Fulcrum Gun (Savage Stars Book 4)

by Anthony James

  “Anything else I should know?”

  “The propulsion sections for the nukes are huge. They’re designed to lock from long range and an extended boost period will take them to a maximum velocity of about eighty thousand klicks per second.”

  Recker was impressed. “That’s damned fast.”

  “Yes, but they pay for it in manoeuvrability. The tech sheets indicate the Meklon built in rudimentary sensor deflection capabilities, but I don’t know how much testing they did.”

  “A nuke won’t be much use in a dogfight,” said Recker. “There’s no oxygen for an explosion in space, so the only result will be a huge pulse of gamma radiation.”

  “Perhaps the Lavorix don’t shield their warships against gamma rays.”

  “That’s a flaw the Meklon would have discovered early, Commander.”

  “You’d think. Anyway, I’m not sure the nukes will hit anything as agile as a warship. Not without a lot of luck.”

  Recker gave the matter some thought. “The Tri-Cannon was originally meant to be deployed on the surface of a planet. If that planet had an oxygen-rich atmosphere, the warheads would explode and the results would be impressive as long as you weren’t in the centre of the blast. Maybe the Meklon thought a high-yield nuclear detonation would have some use against the Galactar’s shield.”

  “Whatever the Meklon believed, we’re the ones in control of the weapons now, sir.”

  “Another tool, Commander. I’ll take as many of those as I can lay my hands on.”

  “You’ll get no arguments from me,” said Aston, with a barely perceptible glance at the wall clock.

  “One last thing and you can go,” said Recker. “Have you learned anything else about the Shield Breaker?”

  “No sir – we point it and we shoot it. Without physical projectiles, I believe there’ll be almost zero time between discharge and impact. The range is effectively infinite – the only trouble will be landing a shot on target.”

  “What about the firing interval?”

  “I don’t know, sir. The Meklon had projections anywhere between thirty seconds and ten minutes.”

  “What else?” asked Recker, sensing Aston had something more to say.

  “The Meklon weren’t even sure if the Shield Breaker would fire twice. They ran some simulations, but since most of the hardware is either experimental, or repurposed, they didn’t have much of an idea what would happen after they fired the gun.”

  “Great.”

  “Welcome to the wonderful world of alien prototypes designed and built under threat of imminent extinction, sir.”

  “And now we’re the guinea pigs,” said Recker. He caught Aston looking at him expectantly. “Go,” he said, pointing to the bridge exit.

  Aston didn’t hang about and left the bridge. Recker killed time speaking with those of his crew who remained and, when the conversation fell quiet, he pondered the future. As usual, predicting what lay ahead bore no fruit, though he couldn’t stop trying.

  The single planned interruption to the journey was accomplished without hiccups. At Recker’s command, Lieutenant Eastwood switched over the ternium drive and the warship entered local space.

  “New coordinates entered, sir,” said Fraser. “A one-hour journey.”

  When the Fulcrum was back at lightspeed, Recker calmed his mind. His fear of the Galactar had faded to no more than a distant memory and now he itched to find out what would happen to the Lavorix warship when it was struck by the Shield Breaker, closely followed by a pair of 424-million-ton ternium-accelerated projectiles. With any luck, it would bring payback for at least a fraction of the damage caused by the Galactar. In his heart, Recker knew he could destroy the enemy ship a hundred times over and it wouldn’t be enough to even the score.

  I’ll settle for destroying it once.

  The hour passed quickly and Lieutenant Eastwood shouted his ten-minute warning. Each member of the crew was ready and Recker detected an almost tangible anticipation. He inhaled deeply and the overchilled bridge air seared his lungs and brought clarity to his thoughts.

  At exactly the time predicted by the navigational computer, the Fulcrum re-entered local space. Recker gave the engines full power and he waited for the sensors to come online.

  “Here we go,” said Burner.

  The bulkhead screen lit up and Recker watched to see what his sensor team would discover.

  “Near scan complete,” said Burner. “Expanding the search sphere.”

  “No planets anywhere nearby,” said Larson.

  Recker didn’t let go of the controls and he banked the Fulcrum hard one way and then the other.

  “Found something!” said Burner. “It’s stationary.”

  “What is it?” asked Recker.

  “One second…it’s not a threat. Damn, I think we found it.”

  Recker opened his mouth to ask what it was, and then an image appeared on one of the feeds. He knew at once what they’d discovered and he felt his throat tightening.

  “Please confirm that’s what I think it is,” he said, reducing the Fulcrum’s velocity to a crawl.

  Fifty thousand kilometres away, a spaceship hung motionless in the void. Looking at its shape, Recker was reminded of a transport in that the vessel had high sides – though these ones sloped inwards towards the top section – and a broad beam. A tapering nose and a sleekness not usually found in transports contained hints of warship. From this angle, Recker could also see how the spaceship had a slight V-shape to it, as it narrowed from stern to nose.

  “Thirty thousand metres in length and a twelve-klick beam at its widest point,” said Aston, her eyes unblinking. “The Meklon interstellar.”

  Recker couldn’t help himself and he swore loudly, crashing his fist down onto the arm of his seat. “They ran for the Gateway and yet here they are on the wrong side of it.”

  “Hull scans indicate their propulsion is operational and running at idle, sir,” said Eastwood.

  “What about comms receptors?” asked Recker. “Any greens? Anyone we can speak to?”

  “I’ve got a green, sir,” said Burner. “I’ll try opening a channel.”

  Everyone in the crew knew what the outcome would be.

  “No answer, sir. There’s a handshake from the spaceship’s core, but nothing else.”

  “Does the ship have a name?” asked Recker. Suddenly, it was important for him to know.

  “Voltrox, sir.”

  “Inform it of the Extinction Protocol. I’d like to connect to its onboard systems.”

  “Done,” said Burner. “It didn’t offer a fight.”

  “Query its flight logs – find out what happened.”

  Burner fell silent for a time. When he spoke, it was with the answer Recker knew was coming, yet needed to hear anyway. “The Voltrox arrived in local space and the Galactar came in right on top of it.”

  “How many survived?”

  “The life support unit reports zero living organisms on the spaceship, sir.”

  “Obtain a link to the interstellar’s internal monitoring systems,” snapped Recker.

  “Coming up.”

  A dozen feeds from the Voltrox’s internal sensors appeared across the bulkhead screen. They had an ethereal property to them, as if the data were coming across an infinite distance, or perhaps from a thousand years ago. The feeds were of a variety of places within the interstellar – passages, rooms, open spaces. On every one, Recker saw bodies - sometimes one or two, and on others there were many.

  The Meklon on the Voltrox had not been dressed for combat. These were likely civilians and they wore flimsy spacesuits designed for comfort. Not one of the dead wore a helmet and their expressions of agonised horror affected Recker in a way that even the loss of planet Fortune had not managed.

  “New feeds,” he said.

  The next twelve feeds were from other places in the Voltrox – more bodies, more sadness.

  “Again.”

  Burner put up another twelve and the
story was the same. A flight from extinction brought short in the most terrible and abrupt way imaginable.

  The Lavorix Galactar – a technological monstrosity – had done this and left the evidence here in a forgotten part of the universe, corpses preserved by the Voltrox’s life support system that would keep them in this exact state for hundred thousand years or more. A grave of two-point-three billion souls, murdered by an enemy seeking to make the entire Meklon species extinct.

  As he stared, Recker cast his mind back a short time to the atmosphere on the bridge before the Fulcrum had exited lightspeed. Given what they’d found, he found himself unable to deny the possibility the crew had experienced a collective premonition about events to come - as though so many deaths carried their own kind of gravity which could affect the feeling of other sentient creatures across vast expanses of space.

  “Sir?” It was Aston, a tear rolling down one cheek. “What’s done is done.”

  Recker nodded in response, though it took him a great effort. “We’re going to put a stop to this,” he promised, unsure exactly what he meant by the words. With a tremendous effort, he hauled himself back from the precipice.

  “Enough,” he said. “Cut the feeds.”

  Burner complied at once, and the bulkhead screen became once more divided into images of the surrounding void. Stars and darkness which usually made Recker feel peace now spoke only of emptiness.

  “The interstellar came here looking for a Gateway,” Recker continued. “It’s the reason we’re here. Find it.”

  “Our scans haven’t located anything, sir,” said Burner, “Which suggests the Gateway hardware isn’t nearby. I’ll keep expanding the scan sphere, but it might take some time to find what we’re looking for – especially if it’s five or ten million klicks away.”

  “Could the Gateway hardware be equipped with sensor deflection hardware?” asked Recker.

  “There’s a chance of it, sir.”

  Recker didn’t want any more delay than necessary and he furrowed his brow in thought. “The Voltrox knows where the Gateway is located. Query its navigational computer and find out.”

  “That’s a good idea, sir,” said Burner. “One I should have thought of already.” He brought his head closer to his main console screen. “Got it.”

  “Where?”

  Burner raised an arm and pointed to the ceiling. “About three million klicks that way.”

  “I’ve got the coordinates - scanning,” said Larson. “Here we go.”

  The Gateway appeared on the centre of the bulkhead display and Recker studied what they’d found. A near-black thick cylinder, with a two-thousand-metre length was ringed by dozens of spaceships. These spaceships were of varying sizes and designs, like they’d been pulled randomly from the Meklon fleet. The closest was twenty kilometres from the cylinder and the furthest was eighty.

  “Zoom in on that large vessel upper left,” said Recker.

  “Done.”

  Recker narrowed his eyes. The hull of the craft was almost three thousand metres in length and it was incomplete. The lower two-thirds resembled a smaller version of the Fulcrum, while the upper sections were missing. Midway along the unfinished topside, Recker noticed a two-hundred-metre rectangle of alloy which bore an unmistakable similarity to a transport with its underside and propulsion removed.

  “What the hell?” he muttered. “Pick another and zoom.”

  The second ship was larger than the first and even further from completion. Most of the underside armour plates were in position, but the flanks were a patchwork of alloy slabs and the darker cubes of ternium modules were visible through the openings. Yet more of the propulsion modules jutted above the highest completed sections of the flank armour. Once again, something resembling the upper half of a transport had been attached midway along.

  “I’m getting high output readings from those hulls, sir,” said Eastwood. “They might not be finished, but their propulsions are ready to go.”

  “I know what this is,” said Recker slowly. “Those spaceships are what power the Gateway. The Meklon didn’t have the time or the capability to make it neat, so they brought these spaceships out of the construction yard early. The only way they could get them to fly was to modify some of their existing transports and tie in the navigational computers.”

  “They weakened their fleet to ensure the Voltrox could escape as soon as possible,” said Aston.

  “All that for nothing,” said Recker, still staring. “A last, desperate throw of the dice to save their people.”

  “The Galactar either didn’t locate the Gateway, or its commanding officer decided to leave it untouched,” said Aston.

  “Why destroy resources when victory is already assured?” asked Recker. “The Lavorix won’t have emerged from the war unscathed – they’ll require ternium and other materials to rebuild.”

  “I’m sure they’ll put the Gateway network to use as well,” said Burner.

  Recker only nodded. He took the controls and piloted the Fulcrum towards the Gateway. The Voltrox fell behind, though the memory of the interstellar was something he’d never lose.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Contact the Gateway,” said Recker. “We want passage to Oracon-1.”

  “Yes, sir. It’s totally comms silent,” said Burner. “I’ve sent it the Extinction Protocol codes. They should be enough to wake it up.”

  Recker didn’t see a reason to make a slow and steady approach, and he held the propulsion at one hundred percent, only slowing at the last possible moment. At eighty kilometres from the Gateway cylinder, he brought the battleship to a standstill. Directly ahead, an enormous transport – as big as those on the Ystarn base – was stationary, and one of the few vessels that was in a finished state.

  “The Gateway accepts our activation authority, sir,” said Burner. “It’s off-grid and didn’t have the coordinates for Oracon-1, so I’ve sent those over.”

  “Anything it can tell us about the interstellar’s destination?”

  “Sphere 1 is all it knows. That along with a bunch of numbers required to position the end point of the Gateway tunnel.”

  “Does that mean the Meklon still exist in Sphere 1?” asked Fraser.

  “The Gateway doesn’t know, Lieutenant,” said Burner. “It has a destination and nothing else. If I had to guess, I’d say the Meklon don’t know what the hell is going on in other parts of their territory.”

  “Seems like a shot in the dark to send two billion people to a place you don’t know is safe,” said Fraser with a shrug.

  “Let’s keep focus,” said Recker. “I want a Gateway to Oracon-1. Lieutenant Burner - please transmit the command.”

  “I already did that, sir, and I received confirmation.”

  “Then why are we waiting?”

  “The Gateway is performing internal calibration. I don’t think the hardware is capable of just aiming anywhere and sending a spaceship straight there.”

  “Hence the network we saw on Excon-1,” said Recker in understanding.

  “Here we go,” said Burner a few seconds later. “The Gateway generator has accepted the coordinates and locked onto the Fulcrum. Ten minutes until activation – the same as it was from Excon-1.”

  “Easily done for once,” said Eastwood.

  Recker didn’t answer. Instead, he kept his attention on the spaceships in the vicinity of the Gateway generator. Burner had counted 63 in total and the Fulcrum was on the outer edge of the ring. While many of the hulls were months from completion, others were almost finished, their armour in place and most of their weapons installed. He’d already known the Meklon were acting under the greatest of pressure and the more he saw, the more he got a sense of their desperation – their panic, even.

  “Five minutes until Gateway activation,” said Eastwood. “The propulsion output from all these spaceships is at fifty percent and climbing.”

  A feeling of incredible unease took hold of Recker. This feeling didn’t build graduall
y, rather it struck him full force in such a way that adrenaline started pumping into his veins.

  “Keep watching, folks,” he said.

  “Is there something wrong, sir?” said Aston.

  “Just a feeling, Commander.”

  “Nothing on the sensors,” said Larson.

  “Don’t let up.”

  “Sixty percent output from those other ships,” said Eastwood. “The climb is nearly linear towards the discharge point.”

  “Next stop: Oracon-1,” said Burner nervously, like Recker’s mood had infected him as well.

  “I’m reading an incoming particle wave about a million klicks beyond the Voltrox,” said Eastwood. His voice was utterly calm, as if he’d transcended fear. “The Galactar.”

  “How long on the Gateway?” asked Recker.

  “A little under four minutes.”

  “Too long,” said Recker.

  He swore, though it didn’t make him feel any better. The Galactar was on its way and experience suggested it would have plenty of time to locate the Gateway and come looking for the Fulcrum.

  Maybe not so easy this time, thought Recker suddenly.

  Acting immediately, he hauled the controls to the side, taking the Fulcrum deeper into the ring of spaceships. The battleship swept by the generator cylinder and he did his best to keep it in between the Fulcrum and the Galactar’s anticipated arrival place. With the cylinder being smaller than the battleship, and with time being tight, the result wasn’t perfect. When Recker brought his ship to a halt, the cylinder was sixty kilometres away. A total of nine incomplete Meklon spaceships were within twenty kilometres, and Recker hoped these would slow down the Galactar’s efforts to locate his vessel.

  “It’s got to be enough,” he said.

  “The particle wave has dissipated,” said Eastwood. “The Galactar is here.”

  “Now we wait,” said Aston.

  “I hate waiting,” said Burner.

  “I hate waiting when it’s like this,” added Larson.

  “Three minutes,” said Eastwood.