Magnus looked round the room. “Any other objections?”.
Chapter 3
Magnus entered the Command Information Centre on Dreadnought thirty minutes after ending the briefing aboard Tor Station. He acknowledged Officers at their posts as he moved through CIC, but his mind drifted to the words Mellor had thrown in his face, underscoring the consequences of getting this wrong.
The Admiralty onboard Sky Keep Station, secure in Avalon’s orbit, would be slow to risk the Kingdom’s long established foreign policy. The urgency needed to avoid a Blight outbreak on the Kingdom’s borders would be blunted by fear of upsetting the King.
He forced himself to slow, taking the four steps up to the raised Commander’s post without rushing or tripping. It would be ill-fated to land himself in Dreadnought’s medical bay with barked shins ten minutes after taking command. Neither was Magnus ready to deal with Tor Station’s and now Dreadnought’s standard issue fleet surgeon. High Guard Fleet medical recruiters had long believed the best medical minds contained more sarcasm than sympathy.
The Commander’s post was a comfortable chair, rigged for acceleration and zero gravity near the point of a quarter circle. Safety restraints flowed over him with a quick order through his mind’s eye, followed by a ship status request. The interface in front of him powered up. Where an empty panel had been just an instant before, the ship’s status board appeared. A brief glance across satisfied him. Dreadnought would depart on time in fifteen minutes. The remaining amber indicators were steadily winking to green. He glanced up at the main display. The universe outside Dreadnought’s hull was there for all to see.
Like many Officers before him, in his early career he had tried using just his mind’s eye to manage his duty station. A very few could concentrate that hard for that long, but most found that the mind’s eye was great for short periods and uncomfortable for long ones. So less sophisticated methods were used. For all the human progress since Earth’s early space age, a real history buff could pick out little of NASA’s mission control could be seen in Dreadnought’s CIC.
Through his mind’s eye, Magnus opened a ship wide broadcast “Crew of the recently resurrected Starship Dreadnought, welcome aboard, this ride has been a surprise for us all. We have a potential threat to our civilisation perhaps even our species. The most contagious Blight strain in a hundred and thirty years has been found. It can overpower our current methods of confinement. For this mission to be a success, we have to strike before the next pandemic can gain momentum. Before the Good Faith Treaty, crews like us crossed known space for situations like this. They came home in triumph, so shall we”.
From the Flight post, two levels down and forward of Command, Greg Jones turned back and theatrically whispered “Skipper, no princess, rebel base or final frontier. Next you’ll insist I don’t crash the ship”. Magnus smiled at him “Ace pilots can find a companion in every port, crash prone pilots sleep alone. I consider you already motivating” then redirected his attention to the rest of CIC “Engineering, drive to standby. Flight, plot a course of the nearest jump point. Tactical, take the ship to condition one. Sensors, get a contact report up on the main display please. Comms, get me, Tor Operations”. Magnus allowed himself a small smile after his rapid-fire orders. Maybe he hadn’t lost his touch after all.
“So whaddayou reckon?”. Three decks down in the otherwise empty crew mess, Paratroopers Gary Thresher and Charles Lincoln were sitting on one of the large sofas, facing a view screen. They were the only members of the crew with no flight duties.
“About what?” said Thresher.
“About inspirational speech number one” said Lincoln.
“Well, it’s uplifting at the end, has a nice call back to past escapades, but he’s bit rusty. I’d say six…........” Thresher continued thoughtfully, between bits of a doughnut “hmmm…..and a half, out of ten”.
“Think the half’s a bit generous myself” Lincoln muttered between sips of strong tea.
Hannah Cartwright spoke up from the Engineering post “Distortion field is spinning up...... field stabilising.... field is propulsive and passed to Flight”. Magnus slightly winced watching her work. Cartwright was one of the few who preferred working without displays. It brought imaginary tears to his mind’s eye just thinking about it.
Dreadnought was running with half her intended crew and Maggie Heisenberg was one of the people who make that work. She had taken over running both the Sensors and Communications posts. Her hands flew across her workspace, the contact report popped up as requested and fluidly she set up a laser link to Tor Station “Skipper, channel is open, contacts report up, standing by”. Few vessels had reason to visit Tor any more. It didn’t take long to detect nothing was out of order.
Christopher Benbow piped up from the Tactical post “Condition once is confirmed across the ship, Magazines are fully loaded, capacitors at full charge”. Magnus broadcast a brief message and an amended set of standing orders to Tor Station. Leaving Mellor in charge after a few hours in a provost’s cell might help him learn a little about command. Or it might give him enough rope to hang himself. It was done now and Magnus couldn’t bring himself to care any longer.
Magnus looked over at Greg Jones “Flight, set a flying course for the last known location of Spirit of Free Enterprise”.
The drive field reached out and twisted space, Dreadnought slid forward, accelerating at a relatively sedate ten standard gravities. The crew felt nothing but the steady tug towards the deck, the para-gravitic systems keeping them alive and unaffected as the ship progressed smoothly through interplanetary space above Tor.
CIC collectively held its breath and Magnus watched like a hawk from his command chair, as Dreadnought prepared herself for the first faster than light jump she’d made in five years. Tor Operations had shut down the jump point blocker. The jump point calmed after the malign influence of the blocker ceased. Now it was viable.
Dreadnought reached the proscribed zone in space, the drive field projectors pulsed and six point eight million tonnes disappeared from Tor space and reappeared just under one light year away in interstellar space, Dreadnought paused briefly in flight, her sensors began a brief active scan, Magnus undertook a short weapons test on a stray interstellar body, tagged it for future visits as I/P 618723/3991, then after a brief reorientation manoeuvre jumped out again.
Four hours and thirty-three minutes after departing Tor Station, Dreadnought jumped into interstellar space just outside the Salmis system. A survey at a range of two light hours confirmed the recorded astro-graphic data.
Magnus didn't take long to decide his next move. Mellor was a pain in the backside, but he was right about the need to preserve the Kingdom's foreign policy and the Treaty of Good Faith. Fortunately, he had options ''Engineering, rig our drive for silent running, Flight, plot our jump in system for minimum detection risk, get us in as close as you to the last known position of Spirit without anyone seeing us, Sensors, get the tail and a pattern of recon drones deployed out after the next jump''. A chorus of acknowledgements ran around the CIC. Dreadnought settled on course for the accretion disc known as Coppinger's Grave Yard.
Five hundred years before Dreadnought’s current mission, an ousted dictator and a small squadron of loyal starships had been annihilated by a multinational fleet in a futile last stand. Ex-President Jeremiah Coppinger had risen to power on an intoxicating platform of populist revanchism in the insignificant system of Townsend. After presiding over an economic renaissance, he led the people of Townsend on a crusade of terror against their nearest neighbours. He eventually drew international umbrage after sparking the third Blight whilst attempting to invade and subdue the populace of High Hebrides.
The major powers of the human sphere had sent a coalition fleet of fifty ships to chase him down. A direct ancestor of Corporal Armstrong had been involved in the desperate final battle inside the dust cloud of the slowly forming gas giant.
In the present, space-time writhed and
billowed for a few microseconds then six point eight million tonnes of starship arrived at Coppinger's Grave Yard, inside the Salmis System. The gas giant core of the accretion disk appeared red whilst the disc was yellow hued. Looking at the main display gave Magnus the distinct impression that his ship was just a mote in God’s own eyeball.
Status lights shifted and whirled, the amidships and spinal launcher spat out a full pattern of recon drones, each setting out on own lonely courses across local space. Right on the very stern of the ship, a small portal irised open, gossamer netting slid out and started gently spinning around Dreadnought's longitudinal axis. as it gathered speed it opened out. The tail deployed over a period of several minutes, opening out like a huge spider web off Dreadnought's stern. It had many limitations, in combat it was positively a hindrance, but it boosted shipboard sensor capabilities by orders of magnitude without compromising stealth.
Laser communications from the drones steadily filled out the tactical display in CIC. When combined with returns from the enormous tail, Dreadnought's Commander gained enviable situational awareness. After forty-two minutes a contact icon popped up on the tactical display.
Harry Bainham had been hunched over his board in the sensors alcove for what felt like an aeon. Dreadnought’s computers did the brute force calculations, but every so often it bumped up against a problem that human judgement solved faster. Three times already he'd nudged the drone management software to avoid losing contact with the recon drones as they slid though the cloud failing to heed its variable nature. The expert system was learning and eventually his diligence paid off.
First, he'd picked up the signature of a torch drive in the cloud. It had been of the right magnitude for Spirit’s class. Then he'd spotted a covert Laurentian beacon heading out of into interplanetary space. The intelligence database onboard confirmed the bearer was genuine a Laurentian asset, but added nothing else.
Bainham called out his contact report with a distinct note of. He’d busted a gut back home in White Spire City to win a coveted off planet role for his hundred years of service. He academic grades had been second to none. He loved his home planet, but knowing the two hundred years after his service were likely to be spent there, he wanted to see the universe. He had fought his way into the Laurentian High Guard, then been selected for the Patrol Flotilla. He had made his boyhood dreams a proud reality. By the time, he’d finished his arduous training, the Treaty of Good Faith had rendered his efforts pointless. He had been lucky to get posted to Tor Station, watching over the Kingdom’s junk yard. The glory days of deep space postings had been over. Battle Fleet squadrons spent all their time in Laurentian space. This was the first time he’d actually done what he'd signed for and he was loving every second.
Magnus stared up at the tactical display, from his seat at the rear of the CIC. He'd directed Greg Jones to plot a stealthy intercept course up through the dust cloud with a slow overtake. This kept acceleration low and minimised the strain on Dreadnought’s emission sinks. Data from the recon probes was processed and the display updated. A size, then class was established. The details of Spirit of Free Enterprise were finally resolved as Dreadnought broke out of the accretion disc cloud.
Chapter 4
Magnus leapt up and strode down the access way through the centre of the CIC, he paused at Harry Bainham’s post in the sensors alcove, long enough to pat him on the shoulder and nod. Simple recognition of good work. He looked over at Hannah Cartwright and her team in the engineering sector. He kept it short “How’s our girl?”. Cartwright looked “Copacetic, Skipper. She’s enjoying stretching her wings after so long sitting about”. Magnus nodded “Five by five, Lieutenant”.
He continued down to the tactical section. There were five posts arrayed around a circular desk top, information could be projected in head through the mind’s eye implant and run up on the holo-display on the desk top. Only two posts were occupied. The ship was running a skeleton crew relying heavily on the ship’s expert system to bridge the gap.
One post had been grabbed by Jack Armstrong. As Dreadnought was mid-operation, he couldn’t just slope off and indulge in alcohol or wear out his small band of troopers with physical training. Instead, he’d decided to jump in and help the short staffed Tactical Department.
Armstrong had seen the galaxy, killing new and interesting people for the last forty years of his career serving the Kingdom. His last tour before being attached to Tor Station had been at drop school teaching small intakes of new paratroopers. He had rotated between field work and advanced courses in zero-g combat, drone control and tactical advising amongst other talents.
After the first jump, he saw how empty the tactical department looked. He also knew an opportunity when he saw it. A lot of the mad plans put in place by the tactical department would be carried out through the blood, sweat and tears of his soldiers. He’d sidled up next Chris Benbow sweating nervously at the Tactical post and offered his services. Since then, both of them had precious little to work with until Bainham found them a target. Now, he found himself, sleeves rolled up looking over options to gain control of Spirit.
Where the Sensors department were responsible for processing information from Dreadnought’s external sensor systems and presenting it in useful form, the Tactical department where to present options to Dreadnought’s Commander and then organise the actions decided upon.
Chris Benbow was deep in contemplation, only realising Magnus had arrived in his section when Armstrong flashed a private message into his mind’s eye. His head flicked up quickly as Magnus sat down at the Round table. Magnus smiled and spoke first “So what are my options Chris?”. Benbow swallowed, trying to sooth his dry throat “Spirit of Free Enterprise is 220 metres long, unladen mass of 700,000 tonnes, a Free Trader class Freighter, 29 years old, hydrogen-helium fusion powered, torch drive, spin gravity, she’s fast for her technology / size class. Her drive section is missing, probably deliberate ejection. Her spin has stopped, she’s in zero-g. She’s flagged to the independent colony of Big Barnacle, a captured asteroid in the Trieste System. Her typical cargo consists of high technology artefacts such as cybernetics, specialised robotics, commercial software, low grade munitions that small colonies find hard to manufacture for themselves. Her crew has changed repeatedly over her time in commission, Dreadnought’s most recent intelligence is 5 years old. Her crew capacity is fifteen with room for another 25 passengers. She is running at her standard cruising velocity now, her spin is off, so any humans left are all in zero g conditions. She’s running much colder than she should be, I think life support and power has been shut off. Her nearest options are the jump point at Salmis 4 or an unstable point in the asteroid belt”.
Armstrong saw Benbow pause for feedback, he gestured gently for the younger man to continue, “The Tact Ad and I have been thinking, we can’t take her out from range because we need intel from any Blight infection and we want to get our asset back. She’s old tech by our standards, even with a full infiltration she won’t see us until we are close, her sensors are old style phased Radar and infra-red, likely with only limited cover around her main drives from her own parasol shield. Our real danger is if she scuttles. She is small, her power generator is correspondingly small. She wouldn’t scratch Dreadnought’s paint, but she could kill anyone on board her. Blight could be in the ship’s crew, hardware or both”.
Magnus looked thoughtful “Have we heard anymore from our asset?”. Armstrong shook his head “No Skipper”. Not for a while now. He stepped back from the board and called Cartwright down to join the meeting.
She dropped down from engineering to join the huddle “The old lady is still ticking over nicely. We’ve got weeks left on the heat sinks at this rate.” She raising her eyebrow and added “So you’ve found your wild goose. What the next move?”.
Magnus looked around the small group “I’m taking 3 Paras over to the Spirit. Dreadnought will close up keeping the drive shield between us and the rest of the ship. She’s o
n her last legs. Something has disabled her and made our job easier”.
He addressed first Armstrong, “We’ll infiltrate through what’s left of the drive section, secure the asset and exfiltrate direct to Dreadnought”.
He then looked directly at his Chief Engineer and then let the other shoe drop “Cartwright, ship’s yours until I get back. I’ve added a note to the log. We’re too short staffed for me to stay behind and mind the store. If this goes wrong and we are not recoverable, you take Dreadnought back to Avalon and report to the Admiralty”. Magnus allowed himself an inner smirk as a look of apprehension crossed her face.
Without pausing he turned back to Armstrong “Jack, get your gear and your troopers, meet me at the main breech”.
Before the objections could roll in, he turned and stalked off toward the armoury, making one last comment over his shoulder, “And Cartwright, don’t let Greg Jones put any dents in my ship”.
Jones glanced over his shoulder at the slightly off put Cartwright and replied with feigned frustration “I scraped one little planetoid, the self-repair handled it fine and he never lets it go. We ducked five missiles with that trick. It buffed itself out”.
Magnus exited CIC and took an elevator to the armoury on the shuttle deck.
He instructed a life support layer then armour to flow over him then seal. He added shoulder munitions launcher, a gauss pistol to his right thigh, a maser carbine hanging off his left shoulder and his psy-blade retracted and attached to his right chest. Jack Armstrong had walked in and started to kit up shortly after Magnus had. Two more Tor Station Troopers, Charles Lincoln and Gary Thresher were standing to one side, taking turns checking their own kit, then their oppo. As Lincoln got to Thresher’s shoulder launcher he joked “Don’t tell me you wore that ‘lucky’ red shirt again”.
The Syracuse Deception Page 3