Fractured Horizons (Savage Stars Book 2)

by Anthony James

  “This is going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack, sir.”

  “I know – do what you can.” Recker twisted in his seat. “Lieutenant Eastwood, I need to be sure that the synch algorithm didn’t screw with something else that we don’t know about. We weren’t the slowest warship in the fleet, so maybe we did somehow arrive early instead of late.”

  “I don’t think there’s any doubt, sir, but I’ll go over the propulsion output logs.”

  Recker left his crew to get on with it. He itched to help, but he was needed at the controls. Even though the local area scans had turned up nothing, Recker didn’t want his ship taken out in a surprise attack. Normally, he wouldn’t have considered it likely, but with the mission task force apparently missing, he didn’t want to discount any possibility, no matter how remote.

  “The timings are worse than we thought,” said Eastwood eventually. “If we assume a straight one percent reduction in our propulsion output and work that across the expected flight duration, we could be as much as 138 minutes later than the rest of the fleet.”

  “And that one percent loss in output translates directly to a one percent increase in travel time?”

  “Well, it’s a little more than one percent,” said Eastwood. “On top of that, we’re not down an exact one percent on our maximum propulsion – it’s more like a 0.98 percent reduction. When you throw it all together, it ends up at 138 minutes.” He looked pained.

  “What else, Lieutenant?”

  “When it comes to the interaction between the synch algorithms and our own processing core, things start to get fuzzy. We thought we were two minutes late, but the timer itself has been wrong from the outset. We could be more than 138 minutes late or less than 138 minutes late and I can’t give you a definite answer one way or the other.”

  “This was always a ten-day journey,” said Burner.

  “But when you say ten days, what you could mean is nine days and fifteen hours. Or ten days and six hours. Humans talk in round numbers and rely on the computers to keep track of the specifics.”

  Burner opened his mouth and then closed it again. He scratched his head. “Things went wrong and we don’t know how badly.”

  “It’s likely we got here a little more than two hours after the rest of the fleet,” said Eastwood. “All that other stuff I said was just the possibilities.”

  “Let’s work on two hours,” said Recker. “As you said, humans get on better with round numbers. I don’t plan to come much closer than this to Pinvos for a while, so if it turns out that we’re actually early, then we’ll see the rest of the fleet when it gets here.”

  “I hope we’re early, sir. I really do,” said Eastwood.

  “Me too, Lieutenant. Keep working on the figures and see what comes out.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Commander Aston, Lieutenant Burner, it’s down to you. Find something and tell me we’re not alone out here.”

  “Since we’re here to investigate Pinvos, that’s where I’m concentrating my efforts, sir,” said Burner. “The planet isn’t large, but the surface is rough and there’s still a lot of ground to cover.”

  “And it’s not easy from 25 million klicks. I know how it is,” said Recker. “The transmission from Oldis led us here, so there’s a good chance you’re going to find another tenixite converter.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve been searching for a pattern of cylindrical holes. Those should be easier to spot than the cylinder itself.”

  “Don’t forget we didn’t see any holes on Etrol.”

  “I reckon that was a dead node,” said Aston. “Either that or it was never called upon to activate its depletion burst.”

  Recker didn’t have an opinion one way or another. Certainly if the Etrol node had failed, it meant the Daklan were in possession of non-functioning hardware and that could only be a good thing.

  “You don’t suppose our fleet was destroyed by a depletion burst, do you?” said Eastwood. “I didn’t want to be the one to ask.”

  “I already considered that same question, Lieutenant. Remember that the Oldis converter didn’t fire until we instructed it from the command station.”

  “It performed an automatic core override on the Daklan shuttle, sir. The cylinder wasn’t all manually controlled.”

  Recker hadn’t forgotten. The core override had knocked the enemy craft out of the air without causing any outwardly apparent damage, leaving him to guess as to what effect the weapon had on its target.

  Two hours went by. The missing fleet didn’t turn up and neither Burner nor Aston located anything significant using the sensors.

  “There’s a chance I missed something,” said Burner. “But given the circumstances, maybe we’d be safer trying for a long-distance scan of the current blind side.”

  “That would mean a lightspeed jump or a long time on the sub-light engines,” said Recker.

  “Or we could stay where we are, sir,” said Aston. “If the fleet arrives, we’ll see the clustered ternium clouds from here.”

  “I don’t think they’re coming, Commander. I think they got here ahead of us and something happened.”

  “If there’s wreckage, we might not find it,” said Burner. “All depending on size of debris and post-destruction trajectory.”

  “Or they were turned into dust by a depletion burst and the tenixite converter got taken blind side by the planet’s rotation,” said Eastwood.

  Recker grimaced. He had plenty of variables to consider and he wasn’t yet sure how he was going to play this one. Having witnessed the effects of the depletion burst on Oldis, he was ready to accept that the weapon could turn an entire fleet into particles so small that the Expectation would never locate them – particularly from this range.

  Aside from a depletion burst, the Daklan were a second possibility. If the aliens were here with sufficient strength, they could have taken out the HPA fleet. In which case, there’d be wreckage, which may or may not be spread across a few million kilometres. Depending on the lateness of the Expectation’s arrival, some of that debris might have impacted with Pinvos and with sufficient velocity to leave visible cratering.

  He growled in anger and wished things were clearer.

  “A lightspeed jump will leave a ternium cloud that increases our visibility to enemy ships a thousand-fold,” he said at last. “It’s a risk I’m unwilling to take – not yet. We’re heading in on the sub-lights – directly for the planet.”

  “That’s a five-and-a-half-hour journey,” said Eastwood.

  “We’re not going all the way, Lieutenant. I’ll aim for twenty million – maybe a bit closer. If the fleet doesn’t arrive in that time, we can say with near certainty that they’re either not coming or they got here first.”

  “At twenty million we’ll achieve better scan results,” said Burner. “It won’t be perfect.”

  “I’ve got faith in you, Lieutenant.”

  With his decision made, Recker fed in the power and the Expectation accelerated to its maximum velocity of 1300 kilometres per second. Thoughts of the overstress device jumped into his head, but he wasn’t even tempted to give the new hardware a trial run.

  After ten minutes, Burner spotted something on the sensors.

  “What the hell?” he said.

  “I need details, not questions, Lieutenant.”

  “I caught a hint of a moving object between us and the planet, sir. With the sensors at maximum zoom, they don’t track too well and I’m doing what I can to establish a lock.”

  “How far away is it?”

  “I’d guess it’s two million klicks over Pinvos, sir.”

  “That’s got to be one of our ships,” said Eastwood. “Or a Daklan one.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Burner. “I’m not sure what it was.”

  Recker didn’t like the unexplained and he felt a rising sense of alarm. “I’ll bring us to a halt,” he said. “Until I know more about that object, we’re not going in any closer than this.�
��

  “I’ve got a lock on it, sir. Whatever it is, it’s huge and travelling fast along a high orbital track around Pinvos. Altitude confirmed at two million klicks and I’m putting it up on the screen.”

  An object appeared on the bulkhead screen. Recker couldn’t think of a more precise way to describe the peculiarly shaped mass of dark grey that sped around the planet. Burner’s assertion that the discovery was huge seemed like an understatement – if this was a spaceship, it was several times the mass of anything in the HPA or Daklan fleets.

  “Can you enhance?” he asked.

  “That is enhanced, sir. The clarity will increase if we get closer.”

  “How fast is it going?” said Recker.

  “Approximately 870 klicks per second, sir.”

  “It could be a spaceship,” said Aston. “Or a satellite.”

  “If it’s a satellite it could reach that velocity with the help of a gravity slingshot,” said Eastwood. “Otherwise whoever built it fitted enormous propulsion modules.”

  “Estimating the mass based on the density of ternium and the dimensions of the object, it could weigh upwards of two hundred billion tons,” said Burner. “And that’s being conservative.”

  At first, Recker’s brain didn’t want to believe. This mission had come with the intention of finding alien artifacts – weapons to be precise – so he knew he shouldn’t be surprised to discover something out of the ordinary.

  “How long before it’s out of sight again?” he asked.

  “Approximately fifteen minutes. It’s got a two-hour orbital period and I didn’t detect it straightaway.”

  For once, Recker was stumped about what to do and he drummed his fingers, aware that a window to act might be slipping away. “A two-hour orbit means that whatever that thing is, it might have been on this side of the planet when our fleet came out of lightspeed.”

  “If the timings were right, our fleet could have arrived in the path of the object we’re tracking, though at a much greater altitude,” said Eastwood.

  “I’d have called those timings wrong, Lieutenant,” said Recker, becoming increasingly convinced that the missing fleet had been destroyed and that this object was responsible.

  “We should let it go, sir,” said Aston. “That’ll give us two hours to scan the planet’s surface for anything we might have missed. Then we should consider a lightspeed jump to the blind side and resume scanning.”

  “What about the object?” said Burner in surprise.

  “We’ll deal with it when we’re ready. I’m proposing we avoid a potential confrontation until we’re ready.”

  “It’s the strangest damn satellite I ever saw,” said Burner. “Whatever we find out about it, I don’t think we’re going to like the answers.”

  “When was it ever different?” asked Recker. “Here’s what’s going to happen – we’ll let the satellite go on its way. A two-hour orbit gives us enough time to finish our intended approach to twenty million klicks.”

  “That means we’ll be a minimum distance of eighteen million from the satellite,” said Burner. “It’s got such a high orbital track that it’ll be further away for much of the visibility window.”

  “Yes. We should be in place in plenty of time for you to determine exactly what it is.”

  “Eighteen million klicks might not be close enough, sir.”

  Recker offered a concession. “What about fifteen million?”

  “If you’re offering fifteen, that’ll have to be good enough. Whatever we’ve found, it probably destroyed our ships and we owe it to the HPA to find out what we can.”

  “Well said, Lieutenant.”

  Recker took the controls and resumed the approach to Pinvos. The Expectation’s sensors tracked the satellite for as long as possible, until it vanished around the planet’s blind side. Once the object was gone, the tension which had crept up on Recker lessened significantly and he exhaled loudly.

  Halfway into the journey, Lieutenant Burner came up with a discovery that shocked everyone.

  “Sir, I’ve been studying the recorded feed of the satellite,” he said. “You’re not going to believe this.”

  “I can’t leave my seat, Lieutenant. You’ll have to spell it out for me.”

  “I told you it was the strangest satellite I ever saw and that got me thinking. I manipulated the feed recording and tested a few hypotheses, and I believe it’s a collection of different objects, rather than just one.”

  “I don’t understand the significance,” said Recker.

  “Let me explain, sir. Once I came up with that conclusion, I tried to break the whole into its component parts and I believe it comprises nine separate objects. Spaceships.”

  Recker suddenly realized where Burner was heading with this. “The missing part of the task force comprises only six members, Lieutenant.”

  “I know that, sir, but I’ve been able to produce a rough estimate of the mass and dimensions. One of the components is the Titan. I’m sure of it. Two of the others conform to the dimensions of a Teron class cruiser.”

  “And the others?”

  “The Trojan and our destroyers. I could be totally wrong about this, but I thought I should let you know.”

  “Assuming you’re correct, that leaves three you haven’t mentioned,” said Recker.

  “Desolators, sir. Three components are the same approximate size as Daklan heavy cruisers.”

  Recker had no idea if Burner had added two and two, and come up with fifty-six, but the whole idea of these warships being somehow bound together on an orbit of Pinvos only added to the mystery of the situation.

  “We’ll find out soon, Lieutenant.”

  “I guess we will, sir.”

  The Expectation flew on.

  Chapter Six

  At seventeen million kilometres from Pinvos, Recker brought the destroyer to a halt. The satellite should have been visible for the last twenty minutes, but Burner was having a hard time locating it.

  “I don’t know where it is, sir,” he admitted. “It’s easy enough to predict where it’ll emerge from the planet’s cusp and it was travelling at a constant velocity, but it’s not where it should be.”

  “Could it have shifted orbit?” said Aston suddenly.

  “That would explain why we haven’t located the target,” Burner nodded.

  “I’ll move my search radius to the north-west, Lieutenant. Let’s see if I’m right.”

  “And I’ll go south-west.”

  A few seconds later, Aston located the satellite. “Got it. I don’t know what the hell happened, but it’s on a different orbital track. Same altitude and velocity as before. Our current distance to the target is eighteen million klicks.”

  “Get me a feed,” said Recker. “I don’t like this at all.”

  “Here we go.”

  At eighteen million kilometres, the feed was noticeably cleaner than it had been from twenty-three million and when he studied it, Recker was left in no doubt that Lieutenant Burner’s theory was far from madness.

  “You were right, Lieutenant. I can see the individual shapes of the warships and for some reason they’re all aligned the same way.”

  “Yes, sir and I believe they’re arranged in a rough sphere. There’re approximately twenty klicks between each of the spaceships and I’m certain those last three are Daklan heavies. Either that or they’re a different sort of warship with near-identical mass and dimensions.”

  “It’s possible they’re something else,” said Eastwood. “The existence of the Vengeance means these new aliens had – or have - a fleet of their own.”

  “If any of our ships are receiving comms, they’re not responding,” said Burner. “Which means they’re either completely out of power or…” He tailed off.

  “Or their crews are dead, Lieutenant. Let’s not sugar-coat what it is we’re up against.” Recker didn’t take his eyes off the feed. “If those hulls form a sphere, what’s in the centre?”

  “The sensors
aren’t detecting anything, sir.”

  “That’s not the same as there being nothing to locate.”

  “No.”

  “Lieutenant Burner, concentrate your efforts on the imagined centre. If there’s something inside that sphere with advanced sensor deflection, I’d like to know what it is,” said Recker. “Commander Aston, check out the surface. Find what there is to be found.”

  “Anything capable of holding nine warships in place and hurling them around a planet at 870 klicks per second isn’t going to fit inside a teacup, sir,” said Eastwood. “It’s going to be bigger than big.”

  “In which case it should be easy to find.” Recker had another thought. “Lieutenant Eastwood, is there any way to obtain hull readings from those warships?”

  “Not from here, sir. You’re thinking this is a core override.”

  “Maybe. The Vengeance was brought down by an override. It was like the off switch had been pushed at the same time as all the onboard systems were returned to how they were before the software was configured.”

  “What we’re seeing could fit in with that,” said Eastwood.

  “Which means we could suffer the same outcome if we get too close,” said Burner. “Did the technical teams find out anything from their examination of the Vengeance that we could use?”

  “No,” said Recker. “There was no trace of the override – like it happened and that was it. No audit logs, no nothing.”

  “If those ships were shut down, how come they ended up so neatly arrayed?”

  Recker shook his head. “That’s something I can’t answer, Commander, and I would dearly like it to be otherwise.”

  “If we’re up against an alien weapon, it would be good to have an idea of the activation range as well,” said Burner. He cursed in frustration. “Too many unknowns.”

  The satellite sped around its orbital track, coming steadily closer to the fifteen-million-kilometre minimum. While the Expectation’s crew had lost a few minutes’ visibility because of the orbital shift, the object wouldn’t be out of sight for a while yet.

  As Recker watched, one of the smaller shapes – a destroyer if the theory was correct - detached from the cluster. It accelerated at an incredible rate until it reached a peak velocity of three thousand kilometres per second, heading directly away from Pinvos. A moment later, the second destroyer followed.