Bane of Worlds (Survival Wars Book 2)

by Anthony James

  Haster was one of those men who got on with things. “I’m calculating the best places to target the chains. Eighteen at the nose, twenty port, eighteen starboard and sixteen aft should pull it up evenly. It’s easy when I tell myself it’s only a billion tonnes.”

  “Let me know when they’re fixed.”

  “I’d like to run a few cross-checks first, ma’am.”

  No one spoke while Haster ran through page upon page of numbers on his console screen. Duggan looked around the bridge, blinking to try and reduce the stinging in his eyes. He was starting to feel light-headed and knew he’d have to get someone to look at his forearm soon. He peered at the area of his suit where the Ghast projectile had clipped him. There was an indentation in the polymer where it had closed up around the hole. It would have also sealed the wound, but that didn’t stop it hurting.

  “I think we’re ready to go, ma’am,” said Haster. “Do you want to double-check?”

  “I trust you, Lieutenant and I take full responsibility for this lift,” said Jonas. “Please proceed.”

  “Okay, here we go. There might be some noticeable vibration.”

  A faint whining and thrumming began, which Duggan recognized as a gravity drive spooling up. The vibration started, faint at first and rapidly building.

  “Look at these gauges, Captain Duggan,” said Jonas. “They show the power flowing through the chains. They’ve got their own source, but we’ll need to divert some extra power from the main engines in order to supplement what’s available to them.” The first set of gauges all showed one hundred percent and they flashed red. “Lieutenant Haster is drawing from our propulsion now. These other gauges will begin to climb in a moment.”

  Sure enough, a separate set of gauges flashed green, before turning to amber. The vibration built, accompanied by a buzzing sound from the equipment in the room. The Goliath was little more than a hollow box with an engine – there was a lot more vibration than there would be on a warship.

  “Seventy percent from the main engines,” said Haster. “The target vessel isn’t moving. I’ll take it up to eighty percent. If it doesn’t move at that point, it’s more than we can carry.”

  “He means if we go above eighty percent, we won’t have enough power to keep the Goliath in the air,” Jonas said to Duggan.

  “That’s eighty percent,” said Haster. The gauges were all red now. Screen upon screen of red.

  “Is it moving?”

  “No.”

  “Is it close to moving?”

  “Probably.”

  “Try eighty-two percent.”

  “Whatever you say, ma’am.”

  The floor of the Goliath rumbled. Duggan recognized it as a symptom of distress. In the crater below, the Cadaveron remained in place.

  “It’s not going to happen, ma’am,” said Lieutenant Green. He looked petrified.

  “Take it to eighty-four percent.”

  “Ma’am?” said Haster.

  “Just do it.”

  “Eighty-four it is.”

  The rumbling continued, until it reminded Duggan of the earthquake they’d felt when the Cadaveron had crashed.

  “I’m getting something!” said Haster, excitement in his voice. “It’s coming!”

  “Hold at eighty-four percent,” said Jonas.

  “It’ll take all day to get here, but it’s coming!”

  Duggan watched one of the screens, which he kept focused on the damaged warship below. For the first ten minutes, there was no sign that anything had happened. Then, he noticed the Cadaveron had rotated slightly from its original position.

  “It’s at five hundred metres,” Jonas told him. “It’s hard to see from this angle. Lieutenant Haster’s got it clear of the stone it was embedded in, so it should come up faster now.”

  “Reducing our engine leech to eighty percent,” said Haster. He puffed up his cheeks and blew out. “It’s coming up under control.”

  It took another thirty minutes. Duggan marvelled at the damage the Cadaveron had sustained – not just from the two missile strikes, but the crash landing as well. The vessel looked like a spent bullet that had been fired at point-blank range into a wall.

  The Cadaveron vanished into the Goliath’s hold without any more drama. The rows of cargo doors closed in unison, locking the ship within. Watching remotely, it was easy to forget just how big the enemy craft was and how much it weighed.

  “Good work everyone,” said Duggan. “I’m impressed.”

  “It’s what we do, Captain Duggan,” said Jonas. She didn’t make an effort to hide the mixture of pleasure and relief on her face. “Can we go to back to Pioneer now? I need a drink.”

  “There’s nothing more for us here,” said Duggan. “Too much death.”

  “It’s going to be a slow run up into space,” said Jonas. “We need to maintain the same power usage to keep the cargo stable in the hold. That leaves us with exactly twenty percent of our gravity drive remaining.”

  “Permission to hit the fission drives with a spanner, ma’am?” asked Green. It seemed to be a joke they had running.

  “Hit them as hard as you like, Lieutenant. I want them ready to go as soon as we’re far enough away from the surface.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’ve just received a message, Captain Duggan,” said Jonas, pointing at a box of text on her screen. “You said you wanted to be informed about any change in Commander McGlashan’s condition.”

  “Yes?”

  “They’ve stabilized her. She’ll not be fit for duty for a while. Not until they can grow her a new stomach and spleen at least. We’ve got some pretty good medical kit onboard and Corporal Moseley is a good medic once you learn to put up with his bad manners.”

  Relief washed over Duggan and he slumped back. He knew he should stay on the bridge until they went to lightspeed. He felt giddy with fatigue and his vision started to swim. Without his suit helmet on, he had no way to give himself a shot of stimulant and it was only his body’s own adrenaline that was keeping him going. Now the lift was done and he’d been told about McGlashan, tiredness roared through him, leaving him with a rushing sound in his ears.

  “I need to sleep,” he said. “And for someone to take me to the medical bay.”

  He stumbled to his feet and almost fell. Someone – Captain Jonas – steadied him and helped him from the bridge. He remembered mumbling an instruction for them to let the Space Corps know they were coming. After that, his last remaining energy was spent and he fell asleep in the shuttle car.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Duggan woke up in a computer-controlled semi-darkness. He was on something soft – a bed. There was a memory of pain and he looked at his forearm, noticing a raw pinkness to it. He gingerly pressed the area where the Ghast projectile had gone through. It hurt and there was the strange feeling that the skin wasn’t his own. He’d been fixed up with an artificial skin that would take a couple of days to grow into the wound and tie up with his severed nerve-endings. His space suit was gone and the room looked surprisingly clean and well-appointed, with a table, a couple of chairs and a screen. He rolled out of bed, finding that someone had dressed him in a blue uniform that signified no particular rank or position. His mind was curiously alert.

  Outside the room, he walked fifty metres along a featureless corridor until he found a shuttle car. He got in and drove it towards the bridge. Captain Jonas was there, along with Green, Haster and a woman whom Duggan didn’t recognize.

  “Captain Duggan,” said Jonas warmly. “How are you feeling? Was my bed comfortable enough for you?”

  Duggan had already guessed where it was he’d woken up. “Better,” he conceded. “Much better. How long was I out for and what’s our status?”

  “You’ve been asleep for over twenty hours, I’d say. As for our status? Well the Ghasts haven’t blown us up and we’re at Light-E, so we should be safe until we reach Pioneer in eighteen days.”

  “Did you send a message to the Spac
e Corps?”

  “We did. It was received by a man with the rank of ensign who promised to treat it with the utmost urgency. Naturally, we didn’t hear anything before we went to lightspeed, so we must assume our arrival will be greeted with a tremendous fanfare, as well as coffee and biscuits served by Admiral Slender himself!” She saw Duggan’s face. “You don’t get along with the Admiral?”

  “We don’t see eye-to-eye.” Jonas was easy going and although Duggan hadn’t known her long, he found it hard to keep things to himself when he talked to her.

  “I’ve never met the man. Not that I would expect to, being the captain of a lowly cargo vessel.”

  Duggan didn’t want to discuss Admiral Slender and certainly not when there were other people on the bridge to overhear his words. “Do they have a spare dock to take the Cadaveron on Pioneer?”

  “It’s a shipbuilding planet, so they must have somewhere. I’m not sure what they’ll do to plug those holes, though. I doubt the Confederation Council will be amused if they learn an exposed warship engine has been lowered into dry dock without adequate precautions in place.”

  Duggan left the people on the bridge to their duties. Lightspeed travel could be soul-crushingly boring at times, particularly a long trip on a slow vessel. He knew that some crewmembers were more than content to sit for hours watching screens or just filling their time by doing not much of anything. Duggan had only a limited patience with downtime, before the urge to do something gripped him again. He’d recently awoken, so hadn’t reached that point yet – in fact, he felt a huge relief that he and his squad had time to recuperate. He was wise enough to predict he’d be feeling like a coiled spring in a week or two.

  The medical bay was a large, starkly-lit area near to the front of the Goliath. There was space to spare on a heavy lifter and the facility had six narrow hospital-style beds, each attended by a top-of-the-line static med-bot. Duggan doubted whether there’d ever been more than one or two beds in use at the same time. Still, it was good that they thought about the health of the crew.

  Commander McGlashan was there, in the furthest bed from the door. At first, Duggan couldn’t tell if she was asleep or awake. Her face was deathly pale - nearly as pale as the white robes she’d been dressed in - and her dark eyelashes made it difficult to see if her eyes were open or not. She was connected to a med-bot by numerous wires and tubes. There was a lump beneath her robe, covering her stomach.

  “Captain,” she said. Her voice was weak, as faint as a rustling breeze.

  “I won’t ask how you feel,” he said. “Has anyone told you what’s happened?”

  “Bill was here with Frank. They said we’ve picked up the Cadaveron.” She gave a wheezing laugh. “They’re not going to know what to do with you when we get back. I’m not sure there’s anything in the procedures that covers it.”

  Duggan laughed. “I haven’t thought that far ahead. Whatever they do, at least we’ll have brought something for them to study. I want us to win this war, Commander. If we have to abandon a few million tonnes of mining equipment on a distant planet, so be it.”

  “When they’ve re-grown my insides, I’ll look forward to joining you on your next ship, sir.”

  “Has anyone told you how long?”

  She tried to shake her head. “This machine on my stomach is what’s keeping me alive. I had a look when they fitted it to me. It does all sorts of wonderful things, except it can’t make me a new set of organs. The military hospital on Pioneer can do that. I’ve seen it happen to other men and women. I’ll be out of action for a couple of months.”

  “You did pretty well on Everlong.”

  “We all did, sir.” Her eyes closed. Duggan watched her for a few minutes. The med-bot didn’t move or show a visible alert, so he assumed she’d fallen asleep again. He didn’t want to overstay, so he got up and left the room.

  The eighteen days which followed could have been a relaxing time. For Duggan, it was a slow build-up of frustration. He spent time in the gym, maintaining his strength and stamina. At other times, he spoke to his soldiers about past missions, the hardships of fighting the Ghasts, and also commiserating with them over the recent losses to the squad. Sergeant Ortiz had a seemingly endless list of stories from her past, which she told in a dry style without boasting or embellishment. These activities were diverting, but weren’t enough to keep him fully occupied.

  In spite of Captain Jonas’ protestations that she’d need to get back to Pioneer before she could have a drink, the food replicators on the Goliath were permitted to vend a limited quantity of alcohol. Duggan found he had sufficient authority to command the machines to produce more alcohol than the other crew members were able to - even more than Jonas herself.

  “Betrayed by my own ship,” she laughed, one evening towards the end of the trip. She took another sip of the thick, sweet-smelling liquid the replicator had produced. “This isn’t entirely awful.”

  “Only partially so,” agreed Duggan.

  “Why are you always so on edge?” she asked, her eyes spearing him.

  Duggan shifted, feeling uncomfortable. “It’s how I am,” he said at last. “Inaction feels like a waste of my life.”

  “Would you have felt this way if there were no war to fight?”

  “I’ve asked myself that many times. I was twelve years old when the war started. Even then I was fascinated by space, by the size of the vessels humanity had managed not only to build, but to make travel so fast you could get from one galaxy to another in days instead of centuries. I knew I wanted to join the Space Corps – to see the places for myself, instead of watching other people visit them on my television at home. At seventeen, I was filled with the bravery of youth and I signed on the dotted line as an infantryman. Looking back, there’s no one who’s ready at seventeen to make such an important choice for themselves.

  “I served for a few years. Earned myself some respect and a couple of medals. Then, someone suggested I go back to school and become an officer. It seemed like a good idea at the time – that I might one day be a lieutenant on the bridge, instead of waiting in my quarters until it was time to get in the tank. I did well and served as a lieutenant for a couple of years until I got fast-tracked to captain.”

  “All you’ve known is the war,” she said.

  “That’s it exactly. All I’ve known is the war. I can’t answer your question about how I’d feel if there were no war. All I can do is guess and that’s a game I’ve never enjoyed.” He took another sip of his drink. The alcohol soothed him, washing away his worries. A part of him knew it was false, but he let himself enjoy the moment. “What about you?”

  “My dad was in the Corps. A couple of my brothers as well. Joining after them seemed like the most natural thing for me to do. Fifteen years later and here I am captaining the MHL Goliath.”

  “Just like that?” asked Duggan.

  “There were a few ups and downs. In the end, there were more ups than there were downs.” She sat back. “I didn’t like the feeling of helplessness against the Ghast missile battery and the warship. We’re not normally sent to places we might see trouble.”

  “There’s plenty of helplessness on a warship as well,” said Duggan. “Times when the Ghast missiles are coming at you in waves and all you can do is hope they collide with the shock drones, or the Bulwarks take them down. Apparently, I’m a statistical anomaly, having run so many missions on a Gunner without being killed.”

  “It’s always good to have luck on your side.”

  “So I’ve been told. I refuse to call on luck, in case it turns against me when I need it most.”

  She laughed. “A man who believes fervently in luck, yet fears it as well.”

  “Maybe. I’m not so stupid I’ll deny it exists, or that I’ve likely had my fair share.”

  “Have you ever been married, Captain Duggan?”

  The question caught him off-guard. “I had a wife once. I thought I could fit a family in around my duty, like a second-class
citizen. I was never there and the woman I married didn’t stick around to see if I’d change. It was the best thing she could have done.”

  “Children?”

  “None. There was talk of it at first. An absent man can’t father children.”

  “Do you regret it?”

  “It’s the easiest thing in the world to tell someone not to regret what they can’t change. Believing yourself when you say those words is harder than anything.”

  “You have your crew. Commander McGlashan.”

  “Yes, I have my crew and yes Commander McGlashan is very dear to me. She’s an officer I respect and away from the Corps, a woman I value as a friend. There was a cloud hanging over me when I thought she might die.”

  “The cloud is now gone?”

  “When one cloud goes, the wind is always there to blow a new cloud into its place.” He sighed. “I don’t normally wallow.”

  Jonas looked at him sadly. “Perhaps when the war is over, we can meet and see if the sky above is blue.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a promise I can keep,” he said, feeling like a coward. The conversation tailed off into a long silence. Jonas was waiting to see if he’d say anything more. Duggan found a wall in front of him, one he’d always pretended wasn’t there. It was the hardest thing in the world to reach up and pull himself towards the top. “I think I’d like that very much,” he said at last. Jonas smiled and Duggan felt as if a weight he’d never known existed was lifted from him.

  The following day was the last before their arrival. Duggan’s head was only slightly fuzzy and he did his best to ignore the alcohol-induced lethargy. He did his usual rounds, visiting Commander McGlashan, who was much improved since the first time he’d found her in the medical bay.

  “We’ll come out of lightspeed in four or five hours,” he said. “There’ll be another couple of hours till we’re close enough to Pioneer to get you off on a transport ship.”

  “I feel fine now, sir.” She smiled ruefully. “I’m sure that would change at once if I unplugged any of these wires. What’ll happen to you?”