Death Skies (Fire and Rust Book 4)

by Anthony James

  “Yes, sir.”

  Deep within the interior of the unknown warship, Conway pushed on after the others, wondering what crap the universe was about to deliver to him this time.

  Chapter Twenty

  With guidance from Governor Wrekstin, who appeared to have the kind of intuitive knowledge about spaceships that Conway had witnessed in some members of the ULAF, the group came to the bridge without a single wrong turn. The Raggers had left the door open, so all Conway and his group had to do was walk right in.

  The bridge looked like any other. If you weren’t born to love space flight, it was cramped, low-lit and claustrophobic. If the thought of hurtling through the void in a metal coffin powered more by theory than known science was the most thrilling idea imaginable, then it was a wonderful example of technology realized. Not everything was in the same place as a ULAF ship and the tech looked a little older. The overall effect was familiar and Conway felt no more and no less at home than he did on any other spaceship.

  “Everything is online,” said Wrekstin, already seated at the largest console towards the front of the bridge. “This is good. The Raggers must have been monitoring the effects of teleportation on the onboard systems and left everything operational.”

  “That means all this stuff works, right?” said Kemp nervously.

  “You’re eager to see where we’ve arrived?” said the Fangrin.

  “Hell no, Governor. I’m eager for you to hit the boost button and get us out of here.”

  Wrekstin gave a low growl which was probably an indication of humor. His dark-furred fingers nimbly pressed buttons and flicked switches. “First we must see where the transport network has delivered us.”

  Fifteen two-foot screens in a three-by-five arrangement covered much of the front bulkhead. They lit up simultaneously, each showing a different image from one of the external sensor arrays. Everyone took notice and scanned the feeds, desperate to know where they’d landed.

  “Another dais,” said Torres, pointing unnecessarily at one of the corner screens. “And another dome.”

  It was the other stuff that got Conway’s attention. The warship was in a much larger space than the previous chamber. In fact, it was large enough to accommodate two other daises, which were placed evenly apart so that the three formed a triangle.

  Elsewhere, the walls were curved metal and lined with the same pattern of wires or cables which Conway had first noticed in the holding cell for Fleet Admiral Stone and the other prisoners. These walls had taken a beating and they were torn, dented and gouged in many places. Through the gaps, Conway saw only blackness. The top of the dome was way overhead – maybe five or six hundred meters. At floor level were other consoles and monitoring tools the same as in the last place.

  “No sign of movement,” said Torres. “Not on any of these feeds.”

  “Are we going to sit here and find out where the transport takes us next time?” asked Kemp. “Me? I’d rather get moving and take my chances.”

  “I don’t know where we are,” said Governor Wrekstin. “I may be able to unravel the star charts in the navigational system given time.”

  “I should be able to help with that,” said Lieutenant Park, who was turning out to be an officer of many talents.

  “What if you can’t figure it out?” asked Kemp, sounding agitated.

  “Then we could return here and let the transport system send us to the next place,” said Rembra. “If there is no other place, then we could try one of those other daises.”

  “Yeah, that one over there leads directly to fairy and unicorn land,” said Torres.

  “My language module suggests a strong possibility of sarcasm in your words,” said Wrekstin. “I take it you do not want to test out the teleport network again?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Lieutenants Conway, Park?” asked Wrekstin. “We are running out of time to decide.”

  “For once I’ll feel a thousand times safer up in space,” said Conway.

  “I agree,” said Park.

  “Very well, I’ll pilot this spaceship, which, incidentally, is named Zemilius, into orbit. Those openings you see in this dome lead to open air. Once we are away from here, I may be able to calculate our position with Lieutenant Park’s assistance. I believe this ship is lightspeed capable.”

  Governor Wrekstin acted immediately by gripping two bars which protruded from the main console.

  “I recommend you hold onto something until we discover the effectiveness of the life support systems,” he said.

  It was sound advice and everyone found something to grab. Wrekstin didn’t give them long and he pulled at the control bars. The background rumble of propulsion became louder and Conway held tight to the back of an empty seat.

  The Zemilius lifted off vertically and, as it climbed, the sensor feeds offered a clearer view of the floor around the daises. Hundreds of spindly shapes lay everywhere, with the biggest heaps next to the three exits.

  “Looks like these Raggers got the same punishment as the ones on Qali-5,” said Freeman.

  “The Ragger transport tech must be creating fissures in the wake of each teleportation,” said Park. “I don’t want to think what the ramifications might be.”

  “We must find a suitable place to exit,” said Wrekstin. “Some of these openings may be large enough for us to squeeze through.”

  Unfamiliarity with the Zemilius’ controls wasn’t enough to stop Wrekstin handling the spaceship like he’d been its captain for the last twenty years. He spent more time looking at the sensor feeds than he did at the control bars, yet the spaceship remained utterly stable.

  It took experience to interpret a visual feed into reliable measurements. Tools existed for this exact purpose, but Wrekstin either didn’t know where to find them or he wasn’t inclined to use them. He kept the Zemilius stationary above the dais and rotated the spaceship. All the while, he kept his narrowed eyes glued to the feeds.

  Conway looked too and he couldn’t see an opening that appeared large enough. On top of that, the walls of the dome were double-skinned, with each skin being many meters thick. He guessed the Zemilius could smash through, but he didn’t want it to suffer any additional damage.

  “There,” said Wrekstin, halting the rotation with the nose pointing at a diagonal slash a couple of hundred meters above the floor.

  “Looks tight,” said Kemp.

  “It is.”

  Even as he spoke the words, Wrekstin pushed on the controls. The spaceship accelerated steadily towards the opening. A couple of minor adjustments made it seem like Wrekstin was aiming too high and then Conway realized that the Fangrin was compensating for the position of the sensor arrays which distorted the apparent position of the nose.

  “Here we go,” said Wrekstin. “Easy as cake.”

  “Pie,” said Torres automatically.

  The Zemilius went through the opening. It wasn’t perfect and one of the wings caught a piece of metal jutting from the outer wall. Otherwise, no alarms, no cursing from Wrekstin and no hardware failure resulting from the collision.

  “We will not wait to see who comes to greet us,” said the Fangrin. He threw the controls to the end of their guide slots and the Zemilius gathered speed with the kind of relentless certainty that made Conway think it was a lot quicker than the age of the tech implied. He expected the propulsion to deafen him, but it didn’t. Instead, it turned from lumpy and grumbling, to a howling sound overlaid with a repeating whoosh.

  “Whoa,” said Kemp. “Look at this.”

  The sensor feeds offered a view that made Conway go cold. This area of the unknown planet had once been an expansive city of dark metal structures. For as far as he could see in every direction, there were buildings - towers, domes, factories in every shape and size. The sensors were on auto-focus and they kept the feed stable, allowing Conway to see that everything was in ruins. The buildings were cracked and split and many of them were on the brink of collapse, as if they’d stood for
gotten for a hundred thousand years or longer.

  It was the same everywhere, for dozens of kilometers in every direction. This city went on and on, unlit, with no movement and no sign of life. Conway felt horror and part of him wished he’d never seen it. Now the image was in his brain and he would never forget.

  “What about the rest of the planet?” said Torres in shock. “Did the Raggers live here? Do they live here now, somewhere away from here?”

  “We will ponder the questions in time,” said Wrekstin. “We are entering the upper atmosphere. I will turn off the auto-focus on the sensors. Perhaps we will see more.”

  The sensor feeds did a rapid zoom-out to reveal a more expansive view of the planet. The ruined structures gave way to rocky terrain, the stone as dull as the city itself. There were few mountains and little else to note. The far horizon was marked by a gentle curve of dark blue, turning to orange. Otherwise, everything was dark and empty.

  To Conway, the planet seemed utterly bleak and lonely. On sight alone, there was nothing different to countless other planets on which he’d had fought. For some reason, this one was different, like it would no longer tolerate life, whatever form that life took. It made him glad they were getting away from it so quickly, even if a return home was in no way certain.

  “A world of the dead,” said Park, watching the feed.

  “Yeah,” said Kemp. “Too much history there for my liking.”

  “There’s something on the sensors,” said Wrekstin.

  The tone of his voice gave away plenty, but not the specifics.

  “What is it?” asked Conway.

  “An object above the surface, approximately eight hundred kilometers to the east.” Wrekstin tapped some buttons on his console and the upper starboard sensor feed zoomed, panned, zoomed again and then locked.

  “What the hell is that?” asked Torres.

  The object was huge – the sensors estimated it to be in excess of two thousand meters long and half as much tall. The angle wasn’t good enough for the sensor computer to determine the depth and a text warning appeared on one corner of the feed screen, the meaning unknown. The object hovered motionless at an approximate altitude of fifty klicks and the pattern on the ground suggested that another great city lay directly beneath.

  Conway didn’t like what he saw. It was a spacecraft, he was sure. Completely black, it was bulky and with features difficult to make out, as if it wasn’t meant to be seen. Conway had no doubt it was equipped for war and he desperately hoped he wouldn’t see the proof of it any time soon.

  “Has it spotted us?” asked Freeman, shifting from foot to foot.

  “I don’t know,” said Wrekstin. “I see no warnings on this console. Perhaps we will escape without confrontation.”

  Seconds passed and the Zemilius broke free from the atmosphere. Wrekstin held it on a course aimed directly into space and the planet’s complete outline gradually became visible. The sensors maintained a zoomed lock on the unknown craft and still it didn’t move. Nobody could take their eyes from it.

  The planet dwindled and Conway got a sense that the Zemilius was accelerating at an increased rate. Wrekstin didn’t let up – he was an experienced starship captain and knew when it was time to run as hard and fast as possible.

  “The life support on this warship is very advanced,” said the Fangrin. “If it were otherwise, we would all be smeared across the rear bulkhead.”

  “I feel better knowing we stole something good, rather than a scrapheap jalopy,” said Torres, not moving her gaze from the feed.

  Suddenly, the text warning on the sensor feed turned red and flashed. Everyone saw it and understood the significance, even if they couldn’t read the alien script.

  “Coming for us,” said Kemp.

  “Yep. Surprised?”

  “I thought maybe we were due a break.”

  “Yeah, we get lucky all the time,” said Torres angrily. “Goddamn shitting aliens!” She thought about it some more. “Except you Fangrin of course. Hell, you’re nearly honorary humans now.”

  “Am I allowed a choice in the matter?” asked Rembra.

  “No.”

  “Can we outrun that thing?” asked Conway.

  “The Zemilius is a fast spaceship. Much faster than I expected from its appearance,” said Wrekstin. “I will answer your question once I have witnessed the enemy ship’s acceleration for a longer period.”

  Time passed, during which nobody except Governor Wrekstin did anything aside from watch the bulkhead screens. The sensor arrays stayed locked and the enemy warship – not for a moment did Conway think it was friendly – remained in the center of one display. The image never quite came into focus and he wondered if this was down to a sensor limitation, or because the other spaceship had tech which made its hull difficult to scan.

  “Come on,” muttered Kemp, leaning on the backrest of an empty seat.

  The bridge lights went low and the screens flickered. Conway’s heart thumped and he waited for the engines to cut out. They didn’t and the sound was as potent as ever. A moment later, the lights came back, and the display images stabilized.

  “Governor Wrekstin - what was that?” asked Conway.

  “I don’t know. A weapon. Whatever it was, it has not slowed or destroyed us.”

  “That’s a good thing,” said Freeman, trying to convince himself everything was just fine.

  The Zemilius kept accelerating and Conway felt hardly any strain on his body. He knew the onboard life support tech must be superior to that of the Unity League and the Fangrin and he hoped they could get the ship into friendly territory so that the scientists could learn from the design.

  “Are we getting further away or is it gaining?” asked Kemp.

  “As it stands, the distance between our two ships is increasing,” said Wrekstin. “That may not continue and our escape depends on propulsion maximum potential and acceleration curves. I am not prepared to perform the calculations at the moment.”

  It was a polite way of telling not just Kemp, but everyone to shut up and back off. Conway had a quiet word with the others. He could understand how they were desperate to hear every little update – himself included – but Governor Wrekstin didn’t need the aggravation when he was focused on saving their asses.

  For a second time, the lights went low and this time the screens dimmed instead of flickering. The propulsion didn’t even stutter. Two minutes went by in silence and then it happened for a third time.

  “The Zemilius is more capable than I first thought,” said Wrekstin. “I wonder if the Raggers had any idea of its potential. However, the enemy spaceship has now had sufficient time to accelerate and it is gaining on us. Given the expected displacement of our pursuer, I am not surprised it has greater potential velocity.”

  “Won’t we both cap out at the same maximum sublight velocity?” asked Freeman, trying to sound like he knew all about it.

  “Nice try, Corporal,” said Lieutenant Park. “If that enemy spaceship is packing larger engines with a greater output, they’ll have a higher maximum sublight than we will. They’ll catch us.”

  “Had I known about this, I would have attempted to lose the enemy ship by repeatedly orbiting the planet we just left. Sometimes it is possible to break into space and lose a pursuer by that method,” said Wrekstin. “Now, we have no choice other than to keep running.”

  “But they’ll catch up and shoot us to pieces?” asked Kemp.

  “The forward sensor readings indicate the likely presence of a planet in the direction we are travelling.”

  “Great – you can fly around it and get us out of here.”

  Wrekstin made a sound that was a cross between a growl and a hmmm. “This planet is three hundred million kilometers from our position. At the current rate, we will not reach it before our pursuer catches us. You will also notice that I am having to make constant small alterations to the controls in order that they do not hit us with railguns, assuming they are fitted with such weapo
ns. This affects our own acceleration and helps the enemy.”

  “Anything we can do?” asked Conway. “The Zemilius has weapons. I saw the covers for the missile clusters on the hull.”

  “It may come to that, Lieutenant Conway,” said Wrekstin. “I’m sure you don’t need me to spell out the odds of success.”

  “No, Governor, you do not.”

  The lights went out completely and stayed that way for a couple of seconds. The screens shut off as well and then the images reappeared a moment after the lights. The consoles didn’t even flicker or dim and the propulsion was likewise unaffected.

  “How long?” asked Torres.

  “They will overhaul us in fifteen minutes. I anticipate they will launch weapons sooner than that.”

  “Looks like we’re not getting that date after all, baby,” said Kemp.

  “Baby?” Torres could do sarcasm and disdain better than anyone Conway had ever met. She squeezed a lot of both into her response.

  “It could have been something special.”

  “Just don’t go there, Kemp.”

  “Knock it off,” said Conway, wondering what he’d started.

  They fell silent and resumed watching the sensor feed. The pursuing ship hadn’t gone anywhere and it appeared as an image-enhanced speck of green, set against the backdrop of space and stars. Five minutes passed and Conway wished he was in the middle of a good, honest gunfight. He couldn’t imagine a way out of this, but he wasn’t ready to lay down and die. The hardest part was having to rely on Governor Wrekstin to come up with something. Conway didn’t hold a grudge and he felt no anger towards the Fangrin after a decade of war, but the irony wasn’t lost on him.

  “Our rate of acceleration is not reducing,” said Wrekstin. “I would expect it to have begun at this velocity.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Kemp.

  Lieutenant Park explained. “The closer to lightspeed a spaceship gets on its sublight propulsion, the greater the energy required to increase velocity. The acceleration curve levels off when you approach the output potential of the engines.”