Duggan ran his fingers through his short hair, feeling the sweat on his scalp. “I don’t know what it’s here for,” he said. The implications if it was looking for them didn’t bear thinking about. “Any further details, Lieutenant?” he asked.
“If I had to guess, I’d say they came in high,” said Chainer.
“They’ll probably circle the planet at fifty thousand klicks. It’s how their big guns usually operate,” said Duggan. “Any idea of how long till they pick us up?”
“No more than fourteen minutes until the risk becomes unacceptably high,” said Chainer, looking at his screens. Pages and pages of possibilities scrolled before his eyes as the Detriment’s mainframe tried to nail down the likeliest course and trajectory of the enemy ship based on past recorded data.
“Let’s give it nine minutes where we are and then we’ll plot a course,” Duggan said. He hoped they’d be able to orbit the planet a couple of times and avoid detection until the Ghast ship decided there was nothing here to bother about. “Sergeant Ortiz, do you copy?”
“I copy, Captain,” she said.
“We’re going to orbit the planet and we’ll be out of comms range in approximately nine minutes. Keep the outbound channel closed and wait for us to contact you.” There was a high chance that the Ghast warship would pick up a signal from the ground, especially if its own orbit brought it near enough.
“Roger that, Captain. Comms closed until we hear.”
“Should we head into the fissure?” asked McGlashan. “If the Crimson got in there with seven times our mass, then we should be able to slide in real smooth.”
“Negative, Commander. We don’t know for sure what’s down there. We’ll be an easy target if we get anything wrong.” He paused. “And we don’t know for certain if the Crimson is there anyway. It’s too much of a risk.”
McGlashan didn’t mention it again and in truth, Duggan was tempted to try a landing. The Detriment’s mainframe estimated they’d have an eighty-six percent chance of avoiding detection for two full circuits of the planet, with that number decaying at an increasing rate for subsequent circuits. The computer didn’t have sufficient data to predict their chances if they decided on a landing. The surface fissure cut into the rock at an oblique and the sensors hadn’t been able to penetrate far enough along to determine if there was enough room for a spaceship to navigate its length. All they had to go on was the evidence of an intense heat in the area. Duggan didn’t like to rely on statistics if he could avoid it, but this time he was going to side with the mainframe.
“That’s nine minutes, Captain,” said McGlashan, when the time had elapsed.
“Sergeant Ortiz, this is the Detriment wishing you good luck.”
“Make sure you come back for us,” she said.
Duggan cut off the comms without replying. He wasn’t a man to make promises he couldn’t keep and the soldiers knew it well enough. They also knew that only death would stop him trying. “Take us away, Commander,” he said.
“Already done.”
“Listen out for anything,” he said to Chainer.
The soldiers were out of comms range two minutes later. Duggan dropped back into his chair and shifted uncomfortably while he waited helplessly for this one to play itself out. To his left, McGlashan watched the weapons panels like a hawk, her fingers never straying more than a few inches from the deployment indentations on the alloy console. The air seemed even more stifling than usual.
The first circuit of the planet took eleven minutes and the next one nine. The Detriment’s hull temperature climbed as the gravity engines threw the spaceship in a tighter and faster orbit than the first.
“The next circuit will bring us back over Sergeant Ortiz’s position,” said McGlashan.
“Down to an eighty-three-point-two percent chance of escaping detection,” Duggan said to himself. “How long till we’re in comms range?”
“Just under a minute.”
“Still no sign of the Cadaveron,” said Chainer.
“What do they want?” asked Duggan. “Why here and why now?”
“Shit happens,” said Breeze.
“Sergeant Ortiz, are you reading?”
“The sergeant’s underground, Captain,” came the voice of Turner. “She’s left me up top.”
“Anything to report?”
“We’ll lose you in thirty seconds,” interjected McGlashan.
“The going’s rough, even for the tanks. A bit slower than we’d have liked. The squad is less than two kilometres along the fissure. You should see this place, Captain. Makes the Grand Canyon look like a knife cut in your steak.”
“Understood, soldier. We’re breaking off now. Keep low and quiet until you hear from us again.”
“Will do.”
Duggan closed the channel. He didn’t want to give the Ghasts any more chance to detect their location than he had to. He got to his feet again, unable to settle. The readouts from the life support showed a sudden fluctuation in their power draw as they corrected the internal environment of the ship in order to protect the occupants from the gravity force of a series of sharp turns it was engaged in.
“How long till we’re in comms range again?” he asked.
“Three more orbits and twenty-six minutes. Looks like we’ll be hot at the end of this next one. A six-minute circuit, skipping just off the atmosphere.”
“Seventy-nine-point-five chance of an unwanted interception,” Duggan announced.
“I never liked the odds when they dropped below ninety-five percent,” said Chainer. Before him, a hundred modulating bars danced to show the status of the engines. Advances in computing power had made the position of ship’s engineer almost redundant. Regardless, Duggan liked the role to be filled, even though he knew that many Gunners flew with a crew of only three. He took comfort from the backup of having a fourth trained officer aboard.
At the end of the six-minute circuit, the Detriment’s nose glowed fiercely, the temperature at exactly one-hundred percent of its design tolerance. The mainframe would never push it beyond that unless it was overridden by the captain or the commander.
“The next one’s a nine, then a ten-point-five,” said McGlashan. “Twenty minutes until we see how the guys and gals are getting on.”
“It needs to be good news,” said Chainer.
“The only good news will be a fission signature from the Ghast ship,” said Duggan. Before him, the chance of interception had fallen to seventy-four-point-nine. It would drop below seventy on the next orbit.
“What happens if they don’t go?” asked McGlashan.
It wasn’t a situation that Duggan wanted to contemplate. Nevertheless, he could feel the burden of the decision closing in on him, like an inescapable collision that he had no way to swerve around. “Why can’t they just piss off?” he asked, not expecting an answer.
“Maybe the ship that pinged us on the approach read enough to be able to predict our destination,” said Chainer. “The latest Cadaverons can almost outthink a Hadron class. If it managed to tally the presence of a Corps vessel way out of its expected arena with the signal from the Crimson, the ship’s AI might just have put two and two together.”
“How’d they manage to follow us, then?” asked McGlashan. “And if they knew of the Crimson’s signal, why didn’t they know it was on this planet?”
“It’s possible they intercepted the Crimson’s warning without knowing exactly where it came from. The further you get from a transmission’s source, the harder it is to pin it down. I’ll bet the Ghasts could have narrowed the source down to half a dozen systems in this galaxy. The Alpha’s only designed to do comms and monitoring – the kit they’re carrying could pick up the sound of a dog shitting on the pavement from half a trillion light years away.”
“Nice example,” said Breeze.
“So, it’s down to luck,” said Duggan, now sure that Chainer had guessed right. “Lucky for them and unlucky for us. It means they know we’re here.”
<
br /> “Seems that way,” said Chainer.
“Six minutes till comms range,” McGlashan said.
“If the Ghasts know we’re here, then they’ll know that the Crimson’s here as well,” said Breeze. “What if they came to the same conclusion as we did about where you could hide a ship?”
“The scanners on a heavy cruiser might be able to cut deeper through the surface opacity,” Chainer added. “We don’t know what their latest ships can do.”
“Reckon they’ll be able to pick up a single man on the surface standing with a communications beacon?” asked Duggan.
“I doubt it. Not easily. Unless they were actively looking, or at a comparatively low orbit.”
“You’ve gone from an almost certain no, to an almost certain yes in the space of three sentences,” Duggan admonished him.
“Sorry, Captain. I wouldn’t want to rely on guesswork, so I’d probably assume they’ll pick up Turner if they stay in the area long enough.”
“One minute to comms range.”
“Ghast ship just coming into the view of our sensors over the planet’s curvature,” said Chainer. “It’s describing a tight circle over the south pole.”
“Dropping us down to five hundred klicks,” said McGlashan. The external viewscreen showed them banking sharply and the planet’s surface filled every inch of the space as they headed steeply downwards and away from the Ghast heavy cruiser, in the hope that they’d be able to hide low against the planet’s surface.
“Did they see us?” asked Duggan.
“Unsure,” said Chainer, leaning across to tap at an area of his console. “Yes, they saw us. I’m picking up the outline of a Cadaveron heading towards our position.”
“Get us away,” said Duggan.
“Already on it.”
The life support systems surged again as the Detriment swung sharply about, wrenching the alloys of the superstructure almost to breaking point. The ship’s sub-light drive shot from fifty percent to exactly one hundred percent as the Detriment accelerated at maximum power in the opposite direction to the approaching enemy. A screen to Duggan’s right helpfully displayed the record bank image of a smoothly-rotating three-dimensional image of a Ghast Cadaveron – a three-point-five-kilometre-long mixture of wedge, cuboid and cylinder in dull silver, with twenty-eight banks of missile launchers, and an enormous front-mounted particle beam generator. It outgunned the Detriment by fifty to one. The only positive was that a Cadaveron carried so many weapons that they’d had to compromise on the engine mass. Out in deep space, it was faster than any Vincent class. Here in orbit the difference was much lower.
“How long till they get in weapons range?”
“I can’t answer that for definite yet, Captain,” replied McGlashan. “Their designs change all the time. This looks like a newer one than we’ve seen. There are a few structural differences that aren’t in our records. It’ll be a minute or two until we see how fast they can go while clinging so close to the surface.
“Let me know as soon as you know,” said Duggan. Calm settled over him and his mind ticked over methodically as it did its best to plot a course out of the predicament they found themselves in.
Chapter Eight
Commander McGlashan spoke the words that Duggan hadn’t wanted to hear. “Looks like this is a fast one,” she announced after less than a minute.
“How fast?” asked Duggan. It was just his luck to come across one of the Ghasts’ new designs. Their ships seemed to change all the time and there was no way to rely on past experience to determine the capabilities of what another ship might be. Even to this day, the Confederation had precious little information on the extent of the Ghast resources, nor how populous they were. One thing was certain: the alien species had taken this war more seriously from the outset and now they were reaping the rewards.
“Three minutes twenty seconds until we’re in range of their missiles. A maximum of fifty-five additional seconds for travel time at our current velocity.”
Duggan didn’t respond immediately. He was too busy thinking, with the familiar expression on his face that he always carried when the threat was at its greatest. None of the options were palatable and in the circumstances, he knew he’d have to pick the best one from a bad lot. The easiest option was to go to lightspeed. There was plenty of time to warm up the fission drive. Of course, that would necessitate abandoning both the soldiers on the ground and the mission itself. Duggan could accept failing the mission, but he could never accept failing the men and women on the planet’s surface. The other option was to engage the Ghast ship and hope to somehow pull a lucky kill out of the bag. Duggan almost laughed out loud at the thought. There was no way in hell the Detriment could knock a Cadaveron out of the sky. That left one option, if only there was enough time to make it work. He grimaced. It was going to be like taking a kick in the balls.
“We need to reach the southern pole before they blow us to pieces,” he said.
“That’s going to stress the hull,” said McGlashan almost absently as she input the new course and overrode the in-built safety parameters.
“I need a decaying orbit that will bring us into the planet’s atmosphere at the last possible moment.” The fourth planet’s atmosphere was thin and comprised a mixture of carbon dioxide, nitrogen and a tiny amount of oxygen. Nevertheless, it would be enough to burn them up at the velocity they’d be travelling.
“What’s the plan?” asked McGlashan.
“I’m going to tell the mainframe to take us over the point where we dropped off the soldiers. We’re going to get in the last tank and try and get to the surface.”
“They’ll pick us up easily,” said Chainer.
“Not if we drop a cloud of shock drones just before we leave,” said Duggan. “With any luck they’ll confuse the Ghast weapons systems.”
“And then they’ll either destroy the Detriment or watch it burn up as we drop too low in the atmosphere.”
“Precisely.”
McGlashan shrugged. She could see that Duggan was decided and if she disagreed with his choice she kept her own counsel. “I’ll miss the old girl,” was all she said.
“Lieutenants, make your way to the tank. You can suit up inside. I’m sure you’ll not hang around to pick up your belongings.”
Duggan didn’t need to say anything further. Chainer and Breeze got to their feet and left the bridge with as much speed as they could manage.
“It’s nearly set,” said Duggan. “We’ll remote jettison once we get to the tank. The ship will enter the atmosphere immediately over the landing site. At the speed we’re going, she’ll break apart almost at once.”
“I hate having to do this, sir.”
“Me too. Come on, let’s get to the cargo bay,” Duggan instructed, ushering his commander through the exit doorway. After she’d gone, he paused for one final look over the bridge of the spaceship he’d commanded for the better part of six years. It had been a true and faithful companion to him.
The air was cooler in the narrow corridor outside, yet not enough to dry the sweat that caked the pair of them as they hurried along in the peculiar half-crouch that you adopted after a while on a Vincent class. McGlashan called over her shoulder as she ran, her breathing hardly laboured at all.
“I’ve programmed in two small waves of shock drones to be jettisoned before the last big one. I thought it might keep the Ghasts guessing about what we’re doing.”
“Good idea.”
“And the weapons systems will fire at anything which comes in range.”
The newest Lambdas could outrange most Ghast missiles. The particle beam was more of a gamble. When they’d first appeared on the enemy warships, their range had been pathetically low. Over the course of only a few years, the weapon had been developed until its range was a match for most of what the Space Corps could field. It was academic – a few Lambdas weren’t going to penetrate the Cadaveron’s defences. Even if a couple got lucky, they didn’t carry enough of a pay
load to cripple anything as large as the heavy cruiser. Still, it would feel good to know that the Detriment’s last throw of the dice caused the enemy at least a small amount of damage. It might be enough to send the Cadaveron crawling back to base for repairs. Duggan realised his mind was wandering and he forced it back to the present.
In the close quarters of the Detriment’s network of tight corridors, Duggan heard an occasional faint rumbling, sometimes accompanied by a shuddering beneath his feet. To a rookie, it would have felt like nothing more threatening than the expected operation of a spaceship. To Duggan, the sounds were indicative of the immense stresses that the Detriments engines and structure were being placed under as the vessel fought to maintain a close orbit around the planet.
“It’s going to be tight,” said McGlashan, her voice almost conversational.
They burst out of the corridor and into the ship’s cramped hold. The single remaining tank was in the farthest corner, the extra distance adding a precious couple of seconds to their journey. Lieutenant Breeze had his head and torso out of the top entrance hatch and waved them over, the gesture redundant, yet faintly reassuring.
“Your suits are inside,” he called. He’d saved them the extra few moments it would have taken to haul the bulky cases of kit over to the tank.
Breeze vanished back within. McGlashan sprang up the angular nose of the tank and vaulted after him, dropping inside with the ease of a woman who’d done the same thing many times before. Duggan didn’t hesitate and followed in the same smooth action, descending a shaft that dropped almost ten feet into the depths of the tank. There were rungs set in the grey metal walls and Duggan’s hands snatched at them to slow his fall. He landed at the bottom, in a space that was hardly five feet high and wide. A grubby red light bathed him from the tank’s interior and there was the strong smell of oil.
“Close it, quick!” urged Breeze, from somewhere deeper within.
His words were spoken in conjunction with Duggan’s hand tapping out a fast combination of three buttons on a console adjacent to the hatch. A slab of metal almost a metre thick shot quietly across and sealed the interior. It was surprisingly cool inside – almost chilly.
Crimson Tempest (Survival Wars Book 1) Page 6