The Dauntless: (War of the Ancients Trilogy Book 1)

by Alex Kings

  The shuttle was hurtling on its own momentum. The face of the asteroid grew closer, but also seemed to shift towards the right. Their trajectory had been carefully plotted so it would drift out of their way just in time, leaving them pointing directly as the Ancient ship.

  The inside of the shuttle was only dimly lit by dull, blood red light. Hanson's team became silhouettes around him. He looked out the window. Slowly, slowly, the asteroid grew – and at last passed off to the side.

  A blank starfield; a faint blue spark in the distance. There was enough free power to put up a feed from one of the shuttle's telescopes.

  And there it was, projected on the screen in front of them: The Ancient ship. A crown of thorns, a mass of spikes contorted into geometries no human would ever think of building. Lightning flashed blue from one side of it to the other.

  As soon as it became visible, something grabbed Hanson's wrist.

  Yilva.

  She'd gone tense. She was holding on to Hanson's wrist on her left, and Agatha's on right.

  Agatha frowned for a moment, then reached over and patted Yilva's arm awkwardly. “It's alright, girl,” she said. “We're still here.”

  Yilva, still tense, released her grip. “Oh, wow. Sorry,” she said. “I … I didn't expect that. Last time I saw that thing, I was on the run for my life.” She interlaced her long fingers through the suit's gloves. “I'm good. Really.”

  “So long as you're sure,” said Hanson.

  Yilva nodded.

  They continued in silence for a while, drifting through space.

  “It's going to be a long trip. How about some music?” Moore suggested at last. “Pink Floyd or Prokofiev?”

  Yilva looked at Srak and shrugged. Srak laughed silently.

  “Your choice,” Hanson told Moore. “We've got time for a bit of both.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Moore. Hanson couldn't see her face, but from her tone of voice she was smiling. A moment later, with a brief crackle, music began to come through the comms.

  Time passed. Through the window, the telescope feed now off, the image of the Ancient ship grew. First a mote of dust, then a distinct smudge, and at last a tiny circle of black. Srak offered occasional commentary on the music – “Sounds like a vra suffocating in chlorine,”; “This bit is pretty good,” – and Yilva listened politely, occasionally pulling out a tablet and working at it. She picked out points on the ship where the shuttle might find a way in, and sent the co-ordinates to the helm.

  Two hours, fifteen minutes in. The Ancient ship had become a distinct crown of thorns by now. Switching to the telescope feed, they picked out visuals on other systems. Two cruisers and a weapons platform. A research base connected to the side of the Ancient ship. Nearby, the ship that had jumped in over Iona – the Zephyr, according to the lettering on its hull. Beside that, the little freighter that had escaped.

  And finally, another ship. Human design. An IL luxury executive liner. Hanson hadn't seen it from their recon position, so it must have arrived less than twelve hours ago.

  Something was definitely going on here.

  Up ahead, there was a brief flash of light. A hundred kilometres in front of them, the decoy shuttle had just been shot down by the asteroid-tracking system.

  “There's our cue,” said Moore, sitting up and killing the music. “Time for some evasive manoeuvres.” She took hold of the console, and a moment later the view of the Ancient ship lurched to the side.

  Hanson felt himself pressed against the wall. Gravity normalisation was back online, just high enough to keep the acceleration from crushing them.

  The shuttle turned again, twisted out the way of another laser shot, then accelerated heavily. The ancient ship appeared on the window, suddenly huge, and growing. Hanson glanced at his helmet's feed. Relative speed 7,000 kph; 9,000kph; 11,000kph. The ship, now a mass of tangled spines and spikes, hurtled up towards them. For a brief moment, Hanson thought they were going to smash into it, be lost in a tiny flash of light like an ineffectual missile.

  Then Moore hit the deceleration hard, dropping their speed, and pulled to the right. Up ahead, there was a gap between two of the spines that led into some deep interior space.

  “There's your door,” murmured Moore. “Thanks to Yilva, I –”

  A deafening boom cut her off. The wall slammed into Hanson's helmet.

  Moore fought with the controls. Outside, the views of the Ancient ship and the starfield spun past in quick succession. “Laser hit!” shouted Moore over the comms. “It was just a glancing blow, but …”

  She managed to steady the shuttle, and pulled it in between two of the great spines. Hanson glanced to the back of the shuttle – a hole had opened where the floor met the rear wall. Its edges were ragged and glowing bright orange.

  “That's one of the engines crippled,” said Moore. “I'm going to set her down where I can.”

  They flew through some massive interior space like a roofed canyon, The shuttle juddered, lurched, and, at the end of the canyon, flew into some other space with an irregular, matte-black floor and low ceiling.

  The shuttle shuddered, then dropped. It hit the ground at speed. With a screech of metal, one engine came away, and the cabin tilted to the side. The shuttle skated along for fifty or so metres before coming to a halt.

  Hanson looked around. “Everyone still here? Any injuries?”

  Nobody was hurt. The edge of the breach was cooling to a dull red.

  “Good. Moore, open the door.” Hanson began to detach himself from his webbing. As soon as the door was open, he climbed out. The black ground was uneven and solid as rock against his boots. Bits of the shuttle's right engine were left in a trail behind it.

  “Sir,” said Moore over the comms. “I didn't have time to get a good look, but I'm pretty sure they sent something after us. A shuttle or a troop carrier, something like that. We need to get going.”

  “Right,” said Hanson. “Can you get in touch with the Dauntless?”

  “No, sir.”

  Hanson walked round behind the shuttle to where the warhead was. Its underside was scuffed, but it looked intact. He checked the tablet on its surface, ran a diagnostic.

  The warhead was fine. But they were kilometres away from their destination, out of contact with the Dauntless, and had a ship on their tail.

  He checked the mapping software and displayed the result on his helmet. The map had integrated everything the shuttle had seen with what Yilva had given them. Huge parts of the Ancient's ship's interior were unknown, but there was enough, at least, to suggest the best direction for them to head in: Across these bizarre plains and through a nearby tunnel. Towards their target – the region where human technology interfaced with Ancient.

  “Srak,” he called. “If you would?”

  “Sure thing, Hanson,” said Srak. He walked over to the warhead and, with his middle arms, hoisted it onto his back and held it steady.

  Hanson looked around his team. “Looks like this just became a one-way mission. But we can still pull it off. Now let's get going.”

  Chapter 54: Mousy Assistant

  Philip Pierce, CEO of Interstellar Liners, stepped through the airlock onto the research station. He stood there for a moment, looking from left to right over his property, and adjusted his cufflinks.

  A second later, Mr. Bell came down the corridor looking slightly harried. His tie – now featuring some displays of cartoon toucans – was slightly off centre. He reached out to shake Pierce's hand. “Glad you could make it, sir. How was the journey?”

  “'Fine,” said Pierce. “Let's get down to business, shall we?”

  “Of course,” said Mr. Bell. He adjusted his tie – which made no difference – then said, “The meeting room is this way.”

  Pierce glanced round to his assistant, a mousy young woman with slightly untidy blonde curls and large glasses. He gave her a quick, silent look, meaning, Come along.

  The three of them headed down the corridor. Pierce, not interes
ted in a delay, began immediately: “Your message said we'd lost the Glaber?”

  “Yes, sir. Sruthur died on Iona, and his ship was destroyed. Their power base on the Afanc is gone. We no longer have any means of controlling Hive Shrike.”

  “Hm,” said Pierce. That was mildly irritating. Like many recent events, it wasn't planned for. Still … “At least it means we won't have to get rid of them later,” he said.

  “My thoughts, exactly,” said Mr. Bell.

  They reached the meeting room. Mr. Bell showed Pierce and his assistant in, and closed the door behind them. The room was small, with four chairs surrounding a table with a sapphiroid display screen built into it. A window on the far side looked out onto the Ancient ship. It was almost like a landscape painting of some netherworld, Pierce thought: The mass of spines and spikes receding off into the distance formed a landscape of sorts, with the dusky reds and oranges of the dust ring acting as the sky.

  “How long before we launch?” he said.

  “We've got the blanks loaded and armed,” said Mr. Bell. “Our technicians are working on uploading the key now. We have to start up systems piece by piece, and –”

  “How long, Bell?”

  “Two, maybe three hours.”

  “And the Forge?”

  “The team over there is prepping it for transit.”

  Pierce nodded. “Good.” He caught Mr. Bell's gaze. “Really. Good work, Mr. Bell. That ship that discovered the plan … it could have been a disaster for us. But you dealt with it admirably. I knew from the start I could count on you.” Without looking at his assistant, he told her, “Note that commendation.”

  “Yes, Mr. Pierce,” she said in a barely audible voice. She tapped at her tablet.

  “Oh, uh, thank you, sir.” Mr. Bell tried, again unsuccessfully, to straighten his tie. “Will you be on board for the attack?”

  “No,” said Pierce. “I'm not the man for the front line. You are. I have to make sure IL's assets are safe – after the attack, the ships might be safe, but our people and property will still be vulnerable. No … But once you have subdued Tethya, I will meet you there.”

  Pierce's assistant frowned at her tablet, then looked up. “Um, Mr. Pierce,” she began. A moment later, the screen in the table began to warble.

  Pierce glanced at the screen then turned back to his assistant. “What is it, Millicent?”

  “There's a security breach.”

  Mr. Bell worked frantically at the table. “No, no …” he whispered.

  Pierce's assistant continued: “A shuttle was spotted by the defence systems a moment ago. It's entered the Ancient ship.”

  Pierce turned to Mr. Bell, who was still frantically working at the screen. “How did this happen? How did it get so close?”

  “It just … appeared,” said Mr. Bell. “It's Alliance.” He paused, and his nostrils flared. “Captain Hanson.”

  Pierce stared at him. “You left him alive?”

  “Yes, sir. But in a crippled ship. I didn't think we could follow us.”

  “Well, he has.” Pierce didn't let his composure slip. He put a hand on Mr. Bell's shoulder. “Can you fix this?”

  “Yes, yes. We just sent a fire team to the area. We'll guard the exits. And the Dauntless must be out there somewhere – we'll find it and destroy it. The plan will go ahead.” Mr. Bell swallowed, clearly uncomfortable, and fumbled with his tie again.

  “Good.” Pierce turned to his assistant. “Millicent, call the captain of our ship and tell him to prepare to jump.”

  “Yes, Mr. Pierce.”

  “If the plan goes well, I'll see you over Tethya,” he told Mr. Bell. Then, to his assistant, “It's time we left.” As she followed him out of the corridor, he added in a murmur only she could hear, “In case it doesn't.”

  Chapter 55: Reminds Me of the Afanc

  As they travelled through the Ancient ship, the overlay on Hanson's visor mapped out greater and greater portions of it along their route. It was more like a surreal landscape than a ship. No corridors, no rooms. Just giant cavities, connected by thin winding tunnels. Irregular floors that merged into walls. It was lit dimly by some unseen light source.

  There was about half a gee of gravity, though this sometimes changed too. It shifted direction regularly, so they found themselves walking along what had looked like a wall from their previous position.

  And everywhere, the same rocklike, black substance making up every surface.

  Srak half lumbered, half bounded in the low gravity, nuclear warhead firmly clamped to his back.

  During their journey Agatha pulled back towards him. “Hey buddy,” she said over the open channel. “This architecture looks pretty familiar. Reminds me of the Afanc.”

  “Yes, I noticed the similarity,” said Srak.

  Yilva spoke up: “Maybe … maybe they are related. Where did the Afanc come from?”

  “Hell if I know,” said Agatha. “I just lived there.”

  They scrambled and bounded up a weak slope that seemed to become level again as the gravity shifted. Hanson checked his map. They'd been travelling for nearly an hour, and they were getting close.

  “Maybe you'll get a chance to research it, if we get through this,” he said.

  “Thought you said this was a one-way way mission, sir,” said Moore.

  “And we should treat it as such. But I've been thinking about the nuke placement. We know it won't cover the whole ship – that's why we have to place it so close. So if we hide well enough and set it on a timer, we might be able to get far enough away to survive.”

  “Huh. Yeah, I can get behind that.”

  Hanson glanced over his shoulder at Yilva. “I'm thinking ten minutes for the timer. I don't want to leave it longer than that. Will that be enough?”

  “Oh, uh. Hold on a moment.” Yilva went silent while she checked the map. “At our current rate of progress … maybe.”

  “Maybe?” said Agatha. Then she laughed. “I like those odds.”

  “Better than our usual,” said Srak.

  They pushed forward, coming into another chamber. At last, there was a change in the relentless black substance. On the walls, chrome panels had been attached. Cables threaded through them and lay like giant snakes. Some disappeared through holes drilled into the floor, and some extended across the chamber and out of sight down a tunnel.

  Hanson raised his rifle. “Keep your eyes open,” he said over the comms. With Moore and Yilva he walked over to the nearest of the panels and peered at it. In the middle, a screen displayed a set of graphs. At at guess, he'd say it was monitoring something inside the Ancient ship.

  “Yilva?”

  “This is it,” said Yilva. She leaned in towards the screen, head twitching as she looked from one area to the next. “We're close.”

  “Can we do any damage from this station?” Hanson asked her.

  “No. It's an auxiliary monitor. No access to the main system. The only place we could get in is at the main spinal connection, where the human systems are connected to the Ancient systems. But that's much deeper inside.”

  Oh well, thought Hanson. It was worth a try. Back to Plan A. “Spread out,” he told his team. “Look for anywhere round here we can hide the warhead.”

  Agatha's answer came soon after: “Over here, Hanson!” She transmitted a location over the local map of the chamber, about thirty metres away. “Srak, come on, hurry up.”

  Hanson found her near the wall of the chamber, behind a jagged extrusion coming up from the floor like a boulder. It was about a metre high, two metres long. There was another metre of space between the extrusion and the wall. Plenty of space to hide the bomb – and here, no-one would see it unless they came over to investigate.

  Hanson checked. There were no panels nearby.

  “Okay,” he said. “This is the place. Set it down, Srak.”

  Srak passed the warhead from his middle pair of arms to his front pair, over his head, then lowered it gently to the ground.

>   As soon as the warhead was on the ground, Moore was at the controls. “You said ten minutes, sir?”

  “Yes,” said Hanson. He pressed his hand against the control panel.

  Moore did the same, then tapped a button on the control panel. The warhead's control systems, working with the suit gloves, read Hanson's and Moore's palm prints. A moment later a small chime sounded. The warhead was armed. Any attempt to break the casing would now cause it to detonate.

  A portion of the rocky black substance on the floor caught Hanson's eye. It seemed to shift, just for a second. Then it became solid again, as if nothing had happened.

  There wasn't time to worry about that.

  “As soon as I activate the countdown, we go back the way we came, as fast as we can,” said Hanson. He reached over to start the countdown –

  A black spike shot up out of the floor in front of the control panel, only a few inches away from impaling his hand. The spike looped round over the bomb and joined the floor on the other side a fraction of a second later. Before Hanson could react, more spikes had come out of the floor, all of them looping over the bomb, forming a sort of black cage around it, without actually touching it.

  “Yilva, what is –” began Hanson. But before he could finish, the cage began to sink into the floor, taking the bomb with it. It vanished as the floor sealed up around it, and a moment later it was as if the bomb had never been there at all.

  “Oh, wow.” said Yilva. She took a step back. “That's not good.”

  “No shit,” said Agatha. “What happened?”

  “The ship,” began Yilva. “The ship must have some automated systems to detect explosives and neutralise them.” She looked from Agatha to Hanson. “But if it's working, that must mean the ship's active … It'll be ready to launch very soon.”

  Hanson's mind raced through the possibilities. With no bomb, how else could they stop the ship? “How long have we got?” he asked Yilva.

  Yilva shrugged. “Ten, fifteen minutes maybe?”

  The chamber seemed to rumble around them.