Crimson Tempest

by Anthony James

  “What is it we’re looking for, sir?” asked Corporal Baker.

  “An old ship called the Crimson, that got lost fifty years ago. It sent a signal to Monitoring Station Alpha, telling us to prepare for war.”

  “We know there’s a war on,” said Sergeant Ortiz. “We’ve been fighting it for long enough. Lost plenty of good men and women too.”

  “We all know that, but someone’s decided this is important enough to send an experienced crew and a valuable warship to find out what’s going on.”

  “Has it got new information on the Ghasts, sir?” asked West. She was hardly chest-high on most of the men, but not one of them would dare cross her.

  “I really don’t know, Soldier. All I’ve been told is that we need to recover the Crimson and fly it back to the Juniper for interrogation.”

  “They expect a ship that old to fly?” West said in disbelief, ignoring the fact that the Detriment was over thirty years old. “Do we even know if there’s enough left of it to fly?”

  “It cut off communications before the guys on the Alpha could get anything more out of it. It said the channel was no longer secure.”

  “That means trouble, doesn’t it?” she asked.

  “It could mean anything,” said Duggan. “A passing Ghast ship, or the ship’s core could have received false information from its sensors. We’ve tracked the Crimson’s signal back to a planet – it’s a place so remote they’ve not even assigned it a number, let alone a name. We find it, the repair drone we’re carrying does its business with the ship and then we fly it home. After that, it’s back to the front for us all.”

  “Something about this stinks,” said Monsey. She was tall, mouthy and popular.

  “What do you mean by that?” asked Duggan.

  “I mean that war is war. If someone tells you there’s a war coming, you listen to them. You don’t send out a Gunner to investigate what’s happening.”

  “Normally, I’d agree with you. The Crimson’s so old, I don’t think anyone’s really interested in what it has to say. If I had to guess, I’d say this is just a tick box exercise. The Crimson was part of a special project that cost a lot of money. There are probably people who want to know what happened to it.”

  “There are people still alive who worked on that ship?” asked Monsey.

  That wasn’t what Duggan had meant to say, but what Monsey said made him wonder if there was indeed anyone left alive who’d worked on the Hynus Project. They’d be pretty old now. It wasn’t unknown for people to live a long time with the advancements in medical technology available to those willing to pursue the dream of life everlasting. He put the thought aside for the moment.

  “On the plus side, it means that for once you soldiers will be seeing some action that doesn’t involve sitting in the hull of a ship, waiting till you get blown to pieces.”

  “Or burned to a cinder,” said Smith.

  Duggan nodded his head in acknowledgement. “It’s almost certain we’ll have to get out of here and down to the surface to find out what state the Crimson is in.”

  None of them voiced an objection to that. Operations on hostile planets were what they were all paid to do. Duggan dismissed the crew and returned to the bridge, with McGlashan, Breeze and Chainer in tow.

  Chapter Five

  Ten weeks was a long time as far as military space flight went. The fastest warships could travel from one side of Confederation space to the other in fewer than five weeks, so it seemed that wherever the Crimson had ended up, it wasn’t anywhere remotely close to the usual flight paths of Confederation vessels, bar the odd scout or mining ship.

  Duggan tried to keep to the usual routines that kept him sane during long voyages. He rose early from his bed – as captain, he was granted the privilege of a habitable space big enough that he couldn’t touch the side walls if he stretched his arms out. There wasn’t much in it, yet it seemed somehow important to him. After rising, he would visit the small mess area to speak to the infantry and crew who came and went. The mess was a room about fifteen feet square with a few hard chairs and tables, all of them fixed to the bare metal floor. The military didn’t go in for carpets and if you didn’t like metal surfaces, you were screwed.

  The mess had two food replicators. The word replicator was a common joke in the Corps. In reality, you pressed a button and the machine would deposit a tray of something in front of you, that more or less approximated what you’d asked for. The food wasn’t replicated either – the ship’s life support systems could produce a rudimentary selection of proteins, carbohydrates and fats. It could mix these together, add a quantity of colours and flavourings, and then compress the whole lot into something that a starving man might find appetising.

  “This is carrots and beef?” said one of the soldiers in disbelief. It was standard practise to question the food replicator’s output – it never got old.

  “Better food than your mother ever made, Turner,” called another of the soldiers. There were fifteen of them on the Detriment – the ship could carry more, but Duggan knew that fifteen was about the most you could fit on a Gunner before people started pissing each other off.

  “If I live to be a thousand, I’ll never know how they manage to get beef that tastes so much like chicken,” said Turner, walking away in mock disgust.

  “It’s breakfast time anyway,” called Davis. “Why don’t you try one of these fine rashers of bacon? They don’t taste much like chicken.”

  “No, they taste like shit,” said Diaz, sitting himself down next to Davis.

  Duggan watched the interplay between them. It reminded him of what he mentally referred to as the good old days, when he didn’t have a care in the world. When all he had to worry about was himself and his squad. When he was too stupid – lacking in wisdom, he corrected himself - to worry about the possibility that he might get killed somewhere and never come home.

  Now he was Captain John Duggan. The Captain John Duggan. The man who, as an infantry sergeant, had single-handedly overcome a fortified nest of Ghast warriors using only plasma grenades and his rifle. The man who’d fought his way across fifty kilometres of hostile terrain to save one of his rifle squad who’d been injured by enemy fire. The man who was known to put the lives of his men above his own. The man who’d lost over a dozen of his crew when a missile tube had exploded.

  As he poked at a slice of blue-sheened ‘ham’ he recalled the time he’d spoken to the mother of one of the dead. She’d been grey-haired and old. Mary Geffen her name had been. She’d fixed Duggan with her pale, grey eyes and told him that it wasn’t his fault and that even if it had been, she’d have forgiven him. Mrs Geffen had given him a hug and wept for her lost daughter. It had been almost more than Duggan could bear.

  Commander McGlashan entered the room, caked in sweat from her morning workout in the gym. A couple of the soldiers called her out as unfit and suggested she might need another hour on the treadbike. She grinned and gave them the finger. Duggan smiled to himself – a rookie might have thought the discipline on the Detriment was lax, but he knew the crew trusted each other. Duggan waved McGlashan over. She nodded and pointed at the replicator, to indicate she’d be over in a moment.

  McGlashan sat down opposite Duggan. She was lean and toned, with an air of competence that had earned her a lot of respect over the years. She was carrying a tray, which she put down in front of her. It had a grey paste on it, and something else that might have been an approximation of toast.

  “Porridge,” she explained, seeing his look. “At least that’s what the readout said.”

  “I was on the Archimedes once,” he said. “Long ago. Nothing but the best on there. If you wanted a steak, you better believe that what came out of the replicators looked, smelled and even tasted like a steak. There were rumours that they kept cows onboard somewhere in one of the lower decks.” Just the mention of the steaks brought a memory of the scent to his nostrils.

  She smiled. “Really? People thought they kept cow
s on there?”

  “Some people will believe anything. The Archimedes is over nine kilometres long. You could keep a lot of livestock inside if you wanted to. Personally, I was happy to believe the ship’s lead engineer when he told me that they get all the latest food replication tech installed as soon as the research labs produce an improved model.”

  “I’ve seen the Archimedes a few times,” said McGlashan. “Always in the distance – too far to make out the details.”

  “I wonder where it is now. It’s needed in the Axion sector from what Admiral Teron tells me.”

  “If they send it to the front, it’ll make people realise that we aren’t winning the war, in spite of what the news channels would have them believe.” She wasn’t easily fooled.

  “There are thirty-five fully colonised planets in the Confederation. I don’t know how they’ve managed to stop the questions.”

  “People believe what they want to believe. If you tell them their sons and daughters died as heroes, you can keep up the charade for a long time. It’s only really been the last five years we’ve been in retreat. Before then, it was all glory. Join the Corps, shoot a few Ghasts a billion light years away and come back with a medal. That’s what the abiding memories are. The glory of humanity.”

  “Except that it’s been a lie and let them push through the cost-cutting even while we’re losing major systems on the periphery. He shook his head bitterly. “I remember when we were making six Anderlechts and one Hadron class every two years. We weren’t even trying. Now we’re decommissioning the old ones quicker than the new ones are coming into service.”

  “There’s not been a new Hadron in four years,” McGlashan said. “I don’t know if there’s a yard big enough to make them in a single piece now.”

  “Teron says the enemy’s got the edge. It’s not looking good.”

  “We’ve known that for long enough, sir. I can remember my first encounter with a Ghast light cruiser. They were so far behind us that hardly anyone wanted to cheer when we blew it into pieces. I was only on a Gunner at the time and the enemy had no hope against us. Now look at what they pack into their Kravens. Weapons that have come from nowhere. The Confederation’s been standing still and they’ve just kept on running.”

  “There’s got to be something we’re missing,” said Duggan. “No one can jump ahead as quickly as they’ve done, no matter how much they want to.”

  “Let’s hope their infantry’s carrying the same shit as they ever did, sir,” said Davis from nearby. There was no such thing as a private conversation in the mess room.

  “Yeah, we can get close enough to put a hole in them at least,” added Turner.

  “You might get a chance to put a hole in some of them when we get to where we’re going,” said Duggan.

  “You think we’ll see them when we go looking for the Crimson?” asked Davis, with the unmistakeable longing of a man who’d done too much fighting.

  “We might. There are Ghasts where we’re going. With any luck, we’ll miss them. In, out and back home.”

  “I’ll believe that when I see it, Captain,” said Turner.

  “Sometimes dreams come true,” said McGlashan, the scepticism evident in her voice.

  The days were boring and Duggan was on edge. Something was nagging away at him and he didn’t know what. To occupy himself, he spent time tracking updates from the war. It wasn’t looking good.

  “Six Gunners missing in action. Axion Sector Nine,” he said. “Anderlechts Grimstone and Devoted confirmed destroyed in combat against three Cadaverons.”

  “Damn,” said Breeze, raising his head. “That’s real bad.”

  “I served on the Devoted for two months,” said Chainer. “They were amongst the best I’ve seen. Taught me a thing or two.”

  “Sector Nine is only a short jump from Charistos, isn’t it?” said McGlashan.

  “Everything in Axion is only a short jump from Charistos,” Duggan replied. “We need to get ships out there.”

  “Think they’ll send the Archimedes? Or at least a pair of the Hadrons?”

  Duggan shook his head to indicate he didn’t know. “I’ve tried to call up the orders for our major ships. I’m denied access to see what’s planned for them. I’d have been more surprised if I’d had the clearance.”

  “We’re going to lose this, aren’t we?” asked McGlashan. “What the hell do they even want from us?” It was a question that had been asked countless times by countless people.

  “Sometimes you just have to accept that you’re never going to understand your enemy,” was all Duggan could think of to say.

  The Human-Ghast war had started almost thirty-two years ago. There’d been no misunderstanding between two space-faring races. There was no initial friendship that had subsequently been lost. Rather, the first encounter had been between a Ghast heavy cruiser – which later become known as Cadaverons – and a small fleet of Confederation mining ships, far, far out from humanity’s central planet of Earth. The Ghasts had simply destroyed the mining ships, killing all of the civilians on board. After that, there had been a number of minor skirmishes, during which it became apparent that the Ghasts were technologically less advanced than humans. Nevertheless, they began to actively hunt out Confederation spaceships until the ruling Council was reluctantly forced to describe the situation as ‘war’. Unfortunately, they were complacent about it, thinking that the Ghasts’ technological inferiority meant that they were little more than war-mongering upstarts.

  After two decades of fighting, still perceived as a side-issue by the Confederation Council, the quantity and quality of the Ghast ships surged. Suddenly, their newest craft were almost a match for the Corps warships. The Confederated planets were populous and wealthy. Their shipyards could lay down dozens of armed vessels per year with the right level of funding. Confident in their assumed superiority, the ruling council continued to treat the Ghasts almost with disdain and neither side showed any determination to communicate. In fact, there was almost complete ignorance on both sides about who it was they were fighting. The difficulties of tracking a spacecraft through lightspeed travel meant that casualties on both sides had mostly been confined to Space Corps personnel.

  As Duggan searched through military databanks that were probably meant to be secured against him, the extent of the crisis began to emerge. Admiral Teron had indicated that the Ghasts had taken the advantage and if anything, he’d underplayed how far ahead they were. From what Duggan could see, they’d taken an incomprehensibly huge leap in technological advancement. It was almost unbelievable what they’d achieved. On top of this, one of Duggan’s old contacts from his earlier days in the Corps sent him some classified documents that showed how the military had been trying to find a way to nail down the destination of a lightspeed spacecraft. The limitation continued to be the processing power of the AIs. If you networked enough of them, it became theoretically possible. Unfortunately, the theory hadn’t yet been put into practise. The worst part of it was, recent data gathered from engagements with some of the newest Ghast vessels suggested that the alien species was years ahead of humanity in AI development.

  “We’re screwed,” said Duggan to himself.

  By the start of the tenth week, Duggan realised he’d had enough of being cooped up. Their destination wasn’t far now, yet he couldn’t help think that there was a long return trip to look forward to. He’d spent a lot of time trawling through archives and databanks looking for any information on the Crimson, in order to determine its maximum velocity and any other capabilities it might have. In the end, he’d turned up a blank. Whatever records there were of the vessel and the trillions of dollars it had taken to create it, they’d been thoroughly expunged. Or classified so high that I don’t have clearance to find out if they even exist, he thought sourly. Not for the first time, he considered the possibility of sucking the contents of the Crimson’s onboard systems into the Detriment’s mainframes. If it was as much of a bucket as he thought it would be
, it didn’t seem likely that it could scrape past Lightspeed D or E. He knew he should have grilled Teron about it more than he had. In the end, there was no point in dwelling on the might have beens. While he was mulling over the possibilities, a red square flashed up on a display to his left, accompanied by a dull bleeping.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  “A Ghast ship,” replied Chainer, his head roving across his instrument readouts. “Type unknown. Our sensors couldn’t scan it in time. Looks like it picked us up as we came within range.”

  It wasn’t unusual to be detected by enemy ships during lightspeed travel. All it meant was that the Ghasts knew that a Corps ship had gone by. They wouldn’t be able to plot their destination, nor follow them. They might have determined it was a Gunner, depending on how new the Ghast ship was and what technology it had onboard. It didn’t really matter to Duggan. What was important was that he’d got confirmation of the enemy’s presence so close to Karnius-12.

  “Let’s hope that’s the only one,” McGlashan remarked.

  “Yeah,” said Duggan. “Admiral Teron said the Crimson terminated its communication because it wasn’t secure. Maybe the Ghasts picked it up.”

  “Would they spend any time looking?” asked McGlashan doubtfully.

  “If I had nothing better to do with my time than patrol an uninhabited chunk of space and I received a signal from an enemy vessel, I’d go looking for it as well,” said Duggan.

  Two days later, the Detriment’s navigational sensors reported their imminent arrival in the Karnius-12 system, which was a series of fifteen planets orbiting a much larger than average sun.

  “Twenty hours early,” said Duggan, without much surprise. Calculating time across the vast distances involved was rarely an exact matter. The Detriment’s old mainframe had plenty of horsepower to run the ship, but it still ran out of steam when presented with certain problems. The AIs on a larger vessel could have nailed it down to within a few seconds. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t important. On the positive side, the calculating error had brought them to their destination a day early instead of a day late.