During the attack on Atlantis the Vraxar had stolen a fleet warship, from the databanks of which it was certain they’d try to extract the location of the Confederation worlds. Duggan’s various forecasting and predictions teams had told him it was probable that the ES Determinant had been destroyed in the Obsidiar bomb blast on the Cheops-A system. In fact, they’d handed him a sheet of paper with an exact percentage on it, that percentage being 73.271%.
“The Vraxar captured one of our warships during the attack on our planet Atlantis. Was it in the hold of one of the ships destroyed near Cheops-A?”
The Vraxar was evidently intelligent enough to guess why the question was important and it gave the same rustling laugh. There was no mockery and no humour in the sound, as though the once-living part of its brain remembered laughter, yet without knowing how to enjoy it. The laughter stopped and the Vraxar gave the answer Duggan was expecting.
“I do not know.”
Sometimes even an expected answer is a cause for anger and Duggan swore loudly. He spun on his heel and strode towards his personal staff.
“Lieutenant Jacobs,” he said in a low voice, directing his gaze towards a slim, mousey-haired woman in her late thirties. “I want you to gather the best people from your team. Get them here as soon as possible and have them question this Vraxar at length. Record everything it says and analyse every word and sentence for repetition or contradiction. Find out what it knows and separate that from what it thinks it knows.”
Allison Jacobs was one of the brightest people in the entire Confederation and her blue eyes gleamed with eagerness at this challenge.
“Do you think it’s lying, sir?”
“I’d say it’s not capable of lying and that’s what makes it so valuable to us. It clearly doesn’t know everything and I’m certain it takes no enjoyment from misleading us – this creature is simply different to us.”
“I know just the people to deal with what you ask, sir.”
Duggan had no appetite for further conversation with the Vraxar and he began walking towards the exit door, with his staff and escort falling in behind and Jacobs walking alongside. The door wouldn’t open again and Duggan suppressed his anger at the temerity of whoever had thought it a good idea to try and prevent the Admiral of the whole damned fleet from getting into this room.
“Override code: Duggan.” The door opened again. “Lieutenant Jacobs - if anyone here gives you trouble or does anything whatsoever to impede you or your team, come to me immediately.”
“I absolutely will do that, sir.”
The group retraced their steps through the medical facility and this time the predictable monotony of the walls was a welcome change from the capriciousness of doctors and aliens. They entered one of the huge airlifts and returned to the surface. Fifteen minutes later, Duggan was in the comfortable surroundings of his office once more, where he found a new potted plant on the corner of his desk, no doubt placed there by his wife.
He turned the plant to a more agreeable angle and sat in his chair, mulling over what he’d learned.
Chapter Fourteen
Duggan was blessed or cursed with a brain that never ran short of practical ideas about how to solve a problem. The snippets divulged by the captive Vraxar made him think the aliens either realised they’d bitten off more than they could chew when they lost a big chunk of their fleet at Cheops-A and had sent this Ix-Gorghal to bolster their remaining forces, or they’d found a new species elsewhere and wished to overcome the Confederation as quickly as possible in order to move on to the next target. It might be that neither was correct, yet he felt confident he was thinking along the right lines. It was also becoming apparent that the Vraxar were voracious in their appetite for war, and, rather than taking tentative steps, they gathered intelligence and then attacked quickly.
“Cerys, please scan our data archives for any mention of a vessel called Ix-Gorghal.”
The answer came back immediately and was spoken in a voice so sultry it made Duggan wonder what on earth his computer-generated personal assistant was playing at. “There is no mention of those words in our archives, nor anything which probability suggests may have been derived from those words.”
“Please access the records we extracted from the Valpian and scan for any mention of a large-scale engagement between the Estral and the Vraxar.”
The Valpian was an Estral cruiser which Duggan and his squad had captured on a hard-fought mission several decades before. It was during this mission he’d first started to suspect that the Estral were fighting on too many fronts. At the time, the Valpian was one of the Estral’s newest, most advanced warships and likely a prototype designed specifically to combat the Vraxar. Now, the fully-intact and operational cruiser sat on a disused part of the Tucson base. Duggan visited it often, if just to sit on the bridge and think about his past.
Detriment, Crimson, Valpian, Rampage, Ransor-D. Tybalt. The names rolled through his head, each one tied to memories of success, failure and endless death.
“Fleet Admiral Duggan?”
He shook his head clear and realised Cerys was waiting for his input.
“Please excuse me. What did you say?”
“No excuses necessary, Fleet Admiral.” The voice oozed with seduction, leaving Duggan flummoxed as to what was going on. “I simply reminded you that we were only able to break the encryption on 83.439% of the Valpian’s data cores and that the results will therefore be incomplete.”
The process of cracking into the Estral arrays was a slow one and it had taken years to achieve 83.439%. Eventually it reached the point where one of Duggan’s predecessors had called it off in order to utilise the processing resources elsewhere. The Estral hadn’t returned and the operation had simply never resumed.
“Fine, please give me a summary of your findings.”
“Very well. The Valpian’s databanks record 1638 engagements between Estral warships and Vraxar. Most were sightings or encounters involving a single ship on each side.”
“How many involving twenty warships or more on the Estral side?”
“There were 210 such engagements.”
The size of the number reminded Duggan how extensive the Estral Empire was compared to the Confederation. They had enough spaceships to fight at least three wars simultaneously and still field twenty or more vessels against the Vraxar on more than two hundred occasions. Not for the first time, Duggan experienced a creeping admiration for the Estral. Even though they were just as murderous as every other alien species in the universe.
“Is there any mention of the Estral facing a warship that was particularly large in size?”
“They mention only one vessel larger than a Neutraliser, Fleet Admiral. The Estral fought what they describe as a Class 1 Battleship, which measured twenty-five thousand metres from nose to stern.”
“That might be it.”
“This Class 1 Battleship was destroyed by the Estral.”
“Anything else?”
“I already told you there was only one mention of a spaceship larger than a Neutraliser, Fleet Admiral,” Cerys admonished.
“It is not wise to bring the Fleet Admiral’s frailties to the Fleet Admiral’s attention!” he replied.
“Your wife will be amused to hear you have been referring to yourself in the third person,” said Cerys primly.
Duggan’s jaw dropped open and he determined to speak to one of the tech guys later to find out what had got into Cerys lately. It was a distraction, though not a priority and he put the issue to one side for the moment.
“How many Obsidiar clusters do we have on the Tucson base?”
“There are five clusters of twenty within the central administration building, as well as two portable clusters of twenty-four, one currently being used by the Fission Prediction project and the other…”
“Yes, I know. That one’s in the central medical facility connected to a Vraxar’s processor through its eye socket.”
The Fission Prediction
project was currently at a critical phase, whilst the clusters in the administration building were fixed in place and not straightforward to move. They could connect remotely to the Valpian, though with a significantly reduced bandwidth.
“The medical facility can do without the portable cluster. The Vraxar processing units aren’t sophisticated enough to need a dedicated resource. Please have the cluster robot moved to the Valpian as a highest-priority. I want to find out what remains undiscovered in that spaceship’s memory arrays.”
“Certainly, Fleet Admiral. I have chosen the appropriate personnel and alerted them to your orders.”
“Send an officer of suitable rank to the medical facility, just in case the staff there find a sudden, urgent use for the robot that might result in a delay.”
Cerys was good for many things. “Already done,” she said.
“Provide me with a time estimate.”
“I estimate it will take not more than three hours for the portable cluster to reach the Valpian, plus a further ten minutes for it to reach the bridge and interface.”
“How long until I see results?”
The latest Obsidiar clusters were worlds faster than the old cores they’d used to dissect the Valpian’s arrays all those years ago and Duggan was hopeful he’d get quick answers.
“I estimate it will take in excess of a week until extraction of the remaining data on the Valpian is completed. There will be a linear supply of new information beginning within moments of the cluster robot’s interface.”
“With no guarantee it’ll be what I want,” said Duggan.
“No, Fleet Admiral. Would you like to hear a list of calculated percentages?”
“No.”
“Very well.”
Duggan was aware that Cerys was also becoming increasingly eager to get in the last word and he chuckled suddenly at the notion that it was striving to become more human. Perhaps the tech guys had updated the software recently to try and give him a more natural experience.
The delay in decrypting the Valpian’s data stores was an unwanted one and Duggan had no intention of twiddling his thumbs while he waited for answers that might not even exist. Ix-Gorghal was somewhere in Confederation Space and he needed to take action in order to locate it. Once he knew where and what it was, he could attempt to counter this new threat.
“Show me a list of significant resources in the Hyptron Sector,” he said.
His desk console lit up and a list appeared on one of the screens. He scanned it carefully, each name familiar to him.
“What is Monitoring Station Sigma’s current focus?”
“They are performing random deep space scans in the Garon Sector, in anticipation of a Vraxar return to Atlantis or their discovery of Overtide.”
“Provide new orders – they are to aim their lenses towards the area surrounding Vanistar. Assign a team to provide them with a list of possibilities as to where Ix-Gorghal might be headed.”
“What sort of possibilities, Fleet Admiral?”
“I don’t know – that’s what we pay these bright minds for. To find order in chaos and to second-guess our enemies.”
“The orders have been made.”
“I want Monitoring Station Tau assigned to the same duties.”
“That will leave us blind in a number of significant areas, Fleet Admiral. Specifically, there will be gaps in our deep space sensor sight on Zircon and Hope.”
“Step up security on those planets. Cancel shore leave where necessary and get every ship in space. How many from our Obsidiar Fleet do we have in the vicinity?”
“There are six within a day’s travel of Hope and seven the same distance from Zircon.”
“Recall them and have them stationed appropriately in case we have any surprises.”
“Done.”
Duggan tapped his fingers on his desk in thought. “Captain Blake discovered an anomaly near to Vanistar.”
“It was investigated.”
“And?”
“It was classified as a semi-stable fission cloud and assigned to a primary research team.”
“What is a semi-stable fission cloud?”
“An unexplained result from a lightspeed arrival, where the fission energy lingers for an extended period instead of dissipating. It’s a theoretical possibility.”
“Why wasn’t I told? I asked for a thorough report on every aspect of that mission.”
“A failure of communications, Fleet Admiral. Would you like me to issue a standard reprimand to the officer who made the final decision?”
Duggan was angry, though much of it was directed towards his own forgetfulness. His personal medical team informed him it was an inevitable symptom of his brain’s gradual decay, though they hadn’t yet detected any measurable evidence to suggest he was afflicted.
“No, get me through to the officer in question.”
“Awaiting connection to Research Lead Joel Breeze. Connection established.”
“Joel?” Duggan’s anger faded when he heard the name. “Bring him through.”
“Hello?” said a voice, clearly not yet recovered from the surprise of this unexpected comms call.
“How are you doing RL Breeze?”
“Very well, sir.”
“I’ll cut to the chase – a recent mission to Vanistar found evidence of a semi-stable fission cloud.”
“Yes, sir,” said Breeze, his voice warming up with immediate enthusiasm. “An exceptionally interesting possibility has almost been proven. We have verified the ES Abyss’s sensor data and now we are attempting to unravel the nature of the anomaly itself.”
“You assigned the research to your own team?”
“Most definitely, sir! This is extremely exciting for all of us.”
Duggan found that if he closed his eyes, he could almost be speaking to the man’s grandfather, such was the similarity in both tone and enthusiasm.
“Joel, the Vraxar have sent something into Confederation Space. A potential game-changer, not that they needed one.”
“And you believe the semi-stable fission cloud is evidence of it, sir?”
“It could be. The engine man on the ES Abyss detected similarities with a wormhole, though he lacked the time to do a full analysis. I have received information which suggests the Vraxar can summon their warships across vast distances of space.”
“Through a temporary wormhole?” RL Breeze sounded momentarily puzzled. “You can’t make a wormhole without access to an almost infinite power source. And then to hold the wormhole open…”
“It took twelve Neutralisers and ten of them were destroyed in the process.”
Breeze was quiet and Duggan could just about hear the cogs in the man’s brain turning as he added up the numbers. “Twelve Neutralisers can generate a lot of power.”
“I would like you to change the direction of your investigation. I would like you to assume that the Vraxar were able to generate a wormhole and I would like you to assume that something came through it.”
“You can’t work backwards like that, sir! It would be a scientific calamity!”
“If anyone ridicules your end report, I will be very pleased to speak to them personally.”
“What exactly are you hoping to find?”
“Something I can work with. There is something called Ix-Gorghal in the Hyptron Sector and I want to know what it is. More importantly, I want to find out where it is. The Vraxar believe we warrant the attention of one of their capital ships and I would like to know what we’re up against.”
“I was running through some numbers when you called, sir. I’ll get on with it.”
“This is top priority. Do you need any help?”
“I’ve got a good team, sir. You remember what they say about too many cooks.”
“Yes.”
“Will there be anything else, sir?”
Duggan hesitated. “How’s your grandmother getting along?”
“I haven’t seen her for a few days, sir. She likes g
etting the flowers.”
“It’s the least we can do.”
The conversation tailed off and Duggan let Breeze return to his number crunching. He dragged himself from his reverie and picked up the next item on his agenda.
Chapter Fifteen
The next few days were more than frustrating for Fleet Admiral Duggan. The mobile processing robot gradually decrypted the contents of the Valpian’s memory banks and while the new information was of great interest to those Space Corps teams dedicated to the study of alien history, there were no clues as to the nature of Ix-Gorghal. There was a chance the Vraxar capital ship appeared in Estral Space after the theft of the Valpian, in which case there’d be no records whatsoever.
The second frustrating event was the death of the Vraxar captive. One morning, it simply died and no amount of medical intervention was sufficient to bring it back to life. Duggan wanted to shout at someone, but he had no excuse to do so. For all he found Dr Faith Clarke annoying she was also excellent at her job, which was why the Space Corps employed her.
The report into the Vraxar’s death wasn’t long in forthcoming. Like the other - dead - specimens they’d studied, this alien was filled with cancers and also many drugs to suppress the disease. Its cells were turgid with a preservative fluid which was unknown to the medical staff. There was every indication it lived in constant, terrible pain and Duggan had no doubt the creature was happier dead than it was alive. That didn’t mean he was happier to have it dead, but his anger wasn’t going to bring it back to life.
He had Cerys check on the two deep space monitoring stations regularly to see if there was anything for him to work on – even the smallest of clues might enable him to take direct action and send out a ship to investigate. The monitoring stations were both new and filled with so many Obsidiar processors and bristled with so many Hynus sensor arrays it seemed inconceivable they could turn up with blanks. However, blanks were what Duggan got.
God Ship (Obsidiar Fleet Book 3) Page 13
