Chapter 25: Last Voyage

Jake was woken on their second night out from the Capital. He dressed quickly and hurried to the bridge. “Report?”

“Communications picked a call for help. An eeler is being attacked by the Reaver and a second ship. With our speed, we’re the closest help. They tried to run but the Reaver caught them and shot off their mast. They just reported they were surrendering. We can be there in an hour at full thrust,” Jolly reported. Jake thought over his choices. Then realized there were no choices. He wouldn’t leave a stranded ship. He realized that might be what they were counting on. “Have you sent out any messages?”

“Not to the Starry Night, the ship being attacked. We encrypted and forwarded the message on the Air Corps net,” Jolly answered. Jake said “let’s see if they’ll answer us. Send to them we are three hours out and coming to assist. Tell them we’re the Pride.” Jolly raised an eye at that. “The Pride is currently in the Scout hold. If this is a pirate trap. They may not answer or claim there is no need for assistance. The Pride is one of the fastest ships around. It’s well known to be a passenger vessel and courier. No real value except the ship itself.”

Jake ordered their course altered while they tried to raise the Starry Night. Twenty minutes after they stopped sending the Starry Night answered. The captain reported they were near losing the ship. The Reaver had taken their cargo and damaged their lift envelopes. The crew was trying to repair the envelopes, but they were running out of lift gas quickly. Jake requested their position, course and altitude. They were holding the position but losing altitude, currently at eight thousand and falling. Jake sent they were three hours out. They sent back they would make what repairs they could and hoped to see them.

Jake used the new system and woke everyone up. He explained they were moving to aid a ship that had been attacked by pirates, but that they were going to do so carefully. The crew was to prepare for combat. He ordered the thrust to full power and sent for the Pride’s Captain. Jake told the man the situation and then explained what he wanted.

“You think it’s a trap?” the man asked.

“I think every call for aid is a trap. It’s how my father died. Flash message in the dark asking for help. He noticed the ship’s damage didn’t match the message and turned to run. He saved his ship but was wounded in the pursuit and died. I won’t make the same mistake. We have the lift gas to spare. Or we can rescue the crew off the ship. If they are legitimate no harm, and you return to the ship afterwards. If not, they’ll get a real shock.”

“Okay, I’ll do it. You could have just ordered me to do it,” he stated.

“I would have captained the Pride myself before I ordered you to do it. That’s just the way I am,” Jake said.

“It makes this and working for you easier knowing that.”

Thirty minutes later they slowed and the Pride went off to circle onto the heading they had sent it would arrive from. Jake ordered all external light turned off. Then ordered the new scouts launched. Once the scouts had taken their position they resumed their course and gained altitude until they were flying just below needing to use masks.

The newly designed scouts could fly much higher and faster. Bridget had sealed and pressurized the cockpit. The Karenna’s original scouts had a single light gun in the nose. The new design had two tubes that fired Bridget’s rockets. She had been irritated he wouldn’t let her convert all the scouts. Jake kept four of the scouts in their original configuration. She used what was left to make another six scouts she called hornets. She and Paul had personally trained each of the Scout crews. She promised anyone who messed with the Karenna would feel her Hornet’s sting. Paul had just grinned when she said it.

The two Scouts that had raced ahead reported back that they had located the ship. It was right where it was supposed to be with one exception. It wasn’t at. Eight thousand feet. It was barely a thousand feet over the mist. When they finally were in range to spot the ship. Jake asked them for position and altitude informing them the Pride would be there sooner than expected. Jake was surprised when they reported they were going down in the next twenty minutes and for the Pride not to bother risking their ship, the Air Corps promised to have a rescue out by mid-morning.

Jake watched through his spyglass as the Pride sent it had spotted them both wirelessly and as a flash message. Jake watched as the crew of both ships hurried to secure the buoys the pride had taken them. The solar buoy could be powered by the ship’s nacelles until the sun came up. Jake was just considering taking the Karenna down to recover the ship when the attack came.

The Reaver came up from the mist and ordered their surrender. The Pride asked if they would like to surrender instead? Jake watched the captain and crew laugh. Right up until two hornets dropped down firing their rockets. The first Hornet hit the Reaver’s Port-side engines with both rockets. The second hornet took out the ship’s giant tiller. Both hornets were gone before the Reaver could respond. Jake figured the Captain would dive for the mist. He didn’t. Instead, he rose, and fired off two signal rockets. The two blue rockets streaked through the mist. Seconds later four Letharian airships rose out.

The hornets changed course and started hitting the new foe. Jake ordered the Karenna to open fire. The Karenna’s first battle in five centuries would be one that was remembered. Jake watched as rockets flew towards all four of the enemy ships. At the distance they were two of the ships simply rose out the rockets path. The third tried to do the same but two rockets found its foredeck. The explosion was unbelievable. A huge section of the deck and part of the ship’s port-side were simply gone. The last ship fared even worse. The captain had been so focused on destroying the hornets he failed to see the rockets coming. Five of them slammed into his decks from above. In a heartbeat, the ship simply was no more.

Jake had the Karenna move and dropped down on its quarry from above. The Reaver changed course and started to dive and run for the mist. Its lack of a tiller was making that difficult. When the Karenna fired a second volley of rockets, a second of the Letharian ships was destroyed. This one still had a large portion of its hull remaining. The Reaver was hit by one of the rockets fired at it. It now sported a massive whole in its starboard side a little aft of mid-ship. The damaged Letharian ship had signaled its surrender and was moving slowly up and away from the other ships being escorted by one of the hornets.

The last ship was diving for the mist when the Karenna’s conventional guns fired. Jake watched as more than twenty large rounds decimated the ship as it disappeared into the mist. The Reaver was using its engines to turn in a tight circle. Jake saw her gun ports open just before the ship was hit the last time. Over a dozen rounds and at least six rockets ripped through the infamous pirate ship. The ship couldn’t handle the damage. It broke into pieces falling into the mist below.

With the battle over cheering broke out. Jake could understand why. He had never been in such a one-sided battle. His crew had performed admirably. He let them have a minute to celebrate. Then used he used the new system to update everyone on the ship. He explained they still had a lot of work to do. It took an hour to bring the Starry Night aboard. The crew were offered a meal but were told they had to remain on their ship. Not because Jake thought they were pirates, but because he didn’t want their testimony to be influenced by speaking to his crew.

The Letharian ship came alongside the Karenna with all of her remaining crew sitting on the deck. Jake wished he could just destroy the dammed thing, but the Air Corps wanted it and the men from it. The crew secured the ship alongside the Karenna and the Captain and his surviving crew were taken to the ship’s brig. Jake was informed by the officer who had gone aboard to pilot the ship next to the Karenna, that the captain had said two of the ships they destroyed had been captained by the Letharian Princes. “What was the Letharian King thinking to allow not one but two of his sons to go on pirate raids?” Jake wondered.

A cruiser and a frigate joined them a day and a half later. Jake gave them his report and happily transferred his prisoners and the damaged Letharian ship. The badly damaged eeler had been given what supplies they needed to repair their ship. Including the old mast off the Song. It was no longer needed as she and Paul had stripped half the nacelles and installed a crystal reactor. The captain would be able to return to port under his own power and not have to worry about someone trying to claim salvage rights. Jake knew that was always a worry.

Before they left the area and continued on to Port Bedford, they hosted the captains and officers of the two ships. He was happy to catch up with another of his friends from his academy days. Catherine thoroughly enjoyed all the stories of Jake’s pranks and misadventures Captain Penbrooke told. Some of them he had forgotten, like gluing the Cadet Captain’s boots to the floor. That prank had taken six months of planning and research to pull off, and his friend told of the different glues they had tested. Jake mentioned how the reason for the prank was due to Penbrooke being given extra duty for a month because the Cadet Captain didn’t think his boots were properly shined. They found out later he had been courting the same girl Penbrooke took to a summer dance.

Jake and Catherine stood on the bow of the ship as Marie guided it to its new home, at least it was only her temporary new home. They were both melancholy at having to leave their home, but it couldn’t be helped. They could stay longer and then shuffle rooms as their suite was worked on. Then even talked about doing so. In the end, both felt it would too difficult to see their home that way. They would move into Catherine’s childhood home until the refit was complete.

Epilogue

“Good afternoon, and Welcome to What History Forgot. I’m Josh Bolton and I am coming to you live from officer’s briefing room on the Karenna. With us is one of the few remaining original crew, Misses Cali Stevens. She was five at the time the Karenna was found and recovered. She’s agreed to sit with me and discuss her memories of the historic event fifty years ago. Misses Stevens good afternoon and thank you for agreeing to this interview.”

“You’re welcome but please call me Cali.”

“Okay, Cali it is then. Everyone has been covering what really happened and the effect those actions have had on our country and our world. I was hoping you might share some of what happened to the different crew members after the Duke and Duchess relaunched the Karenna. What I mean is, we all know she went in for a refit, and then was a passenger liner and an academy. But I was hoping you could share what you know of what happened to the original crew,” he asked.