The Tin Soldiers (Final Dawn, Book 5)

by T W M Ashford

  “And what about the ships themselves? What if I accidentally trigger a mine or a reactor, or something?”

  “It’s been hundreds of years, Jack. Any ordinance that wasn’t scavenged has surely degraded to the point of being harmless by now. Just take it slow and we’ll be fine – right, Adi?”

  “Right,” the Adeona agreed, with somewhat less certainty in her voice. “And stay away from anything too conductive, just to be on the safe side.”

  “Oh, sure. Don’t go near anything too conductive. Shouldn’t be hard in a battlecruiser graveyard, or anything.”

  “Not every metal has a low electrical resistance, Jack. Just try to avoid crashing me into anything, please.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to navigate this mess?”

  “No, I think this requires a slower touch. I’ll concentrate on the scanners and weapon systems, should we run into any trouble.”

  Jack grumbled to himself as he “slowly” inched the Adeona towards the beginning of the debris. Slow. He wasn’t slow. He was nuanced, delicate, versatile. He was the reason sentient ships like Adi came with a bloody flight stick in the first place.

  Flying through the graveyard was like flying through a frozen, three-dimensional snapshot of time. Without any external forces acting upon them, all of the fragments of ship remained almost exactly where they were left following the disaster hundreds of years earlier. The levels of dust were so close to that of a perfect vacuum that not even the fiery particles from the Adeona’s thrusters were enough to push anything they passed off-kilter.

  Her forward-facing floodlights swept across what Jack imagined had once been a cargo hold of some kind. It was hard to tell for sure given that half of the battlecruiser’s hull was sheered off. The breached hold was full of crates, canisters, and artefacts he couldn’t recognise. He suspected there were more than a few corpses floating amongst the detritus, too, preserved for centuries inside their ancient cosmonaut suits.

  God, he really hoped he didn’t end up like that.

  Jack elegantly guided the ship between two criss-crossed pillars cast in purple by the nearby storm. He couldn’t tell if they were giant cosmic blades of some kind, or a pair of massive railguns that had collided somehow. Maybe they were rudders. Even for such an expansive galactic community, five or six hundred years was a long time. Who knew what weapons the old empires used to wage war with?

  Something tiny – a rivet or a lost thumb drive, perhaps – bumped against the cockpit windows as he brought the ship back up again. Everyone winced even though, thanks to the Adeona’s shields and the strength of her industrial hull, it didn’t leave so much as a scratch. Jack hoped he hadn’t just triggered the lightning nebula equivalent of the butterfly effect, where the rivet knocked against a girder, which spun into a thruster coil, which dislodged a…

  Lightning struck the satellite array on the underside of a battlecruiser to the right of him and skittered across its surface like a living web. A short-lived smack of thunder followed. Jack jerked his flight stick to the left and banked hard as an arc of electricity leapt from the cruiser’s hull onto a buckled freighter unit floating to one side, narrowly missing them. He drifted the Adeona to a stop beside the charred skeleton of a smaller interceptor, his hands shaking.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said in a shuddering gasp. “That was a close—”

  A second bolt tore out from the gas cloud above them and punctured the interceptor like a spear of static. Electricity enveloped the disembowelled ship in a violently-throbbing white forcefield. Jack went to fire the Adeona’s thrusters, but he was too late. The lightning made the jump and started spreading over Adi’s hull.

  “Come on, come on,” Jack growled as he pumped the triggers on the back of the flight stick and rammed the accelerator lever forward over and over again. The lights inside the cockpit turned red, just as they had when the Adeona had once been hit by a disruptor mine.

  “Get us out of here, Jack,” said Rogan. The holographic representation of the nebula above her table flickered on and off as the Adeona’s systems surged.

  “What do you think I’m trying to do?” he snapped, flicking every switch and prodding every button he thought might help. They didn’t. The cockpit windows were covered by a blinding wall of electricity, the terminals were shutting down, and he could even hear a serpentine hiss coming from outside her hull.

  Hearing a clunk, Jack turned to look at the co-pilot seat. Klik was hurriedly securing her helmet onto her spacesuit.

  “Any advice would be welcome, Adi,” he yelled, desperately trying the thrusters again.

  Jack could hear Adi trying to reply through her speakers. It was unlikely that the electrical surge was affecting her data core, thank goodness. But her communications system was a mess – all her words came out half-complete, her sentences back-to-front, and her voice warped beyond recognition.

  Suddenly one of the smaller air thrusters worked, gently pushing them away from the interceptor. He squeezed the corresponding trigger as hard as he could. They’d need to fire at least one other air thruster on the other side to slow themselves down again, but that was a problem for Jack Ten-Seconds-From-Now to worry about.

  “The electrostatic charge is dissipating,” said Tuner, rushing from one terminal to the other as they shut down in sequence. “Keep doing that, Jack.”

  “Eh?” shouted Klik.

  “The electricity outside the ship is running out of juice,” Rogan explained. “We’re out of conductive range of the interceptor and we’re too small for any new lightning bolts to strike us directly. Without an active source, it should fizzle out in a few seconds.”

  Tuner jumped backwards as the last available terminal in the cockpit spat sparks at him and cut out.

  “That’s all well and good,” said Jack, “but how the hell am I supposed to stop us from hitting that?”

  Another frigate was growing bigger outside the windows. Well, the bridge of one, at least. It wasn’t a mystery as to where the rest of the ship had gone – they were already drifting rather calamitously through the leftover shrapnel. It wasn’t the inevitability of crashing into the bridge that worried Jack, however. He reckoned Adi’s reinforced hull could take the modest impact. It was the possibility that certain materials on board were of a… volatile nature. It wouldn’t be the first bridge they’d come across with a self-destruct mechanism.

  “Fire Adi’s thrusters,” Rogan said, standing beside her lifeless hologram table.

  “They’re offline,” Jack screamed back at her. “Everything’s offline!”

  “We need to perform a full reboot,” said Rogan, turning to Tuner. “Where’s the emergency override?”

  “Got it,” said Tuner, waddling down to the front of the cockpit. “Leave it to me.”

  “Full reboot?” Jack spun his chair around; there wasn’t much he could do at the dashboard anyway. “Are you serious? What about Adi?”

  “Adi will be fine,” said Tuner, flinging open a hatch on the floor and climbing inside the cubby hole. “Her data core has its own backup power separate from everything else. It’s only her physical systems we’re switching off, and most of them are offline already.”

  “If you say so.”

  Tuner grabbed hold of a chunky red lever and yanked it up from the floor. Everything in the cockpit shut down – all the lights, all the alarms, even the floodlights outside. Aside from the LED lights of Tuner’s head and the sound of Jack’s laboured breathing, all was utterly black and silent.

  Jack felt himself gently lift up from his seat as the artificial gravity system died. With a cold jolt of panic, Jack realised that the atmospheric generator must have gone offline, too. If they couldn’t bring the Adeona online again…

  He fumbled with his helmet. It slipped out of his hands and spun elegantly towards the cockpit ceiling.

  Bugger.

  Having waited a few seconds for everything to fully reset, Tuner grabbed the upturned lever again.

  “Bri
nging Adi back in three… two… one…”

  He slammed the lever back into its groove in the floor.

  Nothing happened.

  “Try again,” said Rogan.

  Jack looked outside as a fresh display of lightning lit up the purple gas clouds. The bridge of the frigate was much closer now – a hundred and fifty metres away at most. They were drifting ever-so-slightly port-side. Unless something else knocked them off-course, Adi’s starboard flank would crash straight into the other ship’s command-windows.

  “Guys…”

  Tuner wrenched the lever upright again, and kept it upright even as something bashed against the front of the cockpit. Jack’s stomach lurched. With her power off, the Adeona’s exterior shields were offline too. Maybe a simple crash would be enough to kill them after all.

  A hundred metres… Ninety…

  Klik got up from her chair and started slowly making her way to the rear of the cockpit.

  Eighty metres… Seventy…

  “Tuner, now!”

  Tuner slammed the lever down again. All of the lights inside the cockpit flickered on. An electrical hum filled the room as all of the computers booted back up again. Jack’s helmet dropped inelegantly onto the floor.

  “Punch it, Jack!” Rogan screamed.

  Jack spun around, grabbed the flight stick and squeezed all the triggers down its right-hand side. Multiple air thrusters fired, slowing the Adeona’s velocity. At the same time, he rammed the accelerator lever forward and redirected most of Adi’s power to her primary engines. They blasted past the derelict bridge, missing the edge of its jagged hull by mere feet.

  He slowed the ship down again as soon as they were clear, this time making sure to keep a good distance from any potential superconductors.

  “Adi?” he said once they were stopped. “Adi, are you all right?”

  The speakers gave off a high-pitched whine. Jack winced and covered his ears.

  “Now that was a rush!” the Adeona replied at one hundred and fifty percent her usual speed. “I feel overclocked, I feel alive, I feel fresh off the…”

  She paused as her first wave of scans pinged off their surroundings.

  “Hold on a second, we’ve moved. Sorry, what did I miss?”

  20

  Ungodly Monolith, Unholy Alliance

  They caught something matching the Negoti shuttle’s approximate size and shape on the Adeona’s scanners about twenty minutes later, though the lightning nebula summoned so much interference that they couldn’t tell for sure it wasn’t just a case of ball lightning or a piece of crashed ship gone astray. And there was always the possibility that Adi’s earlier close encounter had left her sensors fried.

  The object blipped in and out of existence. Sometimes it jumped forwards and backwards, swapping position instantaneously like an over-excited electron. Regardless of exactly where or what it was, however, there was no doubt it was following a hazardous course only a few kilometres relative east of their present location. Rogan plotted out a new route through a tight network of gaseous corridors to intercept them.

  They emerged from the shortcut into a large, empty vacuum-pocket no more or less identifiable than anywhere else in the giant interstellar dust cloud. The shuttle was nowhere to be seen.

  “So where is this thing, then?” asked Klik.

  “Do you think we made a mistake?” Jack stood up from his seat and peered around the ethereal, purple chasm. “Maybe there’s something about the chemical makeup of the nebula that pings back our own signal, or something.”

  “I shouldn’t think so,” said Rogan. “We didn’t have any trouble back in the battlecruiser graveyard.”

  Tuner pushed his chair back from one of the terminals.

  “You feeling all right, Adi?” he asked.

  “Never better!” she replied, still a little charged.

  “Well, there’s nothing here.” Jack sat back down and guided the Adeona forwards. “Surely we should have run into them by now. I’m starting to get the feeling that maybe we did miss them coming out of the nebula.”

  Rogan shook her head gravely.

  “But the calculations,” she said. “Even following the fastest route from the asteroid, they couldn’t—”

  “Shut up about maths,” Klik shouted, “and look out the stupid window.”

  Jack squinted and cursed his rubbish human eyes. He couldn’t see anything out there save for the occasional stabbing branch of electricity and a great deal of murky, ionised gas. But then a tiny, far-from-aerodynamic block of dull, grey metal drifted into view before them.

  “Ah,” he said, swallowing hard. “Oh dear.”

  It was the shuttle, no question about it.

  But it wasn’t alone.

  Following close behind like a mountainous bodyguard was the Archimandrite’s flying fortress – his interstellar temple for the Order of the First Diakonos. The walls of gas on all sides billowed and spilled across its spires as it carved a path towards them. A series of lightning strikes lashed against its black hull and surged across its arches and buttresses, but the ship appeared unharmed. It had evidently been designed with such inhospitable environments in mind. And luckily for the shuttle, it was drawing all of the storm’s ire.

  Jack spun around to look at everyone else in the cockpit.

  “What the hell are we supposed to do now? That ungodly monolith wasn’t part of the plan!”

  “Does it have any weapons?” Klik asked.

  “If it’s all the same to everyone else, I’d really rather not find out.”

  “Do you have any missiles on board, Adi?” Tuner asked. “Or any mines, or other explosives?”

  “I’m afraid not,” the Adeona replied. “I never replenished my explosive ordnance after the battle for the Iris. Much too expensive for our budget, I assure you. I’m at fifty percent capacity for ballistic rounds. Apologies, but I believed this would be enough.”

  “It would have been if we were just up against the shuttle,” Tuner replied, bowing his head. “Don’t worry, it’s not your fault.”

  “I’m not convinced anything the Adeona can fire would be enough to take down something that armoured anyway,” said Jack. “We’d need a battleship to punch a hole in that thing.”

  “Actually,” said Tuner, “I was sort of thinking we could fire a rocket at the shuttle from here. If would could disable it from afar, we wouldn’t need to get within firing range of the Archimandrite’s fortress, either. Presuming they didn’t shoot the missile down, of course.”

  “And is that the plan?” Jack squirmed in his captain’s chair as both the shuttle and temple drew steadily closer. “To just blow up the rest of the LX-14s and be done with it?”

  “If it saves thousands of Qualian lives and helps ensure that all the peace-loving automata across the galaxy get treated fairly,” Rogan said rather unconvincingly, “then I don’t see what choice we have. I’d rather we didn’t kill any of my own kind, but—”

  “Wait, I thought we were just shooting out the shuttle’s thrusters,” said Klik. “Then the Ministry or Negoti could come and safely retrieve the LX-14s afterwards.”

  “Which would be my preferred option,” Rogan replied, exasperated. “But if we disable it with the Archimandrite’s ship right there, Klik, how long do you think it’s going to stay disabled?”

  “Rogan’s right,” sighed Jack. “One way or another, the Archimandrite will get those LX-14s to Queflia’s surface. They’ve got to be destroyed.”

  “What if there’s another way?” the Adeona asked.

  “We’re listening,” said Tuner. “What are you suggesting?”

  “Well, it’s not my suggestion, exactly. It comes from our friend downstairs.”

  Jack looked around at the others, confused. The whole crew was in the cockpit. Dev and Silo were locked in the rec room with enough liquor to knock them both unconscious. Who else was…?

  “You’re chatting with the busted-up LX-14? What the hell are you doing that for?�
��

  “It’s communicating via network; it’s not as if I have much choice. And besides, you’ve left it plugged into me. It seems rude to ignore it. But you might want to listen to what it has to say. It believes it knows a way we can keep the LX-14s alive and put a stop to the Archimandrite.”

  Jack and Rogan glanced at one another uneasily.

  “What’s in it for the LX-14?” Rogan asked. “How do we know it’s not trying to trick us?”

  “We don’t.” If the Adeona could have shrugged, she would have. “But trust me – it might be dumb, but it’s still sentient. It really doesn’t want to get spaced.”

  When the shuttle got approximately halfway through the gas pocket, the Adeona raced forwards. She curved out wide – narrowly avoiding incurring the wrath of the lightning storms to all sides – before sweeping back in again towards the shuttle.

  Her rotary cannons deployed from compartments along her underside and flank and began spinning. She unleashed a stream of ballistic rounds at the shuttle. One of the cannons was trained at specific parts of the ship. The other two sprayed rounds needlessly into the void.

  It needed to look messier than it was.

  The first burst of rounds from the on-target rotary cannon blew out three of the shuttle’s four rear thrusters. The second burst was at the cabin at the other end of the shuttle. Her rounds cracked and then smashed the cockpit’s windows, killing one of the two pilots and leaving the other to suffocate in the vacuum.

  All of this happened in the space of two-point-four seconds (except for the suffocating, which took approximately eighteen seconds longer).

  With only one of the thrusters functional and both of its pilots dead, the shuttle shuddered and sparked to a relative stop. The Archimandrite’s temple continued to bulldoze its way through the volatile gas cloud behind it. No doubt the acolytes inside were already preparing a counter-attack.

  The Adeona shot down the shuttle and roared past it in one slick movement. She performed a quick u-turn before she got too close to the gaseous wall on the opposite side of the pocket, and then raced back again as if to inspect the damage.