Terminus Gate
Survival Wars Book 5
Anthony James
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
© 2018 Anthony James
All rights reserved
The right of Anthony James to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed upon the subsequent purchaser
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Chapter One
A tiny sliver of the sun became visible above the edge of planet Atlantis. In contrast to the carpet of star-speckled darkness, the intensity of the white-yellow light was dazzling. The planet itself was no less breath taking than the majesty of the backdrop, covered as it was in a belt of lush green forests and deep blue oceans.
Half a million kilometres away a spaceship appeared in local space, dispersing the colossal energy from its fission drive throughout the vacuum. The signature alerted the personnel at the Tillos military base to its arrival, and the base mainframe communicated with the much quicker AI core on the spacecraft to find out its status.
Without a pause, the captain of the ESS Crimson fired up the gravity drive, which propelled the one-point-five billion tonne vessel onwards as if it weighed no more than a handful of feathers.
The hull of the Crimson was battered and scarred. There were two huge craters in the outer armour plating and the exterior showed signs of heat damage, giving its edges a blurred appearance. As well as the visible signs, there was other damage. The warship’s engines leaked a vast trail of positrons and the metals of its hull reeked with an impossibly high level of radiation.
In spite of its size, the Crimson had not been designed to carry more than a tiny crew and a small complement of ground troops. There were only four occupants onboard and they sat brooding over what lay before them. The warship had recently accomplished a monumental victory over a seemingly unstoppable enemy mothership, so the mood should have been good. Instead, the high spirits were dampened by uncertainty over what would follow.
“Fleet Admiral Teron was as good as his word, sir,” said Lieutenant Frank Chainer. “We’ve got clearance codes for an immediate landing.”
“That’s good,” said Captain John Nathan Duggan. He stretched and pushed his fingertips across his scalp. “I could do with a haircut.”
Commander Lucy McGlashan fixed him with a piercing stare. “That’s the furthest ahead you’ve thought?”
Duggan shrugged. “I’m not hopeful the Space Corps will grant us anything more significant.”
“I thought I was the cynical one,” said Chainer.
“You are, Lieutenant,” said McGlashan. “It must be rubbing off on the captain.”
“It wouldn’t be too much to expect a week or two of shore leave, would it?” asked Lieutenant Bill Breeze. “I think we deserve it.”
“I’ll have a word when we land,” said Duggan. “I don’t want to make a promise and then find out Admiral Teron has another one of his brown folders predicting a hundred billion deaths somewhere else in the Confederation.”
“The Space Corps has more than one damned captain,” said McGlashan angrily. Duggan could understand the reason for her frustration and he shared it. They were hoping to spend some time together when they landed and if Teron sent them off on another mission, they’d have to keep each other at arm’s length while on duty.
“It would be lovely to think they’ll give us a medal and then pack us off for a couple of weeks to one of the resorts on Atlantis,” said Chainer wistfully. “It’s been twenty years since I was last here on non-military business.”
“Does the Space Corps even give out medals anymore?” asked Breeze. The crew joked about medals, but none of them particularly craved the recognition, though they’d each been decorated on several previous occasions.
“There was talk a few years ago in the Confederation Council that we should abolish medals,” said Duggan, remembering the consternation it had caused at the time. “A couple of the council members got it into their heads that decorating only the deserving few would somehow make the other serving members of the Corps feel less worthy.”
“Yeah, I think I remember,” said Breeze. “I thought it was rumour.”
“I’m afraid it wasn’t.”
McGlashan shook her head incredulously. “You’re seriously telling me someone thought it was a good idea?”
“Apparently so,” said Duggan. “Everyone is equal in the Confederation and there was a genuine attempt to carry that ideal across to the military.”
“I wouldn’t turn down a medal if they wanted to give me one,” said Chainer. “I’d wear it proudly on my chest.”
“You’ve already got five medals that I’m aware of,” said Duggan mildly. “I don’t see them anywhere.”
“I carry them in my hand luggage everywhere I go, sir. I wouldn’t want to lose them.”
“What would happen to them in the likely event we get blown to pieces on our next mission?” asked McGlashan. “Shouldn’t you keep them in a safe place?”
“I’ve got nobody to give them to - at least nobody I’d want to have them. I’d prefer my medals to be destroyed in space by an enemy missile.”
“Let us turn our attention towards matters in hand, ladies and gentlemen,” said Duggan. The information on his console indicated they’d soon be close enough for him to engage the auto-docking systems on the Crimson. Duggan occasionally enjoyed landing his spacecraft manually, but in the circumstances, he wanted to do things by the book.
“I’ve got Colonel Jabran on the comms, sir. He asks that we engage the autopilot at once.”
“He must be worried,” said McGlashan.
“It’s his neck on the line if irradiated fish start washing up on shore next to the tourist resorts,” said Duggan.
“Are they still pretending the damage caused by the wreckage of the Kuidenar and Dretisear was natural causes?” asked Chainer.
“As far as I’m aware, Lieutenant. In the Confederation you only hear what the Council decides you need to hear. After all, if the good citizens knew everything that went on during wartime, there might be a few more questions asked.”
“Difficult questions,” added Breeze. “Questions to whi
ch there might be no easily-justified answers.”
“Yeah, we wouldn’t want people to think there are eight-thousand-cubic-kilometre hostile enemy motherships flying through the vicinity and looking to destroy entire planets in their search for conquest and new energy sources,” said Chainer. “That might cause a little bit of panic.”
Duggan half-regretted bringing the conversation around to the Confederation Council. They had their failings – many failings – but it wasn’t becoming of his rank to criticise them so openly. On the other hand, he trusted his crew implicitly and they wouldn’t spread gossip.
“We’re on auto-pilot,” he said, motioning the others back to their pre-landing routines.
“Let me see what lies below,” said Chainer, searching through the sensor feeds. “They’ve still got the ES Rampage in one of the trenches. Other than that, it’s only going to be us.”
“The Rampage must be more badly damaged than I thought,” said Duggan. “Otherwise they’d have flown it into orbit.”
“Is that some kind of emergency procedure?” asked Breeze.
“It is – the Space Corps tries to avoid cross-contamination. Now they’re going to have to clean up the Rampage as well.”
“They’re going to spray us before we land, aren’t they?”
“They certainly are,” said Chainer. “There’s a clean-up vessel inbound.”
They rendezvoused with the vessel SC Plutos high above Atlantis, at sufficient distance to ensure no harmful emissions would reach the surface below. Duggan observed the clean-up craft as it laboured its way close to the Crimson. The SC Plutos was little more than a featureless cylinder, nine hundred metres in length. It was ancient and incapable of even the most rudimentary lightspeed travel.
“The logs show they built that thing over ninety years ago,” said Breeze. “It must be one of the oldest vessels in the fleet.”
“It doesn’t need to do anything sophisticated,” Duggan replied. He checked their speed and saw they’d slowed right down. “The Tillos mainframe is bringing us to a halt.”
“I thought they could do basic stuff like this on the move,” grumbled Chainer.
“They’re not taking any risks this time.”
For the next hour, the crew watched as the SC Plutos flew sedately around them, firing out high-pressure bursts of semi-liquid particles onto the Crimson’s hull in order to contain the radiation until a full clean could be undertaken on the ground.
“Osmium,” said Breeze. “Lots and lots of it. We’ll be covered in a hard shell worth a hundred billion dollars by the time the Plutos is done.”
“The treatment doesn’t come cheap,” said McGlashan.
“On the plus side, we’ll be the shiniest ship in the Space Corps,” said Chainer.
“Until they scrape the coating off for recycling.”
At last, the pilot of the SC Plutos decided his work was done. There were only two crew onboard the clean-up vessel and one of them spoke briefly to Chainer to advise the treatment was finished. The Tillos landing computer resumed control and the Crimson broke away from the second spacecraft, soon leaving it far behind.
“Technology has moved on a lot since they built the Plutos,” said Breeze.
“I doubt it was fast when it entered service. It does what it was designed to do,” Duggan remarked.
The Crimson established a stationary orbit, directly above the Tillos landing field. Then, it descended quickly in a straight line. The airfield below was clear of ground staff, but an army of automated repair bots clustered eagerly around trench two. They’d strip away as much of the outer shell of irradiated armour plating as necessary to make the warship safe again and carry the thousands of tonnes of waste elsewhere for treatment.
“The Crimson’s going to be grounded for a while,” said Breeze. “I’ve accessed the details of the intended repairs and we’re looking at a few weeks until everything’s as good as new again.”
“We might yet see that shore leave,” said Chainer with a glimmering of hope.
Duggan grunted noncommittally. “It’ll take them less than ten days for make-do repairs, folks. If they want this ship in the air, they’ll skip the spit and polish.”
“We’re on the ground,” said McGlashan, in case they hadn’t realised. The auto-pilot landings rarely produced a perceptible thump.
“We’d best get our suits on,” said Duggan. “We’ll be in decontamination for a day or two after we disembark.”
A short time later, the crew exited the spaceship by the front ramp. Duggan’s helmet flashed up a series of red alerts to make him aware there was far more radiation in the vicinity than the suit could protect against. The four of them sprinted to the closest lift, which carried them to the top of trench two. Through the clear panels of the lift door, the Crimson appeared a glossy and shiny silver from the thin coating which had been applied to it.
“It looks like cheap jewellery,” said McGlashan.
“I like it,” Chainer replied. “Pimp my spaceship.”
Breeze rolled his eyes and looked to the heavens. “You need to see someone from the Space Corps’ Wellbeing Team, Frank. Tell them about these strange ideas you get.”
“They take all shapes and sizes in the Corps, Bill. You know that.”
The lift door fizzed open. There was a single vehicle waiting for them – it was a dull-grey cuboid with rounded sides and a wedge-shaped cabin for a driver to sit in. The words ‘Decontamination Unit’ were written across the sides in yellow, unmissable letters. There was no human occupant in sight, but a robotic voice blared out instructions for the crew to enter the vehicle through a door in the back.
Moments later, they were inside and being sprayed with a variety of substances to scour away the radiation from their spacesuits. The vehicle sped across the landing pad towards a little-used building at the far edge of the base, wherein incidents such as this one were handled. The four of them were directed inside and told to prepare for a thorough process of decontamination and treatment.
Chapter Two
Two days later, Duggan and his crew were given clearance to return to their duties. They took a trip in a decontamination vehicle to one of the primary base administrative facilities. The base was still on radiation alert, but they were permitted to wear their normal uniforms. The journey gave them an opportunity to view the hulking shape of the ES Rampage, which remained unmoving in the place it had docked after sustaining heavy damage in the recent conflict with the Ghasts.
“It’s blocking my view of the Crimson,” said Chainer, craning his neck to look.
“There won’t be anything much worth looking at,” said Breeze, not bothering to raise his head.
“They’ve got the whole base on lock-down still,” said McGlashan, pointing ahead.
“Yeah.”
Duggan looked where she indicated. The building they headed towards was shuttered against radiation. As they drew closer, he saw a pair of stony-faced guards at the door, carrying metering equipment.
“They’re not suited,” said Breeze. “They usually keep the monitoring teams covered up until the air is as clean as it should be.”
“It doesn’t take long to neutralise radiation emissions these days,” McGlashan replied. “The base must have dropped to a yellow alert. Maybe even to blue.”
“Colonel Jabran strikes me as a man who does everything by the book,” said Chainer. “If those guys aren’t suited, there’ll be no gamma rays to worry about.”
“I’ll bet he’s pissed at us,” McGlashan laughed. “This must be the most excitement the Tillos base has ever seen.”
Duggan wasn’t so sure Jabran was a man prone to anger. Though he didn’t get on with the colonel, he was happy to admit that the Tillos base was as well-run as most others.
“Colonel Jabran has done well in the circumstances,” he said. “He has fewer resources than a main facility and he’s been forced to handle a series of critical situations.”
“I suppose,” said Mc
Glashan.
Up close, the two guards were as dour-faced as they appeared from a distance. They grunted surly greetings which teetered on the brink of rudeness. Duggan recognized the type – they’d been given more authority than they could handle and it had instilled an inflated sense of their own self-worth. There was no need to let it worry him, so Duggan stood for a moment as they scanned him for contaminants and walked on when he got the nod.
“Miserable bastards,” said Chainer, just loudly enough for the two guards to pick up his words. They’d likely heard it dozens of times and they didn’t respond, not that there was much they could do about it.
The foyer of the building was anodyne in the same manner as every other Space Corps foyer across the entirety of the Confederation. Duggan counted himself an observant man, but his eyes did their best to skate across the features of the place he stood in and fought his brain’s desire to build a picture of his surroundings. Perhaps this was inspiration for the stealth technology which had served so well in recent weeks, he thought to himself.
The four of them headed towards the wide reception desk, which had been made from some type of polymer and given a finish faintly reminiscent of marble. Duggan gave it a surreptitious rap with his knuckles.
“Good morning,” said the man before them. He was dressed in white and blue clothing, with his hair brushed neatly back.
“We’ve been in decontamination,” said Duggan. “And nobody over there had a clue about where we’ve been assigned.”
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