Renegades (The Progenitor Trilogy, Book Two)

by Dan Worth

  ‘This smells like a set up to me,’ said Rekkid. ‘I don’t doubt that maybe Rheinhold allowed himself to be manipulated for financial gain. But this sort of response seems a little unusual, not to mention excessive. What the hell were all those armed police doing there?’

  ‘Security?’ said Anita.

  ‘So why were they all looking at Rheinhold? Normally there’s agents and armed guards around him, but they’re all looking outwards for threats. They were watching him like a hawk. Is Rheinhold a Shaper agent? Or any of his cabinet?’

  ‘Not that we are aware of, no,’ said The Speaker. ‘Rheinhold was surrounded with anti-Shaper security measures as soon as their presence was known to your intelligence services, but as for the allegations, I’m afraid some of them at least are true. Rheinhold was careless and stupid and his ministers more so. You see what avarice does to you people? You are so easily manipulated. I would hazard that this is the Shapers’ doing and I would estimate that they have been orchestrating this for some time.’

  ‘Why?’ said Anita.

  ‘To destabilise your government, of course. Confusion will reign in the higher echelons of politics for some time and people in the distant colonies and sovereign worlds will start to lose faith in the central authority. Cracks will begin to show soon enough, mark my words.’

  ‘What are they planning to do?’ said Katherine. ‘What do you people know about our enemy? We have to warn them!’

  ‘Alas, we do not know what the Shapers are planning,’ The Speaker replied. ‘And as I said: You will be permitted to return to your people once we have exchanged knowledge. Until then, we must watch, and wait.’

  ‘Nice plan,’ said Isaacs. ‘No wonder you people got fucked by the Shapers. If it’s the all the same to you, I think I’ll pass on becoming a fully paid up member of your little Hidden Hand club. I stand more chance of surviving on my own. Hell, if you give me some warheads I might even nuke that ship for you. I reckon I stand more chance by myself than this entire chickenshit operation. You guys are more than welcome to join me by the way,’ he added, waving a casual hand at the rest of the group. ‘If anyone wants me I’ll be in my ship.’

  With that, he turned and stalked angrily out of the chamber. Anna ran after him and grabbed his arm.

  ‘Come on Cal, don’t be like that. You need to give them a chance.’

  ‘A chance? You said it yourself; we lost a lot of good people today.’

  ‘Cal, the Nahabe have fought these things before and they survived.’

  ‘Yeah? I think they lost, I think they lost because they’ve eked out a pathetic existence ever since. You want humanity to spend the rest of its existence inside a fucking box? Do you? What’s the point of surviving if life isn’t worth living? With all the technology those pompous idiots have at their disposal, they just sit on their hands whilst we face these things. What’s the point in gathering intelligence if you don’t act on it? We need to win, Anna. We need to fight these things and we need to win because I’ve seen first-hand what happens when you lose!’

  ‘Cal…’

  ‘I’ll be leaving as soon as I can. There’s a place on my ship if you want it Anna. Same goes for the others. We need to find Chen and then get the fuck away from here when all hell breaks loose.’

  Katherine watched the two figures argue.

  ‘What do you think?’ she said to Rekkid. ‘Do you think we can trust Isaacs?’

  ‘Yes I do,’ Rekkid replied. ‘I get the distinct impression that he’s the only one with any sense around here. As soon as his ship’s ready we need to leave on it. The Hidden Hand might have failed to destroy that ship, but I doubt that Admiral Chen will. She needs to know what’s going on here.’

  ‘Hi!’ said Anita. ‘What about me? Can I come?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Rekkid. ‘Are you normally this disturbingly cheerful?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘She can come then,’ said Katherine. ‘I think we need someone around to counter your constant bad temper.’

  ‘I am not bad tempered,’ Rekkid replied. ‘I’m just…more practically minded that’s all.’ He saw Katherine wink at Anita. ‘Oh bollocks to the pair you. Come on, let’s go get something to eat… hey, where did The Speaker go?’

  Katherine and Anita turned to face the empty spot where The Speaker had previously hovered. The creature had left without saying a word.

  As it floated back to its quarters the creature that called itself The Speaker fumed inside its sarcophagus. It had so wanted to help! It had sat there, impotent whilst the others had raged against it. But its superiors had been quite clear on the matter and the Nahabe people respected their ancient hierarchy and traditions of service and order. There was to be no sudden move to help the other races. The intelligence gathering was purely for the benefit of Nahabe kind. Any move that was to be made to help others was not to be the result of misguided altruism.

  It had felt helpless, restricted and foolish. It could see the danger. It knew that the Nahabe had the power to act. Furiously, it opened a communications channel to the home-world.

  Chapter 24

  Chen watched the faces of her bridge crew as she told them that the President had been arrested and simultaneously relayed the news to the rest of the ship via the comm. She noted their responses, from shock to confusion, to derision and anger. She herself had been shocked. She’d privately suspected that Rheinhold was crooked, but the charges that were reportedly being brought against him were almost on a par with treason.

  ‘Admiral, what are we supposed to do now?’ said Ensign Goldstein, her face a mask of uncertainty.

  ‘The orders that came through from Command that the Navy have placed all ships on a heightened state of alert, that includes us even though we’re part of SOC,’ Chen replied. ‘The logical assumption is that this would be an ideal time for others to benefit from the turmoil in our government. We need to be ready to respond at a moment’s notice if the situation should change.’

  There were a few mutters of agreement.

  ‘Mr Haldane, a word in my office. Mr Singh you have the bridge.’

  Haldane nodded and followed her.

  Once in her office with the door closed, Chen leant against the corner of her desk and folded her arms. Haldane remained standing rigidly upright until Chen indicated that he should have a seat.

  ‘So what do you think?’ she said.

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘About the situation, about Rheinhold.’

  ‘I’m… not sure. I mean I watch the news the same as anyone else. This scandal’s being going on for months… you know I voted for him at the last election? I thought we needed an experienced man at the helm when the K’Soth were gearing up for war.’

  ‘Do you think the charges are genuine?’

  ‘I don’t know. I couldn’t get over the fact that the footage we saw showed armed guards escorting him.’

  ‘They didn’t seem like bodyguards did they?’

  ‘No… do you think this is a set up?’

  ‘Possibly. Once we’re done here I intend to talk to Haines, find out what the hell’s going on. I’d say there was a possibility that the Shapers had a hand in this. What do you say?’

  ‘It had occurred to me too.’

  ‘Alright.’ She nodded quickly, then changed the subject. ‘How goes the search for the base that those pirates are operating out of?’

  ‘Not good. We’re pretty sure that they’re operating from somewhere in the system’s Kuiper belt, but with a system this size there’s got to be millions of objects out there. It could take forever.’

  ‘Maybe we’ll get lucky.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘In the mean time I want you to set up combat air patrol around Rhyolite and Barstow Station. With all that’s gone on it’s important that we reassure the locals that we’re still in control and deter anyone from thinking they can use this as some sort of opportunity to take advantage of our attention being elsewhere.’
/>   ‘Yes ma’am.’

  ‘That will be all Commander, you may return to the bridge.’

  She watched him go. She somehow felt re-assured. Haldane may be a little stiff, but he wasn’t stupid. She’d need someone like that by her side if the balloon went up. But she really needed Al Ramirez by her side now. Everything about this whole situation felt wrong. The mysterious ship on the planet, the President’s arrest: her gut feeling told her that the Shapers were involved somehow. They were carefully moving their pieces into place.

  She’d give the search for Isaacs another day or so and then return to Haines with or without him. She needed to know what was going on, and so did he, and she no longer trusted the supposed privacy of the hypercom network. She didn’t know who might be listening.

  The armada hung in the sky above Rhyolite, the huge slab-like shapes of two carriers and the utilitarian profiles of their attendant warships were silhouetted against the blue-white glare of the suns. Beneath them, the massive shapes of two Atlas class heavy lifters descended through the turbulent atmosphere of the moon towards the scarred and cratered dig site below, where the alien vessel lay untouched by the devastation that had raged around it.

  Around sixty warships had taken up defensive positions in the space around Rhyolite under Admiral Cox’s command. The Jupiter class carrier Germanicus held orbit above the descending ships, its attendant battle group of destroyers and frigates deployed in a defensive posture about it. Further out, its fighter wings flew combat patrols about the larger vessels while torpedo bombers waited, fuelled and ready, aboard the carrier’s forward catapults.

  The Charon class Marine assault carrier Marathon hung off the Germanicus’s starboard side attended by two destroyers and a handful of defensive cruisers, the rest of its battle group having been dispersed throughout the space around Beatty to watch for any Hidden Hand vessels. Its detachment of marines meanwhile had taken up a number of fortified positions on the surface of Rhyolite around the dig site, should any saboteurs attempt to sneak into the facility.

  Meanwhile the Saturn class carrier Nimitz and its flotilla of ships held station much further out from Rhyolite, where the lessening of the moon’s gravity well made manoeuvring easier but where they could respond quickly to any incoming threats to the dig site and monitor the traffic coming and going from Barstow orbital and the moon itself.

  Cox watched the proceedings calmly from his command couch on the bridge of his own vessel, the Germanicus. From the display he had called into his HUD from the carrier’s belly cameras, the two Atlas lifters were visible as two points of light, glowing whitely against the swirling yellow-brown cloud deck which periodically obscured them from view.

  He would remain here. He had no wish to return to the surface of that blasted moon. His time huddled inside the remains of the downed Condor had been unpleasant and undignified enough. It galled him that it had been a shuttle from the Churchill that had rescued him and not one of his own craft that had picked him out of that sulphurous desert. Besides, his place was here in command of his fleet. He had full confidence in the captains of the lifters, both experienced men, to get the job done.

  In truth he almost wanted the Hidden Hand to have another go at attacking his prize, now he had so much firepower assembled in one place, but he knew that even those wretched pirates weren’t stupid enough to try their luck against such odds. It was a pity really, he’d really like to meet that son-of-a-bitch pilot who’d knocked his Condor out of the sky and yanked those two traitors from under his nose, but with the benefit of superior firepower.

  The two lifters finally vanished from view completely, hidden at last by the thick, swirling atmosphere. Cox turned to his comms officer.

  ‘Mr Lee, telemetry report from the lifters.’

  The younger man studied his console.

  ‘Looking good, sir. Both ships are clear down the line, two kilometres from the surface. They’re switching to AG now sir.’

  The changeover from one drive system to another was vital, otherwise anything below the ships would be vaporised by the spears of superheated exhaust from the massive ships. Cox doubted whether it would have much effect on the alien ship however. He’d seen one of the kinetic munitions from the Hidden Hand raid actually strike the ancient vessel without even leaving a scratch on its curious, crystalline surface.

  Kilometres below, the two Atlas lifters landed fore and aft of the alien ship with surprising delicacy, given their sheer size and weight. Their mass weighed somewhat less in the moon’s reduced gravity, but the heavy, cleated landing claws still sank into the rocky surface, splitting boulders beneath their immense pressure.

  The alien ship had now been completely exhumed from the lava. It lay at the bottom of the pit, surrounded by the mangled wreckage of the base and a few temporary buildings that had been hastily erected following the attack to house the work crews.

  It was strange, some of them had mused. The lava around the base of the vessel had proved to be much more brittle and easy to remove. The strange effect that the ship had been having on people’s minds had also ceased. The ship seemed to be co-operating with them. It was almost as if it now wanted to get the excavation finished as quickly as possible as much as they did.

  Simultaneously, the Atlases extended high powered tractor fields into the pit, cradling the alien ship. Antigravity fields followed, negating the pull of Rhyolite. The Atlases began to lift the alien ship slowly from the pit as small boulders and other debris were tossed into the air by the sudden reversal of gravity and the application of the heavy lifting fields. The ships took the strain with their AG motors, holding the alien ship level between them whilst negating the effect of its transferred weight onto themselves. Then slowly, the three ships began to climb in unison. Two kilometres up, the lifters engaged their downwards-angled main engines and accelerated towards space, boiling the atmosphere with four blinding spears of blue-white plasma.

  There was a ragged cheer from the assembled bridge crew as the group of three vessels emerged from the cloud deck and powered towards the waiting carrier groups. Cox allowed himself a satisfied smile. Everything was proceeding to plan. He knew Reynaud couldn’t wait to get to work on the mysterious craft. Even now, the doctor was back at Centrepoint Station setting up the lab he had been provided with and briefing the staff he had been assigned. The man seemed to have recovered from his ordeal remarkably quickly. The prospect of working on the alien craft seemed to have taken priority in the doctor’s mind from the shock of being bombed and then shot down less than a day ago. Like Cox, he had been lucky not to be seriously injured.

  The lifters and their precious cargo climbed upwards out of Rhyolite’s gravity well. As they drew closer, Cox ordered the Germanicus and Marathon battle groups to form up around the vessels. The Nimitz and her ships would follow as rearguard, whilst the Marathon itself would remain on station to recover its complement of marines.

  Cox then watched with satisfaction as the well trained crews of the Navy carefully slotted their vessels into their assigned stations around the vulnerable lifters. It made his heart swell with pride to see his men and women act with such well rehearsed precision. The manoeuvre completed, each vessel in the flotilla slaved its navigational computer to that onboard the Germanicus. Then the vast array of warships jumped out simultaneously, space rippling from the multiple distortions like a choppy sea.

  Katherine tossed and turned in her sleep in the small private quarters that she had been assigned. As she slept, inside her mind, the ship spoke to her again. Now the ship’s mind was free of Captain Blake’s personality it could taunt her at will.

  She stood on the rocky shoreline of a long dried up sea. Above, the black hole she had seen before cast its deathly light over the desolate scene. A thick mist hung heavy in the chasm where the seabed had once dropped away sharply. As she watched, she saw lights moving beneath the fog. They resolved themselves into two pale, glowing eyes that regarded her with a cold, calculating malevolence.
A dark slit appeared in the mist beneath those two luminous points. It opened wide, in a mocking grin of inky darkness. She felt herself being pulled towards that blackness, felt herself falling into the chill of night.

  Someone grabbed her, pulled her back, took hold of her shoulders and hauled her back into the light.

  She awoke to see Rekkid’s concerned face leaning over. His normally smooth brow was wrinkled with concern.

  ‘Another dream?’ he said.

  ‘Yeah,’ she replied blearily. ‘It was the ship again. I think… I think it was mocking me. It was the same scene as before, with the dead planet and the black hole. But there was something there a…’ she tried to find the right word. ‘A presence of some kind. Another mind. The mind of the ship.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Rekkid and looked thoughtful. ‘Well it may have got what it wanted all along. I actually came to tell you that Cox’s men have finally managed to get the ship off Rhyolite. The Hidden Hand’s scouts just reported back. Several ships in the holding patterns around the moon witnessed it being lifted into space by a couple of Atlas class ships.’

  ‘Couldn’t anyone stop them? Shoot them down?’

  ‘No. Cox wasn’t taking any chances. There must have been something like fifty or sixty ships guarding that thing. With the meagre resources that the Hidden Hand have at their disposal they wouldn’t have got close. It’d have been suicide.’

  ‘So they’re taking it back to Centrepoint Station?’

  ‘Under very heavy guard, yes.’

  ‘I assume Reynaud’s going to start poking around inside it once it gets there. We should just give him a hornets’ nest and a pointy stick and let him get on with it.’

  ‘Hmm well your brain isn’t the only one that ship’s been messing with. Reynaud thinks it will make him famous and Cox thinks that whatever Reynaud finds will boost his stagnating career and make him the saviour of us all.’