Operation Orion - Kevin Dockery [44]
“Missile battery one, have you acquired a target?” the CO demanded next.
“Aye, aye, sir,” came the voice from the gunner’s control turret. “Locked and loaded.”
“Fire one!” the captain ordered.
Jackson saw the bright flare of the missile as the speedy rocket roared away from the frigate. The brilliance faded not because the propulsion was waning but because it was vanishing rapidly into the distance. The LT clenched his fists, hoping to see that deadly missile strike home. He cursed, along with several of the sailors, when the flicker of a beam weapon flashed from the Eluoi destroyer and incinerated the rocket while it was still dozens of klicks away from the target.
The firing ship turned its batteries back to the Troy, catching the frigate in a lethal cross fire as the other destroyer continued its pounding of the U.S. Navy ship. “Fire two!” Carstairs barked, and once again a rocket flared away from the Pegasus.
Abruptly the screen went completely, terrifyingly white: A wash of energy erupted from one of the ships to spread across the entire image. For long seconds the obscuration lasted, and when the image finally returned, the men in the CIC groaned audibly in the display. The space before them was much emptier than it had been moments earlier.
“The Troy blew up,” said the viewing officer, his voice breaking.
Jackson could barely believe it. He would have denied the fact if not for the evidence before his eyes. It seemed unthinkable that a ship the same size as the Pegasus, crewed by more than a hundred brave men and women of planet Earth, could be so utterly destroyed.
But it was simply gone.
Another burst of particles streamed out from the Pegasus, targeting the blazing destroyer that was now caught in a cross fire between the Assarn scouts and the approaching frigate. Puffs of explosive force, gases and flames and debris, burst from the Eluoi ship’s hull. One engine went dark, and the other three flared wildly, sending the ship careering away from the fight as her fusion reactors began to burn out of control.
Again the screen went white, washed out by the emissions of a violent explosion. Jackson winced but couldn’t take his eyes off the screen. When the picture returned, this time it was the Eluoi ship that was gone.
The remaining destroyer’s four engines flared as it raced away, curling around the horizon of the massive planet. The Assarn ships, some dozen of them now visible, regrouped among the wreckage, declining pursuit for the time being. Where the Troy had been, a cloud of debris drifted in space. Some pieces of the ship were large enough to hold out some hope, and Carstairs ordered a course—now slowing dramatically—toward the wreckage.
“Let’s see if we can find any survivors,” he said, his voice as grim and cold as the lonely dead drifting eternally through space.
Ten: Seeking Survivors
The Pegasus moved slowly through the detritus of the space battle. The crew, watching the screens in the CIC or looking out through the portholes and domes of the A and L Decks, spotted bits of flaming engine debris, shattered sections of hull, even bodies. The core of one reactor seethed and churned, burning like a miniature sun as its energy slowly dispersed into the cold vacuum.
One of the Troy’s shuttles, twisted like a child’s toy after a major tantrum, drifted lifelessly past. Half of a deck compartment, with chairs and benches from the mess hall incongruously attached, spun dizzyingly, slowly dropping toward the nearby planet.
“Captain! I’m getting some electronic signature!” called one of the sailors who sat at a computer console. “Twenty klicks away, bearing about two o’clock off our course.”
“Keep your eyes and ears on it,” Carstairs ordered before instructing his helmsman to make the necessary course adjustment. The frigate moved under very low power in a weightless condition.