Recker nodded. “Sergeant,” he said, indicating Vance should go next.
Vance didn’t hesitate and he climbed through the hatch towards the cold-lit interior of the deployment vessel. As soon as the top rungs were clear, Recker followed, grabbing the first rung and dropping nimbly into the shaft, where he descended until he was clear of the opening.
The security panel glowed dimly on the solid alloy wall of the shaft to his left and Recker entered the command to seal the hatch. With hardly a sound, it slid across his vision, blocking out the crimson from the bay and with it, the harsh sounds of distress from the Punisher’s hull.
With practiced ease, Recker climbed, his feet making little noise despite his haste. At the bottom, he stepped off the lowest rung into the incision vehicle’s interior. The bay was long and narrow, with curved walls, a flat ceiling and floor. It thrummed with the readiness of the underfloor propulsion and the chill, clean air seemed artificially pure. The eight rows of two seats were partially occupied and the narrow aisle between them led straight for the open cockpit door. Sergeant Vance was halfway along the aisle, squeezing his way through the clutter of guns and packs.
“Why are we still here?” shouted Recker into the comms.
“I’ll give the order to break the clamps, sir,” said Vance.
Recker had a thought. “Hold that order, Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And grab yourself a seat - my crew will take the controls.”
If the Punisher’s main crew hadn’t been onboard, Vance would have normally been the one flying. When he heard Recker’s command, the soldier stopped his advance on the cockpit and dropped into one of the seats near the doorway.
“Commander Aston, Lieutenant Eastwood, you’re up here with me,” said Recker.
He entered the cockpit. The space was not generous and even more dimly lit than the passenger bay. Three bucket seats with harnesses were fixed in front of a basic, but robust control panel. The ceiling sloped towards the nose, while front and side view screens gave the impression of sitting in a gravity car.
One of the soldiers – Private Nelle Montero – was in the third seat and she’d brought everything online, including the screens. The view outside wasn’t much to admire, being no more than the unmarked walls of the deployment spaceship’s docking bay. Montero turned at Recker’s arrival and her dark eyes met his.
“You’re relieved, soldier. Find yourself a place out back.”
She nodded and climbed from her seat. From her expression, Montero was finding it hard to stay on top of the fear.
“Worried, Private?”
“Hell no, sir.”
“Good. This is going to be a piece of cake.”
“Whatever you say, sir.”
Recker dropped into the centre bucket seat, which was hard but comfortable. Time was running out and he ignored the harness for the moment. Aston and Eastwood took the other two seats and looked at him for guidance.
“Why the hold up, sir?” said Aston.
“We’re ten million klicks from Oldis, Commander. That’s twenty-seven hours travel time at this vessel’s maximum velocity. There’s a Daklan annihilator out there.”
“So we’re still going for the planet?” asked Eastwood in surprise.
“There’s no change in the plan, Lieutenant. The Punisher’s forward engine module is at thirty percent – I’m going to use it to give us a speed boost.”
He calculated the potential maximum speed of the Punisher with only one-sixth of its propulsion available. It worked out at 180 kilometres per second – much greater than that of the deployment ship, but not enough if the annihilator came looking.
Recker interfaced with the Punisher using his command codes and discovered that the lone sensor array had completed its positional calculations. Using that information, he commanded the Punisher to accelerate on a course directly for Oldis. He held one finger close to the launch button for the deployment vehicle and gritted his teeth at the distant sounds of distress he heard from the parent vessel.
“Still too slow. Lieutenant Eastwood, I want the Punisher’s forward module placed into an overstressed condition.”
“I…” Eastwood thought better about protesting. “Yes, sir.”
“I’ve entered my command codes – you should have authority to do it from here.”
Eastwood entered a series of instructions into the right-hand panel of the console. He waited for an acknowledgement from the failing mainframe and then entered several more.
“Done?” asked Recker impatiently.
“No, sir. There isn’t a menu option for this,” Eastwood replied, tapping a long string of digits into one screen and comparing them to a readout on another.
A loud thud from outside made the deployment craft shudder and Recker accessed the Punisher’s top-level damage report. Everything was either at a red status or no longer receiving input from the monitoring hardware.
“We don’t have long, Lieutenant.”
“I know, sir. I can’t work any faster than this.”
“Try.”
As the seconds went by, Recker expected to see the holding bay walls split apart, dropping the incision vehicle into space. He was taking a gamble – he knew it – but experience told him the Punisher was only going to break apart rather than explode. If its magazines hadn’t gone up in the initial enemy missile impact, they weren’t going to do it now. The panel before him showed the Punisher’s velocity climb past 150 klicks per second.
Eastwood rolled his shoulders, blew out noisily and clapped his hands together, the sound muffled by the padding of his spacesuit gauntlets. “Done. Engine output climbing.”
“Nice work, Lieutenant.”
The Punisher’s velocity gauge sped to 250 klicks per second and went on going. Even within the armoured shell of the deployment craft, the howling of the distressed forward module was clearly audible, and it got louder as the maximum output climbed.
“Three hundred percent,” said Eastwood. “Let’s see if it keeps going.”
“The rate is slowing,” said Recker. “320%”
After that, the module’s output didn’t go any higher, though the Punisher continued accelerating strongly. Recker knew how high the velocity was likely to go and he watched the gauge closely.
“Four hundred klicks per second,” he said. “Four-thirty.”
A sudden shift in the view on the cockpit screens made Recker turn his head, where he saw that a ragged left-to-right tear had appeared in the wall of the holding bay. It widened slowly at first and then expanded so rapidly that the sides of the opening were lost from sight.
“It’s happening,” said Aston.
“Four-fifty klicks per second on the gauge.”
The Punisher had given everything – far more than Recker could have expected from the warship. He knew it might have yet more to offer – it might hold together until it was travelling beyond five hundred klicks per second.
The time for gambling was over and Recker hit the release button. He heard the thumping of the holding clamps and the status screen indicated a successful release on eighteen out of twenty. The other two flashed red and Recker hit the emergency release which caused tiny explosive charges to blow out the failed clamps. Those two flashed alternating green and red, and the deployment vehicle was thrown automatically down its launch runners and out into space.
Chapter Sixteen
The initial boost which hurled the deployment vehicle away from the Punisher set it on a diverging course. Aston adjusted the sensors and the much bigger warship appeared as a dark shape overhead, which dwindled steadily.
Further adjustments enhanced the feed and Recker stared in shock at the extent of the damage. The stern was effectively gone, leaving plates of armour hanging loosely around the vast crater formed by the explosion of the lightspeed missile. Elsewhere, much of the alloy hull was mottled and lumpy from the aftereffects of the plasma, leaving only the nose section undamaged.
“That missile really did a number on us,” said Eastwood.
“I know, Lieutenant.” Recker didn’t want to dwell on it.
The Punisher was gone and there was nothing they could do to change the fact. Despite that, Recker’s eyes didn’t want to look away and he studied the wreck for signs it was breaking apart. Larger pieces of debris fell away and then a vast tear appeared along the starboard flank. Recker stopped watching.
“We’ve inherited a velocity of 450 klicks per second,” said Aston. She changed the sensor focus again and this time aimed the vessel’s forward array at the planet Oldis. “If we coast, it’ll take six hours to reach the place we’re going.”
“Wherever that is,” said Eastwood.
The spaceship’s sensors weren’t designed to provide clarity at ten million klicks – more like a couple of hundred thousand at best. Consequently, the feed of Oldis resembled a grimy, grey disc. Luckily, Commander Aston was on the ball.
“I downloaded the latest feed data from the Punisher,” she said. “The stuff that Lieutenant Burner caught before the missile hit us.”
The sensor data the Punisher gathered at forty million kilometres was much clearer than that gathered by the incision vehicle at ten million. That didn’t mean a lot and Recker still didn’t have an idea what they were heading into.
“Lieutenant Burner, I need you in the cockpit,” he called.
Burner showed up a few seconds later. “What can I do, sir?” he asked, leaning forward to check what the console was showing.
“The annihilator is out there still and we’re six hours from Oldis.”
“Are you expecting it to be safe once we reach the planet, sir?”
“I’m not expecting anything, Lieutenant. When the annihilator arrived, it was three million klicks away and then it headed along Resa’s orbital track.”
“Yes, sir.” Burner’s forehead wrinkled as he tried to guess where Recker was leading. “You want to know if they could have seen the cluster of indentations on the surface of Oldis from their arrival position.”
“That’s exactly what I would like to know. And also if they’d have spotted our exit from lightspeed.”
Burner’s forehead wrinkled some more, and he bared his teeth. “The second question’s easiest. They probably didn’t see our ternium wave when we re-entered local space.”
“What about the surface craters? Would they have detected them?”
“If they were looking directly at the place, they would have had a worse view than we did, owing to the more oblique angle. However, their sensors are better than ours so that might not work too much in our favour. We can also assume they were mostly focused on Resa because that’s where they were going.” Burner lifted a hand to run it through his hair and remembered he was wearing a helmet. “On balance, I’d say we’ve got some time before the annihilator comes to Oldis, sir.”
“Six hours?”
“Probably significantly more. It depends on how they approach the scan of Resa. A Daklan battleship is unlikely to tiptoe around like we did. Their crew might scan one side of the planet, lightspeed jump to the exact opposite side, scan and then decide they like the look of Oldis instead. I can’t predict how they’ll act.”
“Thank you for your insight, Lieutenant, you’ve given me something to go on.”
The cockpit didn’t have much room, but Burner hung around anyway and crouched next to Commander Aston so that he could watch the sensors. It wasn’t like he had somewhere else to go.
“From our approach angle we aren’t going to get a sight of what caused the Punisher’s sensors to flag up the presence of metal,” said Aston.
Recker checked their vector again – if the Daklan had an installation on Oldis, he didn’t want to come down straight on top of it. The incision class were designed to drop through a planet’s atmosphere out of the target’s sight and then come in at a low altitude to minimize the chance of early detection.
“That’s intentional, Commander. By the time we’re close enough for surface scanners to detect us, the planet’s rotation will have carried the target site around to the blindside. We’ll go low to the surface and see what we can see.”
“We don’t have to do this, sir,” said Aston. “The military will send someone out here to look for us eventually and this spaceship’s replicator is carrying enough raw food paste to keep everyone onboard alive for a couple of years.”
“There’s nobody coming here any time soon, Commander. Not until high command gets its game together.”
“What about the 34% chance, sir?” said Eastwood. “You said this was the most significant lead we had.”
“It is. That doesn’t mean a whole fleet is going to drop by for a look. We sent an FTL comm telling high command about the annihilator – they’ll assume it took us out and that’s why we’ve gone missing. We can’t send them an update because this deployment vessel isn’t equipped with an FTL transmitter.” Recker took a deep breath. “After the HPA’s recent losses, I don’t know if there’s anyone brave enough to chance another big defeat. For all Admiral Telar knows, the Daklan might have substantially reinforced since we sent the comm.”
“Or we only detected one ship out of many,” said Aston.
“That’s right, Commander.”
“I thought you said Admiral Telar was one of the brave ones, sir,” said Eastwood.
“He is, or at least that’s what I think. The trouble is, he’s not the one making the final strategic decisions.”
“The way you’re talking, it’s like you believe our guys will never show,” said Burner.
“I’m trying hard to convince myself they’ll come. Whatever happens, it won’t be soon.”
“And you’ve decided that whatever’s on Oldis, it’s not Daklan in origin,” said Aston.
“That’s what I said on the Punisher and that’s what I believe now,” Recker nodded.
“I count fourteen of us in total,” said Eastwood. “And we’re on a spaceship designed to knock out lightly-armoured surface vehicles and not much else. How are we going to beat that annihilator when it comes?”
“Nobody’s talking about shooting it down, Lieutenant. We’ve got a head start on our enemy in finding out what’s on Oldis and we’re going to make use of it.”
Aston narrowed her eyes in Recker’s direction. “You’re planning to do more than just look.”
“Maybe. Don’t think I’m intending to throw our lives away. I’m going to take this as it comes – at worst, we’ve got a chance to gather intel so that when we get back to base, we’ve got something useful to report.”
“When we get back to base,” said Eastwood, his face cracking a smile.
“You heard me right, Lieutenant.”
“So. Another of those cylinders,” said Aston.
“That’s what it could be.”
“The one on Etrol didn’t shoot at us,” said Burner. “It could be we’re able to fly closer than we expect.”
“Like I said – we’ll take that as it comes.”
The conversation died off and Recker concentrated once more on his console. The deployment vessel was running on autopilot, though he itched to grab hold of the twin control sticks which came up through the floor. It was a long way to Oldis and the trajectory didn’t require any immediate manual input.
“Commander Aston, you’re in charge,” he said.
“Sightseeing tour?”
“Something like that.”
Recker went to see how the soldiers were faring. They’d adapted quickly to the new circumstances and most of them were killing time by trading insults. Sergeant Vance wasn’t taking part and Recker sat on the empty seat across the aisle to fill his officer in on the many details he was lacking.
When Recker was finished, Vance nodded slowly in thought. “Assuming you’re right and there’s an alien cylinder down there, you want to have a look inside.”
“The time for hiding under the bed passed us by a long while ago, Sergeant.”
“I’m glad someone’s waking up to the fact,” Vance growled angrily. “I could have told anyone the same thing five years ago. That’s when I reckon the tipping point came.”
“What makes you say that?”
Vance shifted uncomfortably. “Nothing scientific, sir. Five years ago, we’d throw a punch and they’d throw one back. We’d show up at a place and beat the shit out of the Daklan we’d find there. Meantime, someplace else, they’d show up and beat the shit out of us. Ever since the tipping point, me and my soldiers, we’ve seen what’s coming. It feels like we survive every deployment by the skin of our teeth. Then, we arrive home and find out that some other guys we knew didn’t make it. Hell, I can’t remember the last time we got to celebrate a real big victory.”
It was unusual to hear Vance speak so much and Recker paid close attention. Most people had an idea that the war was going the wrong way, but Vance had looked further ahead. He knew.
Recker knew it as well. When he commanded his first ship, the Daklan fleet wasn’t anything to run from. Their warships were better at some things and worse at others. Now, just dreaming about an annihilator was enough to make half the military’s commanding officers shit their white cotton sheets.
“I’d like to tell you something’s going to change, Sergeant.”
“It’s times like this that it happens, sir. You could have pointed this spaceship the other way and told us that rescue was coming. Instead, we’re flying into whatever lies ahead.”
“I’m not going to let the Daklan win easily,” said Recker. “Not while I’ve got the strength to stop them.”
Vance didn’t speak for a moment, like he was deciding whether to divulge something important. In the end, he kept his mouth shut and Recker rose from his seat. He looked towards the rear of the bay, which ten soldiers and their kit almost filled. The background drone of the engine combined with the subdued lighting and the confines of the space made Recker imagine he was in a spaceship from hundreds of years ago.
He smiled inwardly. Modern space flight was safe and reliable, except when you brought the Daklan into the equation. With those bastards flying around the universe, it was more hazardous than ever.
War from a Distant Sun (Savage Stars Book 1) Page 14