“If feels good to hold one of these again,” she said, her voice appearing inside Duggan’s helmet. It carried the faintest of echoes as it reflected from the helmet’s interior. It wasn’t perfect, but you got used to it.
“Got a visual on Turner,” said Chainer, still in his seat and awaiting his turn to get his helmet on.
“Where?” asked Duggan, squeezing back to his seat. In spite of his efforts, his helmet clanged off the ceiling of the tank’s hold. A tiny readout appeared briefly to register the collision.
“He’s just inside the fissure.”
“Good man. That’ll cut down the angle for the Ghasts to pick him up.”
Duggan checked their distance. He’d left it late to finish dressing and the tank was almost at the cliff. When it got there, it was programmed to stop and await further instructions. Duggan didn’t want any delay, so he overrode the autodrive and took the controls. The suit interfaced automatically with the tank and Duggan was able to control it using a series of hand gestures or his voice. It could be clumsy sometimes, but with practise it allowed the driver to direct the tank and perform other tasks at the same time.
“I’ve gone to manual,” he said. “Taking us straight in.”
The external sensors showed a clear image of the fissure now. It was several hundred metres wide at the bottom and streaked upwards, its jagged edges narrowing as it climbed. The planet had a long dusk and what little light arrived here from the distant sun was fading slowly. The tank’s sensors struggled to enhance the interior of the fractured cliff face. They weren’t able to read the path ahead perfectly, but Duggan could see enough to realise they were about to drop steeply.
“The cheeky bastard’s waving,” said McGlashan with a laugh as the tank went past Turner at almost thirty kilometres per hour. The ground beneath sloped sharply downwards, before levelling out ahead.
“Looks like he’s pulled the comms beacon further inside,” said Breeze.
“He’s got a nose for trouble,” said Duggan.
“Are we going to stop and pick him up?” asked McGlashan.
“Shortly,” said Duggan. By now, they’d left the soldier a couple of hundred metres behind. He’d shown no sign of following them since he’d been ordered to stay at his post. There again, he didn’t know that the Detriment had been destroyed, though he would surely have guessed something was wrong.
When he judged that he’d taken them far enough into the fissure to block out their transmissions from the Ghast ship above, Duggan brought the tank to a halt. It hovered dutifully in the air as it awaited the next command.
“Turner, get yourself over here. Don’t respond, you’ve got something listening out overhead.”
A few moments later, the suited figure of Turner appeared on their screens. He ran with the peculiar gait of a man who’d worn a spacesuit more often than was good for him. To Duggan, the soldier looked like the old ocean sailors who rolled with the sea as they walked. The gravity on this planet was higher than normal, but Turner didn’t seem to be bothered by it – that’s what the gym work was good for. The soldier jumped up onto the tank’s wedge nose. Everyone inside was suited, so Duggan sent the command for the hatch to open. The computer bleeped to warn that the interior airlock door was also open. He pressed a button sequence on his console to override it.
Moments later, Turner was inside. When he spoke, his voice betrayed an edge of excitement, the emotion exacerbated by his increased breathing from the recent sprint to the tank.
“They’ve found it,” he said.
Chapter Ten
Duggan pushed the tank onwards into the deepening gloom. Its headlights and sidelights threw out a startling amount of illumination, which was just enough to catch the distant walls. “What condition is it in?” he asked.
“The hull is intact, that’s all I know. Comms don’t get through from the entrance and Sergeant Ortiz had to send someone halfway back to let me know that much. We’ll be able to get about another klick along here and then it’s on foot.”
“Is the way blocked?” asked Duggan.
“There’s a rock shelf. There’d be plenty of room to get the Detriment in over it.” Turner frowned at the realisation that everyone on board was now on the planet’s surface.
“The Detriment’s gone. We’ve got a Cadaveron circling above. It might not know we’re here, but it certainly knows that something is here.”
Turner was a good soldier and he didn’t ask for more details about what had happened. There was no other conclusion for him to draw other than that they were effectively stranded on this planet. He couldn’t change it, so he shrugged and got on with it.
After another twelve hundred metres, the floor rose sharply upwards as if it had been pushed from below, until it formed a high ledge across the entire width of the cave. Above the ledge was nothing but open space, vanishing ever higher into impenetrable darkness. In front, the Detriment’s other three tanks were arrayed in a neat line as if they’d been parked in a shopping mall.
“Over a hundred metres high,” said Duggan. He was tempted to see if he could get the tank to climb it. They were made to fall and land safely, not to climb and he was sure it would be fruitless to try. Sergeant Ortiz knew her stuff. If she’d left the tanks here, it was for a good reason.
“How’d they get up?” asked McGlashan, flipping through different sensor images of the rocky ledge in front of them to see if she could find any sort of pathway.
“Don’t ask me,” said Turner. “There’s been no time for chat.”
“Let’s get out and take a look,” said Duggan. He shut down the tank’s engines and pushed through towards the exit hatch. He keyed it open and hauled himself up the ladder, feeling his muscles strain under the additional weight of the suit and the planet’s gravity. His breathing sounded loud in the enclosed space of his helmet and an amber warning light appeared to advise him politely that his oxygen consumption had increased by thirty percent. The hatch slid away into its recess and Duggan was able to exit the tank into the expanse of the cave. As he stood on the sloped front of the tank a feeling of contentment came to him. Some men feared the infinity of the universe, but not Duggan.
“Doesn’t this make you feel alive?” he asked.
Behind him, Turner climbed through the hatch. “If you say so, sir,” he said.
The tank’s lights remained on and they provided sufficient illumination for Duggan to see the barrier in front. He jumped to the ground, landing with a heavy thud on the dark grey rock. The ground was fairly smooth around here and clear of visible grit or dust. The sensors in his helmet advised him that a wind of nine kilometres per hour blew from the entrance towards him. Duggan couldn’t feel it at all in the protection of his suit. The rest of the crew emerged from the safety of the tank and hopped down one-by-one to join them.
“Can you see anything, sir?” asked McGlashan. Duggan’s helmet readout helpfully outlined her body in a red light. Everyone looked the same in their suits.
“The light isn’t good enough to see. I’ll try and reach Sergeant Ortiz.” Duggan opened a comms channel. “Sergeant Ortiz, do you copy?”
There was a delay of several seconds before a reply came. “I copy. We’ve found the Crimson, sir. She’s a bit beat up, but I think you’ll be able to get her to fly. The repair bot’s busting a gut.”
Duggan laughed. “I hope you’re right, Sergeant. A Cadaveron arrived. We’ve lost the Detriment. The Crimson’s all we’ve got to get us home.”
“Roger that, sir. You’re on the surface, then?”
“That’s right. We’re parked up near the tanks. Which way to get up?”
“There’s a place about a hundred metres to the left. It’s a bit of a scramble, so you’ll need to hold on tight.”
“Thanks.”
Duggan closed the comms channel to Sergeant Ortiz. “The good sergeant thinks the Crimson might fly,” he said to the others nearby. Ortiz wasn’t necessarily qualified to make the judgement but Duggan
knew her well enough to give her the benefit of the doubt. She’d seen enough action over the years to recognize terminal damage to a ship’s structure. “There’s a path this way. Let’s go.”
With the other four in tow, Duggan set off across the cavern’s floor. The shelf looked higher than a hundred metres when he stood at the base and it had a clean, smooth look. As he got further away from the tank, the computer within his helmet detected the reduction in light and it turned on the inbuilt torch, which danced ahead with the rhythm of his strides. It didn’t take long to find what they were looking for. There was a deep, diagonal crack running up and away from them, with the lower edge jutting forward about three feet.
“She said it would be a bit of a scramble,” said Duggan, staring at the ascent.
“She wasn’t kidding,” said Breeze.
Duggan led the way, keeping his chest close to the rock face as he sidled his way up. It wasn’t something he’d anticipated taking part in and he found it a frustrating obstacle to reaching their goal. After a few minutes, he crawled over the top and breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t that he was scared of heights – he was simply eager to be on his way. McGlashan came next and Duggan reached down to pull her up the last few feet. A couple of minutes later, they were all standing at the top of the ledge, looking downwards onto the gloom-shrouded outlines of the stationary tanks below.
“Let’s hope we’ll be flying on the way back,” said Breeze.
“This place is huge,” said McGlashan. “I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite like it before.”
Above them was only darkness. The light from their suit helmets was feeble compared to the space and it provided only a glimpse of the route along which the Crimson must once have flown. Ahead, the fracture sloped downward again, the floor littered with sharp-edged stones and boulders. They could have lain here for aeons. There was wind, yet it evidently didn’t carry enough dust particles to smooth off the raw edges of the stone.
“Another two kilometres, sir,” said Turner. “Give or take.”
“Let’s get on,” Duggan replied, aware that there might still be a Ghast heavy cruiser searching for them.
The straight-line distance wasn’t relevant, since they had to veer around many obstacles and occasionally had to back-track for a short way. Some of the boulders were dozens of feet high and in places were piled upon each other. Duggan didn’t spend much time pondering on the cataclysm that brought this about. He wasn’t unaffected by it, but the time wasn’t right to let his mind wander from the task before him.
The journey took almost half an hour and their arrival came almost as a surprise. The boulders were more thickly deposited this far into the cave and they entirely concealed the view ahead. Duggan pushed himself through a narrow gap and then his suit light reflected off something before him. It was something incomprehensibly massive, squatting menacingly on the floor of the cave, filling almost the entirety of the available space. Where his light contacted the surface of the object, Duggan could see that it was utterly smooth and without blemish. Ignoring the exclamations of the crew coming from behind, he jogged forward to see more of the spacecraft.
“That’s the Crimson?” asked Chainer.
Duggan didn’t answer at once. He’d already determined they were at the aft of the ship – the rear was rectangular and perhaps three hundred and fifty metres across, with a height of two hundred and fifty. The vessel’s structure appeared to be suspended twenty metres from the ground and Duggan could just make out the rear four landing feet, each of them enormously thick in order to support the spaceship’s immense weight. There were signs of damage on the underside – there was a black pattern across the silver, covering a hundred metres or more. It was impossible to tell what had caused the damage from here.
“Sergeant Ortiz, we’re here. Give us some light,” said Duggan.
“No can do, sir. The ship won’t listen to me. It’s above my station.”
“Where are you?”
“We’re all on board, sir. The ramp was down. It’s a bit of a walk to get there.”
“On our way.”
They entered the shadow of the Crimson’s hull. It was one thing to see a ship the size of the Detriment from close up, but the Crimson was something else entirely. Where its landing feet were in contact with the ground, there were snaking patterns of stress fractures to indicate the incomprehensible weight of its engines and weapons systems. Duggan noticed that the hull tapered as they walked onwards and he imagined it might be slightly less than three hundred metres wide at the front. It was a classic wedge shape, yet somehow sleeker and more streamlined than most vessels in the Corps.
“It must have been something,” said McGlashan, marvelling at the design.
“Admiral Teron said there were plans to build twenty. Maybe they shelved them because this one went missing, rather than through cutbacks.”
“The brass only tell you what they want you to hear,” said McGlashan, communicating through a private channel. She knew Duggan well enough to speak sedition when it was relevant.
“Maybe.”
“Think the ship will accept your command, sir?” she asked.
“The command code algorithms are designed to be relevant in the past, the present and the future. Any Corps ship of my grade should accept mine.” As he said this, he fervently hoped there’d be no problems. It didn’t seem likely that he’d be sent out here if they knew he lacked the necessary authority for the Crimson’s mainframe to obey him.
“There’s the plank,” said Breeze.
The Crimson’s boarding ramp was about two-thirds of the way along the Crimson’s eleven hundred metre length. It was narrow and sharply inclined, with a surprisingly pristine surface made from a rubber compound to aid grip. You could always tell the expected number of crew on a ship by the width of its boarding ramp. On the Crimson, it was more of an afterthought.
“They weren’t expecting many crew,” said McGlashan.
Above them, a suited figure appeared. “Welcome aboard, sir,” said Ortiz.
With a feeling of mixed apprehension and excitement, Captain John Nathan Duggan climbed upwards and onboard the ESS Crimson.
Chapter Eleven
Duggan felt immediately at home. The larger vessels in the Corps had wide, civilized corridors that would permit three people to walk abreast. They had cinemas, gyms, and open common rooms for the entertainment of the crew. Many of the officers had large rooms for their comfort, with the captain and senior officers provided with entire suites. The Crimson was different – it was just like a Gunner with its cramped corridors and peculiar smell of oil. Yet Duggan could immediately tell it was different. He didn’t know how, but he knew this ship had been designed to win wars. Even when we weren’t fighting one.
When he reached the top of the ramp, Duggan clapped Sergeant Ortiz on the shoulder. He dismissed her back to the other men and didn’t delay himself in getting on with business. With his feet seeming to lead the way, Duggan found himself at the bridge. It was a little larger than the Detriment’s had been, equipped with the same four seats. These ones were covered in soft leather, which had seen no sign of wear and tear. Duggan couldn’t help but press his fingers into the covering on the captain’s chair, wondering why the leather showed no signs of perishing. Around the room, there was the usual panoply of screens and status displays. A few of them displayed lines of digits and code in a dark green shade. The majority were dead. There was a metal wraparound console for each of the seats, covered in buttons and touch controls. It looked the same as the Detriment, yet with a strangeness to it that came from the years it had been waiting here in the darkness.
“Pipes!” exclaimed McGlashan, pointing at a row of three that entered through the bulkhead near the ceiling and exited through the side wall. “I’ve not seen a pipe on a spacecraft in years.”
Duggan chuckled at her enthusiasm and sat himself down in the captain’s chair. Even through the material of his suit he could feel it wa
s comfortable. The console in front of him bore all the hallmarks of standard human design in the field of spacecraft controls. They’d been doing it the same way for a hundred years before the Crimson’s hull was laid down.
“Let’s see what we can do,” he said. Almost of their own volition, his fingers skittered across the controls, his suit relaying the tactile information through its material. The Crimson’s mainframe was online, with access currently denied. Duggan had a tiny chip buried into his forearm that contained an ever-changing chain of a billion numbers and symbols. In theory, it was meant to tally up with the exact same combination available to all Corps ships. The life support was off so there was no way Duggan was going to get out of his suit in order to make a direct skin connection with the ship’s security plate. Instead, he used the suit’s onboard processing unit to pull out the numbers and relay them directly to the Crimson’s mainframe. Immediately, a number of additional displays lit up around Duggan.
“I’ve got lights,” said McGlashan as the commander’s displays flooded into life in front of her. She squinted at the sudden brightness.
“And here,” said Chainer.
“Same,” said Breeze.
“Right, let’s see what we’ve got and what we can do,” said Duggan.
For the next five minutes, he sat quietly as he interrogated the Crimson’s mainframe. The news wasn’t what he’d been hoping for.
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