“They’ll need to bring a long tow rope,” said Hawkins.
“None of the replicators have failed, so we won’t go hungry.”
Blake wasn’t sure what made him notice it. There was an object on the tactical display which the sensors had flagged as just another rock. This one was travelling on a course that wasn’t quite a straight line from the centre. That in itself wasn’t unusual – many pieces of debris had collided with others and deflected onto new trajectories. However, the speed of this object meant that it should have overtaken the Blackbird several minutes ago.
“Lieutenant Pointer, can you give me some more information on Tactical Object #318224578? It’s two hundred thousand klicks to our rear.”
“One moment, sir, I’m not able to get a clear view of it.” Pointer furrowed her brow and then swore loudly. “It’s a Vraxar ship.”
Blake wasn’t a man to give up, but at that moment he felt something akin to despair. “Have they detected us?”
The answer was no surprise.
“Yes, sir. They are definitely heading our way.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t think I can believe it. It’s the battleship that accompanied the mothership the first time we shadowed them around Cheops-A.”
“Activate our energy shield.”
“Shield online,” said Quinn.
As the Vraxar battleship came through the rubble, the Blackbird’s upper sensor arrays resolved more details. The enemy ship was badly damaged, with huge chunks of its plating burned away and the rest of its hull blistered. The fact it hadn’t entered lightspeed in order to close the gap suggested it no longer had that capability.
Usually, Blake would have fancied the ES Blackbird in a race against pretty much anything. At the moment, it was so much down on power, the enemy battleship was closing on them – slowly, yet inevitably. Watching the aliens draw near, Blake felt his hatred for them rise. Whatever his emotions, he couldn’t escape the truth of his helplessness to avoid what was coming.
A particle beam struck the ES Blackbird’s energy shield.
“Not much power behind that one,” said Quinn. “Maybe their ship will fail before they reach us.”
The Vraxar fired a second particle beam.
“Why can’t they just piss off?” said Pointer.
“They don’t know when they’ve been beaten, do they?” said Hawkins.
“How are you getting on with the fission drive, Lieutenant Quinn?” Blake asked loudly, cutting across the inconsequential insults directed towards the Vraxar.
“Give me six hours and I’ll give you ten minutes at lightspeed, sir.”
It wasn’t going to be enough. The Vraxar battleship forged onwards, leaving a trail of metal dust and positrons behind it. Blake was sure it was too badly damaged to defeat anything larger than a fleet destroyer, but it was going to be more than enough to destroy the ES Blackbird. There was no real benefit for the aliens in this pursuit and he wondered if the Vraxar experienced emotions such as anger and the need for vengeance.
The particle beam stabbed across the intervening space again and again. The Blackbird’s energy shield fell steadily - each attack it absorbed removed eight percent of its total. Death was coming and it was coming soon. The crew worked hard to figure out how to get something from the fission engines. It was no good – as Lieutenant Quinn had said, it was going to take hours to bring them online.
“There’s no point in running any longer,” said Blake. “Who wants to go down in a blaze of glory?”
“Not particularly,” said Hawkins. “I was hoping to die on a sun-drenched beach somewhere, next to an empty plate of lobster tails in garlic butter.”
“How about death caused by ramming a Vraxar battleship at high speed?”
“No lobster tails?”
“Sorry.”
“Let’s get on with it, then,” she said.
“Any other objections? I don’t think it’s a good time to ask the Juniper’s survivors.”
“No objections, sir,” said Pointer. “It’s been nice working with you all.”
He smiled. “Yes, it’s not been too bad, has it? We got a few things done.”
Blake didn’t say anything more. He grabbed the control rods and pulled them over to the side, shutting off the autopilot in the process. The Blackbird grumbled and the metal flexed and groaned. It wasn’t anything like as nimble as usual and it took a painfully long time to come around. With their nose pointed back the way they’d come, Blake took aim at the Vraxar ship.
“There’s a fission signature, sir,” said Quinn. “Correction: there are overlapping signatures. We have several spaceships incoming. They’ll land close by.”
Blake knew the answer before he asked the question. “Ours?”
“No, sir.” Quinn’s voice climbed an octave. “I think it’s Ghasts!”
The Ghast vessels materialised into local space. Pointer got a sensor lock and brought them up on the main screen. The crew could only stare in awe.
“Oblivions,” said Blake. “They sent three Oblivions.”
“With Obsidiar cores,” said Quinn.
The Ghasts were not an artistic species, at least not in the same way as humans recognized the word. However, there was something about the design of their spaceships that captured a harsh, terrible menace and beauty. Their battleships were incredible to behold – streamlined wedges of metal, bristling with turrets and missile clusters. The Ghasts were far less numerous than humanity, yet their weapons and spaceships were a match for the best in the Space Corps.
The Oblivions began firing upon the approaching Vraxar battleship. As well as their missiles, they used something Blake had not seen before. The Ghasts were masters of incendiary technology and this new weapon caused the vacuum around the Vraxar ship to erupt in blue-tinged plasma flames. The Ghast particle beams darted into the fire, igniting the already-damaged hull of the enemy ship.
The Vraxar didn’t even attempt to break off. It was so obvious they were utterly outmatched that they continued on their same course, firing the same single particle beam at the Blackbird. We’re the consolation kill, thought Blake as he turned the spy craft onto a new heading.
The enemy battleship failed. It quickly broke apart under the bombardment and its burning wreckage split into many pieces. The Ghasts didn’t stop and they continued firing until there was nothing recognizable left of the Vraxar ship.
Blake glanced down at the state of the Blackbird’s energy shield: five percent.
“Can we speak to the Ghasts?” he asked.
“We have inbound comms, sir,” said Pointer.
“Patch them through.”
“Captain Charlie Blake, I am Tarjos Gor-Lon.” The Ghast laughed without a hint of mockery. “You have caused much destruction. It has brought us great pleasure to see the aftermath.”
For some reason, Blake couldn’t see the funny side. The Obsidiar bomb had obliterated a huge number of Vraxar warships and an entire planet had been destroyed. There were positives to the situation, but he didn’t feel like laughing.
Blake couldn’t think of a suitable response, so he kept it simple. “I’m glad you arrived. Thank you.”
“We are allies now, Captain Charlie Blake! The Confederation and the Ghast Subjocracy. Before we are finished, these Vraxar will wish they had lost to the Estral!”
The conversation didn’t last long and when it ended, Blake stood and faced the others of his crew.
“That was by far the hardest week of my entire life. Now that it’s over, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry,” he said.
To his surprise, Lieutenant Pointer burst into tears.
REFLECTIONS
Fleet Admiral Duggan sat in his chair. The evening sunlight flooded in through his window, lending a brightness to one half of the room and leaving the other half in gloom. In a way, it reflected his mood.
“Why must every success have a failure to counterbalance it?” he asked. “Who makes up the rule
s?”
“The Juniper is gone,” said his wife. “The Vraxar took it and they paid the price. They had enough ships at Cheops to take out half of the Confederation and now they’re destroyed.”
“A steel toecap in their metal balls,” said Duggan with a sudden laugh. “That’s how Captain Blake described it.”
“You like him, don’t you?”
“I see the potential.”
“He’s the same as you and different at the same time.”
“He’s a carefree version of a younger me. The man I could have been.”
“Is it how you wanted to be?”
“No. We are who we are and I don’t regret my past.”
She smiled, casting her own rays of light upon him. “I’m glad to hear it. Now what is next for the Confederation?”
“We’re hearing the right noises from Roban and Liventor – the Council are confident they’ll return to the fold. It’ll be stormy for a time, but fear of the Vraxar will keep them in line. The Obsidiar was their only bargaining chip and we’ve taken that away from them.”
“Was the price worth paying?”
“For a full military alliance with the Ghasts? They’ll be worth every ounce of the Astrinium’s Obsidiar.”
“For the first time in my life, everyone’s pulling in the same direction. I mean not just pretending – really going for the same thing. We’re going to win.”
“I’ve always loved your optimism. It’s the perfect foil for my dwelling on the negatives.”
“When will the evacuation of Atlantis begin?”
“Tomorrow. The projections guys reckon there’s a good chance we’ve cleared the Vraxar out of the area. The Interstellars should get the time they need on the surface.”
“After that?”
“We wait and we prepare. The Vraxar aren’t gone. They’ve beaten every species they’ve encountered up until now and they have no choice other than to keep at us. Once they’ve defeated us, they can use the bodies of our dead to replenish their numbers and begin the cycle again.”
“The Space Corps has the right man for the job,” she said.
“I was beginning to have doubts. Those doubts are fading and now all I feel is anger. We have Obsidiar and we have the Ghasts. Captain Blake’s victory at Cheops buys us some time. When the Vraxar return we will give them much more than a bloody nose.”
The voice of his personal assistant Cerys intruded. “Councillors Stahl and Dawson wish to speak with you, Fleet Admiral, about a matter of some urgency.”
“Aren’t all matters urgent?” Duggan replied. “Bring them through to my communicator.”
His wife stayed for a while, listening to the conversation. Duggan had always been a man with his inner demons. When the time came, he always fought through. As he spoke to the two councillors, the tones of his voice were strong and confident. Whatever the Vraxar brought, they were going to find in Duggan a wall of solid iron which wouldn’t flex an inch and wouldn’t break. This was going to be a war they would wish they never started.
Sign up to my mailing list here to be the first to find out about new releases, or follow me on Facebook @AnthonyJamesAuthor
Table of Contents
Title Page
Contents
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Reflections
Inferno Sphere (Obsidiar Fleet Book 2) Page 25