Chapter 06

Homeward Bound

In the days following the vote on the Forge Federation the main group of people who are the power behind the pirates and the attempts to take control of Forge and the HAK Systems weapons research are having a meeting to discuss their next actions. One of them says, “I think we’ll do a lot better at taking control if we can get Kesselring and Austin out of our way, because they seem to be the cause of all our failures.”

Another responds with, “They are the two main leaders of the Forge military forces and their best strategists. So removing them will help with any future military actions against them. How can we deal with them?”

A third member says, “The battleships we’re building and selling to our allies are ahead of schedule. I’ve two ships in space waiting until the buyers pays us for them as they’re short of funds right now. The ships have delivery crews right now. While they are short crewed they are fully operational, they just don’t have the extra crew members for extended operations or boarding activities. They’re also light on repair teams as a delivery crew aren’t expected to have to make combat repairs. I can have them directed to deal with Kesselring and Austin on their return flight.”

The first smiles as he says, “Yes. That’ll work. The ship they’re on has no weapons and is small, so it should be easy to just destroy it and all on board in open space between systems.” The rest all nod agreement to approve the issue of the orders to make the attack.

Departure

The departure of the Goodwill from Congress is simple and hardly noticed by most people. However, there are a few people who make a careful note of when they leave and how the Goodwill goes about its departure from orbit. The observers carefully note the direction Goodwill takes on its way to the heliosphere boundary then they pass that data to some waiting messenger ships just on the edge of the heliosphere. On the receipt of the message with the departure trajectory the messenger ships leave the area at their fastest speed to deliver their messages.

The Goodwill is three-quarters of their way to the heliosphere when the small scanner probes they have out in front of them detect the messenger ships and their departures. Falcon’s Captain, Senior Lieutenant Melissa Pearson, is in the main crew room of the Goodwill watching the monitors showing a repeat of the ships sensors, along with all but the two on-duty crew members at the ship’s controls. She turns and asks, “Well, Morgan, what do you think of that?”

He smiles as he says, “I think someone is interested in the direction in which we’re travelling so they can organise a reception for us.” He turns to the Captain of the Goodwill and says, “Keep the probes out ahead of us, and replace them when you need to service them. I want both of our Raptors ready for an immediate launch on detection of any combat ships near us. The sensor probes should give us enough warning. Also set the defence screens to maintain seventy-five percent and to go to full power once we have contact.” Everyone acknowledges their orders then they form small groups to discuss what they expect to happen.

A week into the journey home the Goodwill is in open space, but still in Federation space when the sensors detect two large combat ships with one on each side of the Goodwill’s line of advance. Due to how far ahead they have the sensors and the fact they have better sensors than anyone else, at this time, they know the combat ships haven’t yet detected them. So the three captains of the ships have a short conference on what to do.

Melissa says, “They’re coming toward us, so there’s no way we can go to the side without them picking us up. We may as well go through.”

Lorna’s response is, “From the information supplied before we left we know the Federation has nothing this big in this area at this time. So they aren’t likely to be official. I suspect they’re sent by our enemies to take us prisoner to find out what we know.”

After a moment’s thought Morgan says, “Either capture or kill. I can’t decide which is what they’re after. We could turn around and take time to go back then go around, but who knows what they’ll do next. The ship is too big to hide from the sensor package they’re likely to have, but I do not think they’ll be able to detect the Raptors until we’re right on top of them. I suggest we launch the Raptors then move them out to the sides and ahead so that when contact is made we’re in positions to hit them hard if they attack the Goodwill. They know the Goodwill is unarmed and they won’t be expecting any escort ships.”

After a little bit more discussion the plan is refined and put into action by all of the crews preparing their ships for action. Peregrine and Falcon are launched by opening the hangar doors that make up Goodwill’s keel and triggering the springs to shove the two fighters clear of the ship. The doors are then shut and when the Raptors are clear of the ship’s shields the shields are brought up to full power.

Peregrine and Falcon are in full stealth mode as they move out to the sides and ahead so they’ll have the two suspect ships between them when the Goodwill is detected by the other ships.

Contact

Although Lorna is the Captain of the Goodwill she places the relief crew in charge of controlling the ship so she can concentrate on the wider strategy and communications with the other ships. Thus the relief crew are in the command seats while Lorna is in the Crew Room watching the monitors with the information relayed from the control deck systems.

Lorna watches as the two combat ships change their courses to angle in toward the Goodwill from being parallel to each other. They now have enough information to identify them as being Star Class battleships.

Activating her communicator Lorna sends a radio message saying, “To the two combat ships within the sound of my voice, this is Major Austin, Captain of the Forge Federation Diplomatic Courier Goodwill. Please state your reason for changing course toward my ship.” She gets no response, so she repeats the message. Again, no reply, so she says, “If you don’t immediately reply with a satisfactory answer I have to assume you intend to attack my ship. Be warned such an attack is an act of war and we will defend ourselves.

Captain Kelly, cousin to the pirate admiral, is in command of the two combat ships and the captain of the battleship Rigel. On hearing the third radio transmission he says to his bridge crew, “You’re in an unarmed ship, Missy. What will you defend yourself with?” The crew all laugh. He turns to the communications officer, “Tell Regulus we’ll open fire in five minutes, as per our plan. Once we’ve destroyed this flea we’ll deliver the ships and collect our bonus.”

Morgan and Melissa are wide of the two battleships and they turn in toward them when Lorna makes her broadcasts. They both have all of the weapons and shields on-line, along with all of their stealth systems and their sensors as they prepare to attack the battleships if they attack the Goodwill. On the way to their current positions they identified the class of ship, check their records for the ship design, evaluated and decided on their attack points then programmed it all into their combat computers. The sensors have already detected the shield frequency of the targets.

Everyone sits and waits, and watches as the ships move closer to each other. Then both of the battleships fire their main armament beams at the Goodwill without any warning or any attempt to contact them.

Melissa and Morgan act within milliseconds of each other as they put their fighters into full power attacks on their targets and activate their combat computers to make the attack. Both Raptors fire a number of shells at the drives of their targets before switching their fire to where the life support equipment is and place a veritable torrent of shells on the one spot as their aim is to destroy the life support and blast their way into the main power room below it. The shells are on their way before the main beam of the Raptors fires.

The beam attuned to the shield frequency hits and slices through the shield as it causes an overload to take the battleship shield off-line just a microsecond before the first of the shells arrive on target and start to tear the drive, life support, and main power room apart with devastating effect on the battleships. The damage is so severe and fast it stuns all of the Forge people watching the retaliatory attack.

Captain Kelly is smiling as their main beam reaches out to the small ship that’s their target. Then he’s stunned to see the target’s shield is able to handle the attack of the two battleship beams which should be turning it into atoms. He’s turning to speak to his Tactical Officer about the power setting of the beam when the sensor operator calls out, “Small craft above us just now registering on our sensors.”

Right on the heels of that call is the report by the Assistant Tactical Officer of, “Shield failure. All shields down.” This is followed by the ship shivering along with alarms going off across all of the bridge stations. Then suddenly it all goes quiet as all power is lost. The ship shivers a few more times and then all is still and quiet. Not even the emergency lights have come on.

One by one the crew turn on the small lights built into their ship suits before they get out of their seats and start to check their systems.

Within seconds of starting the attack on the battleship Morgan sees the drives turn off at the same time there’s a large and bright explosion in the hole he’s made into the battleship. He correctly assumes the power room has suffered a catastrophic failure and had an internal explosion.

The beam firing at the Goodwill stops with the explosion, and all of the lights visible on or in the battleship go off at the same time. With the main power room gone the battleship will be on the emergency power batteries and the secondary power room that powers the internal systems of the ship. Thus Morgan is waiting to hear them surrender or to see the crew abandoning ship if the explosion was bad enough to warrant it.

However, neither of those events occurs. After a wait of ten minutes Lorna tries to contact the battleships, but receives no reply. She opens the main comm circuit between the three ships and asks, “Anyone got any idea of what’s going on? Or what to do?”

Melissa has manoeuvred Falcon around to get a good look at the drive of the battleship and she responds, “The main drive of this ship will need a full rebuild before it can be started up again. How’s the other one?”

Morgan replies, “My sensors say the drive is dead. I’m looking into the hole I made, but I can’t see much due to the wreckage inside the ship. I guess the main power room exploded and tore up the insides.”

“Yeah. It looks like that to me, too,” is Melissa’s reply.

Lorna says, “We don’t have anyone or the facilities to go have a look. So what do we do now?”

“All we can do is hook up and tow the hulls home. The Goodwill has the power to take one, and the two Falcons will tow the other. They have enough food and life support on-board for a few months, so a few weeks to get them to Forge shouldn’t be a problem,” is Morgan’s next statement.

The three ships take care as they manoeuvre to set magnetic grapples on the two battleships and start the long tow home.

Throughout both of the battleships the crews are busy checking all of their ship’s systems, and finding nothing is working. The entire power system is down. Despite having redundant circuits for everything it’s all down because the explosion in the main power room took out all three of the main power lines and control boxes at the same time as the explosion destroyed the rooms they were in.

The crew members are able to talk to each other on the comm units built into their ship suits, and they are able to manually open many of the doors. However, they’re unable to open the main bulkhead blast-doors used to segregate the ship after major damage. Those doors need power to open them.

An hour after the attack the Captain of each battleship knows they lost several crew members in the explosions on their ship and the rest have been able to get together into seven groups but that’s all. They’re unable to transmit any communications beyond the ship’s hull, and when the power system went down surges along the power lines destroyed all of the controls. The lifeboat system requires power to close the ship’s hatch and to unlock the catches, thus they can’t even launch the lifeboats. The life support system is destroyed, so they’re now reliant on the power in their ship suits and the stored oxygen to survive.

Those who can do so move the emergency stores and stored oxygen to the lifeboats and set up to live in the lifeboats when the oxygen in their part of the ship becomes too bad to breath. However, not all of the crew have access to lifeboats or emergency stores due to the design of the ship.

The crew can feel the occasional light shiver through the ship, so they know their ship has been taken under tow. They just don’t know how long the tow will take. They know the target was a small ship without any capability to board them, so they understand there won’t be any help until they reach their new destination. All of them hope to last that long.

Home

As soon as they get underway with the battleships under tow Lorna sends out two more sets of sensor probes as far as they can go and still be in contact via communications being relayed by the probes in between. As a pair get low on power two new probes are launched and the two sets in between are moved ahead as the probes in need of servicing stop moving and wait to be collected by the Goodwill when it reaches them. They’re then collected, given a field service, and power cells recharged to be ready to launch again. In this way the ten sensor probes take turns as the lead probe. This system gives the Forge ships plenty of advance warning if they should comes across anything, while the system will also give them contact with the Forge System Control when the furthest probe nears the system’s heliosphere by being a communications relay.

Each probe set is a little over two hours of flight time ahead of the one before it at Goodwill’s current rate of travel due to being slowed down by the tows. That puts the lead probe just under seven hours ahead of the small flotilla, so when Lorna thinks the lead probe should be within the communications range of the system’s outer sensors she start sending a message every ten minutes until communications contact is made.

Once in contact with Forge System Control the flotilla’s situation and location is sent so some more powerful ships can be sent out to take over the tows. Thus, while still over five hours out of the system, the flotilla is aware of two of the Forge Customs Cutters approaching their position to take over the tow operations.

However, prior to taking over the tows the cutters connect to the two battleships near their shuttle bays and discharge armoured troops to take control of the ships. The boarding takes longer than they expected as they find they have to cut their way into the ship and then use temporary airlocks as they cut their way deeper into the ship. The cutters leave their boarding parties to their work and relocate to take over the tow service.

Falcon, Peregrine, and Goodwill release their tows and move away from the battleships so the cutters can take over. Lorna recalls all of her sensor probes and takes the lead while Falcon and Peregrine move to the flotilla escort positions as it heads home at nearly triple their prior speed.

Meanwhile, the boarding parties are making their way deeper in to the ships. It takes them just over an hour to search every compartment in both ships. They find two thirds of the crew alive in each ship and move them to be in the one area of each ship so they can be better watched, but they also find many of the crew had died of suffocation after the oxygen in their area had run out. Most of the dead are on the bridge of the ships and those killed in the power room explosions.

The living crew members are glad to have been found and provided with more oxygen supplies because they were also getting low. Thus they don’t give the boarding party any trouble. Nor do they cause any problems when they’re later moved from their ships to custody on Anvil. In fact, they prove very helpful when being interrogated, but they don’t know much as the only people with any really useful information were the officers on the bridge, and they’re all dead.

Note: The battleship survivors all ask to be shipped to the Rainbow Kingdom instead of being shipped back to the Federation, as they fear what their employers will do to them due to losing the battleships.

It takes several weeks for the Forge specialists to go through the two battleships and evaluate the information available in the data storage systems of the ships and what is in the private quarters of the crew. Much of what they learn isn’t useful, but some of the information in the cabin of Captain Kelly is very useful as it includes his orders which weren’t well encrypted. The details of the construction company, General Ships, and it’s location in the company controlled system of General Port is helpful in identifying one of their major enemies.

The Forge leadership discusses what to do with the battleships as they represent a major investment. After much discussion and checking by the Forge ship designers the two ships are moved to the Forge space docks so they can be given extensive refits and repairs to improve them for sale to Forge’s friendly governments.

Outcomes

The refit work on the battleships involves new power rooms, new drive systems, and a completely new power delivery system so they won’t be so easily disabled in any future battle. The life support system is also heavily reworked to provide a higher level of redundancy. The lifeboats and their launch system is changed for them to be powered from the lifeboats should the ship’s main power system fail. New HAK Systems shields and weapons are also installed.

Despite the costs of all of the work a huge profit is made when the two battleships are sold for forty percent of the usual price of a new one. The Rainbow Kingdom and Acadian governments appreciate buying a battleship that is better than anything else in the region for such a low price, and on good terms as well.

Also, all involved in the change of ownership have a good laugh at how they think the original manufacturers will react when they learn what happened to the battleships.

The Forge leadership agrees the Federation authorities need to be told of what happened, but not immediately as they wish to launch an attack on the General Ships docks where the ships were built. Thus, on the same day a transport ship takes the battleship survivors to Purple for them to apply for asylum there Morgan departs Forge leading a flight of Raptors on a trip to General Port for a little payback. The five fighters have the combat range to easily reach General Port and return, so they need no support ships to make the strike.

An official communique is sent from the Federation Ambassador on Purple with the details of the attack on the Goodwill and how her Forge escort fought and defeated the attacking privately owned pirate ships. The message includes the list of all those who died on the ships and how the Forge Federation took the two battleships as prizes. The Ambassador is not happy when he includes the information in his next official mail to his superiors back on Congress.