“What are they going to do?” asked Ensign Chambers. Everyone knew what she meant – the captain of the Rampage had declared for the Frontier League. In theory, the heavy cruiser’s crew no longer fought for the Confederation.
In the end, there was no doubting what action the Rampage would take.
“They’ve launched missiles,” said Adams. “They’re having the same problems as we are with the Lambda targeting.”
It wasn’t only Lambdas which came from the Rampage’s launch tubes.
“What the hell are those?” Adams continued.
“Nuclear missiles,” said Talley.
“I thought they were banned?”
“The Space Corps keeps its secrets. The Rampage is the last ship in the fleet carrying a stock as well as a mechanism for delivery.”
The Vraxar Neutraliser emitted its energy burst again, treating the Rampage’s Lambdas as dismissively as it had those from the Devastator. The nuclear missiles – ten in total – came from a much earlier line of ballistic technology and they weren’t relying on a direct hit. When they came to within a few hundred kilometres of the Neutraliser, they detonated. The vacuum of space ensured their explosions were comparatively small, but it wasn’t the blast which was intended to do the damage. Huge areas around the Neutraliser were saturated with immense quantities of gamma radiation. It enveloped the Vraxar ship, interfering with its shield generators and burning out many of its critical systems.
“Their shield has gone down,” said Adams. “Targeting our missiles and away they go.”
The gamma radiation shut down not only the Vraxar’s shields, but its missile countermeasures and target lock interference systems. The Devastator got away a full launch from its Lambda clusters. Hundreds of the missiles twisted through space before crashing into the Neutraliser. Six Shimmers followed, striking the enemy ship near to its glowing front nullification sphere. The high-yield explosions tore the spaceship into two separate pieces and the sphere broke away entirely. It plummeted downwards, still sparking with unrestrained energy.
“The Rampage is firing again, sir. Conventional missiles and particle beams.”
Incredibly, the Neutraliser was still operational. It climbed rapidly upwards, rotating as it did and trailing liquid metal in its wake.
“They’re charging for lightspeed,” said Johnson.
“It’s too late for those bastards,” said Talley grimly.
It was a close-run affair. A huge series of plasma bursts ripped into the Neutraliser’s hull. It attempted to escape into lightspeed, but the damage was too great. It leapt forward a hundred thousand kilometres before its engines failed and it was dragged back into local space. The Rampage activated a short-range transition immediately and appeared five thousand kilometres away from the stricken Vraxar ship. Talley checked his console. The Devastator only had enough power remaining for a single SRT.
There was no need to assist. The Rampage showed no mercy and subjected the Neutraliser to a sustained bombardment, pursuing the larger pieces until there was nothing significant remaining. The crew of the Devastator didn’t see it, since they had departed this area of space in order to pursue the wreckage of the Vraxar cruiser they’d shot down earlier. Mercer quickly found it.
“There they are, sir.”
The sensor image was both beautiful and terrifying. The planet Roban turned almost imperceptibly in the background, bright greens and azure blues, whilst the Vraxar wreckage hurtled onwards towards it. The Space Corps was equipped to deal with incidents such as this one, though usually the threat came from asteroids instead of alien spacecraft. Talley activated the Hadron’s in-built interception routines and the Devastator pursued the falling object, closing until it was visible to the naked eye.
With a series of targeted missile and particle beam strikes, the Vraxar wreckage was reduced into progressively smaller pieces. Many of them were deflected away from Roban, whilst others burned up on entry into its atmosphere. Other pieces refused to succumb and they crashed into the surface and the oceans. Talley could only hope they’d done enough and that the casualties would be few.
It wasn’t over yet. The ES Devastator was battered, though not yet broken, and with its Gallenium engines slowly coming online. With its Obsidiar core drained, it wasn’t in a fit state for combat.
“The ES Rampage has locked onto us,” said Commander Adams.
Talley sighed. “Will it never end?”
“Captain Lana McBride wishes to speak with you, sir.”
“Of course. Bring her through.”
“Admiral Talley,” she said in a voice so husky it had to be an act.
“Captain McBride. Why have you locked your weapons onto us?”
There was a long pause, as if McBride had instigated the conversation without having a clue what would come from it. The Rampage disengaged its weapons lock.
“It would be best if we talked first, wouldn’t it?” McBride laughed, the sound as husky as her words.
For the first time in what felt like weeks, Talley knew he was talking to someone sensible and relief washed over him.
He took his seat. “There is a lot to discuss,” he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
AFTER A TOTAL of thirty-six hours travelling at lightspeed, the Vraxar mothership shuddered and grated as its gargantuan fission drive deposited it into local space.
On the bridge of the ES Blackbird, Captain Charlie Blake was taken by surprise. He’d been on edge for so long, waiting for this moment, that it took his brain a few seconds to register the event. He felt sharp and alert, but underneath the disguising veneer of synthetic stimulants and adrenaline he was pumped full of, he knew his body was exhausted and desperate for sleep.
The journey had been as uneventful as one could reasonably expect when one was stuck in the cargo hold of a forty-one-kilometre hostile alien mothership. The Vraxar had spent most of the time attacking the Blackbird with a variety of artillery weapons from the maintenance walkways above and to the side. The automated response from the spy craft’s repeaters kept them from getting too bold and the Blackbird’s Obsidiar shield was able to recharge as quickly as these minor attacks whittled it away. It had been a tense period, though not ultimately one in which the Vraxar had been able to press home their obvious advantage.
Blake had a plan, worked out during the time at lightspeed. Plan was a generous term for his preparations. The reality was he’d tried to cobble a few ideas and best-guesses into something which might work out under the right circumstances. Part of him believed he’d blown his mission – there’d been an opportunity to destroy three highly-significant Vraxar assets and, for various reasons, he’d failed to take the chance. Another part of him was content that he’d done the right thing and that the rescue of the Juniper’s survivors was worth the gamble.
Now he had to make it back home, whilst doing as much damage to the Vraxar as possible. Else it’s a court martial for me, he thought. It wasn’t actually the court martial he feared – it was the look of disappointment he imagined on Duggan’s face at being let down by the captain he’d trusted with this important mission.
“Does everyone know what we’re doing?” he asked the others, as soon as it was apparent they were back in normal space.
“Yes, sir,” they responded in unison, though without a great deal of enthusiasm. It didn’t require a master strategist to spot the multitude of flaws in what Blake intended. Since none of them had any better ideas and since they weren’t in command, Blake felt content in proceeding.
“It looks as if we’ve discovered a flaw in the Vraxar defences,” he said, repeating what they’d previously discussed. “We’re inside what is likely to be one of their most powerful ships – if not the most powerful ship – and they lack the means to destroy us while we stay here.”
“Which means they have to flush us out,” said Lieutenant Hawkins.
“And to do that, they will open these cargo doors and have a number of their other ships w
aiting to hit us with particle beams. We will escape from them and leave behind an Obsidiar bomb as our parting gift.” He looked at Pointer, inviting her to spell out the largest obstacle to their success.
She duly obliged. “Because we don’t know where we are, we cannot immediately go to lightspeed. We will require a short period for our sensors to calibrate and for our positioning system to update.”
“Which will definitely not take very long,” he finished.
“In an ideal world,” she added.
As it happened, Blake had no intention of waiting around for the cargo doors to open – he was going to take control instead of sitting around and waiting to see if the Vraxar did as he anticipated. Having entered through a hole in the mothership’s hull, he was going to utilise this same breach on the way out. The edges of the missile penetration through the bay doors had hardened with the cooling of the metal. There was no way the Blackbird would be able to force its way back out without further action.
Taking care to avoid a collision with the Juniper overhead or the side walls of the cargo bay, Blake piloted the Blackbird upwards and backwards. He was sure they were running out of time, so he sacrificed precision for speed. Proximity warnings flashed up on his screen repeatedly, distracting him from the controls. The external sensor feeds showed the bay from various angles as he manoeuvred the Blackbird along. An occasional explosive flash showed that the Vraxar hadn’t given up their attempts to disable the spy ship.
There was a rumbling through the bridge walls and Blake noticed a slight resistance on the control bars.
“We just hit the Juniper,” said Pointer. “Took out the tertiary backup comms antennae.”
“I don’t think they’ll be needing it again.”
He hit something else and this time Pointer kept her mouth shut. There was no need to worry about a few bumps and scrapes against the orbital. If Blake’s plan worked, it wouldn’t be going into back into service.
Another proximity warning appeared, this being the one he was waiting for – it told him the ES Blackbird was as far along the cargo bay as it could go. He brought the ship to a stop.
“Target the area of the hull breach with our last Shimmer missile.”
“Targeting.”
Hawkins went quiet for longer than expected.
“What’s the problem?” asked Blake.
“Sir, the Shimmer won’t accept the command to lock on.”
Blake swore. “Why not?”
“It won’t target because the Juniper will get caught in the blast.”
“We just blew the Juniper’s doors open with a Shimmer missile!”
Hawkins huffed and puffed, as she tried to figure out what was wrong. “Damn. This last Shimmer missile has more recent software on it than the others. They must have added additional targeting routines to prevent accidents.”
“You’re kidding me?” asked Blake, knowing she wasn’t doing anything of the sort.
“Sorry, sir. We won’t be firing this Shimmer anywhere near the Juniper.”
“We’ll have to wait and see if they open these doors,” said Pointer.
“I’ve had enough of waiting,” said Blake.
There was no choice other than to sit it out. Minutes passed and the cargo doors didn’t open. The crew fidgeted and shifted at their stations.
“What if they’re in no hurry?” said Hawkins at last. “We can’t harm them and they can’t harm us.”
“We’re carrying a huge bomb. Of course we can harm them,” said Blake testily.
“They don’t know that, sir.”
After another ten minutes, Blake was beginning to doubt his predictions and his brain cast about wildly for new ideas. It came up blank and a whispering voice began to suggest that he should simply detonate the Obsidiar bomb and have done with it. He wasn’t scared to die, but it somehow felt wrong that he should have taken part in the daring rescue of the Juniper’s survivors, only to sacrifice them when freedom was within their grasp.
“Any luck with the comms?” he asked.
“Still nothing, sir. Until the sensors calibrate with something outside, I won’t know where to point the arrays.”
Blake gritted his teeth with the frustration and didn’t answer. The whispering voice was just beginning to increase in volume and insistence, when he was suddenly rescued from the inevitable death it offered.
“Look!” said Pointer. “The bay doors are opening.”
That got Blake’s attention and banished all thoughts of suicide from his mind. “Is the bomb ready?” he asked.
“The timer is set at two minutes, sir. I won’t start the countdown until you say.”
They watched the cargo doors. At first, they opened a crack and then stopped for a time. The Blackbird’s sensors tried to make sense of what lay beyond but could only pick up darkness.
“Come on!”
The two doors resumed opening, retracting with effortless smoothness into the walls of the mothership’s hull.
“Activate our stealth modules.”
“Stealth modules active.”
Blake double-checked the energy shield was still active, since it would be a disaster if it was not. There were no errors and the shield was still in place, keeping them protected from the onslaught he expected would begin any moment.
“Prepare the Obsidiar bomb for deployment. Do not activate the timer.”
“It’s ready when you are, sir. Once the timer is set, it cannot be stopped or overridden.”
The unlocked file pictures showed there was nothing elaborate about the Obsidiar bomb’s appearance – it was a dull grey cube with rounded edges, a little more than twenty-five metres along each side and contained in a chute underneath the Blackbird specifically designed to house it. The Space Corps had built five such bombs and the registration number on this one was 000002. The first time he saw the number, Blake asked himself how many they’d been planning to build – how many would have been built if there was sufficient Obsidiar to fulfil the perceived need.
There was a nameplate on this particular bomb and whenever Blake read the words, it made him feel like he was staring at a pile of a billion sad-faced corpses. Inferno Sphere.
The cargo doors opened further, until the gap was wide enough that Blake reckoned he could squeeze through. They stopped again.
“I think that’s it,” said Quinn.
“I can see shapes outside,” said Pointer. “There’s something waiting for us.”
“They must have an angle to fire at us if they wanted, but I can’t believe they’ll aim their weapons into the hold of their mothership,” said Blake. “They want us to come out.”
He was right. The cargo doors opened wider, until the depths of space beyond became clearly visible. The sensors detected many shapes and Blake began to wonder what the hell they’d got themselves into.
“Have the sensors calibrated yet?” he asked. “I can see stars in the background.”
“No, sir. They’re still working.”
With a final, unhesitating movement, the cargo doors slid all the way open, revealing what lay beyond. It was worse than Blake could have imagined. Having committed this far, it was not the time to back down or try to think of an alternative.
“Start the timer and deploy the bomb.”
“Acknowledged. I have started the timer,” said Hawkins.
The bomb dropped from its chute beneath the ES Blackbird. It had a rudimentary propulsion system – one which specifically did not draw its power from Gallenium. The bomb floated gently towards the floor of the cargo bay, where it nestled – a tiny object, lost in the vast expanse of the mothership.
“The Obsidiar bomb is now deployed. We have two minutes to get as far away from here as possible.”
A timer appeared on a screen to Blake’s left and began ticking downwards. He gave the Blackbird’s gravity engines maximum power and pushed the control bars hard along their runners. The spy craft was amongst the most agile vessels in the Space Corps and it
burst forward, carrying them out of the mothership’s cargo bay and into space.
Immediately they emerged, Lieutenant Pointer set the Blackbird’s sensors to the task of pinpointing their location in order that they could go to lightspeed as soon as it was required.
“Oh crap,” she said.
Blake saw what she meant and he too swore at the details brought up by the sensors. It looked as if the mothership had returned to its fleet and the Blackbird had emerged right in the middle of it. There were Vraxar warships everywhere around them – Blake had no time to count, but he saw what must have been ten Neutralisers parked in a row. Nearby was a similar number of battleship-sized vessels, lined up in the same way a child might do with his or her toys.
Clustered around the mothership were other Vraxar ships – a hundred or more of them.
“Our welcome committee,” said Blake.
The firing started. Particle beams flashed through space and hundreds of ultra-heavy gauss turrets opened up. The Blackbird’s advanced stealth modules were enough to make the spy craft an elusive target and although many of the inbound projectiles came close, not one of them hit.
TIMER: 110 SECONDS TO DETONATION.
“They’re holding back,” said Lieutenant Quinn. “We’re too close to the mothership. The further away we get, the more we’ll have directed our way.”
It was a tiny advantage, though one Blake was more than happy to accept. He spun the Blackbird around in the tightest of turns, bringing them closer to the mothership. This wasn’t a show of bravado, he was simply giving the sensors the best possible view of the surrounding area in order that they could calibrate as quickly as possible. He wanted to be at lightspeed long before the Obsidiar bomb went off.
“Where are we, Lieutenant Pointer?” he asked.
He guessed the answer himself, just as he saw this solar system’s vast sun appear on one of the port sensor feeds.
“Cheops! We’re in the Cheops system!” she yelled.
“I can see that myself.”
It made sense – this was the place they’d picked up the mothership in the first place. There had been no opportunity for an extensive search at the time, but it looked as if the Vraxar had mustered a significant portion of their offense fleet here.
Inferno Sphere (Obsidiar Fleet Book 2) Page 23