by Alex Kings
“Yeah … but that happens all the time, doesn't it?”
Hanson couldn't help smiling a little. “It does rather, doesn't it?” He sighed, and looked over them once more. “Look, I know you're both capable of looking after yourselves. You've been doing it for god knows how long. And I know that's what you're used to. But now you have this crew at your disposal. You're not alone.”
He sat back in his chair. Any notion that this might be a disciplinary meeting, any remaining oppositional atmosphere had dissolved.
“I know,” said Agatha quietly. She looked Hanson in the eye. “That's why I wasn't about to let that bastard get away.”
“I understand,” said Hanson. “But right now the whole galaxy's counting on us. I can't afford to lose you. Either of you.”
Agatha smiled faintly. “Alright. I'll try and remember in future.”
Hanson nodded. “Dismissed.”
When they'd gone, he headed to the CIC. “How are we doing?”
Lanik looked up from the command console. “We've just got a call from the Firmament. The Tethyans have finished their calculations, and Yilva's been looking over the results.” He called up something on the display. “We've found their backup base.”
Chapter 71: The Return
After the Firmament had offloaded its Petaur passengers on a nearby Tethyan colony, they had assembled a fleet of all ships that could get there in time: A further five Tethyan battleships, the angular grey dodecahedron of an Albascene battleship, and an Alliance dreadnought called the Indomitable.
The nine ships held formation at the reconnaissance stop outside the system and watched.
The star was a bloated red giant. The system itself, a few small balls of rocks dominated by a gas giant that truly earned the name. It was three times as big as Jupiter, an immense banded atmosphere of swirling, poisonous storms.
And, like a mote of dust by comparison, an outpost and a few IL ships orbited around it.
“Sir,” said Miller. “We're getting a call from the Firmament. They want you to lead us in.”
Whatever reason the Tethyans had to let him lead them, Hanson was sure they could organise themselves if anything went wrong. But he wasn't going to let that happen.
“IL have shown they're not willing to do things the easy way,” he said. “We won't let them escape again. The moment we jump in, we attack. I want crippling shots if possible. Take out their jump engines, and don't destroy them if you can help it. We make sure no-one can run. Then we talk. Our intel is going to be a few hours out of date, so the battleships need to jump in formation, surrounding the planet. We can't let anyone get away because they happened to be on the far side of the planet.” He looked around the CIC. “Let's finish this. Jump.”
“Prepare for jump,” Miller said into her console. “All hands prepare for jump. Five … four … three … two … one.”
Ahead of them, a wormhole mouth inflated, then rushed forward. The Dauntless creaked and groaned. Then they were through.
On the displays, the gas giant filled half the field of vision: A giant plain of knotted clouds and storms in a dozen shades of brown and red ochre. The closest Tethyan battleship looked like a tiny blue dot at these scales.
Tactical displays immediately started piping information in.
“We've got three frigates and a luxury liner in the vicinity,” reported Dunn.
“Shields up. Simultaneous firing solutions on all of them,” said Hanson. “Remember: Engines first. Kinetics, lasers, and warheads.”
“The frigates are returning fire.”
“Suppressive fire. Hit the closest with the cannon.”
Distant booms echoed through the bulkheads. A sphere of flicking sparks surrounded the Dauntless as lasers boiled kinetic missiles into vapour. The silvery thread of the monopole cannon tore into a frigate's engines.
“Take out the next one,” Hanson ordered.
The second frigate came in two as the cannon hit it.
“The other frigate has ceased fire,” reported Dunn. “Its jump engines are down. So are the liner's.”
“Any other hostiles nearby?”
“No, sir.”
“Check in with the rest of the fleet.”
Miller spoke into her console, calling for updates. “Everyone's done their bit. Six ships destroyed, nine subdued. No other remaining hostiles in the area.”
Fifteen in total. They were still missing three, then. Though it was possible some had been lost on the journey over here.
“Have the Tethyans send a battleship above the ecliptic and make sure no-one's hiding behind a moon somewhere. And prepare boarding teams for the surviving ships.”
“Sir,” said Dunn. “I'm picking up a disturbance in the planet's atmosphere. It looked like it might be a storm at first, but the readings are wrong.”
“Let's see,” said Hanson.
One display showed a visual: Layers and layers of thick, puffy brown and cream clouds. The one beside it reported anomalous readouts, showing raised levels of radiation and unusual currents in the atmosphere.
As Hanson watched, a ripple ran through the clouds. On these scales, it looked glacially slow, but the display said it was travelling at the speed of sound. A moment later, a second shockwave ran the other way, then a third. The clouds churned. Something beneath had just hit hypersonic velocities.
When it emerged, it was only visible as the point of a conical shockwave in its wake.
“Magnify,” said Hanson.
Against the roiling background, he saw that familiar crown-of-thorns shape. It was sheathed in superheated hydrogen, glowing red. Lightning bolts leapt between its hundreds of spines.
A chill ran through him.
The Tethyans were already reacting. The four closest battleships fired together. The silver threads of their monopole cannons met on the Ancient ship's surface. A tiny flame of plasma lit up on the surface and sawed at some of the smaller thorns.
“Join them,” Hanson ordered. “And keep us out of the way of that weapon.”
It wasn't enough. The other battleships were accelerating round the planet to join up. Maybe if all nine of them and the Dauntless fired together, they could cripple it before things got out of hand …
“We've got more disturbances,” said Dunn.
Another two Ancient ships hurtled up from below the cloud layer. The first one fired its weapon: A ripple in space that met the closest battleship and shattered its nose.
The battle was already lost, Hanson realised.
But where were they coming from? There was no Forge in this system. Somewhere, deep in the gas giant, where the pressure hit a hundred or more atmospheres.
Then he recalled his first ever encounter with IL. When they were looking for nanotech dust found in Hybras.
That was it: The nanotech dust was some sort of alternative construction system. It was growing the ships in the atmosphere, using the gas giant as matter.
Another shot fragmented a battleship's hull.
“We've got a message from the Tethyans,” said Miller. “They're leaving.”
“No!” said Hanson. “Give me an open channel to all ships.”
“Ready.”
“This is Captain Hanson to the Tethyan fleet. Do not jump away. Repeat: Do not jump. Right now we have a chance to stop the enemy from building more ships. If we leave, we lose that chance forever.”
The deep voice of the Firmament's admiral responded, “How do you propose we stop them?”
“The ships are coming from the equatorial band in a region ten thousand klicks across. If we all fire on that together, we might be able sustain a fusion reaction across the whole area.”
All nine Tethyan ships were now gathered above the same hemisphere. The count of Ancient ships had risen to an equal number. The Indomitable and the Albascene ships could do nothing here; they jumped away.
“We are agreed,” said the Admiral. “Optimum attack pattern is as follows.” A string of firing solutions came thr
ough.
Dunn worked through the information. “Ready, sir.”
“Fire,” said Hanson. “One continuous burst.”
Ten silvery threads lanced out from the ships in orbit into the planet's atmosphere. For a few seconds, nothing seemed to happen. Then an infernal red glow lit the clouds from below.
The ships danced as they fired, changing course and velocity at random to avoid the Ancient weapons. But with nine ships now firing, there was no way to avoid them all. One of the damaged battleships, caught by a second shot, crumpled, then exploded into a cloud of vapour.
Their target on the planet grew brighter and brighter. It looked small from this distance, but each of those glowing spots was a column of hydrogen hundreds of kilometres across reaching temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun.
“We're depleting our supply of monopoles,” said Dunn. “We've just passed the fifty percent mark.”
“Keep firing,” said Hanson. “We have to cover the whole area.”
A ring of fire covered the planet's surface, growing thicker and thicker. It was now too bright to look at directly. The displays showed a darkened version.
“Come on,” Hanson murmured to himself. If they could just heat and compress the hydrogen in the centre enough to spark a fusion reaction, it would be enough. Even Ancient technology couldn't survive that.
The Ancient attacks caught two more Battleships. One exploded.
The entire circle was lit up: A giant spot on the planet's surface glowing like a miniature sun. “We're nearing conditions for fusion,” Dunn reported. “Monopole supply down to twenty percent …. at this rate we won't make it.”
“Tap the reactor monopoles,” said Hanson.
There was a moment of surprised silence. Without enough reactor monopoles, they wouldn't be able to jump.
“Yes, sir,” said Dunn.
“And launch all our thermonuclear warheads. Aim them at the centre.”
Another Tethyan ship came apart.
“Warheads away. Our monopole supply is gone – we're draining monopoles from the reactor.”
An ear-splitting crash echoed through the ship. The lights flickered. One of the consoles went dead. “Sit-rep!” called Hanson.
“We were caught by one of the Ancient weapons,” reported Miller. “Glancing blow. All our sublight engines are gone … severe hull damage … multiple hull fractures … ”
“How's the monopole cannon?”
“Still firing. Warheads are about to detonate.”
The glowing spot on the planet's surface lit up like a flashbulb, suddenly so bright that the Dauntless's sensors flagged it as a radiation risk. It had hit the point of fusion ignition. For a tenth of a second, a region as big as a continent became hotter than the core of the sun.
It dimmed quickly as shockwaves raced through the rest of the planet.
Two more of the displays above the command console flickered and died.
“It's time to go!” Hanson said to the fleet. He looked over to Fermi. “Can we jump?”
“Yes,” said Fermi. “Emergency jump calculations are prepared. No answer whether we'll survive, though. That last hit did a lot of damage. Structural integrity isn't great right now.”
“Still a hell of a lot safer than hanging around here,” said Hanson. “Do it!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Prepare for jump. All hands prepare for jump in five … four … three … two … one.”
The wormhole fluttered for a moment as it inflated. It managed to stabilise as it rushed toward them.
There was an immense groan as the ship passed through. Bulkheads screamed. The sound of tearing metal echoed through the CIC.
As they emerged through the other end, it was followed by a short, sharp crack. The command console went dead. Hanson felt the gravity weaken, then vanish entirely. The lights followed a moment later, plunging the CIC into darkness. All background sounds ceased, leaving only silence punctuated by the occasional creak of metal.
*
The little transport vessel floated inside an immense black cavern deep within the Ancient ship. Its comms systems swamped the cavity with everything from radio waves to X-rays, relaying the messages of the communicator artefact.
In its CIC, Pierce looked at one of the display screen. The giant glowing spot was dimming slowly.
“We can worry about that later,” he said. “Begin jump calculations towards Earth.” He turned to Millicent and smiled warmly. “Let's go home.”
The nine Ancient ships jumped together.
Betrayals
Note from the author:
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