Fulcrum Gun (Savage Stars Book 4)

by Anthony James

  “Assuming its crew didn’t already get bored and fly off somewhere else, sir,” said Burner.

  “We’re probably the most exciting thing that happened to them in the last six months, Lieutenant. The fact that we’re a new species has likely turned their interest up to a ten.”

  Recker’s own words reminded him of something. “During the capture of the Fulcrum, I visited the aft security station to activate the internal defences. The onboard monitors had already categorised us as humans and Daklan – using our own names for our species.”

  “The Meklon know about us?” said Aston.

  “That’s the only conclusion I could draw. I asked myself if the Daklan might have negotiated with the Meklon in the past, but then I remembered that Captain Jir-Lazan said there’d been no discussions with either them or the Lavorix. I believed him then and I believe him now.”

  “If the Meklon discovered both the HPA and the Daklan, then the Lavorix might have found out from stolen data,” said Burner.

  Recker nodded. “The perimeter of the tenixite converter network almost brushes against the edge of HPA territory – a few days beyond, but not much when you consider how much space we’re talking about. What if the Meklon discovered planet Fortune - maybe even years ago? What if they also located a Daklan world?”

  “And they left us alone because they were too tied up with the Lavorix to find out if we were friendly or not.”

  “There’s a chance of it,” said Recker. The games of speculation were a lot more enjoyable when believable answers were dropping into place, though he wasn’t too happy about where those answers were leading him.

  “If the Lavorix knew about our other worlds, they’d have destroyed them,” said Larson flatly.

  “I’m clinging to that belief as well, Lieutenant,” said Recker. “The trouble is, the Lavorix know we exist and if they turn their monitoring stations towards HPA and Daklan territory they’ll eventually find something. Or they might send the Galactar to hunt out ternium clouds and lightspeed trails. Sooner or later, we’ll have to deal with the bastards.”

  “If they fought fair, using spaceships and missiles, we might stand a chance if we teamed up with the Daklan,” said Fraser. “Since we’re dealing with depletion bursts, I’m not so hopeful.”

  “I don’t know if the HPA and the Daklan combined have enough firepower,” said Recker. “The Meklon have extensive territory – far more than the HPA and much more than the highest estimates for the Daklan. With all their holdings, the Meklon lost.”

  “You’re assuming the Meklon were ready for war, sir,” said Aston. “If they were a peaceful race, they could have suffered huge territory losses before they geared up to fight. We just don’t know.”

  “You’re right, Commander. We have to hope the Lavorix aren’t overwhelmingly powerful and they got lucky against the Meklon.”

  “Otherwise we might as well write off humanity and the Daklan,” said Eastwood.

  The words were sobering and the crew fell silent for long moments. Recker took the opportunity to continue his search through the Fulcrum’s databanks for additional information about the Galactar. If the Lavorix spaceship had caused as much destruction as the control computer on Excon-1 had suggested, the Meklon would surely have learned something.

  “We’re so accustomed to the feeling of safety that comes from entering lightspeed,” he said. “And I’ve been guilty of believing we’ll finish this twenty-four-hour journey way ahead of the pursuit. What if the Galactar is only moments behind us?” Recker had another thought. “What if it arrives first?”

  “It would be good to know some facts,” said Eastwood.

  “We’re going to focus on unearthing those facts right now, Lieutenant.”

  With the crew rested, but time short, Recker felt the pressure. He refused to let it slow him and he delved amongst the records in the Fulcrum’s tactical system. For a time, Recker was puzzled by the comparative lack of data on the Galactar and was left wondering if the Lavorix craft was so deadly that the Meklon had gathered nothing useful about its capabilities.

  “The Galactar is packing missiles, it’s shielded and it can fire a depletion burst,” said Aston, similarly puzzled. “Other than that, the Meklon files are paper thin.”

  “The Fulcrum’s comms system holds a limited quantity of flight data from other warships in the Meklon fleet,” said Burner. “I’ve located the names of several ships which reported an encounter with the Galactar and which have subsequent flight records in this database.”

  “Which means those ships weren’t destroyed in the engagement.”

  “A sighting doesn’t imply an engagement took place, sir,” said Aston. “The Meklon could have detected the Galactar at a billion klicks and then escaped.”

  Recker didn’t answer at once. He’d turned up some basic technical data on the enemy warship, which reminded him of the findings from the Fulcrum’s briefest of encounters with its opponent. No matter how long he stared, the numbers weren’t believable. Yet somehow, they were true.

  “Twenty-five thousand metres in length,” he said. “Seven hundred billion tons mass. How the hell did the Lavorix construct something like that?”

  “I’m more interested in how many they built like it,” said Recker.

  “I’ve found something,” said Eastwood. “I think you should look at it, sir.”

  Recker crossed the bridge floor and positioned himself between Eastwood and Fraser. Both men had the same software up on their screens and they were entering digits into a series of fields.

  “Looks basic,” said Recker, peering closely.

  “It is,” said Eastwood. “No fancy graphics and little control over the variables.”

  “The Meklon called it a pursuit simulator,” said Fraser. “We enter our flight data into this box,” he continued, pointing a thick finger at his screen. “Down here, we have the option to enter confirmed details relating to a second ship. The Galactar isn’t mentioned by name, but that’s all it can relate to.”

  “I’m entering the data for the Galactar’s arrival at Kemis-5,” said Eastwood.

  “What kind of data?” asked Recker.

  “Mostly to do with time and distance – when the Galactar arrived in a solar system, how far away it was and so on. Also sensor information on its hull outputs.” Eastwood filled in another field. “After that, I can import our own flight data directly from the navigational computer.”

  “Do it,” said Recker.

  “Here we go.”

  Without flashing red lights, sirens or any other drama, the results appeared as several lines of text below the data input fields.

  “Well damn,” said Eastwood.

  Recker scanned the output data, which contained several projections expressed as a percentage. “The Galactar is going to beat us to our destination,” he said. “99.9% certainty.”

  “That’s what it looks like,” said Eastwood. “If they decided we’re a tasty enough morsel, they’ll be ready and waiting for lunch to arrive.”

  Another check of the lightspeed countdown timer informed Recker how little room for manoeuvre was left.

  “We have less than an hour to figure out how this works,” he said. “Is there a how-to file for the simulator?”

  “No, sir. I can access the code, but I’m not familiar with the Meklon programming language,” said Eastwood. “They don’t add help text to the code either, so it’s all commands and numbers.”

  “You’ll have to enter some false data to find out how it changes the output.”

  “That’s not so easy,” said Fraser. “The flight data we import from the navigational computer is fixed and we can’t modify it. We’ll need to locate the lines of code which import that data and point them at another place.”

  “A place we’ll fill with concocted flight data to help build a picture of how the simulator works.”

  Recker wasn’t happy to discover this capability of the Galactar. “That field there which you left
blank – cancellation percentage – I assume that will recalculate the outcome based on us exiting lightspeed early?”

  “I hadn’t thought about that,” said Eastwood. “I bet that’s exactly what it’s for.”

  “Fill it in and recalculate.”

  Eastwood tapped in some digits. “We’re ninety-six percent towards our destination. Let’s find out what happens if we exit lightspeed immediately.”

  The results changed to reflect the new data, along with some extra lines of information which hadn’t been there before.

  “Zero percent certainty the Galactar will beat us to our destination,” said Recker. “These numbers beneath the conclusion are time estimates.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Eastwood. “The simulation predicts that the Galactar has a fifteen percent chance of compensating within thirty minutes.”

  “With a forty percent chance at an hour, and 99.9% by two hours,” said Recker.

  “This confirms it!” said Eastwood in sudden excitement. “The Galactar isn’t basing its pursuit wholly on the ternium cloud of lightspeed entry. The Lavorix have somehow figured out a way of not only detecting a lightspeed tunnel and predicting a destination from it, but they’ve also developed the capability to actively monitor our lightspeed journey.” His face fell as the enormity of it sank in. “Shit.”

  Recker thought of something else. “The only way they can monitor our lightspeed journey is by being near enough to scan the tunnel we’re creating as we go.”

  “Yes, sir. It’s likely the Galactar is tracking us continuously from close range – whatever close range might be when we’re talking about huge multiples of lightspeed.”

  The thought of it made Recker’s skin tighten and the bridge air felt suddenly colder than before. “At least we’re alive,” he said. “That means the Lavorix haven’t worked out how to destroy us at lightspeed.”

  “They’re just sitting on our shoulder, waiting for us to appear,” said Fraser.

  “Put in a new cancellation percentage,” said Recker. “This time, try ninety-seven percent.”

  Eastwood typed and the output changed. “Eighteen percent chance of compensating within thirty minutes. It’s gone up - what the hell?”

  “If the Galactar is sitting close by and monitoring our progress, that percent should remain static, shouldn’t it?” asked Aston.

  “That’s what I’d have thought, Commander.” Eastwood scratched his head with a pained look. “We know so little about the Galactar and we don’t know the variables this simulator considers, beyond those we enter ourselves.”

  “We have to assume the Meklon were better at this than we are, Lieutenant. However unexpected the output from the software, there’s got to be a reason for it.”

  “I’ll see what happens if we cancel this transit at ninety-eight and ninety-nine percent complete,” said Eastwood.

  Half a minute later and he was done.

  “There aren’t enough data points to be certain, but it looks as if the predicted compensation percentage trends upwards,” said Recker, once he’d read the results. “Without being linear.”

  “If we switch over our ternium drive with ninety-eight percent of the journey complete, the Galactar has a twenty-two percent chance to compensate within thirty minutes,” said Eastwood. “At ninety-nine percent of the journey complete, that compensation chance jumps to thirty-five percent.”

  “Welcome to the crazy world of theoretical mathematics,” said Burner, deadpan.

  Recker tapped his knuckles on Eastwood’s console while he absorbed the information. “Is there a way we can find out exactly what compensation means? Does it mean the time taken by the Galactar to realize that its quarry has exited lightspeed, or does it mean the time taken to realize and to arrive at the corrected destination?”

  “That’s the question, sir,” said Eastwood. “And I don’t have an answer.”

  “Can you find it in the code?”

  “Given time. Like always.”

  “Get on it, Lieutenant. Whatever you can unearth from that simulator, I want to hear it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Lieutenant Burner, you’ve got two minutes to select our next destination. I don’t want it anywhere near a Meklon facility. We won’t be responsible for drawing the Galactar to a place the Lavorix might not know about.”

  “I’ve chosen a place – it’s six hours at maximum lightspeed.”

  Recker returned to his seat and took hold of the controls. It was beginning to sink in what a narrow escape they were in the process of pulling off. “Lieutenant Eastwood, I want you to switch over the ternium drive.”

  “Here we go.”

  With a scarcely noticeable shudder, the Fulcrum exited lightspeed and returned to local space. The crew went through their usual routines while Recker gave the spaceship maximum acceleration.

  “Local scans complete,” said Burner shortly after. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. No planets, no stars anywhere close. The sensors have calibrated and I’ve passed on details of our next destination to Lieutenant Eastwood.”

  Recker brought the Fulcrum to a standstill. Immediately, the ternium drive started warming up.

  “Watch those sensors,” he said anxiously, wondering if he should have used the mode 3 – short lightspeed jump - function to obtain some extra distance from the arrival point. Recker had no idea if the resulting ternium cloud would make the Fulcrum easier to track. On the other hand, if he didn’t use the mode 3 jump, maybe the Galactar would appear a hundred kilometres off the portside flank and unload a thousand missiles.

  While Recker couldn’t predict the future, he knew what happened if the guesses were stacked too high. He stopped guessing and didn’t activate engine mode 3.

  “Can we derive any useful predictions within the Galactar’s thirty-minute compensation time?” Recker asked. “Like how heavily it’s skewed towards the upper end?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” said Eastwood. “I might be able to find out from the code, but I suspect that’s going to be a difficult one to pin down.”

  “Fine,” said Recker, reminding himself that Eastwood was an experienced officer and if he said it was going to be difficult, it wasn’t because he lacked the skill or competence.

  “Where are we heading?” asked Aston.

  “The end point is nowhere,” said Burner. “A sun, a few planets.”

  “It doesn’t matter too much, Lieutenant, since we’ll never get there,” said Recker. “Depending on what that simulator tells us, we’re going to cancel the journey at the most advantageous time and go someplace else.”

  “On and on,” said Burner.

  “We’re buying some breathing space, that’s all, Lieutenant,” said Recker. “We’ve already learned something about the Galactar’s ability to follow us into lightspeed.”

  On this occasion, the Galactar didn’t appear and the Fulcrum entered lightspeed again. Even though Recker was sure he and his crew had avoided certain death, the victory seemed slight. Still, he knew that enough small wins might eventually lead to something of greater significance. Equally, they may end up being nothing more than a nuisance to the Galactar.

  Telling himself to concentrate on the positives, Recker climbed from his seat to see what the simulator predicted this time.

  Chapter Four

  “If we cancel this lightspeed journey immediately, the Galactar has an eighty percent chance of compensating within fifteen minutes,” said Eastwood.

  “Not thirty minutes?”

  “No, sir – the simulator seems to vary the timescales depending on the input. Also, bear in mind that we don’t know how far behind us the Galactar is, so I’ve had to base the data I’ve entered into the simulator on the compensation data from the previous trip.”

  Recker felt his head spinning. “So from the previous trip, we believe the enemy had a twenty-two percent chance of compensating within thirty minutes.”

  “Yes, sir. Taking that prediction and combining it with
the other predictions for one and two hours, along with a few assumptions based on educated guesswork, I estimated the Galactar would show up fifty minutes after the end of our last trip. I have far too little information to work out the likely deviation, so I’ve estimated and then rounded up.”

  Recker stared at Eastwood and Eastwood stared back.

  “This sounds like a house of cards, Lieutenant.”

  “It more closely resembles a brick house with foundations of horse shit, sir. The faster I build, the deeper the walls sink. Every new assumption becomes increasingly meaningless.”

  “Show me what the simulator has come up with.”

  “I’ve already plotted the results at ten-percent intervals, sir,” said Fraser. “And made a nice graph.”

  Recker checked out the findings. “The thirty-minute compensation time starts high and falls to its lowest point at the halfway point of our journey. After that, it climbs again.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Fraser. “Neither Lieutenant Eastwood nor I have any way to explain this behaviour. Even guesses are in short supply.”

  If we cancel this new journey midway through, and then start a new journey, can we gradually pull out enough of a lead over the Galactar that it’ll lose our trail?” asked Recker. “Or is that like adding ten storeys to the house resting on horse shit?”

  “No, it’s an excellent question, sir,” said Eastwood. “One which I’ve already started looking into.”

  “And?”

  “My initial feeling is that the overhead required for post-lightspeed sensor calibration and then warming up our ternium drive for each new transition will allow the Galactar to remain within touching distance. Potentially forever.” He made rumbling sound. “Of course it would be useful to know exactly how long is required for our trail to go so cold the enemy can’t follow.”

  “You could find out by telling the simulator that the Galactar started its pursuit ten hours after we entered lightspeed,” said Burner. “See what value it shows and keep entering new ones until you find the lowest time that produces a zero percent chance of pursuit.”