“And the portside,” said Recker, tilting the Fulcrum again.
“Sixty more locked and launched.”
As the Bane plummeted, it was struck unerringly by three waves of missiles. It was a well-armoured ship and would likely have survived the first sixty explosions. Possibly even the next sixty. The battleship couldn’t withstand 180 plasma missile strikes and it was turned into a white-hot ball of flame.
Recker followed it down, warily, though he was certain the enemy was done. Pieces of debris fell away from the light-cloaked wreckage and they trailed in its wake, also burning, like a hundred thousand meteorites.
At the end of its long fall, the Bane crashed onto the Meklon base, landing half on top of the Aktrivisar and half on top of the other broken ships. Somehow, it seemed like a fitting end.
“What’s the recharge time on the Executor, Commander?”
“Less than a minute, sir.”
“I promised Captain Jir-Lazan I’d destroy the Aktrivisar and Axiom, to ensure the Lavorix can’t learn anything if they ever recover the hulls.”
When Executor finished recharging, Recker – without relish - ordered Aston to fire it at the centre of the debris pile. The thumping discharge was no more pleasant than the last one and it took an enormous effort for Recker to keep his eyes on the sensor feed in order to watch the outcome.
The visible effects of Executor were a cross between an explosion and a disintegration. A sphere of darkness came into being and tore the ruined warships to pieces, hurling riven alloy thousands of metres in every direction. Whatever was caught in the two-thousand-metre centre was reduced to dust and fine particles, which were quickly swept away by the ever-present storm on Kemis-5.
Recker watched for a time, needing to be sure. At last, he accepted that nothing useful could be obtained from the debris which remained.
“Done,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”
He tightened his grip on the controls and the Fulcrum flew upwards.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Recker had long since grown accustomed to the bleakness of the universe – maybe even learned to love it – but his main thought was to escape from Kemis-5. The Fulcrum showed no ill-effects from its recent confrontation and it surged above the planet’s atmosphere and into space. Believing it best to get away from the planet, Recker chose a direction at random and pushed the spaceship to maximum speed. Kemis-5 dwindled on the rear sensors.
“Sir?”
The question prompted Recker to half-turn in his seat.
“What is it, Sergeant Vance?”
“What did you do to the enemy warship?”
“I sent it a shut down code. Every warship in the HPA fleet is coded to go offline when it receives one, and most senior commanding officers can issue such a code. It’s a failsafe in case a warship crew goes rogue. We’ve just found out that the Meklon have similar protections in place.”
Vance nodded his understanding. “Would such a code work against the core override, sir?”
“It’s a good question, Sergeant. When the Expectation was hit by the Interrogator’s core override at Pinvos, the first part of the security system it went for was the shut down control.”
“I guess they thought of everything, sir.”
Turning away, Vance ordered the soldiers to resume their clean-up of the bridge. Recker let them get on with it and locked his gaze on the sensor feed once more.
“What next, sir?” asked Burner.
“We have to find out where the Gateway sent us and then we’re going home.”
“I’ve had a look at the Fulcrum’s star charts and I’m having a hard time tallying them up with anything known to the HPA. I think we’ve come a long way.”
“I trust you and Lieutenant Larson will be able to figure something out between you.”
“I’m sure we will, sir.”
“Oh shit,” said Eastwood.
Somehow, Recker knew exactly what was coming and his muscles tensed in anticipation. “A ternium wave,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“The Galactar.”
“It’s too big to be anything else.”
“And it’s arriving at the exact place the Gateway dumped us.”
“Yes, sir. Two million klicks beyond Kemis-5.”
“Shit.” Recker exhaled, feeling suddenly tired. “They worked out how to follow us.”
Aston realized why Recker sounded so drained. “We can’t go home.”
“No, Commander, we can’t go home. Not unless we want to lead that spaceship directly to an HPA world.”
“What are we going to do, sir?” asked Larson.
For a moment, Recker didn’t have an answer. He pulled himself together, though it took all his strength.
“I’ve got no intention of dying out here, Lieutenant,” he said. “Time is wasting and soon the Galactar will locate the mess we left on Kemis-5. Then it’ll follow us out here and destroy the Fulcrum.”
“We should leave,” said Aston.
Recker nodded. “Lieutenant Eastwood, what’s the warmup time on the lightspeed drive?”
“Five minutes, sir. The same as on the Vengeance.”
“Lieutenant Burner, is there anything on the Meklon star charts that will help us?”
“I don’t know, sir. It’ll take me a while to study them properly.”
“In that case, pick somewhere twenty-four hours lightspeed from here and pass the coordinates to Lieutenant Eastwood.”
“Done.”
Recker switched the Fulcrum’s propulsion into mode 2 and the background note became instilled with serenity, rather than urgency. Several output gauges rocketed, giving hints at the unlocked potential from the overstressed ternium modules.
“Mode 3,” said Recker, pressing his thumb onto one of the buttons on the left control bar.
The sensors went blank and the Fulcrum surged into a short duration lightspeed jump, with an accompanying howl from the engines. Recker held the button, wondering how long the battleship could hold this state.
The increased speed didn’t last long and the Fulcrum emerged from lightspeed at zero velocity and with its propulsion returned to mode 1.
“Lieutenant Eastwood, get us away from here.”
“Ternium drive warming up, sir.”
The five minutes dragged and Recker’s eyes kept jumping to the sensor feeds. He’d seen enough of the Galactar to fear it.
“How can we fight something that turned the tide of a war between two empires?” he said, not expecting an answer.
“We have to run and we have to keep learning, until we find a way to escape the Galactar,” said Aston. “And then we take our knowledge back home.”
Recker nodded and his eyes drifted to the lightspeed countdown timer. “The final thirty seconds,” he said.
I can’t let fear rule me. If I do, the battle is already lost.
With his crew and soldiers relying on him, and two data cubes filled with potentially vital information on the Meklon and the Lavorix, Recker knew that this time, more than any other, he couldn’t fail.
The timer hit zero and the Fulcrum entered lightspeed, its destination a solar system that wasn’t on either the HPA or the Daklan charts.
As the warship tore across the ruins of the Meklon empire, Recker’s mind recalled a recent conversation with Admiral Telar, in which he’d been described as a fulcrum. And now Recker was in command of a battleship with the same name. Fate and the universe worked in the strangest of ways and he wondered what his future held.
Whatever came, he’d be ready for it.
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Other Science Fiction Books by Anthony James
Survival Wars (Seven Books) – Available in Ebook, Paperback and Audio.
Crimson Tempest
Bane of Worlds
Chains of Duty
Fires of Oblivion
Terminus Gate
Guns of the Valpian
Mission: Nemesis
Obsidiar Fleet (Six Books – set after the events in Survival Wars) – Available in Ebook and Paperback.
Negation Force
Inferno Sphere
God Ship
Earth’s Fury
Suns of the Aranol
Mission: Eradicate
The Transcended (Seven Books – set after the events in Obsidiar Fleet) – Available in Ebook, Paperback and Audio
Augmented
Fleet Vanguard
Far Strike
Galaxy Bomb
Void Blade
Monolith
Mission: Destructor
Fire and Rust (Seven Books) – Available in Ebook, Paperback and Audio.
Iron Dogs
Alien Firestorm
Havoc Squad
Death Skies
Refuge 9
Nullifier
Scum of the Universe
Anomalies (Two Books) – Available in Ebook and Paperback.
Planet Wreckers
Assault Amplified
Galactar (Savage Stars Book 3) Page 23