Vangaurd Word Update

2k words

***

“All set,” he called. “Take us out.”

The cabin creaked as the thrusters engaged, the transport lifting off the deck. Cadell felt the inertia of the craft as it turned about, clutching at his harness as they pivoted out of the hangar. As they passed through the shield, the station’s gravity gave way to a sense of weightlessness, Cadell’s feet trying to leave the deck in the microgravity.

There were panes of glass on either side of the cabin, Cadell glancing through one as the transport swerved about, the ringworld panning into view. They were gaining rapid distance from the station, the details of the buildings along the torus fading as the Hub gently shrunk down until it was a vague, bullseye-like shape floating in a canvas of stars. Just like the day he’d watched his home planet shrink away when he was assigned to this post, he felt that same pang of trepidation again now, wondering what the rest of the Universe had in store for him next.

He felt a pressure on his arm, and he turned to see Samiha reaching over, giving him a reassuring pat. He smiled up at her, conveying all his gratitude for her without having to speak a word.

After a couple minutes, he heard chatter from the cockpit, catching something about requesting permission to dock. They must be nearing the Endeavour, and as the transport turned again, Cadell got his first look of it out of the viewport. A hull as dark as the space behind it curved into view from above, the profile longer than it was tall. It was comprised of three main sections. The first was a narrow nose with a blocky module that was probably the bridge, antennae and a litany of point-defence cannons spiking from the below it on the chin. Beyond it was a wide midsection, flared out from the sides to house torpedo racks that hung from either side of the hull, which housed enough ordinance to level a small moon in its own right. Last was the engine modules, two giant cones that were currently idle, but were capable of delivering enough thrust to propel such a heavy starship at considerable speeds.

It was hard to gauge its size, given there were no other bodies to compare it too, but Cadell had read up on its class and knew it was about six hundred meters from the engines to the nose, and where the hull wasn’t covered in armour, the ship was bristling with weaponry, from miniguns for shredding apart lighter craft, to torpedos and artillery guns that could blast apart starships just as heavily armed as itself.

“That is a lot of firepower to bear,” Samiha murmured, following his gaze as she examined the ship.

“It’s an assault carrier starship,” Cadell explained. “Not quite as heavy a hitter as a battleship, but it’s more versatile, got its own hangar bays for strike craft and enough room to haul a couple vehicles to help in land operations.”

“And this single ship is all that the Alliance will send?” Samiha asked.

“Not quite,” Captain Vonstock answered, sitting across from her. “We’ll be escorted by a support frigate for this deployment. We don’t know how many ships the UEC used to take the shipyard, so she’ll be our backup. Normally we’d have a support fleet in tow, but we’re all that’s available on this short a notice.”

“Will it be enough?” Kazlu asked. “If the Confederate forces are unknown, perhaps one of our carriers can be spared to help.”

“No need,” Vonstock said. “The Endeavour’s dealt with Confederate rabble before. I’d be more concerned with the groundwork phase of the operation if I were you. Once all ships are neutralised, it will be up to you to clear the shipyard of hostiles, and secure any potential hostages and salvage the remaining equipment.”

The Captain seemed remarkably calm about dealing with a minimal amount of intel, the UEC could have sent in their own assault carrier or two, but he didn’t show a shred of doubt. Cadell admired that about him.

The carrier bloomed until it took up the entire viewport with its bulk, Cadell spotting the Alliance emblem stencilled against the flank. The hull near it was faded and scratched, as if someone had painted the emblem over something, and that was exactly the case with the Endeavour. Most Alliance ships were repurposed Confederate ships, turned over by crews that had switched sides. It was both a mockery to the Confederacy, and a more cost-effective way for the Alliance to grow its burgeoning fleet.

They approached the midsection of the carrier, lining up with one of the airlock ports built above the torpedo hardpoint, a circular door opening up as the closed distance. There was no shield barrier like the one in the Hub hangar bay, but maybe that would change once the Balokarids started seeing wider deployment across the Reaches.

The light from the stars bloomed out as the transport started to dock, fitting snuggly inside the narrow tube without as much as a scrape. They waited unti the pilots gave the all-clear, and the Captain unbuckled his harness, his guards and Cadell’s team doing the same.

“Make sure your boots are engaged,” Vonstock added as he approached the ramp. “The centrifugal gravity won’t kick in until we reach cruising speed.”

Hydraulics whirred, and the ramp descended, the group heading out into the airlock proper. The outer door was sealed tight, but as they rounded the transport Cadell saw that the inner was open, gangways and bulky machinery obscuring the way towards the hangar proper.

A group of eight or so personnel were waiting by a nearby control panel, some of them engineers, but mostly officers dressed in prim uniforms. These must be the Captain’s advisors.

“Well then, this is where we part,” Vonstock said, looking between the five of them. “We’ll be burning towards the shipyard soon enough, but there’s enough time for you to get your bearings. Get comfortable, we’ll be cruising for three months before the fighting starts. We have a gymnasium on level three, I suggest you use it. Private Tosh here will show you around.”

One of the guards stepped forward, flipping open his visor to give them a curt nod.

“And, before I forget,” Vonstock added. “Welcome to the Endeavour.”

Chapter 7: The Shipyard

The quiet clicking of keyboards echoed of the glass walls of the bridge, the occasional mutter into a microphone interrupting the peace. The Endeavour’s navigation systems arced across the forefront of the room in two half circles of dashboards and computing equipment, the technicians behind them tapping away at the dials and buttons. The ship had hard burned for seventy-three days, before counterthrust had been delivered for an equal amount of time afterwards. In those four months of travel, nothing but stars and planetary bodies could be seen out of the massive window spanning the bridge’s northern wall aside from glimpses of their escort ship. The deployment had been uneventful, and there was a general feeling of peace throughout the carrier’s crew. That was all about to change.

The pressure door leading out the bridge parted, and Captain Vonstock walked through, fixing his officers cap across his brow. His heeled boots clicked across the deck as he approached the Captain’s chair, the seat situated up an behind the navigation equipment to give him a clear view out of the glass canopy.

“Report,” he called out, directing his attention to one of the navigators.

“We’re resting at the edge of the system. Visual contact on the yard has been established.”

“On screen.”

A portion of the glass canopy sectioned off, becoming a video feed. It showed a grainy feed of a distant object, one of the technicians zooming in on it. The main habitat was designed not unlike the Hub, with a circular structure that could take advantage of centrifugal force to generate gravity. Dozens of skeletal arms branched out from this central structure, covered with solar panels and industrial machinery. Every pair of arms formed giant open lanes between them, encasing areas large enough where ships could drydock, or be safely constructed within reach of the station’s equipment. Four such lanes existed, two on either side of a bulky midsection, easily the biggest part of the shipyard.

The main conning tower of the yard was heavily damaged. Its top half was missing completely, and a giant chunk of the hull near its base was also missing, probably from a generator gone critical or maybe collateral damage from the debris. Aside from this, the shipyard looked mostly intact, which wasn’t surprising. Shipyards were critical assets for any spacefaring species, especially in times of war, and it took years of mining and funding to construct them, and even the loss of this shipyard was causing logistical nightmares from the Hub to Torquay.

“Any targets on the radar?” Vonstock asked, another operator replying.

“Yes, sir. Three frigate-class vessels are orbiting the station at a distance of thirty kilometres, and there’s a corvette occupying the fourth lane of the yard.”

Vonstock leaned back in his chair, considering. They were outnumbered, but they had the element of surprise on their side, thanks to their rapid deployment from the Hub. Four months didn’t sound very quick, but travelling across the Reaches sometimes took years depending on the distance, and it was only thanks to the early warning of one of the shipyard personnel they were able to move on this so quickly. He wondered if whoever had sent the distress signal was still alive.

They only had a limited amount of time, however, before they showed up on the Confederate’s own radars and the jig was up. A plan was already formulating, however, Vonstock and his advisors having gone over several courses of action during the hard burn.

“Helmsman, bring us within torpedo range of the station,” Vonstock ordered, then he tapped at his console, opening up a channel across the ship. “This is the Captain, set condition red. All personnel report to battle stations.”

A warning klaxon sounded off in the hallway behind the bridge, Vonstock lurching as the ship’s velocity began to climb. He had his orders relayed to their escort ship, the Relentless, the frigate forming up and following at a distance behind them.

Vonstock felt his arms begin to float of the seat, a sensation like he’d lost a couple pounds of weight permeating his stomach, his boots gluing him to the ground. Ships like his carrier had tower-like designs for their internal compartments, which could spin when the gravity drives were powered, allowing the crew to walk about without the need for magnetic boots. The gravity was always turned off when the ship went to red alert, as power needed to be diverted elsewhere.

“Disengage safety on tubes three and four,” Vonstock ordered. “Range?”

“Approaching firing range in three… two… one… mark. Firing solution uploaded. We’re locked.”

“Launch.”

He caught a glimpse of a pair of white streaks to the left of the canopy, but his human eyes were to slow to track the torpedos, the ordinance fading into the inky darkness as they streaked towards the shipyard.

“Engage full burn,” Vonstack added. “Adjust vector and put the shipyard between us and the frigates.”

Vonstock felt the strain in his arms and waist as momentum pushed him into his chair, the carrier pushing into the thousands of kilometres per second. The thermal energy the engines would make would reveal their presence, but that was not of concern anymore.

One of his displays was tracking the torpedos in real time, a rough countdown to impact ticking down from a two-minute mark. A lot of time spent in ship-to-ship combat was really spent staring at numbers on a screen, as the giant breadths of space meant that visual contact just wasn’t feasible, at least without the help of camera feeds and sensory equipment.  

As they drew a couple hundred kilometres towards the station, the feed depicting the shipyard began to define itself, Vonstock catching sight of the docked corvette parked against one of the crane arms. The video feed flickered, and then a bright burst off white overrode the camera, static screening over the image for a moment. When it cleared, he saw that the corvette had been hit, two plumes of smoke trailing towards it from out of frame. The giant cone of the engine snapped away, the warship breaking into shredded chunks that tumbled away. One of the listing pieces collided with the arm, snapping it clean in two like it was wet tissue paper, the crane itself flipping away into the void. Whatever flames borne from the torpedos petered out in the vacuum instantly, the spinning debris floating away to sever apart one of the skeletal jibs that encased the lane from above.

The destruction was limited to the docking lane, fortunately, but it had been completely decimated by the pair of blasts. The main goal of the operation was the preservation of the shipyard, of course, but the corvette was a nimble, powerful ship despite what its smaller size would suggest, and there would be no better opportunity to destroy it then now.

“The corvette is neutralised, sir,” the operator reported. “Structural damage to the shipyard is within tolerable levels.”