Darkspace

by Richard Tongue

  DARKSPACE

  Richard Tongue

  DARKSPACE

  Copyright © 2019 by Richard Tongue, All Rights Reserved

  First Kindle Edition: February 2019

  Cover by Keith Draws

  With thanks to Ellen Clarke

  All characters and events portrayed within this eBook are fictitious; any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Prologue

  Darkness.

  Endless, empty darkness, only a faded star that had never quite managed to ignite filling the desolate gloom. In the course of a billion years, life briefly touched the forlorn system once, a brief visit by a long-dead race, working on a project that they dared to hope would save them all, one that could only come to fruition after endless eons. The sole relic of their visit, a tiny, dull-metal sphere, tumbled end over end in its passage around the dead brown dwarf, no other debris in the system to interfere with its progress.

  Just another system among millions, perhaps billions of its kind, nothing of any interest to the weary travelers who trod the roads of interstellar space, no worlds, no life. Just another notation in a long, long list of stars, an astronomical dead-end. So it would remain for all time, until the universe faded into the longer eternity of the final heat death, the doom which awaited all life at the end of time.

  Except that someone had connected this system to its wormhole network, seen fit to link it into the larger galaxy. That was not remarkable, many races choosing to explore all possible options for passage, were forced to use dead, worthless systems as jumping-off points to more distant destinations of interest. Though the race that had once touched this star had other, greater goals in mind. Goals that had been in progress for so long that there were none remaining who remembered that great purpose, that great hope.

  So it was that there were no eyes, no minds to behold the dull, ancient sphere as it rotated faster, spinning on its axis fast enough to be nothing more than a faint blur, lights dancing all around as finally, after all the centuries of waiting, it fulfilled its destiny, triggering the gravitational linkway that the ancient, dead race had launched, a million years ago. With a blinding light, the new wormhole opened, reaching into the unknown.

  The last hope of a long-dead race, one thwarted by the endless sweep of time itself.

  But perhaps, just perhaps, a legacy that might give humanity one last chance to survive...

  Chapter 1

  “Admiral on the deck!”, a voice cried out as Admiral Mike Scott walked through the docking port, stepping onto the space behind the bridge of his ship, Leonidas. The duty technicians were lined up at attention as journalists took a swarm of pictures, intense flickering flashes filling the air that threatened to bring tears to his eyes. He walked up to his Flag Captain, Clyde Rochford, and shook his old friend’s hand, turning to allow a series of good shots, before his new Weapons Officer, Lieutenant Silva, mercifully intervened.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, if you would proceed to the lower deck, you will be given a brief tour of the ship before being taken to your transport back to Proxima Station. Ensign Morales will be happy to answer any questions you might have, I am certain, and you will have opportunities to take all the pictures you want. Those of you planning to broadcast live before our departure will have suitable facilities provided.” A few of the journalists glanced at each other, but Lieutenant Silva flashed them a severe glare, finally encouraging them to make for the elevator.

  “Thank God that’s over,” Scott said, shaking his head. “I think I’d rather face the Exterminators.”

  “Just as well, given where we’re headed,” Rochford replied. “At least, I assume…”

  “All signed, sealed and approved,” Scott said, holding up a datapad. “Orders direct from the President, which this time give me all the leeway I could possibly want.” Glancing at his watch, he added, “The rest of our commanding officers should be on board by now.”

  “I made sure they had an easier time of it,” Silva offered. “They came in through one of the maintenance locks. I thought it would be best, Admiral.”

  “For their sake if nothing else,” Scott agreed. Looking around, he asked, “Where is Commander Novak?”

  “Bridge watch, sir,” Rochford said. “Getting the last of our stores on board. We’ll be ready to depart as soon as you give the word, though I can’t speak for whichever other ships are being sent with us.” He frowned, then asked, “How many are we getting? The orders I’ve seen weren’t exactly specific.”

  Scott grimaced, and said, “We’ll catch that up at the briefing. No point waiting any longer. Page Commander Novak and have her report at once. I’m going to want her there, and there aren’t any more reporters around for her to dodge.” He paused, turned to Silva, and asked, “Just what exactly did Ensign Morales do wrong, anyway?”

  “Minor in broadcast journalism, sir,” Silva said. “I gather she expressed interest in a possible career change. I thought it best to take the opportunity to convince her of the error of her ways.”

  Shaking his head, Scott led the way down the corridor, glancing back at Silva before turning to the elevator. She’d gone rogue before, had aided her erstwhile commanding officer in his attempt to flee an Exterminator attack, abandoning the ships they were meant to be escorting. However, she’d redeemed herself in spectacular style by leading an enemy battle group on a long, wild chase through a wormhole network, and helped save all humanity from certain destruction.

  Under normal circumstances, heroism of that magnitude would have led to a decoration and a promotion. She’d got the former, but he’d managed to hold back the latter, keeping her close, where her skills could be properly used without the risk of giving her an independent command. She was certainly a talented officer, but there always seemed to be something underneath the surface, as though she constantly held a knife in her hand, ready to stab him in the back.

  Not that he had much choice. The Fleet had grown five-fold in the last year, all the normal rules regarding recruitment thrown out of the airlock in the interests of speed. Most of the shipping companies were screaming about their crewmen being press-ganged, the Admiralty offering absurdly high enlistment bonuses in the interest of getting the Battle Fleet back to full strength, as well as crewing the new ships coming out of the orbital shipyards.

  He stepped into the elevator, looking back at the technicians hastening to prepare his shuttle for the wormhole transit. Boys. That was all they were. None of them were older than eighteen, thrown into uniforms with a hasty ninety-day training course. And Leonidas had received the pick of the litter, the best graduates from the abbreviated training. When he’d joined the fleet, no new recruit would go any further than Low Earth Orbit until they’d spent at least a year in uniform, most officers taking four or five years of training before venturing into space.

  They were rushing, and it showed. Lieutenants in their early twenties, ship commanders younger than thirty, some of them with capital ships under their command, simply because there was nobody else to do the job. There were a few old veterans, retired spacers brought back into service if they were at all physically fit to do it, but there was a lost generation, twenty years when the fleet was reduced beyond safe limits, recruitment kept to a minimum, most of the Battle Fleet placed into mothballs.

  Earth had been at peace. That hadn’t been a bad thing. The problem was that everyone assumed it was a permanent state of affairs. The coming of the Exterminators had changed all that, overnight.

  The first time, he’d been hastily called back into service, put back into uniform and given command of his old ship, Leonidas, along with anyone from his old crew he’d been able to find on the notice they had. Somehow, despite everything, despite the destruction of what eve
ryone had feared would be Earth’s last fleet, he’d found a way to destroy their enemy, hours before the Exterminator warship could begin passage to Earth.

  He’d managed to convince his superiors to attempt a long-range scouting mission, following a series of ancient clues that might lead to the home of the enemy, but before they could seriously begin, his ship had run head-long into a second wave of Exterminator vessels, led back to Terran space by a fleet of would-be refugees fleeing for their lives. Once more, he’d managed to defeat the enemy, despite the failure of their much-vaunted new weaponry, and this time, when he’d demanded to head out into the void, nobody had raised a voice to stop him.

  He stepped out of the elevator, Rochford and Silva behind him, and into the briefing room, a host of officers rising to attention as he entered. Commander Novak, Leonidas’ Executive Officer, his Communications Officer, Lieutenant Chen, Scientific Advisor, Professor Belinsky, and the three commanders of the ships that would be accompanying them into the dark, a small task force with which to probe into the unknown.

  “Be seated,” Scott said, following his own order and taking a chair at the head of the table. “I believe most of you know Commander Ivanov, commanding Xerxes, and Commander Sullivan of Themistocles.” He gestured at the man and the woman sitting on the left side of the table, facing the contingent from Leonidas. “Commander Cortez is commanding Herodotus. I know he’s new to the fleet, but he has led expeditions beyond the frontier on several occasions.”

  “Which doesn’t mean I know any more than the rest of you about what we’re facing,” Cortez warned.

  “It does, however, make you an expert in the art of exploration logistics, and given the scope of our mission, that knowledge promises to be extremely valuable.”

  “Sir?” Novak asked. “With all respects to the commanders of these three ships, is this it?”

  “I’m afraid so, Commander, and at that, we were extremely fortunate. Xerxes and Themistocles are brand new, a pair of experimental prototypes whose construction was accelerated following our first encounter with the Exterminators. They’re rated as Scout Destroyers, and were originally meant to replace the Monitors out on the frontier. Both have a long range, are fast and maneuverable, but have minimal armament and shielding.”

  “We’ve also got excellent sensor packages,” Ivanov added. “And both ships passed through their shakedown cruise without any serious defects, though I would be a lot happier with a ship that has more teeth.”

  Nodding, Sullivan added, “I swear, sir, you could punch through the hull with your fist in some places.”

  “They’re what we’ve got,” Scott replied, “and for the mission we’re attempting, they’re extremely well suited. Herodotus is as an exploration tender. She’s been in mothballs for years, since her maiden voyage.”

  “An exploration tender?” Rochford asked. “I’ve never heard of her.”

  “I hadn’t either,” Scott said. “She was designed about thirty years ago, intended to serve as a flagship for long-range military exploration missions. When they were all canceled, so were her sister ships, but Herodotus was close enough to completion that they finished her as a prototype. We’re lucky she’s been left intact. According to the records, she’s come close to sale on a couple of dozen occasions.”

  With a smile, Cortez added, “I tried to raise the funding for her once myself, had a chance to get a good look at her a few years back. She’s unarmed, of course, but she’s got all the supplies and support equipment we’re going to need if we’re heading out into the black for a while. All systems are functioning well. The catch is that she’s on the slow side, but she’s also got an exceptional sensor package. Damn near state-of-the-art, even today, and I had a chance to bolt on a few extra bits and pieces.”

  “Sounds perfect,” Silva said. “Though…”

  “Four ships are all we can get,” Scott said. “I asked for a full fleet, but I knew right from the start that I didn’t have a chance of getting it. If I hadn’t pitched for the ships we’ve got, we’d have ended up going out alone.” He looked around the room, and added, “The Chief of Staff met with the President this morning, delivering the War College assessment of our strategic situation. The results were far from promising. Both of our victories to this point were the result of a combination of improvisation and luck, as much as anything else. They’d be tough to replicate. Our weapons are still next to useless in conventional battle, and there is little prospect of that changing in a hurry.”

  Nodding, Silva said, “We’ve managed to double up, masers and kinetic cannons, but in all honesty, I don’t see how we can get any better performance than before. There are a few new weapons on board for us to experiment with, but that’s all they are. Shots in the dark. It’s the best we can do, but I don’t think it will be good enough.”

  Scott looked across at her, then back at the others, and said, “War College believes that we will be defeated in six to nine months at best.” There was a brief babble of protest, and he added, “We don’t have enough ships, and the next time, we believe the Exterminators will come in overwhelming force.”

  “That seems a reasonable presumption,” Belinsky said. “We might have some time as I suspect they will wish to ensure a victory on their third attempt, but they will come. They have no choice.”

  “Surely by now they must realize that they are beaten, Professor,” Sullivan replied.

  “No, Commander, it does not work like that. The fact that we have managed such an impressive resistance to their attacks only means that they have no choice other than to strike with all the means at their disposal, regardless of the cost to themselves. If you like, we have given them no alternative. We can expect more reconnaissance, perhaps even another probing attack, but I can easily see a hundred of their ships swarming through all space, with nothing we can do to stop them.”

  “If Admiral Khatri really believes that,” Rochford said, “then why the hell aren’t we going out with the whole damned Fleet at our backs. They’re not going to do any good here, and…”

  “Two problems with that, Captain,” Scott said. “The first is the logistics of such an expedition. I’m sure we could pull enough freighters and transports to do the job, but it would bring the shipping industry to its knees in the process, and they’re already struggling at the moment. The second is a question of morale. Right now our people see the Battle Fleet on the borders, watching and defending them from anything that might attack. That’s something we want to foster and encourage. The last thing we need is another riot on Earth.”

  “There’s a third point, as well, Admiral,” Silva volunteered. “Those ships would be next to useless to us. Every battle has been won with creative tactics, not with weapons. When fleets have gone up against the enemy, they’ve been destroyed, often for no effective gain. Why drag a couple of dozen capital ships out into the dark with us? I’d rather have a small, fast battle group, able to survive for a long time on its own resources, ready to strike the heart of the enemy.”

  “Lieutenant, right now we don’t even know where that is,” Rochford warned.

  “Just one more problem that we have to solve, Captain.”

  “Our mission is essentially open-ended,” Scott interjected, “though we’ve got somewhere to start. Professor Belinsky’s work on the location of the Folk’s emergence point is our primary objective.” The scientist frowned, looked up as though about to say something, then shook his head, allowing the Admiral to continue. “Our best estimates give us a transit time of three weeks and change, with the potential for a couple of interesting detours along the way. Naturally, we’ll be watching for any sign of enemy activity, but my intention is to attempt to escape and evade, unless victory is certain.” He frowned, then added, “Our mission is to gather information, first and foremost. We dodge any fights unless we have no other choice.”

  “We’ll be outside communications range in a week, Admiral,” Chen warned. “How do we report back with any information
we find?” He looked at Commander Sullivan, and added, “The destroyers?”

  “That’s the intention.”

  “Admiral, I’ve looked over the specs on those ships,” Chen replied, “and if they attempt a long transit through space in any way hostile, they won’t stand a chance of making it.”

  “Don’t write us off so quickly, Lieutenant,” Ivanov chided. “We might have a few surprises for you yet. Admiral, surely once we’ve found the Folk…”

  “That’s the start of our mission, Commander, not the end of it,” Scott said. “Our objective is simple. Win the war. By any means necessary.” All eyes were locked on him, and he added, “The harsh and brutal reality of the situation is that mankind is locked into what amounts to an unwinnable war. Even if we had years to prepare rather than months, we’re facing a threat of almost inconceivable proportions. I don’t propose to sit around on Earth waiting for the end, and we have already established quite clearly that none of our warships are a serious match for any of theirs. We’ve beaten them twice. We were lucky both times, luckier than in all frankness we deserved.”

  Looking at him with wide eyes, Belinsky asked, “Admiral, how do you propose…”

  “I don’t know, Professor. If I did, we might not have to go at all. All I do know is that this is the best ship with the best crew in the fleet, and we’ve got the best support ships possible for a long expedition. We represent humanity’s last, best chance for survival, and by damn, we’re not going to let them down.” He cracked a smile, reached for a glass of water, and added, “No pressure, guys.”

  Chapter 2

  Jennifer Novak walked brusquely along the corridor, nodding at one of the technicians as she walked past, carefully running her eye over his work. They never seemed to have the time to properly prepare for departure, always in a frantic hurry. Before the war, everything had been different. Her old ship had spent two months getting ready for a simple perimeter patrol, where they knew they would never be more than a couple of transits from a major fleet installation, moving from outpost to colony, station to settlement, always in civilization.