Orion Gambit - Traci Ganner series book 2

Orion Gambit - Ch 11

“Alright, people. We’re hurt pretty bad, but by some miracle, our cloak appears to still be functional.  The fighters can survive on life support for nine hours if they conserve. Captain Zuarit, once we get the ship back under control, I want you to prepare for secondary protocols.”

“Yes, Traci Ganner. I understand.”

Lieutenant Junior Grade Shawna Davidson climbed the ladder to the AuxCon side hatch and came inside. As the junior damage control officer, she had been sent as a runner to update the conn.

“Captain, we’ve got power problems running up to this part of the ship, but we should have communications working in another ten minutes. In the meantime, we’ve got four teams down below, working fires and trying to reestablish communication with engineering and the hangar deck. We took some serious damage aft of frame twenty-two. The scrubbers are working overtime, ma’am. We estimate that we will have to start venting smoke in another fifteen minutes if we can’t stop the fires.”

“Alright, Lieutenant. I want priority on engineering. We’ve got to get confirmed status on our shields and cloaking system. We seem to have propulsion for now, but I don’t know for how long. Make your way forward to the bridge and meet up with Commander McKenzie. Instruct him to go back with you to coordinate efforts in main engineering. Send one team to work on the hangar deck, but no more than that until we have control and power restored. Do not vent smoke without my express order. Use personal breathers first.”

Captain Zuarit turned to look at Captain Ganner and stared at her for some time before she glanced up at him.

“Captain, we will get to your people, but right now I need to make sure the ship is safe,” Traci said.

Captain Zuarit said nothing. He turned and resumed his efforts to communicate with his men.

* * *

“Admiral, we have a rudimentary communications net in place, sir. We’re sending a scrambled code to each of the ships in our part of the net using a broad transmission pattern. Anywhere we find that the signal is attenuated or weakened, we’ll shift the net.”

Admiral Charleton was leaning over the plotting tank, which now showed lines criss-crossing its globular representation of the Altair system. His ships, along with a few of the faster units of the now much larger Third Fleet, had divided up the system into eight quadrants. Each quadrant was a slice of the system, defined by a fan of ships radiating out from the star and a picket at the slice’s hyper limit. Each ship transmitted a coded loop to the other ships in its pattern. The concept was to create a “net” that could be swept along as the ships fanned outward. Any interference with the signal between ships could be an indication that something invisible was blocking the signal. That would be their hidden Orion battle cruiser.

It was Charleton that had first figured out how the Orion vessel knew which dreadnought in Fourth Fleet to attack. Since the tight beam transmission between the two fleet commands had originated from their command ships, the Orion vessel had brazenly tacked directly between the two fleets until the signal was interrupted. That must have allowed it to pinpoint the terminal points of the transmission.

“Thank you, Mr. Haskell. I’ll inform the first marshal that our cruiser squadron is ready. Let me know if you detect even the slightest interruption in the net.”

“Yes, sir,” the rating said.

* * *

Blood splattered against Doctor Godsman’s gloved arm. His nurse passed him another sponge, but the ensign he was working on was in bad shape, and he couldn’t spare the seconds to clean his uniform. Bodies had been steadily flowing into the medical bay, which, thankfully, was buried in the bowels of the ship and had not been hit—yet.