War from a Distant Sun (Savage Stars Book 1)

by Anthony James

  “Mountain range ahead,” said Burner.

  “I see it.”

  The land rose and Recker was forced to increase altitude to avoid impacting with unyielding stone. Every couple of seconds, his eyes went to the rear feed, knowing that a response was inevitable.

  An orange line streaked into the sky with an origin point near to the cylinder.

  “Shit,” said Burner. It seemed to be the only word coming from his mouth. “What the hell is that?”

  “I don’t know,” said Recker. He’d seen plenty of Daklan heavy cruisers, but this was something new.

  The sensors tracked the line, which kept climbing until it escaped the planet’s atmosphere. As it gained altitude, the colour intensified and turned to white. Then, the line split, becoming five, ten, a hundred, then a thousand or more separate traces. Each formed its own arc and the trails headed for the surface.

  “They’re going to incinerate half the planet,” Eastwood said.

  The words echoed what Recker was thinking. He was sure the Daklan had launched a massive surface-scouring weapon and he didn’t want to be nearby when any of the explosives went off. A feeling a helplessness gripped him. The Finality was at maximum thrust and at any second, he’d need to back off in order to prevent the spaceship burning up. Already the nose temperature exceeded two thousand Centigrade and the thick forward plating glowed fiercely.

  “They’re coming down in a semi-random pattern, sir,” said Aston.

  The Finality’s mainframe estimated the landing positions of the inbound missiles, based on sensor data. Either the weapons team on the heavy cruiser was good or exceptionally lucky and the warheads were going to land all around, whatever Recker did to try and avoid them. He stared at the pattern on the tactical, hunting for a gap into which he might guide the spaceship. There was nothing.

  “Launching disruptors,” said Aston. “Setting Railer on auto.”

  “Hold the Railer,” said Recker.

  “Sir?”

  Recker didn’t answer immediately, and he scanned the incoming weapons. The randomness introduced gaps where there were fewer warheads projected to land.

  “Manually assign the Railer to targets X0-19 through X0-22,” he said. “Beginning at the lowest.”

  “On it.”

  The Railer started up within a couple of seconds and combined with the propulsion to fill the bridge with layers of sound that assailed Recker’s eardrums made it hard for him to think straight. Part of him wanted to aim the Finality towards the dark canvas above and head for the stars. A different voice told him to stay low. Once the heavy cruiser lifted off, Recker knew that every millisecond would be important. As soon as the Daklan obtained line of sight, the Finality would be pulverised by a molten ball of alloy travelling at twenty thousand klicks per second. It seemed better to risk the explosives.

  A clarity of thought settled upon Recker – the kind that only ever came when the fighting was at its toughest. He worked the controls and the Finality twisted through the air, over the mountains and towards his chosen place.

  “X0-19 destroyed,” said Aston. “The inbound warheads aren’t deviating towards the disruptors.”

  “Dumb weapons,” said Eastwood. “Sometimes they’re all you need.”

  “Second incendiary launch detected,” said Aston.

  Burner swore loudly. “Trying to get you something on the tactical, sir.”

  “Railer heating up,” said Aston. “X0-20 taken out. X0-21 taken out. Impact in five seconds.”

  By now, the summits of the mountain range were at their highest. Rather than climb above them, Recker risked everything by flying as low as he dared. The peaks rose before him and he guided the spaceship around them, his breathing even and his eyes unblinking.

  “X0-22 taken out. Impact.”

  From his periphery, Recker saw one of the warheads come down a few kilometres to starboard and he knew there were others. He braced himself and narrowed his eyes, just as one of the larger peaks appeared ahead. Every one of the feeds turned abruptly white and the bridge was starkly illuminated, turning the dull metals into a sickly corpselike grey.

  Knowing that an impact with the mountain was imminent, Recker hauled the controls to one side. The Railer stopped firing and the engines rose once more to prominence. An infinitely deep thud of impact told him he’d misjudged, and the flight instruments jumped around, refusing to settle.

  “Hull temps at three thousand Centigrade,” said Eastwood. “And heading the wrong way.”

  The feeds attenuated and the outside become visible once again, just in time for Recker to discover that the Finality had been knocked completely off course and was heading directly for the sheer side of another mountain. Aside from that, the entire planet seemed to be alight. Amber lights became red and Recker knew that his spaceship was on the brink of destruction.

  “Come on!” he roared, hoping his anger would channel into the technology around him and somehow hold it together.

  With an effort, Recker turned the spaceship onto a new heading and another peak loomed. The impact had completely fooled his spatial sense and he took the only available option which was to increase altitude until he knew where the hell he was going.

  The flames of the Daklan incendiary withered from their full height of ten thousand metres and died on the rocks. The hull temperature stabilised at 3700C, though the alarms didn’t fall quiet. Recker wondered if the chaos would mask the ternium particles spilling from the aft breach. Maybe it didn’t matter – the heavy cruiser wasn’t going to forget about the Finality. The Daklan would keep hunting until Recker and his crew were reduced to carbon. And those ternium particles were going to make it easy for them.

  Anger turned to fury and his body shook with it. His breathing deepened, his vision sharpened, and his body felt the chill of pumping adrenaline, making him shiver despite the blistering, metal-scented air coming through the bridge vents. Burner had managed to get the detonation patterns of the coming incendiaries onto the tactical. They were falling directly ahead.

  Recker knew what he had to do. The huge fissure he’d noticed earlier was only a few hundred kilometres away. Unfortunately, an ocean of plasma incendiary was going to blanket the intervening space in a few seconds. Smiling in defiance, Recker aimed the spaceship right for the middle.

  “Sir, the incendiaries.”

  “I know. Lieutenant Eastwood, shut down the aft engine module.”

  “Sir?”

  “Now!”

  “I’ve got to enter some overrides. Ten seconds.”

  Recker chose his target from the hundreds on the tactical. “Commander Aston, fire the Railer at X1-72, 73 and 74.”

  Her expression indicated she was desperate to know what he planned, but she didn’t ask questions. “Yes, sir.”

  Those warheads were coming down at the exact place Recker was aiming the Finality. If the Railer didn’t take out the three incendiaries, it was all over. Success was no guarantee of survival either. For what seemed like many seconds, the Railer thundered, taking out X1-72 and 73, while X1-74 remained stubbornly on the tactical.

  The countermeasures did their job.

  “X1-74 destroyed!” said Aston loudly.

  “Aft engine module offline, sir,” shouted Burner, just as the Railer shut off.

  Recker knew it already – the spaceship became sluggish and unbalanced. He compensated automatically and got the Finality under control at the same time as the portside, starboard, and forward feeds turned white with the detonation of Daklan incendiaries.

  The margins were tight, but the destruction of the three warheads created a pocket within the flames. Recker hauled on the controls and the Finality slowed to a crawl. In every direction, accelerated plasma turned the billion-year old rock into molten rivers.

  Without fuel, the fires died quickly and Recker accelerated again towards the horizon. The once-grey rocks were blackened and mottled with patches of red and orange. Whatever the Daklan called their incendia
ry weapon, it was utterly savage and Recker was terrified what the aliens would do to an HPA populated world if they ever found one.

  “Watch out for that cruiser,” he ordered. “If we’re lucky, they’ve lost our trail. Or they think we’re dead.”

  “Yes, sir.” Burner sounded shocked that he wasn’t dead.

  “Where are we heading, sir?” said Aston.

  “You remember that fissure?”

  “Like someone took an axe to the place,” she said, repeating his words from earlier.

  “That’s where we’re going.”

  “The Daklan will know we didn’t leave, sir.”

  “Not quite, Commander. They’ll know we didn’t go to lightspeed. If they can’t find us on Etrol, they’ll believe we went into space.”

  “Shouldn’t we do that anyway, sir?” asked Burner.

  “We’re using the planet to keep us hidden, Lieutenant. The moment we head for the skies, the enemy will have a far greater chance of detecting us.”

  “We’re glowing pretty brightly. If they sweep for heat, we’ll stick out like a sore thumb,” said Eastwood. “The plating will cool down a whole lot quicker up in space.”

  “I know. We’re going for the fissure.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  In truth, Recker was tempted to leave orbit and take his chances. He knew from experience how tenacious the Daklan could be and they’d keep on searching. Out in space, a crippled riot class would be an easy find for the enemy. In Recker’s best judgement, the survival of his ship and his crew was best served by taking cover on Etrol and hoping that Admiral Telar had a fleet of warships inbound.

  The Finality gathered speed and the distance counter to the fissure decreased. Watching the digits fall away was agonizing and Recker refused to torment himself by staring too long. The other sights weren’t any better and when he turned his attention briefly to the rear feed, he saw a square, orange-glowing object drop away from the hull and vanish in the Finality’s wake.

  “There goes ten thousand tons of armour plating,” said Eastwood.

  Another slab detached itself from the hull, this time on the portside and Recker thought he heard a distant screeching wrench as it tore free. Two more warning lights appeared on his console and soon he’d be looking at more reds and ambers than greens. The Finality had been Recker’s ship for several years and he knew this was its last mission.

  “No sign of the cruiser,” said Burner.

  Recker wasn’t reassured. It seemed like the enemy weapons team had been ready, which meant that the cruiser was operational and the only reason he could think for the spaceship remaining on the ground was because its commanding officer was elsewhere – maybe inside that massive cylinder.

  “Two hundred klicks and we’re at the fissure,” said Burner. “Nothing in the sky.”

  With his eyes flicking across the terrain ahead, Recker guided the spaceship between the peaks, doing his best to balance outright speed with the requirement to keep the hull temperature from climbing any higher.

  “One hundred klicks.”

  A bead of sweat ran down Recker’s left temple and he brushed it away with his cuff. The Daklan would come, he thought. Right at the last moment to destroy his hopes of escape.

  “Fifty klicks.”

  The Finality was at a low altitude, but not so much that it hid the view of the opening in the ground. Recker saw it – a yawning darkness that started between two mountains and then cut others in half further along its length, widening until it seemed like the planet itself was ready to split in two. He banked the spaceship towards it and came lower towards the floor of the canyon in which the fissure started.

  “I’ve got the enemy cruiser on the sensors, sir,” said Burner. He no longer sounded shellshocked, just empty.

  Recker couldn’t spare the time to look, but his eyes jumped to the rear feed of their own accord. Burner had a visual zoom lock on the enemy spaceship and it climbed like it had no requirement to obey any physical laws. The only positive was that they hadn’t yet seen the Finality and the reason Recker knew it was true was because he wasn’t dead.

  The fissure yawned wide and with rock-solid hands, Recker dumped the Finality into the darkness at the highest speed he dared. So far apart were the sides that the light from the glowing hull hardly touched the sheer walls.

  Deeper went the spaceship, heading into damnation or salvation.

  Chapter Six

  The chasm didn’t narrow until the Finality was two thousand metres below the surface. Even then, Recker had plenty of room. Here and there, outcroppings extruded from the walls, but they were easily avoided.

  At a depth of 2500 metres, a vast, snaking crack in one wall provided the cover Recker was looking for. Getting the spaceship inside should have been a difficult manoeuvre, but he managed it almost without conscious thought. All he could think about was the Daklan cruiser sending fifty missiles down here to find them.

  With his teeth grinding, Recker finished positioning the Finality lengthways in the crack, midway between the floor and the ceiling. Heat continued to spill from the spaceship’s hull and he hoped the rapid change in air temperature wouldn’t cause the stone to shatter and come tumbling down upon them.

  Once he was satisfied with the position, Recker activated the autopilot to keep the warship in place. He removed his hands from the controls and his fingers ached from the tightness of his grip.

  With a loud expulsion of breath, Recker sat back in his seat. He turned and met Aston’s gaze.

  “Piece of cake.”

  “Yeah, easy,” she said. “Just another day in the military.”

  “I’m going to turn off the audible alarms,” said Recker, realizing how much the background chorus had been irritating him. A quick input of his override codes and they fell silent. He closed his eyes for a moment.

  “That’s better,” said Eastwood. “I can just about hear myself think again.”

  “We’ve got plenty to do,” said Recker. He flexed his fingers and the stiffness subsided.

  “Every second we aren’t dead is a bonus,” laughed Eastwood.

  “Let’s take stock,” said Recker. “Lieutenant Burner, while I’m thinking, you let those soldiers down below know where we’ve taken them.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  While Burner passed on the details, Recker pursed his lips in thought. His console told a sorry tale and it didn’t require training to understand that the quantity of red lights on the panel was bad news. “Plenty of redundancy,” he muttered, checking each light in turn.

  Most of the Finality’s backup systems had kicked in, which meant the spaceship was able to remain airborne – assuming the backups didn’t fail. Of course, there wasn’t a backup hull and no backup propulsion modules. Last of all, Recker checked the magazine readouts, which informed him the Finality’s ammunition reserves were below thirty percent.

  “Well, folks, we’re in the shit.”

  “I’m glad you said it first, sir,” said Burner.

  Recker stood and stretched his back muscles. Then, he leaned forward and rested his knuckles on the hard surface of his console while he stared at the bulkhead feeds like there were answers to be found in the external view of orange-lit rock.

  We’ll get out of here, he promised silently. One step at a time.

  “Lieutenant Eastwood, report,” he said.

  “We’re in bad shape, sir, but then again you knew that already. The aft propulsion module is offline so we’re no longer spilling ternium particles. Lieutenant Burner will be better placed to tell you whether or not we went undetected coming in here.”

  “You said earlier there was no guarantee we’d get the module restarted without shipyard facilities.”

  Eastwood took on a pained expression, producing fine lines across his forehead. “I did say that, sir.”

  “We don’t have a shipyard and without that module we’re not getting home.”

  “Not unless there’s an extraction.”
<
br />   “Let’s not pin our hopes on that,” said Recker.

  “The military doesn’t abandon its own, sir,” said Aston. “Even the…” she hesitated, “…unfashionable members.”

  “Unfashionable?” said Recker, raising an eyebrow. “I guess that’s one way to describe it.” He sighed. “You’re right – we got out a comm and they’ll send someone.”

  “You still look worried, sir.”

  “I don’t know that whatever comes will be able to face that heavy cruiser. And if the rest of the fleet is elsewhere then we might be waiting a long time until there’s enough muscle available.”

  “And there comes a time when enough is enough,” said Eastwood. “I wouldn’t expect the military to send so many resources here that they leave an opening for the Daklan elsewhere.”

  Recker thought the same, though he hadn’t wanted to come right out and say it.

  “Anyway, we might need – eventually - to get that engine module online.”

  “Assuming for a moment I can use the forward module to kickstart the aft one, we’ll start leaking ternium again.”

  “I know. I thought you might be able to do some advance preparations. Whatever happens, I want to give the crew on that cruiser time to get bored of hunting for us and stand down.”

  Eastwood ran fingers through his short-cropped hair. “I’ll do what I can, sir. I think this is going to be one of those times when you have to try something to find out if it’s going to work.”

  “Lieutenant Burner, your turn,” said Recker, pointing at his comms officer.

  Burner had a cup of his usual super-strength coffee in his hand, though Recker hadn’t seen the man go to the replicator.

  “If the enemy ship saw us come down here, we’d be dead already,” he began. “Since we aren’t dead, and what with the Daklan being alien bastards and all, they’ll probably begin a sweep of this area of the planet.” He took a sip of the steaming drink.

  “And?”

  “The heat from our hull is enough to produce detectable traces in the atmosphere, sir. If they pass the fissure at an angle, there’s a chance they’ll miss it.”