by Worth, Dan
‘I’m your only hope, you ungrateful bastard!’ cried Morgan as he was led away. ‘You might want to think about that when they have you in front of the firing squad!’
‘Then I’ll save a seat for you in hell!’ retorted Haines from his prone position on the floor. He looked up and saw that the new arrival was standing over him. Haines looked closer and saw the face of Admiral Charles Cox, and was immediately struck by the impression that something else was looking out from behind the man’s eyes, something that was cold and inhuman. A pale scar stood out against the dark brown skin of Cox’s face, bisecting his right eye socket and running down almost to the tip of his moustache.
‘Hello, Admiral Haines,’ said Admiral Cox. ‘I was looking forward to speaking with you again. It seems that you are almost as difficult to kill as my good self. Still, I suppose I do owe you. You were quite the opponent and one always appreciates a challenge. Those marines of yours had been running around in the forest for days and we had been unable to catch them... oh, you’re wondering when we took Dawson and made him one of ours? I’ll leave that for you to figure out, needless to say that the knowledge inside his head gave us both you and rest of your men. Doubtless there are other bands of survivors running around out there, but they will be found, I guarantee it. No-one is coming to rescue you, you can be sure of that.’
‘You always were an asshole, even when you were still human,’ Haines sneered. ‘You were an adequate commander, at best.’
‘Yes, Admiral Cox hated you, of that I am certain. He may be no more and this body of his is just a suitable vessel for me to inhabit, but when I devoured his mind I inherited his memories, his feelings and emotions. So I too hate you Admiral Haines. I hate you so very, very much,’ said Cox, his words descending into a hiss.
‘Oh, really?’ Haines replied, nonchalantly. ‘Well that is a shame.’
‘Yes,’ said Cox. ‘It is.’ With that he aimed a kick at Haines’s stomach, causing him to double over in pain. He aimed another kick at Haines’s good eye, the blow glancing off the orbit and sending Haines sprawling. Cox reached down and grabbed Haines by the throat with his right hand, lifted the old Admiral up and held him there.
‘You are such pathetic, imperfect creatures,’ said Cox. ‘We do not feel pain, or fear, or remorse, or pity. They serve no purpose but to hinder us. The fact that you do, that this imperfect body I inhabit does, is a source of endless fascination for me. When I was plunged into the vacuum by the destruction of my ship, the sensations I felt were unique and... exquisite, even though they caused almost unbearable agony. I would like to share with you a measure of some of that pain. I think you will find it an equally stimulating experience.’
He threw Haines against the wall then. Winded and bruised, Haines fell to the floor in a heap.
‘My kin will return soon in much greater force,’ said Cox. ‘Whether humanity survives at all will depend upon whether your race decides to co-operate, or whether we have to force your co-operation by shackling you with our minions.’
‘I’m surprised that you’re giving us the option,’ coughed Haines. ‘Why don’t you just go ahead and try to enslave us?’
‘I believe in this sort of situation it’s generally not the role of the prisoner to ask the questions.’ said Cox. ‘You will confess to the destruction of the orbital station, and although we could fake the footage, I would personally gain more satisfaction from the genuine article. Whether or not we use it will depend on your co-operation.’
‘Satisfaction? Doesn’t that constitute an emotion, a weakness? Not to mention your sado-masochism.’
‘You can speculate all you wish. But just remember, there’s just me and you in this room, Admiral Haines, and no-one is coming to save you.’
Chapter 24
From: FleetComSolar
To: Admiral Michelle Chen CO CNV Winston S. Churchill. Eyes only.
Auth: HYIOK98361L
Message:
CNV Churchill and group to proceed at best speed to system Matsu (4, -27.6, 2) and commence field test of modified Thea class cruisers CNV Appleton and CNV Dulles. Gunsphere Shadow in the Void of the Nahabe Theocracy to provide backup and fire support. Shaper presence observed within the system. Saturn class carrier CNV Constantine crippled and boarded whilst attempting defection to loyalist forces. Wreck located at (340’, 89’, 52.1AU, relative to Matsu A). Distress beacon activated following boarding action. Probability of crew survival: nil. Beacon likely to have been activated by enemy as a lure to our forces. CNV Churchill to act as if mounting a rescue mission in order to provoke Shaper response. Extreme caution advised. Contact with Shaper forces to be avoided at all costs. CNV Appleton and CNV Dulles to avoid falling into enemy hands at all costs. Crews to be considered expendable in extremis.
-Message Ends-
Chen massaged the bridge of her nose as she looked again at the orders she had been given several days previously. They were heading into the lions’ den, of that there was no doubt. The last sentence was particularly chilling. She was being ordered to fire on her own ships if necessary, to protect the Commonwealth’s sole advantage in this war. She had done so once before in order to protect her ship. The destruction of the Rameses still gave her the occasional sleepless night. She fervently hoped that she wouldn’t have to repeat the experience.
Matsu was a sparsely populated system located roughly half way between Achernar and the Solar System. A red dwarf binary, there were no habitable planets in the system, just a collection of rocky worlds that were either freezing cold or too small to hold an atmosphere. Two brown dwarfs, failed stars, orbited mid-system and formed the centre of what human presence existed here, their strong magnetic fields and high radiation output making it a dangerous, but productive location for energy generation and anti-matter production. The facilities themselves were largely automated. The few thousand humans that lived here permanently did so in the heavily shielded subterranean colony of Xinbei on the second planet.
The Constantine had attempted to escape from the systems now held by the Shapers but had dropped out of her jump in Matsu, sending distress signals to Xinbei to the effect that battle damage sustained during her escape had resulted in engine failure. The Shapers caught up with the Constantine soon after. Though the carrier had put up a brave fight, she was critically damaged before the Shapers boarded her, killing or enslaving her crew. The humans on the Xinbei colony had looked on in horror, powerless to do anything to assist, and had transmitted what they had witnessed back to the Commonwealth before they too came under attack, only surviving by barricading themselves inside their underground colony and collapsing the tunnel to the surface. They had however continued to monitor activity in Matsu and had spotted a number of Shaper vessels moving within the system, shifting in and out of plain sight.
The Churchill and the two modified cruisers now sped towards this lonely outpost of humanity. The Shadow in the Void had raced on ahead. She would be emerging from her jump on the edge of the system whilst the Churchill would come to a halt further out beyond the heliopause, only continuing once the cloaked Nahabe vessel, having also modified its sensors to detect Shaper vessels, had determined that it was reasonably safe to do so.
There was a knock on the door of Chen’s quarters. It was McManus. She bade him enter.
‘Just thought I’d let you know, we’re half an hour away from our destination,’ said the XO. ‘Did you get any sleep?’
‘Not much,’ said Chen. ‘Too much to think about. You?’
‘Naw, I never can before a scrap, you know?’
‘Yes I do. Actually, it’s the need to avoid a fight that’s kept my brain whirring away. This won’t be easy. We have to hope that these sensor modifications the Nahabe came up with actually work, or we’ll be walking into a trap.’
‘Ach, who wants to live forever?’ McManus shrugged.
‘Well... Commander, you seem remarkably cheerful, given the circumstances.’
‘Well ma’am, it feels go
od to be back out here, at the sharp end of things, you know? I get restless if I don’t have space under me, if I can’t feel the deck moving. You and Admiral Cartwright have done me a huge favour, and you know what? I’m glad we’re leading the fight-back against those Shaper bastards.’
‘Yes it does, doesn’t it?’ Chen agreed, a steely glint in her eye. ‘I wouldn’t have it any other way.’
‘That’s the spirit, ma’am. You have a fine ship here, a good crew. We’ll be back home in no time and then we can really take it to ‘em. Listen, all sections have checked in, the ship’s running at peak performance. We’re all ready, Admiral. Shall I wait for you up on the bridge?’
‘Yes, I’ll be along in a minute. Dismissed.’
‘Right you are,’ McManus replied, then saluted smartly and made his way out of her quarters.
Chen was growing to like her new XO immensely. He seemed to have boundless energy, not to mention his apparent optimism. He certainly knew how to lift the spirits of the crew - that much she’d witnessed since he came aboard. He was just what they - and she - needed after the heavy losses they had sustained during the battle for Earth. Cartwright had done her a real favour too, she realised. McManus was potentially worth a lot to her.
She changed into a fresh uniform and then made her way up to the bridge.
On the edge of the Matsu system, in the shadow of the icy outermost planet, Yushan, the Shadow in the Void slipped out of its jump and immediately disappeared from view again behind the light bending fields of its cloak. Positioning itself to that its sensors were able to see past the mass of the planet towards the centre of the system, its crew began to search for their elusive enemy. At first they saw nothing, save for a scattering of human vessels, then as they fined tuned their instruments, the patterns of the Shapers’ communication links began to appear as a fine tracery of signals stretched out across the system, each node in the web an individual ship, lurking beyond the reach of normal sensors.
One hundred AU further out, far beyond the system’s heliopause, the Churchill, the Appleton and the Dulles dropped out of their jump into interstellar darkness. The massive carrier dwarfed the two small cruisers, whose decks were blistered with sensor radomes rather than the armoured turrets and long barrels of offensive weapons.
Chen leaned forward in her command chair, as she squinted at the two dim red points of light ahead of her that marked the Matsu system. The twin stars and their attendant family of planets and other bodies were picked out in her vision by her HUD monocle, along with the position of the Constantine in an erratic orbit around Xinbei and the estimated position of the Shadow in the Void behind the outermost planet. A small number of human vessels could just be picked out at this range, clustered around one of the brown dwarfs in mid-system. Chen wondered at their presence, but the Churchill was too far out to see what they were doing.
‘I wonder what those ships are doing near the brown dwarf?’ said McManus, as if reading her thoughts. ‘Do they not know that there are sharks in these waters?’
‘It seems not,’ replied Chen, musing over the presence of the human vessels. ‘But then I suppose it depends who they belong to and what they’re doing here.’
‘There’s a lot of energy production facilities around those brown dwarfs,’ McManus offered.
‘True enough, and a lot of anti-matter production especially.’
‘Well quite. I doubt the security measures and auto defences on those facilities would present much of an obstacle to the Shapers, if that’s who they belong to.’
The comm. came to life with the synthesised voice of the Lord Protector of the Order of Void Hunters as the Nahabe made contact at last via an encrypted, tight-beam transmission.
‘Churchill, this is Shadow in the Void. I will keep this brief. Shapers detected around the brown dwarf, Nantou, five vessels in all. We are also detecting a Shaper presence aboard the wreck of the Constantine, but no vessels within close proximity. You are cleared to jump to the second waypoint. Out.’ With that, the transmission ended.
‘Well, the Nahabe can see the Shapers, ma’am. Their sensors work at least, even if ours can’t see anything at this range. Do you think that the Shapers can see us?’ said McManus.
‘I’d put money on it,’ Chen replied. ‘We need to play this very carefully as we move in to test our own instruments. We can’t let the Shapers realise that we can see them, or else we blow our advantage. But we can’t rush blindly in there.’
‘So we need to look as though we’re blundering into a trap without actually blundering into a trap?’
‘Yes, exactly,’ Chen turned to Ensign Goldstein. ‘Helm, jump to the second set of co-ordinates.’ As the view outside was replaced with rushing darkness, Chen added. ‘Of course, if the Nahabes’ sensors aren’t showing us everything then we could still be blundering into a trap, intentionally or not.’
Moments later, the Churchill and the two cruisers emerged once more from hyperspace, one thousand kilometres to port of the Shadow in the Void. Like the Nahabe vessel, the human vessels emerged so that the mass of the planet Yushan would mask their position. Now that they were in close proximity to one another, sensor data began to flow from the gunsphere to the carrier.
‘Everything looks good so far,’ commented Lieutenant Commander Singh as he scrutinised his instruments, the screens coming alive with information. ‘We’re getting a good, steady feed and the Nahabes’ instruments are able to see right across the system. We’re getting clear readings from the gunsphere’s sensors up to around one hundred AU. Five Shaper destroyers confirmed and I can see the nest of activity that the Constantine has become. From these patterns it looks like one of the destroyers is acting as controller for whatever is aboard the Constantine. It’s like watching someone pull the strings of a puppet. I’d say we’d be able to easily distinguish ships that have or haven’t been taken over yet with this technology. It’s as clear as day whether there is a Shaper presence aboard or not.’
‘Admiral, we’re being hailed,’ reported Ensign Andrews. ‘It’s the Captain of the Constantine. Should I put him through?’
‘Shite, they have seen us!’ hissed McManus. ‘What do you plan to do, ma’am? Humour him... it?’
‘For now, yes,’ Chen replied. ‘Ensign, put him through.’
A middle aged man’s face, lined with lack of sleep and rough with several days growth of beard appeared in Chen’s HUD.
‘Churchill, this is Admiral Doyle of the loyal Commonwealth vessel Constantine. Thank god you’ve arrived. I thought we’d die out here. Requesting immediate evac. Shapers took down our power plant and left us for dead. We’ve been surviving on emergency batteries for days just to keep us warm and breathing. I have around six hundred surviving crew, about two hundred of which are in need of medical attention.’
‘This is Admiral Chen of the Churchill receiving, we were dispatched to this system to undertake search and rescue,’ Chen replied. ‘You say the Shapers disabled you and left? Can you confirm whether or not they are still within the system? With all due respect, I will not risk a suicide mission.’
‘Impossible to say,’ said Doyle. ‘As soon as they re-enter hyperspace you can’t see them and without main power our sensors are useless.’
‘What about on board your ship, did they try to board you?’
‘That’s a negative,’ Doyle replied. ‘They just left us for dead. The ship’s so badly damaged that I guess they thought that it was useless to them.’
‘Okay. We’ll start putting together a rescue mission, Admiral Doyle, but we’re going to have to tread carefully here. You and your crew hang tight whilst we recon the system.’
‘Will do, Churchill. Doyle out.’ The image of the Constantine’s commanding officer disappeared from Chen’s field of view.
‘Well he’s lying through his teeth and no mistake,’ said McManus. ‘He’s one of them.’
‘He certainly is,’ said Chen. ‘I had entertained the notion that perhaps someone
might be alive on board, barricaded away from the rest of the ship, but I’m willing to bet that everything he said was untrue from the start. We know that that ship has been taken over from our sensor readings. Her crew may still be alive, but they aren’t human anymore, that much we know. The Shapers will be watching our next move carefully to see how we react.’
‘So what do you have in mind, Admiral?’
‘We need to maintain the pretence that we’ve swallowed his lies. Ensign Andrews, put me through to the Appleton and the Dulles.’
The two captains appeared within Chen’s HUD after a few seconds.
‘Captain Hardaker, Captain Trent. As you are probably aware, we have been contacted by the Constantine. Sensor readings from the Shadow in the Void and the lies of her commanding officer have convinced me that the vessel is now in Shaper hands. We need to maintain our cover that this is a rescue op. To that end, you are to scan this system with your vessel’s active sensors on maximum power. This will give a clear signal to the Shapers that we appear to be looking for them, an effort which will of course fail. Simultaneously, you are to begin tests of the newly modified hyperspace sensors. Since these are a passive system, their use ought to be undetectable to the Shapers. We will then compare our results to those obtained from the Shadow in the Void to determine the effectiveness of our equipment.’
‘Aye aye, Admiral, we’ll begin at once,’ said Trent.
As Chen watched, the two recon cruisers began to move out of the shadow of Yushan. The two ships moved apart until the cruisers and the carrier formed the points of an equilateral triangle a thousand kilometres to a side. It was standard operation procedure. The greater baseline increased the effectiveness of the ships’ sensors when working in tandem. Once in position, the vessels began to sweep the system with their active sensors. Predictably, they found nothing save for the other human vessels in the system, but the radiation and hyperspatial waves emitted by the two ships shone out like a pair of beacons. To any casual observer, it would appear as though they were searching in vain for the elusive Shaper ships. Then, after a few moments, they activated their newly modified hyperspatial sensors. Chen looked over at Lieutenant Commander Singh as the results came in, and saw him frown as he compared the readings from the human ships to those being provided by the Nahabe.
