War Fleet: Resistance, стр. 33
Olsen grunted. He’d feared as much. Still, he allowed himself a wry smile. To see his crew performing in such ways made him proud. “Your first executive decision on my watch, Chang. And it was a damn good one.”
Kota and her men were stripping the dead Arstans of weapons, but otherwise left them where they fell. There wasn’t time to deal with them right now. The officers in the CIC had now returned to their stations. Most screens weren’t working — the EMP grenades had a much wider area of effect on electronics than they had on living things.
But the viewscreen was working, and it displayed the splendor of the Ripley sector’s star, burning and raging bright. Olsen could also see the Okranti on the viewscreen, working away on their mission. It had gathered several engineering-modules, deployed around one massive missile: a warhead with red highlights from the star dancing across its surface. Olsen didn’t need to check any references to know it was composed of metrinium. Only that rare metal could survive the strains put on it in the center of a star.
Fortunately, the Okranti was so busy that they hadn’t noticed their beaten and weathered enemy in the vicinity. That was a good thing, since the Tapper’s weapons and shield systems still hadn’t come back online.
“No!” shouted Chang.
Everyone in the CIC spun around at the sharp word.
“No, no, no!” Chang shouted again. He’d pulled one of the control panels right off the wall behind Schmidt and must have done some kind of power rerouting, because it was glowing with data.
“Ensign, what is it?” Olsen asked.
Rob was standing next to Chang. Apparently the white-faced cyborg had been enlisted to help Chang reset the console. Now it was he who spoke up. “It would seem that the situation in the engine room is worse than anticipated. The explosion in there caused a chain reaction in one of the engines.”
“What does that mean?” Olsen said impatiently.
Chang turned, and his face was almost as white as Rob’s. “We have around ten minutes until the ship is completely destroyed, sir.”
38
Olsen felt like he’d been punched in the gut. For a moment, his mind was a jumble of thoughts that seemed to paralyze him. But one fact kept clawing its way through.
Thirty billion colonists.
He glanced around the CIC. It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that Olsen had seen more flashing red lights than he had normal lights over the last forty-eight hours.
“Then we’ve got ten minutes to figure out a way to stop that bomb,” he said. “Suggestions?”
He looked from Rob to Novak, and then along the line of bridge officers. He could see the wheels turning, but nothing was coming out.
“The Extractor,” said a weak voice behind him.
He turned to see Redrock standing next to Kota. His color was coming back, but he still looked bruised and battered.
“The shuttle?” Olsen said. “Can she fly?”
Kota looked skeptically at Redrock. “It’s in worse shape than you are.”
“She’ll fly,” Redrock said firmly.
“I think so, too,” Chang said. “In fact, I’m sure of it.”
It sounded to Olsen like Chang was trying to convince himself, but nonetheless, options weren’t plentiful. “Chang, take any junior crew you need and get down to the Extractor, and get her back in operation. I don’t have to tell you how much time you have.”
As Chang bolted out, Olsen noted that systems were slowly starting to come online, at least, and most of the screens were now flickering back to life.
He turned to Cadinouche. “What is Kraic up to?”
“No change, sir.”
Olsen didn’t understand that. They must have caught them on their sensors by now. No captain in their right mind would commandeer a critical military operation without frequent scans of the sector. But not a single module had budged from position.
Olsen wanted to do something to announce their presence, but the weapons and shield systems were completely kaput. Their comms systems were also a bust, meaning they couldn’t contact Admiralty AI and get an opinion on what to do next — not that he thought such intelligence would do them much good.
Meanwhile, the sun of the Ripley sector raged, lashing out into space with massive fiery tendrils, as if inviting the spatial detonator to enter its realm. The warhead looked almost complete. Even if they could get off the Tapper in the next ten minutes, Olsen guessed they’d have only moments to stop the warhead before it sank underneath the sun’s corona, the sun melted away its outer shell, and the subsequent explosion wiped out the system.
“Sir,” Commander Novak said, breaking the tension. “What is your plan?”
“Ram the warhead with the Extractor and knock it off course,” he said. It hadn’t been his plan until he’d said the words, but now it made sense to him. “If we can push it into orbit around the sun, we might be able to impede the Okranti’s ability to get it back.” He paused. Now he really was out of ideas. “And we hope that the Admiralty will send someone else to stop the warhead launching, before it’s too late.”
He had a bitter taste in his mouth as he said those final words, remembering his last communication with Admiral Brownstone. She really didn’t seem to understand the gravity of this situation, and it seemed like Olsen’s tiny, beaten-up mining ship was humanity’s only hope.
Novak grimaced. “It seems very risky, sir,” she said, “and there seems to be no end goal to that plan. The Okranti will destroy the Extractor.”
She was right. It was a suicide plan. If it was just himself, Olsen would do it, but not with the remainder of the Tapper’s crew. “Do you have any better suggestions for now?”
“Not yet, sir. I’m still thinking things through. Things have turned out quite … unexpectedly.”
“You can say that again, Novak.” He wanted to tell her that this was the problem with leaving executive decisions down to a machine or a system. You needed creativity in times like this.