Antares Crucible

by Warwick Gibson

  The other modified Javelins were already launching Valkrethi, and Cagill hurried to catch up. The Buccra fired energy blasts at the Javelins as the Valkrethi launched and the Javelins scattered. The blasts damaged some of the Alliance ships, and destroyed one that wasn’t quite fast enough to get out of the way.

  The long, arched ships pursued the Javelins as the smaller Valkrethi slid away into the vastness of space. There Alliance forces forestalled any attack as the Hud pilots twisted and turned the Javelins at breathtaking speed, and the Buccra weren’t able to get a shot at them. Then the Valkrethi returned, locking on to the enemy warships.

  The Buccra were caught unawares by the tactic. The giant figures looked small next to the enemy star ships. They worked their way round the hulls of the Buccra ships, looking for weak spots. Parts of the hull were soon ripped away, and sections out of the long arches that joined the bridge and the engine room were torn apart. But as fast as the Valkrethi worked to destroy the enemy ships, they repaired themselves.

  One of the Valkrethi tore loose enough of an arch to get access to one of the long, heavy missiles the enemy ships carried there. The giant figure reached in and ripped the missile apart, but the alien device detonated. Warship and Valkrethi vanished together in a blinding explosion.

  The modified Javelins were taking advantage of the confusion among the Buccra warships as the Valkrethi ravaged them. The Javelins began to slam salvos of super-dense slugs into them. One of the enemy ships, hit by concentrated fire from a dozen Alliance ships, finally lost its power to regenerate. A number of Valkrethi closed on the disabled ship and swarmed over it, dismantling it into sections that drifted apart in space.

  CHAPTER 21

  ________________

  The main Buccra force had split off at the Orion planet, and it had just arrived at the Alliance position next to the gas giants in the outer part of the system. The main Javelin force and the Sumerian fleet formed a shield around the giant motherships, and the conflict spread to a second front.

  The long, arched warships sought to get a clean shot at the motherships with their heavy missiles, and the Javelins and Sumerian warships tried to make sure they didn’t. In cases where the missiles were locked on and launched, the warships worked desperately to pick them off with energy beams before they could do any damage.

  Only the fact they were outnumbered six to one stopped the Buccra from destroying the motherships as easily as they had at the confrontation above Uruk, when the Alliance force had been driven off the planet. The speed of the Hud pilots in the Javelins prevented the Buccra from using their shield-penetrating weapons and greater firepower to gain an advantage. Still, the Alliance began to lose ships as the desperate struggle continued.

  Finally, a mothership moved to the front of the fray, and caught a Buccra warship in its bright, blue, plasma beam. The warship tried to repair itself, and for a while it seemed to hold the destructive forces of the plasma beam at bay, but then it melted away under the fury of the attack. Another enemy ship had just been caught in the bright, blue stream of plasma from the mothership when two of the heavy Buccra missiles drove deep within it and detonated, destroying the giant ship from the inside out.

  Cagill knew his forces outnumbered the Buccra many to one, but he also knew that numerical superiority wasn’t going to give the Alliance victory. He decided on a tactical move, and called all of his Valkrethi together to concentrate on the small contingent of Reaper ships. They were stationed some distance away from the areas of engagement, so he brought the battle to them. If the Valkrethi could make the Invardii run for it, he thought they might order the Buccra to break off the attack as well.

  Cagill called three of the gathering Valkrethi to him, and together they locked on to one of the Reaper ships that had retreated a safe distance from the action. Other teams of four also chose their targets. Cagill’s team slid away into the darkness of space, and then closed on their target. The Invardii were going to be involved in this battle, whether they liked it or not.

  The four Valkrethi slid into the plasma shield of the Reaper ship and worked themselves through it. They dropped onto the nearest hub, and then changed their position to initiate a pincer movement. Cagill sent two of his team to attack from below the hub, while he and the remaining Valkrethi prepared to go in through the side.

  The Invardii would know the Valkrethi had landed on the hub, and they would be expecting them to attack using the same tactics as previously – two from the top and two from the side. Cagill, however, believed in the element of surprise, so he had changed the attack pattern.

  He gave the second pair of Valkrethi time to get into position, then he and his number two ripped open the side of the hub. They found themselves under attack moments later, and the firepower leveled against them was worse than any he had encountered before.

  The Invardii had been busy. More heavy weapons had been installed inside the Reaper ship hubs, and these opened up on the Valkrethi as soon as the hull was breached.

  Cagill was punched straight back out of the hub, while his number two was driven sideways, and landed against a wall in a savage crossfire. Cagill instinctively ran diagnostics on his Valkrethi for damage, and then checked his energy levels. He discovered nothing serious in either department.

  Realizing what had happened to the other Valkrethi he punched his way back into the hub, and dragged his number two out of the line of fire. Then they retreated to a safe distance where the Valkrethi could recover, and try to think up a more effective attack.

  A quick comms check revealed the other two Valkrethi were having the same lack of success trying to breach the lower levels of the hub. Cagill thought for a moment. It was time to try a little trick he had been keeping in reserve for some time now. He signaled his number two.

  “We’re going to use the Valkrethi as armor-piercing missiles,” he said. “What sort of shock do you think the internal damping systems can take?”

  The other Valkrethi shrugged its massive shoulders as it drifted in space. It was recovering now from the battering it had taken. “Quite a lot, I would say,” said the pilot. “But how much is too much? I don’t know the answer to that one.”

  Cagill outlined his plan. It was based on a number of unknown factors, but it was the only real option they had. His number two nodded the Valkrethi’s imposing head.

  They turned and left the Reaper ship, working their way through the plasma shields before putting a good distance between themselves and their target. Then they turned back to look at it.

  Raising their optic shields they opened a pathway between their current position in space, and a similar position on the other side of the Reaper ship. If they did this right, they would be at maximum speed when they hit the hubs inside the plasma shields.

  Cagill gave his number two the finger and thumb ‘O’ signal for okay, and they both activated the Valkrethi displacement systems. Moving slowly at first they soon began to pick up speed, and then the Reaper ship’s shields were flashing toward them. There was a moment when it felt like he was punching through something with the consistency of molasses, before Cagill felt a sudden, massive, physical shock.

  When he came round, he’d lost track of his Valkrethi partner. Somehow he had hit one of the larger hubs on the far side of the Reaper ship. It had always been a matter of chance whether he would hit anything at all. The Reaper ships consisted mostly of large open spaces among the many spars and hubs, but luck had been on his side.

  He turned his head to look back into the long, jagged tunnel he had made deep into the hub. Pushing back the metal walls around him, he made enough room so that he could stand up.

  A quick check revealed his energy levels were on the right side of halfway, but he had taken a lot of damage. His Valkrethi body would take a long time to heal.

  Something hit him a glancing blow on the leg, and blasted out a fair-sized hole in the debris below him. He looked up. Damn Invardii were firing down the corridor he had made in their ship
. He stepped sideways out of the line of fire, and his damaged leg folded under him. Before he realized it, he had crashed through a wall, and into a main corridor.

  The main corridors radiated out from the reactors at the center of the hubs, so he must be getting close. Problem was, should he go left or right? He chose left, and dragged himself determinedly in that direction.

  When he arrived at a thick bulkhead, his spirits lifted. Only a major energy source would need something this robust to contain it. He stood up, shakily. He was getting shot up faster than his Valkrethi was able to repair itself!

  He smashed another entrance through the wall beside the bulkhead, figuring the walls would offer less resistance. He staggered forward into a large, open space, and straightened up in front of a tall metal column carrying glowing plasma conduits into the heights above him.

  Yes! This was the place where he needed to be.

  There was a scattering of Invardii along the galleries ringing the inside of the giant beehive structure. They reacted immediately, clearing the chamber as if by magic.

  Taking us seriously now, are we boys, muttered Cagill tiredly. He knew he only had moments before the Invardii brought in one of their gray cannons and trained it on him again. He lurched forward and ripped all the plasma conduits off the closest side of the central column.

  The conduits sprayed the stuff of suns around the chamber, and Cagill knew he was too close, and too weak, to withstand the blast that would soon follow. It seemed to take ages before the reactor blew out, and the hub followed. Detonations spread through the complex of spars and hubs, and then the Reaper ship was reduced to nothing but a spreading ring of debris.

  It was a long, long time before Cagill came around again, and he was too emotionally exhausted to grapple with the fact he was, somehow, still alive. He lapsed back into unconsciousness, not sure if he would ever see the other members of his team again.

  Two days later, Cagill was well enough to be brought up to date on the events that had followed the destruction of the Reaper ship. It was, first and foremost, impressed upon him how close he had come to destroying himself.

  Then Finch told him what had happened after he lost consciousness the second time.

  “You only just made it out alive,” he said. “We had given up hope of ever finding you when a Orion system. You would have fallen into the system’s sun eventually!

  “There was nothing left of your Valkrethi, just the absolute basics of the shield around the pilot and the life support systems. It must have taken everything your Valkrethi had to protect you from the blast. You were no more than a tiny cocoon floating in space when we picked you up.”

  Cagill knew it had been touch and go. It was still hard for him to believe he was alive.

  “The rest of your team followed your example,” continued Finch, “and fired themselves into the Reaper ships like giant, armor-piercing shells. Once they had destroyed another of the Reaper ships the rest left the Orion system.

  “The Buccra stuck it out for a bit longer, but then they must have been called off by the Invardii. I would say they don’t trust the Buccra to do what they’re told without direct supervision.”

  “As my enemies are divided, so my strength multiplies,” said Cagill.

  Finch raised an eyebrow.

  “Oh, just something I once heard Cordez say,” added Cagill. Then he fixed Finch with a look that said plainly he wanted to know the truth about his next question.

  “How did we go against the Buccra?” he asked, in a firm, even voice.

  “Not so good,” said Finch somberly. “If you want to talk about losses we only managed to destroy five of the Buccra warships – and of course your team of Valkrethi took out two of the Reaper ships.

  “Our own losses were much higher. The motherships were getting hammered toward the end, and we lost nine of them, over half of what we had. The Sumerian warships threw themselves at the Buccra ships to protect the motherships, so we lost more than half of them as well.”

  He paused. The Prometheus losses were that much more difficult to talk about.

  “The Valkrethi move quite slowly at the beginning and end of their dipole shifts through space, and the Buccra learned to target them at those times. We took 22 Valkrethi to the Orion planet, and that number’s been reduced to 14 now. Only nine returned after the battle was over, but others reported in during the following hours as they regenerated themselves. Two of the pilots survived the complete destruction of their mounts, protected by the personal shields.”

  That was the most painful piece of news for Cagill. He had trained that group of Valkrethi pilots himself, and now six of them had been killed in action, and there had been others lost before that. He felt responsible somehow.

  “The tremendous speed of the Hud pilots protected the Javelins to some extent,” said Finch, “but there were still losses due to the uncertainties you find in a dogfight. We lost 26 Javelins, out of the 108 we took with us.”

  Cagill let the numbers sink in. They had lost over a third of the Alliance force, in return for five Buccra warships and two Reaper ships, less than ten percent of the enemy force.

  They had also not given away anything about the Druanii, and the Invardii had accepted Orion neutrality under the old treaties. But the cost of those successes had been so high.

  Even worse, the losses among their forces didn’t look encouraging for the final Alliance assault on the Invardii city. But then, he told himself, trying to bolster a small feeling of hope, the Alliance preparations weren’t finished yet.

  The remnants of the force that had defended the rights of the Orion to neutral in the wars among their neighbors prepared to return home. On the way back they would pass another mission, a very much smaller one, that was heading much further out among the stars.

  PART SEVEN: THE DRUANII BASE

  CHAPTER 22

  ________________

  Cordez was bound for the fringes of the galaxy, and he was going there pretty much alone.

  He wished he could have taken Fedic with him, or Cagill, or Asura, or Finch and some of the Prometheus heads. Even one or two of the Regents he had come to trust. But the Druanii had been very clear, he was to come alone.

  He’d protested that one man couldn’t run a star ship, and they had said he could take one more person, as a combination of pilot and navs officer. He had chosen Geelong.

  Cordez didn’t think the limitation on numbers was a matter of security, just the isolation the Druanii preferred. As if two minds in the same room was already a crowd for them.

  The Druanii had made contact with him in a way that was different to what they usually did. Rather than using the Orion as interpreters, and a visual system of contact, Cordez had been subject to a voice speaking out of thin air.

  He had been alone in his home office, and he’d been startled by the animated voice that darted from point to point about him. It was as if an invisible monkey, with the power of speech, had been jumping and climbing on supports he couldn’t see.

  The Druanii had not wanted to use the Orion as translators this time, and Cordez understood why. The Invardii had the coordinates of their planet now, and any activity that didn’t fit in with the Orion ‘neutral’ status would cause major problems. That still left Cordez with a question. Who was the fidgety little fellow he had spoken to, and what did he or she look like?

  Geelong informed him they were now passing the orbits of the outer planets, and the Javelin would soon leave the Solar System. Cordez flicked his eyes upward to the overhead screen.

  He liked to remind himself of the gray nothingness of stardrive. There were barely detectable eddies in the nothingness, and the flickering shapes that formed behind his eyes helped his thinking processes. He blinked in surprise, and then stood up in disbelief, as the overhead screen came alive. Shimmering bands of light chased each other across the screen. They came and went in ever-changing shades of impossible colors.

  Geelong swore, and ran diagnostics fr
om the navs systems. When that didn’t show anything unusual he asked the ship’s central intelligence to suggest reasons for the extraordinary colors.

  The CI came back with an answer immediately.

  “Quantum breakdown effects,” it said, speaking in a warm, rich voice that was a little too regular to be Human. “Supporting evidence: engine efficiency now approaching 200%, sub space communications no longer operative, wavelength shift noted and postulated as quantum physics breakdown at extreme speeds greater than light.”

  “Godsdammit!” said Geelong, checking the engine efficiency. “The engines are running way, way above maximum. We must be traveling at . . .” His voice trailed off as he saw the readout. “We shouldn’t be alive,” he said, at last.

  Cordez sat back in his chair. He figured it had to be the Druanii, and he guessed it was a way for them to speed things up when time was of the essence. There was probably an Invardii force on its way to the Orion planet right now, and he hoped the Alliance force could get there in time. The war was hotting up, and the Druanii were stepping in to help where they could.

  When he had reassured Geelong that they were, probably, going to live through this sudden increase in speed, he wondered how long it would be before the Javelin arrived at the destination the Druanii had chosen. He managed to figure out what the increase in their speed was – close to 100 times the normal speed – but it was almost a day later when the ship re-entered normal space, and the Druanii relinquished control of the stardrive engines.

  Geelong joined Cordez in front of the large overhead screen as the Javelin came out of stardrive. The multicolored hues indicating their enormous speed began to break up on the screen. The quantum effects were replaced by a black, empty sea of nothing.