Guns of the Valpian

by Anthony James

  He put himself into the former captain’s position, only this time he pretended the Valpian was a Space Corps vessel. He imagined himself having to strip out as much vital information from the databanks as possible before his spaceship fell into enemy hands.

  “It couldn’t be done,” he said, shaking his head. If data was lost from one of a warship’s primary systems, the ship’s computer would assume it happened as a result of weapons damage and automatically restore the information from the backups. This process could happen repeatedly and it was unheard of for a warship to become permanently lost in known space.

  “Could I delete the backups or prevent the restore?” he said, speaking his thoughts out loud. “Not without a great deal of time.” He drummed his fingers on the console. “I could set the backups to restore their data to a secondary memory array. It would be still accessible to someone who knew what they were doing, but it wouldn’t be visible on the primary systems.”

  He snapped his fingers. There was an old tale he’d once heard, possibly apocryphal, about a warship in the early days of the Space Corps. The tale described a rookie comms man accidentally deleting several of the primary databanks. In his panic, he’d tried to cover his tracks by restoring from the backups, only to create an endless loop of data swapping from one place to another. There were at least three different endings to the story which Duggan was aware of, none of which ended in disaster for the ship or its crew. The comms man was, however, dismissed from duty in each variation.

  “The bastards have hidden it from us,” Duggan announced. “I need to find out how and where.”

  “This reminds me why I’m just a lowly gun-toting grunt and he’s captain,” said Byers with mischief in her voice.

  Duggan laughed and felt the pressure release as if he’d turned a valve. “I could be wrong and even if I’m not, I still have to find where the files are hidden.”

  “Some of the guys figured out how to operate one of these alien replicators,” said McLeod. “It was the first thing they did once we got the ship secure. I can get you a coffee or something to eat if you want.”

  The words caused Duggan’s stomach to growl loudly, alerting him to the fact that he was ravenous. The mesh accelerants attached to his broken arm stripped his body of nutrients. The spacesuit kept his body’s reserves topped up, but an intravenous energy fluid was no substitute for proper food.

  “If you can get me something that looks and tastes like five cheeseburgers and a cup of coffee, I’ll treat you to something with a high alcohol content from the Crimson’s replicator when we get back onboard.”

  “You’re on!” said McLeod, standing to leave.

  Byers scrambled to follow. “Wait for me!” she said. “I know how to work a replicator better than anyone.”

  The two soldiers took fifteen minutes to return. Duggan used the time well. By assuming his answer about the hidden backups was correct, he was able to follow a series of logical steps which led him directly to the Valpian’s backup arrays. After that, he was able to track down two separate areas within the memory banks where a huge quantity of data was being shunted to and fro. The ship’s AI moved the files to one of these places and then moved them immediately back to their starting point. There were user-added flags in each of these arrays, which made them appear to be the primary front-end. Thus, the process continued, with the backups moving endlessly between partitions. With a grim smile, Duggan deleted the flags.

  Instantly, one of his screens filled with symbols representing Dreamer coordinates.

  “Got it!” Duggan exclaimed triumphantly.

  “You can take us back to Nistrun?” asked Byers.

  “Yes. This is the place right here. This green symbol is Nistrun and the darker green one is the Helius Blackstar. We just need to work out how we’re going to get through.”

  “It’s a start though, isn’t it?”

  “Each step we take is heading in the right direction,” he agreed. “I’m punching in the coordinates. I’ll bring us out of lightspeed a few hours away from Nistrun. That should minimise the risk we’re detected by one of the enemy warships which are undoubtedly hunting in the area. If we can get the Crimson working, that’s what we’ll do. Otherwise, we’ll play it by ear.”

  “What about the monitoring station? Won’t that see us?” asked McLeod.

  “I’ve already considered that. Its lens is focused on the wormhole, so they might not detect us if they aren’t specifically looking. Also, we did some damage to their main console with plasma grenades. They’re unlikely to be fully operational yet.”

  “Sounds good, sir.”

  “When the Crimson came down, I never thought we’d get a second chance,” said Byers.

  “Nor I,” said Red-Gulos.

  The Valpian’s three AI cores had a colossal amount of computational power and the warship entered lightspeed less than thirty seconds after Duggan began the warmup for the fission drive.

  “How fast are we going?” asked McLeod.

  “I’m not sure,” said Duggan. “Faster than the Crimson and that’s easily the fastest ship in the human or Ghast fleets.”

  “We should do our best to bring the Valpian with us and have our engineers strip it down,” said Berg.

  “We’ll see,” said Duggan. He just wanted to get home and didn’t want to make any more promises. “There’s no doubt both we and our allies could benefit from the technology onboard. We are in this together.”

  Red-Gulos nodded in acknowledgement at the words.

  “How long have we got?” asked McLeod.

  “Just shy of two hours. Get out there and make sure everyone in the squad is aware.”

  “Yes, sir.” McLeod paused. “And sir?”

  “What is it?”

  “You’ve forgotten your cheeseburgers.”

  Duggan looked at the two plates which had been set down near him and which he’d entirely failed to notice. There were things on the plates, which he lacked the words to describe.

  “I think I’ll pass.”

  “What about that drink you promised, sir?”

  Duggan grinned. “You’ll need to do better than what you’ve brought me here.”

  “Not bad for a first effort, I thought.”

  McLeod left the bridge, while Duggan remained in his seat and worked through a series of possible future scenarios in his mind.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “We’ll enter normal space in less than five minutes,” said Duggan, speaking to his makeshift crew. “That is the time we’re at the greatest risk - our fission signature will give any hostile warships advance notice of our arrival. We need to complete a near and far scan as soon as possible, and only then switch to the super-fars.”

  “Yes, sir,” Byers and McLeod responded in unison.

  “Sergeant Red-Gulos, I need you to figure out a way to communicate with the Crimson. I don’t know exactly where we’re going to appear in relation to Nistrun – there’s a chance the crash site will be on the far side of the planet, in which case I’ll pilot us around until we can speak to the crew.”

  “I am not convinced the Dreamer and human communication systems are compatible.”

  “A skilled comms man can pick out any kind of signal, as long as the sender isn’t taking steps to hide it. I want you to send a tight-band transmission aimed directly at the Crimson. Lieutenant Chainer will hear – I guarantee it.”

  “Very well, I will do exactly as you ask.”

  “In the meantime, you have a second task, Sergeant, and this one will be much harder than the first.”

  “What task is that?”

  “By this point, the Valpian will be flagged throughout the enemy fleet as a potential rogue. Their command and control will be exceptionally reluctant to entertain the idea that an entire ship has been hijacked, but they will most definitely inform others in the fleet to treat us with the utmost caution. If we encounter other spaceships, you’ll need to confuse or distract them for long enough to allow
us to escape or to destroy them.”

  “We’re not trained for this, sir,” said McLeod.

  “I know that, soldier. Fighting is a last resort. We have energy shields, so we should have a bit of breathing room if combat is unavoidable.”

  “We’ll do our best.”

  “As always,” Duggan replied. “Get ready on those scanners - we’re entering local space in ten seconds.”

  The Valpian’s AI switched off the fission drives and completed a smooth transition onto the secondary engines. On the bridge, there was tense silence for a time.

  “I can’t see anything in the vicinity,” said Byers.

  “I’m on the fars,” muttered McLeod, his brows furrowed in concentration. “I can see Nistrun, but no hostiles.”

  “How long until we’re at the planet?” asked Duggan.

  “I don’t know how fast the Valpian will go. Until I know that, I can’t tell you.”

  Duggan found the course towards the planet and pushed two of the Valpian’s control sticks into position. The warship had a tremendous amount of thrust and after a period of brutal acceleration, it peaked at a fraction over two thousand three hundred kilometres per second. As far as gravity drive velocity went, it was tremendously quick.

  “If that’s as fast as we can go, we’ll reach Nistrun in five hours, sir.”

  “That’s fine,” said Duggan. “I’d rather take it easy than rush in. We’ve come so far I don’t want to lose it all because of impatience.”

  Five minutes went by, during which McLeod and Byers attempted to translate the reams of data from the warship’s scanners. The further out you looked, the harder it became to make sense of the feeds. Chainer was a lot quicker, but even he couldn’t provide an immediate response in cases such as this one. The real difference was in the way a trained comms man could skim over the unimportant details and rapidly identify the potential hazards. McLeod and Byers didn’t have the knack.

  “We’re good, sir.”

  Duggan didn’t have the heart to tell him they’d have likely been destroyed by now if the scans had come back with a different result.

  “Do you know how to look for a fission signature?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir. I think so,” said Byers.

  “Think or know?”

  “I know,” she replied.

  “Watch out for incoming spaceships. You can’t take your eyes off the console for a moment and you need to perform a full-circle sweep every two minutes. The rest of the time, keep a watch on Nistrun. The enemy know this area of space so they might well jump in closer than we expect.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said with a distinct lack of relish.

  “Do it exactly as I said and there’ll be no blame if you miss something.”

  “I’m on it,” she replied with forced enthusiasm.

  “McLeod, you need to put the forward sensors into super-far mode and aim them directly at Nistrun. We’re a good way out so the images will be grainy and you’ll need to work hard. Look for the installation first, since it’s bigger than the Crimson. From there, you can search for our spaceship. Do you remember the direction we came to get over the mountains?”

  “Yes, sir. Enough to narrow it down.”

  Duggan found he’d been holding his breath and stifled the urge to empty his lungs in a loud sigh. The others were doing as well as could be expected and he needed to project calm over the bridge. He exhaled quietly and regulated his breathing to a steady in-out.

  “I’ve found it!” said McLeod excitedly.

  “Let me see,” said Duggan, leaning across. He’d anticipated a much longer wait and the pessimist in him had also expected the base to be on the far side of the planet.

  “There!”

  McLeod had indeed located the base. It appeared on one of the screens looking much as Duggan remembered it – a collection of randomly-placed structures with a larger building in the centre.

  “No sign of activity,” said Byers. “It’s night time. Maybe they’re sleeping.”

  “We’re too far out to see details,” said Duggan. He put his finger close to the screen and traced a path away from the base. “Bring the sensors this way towards the mountain range,” he said.

  “Okay, sir. It’s a bit hard to keep them steady.”

  “That’s fine, just keep bringing them across.”

  Duggan remembered the enormity of the mountain range. From this distance, it looked like a collection of low, shadowed undulations on the ground.

  “About here?” asked McLeod.

  “Yes. I brought the Crimson down somewhere near there.”

  “I can’t see it.”

  “Keep looking. The hull has light deflection properties even without the stealth modules running. It’s made so that it’s easy to overlook.”

  “Right, I’ll keep on with it.”

  “Want me to help, sir?” asked Byers.

  “Absolutely not. Keep watching for fission signatures.”

  “How are we planning to get on or off the Valpian?” she asked, her eyes still glued to her console. “Both the shuttles in the bay got chewed up by chain gun fire.”

  “Boarding ramps,” said Duggan, tapping his fingertip gently on a tiny button at the top of his panel. “Front one here, back one here and these buttons are for the middle ones. I’d prefer it if we didn’t need to land.” He shrugged.

  “Can’t have everything our own way,” said McLeod.

  Duggan held the Valpian on its course for another thirty minutes. New technology excited him and he dearly wanted to spend some time with the vessel under less trying circumstances. It was fast, agile and he was sure it was superbly well-armed, if only he had full access to the weapons console. The sensors weren’t a huge leap over the Space Corps versions, though Chainer would be the best-placed to conclude on that.

  Most of all, he wished to have his usual crew sitting alongside him and his mind threw up a range of uses for a captured technologically advanced enemy cruiser. In reality, the Crimson remained their best shot at getting home since it was a known quantity. Even so, a little voice continued to whisper about the necessity of bringing the Valpian into the Space Corps’ hands as a prize above all other prizes. They’d strip it apart and take the pieces to a research lab, he thought sourly, before chuckling at the pointlessness of the scenarios his brain conjured to keep itself occupied.

  “Have you found the Crimson, yet?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” McLeod hesitated. “I found where we clipped the mountaintops on our way in,” he said. “There’s a clear furrow in the ground a hundred klicks further on and then a second after another fifty klicks.”

  “I didn’t do any fancy turns in the air,” said Duggan. “It was a straight line for the final approach.”

  “I remember you saying the same thing and I followed the line of the furrow way past its end.”

  “Take another look.”

  “I’ve been going backwards and forwards for the last twenty minutes, sir. I’ve covered this same area a dozen times.”

  “The Crimson shouldn’t be that hard to find. It’s only capable of avoiding casual attempts at detection.”

  “There’s an area here that’s covered in scrapes.”

  “Can you get a closer look?”

  “No, sir. This is maximum zoom.”

  A warning began to chime in Duggan’s head and he gave the matter his full attention. “That’s the place we came to a stop,” he said. “I’m sure of it.”

  “I’m not being stupid, am I?” McLeod asked. “There’s really no spaceship.”

  “No, you’re not being stupid.” Duggan couldn’t tear his eyes away from the sensor feed. “The Crimson is gone.”

  “What the hell? Could they have got it working and flown it somewhere?” asked Byers.

  “I think not,” said Red-Gulos.

  “The sergeant is correct,” said Duggan. “My engine man onboard said the Crimson wasn’t going anywhere for weeks and that was with a replacement
core. Using only the standard mainframe, he was talking about years before the ship would be at anything approaching a fully operational state.”

  “It’s gone somewhere.”

  “If it hasn’t lifted off and it hasn’t been destroyed, there is only one conclusion,” said Red-Gulos, as practical as ever.

  “The enemy have discovered it and somehow managed to take it elsewhere,” said Duggan with a grimace.

  “It’s practically impossible to capture an armed warship,” said Byers. Her face fell. “Oh. We just managed it, didn’t we?”

  At that moment, a shadow fell over the Crimson’s landing site. The shadow appeared and then within the blinking of an eye it vanished.

  “Quickly, zoom out!” said Duggan.

  “Like this?”

  “More. Track left. Keep going.”

  “Crap,” said McLeod.

  “What’s that?” asked Byers, watching the shape as it sped over the surface of Nistrun at a height of only a few kilometres.

  “It’s one of their battleships,” said Duggan.

  “Why is it here?”

  “Just to piss me off,” Duggan replied, closing his eyes to calm his thoughts.

  “What now?” asked Red-Gulos.

  “Once again, we’ve been given no choice other than to risk everything.”

  Duggan already had a plan. It jumped fully-formed into his mind and waited brazenly for him to accept it. He spent the next ten minutes desperately seeking an alternative, before he succumbed to the inevitable.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Is there another way we can find out where they’ve taken the Crimson?” asked Byers, once Duggan had outlined his intentions. “I thought in the Space Corps a warship captain could find out more or less anything he wanted.”

  “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.