“Pinvos?” said Recker, leaning across the desk so that he could make out the tiny text label on the planet.
“It was originally called RT2-R332-W,” said Telar. “I had them rename it to something that wouldn’t slow down every briefing in which it was mentioned.”
“You’re sending me to scout the place?”
Telar had the good grace to look fleetingly pained. “This is too important, Carl. We’re going out there in force.”
“What happened to risk aversion?”
“Like I told you, the military is pulling in the right direction.”
“When is it happening?”
“Soon. There are one or two obstacles yet to overcome. I anticipate we’ll be ready to depart in less than twenty-four hours.”
“Pinvos is a long way from home.”
“Ten days at the speed of the slowest ship.”
“My ship?”
Telar leaned back. “As it happens, you won’t be commanding the slowest warship in the task force. Have you heard of the Expectation?”
“Yes, sir. A riot class currently in the trench outside.”
“It’s not a riot class. Not anymore. The name was originally assigned when the funds were allocated, and, as far as my superiors are concerned, the riot class Expectation will rise from its trench in twenty-seven days.”
“I don’t understand, sir.”
“I reallocated the name to a shard class destroyer, Carl. The vessel was signed off five days ago on Fortune and it landed on Adamantine a few hours ago. Until this morning when I completed the paperwork, it was awaiting a captain and a crew. Now it has both.”
“Thank you, sir.” Recker didn’t know what else to say.
“You deserve better than you’ve been treated. While I’m in control of Adamantine, things will be different.”
“I appreciate that, sir.”
“And now you’re going to ask me what’s next.”
“Yes, sir. I was.”
“Go and see your warship, Carl. I expect the final mission go-ahead to arrive soon and I want you ready to depart. I won’t go through the mission briefing with you – the documentation will unlock at the right time.”
“Yes, sir. What about the Vengeance? If I die, there’s nobody else can make it fly.”
“It’s a single ship, Carl. One way or the other, we’ll take what we need from it.”
“You’re underestimating…”
“No I’m not,” Telar interrupted. He sighed. “I can’t keep you grounded while I wait for the situation to be resolved. The HPA needs its best officers fighting the Daklan.”
Recker had more to say but he didn’t argue. The meeting was over and he glanced towards the door.
“One more thing,” said Telar.
“Sir?”
“The Expectation is the first of a new design - we’ve got a lot of people interested in how it performs. On top of that, I’ve ordered the installation of some modifications. They’re untested, but perhaps you’ll find a use for them.”
Telar stared unblinking and Recker could see he was going to have to find out the answers for himself.
“I’ll do my best.”
“I know.”
Recker headed for the door, his head swimming with the apparent shift in his fortunes. Outside, the cold air hit him like a shock and he stood for a moment.
“Sir?” It was the same corporal from earlier.
“I’m fine,” said Recker.
He got his bearings and headed for the exit.
Chapter Two
The Expectation was parked on the western side of the landing strip, not far from the barriers which surrounded the Vengeance. At 800 metres and with a mass of a little over a billion tons it was much more imposing than a riot class. The Expectation’s design was significantly altered from other destroyers in a way which made it look a hundred years older than most other vessels in the fleet. As he stared at the low-profile hull bristling with weapons emplacements, Recker thought that the Expectation had real potential.
“Looks neat,” said Lieutenant Adam Burner, standing a short distance from Recker. Burner was clean-shaven for once, though his curly hair looked more unruly than ever.
“Neat?” said Commander Daisy Aston, adjusting the band holding her dark ponytail in place. “It looks tough.”
“A mean son of a bitch,” Lieutenant Ken Eastwood confirmed. “See how they angled the plating by another few degrees to deflect Terrus slugs? That should help it resist armour-penetrating warheads as well.”
In space, an attack could come from any direction, which meant that angled plates were of limited effectiveness. Still, Recker thought that a skilled pilot could take advantage by altering the warship’s orientation so that inbound missiles were more likely to glance off the sloped edges.
“Back to the old design,” he said.
“It’s what’s inside that counts, right?” said Burner, tapping his chest.
“Like those two Hellburner tubes?” said Aston.
“Made to crack open the hardest of nuts,” said Eastwood. “It’ll be good to have something with a bit more punch.”
The shard class destroyers weren’t anything like so well armed as a cruiser or battleship, but they weren’t meant to be cannon fodder. In the right circumstances, those Hellburners could split open a Daklan heavy cruiser. The hardest part was surviving long enough to deliver the payload.
“We should head onboard,” said Recker.
He climbed back into the front seat of the pool car which had brought them here. The Expectation was a few hundred metres away and he didn’t have the patience to walk it.
“It’s great to have you back!” said the vehicle’s navigational computer, the falseness of it making Recker want to put his fist through the dash-mounted display.
“Shut up,” he growled.
The computer didn’t take the hint. “Oh I do love a good space battle,” it said.
Recker reached for the mute button on the dashboard.
“And I see we’re starting work on two new spaceships in those far trenches,” the car continued. “Big ones.”
“What new spaceships?” asked Recker, his finger halting an inch from the mute button. “And how come you’ve heard about them and I haven’t?”
“Oh I just pick things up,” the car babbled. “Always in the right place at the right time. You know how it is.”
“What about the new ships?”
“Like I said, sir. Big ones.”
“That must be the technical term,” said Burner from the back seat.
“You should check it out, sir. Find out what they are,” said Aston from the adjacent seat. She gave Recker an encouraging nudge with her elbow.
“Maybe I will,” he said, stabbing the mute button with relish. From this minor encounter with the car he came to a sudden realization. “Ever since I joined the military, it’s been an ongoing joke that if something’s going on, everybody knows about it.” He tapped the cheap plastic dashboard. “And here’s the culprit. Whoever programmed these cars forgot to add some coding to make them keep their mouths shut.”
“There’s got to be more to it than that,” said Eastwood. “Someone would have noticed by now.”
“I’m not sure I want to think about it, Lieutenant.”
Recker took manual control of the vehicle and gave it some power. The gravity car’s engine whined smoothly as it accelerated over the landing strip. The journey wasn’t long, but Recker had to steer around numerous obstacles, from piles of crates, to maintenance crews, cabins, trucks and everything else required to keep a warship armed and ready.
On the left, his view was blocked by the looming barrier around the Vengeance, while to the right, Recker found his gaze returning to the skies over the construction trenches, several kilometres away. He narrowed his eyes at the sight of a huge lifter shuttle, with an even larger propulsion block attached by an invisible gravity chain, and wondered what would rise from those trenches in
a few months.
A hundred metres from the Expectation’s lowered front boarding ramp, Recker brought the car to a halt.
“Let’s go check it out,” he said, pushing open the door and stepping onto the landing strip. Hot sun beat down and the dense, shimmering air throbbed with the pressure of a hundred nearby propulsions.
Recker strode towards the squad guarding the warship and the stifling heat made him long for the frosty corridors of Sub-5. Even stepping beneath the shadow of the destroyer didn’t provide much relief - if anything, it became more humid and, knowing that the spaceship’s interior would be cool, Recker quickened his pace.
A man detached himself from the squad of fifteen watching over the spaceship.
“Sergeant Tracker,” said Recker, remembering him from before.
“Captain Recker,” said Tracker in acknowledgement. He half-turned and nodded towards the Expectation. “Nice looking ship, sir.”
“Nothing that a high-speed flight through a sandstorm won’t fix,” said Recker with a brief smile. The destroyer’s alloys were dull and unreflective, but they were also clearly new and unmarked. “Anyone onboard?”
“Sergeant Vance, sir. He and his men arrived fifteen minutes ago and I directed them to quarters.”
“Thank you,” said Recker.
Tracker didn’t hear the response. His eyes widened and he whirled around so that he was looking north, towards the landing strip perimeter. In alarm, Recker looked too and all he could see was more of the base.
“What is it?” he asked urgently.
For a moment, Tracker didn’t respond. “A couple of spaceholes, sir,” he said eventually, tapping the side of his helmet to indicate he’d heard about it via the comms. “Sounds like they were attempting a flyover in a civilian shuttle.”
“What happened to them?”
“The flight control mainframe brought them down into the waiting arms of Lieutenant Cider and a whole bunch of pissed-off soldiers.”
“I hope they get five years,” said Eastwood. “We’re at war, damnit.”
The arrival of the spaceship spotters was a minor, yet unwelcome distraction and Recker put it behind him.
“Come on,” he said.
At the lower end of the Expectation’s boarding ramp, Recker paused.
“Well folks - another new ship for us,” he said. “It’s becoming a habit.”
Up the ramp he went, his eyes fixed on the airlock. He entered a space that wasn’t much larger than the equivalent in a riot class. A foldable metal bench on one wall provided temporary seating, while a sealed locker contained combat suits, gauss rifles and a few other useful spares. The combined low-level hum of engines along with the faint vibration of technology made him feel instantly at home.
“Before we go any further, let’s get suited up,” said Recker, sliding open the locker door.
He grabbed a suit and set the helmet down near his feet. Then, he took off his cloth uniform and, after a couple of minutes struggle with the stiffly elastic polymers in the combat spacesuit, finished getting dressed. Aston was ready at the same time, then Eastwood. Meanwhile Burner cursed everyone under the sun and accused the suit of being too small, even though they only came in four different sizes and he’d chosen his usual.
“Too much high living on base,” Eastwood commented.
“Maybe he’s been working out,” said Aston without any indication she really believed it. “All those muscles won’t fit in medium suit.”
Eastwood looked at her in mock-concern. “There’s still time to get your eyes checked out before lift-off, Commander.”
Still complaining, Burner rose from the bench, made a few last adjustments to his suit and declared himself ready.
Recker was impatient to be off and he readied himself to open the inner door. He’d been on every type of warship in the fleet and knew what he was going to find. Even so, the excitement was there. With his fingertips, Recker activated the security panel and the door slid open. A gust of cold, sharp-scented air rustled through, drying the beads of sweat in his hair. He smiled.
Beyond the door, a short, narrow passage with a low ceiling led through solid metal to an intersection, where Recker turned left. As he walked along the blue-white lit passage, he tapped his knuckles against the walls to feel the reassuring solidity that only came from enormous blocks of dense alloy and ternium.
“No pipes, no cables,” he said.
Rather than finding a different way to route these intrusions, it seemed as if the designers had instead lowered the ceilings and hidden the conduits in the space they’d gained by doing so. Recker guessed he had about six inches less headroom than normal and when he stretched out his arms, he thought that a similar amount had gone missing from the width.
“If they keep making the crew areas smaller, in a hundred years’ time, they’ll have to design a one-way system for warships because there’ll be no room for two people to pass,” said Aston.
By the time they arrived at the steps leading up to the bridge, Recker was convinced the Expectation had even less overall space for the crew than a riot class. He shrugged – the fewer rooms and corridors the builders had to fit inside, the larger the Hellburner magazines they could accommodate, and Recker would gladly swap high ceilings for more ammunition.
The square door protecting the bridge was shut. Twin, stubby-barrelled miniguns spun lazily in their alcoves to either side, promising a nasty surprise to either Daklan invaders or overachieving spaceholes.
Without hesitation, Recker touched the access panel and the blast door opened.
“Someone pinch me,” said Eastwood. “I just got back on the Finality.”
It was an accurate observation. The bridge area was almost identical to that of a riot class, though Recker noted that the Expectation was fitted with newer-design consoles and, in a nod to luxury, the seat coverings were probably only four degrees of separation from real leather, instead of six degrees on a riot class.
“Why mess with a good design, Lieutenant?” asked Recker.
“No reason, I guess. I just thought they might have rearranged the furniture in the six or seven years since I last served on a destroyer.”
“The more familiar it is, the easier it’ll be for you,” said Recker, marching onto the bridge. “Find your stations, folks. I want to know everything about this spaceship. More importantly, I want to know you’re ready to fly it the moment we receive the order to go.”
Recker took his seat and brought the command console out of sleep. Barely had his screens fired up than Lieutenant Eastwood called for his attention.
“Sir, come and have a look at this.”
“What is it?” asked Recker, standing again.
“This.”
A box constructed from thin metal was sitting on the floor at the base of Eastwood’s console. Wires emerged from one side and they were patched into a small, open hatch, low down. A keypad and green-lit screen on top of the device gave away no immediate clue as to its purpose.
“Admiral Telar said they’d fitted some last-minute modifications,” said Recker.
“This is what passes for a modification these days?” said Eastwood, nudging the box with his foot. “It looks like a college student’s first attempt at building an ATM hacker.”
“Leave it for the moment, Lieutenant. Get ready to fly.”
Recker had hardly got himself seated when Burner relayed a message from the Adamantine flight controller.
“We’ve been given a thirty-minute departure slot, sir. Starting now.”
“I didn’t know Admiral Telar was in so much of a hurry,” said Aston.
“Neither did I,” said Recker. “I only left the meeting three hours ago.”
“Adamantine is expecting a classified arrival, sir,” said Burner. “They must need our space on the landing field.”
“Fine. Acknowledge the order and instruct the ground crews to get clear. If it’s safe for us to go, we’ll go.”
Recker returne
d to his pre-flight checks. The Expectation’s magazines were fully loaded and every status light was green. Whoever had brought it over from the shipyard on Fortune had taken the vessel through its riskiest first lightspeed jump. In theory, the warship was as ready to go as it ever would be.
Twenty minutes into the departure window, Recker was confident enough to order the lift-off.
“Once we’re up, we can finish any remaining checks,” he said.
The crew were ready and so was Recker. He held the controls, ran his eyes across the width of his console and then drew the alloy bars towards him. The underlying grumble from the engine rose in volume and the Expectation rose from the ground, its ternium propulsion carrying the warship upwards like it weighed the merest fraction of its billion tons.
“All sensors locking and focusing within expected parameters,” said Burner.
“Propulsion output at 99%,” said Eastwood. “I don’t know where that final one percent got to.”
“A calibration problem on the monitoring hardware?” said Aston.
“Could be. I’ll check it out once we’re in orbit.”
The Expectation climbed steadily and the underside feeds betrayed the level of activity on the Adamantine base far better than was possible from ground level. It seemed to Recker as if he were watching a huge crowd dancing to an unheard tune, the ordered steps teetering on the brink of chaos.
“The car was right,” said Burner. “They’re making preparations for two new hulls in those far trenches.”
“We’re about to find out what the HPA can achieve when given the motivation,” said Recker.
“Motivation and funding,” said Eastwood. “The military’s been lacking both.”
“Not anymore,” said Recker. He’d seen the determination in Admiral Telar’s face. A change was coming and it was going to sweep everyone on the Adamantine base along like an unstoppable tide – a tide that Recker welcomed with open arms.
Gradually, the base dwindled and Recker turned his attention upwards. The Expectation left the planet’s atmosphere, where it joined the twenty-five-strong defensive fleet of destroyers, cruisers and the Granite battleship.
Fractured Horizons (Savage Stars Book 2) Page 2