Flying the Storm

34.





At the Helm

Solomon stepped aboard the Enkidu. It was a small thing, walking up the gangway and through the starboard hatch, but it signified much. It signified that he had won. He had tracked it down, finally, and now it was his. It felt sweet.

The Enkidu was his and his alone. It was his by right and by wits. Now there was nobody who could tell him otherwise. Not even the pretty Armenian girl, though he knew she brought her own agenda aboard. She didn’t hide it very well. No doubt she thought she would claim the warship and bring it to Armenia to aid her father’s cause.

But the Enkidu was not going to be used for such petty errands. Solomon’s plans were grand; his sights were set on bigger prizes, and he knew now that he would have them.

That wasn’t to say that the girl would serve him no purpose… Perhaps just not the one she had envisioned for herself.

When the hatch sighed closed behind him, he stopped and drew a deep breath. The air was purer than he’d imagined. The warship had been hermetically sealed for twenty years, and now that there were souls aboard he could hear the circulating fans gently hum into life, drawing the air through scrubbers and recycling it. The passageway he now stood in was lined with light grey ceramic plating, designed to prevent spall fragments if the warship suffered a hit. Soft white lights shone from the centre of the ceiling.

He had studied every scrap of information he could find for years, just to form a picture of it in his mind. But now that he actually stood within it, breathing its air and seeing its light, it felt like he had come home. And indeed he had. Who could truly have asked for a better one?

He remembered the girl standing behind him then.

“Where are my manners?” he said, smiling. “Allow me to show you to your quarters.”

She smiled back. Solomon led her along the passageway, taking a left turn onto the main dorsal corridor. He knew exactly where he was going; he’d studied the drawings for so long. Soon they came to the doors he was looking for. Large-print signs labelled the crew quarters, cabins A to L. The Enkidu had enough room to give each one of its twelve crewmembers their own private cabin. The little panel on the wall by the door to cabin B switched on as he came to a halt in front of it. He’d considered putting her in cabin A… but cabin A was his cabin. At a touch of the screen the door whispered open.

“If you would like to make yourself comfortable, I must perform some checks before we launch.”

Vika nodded and walked into the windowless cabin, setting her pack down on the simple desk. The bunk was amply sized and had even been set with linen. Everything he saw confirmed what he already knew: the Enkidu was just days from launch when the union   collapsed.

When Vika sat on the bunk, bouncing a little to test it, Solomon nodded and left, closing the door.

With another tap of the screen, he locked it.

This time, walking along the corridor alone, he couldn’t stop grinning. The ship really was his. He let his hand brush the ceramic plates as he passed, just to make sure it was all real.

It was a simple, straight walk from the cabins along the dorsal passage to the bridge. The door was already open when he arrived. It had probably sat like that since it was completed. A few steps up, and he was there.

The bridge was an almost complete sphere. There were no windows, and it took Solomon in mind of a planetarium. Dark grey, almost black. In the middle of it all, swivelled to face him, was the captain’s chair. His heart pounding, he lowered himself into it.

For a moment nothing happened. In that terrible second he doubted everything. Suddenly the warship had never been finished; he’d misread something; it had locked him out; it had been twenty years and it was simply dead.

But with a whirr and a whisper, the bridge came to life. His chair swivelled around to face bow-wards, and its glass arms illuminated with a start-up sequence that took only moments.

Then before him, seeming to hover in the air between him and the wall, two words flashed.

Hello World.

Solomon laughed out loud at that. You might remove the humans from the construction process, but that didn’t seem to stop engineers from having their little jokes.

“Commodore Solomon Archer,” said a silky female voice from the walls, “welcome aboard.”

Solomon’s grin widened. How I have missed my title.

“Thank you, Enkidu.”

“My pleasure, sir,” lilted the voice.

“Well, Enkidu,” said Solomon. “Begin the maiden launch procedures.”

“Of course, sir.”

The walls of the bridge lit up. Suddenly he was sitting in his captain’s chair, but no longer inside the Enkidu. To him, it seemed like he was sitting atop the highest prow, with the bulk of the warship behind and beneath him, down where the steps to the door were. It all looked so real; the cavern-hangar all around him and the gantry ahead where he’d first seen the Enkidu. The displays were polarising and splitting the light and delivering it to his eyes so perfectly that he felt he really was sitting in a comfortable chair outside of the Enkidu. Even the depth was flawless. Everything looked just as far away as it should. The only hint that it was a display rather than a reality was the little block of green text that hovered in the mid-distance, telling him the progress of the initial system tests.

Soon, they were complete.

“Commodore, all control systems are functional and operating nominally. The reactor has reached operating conditions, and is now deep-charging the energy storage. DT fuel pellet stocks are at maximum. Primary repulsor unit is responding correctly…”

The woman’s accentless voice continued listing off system information, but Solomon was only listening for one phrase.

“The Enkidu is ready for launch.”

Solomon leaned back in his chair. “Take us out, then.”

“Yes, Commodore.”

There was a gentle rumble as the warship began to move backwards, the massive struts guiding it to the hangar doors. Solomon watched as the cavern moved around him and the gantry receded into the distance. He was almost bouncing with anticipation. Swivelling his chair around, he could see the huge rolling doors slide ponderously open, and the vast tunnel beyond become illuminated by long strips of lights. The tunnel sloped downwards steeply, and gradually the Enkidu was guided down it. In the distance, at the bottom, all Solomon could see was blackness. A patch where the lights are out?


No. It was water.

So that’s how you hide the construction of a state-of-the-art aerial warship. You build it inside a mountain, with the only real access from beneath the sea. Have all the materials and machinery shipped in by submarines, avoiding prying eyes in the sky and even the knowledge of the locals. It was perfect. The whole project was perfect.

If only the war hadn’t ended.

Soon the water lapped at the bridge’s cameras. It was an odd notion that he in fact was already several metres below the water, but the sensors through which he was looking had only just reached it. He noted that it was mildly uncomfortable as the optics did their best to convince him that the black water was lapping at his face, and he found he needed to remind himself to breathe. Fascinating.

The Enkidu slid into perfect blackness then, and the only hint of motion was the gentle rumble of the rolling struts that gripped the warship and guided it through the tunnel. Then, after several minutes, Solomon could see a faint light beyond the stern. It was filtering down from above, green and shifting. It was the sun, piercing the depths of the sea loch.

Soon the light was almost directly above him. It was a marvel, sitting in the dry bubble of the bridge, staring upwards through fathoms and fathoms of water. There was a deep clank as the struts let go, and the surface came inching towards him.

The Enkidu broke the surface of the loch. Again the water seemed to lap at his face, but this time above it were the green slopes of the mountains and the blue, hazy sky. The warship floated at the surface for a few moments. Solomon leaned back in his chair and took in the view.

“Repulsor is active, Commodore,” said the female voice.

“Thank you, Enkidu. Take us to one-point-four kilometres.”

Without any sound, the repulsor began to lift the ship. Every molecule within an envelope of several cubic kilometres beneath the warship now bore an imperceptibly tiny share of the Enkidu’s weight. Solomon was carried out of the water and he watched it fall beneath him, running in great streamers from the armour of the warship. Some informative text floated before him, something about the current reactor output and repulsor efficiency, but Solomon paid it little heed. The Enkidu was airborne. It was working just as well as it had been intended to, more than twenty years before. He let out a triumphant laugh.

Twenty-two years ago, he had been promised command of the new aerial warship that would single-handedly break the Asian Territorial Concorde and win the war. But two years later he was denied that honour. He was left to be forgotten, just another dismissed naval officer among thousands.

But now the Enkidu was his. He would carve himself the name that he had been denied.

Soon the warship was hovering above the peaks of the mountains. A small section of the display suddenly zoomed: in the saddle between the mountains still sat the two aircraft. The Enkidu had spotted them.

Solomon was tempted for a moment. He could have tested his weapons batteries on them, but he decided that was unfair. The Dane and the Scot had served him well; they had brought him to the Enkidu and provided some muscle should there have been an encounter with the marines. No, he would leave them be.

“Enkidu, are the primary engines operational?”

“They are, Commodore.”

“Excellent. Have them ready for cruise. We will take a heading of zero-nine-zero momentarily.”

“Of course, Commodore.”

A timer appeared in the air before him, counting down from thirty-three seconds.

Then the female voice spoke again. “Commodore, active sensors are detecting a large signature beyond visual range, approach bearing one-zero-five, ninety-six kilometres. Attempting to identify.”

Large signature. Dread dropped like a stone into the pit of Solomon’s stomach. A little red circle had appeared in the distance on the display, where the signature was coming from. He could see nothing but blue haze.

“Are the stealth measures active?”

“Yes, Commodore. Active sensors are operating in burst mode to reduce detection probability. What are your orders?”

Orders. Yes. He had to act fast.

“Can we outrun them?”

“The object is approaching at eighty-three metres per second. Our top speed is one-hundred and twenty metres per second, however we will be within conventional weapons range for several minutes before escape, and our engine signatures will reveal our position. Recommended escape under secondary propulsion. Estimated time to readiness, fifteen minutes.”

Ffiteen minutes. That was a hell of a long time. The secondary propulsion was his best hope of getting away, but until then…

“Aggressive stance. Arm all point defences and SAM batteries. Charge and load the main armament.”

“Yes, Commodore.”

Solomon could hear the warship’s inner workings behind and beneath him. He could hear its loading mechanisms, though they were at the far end of the ship, handling the heavy railgun slugs. He even imagined he could hear the vast quantities of electric charge moving from deep storage to the banks of capacitors that powered the various weapons. Little tags of information flashed on the screen, notifying him of the different weapons systems and countermeasures that were now armed.

“Commodore,” said the calm female voice of the Enkidu, “the approaching signature has been identified as the NAUS Gilgamesh.”

It cannot be. This couldn’t be happening, surely.

“Should the aggressive stance be relaxed?” the voice asked.

It was happening. There could be no other object with a signature that size. The naval officer in him took over then.

“No, Enkidu, the Gilgamesh is not friendly,” he said. “Give me main armament firing solutions to the Gilgamesh, now.”

“Of course, Commodore.” Even as the voice spoke, two red arcs had appeared before him, stretching off into the distance to the red circle where the Gilgamesh hid in the haze.

“The target is inside maximum range, however for nominal damage the target should be within-”

Solomon interrupted the voice. “Are the main guns loaded?”

“Yes, Commodore.”

He who does not strike first will be the first struck. Solomon knew what had to be done.

“Elevate the guns.” Fins on the projectiles would correct any slight errors, but the guns still had to be well aimed. The Enkidu’s nose raised, tilting the whole ship and the guns that ran along its length. Then it stopped.

“Firing on your command, Commodore.”

“Fire.”

The ship’s engines spooled up for a second, thrusting to take some of the recoil.

And then the Enkidu roared.

When the display had recovered from the huge, blinding flash, it showed Solomon the two white-hot points spearing up into the sky, already impossibly distant, trailing vapour and plasma and smoke as they arced perfectly towards their target. Through the optical zoom the slugs shimmered and wobbled, before disappearing into the haze.

And Solomon waited.

Many seconds later, Enkidu spoke to him again. “Both rounds have impacted, but target is still too distant to verify effect. Multiple additional signatures received. The Gilgamesh is launching fighters, Commodore.”

Fighters meant that escape under primary engines was not an option. He’d just be too slow. He had to give his missile defences every help he could. Altitude would give them energy.

“Take us to three-point-five kilometres.”

“Yes, Commodore.”

“And target those fighters as soon as they are in range.”

“Of course, Commodore.”


“Why are they not launching missiles yet?”

“It is probable that the Gilgamesh and its fighters still cannot achieve radar lock. The report from the main armament will have revealed us momentarily, but beyond visual range the Enkidu is essentially invisible.”

Solomon felt a swell of pride in his warship. Essentially invisible.

“Commodore, would you like the factory defences to be activated?”

“I would like every scrap of help I can get,” he replied.

“Factory defences are coming online now, Commodore. Their effectiveness will be limited to repelling the fighters, however, since they are not designed for-”

“Thank you, Enkidu.” Solomon did not have time for lengthy explanations. What he needed was the main guns to be ready to fire again. One shot every twenty seconds, the tech notes had said. Solomon was close to calling it bullshit. Maybe if the reactor didn’t have to supply anything else… “Is the main armament rearmed yet?”

“Three seconds, Commodore. Increasing reactor output to augment fire rate.”

“Enkidu, fire at will.”

“Yes, Commodore.”

Momentarily, the ship thundered again with the shock of the guns. Once more the two white points shot into the distance, following the firing solutions.

“Change altitude to four kilometres, and take us north three kilometres,” ordered Solomon, not wanting to linger where the guns had fired.

Sure enough, roughly where the Enkidu had first fired its guns a rippling volley of rail shells exploded, thrashing the surface of the sea loch and throwing up spires of white spray. That hammered it home for Solomon. This was a fight. They wanted him dead.

Well come and get me then.

From the steep angle the shells had come in at, Solomon realised just how much more powerful the Enkidu’s armament was. The Gilgamesh’s railgun batteries would be firing at the limit of their range. He wondered if they would even penetrate the Enkidu’s skin. Possibly the only real threat at this range was the explosive charge they apparently carried.

He knew that if the Gilgamesh made it to close range, it was over. Though the Enkidu’s guns were bigger, the sheer weight of firepower that the Gilgamesh could bring to bear would be overwhelming. At close range, even its lightest railguns would cut right through his warship.

But Solomon did not intend to let this engagement become close-range. He could put a lot more one-ton slugs into the Gilgamesh before then, and every time he fired the target would be closer, and his slugs would hit it with more energy. This was a fight he would not lose.

“Hostile fighters are crossing in to visual range,” said the female voice. Solomon could see them marked on the display now, and an optical zoom showed twelve dark spots slowly spreading out into six pairs.

“Enkidu, defend yourself as necessary.”

“Yes, Commodore.”

Suddenly the Enkidu jolted and thrusted, shaking Solomon around in his seat.

“What on Earth-”

“Performing evasive manoeuvres and deploying electronic countermeasures. Incoming missiles.”

The fighters were marking him for the Gilgamesh. Clever idea.

On the display, little flashes and blooms of flame signalled the missiles that the Enkidu had destroyed with its lasers, though these ones had been launched from the fighters. Solomon knew that there would be long-range missiles incoming from the Gilgamesh, but they would be out of laser range yet. The fighters were dispersing further now, twisting and weaving, trying to dodge the lasers. One of them failed, and the little dark speck disappeared in a ball of igniting fuel.

He silently congratulated the Enkidu. She was clearly perfectly capable of fighting her own battles. She weaved and accelerated, firing lateral thrusters until she lined up for another shot at the Gilgamesh.

The two slugs were only a few milliseconds out of their barrels when the Enkidu manoeuvred again, not giving the gunners on the distant Gilgamesh any semblance of an easy shot.

A moment later, another return barrage cracked and thundered a kilometre from the Enkidu, but this one was less intense than the first. Instead, shells began detonating regularly in different positions, all close to the Enkidu. They were exploding almost constantly, pocking the air with grey smoke and supersonic fragments.

It was no surprise to Solomon, then, when a hail of those fragments glanced from the port-side armour of the warship a second later. It was hardly a scratch to the Enkidu, but it was enough to get the anger pumping into Solomon’s bloodstream.

They hit his ship. The sons of bitches hit his ship.

“Enkidu,” he snarled, gripping the arms of his chair.

“Yes, Commodore?” asked the Enkidu, manoeuvring through the rippling explosions.

“Bring that bastard down.”