“I’ve got Admiral Ildir-Ta-Rok on the comms, sir,” said Burner. “He’s in charge of the local Daklan fleet.”
“Put him on open.”
“Captain Recker, you command the Gorgadar,” said Ildir-Ta-Rok. Like most of his species, his voice sounded like an unholy union between white noise and a cheese grater. “What do you know of this enemy warship?”
“It is the Ruklior,” said Recker. “It’s unloading warships.”
“So we have detected. I believe the enemy arrived closer than they intended to our planet.”
Recker nodded his agreement. “Had they deployed their fleet before we detected them, their position would have been much stronger.”
“The Ruklior is within range of our lightspeed missiles, Captain Recker, yet its flight pattern and velocity are such that our warheads will enter local space outside of its shield, rather than within.”
A limitation of the lightspeed missiles was their requirement to re-enter local space before detonation. Their guidance systems were programmed to activate the transition early rather than late, and that meant they’d explode against the Lavorix energy shields, rather than bypassing them and striking armour instead.
“Sir, it’s possible the Ruklior is unaware they were detected by the outer Daklan monitor,” said Burner. “That monitor remains operational.”
“Is that your sensor officer?” asked Ildir-Ta-Rok.
“It is,” Recker confirmed.
“I believe he might be correct. This gives us an opportunity to strike first!”
Recker’s mind jumped unbidden to his early days in the military, to a lesson in warfare strategy he’d attended where the officer delivering his pearls of wisdom was a grizzled, cynical-as-hell, miserable old bastard who’d seen it all and got a shoulder full of medals to prove it.
You think a war between equals is won by the bravest or the most righteous? The side that outthinks its opponent and fights the hardest? Bullshit! The side that wins is the side that screws up the least.
That old man’s viewpoint was just another amongst many – one of the myriad different ways to think about the universe and events happening within it. Taking the current situation at face value, the Ruklior’s crew had made an error and all Recker might have to do was activate mode 3 and fire the Extractor through the guts of that fleet carrier.
And yet, this was the warship chosen by the Lavorix to face the Gorgadar and the Ixidar. A fleet carrier was useless if it succumbed to the first attack and that, in Recker’s mind, meant the Ruklior was going to be a tough nut.
“Admiral Ildir-Ta-Rok, I am concerned that our enemy has chosen the Ruklior as the best equipped for its task. It followed the Gorgadar and the Ixidar to your planet. There is more to this warship than its size and the contents of its bay.”
“What is your evaluation, Captain Recker?”
“The Ancidium was immune to every weapon except the Gorgadar’s particle beam. If the Ruklior had the same defences, the Ixidar would be unable to harm it.”
“Several of our lightspeed missiles have successfully detonated and our monitor confirms visible damage. The enemy craft has adapted its flight pattern to limit the effectiveness of our attacks.”
“So it’s not immune,” said Recker. “That means it has an energy shield that can withstand at least a few hits from the Ixidar’s destroyer cannons.”
“What of this particle beam you mentioned?” asked the Daklan.
“It has a twenty-second recharge interval. The Ruklior’s going to require a few shots before it breaks up.”
“I do not wish to wait idly by as the Ruklior disgorges its fleet near the planet I am charged to protect,” said Ildir-Ta-Rok. “Equally, I am aware that should I instruct my fleet members to activate their lightspeed drives, the enemy will easily outmanoeuvre us.”
Recker was sympathetic to the Daklan’s plight – Ildir-Ta-Rok was in command of the most powerful warships his species had ever created, yet it wasn’t nearly enough to combat the Lavorix. Had the Ruklior’s crew not been wary about the Gorgadar and Ixidar, Recker was sure that the local fleet would already be reduced to molten debris and the planet fallen to the enemy.
“I’ll get back to you, Admiral,” Recker said.
His eye went to the tactical, where four red dots had become fifteen. As Recker watched, three others exited the Ruklior’s bay, and he tried to guess their tactics.
“Do they know the Ixidar is grounded?” he wondered.
“They may do, sir,” said Burner. “Perhaps that’s why they’ve started unloading their fleet, because they know the Destroyer is no immediate threat.”
“The Gorgadar is no pushover,” said Recker.
He sensed he was falling into the trap in which he would waste time attempting to nail down every single variable. It was an impossible task and sometimes it was better to just act. The mode 3 button on the control bar caught Recker’s eye and his thumb brushed gently against it without providing enough pressure to activate.
“I’ve got thirty-two enemy warships on the sensors and counting,” said Burner.
“They could potentially have another fifty battleships within their hold, sir,” said Eastwood. “And we’re watching them spill out.”
“I know, Lieutenant. There’s a lot riding on this,” growled Recker.
“Why don’t we target a proximity mode 3 arrival and hope the death sphere catches them unawares?” said Aston.
“Their course is too erratic to predict, and the death sphere radius is only eighty klicks.” said Recker. “I’m sure we can catch their entire hull within an Extractor cone, but I’ve got a feeling they’re immune to it.”
“Even if you’re right, those smaller ships aren’t immune, sir,” said Larson.
“They’re too far spread,” said Recker. A lightbulb illuminated in his head. “Except the ones in the bay! Lieutenant Burner, open that channel to Ildir-Ta-Rok.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Daklan Admiral entered the channel and he wasn’t happy. “This lack of action is intolerable, human, and you are the only one who can break the deadlock.”
“And that’s exactly what I’m about to do, Admiral. We’re going to mode 3 into the middle of the pack.”
“What about my fleet?”
“There’s nothing you can do from this range, except watch and react,” said Recker.
“My two least favourite responses.”
“Mine too, Admiral.”
“Will the Gorgadar’s shield withstand the bombardment it will receive?”
“Against those ships already deployed? Definitely. It’s the unknowns I’m concerned about.”
“Go,” said Ildir-Ta-Rok. “Delay no longer.”
Recker cut the channel and turned to Aston. “We’re going to fire the Extractor directly into their bay, Commander, and we’re going to test our conventional armaments against the Ruklior. I trust you to pick your targets wisely.”
“Yes, sir.”
The side that wins is the side that screws up the least.
It occurred to Recker exactly how much the negativity of those words had always angered him, as if the skills and bravery of fighting men and women counted for absolutely nothing. He reached towards the tactical and chose his destination. The Ruklior’s velocity and course alterations were effective against lightspeed missiles, but they wouldn’t take it out of Extractor range.
“Activating mode 3,” he said.
The sensors went blank and Recker jammed the control bars forward, producing an exhilarating cacophony from the engines. He banked hard and then again.
“Sensors coming up!” said Burner.
“Locate the Ruklior!” snarled Recker.
The enemy ship might have activated its own mode 3, but he didn’t think so. After all, there was nothing stopping the Gorgadar following again. If this was a trap laid by the Lavorix, it was about to be sprung.
“Sensors online!” yelled Larson. “Targets locked!”
; Those initial targets included several Lavorix battleships and a quantity of smaller vessels, all within ten thousand kilometres of the Gorgadar. Recker wasn’t interested in the battleships, nor the missiles they were ejecting in great quantities towards his vessel.
“Find the Ruklior, damnit!”
“Got it!” said Burner.
At eighteen thousand kilometres away, the enemy vessel was farther than Recker had anticipated and he saw that it was travelling at increased velocity. It was stern-facing and with its pattern of movement unchanged.
At this close distance, the features of the Ruklior were crisp and sharp-edged against the black canvas. Visibly, it held few surprises and its hull was mostly unmarked, suggesting it was fitted with an energy shield to rival that of the Gorgadar. Not that the Ruklior was entirely undamaged – an angry crater still burned with the heat of a lightspeed missile detonation and Recker wondered how many others had struck in the places out of his visual arc.
Altering course, he aimed to sweep around in order that he could locate the bay opening into which he intended firing the Extractor.
“Acquiring targets,” said Aston. “Priority list created. Upper missile clusters one through fifteen: launched. Forward clusters one through five: launched.”
Aston worked with incredible speed and Recker glanced at her priority list. The Ruklior was at number one, with the known battleships coming beneath. His gaze went back to the sensors in time to see the first-launched Lavorix missiles detonate against the Gorgadar’s shield. The reserve gauge didn’t drop more than a fraction.
“They’ll need to do better than that,” said Eastwood.
“Second wave of enemy missiles launched,” intoned Aston. “Enemy countermeasures active. Gorgadar missile impacts imminent. Underside clusters one through fifteen: launched. Portside clusters one through fifteen: launched. Starboard clusters, one through fifteen: launched.”
The forward sixty missiles impacted with the Ruklior’s energy shield. On a different feed, one of the Lavorix battleships was torn apart by dozens of the Gorgadar’s warheads. Other feeds offered an incomplete picture of the conflict. Tracer lines swept through the darkness, while hundreds of propulsion trails from offensive and defensive missiles raced from one screen to another. Around one battleship, Recker spotted a shield of dancing lights appear, like an imperfect copy of a Meklon mesh deflector. The barrier wasn’t enough to protect the Lavorix craft and it vanished within a hundred plasma explosions.
Recker dragged his attention away and focused on the Ruklior. A battleship emerged from its starboard side and a second from its portside. He cursed, having hoped for a clear Extractor shot directly into a single bay. Now, it seemed likely the enemy craft had two separate bays.
Perhaps it won’t matter. Perhaps the Extractor will go clean through from one side to another.
“We’ve received a core override, sir,” said Eastwood. “The Gorgadar’s internal security system has isolated the code.”
A second, much larger, wave of Lavorix missiles, along with a few dozen gauss slugs, crashed into the Gorgadar’s shield. This time the gauge fell, if not by much.
“Should I fire the particle beam, sir?” said Aston. “It’ll give them something to think about.”
The Gorgadar’s sweeping approach had brought the Ruklior’s portside bay into sight, though the angle wasn’t enough to see what lay within. Six further lightspeed missiles had smashed into the visible side – not nearly enough to fatally wound the Ruklior, but enough to make the warship’s crew take notice. As if sensing danger from the Gorgadar’s approach, the enemy craft accelerated. It wasn’t able to pull away and the distance between the two vessels fell rapidly.
“Hold the particle beam, Commander,” said Recker. His mind was already conjuring up thoughts of capturing this warship and adding it to the list of others stolen from the Lavorix.
A total of four spaceships exited the bay, two from each side of the Ruklior. Recker ignored them.
One Extractor shot into that bay and then I’ll see if I can catch them in the death sphere.
The plan was straightforward and Recker bared his teeth in anticipation. Bringing the Gorgadar into a tighter turn, he found the angle into the bay he was looking for. At six thousand metres wide and three thousand high, the opening was immense and within, Recker saw dozens of Lavorix craft. Two sped out, side-by-side and banked opposite ways around the Gorgadar.
“Lieutenant Eastwood, switch the engines into superstress.”
“Engines in superstress.”
The corpse-sigh note of the propulsion which Recker well-remembered from the first time was somehow both dreary and thrilling - ancient and new alike, and hinting at tiers of knowledge and possibility far beyond anything humanity had attained. It made his skin tingle and imbued him with fear and longing all at once.
“Commander Aston, fire the Extractor,” he said.
The Extractor shot didn’t come. Recker’s console software kicked him out, returning him to the top-level menu. At the same moment, the controls went unresponsive in his hands.
“Shutdown code!” yelled Eastwood.
Recker knew he’d taken the sucker punch to end all sucker punches. Maybe the Ruklior had a super-weapon designed to combat the Gorgadar, or perhaps it existed only in his head. Whatever the truth, the enemy hadn’t even needed to show what they had. All they’d needed was a shutdown code, and with the Ixidar offline in the Hakarul construction yard, there was no allied ship to rescind it.
The side that wins is the side that screws up the least.
Cursing in fury, Recker smashed his clenched fist against his console and wondered what he could possibly do to make things right.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Will they destroy us?” asked Lieutenant Larson, when Recker had stopped shouting.
“I don’t know,” he replied through gritted teeth. “They left the Gorgadar untouched after the original crew were killed. It’s possible they retain a hope that one day the death sphere will fade enough that they can salvage the vessel.”
“We’ll soon find out,” said Eastwood. He cocked his head, listening. “We probably won’t hear the explosions until our armour plating is gone.”
Recker had a thought. “We were travelling at 3200 kilometres per second when we received the shutdown code. Our propulsion is offline, but we’ll be coasting at the same velocity. I doubt anything bar the Ruklior itself would be able to keep up.”
“The Lavorix missiles don’t travel fast enough either,” said Aston. “That leaves gauss slugs and the Ruklior as the only concerns.”
“I’m not worried about gauss weapons,” said Recker. “The Gorgadar’s armour is thick enough to withstand hundreds of shots from anything those battleships are packing. They’d need a Tri-Cannon or a Toll to destroy us.”
“The Ruklior could match velocity and anything that came out of its bays would inherit that same velocity,” said Eastwood. “And the missiles those warships fired would boost fast enough to hit us.”
“That would be a scrappy kill,” said Recker. “Would they bother diverting from Terrani long enough to finish us off?”
“We die now or we die later,” said Eastwood, looking up from his console. “Does it matter which?”
“The local Daklan fleet and the ground launchers are capable of firing enough lightspeed missiles to give the Ruklior and these other warships a real headache,” mused Recker. His fury was gone, replaced by a cold calculation. He had screwed up and he didn’t think he’d be able to fix things, but that wasn’t going to stop him trying. “If the Ruklior is concentrating on us, the Daklan might have a better chance of landing their missiles on target.”
“All we can do is sit and wait,” said Larson. “That’s what sucks.”
Minutes passed and Recker heard a distant, low sound coming from a place he couldn’t pinpoint. He knew at once what it was.
“The enemy have had enough of the Gorgadar,” he said. “They’re takin
g us out of the picture.”
The faraway explosions continued, yet became no louder.
“I reckon the Ruklior matched speeds, left a handful of its warships to do the job, and then returned to Terrani,” said Eastwood. “But even without the shield to contend with, those warships are finding it hard to destroy something as massive as the Gorgadar.”
Recker wasn’t fooled. If the bombardment continued much longer, the damage would soon turn from superficial to catastrophic. The Gorgadar’s hardened alloy plates could withstand tremendous heat and punishment and the warship was clad in many layers of those plates. Once the enemy made a breach, the inner blocks of ternium were far more vulnerable to attack.
“There’s got to be something we can do,” said Larson.
“Nope,” said Eastwood. “We can’t override the shutdown code. Not from here.”
Listening carefully, Recker detected that the rumbling blasts had become suddenly louder, as if a huge section of the outer armour had been torn out.
“That’s not good,” said Eastwood. “I wouldn’t mind so much if I had access to the status monitors. It’s the blindness which is hardest to cope with.”
Recker turned in his seat. He’d left Itrol, Litos, Private Carrington and Private Givens behind on the Gorgadar when he first took the other members of the squad to the Ixidar. Those soldiers now huddled miserably in the far corner, keeping out of everyone’s way. The guilt Recker felt was a pounding reminder of how unfair the universe could be to anyone caught on the wrong side of a decision - not that Sergeant Vance and the rest had anything more than a stay of execution.
You’ve had a good run, Carl. Done better than you could possibly have hoped.
It wasn’t enough and the bitter taste of failure mingled with the bridge air’s stench of dead Lavorix. The flavour was something unique and vile, and his hatred of it made him rage inside.
“I still have partial access to the internal monitors, sir,” said Larson. “They record the sound pressure levels throughout the Gorgadar and the volume is definitely picking up.”
“The effort is appreciated, Lieutenant,” said Recker. “It won’t help us, so don’t waste your time.”
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