Chapter 20

Aboard the Revenge, there was a massive crash as the lights flashed off and everyone was sent flying to their feet. It was by far the largest amount of damage the ship had endured.

Admiral Johnson got to his feet quickly and surveyed the situation as some emergency power returned. Most of the bridge crew appeared to be unharmed, but several seemed to be incapacitated. Looking over at where the Captain had been sitting, he noticed Haffard was out cold. Reaching down to see if he was ok, Johnson found that he had a severe bump on his head, and there was blood coming from his mouth.

He rushed over to the comm and called for a medic, and Commander Indra Sing was soon at his side, busily working at one of the comm stations.

"What the hell is going on? Set condition one!" Johnson demanded.

"What footage we have shows we were attacked by at least several squadrons o bombers. Maybe a wing. They were hiding in there, and I don't know how we didn't see them." Sing said in a concerned tone of voice.

"Tell our fighters to search for any TIEs. I don't want them to launch another attack run." He said as medics finally arrived at the bridge, carting away the wounded on stretchers. Good thing the bridge was deep within the ship, and therefore much harder to destroy. Looking around at the various consoles and workstations, he noticed that unless an object hadn't been secured (like several cups of coffee) they gave no indication of any sort of incident.

"Do we have a damage report yet?" Johnson demanded of the young Lieutenant who was manning the damage control station. He was pale at the sight of the mess, but also looked to be confident at his station.

"Admiral we have dozens of impacts across the ship, mostly on the aft section. We were mostly hit by torpedoes, though there were a few concussion missiles as well. The shields got some, but we weren't expecting an attack there, so some hit the armor and got through it." He showed some footage of the Revenge's undersized that had been taken on an escorting destroyer.

"We're going to have to replace some of that." Johnson said. The armor looked to have held in many places, but there were some clear holes.

"Weren't those bottom sections mostly used for storage of consumables and medical supplies." He asked. Johnson didn't have a perfect memory of the space, but he knew the general areas of the ship and what they were used for.

"Indeed, it was good that we didn't hit the fuel line or anything of that nature. It would have been a lot more destructive sir." The officer looked a bit relieved. The problem is that some of the warheads didn't explode immediately upon impact. We have several incoming reports of warheads that detonated a bit within the ship, with one of them close enough to the main power grid that it must have knocked it out sir."

"Good, Lieutenant." Johnson turned to Sing. "What's the status with the rest of the fleets?"

"The Iowa took a hit to one it's secondary aviation fuel tanks. We still are only getting early reports, but the damage is starting to look more severe than ours. The Bismarck has reported only minor damage, their Captain had kept the ship's PDC's on standby..."

"Admiral, we have a torpedo that failed to demonate lodged six with decks below us!" The Damage Control Officer reported. "It could go off at any moment!"

Johnson looked around, at the ship's crew, just getting on their feet again p.

"Let's get the hell out of here!" He yelled, letting the crew get out of the bridge. "Go to the upper observation deck." He gave orders to them.

"Sir?" Sing asked. After less than 30 seconds, the bridge crew of about two dozen members had evacuated.

"Go!" He ordered, as she complied and he followed her. While running, Johnson ordered the areas surrounding the warhead evacuated over his small handheld com link. Preliminary reports indicated that several people had died of a lack of oxygen in either rooms penetrated by the torpedoes or which had lost atmosphere as a result. A few had been lucky to get out by dodging the closing bulkheads or finding a vacuum suit. It was tragic that people had died that way, but more would have been dead if the bulkheads hadn't closed so rapidly.

"Get the bomb squad to the torpedo as fast as they humanly can."

A massive thud had knocked Sergeant James Cooper out of his well deserved rack time. Looking at the clock, he could see he had only been asleep an hour. In theory he should probably be up, as the fleet would be going into combat soon, but he had been preparing and drilling his men the past few days.

The Australian was the leader of Squad 7 onboard the revenge. He and his squad specialized in boarding spacecraft and disarming explosives, which was an important skill to have when facing a hostile ship. During the second battle of Earth, one of the damaged Imperial raider corvettes that had been boarded by Earth Marines after surrendering and had been intentionally scuttled by its crew in a last ditch attempt to cause some damage to the fleet. While they might have succeeded, it only led to the loss of a single damaged corvette, a loss that itself would not have much impact on the conflict.

While ships would normally scuttle themselves through more normal means such as blowing their reactor, it was not an option for the wounded corvette. It's reactor offline, it's Captain deceived to detonate the vessel's supply of warheads to destroy it. The possibility that a similar strategy could be attempted even with a ship's bridge, main engineering, and reactor room under control was worrying. Along with the fact that explosives may need to be disarmed onboard both ships and on the ground led Earth's marines to develop a number of bomb squads to disarm whatever explosives were encountered.

As he got up and slipped into his uniform, he tried to turn the lights on to no avail. He couldn't figure out why, perhaps it had to do with that big explosion. Soon some emergency lights came on, and his comm buzzed.

"Sergeant Cooper, can you hear me?" A voice said over the comm. He instantly recognized it as that of Admiral Johnson. He had only spoken to the man on a few occasions, but those few times had left a good impression on him.

"Yes Admiral, is everything alright?"

"Not really, we got attacked by som bo,bets that were hiding in some old wreckage. A torpedo is lodged in deck ten section 29 and it has failed to detonate. You and your squad will need to disarm it in your vac suits, if you fail it will cause catotrapic damage to the ship. We're all counting on you, Sergeant. Do you understand?

"Yes sir." He replied. "I'm on it."

"Good. Tell me when you have finished." Johnson said, ending the comm.

Quickly he rounded up the other seven members of his squad, and within five minutes they were in their armored vacuum suits. When the torpedo had lodged itself in the ship, it had left a hole behind that extended all throughout the ship, opening that part of the ship up to the vacuum of space.

"That's a big one!" Exclaimed Corporal Carmen Wright, one of the senior most members of the squad when it came to disarming explosives. He walked over to the Imperial topreado to get a better look at it.

"Be careful Corporal, we have no idea what sets those things off." Cooper said, activating the scanners in his suit. He looked intently at the proton torpedo that was wedged across the wall. It was a miracle that it hadn't detonated yet. Perhaps it was a dud.

"Looks like it's armed." He said, getting closer to it. He recognized it as a MG6 Mark I I Proton Torpedo, the standard starfighter launched proton torpedo of the Imperial Navy. Many had been captured aboard the ships that could carry fighters and had surrendered to Earth after the two battles there. He and the squad had practiced working on weapons like these.

He moved over to the torpedo. "Alright, we've practiced this many times." He moved his hands over a small console on the warhead, trying to disarm it.

"Fuck, it's encrypted." Cooper said. This was going to make it harder to crack. Quickly, he grabbed a small tablet attached to his waist. Hopefully the empire hadn't updated the codes it used for these torpedoes.

As he did that, a small thud could be heard. The large shelf the torpedo had been laying against collapsed, with the torpedo falling down with a thud. Cooper closed his eyes and prepared for everything to end, but death did not come.

The torpedo even though it had been armed didn't detonate. That was an even bigger miracle then the previous one, one that had saved their lives this time.

"Holy shit we're alive!" Private Alissa Bund said, looking around.

"It doesn't work. If it didn't explode when it hit the ship, it certainly wasn't going to explode right now." Corporal Wright said.

"Let's just get this fucker defused." Cooper's tablet finished the work it needed to so that the torpedo could be defused.

After several heart wrenching moments the torpedo was defused. Everyone in the bomb squad breathed a sigh of relief.

"Sergeant Cooper to Admiral Johnson, we got the torpedo. It's disarmed." He said.

Johnson heard the message just as the evacuation of the nearby decks.

"Good job Sergeant. You saved many lives and prevented what could have been catastrophic damage to the ship.

"I was just doing my duty sir." He replied.

"That's what I want to hear, Sergeant." Johnson said, smiling to himself.