“How the hell is it still operational?” said Eastwood in disbelief.
A piece of the rear section – a billion tons or more - snapped free and fell into the crater, yet still the heavy cruiser remained in the air, firing nothing, but still searching.
“Give it the Hellburners,” said Recker.
At a range of twenty kilometres, Aston fired and the twin warheads thundered into the stricken desolator, producing gouts of flame from the huge openings they created in the armour. A moment after, four more Hellburners, this time from the Shock and Awe, crashed into the enemy ship.
Six Hellburners were more than enough. The desolator’s resistance was over and the heavy cruiser broke into pieces, which hung briefly in the air before plummeting down. Once again, Pinvos was struck a series of massive blows as the debris crashed into the Interrogator’s heat-scarred crater.
“I’ve got Captain Hutton on the comms, sir,” said Burner.
It was the first time since the beginning of the mission that Recker had spoken directly to his opposite number on the Shock and Awe.
“Bring him through on the open channel,” he said, piloting the Expectation towards the place where the Interrogator hit the surface. It seemed best to check on the satellite’s condition.
Captain Jack Hutton had a deep voice and an accent that was probably from somewhere on Earth. He provided a concise summary of the mission so far. “What a heap of shit.”
Recker couldn’t bring himself to smile. “It’s not over yet,” he said. “Ten days to base and then a week explaining what happened. We lost some good officers here.”
“You extracted some intel, Captain Recker.”
“For all the good it’ll do us against the Daklan. The best outcome is that an unknown alien species doesn’t know where our home worlds are located.”
“One way or another, we’ve got to be sure.”
“I’ve got no arguments with that.”
Recker was exhausted. It felt like he’d been fighting nonstop for weeks and now the prize at the end of it might be no more than early warning about a coming attack from an unknown species. On the other hand, that species might be long dead, or no longer interested in data from the Interrogator. Whatever the truth, humanity – already pushed to the limit – was about to find itself with a whole bunch of additional worries and no easy way to deal with them.
Putting the distraction aside, Recker flew the Expectation over the edge of the largest crater, the sides of which were now completely glassy and with an unhealthy red sheen.
Much of the alien cube was spread across the crater, in melted pieces and pools of hardening alloy, but the devastator bomb hadn’t entirely finished the job. In the centre of the crater, a much larger section of the Interrogator remained. Three of the cube’s faces were missing and its interior was open to the elements. Without proper support, the remaining two vertical walls sagged and leaned, and the inner area had suffered so much damage that Recker struggled to connect its current appearance with what he’d seen before.
“Anything we can salvage?” asked Hutton on the comms, his warship stationary and twenty kilometres east.
“There’s plenty of debris,” said Recker. “I guess if this was an easy operation, high command would be interested.”
“What I’m asking is whether we need to shoot it some more.”
Recker slowly shook his head, aware the other man couldn’t see him doing so. “We could unload everything we have and still be asking that same question.” He held in a sigh. “We’ve done enough.”
Evidently unconvinced, Hutton piloted his warship closer. The comms channel stayed open, though neither man spoke for a while.
“Let’s go,” said Hutton eventually.
“I’ll have my comms man send you a synch code,” said Recker eventually. “It’s time we returned to base.”
“You’re forgetting something, Captain Recker.”
The words left Recker puzzled. “What’s that?”
“Before we leave, it’s our duty to locate Admiral Fraser. He’s on a shuttle somewhere.” Hutton’s voice was scrupulously neutral.
The reminder of Fraser’s actions left Recker angry once again. Still, he couldn’t abandon the man, no matter how tempting it might be.
“Then let’s find him and get back to base,” he growled.
At that moment, Aston made a discovery. “Our weapons targeting system just came back online,” she said.
“You’ve got to be shitting us?” said Eastwood.
Aston wasn’t shitting them and Recker experienced a brief wave of giddiness in the way he usually did when it seemed like the entire damned universe was conspiring against him. He ground his teeth and guided the Expectation away from the surface.
Chapter Sixteen
The ten-day flight home passed quickly and gave Recker an opportunity to reflect upon the mixed fortunes of both the HPA and the personnel fighting this war. Captain Eden Melody – an officer whom Recker had never met - had proven resourceful in the engagement at Pinvos and had offered the ultimate sacrifice to ensure a mission outcome that, while not exactly successful, was more in favour of the HPA than the Daklan.
In contrast, Admiral Fraser had offered no gratitude – at least as far as Recker was aware – for the rescue which had delayed the start of the return journey by thirty-six hours. Not only that, but Fraser had quickly started pointing the finger of blame in every direction – from the personnel who’d drawn up the mission briefing to the people who had died. Nobody was spared in the man’s efforts to justify his craven act of cowardice in abandoning the Trojan.
And that justification was so weak as to be laughable, were there any humour whatsoever to be found in events at Pinvos. Every time Recker played the words through in his mind, he felt his piss boiling and his hands clenched unconsciously into fists.
I decided the mission was best served by putting myself into a risk-laden position from which I could observe matters and report them in the event our assets and resources were neutralised.
Warships, people, death, reduced to spreadsheet terms, like it was a game of numbers to be played late evening over a glass of Cognac. The disconnect between the man and reality was beyond Recker’s comprehension.
After coming out with that one, Fraser had then gone on the offensive, creating as much of a smoke screen as possible to hide his own failings and magnify those of others. The man even had the insolence to suggest that the comparative lack of damage suffered by the Expectation was a direct result of Recker’s reluctance to engage with the desolators and thereby ensure the destruction of the Trojan.
The mental pursuit of justice gave Recker no satisfaction and, with an effort, he made himself concentrate only on the day-to-day activities required to keep the destroyer running smoothly. Whatever would happen once the mission reports were in would happen, though shit had a strange way of sliding off Fleet Admiral Solan’s cohort of friends and sympathisers.
At last, the Expectation broke out of lightspeed, five million kilometres from Lustre. When creating the synch code, Lieutenant Eastwood had detached the overstress box in order that the lightspeed calculations could be performed normally. Even so, it was a relief when the destroyer arrived on target, though none of the crew mentioned it.
“The Shock and Awe just entered local space, a hundred thousand klicks away.”
“Home, safe and sound,” said Aston with unusual rancour.
“Let’s hope the repercussions are aimed at the right people,” added Eastwood.
Recker felt his blood pressure rising, so he didn’t encourage the conversation. Instead he fed power into the engines and set the warship on a trajectory leading to the Adamantine base, which was currently on the visible side of the planet. With the sensors on maximum zoom, planet Lustre lived up to its name, with the orange-tinged light from its sun making the blue oceans glisten with a beautiful, shimmering pattern reminiscent of scales from a mythical dragon.
The wonder of it
wasn’t lost on Recker, but he took no comfort from the sight – not now. This return to base may herald the HPA’s entry into a new period of fear and uncertainty and he was the one bearing the news.
Lasting a little more than an hour, the approach should have been easy to cope with. To Recker’s chagrin, it dragged interminably for thirty minutes, at which point Admiral Telar requested a comms channel. The discussion which followed was brief and only touched on some of the mission details, with Telar being uninterested in much of it. Recker wasn’t fooled – the admiral had his reasons for asking the questions he did, though it left him with no reassurance as to which way the wind was blowing.
Recker had put his faith in high command before. It had bitten him on the ass and then come back for the other buttock. That faith wasn’t yet nearly restored.
“We’ve received a request from the Adamantine flight control mainframe, sir,” said Burner. “It wants to bring us in.”
“Fine,” said Recker, reaching out and selecting an option on his console to accept the request. “I’ve handed over the controls.”
After that, it was a case of sitting back and letting it happen. The flight controller was programmed with multiple layers of caution, so the eagerness with which the velocity gauge climbed came as something of a surprise.
“It’s in a hurry,” said Eastwood. “I wonder if Admiral Telar had the protocols updated.”
“That would make sense,” said Recker. “The mainframe has plenty of processing grunt to make sure nothing hits anything else.”
The Expectation plunged through a thin layer of high clouds and the base appeared far below. Still the flight controller hardly slowed and the construction trenches became visible as diagonal gouges across one side of the base, like a clawed hand had ripped through the concrete.
“Looks like you were right about the planetary dredger making trenches, sir,” said Eastwood. “Two new ones, both seven klicks long and wider than the others. What the hell are they going to build in those?”
Recker wasn’t aware of plans to build spaceships larger than the current battleship design, but he didn’t get to hear everything about what was happening in the military. “Maybe they’re going to build two cruisers in each trench,” he said. “Or half a dozen riots.”
Burner switched between sensor feeds and settled on one he liked. The chosen array was locked on one of the newer trenches, which was a place of intense activity. Shuttles flew in great numbers, most of them carrying huge slabs of alloy. Around the sides, gravity cranes – one of which was about the size of a riot class – manoeuvred the slabs into position, while an army of other machinery sealed the joins and smoothed the surfaces. In addition, a swarm of much smaller vehicles sped here and there, bringing personnel in and out of the construction site.
“Twenty-two days is a long time, huh?” said Aston. “Another five days and they’ll be finished with that trench and ready to lay down the first hull.”
It was a similar story with the second new trench – endless resources being poured into the war effort. In a way, Recker felt proud to witness what the HPA could achieve when it needed to. That pride was tempered by his fear that this was all coming far too late.
“They’ve already started bringing in the engine modules for whatever they’re about to build,” said Recker, gazing at the stack of eight huge grey blocks near the end trench.
“And there’s a new battleship in trench one,” said Burner. “A second in trench two.”
The two warships weren’t near completion – the underside plates of both were in position, along with some of the smaller propulsion blocks. At one time, Recker would have vaguely guessed that twelve months would be needed to bring these warships into service. With endless funding and extra personnel, he was sure Admiral Telar would not tolerate a construction plan that lasted a full year.
As the descent continued, Recker’s eye was drawn to the landing strip. It appeared no different to how he remembered it – a couple of riots and a cruiser were on the ground in the middle of a re-arm and a check-over by the maintenance teams. Once the fleet numbers were bolstered by the dozens of new-planned warships, he was sure the landing strip would be far more crowded than this.
And then something else caught his eye, on the western fringe of the landing strip.
“They took down that wall around the Vengeance,” he said.
The alien spaceship was parked up, far from the closest HPA warship. The sensor feed was clear enough that Recker could see a couple of tanks, some troop transports and a few maintenance vehicles in the vicinity, but other than that, it seemed as though the warship had been forgotten.
“Maybe Admiral Telar has given up on it,” said Aston.
“Maybe,” said Recker, unsure exactly what he thought. Sometimes he had to remind himself that the Vengeance was only one ship and at some point, the HPA might have to accept it held no worthwhile secrets.
A minute later, the flight controller set the Expectation down next to one of the other riots. Immediately, the maintenance crews moved in.
“We’re going to require trench work,” said Eastwood. “They can’t patch up that Terrus damage from the ground and they certainly can’t let this ship fly until they’ve run a thorough audit to find out exactly what happened during the core override.”
“They’ll find nothing,” said Recker. “The technicians found no lasting effects on the Vengeance and I’m sure they’ll find the same thing with the Expectation.”
He stood and rolled his shoulders to alleviate the aches which had crept up on him. His muscles still felt tight and he knew it was a result of far more than sleeping on a thin foam mattress for so long.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said.
Recker led his crew towards the forward boarding ramp. Muggy air greeted them as they climbed towards the gathering mix of personnel on the ground below. Halfway down, the communicator in Recker’s pocket buzzed and he withdrew it. He hadn’t charged the device since the beginning of the trip and the battery was at one percent. It lasted long enough for him to read the message.
“I’ve been invited to a meeting with Admiral Telar,” he said.
“No surprise there,” said Aston. “At least he isn’t keeping you waiting.”
It wasn’t such a small mercy and Recker was glad that his debriefing would begin at once.
“What about us, sir?” asked Burner, vigorously scratching at his unruly hair.
“No specific orders. Until I hear otherwise, you’re still on my crew, so don’t get lost.”
“I need a bath,” said Burner.
“You sure do,” said Aston, crinkling her nose like she’d just noticed a terrible stench coming from somewhere close by.
Recker didn’t hang around to listen to the outcome of the conversation and forged through the incoming soldiers and maintenance teams. Someone had parked a common-or-garden gravity car adjacent to one of the personnel cabins which dotted the landing strip. Recker commandeered the vehicle without guilt and ordered it to transport him to building Outer Admin 7. The car chattered away, offering up snippets from the military’s extensive collection of rules and regulations. Smiling inwardly, Recker guessed that some bright spark had decided that the thousands of newly conscripted former civilians on Adamantine might well benefit from these little reminders.
At last, following an uneventful journey through a base on obvious high alert, Recker was deposited at his destination. A short time later, he arrived at the door to Admiral Telar’s subterranean office, having noticed that the confusion apparent during his last visit was now replaced by an air of organized calm. The soldiers, however, remained, though it seemed like Recker’s arrival had been telegraphed and he was only stopped once.
In the intervening time, the security systems had been updated and the outer door to Telar’s office opened automatically, a feat copied by the inner door.
“Carl,” Telar greeted him. The atmosphere was distinctly frosty and it was nothing
to do with the air conditioning.
Recker strode into the office and stopped in front of the other man’s desk, studiously ignoring the two chairs.
“Sir,” he said.
Telar’s usually ordered desk was covered in paperwork, most of it contained in folders with the contents half-spilled until none of the rich wood of the desk was visible beneath the chaotic piles of reports. If Recker was any judge, the uncontrolled mess would likely be grinding Telar’s gears.
“Sit,” said Telar using one hand to indicate the left-hand chair.
Recker saw it now – Telar was furious. “I’ve been sitting for most of the last twenty days, sir. Have you spoken to Admiral Fraser?”
Telar’s eyes glittered, but he didn’t answer the question directly. “You gathered data from an artifact known as the Interrogator.”
“I did, sir. I had my comms man send the files to the Adamantine base on the way in.”
“I’ve seen those files, Captain. Numbers. Lots of numbers.”
“We’ll need to set a cruncher on them. Find out if they can be tallied with our own star charts.”
“You believe these files are relevant?”
The question caught Recker off-guard. “The Interrogator didn’t want to know who we were, but it certainly wanted to know where we came from.”
Telar tried to pin him with his gaze, but Recker didn’t waver. After a long moment, Telar sighed and some of the tension fell from his shoulders.
“I’ve spoken to Admiral Fraser. He was very keen to tell me all about the mission to Pinvos and the performance of the officers I chose to accompany him. I am sure mine aren’t the only ears to have heard his verbal report.”
“Admiral Fraser spent most of his time in a shuttle, sir, denying him the opportunity to witness the bravery of his officers. Captain Melody in particular was…”
“Enough, Carl. There is no need for you to defend the actions of Captain Melody – her sacrifice is apparent and I will not permit the truth of what happened to be corrupted by the lies of an officer who has failed in his duty at every level.”
Fractured Horizons (Savage Stars Book 2) Page 14