“Nothing of great significance. It’s the sixth planet out and far larger than average.”
“How long until they’re due to launch?”
“Four hours.”
“And we’re two hours away ourselves,” Duggan mused. “That doesn’t give us a lot of time to play around.”
“What sort of playing around did you have in mind?” asked McGlashan.
“I’m not sure,” he hedged. “Eighteen warships clustered around the Blackstar limits our chances of escape somewhat.”
“I could aim to get us close to the wormhole, sir and we could try to activate the launch sequence. The trouble is, we’re heading into the unknown. We can’t go straight to lightspeed after leaving it and you’re aware the stealth modules take some time to reactivate. If luck isn’t on our side, we could find ourselves right in the thick of it.”
Duggan felt the beginnings of a plan forming. He had no idea if it would work or not and he turned the possibilities over in his mind. If it came off, they could accomplish a significant victory as well as escaping. If it failed, they would be just as dead as if they tried to escape and something went wrong. After ten minutes of weighing up the odds, he decided to speak to his crew and see what they thought of it.
Chapter Thirty
“That’s why he’s captain and I’m only a lieutenant,” said Breeze. “There must be a test you need to sit in order to see how many crazy ways you can think of to get your crew killed.”
“If it works, we’ll find it significantly easier to reach the wormhole and we’ll have reduced the enemy’s capability to strike at the Confederation.”
“I understand the positives, sir.”
“Can you modify the launch sequence that we used to get through the wormhole?”
Breeze huffed and puffed. “I couldn’t reprogram it, but I could modify it to do what you want easily enough.”
Duggan turned his attention to McGlashan. “We’ll have a tiny window during which we can launch. Do you think you’ll be able to pull it off?”
“It’s going to be tight, sir.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I’ll give it my best shot.” She smiled. “No promises.”
At that moment, Lieutenant Chainer walked onto the bridge. He looked pale and haggard. “What do you know? I feel exhausted but my brain won’t shut down. No sleep for me.” Something in the tableau caught his attention. “What?” he asked, patting himself down in case his dishevelled appearance had caused the scene.
“Captain Duggan is asking if we wish to face eighteen Dreamer warships head-on.”
“Oh. I thought it was something serious,” said Chainer, dropping into his seat as if nothing untoward had happened.
“Fine,” said Breeze. “Don’t come running to me when we’re all dead.”
Duggan filled Chainer in on the details.
“That sounds like an excellent plan, sir.”
“Has everyone lost their mind?” asked Breeze, aghast.
“I’m trying to be more positive in my outlook,” said Chainer.
“You’ve picked a funny time to give it a go,” Breeze replied.
“If I’m going to die, I might as well have a smile on my face.”
Duggan was beginning to wonder if Chainer’s lack of sleep was affecting him adversely. “Are you ready for duty, Lieutenant?”
“Definitely, sir.”
They sat quietly until Breeze announced there were only thirty minutes until they entered local space. Duggan busied himself with a few final checks.
“What’s our weapons status following the damage our hull suffered at Astorn?”
“Two of our nuke tubes were permanently disabled and three of our Lambda clusters, sir. That leaves us with six nuclear launchers, twenty-one fully operational conventional clusters and two Shatterer tubes.”
“I’d like double the number, but it’s going to have to be enough,” he said. “Lieutenant Breeze, are the modifications completed yet?”
“That they are, sir. I’ll have to leave the timing with the AI, since this is way beyond the capability of my reactions.”
Duggan walked over until he was standing at Breeze’s shoulder. “You’re comfortable with what we’re doing?”
“Of course I am, sir. I just needed to make sure everyone was aware of what we’re getting ourselves into.”
“Nothing worse than any other choice we could have made.”
“No, I suppose not. When it comes to judging risk, there’s always going to be guesswork involved and I trust you to make those guesses more than anyone else.”
Duggan stepped away. “Is everyone ready?”
“As I’ll ever be,” said McGlashan.
“Five minutes,” said Breeze after a time had passed. “At thirty seconds before we exit lightspeed, I’ll activate the wormhole launch sequence. We’re going at lightspeed anyway, so we won’t notice anything. The AI will need to work at double speed to prepare for the immediate re-launch, so there’re going to be a few alerts on your screens. When we arrive at the wormhole the real fun and games will start.”
“I’ll blow as many of the bastards up as possible,” said McGlashan.
“Then the second lightspeed jump will activate after a second or two,” confirmed Breeze.
Duggan spent the next five minutes suppressing the urge to ask his crew if they were ready. They were professionals and they’d have raised any uncertainties already. Nevertheless, he found it difficult to remain quiet and he recognised it as a symptom of his nervousness. They were coming to the end of the mission and now they were so close to home, the final hurdle seemed to be the highest.
“Thirty seconds,” said Breeze. “Launch sequence activated.”
The utilisation on the AI shot to the end of its gauge and remained firmly in place. A figure beneath it showed the usage at two hundred and thirty percent of its intended maximum. Duggan couldn’t help but look at the hatch by his feet and he wondered how hot it was getting in there.
“Fifteen seconds.”
“Three hundred and twenty percent on the core,” said Chainer in amazement. “It’s going to burn out.”
“No it’s not,” said Duggan through gritted teeth.
“Here we go,” said Breeze. “Arrival.”
The external sensor feeds winked into instant focus. Duggan saw the slab side of something vast and metallic, barely ten kilometres away. The port-side feeds showed seven or eight of the enemy warships, including three battleships and two of the same heavy cruisers they’d encountered near to the planet Astorn. To the front, the remainder of the enemy fleet was visible, their warships gathered together with hardly fifty kilometres between each.
“Launching,” said McGlashan.
Something flashed white, completely obscuring the main screen. Then, the sensor feeds went blank and the Crimson entered lightspeed once more, less than two seconds after it had arrived at the Helius Blackstar. This second jump was a short one and the spaceship returned to local space almost immediately.
“They didn’t have their energy shields active,” said Breeze. “On the other hand, one of them managed to hit us with a particle beam on our way out. It’s knocked a few million tonnes of our gravity drive offline.”
Duggan looked at the power gauges. “Forty-five percent.”
“Say goodbye to stealth – the modules have shut down,” said Breeze. “We might be in a position to activate them in an hour or so when things have cooled off.”
“This will have played out long before then,” said Duggan.
“The target planet is dead ahead, sir,” said Chainer. “Someone give it a name for me.”
“Glisst,” said Breeze promptly.
“On we go,” said Duggan, accelerating to maximum velocity.
“It’ll take ten minutes to reach high orbit at this speed,” said Chainer.
“Commander McGlashan, please report.”
“We entered local space nine kilometres from one of the
ir battleships. I hit it with three nukes and seventy-two Lambdas. The rest of our missiles were distributed amongst the remainder of their vessels. You’re aware our homing systems don’t work against the Dreamer warships, but we were close enough that I’m confident we scored a high number of hits. I was unable to launch from five of our Lambda clusters because they lacked a line-of-sight path.”
“What about the Shatterers?”
“I targeted one of their other battleships, sir. I can’t confirm if they successfully impacted – we know they’ll target the bastards, so I’m hopeful.”
“It’s the best we could have done in the circumstances,” said Duggan, running high on his body’s natural adrenaline. “That’s not something they’ll forget. Lieutenant Chainer – have you located the enemy installation on Glisst?”
“Negative, sir. You’re going to have to come around the planet until I can see it. The coordinates were for the planet, not the location of the installation on the surface.”
“We need to find it while they’re still pissed enough to act in haste.”
“There might be a problem,” said Breeze, his voice loud enough to make it clear it was something important.
“What’s wrong, Lieutenant?”
“Check out the AI core, sir. It’s not cooling down.”
“Three hundred and ten percent,” said Duggan. “That’s lower than its peak.”
“I know. It should be closer to one hundred percent by now. I’m not an expert on Dreamer tech, but I doubt it’s meant to be performing so many cycles for so long.”
“What’s making the demands on it?”
“I can’t be sure. If you made me guess I’d tell you it’s a bug in the programming of the launch system, keeping it running instead of letting it slow down.”
“Do what you can, Lieutenant and keep me informed.”
“It might stop us doing what we came to do, sir.”
“It can’t.”
The news about the AI core wasn’t good. Even so, Duggan couldn’t let it distract him and he left the worrying to Lieutenant Breeze. Chainer provided a new course to follow that gave the greatest chance of locating the installation on Glisst in the shortest amount of time and Duggan piloted the Crimson directly along this trajectory.
Five minutes passed until Chainer shouted in excitement. “Got them!” he said.
“I need to be sure it’s the same as the one on Frades-2.”
“It is, sir. Four towers, one huge central pyramid and lots of smaller buildings in between.”
“That’s what we want,” said Duggan.
He took the Crimson straight towards the installation. At first glance, it looked identical to the previous one and for all he knew, it may well have been so.
“There is no sign of surface-to-air defence batteries,” said McGlashan.
“If they’ve got some hidden away, this plan is going to go wrong pretty quickly, Commander.”
They came to forty thousand kilometres without encountering a hostile response. Duggan took them to twenty thousand and then ten. Still nothing was fired towards the spaceship.
“That settles it – this base is as vulnerable as the last one,” he said.
By the time Duggan brought the Crimson to a halt, they were only five hundred metres above the corner towers. The spaceship hung in the air, promising death to everyone who saw it.
“The core is at two hundred and ninety percent,” said Breeze. “It’s definitely something in the launch sequence program.”
“Can you fix it?”
“I don’t have a choice, do I?”
“None.”
Duggan closed his eyes and lay back in his chair.
“How long?” asked Chainer.
“Your guess is as good as mine. We’ll wait here and see what happens.”
“I hate waiting.”
“It won’t be long.”
In his mind, Duggan counted the seconds.
Chapter Thirty-One
Duggan heard Chainer stringing together some guesses.
“Ten seconds for the Estral below to realise we’re not one of their own, plus twenty seconds to recover from the panic. A further minute to act upon the information and let their war fleet know we’re here.”
“Let’s call it forty seconds for the war fleet to coordinate and a further fifteen seconds to set Glisst as a destination,” said McGlashan, joining in.
“With an additional thirty to forty seconds for fission drive warm-up,” said Duggan, his eyes still closed.
“That’s a total of three minutes and five seconds if we assume the quickest response,” said Chainer. “How long have we been here?”
“We’ve been above the base for about one minute,” said McGlashan. “They’ll have detected us before then, so I don’t know when the timer will have started.”
“We could be down to thirty seconds already,” said Chainer.
It turned out they’d overestimated the response time.
“Six big fission signatures,” grunted Breeze. He was too busy working on the core to elaborate.
“Those will be the battleships,” said Chainer. “They’ll have the fastest response times.”
Duggan looked at the gravity drive and saw it was stuck at forty-five percent. Whatever was burning the core, it was also preventing the AI from realigning the atoms in the engines.
“There are seven more fission signatures, sir,” said Chainer, covering for Breeze. “Most of the enemy war fleet will arrive somewhere close to Glisst in the next few seconds.”
“Lieutenant Breeze, I need the core back.”
“I’m working on it.”
“We have no time left. Get the fission drives ready – we’re leaving. Take us anywhere.”
“We can’t, sir, the core will burn out.”
“There’s no alternative, Lieutenant! Do it immediately!”
“Fission drives warming up. They’ll be five minutes and twenty seconds – the AI is busy on other things.”
“Two more fission signatures,” said Chainer. “That makes fifteen of their war fleet.”
“I need specifics on their locations, Lieutenant. Is there a course that will allow us to avoid them until we can go to lightspeed?”
“There are a few choices, sir. None of which will allow us to avoid destruction for five minutes. In fact, their closest vessel will be in a position to launch missiles at us in approximately ninety seconds.”
Duggan realised he’d led them into a dead end. There was no hope of escape from here and it appeared as though it was down to nothing more than a bug in the launch sequence coding. He was calm and his brain continued to evaluate the possibilities, but the best result he could imagine was mutual destruction. It wasn’t something he wished to contemplate. Deprived of choice, he gave the order.
“Get the Planet Breaker ready,” he said. “If we’re going down, we’ll take their fleet with us.”
“I’m unable to access it, sir,” said McGlashan. “It takes a lot of processing power to fire.”
“We’re to be denied even this one opportunity to fight?” he said.
His tactical screen showed the approaching enemy warships. The first few to arrive had exited lightspeed at the far side of Glisst. The red dots which represented the battleships moved at incredible speed and would soon emerge above the horizon. After that, a torrent of warheads would rain down upon the Crimson.
“Perhaps they’ll hold fire while we remain above their base,” said Chainer hopefully.
“They may do just that Lieutenant, but as soon as they realise that we’re about to escape into lightspeed, they’ll have no choice other than to destroy us. They can’t permit us to roam through their territory. Whatever it takes, they’ll want to stop us right here.”
From the corner of his eye, Duggan saw an electronic needle flicker and jump. “The core…” he began.
“I think I’ve done it,” said Breeze, his voice laden with a mixture of stress and relief.
&nb
sp; “It’s dropped to two hundred and sixty percent already,” said Duggan. “Two hundred, one-eighty.”
“It should have gone straight to about sixty percent,” said Breeze. “There’s still a problem.”
“What’s the fission drive timer?”
“Fifty seconds, sir. It’s falling.”
“I can access the Planet Breaker!” said McGlashan. “I’m powering it up.”
“The fission warmup time is falling quickly now that the core is closer to its usual operating parameters,” said Breeze.
“Will it be soon enough?”
“Maybe.”
“Sir, the closest battleship has launched,” said McGlashan. “You were right, they’re taking no chances.”
“I don’t need to know how many missiles there are,” Duggan replied, looking at the sea of red circles on his screen. “We’re back on the plan. Do what we agreed.”
“This one is going to be tight,” said Breeze.
“You did well to fix the core,” Duggan told him.
“It’s not fixed. If by some miracle we get away from here, it’s still got to get us home.”
“Ten seconds until the enemy missiles reach us, sir.”
“The Planet Breaker is online and available,” said McGlashan. She took a deep breath. “Firing the Planet Breaker at Glisst.”
“The fission drives have engaged,” said Breeze.
The Crimson exited local space. At the same moment in time, Glisst was broken apart by the weapon carried somewhere deep in the spacecraft’s hull. The wreckage of the planet burst out from the centre, engulfing the fifteen enemy warships and destroying them within moments. The installation on the surface fared no better and it was hurled into space at several thousand kilometres per second, before it broke into progressively smaller fragments which would be forever lost.
Those on the Crimson didn’t witness the death. Duggan stared straight ahead, with no desire to see the aftermath of another planet’s destruction.
“Another one bites the dust,” said Chainer. “It doesn’t get any easier.”
“We’re in charge of a terrible weapon,” said McGlashan. “It would be better if it had never been invented.”
Terminus Gate (Survival Wars Book 5) Page 21
