Guns of the Valpian

by Anthony James

  “Should I answer the Priority 1?”

  “Yes – try and buy us a few seconds. At the same time, press the comms man on the Soriol and find out where the Crimson is.”

  “I will try.”

  While Red-Gulos spoke, Duggan took the Valpian on a course heading away from the incoming battleship at a moderately high speed, hoping it wouldn’t appear too obvious. The Soriol altered its own course, following a slightly divergent heading that was presumably meant to be surreptitious. Duggan wasn’t fooled for an instant.

  “I’ve got a name from the Soriol’s comms man – it’s where they’ve taken the foreign warship.”

  Duggan’s heart thumped in his chest. “Do you have enough information for us to get there?”

  “I’m not sure, sir. Their comms man stopped himself midway through his sentence and then began talking about something else.”

  “That’s how you Estral avoid lying, isn’t it?”

  “It’s how we communicate,” said Red-Gulos. “I also have the Zansturm’s captain on a separate comms channel. He asks if we are having a pleasant day.”

  Duggan shook his head in disbelief. “Tell him we’re having a wonderful day. Ask him if his family is well.”

  “It is my strong belief they haven’t been taken in by the ruse,” said Red-Gulos. “I suspect they will fire as soon as they are in range.”

  “I know that, sergeant. In all my life, I have never heard a worse attempt to deceive than asking if I am having a pleasant day.”

  “The Zansturm is a big bastard, sir,” said Byers. “Five thousand metres long and I can see four particle beam domes in the hull.”

  “How close are they?”

  “Three quarters of a million klicks.”

  “I reckon it’s got missiles that can travel that far,” mused Duggan.

  “Why aren’t they firing?”

  “Because they know we can get to lightspeed long before those missiles reach us.”

  “What about the Soriol?” asked Byers. “They could do some damage while we’re trying to escape.”

  “It seems strange,” said Duggan. “Unless, they also know we outgun them so much they won’t be able to stop us. That would explain why they haven’t locked on again – they realise it would be a provocation.”

  “Do you think they’ve already received a response from their high command to say we’re a rogue ship?” asked McLeod.

  “That’s the only explanation for the way they’re acting.”

  “The light cruiser is on a strange course,” said McLeod. “It’s sort of coming after us, but not very quickly. Like they’re in no hurry to see what we can do to them.”

  Duggan thought fast. It was certain the Dreamers knew the Valpian had been hijacked. His first thought was to activate the fission drives and take them away in a random direction and hope they had sufficient information to locate the Crimson. The problem was, such action would force the Soriol to open fire. Even if he was correct in his assumption that the smaller cruiser wasn’t a match for the Valpian, their crew were definitely better able to extract the maximum performance from what they had available to them. The enemy might cause enough damage to destroy the Valpian or prevent its escape, both of which were unacceptable.

  “We have an energy shield,” he muttered to himself. “From past experience, missiles won’t penetrate. What happens to a particle beam directed at an energy shield? Does it extend through the shield or is it blocked?”

  Time was running out and Duggan knew he had to act. Also, the crew on the Soriol had divulged the location of the ESS Crimson. If the Zansturm learned about it, they would surely know exactly what the Valpian’s planned destination was. Duggan didn’t wish to have a battleship on his tail when he attempted to rescue his crew.

  Surprise was one of the most powerful weapons available and he decided to utilise it. The Valpian was equipped with two particle beams, which were aimed by a simple method of selecting a target on the tactical display and then pressing a virtual button on a separate screen. Once he aimed the particle beams, it was certain the Soriol would recognize hostile intent.

  Wishing he had his usual crew with him, Duggan targeted both particle beams and fired. A series of power bars jumped from zero to ninety percent, whereupon they began to fall gradually back towards zero. The cooldown time was exceptionally quick compared to anything Duggan had encountered on a human or Ghast ship, but the weapons couldn’t exactly be fired rapidly.

  As soon as he fired, he rotated in his seat until he was facing the navigational console. He entered a series of coordinates and gave the instruction to prepare the fission engines. Less than thirty seconds until we’re out of here.

  “I think the Soriol has fired at us, sir,” said Byers, trying her best to help out. “A couple of these gauges have started to jump around.”

  It was immediately apparent how unprepared they were to engage in ship-to-ship combat. A series of alerts flashed across Duggan’s screens, the symbols appearing and disappearing before he could make sense of them. He attempted to target the Valpian’s missiles, only to be diverted by a higher-priority prompt relating to the fission drives. Byers and McLeod stumbled over their words as they relayed the details on their own screens, without realising they weren’t giving Duggan the information he needed.

  It only took a few seconds for Duggan to realise he was in danger of being swamped. His experience saved him from the distraction and he was able to see through the operational haze. The particle beams had cooled down sufficiently and he aimed and fired them for a second time.

  “The Soriol is gone, sir,” said Byers.

  “What do you mean it’s gone?” asked Duggan. “Please confirm.”

  “We’ve destroyed it, sir. It’s in pieces.”

  Duggan was dumbfounded by the ease with which they’d destroyed the enemy cruiser, but he had too much on his plate to think about it. The Valpian’s energy shield spiked once and then spiked again, this second time by nine million percent. To the left, the tactical display showed hundreds of inbound missiles, each with a distance and course overlay that convinced Duggan they’d been launched from separate places.

  The Dreamer missiles didn’t reach the Valpian. The cruiser entered lightspeed many seconds before its shield could be tested. As soon as Duggan confirmed they were travelling at the warship’s frankly incredible maximum speed, he blew out his pent-up breath. Their randomly-selected location was several hours away, so there was time to think and talk.

  “That went better than expected,” he said.

  The other three stared at him, a dozen emotions writ large across their features.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Somehow, the Valpian’s sensors had captured a recording of the recent engagement with the Soriol and Duggan watched the replay for the third time. The first two particle beams raked through the smaller vessel’s hull, leaving several hundred metres in a patchy orange colour. The Soriol replied with missiles and its own particle beam, none of which had any apparent effect other than to produce a colossal energy surge in the Valpian’s shields. The following two particle beam strikes split the Soriol into three brightly-burning pieces, effectively destroying the vessel.

  “Their energy shields didn’t help them against our particle beams,” Duggan said. “Yet their beams were unable to penetrate our own shield.”

  He cast his mind back to the first appearance of the Dreamer mothership and he remembered how easily its particle beams had destroyed the human and Ghast fleets which were in the vicinity of the Helius Blackstar. It appeared as if the Valpian was equipped with a similarly-powerful weapon.

  “We’ve got newer and better,” said Byers. As a way of explanation, it was surely correct, yet completely unsatisfying.

  “We must make every effort to bring this vessel through the wormhole,” said Red-Gulos. “If it carries the enemy’s most cutting-edge technology it is imperative our own navies are given the opportunity to copy it.”

  Private
ly, Duggan agreed. He wasn’t in a position to commit to anything he couldn’t fulfil. He’d made only one promise and that was to get them home. If he could get more out of the situation, so much the better. He simply didn’t wish to risk his word by chasing the unattainable.

  “Does the location you got from the Soriol’s comms man tie in with anything on the Valpian’s charts?” asked Duggan.

  Red-Gulos was still searching. “He only provided partial details before evidently realising we were imposters,” said the Ghast. “We have a name, rather than a set of coordinates. Luckily for us, the name is an unusual one and there is little repetition of it, even amongst the vastness of the enemy’s holdings.”

  “Have you narrowed it down to something we can use?”

  “Yes. The name Antrajis occurs only three times on the Valpian’s charts. The first is a planet, which might be a logical destination, except that it is approximately eighty-nine days away from here.”

  “I’m not sure we can dismiss it so easily,” said Duggan.

  Red-Gulos raised a hand to indicate he wished to continue. “The next mention of the word Antrajis relates to an ancient satellite which again is located far from here.”

  “They’re probably not on a satellite,” Duggan agreed. “What’s the last option?”

  “Here,” said Red-Gulos, indicating an image on his screen.

  “What is that?” asked Duggan, looking at the object in question.

  The Valpian’s memory banks held a three-dimensional image of the Antrajis. It was comprised of two tori. A cylinder ran through the middle hole of each ring and was connected to them by a series of evenly-spaced struts. Red-Gulos zoomed in and rotated the object so that Duggan got an idea of what it was.

  “An orbital,” said the Ghast.

  “How close are we to it?”

  “Three days at our current speed.”

  “That’s got to be the place,” said Duggan.

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  Duggan returned to his seat and called up the Antrajis on his own screen. The computerised model was exceptionally detailed, showing three vast external hangar bay doors, countless viewing ports and even the thousands of sensor arrays mounted on the orbital’s hull. The bay doors were part of the main cylinder, with the upper and lower ones being above the tori and the middle doors being between them.

  “It’s twenty klicks long and twelve wide across each ring,” he said. “The central cylinder has got a three thousand metre diameter.”

  “It’s quite big, then?” asked Byers.

  “You could say,” Duggan agreed. “It’s not the size that worries me so much as these particle beam domes here and these missile batteries here, here, here and here.”

  “We fly in, shoot the place up, jump onto the Crimson and then fly out,” said McLeod. “I was always told to keep it simple.”

  “Thank you for the advice,” said Duggan drily. “If we shoot the place up, we might end up killing the crew and that’s assuming the orbital isn’t protected by the biggest energy shield we’ve ever seen.”

  “It was just an outline,” said McLeod, unrepentant. “Something to build on, you know?”

  “We’ll see,” said Duggan. “There’s no doubt in my mind about our destination. I’m altering our current course to take us there.”

  Changing course was easier said than done and it took him fifteen minutes to figure out how to alter the Valpian’s course while it was already at lightspeed. It drove home how much he had to learn before he could captain the vessel efficiently.

  “I think that’s it,” he said. “Seventy hours until we’re at the Antrajis.”

  “It’s going to be frustrating, sir,” said Byers. “Every time we jump one hurdle, there’s another. Now I just want to face all the hurdles at once and have done with it so we can go home.”

  “You and me both,” he replied. “On the bright side, you’re not going to have much time for frustration.”

  “Why’s that?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Because I’m going to teach you three the basics of how to operate a warship in combat. Seventy hours isn’t nearly enough, of course, but I want to show you what’s important and what isn’t. Something as big as the Antrajis is likely to be heavily defended and I can’t pilot the Valpian at the same time as I’m doing everything else.”

  “Suits me fine,” she said.

  “Hell yeah!” said McLeod.

  Duggan was pleased he’d been given soldiers who were both excellent in combat and also had exactly the right attitude. He spent the following eight hours showing them what he expected should they begin an engagement with an enemy warship. There was plenty more to do, but Duggan decided to give them a break, conscious of the human brain’s need to rest. He would have dearly liked some time to sleep, though with no one to properly cover the bridge he had to content himself with some stimulant drugs from Corporal Weiss. She assured him they had no side-effects, which was something he’d heard before and never quite believed.

  Weiss checked his arm before announcing it to be healing well, which was a surprise given how poorly Duggan had treated it. In truth, he had to keep reminding himself it was broken since it gave him no pain when he used it for light duties. His shoulder injury wasn’t a concern. It had scabbed over and needed no further attention.

  The condition of Lieutenant Ortiz was unchanged since the last time he’d enquired – she slept and the diagnosis of her injury was incomplete. He asked Weiss to keep him informed and then dismissed her to whatever else she needed to do.

  An hour later, Corporal Gax arrived to report. The soldiers had completed a final, thorough sweep of the Valpian’s interior and they were confident it was clear. Duggan was pleased at the news – on a vessel as large as this one there were sure to be hiding places for an enemy if they were determined to cause mischief.

  In addition to completing the sweep of the ship, Gax had also produced a rough inventory of the hardware onboard. There were no great surprises. The Valpian carried a few hundred assorted rifles, handheld repeaters, grenades and explosives. It also had a secondary holding bay in which there were four mobile plasma launchers, four fast-firing heavy gauss guns and two armoured vehicles, exact type unknown.

  “It looks more advanced than the equipment we have in our own navy,” said Gax. “Yet it appears to perform the same function.”

  “It shoots stuff where you point it,” said Duggan. “There’s only so much you can realistically develop ground weaponry, given that a single spaceship can target and destroy it from thousands of kilometres above.”

  There was one surprise, saved for last. Gax led Duggan to an area deep within the hull of the ship and stopped at a thick metal hatch embedded in the floor. There was an access panel nearby and the Ghast activated it with a sweep of his fingertips. The hatch swung outwards until it was resting against the adjacent wall. There was a shaft with a ladder leading down.

  Taking care with his arm Duggan descended to the bottom, where he found himself in a high-ceilinged room, four metres by eight and lit in a blue so pure it was nearly white. When he removed his helmet, his breath steamed in the air and what he thought was moisture on the walls turned out to be a thin coating of ice.

  There was a cylinder, as long as the room itself. It filled most of the available space and rested on a long metal plinth designed specifically to accommodate it. The cylinder was perfectly smooth, its surface the deepest of blacks. Each end disappeared into the walls, making it impossible to know its precise dimensions.

  Duggan knew what it was – he’d seen this same material within the pyramids deployed in Confederation Space.

  “This must be how they generate their energy shields,” he said, wondering if the obsidian-like material also contributed its power to other areas of the ship.

  Gax shrugged, as if it were something for other people to worry about.

  “Let’s go,” said Duggan, resisting the urge to put his gloved hand on the surface of the cy
linder. “Best keep the others out of here.”

  Gax returned to his duties, leaving Duggan wondering about the Dreamers. They were quite clearly warlike in nature and he knew they were fighting against at least one other enemy besides humans and Ghasts. However, the Valpian was equipped to carry a comparatively large number of troops and it also had a reasonable quantity of ground weaponry. It implied they still engaged in surface combat to some extent, though his own experience suggested they were not the best-trained soldiers. On the other hand, here in the middle of their territory he might have only encountered some of their weaker ground units.

  Then there was the mysterious black material that could generate more power than any other known substance. Duggan wanted to know if it was part of every Dreamer warship or if it was only installed on the newer, more advanced models such as the Valpian.

  “So much we don’t know,” he said, not for the first time.

  The remainder of the time before their arrival at the Antrajis orbital was spent in a continuation of basic training, during which Duggan also learned much about the Valpian’s operation. Many of the vessel’s operational capabilities remained locked down, though he became increasingly convinced there were other parts of the weaponry in particular he should be able to use if only he had the time to figure it out. There was at least one disruptor, access to which was buried deep inside the warship’s weapons console and showing as unavailable for use.

  As it was, Duggan had to content himself with missiles, particle beams and a reliance on the energy shield to keep them safe. He worried the enemy could have a way of disabling the shield remotely. The Soriol had given no sign it was able to, but something more advanced like the Zansturm might have the ability. Eventually, he realised he was worrying needlessly about something he couldn’t change.