God Ship (Obsidiar Fleet Book 3)

by Anthony James

  “Yes, sir.”

  With the most important details covered, Blake prepared to spend a few additional minutes filling in the gaps, knowing there were people in the Space Corps who would pore over every word for clues and hints about the Vraxar’s intentions. He didn’t get the chance.

  “Oh crap,” said Lieutenant Quinn.

  “What?” said Blake sharply.

  The ES Abyss rumbled and core #7 triggered a transition to lightspeed. Caught off-guard, Blake stumbled and grabbed the edge of his console to steady himself.

  “Ix-Gorghal,” said Quinn. “It was doing something to suppress its inbound signature but I managed to spot it in time.”

  “You’re sure it was the Vraxar?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “In that case, good work, Lieutenant.”

  “Does that mean Ix-Gorghal can follow us through lightspeed?” asked Cruz.

  “Looks like it.”

  “That’s awful news,” said Pointer.

  “Let’s not dwell on it,” said Blake. “Lieutenant Quinn – what course have you set us along?”

  “The very early calculations on the Gate Maker’s destination gave a wide arc of possibilities. I’ve pointed us directly along the middle of that arc. We’ll remain at lightspeed for sixty minutes unless we intervene and shut off the fission engines.”

  “Once again that’s excellent thinking, Lieutenant. We might not be on the exact trail of the enemy, but we’ll sure as hell not be going in the opposite direction.”

  “I take it from your conversation with the Fleet Admiral I’m dedicating every spare processing cycle to the task of finding their Gate Maker?”

  “Yes, that’s our target. We’ll find it, destroy it and if we’re lucky, still have a shot at the wreckage of the ES Determinant.”

  “You’re definitely the optimist, sir,” said Hawkins. “I approve.”

  Next was the question Blake knew the answer to, whilst still needing backup confirmation. “Did we leave enough of a mark behind for Ix-Gorghal to get a sighting of us?”

  “If you’re asking me whether the Vraxar will shortly be following us through lightspeed, I’d say you should make allowances for it.”

  “Which is a roundabout way of saying yes?”

  “Yes, sir, it is.”

  Blake ran through the numbers. “Our previous time at lightspeed was two hours. On top of that, I spent fifteen minutes in conversation with Fleet Admiral Duggan.”

  “Which means that two hours fifteen minutes was sufficient time for Ix-Gorghal to calculate our destination and reach us,” said Lieutenant Quinn. “We’re substantially down on power, so we’re not as fast as usual.”

  “Even so, the Vraxar caught up fast.”

  “Very fast.”

  “This presents a number of problems. How are we going to find the Gate Maker and destroy it before Ix-Gorghal shows up?”

  “That’s not the biggest problem,” said Hawkins. “What if the Vraxar guess where we’re going and decide to get there ahead of us? We’re heading in approximately the right direction, so it may not be too hard to work out what we’re up to.”

  “You raise a good point, Lieutenant, and one to which I have no answer.” Blake scratched at the stubble he’d not found the time to shave off. “Lieutenant Quinn, what happens if we simply terminate our lightspeed run midway through? In other words, we set a course that will take us across half the universe, but exit lightspeed after a couple of hours.”

  “Well, sir, lightspeed travel in theory shouldn’t be possible. When our navigational computer plots a course, it generates a graph of probabilities. The further the destination, the lower the probability and the more work it takes in predicting where the target spaceship is going. Therefore, once a course is set…”

  Blake lifted a hand to interrupt. “This is very interesting, though not the appropriate time for the background, Lieutenant Quinn.”

  Quinn cleared his throat. “We leave a trail of positrons.”

  “As simple as that?”

  “Yes, sir. If we abort mid-way through, the trail of positrons will end and the enemy ship will know what we’ve done.”

  “Does that mean they’ll overshoot before they realise and have to backtrack?”

  “I don’t have the expertise to give you an exact answer. You’d need a team of skilled mathematicians and physicists.”

  The crew of a spaceship invariably had a strong background in maths and science. It didn’t necessarily mean they were the most capable mathematicians in the Confederation, since it required many other skills to perform on-ship duties.

  “I understand,” said Blake. “Best guess?”

  “Best guess is they’re packing too much processing power to overshoot.”

  Cruz raised a hand.

  “You’re not at school, Lieutenant Cruz.”

  “No, sir. Isn’t the solution for us to simply do a series of rapid lightspeed jumps in random directions? My understanding is that the fission cloud dissipates rapidly. If the enemy is required to spend time calculating our course, even a few minutes’ delay should ensure they lose our trail because there’ll be no fission signature to run the modelling.”

  Blake turned to Quinn. “Well?”

  Quinn furrowed his brow. “What Lieutenant Cruz says is logical enough.”

  “You’re not convinced?”

  “We don’t know much about their capabilities, sir. What if they can read our positron trail for hours after we’ve gone to lightspeed? I’m sure Lieutenants Pointer and Cruz took note of those huge sensor arrays on the Vraxar spaceship.”

  “We saw them,” said Cruz. “I must admit they looked quite advanced.”

  “In that case, we should assume the worst and hope for the best. We’ll need to come up with a way to both find the Gate Maker and also maximise the amount of time we have to attack it without molestation from a six-hundred kilometre, potentially unstoppable capital ship.”

  “I’ll get to work on a solution,” said Quinn.

  “You’ve got Ensign Bailey to help out – does anyone else in the crew have experience you can call upon?”

  “I’ll look in if that’s okay?” said Hawkins. “I did some time on engines.”

  “Good,” said Blake. “See if you can come up with something before we leave lightspeed.”

  It was a big ask and everyone knew it. The Space Corps did its best to choose people who rose to the challenge rather than hiding from it and the crew got started.

  Needing time to think, Blake dropped into his chair with its familiar smell and the supple creak of real leather. Awful news, Lieutenant Pointer had called it. It was worse than that. Since Ix-Gorghal had a method of following the ES Abyss, it would make completion of this mission to destroy the Gate Maker close to impossible. Looking further ahead, the crew of the ES Abyss were effectively cut off from home because there was no way Blake would be able to return to a Space Corps base with something as monstrously powerful as the Vraxar capital ship following behind.

  The minutes went by while he racked his brains for a solution.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The plan, when formulated, was simple enough and Lieutenant Quinn was the man to explain it.

  “The primary aim is to earn us some time, both to locate the Gate Maker and, from there, to destroy it,” he said.

  “I’d like to think we might eventually escape ourselves,” said Blake.

  “One step at a time,” admonished Hawkins.

  “What do we have, then?”

  “A computer-generated randomised path of varying-length lightspeed jumps,” said Quinn.

  For some reason, Blake felt disappointed at the straightforward nature. “That’s it?”

  “No, there’s more. What we’re going to do is aim on a slightly divergent course from where we expect to discover the Gate Maker. That will make Ix-Gorghal believe we’re going elsewhere. Each time we emerge from lightspeed, we will deposit a few hundred shock drones and then perfo
rm a new transit.”

  “The shock drones will work?”

  “That’s what we’re hoping. They do all sorts of tricks – you see, they’re not just designed to confuse known technologies, they were built to work on the unknowns as well.”

  “I see. What exactly will they do?”

  “They will confuse the Vraxar sensors for a short period and at the same time they will hide our positron trail behind a confusion of signals and broadcasts.”

  “You aren’t convincing me, Lieutenant.”

  “In truth, I’m not convinced myself, sir. However, I genuinely believe a shock drone deployment will buy us some time and we’re in a position where something is better than nothing.”

  “I won’t argue that. Have you been able to come up with any forecasts?”

  Quinn was a man who liked his forecasts and he brandished a sheet of old-fashioned paper with some rough sums on it. “Absolutely,” he said. “Based on how long it took Ix-Gorghal to find us the first time, I have made some projections. If we rely purely on random lightspeed transits, by the time our modelling software has pinpointed the Gate Maker in about five hours, I believe we will have a fifty-minute lead over Ix-Gorghal.”

  “Assuming they can follow our trail of positrons,” said Hawkins.

  “The early indications are that we will be about eight further hours from reaching the Gate Maker, and by the end of that transit, we’ll be a little over one hour ahead of Ix-Gorghal.”

  “What if we deploy shock drones in our wake?”

  “If we do that, I estimate we could have anything from a fifty minute to a three-hour lead.”

  “Potentially less time than if we didn’t deploy the shock drones? How does that work?”

  Quinn looked deflated. “I don’t know, sir. If I was a betting man, I’d go with a two-hour lead when we reach the Gate Maker.”

  Blake’s head swum – he understood what Quinn was saying well enough, yet he couldn’t shake a conviction that his lieutenant had constructed a progressively higher tower of conclusions upon a foundation of turds, these foundations being laid upon a tiny island surrounded by an ocean of shit. The higher the tower went, the less stable it became and the more prone it was to toppling over and landing in the murky brown effluent around it.

  There were times you just had to go with it.

  “It’s an excellent plan,” said Blake.

  “Really?”

  Blake laughed. “It’s an awful plan, but it’s the best we’ve got.”

  Quinn also laughed. “If it fails, I’ll deny all knowledge, sir.”

  “Too late, Lieutenant. I’ll have an entry put into my log describing our intention to enact Quinn’s Folly. If we’re exceptionally lucky, it won’t be the last entry.”

  They put the plan in motion.

  Upon Blake’s command, the ES Abyss exited lightspeed and ejected several hundred shock drones from its armoury. These drones were last-ditch countermeasures, intended to confuse enemy missiles. In this new age where the Space Corps’ opponents were relying progressively more on beam weapons, the drones were somewhat less useful, but every fleet warship still carried a substantial number of these reflective, metre-diameter spheres with their tiny propulsion systems and sophisticated guidance jammers.

  “There they go,” said Hawkins.

  “We’re back to lightspeed again,” said Quinn. “This trip has a thirty-minute duration.”

  The crew sat back to wait. Blake noticed there was a peculiar atmosphere on the bridge, as though no-one quite believed the circumstances. It was like being in a simulator designed by a cabal of insane senior officers, designed to test Space Corps personnel under the most absurdly testing conditions.

  The feeling this was some bizarre, unwinnable trial was exacerbated when Lieutenant Quinn brought Blake’s attention to a slight degradation he’d noticed in the output of the warship’s engines.

  “There’s a fall-off in the region of one tenth of one percent,” he said.

  “Is that a confirmed average and not a fluctuation?” asked Blake.

  “It’s confirmed, sir. Early signs are the rate of drop is increasing.”

  “We’re not going to lose the engines, are we?”

  Quinn didn’t answer directly. “If it happens, we’re screwed without the Obsidiar backup.”

  “Does that mean we’re going to lose the engines, Lieutenant?” Blake repeated.

  “Probably not, though I can’t tell you how far they’ll degrade.”

  It wasn’t good and Blake grimaced. The heavy cruiser had taken a thunderous blow from the Vraxar capital ship and he’d started to think they’d got away with manageable damage, like a soldier shot in such a way that the bullet missed every major artery and every vital organ on the way through.

  “Keep me informed, Lieutenant.”

  After thirty minutes, the Abyss exited lightspeed, Hawkins released more shock drones and the heavy cruiser departed once more. All the while, the eight processing cores on the warship churned away at maximum utilisation as they worked on locating the exact destination of the Gate Maker spaceship.

  “We’ve narrowed it down to this collection of solar systems here,” said Quinn, several hours after the initial encounter with Ix-Gorghal.

  “Anything significant amongst them?”

  “Nothing jumps out.”

  “There’s got to be something, otherwise why not simply stay within an hour of Dranmir instead of heading all this way?”

  “There are a few hundred planets and a few dozen stars amongst all this lot if you want us to get hunting for a likely place,” said Pointer.

  “Do we genuinely want to find this Gate Maker earlier than planned?” asked Hawkins. “Won’t that cut down our anticipated lead over Ix-Gorghal?”

  “Potentially,” said Quinn.

  “I like the challenge and I like to know what’s coming,” said Blake. “At the very least we should try. This isn’t a mission where we can hang around and await the optimum time to strike – the time to attack is as soon as possible.”

  “Do we even know for certain they are heading towards a planet or a star?” said Cruz. “Maybe they can make this gate out in the middle of nowhere.”

  “There’s plenty of emptiness to choose from,” Blake replied. “Which again begs the question why they didn’t simply do what they’re intending to do a few million klicks off the edge of Dranmir. They’re certainly not scared of us and have no intention of running.”

  “I suppose.”

  “What exactly are we looking for?” said Hawkins.

  “I expect most of these planets will be mapped and in the Space Corps database. We’re looking for something unusual – a feature which makes a place different to every other.”

  The crew fell silent while they combed through the Space Corps’ records of planets in the area they believed the Gate Maker had journeyed towards.

  “Big planets, little planets, big suns, small suns,” said Hawkins. “There’s a bit of everything.”

  “Hot ones and cold ones,” said Pointer.

  “I’ve identified a couple of super-hot planets,” said Quinn.

  Blake looked up from his own screen. “Think about it – that one spaceship is going to attempt what a dozen Neutralisers failed to do. It’s going to try and open what we assume will be a permanent gate for Vraxar ships to come through. It won’t have escaped your notice that the Gate Maker was less voluminous than a single Neutraliser, therefore it makes sense they will need a way to either directly produce or extract energy.”

  “I agree,” said Hawkins.

  “If we approach the problem from that angle, does it provide any insights?”

  “Nothing immediate,” said Pointer.

  The hunt resumed. Meanwhile, the ES Abyss’s engine output gradually fell, reducing their lightspeed multiple at the same time. The drop of two percent wouldn’t be especially noticeable when the engines switched to gravity drive, but it was the potential end result which was c
oncerning.

  “We are re-entering local space,” said Quinn, breaking the collective reverie.

  They completed the routine of launching shock drones and vanishing once more to lightspeed, leaving behind a glittering array of robots to confuse the immense enemy they assumed was still in pursuit.

  “We’ll run out of drones eventually,” said Hawkins.

  “How long?”

  “We’ve got enough for another five releases if we continue ejecting the same number of drones each time.”

  Blake checked the schedule of randomised jumps. “There’re enough, as long as we don’t need to repeat this tactic more times than we’re expecting.”

  “Should I cut back the quantity of drones, sir?”

  “No, don’t make changes.”

  With two hours remaining of the predicted fission modelling time, Hawkins ventured a thought.

  “Do we have any idea why the Gate Maker was so highly-polished?” she asked. “It seemed like a lot of effort if there wasn’t a reason for it.”

  “Yeah – it would need to be specially buffed up after nearly every trip,” said Pointer.

  “Maybe it’s meant to deflect sensors from a longer distance,” said Cruz doubtfully. “Not that it would work very well.”

  “What if the Vraxar captain of that ship likes it to be shiny?” said Blake in exasperation. “What if there’s no rhyme or reason for their destination other than they fancied a little bit of sightseeing?”

  “Or what if they intend opening this gate at the place which will bring their fleet in at the closest point to these Antaron they plan to attack?” asked Pointer.

  Blake threw his hands up. “I only like guessing games when I hit on the answer quickly.”

  “I never liked guessing games, even when I won,” said Hawkins. “Where’s the pleasure in relying on luck?”

  In the end, it was Lieutenant Cruz who came up with the only idea which fit. At least it fit in a kind of so-unbelievable-there-must-be-something-in-it kind of way.

  “If we look an hour or two outside of the projected destination area, there’s the location of the old Helius Blackstar.”

  Everyone in the Space Corps was taught about the Helius Blackstar – the wormhole through which the Estral had once sought entry into Confederation Space until the rift was closed by the titanic blast of an Obsidiar bomb.