“We’ll see what happens. I know a few tricks.”
In the face of such stubborn denial, Blake didn’t see any point in arguing. He switched his attention back to the warship’s main console. There were no faults across any of the main or subsystems and everything was green, the same as it was a few moments ago when he’d last checked.
“They reckon Obsidiar is the answer?” said Commander Brady, keen to keep going with the conversation. “I thought the Confederation Council ordered all the fleet warships to have their cores pulled.”
“They did,” Blake replied - he’d done his research on the fleet’s capabilities. “Until recently, there were only five left with Obsidiar backup power. The main being the ES Devastator, which is so far out into the Tallin Sector we have no hope of getting it back in time. The second – the ES Rampage – was stationed at Liventor and has been hijacked by the rebels. The third is the ES Blackbird – I’d like to call it a spy bucket but it’s a lot more than that. The Blackbird is only lightly armed and not suitable to face hostiles except by surgical strike against known opponents.”
“You said there were five until recently,” said Pointer.
“The Impetuous and the Lucid,” Blake confirmed. “They are both on the Atlantis Tillos base having their cores removed. Admiral Murray included the latest copies of the shipyard records, which confirm the work on the Impetuous is completed, whilst work on the ES Lucid is underway. The technicians were due to sever the links between the Obsidiar core and the rest of the ship yesterday afternoon.”
“In other words, there are really only three of these ships in the fleet,” said Pointer. “None of which are in a position to assist.”
“Them’s the breaks, Lieutenant. We’re about to be thrown up against an enemy who are likely to be more advanced than we are and who have a good chance of being able to shut down not just our engines, but everything that runs from those engines. Weapons, sensors and life support.”
“Why have they done it?” she demanded in exasperation. “Why not leave the Obsidiar on our warships?”
“There are a million uses for a power source that is vastly more efficient than any other known material. The three AI cores on the Determinant are powered by Obsidiar. There are research stations with a hundred such cores running in parallel. With Obsidiar, we can miniaturise almost everything that requires a power supply. Think of it, Lieutenant – medical gear that is smaller than ever. Power stations that can power a megacity yet are small enough that you can carry them to new worlds. Processors that can solve problems a thousand times faster. There are countless uses.”
“Augmentations,” said Brady. “That’s the big one. Stuff they can fit to the human body to make us bigger, faster, stronger, with the ability to think like a supercomputer.”
“They’ll never allow them,” said Rivera. “The interest isn’t there.”
“It’s changing,” Brady replied with an enthusiasm which marked him out as a supporter of augmentation tech. “Mark my words – this stuff is already in the lab. That’s what they need Obsidiar for.”
“I don’t care about augmentations or new medical packs,” said Pointer. “We’re about to be blown to pieces by a more powerful enemy. How are we supposed to win without Obsidiar if they can shut us down so easily?” she asked. “This sounds like it could be a suicide mission.”
“What choice do we have?” laughed Brady bitterly. “We have to do something.”
“Yeah, but this? There’s got to be another way.”
“If you think of something, tell me and I’ll forward it to Admiral Murray as soon as we drop out of lightspeed.”
With that, Pointer fell silent, though she didn’t look happy. Blake hoped she wouldn’t fall apart as soon as the missiles started flying. He didn’t dare ask himself if he would cope. This wasn’t the time for self-doubt, though he wasn’t exactly known for a lack of self-confidence.
The ES Determinant flew on.
It was silent within the comms operation centre. Whatever made the noises earlier had stopped, leaving the room’s occupants even more worried about what was going on.
Lieutenant Maria Cruz banged her fist against the sealed door of the weapons cabinet. There was absolutely no give in the metal and she knew there was no way to force it open.
“I can’t believe we’re so vulnerable once the power is cut!” she said.
“Do we really want to fight?” asked Nelson nervously, her eyes on the locker. “Most of us aren’t trained to fight.”
“There are only three gauss pistols in there anyway,” said Keller. “I saw inside last time they came to check everything was in working order. We’re not going to fend off an army with three gauss pistols.”
“Whatever it was made that noise, it’s still outside,” whispered Ramprakash, his ear pressed to the sealed door.
“Come away,” hissed Cruz, waving him back. Realising she needed to do more to take charge of the situation, she pointed to the corner furthest from the door. “Everyone, over there! Quickly!”
The others did as they were asked and hurried around the banks of consoles to the place Cruz instructed.
“Get down!” she said. “They might try to blow the door.”
“That will definitely incinerate us,” said Ramprakash, matter-of-factly.
“We’ll be piles of ash,” confirmed Nelson solemnly.
“Quiet!” said Cruz.
The eight of them crouched in a circle, hidden behind one of the unused consoles. Maria Cruz found seven pairs of eyes looking at her for guidance.
“I need suggestions,” she said. “Whatever is out there, it wants to be in this room. And maybe it wants to be in this room because there’s something it needs that it can only obtain from here.”
“The location of our other planets,” said Akachi.
“Probably,” said Ramprakash.
“Once inside, it could potentially interface with one of these panels and take what it wants,” added Keller.
“Eventually.”
“You’re the tech guys. How do we stop it happening?” asked Cruz.
“I’m not sure we can from in here,” said Akachi. “This is only the control room. There’s no button to press that can shut the whole system down.”
Cruz remembered an earlier conversation and returned to it, convinced she was missing something. “Debbie, what did you mean about needing to analyse the databanks at a molecular level if there was no functioning encryption processor?”
“Exactly what I said, Lieutenant. While there’s a processor online, the databanks can – theoretically – be hacked. If the encryption algorithm stops working the data falls into a static state, making it effectively inaccessible.”
“Like we said before - it would be like losing the key permanently,” said Keller. “So if you could somehow stop the processors doing their thing, the data would be rendered useless.”
“Almost useless,” said Nelson.
“Why isn’t there an off switch for emergencies like this one?” asked Reynolds.
“I’m not sure if you’re being serious, Lieutenant,” said Ramprakash. “In case you are, I’ll remind you that disgruntled employees with sufficient clearance, who were having a bad day, might be tempted to press such an off switch as you describe.”
“You wouldn’t make it that easy,” protested Reynolds. “I’m not talking about a big, red button attached to the wall next to the replicator.”
Ramprakash ignored the response and forged on. “In addition, I very much doubt anyone considered the possibility of a scenario such as this one. They likely assumed that no attacker would get this far and if they did, would find it time-consuming to hack even a single, conventional processing cluster.”
“Fine, fine. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked.”
“Do you think whatever is outside has gone away?” asked Nelson anxiously. “Maybe it saw the door and gave up.”
“I don’t think a door is going to be enough,” said Akachi. �
��Even a metre-thick door made of warship-grade alloy.”
“Come on, focus!” said Cruz, trying not to lose her temper. She reminded herself these were civilians and they’d only gone through the most basic of combat training required for them to work on a Space Corps base.
“Sorry, Lieutenant. We were trying to think of a way to sabotage whatever it is our enemy have planned, weren’t we?” said Keller.
“The processing clusters for the comms hub are elsewhere,” said Keller. “Debbie and I went with them when they swapped in the new core – there’s a whole world under the Tillos base.”
“The underground warren they don’t want you to know about,” said Nelson.
“Can we get to the processor clusters from here?” asked Cruz.
“Sorry. If you’re hoping one of us knows about a secret maintenance tunnel you can sneak through, you’re going to be disappointed.”
“We took the stairs,” said Keller.
“Stairs which are somewhere over that way,” added Nelson, waving her arm vaguely to the left. “Through lots of doors.”
“And even if the power came back, none of us operators have clearance to get into the hardware room,” said Ramprakash. “You’d probably need authorisation from the base commander or one of his minions.”
“We’re stuck here and there’s nothing we can do about it,” said Nelson.
“I thought you were meant to be working on that can’t do attitude?” said Keller, smiling.
“I have been. We’re still stuck.”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s hope our guys managed to repel whatever it was attacked us,” said Nelson. “I could do with some sleep.”
Cruz raised herself half-upright and looked towards the closest of the doors keeping the six of them trapped. She blinked. There was a green light on the access panel, glowing steadily.
“I think the power’s back,” she said in relief.
Without warning, the second blast door twenty metres away opened, gliding to one side with its familiar whoosh. Cruz opened her mouth to greet their rescuers. What she saw was definitely not human and it definitely hadn’t come to rescue them.
She ducked down again quickly, hoping she hadn’t been spotted.
“What…?” Ramprakash began. He saw the look on her face and went quiet.
Cruz was left with the memory of what she’d seen. Whatever was beyond the door – a creature of some kind – was a mixture of flesh and dull metal. It was humanoid in shape, with thick, grey-skinned legs and pelvis. Above that, there was a grey-skinned torso and heavily-muscled arms. The creature’s face was that of a Ghast, with its black hair patchy but mostly in place. However, it wasn’t a Ghast. Half of its face was covered in metal, forming one cheek bone, part of the skull and much of its jaw. It had armour plates over its shoulders and covering parts of its upper arms and chest. Its eyes were those of something living and they glistened in the light of the room.
Lieutenant Maria Cruz closed her eyes tightly, but the vision remained.
Chapter Eight
Deep in the underground bunker, Sergeant McKinney and his men continued their descent.
“We should be close to the bottom,” said McKinney.
“I’m glad someone has a sense of direction,” said Garcia.
The four men reached the bottom of what felt like the fiftieth set of steps and emerged into a rectangular room with four exit passages. They hadn’t seen another soul, though Li had caught the sound of someone thumping at the inside of one of the sealed doors. With no way to prise it open, there had been no option other than to leave it and continue.
Otherwise, the only noise came from the four of them. McKinney was sure the enemy had invaded the Tillos installation with the purpose of stealing the ES Lucid. He didn’t know how, but he was determined to stop them.
“Through here, Sergeant,” said Webb. “This is the place.”
McKinney ran across and looked through the doorway. The hangar lay beyond and the Lucid loomed overhead, its underside not much more than a hundred metres above. The thick pillars of the warship’s landing legs rammed against the concrete like a forest of metal trunks. Even in the dim light, McKinney could make out the snaking fractures from the immense weight of the vessel. The bunker had probably been intended to contain much smaller craft than the one here now.
A whisper of movement in the room behind caused McKinney to whirl around, his gauss rifle pointing ahead.
“Hold!” commanded an unfamiliar voice.
There was a group of six soldiers, coming along the far corridor. They wore the new style spacesuits and had their visors down, making them look alien and threatening.
“Who are you?” barked the voice. “And what the hell is going on?”
“Sergeant McKinney. Who are you?”
The lead soldier lifted his visor revealing some of his face, though not enough to get a real idea what he looked like. “I’m Corporal Evans, sir, and these are my men. I hope you’ve got some answers.”
“I hoped you’d have some yourself,” said McKinney. “The base has been attacked and I believe whoever it is, they want the Lucid. How many are you?”
“Six of us, and another twelve on patrol, sir.”
“Why are you still here instead of up there?”
Evans furrowed his brow, unsure if he was being criticised. The other five milled around a few metres away.
“We were assigned to the bunker, sir. We’ve had no orders to the contrary.”
“You’ve had no communication from the surface?”
“No, sir.”
“You must have noticed the power went out?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You didn’t think to check what was wrong?”
“No, sir. Our orders were to guard this bunker,” Evans repeated. “We assumed someone would come to relieve us.”
“There are people trapped in some of these rooms, Corporal.”
Evans looked confused. “The bunker should be empty apart from us. No one is authorised for out-of-hours work.”
McKinney was almost lost for words. “If this is what forty years of peace has reduced the Space Corps to, perhaps we should hope war is coming, Corporal. This is a screw-up from top to bottom!”
“Sir.”
“Call everyone back from patrol. I assume you can do that?”
“Yes, sir. The suit comms are working fine.”
“Have you tried to reach your commanding officer with the suit comms?”
“The bunker is shielded at surface level, sir. The built-in comms can’t penetrate and the bunker comms array is offline along with everything else.”
Confronted by so many examples of failure, McKinney did his best to be practical. “Corporal Evans, I’m in charge now. You will report to me, alongside Corporal Li.”
Evans nodded and McKinney continued.
“My men need suits and I’d feel better if we had something bigger than gauss rifles with which to defend ourselves.”
Evans saluted. “That is something I can help you with, sir. Follow me.”
“Go! Run!” McKinney urged him. “Gather your men.”
Evans did as he was ordered and set off the way he’d come at a sprint, lowering his visor as he ran. McKinney followed, entering a straight corridor which continued for a hundred metres. Just as he was becoming concerned their destination would be at the far end of the underground facility, the ten of them spilled into a new room.
“Suits, weapons,” said Evans, his voice perfectly reproduced by the spacesuit’s in-built micro speakers.
There was a weapons room leading away from this new room. The door had been jammed open by a metal bench.
“What is that?” asked McKinney, pointing at the bench.
“Only the lieutenants have authorisation to open the door. They tend to get a bit pissed off when we keep calling them down here in order to change out of our suits at the end of a shift, so we keep the door wedged open.”
“Wh
ere are these lieutenants now?” asked McKinney.
“They only do 8am till midnight, sir. We’re left to fend for ourselves during the other eight hours. The weapons are never left unguarded.”
“They were unguarded when we arrived just now.”
“Yes, sir. They were.”
For once, McKinney didn’t care about these monumental failings in procedure. If it wasn’t for those failings, he’d be stuck outside the weapons room, probably kicking the door in anger.
“Inside,” he said to Li, Garcia and Webb.
McKinney went first, stepping over the bench and into the weapons room. It was lit by the emergency backup strips and the light revealed racks of weapons fixed against the walls.
“Whoa,” said Li. “What’s all this stuff doing here?”
“They’re guarding a thousand trillion dollars’ worth of spaceship, remember?” said Webb.
“Only between the hours of 8am and midnight,” said Garcia, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Suit up and do it fast,” said McKinney.
He pulled the closest of the grey suits down from a rack. It felt like soft rubber in his hand, though he knew it was the hardest flexible polymer the Space Corps’ labs could produce in sufficient quantities to meet demand. He stepped into the wide hole at the top, pushing his legs in first. He pulled the rest of the material up, feeling it contract about his legs to make a perfect fit. His arms went in next and he pulled the head covering up and over, taking care that the two earpieces were close enough to his ears. Inside, the material of the suit was perfectly smooth and it only took seconds to get comfortable.
McKinney dropped the thin visor into place, feeling the suction as it formed a seal. He breathed in the scent of the previous occupant’s sweat. He was used to it – every suit he’d ever worn smelled the same.
A HUD illuminated inside the visor. The built-in processing units took over, providing a subtle boost to the light and overlaying information about his well-being. He noted his elevated heart rate. Otherwise, everything was exactly where it needed to be.
Negation Force (Obsidiar Fleet Book 1) Page 6
