“I checked the flight logs. There’s a temporary hold on any mission that doesn’t involve the defence of our established installations or resource-bearing planets. Presumably to give high command a chance to update their strategy.”
“So the whole fleet’s on lockdown apart from us?”
“As far as exploration and scouting goes, yes.”
“Why is Admiral Solan still screwing with you after all these years, sir?” asked Eastwood. “And why does his father tolerate it?”
“Next time I see either of them, I’ll be sure to ask,” said Recker, clenching his fists.
The crew knew his background and they didn’t scratch at the wound. For his part, Recker hated that they were involved and it was more than peripheral. Because Admiral Gabriel Solan held a pointless grudge, anyone assigned to one of Recker’s missions could be sure they’d be exposed to the biggest risks, yet not so obviously that any evidence of it was left behind.
Recker hadn’t even known it was happening for a long time and assumed he was getting all the bad missions because high command thought that a former ground pounder should be pushed harder than the other officers. Yet the bad missions kept on coming and eventually Recker found out by accident that his past transgressions weren’t forgotten.
For a time, he revelled in his ability to take on those missions and turn a good result out of each one. Success was never enough and Recker suddenly knew he’d tolerated the situation for far too long. The manipulation was getting worse, not better, and soon he and his crew would be given a mission that no amount of skill or luck could pull them through.
Maybe this mission.
Although his expression didn’t change, inside he raged and Recker told himself that enough was enough. When this trip to Exim-K was done, he’d put a stop to this. Even if he had to fly the Punisher straight through Admiral Solan’s front window and set the warship down on the man’s hand-knitted fireside rug.
Negative thoughts weren’t going to help him through this mission and Recker pushed them aside. The shift break was due and he sent Aston and Burner to get their four hours sleep. Recker’s muscles felt coiled and he longed to burn off some of his pent-up energy by walking around the spaceship, if just to familiarise himself with what was surely already familiar.
With Aston on shift break, Recker couldn’t go anywhere except the replicator. This one was working fine, and they’d even upgraded the model over what was installed on the Finality. The steak and fries that appeared in the vend slot were almost indistinguishable from the real thing. Almost.
Lieutenant Eastwood didn’t speak much and that suited Recker fine, since the day was beginning to catch up with him. Besides, he appreciated the quiet and used it to think about what might lie ahead at Exim-K. A thirty-four percent chance of finding something was too high to ignore, which meant the Punisher and its crew were likely heading into danger.
Luckily, much of what the deep space monitoring stations detected ended up as nothing out of the ordinary, so the mission could turn out to be an extended surface scan of two heavy ore bearing planets. A real optimist might hope to locate ternium deposits or some other rare metals. Recker smiled thinly at the thought.
At last, his time to sleep came and he accepted the opportunity gratefully, and by halfway into the four-day journey, the crew was fully adapted to the new routine. Recker spoke to Sergeant Vance and a few of the other soldiers and found they were more resigned than angry at being sent out again so soon after touchdown.
“I want to shoot some Daklan sir,” boasted Private Wayland Steigers, one time Recker turned up in the mess room.
“No promises we’ll find any, soldier.”
“Don’t listen to him, sir,” advised Corporal Hendrix. “Last time Steigers fired that rifle he was holding it the wrong way and it took me three hours to patch him up.”
“Hey, quit saying that, Corporal,” Steigers protested. “I was there on Haldar. Fiver, too.”
Hendrix laughed and Recker saw how different she might look when the fighting was over.
“Fiver,” she said. “What a rot hole.”
“What happened?” asked Recker. The war had so many flashpoints he couldn’t keep up with the individual stories.
“What didn’t happen more like,” said Private Ken Raimi, leaning against the wall near the replicator and pretending to study his gauss rifle.
“Yeah,” said Steigers. “Must have been ten thousand Daklan ground troops with tank and air support, trying to take one of our ore processing plants. Me and some of the guys…” he pointed at the other soldiers in the room, “…we were holed up for must’ve been days in one of those big storage areas. The Daklan kept on coming and we kept on shooting them.”
“Good thing for us they wanted to keep the place operational,” said Hendrix. “Else we’d have been toast.”
“In the end, there was just too many of the bastards,” Steigers resumed. “I was down to my last mag and all I could see was Daklan.”
“And what happened?”
Steigers smiled, revealing pristine teeth. “A dozen of our warships came out of lightspeed and incinerated everything. Except the ore plant. That didn’t have a mark on it.” His smile faded. “But they took out Lieutenant Danny Steyne and most of his squad. Damn shame for those boys.”
“Shit happens,” said Hendrix, like she was trying to convince herself.
“And now it’s going to get worse, Corporal,” said Raimi. “Total war means the meat grinder’s got a whole lot more bodies to chew through.”
“I’m not going to be one of them,” said Steigers. “I promised my wife and kid I’d get through this for them. And my daughter thinks her Daddy’s a hero.”
“You let her believe that?” asked Raimi in mock disbelief.
“Hey, shut up, man. It helps me get through, alright?”
“And taking the piss out of you helps me get through.”
“How’s about you kiss my hairy ass, Raimi?”
“I just ate, man. Don’t make me bring it up again.”
Recker listened, glad that the soldiers were opening up in his presence. A couple of months ago when they first came onboard, they were almost hostile - as if they resented him for leaving behind the ground corps and becoming something he didn’t deserve to be. Maybe the attitudes were thawing and Recker hoped it was so.
He left the mess room and continued his circuit of the interior. A riot class wasn’t a good place for the claustrophobic, though Recker found it strangely soothing to be here. Walking these corridors was the closest thing he could get to having some time alone with his thoughts.
At a nondescript door, Recker halted. He tapped his fingers against the control panel and the door rumbled open, revealing one of the two steep ramps leading to the underside bay. Recker headed down.
The bay was the largest interior space on the warship, though that didn’t mean too much. It extended for thirty metres forward to aft and twenty from port to starboard, with a wide channel running down the middle where the incision class deployment vehicle was accessed.
It seemed as if the lighting was set at a lower level than everywhere else and it was freezing cold, like down here the vacuum was pressing at the fabric of the warship and trying to reach the warmth of life inside. With his head brushing the ceiling, Recker advanced across the floor towards the channel. At the edge, he stopped, not knowing why he’d come here.
The deployment vehicle was clamped to the underside of the thick, armoured slab which formed the bay floor. It was hard to make out the shape of the craft by what was revealed in the metre-deep channel, but Recker knew the vessel was sleek, cramped and lightly armoured. Two square hatches, five metres apart, allowed access and he checked the security panels on each to make sure there were no failures.
Everything was operational and ready to go, so Recker exited the bay and headed back to the bridge.
The remaining two days went by in a peculiar mix of double-time and half-time. When Recke
r thought about it, he reasoned that it all averaged out. At no point in the journey did the Punisher’s monitoring tools highlight any hardware faults, leaving Recker confident that the spaceship would hold together for the coming mission.
“We’re going to drop out of lightspeed midway between Oldis and Resa. From the observations of DS-Quad2, they should be almost in alignment with Exim-K,” said Eastwood. “The mission briefing doesn’t make it clear which of the two we should be looking at first.”
“You know why that is,” said Aston.
“Because they didn’t know.”
“That’s right, Lieutenant. We’re here to find out.”
“Still be nice to have some clues.”
“I won’t argue that one.”
“Thirty minute and we enter local space,” said Eastwood a few minutes later. “We’ll get to do that finding out pretty damn soon.”
Recker felt a chill of anticipation, like this mission to Exim-K was going to end up far more significant than anyone expected. He smiled inwardly. If his intuition was right, Admiral Solan might regret sending one of the fleet’s least capable warships. However, Recker fully intended to show what could be accomplished with a riot class warship, a skilled crew and plenty of guts.
“Ten minutes! Get ready for re-entry folks!” yelled Eastwood.
The wall timer counted down and Recker could hardly take his eyes away from it. At two minutes, Eastwood called his final warning and the crew straightened in readiness.
At ten seconds, Recker took a deep breath and placed his hands on the controls. The propulsion system grumbled and the Punisher shuddered at the switchover to sub-light engines. Without drama, the warship re-entered local space.
Chapter Fourteen
Status reports!” shouted Recker, giving the engines maximum. A spaceship always emerged from lightspeed at a low velocity and made an easy target for anything hostile. The accepted tactic was to go to full thrust and execute evasive manoeuvres, launching disruptor drones at the same time if you were dropping into the middle of a battle zone.
“Weapons systems online and available,” said Aston over the sound of the acceleration.
“No errors on the hardware,” shouted Eastwood.
“Waiting for sensor calibration, sir.”
“Commander Aston, I want you to help out on the local area scans,” said Recker, banking the Punisher hard one way and then the other.
“On it, sir.”
“Sensor recalibration complete,” said Burner. “Positioning underway. We’re in Exim-K. Commencing close range scans.”
“Working on the fars,” said Aston.
Recker could fly without conscious thought and he was able to study the bulkhead display to see what the sensors were picking up. Right now, there was plenty of darkness.
“Nothing on the close-range scan,” said Burner. “I’m expanding the sweep radius.”
If there was an enemy warship close by, Recker was sure it would have made itself known by now. Given that the Punisher wasn’t going to be within easy sensor range of either Oldis or Resa, it was enormously unlikely the Daklan would spot their arrival. Even so, the tension in his shoulders and arms didn’t lessen and he waited impatiently for his crew to paint him a picture.
“I’ve located Oldis, sir,” said Aston. “Forty million klicks to port.”
“Remember it’s in near alignment with Resa,” said Eastwood.
“Yes I got that, Lieutenant.” Aston went quiet for a few seconds. “There’s Resa – about forty million klicks starboard.”
“An easy stroll in cosmic terms,” said Eastwood dryly.
“What about the far scans, Lieutenant Burner?”
“Nearly complete, sir. Done. We’re in the clear.”
Recker backed off on the controls and reduced speed to half. “We made it here safely, so that’s the first hurdle jumped. Commander Aston, Lieutenant Burner – check out those planets and see if you can determine which one we should check out first. Bonus points to the officer who pinpoints the location of a Daklan outpost.”
“Let’s get it done,” said Aston. “I’ll take Oldis.” She sounded eager and her hands flew confidently from place to place on her console.
“I guess that means I take Resa.”
Recker would have liked to walk between their stations to see how they worked – it was always good to learn new tricks or see how other experienced officers did what they did – yet even the all-clear on the wide area sweep wasn’t enough to make him abandon the controls. He didn’t get a sense of impending danger but wasn’t about to treat instinct as fact.
Lieutenant Burner was the first to report. “Resa - planet eight of twelve, with zero moons. We’ve got rocks, ice and a ten thousand klick diameter. From this range, there’s not much else to be seen,” he said. “I’ve attempted a penetrative surface scan to hunt for anything which might have triggered the lenses on the monitoring station.” He exhaled in frustration. “We’re too far out and I can’t obtain an accurate geological profile.”
“Commander Aston?”
“Just finishing the preliminaries, sir. Oldis – planet seven with an eighteen thousand klick diameter and again, zero visible moons. That’s unusual for a planet this size. Surface imperfections indicate past upheaval. Given the relative proximity to Resa, maybe the two planets collided a few billion years ago.”
“What do the surface scans show?”
“No conclusive evidence of anything Daklan.”
“Well, shit,” said Recker. He gave a short laugh. “I should stop expecting everything on a plate.”
“We’ve got some work ahead of us, sir,” said Burner.
“What’re the options?” mused Recker. “Going to either place will require a lightspeed jump or ten hours at sub-light. I’m not ready to commit until we’ve obtained every piece of information available to us from here.”
“In that case, the options are to keep doing what we’re doing,” said Burner. “The sensors gather data more effectively from a fixed position. The two planets are diverging along their orbital tracks. If you held the Punisher in a fixed relative position to either Oldis or Resa, I could run a long-exposure scan of whichever planet. That would pull up a lot of raw data, but we might find something in amongst it.”
“Leaving the second planet and two blindsides still to scan.”
Burner shrugged. “Like you said, sir - it’s not coming on a plate. The choice is between safety and speed.”
“Right now, we’ll stick with the safe option.” Recker narrowed his eyes in Burner’s direction. “Do you have a hunch about either?”
“I’m not sure, sir. Maybe Oldis first.”
“Oldis it is. I’ll hold at forty million klicks and you have an hour.”
“That’s not enough time, sir.”
“I know. After an hour, we’ll jump in to ten million klicks.”
“If there are Daklan on the surface, ten million should be far enough to avoid easy detection,” Burner confirmed. “I’ll get started. Commander Aston’s assistance will move things along.”
“You’ve got it.”
“I’ve sent my preferred coordinates to your console, sir. Once the Punisher is stationary in that position, we’ll gather a lot more raw data.”
A green line appeared on Recker’s navigation screen and he guided the Punisher along it. The planet was travelling at a little over eighteen klicks per second around its orbital track, which was an easy speed for the warship to maintain. A few minutes later, Recker finished the positioning and set the autopilot to hold at a precise distance from Oldis.
“Don’t forget you’ll have to compensate for the planet’s rotation, sir. We need to be as relatively stable as possible.”
“I didn’t forget, Lieutenant. We’re in place.”
Aston didn’t require micromanagement and she already had her face close to one of the screens on her console, her eyes darting across the data. Nearby, a paper notepad and a stubby pencil were her
tools for jotting down ideas and discoveries. A few thousand years of technological advancement wasn’t enough to make such basic instruments completely obsolete.
Ten minutes went by and then twenty. Since the Punisher was on autopilot and running smoothly, Recker didn’t have much to do. He drummed his fingers, studied the sensor feeds, vended drinks for Aston and Burner, and tried not to waste time thinking what they might find here at Exim-K. Guessing was a fool’s game, though one it was hard not to play.
“Some parts of Oldis are unusually patterned,” said Burner eventually. “Others, not so much.” It was the first time he’d spoken in about thirty minutes, which was probably a new personal best for the man.
“How so?” asked Recker.
“Hang on, I’ve got enough information to generate a rough topographic map. Here you go, sir – coming up on the centre screen.”
It was a rough map and Recker narrowed his eyes, trying to spot the areas Burner thought were unusual. A grey representation of Oldis hovered on the screen, its computer-generated edges artificially distinct. At first and second glance, the topographical map could have come from any one of the thousands of other dead worlds that Recker had seen before.
“What am I looking for?” he asked.
“I’ll add a highlight.”
The outline of a red oval appeared on the far left of the disk, encompassing an area where the terrain vanished out of sensor sight towards the planet’s blind side.
“See this - lots of different elevations,” said Burner. “Do you notice the narrow gaps between these contour lines?”
“Steep slopes,” Recker nodded. “Impact craters from a meteor storm?”
“Those would have a shallower incline.”
“Then what?”
Burner pursed his lips, like he wasn’t sure if it was the right time to disclose what he was thinking. “I’d expect to see craters covering more of the surface, while these ones are densely clustered. If you look a couple of thousand klicks east, there’s a huge area that’s almost flat. After that, there are signs of a bowl that might be five thousand klicks in diameter.”
War from a Distant Sun (Savage Stars Book 1) Page 12