Invasion By Betrayal

By Ron Lugge

Part Two

"How bad is it?" Captain Kane asked. He knew that the chief was going to detail everything, more because the chief wanted to be certain he got everything than he didn't trust his captain to make the right connections. He watched impassively as bodies were carted out of Apoc's laser cluster, noting the circuitry that had overloaded and blown out of its compartment. The smell of ozone hung in the air, as well as the sewer smell that death brings to all.

"Bad sir. Our shields are gone, power systems are shot, and engines 1, 3, and 4 are beyond repair. Number six is almost as bad, and hyper is semi-operational. Once we hit the other end of the star lane, we won't be leaving for a day, maybe two. Which is fine, since that star system's starlanes aren't right next door to one another." The chief's voice was impassive, but could take that for disinterest. He knew how to delay his grief until later, to save lives and material.

"Alright. How are our weapons?"

"Luckily the missiles run off of an independent power grid, to reduce collateral damage if one of them produces an EMP blast. We have missile tubes 1-9, and 10 should be back up shortly. Unfortunately, the laser cluster is a complete loss. The armor structure held, but somehow the missile conducted its radiation through the armor. The entire system is fried, which killed everyone in the compartment, and the radiation fried the nearby power grid. That's what actually damaged us, the laser cluster is to close to one of the main reactors, and the radiation managed to overload the reactor. When the reactor overloaded, it dumped it all out into the engine power grid. We're lucky at that, it should have dumped into the main power grid, and if it had done that sensors would have been cut. Normally we'd just patch them back in on independent, but the radiation seems to short-circuit just about everything it touches. I don't know how the hyper drive survived. Engine 6 survived only because it was on a separate circuit."

"Back up-the explosion didn't hurt us?"

"No sir, that's the oddest thing. The missile didn't actually do all that much damage to us directly. I'd say it was configured to disable us. The follow up missiles, on the other hand, were definatly meant to destroy us. In the process of damage assessment, I noticed the radiation scarring on the rear of the ship. They were very nasty explosives. If they had registered a hit on us, we'd be dead, shields or no shields."

"I wonder why they fired the destructive missiles after a disabler..."

"I might be-"

At first Captain Kane was frozen stiff in shock at hearing that arrogant voice then he got angry, and yelled, chopping the words into syllables, "KIRK! I SENT YOU TO THE LASER CLUSTER! EVERYONE IN THAT COMPARTMENT DIED!" Having worked into it, he now bellowed out in a rapid clip, "HOW THE HELL DID YOU SURVIVE YOU MANGY, INCOMPETENT, LUCKY-ASSED SOB!!! EVERYONE IN THAT COMPARTMENT DIED! THEY ONLY WAY YOU COULD-" the captain paused for a moment, as though thinking something through. Commander Kirk was up against the wall, pale, and with eyes wide open at the enraged beast before him. He'd known the captain hated him, but he never knew how much. He was suddenly very glad that he had inserted those orders "from the first admiral" into the briefing data stream... after all, if the captain hated him this much, how much harder would life have been without the orders he'd made to "keep your temper, and act as if you didn't know what he did." He started to open his mouth, but Kane beat him to it. His voice was soft, but very hard. Worse yet, he was smiling a cold, hard smile. He went through slowly, leading all around him through his thought process, as he went down it again to find any errors. "The only way you could have survived is if you weren't in the laser cluster. I knew Apoc; he wouldn't have let you leave. I specifically briefed all the appropriate officers. Should I send you to them when we were at battle stations, they were to keep an eye on you, and not let you out of their sight. So, either he disobeyed orders, or you did. You were to go straight to the laser cluster, and stay there. You obviously didn't get there. There was more than enough time for you to do so. Therefore, you chose not to do so. You didn't follow an order. You disobeyed a legal, though unusual, order, and in a combat condition, that is a court-martial offense. And since it HAD to be through cowardice, and it was in effect desertion in the face of the enemy... it looks like you finally gave me the excuse to shoot you."

"You can't do that!"

"Yes, I can. And I will take a great deal of-" The ship shook, as though someone had activated-or deactivated-the engines. Just a slight tremor, but inside of a starlane, anything like that would be major. Even worse, everyone felt it as something shifted - the same something that shifted when entering or exiting a starlane. "What the he-"

"Captain to the bridge! Captain to the bridge! Hyperdrive failure!"

"Bloody hell!" The captain knew what that meant. Either get the hyperdrive back online, or watch as the intense gravitational forces inside the starlane shoved them out the other end. Since FTL travel was possible inside, but not outside, it was very important to have a hyperfield online when you left. Without it, part of your ship would be FTL, the other wouldn't. And that would mean very nasty things as the ship either rammed itself or was pulled apart. "Kirk, report to the brig. You two!" He pointed at the two largest men on a nearby damage control team "Pick out 2 others each, and escort the commander to the brig. The regs require I order him there because his honor as an officer should be sufficient bond, but they don't say anything about insurance policies. You may use whatever means are necessary. If he resists, you can do whatever necessary to subdue him, but I expect him there alive." Kane left for the bridge, and smiled. Kirk swallowed at the unholy glee the two men's eyes showed at the implied opportunity to manhandle him, and the four others they picked out shared the gleam. They knew this smug bastard from prior encounters-a prime reason why rank alone did not guarantee competence.

On the bridge, everyone was scared witless, knowing what the damage to the hyperdrive meant. "Alright people, I want options." Everyone looked at each other, scared to tell him the truth. They were clueless as to how to solve this problem. Then one of them spoke up.

"Captain, did we launch the x-6 missile?" Ensign Hernan, who nearly hadn't made it out of the academy because she assume a superior with a different specialty didn't know anything about hers, asked.

"The mark 6X? The experimental hyperdrive missile? Assistant Tactical Officer?"

"Correct sir, and no, we didn't launch her. She was placed in the forward tubes, and we couldn't shift her to any other tubes-she's too big." The Assistant Tactical Officer replied.

"Well then, Ensign Hernan, your idea?"

"The Mark 6X uses a new engine that lets her create a small hyperfield drive inside normal space." From the tone of her voice, Kane could tell she was ready to start in on her idea, detailing every little detail to ensure his proper understanding of it. Her habit of calming down so swiftly was one of the few reasons she made it through the academy. Officers that could go from all out fighting to talking as if nothing had happened were rare, and their ability to think clearly valued. "Only, instead of creating a pocket of normal space inside otherspace, it creates a pocket of otherspace inside normal space. The only reason we can't use it for ships is the intense radiation, though the power supply is problematical. However, if we so choose, we COULD hook the missile up directly to our power grid. By redirecting power to the internal shielding fields, we should be able to block the radiation temporarily. Since we'll only have to run the missile's drive for a nanosecond or two, we can provide the power easy, and it would take longer than that to burn the engine out. The main problem is timing-we'd have to be accurate to the millionth of a second, or the field won't be up while we're crossing the threshold. Its better than trying to repair the hyperdrive, since we don't know if we can in time, and even if we could we'd face a worse timing problem. Remember, the hyperspace engine needs at least a little real space to create the appropriate pocket so we'd have to be accurate to the trillionth of a second."

Captain Kane thought about it, and gave the go ahead. "With any luck, it might work. And if it does... we'd have the back-up drives for small craft that we've been after for forever. Con, ETA to Yevon System?"

"Two months."

"Just enough time for a court-martial, I'd say."

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