AVAILABLE OCTOBER 2, 2012: Captain Algernon Fisk and THE HMS SCOTT

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.