Duggan’s crew knew about the Tybalt. They knew that the Lambda modifications to the ship’s aft batteries had gone untested before the vessel was ordered out of the yard. One of the launch tubes had overheated and exploded because it hadn’t been properly insulated from the gravity drives. Fifteen people had died and it had been lucky the explosion didn’t breach the armoured magazine where the Lambdas themselves were stored. If that had happened, the whole ship would have been torn apart. Duggan had been brought before a court martial over it, when he’d been falsely accused of powering up the launch tube in order to impress his junior officers with a display of the Tybalt’s firepower. In the end, he was cleared of any wrongdoing. The truth was that the spacecraft had been ordered from its berth too early and the explosion happened without any involvement from Duggan.
“What does Admiral Slender have against you, sir?” asked McGlashan.
Duggan stared into the distance “When the launch tube exploded, one of the men it killed was a junior officer. He was twenty-two years old. An only son, loved and cherished by his mother and father. A man upon whom they pinned all their hopes and dreams. In that regard, he was little different from the other fourteen men and women who died on the Tybalt.”
“What was special about this one man?” she asked quietly.
“His name, that’s all. Frederick Lincoln Slender.”
“Damn.”
“Exactly, Commander. I wept for them all, but the father has not forgotten, nor has his desire to assign blame diminished during the last eleven years. Admiral Slender’s son died on the Tybalt and his hatred for me has lasted ever since.” Duggan’s voice strengthened and took on a hard, dangerous edge. “I am damned if I will permit him to continue his quest for vengeance against me!”
He sat back into his seat, surprised at the fury that gripped him. If Slender had brought him out here just to drag up the past, Duggan was determined to show the man he would not take it lying down.
Chapter Twenty-Five
A short while after the Crimson took up a parallel course to the vastly larger battleship Archimedes, a shuttle crossed the intervening space. After some manoeuvring, it latched onto an area of the Crimson’s hull, close to the retracted boarding ramp.
“It’s connected and sealed, sir. You’re good to go,” Chainer said. He paused for a moment, evidently wondering if he should say anything else. “Good luck.”
Duggan left the bridge without a word and walked in his practised half-stoop to where the shuttle had clamped itself. There was a metal hatch on the floor, which he disengaged and lifted back with a grunt. Beneath, was a shaft with a ladder, leading through many metres of the Crimson’s armour, to the shuttle’s passenger bay at the bottom. Duggan slid down the ladder and sat himself on one of the eight seats in the tiny craft’s bay. It was overwhelmingly metallic and utilitarian, the cream plastic of the seats the only break from the greyness. There was an odour of sweat and grease, as if the last passengers had left a bag of old clothes and food under one of the chairs. There was no one else present – his ride had been sent over completely unmanned, with nobody to greet him as politeness and procedure dictated.
Without warning, the shuttle de-coupled itself with a clanking of heavy alloy machinery. Duggan felt a momentary lurch in his stomach as it fell away from the Crimson. Then, its low-power gravity drive groaned into life and propelled the ship over the comparatively short return voyage. Within twenty minutes, it had docked into one of the Archimedes’ four compact, dedicated bays. Duggan guessed the shuttles had been made bespoke for the flagship and from his recent experience with them, they’d never been updated or modified since. He climbed out through the same hatch by which he’d entered. Any visiting dignitaries wouldn’t be expected to board the vessel this way. Duggan wasn’t the most important man in the Corps, but he was still a high-ranking officer. This was a calculated insult.
When he reached the top of the shaft, Duggan emerged into a brightly-lit corridor which he guessed was somewhere in the maintenance area of the Archimedes. It was cramped and hot, with the harsh odour of barely-contained electricity. There were two soldiers waiting for him, unarmed apart from pistols. They crouched uncomfortably as if they weren’t familiar with anything other than the wide, high passageways that Duggan knew were elsewhere above them in the ship’s interior. The first, a woman with a hard face and her hair tied back, saluted him properly.
“Welcome aboard, sir. We’ve been asked to take you to the waiting area.”
“Waiting area? I’m here to see Admiral Slender.”
The woman shrugged to let him know that she was just doing as she was told. “If you’ll follow me, sir.”
The two soldiers led Duggan a short distance to a maintenance lift. They squeezed inside and he watched as the woman keyed in their destination floor number. They rose quickly and silently. Then, there was a ping and the lift door slid open. The soldiers went first, stepping onto a much wider corridor than the first. The light had the usual blue-white hue of badly-emulated daylight and the walls were smooth alloy. To Duggan it was a luxury that he could stand without bending his spine and his bones crackled as he stretched them out. The soldiers led him several hundred metres, with only one or two deviations. They passed other personnel on the way – a mixture of technicians and soldiers. Duggan wracked his brain to remember how many people the Archimedes usually carried. A few thousand was the best he could come up with. They could probably pack a few tens of thousands inside if they ever needed to carry troops, though there were dedicated spacecraft for that. Even with its enormous length, the bulk of the craft was still given over to the engines and weapons.
“Here you go, sir,” said the man. It was the first time he’d spoken.
Duggan nodded his thanks and entered a room. At fifteen feet square and empty, it would have seemed like an incredibly wasteful use of space on anything smaller than a Hadron. Plastic chairs lined the walls and Duggan crossed the hard-tiled floor to sit on one. There was a replicator in the wall. On another day, he’d have tested it out. At the moment, he had no appetite for food or drink. He waited for twenty minutes without receiving any indication that his presence was known to anyone.
“Pointless, childish games,” he growled to himself. He activated his communicator and pulled the mouthpiece loop down from the earpiece. “Commander McGlashan, please report.”
Her voice came back at once, as if she’d been waiting to hear from him. “Not much to say, sir. The Archimedes has established a remote interface with our mainframe and it’s sucking out whatever data we’re carrying.”
“A remote interface? It’ll take hours to empty the memory arrays.”
“What else are they going to do? We can’t dock with them. At first, I thought they were only interested in bits and pieces, but they’re grabbing everything.”
Duggan wasn’t surprised. “They can’t risk missing anything, Commander. We know how important those memory arrays might be.”
“Have you seen the Admiral, sir?”
“Not yet. He’s left me in a waiting room.”
“Like that, huh?”
“Seems as if that’s the game he wants to play. Are you updating the Crimson’s tactical databases while we have the chance?”
“We are. We might not be here for much longer, but I’m getting us updated. It’s slow, since the outbound data is taking up all the bandwidth.”
Duggan unconsciously lowered his voice. “Scan the archives for any news on the war. The uncensored stuff.”
“I don’t think I have clearance for that, sir.”
“The ship has the same clearance as its commanding officer. You have my permission to use it.”
“Understood. Enjoy your wait, sir. Hopefully we’ll still be here when you’re done.”
The earpiece went quiet, leaving Duggan to sit it out. He wasn’t normally a man who’d accept this treatment. He sighed in realisation that there was nothing to be gained by taking himself off to explore the vessel�
��s interior. His memories of the place were mostly vague, but he wasn’t feeling curious enough to reinforce them. Eventually, he got up and crossed to the replicator. It vended a cup of near-perfect coffee at his command. He put it to one side and ordered the machine to produce him a sixteen-ounce medium-rare steak. It paused briefly before the vending hatch opened to reveal a metal tray with a steak upon it, which looked almost as perfect as the coffee. The aroma drifted to his nose and a growl from his stomach made him realise how bad the food on the Crimson was. He reached for the tray. Before his hand got there, the door to the room’s only entrance slid open and a man entered. He was broad, with a pock-marked face and a lieutenant’s insignia on his shoulder.
“Captain Duggan? Admiral Slender will see you.”
Duggan scowled and considered telling the man that Slender could wait until he’d finished his steak. He bit his tongue on the matter and followed the lieutenant from the room. The man took him several hundred metres towards the aft of the spaceship. As they went, Duggan noticed an improvement in the décor. Here and there a picture was hung, the walls were painted and hard-wearing carpet tiles covered the floor. This was where the officers lived. The bridge was close by – above the officer’s quarters and accessed by a bank of lift shafts. Duggan couldn’t shake the feeling that the Space Corps’ flagship was too big. When the shit hit the fan, everything was just too far from everything else.
“Here you go, sir,” said the lieutenant, stopping in front of a solid-looking door. It was made of polished wood, with a sign on the front to announce the name and rank of the occupant.
The lieutenant took his leave, his receding footsteps muted by the dark blue of the floor tiles. Duggan pressed his thumb to an access panel, half expecting the door to swing open on hinges. It didn’t. Instead, it slid away into a recess in the same way that every other door did. Duggan didn’t wait for an invitation and stepped within.
Fleet Admiral Slender’s office was large and unremarkable. Screens lined the walls and there were several consoles to provide access to whatever information a man of importance might require. There was a dark grey desk of an unknown material. It was scrupulously clean, except for a single, small pile of papers and a monitor. On one corner was a framed photo. It was turned away. Duggan didn’t need to see it to know who was the subject of the image.
“Duggan, take a seat.”
Duggan stared at the man he’d not seen for several years. Admiral Slender was almost the same as he remembered him – his square, clean-shaven face still looked smooth and waxy, but there was something unnatural about him. Slender must have been close to eighty, yet he looked little more than forty. His hair was close-cropped and grey. His eyes were the same colour as his hair and they locked to Duggan’s. Duggan was in no mood to be spoken to improperly.
“Captain Duggan, sir,” he said, pulling out a padded seat, continuing to meet the Admiral’s stare.
“I’d like to say it’s a pleasure to see you again, Captain Duggan.” Hostility crackled about the man’s voice like white-hot sparks. Duggan struggled not to rise to it.
“Have you brought me here in order to tell me you don’t like me. Sir?”
“I don’t know what I’ve brought you here for, Captain. The recovery of the ESS Crimson and your arrival made it seem like a convenient moment to catch up. For old times’ sake.” Slender gave a thin smile.
“I will not sit here and listen to you rake up the past, sir.”
“You will sit here and listen until I say you are dismissed.” Slender leaned back in his chair, his eyes not wavering. “If you make one misstep, I’ll have you expelled from the Corps in disgrace so quickly that you’ll not even have the time to thank your good luck that it didn’t come sooner. However, all that is by-the-by for the moment. I am overall commander of the Space Corps warfleet and we are at war against an implacable foe. We require trained men and women to pilot our vessels against the enemy and for the time being, you are an officer of some seniority.” He paused, his eyes glittering. “What do you know about the ESS Crimson, Captain?”
“I know there’s much more to it than I’ve been told.”
“That’s not what I asked. What do you know about it? Don’t dance around. My technicians tell me you’ve accessed certain parts of the vessel’s data. An unauthorized access. Once the extraction is complete, I’m sure there’ll be an audit trail.”
“A warship’s captain is authorized for everything on board his ship, sir. Unless specifically told otherwise. The Crimson is carrying disruptors. Engines that surpass anything we have in the fleet today. Two cores, one of which can probably outthink the Archimedes on many tasks. Questions without answers.”
“Every question has an answer, Captain, though not everyone is privy to the details. Nor should they be. Some information is too dangerous to be widely available, as I’m sure you’re aware.”
“Such as why two of the fleet’s most powerful warships are in the Garon sector, a place where there haven’t been any reported sightings of a Ghast war vessel?”
“I’m sure you’re aware that the loss of the Archimedes would be grist to the mill of those who would like to sue for peace.”
“The Ghasts have declined every opportunity to have dialogue. Everyone knows that!”
“Have they now? There you go again, Captain. Demonstrating my point about the dangers of information.”
Duggan was stunned. “We’ve had communication with the Ghasts?”
“On a number of occasions. Most recently we have tried forge a deal on their terms. A partial surrender, if you will. An offer to withdraw our fleet to within certain boundaries of space.” The thin smile appeared again.
“And?”
“There is a lack of trust between us and it appears they perceived our willingness to negotiate as a sign of weakness. A month after our last meeting, the Ghasts found Charistos. I’m sure you know what happened there. We assume it’s a show of strength from them, in order to drive us into a total capitulation.” Slender’s voice climbed in anger as he spoke.
“Have they succeeded?”
“No, they have not, Captain! All they have done is demonstrated that we must do our utmost to defeat them! At the very least, we need to parlay as equals, for they seem to despise weakness. Still, there are factions amongst the Confederation Council who blame us – blame humanity - for the current state of affairs. Even in the face of what has happened, they demand that we continue our pursuit for peace - no matter what the cost. Can you imagine what might happen if we surrendered to the Ghasts and they decided to betray us?”
“Have we given up on Angax, sir?”
“Perhaps, Captain. They destroyed the Hadron Ulterior easily during the engagement at Charistos. Easily enough to convince not only me, but many of the Confederation Council, that further risks should be minimised. At least until our research labs have discovered new ways to combat them.”
“Does this mean the Archimedes is now obsolete?” Duggan couldn’t believe it. “Our Lambdas still work pretty well from what I’ve seen, sir.”
“They do, Captain. Unfortunately, the Ghasts have developed a new missile and targeting system. Some of their vessels can launch from more than double our range, as the crew of the Ulterior found to their cost. For some reason, our Bulwarks fail to target them.”
“Yes, sir. I’ve seen those weapons.”
“Then you will know that I can’t risk the Archimedes against the Ghasts until we have effective countermeasures.”
“Will Angax be destroyed?”
“We can only hope not, Captain. The data from the ESS Crimson will be invaluable in helping our cause. We are re-transmitting it to several of our labs even as the Archimedes receives it.”
“Why didn’t we just keep copies of it at the time? Why don’t we have those engines and disruptors aboard every ship in the fleet?”
“Those questions will have to remain unanswered, Captain Duggan.”
“What now for the Crimson, sir
? And my crew?”
“For the time being, the Crimson will remain in escort position until her databanks have been scoured by the Archimedes’ AI. After that? Your fate and that of your crew is currently undecided.” With that, Admiral Slender looked at the papers on his desk and began to look through them. “You’re dismissed, Captain.”
“Sir.”
“One more thing, Captain. Don’t let me catch you attempting to breach the Crimson’s databanks again. Remember my warning.”
Duggan exited the room, made his way to the same shuttle which had carried him to the Archimedes and returned to the Crimson.
Chapter Twenty-Six
When Duggan reached the bridge, it was empty apart from McGlashan.
“Chainer and Breeze went for some sleep. Monsey too,” she said. “Left me in charge. Is everything okay, sir?”
“It went as well as could be expected, Commander. We’ll be staying here until the Archimedes finishes with us. After that? I don’t know.”
“Sometimes it’d be nice to have an idea what’s going to happen more than a week ahead of us.”
“I doubt anyone gets that luxury these days. We’re here because they think the Archimedes is a sitting duck if it gets into a scrap. It seems as if those new missiles we came up against have got people worried.”
“Yeah. I can see why that would happen. How was the Admiral?”
“Hostile, but he managed to keep a lid on much of it. I think he’s as pissed off as we are that the Corps flagship is keeping out of the action.”
“The Confederation is going to do nothing to fight back?”
“Doesn’t sound like it,” said Duggan glumly. “It’s not about fighting back anymore. It’s about surviving for long enough. We’re in the middle of a race to see if we can turn out enough new warships with enough new technology to challenge the Ghasts before they master the ability to follow us through lightspeed to one of the inner planets.”
“They want to make us extinct, huh?”
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