Burner put a zoomed feed of the Galactar on the main screen. The enemy warship was motionless and Recker stared at it in fury. It was scanning for the Fulcrum, he knew as much. How long it would take to locate the battleship was a question he couldn’t answer with any degree of certainty.
“Do they still want us alive?” wondered Aston. “If they ever did.”
“I’m not taking bets, Commander,” said Recker.
Deep down, he was sure the Lavorix wouldn’t tolerate the Fulcrum’s existence a moment longer than necessary. Recker and his crew had destroyed many of the enemy’s ships and that would be too much for the alien bastards to handle.
“There’s an energy spike from their hull, sir,” said Eastwood. “Preparing for a short lightspeed jump.”
The Galactar vanished before Eastwood finished saying the words.
“We need a sensor lock,” said Recker.
“Searching,” said Burner.
Larson got there first. “Found it,” she said.
The Galactar had travelled four million kilometres in the blinking of an eye. Its lightspeed jump had taken it beyond the Gateway generator. Again, it was motionless, though this time the sensor feed was much clearer, such that the pristine finish on the warship’s hull was plain to see.
No weapon has ever penetrated its shield.
“Two minutes,” said Eastwood.
Let’s see what it thinks of this.
The Fulcrum’s nose was pointing thirty degrees away from the Galactar and Recker adjusted the battleship’s positioning in one savage movement of the controls.
“Ready, Commander,” he said.
An unknown weapon struck the Fulcrum, activating its mesh deflector. A moment after the shield had faded it was activated again.
“Two charges down,” said Aston. “They think we’re defenceless.”
“Show them that we aren’t. Both barrels.”
“Tri-Cannon fired.”
Needles on Recker’s display jumped around like they’d been wired in by a second-rate technician. The bass note of discharge was mercifully deadened by 2500 metres of intervening alloy and ternium, yet still he felt it through his palms.
A million kilometres away, the Galactar didn’t move, like they didn’t fear the Tri-Cannon at all.
“Energy spike from their hull,” said Eastwood.
The massive spaceship began accelerating and Recker clenched his fists on the control bars until his knuckles ached. The enemy didn’t want to find out what the Tri-Cannon would do to them, but their overconfidence had made them slow to react.
At four seconds after discharge, two ternium-accelerated slugs of colossal mass crashed into the Galactar’s flank at a shade under three hundred thousand kilometres per second. At the twin points of impact, enormous coruscating discs of dirty blue appeared and these discs expanded, spreading until the entire warship was wrapped in a crackling oval shield.
“Fire again,” said Recker through gritted teeth.
“Waiting on Tri-Cannon reload,” said Aston. “Our missiles won’t lock at this range.”
“What about the nukes?”
“Nukes locked.”
“Give them two.”
“Nukes launched.”
The shield around the Galactar vanished as quickly as it had come and, to his astonishment, Recker spotted two vast indentations on one of the warship’s cuboid main sections. Each of these indentations glowed with the dark red of impact heat, like magma puddles on the vast expanse of alloy.
“We hurt it,” said Eastwood.
“How long before the Tri-Cannon will fire again?” said Recker, watching the nuclear missiles race away under full boost.
“The battle computer estimates two minutes, sir.”
“Ninety seconds on the Gateway.”
Far in the distance, the Galactar kept on accelerating and Recker knew the game was up. The Tri-Cannon wouldn’t be ready to fire in time and even if the Fulcrum survived long enough for the reload to complete, there was no guarantee of scoring another hit on the enemy craft now that it was alert to the danger.
Something unexpected happened.
Lieutenant Fraser yelled that he’d detected an energy surge from the Galactar’s hull and Recker prepared to send the Fulcrum into its own short-range lightspeed jump in the hope of buying some extra time, even though he was sure the action would carry the battleship beyond the Gateway generator’s maximum lock range.
The Galactar disappeared in an immense cloud of ternium particles and Recker lifted his thumb from the mode 3 activation switch.
“Where is it?” he shouted.
“Scanning,” said Burner and Larson at the same time.
Recker hated that he was forced to hold position, but he saw no choice. Without the Gateway, they weren’t escaping the Galactar if the enemy ship came back. The Lavorix had been surprised by the attack he was sure, yet that didn’t mean they were out of the fight. Recker guessed they would run some damage reports and then come back for a second try.
The only hope was that the enemy were overcautious because they knew so little about the Tri-Cannon. Maybe they didn’t know about the long reload interval and maybe they didn’t know the main armament wasn’t operational. Maybes. Lots of maybes.
“No sign of it, sir,” said Larson. “There’s a lot of space to search.”
“Sixty seconds on the Gateway.”
“If the Galactar comes back and we lose the last mesh deflector charge, our engines will fail at the far end, even if we make it through,” said Aston. She tapped her forefinger on the top panel of her console in the only visible sign of concern.
Recker couldn’t recall ever being so on edge. He felt no fear whatsoever, but he couldn’t stomach the thought of losing to his enemy. Not after what it had done to the Meklon and not after how hard he’d fought against it.
The digits on the timer fell and the Galactar didn’t return. Recker had been through a Gateway once and he well remembered the physical trauma of it happening. A sphere of darkness appeared around the Fulcrum and the last charge of the mesh deflector activated. The shield didn’t prevent the wrenching dislocation, nor did it alleviate the thumping agony which left no part of Recker’s body untouched.
Although the worst of it passed quickly, his mind remembered and the lingering pain took many seconds to subside.
It required a great effort to focus and when Recker lifted his head, he saw that the sensors were still offline. He didn’t need them to know with absolute certainty that the Fulcrum had been transported to Oracon-1.
The Galactar was far behind, but it didn’t take intuition to realise the danger wasn’t over. A deep breath filled Recker’s lungs with freezing, reviving air and cleared his mind. He grabbed the controls and shouted for his crew to rouse themselves to action.
Chapter Seventeen
Recker’s crew didn’t need much encouragement. They shook off the lethargy resulting from the Gateway travel and got down to business.
“Sensors online!” said Burner. “They’re recalibrating – I should know where we are on the Meklon star chart sometime soon.”
“Near scans finished,” said Larson. “No hostiles detected.”
Two minutes later and Recker was satisfied that the Fulcrum was in no immediate danger. He reduced the battleship’s velocity and let it coast through space.
“Tell me about Oracon-1,” he said. They’d already gone through the known data but it was good to hear it again.
“Oracon-1 is in the Lempi system,” said Larson. “Twelve planets in total and the space station is located near the fourth planet.”
“Where are we in relation to planet four?”
“I’ve just this moment located it, sir,” said Burner. “It’s ninety million klicks from our position and heading away on its orbital track.”
“Close enough given the distance we’ve travelled,” said Recker. “Once the sensors have recalibrated, I want you to pinpoint the space station. If it’s any
thing like Excon-1, it’ll be geostationary at five million klicks.”
“Sensor calibration complete,” said Burner. “Uh…”
“What is it?” asked Recker sharply.
“I don’t think Oracon-1 is a space station, sir. The positional data we have is for the exact centre of planet four.”
The first thought which jumped into Recker’s head was that Oracon-1 was another subterranean facility, but that couldn’t be right if the positional data was the planet’s core.
“Oracon-1 is on a planet, not in space,” he said. “Focus our sensor arrays directly on the surface and tell me what you can see.”
“On it,” said Burner.
The sensors focused on the faraway world. Burner went through a process of zooming, enhancing and then zooming again. The Fulcrum’s sensor arrays were advanced and backed up with plenty of processing grunt, but the combination wasn’t enough to provide the details Recker wanted.
“That’s the best I can do from here, sir,” said Burner.
“A blueish disk,” said Recker. “Anything else you can determine from the nonvisual data?”
“No, sir. It has an atmosphere and judging by its distance from the sun is a prime candidate for hosting life.”
“If Oracon-1 is on a planet, the star charts should have data for that planet. Right?” said Aston.
“That’s an excellent suggestion, Commander,” said Larson. She fell quiet for a moment. “Kavlon – that’s what the Meklon called the place. It’s about the same size as Earth, with numerous shipyards and military facilities.” Her voice caught in her throat. “Population: sixteen billion. This was the Meklon’s primary population and construction centre for Sphere 4.”
“Would you like me to initiate contact, sir?” asked Burner. “Our comms system has detected several main receptors and countless secondaries.”
“Is one of those Oracon-1?”
“No, sir.”
“What would explain that?” Recker asked, knowing the likely answers.
“Either the base is destroyed, or its comms are blocked at source.” Burner took a breath. “I’ve checked for outbound comms traffic from the planet. There’s nothing – no military and no civilian transmissions except for a few automated handshakes going to off-world locations.”
“Another dead planet,” said Recker angrily.
“Was it ever going to be different?” said Eastwood. The set of his jaw made his fury clear.
“Sixteen billion to add to the mountain,” said Aston. She shook her head. “I never hated the Daklan, even when they were pushing us to defeat. The Lavorix?” Another shake of the head. “I don’t like what they make me feel.”
“We’re going to find more atrocities like this,” said Recker. “If we don’t stay strong, we’ll screw up and made mistakes.” He forced his mind clear. “A planet will have surface defences,” he said. “Can we access those without our inbound transmissions being detected?”
“No, sir. Not unless we rely on luck,” said Burner. “We don’t even know if any surface emplacements are intact and if we try to find out, we could reveal ourselves before we’re ready.”
“The Lavorix can’t be monitoring every single comms station,” said Recker.
“No, sir. If they’re on Kavlon – which I’m sure they are - it’s likely they’ve installed interception hardware on the planet’s comms satellites, as well as on the primary surface facilities.”
“But not the secondary military bases?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, sir. Blanket monitoring is a lot of effort, especially for a world full of corpses.”
“If the Lavorix have ships on the planet, the only reason the automatic defences wouldn’t fire is because they were issued with a code telling them not to.”
“Yes, sir. If the Galactar was immune to the incoming attacks, it could conceivably have had enough time to crack the encryption on the Meklon hardware and then implanted its own orders.”
“If we sent the Extinction Protocol codes to the planet, those would take precedence over everything else,” mused Recker.
“Assuming the Lavorix didn’t corrupt all the Kavlon military protocol hardware.”
Recker ignored the interruption. “If we take over the surface emplacements, not only could we find out how many targets they’re tracking, we could also order them to fire,” he said. “Even if we lost our surprise, we’d have taken out some of the enemy ships.”
“Unless the Lavorix hardware is set to block our instructions and confirm a false affirmative, while registering our position at the same time,” said Larson. “After that, any stationed warships would be able to lightspeed jump straight to us and start shooting.”
The idea of utilising the planet’s defences was an appealing one and Recker didn’t want to let it go. If Kavlon was so important to the Meklon, he expected it to be well-protected, though it clearly hadn’t been enough to prevent the Galactar flying in and killing everyone with its Extractor.
“What about tertiary stations?” asked Recker. “Can we contact those directly?”
“The tertiary station network will route through either the primary or secondary stations, sir,” said Burner. His expression suggested he wasn’t sure what the underlying question was.
“Which doesn’t prevent us from sending a transmission directly to an individual tertiary comms receiver,” said Recker.
“That’s right. However, if you’re planning to issue a firing command to a tertiary station and have it send that command to other facilities, it’ll need to disseminate the order through the primary and secondary stations, like I told you. We might get a few of the emplacements to fire, but as soon as the launch command hits a place the Lavorix have infiltrated, it’ll be stopped. You’ll get a partial launch and the enemy will know we’re here.”
“If we hit every single visible facility with a fire order at the same time, what is the likely outcome?”
Burner chewed his lip. “There are hundreds of tertiary receivers. If we issued each one with an order to fire and instructed that order to be disseminated, the chance of so many simultaneous commands all being blocked on route is negligible.”
“Meaning we’d achieve a full ground launch aimed at whatever enemy ships those stations are tracking,” said Recker.
“Yes, sir.”
As each potential problem was overcome, Recker felt his path becoming clearer. “Pick a ground emplacement – it doesn’t matter which one - connect to it and find out how many targets the Kavlon defence system is aware of.”
“One moment.” Burner didn’t take long. “Thirty-seven total Tier 1 Lavorix warships, of which twenty-eight are currently in flight. On top of that, the defence system has registered the presence of 152 smaller vessels – most likely transports or similar.”
“How many of those are in the air?”
“Eighty-nine. The defence system does not believe they constitute a threat.”
“I know which way this is going, sir,” said Aston. “However, if we destroy the twenty-eight in-flight targets, that leaves nine ground ships that the ground emplacements can’t hit. Once the enemy realises what’s happened and the surprise is gone, they’ll stand a good chance of knocking out the ground launchers. I don’t think we can handle the surviving spaceships.”
In truth, Recker wasn’t sure the Kavlon emplacements could destroy twenty-eight Lavorix warships anyway. However, he was interested in the confusion the attack would sow amongst the enemy and had an idea how he could capitalise on it.
“I’ve got a plan,” he announced. “In order to maximise the chances of its success, I need to know where the Oracon-1 facility is located.”
“I’ll query the tertiary station,” said Larson. “Oracon-1 is showing no receptors, but those ground launchers should have routing data to reach every facility on Kavlon. Even if their transmissions are blocked at the receiver, that doesn’t mean we can’t find out their intended destinations.” She made a hah! sound of trium
ph. “Got it – the station is on the visible side, a few hundred klicks north of the planet’s equator.”
“Good work, Lieutenant. That’s where we’re going,” said Recker.
“This is the moment you tell us the plan, sir,” said Burner.
Recker smiled. “We’re going to lightspeed jump towards the planet – I want us to emerge within a few thousand klicks of Oracon-1. Lieutenant Burner, sixty seconds before the ternium drive fires, you’re going to instruct the ground stations to launch at their acquired targets. Once we’re in position, we’ll destroy any Lavorix warships we detect and at the same time, we’ll saturate the area around Oracon-1 with nukes to screw with the enemy comms and sensors. It’s not like there are any Meklon left to put in a request for damages.”
“That’ll screw with our comms and sensors as well, sir.”
“You’ll have a few minutes to prepare some appropriate lens filters, Lieutenant.”
Burner opened his mouth and closed it again. Recker continued.
“Those nukes will give us the distraction we need to recover the CX1 module and get out of there.”
“How exactly are we planning to recover the hardware, sir?” said Aston.
“Since Oracon-1 is off comms, we don’t know where the Lodor bay is located. We’ll have to play that part by ear – scan the facility and find the target.”
“We’re winging it,” said Burner.
“I wouldn’t put it quite so informally, Lieutenant. We’ll improvise based on our observations of the unfolding situation.”
Recker was sure he heard someone else repeat the words winging it, badly disguising their insubordinate utterance with a forced cough. He pretended he hadn’t heard.
“That’s what we’re doing, folks.”
“In, nuke, steal, exit,” said Aston.
“Exactly that, Commander.”
“How many of our fourteen remaining nukes are we deploying?”
“Ten. Let’s save a few in case we need them later.”
Aston nodded and then gave him a tight smile. “The Galactar followed us from the Excon-1 Gateway to Kemis-5 in only a few hours, sir. We need to act fast if we’re to pull this one off.”
Fulcrum Gun (Savage Stars Book 4) Page 14
