by Dan Worth
‘Do you think it knew what had been done to it? Do you think it was aware? Do you think those poor people...?’
‘I don’t know,’ Isaacs said hurriedly, cutting her off. ‘I don’t want to think about it.’
Their suit comms crackled into life.
‘Come in. Is anyone picking this up? This is The Speaker to all Hidden Hand still in the bays.’
‘Isaacs here, what’s going on?’
‘Finally. Are you alright?’
‘That depends. I’m still in one piece. Maria’s team lost a lot of people in the main bay but we held them here. Anita’s missing, presumed dead.’
The Speaker paused for a moment, as if stunned.
‘Gods...’ it said finally. ‘I’m afraid I was out of contact for much of the fight. All comms got knocked offline by the EMP blast. I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help.’
‘What EMP blast?’
‘The Blessed Nothingness has gone down with all hands, its reactor... never mind. I can’t raise any of the Order on the comm.’
‘I’m sorry Speaker, but they’re all dead. They went down fighting... there were just too many of those, but the Order saved us. They killed almost all of the Enslaved.’
Isaacs heard The Speaker utter what sounded like a quick prayer in its own language before it continued.
‘They died well, honourably. Do not mourn them. This may ultimately work in our favour. The Order will be driven mad by this loss. They will demand vengeance for the death of so senior a commander. Full scale Holy War is inevitable.’
‘Great,’ said Anna. ‘But our immediate problem is that that ship is still inside the docking bay. We don’t know how many more of those things might be inside, or what it’s capable of doing to this base with its own weapons.’
‘The Uncaring Cosmos is still engaged in fighting two of the Shaper ships. It is unlikely that she will be able to attack the other. Nevertheless, we must remove it somehow; it is interfering with the jump computations. Whether intentionally or not, its multi-dimensional nature is interfering with the translation drive’s calculations. The wave forms of particles that exist in multiple planes cannot be yet be quantified, yet the Shaper vessel sits within the radius affected by the drive.’
‘We need to get in there and blow that thing back out of the bay doors whilst we still have the chance,’ said Isaacs. ‘That thing can just sit there until its buddies have killed the remaining Nahabe ship and are able to come and help with their own forces. Any thoughts on how we do that? That fucking thing is a kilometre in length, not to mention angry and heavily armed.’
‘I might know a way,’ said Anna. ‘Follow me. It’s time we got our own back’
A further set of armoured doors led off the repair bay into Port Royal’s spacecraft armoury. Here, weapons and ammunition were stacked in neat rows inside blast proof casings. There were particle beam cannons, rail guns, lasers, missiles and rockets of all kinds and countless drums of bullets and packs of energy cells. Anna strode to the back of the bay towards a large crate that seemed more heavily protected than the rest. She tapped a lengthy code into the keypad set into it and the crate clicked open. The crate was mostly empty, but inside were a few remaining missile warheads. Isaacs peered inside and immediately saw the warning logos on the conical devices.
‘Anti-matter,’ he said, stating the obvious.
‘Yep.’
‘Okay... I’m not going to like this, am I?’
‘Maybe not, but I think it’s our only chance.’
‘Go on.’
‘It was when The Speaker mentioned the Blessed Nothingness going down and the blast taking out some of the Shaper ships. The Nahabe use anti-matter in their drive systems rather than fusion power. It reminded me that we had these.’
‘Fine. How do we blow up the Shaper ship in the bay without killing ourselves? One of these little things has the explosive power of a tactical nuke.’
‘Okay, I’ll show you,’ said Anna and lifted one of the warheads out of the crate with infinite care and placed it on a workbench. She proceeded to work a series of small clips around the base of the device and then removed the nose cone’s casing. Inside, were a dozen white spheres slightly larger than golf balls.
‘Okay, these weapons have two fire modes: One in which all of these little buggers go off at once, and another where it acts as a MIRV and lobs each of these at a different targets. These magnetic containment spheres each contain a tiny amount of AM. The casings are made of paper thin porcelain, so they shatter on impact and release their cargo. Each of these babies should explode with the power of one kiloton.’
‘Okay, you still haven’t explained how you intend to attack that ship with these without killing us all in the process, not to mention destroying the rest of our fleet docked in there.’ said Isaacs sceptically.
‘I thought about that too. The docking bay is very heavily shielded internally, and there’s about a foot of lead around it. It should be able to withstand the blast without too much trouble and stop the radiation from reaching the rest of the base. Plus, the lack of atmosphere will reduce the compression effects of any blast. The doors into the adjoining bay will have come down when the bay depressurised so your precious ship is safe, Cal.’
‘Yeah, so? Whoever gets to go and set this off is a goner, not to mention the fact that I doubt that that ship is just going to let us fire this thing at it. It’s an alien warship with technology billions of years ahead of our own. You stick your head round that gap in the door and it’s adios I’m afraid. You’ll be lucky if there’s anything to scrape off the deck.’
‘I thought about that too. There are ducts running around the outside of the bay that are part of the atmospheric system - for if the bay needs to be flooded or drained of its atmosphere. One of these runs across the top of the middle of the bay. We get someone in there and get them to drop these spheres through one of the vents.’
‘Yeah, and then they get their face melted by the blast, brilliant.’
‘Ah no, see we still have control over the artificial gravity in there. We turn it down to the minimum; we drop the spheres through, ever so slowly, and then shut the vent manually before turning the gravity up to maximum. The spheres fall and break and... kaboom!’
‘Kaboom indeed.’
‘It might not kill it, but my guess is that this thing is like an animal. If we hurt it, it’ll try and run, hopefully back out into space. Then we can make our escape too. So, we get you into the duct and we’ll get this over with.’
‘Me?’
‘Yeah. Do it for Anita, Cal. It’s payback time.’
‘Fuck, yeah.’
Isaacs cursed his wife as he struggled along the inside of the duct. She knew how to push his buttons alright. But he was, after all, doing this for Anita. He badly wanted revenge now. That fucking ship in the bay was going to feel some pain now; he’d make sure of that.
He was still in his suit, since there was no atmosphere to speak of inside the duct, and the bulky garment almost touched the sides of the narrow, metal tunnel as he slid himself forward on his belly. The warhead had been transferred to a smaller, padded box which he pushed along ahead of him. There was no light except the meagre glow from his suit lights and the dim glow ahead of the vents that led down into the docking bay. The duct had angled steadily upwards at first, but now he was on the level section over the bay and the going was a bit easier. He still wondered how he’d ended up being the one to do this, though no-one else seemed too eager to volunteer except Farouk and he was too large to fit inside the duct. Isaacs had promised the big man that he get his chance for payback for Anita another time. The rest of the Hidden Hand had retreated from the repair bay and the doors had been sealed.
The pressure on his mind was growing stronger, the voice more audible the closer he got to the ship.
‘We are coming for you, little creatures. It is useless to deny the inevitable. Come and join us in an eternity of bliss... an eternity in the d
arkness of the void... you should embrace the chance to achieve perfection.... we shall remake you anew, as we remade the others.’ Isaacs got a mental glimpse of alien surgical instruments, of figures strapped to operating tables, of cold, glinting metals slicing warm, vulnerable flesh. ‘But for those who join willingly... we save our most precious gifts for them, our most loyal servants.’ He saw hideous, grub like creatures, writhing in ecstasy; he saw human figures sprouting nano-technological growths, faces distorted by cancer-like, metallic tumours that winked with lights, skin split by whip-like tendrils and pulsing components. He wondered whether the ship could read his mind and knew his intentions or whether it was just broadcasting this stuff into the base as a form of psychological warfare. He tried to blot it out and pressed on.
He dragged a thin cable after him too, that he unwound from a spool on his belt. They couldn’t risk radio transmissions for fear of the ship listening in so this was his lifeline to the rest of the base. It added to his difficulties as it kept getting tangled around his feet, but there wasn’t much choice. He would need to signal to the others when he was ready.
‘Anna, the rest of you, are you seeing any of this?’
‘The horrible visions? Yeah we are,’ his wife replied. ‘Try to ignore it, it’s trying to spook us.’
‘Consider me fully spooked then,’ he replied grimly and dragged himself forward.
He arrived, eventually, drenched in sweat and out of breath, at the first vent. Peering downwards through the slatted aperture he could see the bow section of the warship, gleaming coldly in the bay lighting thirty metres below. As he watched, he saw the crystalline plates move rhythmically. It was almost as if the thing were breathing. It made his skin crawl just to look at it. It was just like the ship he had seen in his nightmares for the past fifteen years.
Carefully, he removed the warhead from its box and stood it on end on the floor of the duct, then with some difficulty he unclipped the nose cone latches and removed it – the thick gloves he wore making the process difficult. The dozen fragile spheres seemed to glow in the beam of his suit light. He realised that he was breathing heavily from the tension. They were so fragile, like eggshells. If he were to break one of them...
He took a moment to calm himself and inspect the warhead. Each sphere was held in place by a small magnetic clip at its base. There was the tiniest of release buttons next to each. Isaacs could barely see the black button against its black background in the dim light. His thick gloves would make it difficult to reach one without risking damage to the sphere above. Not to mention the fact that his helmet’s faceplate was beginning the steam up as he was sweating so much, making it hard to see what he was doing. Using his little finger he carefully pressed one and was gratified when it came loose. He tipped it into his gloved hand, placed it carefully inside the box that he had carried the warhead in, then proceeded to release the other eleven. Finally, with each delicate sphere unclipped, he breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Isaacs here. I’m at the vent. I’m ready to go. Knock off the gravity.’
Almost instantly he felt himself rise slightly off the floor. Reaching carefully down he plucked one of the spheres from the box, taking care not to knock the others flying before closing the lid. He reached over and carefully pushed the sphere through the slats of the vent. When he was satisfied that it was clear he used the lever set into the side of the vent to slowly close it. On both the outside and inside, an armoured panel slid smoothly back into place to cover the vent’s metal grille. Isaacs began to slide himself away, taking the box of deadly eggshells with him.
‘Okay,’ he signalled. ‘I’m clear. Crank up the gravity.’
There was second’s pause.
The bomb fell and then it detonated across the warship’s nose. With no air in the bay, the explosion made no sound, but contained within the small space, the violence of the sudden matter-energy conversion was magnified. A storm of energy and radiation washed across the hull of the Shaper vessel.
Isaacs became aware of the successful detonation when he was flung against the ceiling of the vent by the violent jolt from the blast. Banging his head violently against the metal he struggled to keep hold of the box of warheads and simultaneously, his mind was pierced by a horrendous, enraged shriek.
There were further jolts that he felt through the metal of the duct.
He had hurt the ship. He had hurt it! He could edged back to the vent and cranked it back open and looked down. The front of the ship appeared structurally undamaged but the armoured plates around the bow had assumed a mottled appearance. The hull material had lost its lustrous shine. The vessel thrashed angrily like a trapped animal. The bay around its nose was buckled and glowed from the heat. In places the material appeared almost molten. Isaacs removed two more of the spheres from the box.
‘Okay, gravity off,’ he signalled and repeated the process of pushing the spheres through the vent then closing it.
‘Gravity on again.’
The second explosion was, as he had hoped, even more devastating, and the mental shriek from the ship as it was lashed by radiation was worse still. Isaacs gasped from the pain inside his skull. It was almost unbearable, but this time he knew that he’d really hurt the ship. He crept back and tried to open the vent. It took several tries before it would open. The grating itself glowed from the heat.
The ship’s movements had become more violent. Confused and blinded by pain and rage it was lashing out at everything around it. Evidently its hull - formed from backwards pointing spines - was preventing it from backing out of the bay. Isaacs decided to give it more of an incentive. He reached for more spheres. As he did so, the warship powered its weapons and decided to try and burn its way out of the docking bay. Isaacs saw a tell-tale shimmer build around the tip of some of the spines and somehow knew what was coming. As the gravity went off again he pushed a handful of the spheres through the vent and was halfway through sliding it closed when it jammed.
Isaacs swore. The heat from the explosion must have caused the vent cover, or its mechanism, to expand. He banged the lever furiously as the ship lashed the bay below with energy from its main guns. If one of those beams should touch even one of those tiny spheres now floating out of reach below...
The vent was truly stuck. There was nothing else for it. Isaacs decided to make a break for it. Gripping the box tightly he started to make his way back down the duct in zero-gravity. At any moment he expected a violent explosion and its accompanying dose of deadly radiation. His heart thudded in his chest, his vision was blurred from the stinging sweat that ran into his eyes.
‘Cal, this is Anna. Is everything okay? We’re going to turn up the gravity again.’
‘Give me a minute!’ he yelled into the comm. ‘I couldn’t get the vent closed! I need to get clear!’
‘Okay. But hurry up, that thing is firing its guns inside the bay!’
‘Don’t you think I know that!?’ he screamed, as the duct shook violently.
The duct stretched ahead of him, dark and seemingly endless. He shoved his weary body ever forwards until he could barely carry on, then lay panting, suspending in mid-air in zero-gee.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Do it.’
Gravity dropped him to the floor. Then the world around him lurched violently. Seconds later a scorching wind came searing down the duct, but inside his suit, Isaacs was well protected.
The half-dozen anti-matter warheads fell onto the nose of the Shaper warship and detonated as one in a blinding explosion of heat, light, and gamma radiation. The ship screamed as the bay turned molten around it and its own, graceful form was ravaged by the intense blast. It thrashed in pain and howled. Powering its engines to full reverse it forced its way back out of the bay, firing its rear facing weapons in an attempt to free itself. Bay doors fractured and bent. Delicate crystalline spines shattered. It emerged into space, a wounded thing, enraged and vengeful. Those pitiful creatures had hurt it! They would pay for that! It would leave none alive. I
t would enjoy digging them out of their hiding places and annihilating every single last one of them. It would burrow through this pitiful rock and scoop out its insides and them with it!
Powering its remaining forward guns it raked Port Royal with fire, and discovered, to its bemusement, that they had no effect, that the energy from its weapons appeared frozen in space a few metres from the surface of the base. The surviving Nahabe ship had swooped in close to the base and as the Shaper ship looked at it, it saw that fire from its companions also appeared frozen a short distance from the battered, near crippled vessel.
There was a stasis field in place encompassing the entire structure
Forty minutes later whilst it and its brethren were examining the stasis field, Port Royal suddenly vanished, leaving a core of rapidly whirling metal components. The ship, despite its anger and pain, was intrigued.
Isaacs was dragged from the duct and led back into the base where there was still atmosphere and then removed his helmet. A crowd of Hidden Hand whooped and applauded him as he sat down heavily on the nearest flat surface he could find. Anna leant over and kissed him, before starting to undo his suit’s many clasps.
‘I did it! I fucking did it!’ he gasped, wiping the sweat from his face. ‘Is it dead?’
‘Don’t think so,’ Anna replied. ‘But it left in an awful hurry.’
‘Good enough. Where did we jump to?’ he asked.
‘Achernar. We get a grandstand seat for Cox’s assault on the core systems.’
‘Great,’ Isaacs replied and wiped the sweat from his brow. ‘Out of the frying pan and into the fire.’
Chapter 39
The carrier groups hung, poised, above the pole of Achernar. The oblate star shone a brilliant blue white below them, harshly outlining the utilitarian lines of the slab-like vessels and their accompanying squadrons of warships. Each of the carrier groups was a powerful force in its own right, comprising of the large, heavily armed vessel itself and its squadrons of fighters and bombers, plus four Titan class destroyers, four Callisto defensive flak cruisers, two Europa class frigates and two Tethys class frigate variants armed with tactical missile launchers. Now, six such groups stood together to defend the Achernar system from the incoming threat.
