CAPTAIN ALGERNON FISK and THE HMS SCOTT
Available October 2, 2012
EXCERPT:
Wright, stepping back, leaned against the
wall. As she looked down the line of guns she could see that all the cannons
were loaded and ready to fire. The gun crew which had just moved their cannon
into position were kneeling and leaning on the gun. The gun commander looked
down at the readouts—all appeared to be ordered. He held his right hand out,
thumb up.
Lieutenant Wright turned to a marine who had
just brought a canister from the ammo cradle. The yellow stripe running across
his chest was not dinged or scraped and was the only way to identify him as a
marine beyond the suit and the private insignia stenciled on his arm. She
banged her head against his, and jacked a line directly into his comm unit.
“I need you over by the fifth gun position.
The motor’s shot and I need you to use the muscles that God and the Marine
Corps gave you to move the hunk of metal.” She looked into the visor of the
marine. It showed the top part of his nose and his eyes. His eyes looked
scared.
“Aye, aye, sir,” he responded.
“That’s a good lad,” she said. “Do your duty
and move that cannon when the gun captain tells you. Now get the hell over
there before one of them blows out a back trying to move that stuck bitch.” She
yanked the comm jack out of his unit. Her hand stung after she slapped the boy
on his ass.
****
Outside
the ship, all was chaos. The freighter had launched a series of missiles
towards the SCOTT, and dialed up all of their ship’s
thruster power to turn the smuggler at the last minute, literally the last
minute. The smuggler would come within a few feet of the SCOTT.
It was a dangerous game, hoping that your enemy will do everything you want,
which is what the smuggler was planning on.
The defense lasers on the ship lanced out,
heating the missiles until they exploded, turning the missile into a kinetic
missile, which bounced off the side of the hull because it had lost most of the
momentum. The multiple rounds of plasma from the SCOTT
hit the smuggler across the ship’s upper and forward section of the
freighter. One of the hits knocked the
smuggler’s thrusters offline, causing the whole unit to shut down, preventing
the smuggler from completing their turn. The now unpowered ship drifted off its
planned course directly into the path of the SCOTT.
With a crash, the VOSTOK
crashed into the SCOTT, just above the gun deck.
The shields failed, unable to protect the SCOTT anymore.
The electronium hitting electronium ripped into each other; the SCOTT had the advantage because it was armored, while the
smuggler ripped open at the point of impact, but kinetic energy still needed to
be displaced. Both ships had forward momentum, in different directions.
Newton’s laws came into play. The smuggler’s ship slowed with the impact into
the SCOTT. The SCOTT
continued forward, tilted by the impact of the VOSTOK,
the naval ship’s course slightly adjusted from the kinetic impact. Where the VOSTOK
impacted, several explosions ripped out from the gun deck.
****
Lieutenant Wright crashed to the deck as all
hell broke loose. Further down the deck, she watched a cannon at one end of the
deck explode, sending the sailors around it flying. The status fields clamped
down, closing off the section, attempting to prevent the damage from spreading
further. Another field went up as another cannon exploded, sending more crewmen
flying. There the damage stopped. The VOSTOK was the
dominating image through the transparent shielding. Sailors, who had been
hiding behind the biggest piece of protection they had, their cannons, now
rushed over to the damaged area pulling the wounded and dead bodies from the
wreckage. There was not much hope that any had survived, but perhaps one or two
had. The wounded would be taken down to the sick bay or put in the gun crew
room for the Combat Doc to stabilize and then be handed over to the care of Doc
Eyebold.
