Overlord (65 page)

And still the roar overhead continued of what could only be assumed were even more saucers coming to assist the Grays’ landing force.

TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY NAUTICAL MILES

ABOVE ANTARCTICA

The mistakes in their reverse engineering and even the technical instruction given to the engineering teams by Matchstick in the mating of the Gray power plant with the Martian-designed ion drive were readily apparent as the
Lee
gained high orbit. Fires broke out in the engine spaces as the reverse-flow generators cooling the power plant went into the red and coolant leaks sparked a blazing inferno as engineers, both civilian and naval, fought to extinguish the hell that had erupted in the tight spaces. The only way they could see to put the fires out was the use of emergency venting into open space; the vacuum would suck the inferno out of the large hatches designed just for the scenario.

The bridge was loud as technical men and women were taking emergency calls from almost every deck on the battleship. Commodore Freemantle felt the powerful ion-drive engines shut down as the
Garrison Lee
became the largest object in the history of the planet to be an out of control, floating, and spinning object in space.

Captain Lienanov unfastened his safety harness when he saw the red blinking lights coming from the engine room, six decks high and as many deep at the stern of the ship. He saw the temperature in those spaces rising rapidly as the fire alarms were tripped. He heard the frantic calls coming from those spaces and he roughly shook the commodore by the shoulder to get his attention.

Freemantle immediately placed his headphones back on, and then said into the mic, “Permission granted. Open all vents and hatches to space. Get the fires out and shut off the coolant flow to the mixing chambers, for God’s sake, before they explode and take the bloody engines with it!”

“Commodore, we are also venting oxygen into space from numbers three, six, and fourteen tanks,” the atmospheric officer two tiers below the main deck of the bridge called into his communications mic.

“We can’t do anything about that right now—we can’t spare the damage control parties to fix them. Shut down and transfer as much O
₂
to the remaining tanks as you can.”

“Aye, sir,” the man said and then relayed the order.

Suddenly sparks flew from the maneuvering panel and the four men and two women monitoring the now shutdown maneuvering jets fell back onto the steel deck and rear consoles, their feet losing grip on the Velcro-accented station. They floated free.

“Keep your harnesses on, people, how many times did we drill for that?” Freemantle said as calmly as he could. The
Lee
shook and rumbled and was pushed thirty kilometers from her position as more alarms announced a fracture somewhere in the superstructure.

“We have hull breach!” came the voice of the damage control officer below them. As more technical support personnel floated free of their stations, Commodore Freemantle held his temper in check.

“Calmly, people, calmly, now. Shut down the hull breach alarms, Lieutenant Stevens, that is not a hull breach, it’s the bloody venting ports open to space. Now please shut off that damnable noise.”

The young man felt foolish as he did what he had been ordered.

The
Lee,
to the casual observer from the vantage of the Earth, was upside down, but the crew never realized it. The alarms were slowly being shut down as fires and other small emergencies were brought under control after the men and women in all departments slowly became use to zero-gravity maneuvering in the spaces throughout the ship.

“Gentlemen, I need engine status or we’re going to have Grays sitting in our lap with no engines or weaponry. Radar, enemy fleet status, please?” Freemantle tried his best to be a calming influence to his crew as no men or women in the history of the world had ever faced something as traumatic as this—technology that had gone out of control with no prior testing in the ship’s natural element of outer space.

“Thus far they have not rounded the moon.” The radar officer and his seventeen operators adjusted set and bandwidths. “We are receiving telemetry from Sydney Station; they’re bouncing a signal off of the Mars relay station. The enemy is still being screened by the moon. We are not, I repeat, not being tracked by enemy sensors at this time.”

“That will change as soon as they get in direct line of sight with us.” Freemantle looked over at Lienanov and winked. The captain could not believe he was on this mission in the first place, and was nervously watching men and women who really didn’t know what they were doing. He released his handhold and then went to a standing chair and strapped himself in. “People,” the commodore said, “I need the status on my engines. Without them we have no generators, and without the generators we have no gunnery at all. We will only have the kinetic weapons and the rail guns, and I’m afraid that will fall far short of what we need.”

“Power plant is still offline, Commodore. Engineering is getting assistance from shuttle management, and he is—”

The commodore and everybody else heard the cursing over the intercom as someone below was haranguing the engineering crew to shut the magnetometers down, that they were electrically interfering with the power plant’s flow of energy to the main mixing chambers. Freemantle recognized Professor Jenks immediately—who else would call his engineering officers a bunch of pussies that couldn’t turn a monkey wrench?

“Commodore, we have extraneous personnel interfering with operations down here. We need to—”

Freemantle hit his transmit switch and cut off the engineering commander down below. “What you need to do at the moment is listen to the master chief. He seems to be the only one that has an idea of what to do.”

“Yeah, did you hear that, you limey, snot-nosed little shit? Quit being a tattletale and get your ass over to the mainframe coupling and turn it on. I don’t relish the thought of floating here and being used as fucking target practice. Now move.”

In the background everyone heard the master chief as he took control. They also heard a voice remind Jenks that they were still transmitting to the bridge.

“I don’t give a good goddamn who—”

The command bridge intercom was shut down when Freemantle gave a slice-across-the-throat gesture.

“I particularly do not like that man, but I must say he is one colorful … whatever he is,” the commodore said.

“Permission to join the master chief below?” Lienanov asked.

Freemantle just nodded his head as he studied the motion control board before him. He saw that they had at least 60 percent of their monitors out as the
Lee
spun crazily out of control.

“Now gentlemen and ladies, I need my eyes back online. Can we do something about that, please?”

*   *   *

Carl Everett checked Jack’s status as the Delta medic looked him over.

“As far as I can see, Admiral, he’s got one bad concussion and maybe some glass in his side, but other than that, I think he’s just out.” The medic turned to Tram, who was finally sitting up and being held in place by three men as his body wanted to float away. A sergeant walked toward Tram and offered him a pair of Velcro booties to slip over his white combat boots. Everett turned his attention to the small Vietnamese sniper. Another SEAL passed him an environ suit that should fit the small officer. The suit floated in front of Tram, which caused him to get dizzy and almost vomit.

“Pretty bad down there?” He kneeled as best he could next to Tram inside the zero-gravity environment.

Tram held the Velcro boots close to his chest, pulled the clothing down into his lap, and lowered his head.

“Captain Mendenhall? The Frenchman?” Carl hesitated but asked anyway.

Tram shook his head as he finally looked into Everett’s face. The admiral just patted the famed Vietnamese sniper on the shoulder and then gestured for the medic to get that head wound tended to and for others to get him and the knocked-out Collins into spacesuits.

Everett stood with his feet secured by the antigravity boots and looked out into space from the large porthole. The remains of the Black Hawk were now gone as he spied the roll of the battleship.

“Well, things don’t look like they went according to plan in phase one of this operation.” He looked down at Jack as he lay on the plastic deck. “We’re sitting ducks out here.”

*   *   *

Commodore Freemantle floated to the elongated damage control station and watched his people working the boards. Thus far the fires had all been extinguished without the use of mass venting, thus saving precious O
₂
that they couldn’t spare or replace. They had lost three of the nitrogen coolant tanks used for the enormous turret guns, and thus far they were lucky as far as deaths and injuries. Twenty-two dead and one hundred and fifty injured. For a launch that had gone off without a hitch the
Garrison Lee
soon reminded the crew how dangerous this mission was from start to finish. He realized the training they had the past four and a half years told all personnel in no uncertain terms that this was nothing more than a one-way trip to begin with. They all wanted to get at least a chance to prove to the world, and to themselves, that the
Lee
could make a difference.

“How are the repairs to the power plant? We need at least maneuvering as soon as possible. Right now we wouldn’t even give the bloody Grays a fright, not spinning like this.”

“Professor Jenks said it was nothing more than the arrogant bastards—sorry, sir, his words. The engineers at the Royal Institute of Technology and the techs at General Electric misinterpreting the American asset’s design drawings and installing the twin plasma pumps backward. They said they didn’t look right and changed the specs. It tested well, but when full power to the ion engines was engaged they backed up and shot pure plasma into the cooling system, causing the overload. They are in the process of changing out the lines now. The two plasma pumps have been taken out and reversed.”

Freemantle shook his head. “Awful brave of those engineers who aren’t on this little ride to change the specifications of a being with the intelligence quotient of four hundred of those bloody sots.”

“Yes, sir,” the female American navy motorman said. The twenty-two-year-old had been one of the first volunteers when the assignment was offered to members of the American navy.

Freemantle took hold of the handrail and pulled himself to the radar officer. “Any sign of the bastards?”

“No sign of the large power ship yet, sir. One of the small attack ships nosed over for a look-see and then vanished from the scope in a flash three minutes ago. Gave me a start, I can tell you.”

“Any indication the scout saw us?”

“I don’t see how he could have missed us with the spectacle we’re putting on.”

Freemantle had to smile at his radar officer’s observation. Down the line radar personnel from the Russian, American, and British navies watched their scopes closely. Some of the sets were calibrated at differing wave bands to cover the full spectrum in order to defeat the stealthy design and materials of the alien vessels.

“Well, we have to assume they know we’re here and just don’t know what to make of us as of yet. That time could cost them if we get the damned power plant online,” he said angrily.

“Or maybe they’re just laughing too hard to come at us,” the officer interjected. “I mean, they haven’t had to deal with this class of ship for seven hundred million years.”

Freemantle had to laugh and that broke his momentary spell of anger. He had been too long absent from the real navy and real seamen and knew they joked at the harshest of times. He nodded his head, feeling better about his crew.

His damage control officer joined him as he floated up and took a hold on the same railing, letting his feet secure themselves to the Velcro adherent on the deck.

“Mr. Jenks reports two minutes more will be needed to flush the coolant and plasma lines. He cursed me for not having the foresight to add lengths of ceramic lining to our ship’s stores before takeoff.” The officer looked behind him. “I think he ate all of my behind on that one, sir.”

“Well, he has a point, but it wasn’t your fault, lad. I’m afraid I cut what I thought were all nonessentials from the stores list. Just don’t let on to the master chief, eh? So what did Jenks use for the ceramic lines?”

The officer grimaced. “He bloody well tore out the officer’s zero-gravity toilets. He used the small sections of ceramic tubing, nonconductive duct tape, and aluminum foil.”

Freemantle was stunned.

“He said the officers can shit themselves for getting them into this mess.”

“Very well, I’ll give up my toilet privileges if the damn thing will just work.”

Freemantle let go of the handrail, peeled his boots from the deck, and launched himself up and over the two tiers of battle bridge technicians to grab a firm hold on the captain’s station, where he came to a twirling stop. He would never admit this to his men, or even his wife—if he ever returned home that is—but he had become totally infatuated with the zero-gravity travel from one spot to the other. He settled to the deck and then strapped in. He placed his mic cord into its station and then cleared his throat.

“All hands, this is Commodore Freemantle. I have been informed that we will be testing the power plant repairs in just a few moments. Please take your stations and secure all material.”

The
Garrison Lee
was still spinning crazily in a wide circle.

*   *   *

“What do you mean, they’re just gone?” Admiral Everett said to the attack craft commander of the first shuttle.

Five men were floating free in the bay next to the two ships. The locking gear firmly held them to station but they also did not escape damage from the engine meltdown. Everett counted at least ten serious-sized holes that had to be patched on the outer docked attack ship. When three of the large booster rockets attached only a hundred feet from the shuttle bay were jettisoned, the explosive bolts holding them in place blew them off. But there had been an inordinate amount of dry chemical still left in the booster from the countdown misfire that delayed its activation, thus when the bolts exploded the rest of the fuel was redirected from the containment housing into the girder system of the superstructure. That, in turn, was vented directly to the exposed fuel lines attached to the outboard shuttle. The explosion not only knocked holes in the DuPont-designed heat tiles, but also killed the pilot and copilot of shuttle number two who were strapped into their stations nearby—another safety flaw of the hurried design.