DSS Spruance Pursues an Enemy Spacecraft at Hammer’s Tomb

Fusion Cruiser Spruance CL+ 76
Hammer’s Tomb Deflection Zone
CDR Francis Teller Commanding
Mission Time 3887.16 Tango Zulu

“Hold your course, helm! Thirteen degrees inclination!”

Deck one was rigged for red. The ship was at general quarters. An Alliance upgraded fusion cruiser, carrying one of the most advanced weapons loadouts ever authorized for a Skywatch warship, hurtled through space at alarming speeds, straining against its own drive field. Its enemy was on the run, headed into a star system that had been gradually torn to pieces by the leviathan only one light-hour from its outermost planet’s orbit. The Omicron 474 singularity was not quite in the same kind of hurry as the tiny spacecraft that had spent the better part of two hours navigating past its treacherous gravity distortions, but within a hundred millennia or so, it was expected to tear the insides out of the doomed red sun that dominated the system known as “Hammer’s Tomb.”

The system was technically inside Atlantis space, which made it generally off-limits for Core Alliance vessels, be they military or civilian. That meant it was a secretive haven for the kinds of ships and operations that preferred to remain invisible to Skywatch. There were five planets, only two of which remained intact. The impossibly powerful gravitational forces had pulled the entire system into what amounted to a choreographed decaying orbit. This presented more than a few challenges for guests, not the least of which was the fact that the tidal forces aimed at intact planets or large asteroids were intense enough that surface temperatures were often as much as 200 to 300 degrees higher than normal. The star was gradually accelerating into its decline, pulling everything with it while Omicron applied lateral gravity. While the solar wind from the oversized giant accelerated and gravitational forces created lensing effects that made true navigation by the stars almost impossible, time itself sped up and slowed down at random intervals.

The tactical realities were beyond imagining. Only a madman would voluntarily order their ship into such a place, even if it weren’t marked with the name “Tomb” on star maps. Then again, there was an equally compelling case to be made only a madman would pursue an enemy into the spacetime equivalent of Hell itself.

“We are now inside Atlantis space and in violation of Skywatch regulations!” the XO shouted.

The skipper of DSS Spruance looked ready to leap out of his command chair. His crew wouldn’t have been at all surprised if he did. The roar on the bridge of the recently upgraded Alliance warship was almost unbearable. Only the vessel’s massively overbuilt energy systems were keeping her drive field intact as she howled through space at the edge of one of the most unpredictable systems on Skywatch charts. Only a few hundred miles ahead of her the plasma trailing shadow of her target flickered as it ran for its life. Instruments were unreliable. Inteference was everywhere. Tiny asteroids were burned to ash as they impacted the cruiser’s battle screens.

Not far ahead was contact Reflector Six, the vessel confirmed to have opened fire on both of Spruance’s escorts without provocation.

“Weapons status!” Teller barked.

“Fusion overloads holding, but just barely sir!” the tactical officer responded.

Francis Teller had ordered his cruiser’s newest and heaviest weapons to arm themselves inside their launchers. Spruance was holding eight globes of barely restrained destructive power inside precision tuned magnetic fields so delicately balanced, a variation of half a percent in relative polarities would disrupt the containment shielding and turn a cluster of unrestrained supernovas loose inside the ship’s hull. They were essentially Molotov cocktails that had to be held while lit, at least until the firing ship had a target solution. Overloaded torpedos, on the other hand, were designed to be launched at once, preferably at unimaginable speeds along a vector directly away from the ship and crew. But Teller’s mind was elsewhere. He knew the capabilities of the system, and he knew he could push them if necessary. He didn’t just want to damage his target. He wanted to vaporize it. One thing working in his favor was the fact the space equivalent of an eternal typhoon with 200 foot radioactive waves might do the job before he needed to pull the trigger.

“Go to one hundred ten percent! Shift all reactors blue offsets! Maximum ambient!”

Aboard the new upgraded class of Skywatch warship, an energy officer was posted to the bridge. Their job was to balance fuel and capacitance flows throughout the sleek vessel’s gigantic transmission and storage matrix. Spruance was no longer just a formation cruiser assigned to gunnery in support of a flagship. Now she was a rabid pack animal, engineered for blood hunger and swiftly overtaking prey. Her captain had driven his crew through a 12-week crash course in pure ship versus ship violence while he studied the capabilites of the brand new Jaguar fusion torpedo banks Spruance had acquired. At the moment, however, it was that energy officer who was looking to the XO for help. Commander Teller had ordered his ship’s entire battery to overload status, something which had never been attempted in combat and certainly was never meant to be held in capacitance for long. The stability of the dampening fields was nearing critical.

“Sir, we’ve got thirty seconds before all the line temperatures reach maximum tolerance!” the XO shouted. The rattling and thunderous subsonic vibrations were threatening to create spikes in the bridge’s pressurized atmosphere. The air temperature was approaching 110 degrees Fahrenheit despite the environmental controls’ feverish attempts to restore proper humidity and circulation.

“Get me a target lock, tactical!”

“We can’t close range, sir! Reflector Six drive field integrity is two points above amplitude and climbing!”

Teller pounded his fist on the arm of his command chair. “Damn the weapons lock! Maximum overload aspect for proximity targeting! Bracket pattern!”

“Weapons one and two calibrated. Red charge!”

“Fire!”

The bridge lights dimmed as Spruance’s forward fusion banks each launched two dangerously overloaded bolts of ravenous contained plasma. The weapons shrieked across the inky gloom of space, crossing tens of thousands of miles in fractions of a second. Each punched a strobing hole in the darkness as it detonated. The cruiser heedlessly tore through its own weapons’ shockwaves and continued bearing on its enemy.

“No effect! Reflector Six maintaining range!”

“Fire two!”

Again the power systems fluctuated as the cruiser’s secondary banks each fired twice. Again a barrage of blinding weapons lanced through the void. Painful eruptions of unstable energy flashed and burned in space. Teller’s ship blasted through the unbearable heat and radiation once more, its shields ripping gashes in the spherical bursts. Spruance emerged. Its instruments cleared and rapidly re-acquired their target.

The unidentified attacker was losing speed. Teller’s ship was closing. The commander’s fingers closed tight around the edges of the command consoles on either side of the center seat. If he could overtake Reflector Six his energy banks would have a clean shot at its engines. He needed another ten seconds. Just ten more seconds and his crazed pursuit would bring the enemy vessel within range of his guns.

It was the single-minded fixation on gaining those last few hundred miles that put DSS Spruance squarely inside her enemy’s target envelope.

What Commander Teller didn’t know was that the enemy ship was preparing the kind of attack that didn’t require the enormous energy loads of a fusion cruiser’s weapons. The Jaguar Torpedo system was tremendously capable and far more versatile than most weapons of its type. The Alliance had invested catastrophic amounts of labor, materials and risk to bring them to the battlefield. Fusion torpedos were the weapon that had to work, because the alternative was unthinkable. They were supposed to give captains the option to fire an “energy missile” that didn’t require fuel, guidance systems, complex electronics or a physical vehicle and warhead. Fusion torpedos were weapons with their own modified drive fields guided by the firing ship and its sophisticated targeting scanners rather than on-board tracking. The tradeoff was that the firing ship had to become essentially a fifty-thousand-ton capacitor built around an absolutely massive reactor structure covered with high energy targeting arrays. It did what it was supposed to do, but at a cost. In the great balancing act of firepower vs. defense vs. speed, the super-fast weapon-encrusted fusion cruiser had to give something up.

Unfortunately, Spruance’s enemy and its choice of weapons were about to expose her primary vulnerability.

TO BE CONTINUED