A surprise waited – the source of the rumbling engine he’d heard earlier turned out to be one of the fleet’s battleships, which hovered so low to the ground that it might as well have been touching. The warship was showing its profile and Recker marvelled at the sleek, four-thousand-metre, dark shape that crossed his vision. From here, the front and rear charge cannons were the only visible protrusions in the purposeful lines of the hull. He guessed it was either the Damocles or the Granite, which were the oldest two battleships in the fleet.
“That’s how Admiral Telar got here,” he muttered. “No wonder it didn’t take him long.”
Telar didn’t generally treat fleet warships as his own personal transport, so Recker assumed the battleship had another mission. Whatever that might be, he didn’t know and didn’t attempt to guess.
The landing strip occupied approximately one hundred square kilometres and was clad in a thick concrete which was reinforced with flexible alloy bars that could support the immense weight of a spaceship by bending rather than snapping. Vehicles of all descriptions – many of them automated – travelled in every direction. Recker spotted cranes and cargo trucks, along with the largest low-level crawler he’d ever seen. In the sky, shuttles flew, many of them with huge loads suspended underneath.
The landing strip was never quiet, but the activity was clearly increasing.
“Getting busy, sir,” said the navigational computer.
“Yeah.”
“We’re going to kick some ass!”
“You think?” asked Recker without interest. He didn’t normally waste time speaking to computers.
“Oh, absolutely, sir,” the machine gushed. “I wouldn’t like to be a Daklan when our fleet comes knocking.”
“Thanks for the input. Now be quiet.”
The car drove past a stack of Railer ammunition crates that were probably intended for the cruiser, veered sharply around the tail end of a crawler and then headed straight. The Punisher was still out of sight, parked up in the far corner of the landing field somewhere behind the battleship. Two more riots came into view amongst the organized chaos and then Recker caught sight of the shipyard, several kilometres to his right.
The construction crews were working on something like always, and Recker remembered seeing the incomplete hull of a shard class destroyer in the visible trench when the rescue craft was bringing him in. The adjacent trench – currently out of sight – held a second destroyer and in the third was a cruiser, while the other two were empty. The HPA would need more firepower than two destroyers and a cruiser if it hoped to face down the Daklan fleet.
With each passing second, the battleship grew larger in the windshield and Recker could feel the rumble of its propulsion whenever he touched an exposed metal surface inside the car. He now recognized it as the Granite from a slight variation in the angles of its rear section plating, resulting from repairs a few months ago.
The car didn’t have permission to drive beneath the battleship and it diverted around. After what seemed like many minutes, the vehicle passed beyond the rear section of the warship and then Recker saw his new ride. The Punisher appeared tiny – insignificant – in comparison to the Granite and looked like any other riot class. From what he’d learned, this one only finished its trials eight days ago.
Recker thought back to Aston’s words about them being assigned to a rust bucket and smiled. An old ship would go through the same extensive maintenance as every other warship, meaning they were as reliable as anything else in the fleet. Something new like the Punisher, on the other hand, might well have all kinds of underlying issues that would only make themselves known in the first few hundred hours of active duty.
Someone had a sense of humour, though Recker wasn’t laughing.
The car slowed up and came to a halt at the Punisher’s forward boarding ramp. A squad of soldiers stood guard and a light tank patrolled nearby. The armoured vehicle seemed like an overkill deterrent for the HPA’s army of civilian warship spotters – colloquially known in the military as spaceholes - but there were groups out there for whom it was a badge of honour to get onboard a military craft, even when the penalties for doing so were severe and occasionally fatal.
Recker had no sympathy. The military put on regular parades and displays, giving every citizen the opportunity to see the latest warships and armed vehicles from up close. There was no excuse for interfering with vessels on active duty.
“Good luck out there, sir,” said the car. “And do your duty!”
Slamming the door with feeling, Recker headed the last fifty metres towards the guard squad. He counted fifteen men and women. They looked alert and were dressed in full combat gear, each carrying a standard-issue gauss rifle, a sidearm and two grenades. More than enough to deal with a bunch of overeager spaceholes.
The commanding officer advanced to meet Recker, offering him a salute of pinpoint accuracy. He’d read his briefing and knew who was coming.
“Captain Recker,” said the man. “I’m Sergeant Tracker.”
“Any problems, Sergeant?”
“No, sir. I checked out the test report. Everything’s green to go.”
Recker winced at the reference to a test report. The signoff guys were technical experts, but it was the everyday maintenance teams who knew the nuts-and-bolts ways of keeping a spaceship ticking, often locating faults even when the monitoring hardware reported everything was in tip-top shape.
“Thank you, Sergeant. I’m waiting for my crew and a squad of soldiers.”
“Yes, sir. Commander Aston, alongside Lieutenants Eastwood and Burner. I’ll tell them to head straight onboard.”
“What about the squad?”
“Staff Sergeant Vance, sir,” said Tracker promptly. “I got word he’s on his way.”
“Send him to quarters once he arrives.”
Tracker knew the drill and snapped out another salute, no less perfect than one which preceded it.
With the formalities over, Recker approached the Punisher. Its engines were running, though they struggled to make themselves heard over the all-encompassing droning of the Granite. The multitude of thick landing legs towered high, like a forest of alloy, and the spaceship’s underside blotted out many of the stars. While the riot class were easily the smallest warships in the fleet, only an idiot would call one small.
At the end of the boarding ramp, Recker paused, trying to remember exactly how long it had been since he’d commanded anything other than the Finality. He took a breath and put his foot on the lowest step. The ramp weighed a few thousand tons and it didn’t so much as echo beneath the weight of his tread.
Above, the light from the airlock was muted and Recker climbed into the enclosed space, which was reputedly designed to accommodate exactly fifteen soldiers with a full loadout. Whatever the truth, Recker knew the current record was twenty-eight soldiers, though he had no idea how the feat was accomplished.
A door at the far end of the airlock opened when he touched the access panel and Recker entered the ship. The sight and the smell were identical to that of the Finality and he felt immediately at home.
Within five minutes, he was on the bridge and sitting in the command seat. A quick status check told him that all the onboard systems were online and showing green lights. He accessed the external sensors and focused one of the arrays on the landing strip. In the few minutes since he’d boarded, the quantity of visible traffic had increased noticeably.
Commander Aston was carrying a personal communicator and Recker connected to it.
“I’d guess we’re ten minutes from the Punisher, sir. We got slowed by traffic. You said we had two hours before Admiral Telar expects us to lift off.”
“And you can be sure he’s standing with a stopwatch, Commander.”
She laughed. “I’ll bet. Anyway, we’re coming as fast as we can.”
The channel went dead and Recker accessed the mission briefing files, which he skimmed through once. With that done, he continued his
pre-flight checks. His officers were a little more efficient at the task when it came to their own specialities, but it wouldn’t hurt to give them a head start.
Sergeant Vance and his squad arrived in an ugly-looking armoured transport a few seconds before the crew, and Recker watched the soldiers file up the boarding ramp. He linked with Vance’s comms unit and repeated the order to hunker down in quarters.
“Quarters it is, sir.” Vance’s tone didn’t give away much of his feelings, though Recker was certain everyone in the squad would be pissed at the current turn of events. Or maybe they were experienced enough to have learned that you had to take the rough with the smooth.
Shortly after, Commander Aston entered the bridge, followed by Eastwood and Burner, the latter with his hair sticking up like he’d been fast asleep when his communicator started buzzing.
“Welcome onboard,” said Recker. “Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. The clock is ticking and we have to be on our way.”
“Where are we going, sir?” said Eastwood. “And couldn’t it have waited until morning?”
“Nothing can wait until morning, Lieutenant - I thought you’d know that by now.”
“You’d think,” Eastwood grumbled.
“Let’s not delay any longer, folks. I’ve done the basic checks and you’ve got five minutes to find anything I’ve missed. After that, we’re taking off. The mission briefing gives me the usual limitations on disclosure.”
“Nothing until we’re at lightspeed, huh?” said Burner.
“Got it in one, Lieutenant.”
The crew took their stations and got to work. Recker could see the tiredness in their features and Burner couldn’t stop yawning. They had a long flight ahead, so there’d be time for sleep once the Punisher entered lightspeed.
“That’s five minutes,” said Recker loudly. “Anything to report?”
“All green, sir.”
“Lieutenant Burner, we should have clearance to depart.”
“That’s confirmed, sir. Our window lasts another ten minutes.”
Recker glanced at the clock and smiled. Assuming Telar had ordered the clearance window, he’d given the Punisher precisely zero additional time over the two hours.
“Tell the squad outside to get clear.”
“Sergeant Tracker acknowledges the order.”
The squad didn’t hang about. Most of them piled into a nearby transport, while another climbed into the cabin of the truck Sergeant Vance had arrived in. Moments later, they were gone, leaving the area beneath the Punisher clear.
“We’re ready,” Recker said. He reached out and laid his hand on the two horizontal bars in front of him.
Almost every spaceship captain had preferences about the weighting on the controls and they could be adjusted through software. The resistance he felt when he pulled gently at the alloy bars told Recker immediately that the technicians had loaded his profile data.
He increased power to the engines. They hummed with increasing volume, accompanied by a droning and a faint vibration which was subtly different to that of the Finality.
“That doesn’t sound right,” he said. “Lieutenant Eastwood, check it out.”
“Nothing to worry about, sir. The Punisher is carrying slightly larger propulsion modules than the Finality and our maximum output is approximately four percent higher.”
“That’ll make all the difference,” said Burner.
“Eyes on your station, Lieutenant,” Aston reminded him.
Recker didn’t wait any longer and took the Punisher vertically into the darkness. Several proximity warnings bleeped to advise him of the traffic above the landing strip, but the base mainframe was programmed to halt anything that drifted too close to the warship’s permitted flight path.
Higher into the sky the Punisher flew, gaining altitude steadily. There were no towns or cities nearby, but the military didn’t permit its spaceships to create sonic booms in non-emergency situations.
“You never get sick of the views,” said Aston, pointing at the starboard feed.
From this altitude, the sensors picked up the retreating planet’s day, far in the distance. It was almost gone, leaving a thick curve of deep blue tracing across the edge of Lustre. Recker wanted to stare but had to focus on the warship’s flight. It was sights like this which had first made him abandon his career as a ground soldier to become a flight officer.
On the underside feed, the sprawling Adamantine base dwindled, though the Granite was still visible. To one side, the construction trenches were thick grey lines, with specks moving around like a swarm of tiny insects. Recker noticed activity on the far trench and he wondered if they were expanding it in order to accommodate a larger hull for whatever was due to be built next.
“That’s us at a thousand klicks,” said Burner.
“Time to fly,” said Aston.
“The first active duty stress test,” Recker confirmed.
He rammed the controls forward and the Punisher’s engines responded by throwing the warship towards the stars. The velocity gauge climbed rapidly, the rate of increase only slowing as it approached maximum speed.
“We’ve got clearance to hit lightspeed once we’re at half a million klicks, sir,” said Burner.
That was plenty of time for the Punisher to hit maximum speed and Recker held it there, enjoying the intoxicating propulsion note.
“No alerts,” said Eastwood. “Looks like we got a good one.”
The next big test was entry to lightspeed and Recker brought the spaceship to a halt at exactly half a million klicks from Lustre.
“You have access to the destination coordinates, Lieutenant Eastwood. Warm up the ternium drive,” he said.
“Roger that, sir. On the star charts that shows up as a solar system called Exim-K. Four days travel time.”
“That’s right.”
The warmup required fifteen minutes and although the crew talked lightly, it was a tense wait. A warship was tested extensively for lightspeed entry before it went into service, but for some reason, accidents still happened, predominantly on the very first active duty transit.
At exactly fifteen minutes, the warship’s mainframe completed its calculations and the Punisher launched into lightspeed.
Chapter Thirteen
The spaceship’s instrumentation jumped around crazily, the sensors went blank and the comms links dropped, while the crew experienced nausea and a feeling of dislocation. So far, nothing unusual.
“We’re not dead,” said Lieutenant Burner.
“Doesn’t seem like it,” said Aston.
Recker concealed his relief. He hadn’t expected the Punisher to break up, but he thought a few ambers might appear on the monitoring tools. As yet, the sea of green lights hadn’t so much as flickered and he was beginning to wonder if his opinion about the reliability of new spaceships was no longer valid.
“As Lieutenant Eastwood said, the Punisher seems like a good one,” he said. “But don’t take your eyes off the equipment just yet.”
“I can’t keep mine open, sir.”
“First duty break is in an hour and you’re one of the chosen two, Lieutenant Burner. The replicator’s in the usual place if you need some temporary assistance.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Burner, rising at once to order a coffee.
Aston stretched luxuriously in her seat and rolled her head on her shoulders. “Are you going to tell us what’s happening at Exim-K?” She stood and gave Recker a look. “And what are high command planning to do with the information we brought back from Etrol?”
“I hear we’ve gone to total war, sir,” said Eastwood.
The crew had some pent-up questions and Recker did his best to answer them. They hadn’t heard about the losses inflicted on the HPA fleet and they took it hard.
“That’s a real kick in the balls,” said Eastwood. “We’re not coming back from that soon.”
“It won’t be easy, Lieutenant. The next few months are going to be
the most important of our lives.” He smiled grimly. “By which I mean the lives of every HPA citizen.”
“We might lose this,” said Burner, as if it was just sinking in. “All these years of fighting and now we’re on the brink.”
“We’re not on the brink yet,” said Recker, more angrily than he meant. “We’ve had setbacks before and this is another one to add to the list. You know what total war means – bottomless funding for new ships and new tech. The military is bringing in the finest minds from across the HPA. It’ll take a few months for everyone to start pulling in the same direction, but that’s just a challenge we’ll have to overcome.”
“I hope it works out, sir,” said Burner quietly.
“It will. It has to.”
“Lightspeed missiles,” said Aston, shaking her head in dismay. “What can we do against technology like that?”
“We can learn fast, Commander. Same as we always do.”
“And we’re still non-the-wiser about what the Daklan were planning on Etrol,” said Aston.
“It doesn’t look like we’ll find out any time soon, either,” said Recker. He thumped his console, but the anger was already fading.
“Once we reach Exim-K, we’re to investigate two of the twelve planets – Oldis and Resa,” said Eastwood. “Neither of which have been scouted by the HPA. So what exactly is it we’re looking for?”
“Nobody knows, Lieutenant. One of the deep space monitoring stations found something – a trace of whatever it is they hunt for – and the report ended up in Admiral Telar’s hands. Now we’re on our way to see whatever there is to be seen.”
“What aren’t you telling us, sir?” said Aston.
“I’m that obvious?”
“Sometimes.”
“Admiral Telar had a big list of places to explore. The one we were given stood out as the most likely to be a site of enemy activity.”
Aston looked shocked. “In that case, why aren’t they sending a substantial force, sir?”
“Admiral Telar didn’t say.”
“But you found out.”
War from a Distant Sun (Savage Stars Book 1) Page 11