“What’s the plan when we meet the enemy?” asked McGlashan.
“We hammer them with nukes and conventional missiles,” said Duggan. “Even though we’ll take some damage, we should be able to defeat them.”
“Not too much damage I hope, Captain?” said Lieutenant Nichols.
“My orders come from an Admiral of the Space Corps,” said Duggan. “I’ve been trusted with their execution. If you have anything you wish to discuss, please feel free to get on the comms and speak to whoever it is you wish to speak to. I will not have you questioning my orders when the missiles start flying.”
Nichols gave one of his infuriating smiles. “I’m sure neither you nor your senior officers wish to appear profligate when it comes to the assets purchased with the Confederation’s funding.”
“I will complete my mission,” said Duggan. “I can’t believe you’re still here. You’ve seen what we face, Lieutenant Nichols. I’m surprised you’re not begging your superiors to maintain our war footing.”
“If we believed the military about everything, we’d have to give you so much money there’d be nothing left for any other facilities our citizens like to have provided for them. Warships, tanks and shuttles, Captain. Our people cannot eat them and they cannot sleep in them. Money cannot be wasted when the need is unproven.”
“Did you prevent the tank deployment from the Terminus?” asked Duggan. The bridge went silent.
“I have a job to do, Captain. Please let me get on with it,” Nichols replied, sitting down.
Duggan returned to his own seat. He didn’t know where the accusation had come from – he hadn’t been conscious of thinking the words, yet they had arrived unbidden from his mouth. The more he thought about it, the more the idea developed a twisted appeal. He remained in his seat for a few minutes and then got up, before leaving the bridge. A short while later McGlashan found him in the hold, inspecting the array of tanks and other weaponry within.
“Why would he do that?” she asked.
Duggan didn’t regret his words. “When nothing adds up, I have to ask what other reasons there could be.”
“The Terminus was damaged, sir. Not much of anything worked.”
“Only one tank launched and that was mine. There was no reason for it to happen, Commander. We spent most of the return trip investigating and then all of a sudden we got green lights on the release commands.”
“The AI could have fixed the problem. It’s happened before.”
“I’ve seen enough strange things happen to accept there’s not always an easy answer. Still, it seems peculiar for only my tank to launch and for everything else to remain in a failed state until a short time before we returned to the Juniper. It’s conceivable that Lieutenant Nichols has codes to lock down the assets his department claims to manage.”
“What you’re suggesting is that he tried to murder you?” she asked, uncertainty clear across her features.
“No, Commander. I despise the man, yet I can’t see why he’d want to kill me. I think there’s a power struggle going on somewhere in the echelons above me. Nichols has greater power than his Space Corps rank suggests. It could be as simple as one organisation trying to discredit another.”
“In the middle of a war?” she asked. “They could have picked a better time.”
“These things never stop, Commander. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen. You heard Nichols – he talked about money, rather than the extermination of our species. He expressed scorn about the military and how much we could be believed. If he’s as blinkered as he sounds, he may think it’s his duty to undermine us at every opportunity. The worse we look, the better it is for him. In his eyes, the Ghasts are neutralised and the extent of the Dreamer threat is undetermined. What better time to try and claw back some of the money invested into our warfleet?”
“Whatever it takes?”
“I don’t know,” said Duggan at last. “It’s the only reason I can think of for the launch failures on the Terminus. I can’t be certain of his motives, so I’ll have to give him the benefit of the doubt for now.”
“I suppose if you’d died on Trasgor and the mission had failed, the Space Corps would look incompetent,” she said.
“Maybe. Or maybe he’s just an overzealous bastard who’s acting outside his orders.”
“I’ll try and keep an eye on him,” said McGlashan. “I can record what commands he makes from his console. If he gets up to any funny business, I’ll throw him into space myself.”
Duggan took a deep breath. “I found bodies in the pyramid on Trasgor.”
McGlashan looked at him closely, aware he had more to tell. “Dreamers?”
“Several of them were burned beyond recognition. There was one which wasn’t - the very last one I found. It looked like a Ghast.”
Her eyes widened. “What does that mean?” she asked.
“It throws everything we know out of the window. Other than that, I have no idea what will come from it. I told Admiral Teron. He believed me, yet he wants more proof. We might find that proof where we’re going.”
“How can the Ghasts and Dreamers be working together? The Dreamers have been equally hostile to both of us.”
“I really don’t know. There’s got to be an answer. Nil-Far acted so strangely once he realised what was on Trasgor. He knew something and he didn’t want to tell us.”
“You like Nil-Far.”
“I’m not sure like is the best word for it. I saw something in him that made me feel hope our two races could finish this war. I thought if there were others like him, we may have a chance for a working peace. After what happened on Trasgor, I am utterly confused.”
“That makes two of us,” she said, trying to smile. “What happens if we find more Ghasts in this next pyramid?”
“It’s going to become much harder to make a lasting peace. There’s no way we’ll be able to trust them. We’ll build up the fleet until we feel safe. Eventually hostilities will resume one way or another. Someone in the Confederation Council will ask why we have the Planet Breaker if we aren’t going to use it. I’m sure you can guess what will happen.”
“What about the Dreamers?”
“They’re the big unknown and the greatest threat we face. If they need new worlds to live in so badly that they’ll throw themselves through a wormhole to find them, I dread to think how numerous they are.”
“At least if we’re told to build up the fleet, it’ll put Lieutenant Nichols out of a job.”
“Every cloud has a silver lining,” said Duggan.
They returned to the bridge and settled down to their usual duties. Duggan occupied himself by running through the logs of the previous encounter with the Dreamer warship. The few examples he’d seen so far showed their vessels to have flat, rounded noses, with broad struts running parallel to a low-slung main hull. They looked delicate in a way, as if they lacked the mass to hold the weapons Duggan knew they carried. In comparison, the sleekest of the Space Corps ships looked heavy. Not quite clumsy, but lacking in flair. The Corps had always built for purpose, rather than to make their ships look pretty. Duggan wondered if the Dreamers’ technology was so advanced they had the luxury of building their ships to impress visually as well as being able to destroy. Ultimately, it wasn’t important for him to know.
Over the next couple of days, Duggan spent time with the soldiers onboard. There hadn’t been much opportunity to speak to them on the Terminus and he liked to put names to faces. Everyone looked the same in their spacesuits and he preferred to know who he was talking to. The troops had accepted Lieutenant Ortiz, having been initially resistant. Duggan hadn’t doubted for a moment she was capable of handling them, else he wouldn’t have asked her to do so. When they returned after this mission, he planned to recommend her promotion to lieutenant be made permanent.
With the inevitability of time, the five days passed. On the bridge, Duggan took his seat, gave his instructions to the crew and waited for the AI to decide when it wa
s time to disengage the engines and put them into normal space.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“I’m detecting gamma radiation twenty thousand klicks to starboard,” said Massey.
“There’s something else,” said Perry. “Wreckage at about a hundred thousand klicks.”
“Wreckage of what?” asked Duggan. “Tell me what’s out there!”
“Need time,” said Chainer, his head down in concentration, an empty can of hi-stim on his console nearby.
“We might not have any time,” said Duggan.
“Our comms are down,” said Perry.
“Activate the backup systems.”
“Switching over now,” said Chainer.
“Weapons systems ready to fire,” said Reyes. “As soon as we’ve got eyes on the target.”
“Do we have any of our ships in the vicinity?” asked Duggan.
“The Vestige and the Brazen have just arrived,” Breeze told him. “Their fission signatures have come up on my screen.”
“Send them a red alert. Presence of hostiles,” said Duggan, hoping the rest of the fleet had been sharp enough to activate their own backup comms.
“The Furnace and Extraction got here before us,” said Perry. “Two hundred and fifty thousand klicks off.”
“Damn they didn’t come in close enough,” said Chainer. “Sir, I’ve got a confirmed sighting of a Dreamer warship. It’s more than two klicks long - the same type we saw before.”
“I’m reading it,” said McGlashan. “Just out of Lambda range.”
“Lustre and Paranoid are here, sir,” said Perry. “Lustre at fifty thousand closer to the enemy and the Paranoid twenty thousand further away.”
Duggan swore loudly and banged his fist against the bare alloy of his console. “This is meant to be a military operation. We’ve come in spread across half of the damned galaxy!” He glanced at one of his screens. The ES Rampage was fifteen minutes out from Kidor, with the rest of the group scattered all about. He didn’t have a chance to open his mouth again before red dots appeared across his tactical screen.
“The Lustre’s launching her nukes, sir,” said Reyes. “Six Lambda-mounted warheads fired, along with sixty conventionals. They’ve disabled the targeting. There’s zero chance of a unguided warhead strike from that range.”
“Fifty missiles coming in response from the enemy,” said McGlashan.
“The wreckage is the ES Fencer, sir,” said Massey. “Evidence suggests they got burned up by a beam strike.”
“I’m bringing us into range,” said Duggan, hauling on the control bars. “I want those bastards to be swimming in so much radiation their home world can see them glow. Our other ships should know what to do. Lieutenant Perry, get in touch and remind them, just in case they’ve forgotten.”
“Aye sir!” said Perry. He’d been timid at the start, though his confidence had noticeably grown since the first time he’d met Duggan.
“The Vestige has launched as well,” said Reyes. “Six more nukes and another cloud of Lambdas.”
Duggan called up a sensor feed onto the main bulkhead screen. It showed the Lustre, which was the closest to the enemy vessel. The image sparkled with pinpricks of silver light. The Anderlecht had launched countermeasures and the shock drones interfered with the Rampage’s sensor readings. The cruiser’s Bulwark projectiles were tearing up the sky around the vessel as well, with four out of six firing at the incoming missiles.
“Not enough to stop fifty missiles,” said Duggan to himself. He pushed the control bars harder in a pointless effort to extract more speed from the Rampage.
“Beam hit on the Lustre,” said Breeze. “Damage unknown.”
More than just the beam weapon hit the cruiser. Spheres of white appeared, partially hidden by the vessel’s hull.
“Several successful missile hits,” said McGlashan. “I can’t tell you how many exactly, since their Bulwarks might have knocked out a few at the last moment. The Lustre is probably out of the fight.”
“None of their Lambdas hit,” said Reyes. “They’ve remote-detonated their nukes. I don’t think they’ve come close enough to disable the enemy shields.”
“I’m feeling distinctly under-powered,” said Chainer as he watched events unfold on his sensor feeds. “Bring back the Dretisear.”
“Unfortunately, you’re right, Lieutenant,” said Duggan, his eyes not leaving his console. “I hadn’t anticipated we’d be taken by surprise and I’d hoped to combine our firepower. Instead, we’re spread out and easy pickings.”
“Luck’s only great when it’s with you,” said Chainer. “Otherwise it’s like a kick in the balls with a hobnailed boot.”
“Focus, Lieutenant,” warned Duggan.
“We’re in range,” said McGlashan.
“Fire Lambdas only,” said Duggan. “Keep the fast reload till we’re closer. Let’s see if we can overload their countermeasures with numbers.”
“One hundred and twenty missiles away,” said McGlashan.
“They’re launching more missiles. Two waves of fifty,” said Reyes.
“One for us and one for the Vestige,” said Duggan. The Lustre was disabled, though not yet destroyed. Luckily for the crew, it appeared as if the Dreamer vessel had decided to concentrate on the other inbound threats.
“The Vestige scored a hit,” said Chainer. “Bang on their shields.”
“One hit on a warship that size isn’t going to cut it even if they didn’t have shields,” said Breeze.
“Six more nuclear detonations in the vicinity of the enemy,” said Reyes.
“There are fluctuating readings from their shields,” reported Chainer. “Something’s given them a shock.”
“Shields down?” asked Duggan. “We’re still too far away.” It was becoming painfully obvious how under-equipped they were for this encounter. The Dretisear had brought two weapons that could damage the Dreamers. The Space Corps warships could only fire nukes and keep their fingers crossed.
“The enemy ship is coming towards us,” said Duggan. “Maybe we look like the biggest threat.”
“Their course will take them near to the Lustre,” said Chainer.
“We just took a beam hit on the nose,” said Breeze. “I hope those nukes are well-insulated.”
“They are,” said McGlashan. “We’ve lost some of our front tubes, though.”
“How long till the other ships get close enough to fire?” asked Duggan.
“Minutes,” said Chainer. “Quite a few minutes for the Extraction and the Furnace. They won’t get here before it’s over.”
The enemy missiles approached the Rampage at a terrifying speed. Duggan tried his best to time it right and swung the spaceship at an angle which allowed more of their Bulwarks to fire. The grumbling of the cannons echoed through the bridge.
“Countermeasures away,” said McGlashan. “Plenty of shock drones for their missiles to find a way through.”
Several pairs of eyes watched the inbound warheads and there was more than one release of pent-up breath when the Rampage’s countermeasures dealt with all fifty. The Dreamer missiles were fast and with a good range, yet they didn’t seem vastly more advanced than the Lambdas. In fact, Duggan thought, the enemy missiles were in many ways inferior to what the Ghasts possessed. The Dreamer beam weapons were exceptionally powerful but they weren’t a game-changer. It was the energy shields which made the difference.
“The Vestige has taken a couple of hits,” said McGlashan. “No way to confirm the damage yet.”
“Our missiles have passed by the enemy warship,” said Reyes. “No hits.”
“I’ve detonated the nukes,” said McGlashan. “That’s got to be close.”
“There’s a shuttle launch from the Lustre, sir,” said Chainer. “They’re abandoning ship.”
“Are they so badly damaged?” asked Duggan.
“Must be,” said Breeze. “There’s a lot of heat spilling off them.”
The tactical screen was now a mess
of pin-point lights. Lambdas poured from the Rampage’s remaining forward tubes, followed by four nukes. The ES Vestige continued to unload from its own arsenal, while the ES Paranoid had come close enough to fire its two missile clusters. The enemy ship responded with a barrage of its own, each wave consisting of exactly fifty missiles, spaced out at irregular intervals.
Another particle beam struck the Rampage, near to the previous one. Red alerts appeared on the bridge status displays and a siren began its alarm. Two missiles penetrated the barrier of countermeasures, crashing into the side of the warship and tearing ugly holes through the armour.
“One of our missiles scored a hit,” said Chainer. “Their shield is still up and looking as healthy as ever.”
We’re going to lose this, thought Duggan. He didn’t speak the words out loud. Instead, he ordered McGlashan to use the rapid reload and fire the Lambdas as quickly as possible. She acknowledged the order and missiles continued to spill from the warship’s launch tubes.
“We’ve received another missile hit aft,” announced Breeze. “Our engine output is falling. If we take another one there we’re screwed.”
“The Lustre’s moving, sir,” said Chainer. “They must have left someone onboard.”
The news caught Duggan by surprise. Sure enough, the large dot representing the Anderlecht was moving at a decent speed. “Going fast too, from the looks of it,” he said.
“Are they trying to ram the enemy?” asked Massey in shock. “There’s no way they’ll be quick enough!”
“They’ll get close,” said Chainer. “The enemy’s changed course to avoid an interception.”
Duggan still had his eyes on the tactical screen. The dot representing the Lustre vanished without warning. “What?” he asked.
“The Lustre has exploded, sir!” said McGlashan. “What the hell?”
Duggan cycled through the options on his tactical display and saw a vast cloud of radiation, expanding at enormous speed away from its centre. The cloud engulfed the Dreamer vessel and continued beyond.
Chains of Duty Page 16