hope for a miracle.

  She input her designator code into the system and hit the broadcast button, wondering how wise this was.

  Within a minute they received a response ping.

  “Got one,” she said excitedly, seeing that it wasn’t far off.

  “Get us there…slowly.”

  With a flurry of commands, Carolyn brought up the navigational system onto the tabletop touchscreen. Their fuel was limited, but the thrusters had enough maneuvering capability to keep them from being completely ballistic, and according to her computations they did have enough to rendezvous with the other pod.

  Knowing that haste would waste fuel, Carolyn nulled out the difference vector between the two pods then added a little extra thrust to start them drifting towards each other, but no more. It would take hours for them to rendezvous, but they wouldn’t have to waste fuel with a massive deceleration upon arrival, and the more they saved the better at this point.

  When the opposite pod pinged again two others responded as well, prompting Carolyn to alter their signal, indicating that the others should rendezvous with them. Having already made things easy for the first pod, she began running the calculations for the others and discovering that they were going to have to burn a considerable amount of fuel to catch up with them, given their radial directions. They were both ‘close’ as far as being on the same side of the station, but their inertia was carrying them separate ways, with the gaps increasing every second.

  The Captain knew the key was trends and predictability. If she kept making adjustments for the sake of the others, and they did the same, they’d end up wasting more fuel by having to guess where the command pod was going to be. By keeping ballistic she would give them a predictable target to rendezvous with…though she wished she could tell them that over the comms. That was a risk she wasn’t prepared to take though, for the quieter they were the less chance of attracting attention. With so much debris floating around a silent pod would look the same on radar, giving them a good chance of escape once they got considerably farther away from the quickly disintegrating station.

  “I’ve got three pods now,” she said, then realized the Admiral had slipped back into unconsciousness. She unlatched her restraints and moved to the seat next to him to check his vitals, letting out a sigh of relief when she confirmed he was still breathing.

  “Hang on, Dan,” she whispered, turning her attention back to the other pods.

  Two hours later the first rendezvous occurred, and with some precision flying Carolyn was able to mate the top of their teardrop pod with the bottom of the other, thereby establishing a hard connection that came up through a second, hidden hatch underneath the control console of the other pod. When the connection was made, she floated up and through the short extendable connection and poked her head out underneath the raised console, then climbed up into their cabin like a hamster coming up and out a small tube.

  “Captain, are we ever glad to see you,” one of the four crewmen in the pod said with a look of genuine relief on his face.

  Carolyn glanced around, taking stock of the survivors, with her eyes landing on the medic’s uniform to her left.

  “You, come with me,” she said, pointing to the man before crawling back down the cramped tunnel.

  “Do you have wounded?” he asked, sliding down feet first.

  “Dear god!” he exclaimed once he saw the other occupant.

  “What is it?” a voice asked.

  “It’s Admiral Waikford,” the medic answered back. “He’s got some type of a head wound,” the medic said, his voice trailing off as he floated down next to the still unconscious man.

  “Piece of debris hit him,” Carolyn said, floating mid cabin with a hand on the hatchway. “He’s lost a lot of blood.”

  “Have you given him anything?”

  “Blue pill.”

  “Good…that probably helped. Get me two whites and something to grind them down with. I need them in powder form.”

  Pushing off the ‘ceiling’ Carolyn dropped down to the console and began digging around inside. She found the vile with the white pills, marked as painkillers, and pulled out a pair of the dry tablets, which she placed inside an empty ration cartridge split up into sections like an egg carton. Lastly she removed her wedding ring and handed it all to the medic.

  “Water bo
ttle,” he said next, carefully grinding up the pills using her ring as the breaker as he cupped the floating dust expertly back into the cartridge slot. “Open it then hand it to me very, very slowly.”

  Doing as bidden, Carolyn unscrewed the cap then kept enough forward momentum to keep the water from flowing forward. The movement acted like artificial gravity, keeping it in place at the bottom of the flexible bottle until it got into the medic’s hand…who whipped it around in circular motion, ever so slowly decreasing speed until it was just barely moving.

  With a flick of his other hand he brought his thumb to bear over the top of the cartridge that he had been holding closed and flicked out a bit of crushed pill dust, whereupon he flew the open bottle around in mid air, collecting the dust all the while keeping a little momentum in the liquid to hold it in place. He continued with the exercise until he had all the dust relocated and he released cartridge.

  “Cap,” he called, getting it handed to him a moment later. He caught the lid on the bottle and screwed it tight, then began shaking the liquid to mix in the medication.

  “Well done,” Carolyn congratulated him.

  “Now for the hard part,” the medic said, jostling the Admiral. He had to shake him many times before the man’s eyelids snapped open.

  “Good,” the medic said under his breath. “Admiral, can you hear me?”

  “Carolyn?”

  “I’m here,” she said, sliding over to his right side, opposite the medic. “We’ve docked with another pod, one with a medic.”

  “Good…very good,” he said, coughing slightly, which he immediately regretted as the bodily tremors did a number on his head.

  “I need you to sip this, sir. It will help with the pain,” the medic said, handing him the bottle with straw.

  “How many?” he asked his XO.

  “Four,” she answered. “With five more pods enroute. We located some others while you were out.”

  “The British?”

  “Leaving us alone, for now. I think they’re searching their own wreckage for survivors.”