Guns of the Valpian (Survival Wars Book 6)

by Anthony James

  “That’s mostly true,” said Duggan. “However, in order to do so, I need to jump through a variety of hoops, some of which are time consuming and all of which are designed to prevent imposters getting into highly sensitive military databases.”

  “On the Valpian, we can access most things we need in order to operate the ship, but anything else requires a code?” she asked.

  “In a nutshell, yes. The code might be a biological one implanted in the bodies of the crew and used automatically to approve certain functions or it might be a combination of skin patterns and iris recognition. It’s likely to be several different things, none of which involve the manual typing in of a ten-thousand-digit number.”

  “Can’t we cut off the old captain’s hand and press it against an activation plate somewhere in order to get access to what we need?” asked McLeod.

  “You’ve been watching too many movies, soldier.”

  “A good idea is a good idea no matter where it came from, sir.”

  “In this case, we need something different,” said Duggan, not entirely sure if McLeod truly believed the idea was a sound one. “Sergeant Red-Gulos, can you see any commonality between the methods employed by your navy and that of the Dreamers? I need anything that might help us.”

  “I am foremost a soldier, sir. I have some knowledge of our warships, but I have not commanded one. I have not seen a way in which I can help.”

  “Your time will come, don’t worry,” said Duggan.

  He found his hand reaching out towards the control panel which gave access to the warship’s encrypted data repositories. He withdrew the hand – his previous attempts to access the system had failed and he certainly wasn’t going to succeed by guessing. It was possible to hack into a warship’s backend though it wasn’t feasible to do it without having a number of high-end AI cores working in tandem. In truth, he had no idea how the Dreamers guarded their military secrets and accepted there was no current way to gain entry by brute force.

  “If at first you don’t succeed, cheat,” Byers announced.

  “We need the battleship to leave before we can do anything,” said Duggan. The Valpian was at a standstill, four hours away from the surface of Nistrun. It was mostly luck which had allowed them to spot the enemy warship from this distance and Duggan was confident the Valpian would remain undetected.

  “They’re doing thirty-minute laps,” said McLeod. “I don’t think they’re in a hurry.”

  “We’re in no rush, are we?” asked Byers.

  “I don’t want to hang around here for days,” said Duggan. “If the battleship’s crew is halfway competent, they’ll perform a constant area scan. They’ll find us eventually. Plus, I don’t want the Crimson to remain in the hands of the enemy for a moment longer than necessary.”

  “It’s got our secret data and our stealth modules on it.”

  The Crimson carried much that was precious to Duggan, though he wasn’t going to spell it out. He was petrified something would happen to McGlashan and the others of his crew. The anguish beat against his resolve and insisted he act immediately instead of waiting for the best time. She could be dead by now.

  “They’re leaving!” said McLeod.

  “Show me,” said Duggan, springing across in a burst of movement.

  “There – it’s flying away from the surface at angle that will take it…nowhere?”

  “It’s preparing for lightspeed. Byers, please confirm.”

  “Uh, sorry sir, I was watching McLeod’s screen. Yes, there’s a fission signature.”

  “You can’t let yourself get distracted, soldier. A warship’s crew live or die by the speed of their reactions.”

  “Sorry,” she repeated.

  The battleship disappeared, leaving behind an invisible sphere of rapidly-fading energy.

  “That’s a fast one,” said Duggan. “It took hardly any time between warmup and lightspeed. They must be sending their newer ships to the area around the wormhole since we destroyed their fleet.”

  “The Valpian is a new ship as well, isn’t it?” asked McLeod.

  “A cruiser is no match for a battleship,” Duggan replied, returning to his seat. “We’re not waiting any longer – I’m going to prepare a short lightspeed hop in towards Nistrun. It’ll take too long on the gravity drives and there’s nothing other than the monitoring station left to detect us.”

  “Will they report our presence to their superiors?”

  “Maybe. Probably. It doesn’t make much difference. If we can’t fool them, we’ll know about it soon enough. We’ll fly elsewhere and consider our next move.”

  The plan was a simple one and straight out of the beginner’s handbook. Duggan was going to take the Valpian into comms range of the monitoring station. Then, Red-Gulos was going to try and convince the personnel on the base to divulge the location of the Crimson. The plan relied on two main assumptions – firstly, Duggan hoped the chaos from the earlier raid had left the place in disarray and perhaps killed a few of their senior officers. This would leave them vulnerable to bullying.

  Secondly, there was a chance the monitoring station’s personnel were not privy to top-level secrets such as the theft of a major warship. It was the kind of thing the brass tended to keep to themselves, owing to the limitless scope for embarrassment, sackings and, possibly, executions.

  He looked at Red-Gulos, noticing for the first time the lines at the corner of the Ghast’s eyes.

  “Do you know what you’re going to say?” Duggan asked.

  The Ghast met his gaze. “I am confident in my dealings with anyone. However, it is not always possible to defeat someone in verbal combat.”

  “Of course. We’re at war and we can’t expect to win every battle.” He smiled. “This is a big one.”

  The Valpian jumped in towards the planet. Duggan was a little bit rough-edged in his control over the engines and was still getting to grips with the coordinate system and distance counters the Dreamers used. Consequently, he brought them in somewhat closer than intended, at an altitude of seven thousand kilometres and directly above the installation.

  “If they didn’t know we were here before, they definitely do now,” said Byers.

  Duggan waved her to silence. He nodded at Red-Gulos. “Ready?”

  The Ghast nodded in return. A row of symbols appeared on his comms screen. “They have initiated contact.”

  “They will be surprised to see us.”

  Red-Gulos stretched out a hand and accepted the inbound comms request.

  The conversation went on for some time, during which Duggan kept the Valpian moving in a slow circle at a height of five thousand kilometres. His knuckles ached from clutching the control sticks too hard and he had to force himself to loosen his grip. The bridge suddenly felt colder than ever, though it didn’t stop a sheen of sweat developing across his forehead.

  He tried to listen in to gauge how Red-Gulos’ attempts at persuasion were going. Unfortunately, much of the talk was in idioms and this foiled the language module’s clumsy attempts at interpretation. One thing was clear – the Ghast was becoming increasingly competent at communicating in the Dreamer’s version of the language. Duggan idly wondered if Red-Gulos had a side-line as a scholar of ancient scripts or if he was just a natural. Subjos Gol-Tur had promised the best and he hadn’t exaggerated.

  After a stressful ten minutes, Red-Gulos stopped talking. His comms screen went blank and he flexed his shoulders. His expression was inscrutable.

  “Well?” Duggan demanded.

  “I am not sure what to say,” said the Ghast. “I have fooled them into providing us with something, but not what we need.”

  “Stop talking in riddles,” said Duggan, already losing patience.

  “I apologise – that was not my intent. I will explain what I have discovered. The commander of the monitoring station below was killed during our recent assault, leaving a more junior officer in charge. He has heard a series of rumours that the Valpian was somehow out of
commission and he was especially curious to learn why we are in a low-altitude circuit over his station.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Duggan, motioning for him to proceed.

  “I assured him there is no problem with the Valpian and I told him we continue to look for a crashed enemy warship, sighted close to Nistrun. It seems that we missed the departure of what he described as a Class 1 Neutraliser by a matter of an hour or two.”

  “What the hell is a Class 1 Neutraliser?” asked Duggan.

  “It doesn’t sound like something we want to meet,” said Byers quietly.

  “Whatever it is, it picked up our warship and carried it elsewhere,” said Red-Gulos.

  “Where has it taken the Crimson?” asked Duggan, with a feeling he wasn’t going to like the answer. He was correct.

  “The information is one grading above the status of the monitoring station,” said the Ghast. “I am not sure how the Dreamers tier the flow of their military information, but those on the base are not party to that which we require to know.”

  Duggan bit on his tongue to prevent a stream of expletives coming forth. “This the end of the road.”

  “Perhaps not, though you will not like to hear the alternative.”

  “Go on.”

  “The battleship we observed arrived as an escort for the Neutraliser vessel. The comms man on the battleship Zansturm was free with his tongue and he made it known his warship is taking up a position close to the wormhole, in preparation for an eventual journey through.”

  “This comms man told the base where the Crimson is?” asked Duggan with sudden hope.

  Red-Gulos laughed without a trace of mockery and shook his head. “Not at all. He told the base that he knows this information, yet without providing the location.”

  “Then there’s nothing left,” said Duggan.

  “The way to proceed is clear!”

  Duggan opened his mouth to insist the Ghast speak plainly. Then, it dawned on him exactly what Red-Gulos was suggesting. “You obtained the coordinates of the Zansturm’s destination?”

  “I did.”

  “We need to speak to them and find out where the Crimson’s gone.”

  “Won’t they shoot us down, sir?” asked McLeod.

  “Maybe. Probably,” he replied. “I’ve got a couple of ideas how we can get around that.”

  “There’s more,” said Red-Gulos, saving the best for last. “The Zansturm is joining with four other warships in the area. We’ll have five enemy vessels to contend with.”

  For some reason the news didn’t add anything extra to Duggan’s burdens. “If we can deal with one, we can deal with five,” he said. “The battleship is more than we can handle, so if it comes to shooting we’ve already lost.”

  The two human soldiers exchanged glances.

  “Any objections?” Duggan asked.

  “Without the Crimson, we’re dead anyway,” said Byers. “I always said I’d prefer a quick death over a slow, drawn-out one.”

  “I have a promise to keep,” Duggan said. “And there’s no room for further death.”

  “I have learned how to activate the internal comms,” said Red-Gulos. “Would you like me to advise the others?”

  “Yes. I’ll speak directly to anyone who wishes to express their concerns.”

  “There will be no one.”

  “I know,” Duggan replied.

  Red-Gulos fed through the coordinates for their next destination. Duggan accepted them and instructed the Valpian’s cores to prepare the engines. The cruiser entered lightspeed on the short journey towards the wormhole. It didn’t take long and soon the vessel emerged into local space. Immediately, a series of emergency warnings appeared across four of the screens in front of him.

  “We’ve come in close to an unknown warship, sir,” said Byers.

  “I can tell,” said Duggan. “It’s locked on and is preparing to fire.”

  He didn’t know how long they had left before the Dreamer warship launched its missiles – it was unlikely to be very long.

  A couple of metres away to the right, Red-Gulos reached for his comms panel and attempted to open a channel to the other ship. They had only this one chance and they couldn’t afford to squander it.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  SECONDS TICKED BY.

  “No sign of a launch yet,” said Duggan. “They still have us targeted.” He noticed that one of the gauges on his console had climbed several million percent from its initial low value. “Our energy shield is up.”

  To his astonishment, there was no appreciable drain on any other part of the Valpian’s power output. He was sure Lieutenant Breeze would venture a few theories on the matter if he ever got the chance.

  “I’ve got a comms channel through to the other warship,” said Red-Gulos at last. The tone of his voice through the language module was unchanged, adding to the impression that Ghasts were immune to the effects of stress.

  “Is it the Zansturm?”

  “Negative. This is the cruiser Soriol.”

  “Find me the other warships, quickly,” said Duggan to Byers and McLeod. His words were wasted, since they already had their heads down in concentration.

  Red-Gulos talked, his harsh, alien voice uttering a steady flow of words without apparent concern.

  “We came in almost on top of the Soriol, sir,” said Byers. “It’s thirty thousand klicks to starboard.”

  “Where are the other four?”

  “I’ve located one,” said McLeod. “It’s half a million klicks in front of us. It was heading away, now it’s coming about and heading towards us. It’s a smaller ship – fifteen hundred metres. What’s that make it? A light cruiser?”

  “That’s as good a term as any,” said Duggan.

  He tapped into three of the Valpian’s sensor feeds. The outline of the Soriol was sharply-etched on one. It was smaller than the Valpian and to Duggan’s experienced eye, it looked much the older ship. They’re probably scared of us, he thought.

  In the background was the Helius Blackstar, many millions of kilometres away. The Valpian’s sensors automatically outlined the area in a pastel shade of blue. Other than that, there was little of interest – just an empty area of space with nowhere to hide and nothing which could be used for advantage. Duggan felt as if he were standing outside the door to freedom, without having the ability to turn the handle and escape. Even if he knew how to get through, there was unfinished business to deal with first.

  “They’re not happy,” said Red-Gulos.

  “No kidding. What’s their main problem?”

  “I don’t think they know, sir. The Valpian has been flagged as missing and they want to know why we’re here.”

  Duggan could have laughed. To use missing as an excuse for a captured warship reeked of panic amongst those in charge. It bore all the hallmarks of trying to cover up a vast, incomprehensible failing. The people behind it would be desperate to buy sufficient time to get their alibis coordinated. Even now, there’d be some poor, unfortunate Dreamer being lined up to take the blame.

  “The crew of the Soriol don’t want to fight us,” Duggan said. “I’m certain we’ve got the superior warship and I’m equally certain they’d far rather there was an innocent explanation that will save them from having to open fire.”

  Red-Gulos grinned – it was a disconcerting sight. “Very well, I will provide them with an innocent explanation.”

  “If we can get the captain of this warship to believe us, there’s an excellent chance we can convince the others.”

  “I think I’ve got the Zansturm, sir,” said McLeod. “That’s a long way off – over a million klicks.”

  “What’s it doing?”

  “Coming our way at two thousand three hundred klicks per second.”

  “There are two more out there,” said Duggan. “They’ll want to come for a look as well once they learn we’ve arrived.”

  “There’s bad news,” said Red-Gulos. “They intend to speak with their super
iors.”

  “That’s not what I wanted to hear. Even if their high command is trying cover things up, they’ll ask the warships here to detain us.”

  He racked his brains to think of a way out. In Confederation Space, a warship’s comms signal could travel from source to destination in a matter of seconds. He knew the Dreamers populated a far greater volume of space and he was reasonably sure their comms technology was little better than the Space Corps’. The aliens were likely to have numerous command and control stations. Even so, it might well be that a signal could take a number of minutes until it reached an officer capable of providing guidance on something of this magnitude.

  “Tell them to speak to the monitoring station on Nistrun,” he said in a flash of inspiration. “They can verify that our missing status no longer applies.”

  “The monitoring station only knows because we convinced them,” said Red-Gulos.

  “Your species is vulnerable to the machinations of those who can deliver outright lies,” said Duggan.

  “I am quickly learning how to speak them fluently,” said Red-Gulos.

  “Then take this as an opportunity to get more practise!” ordered Duggan. “Make the crew of the Soriol contact the monitoring station for corroboration of our mistruths.”

  It didn’t take long for Red-Gulos to pass on the message. “I have advised them as such.” He scratched his head in puzzlement. “So, we lied to the monitoring station and because they believed our words, they are able to pass them off as truth, even though the foundations of the facts do not exist. It is making my head spin.”

  “It probably won’t work,” said Duggan. “It wouldn’t fool a human – any human – for more than a couple of seconds.”

  To Duggan’s absolute amazement, the crew on the Soriol bought it. Or so it initially seemed.

  “They’ve de-targeted us,” he said with an unwillingness to believe.

  “Their comms man has told me as much,” said Red-Gulos. “They are standing down from full alert.”

  “The closest of their other warships – the light cruiser - is breaking off, sir,” said McLeod. “It’s back on its original course. No, wait! They can’t make up their minds and they’re turning again.”