“I will do, sir. The first sweep completed while you were speaking to Admiral Teron. I’ve managed to scan in a narrow cone between here and the wormhole. There’s no object greater in length than four kilometres. If there was a Hadron or Oblivion anywhere in that cone, I’d know about it. I’m running a sweep for anything two kilometres long, which will tell us if there are any Anderlechts or Cadaverons. I get this feeling I’m going to come up empty-handed.”
Duggan agreed with Chainer’s gloomy assessment. Nevertheless, they had to keep on searching. “I’m holding course. We’ll circle the Blackstar at ninety minutes distance. That should be close enough for you to detect anything.”
“Anything big,” said Chainer.
“We’re staying for as long as it takes to get answers. I’d prefer to know sooner rather than later.”
On the bulkhead screen, the Helius Blackstar was now to the far right as Duggan’s course took them around it. The gravity was immense, but it was only the final million kilometres that would cause the Crimson any problems with maintaining its distance. Ninety minutes out on the gravity drives was a little over ten million kilometres, which gave plenty of margin in case something went wrong. He could have taken them closer and completed the circuit a few minutes faster, but for some reason he felt reluctant to do so. A voice in his mind chimed up to suggest it was his body’s in-built primal fear of something with such colossal power that it utterly dwarfed anything made by mankind or Ghast alike.
After two-thirds of a circuit, Chainer spoke up. Duggan recognized the concern in his lieutenant’s voice at once.
“Sir, I’ve got something. Wreckage, I think.”
“Ready on the weapons,” said Duggan.
“As ever,” McGlashan replied.
“Anything running under its own steam?”
“Definitely not. I’m analysing now.”
“I can read some of it,” said Breeze. “Positrons.”
“Ours?”
“Some of ours. Some Ghast as well, if I were a betting man. There’s something strange about it. Usually there’s a pattern from a warship engine, even when it’s been destroyed. It’ll pulse out in a defined wave. These emissions are completely irregular.”
“You’re sure they’re ours?”
“I can confirm what Lieutenant Breeze says, sir,” said Chainer. “It’s part of a Space Corps hull. Three hulls to be precise.”
“Do you know which vessels?”
“Can’t be sure. If you wanted me to guess, I’d say from the thickness of the plating on one of the pieces, we’ve lost the Lancer or the Devastator. If you wanted me to guess some more, I’d say there are parts of an Oblivion floating a couple of hundred thousand klicks away.”
“Any other details? I need something that’ll tell me what’s happened here. Who betrayed who? If none of our ships have reported in, that means we’ve lost them all. It beggars belief to think they might have been destroyed so quickly that not a single one was able to send a report or a warning.”
“More wreckage, directly ahead,” said Chainer. “I’d say this is predominantly Ghast – parts of a Cadaveron, drifting towards the Blackstar. There are some big pieces amongst it. There could be more than one vessel.”
“Can you detect signs of damage?” asked Duggan.
“They were hit by something hot. I’m not sure if it was missile plasma.”
“What do you mean you’re not sure?”
“It’s not clear-cut what’s caused the heat damage, sir. It could be plasma.”
“You think it’s something else?”
“I’d need more time to analyse and from closer range.”
“We’ll be going past the wreckage anyway,” said Duggan. “The more I see, the less I like.”
“Sir, I’m detecting something else. It’s a long way away – I’d guess it’s twenty klicks to a side. I have no idea what it is.”
“Where?” asked Duggan sharply.
“We’re on course to meet it. It would have been directly behind the Blackstar from our arrival position.”
“I’m convinced the Ghasts have nothing close to that in size,” said Duggan. “What the hell?”
“What if they’ve come back, sir?” asked Chainer.
Duggan sat still for a moment as the answer to Chainer’s question came to him. “The Dreamers,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Duggan was convinced – the mysterious species of aliens had returned. The little he knew about them suggested they were hostile and their appearance would explain the destruction of the human and Ghast fleets.
“How far away is it?” he asked.
“An hour away on the gravity drive, sir.”
“I’ve seen enough,” said Duggan. “Get the fission drives ready.”
“On it. Where to, sir?”
Duggan’s mind raced through the options. “We don’t know if they can follow through lightspeed,” he said. “Bring us out somewhere halfway between here and Pioneer. At least if they follow, we won’t have led them anywhere important.”
“The unknown vessel has performed a hop, sir,” said Chainer. “They disappeared from where I first saw them and reappeared less than thirty minutes distant. The time which elapsed between them disappearing and reappearing is a decimal with several zeroes after the point.”
“Twenty-eight seconds for the fission engines,” said Breeze.
Duggan was worried by Chainer’s words. With the other vessel so far away, there should have been plenty of time to escape. My first encounter with the Dreamers and I’ve already underestimated them, he thought. He hauled the Crimson around, pointing it in the opposite direction to the approaching ship.
“Send a signal to the Juniper,” he said. “Tell them we have an unknown, advanced and potentially hostile species in Confederation space.”
“I’m trying,” said Chainer. “We’ve had our comms knocked out.”
“What’s happened, Lieutenant? Without specifics I can’t decide on what to do.”
“I have no specifics to give you, sir,” said Chainer, exasperated and angry. “Nothing is working on the long range comms.”
“What about the emergency beacon?”
“Nothing – it’s dead, all of it.”
“Shit, we better hope we can get out of here before that ship does another jump,” said Duggan.
“Five seconds,” said Breeze. “Almost there.”
Several events occurred at almost the same time. The first event was the arrival of the unknown vessel. It winked out of view and reappeared less than a hundred thousand kilometres away. A pulse of something washed over the ESS Crimson. Then, the Crimson launched itself into lightspeed.
“Made it,” said Chainer,” breathing hard.
“Only at Light-C,” said Breeze. “Engine power falling away. Dropping to Light-A. We’ll be back in normal space any moment.”
“What’s happening?” asked Duggan. He sprang over to stand next to Breeze.
“We’re out of lightspeed,” said Breeze. “Deep fission engines at less than ten percent and still falling.”
“Where are we, Lieutenant Chainer? Did the enemy ship manage to follow us?”
“Calculating our position. Damn, sir, we’re right back where we started. This is the system where we found the Crimson.”
“Lieutenant Breeze, can you tell me what’s happening to our engines?”
“I can tell you what sir, I can’t tell you why. Our logs picked up a pulse from the Dreamer vessel right as we jumped. It’s scrambling our engines quicker than the core can straighten them out – like it’s reversed the mass configuration that takes weeks to set up on a new spaceship. When it’s done, we’ll be little more than a lump of heavy metal, waiting to start again.”
“I’m going to set us in an orbit around the closest planet, until whatever happened to us finishes what it’s doing. After that, we can see if we can fix it and get home.”
“Prot-7, sir. Someone in the Space Corps de
cided to give the place a name after we brought the Crimson back. They’ve called the planet Prot-7.”
Duggan aimed for the planet Prot-7 and plotted a course to take them to a high orbit. He could tell something wasn’t working correctly. “Why are we going so slowly, Lieutenant Breeze? Our velocity is at eighty percent of maximum.”
“We’re losing the gravity drives as well. I’m trying to partition what we have left, so they’re separate to the scrambled areas. It’s not responding as I’d hoped.”
“The Dreamer core isn’t fast enough?”
“It’s not a question of speed. It’s like someone’s shoved a big stick into our engines and stirred everything up. It’ll need to settle before any attempts to fix it will work.”
“You’ll need to put us down, sir,” said McGlashan. “While there’s still time for a controlled landing. What if the life support fails next? We’ll need to be prepared.”
“Good thinking, Commander, except we can’t spare anyone to fetch the suits. We’ll have to sit tight for the moment. I’m taking us onto Prot-7 while I still can.”
The planet would have been a few minutes’ distance on full gravity drives. They’d only had eighty percent of power when Duggan directed them towards it. In a vacuum, there was nothing to slow the Crimson down from the speed it had attained – it was controlling the velocity as well as the steering which was the biggest concern.
“Fifty percent,” said Breeze. “The rate of decline is reducing.”
“Will we have anything left at the end?”
“No sir, the curve is still closing in on zero.”
“The sensors run off the gravity drives, don’t they?” asked Duggan.
“Yes they do, sir,” said Chainer. “They don’t take much as a percentage of the overall output, but if we end up at zero, they won’t function. It’s only the life support which is fully isolated and independent of anything else.”
“The mainframe has its own power source,” Breeze corrected him.
“Of course.”
“Make good use of the time you have,” Duggan told Chainer.
“What am I looking for, sir?”
“Anything, Lieutenant. We are not in a good situation. I want to know about anything that might help or hinder us.”
“Assuming the unknown vessel was the Dreamers, is there a chance they might choose to follow us through lightspeed?” asked McGlashan. “We didn’t get above Light-C and they could have the technology to allow them to predict our destination at such a comparatively low speed.”
“I didn’t intend us to arrive here, Commander,” said Duggan. “For them to follow, they’d need to predict the rate of decay in our engines and decide where that would drop us into local space. It’s a stretch to imagine they’re advanced enough for that.” He grimaced. “What do you suggest?”
“Nothing complicated. Try and land in a cave beneath metal ore, so they have a harder job detecting us from orbit.”
“You don’t have lots of time,” said Breeze. “Prot-7 is five minutes away at current speed. Slowing down for a landing will be tight enough as it is.”
“Do we have the data from our first scans when we arrived on the Detriment?” asked Duggan.
“I was sending it to the Corps network as I was gathering it,” said Chainer. “It’s standard practise to do so, and it’s standard practise to update the databanks of fleet spacecraft with anything new. We should have the records.”
“I need to know how long it’ll take me to reach the cave we found the Crimson in originally,” said Duggan. “At least we know it’s suitable.”
“That’s a lot of calculating,” said Chainer.
“Work it out with Lieutenant Breeze. There’s not a lot of time.”
“You’ll have about one minute in low orbit before we have to land,” said Breeze.
“Urgent, huh?” Chainer muttered. He was lost in thought, his left-hand screen a mess of green-glowing numbers and lists.
Chainer and Breeze conferred quietly. Duggan kept an eye on their destination and course.
“I need something, gentlemen,” he said calmly.
“I appreciate that, sir,” said Breeze.
The planet Prot-7 filled the main screen, as grey and lifeless as Duggan remembered it. They were close enough to see the pocks and scars which littered the surface.
“Beginning my approach,” said Duggan. He altered their trajectory in order to bring them into a fast, low orbit. They didn’t have much time, so he planned to get them as close as possible in order to maximise the time for manoeuvring. Prot-7 had a very thin atmosphere, but it was enough to burn them up if Duggan misjudged it. He could have handed it off to the mainframe, except the built-in safety features simply wouldn’t permit what he was attempting. The ship’s core assumed they’d stay in orbit if the engines were failing. It had no way to take into consideration the possibility that an enemy ship could be in pursuit, making a forced landing imperative.
“We won’t make it to the original cave,” said Breeze. “We’ll be about a minute short, unless you want to do a crash landing or risk the hull melting.”
“I’m assuming you’ve planned the alternatives,” said Duggan.
“I’m sending you some coordinates, sir. There’s a place near to the planet’s equator. There’s plenty of dense metal ore overhead and the landing should be easy.”
“It’ll not be the perfect location to evade enemy sensor detection,” said Chainer. “I think it’s the best hope we’ve got, though.”
“That’s good enough, Lieutenant,” said Duggan. “I’m taking us to the coordinates you’ve given me.”
Duggan brought the Crimson in at a steep angle, waiting until the last possible moment to level them off. The hull temperature climbed immediately, pushing up to fifty percent as he tried to reach the landing site as quickly as possible.
“Gravity drives at ten percent, sir,” said Breeze. “Take care – they won’t be as responsive as you expect.”
“Got it,” Duggan replied. He had no time to lift his head and kept focused on pushing everything as close to destruction as he could, without stepping over the line.
“Just under a minute and there won’t be enough power to land.”
Duggan didn’t respond. This was a big test of his ability. From the corner of his eye, he saw McGlashan taking her seat. She’d been standing at her console up till now and was evidently wise enough to take the additional precaution of fastening herself in.
Chainer spoke up, letting them know the situation had gone from bad to worse. “We’ve just flown over a Cadaveron, sir. They’ve flattened half a mountain range. Nothing from its engines, but the hull looks in one piece.”
Duggan couldn’t spare the time to think about it. The Crimson’s hull was at ninety percent of its design temperature and still rising. They raced over the planet’s surface, heading towards the equator.
“Come on,” said McGlashan.
They were close enough and Duggan hauled up on the control rods. The Crimson shuddered and there was a peculiar grating rumble from somewhere. He knew what the sound meant – the engines were overstressed. The hull temperature was at one-hundred and ten percent and they were travelling at thirty klicks per second when Duggan saw their destination, overlaid with a red circle on his guidance screen.
“There’s a fission signature just appeared, sir,” said Breeze. “Not like anything I’ve seen before.”
“I see it,” said Chainer. “The type isn’t in our databanks. I’m assuming it’s a Dreamer vessel. We should be undetectable to their sensors for the moment.”
Duggan clenched his jaw tighter, feeling his teeth grating against each other. They were approaching the landing area faster than he’d intended and it was a struggle to slow the Crimson down.
“There’s the canyon,” said Chainer.
“Twenty-eight klicks long, two wide and three deep where we’re going,” said Breeze.
In the watery light of the planet’s
morning, the orange-glowing outline of the Crimson stopped in mid-air, directly above and parallel to the rough, grey-stone chasm. Heat poured away from its hull, distorting the air around. Then, the spacecraft dropped vertically downwards, the speed of the motion defying its eleven-hundred metre bulk. There was something else beneath – an object which had escaped detection by taking refuge in the very same location. This object dwarfed the ESS Crimson. It was near four-and-a-half kilometres in length, part wedge, part cuboid. It had metal domes at the front and rear. The object was both ugly and sleek at the same time, possessed of an otherworldly menace.
Duggan saw the spacecraft too late to abort his landing. With his gravity drives at zero percent, it was all he could do to keep the Crimson from landing on its side, or worse. Rock cracked and splintered as it bore the two-billion tonne weight of a second spacecraft. Then, all was quiet and the crew of the Crimson found themselves stranded less than five hundred metres from a Ghast Oblivion.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Permission to say balls, sir?” asked Chainer.
Duggan slumped in his chair, feeling the leather stick to him in the heat. “Why can’t anything be easy?” he asked. He wiped his forehead with one sleeve and saw the dampness on his uniform. He’d been sweating more than he realised.
“The sensors have shut down. Not enough juice for them to keep going,” said Chainer.
“Engines at a flat zero,” added Breeze. “You couldn’t power an electric toothbrush off them.”
“We’re not in a good position, ladies and gentlemen,” said Duggan. “Sensor blind, no comms and without power.”
“The Ghasts didn’t shoot us to pieces, sir,” said McGlashan. “They had time and opportunity to do it.”
With an effort, Duggan pulled himself together. He stood and addressed the crew. “We’re in the crap, make no mistake about it. I need to know exactly what our status is and I also want your opinions. Lieutenant Breeze – you start. What about our engines?”
“Sir, it’s my educated guess that the Dreamer weapon has disrupted the links at a subatomic level. Rather than pulling in the same direction, everything is swimming around at random.”
Bane of Worlds (Survival Wars Book 2) Page 19