Cruz suppressed a shudder at both his proximity and use of her first name. “You will refer to me by rank, Lieutenant. As for how I’m getting along, you can see I’m still trying to get the main comms array back online.”
She pushed fingers through her dark hair in frustration and dragged her chair a little further away from Reynolds. Whatever residual power remained in the base generators, it was sufficient to keep her console running at a very low level. The problem was, the really important stuff – like sending a distress signal to one of the Confederation’s other hubs - required the main transmitter array to be online and there was nowhere near enough power for that.
“Did you hear that?” asked Nelson. “I think I heard another explosion!”
“I hope not.”
There was a distant rumbling, deep and heavy. The reverberations from it caused some of the wall panels to buzz with the vibration.
“Crap, what is going on, Lieutenant?” asked Keller. “That sounded closer than the last ones.”
“We’re under attack,” said Cruz, repeating the same line she’d already told them. “Someone’s attacked the base.”
“Who would do that?” asked Nelson. “This is the Space Corps you’re talking about. There’s no one capable of attacking a Space Corps base.”
The sound of further explosions reached them – this time a series of blasts that went on for almost a full minute.
“Coming closer,” said Nelson, her eyes wide with fear.
“It’ll be the Ghasts again,” said Reynolds. “I never did trust those barbarians after what they did to Angax and Charistos.”
“That was more than forty years ago,” said Cruz. “We’re at peace.”
“They’re backstabbing bastards,” Reynolds insisted. “If it’d been my choice, we’d have finished them when we had the chance. Now look what’s happening.”
“Lieutenant, be quiet,” said Cruz, trying to keep a lid on her growing anger. “You’re not helping.”
She noticed something unusual and peered at her main screen. “When did they swap out that encryption processing module on the main array?” she asked. “You remember? When the old one burned out.”
“Five months ago,” said Keller at once. “They fitted a new single-core unit to replace the whole cluster. One core to replace a cluster! I had a look at the specs – we’re getting thirty percent of our cycles from that single unit.”
“We still have six of the old clusters, each with eight encryption cores,” said Nelson. “When they told me the new core was close to twenty times faster than the individuals in the cluster, I was like wow!”
“What does this mean, then?” asked Cruz. The operators could be a gold mine if you asked them the right questions.
Keller came over and studied her screen. “The new core hasn’t slowed down,” he said.
“Is that expected?” she replied. “The other forty-eight have all throttled to five percent because they aren’t getting enough power. The new one is still operating at maximum.”
“It’s an Obsidiar processor,” said Ramprakash, as if that explained everything.
Cruz turned to look at him. She knew how everything worked and could operate the comms array blindfolded, but the operators knew the underlying tech far better than she did. “What’s one of those? They didn’t think to fill me in.”
“New self-powering stuff they’ve started turning out of the fabs. Super expensive and super fast. I’ve got a friend over on the Juniper who reckons we’re the last in line for a full upgrade. They’ve done the other hubs already. Typical eh? We’re always the last.”
“Oh yeah, I knew that,” said Reynolds.
“Right,” said Keller.
Cruz pursed her lips, wondering if having a self-powering encryption processor brought them any new options. The main transmitter array was still offline so there was nothing new to encrypt, yet the core was still churning away at something.
Keller saw her look of concentration. “The algorithms keeping the existing databanks encrypted change every few nanoseconds,” he said. “That’s what’s using up all our processing cycles. It doesn’t show up on your console, but the algorithm switch has slowed down since the other clusters went into throttle mode.”
She looked at him and he smiled.
“Thanks, Larry. I’m glad you tech guys know your stuff.”
“No worries, Lieutenant.”
Keller moved off towards his own console, leaving Cruz with her thoughts.
“Shame about your birthday drinks,” said Reynolds, getting into her personal space again. “Maybe you’d like to celebrate with me when we get out of here.”
Her mouth automatically chambered the response Piss off. Her brain intercepted the words a moment before delivery and replaced them with, “Not going to happen, Lieutenant.”
There was another explosion, this one seeming to be almost on top of the hub room. Cruz got the inescapable feeling something was coming and she wouldn’t like whatever it was.
Sergeant Eric McKinney felt like he’d entered a strange, parallel universe – a place in which the impossible happened frequently and where he was required to figure his way out of a combat situation in which he had no intel, no commanding officer and, worst of all, no idea what the hell he was meant to be doing or why. None of his squad carried a communicator and the one in the patrol car had stopped working when the power died. McKinney could handle himself, but he would have appreciated some advice right at this moment.
The four of them were still on the surface, hiding within the maintenance entrance to the underground bunker. Whoever it was attacking the installation, they’d not left much standing and every so often another plasma missile would strike what little remained.
“The lifts aren’t working,” said Garcia, kicking the featureless metal of the left-hand bank of doors.
“No shit?” said Webb, looking outside. Fading light from distant fires played across his high cheekbones and reflected from the sheen of sweat on his face.
“We’ve already established there’s no power to the lifts,” said McKinney. He cast his eyes around the darkness of the room, not sure what he was searching for.
“There’s something out there,” said Webb. “I can feel it.”
“Of course there’s something out there!” said McKinney angrily. “What do you think destroyed the base?”
Garcia crossed to the entrance doors, being careful to keep his back pressed to the interior walls. He lifted his gauss rifle. “I wish they fitted night sights to these things.”
“Everything’s built into the spacesuit visors,” said Corporal Li. He flexed his arms. “I’d feel a whole lot better if I was wearing one.”
“What do they do if there’s a fire in the bunker?” asked McKinney, the question more for himself than the others.
“They come up in the lift,” said Garcia. “The power never fails, so they come up in the lift.”
“No, they have to come out of an emergency exit,” said McKinney. “There are regulations for this kind of thing.”
“There’s no emergency exit in here,” said Li. “We’ve checked.”
McKinney had an idea about where the emergency exit might be. “Stay here,” he said.
With that, he darted outside and crouched by the exterior wall, leaving Webb spluttering out questions. Doing his best to stay low, McKinney crept around the building. There’d been no chained explosions for the last few minutes and it seemed like much of the base was either ablaze or had been completely levelled by the initial onslaught. The air was warm and carried a peculiarly unpleasant scent which McKinney didn’t recognize.
At the rear of the building, a few metres from the wall, he found what he was looking for. He counted himself lucky to have seen the gleam of metal, given how little light reached this side of the maintenance entrance.
The emergency exit was a square hatch, raised a few centimetres from the ground and with a mechanical release wheel on its surface. McKi
nney blew out in relief to find something that didn’t require a power source for him to operate. He took hold of the grey metal. It was cold to touch and he turned it rapidly until it wouldn’t turn any more. With a grunt, he hauled the hatch open, finding it easier to lift than anticipated. There was a shaft underneath, illuminated by low-draw lighting strips which he assumed must have their own power source. A ladder ran down the wall, descending into the depths.
Less than two minutes later, the four of them were climbing, grateful to be doing something even if they didn’t know what their goal was. Corporal Li was the last man into the shaft and he closed the hatch behind him.
“Lock it,” said McKinney, his voice muted by the solidity of the walls.
Li did as he was asked and followed the others.
The shaft wasn’t as long as McKinney thought it might be. From chatting to the people working in the underground bunker, he knew the place was at least a thousand metres deep, as well as being four thousand long and fifteen hundred wide. It therefore came as a relief when they emerged into a room after little more than a hundred metres of climbing.
This room was lit with the same strips as were in the exit shaft. It was a large, square room with metal walls and four wide exit corridors. There were two operator consoles in opposite corners, their screens blank.
Garcia poked at one. “Dead.”
“What now, Sergeant?” asked Webb.
McKinney knew the men looked up to him and he didn’t want to let them down. He marshalled his thoughts.
“We face an unknown enemy. We’re cut off from base and we lack a means of communication,” he said. “There’s got to be others down here. We need to find them and then see if we can get a message out to whoever is left alive.”
“There’ll be comms packs somewhere in the bunker, sir,” said Li. “Plus weapons and protective suits.”
“We’ve got to find them,” McKinney agreed. “As well as food and water. They’ve got some sort of backup power running down here. We’ve got to hope the replicators are wired into it.”
“What about the bastards who attacked the base?” asked Garcia. “There’s got to be some payback for it.”
“One thing at a time, soldier. If we’re going to have a chance to strike, we need to be prepared first.” McKinney raised his gauss rifle, thankful its internal power source was unaffected by whatever had shut down the base. “Something flew overhead when we were outside. I don’t think one of these will do much good against it.”
“There’s nothing down here will do much good against a spaceship,” said Garcia.
“I’m more concerned with what is going to get off that spaceship,” said McKinney. “The bombardment has just about stopped. That makes me think our enemy believes it’s time to come down for a look. When they do, I want to show those bastards the business end of a gauss round.”
He didn’t wait any longer. Sergeant Eric McKinney chose an exit passage at random and headed off along it. The others didn’t stick around and hurried after.
Chapter Five
Fleet Admiral Duggan was furious and it took every ounce of his strength to keep it from spilling over. He was standing in his office, facing a viewscreen on one of the walls. He’d been awake for over twenty hours and it was starting to take its toll. There was a robotic med-box at his feet. It was inevitable he’d require it to inject him with one of its many stimulants in the near future. For the moment, the med-box was unused and it bleeped softly to remind him of its presence.
“How could you let this happen, Fleet Admiral?” asked Councillor Watanabe, looking down his long nose.
“And what are you going to do about it?” said Councillor Kemp.
“Don’t you dare ask me how this happened, Councillors!” said Duggan, struggling to keep his voice even. “I advised you time and again that we should keep the fleet warships equipped for every eventuality and that means they needed an Obsidiar core. Furthermore, we have fewer than half our peak numbers of active vessels currently in service.”
“You’ve had decades and more than enough funding to find an alternative source or material to the Obsidiar, Admiral,” said Councillor Monkton. “And you can’t seriously expect the Confederation’s citizens to keep paying for the Space Corps to remain on a war footing. Forty years we’ve been at peace.”
“Do you know how many digits there are in the yearly total of the Space Corps’ budget?” asked Kemp.
“Eighteen,” snapped Duggan.
“Nearly nineteen.”
Duggan wasn’t about to take the blame for the numerous failings which were beginning to surface. “Finding Obsidiar is, and always has been, an issue for the Confederation - not specifically a Space Corps responsibility. The military’s needs have been overridden and this is the result! If I’d been allowed my way, we’d have almost fifty combat-ready warships that could face a Neutraliser. As it stands, we have effectively none.”
“Do we even know the enemy has deployed a Neutraliser?”
“Only by assumption. The known facts of the Atlantis situation point to the arrival of a vessel able to shut down any Gallenium power source.”
“If you are so certain an Obsidiar-cored vessel is the answer, why did you order our single Obsidiar-powered battleship – the ES Devastator – out to the frontier, from where we have no access to its tremendous firepower and stealth capabilities?”
“The order was given in full cooperation with the Confederation Council, as you well know, Councillor Ancroft. I seem to recall the words a show of strength to the frontier worlds being bandied about amongst your colleagues. Unfortunately, the so-called Frontier League declared independence before the Devastator could get there.”
“I do not accept your attempts to deflect blame, Fleet Admiral,” said Councillor Kemp. “Where is the evidence of successful projects to produce Obsidiar? Now we face two terrible problems – a rebellion and a likely alien attack. Perhaps the Space Corps would perform better under the guidance of another?”
“Councillors, you are queuing up to point the finger of blame at the military. The fact of the matter is, we need to put these disagreements to one side, else we may find our enemy destroys us utterly while we bicker over what we cannot change,” said Duggan. “I require you to release the supplies of Obsidiar we hold here on New Earth so I can have cores installed onto as many of our compatible warships as there are available. This must be done as soon as possible.”
The gathered councillors muttered amongst themselves. Duggan didn’t hate them – he knew them for what they were. They were politicians, forever buffeted by whatever winds blew their way. Their priorities were different to his, but in this they needed to be pulling in the same direction.
“What happens if we permit the use of our Obsidiar only to find this unknown enemy destroy the ships carrying it?” asked Councillor Ellerson. “An irreplaceable resource would be forever lost.”
“The people on Atlantis are an irreplaceable resource, Councillor.”
“How long will they last without power?” asked Councillor Ancroft.
“There is no straightforward answer to your question,” Duggan replied, wondering if he was being baited into something. “Primary facilities usually have a backup source of power. Those backups won’t run forever, but the population will have food, water and heat for a time.”
“It’s a shame our fleet doesn’t have backup power,” said Ancroft. “Backup that doesn’t rely on Obsidiar,” she added hurriedly to avoid giving Duggan an opening.
Duggan wasn’t prepared to explain the basics of spaceship design. It took billions of tonnes of Gallenium to achieve a high lightspeed. There was no widely-available alternative that you could simply bolt onto the back of a warship to take over the reins in the event of a complete failure in the main Gallenium drives.
“Do I have permission to access the Obsidiar reserves?” he asked.
Councillor Stahl stepped forward. “We cannot replace those reserves if they are lost. Obs
idiar opens up new avenues for research in unexplored fields. Possibilities we could never have dreamed possible without it. If we gamble with our reserves, we are gambling with the Confederation’s future.”
“Nothing you say reduces the necessity to act with the greatest urgency, Councillor.”
“Perhaps. I would prefer an opportunity to confer with my colleagues before we make any hasty decisions.”
Duggan ground his teeth together. “Any delay increases the advantage our enemy holds over us.”
“It seems to me they already have the advantage, Fleet Admiral,” said Councillor Monkton. “I agree with my colleague – we should seek a consensus and only then will we be capable of acting with rational courage.”
“I assume your rational courage will be appreciated by the several billion men and women you’ve placed upon your Obsidiar scales, Councillor.”
“Don’t seek to judge me, Fleet Admiral,” snapped Monkton. “I suggest you explore other avenues to bring this situation to an acceptable conclusion. This is what we employ you for.”
“We are not yet convinced there is a need to throw all our resources at the problem. You have your fleet, Admiral. I suggest you deploy it wisely.”
Duggan couldn’t believe the way the conversation was going. It was as though these intelligent men and women had stuck fingers into their ears in order to block out any words they didn’t agree with. Duggan was a pragmatist and knew when it was time for a temporary withdrawal.
“How long until you come to a decision on the Obsidiar? I will need to divert warships to New Earth in preparation. I will not be pleased if I summon them, only to find I am not permitted access to the Obsidiar.”
“The resources of the Space Corps are yours to juggle,” said Watanabe. “However, I’m sure my colleagues will happily commit to providing you with an answer in forty-eight hours or less.”
“That is longer than I hoped.”
Negation Force (Obsidiar Fleet Book 1) Page 4
