“What action should we Ghasts take under the terms of our joint agreement?”
“I would like your warships to reinforce our planets. I will have my personal assistant send over relevant details.”
“We will be spread thinly.”
“There is no choice. I will not ask any captain to throw his ship at the enemy. We must do our best to engage cautiously and hope we can gather sufficient numbers to finish the bastards off.”
“Very well. I will pass on the orders.”
“There is something important you should make your captains aware of. If the Vraxar come to our worlds, there may come a time when we send notice concerning the activation of Last Stand. When that warning comes, your warships should enter lightspeed immediately.”
Subjos Kion-Tur narrowed his eyes. “Very well. If we hear mention of Last Stand, we will break off any engagements and go to lightspeed.”
“Thank you.”
The Ghast’s good humour returned at once. “No, Fleet Admiral Duggan! It is we who must thank you for this opportunity to crush the maggot-like Vraxar. We will succeed where the Estral did not and the annals of history will record our victory!”
“I am glad we are no longer enemies, Kion-Tur.”
“As am I. The universe will lay [translation unclear: baskets of fruit] at our feet once we have eradicated the Vraxar!”
Duggan ended the connection and turned his attention to the information on his desktop console. Status reports rolled up the main screen as each warship in the fleet provided updates on locations and new flight paths. The network of military bases throughout the Confederation were now running on Obsidiar backup power.
Sitting at his desk in his quiet office, it was difficult for Duggan to envisage the enormous activity his few simple words had triggered. Maximum alert. Those words meant there would be somewhat more than a million Space Corps personnel looking for guidance and direction. For the vast majority, this would be the first time they’d been asked to respond to such a command.
He rotated his chair in order to see out of the window – there were red lights visible amongst the artificial daylight which covered most of the base. Below, people ran to places unknown, and overloaded vehicles sped to their destinations along the crowded roads. The rain had started and it fell from the blackness of the sky, making patterns through the light and spattering the pavements at the end of its journey.
A shape rose into the sky, the vast, grey underside of an Imposition cruiser cast in relief against the darkness. The warship hung in the air for a second and then it accelerated, creating a series of hollow sonic booms, its immense engines exerting only a tiny fraction of their full thrust. It climbed vertically, gaining speed at an increasing rate as it left the Tucson base far below.
Moments after the cruiser was gone from sight, the first of the four Crimson class destroyers rose from the ground. The second followed and the third, until every one of the parked warships was in the sky, ready to face whatever might come. Duggan closed his eyes, wishing he was with them.
It was not to be, and with a gentle push of one foot on the floor, he propelled the chair into a full rotation until he was once again facing his desk. The communicator was covered in red lights – seventy admirals and members of the Confederation Council who wanted to speak to him. His brain selected one at random – Admiral Tamiko Kruger – and his finger moved towards the comms button.
“Research Lead Marion Norris requests entry into your office,” said Cerys.
Duggan’s finger stopped.
“What does she want?”
“She says it’s important. Very important. The feed from your door sensor suggests she is in a state of great distress.”
Duggan withdrew his finger from the communicator. Marion Norris was the second most senior member of the Projections Team and he had a good idea what she was here for.
“Let her in.”
The door opened and RL Norris spilled through the opening. She was young, pretty and blessed with wild hair and a brain that could solve certain types of theoretical mathematical conundrums faster than an Obsidiar processor. Duggan had seen her do it – it was like the answers just popped into her head. Norris carried a brown folder, from which sheets of ill-arranged paper protruded. She was flustered and she stumbled across the floor towards Duggan.
“You don’t need to bother with greetings, just tell me the facts,” said Duggan.
“We ran the ES Determinant numbers again, sir. The chance of a data harvest went past 100 percent ten minutes ago. They know where to find us.”
“92% was enough to make me issue a Confederation-wide full-scale alert, RL Norris.”
“I realise that, sir,” she said, still trying to catch her breath.
“Now you’re going to tell me you’ve put a percentage to something additional. Something I don’t want to hear.”
“Sorry, sir. The modelling we use required a 100% certainty before it could begin populating the second stage.”
Duggan was aware of the prediction model’s second stage – once it had achieved certainty on stage one it could begin guessing at the Vraxar’s first target.
“Where are they going to show up?”
The answer was exactly what he’d expected. Duggan was a man whose entire life had been a series of progressively higher, thicker walls for him to climb over or simply break his way through. It appeared as though fate wasn’t done playing tricks on him, even in his later years. Death always wins.
“Here, sir. We expect the Vraxar will come here to New Earth. I have derived the percentages and created a table for you to look at.”
“Thank you, RL Norris, that won’t be necessary.”
The voice of Cerys intruded upon the meeting and there was an urgency to the tones which Duggan had never heard before.
“Fleet Admiral, the Retulon base reports the arrival of an unidentified vessel in New Earth orbit. I recommend you follow emergency protocols and make for your command bunker.”
The words sunk in like the serrated claws of a wild animal through the still-living flesh of its prey. Just hours ago, Duggan had been filled with new energy to face the Vraxar threat. In a short time, that optimism had been torn up, shredded and rubbed in his face as a mockery of his efforts to bend the future to his will. Far from being bowed by this new calamity, Duggan found himself laughing in bitter defiance. Whatever twists fate planned for him, he would meet them head-on and do whatever it took to come out on top.
Death might always win, but it’s damned well going to happen when I choose it.
“What was that, sir?” asked Norris.
The question was nearly as shocking to Duggan as everything else which had happened. She can almost hear me think.
“Nothing, RL Norris. We’re under attack. Do you know the routine?”
She nodded and hurried from the office, leaving the folder behind her.
“Cerys, order Tucson ground personnel to the shelters. Then, get me through to Colonel Stinson on the Retulon base.”
“The comms link is down, Fleet Admiral.”
“Is it the link or have the Vraxar destroyed the base already?”
“I don’t know the answer to that.”
“Find out and tell me, damnit!”
There was something wrong with Cerys. The voice of his personal assistant suddenly became much slower, as if there was something chewing up so many of the node’s processing cycles it had none left to formulate a response.
“I…will…keep….”
“What is happening?” he asked, knowing it was a waste of breath.
As he anticipated, there was no further response from his personal assistant. Whatever was affecting Cerys was also working on his desktop console. The real time updates on the screens slowed to a crawl and then stopped entirely. He tried to access another of the base’s many processing nodes, this time on a separate core cluster. The result was the same.
There was a muted pounding on his office door, the
sound of fists striking thick, dense metal. Duggan ordered it to open. Outside was his security team, fully armed and dressed in protective suits. Lieutenant Tom Richards was with them and from his manner he wasn’t in the mood to argue, even with the most senior officer in the Space Corps.
“Sir, we’re leaving. Now.”
It looked as if the short war was already entering its final phase and Duggan had no idea what the next hours would bring. He nodded at Richards and allowed himself to be led away from his office and towards the secure bunker many hundreds of metres below the surface. The bunker wouldn’t help him if the Vraxar did the same to New Earth as they did to Atlantis, but if they planned a longer visit it might buy him the time needed to have a say over what was coming.
Chapter Three
The mood was sombre on the bridge of the Galactic class heavy cruiser ES Lucid. The air was cold, the lights slightly too bright and the crew said little. The deep fission engines thrummed, their soothing sound completely at odds with the urgency of the situation. Captain Charlie Blake paged through status reports from the warship’s critical systems, killing time rather than doing anything useful.
A few minutes after the system-wide comms alert had gone out ordering them into a state of battle-readiness, the reports of Ix-Gorghal’s arrival at New Earth had come through. There were more than thirty Space Corps warships stationed in or around the planet, and the Lucid was amongst a small group of others which were a short lightspeed distance away.
Blake had checked the records – each and every one of his crew had family on New Earth, himself included. There were more than one hundred soldiers in their quarters below and sixty of those also had family. New Earth was a big planet – easily the most populous in the Hyptron Sector - and many people could trace their history back there. In the circumstances, it was incredible how well they were keeping it together.
“How long until we enter local space?” he asked. The countdown timer was on a screen in front of him, but he felt an urge to break the silence.
“Less than one hour, sir,” said Lieutenant Jake Quinn.
“It should only take a few seconds for our databanks to receive the newest information once we exit lightspeed,” said Lieutenant Caz Pointer.
The ship’s systems couldn’t update during lightspeed travel and it was usual practice to have a series of short breaks on the way in order to establish a connection to the Space Corps network.
“Then we can be on our way for the final ten-minute leg of the journey,” said Quinn.
“I hate the waiting,” said Blake. “I could handle it in the past. Now it’s the worst part.”
“I’ve never liked waiting,” said Lieutenant Dixie Hawkins. “Particularly when I know the end of the waiting will see me dumped face-first into a heap of crap.”
“I wonder how our fleet is getting on,” said Pointer.
“Best not to think about it,” said Quinn.
Blake didn’t usually tolerate overt expressions of pessimism, but today wasn’t a day for pretence.
“They’ll hold back until they believe they have a chance to score a kill.”
“What happened to sending in the damage soaks and following up with overwhelming numbers?” asked Hawkins.
“That was in the days when your enemy warships weren’t the size of a small moon.” Blake thumped his clenched fist down hard on the arm of his seat. The padding denied him the distraction of pain and he growled in frustration. “I can’t see a way out of this.”
“The Ghasts will help, won’t they?” asked Pointer. “Imagine what three or four Particle Disruptors will do to Ix-Gorghal’s shields.”
“The Ghasts have plenty of battleships, however I don’t think they’re all equipped with Particle Disruptors. The Sciontrar was new, and the Kalon-T7 with it.”
“Well just damned incendiaries then!” said Pointer, showing the depths of her own frustration. “There’s got to be something that can bring down Ix-Gorghal’s shield.”
“Ideally, something with more finesse than detonating an Obsidiar bomb next to one of our home worlds,” said Quinn.
“They won’t let a bomb off, will they?” asked Pointer. She, at least, hadn’t yet given up hope. It was early days yet.
“There’s only one on New Earth,” said Blake quietly. “That’s classified information, by the way. I don’t think it matters anymore.”
“Can they launch this bomb?”
“It’s not designed for launch, Lieutenant. I’m not even sure if it’s ready yet.”
“If it’s not designed for launch, what did they hope to do with it?” asked Pointer. “Drop it from a heavy lifter onto the enemy shields?”
“It’s called Benediction. A bomb designed to save us even as it turns us to cinder.”
The meaning wasn’t lost on any of them.
“They’d really do that?” asked Hawkins.
“There may be no option, Lieutenant. Which alternative would you prefer?”
Hawkins sniffed and Blake realised she was close to tears. “I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this. That we’d somehow find a way.”
“Don’t write us off yet.” He hesitated, wondering if it was worthwhile giving them false hope. “We have Earth’s Fury.”
“What’s a deep space monitoring station going to do for us?” asked Quinn.
“That’s what they’re pretending it is these days?” said Blake. “It’s not a monitoring station – it’s an Obsidiar gun, designed to fire unstable Obsidiar projectiles at near-light speeds.”
“Will they use it against Ix-Gorghal? Can we expect to receive the all-clear when we enter local space?”
“It’s not ready yet,” said Blake. “It’s close. Maybe they can get it operational in time to give us some support when we attack the enemy.”
“Forgive me if I don’t sound too enthused, sir,” said Hawkins. “If it’s unfinished, I assume it’s on the ground and if it’s on the ground, then it needs a firing angle to hit the enemy. The chance of that happening seems remote.”
“Well, it’s something,” Blake replied. “It’s better than triggering Last Stand.”
“Last Stand?” asked Pointer. She narrowed her eyes. “You mean there’s an Obsidiar bomb on every Confederation planet?”
“Yes, there is. Benediction was the last to be signed off, the others are ready to detonate.”
“Shit luck for humanity,” said Hawkins.
“Shit luck for the Vraxar,” Blake replied. “They’ve found a species which is willing to take whatever action is necessary to ensure either victory or mutual destruction.”
Pointer didn’t look assured. “Will Benediction be enough to kill the Vraxar at the same time as it kills us and destroys our planet? Or will we simply be killing ourselves in order to avoid conversion? Ix-Gorghal’s shield was strong enough to withstand the destruction of Atlantis.”
“I don’t have the answers you’re looking for, Lieutenant. I wish that I did.”
“We’re guessing, sir. We need more than guessing.”
“You know more about Fleet Admiral Duggan than I do, Lieutenant. Is he a man who likes to guess?”
Pointer slumped in her seat. “No. Not according to the records, he isn’t.”
“In that case, you need to rely on history to make your judgement about the present.” He waited until he caught her eye. “And maybe you need to rely on your crew to pull something out of the bag. We’ve done it before.”
She opened her mouth to respond. The anger was gone and she kept the words to herself. Blake trusted his opinion of her and was sure she’d channel her hatred of the Vraxar into action when the time came.
The minutes ticked away and the seconds followed. The countdown timer reached zero and the ES Lucid ripped through into local space, entering an area of Confederation territory which was devoid of planets or any other notable features. The near and far scans were a priority and Pointer finished up quickly. The Space Corps number crunchers were sure the Vraxar had on
ly a handful of warships left in human-held space, so the chance of a random engagement was infinitesimally small.
While Pointer did her job on the sensors, Blake prepared to sift through the expected flood of new information, keeping his fingers crossed there’d be a team working to issue summary data and save him from the hours it would take to separate out the chaff. It wasn’t looking good.
“There’s still no contact with New Earth,” he said. “Nothing in, nothing out.”
“Another Neutraliser? I thought we got the last one,” said Hawkins.
“We think we got the last one in Confederation Space,” Blake corrected her. “This doesn’t look like a Neutraliser, so much as a total comms lockdown.”
“Ix-Gorghal did that to us before,” said Quinn, remembering the time the Vraxar capital ship had kept the ES Abyss and the Ghast battleship Sciontrar held in a stasis beam. The Vraxar had blocked communications using an unknown technology.
“Lieutenant Pointer figured out a way to reach the Sciontrar,” said Hawkins.
“That was a very slow signal,” said Pointer. “It was fast enough for our needs. It wouldn’t travel fast enough for interplanetary communication.”
“What about the fleet?” asked Hawkins suddenly. “Have we heard from the New Earth fleet?”
Blake continued reading, his eyes skimming over a series of reports whilst his chest constricted until it was an effort to suck in the chill air. “They’re gone,” he said, his voice hollow.
“Destroyed?”
“I don’t know. None of the local defence fleet is showing up on the Space Corps network.”
“You’re shitting us?” said Quinn in disbelief.
“I thought they were meant to sit back and observe?” said Pointer. “What the hell were they playing at?”
“We don’t know what happened, Lieutenant. It could be that Ix-Gorghal has a hundred warships in its hold, or it may have simply forced a confrontation.”
“What are we going to do?” asked Quinn.
“We’re going to find out who’s running the show and we’re going to speak to them.”
Earth's Fury (Obsidiar Fleet Book 4) Page 3