Inferno Sphere (Obsidiar Fleet Book 2)

by Anthony James

  While Bannerman passed on the message, McKinney began giving orders across the squad’s open channel. He felt galvanised, though he wasn’t foolish enough to think the eventual outcome would be any different. In his mind, action without hope of success was far better than taking no action at all.

  It didn’t take long to prepare. Bannerman closed up his comms pack and shrugged it onto his shoulders. The others formed into a line two abreast and waited while McKinney filled them in.

  “We’re going to meet up with another group of survivors. Our destination is the main command and control area up on level 285. There are a lot of stairs to climb and no doubt a lot of dead bodies. Once we reach our destination, we’re going to send a distress signal to the Space Corps. There’s a chance they might think of a way to get us out of here.”

  “Do they care enough about us, sir?” asked Rubin Musser, the tube of a plasma launcher balanced over one shoulder.

  “I hope so, soldier. As far as I’m concerned, that’s something we can’t influence. Let’s focus on the things we can do.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  McKinney opened his mouth to give the order to move out when he was distracted by a flurry of movement from Corporal Bannerman.

  “Someone wants to speak to us, sir,” he said, attaching a cable from the comms pack into an interface port on his visor.

  “Who is it?” asked McKinney, sensing at once something was wrong.

  “It’s one of the guys in the level 95 primary fab.” Bannerman swore. “It’s the Vraxar, sir. They’ve boarded the Juniper.”

  “Tell them to stay hidden.”

  “It sounds like it’s too late for that. I can hear gunfire in the background.”

  “Shit. Is the line still open?”

  “The line is open, but there’s no one on the other end of it. He’s either run off or dead, sir.”

  McKinney gritted his teeth. The men and women on level 95 weren’t his immediate priority and he’d expected them to remain safe while he got on with things elsewhere. The eventual plan had been to send someone down for them – now it didn’t look as if that was going to happen. Furthermore, it appeared as though the task of reaching the command and control area had just got a whole lot harder with the arrival of the Vraxar.

  “It looks like the Vraxar have decided to act,” he said. “That’s going to make things difficult. I’m damned if I’m going to give up. Corporal Bannerman – fill Sergeant Woods in and tell him to proceed as planned. If we hear from any more groups of non-coms, they’ll need to hole up wherever they think is safe. It’s not like there’ll be a shortage of places to hide on the Juniper.”

  The tension amongst the squad was palpable. McKinney had fought alongside many of them on Tillos. There were a few new faces and he hoped they’d take strength from the others. Another fight against the odds, he told himself grimly.

  “Come on!” he said. “Let’s move out!”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CRACKS WERE BEGINNING to show in Admiral Henry Talley’s usually calm exterior. His primary, overriding emotion was one of frustration. The Vraxar had attacked the Juniper and here he was, way out on the fringes in what was currently the Space Corps’ most capable warship. He ached to be recalled, or preferably, to be confronted by a Vraxar fleet so that he could unleash the Devastator’s arsenal of high-yield weaponry upon them.

  “That would certainly get the Ghasts involved, whether they wanted to or not,” he muttered sourly.

  The Oblivion class Gallatrin-9 was still out there, maintaining a lazy orbit above Roban. The entire rebel fleet was comprehensively outgunned by each of the battleships but they stayed close, as if the Robanis needed to feel they were equal partners. The ES Rampage was due in a few hours and the heavy cruiser had the potential to tip the scales one way or another. For good or ill, he thought.

  Talley had spoken to the Ghast captain Rioq-Tor on more than one occasion. The alien seemed to be in no particular hurry, either to leave or to move things forward. There again, the Ghasts weren’t currently under attack from the Vraxar.

  “They’re here to dissuade us from using force against the rebels,” said Commander George Adams.

  “Indeed,” said Talley. “If the Robanis have told them about the Obsidiar, the Ghasts will want to get their foot in the door.”

  “I wonder if they’d actually fire upon us.”

  “It’s a question I’ve asked myself ever since they showed up, Commander. We don’t need a war on one front, let alone two. Let’s see what transpires.”

  “Why won’t the Robanis speak to you again, sir?” asked Mercer. “I thought dialogue was meant to be the way forward in disagreements like this.”

  “It is. However, there are times when stalling can ramp up the pressure on the other side. The Robanis must be aware of our situation with the Vraxar and they’re hoping that by ignoring us we’ll eventually come to them with favourable terms.”

  “The Ghasts don’t seem to be getting the same cold shoulder,” said Lieutenant Poole. “They’ve made two shuttle visits to the surface in the last twelve hours.”

  “It’s just another lever for the Robanis to pull,” said Talley. “I don’t need to be a politician to see what they’re doing.”

  “It would really screw things up for them if we figured out where their Obsidiar was,” said Sykes. “They’ve effectively stolen it from the rest of the Confederation anyway, so it would only be right if we stole it back.”

  Something in Sykes’s words generated a thought in Talley’s head. His brain raced after the thought and turned it into an idea.

  “You might be on to something, Ensign,” he said.

  “Yeah, you can rely on me, sir.” She looked puzzled. “What was I on to?”

  Talley didn’t answer and sat down to think. The Robanis had told him they’d found a source of Obsidiar and that he would never locate it. Like a fool, he’d believed them and hadn’t spent any time trying to figure out how an outlying planet might have pulled off something the rest of the Confederation had failed at so comprehensively.

  He pulled up a few pages of information from the Devastator’s databanks and studied them. There was definitely no Obsidiar on either Roban or Liventor – both planets had been comprehensively scoured by fleet prospectors. That meant they’d found it elsewhere.

  Talley checked the inventory of spacecraft available to the frontier planets. The warships he knew about already, but aside from that there were a dozen scouts and a few prospectors. It was hardly even two weeks since the declaration of independence and he had to assume it was the discovery of Obsidiar which had emboldened them to act.

  “Lieutenant Mercer? I would like you and your team to check through the flight logs of every lightspeed-capable spaceship available to the frontier rebels. More specifically, I would like you to concentrate your efforts on any vessels that returned from their scheduled missions early.”

  “Yes, sir. We’ll get onto that right away.”

  “Need any extra muscle on that one, sir?” asked Commander Adams.

  “Thank you, I’ll let you know.”

  It wasn’t too long until Talley received his first update.

  “Everything checks out, sir. There are only two reported changes to scheduled missions over the entirety of the last year and neither of those resulted in an early return or an extension for the craft involved. Once we get to the date where they declared independence, they started deleting their flight plans as well as the backups.”

  Talley thought about it some more. Physically stealing a spaceship from the Space Corps was one thing but cutting off its myriad of automated processes was entirely another. It required a great deal of knowledge and expertise to completely sever the ties. So, while the rebels might have control of the vessels, they needed to constantly delete logs and backups and jump through all manner of hoops to keep their activities hidden from the Space Corps.

  “Did you audit the time stamps on the flight data?” he asked. />
  “No, sir. What does that mean?”

  “It’s possible the rebels attempted to cover their path by injecting some new data into the navigational system of one of their vessels after the event. Any new information would have a time stamp added automatically and this time stamp would be more recent than the actual flight time. It’s difficult to hide.”

  The second search took longer and once again came up negative. Talley wasn’t to be dissuaded. The frontier rebels had located Obsidiar using a Space Corps craft. One way or another there’d be a record of it, or some kind of anomaly to highlight an alteration to the logs.

  “We need to see the backups,” he said. “The rebels don’t have the resources or the know-how to have interfered with every single one of those.”

  “The backups are on the Juniper, sir.”

  “There will be others on Roban – I doubt there’s anyone in the rebellion with the authority to make high-level deletions from their main data store.”

  “We’re unable to access them,” said Adams. “They’ve created some new protection gates - I had a tiny little look a few minutes ago.”

  “We’ve got enough Obsidiar processors to crack any home-made walls they’ve programmed in around their surface data storage facilities,” said Lieutenant Johnson.

  “I’m sure they’re monitoring for intrusions,” said Talley. “And it might take us days to manage what you’re suggesting. Once they figure out what we’re up to, the situation becomes even more volatile and unpredictable.”

  “Can’t an Admiral just send off a, you know, high priority give me what I want command to these data arrays and get stuff back?” asked Sykes.

  Ensign Callie Sykes was having a good day, in her own inimitably annoying fashion.

  “No…” mused Talley. “I don’t have the authority to circumvent our security protocols. However, there are times the hand of friendship works where force will not.”

  Commander Adams made the logical leap. “A fleet warship such as the ES Furnace will offer up its own backups under certain circumstances. We might find what we need in there.”

  “They’ve put a block on our access, sir,” said Mercer.

  “They have indeed, Lieutenant. However, if the ship were to be told it was about to undergo routine repairs, we might find it more willing to give up its data.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Lieutenant Poole.

  “Whenever a fleet warship is brought in for repairs, the shipyard technicians need to be able to gain access to all of the onboard systems in order to perform their diagnostics. They can’t actually read the contents of sensitive data, but they can move it around if they need to. In order to facilitate this, the ship needs to be placed into maintenance mode.”

  “Which needs an authorisation code from the Juniper,” said Mercer.

  “Or, failing that, codes from an officer of Admiral rank or greater,” said Adams.

  “Won’t they know we’ve done it?” asked Lieutenant Johnson doubtfully.

  “Yes.”

  “Won’t they see it as a hostile act?”

  “Let me handle that,” said Talley.

  It was easy enough to put the plan into action. Talley simply had the ES Devastator transmit a code to the Furnace. It took a moment for the rebel warship’s AI to acknowledge the command and then it was done.

  “Extract their backups,” said Talley. “I want everything.”

  “Sir, I’ve got Captain Mills on the comms,” said Mercer. “He doesn’t sound too happy.”

  “Wait ten seconds and then pass him through.”

  Ten seconds went by.

  “What the hell are you playing at?” asked Mills.

  An anger had been building within Talley ever since he’d arrived at Roban. Piece by piece it had increased until he realised how powerful were its currents and now it was too much for him to resist. The Confederation was under attack by an alien species whose sole aim was to kill every single living creature in the universe. And here he was, tiptoeing around, acting the diplomat, while the so-called Frontier League played their own games for their own ends. He was sick of waiting, cap-in-hand, to see what scraps might be thrown his way.

  “Since you have prevented my usual access to the ES Furnace’s data arrays, I have placed the warship into maintenance mode so that I can take the information I require from your backups.”

  “You can’t do this!”

  “I can and I am. There are bigger issues at stake than your rebellion and I will not wait here at the beck and call of your council while the damned Vraxar murder our people!”

  “This is an act of war, Admiral!”

  “No, it is an act designed to ensure our survival, Captain.”

  The extraction of data from the Furnace completed.

  “They’ve locked onto us with their weapons, sir,” said Adams.

  “Captain Mills, I didn’t think the Space Corps allowed foolish people to pilot their warships. I suggest you speak to your superiors before you do anything rash.”

  Mills swore, the petulant response of a man out of his depth.

  “He’s gone,” said Mercer.

  “They’re maintaining the weapons lock,” said Adams.

  “It’s his only way of saving face,” said Talley. “Ignore it.” He felt invigorated by taking action and he stalked around the bridge. “Lieutenant Mercer, get to it. I need you to cross-check every one of those backups against every flight record for all of the rebel ships. If there’s a discrepancy in the time stamps, I want to know about it immediately!”

  The comms team got on with it. There was a lot of collation to do and Talley would have liked to assign others of the crew to the task as well. With so many other warships in the area, it seemed better if they didn’t have the distraction.

  This time, they got lucky and found the answer quickly.

  “Sir, look at this!” said Ensign Banks, waving his hand.

  Talley crossed to stand at his shoulder. “What have you found?”

  “A difference in the stamps, sir. Look at the details for this flight log – the current file looks normal, as do these four backup copies of the log. However, there’s this other file here where the time stamp number has an additional decimal place.”

  “This must be the original record,” Talley urged. “Let’s see what happened.”

  It was all there, plain to see. Three weeks ago, one of the Robani prospectors had been surveying planets nearby. It was standard stuff – check to see if there was anything worth having and then record the findings. On this particular occasion, the vessel had aborted its mission twelve hours early and come home. The Robanis had subsequently tried to cover it up by replacing the original flight plan logs with a log showing the prospector at a different place entirely. It must have taken a lot of effort to fake the time stamps of the data, but their efforts were wasted because of a single decimal place which had allowed Ensign Banks to identify the altered record.

  “Why didn’t they just delete it?” asked Mercer. “Like they’ve been doing for everything else since they declared independence?”

  “I don’t know,” said Talley. “I can only assume they thought they’d covered their tracks sufficiently. Maybe we found the only backup in existence that they hadn’t managed to overwrite with falsified data.”

  Mercer looked like she wanted to say more. She was distracted by an incoming message on her comms panel.

  “It’s Councillor Alexander, sir.”

  “He took longer than I expected. Deny his request for a channel.”

  “Cut him off?”

  “Exactly.”

  “That was empowering. He’s gone, sir.”

  “It’s likely to get interesting here in the very near future. Fortunately, we won’t be around to witness it. Lieutenant Mercer, send a brief message to Fleet Admiral Duggan, advising him we’re off to find the pirates’ treasure.”

  “Pirates’ treasure?”

  “He’ll know what it means. Lieute
nant Johnson – we’re going to lightspeed. The target location is planet Vontaren.”

  “Yes, sir. Ready on your word.”

  Talley waited for Mercer to send her message. Once she was done, he gave the order for the launch into high lightspeed. The Devastator burst away from its orbit of Roban and Talley had never been so relieved to see the back of a place as he was then.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  REACHING the Juniper’s command and control levels was easier said than done. The orbital was too large for all but the most long-served personnel to have intimate knowledge of every passage and McKinney was having to rely on a 3D overlay on his HUD for directions. So far, it had given them enough of an edge that the squad had been able to avoid an engagement with the alien troops. McKinney wasn’t usually shy when it came to shooting aliens, but he didn’t want to give the game away early. Once the Vraxar knew about the human soldiers, they’d hunt them with purpose.

  The squad reached the top of a long flight of steps, which ended at a wide landing. There was an opening to the left, which the lead man looked through before announcing the all clear. The squad cautiously entered what was the large reception area of level 214. The walls were clad in a pristine white ceramic and a number of reception desks were arrayed in a semi-circle in front of the stairwell and the nearby bank of six non-operational airlifts. During normal operation, these desks would have presented a formidable barrier to any unauthorised attempt to access what lay beyond.

  The emergency lighting was in effect, adding a sombreness to the area and it was silent, barring the noises made by the squad. Whatever was happening elsewhere on the Juniper, the sound of it didn’t reach this far.

  The soldiers spread out with their gauss rifles in hand, checking along the three exit passages which led from the opposite wall. Huey Roldan and Rudy Munoz hung back to watch back the way they’d come.