“Sir, procedure dictates no loading for an SRL until an enemy is detected. The cores might burn out.”
“The Obsidiar cores don’t burn out as easily as the old.”
“Sir, but…”
“Do it, Lieutenant Rivera - we have three cores.” Blake fixed Rivera with a hard look. “Don’t question me again when we’re facing potential hostiles. I won’t tell you again.”
“Sir,” Rivera acknowledged, not trying to hide his own anger.
Blake didn’t care what Rivera thought about it. He was furious he’d been asked to repeat an order. If his lieutenant had asked for confirmation at almost any other time, it would have been fine. In their current situation it was absolutely unacceptable.
An SRL meant instructing a warship’s core do the preparations for a lightspeed jump in advance. Once the preparations were complete, the core would hold ready for the final command to go. The problem was, holding the processor in a state of readiness increased its utilisation, sometimes beyond its permitted maximum. The longer an SRL was held, the greater the chance of a core burnout. A ship without a core was effectively helpless – no weapons, no sensors and no lightspeed.
“Cores two and three are loaded, sir. Utilisation at eighty percent and ninety-five percent respectively.”
“Keep me informed.”
“Anything from the other vessels, Lieutenant Pointer?”
The sound of Pointer swearing made Blake turn.
“The comms have gone off, sir. I can’t speak to any of the other ships.”
Blake hesitated for a split second. Then, he remembered something about this in the mission briefing – the possibility the enemy could do something to interfere with the main comms.
“Switch to backups!” he ordered. “Let the others know something’s coming!”
Pointer looked lost, her face scanning the front of her console. Then, her confidence returned and she stabbed with her fingertips at one of the panels. “Secondary comms active.”
“Get us back onto the RFA network. Do it fast.”
“I can’t, sir. They’re still offline.”
Blake swore and clenched his fists. “We’re under attack! How the hell can we respond without comms?”
“The Undertow and Lingard are now on backups, sir. The New Beginning is still offline – that’s the ship we’re meant to be routing through.”
“Set us up as a hub. Invite the Undertow and Lingard to join.”
“There’s a decaying fission signature about two hundred thousand klicks to starboard, sir,” said Rivera. “Something just arrived.”
“What do you mean just arrived? You should have received warning.”
Rivera stared back. “I missed it, sir.”
Thoughts raced through Blake’s mind, the most prominent of which was how badly prepared both he and his crew were to face the enemy. During the Ghast war, the Space Corps had been filled with officers who’d experienced dozens of engagements. Now, they were all dead or retired.
“Get me a fix! Find me a target!”
“Fixed!” shouted Pointer. “The enemy ship is jumping about like crazy! It’s hard to keep the sensors locked onto it!”
The main bulkhead viewscreen showed a feed from the front sensor array. At first, there was nothing visible. Then, a spacecraft appeared, moving fast. It was like nothing the crew on the Determinant had seen before – it was a black, tapering cylinder covered in hundreds of long, round metal posts, which aimed forward and ended in points. There was no obvious sign of weapons clusters, though Blake had no doubt they’d be housed somewhere within the Vraxar warship’s hull. The alien ship was strange and somehow repellent to the eye.
As the Determinant’s crew watched, the enemy spaceship flickered, disappeared and reappeared a thousand kilometres away. Two seconds later, it did the same thing again.
“There are more of them,” said Rivera. “Three…wait…four. I think.”
“I’ve set a single ship as target. Fire Lambdas.”
“Lambda X’s refusing to lock,” said Brady. “The ES Sabre has been struck by an unknown weapon.”
“Damnit, we’re stuck in formation with the New Beginning,” said Blake. “Taking manual.” He grabbed the control bars in front of him and pulled, bringing the Determinant around in a steep curve towards the closest of the enemy craft. He felt hints of nausea and the muscles in his neck strained against the pull. The life support modules stabilised the interior and the feeling quickly passed.
To his left, the Determinant’s tactical display showed a number of red dots, which moved erratically. Occasionally one vanished and reappeared a few thousand kilometres away.
“Holy crap, the Sabre’s breaking up!” said Pointer.
“Particle beam strike on the Undertow,” said Brady. “Two more on the Hurricane.”
“Where’re those damned missiles?”
“Got a Shatterer lock. Forward tubes away.”
“Nothing from the New Beginning,” said Blake.
The Determinant was a fine warship, but it was still just a destroyer. It lacked particle beams, disruptors and most of the countermeasures found on larger Corps vessels. A destroyer was meant as a mobile missile battery, not as a backbreaker. The New Beginning, on the other hand, had overcharged particle beams, Splinter countermeasures, multiple Shatterer launchers and could fire a volley of eight hundred Lambda X missiles every fifteen seconds. It was also packing the latest stealth modules.
“The New Beginning has gone into stealth mode,” said Rivera. “Thanks a lot, guys,” he said bitterly.
Blake had no idea what Captain Kang was playing at. The Galactic should have remained on the tactical display of other fleet warships. With its comms offline, it simply vanished.
With the most powerful ship in the response fleet potentially out of the engagement, Blake got on with the job in hand. The fight was hardly underway and it already looked like a lost cause.
Chapter Ten
“What the hell are we going to do?” whispered Manoj Ramprakash hoarsely.
Lieutenant Maria Cruz leaned carefully around the side of the console cluster. There was a narrow gap, through which she could see the alien creature standing in the doorway. A full minute had passed and the intruder showed no sign of movement – it remained in the same place, its eyes staring ahead. Every few seconds, it blinked.
Just as Cruz started to withdraw her head to confer with the others, the creature moved. It took a series of steps, which carried it out of sight behind the eight-feet-tall central comms control panel. The footsteps continued, heavy and thumping across the floor tiles. Cruz leaned this way and that but was unable to bring the alien into view. She crawled back to the group.
“It looks like a Ghast fused with a mech suit,” she whispered.
“One of their shock troops?” asked Nelson.
“I have no idea what it is, but I don’t think it’s a Ghast. One thing I do know is that we’ve got to tell someone about it.”
Akachi had his diagnostics tablet in one hand. “Oh crap,” he muttered. “Look at this.”
He turned the display around so everyone could see. The tablet showed a series of gauges and utilisation bars for the central comms processing unit. There was a series of progressively larger spikes across the entire cluster.
“Something’s trying to hack in,” said Cruz.
“Maybe that thing has plugged into one of the interface ports over there and now it’s trying to brute-force its way through our encryption.”
“Is there any indication how long that’ll take from what you can see on the tablet?”
“How long is a piece of string?” Akachi responded. “There’s no way to tell what sort of kit it’s got – all I can tell you is that it’s going to bring the whole cluster group up to full utilisation in the next few minutes. Whatever it’s using, we can assume it’s designed for exactly this sort of task.”
“Where’s it getting its power from?” asked Reynolds.
; “I don’t know,” said Cruz. “If they can shut us down, it makes sense they have some control over the effect.”
“Once it’s unlocked those encryption routines, it’ll be free to access whatever it wants,” said Nelson. “From what we can guess, these things have knocked out a major Space Corps base without finding much to trouble them. Just think what will happen once they have the location of the remaining twenty-five planets.”
“Yeah – we don’t even know if anyone’s aware of what’s happened here,” said Keller.
Reynolds snorted quietly. “If you think the Space Corps failed to notice the loss of an entire base, you’re even stupider than you look.”
“Pack it in!” Cruz warned, struggling to keep her voice low enough that it wouldn’t be overhead by the alien.
Reynolds shot her a look but didn’t say anything. Even he wasn’t stupid enough to start an argument with a superior officer when there was an alien intruder in the main comms room.
“Larry – is there any way we can pull out the processing units if we get to that room you told me about?” asked Cruz.
“To render the hub data inaccessible?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“The processing room needs a high level of authorisation to enter. If we can get inside, then sure – we can pull out the units.”
“You don’t have that sort of authorisation, Lieutenant,” said Nelson. “We’re talking Colonel Tenney type of authorisation and maybe a few others.”
“That door over there is open,” said Cruz. “Maybe there are others open as well. They could have already hacked into the base mainframe to let themselves get everywhere without having to blow every door.” She met their eyes one by one. “I need to act and I need to do it soon.”
“Think we can get out of here without being seen?” asked Keller.
“Can’t we overpower whatever it is hacking our kit?” asked Ramprakash. “There are six of us.”
“I don’t know if it’s armed,” said Cruz. “It’s seven feet tall and it looked pretty strong. We don’t know if any more are coming.”
“Don’t get me wrong – I’m not desperate to start a fist fight with it,” Ramprakash replied.
“We’re going to get out of here. I’ll go look for the processor room, you others should try and get off base. Find somewhere safe and keep your heads down. The bad news is, I need someone to show me where the processor clusters are.”
“I might be able to show you, Lieutenant,” said Keller.
“I’ll come along as well,” said Reynolds. “That’s what they’re paying me for, right?”
Cruz did her best to keep her surprise hidden. Reynolds was one of the least committed officers she’d ever encountered and she expected him to split and run at the first opportunity.
With the whispered conference over, it was time to move.
“Come on,” Cruz said. “Keep low.”
Whatever the intruder was doing, it made no sound. Cruz kept her head below the top of the consoles and made her way along, sticking close to the wall. She caught a glimpse of the enemy as she darted across a wide gap between the maintenance console and the monitoring section. The alien creature had its arm extended and was touching the main supervisor console for the hub. It didn’t look across, nor give any sign it had seen her. From this angle, she could see extra plating across its upper and lower back.
When she was only a few metres from the exit, Cruz stopped to let the others catch up. A green light nearby caught her eye and she realised the weapons cabinet door was unlocked. Must have happened when the main door got power again.
She pulled the locker open quietly and saw the three gauss pistols within. They had a handle, a short barrel and a small bore. Unlike a standard-issue gauss rifle, the pistols couldn’t fire their projectiles over a distance of several kilometres, neither could they punch clean through several bodies at once if these bodies happened to be lined up conveniently. That didn’t make the pistols useless – they were simply lightweight, backup weapons.
Cruz pulled one free and tucked it into her belt. Reynolds didn’t wait for permission and helped himself to the second. The other four stared at the remaining pistol, as though it were a poisonous snake getting ready to strike.
“Ramps, you take it.”
Cruz didn’t spend any time waiting to see his reaction. She made her way towards the door, this time on all fours. She reached a point where the open door was to her left, whilst at the same time she had a clear sight of the alien.
Confronted by such an apparently straightforward choice, she drew the gauss pistol out. It was warm in her hand and smooth to touch. She aimed carefully. Her forefinger rested upon the firing button. She pressed the button and kept it held down.
The pistol whined as it launched three of its dense metal projectiles rapidly from the barrel. All three struck the alien where Cruz had intended – straight in the gaps between its back armour. It wheeled around with terrifying speed and something cracked in its hand.
Cruz fired again – the pistol limited to bursts of three. The enemy went down, slumping to the floor with a thud that spoke of its great weight. Cruz fired another two bursts into its body for good measure.
“I didn’t give you permission to touch my console,” she said.
She turned and found the others staring at a dead body. It was Ramprakash with half of his head blown off. There was a bloody smear across the floor and wall. Cruz shut her eyes. When she opened them again, nothing had changed.
Training took over. “We need to move,” she said. “Someone take his gun. There’ll be others coming.”
“Lieutenant, there’s still something chewing on the cores,” said Akachi. His hand shook violently as he showed her his diagnostic tablet.
“Is there another place they could interface with the hub?”
“The Central Command Building - that’s where Colonel Tenney and his staff work.”
Cruz breathed in deeply and blew out. “Shit.”
Tentatively, she walked towards the slumped form of the alien creature. Blood oozed from wounds on its body, merging with a clear fluid leaking from ruptures in its jointed armour. It had a gun of some sort, still clutched in one hand. The worst part of it was the smell – a sickly sweet odour came from the body, like badly-preserved meat. She fought down the urge to retch. She didn’t back off immediately and had a look at the console. There was no sign of a physical connection between the creature and the hardware.
“Doesn’t look like it was trying to interface with our kit after all,” she said to the others. “Maybe this one got lost and wandered in here at random.”
“And they’ve plugged in remotely at the CCB instead?” asked Keller. “If they haven’t sent many ground troops into the comms hub, we should have a better chance of getting to the processing cores.”
It sounded logical and Cruz nodded, trying not to look too hopeful. There was no point in staying around any longer. “Come on, we’re going,” she said.
Cruz led the way, taking the others into the corridor outside. It was cold in here – the cold of unheated night time air drifting through the underground complex.
“Maybe we should stick together,” said Nelson, shivering.
The death of Manoj Ramprakash hadn’t been part of the plan. Cruz realised she wasn’t ready for the responsibility of looking after herself, let alone three civilians. Nevertheless, her sense of duty was strong and she could do little to resist it. She nodded at the others.
“We stay together for now.”
They set off, deeper into the hub.
Sergeant Eric McKinney brought the men of Squad A to an abrupt halt as soon as it became apparent he didn’t know where the hell he was going. The HUD on his visor showed a perfectly accurate 3D reproduction of the bunker’s interior, but it was hard to interpret on the run, especially when McKinney lacked any prior knowledge of the layout.
“What’s the quickest way to the surface? I need someone on point.”
“If you want to get to the surface, there’s the secondary entrance away to our east,” said Stein. The soldier talked with reassuring confidence.
“The secondary entrance is close to the main research facility, isn’t it?” asked McKinney.
“Yes, sir. Not too far.”
“When we came through the maintenance entrance, that part of the base was in flames. There could well be a strong enemy presence in that area.”
“We could head back for the maintenance shaft if you want, sir.”
“What other options are there?”
“There’s the primary entrance. That’s close to the central admin section and hard to miss – if I was an invading alien bastard I’d be all over that door like a rash. Assuming I wanted to come down here, that is.”
“What other ways do we have to get in and out?”
“There’s an entrance at the top end of Section D. That’ll take us out right near the main comms hub. It’s in the middle of the base, though, so we probably don’t want to try that one.”
“The comms hub?” McKinney asked with interest.
“Yes, sir. As I said, it’s right in the middle of everything.”
“We don’t know who is left alive on the base, soldier. The Space Corps’ high command may be grateful to have a squad in position to send and receive off-world communications.”
“The power is down, sir,” said Elder.
“We don’t know exactly what is affected by the outage. We’re going to the hub. If it’s already secure, then we can use it to communicate much further afield than with this portable beacon.”
“What if the hub is in enemy hands?” asked Garcia.
“I’ll think about that when we get there. Stein, take us to the Section D entrance.”
There was little relish in Stein’s voice when he acknowledged the order and his reflective visor hid his expression. The man raised one arm and used the barrel of his repeater to point.
Negation Force (Obsidiar Fleet Book 1) Page 8