Dreadnaught: A Military Sci-Fi Series (Omega Taskforce Book 5)

by G J Ogden

  Sterling snorted a laugh. “Okay, Ensign, you’ve impressed me,” he said, relaxing his grip on the sides of his consoles. “Now impress me again and find the Obsidian Base before another giant rock takes a liking to us.”

  “I have already located it, Captain,” Ensign One replied, cheerfully. “Course laid in and ready to engage.” The robot’s eyes seemed to flash. “I have made sure to avoid any more of the larger fragments of rock.”

  Banks’ console then chimed an alert. Sterling turned to his secondary console to read the information at the same time as his first officer.

  “Ten ships approaching, sir,” said Banks, working her console and sending an image of the vessels to the viewscreen. “Their configuration matches Griffin’s Obsidian Fleet warships.”

  “It looks like the Admiral has sent a welcoming party,” said Sterling, studying the new arrivals.

  “Let’s hope the Obsidian robots on those ships are a little friendlier than their counterparts,” Banks added with a fatalistic air.

  Sterling hadn’t even considered that the machines piloting the warships approaching them were still running the scrambled code that had caused their own Obsidian Soldiers to rebel. He was suddenly anxious again, in case there was a need to return to battle stations.

  “I will take care of the remaining Obsidian crew once we return to the base, Captain,” Ensign One chipped in. His intervention was timely and comforting. “I will offer them the same choice as the others.”

  Sterling’s newfound sense of calm was immediately shattered. “And what if they decide not to join our crew, Ensign?” he asked his sentient AI. “What if they decide that humans are little better than viruses, and choose to annihilate us?”

  “I am confident that will not be the case, Captain,” Ensign One replied.

  “That’s not a satisfactory answer, Ensign,” Sterling hit back. “Soldiers don’t get to pick and choose what orders they follow. This is war and we need those machines.”

  Ensign One appeared to ponder this for a moment, though Sterling again thought that this was more an attempt to appear more human than because it actually needed time to think. The computing power that the sentient AI helmsman possessed was capable of running an entire COP and probably more besides.

  “If any of the Obsidian machines choose a path that risks the mission then I will deal with them, sir,” Ensign One finally replied. There was a darkness to the AI’s statement that made it sound suddenly very human.

  “Exactly how will you deal with them, Ensign?” Sterling asked. He disliked ambiguity. Only the facts mattered, even if they were grizzly and unpleasant to hear.

  “The Omega Directive is in effect, is it not?” Ensign One replied. “Should any of the Obsidian Soldiers choose to rebel, I will destroy them.”

  Sterling nodded. Though he wasn’t unsympathetic to the difficult position he’d put his AI in, this was the answer he’d needed to hear. Ensign One had already destroyed the only other sentient AI known to exist – now it would be in a position where it may have to eradicate more of its own kind. Does the concept of morality and ‘human rights’ extend to artificial beings? Sterling wondered as he stared back into his helmsman’s glowing eyes. Perhaps the cold logic of computers made the decision easier for Ensign One than it would have been for a flawed, feeling human being.

  Yet, this did not diminish the act in Sterling’s eyes. All it did was prove that he’d made the right decision to trust this new life form with the responsibilities of an Omega officer. Like the rest of them, Ensign One would have to make hard choices. Choices that most feeling, emotional beings would not be able to make. Sterling didn’t doubt that Ensign One would do what was necessary, no matter the cost. However, the robot’s unswerving conviction only brought into sharp relief the doubts he had about another Omega officer.

  Sterling forced down another dry swallow as he glanced across to Commander Mercedes Banks, who was focused on her consoles and unaware of his probing gaze. He knew that in the days and weeks ahead it might become necessary to sacrifice his first officer, or order her to her death. He knew that if that moment came, he would be compelled to act for the good of the mission, and ultimately for the sake of humanity. The problem was that the only person on the ship that Captain Lucas Sterling now doubted had the stomach to carry out this task was himself.

  Chapter 33

  Obsidian Base

  Sterling entered the observation lounge on the alien shipyard they had commandeered for use as their new Obsidian base. The installation had once been responsible for building the Sa’Nerran Battle Titan. Sterling thought there was a poetic irony to the fact it would now repair and upgrade the only vessel left in the galaxy that could possibly match the Titan’s might.

  Stepping further inside the observation lounge, Sterling peered out through the glass walls at the Fleet Dreadnaught Vanguard. The mighty four-kilometer-long vessel filled less than half of the colossal shipyard. It was the first time Sterling had ever considered a dreadnaught to look small compared to its surroundings. Fleet hadn’t named the alien super dreadnaught the ‘Titan’ for no reason – at more than ten kilometers long, it dwarfed even the Vanguard.

  However, it wasn’t so much the Sa’Nerran Titan’s size or even its powerful aperture-based weapon that had turned the tide of the war, but its unique neural weapon. Using this, the Titan had turned the Fleet Dreadnaught Hammer against its own side. Sterling shuddered at the thought of how many other Fleet ships and installations had fallen victim to the Titan’s coercive control since then.

  Sterling’s hands balled into fists, knowing that this outcome had not been inevitable. If the United Governments’ Senators, and War Council – Admiral Vernon Wessel most of all – had possessed the guts and foresight of Griffin, they wouldn’t be in this mess now. Fleet ships and outposts could have been equipped with the neural firewall that now protected Sterling and his crew. The Sa’Nerra’s key advantage would then have been nullified and the contest between the two warring races would have boiled down to a straight-up fight. Survival of the strongest. In battle, Sterling was confident that Fleet could have prevailed. Now, Earth’s forces were either wiped out or had been turned and forced to serve the enemy.

  Sterling sighed and relaxed his hands, realizing there was no point in dwelling on these facts. What was done was done, he had to keep reminding himself. Now, all that mattered was what they did next. And the colossal battleship beyond the glass of the observation lounge, surrounded by scaffolds, worker drones and repair ships, had a critical role to play in this future.

  The door to the observation lounge slid open and Commander Mercedes Banks walked in. Sterling hadn’t needed to turn around to know it was her. He could tell that it was Banks merely by the cadence of her boots striking the alien deck plates.

  “Penny for your thoughts?” said Banks. She had stopped just to Sterling’s side and folded her arms across her chest.

  “You’ll need a lot more than a penny,” Sterling replied.

  “That bad, huh?” said Banks.

  Sterling huffed a laugh. “No, not all bad, just… busy,” he said, making a swirling motion around his head with his finger. “Now that we’ve actually reached Omega Four with the Vanguard there’s so much more to think about.”

  Banks nodded. “I know how you feel,” she replied. Coming from anyone else, Sterling would have scoffed. However, Mercedes Banks probably was the only person alive who did know how he felt. Often, she knew it better than he did himself. “Part of me is amped that we made it this far, and that we now get a chance to strike back at the Sa’Nerra and make them pay for what they’ve done.” His first officer’s voice had grown angrier and more aggressive as she said this. Merely thinking about the fight that was to come was getting her in the mood for battle. “But it’s sort of bittersweet, you know?” Banks went on, turning away from the window to look at Sterling. “If the reports are true, we’ve already lost, so what the hell are we really fighting for?”

&
nbsp; Sterling nodded and met his first officer’s gaze. It was this exact same quandary that had been bothering him too. And while he didn’t have all the answers, the one thing he knew for sure was that there was still much to fight for.

  “We haven’t lost everything, at least not yet,” Sterling replied. “The Sa’Nerra will come to understand the gravity of their mistake soon enough. We’ll make sure of that.”

  Between docking the Vanguard at the Obsidian Base, organizing repairs, and briefly updating Admiral Griffin, Sterling hadn’t had much time to assimilate the scant reports from Fleet that Griffin had managed to intercept. However, he knew enough. In the weeks that Sterling had been gone, it was all but confirmed that Earth had been lost. The specifics were still sketchy, but in truth there was little more any of them needed to know. Yet if humanity’s homeworld had become a vassal of the Sa’Nerran empire, the human race was not yet beaten. There were still millions of people spread amongst colonies in the Void and in what used to be Fleet space. In order for humanity to have a future free of the Sa’Nerra, the aliens needed to be made to understand that their actions had consequences. And if it took bombarding the Sa’Nerra’s own home planet to dust in order to teach them that lesson, Sterling would do it, and more.

  While he was contemplating committing genocide, Sterling noticed that a repair ship had hauled the Invictus out of the Vanguard’s docking garage. The vessel was now towing the Marauder to a free repair station inside the giant shipyard. Set against the backdrop of the Vanguard and the shipyard itself, the Invictus looked tiny, like a fly buzzing around an alligator. It also looked in far worse condition than Sterling had remembered.

  “I hope we can manage to salvage the Invictus,” Banks said. His first officer had clearly spotted the ship being towed toward them too. “She’s been with us from the start and she deserves to be there at the end too.”

  “She’ll be there,” Sterling answered, confidently. In fact, this was the only thing he knew with absolute certainty. “Even if I have to bolt her back together with my own bare hands, the Invictus will fly into battle again.”

  “It’s not like you to get all sentimental,” Banks teased, nudging Sterling gently with her shoulder.

  “It’s not sentimentality, Mercedes,” Sterling hit back. He was still tense and irritable as a result of seeing his ship in such a dilapidated state. “We need the Invictus. She may not have the size or the power of the Vanguard, but she’s a true warrior.”

  “She’s like her captain,” Banks said, herself switching to a more assertive, confident stance.

  Sterling smiled. He hadn’t yet revealed his plan for the Invictus to his first officer, and now was not the time. However, Banks’ statement could not have been truer.

  The door to the observation lounge slid open for a second time and this time Admiral Griffin marched in. Despite abandoning Fleet to take matters into her own hands, she still wore her Fleet uniform, as did Sterling and the rest of the crew. It didn’t matter that they would all have been facing court-marshals and dishonorable discharges, should Fleet have still existed. Their hearts were still Fleet and each one of them would die in the uniform if that was their fate.

  Curiously, the door remained open even after the Admiral had entered. Then Sterling realized why; Ensign One was following closely behind and had also now stepped inside the observation lounge. The sentient AI was wearing its Fleet uniform, which Sterling noted was far more neatly pressed and polished than his own.

  “No need to sit, Captain, this won’t take long,” said Griffin, in her usual brash and standoffish manner. Griffin turned to Ensign One, and the robot immediately straightened to attention. Sterling almost laughed out loud, finding it amusing that the prickly Admiral had the same chilling impact on the sentient AI as she had on everyone else. “First, a little housekeeping,” Griffin went on, locking her eyes onto the shining orbs of the robot’s modified cranial section. “I’ve reviewed your performance during the mission to retrieve the Vanguard and I’m pleased to confirm that your field promotion to Ensign is permanent,” the Admiral said, stretching out her hand to the robot. Ensign One took Griffin’s hand and they shook firmly. “Congratulations, Ensign One.”

  “Thank you, Admiral Griffin,” Ensign One said. Sterling thought that the robot sounded genuinely choked-up.

  “Now fix all these other screwball robots and get my Obsidian ships ready to fight,” Griffin added, turning away from the machine to face Sterling. The abrupt statement appeared to catch Ensign One off-guard and the machine turned its eyes to Sterling, as if seeking confirmation about what to do next. “That means you’re dismissed, Ensign,” Griffin added, before Sterling was able to speak up.

  “Yes, Admiral,” Ensign One replied before spinning on its heels and marching out of the room. Sterling smiled, noticing that the robot’s pace had quickened compared to when it had entered the observation lounge. Griffin could scare the crap out of a lump of rock… he thought to himself, idly.

  “I have some updated information regarding the status of Fleet and Earth,” Griffin then went on, sticking firmly to matters of business. “What I know is this,” the Admiral said before clearing her throat and pulling a small PDA out of her pocket. “The Sa’Nerran armada halted progress toward Earth at F-sector and engineered a new aperture directly into the solar system. Thanks to Ensign One, data intercepted and decoded from the aperture relays near Mars has now confirmed what we suspected. Earth has fallen.” Despite the fact Sterling had already accepted the likelihood that Earth had been conquered, hearing the Admiral confirm this as fact was still a bitter pill to swallow. “All the major cities and defensive installations have been annihilated from orbit and Sa’Nerran ground forces have landed.”

  Sterling again felt his hands ball into fists. This time, he squeezed so tightly that the metal of his bionic hand creaked under the pressure.

  “What of the Fleet?” Sterling asked, trying to discover if there was any good news. “Did any vessels manage to escape and re-group?”

  Griffin shook her head. “By the time the Sa’Nerran armada had reached Earth’s orbit, forty percent of the fleet was already destroyed, and at least twenty percent was under Sa’Nerran neural control,” the Admiral said. “With the Titan and the Hammer leading the attack, the remaining Fleet forces didn’t stand a chance.”

  “Perhaps some managed to surge away?” Banks suggested. “There could still be a resistance force regrouping somewhere in the inner colonies.”

  Griffin sighed and shrugged. “It’s possible, Commander Banks, but whatever remains of the fleet will not be enough to mount a resistance,” the Admiral said. “And they will not be able to escape Fleet space either. They’re trapped. The Sa’Nerra are already hunting them down and destroying them. It’s only a matter of time before every human being in the inner colonies is dead.”

  Sterling nodded, agreeing with the Admiral’s assessment. “And once they’re done with the inner colonies, the armada will start to creep back out into the Void,” he said. “To give any potential resistance force a chance, we need to hit the Sa’Nerra hard and quickly, so they have no choice but to withdraw from Fleet space.”

  “We are of one mind, Captain Sterling,” Admiral Griffin replied. “We will strike the alien homeworld with a ruthlessness and brutality that will chill the blood of even the most hardened Sa’Nerran warrior,” she went on, appearing to grow several inches as she spoke. “It will be a clarion call to war. And if the Sa’Nerra do not answer and choose to sacrifice their own planet, so be it. We’ll reduce their world to ash. An eye for an eye.”

  Sterling felt his heart swell as the Admiral delivered her speech. Freed from the shackles of Fleet and United Governments politics and bureaucracy, Griffin had come alive. She was finally fighting the war on her own terms, and was clearly reveling in the task ahead. Her confidence and bullishness were infectious and Sterling suddenly felt an urge to get back out into space and put her plan into action.

  “If we’
re going to cut the beating heart out of the Sa’Nerra empire, I’m going to need my old ship, Admiral,” Sterling said, pointing to the Invictus, way out beyond the glass wall of the observation lounge.

  “You’ll have her, Captain, of that you can be assured,” Griffin replied, again instilling Sterling with the confidence he needed. “In the time you were away, my Obsidian Soldiers have scoured the Void and recovered enough parts and equipment to build a dozen more Obsidian ships.” She turned to the glass wall, pressed her hands to the small of her back, and peered out at the Invictus. “McQueen’s phase-four vessel is also unlocking a universe of secrets,” she went on, again appearing to grow taller as she spoke. “The Invictus and the Vanguard will both be rebuilt, stronger, faster and more powerful than ever.”

  “What about the Raven, Admiral?” Banks asked. “Can we make her fly too?”

  “Sadly not, Commander,” Griffin replied. The disappointment was written all over the Admiral’s face, and Sterling understood why. Having a phase-four Sa’Nerran Skirmisher as part of their taskforce would have given a significant boost to their offensive capabilities. “However, the alien Skirmisher did have a combat shuttle on board,” Griffin went out, her tone brightening a touch. “With the help of Lieutenant Razor and Ensign One, this can be converted and put to use.”

  Sterling nodded and for a moment all three officers returned to silently observing the repair works outside. Griffin’s assurances had gone a long way to quelling some of the doubts and concerns that had been occupying Sterling’s mind. However, bullishness alone would not give them victory. Should they manage to reach the Sa’Nerran homeworld, there was no doubt that the Vanguard was capable of levelling the major cities and continents from orbit. However, even if they made it to the planet without taking heavy losses and succeeded in bombing it to oblivion, there was still the matter of the alien armada. A dreadnaught, a marauder and perhaps thirty to fifty Obsidian ships was not enough to stand against the might of an alien force shored up by dozens of turned Fleet warships. In order to force the Sa’Nerra to abandon Earth and not return, they would need more. However, these were details, and Sterling was aware that this was not a moment for details. This was a moment to reflect on the incredible victory they had won, both in terms of recovering the Vanguard and killing Emissary Lana McQueen. It was also a time for Sterling to reflect, in his own way, on those they’d lost along the way.