“Never mind!” she yelled, and turned to Roberto. “How long between the two pigeons?”
“Ah, few minutes, why?” said Roberto.
“Exactly how long?” snapped Celia.
“Just over four minutes,” said Jeneen, who had recovered her composure and pulled up the ship’s log for the drone arrivals. Celia whirled to the navigation grid and examined it closely.
“The distance between the two sats was maybe one fifth of the distance from the last sat to Ragnaroth. Less the travel time of the last pigeon that means we’ve got less than 20 minutes before whatever destroyed the sats gets here.”
They all looked stunned.
“You can’t be sure . . ,” began Andre.
“But we can’t be sure it isn’t a destructive force of some sort,” said Roberto urgently. He had seen Celia in action in emergencies before. If you wanted to live, you backed her.
“Be ready to leave in five, all of you. I’m going to talk to the Sumerians,” said Celia. Then she paused.
“Andre, we may have to hide. Check Earthside of the ship, you may have to find us somewhere to put our heads down.” And then she was gone.
Sumerians did not need to sleep for long, but they did need to rest after prolonged periods of activity. They took their downtime pursuing less mentally demanding and more leisurely pursuits, and did not have a ‘night’ period specifically set aside.
That meant the command centre on Ragnaroth had a full complement of officers around the clock. Celia approached the door to the command centre and tapped in her code. She waited for the ‘permission to enter’ signal to appear.
Once it did so she stormed through the door into a lofty room more like a hall from her home town than a bridge, and headed for EusBrahmad. She was thankful he was there. He towered over her, shoulders reducing to a solid neck that reduced again to a long, barely humanoid head.
“We have to abandon Ragnaroth,” she told him bluntly. The Sumerians in the vicinity stopped what they were doing. Heads turned in her direction, though they wouldn’t know what she was saying. Only the Par’Brahmad leader and Second habitually wore linguist earpieces.
“Something has just destroyed two of our satellites, and is heading this way,” she said. “We can’t take the risk of staying at this location.”
“You are sure?” said SarSanni from his position in front of the navigation panels. Celia nodded vigorously. SarSanni turned to EusBrahmad. “Perhaps we should consider this information the Human team has brought us.”
He turned back to Celia. “When will this ‘something’ of yours reach Ragnaroth?” he enquired.
“I’m not sure exactly what this thing is,” said Celia apologetically, “but it would be wise to leave the station right now. It will be here in fifteen minutes.” She knew the earpieces would translate the timescale for the Sumerians.
Put on the spot before his crew, EusBrahmad took the easiest course open to him, and began to ramble on about Sumerian superiority.
“The Sumerians do not run from an unnamed menace!” he declared.
Celia felt her heart sink. She had expected this, but so many lives would be lost if the Sumerians did nothing.
“Shut down your systems,” she said to SarSanni. “Perhaps this something will bypass you if it believes the station is abandoned.”
She looked intently at him, willing him to take the threat seriously. She wanted to shake him, but had no idea how the Sumerian Second would interpret that. There was no reply from either of the Sumerian commanders.
She turned away at last. “Good luck,” she said to SarSanni, not sure how that would translate in his culture, and hurried out of the command centre.
The bridge on the Europa was alive with organised chaos when she arrived. The team had been powering up systems, and stowing equipment, in anticipation of a sudden departure.
“Take us out on the opposite side of the space station to the destroyed sats,” she said to Andre. “With any luck the station will camouflage our departure for a few minutes.”
“We normally ask the Sumerians to open the cargo bay doors,” said Andre, “though that’s more of a formality than anything.”
“Can you override?” said Celia. Andre nodded.
With less than ten minutes remaining, the ship hurled itself away from the station, a hare trying to outrun a wolf.
“Look for something up ahead that can mask our energy signature,” said Celia, as she bent over the navigation screen with Andre.
“Already onto it,” said Jeneen, her fingers flying over the remote sensing equipment, trying to find something in the rapidly unfolding space ahead. They were now outrunning any information about what was happening at the station, which was limited to the speed of light. That left them blind to what was happening behind them, and increased the urgency of finding a hiding place.
Several minutes later, Celia shook her head.
“It’s no good. There’s nothing suitable in front of us and it’s quite possible something is overhauling us from behind. I think we should turn off our present course and run obliquely.”
“Got it!” called Jeneen. “Off our present course but close by. A star system with a gas giant.”
“Do it!” said Celia, and Andre set to work. There was no apparent change of direction, but they dipped below the speed of light briefly so that Andre could set the new coordinates. Minutes later they curved around a huge orange planet and eased into its upper atmosphere from the other side.
“We’re in orbit,” said Andre some time later, “but we’re having to compensate for the drag of the atmosphere. The star drive chamber is running hot from our run at full speed, but the heat will dissipate soon enough in this soup.”
Outside the ship acid storms lashed the Europa, and turbulence shook the craft despite the autopilot’s attempts to avoid the worst of it.
“How much of this can we take?” said Roberto.
“The hull?” said Andre. “As much as the atmosphere can throw at us. The sensor arrays might have problems though.” He hurried over to help Jeneen shut down the arrays and put a protective current through the hull.
Back at Ragnaroth the complement of officers in the Sumerian command centre went to high alert. Despite the possible danger, the Sumerians were supremely confident. In 200 thousand years they had not met a situation they could not handle, so why should anything be different now?
The time span Celia had mentioned passed, and nothing was reported on the long-range sensors. The crew began to relax.
“Sumerians do not run at the sight of their own shadows!” proclaimed EusBrahmad, using one of the few expressions that was the same in both languages. He prepared to stand the command centre down from high alert.
“Detecting something on infra-red at maximum range,” reported one of the Par’Door, the technician class. “Confirming a point source dropping below the speed of light.” He put it on the central screen.
“What is that?” said SarSanni. He knew it was not Rothii or Sumerian, and it was unlikely to be Human. A vast glowing shape like the blade of an ornate ceremonial dagger sliced through space toward them. It seemed to be a ship carved by a giant sculptor from a massive solar flare.
“Recording continuous plasma discharge,” said a Par’Lock engineer. “Disruptive ionisation. Sensor arrays failing, boosting back-up and multiple integrity.”
The flat, bright ship of flame slowed further, and began to bypass the space station.
“It’s bigger than Ragnaroth,” said the Par’Lock engineer, “much bigger,” and then his instruments began to overload.
SarSanni muttered into the communications wheel on his forearm, and left the command centre. As soon as he was through the door he started to run.
He was soon at a Sumerian transport ship in a cargo bay near the top of the giant space station. His two protégés, both Par’Sanni, arrived a moment later, carrying the supplies he had requested. He hurried them on board the transport ship.
; “We must not be leaving?” said AldSanni, standing firmly in the centre of the pilot cabin and refusing to go any further. He would not leave without the other Sumerians, and none of them would leave without direct orders from their Par’Brahmad.
SarSanni had anticipated this, and now he outlined his plan. As a precautionary measure they would use the technician hatches and enter the massive containment chamber in the transport ship. It was the area best shielded from radiation, and most likely to survive damage. If the huge space station was going to be devastated, at least some of them might live to tell the story.
AldSanni wanted to ask the rest of the crew who would agree to accompany them. SarSanni made the Sumerian formal sign for an impossible situation. AldSanni sagged, realising as SarSanni already had that the rest of the Sumerians would be too slow to grasp the situation, and there was not enough time.
Outside the station, the strange new ship brightened. The black hull of Ragnaroth glistened like the darkest night as it reflected the glare. Then loops of fire from nose to tail, like the solar flares that rose out of a sun, scythed from the ship and sliced open the space station.
Inside the transport ship, SarSanni and the others felt the decks about them shudder, and heard the terrible squeal of metal giving way.
“Hurry!” yelled SarSanni, and pushed the other two toward the rear of the ship. Galvanised, they broke into a run, then a strange but effective sprint as enormous concentrations of adrenaline dumped into their systems. SarSanni tapped his master code into the technician hatch at the rear of the ship, and it opened. They clambered in.
Another plasma blast sliced a chunk off the bottom of the station. SarSanni made it to the containment chamber and released the hatch. He scrambled through as soon as it opened, and the others followed.
Once they were all inside he sealed the chamber with the same master code. Then the little group settled against the supports at the bottom of the chamber, and extracted glow lights from the supplies they had brought. Above them the immense firebox of the Orscantium decay unit stood silent, the rods damped in short-range nucleic fields.
Outside the station more scything flashes of fire breached the hull in a dozen places. Then a larger burst of fire split the station into fragments.
Safe for the moment in a jagged chunk of the station that contained the cargo bay, the three Par’Sanni whirled away amidst the debris.
CHAPTER 10
________________
Two days later, four of the strange new plasma ships arrived at Ba’H’Roth, the home planet the Rothii had abandoned so long ago.
A substantial Sumerian settlement had grown up on Ba’H’Roth. Sumerians were not normally a curious people, but some had the time and resources to visit the world of their benefactors, the Rothii from whom they had inherited their technology.
An extensive hospitality industry had grown up to cater for the visitors, and the Sumerian government had centralised a number of departments around the large science station that existed on the planet.
There was also a vast dry dock floating in orbit above Ba’H’Roth. Sited at one corner of the Sumerian empire, closest to the Core, it was a convenient place to install a maintenance station for their ships.
Three Sumerian warships were currently docked there, undergoing routine refurbishment. The other five ships of the Number Fourteen wing of the Imperial Deep Space Navy were due to return soon from manoeuvres at MahiRoth, the deserted remains of a Rothii moon colony in the next system.
As the vast ships of fire entered the Ba’H’Roth system, the science station detected them, and sounded an alarm. Not only was traffic from the direction of the Core unexpected, but the size of the ships and the strange energy signatures were completely unknown to the Sumerians.
The warships at the dry dock declared an emergency alert and recalled their crews from the planet’s surface. The first warship to have its full complement of crew was dispatched to recall the rest of Number Fourteen wing from MahiRoth at maximum speed.
The Sumerian settlement on the planet powered down its reactors and blanked out all power. Messages of peace were broadcast continuously, and the population took refuge in the complex of storage chambers that lay beneath the settlement.
Another of the warships at the dry dock reached operational readiness and stood off from the planet, powering up its weapons. As the remaining warship struggled to ready itself, the plasma-covered ships converged on the planet. One of them swept past the dock and sliced it open, pinning the remaining warship in the tangled wreckage. The trapped ship fell toward the planet beneath it, desperately trying to lift the combined weight of itself and the dry dock wrapped about it.
Then the four ships of fire dropped lower, and seeded the upper atmosphere with hundreds of sleek, black ground craft. The ships plummeted through the atmosphere, turning red, and then a vibrant orange. Reaching the surface they levelled off, and cooling now, came in low and fast over the populated areas.
Down in the underground chambers the Sumerian population crowded around screens running off deeply buried batteries. They stood awed by the immense, flat, ornate shapes high above, each wreathed in constantly changing fields of fire. Then they watched the arrival of the sleek, black, malevolent-looking ground ships above the main settlement and its adjoining research station.
The ground ships were obscured by strange puffs of super-heated air from their sonic generators when they were still a long way from the settlement. The immensely dense bursts of sound outflew the ground ships, and flashed across the surface to detonate well below ground level.
Whole areas across Sumerian settlement erupted from below, leaving huge craters. Those who were still alive heard the rain of debris thunder into the ground above, and then it grew strangely silent, as the layer of dirt over them thickened. Then it was their turn, and the settlement was left completely destroyed.
The ground ships veered away from the dust, and flying debris, and destruction ahead of them, and lined up on the Sumerian science station. It was destruction from a distance. It was pre-meditated murder.
Then the five Sumerian warships from MahiRoth appeared at the edge of the system, the cooling towers that sat behind the containment chambers running so hot from their desperate dash that the ships appeared to be haloed in blinding light. The captain of the warship that had stood off from the dry dock above Ba’H’Roth moved his ship to join them.
Falling toward the planet below, the crew of the trapped Sumerian warship tried desperately to free themselves. The small thrusters used for manoeuvring in orbit were unable to make any real difference to their situation, and star drive engines had catastrophic effects this close to the surface.
The hull of the warship had not yet been breached, but time was running out. The captain considered bringing the ship’s weapons to bear on the dock itself, but what further damage would that do to his ship? Then he decided he had no choice, he was running out of options.
The Par’Brahmad wing commander of the approaching warships saw the situation, and his Par’Sanni Second briefed him on possible courses of action.
The two of them had been a successful combination since their early days, and had been promoted quickly to the command of a deep space Navy wing. Their success was largely due to the Par’Brahmad knowing when to leave things to his quicker-thinking Second.
They decided on a plan of attack. The bulk of the Sumerian warships would distract the ships of fire, while one of them assisted the ship that was trapped within the dry dock. Its orbit had already decayed to the point where it was close to the boundary of the planet’s atmosphere. There was very little time left for it.
The warships separated out and began their attacking runs on the ships of fire. The remaining warship took a wider path that took it round the planet to its stricken sister ship.
The warships targeting the attackers above the planet launched missiles, and locked on with their plasma cannons. Bright blades of fire scythed out in multiple directions f
rom the ships of fire. The Sumerian warships somehow managed to run within the expanding rings and targeted a point on the fiery hull below them, firing plasma cannon repeatedly into the same spot while they swept overhead.
Then the first pass was over. Turning, the warships saw their close-range missiles explode, and the plasma-covered ships continue unharmed. They came in for a second pass, and an arc of fire scythed out from one of the ships, cutting one of the Sumerian warships open. It rolled away, and began a long, fiery descent toward the planet below. The others pulled out of the attack and reformed at a safer distance.
The Par’Sanni Second and Sumerian wing commander were desperately looking for a solution, a way their ships could have some impact on these strange and deadly invaders. The fire ships were faster and stronger than they had thought possible.
This close to the enemy, and this close to the planet, they could not launch fusion missiles. All they could do was try to distract the ships of fire and buy time for the remaining warship on its rescue mission. Spreading out into attack formation once again, they threw themselves at the much larger enemy ships.
Now on the other side of the planet, the remaining warship was falling alongside its helpless comrade. Together they primed their weapons. At exactly the same time they cut through the remains of the dry dock that lay wrapped around the trapped ship, the one targeting the forward section which was in clear view of its cannons, and the other the wreckage that lay across the aft thrusters and star drive unit. Thankfully the wreckage fell free, but it tore open two decks of the ship as it departed. Casualties of war, thought the captain grimly, as he briefly considered the sudden loss of life, and then forced himself to dismiss it from his mind. More fortunately, the thrusters appeared to be still operable, and the stardrive unit undamaged. At full thrust the two warships began to clear the planet’s atmosphere.
On the planet below, the destruction of the Sumerian settlement was almost complete. While the bulk of the obelisks concentrated on the Sumerian facilities, many of the sleek, black ships searched the planet’s surface for Rothii remains, destroying the squat Rothii data storage facilities wherever they found them. The underground storage chambers did not seem to attract the attention of the black ships, and the Sumerian population huddled in fear as each needle-nosed craft passed overhead, destroying anything still standing on the surface.
Invardii Series Boxset Page 24