Crimson Tempest

by Anthony James

  “It was top military kit - grade A advanced. Stuff that we’d not put on a ship before or even thought to put on a ship. A lot of it was theoretical at the time – a new branch of tech that had enough funding poured into it to have paid off the cost of building the Juniper twice over.”

  Duggan let out a low whistle. “I’ve not heard any of this before. That means it was either unimportant or top secret. I’m sure I’m not sitting here because it was unimportant. Why was there only one built?”

  “Cutbacks. This was before the Ghast war started. I guess the paymasters decided that we didn’t need to be pouring fifteen percent of the total military budget into something new and unproven.”

  “Why’d they even start it in the first place?” asked Duggan.

  “When times are good, we build. When times are lean, we look to where we can save money.” Teron shrugged as if it were of little consequence. “Besides, there were lots of benefits to the project in terms of fission drive improvements, missile tech and hull design. Those Lambda missiles you’re carrying on the Detriment? You can thank the Hynus project for that. More than half of our current armaments and weaponry are rooted in the Hynus project. It’s the main reason why the Ghasts haven’t reached Earth yet.”

  “Hynus project?”

  “That’s what they called it. The Hynus project was eventually meant to produce more than twenty ships.”

  Duggan shook his head at what sounded like a short-sighted approach to humanity’s defences. “They shut it down? And you still haven’t said what happened to the Crimson.”

  “It vanished on its maiden voyage. One minute it was there, the next it stopped broadcasting. We sent ships to search for it, but there was no sign. The Crimson was faster than anything else in the Corps at the time and it was a long trip for the search crews to get far enough out to look. They were unsuccessful and it was deemed that some of the more experimental hardware on board had failed, resulting in the ship’s destruction. Fortunately, it was unmanned at the time so there were no awkward questions to answer that might cause unwanted people to start sniffing around for the existence of the Hynus project. That was fifty-three years ago.”

  Something didn’t add up and Duggan couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. “Why is this important now?” he asked.

  “We’ve had contact from the Crimson. One of the vets on Monitoring Station Alpha picked up a transmission from it, telling us to prepare for war.”

  “A legit signal?”

  “One-hundred percent, copper-bottomed legit.”

  “What did it mean prepare for war?” asked Duggan.

  “We don’t know. The transmission was terminated before the men on the Alpha could get more details. The Crimson cut itself off, stating the channel wasn’t secure. We’ve had no further response.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “You’ve been instructed to find the Crimson. We’ve traced its signal to a system of planets in Karnius-12.”

  “Why me, sir?”

  “It won’t just be you. You’ll be taking the Detriment, her crew and her soldiers. The thing is, we’ve not had a presence out there for many years – ever since the Ghasts drove us back. There are few resource planets anywhere close, but the Ghasts might still have patrols.” Teron stared intently across. “We need that information. What have the Crimson’s sensors picked up? It could be nothing, or it could have important intel on what the Ghasts are planning. We just don’t know.”

  “Sounds like a wild goose chase.”

  Teron ignored the comment. “There’s more - I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but we’re going to lose the Axion sector. Within the year. The Confederation has increased our funding, but we’ve been playing catch-up for several years. We can’t turn out new ships nearly fast enough to replace the ones we’re losing. The Ghasts have the numbers and now their newest ships have the edge on ours. Total war, John. They’ve been waging it, while we’ve been sitting on our hands.”

  “I’ve seen what it’s like out there, sir. They’re really pushing us. I didn’t know it was that bad. We’ve just come away from an engagement with a Ghast light cruiser with some sort of weapon that knocked our systems out totally for a full minute. On something as small as a light cruiser of all things.”

  “We know about their new tech, Captain Duggan. It’s why we’re going to lose Axion. Their disruptors are only one example out of several. They’ve got beam weapons that can melt our engines from over a hundred thousand klicks. New missiles that are up there with our latest. It’s like they’ve jumped decades ahead of us. Our intel guys have no idea how they’ve advanced so quickly. We’re working on countermeasures, but it’s not looking good. We might live through this if we’re given time. If the Crimson has information, then we need to do our utmost to find out what it is.”

  “Charistos and Angax are in Axion, aren’t they? How many billions of people live there?”

  “A little over three billion across the two planets. It’s only a matter of time till the Ghasts discover them.”

  “What do you think they’ll do?”

  “I don’t know - we’ve never been faced with the question before. Perhaps they will try and impose their own leadership.” Teron looked into the distance. “Do you remember what they did to that mining planet out in Late Ganymede?”

  Duggan did remember. It was something that had reverberated across the Confederation and finally made people sit up and take notice. “They dropped something into the atmosphere. A bomb of some sort that we’d never seen before.”

  “Yes they did. It scorched twenty percent of the planet’s surface and killed almost everyone who was living there. Over a million people – gone, just like that.”

  Duggan shifted uncomfortably in his seat at the memory. “How many of their ships are carrying this new weaponry you mentioned? They caught the Detriment pretty easily with it.”

  “One in four maybe, but that’s only for the moment. We’re only going to see more of it. You’ve already seen that it doesn’t make them invincible. However, it can turn the tide and that’s going to be enough.”

  “Maybe if I hadn’t been sent out to the frontiers I’d know all this.”

  Teron had the good grace to look pained. “People are still pissed at you. Important people.”

  “Damnit, the Tybalt was eleven years ago!” Duggan shouted, banging his fist on the table. He’d once captained an Anderlecht cruiser. As an up-and-coming young officer, he’d always been tipped for greatness. An explosion in the Tybalt’s weapons systems had put an end to that and consigned Duggan to a dead-end role on one of the Space Corps’ smallest warships. He’d been cleared by a court martial, which was the only thing that had stopped him being kicked out of the Corps in disgrace. It hadn’t been enough to save his career.

  “Nothing will change. You know that.”

  Duggan leaned back in his seat and sighed. “So, you need me to pilot a ship to Karnius-12, find out what happened to the Crimson, and discover what it meant by telling us to prepare for war?”

  “There’s more to it than that - we need you to bring her back. Intact if possible, so that our technicians can interrogate the ship’s databanks. It’s imperative that you attempt to recover the vessel. Do you understand?”

  Duggan stared back at Teron. “This is wrong, sir. It’s going to be in pieces spread across a thousand kilometres of rock, or floating in space somewhere. And I’ll bet I could download the entire contents of a mainframe as old as the Crimson’s onto a cube the size of my thumb. Why do we need it back?”

  “I haven’t been given that information, Captain. I have my orders, too.”

  Duggan stood, the glare from the room’s monitoring screens casting a multitude of shadows across his face. “How long?” he asked.

  “Now. Your ship and your crew will leave immediately.”

  “We’ve got a big hole in the hull.”

  “The Juniper’s repair bots are fixing a patch over it as we s
peak. It won’t look pretty.”

  “And we lost three the men.”

  “Their families will be notified. I’ve had another three assigned to your ship. Good men.”

  Duggan left the room. Nothing was looking pretty about this mission.

  Chapter Four

  Duggan returned to the Detriment in Hangar Bay 1, which was a vast, open space enclosed by huge sheets of reinforced alloy. The Juniper had never been intended as a military launch platform, but each of her three bays could comfortably accommodate an Anderlecht class cruiser if needed. It wasn’t uncommon to see one docked and the Juniper was guarded by three such ships in near space at all times. The Detriment was looking somewhat worse for wear, scarred and pocked, with the snub nose blackened from too many sub-light catapults through the atmospheres of the planets she’d fought on.

  Hangar Bay 1 was surprisingly empty of personnel – here and there, Duggan saw technicians, carrying hand-held scanners which could analyse the integrity of a ship’s hull in precise detail. The onboard mainframe could do most of this stuff these days, but the Juniper’s AIs were always good for a second opinion – they had vastly more processing grunt than what was available to the Detriment’s almost obsolete silicon-based systems. The Detriment was perched on its five squat legs, with its retractable boarding ramp fully extended. Duggan walked around to the rear quarter of the spacecraft. The thirty-metre gouge in the armour plating had been plugged in the usual fashion. Quick-fix repairs were done by squirting molten alloy into the hole. The ship’s engines could disperse the heat in minutes, leaving the alloy to cool and harden quickly, while the repair bots pressed the patch into shape when it was still malleable. It looked as ugly as Duggan had expected.

  He approached the boarding ramp. Two men were stationed at the bottom, slender gauss rifles clutched diagonally across their chests, as if they’d been frozen in the middle of a parade ground exercise.

  “Sir!” they exclaimed in unison.

  “Turner, Jackson,” Duggan greeted them. “Get yourselves to quarters. We’re leaving at once.”

  “Sir?”

  “I’m expecting three replacements. Have they shown up?”

  “Sir, they came aboard less than an hour ago. Sergeant Ortiz is looking after them.”

  “I’m sure she is,” Duggan replied, walking past the two men. They fell in behind him.

  There was no reason to leave a guard here on the Juniper. Duggan had felt obliged – life as one of the fifteen infantry onboard a Vincent class was as perilous as could be imagined, so he made every effort to keep them occupied. Every Corps warship carried soldiers under the ultimate command of the vessel’s captain. The Ghasts liked to get planetside and murder humans every now and again, particularly on the mining outposts where an aerial bombardment would accomplish little. The best way to combat a Ghast incursion was to get down there and shoot right back at them. The real downside for the infantry was that ship-to-ship contact involving something as small as a Vincent class almost invariably ended in the complete destruction of one vessel or the other, with the soldiers on board powerless to do anything other than await whatever would come. It could be a shitty job sometimes and Duggan knew all about it.

  When he reached the bridge, Duggan checked and found the Detriment’s arsenal had already been restocked. A hull status update from the Juniper reported that the patched-up hole had cooled sufficiently for them to lift off. Duggan checked the crew roster to see if anyone had disembarked. He’d given no permission for anyone to leave and was pleased to see that he wouldn’t have to go looking for AWOLs. The ship hadn’t docked in weeks and it wasn’t unreasonable for the crew to think they might get a bit of shore leave. There was more bad news to come for them.

  “Where’s Commander McGlashan?” he asked Breeze.

  “Gym, of course.” It was where she spent the majority of her spare time.

  Duggan sent a message for her to attend the bridge and she appeared within minutes, sweat beading upon her bare shoulders and neck.

  “We’re going again already?” she asked. It was no secret, since the Detriment’s engines were already thrumming in readiness to depart. “I should have guessed when they sent every repair bot on the Juniper over to see us.”

  “You’d best get ready,” he said, giving away nothing. McGlashan looked at him for a moment before shrugging. She wasn’t in uniform yet, but Duggan didn’t want to wait. He pointed at her seat and she took the hint.

  On the view screens, Duggan watched as Hangar Bay One became flooded in a deep orange light, which cycled on and off. He knew there’d be sirens, which thankfully weren’t piped through to the bridge. When the Juniper’s sensors had decided there was no one left in the bay, the four hangar doors slowly uncoupled and slid smoothly into recesses in the orbital’s walls. There was another space beyond – an enormous airlock protected by reinforced doors.

  On the bridge, everyone took their seats even though it wasn’t strictly necessary. Space flight had been choppy in the dim and distant past. Now it was rarely more violent than a slight feeling of movement – akin to being in a lift and even that was something which the ship’s life support systems fought to suppress. On the newest ships, there was nothing to betray whether the vessel was accelerating, slowing or not moving at all.

  The image on the viewing screens began to move as the Detriment lifted. Duggan gave the autopilot instruction for it to rotate the nose towards the hangar doors. He didn’t need to turn the ship at all – he was just programmed this way in some anachronistic acknowledgement that humans needed to feel like they were travelling forwards. When necessary the vessel could fly in any direction it chose.

  The Detriment sailed out through the airlock, gathering speed steadily. There were limits on how much thrust the ship’s pilot could utilise so close to the orbital and Duggan was careful not to exceed them. It was unlikely that such a small ship’s gravity drive could knock the Juniper even a centimetre off its ellipsis, but there was no point in overstepping the mark so soon after the arrival which had pissed off the AI. Behind them, the airlock doors closed as quickly as they’d opened, leaving no visible seam to mark where they were. Even with the thrust limits, it wasn’t long until Duggan could see the entirety of the Juniper, against the cold blue background of Kryptes-9. Soon, the orbital was little more than a speck as the Detriment gathered pace.

  “Deep fission engines coming online, Captain,” said Breeze. “The Juniper’s fed us the coordinates.” He frowned as he saw where they were heading. Beneath their feet, there was the familiar rumbling shudder as the vessel prepared to begin the journey.

  “Anderlechts Delectable and Deeper hailing us good voyage, Captain,” said Chainer.

  “What about the Thunder?” asked Duggan.

  “There are only two ships within sensor range, Captain,” said Chainer in puzzlement. “Are you expecting more?”

  “There should be three,” said Duggan.

  “Captain, the Thunder was destroyed by Ghast forces in the Glimmer Nebula over ten months ago,” said McGlashan, calling up the details on one of her screens. “She was carrying troops.”

  Duggan exhaled loudly. “How many?”

  “Over seventeen thousand dead,” said McGlashan.

  “What a waste,” was all he could think of to say. It didn’t sound like enough.

  “Aye, Captain. As it ever was.”

  “Deep fission engines ready,” prompted Breeze.

  “Let’s be on our way,” growled Duggan, steeling himself for the sensation of dislocation.

  “Lightspeed-H attained,” said Breeze a few moments later. “Holding steady.”

  “Please confirm all systems operational,” said Duggan.

  “Weapons systems online and at one hundred percent,” said McGlashan. “Guidance systems, life support at ninety-nine point nine-nine. Propulsion systems at forty percent and climbing. Everything within expected parameters.”

  “Next stop, Karnius-12 system,” announced Du
ggan.

  “I’m seeing a ten week and three-day time to reach our destination,” said Breeze. He didn’t even try to hide the dismay.

  McGlashan swore. She caught herself. “Sorry, Captain. I didn’t know we were going that far out.”

  Duggan was sympathetic, but he couldn’t let on. The crew would be pissed and he didn’t blame them – many of them were due leave. They’d been properly stitched up. That’s the Space Corps for you, he thought.

  “What’re we looking for, sir? If you don’t mind me asking.” said Chainer. “Is it something to do with that repair bot they’ve loaded into the hold?”

  “I don’t mind, Lieutenant,” Duggan replied, unaware about the existence of the repair robot until that very moment. “We’re hoping to find something that’s been lost for fifty-three years. A ship. It’s holding data that will let us know how much crap humanity is about to find itself in.” The other three occupants of the bridge stared at him dumbly. He returned their looks for a time, before he continued. “If someone’s going to put their life on the line, they should know what they’re doing it for,” he said. “Get everyone to the mess room. I’ll fill you in with what I know.”

  Within ten minutes, the small contingent of crew and infantry were crowded into the mess room. The infantry didn’t look happy and they stared at him expectantly. Duggan picked out the three new faces at once. They were younger than he’d expected. When everyone had arrived, Duggan stood up in order to address them.

  “I know you’re all wondering why we didn’t stay long at the Juniper. We’ve been given an important mission and it’s going to screw up any hope you might have of getting some time away from the Detriment.” Across the room, voices were raised in barely-contained anger and frustration.

  “I’ve not had any leave for nearly two years,” said Nelson. He was medium height and wiry, with a scar running diagonally over his left eye.

  Duggan looked back at Nelson, meeting the man’s gaze evenly. “I understand that, Soldier. We’ve been sent to look for something. It’s over ten weeks away in Karnius-12.” The complaints were louder this time and Duggan was forced to wave the infantry to silence.