It wasn’t only Ix-Gorghal which was a cause for worry. The Vraxar had lost many ships at Cheops-A and it was surely a sizable percentage of what they had in Confederation Space. The trouble was, the Vraxar fleet had so many warships it was certain enough remained to for these remnants to present a grave threat in themselves.
During these few days, Duggan spoke regularly to his various teams and also to the Ghasts. The aliens hadn’t detected anything unusual, nor taken part in any engagements. The leader of the Ghast navy – Subjos Kion-Tur - seemed to be rather more dejected than usual, which Duggan put down to the lack of action. If there was one thing about the Ghasts which wasn’t in doubt, it was their wholehearted commitment to a cause.
In the end, someone came through for Duggan, albeit in a slightly different manner to what he was expecting.
“I have a request from Research Lead Joel Breeze to speak to you, Fleet Admiral,” said Cerys.
“Bring him through.”
“Hello, sir,” said Breeze.
“What can I do for you, RL Breeze? Please tell me you have some positive news.”
“I’ve got something, sir, though I don’t know if it’s exactly what you want. You asked me to contact you with any developments.”
“That I did. What have you found?”
“Well, I did as you asked and accepted several assumptions as truth. The fewer unknowns you have, the easier it is to fill in the other missing pieces.”
Duggan sat up straight. “You’ve learned something about the Vraxar ship?”
“The direction of its travel.”
“Where’s it going?”
Like all researchers, Breeze liked to tell the story of how he got to his conclusion. Duggan didn’t mind a good story when he had the time, though he was feeling somewhat agitated at the moment. Even so, he sat patiently and listened.
“We took a look at the sensor data the ES Abyss captured on the Vanistar anomaly and compared it to old data from the Helius Blackstar.”
“That data is very old.”
“And very rudimentary, sir. We were stumped for a while, but when you took the ESS Crimson through the wormhole, it left a wave pattern of disturbed energy. We compared that pattern with the ripples in the Vraxar wormhole and tried to work out an exit vector.”
“And?”
“At first, it didn’t work – there was no commonality between them. We assumed different shapes and sizes for the Vraxar ship and eventually we got a kind of match.”
“What probability did the computer give you?”
“We don’t work off computer probabilities here, sir. We work off our own data and…”
“Gut feeling?”
“Don’t tell anyone, will you? We’ve been keeping a record for the last two years called hunch versus computer. At the moment, hunch is ten points in the lead.”
Duggan roared with laughter. “I might have known!” he said. “All these years we’ve been relying on computers and they still can’t beat gut instinct!”
“It’s uplifting, isn’t it? Humanity is not redundant yet, no matter how much people grumble about being replaced by a computer.”
“When we’ve sent the Vraxar packing, you can write me a paper on that one. The Space Corps will give you whatever funding you need and I’ll personally fix the medal to your chest.”
“It’s not quite that easy, sir. You see, some people are absolutely terrible when it comes to hunches. Others? Well, they can beat the odds every time. It’s a fascinating subject.”
It was indeed a subject close to Duggan’s heart and he would have enjoyed talking at greater length about this hunch versus computer chart. He knew it would have to wait. “Where did the Vraxar go?”
“We believe they came out of the temporary wormhole at a sub-light speed following a trajectory I am just offering to your personal assistant.”
“Cerys, accept that data and show it on my screen.”
His personal assistant knew when to stay quiet. It accepted the inbound data packet and fed it through to his console. A star chart appeared on Duggan’s right-hand console screen, with Vanistar to one side and a line tracing through the solar system.
“I gave you details of when the ES Abyss arrived in the locality, didn’t I?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How long after these events did the Abyss reach Vanistar?”
“Somewhere between eighteen and twenty hours.”
Duggan was impressed – the personnel on Monitoring Station Delta had located the crashed Neutraliser a mere six to eight hours after it came down on Vanistar. He zoomed out his view of the chart and the computer obligingly extended the trajectory line for him. He zoomed out again until Vanistar was a tiny dot. The line continued into empty space.
“Eighteen to twenty hours at sub light speed leads nowhere,” he said.
“I agree, sir. The summoned spaceship certainly went to lightspeed shortly after it came through the wormhole.”
Duggan zoomed out his display once more, assuming the Vraxar ship could travel as fast as anything in the Space Corps. The line intersected a number of solar systems and represented a huge area of space.
“If it continues on this predicted course it will never reach a Confederation Planet,” he mused. “It will exit the Hyptron Sector and eventually pass by Ghast occupied space, again without intersecting one of their planets. Where the hell are they going?”
RL Breeze cleared his throat. “Well, sir, I’ve had some thoughts on that.”
“I’m all ears.”
“This is both good news and bad news. It’s good because the Vraxar don’t know where we are, but it’s bad because they’ve been forced to send one of their most powerful vessels. I can’t imagine they’d send what we assume is an exceptionally significant resource just to have it float around waiting to learn its final target location.”
“We’re working on the belief that the ES Determinant is their sole way of finding out where our planets are.”
“Yes, sir. It may be they wish to transfer the Determinant’s memory array from the Atlantis Neutraliser to Ix-Gorghal. It’s probably not too much of a stretch to expect the Vraxar’s main ship will have the processing clout to pull what it needs from the static array.”
“If that was the case, we’d need to accept that the remains of the Determinant weren’t destroyed at Cheops-A.” He grimaced. “The cynic in me was never in doubt.”
“The trajectory line passes through more than thirty solar systems, as well as vast areas of emptiness. They’d need to meet somewhere along there, with a solar system making a good point of reference for them if their navigational systems haven’t plotted a full map of Confederation Space.”
“So the question is, how do we predict the rendezvous point on this line?”
“When there are unknowns, you need to use whatever datapoint is available to you, sir.”
“The Determinant was taken from Atlantis twelve months ago, RL Breeze.”
“It’s all we have to work with.”
“If we assume they left Atlantis without knowing their vector, they could intersect this line at any point.” He thought for a moment. “Unless…”
“Unless we join a line between Atlantis and Cheops-A!” said Breeze, interrupting in his excitement.
Duggan spent a moment adding a connecting line on his display which joined Atlantis to Cheops-A. The line diverged from the predicted course of Ix-Gorghal. He changed it slightly, this time joining a line from the Vraxar departure point in the skies of Atlantis, to the place where Captain Blake had detonated the Inferno Sphere device.
“Almost a perfect match,” he said. “Right in the middle of this solar system here.”
“The chances of that are slim to say the least, sir!”
“I agree. Before we found the crashed Neutraliser on Vanistar, there was a gap of twelve months since we last saw a Vraxar spaceship. It’s still a bit of a long shot to expect everything to drop into place.”
“
They may have taken the Determinant to this new solar system right after they left Atlantis, sir. It may be that Ix-Gorghal is going to a place where the Neutraliser has been waiting for a year, rather than the two ships being on a converging heading.”
Duggan remembered a question which he hadn’t yet been able to ask. “You mentioned having to play with different shapes and sizes of the Vraxar ship in order to predict its arrival trajectory.”
“Yes, I did say that.”
Duggan detected the reluctance at once. “How big did you have to go in order for your numbers to work?”
“That’s the thing, sir. It’s the one weakness in our conclusion.”
“Tell me.”
RL Breeze told him.
“What’s the variation?” asked Duggan.
“If you go plus or minus three percent everything still sort of fits.”
“I was hoping for a greater variance.”
“So were we.”
The last piece of information was like a punch to the stomach and Duggan felt queasy with the news. Only a couple of minutes ago he’d felt invigorated to have a new plan. It had been taken away from him by three words. Fifty thousand metres. It was bigger than the Vraxar spaceship which had carried off the Juniper. It was awful news, but he could only work with what he was given and until he had confirmation, he was going to hope Breeze’s estimate was wildly wrong.
“Thank you very much for your work and that of your team, RL Breeze,” said Duggan.
“It’s what we’re here for.”
“Your grandfather would have been proud, Joel. You’ve got his love of solving problems.”
Breeze sounded embarrassed. “Thank you, sir.”
Duggan ended the comms channel, wondering if he was becoming too sentimental.
For the next few minutes, he looked at the two converging lines on the star chart and he found it hard to wrench his gaze away from the intersection point. It was surely too much to expect year-old data to show the location of the Vraxar. There again, the lines met perfectly and the chances of that were too small to measure.
“Cerys, please give me a list of assets within twenty-four hours of maximum lightspeed travel from the Dranmir system.”
The answer wasn’t long in coming and it was no surprise. “There is only a single ship within twenty-four hours of Dranmir. The Galactic class ES Abyss is currently seventeen hours from the sun.”
“He’s always there,” said Duggan to himself. “Just like I was always there.”
He knew this assessment wasn’t quite correct. While Duggan had been actively chosen for the hard missions when he was a serving captain, it was pure chance which kept putting Blake in the thick of things. I wonder if he’s regretting his luck. He laughed to himself. I bet he loves it, the same way a part of me used to love it.
“The ES Abyss is not at lightspeed. Would you like me to send a message to Captain Blake informing him of his new destination?” asked Cerys.
“Hold, please. I can’t send him in alone. Do we have any other resources which may be a little further afield?”
“The next closest Space Corps vessel is a Crimson class destroyer which is escorting a prospector towards a potential new Gallenium-bearing moon. The ES Jouster is thirty-three hours away.”
“I wanted a little more than a destroyer,” said Duggan. “What about the Ghasts? Do they have anything we can call upon?”
“The Ghasts have two significant warships within twenty-four hours of Dranmir.”
Duggan checked the details. Under the terms of their alliance, the Ghasts were not only permitted in Confederation Space, but actively encouraged to patrol it. The Vraxar would need to fly through human territory in order to reach the Ghasts and both parties agreed this was the most appropriate way to try and counter the enemy threat.
“Get me a channel through to Subjos Kion-Tur,” he said.
“I am attempting the connection.”
It took fifteen minutes to get Kion-Tur into the comms channel and when he appeared, he was the same hulking figure of muscle and grey flesh, dressed in a blue uniform. The Ghast’s face was surprisingly human and he didn’t look happy.
“You look upset, Subjos Kion-Tur.”
“I am not upset, Fleet Admiral.” The Ghast laughed suddenly. “Perhaps a little upset.”
It didn’t take much to guess what the matter was. The Ghasts had committed to a military alliance expecting to face immediate and continuous action. They were a martial race and were more afraid of peace than they were of war.
“I might have something to cheer you up.”
“The deaths of our enemies will cheer me up.”
“Perhaps that is what I have for you. You have two warships stationed within our Hyptron sector.”
Kion-Tur furrowed his brow in thought. “The Oblivion class Sciontrar and the Cadaveron class Kalon-T7.”
“Are they Obsidiar equipped?”
“They are. What do you need them for?”
“We recently captured a live Vraxar from a crashed Neutraliser.”
“Yes, you informed us of it.”
“What we haven’t yet informed you of is the possible presence of a Vraxar capital ship in Confederation Space.”
Kion-Tur rubbed his hands together. “What do you know of its capabilities?”
“Absolutely nothing. We know its name – Ix-Gorghal – and we believe it to be in the region of fifty thousand metres long, with proportional volume.”
“Fifty thousand?” said the Ghast. “That would be a deadly opponent.”
“We believe it finished off the final Estral resistance.”
“That was forty years ago! This Ix-Gorghal must be covered in rust and useful for nothing other than spare parts!”
The Ghast talked a good fight and Duggan didn’t doubt his bravery. He also knew that Kion-Tur was fiercely intelligent and that his words were little more than blowing off steam.
“We think we have located it, Subjos, in the Dranmir solar system.”
Kion-Tur nodded. “What spaceships of your own will you send?”
“We have only one – a Galactic class heavy cruiser.”
“It will have to suffice. You have my approval for this venture, Fleet Admiral. Have your Cerys send the details to the Sciontrar and the Kalon-T7. Their commanding officers will be expecting to hear.”
“Thank you.”
“I would like to have those warships back if possible, Fleet Admiral. The Sciontrar is the pride of the Ghast navy. You will be impressed when you see what it can do.”
“This isn’t to be a suicide mission, Kion-Tur. I don’t believe in them.”
“But you are a man who always finds a path to victory. I can see it in your face and I have read it in our reports of your past engagements.”
The Ghast had a good eye and Duggan couldn’t deny the words. He’d lived through many situations where anyone else would have died. Perhaps he was so far along the probability curve he’d survived on luck rather than by application of skill. It made him different – he couldn’t accept defeat and he carried an underlying certainty that winning was an option available to everyone. Maybe it isn’t, he thought.
“We must find out what we are up against, Kion-Tur, and destroy it if possible.”
“Three ships won’t be enough if it is as big as you say.”
“I know but having three will maximise the chance we gather useful intelligence. Or land a lucky strike and make the Vraxar run.”
“I am not giving you an argument!” said the Ghast. “Our ships will rendezvous with your heavy cruiser and together we will see what there is to be seen.”
With the agreement made, Duggan ended the connection. He had misgivings about the mission so he made direct contact with Captain Blake to pass on the orders. When it was done, he spent some time looking out of his window. It was gloomy and a steady drizzle shrouded the nearby buildings and trees.
“Cerys, what is the estimated completion time for Desolation and
Falsehood?”
“Desolation will be prepared within nineteen days and Falsehood within seventeen. The other three are complete.”
“I signed off ten more.”
“Your orders have been received by the factory, Fleet Admiral. The construction will take time.”
He nodded in response and continued staring outside.
Chapter Sixteen
One part of Captain Charlie Blake – the part which was capable of childlike joy at the overcoming of minor obstacles – was ecstatic. Another, larger, part of Captain Charlie Blake was distinctly concerned.
On the one hand, he’d tracked down the source of the smell on the Abyss’s bridge to a malfunctioning replicator and put in place a temporary fix by shutting the machine off. On the other hand, he’d been given the details of his latest mission.
“Fifty thousand metres! How the hell are we expected to beat something like that?”
“I was listening to the same conversation as you were, sir, and there was no mention of beating anything,” said Lieutenant Dixie Hawkins. “In fact, I distinctly recall hearing Fleet Admiral Duggan using the words don’t do anything rash.”
“And then he said gather intel and get the hell out of there,” said Lieutenant Caz Pointer.
Blake stopped pacing and faced his crew. “You appear to have the impression that I’m some kind of gung-ho rookie,” he said.
There was silence and Blake could see this was important to them. They think I’m going to kill them in some insane hunt for glory, he realised.
“We’ve been given another dangerous mission,” he said. “Based on size alone this Ix-Gorghal sounds like it could destroy fifty ships without breaking a sweat and I’m not going to throw the ES Abyss at it. I take risks only where necessary.”
“I think we were just getting used to the idea that the Vraxar might have something bigger than the last big one we faced,” said Lieutenant Maria Cruz. “That other vessel – the one we thought was a mothership – was more than big enough and we had a super-stealth craft and an Obsidiar bomb. What do we have now? Missiles.”
God Ship (Obsidiar Fleet Book 3) Page 14
