Wed Apr 13, 2005 5:00 pm by ww2jacob
Chapter Eleven- We Won’t Go Quietly
Black dived around the corner. He jumped up, leveled his rifle, and dispatched two more guards. They had to be on the right track now.
The small party of Liberty attackers had been wandering the halls of this battleship for nearly an hour now. It was very exhausting, and they still had not found the bridge. They had found plenty of guards to fight, however, and there seemed to be more of the guards along this path.
By now, the small group had been whittled even smaller, down to only Black, Serena, and two crewmen: Donavan and Reeves. Each person now had a rifle that they had found when they had stumbled across a small armory fifteen minutes ago. Black had also picked up a can of neural stun gas, in case it was needed. They had been hopelessly lost, and none of them had any idea about how to get to the bridge in a Bretonian battleship.
Black ran ahead, and spotted a group of three crewmen running down the hall towards him. He gestured for the other three to follow him, and he ducked into a service passage.
The crewmen stormed past, and kept running down the hallway that Black and crew had just come down.
Black looked down the dimly lit passage that they were in. It went on for a long ways. Plus, there were no guards. Also, as Black checked his datapad, it seemed to lead to the bow of the ship. He motioned for the others to follow him, and he began walking down the passage.
He reached a dead end, and before he turned around to head back, he heard something above him.
There were distinct voices coming from the top of the passage. He looked up, and saw light streaming through a grate in the ceiling. Men were standing in the room above, talking.
Black leaned up, and peered through the grate. It was the bridge! A giant window covered most of one wall, as a similar one did on the Jefferson’s bridge. Rows of computer consoles dotted the sidewalls, with technicians at each one. At the back, a large door stood, with guards at each side. In the center, near the grate, two men stood, talking. One was shorter, and a bit on the heavyset side. The other man was tall and thin. They both seemed to be of fairly high ranking, since their rank insignias had many bars, and their Bretonian uniforms were well decorated.
“This system seems to be the ideal meeting place for our fleet. The small enemy presence was defeated, with only two ships escaping. They will warn those in New Berlin, but there is nothing left to stop us. We have destroyed the entire Rheinland fleet, and what remains cannot even control the panicked civilians,” said the tall man.
“True, but they still could send to Liberty for help, sir,” the short man, obviously the subordinate, said.
“Didn’t you hear? We sent the reserve fleets into California yesterday! The Liberty fleet was soundly defeated, and now our Kusari allies and ourselves are closing in on New York even as we speak. Soon, Liberty will be ours as well. No one stands to defeat us. The two weakest houses, the ones who were regarded as worthless and pathetic, are now the sole rulers of Sirius!”
Black and the others reeled at this news. Liberty had lost California?
Impossible! The 1st Battlegroup had been sent there, along with the 3rd Fleet! There was no way that the Bretonians could have beaten them there, no way!
The men above continued. “You see? We gather the main fleet here, crush New Berlin, move through Hamburg and Kepler, and then attack New York simultaneously with the reserve fleet, and the Kusaris from Colorado!” the tall one said.
As he listened, Black heard a rumble, and began to feel a strong breeze from beneath him. He looked down, and saw that there was another grate under him, and a fan beneath that. He suddenly got a brilliant idea.
He told the rest of his party to move a good distance back down the shaft, and pulled out the neural gas container. He pulled the pin, set it on the grate beneath him, and sprinted down the shaft, as fast as his feet would carry him.
A cloud of gas rose up from the canister, and through the grate on the top, and into the room above. Black couldn’t hear the men on the bridge, but he knew that they were now gagging as the potent gases knocked them out.
He allowed himself a quick grin. He glanced back at his party, and noticed that the rest of them had smiles on their faces as well.
They waited a good two minutes, until the gases had vanished, and then they moved back down to the end of the shaft. Black reached up, and pushed open the grate. The gases were gone off the bridge as well, but all the men on the bridge were knocked out cold. Black had picked up enough from the two men’s conversation to figure out a plan.
Followed closely by his party, Black moved to the main control panel. He knew that they had very little time before the men on the bridge came to, and they would have to be long gone by the time that happened.
He was glad to find that the computer was active, and that he had full access to all of the ship’s systems. He pulled up the communications menu, and sent a message to what he assumed to be the main fleet, still in Omega-11. He told them that they had secured the system, and that the fleet should amass in the system. He quickly received an affirmative response, and smiled. They were playing right into his hands.
He quickly opened up the piloting menu. He set a course for the dead center of the system, set the engines to 300%, and locked the course and speed. Then, a message flashed up on the screen, informing him that the ship’s reactor would overload in ten minutes if he did not lower the speed.
Black smiled. Just as he had planned. Alarms went on throughout the ship, and he motioned for the rest of his party to proceed back down into the service corridor. Before he locked the console, Black sealed off all the doors he could, and found a good path to the docking bay. He sealed off the main door to the bridge, and locked down every exit from the ship, with the exception of the main docking bay. He sealed off every entrance to the docking bay, with the exception of another service passage that he was planning to use to get into the bay.
Once all of this was finished, Black locked down the console. Nobody would be able to change anything now.
He jumped down into the corridor, just as the first Bretonians started stirring on the bridge.
“Let’s go,” he whispered to the three others.
They followed him down the passage. Right above him, Black heard alarms and footfalls. He knew, however, that the Bretonians would have a very difficult time getting onto the bridge, and even if they did, they would have an even tougher time getting the reactor offline. The only thing that mattered now was getting himself and his companions off the ship. Ten minutes wasn’t a lot of time, but it would have to be enough. The rest was up to luck and Black’s navigation skills.
He urged the others to move faster. The clock was ticking. Already, he could hear and feel a rumble beneath him. The sprinted down the passage, into a main hall, and into another passage. Black checked his chronometer as they ran. Just five minutes. He ran harder.
Through another main hall, past a pair of bewildered crewmen, and into the docking bay, they ran. They stopped in their tracks once they entered the bay. The main doors had opened, and the wing of Bretonian fighters that Black had seen leave was entering the bay! Black grabbed Serena and jumped back into a corner. Reeves and Donavan caught the message, and joined them in the corner.
The Bretonian ships, Crusaders, set down. Their hatches opened, and a Bretonian pilot came out of each. Black caught a bit of their conversation.
“But why did they call us in, then?”
“I don’t know! The captain said something about a reactor something-or-another.”
“What’s that all about?”
“No idea, he probably—hey! What is that?”
He was pointing to the Rheinland ship that Black had landed in the bay when he had arrived.
“Man, that sure is nice. Those Rheinlanders always did have the better ships.”
“Yeah, I wonder how the boys captured it?”
“No idea. Let’s go to the bridge and see what’s up.”
The Bretonians crossed to the door that led to one of the main hallways to the ship. They were a fair way from it, since the cavernous docking bay was very long.
Black whispered to each person. He held up three fingers, then two, then one, then he ran for the Rheinland ship. The others each ran for a Bretonian ship. They took care to be quiet as they opened the hatches and climbed in, right as the Bretonians reached the door. They looked up in surprise when it did not open. Black had made sure to lock it down while on the bridge. Right then, Black started the engines, and the Bretonians turned. Three other engines started near him, and Black activated his belly thrusters. His ship was propelled off the deck, and his targeting came online. He swung his cross-eye to right next to the Bretonians, and squeezed off a shot. The deck next to the Bretonians became a black mess, and they, who had originally been planning to try to get their ships back, turned tail and ran to a far corner of the bay.
Black checked his chronometer again. Less than a minute!
“Serena, activate the docking sequence!” he called over the comm, knowing that only a Bretonian ship would be able to open the bay doors. She acknowledged, and the big inner doors began to open. The four ships flew into the airlock, and the inner doors shut behind them. The outer doors opened, and the sight that they saw was incredible.
Space had turned brilliantly bright. Yellow light streamed everywhere. The battleship was flying right into the sun. The mighty sheets of hull armor were melting away, and the battleship itself looked deformed. Parts near the engine were already glowing from the expanding reactor. Black activated his thrusters, and sped away as fast as he could. He activated cruise, and was glad to see that the other ships had already joined formation with him, slaving their navigation to him.
They sped away towards the nearest jumphole, one that had recently phase-aligned to Frankfurt.
They were only 3K from it when a brilliant flash of light came up behind them. Black turned to look, and saw a flash inside the sun’s corona. The Bretonian battleship had just died. Then, another explosion, and another, and another. Then, finally, the most brilliant and bright of all. Black’s viewscreen automatically darkened to its darkest setting. Black seemed to be swimming in a sea of light, and he could see nothing else. He screamed, just as he noticed the batch of color in front of him. Then, he was in a tunnel of color. Everything then went black.
Dresden, and all those in it, had died.
