“How are we going to get inside if we can’t see it?” asked Chainer, once they were in the lift.
“I’m sure there’ll be someone waiting for us at the bottom, Lieutenant.”
There was a greeting party – a team of dour-faced scientists of some rank, each carrying a hand-held analysis device. “Captain Duggan, I assume?” said the lead man.
“Yes,” said Duggan. “Is it ready?” While he spoke, he looked over the man’s shoulder. From so close, the Crimson’s cloak created a shimmering in the air. He thought he could detect a high-pitched whine that he wouldn’t have otherwise associated with a spacecraft and there was the smell of something in the air, charged alloy mixed with heat.
“Whenever you are. Are these all you’re taking?”
Teron hadn’t said anything about troops – he’d told Duggan to get into the air and nothing more. “I haven’t seen the roster. If we’re the only four on it, this is everyone.”
“I’m not interested in the roster, Captain. I’m a scientist, not a gun-toting grunt.”
“Maybe you should show a bit more respect,” said Chainer, unusually bold.
Duggan held up a hand to stop any more comments. The scientist looked as if he wanted to say something else, but he saw Duggan’s face and held his tongue.
“I’ll disengage the cloak and you can go onboard,” said the man. “My team have left everything powered up and there should be no one left on the ship.”
“Thank you,” said Duggan.
The scientist lifted his tablet and made a couple of gestures. Without noise or ceremony, the ESS Crimson appeared before them, compact and laden with promises of death. From here, it was impossible to see the whole of the ship – Duggan didn’t need to; the memory was etched forever in his brain. The boarding ramp was down and he walked towards it, the ill-tempered scientist already forgotten. The others followed, their faces tilted upwards.
“Never thought I’d see this again,” said Chainer.
“Nor me,” said Duggan truthfully.
The Crimson had been subjected to extensive research since they’d recovered it over two years before. That didn’t mean it had changed much – in fact, everything looked the same. They reached the bridge, expecting to see new equipment to update the old. There were a few bits and pieces – the original monitors had been replaced and there were some additional control panels, which gleamed in bright contrast to the old.
“Not much different,” said McGlashan. “Most of this stuff is more than fifty years old now. You’d think they might want to pull it out and swap in the latest tech.”
“The interfaces are solid enough,” said Duggan. “The same basic design we’ve used for decades. It’s the back-end where the work takes place.”
The scientist was true to his word and the consoles were powered up and ready to use. Chainer dropped into his seat and scanned the facilities available to him.
“We’ve been improved,” he said. “New sensor arrays and a few more added to the total.”
“The engines are the same as they ever were,” said Breeze. “More grunt per metre cubed than anything else in the fleet.”
“Have they installed anything to protect against engine scrambling?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll let you know when I find out.”
Duggan turned to where Commander McGlashan was sitting. She stared intently at the weapons consoles, her brows lowered in thought. When she spoke, it wasn’t to let them know about their offensive capabilities.
“When do we find out where we’re going?” she asked. “The ship is ready to fly as soon as we get the word.”
“I’m waiting for Admiral Teron to give the nod.”
“Do we have to sit in the dock?”
“I suppose not,” said Duggan. “Strap yourselves in, I’ll take us into orbit.”
“I haven’t finished my pre-flight checks, sir!” said Chainer.
“You won’t need to,” said Duggan with confidence. “I can guarantee you this warship has been subjected to the most rigorous inspections you can imagine.”
With that, Duggan took his seat. The leather chair crackled beneath his weight and gripped him comfortably. The screens around him were green and each monitoring gauge settled perfectly where it should be. He’d seen spaceships fresh out of the dock with more variance in their onboard systems than this.
“Do we have clearance?”
“Absolutely,” said Chainer.
“I’m activating the autopilot,” said Duggan. He grinned. “There’s too much ground traffic to risk a manual take-off.”
The autopilot dribbled power to the engines and lifted the Crimson effortlessly off the ground – one-point-five billion tonnes of weapons, engines and armour. Up it climbed, into the darkening sky of Atlantis. The ground crews below paused to look, sensing this was a sight they might never witness again. Even the most experienced amongst them had no idea what the departing warship was – their eyes told them it was an obsolete relic from the past, fit only for the museum. A few of them guessed at the truth, without knowing why they were so sure the Crimson was far more than it appeared.
At fifty thousand kilometres, Duggan instructed the mainframe to establish an orbit.
“Not much about, sir. A few Gunners and the Proximal are in a low orbit,” said Chainer. “Is the planet safe now?”
Duggan realised he hadn’t told them anything yet. “No, Lieutenant, the planet is no safer now than it was when the Ghast fleet arrived.”
“The Dreamers?” said McGlashan, guessing easily.
“The Space Corps stats analysts believe they’re coming here.”
“Why are there hardly any warships to protect the place?” asked Chainer.
“Anything we had close enough to get here was sent against the Ghasts.” He mentally stumbled, since he wasn’t quite sure himself why there were so few spacecraft in the area. “I don’t know, is the short answer. Maybe they’ve already given up.”
“I’ve finished checking through the weapons systems,” said McGlashan, a familiar gleam of excitement in her eyes. There was something else, too – fear.
“Am I going to like what you’re about to tell me?”
McGlashan didn’t get a chance to answer.
“I’ve got Fleet Admiral Teron on the comms,” interrupted Chainer.
Duggan gave a motion to indicate he was ready to speak.
“Captain Duggan, my apologies for leaving you hanging. I see you’ve taken the Crimson up.”
Teron was very-well informed, since there was no way he could have known simply by talking over the comms. “Yes, sir. I thought it prudent to make a head-start. Can you provide us with some details of what’s expected?”
“Can your crew hear me? Never mind, they deserve to know.” The words were ominous.
“They perform better when they know what they’re facing, sir.”
“You get all the crap, Captain Duggan and this time is no exception. I trust you and I trust your crew. Atlantis is doomed, according to the reports. I’m not a man who believes in fate, which I why I’m giving you this job – if there’s anyone who can defy the odds, it’s you. I’m also not a man who gambles, but this time I’m taking a big one. You’re carrying irreplaceable hardware. I’d like it back, though in my heart I accept it’s not going to happen.”
“Sir, I thought you didn’t like beating around the bush either.”
Teron laughed with relief as he realised Duggan wasn’t going to hold anything against him for what was to come. “Quite right, John. I need you to find the Dreamer mothership and I need you to destroy it before it reaches Atlantis. There’s Gallenium on Pioneer as well – I don’t know if you’re aware. The Projections Team gave me the bad news about that planet just this morning.”
“The Crimson can’t beat the mothership, sir.”
“You have to do something. If you don’t destroy it, lure it in a different direction. Anything but let them come here.”
The recent c
onversation in Meeting Room 73 had given advance warning that something was coming, but with no indication the requirements would be quite so demanding. In his mind, Duggan had thought he was being sent on a trial run to take out one of the lesser Dreamer warships. Now he saw that Teron had given him a task which was infinitely more dangerous.
“Alone?” he asked.
“We could send every single warship we have and they’d be destroyed in minutes – seconds, even. You know this is true.”
Duggan didn’t try to deny it. “Yes, sir. I know it’s true.”
“I’m working on something. Whether it’ll happen in time, I don’t know. I can’t even say if it’ll be significant.”
There was no point in prying. Teron liked his secrets. “Where are we headed?”
“The Tillos mainframe has uploaded the details – scant as they are.”
“I can see them.”
“Good luck, Captain Duggan, to you and your crew. I thank you for the services you’ve rendered to the Space Corps.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Goodbye.”
“He’s gone,” said Chainer.
“That sounded like a farewell to people who are already dead,” said Breeze.
“It was, Lieutenant.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
DUGGAN SPENT a few moments skimming through the information which had arrived from the Tillos base. “Set a course for Kidor,” he said.
“Kidor again?” asked Breeze, entering the destination into his console.
“There’s no mothership there,” said Chainer, a glimmering of hope in his voice.
“Just a Dreamer battleship,” said McGlashan.
“It’s the one connection we have to those alien bastards,” said Duggan. “We’re going to destroy that battleship and the pyramid in the hope it brings the mothership in to take a look.”
“We’re expected to defeat their second most powerful ship in order to call out the most powerful? It doesn’t get any better, does it?” asked Chainer.
“We’ve come through worse before, Lieutenant.”
“No, we haven’t,” said McGlashan.
“You might be right,” Duggan conceded with a chuckle.
“I’m definitely right.”
“We’ve gone to lightspeed,” Breeze informed them, in case they’d missed the subtle transition. “It’ll be two days to Kidor at Light-V.”
Duggan nodded to acknowledge the information, his eyes not leaving McGlashan. “Give us a run-down on what we’re carrying, Commander. It would be nice to know what stick we have to beat our enemies with.”
“This is where it gets good,” she said. “At least if we were facing a Cadaveron it would be good.”
“Come on,” said Chainer, impatient to hear.
“There are more Lambdas than last time – we’re up to twenty-four clusters of twelve with a fast-launch option. They’ve added two more Bulwarks, taking us to twelve. It’s a new type I don’t recognize, but the manufacturing date is two months ago, so they’re fresh out of the plant.”
“What about the disruptors?”
“They’ve re-installed them. On top of that, there are eight nuke launchers and eight missiles per tube. They’re modified Lambda propulsion sections like we had on the Galactic class and the warheads have a yield of slightly more than two gigatons each.”
“Are they going to break down again?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. These are a newer revision if that provides any reassurance.”
“Not really. What else?”
“This is where it gets good and bad. The good thing is we have two Shatterer missile launchers, with eight warheads for one tube and seven for the other.”
“Why the odd number?” asked Chainer.
“I think I can guess,” said Duggan. “We’re using parts they’ve salvaged from the Ransor-D Cadaveron, or possibly that tube we pulled from Everlong.”
“Here was me hoping they’ve perfected the technology,” said Chainer. “Only to find we’re using stolen Ghast parts.”
“I assume the Shatterers were the good news,” said Duggan. “What about the bad?”
“The Planet Breaker, sir. It’s installed, unlocked and ready to use.”
“Damn,” said Chainer.
“Teron was right in more than one way when he said he was taking a gamble,” said Duggan. “If we lose the Crimson, it’ll cut off the Confederation’s access to a means of catching up with the Dreamers’ tech levels.”
“We can hope they’ve extracted enough to make blueprints in the labs,” said McGlashan.
“This is a lot of weight we’re carrying,” said Breeze.
“That we are, Lieutenant.”
Duggan sat down to think. He was accustomed to having things held back – he readily accepted he wasn’t so important that he needed to be told everything there was to be told. Here, there was no holding back. The Crimson had been loaded with every available resource available to the Space Corps. If the ship was destroyed, there was a chance it might set the weapons labs back a dozen years or more. There was something else to add to the responsibility he’d been given, which Lieutenant Breeze shortly announced.
“The Dreamer core is installed and online,” said Breeze. “I didn’t realise until I’d completed my checks.”
“Another asset we can’t possibly afford to lose,” said McGlashan.
“Atlantis is the only asset we can’t afford to lose, Commander. The Space Corps have drawn lines in the sand and it’s up to us to keep our enemy on the other side of those lines.”
McGlashan nodded to show it was something she understood. “We’ll give it our best shot.”
Duggan left the bridge and made his way to the gym. On the way, he passed through the mess area – it was strange to find it absent of life, though the smells of stale replicator food remained. The mess was usually the most frequented area of a spaceship outside of sleeping hours. Duggan couldn’t foresee a necessity for the Crimson to land but he’d been wrong before. This time there was no choice – the engagement with the enemy would have to be resolved without surface combat.
He sat on one of the gym’s two treadbikes. The rumble of its gears helped him focus his mind and although he couldn’t help but think about what lay ahead, he found he was more relaxed than he had been for a long while. He reflected that each of his recent missions had merely been part of a much greater whole. This time it was an all-or-nothing attempt to force an outcome. The odds of success weren’t good – in fact they were exceedingly poor – but there was an opportunity here to buy some time for the Confederation. He was under no illusion about what would happen if they pulled off a shock victory against the Dreamer mothership – more of the aliens would certainly follow through the wormhole. Still, it seemed unlikely they had many more warships of such overwhelming power in their fleet, so the loss of just one would give them a real bloody nose. Most importantly, the Space Corps would definitely be interested in salvaging the wreckage left behind.
“You’re daydreaming,” said a voice, cutting through his reverie.
“It was pleasant thoughts for a change, Commander,” he said.
“Wondering where to hang your medals when we come home triumphant?” she asked with a grin.
“When I’ve been given a normal mission, I concentrate on the possibility of failure. Not because I’m pessimistic, simply because I like to anticipate whatever is in my power to do so. Then I get accused of dwelling too much on failure.” He smiled. “With the odds stacked so heavily against us, I find it impossible to think about anything other than success.”
“How do we accomplish this outstanding achievement which is so clearly mapped out in your head?”
“I’ll think of something,” he said.
“Do you have a plan?” There was a note in her voice which told him she was hoping for an answer.
“I apologise if I sounded dismissive. This is a tough job we’ve been given and the fact that I’ve come
to terms with it does not mean everyone else feels the same.”
“It’s not that bad.” She ran fingers through her hair. “Maybe it’s close to being that bad. I’ve known fear and doubt in the past, but they’ve never bothered me. You’ve always got us out of trouble, John.”
“And this time you don’t think I can do it?”
“I don’t think you’ve been dealt a fair hand.”
“The player with the lowest cards can still win, Lucy.”
“If you’ve got a royal flush, you’re not going to fall for the bluff and you’re definitely not going to blink first.”
He climbed from the treadbike and looked at her. Unable to prevent himself, he reached out and pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her. She stood quietly, her face looking up at his.
“I told you I’d think of something and I will,” he said quietly.
“I don’t want to die before I get to know you,” she said.
“No promises,” he said. “Not when I can’t keep them.”
“I know. Do your best, that’s all I’m asking.”
“That’s something I can promise.”
He stepped back and held her stare. The fear remained in her eyes, but there was also determination to beat what was to come. Whatever demons she struggled with, they’d met their match in Commander McGlashan.
“I need to get back to the bridge,” he said. “Are you staying here?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve got a couple of hours left on my break and a workout on the treadbike will do me good.”
“Fine, I’ll see you back there.”
He headed along the twisting, turning corridors of the ESS Crimson. The hum of the engines was soothing and he ran his fingertips along the smooth alloy walls as he went. He fancied he could sense the warship’s eagerness to face battle – like it was straining to be unleashed upon whichever opponents the crew faced. There was many a captain who succumbed to the lure of attributing human desires to their spaceships. Duggan usually felt attuned, but not to the degree he did at that moment. He asked himself if his new-found feelings for Commander McGlashan had opened his mind, or if it was simply because he was certain that death awaited them in the coming days.
Fires of Oblivion (Survival Wars Book 4) Page 19
