Dark Echoes - Part 13

Maybe-this-could-work! Smith told himself, reading the sensor data rapidly, then looked at Jones; Jones nodded wide-eyed. Aaen noticed in his right peripheral the look on Smith’s face. He had seen that look before and understood more than anyone what it meant—especially as a commanding officer. Aaen’s interest was modestly piqued as he looked at Jones. She looked back at him with a concerned look, then back at Smith. “If we adjust the torpedoes’ targeting sensors, we can target them. What’s better? We can fire with the stealth system activated,” Jones looked at Connors. Running the numbers on the proposition took ten seconds—she nodded. “The catch is—“ Jones paused, “they can triangulate where we’re at based on the torpedoes’ trajectory, so we’d have to execute evasive maneuvers before they can score a direct hit. Their targeting systems look more advanced than ours—a lot more. I think they could probably get a good weapon bearing on us within three to five seconds.” That left a taste. “The biggest problem is, because of the effects of wherever the heck we’re at on the targeting systems, the targeting sensors are likely going to have a questionable lock. We’ll be firing pretty much `on analog. At best, we’ll be able to fire the torpedo in a given direction, then hope it hits something hard and detonates.”

Smith looked at Wilson. Wilson was already looking over his shoulder and nodding almost exhaustedly, “I think I can do it,” Jeez!—He gasped. . I hope Sandberg can hit those bozos. He checked the ship’s chronometer on his computer—it was almost 24:00 hours. Cheese.

Dang it, Sandberg looked left and shouted, “I-need-a-target!” He was eager to end this but hoped it wouldn’t have to end in ships exploding into blinding, violent fireballs. Then the thought crossed his mind. . What if those smaller ships were drones? Another jolt of rolling thunder rocked the bridge to port. The crew braced for stability.

“They’re still firing blind!” Jones declared. “No weapon lock!”

Sandberg adjusted the settings on Odyssey’s targeting sensors to target the weapon systems, “Jones, find me a target—big or small. Just find me a target,” Take out their weapons, the drones might. . .well, who knows . . . .

Jones executed a scan. . .THERE! “POSSIBLE TARGET at two o’clock high transferring targeting coordinates to the tactical station!”

Sandberg nodded sharply, “TARGET ACQUIRED! Torpedoes locked!”

“FIRE torpedo number one!” Aaen commanded sharply, clenching his jaws and slamming his fist into his armrest.

Sandberg switched the torpedo to detonate on proximity, then declared, “Torpedo away!” An alarm sounded as a bright white oval-shaped warhead shot from the starboard launcher, rapidly dimming into the darkness.

Smith snapped, “Precautionary: emergency evasive!”

“Aye!” Wilson acknowledged, immediately changing Odyssey’s speed and heading; one-quarter sublight, coming hard to port, adjusting pitch to Z-minus-two-hundred-meters. The torpedo passed out of the viewscreen in less than a second.

“Torpedo is on-target!” Sandberg declared, glaring at his screen, watching the small green triangular icon soar at the large, blurry distortion that seemed to shift from left to right at an upward angle on his screen—then vanished. A second later, the triangle turned into a burst of fragmented digital confetti and flame.

The crew members at front of the bridge turned to Sandberg, who clenched his fists in frustration, turning his head subtly, “Negative impact!” DANG IT!. . A ‘lucky shot’ would have been to disable the target. . . Wait—he squinted at his screen—what was that flicker effect in the second targeting quadrant?

*****

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