Dry, No Lube Ch. 09: Invasion

"Aye aye, ma'am."

She settled back into her chair, her ship and crew alive around her. P/E doctrine called for her to work her guns at a rate that could sustain an indefinite infantry operation, and she always calculated that rate carefully before her placer operations. But this was different, shooting until one side or the other ran out of will, a slugging match with no real long-term plan. At maximum ammo use, she knew, she had about nine minutes of ordnance aboard, and a glance at the chrono told her they'd already been shooting for six.

Fuck! It seemed like an eternity.

The hull ahead of them was twisting now, the warheads taking a toll on the armor at last. Misty jets of escaping gases, quickly squelched, told of damage control efforts over on the enemy ship, but Pixy could see that her furious assault was starting to wear the armor away. Messages were coming in from Laredo, tales of dreadnoughts gingerly moving up in support, but the scarred hull in front of her told her they'd be too late. And so did a hushed gasp from Luzhenka. "Goddamn, ma'am, we're doing it."

"Shut the fuck up and get the incendiaries ready," Pixy shot back. She was already moving on, the next steps here a murky haze in her mind. "Comms! Any action from the trap-batteries?"

"No, ma'am. They say they're in a defensive posture."

Pixy scoffed. "Tell them if they don't open up, I'll instruct Major Kutuza to come out of that barracks barge and do their job for them." It was a bluff, obviously; Pixy did not command Kutuza, and proper employment of a tactical trap-battery was probably well beyond the Fifth P/E Battalion's training and experience. But desperate times, she figured, call for desperate measures. Tirving shuddered to the impact of a near miss, one of the oncoming dreadnaughts finally plucking up the courage to shoot. "Shields up two percent aft," she ordered. It would mean a slightly slacker bombardment, but she was almost done with that target anyway.

"Shields plus two percent, aye!" someone echoed.

More jets spewed from cracks in the enemy hull, and just as Luzhenka announced they were down to just ten percent of their ordnance, the armor at last caved in before them, a warren of enemy corridors appearing suddenly beneath the ship's skin. Pixy fought to control her own excitement as she turned toward Targeting. "Cease fire with multipurpose and put some fucking incendiaries inside there, now!"

"Ma'am!" Luzhenka was already on it, though, so Pixy moved her mind onward. It was almost a physical effort now, a conscious move to shift her mental gears. She stared at the Main Plot, making sense of the moving parts, the dancing ships.

"We need space," she muttered to herself as the enemy vessel surged with flame around the cracks in the hull, like the light shining through the edges of a bathroom door in the dark. "Mr Nevsky? We're disengaging. Retrofire please, at twenty percent."

"Ma'am?" Malavongsy turned from the sensor pit. "Enemy vessel, right aft! Close aboard!"

"No shit?" She spun in her chair, peering back along the clumped organic armor, through the shimmer of her shields. The oncoming dreadnought loomed against the nearer stars, a web of fire connecting her bows to Tirving's stern like a string of saliva linking a pair of lips after a kiss. Her ship rocked. "Turn! Turn towards!"

"Fuck," she heard the helmsman bite out, "she's sluggish."

"Vane damage," Malavongsy called out, staring into his scope. "Starboard."

Shit. "Shield status, Mr Tomasu?"

"Limited, ma'am. Organics are fine, passive are not."

"Well, shit." She stared back, the dreadnought scoring more hits, fire lancing throughout the ship now. The stars wheeled around them as they turned, but sluggishly, the enemy ship coming fast. "Jesus H Buddha. How much clearance do we have forward? I need to buy some breathing room."

"Not enough clearance yet, ma'am," Malavongsy grated, "that damaged command ship is just too fucking big. We'll be clear in twenty-three seconds, I think."

"Fuck." That was a lot of time to do damage. "Full power to those aft shields, Mr Tomasu," she commanded, but it was a little late now: Tirving's starboard vanes now dragged uselessly, trying feebly to work.

"Maneuvering's going to be a problem," Malavongsy observed.

"No shit." She watched helplessly, the fire raking them now that the enemy vessel was falling off toward the Rock. She cringed as she saw her quarters take a hit, the hull there hissing out the atmosphere, and spared a quick guilty thought for her light-lizard. "Poor Fucknut."

"Forward clearance in ten!" The helmsman was frowning. "So hard to control this bitch..."

Pixy's eyes widened. "Full acceleration in ten seconds!" she barked, glancing down at the drive banks to see how damaged they were. Not that it mattered; she needed some room to think. It was intolerable, just sitting here soaking up damage.

"Rear clearance check?" The OOD was running mindlessly through the acceleration checklist, frowning at what he saw. "It's not safe."

"Why not, Mr Nevsky?" Pixy snarled. "You afraid our exhaust plume will damage that fucking battleship?" She leaned down and pushed the button herself, the ship shaking as it gathered speed, scorching the pursuing dreadnought's bow. "What's our course?"

"Uh, twenty-seven thousand by twelve-point-seven, squared, velocity at factor six. It's all the engineers can give us until we reduce shield power."

"Which we're not fucking doing." She glared back as the Cathos Vremein shrank behind them, then peered up at her plot-repeater. "Look, find me Contact 4 and Contact 102. Whichever one is closer, lay that course."

"Ma'am?"

"I liked killing that command ship," she explained, "and now I want another one." Her mind was racing, leg shaking like her ship's damaged vanes, the engines building the temporary safety of distance. "We're going back."

"We're doing what?"

She ignored the gaping OOD, finding Jatsupa on the vox-box. "XO. You there?"

"Barely, Captain. One of the auxiliary shuttles got nailed, and so did the lifting arm."

"Never mind the damage," she murmured, glancing around to make sure there was nobody in earshot, "I'm going to evacuate most of the crew. Allocate shuttles, but leave... two. Leave two shuttles."

"Ma'am?" He was doing it again, that wariness in his voice telling her exactly what his face looked like. "Can you explain?"

"We're almost out of ordnance. Meaning we don't need any of the gunners anymore. If we don't need them, we don't need the magazine techs. We've lost half our vanes, so the nav crew can go too. And most of comms." Her brain was working cleanly, quickly, crisply. "I'll designate a skeleton crew of fifteen or so, plus myself, and we'll carry on. You'll take the rest of them out of danger."

"I don't like this, Captain," he told her bluntly.

"I don't expect you to," she shot back, terminating the connection as she swung toward the OOD. "Mr Nevsky. Assemble the officers here now. I've got orders for everyone." She coughed. "And find me some tea, if you can. We've got more work to do."

* * *

When Tirving curved laboriously back toward the Cathos Vremein under shunted vanes, it found the massive formation in a slowed and tentative jumble. The wounded command ship was limping into a slow, wide orbit around the Rock, its fires still glowing within, and the rest of the fleet seemed to be trying to organize. Pixy nodded to herself, mind working, thinking about what she could do as her ship continued to vomit shuttles packed with her crew.

Jatsupa had been pissed, but Pixy had been pissed too, and in the end, a pissed Commander will always beat a pissed Subcommander. So he was managing a little flotilla of his own, over twenty of the Army's shuttles, packed to the brim with every nonessential crew member Pixy had been able to justify sending out. Her sendoff had been brief: thanks, you did a great job, everyone will get a medal, but if you're an ordnance sailor on a ship with no ordnance, you're just going to be in the way.

So now she was left with one person each at all the major stations, with Perfaxon and Legette in the engine room. Thirteen souls, plus their captain, and she'd made sure all of them were volunteers. She'd already dashed off a note, sent with Jatsupa, nominating all nine officers for the Gold Cross and the three enlisted sailors for Gold Orders, which was the way these things usually worked. With luck, she assumed most of them would survive to pin them on their chests, too.

She studied the Main Plot, watching the angles, evaluating the motion. "The nose is behaving strangely," she decided.

"Vanes, ma'am," the helmsman grunted.

"I'm accounting for the vanes, dammit." She eyed the starfield ahead, noting that the Cathos Vremein were getting themselves unfucked: a gaggle of smaller vessels now clustered around wounded Contact 52, which still pulsed fire from deep within. Verily was picking up many more signals from 102 and 4, which was why Contact 102 lay dead ahead. "You're not having trouble fighting that nose droop?"

"I am," the helmsman shrugged, "but I assumed it was the vanes."

"Nah." Pixy thought about it some more, then nodded. "I think the organic armor is all jammed up front now." Nobody on the bridge could see the whole bow, and the indicators had been fried when the vanes went, but it made sense. "Your down-angle is, what, about three? Three and a half?"

"Close to four, Captain."

"Yeah. That squares with the total weight of the OAS." All that weight, up forward, was giving her an idea. She'd had the last of their torpedoes loaded in the tubes and set for command-launching before she'd sent the gunners away, so she could press a button now and send it all out. She'd considered just going and doing that to Number 102, but now there was a darker plan in her head. Darker, but more useful. She pondered, then called back to Engineering. "What's the status on thrust, Mr Perfaxon? Are we back over 90% yet?"

"Getting there, ma'am. Another five minutes and we'll have good drive capability in the sublight engines." He paused. "I mean, we're still full-up in the Lerbal engines too, but given the situation I don't recommend using them for anything."

"No, no." Of course not. Everyplace the Tirving needed to go was here, right here. No need for lightspace anymore. "We're entirely local now." She mused, pondering, the possibilities shaping themselves in her head, until her leg stopped twitching and she finished with the engineer. "When I give the word? Full power for twelve seconds, then cold-soak, then light me back up for a sustained burn at moderate thrust. Apportion the power for... say, a five-minute burn. Comprehend?"

A pause. "We can give you that, ma'am. Though not much more, I think. The engines aren't all that damaged, but we did take a strike or two."

"That's all I should need, Mr Perfaxon, thank you." She brooded a moment, wondering just how foolhardy all this was, then spoke up quietly. "Listen. The new plan is to engage Contact 102 by ramming. Full speed, OAS forward, straight into the ship's aft quarter. I intend to damage it severely enough to put it out of the fight, then back off and reevaluate our options." She stirred, then looked up. "I get that this is a pretty fucked-up plan. So if anyone wants to join Commander Jatsupa, there are two more shuttles in the Vag. Just save one for me."

Velzeboer, on the sniffer, cleared his throat. "Ma'am? Are we going to die?"

"Eventually. But maybe not today." She glared back at him. "And if we do? No biggie. I've died before, and it's not that bad." And then she waited, expecting a mass exodus. She was shocked when it simply didn't happen. Everyone glanced at her, then at each other, then at their consoles.

Pixy gave it a full, silent minute, then nodded. "Thank you. Standby." She looked down at her lap then, thinking there must have been something in the brightness of the local stars, something that was making her eyes tear up. But the tears went away when she blinked, and by that time Perfaxon and Legette had the power she needed. "Let's do this."

* * *

Nobody had tried deliberately ramming an enemy ship since the beginning of the Third Antarean Incident, one of the big battles that had led up to the war out there nearly two hundred years ago. According to Fleet lore, one of the captains there had seen an opportunity to take out two Antarean vessels simultaneously despite his lack of heavy armament, an opportunity his own admiral had missed. So he'd gone after the enemy, intending to strike the first one a glancing blow and then carom off into the second, thus getting a space-combat version of a 7-10 split.

It hadn't worked well.

Now Tirving was trying something a little simpler, and not to win a war or even a battle: no, they were just trying to delay their enemy, buying time with an immensely difficult and dangerous stunt, and every one of the people aboard knew that as they barrelled through the Cathos Vremein formation at top inertial speed. Blasts came in from all sides, though haltingly, for the Cathos were still touchingly averse to hitting each other and Pixy Pfeiffer was taking advantage.

Ships drifted across, alongside, and behind her path, a pattern crowded enough for any Fleet Basin. All the while she eyed the Main Plot, sitting behind the helmsman, nudging her ship just slightly to keep up with 102's clumsy evasions. She now realized they would strike farther aft than she'd intended, but better aft than forward: most of the enemy armor was up front. She stared, mesmerized, at the Cathos Vremein drive cones, growing steadily bigger as Tirving bore down, the physics growing more and more inescapable by the second. A voice floated up from the nav pit, quiet but confident. "This is really gonna suck."

"Nonsense," Pixy sniffed, "it's going to be fucking legendary. Now then," she announced over an Intertube now broadcasting to empty corridors and silent quarters, "brace for collision." She could feel her brain, sharp and clear as it sorted through her options, but she was done making choices for now. So there was nothing to do but watch as, inexorably, the enemy command ship drew nearer and nearer, until at last its shadow fell across the Tirving's optics and she closed her eyes.

She opened them moments later onto a changed bridge, a place of acrid darkness thick with panicky cries and the sharp smell of ozone. At once, her mind fled far away, back to the hollow detached engagement where she'd taken the little Pulver in and gotten her bridge laid open by an enemy torpedo. There had been the same breathlessness then, the same shouts, the same alarms and smoke and flame.

But then, there had also been the rich scent of blood, of her own back flayed open. Of Amber Okonkfwe splattered across the decks.

She fought for control, shouting at her memories, reminding herself that this was not that: this was new. And it was now. And she was the fucking captain, with duties that she'd damn well better get to. So she struggled to her feet, a ringing in her ears and her mind, groping blindly for the fire suppressant switch beside her chair. Distantly she heard yells, commands with that desperate emergency ring to them, but she wrenched herself to her duty and hollered into the gloom.

"Pipe the fuck down!" she shouted, coughing. "One at a goddamn time!" She could feel her ship, still alive, still chewing deeply into the Cathos Vremein vessel, engines still kicking with the sustained thrust Perfaxon had promised her. She heard the dull thump of explosions now, but her heart calmed down a little as she realized, with grim satisfaction, that it wasn't her ship that was exploding. It was her enemy. She crawled below the smoke, seeking the Plot. "How far did we penetrate?"

"Wrong verb tense, ma'am," Nevsky, mopping blood from his forehead, grinned stupidly. "We're still penetrating."

"Full reverse," she ordered, but the helmsman was frantically rebooting his system.

"I've got no control from here, Captain!"

"Jesus H Buddha." Pixy's implant was spewing numbers mindlessly: acceleration, deceleration, relative motion. Tirving shuddered, trying to punch deeper into the twisted wreckage of the enemy vessel. Another blast rattled her ears from somewhere deep inside the command ship as she fumbled back to her seat and called up the status of the organic armor. She picked up the sharp smell of deconstructant, and unless she was mistaken, the hyperventate was stinkier; must be a leak, or more like a hundred leaks. Her hand fumbled for the paddlecatch. "Engineering! You still alive?"

The crackle that burst from the voxbox was not reassuring. "Yeah! What do you want? Over!"

"I want reverse thrust," Pixy stammered, the phlegm rising into another hacking cough. The flame retardants hissed all around her now, the smoke venting slowly. The entire ship would stink after this, but that hardly mattered now. "As fast as you can give me, as much as you can give me."

"Reverse thrust, aye." The wait after that was interminable, a choking mess of shunts, rerouted circuits, gravisensors, and shutoff valves before, at last, the Tirving settled down into the relative calm of slack engines. When they started up again, all the sounds were much worse, much louder as the P/E ship tried to wrench free.

"We're losing organic armor by the ton, ma'am." Lieutenant Restuta had taken on the damage control station, whose displays were slowly flicking back to life as the power found its way into new routes. "I don't know how much we're going to wind up with after this."

"I'm not worried about 'after this,' Ms Restuta," Pixy coughed, "because backing out of this motherfucker will be enough work for one day." A squeal from somewhere out there told her the Cathos Vremein were still using metal for their structural components, the fucking rubes. She fought to slow her breathing down, letting the smoke slowly dissipate as everyone picked themselves back up and went back to their stations. "Damage reports from everyone as soon as possible, please."

"We're going to run out of power before we can get out of here, ma'am," Malavongsy told her with the certainty of a man who's just looked at the master readout. "Long before."

Pixy nodded, her mind already running through the usual power-draw suspects. "As soon as I get around to it," she promised, "I'll take the gravity offline. That should do it."

"Ma'am," he nodded, his face a mass of sweaty soot. All around them the two locked ships growled, linked in space, probably headed already for the artificial gravity well. None of which anybody could do anything about, unless they could back out of the Cathos ship. "I'll go secure for zero-g."

"Yes. Do that." She was fielding damage reports, discovering happily that the faithful Organic Armor had done its job. It had performed way beyond its specs, becoming the solid fist that had punched straight through a Cathos Vremein hull, and Fleet needed to know that. So she jotted it quickly in the log before, once more, she took to the Mass Intertube. "Gravity's going away in ten seconds," she warned, her voice hoarse as it came rolling from the speakers. "Brace."

She felt the usual wave of nausea that always accompanied zero-g for her, though she'd noticed it was better since her Total Clone Replacement. Apparently, her younger body did better whilst floating. Though only slightly; she still found herself searching automatically for a Jefferman Tube, but it was hopeless. Everything was floating. Nobody ever expected the entire ship to lose gravity. "Fuck," someone moaned, and that did it: the pungency of vomit now joined the rest of the bridge's many odors. A rat, chittering indignantly, floated from under the commo console.