Survival Wars Books 1-3

Crimson Tempest, Bane of Worlds, Chains of Duty

Anthony James

© 2018 Anthony James

All rights reserved

The right of Anthony James to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed upon the subsequent purchaser

Cover Design by Dan Van Oss www.covermint.design

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Contents

Survival Wars Books 1-3

Crimson Tempest

Bane of Worlds

Chains of Duty

Survival Wars Books 1-3

CRIMSON TEMPEST

Fifty-three years after it vanished, Earth's only Super-Devastator warship, the ESS Crimson sends out a distress signal...

Humanity is fighting against an implacable foe. The Ghasts – a ruthless alien race - seem hell-bent on wiping out mankind. They have a vast warfleet and their technology is advancing at a terrible rate.  Captain John Nathan Duggan and his crew are given a mission – find the missing ESS Crimson and bring it home. Little does Duggan realise, this is no ordinary mission. As he struggles against enemies both within and without, he desperately tries to unlock the mystery surrounding the Crimson’s disappearance and the unknown weapons it carries. He soon discovers the missing warship might be the only hope for salvation that mankind has left. When everything is veiled in secrecy nothing is easy, as Duggan is about to find out.

BANE OF WORLDS

Following his successful mission to recover the missing warship ESS Crimson, Captain John Duggan finds himself unredeemed in the eyes of his superiors. His duties resume and this time he’s given something easy - escort a cargo ship to a distant planet and bring it home safely. But war is never so predictable and a straightforward mission becomes something much more important. The outcome may well determine the future of humanity. Someone has terrible plans for the ESS Crimson and Duggan is about to find himself party to endless destruction. Even as worlds die, a new threat is waiting on the horizon.

CHAINS OF DUTY

For Captain John Duggan, it seems like war never ends. Each success brings another mission and more death. Following events at the Helius Blackstar, Duggan is given the Space Corps’ newest warship – a heavy cruiser armed to the teeth with the latest weapons and technology. A prospector craft, the SC Lupus, has gone missing and his superiors want to find out what happened and the aggressors dealt with accordingly. The wrecked spaceship is soon found. However, nothing is as it seems. What Duggan finds on a distant planet turns everything on its head. With the survival of humanity potentially in the balance, Duggan – a man forever chained by duty – is required to take the biggest risk of all. The man who has faced everything is about to come up against an opponent he cannot possibly defend himself against.

Crimson Tempest

Survival Wars Book 1

© 2017 Anthony James

All rights reserved

The right of Anthony James to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed upon the subsequent purchaser

Cover Design by Dan Van Oss www.covermint.design

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An Unnamed Planet, Karnius-12 System

Year 31 of the Human-Ghast War.

The repair bot had been busy for a long time. It was slow and methodical, blessed with an infinite patience. For over fifty years it had been working on a single task, which was to bring the vessel’s mainframe back online. The damage was extensive, but the robot continued unabated even though it was almost out of power. It hadn’t been programmed with anything as pointless as human emotions to make it care about how long it took, or even whether or not it would be successful. All it could do was go through the trillions of tiny steps required to bring the ship’s main computer systems to an operational state. Given the time and the materials, the robot could have constructed a completely fresh core, though its power cell would have decayed long before it could accomplish such a monumental task. There was a second core hiding behind the first. This core was almost undamaged, though it was unable to access any of the spacecraft’s systems except by routing through the first. It waited with patience.

Success came without witness. On the ship’s main bridge, a screen winked briefly into life, before fading again. A different screen illuminated, a hundred billion lines of code scrolling up and vanishing in the blinking of an eye. Deep within the ship, the mainframe became semi-aware again. The screen on the bridge flickered and then went out – the ship’s core wasn’t wasteful and it didn’t need to expend even this infinitesimally small amount of energy. The bridge screens were for human pilots and this ship hadn’t carried a crew.

For the next three seconds, it checked the status of the onboard systems. There was extensive damage to almost every system and subsystem. The single remaining repair bot had the primary task of repairing the core, with the propulsion, weapons and life support systems a lower priority. As such, there was little the mainframe could do for the moment. The transmission systems were offline – damaged, but the ship considered that it could re-route power away from the primary, secondary and tertiary communications systems, in order to activate the emergency antenna. The concern was, the emergency system lacked the capability to broadcast with full encryption.

The ESS Crimson ran through the possibilities and decided the risk was worthwhile. It sent the signal and waited for a response.

Chapter One

The game of cat and mouse had lasted almost two days. So far, the damaged Ghast light cruiser – a Kraven class - had managed to keep the gas giant Gyer-12 between itself and the pursuing ship ES Detriment. It was a dangerous game for all parties. The two ships weren’t built for extended periods in low orbit and the snub nose of the Detriment’s hull glowed a dull orange from the heat of the planet and the blossoming clouds of silicate which spilled thousands of kilometres above the tempestuous surface.

Captain John Nathan Duggan was standing on the cramped bridge, embedded deep within the five-hundred-and-twenty metre length of the Vincent class warship. Gunners was the nickname given to them by their crew. They were an ancient design, yet modular and easy to patch in new technology, which was enough to keep hundreds of these workhorses still in service. There was something glorious about serving on ships like this and their crews had the shortest expected lifespan of anyone in the Space Corps. It either made them proud enough to fight like demons, or they tried to get a placement elsewhere. Many grew to love working on the Gunners and if they’d been offered a transfer to a Hadron class, they’d turn the chance down. There was something about fighting on the edge that appealed to certain people and they’d never want to serve elsewhere.

There were no windows on the bridge – a single long screen against the bulkhead projected a 360-degree view of everything around the vessel, whilst displays and readouts flashed with continuously-updated status reports. There was only just about room for four people, with the cracked leather seats giving no illusion of comfort. An ancient design flaw, never fixed on subsequent revisions of the Vincent class, meant that the air conditioning wasn’t strong enough to keep the bridge at anything like an acceptable temperature. It was hot and the air carried tangy odours of oil, grease and electricity.

Duggan wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. He was angry – furious almost, that the Ghast ship had evaded them for so long.

“What the hell do they think they’re playing at?” he asked, not for the first time. He wasn’t expecting an answer and got none. “Anything on the fars?” he asked.

“No ping. Not even an echo of a ping,” replied Second Lieutenant Frank Chainer. He had his face glued to a bank of glowing green screens in front of him. To Chainer’s left and right, the ship’s sensors spilled out page after page of readouts. Sometimes a trained comms man could spot an anomaly to indicate the presence of something too subtle to register on the screens. Chainer took another shaky gulp from his hi-stim drink can.

“They still outgun us, Captain,” said Commander Lucy McGlashan. “And we have no idea how long their distress beacon was sending before we destroyed it.”

Duggan growled. He knew he was being stupid. Stupid and stubborn. They’d caught the Ghast ship unawares and Duggan had decided to take a shot at it. The Detriment had two batteries of the latest Lambda missiles, one of which had evaded the enemy ship’s Vule Cannons and torn a vast hole in her engines. With the Ghast ship drifting, Duggan thought he’d scored a win. Then, without warning, it had happened. Everything on the Detriment had gone dead – stone, cold, dead. Every light and every screen winked out of existence, as if a mysterious hand had pressed a central power button. They’d been lucky that the Ghast ship’s momentum had carried it out of weapons range. After exactly one minute, everything had come back online, as if nothing had ever been wrong. The crew had checked the error logs, but as far as the ship’s compact mainframe was concerned, nothing whatsoever had happened.

By the time the sub-light engines had fired up again, the Ghast ship had dropped into the gas giant’s orbit and used the iron and silicate atmosphere to hide itself from the Detriment’s sight. Duggan couldn’t even leave his ship high and stationary for the Ghasts to come to him – the enemy light cruiser could evade detection simply by staying low beneath the swirling gases of the atmosphere. It was now a matter of luck as to if or when Duggan could force another engagement.

“How long till they can get their deep fission drives online?” Duggan asked.

“I’d only be guessing, Captain,” said Lieutenant Bill Breeze. “Their technology works like ours, but not like ours. We made a big hole in their hull. Our sensors suggest we took out twenty three percent of their engine mass. It all depends on how good their ship’s core is at rerouting. Hours, days or weeks. Take your pick.”

Duggan already knew this – he just couldn’t stop himself from asking again. He felt clenched up tight as if he had to do something, but with no control over what. There wasn’t even any room for him to pace in order to work off steam, and he didn’t dare leave the bridge for long enough to spend a couple of hours in the ship’s gym.

“They can’t stay lucky forever,” Duggan said quietly. On the screen ahead of him, the computer-enhanced image of Gyer-12 drifted slowly to the left, against a background of distant stars which showed as magnified specks against the pure blackness. Staring out into those black depths gave Duggan a feeling he’d never been able to put words to. The emptiness had frightened him once – now he craved it. In the background, the air conditioning thrummed and the integrity warning system continued to bleep softly at the intense stresses being placed on the alloys that comprised the hull.

“Got a fission signature, Captain,” said Breeze, the loudness of his voice cutting across the low noise of the bridge.

“Where is it? How far?” asked Duggan at once, crossing over to stand at Breeze’s shoulder.

“One hundred and eleven thousand klicks anti-clockwise with a thirty-degree offset from our orbit. They’re almost a third of a circuit ahead of us.”

“Can we get to them before they jump out of orbit?”

“Not a chance. Not unless you want us to burn up,” said McGlashan. “Thirteen minutes till we can get close enough for the Lambdas.”

“Unlucky thirteen,” said Chainer.

Duggan swore. “How long till they can go to lightspeed?”

There wasn’t a planet dense enough to keep that hidden from the Detriment’s sensors. If the Ghast ship had managed to get enough of its fission engines online, it could outrun the smaller Vincent class.

“The output from their engines means they’ll be gone in five minutes,” Breeze announced. “Nope, they’ve stepped it up. Make that three minutes.”

Duggan increased power to the Detriment’s sub-light engines. The warning bleep increased in volume at once and a faint vibration began underfoot. Hold it together, old girl.

“Eleven minutes till engagement,” said McGlashan. Her face was a pattern of reflected light strobes as she focused on the screens in front of her.

“One minute till they’re gone,” said Chainer.

“We’re not going to make it,” McGlashan told them, as if they hadn’t already guessed.

“The fission signature’s faded, Captain,” announced Breeze. His face showed a mixture of elation and fear. “Whatever they tried, it didn’t work.”

“And now we know exactly where they are.”

“They must know we’ve picked them up,” said McGlashan.

Duggan ran his fingers across a couple of the screens on a console in front of him and then touched another to override the ship’s safety warning. The Detriment’s speed increased another five percent and the vibration became a shuddering. The warning bleep turned into a continuous tone to let the crew know that the hull temperature had gone ten percent above its design maximum.

“The boys and girls below will be getting worried,” McGlashan told him.

“I want those bastards,” said Duggan. With a grunt, he relented and backed off the power. There was no point in taking the risk for such a small gain. The Ghast ship would be lost in the atmosphere by the time they got to where the fission signature had come from. He looked across and saw McGlashan take a deep breath and shake her head to free the droplets of sweat from her eyebrows.

“Nine minutes,” she said.

In front of Duggan, another screen lit up a bright blue. Letters formed on the screen: Priority Message Delivered. It wasn’t the time for distractions, but the Detriment’s comms system dutifully rolled the lines of text onto the screen. Return to the Juniper. No delays. Teron. Duggan swore again when he read the words.

“What’s up?” asked McGlashan.

“It’s Admiral Teron. He wants us back at the Juniper. Without delay.”

“He could have picked a better time,” said Breeze.

“He won’t notice a few minutes, will he?” said Duggan, dismissing the message.

“Wouldn’t want the Ghasts escaping after all this effort we’ve put in,” said Chainer.

Minutes passed and no one dared to break the silence. Duggan drummed his fingers on the grey metal console before him. He felt a line of sweat soaking through the back of his uniform.

“Three minutes.”

“Anything on the fars?”

“Nothing. No, wait. Maybe.” Duggan looked over. Chainer was frowning.

“What do you mean, maybe?”

“I thought I saw something just for a moment. Maybe.”

“We can’t work on maybes, Lieutenant,” said Duggan. “Get the Lambdas ready,” he said to McGlashan with urgency clear in his voice. “And launch countermeasures. Immediately.”

McGlashan was good – one of the best. She didn’t question the order. “Shock drones away. Bulwarks ready.”

“Got incoming,” said Chainer. “Fifteen, twenty. Fast moving. Missiles, Captain. Four waves.”

“Beginning evasive manoeuvres!” Duggan barked. A deep grumbling thrummed into the structure of the metal walls as the ship’s computer fired them into a randomised pattern of turns and rotations. A wave of giddiness swept through Duggan as the Detriment’s life support systems struggled to cope with the incredible changes in gravitational forces that would have otherwise crushed the fragile bodies of the human crew.

Where’re those bastards hiding?” asked Duggan. “Can you get a fix on them?”

“They must have doubled back, Captain,” said Breeze.

“I reckon,” said Duggan. “They’re either very lucky or very good.” Or perhaps this Ghast ship just has better sensors than the Detriment. They’d been making advances over the last few years. It had plenty of people in the Space Corps worried. “ETA on the missiles?”

“First wave in thirty seconds, Captain,” said Chainer. “Got another fission signature. This one incoming. It’s a big one. Dropping out of Light-J on the far side of Gyer-12.”

“One of ours?” asked Duggan, knowing that it couldn’t be. The Corps had nothing out here in no-man’s land. At least, nothing bigger than a Gunner.

“Cadaveron,” said Chainer.

“Damn,” muttered Duggan. It was a Ghast heavy cruiser – the Detriment stood no chance against it. “At least their navigator screwed up and took them the wrong side of the planet.”

All around the bridge, status warnings burned orange on the readout screens in a seemingly endless procession of information thrown up frantically by the Detriment’s mainframe. A multitude of warning bells clamoured for attention, their volume low yet impossible to ignore. Neither Duggan nor his crew showed outward sign of fear. They’d been in the Corps for years – decades even. Each of them had seen almost everything that could be imagined. In the end, fear got them nothing. They either lived or died and often it was luck that saw them through.

“First wave of missiles within fifteen thousand klicks.”

“Launch more shock drones.”

“Shock drones away.”

The view screen lit up, so brightly that it was almost a pure white. The bridge computers stepped in quickly and reduced the intensity so that it wouldn’t burn the eyes of the crew.

“First wave of missiles down,” said Chainer. “Next in ten, fifteen and twenty seconds. They’ve packed them in.”

“Bring the fission engines online,” said Duggan.

“Fission engines coming online,” Breeze responded. “Eighty-three seconds till we can go.”

“I’ve nearly got a fix on them, Captain,” said Chainer.

The view screen lit up white again. This time there was a greyish tint, as if the ship’s computer had adjusted it badly. There was a shuddering accompanied by an almost imperceptible tilt to the left.

“Right-hand Bulwark got the last one,” said McGlashan. “They’re getting closer.”

“Deploy shock drones.”

“Shock drones away. Lambda batteries ready to fire. Waiting for a fix.”

“I’ve got a fix.”

“I see it. Lambdas gone, Captain.”

Again, there was the whiteness on the screen and the shuddering came. Both Bulwarks this time, thought Duggan. Too close for comfort. On the weapons display in front of him, twenty Lambda missiles raced away, tiny dots that could rip a hundred-metre hole in the heaviest of armour. The latest versions were still better than anything the Ghasts had, at least as far as he knew.

“We can fire another twenty in ten seconds,” said McGlashan. Her eyes were alive and glowing with the excitement.

The last five of the Ghast light cruiser’s missiles detonated five thousand klicks away, confused by the swarms of one-metre metallic shock drones. The drones had tiny single-use engines that could propel them hundreds of klicks in only a few seconds. As they flew, they transmitted signals in all directions and on a billion different wavelengths in the hope that they would confuse or destroy the guidance systems of incoming missiles. If they failed, there were always the Bulwark cannons, but when they fired, everyone knew it was time to cross their fingers.

“Lambdas will impact in twenty-five seconds,” said McGlashan.

“They’ve launched another five missiles, Captain. Impact in thirty-two seconds. I’m getting something else from them. A power surge.”

For the second time, everything went dead on the Detriment.

Chapter Two

The bridge descended into a darkness that was utterly impenetrable. Every screen winked out at once, the air conditioning stopped thrumming and the faint vibration of the Detriment’s huge engines stopped.

Duggan spoke into the void, his voice calm, yet with an unmistakeable edge to it. “Anyone getting a response from their consoles?”

“Nothing, Captain.”

“Dead.”

“No response.”

“Keep trying.”

None of the crew said anything further, waiting for Duggan to speak.

“Thirty-two seconds to impact at last report,” Duggan said. His hand reached out for the solidity of the plasmetal control panel in front of him. With the absence of sight, his brain marvelled at the absolute smoothness of the material beneath his fingertips. In his head, Duggan counted down from twenty-five, slowly and calmly, permitting himself a deep breath every five digits. The seconds stretched on forever, time on the bridge going so slowly that it might as well have stopped. A long time ago, Duggan had watched a documentary about life aboard the old submarines hundreds of years passed. How the sailors must have waited in the confines of those tiny spaces, never knowing if death would take them until it almost inevitably did. And they call this progress.

After a lifetime and more had passed, Duggan’s count reached zero and he breathed out noisily. “Drones must have got them. Let’s hope they didn’t launch any more.”

“This makes you realise you’re alive,” said Chainer.

“Everything’s still completely out,” said McGlashan.

“It lasted for one minute last time. There can’t be long left.”

“You think it’s the same thing again, Captain?” asked Breeze.

“The Ghasts have used a new weapon on us. I would love to find out if there’ve been any other reports on the front. For the time being, let’s hope that when the lights come back on we don’t have six waves of incoming missiles.”

“I’m mashing the release command for the drones,” said McGlashan. There was a smile in her voice. Duggan couldn’t remember the last time she’d been phased. At least not badly.

The lights came on, as if that hidden power switch had been flicked again. Darkness vanished, to be replaced by displays and readouts filled with updates and status reports. Duggan had been so caught between expecting death and expecting light that the brightness caught him unawares and he had to squint and shield his eyes. The structure of the ship shuddered as energy flowed through one hundred and thirty million tonnes of engine mass.

“Resume evasive manoeuvres. Status reports,” Duggan commanded.

“We’re on a random course already, Captain. The engines are continuing as they were.”

“Shock drones away, that’s our last cargo.”

“Scanners clear. No missiles and no Ghast light cruiser.”

“Bringing fission engines back online. One-hundred-and-seventy seconds. It seems like whatever shut us down has slowed up the mainframe.”

“Any sign of debris, Lieutenant?”

“Checking. Nothing at the moment.”

“Could they have got away? Hidden themselves?”

“There wasn’t enough time to escape. Scanning.”

“Any transmit logs from the Lambdas?” asked Duggan.

“Nothing at all, Captain. If they scored a hit, the transmits didn’t reach us or our sensors were offline and unable to receive.”

“How long till the Cadaveron gets here?” There was no chance they’d have failed to detect the fission engine build up from the Detriment.

“At least eight minutes. Plenty of time,” said Breeze.

“Plenty of time,” echoed Duggan, wondering why he didn’t feel convinced. He looked at the displays in front of him – at the carpet of white-spotted blackness in the background of the gas giant. It told him nothing at all. There were times when sight was reduced to an almost useless sense and there was still that primeval feeling of helplessness when it happened.

“I’m picking up a cloud of fragments, Captain,” said Chainer. “Decaying orbit approximately ten thousand klicks from the last known position of the Ghast ship. We got them.”

“You’re sure?”

“Definite, sir. No! We’ve got homing mines! Three of them only ten klicks!”

“How’d you miss those?” snarled Duggan, preparing himself for the impact.

“Sorry sir, no time to pick them up when the power came back.”

In the vacuum outside, three one-foot diameter mines clamped themselves to the Detriment’s starboard side. They armed themselves and exploded within half a second. The shaped explosions sent a ripple through the spacecraft’s hull, inflicting a violent trauma to the Detriment’s thick armour plating. Insulated from the worst of the blasts, the occupants on the bridge felt little more than a trembling through the walls. A stark red emergency light filled the room.

“Status report!” shouted Duggan.

“Engines still at ninety-five percent, sir,” said Breeze.

“Have they breached the hull?”

Breeze looked up, worried. “I’m reading damage to the lower infantry quarters.”

“Sergeant Ortiz, please report at once!” Duggan said through the onboard comms. “We’ve taken a hit over the lower infantry quarters.”

The comms crackled and spat, a cacophony of background shouting. “It’s gone to shit down here, sir. Life support’s shut us out of the below quarters and we’ve got men in there!”

“I need to know what’s happening, Sergeant!” Duggan blew out his breath and sprinted through the narrow exit door from the bridge. He dropped down the access steps three at a time and charged through the tightly turning corridors of the spacecraft’s interior until he came to the area of the ship where the soldiers spent their time. The upper infantry quarters were cramped. Men and women from the Detriment’s small contingent of soldiers were gathered, shouting and pressed tightly in the narrow space between the wall-mounted bunks. There was an access hatch that led down to the lower quarters. It was closed.

“Sergeant, what’s the situation?” asked Duggan, picking out the slender shape of the infantry officer. She was crouched over the featureless alloy plate that led below. It had a display panel that was flashing a blood-red colour.

Ortiz stood and faced him, anger visible in her deep-set brown eyes. “Rogers, Morgan and Rivera are down there, sir,” she said. “The mainframe slammed the access hatch tight.”

Duggan shouted and kicked out at the nearest wall. “Captain to bridge. Anything you can give me on the status down here?”

The voice of Lieutenant Breeze returned at once. “There’s been no breach, sir, but the engines dissipated a lot of heat through that area.”

“How much heat?” asked Ortiz.

“Fifteen hundred degrees. Looks like the temperature’s down below a hundred now. The hatch should open up soon.”

“Where’s Corporal Blunt?” asked Duggan, looking around for the ship’s medic.

“They’re gone, sir,” said Ortiz quietly.

“Ship’s sensors aren’t reporting any signs of life,” said Breeze.

Duggan sat down on one of the bunks and put his head in his hands. Corporal Blunt arrived, carrying with him a pack and a metallic box of hi-tech medical equipment. The man was thickset and looked younger than his years. He’d arrived just in time to hear the report from the bridge.

“Clear the room,” Blunt instructed. “The hatch lock has just disengaged. I don’t need anyone to go down there with me.”

“I need to see, Corporal,” said Duggan.

Blunt nodded and waited until the soldiers had cleared the room before he opened the hatch to the lower quarters.

Half an hour later, Duggan returned to the bridge. The destruction of the Ghast light cruiser against the odds would have usually filled him with elation. Now all he felt was anger and sadness that he’d lost three of his men.

“Good work ladies and gentlemen,” he said, the words sounding hollow. “Point us towards the Juniper with no stop-offs.”

“The Juniper it is,” said Breeze.

Two minutes later, there was a whine and everyone on board the Detriment was gripped by the unshakeable feeling that they’d been displaced, yet without being able to put exact words to the feeling. The life support systems sucked up almost a thousandth of one percent of the engine’s output as they fought to stabilise the vessel’s interior against the incomprehensible dislocation that was about to happen to the fragile bodies aboard. Then, the Detriment vanished from the orbit of Gyer-12, skimming away through space at many multiples of lightspeed. Far behind, the shattered pieces of the Ghast light cruiser tumbled lazily towards the planet’s surface. The few sections which were large enough to survive the heat would crash into the surface over the coming weeks.

The Ghast Cadaveron, which had come in response to the distress beacon from the smaller ship, registered that the Corps vessel had entered Light-H – a speed somewhat in excess of that normally achievable by a Vincent class, but well within the capabilities of the heavy cruiser if it chose to follow. Its AI ran through the countless destinations in its databanks of known human outposts, before narrowing them down to the five most likely. None of these possibilities had a greater than three percent likelihood of being correct. Accurate lightspeed pursuit was almost impossible even with the processing power available to the most advanced warships. The Cadaveron possessed a colossal amount of firepower that would be wasted in the pursuit of a Vincent class. The Ghast ship left the planet to travel its own course.

Nineteen days later, the Detriment exited Light-H and re-entered normal space. The ship’s sub-light engines fought to stabilise its speed and course for a few seconds and the brutal exit from lightspeed was replaced by a comparatively serene entry into a very high orbit of planet Kryptes-9. Along the way they’d jettisoned the bodies of their dead out in space, letting the infinity of darkness claim them forever. The men had been reduced to little more than carbonized lumps of matter, dehumanized as an added insult to their deaths. Duggan felt his blood boil whenever he thought about it. He’d not lost a man or woman in five years.

“You’ll not hear the end of this little trick when we dock,” said Breeze, his voice cutting through the silence.

“So we dropped in a little too close for comfort,” said Duggan. “Teron said no delays. We’re just following orders.”

It was accepted practise for a ship to emerge from lightspeed travel at least an hour away from an orbital position. It wasn’t entirely unheard of for a helmsman to plot a course that was fractionally awry and there were rumours that an AI had once managed to screw things up and nearly cause a disastrous collision between an Anderlecht class and the surface of a moon.

“Like he’ll take the flack for that one,” said McGlashan.

“Juniper ahead, Captain. Her AI isn’t pleased.”

“I’m sure it knows why we’re here.”

“I’ll bet it knows more than we do.”

“Amen to that,” said Duggan.

Through the main viewscreen he saw the approaching orbital command and control station, magnified by the Detriment’s mainframe so that the details were sharp. The Juniper was a vast, metallic cuboid that rotated smoothly about its own axis, with a surface that appeared featureless from a distance, but which was covered in a myriad of sensors when viewed from close range. It had taken many decades to build and its construction had stripped at least three remote planets of their precious resources of certain rare metals that went into making up the ship’s awe-inspiring power and propulsion systems. Duggan had once heard an engineer boast that the Juniper’s engines could generate enough thrust to reverse a large moon’s orbit. He didn’t know if that was true or not, but had no reason to doubt what he’d heard. They’d not been fired up in anger for thirty years anyway and the Juniper continued to rotate in a smooth elliptical orbit, several hundred thousand kilometres above the surface of ice giant Kryptes-9.

“We’ve got clearance to land,” said Chainer. “It’s still not happy.”

Duggan gave a rumbling laugh. He’d never learned to feel guilty for pissing off an AI. An hour later, he was in an airlift taking him from Hangar Bay 1 on the 705th floor, all the way to the 17th floor of the Military Command Unit. The Military CU took up several dozen floors and much of the Juniper’s interior. It was one of the few operational command and control stations that remained after decades of cutbacks. The once almighty armed forces had been scaled back and scaled back, with the funds ploughed into whatever current issue the bigwigs thought would get them votes. It was short-termism at its worst.

At the 17th floor, the air lift slowed smoothly and its doors opened, allowing Duggan to exit into the Military CU. The lobby area was stark and clean – almost clinical in design. The temperature was several degrees too cold. The space he’d entered was huge and overwhelmingly metallic – like a spacecraft hanger with a low roof. People hurried to and fro, dressed in their contrasting uniforms, all trying to give the impression that they knew what they were doing.

Duggan was familiar with the place. As a captain with over twenty years’ experience, he’d visited the Juniper on dozens of occasions. There’d been a time when he’d almost felt as if he lived here. The rest of his time had been spent scouting the edges of Confederation space for signs of Ghast activity. He set off across the floor, the hard soles of his boots producing a crisp noise from the metal underfoot. Duggan was an imposing figure – over six feet tall, with broad shoulders, cropped blond hair and a piercing stare from his green eyes that sent people scuttling out of his way as he approached. The CU had a row of reception desks with real people sitting at them, instead of automated check-in screens. The man whom Duggan approached looked up.

“Captain Duggan?” the man asked, polite and impersonal. The scanners in the lift had sent this information on ahead.

“I’ve been asked to see Teron.”

“Admiral Teron, sir. I assume you know how to find him.” The receptionist was a pro – he made his words neither a statement or a question, allowing Duggan to ask for more information if he needed it.

“Thanks,” said Duggan. He knew exactly where he was going.

He walked along what seemed like several hundred metres of stark, silver-grey corridors until he arrived at his destination. Sensors checked his identity, whilst a nano-computer somewhere in the Juniper’s brain tallied his appearance with the diary of the occupant. Finding a match, it dutifully slid the plasmetal door open, permitting him entry. Duggan didn’t pause and stepped through into the office beyond.

“Good to see you, Captain Duggan,” spoke a deep voice.

“That wasn’t what you said last time I saw you, sir,” replied Duggan.

Chapter Three

The office was large and the left-hand wall was covered with screen upon screen, each of which flashed with numbers, diagrams, schematics. There were other monitors on the right-hand wall which received a feed from the orbital’s monitoring sensors and showed alarms and statuses of the vital systems that kept the Juniper running. The orbital hadn’t broken down yet, but there were thousands of technicians who lived aboard and worked long hours to keep it ticking. There was a large desk – made of real wood, which had seen better days. Behind the desk was a man – he looked at least sixty, though it was difficult to be sure how old anyone was, with the availability of life-extending drugs. Admiral Malachi Teron could have been over a hundred years old for all Duggan knew.

Teron was broad and grizzled, with short, white hair and a lined face. He had scars on his neck – light pink and angry from where he’d been caught by a Ghast plasma burst twenty years ago. His red uniform dripped with medals, testament to the campaigns he’d fought in.

“Take a seat,” said Teron, his voice was harsh and with an unnaturally rough quality that came from the injury he’d suffered. It was an order and Duggan took one of the two firm chairs.

“What do you want from me, sir?” he asked.

“You always liked to get to the point, didn’t you, Captain Duggan?” asked Teron. The man exhaled noisily and sat back in his seat, running his thick fingers over his scalp. He looked tired. “Something’s come up. Things are happening – important things, that need the right man to deal with them.”

“Things? Is that the military term for it?” asked Duggan with the hint of a smile. “Come on, sir. Stop beating around the bush and tell me what’s going on.”

Teron paused for a moment in order to push a brown folder from one position on his desk to another. Then, he looked up. “Have you ever heard of the ESS Crimson?”

Duggan frowned and racked his memory. He’d probably flown in half the Space Corps’ ships at one time or another, but this one didn’t ring a bell. “ESS means it’s old, right?” he asked.

“Very old, as it happens. Corps ships became universally prefixed with Earth-Star over forty years ago. There was only ever one ship built as Earth-Star Superior, which was the Crimson.”

“What happened to it?” asked Duggan,

“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 speak. 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 Duggan.

“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.

“What is it we’re looking for, sir?” asked Corporal Baker.

“An old ship called the Crimson, that got lost fifty years ago. It sent a signal to Monitoring Station Alpha, telling us to prepare for war.”

“We know there’s a war on,” said Sergeant Ortiz. “We’ve been fighting it for long enough. Lost plenty of good men and women too.”

“We all know that, but someone’s decided this is important enough to send an experienced crew and a valuable warship to find out what’s going on.”

“Has it got new information on the Ghasts, sir?” asked West. She was hardly chest-high on most of the men, but not one of them would dare cross her.

“I really don’t know, Soldier. All I’ve been told is that we need to recover the Crimson and fly it back to the Juniper for interrogation.”

“They expect a ship that old to fly?” West said in disbelief, ignoring the fact that the Detriment was over thirty years old. “Do we even know if there’s enough left of it to fly?”

“It cut off communications before the guys on the Alpha could get anything more out of it. It said the channel was no longer secure.”

“That means trouble, doesn’t it?” she asked.

“It could mean anything,” said Duggan. “A passing Ghast ship, or the ship’s core could have received false information from its sensors. We’ve tracked the Crimson’s signal back to a planet – it’s a place so remote they’ve not even assigned it a number, let alone a name. We find it, the repair drone we’re carrying does its business with the ship and then we fly it home. After that, it’s back to the front for us all.”

“Something about this stinks,” said Monsey. She was tall, mouthy and popular.

“What do you mean by that?” asked Duggan.

“I mean that war is war. If someone tells you there’s a war coming, you listen to them. You don’t send out a Gunner to investigate what’s happening.”

“Normally, I’d agree with you. The Crimson’s so old, I don’t think anyone’s really interested in what it has to say. If I had to guess, I’d say this is just a tick box exercise. The Crimson was part of a special project that cost a lot of money. There are probably people who want to know what happened to it.”

“There are people still alive who worked on that ship?” asked Monsey.

That wasn’t what Duggan had meant to say, but what Monsey said made him wonder if there was indeed anyone left alive who’d worked on the Hynus Project. They’d be pretty old now. It wasn’t unknown for people to live a long time with the advancements in medical technology available to those willing to pursue the dream of life everlasting. He put the thought aside for the moment.

“On the plus side, it means that for once you soldiers will be seeing some action that doesn’t involve sitting in the hull of a ship, waiting till you get blown to pieces.”

“Or burned to a cinder,” said Smith.

Duggan nodded his head in acknowledgement. “It’s almost certain we’ll have to get out of here and down to the surface to find out what state the Crimson is in.”

None of them voiced an objection to that. Operations on hostile planets were what they were all paid to do. Duggan dismissed the crew and returned to the bridge, with McGlashan, Breeze and Chainer in tow.

Chapter Five

Ten weeks was a long time as far as military space flight went. The fastest warships could travel from one side of Confederation space to the other in fewer than five weeks, so it seemed that wherever the Crimson had ended up, it wasn’t anywhere remotely close to the usual flight paths of Confederation vessels, bar the odd scout or mining ship.

Duggan tried to keep to the usual routines that kept him sane during long voyages. He rose early from his bed – as captain, he was granted the privilege of a habitable space big enough that he couldn’t touch the side walls if he stretched his arms out. There wasn’t much in it, yet it seemed somehow important to him. After rising, he would visit the small mess area to speak to the infantry and crew who came and went. The mess was a room about fifteen feet square with a few hard chairs and tables, all of them fixed to the bare metal floor. The military didn’t go in for carpets and if you didn’t like metal surfaces, you were screwed.

The mess had two food replicators. The word replicator was a common joke in the Corps. In reality, you pressed a button and the machine would deposit a tray of something in front of you, that more or less approximated what you’d asked for. The food wasn’t replicated either – the ship’s life support systems could produce a rudimentary selection of proteins, carbohydrates and fats. It could mix these together, add a quantity of colours and flavourings, and then compress the whole lot into something that a starving man might find appetising.

“This is carrots and beef?” said one of the soldiers in disbelief. It was standard practise to question the food replicator’s output – it never got old.

“Better food than your mother ever made, Turner,” called another of the soldiers. There were fifteen of them on the Detriment – the ship could carry more, but Duggan knew that fifteen was about the most you could fit on a Gunner before people started pissing each other off.

“If I live to be a thousand, I’ll never know how they manage to get beef that tastes so much like chicken,” said Turner, walking away in mock disgust.

“It’s breakfast time anyway,” called Davis. “Why don’t you try one of these fine rashers of bacon? They don’t taste much like chicken.”

“No, they taste like shit,” said Diaz, sitting himself down next to Davis.

Duggan watched the interplay between them. It reminded him of what he mentally referred to as the good old days, when he didn’t have a care in the world. When all he had to worry about was himself and his squad. When he was too stupid – lacking in wisdom, he corrected himself - to worry about the possibility that he might get killed somewhere and never come home.

Now he was Captain John Duggan. The Captain John Duggan. The man who, as an infantry sergeant, had single-handedly overcome a fortified nest of Ghast warriors using only plasma grenades and his rifle. The man who’d fought his way across fifty kilometres of hostile terrain to save one of his rifle squad who’d been injured by enemy fire. The man who was known to put the lives of his men above his own. The man who’d lost over a dozen of his crew when a missile tube had exploded.

As he poked at a slice of blue-sheened ‘ham’ he recalled the time he’d spoken to the mother of one of the dead. She’d been grey-haired and old. Mary Geffen her name had been. She’d fixed Duggan with her pale, grey eyes and told him that it wasn’t his fault and that even if it had been, she’d have forgiven him. Mrs Geffen had given him a hug and wept for her lost daughter. It had been almost more than Duggan could bear.

Commander McGlashan entered the room, caked in sweat from her morning workout in the gym. A couple of the soldiers called her out as unfit and suggested she might need another hour on the treadbike. She grinned and gave them the finger. Duggan smiled to himself – a rookie might have thought the discipline on the Detriment was lax, but he knew the crew trusted each other. Duggan waved McGlashan over. She nodded and pointed at the replicator, to indicate she’d be over in a moment.

McGlashan sat down opposite Duggan. She was lean and toned, with an air of competence that had earned her a lot of respect over the years. She was carrying a tray, which she put down in front of her. It had a grey paste on it, and something else that might have been an approximation of toast.

“Porridge,” she explained, seeing his look. “At least that’s what the readout said.”

“I was on the Archimedes once,” he said. “Long ago. Nothing but the best on there. If you wanted a steak, you better believe that what came out of the replicators looked, smelled and even tasted like a steak. There were rumours that they kept cows onboard somewhere in one of the lower decks.” Just the mention of the steaks brought a memory of the scent to his nostrils.

She smiled. “Really? People thought they kept cows on there?”

“Some people will believe anything. The Archimedes is over nine kilometres long. You could keep a lot of livestock inside if you wanted to. Personally, I was happy to believe the ship’s lead engineer when he told me that they get all the latest food replication tech installed as soon as the research labs produce an improved model.”

“I’ve seen the Archimedes a few times,” said McGlashan. “Always in the distance – too far to make out the details.”

“I wonder where it is now. It’s needed in the Axion sector from what Admiral Teron tells me.”

“If they send it to the front, it’ll make people realise that we aren’t winning the war, in spite of what the news channels would have them believe.” She wasn’t easily fooled.

“There are thirty-five fully colonised planets in the Confederation. I don’t know how they’ve managed to stop the questions.”

“People believe what they want to believe. If you tell them their sons and daughters died as heroes, you can keep up the charade for a long time. It’s only really been the last five years we’ve been in retreat. Before then, it was all glory. Join the Corps, shoot a few Ghasts a billion light years away and come back with a medal. That’s what the abiding memories are. The glory of humanity.”

“Except that it’s been a lie and let them push through the cost-cutting even while we’re losing major systems on the periphery. He shook his head bitterly. “I remember when we were making six Anderlechts and one Hadron class every two years. We weren’t even trying. Now we’re decommissioning the old ones quicker than the new ones are coming into service.”

“There’s not been a new Hadron in four years,” McGlashan said. “I don’t know if there’s a yard big enough to make them in a single piece now.”

“Teron says the enemy’s got the edge. It’s not looking good.”

“We’ve known that for long enough, sir. I can remember my first encounter with a Ghast light cruiser. They were so far behind us that hardly anyone wanted to cheer when we blew it into pieces. I was only on a Gunner at the time and the enemy had no hope against us. Now look at what they pack into their Kravens. Weapons that have come from nowhere. The Confederation’s been standing still and they’ve just kept on running.”

“There’s got to be something we’re missing,” said Duggan. “No one can jump ahead as quickly as they’ve done, no matter how much they want to.”

“Let’s hope their infantry’s carrying the same shit as they ever did, sir,” said Davis from nearby. There was no such thing as a private conversation in the mess room.

“Yeah, we can get close enough to put a hole in them at least,” added Turner.

“You might get a chance to put a hole in some of them when we get to where we’re going,” said Duggan.

“You think we’ll see them when we go looking for the Crimson?” asked Davis, with the unmistakeable longing of a man who’d done too much fighting.

“We might. There are Ghasts where we’re going. With any luck, we’ll miss them. In, out and back home.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it, Captain,” said Turner.

“Sometimes dreams come true,” said McGlashan, the scepticism evident in her voice.

The days were boring and Duggan was on edge. Something was nagging away at him and he didn’t know what. To occupy himself, he spent time tracking updates from the war. It wasn’t looking good.

“Six Gunners missing in action. Axion Sector Nine,” he said. “Anderlechts Grimstone and Devoted confirmed destroyed in combat against three Cadaverons.”

“Damn,” said Breeze, raising his head. “That’s real bad.”

“I served on the Devoted for two months,” said Chainer. “They were amongst the best I’ve seen. Taught me a thing or two.”

“Sector Nine is only a short jump from Charistos, isn’t it?” said McGlashan.

“Everything in Axion is only a short jump from Charistos,” Duggan replied. “We need to get ships out there.”

“Think they’ll send the Archimedes? Or at least a pair of the Hadrons?”

Duggan shook his head to indicate he didn’t know. “I’ve tried to call up the orders for our major ships. I’m denied access to see what’s planned for them. I’d have been more surprised if I’d had the clearance.”

“We’re going to lose this, aren’t we?” asked McGlashan. “What the hell do they even want from us?” It was a question that had been asked countless times by countless people.

“Sometimes you just have to accept that you’re never going to understand your enemy,” was all Duggan could think of to say.

The Human-Ghast war had started almost thirty-two years ago. There’d been no misunderstanding between two space-faring races. There was no initial friendship that had subsequently been lost. Rather, the first encounter had been between a Ghast heavy cruiser – which later become known as Cadaverons – and a small fleet of Confederation mining ships, far, far out from humanity’s central planet of Earth. The Ghasts had simply destroyed the mining ships, killing all of the civilians on board. After that, there had been a number of minor skirmishes, during which it became apparent that the Ghasts were technologically less advanced than humans. Nevertheless, they began to actively hunt out Confederation spaceships until the ruling Council was reluctantly forced to describe the situation as ‘war’. Unfortunately, they were complacent about it, thinking that the Ghasts’ technological inferiority meant that they were little more than war-mongering upstarts.

After two decades of fighting, still perceived as a side-issue by the Confederation Council, the quantity and quality of the Ghast ships surged. Suddenly, their newest craft were almost a match for the Corps warships. The Confederated planets were populous and wealthy. Their shipyards could lay down dozens of armed vessels per year with the right level of funding. Confident in their assumed superiority, the ruling council continued to treat the Ghasts almost with disdain and neither side showed any determination to communicate. In fact, there was almost complete ignorance on both sides about who it was they were fighting. The difficulties of tracking a spacecraft through lightspeed travel meant that casualties on both sides had mostly been confined to Space Corps personnel.

As Duggan searched through military databanks that were probably meant to be secured against him, the extent of the crisis began to emerge. Admiral Teron had indicated that the Ghasts had taken the advantage and if anything, he’d underplayed how far ahead they were. From what Duggan could see, they’d taken an incomprehensibly huge leap in technological advancement. It was almost unbelievable what they’d achieved. On top of this, one of Duggan’s old contacts from his earlier days in the Corps sent him some classified documents that showed how the military had been trying to find a way to nail down the destination of a lightspeed spacecraft. The limitation continued to be the processing power of the AIs. If you networked enough of them, it became theoretically possible. Unfortunately, the theory hadn’t yet been put into practise. The worst part of it was, recent data gathered from engagements with some of the newest Ghast vessels suggested that the alien species was years ahead of humanity in AI development.

“We’re screwed,” said Duggan to himself.

By the start of the tenth week, Duggan realised he’d had enough of being cooped up. Their destination wasn’t far now, yet he couldn’t help think that there was a long return trip to look forward to. He’d spent a lot of time trawling through archives and databanks looking for any information on the Crimson, in order to determine its maximum velocity and any other capabilities it might have. In the end, he’d turned up a blank. Whatever records there were of the vessel and the trillions of dollars it had taken to create it, they’d been thoroughly expunged. Or classified so high that I don’t have clearance to find out if they even exist, he thought sourly. Not for the first time, he considered the possibility of sucking the contents of the Crimson’s onboard systems into the Detriment’s mainframes. If it was as much of a bucket as he thought it would be, it didn’t seem likely that it could scrape past Lightspeed D or E. He knew he should have grilled Teron about it more than he had. In the end, there was no point in dwelling on the might have beens. While he was mulling over the possibilities, a red square flashed up on a display to his left, accompanied by a dull bleeping.

“What was that?” he asked.

“A Ghast ship,” replied Chainer, his head roving across his instrument readouts. “Type unknown. Our sensors couldn’t scan it in time. Looks like it picked us up as we came within range.”

It wasn’t unusual to be detected by enemy ships during lightspeed travel. All it meant was that the Ghasts knew that a Corps ship had gone by. They wouldn’t be able to plot their destination, nor follow them. They might have determined it was a Gunner, depending on how new the Ghast ship was and what technology it had onboard. It didn’t really matter to Duggan. What was important was that he’d got confirmation of the enemy’s presence so close to Karnius-12.

“Let’s hope that’s the only one,” McGlashan remarked.

“Yeah,” said Duggan. “Admiral Teron said the Crimson terminated its communication because it wasn’t secure. Maybe the Ghasts picked it up.”

“Would they spend any time looking?” asked McGlashan doubtfully.

“If I had nothing better to do with my time than patrol an uninhabited chunk of space and I received a signal from an enemy vessel, I’d go looking for it as well,” said Duggan.

Two days later, the Detriment’s navigational sensors reported their imminent arrival in the Karnius-12 system, which was a series of fifteen planets orbiting a much larger than average sun.

“Twenty hours early,” said Duggan, without much surprise. Calculating time across the vast distances involved was rarely an exact matter. The Detriment’s old mainframe had plenty of horsepower to run the ship, but it still ran out of steam when presented with certain problems. The AIs on a larger vessel could have nailed it down to within a few seconds. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t important. On the positive side, the calculating error had brought them to their destination a day early instead of a day late.

“Do we know exactly where we need to come out of lightspeed?” asked Breeze. “I’m sure we’d all prefer it if we landed on the nose, rather than six hours out.”

“The Alpha locked the Crimson’s signal down to the fourth planet,” said Duggan. “We have only basic data on it, since I don’t think anyone’s been out here in decades.” He reached across to an indentation on the plasmetal console and brushed it with his finger until he located what he wanted. “It seems like the fourth planet is nothing other than a big old rock. Too far out to host life, not so far out that it’s covered in ice.”

“Could be any one of another thousand planets we’ve seen,” said McGlashan.

“Nothing to get too excited over. If the Crimson’s there, we should be able to pick it up when we get close, even if it’s keeping radio silence. A kilometre lump of metal can’t hide for long.”

“Did they bother to go looking for it when they first lost contact?”

“Teron said they did, without giving away too many details. Perhaps they were certain it had been lost in far space or destroyed. However long they bothered to search, they didn’t find what they were looking for.”

“It sounds like baloney to me,” said Breeze. “If the Crimson was so valuable, why would they let it go without getting every tiny detail about it answered?”

“Yeah, something smells, that’s for sure,” added Chainer.

Duggan had already come to that conclusion. “It’s a fifty-year-old mystery that may not even be a mystery. Whatever happened way back then doesn’t concern us now. Let’s find this piece of junk and be on our way home.” He thought quietly for a few moments. “Let’s keep ready. I don’t like not knowing.”

Less than an hour later, the Detriment grated judderingly into near space, exactly twenty-five minutes away from the fourth planet in the Karnius-12 system. Before Duggan could even catch his bearings, a priority communication came through on an encrypted military channel.

“Top secret,” he muttered, his heart sinking as he read the details.

Planet Charistos discovered by Ghast fleet. Attempts at negotiation ignored. Military counterstrike failed. Hadron Supercruiser ES Ulterior destroyed. Surface of Charistos ignited by Ghast bombardment. Estimated civilian casualties: one-point-one billion.

“They’ve done it,” said Duggan, putting his head in his hands. “The bastards. They’ve gone and done it.”

Chapter Six

For almost two days, the Detriment orbited the planet, her sensors constantly interrogating the surface for signs of an unnaturally heavy object. The planet was a barren rock with a diameter of a little over one hundred thousand kilometres. The surface was pocked and scarred from an ancient meteorite storm of unusual ferocity, which the ship’s mainframe calculated to have occurred over three billion years previously. Without the presence of life to carpet the planet’s surface, the undisguised craters looked fresh and jagged.

“Nothing showing, Captain,” said Chainer. He’d exhausted himself with his efforts over the last forty hours and had found no sign at all of the missing ESS Crimson. They were all running on empty now, drained to enervation by the news of the massacre on Charistos. “I’ve covered every inch of the surface.”

“Could it be hidden in one of those craters?” asked Duggan. His face was haggard and pale. He called up a magnified image of the surface of the main view screen. It was a mixture of greys and computer-enhanced blacks.

“If it was fifty metres long then it might have escaped notice. It’s a kilometre long and weighs well over a billion tonnes. I haven’t missed it.”

Duggan cursed. There’d been no sign of Ghast activity yet. Even so, he had the feeling that he was pushing his luck by staying out here. Everyone was getting edgy, like they knew the Detriment was a sitting duck.

“Should we contact Monitoring Station Alpha and get confirmation of coordinates from the source receptor?” asked McGlashan.

“It’s a good idea, but they already fed the coordinates to the Juniper and the Juniper fed them straight to us. The Crimson is either here or it’s been destroyed after sending the signal.”

“What if it broke into pieces and the core somehow managed to survive with enough pieces to cobble together a transmitter?” asked Breeze. “It’s happened before. There might only be parts on the surface instead of a whole.”

“The sensors would have picked up anything big enough to transmit,” said Chainer. “I can focus the search on smaller fragments if necessary. It’ll take hours to scan for ten metre pieces or much longer if we want to scan for five metre chunks.”

“I don’t want to spend any more time here than is absolutely necessary. We’re needed back where we should be, instead of out here looking for a phantom in the mist,” said Duggan. He leaned across to have a look at the readouts, breathing in the bitter aroma of Chainer’s thick, black coffee as he did so.

“Look here, Captain,” said Chainer. “Here’re the analyses. There’s nothing that even remotely resembles what we’re looking for.”

“These crust scans over here. Iron ore?”

“Yes. Mostly hematite. It’s nothing unusual. It wouldn’t block our scanners.”

“This is much denser. This area on the south pole.”

“That’s galena. Lead ore. Again, nothing unusual about it. The Crimson should be much denser than that. It would stick out like a sore thumb.”

“What about if the ship was underground?” asked Duggan. “Beneath all of this stuff?”

Chainer blinked. “I suppose it’s possible it could hide if it was deep enough. A few hundred metres of lead would block even the Archimedes’ scanners, let alone the ones we’re working with. A kilometre worth of ship needs a pretty big hole.”

“Are there any places that could hide a ship?” asked Duggan.

“Let me see.” Chainer called up the detailed surface map which the ship’s sensors had created during the two days’ circuits of the planet. “You could hide the Juniper in some of these holes,” he muttered, his eyes glancing over the results of his mainframe query.

“Anything?” prompted Duggan, impatient for an answer.

“There are at least a hundred fissures that might be wide enough to house a kilometre-long object,” said Chainer.

“What about here where the ores are most thickly clustered?”

“That’s an area nearly thirty million square kilometres. It looks like it took the brunt of the meteorite storm, which might explain the presence of so much ore. There must be fifty or sixty fractures in the rock that you could hide a ship in.”

“Let’s focus our efforts there,” said Duggan.

“Aye, Captain,” acknowledged Chainer.

Duggan changed their course towards the planet’s south pole. “Which are the most likely places you’d hide a ship?” he asked.

Chainer called up a holographic view of the area, overlaid with the fissures in the planet’s surface. The image hovered in the space of the bridge, tantalisingly realistic, yet impossible to touch. “We’ve got a couple here and another one here. I reckon you could fit a big ship into those ones.”

“Anything in the data we’ve already collected from our scans that might help?” asked Duggan.

“I’d say we can rule this one out and this one. We flew directly over and got a pretty good view straight down. There’s nothing at the bottom. And this one narrows almost immediately. You might squeeze something through.”

“Not likely, though,” mused Duggan.

Four minutes later, the Detriment reached a position where its scanners could gather additional data based on the new priorities which Chainer had given them. Duggan stood nearby watching the readouts, while McGlashan and Breeze didn’t even try to feign disinterest. For another hour, the Detriment criss-crossed the crater-strewn south pole of the planet. In truth, the ship’s sensors were advanced enough that they could pick up extraneous data even when they hadn’t been instructed to do so. The mainframe wasn’t quite aware, but it was well enough programmed to know that it was best to gather too much information when the opportunity arose, rather than too little.

“Nothing new,” said Duggan, almost to himself.

“I reckon we’ve got seventeen possible locations,” said Chainer. “Places where the surface metals are too thick to be certain they aren’t hiding anything.”

“Anything you can do to eliminate some of those? Seventeen is too many to search. It could take us weeks, especially if we have to get outside and use the tanks.” Every gunner carried a total of four armed vehicles for surface work, which were affectionately known as tanks. They were technological anachronisms, but they were tough and packed a punch.

Chainer stared at his displays for a few moments, without speaking. Eventually, he gave Duggan the bad news. “I can’t see any way of bringing the numbers down.”

“Can you analyse the sites for any signs of surface disruption that might not have occurred naturally?” asked Duggan.

Chainer frowned. “I’m not sure I follow.”

“I want signs of heat damage to the surrounding rocks. Anything hotter than a meteorite strike. Like something from a missile or a beam weapon. If the Crimson came in fast, it may have only had nanoseconds to pick its location.”

“And if so, it might have blown an existing hole wider in order to get through,” said Chainer in understanding.

“Exactly.”

The results weren’t long in coming. “This one, Captain. There are signs of something much hotter than expected. There’s extensive fusing in the rocks in a big area near this crater over here.”

“That’s more like a cavern than a fissure,” said Duggan, peering at the area. “Four hundred metres wide and three hundred tall. You could fit a ship in there.”

“It would almost be touching the sides,” said McGlashan. “Not something I’d fancy without guidance.”

“That’s our spot,” said Duggan with a sudden certainty. “If anyone came looking for the ship they’d easily miss it if it were hidden in there.”

“We’re going down for a look?” asked McGlashan. She’d served her time as a foot soldier in the same way that he had, and Duggan suspected that she missed the days.

“I’m afraid not, Commander,” said Duggan with a smile. “We’ll allow Sergeant Ortiz and her men this one, shall we?”

McGlashan showed a flicker of disappointment. “Of course, Captain. It’s their time to shine.”

Duggan called up the ship’s intercom. “Good news ladies and gentlemen. It’s your chance for some action. Get suited up and report to the launch bay. Twenty minutes, please.” He closed the channel and turned to the others on the bridge.

“I’ll get down there and let Sergeant Ortiz know what’s up.” With that, he climbed out through the tight exit door from the bridge and navigated his way with a practised smoothness along the two hundred metres of corridors that took him through ultra-dense engine matter towards the Detriment’s single, cramped launch bay. As he walked, Duggan could feel the immense, otherworldly power of the vessel’s engines which surrounded him on all sides. Although the Detriment appeared huge to look at, there was hardly anything spare within its hull. Propulsion, weapons, guidance. All the important parts took up close to ninety-five percent of the interior. It left precious little room for a sizeable crew or cargo, not that the Gunners had ever been specifically designed to shuttle infantry into combat – their addition was more of an afterthought. Duggan had never asked what the production line cost of a Vincent class came to. He doubted it was a cheap way to carry four crew and fifteen soldiers.

The launch bay was an area at the lowest end of the ship and close to the rear. It was less than twenty metres square and six high, with only eight metres of alloy separating the contents from the oblivion of the vacuum outside. The four tanks took up the majority of the available space – they were angular and vaguely wedge-shaped, with stubby cannons mounted on turrets. They didn’t need wheels and could hover over almost any surface. It was cramped and uncomfortable inside, with barely enough room to fit six infantry in their combat suits. Duggan had seen a dozen crammed into one before and it hadn’t been a pretty sight.

The repair bot was sitting in the centre of the hold, between the four tanks. It was a matte grey cylindrical object, three metres long, squat and powered by a small gravity drive hidden somewhere within. The robot’s surface was utterly featureless to the naked eye and it was designed to operate in the most hostile environments imaginable. It appeared almost sullen as it waited in the hold.

In the remaining space of the Detriment’s bay, soldiers struggled into their combat gear, the sounds of their voices raised above the background noise of the engines. Duggan was experienced enough to pick up the nervous tension of men and women who were about to face the unknown. Soon, they were gathered in formation, with Sergeant Ortiz at their head. Their body suits were a dark grey, made of a flexible polymer and with an oversized alloy helmet that could support the suit’s occupant for almost a month away from the ship. They looked strange and menacing.

“We’ll not be setting the Detriment down,” said Duggan. It wasn’t usual practice to land, particularly in a potentially hostile situation like this one. The vessel would be an easy target if a Ghast warship dropped out of lightspeed close by. “We’ll come to a height of two hundred klicks and then let you go. I’ve had the Detriment’s mainframe give the tanks and repair bot the instructions they need. You’ll just sit back and enjoy the ride.”

“Same as ever, Captain,” said Ortiz, her voice imperfectly replicated by the suit’s comms box.

“We think the Crimson piloted itself into a split in the surface over the planet’s south pole. I want you to get in there, find the ship and point this repair bot in the right direction. Needless to say, you can’t let anything happen to it, else we’ll be trying to lift whatever’s left of the Crimson into the hold that we’re currently standing in. And I’m sure you can see there’s not enough room to carry both tanks and spaceship fragments.” The soldiers relied on the tanks for transport and firepower. They’d be loath to see them abandoned so that the Detriment could carry a semi-functioning computer core back to the Juniper.

“What happens when the Crimson’s fixed up, sir?” asked Ortiz.

“That depends on what state it’s in and how fast it can fly. We have almost no data on its capabilities. The decision has not been made.”

“Understood,” she said.

With that, Duggan left the soldiers and returned to the bridge. He sat back in his seat and watched the internal readouts that told him the men and women had now boarded the tanks and were ready to disembark on his signal. Duggan gave McGlashan the nod to let her know she was in control for the drop.

“Bringing us in close, Captain. Thirty seconds,” she said, tapping in a path to bring them near to the planet’s surface.

“Thirty seconds and we’ll be in place,” echoed Duggan through his comms channel to Sergeant Ortiz.

“Roger that, Captain. Thirty seconds.” Her voice was piped directly into the bridge and her words floated in the air.

“We’re now one-hundred-and-ninety-five klicks up,” said McGlashan. The viewscreen showed an image of a bleak, flawed surface. It was inhospitable by the standards of many planets, yet there were places that were much harsher than this one.

“Almost a walk in the park,” said Duggan to himself. “Sergeant Ortiz, you’re good to go.”

“Roger,” came the response.

“Cargo hold door open,” said Breeze. “Tanks one, two and three on their way. Repair bot with them.”

“Keep me updated, Sergeant.”

Ortiz’s voice came back at once. “Like you said, Captain. Just sitting back and enjoying the ride.”

“We’re pulling up to ten thousand klicks and we’ll circle the landing zone. Keep the comms open unless I say otherwise.”

“Roger. We’ll leave a manned beacon up top at all times.”

“Let me know when you’re on the ground.”

“Will do.”

McGlashan brought the Detriment away from the planet’s surface while they waited. The seconds passed until they became a few long minutes. The tanks could be dropped from twenty-five thousand kilometres in an emergency. They’d not have much power left by the time they landed, so Duggan had brought the Detriment in close so that the tanks’ engines would have plenty of juice to spare. Once down, the armoured vehicles had no way of getting back up. Duggan planned to deal with that when it became an issue.

Ortiz’s voice crackled into life, startling Duggan. “All tanks safely deployed, Captain, less than two klicks from the target. We’ve got the repair bot tagging along with us.”

“Roger. Keep those updates coming.”

Duggan found himself on his feet while he waited for further news. He wasn’t sure why he felt so concerned, since he’d always thrived on taking risks. Something about this mission just didn’t feel right. He wasn’t given the time to reflect on the vagaries of fate or luck.

“Deep fission signature detected, Captain,” said Chainer. “We’ve got a Cadaveron breaking out of lightspeed on the far side of the planet.”

Chapter Seven

Duggan swore and then swore again. “Any chance they’ll have detected us?”

“No chance at all.”

“Sergeant Ortiz, we’ve got a Ghast heavy cruiser coming into orbit. We’ll need to break off comms shortly. Keep your heads low.”

“Roger that, Captain.”

“Keep looking for the Crimson and we’ll collect you when we’re able.”

“What now?” asked McGlashan. “Think it’s here looking for us?”

Duggan ran his fingers through his short hair, feeling the sweat on his scalp. “I don’t know what it’s here for,” he said. The implications if it was looking for them didn’t bear thinking about. “Any further details, Lieutenant?” he asked.

“If I had to guess, I’d say they came in high,” said Chainer.

“They’ll probably circle the planet at fifty thousand klicks. It’s how their big guns usually operate,” said Duggan. “Any idea of how long till they pick us up?”

“No more than fourteen minutes until the risk becomes unacceptably high,” said Chainer, looking at his screens. Pages and pages of possibilities scrolled before his eyes as the Detriment’s mainframe tried to nail down the likeliest course and trajectory of the enemy ship based on past recorded data.

“Let’s give it nine minutes where we are and then we’ll plot a course,” Duggan said. He hoped they’d be able to orbit the planet a couple of times and avoid detection until the Ghast ship decided there was nothing here to bother about. “Sergeant Ortiz, do you copy?”

“I copy, Captain,” she said.

“We’re going to orbit the planet and we’ll be out of comms range in approximately nine minutes. Keep the outbound channel closed and wait for us to contact you.” There was a high chance that the Ghast warship would pick up a signal from the ground, especially if its own orbit brought it near enough.

“Roger that, Captain. Comms closed until we hear.”

“Should we head into the fissure?” asked McGlashan. “If the Crimson got in there with seven times our mass, then we should be able to slide in real smooth.”

“Negative, Commander. We don’t know for sure what’s down there. We’ll be an easy target if we get anything wrong.” He paused. “And we don’t know for certain if the Crimson is there anyway. It’s too much of a risk.”

McGlashan didn’t mention it again and in truth, Duggan was tempted to try a landing. The Detriment’s mainframe estimated they’d have an eighty-six percent chance of avoiding detection for two full circuits of the planet, with that number decaying at an increasing rate for subsequent circuits. The computer didn’t have sufficient data to predict their chances if they decided on a landing. The surface fissure cut into the rock at an oblique and the sensors hadn’t been able to penetrate far enough along to determine if there was enough room for a spaceship to navigate its length. All they had to go on was the evidence of an intense heat in the area. Duggan didn’t like to rely on statistics if he could avoid it, but this time he was going to side with the mainframe.

“That’s nine minutes, Captain,” said McGlashan, when the time had elapsed.

“Sergeant Ortiz, this is the Detriment wishing you good luck.”

“Make sure you come back for us,” she said.

Duggan cut off the comms without replying. He wasn’t a man to make promises he couldn’t keep and the soldiers knew it well enough. They also knew that only death would stop him trying. “Take us away, Commander,” he said.

“Already done.”

“Listen out for anything,” he said to Chainer.

The soldiers were out of comms range two minutes later. Duggan dropped back into his chair and shifted uncomfortably while he waited helplessly for this one to play itself out. To his left, McGlashan watched the weapons panels like a hawk, her fingers never straying more than a few inches from the deployment indentations on the alloy console. The air seemed even more stifling than usual.

The first circuit of the planet took eleven minutes and the next one nine. The Detriment’s hull temperature climbed as the gravity engines threw the spaceship in a tighter and faster orbit than the first.

“The next circuit will bring us back over Sergeant Ortiz’s position,” said McGlashan.

“Down to an eighty-three-point-two percent chance of escaping detection,” Duggan said to himself. “How long till we’re in comms range?”

“Just under a minute.”

“Still no sign of the Cadaveron,” said Chainer.

“What do they want?” asked Duggan. “Why here and why now?”

“Shit happens,” said Breeze.

“Sergeant Ortiz, are you reading?”

“The sergeant’s underground, Captain,” came the voice of Turner. “She’s left me up top.”

“Anything to report?”

“We’ll lose you in thirty seconds,” interjected McGlashan.

“The going’s rough, even for the tanks. A bit slower than we’d have liked. The squad is less than two kilometres along the fissure. You should see this place, Captain. Makes the Grand Canyon look like a knife cut in your steak.”

“Understood, soldier. We’re breaking off now. Keep low and quiet until you hear from us again.”

“Will do.”

Duggan closed the channel. He didn’t want to give the Ghasts any more chance to detect their location than he had to. He got to his feet again, unable to settle. The readouts from the life support showed a sudden fluctuation in their power draw as they corrected the internal environment of the ship in order to protect the occupants from the gravity force of a series of sharp turns it was engaged in.

“How long till we’re in comms range again?” he asked.

“Three more orbits and twenty-six minutes. Looks like we’ll be hot at the end of this next one. A six-minute circuit, skipping just off the atmosphere.”

“Seventy-nine-point-five chance of an unwanted interception,” Duggan announced.

“I never liked the odds when they dropped below ninety-five percent,” said Chainer. Before him, a hundred modulating bars danced to show the status of the engines. Advances in computing power had made the position of ship’s engineer almost redundant. Regardless, Duggan liked the role to be filled, even though he knew that many Gunners flew with a crew of only three. He took comfort from the backup of having a fourth trained officer aboard.

At the end of the six-minute circuit, the Detriment’s nose glowed fiercely, the temperature at exactly one-hundred percent of its design tolerance. The mainframe would never push it beyond that unless it was overridden by the captain or the commander.

“The next one’s a nine, then a ten-point-five,” said McGlashan. “Twenty minutes until we see how the guys and gals are getting on.”

“It needs to be good news,” said Chainer.

“The only good news will be a fission signature from the Ghast ship,” said Duggan. Before him, the chance of interception had fallen to seventy-four-point-nine. It would drop below seventy on the next orbit.

“What happens if they don’t go?” asked McGlashan.

It wasn’t a situation that Duggan wanted to contemplate. Nevertheless, he could feel the burden of the decision closing in on him, like an inescapable collision that he had no way to swerve around. “Why can’t they just piss off?” he asked, not expecting an answer.

“Maybe the ship that pinged us on the approach read enough to be able to predict our destination,” said Chainer. “The latest Cadaverons can almost outthink a Hadron class. If it managed to tally the presence of a Corps vessel way out of its expected arena with the signal from the Crimson, the ship’s AI might just have put two and two together.”

“How’d they manage to follow us, then?” asked McGlashan. “And if they knew of the Crimson’s signal, why didn’t they know it was on this planet?”

“It’s possible they intercepted the Crimson’s warning without knowing exactly where it came from. The further you get from a transmission’s source, the harder it is to pin it down. I’ll bet the Ghasts could have narrowed the source down to half a dozen systems in this galaxy. The Alpha’s only designed to do comms and monitoring – the kit they’re carrying could pick up the sound of a dog shitting on the pavement from half a trillion light years away.”

“Nice example,” said Breeze.

“So, it’s down to luck,” said Duggan, now sure that Chainer had guessed right. “Lucky for them and unlucky for us. It means they know we’re here.”

“Seems that way,” said Chainer.

“Six minutes till comms range,” McGlashan said.

“If the Ghasts know we’re here, then they’ll know that the Crimson’s here as well,” said Breeze. “What if they came to the same conclusion as we did about where you could hide a ship?”

“The scanners on a heavy cruiser might be able to cut deeper through the surface opacity,” Chainer added. “We don’t know what their latest ships can do.”

“Reckon they’ll be able to pick up a single man on the surface standing with a communications beacon?” asked Duggan.

“I doubt it. Not easily. Unless they were actively looking, or at a comparatively low orbit.”

“You’ve gone from an almost certain no, to an almost certain yes in the space of three sentences,” Duggan admonished him.

“Sorry, Captain. I wouldn’t want to rely on guesswork, so I’d probably assume they’ll pick up Turner if they stay in the area long enough.”

“One minute to comms range.”

“Ghast ship just coming into the view of our sensors over the planet’s curvature,” said Chainer. “It’s describing a tight circle over the south pole.”

“Dropping us down to five hundred klicks,” said McGlashan. The external viewscreen showed them banking sharply and the planet’s surface filled every inch of the space as they headed steeply downwards and away from the Ghast heavy cruiser, in the hope that they’d be able to hide low against the planet’s surface.

“Did they see us?” asked Duggan.

“Unsure,” said Chainer, leaning across to tap at an area of his console. “Yes, they saw us. I’m picking up the outline of a Cadaveron heading towards our position.”

“Get us away,” said Duggan.

“Already on it.”

The life support systems surged again as the Detriment swung sharply about, wrenching the alloys of the superstructure almost to breaking point. The ship’s sub-light drive shot from fifty percent to exactly one hundred percent as the Detriment accelerated at maximum power in the opposite direction to the approaching enemy. A screen to Duggan’s right helpfully displayed the record bank image of a smoothly-rotating three-dimensional image of a Ghast Cadaveron – a three-point-five-kilometre-long mixture of wedge, cuboid and cylinder in dull silver, with twenty-eight banks of missile launchers, and an enormous front-mounted particle beam generator. It outgunned the Detriment by fifty to one. The only positive was that a Cadaveron carried so many weapons that they’d had to compromise on the engine mass. Out in deep space, it was faster than any Vincent class. Here in orbit the difference was much lower.

“How long till they get in weapons range?”

“I can’t answer that for definite yet, Captain,” replied McGlashan. “Their designs change all the time. This looks like a newer one than we’ve seen. There are a few structural differences that aren’t in our records. It’ll be a minute or two until we see how fast they can go while clinging so close to the surface.

“Let me know as soon as you know,” said Duggan. Calm settled over him and his mind ticked over methodically as it did its best to plot a course out of the predicament they found themselves in.

Chapter Eight

Commander McGlashan spoke the words that Duggan hadn’t wanted to hear. “Looks like this is a fast one,” she announced after less than a minute.

“How fast?” asked Duggan. It was just his luck to come across one of the Ghasts’ new designs. Their ships seemed to change all the time and there was no way to rely on past experience to determine the capabilities of what another ship might be. Even to this day, the Confederation had precious little information on the extent of the Ghast resources, nor how populous they were. One thing was certain: the alien species had taken this war more seriously from the outset and now they were reaping the rewards.

“Three minutes twenty seconds until we’re in range of their missiles. A maximum of fifty-five additional seconds for travel time at our current velocity.”

Duggan didn’t respond immediately. He was too busy thinking, with the familiar expression on his face that he always carried when the threat was at its greatest. None of the options were palatable and in the circumstances, he knew he’d have to pick the best one from a bad lot. The easiest option was to go to lightspeed. There was plenty of time to warm up the fission drive. Of course, that would necessitate abandoning both the soldiers on the ground and the mission itself. Duggan could accept failing the mission, but he could never accept failing the men and women on the planet’s surface. The other option was to engage the Ghast ship and hope to somehow pull a lucky kill out of the bag. Duggan almost laughed out loud at the thought. There was no way in hell the Detriment could knock a Cadaveron out of the sky. That left one option, if only there was enough time to make it work. He grimaced. It was going to be like taking a kick in the balls.

“We need to reach the southern pole before they blow us to pieces,” he said.

“That’s going to stress the hull,” said McGlashan almost absently as she input the new course and overrode the in-built safety parameters.

“I need a decaying orbit that will bring us into the planet’s atmosphere at the last possible moment.” The fourth planet’s atmosphere was thin and comprised a mixture of carbon dioxide, nitrogen and a tiny amount of oxygen. Nevertheless, it would be enough to burn them up at the velocity they’d be travelling.

“What’s the plan?” asked McGlashan.

“I’m going to tell the mainframe to take us over the point where we dropped off the soldiers. We’re going to get in the last tank and try and get to the surface.”

“They’ll pick us up easily,” said Chainer.

“Not if we drop a cloud of shock drones just before we leave,” said Duggan. “With any luck they’ll confuse the Ghast weapons systems.”

“And then they’ll either destroy the Detriment or watch it burn up as we drop too low in the atmosphere.”

“Precisely.”

McGlashan shrugged. She could see that Duggan was decided and if she disagreed with his choice she kept her own counsel. “I’ll miss the old girl,” was all she said.

“Lieutenants, make your way to the tank. You can suit up inside. I’m sure you’ll not hang around to pick up your belongings.”

Duggan didn’t need to say anything further. Chainer and Breeze got to their feet and left the bridge with as much speed as they could manage.

“It’s nearly set,” said Duggan. “We’ll remote jettison once we get to the tank. The ship will enter the atmosphere immediately over the landing site. At the speed we’re going, she’ll break apart almost at once.”

“I hate having to do this, sir.”

“Me too. Come on, let’s get to the cargo bay,” Duggan instructed, ushering his commander through the exit doorway. After she’d gone, he paused for one final look over the bridge of the spaceship he’d commanded for the better part of six years. It had been a true and faithful companion to him.

The air was cooler in the narrow corridor outside, yet not enough to dry the sweat that caked the pair of them as they hurried along in the peculiar half-crouch that you adopted after a while on a Vincent class. McGlashan called over her shoulder as she ran, her breathing hardly laboured at all.

“I’ve programmed in two small waves of shock drones to be jettisoned before the last big one. I thought it might keep the Ghasts guessing about what we’re doing.”

“Good idea.”

“And the weapons systems will fire at anything which comes in range.”

The newest Lambdas could outrange most Ghast missiles. The particle beam was more of a gamble. When they’d first appeared on the enemy warships, their range had been pathetically low. Over the course of only a few years, the weapon had been developed until its range was a match for most of what the Space Corps could field. It was academic – a few Lambdas weren’t going to penetrate the Cadaveron’s defences. Even if a couple got lucky, they didn’t carry enough of a payload to cripple anything as large as the heavy cruiser. Still, it would feel good to know that the Detriment’s last throw of the dice caused the enemy at least a small amount of damage. It might be enough to send the Cadaveron crawling back to base for repairs. Duggan realised his mind was wandering and he forced it back to the present.

In the close quarters of the Detriment’s network of tight corridors, Duggan heard an occasional faint rumbling, sometimes accompanied by a shuddering beneath his feet. To a rookie, it would have felt like nothing more threatening than the expected operation of a spaceship. To Duggan, the sounds were indicative of the immense stresses that the Detriments engines and structure were being placed under as the vessel fought to maintain a close orbit around the planet.

“It’s going to be tight,” said McGlashan, her voice almost conversational.

They burst out of the corridor and into the ship’s cramped hold. The single remaining tank was in the farthest corner, the extra distance adding a precious couple of seconds to their journey. Lieutenant Breeze had his head and torso out of the top entrance hatch and waved them over, the gesture redundant, yet faintly reassuring.

“Your suits are inside,” he called. He’d saved them the extra few moments it would have taken to haul the bulky cases of kit over to the tank.

Breeze vanished back within. McGlashan sprang up the angular nose of the tank and vaulted after him, dropping inside with the ease of a woman who’d done the same thing many times before. Duggan didn’t hesitate and followed in the same smooth action, descending a shaft that dropped almost ten feet into the depths of the tank. There were rungs set in the grey metal walls and Duggan’s hands snatched at them to slow his fall. He landed at the bottom, in a space that was hardly five feet high and wide. A grubby red light bathed him from the tank’s interior and there was the strong smell of oil.

“Close it, quick!” urged Breeze, from somewhere deeper within.

His words were spoken in conjunction with Duggan’s hand tapping out a fast combination of three buttons on a console adjacent to the hatch. A slab of metal almost a metre thick shot quietly across and sealed the interior. It was surprisingly cool inside – almost chilly.

“How long?” asked Duggan, his voice muffled by the thickness and solidity of the surrounding alloys.

“You only just made it, sir,” said Breeze.

“Less than twenty seconds till we’re in range of their missiles,” added Chainer, watching a tiny display screen that showed an information feed from the Detriment’s main core.

The inner chamber of the tank was eleven feet long, six wide and slightly more than five high. There were three forward-facing seats to each side, all of them with tiny screens and cut-down control consoles. The central walkway was only two feet wide, with a smooth metal floor. The walls were a mess of pipes and wires, leading off to who knew where. The tanks were tough and reliable, yet disposable. If something went wrong, there was no expectation they’d undergo any sort of field repairs. If you found yourself stuck on one that broke down or suffered damage, all you could do was cross your fingers and hope someone would come and pick you up. In a way, they were the same as the Gunners – a mass of engines, weapons and armour, wrapped like a cocoon around the vulnerable human cargo. Duggan had always felt at home riding in one.

“The Detriment’s just taken a beam hit aft,” said McGlashan coolly. She’d reached her seat only seconds before Duggan and patched herself immediately into the ship’s computers.

“Damage?”

“Twenty percent of our engine capacity fried. That Cadaveron must be fresh out of the yard,” said Breeze. “They shouldn’t be able to hit us from so far out.”

“How long till we’re over our drop zone?” asked Duggan.

“One minute and eight seconds,” said McGlashan.

“It’s going to be a close one.”

“They’ve launched missiles. I’ve got two waves of twelve. And here comes a third. Twenty of our own going back towards them.”

“They’re holding back,” said McGlashan. “They must be expecting an easy kill. Normal recharge time on their particle beam is up in eight seconds. Our first wave of shock drones is gone.”

“Missiles will impact in fifty seconds, ours in less than twenty.”

“We’ve taken another beam hit. That one’s burned out approximately thirty million tonnes of our engines,” announced Breeze. “Bang goes anything above Lightspeed-A. That’s if we can even get that online.”

“At least their recharge is working exactly as expected,” said Chainer. Everything else about this Ghast ship seemed to be more advanced than they’d expected.

Duggan wasn’t paying attention to the consequences. He hadn’t expected to get away on the Detriment. All he wanted was to escape to the planet’s surface without the enemy ship detecting them. He paged through the updates and status reports on his own screen. “Second wave of shock drones away,” he said. “And another twenty Lambdas.”

“We need fifteen seconds lead time to make a clean launch for the tank,” said McGlashan.

“I know, Commander. We’re pushing it.” Duggan laughed, the sound stark and without humour.

“None of our first wave of Lambdas got through, sir.”

“Understood,” said Duggan through gritted teeth. It looked like he was going to be denied even the modest satisfaction of giving them a bloody nose.

“We’ve got another two waves of twelve on the sensors,” said Chainer. “They’re spacing them out nicely.”

The next few seconds tested Duggan’s determination to the full. If they escaped the Detriment too early, they’d have a longer journey to make contact with Sergeant Ortiz, which would vastly increase the chance that the Ghast ship would detect them on the surface. If they waited for even a second too long, the hold of the Detriment would become their coffin. How much longer till their particle beam recharges? he asked himself.

“Yes!” shouted McGlashan. “We got a hit right on their nose!” Her words were strangely reminiscent of Duggan’s own thoughts just a moment before. “Sending them another twenty Lambdas. Let’s see how they like that.”

“We might have knocked their particle cannon out,” said Chainer, frantically looking through the sensor readouts for any sign of positrons leaking from the Cadaveron’s hull. There was nothing, though the range was extreme.

“Their missiles have passed our first drones.”

“How many’d we get?”

“Nine, six and one,”

“That leaves only twenty,” said Breeze ruefully.

“Two, three and five of their missiles taken out by the second wave of drones.”

“Initiating tank deployment,” said Duggan, reaching forward to authorise the launch.

“What about our third wave of drones, sir?” asked McGlashan.

“Leave them to me,” said Duggan. In his head, he counted down. Twelve, eleven, ten, nine.

“Bulwark cannons firing,” said McGlashan.

“Come on,” muttered Chainer under his breath.

Eight, seven. Duggan initiated the release of the final shock drones. A dozen launch tubes on the top of the Detriment spewed a glittering cloud of metal into the void above the ship.

The first Ghast missile impacted at the rear of the Detriment. It punctured halfway through the twenty-metre thick alloy armour, the warhead exploding and tearing out a huge chunk of the armour plating. Three more missiles struck in the vicinity of the first, shredding the super-dense materials of the ship’s already ruined fission drive. The hull of the Detriment rocked and shuddered.

Four, three. In the Detriment’s hold, sheltered for the moment from the worst of the explosions, a shaft opened beneath the tank. It was a perfect fit for the armoured vehicle. The tank’s passengers got a sensation of movement. Two, one. The tank was sucked down the shaft and expelled into darkness, a little over one hundred kilometres above the planet’s surface. Outside the tiny vehicle, dozens of kilometres away, four of the missiles from the Cadaveron’s third wave detonated fruitlessly amongst the shock drones. The final two evaded the single Bulwark cannon that remained functional on the Detriment and plunged into the crippled vestiges of the spacecraft. The last Captain John Nathan Duggan saw of his ship was a crude, grainy image relayed onto his screen from the tank’s feeble sensor array. In a flash of reds and intense blues, the Detriment was reduced to chunks of molten hot pieces and cast in a chaotic pattern across the planet’s black sky.

The pain of the loss took hold of Duggan, much stronger than he’d expected it to be. He closed his eyes for a time. When he opened them, he was gripped with a determination he’d never felt before.

“Those bastards are going to pay for everything they’ve done,” he said.

Chapter Nine

No one spoke as the tank dropped from the sky towards the planet below. In the cramped interior, the occupants looked at the limited information from the vehicle’s rudimental sensors and propulsion systems, as if the intensity of their study could somehow influence their helplessness.

“Any sign of the Cadaveron?” asked Duggan at last.

“There’s something big way up there,” said Chainer. “It’s slowing.”

“Try and keep the drones between us and the Ghasts,” Duggan instructed McGlashan. “If we’re lucky they’ll either not bother looking or they’ll see us as a piece of debris.”

“Doing my best, sir,” said McGlashan. The tanks were designed to fall and land safely. The pilot had only a limited amount of control over the direction since it was expected that the vehicles would be accurately dropped in the first place. The tanks were definitely not manoeuvrable.

“Eighty klicks and counting,” said Duggan. It was peculiarly silent, ensconced in the tank’s hull. There was a faint vibration and a humming from the machinery locked away behind the inner walls. Otherwise, the only sound was that of the people within. “On the bright side, it looks like we’re coming in less than forty klicks from our target.”

“The terrain’s not perfect,” said Chainer. He’d fed the results of the Detriment’s surface scans into the cores of each of the four tanks before the soldiers had left for the surface.

“Nothing this baby can’t handle,” said McGlashan.

Duggan called up the details. The ground was rugged and covered in loose rocks, gravel and dust. He asked the tank’s guidance to plot the best route – forty-seven kilometres, taking into account a more circuitous route they had to take in order to avoid a mile-high vertical crag that the tank wouldn’t be able to climb easily.

“A little under an hour to get where we’re going,” he said. “That Cadaveron’s going to get plenty of opportunity to spot us on the way.”

“It wasn’t circling directly above where the soldiers came down,” said Chainer. “Could be that they’re hunting in the wrong place.”

“That might buy us enough time,” said Breeze.

“Yeah - it took us a while to find the right place.”

“That’s if we’re at the right place,” said McGlashan. “If the Crimson isn’t there or if it’s nothing but a lump of metals, we’re a long way from rescue.” The tank could send out a low-speed distress signal. This far out it would be hit and miss as to whether or not anyone could get to them before they ran out of power. That’s if anyone even bothered to try. The risk versus reward wasn’t high, particularly given how much the Ghasts had the Confederation on the run.

“They won’t come for us,” said Duggan. He didn’t mean to sound fatalist and just wanted them to know what he felt was the truth. “They’d need a fleet of Anderlechts to ensure success. They don’t have the ships to spare and we’re simply not important enough.”

“We may not be, but perhaps the Crimson is,” said Breeze.

“Don’t overthink it. We’re what they sent, not a fleet.”

“Aye, that’s right enough,” said Chainer.

“Coming in to land,” Duggan told them.

The vehicle’s landing routines were almost entirely autonomous. Two kilometres above the surface, the tank’s gravity engines slowed the hurtling descent towards the rocks below. On board, the occupants were given a ride that was rough in comparison to what they’d have felt on a spacecraft. The tank’s life support systems were much more limited in their capabilities.

“A bit choppy,” commented McGlashan. The tank’s hull flexed and creaked to accompany the increasingly intrusive howl of the engines.

“I’ve not been on one of these since training,” muttered Chainer. “I’d almost forgotten what it’s like.”

“Cheer up, Lieutenant. Soon we’ll have landed on a hostile planet with no backup and no-one coming to our rescue.”

“That’s not what I wanted to hear, Commander.”

The tank landed with a surprising smoothness. The vehicle’s guidance system dropped them onto a clear area of the ground, hardly disturbing the gritty dust that was strewn thickly all around. The tank hovered for a second or two, a little more than a foot above the ground. Then, it rotated until its wedge-shaped nose was pointing towards the east and moved away on its pre-determined course. Its engines gave out little signature of their operation and the angular hull was designed to show an almost-invisible profile to hide it from sensor detection. It wasn’t fool-proof, but there again, nothing was.

“Might as well sit back and enjoy the trip, folks,” said Duggan, sounding more cheerful than he felt. His chair crackled as he tried to get comfortable. It felt like it had been designed for a person with much shorter legs than his and Duggan found his knees pressed tightly against the console in front of him. He brought up the sensor feeds from the outside. The place was as bleak as any he’d seen. Some planets had atmospheres that were hostile beyond measure, where even the tanks couldn’t stay for long. For some reason, Duggan had always loved the thrill of danger. Here it was barren and lifeless. Just another planet amongst countless others that had nothing of interest to bring anyone to visit. Except that this one DOES have something, spoke his inner voice.

Duggan watched the terrain pass by. The tank scooted over the undulations without any ceremony. There was the occasional sensation of ascending or descending, which was a similar feeling to that of being in a lift. The onboard computer showed a countdown of both time and distance to indicate how long till they’d arrive. With twenty minutes to go, Duggan succumbed to the inevitable and set to the task he’d been putting off.

“We should get into our suits,” he said. “One at a time.” They were bad enough to get into with plenty of space in which to operate. Inside the cramped cockpit of the tank, it would be an exercise in frustration and futility.

Duggan made his way to the locker where Breeze had stowed away four of the life-support suits. He pulled one free without much relish. It was cumbersome, though not as heavy as it looked.

“I never like wearing them either,” said Breeze with a chuckle when he caught Duggan’s expression.

After a short struggle, Duggan was enclosed in the dark grey polymer suit. It was about a centimetre thick all over and proof against a huge variety of atmospheric temperatures and conditions. Inside the gloves, his fingertips registered the feel of the material – it was somewhere between a plastic and a dense rubber. It resisted movement, but only slightly. After a few days in one, the wearer could usually operate almost like they weren’t encumbered.

“Leave the helmets till we’ve arrived,” he said. The helmets were oversized spheres filled with complex technologies and they were unpleasant to wear at the best of times, let alone in the bowels of a tank.

Duggan returned to his seat and left the others to don their own suits. He kept his gaze on the external sensors and watched as the vehicle entered the lee of a sheer cliff. To the other side, a flat plain of gravel and scree rolled away for what might have been a hundred miles.

“Want me to try and reach Sergeant Ortiz, sir?” asked Chainer.

“Maintain silence. We know where they are.”

“Roger.”

“If they broadcast a signal, shut them down fast.”

“Will do.”

On his screen, Duggan watched the cliff recede gradually into the distance. “Five minutes to go. We should start our descent any moment.”

The tank’s front sensors showed what looked like the lip of a cliff a short distance ahead. The edge appeared to be almost smooth, as if it had been filed down by three billion years of abrasion from wind-borne dust. The tank didn’t slow and it glided easily over the edge. There wasn’t a sharp fall - in fact, the lip was the edge of a crater. It was only because the Detriment’s sensors had told him it was a meteorite scar that Duggan knew as much. Before them lay a long slope that curved to the left and right, further than the eye could see. The meteorite had struck at an angle, leaving something between a furrow and a crater that was five kilometres wide and over twenty long. Their course had intersected the crater close to their destination. At the end of the furrow, the meteorite had smashed the rock into a huge cliff with a wide, vertical fracture running from the bottom to a point halfway up. It was here that Sergeant Ortiz had gone.

McGlashan gave a low whistle when she called up a view of the crater on her screen. “This must have been a big one. It looks painful even after all these years.”

Duggan thought it a strange choice of words but didn’t wonder about it. “We need to get underground as soon as we can. Turner said it was rough for the tanks so we might have to get out and walk sooner than we’d hoped. There should be room for us to get under cover before we have to ditch it.” He planned to pilot the tank straight into the gap under the cliff, to minimise the chance that the Cadaveron would pick them up.

The tank cut down the slope at an angle. It made good speed and the ground soon levelled out. The cliff was visible in the distance – high, looming and rugged. It came inexorably closer and Duggan studied his viewscreen for a sight of their destination. The tank’s sensors struggled to cope with the contrast between the shadows, so he wasn’t able to get a clear view of the place he hoped to find the Crimson. They were still over three kilometres away when a voice scratched into being, piped into the tank’s interior through a metal-grilled speaker.

“This is Infantryman Turner, hailing Detriment Tank Four. Do you copy?”

“Infantryman Turner, this is Lieutenant Frank Chainer. Shut down your broadcast immediately and await our arrival.”

Turner didn’t need to be told twice and the speaker fell silent.

Duggan swore at the unwanted communication. In his head, he willed the tank to move faster, cursing again at the thought that the Cadaveron might have detected their presence.

“I’ve got nothing incoming,” said Chainer.

“Don’t waste your time,” Duggan told him. “If they send a missile at us, we’ll not get more than a couple of seconds’ notice. These are surface vehicles.”

“Definitely not equipped to pick up incoming missiles from space,” added McGlashan.

“Fine, I get the message,” said Chainer. He was used to working with equipment that was a lot more sophisticated than he had available to him now. The limitations were already bugging him.

“Best get your helmets on and break out the rifles,” said Duggan. He clambered to the rear of the cockpit and picked up his own helmet. It was completely opaque from the outside – the computers within fed through all the details the wearer needed. Duggan crouched low and dropped it over his head. He felt a tightening around his neck where the tiny motors in the helmet forced a seal with the rest of the suit he was wearing. The feeling was disconcerting – like the suit could strangle him if it ever malfunctioned. There was a wraparound screen within the helmet, which automatically projected a copy of the outside world, enhanced to provide the most comfortable view for the human eye. There was the smell of decades-old stale sweat that every helmet Duggan had ever worn seemed to carry, as if the material was impregnated with it at the factory.

There was a second locker in the tank, set against the left-hand wall. Duggan gave the spoken command for it to unlock, his suit’s comms unit relaying the detail to the tank’s onboard computer. The locker door slid open with a faint hiss. Inside, there were six gauss rifles, resting horizontally on deep shelves. Duggan reached within and snapped the top one free of its mounting. He turned it over in his hand – a dull silver tube about three feet long and with a diameter of six inches. It had a hand grip at one end and another in the middle, with a recessed switch to fire. Duggan considered himself a good shot and he felt comfort from holding the weapon. Next to him, McGlashan had put her helmet on and snapped out a second rifle.

“If feels good to hold one of these again,” she said, her voice appearing inside Duggan’s helmet. It carried the faintest of echoes as it reflected from the helmet’s interior. It wasn’t perfect, but you got used to it.

“Got a visual on Turner,” said Chainer, still in his seat and awaiting his turn to get his helmet on.

“Where?” asked Duggan, squeezing back to his seat. In spite of his efforts, his helmet clanged off the ceiling of the tank’s hold. A tiny readout appeared briefly to register the collision.

“He’s just inside the fissure.”

“Good man. That’ll cut down the angle for the Ghasts to pick him up.”

Duggan checked their distance. He’d left it late to finish dressing and the tank was almost at the cliff. When it got there, it was programmed to stop and await further instructions. Duggan didn’t want any delay, so he overrode the autodrive and took the controls. The suit interfaced automatically with the tank and Duggan was able to control it using a series of hand gestures or his voice. It could be clumsy sometimes, but with practise it allowed the driver to direct the tank and perform other tasks at the same time.

“I’ve gone to manual,” he said. “Taking us straight in.”

The external sensors showed a clear image of the fissure now. It was several hundred metres wide at the bottom and streaked upwards, its jagged edges narrowing as it climbed. The planet had a long dusk and what little light arrived here from the distant sun was fading slowly. The tank’s sensors struggled to enhance the interior of the fractured cliff face. They weren’t able to read the path ahead perfectly, but Duggan could see enough to realise they were about to drop steeply.

“The cheeky bastard’s waving,” said McGlashan with a laugh as the tank went past Turner at almost thirty kilometres per hour. The ground beneath sloped sharply downwards, before levelling out ahead.

“Looks like he’s pulled the comms beacon further inside,” said Breeze.

“He’s got a nose for trouble,” said Duggan.

“Are we going to stop and pick him up?” asked McGlashan.

“Shortly,” said Duggan. By now, they’d left the soldier a couple of hundred metres behind. He’d shown no sign of following them since he’d been ordered to stay at his post. There again, he didn’t know that the Detriment had been destroyed, though he would surely have guessed something was wrong.

When he judged that he’d taken them far enough into the fissure to block out their transmissions from the Ghast ship above, Duggan brought the tank to a halt. It hovered dutifully in the air as it awaited the next command.

“Turner, get yourself over here. Don’t respond, you’ve got something listening out overhead.”

A few moments later, the suited figure of Turner appeared on their screens. He ran with the peculiar gait of a man who’d worn a spacesuit more often than was good for him. To Duggan, the soldier looked like the old ocean sailors who rolled with the sea as they walked. The gravity on this planet was higher than normal, but Turner didn’t seem to be bothered by it – that’s what the gym work was good for. The soldier jumped up onto the tank’s wedge nose. Everyone inside was suited, so Duggan sent the command for the hatch to open. The computer bleeped to warn that the interior airlock door was also open. He pressed a button sequence on his console to override it.

Moments later, Turner was inside. When he spoke, his voice betrayed an edge of excitement, the emotion exacerbated by his increased breathing from the recent sprint to the tank.

“They’ve found it,” he said.

Chapter Ten

Duggan pushed the tank onwards into the deepening gloom. Its headlights and sidelights threw out a startling amount of illumination, which was just enough to catch the distant walls. “What condition is it in?” he asked.

“The hull is intact, that’s all I know. Comms don’t get through from the entrance and Sergeant Ortiz had to send someone halfway back to let me know that much. We’ll be able to get about another klick along here and then it’s on foot.”

“Is the way blocked?” asked Duggan.

“There’s a rock shelf. There’d be plenty of room to get the Detriment in over it.” Turner frowned at the realisation that everyone on board was now on the planet’s surface.

“The Detriment’s gone. We’ve got a Cadaveron circling above. It might not know we’re here, but it certainly knows that something is here.”

Turner was a good soldier and he didn’t ask for more details about what had happened. There was no other conclusion for him to draw other than that they were effectively stranded on this planet. He couldn’t change it, so he shrugged and got on with it.

After another twelve hundred metres, the floor rose sharply upwards as if it had been pushed from below, until it formed a high ledge across the entire width of the cave. Above the ledge was nothing but open space, vanishing ever higher into impenetrable darkness. In front, the Detriment’s other three tanks were arrayed in a neat line as if they’d been parked in a shopping mall.

“Over a hundred metres high,” said Duggan. He was tempted to see if he could get the tank to climb it. They were made to fall and land safely, not to climb and he was sure it would be fruitless to try. Sergeant Ortiz knew her stuff. If she’d left the tanks here, it was for a good reason.

“How’d they get up?” asked McGlashan, flipping through different sensor images of the rocky ledge in front of them to see if she could find any sort of pathway.

“Don’t ask me,” said Turner. “There’s been no time for chat.”

“Let’s get out and take a look,” said Duggan. He shut down the tank’s engines and pushed through towards the exit hatch. He keyed it open and hauled himself up the ladder, feeling his muscles strain under the additional weight of the suit and the planet’s gravity. His breathing sounded loud in the enclosed space of his helmet and an amber warning light appeared to advise him politely that his oxygen consumption had increased by thirty percent. The hatch slid away into its recess and Duggan was able to exit the tank into the expanse of the cave. As he stood on the sloped front of the tank a feeling of contentment came to him. Some men feared the infinity of the universe, but not Duggan.

“Doesn’t this make you feel alive?” he asked.

Behind him, Turner climbed through the hatch. “If you say so, sir,” he said.

The tank’s lights remained on and they provided sufficient illumination for Duggan to see the barrier in front. He jumped to the ground, landing with a heavy thud on the dark grey rock. The ground was fairly smooth around here and clear of visible grit or dust. The sensors in his helmet advised him that a wind of nine kilometres per hour blew from the entrance towards him. Duggan couldn’t feel it at all in the protection of his suit. The rest of the crew emerged from the safety of the tank and hopped down one-by-one to join them.

“Can you see anything, sir?” asked McGlashan. Duggan’s helmet readout helpfully outlined her body in a red light. Everyone looked the same in their suits.

“The light isn’t good enough to see. I’ll try and reach Sergeant Ortiz.” Duggan opened a comms channel. “Sergeant Ortiz, do you copy?”

There was a delay of several seconds before a reply came. “I copy. We’ve found the Crimson, sir. She’s a bit beat up, but I think you’ll be able to get her to fly. The repair bot’s busting a gut.”

Duggan laughed. “I hope you’re right, Sergeant. A Cadaveron arrived. We’ve lost the Detriment. The Crimson’s all we’ve got to get us home.”

“Roger that, sir. You’re on the surface, then?”

“That’s right. We’re parked up near the tanks. Which way to get up?”

“There’s a place about a hundred metres to the left. It’s a bit of a scramble, so you’ll need to hold on tight.”

“Thanks.”

Duggan closed the comms channel to Sergeant Ortiz. “The good sergeant thinks the Crimson might fly,” he said to the others nearby. Ortiz wasn’t necessarily qualified to make the judgement but Duggan knew her well enough to give her the benefit of the doubt. She’d seen enough action over the years to recognize terminal damage to a ship’s structure. “There’s a path this way. Let’s go.”

With the other four in tow, Duggan set off across the cavern’s floor. The shelf looked higher than a hundred metres when he stood at the base and it had a clean, smooth look. As he got further away from the tank, the computer within his helmet detected the reduction in light and it turned on the inbuilt torch, which danced ahead with the rhythm of his strides. It didn’t take long to find what they were looking for. There was a deep, diagonal crack running up and away from them, with the lower edge jutting forward about three feet.

“She said it would be a bit of a scramble,” said Duggan, staring at the ascent.

“She wasn’t kidding,” said Breeze.

Duggan led the way, keeping his chest close to the rock face as he sidled his way up. It wasn’t something he’d anticipated taking part in and he found it a frustrating obstacle to reaching their goal. After a few minutes, he crawled over the top and breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t that he was scared of heights – he was simply eager to be on his way. McGlashan came next and Duggan reached down to pull her up the last few feet. A couple of minutes later, they were all standing at the top of the ledge, looking downwards onto the gloom-shrouded outlines of the stationary tanks below.

“Let’s hope we’ll be flying on the way back,” said Breeze.

“This place is huge,” said McGlashan. “I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite like it before.”

Above them was only darkness. The light from their suit helmets was feeble compared to the space and it provided only a glimpse of the route along which the Crimson must once have flown. Ahead, the fracture sloped downward again, the floor littered with sharp-edged stones and boulders. They could have lain here for aeons. There was wind, yet it evidently didn’t carry enough dust particles to smooth off the raw edges of the stone.

“Another two kilometres, sir,” said Turner. “Give or take.”

“Let’s get on,” Duggan replied, aware that there might still be a Ghast heavy cruiser searching for them.

The straight-line distance wasn’t relevant, since they had to veer around many obstacles and occasionally had to back-track for a short way. Some of the boulders were dozens of feet high and in places were piled upon each other. Duggan didn’t spend much time pondering on the cataclysm that brought this about. He wasn’t unaffected by it, but the time wasn’t right to let his mind wander from the task before him.

The journey took almost half an hour and their arrival came almost as a surprise. The boulders were more thickly deposited this far into the cave and they entirely concealed the view ahead. Duggan pushed himself through a narrow gap and then his suit light reflected off something before him. It was something incomprehensibly massive, squatting menacingly on the floor of the cave, filling almost the entirety of the available space. Where his light contacted the surface of the object, Duggan could see that it was utterly smooth and without blemish. Ignoring the exclamations of the crew coming from behind, he jogged forward to see more of the spacecraft.

“That’s the Crimson?” asked Chainer.

Duggan didn’t answer at once. He’d already determined they were at the aft of the ship – the rear was rectangular and perhaps three hundred and fifty metres across, with a height of two hundred and fifty. The vessel’s structure appeared to be suspended twenty metres from the ground and Duggan could just make out the rear four landing feet, each of them enormously thick in order to support the spaceship’s immense weight. There were signs of damage on the underside – there was a black pattern across the silver, covering a hundred metres or more. It was impossible to tell what had caused the damage from here.

“Sergeant Ortiz, we’re here. Give us some light,” said Duggan.

“No can do, sir. The ship won’t listen to me. It’s above my station.”

“Where are you?”

“We’re all on board, sir. The ramp was down. It’s a bit of a walk to get there.”

“On our way.”

They entered the shadow of the Crimson’s hull. It was one thing to see a ship the size of the Detriment from close up, but the Crimson was something else entirely. Where its landing feet were in contact with the ground, there were snaking patterns of stress fractures to indicate the incomprehensible weight of its engines and weapons systems. Duggan noticed that the hull tapered as they walked onwards and he imagined it might be slightly less than three hundred metres wide at the front. It was a classic wedge shape, yet somehow sleeker and more streamlined than most vessels in the Corps.

“It must have been something,” said McGlashan, marvelling at the design.

“Admiral Teron said there were plans to build twenty. Maybe they shelved them because this one went missing, rather than through cutbacks.”

“The brass only tell you what they want you to hear,” said McGlashan, communicating through a private channel. She knew Duggan well enough to speak sedition when it was relevant.

“Maybe.”

“Think the ship will accept your command, sir?” she asked.

“The command code algorithms are designed to be relevant in the past, the present and the future. Any Corps ship of my grade should accept mine.” As he said this, he fervently hoped there’d be no problems. It didn’t seem likely that he’d be sent out here if they knew he lacked the necessary authority for the Crimson’s mainframe to obey him.

“There’s the plank,” said Breeze.

The Crimson’s boarding ramp was about two-thirds of the way along the Crimson’s eleven hundred metre length. It was narrow and sharply inclined, with a surprisingly pristine surface made from a rubber compound to aid grip. You could always tell the expected number of crew on a ship by the width of its boarding ramp. On the Crimson, it was more of an afterthought.

“They weren’t expecting many crew,” said McGlashan.

Above them, a suited figure appeared. “Welcome aboard, sir,” said Ortiz.

With a feeling of mixed apprehension and excitement, Captain John Nathan Duggan climbed upwards and onboard the ESS Crimson.

Chapter Eleven

Duggan felt immediately at home. The larger vessels in the Corps had wide, civilized corridors that would permit three people to walk abreast. They had cinemas, gyms, and open common rooms for the entertainment of the crew. Many of the officers had large rooms for their comfort, with the captain and senior officers provided with entire suites. The Crimson was different – it was just like a Gunner with its cramped corridors and peculiar smell of oil. Yet Duggan could immediately tell it was different. He didn’t know how, but he knew this ship had been designed to win wars. Even when we weren’t fighting one.

When he reached the top of the ramp, Duggan clapped Sergeant Ortiz on the shoulder. He dismissed her back to the other men and didn’t delay himself in getting on with business. With his feet seeming to lead the way, Duggan found himself at the bridge. It was a little larger than the Detriment’s had been, equipped with the same four seats. These ones were covered in soft leather, which had seen no sign of wear and tear. Duggan couldn’t help but press his fingers into the covering on the captain’s chair, wondering why the leather showed no signs of perishing. Around the room, there was the usual panoply of screens and status displays. A few of them displayed lines of digits and code in a dark green shade. The majority were dead. There was a metal wraparound console for each of the seats, covered in buttons and touch controls. It looked the same as the Detriment, yet with a strangeness to it that came from the years it had been waiting here in the darkness.

“Pipes!” exclaimed McGlashan, pointing at a row of three that entered through the bulkhead near the ceiling and exited through the side wall. “I’ve not seen a pipe on a spacecraft in years.”

Duggan chuckled at her enthusiasm and sat himself down in the captain’s chair. Even through the material of his suit he could feel it was comfortable. The console in front of him bore all the hallmarks of standard human design in the field of spacecraft controls. They’d been doing it the same way for a hundred years before the Crimson’s hull was laid down.

“Let’s see what we can do,” he said. Almost of their own volition, his fingers skittered across the controls, his suit relaying the tactile information through its material. The Crimson’s mainframe was online, with access currently denied. Duggan had a tiny chip buried into his forearm that contained an ever-changing chain of a billion numbers and symbols. In theory, it was meant to tally up with the exact same combination available to all Corps ships. The life support was off so there was no way Duggan was going to get out of his suit in order to make a direct skin connection with the ship’s security plate. Instead, he used the suit’s onboard processing unit to pull out the numbers and relay them directly to the Crimson’s mainframe. Immediately, a number of additional displays lit up around Duggan.

“I’ve got lights,” said McGlashan as the commander’s displays flooded into life in front of her. She squinted at the sudden brightness.

“And here,” said Chainer.

“Same,” said Breeze.

“Right, let’s see what we’ve got and what we can do,” said Duggan.

For the next five minutes, he sat quietly as he interrogated the Crimson’s mainframe. The news wasn’t what he’d been hoping for.

“The mainframe’s showing an uptime of almost ninety-six weeks,” he said. “Either it didn’t send a signal straight away, or whoever sent us here sat on their hands for four months before deciding to act. On top of that, I’ve only been given clearance to activate and use the sensors, the life support and the propulsion systems. The rest of it is locked down - weapons and most of the databanks.”

“Can you override?”

“I’m working on it. I’m denied access. Looks like the old girl is suspicious of newcomers.”

McGlashan gave a shake of her head. “So, we’ve been sent all the way out here to bring the Crimson home, yet with no way to defend ourselves against attack?”

“Looks that way.”

“What else have we got?” she asked.

Duggan poked around for a minute longer, giving out one or two low whistles of surprise, yet saying nothing.

“Don’t you hate it when he does that?” complained Chainer.

“I’ve authorised all the consoles as much as I’m able. The life support is now online. It’s already closed the boarding ramp and we’ll have another five minutes till the atmosphere is hospitable. Admiral Teron wasn’t lying when he said they’d spent a lot of money on this ship. If you believe this readout, the engines have one hundred-and-seventeen times the output of the Detriment’s. They’re bigger and vastly more efficient.”

“That can’t be right,” said Breeze. “That would make them far more advanced than the Detriment’s and we had a refit only four years ago to add on some extra power.” He called up half a dozen readouts and positioned them side-by-side on his screen. “This thing’s got more power than a Hadron class,” he said, looking puzzled.

“That means we can just fly out and show that Cadaveron a clean pair of heels?” asked Chainer.

“Not likely,” said McGlashan. “If it picks us up manoeuvring out of this hole, it’ll blow us away long before the fission drives come online.”

“The last record before the mainframe shut down shows that something fried a big chunk of the engines.”

“It’s had ninety-six weeks working at them,” said Breeze. There were weapons that could disrupt the connections between the atoms that comprised the engines of a spaceship, in order to slow or stop them entirely. As long as the material remained in place, the vessel’s mainframe could generally re-establish those connections or re-route as necessary. It wasn’t a quick process. A missile strike was a different thing entirely, but the Crimson hadn’t suffered any explosive damage that Duggan could see.

“Ninety-six weeks hasn’t been long enough for it to repair everything. I’m reading a history of extensive damage,” said McGlashan.

“We’re not quite ready to fly out yet,” Breeze replied. “We’re at thirty-five percent.”

Like a jigsaw puzzle of trillions of pieces, the earliest parts were the hardest to slot into place. The further along the repairs went, the easier they became. Thirty-five percent sounded low, but Duggan knew that meant the ship’s core had completed the bulk of the work.

“That’s much faster than I’d have expected. Perhaps the brain of this thing is quicker than it’s letting on,” mused Duggan. “Or maybe it was designed to be exceptionally good at specific tasks. Lieutenant Breeze, can you give me a prediction for when we’ll be ready to fly at something close to peak efficiency?” He didn’t need to spell out that he meant with a chance to escape the Ghast heavy cruiser.

“We’ll be above ninety percent in approximately twenty hours, sir. A little longer if you want to go at a hundred percent.”

As he talked, Duggan worked at the weapons systems. Without warning, the Crimson provided access to the locked-down sub-arrays. Several new options became accessible from his console and Duggan opened them up.

“It’s let me into the weapons,” he said.

“What’re we carrying?” asked McGlashan.

“Wait on, I’m authorising you.”

“Here we go,” she said, excitement in her voice.

Duggan was ahead of her and he scrolled through the Crimson’s lists of arms and ammunition. “We’ve got eighteen banks of ancient Lambdas – big clusters. There’re eight early-gen Bulwarks and a dozen nukes. Big ones. Really big ones.”

“Nukes?” asked Chainer, blinking in amazement.

“Looks like it. Long range and slow.”

“What’re we carrying nukes for?”

“I don’t know,” said Duggan.

“Sometimes, when everything else has failed, there might be a time when you need to rely on a crude and filthy high explosive,” announced Breeze. He sat back in his seat with an air of faint satisfaction.

“I wouldn’t like to be within a hundred klicks when one of these things goes off,” said McGlashan. “I didn’t even think we made them anymore.”

“We’re carrying a lot of ordnance,” said Duggan. “Teron wasn’t wrong when he said they’d put the good stuff onboard. This vessel must have been a flying juggernaut.”

“Until they launched the first Hadron class, at least,” said Breeze. “This ship would have been a match for anything. Even today they could refit it with the newest Lambdas and it would be worth sending to the front line.”

“There’s more,” said McGlashan quietly. “Two more weapons systems. At first, I thought they were offline. Now I can see that the ship is preventing access.”

Duggan picked up on it and tried to call up the details. He was blocked as well. “I wonder what they are,” he said.

“Mines?” asked McGlashan.

“Nope, I can access the mines. They’re under countermeasures for some reason. These are something different.”

“Sounds interesting,” said Chainer.

“I’ll keep working on it,” Duggan said. He looked at McGlashan. “See if you can find a back door.”

“Will do. These things are normally locked down pretty tightly.”

“Of course,” said Duggan. “And how’re our sensors and comms?”

“It looks like the repair bot’s been busy,” replied Chainer. “Unfortunately, it’s had a lot to do. I’ve got onboard comms fully functional and nine of the thirty main sensor arrays are reporting themselves to be operational.”

“No main comms?”

“None, sir. The ship sent its distress call through the emergency beacon. It must have known what a risk that was. It’ll have lit up the receivers of everything between here and Monitoring Station Alpha.”

“How’d it even get a signal out if our sensors couldn’t find it?” asked McGlashan.

“It’s been clever. From what I can see here, it waited until the tilt of the planet meant the cave mouth was pointing in the approximate direction of the Alpha. It fired the signal off and bounced it twice to achieve the angle it needed to reach space. The emergency beacons send out a much more robust signal than anything from a regular transmission system. You can do this sort of pissing about with them.”

Duggan nodded to indicate his appreciation for Chainer’s detective work. “How long till the main transmission systems are available? If we get out of this cave, I want to be able to speak to the Juniper immediately.”

“I don’t know. The repair bot is working on them now, but it isn’t feeding a status update to the core. The comms are intricate,” he finished.

“Keep me updated.”

“I’ve got some bad news, sir,” said McGlashan. “The autopilot and guidance systems aren’t responding to my status requests.”

“Broken?”

“I can’t get into them to find out the extent of the damage. Maybe the Crimson’s landing wasn’t so smooth and a few of the tertiary systems got knocked out.”

“That’s going to make things a little more difficult,” said Duggan.

With those words, he climbed to his feet and stretched as he attempted to clear his mind. They’d found what they were looking for and against the odds, it appeared as if the Crimson wasn’t the bucket of bolts he’d expected to find. There was still damage, but it could have been a lot worse than it was. One-hundred-and-seventeen times the output. The words echoed around in his mind as he wondered how fast the vessel would go. It wasn’t an exact science, since the engines needed a super-powerful core to mould their output continuously through lightspeed. Even the largest-engined vessel would be comparatively slow without the processing grunt to back it up. They wouldn’t know how fast the Crimson was until they gave it a go.

Something boiled up inside. “Everywhere I look, there are secrets,” he said angrily. “And I don’t like it one little bit.”

“What do you mean, sir?” asked McGlashan.

“Look at this spacecraft. Built for no reason and carrying enough weaponry to have knocked out half of the Ghast fleet if she’d been available at the start of the war. Old weapons, old defences, yet engines that we couldn’t build even now. Other weapons that the captain isn’t allowed to look at. I need to know what this shit is all about.”

None of the crew had anything else to say and they stayed quiet. Duggan glowered angrily for a few moments until his spacesuit’s helmet binged softly to let him know that the environment on the bridge was now adequate to support human life. He released the seal around his neck. It hissed softly and he put the helmet to one side, glad to see the back of it. He called up the onboard comms, which he patched directly through to Sergeant Ortiz’s suit.

“Sergeant Ortiz. Let the soldiers know the life support systems are operational and they can take off their suits if they wish.”

“Thank you, sir, we’ve already discovered that.”

“Also advise them that the ship is armed and will soon be operational. I’ll keep you posted on progress.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“And Ortiz?”

“Yes, sir?”

“How has Monsey been keeping up with her special skills?”

“Sir?”

“Hacking, Sergeant. Does she still practise?”

“I believe she might dabble when the opportunity presents itself.”

“The opportunity is about to present itself now. Send her to the bridge at once.”

“Will do, sir.”

Duggan ended the communication and found the others looking at him quizzically. He smiled back. “Let’s see if modern techniques can breach the defensive walls of a fifty-year-old warship’s core,” he said. “I’d rather fly with full knowledge of what’s at our disposal.”

Monsey arrived on the bridge five minutes later, stooping low through the entrance door. She carried a foot-square metallic cube, which had an old mechanical-style keyboard plugged into it and a separate grey-framed display screen balanced loosely on top.

“How’s it going, soldier?” asked Duggan.

“I’m good, sir. I hear you need me to break into something.”

“The Crimson’s mainframe. It’s hiding something from me. I need access to the ship’s databanks and weapons.”

“That’ll need time, sir,” said Monsey, hiding her surprise. She put the cube down gently. “This baby’s one of the latest bootboxes. Updated with the latest military-grade boards when we were on the Juniper a couple of years ago. If this ship’s as old as you say it is, I’ll be able to crack it. They built the warship cores tough, so don’t expect it to happen at once.”

“I need something and soon,” he said.

“I’ll do what I can,” she said. With that, she lifted the keyboard into her lap and began tapping away with a speed that indicated she’d had a lot of practise. Reams of text scrolled over the monitor’s display, showing strings of encrypted numbers and letters. Her blue eyes stared unblinkingly at the screen, telling Duggan that she was already lost to the world.

Duggan picked up his helmet. “I’m going back outside,” he said.

“Sir?” said McGlashan.

“If the autopilot’s unavailable and most of our sensors are offline, I’ll need to take another look at the cave - to see how much of a squeeze it’ll be to get out of here if we have to make it without the guidance systems. The bulkhead viewscreen never seems quite good enough when things get really tight.”

“Need company?” she asked.

“Wait here, Commander. I need you to keep working and see if there’s anything else about this vessel that we need to be aware of.”

She looked disappointed. “Understood.”

Duggan put his helmet back on and made his way back down the boarding ramp at a half-jog. He needed to spend time on the Crimson to familiarise himself with the controls, but he also knew that there was no way he’d be able to pilot it out of the cave if he didn’t have a mental image of what he was flying through. He was itching to test himself.

“Still a young man at heart,” he muttered.

He pushed himself through the piles of rocks that covered the cave floor, with his helmet light set to maximum intensity. It wasn’t bright enough to give him a perfect view of the walls and it certainly didn’t illuminate the cavern’s ceiling. What it did do was let him see enough to realise that he was going to have a fight on his hands to get the Crimson out of here without hitting something. Duggan got to the rock shelf and knew he’d come far enough. Beyond this point, the cavern opened up enough that it would be a piece of cake to get the Crimson out. He sat on his haunches for a minute, looking at the four parked tanks below. The increased gravity of the planet was starting to weigh down on him. Chainer’s voice came through unexpectedly, a mixture of static and hiss to indicate the difficulty of communicating down here.

“Sir?” said Chainer. There was an urgency in his voice.

“What is it, Lieutenant?”

“We’re too deep underground for our remaining sensors to detect anything in orbit. However, I’ve patched into the sensor array on one of the tanks and used that to piggyback to the beacon we left near to the entrance.”

“And?”

“It’s picked something up, sir. The same approximate dimensions and weight as a Ghast drop ship. I think they’ve found us.”

“How far?”

“Three klicks from the cave entrance. Maybe less.”

Duggan clenched his fists in anger and opened a channel to Sergeant Ortiz. “Sergeant. Get back in your suits and prepare for combat. We’ve got incoming.” He killed his light, unslung his gauss rifle and lay low, with his suit helmet’s sensors scanning ahead for movement.

Chapter Twelve

“Sir, you should get back to the Crimson.” McGlashan’s voice was faint.

“Negative, Commander. I’m waiting here to find out what we’re facing. They won’t see me.”

“Sir,” she acknowledged. Even through the interference, her doubt was palpable.

“Sergeant Ortiz, I need your squad here at the shelf – on the double. Bring everything you’ve got.”

Ortiz’s voice crackled through to Duggan. “We’re leaving the Crimson now. Good job we didn’t take off those suits, huh? What’ve we got?” From the tone of her voice she was running, though it hardly sounded like she was labouring at all.

“Lieutenant Chainer’s picked up what he believes to be a Ghast dropship coming to land less than three klicks from the entrance to this cave. We need time to get the Crimson’s engines up to peak efficiency.”

“Any idea of their numbers?”

“None. I’m assuming they’ve sent a full complement.” They both knew that an enemy dropship could carry fifty of their soldiers, as well as several pieces of heavy equipment.

“Won’t the Cadaveron just send missiles to blow this place apart when we’ve killed all of their soldiers?” she asked, confident as ever that she and her squad would come out on top.

“They may. We have to assume they don’t know exactly where the Crimson’s landed. It’ll take a heavy bombardment if they want to be sure they’ve got us. On top of that, they don’t like to think we can beat them face to face. It could be that they send another dozen shuttles after the first one.” Duggan also held a secret hope that the Ghasts would be interested in finding out what had brought the Corps out here. There was a chance they wouldn’t necessarily try to destroy anything until they found out what it was they were dealing with.

“Shame about that beacon,” Ortiz said. “They’ll know we’re here.”

“Nothing we can do about that. We can’t hide the tanks anyway.”

“We’ll reach you soon. Any movement?”

“It’s quiet.”

“Just the way I like it.”

“Don’t lie to me, Sergeant.”

Ortiz laughed, a rich, throaty noise. “Wouldn’t dream of it, sir.”

The comms went quiet, giving Duggan a few moments to think. The soldiers had a long way to go and it would be a close-run thing for them to reach him before the Ghast forces arrived. He considered the idea of pulling everyone back and having them sit tight inside the Crimson. The trouble was, such a course would allow the Ghasts to reach the spacecraft without opposition. From there, they could report the ship’s exact position underground and give the Cadaveron’s captain an easy ride if he decided to launch a full broadside of his missiles towards the surface above. More importantly, it would also betray the fact that there was a Corps warship here. All-in-all, it seemed better to keep the enemy guessing.

His suit camera still hadn’t picked anything up, so he took the opportunity to move to a new position on the edge of the shelf, where he could lie flat behind a raised area of rock. He kept his rifle braced against his shoulder and activated the head-up-display within the helmet. The results weren’t perfect, though some of the areas of deepest darkness ahead were intensified into sharp relief.

As he waited, he made use of his CO’s authority to connect with Ortiz’s helmet feed. The soldiers were still finding their way through the rocks and they ran at an impressive pace. A speech-to-text overlay accompanied the feed, giving an update of the communications between the men and women. It was a useful facility when you needed to keep track of the action during an engagement without listening directly to what everyone was saying.

“Sir, I think you should reconsider,” crackled the voice of McGlashan, trying again to get him to return to the Crimson. “You might get killed.”

“Thank you for the concern, Commander. We need to keep the Ghasts from finding out what we’re hiding here. At least until we can fly. Otherwise we run the risk of their captain bombarding the roof of the cave until it comes down on us.”

“Aye, sir,” she said, still not convinced.

“You can fly it out if anything happens to me,” he said. McGlashan didn’t bother to reply. She knew he was taking a pointless risk, as did he. My decision to make, he thought. His suit informed him that his heart rate and blood pressure were slightly elevated. Not fear. Anticipation.

There was movement behind him. The first of the soldiers arrived, dropping onto their stomachs and swarming along the ground towards the lip of the shelf, keeping their chests just high enough that their bandoliers of plasma grenades weren’t dislodged.

“Spread out,” said Ortiz, waving her hand to the left and right to indicate where the infantry should go. Amongst the men, Duggan saw the ship’s medic, Corporal Blunt. He had a heavy pack of complicated healing kit fixed across his back that looked like it weighed seventy pounds.

Turner emerged last from the rocks, fifty yards back from the ridge. He’d been given the unenviable task of carrying the amplifier unit that would let them take remote control of the tanks. He dropped low and dragged it the remainder of the way to the edge.

The comms fizzed and hummed. “Captain Duggan, Sergeant Ortiz. This is Lieutenant Chainer. Something’s just destroyed the cavemouth beacon.”

“Roger,” said Ortiz. “We’re almost in position. Setting up remote connection to the tanks now.” She was only ten yards from Duggan and flat on her stomach. Her helmeted head turned towards him and she raised her hand with first finger and thumb pressed together. “Shame we can’t see the cave mouth,” she said to him. The suit’s sensors could only detect movement up to eight hundred metres, which was unfortunate since the gauss rifles could kill at two klicks or more.

“I’m taking command of this one, Sergeant,” said Duggan over a private channel.

“Understood,” came the instant reply. There was no rancour in her voice – she knew Duggan had earned his right to command.

“Stay down and keep your lights out,” said Duggan across the open channel to the squad. “Switch on movement and heat sensors. The Ghast suits will mask their signature, but we might get warning of any ordnance. We’ll try and surprise them with the tanks. I’ll take tank one, Diaz you’ve got two, West three, Nelson four.”

“Roger,” came the responses almost at once.

Duggan instructed his helmet to tap into the amplification unit, which then relayed him to the onboard micro-core of tank one. “Tank one sensors seeing heat and movement,” he said. The vehicles’ sensor arrays were more sensitive than the tiny helmet arrays and they’d be relying on them to detect where the Ghast forces where and what kit they had with them.

“What do we have?” asked Ortiz.

“Ghast compact tank and troop movement,” he said. “Tank one moving out. Tank two fall in behind. Three and four follow at three hundred metres. Activating weapons systems. Setting to auto detect and fire.”

Under Duggan’s instruction, the front tank glided smoothly ahead for three hundred metres towards the cave entrance. Suddenly, the sensor feed began to shudder, which told Duggan that its main armament was firing. The tanks could propel fist-sized chunks of depleted uranium at an incredible velocity and with reasonable accuracy over long distances. It was a crude method of waging war, yet it continued to be a cheap and effective way of destroying the opposition. You could track and intercept inbound missiles. You could deflect beam weapons with the right kind of armour. It was difficult to do anything about a heavy slug of dense metal coming towards you at fifteen klicks per second.

“What’s it firing at?” muttered Duggan.

He accessed the tank’s targeting system. It looked like Sergeant Ortiz had patched herself in for a look and had got there ahead of him. “Knocked out their tank, sir. That’ll piss them off.”

“Incoming,” said Diaz, his voice calm.

“What is it?”

“No information at the moment, sir.”

The feed from the Duggan’s tank became an incandescent white, which faded quickly to static noise. In the distance, the floor and walls of the cave ahead of them glowed with the fierce light of the Ghast artillery attack. The white-hot burst vanished in a moment, leaving the first tank scorched, but apparently undamaged and still operational. The vehicles were made to absorb a lot of incoming fire, but Duggan knew that whatever had caused that blast, there’d be damage to the armour and probably to the equipment onboard. He checked and saw multiple failure reports from the onboard systems, including the forward sensors. Luckily, the engine hadn’t stalled and the tank continued onwards at seventy-five percent speed.

“Computer-guided plasma launcher,” said Diaz. His tank was the closest and its sensors had read enough to be sure what had struck the first vehicle.

“Tanks three and four under control,” said Ortiz. “Heading after the others.”

“We need to destroy that launcher before the Ghasts find out we’re up here,” said Duggan grimly. The plasma launchers were nasty against armour and nasty against ground troops. The splash damage could engulf even the most dug in of troops. Given the time, they could smash through almost anything, including a warship’s heavy armour. The infantry was spread across a width of over one hundred metres, so they weren’t clustered. Still, they’d become easy prey if all of the tanks were destroyed before they’d knocked out the Ghast artillery.

“Need me to take point, sir?” asked Diaz. Tank one was slowing the progress of the one behind.

“All yours, Soldier,” said Duggan.

“Any sign of the plasma launcher?” asked Ortiz.

“Nothing yet, Sergeant,” said Diaz.

There was another burst of light against the first tank. Its onboard warning alarms chimed urgently and fed through a number of deep red warning gauges showing that most of the onboard electronics had just burned out.

“Tank one out of action,” said Duggan. “Tank two continue ahead. Three and four keep your distance.”

With his tank going nowhere fast, Duggan spent a few seconds pulling up the details from the remaining functional array on the vehicle. He sent the data file through the suit’s communicator to the Crimson, hoping that it wouldn’t arrive corrupted.

“I need an enhance on that file. Immediately,” he said. Even the Crimson’s old mainframe would have several hundred thousand times the processing power of the tank and it would be able to discern possibilities from the video that the tank’s computer would not. The line hummed for a few seconds before McGlashan spoke.

“Captain Duggan, Sergeant Ortiz, I’ve got some bad news for you. There are two plasma launchers. One’s in the cave mouth between two rocks to the far left. The muzzle is pointing through and into the cave. The other one is almost two klicks away. I can’t get an exact location, only an approximation. They must have kept it with the dropship.”

“Roger that. Diaz, West, Nelson. Target the rocks at the left-hand side of the cave entrance.”

The soldiers in control of the tanks wasted no time. “Overriding auto targeting,” said Diaz.

The short-barrelled gun of tank two clanked four times in succession, sending its ammunition at high velocity in the direction Duggan had indicated. The remaining two tanks followed suit, pumping out heavy metal slugs in short volleys. Their aim wasn’t exact since it was hard to aim precisely through the remote control.

Before Duggan was able to confirm if the artillery piece at the entrance had been destroyed, another blast of plasma burst across the cave, the ferocity of it turning the exterior of tank two a molten orange. This time, Duggan’s helmet picked up the spitting sound of the superheated air as it expanded at an immense speed, washing outwards for a hundred metres all around. Before the echo of the light had faded from Duggan’s retinas, there was another plasma strike on the tank.

“Tank two out of action,” said Diaz. “Two direct hits.”

“Three and four taking evasive manoeuvres,” said West. “Still firing.”

Duggan continued to watched through tank one’s remaining sensor and saw huge chunks of rock explode away from the boulders near the cave entrance over one thousand metres away. The barrage from tanks three and four continued, smashing the rock into pieces. Something metallic was hurled into the air, twisting and turning as its ruined mass arced fifty metres from where it had been positioned. There was other movement – shapes in powered armour scattered away, whilst others crept into the cave close to the side wall.

“Got the bastard!” said Nelson in triumph.

He’d spoken too soon. Another of the guided plasma strikes made a direct hit on tank four. Before the light of it had faded, Duggan was able to see a number of smaller explosions detonate against the vehicle’s hull as the Ghast soldiers threw their grenades against it. For a moment, it looked as if the tank’s armour might have shrugged off the attack, but then something else exploded against it in the muted colours of a conventional explosive launched in a low-oxygen atmosphere. Whatever it was, it stopped tank four immediately.

“Looks like it’s down to me,” said West.

“Ignore their soldiers and go straight for the second launcher,” said Duggan, with utter calm. “I’ll feed you the coordinates if I get anything exact,” he told her. “You’ve got shock troops coming to the left.”

“Roger. I’ll hold fire until I see that plasma launcher,” West replied.

“We can’t give ourselves away - keep your movement to a minimum,” Duggan told the squad. The suits were designed to give out hardly any heat and they could fool all but the most powerful infra-red sensors. It was all about the movement, which was easy to detect and hard to disguise. “I make it forty Ghast shock troops incoming. They’re still out of helmet viewing range.”

Duggan watched the Ghast soldiers advance through the sensor from tank one. They wore the powered alloy battle armour that he’d seen them wear ever since the first time he’d engaged in direct combat with them. The Ghasts were already much bigger than humans – seven feet tall humanoids that seemed almost as broad as they were tall, with dense bones structures and heavy musculature that made them as strong as they looked. Even so, they had no more ability to survive in a near-vacuum than a human and they ensconced themselves in servo-powered armoured suits, which were angular and ugly in design. The Ghasts looked slow and clumsy inside their suits and Duggan had always felt that the lighter suits of the Corps soldiers were better-suited to ground combat.

“Exiting the cave mouth now,” said West. “Taking small arms fire and a couple of grenade strikes. Nothing to worry about.”

Duggan patched himself into tank three for a few seconds. The landscape outside the cave was littered with rocks and indentations. The Ghast dropship could have hidden almost anywhere. The plasma launchers didn’t need a perfect trajectory to score a hit, since their projectiles could veer through the air. Still, there were limitations to where the second artillery unit could be positioned in order to have scored a hit so deep within the cave. Wherever it was, random fire stood no chance of taking it out.

“Any news on the second launcher’s position, sir?” asked Ortiz. “Those Ghast troops are going to realise we’re here soon.”

“Commander? We need something on the second launcher and soon. Got anything new for us?”

“Negative, sir. I’ve managed to connect to the tank through the amplifier but we’re not receiving a consistent high-resolution feed. I’m transmitting the best data we have through to the tank’s autofire systems.”

“Keep at it,” said Duggan.

“First Ghast squad coming to within eight hundred metres,” said Ortiz.

“I’m taking fire, sir!” said Carter, with an edge of tension in his voice.

“Shit, I think they’ve got a couple of heavy repeaters with them,” hissed Davis from his position nearby.

It looked like the Ghasts had come prepared for some real action. Duggan took a deep breath and prepared to give the order to respond. Before he could open his mouth, all hell broke loose - the rocks of the shelf and the boulders behind him seemed to explode into a million shards. The sharp fragments flew into the air, before skittering in every direction and bouncing away from the suits and helmets of Duggan’s squad.

“Return fire,” he said. “Kill those ugly bastards.”

Chapter Thirteen

Returning fire was easier said than done. The Ghast heavy repeaters raked left and right along the edge of the shelf, keeping the soldiers pinned down. Duggan was able to see the weapons through tank one’s sensors – they were little more than a chain gun mounted behind an alloy shield. The repeaters had tiny engines that let a single Ghast move them around easily, whilst also providing power to cycle the weapon. The enemy had moved four of them inside the cave mouth and they’d set up overlapping fire to ensure that Duggan’s squad couldn’t even lift their heads without the risk of having them blown off. All along the ridge, the soldiers occasionally looked over but there was little they could do to put the advancing Ghasts under pressure.

“Got one,” said Jackson grimly, as a shot from his rifle smashed through the suit of an approaching Ghast warrior from over seven hundred metres.

“They’re advancing in fives,” said Ortiz. “Giving themselves plenty of cover.” She ducked back down, just as two of the repeaters shattered a chunk of the ledge away nearby.

Duggan raised himself on his elbows and fired a couple of quick shots with his own rifle. The newest models had very little kickback, but he kept it braced against his shoulder out of habit. The gun hummed and whined, sending out its dense metal bullets towards the closest of the Ghast squads. One of the distant enemy was spun around and dropped to the floor. The Corps gauss rifles could punch through the Ghast armoured suits easily enough.

“I’ve been hit, I’ve been hit!” screamed Henderson. A way to his left, Duggan’s suit magnified and enhanced a spray of blood as it was jettisoned from the soldier’s body.

“Hold tight, I’m coming to get you,” said Blunt, dashing across in a low crouch, his medical kit bouncing wildly on his back.

“How’s that tank doing?” Duggan asked. “We could do with it back in here.”

“The Crimson’s sent through its best guesses, sir. No luck yet. It’s ridden one hit and there’s been nothing else. I might be under the plasma launcher’s firing arc,” said West.

Duggan didn’t say anything else and hoped that the soldier was right about the tank being too close for the plasma launcher to get off another shot. The Ghasts had them pinned down pretty well and it wasn’t looking good. He fired off another three rounds in quick succession, unsure if he’d scored a hit.

“Is this quiet enough for you, Sergeant?” he asked.

Ortiz laughed in good humour as she fired a snap shot towards the enemy forces. “This is just perfect, sir,” she said.

The heavy repeaters chewed up the rock face in front of him, forcing Duggan to stay low. He took advantage and connected with tank three’s sensors. He could tell at once that it was firing and the main turret burned hot from the friction. Three bursts of four rounds bludgeoned the distant rocks into splinters. The tank fired another volley, this time shattering an overhanging shelf into pieces and sending a hundred tonnes of rock onto the ground beneath.

It appeared that West’s opinion that tank three was too close to the launcher was wrong. The tank took another hit, though its evasive pattern was enough to ensure this next plasma burst deflected partially away from the angular front armour.

“Close,” muttered Duggan. It was down to luck if the tank would find the launcher quickly enough. “I hate relying on luck,” he growled.

“Don’t we all, sir, don’t we all.” It was McGlashan, monitoring his comms output.

Tank three continued with its bombardment. Duggan caught sight of something and the sensor readouts confirmed a flash of hardened alloy, hidden fifteen hundred metres away behind a two-hundred-metre-wide bank of irregular rock.

“Got the dropship,” he said in triumph.

“I’ve got the coordinates,” said West. “Let’s pray the launcher’s with it.”

Four heavy projectiles collided with the rock, each connecting within a few feet of each other. Another four followed and then another four, as the tank continued to trace an irregular pattern of movement towards the dropship’s location. The final volley blew out an enormous chunk of the rock, leaving the Ghast dropship easily visible. It was an ugly design – blocky and functional.

“Say goodbye,” said West. Duggan could picture her face as she directed the tank to fire.

The dropship was struck by a volley of depleted uranium rounds. It wasn’t designed to withstand the punishment of high-calibre weaponry and its structure was crumpled and knocked over onto one side. Its hull split and the life-supporting gases of the interior were sucked out into the planet’s atmosphere.

“There’s the launcher,” said Duggan.

The Ghasts’ artillery piece had been placed to the rear of the dropship and was now fully visible. Its crew of four were gathered around it, their deaths assured. The tank took moments to reload and its projectiles took less than a second to cross the intervening space. The launcher and its crew were flung into the air, a mixture of metal and bodies thrown many metres by the unstoppable fusillade.

Duggan had almost no chance to feel satisfaction. Before he could give the instruction for the tank to return to the cave and take out the heavy repeaters, an explosion tore into the surface – this one much, much bigger than anything from the plasma launcher. The feed from tank three ended at once.

“The Cadaveron’s just taken out the tank,” Duggan said.

“That’s not good news for us,” said Ortiz. She was as matter-of-fact as ever.

Duggan took stock. The heavy repeaters continued their withering fire without cease. He didn’t know how much ammunition they could hold and it didn’t look as if they were going to run out before the advancing Ghast shock troops got close enough to do a suit-jump onto the ledge.

“We need to take out those repeaters,” he said through gritted teeth. The destruction of the tank put them in real danger of losing this one.

“Their closest two squads have advanced to within four hundred metres, sir,” said Ortiz. “We should be able to make it back to the rocks behind us if we stay low.” The cave mouth was at a higher level than the floor beneath the shelf, but not quite high enough for the repeaters to fire directly onto the shelf. Duggan knew they should make a run for it.

“Dammit, we need more time for the Crimson to repair her engines!” he said.

“We’re going to get slaughtered here, sir,” said Ortiz.

“We’ve lost Henderson,” said Blunt, patching a channel straight into Duggan’s suit.

Duggan swore loudly. He knew it was time to retreat. His head told him this one was a lost cause. The repeaters swept the shelf in front of him, sending a dozen serrated pieces of stone against his suit and helmet with a dull clatter.

“Sir, we should go, sir!” said Ortiz.

“Captain Duggan, you can’t wait there any longer,” said McGlashan, addressing him more formally than usual.

“If we have to fly out of this cave with the engines at thirty-five percent, that Cadaveron will blow us out of the air before we’re fifty klicks from the cave!” he said. “We need more time!”

“There’re too many of them!” shouted Collins across the open channel. He was close to panic.

A cold calm descended on Duggan as he considered his options. Just when he thought he’d have to concede this one as a lost cause, his brain came up with an idea. It was risky as hell, but once he’d thought it, he couldn’t shake it off.

“Commander McGlashan. Are the Crimson’s aft Lambda batteries operational?”

“Yes sir, all eighteen clusters are functional.”

“Good. I need you to fire two missiles at the cave mouth here. The repeaters are keeping us pinned down.”

“Sir?”

“Do I need to repeat everything for you, Commander?”

“No. Sorry, sir. It’s just that the cave mouth is far too close. The Lambda guidance systems don’t kick in until they’ve gone more than twenty klicks. Otherwise the acceleration destroys the instrumentation.”

“I am aware of this, Commander. You’ll need to override and target them manually.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line and he almost heard McGlashan gulp. “That’s going to need a hell of a shot,” she said.

“I trust you. Do it and do it now.”

“Aye, sir. Working on the override now. You might want to tell the guys and gals to put their heads down.”

“Listen up everyone. We’re going to take out those heavy repeaters with the Crimson’s Lambdas. You’d best keep your heads down.”

The squad’s open channel became awash with a cacophony of shocked voices. Duggan shut them down at once and ordered silence. “And once those repeaters are destroyed, I want you to show any Ghast survivors that the Corps can be dirty bastards too.”

“Amen to that,” said Ortiz.

“Launching now, sir,” said McGlashan.

Duggan flattened himself to the ground, willing himself to show as small a profile as possible. There was the tiniest of delays, during which two of the Crimson’s Lambda missiles shot away from their cluster, sleek tubes of single-burn gravity engines, guidance and payload. They followed an almost perfectly flat trajectory across the boulder-strewn cavern floor, racing over the huddled human soldiers, still accelerating at a colossal rate. The first warhead struck the cave wall a little over a hundred metres above the ground. The Lambdas were designed to pierce the thickest of armour and this one buried itself deeply into the rock face before its payload detonated, blowing out a ragged hole in the wall and incinerating the Ghasts and the heavy repeaters in a millisecond. The second missile shot out of the cave, its trajectory carrying it away from the planet’s surface and out into space.

The heat from the blast washed down the cave, killing all of the advancing Ghasts and charring their bodies to ashes inside their suits. A cloud of blue-hot dying fire engulfed Duggan and his squad, roiling over and buffeting them. Each suit immediately shut down all non-essential power-draining subsystems as the life support system sucked all available power to keep the occupants alive. Four hundred and ninety degrees, Duggan saw the outside temperature peak at. Can’t resist that for long.

To Duggan’s relief, the temperature fell away rapidly as the Lambda blast receded. He crawled quickly forward towards the edge of the shelf and saw Ortiz doing the same. It was utterly dark below and his suit’s comms and image enhancements were slow to reactivate. Must have taken some damage. After what seemed like an eternity, the suit’s life support allowed the helmet sensors enough power to resolve the blackness below.

“No movement,” said Ortiz. It looked like her suit was working a little better than his. “Damn, sir, that was crazy.” Her voice carried a mixture of admiration and relief.

“Ghast forces eliminated. Well done, soldiers,” said Duggan through the open channel.

Along the ledge, the rest of the squad pushed themselves to their feet. One or two of them looked distinctly shaky. A few half-garbled voices spoke at once, the men and women not quite recovered from what had happened.

“Sir? Is everything all right?” asked McGlashan. She sounded shaky too and Duggan realised he’d just told her to do something that could have killed them all.

“Your aim was good, Commander. Looks like you got them all.”

McGlashan didn’t say anything, but she didn’t close the channel quickly enough to stop Duggan hearing her sharp exhalation of breath.

He stood up, feeling more elated than anything else. Then he saw the prone body of Henderson, with one arm torn off and a dinnerplate-sized exit hole through his back. Corporal Blunt had hooked the soldier up to one of his machines. It hadn’t been enough. Duggan’s feeling of victory evaporated at once. “Let’s get back to the Crimson. Bring Henderson with us and we’ll send him out into space. It’s the least he deserves.”

Chapter Fourteen

“Should we leave anyone behind to keep watch, sir?” said Ortiz, as the squad of soldiers threaded their way through the boulders that led towards the Crimson.

“There’s no point anymore. The Cadaveron can’t fail to have picked up the Lambda blast. They’ll know there’s something big down here. The important thing is they don’t know where the Crimson is, which denies them the opportunity to destroy it.”

“Unless they bombard the surface and rely on luck, sir.”

“There’s always that, Sergeant. For the moment, I won’t risk anyone else. The Cadaverons carry upwards of a thousand troops. We can be pretty sure that next time it won’t be a single dropship that comes to investigate.”

“At least these rocks should slow them up some,” she said. “Might stop them getting their artillery close enough.”

Duggan wasn’t convinced but didn’t say so. “You’ve got command again,” he said, letting Ortiz know that she was giving orders to the squad again.

“Yes, sir,” she acknowledged.

“I want these rocks to be riddled with grenades. To give the Ghasts something to think about when their foot soldiers come this way.”

Ortiz unclipped one of the dull grey tubes from her bandolier. She gave the dial on top a twist, her fingers surprisingly nimble within the suit. Without a glance, she tossed it carelessly to one side, where it bounced twice before coming to rest. “It’ll arm itself in five minutes. Anything comes within twenty feet and it’s boom time. We’ll not be able to come this way again.”

“We shouldn’t need to, Sergeant.”

Sergeant Ortiz passed on the instruction and soon all of the soldiers were arming the grenades they carried with them and flicking them away between the rocks with a practised nonchalance, as if they were throwing away something of no concern at all.

“How’re the quarters on the Crimson?” Duggan asked her, partly to pass the time and partly because he wanted to know.

“We might as well be back on the Detriment,” said Ortiz, her voice betraying the faintest hint of amusement. “The food replicator’s a sight to behold.”

“The Crimson’s internal layout is practically identical to a Gunner, going by what I’ve seen,” said Duggan. “They must have hired the same designers. We’re packing a lot more weaponry than we had on the Detriment.”

“Enough to beat that Cadaveron?” asked Ortiz. There was hope in her words. For all her toughness, she didn’t want to die out here.

“We’ll be trying to outrun it, not shoot it down,” said Duggan. “The Crimson looks like it’s a real killer, but it’s still over fifty years old.”

They got back to the Crimson much more slowly than Duggan would have liked. Carrying the body of Henderson slowed them down significantly, though there was no way Duggan was going to leave the man behind. At the bottom of the boarding ramp, he thanked the squad and dismissed them to their quarters. Duggan made his way towards the bridge – it had felt good to be out there with a rifle in his hand, but it was a relief to be back on a spaceship again.

“Welcome back, sir,” said McGlashan. She looked almost gaunt. They already knew about the loss of Henderson and it was clear from the haggard faces on the bridge that the man’s death didn’t sit easily with them.

“What’s our status?” he asked. “I doubt we’ve got more than another couple of hours before we have Ghast troops knocking on our door.”

“Twelve hours until ninety percent on the engines,” said Breeze.

Duggan frowned. “Going quicker than expected?”

“Yes sir, much quicker. It’s going like we’re packing a modern AI, rather than a bunch of silicon.”

“Could it be highly optimised?”

Breeze looked pained, as if he didn’t want to commit to an answer. “Could be, sir.”

Duggan turned to Monsey. “Any progress, soldier?”

“They’ve locked the core down pretty well, sir. Or should I say cores. It’s the strangest arrangement I’ve seen.”

“What do you mean?” asked Duggan.

“It’s like they’ve got an old mainframe piggybacked on top of another back-end core. I don’t know how to explain it better than that. It’s not something I’ve come across before. The front end is a design I recognize. I’m only getting glimpses of what the back end is doing. It’s fast, sir. Really fast.”

“Some sort of push-pull system?” he asked. “Or done to improve the redundancy?”

“Unlikely, sir. The term mainframe on warships like this always encompasses a dozen layers of redundancy anyway. This is something different. I can’t get a proper go at the second core at all.”

Duggan was intrigued, but didn’t know what to make of the soldier’s words. He left her to it and considered his other options. The Ghasts were certainly not going to leave them alone now that they’d seen their dropship destroyed and picked up the launch of two Lambdas. They’d either send an overwhelming force of their troops to the cave, or they’d pound the surface above. Given that their ground troops had been killed before they could discover any worthwhile information about what was hiding here, Duggan had to assume the Ghast commander would send more of his soldiers.

Another two hours passed in a tense near-silence. The clacking of Monsey’s keyboard was louder than the air conditioning and the faint humming sound that was prevalent throughout the entirety of the ship. There was something about it which made Duggan think that the Crimson was eager to see action. He shook the feeling away.

“Engines at forty-five percent,” announced Breeze. “Whatever the core is doing, it’s flying through it.”

“Not quickly enough,” said Duggan.

“I’ve got movement on the sensors,” said Chainer. “I’d say it’s ground troops coming towards our position.”

“They can’t get anything big enough to hurt us through those rocks,” McGlashan replied. “They’re not going to damage anything throwing grenades and firing their rifles at us.”

“Of course, they aren’t,” said Duggan. “However, their plasma launchers might be able to land a few shots on us if they can get them far enough into the cave.”

“Do they have the firepower to pierce the Crimson’s armour?” she asked with a frown.

“Who knows? I can’t recall a time when a piece of Ghast artillery was given the opportunity to fire upon a Corps vessel.”

“Probably best we don’t find out,” said Breeze, without lifting his head from the instrument panel.

“Here they come,” said Chainer.

All five on the bridge watched on the viewscreen as a dozen Ghast soldiers came into view from the cover of the rocks. They took a defensive position, spreading themselves widely amongst the outcrops and loose boulders.

“There’re more behind these ones,” Chainer said. “I’d guess at least three hundred. I’m picking up their attempts to transmit.”

“Can you read what they’re saying?” asked Duggan. It made no difference – it didn’t take a genius to imagine what details their message contained.

“Negative, sir. The Crimson was build long before their latest encryption methods. It’ll take the mainframe a while until it learns how to decrypt what they’re sending.”

“Fine,” said Duggan, waving the matter away. “See what it can come up with. Don’t divert from other tasks.”

The Ghasts didn’t take any hostile action immediately. They set up position and watched from within their alloy space suits.

“What are they up to?” wondered McGlashan.

“They probably can’t get a message to their ship’s captain,” said Duggan. “I’ll bet they’re having to send some of their soldiers back towards the cave entrance so they can act as a relay for the message. It’ll buy us some time. Not much, but better than none.”

Another thirty minutes passed until, without warning, the Ghast troops disappeared into the rocks as if they’d never existed.

“Got plasma rounds incoming, sir,” said McGlashan, five minutes later. “Lots of them.”

“At least we’ve got our answer,” said Duggan. “It doesn’t look as if the Ghasts are curious enough about the Crimson to bother trying to capture it.” On one of his screens, he watched at least a dozen red dots which came in a wavering line towards the Crimson. Each of the dots represented an incoming plasma shell. “Let’s see what damage ground artillery can do to the armour of the Hynus project’s pride and joy.”

Chapter Fifteen

The cluster of dots came closer and closer, until one by one, they winked out. A damage readout plotted a variety of graphs, charts and tables to indicate where the impacts had occurred and the extent of the damage. Deep as they were in the structure of the ship, none of the occupants felt even the slightest indication that anything was amiss. The plasma launchers were designed to take out armoured vehicles like the Detriment’s tanks. Against an eleven-hundred-metre warship, they were rather less effective.

“They’re going to need something bigger,” said McGlashan with a grin. “They hardly scratched us.”

“They’ve got plenty of time,” said Duggan. Sure enough, a second cluster of the red dots appeared on his screen, drifting silently towards the Crimson.

“The bastards got our range pretty easily,” said Breeze.

“Their soldiers will have planted a tracking beacon beneath us, or somewhere nearby,” Duggan told him. “All they’ll need to do is point their launchers this way and let their guidance systems do the rest.”

“Second rounds have impacted. The surface of our aft armour plating has melted to a depth of nearly a metre.”

“Dammit!” said Duggan. “I don’t want them whittling us away before we’ve even taken off.”

“Engines at forty six percent,” said Breeze. It had only been a few minutes since his last announcement.

“Third wave incoming,” said Duggan under his breath. He turned his attention to Breeze. “If we forget lightspeed, how long until you can get the gravity drives functioning?”

“They’ll work now, sir. I just don’t have enough data to predict how fast we’ll be able to go with them.”

“Divert the mainframe until it’s working fully on the gravity drive.”

“I’m on it,” Breeze replied.

“How’re you coming on with the core, soldier?” asked Duggan.

“Still at it, sir,” replied Monsey noncommittally. “Don’t rely on me getting it unlocked before you need it,” she said.

“Do your best,” he replied. In truth, he didn’t know if whatever was held in the locked-down core was going to be of any use to them. Regardless, he had no intention of letting up in his efforts to find out. It appeared as if the Crimson had secrets and he was determined to find out what they were, before he got back to the Juniper. Assuming the Cadaveron doesn’t blow us to shit first.

The third barrage struck the Crimson and it wasn’t long until a fourth appeared on the spaceship’s detection screens. Duggan breathed deeply, feeling the warm air of the bridge fill his nostrils with its comforting odours.

“I’m taking direct control of the first rear Lambda battery,” he said.

“You don’t have the angle, sir,” said McGlashan. “I think they’ve learned from the last missile strike they took from us. Our sensors won’t reach outside, but we can plot back to the Ghast position by analysing the trajectory of the incoming rounds. Even if you fire as flat as the Lambdas will go, you’re going to overshoot.”

“I think you’re right,” he said with a humourless laugh. “Maybe it’ll give them something to think about though.”

“Just don’t bring the ceiling down and block our way out,” she replied.

The fourth wave of plasma fire scoured the Crimson’s outer hull. Before a fifth was launched, Duggan triggered the release of another of the Crimson’s arsenal of Lambdas. A concealed opening at the rear of the spaceship slid open for the briefest of moments. A ten-metre-long alloy tube screamed away, accelerating at a rate quicker than any local space warship could manage. The missile’s guidance system remained inoperative as the Lambda exited the cave at a speed that made it difficult for a biological eye to detect. It flew low and fast over the clustered Ghast artillery. At last, the guidance computer came online, too late to prevent the missile from detonating against a steep escarpment, almost eighty kilometres beyond the Ghast positions.

“Missed,” said McGlashan on the Crimson’s bridge. “Got another wave of plasma rounds incoming. Same number as before.”

“Did we get anything from the Lambda’s transmit log?” asked Duggan.

“Nothing. The signal got blocked by all these rocks.”

It wasn’t unexpected, but nor was it what Duggan had hoped to hear. Without the transmit log, he had no way of determining whether or not his first launch had been at all close.

“How’re the piloting systems?” he asked suddenly.

“Still down, sir,” said McGlashan. “I had them on a low priority until we got closer to launch. The repair bot’s working on the sensor arrays.”

“Never mind,” Duggan told her. He turned to Lieutenant Breeze. “Start the gravity drive.”

“Sir? It’ll slow down the repairs,” said Breeze.

“Do it.”

“Whatever you say,” said Breeze. “We’re only at fifty percent.”

“I understand. Bring them up.”

“Coming online now.”

A feeling of excitement ran through the people on the bridge. Even Monsey felt it and she looked away from her efforts to hack into the Crimson’s core in order that she could see what was happening.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re starting her up,” said Duggan over the internal comms. “Since we have no idea what to expect, I’d suggest you prepare for a bumpy ride.”

A grumbling vibration coursed through the floor, scraping like two pieces of indescribably heavy metal rubbing against each other. There was a humming, whining sound which rose in pitch. The noise became louder and higher in frequency, yet it somehow faded rapidly into the background until it was detected only at the extremes of human hearing.

“What the hell is this?” asked Breeze. “I’ve not heard a ship that sounds like this one and I’ve been on a hundred. I was standing less than twenty metres above the Archimedes’ fission drive on one of her earliest flights and it was nothing like this.”

Duggan knew what Breeze meant. The Crimson sounded rough – harsh even, but there was something about it that raised the hairs on his neck. Not even the Detriment had come close and that was as seat-of-the-pants as any warship built in the last fifty years. He reached over the buttons and indentations on his console, their arrangement as familiar as any Corps ship.

“Let’s see how easy this bird is to fly,” he said.

“What’re you planning, sir?” asked McGlashan. She looked dazed.

Another barrage from the Ghast artillery washed over the ship’s hull, leaving the surface glowing briefly white before the armour dissipated the heat and the white faded to a dull orange. Duggan cleared his mind of the distraction and looked at the two horizontal black metal bars in front of him. They were set in a comfortable position for him to reach when he was reclined in the captain’s chair. The control levers had buttons embedded into them and there were a series of sliders and more red buttons adjacent. He stared at them for a few seconds. It was so long since he’d needed to use manual controls that his eyes hardly even noticed their existence these days. Going soft, he reprimanded himself. He stretched out his left hand and rested it on one of the control levers. The metal was cool and smooth. His other hand reached for the second control lever, his thumb taking a natural position between two of the buttons.

“We’re leaving this place. Right now.”

Chainer, Breeze and McGlashan exchanged glances. “There’s not a lot of room, sir,” said McGlashan at last. “You can’t get a ship this big out of here without the guidance systems.”

“You’ve got less than seventy metres spare at the narrowest point,” said Chainer. He looked worried – very worried.

“And you’ll be coming out backwards,” added McGlashan.

“With reduced engine capacity and a Ghast heavy cruiser circling over our position.”

“We’d best not hang about, then,” Duggan told them. His face lit up in a broad smile and he felt completely calm. Without giving the matter any more thought, he pulled gently at the left-hand control lever. The Crimson lurched fractionally as it rose a few feet from the ground. Duggan corrected the tilt. The action came to him automatically, even after so long of relying on autopilot systems to get his ships to where he wanted them. He stabbed at a button on the console and a flashing light indicated that the landing gear had retracted into the hull.

“Piece of cake,” muttered Chainer anxiously.

The pilot’s displays threw up reams of information, which flashed onto Duggan’s primary and secondary screens. A head-up-display shimmered in the air before him, feeding through the details from the warship’s external sensors. Many of the arrays were still not functional and Duggan found he had to patch together a mental image of the Crimson’s surroundings based on the details he gathered from those of the sensors which were operational, and from his recent trip outside.

“Up we go,” he said to himself. Proximity alerts flashed to warn him that the Crimson had come within ten metres of the left-hand wall of the cave. In a hovercar it would have been ample room. When you were piloting more than a thousand metres of warship, the distance suddenly seemed tiny. As if it had decided that lights alone were insufficient warning, the Crimson’s warning systems played an insistent buzzing sound through a speaker on the bridge. The sound instantly set Duggan’s teeth on edge.

“That last artillery barrage scraped underneath us,” said McGlashan. “It just missed.”

Duggan only half listened. Although he was calm, it was taking the utmost concentration to keep the Crimson steady. The control sticks were sensitive and the designers hadn’t expected the pilot to ever need to handle the ship in such a confined space. They’d probably been thought of as redundant anyway now that the mainframes and AIs were relied on to pilot Corps vessels. There’d been more than one captain who’d suffered the indignity of having their command stripped because they’d decided to show off by taking direct control of a spaceship. Either way, Duggan was glad the option was still available on the Crimson.

With a deep breath, Duggan steadied the ship and brought it another ten metres away from the wall. He doubted that a low-speed collision would do much damage, but he didn’t really want to find out what would happen if almost two billion tonnes of ultra-dense metal struck several billion tonnes of heavy ore. Slowly, he raised the ship until it hovered above the highest of the boulders that littered the cave floor. He pulled at the right control stick and the Crimson began a steady movement backwards. Duggan scarcely noticed that the vibration of the hull had smoothed off as the spacecraft glided through the thin atmosphere.

“Another artillery strike, sir,” said McGlashan. “Ten hits and four misses. They’ve recalibrated their aim.”

“I wonder if their crew realise we’re coming,” Duggan replied.

“We’ll need every second we can get if we’re to escape that Cadaveron.”

Duggan had most of his focus on keeping the ship level, but he had a sudden idea. “How’re you with aiming the Bulwarks manually?” he asked. “We’ve got two out of eight at the rear?”

“I’ll give it a go, sir,” said McGlashan, picking up his meaning at once. There was still no room for the Lambdas to target the artillery. The Bulwarks, on the other hand, might be a better bet once they could get a line of sight along the cave. If McGlashan could manage it, things would become messy for the Ghast artillery and their crew.

“Looks like we’re coming close to the ledge now, sir,” said Chainer. Duggan was surprised that it had taken so little time. There again, two klicks was almost nothing to a spacecraft, even one being piloted as gingerly as the Crimson.

“I see them!” said McGlashan. The excitement in her voice was clear. “The cocky bastards must have thought we were grounded. They’re spread across the cave mouth.”

Duggan couldn’t take his eyes away from what he was doing in order to look across at the commander’s console. He felt the faintest change in the Crimson’s structure as it absorbed the recoil from the two rear Bulwarks. The early models of these cannons had suffered from enormous amounts of kick, such that it had taken many iterations before they could mount more than a single one on practically any vessel. In his mind, he could picture them spewing out their depleted uranium projectiles. The modern versions could burst up to twenty thousand rounds a minute as a last-ditch defence against incoming missiles. He didn’t know what the Crimson’s versions could do, but he could imagine them shredding the rock floor of the cave like it was nothing more than paper. The Bulwarks bore similarities to the main armaments on the tanks, only they were much, much bigger and vastly more destructive.

The Bulwarks fired again, and this time Duggan was able to glance at an external feed from the cavern outside. He saw a hundred deep rents across the stone and something that might have been the mangled remains of ground artillery. Chunks of rock fountained into the air once more and he saw a couple of silvery shapes thrown violently into the distance.

“That’s the last of them,” said McGlashan. “Not much they could do about that.”

Duggan didn’t hang around. Gaining in confidence, he increased the speed of the Crimson, feeling the ship’s gravity drive respond eagerly as its output rose to a tenth of one percent. For the first time in over fifty years, the ESS Crimson emerged from its hiding place and into the bleak darkness of the unnamed planet’s night.

Chapter Sixteen

Almost at once, the warnings came. Chainer’s station chimed a multitude of updates, which mirrored themselves onto Duggan’s tertiary console screen. McGlashan’s hands moved rapidly across buttons and touch panels, as her brow furrowed in concentration.

“I’ve picked up the Ghast ship,” said Chainer. “It’s high and circling towards us.”

“Has it detected us?” asked Duggan.

“No way to tell, sir. Too many of our own sensors are damaged.”

Duggan didn’t respond immediately. He pushed at the spaceship’s control levers to bring its enormous bulk to a halt. With a twist of one lever, he swung the nose around and lifted the vessel away from the planet’s surface. A wave of giddiness threatened to swamp him and he saw McGlashan stumble forwards against her own console. The Crimson’s outdated life support systems caught up with the crushing effects of the acceleration and the feeling subsided almost at once. Duggan took a deep breath and rammed the left-hand lever as far along its slot as it would go. The feeling of giddiness returned, much stronger than before, but this time the life support was able to counteract the tremendous stresses within a second. For all its size, the Crimson wasn’t at all ponderous. There was a vibration deep enough to set Duggan’s jaw aching and then the warship rocketed away, eleven hundred metres of engines and weapons.

“Nose temperature already at thirty-five percent of design tolerance,” said Breeze. “You’ll need to take us higher and soon.”

“The Cadaveron’s changed course,” Chainer said. “It’s coming to see what we are.”

“Can’t get a lock on with the Lambdas,” McGlashan added. “We’re at the extremes of range and the sensors I need are out of action.”

Duggan checked their speed. Even with its gravity engines at little more than half power they were approaching ninety percent of the Detriment’s maximum speed. It wasn’t going to be much good if they burned up because he was keeping so low to the surface.

“Bringing us up,” he said. “I don’t think we can outrun them yet.”

“I think they’ve launched, sir,” McGlashan told him. “Can’t be certain.”

“Release shock drones.”

“It doesn’t look like they’re shock drones as we know them,” said McGlashan. “They’re some sort of metal globe with a transmitter in. They’re away now. Not sure what good they’ll do.” She looked at the countermeasures readouts. “We’re carrying plenty of them,” she said with grudging admiration. “We must have dropped about ten thousand just there.”

Duggan thought fast. He had to assume the Cadveron had launched at least four waves of missiles at them and given their previous encounter with it, they might have a little over fifty seconds until impact. Maybe as much as a minute. The Crimson was now at the extremes of the planet’s atmosphere and the hull temperature had steadied. The Cadaveron was at least five thousand klicks higher and an uncertain distance behind. It showed no signs that it wanted to drop into a lower orbit. Whoever the Ghast captain was, he or she wasn’t stupid. All the heavy cruiser needed to do was to keep up the pursuit and launch missiles until the Crimson was eventually knocked out of the sky. Duggan checked his velocity. Incredibly, the Crimson had reached one hundred and five percent of the Detriment’s maximum gravity drive speed.

“We might outrun these bastards,” he said. “If we can live long enough.”

“There’ll be no deep fission engines for hours, sir. The core is working entirely on the gravity drive.”

“Understood, Lieutenant. Keep focus on the gravity drives for now.”

“Ghast missiles within range of some of our working sensors,” said McGlashan. “We’ve got four waves of twelve. Uncertain if there are others coming after. Impact with our drone cloud in eight seconds.”

“Are the Bulwarks getting enough information to target them?”

He got his answer soon enough. The deep vibration of the Crimson’s engines was suddenly accompanied by a low thrumming.

“The six we can bring to bear are firing on auto, sir.” She paused. “The drones have destroyed twenty-three of the incoming.”

“Release more.”

“Looks like we don’t need to,” McGlashan replied after a few seconds of staring at one of her screens.

“We’ve got them all?” asked Duggan in surprise.

“We’ve been on the Detriment too long, sir. The Crimson’s got near Hadron-class cannons. They’re old, but fast and they’ve destroyed the rest of the missiles.”

Duggan blinked. “The Crimson’s not that big,” he said. “We’re carrying eight supercruiser-sized Bulwarks?”

“I’m only telling you what I see, sir.”

“She’s right, Captain,” Breeze told him. “This ship is far denser than the Detriment.” He called up the schematics for an old Anderlecht cruiser. The Crimson didn’t have the schematics for anything newer in its databanks. “From memory, I’d say we’re easily the heaviest spacecraft per meter cubed that the Confederation navy has.”

“What the hell is going on here?” asked Duggan. “The Crimson’s ancient. The Corps engineers have been trying to improve engine density for decades. They’ve hardly moved on since the war started. A percent or two every year.”

“Yet here we are,” said Breeze lamely.

“They’ve launched more missiles,” said McGlashan. “I can’t see how many. Drones away.”

“We’re losing them,” said Duggan with a low whistle. The distance pings showed that the Crimson was creeping away from the Cadaveron. “We’ll be out of missile range in less than a minute.”

“More cat and mouse till the deep fissions are up.”

“Something I’ll happily accept,” Duggan replied.

A minute later, the second waves of Ghast missiles encountered the same fate as the third. More than half collided with the drone cloud, while the remainder were shot down by the Crimson’s Bulwark cannons. Duggan reflected that for the first time, the Cadaveron’s captain had slipped up by underestimating what he’d faced. Some of the Ghast heavy cruisers could launch more than a dozen waves of twelve missiles at a time. If Duggan had been piloting an Anderlecht cruiser, that’s how fast they’d have come. Maybe their factories are having problems keeping up with missile production, Duggan thought. It was some consolation, though he realised that a lucky Lambda hit from the Detriment had taken out the Cadaveron’s particle beam. Things might not have gone so well if the Crimson had taken a few hits from that.

“We’re out of missile range,” said McGlashan.

“We’re quicker than they are, even with this damage,” Duggan replied. He looked at Monsey. “Any news, soldier?” His internal alarm bells had begun to ring with increasing urgency. Somebody in the Corps had been keeping secrets when they’d sent him out here and he was desperate to find out what was going on. The Crimson’s data banks might just hold the information he wanted.

“I’ll let you know, sir,” she said, not even lifting her face to look over.

“The Ghast ship’s veered away on a new course, sir,” said Chainer.

It had been inevitable. Once it became clear that the Crimson was the faster vessel, the Cadaveron would be forced into plotting an AI-determined semi-random course that would have the greatest chance of intercepting them. Duggan had nothing to rely on but himself with the autopilot non-functional and he didn’t like the idea of trying to beat an AI at a task they were perfectly designed to excel at. He could buy them some time by heading directly out into space. On paper, it sounded like a good idea. In reality, as soon as the planet stopped becoming an impediment to the Cadaveron’s sensors, they’d be able to do a short-range lightspeed jump to bring them out near to the Crimson. It wasn’t something that would have been possible even ten or fifteen years ago, but the processing power available to a larger ship made this new tactic viable. Duggan had almost been caught out by it the first time it had been used against him.

“Put everything onto the deep fission drive repairs,” he said as soon as the Cadaveron broke off the direct pursuit.

“Doing it now, sir,” said Breeze. “I reckon we’ll be able to break into a low lightspeed in under three hours.”

“Low enough that they’ll be able to follow us?” Duggan asked.

“I’d have to go with ‘yes’ on that one. Everything about this Ghast ship suggests that they’re carrying the latest and greatest.”

“At least they didn’t shut us down like the light cruiser did to the Detriment.”

“Maybe we didn’t get close enough for them to try,” said Duggan. “We have to stay ahead.”

“Our chance drops with every circuit,” said Chainer. If there was a pessimist amongst the crew, it was Chainer.

“Someone once told me that a computer can never truly produce randomness,” said Duggan. “Even the most powerful of AIs rely on an algorithm to generate something that looks random, but when you boil it down, it’s only part of an infinitely long string of numbers. Let’s see how the Cadaveron’s AI works against the randomness of a Corps captain’s brain.” With that, he swung the Crimson about and pushed the nose downwards towards the surface.

For the next hour, Duggan changed course and speed at regular intervals, hoping that his approach would somehow allow them to elude the pursuing Cadaveron long enough for the Crimson’s fission drives to become available. The heat on the bridge was stifling and Duggan felt the sweat beading across his forehead. When he looked at Chainer, he saw the lieutenant was feeling it worse than he was, and the man had to wipe his face regularly with the sleeve of his uniform. He’d found himself a coffee from somewhere and steam rose from the tarlike surface of the liquid.

As the minutes wore on, Duggan found himself more and more impressed with the Crimson. There were spacecraft which were difficult to control manually – generally the larger they were, the more cumbersome they became. Even a Vincent class was sluggish to respond to commands from the control console, though Duggan vaguely remembered that their hulls had initially been designed for civilian craft. It was only later they’d been adopted by the military for use in their smallest and most numerous warships. The Crimson was different – it was as if it had been designed from the ground up to be a pure-blooded hunter-killer. McGlashan had picked up on it too.

“If we had twenty more of these we’d kick them out of the Axion sector,” she said. “Even without refitting the Lambdas.”

“It’s something all right,” said Duggan. “Set three of these on a Cadaveron and the Ghasts would soon find out what a real challenge is.”

In reality, the Space Corps databanks held records of at least thirty-five known Cadaverons which had been detected but not destroyed. The intel guys had tried to extrapolate the total numbers of Ghast heavy cruisers from the known quantity. The number they’d come up with was exactly fifty-eight. It had stuck in Duggan’s head for some reason. Fifty-eight. There’s someone being paid a lot of money to be so precise. I hope they’ve over-estimated. The Ghasts had bigger ships than the Cadaverons – some of them almost as large as the five-kilometre Hadron supercruisers, of which the Corps had only seven with the destruction of the ES Ulterior. So far, there’d been no direct engagement between a Hadron and a Ghast Oblivion, at least not that Duggan was aware of. He had no idea what happened around Charistos before the planet’s population was wiped out.

“The repair bot’s brought two more sensor arrays back to functionality,” said Chainer.

“Eleven out of thirty?” asked Duggan.

“Aye, sir.” Chainer went quiet for a moment. It usually meant he was concentrating hard. “None-too-soon, it looks. Got a ghost of something at four thousand klicks above us, twenty degrees offset, coming on a near-intercept path.”

Chainer fed the projected path of the Cadaveron through to Duggan’s tertiary display. Duggan hauled the Crimson’s nose around and pointed it upwards. He increased their speed to maximum and the almost impossibly heavy spacecraft accelerated hard out of the planet’s atmosphere, her nose already beginning to glow.

“No sign of a launch yet, sir,” said McGlashan.

“What’s our range?”

“Borderline missile range, I’d guess. If they’ve not fired yet, I’d say we’ve made it.”

“We’ve just had something sweep through our aft quarter engines,” said Breeze. “Efficiency down eleven percent. Looks like they got their particle beam working again.”

It wasn’t news that Duggan wanted to hear. He checked the Crimson’s speed and did a quick calculation. With the reduced efficiency, they were still going much faster than the Detriment’s maximum velocity. That meant they should be able to outrun the Cadaveron, assuming the Ghasts weren’t able to fire the particle beam again.

“Programme set: particle beam recharge twenty-five seconds. Begin,” he instructed the Crimson’s mainframe. Instantly, a timer began on his display, mirrored across onto McGlashan’s. The spaceship’s core was intelligent enough to account for the delay between the weapon strike and Duggan’s instruction, so when he looked at it, the countdown was already at eighteen seconds. From their earlier encounter with the Cadaveron, they’d learned that its particle beam had a much longer range than they’d expected. The problem was, he didn’t know exactly how far that range was. It would make all the difference. His brain raced through the possibilities. Although the Crimson was pulling away, he had to assume that it wouldn’t be enough and they’d take another beam hit.

Duggan had one of those minds that could instantly evaluate the possibilities of a battlefield. As a foot soldier, he’d been able to imagine the players in combat as the pieces on a gameboard. When he’d finally pushed himself to a promotion and joined the crew of a spaceship, he’d carried the skill with him. We should be able to ride a second hit before our speed drops too low. Can we hide behind the planet’s curvature? was his first thought. He pictured the distances between the two vessels. Even if he dropped to within five klicks of the surface, he didn’t think it’d be enough. The Cadaveron was too high to be caught out by such a move.

“Got something new coming, sir. A fission signature. Big. Very big.”

“They’ve sent a Hadron to look for us?” asked McGlashan.

The words had hardly left Chainer’s mouth when the Crimson’s damage displays showed a number of spikes to indicate a second particle beam hit in the same place as the first.

“That one’s only cost us six percent,” announced Breeze.

“Sorry to piss on your good news, but it’s not a Hadron. We’ve just had an Oblivion battleship drop into far orbit.”

Chapter Seventeen

“Have we got every damned Ghast warship in this sector looking for us?” said Duggan, his voice loud with anger. “Things must be worse than we’ve been told if they can spare a battleship way out here!”

“Double the fun,” said Chainer to himself.

“I think we’re beyond the range of their particle beam now,” said McGlashan.

“Two Ghast warships hunting us in orbit cuts our chances right down,” said Duggan. “It’s only a matter of time.”

“How fast are the Oblivions?” asked Chainer. “I’ve never seen one outside of a holoscreen before.”

“They’re plenty fast,” said Breeze. “One of our scouts pinged one at Light-N a few years ago. There were no complaints about funding cuts in the fission drive engineering division after that. Money can’t buy you time, though. Never could and it’s come far too late for us to catch up anytime soon.”

“Yeah, the story of mankind’s destruction,” said Chainer with a snort.

“I want no more talk of that, Lieutenant!” barked Duggan. “We can’t allow ourselves to give in to fear. We’ll beat these bastards, no matter what it takes!”

“Aye, sir,” said Chainer quietly.

Duggan continued to stare at his HUD. “We need to do something about that Cadaveron,” he said. “It’s the weakest of the two enemy warships.”

“They’ll be out of sensor range in a few seconds, sir,” said Chainer.

“Can you read what the enemy vessel did when it reached the cloud of shock drones?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. They did what they normally do and crashed right through the middle of them. They’ll have picked up a few dents, but they’ll have saved a few seconds by not changing course.”

“And they know they’re shock drones and not hull mines because the drones actively transmit, while the mines do not.”

“Yes, and the mines fly at a known speed. They’re not sophisticated enough to fool the Ghasts’ sensors.”

“Indeed,” said Duggan. He called up his weapon’s panel. “Twelve nukes onboard. Big ones, like you said.”

“Long range and slow.”

“With big old, programmable boosters,” Duggan added. He activated two of the missiles and created a speed and trajectory for them. “We need to keep that Cadaveron on our heels,” he said.

“They’re still following,” said Chainer. “They’ll break off once we get too far ahead.”

Duggan pulled back on the control stick, reducing the Crimson’s speed gradually until it was travelling fractionally slower than the Cadaveron. “Let’s keep them interested,” he said.

“What’s the plan? You’re up to something,” said McGlashan. “I know when you’re up to something.”

Duggan didn’t respond at once. His mind worked feverishly as he calculated a course that would keep the Cadaveron in a straight line behind them. He made a subtle change to their trajectory that would let the enemy close the distance between them. “On my word, I want you to release the drones,” he said.

“Understood,” said McGlashan, staring at him with wide eyes. She’d guessed what was coming.

“Release,” said Duggan. A moment later, he confirmed with the Crimson’s mainframe that he really did want it to fire two additional weapons from the ship’s arsenal.

“They’re gone. Two nuclear missiles right behind.” McGlashan looked up in admiration. “Keeping a perfect pace with the drones.”

“I don’t know if it’s possible to catch an AI napping. Pray that it is,” he said.

“Those drones might confuse their scanners long enough,” McGlashan replied. “As long as they don’t spend too long wondering why we scattered our countermeasures without any inbound missiles.”

Duggan found his grip tightening on the control levers, until his knuckles showed white through his skin. “Not long,” he said.

“They didn’t go through the drone cloud, sir,” said Chainer. “They missed it by a whisker.”

“Did they take evasive measures?”

“Can’t tell you for definite.”

“We’re back in particle beam range,” said McGlashan. The words hardly left her mouth before the Crimson took another hit to the rear.

“Another four percent gone, sir,” said Breeze. “We’re pretty resistant to whatever they’re firing. The Detriment would have been floating adrift after a third hit.”

“They’ll burn us out eventually,” said Duggan. “How long till our speed is cut to below theirs?”

“We’re almost there, I’d say.”

“Fire drones on my command,” Duggan said calmly.

“Sir,” acknowledged McGlashan. “We’ll be within missile range in less than one minute. I don’t think they’ll hold back this time.”

“Still waiting,” said Duggan, his eyes darting across a dozen readouts in front of him.

“Their particle beam will be ready in ten seconds.”

“Release,” he said.

“Drones away. Nukes with them.”

“Keep your fingers crossed, ladies and gentlemen. This is our last chance to surprise them before we have to slug it out with missiles.”

“Their particle beam got us again,” Breeze said.

Duggan checked over his console. The Crimson’s speed had dropped below the Cadaveron’s maximum sub-light velocity. They’d soon be a sitting duck. The tension built. None of the four said anything as they waited for fate to roll its dice.

“Not long till they can launch missiles,” said McGlashan. “They’re approaching the cloud.”

Duggan clenched his jaw. “Come on you bastards,” he said.

“I’m detecting gamma rays at the extremes of our sensor range, sir,” said Chainer. “Lots of gamma rays.”

“The Cadaveron?”

“Can’t see. No, wait, it’s changed course and speed. It’s heading away at an oblique and slowing down.”

Duggan jumped up and punched the air. “How’d you alien murderers like that?” he bellowed. “Two gigatons of the Space Corps’ finest.” He recovered his composure and dropped back into his seat. “Bringing us around. I want every Lambda cluster ready to go!”

“Aye, sir.”

With a twist of the control stick, Duggan brought the Crimson’s nose about, bringing the vessel in a tight curve, a few hundred klicks above the barren planet. The giddiness from the life-support delay hit him and he shook it off. The spaceship had taken significant damage to its gravity drive but it was still fast. Soon, they’d closed in enough for Chainer to determine more details about the Ghast ship and he brought up a zoomed image on the bulkhead screen. The Cadaveron was travelling at reduced speed, and it rotated slowly as it hurtled through the atmosphere. The dull silver of its exterior was blackened and rippled near to the cone-shaped nose.

“I was expecting more damage,” said Chainer, hints of disappointment in his voice.

“There’s not enough oxygen for it to have taken much blast damage,” said Duggan. “I’ll bet it’s shielded to hell against gamma rays as well.” He smiled. “Just not enough to block out two gigatons detonating off its armour.” In truth, Duggan didn’t know if the nuclear blasts had knocked out all of the Cadaveron’s weapons systems. Its engines were clearly offline, but other than that, he could only guess at the extent of the damage. He turned to McGlashan. “Fire.”

The Crimson could bring twelve of its eighteen Lambda batteries to bear. “Full broadside on its way,” she said, her voice tight. The missile tracker became a sea of red dots, which rocketed away through space. One hundred and forty-four Lambda missiles cut through the vacuum at an awe-inspiring velocity. The missiles had been built decades before and the engines failed on three, leaving the warheads to drift slowly behind the others. The remainder of the weapons functioned as intended, their guidance systems sending them on an intentionally uneven path to their goal. Around the Ghast ship, star-bright bursts of white appeared and blue tracers appeared from the ten port-side Vule cannons.

“They’re not completely helpless,” said McGlashan.

“Fire,” said Duggan, his voice crisp and clear.

The Crimson sprayed out its second broadside and this time all of the Lambdas activated. The first wave met the withering storm of Vule fire and the concussive bursts of the Cadaveron’s plasma flares. Dozens of the missiles were shredded, but four of them penetrated the enemy countermeasures, setting off a row of thumping white explosions along the spaceship’s flank.

“We’re locked and loaded, sir,” said McGlashan.

Duggan didn’t look away from the viewscreen. “Fire.”

Another six missiles impacted with the Cadaveron. The heavy cruiser had a vast array of countermeasures, but it would normally have been accompanied by a number of much smaller Hunter spacecraft to act as a buffer between itself and incoming fire. Out here in the depths of uncontested space, it had no such outriders. When the light faded from the detonations of the second wave, the huge rip in its hull was clear to see. Still its Vule cannons continued to fire and the plasma flares scattered all around without cease.

“Fire,” said Duggan, his face set with determination.

The third wave crashed into the stricken Ghast vessel, two of the Lambdas plunging into the tear in its hull. This time the blasts almost ripped the spacecraft in two and Duggan realised that he should have conserved his ammunition. He watched the fourth wave of missiles land all across the three-kilometre length of the heavy cruiser. As white faded to black, the Crimson’s sensors showed a scene of twisted hunks of alloy drifting without purpose across the star-strewn sky. The crew stared at the image for a while. Even in a war as ruthless as this one, it was sobering to imagine the death they’d just wrought amongst the enemy.

“I’ve been told the Ghasts have fifty-eight such vessels,” said Duggan. “And now they have only fifty-seven.” He reached down and ran his fingers along the edge of his console. “It’s my wish that we get the chance to destroy each and every one of them.”

“Amen to that,” said Chainer.

“We’ve still got an Oblivion battleship somewhere in orbit looking for us, sir,” said McGlashan.

“We have, Commander. At least we’ve given ourselves a chance to evade it for long enough until our fission engines are ready to go.”

“To hell with that, sir!” she replied with a grin. “I say we go hunting for them!”

Duggan grinned in return and sat in his seat. He took the control sticks and chose a course and speed at random. He looked at Monsey. She’d put her keyboard to one side and her eyes were still on the image of the disintegrating Ghast ship. “What do you think, soldier?”

“Let’s get them, sir.”

Chainer breathed out noisily, the sound of a hundred tensions being released at once. “One kill and everybody goes crazy.” He shook his head and hunkered down over his screen.

Chapter Eighteen

For all his words, Duggan had no intention of looking for the Oblivion battleship. They’d just pulled off a good win, but he wasn’t stupid or foolhardy enough to throw his ship and his crew against one of the prides of the Ghast fleet. Instead, he crossed his fingers and hoped that the Crimson’s mainframe could repair the fission drives before they caught sight of the battleship.

“Think we should divert our repairs back to the gravity drive, sir?” asked Breeze. “It’ll give us extra flexibility if the Oblivion finds us.”

“We could be damned if we do and damned if we don’t,” said Duggan. “We’ll either get lucky or we won’t.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in luck, sir?” asked McGlashan.

Duggan snorted. “I don’t, Commander. However, as captain of this vessel, I’m required to give due consideration to everything.”

McGlashan laughed. “Whatever you say, sir.”

Over the course of the next six hours, Duggan sat almost unmoving as he directed the Crimson in an unpredictable orbit around the planet. Most of the time he kept the vessel low to the surface in the hope that the curvature would act as an additional barrier against detection. Although the atmosphere was thin, it was sufficient to keep the hull of the spacecraft constantly at the upper end of its design tolerances. As time progressed, Duggan became increasingly aware that he was pushing himself to his own physical limits. He’d not slept since the Detriment had been destroyed and even then, he’d only been able to snatch an hour or two of fitful rest. The crew suffered as well and all of their heads had begun to droop. Monsey had taken herself back to her quarters for some shuteye.

“Here you go, sir. Another cup of the finest in-flight coffee you’re ever likely to taste.” It was Lieutenant Breeze. The man leaned down to put a cup of the dark, steaming liquid next to Duggan, balancing the cup precariously next to a touch panel. A half-eaten plate of brown mush was left forgotten nearby.

Duggan neither knew nor cared if the panel was waterproof and he took a sip of the coffee. His mouth was so bored with the taste that he could no longer decide if it was good or bad – only the memory of his first few mouthfuls hours ago told him that it was criminally poor.

“Drink much more of that and you’ll not be able to sleep no matter how badly your body wants to,” said McGlashan.

“It feels like I’m immune to the caffeine,” he replied. He turned his head towards Breeze. The lieutenant had just about made himself comfortable in his seat. “How are the fission drives coming along?” Duggan asked.

“Three hours and I reckon we might be ready to pull off another great escape.”

“They’ll call me Lucky John Duggan if we last that long.”

“That’s got a ring to it,” McGlashan said. “Lucky Captain Duggan.”

“Don’t push it, Commander,” he replied.

“What’s going to happen to us when we get back?” she asked, changing the subject abruptly.

Duggan shrugged. “All I can go on is what I was told. There’s information somewhere buried in the ship’s core that we need access to. Whether it’s useful or not, I don’t know.”

“Think Monsey can crack it? She doesn’t seem to have made much progress.”

“Don’t be fooled by her appearance. I’ve checked her files – she’s had an interesting past to say the least. She’s got form when it comes to cracking military hardware. And don’t forget – this is a Space Corps warship. There won’t be easy backdoors into the core that any kid with a keyboard could play guessing games to get through.”

McGlashan raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like our soldier has an intriguing background.”

“She’s as well-qualified as anyone to do what I’ve asked her to do,” said Duggan.

“It seems a bit hush-hush to me. The Crimson, I mean,” said Breeze. “We all feel it. Are you sure what you’re looking for isn’t better off staying hidden, sir?”

“I’d rather be punished for knowing too much than for knowing too little.”

“What will happen to the ship once they’ve interrogated it?” asked McGlashan. “I’ve already grown fond of her.”

“If they’ve got a spare shipyard they’ll probably re-fit the Lambdas and the Bulwarks, then send it out to join the rest of the fleet.”

“With a new captain and crew?”

“Yes, Commander. With a new captain and crew. Even without my current unpopularity amongst certain factions within the Space Corps, they couldn’t justify having us sitting on our behinds while they refit the Crimson. We’ll be put onto whatever Gunner they have going spare and told to go kill some Ghasts in the Axion sector.”

“At least that’ll be an improvement over what we’ve been doing up till recently. You were wasted when they had the Detriment searching through the fringes of Confederation space.”

“I don’t think anything will be good from now on, folks. Charistos is gone. They Ghasts have opened the gates. It’s only a matter of time until they find Angax. Even if they don’t, their advances in AI cores means it’ll be two or three years until they can follow us through low lightspeed. Humanity is pretty much screwed unless something changes and soon.”

“Is it really so bad, sir?” asked McGlashan.

“I don’t know, Commander. Probably. Maybe. I’m tired. I’ve never met a man or woman who could look on the bright side when they’ve been deprived of sleep.”

“Yeah,” she said, unconvinced.

“I wish we had some long-range comms to pick up what’s happening,” said Chainer. “It seems like the repair bot’s been given a long priority list and the main comms are somewhere in the middle. I don’t know which shit-for-brains thought that the comms for a stranded ship were a medium priority, but I’d like to punch him in the face. The autopilot’s right at the bottom of the list.”

“It’ll take longer to sort out the bot than it will be to let it get on with what it’s doing,” said Duggan. “And we can’t spare anyone to re-programme it. The Crimson’s core doesn’t recognize all of the repair routines and technologies on the bot either, so we can’t get the ship to do our dirty work.”

“I understand that, sir. It’s just frustrating, you know? I don’t like being blind. It feels like we’re facing half the Ghast fleet with both arms tied behind our backs.”

“One way or the other it won’t be too much longer now, Lieutenant. Keep focused and we’ll get out of here in one piece.”

Chainer nodded vigorously, like a man desperate to convince himself that something was true. “You can count on me, sir.”

“This the moment when our sensors pick up the Oblivion,” said McGlashan, her eyes glittering with mischief.

“Ha ha. Not this time, Commander,” said Chainer. “We’re clear all across the board.”

“Have you ever come up against an Oblivion, sir?” asked Breeze. “I’ve heard about them and read up on the files. Sometimes you just need to see one in the flesh to know what you’re up against.”

“I saw one of their first prototypes. Maybe eighteen years ago, when the Ghasts started to build bigger to try and match us. That one wasn’t much larger than a modern Cadaveron. The Hadron Devastator destroyed it way out in a place nobody’s heard of. It was one-sided, but the Oblivion soaked up a hell of a lot of missile fire before it broke apart. I think it would be a close-run thing between the Devastator and one of the newer Oblivions. The latest two Ghast battleships the Corps is aware of were calculated to be similar in volume to the Hadrons.”

“How many Oblivions are there?”

“Last I heard, we know of twelve. Three of them are more than ten years old, the other nine are newer and larger. We have to assume they’re carrying the latest weaponry.”

“With seven Hadrons and the Archimedes left to face them,” said Breeze. “And a few dozen Anderlechts.”

“They’re building faster than we are, Lieutenant. We had our chance to go after them more aggressively years ago. We might have blown the opportunity to finish the war on the winning side.”

Monsey returned to the bridge. She offered a smart salute and sat cross-legged on the floor with her keyboard. She looked hardly more refreshed than when she’d left five hours ago.

“Not get much sleep, soldier?” asked Duggan.

“Not really, sir. It always happens when I’ve got a hard nut to crack. The numbers and possibilities spin around in my head and won’t give me peace.” She grinned. “Makes it a bastard to get any sleep.”

“I’ll leave you to it,” said Duggan. “I’d recommend a few cups of this fine coffee to overcome any fatigue.”

Monsey grunted in response, clearly not buying it. Moments later, she was lost to the world once more, her keyboard clattering as she continued her game of cat and mouse with the mainframe’s anti-ingress codes.

Duggan concentrated once more on keeping the Crimson’s course as erratic as possible. Two hours passed and he found that tiredness was lulling him into a state of relaxation. The danger of the situation hadn’t gone away, but he knew he was close to falling asleep.

“Getting a ping,” said Chainer. “High and wide – something much bigger than us.”

“That’s not what I wanted to hear, Lieutenant,” snapped Duggan, reading the coordinates that Chainer sent through to him.

“Just telling it like it is, sir.”

“I know, Lieutenant. I’m just tired is all.”

“No worries, sir. It’s definitely the Oblivion. It knows we’re here and it’s coming around.”

“Can you get a scan of it?” asked Duggan, changing course to point the Crimson directly away.

“Size and approximate mass only. Over four thousand metres long. Nearly a billion and a half cubic metres. I wouldn’t like to drop it on my foot, sir.”

“Lieutenant Breeze, give me some good news.”

“Wish I had some, sir. Fission engines at seventy-eight percent. Another fifty minutes till we’re able to do anything other than crawl away.”

“We don’t have fifty minutes,” said Chainer. “We’ve got another fast one. The Ghasts are closing on us.”

“Not enough data on their vessel to determine when they’ll be able to fire,” said McGlashan.

“I wonder how we’d fare with full sub-lights,” mused Duggan aloud.

“We’d piss all over them, I reckon,” said Breeze.

Duggan had a thought, one he realised he should have had several hours ago. “Lieutenant Breeze, what are you basing your calculations on for when we’ll be able to reach sufficient velocity to escape?”

“Standard metrics, sir. We’ll be able to hit high Light-A. Low Light-B in five minutes. Even a Cadaveron would have a good shot at reading our trail at that speed. I would hate to guess what the Oblivion could manage. We don’t want to lead it to the Juniper.”

“Indeed not, Lieutenant. On the other hand, there’s nothing that’s particularly usual about this spacecraft, is there?”

“I suppose not,” said Breeze. “It’s old military tech though. The parameters are easy enough to predict.”

“Military tech,” repeated Duggan, without elaborating.

Without warning, the lights on the bridge dimmed, their intensity dropping until the crew were almost in complete darkness. Before any of them could say a word, the lights strengthened and were at their normal brightness less than a second later.

“They’ve tried to shut us down, sir. We’re not even in missile range yet.”

“They must have the same weapons systems that the Kraven light cruiser we destroyed a few weeks ago used against the Detriment,” said Duggan. He cursed loudly.

“With a much better range on it as well,” said McGlashan.

“They’ll have at least one particle beam to add to the fun,” said Duggan. “They’ll rip us apart if they get close enough to use it.” Without turning from his own screens, he spoke to Lieutenant Breeze. “Point us at an offset somewhere between here and the Juniper and power up the fission drive.”

“Aye, sir. Bringing them up.”

“Estimated time?”

“Calculating it now. Only thirty seconds. Colour me impressed.”

Duggan activated a channel to the infantry quarters. “Alert. We’re going to attempt lightspeed in less than thirty seconds.” There was no time to fill them in on the details. They’d be scrambling for something solid to hold onto – most of them had served long enough to remember a bumpy ride from fission drive activation.

Monsey spoke up, catching Duggan by surprise. “There’s some proper grunt to this backend core, sir. Whatever it is, it’s not fifty years old. It’s modern and real fast. I mean like nothing I’ve seen before fast. Its utilisation went up to nearly one hundred percent just as the Ghasts tried to cut our power.”

“Questions with no answers,” muttered Duggan.

“They’re lighting up their fission drives as well, sir,” said Breeze. “I wonder if they’re going to try and follow us.”

“Another power surge,” said McGlashan. “Coming now.”

Once again, the lights dimmed. This time they didn’t go nearly as low and came back almost at once.

“Another utilisation spike,” said Monsey.

“They’ve launched something, sir,” said McGlashan. “A single warhead from the looks of it.”

“Anything to add, Lieutenant Chainer?” asked Duggan.

“I see it, sir. It must have a greater range than their usual missiles. Assuming it reaches us.”

“I think we can safely assume that it’s going to blow the crap out of us if it gets here in time. Another piece of something new.”

“It’s coming at us incredibly fast. Fifteen seconds to impact.”

Breeze laughed, the sound without any humour. “Fifteen seconds till we can go.”

“The Bulwarks aren’t targeting the missile. They’re not even registering it as an incoming object,” said McGlashan. She breathed out. “Life can be interesting around here.”

“Ten, nine…” said Breeze.

“Come on,” said Duggan.

“Dropping countermeasures,” said McGlashan. “Something makes me think they’re not going to work.”

“Seven, six…”

“More countermeasures away.”

“Five, four…”

“It’s already through the first drone cloud.”

“Three, two…”

“Damn them to hell!”

“One, impact…”

The impact didn’t come. There was a howling sound and the spacecraft shuddered. Duggan felt something clutch at his innards and twist them hard. His chest tightened and he struggled against the violent urge to throw up whatever was in his stomach. He was faintly aware of someone retching and he saw McGlashan with her head bowed and her hands to her face. The physical stresses on his body built and Duggan thought he might pass out. Moments before he lost consciousness, the sensation receded, though not as quickly as he wanted.

“Are we hit?” asked Chainer, his voice thick as if he’d bitten his tongue.

“Hull integrity at near maximum,” said Breeze a few seconds later. “Fission drives down to thirty percent and climbing.”

“We made it,” said McGlashan. “Just barely. I can’t believe the Bulwarks couldn’t see that missile. They’re definitely all online and operational.”

The Crimson’s life support systems caught up and Duggan shook his head to clear away the fog. Something caught his eye. “Lieutenant Breeze, can you confirm my velocity readout?”

“This can’t be right. I’m getting us at Light-P. With a quarter of the drive awaiting re-routing.”

“Lieutenant Chainer, do you have enough sensors to get an accurate reading from the surrounding stars?”

“Not accurate, sir, but I should be able to get something close enough. Let’s see what we have.” Chainer’s voice was stronger and he looked alert as he worked out an approximation of their speed. “Light-P it is. Give or take.”

Breeze whistled with the appreciation of a man who lived and breathed engines. “We’ll be at the Juniper in ten days at this rate. Except I’ve programmed us to drop back onto the gravity drive three days from here, in case we were followed.”

“Great, we’ll have to go through that dislocation again,” said Chainer. “Remind me not to eat anything beforehand.”

“That Oblivion won’t be following us at this speed,” said Duggan. “Re-route and point us straight at the Juniper.”

“On it now, sir.”

“Ten weeks out and here was I thinking it would take us six months to get back,” said Duggan. “Instead it’s only ten days. I would kill for some answers.”

“Working on it, sir,” volunteered Monsey. She’d recovered quickly from the burst into lightspeed and had resumed typing as if nothing had happened.

Duggan opened a comms channel to the soldiers’ quarters. “Sergeant Ortiz, please report.”

There was a pause for a few moments. “This is Sergeant Ortiz. We got a bit shook up. The pride of a couple of the guys got hurt. Otherwise, no injuries.” Another pause. “A bit of a rough ride, that one, sir.”

“My apologies, Sergeant. I’ll try and give you more notice next time. No guarantees – you know how it is. Let your squad know we’re on our way back to the Juniper. Ten days.”

“Aye, sir. Ten days sounds good to me.”

Duggan cut the channel and looked over at the people on the bridge. “I’m going for some sleep. Don’t break anything while I’m away.”

Chapter Nineteen

Six hours later, the alarm bleeped a discordant sound that was perfectly engineered to ensure it was impossible to sleep through.

“Off!” Duggan commanded and the alarm fell silent. He lay still for a few minutes to give his head time to clear. His body needed more than the six hours he’d allowed it, but there’d be time to catch up later. As long as he could function without making any stupid errors, it would be sufficient.

The Captain’s Quarters on the Crimson were just about what he’d expected them to be – cramped and barely comfortable. Duggan was used to it and didn’t need anything more, though it would sometimes be nice to stay in a place a little bit more luxurious.

“When I get some vacation,” he grunted, rolling off the narrow bed.

A few minutes later, he reached the bridge. McGlashan and Chainer were nowhere to be seen.

“They left a few minutes after you,” said Breeze. He looked utterly exhausted. “My turn when they get back.”

“Go on now, Lieutenant. Get some rest – you deserve it. There’s no risk of interception at the speed we’re going.”

Breeze pushed himself to his feet. “I won’t argue with you.” He mumbled. With a yawn, he half-stumbled away from the bridge to his bed, leaving Duggan and Monsey on the bridge.

“Any developments, soldier?” he asked.

“Getting there, sir.” She hesitated, as if she wanted to say something more.

“What is it?”

“The more I see of the backend core, the more I’m left wondering about it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t really know. I haven’t cracked it yet, but I’ve seen enough to think that it’s designed completely differently to any other core I’ve encountered.” She chewed on her lip. “It’s as if the front-end mainframe and the back core are speaking different languages. Similar, but not quite the same. They’ve been cobbled together and are getting along just nicely, yet there’s a problem with understanding.”

“The Crimson was the result of the Hynus project. It had a lot of money thrown at it. And I mean a lot. Could the Crimson have a new type of core resulting from that?”

“It’s possible, I guess. I can’t understand why they didn’t develop it further, since it’s brutally fast at almost every task. I can see a few weaknesses to how it approaches some calculations. Otherwise, it has few downsides.”

“Maybe it’s got a trillion dollars’ worth of rare metals in it,” he said.

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Perhaps we’ll find out a bit more when you crack it. I need to know about those weapons systems, soldier.”

Duggan sat down in his chair and ran through the Crimson’s status reports. Everything was as expected, with the fission drive still at seventy-eight percent. Repairs couldn’t proceed on the fission drive or sub-lights either while the ship was travelling at lightspeed. They just needed a break from action for a few days to bring everything to a level Duggan would be happy with.

“Always playing catch up,” he muttered.

An hour later, McGlashan returned to the bridge. She looked sharp and fresh – she was one of those people who could steal an hour here and there and keep on going. Chainer arrived after another hour, looking shabby and dishevelled. He had a cup of coffee in one hand and a can of generic hi-stim in the other.

“I never grew out of my youth,” he said, smacking his mouth. “If I didn’t lie in till eleven, I always felt like crap.”

“Hi-stim overdose,” McGlashan told him. “I don’t touch that stuff.”

“Some of us never learned how to powernap,” he replied without irritation. “There was nothing to report for the last few hours sir. No recorded pings, no sign of anything trying to sniff us out. The bot’s got three more sensor arrays online. We’ll be at full sensor strength before we hit the Juniper and with any luck the long-range comms will either be fixed or near as damnit.”

“Good. I want us to be as ship-shape as possible before we see any more action.”

“Sir?”

“Yes Commander?”

“While you were sleeping, I had a chance to do some calculations. Based on our known volume, ship dimensions, quantity of Lambda batteries and so on, I figure that whatever the two unknown weapons systems are, they’re taking up a big chunk of space. Much bigger than anything I’ve seen on a ship before.”

“An early beam weapon?” asked Duggan. “I know the Space Corps had a functioning unit long before we started seeing them on the Ghast warships. I don’t know if the research was completely abandoned, but I think we only have two vessels that carry one owing to their size and expense. The Archimedes has one and the Hadron Maximilian.”

“Maybe that’s what they are. We could be carrying two. That would be interesting.”

“If we ever get a chance to unlock them,” Duggan replied with a shake of his head.

The following nine and a half days crept by. Duggan wondered if he should be grateful for the break, but all he could think about was the deaths of a billion people on Charistos and the secrets that the Crimson’s core kept locked up tight. Monsey kept at it, pushing herself for as long as twenty hours on some days, while she tried to find a way through the ship’s defences. Even though she didn’t say it outright, it was clear she was becoming increasingly frustrated at her failure to defeat the core’s protective layers.

“I once took control of an old Gunner in under five hours,” she said. “That was when the military police came knocking on the door. Didn’t matter much to me then – I’d beaten the best minds in the Corps and took one of their ships out if its bay. Remotely, of course.”

“I know all about it, soldier,” Duggan told her. “I still don’t know how you didn’t get twenty years for that one.”

“I got five and that was enough,” she said with a smile. “I never got a shot at anything bigger than a Vincent class. I told myself that something as old as the Crimson would be a piece of cake. Except it’s orders of magnitude harder than a thirty-year-old Gunner.”

“Still sure you’ll get there in the end?”

“The bravado in me wants to say ‘hell yes’. The part of me that’s older and wiser tells me to keep my damn mouth shut and not make any more predictions.”

Duggan was disappointed and it was hard to keep it from his face. “We’ve been through too much to go without answers. We get back to the Juniper and they’ll take this ship off me.”

At the beginning of the tenth day of their escape from the Ghast Oblivion, the Crimson came within near space range of the Juniper.

“Well what do you know?” said Breeze. “The old mainframe predicted the flight time bang on the nose. We’ll be coming out of lightspeed in ten minutes time.”

Duggan connected through to Sergeant Ortiz. “Sergeant? I promised you advance warning of any possible turbulence, so here it is. Ten minutes and we’ll arrive in local space close to the Juniper.”

“Thank you, sir. Some of the guys reckon they’re due a bit of leave. Any chance you can put in a good word for us when we dock?”

“I’ll do my best. No promises. You know what the Corps is like.”

She laughed with a complete lack of bitterness. “Understood, sir. We’ve been living on hope not certainty for long enough now. I’m pretty sure they know how it is.”

“Kryptes-9 in five minutes,” announced Breeze a short while after. “We’ll arrive in near space an easy seventy minutes ride out from the Juniper.”

“We can’t wait seventy minutes, Lieutenant. I want us to come in closer.”

“Yes sir!” said Breeze. “Fifty minutes?”

“Let’s try for thirty minutes, shall we?”

McGlashan stifled a laugh. “You’re really going to piss someone off.”

“Time is of the essence, Commander. And I’m not in the mood for waiting.”

“Coming out of lightspeed should be easier than going in, right?” asked Chainer.

“Who knows, Lieutenant. Is your stomach empty?”

“I just ate, sir. Waffles, they were meant to be.”

“Make sure you point your face away from me when we arrive.”

“Yes, sir.” Chainer looked green already.

The Crimson’s near space arrival was more serene than its entry. The ship grated and juddered, producing a scraping sound from somewhere deep within that almost had Duggan worried. There were a few moments of nausea which passed quickly.

“Orbital Station Juniper hailing us on short-range comms,” said Chainer. “The AI isn’t happy to see us.”

“Obtain landing permission. Say it’s an emergency and we’re coming in without autopilot.”

“Permission denied, sir.”

Duggan laughed. He was much happier dealing with a truculent AI than he was trying to escape from a Ghast battleship with half of his weapons systems unavailable. “It must know what this spacecraft is. Tell it to speak to Admiral Teron.”

“I’ve relayed the message sir. It’s warned us to keep our distance.”

“Setting a course directly towards Hangar Bay One,” said Duggan.

“He’s enjoying this a bit too much,” observed McGlashan.

“ES Deeper hailing us, sir. Telling us to keep our distance or they’ll be forced to engage.”

“Where are they?”

“I’m picking them up leaving high orbit around Kryptes-9. It’s good to have the sensors back.”

Before Duggan could push things any further, the Juniper’s AI provided clearance for landing in Hangar Bay One.

“It’s holding off from any further criticism, sir. Someone must have told it to keep quiet.”

“Let’s get docked and see what we’ve missed since we’ve been away,” Duggan said, realising how desperate he was to find out. He pushed the gravity drive to maximum and the Crimson rocketed onwards at such a speed that he had to quickly back off for fear of making the AI do something they’d all regret. “We’ll have near twice the sub-light speed of the Detriment when the re-routing’s completed.”

“Shame we’d burn up if we tried to go so fast in orbit,” said McGlashan. “It’ll be nice to know what she can do with a fully functioning gravity drive though.”

Thirty minutes later, they were docked. The Juniper’s bays could hold larger spacecraft than the Crimson and Duggan found it easy to pilot the ship in and land it smoothly. It was the kind of stuff they drummed into you in training, even when they knew the automatic guidance systems would do the work most of the time. Duggan had always possessed a talent for it, which came from a lack of fear about the consequences of getting it wrong.

“Nicely done, sir,” said McGlashan.

“Stay here,” he warned, getting up from his seat. “Keep everyone onboard until you’re ordered to leave. When we get the chance, I’ll let you take our next assigned spaceship out without the autopilot.”

“Thanks – I’ll look forward to it,” she said.

Duggan marched off the Crimson and took the lift to the 17th floor of the Military CU. He strode across to the reception desk, where the same man who’d greeted him weeks ago was sitting.

“Déjà vu,” Duggan muttered to himself.

“I didn’t catch that, sir,” said the man.

“I’m here to see Admiral Teron.”

“Yes, sir, he’s expecting you.”

“Thanks, I know the way,” Duggan growled, walking past.

Minutes later, he was at Teron’s door. It slid open at once, and Duggan stepped inside.

Teron was inside, leaning forward intently on his battered leather chair. “Captain Duggan,” he said. “I hear you’ve found what you were looking for.”

Chapter Twenty

“What the hell did you send us to recover, sir?” asked Duggan.

“Like I told you, Captain. Old military tech that sent us a warning about a coming war,” Teron responded smoothly.

“You’re hiding something! I know you are! I lost one of my men finding that ship, damnit! Then I find it’s faster than anything else in the fleet and it’s got some kind of advanced core that can ride an attack from a Ghast disruptor. On top of that, half of the Ghast fleet were out there with us. There was an Oblivion battleship, sir. A new model. What was it doing so far away from anywhere?”

Teron had the good grace to look pained. “The Crimson is important. Not just for the information it holds, but for what it’s carrying.”

Duggan took a deep breath. “What exactly is it carrying, sir? Why did we spend so much on that ship and then not follow through with the tech? If we had the Crimson’s engines on every ship in the fleet, we’d already have a big advantage on the Ghasts. We’d be able to outmanoeuvre them in every dogfight. Outrange their missiles. It could be all the difference.”

“I know, Captain Duggan. I’ve looked through the design specifications. It was damn fast when it left the shipyard.”

“I tried to look it up. Access denied. Why is the information buried so deep? We should have an army of engineers digging up the files and building on the research.”

“We can’t,” said Teron quietly. “There are no records of the design.”

“What do you mean, no records? How’d they build the damn thing in the first place? Are you telling me that someone’s lost the files? Or they’ve been destroyed? How could you lose all that? There must have been exabytes of data!”

“They’re neither lost nor destroyed.”

“What are you telling me, sir? Why aren’t you talking straight?”

“Because I’m not allowed to, John.” The two men stared at each other for a time. Eventually, Teron looked away towards one of the banks of screens on his office wall. “Charistos finally drove the message home to the Confederation Council,” he said. “There’ve been riots on Earth, New Earth, Hope, Pioneer. Every habited planet in the Confederation has seen some sort of unrest. The people realise they’ve been fooled and that the Ghasts really might wipe us out. We’ve gone to total war. Everything from now on will be geared towards destroying our enemy. Before you left to find the Crimson, the military was already receiving more funding than we could easily deal with. Imagine that - our infrastructure was so badly cut, we could hardly spend the money quickly enough. Now the investment is pouring in.”

“What about the shipyards, sir? The factories? The research labs? We can’t just revive them and expect everything to work at full speed again.”

“I understand your cynicism, Captain – it’s something I’ve been accused of myself on more than one occasion.” Teron gave a glimpse of a smile. “However, someone in the Space Corps had enough clout to ensure that many of our facilities were mothballed, rather than dismantled. It’ll take time to bring them up to speed, but I assure you it’ll take a lot less time than it would to build them from scratch.”

“Where do you get the people to work them? We must have lost the skills and the expertise.”

“The Confederation has implemented National Service. Interplanetary Service would be a more appropriate term, of course. There was no resistance to the proposal at all. Even now, we’re commandeering the scientists and engineers we need. Just think of it – we have access to tens of millions of people across the Confederated planets who have skills we can put to good use. We’ll not go wanting for lack of suitable personnel.”

Duggan ran his fingers across his stubbled chin. He hadn’t had the chance to shave yet. “I’m almost impressed. Why didn’t we do this five years ago when it might have meant something?”

“We are all guided by the whims of our superiors. This is the hand we’ve been given and we have to play it to the best of our ability. We’ve already begun work on two new Hadrons. There will also be eighteen new Anderlechts, on top of those partway through construction. The Hadrons will take five years before they come into service. The first Anderlecht will be ready in two. There’ll be another flagship when we can build a big enough yard. We’re designing a whole new class of heavy cruisers to match their Cadaverons. It’s a gap in our fleet we’ve put up with for too long.”

Duggan’s mind raced at this cascade of new information. “It’s good to hear we’re doing everything we can, sir. We’re totally outgunned at the moment. We’re going to need a lot more than two Hadrons and we’ll need them a lot sooner than five years from now.”

“Indeed, but it’s a start. As I said – we have unlimited funding. When the facilities become available we’ll have the money and resources to lay down another five Hadrons. And another five after that. We are going to have so many light cruisers that the skies will be filled with them.” Teron’s eyes glittered angrily. “We’re going to beat these bastards, even if I have to take charge of a spacecraft myself!”

“Tell me about the Crimson, sir,” Duggan said.

Teron leaned towards him. “I can’t. This is top-top secret. Even I only have partial access to the files.” He sat back again and steepled his thick fingers in front of his face. “The Crimson is carrying several things we need, that we thought we’d lost for good until we received its signal. We have to break the ship up and take the pieces to the labs. I am not a man prone to melodrama, so you must believe me when I tell you that the Crimson is the greatest hope for humanity’s salvation.”

“I had guessed there was more to it than the need for a simple databank interrogation.”

“I didn’t lie to you, John.”

“Does partial truth count as the truth or a lie?”

Teron exhaled loudly. He didn’t look comfortable. “We received the Detriment’s death code. I know you loved that ship.”

“We were surprised by a Cadaveron. We didn’t stand a chance.”

“There’s a Vincent class parked in Hangar Bay Two. Its captain got killed in a Ghast ambush on the surface of an outlying mining planet. ES Brawler. Fitted with new Lambdas and the same engine mods as you had on the Detriment. You’ve been assigned to it.”

“What about my crew? And the soldiers?”

“The Brawler’s already got a crew. I hear some of yours are overdue vacation.”

“I don’t want a new crew, sir! I want the crew I’ve got!”

“I’m sorry, Captain Duggan. I need them here on the Juniper where I can keep an eye on them. I’m sure they know little of importance about the Crimson, but I can’t have them going around spreading rumours and gossip. I’ve given you more information than I should have done, out of respect for who you are.”

“I understand, sir. I don’t like it and I don’t agree with it, but I understand.”

“I’ll see what I can do to reunite you with the same crew when you return from your next assignment. By then, the need for secrecy may well have diminished. For now, you’re dismissed, Captain, and the men and women on the Crimson will have some much-deserved rest and relaxation here on the Juniper. You’ll be reporting for duty first thing in the morning. Things are difficult for us in Axion and we need every spare ship to keep the Ghasts from finding Angax.”

“Yes, sir,” said Duggan through gritted teeth. “Permission to tell them myself?”

“That will be fine. Don’t take too long. I have a team of engineers preparing to board the Crimson. I don’t want them having to contend with ill-will from any crew who might have overstayed their permission to remain.”

Duggan rose to leave.

“Oh, and Captain Duggan?”

“Sir?”

“Good work bringing the Crimson back.”

Duggan didn’t say anything more and left Admiral Teron’s office. A few minutes later, he was in the lift again, alone as it climbed silently through the Juniper’s immense interior. The overly-chilled air should have been a welcome change after weeks in the hot and claustrophobic confines of the Crimson’s bridge. Instead, it made him crave to be back in the heat and oil-scented humidity. His earpiece bleeped and a voice came through. It was Commander McGlashan. She sounded excited.

“Sir? Monsey’s found something.”

“What is it?”

“I’m not sure yet. She’s breached one of the databanks. There’s reams of stuff in there, much of it still encrypted.” She paused. “I didn’t want to start looking until you got back.”

“Start looking now, Commander. Get Lieutenants Chainer and Breeze on it as well. Tell Monsey to keep up with her efforts.”

“What are we looking for?”

“I don’t know. Anything that looks interesting. Something that tells us about the Crimson.”

“We’re on it, sir.”

“Commander? I’m heading back to the ship now. I’d planned to wait so that I could tell everyone face to face. There doesn’t seem like much point now. We’ve run out of time. Find out what you can, but we’ll need to leave the Crimson soon.”

McGlashan didn’t answer at once and Duggan was sure she’d guessed the implications of what he’d said. “Understood. See you when you get here, sir.”

The lift ride took a few minutes, though it felt much longer. A voice came from a tiny wall speaker to announce the arrival at Hangar Bay One and Duggan stepped out into the vast, open space. The Crimson was still there, low, sleek and menacing in the artificial light of the Juniper’s interior. Duggan could see pocks and scalding across the rear of the vessel where it had taken hits from the Ghast plasma launchers. There were areas of a darker grey, which he recognized as damage from the Cadaveron’s beam weapon. The bay was much busier than Duggan had ever seen it, with groups of men and women clumped everywhere, dressed in a variety of uniforms. The area around the Crimson’s boarding ramp was crowded and there was a lot of shouting coming from the middle. Duggan pushed his way through, uncaring if he ruffled any feathers as he did so. Sergeant Ortiz was standing at the bottom of the ramp, accompanied by Turner, Jackson and Nelson. They held their gauss rifles threateningly and Ortiz was talking loudly to someone. Duggan elbowed his way to the front.

“Captain Duggan!” she said, giving him a salute. She looked unruffled.

“What seems to be the trouble, Sergeant?”

“Sir, these people are attempting to board the Crimson. We have not been told that they are permitted to enter, therefore I have been obliged to assume that they have no authority to do so. Not until the captain of this vessel advises otherwise.”

“Thank you, Sergeant, you’ve done the right thing. I’ll handle this.”

“Aye, sir!”

Duggan turned to face the tall man who had been shouting the loudest at Sergeant Ortiz. He had an off-white uniform and a badge that indicated he was one of the Juniper’s leading engineers. The man opened his mouth to speak, but Duggan cut him off with a hard stare.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Engineering Captain Newt Miller, deputy head of engineering on the Juniper. We’ve got a lot to do, Captain and your soldiers are preventing us from getting on with it.”

“These soldiers are doing their duty, Captain Miller, as I’m sure you’re aware. If they had let you board without direct orders from me, they would have been open to a court martial. This is a vessel of war and you are in no position to order them to stand aside.”

Miller swallowed, but didn’t lower his gaze. When he spoke, his voice was conciliatory. “Captain, I’ve been instructed to get working on this spacecraft as soon as possible. I have nearly a thousand men ready to begin.”

Duggan doubted that Miller knew any more than he did about the secrets of the Crimson. The man had a job to do and he just wanted to get on with it. “To begin on what, exactly, Captain Miller?”

Miller hesitated as he considered whether or not Duggan had any right to know. “We’re to set up an interface between the ship and the Juniper to expedite an extraction of data. Some of the vessel is to be dismantled in preparation for delivery to New Earth. What they plan to do with the pieces when they get there, I have no idea. After that, I believe we’re to fit replacement engines and upgrade the weapons systems.”

Duggan outranked Miller, but he wasn’t in a good position to instruct the man to stand down. Nor did he have any justification to do so, given that he’d been technically removed from command of the Crimson. Before the conversation could progress to its inevitable conclusion, the blue-white light in the hangar bay turned abruptly to a deep, sickly red. At the same time, a siren began to wail. Captain Miller and his technical leads looked about them in confusion.

The impersonal, androgynous tones of one of the Juniper’s AIs spoke calmly over the blaring siren. “All personnel to station, all personnel to station. Attack imminent. Repeat: all personnel to station, all personnel to station.”

There was admirable purpose amongst the hundreds of men and women and Duggan could see them hurrying off towards the many exits from the hangar bay. Captain Miller turned away and started giving out instructions to the people next to him.

Duggan forced open a channel to the Crimson’s bridge. “Commander, what’s happening?”

“The Juniper’s sensors have picked up a Ghast Cadaveron breaking out of light speed, sir. Right at the extremes of detection range.” She swore. “Make that two Cadaverons. Looks like they’ve got lucky and found us.”

Chapter Twenty-One

The crowd at the end of the boarding ramp had almost dispersed. Duggan turned to Sergeant Ortiz. “Get onboard and fast!”

She didn’t need telling twice and ran up the ramp, with the other three soldiers close behind. Duggan followed at once and shouted through an order for the ship to be sealed. There was a hiss as the ramp began to close, cutting out the red light from outside and leaving Duggan to race along the dimly-lit corridors of the spacecraft. Before he was halfway to the bridge, he felt the familiar vibration of the Crimson’s engines coming online.

When he arrived, he found McGlashan, Chainer and Breeze at their stations, each of them looking ready for action. There was no sign of Monsey.

“What’re your orders, sir?” McGlashan asked at once.

“We need to defend the Juniper. It’s too valuable to lose.”

“Sub-lights are ready to rock and roll, sir,” said Breeze.

“Lieutenant Chainer, get us clearance to leave. The Deeper and Delectable can’t beat two Cadaverons.”

“On it.”

“Find out what’s in Hangar Bay Two. We’ll need everything we can muster.”

“I already checked,” said McGlashan. “One Gunner. The ES Brawler.”

“There’s no captain assigned to it. That’s the ship I’m meant to command.”

“They must have found someone, sir. From what I can tell, the Brawler’s in the process of leaving its bay.”

“Sir, the Juniper’s denying our request to leave,” said Chainer.

“For what reason?”

“It says that you’re no longer in command of the Crimson and the ship has been placed under quarantine.”

“Ask it again. Make it clear we have sufficient firepower to provide worthwhile assistance to the ships already out there.”

“Okay, I’m trying.”

“Tell the stubborn bastard that it has insufficient authority to approve its own inevitable destruction.”

McGlashan laughed. “Like that’s going to work.”

“It’s come back with a negative again. Doesn’t look like we’re going anywhere soon.”

“Patch me through to Admiral Teron.”

“His channel is blocked, sir.”

“All warships above Vincent class can override channel blocking. I’ll bet the Crimson could get through to the Confederation Council weekly congress meeting if it wanted. Get me the Admiral.”

“Yes, sir. Here we go. Got him.”

A voice crackled through to Duggan’s earpiece. It was Admiral Teron - he sounded surprised at the interruption. There were other voices in the background to suggest he was attending an emergency meeting.

“Who is this? What are you doing?”

“Duggan, sir. You need to overrule the Juniper’s AI so that the Crimson can assist the Deeper and Delectable.”

“Captain Duggan, I can’t allow that vessel to leave. I’ll be strung up if it gets destroyed.”

“We can’t do anything sitting in the hangar, sir. Two Anderlechts don’t stand a chance against those Cadaverons. I know the Juniper packs a punch, but it’s an easy target.”

Teron paused before he spoke again. “There’s only the Deeper out there, Captain Duggan. The Delectable’s been ordered elsewhere. Very well. Give me a moment and I’ll authorise your departure.”

It happened quickly. “The Juniper’s provided approval, sir,” said Chainer. “It won’t open the doors until the hangar’s cleared. From what I can see on the external sensors, it looks as if that won’t be too long.”

Teron spoke again. “Captain Duggan, will that be all? My attention is needed here.”

Duggan wasn’t done yet. “Sir, the unlock codes for the Crimson’s weapons systems, please.”

“I am not permitted to give you those.”

“You know what we’re carrying.”

“Of course I know!”

“The codes please. If it’ll give us a fighting chance, you owe it to us to provide those codes.”

“I only have the authorisation for the disruptors, Captain.” He sighed audibly. “Very well. I’ll transmit the unlock codes. They should come online in the next few minutes.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I’ll have your balls for this, Duggan.”

Duggan smiled. “I’m sure you will, sir.”

“Good luck out there. We don’t want to lose the Juniper. The Corps has big plans for it.” Teron’s concern sounded far more for the orbital than for his own life.

Duggan closed the connection. “Have you received anything?” he asked McGlashan. The others on the bridge had only been party to Duggan’s half of the conversation with Teron. They’d gathered enough that they didn’t need to ask for details.

McGlashan didn’t look up from her console. “We’ve got something coming through now.” She raised an eyebrow. “The unlock codes are fourteen trillion characters in length. There are thirty of them in total. No wonder Monsey was taking so long to crack them.”

“Let me know when we have access to the disruptors.”

“Will do, sir. These are the same disruptors as the Ghasts have been using against us?”

“I hope so, Commander.”

“Captain, the hangar doors are opening.”

Duggan reached for the control bars and pulled gently back. It already felt completely natural and his instrumentation told him that the Crimson was hovering thirty feet above the hangar floor. The nose of the ship was pointing away from the doors and it would take precious seconds to rotate it in order to fly out forwards.

“I came out of a cave backwards, this hangar should be easy,” he muttered. The pilot’s viewscreen showed the floor of Hangar Bay One speeding by underneath the spacecraft. Moments later, the cold alloy was replaced by the unending blackness of space, against which the icy blue of Kryptes-9 was sharply contrasted. When the Crimson had completely emerged, Duggan wrenched hard on the controls to spin it around, simultaneously feeding in enough power to thrust the craft away from the Juniper. The tail of the warship came within a hundred metres of the orbital’s wall. The AI would be pissed again. Duggan didn’t care – there were more important things to be concerned with.

“The gravity drive repairs were completed while we were docked,” said Breeze. “They’re at one hundred percent.”

“I’ll have a picture for you in a moment, sir,” said Chainer. “Right, got them. The first enemy vessel is engaged with the Deeper. Looks as if they’re trying to lure the enemy away to the other side of Kryptes-9. I can’t tell if it’s working or not. The Brawler’s moving to intercept.”

“What about the second Cadaveron?”

“Heading straight for the Juniper. Four hundred thousand klicks and closing.”

“Let’s cut them off,” said Duggan. He pushed the gravity drive to maximum output and the giddiness came. It lasted a second or two until the life support negated the effects of the acceleration.

“I’m getting a fission signature, sir,” Breeze announced. “An absolutely enormous one.”

“Another Oblivion?” asked Duggan sharply.

“Not this time. It’s coming from the Juniper. They’re getting ready to hit lightspeed.”

Duggan shook his head at his own stupidity. Naturally the orbital wasn’t going to hang around. Even if the Ghast attack was repulsed, the enemy would have certainly relayed the Juniper’s position on to the rest of their fleet. There’d be twenty Ghast warships heading at full lightspeed towards their location already.

“Any idea how long?” he asked.

“I’m sorry, sir – I have no idea. It’ll be nothing like as quickly as a warship can do it. I mean, have you seen the size of the thing?” Breeze sounded breathless with excitement.

“The disruptors are online, sir! We’re carrying two of them!”

“Give me the details, Commander.”

“Range almost two hundred and fifty thousand klicks. They’ll pull juice from the fission engines. The power draw is huge.”

“Can we use them yet?”

“No, sir. Their status tells me they’re still warming up. They’ll be ready in less than a minute.”

“If they draw from the fission engines, that must be why the Ghasts haven’t been firing them at will,” said Breeze, studying the disruptor feeds. “My top of the head calculation tells me the Detriment couldn’t provide enough power to use the disruptors at anything more than ten or fifteen thousand klicks.”

“Two hundred and fifty thousand klicks, Commander? That’s far more than the range of the newest Lambda prototypes. What’s the longest range we’ve taken a hit from a Ghast disruptor?”

“One hundred and thirty-two thousand klicks from that last Cadaveron we escaped.”

“Incoming enemy warship at three hundred and forty thousand klicks,” said Chainer.

“Can you give me anything on the ES Deeper’s situation, Lieutenant?”

“Negative, sir. They’ve gone behind Kryptes-9. We’d pick up a fission signature. Anything else? Not a hope.”

“Want me to hit the bastards as soon as the disruptors are ready?” asked McGlashan.

“Hold till I say.”

“Aye, sir.” She looked disappointed.

“Three hundred thousand klicks.”

“Fifteen seconds for the disruptors.”

“Two hundred and sixty thousand klicks.”

“Disruptors ready when you say the word, sir.”

“Fire as soon as they come in range, Commander.”

“They’ve launched something, sir,” said Chainer.

“Firing the disruptors.”

The lights on the bridge dimmed low. There was a high-pitched whine, almost beyond the scope of hearing. A thumping sound shook the entire hull of the spacecraft.

“Fission engines down to ten percent. Enemy vessel no longer emitting positrons,” said Breeze. “We just used enough power to light the biggest city on New Earth for a month!”

“Enemy missile on its way. At our combined speed it’s closing at six thousand klicks per second. I’m picking up the same readings as I got from the missile the Oblivion sent after us,” said Chainer.

Duggan frowned. “They can’t target us from so far out, can they? Neither our missiles or theirs will target until they’re within a range threshold.”

“Another piece of new tech for us to deal with,” said McGlashan. “This could be a game-changer if they can launch from so far.”

“We’re still closing with the enemy vessel at three thousand klicks per second, sir,” said Chainer.

“We’ll be in Lambda range in approximately thirty seconds,” said McGlashan.

“Fission drive at twenty percent. Climbing fast.”

“Their missile will reach us in a little over twenty seconds.”

“Recommend evasive manoeuvres, sir,” said McGlashan. “The Bulwarks aren’t targeting again.”

“We don’t know the range of that missile, Commander. It might follow us across half the galaxy. We’ve only got a minute before the Cadaveron’s power comes back.”

“Fission drives at twenty-eight percent.”

“Target that missile, Commander. Hit it with the disruptors.”

“We’ve not got the power to hit it from far out, sir.”

“Fire them, Commander. Do it soon.”

“Five seconds to impact.”

“Firing disruptors.”

The whining sound was repeated and the walls of the bridge shuddered at the outpouring of energy. Duggan hauled the Crimson away to one side and off the path of the inbound missile.

Chainer blew out a lungful of pent-up air and McGlashan clenched her fist. “Got it,” she said.

“Fission engines at three percent and climbing.”

“The enemy missile has gone by, sir,” said Chainer. “Negative strike.”

“I want every Lambda locked onto that Cadaveron as soon as you’re able, Commander. Give those bastards hell.”

Less than twenty seconds later, the combined velocities of the two ships brought the Cadaveron into Lambda range.

“Twelve clusters away, awaiting reload,” said McGlashan.

“Bringing us round. Give them the other side.”

“Remaining six clusters have launched sir.”

“Fire again when ready,” Duggan said, altering the trajectory of the spaceship in order that the first twelve clusters could launch again as soon as they were ready.

“Off they go,” she said.

The four of them watched soberly as three hundred and sixty Lambda missiles sped across the intervening space towards the disabled Cadaveron.

“First wave impacts in ten seconds,” McGlashan said. “We’ve not got enough missiles to keep this up all day.”

“Pulling us away to one hundred and forty thousand klicks,” said Duggan. “I don’t want them firing at us when their power comes back.”

“Will it happen in time?” asked Chainer. “I’ve lost count of the seconds.”

“We’ve gone past one minute already,” Duggan replied.

“I’m detecting Vule traces from their port side,” said McGlashan. She looked up. “One hundred and five successful Lambda strikes from the first wave.”

“Shit,” said Chainer. “That’s got to be enough to knock out three Cadaverons.”

“Sixty more confirmed strikes.”

“There’s going to be nothing left for the next ones to hit,” said Breeze quietly.

By the time the remaining missiles reached the position of the enemy vessel, their guidance systems were reduced to chasing ever-smaller fragments of the Cadaveron. As Duggan swung the Crimson towards Kryptes-9, all that remained of the heavy cruiser was a cloud of metal shards and white-hot dust.

“Let’s get over here and see what’s happened to the Deeper,” he said.

As the spaceship accelerated across the vacuum, Duggan found questions jumping unbidden to his mind. If Admiral Teron only had partial access to the systems onboard the Crimson, what sort of rank would be needed for full access? Outside of the Confederation Council, he could only think of one name and it wasn’t somebody he wanted to hear from again – a name that would bring him only trouble. The man who had condemned him to life in the backwaters of the Space Corps. He put the thoughts aside and concentrated on the current situation.

Chapter Twenty-Two

There was no sign of the ES Deeper. The Brawler was heading towards the planet with a trajectory that indicated her captain was intending to take a random orbit in the hope of intercepting the Ghast heavy cruiser. The destruction of the second Cadaveron had taken hardly any time and the Crimson rapidly gained on the much slower Gunner.

“Do we have any data at all on the Deeper’s position?” asked Duggan. “I don’t want to end up chasing around Kryptes-9 for a day in the hope that we stumble across an engagement.”

“We’ve got no details on their flight path at all, sir,” Chainer replied. “I’ve just enquired with the Juniper and her AI can only provide a flight path until the Deeper went behind the planet. The Juniper’s got the best sensor arrays this side of Monitoring Station Theta, but they still can’t see through two hundred thousand kilometres of rock and ice.”

“We should be grateful the enemy captain took the bait, sir,” said McGlashan.

“The stupid warlike bastards,” snorted Breeze. “They’d have had a shot at the Juniper if they’d acted together.”

“I’ve seen them behave like this before,” said Duggan. “It’s as if they get a medal for every Confederation ship they shoot down.”

“Or a promotion,” offered McGlashan. “It makes you realise how little we know about them.”

“We can guess their motivations by their actions. Today they’ve screwed up badly and given us the opportunity to capitalise on it.”

Chainer called over. “Sir, I’ve got a priority request from the Juniper. It’s Admiral Teron.”

“Don’t hang around man, patch him through.”

“Coming through now.”

Teron’s voice spoke into Duggan’s private channel. “Good work, Captain. The Juniper’s preparing to jump. I want you to take the Crimson and get out of there as soon as you can.”

“Sir, what about the Deeper? A single Anderlecht is going to have a tough time against that heavy cruiser.”

“I know, Captain. I’ve been there myself and come home with the scars. The Crimson’s too valuable to lose. As soon as the Juniper departs, you will set a course at maximum speed. You are to rendezvous with the Archimedes.”

“Sir, with the disruptors we can help the Deeper.”

“I gave you an order, Captain. As soon as the Juniper leaves, you’re to break off any attempt at engagement and make for the Archimedes.”

“Our fission drives have gone cold since we fired the disruptors.” Duggan looked across at Breeze with a stare that told him not to say anything that might be overheard. “I don’t know how long till they’ll be ready.”

“I know how they work, Captain. I’ve read the files,” said Teron with a dangerous edge to his voice. He sighed and spoke again. “Captain Duggan, those are the only working disruptors that the Confederation possesses. If the Crimson is destroyed, we lose access to a weapon that might bring us back onto an even footing with our enemy.”

“I understand, sir. The Ghasts have a new long-range missile. We’ll do our best to keep them at bay until the Juniper goes to lightspeed. Over.” Duggan cut the channel before Teron could order the Crimson to withdraw to a position closer to the space station. He looked at Chainer. “I don’t want him getting through again, Lieutenant. Block any further communications from the Juniper. Make it look like a technical issue.”

“Aye, sir,” said Chainer.

“Lieutenant Breeze, any clue as to when the Juniper will leave us?”

“They’ve been holding at peak output for nearly four minutes, sir.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No sir, it wasn’t. I don’t know when they’ll be ready. There’s a good chance they don’t either.”

Duggan guided the Crimson into a high orbit and continued to close in on the much slower Gunner ahead of them. “Get me a channel to the Brawler.”

“Short range comms channel coming through, sir.”

“ES Brawler, this is Captain John Duggan, please acknowledge.”

“Captain Duggan, this is Commander Emily Smith.”

“You left the hangar ahead of us. Did you pick up the enemy’s orbit?”

“Negative, sir. We’re approaching this one blind in the hope we can help out.”

“Don’t engage the Cadaveron without assistance. You can’t beat it.”

“Understood. Want us to ride with you, sir?”

“Negative. I don’t think you’ll be able to keep up.”

The Crimson flew past the Brawler at a distance of three hundred klicks and almost double the velocity. “So I see, Captain. Good luck.”

“She sounds nervous,” said McGlashan once the communication channel was closed.

“Can’t say I blame her,” muttered Chainer, a sheen of sweat visible across his forehead.

“Fission drive back up to sixty percent,” said Breeze. “At least we’ll be able to shut them down.”

Duggan remembered something McGlashan had said a few minutes ago during the fight with the second Cadaveron. “How many missiles do we have left, Commander?”

“Three hundred and twenty-one. Enough for one and a half full-cluster launches.”

“Normal procedure is to carry enough for twelve launches from each tube,” said Duggan with a frown. “The Crimson should have been loaded with over two and a half thousand missiles. We should have more than fifteen hundred left.”

“Maybe they sent her out with a half-load for her trials.”

“The Crimson wasn’t on a trial. It had entered active service. Somewhere along the lines it’s fired well over a thousand missiles from its payload. When things calm down I want you to find the audit logs.”

“Will do sir. Ten to one they’re in the locked-down databanks.”

“I’ll not put a dollar on it, even at ten to one, Commander.”

Lieutenant Chainer cut into the conversation. “The Juniper’s accelerated to Lightspeed-G, sir.”

Breeze had been monitoring it too, and his eyes were wide. “The biggest fission output I’ve ever seen.”

“Could run a couple of pocket calculators from it, then?” asked McGlashan.

“I’m picking up another signature from the far side of Kryptes-9,” said Chainer. “Too small to be a Cadaveron.”

“The Deeper’s, getting ready to haul out,” said Duggan. “No point in them sticking around here to get themselves blown up now that the Juniper’s gone. “Looks like our work here is done for now. Lieutenant Breeze, get us ready to leave as well. Set a course for the Archimedes.”

“Winding them up as we speak, sir. There’s not been time to get them to re-route to one hundred percent, but they’re near enough. Let’s see what she can do this time. Thirty seconds till we’re ready. I’ve sent a warning through to the quarters below. They’ll be at a shade over ninety percent when we go and should climb to ninety-nine post-jump.”

“Want me to speak to the Brawler, sir?” asked Chainer. “They can’t have missed it either.”

“Tell them to leave the vicinity at the earliest opportunity. I doubt Commander Smith has any orders, so she can pick the New Earth military base or she can head over to Angax if that’s where her gut takes her.”

“Commander Smith sends her regards, Captain. They’ll take a look at what’s happening around Angax.”

Duggan smiled. There were plenty of brave men and women in the Space Corps.

“Sir?” It was Chainer. “The fission signature’s died.”

The smile drained away. Duggan knew the answer, but had to ask the question. “Without departure?”

“Yes sir. The Deeper hasn’t gone anywhere.”

“Want me to cut the engines?” asked Breeze.

Duggan shook his head, certain that the Deeper had been destroyed. He clenched his teeth, suppressing the urge to try and force an engagement with the enemy vessel. He remembered Teron’s words that the Crimson had the only disruptors available to the Confederation. He knew himself that the engines were something special, even if Teron hadn’t mentioned it. There were many other secrets to the warship, he was sure. Layer upon layer of them, hidden away from him, yet tantalisingly close. He didn’t want to be known as the man who threw away humanity’s chance of settling the score for the destruction of Charistos. Over a billion dead, with tens of billions more hoping for something to come that might improve the odds of victory. Against that, a lone Cadaveron was an insignificant prize, which only a madman would chase in the circumstances.

“We go for the Archimedes. Best speed.”

The words had scarcely left his mouth when the entirety of the Crimson’s eleven hundred metre length was shaken by a vibration that rolled through the bodies of the men and women on board. Dizziness and nausea crashed into Duggan, battering him with increasing intensity until he felt consciousness begin to fade. Before the merciful relief of the darkness claimed him, Duggan had enough time to give thanks that the ship’s engines were only at ninety percent when they made the jump.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Captain John Duggan cracked an eye open. He was in his chair on the bridge. A few feet away, McGlashan groaned slightly, beginning to stir. Breeze and Chainer were out for the count. It looked like Chainer might have caught his forehead on the edge of his console and there was a bump already beginning to form. Duggan tested his body and found that his strength was returning quickly. Regardless, he was in no hurry to test it out.

“It’s like being back in the academy gravity acclimatiser,” said McGlashan, her words slurred. “The one you can’t beat, where they turn it up until everyone blacks out.”

Duggan grunted a response, not ready to make light conversation. “Lieutenant Breeze? Lieutenant Chainer?”

Breeze jerked at the sound of the voice. He was a strong man and would be angry with himself for falling unconscious. “Sir?”

“What’s our status?”

As Breeze brought himself round, Duggan pushed himself upright and half-stumbled towards Chainer. He checked his pulse – it was beating strongly. The bump on his forehead looked like it might need some attention from Corporal Blunt.

“Sir, we’re going at a tiny fraction below Light-T and still climbing. They’re going to have to invent a new scale.” Breeze looked dazed and Duggan wasn’t sure if it was because of the effects of the acceleration or because of the speed they’d attained.

“Sergeant Ortiz, please report,” he said.

Ortiz spoke, her voice notably weaker than normal. “Damn, sir.” She cleared her throat loudly and apologised for it, like she wasn’t thinking straight. “We’ve got cuts and bruises. Corporal Blunt’s checking Diaz out for concussion.”

“Send the corporal here as soon as he’s finished with Diaz. Lieutenant Chainer’s taken a knock to the head. Send Monsey as well. I need her plugged in to the core as soon as she can. The Juniper’s escaped and we downed one enemy Cadaveron. Next stop, the Archimedes.”

“Good news about the enemy vessel, sir. I hear there’s real steak on the Archimedes. A herd of cattle in the hold, just waiting to be turned into the best cuts of beef.”

In spite of the circumstances, Duggan couldn’t help but laugh. “I don’t want to rain on your parade, Sergeant - I doubt there’s ever been a cow within a thousand klicks of the Archimedes.”

“Until I see otherwise, I’ll continue to believe, sir.”

Duggan closed the comms channel and turned his focus back to the bridge. His head had cleared and his strength had just about come back. Chainer moaned quietly and his lips moved slightly.

“Think he’s okay?” asked McGlashan, concern on her face.

“Just a knock on the head, Commander. I’m sure Corporal Blunt will have him right as rain in a few minutes.” Duggan peered in closely – Chainer was paler than usual and his face was dripping with sweat. It was hot, but not that hot.

“The fission drives have climbed up to full,” said Breeze. “Ninety-nine percent available and we’ve topped out at dead-on Light-V. That officially puts us as easily the fastest ship known to man, woman, or Ghast.”

“I like those figures, Lieutenant. Feels like we’re setting a new Confederation record for speed. We’re the trailblazers of the Corps,” said McGlashan.

“Five days and eight hours until we rendezvous with the Archimedes. Assuming she doesn’t change course or speed in the meantime. Or decide to make a lightspeed jump somewhere.”

“The Juniper should have sent a message on ahead. If not, we might be following the Archimedes around like a lost dog until we find it.”

“Five days?” asked Duggan. “Which sector’s she in?”

“Garon sector, according to our path and ETA.”

“What the hell is the fleet’s capital ship doing out there?” asked Duggan. “That’s about as far from Axion as you can get.”

Neither McGlashan nor Breeze offered an answer. Breeze shrugged and looked uncomfortable at the possibilities.

“Who commands it now?” asked McGlashan.

“It should still be Admiral Johnson,” said Duggan. “The man’s not known for his reluctance to face danger head-on. I wonder why he’s taken the flagship so far away from it.”

Corporal Blunt arrived, bringing his box of tricks with him. Duggan pointed to Chainer and the medic nodded his acknowledgement. He unslung his medical pack and crouched down to start poking at the half-conscious Lieutenant Chainer. Within seconds, he had several wires attached to Chainer’s flesh.

“Nothing to worry about, sir. He has a mild concussion, but nothing to keep him off duty. He’s going to feel like crap when he comes round. Want me to give him a shot of something?”

“I need him at his best,” said Duggan.

“Right you are. One dose of synthetic adrenaline it is. We call it adrenaline, but that’s just so people think it’s something nice and friendly we’re sticking into their arm.” He held up a large needle, filled with a clear fluid. “The list of drugs in this is so long it’d take a med-student a week just to write them down.” With that, he jabbed the needle unceremoniously into Chainer’s arm. There was a quiet hiss as the syringe’s onboard micro-brain squirted the fluid into the lieutenant’s vein. The result was immediate. Chainer practically jumped upright, his eyes sharp and bright.

“What?” he gasped.

Corporal Blunt was familiar with the reaction and continued to speak to Duggan as if his patient didn’t exist. “He might become nauseous in a few hours when that wears off. If he needs any more, let me know.” Blunt turned to Chainer as if only just realising he was there, before clapping him on the shoulder in a familiar manner. Every field medic Duggan had ever worked with had some sort of oddness about them and Blunt was no exception. It was probably how they coped.

“Thank you, Corporal. I’ll speak to you if I need anything further.”

“Right you are, sir.” Blunt gave a half-smile and turned to leave. The arrival of Monsey with her own kit meant it was a squeeze for him to get through the door.

“I need you to continue as you left off, soldier.”

“Will do, sir.”

“Commander McGlashan tells me you’ve unlocked one of the databanks?”

“I have, sir. Even that felt like breaking through a brick wall with a toffee hammer. There was no chance to index any of the data. I didn’t access it via the expected method of entry.”

“That’s fine,” said Duggan. There’d been no time for any of them to start sifting through what they’d found. He indicated to Monsey that she should get on it and she nodded. He looked at Chainer to see how the man was doing. The lieutenant had recovered from his shock awakening and was hunched over his console, his hands blurring as they called up data feeds from the ship’s sensors.

“How’re we doing, how’re we doing?” said Chainer to himself. His voice carried an almost frantic note. Duggan recognized the effects of a high dose of battlefield adrenaline.

“Lieutenant Chainer, how long till our long-range comms are functional? I’d like to get a message through to the Archimedes as soon as we come out of lightspeed.”

“They’re next on the list, sir. The repair bot should be on it later today. Yes, that’s it, today. They should be fixed soon. Do I make it six days till we reach the Archimedes? No, five days. It’s closer to five days. They’ll be ready before we dock. I’ve got to get on, sir.”

McGlashan was familiar with field medication as well and Duggan caught her grinning at Chainer’s babbling speech.

“We’ve got five days ahead of us, Commander,” Duggan said. “That gives us plenty of time to find out what we can.”

“I’m already on it, sir,” she replied.

They spent the next few hours hunting through the huge quantities of uncategorised data that Monsey had unlocked for them. If they’d accessed it through the usual front-end it would have been easy to find anything of interest. As it was, the work was slow and tedious. Duggan found his frustration growing as he picked through a seemingly endless array of schematics for the Crimson’s hull.

“Admiral Teron told me there are no design plans on record for this ship,” he said. “Yet that’s all I can find here. I find it hard to believe that they sent all the technical drawings and specifications out with the ship and didn’t keep any of them on the lab mainframe. From what I gather there aren’t even a few damned print outs available to look at.”

“I see hull composition, Lambda mountings, life support,” said McGlashan. “Even something about the replicators. There are more than two hundred drawings for the boarding ramp.”

“Nothing about the engines or the disruptors,” mused Duggan. “Or the last unknown weapons system either.”

“The Ghasts have disruptors, sir. They’ve only started to use them recently. Could they have stolen the designs from us?” She hesitated. “Or could someone have sold the details to them?”

“I don’t know, Commander. None of it’s making any sense at the moment. If the Space Corps had this technology fifty years ago, why didn’t we use it? Teron talked about funding. I can almost believe that, but why would the records vanish?”

“Do we know for definite there are no records?”

“I believed him when he told me,” said Duggan. “It’s why they’re so desperate to have the Crimson back now. I saw it in Teron’s eyes and I can see it with my own eyes. This warship is a game-changer.”

“You don’t think there was a traitor who sold the plans to the Ghasts?”

“There’d be no logic to it. What would such a traitor gain? Money? I can’t imagine there’s anyone who had access to not only steal all the data, but to completely expunge it from every place it was stored and backed up. It can’t have happened.”

“There are a few people who could pull it off though?”

“One or two people in the Space Corps, perhaps. A dozen members on the Confederation Council. It wouldn’t be at all easy and I can’t imagine there’d be enough gain to make it worthwhile. Is there really someone out there who hates the human race enough that they’d assist an enemy which gives every impression that they want to make us extinct? For nothing more than money?” He shook his head at the thought. The same name that had come into his head earlier paid him another visit. He kept it quiet.

“What, then?”

“The answers have to lie here somewhere, Commander. In the Crimson’s databanks. This was a top-grade warship. You can be sure that every snippet of information pertaining to its design and maintenance will be stored here somewhere. This might be the only place it exists.”

In spite of their best efforts, the answers remained stubbornly out of reach. They spent the next two days trawling through the area of the Crimson’s memory that Monsey had gained access to. By the middle of the second day, Monsey managed to provide front-end access, which allowed them to view all the data in a logical index. This sped things up immeasurably, but only served to demonstrate that what they were looking for wasn’t there.

“There’s nothing here,” said McGlashan at last. “At least not in this memory array.”

“I might have access to another chunk soon, sir,” said Monsey. She’d been so quiet that Duggan had almost forgotten she was there. The constant rattle of her keyboard had slipped into background obscurity like a droning lightbulb.

“How soon?” asked Duggan.

“Soon, sir. I’m not sure I can pin it down. I’ve successfully circumvented a whole load of encrypted block codes. I’ve got tricks the original programmers didn’t know about.”

Duggan opened his mouth to press her for specifics. He closed it again. He didn’t want to push Monsey so hard she’d lose focus. She’d been putting in eighteen hours a day.

“Yes!” shouted Chainer, clapping his hands loudly. “Main long-range comms back online, sir! If you want to speak to someone anywhere in the Confederation I can patch you through as soon as we come out of lightspeed! Even through to Earth if you want!”

“Thank you, Lieutenant, I don’t have any relatives there,” said Duggan dryly. “I’d like to get through to the Archimedes. It’s just a shame we can’t do it until we come out of lightspeed.” Comms wouldn’t get through at the speed they were going – it was one of the problems with lightspeed travel. You might be travelling fast, but you were also travelling blind. Still, it was positive news that the Crimson was now almost as good as new again and Duggan felt his mood lift slightly. It took another leap when Monsey spoke.

“Got them!” she said. “Sir, I’ve cracked another one of the arrays. This time I got straight in through the front door.”

“Good work,” said Duggan, giving her a clap on the shoulder. “That’s the sort of soon I can appreciate.”

She smiled back. “No problem, sir, I just didn’t want to set your expectations and get it wrong. Glad to help. I’ll grab myself a coffee and have a go at the other two arrays.”

“Take a rest when you need it, soldier.”

“I definitely will, sir.” She looked boosted by her success.

Duggan was tired and he could see by McGlashan’s face that she was running low on energy as well.

“I don’t think I can stomach another coffee as long as I live,” she said, calling up the new access menu. “Whoa, look at this! I can access the fission drive details here. There’s something on the double-core design as well. Looks like we hit pay dirt!”

“Let’s get on with it and see what we’ve got,” he replied, feeling the tiredness ebb. He knew it would only be a temporary relief but he was glad to take advantage of it.

After half an hour, it become clear that the more he learned, the more was hidden from him. There were thousands upon thousands of new schematics relating to the Crimson. Duggan was no engineer, but he’d learned enough that he could understand the basics of spaceship design and he could look at a technical drawing and know what it meant and where it fitted into the whole. What they’d unearthed in the Crimson’s archive was a mystery.

“Look at this drawing here,” he said. “It’s a very high-level diagram to show the two processing cores. Over here’s the model designation of the front-end core. I’ve checked it out and it’s a design from one of the Corps labs. Not quite a standard model – they’ve modified it quite extensively for the Crimson and called it the Hynus-T. It’s slow by modern standards, but dramatically quicker than most warship cores of the era. Nevertheless, it’s consistent with a cost-no-object new military design.”

“Yeah, I remember reading about this model series,” said McGlashan. “New and improved super-cores, now too old to bother with.”

“This secondary core here isn’t anything I recognize at all. I call it secondary, when in reality it appears to have primacy over the known model. I can see the interfacing between the two and they expected a tremendous amount of throughput. The connections between the cores suggests that the engineers were prepared for so much data to be transferred that the front core has specially-designed buffers to prevent it from getting flooded.”

“Like too much information coming at one time choking it up?”

“That’s how it appears. It’s hard to say more without looking at the original specifications, or speaking to some of the engineers who worked on it.”

“There’s no code or model number for this second core?”

“Not that I can see. Wait! There is something. It’s been given a strange name, listed on a few of these drawings. They’ve called it a Dreamer core.”

“A nickname? The name of a company perhaps?” asked McGlashan. “Maybe a sub-project of Hynus, designed to produce a new type of computer.”

Duggan did a search on the word Dreamer, to see if it was mentioned elsewhere. It was, many times, except nowhere was there any clarification on what it referred to. “Dreamer engines,” he said. “We’re packing a Dreamer engine and a Dreamer core. Shame I don’t have the first idea what that means.”

“Doesn’t look like the designers did either, sir. Must have been so classified they didn’t even know what it was they were working with.”

“Nothing surprises me anymore, Commander.” Duggan got to his feet. “I’m going for some rest. You know where to find me.”

With that, he headed to his quarters for the six hours he allowed himself. He was dog tired, but sleep didn’t come at once. Possibilities swirled and spun. The face of a man he’d tried to forget came to his mind and wouldn’t leave him alone.

Chapter Twenty-Four

After a little over five days and eight hours of travel, the ESS Crimson’s fission drive shut off and the spaceship entered normal space with another violent burst that shook the crew and soldiers who were onboard.

“Damn I’ll never get used to that,” said Chainer.

“At least you didn’t knock your head again,” McGlashan replied with little sympathy. “Look on the bright side – the arrival is much easier than the departure.”

“Maybe they’ll refit the life support systems for us,” he replied. “It’s clear the one we’ve got isn’t up to the task.”

“Pay attention to your stations,” Duggan told them. “What’s our status. Where’s the Archimedes?”

“Sorry, Captain,” said Chainer. “I’ll find out for you right now.”

Duggan backed off. The physical punishments inflicted by the Crimson weren’t something he enjoyed either and it took a few moments to shrug off the effects. “No problem, Lieutenant. Let me know when you’ve found them.”

“We’ve come in right on the spot,” Chainer said. “I’d kind of got used to the Detriment’s old way of landing us here there and everywhere, half a day late or early. Checking sensors now. Yep, got the Archimedes, sir. Well, the Crimson’s mainframe doesn’t know it’s the Archimedes, but it’s the only spacecraft I know that’s nine kilometres long. It’s coming out from the far side of the planet over there. Dion-983.”

“Catchy name,” said McGlashan.

“They’re two hours distant, sir.”

Duggan took control of the Crimson and pointed it towards the coordinates Chainer fed through. The repair bot had fixed the autopilot a couple of days back, but Duggan found it suited him better to guide the ship manually. “Bring up their comms man and let them know we’ve arrived. I’m sure they’ve seen us.”

“Aye, sir. They’ve acknowledged our hail and returned the greeting. We have permission to come in close.”

“What escort do they have?”

“Getting multiple pings. I’m downloading the data.” The Crimson’s data on Corps vessels was fifty years out of date and Chainer had to send a request to the Archimedes’ AI for each of the spacecraft in the vicinity. “Hadron Precept in attendance. Along with Anderlechts Fixation, Extermination and Delectable. Those are just the ones I can see. I’d expect there to be others still hidden behind Dion-983.”

“They’ve got a quarter of the damned fleet here,” said Duggan. “Out in the back end of nowhere.”

“Maybe they know something we don’t,” said McGlashan.

“I hope you’re right, Commander. They’ve got enough firepower to waste half a dozen Cadaverons. At least we know where the Delectable got to. Sent here to orbit a dead planet while Ghast ships attack the Juniper.”

Duggan chewed his lip as the Crimson closed the gap on the Archimedes. He’d expected a lot more communication than they’d received so far. The Corps flagship was practically silent and unresponsive.

“Can her hold accommodate us, sir?” asked McGlashan.

“Not a hope. It’s a warship, not a cargo vessel. They might have a couple of Gunners docked. Otherwise it’s the same as every other Corps combat ship: engines, weapons, armour. It’s a lot more luxurious than anything else in the fleet, though. After all, it’s meant to host important people.”

“The sort of people who might take offence if they’re not treated with the respect they feel they deserve?” asked Breeze.

“Exactly, Lieutenant. The sort of people who might decide to cut ten percent of the Corps’ budget if they don’t get a perfect cup of coffee from a replicator.”

“Bastards,” said McGlashan, almost to herself.

“Not all of them, Commander. There’re plenty of good men and women on the Confederation Council. They’re just too slow to react and they’ve been badly-informed about how the war is going. Or maybe we have too many peacetime leaders. Still, it’s better to treat your superiors with respect, rather than hope for their goodwill.”

Duggan heard what sounded suspiciously like stifled laughter at his last sentence. He pretended he hadn’t noticed. “Let’s have a look at what we’ve got,” he said to Chainer. “Bring up the Archimedes on the screen.”

Chainer complied and an image of the largest battleship in the Space Corps filled the bulkhead monitor. It was difficult to see the enormity of it without another vessel for comparison and to the untrained eye it looked like a functional wedge, the same way that most Corps ships did. When he looked closer, Duggan could see the thousands of pits and indentations along the flanks which hid hundreds of Lambda clusters, Bulwark cannons and defence ports. To the front and rear, there were the tell-tale bulges that showed where the particle beams were housed. The Space Corps beam weapons were technologically inferior to the Ghasts’ latest models, but from what Duggan knew, the Archimedes was big enough to carry power modules that were large enough to overcome many of the shortcomings.

McGlashan was the first to speak. “It’s impressive,” she said.

“But?”

“It’s too clean, Captain. Either they give it a sponge down every two weeks or it’s never been fired upon.”

“It’s thirty years old, Commander. It came into service near the start of the war. An experiment, I believe, simply to see if we could make something that big. It’s seen action and plenty of it. In the first ten years, she scored dozens of confirmed Ghast warship kills. Then the enemy ships started to get bigger and better. Someone got scared that the Archimedes might one day get crippled or worse. They’ve kept it out of harm’s reach since then, refitting it endlessly with the latest technology they had no plans to use in anger. If it got destroyed, the Space Corps would look like fools. Even worse, it would have made it impossible to stop the public learning what a mess we were making of the war. I don’t know where the orders came from to keep it away from the front. A faction in the council, perhaps. They couldn’t have done it without some agreement within the Corps.”

“Everyone knows we’re losing the war now,” said McGlashan.

“They do. And it took the incineration of a billion people on Charistos before the Council took proper notice. That’s why I’m so pissed off to see the Archimedes out here…hiding from it all. Not only that, but she has a full battle escort. Orbiting endlessly around an empty planet, while the people on Angax check the skies every day to see if the Ghasts have found them. Those people are being failed, even now.”

“They should have made you Admiral, sir,” said Breeze. “At least then everyone would know they had someone who would always try his best.”

Duggan looked at the man and met his eyes. There was nothing other than sincerity in them.

“Sir? How can you say on the one hand that the Council are mostly good men and women, when they’ve spent years cutting our funding?” asked McGlashan.

Duggan sighed. Officers were expected to ask questions of their superiors, and it occasionally made things difficult. “I don’t know for certain, Commander. I only have guesses.”

“Can we know what those guesses are, sir?”

Duggan didn’t really want to say anything else on the matter. In the end, he spoke. “It’s as I’ve told you. The Council can only react to the information they’re given. Who knows if they’re always provided with a complete picture? Let’s not talk any more about it. Admiral Teron told me this is the hand we’ve been dealt and it’s the one we have to play.”

“Feels like we’ve got a seven high at the moment,” said McGlashan.

“Enough, Commander.”

“Incoming message from the Archimedes, sir,” said Chainer. “For your ears only.”

“Very well. Who is it?”

“It’s Fleet Admiral Slender.”

Duggan didn’t say anything. Anger played across his face, clear for them all to see.

“Sir?”

Duggan sat down. “Patch him through at once.”

There was a humming in Duggan’s earpiece, before a cold voice cut across it. “Captain Duggan.”

“Admiral Slender.”

“You are to bring the ESS Crimson to a parallel path with the Archimedes. A shuttle will come and pick you up. You alone.”

“Sir.”

The line went dead. Duggan looked over to Chainer, with an eyebrow raised questioningly.

“He’s cut you off, sir.”

“I think he just wanted to hear my voice,” said Duggan. “To remind himself that I’m still alive.”

“You don’t get on with him?” asked McGlashan.

“That would be an understatement, Commander. Admiral Slender is the man responsible for everything that happened since the Tybalt.”

Duggan’s crew knew about the Tybalt. They knew that the Lambda modifications to the ship’s aft batteries had gone untested before the vessel was ordered out of the yard. One of the launch tubes had overheated and exploded because it hadn’t been properly insulated from the gravity drives. Fifteen people had died and it had been lucky the explosion didn’t breach the armoured magazine where the Lambdas themselves were stored. If that had happened, the whole ship would have been torn apart. Duggan had been brought before a court martial over it, when he’d been falsely accused of powering up the launch tube in order to impress his junior officers with a display of the Tybalt’s firepower. In the end, he was cleared of any wrongdoing. The truth was that the spacecraft had been ordered from its berth too early and the explosion happened without any involvement from Duggan.

“What does Admiral Slender have against you, sir?” asked McGlashan.

Duggan stared into the distance “When the launch tube exploded, one of the men it killed was a junior officer. He was twenty-two years old. An only son, loved and cherished by his mother and father. A man upon whom they pinned all their hopes and dreams. In that regard, he was little different from the other fourteen men and women who died on the Tybalt.”

“What was special about this one man?” she asked quietly.

“His name, that’s all. Frederick Lincoln Slender.”

“Damn.”

“Exactly, Commander. I wept for them all, but the father has not forgotten, nor has his desire to assign blame diminished during the last eleven years. Admiral Slender’s son died on the Tybalt and his hatred for me has lasted ever since.” Duggan’s voice strengthened and took on a hard, dangerous edge. “I am damned if I will permit him to continue his quest for vengeance against me!”

He sat back into his seat, surprised at the fury that gripped him. If Slender had brought him out here just to drag up the past, Duggan was determined to show the man he would not take it lying down.

Chapter Twenty-Five

A short while after the Crimson took up a parallel course to the vastly larger battleship Archimedes, a shuttle crossed the intervening space. After some manoeuvring, it latched onto an area of the Crimson’s hull, close to the retracted boarding ramp.

“It’s connected and sealed, sir. You’re good to go,” Chainer said. He paused for a moment, evidently wondering if he should say anything else. “Good luck.”

Duggan left the bridge without a word and walked in his practised half-stoop to where the shuttle had clamped itself. There was a metal hatch on the floor, which he disengaged and lifted back with a grunt. Beneath, was a shaft with a ladder, leading through many metres of the Crimson’s armour, to the shuttle’s passenger bay at the bottom. Duggan slid down the ladder and sat himself on one of the eight seats in the tiny craft’s bay. It was overwhelmingly metallic and utilitarian, the cream plastic of the seats the only break from the greyness. There was an odour of sweat and grease, as if the last passengers had left a bag of old clothes and food under one of the chairs. There was no one else present – his ride had been sent over completely unmanned, with nobody to greet him as politeness and procedure dictated.

Without warning, the shuttle de-coupled itself with a clanking of heavy alloy machinery. Duggan felt a momentary lurch in his stomach as it fell away from the Crimson. Then, its low-power gravity drive groaned into life and propelled the ship over the comparatively short return voyage. Within twenty minutes, it had docked into one of the Archimedes’ four compact, dedicated bays. Duggan guessed the shuttles had been made bespoke for the flagship and from his recent experience with them, they’d never been updated or modified since. He climbed out through the same hatch by which he’d entered. Any visiting dignitaries wouldn’t be expected to board the vessel this way. Duggan wasn’t the most important man in the Corps, but he was still a high-ranking officer. This was a calculated insult.

When he reached the top of the shaft, Duggan emerged into a brightly-lit corridor which he guessed was somewhere in the maintenance area of the Archimedes. It was cramped and hot, with the harsh odour of barely-contained electricity. There were two soldiers waiting for him, unarmed apart from pistols. They crouched uncomfortably as if they weren’t familiar with anything other than the wide, high passageways that Duggan knew were elsewhere above them in the ship’s interior. The first, a woman with a hard face and her hair tied back, saluted him properly.

“Welcome aboard, sir. We’ve been asked to take you to the waiting area.”

“Waiting area? I’m here to see Admiral Slender.”

The woman shrugged to let him know that she was just doing as she was told. “If you’ll follow me, sir.”

The two soldiers led Duggan a short distance to a maintenance lift. They squeezed inside and he watched as the woman keyed in their destination floor number. They rose quickly and silently. Then, there was a ping and the lift door slid open. The soldiers went first, stepping onto a much wider corridor than the first. The light had the usual blue-white hue of badly-emulated daylight and the walls were smooth alloy. To Duggan it was a luxury that he could stand without bending his spine and his bones crackled as he stretched them out. The soldiers led him several hundred metres, with only one or two deviations. They passed other personnel on the way – a mixture of technicians and soldiers. Duggan wracked his brain to remember how many people the Archimedes usually carried. A few thousand was the best he could come up with. They could probably pack a few tens of thousands inside if they ever needed to carry troops, though there were dedicated spacecraft for that. Even with its enormous length, the bulk of the craft was still given over to the engines and weapons.

“Here you go, sir,” said the man. It was the first time he’d spoken.

Duggan nodded his thanks and entered a room. At fifteen feet square and empty, it would have seemed like an incredibly wasteful use of space on anything smaller than a Hadron. Plastic chairs lined the walls and Duggan crossed the hard-tiled floor to sit on one. There was a replicator in the wall. On another day, he’d have tested it out. At the moment, he had no appetite for food or drink. He waited for twenty minutes without receiving any indication that his presence was known to anyone.

“Pointless, childish games,” he growled to himself. He activated his communicator and pulled the mouthpiece loop down from the earpiece. “Commander McGlashan, please report.”

Her voice came back at once, as if she’d been waiting to hear from him. “Not much to say, sir. The Archimedes has established a remote interface with our mainframe and it’s sucking out whatever data we’re carrying.”

“A remote interface? It’ll take hours to empty the memory arrays.”

“What else are they going to do? We can’t dock with them. At first, I thought they were only interested in bits and pieces, but they’re grabbing everything.”

Duggan wasn’t surprised. “They can’t risk missing anything, Commander. We know how important those memory arrays might be.”

“Have you seen the Admiral, sir?”

“Not yet. He’s left me in a waiting room.”

“Like that, huh?”

“Seems as if that’s the game he wants to play. Are you updating the Crimson’s tactical databases while we have the chance?”

“We are. We might not be here for much longer, but I’m getting us updated. It’s slow, since the outbound data is taking up all the bandwidth.”

Duggan unconsciously lowered his voice. “Scan the archives for any news on the war. The uncensored stuff.”

“I don’t think I have clearance for that, sir.”

“The ship has the same clearance as its commanding officer. You have my permission to use it.”

“Understood. Enjoy your wait, sir. Hopefully we’ll still be here when you’re done.”

The earpiece went quiet, leaving Duggan to sit it out. He wasn’t normally a man who’d accept this treatment. He sighed in realisation that there was nothing to be gained by taking himself off to explore the vessel’s interior. His memories of the place were mostly vague, but he wasn’t feeling curious enough to reinforce them. Eventually, he got up and crossed to the replicator. It vended a cup of near-perfect coffee at his command. He put it to one side and ordered the machine to produce him a sixteen-ounce medium-rare steak. It paused briefly before the vending hatch opened to reveal a metal tray with a steak upon it, which looked almost as perfect as the coffee. The aroma drifted to his nose and a growl from his stomach made him realise how bad the food on the Crimson was. He reached for the tray. Before his hand got there, the door to the room’s only entrance slid open and a man entered. He was broad, with a pock-marked face and a lieutenant’s insignia on his shoulder.

“Captain Duggan? Admiral Slender will see you.”

Duggan scowled and considered telling the man that Slender could wait until he’d finished his steak. He bit his tongue on the matter and followed the lieutenant from the room. The man took him several hundred metres towards the aft of the spaceship. As they went, Duggan noticed an improvement in the décor. Here and there a picture was hung, the walls were painted and hard-wearing carpet tiles covered the floor. This was where the officers lived. The bridge was close by – above the officer’s quarters and accessed by a bank of lift shafts. Duggan couldn’t shake the feeling that the Space Corps’ flagship was too big. When the shit hit the fan, everything was just too far from everything else.

“Here you go, sir,” said the lieutenant, stopping in front of a solid-looking door. It was made of polished wood, with a sign on the front to announce the name and rank of the occupant.

The lieutenant took his leave, his receding footsteps muted by the dark blue of the floor tiles. Duggan pressed his thumb to an access panel, half expecting the door to swing open on hinges. It didn’t. Instead, it slid away into a recess in the same way that every other door did. Duggan didn’t wait for an invitation and stepped within.

Fleet Admiral Slender’s office was large and unremarkable. Screens lined the walls and there were several consoles to provide access to whatever information a man of importance might require. There was a dark grey desk of an unknown material. It was scrupulously clean, except for a single, small pile of papers and a monitor. On one corner was a framed photo. It was turned away. Duggan didn’t need to see it to know who was the subject of the image.

“Duggan, take a seat.”

Duggan stared at the man he’d not seen for several years. Admiral Slender was almost the same as he remembered him – his square, clean-shaven face still looked smooth and waxy, but there was something unnatural about him. Slender must have been close to eighty, yet he looked little more than forty. His hair was close-cropped and grey. His eyes were the same colour as his hair and they locked to Duggan’s. Duggan was in no mood to be spoken to improperly.

“Captain Duggan, sir,” he said, pulling out a padded seat, continuing to meet the Admiral’s stare.

“I’d like to say it’s a pleasure to see you again, Captain Duggan.” Hostility crackled about the man’s voice like white-hot sparks. Duggan struggled not to rise to it.

“Have you brought me here in order to tell me you don’t like me. Sir?”

“I don’t know what I’ve brought you here for, Captain. The recovery of the ESS Crimson and your arrival made it seem like a convenient moment to catch up. For old times’ sake.” Slender gave a thin smile.

“I will not sit here and listen to you rake up the past, sir.”

“You will sit here and listen until I say you are dismissed.” Slender leaned back in his chair, his eyes not wavering. “If you make one misstep, I’ll have you expelled from the Corps in disgrace so quickly that you’ll not even have the time to thank your good luck that it didn’t come sooner. However, all that is by-the-by for the moment. I am overall commander of the Space Corps warfleet and we are at war against an implacable foe. We require trained men and women to pilot our vessels against the enemy and for the time being, you are an officer of some seniority.” He paused, his eyes glittering. “What do you know about the ESS Crimson, Captain?”

“I know there’s much more to it than I’ve been told.”

“That’s not what I asked. What do you know about it? Don’t dance around. My technicians tell me you’ve accessed certain parts of the vessel’s data. An unauthorized access. Once the extraction is complete, I’m sure there’ll be an audit trail.”

“A warship’s captain is authorized for everything on board his ship, sir. Unless specifically told otherwise. The Crimson is carrying disruptors. Engines that surpass anything we have in the fleet today. Two cores, one of which can probably outthink the Archimedes on many tasks. Questions without answers.”

“Every question has an answer, Captain, though not everyone is privy to the details. Nor should they be. Some information is too dangerous to be widely available, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

“Such as why two of the fleet’s most powerful warships are in the Garon sector, a place where there haven’t been any reported sightings of a Ghast war vessel?”

“I’m sure you’re aware that the loss of the Archimedes would be grist to the mill of those who would like to sue for peace.”

“The Ghasts have declined every opportunity to have dialogue. Everyone knows that!”

“Have they now? There you go again, Captain. Demonstrating my point about the dangers of information.”

Duggan was stunned. “We’ve had communication with the Ghasts?”

“On a number of occasions. Most recently we have tried forge a deal on their terms. A partial surrender, if you will. An offer to withdraw our fleet to within certain boundaries of space.” The thin smile appeared again.

“And?”

“There is a lack of trust between us and it appears they perceived our willingness to negotiate as a sign of weakness. A month after our last meeting, the Ghasts found Charistos. I’m sure you know what happened there. We assume it’s a show of strength from them, in order to drive us into a total capitulation.” Slender’s voice climbed in anger as he spoke.

“Have they succeeded?”

“No, they have not, Captain! All they have done is demonstrated that we must do our utmost to defeat them! At the very least, we need to parlay as equals, for they seem to despise weakness. Still, there are factions amongst the Confederation Council who blame us – blame humanity - for the current state of affairs. Even in the face of what has happened, they demand that we continue our pursuit for peace - no matter what the cost. Can you imagine what might happen if we surrendered to the Ghasts and they decided to betray us?”

“Have we given up on Angax, sir?”

“Perhaps, Captain. They destroyed the Hadron Ulterior easily during the engagement at Charistos. Easily enough to convince not only me, but many of the Confederation Council, that further risks should be minimised. At least until our research labs have discovered new ways to combat them.”

“Does this mean the Archimedes is now obsolete?” Duggan couldn’t believe it. “Our Lambdas still work pretty well from what I’ve seen, sir.”

“They do, Captain. Unfortunately, the Ghasts have developed a new missile and targeting system. Some of their vessels can launch from more than double our range, as the crew of the Ulterior found to their cost. For some reason, our Bulwarks fail to target them.”

“Yes, sir. I’ve seen those weapons.”

“Then you will know that I can’t risk the Archimedes against the Ghasts until we have effective countermeasures.”

“Will Angax be destroyed?”

“We can only hope not, Captain. The data from the ESS Crimson will be invaluable in helping our cause. We are re-transmitting it to several of our labs even as the Archimedes receives it.”

“Why didn’t we just keep copies of it at the time? Why don’t we have those engines and disruptors aboard every ship in the fleet?”

“Those questions will have to remain unanswered, Captain Duggan.”

“What now for the Crimson, sir? And my crew?”

“For the time being, the Crimson will remain in escort position until her databanks have been scoured by the Archimedes’ AI. After that? Your fate and that of your crew is currently undecided.” With that, Admiral Slender looked at the papers on his desk and began to look through them. “You’re dismissed, Captain.”

“Sir.”

“One more thing, Captain. Don’t let me catch you attempting to breach the Crimson’s databanks again. Remember my warning.”

Duggan exited the room, made his way to the same shuttle which had carried him to the Archimedes and returned to the Crimson.

Chapter Twenty-Six

When Duggan reached the bridge, it was empty apart from McGlashan.

“Chainer and Breeze went for some sleep. Monsey too,” she said. “Left me in charge. Is everything okay, sir?”

“It went as well as could be expected, Commander. We’ll be staying here until the Archimedes finishes with us. After that? I don’t know.”

“Sometimes it’d be nice to have an idea what’s going to happen more than a week ahead of us.”

“I doubt anyone gets that luxury these days. We’re here because they think the Archimedes is a sitting duck if it gets into a scrap. It seems as if those new missiles we came up against have got people worried.”

“Yeah. I can see why that would happen. How was the Admiral?”

“Hostile, but he managed to keep a lid on much of it. I think he’s as pissed off as we are that the Corps flagship is keeping out of the action.”

“The Confederation is going to do nothing to fight back?”

“Doesn’t sound like it,” said Duggan glumly. “It’s not about fighting back anymore. It’s about surviving for long enough. We’re in the middle of a race to see if we can turn out enough new warships with enough new technology to challenge the Ghasts before they master the ability to follow us through lightspeed to one of the inner planets.”

“They want to make us extinct, huh?”

“That’s what it sounds like.”

McGlashan gave her console a familiar pat. “They’ll have to get past this old bird, first.”

Duggan laughed. “That they will. And once we’ve run out of missiles, we’ll strafe them from close-up with our Bulwarks.”

“If that fails, we’ll ram them, sir. Like we did in the good old days. Or set off all the nukes in the hold and go out in an eight-gigaton blaze of glory.” Something caught her eye and she leaned forward intently over one of her screens and began to make a series of command gestures to the mainframe. “Cancel, damnit, cancel!” she said.

“What’s happening?” asked Duggan, crossing over to look.

“It’s the Archimedes, sir. It’s emptied the first two memory arrays and now it’s deleting them.”

“Can you stop it?”

“No, sir. The flagship’s AI operates at the rank of Admiral. I don’t have anything like the authority to prevent it.”

“Get Monsey here immediately!” Duggan said.

“I’m sending for her now.”

“Admiral Slender warned me against digging through the databanks. Seems like he didn’t think his warning was sufficient.”

“Databanks one and two are now deleted from our memory arrays. Three and four are still intact. It hasn’t finished downloading those yet. There’s not long left until it’s done.”

Monsey arrived, looking tired. “What’s the matter, sir?”

“The Archimedes is deleting our data. Can you stop it?”

“Yes, sir. I can hack in and block their access to the delete commands. They’ll know immediately what I’ve done. Given time, I could write some code to hide my tracks. It’ll take days to make something halfway decent. Even then it won’t fool the AI for long. They’ll find out what’s happened eventually.”

“Can we copy databanks three and four into another area of the mainframe? Or hide it in the backend core?”

“A nice idea, except it won’t work. The Archimedes has the data locked while the transfer takes place. I could run you a copy, but again it’ll set the alarms ringing.”

“Very well, soldier. That will be all.” Duggan knew there was a chance he might be able to talk himself out of a court martial, even with Admiral Slender gunning for his arrest. The Space Corps judiciary was proud of its impartiality. Monsey would be a much easier target.

When Monsey had gone, McGlashan spoke quietly. “Sir, do we have any right to know what’s in the databanks? Shouldn’t we let someone else deal with it?”

Duggan pushed his fingers through his short-cropped hair. “You might be right, Commander. Still, it doesn’t sit well with me that I’m being told to risk my life and the lives of my soldiers and crew without knowing why it’s happening. Information is everything. If I don’t have it, I can’t make the best decisions. Besides, I’m captain of this vessel until I’m told otherwise and it’s incumbent upon me to learn everything I can about its capabilities. Secrecy be damned!”

“You might push it too far, sir.”

“That I might.” He grinned. “However, I have not once received a direct order telling me that I am not allowed to find out the secrets of the ESS Crimson. I have simply been ordered to stop my efforts to hack the databanks.”

“Databanks which will shortly be cleaned out of anything useful.”

“I need to think on the matter,” he said. “At the very least, I’m relieved the Crimson is no longer the only receptacle for that information. They are sending the data to our war labs for analysis.”

“They might think to make copies this time, and use it to make a few new engines and disruptors.”

“I’m sure that’s on the agenda, Commander.” Duggan returned to his own console and checked through a number of status reports. “How far did you get with updating our databases from the repositories on the Archimedes?”

“Uh, it kind of fell off the radar, sir. We’ve got all we need to know about the latest Ghast ships and weaponry. The guys below wanted some TV that wasn’t over fifty years old, so I’ve done my best to help them out. They deserve it.” She shuffled uncomfortably.

“You’ve spent the time getting fifty years of TV?”

“It’s good for morale, sir.”

Duggan shook his head and paged through the updates to the Crimson’s databases. It looked to be in order. At least if they were given a chance to fight again, they’d have the latest information on all of the known Ghast ships. It would be invaluable assistance to know which ones were reported have the latest disruptors, beam weapons and missile systems.

“Let’s have a look at the secure data on the war,” he said to himself. His rank allowed him to access much that would otherwise be censored for wider release. It wasn’t seen as good for morale to give exact numbers of casualties to the public. In addition to that, news about the destruction of a spacecraft would often be buried for a time.

“Does it say what happened on Charistos, sir?” asked McGlashan.

“The Ghasts detonated a series of warheads in the upper atmosphere. It caused the air to ignite all the way to ground level. They’re still analysing the exact weapons used. We’ve never seen them before.”

“Hopefully we’ll never see them again. Have the Confederation got anything similar?”

“Nope. Not unless they’re keeping it secret. We’ve never had to develop anything suitable to wipe out an entire planet before. The nukes we’re carrying would do a pretty good job of knocking out a few cities, just not an entire planet.”

“I don’t know what I’d think if we were told to deploy them onto the surface of a populated planet.”

“Nor I, Commander. But you know what? If it was a choice between blowing the bastards up or losing the war, I’d do it in a heartbeat. I’d have to come to terms with it later.”

“I wanted to be a captain once. To take charge of my own vessel and go out there to stick it to the Ghasts. Now I don’t think I’d be strong enough.”

“I’m an old bastard, Commander. Old and cynical. One day you’ll be just like me.”

Duggan’s words lightened the mood and McGlashan laughed. “Twenty years until then, sir.”

“Fifteen, Commander. Only fifteen.”

McGlashan leaned closer, her brow furrowed. “You’re still logged in to the Archimedes with the Crimson’s authority instead of your own.”

“It doesn’t really matter. I’m permitted to do it this way if I choose.”

“What do these menu options here mean? The ones with multiple asterisks?”

“I’m not sure. That would generally indicate a secured file with extra encryption.”

“Like the secret stuff?”

“It could be. Or maybe stuff that’s been hidden from normal view so as not to clutter up something more important.”

“Captain-level stuff.”

“No, Commander. I wouldn’t expect to see these files.”

“What’s that?” She pointed at one of the options.

“Pay scales. I already know what you’re paid, Commander.”

“There’s an option for Admiral Teron up there. The file is unlocked.”

Duggan wasn’t really interested in what Teron got paid. He returned to the top-level menu. “There might be a problem with the file security. I should let the Archimedes know.”

“I don’t think there’s a problem with it, sir. The Crimson was something new at the time. Something special. It would make sense for it to have high-level access authority.”

Duggan thought for a moment and then queried the command access level. “You’re right. We’ve got clearance at a level just short of Fleet Admiral. Higher even than Admiral Teron. The Crimson is so old that no one seems to realise that it can act beyond the authority of a full Admiral. Otherwise they’d have revoked it immediately. Or at least as soon as they’d found someone able to do so.”

“That’s enough access to do a lot of things.”

“Yes, Commander. A lot of things.”

Duggan started a query to discover anything that the Archimedes might be holding on the Crimson or the Hynus project.

“Can you include the word Dreamers in the search as well, sir?”

“I’ve added it.” He kept his eyes on the screen. There was no immediate response, which didn’t bode well.

“They’ve finished off databanks three and four,” said McGlashan. “The delete command will be coming soon. Here we go - they didn’t hang around. You can stop it if you want, sir.”

The irony that a warship which had been lost for more than fifty years technically outranked the Space Corps’ flagship wasn’t lost on Duggan. “I’d better not try it,” he said. “It’s not something that would go unnoticed.”

“I think you’re already treading that line, sir.”

“I can cover my tracks when I’m looking for something as simple as a data file. If I countermanded the Archimedes’ AI, that would be pretty easy to spot.”

His query completed and a list flashed up on his screen, each file represented by a serial code that gave away nothing about the contents. There was a lot of information to check and the longer he took looking, the greater the chance that the Archimedes’ AI would notice something was amiss. It was usual for even the moderately secret datafiles to be scanned regularly for locks that would indicate they were being viewed. If the Crimson’s mainframe was found accessing something it shouldn’t be, it wouldn’t take long to put two and two together, at which point Fleet Admiral Slender would be on the comms, asking some pointed questions.

“For a vessel we have so little information about, there’re a hell of a lot of files relating to it. Big ones.”

“Can you pull them across?”

Duggan grimaced. “Not quickly. If I open up a wide data channel, someone onboard the Archimedes will start asking questions. If I open up a narrow channel, we’ll be here all week and that’ll increase the chance that a file lock will be discovered.”

“It’s not worth a court martial, sir.”

He swore. “You’re right, Commander, it’s not. I don’t want to give Admiral Slender the pleasure of seeing me receive a dishonourable discharge.” He exited the menu and disconnected from the Archimedes’ databanks.

“Sir? You’re not going to believe this.”

“What is it?”

“All four databanks have repopulated. Everything is back as it was before the Archimedes deleted it all.”

“That can’t be right,” said Duggan. The lists that had reappeared on his own screen told him that McGlashan wasn’t mistaken. “Are we receiving a transmission from the flagship?”

“Nothing, sir. They couldn’t get the data back to us so quickly even if they wanted to.”

“Some automatic undelete command to restore the data from a hidden cache?”

“Definitely not. There’s no sign of an automatic command running anywhere on the system.”

The answer came to Duggan. “Check the interface between the front and back cores of the Crimson.”

“I think you’ve got it, sir. We’ve had three exabytes of data pushed through one of the links. Shame I can’t see any further into the secondary core. I would love to know what’s going on there.”

“Any sign the Archimedes realises what’s happened?”

“None, sir. The AI probably thinks everything’s hunky-dory.”

Lieutenant Chainer arrived, looking like he could happily sleep for another two days. He had a coffee with him and the smell drifted into the bridge, far more appetising than the taste. “Hello, sir. I hope everything went well.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. The Admiral and I have disengaged for the moment.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Chainer accessed his console and began to run through his rote checks. He jumped up and started coughing, spraying coffee over the floor. “Sir, fission signatures! Five big ones! They’re coming in with no discernible pattern around Dion-983. There’s nothing on the flight plans to say they’re ours.”

“Get Lieutenant Breeze up here at once,” Duggan barked. “Hail the Archimedes. I don’t care if they already know. Commander McGlashan, prepare the weapons systems. What’ve we got Lieutenant Chainer?”

Chainer’s coffee fell to the floor in his haste, spreading a pool of the thick liquid under his feet. “Negative confirmation yet, sir. I’m scanning them up now. Two Cadaverons and one Oblivion.”

“What about the others? Tell me, Lieutenant!”

“Another Oblivion. A third Cadaveron breaking out of lightspeed.”

Duggan looked at the feeds. The fifth vessel arrived in local space. The Crimson’s databanks tried to match up the dimensions against known Ghast warships and produced a list of possibilities.

“One new Oblivion, the other four unrecognized. They’re either building four for every one of ours, or we’re just a minor foe on the edge of an empire.”

“How did they find us?” asked McGlashan.

“I wish I knew, Commander. I wish I knew.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

All across the bridge, screens exploded into life. The comms burst into a frantic cacophony of signals and messages as the Space Corps fleet tried desperately to coordinate a response to the threat. Duggan knew the Archimedes main comms room had over thirty people inside and he pictured them struggling with the tide of information. Lieutenant Breeze arrived, already aware that something was wrong.

“Lieutenant Breeze to your post,” Duggan said loudly. “Lieutenant Chainer. I need you to paint us the picture. Commander McGlashan, you will fire Lambdas when ready upon any Ghast vessel that comes close enough.”

“Sir, I’ve got one Oblivion and one Cadaveron ahead of us and closing. They’re going straight for the Archimedes. There’s one more Cadaveron coming around Dion-983. It’s fast. Four minutes until it can engage our flagship. The Anderlecht Extermination is almost in range of it. The third Cadaveron missed its mark and entered local space behind the planet. They’re out of sensor sight. From the positioning data I’ve got from their fission engines, I estimate between six and eight minutes till it can engage. The second Oblivion is already firing at the Precept. I’m tracking six long range missiles.”

“Commander, prioritise the approaching Oblivion. That’s what the Archimedes will be aiming for as well. We don’t want to divide our firepower.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Keep on it, Lieutenant Chainer. I’ll take over the comms to the Archimedes.”

“Aye, sir.”

Duggan pushed the Crimson’s sub-light engines to one hundred percent, angrily shrugging off the now-familiar dizziness. The Archimedes wasn’t a slow vessel, but it fell quickly behind. Duggan had no idea how the Ghasts had managed to find them so far away from the usual arena of conflict between the two sides. They always seemed to be two steps ahead. They always had something in reserve, or a new weapon to keep the Corps ships on the back foot.

“Flagship Archimedes, this is Captain Duggan. ESS Crimson armed and ready to engage. Please instruct.”

“I’m reading you, ESS Crimson. Protect the Archimedes. Repeat, protect the Archimedes.”

“Understood. We’re moving to intercept the approaching Oblivion.”

“Anderlechts Fixation and Lambast assisting the Precept, sir,” said Chainer. “Delectable out of sensor sight. The Extermination is under fire. Shit, nearly two hundred missiles heading their way. They’ve returned with ninety-six of their own. Impacts in less than thirty seconds.”

Duggan’s mind raced through the possibilities. The two Oblivions and three Cadaverons were outgunned by the Corps ships in the vicinity. The Ghasts didn’t always act in an expected manner, but they hadn’t shown themselves prone to suicide. There was only one conclusion – the enemy believed their new technology was sufficient to overcome the conventional armaments carried by the Corps vessels.

“The Archimedes will soon be within the estimated range of their new missiles,” said Chainer. “The Oblivion’s course indicates that’s what they’re intending. The Cadaveron’s keeping close by. I’d guess they’re going to ignore us and go for the big prize.”

“Use the disruptor as soon as we’re in range.”

“That’ll take our fission engines close to zero.”

“We’re not planning on going anywhere, Lieutenant.”

“They’ve launched!” said Chainer. “Four missiles heading for the Archimedes.”

“Disruptors fired.”

“Fission engines at three percent and rising.”

“Positron output from the Oblivion has dropped to almost zero, sir.”

“Let’s get close and say hello,” said Duggan.

“The ES Precept’s taken a hit, sir. It’s hard to tell the damage through the interference from her countermeasures. She’s not close enough to fire Lambdas in response. The Extermination looks in a bad way. All six Bulwarks still firing. They’ve scored some hits. There’s a big leak from the Cadaveron nearest to them.”

The bulkhead viewscreen lit up in a flash of pure, incandescent white. The darkness of space was dispersed as countless launch ports along the Archimedes’ flank opened up to send out a dense cloud of shock drones and pulsing plasma flares.

“Get through that, you bastards!” shouted Chainer.

Duggan wasn’t convinced. These new missiles from the Ghasts had ignored their countermeasures before. It didn’t seem likely they’d start crashing into the shock drones now.

“Our Cadaveron is almost within Lambda range.”

“Hold onto our missiles. I want that Oblivion.”

The bridge lights dimmed and a spray of interference speckled across the screen. “They’ve tried to shut us down with their disruptors,” said Breeze. “They’re out of luck.”

“The Cadaveron’s launching at us. Forty missiles from their front batteries,” said Chainer. The Lieutenant was in danger of becoming swamped by information. There were times when you needed more than one comms man.

“Lieutenant Chainer, leave the weapons reports to Commander McGlashan.”

“Sir.”

“Commander, hold off the shock drones until we’re close. I don’t want us to overtake our own countermeasures. Then give us two fast bursts. Fire at the Oblivion as soon as you’re able.”

“We’re in range. Seventy-two Lambdas on their way.”

“There’s a positron surge from their engines, sir,” said Breeze. “They’re coming back online. That’s short of a full minute.”

“Bigger ship,” grunted Duggan, pulling the Crimson away out of range. There was no way he wanted to give the Oblivion a chance to unleash a broadside.

“Beam strike across our engines. Coming from the Oblivion” said Breeze. “We’re five percent down.”

“Drones away. No return missile fire from the Oblivion. Their Vule cannons are firing and they’re throwing out plasma flares.” McGlashan almost sounded impressed. “They’re packing a lot of weaponry.”

“The Extermination’s full of holes, sir. She’s going to break up,” said Chainer. “Fixation and Lambast are firing on the first Oblivion. Something’s wrong with the Precept.”

“She’s drifting,” said Breeze. “I can patch into her engine readouts from here. They have zero output.”

“They’ve been hit by a disruptor,” said Duggan.

“Second drone cloud launched, sir. Take us to a horizontal so the front Bulwarks can target.”

Duggan adjusted the Crimson’s heading, in order that they could bring more of the rapid-fire cannons to bear against the incoming missiles. From the corner of his eye, he saw the four missiles from the Oblivion on his tactical readout. They were passing through the Archimedes’ countermeasures.

“The Cadaveron’s sending us another sixty. Our drone cloud has thinned out the first wave.” McGlashan clapped her hands together, the sound loud and crisp. “Yes! Five successful Lambda strikes on the Oblivion! Three in their engines.”

“Come on!” said Chainer to himself. Sweat dripped from his hair and he wiped it away with the back of his sleeve.

Duggan had taken the Crimson far above the Cadaveron. They were much faster than the Ghast vessel and he intended to keep between the Archimedes and the enemy craft. He’d taken them to a position from which the enemy short-range missiles could no longer target them. It wouldn’t protect them from the sixty that were still inbound, but there’d be no more for the moment.

“We’re out of the Oblivion’s missile range. Also outside of the longest reported Ghast beam range,” said Chainer. He could be jumpy sometimes, but in a real pinch he was deadly calm.

The walls of the bridge shook and there was a harsh metal-edged roar. Given their trajectory, they could only get five of the Crimson’s eight Bulwark cannons pointing towards the incoming Ghast missiles. Everyone held their breaths until the firing stopped.

“First wave destroyed,” said McGlashan. Then the bad news. “The Archimedes has been hit. Four successful strikes, I think.”

“I wonder what the payload is of those missiles,” said Breeze. “They must be all engine to travel so far. There might be no room for a big warhead.” He looked up. “Our fission engines at forty percent.” The words came almost as an afterthought.

Duggan was desperate to know how quickly the Ghasts could reload for another try. He’d seen the Ghast long-range missiles a few times, but on each occasion the engagement had been finished before they’d completed a second launch. There were several reasons why the Ghasts might not be able to fire them rapidly. Duggan kept his fingers crossed that it was a technical limitation.

“Shock drones on their way,” said McGlashan. “We’re running low on them, sir.”

“We’re running low on everything, Commander. Launch more.”

“Away they go.”

“The Archimedes is powering up her fission drive, sir. I don’t think they’re going to stick around.”

Duggan opened a channel. “Archimedes, this is Crimson. I’m reading a fission build-up from your engines.”

“We’ve got four big holes in our side. Four real big holes.” The comms man’s voice carried an edge of panic. No one on the Archimedes expected to die in combat.

“What’re our orders?” Duggan spoke sharply, trying to make the man forget his fear.

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Find out, then!”

Duggan cut the channel. The vibration started again, an almost imperceptible thrumming that resonated through everything. The Bulwarks were firing at the second wave of Ghast missiles. An idea came to Duggan and he rapidly plugged in some instructions to the Crimson’s mainframe. He was determined that this encounter would not become a disaster from which the Space Corps might never recover.

There was a rumbling sound. Deep and violent, it washed through the spacecraft. A split second later, there was another. A siren started on the bridge and a red light began to cycle from a dark hue to a lighter one and back.

“We’ve taken two hits aft,” said McGlashan. She looked as grim-faced as Duggan felt.

“Damage report!”

“Collating the information,” said Breeze.

“The Oblivion’s launched another wave of long-range missiles. Four on their way.” McGlashan stuttered for the briefest of moments. “We’ve launched two of our nukes. Sir?”

“If nothing else will target their missiles, maybe we need to try something with a bit less finesse.” Duggan gave her a tight smile.

He looked back at his console. The Cadaveron had changed its course to try and intercept them. It was too late and the enemy ship was far behind them. The Lambda strikes on the Oblivion’s engines had evidently done some damage and the battleship was running at less than half of its expected velocity. The Archimedes had changed course and was heading directly away from the conflict, to buy some time for her fission drives to build up.

“Sir, the Precept’s back online. They’re readying their fission drives,” said Breeze.

“Not going to make it,” muttered Chainer.

“Fission engines lighting up everywhere. The whole damn lot of them are preparing to go.”

A voice broke into Duggan’s ear. It was one of the comms men from the Archimedes, belatedly telling him what everyone else seemed to already know. “Sir, you’re ordered to leave the scene of the conflict. Your destination is the New Earth Capital Shipyard. Good luck.”

The line went dead, just in time for Duggan to hear Breeze read out the damage report from the two missile strikes. “We’ve got two big holes in our armour. Only one breach through to the fission engines. Negligible damage and a small antimatter leak.” Breeze puffed loudly, the relief evident. “Our aft plating’s going to look like a lump of cheese and we’d best hope we don’t take another hit anywhere close.”

“Prepare us for a lightspeed jump, Lieutenant,” ordered Duggan.

“Course, sir?”

Duggan spat the words out. “New Earth Capital Shipyard.”

“Dialling in the coordinates.”

Even while he talked and listened, Duggan’s head and hands never stopped moving as he continued to make adjustments to the Crimson’s trajectory. To one side, the two nukes he’d launched showed up as amber points on his tactical display. They described a smooth path along the course he’d set them, painfully slow compared to the much faster Ghast missiles.

“Too slow,” he said to himself. “I took too long.”

It was turning into a disaster for the Corps ships and Duggan found anger building within him, sweeping away the calmness. Without taking his eyes from the nukes, he used the Crimson’s override to force a channel directly to Admiral Slender. “Sir, it’s Captain Duggan.”

Slender showed no surprise at the intrusion. “What is it, Captain?” There was hostility, clear in the curtness of his voice.

“We’re getting the crap beaten out of us here, sir. What are the unlock codes for our weapons systems?”

There was a pause, so slight that Duggan wasn’t sure it had been there. “The Archimedes is badly damaged! Don’t you think I’d have told you them if I’d known? Don’t you think I’d have had someone transmit you those codes?”

“Sir, I really don’t know what you’d have done.”

“Damn you, man! There are no codes! We could only get the disruptors working! The final weapons systems on the Crimson have never worked!”

“Thirty seconds till we can go,” said Breeze. “Fission drives at one hundred percent. It’s going to be rough.”

On Duggan’s screen, the two amber dots and the four red dots of the enemy missiles coincided. The rest of the tactical map remained a crowd of missile reports and status updates, but the six dots he’d been watching vanished and didn’t reappear.

“The nukes have detonated. Enemy missiles disabled or destroyed,” said McGlashan almost absently. She was watching Duggan.

“We’ve got someone else coming to the party,” said Chainer. “Whatever it is, it’s a big bastard. There’s nothing on the Corps transit log. It’s definitely not one of ours.”

Breeze had picked it up. “That’s bigger than big. Sir, we need to get out of here. All of us.”

Duggan heard, but didn’t take his focus away from Admiral Slender. He was sure that the man was telling him the truth, which made it all the more galling that there’d been such secrecy.

“Why didn’t Admiral Teron tell me there was no functioning extra weaponry in the first place, sir?”

Slender didn’t answer the question. “Bring the Crimson to the New Earth Capital shipyard for dismantling, Captain Duggan. Those are your orders. If that vessel suffers any more damage, I’ll have you dismissed from the Corps and this time you won’t be able to wriggle out of it.” The channel went silent – Slender had ended the conversation.

“A new Ghast warship has entered the arena, sir.” Chainer sounded shocked. “It’s…huge.”

“Record whatever data you can, Lieutenant. We’re not going to stick around to shake hands.”

“The Archimedes, Fixation and Lambast have gone to lightspeed. They must have synchronised.”

“The Precept tried to go and failed,” said Breeze. “She’s taken too much damage.”

In the last second before the ESS Crimson tore its way violently into lightspeed, Duggan saw two images that would haunt him forever. The first was the sight of the new Ghast spaceship. The unknown vessel was at least ten kilometres long, its hull an ugly mass of lumps, curves and weaponry. The second image was of the Hadron ES Precept, smashed into a million different pieces, each part beginning its own endless journey through space.

The force of the acceleration pushed Duggan hard into his seat. An unseen hand clenched itself around his body and squeezed. He struggled to breathe and his ribcage felt as if it would splinter, sending needle-sharp slivers of bone into his lungs. Unconsciousness came quickly, utterly denying his resistance.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Duggan wasn’t sure how long he was out. When he came to, his head was pounding and his body ached. He coughed and felt a pain across his chest, and the taste of blood was strong in his mouth. He summoned up his strength and sat upright, doing his best to ignore the dizziness. McGlashan was stirring, while Breeze snored loudly at his console.

“Commander?”

“Damn I feel like crap,” she said. “Can’t we do something to the engines to cut their output before we enter lightspeed? I’d rather go at seventy-five percent and accelerate afterwards, than start off at full power.”

Duggan’s brain wasn’t ready for the challenge of the question. “I’ll put your idea to Lieutenant Breeze when he wakes up,” he said.

A few minutes later, Duggan was feeling much better. McGlashan was alert, but hadn’t ventured out of her seat and Breeze was trying to operate his console with trembling hands. Chainer was still unconscious, though his pulse was strong and he showed no sign of injury.

Duggan checked in with Sergeant Ortiz. No one was seriously hurt, though Corporal Blunt had used his battlefield adrenaline syringe on three of the men.

“I’m sure they’re faking it in order to get a jab, sir,” said Ortiz with a degree of humour that Duggan wasn’t feeling himself. “They try that adrenaline once when they’re properly hurt and then they want it every time they break a fingernail.”

“I’m pleased everything is fine,” said Duggan. “Send Corporal Blunt here when he’s finished up with the squad.”

The words had scarcely left his mouth when Lieutenant Chainer began to groan. He coughed a couple of times and then opened his eyes.

“Whose side is this spaceship on?” he asked.

“Sergeant Ortiz?” said Duggan, catching her before she could go. “Belay that order. There’s no need to send Corporal Blunt.”

“Roger that, sir.”

The next few minutes were filled with curses and grunts as the crew of the bridge tried to recover from the trauma their bodies had been subjected to.

“Those holes in our rear haven’t slowed us down,” said Breeze. “We’re just about on Light-V. At this speed, we’ll reach New Earth in just shy of seven days. We’ll be able to fit in a week’s vacation before the Archimedes gets there and she’s not exactly slow.”

“We really took a kicking back there,” said Chainer. “The Archimedes didn’t even get a shot off and now the Precept’s gone. The Ghast disruptor managed to shut down an entire Hadron, sir.”

“The Ghasts are way ahead of us, Lieutenant. We already knew that. This was just a demonstration of the fact.”

“I know, sir. Sometimes you don’t need your face rubbing into the dirt to know that it’ll feel like crap.”

Duggan understood what Chainer was trying to say. “Let’s count this as the beginning of a new war. We’re facing a much more powerful foe and we’re going to do everything we can to beat them. They have the upper hand, but every day that passes we’ll get stronger. And if we can live long enough, one day we’ll show them what happens to the Space Corps’ enemies.”

“They’ve already found out what happens to those who come up against the Crimson!” said Chainer.

“I wonder how long it’ll take them to refit the old girl once we reach the shipyard,” said McGlashan, refusing to get drawn into Chainer’s sudden optimism. “I’d love to be assigned here again once they’ve updated it.”

“I don’t even know if they’ll bother,” said Duggan.

“You said before that they’ll upgrade all the old tech,” said McGlashan. It wasn’t quite an accusation.

“The existing life support system should be good enough if they put in some standard engines,” said Chainer. “No more blacking out for the men and women of the Crimson.”

Duggan sighed. “I said they’d probably upgrade it. That was before I heard what Admiral Teron said about the Confederation going to total war. If there’s no shipyard left to take the hull, they might pull it apart. I’m sure they could re-use some of the plating. There’ll be an assessment by someone who’s never seen the inside of a ship before and who’s more interested in the cost. That person may decide to break the Crimson for scrap.”

“Well, we’ve had some good times,” said McGlashan, brightening. You couldn’t keep her down for long. “We kicked some butt, that’s for sure.”

“That we did,” agreed Duggan.

“Want me to call Monsey up here?” she asked suddenly. “We’ve got a week to try and get some answers from those data arrays.”

Duggan smiled, though he didn’t feel in the mood, He idly called up the top-level access menu for the blocked memory banks. He saw something which made him sit upright and look closely.

“What is it?” asked McGlashan, noticing his interest.

“Have a look at this,” he said. She came over and leaned across.

“Four data arrays, four menu options,” she said.

“Four data arrays, two of which are hidden,” Duggan replied. “We shouldn’t even know they’re there.” He punched up the option for one of the arrays. A series of sub-lists appeared immediately.

“How?” asked McGlashan.

“I don’t know.” He checked a few things on the file security. “You said the secondary core did some kind of data restore. Whatever it did, the file security has been removed in the process.”

“Assuming the backup files even had the security in the first place,” she replied.

“It doesn’t matter. Let’s have a look at what we’ve found.”

“What about Admiral Slender’s orders, sir?”

“I remember his words quite clearly, Commander. He told me I was not to make any further attempt to breach the databanks. These databanks are already open, so there’s no need to breach anything.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Let’s start on the third array,” said Duggan.

There was a lot of information, but it was easy enough to search through when they used the right keywords. The more Duggan found, the colder he became, until the heat of the bridge wasn’t enough to keep him warm. He looked at McGlashan and saw his own fears reflected in her eyes.

“This is…dynamite,” she said.

“It’s worrying,” said Duggan.

“So, they found all this stuff – this wreckage – just floating around in space somewhere and decided to try and patch it into a spacecraft? Without having the first idea of what it was?”

“It appears that they had a good idea about what most of it was, Commander. They just weren’t able to copy it.”

“And they think they can now?”

“We’ve moved on since they found the pieces. If we can’t copy it, I think we can safely assume that mankind is going to be exterminated by the Ghasts.”

“What’re you talking about?” asked Chainer. He looked across at Breeze. “Don’t keep us waiting.”

Duggan took a deep breath. “The Crimson isn’t entirely a manmade warship,” he said. “A little over a seventy years ago, one of our scout ships found some wreckage near to the Helius Blackstar.”

“Helius Blackstar?”

“It’s a wormhole,” said Breeze. “You fly in one end and you reappear somewhere else without any time elapsing. At least that’s the theory. In reality, you throw something in there and it gets crushed by the gravity. There are five or six wormholes catalogued throughout Confederation space. I think we gave up trying to figure out how to survive a trip through one decades ago.”

“It looks like something got through the Helius Blackstar,” said Duggan. “Maybe it got destroyed on the way. The point is, it actually made the transit, broke up and left pieces of itself strewn across local space in the vicinity.”

“You mean something that wasn’t the Ghasts?”

“The technology was completely unknown. They hauled the pieces back to the labs for study. The trouble was, what they’d found was so far advanced, the scientists had no way of reproducing it. It was made of new materials, crafted in ways we couldn’t even comprehend. They assumed it had come from an unknown race of beings, living somewhere a long way distant from us.”

“Aliens. I wonder if they’re anything like the Ghasts.”

“They gave this unknown species the name Dreamers. There’s no indication why they chose that name.”

“Couldn’t they have just pulled this new technology apart for a closer look?” asked Chainer after he’d thought about it for a moment.

“Have you ever owned a watch, Lieutenant?”

Chainer looked confused. “Sure, I had one when I was a kid.”

“Did you ever take it apart to look at what was inside?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened when you tried to put it back together?”

“I see what you mean. I took it apart and all the pieces wouldn’t fit back in the case.”

“I think the scientists decided the technology was better in one piece.”

“Why’d they decide to shove it into the hull of a ship? Shouldn’t they have left it in a lab somewhere?”

Duggan wasn’t sure. He spoke, in the hope that his words would coalesce into something that made sense. “The Space Corps found the wreckage and they kept it. Did the Hynus project come about to make use of the alien technology, or did they use the funding for Hynus as a way of trying to meld our existing technology with the new? I don’t have the answers. The information in the data arrays is all over the place. Memos here, research notes there. It’s hard to build the complete picture.”

“I know what I believe,” said McGlashan. They all looked at her and she continued. “If you ask me, the people at the top couldn’t stomach the idea of leaving a load of new toys sitting in a warehouse somewhere, waiting for someone in the future to put to use and claim all the glory. I’ll bet my eye teeth they decided to put it into the Crimson to show what high and mighty bastards they were.”

Duggan could be cynical at times, but McGlashan’s outburst surprised him. There again, her theory had a certain appeal, such that he found it hard to discount it entirely.

“What happened to the Crimson?” asked Chainer eventually. “Why’d it hide itself in that cave?”

“We’re still trying to find out,” said McGlashan. “There’s the entirety of the fourth array to search.”

“Don’t let me keep you,” said Chainer.

For the next eighteen hours, Duggan and McGlashan kept up the search. The longer they spent, the more they uncovered from the past. Halfway through, they had to take a break and although Duggan did his best to sleep, he found it difficult to rest. His mind continued to work feverishly and even when he finally drifted off, his sleep was disturbed by the vivid images in his head.

By the time he was done, Duggan sat back in his chair, exhausted. He didn’t have all the details, but he was sure he’d found most of the relevant facts. Everything seemed to be linked – the Ghasts, the Crimson and this unknown alien species. He just couldn’t see where the connections lay.

“How far from the Helius Blackstar are we?” he asked.

“At current speed? Just over eight days. Then another five to get to New Earth from there.”

“Change our course and take us there. Admiral Slender and his threats be damned!”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

With its new direction programmed into the navigation system, the ESS Crimson skimmed its way through space. Onboard, the crew sat, lost in their own thoughts. The bridge stank of coffee and sweat and Duggan’s flesh prickled beneath his uniform.

Chainer was the first to speak. “You’re saying the Crimson actually fought one of these Dreamer spaceships?”

“It’s all there in the combat log.” Duggan shifted in his chair. It was suddenly hard to get comfortable. “It launched over a thousand of its missiles and fired the disruptors eight times. The Crimson’s sensors logged a kill and recorded the Dreamer craft breaking up. Its last trajectory would place the remains on a planet near to where we found the Crimson.”

“That Dreamer ship must have been one tough bastard to have mopped up a thousand Lambdas. What did it look like?”

“Dark green, that’s the only details the sensors captured.”

“Dark green? What’s that all about?”

“I don’t know. If I had to guess, I’d say the Dreamer vessel was protected by some kind of field that made it difficult for the sensors to pick it up.”

“That’s part of the reason the Crimson fired so many missiles,” said McGlashan. “Each missile had its targeting system disabled in order to fire them out in a straight line. Without guidance.”

“That’d be like trying to throw a ball into a cup from two hundred yards away,” said Breeze. “The number of calculations needed to try and predict the enemy movement would be astronomical.”

“We have a lot of processing power onboard, Lieutenant. Even so, it took a lot of attempts. Over a thousand missiles. We can’t even guess if the disruptors worked,” said Duggan.

Breeze let out a low whistle. “This is nuts.”

“On top of that, the Crimson tried to fire its last, unknown weapon. The one that Admiral Slender said the Corps engineers couldn’t figure out.”

“Why didn’t it work?” asked Breeze.

“The Crimson’s mainframe registered some type of jamming. Maybe that’s not the right word. It tried to fire and it was prevented from doing so.”

“Prevented? You mean by the alien ship or something?” asked Chainer.

“We’re guessing,” said McGlashan. “However, the combat logs show that the jamming wasn’t directed against the weapon itself. Rather, it seems as if the first core tried to fire and the second core prevented it.”

“Or refused to do so,” said Duggan.

“The ship’s own core refused to fire?”

“Not exactly. The Hynus-T battle computer tried to fire and was overruled by the Dreamer core,” said McGlashan. “I’ve spoken to Monsey and had her run some checks. Several of the major functions on this ship are initiated by the human-built mainframe and then passed on to the Dreamer core for processing. That’s part of the reason the Crimson is so fast – the alien computer is magnitudes quicker at shaping the engine output, for example. It has a lot of grunt.”

“The implication worries me,” said Duggan. “It suggests the weapon might be so devastating that the Dreamer core would have preferred to risk its own destruction in combat, rather than let it be fired.”

“What was it doing in the cave? Why not just come home? And why didn’t the Corps send anyone out looking for it? Like really look for it?”

“They did look for it - Admiral Teron said as much. We saw how well it was hidden. Maybe they had to abandon the search. It could even be they had to call off the search before someone in the Confederation Council got wind of it. After all, they’d lost the most significant discovery mankind has ever made.”

“Great. They swept it under the rug,” said Chainer. “Don’t you just love the men in charge?”

“As for why it was in the cave? The mainframe was damaged and there was substantial other damage. I think it was acting to preserve its own existence by hiding until it could send out its message. Prepare for war. It wasn’t talking about the Ghasts. It was talking about the Dreamers. We could be facing two enemies, each of them more advanced than we are.”

The crew didn’t look happy at Duggan’s revelation. Eventually, it was Breeze who spoke, his voice calm and quiet. “We need that weapon, don’t we, Captain?” he said. “Something to keep us in the game.”

“We need something, Lieutenant. We’re staring down the barrel of a gun.”

“Then why are we going to the Helius Blackstar?” said Chainer. “We’ve got an idea of what’s gone on. Shouldn’t we get on our way to New Earth and let the engineers take over? I mean, they might be able to get it to work. Instead, we’re taking the long route.”

“We need answers. At the very least, I’d like to know what the enemy vessel looked like. There might be clues and wreckage we can scan. We’ll be delayed by six or seven days taking this diversion. The Archimedes will arrive at a similar time. They can’t broadcast from lightspeed to ask where we are. I guarantee that if we fly straight to the New Earth Capital Shipyard, the Crimson will sit untouched in a dock until Admiral Slender arrives to give instructions.”

“Won’t someone in the Confederation Council take charge?”

“I very much doubt they know about the recovery of the Crimson. They might not even be aware it was ever built. Rest assured, Lieutenant, if anyone is hauled before a court martial for this, it’ll be me.”

“Everything’s screwed up,” said Chainer.

“Everything but us, Lieutenant,” said McGlashan.

As the days passed, the stress built amongst the crew. Duggan could feel it in the hot and claustrophobic atmosphere. Tempers were short and he could feel that they were one wrong comment away from being at each other’s throats. He ordered them to take turns away from the bridge, doing whatever they did to let off steam when they were off duty. There was no gym on the Crimson and it was sorely missed. It made him realise how tough it must be for his soldiers, cooped up in their bunks for hours on end.

“No one said war would be easy,” he growled to himself, wondering if the pressure was getting to him as well. He’d told Breeze they were looking for answers. In reality, he didn’t know exactly what answers he was hoping to find and on more than one occasion, he was confronted by the urge to change their course to New Earth.

On the third day, he had an idea and called Monsey to the bridge. She arrived, looking as keen as ever and carrying her box of semi-legal computer hardware.

“What did you find out about the Crimson’s secondary core?” he asked. “Before you got into those data arrays.”

“Just what I told you, sir. It’s damned fast. I’d bet everything I own it’s something different to the usual nano-cores. It’d rip the AIs on the Juniper into shreds at most tasks. At a few bits and pieces, it’s surprisingly slow.”

“It’s fully interfaced with the front mainframe?”

“If you asking me whether it speaks in numbers and can understand instructions given in numbers, then yes it does and yes it can. There are a few differences and there’re a dozen hardware interpreters to allow the front and back to shake hands properly. It’s a Ghast computer, isn’t it, sir? Just goes to show, biological creatures make up their own languages, but wherever you go, computers speak the same.”

Duggan smiled. He didn’t want to lie. “No soldier, it’s not a Ghast computer.”

Monsey was wise enough that she didn’t ask anything more about it. “Okay, sir. What do you want me to do with it?”

“We’re carrying a weapons system that I want to access. The secondary core is hiding that weapon away. I have reason to believe that it will also prevent the weapon from firing should I ever require it.”

“The rebellion of the machines, huh? My old man always warned me it would happen.”

“I need you to see if you can find out how it’s happened and how I can override it. After all, I am the captain of this ship.”

“Right you are, sir. I’ll plug in and get back to where I left off. I’ll warn you – the data arrays were stored on the Hynus-T mainframe and that was quick enough to make the hacking a real test. This other core? That’s something else entirely. I could grow old and die before I get around its defences. This bootbox works on brute force. It’s good, but there’s only so much it can do.”

“Do what you can, soldier. We have no choice.”

On the eighth day, the Crimson emerged from lightspeed into a position close to its destination. The arrivals were easier to handle than the departures, much to the relief of the crew.

“Sir, It’s just clicked what this place is,” said Breeze. “It’s called the Hynus solar system. They might not have found names for the planets, but they sure as hell found a name for the sun.”

“A short jump from the Helius Blackstar,” said Duggan. “This is where it all began.”

“For the Crimson at least,” said McGlashan.

“The combat logs show that the engagement with the Dreamer vessel took place on the tenth planet. It’s approximately the same size as Earth and we’ll reach a high orbit in less than one hour. Hynus is a big sun and we’re a long way out.” He called up the image of the planet on the bulkhead screen. It was unusually large given how far away it was from the sun. It radiated an icy blue that made Duggan feel cold just by looking at it. “There we have it. The alien craft fell somewhere onto the surface.”

“Scanning it now, sir,” said Chainer. “It looks serene from the main screen. When you look closer, it’s a tempest. Average temperature close to minus two hundred and forty degrees Celsius. Snow, ice, mountains and not much else.”

“We don’t have suitable kit to let us disembark, so surface work is out of the question. I wouldn’t like to risk it with a normal spacesuit,” said Duggan. “I’m going to take us into a mid-orbit and we’re going to scan the surface. If there’s anything unusual or unexpected, we’re going to try our best to find out what it is.”

“We have more sensors than the Detriment carried, sir. However, I don’t know if they’ve been adapted for this kind of work. Things have moved on since they built the Crimson. Every ship in the fleet is now expected to take topographical readings whenever they’re in orbit. It might not have been a priority fifty or sixty years ago. There’s a lot of surface interference for us to look through.”

“We’ll have to make do with what we’ve got, Lieutenant. If there’s anyone that can make sense of incomplete sensor readings, it’s you.”

“Aye sir!” said Chainer.

The planet loomed ahead and Duggan took the Crimson to an orbit ten thousand klicks above the surface. He hoped Chainer’s pessimistic suggestion about the sensors would prove to be false.

“I’m owed a bit of luck,” he said.

“What’s that sir?” asked McGlashan.

“I said I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we don’t end up circling the planet for days on end before we locate anything of interest.”

McGlashan was aware of the consequences for Duggan if he was caught disobeying Admiral Slender’s orders and she nodded at him. “Fingers and toes, sir.”

“How fast can I go?” Duggan asked.

“I’m already getting gaps in the readings, sir,” Chainer replied. “I think you should slow down. A one-hour orbit should allow us to gather what we need.”

Duggan gritted his teeth at that, since the Crimson would comfortably do a full orbit of a planet this small in five minutes, depending on the height and hull temperature. “One hour orbit it is,” he said. “How many till we’ve covered everything?”

“I’d say twelve if we come across any excessively mountainous areas. Ten if it’s all flat rock.”

With his knuckles white from their grip on the control sticks, Duggan got on with it.

Chapter Thirty

After two hours, Duggan relented and activated the recently-repaired autopilot. It almost felt like he was betraying himself, but he was relieved that he could take a break from sitting in the same position. Chainer was drinking what must have been his ninth cup of coffee since they’d begun the search. The man seemed to have an infinite capacity for the stuff.

“What’ve we got, Lieutenant?”

“We’re getting a pretty good picture of what’s down there. It’s just slow. There’re lots of mountains. It’s like the entire planet is one big, damned mountain range. It’s hard for the sensors to pick up details from their shadows in a single pass.”

“Give me the bad news.”

“We might need ten full circuits and then you might need to turn around and do another seven or eight in the opposite direction.” Chainer put his half-empty cup down. “Unless you can think of a way to limit the amount of terrain we have to cover? Like when you guessed the Crimson might be under the surface. That gave us something to home in on.”

Duggan sat back in his seat to ponder the words. An idea jumped into his head.

“Commander, can you locate the precise time and date on which the Crimson engaged the Dreamer vessel?”

“Checking.”

“When you have that, use it to determine the exact rotational position of this planet at the time of the engagement. Lieutenant Chainer, I want you to take a break from what you’re doing. I’m sending you a link to the Crimson’s sensor logs. There’s a plot of the debris as it fell. I need you to combine that with Commander McGlashan’s information. There’s a chance it will show which area of the planet the wreckage fell onto.”

It took some time until they came up with an answer. There wasn’t quite enough data to make it a straightforward calculation and there was some guesswork involved.

“I’d say it came down here, Commander. What do you say?”

“I’d agree with your assessment, Lieutenant.”

“Where do we need to go?” asked Duggan, turning off the autopilot.

“I’ve sent you the coordinates.” Chainer grimaced. “It’s an area that was on our second-last planned orbit. We may have saved ourselves ten hours of looking at mountains and snow.”

“Some good news at last,” said Duggan. He increased power to the gravity drive and completed a half-circuit of the planet in two minutes, leaving the hull glowing like a sullen ember.

“We are able to pin it down to a fairly narrow area,” said Chainer. “A few thousand square kilometres. If you go low and slow over the area, I should be able to get what we need in a single pass.”

Duggan followed Chainer’s suggestion and reduced the Crimson’s speed to what felt like a crawl. They were less than two thousand klicks up, yet the bulkhead screen showed no more detail than it had from a much higher orbit. The surface was a bleak and featureless white. Any variation was invisible to the naked eye.

“What’s it like down there, Lieutenant?” he asked.

“Rough, sir. Really rough. There’s a storm right beneath us. If we were in a smaller ship and a bit lower than we are, you might have a tougher job keeping us steady. I’m going to have to tweak the sensors a bit. You get a lot more play with these old models. With the new ones, you have to do what you’re told.” Chainer went quiet. Duggan turned to look. The lieutenant’s face had gone completely white, as if he’d seen an army of ghosts run across the bridge. Duggan realised at once he was about to hear something disastrous.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, urgency in his voice.

“You need to look at this, sir. You need to look at it now.”

Duggan sprang from his chair and stood at Chainer’s shoulder. “Tell me.”

“We’re broadcasting, sir. We shouldn’t be broadcasting, but we are.”

“Tell me clearly, Lieutenant!”

“It’s the sensors, sir. They send and receive external data and then pass it on to the mainframe. I was playing around with them to try and get a better picture of the surface, when I noticed one of them send out a ping. Just a single ping.”

“Where did it go?”

“I don’t know, sir. I don’t even know if it was aimed anywhere.”

“We’re a vessel of war. We should be running on silent! Check the rest of the sensors in the same way. Do it now!”

“There’s nothing. They’re all quiet. Hang on, we sent another ping. From a different sensor.”

“Does it contain any data? Anything about us?”

“No specific data, sir,” said Chainer miserably. “Except if you happen to pick up that ping, you’ll be able to find out exactly where it’s come from.”

“What’s giving the instruction to send? Stop it at once!” Duggan said. He realised his voice had climbed louder than he’d intended. “Find out what it is, Lieutenant,” he finished.

“We’re in the shit, aren’t we?” said McGlashan.

“Yes, Commander. We’re deep in it,” he said. “If the Ghasts can read those pings, there’s a good chance we led them straight to the Juniper and the Archimedes. There we were happily doing our duty, congratulating ourselves on a job well done, when all the while we were sending out signals to every enemy vessel that was listening!”

“Sir? The instruction to send out the pings is coming from the mainframe. They’re going out at semi-random intervals from random sensors.”

“Block it at once,” said Duggan.

“I can’t, sir. I’ve traced the command through the Hynus-T and it’s coming from the interface with the Dreamer core.”

Duggan almost punched the nearest wall. “The damned alien computer’s sending out an SOS! They put it into one of our spacecraft without guessing it might have an automated distress beacon, like every one of our warships! Who knows how long it’s been sending?” He took a deep breath. “What do we think? Is it nothing more than an automatic response? Or is there an intention behind it?”

“I think we have to assume it’s automated, sir. A call for help and nothing more.”

Duggan caught sight of Monsey. “There you go, soldier. It’s an alien computer, just not one that belongs to the Ghasts. We need access to it, or at least we need something that allows the front mainframe to take precedence. We have to override whatever locks or hard-coded instructions it’s been programmed with.”

She met his eyes, not afraid to tell him the truth. “I can’t stop it, sir. I might never be able to crack it. If I had a billion times the horsepower I’d be able to give you some good news.”

“We don’t have a billion times the horsepower,” he said. Monsey put her head down and started at her keyboard again.

Duggan paced the two or three steps there was room for. “We can’t go anywhere until we can stop the pings. We might lead the Ghasts right to our position.”

“At least you’ll be saved from a court martial, sir,” said McGlashan. “They can’t prosecute you for saving humanity. Just think what might have happened if we’d gone straight to New Earth.”

“They won’t care about unintended, positive consequences. They’ll prosecute me for gross dereliction in not finding out sooner.” He swept the matter aside. “There’ll be time to think about it later. For the moment, we’re unable to go anywhere until I can think of a way out of this mess.” He felt suddenly weary all the way into his bones.

“Want me to go back to scanning the surface, sir?” asked Chainer.

“May as well, Lieutenant. We can at least accomplish what we came here for.”

For a time, the clattering of Monsey’s keyboard and the humming of the ship’s engines was the only sound. Then, Chainer spoke. “Sir, I’m seeing an unusual pattern on the surface.”

“What do we have?” asked Duggan.

“These scars in the rock here aren’t consistent with any natural formations. There have been a number of impacts and the geological data suggests they’re comparatively fresh.”

“Fifty years fresh?”

“Give or take. But look, where the impact scars terminate, you’d expect to see signs of whatever caused them. These three here are all clean. There’s nothing there.”

“Could the Dreamer craft have vaporised with the force of the impact?” asked Duggan.

“If the pieces were big enough to make these indentations, then they’d leave evidence if they broke up. There’d be something for us to see. I’ve run a close-in scan of the first area and there’s nothing.”

“Run a check on this new area over here,” said Duggan, pointing to another area of the surface.

Chainer ran a number of commands. He frowned and ran another command. One of his screens zoomed in on something. He looked up at Duggan. “I’m sure you know what that is, sir.”

“A Ghast dropship,” said Duggan.

“It looks pretty badly beaten up and it’s buried beneath forty metres of ice and snow. If I had to guess, I’d say they crash landed and couldn’t get back up to their mothership.”

“The Ghasts have been here? What does that mean?” asked Breeze.

“What it suggests to me, is that the Ghasts found the remains of the Dreamer spaceship, Lieutenant. They were behind our technology curve for most of the war. It’s only fairly recently they’ve surpassed us and they’ve made astounding leaps. From the evidence we’ve got here, it’s clear the Ghasts have taken away the Dreamer wreckage and have succeeded in making copies of it.”

“Let me get this straight,” said Chainer. “The Confederation found the remains of a Dreamer ship floating next to the Helius Blackstar. We made a spaceship out of it. That same spaceship then shot down a second hostile Dreamer vessel, which the Ghasts found and are now using to kick the crap out of humanity?”

“I’d say that covers the likely situation quite nicely, Lieutenant,” said Duggan.

“That would also explain why there are so many Ghast ships in this sector,” said Breeze. “I wonder if they’re stupid enough to go looking for another Dreamer ship to cannibalise.”

“Why else would they still be here?” asked McGlashan. “I’ll bet this is a regular patrol route for them now. Take a flyby every two weeks and see if there’s another alien vessel to shoot at or strip down for parts.”

McGlashan’s words drove home to Duggan the danger they were in if they stayed here any longer than they needed to. “It doesn’t seem likely that the Ghasts missed anything,” he said. “Have you got enough scan data to finish up your search at a later time?”

“I’ve got what I need,” Chainer confirmed.

“Does anyone have any preferences as to where we go?” asked Duggan. “A nice, warm planet somewhere far away from humanity, where we can put our feet up?”

“None that I can think of,” said McGlashan. Her brow furrowed. “Sir, we’ve still got the repair bot onboard. The one we carried on the Detriment.”

“Yes, it’s inactive in the hold, waiting for something else to break.”

“I can re-programme it to physically shut down the sensors if you want. It’ll take me a few hours to make the changes and then it’ll take the bot a few more hours to interface with each one and disable it.”

“What else do we have to do with our time, eh?” asked Duggan.

“I think we’re about to have plenty to do,” said Breeze. “Fission signature incoming.”

Duggan jumped to the controls, gripping the bars in readiness. This wasn’t part of his plans. “Damnit, what do we have?” he snarled.

Chapter Thirty-One

The news was as bad as Duggan expected and he cursed himself for staying too long in orbit around the ice-clad planet. He should have realised the Ghasts would pick them up sooner rather than later. His thirst for answers might have cost them dearly. Screw those bastards.

“Oblivion battleship, sir,” said Breeze. “The same one we escaped when we found the Crimson. This time their helmsman has got them close by. One hundred and forty thousand klicks. Their particle beam has just hit us. Fission drive down eight percent.”

Duggan pushed the control bar to maximum and the Crimson surged away over the surface of the Hynus system’s tenth planet. He took them as low as he dared, in the hope that he’d be able to take advantage of the planet’s curvature and prevent the enemy battleship getting a missile lock. The beam weapon would take a few seconds to recharge and he knew exactly what they’d launch next.

“Fire the disruptors,” he said. “Before they launch a missile.”

“Firing now, sir. We scored a hit.”

“Too late,” said Chainer. “Ghast super-missile inbound.”

“Deep fission engines at sixteen percent,” said Breeze. “I’m not reading any positrons from the Ghast hull. They’ve been shut down.”

“That missile is closing at a little over two thousand klicks per second.”

The Crimson was fast. Flat out, it wasn’t vastly slower than a Lambda or one of the Ghasts’ conventional missiles. These new missiles were much faster than any other ballistic weaponry on either side. Duggan kept low, hoping to fool the missile’s guidance system, or force it to burn up in the thin atmosphere. It wasn’t working and Duggan was forced to climb away from the planet’s surface to stop the Crimson’s armour plates melting. The Oblivion was soon lost from sensor sight behind the planet, but the missile tracked them unerringly.

“Forty seconds to impact,” announced Chainer.

“Readying the disruptors,” said McGlashan. “What’s our power?”

“Climbing. Twenty percent. There’ll be enough juice to fire. We’ll be pushing it fine.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Duggan muttered to himself, his eyes roving across a dozen tactical displays.

“Thirty seconds.”

“Engines at twenty-two percent,” said Breeze. “They come back at an astonishing rate. Much quicker than they did on the Detriment.”

“That’s because the backend core is ten thousand times quicker than the Detriment’s mainframe,” said Monsey. She didn’t seem at all concerned about the incoming missile.

When he heard her words, Duggan felt as if someone had plugged him into a socket and flicked a switch. A part of his subconscious fired a thought to the front of his brain that was so intriguing, he cursed the incoming missile again for preventing him acting upon his idea.

“Twenty seconds.”

“Insufficient power to target and fire.”

“Ten seconds.”

“Still not ready.”

“Five seconds.”

“Firing.”

“Enemy missile free-floating. Its velocity will take it completely out of orbit in approximately fifteen seconds.”

“Engines at three percent. That’s as low as it’ll let them go.”

“Damn we’re good,” said Chainer, slumping back in his chair and wiping his brow.

Duggan was hardly listening. He turned his attention to Monsey and waved his hand to bring her attention away from the keyboard. “You said that if you had a billion times the horsepower, you could hack the Dreamer core?”

“A turn of phrase, sir. I meant that I’d need a lot more number crunching power to brute force it open.”

“The way I understand it is that the Hynus-T mainframe does all of the bits relating to Space Corps technology. It controls the Lambdas, autopilot, life support and so on.”

“You’d know as much about that as me,” said Monsey.

Duggan continued. “The two cores are linked by a series of enormously wide interfaces. The Dreamer core takes over where the engines are concerned. It does the repair re-routing and deals with post-jump recovery.”

“That’s how it’s been set up. Whoever built the Crimson, they were tapping into the Dreamer core processor for its speed alone. It still has its own programming, presumably from when it was embedded into a Dreamer ship. Now that I know where it’s come from, things make a bit more sense. The Hynus engineers managed to block off large parts of the Dreamer core’s instruction set and only let through those parts which control the weapons systems they recovered. It’s a hatchet job, but I must admit I’m impressed.”

“They had almost infinite resources,” said Duggan. “And probably two thousand of the Corps’ finest minds working on this alone. Still, it’s good to see they managed to get as far as they did. What you suggest goes some way to explaining why they couldn’t get the final weapon to fire. The Dreamer core must have some failsafe to prevent it working unless certain conditions are met.”

“Or it obtains certain approval,” said McGlashan.

“What are you getting at, sir?” asked Monsey.

“If the human-built front-end can utilise the processing power of the Dreamer core and send instructions back over the interface, can we tell the Hynus-T to brute force its way into the weapons systems?”

Monsey blinked. “You’re asking if we can get the Dreamer core to hack itself?”

“That’s precisely what I’m asking,” said Duggan. “Can you tell it to do that?”

Monsey opened her mouth and closed it. Duggan couldn’t remember seeing her at a loss for words before.

“That’s a very good idea, sir,” she stuttered. “But you can probably do that from your console with a few lines of code.”

“That’s not my field,” Duggan said. “Please proceed. I want full access from my console as soon as possible.”

“What are you planning, sir?” asked McGlashan.

“I’d have thought it was obvious, Commander. First, I’m going to use our access to the Dreamer core to prevent it from sending any further signals. Secondly, I’m going to evaluate the hidden weapons system. If possible, I’m going to test it out on that Ghast battleship by blowing them apart!”

“That’s a plan I can go with,” said McGlashan.

“I just need to find us the time,” said Duggan. He changed their heading, trying to keep it as erratic as possible. “At least we can outrun them and can knock out their super-missiles if we need to.”

“They’ve only been launching one at a time, sir,” said Chainer. “The battleships which attacked the Archimedes were capable of launching more.”

“Maybe this Oblivion’s only carrying a prototype version. Or perhaps we’ve been lucky so far,” said McGlashan.

“Our luck’s got to run out eventually. Can’t we just point the nose somewhere far out and come back when we’ve had a chance to sort all this stuff out?”

“We’re staying, Lieutenant. We’re going to get something out of this. It’s what we all signed up for.”

“Aye sir,” Chainer muttered.

The first circuit of the planet took eight minutes. It was enough for Monsey to adapt some of the code she’d already created to access the Crimson’s Hynus-T mainframe.

“I’m setting it up for a first run, sir,” she said.

“Do it as soon as you can.”

“On its way. Shit, it’s almost filled the interfaces with breach attempts.”

“Fission drive recovery has slowed right down, sir. We’re almost at full, but if we have to fire the disruptors again, you won’t have them ready for a long time after. The Dreamer core must have too much on its plate.”

“I wish I had access to this much grunt all the time,” said Monsey. “It’s probably for the best that I don’t.”

“Can you tell how long?” asked Duggan.

“It’ll happen when it happens, sir. It takes patience to hack anything big. The same patience works well when I’m looking along the barrel of a rifle, waiting for a Ghast to walk into my sights.”

“I don’t have a lot of patience just at this moment, soldier.”

“Sorry, sir. Nothing I can do to speed it up. This is something new to me as well.”

At that moment, Duggan’s luck ran dry.

“Enemy vessel coming up on the sensors, sir. High above us. Nearly three hundred thousand klicks up and over.”

“Have they seen us?”

“We’re hard to miss, sir. They’ve changed course and are coming in lower.”

At that moment, Duggan realised he was about to be sucker punched. With the usual missiles employed by both sides, there was little point in sitting out of orbit and waiting for the enemy to come to you. The standard missiles couldn’t target from so far out, and the opponent could easily fly out of sensor sight around the other side of the planet. This turned planetary combat into a hunt, which often relied on luck to see who got the first shot away. Not anymore, Duggan thought.

“I’m detecting super-missile launches, sir. Something tells me they were holding back before. This time it’s six at once.”

Duggan thumped his console with a clenched fist. “Damnit!” He took a deep breath. “I’m taking us away around the planet. Hold the disruptor fire until we’re out of sight of that Oblivion. I don’t want them getting a second salvo off when there’s nothing we can do about it. How long till impact?”

“At least one hundred and thirty seconds, sir. It depends on how much speed you hold around the planet.”

“Are we out of sensor sight yet?”

“No, sir. Nearly,” said Chainer.

The next few seconds were tense and everyone on the bridge apart from Monsey kept their eyes glued on the tactical display.

“We’re out of sensor sight now, sir,” said Chainer after what seemed like hours instead of seconds. “Given what we know about their position, we should hopefully be able to avoid that Oblivion for at least one more orbit.”

“It’s the missiles I’m worried about, Lieutenant. We can’t use the disruptors on all six.”

With his mind racing, Duggan pushed the Crimson as fast as he dared, away from the incoming missiles. The hull temperature soared as it tore through the thin atmosphere.

“Sir? We’ll need to activate the fission engines,” said McGlashan quietly. “Else there’ll be nothing left of us to take to New Earth.”

Duggan looked up. He’d set his mind on the destruction of the enemy vessel, completely at odds with his ability to make it happen. He’d been about to risk everything without having a plan as to how he’d get them out of it alive. This one was lost, he’d just been too stubborn to see it.

“Thank you, Commander,” he said. He opened his mouth to give the instruction for Lieutenant Breeze to load up the engines. The order didn’t come.

“Hell yes!” shouted Monsey. “Got you now!”

“Give me some good news, soldier,” said Duggan.

“Damn right there’s some good news, sir! Cracked it open like a nut! I’m assigning command rights to your consoles now.”

Duggan checked his access screen. A new tier of options had appeared for him to view. He opened up the menu for the weapons systems - there was a single additional option available to him. It had a description, but the text was a mixture of unfamiliar characters. Feeling excitement and determination build up inside him, he brought the weapon online.

Chapter Thirty-Two

“It’s warming up! It’s going to be ready in less than thirty seconds,” said McGlashan. She’d picked up on Duggan’s excitement at once.

“Sir? The fission engines?” asked Breeze.

“Hold for one moment, Lieutenant. Until we see what we’ve got here.”

“Still got seventy seconds until missile impact,” said McGlashan. “Longer if you go higher and faster, sir.”

Duggan changed course and dragged the nose of the Crimson into the vacuum of space.

“Sir, according to my readouts you’re heading directly towards the most likely location of the Ghast battleship,” said Chainer. He looked worried, like he thought Duggan was losing it.

“I know, Lieutenant.”

“And at the rate you’re climbing, we may well be in range of their disruptors, beam weapons and normal missiles when we reach them.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” As the ship climbed away from the planet, the hull temperature dropped and Duggan was able to increase their speed.

“Fifty seconds to missile impact,” said McGlashan. “Their rate of approach has diminished now that we’ve left the bounds of the atmosphere.”

“Is the weapon online, Commander?”

“A few seconds left. Here we go. It’s lit up and ready to fire!”

“Sir, the enemy battleship is coming into view over the edge of the planet. She’s heading directly towards us at full sub-light. Two-hundred and thirty thousand klicks away.”

“They’re launching. Another four super-missiles. Impact in thirty-eight seconds.”

“Lieutenant Breeze, fission engines please. Point us away from Confederation space.”

“I thought you’d never ask. We’ll be out of here in just shy of thirty seconds.”

“Missiles behind, missiles in front. I should’ve written my will when I had the chance,” said Chainer, his voice much calmer than his words.

“Commander, please target and fire our new weapon as soon as you’re able.”

McGlashan frowned and when Duggan glanced over, he saw her press the same area of her console several times. “The targeting must be out. Or screwed. Or both. It won’t target the enemy ship.”

“We’ve got no problems with the sensors, Commander,” said Chainer. “All thirty are showing green.”

“Sort it out soon, Commander, or we’ll miss our chance.”

“It might be broken.”

“Ten seconds till we’re gone.”

“Target, damnit!” shouted McGlashan.

“Just fire them, Commander! Press the button!”

“There’s no target!”

“Five seconds.”

“Do it!”

“Firing!”

There was a shriek, coming from somewhere in the depths of the ship’s hull. It rose to a crescendo almost at once, a sound which brought with it waves of punishing vibration through the entire structure of the Crimson. The walls and floors shook, as if something had exploded deep within. It seemed to Duggan as if the Hynus engineers had made a mistake by fitting this unknown technology into a spaceship. They couldn’t have known the stresses the weapon would subject it to when fired. Before Duggan could even begin to worry that the Crimson was about to be ripped into pieces, something else took his full attention.

The tenth planet was still visible away to one side of the bulkhead screen. It appeared much smaller now that they’d flown so high above it. Without apparent sound, the planet shattered. Vast, gaping chasms spread across its surface in a tenth of a second. The pieces separated, each part cracking and splitting into ever smaller fragments of the whole. In the blinking of an eye, they exploded thousands of kilometres away from each other as they expanded at a speed almost beyond comprehension. None of the crew had time to say a word before the Crimson catapulted them into high lightspeed. Unconsciousness, when it came, was a welcome relief.

When Duggan came to, he had the usual uncertainty about how much time had elapsed. He supposed it didn’t really matter. We just destroyed an entire planet were the first words that came into his mind. Gone, just like that.

McGlashan was already awake and she looked at him, her eyes dark and her expression giving nothing away about her thoughts. He stared back, sharing the bleakness of the moment with her.

“I suppose we should be happy,” she croaked. “We found something that can even the odds.”

“I don’t think I could ever be happy knowing what we’ve got,” he said, surprised at the strength in his voice.

Chainer woke next, driven from the sanctuary of sleep by what he’d seen. “We just blew up a whole planet,” he said dumbly.

Duggan shook off his lethargy and ignored the pain of his body. “Rouse yourself Lieutenant and fix it so that our sensors stop transmitting. I want to get this spacecraft to New Earth. I don’t want the responsibility for it anymore.”

“Aye sir, I’ll be on it when the pounding in my head calms down enough.”

McGlashan came across, holding herself steady against Duggan’s chair. “The Ghasts haven’t shown us any quarter, sir,” she said quietly. “In a terrible war, it’s the side which blinks first that loses. Remember what they did to Charistos.”

“I know, Commander. They’re more ruthless than we are. They want to fight, while the Confederation has never been given the choice.”

Something caught Duggan’s eye. A message had arrived – he guessed it must have slipped in a moment before they went to lightspeed. He read the message and then deleted it.

“Sir?” asked McGlashan.

“They found Angax. Did the same to it as they did to Charistos. Almost two billion people, incinerated by those bastards.” He looked at her, anger spilling across his face. “They think they’ve got us, Commander. They think they’re going to find our planets one by one and destroy our people. We’ve got a new weapon now and I hope to hell I live to see the day we can fire it at their home world.”

As McGlashan looked away, tears visible in her eyes, the ESS Crimson cut a path onwards through space, carrying with it the most terrible kind of hope imaginable.

* * *

The Survival Wars series continues in Book 2, Bane of Worlds!

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Bane of Worlds

Survival Wars Book 2

© 2017 Anthony James

All rights reserved

The right of Anthony James to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed upon the subsequent purchaser

Cover Design by Dan Van Oss www.covermint.design

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Limbo

The light from the long New Earth mid-summer day had started to fade as the yellow sun crept lower towards the horizon. There were distant clouds, already turning to a vivid red. The clouds seemed frozen in place, making unusual patterns of almost-familiar shapes. It was still hot, though the heat would rapidly escape into the night sky when it became dark.

Captain John Nathan Duggan looked down the barren slope and into the inconceivable space within the New Earth Capital Shipyard. From his position atop one of the surrounding hills, he could see most of the hundred-square-kilometre complex – it was a drab collection of concrete and metal-walled buildings, foundries and an ever-moving sea of vehicles and people. There were three deep V-shaped channels which ran from east to west, each one flanked by structures built from massive beams, with heavy cranes visible everywhere.

The nearest – and longest – of these channels contained the hull of the Space Corps’ newest Hadron class supercruiser. It was almost six kilometres in length and destined to be the first of the new generation of battleships, meant to outrun and outgun the Ghast Oblivions.

“It’s doomed already,” said Commander Lucy McGlashan. Her face looked haunted and her eyes were darker than usual.

“Why do you say it’s doomed?” asked Duggan. He already knew the answer.

“It’s the same as the others. Bigger, a little more efficient. The Ghasts will blow it into pieces. We don’t have anything that can target and destroy their Shatterer missiles. Even a Cadaveron will give it a run for its money.”

“It’s just a hull so far, Commander. The core goes in near last and the weapons are the final thing they fit. That’s another two or three years for the tech labs to come up with something new. I’ve heard about a few lines we’re testing in prototype. There’s real promise, I’m told.”

“I’ve heard plenty of promises, sir. We’ve spent the whole of the last year hiding from the Ghasts, trying to buy ourselves enough time to build the fleet. What’s the point? It’s just target practise for those bastards.”

“You’re not usually so bitter,” he said.

She sighed in response. “Maybe it’s getting to me. Being kept off duty for so long.”

“These things take time to resolve, you know that. We’re facing serious charges. I’d rather they got it right than rushed through a verdict.”

“Will Admiral Slender be able to sway them?”

“Perhaps. He’ll have to be careful he doesn’t try too hard. It’ll rub people the wrong way and make it look like he’s got a vendetta.”

“He does have a vendetta, sir.”

“Against me. Not against you, Lieutenant Chainer or Breeze. The investigators won’t want to be drawn into his mission to bring me down. He’s a powerful man, but he has no say over their decision. Friends on the Confederation Council might get him the result he’s after.”

“He has those friends, doesn’t he?”

“Fleet Admiral Slender doesn’t have friends, Commander. He’s always been respected for his abilities, rather than his personal qualities. The death of his son beat out any interest he might have had in friendship. So, the most he can expect is some nominal support. He has no one who’ll risk their careers for him. No one who’s willing to become embroiled in what could end up a messy business.”

McGlashan looked at him curiously. “How do you know all this?”

“I have to keep my ear to the ground, in order to ensure we get treated fairly.” Duggan gave a half-smile.

“Any idea when we’ll hear?”

“Soon. The sooner the better.”

“What’ll happen if we’re cleared?”

“We’ll be given another ship. A Gunner. Then, we’ll be sent out to do whatever it is we’ll be asked to do. And I’ll have to spend the rest of my time in the Corps looking over my shoulder for whatever comes next.”

“I’m glad to see the Crimson’s still in one piece,” she said, changing the subject. “I don’t envy them trying to study the Dreamer tech from the inside.”

Duggan looked into the shipyard’s middle trench. At over two kilometres long, they could have built an Anderlecht light cruiser in it. For the moment, it held the eleven hundred metre length of the ESS Crimson. It looked menacing, even at such a distance, hardly reflecting the sun’s warm light at all. Duggan couldn’t decide if the threatening quality was because of the vessel’s sleek lines or because he knew what weaponry it carried.

“They’ve taken some of the plating off the underside and stripped out several of the Lambda clusters and Bulwarks to give themselves more room inside. I guess they didn’t want to risk breaking anything by trying to disassemble a working model.”

“I hope it doesn’t slow them down too much. As much as I love the ship, I’d have it torn to pieces if it meant we could copy the hardware a few months sooner. Hell, even a few weeks or days.”

“They’ve taken a gamble,” said Duggan. “A surprisingly risky gamble. It gives the Confederation an ace up their sleeve. Not one they can play every round, but if it’s played right, it could change the whole outlook for the war.”

“By blowing up one of the Ghast planets?”

“If that’s what it comes down to,” he said quietly. “The Ghasts seem to value strength, or at least the appearance of strength. We might not have to blow up one of their planets. If we destroyed something nearby, it might be enough to make them think twice about taking us on.”

“We’ve got to find one of their planets first. There’s no sign of that happening anytime soon. They already know we have the capability to destroy worlds.”

“We don’t know that, Commander. When we destroyed the tenth planet, the only Ghast ship in the vicinity was the Oblivion. One of the labs did some modelling and they figured out the battleship would have almost certainly been destroyed. The trouble with modelling the unknown is that you can never be sure.”

“Two seconds to us is hardly any time, sir. To an Oblivion’s AI, it’s plenty of time to package and send a signal to say what happened.”

“Who knows?” was all he could say in response.

“If we found one of their worlds and you had the opportunity to fire the weapon, would you do it?” She’d asked him before and he’d never given a straight answer. He could see the question and the answer were important to her.

“I can’t tell you, Commander. Some questions are best answered only when you have to answer them. I would do my duty.”

“Yeah.” It was a noncommittal response. Duggan didn’t know what she expected to hear from him.

“I’ve seen enough for today,” he said. “Let’s get back to base.”

Duggan turned his gaze away from the New Earth Capital Shipyard and walked across the parched earth towards the car he had parked up on the verge. It was ancient and decrepit, running on rubber tyres, and modelled along the same lines as an early diesel-engined jeep. He climbed into the front seat and fired it up, still half-expecting to hear the clatter of cylinders. The vehicle’s power plant was much more modern and it hummed in near-silence. Duggan pressed the accelerator and the car surged away along the rough-paved road, the rubber tyres skittering for grip.

The Space Corps base was sprawled across a large area adjacent to the shipyard. The military owned vast swathes of land in this area – it was out of the way, yet easy to supply from the nearby megacity of Frontsberg. By the time Duggan and McGlashan got back to base, the sky was almost completely black, speckled here and there with pinpoints of starlight. Duggan parked up in one of the communal bays and stepped onto the tarmac. He looked around – there was nothing about the base that looked remotely advanced; squat, ugly buildings of steel-reinforced concrete, thrown up quickly and without thought for the final appearance.

“They could have built this place five hundred years ago,” said McGlashan, reflecting his thoughts. “If an alien race saw this place before anything else, they’d wonder if we’ve even learned to fly.”

Duggan grunted in response, his mind already elsewhere. He bade McGlashan goodnight and went back to his quarters. Duggan was housed in one of the larger buildings on the base, where he had a room and an office. He might be on enforced ground duty, but he was still a captain in the Space Corps until he was told otherwise. Stepping into the confines of his room, he realised how difficult it was becoming for him to stay cooped in this place. When he was in the close-quarters of a spacecraft’s bridge, the lack of space was somehow liberating. Here, it only served to remind him how much his future was in the balance and how little control he had over what was to come.

The lights came on automatically when he stepped over the threshold. He had a desk in one corner, made from some type of lightweight mass-produced plastic. There was a screen on the desk, along with a keyboard and mouse. The technology had been around forever and here it was in his quarters. Duggan sat in front of the screen, without any great enthusiasm. The display flashed up at once, showing a list of several new messages. When he saw the subject of one, he sat up straight and opened it. There wasn’t much to read and he skimmed over it quickly, before reading it for a second time. At last, he sighed and slumped back into his seat. He called up McGlashan’s number on his desk communicator.

“What is it?” she asked.

“We’ve been cleared of any wrongdoing,” said Duggan. “In fact, the investigation found strong evidence that we went above and beyond expectations, whilst pointing out that our positive actions in no way excuse a number of minor failings. They’ve stopped short of suggesting we get a medal,” he finished wryly.

“That’s great, sir! What happens now?” She sounded stunned at the news. Duggan knew how badly it had affected her, having the charges hanging.

“We go back to our normal duty, that’s what happens.”

“As if nothing happened?”

“Exactly, Commander. As if nothing happened.”

As he watched his display, a new message appeared. Duggan opened it and read the contents.

“Sir? Are you still there?” asked McGlashan.

“You’d best pack your things, Commander. We’re shipping out tomorrow.”

“Sir,” she said, in that one word conveying a mixture of untold relief and excitement.

Duggan ended the call and sat in quiet contemplation for a few minutes, before he contacted Lieutenants Breeze and Chainer in turn, to let them in on the news.

Chapter One

“Captain Duggan!” said Admiral Teron, as if he were greeting a long-lost friend. “How have you been keeping yourself?”

Duggan gave a mental shake of his head at the greeting. Teron knew exactly what had happened since the last time they’d met. “I’m fine, sir,” he said, taking a seat. The Admiral’s office on the Juniper hadn’t changed a bit since the last time Duggan had visited it. In fact, he couldn’t remember it changing at all in the last ten years.

“Good of you to get here so quickly,” said Teron.

“I had little choice in the matter, sir,” said Duggan. The trip from New Earth to the Juniper had taken almost a week on the Anderlecht ES Greeter. They wouldn’t usually employ a warship to shuttle personnel from one place to another, but the Greeter was to be permanently stationed near to the Juniper, assisting the Hadron ES Maximilian and almost a dozen Vincents. It didn’t look as if the Space Corps was going to take any further risks with the orbital. Last time Duggan had been here, two Cadaverons had almost come within launch range of their missiles, drawn to the location by an automatic emergency signal from the Crimson’s alien core.

Teron wasn’t fond of small talk and to Duggan’s relief, the Admiral got on with business. “We’re at total war, as you know, Captain. That ensures unlimited funding to our efforts, but it does not ensure we have unlimited trained personnel to fill every role. We’re making ships faster than we can fill them, at least as far as the Vincent class is concerned.”

“Does that mean I’m to be assigned to another Gunner, sir?” Duggan didn’t know whether to be happy or angry.

“You’ve been cleared, Captain Duggan. Unfortunately, for you, that doesn’t mean you’ll be given command of a bigger ship. The Space Corps is required to keep you in your earned position, but that doesn’t entitle you to preferential treatment.”

“I didn’t ask for preferential treatment, sir,” said Duggan. “Just fair treatment.”

“If I were you, I’d keep your head down for the foreseeable future, Captain. Your exoneration doesn’t have any conditions attached, nor does it offer you any protection going forward.” Teron stared intently across the table.

“A warning, sir?”

“Take it as you will, Captain Duggan. I’m sure you realise how it has to be.”

“Stuck on a Gunner until I retire or get blown to pieces.”

“I didn’t bring you here to argue. I won’t discuss it further. I brought you here to talk about your newest assignment.”

Duggan didn’t press the matter. He’d been around long enough to know when it was pointless. Fleet Admiral Slender wasn’t a man to forget and he’d not be happy about Duggan’s latest escape. The Space Corps’ top man couldn’t ignore the verdict of innocence, but that wouldn’t stop him doing his best to make Duggan’s life difficult.

“What am I to do, sir?”

“I’ll get to that shortly,” said Teron. “You’re aware we’re building warships at a tremendous rate. We’ve got dozens of new hulls laid down, and that’s not including the one hundred and fifty Vincent class that are nearing completion. In fact, the first ten have just entered service.”

“It’s hardly been a year,” said Duggan, making no effort to hide that he was impressed.

“Fourteen months, as it happens. Competition – it’s a wonderful thing. Each shipyard has been encouraged to do its best to beat the others. You may remember the times when the Confederation constructed a lot more spacecraft. Rivalry was rife. All we’ve done is reminded the shipyard workers how it was in the past and I’m pleased to say they’ve responded as we hoped they would.”

“I’m glad we’re getting up to speed, sir,” said Duggan. “Where are you heading with this?”

“A lot of ships need a lot of metal. The engines in particular require certain rare elements in enormous quantities.”

“We’re running out of raw materials?”

“Not exactly. There are numerous planets in Confederation space, many of the suitable ones given over to the mining operations needed to feed our industries. However, these mines are not able to meet the demand for metals that we’re placing on them. Even if the metals are there for the taking, we lack the capabilities to mine them and transport them to our foundries. The Space Corps hasn’t stood still on this matter, and we have focused many of our efforts on increasing production at these facilities.”

Duggan wondered where Teron was going and began to wish the Admiral would speak clearly. “Mining operations aren’t usually a concern for the Space Corps’ warships, sir. Am I to be given command of a military transport?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes you are.” Before Duggan could open his mouth to protest, Teron waved a hand to silence him. “You’re to escort a transport vessel to one of the mining planets in the Larax Sphere. A place called Everlong. They’ve recently discovered a considerable quantity of ore which they lack the equipment and personnel to exploit. We need those metals, so we’re sending what they need to treble their output.”

“When did we begin escorting transport vessels within the Larax Sphere?” asked Duggan. “Have there been Ghast sightings?”

Teron steepled his fingers in front of his face – an unconscious gesture which Duggan identified as meaning the Admiral was choosing his words carefully.

“No direct sightings,” he said at last. “You’ll be aware the Larax Sphere is only a comparatively short jump from the Axion Sector. Charistos and Angax had a lot of commerce with the Larax planets. We have concerns the Ghasts might have attempted to track some of our low-light transport vessels as they fled the destruction. It’s possible the Ghasts’ AIs were able to narrow down the escaping ships’ destinations as they entered lightspeed. We’re certain our enemy still lacks the ability to track our fast military ships, but we’re not nearly so certain they can’t do it to slower craft.”

Duggan fixed Teron with a gaze. “We have three populated planets in the Larax Sphere. Are you telling me the Ghasts are close to finding them?”

Teron shifted in his seat. “Three of our transport vessels have gone missing in the last month. They’ve vanished without sending a distress signal.”

“Nothing at all?” asked Duggan.

“That’s what I said. If the Ghasts found and destroyed one of these smaller spaceships out in the depths of space, we’d never find out beyond guessing. We aren’t certain it’s the Ghasts.”

“What do the sim guys tell you about the cause?”

“Fifty-fifty between a Ghast interception and accidental destruction.”

Duggan wasn’t buying it for a minute. Accidents did happen on modern spaceships – he knew that only too well. However, they were exceptionally rare and blaming the loss of three ships to accidents in a month was stretching the bounds of credulity. “What do you believe?” he asked.

“I’m required to give the simulation team the respect they’re due, Captain Duggan. However, I know that odds of fifty-fifty aren’t good odds unless you’re a determined gambler. And I’m not a gambling man.”

“Escorts for every transport, then?”

“Until we learn for definite what happened to our missing ships. On the positive side, it gives us the opportunity to introduce our new spacecraft and crew to the dangerous side of the Corps without throwing them straight in at the deep end. You’ll be pleased to learn you are to be a part of this introductory process by mentoring a fellow captain on his first voyage.”

“What?” asked Duggan, sitting upright.

“You’re being given command of a brand-new Vincent class fighter in order to escort a heavy-lift mining transport and its personnel to Everlong. Accompanying you on this journey will be Captain Mason Graham on his maiden flight. He’ll have his own spaceship, of course. I’m certain he’ll become an excellent officer, given time and the right guidance. You will, of course, be the senior officer and in charge of the mission.”

“I don’t need this crap, sir.”

“You have the experience, Captain Duggan. You cannot shirk your responsibilities by refusing to share it with others.”

Duggan knew he’d spoken out of place, but couldn’t bring himself to apologise. He wasn’t in the mood for saying sorry. Instead, he nodded to show he accepted Teron’s words, his expression making it clear he didn’t like what was asked of him.

“On the bright side, it shouldn’t be as dangerous as your trip to locate the ESS Crimson turned out to be. As soon as the heavy-lift transport has delivered its cargo, it’ll return to its base. You’ll stay with it until it returns to the space port on Pioneer and then you’ll be given new duties.”

“Are we meeting the transport at Pioneer? That’ll add several days to the journey.”

“No – you’ll rendezvous with the MHL Goliath at the mid-point of its journey. The lifter has already left the space port, along with Captain Graham’s ES Ribald.”

“That means there’s no time to pick up the new Gunner anywhere other than here on the Juniper,” said Duggan.

“Correct. The ES Pugilist is in Hangar Bay Two. It’s like your old ship Detriment, except everything’s newer and mostly better. There are one or two additions, which you’ll begin to see on some of the new spacecraft and which will eventually be retrofitted to older vessels, assuming they prove their worth.”

“What sort of additions?” asked Duggan.

“Don’t get yourself too excited. New high-impact Lambdas, with one or two changes to the guidance systems. In addition, there are two high-yield nuclear missiles, with their own dedicated launch tubes. After the success you had with those on the Crimson, we’ve had them added to the arsenal of a few of our warships. Ideally, we’d have liked to mount them on a modified Lambda propulsion section, but there’s not been time. I’ll leave you to read through the technical specifications when you’re in flight to your rendezvous point.”

“That’s fine,” said Duggan. From what Teron had told him, he wasn’t anticipating any great surprises. “How is the Archimedes doing, sir?” he asked. The damage the Space Corps’ flagship had suffered from the Ghast Shatterer missiles was a closely-guarded secret and Duggan had struggled to find out anything concrete.

“She was badly damaged. The Ghast missiles breached her armour in two places and ripped big holes in the engines and disabled almost half of the port-side weapons and countermeasures.”

Duggan gave out a low whistle. “The Shatterers must have some payload.”

Teron’s face twisted and he pursed his lips. “They do, Captain Duggan. Though not enough to have caused as much damage as they did to the Archimedes. They got lucky and struck in a place where two sections were originally fitted together. They found a design flaw, if you will. We should almost be grateful.”

“How long until it can fly at full capability?”

“Another eighteen months,” said Teron. “In reality, we’re stripping out some of the redundant systems in order to make room for the new technology we’re hoping will come onstream in the interim. If needed, she could fly at almost full speed tomorrow if we released her from dry dock. She’d be lacking a huge portion of her weaponry, of course.”

Duggan was left with the impression that Teron wasn’t telling him the whole story. There’d be time to think about that later. “Permission to bring my own crew onto the Pugilist, sir?”

“I told you to bring them with you, didn’t I? Permission granted.”

“What about the infantry I had with me before? They were good men and good women.”

“I’m afraid they’ve been dispersed amongst other ships. You’ve had fifteen picked at random from those who happened to be on the Juniper. I’m damned if I can remember their names and truth be told I’ve got better things to do with my time than spend it looking at troop lists. I’ve got the roster here.” Teron picked up a piece of paper and handed it over. “Here we are, centuries after we were promised a paperless society and my desk is covered in the stuff.”

Duggan took the paper and looked at the names. He struggled to suppress a smile as he rose from his seat. “With your leave, I’ll go and take a look at the Pugilist, sir.”

“Of course. I’ll have the Juniper feed through the specifics of your flight. Goodbye, Captain Duggan and good luck, though I’m sure you won’t need it.”

Chapter Two

The ES Pugilist was one of two Gunners in Hangar Bay Two. Duggan didn’t need to ask which one was which. The closest of the two was a dull grey, with a blackened nose and signs of extensive heat blistering. The second had a peculiarly glossy sheen from the lacquer they applied at the factory. Duggan didn’t know why they bothered, since the coating was always burned away as soon as the spacecraft entered a planet’s atmosphere at anything above ten percent of its maximum speed. The Pugilist also had its name emblazoned along the side, in five-metre-high letters. The painted letters wouldn’t last any longer than the lacquer. Other than that, the two spacecraft looked identical. The hull design was a proven shape which they’d never seen fit to alter in decades.

Hangar Bay Two was vast, with hundreds of people flowing around. It took Duggan almost five minutes to reach the Pugilist’s boarding ramp, since he had to make his way around people, vehicles and maintenance equipment. The ramp was down, with two soldiers at the bottom of it. They looked alert, with their gauss rifles held in readiness, though Duggan couldn’t for the life of him think why they’d be agitated. Perhaps it was the presence of all the people in the area. As he came close, they recognized him, presumably from having seen his face on their assignment notices. They both saluted.

“Sir, welcome to the ES Pugilist, sir!” said the closest, a woman with blonde hair and sharp eyes.

“Who’s aboard?” asked Duggan.

“All fifteen of our squad are ready to go, sir. And Commander McGlashan is on the bridge.”

“Excellent. Lieutenants Chainer and Breeze should be here shortly. They know where they’re going.”

“Sir,” said the woman.

Duggan was about to walk past when he stopped. “What’re your names?” he asked.

“Infantrymen Powell and Casper, sir,” replied the woman, her voice crisp, yet polite.

“You look on edge,” said Duggan.

“Sir?” she stuttered.

“What’s bothering you?”

“Nothing, sir. Sergeant Ortiz told us to be alert, that’s all.”

Duggan nodded to himself and made his way up the ramp. The interior was exactly the same as every other Vincent class – cramped and with pockets of stifling heat, interspersed with areas of bone-biting chill. He knew before he reached the bridge that it would be far too hot and he knew exactly what it would smell like. He wasn’t disappointed.

“We could be back on the Detriment again, sir,” said McGlashan with a broad smile.

“Feels like I never left it,” Duggan admitted. “A bit shiny for my liking.”

“And there’re no rips in the seat coverings,” agreed McGlashan, sitting in her chair. It squeaked and crackled like the cheap leather it was.

“We’re on escort duty,” said Duggan. “Double escort duty.”

McGlashan stopped what she was doing and looked at him. “From the look on your face, I take it that’s not good?”

“We’re taking a heavy lifter to Everlong – a mining planet. We’ve got company. A second Gunner is coming with us. It’s got a fresh captain. Fresh crew as well, I imagine.”

“Backup is always good.”

“Not when I have to hold hands.”

McGlashan looked over her shoulder to make sure no one was approaching the bridge. “Sir, the new bloods are what we need to keep fighting the war.”

“They are.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“I feel as if I’m getting to old to teach. Too many bad habits.”

“I learned more in the first two months I spent on a ship than I did in the four years I spent training to come on a ship. You have an opportunity to pass on what you’ve learned, sir. To beat the Ghasts.”

Duggan sighed. “I’ll give the man a chance, Commander.”

“I’m sure you’ll treat him fairly, sir,” she said. It almost sounded like an order. “When are we leaving?”

“As soon as we’re all aboard.”

“That won’t be long. The ship’s life support has detected the arrival of Lieutenants Chainer and Breeze. We’ve got Sergeant Ortiz with us.”

“So I hear. I think she’ll be disappointed when she learns about our destination.”

“No chance of a scrap this time?”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. We shouldn’t need to put down on the planet’s surface, at least.”

While they waited for Breeze and Chainer to arrive, Duggan ran through a series of check routines on the Pugilist’s weapons, guidance and engines. He was suspicious of new spacecraft, ever since an accident on an Anderlecht cruiser he’d captained in the past.

“It looks good to go,” he said. “They put this ship together in record time, but they don’t seem to have cut any corners.”

“I’ll be holding tight on the first lightspeed jump,” said McGlashan.

“It came to the Juniper at Light-F. A gentle cruise to run in the engines. We’ll need to go a lot faster than that to reach the rendezvous in time.”

Lieutenant Bill Breeze arrived first, with Lieutenant Frank Chainer right behind. Chainer was carrying a six-pack of hi-stim cans.

“So new you can small the paint drying, sir,” he said. Then, he held the cans aloft, like a supplicant at the temple steps. “I brought supplies.”

“He also wanted to stop off for a coffee on the way,” said Breeze with a wink.

Duggan pointed at their seats. They took the hint and sat. McGlashan powered up their consoles. “The Juniper has already fed our destination coordinates into our mainframe, sir,” she said.

“Start the engines up,” said Duggan.

There was a high-pitched whine, followed by the familiar coarse vibration. It rapidly settled down to a smooth, underlying thrumming. The engines on a warship didn’t take much warming up.

“Gravity drive at full power and ready to go,” said Breeze.

“Request clearance to leave.”

“The Juniper’s given clearance, sir. Hangar Bay Two should be empty of personnel in ten minutes.” Chainer cleared his throat. “The AI has requested you engage the autopilot.”

“Requested?” asked Duggan.

“It won’t open the doors until you do so.”

“Very well.” Duggan activated the Pugilist’s automatic control systems and sat back in his chair.

Ten minutes later, the heavy external doors that separated the Juniper from the vacuum outside slid open. The Pugilist lifted smoothly from the hangar floor, its silver alloy hull bathed in the strobing deep red of the internal warning lights. Under the guidance of its mainframe, the spacecraft exited at precisely the correct speed, and maintained an exact distance from the walls of the aperture. McGlashan looked at Duggan and raised an eyebrow. He shrugged in response.

“I can’t act like a hooligan every time, Commander.”

The bulkhead screen showed an image of the Juniper as it receded into the distance behind the Pugilist. None of the crew spoke for a while – there was something soothing about watching the enormity of space. Minutes passed, until the incredible bulk of the orbital was nothing more than a silvery dot, mankind’s largest space-borne structure reduced to insignificance by the infinity of its surroundings. Glesta-2 was visible to one side – a large, grey sphere of rock and common metals. Soon the Juniper would be lost from sight as it proceeded on its wide circuit about the planet.

“Power up the deep fission drive.”

“On it now. Seventy-eight seconds till they’re ready. That’s a bit quicker than normal – they must have been doing some optimisation.”

“Could be they’ve already learned something from the Crimson’s Dreamer core,” said Chainer.

“Or given the Vincent mainframes a bit more oomph,” said McGlashan.

“Our technology’s moving forwards,” Breeze replied. “That’s all that matters.”

“Go to full speed as soon as you’re able, Lieutenant.”

“Will do, sir.”

Duggan kept an eye on the fission drive readouts, prepared to cut them off if he saw anything anomalous. There was nothing untoward and a series of gauges climbed steadily, until the mainframe completed its calculations and decided the engines were ready to fire. There was a rumbling thump to signify their shift to lightspeed.

“We’re a fraction above Light-H,” said Breeze. “Slightly faster than the Detriment.”

“It’s a relief we’re not waking up from unconsciousness,” said Chainer. Lightspeed jumps on the Crimson had been brutally harsh on the human occupants of the ship. The Pugilist was much slower, and the life support systems had an easier time keeping things stable.

Duggan was also relieved. It would have only been a matter of time before one of the Crimson’s crew or the ship’s infantry had been seriously hurt. Still, he knew which of the two vessels he’d prefer to be in command of.

“Give me the Crimson any day,” said McGlashan, as if she’d read his thoughts.

“Yeah,” said Chainer. “I never did mind a few minor lacerations in the line of duty.”

“How long till we rendezvous?” asked Duggan.

“Six days until we stop, give or take. After that, it looks like we’ve got another ten days until we get to our final destination. A place called Everlong. Why the mid-flight break?” said Breeze.

“It’s a mining planet. The Space Corps is running low on dense metals. They’ve recently found a whole load of what we need, waiting to be dug up. All we have to do is escort a heavy lifter to the planet. We’re meeting it somewhere in the middle of the journey.”

“I’m checking the specs on the ship we’re meeting, sir. It’s big and slow. I’m not even sure if it’ll scrape past Light-E. Why are we escorting it anyway? Everlong is in a safe area of Confederation space.”

“It might not be safe now, Lieutenant. That’s why we’re coming along with it.”

“The Ghasts aren’t letting up, are they?” asked Chainer. “We might be hiding from them, but they’re not going to stop looking.”

“Did you think they would?” asked McGlashan.

“No, Commander. I’ve seen the same things you’ve seen. I didn’t for one minute think they’d let up.”

Duggan pushed himself upright. The chair’s leather covering squeaked and made him wonder why they’d tried to save coppers on the seats, given how much the warship cost to build. “Call the squad to the mess room and we’ll go down and meet them. I’ll let them know where we’re off to.”

Chapter Three

The meeting didn’t take long. There wasn’t much to tell the squad about where they were going or why. Duggan sized up the men and women he’d been provided with – there were a couple who looked like they’d not seen much action, but the rest had the calm, self-assurance that suggested they’d seen their fair share of combat. Sergeant Ortiz hadn’t changed at all in the year since she’d last served on one of Duggan’s ships. She was hard and competent, with lines at the corners of her eyes to betray how long she’d been in the Corps.

“Good to see you, Sergeant,” said Duggan, when the rest of the squad had been dismissed.

“And you, sir.”

“What’ve we got here?”

“There’s some good experience amongst them. A couple of young bloods, full of themselves. I’ll soon fix that.”

“I’m sure you will, Sergeant. I can’t see there being any fighting this time around.”

“I’ll take it as it comes, sir. Word is, there’ve been a few sightings around the Larax Sphere.”

Duggan hid his surprise. He knew he shouldn’t have been shocked to learn that Ortiz had heard some things. Soldiers had a knack for finding out what was meant to be a secret. “You’ve had Monsey hack the Juniper to find that out?”

“Monsey is dead, sir.” She saw his face. “I’m sorry, sir. Didn’t you know? She got chewed up by a Ghast repeater out in some forsaken part of the Axion sector. I didn’t even know we sent ships there anymore.”

“Thank you, Sergeant. I hope she gave as good as she got.”

“I’ll bet she did, sir.”

Duggan returned to the bridge, in a foul mood. He should have heard about Monsey’s death sooner. He’d been kept at his desk for the last year, but that was no excuse for him to remain ignorant of what was happening to the people who’d been with him on the Crimson. Duggan had lost men and women before – it never got easier. He sat in his seat and kept himself busy monitoring the Pugilist’s onboard systems for any fluctuations in output that might indicate a fault somewhere. The others saw his face and didn’t speak. After an hour had passed, Duggan shook away the cloud, determined that he wouldn’t be weighed down by it.

“Have you been through our weapons systems?” he asked. “Admiral Teron said they’ve made some changes.”

“Nothing too revolutionary,” said McGlashan. “We’ve got two banks of eight Lambdas each. At first, I thought it was a downgrade, since the Detriment had two clusters of ten. However, these are a newer model of missile. One hundred and forty thousand klicks targeting range and a higher plasma yield. They fly faster too.”

“Should let us get the jump on the Ghast conventional missiles,” said Chainer hopefully.

“Assuming they haven’t made changes of their own,” said Breeze. He wasn’t usually so cynical.

“The Lambda guidance systems are different as well. I’ve not had a chance to look into it,” said McGlashan.

“Admiral Teron said something about that,” said Duggan. He frowned as he read through the top-level technical specifications of the missiles they carried. “We can manually disable the homing element of the weapon.”

“Eh? Why would we want to do that?” asked Chainer.

Duggan realised why. “The Lambdas can fly a lot further than their maximum launch range. The limitation is in the targeting – they can’t detect an object that’s too far away. If we disable the guidance, we can fire them in a straight line from much greater distances.”

“Like the Crimson did against that Dreamer ship?” said Breeze.

“Must be,” said Chainer. “Except the Crimson had eighteen missile clusters and a core that’s far faster than what we’ve got on this ship. We wouldn’t have a hope of getting a straight-line hit on something that’s more than twenty thousand klicks out. Even then it would be down to luck.”

“It’s something, Lieutenant,” said Duggan. “An option we didn’t have before. At least the Corps is trying to learn new ways of doing things.”

“Yeah. It’s got to be better than nothing.”

“What about the nuclear warheads?” asked Duggan, turning towards McGlashan.

“I don’t see any nukes in our arsenal, sir,” she said.

“They must be locked to the captain’s console. Even after all these centuries, they’re still scared of an accidental launch. I’ve given you access to them, Commander. I’m sure you won’t get up to any mischief.”

“I don’t like them,” she conceded. “These ones are just shy of a gigaton each. Seems like they’ll boost for half a million klicks. They’re not exactly nimble and they won’t outrun anything.”

“Mankind’s answer to the Shatterer missiles,” said Chainer. “Can you foresee any situation where we’ll need them, sir?”

“No, Lieutenant, I can’t. Except that as we’ve learned, it’s occasionally good to have an option for the unforeseen. I’d rather have them with us than not.”

The remainder of the six days went by in relative quiet. The mood onboard was relaxed and Duggan reflected that they’d all had the threat of punishment and dismissal to deal with for far longer than was good for their health. The war against the Ghasts wasn’t going well, but it didn’t appear to be weighing down on the crew. Things had been comparatively quiet for a while – or at least the Space Corps hadn’t lost any major ships for the last few months. Several Anderlechts and a few dozen Gunners had been destroyed in battle that Duggan knew about. In a way, the losses were almost acceptably low, given how many new ships the Confederation was building. In his heart, Duggan knew that something was going to change. The Ghasts hadn’t given up on the war. He worried that next time there was a major confrontation, mankind was going to be in for a shock.

Two hours into the sixth day, the Pugilist’s deep fission engines cut out and, without fuss, the spaceship entered normal space.

“Any sign of the Goliath or the Ribald?” asked Duggan.

“Scanning the locality,” said Chainer, the faraway tone to his voice indicative of his concentration.

“We’re early,” said Breeze. “The mainframe calculated it almost ninety minutes out.”

“They’re here, sir. I’m getting two pings a little over an hour’s sub-light travel away. There’s nothing else out here, so they’re easy to spot.”

Duggan took manual control of the Pugilist and directed the ship towards the coordinates Chainer fed through to him. “Hail both vessels.”

As he waited for Chainer to get a response, Duggan zoomed in the main display to show the MHL Goliath. The back three-quarters of the ship was cuboid, while the nose was much smaller and looked as if it had been welded on as an afterthought. The cargo bay doors were huge and ran in pairs along the underside of the otherwise featureless superstructure. It was functional and nothing more. The Pugilist’s mainframe listed the dimensions and overlaid the image of a Gunner onto the screen. The Goliath was a big ship – over five kilometres in length, but bulky and massive where a warship would be sleek and streamlined. Unlike a warship, the heavy lifter had plenty of internal space and its fission engines were comparatively small. Its gravity drive was oversized and allowed the Goliath to drag an inconceivable weight of cargo away into space.

“I’m getting responses from both vessels,” said Chainer. “Captain Erika Jonas asks what took us so long.”

Duggan gave a half-smile. “Tell her we stopped off for a bite to eat.”

“Captain Mason Graham from the ES Ribald wants to speak to you directly, sir.”

“Very well. Bring him through.”

“He wants a private channel, sir.”

“What the hell does he want a private channel for?” asked Duggan. He shook his head. “Fine, connect him.”

Moments later, there was an almost undiscernible fizz in Duggan’s earpiece as it became active. A man’s voice spoke. It was of indeterminate age, but Duggan had already looked at the files and knew the speaker was twenty-six years old.

“Captain Duggan?”

“Speaking. Captain Graham, what do you need a private channel for?”

There was a short pause. “Protocol, Captain Duggan. The communication between two captains of the Space Corps must remain confidential at all times when it pertains to matters relating to their assignment or mission.”

Duggan thought he could just about remember reading something about that. “What matters do you wish to discuss?”

“Formations and tactics, Captain Duggan. I have a few suggestions.”

“There are only two warships and one MHL, Captain Graham. We’ll be at lightspeed for ten days and in orbit around Everlong for no more than a single day. I can’t imagine we’ll have much need of a formation. As for tactics, if we see anything larger than a Kraven light cruiser, our tactics will be to get away as quickly as we can.”

“Captain Duggan, we might encounter Ghast warships at sub-light near to Everlong.”

“Indeed we might. In that case, I will tell you what to do and you will do it at once. Are those tactics clear enough for you?”

“I’m not sure that’s the best approach, Captain Duggan,” said Captain Graham. His voice sounded strained.

“While I’m in command, that’s the approach we’re taking. Am I clear?”

“Yes, Captain Duggan. Very clear.”

“Good. The Pugilist will come to within five thousand klicks of the Goliath. My comms man will feed the exact flightpath to both the Ribald and the Goliath, to ensure we all exit lightspeed at close to the same place. The Pugilist and Ribald will depart ten minutes prior to the Goliath, to ensure we arrive first - we’ll be going at Light-E, so there shouldn’t be too much variation.”

“Understood.”

“Excellent. And Captain Graham? I trust my crew almost as much as I trust myself. There’ll be no more private channels for discussions like this one.”

Duggan ended the connection and stared ahead, his face like thunder. When he’d gathered himself, he noticed McGlashan grinning at him. He glowered at her and she quickly looked back at her console.

“I’m going to bring us in close,” he said. “Lieutenant Breeze, get an advance calculation of our course and transmit it to the Goliath and the Ribald. Lieutenant Chainer, let Captain Jonas know that we’ll be on our way as soon as we’re within five thousand klicks.”

“The Goliath needs an hour before it can break into lightspeed, sir,” said Breeze. “They’re not built for speed or urgency.”

“We’re an hour away. The timing is close to perfect,” said Duggan.

“I’ve let them know, sir,” said Chainer. “Captain Jonas tells me they’re putting coal in the boilers as we speak.”

One hour later, the ES Pugilist came to within five thousand klicks of the MHL Goliath. The Ribald had taken up a position on the far side of the heavy lifter, also five thousand klicks away. At precisely the same time, the two Gunners accelerated away from local space, vanishing into the controlled uncertainty of lightspeed. Ten minutes later, the Goliath followed.

The Pugilist’s mainframe calculated the journey would take just under ten days to complete. Duggan got himself comfortable, feeling a sense of relief that the comms systems wouldn’t function at the speed they were travelling. He didn’t want Captain Graham bothering him with any more suggestions on the way.

“What’s the Goliath carrying, sir?” asked Breeze. “That’s a Class One MHL. We’ve only got a handful of those in service.”

“Machinery. Drills, grinders, smelters. When it drops off all that cargo, it’s going to fill up with as much semi-refined metal as it can fit in the hold.”

“It can do all that in a day?” asked McGlashan.

“Probably not, Commander. I know I told Captain Graham we’d be in orbit for a day. I’d guess we’re looking at closer to five days or a week.”

“Is the Goliath leaving many personnel on Everlong?” asked Breeze.

“A few. Operations are mostly automated, since the planet isn’t able to support life.”

“It must be tough for the miners,” said McGlashan.

“Tough and dangerous. I don’t envy them,” said Duggan. He got up from his seat. “The gravity on Everlong is higher than we’re used to. I don’t plan to set us down, but I’d suggest you get in some gym time in case that changes.” With that, he set off to the Pugilist’s tiny gym room, intending to follow his own advice.

Chapter Four

Ten days and one hour later, the ES Pugilist emerged from lightspeed, two hundred thousand kilometres away from its destination. Everlong was the fifth planet out of twelve, orbiting a much larger than average sun. Everlong itself was nothing extraordinary, with a diameter of fifty thousand kilometres and an arid surface of sand, rock and little else. What made it unusual was the quantity of valuable metals to be found within its crust.

“Lieutenant Chainer, scan the area.”

“On it. Standard checks show the area’s clear.”

“Run a detailed check.”

“Yes, sir. Are you expecting something?”

“Not quite expecting, Lieutenant. It’s always best to be certain.”

“We’ve come in more or less exactly where we wanted,” said Chainer. “The mining operations are visible to our sensors from here. They’re right on the cusp, though and the planet’s rotation will take them out of sight within the hour.”

“Any sign of anything unusual?”

“There’s not a peep, sir. Everything’s quiet.”

“Is that good or bad?”

Chainer frowned. “I don’t know, sir. I would expect there to be some traffic. They probably don’t send much long-distance, but the surface operations would usually be messy with broadcasts.”

Duggan crossed over to look over Chainer’s shoulder. “What’s your opinion, Lieutenant? Could they be in the middle of a shut-down?”

“I’d expect there to be more broadcasts if they were having a maintenance break, sir.”

“Technical difficulties?”

“Possible. It wouldn’t affect every piece of equipment on the surface. The sensors on the Pugilist aren’t the most sensitive models available, but this is still a warship. We could detect a single hand-held communicator from here.”

“How visible was our arrival?”

“Pretty visible,” said Breeze. “Anything military would know we’ve arrived.”

“If they were looking.”

“They’d have to be stupid to miss us.”

“Keep our comms silent for the time being, Lieutenant Chainer. I’d like to say there’s nothing to worry about.”

“You’re not going to?”

“It’s not a phrase I believe in.”

“There’s a fission signature nearby, sir. It’s the ES Ribald,” said Breeze.

“Ribald, this is Pugilist. Maintain silence,” said Chainer.

“Roger that,” came the response from the Ribald’s comms man. “Any reason for concern?”

“Just precautions at the moment. We’re not detecting any surface activity.”

“This is Captain Graham. The files report this to be a sub-surface mining operation in metal-saturated rock. I would expect any activity to be hidden from our sensors, particularly at our current angle to the planet. I recommend we approach as normal, as per Space Corps procedures.”

“We’ll proceed with caution, Captain Graham,” said Duggan. “Keep your crew on alert and arm your countermeasures.”

“The Goliath’s appeared in near space, sir,” said Breeze. “Fifteen thousand klicks closer to the planet.”

“Captain Jonas, this is the Pugilist. We’re going to approach the planet with caution. Keep your distance behind us – recommend fifty thousand klicks.”

Captain Jonas’ voice filled the bridge, rich and sultry. “Fifty thousand klicks it is. We’ve got enough machinery in the hold to mine this planet dry in five years. I wouldn’t like to have it spilled before we can put it to use.”

Duggan gave a signal for the channel to be closed. “I’m bringing us closer for a look,” he said to his crew. “Lieutenant Chainer, keep your eyes glued to those readouts.”

“Captain Graham might be correct, sir,” said McGlashan. “We keep our mining operations as quiet as we can. Ever since the early days of the war. No miner wants to see a Ghast ship arriving in orbit – it means almost certain death for the people below.”

“I know this, Commander. There’s nothing to lose by remaining suspicious. Remember we’re effectively in contested space now.”

“I thought there was no proof the Ghasts destroyed our vessels?” said Breeze.

“There isn’t, Lieutenant. However, I don’t like surprises.”

Duggan kept the Pugilist at a steady speed, without pushing the vessel’s sub-light engines to anything like their full capacity. He noted the Ribald kept a precise distance to his left and slightly behind, while the Goliath gathered speed early to ensure it was able to keep pace with the much nimbler warships.

At one hundred thousand klicks, he looked at Chainer for an update. The lieutenant had been quiet for the last few minutes, his brow furrowed in concentration.

“Lieutenant Chainer?”

“Sir, I’m looking. I’m getting a clearer view of the operations at this range. The mine is a big, open pit, which leaves them with an extremely low profile from here. I’d be able to see better if we were directly above.”

“Any noise?”

“Nothing. When we get closer I should be able to detect the vibrations of their surface equipment. They don’t keep everything below ground. Some of the processing goes on up top.”

“Ribald, this is Pugilist. Something isn’t right. Keep alert.”

“Roger.”

Duggan checked the time logs since their arrival. “We’ve been here almost ten minutes. If there was a Ghast ship in orbit, we’d have seen it by now, wouldn’t we?”

“Almost certainly. Past data suggests they maintain a speed that would have had them visible to us by now. Even if they’d gone behind the planet the moment we’d arrived,” said Breeze. “And they’d have seen our fission signature.”

“I’m still not happy,” said Duggan. With little choice but to proceed, he increased the power to Pugilist’s engines. At forty thousand klicks, the planet filled the bulkhead viewscreen completely. It was a dull shade, somewhere between a yellow and a grey - as drab a place as any other mining planet in Confederation space.

“What a shit hole,” muttered Chainer to himself.

“I’ll bring us higher, so we can see down into the hole,” said Duggan. “I don’t want us to be right on top of them by the time we get a proper look.”

“This was a big mine already, from the looks of things,” said Chainer. “The surface works alone are eight kilometres across. I still can’t see the bottom from this angle. I’m starting to pick up vibrations – they’re consistent with heavy machinery.”

“You’re certain?” asked Duggan sharply.

“It’s definitely mechanical, sir.” Chainer didn’t say anything for another few seconds. “Other than that, there’s nothing. I don’t like it. I should be able to tap into their comms from here. They only have civilian kit at places like this. It leaks out for thousands of klicks if you know what you’re listening for.”

“Could the Ghasts have been here, sir?” asked McGlashan. “They might have killed everyone and left.”

“There’s no sign of plasma spill on the rim of the pit,” said Chainer. “I guess they could have dropped some missiles dead centre and I’d still not have the angle to see it.”

Duggan didn’t like it at all. This was meant to have been a straightforward escort mission. Now it was beginning to seem like something had happened to the Everlong mining operations. The one reassurance was the lack of any Ghast ships in the vicinity.

“We’ll be directly above them in a few seconds,” he said. “I’m keeping to thirty thousand klicks. We’ll get a perfect view from there.”

“I can see it now, sir. Everything looks normal. They’ve got two big grinders on the go. No sign of any operatives. I don’t know how automated the grinders are. Wait on, there’s no power to their comms mast, though I can’t see any outward signs of damage.”

“Damnit, we’re going to have to land and check it out,” said Duggan. “Try hailing them.”

“There’s no point, sir. I’ve got nothing to patch into without that mast. They’ll have a wired link to other comms units underground, but without the main one, I can’t reach anyone or anything.”

“Ribald, this is Pugilist,” said Duggan. There was no response. He looked at his tactical display – the other Gunner had drifted slightly off course. “Force open a channel,” he said to Chainer.

“My request isn’t reaching them – something’s wrong.” His voice climbed in pitch. “Sir, I’m picking up an anomaly just below the surface. Ghast military alloys.”

“There are no positrons coming from the Ribald’s hull, sir,” said Breeze.

“A disruptor!” said Duggan, pulling the nose of the ship away from the mine pit. He increased the gravity drive to full and pointed them towards the surface, hoping to cut off the angle and prevent any further attacks.

“There’s a missile launch from the surface, sir. A Shatterer,” said McGlashan, her voice eerily calm. “We’re its target. Seven seconds to impact.”

Duggan wanted to hit something in frustration. They’d been drawn into a trap and there was little he could do about it. He had the Pugilist at full power and aimed at the distant surface. The heat readings from the hull rocketed upwards as the particles in the planet’s atmosphere battered against it. He knew it wasn’t going to be enough – it wasn’t going to be nearly enough. The Ghast Shatterer missile curved in flight, adjusting its trajectory to pursue the fleeing warship. Travelling at a little under four thousand klicks per second, it struck the rear of the ES Pugilist. The missile’s warhead buried itself into the metres-thick armour, before it detonated in a blinding flash of white plasma. The warship’s armour was ripped apart, sending a cascade of burning metal in a wide arc behind.

The bridge shook violently and a deafening rumble thundered through the bulkhead walls. Chainer and McGlashan were knocked from their chairs and onto the floor. Duggan clung on grimly to his control sticks. The vessel’s emergency alarms chimed and the room was bathed in red light. Duggan scanned his status screens – one of them had gone out completely, whilst the other four poured an endless list of text and three-dimensional images of the damage for him to try and make sense of. Far from subsiding, the rumbling increased in intensity, booming against his ears.

“We’re screwed, sir,” said Breeze. “Fission drives almost completely shredded. Gravity drives offline.”

“Get them back,” Duggan said through gritted teeth.

“I don’t think there’s anything to get back, sir.”

“I don’t care. Give me something.”

Chainer dragged himself onto his chair, cursing loudly. McGlashan regained her feet. She looked dazed.

“Commander, is there any else incoming?”

McGlashan visibly shook herself and her expression was angry that she’d been unable to stop herself being thrown from her post. “Negative, sir. One was enough.”

“Engines, Lieutenant. Where are they?”

“Still offline,” said Breeze. He was too busy to say more.

“We are going to crash into the surface at almost one thousand klicks per second if you don’t do something. There’ll be a big new crater next to the mine.”

“I’m on it, sir,” snapped Breeze.

Without its gravity drive, the spacecraft was nothing more than a lump of metal. It couldn’t glide and it couldn’t change direction without its engines. It hurtled downwards, the bulkhead viewscreen showing a jumpy image of the planet, disrupted by noise from the ship’s damaged sensor arrays.

“We’ll burn up in twenty seconds,” said Duggan.

“There’s no power – nothing,” said Breeze. “The mainframe’s not quick enough to re-route in time.”

Duggan acted instinctively. He shut off the weapons and also the mainframe’s access to what little remained of the fission drive. Without access to those sub-systems, the core diverted its processing to the gravity drive.

“I’m getting a utilization spike on the engines,” said Breeze. “Come on, come on!”

“Now, Lieutenant.”

Breeze sent the command to restart the gravity drive. Something howled for a second, before fading away until it was lost in the rumbling. “What the hell?” he asked, then, “They’re online, sir! Four percent of maximum output.”

“Get me more,” said Duggan, struggling to keep the Pugilist from entering an uncontrolled spin. He detected a response from the control sticks and fought hard to correct the spiral.

“We’re not gonna burn, we’re not gonna burn,” Chainer repeated under his breath. “Come on, sir.”

At five thousand klicks above the surface, Duggan wasn’t sure if he could get the ship under control. It was responding sluggishly and the nose wouldn’t come up. The hull temperature was at one hundred and thirty percent and climbing. The speed of descent slowed, but it didn’t look like it would be enough.

“It’s going to be close,” said McGlashan. “The hull is beginning to melt.”

“Gravity engines are dropping off, sir,” said Breeze. “Back down to three percent.”

“Not now!” shouted Duggan. “It can’t happen now!”

As the atmosphere thickened, Duggan found he was able to direct the plummeting warship through the resistance of the colliding atoms. It wasn’t much – hardly anything – but it let him alter the Pugilist’s trajectory just enough to approach the surface at an angle. The gravity drives were slowing them, yet with only a fraction of their output available it wasn’t going to allow a controlled landing.

“Sergeant Ortiz, I hope you’re buckled up,” said Chainer through the comms. “Shit, the internal voice is down.”

“We’re going to hit,” said Duggan. “Hold on.”

Seconds later, the ES Pugilist crashed at an oblique into the surface of the planet Everlong, at almost two thousand kilometres per hour. It skipped up once, before it began rolling, tearing vast chunks out of the stone. Where the hull crashed through an area of sand dunes, the heat from its entry fused the grains into a coarse glass. Eventually, the ruined craft came to a stop and lay motionless, while the retained heat of its alloys slowly dwindled into the thin air.

Chapter Five

Duggan coughed and groaned. His head felt like someone had struck it with a hammer and he was sore all over. He cracked an eye open and red light seeped in. The persistent background rasp of the ship’s alarm grated through his ears and into his brain. It was so hot that he felt like he was on fire. A face appeared over him, concern etched into its features.

“How long?” he asked, the words coming out as little more than a harsh croak.

“Fifteen minutes, sir,” said McGlashan. “I’ve sent Lieutenant Chainer to fetch Corporal Bryant.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Too late to say that now – there’s no way to let Lieutenant Chainer know. Pretty much everything’s out of action, or damaged.”

“Except the life support.”

“It kept us alive, sir. We’d be nothing more than bloody smears across the walls without it. I don’t know how much longer it’ll work. It’s failing. The whole ship is failing – what’s left of it.”

Duggan coughed again and unclipped himself from his seat. “What you’re saying, Commander, is that I can’t sit around in this chair doing nothing.”

She smiled, the sight of it giving Duggan some cheer. “That’s exactly what I’m saying, sir.”

“Where’s Lieutenant Breeze?”

“I’m over here, sir.”

Duggan craned his head to look, feeling a sense of relief that Breeze was alive. With a monumental effort, he pushed himself upright. Nausea threatened to swamp him for a time, until he suppressed it with an effort of will.

“What’s our situation?”

“We’ve come down less than fifty klicks from the mine. A good effort in the circumstances.” She flashed the smile again. “The rear two hundred metres of the Pugilist is gone, or at least there’s nothing usable there.”

“Any losses?”

McGlashan’s face changed. “I don’t know, sir, the internal comms aren’t going to work again any time soon. Lieutenant Chainer will get details on our casualties and he’s going to tell Sergeant Ortiz to find out what’s left in the hold. We’ll need suits to get out of here. There’s no air and we’re spilling antimatter in a ninety-kilometre arc.”

The sound of hurried footsteps at the bridge entrance alerted Duggan to the arrival of Chainer and the squad medic, Corporal Bryant. Bryant was short, slim and as no-nonsense as they came.

“Sit!” she insisted. Duggan sat. Bryant immediately linked him up to her portable diagnostic and treatment box. She watched the readouts for a full thirty seconds. “You’ll live,” she said, without any more explanation.

“How are the men?” Duggan asked.

“Two dead, sir. Howell and Schneider.”

“Damnit. What happened?”

“You’d need to check the life-support logs. They were on the bottom bunk in the same room. If I had to guess, I’d say the life support wasn’t functioning at floor level. There isn’t much of them left to bury or launch into space.”

Duggan dismissed her. There’d be time to mourn later. “What happened to the Ribald and the Goliath?”

“I don’t know, sir,” said Chainer. “The missile took out our aft sensor arrays. I’ve checked the logs and confirmed that we received no data after the impact.”

“Do we have anything left at the front to scan for them?”

“No, sir. We’re buried nose-down. The long-range comms are gone as well. We’re little more than a metal husk.”

“We need to get outside,” said Duggan. “And get clear of the area.”

“Sergeant Ortiz is heading to the hold. She’s going to gather what we need. If it’s still there.”

“The hold is right near the bottom of the ship. It’s going to be hot in there for a good while yet.”

“The squad keep a couple of suits in their quarters,” said Chainer. “Better safe than sorry, I guess.”

“I’m glad they’re prepared,” said Duggan. He had a worrying thought. “If we’re nose-down, can we get out?”

“I think so,” said McGlashan. “The secondary boarding ramp still has power. I don’t know if we’ll be able to open the primary ramp. Or the hold doors.”

“We’ll need the tanks,” said Duggan. “Assuming they’ve not been smashed to pieces.”

“I’ve checked,” said Chainer. “There are no status updates from any of the four vehicles. They could be damaged beyond repair or it could be down to the malfunction of the internal comms.”

“Follow me,” said Duggan. “We’re abandoning ship. Another Gunner under my command shot down.” He was still angry at being caught unawares by the Ghasts.

He ducked through the bridge entrance and into the corridor outside. Usually he’d have been struck by waves of colder air only a few metres from the heat of the control room. Now it was so hot he could feel the air searing his lungs if he breathed in too deeply. The hull of a warship was designed to dissipate heat quickly throughout the structure. The problems came if there was too much heat – at that point, the whole of the interior could heat beyond the capabilities of the HVAC to control. The Pugilist was dangerously close to becoming a death trap.

Duggan took the crew to the mess room – it was filled with the same red light as the bridge, but the alarm was mercifully quiet. Sergeant Ortiz would have to come through here in order to reach the bridge. They didn’t have to wait long. A figure entered, wearing one of the Space Corps’ flexible polymer space suits. The figure was Sergeant Ortiz, dripping with sweat and dragging a couple of suits behind her. Corporal Simmons was also there, similarly encumbered. Neither of them wore their helmets – it was too cramped in the ship to make easy progress wearing one.

“Sir, we’ve found suits and rifles in the hold.” She dropped the pile to the ground, taking care that the oversized helmets didn’t clatter off the floor. “The tanks are beat up – all four broke their moorings. There’s been an explosion as well – I think a plasma grenade blew up in its locker.”

“The lockers are fully insulated,” said Breeze.

Ortiz shrugged. “It was too hot to stick around, even in the suits. It’s getting hotter as well, sir.”

“That’s not good,” said Breeze.

“Will the tanks work?” asked Duggan. He picked up a suit and began to struggle his way into it.

“If we can flip them over, I’m sure we’d get at least one of them going, sir,” said Ortiz. “Three are on their roofs, one is on its side.”

Duggan needed a direct answer. “Sergeant Ortiz, is it your opinion that we should abandon the tanks?”

“Yes, sir. I believe we should evacuate the ship as soon as possible. If we manage to get one of the tanks the right way up, there’s no way to be sure we’ll be able to get it out through the launch chute. The mainframe’s locked everything down. I’m sure you could override, but there’s no guarantee there’ll be anything other than sand or dirt at the bottom of the chute. We’ve got a portable beacon with us – we’ll be able to let the Corps know we’re out here.”

“We’ll not be using that beacon yet, Sergeant.”

“Sir?”

“The Ghasts must think we’re all dead. We need to use that to our advantage and see if we can take out their disruptor and Shatterer emplacements. We’re here to escort the Goliath and until I know what’s happened to it, that’s what we’re going to do.”

Ortiz saluted. “Yes sir!”

“Gather the squad and get them suited. We’re leaving by the secondary ramp. Make sure you save a couple of rifles for us.”

Ortiz nodded and left. Five minutes later, Duggan and the rest of the crew were in their suits. The feeling of being ensconced in the material was an unusual one. Duggan could feel his skin temperature dropping immediately to a more acceptable level, while his face and head remained covered in sweat. He picked up his helmet and resisted the temptation to put it on.

They left the mess room in a line. Breathing became harder and Duggan wondered how the soldiers had managed, since they were quartered closer to the outer hull than the bridge was. It wasn’t long until he had to put his helmet on. The servos hissed as they made a perfect seal around his neck collar. At once, the onboard computer spilled information onto the mini-HUD, informing him of the temperature, his assumed state of physical wellbeing and who on the ship was sharing his open comms channel. He inhaled the cold air inside - it was redolent with the scent of rubber and sweat, but the relief it brought was immense.

It was crowded at the top of the secondary ramp hatch. There was a small room here which was much too small to fit a combined seventeen infantry and crew, so the men and women had been forced to line up against the wall of the two exit corridors. They all wore helmets – this close to the outer skin of the hull, it was far too hot for any of them to survive without one. Someone handed Duggan a rifle without being asked and he took it gratefully.

“Please confirm through the open channel when you’re ready,” said Duggan. “There’s not enough air to breathe outside and you don’t want to know how many positrons there are.” He checked his temperature reading and saw it was over two hundred and fifty degrees – already a couple of degrees higher than it had been five minutes ago.

Duggan elbowed his way to the release panel for the secondary boarding ramp. The mainframe was slow to respond to his commands and he wondered if it was dying, or if it was occupied elsewhere. Impatient to be on, he repeated the instruction. With a scrape of warped metal, the ramp unlocked from its mounting and juddered as it descended. His helmet gave a quiet chime to alert him to the dangerous levels of antimatter.

“Seems like we’re partially on our side,” said Duggan, peering along the length of the boarding ramp. It was early morning on Everlong according to his helmet. Outside, he could see swirling grey sand, blowing in waves across more grey sand. The light from Everlong’s sun was poor, or obscured by clouds of dust - it was hard to tell from where he was standing. The far end of the ramp was suspended in the air and Duggan made his way carefully along it. “Three metres to the ground,” he said, looking down. “It could have been a lot worse.”

Without giving the matter anymore thought, Duggan slung his rifle over his back, crouched at the edge of the ramp and dropped off it. He used his hands to grab the edge and arrest his fall. From there, he dropped the remaining three feet to the ground. Above him, a figure loomed – his suit told him it was Sergeant Ortiz. Seconds later, she was on the soft, sandy ground with him. It wasn’t long until the rest of the ship’s occupants were outside. From this close, it was impossible to see what state the Pugilist was in, but the alloy hull creaked and pinged loudly as it cooled. The mine was to the north-east of their position and Duggan led them that way at once.

“Lieutenant Breeze, I was told by Commander McGlashan that our engines are throwing out positrons in a ninety-kilometre arc.”

Breeze responded on the private channel. “At least ninety kilometres. It won’t die down for a thousand years either, unless the mainframe’s able to do some major rerouting. Even that might take months.” He glanced over his shoulder to the stricken warship. The damage was much easier to see now they’d made it a hundred metres away. “Years,” said Breeze, when he saw the vast rip through the metal. “How the hell did we live through that?”

Duggan didn’t know. He stopped for a few seconds to study the spacecraft. When the wind died down and the sand stopped swirling, he could see how the front of the ship had melted until it was almost unrecognizable from what it had once been. It had cooled and hardened already, leaving the once sleek craft looking lumpen and ugly. The rear of the ship – or at least the part which Duggan could see – was splayed outwards, with the alloys burned and grotesquely twisted. Given the opportunity, the Corps might one day attempt a recovery in order to re-use the precious metals it contained. Certainly, it would never fly again as the ES Pugilist.

“I’m glad the hole is pointing away from us,” said Duggan at last. “I wouldn’t have felt comfortable walking for fifty klicks with an open fission drive pointing straight at us. I’m not sure how long the suits would hold up against that.”

The going was rough – underfoot it was a mixture of ankle-dragging sand and strewn rocks. The soldiers and crew were fit, but even so they had to watch the ground carefully to be sure they didn’t suffer an unwanted fall. On the plus side, the ground was relatively level. Duggan was keen to make quick progress, since he didn’t know if any of the miners were alive, or what had happened to the Goliath and the Ribald.

“I hate going blind,” he growled to McGlashan.

“Only forty-seven klicks to go, sir,” she said, realising at once why he was so frustrated. “The days here are twenty-two hours long. We should get there late tomorrow.”

A voice broke into the conversation as one of the soldiers swore loudly into the open channel – it was Santos. “Shit man, what’s that?”

Duggan spun around, trying to see what had caught the man’s attention. It didn’t take much to find – something had exploded behind them. The visibility was poor and it looked like a grey-blue light had surrounded the Pugilist’s crash site.

“Is that the engines?” asked Friedman. “Hell, I’m glad we got away in time.”

Duggan felt cold, even in the cocoon of his suit. “That’s not the engines, soldier,” he said. “Something’s just hit it from orbit.”

No one spoke as they digested this information. Duggan didn’t need to spell out exactly what he meant – a Ghast ship had arrived and it had decided to finish the job started by the ground-launched Shatterer missile. What Duggan hoped to achieve was about to become a whole lot harder.

Chapter Six

They picked up the pace, risking their safety in order to increase their distance from the ES Pugilist. Duggan watched his pounding feet as they left a trail of shifting imprints, which were quickly swept away by the buffeting winds.

“Lieutenant Chainer, what are the chances of the Ghast ship spotting us?”

“That really depends, sir. If they’re specifically looking for us in this area, they’re definitely going to see us. If they’re doing a random, high-level sweep, they’ll probably miss us. On top of that, you have to consider what sort of ship it is. If it’s a light cruiser, it’ll take them more effort as they’ll have fewer sensors. If it’s something like a Cadaveron, their AI could well spot us even if their comms man doesn’t. Assuming they even have a comms man.”

“And assuming you can call whatever it is a man,” said Duggan wryly.

“You’ve gotta call them something, sir. Man is as good a word as any. Woman just wouldn’t seem right for some reason, given what warmongering bastards the Ghasts are. The only real warmongering bastard I know who’s a woman is Sergeant Ortiz. No offense meant, of course.”

Duggan smiled to himself. “That’s fine, Lieutenant, I know what you mean.” He considered his next words carefully. “We’re likely to see some fighting. How are you with a rifle?”

“I’m a good shot, sir. I came third in my year. Just because I’ve not fired one in anger for a while doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten how to aim. We’ve faced death many times before on the bridge. In my eyes that’s no different to facing it when you’re carrying a rifle.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant, that’s what I needed to hear.”

“One last thing, sir. We should keep comms talk to a minimum. Our channels are well-shielded and the signal doesn’t have far to travel between us, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

“Agreed. I’ll let the squad know.”

They pushed on for the remainder of the planet’s day. It made no difference to a warship’s sensors if it was light or dark, so Duggan felt it best they press on rather than waiting for night. On board a spaceship, night and day lost a lot of its meaning, but Duggan knew most of the people who served on one tried to keep to a routine.

“Any of the squad going to fall asleep on us, Sergeant?” he asked at one point.

“I don’t think so, sir. A few of the guys have their own sleeping patterns. If I catch them flagging, I’ll make sure it’s the last thing they do.”

She said it so calmly that Duggan half believed her words. “Don’t shoot anyone until you’ve spoken to me first, Sergeant.”

“I’ll keep it to flesh wounds only, sir,” she said.

Mindful of Chainer’s words about keeping comms noise down, Duggan didn’t say anything further. Night came and the temperature fell far below freezing. It was nothing too extreme and Duggan hardly registered the fact. His suit kept his body at a comfortable temperature, as well as recycling his waste. On top of that, it kept him in tip-top physical shape by injecting him with a tiny quantity of a complex stimulant every three hours to ensure he was able to keep going. The drugs could keep the suit’s occupant functioning for a month – longer in some cases. At the end of it you’d feel like crap, but it was mostly better than dying. Some of the men and women who saw a lot of surface action developed a craving for what they called suit time – their fix of the stimulants. It was an addiction that Duggan had no wish to acquire.

They stopped for a time – it could hardly be called a camp. It was nothing more than a cluster of seventeen men and women in a loose circle, clutching their gauss rifles as they tried to catch some sleep. One or two lay on their sides, hoping the coarse sand would act as a cushion against the discomfort. Duggan had been out in places like this before and he didn’t even try to lie down – he knew it wouldn’t help him sleep. He looked around, willing his eyes to pierce the gloom. There was nothing to look at – the Pugilist had come down on a bleak, open area of the planet where the wind never seemed to stop blowing and the sand didn’t end. The utter darkness above was dotted with an unfamiliar pattern of stars. The speed at which a modern warship could travel meant you never got the chance to become familiar with the skies. In truth, Duggan didn’t especially care. He was fascinated by space, yet he’d never developed any romantic notions about what lay there.

One or two voices carried across the open channel and Sergeant Ortiz cut them off with a sharp command. Soldiers needed the camaraderie of hearing each other’s voices and Duggan felt bad for them. It could be lonely when you had to travel in silence. It was easier if your team mates were able to push you onwards.

After six hours of discomfort in impenetrable darkness, Duggan gave the command for them to break camp. The suits could enhance the landscape sufficiently to enable travel even in the blackest of nights, but the squad still needed a break and night had been as good a time as any. Duggan hadn’t slept well and he was sure he wasn’t alone. The temptation was already there to instruct the suit to inject a booster stimulant into his bloodstream. He resisted for the moment, certain that many of the people around him wouldn’t be so stubborn.

He picked up his rifle. “Let’s go,” he said.

The day progressed in the same manner as the last one. The wreckage of the ES Pugilist was far behind now and Duggan was sure they’d remain ignorant even if the Ghasts fired another dozen missiles at the shell. The tedium of silence gave him a chance to think. He wondered why the Ghasts would go to the effort of installing a disruptor and a Shatterer launcher on such a forsaken planet as this. He was forced to concede that whatever the reasons, it had allowed them to take three Corps spaceships completely by surprise.

He permitted himself a modest gamble by speaking to Lieutenant Chainer. “You detected the presence of Ghast alloys on the surface just before they launched the missile at us.”

“I did, sir.”

“How big?”

“It was big. I can’t think of a more technical term for it and I didn’t get time to obtain an estimate of the measurements. The missile launcher was a lot bigger than a Lambda cluster – even bigger than the ones we had on the Crimson.”

“Maybe that’s why we’ve not seen such a weapon on anything smaller than a Cadaveron,” mused Duggan. “It might need to be mounted on a large platform.”

“When the Ghasts attacked the Archimedes, their newest Oblivion only launched six Shatterers at a time. In the circumstances, we have to assume they weren’t holding back. There was a long delay between launches.”

“It must have been a reasonable investment in time and effort to bring their hardware all the way here and then install it.”

“It implies a certain inclination towards permanency, sir.”

“Up till now they’ve shown no sign they want to do anything other than destroy our resource-gathering operations. Yet here they are, putting in enough defences to knock out a couple of Gunners. Perhaps even an Anderlecht cruiser if one happened by.”

“With something else in orbit as well, sir.”

“They’re pushing outwards and holding onto their gains, Lieutenant. If they’re increasing their presence in the Larax Sphere, it doesn’t bode well for the occupied Confederation planets.”

“I thought it was only a matter of time anyway?”

“It is, Lieutenant. I had hopes that maybe they’d be looking in some other direction for a while. Instead, they’re getting ever closer and we’re definitely not ready for them.”

“The topographical scans I made before we were shot down detected the presence of Gallenium, sir. Fragments on the surface and borne in the sand. The place must be rife with it for it to be just blowing around.”

“If they’ve found big deposits of Gallenium, I’m not surprised the Corps sent a heavy lifter here,” said Duggan. “I think there are only five or six known planets with significant quantities of the ore in Confederation space.”

“Are we running out of it, sir?”

“As far as I’m aware, we’ve got sufficient proven reserves to put engines in hundreds of new Hadrons. Perhaps the Ghasts are running out. I can’t think of any other reason they’d want to establish a base here.”

“Why isn’t the surface overrun with their soldiers?”

“You don’t need a significant force on the ground to run a mine, Lieutenant. All you need are enough people to keep the machines ticking over and to say hello when the supply ship comes by. The strength comes from what you keep in orbit above.”

“It’s not likely to be a Kraven, then, is it?”

“I’d guess at something a little bit bigger,” said Duggan.

“Damn. It’s not looking good for us down here.”

“We’ll see, Lieutenant. We might get a chance to throw a spanner in their works.”

They trudged on through midday. The temperature remained cold and the sun had a peculiar blue halo as it shone through the billowing sand. The land began to climb steadily upwards and Duggan remembered the open area of the mine had been hollowed out from a series of hills. Mining operations tended to grind up a huge quantity of surface rock and filter out the metal-bearing ores they were looking for. By the time the open cast part of the mine had gone deep enough, the operators would have identified the richest seams and would be able to focus their efforts on following these under the ground. Duggan had only seen one or two such places and his mind retained an image of ragged, dirty pits, with enormous tunnels snaking away into the earth as the miners pursued the veins of metal.

As they climbed, the surface covering of gritty sand gave way to rough stone. Visibility improved as they rose above the swirling sands and Duggan realised how oppressive it had been walking in silence and with reduced sight. On the other hand, he now felt exposed with the obscuring veil of sand gone. His suit outlined Sergeant Ortiz in red and Duggan tapped her on the shoulder. She turned and he made the signal to indicate it was time for additional caution. Ortiz gave a strange bobbing motion – it was the only way to nod in a spacesuit.

Duggan checked his helmet’s positional display and found they were less than three kilometres from the south-west lip of the mine workings. The Pugilist had managed to keep the spacesuits fed with data until a point only a few nanoseconds before the Shatterer had hit them. The suits couldn’t store a huge amount of information, but the onboard computer and databanks had enough space to hold specifics on distances, heights and terrain type. It was hard to get lost when wearing one, though not completely unheard of.

“Sir?” It was Breeze.

Duggan knew the man wouldn’t have broken comms silence without good reason. “What is it?”

“The suits aren’t particularly good at detecting positrons – they don’t need to be. However, I’m getting some fluctuations in the atmosphere away to our left. I’d say two or three klicks, not far off our path.” Breeze raised a suited arm and pointed.

Duggan looked in the direction indicated. The land continued to climb all about them – they were more than halfway up a long, gentle rocky slope that stretched off to the left and right. Rocks and boulders provided some cover and also blocked Duggan’s ability to see as clearly as he’d have liked. He changed course slightly and waved the squad to follow. They wended their way upwards, taking greater care to stay in cover. There was no indication of a Ghast presence, but there was no sense in taking unnecessary risks. Duggan’s movement and heat sensors remained untriggered, though the cluttered rocks meant he couldn’t be fully sure there were no surprises ahead.

After ten minutes, Breeze spoke again. “The rocks are shielding the source of the positrons. There must be some real dense metal in this hillside. It means the emissions are all going upwards into the atmosphere.”

“Missile emplacement?”

“I don’t think so, sir.”

The squad emerged from a cluster of large boulders. Duggan couldn’t help but glance into the sky, as if his eyes could somehow see a Cadaveron circling forty thousand kilometres above him. Nevertheless, he felt a menace that he couldn’t shake off.

The place which Breeze had directed them turned out to be the beginning of the mine pit, just a few hundred yards from where they’d been originally going. It was almost impossible to keep hidden from eyes above, so Duggan had to trust to luck that they’d not be struck by a Ghast missile as they came closer. The squad lay flat on the edge of the pit and looked over – the amount of rock which had been chewed to make the hole was hard to believe. Duggan remembered it to be eight kilometres across and it looked as big as it sounded – a roughly circular pit with sloped sides of hewn stone that dropped at least a kilometre down, with narrow tiers every hundred metres or so. The bottom was just about flat and covered with a layer of grey gravel, the pieces crushed by heavy machinery and scattered about because there was nowhere else to put them. That same machinery was in evidence, dotted around the pit floor. That wasn’t what caught Duggan’s eye. There was something else in the pit – something which had crashed into the side wall with such velocity that it had left a kilometre-wide crater off to the north. Fissures spread away from the crater, upwards and across the pit floor.

Now they had a clearer view of the source, Duggan finally realised what it was. The positrons were coming from something ultra-dense - a mixture of elements bonded together in such a way that they could produce sufficient power to propel a ship many times faster than the speed of light.

“It can’t be the Goliath?” Duggan asked Breeze.

“No sir. Too dense for an MHL’s engines.”

“How much to make that hole?”

“Twenty square metres if it was travelling fast enough. If they’d slowed their fall like we did, a whole lot more. It’s definitely not the entire ship.”

Duggan swore to himself. This was what had happened to the Ribald – blown into chunks somewhere in the sky above the planet and left to rain down in pieces across the surface. Whatever tiny hope he’d retained that the young captain Mason Graham and his crew might have survived and escaped to safety, were dashed by the sight of the wreckage in the mining pit below.

Chapter Seven

Duggan did his best to put the Ribald’s destruction from his mind. What he planned next was going to be difficult enough without being able to use the comms systems freely and the antimatter spilling from the Ribald’s engines meant they couldn’t take a methodical approach. He didn’t know how long the suits would protect them and he didn’t want to take any more chances with the lives of his squad than he had to.

“It’s going to be far too dangerous as it is,” he muttered to himself.

Duggan studied the lay of the land in the fading light of day. The machinery he’d noted came in several different shapes, all of it oversized. There was something which looked like an earth dredger, with towers, gantries and conveyor chutes mounted on a gravity drive. Duggan had no idea what it was called, but it was several hundred metres long and at least two hundred tall and wide. There were a few dozen diggers and dumper lorries, and other cubes of dirty metal that housed the grinders. Duggan used his suit’s zoom function to look more closely - none of the mining equipment gave any impression it was operational. On the far side of the pit, three gargantuan tunnels disappeared into the earth, the distance too great for his suit to pierce the darkness within. There were ore storage containers as well, some of them up to five hundred metres long and two hundred tall. These massive, reinforced units were close to the tunnel entrances – the captain of the Goliath would have expected to be loading them into the cargo bay by now.

The figure next to him elbowed him to get his attention - Sergeant Ortiz was the culprit. She pointed towards the bottom of the slope, where there was a metal-walled hut. Compared to everything else, the hut was comically small. At first, Duggan wasn’t sure what he was meant to be looking for, then he noticed two shapes against one of the walls. They looked like sacks of goods which had been thrown carelessly into place and forgotten about. When he zoomed in, he could see they were bodies - men or women he wasn’t sure which. They were clad in the survival suits which enabled humans to operate in moderately hostile environments such as that on Everlong. It was too far to see if there were any injuries to the bodies – the Ghasts used a heavier gauss-type rifle than those used by the Space Corps and they tended to leave extensive exit wounds. Whatever had killed these people was unclear.

“Lieutenant Chainer, where did you detect the Ghast emplacement?”

“Close to the middle, sir. I’ve lost my bearings a little but I’d say it’s behind that dredger. Our sensors didn’t see anything at first, so I’d guess it’s been half buried.”

That would make sense, Duggan thought – keep the weapons engulfed in the Gallenium-rich earth to conceal them from attackers for as long as possible. It was a long way to the bottom and a long walk to the middle of the pit. Duggan would have much preferred a precise idea of where they were going, rather than being kept in the dark until they were almost at the target.

Suppressing the urge to look upwards, Duggan spoke into the squad channel. “Listen up – we’ve got a Ghast disruptor and a Shatterer missile launcher somewhere in this pit. I believe they’re hidden, almost certainly by earthworks. It’s likely they are on the far side of that dredging equipment in the middle. We’re going to spread out and make our way to the dredger. Keep low, use cover and stay alert. I wish I could tell you exactly what we’ll find, but I can’t. We’re going to try and catch the Ghasts unawares and disable their ground facilities. If there are any miners alive, it’s our duty to find them and help them. Maintain radio silence, keep movement and heat sensors on. If you see the enemy, report in quickly and succinctly. Make sure you hold your fire until you hear otherwise.”

The squad members knew that Duggan didn’t need a spoken acknowledgement. A few of them performed a clumsy nod and one or two raised their rifles. Duggan crawled to the edge of the pit and looked down. The walls sloped sharply and were covered in loose earth and gravel. The uppermost tier was over one hundred metres beneath him. If he lost his footing, there’d be a lot of dust which would be visible to anyone looking. He slung his rifle across his shoulder and climbed over the edge. The gravel shifted under his feet, but he could feel the solidity underneath. He belatedly realised the miners wouldn’t have left the walls prone to landslides every time something disturbed them. Even so, the going was tough, straining the muscles of his calves and upper legs as he tried to control his descent.

To either side, stones rattled and clattered past as the others of the squad began their slithering climb. To Duggan’s relief, there were no accidents and within five minutes, they had made it to the first tier from the top. He was concerned about the leaking engine from the Ribald, but Duggan knew it would be suicide to charge all the way to the bottom without stopping to check for enemy activity. To his relief, it was still quiet and he started down again, half-crawling and half-standing in order to maximise his grip. Something struck his helmet and he caught sight of a fist-sized rock spinning away to the tier below. He looked up to see Morgan recovering from a near-fall. The man carried the squad’s portable comms beacon - a heavy silver box which made running and climbing much harder. There was no need for apologies and Morgan didn’t even bother to raise an arm – he had too much on his plate as it was.

They’d been climbing for over twenty minutes when they reached the last tier before the bottom. Duggan found himself in a routine where he could execute a controlled slide over the roughest parts of the slope and crab down the parts where the going was easier. As he set off on the last section of slope, his mind was already concentrating on the next phase of the approach. Then, his suit picked up a scuffing noise off to his left. He looked over in time to see one of the squad toppling headlong past. It was Casper, one of the new recruits to the Space Corps. The soldier tumbled over on his way down, bounced twice, slid for twenty metres before an outcrop knocked him away from the slope and into the air again. As he fell, gravel was shaken loose and clouds of fine dust burst away from the surface. No one spoke as they watched the event play out in front of them. The last tier was the highest of all, and when Casper eventually reached the bottom, he lay still, his body made small by the distance.

Duggan swore into his helmet and began scrambling towards the fallen soldier. There was another person closer – it was Corporal Bryant, bent almost double in order to keep balance with a med-box on her back. Duggan almost gave a warning for her to slow down. In the end, she knew the risks and he didn’t want to distract her. Bryant reached Casper first and had him plugged to her machine by the time Duggan reached the bottom. There were interfaces in several places across the space suits, and wires stretched from the med-box to the ports in the soldier’s helmet. Bryant didn’t wait for long. Her fingers were nimble even in the suit and she plucked the wires away from Casper’s helmet. They retracted into the med-box automatically. She looked at Duggan – at least he assumed she was looking, since the helmet visors were completely opaque. She ran a finger across her throat and wriggled the straps of the med-box back over her shoulders.

Duggan crouched over Casper’s body, a man he’d hardly said a word to, but who was still part of his squad. He was aware that the others of the unit had reached the bottom of the slope and had gathered around. Death was impersonal in this war – you couldn’t even take solace from looking in a dead soldier’s face in order to commit their features to memory. Duggan had nothing to offer this man – not even the honour of being launched into space. He stood slowly and saluted, sensing the others doing the same.

It wasn’t the time for mourning. Duggan raised a hand and waved it towards the vast structure of the dredger in the distance. His suit calculated it to be over three kilometres away. The ground between was open in places, though there were a few pieces of smaller machinery, as well as collections of disposable metal huts that Duggan had seen in places like this before. The huts provided shelter, yet were cheap enough that they could be left behind when operations moved on.

There was no sign of movement anywhere close by, though a warning alert in his helmet had begun a gentle, unobtrusive chime to let Duggan know about the dangerous levels of positron emissions close by. He wanted to kick something in frustration – instead, he put his head down and began a sprint towards an abandoned dump truck a few hundred metres away. The others split off in groups of two, three and four as they chose their own destinations and ran towards them.

The dump truck was forty metres long and painted a dirty yellow, which looked even less appealing underneath the layer of caked-on grime from the years the vehicle had worked at this place. Duggan wasn’t interested in its history – there was no one in the cab and nothing to indicate its engines had been fired up recently. The vehicle was valuable, but it was just another piece of ultimately disposable equipment in the Human-Ghast war. If it was no longer needed on the site, Duggan had no doubt it would be abandoned. It would form a line on an inventory list somewhere on a Corps mainframe, yet would end up rotting here since it was easier to make a new truck than send a ship out to reclaim this one. The MHL Goliath could fit hundreds of these vehicles in her hold in order to carry them elsewhere, but the containers of half-processed ores were needed far more than the truck.

Corporal Simmons and Commander McGlashan joined Duggan at the truck. He indicated they should wait as he peered out around the edge. There was still no movement and nothing on the suit’s heat detectors. With any luck, the Ghasts weren’t expecting an attack from the ground. As far as they knew, they’d destroyed the Corps spacecraft and their own warship had hit the remains with a missile strike. If they happened to notice Duggan and his squad approaching, things would get uncomfortable very quickly. A Cadaveron could obliterate anyone on the surface in twenty seconds.

The next area of cover was a collection of the portable huts. They were stacked two or three high in places and there was almost enough of them to call it a village. The light had dropped so low that it was distinctly gloomy and Duggan’s suit amplified his vision, the process giving everything a green tint and making distant outlines slightly fuzzy. With his rifle clutched across his chest, Duggan ran for the huts, covering the three hundred metres in a minute. He pressed his back to the first hut he reached, feeling his heart beat in his chest and hearing his laboured breathing in his helmet. He was fit enough, it was just that running in a suit was far harder than running without.

The huts were not pleasing to the eye, nor were they intended to be. They were double-skinned blocks of metal, fifteen metres in length. They had no windows, one airlock-controlled door and one emergency exit hatch. Duggan had been in places like this a few times – they were as grim inside as they were outside. Some of them were intended to be used as housing and he guessed there’d be bunks in most of these huts. It was a shitty place to spend any amount of time.

McGlashan and Simmons arrived. Duggan motioned for them to follow him. It looked as if there might be thirty or more huts here – easily enough to house all the personnel for the mine. They were a long way away from the mining tunnels, but there’d be plenty of transport to shuttle the miners to and fro. Some of the equipment made a lot of noise, so Duggan wasn’t surprised they’d left the huts here, away from it all.

He looked along a passage between two of the cabins. The gravel appeared to be well-trodden. He saw the first sign of violence nearby – one of the metal walls had been ripped, leaving a sharp-edged tear through both skins. It wasn’t clear what had done the damage – the Ghasts weren’t known for subtlety and had a variety of weaponry that could have punched through the toughened wall. There was no hint of movement and Duggan was already sure this had happened some time ago. Even so, he didn’t plan to leave himself open, so he indicated that McGlashan and Simmons should give him cover. They crouched low at the opposite sides of the passage and aimed their rifles along.

Duggan darted forward until he was adjacent to the hole in the cabin. With his rifle pointed ahead, he chanced a quick looked inside. The opening was large enough that he got a good enough view of what had happened – the damage had opened up the two main interior rooms to the thin atmosphere of Everlong. On one side were bunks, many of them thrown around. The other room contained tables and chairs. A viewscreen on the far wall had two big holes in it. A programme continued to play on the screen, the colours smeared and blurred.

There was a body – it was dressed in blue overalls. The man had been shot far more times than was needed to kill him. Duggan counted at least ten wounds. The Ghast weapons lacked finesse but they packed a punch. The body in the hut was a mess, like a piece of meat that had been tenderized far too long. Duggan looked away. At the end of the passage between the two huts was an open area about fifty square metres, surrounded by other huts. Duggan made the signal for McGlashan and Simmons to follow him with caution. He went on, scanning for movement and heat - the suit might just about pick up both through the walls of the cabins, though not accurately enough for him to rely on.

None of the huts close by were damaged and Duggan sprinted across the open space, keeping himself close to one of the walls. He entered another passageway, where the huts had been stacked two high. Their walls seemed to close in around him, exacerbating the darkness of night. He gave McGlashan and Simmons cover as they ran to join him, taking comfort from the weight of his rifle.

There was a hut positioned cross-ways at the end of the passage, reducing the options to a right or left turn. Duggan looked both ways – across from him to the right, the door to one of the huts was missing and the frame around it was twisted. He hurried towards it. There were more bodies inside – three of them this time. They were in the far corner, facing the door. None of the three were armed – there might be a few low-level firearms on the site, but nothing that would repel an armed assault by the Ghasts. The miners had been shredded by something with a high calibre and a fast rate of fire – probably a hand-held repeater, Duggan thought. The wall behind them was pocked with fist-sized holes. There were smears of blood, brown and dried, with sprays of it reaching to the ceiling. The violence was senseless – the people in here had almost certainly offered their surrender. The Ghasts had never seemed to care in the past and here on Everlong, Duggan saw that things hadn’t changed.

McGlashan looked in. She’d not fought in the Corps infantry for years and Duggan wondered how she’d take it – he was sure she’d be angry. As he thought about it, he realised how angry he was himself. It had been building gradually within him, so slowly and subtly that it had almost caught him unawares. He clenched his teeth to get a grip on it. At that moment, the voice of Sergeant Ortiz burst into his earpiece with startling clarity.

“I’ve got movement. There’s something up on the left-hand gantry on the dredger.”

Duggan held his rifle and ran through the cabins, feeling a mixture of hope that he’d get a shot at the enemy and fear that it might lead to discovery and the death of them all.

Chapter Eight

Duggan looked around the edge of the final hut. His helmet informed him that the dredger was still two-point-three kilometres away. There was an area of clear ground before him, with another couple of dump trucks and a mobile crane the next suitable places to find cover. The distant dredger loomed above everything, its upper gantries clearly visible over the other machinery on the pit floor. Duggan checked carefully – Sergeant Ortiz was correct. There was something moving along one of the walkways. If it was a Ghast soldier, it would have a clear view across the open areas of the pit floor. The squad would be easily detected by image amplification or movement sensors.

Duggan checked to his left – Sergeant Ortiz was more or less parallel with him and was crouched behind a nondescript lump of crumpled alloy a hundred metres away. There were three others with her. Another hundred past that, Breeze and Chainer were next to a mobile crane, along with Hill, Flores and Santos. The other soldiers weren’t in line of sight and Duggan wasn’t about to ask them to report in.

They watched for a time. Seconds become minutes and the distant figure showed no sign of moving. It was tall and broad like the Ghasts, yet Duggan couldn’t confirm for certain it was one of the enemy. It appeared to be seated and was partially obscured by a support beam. A decision he didn’t want to make became unavoidable. There was no way they could risk sneaking any closer. If it was a Ghast and it saw them, it could either escape or communicate to the others in the launcher, who could in turn relay the information to the ship in orbit.

Duggan pulled his rifle to his shoulder and peered along the length. “If you’re a miner, you’re a stupid bastard for being up there.” He took a deep breath. “Don’t be a miner.” Duggan squeezed the trigger. The rifle whined. It had hardly any kickback, producing only a gentle thump against his suit. A moment later, the distant figure pitched over. Before Duggan could release the air he was holding in his lungs, he saw it half rise again. He tried to adjust his aim, cursing that the first shot hadn’t been a straight kill. He was too slow – the figure on the gantry slumped again, falling so flat that it would be almost impossible to hit from below. Duggan looked around for the source of the second shot. McGlashan tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to where Ortiz was crouched. The Sergeant was just lowering her rifle. She raised a hand and gave a thumbs up. Duggan let out his breath and responded with one of his own.

“We need to move up and fast. That Ghast’s suit may have communicated its death,” he said to the squad. “Remain alert, shoot on sight.”

With that, Duggan broke cover and ran towards one of the trucks. After a few seconds, he realised he was pushing himself too hard. If he was too much out of breath when he reached the Ghast emplacements, his shooting accuracy would suffer. With an effort, he slowed his charge, pacing himself to a speed he knew he could maintain for hours at a time. The ground was mostly flat and he had to give only occasional glances to his footing as he crunched through the gravel. A thin layer of sand dragged at his feet and he imagined this whole pit would be filled with it in a hundred years – the entire mineworks gone as if they had never existed.

He reached the dump truck and scrambled along behind it until he could see the dredger. There was no movement. A thought formed in his mind and he didn’t like it. The Ghasts might come looking for their comrade soon. The possibility wasn’t a good one and it spurred Duggan onwards. He burst away from the shelter of the truck – one-point-nine klicks away from his target, the suit told him.

He reached another hut – this one had been tipped onto its side. A dark object loomed on the other side – it was an excavator which had somehow collided with the cabin. As he waited a few seconds for McGlashan and Simmons to join him, Duggan became aware of a sound, a distant noise picked up and amplified by his helmet. He realised what it was – a crushing machine was operating in the pit. It confirmed what he’d already thought - the Ghasts were keeping the mine running. Their attack must have happened within the last week or two, otherwise the Space Corps would have known about it and sent more than two Gunners to investigate. Or ignored it in case the Ghasts shot down a few more of our warships, thought Duggan bitterly.

He continued running, over a wide space free from industrial clutter. The natural light had gone, leaving only a deep, rich blue on the horizon, faintly seen over the northern edge of the pit. The suit helmet continued to boost the image, projecting the outside world as greens and variable greys. He saw movement – there was something climbing a gantry ladder on the dredger. He fell to one knee, sliding along through the gravel, raising his rifle as he did so. Duggan aimed and fired a shot, steadied himself and fired two more. The distant figure fell a dozen feet before it became tangled in something, causing it to hang suspended in mid-air. Simmons and McGlashan overtook him, while Duggan pushed himself into another run, his feet leaving gouges in the dirt as he accelerated.

The three of them reached a crane. It was a yellow-painted block with a model designation painted on the side in faded white letters. The boom towered above the thirty-metre-wide base platform, while the gravity engine thrummed quietly. The Ghasts either hadn’t noticed or hadn’t cared that it was still active. The cab was high above and reached by a ladder. Duggan looked for a moment, though he had no intention of climbing up to see what was inside. If there was anyone up there, they were certainly dead. The visors of McGlashan and Simmons pointed straight at Duggan – they were watching and waiting for him to take the lead.

Nine hundred and fifty metres, he thought as he sprinted away from the crane. There was almost no cover between here and the dredger. From the edge of the pit, it had looked as if there was machinery all the way to the centre. The perspective had deceived Duggan and he called on his reserves of energy. The muscles in his legs stretched and complained. There was a pile of rocks to one side. He ignored their offer of cover and kept a straight line towards the dredger. As he came towards it, the enormity of the machinery struck him. From afar it simply appeared to be big. Closer up, a kilometre of movable alloy structure was somehow just as awe-inspiring as a docked warship. The main section of the dredger looked like a solid wall, tall and imposing on its thick legs. At each end, massive arms reached outwards, with bladed wheels to rip through hard-packed dirt and stone. The support towers went ever upwards, with thick metal cables anchored in countless places.

Five hundred metres. Figures kept a rough line to his left and right. The members of his squad had converged into this open space, with little more than a hundred metres separating the furthest two. At three hundred metres, there was more movement on the dredger, a way back from the edge of the central section. The angle was too sharp for Duggan to get off a shot. Butler and Flores were a few metres back and they both crouched briefly. Duggan couldn’t tell if either of them had fired. He looked to the dredger and his suit was no longer able to detect a source of movement.

Duggan reached the base of the dredger, breathing hard. His suit warned him about his elevated heart rate and oxygen consumption. He ignored it and ducked beneath the central section. The support legs were only five feet high, so he had to keep his head low to prevent his helmet colliding with the machinery. The underside was scored and pitted, with deep grooves where the gravity engines had previously lowered the dredger onto sharp rocks. The opposite edge was a good distance away – two hundred metres, Duggan guessed. He tried to make sense of what was out the other side, but all he could see was grey.

“Sir?” It was Chainer. His voice sounded strained with running. “We should be okay to communicate under here as long as we keep it brief. The Cadaveron’s sensors won’t be able to penetrate so much metal unless they’re really focused on this spot.”

Duggan didn’t respond directly. Instead, he opened a channel to the whole squad and spoke while he continued towards the far side of the dredger. “We can use comms under here if we keep it quick and to the point. The Ghast emplacement can’t be far and we have to get inside before they realise we’re here and lock it down. We might already be too late. I saw movement up top. Powell, Walker, Hill, Friedman, you’re going up there to look for it along with Corporal Simmons. Once the threat is eliminated, you’ll provide cover for us below. Only break silence when you have to.”

“Aye, sir,” came the responses at once.

“Go now. It’ll give you a chance to get in position.” The five soldiers he’d instructed turned as one and crabbed their way back where they’d come from. Duggan continued to give his orders. “Morgan, you’re going to sit tight under here. If it all goes to shit, you’re going to use that comms beacon to send a distress signal to the Corps. Let them know we think the Ghasts have a Cadaveron in orbit and a ground-installed Shatterer and disruptor.”

“Damn, sir, looks like I’m going to miss out on all the fun.”

“It’s vital you get it right, soldier. If you use the beacon too early, the Ghast ship will destroy us all.”

“I’ll do my best. With your permission, I’ll haul the beacon out towards one of those dump trucks back there. I’ll not be able to send anything while I stay under here. At least I’ll be able to fire off a quick transmission if it all goes bad.”

“Fine, do it,” said Duggan. He dismissed the matter and moved onto the next one. “Flores, do you still have the shaped plasma charges? We might need them.” They’d not had time to properly equip themselves while escaping the Pugilist – they had rifles and no grenades. Duggan was grateful that Flores had kept a couple of explosives in his footlocker and had brought them with him. It was entirely against regulations, but in the circumstances Duggan wasn’t going to say anything, particularly since Flores was the squad’s boom man.

“Still got them, sir. Just point me in the right direction.”

“Right, let’s go. I don’t think we’re going to find any lost miners wandering around, so if it moves, shoot it.”

There was a series of enthusiastic responses to this last instruction. The Ghasts were hated by almost everyone and a command to kill them was guaranteed to be met with approval. Duggan made haste across the underside of the dredger. It was still hard to be sure what was out the other side until he came to the last few metres and got a better view. Much of the open cast pit was visible, with its machinery and tiered walls. However, there was something unusual two hundred metres or so from the dredger. At first glance, it looked like someone had dug a ragged three-hundred and fifty metre hole in the floor of the mining pit and afterwards had partially filled one half of it in, forming a loose-packed mound of brown-grey dirt in the process. The mound was only about ninety metres high, so it was no wonder they’d not been able to see it from the upper edge of the pit.

“What the hell?” asked Sergeant Ortiz.

It struck Duggan what he was looking at. “That’s a missile crater,” he said, finding he was speaking almost in a whisper. “The Ghasts must have been in a hurry to establish their defences – they’ve blown a hole in the ground and dropped their battery inside. They must have used some type of transport to bring it here.”

“Some of the older Cadaverons had room for cargo, sir,” said Lieutenant Breeze. “Before they started filling all the available space with weapons.”

“There we have it. A missile emplacement in a hole covered with soil was enough to fool two Space Corps warships long enough to blast both of them out of the sky.” Duggan wasn’t happy to have been so easily beaten.

“Any sign of a way in?” asked Ortiz. “I assume they’ve got a crew to make the decision about what to destroy and when.”

“Are we looking at two different structures?” asked McGlashan. “I’m sure the disruptors and missiles would be entirely separate units on a warship.”

“We’re going to have to find out, Commander. I can’t see anything other than dirt, so the way in must be around the far side of this mound or in what’s left of the crater.”

Another voice intruded on the open channel. “Sir, it’s Corporal Simmons. We’ve eliminated a Ghast soldier up here. He wasn’t wearing his mech suit. He took cover before we got him. I’d assume he got a message away. Damn they’re ugly bastards.”

“Understood,” said Duggan. “Get in position and provide cover.” He waved the members of the squad who remained with him forward, urging them into the open. “Time is running out. We need to finish this.”

Chapter Nine

As soon as he left the comparative safety of the dredger, Duggan felt vulnerable. He had to assume the Ghast had alerted someone about the presence of Corps soldiers and if the message reached the Cadaveron, there was an excellent chance a precision-guided missile would be on its way shortly. Unless they don’t want to risk damaging their own ground structures, Duggan thought with a flickering of hope.

He reached the edge of the crater. The piled earth made it closer to a moon shape than a circle. As soon as he arrived, his earlier words that a missile was responsible for it were confirmed. The sides of the hole had been turned into a deceptively smooth-looking reflective glass from the heat of the plasma. The remaining part of the crater was well over a hundred metres deep, with steeply-sloping sides. At the bottom of the dirt mound, he could see metal, glinting to his image-enhanced sight. There was definitely something under the soil which the Ghasts had tried to conceal. This close, it was a poor job. From forty thousand klicks away, it had been good enough.

He set off at a fast jog, following the lip of the hole and looking for a way into what was certainly a weapons battery. When he reached the part of the crater which contained the mound of earth, he noticed how rough and ready the construction was. He guessed they’d forced some of the miners to do the work. There were a couple of huge excavators not too far away which could have done the job in a day or two. Ahead, he saw what he was after. Smooth metal was visible, jutting directly out of the heaped earth.

“Sir, we’ve got movement.” It was Corporal Simmons. “There’s a vehicle coming out from one of the far tunnels. Three klicks and heading straight towards us.”

“I’d suggest you get your head down,” said Duggan. The squad members with him were hidden from the tunnels by the pile of earth. He hoped they’d evade detection for long enough to do what they’d come for.

There was a shrieking sound, followed by a series of harsh clangs, so numerous they almost became a continuous sound. Duggan looked up and saw streaks of green from the Ghast rounds as they raked across a section of the dredger. He knew the projectiles would have been invisible to his naked sight, but they left a fleeting echo on his helmet sensors, which the suit’s tiny computer dutifully fed through.

There was another fusillade, which ripped into one of the dredger’s gantries, producing momentary orange traces which rapidly faded back to grey. There was a secondary noise – a screeching from torn metal shredding through other metal. Duggan kept his head low and sprinted on, doing his best to ignore the din.

“We’ve lost Walker,” said Simmons with absolute calm. “Returning fire. We’ve got a Ghast light tank with a repeater turret.”

“Get under cover,” said Duggan tersely. “You can’t scratch it with your rifles.”

The words had hardly left his mouth when the Ghast repeater unleashed another punishing volley of rounds into the structure of the dredger. The noise was unbearable and Duggan didn’t like to think what it would be like for the soldiers huddled up there.

He reached the metal wall he’d seen and he slowed, the others stopping with him. From here, it was possible to make out the rough shape of what was buried. It was a huge cylinder, with a diameter of more than one hundred metres. It was as high as the dirt mound, with no indication how deep into the earth it went. Duggan remembered the Ribald was hit with the disruptor from thirty thousand klicks. Unless the Ghasts had made huge advances in miniaturisation, there had to be a big power source in the cylinder – something with similar mass to a Vincent class fission drive.

The earth had been packed down tightly on this side of the mound, with a steel mesh in place to stop the soil coming down. The reason was immediately apparent – there was a doorway, two metres wide and three high, visible only as a fine seam in the polished surface of the alloy. Most Ghasts were seven feet tall, made even bigger in their mech suits. This must be where they came in and out.

“Flores, come here and take a look,” said Duggan.

Flores came forward and checked over the door and its surrounds. He reached out and struck it with a clenched fist. The blow produced no discernible sound. “Damn sir, this must be five feet thick. It’s warship grade alloy.”

“This tube was probably built for an Oblivion. Can you get it open?” As he spoke, another extended round of heavy repeater fire ripped overhead, pummelling hundreds of half-metre holes across the upper deck of the dredger. Duggan looked in the direction of the mining tunnels and his suit reported the presence of a Ghast vehicle coming into sight around the banked earth.

When Flores didn’t respond immediately, Duggan shouted at him. “Speak, man! That tank could see us at any moment!”

Flores slung his rifle and held up the two shaped charges. They were fist-sized and could stick to any surface. A built-in timer could be set manually or the charges could be detonated remotely through a command from a spacesuit. “There’s not a hope in hell, sir. I’d need a dozen of these babies to burn a hole in that door.”

Duggan opened his mouth to speak, not knowing exactly what he was going to say. In the end, he didn’t need to say anything. Without warning, the door moved of its own accord, sinking five feet into the walls of the missile battery and rotating slowly sideways with the glacial smoothness of perfectly-machined gears. The space behind the door was revealed to be a large airlock, with featureless walls, ceiling and floor. There was an indistinct shape, visible to one side and waiting patiently. It was a Ghast, hulking and angular in a mech suit. It had a hand-held repeater clutched across its chest, with the weapon’s power cell visible over the alien’s shoulders. There was a moment, a fraction of a second, which felt like it lasted half a lifetime while the two sides looked at each other in mutual surprise. Duggan lowered his rifle and pulled the trigger, sending a metal slug into the Ghast’s chest. There was a sharp hiss of escaping air or servo fluid. Duggan shot it again, while the Ghast began to swing its repeater towards him. Then, the creature was thrown from its feet by another half-dozen rounds from Duggan’s squad. It thumped against the floor with a dull clunk and didn’t move.

“Inside! Now!” barked Duggan. The squad didn’t hesitate and scrambled past to get into the airlock. Before they could make it, a flash of pure, exquisite white lit up the night. Duggan had to close his eyes to shield them from damage. A roaring wave of heat buffeted against him and he fell flat while the other soldiers did the same. He felt the light fading and when he opened his eyes, he saw static across his vision from the overload to the helmet’s sensors. A series of warnings told him the suit’s exterior had suffered permanent damage from a blast of heat significantly above its design tolerances. Duggan blinked, trying to clear the white spots from his eyes. The helmet sensor recalibrated itself in moments, just as a second detonation dispersed the night. The heat roiled over the huddled squad while they tried frantically to crawl into the shelter of the airlock. Duggan scramble-crawled the last few feet to join the others. He saw what had happened – something big had struck the dredger, followed by another of the same. The gargantuan machinery had been ripped into two pieces, each one glowing bright orange from the after effects of the missile strikes. The remains looked like a hideous wreck, melted and distorted until they were something completely different to what they had been before.

Duggan rolled to his feet and pressed his back to the airlock wall, in case another strike was incoming. “I think the orbiting ship knows we’re here,” he said, hoping the thick alloy shielding of the missile battery would prevent the Ghast ship detecting where they were. More dead, he thought. With each one, I owe those bastards a little bit more.

Someone moved past him, stepping over the sprawled body of the Ghast. It was Sergeant Ortiz and she was looking at something. There was a panel on the wall, on the opposite side of the doorway to where the enormously thick door waited unmoving. “Anyone know how to work this Ghast stuff?” she asked. “I think we should close the door.”

“They don’t teach you that at the academy,” said Chainer. He laughed nervously. “I think my suit’s failing.”

“Mine’s taken a battering,” said Bryant.

“And mine,” said Dorsey.

“Permission to piss around with this panel, sir?” asked Ortiz.

“Go ahead,” Duggan told her.

Ortiz didn’t wait. She pressed a couple of fingers on it. When it was clear nothing was going to happen, she put her palm against it, then made a sweeping motion with her hand. She stopped trying and gave the panel a two-fingered salute.

Duggan was aware there was a tank outside. He didn’t know if the Ghasts realised there were still human soldiers left alive. Even if the tank crew didn’t come to investigate, it wouldn’t be long until the Ghasts in the missile emplacement realised the airlock door had been left open. He checked the surroundings – the airlock was about four metres square. The inner door was opposite the outer and was about the same dimensions. Duggan crossed over to it. There was another panel, which he touched, expecting the same lack of response that Ortiz had found. He wasn’t disappointed.

“Flores, check this door out, will you? Maybe they didn’t reinforce the internal fixtures as much as the outer ones.”

“Will do, sir,” said Flores, walking as he talked. He gave it a hard thump with his hand. “Two feet thick and made of something softer,” he said at once. “It won’t disperse the heat nearly as well as the outer door. I can open this one. It’ll need both charges and we’ll need to get outside while they burn.”

“What about the tank?” asked Chainer. “And what if the Ghasts remote-close the external door?”

“Take your pick, Lieutenant,” said Flores, already placing the charges against the seam on the inner airlock door. “I can say with one hundred percent certainty that you’ll fry if you stay inside. If you go outside, there’s a chance you’ll live.”

“Look on the bright side, Lieutenant,” said Ortiz, walking towards the outer doorway. “If the Ghasts forget to lock us outside, they’re going to find it pretty hard to breathe in about two minutes when all their air gets sucked out.”

“Yeah, sounds good,” said Chainer, putting on a show of bravado.

Ortiz was first out through the door. She dropped into a low crouch and kept her rifle pointing forwards. “Go to the right,” she said. “Try and put some of this dirt between us and the tank.”

“Charges set,” said Flores. “Thirty seconds.”

“Best not trip over the mech suit, soldier,” said McGlashan as she skirted around the motionless body.

“Think the Ghasts will fire missiles at this battery?” asked Chainer as he inched warily through the outer door.

Duggan was right behind him. “Not a chance of it.” As he said the words, a plan formed in his head. It came to him fully formed with such force that his heart beat hard in his chest at the possibilities. Suddenly, it was of vital importance that the enemy warship – a Cadaveron, he was sure - didn’t know they still lived. “Stay low, maintain radio silence,” he instructed.

The remaining ten of them got outside in plenty of time. They sat to the right of the doorway with their backs pressed against the steel mesh. There was no sign of movement and Duggan gritted his teeth with each passing second. Where’s that damn tank?

His suit detected an angry fizzing, hissing noise. Blue light flared in the doorway – the charges were purposely designed to emit as little light and sound as possible. The man next to Duggan got up and ran into the airlock – it was Flores. Hoping the soldier had a good enough idea when it would be safe, Duggan got up to follow, keeping low and close to the wall.

“Shit, the outer door’s closing,” said Flores.

“Get in! Quickly!” shouted Duggan, finishing the last couple of yards at a burst sprint. He leapt over the mech suit and got himself to the far side of the airlock to give the others plenty of room to follow. He turned to face the outer door and watched as it slid easily along hidden runners. The door was moving too fast and Duggan realised with horror that it was going to trap most of them outside. Sergeant Ortiz darted through at the last moment. She was a quick thinker and jammed her rifle under the door. The gauss rifles looked flimsy, when in fact they were about the hardest material available to the Confederation weapons plants. They needed to be strong to put up with the high internal forces they were subjected to. Something screeched – and the door stopped moving. The rest of the squad came through at the double. For a few moments, it looked as if Ortiz might have permanently jammed the door. Then, with a lurch, it moved a few inches, crushing part of the rifle against the floor.

Duggan looked around and saw only one option. He reached down and took one of the mech suit arms – it was a heavy, jointed tube of a metal he didn’t recognize. “Help me!” he said, dragging at the arm. Duggan was a strong man, but he could hardly move the body.

Others joined him. Hands reached beneath the suit and between them they hauled it over the smooth floor and dumped it across the doorway. The suit was massive, but the door looked as it if weighed a hundred tonnes. The square slab of metal moved again, flattening Ortiz’s rifle completely. Then, it connected with the mech suit. The door didn’t slow and it pressed the dead Ghast against the far edge of the doorway. The suit creaked as it was crushed between the door and the frame.

“Come on! Do it!” said Dorsey.

Just as it seemed the suit might not be strong enough, there was a grating sound and the square door stopped moving. Duggan let out a breath and went over to see the result. The mech suit was badly crushed, but it had left a narrow opening between the door and the frame. It would be a tight squeeze to get out. There was blood as well – it oozed through ruptures in the suit’s metal and spilled onto the floor. Red, just the same as ours.

Duggan turned his attention to the rest of the squad and the inner door. “What have we got here?” he asked, pushing his way through.

Chapter Ten

The inner airlock door was still in place. However, the shaped charges had burned a metre-round hole straight through the middle. Ortiz, Breeze and Butler had their rifles trained inside. The edges of the hole smoked with heat and looked glutinous. A readout in his helmet told Duggan that air of approximately the same composition as that required for human life, was rushing out through the opening. There was another room visible through the hole, as drab and metallic as anything the Space Corp’s designers could come up with and lit in a cold blue. Tall, wide doorways led off to places deeper within the battery.

“It should have cooled enough to get through, sir,” said Flores. To demonstrate, the man pressed his suited hand on one of the surfaces for a half-second before removing it quickly. “Still hot if you hang around.”

Duggan ducked his head and did a half-roll through the gap. Once through, he crouched to one side with his rifle trained ahead. “Come on,” he said. When they were all through, Duggan split them into two groups of three and a four. “Three doors, three squads,” he said. “Move quickly and kill any Ghasts you see. It’s a near-vacuum on this planet, so they should be dead from ruptured lungs if they weren’t suited. Any Ghasts at the bottom of the emplacement may have had time to protect themselves.” He paused to let that sink in before he continued. “Make sure you don’t break anything. We’re looking for a control room. Find it and secure it. Sergeant, Ortiz, I’m giving you the largest squad, since you don’t have a rifle.”

The open channel filled with acknowledgements. Duggan didn’t wait around and went left, with Dorsey and Santos behind him. Ortiz went straight on and McGlashan took the right.

The way to the left entered a wide, short corridor. The three of them stuck close to the walls and advanced, their rifles at the ready. Duggan noticed there was a slight curve on both sides and he guessed they were following the perimeter of the cylinder. There was a room at the end – four metres square, with a series of free-standing metal cabinets against one wall. The body of a Ghast lay here, on its side, with one arm outstretched as if it were reaching for something. Its broad frame was clad in what could only be described as brown trousers and a shirt, made from a tough-looking cloth.

“You wouldn’t think they’d dress like us, would you?” asked Santos.

“The same, yet completely different,” said Dorsey, her voice a whisper.

The grey eyes of the dead creature stared at them from the smooth grey-skinned face. Duggan stepped around it and continued across the room. There was a single exit – a series of steps led down, the curvature clearly visible. The interior lights burned from indentations in the wall where they’d been embedded. Duggan looked at one of the lights as he passed – it was a fist-sized globe that emitted a diffuse light and served to illuminate heat-scarring on the walls.

“Got bodies,” said Ortiz across the channel. “Three of them at the top of what I think is a service shaft. It’s steep and looks like it goes all the way to the bottom.”

“Advance with caution, Sergeant,” said Duggan. He continued down the steps with the other two behind.

“These steps look like they’ve been welded across here,” said Dorsey. “You can see through the risers and there’s just…. nothing. Like we’re standing in a big empty space.”

“I’m certain we’re standing in a modified warship Shatterer tube,” Duggan said. “This area is for heat expansion when the missile launches. Damn, they must have cobbled this place together in a hurry. And it’s huge. No wonder they haven’t installed Shatterers on their smaller vessels yet.”

“If it was meant for a warship, that might be why there was no lock-down when the airlocks failed, sir,” said Santos. “This place must have been a death-trap to work in.”

“Yeah. It’s all good if it makes our lives a bit easier,” said Dorsey.

The steps went on for some time and Duggan tried to figure out how far into the earth they’d gone. At the bottom, the steps ended at a landing, with a wide passage leading to the right. Duggan followed it for thirty or forty metres, realising it was taking him to the centre of the battery. At last, the passage opened onto a ten-metre-wide platform that curved to the left and right, until it made a complete circuit of this central part of the interior. There was a thrumming sound here, which Duggan recognized at once – it sounded exactly like the engines of a spaceship. The three of them made their way to the edge of the platform, keeping alert for any sign of movement. There was no safety rail at the edge. Rather, there was a perfectly round hole, with a diameter of ten metres or more. The hole dropped deep below and vanished into green-edged darkness above.

“This is where they launch the missiles from,” said Duggan. “And these walls must contain the power source for the disruptor. They’ve managed to build both weapons into a single unit.” He peered carefully over the edge. Far below, there was a shape, the tip of it visible to the helmet’s sensors. “There’s a missile in the tube,” he said. “They must have to pre-load in order to fire on demand.”

“They’re big bastards,” said Santos grudgingly. “Shame we’ve not got a few of them ourselves.”

“I’m sure we’re working on making our own,” said Duggan. He dropped into a crouch at the sight of movement opposite. It was McGlashan with her squad. She gave him a single wave, which he echoed. “Anything to report?” he asked, knowing she’d have told him already if there had been.

“Nothing, sir.”

“We need to get on.” He changed channel and spoke to privately to Ortiz. “Where are you, Sergeant?”

“Still coming down the service shaft, sir. There’s a ladder, but it’s not built for us. Makes it a bit hard to climb.”

“Fine, keep going.” He closed the line and made a gesture to McGlashan and her squad to tell them to look for a way ahead. It wasn’t hard to find – there was an exit equidistant from both squads. The area wasn’t lit and it showed as a greenish square against the solidity of the surrounding metal. Duggan advanced towards it, keeping his gaze fixed firmly ahead.

Movement nearly caught him unawares. A broad shape appeared in the opening. His suit outlined it in orange, which contrasted sharply with the intensified greens. He fired at it, hearing Dorsey and Santos doing the same. The figure went down, falling back into the doorway.

“I’m hit.” It was McGlashan.

“We’re taking fire,” said Duggan calmly. “McGlashan’s hurt.”

“Need backup?” asked Ortiz.

“I’ll let you know. We’ve got Corporal Bryant up here with us.”

Another shape appeared. This Ghast was more cautious than the last and it crouched close to the wall. Something pinged next to Duggan’s head, ricocheting away. He fired back, not knowing if he’d scored a hit. Santos rolled away from the wall and pressed himself flat on the floor. He raised up on his elbows and fired twice in quick succession.

“I see at least two,” he said.

The distant shape ducked away behind something. Duggan kept firing into the darkness, hoping to keep the Ghasts pinned down.

“Chainer, Santos, Dorsey, advance,” he said.

At once, Dorsey swarmed past on her belly, using her legs to push herself across the smooth floor. Santos was a little way ahead of her. Duggan’s rifle whined as he fired it again and again, the tube becoming warm to the touch. A glimpse of movement told him at least one Ghast was still alive. Something whispered by his forearm. He didn’t pay it any heed and fired another couple of rounds, until a bleeping in his helmet became too insistent to ignore. He looked at his arm, suddenly aware of the pain. There was a puncture wound in the suit, already sealed over as the material re-bonded. He felt a stabbing pain in his neck – it was the suit injecting him with a burst of battlefield adrenaline as a precautionary measure.

“Get these bastards,” he growled. The adrenaline reached his heart like a violent kick to the chest and almost made him retch. His breathing deepened and his skin felt cold and tight. He kept firing as the advancing soldiers closed towards the place the Ghasts were hiding. Santos got there first.

“Hold fire,” he said. “I think we got them.” The soldier went towards the opening, still on his stomach. “Got three dead here.” The sound of his rifle carried over the channel when he fired four or five extra rounds. “Definitely dead.”

Duggan left the insignificant protection of the wall and sprinted across to where Santos, Dorsey and Chainer had established themselves. They stayed crouched, their rifles pointing into the opening. It was dark, but there was enough light for Duggan to see what he needed to. The three Ghasts were unmoving on the floor. They wore a type of space suit that he’d not seen them in before – they were made of a flimsy-looking material, with cube-shaped metal-and-glass helmets that might have been two hundred years old. There was a thick, heavy, heat-proof door on runners to one side of the doorway.

“They were about to lock us out, sir,” said Chainer. “We got here just in time.”

“Hold here,” said Duggan. “Shoot anything that moves.” He ran around to find McGlashan. She was prone on the floor, hooked up to the med-box that Corporal Bryant brought everywhere with her. Duggan could see a re-sealed hole in McGlashan’s suit over her stomach and there was blood on the floor underneath her from the exit wound.

“How is she?” he asked Bryant, wondering how he kept his voice steady.

“She’s in trouble, sir,” said Bryant. “We need to get her to proper medical facilities or she’ll die.”

“I feel great,” said McGlashan, interrupting the conversation. She didn’t sound quite with it.

“The box has pumped her so full of crap she’ll think she can run a marathon,” said Bryant. “It’ll induce a coma shortly, to extend her life.”

“Hand me a rifle,” said McGlashan. She sounded half asleep.

“Santos, wait here with Corporal Bryant.”

“Will do, sir.”

“You’ve been hit,” said Bryant, as Duggan got to his feet.

“I’ll be fine,” he said. Bryant didn’t argue. She knew a lost cause when she saw one.

Duggan returned to Chainer and Dorsey, trying to put news of McGlashan’s injury from his mind. Together, they walked into the room from which the Ghasts had ambushed them. It was four metres square, like every other room in the missile battery. There was a hatch in the floor, a metre to each side and almost a metre thick. It was folded back from its opening and had ratcheted runners to allow a series of motors to haul it open and closed. There was a shaft, with a metal ladder running up one side. There was a room at the bottom, but it was impossible to make out any details of what was down there. He thought he could see a green light, though he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a false hue created by his spacesuit sensor. There was another ladder, this one going up the side wall and into a square hole in the ceiling.

“I’m going down,” said Duggan. He took hold of the top rung and stretched out a foot. The gaps between the rungs were awkwardly large and he recalled Ortiz’s words from earlier. A hint of pain flared up from his wounded forearm as he forced it to bear his weight. “Cover me,” he said, climbing deeper into the shaft.

He descended at least forty metres. He paused once or twice to listen out for sounds that might indicate there were more Ghasts inside. There was nothing. At the bottom, he found himself in a room that was packed with screens, consoles and two more dead Ghasts, slumped in oversized metal chairs. The chairs looked as if they’d guarantee backache after twenty minutes of sitting. Duggan began to wonder if the Ghasts celebrated discomfort, or took pride in enduring it. He did his best to ignore the frozen expressions of pain on the Ghast faces and studied some of their equipment. He recognized many of the functions immediately.

“Sergeant Ortiz, I need you and your men here, at the double. Santos will give you directions. Lieutenant Chainer, come here. I need to see what you think of this.”

“Roger,” said Ortiz.

“On my way,” Chainer added.

Above, Chainer began his careful descent, while Duggan poked around. The equipment in the room had clearly been added after the missile tube was built. There were holes in the walls, made for optical connections, with nothing routed through them. In other places, screens had been roughly bolted to the walls. Chainer arrived and glanced about.

“Definitely their control room,” he said. “They’ve got everything they need. How are we going to spoil it without grenades? Are we just going to shoot everything and hope?”

“We’re not going to spoil it, Lieutenant. We’re going to figure out how it works. Then, we’re going to bring that Cadaveron in close and hit it with as many missiles as we can. If we don’t, that heavy cruiser may well be enough of a deterrent to stop the Space Corps sending out a rescue ship when we use the comms beacon. Particularly when Admiral Slender learns I’m amongst the party to be rescued.”

Chainer didn’t say anything. Duggan had half-expected him to offer an alternative. Instead, Chainer kicked one of the dead Ghasts from its chair. With a grunt, he dragged the seat across the floor and positioned it in front of four banked screens which Duggan had already guessed were part of the comms unit. “We’d best get on with it, sir. I don’t think Commander McGlashan has long left. My suit’s not got much longer either from the looks of it – enough power for two more days I reckon.”

“Damnit, why didn’t you mention it earlier?”

“I did, sir. There’s nothing I can do about it, so I just got on with what we were doing.”

Duggan sighed. “Come on Lieutenant, let’s see if we can pull a rabbit from our hat.”

Chapter Eleven

Lieutenant Breeze arrived ten minutes later. He had a vast experience earned on numerous spacecraft. “I haven’t got a clue what their writing means, but I’ve got a pretty good idea of what console does what,” he said after a few minutes.

Duggan could only nod in response. He was in a foul mood, since Corporal Bryant had just informed him that Commander McGlashan would be dead in a matter of hours, rather than the days it would take to get a Space Corps vessel to Everlong. He had the others to look out for as well and he did his best to remain focused. His arm throbbed and he resisted the temptation to take another shot of adrenaline.

“These control the power,” he said. “I can’t read the gauges and I probably don’t need to know what the numbers are. The screens are touch-sensitive and they seem quite happy to track where I point.”

“Unlike the control panels for the airlock door,” said Breeze.

Duggan continued with his efforts to understand the Ghast equipment. Their method of doing things was lacking in finesse – clumsy, almost. Then he remembered that they’d picked up a lot of their tech from the parts of a wrecked Dreamer warship. Before that, they’d been decades behind what the Confederation could build. This was a mish-mash of old and new. Duggan persevered and soon he was sure he knew how to launch the Shatterer missiles. The trouble was, there was no obvious way to target them. Similarly with the disruptor – it seemed easy to fire, except the targeting was either offline or he simply didn’t know how to do it.

“I think these options control the internal doors in the missile battery,” said Breeze, studying one of the panels.

The suited figure of Chainer leapt up from his chair. “Yes!” he shouted.

“What’ve you got, Lieutenant?” asked Duggan. He noticed Chainer had got something up on one of the monitors.

“This is the Ghasts’ tracking screen,” said Chainer, pointing. “Look, there’s an object moving in a low orbit here. It’s circling around this nearby area of the planet at a low speed.”

“The Cadaveron,” said Duggan.

“No, sir, I don’t think so.” Chainer was clearly excited by something. “Over here there’s another object, almost directly above us. It’s hardly moving.”

“The Ghasts have two warships stationed?” Duggan furrowed his brow. He wasn’t sure what Chainer was getting at.

“I can’t figure out the numbers, but I’ve worked out how to overlay the two objects on top of each other. The first one is bigger than the second – I’d say it’s close to seventy percent longer, with a far greater volume.”

Duggan suddenly understood. “They didn’t destroy the Goliath!” he said. “The bastards must have guessed what it was carrying and kept it intact. They’re planning to steal the cargo and use it for their own mining operations!”

“That would make sense,” said Breeze. “The equipment in the Goliath’s hold is worth a king’s ransom.”

“They’ll have a top-notch medical bay on the MHL, sir. They expect accidents doing what they do.”

“Can you contact the Goliath?” asked Duggan.

“I can, sir. Unfortunately, if the Ghasts operate anything like we do, they’ll be continuously monitoring our broadcasts. It’s good practise. There’s another thing, if it makes a difference. Assuming that’s a heavy cruiser above us, it’s smaller than normal – using the Goliath as a comparison, I’d say the Ghast ship is less than three thousand metres long.”

“Must be an old one,” said Breeze. “For all the good it’ll do us.”

Duggan’s mind was racing. He went back to the console which controlled the targeting. He was now able to see a mirror of Chainer’s tracking screen, with the Cadaveron and heavy lifter far above. The Shatterer could target either of the two craft, while the disruptor wouldn’t acknowledge either as a target. “I can hit the Cadaveron,” he said. “Even if it’s an ancient model, one missile won’t bring it down. If we can get them with the disruptor, we might get two or three missiles away.”

“Will that be enough?” asked Chainer doubtfully.

“It might be. Those missiles tore a Hadron to pieces and put a few big holes through the Archimedes.”

“How do we get them with the disruptor?” asked Breeze. “I guess they’ll be at a hundred thousand klicks.”

“There’s no reason for them to come into range. They can do everything they need to from where they are, including destroying this battery if it takes their fancy,” said Chainer.

“That’s it!” said Duggan. “They’ll not want to destroy this emplacement. However, if they think something’s wrong, they’ll definitely send a dropship to investigate.”

“They launch their dropships from a much lower altitude!” said Breeze. “They may come close enough for us to disable them with the disruptor.”

“We need to find the distress beacon,” said Duggan. “And get everyone behind the blast door in the room above.”

“Why haven’t the Ghasts already triggered the beacon?” asked Chainer. “At least I’m assuming they haven’t, since the Cadaveron is still circling happily overhead.”

“This place isn’t rigged up to be secure,” said Breeze. “I’ll bet there are no alarms or anything to let the people in the control room know there’s been a breach. These two Ghasts could have been caught unawares when the air got sucked out.”

“What about those three who tried to kill us in the room above?”

“Who knows?” said Duggan. “They might have been suited up elsewhere in the silo and been on their way to check out the control room.” He spoke to Sergeant Ortiz. “Get everyone into the room above. We’re going to try and seal it.”

“Sounds like you have a plan, sir.”

“There’s always a plan, Sergeant. We might need to fire that missile in the tube.”

Less than a minute later, Ortiz spoke. “Everyone’s in, sir.”

“We’re going to close the door. Stand back.”

“It’s closing, sir.” She went silent. “Completely closed now.”

“Good. Sit tight until you hear otherwise.”

By the time Duggan finished speaking, Breeze had found the distress beacon. It was a grey button, on its own away from anything else.

“I wonder if grey is their equivalent of our red,” said Chainer.

Duggan pressed the button. It took hardly any force and it made a click. There was no visible sign that anything had changed within the missile battery.

“Any alteration in the Cadaveron’s flight path?” asked Duggan after a few moments.

“Yes, sir. They’ve reacted immediately,” said Chainer. “I’d say they’re coming in for a look.”

“Keep your fingers crossed they do what we’re expecting, rather than blowing us up,” said Duggan.

“Expect the worst and hope for the best,” muttered Chainer. “They’re dropping fast. If they started at a hundred thousand klicks, I’d say they’re at fifty thousand now.”

“Coming closer than that?” asked Duggan.

“No, sir. I think they’ve levelled out at fifty thousand. There’s a load of mumbo jumbo coming up on one of my screens. They’re probably asking how we’re doing.”

“Ignore it,” said Duggan.

“We’re going to be in the shit if they launch a dropship from that height,” said Breeze.

“They normally come in lower,” said Duggan.

“Yeah,” said Breeze. “Come and say hello to Billy.”

“Still not moving.”

“Probably takes a few minutes to load up and prepare for launch. They’re just being cautious,” said Chainer.

“I don’t like it,” said Breeze.

“They’re moving again,” said Chainer. His exhalation of breath carried clearly through the helmet speakers. “Forty thousand klicks.”

Duggan kept his eyes glued to the disruptors. “Still can’t target,” he said quietly.

“Thirty-five.”

The Cadaveron became highlighted on his screen. “Target locked,” said Duggan. He pressed an area of the display to fire the disruptor and straight after sent the launch command to the Shatterer in the tube.

“Some of these gauges are bouncing around like crazy,” said Breeze. “I’d say we’re out of juice for the time being.”

Any other words were drowned out by a thunderous sound. Even muffled by twenty-five metres of alloy, the noise was tremendous. The whole missile battery shook and there was a howling roar that increased in volume. Then, it was silent again, as the Shatterer missile flew from its tube and into the night sky.

“Seven seconds to impact,” said Duggan, remembering how long it took a Shatterer to hit the Pugilist at the same altitude. A green dot raced across his screen, on an intercept course with the larger green dot of the Cadaveron. The two dots met and the smaller one winked out of existence.

“The Shatterer’s scored a hit,” he said.

“The Cadaveron must have been pointing downwards when the disruptor got them,” said Chainer. “Its altitude is still dropping. They’re in free-fall, sir!”

There was a rumbling from somewhere beneath, followed by the vibration of powerful gears shifting a thousand tonnes of missile into a position from which it could be fired.

“Automatic reload,” said Chainer. The vibration continued. “Is anyone keeping a timer?”

“Not a very fast reload,” said Breeze. “I’m counting.”

“We’ll know soon enough when our minute’s up, Lieutenant. We’ll see missiles coming towards us.”

“These gauges are settling down. I don’t need to read Ghast to know there’s nothing much left in the tank,” said Breeze. He spat the words out in a staccato rhythm while he maintained his internal count of the time. “I’m up to thirty seconds.”

The gears continued to rumble and Duggan mentally thanked Breeze for keeping a count - it was important to him that he know how long they had left. “No third strike, then.” He’d realised this already – none of the Ghast warships had been able to fire the Shatterers quickly.

“Forty.”

“Maybe no second either,” said Duggan.

“They’re at eighteen thousand klicks now. They’re going to land too close for comfort.”

“Fifty seconds.”

The sound of the gears stopped. Still there was no option to target the second missile.

“Sixty.”

The disruptor and the Shatterers lit up simultaneously. Duggan fired both at once, gritting his teeth at how close-run it was. The sound of the second missile engulfed the control room and it was a relief when the roar of its launch faded to nothingness. The Cadaveron was much closer this time and the second missile took only three seconds to strike the Ghast heavy cruiser.

“Our power’s down to zero, give or take,” said Breeze.

“Sir, I really think there’s a good chance of their impact killing us,” said Chainer. “It would be a shame, since we’ve technically beaten the bastards.”

Something in Chainer’s words made Duggan burst into laughter. “I don’t want any of us to die, Lieutenant, but if we do, we can rest easy knowing we’ve killed some Ghasts with their own missiles.”

“They’re less than five thousand klicks above the surface,” said Chainer. “They’re going to land four hundred klicks east. The crater’s going to be huge.”

Duggan spoke to the squad. “There’s three thousand metres of Ghast heavy cruiser about to crash nearby in the next twenty seconds. I want you all to know that if it kills us, you did a damn good job here.”

“Twenty seconds notice of impending death, huh?” asked Ortiz. “That’s more than we usually get.”

“Now,” said Chainer.

For a few seconds, there was nothing. Then, the walls of the silo began to shake. It started gradually, before building in ferocity. Duggan struggled to keep his feet and Chainer was knocked from his chair. The rumbling didn’t subside, rather it built again until it reached a new intensity. The entire missile battery canted to one side and the three of them were cast helplessly into the wall. One of the screens fell loose and it smashed against Duggan’s shoulder. He shouted in pain and anger. Still the shaking went on, until it seemed as if the shockwave was going to kill them all.

After what seemed like an eternity, the quaking stopped. Duggan struggled to his feet, fighting for grip on the thirty-degree tilt of the smooth floor.

“Is anyone hurt?” he asked the squad. “How’s Commander McGlashan?”

“The Commander’s been well looked after, sir,” said Corporal Bryant. “Other than that, I’d say we have plenty of bruises.”

It was better news than Duggan could have hoped for, but there was no time for celebration. “Lieutenant Chainer, do you think you can open a channel to the Goliath? Ask her captain to scan the crash site and tell us what’s out there.”

Chainer pressed a few areas of his console. He waited and then pressed them again. “It’s not working, sir. Either I’m doing it wrong or our comms are down.”

Duggan swore. “Everybody, get ready to move out. We’re getting out of here and we’re going to see what a crash-landed Cadaveron looks like.” In his head, there was another thought, which he didn’t speak. And if the Ghasts have killed Morgan and disabled the comms beacon, we’re going to be right out of luck.

Chapter Twelve

It took longer to exit the silo than it had taken to enter. The structure had been knocked at an angle by the shock from the Ghast heavy cruiser. The floor was smooth and even the high-grip soles of the space suits struggled as the men and women clambered around the central area where the missiles had launched from. In addition, the inner walls of the silo were still blisteringly hot from the launch.

“Over two hundred degrees,” said Duggan. “It wouldn’t normally matter, except my suit’s not functioning properly.”

“It feels about eighty degrees in my suit,” said Chainer. “I’m not sure there’s any power going to the temperature control. Natural insulation only for me.”

“It’s not too cold on the surface, Lieutenant.”

“Colder than I’d like.”

Duggan paused for a moment on the perimeter steps. Corporal Bryant and Sergeant Ortiz were carrying McGlashan. It didn’t look easy.

Ortiz caught his reflective visor looking at them. “I’d rather be carrying a rifle,” she grunted.

At last, they reached the entrance airlock room. The heavy outer door was in the same place, jammed against the dead Ghast in its mech suit. Duggan instructed the others to wait. He climbed onto the twisted metal-clad body and inched sideways through the door. It was still night and his suit vision flickered and jumped disconcertingly as the damaged helmet struggled to cope. The missile battery had tipped away from the edge of the crater it had been buried in and was lying against the collapsed opposite wall of the hole. There seemed to be a lot more earth and gravel than there had been earlier. Duggan had to perform a controlled slide down the exposed outer surface of the tube and jump the last few feet. He landed in soft earth and scrambled upwards towards the edge above him.

Duggan looked over the loose dirt at the crater’s edge, making the most of the cover it provided. There was no sign of the Ghast light tank which had chewed up the dredger with repeater fire. There was plenty of other damage. In fact, nothing looked the same as before. The mining equipment was scattered about, most of it tipped over, or thrown from its original position. From where he was, Duggan could see most of the dredger. The remaining pieces of it had moved a great distance, and there was a huge chunk of sharp-edged metal balanced precariously on the edge of the pit near to the missile tube. It didn’t look as if it was going to fall of its own accord, but Duggan was concerned there might be aftershocks from the earlier earthquake.

“Sergeant Ortiz. Bring everyone out. And thank your lucky stars we found ourselves in what must have been the most secure structure on the entire planet.”

“Coming out now, sir. I take it the world’s gone to shit out there?”

“It’s worse than that, Sergeant. Far worse.” She didn’t respond to that. Duggan climbed onto the ground above and surveyed the area as best he could. The mining tunnels he could see had all collapsed – buried and gone beneath a billion tonnes of earth and stone. The sides of the mining pit were no longer carefully tiered. Instead, they were ragged from the numerous landslides triggered by the Cadaveron’s impact. The eastern wall was too far to make out clearly – it looked like a dark mass, but was now much lower than it had been before. The shocks must have punched the sides in and caused the whole lot to come down.

“Infantryman Morgan, do you copy?” he asked. There was no response. “Infantryman Morgan, do you copy?” Duggan’s heart lurched in his chest at the thought of losing another squad member and their only comms beacon.

“Morgan here, sir. Are the fireworks over?”

Duggan blew out noisily. “For now, soldier. Are you hurt? How’s that comms beacon?”

“I’m the luckiest man alive, sir. I took a couple of knocks is all. I’ve looked after that beacon like it was my own child.”

“Stay put for the moment. We brought the enemy warship down, but the light tank is unaccounted for. We’re coming out of the silo.”

The rest of the squad began leaving the Shatterer battery. Most of them followed Duggan’s idea of sliding down twenty metres or so and then jumping into the earth. It wasn’t so easy to get McGlashan out and her comatose body nearly slipped to the ground in the process.

“You three, stay here with the Commander,” said Duggan, pointing out the chosen squad members. “The rest of you are coming with me. Morgan’s alive and he’s got the beacon.”

The relief was palpable. The six of them set off at a good pace, using the torn dredger for cover. Morgan was in the cab of a dump truck. It had turned onto its roof in the earthquake.

“Lucky I remembered to belt in,” he said. “Else I’d have landed on my head.”

No one took advantage of the opportunity to comment on the benefits of Morgan landing on his head. The time didn’t feel right for joking, given what had happened so far.

“Where’s the beacon?” asked Duggan.

“Right here, sir,” said Morgan. He opened the glove box and slid out the comms beacon. It was a metal cube, with several extendable aerials. Duggan took it and set it up at once.

“Sir, there’s movement a way over to the north,” said Dorsey. She was outside the cab, peering into the distance.

Duggan looked up sharply. “Coming our way?”

“I’m not sure. I’d say it’s the tank.”

“Of course it’s the damned tank,” muttered Duggan. He powered up the beacon. “MHL Goliath, this is Captain John Duggan. Do you copy?”

There was a pause for a few seconds. “This is Captain Erika Jonas of the MHL Goliath. You are not going to believe the size of the hole you just made in this planet.”

“We need a pickup – urgently. We’ve got an injured officer here.”

“What about the missile bunker?”

“We’ve taken care of it. Come at once. There’s a Ghast tank hunting us and we’ve got nothing except our rifles.”

“Roger. On our way.”

With the broadcast finished, the beacon powered itself off. “Where’s that tank?” Duggan asked.

“About a klick away. It’s sweeping the area. I’d say they’re looking for something, without knowing what.”

“Could they have picked up our signal?” asked Duggan.

“Not sure, sir,” said Chainer. “These beacons aren’t well shielded. That doesn’t mean every piece of military hardware automatically knows when it’s sending.”

“Damnit, I think they’ve seen me,” said Dorsey. She ducked around the edge of the truck again.

“Think?” asked Duggan.

“Sorry sir, they’re coming straight towards us.”

“Get down!” shouted Duggan, throwing himself onto the ground.

The others followed suit. There was a clatter of metallic impacts against the side of the truck, punching dozens of holes along its forty-metre length. The force of the blows was such that each one knocked the truck a little way along the ground. The soldiers crawled on their stomachs to keep ahead of the machinery which threatened to crush them. Another volley smashed through the truck bed. Duggan could feel the depleted uranium projectiles ripping through the thin air above him. He looked frantically around for a place to run. There was no other cover within two hundred metres and the tank would see them if they tried to escape. And it’ll get us if we don’t, came the grim realisation.

“What do we do, sir?”

“Sir, should we run?”

“There’s the tank!” said Dorsey.

A menacing shape came into sight around the edge of the truck, all angular sides and plate armour. The turret on top rotated with unnerving speed as it retargeted. Another round of projectiles spilled into the ruined truck as the soldiers tried desperately to crawl around to the far side, in the hope they hadn’t been seen. Duggan fired a couple of shots from his rifle, determined to show at least this amount of resistance.

The seemingly inevitable death didn’t arrive for Duggan or his squad. Before the Ghast tank could focus on them, a wall of earth gouted from the ground. It stretched in a line a hundred metres long, like a high fountain of grit and stone. Duggan’s suit picked up hints of movement coming from above, objects streaking to the surface at an unimaginable velocity, accompanied by a deep thumping where they struck the surface. The tank was punched and flattened, flipped over and thrown twenty metres high. The fountain stopped and then returned, breaking the tank into pieces and shredding each part into something smaller again.

The fountaining stopped and fragments of stone rained down upon the huddled soldiers, rattling against their helmets and covering them with dust. Duggan raised his head and knew that on this day, he’d relied on luck far more than he should have. He stood up and dusted himself off, the gesture both automatic and pointless. Cheering broke across the open channel as the men and women became accustomed to continued life, rather than death.

A few minutes later, a shape appeared in the sky. One of the Goliath’s four personnel transporters hovered silently overhead while its sensors scanned the ground for underlying fractures that would jeopardise its landing. At last, it settled to the ground in an open space a short distance from the truck. Duggan sent the five soldiers with him to meet with it, while he ran to help the three he’d left with Commander McGlashan. Together, they carried her across the rough ground to the transporter. The craft was big enough for two hundred people if you crammed them in tightly. At the moment, it only carried three members of the Goliath’s crew, plus the five from Duggan’s squad. Several came to assist and they got McGlashan up the wide boarding ramp and into the airlock. Minutes later, the transporter was away, heading towards the heavy lifter.

With a feeling of relief, Duggan pulled his helmet off and went to speak to the pilot. She greeted him with a smile that was as open and genuine as they came. She was in her thirties and attractive, with a mischievous glitter to her eyes.

“Glad you could join us, Captain Duggan.” She extended a suited hand. “Captain Jonas.”

They shook hands. “Your timing is excellent,” he said. “Another ten seconds and we’d have been finished.”

“The Goliath isn’t warship, but we still carry a few Bulwarks, in case any stray missiles come our way.” She winked. “Or a Ghast light tank.”

An image of something was zoomed in on one of her monitors. Duggan leaned over for a closer look.

“That’s the crater,” she said. “How much would you say one of those Cadaverons weigh?”

“That particular one? About nine-point-five billion tonnes. There are bigger ones in the Ghast fleet.”

She zoomed the image out to show the entirety of the heavy cruiser’s impact crater. There was a tiny spot off to one side, which she pointed at. That’s the mine operations there. You might not have seen it from where you were on the ground, but there’re cracks everywhere. One of them a whole kilometre wide. It’s going to take a while before they can get that site running again.”

Duggan was occupied looking at the two craters side-by-side. The Ghast ship had struck the planet at a sixty-degree angle. It must have turned over a few times after impact, which made the initial crater extend into a long, deep furrow.

“Three hundred klicks across.” He shook his head, dumbfounded at the damage.

“And about five hundred long. Goes down an awful long way, too. The hull stayed in one piece - inconceivable when you think about it. Would any of them have lived?”

“Depends on what damage the missiles did before it crashed. If the life support suffered damage, their bodies will be spread a nanometre thick across the walls.”

“Tough luck for them, huh?”

“I’m out of sympathy.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Something else loomed into view. The MHL Goliath lay ahead, with a hatch open high on one of its sheer sides. Captain Jonas engaged the autopilot and the two of them sat in silence while the onboard computers lined them up with the docking bay and guided them in to land.

Chapter Thirteen

The ship’s medic was waiting for them in the hangar bay. He was a surly man who spoke in little more than grunts. He’d brought the Goliath’s mobile medical robot along with him, which was an eight-feet tall block with a human-sized tube through the middle. A couple of the soldiers wrestled McGlashan into the tube, which closed up, sealing her in completely. The med-bot reversed away on its tiny gravity engine, the ship’s medic close behind.

“Will she live?” Duggan called after the medic. The man just shrugged and continued walking. It was insubordinate, but this wasn’t a battle Duggan wanted to start.

“I guess you’re in charge now, Captain Duggan.” It was Jonas. She offered a perfect salute with just the right amount of mockery. It would have made Duggan grin on another day. “What do you command? Shall we set a course for Pioneer?” she asked.

He realised how exhausted he was. He’d not slept apart from a few restless minutes snatched on the walk from the wreck of the ES Pugilist. His body had been running on battlefield adrenaline for too long and the pain from his forearm was making it difficult to focus.

“We can’t go to Pioneer yet, Captain Jonas,” he said. “We’re not finished with our duties here on Everlong.”

She raised an eyebrow and there was no trace of humour when she spoke. “The miners are all dead, Captain Duggan. We were in orbit long enough to find that out, at least.”

“I know,” he said. “The poor bastards didn’t stand a chance. We can still get something out of this.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“The Shatterer emplacement on the ground. Do you have room for it?”

“How big is it?”

“One hundred and twenty metres in diameter, length unknown. I’d guess no more than three hundred metres.”

“Oh, I thought you meant it was big. There’s almost room for that under my bed.”

This time Duggan couldn’t help but smile. “We’ll need to get it onboard. If we get it back to a shipyard, the Corps research labs will have something to go on. We’ve got nothing to combat them at the moment. The Shatterers ignore all our countermeasures.”

“I know,” she said. “We’ll get it into the hold. Tonight. Want to come up to the bridge and see how a Class One Military Heavy Lifter works?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

While a Corps warship was all engines and weapons, the Goliath was all gravity lifter and cargo bay. The hull was triple-skinned and access corridors ran between the walls. Duggan found himself sitting in a narrow two-seater gravity-drive car that scooted along the seemingly deserted passages.

“We’re a bit more spread out than a warship,” said Jonas. “So we need transport to get us around.”

“How many crew do you have?”

“Twenty-two. It’s not as if we could lift any of our cargo by hand, no matter how many people we brought onboard.”

“What’ve you got in your cargo bays?”

“A couple of rock-borers at fifteen million tonnes apiece. An entire smelting plant, custom-built on Pioneer for operations here. That’s got to weigh at least five hundred million tonnes. Then there’re all the vehicles and supplies. Nothing we can’t handle. Here’s the bridge.”

They left the vehicle at the bottom of a grey-metal stairwell. Everything in the Corps was grey, as if a tin of paint would push the budget too far. Duggan was used to it and hardly even noticed these days. He entered the bridge behind Jonas. To his eyes, the room was sprawled across an unnecessarily large area. There were a couple of men at banks of screens on the far side.

“Second Lieutenants Green and Haster,” she said. They turned and nodded at Jonas. Discipline tended to be a bit less formal on anything that wasn’t a frontline warship and Duggan didn’t worry about it. Jonas pointed to a chair in front of some more screens and he sat.

“What happened to the ES Ribald?” he asked, hoping she might have some more details beyond what he’d already guessed.

“Same thing that happened to you. They got hit by a missile. At least that’s what our mainframe assumes happened. See, our sensors aren’t made to detect objects travelling at four thousand klicks per second. Anyway, they didn’t get lucky. Broke to pieces in mid-air and ended up scattered across half the planet.” She turned to face him. “Captain Graham seemed like he had a good heart. He was petrified of meeting you. I could hear it in his voice. I hope he left a good impression.”

Duggan sighed. “I didn’t like him. Maybe I should have given him more of a chance.”

“It’s too late for that now,” she said, her words without judgement.

“How did you know what the Ghasts wanted of you?” Duggan asked. “After they’d destroyed your escort.”

“I didn’t have the faintest idea. They shot down the Pugilist and Ribald and simply didn’t shoot us down. I knew I couldn’t outrun them, so I just waited to see what they’d do. They did nothing and I kept waiting. Then, the Cadaveron showed up. They tried to communicate with us – sent us all sorts of messages. Our mainframe’s been working on figuring out what they wanted, but it’s not the quickest model in the Corps. It’s funny to think we’ve been fighting for so long and we don’t even understand each other’s languages.”

Duggan knew the two sides had communicated in the past, though it was something he kept to himself. Even with that knowledge, he was unaware how the dialogue had taken place or how the Space Corps had figured out enough of the Ghast language to get things moving.

“I’m going to bring us over the mine area,” she said. “The gravity chains have a range of thirty klicks. Like a reverse gravity engine, except slower and with more short-range grunt. Where’d you say that missile tube was?”

“Right in the middle. In a crater.”

“Another crater? You make a lot of them, do you?” It was a throwaway comment, not meant to be anything.

Duggan grimaced, remembering the planet he’d destroyed while captaining the ESS Crimson. “It’s been known to happen.”

“The sensors have located the object. Half-buried and at an angle. Shouldn’t present a problem and there’s plenty of room in Cargo Bay Fifteen. I see it’s just shy of eighty-five million tonnes. Pretty heavy for its size - it must be right up there with the other densest metals.”

“It’s no problem, is it?”

“No problem at all. Here, we’re hovering at nine klicks. Opening the bay door.”

The nearby screens each showed a different viewpoint of what was happening. One showed a pair of cargo doors sliding away into the recesses of the spacecraft – Duggan assumed there’d be room for them between the hull skins, to ensure the doors wouldn’t interfere with what was in the hold.

“Got a fix on it,” said Jonas. She sounded as if she were reciting the words as much for her benefit as Duggan’s. “Watch what happens.”

Duggan had seen before how the lifters worked. Nevertheless, he stared in fascination as one of the screens showed the Shatterer tube being dragged smoothly and cleanly from its crater.

“The invisible hand of God, we call it,” said Jonas. “Five klicks away. Rotating it perpendicular. Coming in nicely.”

A couple of minutes later and it was done. The Ghast Shatterer tube was safely stowed on the Goliath.

“The Corps engineers will be happy to see that,” said Duggan.

“And I’ll be happy to see the back of this planet,” said Jonas. “The deep fission drives take nearly an hour to warm up. I’ll bring us to a high orbit while Lieutenant Green hits them with a spanner.”

“How much can this vessel lift?” asked Duggan. “If the cargo bays were all empty and you wanted to haul the heaviest item you could?”

“We’ve done five billion tonnes before, though that was in separate units of a billion each. We were expecting to pick up almost that amount of metal from Everlong.” She looked at him sideways. “You’re up to something.”

“What about nine-point-five billion tonnes in the form of a single object?”

“I knew you were up to something. If you’re referring to that wrecked Cadaveron on the surface below, then there’s no room for it. We’re full up.”

“What if you removed all of the other cargo apart from the missile battery? Would there be room?”

Captain Jonas opened and closed her mouth, still not sure if she should take Duggan seriously or not. “If we emptied the hold and dumped all our inner walls there would theoretically be enough room to fit a Cadaveron inside. It’s nearly ten billion tonnes.” She repeated the weight as if to remind Duggan what he was asking.

“Could the gravity chains pick it up? And if so, would you have enough power to bring it into space? Captain Jonas, we have a unique opportunity to capture one of the enemy’s most powerful warships. As far as I’m aware, such a chance hasn’t arisen before. We’ve taken wreckage of course, but nothing like this. The things we could learn, Captain. Imagine what this might do for the Confederation.”

“I’m too busy imagining my precious spaceship crashing into the same impact crater as the Cadaveron you want to lift out of it. It’ll take us at least two days to safely unload our cargo. What if the Ghasts come back?”

“How long to jettison the contents of the hold?”

“Less than half an hour. I can’t possibly authorise that. It’ll take years to pay for out of a captain’s salary.” Her sense of humour was still there at least.

“Could you recover the wrecked spaceship?” asked Duggan quietly.

“If you approve it, I’ll give it a go.”

“Very well. Captain Jonas, I want you to jettison whatever cargo you’re carrying. After that, the MHL Goliath will bring the Cadaveron into its hold and we’ll take it back to Pioneer.”

“You’re the boss,” she said. “What if there’s anyone alive on board and they decide to open fire?”

“We’ll find out long before we get them into the hold.”

“Stick our head around the corner and see what shoots at us, huh?”

“You have nothing to worry about, Captain Jonas. If there’d been anyone alive on that Cadaveron, they’d have blown the Goliath into pieces by now, rather than see us escape to Confederation-controlled space. However, if we’re to bring a Ghast warship to a populated planet, we need to be sure its AI is not able to transmit its location.”

“We’re not a warship, Captain Duggan. We might not even be able to detect its transmissions, let alone try and block them. If we do somehow manage to get it into the cargo hold, our hull won’t stop outbound comms either.”

“I know. I’m going to take some of my squad onto the surface and we’re going to have a look onboard. You carry explosives on the Goliath, don’t you?”

Captain Jonas could only nod, leaving Duggan to worry about the details of his proposal. He had no idea if his plan was going to work, but was determined he wouldn’t give up without trying.

Chapter Fourteen

An hour later, Duggan was in the cockpit of the same transport craft that had recently brought his squad away from the surface. In the passenger area, a row of suited men and women sat, their bodies rocking in time to the faint buffeting the transport was subjected to. They carried their rifles, and three of them had heavy packs of explosives from the stores on the Goliath. The suits looked worse for wear after the blast from the Cadaveron’s missile earlier. Santos had been forced to stay behind because his helmet power supply had failed. As well as that, Butler had swapped suits with Chainer, since the Lieutenant’s suit was too damaged to risk wearing. Therefore, they’d left Butler as well, in order to bring Breeze and Chainer who were better-placed to figure out the equipment on the Ghast ship’s bridge. There were suits on the Goliath, they just weren’t designed for combat use.

“We’ll be landing in six minutes,” said Duggan. “Are you all excited to see the insides of a Ghast warship?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world, sir,” said Ortiz. Duggan knew she wasn’t exaggerating.

He kept the transport low to the ground, more out of habit than anything else. When they flew over the edge of the vast impact crater, he brought them up higher so he could focus the sensors on the crash site. The view on the closest screen changed to show a zoomed-in section of the distant centre and Duggan mirrored it through to the passenger bay. The image looked unfocused - there was a distinct shimmering from the heat, which the sensors struggled to correct. Gradually, the details became clearer, revealing the damaged hull of their target. The Cadaveron was in one piece as Jonas had said. It didn’t look much like a warship any more – the nose had been flattened and the sides were deeply scarred. Nevertheless, there was something unpleasantly threatening about the remains, as if the vessel were dangerous even in its current state.

“How did it stay in one piece?” asked Flores. “I bet it came down at a hundred klicks per second.”

“It’s almost solid metal, Soldier. Denser and stronger than almost any other material – our own warship engines aren’t much short of thirty tonnes per cubic metre and I’m sure the Ghasts’ engine technology is on par with ours. If it had been hollow, the pieces would have burned up or scattered across a million square kilometres.”

“Has there been any sign of movement or life since it went down?” asked Ortiz.

Duggan touched the screen to zoom in further. He panned across the length of the Cadaveron. There were two huge holes in its port side.

“The life support can sustain the crew on a jump to lightspeed,” he said. “If it was functioning when they landed, there’s a good chance they’d be alive. The fact that we’re alive and not deconstructed into atoms by a missile strike tells me for sure they’re all dead.”

“We can learn a whole lot from that ship, I take it?” asked Ortiz.

“We need this vessel badly, Sergeant – to learn the weak spots. If the life support is vulnerable or there are other design flaws, we might even be able to program our own missiles to target those areas of their warships.”

“I’ll bet the Goliath’s captain wasn’t happy when you told her what you wanted to pick up,” said Breeze.

“I don’t think she was expecting it,” said Duggan. “I’m going to fly the length of the hull, to see if there’s any obvious way to enter it. If it’s shut up tight we’re going to be here a long time, which is bad news when we don’t know if there are any other Ghast ships incoming.”

He took them close, descending carefully into the seven-kilometre-deep crater. The sensors of the transporter reported the surrounding rock to be dense with metal ores. Duggan wondered what the damage would have been like if the Cadaveron had crashed into soft rock. Their destination loomed ahead - the hull was a dull silver, similar in appearance to a Corps vessel. However, the Ghast ship was slightly more irregular in shape, with extra angles and curves. There were also one-hundred-metre domes at each end, which Duggan knew housed beam weapons.

“Ugly looking thing,” said Chainer.

“I’ll bet they say the same thing about ours,” said Dorsey.

“Have you been reading a book on understanding the enemy?” asked Flores. “Love Thine Murderous Bastard Alien Neighbour?”

“Piss off, Flores - before I shoot you in the balls,” she retorted.

“You’d need to be a good shot,” said Morgan, producing a series of jeers across the comms.

From a distance of two hundred metres, the Shatterer missile holes looked even more devastating. Their blasts had ripped deep into the craft, tearing through several dozen metres of the outer armour. Beneath, the colour of the metal changed to a greyish blue that Duggan recognized as part of the engines. The transport had only moderate shielding, so he didn’t get any closer, nor stay for longer than he needed to.

“Any idea where they get in and out?” asked Chainer.

“It’s usually somewhere underneath,” said Duggan. “It seems to change from ship to ship.”

“If it’s sealed up, you know we’ve got a cat’s chance of getting inside, no matter how many explosives we stick to it?” That was Breeze, speaking privately.

“We won’t know until we’ve looked, Lieutenant.”

The front of the heavy cruiser was embedded deep into the rock, with the tail pointing upwards at a slight angle. Duggan flew as close as he dared, hoping there’d be a visible means of entrance. There was nothing on either port or starboard. The underside of the vessel was similarly without visible opening, though it was too low to the ground to see for certain.

“I’m going to fly us over the top,” said Duggan. The transporter climbed smoothly upwards at his command and he directed it to run above the length of the Ghast ship.

“What’s that I can see on the screen, sir?” asked Ortiz. “There’s something sticking out.”

“I see it too,” said Dorsey.

Duggan brought the transporter to a halt and kept it hovering, fifty metres over the vessel below. He squinted at the pilot’s viewscreen until he saw what Ortiz had mentioned – it was a nondescript metal post, a few metres in length, sticking directly upward from the hull.

“I think that’s an external sensor array, sir,” said Chainer. “It looks similar to one of our comms beacons, except we keep ours housed under half a metre of armour. Maybe the Ghasts’ tech isn’t capable of operating that way.”

“What happens if we plant explosives on it?”

“You’ll stop that single array from working. I’d guess a ship this size would have dozens like it protruding from all over.”

“Some of them on the underside?” asked Duggan.

“I’m sure there will be, sir. They might be bent or flattened, but there’s always a chance they’ll still work.”

The fleeting hope of destroying all the external sensors to disable the Cadaveron’s ability to communicate slipped away. Duggan swore. He could feel his stress rising, which he knew was a symptom of his increasing tiredness. The wound on his forearm was hurting progressively more and he’d not been able to spare the time to have anyone look at it. He’d not removed his suit and didn’t know how much of a mark the Ghast projectile had left behind on his flesh. He didn’t want to dwell on it.

“I’m going to put us down, so we can get out and have a better look underneath,” he said.

The floor of the crater was uneven and sloped towards the centre. The transporter was designed to land on a variety of surfaces and it settled without fuss. The side door hissed open and lowered itself to the ground. As he stepped onto the heat-scalded grey rock, Duggan felt tiny in the shadow of the crashed spacecraft. The air temperature was over eighty degrees, with heat continuing to spill into the atmosphere from the Ghast ship.

“I’m not expecting trouble, but turn on your movement sensors and keep an eye out. We’re looking for a boarding ramp. You all know what one looks like – theirs aren’t any different to ours.”

There was less room underneath the Cadaveron than Duggan had expected. The immense weight of its alloys and the speed of its impact had pushed it into the rock. There were a few hundred metres aft where they could get beneath the hull for a look. As he put one hand on the hot metal and peered into the darkness, Duggan felt a rumbling in the rock around him. The rumbling stopped and then came again, stronger this time.

“Get away,” he shouted on the comms, before turning and sprinting in the direction of the transporter.

The others didn’t need to be asked twice and ran with him. The vibration ended once more, leaving behind an unspoken threat that it would return.

“The Cadaveron moved, sir,” said Chainer. “I had my hand on it when the second tremor came and the hull shifted a couple of inches.”

“It’s probably too heavy to be stable,” said Breeze. “Objects this size and density weren’t really meant to be supported.”

“Damnit, that’s going to stop us doing a proper search,” said Duggan, wondering if he should call the whole thing off and return to the Goliath. Then, he saw something with his suit-enhanced sight. The front-most of the missile holes was over three hundred metres away. From the ground, it was possible to see something which had been concealed when looking from the transporter – there was an area of different colour, a blue glow deep within the metal hole.

“I can see light,” said Duggan. “One of the missiles must have penetrated through to a part of the vessel where the Ghast crew worked.” He started jogging towards it. The missile hole was way up above him, with no obvious way to reach it. The Cadaveron had taken a lot of damage when it went down, but there was no way to climb the scratched metal sides.

“I can see it as well,” said Chainer. “I think we blew open one of their inner rooms or something.”

“Back to the transporter,” said Duggan. “We’re going to try and land in that hole.”

“Sir, our suits won’t protect us from the emissions for longer than a few minutes,” said Breeze.

“You’re right, Lieutenant. Anyone who wants to wait on the ground is welcome to do so.”

“Hell no,” said Breeze. “I was just letting you know the risks.”

“No way I’m turning down the chance to get a look inside,” said Dorsey.

Duggan began the short trip to the transporter, with the others close behind.

It was much harder to land the transporter in a three-hundred and twenty metre missile hole than it was to land it on the ground next to the stricken Ghast vessel. The transporter’s autopilot refused to accept Duggan’s instructions, so he had to shut the system down and use the control sticks to bring them into position. He was conscious of the passing time, so was denied the opportunity to take things as slowly and carefully as he’d have liked. The hole was uneven, and some of the outer armour had melted downwards, leaving sharp fragments overhanging the place he wanted to land. The transporter was only eighty metres long, but it was cumbersome and not designed for precision close-in flight. Duggan spent a minute lining it up so that he could fly it in sideways, cursing the gusts of wind which seemed to have sprung up from nowhere.

He got them in, slowly and cautiously. There was no smooth place to land and he struggled to get three of the four landing feet nestled into places he was confident they wouldn’t slip away from. The rear of the transporter was heavier than the front and he managed to get the back two feet in place, before rotating the nose of the craft and getting one of the front feet down. The vessel tilted slightly and there was a scraping noise when the feet slid over the canted metal. Duggan held his breath as the transporter’s nose slipped forwards. There was the thumping sensation of a low-speed collision and the movement stopped. Duggan had hardly gathered himself when he heard Sergeant Ortiz exhorting the squad to get moving.

“The exit door won’t extend fully, sir,” said Ortiz. The door was meant to fold outwards from the side of the transporter, to create a ramp for passengers to walk up and down. It had opened partway, but a thick spear of metal prevented it from moving further. There was a V-shaped gap to either side.

“There’s plenty of room to climb out,” said Duggan. He pushed through the others and poked his head outside. “Three hundred degrees. Pretty hot,” he said, handing his rifle to Breeze. Then, he used both hands to grip the top of the doorway and lifted himself upwards. He swung sideways and managed to get through the gap without smashing his helmet off anything.

Ortiz came next, followed by Chainer and Breeze. The others inside passed out the rifles and packs of explosives.

“I doubt we’ll need any of these guns,” said Duggan. “If there’s a hole into the crew’s quarters, they’re all dead.”

“They must have internal airlocks, sir.” said Chainer. “They shouldn’t all have died from a single breach.”

Duggan couldn’t deny the logic in Chainer’s words. Still, he remained certain that this vessel had become a tomb for the crew it carried. His helmet chimed a warning about temperature and positrons, letting him know it was time to move on from where he was standing. He ignored it for another few seconds, until everyone had exited the transporter. It was dark and the light from their helmets flashed over the area, casting elongated shadows onto their surroundings. The high sides of the transporter prevented them from looking outwards, not that there was anything to see. The blast crater in the Cadaveron’s side sloped upwards, curving over until it formed a roof far above. Duggan searched for the source of the blue light he’d seen from below and found it quickly. There was a hole a few metres square, fifty or so metres up and to their left – it had appeared much smaller from below. There was a space through the hole, with the light giving away nothing of what lay beyond.

“We must be looking at the ceiling from this angle,” said Chainer, stepping back to let Duggan go past him.

Duggan scrambled over the hot alloy surface, finding it surprisingly easy to grip. His rifle was slung across his back and it clattered against a sharp-edged piece of misshapen metal as he squeezed by. He reached the hole, just at a point where angle of the slope would have made it hard to climb any higher. There was an open area on the other side of the gap and with a deep breath, Duggan climbed into the Ghast vessel.

Chapter Fifteen

Duggan found himself in a room ten metres wide and stretching to a hundred in length. There were two passages leading away from opposite walls. The temperature was lower here and Duggan guessed this area was heavily insulated from the mass of engines close by. He stepped a few paces forward – the floor was metal-tiled and at a fifteen-degree angle from level. Footing would have been treacherous had the Cadaveron been at more of a tilt. As it was, he found it easy enough to manage. Sergeant Ortiz appeared next at the hole and Duggan moved deeper into the room so she and the others could enter.

“Look at all these bunks,” she said. “Hundreds of them.”

Chainer came next. “The poor bastards in here must have been vaporised.”

“And not a damn thing they could do about it,” said Flores.

“Have you been reading that book you were telling me about?” asked Dorsey.

“We’re all soldiers, aren’t we?” muttered Flores, not pleased to have been called out.

The bunks were little more than alcoves in the walls, eight feet long and four deep. They were stacked three high, with the uppermost ones ten feet from the floor. There were deep, horizontal grooves in the walls next to them – ladders for the Ghast soldiers to climb up to reach their beds. Duggan headed along the room, keeping close to the wall as he went. He looked into the first bunk he reached – there was nothing within. Whatever bedding there might have been was either utterly destroyed by the heat of the Shatterer missile, or sucked out into space.

“I might hate these alien bastards, but there’s no pleasure to be gained from this,” said Ortiz.

“Yeah,” said Flores.

“We need to move,” said Duggan. “This place is too hot and we might have a lot of running to do to find the bridge.”

With that, he set off with his rifle in his hands. He kept it across his chest, rather than at his shoulder. Speed was more important than anything and he was certain there’d be no resistance. The passageways he’d seen earlier went left or right from the room. Duggan went left, guessing the bridge was more likely to be at the front of the ship. In other circumstances it would have made more sense to split up, but the density of the ship would stop any suit-to-suit communication and he didn’t want anyone getting lost.

The corridor they entered was oversized, as was everything to do with the Ghasts. Pipes and cables ran in trays high up on the walls. Every so often, there were screens embedded into the walls, with no clue as to their function. The blue light was everywhere and seemed to exude from the walls themselves, instead of having a discernible source.

“It’s a mixture of old and new,” said Chainer. “I’ve not seen a pipe on a spacecraft since we were last on the Crimson – I’m half expecting to see steam coming out of a loose joint. However, the lighting is technologically superior to anything on a Corps vessel.”

“This Cadaveron isn’t one of their recent models, Lieutenant,” said Duggan. “I can’t imagine we’ll see exposed cables on one of those.”

“I’m sure you’re right, sir. It’s just this particular ship can’t be that old. If it was older than twenty years, chances are the Space Corps would have blown it up way back when we were better than them.”

It wasn’t worth pursuing any further and Duggan didn’t respond. The passage continued and the temperature dropped steadily. They reached a branch to the right, three hundred metres from the bunk room. There was another room, fifty metres square. This room was a mess, with piles of unrecognizable metal objects flattened against the wall closest to the front of the ship. Here and there were tables and benches, still fastened to the floor. The back wall had three lockers attached to it, each one buckled and warped.

“What’s all this crap?” asked Dorsey.

Duggan took a few paces into the room. “This is what tables and chairs look like when they’re ripped from their fixings and smashed into a wall at several thousand metres per second.”

“Any bodies?” asked Ortiz.

“If there were, I don’t think they’d be recognizable as anything,” said Duggan. “There’s some discoloration to the metal over here. That might be clothing I can see in the corner.” He shrugged, not wanting to think about it just now. “The life support had definitely failed when they came down, else this lot would still be in place. We’re too far away from where the Shatterer hit for it to have caused this damage.”

“This is familiar,” said Ortiz. “Everything about it.”

“We could be on a bigger version of an Anderlecht,” said Duggan. “They don’t care much for creature comforts on those either. Anderlechts and Gunners - mobile gun platforms like this Cadaveron. Put a crew onboard and send them out to fight.”

There was something about this room which disturbed him, almost as much as the bunk room. There was another exit opposite, which he ignored and returned to the corridor they’d been originally following. As he walked, Duggan noticed scrapes and scratched in the walls and floor. When the life support failed and the ship crashed, anything unsecured in this passage would have hurtled along here at an incredible speed, catching the walls as it went. He paused for a moment and pressed his palm against one of the sides, to reassure himself about a suspicion. There was a humming vibration, clearly felt through the material of his suit.

“After all this, the engines are still online,” he said.

“Will it fly?” asked Ortiz.

“It might,” said Duggan. “Though anyone living would have a rough time of it.”

They reached another turning to the right, which ended at a series of wide steps going up. Duggan led the squad towards the steps and climbed. They continued for a few metres before reaching a wide landing. Corridors went away to the left and right, their destinations unclear. There was a door ahead, heavy-looking, featureless and closed. The light flickered on and off at irregular intervals and Duggan turned his helmet light back on to compensate.

“Flores, take a look at that door,” he said.

The soldier unslung his pack of explosives and stepped forward. He repeated the process he’d gone through in the Shatterer silo earlier, by hitting the door with his hand.

“Solid,” he said.

“In less technical terms please,” snarled Ortiz sarcastically. “Stop pissing about, man!”

Flores apologised. “Sorry, Sergeant, I was just thinking how much it’ll take to open it. My brain can’t work on two things at once. I can get it open but it won’t be pretty. The explosives on the Goliath aren’t meant for this type of work.”

“Will there be anything left on the other side once you’re done?” asked Duggan. “If this is the bridge, it’s important you don’t blow it to pieces.”

“I’ll do my best, sir. That’s the only promise I can make.”

“Fine, do it,” said Duggan. He wasn’t happy, even if it wasn’t Flores’ fault.

It didn’t take long. In a couple of minutes, Flores had positioned a number of red cubes around the door frame. There were no wires and the charges could be triggered simultaneously by a remote command.

“That should do it. We’ll need to get away from here.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” said Morgan.

They hurried down the steps and positioned themselves with their backs to the walls around the corner. Ten long seconds passed and nothing happened.

“Do it,” said Duggan.

“The walls are blocking the remote command, sir,” said Flores. “Hang on, I’m trying something else.”

The sensors on Duggan’s suit picked up an angry crackling sound from nearby. The noise went on for a time and was followed by a low, muted thump. Flores was off at once, sprinting towards the steps. Duggan didn’t hang around and ran after him. The door was gone, or at least it had been melted into a shape that was no longer recognizable as a door. It had folded back into the room beyond, bringing chunks of the doorway with it. The metal glowed fiercely at the edges, though its intensity was already diminishing.

“Good work,” said Duggan, giving Flores a clap on the shoulder.

“No problem, sir.”

“Lieutenants Breeze, Chainer, I think we’ve found what we’re looking for. Follow me.”

Duggan stepped past the ruined door and onto what could only be the bridge. It was coldly lit in blue and filled with bank upon bank of screens and consoles. Some of the screens were illuminated in the symbols of the Ghast alphabet, whilst others were blank.

“Big,” said Chainer.

“I count more than thirty seats. It takes a lot to oversee a big ship like this one,” said Breeze.

At the doorway, Ortiz peered inside. Duggan waved her and the others to enter. “Don’t touch anything,” he warned.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, sir,” she replied.

Chainer and Breeze had already begun looking around. The bridge was at least fifteen metres square, with contoured metal seats still fastened firmly to the floor. There were islands of screens placed evenly around, each with three chairs positioned before them.

“The Ghasts must have built this place to withstand a bigger impact,” said Breeze, pressing his finger onto some of the controls. “It’s all remained in place.”

“Apart from the crew,” said Duggan. There was a film of something across the front bulkhead and part of the ceiling. It was clear and viscous, with large patches of grey material stuck to it. He shook his head and turned away. “Let’s hope there’s nothing we need to access under there. The crew broke half of the equipment when they flew into it.”

“I think I’ve located the comms area, sir,” said Chainer. “I recognize some of it from what we saw in the Shatterer battery.” He was at the rear wall, sitting in one of the three seats. The size of the Ghast chair made him look faintly ridiculous – almost like a child - and the oversized suit helmet only added to the effect. Duggan and Breeze joined him, with the latter having to drag himself away from the propulsion control area of the bridge.

“Can you work any of it?” asked Duggan.

“Bits and pieces,” said Chainer. “I’m amazed at how similar it is to our equipment in appearance. I guess the same needs are likely to produce a similar approach in design. I’m left with the impression their comms systems lag behind ours.”

“Not enough to make a difference,” said Breeze.

“No, not enough.”

“Any idea how to shut the sensors down?” asked Duggan. “And will that definitely stop the comms working?”

“Well, sir, there’s rarely a need to power them off, so it’s not as if there’s a button you can press to do it. In the Corps, we do rolling restarts of each sensor array on a monthly basis – it can highlight problems when they perform their boot-up self-checks. Or if the ship is in for a full repair job in a dry dock, they might want to turn them off then. Which would be all well and good if I had any way of understanding their damned jibber-jabber.”

“Will it definitely stop the comms?” repeated Duggan.

“On one of ours it would,” said Chainer. “The comms are a separate system, but they fire out through the super-fars. Turn off the sensors and the comms have nowhere to go.”

“What about powering down the whole ship?” asked Breeze.

“With the number of hoops I have to jump through to do that on something as small as a Gunner, I don’t hold out much hope it’ll be an easy job on a heavy cruiser,” said Duggan, racking his brains for anything which might help.

Chainer was busily pressing at areas of the console around him. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” he said to himself. On the screens nearby, codes and message flashed up in a language none of them could understand. “Whoops!” he said, without elaborating further. Duggan didn’t ask what had happened to produce this exclamation – Chainer knew his stuff.

Time dragged on and Duggan alternated between pacing and examining the surrounding screens for something that might help. For once, his brain failed him utterly and refused to offer anything that would move matters forward. In the end, his temper and patience snapped and he opened his mouth to order a withdrawal to the transporter.

“I think I’ve got it!” said Chainer, stopping Duggan’s words before they were spoken. “How could I have forgotten that?”

“Tell me!” urged Duggan, leaning across to see.

“They’ve got a simulation mode, sir. We have them on our own warships. It allows you to test the crew’s performance in a variety of improbable scenarios. I remember them hitting me with one the very first day I was promoted – they made the ship go blind, to simulate a total failure of the comms. You’re supposed to fail the test miserably, yet somehow learn from the process.”

“And you can do that to this ship?”

“Yes, sir. There’s an option to close off all internal and external comms. There are various other options to fool the young Ghast officers as well. I can throw up a hundred pings on their fars that will look for all the world like the entire Space Corps fleet is approaching.”

“That won’t be necessary, Lieutenant. Shutting off the sensors will be sufficient.”

“Will the scenario end automatically after a set time?” asked Breeze.

“That’s the best part of it – it’ll last until it’s manually cancelled.”

“Excellent work, Lieutenant. Please do what you need to.”

“It’s done, sir. The Cadaveron won’t send or receive a signal until we choose to end the simulation.”

Duggan felt an immense relief when it was done. He led the squad at a run back to the transporter. It was still where they’d left it – he’d half expected it to have slid away from its uncertain berth and crashed to the ground below. With his helmet chiming an increasingly urgent warning about the positrons from the heavy cruiser’s engines, Duggan climbed aboard the transporter, followed by the others. He eased the craft out from the Shatterer’s impact hole and up into the dark sky. When he got a moment to relax, he spoke to Chainer.

“How did you do on your scenario, Lieutenant?”

“I refused to believe that all comms could fail at once, sir. They’re robust, independent systems and individually their failure rate is below a tenth of one percent over the entirety of their fifteen-year lifespan. The chances of them going wrong at the same time without the ship receiving weapons damage was so low I discounted it. When I worked that out, it was easy to guess it was a test. I located the simulation program and ended it. Afterwards, I started a new one which produced a series of inbound messages to indicate the entire Confederation was in revolt. I didn’t serve under that captain for long.”

Duggan laughed with genuine enjoyment as the transporter continued its journey to the MHL Goliath.

Chapter Sixteen

“I’m going to dump this stuff the first place that catches my eye. Somewhere away from the mining pit,” said Jonas. She had an expression of worry. Duggan sat next to her on the bridge as they discussed how they were going to jettison the Goliath’s cargo of valuable machinery.

“There’s no life on this planet, so get rid of it anywhere that won’t interfere with the lift operation,” said Duggan.

“I’m going to need a code from Lieutenant Green,” she said. “There are a few fail-safes to stop one of us getting drunk and accidentally leaving our cargo in space somewhere.” Jonas waved a hand and Green came over. He was an unassuming man and he blanched when he heard what was about to happen. He went even paler when Jonas told him what they intended to fill the empty space with.

“Can’t we send a signal to someone in the Corps?” he asked. “To get approval?”

“We could send that signal, Lieutenant,” said Duggan. “We’re not going to. I’m approving this, so please enter your codes into the mainframe.” He knew it might take hours for a request from the lifter to get through to someone with enough seniority in the Corps to give the go-ahead. If this had been a warship, he could have pushed a message through to a place higher up the chain. The lifter didn’t have that authority.

Lieutenant Green swallowed hard. He looked as if he wanted to say something else, but wisely chose not to. He reached over one of the panels and entered a series of digits, which the ship’s mainframe combined with his biometric data. The computer noted that the lieutenant was exhibiting an elevated heart rate, but within the expected range for the enormity of the decision.

“Thank you, Lieutenant Green. You may go back to your seat,” said Jonas. The man wandered off, looking dazed.

“Done?” asked Duggan.

“Just entering my codes now, overriding this, countermanding that. All the usual stuff needed for a once-in-a-lifetime decision. We’re almost over the dump zone. It doesn’t feel right to call it the drop zone, somehow.”

“Whenever you’re ready,” he said.

“There needs to be a big, red button to press, doesn’t there?” she asked. “Like you see in the old movies, with a big ‘Do Not Touch’ sign beneath it.”

“How long?” asked Duggan. He could understand Jonas’ nervousness, but he wanted her to get on with it. He knew he was getting tetchy from the pain in his forearm. With everything to see to, he’d still not had it treated.

“It’s done,” she said. “Or at least, it’s started. You’ll see it on this screen over here.”

One by one, the cargo bay doors beneath the Goliath slid away into their recesses in the hull. For a few minutes, nothing else happened. Across the room, Green and Haster watched the same images on their own screens. Duggan felt sympathy for them – they probably thought their careers were evaporating before their eyes.

“Everything’s got to unlatch in the right order,” explained Jonas. “Then the gravity chains will release and out it’ll all go.”

Another ten minutes went by. Then, something dropped away from the hold – a series of huge, metal plates. Most of them fell straight, while a few turned as they fell, as if they hadn’t been released cleanly. “That’s the interior walling. If we didn’t drop them first, there’s a chance some of the cargo would bounce away and collide with the hull. Next, the gravity chains should shut off. Yep, there they go.”

A silver-hued shape fell from the cargo bay – it was angular and indistinct. Other shapes fell with it, some large, some small. They rained from the Goliath’s hull – a hundred billion dollars’ worth of plant and machinery scattering across the rocky surface below. The crew on the bridge observed in silence until there was nothing left to fall.

“That’s the lot,” said Jonas. “We’re as light as a feather now.”

“Bring us to the crash site,” said Duggan.

“We’re on our way. ETA less than five minutes.”

“Show me the Cadaveron, please.”

It came up on the display, scarred and sullen. “It’s an awful-looking thing,” said Jonas, concentrating on fine-tuning their approach. “Green, Haster, get over here. We’re about to pick up something heavy.”

The two men got up and walked the five metres to sit at an adjacent bank of consoles. “Are you sure this is a good idea, ma’am?” asked Haster. “Lieutenant Green just told me what you’re planning, I checked out the design specifications for the Goliath. It was never intended to lift more than five billion tonnes in one go. The highest single lift we’ve needed to make was just over three billion.”

“We’ll have to worry about specifications afterwards, Lieutenant Haster,” said Jonas. “The Space Corps needs us to recover that spacecraft. We need to work together to ensure it happens quickly, before the Ghasts send another one like it to see what’s happened.”

“Rest assured they’ll have one on its way,” said Duggan. “There was plenty of time to send a distress signal.”

“Fine,” said Haster, seating himself. “It’s my duty to ask questions, that’s all.”

Captain Jonas looked at the viewscreens again. “The crater is almost seven klicks deep where the enemy vessel has settled,” she said. “I’d like to get to fifteen above so we’ve got a bit of room for manoeuvre.”

Duggan had a sudden thought. “Are you shielded against positron leaks? They’re pouring from those holes.”

“You name it, we’re shielded from it. Except outbound comms and a few other things. You could set off a nuke in our hold and we wouldn’t know about it.”

“That’s not quite true, ma’am,” said Green.

“You know what I mean, Lieutenant. The radiation wouldn’t cause us any harm.”

“We’re stable and in place,” said Haster. “The mainframe is refusing to acknowledge the object as a permittable target for the gravity chains.”

“You’ll have to do it manually, Lieutenant. Like they taught you in college.” Jonas turned her head towards Duggan. “Lieutenant Haster is a superb winchman - that’s why I have him here on the Goliath. The little stuff like that missile tube, I’m happy to do myself. This one, I’ll leave to him.”

Haster was one of those men who got on with things. “I’m calculating the best places to target the chains. Eighteen at the nose, twenty port, eighteen starboard and sixteen aft should pull it up evenly. It’s easy when I tell myself it’s only a billion tonnes.”

“Let me know when they’re fixed.”

“I’d like to run a few cross-checks first, ma’am.”

No one spoke while Haster ran through page upon page of numbers on his console screen. Duggan looked around the bridge, blinking to try and reduce the stinging in his eyes. He was starting to feel light-headed and knew he’d have to get someone to look at his forearm soon. He peered at the area of his suit where the Ghast projectile had clipped him. There was an indentation in the polymer where it had closed up around the hole. It would have also sealed the wound, but that didn’t stop it hurting.

“I think we’re ready to go, ma’am,” said Haster. “Do you want to double-check?”

“I trust you, Lieutenant and I take full responsibility for this lift,” said Jonas. “Please proceed.”

“Okay, here we go. There might be some noticeable vibration.”

A faint whining and thrumming began, which Duggan recognized as a gravity drive spooling up. The vibration started, faint at first and rapidly building.

“Look at these gauges, Captain Duggan,” said Jonas. “They show the power flowing through the chains. They’ve got their own source, but we’ll need to divert some extra power from the main engines in order to supplement what’s available to them.” The first set of gauges all showed one hundred percent and they flashed red. “Lieutenant Haster is drawing from our propulsion now. These other gauges will begin to climb in a moment.”

Sure enough, a separate set of gauges flashed green, before turning to amber. The vibration built, accompanied by a buzzing sound from the equipment in the room. The Goliath was little more than a hollow box with an engine – there was a lot more vibration than there would be on a warship.

“Seventy percent from the main engines,” said Haster. “The target vessel isn’t moving. I’ll take it up to eighty percent. If it doesn’t move at that point, it’s more than we can carry.”

“He means if we go above eighty percent, we won’t have enough power to keep the Goliath in the air,” Jonas said to Duggan.

“That’s eighty percent,” said Haster. The gauges were all red now. Screen upon screen of red.

“Is it moving?”

“No.”

“Is it close to moving?”

“Probably.”

“Try eighty-two percent.”

“Whatever you say, ma’am.”

The floor of the Goliath rumbled. Duggan recognized it as a symptom of distress. In the crater below, the Cadaveron remained in place.

“It’s not going to happen, ma’am,” said Lieutenant Green. He looked petrified.

“Take it to eighty-four percent.”

“Ma’am?” said Haster.

“Just do it.”

“Eighty-four it is.”

The rumbling continued, until it reminded Duggan of the earthquake they’d felt when the Cadaveron had crashed.

“I’m getting something!” said Haster, excitement in his voice. “It’s coming!”

“Hold at eighty-four percent,” said Jonas.

“It’ll take all day to get here, but it’s coming!”

Duggan watched one of the screens, which he kept focused on the damaged warship below. For the first ten minutes, there was no sign that anything had happened. Then, he noticed the Cadaveron had rotated slightly from its original position.

“It’s at five hundred metres,” Jonas told him. “It’s hard to see from this angle. Lieutenant Haster’s got it clear of the stone it was embedded in, so it should come up faster now.”

“Reducing our engine leech to eighty percent,” said Haster. He puffed up his cheeks and blew out. “It’s coming up under control.”

It took another thirty minutes. Duggan marvelled at the damage the Cadaveron had sustained – not just from the two missile strikes, but the crash landing as well. The vessel looked like a spent bullet that had been fired at point-blank range into a wall.

The Cadaveron vanished into the Goliath’s hold without any more drama. The rows of cargo doors closed in unison, locking the ship within. Watching remotely, it was easy to forget just how big the enemy craft was and how much it weighed.

“Good work everyone,” said Duggan. “I’m impressed.”

“It’s what we do, Captain Duggan,” said Jonas. She didn’t make an effort to hide the mixture of pleasure and relief on her face. “Can we go to back to Pioneer now? I need a drink.”

“There’s nothing more for us here,” said Duggan. “Too much death.”

“It’s going to be a slow run up into space,” said Jonas. “We need to maintain the same power usage to keep the cargo stable in the hold. That leaves us with exactly twenty percent of our gravity drive remaining.”

“Permission to hit the fission drives with a spanner, ma’am?” asked Green. It seemed to be a joke they had running.

“Hit them as hard as you like, Lieutenant. I want them ready to go as soon as we’re far enough away from the surface.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’ve just received a message, Captain Duggan,” said Jonas, pointing at a box of text on her screen. “You said you wanted to be informed about any change in Commander McGlashan’s condition.”

“Yes?”

“They’ve stabilized her. She’ll not be fit for duty for a while. Not until they can grow her a new stomach and spleen at least. We’ve got some pretty good medical kit onboard and Corporal Moseley is a good medic once you learn to put up with his bad manners.”

Relief washed over Duggan and he slumped back. He knew he should stay on the bridge until they went to lightspeed. He felt giddy with fatigue and his vision started to swim. Without his suit helmet on, he had no way to give himself a shot of stimulant and it was only his body’s own adrenaline that was keeping him going. Now the lift was done and he’d been told about McGlashan, tiredness roared through him, leaving him with a rushing sound in his ears.

“I need to sleep,” he said. “And for someone to take me to the medical bay.”

He stumbled to his feet and almost fell. Someone – Captain Jonas – steadied him and helped him from the bridge. He remembered mumbling an instruction for them to let the Space Corps know they were coming. After that, his last remaining energy was spent and he fell asleep in the shuttle car.

Chapter Seventeen

Duggan woke up in a computer-controlled semi-darkness. He was on something soft – a bed. There was a memory of pain and he looked at his forearm, noticing a raw pinkness to it. He gingerly pressed the area where the Ghast projectile had gone through. It hurt and there was the strange feeling that the skin wasn’t his own. He’d been fixed up with an artificial skin that would take a couple of days to grow into the wound and tie up with his severed nerve-endings. His space suit was gone and the room looked surprisingly clean and well-appointed, with a table, a couple of chairs and a screen. He rolled out of bed, finding that someone had dressed him in a blue uniform that signified no particular rank or position. His mind was curiously alert.

Outside the room, he walked fifty metres along a featureless corridor until he found a shuttle car. He got in and drove it towards the bridge. Captain Jonas was there, along with Green, Haster and a woman whom Duggan didn’t recognize.

“Captain Duggan,” said Jonas warmly. “How are you feeling? Was my bed comfortable enough for you?”

Duggan had already guessed where it was he’d woken up. “Better,” he conceded. “Much better. How long was I out for and what’s our status?”

“You’ve been asleep for over twenty hours, I’d say. As for our status? Well the Ghasts haven’t blown us up and we’re at Light-E, so we should be safe until we reach Pioneer in eighteen days.”

“Did you send a message to the Space Corps?”

“We did. It was received by a man with the rank of ensign who promised to treat it with the utmost urgency. Naturally, we didn’t hear anything before we went to lightspeed, so we must assume our arrival will be greeted with a tremendous fanfare, as well as coffee and biscuits served by Admiral Slender himself!” She saw Duggan’s face. “You don’t get along with the Admiral?”

“We don’t see eye-to-eye.” Jonas was easy going and although Duggan hadn’t known her long, he found it hard to keep things to himself when he talked to her.

“I’ve never met the man. Not that I would expect to, being the captain of a lowly cargo vessel.”

Duggan didn’t want to discuss Admiral Slender and certainly not when there were other people on the bridge to overhear his words. “Do they have a spare dock to take the Cadaveron on Pioneer?”

“It’s a shipbuilding planet, so they must have somewhere. I’m not sure what they’ll do to plug those holes, though. I doubt the Confederation Council will be amused if they learn an exposed warship engine has been lowered into dry dock without adequate precautions in place.”

Duggan left the people on the bridge to their duties. Lightspeed travel could be soul-crushingly boring at times, particularly a long trip on a slow vessel. He knew that some crewmembers were more than content to sit for hours watching screens or just filling their time by doing not much of anything. Duggan had only a limited patience with downtime, before the urge to do something gripped him again. He’d recently awoken, so hadn’t reached that point yet – in fact, he felt a huge relief that he and his squad had time to recuperate. He was wise enough to predict he’d be feeling like a coiled spring in a week or two.

The medical bay was a large, starkly-lit area near to the front of the Goliath. There was space to spare on a heavy lifter and the facility had six narrow hospital-style beds, each attended by a top-of-the-line static med-bot. Duggan doubted whether there’d ever been more than one or two beds in use at the same time. Still, it was good that they thought about the health of the crew.

Commander McGlashan was there, in the furthest bed from the door. At first, Duggan couldn’t tell if she was asleep or awake. Her face was deathly pale - nearly as pale as the white robes she’d been dressed in - and her dark eyelashes made it difficult to see if her eyes were open or not. She was connected to a med-bot by numerous wires and tubes. There was a lump beneath her robe, covering her stomach.

“Captain,” she said. Her voice was weak, as faint as a rustling breeze.

“I won’t ask how you feel,” he said. “Has anyone told you what’s happened?”

“Bill was here with Frank. They said we’ve picked up the Cadaveron.” She gave a wheezing laugh. “They’re not going to know what to do with you when we get back. I’m not sure there’s anything in the procedures that covers it.”

Duggan laughed. “I haven’t thought that far ahead. Whatever they do, at least we’ll have brought something for them to study. I want us to win this war, Commander. If we have to abandon a few million tonnes of mining equipment on a distant planet, so be it.”

“When they’ve re-grown my insides, I’ll look forward to joining you on your next ship, sir.”

“Has anyone told you how long?”

She tried to shake her head. “This machine on my stomach is what’s keeping me alive. I had a look when they fitted it to me. It does all sorts of wonderful things, except it can’t make me a new set of organs. The military hospital on Pioneer can do that. I’ve seen it happen to other men and women. I’ll be out of action for a couple of months.”

“You did pretty well on Everlong.”

“We all did, sir.” Her eyes closed. Duggan watched her for a few minutes. The med-bot didn’t move or show a visible alert, so he assumed she’d fallen asleep again. He didn’t want to overstay, so he got up and left the room.

The eighteen days which followed could have been a relaxing time. For Duggan, it was a slow build-up of frustration. He spent time in the gym, maintaining his strength and stamina. At other times, he spoke to his soldiers about past missions, the hardships of fighting the Ghasts, and also commiserating with them over the recent losses to the squad. Sergeant Ortiz had a seemingly endless list of stories from her past, which she told in a dry style without boasting or embellishment. These activities were diverting, but weren’t enough to keep him fully occupied.

In spite of Captain Jonas’ protestations that she’d need to get back to Pioneer before she could have a drink, the food replicators on the Goliath were permitted to vend a limited quantity of alcohol. Duggan found he had sufficient authority to command the machines to produce more alcohol than the other crew members were able to - even more than Jonas herself.

“Betrayed by my own ship,” she laughed, one evening towards the end of the trip. She took another sip of the thick, sweet-smelling liquid the replicator had produced. “This isn’t entirely awful.”

“Only partially so,” agreed Duggan.

“Why are you always so on edge?” she asked, her eyes spearing him.

Duggan shifted, feeling uncomfortable. “It’s how I am,” he said at last. “Inaction feels like a waste of my life.”

“Would you have felt this way if there were no war to fight?”

“I’ve asked myself that many times. I was twelve years old when the war started. Even then I was fascinated by space, by the size of the vessels humanity had managed not only to build, but to make travel so fast you could get from one galaxy to another in days instead of centuries. I knew I wanted to join the Space Corps – to see the places for myself, instead of watching other people visit them on my television at home. At seventeen, I was filled with the bravery of youth and I signed on the dotted line as an infantryman. Looking back, there’s no one who’s ready at seventeen to make such an important choice for themselves.

“I served for a few years. Earned myself some respect and a couple of medals. Then, someone suggested I go back to school and become an officer. It seemed like a good idea at the time – that I might one day be a lieutenant on the bridge, instead of waiting in my quarters until it was time to get in the tank. I did well and served as a lieutenant for a couple of years until I got fast-tracked to captain.”

“All you’ve known is the war,” she said.

“That’s it exactly. All I’ve known is the war. I can’t answer your question about how I’d feel if there were no war. All I can do is guess and that’s a game I’ve never enjoyed.” He took another sip of his drink. The alcohol soothed him, washing away his worries. A part of him knew it was false, but he let himself enjoy the moment. “What about you?”

“My dad was in the Corps. A couple of my brothers as well. Joining after them seemed like the most natural thing for me to do. Fifteen years later and here I am captaining the MHL Goliath.”

“Just like that?” asked Duggan.

“There were a few ups and downs. In the end, there were more ups than there were downs.” She sat back. “I didn’t like the feeling of helplessness against the Ghast missile battery and the warship. We’re not normally sent to places we might see trouble.”

“There’s plenty of helplessness on a warship as well,” said Duggan. “Times when the Ghast missiles are coming at you in waves and all you can do is hope they collide with the shock drones, or the Bulwarks take them down. Apparently, I’m a statistical anomaly, having run so many missions on a Gunner without being killed.”

“It’s always good to have luck on your side.”

“So I’ve been told. I refuse to call on luck, in case it turns against me when I need it most.”

She laughed. “A man who believes fervently in luck, yet fears it as well.”

“Maybe. I’m not so stupid I’ll deny it exists, or that I’ve likely had my fair share.”

“Have you ever been married, Captain Duggan?”

The question caught him off-guard. “I had a wife once. I thought I could fit a family in around my duty, like a second-class citizen. I was never there and the woman I married didn’t stick around to see if I’d change. It was the best thing she could have done.”

“Children?”

“None. There was talk of it at first. An absent man can’t father children.”

“Do you regret it?”

“It’s the easiest thing in the world to tell someone not to regret what they can’t change. Believing yourself when you say those words is harder than anything.”

“You have your crew. Commander McGlashan.”

“Yes, I have my crew and yes Commander McGlashan is very dear to me. She’s an officer I respect and away from the Corps, a woman I value as a friend. There was a cloud hanging over me when I thought she might die.”

“The cloud is now gone?”

“When one cloud goes, the wind is always there to blow a new cloud into its place.” He sighed. “I don’t normally wallow.”

Jonas looked at him sadly. “Perhaps when the war is over, we can meet and see if the sky above is blue.”

“I don’t know if that’s a promise I can keep,” he said, feeling like a coward. The conversation tailed off into a long silence. Jonas was waiting to see if he’d say anything more. Duggan found a wall in front of him, one he’d always pretended wasn’t there. It was the hardest thing in the world to reach up and pull himself towards the top. “I think I’d like that very much,” he said at last. Jonas smiled and Duggan felt as if a weight he’d never known existed was lifted from him.

The following day was the last before their arrival. Duggan’s head was only slightly fuzzy and he did his best to ignore the alcohol-induced lethargy. He did his usual rounds, visiting Commander McGlashan, who was much improved since the first time he’d found her in the medical bay.

“We’ll come out of lightspeed in four or five hours,” he said. “There’ll be another couple of hours till we’re close enough to Pioneer to get you off on a transport ship.”

“I feel fine now, sir.” She smiled ruefully. “I’m sure that would change at once if I unplugged any of these wires. What’ll happen to you?”

“I anticipate I’ll be required to stick around while the Cadaveron is unloaded. There’ll be a debriefing at some point. A thorough debriefing.”

“Do you think he’ll cause you any problems?” She meant Admiral Slender.

“I hope not. I think his hands will be tied in the circumstances.”

“It’s going to be interesting, at least.”

“I can think of several words, of which interesting is only one,” he replied.

He left the medical bay and tried to constructively fill the remaining few hours, without much success. Eventually, an announcement came through on the internal comms to advise everyone onboard that the MHL Goliath was about to enter local space. There was a minor jolt as it happened, hardly enough to cause nausea or injury. Duggan made his way to the bridge, in order to see what communications might be awaiting them as they approached Pioneer on the gravity drive.

Chapter Eighteen

Duggan was ordered to leave the Goliath as soon as he was able. After saying his farewells, he boarded one of the transport vessels, with nobody else to keep him company on the short journey. The tiny spacecraft brought him in dubious comfort to one of the landing pads at Pioneer’s largest Space Corps base. From above, the internal screens of the transport showed a dimly-lit grid-pattern of dreary brick buildings, their grimness exacerbated by the driving rain and the fading early evening light.

Duggan left the transport behind, pausing only briefly to watch it take off into the darkening sky. The base was a hive of activity – there was a huge research lab here amongst many other facilities. The work within the walls of this lab never stopped and hardly slowed down at night. Duggan scarcely noticed the people scurrying around, or the vehicles which swished silently along the smooth roads. He didn’t have far to go, so he chose to walk, ignoring the rain as it soaked through his clothing.

At the largest of the administration buildings, he took the steps two at a time. Inside, he stopped one of the staff officers. It appeared he was expected – the Space Corps was highly efficient when it came to the little details.

“You’ve been given an office on the second floor, sir,” said the staff officer. “Your lodgings are in building nine-seven-five.” She smiled apologetically. “You might want to take a car to get there.”

“Thanks,” said Duggan. “Any messages for me?”

“Admiral Teron has asked you to contact him as soon as you arrive, sir. Any time of day or night, it says here,” she said, studying her screen. “Must be something important.”

She was just making conversation, rather than fishing for information. Duggan left her and made his way through the building to his room. There was no need to ask for directions – these places were practically identical inside, whichever planet you were on and whichever base. There must be a hundred thousand technical drawings for each warship, yet only a single architectural design for every base, thought Duggan. He couldn’t bring himself to smile at the idea.

There were no surprises waiting for him in his room either. It was a reasonable size, square and painted light blue. There was a desk, two chairs and a couple of pieces of furniture, the types of which Duggan forgot as soon as his eyes looked away.

“Let’s see what Teron wants,” he muttered, powering up his main screen. It didn’t take long for the Admiral to respond, his face shimmering for a few seconds as the comms relays stabilised. From what Duggan could see of the background, he guessed Teron was still on the Juniper. His expression was unreadable.

“Captain Duggan,” Teron said, his lips a fraction of a second out of sync with the image of his face.

“Sir.”

“I’m not sure where to start. Your arrival has caused some consternation. Perhaps not your arrival as much as what it is you’ve brought with you.”

“Sir, I’ve been aboard the Cadaveron. It looks like a wreck from the outside, but I’m confident many of its major systems are still operational. We will be able to learn from it. Copy what we don’t already have. The Shatterer battery we brought still has missiles inside. I’ll bet we can strip them down and have a working prototype of our own in a matter of months.”

“I’m aware of the opportunities you’ve presented us with, Captain Duggan. In fact, I think you’ve done us a great service. We’ve never even tried to capture one of the Ghast vessels before, let alone accomplished it.” Teron steepled his fingers. “But damnit man, why do you have to bring baggage with everything you do? The Goliath’s cargo was irreplaceable – it’ll take months to remake all the bespoke equipment.”

“I’m sorry I had to dispose of it, sir. There really was no other way. Besides, the Ghasts know how to find Everlong now. Given our recent policy of avoidance, I can’t imagine we’ll try to restart mining operations any time in the near future. For every one ship we send, they’ll send two.”

“I’ve no doubt you’re correct,” said Teron. He leaned forwards. “This is something new, Captain Duggan. The first sign of the Ghasts using something, rather than destroying it outright.”

“They might have a shortage of Gallenium, sir. It’s rare enough that we’re only finding traces of it on every planet apart from a handful.”

“We can hope they’re running into supply problems. We don’t know where the Ghasts’ home planets are, but we can be sure they’re a long, long way from Everlong. Once our new warships come into service, we’ll have more than enough spare to intercept the enemy heavy lifters as they try to ferry the metals home.”

“They deployed a Shatterer tube, sir,” said Duggan, reminding Teron of the fact. “Next time there may be ten such emplacements. Or twenty. We don’t even know what their maximum targeting range is – it could be that their lifters can operate in safety under the umbrella of their missile batteries.”

“You’ve seen how the new Lambdas can have their guidance disabled. We can sit a million kilometres out of orbit and launch them in a straight line into the Ghast mining operations. Even a Vincent class has the processing grunt to land a strike in time with the planet’s rotation.”

“A single Cadaveron in orbit could shoot down thousands of Lambdas with their targeting and guidance disabled. We need something better than that.”

“We’ve got people working on it, Captain,” said Teron. “Anyway, we’re getting off topic.”

“What was the topic, sir?”

“I’ve been asked to give with one hand and take with the other,” Teron replied. “I’m to congratulate you on your fine work under trying circumstances. Bringing back an enemy vessel is something the Space Corps appreciates. There are a number of people on the Confederation Council who are speaking about you in positive terms. However, I’ve also been asked to reprimand you for your reckless endangerment of the MHL Goliath and its original cargo. We might be at total war, but that doesn’t mean our funds can be wasted. Others on the Council are asking where their money has gone to. In addition, you had the chance to escape from Everlong much earlier than you did and your delay increased the chances of the Ghasts finding and destroying a Class One Heavy Lifter.”

Duggan knew it was a load of crap, but he was sure Teron was just relaying a message. “What’s going to happen, sir?” he asked.

“Desk duties for the moment, Captain Duggan. While the investigation into your mission is completed.” Teron glanced to one side, as if he wanted to be certain no one was listening. “Don’t worry about it. The Space Corps can’t be seen to lose billions of dollars at the drop of a hat. We have to fight for our reputation, particularly when there are many citizens of the Confederation who are asking why we let Charistos and Angax be annihilated.”

“Could we have done more?” asked Duggan.

“We both know the superiority of the Ghast warfleet. We could have dashed our ships against theirs without stopping them. The fate of those two planets was sealed as soon as the Ghasts learned of their coordinates.”

Duggan couldn’t deny Teron’s words made sense. Even so, it didn’t sit easy with him. “It’s a shame we let them get ahead of us. We could have stopped them in the early years.”

“Everything we know about them suggests they respect strength,” said Teron, not answering directly. He opened his mouth to say more and then closed it again.

“Admiral Slender told me about our attempts to negotiate with them, sir.”

Teron snorted. “Surrender, more like, that’s closer to the truth of what we offered. We’ve seen how they respond to weakness.”

“We started out stronger than they were and they didn’t back off,” said Duggan.

“Maybe they like a challenge. Who knows why they’re doing what they’re doing? I wish we’d chased them down when we still could and destroyed each and every one of their ships!”

“Their planets too?” asked Duggan quietly.

“I don’t know, Captain Duggan. If it was the only alternative, that’s what I’d do. In a heartbeat.”

“I tell myself that as well, sir, and then in my head I see an image of a planet disintegrating on the Crimson’s viewscreen.”

“They’ve called it the Planet Breaker – that weapon on the Crimson,” said Teron. “I don’t know who chose it, but the name stuck and that’s what they call it now.”

A thought came to Duggan, which tightened his skin and left him feeling cold with the potential of it. “The Cadaveron must hold the information we need about their ships, their planets. Maybe even their history and their way of life.”

Teron frowned. “I’m sure there’s plenty of information in its data arrays. You do know their AI technology is more advanced than ours? It’s not like we’re going to be able to plug it into one of our data facilities and stream off what we need. We might get something, but I’m sure each and every string will be so heavily encrypted we’ll take years to decode it, assuming we can manage that. We couldn’t even break our own encryption methods by brute force. It’s only because we have the keys that we can access our own repositories. The Juniper’s AI cores are about the fastest we can manage and I doubt they could get anything from that Cadaveron’s arrays before this war has played out one way or another.”

“I’m not suggesting we use our own technology, sir,” said Duggan. “One of my squad – a soldier – was able to make the Dreamer core on the ESS Crimson hack itself. That core is fast and it’s focused. It might be fast enough to give us access to the Cadaveron’s databanks. If a self-taught hacker can do it, I’m sure the thousands of programmers available to the Space Corps could work something out between them.”

Teron stared straight ahead, his eyes piercing and dark. “Captain Duggan, I think you might have just come up with an idea.” He banged the table with his fist and gave a bleak smile. “If you’re right and this works, it could turn the war on its head. Or at least get back some of the advantage we’ve squandered.” His eyes became distant and he talked, more to himself than to Duggan. “We’ve got three available shipyards on Pioneer big enough to take a Cadaveron. It’s leaking antimatter. The dock in the Atican Desert is a thousand miles from anywhere. We can unload it there. The ESS Crimson will fly at Light-V. That makes less than four days travel from New Earth to Pioneer. We’ve got teams there, good teams. Interfacing the two systems will be the hard part. We managed it before, there must be records. If not, there’ll be audit logs on the Crimson.”

Duggan watched, impressed as Teron ran through the details of making it work. He didn’t always betray the qualities which had made him an Admiral, yet he seemed to possess an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the Space Corps organisation.

“Is there anything I can do to help, sir?” asked Duggan, interrupting the flow of words.

“Not for the moment, Captain Duggan. I’m afraid nothing has changed with regards to your desk duty. I must insist you remain on Pioneer. There’ll be plenty of paperwork for you to shuffle until we conclude the investigation into your unauthorized cargo drop.”

“What happens then?” Duggan hadn’t expected any other response from Teron. There were times when even his best wasn’t good enough.

“Another Vincent class, another mission. I thought you’d know that by now.” The last words weren’t said unkindly. “Don’t worry - I’ll get you your crew. They’re grounded as well, not that your commander will be going anywhere outside of a hospital anytime soon.”

Duggan couldn’t bring himself to offer thanks. He reached across to the screen and ended the call, his mood already turning sour.

Chapter Nineteen

Days passed and the days became weeks. Duggan didn’t class himself as a desk officer and he hated being confined for hours on end in the same room, which was ironic given how much he craved to be back on the bridge of a warship. His in-tray remained full, owing to the fact that he did his best to ignore the contents. His rank gave him the ability to deflect much of what was thrown his way and nobody seemed interested in speaking to him about it. This period of enforced quiet was doubly hard for him to bear, coming as it did so soon after the eighteen-day journey from Everlong to Pioneer. On one of his visits to Commander McGlashan in hospital, she spoke to him about it.

“What were you expecting to happen?”

“I’m a realist, Lucy and I genuinely thought they’d give me another ship straight away. This whole thing about having to put me on desk duty over some missing cargo stinks to high heaven.”

She smiled. Her strength had returned and it wouldn’t be long until she was allowed to leave the medical facility. “Admiral Slender’s never going to forget. He’s the head honcho, remember?”

“That he is. I’m sure I’m not foremost in his mind at every hour of every day. He can’t micro-manage everything I do within the Corps.”

“Are you so sure? It wouldn’t take much – a word here, a mention there. I’ll bet he gets a report about you put on his desk every week or every month.”

The thought was depressing. “What a waste of everything!” said Duggan. “A waste of his son’s potential, a waste of his father’s life spent haunting mine. All because of this damned war!”

“Look on the bright side, John. If they manage to crack the Cadaveron’s AI, you might be the main reason humanity comes back fighting. If we can find out where the Ghasts live, it gives us a huge opportunity.”

“To kill billions more? Tens of billions?” He shook his head. “The price of winning goes up every time I hear it mentioned.”

“They’ve pushed us to it,” she said. “Don’t ever forget that. Your anger should be directed at them, not at what action the Confederation may be forced to take.”

“You’re right. Of course you’re right.” He changed the subject. “Two more weeks till you’re out of here?”

“That’s what the doctor said. Ten days if I’m lucky. I’ll be whole again in seven, after that it’s a case of observation to make sure everything’s working properly. There’ll be lots of pills, I’m sure. I feel weak and soft already.” She smiled. “I need to hit the gym, or get back to some proper action, instead of watching the news all day.”

“I think I’d rip the tubes from my arm after a week on that bed.”

“Don’t think I haven’t thought about it.” Her face became serious. “Have you heard anything? About the Cadaveron or the Crimson?”

“They unloaded the Cadaveron hull into a dock a couple of days after we returned. I know the Crimson arrived five days after that. It’s hard to keep things like that secret – there’s always someone from the press keeping an eye on the dockyards. If not, there are plenty of spacecraft enthusiasts watching to see what’s coming and going. Other than that, it’s all been locked down tightly. I’ve spoken to one or two people and they’re as much in the dark as I am.”

“They must be giving this the top-top-secret treatment.”

“You can see why they’d not want anything to get out. Hope that comes to nothing can produce unpleasant results.”

“Anger and revolt.”

“It’s not what the Confederation needs right now, nor the Space Corps.”

Another ten days passed and Duggan remained pessimistic that he’d ever adapt to the enforced inactivity. He saw Chainer and Breeze in passing and nothing more. They’d been drafted in to work at the research lab. They weren’t capable of contributing to anything cutting edge, but they were experienced officers and able to provide input at various stages of a project’s development. Duggan envied them for having the chance to throw themselves into something. He would have volunteered to help if it wasn’t for the fact he’d be automatically disqualified because of his seniority. The Space Corps wanted him at a desk, yet they also wanted him to remain available.

Late one evening, a message arrived while Duggan was still in his office. The bleeping on his receiver somehow conveyed an urgency and Duggan read it immediately. You are ordered to the Atican Shipyard. Transporter vessel Nine-Five. Do not pack, do not delay. Teron.

Duggan looked at the words for a moment and then deleted the message. His inbox was always empty – he hated the thought of having the old messages waiting for him every time he checked for something new. It felt like having unfinished business. He left his office, letting the door close itself silently behind him. Something told him he wouldn’t be coming back.

Transporter Nine-Five was a standard model, boxy, stubby and reliable. It waited in the middle of landing pad number three, with lights on and its low-powered gravity engines humming smoothly. The side ramp was extended and more light spilled from the interior, illuminating an area of the concrete. There were three figures on the ramp, no more than animated silhouettes. Duggan hurried across, recognizing the voice of Lieutenant Breeze before his eyes could resolve the man’s details. Chainer was there was well.

“Captain,” said Chainer, offering a salute which Duggan returned. “Do you have any idea what we’re doing here at this time of night? I was just about to turn in.” He waved at the third man, whom Duggan didn’t recognize. “This here’s the pilot. He says he’s been told to wait until the three of us are onboard, then we’re off to a shipyard somewhere I’ve never heard of.”

Duggan set his gaze on the pilot. The man was stocky and with a helpful face. “Only three passengers?” Duggan asked.

“Yes, sir. Lieutenants Chainer and Breeze, and one Captain Duggan. I take it I have all three of you present, in which case we can set off right away once you’ve seated yourselves.”

“There’s a fourth passenger,” said Duggan.

The pilot looked confused. “I was only told about three, sir. Do I need to wait?”

“Yes, you do. I need access to your comms.”

Only the pilot was meant to operate the transporter’s comms and for a second it looked as if the man might stand his ground. He was wise enough to know which fights were worth fighting. “All yours, sir. We’re already behind schedule. They’re going to start giving me crap about blocking this pad soon.”

“I’ll handle that,” said Duggan, entering the transporter. Chainer and Breeze came after, their expressions speaking of a thousand unasked questions.

The cockpit was cramped, with a single battered chair covered in worn fabric. Duggan dropped into the seat and ordered the comms system to connect him.

“Hello?” said McGlashan.

“It’s me. Are you still due for release the day after tomorrow?”

“Another thirty-six hours. Not that I’m counting.”

“How do you feel?”

“Bored.”

“I mean, can you walk? Can you get yourself to landing pad three? I need you here now.”

Excitement, clear and unmistakable came into her voice. “A couple of needles to pull out and I’ll be on my way. Assuming my legs remember how to walk.”

“Take one of the cars outside,” said Duggan.

“You’re all heart, sir.”

“See you in ten minutes.”

The call was cut from the other end. Duggan climbed out of the cockpit. The pilot was standing uneasily nearby, clearly worried about letting someone unauthorized use the onboard systems. Duggan thanked him and told him they’d be waiting for a final passenger.

“What’s going on, sir?” asked Chainer.

Duggan smiled in response. “I have no idea, Lieutenant. All I know is that I’m pleased to be sitting here, rather than sitting at a desk.”

“There were some important tests to run on a new gravity drive modification tomorrow,” said Breeze, sounding disappointed.

“I have a feeling we’re going to hear about something of a greater significance in the near future.”

“And you’re not going to tell us what until we get there,” said Breeze, not quite making it a question.

“I might be completely wrong, so you’ll have to wait.”

A few minutes later, a white-painted car sped across the open ground. It stopped on the pad, violating several regulations by doing so. Commander McGlashan got out, walking in a manner which suggested she’d be more comfortable with assistance. Duggan helped her onboard and she dropped gratefully onto one of the hard seats.

“That wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped. I had to fight off a horde of medical staff who were insistent that I stay. In the end, I had to order them to leave me alone.” She took a deep breath, though she didn’t appear in any way flustered. “What’s this all about?”

“You’ll have to wait and see,” said Chainer. “The captain likes his secrets.”

“We’re going to the Atican shipyard,” said Duggan.

“I see,” said McGlashan. She knew enough to guess the possibilities that might ensue.

“She knows. I can tell,” muttered Chainer. “Maybe I should have gone for that promotion after all. Then I’d get to hear this stuff.”

Duggan laughed. He shouted to the pilot that they were ready to leave. The man lifted a thumb in acknowledgement. The outer door slid shut and there was a barely-noticeable lurch as the transporter left the ground. As soon as they were in the air, Duggan felt elated. Even if the trip turned out to be something other than he was hoping, at least it had shattered the monotony of life on the ground.

The Atican shipyard was nine thousand kilometres away. The transport vessel was basic and it only had a single screen for the passengers, which showed the unending blackness of outside as they swept through the night. After an hour, the pilot came from his cabin to speak to them.

“We’re almost there, folks. It’s still night here so you get to see something special. I’ll point the camera ahead so you can see what we’re coming to. It’s something of a sight, let me tell you.” He returned to his cockpit and the view on the screen shifted. At first, it appeared as if there was a white glow on the horizon. They came closer and the glow expanded, until it seemed as if there was a pocket of daylight in this single area.

As they approached the shipyard, details became clearer. It was huge, covering at least one hundred square kilometres. There were five great trenches running in parallel. Four of the trenches were five kilometres in length, with the last one closer to ten. There was something in the longest trench – an incomprehensibly large hull was being constructed, which filled the whole length available.

“A new flagship,” said Duggan. “I didn’t know.”

“They’ve hardly started it,” said Breeze. “It’ll be years.”

“That one next to it’s got to be a Hadron,” said McGlashan. “They weren’t wrong when they said this was a shipbuilding planet. The hull looks complete.”

“Over there,” said Chainer, pointing at the screen.

Of the remaining trenches, one was empty. The next one held the damaged hull of the Cadaveron. It looked undersized and misshapen in comparison to the other two vessels. The final trench contained a fourth spaceship, this one the smallest of them all by a considerable margin. Its sleek lines and purposeful shape spoke promises of death. In spite of its size, this was the most dangerous vessel in the Space Corps.

“The Crimson,” whispered Duggan with longing.

Chapter Twenty

The transporter landed without fuss on a pad situated in one corner of the shipyard. The artificial light was so bright, Duggan found himself shielding his eyes against the glare. It was a hive of activity – there were people and vehicles everywhere, moving continuously. There was evidently a great deal of order behind the chaos, as witnessed by the rapid progress of the construction.

The four of them crossed a few hundred metres of open ground on foot and entered one of the largest buildings in the compound. It was as busy here as it was outside and Duggan saw more than one individual with unnaturally wide eyes which suggested they’d been using stimulants to keep themselves going.

“Office Seven, Captain Duggan,” said a smiling lady behind a desk. “You’ve been asked to attend alone.”

“What about us?” asked Chainer.

“The Star Building’s facilities are available for your use,” said the lady. “If you wish, I can show you around, sir.”

“That would be great,” said Chainer. “I need a gallon of hi-stim to stop me falling asleep.”

Duggan left them to it. The low number of the office was indicative of the likely importance of the occupant. He was therefore unsurprised when he found Admiral Teron within. The Admiral usually looked on top of his game. On this night, he looked haggard and close to exhaustion. The room was filled with the odour of freshly-brewed coffee and an oversized cup sat on his desk.

“Captain Duggan. I hear you’ve brought an additional visitor.”

“I couldn’t leave her behind, sir.”

Teron didn’t seem too interested. “Well, it might be for the best anyway. I’ll trust to your judgement that Commander McGlashan is ready for duty.”

Those were the words Duggan had desperately wanted to hear. Ready for duty. “Sir, I can vouch that she’s ready.”

“That’s good. You’ll need to be prepared for what’s to come.”

“What’s happening, sir?”

“Events have moved on apace, Captain Duggan. There’s a lot to fill you in on. It would normally be above your grade, but I’ve been given clearance to let you know most of it. Your ability to make the right decisions may be impaired if you’re kept in the dark.”

Duggan was intrigued. “I’m going somewhere?”

“Yes, you are.” Teron took a deep breath and shook his head, as if to clear the fog from it. “We’ve found out where the Ghasts are. They live on nine worlds, the closest of them a long way distant from here. The statisticians tell me we had less than a one percent chance of finding them by accident in the next five years, if that gives you any idea of how remote the likelihood was. The Dreamer core, Captain Duggan. It smashed into the Cadaveron AI two days after we made the interfaces. We pulled out so much data we’ve had hundreds of our intel team working on it around the clock. And we found what we were looking for. Coordinates, flight paths, codes. We already had a faint grasp of their language, now we’re working on putting together an interpreting module that we can install on every ship. Perhaps even in every spacesuit.”

“What are we doing with this information?” asked Duggan.

“Coming to a decision has been…difficult. There have been a number of conflicting suggestions and much of our time has been spent in coming to a unified position.” He flashed a tight smile, which told Duggan there was much the Admiral wasn’t going to speak about. “Anyway, here we are and we have made progress. The ESS Crimson’s sensors kept a record of your destruction of that planet. We’ve made the footage available to the Ghasts.”

“Did they respond? Did they believe it was genuine?”

“The images could be forged, it’s true. However, forensic examination would soon dispel the lie,” said Teron. “We’ve never been able to confirm if the Oblivion battleship you were in combat with at the time survived the destruction. If it escaped, the Ghasts will have corroboration the information we provided them with is accurate.”

“We simply showed them what we’re capable of and nothing more? What could that achieve?”

“Give us a little more credit than that, Captain Duggan. We showed them what we could do. The threat was implicit enough. However, we have also provided them with the coordinates of one of their home worlds and threatened to use the Planet Breaker on it if they don’t agree to a negotiated ending to the war. Only this time, it will be on our terms, rather than theirs.”

“This is huge news, sir,” said Duggan. He felt bewildered at the speed it had happened and was in grudging admiration of the Confederation Council’s resolve in making the threat.

“We can’t pat ourselves on the back yet. We’ve arranged to meet with them, where we hope to agree a truce. Afterwards, we’ll look for a permanent settlement. In fact, there’s a contingent of our spacecraft on route to the meeting place already, led by the ES Devastator and the ES Lancer.”

Duggan gave a nod at that. “Two of our remaining Hadrons.”

“And six Anderlechts besides. The Ghasts respond to strength and we’re determined to show them just that, yet without risking too much of our fleet. They may still decide to ambush us.”

“Where are we meeting them?”

“That’s one of the things I can’t tell you.”

It seemed strange that Teron had been told to withhold the information, but Duggan had no time to ponder it. “Why am I here? Where am I going?”

“You are going somewhere and your crew with you. We’re sending the Crimson to the rendezvous and you’re going to captain the vessel.”

Duggan was speechless. Of all the things he’d expected to happen, this was not one of them. “Sir, that’s got our only Planet Breaker in it. The engines and core are irreplaceable. What if they blow it up?”

“If they decide to destroy the Crimson, they’ll achieve little apart from the deaths of you and your crew. We’ve removed the Planet Breaker, Captain Duggan. It’s in a laboratory elsewhere, deep underground, where a team of our best men and women are working to create blueprints for a new one. If we lost the engines and core, it would be regrettable. In reality, they’re unimportant to the events which are now unfolding. We win or we lose based on that single weapon. The Crimson will be a show of force and intent, nothing more. Besides, the Ghasts are ignorant of the fact we’ve only got one Planet Breaker, a state of affairs we’ve done our best to encourage.”

“I’ll be more than happy to captain the Crimson again, sir. I can’t help but ask - why me?”

“You know the ship. In spite of my words, we’re not eager to lose the vessel. There has been some opposition, but in the end, it was deemed that you were the most logical choice for this mission. I wouldn’t expect it to be a permanent state of affairs. We’ve patched up the damage it suffered on your last flight, refitted the Lambdas with newer models and I believe the techs have managed to increase the cluster count to twenty, as well as fitting two new, additional Bulwarks. The Crimson won’t be an easy target.”

“It never was, sir.”

“Now it’ll be even less of one.”

“Why didn’t you send us out with the Devastator and Lancer?”

“We weren’t in a position to release the Crimson until earlier today. The plans were already made, though we weren’t able to put them into motion until a few minutes before I sent you that message. The Crimson is faster than everything else in the fleet. You’ll have to travel at maximum speed in order to arrive in time. It’s fifteen days out.”

“Fifteen days? At Light-V, that means the rendezvous point must be an incredible distance from anywhere populated.”

“That’s precisely the reason, Captain Duggan! You can appreciate there’s a lack of trust, particularly on our side. If the worst happens, we want the Ghasts to think our home worlds are in a completely different sector to where they really are.”

“I take it we’re leaving at once, sir?”

“Would you have it any other way?” Teron gave a genuine laugh. It made him seem younger, though the tiredness in his face returned as the laughter ended.

“I recall a series of unpleasant side effects from the Crimson’s acceleration to lightspeed,” said Duggan, remembering the injuries he and his crew had suffered. He had no desire to experience the feeling again.

“We’ve improved the life support modules. I’d give you the technical details if I understood them. Suffice to say, the engineers believe they’ve alleviated the problem.”

“Alleviated?”

“That’s what they told me.” Teron shrugged. “You’ll have to go with what you’re given.”

“Has the infantry been assigned yet? I’d like to speak to the sergeant as soon as I get onboard. Beforehand if possible.”

“You’ll have no soldiers. It’ll be you and your three crew. I had a commander assigned. I assume he won’t be needed any more.”

“No, sir, he won’t. Why will there be no soldiers?”

“You won’t be landing anywhere and we don’t want to encourage you into a position where you might be tempted.”

“You could simply order me not to,” said Duggan quietly.

“That’s been tried before, Captain. Anyway, you’re dismissed. You have permission to board the Crimson. Your destination has been programmed in and locked down. You’ll go immediately to maximum speed and, with any luck, arrive in time for the rendezvous. I expect negotiations will take several days, so I wouldn’t be concerned about missing anything.”

“Sir.”

“And Duggan? This really is good news. For everyone in the Confederation. I hope that next time I see you, we’ll be able to celebrate an end to the war. I don’t like to speak too much of these things in advance in case my doing so somehow prevents them from coming to pass. All I can do is wish you good luck, in the same way I did the other captains on this mission.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Duggan spun on his heel and marched out of the Admiral’s office. The corridor outside was near the building’s reception and he could hear the sound of Chainer’s voice somewhere ahead. Duggan walked smartly onwards, finding it hard not to break into a run.

When he arrived in the waiting area, all three stared at him with concern. It was Breeze who spoke first. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

Duggan grinned at them. “There’s nothing wrong. Quite the opposite, in fact. Come on, we’ve been given a mission.”

He waved away their questions and took them outside. He didn’t know how long he’d been in with Teron – long enough for the sky to have turned from black into the deep, pure blue of early dawn. Duggan commandeered a hovercar and the four of them climbed in. He pushed the vehicle to an unsafe speed and steered it across the shipyard.

“Why all the mystery?” asked Chainer.

“There’s no mystery, Lieutenant. Or at least there won’t be when we get onboard. I can’t tell you about it until then.”

“Where are we going? Have we got another ship?”

The rapid trip across the ground came to an abrupt end when Duggan pulled up alongside an object which was eleven hundred metres long. “We have got another ship, Lieutenant. This one, and we’re departing as soon as we reach the bridge.”

Chapter Twenty-One

There had been dozens of technicians crammed into the narrow corridors of the ESS Crimson. These technicians were all heading in the opposite direction to the boarding crew.

“Left it to the last minute, huh?” Chainer said to a man who hurried by. He got no response to his question.

By the time they’d reached the bridge and completed their brief pre-flight checks, they were the only four on the warship. “Internal sensors report nobody else onboard, sir,” said Chainer. “We can take off whenever you want.”

“Anything external?”

“No gantries or cranes overhead and nothing left anywhere on the hull. Not even a hammer or a nail.”

Duggan laughed at that. There wasn’t a single screw or nail anywhere on a fleet warship. “Engines?” he asked.

“Our gravity engines are warming up, sir. They were still hot from the last time they were powered. Maybe they were doing some last-minute tests.”

“How are our weapons, Commander? Admiral Teron advised me we’ve had a few upgrades.”

“He wasn’t lying, sir. Twenty Lambda clusters with a dozen tubes in each. Range and payload look good. Ten Bulwarks, two of them newer than the others. They’ve all had updated tracking and targeting modules fitted. The originals must have been good enough that they’ve not needed replacing. They’ve been working fast to get this done so quickly.”

“I don’t think the technology of the base gun has changed much – only how they aim,” said Duggan, relieved to hear their defences had been improved.

“We’ve got shock drones as well. Super-Warblers according to the tech specs.”

“Super-Warblers?” asked Chainer. “Sounds like some kind of bird that can peck a whole tree down in one go.”

“We should be happy the Space Corps isn’t standing still, ladies and gentlemen. Anything that can give us an advantage should be celebrated,” said Duggan.

“I’m celebrating, believe me,” said Chainer. “I’ll save my happy face for when these Super-Warblers have intercepted their first missiles.”

McGlashan continued to run through their armaments. “We’ve still got the disruptors fitted, sir. There’s no trace of the other weapon. It’s not locked down like it was before – it’s just plain gone.”

“I know, Commander. Admiral Teron told me as much. They’ve taken the module away. It’s called a Planet Breaker now – I don’t know if that’s how it’ll be listed in the specification manuals.”

“Planet Breaker?” said Breeze. “I can’t think of anything better to call it. By the way, I’m denied access to set a course and destination. It’s only the gravity drives that’ll respond.”

“We’re not permitted to know our destination. It’s been programmed in for us – we’re going to sit back in comfort as we’re steered to where we need to be.”

“Strange,” said Breeze. “Anyway, we can lift off now. The engines are good to go.”

“I’m getting clearance from the shipyard flight control,” added Chainer. “No other craft are permitted to land or leave until we’re gone.” He whistled. “This must be important.”

“It is, Lieutenant. I’ll tell you all about it as soon as we hit lightspeed.” With those words, Duggan took hold of the Crimson’s control bars. He closed his eyes as the coolness of the alloy on his palms exactly matched the memory.

“The shipyard flight computer asks if we’ll kindly engage our autopilot for departure,” said Chainer.

“It really asked kindly?”

“Really, truly, sir.”

Duggan allowed the autopilot to take over, with a pang of disappointment. “I never could refuse a polite request,” he muttered.

The autopilot didn’t delay. It confirmed the permission to depart and then lifted the Crimson directly into the air, taking care not to cause any turbulence that might affect those on the ground. The higher it climbed, the faster it accelerated.

“Two thousand klicks, three thousand,” said Chainer.

“The deep fission drives are going through their build up procedures,” said Breeze.

“Already?” asked Duggan with a frown. “I thought they’d wait until we were much further away.”

“It sounds like this is important enough to ignore procedures,” said Chainer.

“Twenty-nine seconds and we’re out of here,” said Breeze.

“We’re at sixteen thousand klicks now, nothing on the fars. All set for a jump.”

“Power at exactly one hundred percent. Twenty seconds remaining.”

Chainer spoke, his voice suddenly worried. “Are we going straight to maximum speed?”

“Yes we are, Lieutenant,” said Duggan. “As fast as we can go.”

“Doesn’t that mean we’re going to wake up covered in bruises an hour from now.”

“Ten seconds.”

“I’d recommend you hold on to something, Lieutenant Chainer.”

“Crap, I forgot about this.”

“Three, two, one…”

The Crimson jumped. The engines whined as they unleashed their power, hurling the vessel onwards at an unimaginable velocity. It tore through space, pointing directly towards its pre-programmed destination. On the bridge, the crew felt a momentary giddiness which threatened to become outright nausea. There was a sensation of being crushed, as if by a billion cubic metres of water. The feeling passed almost before their brains could register it. Then, everything was as it had been before the jump. Duggan suppressed a smile when he saw how tightly Chainer had been gripping his chair.

“That wasn’t so bad was it, Lieutenant?”

“You knew, didn’t you, sir?”

“Knew what?”

“They’ve given us some additional life support modules.”

“I think Admiral Teron may have said something about it,” said Duggan, pretending to study one of his screens. Chainer huffed and puffed, but he was clearly relieved he wouldn’t have to suffer unconsciousness every time they decided to do a full-power shift to lightspeed.

“We’re just over Light-V and holding steady,” said Breeze. “The Crimson’s lost none of her speed in the time she’s been in dry dock. Our destination is fifteen days away. That’s going to take us way out.”

“Yes, it is, Lieutenant.”

“Can you tell us what’s going on now, sir?” asked McGlashan. In spite of her recent convalescence, there was a glow to her cheeks and her eyes were bright and inquisitive.

Duggan told them. He recounted his most recent conversation with Admiral Teron, to bring his crew up to speed with the situation. They deserved to know exactly what was at stake here, in order that it could shape their actions if they encountered any trouble ahead. Duggan knew the information was top-secret, yet he trusted his crew and preferred them to know what was going on.

When he heard the news, Chainer jumped up and cheered. Even the normally-reserved Breeze had a look of dazed happiness on his face.

“You mean this could all be over, sir? We could actually beat the Ghasts?” Breeze asked.

“Not beat, Lieutenant. Force into a position where they have no choice other than to make peace.”

“Just like that?” asked Chainer, calming down. “They’ve killed billions of our people, sir. Do you think we’ll let them get away with it?”

“What do you suggest? A punitive strike on a few of their planets, Lieutenant? Kill a billion more of theirs than they did of ours?”

Chainer looked ashamed. “That’s not quite what I was saying. It just doesn’t seem right somehow for them to get away with what they’ve done. It’s not as if we asked for this war in the first place.”

“Look at it this way,” said McGlashan. “We were facing annihilation. Our entire species may well have been wiped out a few years from now. With this new weapon, we’ve been given the opportunity to settle on our terms. If we negotiate properly, we could ensure the Ghasts make reparations for what they’ve done.”

“There’s not enough money for that,” said Chainer.

“It doesn’t have to be about money, Lieutenant. The lives of those people are lost. We can’t get them back and we can’t fix what’s happened to them. We need to ensure there are measures to prevent this happening again. There’s a chance to learn and for the Confederation move on from this war. Who is to say it won’t make us harder, such that next time we find ourselves in this position, we act differently?” asked Duggan.

“I don’t have any answers, sir. I can only say what I think and hope the people who make the deals exceed my expectations,” said Chainer. “I want this to end as much as anyone.”

“I know, Lieutenant. We should be pleased at the situation we find ourselves in. Sometimes we can try looking too far into the future and forget to enjoy what’s going on in the present. We have fifteen long, boring days ahead of us in which to contemplate what might happen. And don’t forget – we should be proud of what we achieved as a team, not only in returning the ESS Crimson, but in recovering the Cadaveron from Everlong.”

“A shame we had to lose some people along the way,” said Breeze.

“We couldn’t have done it without their sacrifice,” said Duggan, refusing to feel morose.

Talk of the dead brought the conversation to an inevitable end. Each of the four crew sat in quiet thought, watching the unending stream of updates and status reports which rolled from the Crimson’s mainframe and onto their screens. The spaceship continued at an unchanging speed, hauling them towards a rendezvous which could define mankind’s destiny.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Look at this!” exclaimed Chainer, delight plain in his words. “They changed over the food replicators as well! They must have been expecting to show members of the Confederation Council around the place.”

“What’s that you’ve got?” asked Breeze suspiciously.

“Steak and a hi-stim!”

“You sure know how to live,” said McGlashan with a shake of her head.

“He’s a true bastion of fine dining,” joked Breeze.

Chainer ignored the banter and sat down with his plate and his drink. The smell of the meat swept aside the usual scent of oil and ozone. Breeze was the first to crack and he ducked outside to find the replicator, pursued by the sound of Chainer’s laughter. Soon they were all eating plates of food which were acceptable facsimiles of the originals.

“Not bad,” admitted McGlashan, eating a sandwich. “Better than what they served up in hospital.”

Duggan had a cheeseburger that dripped clear, greasy liquid onto his metal plate. He’d promised himself long ago that he’d never have another burger, but on this occasion, he thought there were reasonable grounds for breaking his word.

“The trip may end up long and boring, but at least the food will be worth eating,” said Breeze. “Even if it somehow feels wrong for me to enjoy it.”

“Yeah, you sort of get used to the swill on a Gunner,” said McGlashan. “I feel as if I’m cheating on all the other Vincent crews who have to put up with brown sludge.”

“Some people will never learn how to enjoy themselves,” said Chainer. He finished his can of hi-stim and burped with satisfaction. “Say, Captain? How come we’re not allowed to know the location of this meeting with the Ghasts. Did Admiral Slender think you were going to run to the press and spill the beans about what’s going on?”

Duggan put his empty plate aside. He remembered asking himself why he was being kept in the dark and hadn’t had much time to think about it. “That’s a good question, Lieutenant and one to which I don’t have an answer. If anyone in the Space Corps was worried I’d go to the press, I think they’d be more concerned that I’d know about the Planet Breaker and about the potential for a negotiated settlement. If the newspapers learned peace was in our grasp, there’d be hell to pay if talks broke down and the fighting resumed. This makes me think there’s a different reason for them keeping the location of the rendezvous a secret.”

“Call me cynical if you like, but it seems really strange to hide where we’re going from us,” said Breeze.

“It does,” mused Duggan. He crossed the tiny bridge until he was standing at Breeze’s shoulder. “What information can you see about where we’re going?”

“Nothing whatsoever. We’re flying blind and trusting whoever programmed the mainframe to get us where we want to be in one piece.”

“I don’t think anybody wants us to be destroyed, Lieutenant. There are easier ways to achieve that. Why bother telling me a load of secrets and then killing us for them? That would be completely senseless.”

“There was a lot of secrecy surrounding the design of the Crimson, wasn’t there, sir?” asked McGlashan. “Could the Space Corps want the ship to become lost, to save them having to answer difficult questions?”

“Questions from who?” asked Chainer.

“I don’t know. Are there factions in the Confederation Council who have been kept in the dark about the Dreamer technology? Members of the press? Concerned citizens, wondering why an ancient hull is getting so much attention in a shipyard? It’s not as if they can keep ship watchers from seeing it. There’re plenty of civilians out there who know exactly which ships the Space Corps has in its fleet. I’ll bet they’re very interested in the Crimson. We might find the fission drives never switch off and we keep on going and going until we die of old age. They could make it seem like an accident.”

Duggan wasn’t convinced. “That’s not how it works, Commander. They would have reduced our weaponry if they intended to do something as clumsy as losing us. Why upgrade the Lambdas and add extra Bulwarks?”

“I was just opening my mouth to see what came out, sir,” said an unabashed McGlashan.

Duggan peered at Breeze’s status screens. “We’d normally punch in a destination and the mainframe would take us there. Can you see our trajectory? We should be able to predict where we’re headed if we know which direction we’re going.”

“That’s the first thing I thought about, sir. I’m locked out of both course and destination details.”

“Doesn’t the Crimson have a greater level of authority than an Admiral?” asked McGlashan. “You could use that to override anything they programmed into software.”

Duggan’s interest levels were climbing, especially since he foresaw nothing else to keep him occupied in the coming two weeks. “I’ll have a check of that,” he said, returning to his console. A few tests left him disappointed. “I could see how they’d overlook something as unexpected as a ship having such a high authority. On this occasion, they’ve spotted it and disabled the facility.”

“That would have taken Fleet Admiral Slender’s direct approval?” asked Breeze.

“Or Fleet Admiral Gibson, though she no longer has frontline duties,” said Duggan. “There are several people on the Military Oversight Committee who can override more or less anything.”

“It doesn’t really matter if they’ve hidden the direction of our travel, sir,” said Chainer. “Our databanks hold records of all known stars. I can use the sensors to read which ones we pass and should be able to build up a picture from there. It’ll not be as precise as simply knowing where we’re going.”

“It should be enough,” said Duggan, rubbing his chin in thought. “How long will it take?”

“I could give you a guess ten minutes after starting. It won’t be accurate, thought. The longer I have, the better an answer I can give you.”

“There’s plenty of time, Lieutenant. How about we give it twenty-four hours?”

“That’ll be more than enough to give you something as close to perfect as we can achieve,” said Chainer. “Honestly, I don’t know why they even bothered trying to hide this information from us. Any good comms man could find out.”

Duggan smiled to himself. “Don’t belittle yourself, Lieutenant. If it was that easy, I’m sure they wouldn’t have bothered taking steps to try and cover up our destination.”

“Never underestimate the potential for another man’s incompetence,” said Chainer, a born cynic.

Duggan spent the rest of the day in the gym, which he was relieved to find they’d installed at some point recently. It was as if there’d been two separate teams working on the Crimson at the same time – one team to extract information about the Dreamer technology and a second to ready it for the next crew. It was better to be prepared than found wanting and the Space Corps had all the money and personnel it needed.

He spent a full seven hours in bed at his allotted time and rose feeling refreshed. The rest of the crew were on the bridge, their turn to sleep not yet due.

“What do we have, Lieutenant?” asked Duggan. “Do you have enough to tell me where we’re going?”

“I’m just collating the latest batch of sensor readings, sir. We should have enough to be pretty accurate.”

“Show me, please.”

“Here we are,” said Chainer, bring up a chart across the bulkhead. The image hung in the air, a carpet of black, speckled with near-invisible motes of white. “I’ve had to zoom right out, since we’re travelling so far. I’ll highlight the extents of Confederation Space and put a red marker at our current position and also where I expect us to be when we come out of lightspeed.”

Two red dots appeared on the screen. Duggan could see them clearly enough, yet he couldn’t stop himself taking a couple of steps closer. “That’s way outside Confederation Space,” he said. “Any idea what’s there?”

“Not a clue, sir,” said Chainer. “Our databanks hold nothing on the place we’re going to.”

“Has the information been hidden or expunged?”

“I don’t think so. We’ve just never explored so far away from our home planets. We’ve got a map of one or two stars close by. Presumably the monitoring stations occasionally detect something new and add it to the catalogue. Otherwise, it’s a blank canvas.”

“What the hell are we going there for?” asked Duggan, his mind whirling.

“Beats me. You said we were going for somewhere neutral to negotiate with the Ghasts. Maybe this is the place.”

“Something doesn’t feel right,” said Duggan. “And usually when something doesn’t feel right, I get suspicious.”

“A coverup?” asked Chainer.

“Why would they bother?” said Breeze, returning to the question they’d already found themselves unable to answer.

The questions plagued Duggan and refused to give him peace. He sat thinking for an hour, without being able to figure out why the Crimson had been sent fifteen days towards a place there was scant information about. He stood. “What’s the standard maximum velocity of an Anderlecht cruiser?” he asked.

“Light-H?” said Breeze. “I think they’ve upgraded a few to go faster. It won’t be many tiers higher. Why do you ask?”

“I’m trying to figure out the timelines. Admiral Teron told me they’d sent two Hadrons and a number of Anderlechts to negotiate with the Ghasts, except he didn’t say how much earlier they’d left than us. They’ll be forced to travel at the same speed as their slowest ships. How long would it take an Anderlecht to reach our current destination, if it travelled at Light-J?”

“Thirty-five days? Forty? Maybe a couple more,” said Breeze. “There are a few variables stopping me predicting an exact duration.”

“If we take the fastest-case scenario, in which an Anderlecht has been upgraded to Light-J and takes thirty-five days to get from A to B, they needed to leave approximately twenty days before us, in order for us to arrive in good time.”

“Or as many as twenty-five days before us at Light-H,” said Breeze.

“It was seven days from the time we brought the Goliath home, till they landed the Crimson in the dry dock next to the Cadaveron. They’d have had to set up the interfaces, and Admiral Teron told me it took two days for the Dreamer core to unlock the Ghast AI. After that, they had to search through everything they’d extracted, make sense of it, and come to a high-level decision about how they were going to proceed. After that, they approached the Ghasts, who would have then needed to agree to negotiations and decide on the place for the negotiations to take place.”

“It’s starting to look a bit tight time-wise,” said McGlashan.

“Very tight, Commander. So tight, I’m left wondering exactly what is going on.”

“There could have been enough time, couldn’t there, sir?” asked Chainer. “We were on Pioneer for over a month. If everything fell into place, it could have all worked out?” He sounded as if he were looking for confirmation.

“Yes, there could have been time, Lieutenant. In fact, there must have been, because however hard I try to guess, I can’t for the life of me think why we’d be sent alone to a place that’s not even on the charts. It makes so little sense, that I’m trying to convince myself everything must be fine.”

“Except you’re not convinced?” said McGlashan.

“I’m damned sure I’m not convinced, Commander. Now I’m left trying to decide what we’re being used for. I had enough of this crap when we went looking for the Crimson in the first place.”

None of the crew had answers and Duggan was left trying to figure out exactly what, if anything, was going on.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The ESS Crimson came steadily closer to its destination. The crew had not been idle during this time. In fact, they’d applied themselves to the task of trying to disable the lockouts on the deep fission engines and the guidance systems. Duggan wasn’t quite sure what he intended to do if they succeeded. First and foremost, he wanted to leave lightspeed so that he could use the long-range comms to speak to Admiral Teron. After that, he wasn’t sure what the plan would be. If everything was above-board, he’d definitely be in for a stern lecture from Teron, but he could handle that. It was the hurtling into the unknown that he didn’t like.

“They went to a lot of trouble, sir,” said McGlashan. “This isn’t an amateur job – they really didn’t want us to play around with what they programmed in. There’s all sorts of encryption and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve fitted some additional hardware for extra security.”

“I don’t suppose there’s one of those simulations you can run, is there Lieutenant? To let us take control again?”

“The Crimson’s too old, sir. They probably didn’t start adding that stuff until later. Besides, I’m not certain there’d be any sim that could do what we want.”

“Particularly since you told the Space Corps how we’d disabled the Cadaveron’s sensors, sir,” said Breeze. “I imagine they realised we might try and pull that trick again. I don’t think it matters anyway. We’re coming out of lightspeed in less than five hours.”

“Might as well see what they’ve got in store for us, eh?” asked Chainer. His tone suggested he had no genuine desire to find out and he sounded on edge. He’d been drinking hi-stim almost continuously and Duggan wondered if he should speak to him about it.

“It doesn’t seem as if I’m going to be given the choice,” said Duggan. “Another mystery to be solved.”

“Not long to go,” said McGlashan.

“I want everyone on full alert when we enter normal space. Weapons ready and a full sensor check of the area. Lieutenant Breeze, you will check to see if the fission drive lockout persists after our arrival. If any of you needs to rest, now is the time to do it.”

None of them left the bridge. In truth, they’d arranged their sleep shifts around the projected arrival time. On a Gunner, the mainframe could dump you out of lightspeed many hours either side of the estimated time. The Dreamer core on the Crimson could pin it down to the minute, so the crew had been able to plan their rest breaks with a high degree of confidence.

As the minutes ticked down, the air on the bridge became progressively more stifling. Chainer kept blowing out his breath and running a finger around the inside of his collar. He shifted constantly, until his fidgeting started to bother Duggan.

“I need another hi-stim,” said Chainer at last.

“I’d rather you held off for now, Lieutenant. It’s making you jumpy.”

“Sorry, sir. It happens when I’m on edge. I’m worried about where we’re going to end up.”

“That’s fine. No more hi-stim until we’ve found what lies ahead,” said Duggan. He didn’t know if Chainer’s excessive consumption was a matter for concern. It seemed better to err on the side of caution and ask him to stop drinking the stuff.

“Coming out of lightspeed in less than a minute,” said Breeze.

“All weapons online,” said McGlashan. “Disruptors powered up, countermeasures ready.”

“I’ve programmed in a full scan to begin as soon as we slow down,” said Chainer.

The engineers had done a good job with the life support and they experienced hardly any nausea when the Crimson appeared in local space. What they found was completely unexpected.

“We’ve been dropped twenty minutes out from the fourth planet orbiting an unknown sun,” said Chainer. “It’s a big old place from what I can see. A quick sweep shows nothing to be concerned about in our vicinity.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Give me time, sir. There could be something behind this planet. They’d be hidden from view, though.”

“Where’re our warships?” asked McGlashan.

“Sir?” said Breeze. “The lock on the deep fission engines is still in place. However, I’m now locked out of the gravity drives as well.”

“What do you mean, locked out?” asked Duggan sharply.

“Exactly that, sir. I have no control over our speed or direction.”

“Are we moving?” Duggan checked his own console and discovered the Crimson was flying at one-hundred percent on the gravity drive. “What the hell is going on?” he asked.

“We’re moving directly towards that planet, sir.”

“Still no data on it?”

“Nothing in the Crimson’s arrays. Doesn’t this stuff normally get fed from ship to ship as soon as they find somewhere new?”

“Not always,” said McGlashan. “And only if you’re within range of the ship carrying the new data.”

“Uh, sir? You might want to look at this,” said Chainer, fear in his voice. “I mean, right now.”

Duggan jumped up and stood next to him. “What is it?”

“This planet is populated, sir. Densely populated. In fact, there’s hardly a part of the surface which isn’t covered in metal or other signs of building.”

“A Ghast planet,” said Duggan. A coldness swept into him, which dried the sweat on his skin immediately.

“I’m picking up activity in high orbit,” said Chainer. “Coming towards us.”

“Ours?”

“No, sir. I’d say it’s two Ghast light cruisers.”

“What’s on the planet? Can you find our ships, Lieutenant? Could they have stopped here and been captured or destroyed?”

“That’s a lot to look for,” said Chainer. “I’ll let you know as I find out.”

“Damnit, I don’t want us to fire on those Kravens and then find out our ships are on the other side of the planet, negotiating for peace.”

“We could have got here first,” said McGlashan.

“It’ll take at least one orbit before I can give you an educated guess as to whether or not our warships are here, sir. On the other hand, I don’t need a full orbit to tell you the Ghasts have at least five surface areas which could function as shipyards or landing areas. Those Kravens will be in firing range in a few minutes.”

“Anything on the engines, Lieutenant Breeze?”

“I’m trying, sir. They’re still pointing us straight ahead. No deviation in our course.”

“Have we been programmed to crash?” asked McGlashan incredulously.

Duggan didn’t think they were going to crash. He’d begun to realise exactly what they were here for and exactly why the Crimson’s weapons systems had been upgraded. “I think we’ve been betrayed by our own side, Commander. Target those Kravens and launch everything we can bring to bear.”

“I can see activity on three of the landing areas,” said Chainer. “If I’m not much mistaken, there are at least a dozen gravity engines warming up. Big ones and small ones. They’re scrambling everything they’ve got.”

“Lieutenant Breeze, I want us to get away from here. Now.”

“Not a hope, sir. Whoever’s been playing with the gravity engines, they’ve done the same job as they did with the fission drives. It won’t override from here.”

“First Kraven at one-hundred and forty thousand klicks,” said McGlashan. “Firing clusters one through ten.”

The external missile coverings slid back to allow one-hundred and twenty Lambdas to burst away from their launch tubes. The coverings slammed back in less than a quarter of a second, leaving the Crimson’s hull smooth and pristine once more.

At his console, Duggan tried everything he could think of to give him control of the ship again. He engaged the autopilot and disengaged it. He instructed the mainframe to begin full evasive manoeuvres, and he pulled at the manual control levers. Nothing worked. The Crimson followed its pre-programmed course exactly, bringing them ever closer to the Ghast planet.

“There’s a power spike,” said McGlashan. “And another.”

“Disruptors,” said Duggan. “They’re trying to shut us down.”

“It hasn’t worked,” said McGlashan. “We’ve got the Dreamer core. The first Kraven’s launched missiles. Only thirty.”

Only thirty. The number seemed pathetic in comparison to what the Crimson could launch. Duggan found no satisfaction in the thought. “Shut down the second Kraven at one-hundred and sixty thousand klicks. Destroy it with Lambdas.”

“The first Kraven’s launching its countermeasures. Three Vule cannons and plasma flares. I don’t think it’ll be enough.”

The Ghast light cruisers outgunned the Vincent class vessels in the Space Corps. The Kravens which had been equipped with disruptors could easily give an Anderlecht a run for its money. Against the swarm of Lambdas from the Crimson’s arsenal, this one had little hope. The ten-metre missiles twisted and turned as they homed in on their target. The Kraven swung away, trying to hide behind its cloud of countermeasures. Some of the Lambdas were fooled and detonated against the white-hot plasma flares. A few more were shredded into pieces by a hurricane of Vule fire. The rest – almost fifty – crashed into the light cruiser at a combined speed in excess of three thousand klicks per second. Plasma warheads blazed with shocking intensity, engulfing the Ghast ship. When the light faded there was nothing remaining except a cloud of fine debris, scattering in all directions.

“Launch our own countermeasures?” asked McGlashan.

“Wait, please,” said Duggan. “If we release too soon, we’ll have flown past the cover of our drones when their missiles reach us.”

“Ten seconds to impact.”

“Launch countermeasures. Where’s that second Kraven?”

“Shock drones away. Second vessel coming to one-sixty thousand klicks.”

Thousands of reflective shapes spilled out from the Crimson, their tiny engines boosting them away on a course given to them by the ship’s mainframe a nanosecond before they were launched. Each drone was slightly different in shape and each one gave off a mock-signature that was meant to confuse or fool missile guidance systems. The drone cloud was enormously expensive, but it did its job. Twenty-eight of the Kraven’s missiles unleashed their payload onto a drone, rather than the ESS Crimson. The remaining two missiles were tracked and destroyed by depleted uranium projectiles from the four port-side Bulwarks.

“All thirty incoming missiles destroyed,” said McGlashan.

“Sir, do you have any idea what’s happening here?” asked Chainer. “In less than two minutes, we’re going to have half of the Ghast fleet launching from the surface.”

“We’ve been sent on a mission, Lieutenant. I’m certain it’s not one of peace. If I’m correct, those Ghast ships won’t reach us.”

“Sir? I don’t understand,” said Chainer.

“Disruptors fired,” said McGlashan.

“That’s taken the fission drives to thirty percent,” said Breeze. “Positronic output from the Kraven hull at close to zero.”

“Fire,” said Duggan. “Eight tubes, this time. No need to waste ammunition.”

“Ninety-six missiles gone. They should impact a few seconds before the Kraven comes back online. I’m seeing activity on the weapons console, sir. I don’t know what it is. There’re utilisation spikes on the mainframe, like it’s powering something up.”

“I can access the gravity drives!” said Breeze.

Knowing it was too late, Duggan gripped the control rods and swung the Crimson away from the planet, still at full power. Deep within the hull of the vessel, something howled. The noise built rapidly until it was painful to hear.

“What the hell?” said Chainer, his words drowned out by the sound. Duggan saw realisation dawning on the man’s face.

The floor and walls vibrated angrily, as if they fought to contain something of incredible ferocity. The howling turned to a whine, which dropped away to nothingness as quickly as it had started. On the bulkhead viewscreen the image showed the Ghast planet breaking into pieces. It was slow at first, nearly serene. The Crimson was already far distant, so when the world behind them exploded, the crew were given a perfect, terrible view of it happening. The largest fragments split and split again, becoming smaller fractions of the whole as they cracked away from the centre. To Duggan’s eyes, it appeared as if the pieces moved lazily, though in reality he knew they were travelling at hundreds or thousands of kilometres per second. The light cruiser they’d targeted was lost amongst the chaos, its destruction a certainty.

Ahead of it all flew the ESS Crimson, her gravity drives sufficient to keep the vessel ahead of the tumbling shards of a broken world.

“Planet Breaker,” said Duggan, so softly he wasn’t sure he’d spoken aloud.

Chapter Twenty-Four

For a time, there was silence. No one spoke while they stared at the bulkhead screen. Eventually, Duggan switched it off. The bridge was eerily dark without the illumination it provided.

“The deep fission drives are available, sir,” said Breeze. His voice was expressionless. “Want me to get them ready?”

“Where will we go?” asked Duggan. He sighed. “Hold tight for a moment, Lieutenant. I need to gather my thoughts.”

“I’ve got Admiral Teron on the comms, sir. He wants to speak to you, privately.”

“I don’t give a damn what he wants. Put him through on the bridge open channel.”

“Will do, sir.”

Teron’s voice spoke through the speakers positioned all around, giving it the appearance of floating in the air before them. “You have done what you have done, Captain Duggan?”

“Yes, sir, it’s done.” He felt too tired to shout his anger.

“I’d like to say well done, but I don’t believe it’s a time for congratulations. You should have been left in full control of the Crimson once the Planet Breaker discharged. I’m sending you a new set of coordinates. The meeting with the Ghasts is taking place, just not here.” Teron sounded genuinely sorrowful.

“Where are we going, sir? If we’re permitted to know.”

“You’re coming to Pioneer and bringing the Crimson with you.”

“Why do you need us there?”

“To remove the Planet Breaker, of course. We’re not even close to being able to copy it and it’s far too valuable to have it flying around the universe.”

“What about the negotiations? The fleet we sent to meet the Ghasts?”

“I’m sorry, Captain Duggan. We’ve already had our first meeting with the Ghasts. We showed them what we could do and they either didn’t believe us or didn’t think we’d have the determination to carry out our implied threats. We have another series of talks due soon. This time we decided it would be best if we showed our intent beforehand. To encourage them to pursue a more peaceful relationship with us.”

“There must have been another way,” said Duggan. “Conventional arms could have sent a message.”

“This is the way we have chosen, Captain. It’s finished now and we must look forwards to a brighter future for the Confederation.”

“Why me? Why us?”

“I think you know the answer to that one, Captain. For what it’s worth, I would not have chosen to handle matters in this way.”

“Is the Space Corps planning to use the Planet Breaker again?”

“I genuinely hope not. We will see what the Helius Blackstar brings. That’s where it started and that’s where we should end it. Twelve days from this point and we should have news. Keep your fingers crossed that we achieve the result we want.”

“What happens at Pioneer, sir?”

“No one will know about your mission and it must stay that way. We’ve got a dozen Vincent class fighters at the Pioneer shipyards, waiting for men and women to act as their crew. You’ll be assigned to one and put onto your usual duties. Only this time, you might be able to perform them without an expectation that death will result from your endeavours.”

“Yes, sir.”

There was silence for a few seconds, as if Teron had gone. His voice returned. “If the war ends, there’ll be no one we can thank more than you. You’ll already know you won’t get the recognition you deserve.”

“It’s not recognition I was looking for, sir.”

“I know, Captain. I’ll see you for a full debriefing once you return.”

This time Teron didn’t say anything more.

“He’s gone,” said Chainer.

“Sir?” It was McGlashan. She spoke hesitantly, unable to read Duggan’s mood. “We should get away from here. The Ghasts will have definitely got a signal out. There’ll be dozens of their warships inbound.”

“You’re right, Commander. There’s no point in remaining. Lieutenant Breeze, get the fission engines going.”

“Yes, sir. A course for Pioneer.” Duggan detected the smallest suggestion of a question in the man’s words.

“How far away from the Helius Blackstar are we?”

“Just shy of thirteen days, sir.”

“That’s where we’re going.”

The crew exchanged glances, though none of them said anything about this disobeying of a direct order.

“Fission drives at one hundred percent and calculating our course. Thirty seconds.”

“Proceed when ready,” said Duggan. “Remember what you’ve seen here today. The price of peace is a harsh one to pay – on both sides.”

“Never again,” said Chainer.

The giddiness came, brushing up against the edges of nausea. Duggan felt his body tighten, before the sensation eased. The ESS Crimson flew away from the solar system in which the remains of the Ghast planet were left drifting. Some of the fragments were large enough to wreak devastating damage on the nearest planets and perhaps the sun itself. It hardly matters, thought Duggan. There’s nothing left to kill.

“Light-V attained,” said Breeze. “I have full control over our propulsion systems again.”

“Until next time,” said Chainer softly. “I’m not sure I trust this spaceship after what’s happened.”

“I agree with you,” said McGlashan. “If I get the chance, I’m going to see if I can do something to prevent it happening again.” She smiled. “I’m just not quite sure what.”

“We’ve been properly screwed, haven’t we?” said Chainer.

“Yes, Lieutenant. I’m sorry you had to be a part of it. That goes for each of you.”

“I’d have rather been here than somewhere else,” said McGlashan. “Not for the killing, just for being a catalyst.” She looked uncertain. “I don’t know what I’m trying to say.”

“What happens when we get to the Helius Blackstar?” asked Breeze.

“I don’t know, Lieutenant. We’ve been used as a tool, without our knowledge. I don’t like the dishonesty. Maybe I feel we deserve to be there when they make peace. It’s something we’re owed.”

“Won’t the arrival of the Crimson piss the Ghasts off? They might think we’re rubbing their faces in it.” said Chainer.

“If they respect strength as much as the Space Corps believe they do, the Ghasts will appreciate the Crimson, rather than hate it. Whatever the truth, I’m damned well going to be a witness to the proceedings.”

“They’ll kick you out for this, Captain,” said McGlashan.

“They might. Perhaps it’s my time. If the war ends, they won’t need people like me anymore. There’s still time for this one last adventure.” He grinned. “The bastards won’t grind me down.”

For once, the journey passed quickly, as if the speed of their travel somehow affected their perception of time itself. Duggan kept himself physically busy in the gym and tried not to brood over what had happened. Chainer estimated from his sensor records that there’d been over fifteen billion inhabitants on the Ghast world – the number was so big it felt unreal. Duggan tried to grasp it and picture the enormity of the Confederation’s actions and discovered how futile it was. One phrase returned to him again and again, when he slept and when he was engaged in his daily duties. It was us or them. He often asked himself if there was an alternative. In the end, he gave up thinking about it. He’d been given command of the mission because of one man’s hatred and spite. Duggan couldn’t allow that man to be victorious.

Mid-way through the twelfth day, the four of them were on the bridge, contemplating what was to come.

“What happens when we get there, sir?” asked Chainer. “I don’t think the Space Corps fleet will open their arms and welcome us.”

“They’ll have little choice,” said Duggan. “If the Ghasts get the impression something is wrong, they may try and capitalise on it.”

“By shooting us to pieces?”

“Probably nothing so overt, Lieutenant. If the Confederation doesn’t look united, it may affect the Ghasts’ attitude during the negotiations. They might become stubborn or hold out for an unreasonable settlement.”

“The fleet will pretend to welcome us with open arms,” said McGlashan. “It’s only afterwards we’ll be punished.”

“There’s only one person who’ll be punished,” promised Duggan. “And I won’t go down without a fight.”

“How will the talks happen, sir?” asked Breeze. “Will they meet face-to-face?”

“I doubt it,” said Duggan. “There’s no common language.”

“So how do we speak to each other? Did you say something about us having developed an interpreter?”

“Admiral Teron said we’d figured it out. He was a bit cagey about it.”

“Want me to dig around in the comms for anything new?” asked Chainer. “They’ve pinned a lot on the Crimson – it would make sense for them to have fitted the ship with all the important stuff.”

“Go on, have a look,” said Duggan. “I’m interested.”

Chainer went quiet as the others talked about the potential outcomes.

“I hope something good comes from what’s happened,” said McGlashan. “It would break my heart if we had to destroy more of their worlds.”

“Do I recall you saying it was a price worth paying?” asked Duggan.

“I can’t settle on what I think is right. That either means everything is right or nothing is. Ultimately, I don’t want to die and I don’t want humanity to be wiped out for a war no one understands. If the only alternative to our extinction is theirs, I’d pay the price.”

“I’ve got something, sir,” said Chainer.

“What have you found?”

“New language modules, tucked away amongst a selection of New Earth sub-dialects.”

“Hidden?” asked Duggan.

“I don’t believe so. Probably just shoved in there at the last minute. I’m running a couple of the language modules up onto the bulkhead screen.” The screen in question lit up with rows of characters and symbols. “This is the written version of the language – it looks just like what we saw on the Cadaveron and in the Shatterer battery.”

“It’s definitely the same,” said Duggan.

“There’s an audible version as well,” continued Chainer. There was a series of harsh, barked sounds from the bridge speakers. “I think that’s Ghast for hello.”

“Doesn’t sound very friendly,” said Breeze. “From the tone it sounds more like piss off than hello.”

“It probably needs some fine tuning,” said Duggan drily. “At least we’ll be able to understand any Ghast broadcasts that come our way.”

“We are going to kill you,” mimicked Chainer, trying his best to replicate the roughness of the Ghast speech.

“Give us all of your hi-stim,” said Breeze in a similarly rasping voice.

“Enough,” said Duggan without anger, waving them to silence. “Lieutenant Chainer, I want you to keep those language modules running constantly when we get there. If there’s anything important happening, I’d like to hear about it.”

“Aye, sir.”

“How long, Lieutenant Breeze?”

“Just less than one hour, sir.”

“Bring us out of lightspeed a little way out. How far from the Blackstar is the planetary system where we found the Crimson?”

“Too far for gravity drive travel.”

“Take us to three hours away from the Blackstar, then. I don’t want anyone to become alarmed by our unexpected arrival. I’d like them to have plenty of warning we’re coming.”

“And for us to have plenty of time to see what’s ahead?” asked McGlashan.

“Exactly right, Commander.”

“I’ve made the adjustments,” said Breeze.

“Fine. Put your feet up while you can, ladies and gentlemen. I’m certain things will be interesting when we get there.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

The first impressions were not interesting at all. “There’s nothing here, sir,” said Chainer. “The fars and super-fars are showing a total blank.”

“Can we see the wormhole from here?”

“We’re a long way out, but I should be able to get it up on the screen. Here it comes.”

“Doesn’t look like much,” said Breeze. “Like a black dot on a sheet of black paper.”

“The screens can only go so dark,” said Chainer. “They’re incapable of showing anything darker than zero light. If you watch, I can overlay some movement indicators to show where it is.”

Their destination became visible on the bulkhead screen – it was a circle of pure darkness. A swirl of red, computer-generated specks surrounded it, gradually spiralling inwards.

“How fast at the centre?” asked Duggan. It had been a while since he’d studied the physics of a wormhole.

“It’s not the speed, so much as the weight,” said McGlashan.

“And the overwhelming, crushing force of gravity,” said Chainer. “We’ve got nothing capable of surviving a trip through one. If we managed to overcome that obstacle, the next problem is to have enough power to escape the pull at the far end. We’d then need to figure out where the other end actually is. It’s conceivable a ship could emerge so far distant that even our comms would take weeks, months or years to reach home.”

“Yet the Dreamers got something through,” said Duggan. “One of their ships was intact.”

“The Crimson might stand a chance,” said Breeze, rubbing his chin in thought. “At least as far as the propulsion goes.”

“The gravity engines couldn’t pull us clear of that,” said McGlashan. “Not a hope.”

“No, but if we engaged the fission engines at the exact moment of arrival, I reckon she’d be able to get clear.”

“You’d need to know the precise amount of time you were in the wormhole,” said Chainer. “That would take an immense amount of processing power.”

“We’re carrying the most advanced core in the Confederation. I’m certain the Ghasts have nothing like it,” said Duggan. He saw their faces. “Don’t worry, we’re not planning a trip through the wormhole. It’s time humanity studied them in greater detail, I think. While the Space Corps has unlimited funding, it would be a good idea to learn a few things. The Dreamers came twice, which suggests they didn’t give up after the first attempt.”

“We don’t need any more crap going on,” said Chainer. “The Dreamers can stay exactly where they are, wherever that is.”

“I’m taking us straight towards the wormhole,” said Duggan. “I have no idea where the proposed negotiations are meant to take place. I’ll assume it’s close to the Blackstar, since that’s the place Admiral Teron mentioned. Lieutenant Chainer, continue with an in-depth scan of the area. In particular I’d like you to focus directly ahead to where we’re going.”

“If they’re on the other side of the wormhole, we won’t see anything until we circle around it. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you how these things do crazy tricks with the sensors.”

“That’s fine, Lieutenant. I simply need warning of whatever there is to be seen.”

“I’ll keep on it. At this distance, it takes longer to sweep the area.”

“Is there no comms chatter?” asked McGlashan.

“Again, we’re a bit far out, Commander. Military comms are tightly focused and hard to intercept if you’re not the intended target. I’m not surprised there’s nothing to be heard.”

Duggan frowned at the thought. “Our fission signature should have been easy enough to spot when we arrived. Why haven’t we been contacted?”

“There’s a chance it could have been missed,” said Breeze. “We’re quite a distance. On the other hand, I’d be having stern words with anyone on my team who didn’t notice a ship emerging from Light-V a mere ten million klicks away.”

“Try hailing the Devastator directly,” said Duggan. “Tell them we’ve come for the party.”

“There’s no response, sir. I’ve sent out a request on her direct channel and there’s no answer. I’ve also tried routing through the Juniper and I got the same thing.”

“Try the Hadron Lancer as well,” said Duggan, trying to remember if Teron had mentioned the names of any other vessels due to be in attendance.

“Nothing from the Lancer.”

“Are you sure the Devastator and Lancer are here, sir?” asked McGlashan. “Admiral Teron has told you a whole pack of lies up to now. They may have sent the Archimedes or the Maximilian. Hell, they might have sent a lone Gunner with Admiral Slender himself on the bridge.”

“The skill with telling lies is to keep them as simple as possible,” Duggan replied. “I’m convinced Teron stuck as close to the truth as he was able. I believed him when he said there was a delegation and I believe the Devastator and Lancer are with it.”

“Wherever they are, they’re not answering the telephone,” said Chainer. “That means the only place they could be is across the wormhole from our position.”

“I’m altering course to take us around the other side,” said Duggan. “Keep searching until I tell you otherwise. If there’s an object bigger than a speck of dust, I want to know about it.”

“I’ll have to pause for a moment, sir. I’ve got Admiral Teron here. He’s asking to speak to you.”

“Don’t keep him waiting,” said Duggan.

Teron spoke, his voice fluctuating in volume because of the distance. “Duggan, what the hell are you doing there?” He sounded angry and worried.

“Sir, I figured I should show my face at the negotiations. To let the Ghasts know we mean business.”

“Damnit man, it’s all gone to shit! Get out of there now and come back to Pioneer.” Teron didn’t usually swear. Duggan caught McGlashan’s eye – something serious was wrong.

“Sir, what’s happened?”

“That’s not for you to know. Leave that sector and return at once. That’s a direct order, Captain!”

Duggan took a deep breath. “Sir, please tell me what is wrong. We are armed and ready to assist with any conflict.”

“Whatever it is, you can’t deal with it. We’ve lost communication with our delegation fleet. Ten ships, incommunicado.”

“There’s nothing on our sensors. Have the Ghasts double-crossed us?”

Teron sighed. It wasn’t the sigh of a man who was frustrated – it was the sigh of a man who was neck-deep in quicksand and didn’t know how to get out of it before he was dragged under. Duggan was the man at the edge of the pool, offering a stick to pull him out. Teron took it with both hands. “If it’s the Ghasts, they’re putting on a good show of it. I’ve spoken to their overall fleet commander personally and he has told me they’ve lost track of their ships as well. They sent two Oblivions and eight Cadaverons that we’re aware of.”

“They were really beating their chest,” said Duggan. “Is there any trust remaining?”

“I can’t be certain. We are not on the best of terms, but I don’t think they’re desperate to have another one of their planets destroyed. They’re hoping our dealings are honest.”

“What happens next? Are we sending more spacecraft to this sector?”

“Not a chance, Captain Duggan. We’re going to sit tight, rather than throw more of our dwindling fleet at an unknown threat.”

“What about the Ghasts?”

“They can do whatever they choose. They have more ships than we have, but they lost a number of them when the Crimson destroyed Lioxi. Plus whatever casualties they may or may not have suffered at the Helius Blackstar.”

A name to the place at last, thought Duggan. “We’re going to stick around for a look, sir. The Crimson’s faster than anything else in the fleet and with more weapons than anything this side of the Maximilian. I won’t let a chance at peace fail because we lack intel.”

“I won’t give you another direct order on the issue, Captain Duggan. I can see I’d be wasting my breath. Don’t lose the Crimson, whatever you do. If the Ghasts aren’t playing fair, it’s the only hope we have left.”

“No orders from you and no promises from me, except one, sir,” Duggan replied grimly. “I promise I’ll do my best, nothing more.”

“It had better be enough, Captain. Good luck.”

“He’s gone,” said Chainer.

Duggan blew out and realised he’d been holding so tightly onto the Crimson’s control bars his knuckles were white. “How did he know where we were?”

“The Juniper must have logged my comms request and told someone we were broadcasting from way off our expected location. I’ll have to remember they can do that next time I try routing through the Juniper or one of our monitoring stations.”

“It’s no problem, Lieutenant. I’m glad I got to speak to Admiral Teron.”

“Nothing is ever simple,” said McGlashan.

“Life on the Detriment was a lot more straightforward,” said Chainer. “Even if it felt like a peashooter in comparison to the Crimson.”

“Lieutenant Chainer, resume your efforts in scanning the area. I need to know about anything that shouldn’t be here. We may also be looking for debris.”

“I will do, sir. The first sweep completed while you were speaking to Admiral Teron. I’ve managed to scan in a narrow cone between here and the wormhole. There’s no object greater in length than four kilometres. If there was a Hadron or Oblivion anywhere in that cone, I’d know about it. I’m running a sweep for anything two kilometres long, which will tell us if there are any Anderlechts or Cadaverons. I get this feeling I’m going to come up empty-handed.”

Duggan agreed with Chainer’s gloomy assessment. Nevertheless, they had to keep on searching. “I’m holding course. We’ll circle the Blackstar at ninety minutes distance. That should be close enough for you to detect anything.”

“Anything big,” said Chainer.

“We’re staying for as long as it takes to get answers. I’d prefer to know sooner rather than later.”

On the bulkhead screen, the Helius Blackstar was now to the far right as Duggan’s course took them around it. The gravity was immense, but it was only the final million kilometres that would cause the Crimson any problems with maintaining its distance. Ninety minutes out on the gravity drives was a little over ten million kilometres, which gave plenty of margin in case something went wrong. He could have taken them closer and completed the circuit a few minutes faster, but for some reason he felt reluctant to do so. A voice in his mind chimed up to suggest it was his body’s in-built primal fear of something with such colossal power that it utterly dwarfed anything made by mankind or Ghast alike.

After two-thirds of a circuit, Chainer spoke up. Duggan recognized the concern in his lieutenant’s voice at once.

“Sir, I’ve got something. Wreckage, I think.”

“Ready on the weapons,” said Duggan.

“As ever,” McGlashan replied.

“Anything running under its own steam?”

“Definitely not. I’m analysing now.”

“I can read some of it,” said Breeze. “Positrons.”

“Ours?”

“Some of ours. Some Ghast as well, if I were a betting man. There’s something strange about it. Usually there’s a pattern from a warship engine, even when it’s been destroyed. It’ll pulse out in a defined wave. These emissions are completely irregular.”

“You’re sure they’re ours?”

“I can confirm what Lieutenant Breeze says, sir,” said Chainer. “It’s part of a Space Corps hull. Three hulls to be precise.”

“Do you know which vessels?”

“Can’t be sure. If you wanted me to guess, I’d say from the thickness of the plating on one of the pieces, we’ve lost the Lancer or the Devastator. If you wanted me to guess some more, I’d say there are parts of an Oblivion floating a couple of hundred thousand klicks away.”

“Any other details? I need something that’ll tell me what’s happened here. Who betrayed who? If none of our ships have reported in, that means we’ve lost them all. It beggars belief to think they might have been destroyed so quickly that not a single one was able to send a report or a warning.”

“More wreckage, directly ahead,” said Chainer. “I’d say this is predominantly Ghast – parts of a Cadaveron, drifting towards the Blackstar. There are some big pieces amongst it. There could be more than one vessel.”

“Can you detect signs of damage?” asked Duggan.

“They were hit by something hot. I’m not sure if it was missile plasma.”

“What do you mean you’re not sure?”

“It’s not clear-cut what’s caused the heat damage, sir. It could be plasma.”

“You think it’s something else?”

“I’d need more time to analyse and from closer range.”

“We’ll be going past the wreckage anyway,” said Duggan. “The more I see, the less I like.”

“Sir, I’m detecting something else. It’s a long way away – I’d guess it’s twenty klicks to a side. I have no idea what it is.”

“Where?” asked Duggan sharply.

“We’re on course to meet it. It would have been directly behind the Blackstar from our arrival position.”

“I’m convinced the Ghasts have nothing close to that in size,” said Duggan. “What the hell?”

“What if they’ve come back, sir?” asked Chainer.

Duggan sat still for a moment as the answer to Chainer’s question came to him. “The Dreamers,” he said.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Duggan was convinced – the mysterious species of aliens had returned. The little he knew about them suggested they were hostile and their appearance would explain the destruction of the human and Ghast fleets.

“How far away is it?” he asked.

“An hour away on the gravity drive, sir.”

“I’ve seen enough,” said Duggan. “Get the fission drives ready.”

“On it. Where to, sir?”

Duggan’s mind raced through the options. “We don’t know if they can follow through lightspeed,” he said. “Bring us out somewhere halfway between here and Pioneer. At least if they follow, we won’t have led them anywhere important.”

“The unknown vessel has performed a hop, sir,” said Chainer. “They disappeared from where I first saw them and reappeared less than thirty minutes distant. The time which elapsed between them disappearing and reappearing is a decimal with several zeroes after the point.”

“Twenty-eight seconds for the fission engines,” said Breeze.

Duggan was worried by Chainer’s words. With the other vessel so far away, there should have been plenty of time to escape. My first encounter with the Dreamers and I’ve already underestimated them, he thought. He hauled the Crimson around, pointing it in the opposite direction to the approaching ship.

“Send a signal to the Juniper,” he said. “Tell them we have an unknown, advanced and potentially hostile species in Confederation space.”

“I’m trying,” said Chainer. “We’ve had our comms knocked out.”

“What’s happened, Lieutenant? Without specifics I can’t decide on what to do.”

“I have no specifics to give you, sir,” said Chainer, exasperated and angry. “Nothing is working on the long range comms.”

“What about the emergency beacon?”

“Nothing – it’s dead, all of it.”

“Shit, we better hope we can get out of here before that ship does another jump,” said Duggan.

“Five seconds,” said Breeze. “Almost there.”

Several events occurred at almost the same time. The first event was the arrival of the unknown vessel. It winked out of view and reappeared less than a hundred thousand kilometres away. A pulse of something washed over the ESS Crimson. Then, the Crimson launched itself into lightspeed.

“Made it,” said Chainer,” breathing hard.

“Only at Light-C,” said Breeze. “Engine power falling away. Dropping to Light-A. We’ll be back in normal space any moment.”

“What’s happening?” asked Duggan. He sprang over to stand next to Breeze.

“We’re out of lightspeed,” said Breeze. “Deep fission engines at less than ten percent and still falling.”

“Where are we, Lieutenant Chainer? Did the enemy ship manage to follow us?”

“Calculating our position. Damn, sir, we’re right back where we started. This is the system where we found the Crimson.”

“Lieutenant Breeze, can you tell me what’s happening to our engines?”

“I can tell you what sir, I can’t tell you why. Our logs picked up a pulse from the Dreamer vessel right as we jumped. It’s scrambling our engines quicker than the core can straighten them out – like it’s reversed the mass configuration that takes weeks to set up on a new spaceship. When it’s done, we’ll be little more than a lump of heavy metal, waiting to start again.”

“I’m going to set us in an orbit around the closest planet, until whatever happened to us finishes what it’s doing. After that, we can see if we can fix it and get home.”

“Prot-7, sir. Someone in the Space Corps decided to give the place a name after we brought the Crimson back. They’ve called the planet Prot-7.”

Duggan aimed for the planet Prot-7 and plotted a course to take them to a high orbit. He could tell something wasn’t working correctly. “Why are we going so slowly, Lieutenant Breeze? Our velocity is at eighty percent of maximum.”

“We’re losing the gravity drives as well. I’m trying to partition what we have left, so they’re separate to the scrambled areas. It’s not responding as I’d hoped.”

“The Dreamer core isn’t fast enough?”

“It’s not a question of speed. It’s like someone’s shoved a big stick into our engines and stirred everything up. It’ll need to settle before any attempts to fix it will work.”

“You’ll need to put us down, sir,” said McGlashan. “While there’s still time for a controlled landing. What if the life support fails next? We’ll need to be prepared.”

“Good thinking, Commander, except we can’t spare anyone to fetch the suits. We’ll have to sit tight for the moment. I’m taking us onto Prot-7 while I still can.”

The planet would have been a few minutes’ distance on full gravity drives. They’d only had eighty percent of power when Duggan directed them towards it. In a vacuum, there was nothing to slow the Crimson down from the speed it had attained – it was controlling the velocity as well as the steering which was the biggest concern.

“Fifty percent,” said Breeze. “The rate of decline is reducing.”

“Will we have anything left at the end?”

“No sir, the curve is still closing in on zero.”

“The sensors run off the gravity drives, don’t they?” asked Duggan.

“Yes they do, sir,” said Chainer. “They don’t take much as a percentage of the overall output, but if we end up at zero, they won’t function. It’s only the life support which is fully isolated and independent of anything else.”

“The mainframe has its own power source,” Breeze corrected him.

“Of course.”

“Make good use of the time you have,” Duggan told Chainer.

“What am I looking for, sir?”

“Anything, Lieutenant. We are not in a good situation. I want to know about anything that might help or hinder us.”

“Assuming the unknown vessel was the Dreamers, is there a chance they might choose to follow us through lightspeed?” asked McGlashan. “We didn’t get above Light-C and they could have the technology to allow them to predict our destination at such a comparatively low speed.”

“I didn’t intend us to arrive here, Commander,” said Duggan. “For them to follow, they’d need to predict the rate of decay in our engines and decide where that would drop us into local space. It’s a stretch to imagine they’re advanced enough for that.” He grimaced. “What do you suggest?”

“Nothing complicated. Try and land in a cave beneath metal ore, so they have a harder job detecting us from orbit.”

“You don’t have lots of time,” said Breeze. “Prot-7 is five minutes away at current speed. Slowing down for a landing will be tight enough as it is.”

“Do we have the data from our first scans when we arrived on the Detriment?” asked Duggan.

“I was sending it to the Corps network as I was gathering it,” said Chainer. “It’s standard practise to do so, and it’s standard practise to update the databanks of fleet spacecraft with anything new. We should have the records.”

“I need to know how long it’ll take me to reach the cave we found the Crimson in originally,” said Duggan. “At least we know it’s suitable.”

“That’s a lot of calculating,” said Chainer.

“Work it out with Lieutenant Breeze. There’s not a lot of time.”

“You’ll have about one minute in low orbit before we have to land,” said Breeze.

“Urgent, huh?” Chainer muttered. He was lost in thought, his left-hand screen a mess of green-glowing numbers and lists.

Chainer and Breeze conferred quietly. Duggan kept an eye on their destination and course.

“I need something, gentlemen,” he said calmly.

“I appreciate that, sir,” said Breeze.

The planet Prot-7 filled the main screen, as grey and lifeless as Duggan remembered it. They were close enough to see the pocks and scars which littered the surface.

“Beginning my approach,” said Duggan. He altered their trajectory in order to bring them into a fast, low orbit. They didn’t have much time, so he planned to get them as close as possible in order to maximise the time for manoeuvring. Prot-7 had a very thin atmosphere, but it was enough to burn them up if Duggan misjudged it. He could have handed it off to the mainframe, except the built-in safety features simply wouldn’t permit what he was attempting. The ship’s core assumed they’d stay in orbit if the engines were failing. It had no way to take into consideration the possibility that an enemy ship could be in pursuit, making a forced landing imperative.

“We won’t make it to the original cave,” said Breeze. “We’ll be about a minute short, unless you want to do a crash landing or risk the hull melting.”

“I’m assuming you’ve planned the alternatives,” said Duggan.

“I’m sending you some coordinates, sir. There’s a place near to the planet’s equator. There’s plenty of dense metal ore overhead and the landing should be easy.”

“It’ll not be the perfect location to evade enemy sensor detection,” said Chainer. “I think it’s the best hope we’ve got, though.”

“That’s good enough, Lieutenant,” said Duggan. “I’m taking us to the coordinates you’ve given me.”

Duggan brought the Crimson in at a steep angle, waiting until the last possible moment to level them off. The hull temperature climbed immediately, pushing up to fifty percent as he tried to reach the landing site as quickly as possible.

“Gravity drives at ten percent, sir,” said Breeze. “Take care – they won’t be as responsive as you expect.”

“Got it,” Duggan replied. He had no time to lift his head and kept focused on pushing everything as close to destruction as he could, without stepping over the line.

“Just under a minute and there won’t be enough power to land.”

Duggan didn’t respond. This was a big test of his ability. From the corner of his eye, he saw McGlashan taking her seat. She’d been standing at her console up till now and was evidently wise enough to take the additional precaution of fastening herself in.

Chainer spoke up, letting them know the situation had gone from bad to worse. “We’ve just flown over a Cadaveron, sir. They’ve flattened half a mountain range. Nothing from its engines, but the hull looks in one piece.”

Duggan couldn’t spare the time to think about it. The Crimson’s hull was at ninety percent of its design temperature and still rising. They raced over the planet’s surface, heading towards the equator.

“Come on,” said McGlashan.

They were close enough and Duggan hauled up on the control rods. The Crimson shuddered and there was a peculiar grating rumble from somewhere. He knew what the sound meant – the engines were overstressed. The hull temperature was at one-hundred and ten percent and they were travelling at thirty klicks per second when Duggan saw their destination, overlaid with a red circle on his guidance screen.

“There’s a fission signature just appeared, sir,” said Breeze. “Not like anything I’ve seen before.”

“I see it,” said Chainer. “The type isn’t in our databanks. I’m assuming it’s a Dreamer vessel. We should be undetectable to their sensors for the moment.”

Duggan clenched his jaw tighter, feeling his teeth grating against each other. They were approaching the landing area faster than he’d intended and it was a struggle to slow the Crimson down.

“There’s the canyon,” said Chainer.

“Twenty-eight klicks long, two wide and three deep where we’re going,” said Breeze.

In the watery light of the planet’s morning, the orange-glowing outline of the Crimson stopped in mid-air, directly above and parallel to the rough, grey-stone chasm. Heat poured away from its hull, distorting the air around. Then, the spacecraft dropped vertically downwards, the speed of the motion defying its eleven-hundred metre bulk. There was something else beneath – an object which had escaped detection by taking refuge in the very same location. This object dwarfed the ESS Crimson. It was near four-and-a-half kilometres in length, part wedge, part cuboid. It had metal domes at the front and rear. The object was both ugly and sleek at the same time, possessed of an otherworldly menace.

Duggan saw the spacecraft too late to abort his landing. With his gravity drives at zero percent, it was all he could do to keep the Crimson from landing on its side, or worse. Rock cracked and splintered as it bore the two-billion tonne weight of a second spacecraft. Then, all was quiet and the crew of the Crimson found themselves stranded less than five hundred metres from a Ghast Oblivion.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“Permission to say balls, sir?” asked Chainer.

Duggan slumped in his chair, feeling the leather stick to him in the heat. “Why can’t anything be easy?” he asked. He wiped his forehead with one sleeve and saw the dampness on his uniform. He’d been sweating more than he realised.

“The sensors have shut down. Not enough juice for them to keep going,” said Chainer.

“Engines at a flat zero,” added Breeze. “You couldn’t power an electric toothbrush off them.”

“We’re not in a good position, ladies and gentlemen,” said Duggan. “Sensor blind, no comms and without power.”

“The Ghasts didn’t shoot us to pieces, sir,” said McGlashan. “They had time and opportunity to do it.”

With an effort, Duggan pulled himself together. He stood and addressed the crew. “We’re in the crap, make no mistake about it. I need to know exactly what our status is and I also want your opinions. Lieutenant Breeze – you start. What about our engines?”

“Sir, it’s my educated guess that the Dreamer weapon has disrupted the links at a subatomic level. Rather than pulling in the same direction, everything is swimming around at random.”

“Can we fix it?”

“I think so. It’s going to take weeks for the core to reconfigure the engines. It’s like when we first located the Crimson, except then it had already been rerouting for a long time.”

“Meaning we only had to wait hours,” said Duggan.

“That’s right, Captain. Now we’ll need to start at the very beginning and that’s where the reconfiguration is slowest.”

“How could a weapon do that?”

“It’s strange and I don’t have an answer.”

“Start work on it at once, Lieutenant.” Duggan turned his attention to Chainer. “What about our sensors? When will they work and when can you get the comms running?”

“Basic operation of the sensors will become available before the engines are at a fraction of one percent. Long-range stuff will take more time, because that draws more power.”

“What about our comms?”

“I can run diagnostics if you want me to tap into the mainframe’s cycles. Gut feeling is we’ve been jammed.”

“Permanently? Is that possible?”

“We can’t do it, sir. Neither can the Ghasts as far as we know. I’m sure it’s possible – I’m one of those people who believes everything is possible.”

“Do you think you can get them working again?”

“Truthfully? I have no idea. Given the time, I’m sure I could provide you with an explanation as to what’s happened. Resolving it might be a different thing entirely. It may be that our comms gear has been completely ruined such that it needs a complete replacement at a shipyard. The internal stuff looks like it's working for some reason. That’s a lot less sophisticated than the long-range comms. I don’t think it’s been affected.”

“Commander McGlashan. Are our weapons online?”

“Everything apart from the disruptors, which run off the engines. I’m assuming the Planet Breaker needs an external power source as well. It’s still hidden from my console, so it doesn’t really matter anyway. The Lambdas have their own power systems and we can instruct them to launch using the mainframe. I’d say we have nine or ten missile clusters which are unusable owing to our proximity to the side wall and floor of this canyon.”

“If our weapons are working, it would be a wise to assume the Ghasts can launch as well.”

“Definitely, sir,” she said.

“And if the Ghasts can launch their missiles, yet haven’t done so, we must assume they have chosen to let us live.”

“Or they’ve suffered damage we’re unaware of,” said Breeze.

“For some reason, I don’t think that’s the case,” said Duggan, rubbing his chin. “Did we manage to capture any data on the Oblivion prior to the sensors going off?” he asked.

“Whatever the sensors see, they keep a record of,” said Chainer. “Let’s have a look.”

“I’d like to know if they are showing external signs of damage.”

“Nope, sir. Nothing at all. They’re clean on top and on the one side we got a view of. There’s something else as well – it’s the same Ghast warship that we encountered on this planet when we took the Crimson out of the cave. The one we got away from.”

“Well damn,” said Breeze. “Funny old world, isn’t it?”

“From what we know, the Confederation fleet met up with the Ghasts at the Helius Blackstar and several of them were destroyed, presumably by the Dreamer spaceship. We’ve found a Cadaveron and an Oblivion on this planet, apparently stranded. Therefore, it’s likely they’ve been hit with the same engine scrambler as we have and they managed to escape this far. There must be other ships as well. The Oblivion hasn’t fired on us, so they do not see us as the enemy,” said Duggan, letting his mouth run.

“Or they see us as the lesser of two enemies,” said McGlashan.

“We came here for peace and found something we hadn’t bargained on,” said Duggan.

“I wonder if they realise who and what we are,” said Breeze.

It was a question to which Duggan dearly wanted to know the answer. “If they recognize the Crimson as the vessel carrying the Planet Breaker, I don’t want to predict what they’ll try and do,” he said. “Even less do I want to predict what they might do to the people who were onboard when Lioxi was destroyed.”

“Yeah, the results might not be pretty. Least of all for us,” said Chainer.

“All we can do is hope they remain unaware,” said Breeze. “There’s a chance.”

Duggan brought matters back on course. “Lieutenant Breeze, you detected the arrival of what you took to be a Dreamer vessel just prior to our landing. We can be absolutely certain they will be hostile. I think our primary objective should be to figure out what we’re going to do about them. They can only have come for one reason, which is to finish what they started. The Ghasts are secondary.”

“I’m sure you recall the logs from the Crimson’s last battle with the Dreamers,” said McGlashan. “The Lambdas couldn’t track the enemy craft and the Crimson fired hundreds of missiles before it scored a win. We don’t have the luxury of being able to out-fly anything at the moment.”

“How much cover do we have in here, Lieutenant?” asked Duggan.

“If we assume their sensor technology to be similar to ours and not too far advanced, they’d need to overfly us directly. It depends on how determined they are and how many orbits it takes before they happen to get the right angle to see where we are.”

“You’re saying it’s down to luck,” said Duggan. He shrugged to show he wasn’t blaming Chainer.

“Would you have it any other way?”

Duggan wasn’t even tempted to smile. “For once, it doesn’t seem right to be talking about luck. We’re going to need a lot more than that to get us out of here.”

“There’s no way the engines are going to be ready to fly us out of here in time,” said Breeze. “Even if they were, who’s to say they won’t get scrambled again?”

Something occurred to Duggan. “The fission signature you detected just before we landed wasn’t big enough to be the Dreamer ship we saw at the Blackstar, was it?”

“Not unless their engine technology is vastly, inconceivably different from ours. I’d say it was something much, much smaller.”

“The mothership sent out a fighter to do the mopping up,” said Chainer.

“I need some time to think,” said Duggan. “If the Ghasts or the Dreamers decide to blow us up, there’s not a great deal we can do about it.”

He got to his feet and left the bridge. He walked along the tight, turning corridors of the Crimson, through areas where it was too hot and other places where it was so cold that moisture beaded on the walls and ceiling. The ship was dead – utterly silent where there would normally be a familiar, comforting humming vibration from the engines. The quiet was strangely distracting and Duggan found it a struggle to ignore the hush for long enough to allow his brain to slip into its familiar analytical mode, where it was able to view and evaluate the options dispassionately. When there wasn’t much to go on, it gave him more time on each of the few choices and it was easier to discard the ones that were least likely to bring success.

After ten minutes alone, Duggan was left with one clear thought as to what they needed to do. He wasn’t sure if it was viable or not, but he was determined to find out. He was a few hundred metres from the bridge and he found his feet carrying him faster and faster, suddenly impatient to get on with matters. When he arrived, his crew watched him carefully, their eyes occasionally jumping to what he was carrying.

“Lieutenant Chainer,” Duggan began. “We spoke about the Ghast language modules you uncovered in the Crimson’s data arrays.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Our comms are offline, so we can’t communicate with the Ghast battleship?”

“No, sir.”

“During our earlier conversation, did I mention that Admiral Teron talked about one day putting the language files into spacesuits?”

“I don’t think so, but it would make sense.”

“I’m going to put on this space suit I’m carrying. If it doesn’t have those language modules installed, will you be able to add them?”

“The files aren’t enormous. They should be easy enough to pass across.”

Five minutes later, Duggan was in his space suit, with the helmet in place. He searched through the options and couldn’t find anything related to the Ghast language. He asked Chainer to patch the Crimson’s mainframe in and assist with the search. It didn’t take long to realise the space suit didn’t have the facility he wanted.

“Please install them,” Duggan instructed.

Less than ten seconds later and it was done. There was a new option within the suit’s communicator, that was meant to interpret Ghast words into human language and vice versa. He tried one or two phrases, but had no way of verifying if he was saying what he intended to say.

“Want me to come with you?” asked McGlashan, having guessed where he was going.

“I don’t think we need take that risk. One person should be sufficient to see if the Ghasts are hostile and if they’re willing to work with us.”

“Do you have a plan beyond that?”

“No, Commander. I intend to play it by ear.”

“Our inventory lists three low-powered portable beacons in cabinets at various locations on the ship,” said Chainer. “They’re meant for surface use only. It would be a real risk, but they should have the power to get a signal to the Space Corps. It might take a few weeks for our message to get there, but it’s an option.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant, I’ll bear it in mind. I would prefer to speak to the Ghasts before I risk jeopardising us further. After all, we know very little about the Dreamers and what they can do.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll dig the beacons out while you’re gone in case we need to use them. I might be able to set them to send a pre-defined message at some point a few days from now. That way we’ll still get a message out, even if we’ve all been killed.”

“That’s a fine idea, Lieutenant. I’ll leave you to it.” Duggan paused before he left the bridge. “Since I’ll be unable to communicate with you once I’m away from the Crimson, please take whatever action you deem necessary if any harm comes to me. Commander McGlashan will be in charge.”

“Are you taking a rifle?” asked Breeze.

“I don’t think I’ll need one,” said Duggan. “They’ll either shoot me or listen to me. One way or another, a rifle won’t help.”

“What if they don’t see you?” asked Chainer.

“I’ll have to hope they do.”

He exited the bridge, taking exaggerated care to avoid hitting his helmet against the side walls. In the corridor outside, he walked swiftly to the Crimson’s secondary boarding ramp. There was an airlock, which he entered and sealed behind him. A red warning light cycled as the boarding ramp released with a clunk of gears. It lowered to the ground below. The light outside was almost non-existent. When he was set on a course, Duggan rarely felt trepidation. With confidence, he strode down the boarding ramp.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The canyon was deep and wide, its floor covered in rocks and boulders. It jagged away in both directions and its walls loomed ever upwards, sheer in places and overhanging in others. Light reached here, though it was feeble and hardly enough to give the impression it was day. There was no river at the bottom – in fact, Duggan couldn’t recall if there was any water at all on Prot-7. It made no difference. A single object dominated everything - the Oblivion towered several hundred metres high, yet it also managed to appear low-slung and intimidating. From the ground, Duggan was able to see the warship was on dozens – perhaps hundreds - of pillar-like legs, each of which must have been strong enough to support a Vincent class fighter. Fractures spread away in all directions, many of them several metres in width. It was easy to see the rock wasn’t strong enough to support this burden and the heavy cruiser might soon sink into the ground.

Duggan walked purposefully across the intervening space. Here and there, he had to jump across cracks in the ground and once he needed to backtrack to find his way around a five-metre-wide fissure that vanished into emptiness beneath the surface. When his helmet sensor told him he was only one hundred metres away, he stopped. From this close, he could make out the variations in the Oblivion’s surface. There were dents and scrapes here and there from where small objects had collided with it in flight. In one place, there were faint, round indentations, in a cluster of twenty, which Duggan took to be launch tubes for the Ghast missiles. There was another, much larger hatch underneath the spacecraft, which most likely housed one of the Oblivion’s many Vule cannons. All-in-all, it looked like a perfectly-designed implement to destroy as much of the Space Corps fleet as possible.

Duggan had never possessed the patience necessary to wait for extended periods. It appeared the Ghasts weren’t patient either. With no indication how they’d detected his presence, they lowered one of their boarding ramps. At first, Duggan didn’t notice it had happened, since it was several hundred metres away and there were numerous support legs between him and the ramp. His suit picked up sound and movement and he turned his head to see six Ghasts walking towards him. He’d expected them to be in their mech suits and they were. A lone, unarmed human presented them with no threat and Duggan wondered if everything about the Ghasts necessitated an outward display of strength.

They approached, two abreast and three deep. The dull silver of their armour was an almost perfect camouflage for the terrain here. They stopped in front of him and Duggan noted they carried light repeaters. In spite of the name, nothing about these weapons was lightweight. They were powered by a cell on the mech suits and they could spray a large number of projectiles in a short amount of time.

The front two Ghasts were eight feet tall in their suits – probably not much shorter out of them. They towered over Duggan, broad and threatening in their metal armour. The visors on the suits were large and almost square, wrapping around the front of the Ghast helmets. Duggan looked into their eyes and could read no emotion in the wide, thick-boned faces of this strange species.

Duggan knew that without communication, he was open to whatever the Ghasts decided to read into the situation. If they got his intentions wrong, it would be easy to kill him. This was his only chance to get it right and Duggan activated the language module in his helmet. His suit scanned for receptors nearby and it located six channels, all of them blocked and encrypted. Duggan sent a query to one of these receptors. At first, nothing happened. Then, the receptor allowed his helmet to pair with it. Duggan cleared his throat.

“I’ve come to talk,” he said. His helmet converted the words into the Ghast tongue and sent them off to the receptor.

The front two Ghasts continued to look at him, their gaze unflinching. Duggan had no idea if this was a threat or a test, so he stared back, meeting the grey eyes with his own. His visor was opaque, so it made his job much easier and all he needed to do was bend his neck and keep his helmet pointing towards the two aliens.

He got his answer. He wasn’t sure which of the Ghasts spoke, but the response was succinct. “Come,” it said. The helmet’s interpretation gave no idea as to the tone or intent behind the words. It was going to be hard to reach an agreement without having a misunderstanding.

The six Ghasts turned and began walking away, as if they’d already forgotten about Duggan. He followed them, finding their pace matched his natural walking speed. His past encounters – where there’d been only fighting instead of talking – told him the Ghasts weren’t especially fast in their suits. He had no idea how quickly they could run in whatever normal clothes they wore.

His escort took him into the darkness amongst the towering support legs of the Oblivion and to the bottom of the support ramp. There were steps, which Duggan saw had been perfectly designed to match the strides of a Ghast wearing a mech suit. The aliens didn’t wait and climbed upwards at once. Duggan took the time to stare into the cold blue interior of the vessel, twenty or thirty metres above. For the first time since leaving the Crimson, he felt the first suggestions of fear, tendrils of it working away at his confidence. It wasn’t fear for himself, rather a fear that he might fail to capitalise on the opportunity which lay before him. He swept the feeling aside, replacing it with determination. The Ghasts surely wouldn’t deal with a man who quailed before them.

There was an airlock at the top - a high-ceilinged room with smooth walls. Duggan was instantly reminded of the Shatterer tube on Everlong, which had a similar room. Everything was bland and featureless. Pretty pictures distract a soldier from fighting. The words of one of Duggan’s old trainers jumped unbidden into his mind. He’d never thought them important enough to waste time thinking about, so he had no idea why his mind chose this moment to serve them up.

The outer ramp rose at speed and it thumped closed. There was the sound of a dozen metal bolts sliding into place somewhere within the warship’s hull and the hiss of a seal being created. One of the Ghasts clanked across to a metal plate on the wall. It pressed the metal knuckles of its suit gauntlet onto the panel and the interior door slid aside. There was a passage beyond, blue lit, in the same hue as the airlock. Duggan followed the Ghasts through and was struck by the absence of other sounds. Aside from the metal-on-metal of the mech suits, there was no noise. The humming of the engines was missing and Duggan could tell this ship was dead, in the same way the Crimson was dead. It confirmed the Ghasts had suffered the same fate, not that there’d been any doubt in Duggan’s mind.

Like most warships, whose vast exteriors concealed a compact interior, the Oblivion appeared to have little internal space to spare. There were some Cadaverons which had been known to carry in excess of one thousand troops and Duggan assumed the Oblivions could carry substantially more. Even so, he didn’t see much evidence of places where troops could be stationed. They went along a long corridor, which branched several times. After one branch, Duggan thought he could see steps at the end, and wondered if the Oblivion contained several different levels. Certainly, he saw no one else apart from the six Ghasts who led him onwards.

Duggan was taken to a room, bare of decoration. The walls were ten metres apart and the ceiling five metres up. There was nothing on the floor and a single door led away opposite to the one he’d entered.

“Wait here,” said a voice. With that, the alien soldiers passed through the far door, leaving Duggan alone. There was nothing to sit on and nothing to look at. He knew the Ghasts used seats and he was fairly sure they were civilised enough to have other furniture. It could have been a calculated insult to leave him here, he thought. For some reason it didn’t seem likely – it would be far too subtle.

The Ghasts had left both doors open, since they evidently didn’t think Duggan was a threat, nor that he’d try and escape. He looked through the exit door – there was another corridor beyond, which went to the left and right. To Duggan’s surprise, he saw a Ghast walking towards him. This one was dressed in a stiff-looking grey cloth uniform. It wore no helmet and carried no weapons. It entered the room, watching Duggan as it did so.

The figure walked to the centre of the room and stopped, barely ten feet away. Up close, Duggan saw the age-lines across its broad forehead and at the corners of its eyes. It had hair, thick, dark and almost humanlike. The grey eyes never left him and Duggan sensed the creature was waiting for him to do something. There was intelligence – fierce and honed, backed up by the powerful, heavy-boned frame common to all of this species. It made the average Ghast stronger than almost any man or woman.

Duggan’s helmet readout informed him the air here was good enough for him to breathe. He activated the external speaker on the helmet and broke the seal around his neck. He lifted the helmet over his head and placed it on the floor next to him, feeling cold air rush across his skin. He was convinced the alien before him was in a position of seniority and there would never be any trust without eye contact. Duggan remained quiet for a few seconds and he could sense the Ghast evaluating him.

“I am John Duggan, captain of the Space Corps vessel ESS Crimson,” he said.

The helmet speaker hummed and then spat out a series of rasping syllables. The Ghast narrowed its eyes and responded. Duggan’s untrained ear immediately picked out differences in tone between the helmet’s interpretation and the Ghast’s speech. He hoped it wouldn’t be too much of an impediment.

“I am Nil-Far. I command this Oblivion.” There was a pause before the word ‘Oblivion’ and Duggan guessed the Ghasts used a word or phrase which wouldn’t translate directly. The language modules weren’t complete and probably weren’t able to catch the subtleties of vocabulary as well as tone. The helmet produced more words, these ones not a part of the conversation.

“By the pattern of this specimen’s voice, there is a ninety-five percent chance it is male.”

Had Duggan been a trained negotiator, he would have littered his words with niceties and flowery phrases. He had no time for pleasantries. “Both our fleets have been destroyed by a third species. We have named them Dreamers. Humans and Ghasts alike utilise technology scavenged from an earlier Dreamer incursion through the wormhole.”

“Their technology is powerful,” said the Ghast. “You used it to destroy Lioxi.”

There was no way to tell if there was accusation in the words, or a simple statement of fact. Duggan didn’t hide behind excuses. “We used it on your planet to bring about an end to the war. The Confederation could not permit you to destroy more of our planets.”

“It is understandable,” said Nil-Far. When he spoke, he revealed straight, white teeth in perfect proportion to his face, though there was no hint of a smile. “We came to this sector to end the hostilities.”

“Had you reached a settlement before the Dreamers arrived?” asked Duggan.

“There was progress.” Nil-Far lowered his heavy brows, giving the impression he was thinking. “We will go elsewhere to speak, instead of standing here like [word not recognized].”

Duggan was relieved. It didn’t seem likely they could accomplish anything worthwhile in this room. Nil-Far left the room without a backward glance. Duggan grabbed his helmet and walked quickly after. He fell into step, determined not to show potential weakness by following behind. They climbed a set of steps to a higher level and went through a series of doors. Here there were a number of much larger rooms, some open and some only glimpsed through clear panes in their doors. There were many Ghasts and Duggan wondered at the numbers onboard – from what he saw, they carried more personnel on this battleship than anything in the Space Corps fleet. Those he saw were clearly not soldiers. They sat in threes at consoles set against the walls. Many carried metal cylinders or cubes, from which wires and cables dangled. There were hatches in the walls and what he imagined to be maintenance tunnels. The Ghasts were everywhere and they were all busy with something. Nil-Far walked on without a word. Here and there, the helmet picked up a snippet from nearby Ghasts, and translated it into speech Duggan could understand. He found himself impressed – everything he overheard was about how to get the Oblivion moving again, rather than time-wasting or joking. Do they even have jokes? he wondered idly.

Nil-Far stopped outside a door in a much quieter area of the vessel. He raised a broad hand and placed it palm-out on a panel. The door slid open, to reveal another ten-metre square room of the sort Duggan had seen many of. Unlike the other rooms, this one had what was unmistakeably a metal desk, with thick legs and four chairs fixed to the floor on one side, and a single chair on the other. There were screens in the walls, showing a constantly-changing list of characters and symbols. There was something about it which reinforced a feeling he’d had before – the Ghasts had a mish-mash of old and new. It was like they’d advanced too far and too fast and they struggled to control the technology they’d built. That was why they had so many maintenance crew onboard.

Nil-Far took the single seat. The Ghast didn’t offer, so Duggan took one of the four seats opposite. It was as flat and cold as the walls.

“Our Admiral was killed,” said Nil-Far. “After his death, I could see my primary objective was to protect my ship.” It was as close to conversation as anything the Ghast had spoken so far.

“There is a Cadaveron elsewhere on this planet,” said Duggan.

“We were not the only ones to escape. Why are you here, John Duggan?” Still there was nothing readable in the face of the creature.

“I have come to finish what was started,” Duggan replied.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Are you in a position to speak for your Confederation?” asked Nil-Far.

“No, I am not,” said Duggan.

“We do not need to talk if you have nothing.”

“I bring an opportunity to carry the truth of what happened here to the Confederation home planets. The Dreamers jammed our communications, preventing news from reaching my superiors. We have Planet Breakers mounted on eight new prototype warships and we have the coordinates of your remaining populated worlds.” He stopped to allow the translation to catch up. “It is not in your interest for a misunderstanding to exist. As it stands, nobody in the Confederation knows with absolute certainty that this is not a result of Ghast treachery.”

Nil-Far’s face twisted in an emotion that took no empathy to identify. He clenched a fist and banged it hard upon the metal table top. “There is no Ghast treachery! We do not break our word when it is given! We fight and we bring death to our enemies, but an oath is [words not recognized]!”

Duggan didn’t flinch at the Ghast’s anger. He didn’t allow his expression to change at all. “There needs to be more than talk of oaths. The Confederation wishes to have peace. They would prefer to have peace without further deaths. If they can’t have peace on those terms, they will destroy each of your remaining worlds in turn, until peace comes through your extinction.”

“Why not destroy us anyway?” asked Nil-Far.

“Is that what the Ghasts intended for the Confederation?” asked Duggan.

“We fight to win,” Nil-Far replied. “This is not a war my species wanted.”

This time it was far harder for Duggan to keep his expression neutral. Nil-Far’s words contradicted everything he knew about the war. Each side has its own truths, he thought. “You will settle with the Confederation?”

“We will settle.”

“You have told me your species is honourable and I accept what you have said. We are not the people to set anything in stone, but we can provide an example to show our hostilities are no longer necessary. I wish to escape this planet and return to the Confederation with details of the Dreamer assault on our fleet. I am sure you wish to return to your own worlds.”

Nil-Far didn’t answer at once. His eyes became distant as he considered what Duggan had said. The Ghast looked different to a human, yet in many ways there were striking similarities. “These Dreamers destroyed four of our most recent warships in seconds,” said Nil-Far. “They warped amongst us and their beam weapons ripped us to pieces. We were unable to communicate and tried to withdraw. Our engines shut down in moments, leaving us stranded here.”

“We experienced the same,” said Duggan. “Do you know if any vessels from the human or Ghast fleet escaped? Were there any successful strikes on the Dreamer craft?”

“I think my warship was among a handful given the time to fire upon them. Our standard missiles refused to target, even though the enemy was so large. We launched six [technology not recognized] from our forward tubes. They were destroyed prior to impact. Our lightspeed drive took us away before we could try again.”

“What destroyed them?” asked Duggan, assuming Nil-Far referred to his use of Shatterer missiles.

“We have not been able to confirm with certainty. The warheads detonated a short distance from the target.”

“An energy shield?” asked Duggan. The Confederation had been experimenting with this technology. The labs had got it working in principle, except the energy draw was so huge, the shields would knock out the engines of a warship in a split second’s use.

“If I understand your words correctly, an energy shield is exactly what we believe stopped our weapons.”

The more he heard, the greater a feeling of dread seeped into Duggan’s bones. The Dreamers were advanced and they were hostile. If they’d come here for war, which was an inescapable conclusion, both Ghasts and humanity were in deep trouble. There wasn’t time to pursue each detail fully, so Duggan moved on.

“Do you know how they jammed your communications?”

“We are working on it,” said Nil-Far. It wasn’t clear if he was withholding something, or if he didn’t have more to say.

“How long until you can fly?” asked Duggan. “Our engine re-routing could take days or weeks.”

Nil-Far narrowed his eyes, another humanlike expression. “We have damage to our AI,” he conceded. “We passed many of my crew on the way here. You will have noticed we are reduced to doing some repairs by hand.”

There was much Duggan wished to ask and much he wished to learn. The time wasn’t now and he wanted to deal with the most pressing issue for both sides. “We detected a fission signature when we entered orbit,” said Duggan. The helmet struggled to translate.

“I don’t understand.”

“A ship emerged from lightspeed somewhere above this planet. We believe it to be a Dreamer vessel, though not the large one which destroyed our fleets. We suspect this one to be a smaller fighter. We think it wishes to find and destroy us.”

“I do not wish my vessel to be destroyed.”

Nil-Far appeared to accept much of what Duggan said without questioning it, as if the Ghasts hadn’t learned to lie or it simply wasn’t part of how they communicated.

“If it’s looking, it will find us. This will happen before either of our vessels can escape.”

“The enemy craft will remain until it has finished what the larger ship started,” said Nil-Far. There was certainty, clear in the translation.

“I agree,” said Duggan. “It may succeed against us whether or not our engines are functioning.”

“Our weapons may have the power to deplete its energy shields,” said Nil-Far, giving away his knowledge of the technology.

“The ESS Crimson destroyed one of the first Dreamer craft to come through the wormhole,” said Duggan. “The logs of the combat show the enemy warship possessed a technology which prevented missiles from targeting it.”

“That is what we discovered,” said Nil-Far. “I can think of ways around the problem, though I will be unable to put them into action without a great deal of time.”

“Your Shatterers can target.”

“They can. We have six batteries as I’m sure you are aware. What you might not know is that only four of these are capable of firing upwards. The other two fire downwards.”

“Four should be sufficient, assuming it has no energy shield.”

Nil-Far gave a single nod of his head. “The Shatterers are the pinnacle of our weapons technology.”

Duggan stood. “I need to get back to my ship and speak to my crew. There may be a way for us to defeat this common enemy. I do not wish our peace to fail.”

Nil-Far’s grey eyes glittered dangerously in the blue light and Duggan could see the Ghast had reached his status because he was skilful and competent. “We might soon find our ships side-by-side against a new foe, John Duggan.”

“We might,” said Duggan. After everything which had gone before, it felt peculiar to be talking so openly to a representative of the species he’d fought so long. He put the thoughts to one side. “I will need to communicate with you again. It is not suitable for me to put on this space suit and cross between our vessels.”

“I will send my soldiers to escort you from the ship. I will have one of them wait outside until this is done. You can pair one of your helmets to his battle armour and use it as a relay to carry information. I assume your internal communications are working?”

“They are,” said Duggan. “Very well, I will do as you suggest.”

“My troops are already outside. Go,” said Nil-Far.

Duggan climbed to his feet and picked up the helmet. He caught sight of his face, reflected in the visor. The sternness of his features shocked him and he put the helmet on again while he walked towards the door. It opened and, as Nil-Far had said, there were six Ghasts in the corridor outside, still in their mech suits and still with their repeaters. Duggan walked past them, taking the lead. He’d memorised the route they’d taken to reach Nil-Far’s room. The soldiers fell in behind and made no attempt to stop him or ask him to slow down.

Standing in the airlock gave Duggan a few moments to play over the recent events in his mind. There was too much to think about and no hope of settling anything with himself. At last, the boarding ramp swung away and crashed against the ground beneath the Oblivion. Duggan walked down without a backwards glance. He took a measured pace to the Crimson. Some of the cracks in the ground had widened or extended and he hadn’t been gone long. The Oblivion was sinking.

The Crimson felt like a welcome return to home when he boarded it. He stayed in his suit and fetched another suit helmet from one of the lockers. He interfaced with it and transferred the language modules across. When it was set up, Duggan walked down the boarding ramp again and placed the second helmet on the ground. He looked towards the Ghast ship and, as promised, there was a lone figure waiting, the visor of its mech suit pointed in his direction. Duggan initiated the connection between the suit helmet and the mech suit.

“This is Duggan. Acknowledge.”

A voice responded, routing from the bridge on the Oblivion, through the mech suit, on to the second helmet and then into Duggan’s earpiece.

“Acknowledged.” The suit’s translation only had one voice and there was no way to tell if it was Nil-Far or another Ghast who responded. Ultimately, it wasn’t important, as long as the message got to the right person.

Duggan re-entered the Crimson. Once he’d passed the airlock, he removed his own helmet and returned to the bridge with it clutched in one hand. After the chill of the Oblivion, the heat of his own ship was a relief.

Chapter Thirty

“We have to come up with a plan, or that Dreamer warship is going to blow us and the Ghasts to pieces,” said Duggan. “I need ideas and I need them now!”

“We’re fighting against the unknown, sir,” said Breeze.

“No we’re not, Lieutenant. We’re fighting against some unknowns. We have information from the Crimson’s previous encounter and we have information from the Ghast Captain. That’s sufficient to make something work.”

“We know we can’t target the enemy with our Lambdas,” said McGlashan. “We can disable the guidance systems and launch them in a straight line in the hope one of them might get a strike.”

“Except the Ghasts believe the Dreamers have an energy shield,” said Breeze. “We have to assume one or two lucky strikes won’t disable it, else why bother having one in the first place?”

“What can we learn from the Crimson’s first encounter?” mused Duggan.

“It fired hundreds of missiles and used the disruptors,” said Chainer.

“It fired the disruptors many times,” said McGlashan. “Why would it need to keep using them? A disabled ship is a sitting duck, even for an unguided missile.”

“Some of the bigger Ghast warships shrug off the disruptor effects in less than a minute,” said Duggan. “And the Crimson itself is hardly affected, except for a spike on the core. It’s certain the Dreamer ships aren’t going to be disabled.”

“Why fire them, in that case?” asked McGlashan. “Could the disruptors knock out an energy shield? That would allow a missile to impact with the target.”

“You could be on to something,” admitted Duggan. “It’s still academic, since we need engine power in order to fire the disruptors.”

“I was asked to submit a couple of papers on engine outputs a few months ago,” said Breeze. His expression showed he was thinking hard. “I think it was in support of our own research into energy shields. Anyway, they have a preposterous amount of draw in their current form. However, in order to contribute, I did learn a few things about the field generators. One of the earliest hurdles was their susceptibility to gamma rays. The first prototypes were exceptionally vulnerable. They added shielding, of course, but it increased the complexity.”

Duggan started to understand where Breeze was leading. “A crude and filthy high explosive,” he said, repeating a phrase Breeze himself had once used.

“That’ll do it,” said Breeze. “At least to one of ours. Who knows what it’ll do to this Dreamer stuff?”

“Two of our nuclear launch tubes point upwards,” said Duggan.

“I see where you’re going with this, sir,” said Chainer. “On the off-chance we manage to land a strike on the Dreamers, won’t this energy shield deflect the blast harmlessly?”

“It’ll deflect the blast,” said Breeze. “That’s what it’s designed to stop. Radiation still gets through, as if the shield doesn’t exist.”

“They might not even have a shield,” said Chainer. “We’re only guessing.”

“The logs from the Crimson at least imply the presence of shielding,” said McGlashan. “It’s not beyond the scope of possibility for an advanced race to have technology that can stop lock-on targeting and can also stop explosive or plasma damage.”

“I know we’re working on both,” said Duggan. “It’s early days, though. Some of this stuff takes decades to perfect and even longer before the Space Corps is willing to modify an existing ship design to accommodate it.”

“They’re not going to sit there and let us chuck a couple of nukes off them, are they?” asked Chainer. “I mean, I’d love for this to work, but I think we need something more. They’re going to blow us to smithereens before our missiles reach them.”

“What do you suggest, Lieutenant?”

“Turn off the Lambda guidance and throw up enough missiles to keep them busy? I don’t know.” Chainer threw up his hands. “Hide a nuke amongst the Lambdas and programme it to explode when it detects an object nearby? Or remote-detonate a nuke by hand?”

A sketchy plan formed in Duggan’s head. “How are the sensors coming along?” he asked. “If we can’t see our target, we can’t launch at it anyway.”

“I could bring them up now if you wanted, sir. I didn’t want to take any resources away from the cores, so left them off.”

“What sort of range are we looking at?”

“The fars and super-fars won’t be available for another day I’d guess. I can give you a good idea of anything within fifty or sixty thousand klicks. Only straight up, of course. We’ve got nothing that can see through the side walls of this canyon.”

“Turn them on,” Duggan said.

“They’re running through their self-checks. We’ll have vision in a couple of minutes,” Chainer replied.

“Do you have an estimate of when we can fly?” said Duggan.

“The Dreamer core is astounding,” said Breeze. “It’s going to take us from zero to twenty percent in less than two weeks. That should be able to get us home in a month.”

“A month is too long, Lieutenant.”

“The longer we sit tight, the more the core can reroute,” Breeze replied. “And the quicker we’ll be able to go.”

“How long since we landed?” asked Duggan.

“Three hours,” said McGlashan. “It already feels like weeks.”

“Sir, I’m getting a request from the Oblivion.”

“Get me a link,” said Duggan.

Crudely translated words spat from the bridge speakers. “ESS Crimson, this is Nil-Far - our sensors have tracked an object overhead at twenty-two thousand kilometres. It did not stop and is now out of our sight.”

“Did it note your presence?”

“Our AI believes a ship equipped with equivalent technology to our own would have detected us with a probability of almost one hundred percent.”

Duggan bit his tongue to stop from swearing. “We have an idea, which requires us to fire as many objects in the air as we can manage. Have you overcome your missile guidance issues?”

“Our standard missiles are not available for launch.”

“Keep on this channel,” said Duggan to the Ghast captain. “Lieutenant Chainer, have those sensors come online?”

“Sir, they’re dressed up and ready to dance.”

“Is there anything overhead?”

“Negative. The skies are clear and blue.”

“Commander, I want those Lambdas programmed to fly straight. Prepare the nukes as well. They need to act as much like a Lambda as possible.”

“A much slower Lambda.” She gave a rueful smile.

“Sir, I’m registering a beam strike on the Ghast ship,” said Chainer. “Crap, that’s a big one. It’s melted about six hundred metres of her hull.”

“Nil-Far,” said Duggan. “You’ve been hit. We can’t tell where from.”

The Ghast responded in the synthesised tones which gave away nothing about his mood. “Our AI can detect traces of the enemy. In addition, we have tracked the beam strike to its source.”

“The Ghasts have launched Shatterer missiles, sir,” said Chainer. “Four on their way.”

“Where are you with those missiles, Commander?” asked Duggan. “Lieutenant Chainer, I want you to find the enemy craft. The Ghasts have managed it, why haven’t you?”

“They’re deflecting our pings,” said Chainer. “That’s all it can be.” He pressed furiously at his console, with his face so close to a screen his nose was almost touching it.

“I can give you four hundred Lambdas, sir,” said McGlashan. “As soon as we have sensor sight.”

“Get on with the nukes. Don’t launch anything until I tell you.”

“The Ghast missiles have detonated against an object a little over twenty thousand klicks up,” said Chainer. “That helps me get an eye on them.” He struck his console in excitement. “Yes, got the bastards!”

“I see them,” said McGlashan.

“Fire the Lambdas,” said Duggan. “Two waves of forty-eight each, ten seconds apart.”

“First wave on their way,” she said at once.

“The Oblivion’s been hit again – twice this time,” said Chainer. “They’re going to be a pool of sludge with a few more of those. They’re launching plasma flares and I’ve got traces of Vule fire in the air.”

Duggan activated the bulkhead screen, which had been turned off while the sensors were powered down. The top of the canyon was far above, and the sky was completely obscured by vivid-white flares bursting in their thousands. Thick, grey lines of Vule projectiles raked through, converging on an area far above.

“That’s going to interfere with our launch,” said Duggan. “Nil-Far, stop firing plasma flares. We need to launch our missiles. There’s a chance we can disable the enemy vessel’s shields.”

“Holding our second launch,” said McGlashan.

Nil-Far responded after what seemed like an age. “Very well, John Duggan. No more flares.”

Outside, the whiteness faded from view. When it was clear Duggan nodded to McGlashan.

“Second wave of Lambdas gone,” she said.

“When will the nuclear missiles be ready?”

“I’ve programmed two and we’re carrying six. Want me to do the rest?”

“Yes, Commander. All of them.”

“Nil-Far, how long between your Shatterer launches?”

“One minute.”

“The Ghasts have launched again. Three this time.”

“One of their launch tubes has been melted,” said Breeze. “Their ship is a mess.”

“Have we scored any hits, Lieutenant?” asked Duggan.

“There was a lot of noise from those flares. The sensors take a moment to settle.” said Chainer. “I may have read a power spike somewhere. I can’t be sure. The Oblivion’s been hit again. The Dreamer ship is still up there.”

“Our hull is heavily damaged,” rasped the voice of Nil-Far. “Several of our operational systems have shut down. We will soon be destroyed.”

“We’re going to try and bring down the Dreamer energy shield with nuclear warheads,” said Duggan. “Hold your next Shatterer launch until after detonation.”

“The channel is closed, sir. Something’s knocked out one of the relays on the ground.”

“Did the message get through?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

Duggan shouted in fury. With the communications down, there was no way for them to combine their attacks on the enemy ship above. They might only have one chance and it seemed as if it was already slipping away.

Chapter Thirty-One

Duggan calculated in his head, even while his hands flashed over his console. He sent out a cloud of shock drones. Many of them crashed into the side walls of the canyon, clattering away into the distance, or bringing down chunks of rock and stone. Some of them raced into the sky, where they transmitted wildly fluctuating signal patterns.

“Fire another eight clusters, now!” he said.

“Ninety-six missiles away,” said McGlashan.

The timing was going to be crucial. The nukes travelled much slower than anything else they carried. Duggan wanted them to arrive at the same time as a wave of Lambdas. He didn’t know exactly what he hoped would happen. The enemy ship’s tracking systems might be confused or overloaded by the quantity of targets in the air and if the nukes didn’t get through, some of the Lambdas might weaken the energy shield enough for the Shatterers to disable it completely.

“We’ve had a detonation, sir,” said Chainer.

“A hit?”

“No sir, only fifteen thousand klicks. Must have been a Lambda impacting on a shock drone.”

“That’s the chance we’ll have to take,” said Duggan. He sent up another cloud. The drones accelerated at a similar speed to the Lambdas. The ones which made it from the canyon were lost in the endless sky. Others were visible on the main viewscreen as they ricocheted and careened off the walls.

“Lambdas almost reloaded,” said McGlashan.

“Fire another hundred as soon as they’re ready.”

The Crimson rocked fractionally, an infinitesimal feeling that Duggan detected only because he’d served on spacecraft so long.

“What was that?” he asked sharply, wondering if the ground was shifting beneath them.

“Beam strike aft,” said Breeze. “It’s going to get hot in here soon.”

“Lambdas away.”

Duggan frantically checked the status of the nuclear warheads. They were still showing green. He instructed the mainframe to launch them.

“I see two nukes,” said McGlashan.

“What’s our damage?” asked Duggan.

“We’re glowing nicely,” said Breeze. “There’s about thirty percent of our volume showing heat alerts. Another strike and a big chunk of the ship is going to melt.”

“Three more Shatterers have launched from the Oblivion, sir,” said Chainer.

“They mustn’t have got the message,” said Duggan. “That could see us all killed.” It was worse than that – as far as he was aware, the Crimson and the Oblivion might well be the only surviving warships to bring news about the Dreamer arrival. On top of that, they could both attest to the fact that neither Ghasts nor humans betrayed the temporary truce between the two species. A loss of trust would make it impossible to forge peace.

“Two more nukes flying high,” said McGlashan. “Four gigatons in the air.”

“I can see three quick energy spikes on this chart,” said Chainer. “The Shatterers got there first. I can’t confirm a kill.”

The Crimson’s nukes flew at about a thousand kilometres per second – a quarter the speed of the Ghast Shatterers. If the Ghasts had waited another two or three seconds, the first pair of nuclear missiles would have reached their target area first. As it was, Duggan remote-detonated the warheads before they flew higher than twenty-two thousand kilometres.

“Whoa, I’m getting all sorts of stuff!” said Chainer. “I’m just trying to make sense of it.”

“They’re not even trying to shoot our missiles down, are they?” asked Breeze.

“Doesn’t look like it,” said McGlashan. “Cocky bastards.”

“The Oblivion’s been hit again. It’s like they target whatever they fancy,” said Breeze. “Or have some crazy priority system.”

Duggan detonated the second pair of nuclear warheads. His tactical screen showed a cluster of faint red circles, which expanded rapidly. The atmosphere was too thin for there to be much of a blast, but he’d tuned in to gamma radiation. He felt hot all of a sudden – it was warning up in the bridge. “Fifty degrees,” he said under his breath. “Let’s hope we don’t take another beam hit.”

“I’m not sure the Ghasts are going to fly that battleship any time soon,” said Breeze.

Duggan kept focus on the present. “Fire the Lambdas as soon as they load,” he said. “Give it everything we’ve got.”

“The Dreamer energy readings are all over the place,” said Chainer. “Up and down.”

“Are their shields working?”

“I don’t know, sir.” He grinned suddenly. “I think we’ve got them! Their shields, I mean.”

“Are you certain?” asked Duggan.

“Yep, the energy output from their location has dropped to a fraction of what it was. And they’re changing position.”

“Evasive manoeuvres,” said McGlashan.

“Keep firing at them,” said Duggan. “We have no idea how long their shields will remain offline.” His tactical display showed the gamma radiation as it dispersed outwards. There was enough to kill anything living in a short time, yet the intensity was fading. He hoped they wouldn’t need continuous, massive bursts to keep the Dreamer shields out of action. He stretched out a hand, intending to launch the final two warheads.

“They’re moving again,” said Chainer.

“Where?”

“I don’t know, sir. They’re heading east in a straight line. We’ll have no launch angle in about five seconds - they’re fast.”

“You know what this means don’t you?” asked Duggan angrily. “They’re going to wait for their shields to restart and then they’re going to come back and finish the job. Only this time, they won’t be surprised by slow-moving nuclear missiles.” He could sense impending defeat and he didn’t like it. “What’s our damage report?”

“Their beam weapon is much more powerful than anything we’ve got. Our engines have dispersed it at the cost of a huge overall increase in their temperature. I’d say a second hit will disable us permanently, with the side-effect of cooking us all to a crisp on the bridge,” said Breeze.

“What about the Ghasts?” asked Duggan.

“They’re a lot worse off than we are, since they took several hits in the same place. Life isn’t going to be pleasant for anyone stuck in that area of their ship.”

“Let’s have a look,” said Duggan. The bulkhead viewscreen changed to show the front and middle sections of the Oblivion, glowing and half-melted into a new shape.

“Sir?” Chainer’s voice contained an infinite excitement, like a gambler rolling the dice on an all-or-nothing high-stakes game. “Two more Shatterers have just launched from the Oblivion!”

“What do you mean?” asked Duggan. “Has the Dreamer warship come back?”

“Definitely not. Look, the Ghast missiles are curving through the air. They’ve peaked at over four thousand klicks per second and gone to the east.”

“How the hell did they manage that?” asked McGlashan.

“Maybe they get a lock on during the reload,” said Duggan. “Or the Ghasts could have improved their technology already. They’ve had over a year to advance it.” He shook his head. “For once, I’m crossing my fingers and hoping a Ghast weapon strikes its intended target.”

“Nothing we can do but wait,” said Breeze. “I hate waiting.”

“You’ve got a lot of it to come, Lieutenant. Even if we win this one, it’ll take a long time for the engines to come back online.”

“What if the Dreamers send another ship?” asked Chainer.

It wasn’t a question Duggan wanted to offer an answer to. He gave it a go. “One step at a time. Try not to think about the possibility of a second death before we’ve escaped the first.”

“I need a hi-stim,” said Chainer. “I’ve been trying to keep off that shit. My hands are beginning to shake from withdrawal.” He laughed, the sound free of worry for a change. “One step at a time,” he said, repeating Duggan’s words.

They waited in the sweltering heat. Minutes passed and then hours. The Dreamer warship didn’t return and Duggan convinced himself it had been destroyed. The temperature gradually diminished and the viewscreen showed the Oblivion’s heat-glow had gone. The Ghast vessel was still enormously hot and it looked like a damaged parody of menace.

The next day, Chainer detected one of the Oblivion’s rear boarding ramps opening. “Sir, one of the Ghasts has appeared.”

“Only one?”

“I can’t see any more. Looks like he’s just waiting.”

Ten minutes later, the boarding ramp on the Crimson dropped smoothly onto the hard ground. A single figure in a spacesuit walked down. This figure was John Duggan. He wore one helmet and carried a second. He placed the second helmet onto the ground and for a moment, considered returning to the bridge. Instead, he made his way steadily across the five hundred metres between the two vessels. The heat was tremendous, but his military-grade suit offered enough protection. The Ghast came forwards, clad in a bulky mech suit. Duggan looked into the alien’s clear visor and wasn’t surprised to see it was Nil-Far.

“Our enemies are no more,” said the Ghast.

“For the time being. We don’t know how many more fighters they carry on their main ship.”

“We do not. A single one of their craft was a fearsome opponent. Its beam weapon had only a fraction the power of those from the mothership.”

“It was an opportunity to learn. We have data to carry home to our superiors. Will your ship fly?”

“Eventually it will be able to reach home. In six months. A year perhaps.”

“That is a long time.”

“I would prefer it to be sooner. These Dreamers are here for war and we Ghasts do not have the ability to defeat them. We will never stop trying, as the Dreamers will soon discover.”

“We need peace between our two races,” said Duggan.

“Your negotiators wished us to become vassals of the Confederation. Under threat of extinction.”

“I am not a negotiator, Nil-Far. Our chances of success will be greatly increased if we fight together.”

“We must agree terms quickly.”

With that, Duggan took his leave and returned to the Crimson. For the next three weeks, the ship’s mainframe and the Dreamer core worked at rerouting the scrambled engines. It was frustratingly gradual progress and the crew felt trapped in slow-motion. The Dreamers didn’t return and Duggan asked himself if their main ship had moved away to a different area of space and was therefore unable to send any other fighters to Prot-7.

Eventually, the engines were sufficiently repaired that Duggan felt it was the right time to depart. The Crimson flew directly upwards and out of the canyon, leaving the Oblivion behind. They launched into lightspeed, managing to exceed Light-K by a small margin. This was quick for most warships, but for the Crimson it was little more than a crawl. At Duggan’s instruction, they set a course for the Juniper.

Chapter Thirty-Two

“The Juniper is dead ahead, sir,” said Chainer.

“I’ll bring us in slow and steady,” Duggan replied.

“I still think they’re going to shoot us down,” muttered Chainer.

“You told us the Maximilian will be able to detect our comms failure!” said McGlashan.

“Yeah, maybe they will.”

“I’m going to initiate the automatic landing systems,” said Duggan. “If they don’t open the doors, we’ll have to crash into them.”

In the end, the Juniper did open the door to Hangar Bay One. Catastrophic failures of a warship’s comms systems were exceptionally rare outside of a simulation, but it had happened before, albeit only once. The Crimson docked smoothly and perfectly under the direction of its mainframe. Before a contingent of the Juniper’s security forces could quarantine the ship, two figures disembarked, one of them being Duggan in a full spacesuit. He used the helmet to patch into the Juniper and reported the damage to the Crimson’s comms. He also obtained details of the highest-ranking officer currently in residence, as well as clearance to meet with this officer immediately.

Duggan and his companion made rapid progress to their destination, drawing a number of curious and some outright hostile stares. A group of eight security men and women followed closely; they held their gauss rifles tightly. At Admiral Teron’s office, Duggan waited until the door slid aside. He entered without hesitation, finding the room exactly as it was on his last visit.

“Captain Duggan,” said Teron from his seat. He kept a commendably straight face when he saw who was with Duggan. “We have much to talk about.”

“Much more than you can possibly imagine, sir.”

“Take a seat, please. Who is this you have brought with you?”

“Sir, this is Nil-Far, Captain of the Ghast Oblivion Ghotesh-Q. We’ve got a fight on our hands, and this time it’s not the Ghasts who are our enemies.”

“Captain Duggan, tell me what you’ve learned.”

And Duggan told him.

* * *

The Survival Wars series continues in Book 3, Chains of Duty!

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Chains of Duty

Survival Wars Book 3

© 2017 Anthony James

All rights reserved

The right of Anthony James to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed upon the subsequent purchaser

Cover Design by Dan Van Oss www.covermint.design

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The Beginning

Halfway across the Garon sector from humanity’s nearest populated world, the prospector SC Lupus emerged from lightspeed into a barely-charted solar system, which consisted of an average sun orbited by nine equally average planets.

“Captain Carlson? We’re fifty minutes from the fourth planet,” said 2nd Lieutenant John Houston.

Captain Eva Carlson nodded, though her expression of concentration didn’t change. She continued to examine a series of data streams on her primary monitor. The ship’s sensors fed through the results of their first scan and blue text flew across Carlson’s screen at a speed which seemed far too quick for a human brain to comprehend.

“It’s nice to know the mainframe on this old bucket can get it right once in a while,” said Ensign Seb Lynch. “Last system we visited, it took us a day on the gravities to get where we should have been.”

“It was only nineteen hours,” said Carlson, finally dragging her attention away.

“Have you found anything, Captain?” asked Houston. “Want me to take a look?”

“I don’t think there’s any need just yet, Lieutenant. It’s as I thought – we don’t have enough data to make an informed decision. The last time a scout ship came here was thirty years ago and they didn’t stay for long.”

“We’re going to go in close and do it by hand, huh?” asked Lynch. He knew absolutely nothing about geology and had no idea why they’d assigned him to a vessel designed for the specific purpose of discovering new and viable planets for the Confederation’s mining operations.

“It looks that way, Ensign,” said Carlson. She was usually happy to put up with Lynch’s questions – he had the makings of a good officer once he decided where to specialise. For now, he was covering most of the comms and engines work, allowing the other two to focus on deciphering the reams of data they’d scooped up from the four solar systems they’d stopped at so far. Finding new resources wasn’t quite needle in a haystack work, but Carlson would be first to admit there was an element of luck involved. A skilled crew could improve the odds, yet there were times when the Lupus had come home after six months of searching with nothing to show for it.

“Glantia-312 is what they’ve called the sun,” said Lynch, repeating what they already knew. “I wonder how much they pay the guys who name all this stuff. Do you think the salary is good?”

Carlson gave a shrug. It was a gesture that said many things, depending on her mood. At the moment, it was saying stop asking stupid questions. She waved Houston over. The bridge on the prospector was large, well-lit and furnished with expensive, padded chairs – the Space Corps’ scientists expected a little more comfort than soldiers and they usually got what they wanted. The reasoning behind it was fairly straightforward – a soldier who was kept in cramped quarters for weeks on end would be more inclined to fight than one who spent his or her life cosseted and happy. On the other hand, if you kept a scientist or researcher in those same conditions, they’d never work at peak efficiency. There was no proof behind any of this apparently smooth logic and the truth of it was rarely challenged.

“I’ve had a quick look already, Captain,” said Houston. “We can discount six of the planets right off the bat. Two of them are too hot, two of them too cold and two of them just outright hostile.”

“I agree,” said Carlson. “The largest planet here might be viable for further checks, but I can see a storm over it that’s almost fifteen thousand klicks across. I don’t think the guys below would be too pleased if we dropped them off there.”

“That leaves us with just the last two,” said Houston, leaning over her shoulder for a better look at the sensor data. Images of both planets appeared on a screen, each as dull and featureless as the other. “This one’s about Old Earth sized and this other one fifty percent larger. Which one takes your fancy?”

“Neither,” replied Carlson truthfully. The Glantia-312 system was the last stop for the Lupus and after that, Carlson was due almost a month of leave. Nevertheless, she knew her duty and had no intention of leaving without checking out these two planets to see what metals were held in their crusts. They still had the Resource Base Establishment Dropship in the cargo bay – a kilometre worth of men and machinery ready to be deployed wherever there was enough metal to make it worthwhile. Carlson knew her superiors would be disappointed if she returned with the RBED still unused. She sighed. “We’re closest to the largest planet. Let’s get that one out of the way first. Ensign, can you give me a detailed sweep of the surface, please? I need a topographical and atmospheric scan.”

“Yes sir!” Lynch replied. “Should be ready in a few minutes.”

“I’m taking us towards the surface. Let’s get this over and done with quickly and efficiently.”

Carlson powered up the gravity engines. The prospector wasn’t fast and didn’t need to be. They weren’t meant to face danger and their crews expected to be away from home for a long time. It was too expensive to fit bigger engines in spacecraft like this, especially with the current drain on Gallenium from the Space Corps’ extensive ship-building programme. Besides, bigger engines would have needed an overhaul of the basic design and there wasn’t much appetite for that.

“There’s not much of an atmosphere to speak of,” said Lynch. “Nitrogen at fifteen percent. Oxygen at zero-point-one percent. Inert gases at two percent. All the usual run-of-the-mill stuff. I’m sending the latest data to you.”

The atmospheric data popped up on Carlson’s screen and she scanned it idly. “It says oxygen at zero-point-two percent here,” she said.

“It was definitely point-one,” said Lynch. “See, look here.” He went silent for a moment. “That’s not right. I’ll do a quick check on the sensor calibration.”

Houston had taken an interest now. “What have we got?” he asked.

“The oxygen level is at point-two-two now,” said Lynch. “It’s climbing.”

Carlson frowned. “Are you sure those sensors are reading right?”

“As sure as I can be. We have three independent front arrays, all of them reporting exactly the same thing into the mainframe. I don’t know anything about rocks, but I’m sure this isn’t meant to happen.”

Carlson winced inwardly at Lynch’s reduction of her entire profession to the word rocks. “Keep an eye on it and continue with your scan.” She already knew they couldn’t leave until they’d found out more about the anomalous oxygen readings and they certainly couldn’t pretend they hadn’t noticed, since there was a good chance the audit logs would betray them later.

After another twenty minutes, Lynch called out with an update on his progress. “I’m detecting metal on the surface.”

“Just lying there, waiting to be picked up?” asked Houston. He realised he’d sounded a bit harsh. “Sorry.”

“Not metal ore, sir,” said Lynch. “A metal object of some type.”

“Have there been reports of missing spacecraft in this area?” asked Carlson.

“None that I’m aware of,” said Houston.

“We’re definitely not at war with the Ghasts anymore, are we?” asked Lynch.

“Our instructions are to report any sightings, but hostilities are at a temporary end,” said Carlson. “If those are Ghasts down there, we should take a look and confirm. What size is the object?” She’d also been given instructions to watch out for anything else unrecognized, Ghast or otherwise. Her superiors hadn’t given specifics and had warned that the information was top-secret.

“I’d say it’s more than kilometre to each side and nearly as much tall. The mainframe’s estimation is that it’s regular like a pyramid, rather than anything spacecraft-shaped. The oxygen’s up to point-three. Do you want me to have a guess at something, Captain?” asked Lynch.

“Fire away, Ensign.”

“The atmospheric levels of oxygen aren’t uniform. In fact, they’re at almost zero across much of the surface. They’re at their greatest intensity within a few thousand klicks of the object. Like it’s throwing out oxygen.”

“Get on the comms,” said Carlson at once. “Highest priority message to the base on Atlantis.”

Lynch made a few gestures across his panel. An expression of worry appeared that he made no effort to disguise. “I’m getting nothing on the comms, sir,” he said. “Not even static.”

Carlson chewed her lip. Something was wrong and she knew she had to act quickly. “Take us to lightspeed,” she said. “Immediately.”

“Right you are, sir,” said Lynch. “It’s going to be a few minutes until we can launch.”

With a feeling of dread, Carlson turned the nose of the Lupus away from the planet. She wanted to put some distance between her ship and the surface object while the deep fission engines got ready.

“There’s something heading towards us,” said Lynch. “It’s coming directly from the planet’s surface at about two thousand klicks per second. Our sensors are struggling to pick it up at that speed.”

“What is it?” asked Carlson. “How did you miss it?”

“We’re a prospector, sir, not a warship. Our equipment doesn’t see everything,” said Lynch. “It’s over two klicks in length.”

“How long until it can fire?” asked Carlson.

“If you’re asking are we going to reach lightspeed before the inbound craft reaches likely weapons range, I’m going to have to disappoint you.” Lynch sounded deadly calm and Carlson remembered that he’d served for a time on an Anderlecht cruiser. He sounded every bit like a military man now.

The SC Lupus was still more than five minutes from escape when it was destroyed. The approaching ship fired a powerful particle beam, which swept through the Lupus’ engines and hull, melting a huge chunk of the vessel’s structure. This first attack killed the eighty men and women who were stationed on the RBED in the hold, heating the air and burning them alive within moments. A warship would have had sufficient engine mass to disperse the first strike, while the Lupus was easy prey. The second beam strike followed soon after, killing the remaining crew. The last thing which went through Carlson’s mind before she perished in the superheated air, was regret that she’d failed the people onboard. There was no way for her to know that their deaths had been inevitable as soon as they’d arrived in the Glantia-312 system.

Chapter One

Captain John Nathan Duggan shivered. It wasn’t the temperature in his office which made him do so – though it was admittedly a couple of degrees colder on the Juniper than he’d have liked. Rather, it was the words on his screen which made him feel cold. Fleet Admiral Slender confirmed dead, was the opening sentence on the file. Duggan stared at the details for a few moments longer. He’d read the file a hundred times without knowing if he felt relief or happiness. Deep down, he couldn’t bring himself to feel either – the most suitable description was that he felt nothing.

The file was top secret and he closed it off his screen. There was nobody in his office, but he didn’t want to leave it there for everyone to see. At the moment, it was hush-hush, presumably while the Space Corps frantically tried to come up with the best story to explain what had happened. The Dreamers had killed him, yet the news of this new alien threat was deemed too dangerous to be given to all and sundry – at least while the business with the Ghasts was still to be concluded.

A message pinged into his inbox and he sighed when he read the subject. It was another one of the countless humdrum memos which clogged up his mailbox day in and day out. The more such messages he received, the less time he had to deal with other issues. Before he could send a bluntly-worded reply, his communicator chimed softly to alert him to a priority voice call. Duggan saw who it was and accepted it immediately.

“Captain Duggan? I need you in my office at once.” It was Admiral Teron, his tone of voice neutral.

“Yes, sir,” Duggan replied and ended the call.

The conversation had been terse, since neither man liked to waste words on niceties. Duggan stood and headed towards the door, hardly noticing the utterly anonymous furnishings around the office he’d been assigned to for the last two months. The door slid open and he turned left along the metal-walled corridor. Men and women passed him by, one or two smiling absently as he made his way along. He had no idea what the Admiral wanted and he hadn’t spoken to Teron directly in over a week. The familiar plasmetal door whisked aside once the Juniper’s AI had decided that Duggan was permitted to enter.

“Come in!” said Admiral Teron from the recesses of his office.

Duggan wasn’t shy and had covered several paces within before the words reached him. He’d visited this room so often it felt like a home. The light in the office was average and amplified by the glow of a dozen status screens around the walls. Someone who was less familiar with Teron might have thought they were for show. Duggan knew they were not – the Admiral had an excellent eye for detail and liked to keep a watch on everything that was going on.

“Good morning, sir,” said Duggan. Since the death of Fleet Admiral Slender in the Dreamer attack at the Helius Blackstar, life had become a bit more straightforward and Duggan found he wasn’t looking over his shoulder all the time. He’d almost got to the stage where he’d forgiven Teron for tricking him into flying the Crimson on its mission to destroy the Ghast planet Lioxi. Teron had always been a man who liked to find order amid chaos and Duggan was willing to accept the Admiral had been acting in what he thought were the best interests of the Confederation.

“Have a seat, please,” said Teron, gesturing with one thick-fingered hand. The plasma scars on his neck burned more vividly than usual today.

Duggan sat and met the Admiral’s gaze. “I’m going somewhere?”

Teron grunted. “Never one to mince your words, were you?” Then, he laughed gruffly. “I swear that ninety percent of the people I deal with spend their lives making unimportant comments about unimportant things. I don’t have the time for it. You are going somewhere and we’ll get to that in just a moment.”

Duggan’s skin prickled with rising excitement. He’d been posted on the Juniper as part of an extensive debriefing ever since the vast Dreamer mothership had destroyed much of the human and Ghast fleet at the Helius Blackstar. The Space Corps wanted him to be available at all times to speak to representatives of its many divisions about the coming threat. If they’d put him on a warship and sent him on a mission somewhere, he would be incommunicado when travelling at lightspeed. Even worse, he might end up getting killed and his store of knowledge lost with him. Duggan didn’t especially enjoy being confined to the Juniper, but he accepted the necessity. As it happened, he was kept constantly busy and he found it refreshing that he could provide input and be listened to. How one man’s death has changed things, he thought.

“The Space Corps believes my fonts of intel have been emptied, sir?” he asked.

“I’m sure you’ve had enough of being grilled, Captain Duggan. I’ve decided it’s time to move you on to something else.”

Duggan raised a mental eyebrow at Teron’s choice of words – the suggestion that it was the Admiral’s choice to do this, rather than having to wait for confirmation elsewhere. “Is it to do with the Dreamers, sir? Do we have something new on them?”

A brief look of irritation came over Teron’s face - he didn’t like to be second-guessed. “We don’t know what it’s about, Captain Duggan, that’s what you’re here for. One of our prospectors has gone missing out in the Garon sector – the SC Lupus, though I doubt you’ve heard the name. It’s just one ship amongst many.”

“It didn’t send out a distress signal, I assume?”

“No, we’ve heard nothing from it. They were due to dock at the Atlantis main spaceport a few days ago. They stopped broadcasting over a week back.”

“Could they have landed in a place with so much ore the planet’s density has prevented them sending their status reports?” Duggan was clutching at straws, more in desperation than anything else. If a spacecraft had gone missing, it was hard to avoid concluding the unthinkable.

“It’s not very likely. We believe something has happened to the Lupus. I’m sure you know what that means.”

“Do we trust the Ghasts?” he asked. “Or do the stats teams say it’s Dreamer?”

Teron sighed and took a piece of paper from his desk. “If you want the exact breakdown, the Projections Team has provided a weighting of five percent for accidental ship destruction, thirty-five percent for a rogue or planned Ghast attack, with the remaining sixty percent attributed to an unknown alien threat. You can draw your own conclusions. Furthermore, we’ve asked the Ghasts to stay away from the Garon sector while negotiations take place, so they shouldn’t be anywhere near. From what I’ve heard, our former enemies take pride in their trustworthiness.”

There were few people better-placed than Teron to hear how the peace negotiations were proceeding. In fact, Duggan wouldn’t have been surprised if the Admiral had a part in directing them. The death of Admiral Slender had opened doors for more than just Duggan.

“I hope that’s the case, sir, I truly do.”

“The Ghasts are never going to be liked after what they’ve done, but we can at least hope they have enough redeeming qualities that we never need to face war with them again.” Teron’s face twisted in anger. “Not that we’d give them another chance at it.” The expression vanished as quickly as it had arrived. “Have you heard of the ES Terminus?”

Duggan racked his brains. The Space Corps was producing new ships at such a rate it was difficult to keep track of them and the impending peace with the Ghasts hadn’t slowed the building programme one bit. Suddenly, the name prompted his memory. “The first of our new heavy cruisers,” intoned Duggan. “Designed to fill in the operational requirements for a vessel larger than an Anderlecht, yet smaller than a Hadron. A direct rival to the Ghast Cadaverons.”

“Indeed,” said Teron. “We laid down three such hulls a number of years ago. The work was mothballed during the cuts, but luckily, they weren’t dismantled. As a consequence, we were able to proceed with the work on these vessels once our funding levels were increased. The ES Terminus is the first of its kind to reach completion.” Teron leaned forward. “Captain Duggan, you will be the first person to captain it.”

For once, Duggan was lost for words. “Sir?”

“You’re a good man, Duggan and one of our best officers. Your treatment has been tantamount to criminal and I include myself as party to it. Things have changed now.” He let those last words hang in the air.

“Where am I taking the Terminus, sir?”

Teron laughed for the second time. “Don’t be too happy, Captain Duggan. We wouldn’t be the Space Corps if everything was easy. The Terminus is going to look for the Lupus. At least that’s what your order sheet says - in reality, you’re searching for our enemy.”

It was Duggan’s turn to laugh this time, a mixture of giddy excitement and cynicism. “You weren’t joking, were you? It’s a suicide mission to go looking for the Dreamers. How many did they destroy from our combined fleets? Ten? Twelve?”

“Fourteen warships lost, as it happens. That was the mothership. You managed to bring down one of their smaller fighters.”

“It was a close-run thing!” said Duggan. “Without the Ghotesh-Q to launch its Shatterers, we’d have been destroyed. Wouldn’t it be better to send out the Crimson again?”

“From a purely martial standpoint, I’m sure you’re right. However, this time the Crimson is going nowhere. We’ve made strides in copying certain parts of the processing core– it’s really quite advanced and much of it is still beyond us. We’ve learned a great deal from the disruptors and the engine design, but again it’s nothing we can fully replicate – at least not on the scale necessary to place on a warship.”

“You mean we can partially copy this stuff?”

Teron’s face went blank as he considered his words. “In bits and pieces. We can recreate the core design at a molecular level, we simply can’t scale it up yet. The lab could make you an outstandingly fast wristwatch if you wanted one. Otherwise, we’re not quite there when it comes to making something that could run a fleet warship. On the plus side, our next generation beam weapons will be smaller and with a longer range. We estimate we’ll be on a par with what the Ghasts have been producing for the last year or two. It’s a start.”

Duggan got the impression Teron was hiding something. He knew the Admiral well enough to pick up the nuances in his behaviour. “There’s something else, isn’t there?” he asked.

Teron didn’t have the good grace to look guilty. “There’s always something else, Captain Duggan,” he said dismissively. “I thought you’d have learned that by now. In this case, you’ll be accompanied by a second warship. A Ghast vessel – the Oblivion class Dretisear.”

Duggan was too much an old hand at these games to be surprised. “I think it’s a good idea, sir.”

Teron had clearly expected to deal with objections, so he launched into his speech anyway. “The Dreamers are an enemy to both sides. After much deliberation, we considered it for the best that we undertake this as a joint exercise. It will demonstrate to the Ghasts that we are willing to trust them and to work with them.”

“And we need their Shatterer missiles to do the business for us if we come across any more Dreamers.”

“Maybe and maybe not,” said Teron cryptically. “There is more to this exercise than you might think, Captain Duggan. On the one hand, we have the Dreamers to contend with, but we would be fools to discount the Ghasts as an ongoing danger. We’re sending our newest ship along with one of our best captains as a show of force. The Terminus punches above its weight as it was always intended to. Why make a new ship that’s the equal of what the enemy has? This is why we insisted they send an Oblivion, rather than a Cadaveron. We want them to see what our heavy cruisers are capable of.”

“The Space Corps must really be confident,” said Duggan.

Teron smiled a grim smile. “We are,” he said. “The hull of the Terminus was ready and we’ve had ample time to fit in the latest and best we’ve got. Humanity never moves faster than when its existence is threatened and we’ve had enough development money to make a few leaps of our own in the last year and a half.”

“I’ll need my crew,” said Duggan.

“Take whoever you need, as long as they’re already here on the Juniper. The Terminus has been stationed in near space outside the orbital for two hours. For once you’ve been given a warship that won’t fit inside one of the hangars.”

“We’re to find out what happened to the Lupus, flex our muscles at the Ghasts and destroy any hostile aliens we meet?”

“That sums it up nicely,” said Teron. “The Lupus was assigned to an area of space that is almost mid-way between the Helius Blackstar and Atlantis. We have more than ten billion people living on Atlantis. I don’t need to remind you we’re getting ever nearer to Hyptron. We have eight of our populated planets in that sector. It’s the second-most populated area of Confederation Space, with over one hundred billion people living across those eight worlds.”

“If the Dreamers get there, all our recent successes against the Ghasts will have been for nothing,” said Duggan.

“Exactly. There’s a lot riding on this, Captain Duggan. We have additional ships searching the other solar systems on the Lupus’ logs, but you’re going the furthest out. If you discover anything, let us know as soon as possible.”

“Will do, sir,” said Duggan. “Permission to find my crew and board a shuttle to the ES Terminus?”

“Granted.”

Chapter Two

The Juniper was immense – easily the largest object mankind had ever sent into space. Fortunately for Duggan, the orbital’s internal communications systems were excellent and it didn’t take long to locate the people he needed to speak to. He had to countermand one or two orders in order to get things moving and in the end, he got what he wanted. The report sheets for the Terminus told him there was already a full complement of troops onboard, but there was always room to squeeze in a few more.

The Juniper had a number of small, personnel transport shuttle docks, to avoid the intrusive procedures necessary to open the gargantuan doors to the main hangar bays. By the time Duggan reached the transport, there was already a familiar face onboard. The vessel was faithful to its type, being little more than a brightly-lit metal box, with a number of worn seats and a single viewscreen. There were plenty of luxury models available, but the Space Corps tried not to be overtly wasteful in its usage of taxpayer funds.

“We’re moving out?” asked Lieutenant Frank Chainer from his seat. “Why all this cloak and dagger stuff, sir?”

“What cloak and dagger, Lieutenant?” asked Duggan, slightly bemused at the accusation.

“It feels like we’re sneaking off the Juniper. Don’t we normally climb into whatever Gunner is waiting in the hangar bays?”

“Not this time,” said Duggan.

Commander Lucy McGlashan and Lieutenant Bill Breeze arrived on the shuttle and he greeted them. Seniority allowed Duggan his choice of officers and these were the three he wanted. In other circumstances, they might have already been assigned to a new ship. As it was, they’d been subjected to the same extensive debriefing as Duggan, which had kept them here on the orbital.

“Sir,” said Breeze, nodding his head and smiling. Then, he remembered procedure and offered a salute. His eyes were sharp and he looked eager to be on his way.

“Good morning, sir,” said McGlashan. “Many more to come?”

“Just a few,” said Duggan. “I doubt they’ll be long.”

“There were some proper miserable bastards getting off this shuttle when it docked,” said Chainer. “It looked like they’d been dismissed from the Corps or something. There were a couple of officers amongst them.”

Duggan guessed who they were – the officers from the ES Terminus who had been taken off the ship in order to make room for Duggan’s own crew. He didn’t worry about it too much – if you couldn’t accept your toes being trodden on every so often, you weren’t tough enough to make the really hard decisions.

The sound of footsteps made Duggan turn. A small complement of soldiers had arrived, dressed in smart blue uniforms. They weren’t allowed to carry their gauss rifles around the orbital without specific clearance and they looked lost without them.

“Sir!” said Sergeant Ortiz. “Corporal Bryant is with me, along with infantrymen Flores, Butler, Dorsey and Morgan.”

The men and women stood smartly to attention in the enclosed interior of the shuttle. “What about Santos?” asked Duggan.

“I have no idea where he’s gone to, sir,” said Ortiz. “I thought we’d all been ordered to stay on the Juniper.”

“You had,” said Duggan. “Never mind, there’s always someone who slips through the net. He’s probably safer wherever he is.”

“Will there be action, sir?” asked Ortiz. Her expression and words were full of longing. The obvious yearning might have worried Duggan if he hadn’t seen Ortiz in action. She could be gung-ho, but never suicidal.

“There’s always that chance, Sergeant. Assuming we don’t get blown up before we can disembark.”

“When one threat recedes, another rises to take its place,” she said, revealing her thoughts about the nature of the mission.

Duggan didn’t confirm or deny anything. “Take a seat please. We need to be on our way.”

The shuttle had no pilot and remained under the direct control of the Juniper’s AIs. The outer door whirred closed, sealing them inside. There was a clunk and a shuddering scrape to indicate the shuttle had detached from its moorings. The feeling of acceleration which followed was so slight it was easy to miss. The Juniper did everything by the book and the shuttle’s exit from its launch bay was perfect. The internal viewscreen remained stubbornly blank, depriving them of what would be a magnificent sight as the orbital receded slowly away behind them.

“So, where are we going, sir?” asked Chainer, struggling to contain his curiosity.

Duggan didn’t like to keep secrets just for the sake of it and they’d find out soon enough. “I’ve been given command of the ES Terminus. It’s the Space Corps’ first Galactic class heavy cruiser.”

“A heavy cruiser? Wow, sir!” said Chainer. “They’ve finally seen sense and put you in charge of something decent?”

“I’ve not had time to study the spec sheets yet,” said Duggan, smiling at Chainer’s enthusiasm. “Admiral Teron assures me it’s special. Let’s wait till we get there.”

As if prompted by his words the transport’s internal screen flickered, before the picture settled on a distant object. The shuttle’s sensors zoomed in once and then twice more, until the object filled the display. The image appeared grainy and blurred at first. Then, the sensors resolved the details and snapped them into focus. Without anything for comparison, it was difficult to judge exactly how big the spacecraft was, but when you’d seen enough of them it became easy to make a good guess.

“That’s it?” asked Breeze, his mouth half-open.

Duggan stood from his seat in order to get a closer view of the warship. After he’d left Teron’s office earlier he’d called up computer-generated image of the Terminus to study. It hadn’t been enough to properly convey the menace possessed by the spacecraft.

“Even if none of the weapons were functioning, I wouldn’t want to face it,” said Chainer, his eyes fixed on the screen.

Like a dying man reaching for salvation, Duggan lifted his arm and traced a finger along the outline of the ship. It was clearly a Space Corps design, yet took cues from some of the older Ghast Oblivions. The result was a ship which could have looked like a patchwork of ideas, yet instead fitted together into something that was entirely new. The front third was a wedge, with a dome beneath. The centre third was sleek and flat, while the aft was thicker, with rounded edges. There was at least one more particle beam housing mounted there. The Terminus looked mean and fast.

“The Space Corps must be expecting trouble if they’re sending that?” said McGlashan.

“You’ve seen what we’re facing,” said Duggan. “We’ve got nothing that will last against the Dreamers’ technology. The Admiral told me the engineers have done what they can, but I doubt it’s going to be enough. We’re going to need brains for this one, as well as whatever weaponry the Terminus is carrying.” He took a deep breath. “We won’t be alone, either.”

“What else are they sending with us?” asked McGlashan. “Another couple of Galactics?”

“The others aren’t due to enter service for a few weeks, Commander. Our companions for this particular mission will be familiar to all of you. They’re sending an Oblivion with us - the Dretisear. This isn’t just about the Dreamers, it’s about showing the Ghasts what exactly the human race is capable of.”

He caught Ortiz grinning as she heard the words. “Maybe we’ll get to fight next to them, sir. Show them what a real soldier can do.”

“Maybe,” said Duggan, unwilling to be drawn into a discussion on it. “Anyway, folks, there’s our home for the next few weeks. At least this time we can’t complain they haven’t given us the tools to do our jobs properly.”

“I only wish that for once we could be facing an inferior enemy, rather than a vastly superior one,” said Chainer.

“Where would be the fun in that?” asked McGlashan.

“I’d settle for a bit less fun and a higher chance of survival,” grumbled Chainer.

The transport came ever closer to the ES Terminus. The image of the warship remained a constant size on the viewscreen, as the sensors adjusted the scale. It made it impossible to judge how far away they were, but a countdown appeared in one corner of the monitor to let them know how long until they docked. Duggan regretted he’d not brought a hand-held tablet with him, since he dearly wanted to start checking the technical capabilities of the warship. He’d been so focused on other things when he’d packed his few belongings into a kitbag that he’d forgotten to do so.

The external image of the ES Terminus changed. The warship no longer remained static on the screen – it came closer and closer. The docking countdown indicated there were only a few minutes to go and the people in the passenger bay started to shift impatiently with the imminence of their arrival. A port opened towards the rear of the Terminus, appearing as an area of image-intensified darkness against the grey alloy.

“Even got our own shuttle bay,” said Flores nervously.

“How else did you think we were going to get onboard?” asked Dorsey. “Put on a suit and float over the gap?”

Flores didn’t rise to the bait. “Yeah, maybe I didn’t think it through.”

The unlit dock filled most of the screen and Duggan admitted to himself he wouldn’t have enjoyed trying to fit into the bay with the transport under manual control. There were some things you just had to trust to the computers. There was no sensation of deceleration, though the view from outside indicated they’d slowed to a crawl. A gentle thump was followed by the clunking sounds of magnetic clamps latching onto the transporter’s hull. A green light appeared over the door, to let them know it was unlocked and safe to open. Duggan didn’t wait. He stabbed at the release button with his forefinger and tapped his foot for the few seconds it took for the door to open outwards and form a ramp.

The compact docking bay was bathed in deep red light, with a single exit behind a sealed airlock door. Duggan marched across the solid metal floor, the sound of his footsteps muffled by the thickness of the metal. While the others scrambled to gather their belongings and follow, Duggan disengaged the door locks and watched as the square of metal sank away into the aperture and then slid to one side on heavy-duty runners. The walls were about three metres thick here and the door itself almost as deep. He paused on the threshold and closed his eyes, as he always did before he stepped onto a new warship. A faint draught washed over him, bringing tepid air and the sharp-edged scent of metal. It was the impersonal disdain of a killer.

The others gathered behind him and Duggan wondered if they experienced the same feelings he did. McGlashan’s expression gave nothing away and she craned to see into the room beyond the door.

“Come on,” said Duggan. “Let’s see what the Space Corps has given us to defend against our enemies.” With that, he walked ahead and onto the ES Terminus.

Chapter Three

Duggan realised how ill-prepared he was, since he didn’t even know how to reach the bridge. Whilst McGlashan grinned, he called up the ship’s plans on a wall screen in the room beyond the airlock. The bridge was located slightly in front of the ship’s mid-point, which he knew was statistically the safest place for it. The infantry men and women were a few hundred metres away towards the aft, which was statistically the second-safest zone of the ship. On a small fighter like a Vincent class, it often didn’t matter that much – a single missile strike could easily engulf two or three of these safe zones, while a couple of missiles could destroy the entire vessel. On a larger warship, it could make the difference between a quick death and the opportunity to escape.

“Sergeant Ortiz, lead the men to their quarters. You’re to take charge. If there are any complaints, tell them to message the bridge and speak to me about it.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, saluting.

“We’re a warship, not a troop carrier, but there are still almost one hundred fighting men and women on board. I’m sure you can handle it.”

Her face hardened and her dark eyes gleamed. “Of course, sir.”

Duggan dismissed her and she headed off through the left-hand doorway with the other five men and women behind.

“We’re this way,” he said, pointing straight ahead. The corridor ahead was illuminated in the Space Corps’ standard blueish-white artificial daylight. There was room for two people to walk abreast, albeit with little spare. Duggan went first, followed by the other three. The faint humming of the gravity drives told him the engines extended along much of the vessel, though that was normal on a fleet warship. So far, there’d been no surprises.

“You’ve seen one ship, you’ve seen them all,” said Breeze.

“I always feel as if I’m walking inside an enormous metal cube,” said Chainer. “With an unimaginable weight pressing down on me from above.”

“Why a cube?” asked Breeze.

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s the shape my brain attributes to the experience.”

Duggan listened to the conversation, without joining in. Some of the Space Corps’ vessels were incomprehensibly large and even the smaller ones contained an enormous amount of the dense metals needed for lightspeed travel. Being on a spacecraft made Duggan feel many things, but he rarely spoke about it.

The bridge was behind a square blast-proof door at the end of another grey-walled corridor. The Terminus evidently had an automatic recognition programme that detected the approach of officers. There was a warning chime and a red light glowed from a beacon set in the ceiling. With barely a sound, the thick slab of a door slid away into a recess in the wall, revealing the bridge.

“A bit bigger than I’m used to,” said Breeze, following Duggan inside.

The bridge was six metres square and well-lit – almost too bright compared to that in the corridor outside. The air was chill and curiously free of odour. The captain’s chair was in the centre, surrounded by consoles and screens. There was a place for the second-in-command nearby, along with seats and consoles for comms and weapons to the left and right. There were four people already here. They’d clearly been expecting visitors since they were stood to attention and faced straight ahead with the neutral, steely gaze of those who didn’t know what to expect from their new captain.

“I’m sure you’ve been told who I am,” said Duggan, looking at them in turn. “I’m Captain John Duggan, in charge of the ES Terminus. I’ve brought some of my own crew with me, who you will work alongside. They will introduce themselves in due course, but please be aware that Commander McGlashan here is the next in charge.” He walked over and stood in front of the nearest officer. “Who are you?”

“Lieutenant Alice Massey, sir. Comms.”

Duggan looked into her blue eyes. Massey was young and ambitious – he’d seen the type before and was suspicious. To Massey’s credit, she didn’t flinch under his gaze.

“Name?” he asked, speaking to a slim man, who hardly looked old enough to vote.

“Ensign Mick Perry, sir. I’ll be helping out with the comms as well.”

The next man was broad and with a lined face. It was clear he’d once been a soldier before he trained as an officer. “Lieutenant Gabriel Reyes,” he rumbled. “Weapons. Pleased to meet you, sir.”

The final officer was in his mid-thirties, below average height and with an expressionless face. His eyes, however, were bright and intelligent. There was something dislikeable in the set of his features. “Lieutenant Herbert Nichols, sir. Military Asset Management.”

Duggan frowned. “What do mean by military asset management?”

“The Terminus is a valuable ship, Captain Duggan and it carries with it several items of non-disposable heavy armour. I’ve been assigned to ensure the Space Corps’ equipment is treated with the respect it deserves.”

“I’ve never heard of your department.”

“We’re recently formed, sir. We sit somewhere between the Space Corps and the people who approve the funding for all of these new warships.”

“You’ve been set up by the Confederation Council?”

“There must be oversight to ensure the Confederation’s taxpayers are getting value for their money,” said Nichols.

Duggan stepped forward and looked closely at Nichols. “And what exactly do you propose to do if I treat the ship with what you believe to be a lack of respect?”

Nichols didn’t recoil at the scrutiny. “I’m here on an advisory basis, sir. To watch and monitor.”

“And to report anything you don’t like the look of?”

“I’m sure I’ll be thoroughly debriefed at the end of our current duties, sir.”

This wasn’t a pleasant surprise and Duggan had no idea if Nichols was here owing to new impositions on the Space Corps, or if he’d been assigned to the Terminus because Duggan himself wasn’t fully trusted. “Have you been in action before, Lieutenant Nichols?”

“I’m a time-served officer, sir. You don’t need to worry about me hiding under a table when the firing begins.”

“Assuming I’m permitted to let the Terminus take fire?”

“You’re the captain, sir,” said Nichols, looking completely unruffled.

“I am the captain.” Duggan lowered his voice. “If I catch you trying to undermine me, I’ll lock you in the brig. If I’m feeling particularly annoyed, I might just fire you into space. Am I clear?”

“Very clear.”

“Good.”

Duggan turned so he could address everyone. “We’re looking for a missing prospector, the SC Lupus. You don’t need to be an expert to know that spacecraft don’t usually go missing without external interference, so there’s the possibility we’ll be called upon to take direct action against threats currently unknown.”

“Is it these Dreamers I’ve been hearing about, sir?” asked Perry.

In spite of efforts to keep a lid on things, most people in the Corps had heard at least a rumour about this new threat. It was as if the Ghasts were already a thing of the past. “We don’t know, Ensign, that’s why we’re going to have a look. All I’m allowed to say is that there is evidence of a credible threat. The source is known to be hostile to the Confederation.”

“Are they as advanced as people are saying?” asked Reyes.

Duggan sighed. There was no way he was going to be able to partake in the attempted cover-up – not unless he wanted to spend the whole journey speaking in half-truths and riddles. “I don’t know how advanced these people are speculating the Dreamers to be, Lieutenant. Suffice to say I have encountered them once and it was enough to scare me. Their technology isn’t within touching distance like that of the Ghasts – this new foe destroyed a number of our most powerful warships without effort or hesitation. If we encounter them, it will take every ounce of ingenuity, skill and luck we possess to defeat them or escape.”

“If we’re going to die, why are they sending us, sir?” asked Massey.

Duggan couldn’t tell if she was attempting insolence or was genuinely concerned they were being sent on a suicide mission. He gave her the benefit of the doubt. “Death is never certain. I’ve fought against them once, as have my crew. We’re still here to tell of it. We needed help and we will have the same assistance again. We’ll rendezvous with a Ghast Oblivion in two days from now. Their weapons complement our own and together we stand a chance.”

He let that sink in for a few moments. The expressions of his new crew told a variety of tales, none of them happy ones. Someone gave a deep chuckle – it was Reyes.

“I’ve spent years fighting the Ghasts and now I’ll be fighting alongside them.” He laughed again. “It’s going to take some getting used to.”

“Believe it or not, we had the Ghasts beaten, Lieutenant,” said Duggan. “That’s why we can make peace with them. The Dreamers are something else entirely and as things stand, we have no chance of winning. They may have a weakness to exploit and we need to find it.” He took a deep breath before he spoke again. “We also need to find out what they want. They came through a wormhole and this was not their first attempt to do so. We believe they’ve tried it three times and succeeded twice. It’s almost certain they’ll keep coming. If their current incursion fails, there’ll be another after that and then another.”

The four new officers still had questions and they tumbled forth, voices speaking over each other. Duggan asked them to be quiet. “We’re wasting time. We need to reach the meeting place with the Ghasts as soon as possible and then we can begin our search. Lieutenant Breeze, prepare us for lightspeed. As soon as we’re underway, I’ll convene a meeting for everyone onboard and I’ll tell you what I can. If it comes to fighting, I want you to know what you’re facing and what’s at stake.”

Everyone took their stations, with Duggan too much on edge to take his seat. He stood at Lieutenant Breeze’s shoulder, watching him call up the engine data.

“I’m impressed,” Breeze conceded. “There’s a lot of power at high density and we’ve got a powerful core to use it properly. I’ll bet we’re as fast as the Archimedes.”

“A true evolution,” said Duggan.

“You can control evolution,” said Breeze. “It’s the revolution you need to worry about.”

There was an underlying message that Duggan didn’t quite agree with. He craved advancement – the fight to control technology and see what became of it.

“Anything you don’t understand about these consoles?” he asked.

“It’s standard stuff in a new suit,” said Breeze. “Nothing unexpected, just everything’s a little better and a little more efficient. I’ve got the coordinates from the Juniper for the first stop off. Then there’s another, longer trip to follow. I’ll not be able to provide an exact time until I’ve had a chance to dig around a bit more.” He pressed an area of his screen and an orange circle appeared. “That’s our fifty second warning to lightspeed. Not bad, I suppose. Nothing like the Crimson, but you can’t have everything, eh?”

“Fifty seconds until we’re gone!” announced Duggan. He guessed the transition to lightspeed would be a smooth one, given this was the Space Corps’ newest vessel. Nevertheless, he decided it was time for him to sit in his cloth-covered chair, absently wondering if they’d stopped making the fake leather ones.

A low rumbling heralded the catapult into lightspeed, accompanied by a featherlight sensation of spacial uncertainty. Then, it was done and the ES Terminus ripped its way through the fabric of the universe in a way which nature had never intended. Ahead lay undetermined hints of death and conflict.

Chapter Four

“Light-M achieved, sir. She’s got a lot of muscle,” said Breeze.

“I could walk faster,” said Chainer provocatively.

Duggan heard Lieutenant Massey snort. “This is the quickest ship in the fleet,” she said. “I’ve run a few sims on the theoretical output and we’re almost one percent faster than the Archimedes.”

“In that case, we’re the second fastest ship in the fleet,” said Chainer, struggling to withhold his glee.

“Lieutenant,” warned Duggan.

“What’s faster?” asked Perry, not taking the hint.

“The Crimson’s much faster,” said Breeze. “We recorded her at Light-V.”

“Enough!” said Duggan, more forcefully. “We can’t make another Crimson, so for all intents and purposes the Terminus may as well be the fastest thing we’ve got.”

The conversation ended and the background noises of the bridge came to the fore – a mixture of electrical humming and a peculiar high-pitched whine at the extents of hearing. Duggan checked the arrangement of his consoles and found them more or less to his liking. He could access the ship’s many systems and subsystems quickly and easily. The ergonomics department had put in a lot of effort. A series of control bars were positioned either side of his chair and within easy reach. Duggan rested his hands on them, letting the coldness seep into his skin. The manual controls weren’t active and wouldn’t work at lightspeed anyway, so he moved them carefully, testing the weight. There was much he needed to learn and he was desperate to get on with it. However, there was something he felt duty-bound to get out of the way first.

“Ensign Perry, please let the troops know there’ll be a briefing in fifteen minutes.”

“Where at, sir?”

“I have no idea,” said Duggan. “This is the first time I’ve been onboard. You pick somewhere and we’ll go there. I assume there’s a mess hall or similar?”

“I’ll tell them it’s in the mess hall,” said Perry, taking the easy way out.

Duggan set off with the crew, leaving McGlashan behind. The chances of anything going wrong were remote, and she’d be up to the task of keeping an eye on things for thirty or forty minutes. He located the mess hall with a minimum of deviation on the way - Breeze had been right in more ways than one when he said all ships were the same.

“Longer, wider passages, yet each going to the places you’d expect,” said Chainer. “I’m not complaining by the way.”

“Yeah, who wants to spend time learning the layout each time you come some place new?” asked Breeze.

The mess hall was the same as mess halls on every other ship Duggan had served on – bigger than some, smaller than others. There were long metal tables, firmly attached to the floor, along with a series of benches which were carefully designed so you wouldn’t want to sit on them for a moment longer than necessary. There were four food replicators visible – there could have been more, hidden behind the men and women streaming in from the far doorway. There was a low chatter amongst them – it was always the same on new ships with new people.

Sergeant Ortiz was already there, standing to one side. Duggan caught her eye and she gave him a nod to indicate she was in control. This was about the largest number of troops she could be given charge of without having a higher rank.

After a time, everyone was present bar the usual stragglers with their array of excuses. Duggan studied them, looking at the grim faces and hard eyes. These weren’t fresh recruits - these were battle-hardened troops who’d seen their share of combat. It was logical for the Space Corps to handpick who it wanted on its latest warship. There’d be the wise guys and the loudmouths in amongst them, but for now they showed impeccable discipline with their blue uniforms clean and pressed.

Duggan spoke and they listened. “We’re out looking for a lost prospector. You may be asking yourselves why the Space Corps has decided to send its first Galactic class heavy cruiser on a search and rescue. In reality, this mission may put each one of us in danger. The rumours you’ve heard – the Dreamers – they’re real. The details you’ve been told may be lacking, but I can assure you this is a new threat and potentially a far greater one than posed by the Ghasts.” There was some muttering at this. Rumours were easily believed, yet there were times when it needed a senior officer to drive home the truth. “We don’t know what these aliens look like and we don’t know the extent of their capabilities. In fact, we don’t even know if they’re responsible for the loss of the prospector. I’m a man who expects the worst in the hope that I won’t find it. Therefore, I’m assuming we’re going to run into a few of these bastards.”

A woman raised her hand. Her face was fine-boned and she had her dark hair tied back “Sir?”

“Name?” asked Duggan.

“Sergeant Carpenter, sir. If we end up in a firefight with these aliens, how do we respond appropriately if we don’t know their capabilities? Is there no intel at all?”

Duggan swept his gaze across the troops. “I can see from your faces that you’re the best and that means you’ve been given the crappiest job. I can only reiterate that we know nothing about the Dreamer’s ground capabilities. We don’t know what they look like or how they deal with threats. The best advice I have at the moment is to try and put a slug in them from as far away as possible.”

A man raised his hand this time. “Sir, Corporal Wong here. Are we definitely going to see some fighting?”

“There are no certainties. The SC Lupus might well have broken up owing to a fault onboard. I’m sure there’s more to it. There are other Space Corps vessels searching as well, but we’re the people who’re going to the highest risk zone. If there’s anything to find, I’m determined to find it. If there’s anything to kill, we’re going to be the ones to do it.”

“Damn, I’ll get a medal for this,” said a man a couple of rows back.

Duggan raised his voice, to ensure they heard his next words clearly. “This is to be a joint mission. We’ll have the Ghasts with us – an Oblivion battleship is coming. If the fighting starts, you can be sure they’ll want to join in. Does anyone have a problem with that?”

It seemed like everyone started talking at once. Questions came and the volume rose to an uncomfortable level. Duggan stood impassively for a few minutes until it settled. When things had quietened, he spoke.

“Most of us have fought the Ghasts for as long as we can remember. I’ve lost more friends than I can put a number to. The thing is, I’ve seen what’s coming and I know the Confederation isn’t going to come out of this one – not without help. I don’t know if the Ghasts hate us as much as we hate them and in truth I don’t really care. We’ve beaten them and now we need them. What the future holds, I can’t tell you.”

“We’ve got to keep fighting, man,” said a voice in the ranks.

“Yeah, it’s not about the Ghasts anymore. We beat those, now we’ve got something else to beat.”

“Nothing ever changes,” said Duggan. “You know that more than anyone. When we beat the Dreamers, there’ll be something else, and again after that. You might not have known it when you signed up, but you sure as hell must know it now.”

“Alvarez here doesn’t know shit, sir. He still can’t tell the business end of a rifle without guidance.”

“Hey, shut up, Hammond you Ghast lover,” came the response, presumably from Alvarez.

There were a number of boisterous exchanges from the troops. Duggan smiled and waved them to silence, since he didn’t want the meeting to get out of hand. “Anyone got a problem if it comes to fighting with the Ghasts?” he repeated. This time no one spoke and Duggan nodded. He had one last thing to deal with. “I’m sure you’ve met Sergeant Ortiz by now.” There was more muttering, not entirely friendly. “Sergeant Ortiz has seen more action than almost anyone I know. She’ll be in charge from now on. As of this moment, she’ll also be Acting Lieutenant Ortiz. Anything you need, it comes through her.”

Ortiz’ expression didn’t change. “Thank you, sir,” she said.

“I have matters to attend to,” said Duggan. “I know I can rely on the men and women in this room to do what’s necessary. Lieutenant Ortiz may want to speak to you after I’ve left.”

With that, he took the corridor which led back to the bridge. He’d hardly covered ten metres when he heard Lieutenant Ortiz raise her voice to a bellow. He smiled to himself – it had been a long time since he’d needed to promote anyone. Ortiz would have had a hard time of it if he’d left her at sergeant.

“Do you think they’ll fight willingly with the Ghasts if it’s required?” asked Breeze, falling into step.

“Absolutely,” said Duggan. “They look the part and I’m sure the skills are there. They’re soldiers and fighting is what they do.”

“I’m not sure what I think about our situation.”

Duggan laughed. “You’ve got to take the rough with the rough sometimes. As far as I’m aware, this is the first time we’ve done anything like it.”

“Since Prot-7,” said Breeze.

“That was through necessity,” said Duggan. “There is also necessity here yet there’s a lot more to it, bubbling under the surface. We’re the lab rats, being tested to see what happens and how we react.”

“You don’t get an easy ride, sir.”

“None of us do, Lieutenant. Anyone who’s with me has to put up with the same.”

“You live for it,” said Breeze. It was a statement and not a question.

It wasn’t a conversation Duggan would have permitted except amongst a few people he trusted most, and Breeze was one of those people. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he replied. “It’s the only way I can make a difference.”

They reached the bridge, to find McGlashan absorbed in an array of the ship’s specification documents. She looked up at the sound of the returning crew and her eyes found Duggan.

“Sir, you need to see this. The Admiral wasn’t wrong when he said the Terminus was designed to show off.”

McGlashan was excited, like a child with a dozen new toys. Some of it rubbed off on Duggan and he crossed over to take a look. Before he’d covered the few paces to her station, another excited voice reached him. This time, it was Chainer, holding a metal tray in front of him. There were several items resting on it.

“They’ve got the same food replicators as they installed on the Crimson!” he said breathlessly. “Hi-stim, coffee and a couple of hamburgers. If I die, at least I’ll die happy.”

Duggan shook his head. “Try not to spill it over your console, Lieutenant.”

Chapter Five

“What have you found?” asked Duggan. He waved Lieutenant Reyes over at the same time, in case he had any input.

“There are seventeen Bulwarks. Seventeen of them, sir. They’ve got a higher rate of fire than anything I’ve seen before.”

“New heat dissipation modules,” said Reyes. “They’ve figured out how to channel it out across the hull and into the engines. We could punch a hole through a twenty-metre steel plate with a single round.”

“There are three beam weapons with overlapping fields of fire,” continued McGlashan. “The range is still poor compared to the Ghast stuff.”

“They have no travel time,” said Reyes. He smiled. “If you can get in close enough to use them. These ones can draw from the main engines to increase their intensity and they have a firing interval of thirty seconds. I’ve heard they’re putting eight of them on the Maximilian.”

“Why not the Devastator as well?” asked McGlashan. The Hadron Devastator had been sent to the Helius Blackstar with the Lancer. The Lancer had been destroyed and the Devastator had taken six weeks to limp home on its scrambled engines.

“I’ve been told the Maximilian doesn’t need extensive redesign to fit the modules in its hull. It’s the only Hadron with a beam weapon.”

“The Devastator won’t be ready to resume service for a while,” said Duggan. “They’re trying to find out how the Dreamers managed to shut its engines down.”

“So it’s true?” asked Reyes.

“Yes, Lieutenant, I’m afraid it’s true. Whatever they used, our sensors can detect it, but we had no way of stopping it happening.”

“We’ve got thirty-six Lambda clusters,” continued McGlashan. “Each with ten tubes, and get this – an eight second reload.”

“They’ll burn out if you use the rapid reload more than three times in succession,” said Reyes. “After that, it’s an expensive strip-down and repair on the damaged parts. We’ve been warned not to use it more than twice in a row – just in case.”

“The range on these is good,” said McGlashan. “Another change for the better.”

“How far?” asked Duggan.

“They’ll target at a hundred and fifty thousand klicks,” said Reyes. “They’ve got new boosters as well, taking them up to almost three thousand klicks per second.”

“Everything’s new and improved,” said Duggan. “Even so, there’s nothing here that’ll beat a Ghast Shatterer.”

“There are two more options,” said McGlashan. “Locked down, so I guess we’ve got some nukes with us.”

“Lieutenant Reyes?” asked Duggan.

“I’d guess the same, sir. I’ve been told we have extras that are usable at the captain’s discretion.”

“I’ll have a look,” said Duggan. He sat at his chair and called up the weapons consoles. Sure enough, there were two options with a block on them. He enabled both, with the second option needing several layers of confirmation. “Can you see them now?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. The first one is definitely nukes.” She gave a low whistle. “Someone in the Space Corps has taken a shine to the idea of radiation weapons.”

“How so?” asked Duggan, standing again.

“There is a grand total of thirty-two nuclear weapon launchers on the ES Terminus. Not only that, but the payload is massive. Two gigatons per warhead from the looks of it and we’re carrying eight missiles for each tube.”

“They’ve had people working on this for a lot longer than the two months since we returned from the Blackstar,” Duggan said, referencing the fact that the Dreamer energy shields were vulnerable to heavy bursts of gamma rays.

“It’s been closer to two years since we brought the Crimson home,” said McGlashan. “If you remember, we used nukes to pretty good effect against the Ghasts. Maybe this is just luck and they were developing these things to be used in a war we’re no longer fighting.”

“Whatever the reason, I’m glad,” said Duggan. He leaned closer to one of the screens next to McGlashan. “Look at the propulsion section,” he said. “That’s something new, isn’t it?”

“Lambda based, I reckon,” she said, peering at the specification diagrams. “Should be a lot more useful than what we had before.”

“A lot better,” said Duggan. “I’m beginning to feel a little more relaxed about this whole trip. A few Shatterer launchers wouldn’t go amiss, but I can’t have everything.” He frowned. “This final weapon isn’t a weapon after all.”

“What is it?” asked Reyes.

“Something I’ve not seen in a long time,” said Duggan. “It’s an option to simultaneously detonate every single warhead we’re carrying. From the dates on these files, it’s been cobbled in at the last minute.”

“Why would you want to blow everything up at once?” said Reyes.

“Self-destruction, Lieutenant. To destroy the ship.”

Reyes scratched his head. “I could understand how you might want the ability to do that if you were expecting the enemy to board and take a vessel by force. That’s never going to happen these days.”

Duggan guessed why the facility was available and he didn’t like it. “It’s to make us into a weapon - not to deny the vessel to the enemy. If our engines get scrambled or we’re otherwise incapacitated, it’s to give us one last throw of the dice.”

McGlashan looked troubled. “Sir? What if the same happens to us again? Like what happened when we were sent to Lioxi on the Crimson.”

“Betrayal?” asked Duggan sharply, not caring if Reyes heard the exchange.

“I don’t know,” said McGlashan. “What if they waited until we were close to a high priority target and someone decided remotely it was time to activate the self-destruct? We could be sacrificed in the name of the greater good. There are enough explosives to take a big chunk out of an entire planet.”

“The Space Corps’ new Planet Breaker,” said Duggan with a humourless laugh. The idea left him uneasy and he returned to his station in order to disable the facility from Lieutenant Reyes’ console. Experience had told him to be wary with whom he trusted. If there was to be a double-cross it didn’t seem likely Reyes would be the source. Even so, access to the self-destruct facility was above the man’s grade. It was above McGlashan’s too, though she’d earned enough respect that Duggan was confident she could handle the responsibility.

When Duggan finished speaking to McGlashan and Reyes, he saw Lieutenant Breeze waving him over. The man looked to be in his element, with multi-coloured gauges and power bars covering three of his display screens.

“This ship is a marvel, sir. It just goes to show how things might have been if the Confederation Council hadn’t cut our spending to the bone. If we’d had half a dozen of these on the frontline five or six years ago, the Ghasts wouldn’t have come close to Charistos or Angax.” He fell silent for a moment, wondering if he’d said too much.

“I understand,” said Duggan. “If they’d poured in enough money back then, we’d have developed our technology faster and been better prepared. The Ghasts might not have had enough ships remaining to install their Shatterers.” He didn’t say that billions of lives – both human and Ghast – could have been saved.

“They’ve made some updates to the engines,” said Breeze, changing the subject. “It would appear those debriefing meetings had some use after all.”

“What sort of updates?”

“It’s more to the core than anything else. The brain of this vessel is fast – from the model designation, we’re carrying a pared-back version of the AIs they have on the Juniper. They have three full-fat models, of course, but there’s a lot more stuff to control on the orbital. If you see here, our AI has been optimised – they’ve added some extra hardware to it. Without knowing the specifics, I’d say it’s been designed to subdivide the engines into a series of linked units.”

“Meaning what, exactly?”

“If the Dreamers try to scramble us, the AI will pretend we’re only equipped with five hundred tonnes of engine, instead of nearly six billion tonnes.”

“That must mean the lab guys are sure the Dreamer weapon instructs the ship’s own AI to do the scrambling.”

“Not necessarily,” said Breeze. “Last I heard, they still didn’t have a clue, if you can excuse the technical term for it. They’re trying something, and that’s better than nothing.”

“Of course,” said Duggan.

Duggan spent the remainder of the following two days familiarising himself with all aspects of the ES Terminus. The ship had a lot of firepower and the Space Corps engineers were clearly proud of what they’d designed and built. In other circumstances, a new captain would have been given weeks of trials and training before he was permitted to take a warship like this one on active duty. It was a sign of the Space Corps’ concern that they’d sent Duggan out with this one immediately. In reality, there was nothing that would take an experienced captain unawares. There was always change and the best officers adapted to it.

So, the ES Terminus had newer and better weapons. Her rooms and corridors were kept at a constant temperature which never fluctuated more than a single degree in normal operation. There was a large gym and a small cinema room. The captain’s quarters consisted of two rooms – one for sleeping and another for study and contemplation. The bunks for the soldiers were marginally more opulent than normal. Everything was just a little bit better than it needed to be and Duggan couldn’t decide if he liked it or not.

“It’s got no soul, has it?” said McGlashan, as they sat opposite each other in the mess. It was breakfast time and the room was lively.

“How did you know what I was thinking?” he asked.

“Your face always tells a picture,” she said, laughing. “I’ve worked with you long enough that it’s easy to read.”

“I didn’t know I was so obvious,” he said gruffly. “You’re right, though. I think I miss the Detriment most of all. Even more so than the Crimson.”

“There’s something about living on the edge, isn’t there? We’ve had too much luck, sir. Maybe it was time to move on.”

“Maybe,” he hedged.

“And this is something you’ve deserved. Not just you – Frank, Bill and me too. You can achieve anything you want now there’s nobody to hold you back.” She winked. “I hear there’s an opening within the admiralty. You should apply.”

He laughed in genuine delight. “I’d love to see their faces when they opened that letter.”

“Definitely,” she said. “One day, though. You deserve a chance at it, sir.”

“If the past had treated me differently, I think it may have been a path to follow,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s something I want. I’m institutionalised – without a ship I feel lost.”

“You need to change, sir. Fill the void with something else.” Her eyes glittered – mischief tinged with sadness. “You should look up Captain Jonas when we get back.”

He laughed again, causing heads nearby to turn - Duggan wasn’t known for outward displays of humour, something the men and women on the Terminus had picked up on quickly. “Perhaps I’ll do that, Commander. Perhaps I will.”

The following morning, the ES Terminus exited lightspeed, ten minutes earlier than projected. The designated meeting place was located on the fringes of the Garon sector and close to nothing of interest.

“Anything here?” asked Duggan. He looked across in time to see Chainer giving Ensign Perry a nudge.

“Sir, just doing a sweep now,” said Perry. He looked relieved to have delivered this tiny snippet of information. If he lacked confidence he’d need to get over quickly.

“Let me know soon,” said Duggan, meaning I need to know at once.

The Terminus was bedecked in sensors and the comms team worked fast in order to collate the data.

“I’ve detected a single object, sir,” said Massey. “Four-point-five kilometres in length, with a volume almost twice our own. They’re twenty minutes away on full gravity drive.”

“They’re turning, sir,” said Chainer. “Swinging about and coming to greet us.”

“Send a message to the Juniper to let them know we’ve arrived and then hail the Oblivion,” said Duggan.

“They are responding,” said Chainer. “The captain wants to speak to you.”

“Good, put him through to my earpiece,” said Duggan.

A voice, startling in its clarity, came through. Duggan had been informed that the Space Corps had made rapid strides in the language modules in the last two months and it was apparent by the subtleties in inflection, where there had previously been only a monotone.

“Captain John Duggan. I am Nil-Far, and I command the battleship Dretisear.”

Chapter Six

“At least we know who we’re dealing with,” said Duggan, when his brief conversation was over. Nil-Far was about as talkative as Duggan.

“You know their captain?” asked Massey.

“We’ve met once or twice,” said Duggan drily. “If the other Ghasts are as trustworthy as Nil-Far, we can be sure they will stick to the letter of our peace treaty.”

“When we sign one,” said Massey.

“Precisely. The Dretisear has been kept in the dark as to our final destination. It seems as if the Space Corps wasn’t ready to trust them with advance information about the SC Lupus’ travels until we were available to provide an escort. Lieutenant Chainer, please send the necessary information to the Ghast ship. We’ll be leaving at once.”

“I’ve sent them the data,” said Chainer.

“Deep fission drives warming up,” said Breeze. “They’re doing likewise.”

“They don’t stick around,” said Reyes.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the Ghasts are efficient,” said Duggan. “Nil-Far is definitely not alone amongst them in having that trait.”

“You sound as if you like them, sir,” said Massey. There was a hint of triumph in her features and Duggan realised she’d been waiting for a chance to accuse him. It was widely-known he’d dealt with the Ghasts and that he’d brought one of their senior officers to the Juniper. Somehow it appeared as if this made him look like a sympathiser – at least in Massey’s eyes.

“What do you mean, Lieutenant?” he asked, his voice neutral.

Massey opened her mouth and then closed it, knowing she’d started along a path without taking precautions against the dangers ahead. Her mouth opened again and she forged on regardless. “It’s just the way you talk about them. Never a bad word to say. It sounds to me as if you like them. Sir.”

Duggan stalked over to her seat. “Stand up!” he said. She stood and looked at him. Massey was a tall woman, but her eyes weren’t level. Even so, she met Duggan’s stare evenly and this time the insolence was clear.

“What do you recall of my address to the troops in the mess room two days ago?” he asked calmly.

“Not much,” she said.

“Not much, sir.”

“I don’t remember very much of what you said, sir.”

“You won’t remember me saying how much I liked them, because I have fought against them for my entire adult life, Lieutenant Massey. I have nothing to prove to you or anyone.”

“They’re bastards, sir. Each and every one of them. You shouldn’t call them trustworthy. They’ve killed billions of people!”

At once, Duggan knew. “Who have you lost?” he asked.

Her face wilted and her eyes glistened. “It feels like everyone, sir.”

“You need to put it to one side, Lieutenant, before it breaks you. The Ghasts are not our friends, but we need them. The Dreamers will kill us all if we stand alone. We have no choice. Take your seat again.”

She nodded and the hostility in her face was gone. Duggan was glad to get this over with so soon, rather than have Massey fester about it until she did something really stupid. The rest of the crew were sitting and watching their screens intently, pretending nothing had happened.

“Are we at lightspeed, yet?” Duggan asked.

“A couple of minutes ago, sir,” said Breeze. “The Oblivion beat us to it by two seconds.”

“Want me to keep a score?” asked Chainer. “One-nil to them in the pissing competition, with everything still to play for.”

“That won’t be necessary, Lieutenant,” said Duggan, pleased to feel the air clear with Chainer’s light-hearted remarks. “We’re meant to be a Cadaveron-beater, remember? Not an Oblivion-beater.”

“I don’t believe that for one moment,” said McGlashan. “The Space Corps engineers are dying to see how we compare.”

“Yes, I bet they are,” said Duggan. “One-nil, it is.”

“I’ll settle for a draw,” said Breeze. “That would be effectively a victory, considering how much smaller we are.”

“We can judge it at the end,” said Duggan, his tone making it clear the conversation was over. “Now – what do we know of where we’re going?”

“Glantia-312,” said Breeze. “There’s nothing remarkable about it from what I can see on the charts. There are two or three planets where you might expect to find metal ore and minerals.”

“This was the last scheduled stop for the Lupus, wasn’t it?” asked McGlashan. “The audit reports show they’d visited several solar systems beforehand and they checked in with base each time.”

“So I see,” replied Duggan.

“Why aren’t they sending all the search and rescue vessels to Glantia-312, instead of spreading them thinly?” she asked.

Duggan shrugged. “The mission briefing documents give details of the Projections Team’s findings. There are several places between Glantia-312 and the Lupus’ previous stop-off. It’s not entirely unknown for an experienced prospector captain to make a diversion if they come across data to suggest there’s a greater chance of success elsewhere. Besides, if the Dreamers are responsible for the loss of this ship, having greater numbers might not be to our advantage.”

“More valuable warships to get scrambled, jammed and shot down,” said Chainer helpfully.

“The Terminus is the only vessel to be accompanied by the Ghasts,” said Duggan. “This tells you where the Space Corps believes the largest risks are. If anything goes wrong, both the Confederation and the Ghasts will be equally weakened.”

“I suppose,” said McGlashan. “I can’t help but feel like we’re the stick they’re poking into the viper’s nest.”

“We’re definitely that, Commander. I thought you’d have learned by now – if you lift your head above the parapet in the Space Corps, you’d better be wearing a helmet. The more noticed you are, the more crap you get thrown your way.”

Chainer gave Ensign Perry a gentle elbow in the arm. “You should listen to this. You might learn something about how the world works.” Perry smiled nervously and said nothing.

“We’ve got five more days until we arrive,” said Duggan. “As ever, we will expect the worst. I need the comms team to provide detailed early scans of the vicinity. The last time we encountered a Dreamer vessel it was difficult to get a sensor lock on it. Lieutenant Chainer has learned from this and he’ll bring you up to speed on what to look for. We can’t afford to get it wrong.”

“We’ll exit lightspeed approximately an hour out from the fourth and fifth planets – equidistant between the two,” said Breeze.

“Why did you pick that location?” asked Massey curiously.

“I spent time on a prospector, many years ago. It’s quite interesting what they do and I picked up a few bits and pieces. Generally, you’d choose the centre planets if you’re after quick results. The inner ones are too hot and the outer ones too cold.”

“We can mine at really low temperatures, can’t we?” asked Perry.

“Yes, we can. It’s not always feasible to do so and the furthest planets are usually small and therefore have less potential for holding big deposits. Hence we aim for the middle and see what happens.”

“Oh,” said Perry. He sounded disappointed somehow, as if he thought there should have been a far greater amount of scientific decision making involved in the process.

With a few days to fill, Duggan looked for activities to occupy his time. He wasn’t a big sleeper, since his brain was always more active than was good for him. There was much to learn about the ES Terminus and he threw himself into the task, studying data sheets and specification documents. On the final morning, he took himself off to examine the hardware they carried in the hold. McGlashan came along, also looking for something to do. The cargo area was accessed by a lift or steps. It was big and it needed to be, in order to contain the firepower which had been packed inside.

“You could assault a major city with this lot,” said McGlashan. “Assuming you didn’t decide to destroy your target from orbit instead,” she added.

“The needs of war change constantly,” said Duggan. “I imagine when they made the plans for the Galactic class, they foresaw a need for big guns on the ground. We must have been taking a few hits on our mining outposts at the time.”

“These tanks look a bit more dangerous than the little ones on a Gunner,” she said.

Four of the Space Corps’ heavy tanks sat upon their launch hatches. The vehicles were held in place with gravity clamps powered by the ship’s engines. The tanks were twenty-five metres long, ten wide and six tall. Their fronts were angular to help them deflect incoming rounds. The rear was ugly and squared off. There was a single turret on each, with a wide-bore muzzle that could unleash a projectile the size of a man’s head. They could rip a hole in a mountain, or flatten dozens of buildings in a short space of time. In spite of their size, they were mostly armour and weapons, with little room for troops inside. Deeper in the cargo bay loomed two dark shapes, much bigger and far more intimidating.

“Colossus tanks,” said McGlashan. “I thought they’d stopped making these.”

“They did for a while,” said Duggan. “The money it costs to make each one would shock you. These look pristine – the Corps must have started up production again once they got the funding.”

Each Colossus tank was more than forty metres in length. They were a similar shape to most Corps tanks, but they carried a single, huge, slow-firing turret-mounted gun that was designed to knock out Ghast transporters on the ground – or anything else stupid enough to come into its sights. It also had two guided plasma launchers mounted on its shoulders.

“I once saw one of these get hit by two Ghast missiles launched from orbit and it still kept going,” said Duggan. “It’s almost solid alloy.”

“What happened to that tank?”

“The next six missiles took it out,” said Duggan. “What’s on the ground can never beat what’s in the sky.” It was an old mantra and belief in it was why the Space Corps had subsumed the other branches of the military more than a hundred years ago.

They finished up their exploration of the Terminus’ hold. There was a pair of slow-moving depleted uranium repeaters and two micro-batteries that could launch adapted versions of the Lambda missiles. Micro in this instance was something of a misnomer and the batteries weren’t much smaller than one of the heavy tanks.

On the far wall were lockers which contained over two hundred spacesuits, along with rifles, grenades and a variety of hand-held launchers. All-in-all, there was a devastating array of weaponry, should it ever be needed.

“I’ve seen enough,” said Duggan.

“Impressed?”

“I wouldn’t have expected anything less on a top-of-the-line fleet heavy cruiser. They made sure the Terminus was ready for anything.”

Duggan’s earpiece buzzed and Lieutenant Breeze spoke to him briefly.

“We’ll be arriving soon?” asked McGlashan, when the exchange or words was over.

“Thirty minutes. We’d best get back to the bridge and prepare.”

They hurried away, through the wide corridors of the Terminus. As they ran, McGlashan asked something which had been on her mind. “You threatened to throw Lieutenant Nichols in the brig if he interfered. Do we even have a brig?”

“I have no idea, Commander. If we don’t, I’ll just have to proceed with my second threat and launch him into space.” He felt his mood turning sour. “Damn the man, I won’t have him interfering with anything aboard this ship!”

“He’s just doing his job, sir.”

“He likes putting his oar in - I can see it in his face. He’ll cause trouble if he’s given the chance.”

The bridge lay ahead. The blast door slid open and they went inside.

Chapter Seven

The ES Terminus emerged into near space. Within five seconds, the Dretisear did likewise, a few thousand klicks off to one side. Given the distances involved, it was remarkably well done. The crew on the Terminus launched into a well-rehearsed drill, scanning the close, medium and far distances.

“Got nothing close, except the Oblivion,” said Perry.

“Continuing with medium-range scan,” said Massey.

“Working the super-fars,” added Chainer, his face a picture of concentration. He’d given himself the most difficult task. “I’ll shout when I’ve got something to tell.”

“Ensign Perry, hail the Dretisear and enquire as to their wellbeing.”

“Hailing them now, sir. Their comms uhm man is responding. They have nothing to report and are scanning the area. He reports them to be on full alert.”

“Good,” said Duggan. He’d spoken to Nil-Far enough to know the Ghasts worked in a surprisingly similar manner to humans. “Report that we are doing likewise. Afterwards, repeat your close-in scans and don’t stop until Lieutenant Chainer or I tell you to do so.”

“Sir.”

Duggan sat down, sinking into the thick padding of his seat. He waved Breeze over and showed him a computer-generated view of the orbiting planets.

“We’ve got three in the middle of the nine. Which one do we check out first?”

Breeze furrowed his brow. “Planet six isn’t a good bet. I reckon the Lupus would have been interested in four and five.”

“One small, one larger,” said Duggan. “It feels like picking a bottle of wine by the label and hoping it’s a good one.”

Breeze chuckled. “I don’t see much to distinguish them. Two cold, grey balls of rock which may or may not be riddled with veins of precious metal. Choose whichever one you wish, sir.”

Duggan stared at his screen, with the two planets side-by-side, as if he could somehow get a clue about which alternative the captain of the Lupus would have chosen. “Anything on the fars?” he asked.

“Medium range scan almost done, sir. No sign of anything untoward.”

“Short range still clear,” said Perry.

“We’re going for the larger planet,” said Duggan at last. “Please communicate our movements to the Dretisear. What’s the planet called, anyway?”

“It doesn’t have a name yet,” said Breeze. “I can make the ship assign one automatically and have it pinged back to base for the records. Want me to do it?”

“May as well,” said Duggan.

“According to this, we’re going to Trasgor,” Breeze said. “And the fifth planet has been named Virtus, should we need to search that one as well.”

“Send a message to the Juniper and let them know we’re safe and well,” said Duggan, aware that the Terminus’ AI would likely have already done so. “We’re going to perform a slow orbit of Trasgor until the comms team are certain the missing ship isn’t here.”

“I’ve finished the first far scan, sir,” said Chainer. He looked perplexed.

“I don’t like it when you get that expression, Lieutenant.”

“Something doesn’t feel right. I’ve run a quick pass over the area of the planet’s surface we can see and everything looks fine, except that the oxygen levels look abnormally high. It’s not something I’d normally notice.”

“What do you mean abnormally high?” asked Duggan. “One or two percent?”

“Closer to ten percent and it’s not evenly distributed – the quantity increases towards the dark side to the west.”

“I’ve got metal, sir,” said Massey, urgency in her voice. “A couple of hundred thousand klicks away.”

“Is it the Lupus?” asked Duggan, crossing for a look. “Keep the Dretisear informed,” he told Ensign Perry.

“They’re telling me about it,” said Perry. “They must have seen it at the same time as we did.”

“I can’t confirm the origins, sir,” said Massey. “I’m sure it’s wreckage of some type.”

“It’s not going to be anything other than the Lupus, is it?” said Duggan, not really looking for a response.

“There’s more metal on the surface,” said Chainer. “On object of some sort.”

“Parts of the wreckage?” asked Duggan.

“I don’t think so, sir. This is big and it’s not moving. I need more time or we need to be nearer.”

Duggan didn’t like what he was hearing. “I want you all looking out for an enemy vessel. Ignore the wreckage for the moment. I’m going to bring us closer.”

He took manual control of the Terminus and it surged forward on its gravity drive. It was testament to the design improvements that there was no sensation of movement. The only way Duggan knew they were at fourteen hundred klicks per second was the reading on his display.

“Be prepared,” he said to McGlashan.

“As ever.”

“I’ve got something, sir,” said Chainer, his voice louder than usual. “It’s emerging from the planet’s shadow and coming towards us. Half of our sensors are skating off it, like it doesn’t want to be seen. It’s making two thousand klicks per second – whatever it is, it’s a lot faster than we are.”

“Message the Dretisear. We’re assuming the approaching vessel is hostile and we’ll take appropriate action.”

“I’m getting the same message from them,” said Perry.

“Don’t sound so surprised, Ensign. The Ghasts know how to deal with threats.”

“The Ghasts have launched six Shatterers, sir,” said McGlashan. Her expression was one of utter shock. “We’re a million and a half klicks away.”

“Ten times the range of our Lambdas,” said Breeze with a shake of his head. “Who is showing off to who?”

“Our comms have just gone dead, sir,” said Chainer. “No warning, nothing. They’ve fitted some ancient backup circuits, presumably in the event of this happening. I’m going to try and get a message off to the Juniper.”

“Hold!” said Duggan. “We don’t know if the enemy can trace our comms to their destination. The Space Corps knows where we are if anything goes wrong.”

“Six minutes till the Shatterers reach their target,” said McGlashan.

“What do we have on the approaching ship?” asked Duggan.

“It’s smaller than we are,” said Chainer. “Between two and three klicks in length. It’s got the same energy output as the one we fought on Prot-7, so it’s got shields. Definitely a Dreamer ship – what the hell is it waiting around here for?”

“If it’s more than two klicks long, this ship is bigger than the one on Prot-7,” said Breeze grimly. “It might have a lot more juice to maintain its shields.”

“Good job we’ve got a hold full of nukes,” said McGlashan.

“They’re definitely going to work?” asked Reyes.

“They did last time, Lieutenant. Who knows what they’ll do against this particular warship? Just keep your fingers crossed it’s only the mothership which has the engine scramblers,” said Duggan. “Otherwise it’s going to get really messy for us.”

Reyes crossed himself, a gesture Duggan hadn’t seen in a long while. “I’m praying, sir,” he said.

“Captain Duggan, if the probabilities show the incoming vessel to have superior capabilities to the Terminus, I recommend you commence the transition to lightspeed,” said Nichols. “They’ve already disabled our comms.”

“Your advice is noted, Lieutenant Nichols,” said Duggan, struggling to keep his voice calm. “My mission is to learn about our enemy, not to run away as soon as they appear in the distance. Nor can we abandon our allies to face this threat alone.”

“They’re not our allies yet, sir,” said Nichols smoothly. “Negotiations aren’t complete.”

“We’re staying,” snapped Duggan. “This discussion is over.”

“Yes, sir,” said Nichols. There was the faintest hint of something in his voice, which bordered on mockery.

“The Dreamer vessel has launched something, sir,” said Chainer. “Twelve objects, moving fast.”

“Missiles?” asked Duggan. This was the first time he was aware they’d used ballistics.

“I’d guess so. Our AI has plotted their trajectory. They’re trying to shoot down the Ghast missiles. Damn those things are even quicker than the Shatterers.”

“I’m detecting another six launches from the Dretisear,” said McGlashan. “I hope they’ve got plenty of ammunition.”

The distance between the three ships steadily closed. Duggan ground his teeth in impotent anger, unable to do anything more than watch. None of the Terminus’ weapons would target an object from so far and he knew from experience they couldn’t lock onto the Dreamer ships anyway. Range and targeting had become the most important factors in ship-to-ship combat, rather than the ability to launch hundreds of missiles simultaneously. The Space Corps needed to catch up and soon.

“Four of the Ghast missiles have been destroyed,” said Chainer. “The remaining two from that wave will impact shortly. Maybe the Dreamer technology isn’t so infallible after all.”

It wasn’t the best time to take comfort from the possibility and Duggan watched his tactical display like a hawk. “Commander McGlashan, as soon as we’re in range I want to see thirty-two nuclear missiles heading for that Ghast ship and I want three hundred Lambdas following right behind.”

“We can only launch ten nukes directly forward.”

“Fine, launch ten.”

“There’s been another launch from the enemy vessel,” said Chainer. “Shit – dozens of them this time.”

“They’re not all targeting the Shatterers,” said Massey. “I’d estimate we’ve got twenty aimed at us and another twenty at the Dretisear. The rest of them are on an intercept course with the Ghast missiles.”

“Another six Shatterers have just left the Oblivion,” said Reyes. “This is going to be intense.”

“You’d better get used to it,” muttered Chainer, his eyes flicking between three different screens at once.

“We won’t be within firing range until after their missiles reach us,” said McGlashan.

“Here come some more,” said Massey. “Another fifty.”

“Two more of the Ghast Shatterers have been intercepted,” said Chainer.

“Get our countermeasures ready,” said Duggan.

“We’re not lacking in those,” said McGlashan. “Shame they’re untested against the Dreamer missiles.”

“It’s going to be a very brief fight if our countermeasures are ineffective,” said Duggan.

Through the void outside, dozens of missiles raced towards the Terminus and the Dretisear with combined velocities of over six thousand kilometres per second. At his station, Duggan hunched over the controls of the warship, his jaw set and his eyes hard. The thrill of the unknown electrified his mind and body and his eyes never left the incoming swarm of red dots on his tactical display. He tried through the power of his will to force the Bulwark cannons to target, not knowing if they’d fire or not. The seconds counted down and the crew waited to see how this first round of battle would conclude.

Chapter Eight

At intervals along the front and top of the Terminus, hatches opened. Bulwark cannons tore along reinforced alloy runners in a fraction of a second, emerging into their exterior positions. Stubby muzzles rotated at terrifying speed as their tracking modules sought a target. In-built sensors sent out pings, detecting the inbound Dreamer missiles. The targets were travelling at a speed in excess of the design capabilities of the Bulwarks. Nevertheless, nine of the seventeen cannons locked on and sprayed thousands upon thousands of their projectiles into space, while the ship’s AI tried to predict the future position of the missiles.

At almost the same time, other hatches opened in hundreds of places about the hull of the ES Terminus. Dense, metal globes shot away into the darkness, their transmitters spewing out interference to confuse the enemy missiles. There were other openings – a series of tubes ran along the back of the Terminus, protruding like the spine of an enormous, metal creature. Spheres of glowing white were hurled outwards, to explode in a blinding cloud that hid everything with its intensity.

Thousands of kilometres away – a tiny distance in the context of such engagements - the Dretisear lit up the darkness with its own ceaseless expulsions of superhot plasma. A dozen Vule cannons unleashed a barrage of projectiles, their trajectories converging, changing and converging once more, as their tracking systems switched from one target to the next.

“Countermeasures away,” said McGlashan. “The Bulwarks are targeting.” Her relief was palpable.

“I believe the Oblivion has launched six more missiles,” said Chainer. “It’s hard to read through their flares.”

“We’ll be able to launch our own missiles in a few seconds,” said McGlashan.

“They won’t target,” said Duggan. “Make sure you’ve disabled their guidance systems and fire them in a straight line. I want the nuclear warheads to detonate automatically when they come into range of those bastards.”

“Aye, sir. On with it now,” she replied.

“Quickly,” said Duggan, gritting his teeth.

“The Dreamer ship has launched another fifty missiles,” said Massy.

A series of status warning lights appeared on one of Duggan’s screens. The background hum of the Terminus became a rumbling.

“Two impacts aft,” said Breeze. “Shit, and a beam strike in the same place.”

“The Dreamer ship has been hit by four Shatterers, sir,” said Chainer. “Their energy output went up by four hundred percent.”

“Ten of our nukes are on their way,” said McGlashan. “Flying straight outwards.”

“Two hundred Lambdas hot on their heels,” added Reyes. “It’s the most we could launch, since half of the clusters are pointing the wrong way.”

“Come on,” said Nichols to himself. It was cool, but the man had a sheen of sweat across his forehead – the first sign he was affected by events around him.

“The Ghasts are launching too. Almost five hundred missiles!” said McGlashan. “They couldn’t even launch their conventional plasma warheads at the Dreamers back on Prot-7. Seems as if they’ve done some work to sort it out.”

There wasn’t time to dwell on it – the Dretisear outgunned the Terminus by a wide margin. The Space Corps’ newest heavy cruiser wasn’t a match for the Ghasts’ most recent battleship. Foolish to think that it was, thought Duggan. “What’s our damage?” he asked.

“Two big holes out the back,” said Breeze. “And it’s pretty hot in there, too. We’ve lost some of our engine output.”

“The enemy have fired more missiles,” said Massey. “Another fifty. From their trajectories, these are intended to intercept our nukes.”

“We’ve been hit by their particle beam again,” said Breeze. “The Dretisear has taken at least two hits as well. She’s spilling positrons from four places – a few of the enemy missiles got through the Ghast countermeasures.”

“Our beam weapons aren’t in range,” said Reyes. “Not by a long shot.”

“Give them another ten nukes,” said Duggan. “Follow up with Lambdas.”

“The nukes aren’t ready to launch, sir,” said McGlashan.

“Fire the Lambdas. Everything we’ve got.”

“They’re on their way. Our Bulwarks are going again,” she said.

“Most of our first wave of nukes was successfully intercepted, sir,” said Reyes. “Three have detonated.”

“Another one of their missiles got through,” said Breeze. “That’s a third hit.”

The light on the bridge changed abruptly, to the rich, deep red of danger. Warnings and alerts rolled over Duggan’s screen in an unending wave.

“Some of our weapons have been disabled by the strikes,” said McGlashan.

“That last one came close to the life support modules,” said Breeze.

Duggan wasn’t paying attention to the damage reports. He saw three growing circles bloom over his tactical display as the gamma rays from the nuclear warheads expanded from the centre. The Dreamer warship appeared as a red dot, moving at an incredible speed through the fringes of one of the circles. Hundreds of smaller dots converged on it, the human and Ghast missiles launched with their homing capabilities disabled.

“The Dretisear is changing course,” said Massey.

“Running?” asked Duggan sharply.

“Damaged, I think,” she replied.

“What about the enemy shields, damnit?” he asked.

“Another two jumps in their output, sir,” said Chainer. “We got a couple of lucky hits, but their shields are still functioning.”

Duggan swore – the nuclear detonations mustn’t have been close enough to disable the enemy shields. “Are we ready to launch again?” he asked.

“Only Lambdas. The nukes have a different reload mechanism, which is taking a whole lot longer.”

“Fire the Lambdas then,” he said.

“Away they go.”

“They haven’t fired the particle beam for a while,” said Breeze. “I wonder if they’re unable to use it when their energy shield is under heavy bombardment.”

“We’ll think about it later, Lieutenant,” said Duggan.

“Another missile launch from the enemy, sir. Divided between us and the Ghasts,” said Massey. “Their ship is coming in real close to us.”

“The Ghasts have fired their disruptor, and launched another four Shatterers.” said McGlashan. “They’ve lost two of their launch tubes.”

“The Dreamer energy shield has gone, sir!” said Chainer excitedly. “The disruptor must have knocked it out.”

Duggan gripped the control bars tightly. Experience suggested the enemy shields wouldn’t stay down for long. In fact, he was surprised the disruptor had disabled them at all. On his tactical screen, the Lambdas and the inbound Dreamer missiles crossed over. Two of the Lambdas connected with the larger dot of the Dreamer warship, while the remainder flew onwards. The Shatterers appeared at the extremes of his display, their trajectory changing as they homed in on their target.

“We got a missile hit!” said Chainer. “Two hits!”

“Fire the Lambdas again!” said Duggan. He saw how close the enemy had come. “And get our particle beams on them. See how much they like it.”

“I can only give you sixty Lambdas, sir. Half of our port tubes are jammed.”

“Do it!”

A distant whining sound rose to accompany the rumbling of the damaged warship. “I got a beam weapon hit on them,” said Reyes.

“Don’t fire them again!” shouted Breeze urgently. “That last one pulled too much from our engines and they’re already dispersing a lot of heat close to the infantry quarters.”

Reyes jumped as if he’d stuck his finger in an electrical socket. “Sorry,” he mumbled, even though there was no way he could have been aware.

“Their shields are back!” said Chainer in dismay.

A faint thrumming came through the floor and the walls as the Bulwark cannons discharged once more. McGlashan activated the countermeasures again and the shock drones flew in all directions. Duggan watched the tactical screen from the corner of his eye as one-by-one, the Dreamer missiles winked out of existence. One final missile remained, having evaded a torrent of Bulwark fire and it plunged into the side of the ES Terminus, midway between the bridge and the troops’ quarters. The shockwave of it coursed through the metal walls.

“We got another three Lambda hits on their shield,” said Chainer. “Their energy output went up sixty percent. I think they’re struggling to hold it, sir.”

“Fire whatever we’ve got,” said Duggan. It seemed like it would be too little, too late. The next wave of Dreamer missiles would destroy both the Terminus and the Dretisear.

“The Oblivion’s fired its disruptor again,” said McGlashan, an edge to her voice that could have been fear or excitement.

“Their shields are gone,” said Chainer, with the same unidentifiable quality to his words.

Duggan didn’t say anything. Aside from the three spacecraft, there were only four objects on his tactical screen. The four Shatterers reached their target, flickered and then disappeared. The red dot of the enemy vessel remained in place for a further two seconds then it too, disappeared.

Chapter Nine

“Yes!” said Chainer, jumping from his seat. “That’s taught those bastards!” He sat down quickly when he realised their situation was still far from ideal.

“I need updates and I need them fast,” said Duggan. “What’s our damage? How is the Ghast battleship? And get me confirmation of the kill. I want to know for certain we’ve got them.”

The details spilled out from his crew.

“The kill is definite, sir,” said Massey. “There’s a cloud of white-hot debris spread across a few thousand klicks. We’ve already passed a few of the bigger pieces.”

“What’s our status? I need someone to speak to the guys below and find out if they’ve had any casualties. Lieutenant Chainer, I want you to use the backup comms circuit – try and talk to the Ghasts. We can’t be certain there aren’t any more Dreamer ships in the locality.”

“We’d be dead if there were,” said McGlashan.

“Our status is that we’re full of holes,” said Breeze with concern. “Our engines have suffered a near-critical failure. Luckily, there’s no sign of a breach into the life support modules.”

“What about our weapons?”

“Not looking great,” said McGlashan. “We’ve got multiple failures across offensive and defensive systems. I’m completely locked out of the nukes and we’ve lost twenty-two of our Lambda clusters.”

“Is the loss permanent?” asked Duggan.

“Too early to say. The AI’s looking to repair or reroute where it can. If it’s heat damage, there’s a chance we’ll be able to recover some of our capabilities. I really don’t know what’s up with the nukes – they have their own reload and launch instruction set. It’s different to what I’m used to.”

Duggan swore under his breath. A single Dreamer spacecraft had nearly managed to destroy two of the most powerful warships in the human and Ghast navies. He didn’t know what capabilities the Terminus had remaining now it was over – certainly they couldn’t put up much of a fight if any other hostiles showed up. The most sensible course of action for the safety of the ship and its crew would be to leave the area immediately – assuming that was an option. Unfortunately, they’d been sent here to gather intel and there was something unexplained that needed to be investigated.

“I want details on the object you detected on the surface,” he said to Chainer. “Lieutenant Breeze – I need to know if we can go to lightspeed and if not, when we will be able to.” He turned to McGlashan and Reyes. “Get those weapons back online. We’re a sitting duck without them.”

There was a chorus of acknowledgements and Duggan dropped into his seat to do some testing of his own. He discovered there was some output from the gravity engines, but they were at a fraction of their maximum. The status of the deep fission drives was buried beneath layers of alerts and errors. He ignored them for the moment – that was something for Breeze to explore.

“Sir? I’m getting a response from the Dretisear,” said Chainer. “They must have installed additional comms systems as well.”

“What do they say?”

“It’s difficult to understand and I keep losing the signal,” said Chainer. “I think a summary is that they’re pretty beat up.”

“Tell me something I didn’t know,” said Duggan.

“Their fission engines are offline and their gravity drives nearly at zero. They won’t be going anywhere until they cool down.”

“I appreciate their honesty,” said Duggan. “Update them with our status and ask if they have sufficient power to maintain an orbit over the planet – tell them it’s called Trasgor.”

“It’s going to take them four or five hours to get there,” said Chainer.

“I doubt we’ll be going very much faster,” replied Duggan. “We’re going to see what it is the Dreamers left on the ground.”

“Is that wise, sir?” asked McGlashan. “What if it’s a weapon?”

Duggan acknowledged the comment with a nod. “We need to find out, whatever it takes. The Dreamers aren’t our friends and I don’t imagine their activity on the planet is benign.”

“We should try and contact the Space Corps,” said McGlashan.

“Yes, we should, Commander. Lieutenant Chainer? Can you get a message to the Juniper?”

“I think so. The signal will be slow and I thought you were concerned it might be tracked.”

“What’s our closest monitoring station?”

“Gamma – it’s the only one in the Garon sector.”

“Good, route the signal through Monitoring Station Gamma. Make the guys there aware of the risks we’ll have subjected them to. They may want to abandon it for a while and I don’t want any more blood on my hands.”

“Preparing the communication,” said Chainer. “What do you want me to tell them?”

“Tell them what’s happened. We’ll update when we can.”

“Okay, I’m sending it. The signal won’t get there for another couple of days. This backup equipment we’re using is old and slow compared to the new stuff. Luckily for us it’s a bit more robust.”

“I’m taking us towards Trasgor. Send a recommendation to the Dretisear to remain at a distance. Nil-Far’s no fool, so I’m sure he’ll do so anyway.”

The Terminus swung around smoothly. To an observer, the warship might have seemed graceful, even with its exterior charred and damaged. To Duggan, everything felt cumbersome and heavy. A vibration grated through the control bars and something creaked behind the bulkhead wall. The recent combat, combined with the planet’s rotation had taken the surface object away from sensor sight.

“If we can’t see them, they can’t see us,” said Chainer, trying to put a positive spin on their situation. “As soon as they come into view, I’ll let you know. I’d estimate it’ll be at least an hour at the speed we’re going.”

“Understood,” said Duggan.

The updates kept coming, piling on top of each other and reminding Duggan how much more there was to consider on a warship as big as this one. It had been a long time since he’d captained anything larger than the Crimson and he didn’t like the idea that he’d become rusty.

“Bad news from the troops below,” said Perry. “Five confirmed dead and another six out of action. Lieutenant Ortiz apologises for the delay in updating you – there’s been a lot going on.”

“Patch her through, Ensign.”

Ortiz spoke through the bridge speakers. There was an absence of background noise at her end and her voice was loud and clear. “Sir, we’re all suited up. The temperatures aren’t too good here.”

“We took a beating, Lieutenant.”

“I saw it on the update feeds in the barracks, sir. Some of the guys weren’t where they should have been – they were practising laps in the aft corridors. They ignored the internal alarms telling them to get the hell away.”

Duggan breathed out noisily. The soldiers who’d been killed had chosen to disregard procedure by remaining in a high-risk area of the ship. Even the experienced guys could become cocky once they’d survived a few engagements. “I’ll get their details when things have calmed down. Is there anything left to give them a send-off?”

“There’s enough, sir,” said Ortiz. Her anger and frustration were easy to hear.

“Very well. We’ll deal with it when we’re able.”

Duggan closed the line, shut his eyes for a moment and sat with his fists tightly clenched. He pushed aside the emotions. “What else has gone wrong?”

“Sir, the lightspeed engines aren’t coming back anytime soon,” said Breeze. “We’ve got some big areas completely burned out and the rest is going to stay hot for days. The gravity drives should improve slowly – you might have another jump in output within the hour.”

“We’ll die of old age trying to get home on the gravity drive,” said Duggan.

“That we will. I can’t tell you when we’ll have lightspeed available. I’m certain we’ll get them back eventually.”

Another hour passed, without significant improvement in the ship’s damage status. The Dretisear stayed within range, though the Ghasts didn’t let on if they could go any faster. The emergency lighting on the bridge remained in place and every one of the displays was a sea of red. Aside from the extensive damage, Duggan was relieved the life support was fully operational and ninety percent of the sensor arrays were undamaged. Most of all, he was happy that the Dreamer warship hadn’t been equipped with an engine scrambler – he assumed they’d have used it if it was available. If the scrambler was something only the mothership carried, it was significant news.

“The surface object is coming into view, sir,” said Chainer.

“Are we close enough for you to see what you want to see?”

“The closer the better,” Chainer replied. “It’ll take longer to get specifics from here.”

“Fine,” said Duggan, leaving the ship on the same course.

“It hasn’t moved from the place I saw it last time. Whatever it is – it’s big. One-point-five klicks to each side and in the shape of a pyramid.”

“I’ve checked out the wreckage we noted earlier, sir,” said Massey. “It’s the SC Lupus – it’s in one piece, but all out of shape.”

“They got taken out by the same particle beam that almost finished us,” said Breeze. “They’re nothing but a lump of ruined metal now. Poor bastards onboard must have been killed in seconds.”

“Yeah,” said Chainer. “At least we got some payback for them.”

“They kicked us in the balls for our trouble,” said Perry.

“It’s rarely clean, Ensign,” said McGlashan. “They might tell you about quick and easy kills in the classroom. The reality is, we’ve taken half a trillion dollars’ worth of damage and we’ve lost some of our men and women. I’m sure Lieutenant Nichols will have plenty to include in his report.”

Nichols said nothing, but he smiled thinly.

“I’m getting a transmission from the Dretisear, sir,” said Perry. “They’ve detected an energy shield around the object on Trasgor, with a diameter of eight klicks. Their AI has calculated the chances of it being a Dreamer artefact at one hundred percent.”

“Did they specify what precisely they mean by an artefact?” asked Duggan.

“I’m querying the word with them,” said Perry. He looked up. “They didn’t mean anything specific, if I interpret their response correctly.”

“Beaten by a damned Ghast comms man,” said Chainer angrily.

“Competition is a wonderful thing,” said Duggan mildly. “See what else you can find.”

“What the hell do they need an energy shield for?” asked McGlashan.

“It’s got to be something important,” said Duggan. “I’m afraid we can’t go anywhere until we find some more information about what’s going on.”

“I think I might know what it is,” said Massey, with a look of nervous pride. “The oxygen levels have climbed since Lieutenant Chainer first detected the unusually high quantity. The closer to the object you look, the higher the oxygen. I believe the artefact is generating it and pumping it out in order to create an atmosphere.”

“What the hell would they be doing that for?” asked Perry.

“To make the planet habitable,” said Duggan. The hairs on his neck prickled at the thought. “The Dreamers could have come through the wormhole specifically to expand into this area of the universe. If they’re making habitable planets, that means they plan to keep coming.”

“There’s hardly room for us and the Ghasts,” said Chainer. “Let alone a third race of murderous aliens.”

“How big was that mothership when we saw it?” asked Duggan, with worry in his voice.

“Huge,” said Breeze. “Twenty klicks to a side, approximately the same shape as a cube.”

“You could fit hundreds of these artefacts inside that one mothership,” said Duggan. “If they’re dropping them around this sector – or beyond – humanity could be in even deeper crap than we thought. This means our enemy is here to stay, rather than simply have a look around and then leave.”

“What should we do?” asked McGlashan.

“The first thing we’re going to do is destroy whatever it is they’ve left behind on Trasgor. Then, we’re going to return to the Juniper and leave the decision about what to do next in the hands of Admiral Teron and his superiors. This mission is shaping up to be a bad one.”

Chapter Ten

“How are we going to destroy it, sir?” asked McGlashan. “We can’t launch the nukes and I don’t know if I can get them working again.”

“We’ll have to launch conventional missiles at them and see if they run out of power,” said Duggan. “It’s crude and it’s all we have at the moment.”

“Sir, I’ve got the Dretisear on the comms. Captain Nil-Far wishes to speak with you privately.”

“Very well,” said Duggan in puzzlement.

His earpiece squealed with interference and there was an irritating buzzing sound which came and went. “Captain John Duggan, what are your intentions towards the alien artefact?” asked Nil-Far, eschewing the niceties of human conversation.

“We have made the decision to destroy it. It is our belief the Dreamers intend to create a breathable atmosphere on Trasgor in order to populate it later.”

“That is also our conclusion. I would ask that you do not go ahead with your plans.”

“Why not?” asked Duggan, doing his best to conceal his surprise. He wasn’t sure if the language modules could convey emotion clearly, but he didn’t want the Ghast to know he’d been caught unawares by the request.

“I lack the authority to provide that information. We have sent a signal to Vempor. Alas, our backup comms do not travel quickly and we do not anticipate a response soon.”

“Do you have knowledge of this artefact that we should be aware of?”

“I lack the authority to provide that information,” repeated the Ghast.

“It is my belief we should take this opportunity to disrupt the Dreamer plans,” said Duggan. “What action will you take if we proceed with the destruction?”

There was a pause this time – a long one. “I also lack the authority to break the truce between our two races, John Duggan. Therefore, I will not intervene should you proceed with your stated action. I must warn you that the response from Vempor might give me a different instruction.”

“You might fire on us?”

“If I am asked to do so, I will attempt to destroy your vessel.”

Duggan’s surprise had turned to shock and his brain fought desperately for an appropriate response. “There is no time for these games, Nil-Far! If you do not give me a good reason why I should leave this Dreamer artefact, I will proceed with its destruction.”

“It is not a game, John Duggan. I cannot give you the information you request.”

“We will speak again soon,” said Duggan, cutting off the Ghast captain. He looked around at the others on the bridge. The conversation hadn’t been entirely private and the crew had clearly heard Duggan’s side of it. “What the hell am I missing?” he asked in frustration. “Our supposed ally has come near-as-damnit to saying he’d break our truce on the basis of this unknown object.”

“The Ghasts know more about it than we do,” said McGlashan. “That’s a certainty.”

“Could they have found something like it in the past?” asked Breeze. “There was Dreamer wreckage all around the Helius Blackstar. Perhaps there was something like this which they recovered and it provided them with valuable technology.”

Breeze’s suggestion seemed reasonable, even if it didn’t add up entirely. “We’re sure they used alien technology to bolster their own research in order to try and defeat the Confederation,” said Duggan. “We have a truce now and we’ve demonstrated our ability to destroy their populated worlds if we choose to do so. Surely the only benefit they could get from recovering this thing on Trasgor would be to increase their military capabilities to destroy humanity.”

“And since we’re at peace, their actions are unusual,” said McGlashan.

“Unusual at the very least,” said Massey. “Sir, something about this stinks to high heaven.”

“I agree,” said Chainer.

Duggan felt as if he’d been skewered on a spike, leaving his arms and legs free to thrash but with no way to escape. He wasn’t expecting a response from the Space Corps for days, in the same way the Ghasts weren’t able to reach their own superiors. The Dreamers would have certainly sent a warning to their mothership – it would be a stupid man who hoped otherwise. There was no way the Terminus could wait around to see what came back from Admiral Teron. Furthermore, the Dretisear might well receive an instruction to launch a surprise attack. There was little chance of a good outcome from this situation.

“Could the Ghasts make good on their threats to destroy us?” he asked.

“They’ve taken a lot of damage,” said McGlashan. “Some of their weapons have been disabled, but they’re a big ship and I’ll bet they can still pack a punch. There again, so can we.”

“If we destroy each other, nothing will be gained and peace will be lost,” said Duggan. “That’s not an option.”

“I reckon I can get the ship to lightspeed in twenty-four hours,” said Breeze. “It might be enough to get us away before the Dreamers come looking for their missing spacecraft.”

“If we leave, the Ghasts might attempt to recover the object,” said Massey.

“The Oblivion isn’t a heavy lifter,” said Duggan. “All they can do is fly overhead and look at it.”

“What if the Dreamers don’t come back?” she asked. “What if the Ghasts have requested a spaceship to recover the object and they get away with it before the Space Corps sends another ship here? The most charitable reason I can think of for the Ghasts behaving like this is because they’re idiots.”

“They’re many things, but they’re not stupid,” said Duggan.

“At the very least, this system could become a flashpoint, sir,” said McGlashan. “If the Space Corps sends ships, the Ghasts send ships and then the Dreamers show up.”

With each word uttered, Duggan became more certain as to the best course of action. He raised a hand to stem the flow of suggestions. “It seems to me the best way to proceed is to remove the entire reason for any of us to be here. We’ll go ahead with the plan and destroy the object. Ensign Perry, please communicate our intentions to the Ghasts. Advise that we do not expect any interference from them in what is now a Space Corps affair.”

“I’ve let them know, sir,” said Perry. “They’ve acknowledged receipt, with no return message.”

Duggan hadn’t expected one. He’d never seen Nil-Far lie outright and assumed this was inherent to the Ghast species. However, there were plenty of ways to avoid giving anything away and whenever he didn’t want to answer a question, Nil-Far would say that he couldn’t provide the information or any one of countless variations on the same response.

“They’re still following, sir,” said Chainer. “Want me to warn them off?”

“I’d prefer them to stay close, Lieutenant. They have Shatterers that can target from at least ten times further away than our Lambdas. If there’s a betrayal, we can fire back at this range.”

“Sorry sir, I should have realised.”

Duggan waved it away. “Keep monitoring the area, Lieutenant. We need to keep our eyes and ears wide open.”

Another voice spoke up, this one unwelcome. “I disagree with your chosen course,” said Lieutenant Nichols. “In its current state, the Terminus could be repaired and returned to action within months. You’re taking an unnecessary risk in approaching the planet. If we made distance on our gravity drive until the fission engines were ready, we could return to a shipyard. I’m sure the Space Corps will happily send other ships this way and in greater numbers.”

“You can’t fight a damned war if you’re checking the cost of every bullet!” said Duggan. “I’ve told you what we’re going to do, Lieutenant. You don’t have the authority to cross-examine my every decision.”

“I assure you I do, sir,” said Nichols. He had a look of self-satisfaction that infuriated Duggan.

“We’re going to Trasgor,” said Duggan with finality.

The ES Terminus drew steadily closer to the site of the alien artefact, travelling at twenty percent of its usual maximum speed. The Oblivion shadowed them at a range of a hundred thousand kilometres – comfortably within Lambda targeting range. Duggan was glad - the Dretisear’s proximity suggested there was no current intent to begin hostilities. If the battleship drifted another fifty thousand kilometres distant, then it would likely be time to prepare for an unwanted conflict.

“The artefact is on fairly flat ground, sir,” said Chainer. “There are a few undulations within the eight-klick perimeter of the shield and a couple of valleys. Other than that, you know the score – rock, rock and more rock.”

“Anything else of note?” asked Duggan. “Signs of life or activity?”

Chainer hesitated. “I can’t tell you for certain. The shield distorts our sensors on the way through, which is why it takes a few seconds to get a lock on their spaceships. A spaceship tends to be a lot bigger than ground artillery.”

“You mean you can’t tell me what else might be down there?” asked Duggan.

“I can’t,” said Chainer, with a defensive tone to his voice. “I thought we were going to blow them away from high orbit?”

“We don’t know if that’s going to work,” said McGlashan. “Another couple of minutes and we’ll be close enough to give it a go.”

“How many Lambda clusters can we bring to bear?”

“We’ve got sixteen operational, of which two I wouldn’t want to chance using. Of the fourteen, we can use them all if they’ll successfully target the object. If we need to launch in a straight line, we’ll only be able to bring seven to bear at one time. The nukes are still showing a total malfunction.”

“Be prepared with the countermeasures if they launch anything from below,” said Duggan. A distance countdown on his screen showed how close they were to lock-on range.

“Our missile targeting is fully functional,” said McGlashan. “Whatever it is on the ground it’s not carrying the same tech as their warships.”

“Let the Dretisear know we’re about to commence bombardment.”

“They’ve acknowledged, sir. Nothing more,” said Perry.

“Fire when ready, Commander. Fourteen full clusters.”

“Aye, sir, missile launch complete. One hundred and forty on their way.”

“That should be enough to give them a fright,” said Breeze.

From their furthest range, it took the Lambdas a full minute to reach a stationary target. The crew of the Terminus remained silent while the guided plasma warheads closed in on the artefact far below. Chainer diverted one of the sensor feeds onto the bulkhead screen. From this distance the image was grainy, but clear enough that the target was visible as a large near-black pyramid with blurred edges. Suddenly, the image became entirely white as the missiles detonated with an intensity of light far in excess of what the screen could replicate. Even so, it was bright and Duggan had to squint his eyes against the glare. The plasma fire dissipated within seconds.

“Still there,” said Reyes.

“There was an immense power reading when we hit the shield, sir,” said Chainer. “It only lasted a couple of seconds and could have powered a dozen big cities for the same amount of time.”

“Fire again,” said Duggan. “Every tube, and utilise the rapid reload for three waves.”

“Roger,” said McGlashan.

More Lambdas raced away, followed eight seconds later by another wave and finally by a third.

“If four hundred don’t do the business, I don’t know what will,” said Chainer. “Apart from the nukes, that is.”

The bulkhead screen lit up again and again. Each time the light faded, the artefact remained untouched, stubbornly defiant against the firepower directed against it. When the final wave of Lambdas had exploded fruitlessly against the energy shield, Duggan slumped into his seat.

“Have we got anything else?” he asked. “Will the beam weapons penetrate?”

“In truth, I don’t know,” said Breeze. “I don’t think it’s safe to use them yet. If they burn out more of our engines, we could be stranded here for weeks.”

It wasn’t something Duggan wanted to contemplate – he wanted to destroy the object and get away from this forsaken place as soon as possible. He could continue to expend missiles against the shield, yet was convinced there was little hope it would succeed.

“The peak energy readings didn’t drop,” said Chainer. “Whatever they have powering the shield, it wasn’t weakened.”

“Sir? Maybe we should turn around and put some distance between us and the planet,” said McGlashan.

“That choice does not sit well with me, Commander. It will resolve nothing.” He had a thought. “Lieutenant Breeze, you mentioned that you’d contributed to the Space Corps’ research into our own version of an energy shield.”

“Just peripheral input, sir.”

“You said you’d picked up a few things – like the shields’ vulnerability to gamma rays. Do you think the energy shield below is a complete sphere, encompassing the artefact entirely?”

“I’m not sure what you mean, sir.”

“Can you project an energy shield through rock, for instance?”

“I see,” said Breeze, nodding his head. “Well, the Space Corps’ research wasn’t too far along and we couldn’t do anything like the Dreamers have done. However, it needs exponentially greater power to maintain the shield through the resistance of other atoms – hence the power spikes we see when our missiles impact against them. You want to know if the surface energy shield goes into the surface of the rock and I would give you an educated response that it does not. It’s probably something like an umbrella that comes very close to the surface, without penetrating beneath.”

Duggan gave a humourless smile. “In that case, it’s time for us to go down for a closer look.”

Chapter Eleven

It was McGlashan’s duty to suggest alternatives. On this occasion, she saw the set of Duggan’s face and kept her own counsel on the matter.

“A full deployment, sir?” she asked.

“We don’t know what’s waiting for us, so we’re going down there with everything we’ve got,” he said. “The worst that can happen is we arrive and there’s nothing to oppose us.”

“We don’t have a heavy-lift transporter with us,” said Lieutenant Nichols. A ship like the Terminus had the ability to deploy troops and hardware. What it didn’t have was any way to recover that hardware once it was dropped – there were dedicated pickup vessels for that work, none of which were within a weeks’ travel.

“I’m aware of that, Lieutenant,” said Duggan. “This mission is already an expensive one, but we aren’t going to worry about the money.” He smiled challengingly.

“Let’s look after the guys and gals by giving them our full support, rather than sending them out with a dozen rifles to share,” said McGlashan.

“Captain Duggan,” said Nichols, ignoring McGlashan’s words. “I am not convinced that a deployment of the hardware we’re carrying is the best course. We are throwing good money after bad.”

Duggan shook his head. “Didn’t you hear what Commander McGlashan said? We support our troops with everything we’ve got.”

“If you’re set on this course, a scouting party would be the best way to determine what proportion of the ship’s equipment you need to utilise,” said Nichols.

“You’re overstepping, Lieutenant,” said Duggan with a dangerous edge to his voice.

“Not at all, sir. I’m merely performing the duties given to me by my department.”

“You’re interfering with the appointed captain of the ES Terminus. We’re deploying everything, unless you’re telling me the Military Asset Management people have assigned a greater value on their tanks than they have on the Space Corps’ soldiers?”

“Everything has a price, sir. I am formally advising you that Military Asset Management disagrees with this release of hardware.”

“Disagrees?” shouted Duggan. “We’re at war, man! Where’s your authority to tell me how to act in a hostile situation?”

“My superiors will confirm my authority.”

“We have no comms, Lieutenant. All I can hear at the moment is hot air.”

Nichols smiled knowingly. “As you wish, Captain. The resolution of this matter will happen later.”

“Shut up and get out of my sight, Lieutenant Nichols! Your organisation is a disgrace.”

Nichols didn’t answer. He simply nodded his head once and returned to his seat. The confrontation had interrupted preparations for the troop deployment and left the others quiet with shock. It was Chainer who spoke first.

“Can we fit a hundred into the transport shuttle to bring everyone back?” he asked. “It’s going to be a tight squeeze.”

“We’ve got a shuttle on each side,” said Duggan. “There’s plenty of room.” He didn’t mention that it would be tough if they came back with a few injured – it felt like it would bring bad luck if he talked about casualties before they happened.

“Not so much room if one of those enemy missiles had impacted next to one of our shuttles,” said Massey.

Duggan didn’t respond. As it happened, one of the Dreamer missiles had come perilously close to destroying both the life support system and the port-side shuttle. In the end, both had survived the blast. He opened a channel to Lieutenant Ortiz.

“Get the troops ready - load them up into the tanks. We have a target object protected by a shield generator and we’re going to see what we can see – it’s Dreamer tech. We’re taking everything in the hold and I’ll be in command.”

“Roger that, sir. It’ll be nice to give our own input, if you know what I mean? Some of the boys here have got itchy trigger fingers.”

“I’m sure they have,” said Duggan, ending the communication. He found McGlashan staring at him.

“You don’t need to go, sir. Lieutenant Ortiz is more than capable. You’d be better off on the bridge.”

“You’re right, Commander, I would be better on the bridge. However, I am giving you this opportunity to show what you can do. A commander does not become a captain without showing her worth.”

“I don’t care about perception of worth, sir. I care about the success of this mission,” she said.

“We’ll succeed with you or I in charge,” he said. “I won’t be swayed on this, Commander. It’s vital I take a look at what’s down there, rather than leaving it to others. I have a feeling that what happens on Trasgor will have repercussions and I can’t deal with them if I haven’t been fully involved in the actions I order.”

McGlashan didn’t look happy, but she wasn’t one to shy away from responsibility. “Very well, sir. I’ll look after the Terminus while you’re gone.” Her expression cleared like a cloud moving away from the sun. “Just don’t try and blame me for those holes in our side. They can go on the list of Captain John Duggan’s misdemeanours.”

“Agreed,” he said. He turned his attention to other matters. “Lieutenant Chainer, I assume you’ll be able to keep in close touch using the backup comms systems?”

“Yes, sir. It’s not as if they’re prehistoric or anything. They were made when we couldn’t travel the distances we can go on a modern spaceship. Messages will reach the planet’s surface in less than a second and come back at the same speed.”

“Good. I may well need you.” He walked to McGlashan and spoke to her quietly so he wouldn’t be overheard. “Keep an eye on Lieutenant Nichols. I have no idea why he’s here, but I’m convinced there’s more to him than meets the eye.”

“You got it, sir. I can handle him.”

“Make sure you can and don’t put up with any insubordination. If tries anything, lock him up under my authority.”

“Will do.”

Duggan left the bridge and broke into a run towards the hold. There was noise and activity, with soldiers breaking out rifles and bandoliers of plasma grenades. It was warmer than it should be, though not so bad that there was any immediate risk of injury from it. He pulled a spare suit down from a wall locker and struggled his way into it, cursing under his breath as he did so.

“Need a hand, sir?” It was Lieutenant Ortiz.

“I think I’ll manage,” he said with a grimace. Something caught his eye on the shoulder of Ortiz’ suit. The word Jess had been written in black ink.

“Thought you deserved your own private suit?” he asked.

“I didn’t want one of these sweaty bastards putting it on later, sir,” she said. “We’ve got plenty of spares onboard so there’s no need to share.”

Duggan chuckled. “We need to tie the repeaters and launchers onto the backs of the heavy tanks,” he said, bringing the subject on to the matters at hand.

“I’ve given instructions to hook them up,” she said. “We’ll be ready to go in less than fifteen minutes. There’s ninety of us left, including you. A few of the guys suffered minor burns on top of the more serious injuries. I decided they should stay behind.”

“That’s fine, Lieutenant. It makes an even fifteen in each tank on the way down and a bit more breathing room on the way up,” said Duggan. “I have no idea what we’re facing. From what I’ve seen so far, it’s not likely to be friendly.”

“Maybe one day we’ll meet a bunch of aliens who aren’t determined to wipe us out.”

“I’m not expecting to see them any time soon,” said Duggan.

“What sort of gear do you think they’ll have, sir?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, Lieutenant. I wish I had a better answer for you.”

“Sometimes this job sucks,” she said, the look on her face suggesting that now definitely wasn’t one of those times.

Ortiz moved away, shouting orders at the men and women in the hold. The urgency increased noticeably wherever her finger pointed. Duggan finished putting his suit on and picked up the helmet. The nearest weapons locker was hanging open and he grabbed a rifle. He chose one of the two Colossus tanks at random. A set of eight steep steps went upwards through the outer armour, ending at a heavy servo-powered door that led into the tank’s interior. There was a man stationed within, counting off the numbers who came inside. Duggan assumed the soldiers been given squad numbers and assigned their own vehicles.

“Welcome aboard, Captain,” said Butler.

“Thank you, soldier,” said Duggan, squeezing through.

“I thought these tanks were all in museums now.”

You’ll be glad they aren’t when the shooting starts,” replied Duggan, moving away.

Duggan hadn’t been inside a Colossus tank for years and nothing much had changed. There were three rooms – one for command and control, the other two for carrying troops in a certain amount of discomfort. Duggan had entered through one of the two side entrances, which took him into one of the small holding rooms. A doorway in the metal wall led to a short connecting passage and then to the control room. The tank was huge, but even so it was cramped within and the lighting was a gloomy and subdued green. It would turn red if the tank came under fire. There were bucket seats along two of the walls, with five of them currently occupied. Duggan nodded at the soldiers as he went through.

Corporal Hammond was in the control room – he was broad, with tousled brown hair and an air of competence. There were four seats in total and a bewildering array of screens and consoles. “All systems are operational, sir,” Hammond said. “We’re waiting on two more who’ll be in here with me, and then we can go when the order comes.”

“That order will be coming soon,” Duggan replied. “You’re in charge of this tank?”

“Yes, sir.”

Duggan spent a few moments looking around. He knew how to control the smaller tanks in the Space Corps – those on a Vincent class were disposable and basic. The Colossus tank was packed with all manner of extra equipment and was definitely not classed as a disposable asset. There was much that looked familiar to Duggan’s eye. He guessed he’d be able to get the tank moving and firing, just not as efficiently as someone like Hammond. When it came down to it, much of the hardware in the Space Corps ran off the same back-end programming and many of the interfaces were closely related. It was what allowed well-trained people like Duggan to effectively utilise a variety of military resources. A fleet warship was by far the most demanding and responsible role. Corporal Hammond would be able to handle a tank – generally only the best and most well-trained soldiers went onto a spacecraft - but he’d have no hope when it came to controlling even a Vincent class. It took several years of training for that.

“I’ll need the fourth seat,” Duggan said. “To coordinate with the Terminus.”

“We’ve got nobody sitting in that one, sir,” said Hammond, pointing. “It’s all yours.”

Duggan took the indicated seat. The console was powered up and ready to use and he plugged into the other tanks to find out their statuses. The soldiers knew their stuff and four of the other five were set to go. While Duggan familiarised himself with the menu options on the tank, soldiers Reed and Quinn entered the control room and squeezed into their seats.

“Bridge, this is Duggan, do you copy?”

“I copy,” came the voice of Chainer.

“We’ll be ready in a few minutes. Commander McGlashan will initiate the launch sequence when I give the go-ahead.”

“Right you are, sir. I’ve got green lights from four out of the six vehicles already and yours just came on to make it five.”

“We’ll wait for the sixth – everyone goes at once.”

“We’re holding at forty thousand klicks above the surface. How high do you want?”

“Tell Commander McGlashan to come to five thousand and return to a high orbit as soon as we’re away.”

“Will do, sir. I’ve just had the sixth green light.”

Duggan muted his mouthpiece. “Corporal Hammond, the bridge sees six green lights. Can you confirm?”

“Yes, sir. All the tanks are prepared for launch.”

“Bridge, this is Duggan. Please lock down the cargo bay and initiate launch at five thousand klicks.”

“Roger that, we’ll be saying farewell in ninety seconds.”

As he watched the countdown on his screen, Duggan felt a sense of anticipation about what might be to come. He’d told McGlashan that he wanted her to taste the responsibility of captaincy. His words had been genuine, but the other reason was that he couldn’t stay away from danger. The lure of it whispered to him constantly, until it became a struggle to ignore. There were times he wondered if the addiction made him act recklessly and he had no answer to the question.

“We’re launching in five seconds,” said Hammond to the troops onboard.

There was a clunking of something mechanical, followed by a sickening feeling of intense acceleration. The Colossus tank was hurled downwards along magnetic runners. A hatch in the spacecraft’s hull burst open to allow the vehicle to eject. A moment later, the hatch closed, leaving the hull smooth and without visible seam. Already far below, the tank tore through the sky, plummeting towards the surface of Trasgor. Inside, the men and women cracked nervous jokes to distract themselves from humanity’s innate fear of falling.

Chapter Twelve

It quickly became apparent that something was wrong.

“I have negative launch on five of the tanks,” said Hammond.

Duggan contacted the Terminus. “We have multiple failed launches. Damnit, tell me what’s happened!”

It was Lieutenant Reyes who answered. “We’re not sure, sir. There are no system errors on the launch hardware. Commander McGlashan is doing her best to rectify the situation.”

“Keep me informed,” said Duggan curtly. “Less than two minutes in and it’s already going wrong.”

“We’ll do our best,” said Reyes.

The three soldiers in the control room had their eyes on Duggan, unasked questions clear on each of their faces. The course and destination of the tank was pre-programmed into its mainframe. There seemed little point in deviating yet.

“We make no changes,” said Duggan. “They’ll have to get this fixed and send the others to meet us.”

Duggan checked the status reports for the tank’s critical systems. Perhaps there had been some unrecorded damage from the engagement with the Dreamer warship. It didn’t take long to reassure himself there was nothing to cause concern as far as the tank itself went. All the gauges and readings were exactly where they should be.

“We should land in ten minutes,” said Corporal Hammond. “Let’s have a look at the external sensors and see where we’re going.”

He activated the largest screen in the cockpit, which filled the area with a startling amount of light. Some tank crews found the main screen distracting and kept it turned off.

“Trasgor, eh?” said Quinn. “I’m sure I’ve seen this place before.”

“Yeah – it’s round, grey and cold. A perfect holiday destination,” said Reed.

“It’s my dream that one day I’ll be sent to a planet full of palm trees and beaches,” said Quinn.

“It’d be just our luck to find it covered in hostile lifeforms.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right.”

Duggan let the conversation wash over him. The words were comforting in a way, reminding him of fellowship and cameraderie. After another minute, the urge to contact the Terminus became too great and he requested another channel.

“Where’re my tanks?” he asked.

“Still in the hold where you left them, sir,” said McGlashan.

“Any progress on finding out what went wrong and getting it fixed?”

“Not yet, sir. We’ve confirmed there’s no damage to that area of the ship.”

“No damage?” asked Duggan. “That means there’s a failure between the AI and the launch tubes.”

“That’s what I thought and I’ve checked it out. I can’t see any problems.”

“Unload the soldiers from the remaining tanks and send them to one of the transport shuttles. They can come to the surface that way. Leave the tank crews in place and you can launch the remaining five vehicles once you’ve discovered the fault and fixed it.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll get on it right away.”

The minutes passed and a grumbling noise pervaded the interior of the tank. The noise gradually increased in volume, though not loud enough to drown out conversation.

“Gravity engines boosting at sixty percent of maximum output,” said Hammond. “They’re guiding us in to the landing place. We’re going to set down right where we want to be.”

Duggan spoke to the Terminus again, in the final minutes before the tank landed. There was no apparent cause for the launch failure and McGlashan had narrowed it down to a likely fault with the ship’s AI. It was mystifying, since the brain of a warship had so much redundancy a failure of any sort was practically unheard of. The transport shuttle wouldn’t be loaded for another few minutes. Duggan told McGlashan and Reyes to keep on with their efforts to fix the problem.

“Here we go,” said Hammond over the internal comms. “Landing procedures underway. Keep your sick bags ready.” The comment about sick bags wasn’t too far from the truth and it wasn’t uncommon to feel nausea when a vehicle like this one decelerated. The tanks were programmed to come in fast, and then slow down at the last possible moment to make them less of a target. The main viewscreen showed an image of pitted, uneven ground, before Hammond switched the display off. The tank’s engines howled and Duggan swallowed to keep on top of the rising nausea. The sensation remained for too long, but then it passed abruptly.

“We’re on the ground, with weapons and propulsion good to go,” said Hammond. “Awaiting your instructions, sir.”

Duggan pulled up a topographical view of the area on his tactical display. They’d landed fifteen kilometres from the target, which made it eleven to the edge of the energy shield. The surrounding area was bumpy and uneven, thickly covered in a layer of gritty dust and pebbles. The sky was clear and visibility was good. The tank was in a wide channel, with rounded sides and a depth of a hundred metres or so. It prevented them from getting a sight of the artefact, but also gave them cover from any ground attack. There’d been nothing threatening so far and Duggan had taken a chance by having them land as close as this, relying on the Terminus’ ability to deal with anything that showed up outside the energy shield’s perimeter. Time was short and he wanted to get business over with as soon as possible.

“Terminus, do we have an ETA on that shuttle?”

“They’re loaded up, sir. Another minute and they should unlatch.”

“Good. Have them land at our position.” There was little choice other than to wait for the other troops to arrive.

“Sir?” said Chainer, with concern. “The shuttle won’t undock.”

“What the hell is going on?”

“We have no idea. It must be a symptom of what’s affected the other five tanks.”

“I thought the Galactic class was meant to be the Space Corps’ pride and joy.”

“That’d be the Crimson, sir. The Terminus is pretty beat up. I’d say it’s put up a decent showing so far.”

“Just get me those tanks, Lieutenant, and the shuttle. I don’t mind being killed by enemy fire, but I certainly don’t want to suffocate in the hull of a tank.”

“This baby’s got enough power to sustain us for months, sir,” said Hammond. “Plenty of time for them to rescue us.”

Duggan wasn’t convinced a rescue craft was coming any time soon, though he didn’t say it. The occupants of this lone tank were effectively stranded on the surface of Trasgor, with no guarantee they’d have any support either from the Terminus or from the Space Corps. It wasn’t that the Corps had no loyalty to its own – there was simply no appetite to throw men and materials at a lost cause. Duggan had his own code of honour, but he couldn’t blame his superiors for refusing to send a fleet every time they lost a soldier and it wasn’t realistic to expect them to change. He looked at his wrist to check the time - he’d not worn a watch in years and this was a habit he’d never managed to shake.

“We’ll give them another fifteen minutes to fix whatever’s wrong and then we’ll make our own way to the target.”

The fifteen minutes passed quickly. Duggan checked with the Terminus several times to see what the holdup was. He hoped for answers and a resolution, and got neither.

“There’s definitely no hardware fault,” said McGlashan. “I’ve checked for damage numerous times and there’s nothing. I feel as if I’m knocking my head against a wall.”

“Could there be an emergency override in place from the AI?” asked Duggan. “Maybe the life support is giving it a false reading that’s telling it to keep the ship sealed.”

“That doesn’t explain why you got away successfully.”

“No, it doesn’t. I’ve seen enough things go wrong to know the underlying logic isn’t always easy to spot. Keep on it, we’re beginning our agreed route towards the target.”

“Okay, sir. Good luck.”

A notice on Duggan’s screen informed him the line to McGlashan was closed. He let Corporal Hammond in on the news which he’d already overheard. “We’re not waiting any longer. Take us towards the target.”

Hammond wasn’t a man to delay. Even while he acknowledged the order, he used the tank’s control bars to feed power into its gravity engine. The vehicle lurched once and then moved away, hovering a couple of feet above the surface. Any larger stones which lay in its path were knocked aside by the immense weight of the Colossus tank.

“It’ll be fifteen or twenty minutes until we reach the perimeter, sir,” he said. “Less if you want us to push our speed.”

“Steady as she goes for the moment, Corporal. There’s a time to walk and there’s a time to run.”

Duggan spent the minutes watching the topographical display of the terrain. He called up the feeds from several of the external sensors in order to get a feel for what was outside. The channel twisted left and right. It was reminiscent of a riverbed, though the parched, barren surroundings of this world gave the impression there’d never been water here. It was daytime outside and the sensor feeds were razor-sharp, showing the ruggedness of the land ahead. They were amongst what might be described as hills, which were low and unevenly shaped. Without soil or plant life to smooth off the jutting edges, everything was angular with not a curve to be seen. It was harsh and unwelcoming, though Duggan hardly noticed.

The terrain readings sent down from the Terminus were highly detailed. The target object was in a wide, curved valley, with steep sides that sloped to heights of up to thirteen hundred metres. The artefact itself was on the floor of the valley and rested on an area of flat ground. There was no way to tell if the positioning was by accident or design, which made it hard to guess how the defences would be arranged. That was assuming the Dreamers had left something behind to repel a ground assault.

“This channel tapers off a few hundred meters ahead and when we come out we’ll be in an exposed position,” said Hammond. “There’s no cover for the following two klicks until we reach the perimeter.”

“We’ll be hidden from the pyramid when we reach the shield,” mused Duggan. “Once we’re through, I’d say we can proceed at least a couple of klicks along the valley before we’re in direct sight of the target.”

“You don’t think the perimeter will be defended, sir?” asked Hammond.

“We have to assume it is,” said Duggan. He checked the maps again – once the tank left the channel, it would need to cross the side of a gentle slope. This slope became steeper until it formed the left-hand valley wall. Whatever defences the Dreamers had positioned here would likely have a shot at the oncoming tank. The vehicle’s shape was designed to deflect sensor pings but in reality, it wouldn’t fool anything remotely sophisticated. After that, all it had to rely on was armour and brawn. Duggan had a thought. “Stop the tank, Corporal Hammond. I need to speak to somebody on the Terminus.”

“That’s done, sir.”

Duggan used the onboard comms to reach the warship high above. “Lieutenant Breeze, for the removal of doubt, if we can’t fire into the energy shield, are the enemy able to fire out of it?”

“No, sir. The shield will block incoming and outgoing - they’ll have to drop their shields to fire out. Their spacecraft was doing the same and I’m sure whatever’s on the ground will suffer the same limitation.”

“We’ll shortly be in line of sight of any perimeter defences. If their shield goes down, be sure to launch missiles from the Terminus at whatever you can see.”

“No such luck, sir,” said Breeze. “They’ll not be stupid enough to leave themselves so vulnerable. The shield will go off and come back on within a hundredth of a second. There’ll be no time for a missile to reach its target.”

“Any sign of my tanks or soldiers?”

“Commander McGlashan is shaking her head and shrugging her shoulders.”

Duggan laughed bitterly and closed the line. “I’m going to wring someone’s neck for this,” he said.

“It’d be nice to have the others with us,” said Quinn.

“More glory for us,” laughed Reed. “Another story to tell the grandchildren.”

Duggan motioned for silence, to allow him to think. The tank was the safest place for the troops and also the largest target. He made a decision and acted on it. “I want everyone apart from the crew outside,” he said.

“They’ll be unprotected,” said Hammond.

“I’m afraid that in this instance, it’ll be us taking the risk,” said Duggan.

“Sir?”

“We’re going to stick our heads out and see what shoots back.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Hammond without missing a beat. He used the internal speakers to instruct everyone to put on their spacesuit helmets. “Lieutenant Ortiz asks what I’m playing at, sir.”

Duggan was pleased to find her on the single tank they’d managed to deploy. She evidently hadn’t known Duggan was onboard as well. “Tell her to stop asking questions and get outside.”

“Message relayed,” said Hammond. “We’re empty apart from the four of us.”

“Take us carefully ahead, Corporal. Once we leave this channel we’ll be showing our face to the enemy. Be ready to backtrack if there’s a response.”

The Colossus tank’s engines powered up again, carrying it in near-silence up the slope and out of the channel. The eleven soldiers who had been left behind watched the heavily-armoured block of metal from a distance of three hundred metres. They were safe between the cocooning rock walls around them, while the tank became exposed to whatever might lie ahead.

In the cockpit, Duggan and the crew watched their various tactical screens nervously. This was the moment which would decide if this part of the overall mission was going to be a success or failure.

“Something’s locked on!” said Quinn, calmly and clearly.

“Take us back!” said Duggan.

It was too late to escape. A surface-launched projectile sped outward from the shield, following a low, flat trajectory towards the tank.

“We’re not going to make it,” said Hammond, his mouth unable to complete the words before the inbound slug connected with the tank.

Chapter Thirteen

There was a hideously loud clang, accompanied by the screeching of tortured metal. The remaining occupants of the tank felt it rock under the force of the impact. Another strike followed four seconds later, while Corporal Hammond pushed the tank to maximum velocity as he reversed it towards the channel. The hull of the tank shuddered under one final blow before its profile finally vanished from sight in the safety of the channel below.

“Crap, we’re going to look like a piece of cheese after that,” breathed Hammond. “Give me a damage report.”

“There’s a minor drop in output from our engines. Weapons okay, sensors okay. They must have deflected away from our armour, sir.”

Duggan tried to ignore the ringing in his ears and collated the sensor reports about what had hit them. “I read that as three dense metal strikes from a high calibre artillery piece,” he said.

“That’s what it was,” said Quinn. “A coil gun, somewhere ahead. It’s a damn good job we’re not in anything smaller than this, else I reckon we might have been completely disabled.”

“Or dead,” said Hammond, speaking the word Quinn had avoided.

“Yeah, maybe.”

“What now, sir?” asked Hammond. “We’re tough as hell, but we can’t take that level of bombardment over two klicks. If they weren’t behind a shield, we could try duking it out with them. There’s no fixed emplacement that can stand more than a single round from our main turret.”

Duggan knew this wasn’t an idle boast – he’d seen what the main cannon on one of these tanks could do. His brain spun through the possibilities. The most important result from this was that the Dreamer defences had shown themselves, yet without getting a kill.

“We need the rest of those tanks,” he growled. He patched into the Terminus’ comms system. “Did you get that?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” said Chainer, with hints of excitement in his voice. “They dropped their shields three times for about a hundredth of a second on each occasion. It was more than long enough for us to get an idea of what’s down there. We’re just running through the data.”

“Give me an outline, Lieutenant.”

“There is a total of eight guns covering the pyramid, arranged equally around the perimeter. They’ve done a poor job, sir. They have almost no overlapping fire and the ship’s AI calculates there’s only a two hundred and fifty metre area where you’ll be under fire from two of the guns at the same time.”

“One is more than enough, Lieutenant. They’re high calibre, high velocity weapons and they’re hidden behind an energy wall that our weapons can’t penetrate.”

“We’ll give you whatever support we can, sir. I’ve sent you a picture of the nearest emplacement – we got a good view of it.”

A rotating three-dimensional image appeared on one of Duggan’s screens. It showed a spindly metal frame with a tube running through the middle. A larger alloy cuboid squatted at the rear, presumably to house the power and ammunition. It looked unusually elegant, even if it didn’t give away any clues as to the best way to combat it. In fact, Duggan couldn’t see a way forward. He could have someone take remote control over the tank, send it towards the shield and hope the onboard weapons system had enough grunt to fire the main turret at precisely the right time for the projectile to arrive in the split second the energy shield went down. He didn’t need the Terminus’ AI to run a simulation to know the plan had little hope of working. The tank’s main turret was slow to reload – at least two seconds between each round. There were the two plasma launchers on the shoulders, but they had a reload time of between fifteen and twenty seconds. The Colossus was designed to shatter defences with outright force, rather than with finesse.

“Was there any sign of life?” asked Duggan. “It would be nice to know what our enemy looks like.”

“The emplacements are unmanned, sir. The central structure is too dense for our sensors to penetrate.”

“Any clues as to what it is?”

“A big power source and an oxygen generator, as we’ve already guessed. If there’s a way inside, I haven’t seen one.”

“Has Commander McGlashan fixed the nuke launchers?”

There was the sound of conferring. “No ETA at the moment. If we get them working, I don’t need to tell you about the blast radius from a two gigaton warhead, sir.”

Duggan didn’t need telling. The gamma rays would take out the energy shield. The tank was well-insulated, but he had no idea if it would be enough to block the quantities of radiation which would pour forth after the detonation. Radiation wasn’t even the primary concern – the explosion itself would extend for hundreds of kilometres in all directions, followed by a shock wave of terrifying proportions. Duggan really didn’t want to be on the surface of Trasgor when a massive nuclear warhead exploded.

“I’ve got an idea,” he said. As he spoke the words, he’d already convinced himself it was the quickest option available and one which put the fewest lives at risk.

“I’m all ears, sir,” said Chainer.

“Put Commander McGlashan on. She’ll need the details.”

McGlashan’s familiar voice replaced Chainer’s and Duggan explained his plan.

“The timing will need to be perfect, sir,” she said. “And there’ll only be one shot at it.”

“I know, Commander. If we had the heavy repeaters we wouldn’t need to resort to this sort of crap.”

“We can’t launch the Lambdas quickly enough to hit the gauss emplacement and the pyramid,” she said.

“We’ll lose the tank. I can’t think of a better way.”

“You could call it off and retreat to safety until we get things figured out up here.”

“Time is against us, Commander. The reasons we discussed earlier still hold true – we need to destroy this object. I can’t accept another war with the Ghasts.”

“Nor I, sir. Tell me when you’ve made the preparations.”

“Will do.”

Duggan used his headset to create an open channel to the troops on the surface. “Listen up, we’re pinned down by an enemy gauss emplacement which is protected by a force shield. Every time it fires, the shield drops for a fraction of a second. We’re going to send the tank ahead without a crew and the Terminus is going to try and get a Lambda through when the coil gun fires.”

“The tank will be destroyed, sir,” said Hammond.

“Almost certainly,” said Duggan. “There are still problems on the Terminus. I’m confident the crew will be able to resolve those problems, at which point they’ll send the shuttle to pick us up.”

“What if they don’t, sir?” said Reed. She had a right to ask the question.

“If they can’t get the shuttle to launch, we’re stuck here with just our suits, our rifles and each other. This doesn’t change anything – we’re stuck here anyway. The Space Corps may or may not come for us, so I’m not making you any guarantees.”

A few of the soldiers muttered about their lot. In reality, this was what they’d signed up for and none of them came close to mutiny.

“Sir?” said Quinn. There was an unexpected timidity to his voice.

“What is it, soldier?”

“You said you planned to send the tank ahead, didn’t you?”

“Unless you want to pilot it yourself?”

Quinn took an audible breath. “We don’t carry a remote box for the Colossus tanks unless specifically requested. The crew is expected to stay onboard at all times.”

“There’s no remote box?” asked Duggan, closing his eyes briefly. He left the open channel and spoke to the Terminus. “I need you to patch into the tank and have the AI ride it out towards those emplacements.”

The line hummed quietly for a few moments. “I’ve just tried to access the vehicle’s mainframe,” said Chainer. “It’s not going to work well on the backup comms.”

“Speak clearly, man!” said Duggan. “What do you mean it won’t work well?”

“I should have been more precise, sir,” said Chainer. “I should have said that it won’t work.” He launched into a hurried explanation about interfaces and the sizes of data packets.

“That’s fine, Lieutenant,” said Duggan. He turned to the other three on the bridge. “Get your helmets on and go outside with the others. I’ll take it from here.” They stared blankly at him for a moment as his words sunk in. “Go!” he repeated.

Galvanised into action, the tank’s crew released the locks on the exit doorway and went through without a further word. A couple of minutes later, the internal sensors reported there to be only a single occupant. Duggan looked around at the banks of screens. One of them showed the soldiers gathered in a group outside. They milled about with uncertainty. While he was working the steps of his plan through his mind, Lieutenant Ortiz spoke to him privately.

“Need any company?”

“Thanks for the offer, Lieutenant. The troops need you to look after them if something goes wrong.”

She didn’t push it. “Good luck.”

“I’m told these tanks are built to last,” he said.

“That they are.”

Ortiz wasn’t one to overstay her welcome and she left the comms. Duggan felt he was as ready as he’d ever be. He picked up his own suit helmet from where he’d left it on the unpainted metal floor next to his seat and put it on, breathing the scents of rubber and stale sweat like they were old friends. He felt enclosed and safe within the suit, even if it offered no protection against gauss rounds.

“Commander McGlashan. I’m taking manual control of the tank. Please commence your firing routine upon my word.”

McGlashan was a professional and knew when it was time to keep her mouth shut and follow orders. “I’ve programmed in the instructions, sir. The missiles are loaded and ready. We’ll need to utilise the rapid reload function on the tubes, so we’ll only be able to maintain full launch density for thirty-two seconds. After that, our firing rate will fall by more than half.”

“What’s your altitude?”

“We’re at forty thousand klicks, sir. Sixteen seconds from launch to detonation.”

Duggan moved himself to Corporal Hammond’s chair and looked at the instrumentation before him. He gave the tank’s engines one final check. They were down five percent from one of the earlier gauss impacts. It wouldn’t have an appreciable effect on the vehicle’s top speed of fifty kilometres per hour and he was just shy of a hundred seconds away from the energy shield. Chainer had sent some additional data from the Terminus to show the overlapping fields of fire from the gauss emplacements. Two hundred and fifty metres’ worth. Less than twenty seconds. It was going to be rough if he even managed to get that far. His eyes drifted to the external display which showed the place where a single one of the gauss rounds had hit the tank, leaving a two-metre-wide furrow across one of the angular front panels. A direct hit would be far more devastating.

With an effort of will, he buried his doubts and placed his hands on the control bars. “Commander McGlashan, please launch.”

Duggan scarcely heard her acknowledgement. He increased the tank’s gravity engines to one hundred percent and pushed his right-hand control bar as far along as it would go. The tank had a tremendous amount of power – enough to overcome the inertia of such a heavy object. It burst forward and up the slope which led away from the channel, scattering stones and dust behind it.

Chapter Fourteen

The tactical screen flashed red, before the tank had gone more than fifty metres over the open ground. The vehicle’s sensors detected the output from a coil gun and relayed the information to the cockpit. A grooved metal ball, the size of a man’s head, thundered into the heavily-armoured front of the tank and ricocheted dozens of kilometres away. Inside, Duggan felt the force of the blow through his seat and through the palms of his hands where they rested on the cold metal of the control bars. The sound of the contact chimed harshly and he was thankful the spacesuit helmet automatically reduced the volume to a safe level. A second round followed the first, again deflecting away from the warship-grade alloy of the tank’s armour.

During the earlier engagement, Duggan had discovered the Dreamer gun had a firing interval of four seconds – plenty of time for it to get away a couple of dozen shots. He’d programmed the details into the tank’s mainframe, in the hope the computer would be able to calculate all the necessary speeds and distances that would allow it to fire the main turret just when the energy shield dropped. Something rumbled deep within the tank as the mainframe decided it was time to fire. A half-tonne projectile screamed away at such a velocity that it left a bright orange trace in the sky behind it. Two kilometres along its path, the slug struck a shimmering barrier in the air. Streaks of pale blue snaked away from the impact, like sparks of electricity jumping through clear water. The sparks faded and the flattened globe of depleted uranium fell to the ground. On the other side of the energy shield, the Dreamer gun fired again.

Far overhead, the first of the Terminus’ Lambda missiles hit the top of the shield. The warhead exploded into blinding white, expanding to fill several hundred metres with tumultuous fire. The blast wasn’t able to complete its natural desire to form a sphere. Rather, it spread over the dome-shaped barrier generated by the pyramid beneath. A fraction of a second later, another Lambda hit in the same place, followed by another and another. Instead of firing in waves, Duggan had given instructions for the missiles to be launched with a tiny interval between each, in the hope that one might get through when the energy shield was down.

Within the tank, Duggan gritted his teeth as another round hit the tank. The main turret fired again and the shoulder-mounted plasma launchers ejected their own explosives towards the barrier. He’d set up a distance counter to show how far the energy shield was from his position. It already felt as if he’d been under fire for hours but when he checked, the tank was still seventeen hundred metres away. Duggan didn’t know quite what he intended if he made it to the perimeter. He had no intention of crashing into it and killing himself. What he did know was the longer the tank kept moving, the greater the chance one of the Lambdas would hit the pyramid. It had damn well better be enough.

Duggan quickly learned why there was room for four in the cockpit. An endless quantity of text was thrown across his screens and it was a fight to keep on top of it. On a spacecraft, he’d have managed; on the tank, everything seemed to be in a different place or accessed in a different manner. With little time to think, the overload of data threatened to swamp him.

“Come on!” he shouted.

Another thumping blow shook the tank and the damage reports came in. Amber warnings changed to red and the sensors reported a breach through the tank’s front plating where two projectiles had struck near to each other. Other sensors reported garbage – lines of unintelligible code to indicate their failure. Several of the viewscreens merely showed grey static, which seethed in quiet anger.

“Fourteen hundred metres,” he said, watching the number count down another digit with painful slowness.

“Sir? You’ll be entering the overlapping field in twenty seconds.” It was Chainer, his voice welcome but the news not.

“Any luck?” said Duggan, tersely. He was too occupied to say more.

“A couple of near misses,” said Chainer.

No luck, in other words, whispered the thought in Duggan’s mind. “Tell me when there’s good news.”

The next gauss round destroyed one of the shoulder launchers, catching the plasma round halfway out of the tube. The missile exploded with a low thump, ripping out a lump of the armour. Plasma spilled across the rear quarter of the tank, blistering and softening the alloy. The tank’s mainframe fired in response, a nanosecond later than it needed to, leaving the Dreamer weapon unharmed behind the shield.

“Entering the crossfire, sir,” said Chainer. “Good luck. I’ll let you know if we score a hit.”

“Roger.”

Dense metal smashed against the tank’s front plating. The force of the blow heated the enemy projectile to an extreme temperature, flattening it to a thin disk. It fell away, to be left behind amongst the rocks and gravel. Where it struck, there was a deep crater in the armour, the metal sundered and battered. The projectiles came at two second intervals now, the sound of their blows echoing in Duggan’s head with a rhythm of death and ruination.

The tank ploughed on, a damaged mass of plasma-scoured metal. Giddy with battle, Duggan shouted incoherent words of encouragement to the machine. Pride filled his chest at the defiance it showed against the incoming assault - that this projection of the Space Corp’s capabilities could deny the inevitability of its own destruction for so long.

Ten seconds. He didn’t know if he’d spoken the words aloud or imagined them in his head. Eight. Still the barrage persisted. The tank was slowing – one of the slugs had put a hole clean through the armour and into the gravity drive. Four seconds and we’re clear. The tank and me. The last few seconds lasted forever as this battle within a battle struggled on to its conclusion. When the tank finally broke out of the crossfire, it was a mess of burned, punctured metal and still at seventy-five percent of its maximum speed. Bathed in the glow of red, critical alert lights, Duggan had no idea how it was moving so quickly.

“Sir, one of our missiles got though,” said Chainer. “It struck the pyramid dead on. The energy output went haywire for a second and then it stabilised.”

“Keep firing,” said Duggan, his own voice sounding distant to his ears.

“We’re not letting up,” said Chainer.

The tank had come to within thirty seconds of the shield. Its speed was tapering and the mainframe had to constantly recalculate the time. For each digit the counter fell, it seemed as if another was added to take it back to where it had been. One by one, the sensor feeds winked out as they became too damaged to function. Throughout it all, the Dreamer gun maintained its constant rate of fire, pummelling the tank into a shape that looked like nothing it had been before. Duggan shook his head in wonder – there was no way the tank should still be moving and he should have likely been dead long ago. He was faintly aware of the heat in the cockpit. It had risen past two hundred degrees. Nothing the suit can’t handle.

With twenty seconds to go, one of the incoming rounds buried itself deeply into the body of the tank. The compressed slug burst through the cockpit wall and fell to the floor near Duggan, glowing fiercely. A siren added itself to the cacophony, warning of a breach into the control room. Duggan crunched his fist against the speaker. The alarm continued to sound, ignorant of his efforts to silence it.

“A second successful strike on the pyramid,” said Chainer. His voice squawked and crackled. “The shield is still up.”

“I think the comms are failing,” said Duggan, raising his voice in anticipation of the next impact. “The tank’s dying.”

“Hang in there, sir.”

Duggan took another look around the cockpit. There were hardly any screens running and the temperature had climbed past two hundred and forty degrees. The suit was an exceptional insulator, but he could feel heat from the burning slug beating against him. Metal shrieked against metal somewhere above the ceiling. Main turret disabled.

The tank was travelling at what felt like a crawl, with one side barely an inch above the ground. Duggan checked the timer – one of the three displays which remained active. Still on fifteen seconds. It was beginning to seem as if he’d never reach his destination – a long walk where the end faded ever further into the distance. He wondered briefly if he’d live through it. The enemy would surely stop firing once the tank was broken into enough pieces. Perhaps they’d continue their attack long after a human would have stopped. Thirteen seconds. McGlashan’s unlucky number. Today it’s mine too.

One of the sensors was still operating – miraculously it was pointing forward. Duggan peered at its feed and saw his goal. The gauss emplacement looked exactly as it had on his screen earlier, yet bigger than he’d expected it to be. Another punishing strike cracked against the tank. The projectile was far too fast for the human eye. The sensor detected it, however, and showed it as a streak of orange over the display. The trace faded and was replaced by another. A hole appeared in the ceiling, wide and ragged. Duggan noted it calmly without spending time wondering where the projectile had finished up. Thirteen seconds still on the clock. A sign that my number’s up.

“Sir, we’ve hit them again! The shield is down!”

Duggan sat bolt upright, the dreamlike quality of the last few seconds banished as if it had never existed. “Get that coil gun for me! I’ll be dead in a few seconds.”

“You’re too close, sir. Commander McGlashan’s trying.”

Plasma ignited a few hundred metres beyond the gauss gun. It spread with blinding speed, the extremes of the blast engulfing the emplacement. The tank was struck again. When the flames receded, the coil gun was still intact, mocking and stubborn. Here and there, patches of the metal smouldered. There was a second detonation, this time a few metres closer. Once more the plasma fire raged, this time licking across the hull of the tank. Any closer and Duggan could see he’d be burned to a cinder.

“Hold fire!” he said.

The entire structure of the tank shuddered. The engines howled, though to Duggan it sounded like a scream of agony.

“Don’t give up!” he roared, thumping his palm onto the console before him.

He had no idea how the tank had so much resilience – a battered husk of metal and engines with its single functioning sensor and a mainframe that seemed to be as obstinate as Duggan himself.

“Get out, sir!” shouted Chainer.

“Negative, Lieutenant, I’ve got this one,” said Duggan.

A third hole appeared in the cockpit and this time he could see clear daylight through it. He looked out, seeing the emplacement only a few metres away, red hot and smoking, with the air shimmering above. The gun fired again. Duggan had no idea what happened to the slug and he didn’t care. Through the hole, he watched the tank collide with the structure supporting the gun. The tank was down to eight kilometres per hour, yet it had lost none of its weight. The emplacement was much stronger and heavier than it appeared. Nevertheless, the tank carried a vastly greater bulk and it hardly slowed as it crashed through, bending and twisting struts and beams. The gun barrel was knocked away and the hull of the tank thumped into the housing for the power supply and ammunition. The housing was thick-walled and strongly moored - not enough to prevent it being tipped over and pushed aside.

At that moment, the tank’s engine died. The howl of stressed metal faded at once and the tank dropped to the ground, leaving Duggan breathing heavily in his seat. He unclipped his safety belt and prepared to leave in haste. There was only a single screen lit, still showing its countdown. Thirteen seconds. It must have got stuck. Not my unlucky number – not this time anyway.

“I’m getting out of here,” he said to Chainer.

The inner blast door protecting the cockpit shuddered painfully open and he dashed along the short tunnel to the holding area. It was a mess of sharp-edged holes and there was a wide slash along one wall. Anyone in here would have died a dozen times over. The exit door was gone, ripped away at some point in the last few minutes. Duggan jumped down the steps and into the wan light of day, never so happy to be alive as he was then.

Chapter Fifteen

Duggan dropped to his haunches and looked at the wrecked tank. There were too many scars for him to count, but it looked like it had taken at least fifty rounds. He shook his head in disbelief, having seen smaller tanks get knocked out by a single, well-directed gauss projectile.

“Lieutenant Chainer, please destroy the second coil gun and confirm when the path is clear for me to bring the rest of the troops up.”

“Commander McGlashan confirms the target will be destroyed in the next few seconds, sir.” There were the sounds of background confusion. “The Oblivion is breaking away from us.”

“Have they communicated?”

“Negative. Lieutenant Massey is trying to reach them.”

“Don’t let them get beyond Lambda range!” shouted Duggan. “Stay close and find out what the hell they’re doing. Get the men out of the shuttles and back to their quarters – it’ll be safer there.”

“Will do, sir. The Ghasts are building up speed – they might be establishing an orbit.”

Duggan exhaled. It wouldn’t be unusual for a damaged spacecraft to go into a stable orbit while repairs were ongoing. He wanted to trust Nil-Far, but there was no way he was going to drop his guard. “The order stands. Shadow them and find out what they’re doing. They might not have any reason to remain over the pyramid now we’ve destroyed it.”

“It’s not completely destroyed, sir. It’s far too big for three Lambdas to do that. The energy shield is down and the oxygen levels are stable. I’d say it’s disabled and nothing more. Do you want us to complete the job?”

“Not just yet – I’d like to go and take a closer look. We could learn something about why the Ghasts were so keen for it to be left intact. If they’re moving away, I assume they’ve decided it’s no longer important to watch what we’re doing.”

A distant roar caught Duggan’s attention. He jerked around in time to see the fading blast from a Lambda strike atop an escarpment, a kilometre or more away.

“There goes the gun,” he said.

“We took out five of the eight, sir. The others shouldn’t trouble you.”

“Thank you. When will we lose comms?”

“Soon. I don’t have enough data on their planned course to let you know exactly when the planet is going to get in the way.”

“Get me Commander McGlashan, please.”

Chainer transferred him over. When McGlashan spoke, she sounded calm and collected, to Duggan’s relief. “Sir?”

“You might be in charge for a while. For the sake of certainty – if you need to fire upon the Dretisear, you’ll do so with my full support. Act according to the circumstances, rather than worrying about what might come from them. We can deal with the consequences later.”

“Will do, sir. Thanks.”

Her words had developed a faint echo and a hum, which were the usual symptoms of a connection about to fail. He’d expected a little longer to confer with his crew. It wasn’t to be - his earpiece went dead, leaving him and his squad on the surface of Trasgor, without immediate backup.

“Lieutenant Ortiz, you can bring the squad forward. Everything’s clear, so pick your feet up.”

Ortiz didn’t answer for a few seconds. When she spoke, it was clear she was running. “We assumed it was over when the noise stopped and we saw those plasma bursts.”

“The tank took a beating and won’t be going anywhere soon. The Terminus has gone out of comms sight so it’s just us, and we’re going to take a look at the pyramid.”

“Have you left anything for us to shoot, sir?”

“For the sake of everyone, you’d better hope not.”

“There’s always next time. We’ll be with you in approximately seven minutes. Should we maintain radio silence?”

Duggan weighed it up. “Don’t bother, Lieutenant. I’d rather we had clear comms for now.”

“Understood.”

Duggan looked into the distance, towards the channel they’d hidden the tank in. The ground was more undulating than he remembered and he couldn’t see the approaching infantry. The tank must have been visible all the way, since he couldn’t recall a let-up in the punishment it took. Another minute went by and he saw the heads of the lead soldiers appear. A trick of perspective made it appear as if they made no progress at all for another few minutes, until they were almost upon him.

“How’d you get out of that?” asked Torres. “And how the hell did it get this far?”

Duggan shrugged, before realising the gesture was hard to interpret when performed within a suit. “They say I’m lucky,” he said humbly.

No one said anything more about it, though Duggan detected what might have been one or two shaken heads.

“What now, sir?” asked Ortiz.

“The energy shield is gone. We need to move towards the target object – another four klicks ahead of us along this valley. The emplacements between here and there have been destroyed.”

“Any other threats?”

“Nothing known. We’re going to assume that could change at any moment. I don’t know what other damage the pyramid has suffered and I don’t know what it contains – if anything. I’d like to find answers – this could be key to our future relationship with the Ghasts and it may also give valuable clues about why the Dreamers have come and what they want.”

“We might need some hardware,” said Ortiz. “Carpenter, Reed, get on there and see what you can dig out.”

“Is it safe?” asked Reed doubtfully. It wasn’t the best response.

“It’ll be a lot safer than me shooting you in the leg, soldier. Now move!”

Ortiz had the knack of making threats in such a way that the other soldiers took her seriously, yet without hating her for making them in the first place. Reed hurried towards the open side door of the tank, with Carpenter following. The pair of them emerged a few minutes later, dragging a number of objects.

“A slug went through the weapons cabinet and took out most of the contents,” said Reed. “Do we need any of this stuff?”

Duggan and Ortiz had a look at what they’d found. There was a six-feet metal tube with a fist-sized opening at one end. It had two small metal cubes attached to it, positioned near the middle.

“Carpenter, you take the plasma launcher. Check it’s working and make sure it’s charged. We’ll leave it behind if it’s empty.”

Yes, sir,” said Carpenter. He stooped over the tube and pressed a switch on one of the cubes. “Six rounds, sir. Fully loaded.”

Next to it was a stubby cannon with a three centimetre bore. The barrel was about two feet long and joined by a rigid tube to a large cloth-encased metal pack. The pack was designed to be carried on a soldier’s back using two straps.

“Torres, you’re a strong lad, pick up the repeater.”

Torres did indeed look like he could press his own bodyweight and he muscled his way through the others. He struggled into the straps and positioned the barrel at his side, where it pointed straight ahead. “And they call this a light repeater?” he said.

“Compared to what the Ghasts have, that is definitely a light repeater,” said Montgomery.

“Theirs have a lower range and less penetration,” said Alvarez. “They need to keep their guns big to keep up with ours.”

The summation was partially true. The Ghasts’ hand-held weaponry was inferior to what the Space Corps handed out to its soldiers. However, the difference was slight and the average Ghast could carry much more weight than a human. Put them in a mech suit and they could carry a whole lot more again.

“We’re not here to talk about the Ghasts,” said Duggan. “We’ve got what we need. Leave the comms beacon here,” he said, indicating the final item they’d recovered from the shell of the tank. “The suits’ comms should be good enough.”

He turned until he was facing in the direction of the pyramid. There were two ways to approach – they could head along the floor of the valley, which curved towards their destination. Alternatively, they could climb the slope and cut over the top of the hill in a straight line. Duggan surveyed the land, trying to decide which way he liked the most. The sides of the valley were only a few hundred metres high at this end. They looked rough, but without presenting a major risk of falling. The valley floor, on the other hand, was easy-going terrain, albeit littered with rocks. If there were known hazards, the high ground was the most sensible place to be. The last report from the Terminus suggested there was nothing to worry about within the former perimeter of the energy shield, except the remaining three coil guns.

“We’re going up,” said Duggan. “Better safe than dead.”

It wasn’t the preferred route amongst the soldiers. They knew better than to complain and they got their heads down and followed Duggan as he set off in what was a straight line towards the pyramid. The valley wall turned out to be steeper than it appeared, and with a coating of grit that made their footing uncertain. Torres and Carpenter had heavier loads than the others and they fell gradually towards the back of the pack, until Duggan had to slow the pace. Ortiz shouted at them once or twice, but she knew what they were carrying and there was little venom in her words.

At the top, there was a good view of the valley and not much else. On the opposite side, the terrain was uneven, as if it had been moulded purposely to be as irregular as possible. This side was mercifully a lot flatter and with a gentle upwards slope. There was a high cliff a few kilometres away, which they didn’t need to go near in order to reach their goal.

Duggan waved the squad forward and they made a good pace. He kept a careful eye on the ground before them – it looked undisturbed. Minefields had once been commonplace, but they were difficult to keep hidden from a warship’s sensors. Anything on the ground was vulnerable to a strike from the air, which was why ground offensives were much less significant than they had once been. There were fewer, better trained soldiers, with the flexibility to use a variety of equipment and adapt to whatever surprises the war might throw at them.

The slope continued for more than two kilometres. They didn’t venture too close to the valley’s edge, since its wide curve would have added time to the run. At the highest point of the slope, the tip of the pyramid became visible, its straight lines and regularity intruding upon the randomness of nature. Soon after, the arc of the valley cut across to intersect their journey and they stopped for a moment on the edge. They were high above the valley floor and shadows from the late-afternoon sun stretched more than halfway over, lengthening rapidly as the day drew to a close. The pyramid was in clear sight and the squad kept low while they surveyed the area. This close, the Dreamer artefact was massive. Duggan remembered it to be equally proportioned, yet it somehow appeared squat and brooding. Its surface was a smooth, unreflective, near-black at fifteen hundred metres to a side. There were patches of obvious damage – with a huge crater midway up the side facing them, surrounded by a lip of melted alloy which had re-hardened into an ugly shape.

“Lots of positrons,” said Duggan, cycling through the suit helmet’s array of scanning options.

“We should be safe in our suits, sir,” said Ortiz.

“Best we don’t hang around anyway. I want to take a look and then we can hunker down somewhere to wait for a pickup.”

“I make it just less than a thousand metres away,” she said. “No sign of movement, no sign of life.”

“And no sign of a way in. Not on this side.”

Duggan felt deflated, without knowing exactly why. He didn’t know if he’d expected that simply laying eyes on the pyramid would give him the answers he wanted. He watched it for a few minutes longer, hoping for something to change, a doorway to open – anything that might give away details about its nature. In the end, there was nothing for it. He got to his feet and set off warily towards the valley floor.

Chapter Sixteen

The way down was harder to negotiate than the way up. The squad slipped and slithered, sending a cascade of loose stones and gravel before them. No matter how much care he took, Duggan felt as if he were at a constant risk of tumbling headlong towards the bottom. They made it intact, though Alvarez covered the last fifty metres on his backside. The man got up and patted himself down ruefully. The polymer suits were tough and proof against most abrasion, so the only thing damaged was his pride. The others were too focused on their destination, so the insults sent his way were muted.

Duggan paused to look up at the pyramid’s apex. He was used to seeing created objects of unimaginable size and this had no greater volume than a number of the Space Corps’ larger ships. Regardless, there was something peculiar about being confronted with evidence that the Confederation’s greatest achievements were not unique in the universe. First came the Ghasts, and now this new alien species.

With a start, he realised the Terminus had been out of contact for much longer than a single orbit of the planet – even a slow one. He tried to connect and got nothing. He swore under his breath and pushed the uncertainty from his mind.

“Come on, let’s see what we can learn about this alien technology,” he said.

The base of the pyramid wasn’t far and Duggan sprinted across the intervening space, using the heat and movement sensors on his helmet to detect anything he might otherwise miss. The squad followed him, ungainly in their protective suits. When he reached the pyramid, Duggan paused and then pressed the palm of his hand onto the surface. It was neither warm, nor cold, with a hint of vibration deep inside. The glove of his suit numbed his sense of touch, though not enough to block the feeling entirely.

“We’re going around,” he said on the open channel. “Watch out and shoot anything that moves.”

“Those are the kinds of orders I like,” said Ortiz.

Duggan led the way, advancing cautiously. As he walked, he noticed the fractures running through the stone at the base of the pyramid. Even with a gentle landing, the artefact was heavy enough to overstress the rock. It took a few minutes to reach the corner. He looked carefully around and saw the next side was in shadow. His helmet sensor kicked in automatically, gathering and enhancing the available light. The result was near-perfect, though a trained eye could tell the difference. In the reduced light, the walls of the valley appeared almost sheer, looming into the sky. There was something eerie about the entire scene – a peculiar contrast between raw nature and alien technology. Duggan walked along this darkened edge, his feet crunching through the gravel. Above, the sky was a blanket of stars, the blackness in contrast with the waning light cast upon the surface of Trasgor by its sun.

“Sir, you’ve just walked past something,” said Ortiz. She was feeling the strangeness too, and her voice was little more than a hoarse whisper.

Duggan stopped and looked around, trying to see what he’d missed. Ortiz helped him out by stepping close to the pyramid and running a finger along a near-invisible seam in the surface.

“A door?” asked Duggan. He continued a few more paces, searching for another seam. He found one and followed it with his eyes. The seam went up at a diagonal for a few metres, and then cut horizontally across to join the other one. It was difficult to judge from so close, but it appeared as if the vertical seams ran exactly parallel to the edges of the pyramid itself.

“Bang in the middle,” said Ortiz. “Aliens like symmetry, huh?”

“Anyone got a crowbar?” asked Quinn.

“I thought you always carried one in case you got the chance to do a bit of breaking and entering,” said Reed.

“Piss off,” replied Quinn mildly.

“Be quiet,” warned Ortiz. She didn’t need to raise her voice and the others fell silent.

Duggan banged his fist against what he assumed was a door. It was about four metres wide and there was no give in it whatsoever – it could have been a hundred metres thick for all he knew. “We’ll need more than a crowbar to get this shifted,” he said.

“We’ve got grenades and explosives,” said Ortiz.

“Anything that looks like an access panel?” asked Corporal Hammond.

Five of the squad monitored the area, while the remainder looked for a way to open the door. Garvin was the nearest thing to an explosives expert they had, and she stared at the smooth surface, trying to figure out if they had sufficient kit to get it open. Duggan stepped away, hoping to find some inspiration. There was another Lambda crater on this side of the pyramid – about five hundred metres up. The slope was far too slippery to climb and they didn’t have any additional gear with them to help. He found it hard to focus on the solution, since he was distracted by the inevitable conclusion that followed his certainty about this being a door. A door was there to let people in and out. If the pyramid had been nothing more than a power source for whatever created the oxygen, there would have been no need for a way inside.

“Lieutenant Ortiz, we need to be careful,” he said. “There must be something – someone – inside. Else why have a door?”

“They might not be inside now, sir. The Terminus made some big holes in this thing. It may be that the air got sucked out, killing whatever was inside. Assuming they left some of their number behind.”

The oxygen levels weren’t sufficient to support life, so there was a chance she was right. Duggan itched to face this new enemy, to see what they were made of. If they’d perished inside, the opportunity would be gone.

“I don’t care how they die, as long as they’re dead,” said Cook with uncanny timing. “It means I’ll be alive for the next time we fight them. Or the Ghasts. I suppose I don’t care who it is.”

“There’s no way we’re getting this open by force,” said Garvin. “The tank would have been enough if it still worked.”

“No point in crying over it,” said Ortiz. “The tank’s gone.”

“We’ll have to wait,” said Duggan. “See if the Terminus comes back. If not, we’ll be here a while.”

“Permanently, if you ask me,” said Quinn unhelpfully.

“I’ve been to worse places than this,” said Reed. “Admittedly not many.”

The squad talked lightly, but the situation was serious. Everyone knew it, though they chose to pretend otherwise. The conditions on Trasgor weren’t harsh enough to threaten them while the spacesuits functioned. Regardless, it would be an unpleasant few months counting down the time until the helmet power units failed and they suffocated.

“Should we head back to the tank?” asked Garvin. “One or two of us know how to fix things. Maybe there’s something we can do to get it moving.”

“It’s not going anywhere,” said Duggan. “If it’s ever recovered they won’t even try to repair what’s left.”

“And there’s all that shit spilling out if its engines,” said Hammond.

“If we’re going to die, we may as well do it trying,” said Duggan eventually. “We’ll head back and see what we can do. We should finish looking around this pyramid, in case there’s a door open on one of the other sides.”

They continued onwards until they had completed a full circuit of the pyramid. It was tightly sealed, with no sign of another door. Duggan hadn’t pinned any hope on it being otherwise, so he got his bearings and began to walk purposefully back towards the ruined tank. The others came silently after, with no one offering an opinion or alternative.

They reached the tank without incident. Seeing it anew, Duggan was certain there was nothing they could do to fix it. He didn’t wish to lower the squad’s morale by repeating his earlier words about how broken it was, and regretted saying them. Still, a realist would know any attempt at repairs was a lost cause. Sometimes, a futile task was enough to hold people together and Duggan hoped it would be the case here.

“There it is. I expect it to be running smoothly within four hours,” he said, attempting to spur them on with humour.

“Nice one, sir,” said Alvarez. “Give me your magic wand and I’ll wave it for you.”

“I want another search of the shell,” said Duggan. “Whatever you can find, bring it outside. Corporal Hammond, I want you in the cockpit. If there’s life in any of the systems, bring them online and see if there’s something we can use.”

A number of the squad got to work with enthusiasm. Others were noticeably less keen and they trudged around the edges of the tank, trying to look busy. Ortiz went amongst them, shouting words of encouragement. No one was fooled, though their activity levels increased.

There wasn’t much of the day left and the squad worked for two hours before the light became too bad to work without image intensifiers. It was possible to continue and Duggan considered doing so. In the end, he called a halt for the day. They’d worked hard on fixing the tank and accomplished nothing. All of the internal screens were dead and Hammond hadn’t been able to get any form of response from the mainframe at all. The spacesuits were giving amber warnings about positrons, so they couldn’t stay here forever. There was little point in trying to outdistance the leakage and they stayed close to the vehicle, with a few attempting sleep in the half-dozen seats that remained intact within.

Duggan sat with his back to the tank’s side wall, staring into the distance. Intensified greens and blacks from the landscape mixed into an array of shapes that looked utterly different to how they had during the day. It was tempting to switch off the sensor and enjoy the solitude of darkness. There was little chatter and those voices which spoke lacked their usual humour. There was no anger either and for that Duggan was thankful.

He’d been lost before on other planets and in circumstances as bad as this. He’d been younger then and it had felt like an adventure. Not once had he considered his death as the outcome. Here on Trasgor, the weight of his mortality pressed heavily against him. It wasn’t so much his death he feared as it was dying with his duty left undone. Failure was a word he’d spent his entire life running from in one form or another. The older and wiser he became, the harder it was to escape. I’ve managed it so far, he thought, shaking away the gloom. What’s the point in a life without challenge?

He worked through the possibilities, trying to see if there was a glimmer of a way to control events. The Terminus had been gone for too long and it was increasingly likely something was amiss. Lieutenant Chainer had said their initial distress signal through Monitoring Station Gamma would take a couple of days to reach its destination. After that, it could potentially be several more days until a rescue ship got here – perhaps another of the vessels the Space Corps had sent to look for the SC Lupus was close enough to arrive sooner. The thought gave him some hope – the Corps might risk a disposable craft if it was in the vicinity. If they lost a Gunner, there’d be little impact on the fleet’s capabilities. The biggest unknown was the Ghasts. Nil-Far’s interest in the pyramid had been intense and Duggan dearly wished he knew why. Then, there were the Dreamers. While he sat thinking, they could have a dozen warships coming towards Trasgor to find out what had happened here.

His mind wandered off to encompass other ideas, none of which would benefit the stranded troops. Circular thoughts pursued each other, eventually driving him into a fitful doze. Even in sleep there was no freedom from the helplessness and his dreams were vivid representations of death. In the end, he stood and took himself for a walk. When he returned a few hours later, the horizon was brightening and the squad were getting themselves prepared for another day attempting to repair a tank which everyone knew would never move again.

Chapter Seventeen

The morning passed slowly. They’d exhausted their few options when it came to repairs. Without proper tools and with only a passing knowledge of how the tank worked, they ran quickly into a dead end. Corporal Hammond had found a hand-held analyser, which he’d plugged into one of the mainframe’s interface ports. The device ran through a number of routines to try and kick-start the vehicle’s main computer. After a while it, too, gave up, having exhausted its own pre-programmed list of options.

Duggan was just about to call for them to return to the pyramid and plant every last explosive device they possessed onto the door and see if it would blow open, when his suit comms crackled faintly. He jerked in surprise. The crackling didn’t go away and he heard a voice amongst the harsh static, repeating a message over and over. He tried to respond, convinced his words would be lost in the noise. After a few minutes, he was able to make it out what was being said.

“This is Terminus Shuttle One. Do you copy?”

“This is Captain Duggan. I copy.”

“Captain Duggan, this is Sergeant Washington. We’re approaching your coordinates. Please hold your position. ETA twenty minutes.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” said Duggan, relief flooding into him. He spoke into the open channel. “We’ve got a rescue coming. Everyone get off the tank and be ready to give them a wave.”

“Damn, I’m glad to hear those words,” said Ortiz.

Duggan had plenty of questions, which he kept to himself for the moment. Twenty minutes wasn’t long and the shuttle was soon visible in the distance. The vessel was about fifty metres in length and it hovered for a few seconds while its landing computer checked the solidity of the ground below. When it was satisfied, the autopilot set the craft down a short distance away from the tank. The squad ran over, as the boarding ramp folded quietly outwards.

“Sergeant Washington, I’m glad to see you,” said Duggan to the first man off the ramp.

“I thought you might be, sir. Want me to fill you in on the details?”

“Fire away, Sergeant. Where’s the Terminus?”

“The ship’s still up there, sir. Commander McGlashan spoke to me directly. The Ghasts are following some crazy pattern around this system. She isn’t certain, but she thinks they may be purposefully taking a route that keeps us out of contact with the ground deployment.”

“She said that?”

“Yes sir. The Ghasts finally responded to our request for information and they claim they’re doing engine tests after the recent damage they suffered.”

“What did Commander McGlashan say about it?”

“She believed them, sir. She also believes their deep fission drives have sufficient output to take them into a medium lightspeed. The engines on the Terminus won’t be ready for another few hours. Commander McGlashan is continuing to shadow the Dretisear as per orders.”

“How did you get here? There were launch problems.”

“Those problems remain unresolved, sir. However, the men and women onboard have worked tirelessly with metal cutters and managed to remove the magnetic clamps from this craft, thereby allowing it to leave the Terminus. The Ghast ship came close enough to the dark side of Trasgor for the shuttle to launch. Here we are, sir.”

Duggan clapped Sergeant Washington on the shoulder. “Well met, Sergeant. How long till the Terminus comes within range again?”

“Hours, sir. We’re to fly to a pre-arranged meeting point for an attempted pickup.”

“The Terminus is moving fast?”

“Too fast for the shuttle to keep up, sir.”

“Well, we can’t have everything, Sergeant. I don’t suppose we can expect a tank to be following in your footsteps any time soon?”

“Not a tank, sir,” said Washington, sounding pleased. “We did manage to fit a heavy repeater into our hold. It didn’t leave much room for anything else and it’s given the engines a workout.”

“Sergeant, the news keeps getting better,” said Duggan. He climbed up the ramp and looked inside the shuttle. The heavy repeater was fifteen metres long and five wide – a cube of metal with a rounded front and a three-metre-long turret on top. Someone had painted the words Suck me on the barrel in rough green letters. The repeater hovered a few inches above the floor and the top almost reached the ceiling. The seats in the personnel bay hadn’t been cleared before the gun was loaded and struts of crushed metal were visible, poking out from beneath. There were a few soldiers in the bay as well, waiting to see what was expected of them.

“You powered the gun up to stop it from sliding around?”

“Yes, sir.” It was against procedures, since unsecured artillery had been known to rupture the hulls of transport vessels in the past. Duggan recalled it was something about the onboard positioning systems becoming confused by the motion of a shuttle. Here and now, it didn’t matter one bit.

“We’re coming onboard,” said Duggan. “I want to test out the repeater on something close by.”

The men and women of his squad scrambled up the ramp. There wasn’t a lot of room left once they gave the repeater a wide berth. Nobody wanted to be crushed to death when they were on the verge of rescue. Duggan climbed into the small cockpit, though he let Washington continue as pilot. The shuttle took off with a rumble of stressed engines. Duggan glanced back through the cockpit door and saw the heavy repeater sway gently in position. The troops watched it nervously.

Moments later, the shuttle landed in the valley, about five hundred metres from the pyramid. The occupants jumped out, grateful to be away from the unsecured gun.

“Unlatching the side panel,” said Washington, pressing a button on his console.

There was the hiss of a seal breaking, followed by a whining noise. The entire side wall of the shuttle opened outwards, coming to rest gently on the solid ground. These vessels weren’t expected to carry large loads, but they’d been designed with flexibility in mind - there were times the normal boarding ramp wasn’t big enough. Sergeant Washington left his chair and climbed onto the back of the repeater by means of a set of rusted iron rungs. There was a platform with railings, big enough for a single person to stand on. The gun was controlled remotely, though there were times it was easiest to have someone onboard to fine-tune its movements. When there was a long way to walk, it wasn’t uncommon to find the top platform of one of these crowded with men and women.

Duggan jumped off the shuttle, landing with a crunch on the ground. Sergeant Washington rotated the gun with the utmost care. The hull of the shuttle was strong, but it wasn’t proof against a collision from an object as heavy as this artillery piece. Slowly, it came down the wide ramp, until it was clear of the vessel. A few of the squad expressed their relief over the comms channel.

“Where should I point it, sir?” asked Washington.

“Over there,” said Duggan, pointing at the pyramid.

“This is a big bastard of a gun but I’m not sure it’ll go through something as strong as that.”

They had landed opposite the single door into the pyramid. Duggan jogged over and indicated the area he wanted the repeater to aim at.

“There’s a door. You can’t see it unless you’re close up.”

“Everyone back!” shouted Ortiz. “This is going to be loud.”

“What about ricochets?” asked Quinn. “I’ve seen people killed by the ricochets.”

“New model,” said Washington. “The firing computer won’t eject a projectile if it believes there’s a chance of a bounce back.”

“I’ve heard that before. Shouldn’t we get the shuttle away just in case?”

Washington laughed richly, the sound carrying undertones of barely-contained madness. “Trust in technology, soldier. Trust in technology.”

The soldiers sprinted towards the far side of the shuttle. In reality, a ricochet would smash the vessel apart easily and it might have been for the best to take it a few dozen kilometres away in order to minimise risk. Duggan was high after the turnaround in his fortunes and wasn’t in the mood for delay. On top of that, he wanted to be prepared for whatever lay inside the pyramid. He strolled away from the door. The barrel of the floating artillery was a fist-sized circle of impenetrable darkness, pointing directly over his head. He came level with it and thumped the palm of his hand against the side wall.

“Fire,” he said.

The repeater poured out its fury. The floating base shook as its gravity drive fought to correct against the recoil. The barrel of the gun rocked violently, its targeting computer making thousands of tiny updates to account for the kickback. The grumbling noise of slugs racing through electromagnetic coils was overwhelmed by a gargantuan clattering of depleted uranium striking a dense alloy surface at several thousand metres per second. Duggan’s suit helmet attenuated the sound, reducing it to a level that was just below the pain threshold. He stared impassively at the door as it was subjected to an immense and unrelenting crushing force. The surface began to glow, starting with a dull red and increasing in brightness until it was a vivid orange. The metal swam with movement, reminding Duggan of fingers being pressed into dense clay. Through it all, Sergeant Washington laughed with pure delight.

The door held up well against the assault. The clattering merged into a single, constant sound, which droned and buzzed in Duggan’s ears. The Space Corps heavy repeaters fired faster and faster as they warmed up, until eventually the control computer had to shut them down. Without that restraint, they would continue to the point of self-destruction. Duggan pressed his hand gently against the floating base. The metal felt warm, even through the insulation of the glove he wore. It would likely shut down soon.

The fusillade continued unabated and, without warning, a hole appeared in the door. A moment later, it was torn away from its mountings, crumpled and pulverised into a twisted slab of glowing alloy. Sergeant Washington didn’t stop and the door was punched away from the doorway and hurled into the pyramid, spreading heat and light around it.

Duggan ran to the back of the gun, meaning to give Washington the signal to stop. He was too late – the noise ended abruptly, leaving Duggan with a ringing in his ears. The Sergeant chuckled to himself as if remembering the greatest joke he’d ever heard.

“Enough,” said Duggan.

“Man, I love this shit,” said Washington, leaning around the gun to admire the damage he’d caused. Before he could say more, something hit him in the head, taking it clean away along with half of his shoulder and one arm. His body was smashed to the floor, his life taken instantly.

“Get down!” shouted Duggan to the rest of the squad. “We’re taking fire!”

Chapter Eighteen

Sergeant Washington was dead, pieces of his body carried away by whatever it was that hit him. Duggan left the corpse where it lay and looked around the side of the repeater. The doorway was three hundred metres away and the ruined door smouldered sullenly in the space beyond. Its glow had faded to a red which showed nothing of the surroundings and also conspired to interfere with the attempts of Duggan’s helmet sensors to pierce the darkness.

“Where did the shot come from?” he shouted. There was nothing moving in the Lambda crater above, so the only place was the doorway.

“I’m not detecting movement,” said Ortiz. “The repeater’s in the way and there’s no angle to see in the door.”

Something thundered into the base of the artillery gun, knocking it a few centimetres towards Duggan. A second strike followed the first and the repeater was again pushed away. Duggan patched into its computer using his helmet to interface. It was down to thirty percent of its ammunition and several damage warnings flashed up. The gun was hit again.

Without giving it further thought, Duggan instructed the gun to move towards the pyramid door and to fire at maximum rate into the opening. The harsh sound of metal striking metal came again as repeater projectiles tore into the darkness. The gun floated forwards at a fast walking pace, with Duggan keeping behind it. Another damage warning appeared and the gravity engine shut down, causing the machine to drop to the ground. It landed with a heavy thud, sending reverberations through the stone. The gun continued to work and it spewed its missiles into the pyramid. Duggan kept it firing until the ammunition ran out and the muzzle fell silent.

“Did you get it?” asked Ortiz.

Duggan didn’t reply at once and waited to see if there’d be any more firing from within. It remained quiet. “I hope so,” he said at last.

He looked out from the protection of the now-still artillery. The doorway was a couple of hundred metres away and if there was anything inside, they’d get a shot at him if he ventured out. The shuttle was behind and he saw three one-metre holes through its hull. There was no damage to the cockpit and he kept his fingers crossed that the vessel would be able to get them away from here. He’d erred in leaving it so close and it might be something he ended up regretting later.

“Cover me,” he said.

He ran sideways away from the repeater, looking to cut out the angle so anyone deep inside the doorway wouldn’t have much chance to fire at him. He heard the fizz of gauss rifles – not those of the enemy, but those of his soldiers as they fired into the doorway. When he was a few metres clear of the gun, he changed course and sprinted directly towards the pyramid, reaching it a little way to the side of the opening. He inched along until he could look within. The spacesuit helmet had a sensor near the top, so he didn’t need to put too much of his head around the corner. The broken door had faded to black and though it emitted enough heat to cause a shimmering in the air, it no longer interfered with the suit’s ability to penetrate the darkness. There was a passage which led further into the pyramid. It opened out into a space after fifty metres or so. The inner walls were as dark and featureless as those outside and it was hard to distinguish edges. There was a mass within – an indistinct shape somewhere beyond the corridor. Nothing moved and there were heat signatures coming from both the door and the unknown object. Duggan turned his visor towards the Corps repeater – there were several large holes in its front surface.

“Clear?” asked Ortiz.

“I can’t be certain. There’s something inside that might be a weapon. Hard to tell if it’s working.”

“The repeater should have taken it out?” She phrased it as a question, clearly unsure herself.

“Maybe. I wonder why it wasn’t destroyed when we knocked the door down.”

“Automated defences? It could have moved into place when it detected a breach.”

“We can’t sit around waiting to see what happens. Move up. One at a time.”

The first shape broke out from behind the shuttle. It was Ortiz, never one to hide behind others. The repeater was between her and the doorway, but there was a space of a few metres where she’d be visible. She made it to the pyramid without being torn to pieces by high calibre gunfire.

“Next,” she said. “Move fast and don’t stop.”

“I want two to stay behind,” said Duggan. “People who can fly that shuttle. Check it works and get it out of here before any more holes appear in it.”

“Reed, Quinn, that means you,” said Ortiz.

Soon, nineteen of them were lined up to the right of the four-metre doorway. There hadn’t been any further shots from within and Duggan was sure the weapon inside the pyramid had been destroyed. He wasn’t quite sure enough that he’d run headlong towards the wreckage, nor send one of his squad to do the job for him.

“Damn, there’s wasn’t much left of Sergeant Washington,” said Alvarez.

“There isn’t time to think about him yet,” said Duggan. He waved Carpenter over and the soldier came closer, still carrying his shoulder-fired plasma launcher.

“Are you a good shot with that thing?” asked Duggan.

“Pretty good, sir. What’s the target?”

“There’s something in there, it’s giving off heat. I think it’s a movable gauss turret. I’d like you to hit it again.”

Carpenter carefully leaned out. “That thing back there?”

“If you’re looking at the shape about eighty or ninety metres away, then that’s what I want you to hit.”

“You got it, sir,” he said. Carpenter lifted up the launcher tube. It was heavy and he grunted with effort. He took four paces backwards, still remaining out of sight. The tube emitted three quiet beeps and its coils whined. Carpenter leapt into the doorway and something whooshed from the launcher. There was a whump inside the pyramid and the walls of the corridor were briefly lit in bright light. Carpenter jumped back even before the plasma light had started to fade. “Direct hit,” he said.

Duggan had a look. The plasma light had gone, leaving a strong heat signature at the place it had detonated. There was no way to tell for certain if the weapon in the pyramid was disabled. The shoulder launchers were effective against most things this side of a tank. It was time to act, rather than hide behind endless precautions.

“I’m going in,” said Duggan.

He didn’t hesitate and darted around the corner, pushing himself into a fast run along the passageway. His breathing sounded loud in his ears and he gritted his teeth. As he ran, he noticed furrows in the walls, which hadn’t been obvious from outside. The repeater slugs had scarred everything. The broken door covered most of the corridor’s width and he jumped over it. I’m still not dead.

The object became clearer – it was a mangled lump of metal, with bits half-ripped away. Duggan saw what it was – a smaller version of the coil guns the Dreamers had left positioned around the perimeter of the energy shield. There was no way to tell if this was a fixed emplacement or if it had moved itself into place as part of an automatic self-defence system. Or been moved here by our enemies.

It didn’t take long to reach the end of the corridor. The gun didn’t fire and Duggan was pleased to find he was still alive. As he’d guessed, there was a room at the end and he crouched near to a wall and looked inside, using his helmet to detect anything potentially hostile. The chamber was a good fifteen metres square and had corridors leading away from the other three walls. Duggan’s breathing settled from his sprint and the flood of adrenaline his body had produced. He noticed the humming he’d felt the first time he touched the pyramid, leaving him surer than ever that this was just a power source, left behind to make Trasgor inhabitable for its makers. Knowing it didn’t explain why the Ghasts would have such an interest.

Duggan took a gamble and crossed the room, keeping low. His rifle was in his hand and he aimed it ahead. He skirted around the ruin of the Dreamer gauss gun, dimly aware of the heat it continued to emit. He reached the opposite passage and pressed himself to the wall on one side. The corridor went on, deeper into the artefact. The humming was infinitesimally louder and there was more sign of repeater damage to the walls. The pyramid was only fifteen hundred metres across – the projectiles could easily have covered the distance if the passage went all the way to the other side. There might be another door there, he guessed.

“Lieutenant Ortiz, bring the squad in,” he said. “We’re going to have a look.”

There was no response. He frowned and checked the comms were functioning. There was no problem with the hardware. “Too much metal,” he muttered to himself. “Blocking the comms.”

He hurried towards the entrance. A few metres from the doorway, his earpiece came to life again.

“Do you copy?” said Ortiz.

“I do now, Lieutenant,” he said. “This place is too dense for our signals to penetrate. It’ll add to the danger, but we’re going to search it.”

“How many squads?”

“Three – a six, a six and a seven.”

The troops were quickly divided. Duggan was in a group of six, with Alvarez, Cook, Hunter, Smith and Corporal Wong who’d come down with the shuttle.

“We go in for exactly one hour and then we come out,” said Duggan. “Is that clear?”

“I’m not sure I want to be in there any longer,” said Torres. “Not if I have to carry this repeater everywhere with me.”

“You’ll be pleased you have it when the bullets come flying,” said Ortiz. “Now let’s move out!”

They went in one squad at a time, leaving a ten second gap between each. Duggan’s squad was first and he chose the straight-ahead route, which took them directly towards the centre of the pyramid.

“The middle’s got to be the most dangerous,” whispered Smith without any particular sign of worry.

“The most exciting,” said Hunter. “That’s where they’ll keep all their alien women.”

“You’re stupid,” said Smith.

“Quiet!” Duggan ordered. It wasn’t the time for banter and he wanted them focused on the task in hand.

The sound of footsteps told him the other squads were on their way through the two side exits. Duggan got his feet moving and advanced along the corridor at a measured pace, hearing the others fall in behind. The side walls sloped inwards, so he couldn’t keep as close to them as he preferred. It left him feeling exposed, even though the safety offered by the wall was ephemeral at best. After sixty metres, they reached another room. This one was empty and with no sign of defensive emplacements. Duggan had been worried the place might be riddled with them and his soldiers only had rifles and grenades. They were in no way prepared to face heavy armour or high-calibre guns.

The comms to the other squads were dead, leaving the six of them alone in the depths of the unknown. Duggan checked his timer and was shocked to find seven minutes had elapsed. It felt as if only seconds had gone by. With a deep breath, he and his squad pressed on deeper into the pyramid.

Chapter Nineteen

They crossed over two more rooms, each with the same number of exits as the one before. These places were empty and there was no apparent need for them to exist. It could have been a result of the method used to create the pyramid, Duggan supposed. It didn’t seem likely. The trouble was, he was a man who liked to think there was a reason for everything. When the reason wasn’t apparent, his mind would search endlessly for an answer.

After the fourth room, they entered another passage. There was still the occasional sign of repeater fire on the walls. Here and there they came across flattened discs of metal, where the projectiles had ricocheted away from the sides and come to a rest on the floor. Duggan turned one over with his foot – it was heavy yet made little sound when he flipped it.

The corridor opened out into a vast space that filled the centre of the pyramid. The ceiling was lost somewhere in a darkness their suit helmets struggled to make sense of. The walls to the sides were visible, about four hundred metres away. These walls sloped up until they, too were gone from sight. In the centre of the space was a pillar. It wasn’t a pillar in the conventional sense – this was a vast, cylindrical monolith of stone which glittered faintly without any light source to reflect. Duggan estimated the diameter of the object to be five hundred metres and it blocked his view of the chamber’s far walls. He couldn’t guess at the height – certainly it went beyond the extents of what he could see.

“What the hell is that?” asked Smith.

Duggan shook his head. “I don’t know. A power source, perhaps. There are no detectable emissions.”

“My suit’s picking up light over there, sir,” said Wong. “Not a lot, though.”

Duggan pointed his visor towards the left of the room. The pillar blocked his line of sight, but there was the faintest increase in light on the floor and walls. It was easy to miss if you were concentrating on something else. He tried to figure out their position in relation to the exterior damage the pyramid had suffered.

“We landed two Lambdas on this place before the third one shut it down. The last missile must have damaged this pillar.”

“It’s big,” said Hunter doubtfully.

“Could be delicate,” said Alvarez. “Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s metal.”

“Let’s check it out,” said Duggan, setting off across the floor. “Keep your lights off for now and stay alert.”

The metal underfoot was dense and thick. It seemed to absorb the sound of their footsteps as they walked over it. Neither was there any perceptible echo from the subdued noise of their passage. The effect was one of walking in a tight, enclosed space, rather than in a huge chamber. The sensation wasn’t altogether a pleasant one. Duggan looked about, jerking his head in all directions in case there were any more automated defences left here by the enemy. He considered turning on his light and rejected it. The helmet torch would interfere with the sensor’s image intensifiers, without being powerful enough to illuminate the walls or ceiling.

He reached the pillar – huge chunks had been ripped from it and they were scattered on the floor everywhere around, along with spent repeater slugs. It looked as if it had taken thousands of hits, making a hole many metres across and deep. Duggan craned his neck and he could make out shapes high above, with no way to discern exactly what they were. The material in front of him was utterly black when viewed from straight on, yet it twinkled with a hint of the metallic when seen from an angle. Stepping forward, he pressed his hand against the column. His suit helmet provided him with an urgent warning and he pulled his hand away.

“It’s cold,” he said. “Very cold. Yet there’s no chill emanating from its surface.”

“It reminds me of obsidian,” said Cook. “That stuff you get around volcanoes.”

“Yeah,” said Smith. “With a sprinkling of metal in it.”

Duggan had no idea what it was made of, though it did look exactly like obsidian with a metallic sheen. “We should try and take a piece of it for testing,” he said.

“Want me to pick some of it up, sir?” asked Hunter.

“Not yet, soldier. If it got hit by a Lambda, there might be other pieces on the floor further around.”

“The repeater really smashed it up,” said Alvarez.

Duggan moved on, walking close to the pillar while taking care not to touch it again. The suits were particularly well-insulated against cold, but there was no point in taking unnecessary chances. He checked his timer. Twenty minutes. Time was running out and he didn’t want to leave here without learning more. It was an option to come back later, though one he hoped he wouldn’t need to exercise.

The light increased, a miserly quantity coming in through a gap overhead. “There’s a hole in the ceiling, right near to the pillar,” he said.

“With pieces on the ground,” said Wong.

More black shapes covered the floor, most of them small. Duggan stooped over one – it was fist-sized and shaped like a dagger with an edge that could have sliced easily through his suit. He remembered hearing that obsidian was brittle, yet its edges could be sharper than any metal.

“Careful what you pick up,” he warned. He walked a few paces on, to see if there was anything suitable for him to collect. There was plenty of choice and he tentatively touched one with a fingertip. “It’s broken away, yet it’s just as cold as the main cylinder,” he said.

Hunter and Smith walked further along, looking curiously around them.

“Some big pieces here, sir,” said Smith. “This one must weigh a hundred tonnes.”

“I’ve found something,” said Hunter.

There was a note to the man’s voice which made Duggan take notice. “What is it?” he asked.

“I think it’s a ladder, sir.”

Hunter was twenty metres further around the pillar, walking and looking up at the same time. Duggan jogged towards him. “Hold up,” he said.

The soldier stopped walking and raised an arm to point. There was a series of rungs protruding from the side of the pillar. They appeared to be made from the same near-black metal as the pyramid’s walls, widely spaced and climbing into the dark. When Duggan looked closely, he saw there were sockets to either side of the rungs, like there’d once been a safety cage fitted around the ladder. There was no sign of it any longer. The ladder was almost indistinguishable from the pillar and it was a wonder Hunter had spotted it. He touched the third rung and his suit informed him it wasn’t any colder than the surrounding air. A part of Duggan wished Hunter’s eyes hadn’t been so sharp, since he knew what he was going to have to do.

“I’m going up,” he said.

“Shouldn’t we look for some stairs?” asked Wong.

“If I find some stairs when I’m at the top, I’ll be sure to come down that way,” said Duggan. He had no relish for the climb, yet was reluctant to go looking for a stairwell or a lift he might be unable to operate. “I don’t want to us run into another gauss emplacement either.”

“Can you make it to the top and back down in time, sir?” asked Hunter.

“Probably not – unless there’s a quicker way down that doesn’t involve me falling. We need a sample of this pillar. If I’m not back when the sixty minutes are up, I want you to do whatever it takes to return one of these chunks to Lieutenant Ortiz and let her know where it came from. Wait here for as long as you can.”

With a deep breath, Duggan stretched out a hand to the highest rung he could reach and put his foot on the lowest. He pulled himself up to the next rung, discovering the wide placement made it difficult to climb without putting extra strain on his arms and shoulders. In addition, it was hard to avoid brushing against the pillar itself. A whispering internal voice told him he was being stupid and he agreed with it. The part of him that was a stubborn bastard took control of his limbs and made him press on.

Duggan was fit and strong. However, the spacesuit was heavy and his gauss rifle knocked against his back in an irritating manner. The weapon would have been better left on the ground, yet he was reluctant to leave himself completely defenceless. He climbed higher, with pain building in his muscles. He grimaced and stared directly ahead, trying not to think of anything but the climb.

Minutes passed and each rung became a challenge to overcome. Duggan cursed his obstinacy and concentrated on lifting his arms and dragging himself upwards a single step at a time. He didn’t think about falling, refusing even to accept the possibility. Instead, he occupied his mind by counting each rung he climbed. At four hundred metres, a readout within his helmet advised that his heart rate had climbed to an unsustainable level and advised him to take a shot of battlefield adrenaline. Duggan hated the thought and he ignored the suggestion.

He paused to look upwards and wished he hadn’t. The change in perspective, allied with the blood rushing through his head, made him dizzy. He closed his eyes, but not before he’d seen an outline of a rough hole from the Lambda strike against the pyramid. Where the ladder went, he couldn’t see. The dizziness passed and Duggan began once more, repeating a mantra in his head. Grip, pull, climb, six hundred, grip, pull, climb six hundred and one.

By seven hundred metres, the suit was unable to regulate his body temperature adequately. Sweat covered his forehead, dripping into his eyes and stinging them constantly. There were a series of red alerts on his HUD about the physical state of his body. It wouldn’t be long until the suit took matters into its own hands and started injecting him with whatever concoction of drugs it felt he needed. Luckily, the pillar had begun to taper, presumably coming to a point like the pyramid itself. Therefore, Duggan was no longer climbing vertically and the going was fractionally easier. He growled at the imaginary person which inhabited the spacesuit mini-computer and told it where it could shove its battlefield adrenaline.

It took him a while to realise he was no longer in an open space. He glanced around and discovered that he’d ascended through the ceiling and was in a semi-circular shaft which continued through the metal. Heartened, he tipped his head back and his eyes told him the shaft ended in another fifty metres or so. His body’s reserves were depleted and the last part of the climb took a huge expenditure of effort to complete.

At last, he made it. The shaft ended at a metal ceiling. There was no way to tell if the pillar went higher and in truth Duggan was beyond caring. There was a square opening in the wall on the opposite side of the shaft. It was large, wide and more than a metre away from the ladder. Duggan cursed and used his feet to push away from the rungs. His legs were leaden and he didn’t get the distance he’d wanted. Nevertheless, it was far enough and he landed with a thump in the opening. He was in a passage, approximately two metres wide and three high. There was no light to speak of and he turned on his helmet torch. His heart fell – the passage continued for only a few metres before it ended at a dull, black-metal door.

He advanced, flexing his shoulders to try and get the blood flowing into his tired muscles. As he’d feared, the door didn’t open automatically for him. However, there was something attached to its surface which didn’t appear very often on the doors which Duggan habitually used. It was a heavy metal handle - nothing more than a horizontal bar. It looked stiff, but when he pressed down upon it, the handle moved silently and easily. He switched off his torch, in case there was something unexpected on the other side. The door gave the impression it had a great weight when he pulled on it, yet it opened without requiring much effort.

There was a room beyond. It was unlit, except by the tiny quantity of light which came through an irregular six-metre opening in the ceiling. The metal around the hole had been melted and then reformed as it cooled. Duggan had seen plasma damage often enough that he knew this was part of the crater resulting from a missile strike. Through the gap he could make out the pinpricks of stars which filled Trasgor’s night-time sky.

The ceiling itself was five metres above and the room was five metres across, with the opposite wall being vertical, rather than sloped like the sides of the pyramid. The floor went to the left and right away from him. Duggan stopped for a moment while he struggled to make sense of the overall shape. Then it came to him – the room went around the inner perimeter of the pyramid. Ten metres away on each side there were corners and the room continued at a right-angle to each. He was sure if he went in either direction, he’d end up at this door. There was no sign of furniture, however there was a row of screens running along the far wall. They were all dark, as if the power had been switched off.

There was something else – a misshapen object a few metres away. When Duggan focused, he saw there were others with it. His motion and heat sensors were clear and there was no sound to be heard, so he walked over to the nearest shape. It was a body, so badly damaged by the ingress of plasma fire that it was unrecognizable. Dreamers, thought Duggan. He pulled at the remains, hoping there might be something for him to look at – to see the features of humanity’s new enemy. The body was little more than charcoal and ash. It crumbled under his grip, giving away nothing of how it once looked. He checked the other remains without learning anything further about these aliens.

He got to his feet, feeling the early signs of aching in his limbs. Stepping carefully over the bodies, he made his way to the place where the room turned left. He peered around the corner, uncertain if there were any active defences. It was clear and the room continued until it reached another corner. There were more screens embedded in the wall – a row of dozens, each as blank as the next. He went across to one and pressed it, wondering if he could activate it. The screen remained off, but there was something vaguely familiar about everything here. The idea tugged at his brain and told him this was significant.

Duggan turned left again. There were more screens and a door in the centre of the wall. He hurried over to it. This door had no handle and it was closed. There was a clear square plate on the wall adjacent. He pressed the plate, knowing before he did so that it wouldn’t activate at his command. He was sure this had been the main control room for the pyramid, or at least a secondary one. The answers he’d hoped to find continued to elude him and his frustration grew. He kicked the door with the front of his foot and swore at it.

The realisation that he might have to climb the ladder came to the fore in his mind. He didn’t want to contemplate it – the way up had left him with little spare for the way down. He called up the timer. Sixty-five minutes – I’ve got to hurry. Leaving the door, Duggan moved to the next corner, which would take him around the full perimeter of the pyramid. There were more screens and another closed door. Next to the door was a slumped figure. Now he’d ascertained there were no defences in this room, Duggan switched on his helmet torch and light illuminated the body. It was partially charred, though there were signs it had escaped the worst of the plasma. He walked towards the corpse, hearing his heart beating in his ears. His mind had reached a conclusion that he didn’t want to accept, at least not until his eyes gave him no choice.

The Dreamer had been dressed in a flexible, dark silver material, which had burned away and allowed the exposed flesh to be eaten by plasma. Its head pointed away, the dead face looking at the metal floor. Duggan didn’t want to see it and he put out a hand slowly, hating his weakness. He closed his eyes and pulled at the body. It rolled over with a quiet sigh. Duggan opened his eyes again and found himself looking at the lined, grey face of a Ghast.

Chapter Twenty

Duggan stared dumbly at what he’d found. The alien’s eyes were open and they looked back at him, blank and lifeless. He wasn’t a man to be frozen by shock or indecision and he stood up, turning his attention away from this revelation and onto the task of escaping the pyramid.

The nearby door was sealed and also lacked a handle. There was another activation plate to one side, which he pressed without any more luck than the last time. The fingers of the dead creature were curled up tightly into its palm. With an effort, he straightened them, feeling the thick digits crackle as tendons stiffened by rigor mortis were stretched. The body was heavy and difficult to move, seeming to weigh more than its size suggested. It took a few seconds for Duggan to haul it into a position where he could push the grey palm onto the door’s activation plate. His hopes were dashed when the door stayed close. Before he could think of anything else, he heard a crackling in his earpiece and a female voice spoke, the words unclear.

“The hole!” he said, looking through the damaged ceiling and to the stars outside. He dashed over, until he was standing directly beneath it. “ES Terminus, this is Duggan, do you copy?”

There was a response, clear and crisp this time. “Sir, this is Commander McGlashan. Where are you?”

“I’m inside the pyramid – there’s a hole in the roof for the signal to get through.”

“You’ve got to get out. The Ghasts are going to destroy it!”

“What do you mean?” he asked. “They were the ones who asked us to leave it untouched.”

“They must have received orders to the contrary. They’re planning to wipe out any trace it was here.”

“What about the squad? Have you told them we have people down here?”

“They gave us sixty minutes to evacuate and we only have fifty-five remaining.”

“Do what you can to stall them,” said Duggan. “I’ll be out of comms sight in about five seconds and won’t be able to speak until I exit the pyramid.”

“Understood. I’ll do what I can, sir. The shuttle will need to leave in fifty minutes to be sure of getting clear.”

Galvanised by his determination to bring news of his discovery away from this place, Duggan ran towards the open door he’d first entered through. He sped along the short passageway, the light from his torch sweeping aside the darkness and glinting off the surface of the black pillar. The rungs were clear to see in the artificial light and he sprang for them, grabbing the closest tightly with both hands.

He started to climb, now knowing why the rungs were spaced so far apart. After a hundred metres, the effects of his earlier exertions caught up with his willpower. A hundred metres later and exhaustion threatened to overcome him.

“Damnit, I won’t die because I’m too proud!” he said angrily. What he’d found was too important for the information to be lost because he’d fallen from a ladder.

He ordered the suit to give him some battlefield adrenaline. He felt the prick of the needle, sharp and intense. The drug coursed through his veins, giving strength to his limbs and making him feel like he could run a thousand miles. His heart hammered in his chest, his pupils widened and his jaw clenched tightly.

Down he went, his arms and legs metronomic as they carried him towards the floor below. Four hundred metres to go, he thought with surprise. Feels like I’ve just started. The fifty-minute timer ticked steadily downwards on his HUD. Plenty of time, I could get used to this. He shook the feeling away – the adrenaline was dangerous if it was overused. It took something out of the user and never gave it back. It was a trade – the drug helped you live in exchange for an undying lust to use it again and again. Duggan had seen the effects of long-term abuse and there was no way he’d give in to that.

His leading foot struck something unyielding. For a split second, Duggan thought he was in the process of slipping away to his death. Then he saw that he’d reached the bottom of the ladder. The adrenaline’s initial rush was already subsiding - the drug would keep him going for a few hours yet, but the first big kick had faded. He took a few seconds to get his bearings and then made a run for it. There were broken pieces of the pillar around him on the floor. He was tempted to grab one, before telling himself that he trusted his squad to do as they were told.

“It’s too important to leave to someone else,” he said, scooping up a piece from the ground and resuming his sprint around the base of the pillar. The suit detected the extremes of temperature and offered a warning. Duggan held onto the rock and exited the huge central room, passing the chunk from hand to hand. His palms got colder and colder and the material of his suit became stiff and brittle. He dashed through the rooms he’d passed and the pain in his hands got worse, until he had to grit his teeth against it. The battlefield adrenaline had strong numbing properties and Duggan knew the coldness was doing him real damage.

An object appeared in his path. He leapt over it before remembering it was the pyramid’s outer door. A few paces more and he emerged into Trasgor’s night, his eyes searching left and right for the transport shuttle. There was no sign of it and he was forced to drop the pillar shard for a moment.

“This is Duggan, where the hell are you?” he shouted into the comms.

“Sir, we’re still here,” said Ortiz. “I’ve got a lock on you and we’ll be there in a moment.”

A searchlight appeared on the ground a couple of hundred metres away, moving towards his position. He squinted up and saw the shuttle hovering in the sky, level with the top of the pyramid. It dropped towards him and thumped heavily into the ground, the pilot sacrificing finesse for speed. Duggan picked up the rock and ran towards the transport, feeling the deep chill rush into his cold-blistered palms. The entry ramp opened and Duggan jumped onboard, throwing the pillar sample onto the floor. The pain was intense and the suit injected him with a strong painkiller without his intervention. The visors of the men and women in the passenger bay looked at him, giving away nothing of the expressions within. Duggan fell into one of the seats which had survived the damage from the heavy repeater and closed his eyes, the pain already fading.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Ortiz, leaning out of the cockpit to be sure Duggan was safely inside.

The door closed and the shuttle lifted off, accelerating faster than procedures allowed for. Duggan checked the timer. Seven minutes.

“Want to stick around for the fireworks, sir?” asked Ortiz

“We’d best not, Lieutenant. I’d rather we weren’t accidentally hit by a stray missile.”

“I’m sure they wouldn’t do that,” she replied.

“I’d have agreed with you only a few days ago,” said Duggan, wondering what he believed about the Ghasts after recent events. “We’re escaping by the skin of our teeth. Let’s not slow things down.”

“Right you are, sir.”

The transport flew into the sky, still accelerating hard. It had a life support system that could mitigate the effects, though not one that was able to withstand the abuse of a determined pilot. There were rough metal patches over the holes through the hull. Duggan had no idea where the soldiers had got the materials to make them. This was the sort of thing they were good at.

The shuttle docked twenty minutes later, with Ortiz allowing the autopilot to take control over this final manoeuvre. Duggan was first off, eager to return to the bridge and resume command of the ship. When he exited the docked craft, he saw where the soldiers had cut through the metal clamps which had previously held it in place. Without them, the shuttle might not survive the jump to lightspeed.

Before the squad could return to their quarters, Duggan took his helmet off and thanked them for their work on the surface. There were nods and acknowledgements, with more than one person speaking of their eagerness to become reacquainted with the food replicator. The suits sustained their occupants but they couldn’t replace the feeling of having a full stomach.

“I need a medic,” said Duggan. He knew his hands were going to be a mess and he wasn’t looking forward to seeing what state they were in. The gloves of his spacesuit were splitting and he knew he’d put himself at great risk to bring the sample of the pillar.

“You should have left that piece of rock, sir,” said Ortiz. “Your squad brought a couple of pieces already.”

“Damn,” said Duggan ruefully. “I should have trusted them more.”

“You’re like me, sir. You don’t want anyone to do something you could do yourself.” She smiled at him, her features softening. “I’m glad you got out.”

“Me too,” he said. “Though the information I discovered won’t be welcome when I hand it on.”

Ortiz was a professional and she didn’t pry further. “I’ll send Corporal Bryant to the bridge. She’ll have you sorted in no time.”

“And have those samples locked up somewhere safe. Have one brought up to the bridge in a cold-proof box or something – Lieutenant Breeze might know what it is.”

“Will do, sir.”

Duggan returned to the bridge. The crew were happy to see him and greeted him warmly, except for Lieutenant Nichols who didn’t smile and only said enough to avoid giving insult. There was little time for pleasantries and Duggan got straight on with business.

“Have the Ghasts done what they said?” he asked.

“Right at the time they promised,” said McGlashan. “They didn’t hold back either. We tracked just shy of one hundred missiles inbound to the pyramid. Here’s what it looks like now.” An image came up on the bulkhead screen. Duggan had to take McGlashan’s word that the Dreamer artefact had once been there. After the Dretisear’s missile bombardment there was nothing recognizable, just a cluster of craters and an area of heat-blackened rock.

“Where is their spaceship and what information have they given you about why they wanted to destroy the pyramid?”

“They’re ten thousand klicks away and moving in a tight circle over the target area, same as we are.”

“No more information?”

Lieutenant Breeze was the next to speak. “We’ve got a fission signature from the Dretisear.”

“Get Nil-Far on the comms!” said Duggan loudly.

After a few moments, the Ghast captain’s voice reached Duggan’s earpiece. “Captain John Duggan,” he said, the interpretation giving away no hint about the Ghast’s demeanour.

“Shut off your engines, Nil-Far. I want answers!”

“I have been ordered to leave this place. You have found what happened to your missing ship, therefore our mission is completed.”

“What was that object on the surface? Why the secrets?”

“I do not have the authority to say, John Duggan. Nothing has changed.”

“Ten seconds and they’re gone,” said Breeze.

Duggan’s earpiece had become quiet and he thought Nil-Far was gone. The Ghast was still there and he spoke one final question.

“Did you see anything within the pyramid?”

“I saw nothing,” said Duggan.

“They’re gone,” said Breeze. “At a healthy speed from what I can tell. They’re either good at repairs or we overestimated their damage.”

“How long till our engines are ready?” asked Duggan.

“They came online half an hour ago, sir. Not enough to attain maximum velocity, but it’ll get us where we need to be.”

“Fine,” said Duggan. “Warm them up and set us on a course for the Juniper. The shit is about to hit the fan.”

He caught McGlashan staring at him with one of her expressions. He didn’t know if he had anything to say to her just yet, so he didn’t meet her gaze. The engines on the Terminus took a few seconds longer than usual to prepare and then they sent the heavy cruiser away into lightspeed.

Chapter Twenty-One

With a feeling of déjà vu, John Duggan paused for a moment outside Admiral Teron’s door. He clenched his fists, feeling the new layers of artificial skin flex uncomfortably. The Juniper’s AI scanned and recognized him, before opening the way for him to proceed. There were no perceptible changes to the office, except for the presence of an additional person who sat opposite Teron. This woman turned to look at Duggan as he walked inside, her eyes narrowing briefly, as if she had already found him wanting. For his part, Duggan kept his gaze neutral and even, having recognized her to be another officer of Admiral rank.

“Have a seat, Captain,” said Teron. “This is Admiral Franks.”

Admiral Franks was lean and her face was hard. Her hair was pulled away from her face and tied in a bun at the back of her head. Duggan wasn’t a good judge of ages, but thought her to be somewhere in her fifties. They exchanged polite greetings, during which Admiral Franks’ accent showed her to be originally from New Earth.

Teron got straight on with business. “I’ve read your preliminary report and I’m not pleased. This puts us in a very difficult situation.”

“I can appreciate that,” said Duggan.

“However, it may do little beyond bring forward other plans we have.”

Duggan was caught unawares. “What do you mean?”

“We’ll get to that shortly. Admiral Franks was here on other business and it seemed wise to invite her along to our discussion. I don’t have the authority to deal with this on my own.”

“Have you spoken with the Ghasts about what happened on Trasgor, sir?”

“We have, albeit only briefly. As far as they are concerned, they were within their rights to destroy the pyramid and claim their actions have no bearing on the peace we are negotiating. They also claim there were no threats made to members of the Space Corps or its warships.”

“All of this is close enough to the truth that it’s hard to refute, sir,” said Duggan. “Except you weren’t there. The Ghast captain was rattled when we found the pyramid and I believed there was a significant possibility the Dretisear would receive orders to fire upon us. The ES Terminus is a powerful warship but it is not a match for an Oblivion, no matter what the Space Corps might hope.”

“Was there much of a difference between the two?” asked Teron, with an unmistakeable interest.

“Enough, sir. They had more of everything and they were tougher and faster than us. I think the AI core on the Dretisear is ahead too. The biggest difference continues to be their missile targeting.”

“Well over a million kilometres,” said Franks with a slight drawl. “They have been keeping secrets, haven’t they?”

“Not secrets, sir. They’ve just continued to do what they’ve been beating us at for the last ten years – building and improving.”

“That won’t last forever, Captain,” said Teron. “We’re gaining on them technologically and there’s nothing they can do to stop it.” He paused to consider his next words. “We’ve had a few people working to estimate the Ghasts’ theoretical industrial output, and do you know what? Even the most pessimistic results suggest that the Confederation has a fifty percent greater output than the combined Ghast worlds. Give us the time and we will overtake whatever technology they can create.”

“That’s by-the-by, sir. There was a damned Ghast in a terraforming power source left on Trasgor,” said Duggan. “We need to find out why. Have the Ghasts secretly allied themselves to the Dreamers? They could have encountered each other around the Helius Blackstar and somehow come to an agreement.”

Teron and Franks went quiet for a few seconds. It was Teron who broke the silence. “We need more proof, Captain.”

“I saw the body, sir. It was a Ghast.”

“I’m not doubting what you saw, nor am I going to humour you whilst I secretly believe your eyes deceived you or some other such nonsense. However, I do need more proof before I’m certain. If you’d been able to recover the body, we’d have been able to do tests.”

“We couldn’t do a recovery because the Ghasts blew it up,” said Duggan. “They must have known what we’d find there, which would explain why Nil-Far was unwilling to tell me anything.”

“You told the Ghast captain what you saw?” asked Franks.

“It was in my report, sir. I told Nil-Far I hadn’t seen anything. I wanted to tell Admiral Teron about it first.”

“The Dreamers destroyed as much of the Ghast fleet at the Blackstar as they did of ours,” said Teron. “Why would they be allies? On top of that, the Ghasts willingly assisted you with destroying the Dreamer warship which was guarding Trasgor.”

“I don’t know, sir. We know so little about the Ghasts and how they are governed. Could they have different factions, some of whom allied themselves with the Dreamers?”

“It doesn’t seem likely, does it?” asked Franks. “The Ghasts have always acted in concert against us. Why should they suddenly be split now?”

Duggan shrugged, aware none of it made a lot of sense. “I’m worried we might arrange peace, only to find ourselves betrayed later. The Ghasts alone are a powerful foe. The Dreamers have only a limited presence in our space and they are looking to prepare entire worlds, presumably for them to populate. They will send more ships after the others and we could be caught in the middle.”

“What are you suggesting, Captain?” asked Teron.

“Caution. Any peace deal with the Ghasts should be accompanied by a reduction in their armaments and a commitment by them to share their Shatterer technology. At least that will cut what advantage they have over us.”

“We’re trying,” said Teron. “They aren’t buying it.”

“Will they eventually agree?” asked Duggan.

“Who knows? They may or they may not. I’m not really permitted to talk to you about it, Captain. Negotiations such as this are invariably delicate.”

“If the Ghasts won’t accept a reduction in their armed capabilities, they will eventually become a threat again,” said Duggan. “Who is to say they aren’t working on their own version of the Planet Breaker? They used a series of incendiary devices on Charistos and Angax. If they find where our home planets are, they could use them against us. And who knows what could happen if they are allied with the Dreamers?”

Teron gave a barked, humourless laugh. “I thought you wanted peace!” he said. “Here you are talking like we should make contingency plans to betray the Ghasts!”

“I do want peace, sir. Most of all, I want the Confederation to survive. I’ve fought too long to be on the losing side. Too many of my soldiers have died in the cause.” His anger grew. “I simply do not want peace at any cost, sir.”

“This is all for the future, Captain Duggan,” said Teron, his eyes glittering. “The very near future. Rest assured, the details in your report have been taken seriously. I’ve said before that you always come with baggage – every victory has a downside.”

“That’s how it is, sir,” said Duggan.

“I know,” Teron replied. “It’s something I’ve come to accept. For the moment, you’ll need to leave certain matters in the hands of others.”

“What next for me and my crew?”

Teron didn’t answer directly, a trait Duggan had become familiar with. “You brought back samples of the Dreamer power source from Trasgor. Your Lieutenant Breeze made some preliminary findings about its nature, which have got a few of our scientists excited. Very excited.”

“I believe it provided power for the energy shield and also for the structure itself – to create a new oxygen-rich atmosphere for the planet,” said Duggan.

“I don’t think there’s much doubt about that,” said Franks. “However, the idea of a power source based on stone rather than metal is what has got us interested.”

“I thought stone was too brittle to use in a military capacity?” said Duggan. “Hence we use metal for everything.”

“That’s what we’ve always believed,” agreed Franks. “Our researchers have started to think that the output from a metal-based power source will never be sufficient for a number of objectives we would like to pursue. Not because we lack the knowledge, but because the material itself is unsuitable.”

“Cutting to the chase, we want more of what you found,” said Teron.

“I’ve just arrived back!” said Duggan. “There’s been no time to study the samples, let alone decide what we need!”

“That’s only partially true. We have past research projects into generating power from materials other than metal. Many of them reached a dead end, though in some cases this was because of our own limitations, not a limitation of the materials we hoped to utilise.”

“There are times you know something is possible, yet lack the capability to make it happen,” said Franks.

Teron performed another one of his topic shifts. “How many of our spacecraft do you think it would take to destroy the Dreamer vessel you encountered in the orbit of Trasgor?” he asked.

“It depends how many of our craft you expect to be destroyed,” Duggan said. “Without Shatterer missiles, we’d need to get in close enough to bring down its shields with nuclear blasts.”

“How many?”

“Three like the Terminus would stand a chance. I’d want many more for certainty.”

“We’ve lost another ship,” said Teron. “In the Garon sector, a couple of days’ high lightspeed from Trasgor.”

“This time it was a warship, the Anderlecht Bulldozer.”

“Travelling alone in an area known to hold a threat to our fleet?” asked Duggan sharply.

“Rest assured there’ll be a reckoning,” Teron replied. “All you really need to know is that they sent a low-speed distress signal from the surface of a planet, describing the presence of a large pyramid-shaped object on the ground.”

“We don’t know if the Dreamers can trace our broadcasts,” said Duggan.

“The crew of the Bulldozer didn’t consider that,” said Teron. “What’s happened has happened.”

“What else have they told you?”

“They were destroyed by an unknown warship which hit them with beam and missile fire. We’ve not heard from them after their first message.”

“We’re sending you to recover the pyramid,” said Franks. “You’ll likely encounter another enemy warship, which you’ll need to destroy, before picking up the target object and bringing it to New Earth for study.”

“I’ll require a heavy lifter,” said Duggan.

“We’re currently looking into what vessels we can make available for this task,” said Teron. “It’s a high priority, so resourcing isn’t an issue. It’s the time and distances which we’re struggling to overcome. We need you to go as soon as possible.”

“What if the pyramid broadcasts distress signals from the hold of the MHL?” asked Duggan.

“You’ll have to make sure it doesn’t,” said Teron. “This is your chance to take another look inside and capture whoever happens to be operating the device.”

“If I can’t be certain I’ve locked down their transmissions, I’ll have to destroy it,” said Duggan.

“We’d rather you didn’t,” said Teron.

“And what about the crew who sent the broadcast?”

“They’re a secondary concern, Captain Duggan,” said Franks.

“If I can find them, I’ll bring them back.”

“Of course,” Franks said. “I’ll repeat they are secondary to your primary goal.” She didn’t need to spell out what she meant.

Duggan thought the meeting was over and that he was about to be dismissed until the time came when Teron had gathered enough warships.

“There’s more, which I’ll let you know about while you’re here,” said Teron, his expression showing the news wasn’t going to be palatable. “The Confederation Council are looking to cut costs. To reap the benefits of peace before peace has arrived.”

“We’re having a stand-down from total war?” asked Duggan.

“Not yet. They’re seeking to justify it and the decision is in the balance.”

“Unbelievable,” said Duggan. “We’re facing two dangerous alien races, both of whom have the capability to wipe us out.”

“They’re not looking to cut us to the bone, Captain,” said Franks with a thin smile. “Just bring the costs back to what they describe as a more acceptable level. Existing ships will be built and more will follow. Inevitably there’ll be a degree of scaling back.”

“You know all about Military Asset Management,” said Teron. “They’re one of the monitoring tools the Council asked to be implemented.” He raised a hand to forestall Duggan’s next words. “Yes, I’ve read about Lieutenant Nichols in your report and yes his behaviour was unacceptable. I will have words with the right people, but we have to put up with it for the moment.”

“Sir, he questioned my actions at every opportunity. He could have jeopardised the mission.”

“In truth, I am furious, Captain Duggan,” said Teron. “My hands are tied for now. Nichols is a senior figure in MAM - his rank of lieutenant is not representative of the power he wields. You need to be careful with him.”

“He’s coming with you,” said Franks.

It wasn’t the sort of news Duggan had wished to hear. He’d hoped to be rid of Lieutenant Nichols and anyone else from MAM who took an interest in what he was doing. The stern faces of Teron and Franks told Duggan his complaints wouldn’t go anywhere. “Is that all?” he asked with a calm he didn’t feel.

“That’s all, Captain.”

Duggan stood and left the office, feeling two pairs of eyes drilling into his back as he went.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Within thirty-six hours, Duggan had his warships. It wasn’t exactly what he wanted, but he grudgingly admitted there was probably enough firepower to get the job done, even if it wasn’t the overwhelming force he wanted. He stood on the bridge of the Galactic class ES Rampage, with the crew and soldiers from the ES Terminus already brought onboard. The Terminus wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while, except to a shipyard for extensive repairs.

“We’ve got Anderlechts Vestige, Lustre and Extraction with us,” said Chainer. “The Brazen is due within the hour.”

“How many Gunners?” asked Duggan.

“We’ve got Furnace, Paranoid and Fencer, sir. New models.”

It was good to have the Vincent class fighters with them, though they probably wouldn’t contribute too much. Duggan had in the past thought these smallest of warships could be made to fight like tigers. He’d had a lot of time to reflect and it was increasingly apparent the Gunners were being gradually left behind and their significance diminishing. They couldn’t hold many Lambda clusters or nuclear missiles. They were definitely not big enough for a beam weapon. As time passed, the former workhorse of the fleet was heading for irrelevancy. Duggan wasn’t usually sentimental but there was something sad about the idea.

“Where’s our lifter?” asked Duggan.

“It’s coming later,” said McGlashan. “The details arrived a few minutes ago. There wasn’t anything suitable near the Juniper, so they’re having one sent directly to Kidor – that’s the name of the place where the Bulldozer’s crew found the pyramid. The lifter isn’t fast and it might not be there at the same time as we are.”

“That’s for the best,” said Duggan. “We don’t want it getting involved in the fighting.”

“It’s the MHL Goliath,” said McGlashan, her face perfectly straight.

Duggan shook his head and turned to Chainer. “We’re instructed to leave at once. Please coordinate our departure with the other vessels.”

“I’ve already done so, sir,” replied Chainer. “We’ll leave within five minutes of the Brazen’s arrival.”

There wasn’t much to do while he waited and Duggan fidgeted with impatience. The cruiser was five minutes later than scheduled when it winked into normal space, a good distance from the Juniper.

“Send them my greetings and tell them to get ready,” said Duggan.

“I’ve provided them with the coordinates,” said Chainer. “They’ve confirmed readiness to depart.”

After another five minutes, the eight Space Corps warships surged into lightspeed within a millisecond of each other. The Rampage was capable of Light-M, yet the heavy cruiser was obliged to travel no faster than the slowest accompanying vessels.

“We’re at Light-H,” said Breeze. “It feels like a bit of a crawl, these days.”

“How long till we arrive?”

“Another five days, sir. Kidor is a lot closer to the central zones of Confederation space.”

“I know,” said Duggan. “It has me worried.”

“Do you think the Dreamers are looking?” asked McGlashan.

“They know there are at least two intelligent species here,” said Duggan. “Our technology is clearly not as advanced as theirs, but we’ve managed to destroy two of their ships. If they’re not specifically looking, they’re certainly alert to our presence.”

“What’s the plan when we meet the enemy?” asked McGlashan.

“We hammer them with nukes and conventional missiles,” said Duggan. “Even though we’ll take some damage, we should be able to defeat them.”

“Not too much damage I hope, Captain?” said Lieutenant Nichols.

“My orders come from an Admiral of the Space Corps,” said Duggan. “I’ve been trusted with their execution. If you have anything you wish to discuss, please feel free to get on the comms and speak to whoever it is you wish to speak to. I will not have you questioning my orders when the missiles start flying.”

Nichols gave one of his infuriating smiles. “I’m sure neither you nor your senior officers wish to appear profligate when it comes to the assets purchased with the Confederation’s funding.”

“I will complete my mission,” said Duggan. “I can’t believe you’re still here. You’ve seen what we face, Lieutenant Nichols. I’m surprised you’re not begging your superiors to maintain our war footing.”

“If we believed the military about everything, we’d have to give you so much money there’d be nothing left for any other facilities our citizens like to have provided for them. Warships, tanks and shuttles, Captain. Our people cannot eat them and they cannot sleep in them. Money cannot be wasted when the need is unproven.”

“Did you prevent the tank deployment from the Terminus?” asked Duggan. The bridge went silent.

“I have a job to do, Captain. Please let me get on with it,” Nichols replied, sitting down.

Duggan returned to his own seat. He didn’t know where the accusation had come from – he hadn’t been conscious of thinking the words, yet they had arrived unbidden from his mouth. The more he thought about it, the more the idea developed a twisted appeal. He remained in his seat for a few minutes and then got up, before leaving the bridge. A short while later McGlashan found him in the hold, inspecting the array of tanks and other weaponry within.

“Why would he do that?” she asked.

Duggan didn’t regret his words. “When nothing adds up, I have to ask what other reasons there could be.”

“The Terminus was damaged, sir. Not much of anything worked.”

“Only one tank launched and that was mine. There was no reason for it to happen, Commander. We spent most of the return trip investigating and then all of a sudden we got green lights on the release commands.”

“The AI could have fixed the problem. It’s happened before.”

“I’ve seen enough strange things happen to accept there’s not always an easy answer. Still, it seems peculiar for only my tank to launch and for everything else to remain in a failed state until a short time before we returned to the Juniper. It’s conceivable that Lieutenant Nichols has codes to lock down the assets his department claims to manage.”

“What you’re suggesting is that he tried to murder you?” she asked, uncertainty clear across her features.

“No, Commander. I despise the man, yet I can’t see why he’d want to kill me. I think there’s a power struggle going on somewhere in the echelons above me. Nichols has greater power than his Space Corps rank suggests. It could be as simple as one organisation trying to discredit another.”

“In the middle of a war?” she asked. “They could have picked a better time.”

“These things never stop, Commander. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen. You heard Nichols – he talked about money, rather than the extermination of our species. He expressed scorn about the military and how much we could be believed. If he’s as blinkered as he sounds, he may think it’s his duty to undermine us at every opportunity. The worse we look, the better it is for him. In his eyes, the Ghasts are neutralised and the extent of the Dreamer threat is undetermined. What better time to try and claw back some of the money invested into our warfleet?”

“Whatever it takes?”

“I don’t know,” said Duggan at last. “It’s the only reason I can think of for the launch failures on the Terminus. I can’t be certain of his motives, so I’ll have to give him the benefit of the doubt for now.”

“I suppose if you’d died on Trasgor and the mission had failed, the Space Corps would look incompetent,” she said.

“Maybe. Or maybe he’s just an overzealous bastard who’s acting outside his orders.”

“I’ll try and keep an eye on him,” said McGlashan. “I can record what commands he makes from his console. If he gets up to any funny business, I’ll throw him into space myself.”

Duggan took a deep breath. “I found bodies in the pyramid on Trasgor.”

McGlashan looked at him closely, aware he had more to tell. “Dreamers?”

“Several of them were burned beyond recognition. There was one which wasn’t - the very last one I found. It looked like a Ghast.”

Her eyes widened. “What does that mean?” she asked.

“It throws everything we know out of the window. Other than that, I have no idea what will come from it. I told Admiral Teron. He believed me, yet he wants more proof. We might find that proof where we’re going.”

“How can the Ghasts and Dreamers be working together? The Dreamers have been equally hostile to both of us.”

“I really don’t know. There’s got to be an answer. Nil-Far acted so strangely once he realised what was on Trasgor. He knew something and he didn’t want to tell us.”

“You like Nil-Far.”

“I’m not sure like is the best word for it. I saw something in him that made me feel hope our two races could finish this war. I thought if there were others like him, we may have a chance for a working peace. After what happened on Trasgor, I am utterly confused.”

“That makes two of us,” she said, trying to smile. “What happens if we find more Ghasts in this next pyramid?”

“It’s going to become much harder to make a lasting peace. There’s no way we’ll be able to trust them. We’ll build up the fleet until we feel safe. Eventually hostilities will resume one way or another. Someone in the Confederation Council will ask why we have the Planet Breaker if we aren’t going to use it. I’m sure you can guess what will happen.”

“What about the Dreamers?”

“They’re the big unknown and the greatest threat we face. If they need new worlds to live in so badly that they’ll throw themselves through a wormhole to find them, I dread to think how numerous they are.”

“At least if we’re told to build up the fleet, it’ll put Lieutenant Nichols out of a job.”

“Every cloud has a silver lining,” said Duggan.

They returned to the bridge and settled down to their usual duties. Duggan occupied himself by running through the logs of the previous encounter with the Dreamer warship. The few examples he’d seen so far showed their vessels to have flat, rounded noses, with broad struts running parallel to a low-slung main hull. They looked delicate in a way, as if they lacked the mass to hold the weapons Duggan knew they carried. In comparison, the sleekest of the Space Corps ships looked heavy. Not quite clumsy, but lacking in flair. The Corps had always built for purpose, rather than to make their ships look pretty. Duggan wondered if the Dreamers’ technology was so advanced they had the luxury of building their ships to impress visually as well as being able to destroy. Ultimately, it wasn’t important for him to know.

Over the next couple of days, Duggan spent time with the soldiers onboard. There hadn’t been much opportunity to speak to them on the Terminus and he liked to put names to faces. Everyone looked the same in their spacesuits and he preferred to know who he was talking to. The troops had accepted Lieutenant Ortiz, having been initially resistant. Duggan hadn’t doubted for a moment she was capable of handling them, else he wouldn’t have asked her to do so. When they returned after this mission, he planned to recommend her promotion to lieutenant be made permanent.

With the inevitability of time, the five days passed. On the bridge, Duggan took his seat, gave his instructions to the crew and waited for the AI to decide when it was time to disengage the engines and put them into normal space.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“I’m detecting gamma radiation twenty thousand klicks to starboard,” said Massey.

“There’s something else,” said Perry. “Wreckage at about a hundred thousand klicks.”

“Wreckage of what?” asked Duggan. “Tell me what’s out there!”

“Need time,” said Chainer, his head down in concentration, an empty can of hi-stim on his console nearby.

“We might not have any time,” said Duggan.

“Our comms are down,” said Perry.

“Activate the backup systems.”

“Switching over now,” said Chainer.

“Weapons systems ready to fire,” said Reyes. “As soon as we’ve got eyes on the target.”

“Do we have any of our ships in the vicinity?” asked Duggan.

“The Vestige and the Brazen have just arrived,” Breeze told him. “Their fission signatures have come up on my screen.”

“Send them a red alert. Presence of hostiles,” said Duggan, hoping the rest of the fleet had been sharp enough to activate their own backup comms.

“The Furnace and Extraction got here before us,” said Perry. “Two hundred and fifty thousand klicks off.”

“Damn they didn’t come in close enough,” said Chainer. “Sir, I’ve got a confirmed sighting of a Dreamer warship. It’s more than two klicks long - the same type we saw before.”

“I’m reading it,” said McGlashan. “Just out of Lambda range.”

“Lustre and Paranoid are here, sir,” said Perry. “Lustre at fifty thousand closer to the enemy and the Paranoid twenty thousand further away.”

Duggan swore loudly and banged his fist against the bare alloy of his console. “This is meant to be a military operation. We’ve come in spread across half of the damned galaxy!” He glanced at one of his screens. The ES Rampage was fifteen minutes out from Kidor, with the rest of the group scattered all about. He didn’t have a chance to open his mouth again before red dots appeared across his tactical screen.

“The Lustre’s launching her nukes, sir,” said Reyes. “Six Lambda-mounted warheads fired, along with sixty conventionals. They’ve disabled the targeting. There’s zero chance of a unguided warhead strike from that range.”

“Fifty missiles coming in response from the enemy,” said McGlashan.

“The wreckage is the ES Fencer, sir,” said Massey. “Evidence suggests they got burned up by a beam strike.”

“I’m bringing us into range,” said Duggan, hauling on the control bars. “I want those bastards to be swimming in so much radiation their home world can see them glow. Our other ships should know what to do. Lieutenant Perry, get in touch and remind them, just in case they’ve forgotten.”

“Aye sir!” said Perry. He’d been timid at the start, though his confidence had noticeably grown since the first time he’d met Duggan.

“The Vestige has launched as well,” said Reyes. “Six more nukes and another cloud of Lambdas.”

Duggan called up a sensor feed onto the main bulkhead screen. It showed the Lustre, which was the closest to the enemy vessel. The image sparkled with pinpricks of silver light. The Anderlecht had launched countermeasures and the shock drones interfered with the Rampage’s sensor readings. The cruiser’s Bulwark projectiles were tearing up the sky around the vessel as well, with four out of six firing at the incoming missiles.

“Not enough to stop fifty missiles,” said Duggan to himself. He pushed the control bars harder in a pointless effort to extract more speed from the Rampage.

“Beam hit on the Lustre,” said Breeze. “Damage unknown.”

More than just the beam weapon hit the cruiser. Spheres of white appeared, partially hidden by the vessel’s hull.

“Several successful missile hits,” said McGlashan. “I can’t tell you how many exactly, since their Bulwarks might have knocked out a few at the last moment. The Lustre is probably out of the fight.”

“None of their Lambdas hit,” said Reyes. “They’ve remote-detonated their nukes. I don’t think they’ve come close enough to disable the enemy shields.”

“I’m feeling distinctly under-powered,” said Chainer as he watched events unfold on his sensor feeds. “Bring back the Dretisear.”

“Unfortunately, you’re right, Lieutenant,” said Duggan, his eyes not leaving his console. “I hadn’t anticipated we’d be taken by surprise and I’d hoped to combine our firepower. Instead, we’re spread out and easy pickings.”

“Luck’s only great when it’s with you,” said Chainer. “Otherwise it’s like a kick in the balls with a hobnailed boot.”

“Focus, Lieutenant,” warned Duggan.

“We’re in range,” said McGlashan.

“Fire Lambdas only,” said Duggan. “Keep the fast reload till we’re closer. Let’s see if we can overload their countermeasures with numbers.”

“One hundred and twenty missiles away,” said McGlashan.

“They’re launching more missiles. Two waves of fifty,” said Reyes.

“One for us and one for the Vestige,” said Duggan. The Lustre was disabled, though not yet destroyed. Luckily for the crew, it appeared as if the Dreamer vessel had decided to concentrate on the other inbound threats.

“The Vestige scored a hit,” said Chainer. “Bang on their shields.”

“One hit on a warship that size isn’t going to cut it even if they didn’t have shields,” said Breeze.

“Six more nuclear detonations in the vicinity of the enemy,” said Reyes.

“There are fluctuating readings from their shields,” reported Chainer. “Something’s given them a shock.”

“Shields down?” asked Duggan. “We’re still too far away.” It was becoming painfully obvious how under-equipped they were for this encounter. The Dretisear had brought two weapons that could damage the Dreamers. The Space Corps warships could only fire nukes and keep their fingers crossed.

“The enemy ship is coming towards us,” said Duggan. “Maybe we look like the biggest threat.”

“Their course will take them near to the Lustre,” said Chainer.

“We just took a beam hit on the nose,” said Breeze. “I hope those nukes are well-insulated.”

“They are,” said McGlashan. “We’ve lost some of our front tubes, though.”

“How long till the other ships get close enough to fire?” asked Duggan.

“Minutes,” said Chainer. “Quite a few minutes for the Extraction and the Furnace. They won’t get here before it’s over.”

The enemy missiles approached the Rampage at a terrifying speed. Duggan tried his best to time it right and swung the spaceship at an angle which allowed more of their Bulwarks to fire. The grumbling of the cannons echoed through the bridge.

“Countermeasures away,” said McGlashan. “Plenty of shock drones for their missiles to find a way through.”

Several pairs of eyes watched the inbound warheads and there was more than one release of pent-up breath when the Rampage’s countermeasures dealt with all fifty. The Dreamer missiles were fast and with a good range, yet they didn’t seem vastly more advanced than the Lambdas. In fact, Duggan thought, the enemy missiles were in many ways inferior to what the Ghasts possessed. The Dreamer beam weapons were exceptionally powerful but they weren’t a game-changer. It was the energy shields which made the difference.

“The Vestige has taken a couple of hits,” said McGlashan. “No way to confirm the damage yet.”

“Our missiles have passed by the enemy warship,” said Reyes. “No hits.”

“I’ve detonated the nukes,” said McGlashan. “That’s got to be close.”

“There’s a shuttle launch from the Lustre, sir,” said Chainer. “They’re abandoning ship.”

“Are they so badly damaged?” asked Duggan.

“Must be,” said Breeze. “There’s a lot of heat spilling off them.”

The tactical screen was now a mess of pin-point lights. Lambdas poured from the Rampage’s remaining forward tubes, followed by four nukes. The ES Vestige continued to unload from its own arsenal, while the ES Paranoid had come close enough to fire its two missile clusters. The enemy ship responded with a barrage of its own, each wave consisting of exactly fifty missiles, spaced out at irregular intervals.

Another particle beam struck the Rampage, near to the previous one. Red alerts appeared on the bridge status displays and a siren began its alarm. Two missiles penetrated the barrier of countermeasures, crashing into the side of the warship and tearing ugly holes through the armour.

“One of our missiles scored a hit,” said Chainer. “Their shield is still up and looking as healthy as ever.”

We’re going to lose this, thought Duggan. He didn’t speak the words out loud. Instead, he ordered McGlashan to use the rapid reload and fire the Lambdas as quickly as possible. She acknowledged the order and missiles continued to spill from the warship’s launch tubes.

“We’ve received another missile hit aft,” announced Breeze. “Our engine output is falling. If we take another one there we’re screwed.”

“The Lustre’s moving, sir,” said Chainer. “They must have left someone onboard.”

The news caught Duggan by surprise. Sure enough, the large dot representing the Anderlecht was moving at a decent speed. “Going fast too, from the looks of it,” he said.

“Are they trying to ram the enemy?” asked Massey in shock. “There’s no way they’ll be quick enough!”

“They’ll get close,” said Chainer. “The enemy’s changed course to avoid an interception.”

Duggan still had his eyes on the tactical screen. The dot representing the Lustre vanished without warning. “What?” he asked.

“The Lustre has exploded, sir!” said McGlashan. “What the hell?”

Duggan cycled through the options on his tactical display and saw a vast cloud of radiation, expanding at enormous speed away from its centre. The cloud engulfed the Dreamer vessel and continued beyond.

“The enemy shield is gone, sir!” shouted Chainer.

“Engines too, from the looks of it,” said Breeze. “Their output is close to zero.”

“Fire everything!” said Duggan.

“Continuing as before, sir,” said McGlashan. “We might not need to bother.”

Duggan realised what she meant. There were still hundreds of Lambdas in flight. Four of them hit the Dreamer ship within a hundred metres of each other. Duggan called up the external feed and zoomed in on the enemy vessel. The Lambda blasts had opened up a huge, deep breach into its hull. Duggan didn’t know enough about the design of the Dreamer ships, but the damage looked severe.

With its engine output reduced, the Dreamer warship wasn’t able to take effective evasive action, making it easy for the Rampage’s AI to predict the enemy’s course. Duggan watching intently as another twenty Lambdas cascaded against the length of the spaceship. Plasma washed over and through its armour, hiding much of the hull behind a fierce glare. More missiles plunged into the stricken vessel, tearing it into three parts. Still the barrage continued, until the enemy ship was scattered in glowing pieces over a huge swathe of Kidor’s sky.

There was no cheering, only relief, tinged with sadness. Duggan fell into his seat and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “See if you can get in touch with the other ships and find out who we’ve lost. Then speak to the people on the shuttle and ask what happened. Whoever was on the Lustre has saved a lot of lives.”

“Aye, sir,” said Perry.

“There’s got to be a better way to defeat them,” said Duggan. He set a course for Kidor, though not before he’d caught the unreadable expression on Lieutenant Nichols’ face.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The eight ships which had set off from the Juniper were reduced to six, with the loss of twenty-two soldiers and crew. The captain of the Lustre – a woman called Anya Gottlieb had issued the evacuation order for her ship, but had stayed behind to activate the self-destruct facility in case the Dreamer ship came close. Duggan silently congratulated her for her prescience and sacrifice. There queue of tributes to pay was building.

The shuttle had nowhere to dock and shadowed the other ships. The ES Rampage had two docking bays, both of which were occupied. Duggan was more than happy to jettison one of his two shuttles and this he did, programming its onboard computer to keep the craft stationary in case anyone ever came to recover it. Lieutenant Nichols offered no protest. A short while later, the shuttle from the Lustre docked and ninety additional personnel boarded the Rampage. There was room for them, though it was a little cramped.

“We took some hits,” said Breeze. “This time we came out of it mostly intact. Even if we lack the weaponry to destroy the enemy, we can still ride a few punches.”

“I agree,” said Duggan. “The Space Corps have come up with a solid design here. Once our weapons technology catches up, the Galactic class will be a force to reckon with.”

“What are our orders now, sir?” asked McGlashan.

“Ensign Perry, contact the other vessels - order them to stay close and in standard formation. We need to be on guard against the possible presence or arrival of another enemy warship. This time we will be clustered tightly enough to focus our fire, instead of being spread halfway across the solar system.”

“I’m advising them, sir,” said Perry.

“We’ll approach slowly until the ES Extraction and ES Furnace join with us. Then we will do a controlled sweep of the planet’s surface to find this pyramid we’ve been sent to locate.”

“The Extraction or Furnace might have already located it,” said Massey. “I’ll find out.”

“When is the heavy lifter due, sir?” asked Breeze. “I reckon we got lucky on Trasgor when the enemy didn’t send reinforcements.”

“I’m sure you’re correct, Lieutenant,” said Duggan. “We’ve got between four and six hours until the MHL Goliath comes. That’s plenty of time for something to happen, so we’ll remain on high alert.”

The search would have been finished quickly if the six vessels had been able to disperse into different orbits. Duggan was insistent they stay together, which slowed things down. In common with Trasgor, this planet was mid-distance from its sun and not otherwise remarkable. There was no sign it held great quantities of rare metals or anything resource-wise which would make it a specific target for settlement. However, its distance from the sun would ensure it would be neither too hot, nor too cold, once it had a suitable atmosphere to support life.

“The oxygen levels are higher than I’d expect and they’re on the way up,” said Chainer. “Same as we found on Trasgor.”

“We’ve had a confirmed sighting of another pyramid, so it’s here,” said Duggan. “Can you track the source of the oxygen?”

“That’s what I’m doing now, sir. The concentrations are higher close to Kidor’s equator. I’ve sent you the details.”

“Got them,” said Duggan. “I’m changing course. I’d like you to keep scanning for any further emergency broadcasts from the people on the surface.”

“Of course, sir,” said Massey smoothly.

“Got it!” said Chainer excitedly. “They’ve left this one in pretty much in the same place as the one on Trasgor.”

“I’m sure there’s a reason,” said Duggan. “What’re the readings from it?”

“There’s an energy shield with an eight-kilometre diameter, which comes as no surprise.”

“No sign of anything else?”

“Nothing our sensors can pick up. There might be defensive emplacements like Trasgor. In fact, I’d bet money there’s something inside the perimeter.”

“Are we going to disable them with the nukes?” asked McGlashan.

“We’ll hold for a moment,” said Duggan. “Let’s make a very quick sweep for the Bulldozer’s missing crew.”

“I think I’ve already found them, sir,” said Massey. “There’s a beacon on the ground about two klicks from the energy shield perimeter.”

“I see it,” said Chainer. “It’s firing out a signal along the floor of a valley and almost flat across the planet’s surface. No wonder we didn’t spot it sooner.”

“Why would it be doing that?” asked Duggan.

“I don’t know, sir. Maybe something’s disturbed it. The signal is strong, but it’s going nowhere except a hundred trillion miles out into nothingness.”

“What’s the terrain like around it?”

“There are high hills. Rock, stone, the usual stuff. The beacon is near a cliff face. And look! Something has exploded right at the top. There’s a big chunk of the rock missing.”

“A missile?”

“I’m certain that’s plasma damage,” said Chainer.

“Any sign of the people who operated the beacon?”

“Nope. They might have been killed, sir.”

“I’m not so sure,” said Massey, chewing her lip.

“What do you mean?” asked Duggan, standing at her shoulder.

“If the beacon was originally broadcasting directly upwards, it would have been found by anyone determined to do so. I wonder if the Dreamer warship fired a missile at the source of the signal, only they hit the top of the cliff by mistake. If they caused enough rocks to tumble down, they could have buried the beacon or knocked it over.”

“Then the signal apparently vanished, making the enemy think they scored a hit?” asked Duggan. He wanted to believe, but wasn’t yet convinced.

“It’s a possibility, sir.”

“It’s a poor job if they managed to miss a ground-based target,” said Reyes.

“Stranger things have happened,” replied Duggan. He stood abruptly. “I’m going to send a few of the troops in a shuttle to take a look. We can’t launch a two gigaton nuclear warhead at the energy shield if the Bulldozer’s crew are holed up somewhere close by. Lieutenant Nichols, you’re going with them.”

Nichols couldn’t conceal his surprise. “I’m needed here,” he spluttered.

“To do what? Keep an eye on me? You’re going to go and have a look at what we have to do in the Space Corps from time to time. How can you make a firm decision on how we treat our assets if you don’t experience it first hand?”

Nichols gave Duggan a look that was not at all friendly. “I have done this before, Captain,” he said. Even so, he had no choice in the matter and climbed from his chair.

“Ensign Perry, please tell Lieutenant Ortiz that she is to choose eight of her men and women to go on a short trip to the surface, leaving from Shuttle Bay One as soon as they’re ready. Make her aware that Lieutenant Nichols will be joining them and that this should be a quick in and out, without the need for gunfire.”

Nichols left the bridge, glowering as he did so. He wasn’t stupid enough to outright mutiny, but he made his displeasure obvious. Duggan didn’t care – if Nichols wanted to involve himself in how the Space Corps used its equipment, he should be prepared to get his hands dirty.

“The atmosphere has improved in here already,” said Chainer, taking a swig from a can of hi-stim.

“Lieutenant Chainer,” warned Duggan.

“I was just saying, sir,” Chainer replied.

A short time passed, before Ensign Perry announced he’d received notice from Lieutenant Ortiz that she was ready to depart.

“Good. Tell them to make haste. Find out what happened to the crew of the Bulldozer and get back here,” said Duggan. Ortiz wasn’t known for taking her time and the shuttle departed swiftly. It backed out of its bay, rotated smoothly on its axis and then raced off towards Kidor.

“There’s no sign of hostile activity from the Dreamers,” said Chainer. “No change whatsoever.”

“Good - keep watching. Commander McGlashan, destroy anything that emerges from the energy shield.”

“They’d have to be foolish to stick their heads outside,” said Breeze.

“I know,” replied Duggan. “However, for all their technology, I’m starting to believe our enemy are not completely infallible. They’ve made mistakes before.”

Duggan ordered Perry to request regular updates from the shuttle. A moment later, the voice of Lieutenant Ortiz came through the bridge speakers. “I’m going to bring us in low and flat and stick close to the valley floor. Everything’s clear so far, though I’m sure you know better than we do, sir.”

“There’s no sign of anything hostile,” said Duggan. In truth, a surface-launched missile could destroy the shuttle before there was time to blink, let alone try and intercept it. There was a risk in sending the shuttle to look for the missing crew and Duggan was fearful. In other circumstances, he’d have gone himself, yet he carried too much responsibility now to go out on a limb to save people who might already be dead.

“Want me to order a bombardment on the shield in case they let their guard down?” asked McGlashan.

Duggan cursed himself for not thinking of it earlier. “Thank you for the reminder, Commander. It’s too late, now though. The shuttle is too low for the enemy to target it with surface missiles. If they were going to do anything it would have happened already.”

“We’re at the landing area, sir,” said Ortiz. “I’m going to set the shuttle down.”

“What do you see?”

“It’s rough. This area of the valley is filled with rocks. I can read the signal from the beacon clearly and it’s somewhere amongst the mess.”

“Any signs of life?”

“Nothing I can see. There’s a cave in the cliff wall.”

Duggan looked questioningly at the comms team. “I’m sure there is, sir,” said Chainer. “We could easily miss something like that from directly overhead. Particularly if there’s an overhang.”

“We’re down safely,” said Ortiz. “We’ll have to go outside and take a look around.”

“Keep us informed,” said Duggan.

He paced back and forth for a few minutes, impatient to hear an update. The bridge had begun to smell of ozone and metal, where previously there had been little discernible odour. It had been the same on the Terminus. The scents would have been comforting in other circumstances.

“The cave looks deep,” said Ortiz. “We’re going inside. I’ll leave Flores at the entrance in case we lose the comms. I have no idea how far they’ll work through the rock.”

“Roger.”

“Sir?” said Breeze, alarm in his voice. “I’ve just read a fission signature, about a third of an orbit away from us. It’s massive and it’s not one of ours.”

“Ghast or Dreamer?”

“Bigger than an Oblivion. And the Ghasts don’t know we’re here,” Breeze replied.

Duggan swore. If the newly-arrived warship was bigger than an Oblivion, that made it at least five kilometres in length. The Ghasts’ capital ship was far larger than that, which left only one possibility.

“There’s no way we’ve got the firepower to beat a Dreamer ship as large as that one,” he said. “We’ve got to assume they’ll come towards the pyramid.”

“I’d say so,” said Breeze.

“How long have we got?”

“Minutes if we’re lucky,” said Chainer.

“Sir, I’m receiving several requests for orders from the other ships,” said Perry. “They’ve detected the arrival and they want to know what to do.”

The possibilities roiled in Duggan’s head. He chased each one, finding nothing but dead ends. The odds were too great and the dangers too much to face. “Order an immediate retreat. Full speed to the Juniper.”

“What about the shuttle, sir?” asked McGlashan.

Duggan gave her a grim smile. “The ES Rampage is not going anywhere, Commander.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

“Lieutenant Ortiz, we’ve got hostiles – more than we can deal with.”

“Sir, Lieutenant Ortiz can’t hear you.” The voice belonged to Flores. “She’s inside the cave with the others.”

“Get them out of there and be ready to board the shuttle. We’re going to do a couple of orbits and see if we can pick you up.”

“Yes, sir,” said Flores.

“We should leave with the rest of the fleet, sir,” said McGlashan.

“I don’t want to abandon our soldiers, Commander.”

“There may be little choice. The enemy clearly knows we’re here. They’re going to hunt us down and they’re going to destroy this ship and everyone onboard.”

“What about the Goliath?” asked Duggan. “We can’t communicate with them when they’re at lightspeed. We need to do something!”

“A couple of hours till the Goliath arrives,” said Chainer.

“And another hour after that until they can return to lightspeed,” said Breeze.

Duggan stayed quiet, though his mind was in turmoil. The mission had failed and he accepted that. The enemy ships significantly outclassed those of the Space Corps, so in a way they’d fared better than could be expected. However, he couldn’t stomach the thought of abandoning Ortiz and the others. He’d also made a promise to Captain Erika Jonas and it was a promise he wasn’t going to break. He realised how angry he was and did his best to push the emotion aside before it swamped his rational thought.

“The Vestige, Extraction and Brazen have gone to lightspeed,” said Breeze. “The Paranoid and Furnace are almost ready.”

Duggan got into his seat and took the control bars. He swung the ship until it was facing the opposite direction to the Dreamer warship and increased power to the gravity drives. He brought them low to the surface and the hull temperature climbed at once. McGlashan came over and stood next to him. She spoke quietly.

“Sir, we have to leave. There’s no way to tell if the enemy ship will pursue us or if they’ll stay directly over the pyramid. Whatever happens, the shuttle is too easy a target. We’re both going to get shot down if we try to let them dock.”

“I know, Commander,” he replied with equal quiet. “I have no choice but to try.”

“There is always an alternative, sir, but these decisions are the hardest of all. You wonder why I’ve not pushed for a promotion. This right here is the reason for it.”

“Sir, there’s another fission signature,” said Breeze. “High overhead at a distance of two hundred thousand klicks.”

“What is it?” asked Duggan sharply.

“It’s the Goliath, sir,” said Chainer. “It’s arrived early.”

“Try hailing them! Tell them to swing around and get away!”

“I’m getting nothing when I try to contact them,” said Chainer. “Their comms are down and they won’t be equipped with a backup facility.”

“I’m detecting missiles,” said Reyes. “The curvature of the planet stops me from seeing the source, but it can only be from the enemy warship.”

McGlashan ran the few paces to her console. “Fifty in the air,” she said. “They’re targeting the MHL Goliath.”

With his heart sinking, Duggan watched the wave of missiles speed across his tactical display. He zoomed out until the MHL Goliath appeared as a distant, green circle. Time slowed and everything around him faded into a dimly-realised blur. He opened his mouth to speak, unsure what he wanted to say. In the end, no words came out. The red dots of the enemy missiles reached the larger green circle. Without ceremony, the screen went blank.

“The Goliath is gone, sir,” said Chainer. “They managed to shoot down about six of the incoming missiles with their Bulwarks.”

“Gone,” repeated Duggan slowly, his grip on the control rods weakening.

“Sir, you need to act, else we’ll follow the same way,” said McGlashan.

Duggan felt as if he were wading through treacle, with his thoughts slowed down to a crawl. Instead of making them easier to control, they became more elusive and swam easily away from him.

“Sir!”

“Yes, Commander, I hear you,” he said.

One part of his mind remained detached. It evaluated the possibility of recovering the stranded shuttle, rejecting the idea immediately. I must get something out of this, he thought. With a flash, he realised there was no reason he had to do so. Or maybe I need to accept this and face the consequences. Duggan had never been a man to hide. Whatever difficulties had been thrown into his path, he’d always faced them square-on. The trouble was, he now knew, none of what had gone before had remotely prepared him for this. Commander McGlashan had spoken to him about these most difficult of choices. In reality, the only choices were the ones you permitted yourself to make. There was only one option and Duggan forced himself to take it. Not for himself, but for everyone he had responsibility to command.

“Activate the fission engines,” he said. “We’re going to the Juniper.”

“Aye, Captain,” said Breeze. “They’re coming online, we’ll be able to leave in just shy of fifty seconds.”

It happened without Duggan realising it. The ES Rampage burst away from its low orbit of the planet Kidor. It left behind the wreckage of broken spaceships and an uncertainty about the missing soldiers. On the planet’s surface, the alien artefact continued to generate oxygen in vast quantities under the protection of the Dreamer battleship.

“A little less than four days until we arrive,” said Breeze. “We’re not held back by the slower warships on this run.”

“Sir?” It was Chainer. “We received a transmission via the emergency beacon on Kidor a split second before we escaped.”

“What did it say?”

“The message came from Flores. It said they found Ghasts.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.”

No one spoke on the bridge for a few hours. As their shifts ended, the crew took turns to head off for sleep. Chainer seemed to be constantly heading to and from the replicator, bringing with him a variety of grease-laden foods, coffee and cans of hi-stim. Eventually, the ozone smell of the bridge was replaced by the smell of cooked meat, interspersed with coffee and the sharp-edged tang of booster drinks. Duggan hardly noticed, so lost was he in his own thoughts.

“You should get some sleep, sir,” said McGlashan. Duggan couldn’t remember when she’d last gone for sleep either, but she looked fresh and alert.

“I don’t feel tired,” he replied, surprised at the truth of his words. He should have felt drained, when in fact he felt nothing.

“Something to eat, then.”

Duggan looked at McGlashan’s concerned face. She wasn’t going to let up until he made at least a small concession. “Very well,” he said. “I haven’t eaten in a while.”

“Good, neither have I,” she said. “I think I’ll join you.”

Duggan shook his head in mock-despair and got to his feet. He left the bridge, with McGlashan walking alongside. They continued in silence until they reached the mess room. There were a few soldiers inside – any place on a spaceship where you could get food was rarely empty. Duggan got himself a tray and ordered the replicator to produce a steak and fries, which he took over to his table. McGlashan sat opposite, with two cheeseburgers and a coke. Duggan raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t eat healthy food all the time,” she said, patting her flat stomach. “Believe me, I’d far rather be eating cheeseburgers than fruit for my lunch.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Duggan. He looked at his own stomach to reassure himself there was nothing spare and then took a bite of his steak. It was dry in his mouth at first, but then saliva flowed to let him know that his body was hungry.

McGlashan looked around furtively to make sure there was no one paying attention. “You liked Captain Jonas a lot?”

Duggan took a deep breath, aware that he’d been brought into an ambush. “I hardly knew her,” he said. McGlashan stared hard, insisting he continue. “She reminded me of what I’ve missed,” he continued. “I thought I saw this one last chance to find what the war has denied me.”

“A wife? A family?” she asked gently.

“Maybe. Not just that. Everything. So I can forget the past and move on to the future.”

“You’re tired of war?”

“Part of me wants to keep fighting forever. Another part is tired and wants a change. I sense it growing within me. All the fighting takes it from you. Each time we escape by the skin of our teeth, I feel diminished. I want to get away before there’s nothing of me left.” The words were hard to speak and Duggan focused on nothing but the voice coming from his mouth, refusing to run away from what he had to say.

“You could ask to be taken away from active duty,” she said. “Heaven knows, you’ve done your fair share on the frontline. With Admiral Slender gone, there’s no one left to hold you back. I bet Admiral Teron would have you on his team without hesitation.”

“I’m not sure I can do that,” he said. “There’s a part of me wants to see the war through to its end. We aren’t there yet.”

“You’ll never win if you keep thinking like that. What about the Dreamers? Are you going to fight until we’ve defeated them or the Confederation is wiped out? You can’t carry everything on your shoulders.”

Duggan sighed. “It feels as if that’s what I have to do. I’m not so stupid that I think I can manage, nor so untrusting that I believe I’m the only one that matters. Still, I’m driven. I can’t let go, Lucy.”

“You’re a stubborn man, John Duggan. You always have been and you always will be. It’s going to kill you in the end.” She took a deep breath. “And I don’t want to see that happen.”

He looked across and saw something in her face which he didn’t recognize. Maybe something you don’t want to recognize, said an unbidden voice. “I don’t want any of us to die,” he said lamely.

McGlashan sat back, not willing to let him wriggle off the hook. “You’ve experienced real, proper, hands-tied failure for the first time and it’s going to eat you alive if you let it.”

“The larger the stakes, the more it hurts,” he admitted. “And the stakes on Kidor were very high. I don’t so much care that we had to run away. I can’t accept that I’ve lost Ortiz, I’ve lost ships under my command and I’ve lost what I hoped was a chance at my future. A slim, remote chance, but a chance nonetheless.”

“You did your best, John - you always do. When we get back to the Juniper you need to be over this. You need to be strong, because you can be sure there’ll be hard questions to answer. An innocent man who feels guilt will hang for crimes he didn’t commit. You’re leaving yourself open to a punishment you don’t deserve.” She put her hand briefly on his and then pulled it away. She stood to leave, with half of her meal untouched. “There’s more than one future,” she said quietly.

Chapter Twenty-Six

The ES Rampage arrived at the Juniper before the other ships. Duggan found he was as fascinated as ever when he saw the slow-turning orbital on the bulkhead screen.

“The Juniper’s AIs have greeted our arrival,” said Ensign Perry. A moment later, he spoke again. “It’s Admiral Teron, sir. He wants to know how you got on.”

“Tell him our mission has failed. He can have my report when I see him.”

Perry looked nervous at the instruction, though he carried it out at once. “Admiral Teron has acknowledged the response and nothing more,” he said.

Duggan nodded to show he’d heard. “I’m bringing us closer to the Juniper and then I’ll take the shuttle. The rest of you will need to stay here until you hear otherwise.”

The ES Rampage was a lot faster than the shuttle it carried, so there was no point in disembarking quite yet. Duggan closed the distance with the orbital at a speed which comfortably exceeded the recommended maximum. The Juniper issued several warnings, which he ignored. There were other warships in the vicinity, but there was no chance of a collision so it seemed reasonable to be as quick as possible.

The shuttle was cold and its interior light seemed too bright. Duggan climbed into the cockpit and undocked from the Rampage, feeling the emptiness of space only a few feet away from him. He set a course towards the orbital and dutifully engaged the auto-dock routines when the Juniper asked him. The approach felt needlessly slow and Duggan was relieved when a green light showed he was able to enter the airlock.

The corridors of the Juniper were busier than usual and people bustled around. A few smiled at Duggan politely as he went by, though most kept their eyes aimed at the floor, or fixed on a point somewhere in the distance. Teron wasn’t in his office and had asked to speak to Duggan in one of the orbital’s countless meeting rooms a few extra minutes’ walk away.

He arrived at the door to Meeting Room A-212 and waited. The door didn’t move. With a sigh, he pressed his palm to the security panel off to one side and the door whisked open.

“What happened, Captain Duggan?” asked Teron.

Duggan looked around very briefly, his eyes telling him at once there was nothing of interest here. It was just another meeting room with a square table in the middle, surrounded by chairs. There were a couple of screens on the wall and a series of motivational framed images dotted about the place. Teron sat upright in one of the chairs. The sheets of paper arrayed in front of him suggested he’d recently finished a meeting in the room. Duggan took a chair.

“We lost two warships, one heavy lifter and didn’t recover the pyramid, sir,” said Duggan, with a set to his jaw. “And we’ve had to leave some people behind on Kidor.”

Teron didn’t say anything for a while, his grizzled face giving nothing away. “What went wrong?” he said at last.

“We were outgunned, sir. We engaged another Dreamer warship. Nukes work on their energy shields, but without targeting it comes down to luck. We destroyed that one only because of a brave woman’s sacrifice. Then another arrived and I ordered our ships to retreat. Before the Rampage could escape, the Goliath came out of lightspeed and the enemy destroyed it.”

“Could you have done anything differently?”

Duggan had thought about the answer to that very same question for much of the voyage to the Juniper. The mission had gone wrong from the outset – they’d lacked firepower, technology and had emerged from lightspeed scattered too far apart.

“There’s always another way, sir. The way I chose didn’t work out. I don’t think we’d have succeeded whatever choices I’d made.”

Duggan had a patchy knowledge of Teron’s background. Some he’d guessed, some he’d learned from other sources. On top of that, he had his own opinions about the Admiral. On this day, Teron impressed Duggan greatly.

“Our best isn’t always good enough, Captain Duggan. Some of us learn that early on, some of us learn it later. In all my years in the Space Corps, I’ve not yet met a man who lasted as long as you have. If you accept what’s happened, you’ll come out stronger for it. If you don’t accept it, there’s nothing that can save you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Your mission went wrong. I’m sure I’ll learn the details later. The Space Corps needs you, Captain Duggan. Are you ready to carry on?”

Duggan met Admiral Teron’s eye and saw the steel that underpinned the person. “Yes, sir. I’m ready to carry on.”

“I didn’t expect anything else. Now, we have things to discuss. The information you brought back last time has been the cause of much head-scratching, particularly your report about the dead Ghast in the alien pyramid.”

“We received a transmission just as we were leaving Kidor, sir. We found an emergency beacon from the Bulldozer’s crew and sent a shuttle to look for them. The message from our soldiers told us they’d found Ghasts.”

“Nothing more specific?”

“No. The message was incomplete and we weren’t able to wait any longer, so I can’t tell you more than I have.”

“As it happens, I believe you. There are lots who don’t believe or simply don’t want to believe. However, the legions of stats and predictions analysts we employ have decided that there are avenues we should investigate.”

“What avenues, exactly?”

“Naturally, we are concerned at the possibilities of a Ghast-Dreamer alliance. Also, we are concerned that we lack enough information to make an educated guess at other possibilities.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“If you think about it, we know nothing about the Ghasts. Equally, we know absolutely nothing about the Dreamers. Therefore, in our ignorance, we are unable to see other reasons for what you encountered. I’ve heard this referred to as unknown unknowns.”

“What reasons could there be other than an alliance?” asked Duggan.

Teron smiled grimly. “I wish I knew. I always search for logic, Captain Duggan. Even amongst chaos, I am convinced I will find order. Everything we know contradicts itself, leading to a never-ending circle of what-ifs. There are occasions when I fail in my search, but I never give up looking.”

Duggan nodded, hearing a description of himself in Teron’s words. “Have you found anything yet, sir?”

Teron snorted with laughter. “Would that I had! The questions haunt my every waking minute and pursue me into sleep. Amongst it, one thing keeps returning. I ask myself why the Ghasts were so interested in the pyramid and wouldn’t tell you the reason.”

“I haven’t found an answer to that either,” said Duggan. “However much I’ve thought about it.”

“It doesn’t seem right. One minute they wanted you to leave the artefact, the next they destroyed it themselves. It appeared as if they were willing to return to war over it.”

“I’m certain it was a possibility.”

“I gave these snippets to some of our best statistical analysts. And you know what? They believe there’s something significant behind it – not merely a result of an uncertain situation.”

“How significant do they mean?”

“Enough that we have to find an answer, Captain Duggan. We’re working on something. As it happens, we were already intending to use this particular resource for something else, yet a new opportunity has arisen.”

“Can you explain, sir?”

“Not at the moment, I can’t. I’m awaiting clearance. The ability to use this resource is also contingent on the progress of the peace negotiations we’re in the middle of.”

Duggan was curious and wary in equal measures. He was aware of the need for secrets, yet he’d fallen foul of them before. With a humourless smile, he reminded himself it was the secrets that weren’t even hinted about which were the ones to be most careful of. Here, Teron was talking openly about the existence of a secret, without giving away the details. Let’s see where this one goes, thought Duggan.

“Are you telling me there’s another mission?”

“Not quite yet. There’s a chance it’ll happen.” Teron sighed. “You’re a good man, Duggan and I don’t want to lie to you. Suffice to say, if my plans become an option, you’re the man I’d like to bring them to fruition. I’ll also tell you it’s something you won’t like one little bit.”

“I appreciate the honesty, sir.”

“No, don’t say that. I’m not being honest, am I? An honest man would tell you exactly what is required.”

Duggan laughed. “Fine, in that case I’ll amend my last sentence to ‘I understand the need for secrets’, if that sounds better.”

Teron smiled. “That suits me.”

“If there are no plans ready and there is nothing to tell me, what am I assigned to in the meantime?”

“Something I’m sure you’ll like far less than what I have in mind.”

“Desk duty?”

“I’m afraid so. The Space Corps requires a full and comprehensive report of what happened on Kidor. Every encounter with the Dreamers gives us valuable insights and – believe it or not – has an immediate effect on the direction our weapons research takes. We’re making progress. It might not seem quick when you’re out there launching missiles without guidance systems, but I can assure you we’re making some incredible breakthroughs. It also helps that you brought us an example of the Ghast Shatterer launch tubes and some of their missiles. It’s much easier to copy than to build from scratch.”

Duggan was heartened by the words. He could read from Teron’s animated body language that the Admiral truly believed what he was saying. “If our targeting systems were better, that would make the difference.”

“We’ve got more than one hundred thousand people working on that aspect of our weapons design alone. One hundred thousand, Captain Duggan. We’ll get there. Anyway, I didn’t bring you here to talk about that. A man like you can find out the details if he’s determined enough. I want you to leave for the Atican shipyard on Pioneer. Take the ES Rampage, since I believe it needs a few minor repairs which they have the capacity to accomplish.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll leave at once and wait until I hear further.” He hesitated. “What will happen to the soldiers on Kidor?”

“I can’t promise you anything. You know if we send more ships, more troops, they’ll be killed?”

“Yes, sir, that seems the probable outcome.”

“If they’re in their spacesuits, they have a few months yet. Leave me to think on the matter,” said Teron. “Dismissed.”

Duggan was almost to the door when he asked a question he’d meant bring up earlier in the conversation. “What about the samples of the power source we brought back from Trasgor, sir? I thought they were more important than anything.”

“They are. We’ve missed this opportunity to capture an intact Dreamer power core. If another one arises, we’ll try again.”

This time, the meeting room door slid open automatically. Duggan exited the room and retraced his footsteps until he reached the shuttle. It was exactly where he’d left it. He boarded the craft and piloted it away from the Juniper. A short time later, he was back on the ES Rampage, relieved, yet with no idea what the future had in store for him.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“Pioneer it is,” said Breeze.

“What’re we going there for, sir?” asked Chainer.

“Admiral Teron’s got something for me. He says I’m not going to like whatever it is.”

“It must be bad if he’s keeping it to himself,” said Chainer.

“I don’t think he has the details either, Lieutenant. We’re going to twiddle our thumbs at the Atican shipyard complex until he decides what he’s going to do.”

“You mean this top-secret mission might never happen?”

Duggan shrugged. “That was the impression I got.”

“Maybe we should head back to Kidor and see if we can rescue Lieutenant Ortiz and the others,” said Breeze, his face deadly serious.

“We can’t,” said Duggan. “The time isn’t right and we’d get ourselves killed for nothing. I promise you our soldiers aren’t forgotten, Lieutenant. I’ll see what I can do.”

“They’re going to be bored sitting in that cave,” said Chainer.

“I’d prefer them to be bored, rather than dead,” said Duggan.

“We’re at Light-M,” announced Breeze, almost sounding surprised himself. The transitions on the heavy cruisers were smoother than any other vessel. “Less than three days till we reach our destination.”

On this one occasion, the time flew over. It was unfortunate for Duggan, since he wanted the time to think. He had shaken off the lethargy he’d felt in the aftermath of the mission to Kidor. The chains of it were still there, but they no longer held him back. Their presence was a reminder of his duty and he chose to take strength from them, rather than be weighed down. He focused his mind on the future instead of the past and his determination built, filling him with endless energy. Captain Jonas was gone and Lieutenant Ortiz was stranded on a hostile planet. He couldn’t fix the first, but he could try his best to come to terms with it. There was little he could do about the second for the moment - his words to Lieutenant Breeze about the time not being right were true and Duggan did his best to accept that. As long as he eventually got a shot at getting his soldiers away from Kidor, it would be enough.

Within five minutes of its predicted time, the ES Rampage arrived into a high orbit over the planet Pioneer, forty thousand kilometres above the surface. Chainer scanned the vast shipyard far below.

“They’ve got a couple of free trenches for us,” he said. “I assume we’re landing in one of them?”

“Yes, Lieutenant. Get permission from the shipyard mainframe and we’ll set down nice and easy.”

Chainer got the clearance he needed and Duggan prepared to bring the Rampage closer, in order to engage the automatic landing system. Procedures dictated a slow, steady approach and since Duggan wasn’t in the mood to deal with an angry computer, he kept to the recommended guidelines. Something caught his eye and he brought up an image on the bulkhead viewscreen.

“They’re making good progress on the new flagship,” he said. “Last I remember, there was hardly anything more than an outline.”

All eyes were fixed on the growing hull of the new warship. It was nearly ten kilometres long and planned as a replacement for the Archimedes, though the latter would remain in active service.

“They’re going to call it the Aristotle,” said Massey. “That’s what I’ve heard, anyway.”

“Someone likes their historical figures, huh?” asked Chainer. “I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d named it the Admiral Slender.”

Hearing the name gave Duggan a start. At one time it would have brought unpleasant memories to accompany it. Duggan was pleased to find it did no such thing, as if the dead man had finally relinquished his grip.

“What about that Hadron next to it?” he asked, pointing a finger at a vessel in the adjacent trench. This one was a lot closer to completion. “Have you heard what that will be called?”

“I have no idea,” said Massey. “Most of the excitement is around the flagship.”

“We should take heart from seeing this,” said Duggan. “It’s a profound example of what humanity can achieve when it’s pushed. The Ghasts’ fleet has grown enormously over the last few years, but it’s nothing close to what we’re doing now.” He opened his mouth to say something else and decided against it.

“What else?” asked McGlashan.

Duggan sighed. “I didn’t want to dampen anyone’s spirits, because in truth the Confederation has improved so much in the last couple of years. It’s just that our weaponry has yet to catch up. We’re working on so much that’s new, yet I can’t see any of it being ready in time to fit into these new hulls. We’ll have dozens of ships at Galactic class and above, each of them stunted by weaponry that is behind what our opponents can put against us.” He smiled with sudden conviction. “However, each day which passes brings us closer to parity. After parity comes superiority. I’m convinced we’ll pull through this if we’re given the time - even against the Dreamers.”

The image on the viewscreen panned away from the Hadron and onto the next ship docked here. This one looked different – it had more lumps and curves than the others, like a mixture of shapes thrown together. The front was crumpled and there were indentations along its flanks. Even so, there was no mistaking it for anything other than a fighting spaceship. It was different to the Space Corps’ designs, yet just as threatening.

“The Cadaveron we brought back,” said Breeze. “No sign of antimatter leaks, so they must have sealed it up tightly.”

“Given it a coat of paint as well,” said Chainer.

“Yeah, it looks a lot tidier than when we picked it out of that hole on Everlong,” said McGlashan.

“There must be thousands of people working on it,” said Chainer, zooming in for a closer look. “They’ve got all the heavy-duty kit around the hull.”

“Maybe it’s heading for the museum,” said Breeze. “It would make an impressive exhibit.”

“As long as they keep people off the bridge,” joked Chainer. “I seem to recall the engines were still working.”

“I imagine quite a lot of it was still working,” said Duggan. “We got lucky in taking out the life support section.”

“Well, we’ve been asked to land right next to it,” said Chainer. “There’ll be a good view when we disembark.”

They were close enough to activate the auto-land and Duggan handed control of the ship over to the AI. It brought them in carefully, so as not to create turbulence on the ground.

“They’ve not stopped work on the Cadaveron for us,” said Breeze. It was usual practise to move workers on adjacent trenches away when a warship as large as the Rampage came in to land.

“Probably want to get it done and free up that space for something else,” said Chainer.

“The fifth dry dock is free already,” said McGlashan.

“Never mind,” said Duggan. “I’m sure they know what they’re doing.”

A few minutes later, the ES Rampage landed dead-centre in trench four. Each of the dry docks contained an enormously powerful gravity field, which supported much of the docked spaceship’s weight. The power draw on the field generators was immense, and each had what was effectively a warship gravity drive buried underground to provide the necessary power. The crew on the Rampage experienced a barely-perceptible thump as the spaceship’s weight settled on the reinforced alloy surface.

Duggan was first to his feet. “Let’s go and find out what they want us to do while we await the next mission from Admiral Teron,” he said. “Ensign Perry, send a message to the troops below. They’re dismissed to the barracks until they’re called upon.”

The crew followed Duggan off the bridge and to the front boarding ramp. It was mid-afternoon and heat from the desert air washed inside the interior bay. There was a woman in uniform waiting at the bottom. She greeted Duggan and handed him a clipboard with a pen. There was a form to sign in order to hand over the warship and Duggan scribbled his name, wondering why this anachronistic procedure still existed.

They took a lift out of the docking trench and paused briefly to say their farewells. Each had received orders as to where they needed to report once they reached the shipyard. The Space Corps considered all of its officers to form a pool into which it could dip for the personnel it needed. There were a few senior captains like Duggan who could generally get their way and retain the same crew from mission to mission. For now, the people from the ES Rampage would be split.

The damaged Cadaveron loomed out of the adjacent trench, its hull a non-stop hive of activity. The Ghast vessel was a little smaller than the Rampage and it looked in surprisingly good condition compared to the last time they’d seen it close up. The Space Corps had a lot of funding, yet Duggan didn’t think it likely they were doing the repairs without a specific purpose in mind. He felt a strange attachment to the vessel given what had gone before, and decided he’d try and find out why so much effort was being expended on fixing it up.

There were ranks of shuttle cars parked in a line near to the dry docks. Duggan wished the others good luck and climbed into the nearest car. He knew where he was going and pushed the vehicle to its maximum permitted speed in the direction of a large building in the distance. His destination was a square, utilitarian slab of greyness, its surface pocked with darkened windows and with a Space Corps flag outside the main entrance. He pulled up in front of it. Usually at a time like this, his morale would ebb away like water through his fingers. Today, he felt energised without knowing exactly what had changed.

Half an hour later, he’d been assigned a new office and provided with new quarters close by. He breathed in the warm air, happy it wasn’t over-chilled like most of the military’s buildings. At his desk he powered up his computer. It sprang immediately into life, helpfully displaying his inbox. The page was already half-full of notices, warnings and memos about this, that and the other. He read each in turn, finding nothing important. He deleted everything, only to find a new message appeared a few seconds later. He shook his head and deleted this latest one, aware he was trying to hold back the tide with a wall of sand.

He turned his screen off and sat for a time in quiet contemplation. There were so many questions to which he had no answer. Where once his powerlessness would have angered and frustrated him, now he felt only calm. He remembered the words from Admiral Teron. If you accept what’s happened, you’ll come out stronger for it. Duggan pondered those words and knew that he had accepted his failure, or at least was close to acceptance. The unfinished business of leaving Ortiz behind would gnaw at him until he concluded it one way or another. Whatever happened, he was going to do something.

Outside, the soothing orange glow of day was fading. Night came quickly in the desert, though work on the warships would continue around the clock under artificial daylight. Duggan heard his stomach growl, reminding him he hadn’t eaten in several hours. He sat for a few minutes longer, before putting a call through to McGlashan and arranging to meet up for some food.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

A few days went by, during which Duggan used his contacts to find out whatever information there was to learn. What he discovered was that the details he wanted to know were so well-guarded, no one had anything to tell. The negotiations with the Ghasts were top-top-secret, with the Confederation Council refusing to give out anything whatsoever as regards their progress or lack thereof. This was no surprise, since the subject of peace continued to be a touchy one with the general populace, no matter what positive swing was given to it.

There were reports of sporadic rioting on a few of the Confederation planets. This news was harder to suppress, if in fact it was suppressed at all. The people were sick of war and they were sick of their money being spent to finance that war. Many had decided peace was a given and therefore it was time to scale back the eye-watering level of expenditure on new spaceships and technologies. Duggan couldn’t blame them. They had a vision of the war which was passed through many filters before it was made available for their consumption. He doubted any of them had even heard of the Dreamers. Still, it drove home the reason why new departments such as Military Asset Management had sprung up to provide oversight on how money was spent. Duggan accepted the principle, if not the implementation.

Otherwise, there wasn’t much to learn that he wasn’t already aware of. The one remaining mystery was that of the Cadaveron and why the Space Corps was diverting so much effort in restoring it. Duggan had taken himself out to the dry dock on a few occasions and spoken to the technicians working there. Some secrets were hard to keep and generally there’d be rumours flying around, waiting to be plucked from willing mouths. This time there was nothing and he was reduced to guessing - a game he wasn’t especially fond of. When the mystery of the Cadaveron was finally answered, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or cry.

“Sir, there’s an inbound call from Admiral Teron,” said an androgynous voice in Duggan’s earpiece. It was the shipyard’s automated comms system, which was designed to act exactly like a human secretary. Duggan was in the middle of a video meeting with a number of senior members of the ballistics research team, who wanted his input on various matters relating to the armaments on the Galactic class warships. He was alone in the meeting room, while the engineers were sat in a research lab on another world, several thousand light years away.

“Can it wait?” he asked the automated voice, knowing what the answer would be.

“He wants to speak to you now,” it replied, with just the right degree of sheepish insistence.

“Very well.”

The six men and women on the other end of the video link stared quizzically at him. “I take it our meeting is going to be cut short?” asked one of the men churlishly.

“It is,” said Duggan. “We can reconvene later.” He switched channels without further delay. The wall screen went blank for a second, before the image of Admiral Teron appeared. There was someone else in the room with him, sitting just off camera.

“Captain Duggan, I hope I’m not interrupting anything.” He didn’t look as if he especially cared one way or another.

“Nothing that can’t wait, sir.”

“I told you I might have something for you.”

“Yes, sir.” The words sparked through Duggan’s body, though he tried not to show it.

“We’ve been held up by a few things. Nothing is straightforward these days. There are times I wonder if it would be easier if we simply declared war on the Ghasts again in order to bring things to a conclusion.”

“I’m sure there’s a better way.”

Teron laughed. “Don’t patronise me, Captain Duggan. A man is allowed to let off steam every once in a while.”

Duggan smiled in response. “What do you need, sir?”

“The Ghasts want their Cadaveron back.”

“I see,” said Duggan.

“The peace negotiations aren’t moving as easily as we’d have liked. It’s hard to offer the hand of friendship whilst the other hand is pointing a gun. The talks are meandering.”

“From our end, or theirs?”

“Mostly ours.”

“Because we can’t trust them.”

“That’s it exactly. We’re in a situation where we don’t really trust them. There is nothing about their approach that appears anything less than genuine, yet we can’t be certain where we stand. It’s down to what you found on Trasgor.”

“We’ve been negotiating since before Trasgor,” said Duggan.

“Of course we have and everything was going well until that point. A few weeks ago, we were determined to achieve peace on our terms. Now we’re stalling in the hope we can find clarity on the matters which worry us. If the Ghasts can’t be trusted – and remember how ruthlessly they conducted the war – we don’t want to let down our guard. Equally, we don’t want to begin hostilities again. The Planet Breaker is the only game-changer we possess. If it was destroyed somehow or malfunctioned, we’d be back to square one.”

“The Ghasts’ best warships are better than ours.”

“Yes, they are. I suppose if it came to it, we could bombard their worlds with nuclear warheads and lose much of our fleet in the process. That’s assuming they don’t have ground-based defences that can nullify such an attack.”

“Are we planning to negotiate forever?” asked Duggan. “Or are we close to a breakthrough on some new weapon or other that will significantly increase our odds if we lose the Planet Breaker?”

Teron rubbed his thick fingertips across his close-shaven scalp. “We have a status quo that suits us. I’m aware we’re kicking the can down the road, and in truth our time is running out. We’ve seen the early signs that the Ghasts are beginning to doubt our sincerity. We don’t want that to happen.”

“I take it we’ve offered to return their heavy cruiser as a gesture of our continued goodwill?”

“That’s an excellent summary,” said Teron. The other person in the room with him shifted position, their face still away from the camera. It didn’t look like Admiral Franks and Duggan wondered if there was a reason this person chose to remain anonymous.

“And I’m the man chosen for the job?”

“This is something I’m offering you, Captain Duggan. As I’m sure you’re already thinking to yourself, this isn’t going to be a simple handover of their warship. We’re going to send the Ransor-D to them, however we won’t surrender it without getting some use out of it. That warship is going straight to their home world Vempor.”

“Without their approval?”

“Yes, without their approval. We want you to keep it in orbit for as long as possible in order to scan the surface for signs of Dreamer activity. You’ll send the details on to us via Monitoring Station Beta.”

“You’re expecting to see signs of warships?”

Teron shrugged. “Anything, Captain Duggan. At this point in time, I’d gratefully take whatever you can find that ties the Ghasts to the Dreamers.”

“What if there’s nothing?”

“It’ll go some way to alleviating our concerns.”

“Just to be clear - you want me to fly the Cadaveron to Vempor, do a few circuits to look for signs of a Ghast-Dreamer alliance and then come home?”

“You might not be coming home. We’re planning to arrange the handover in a neutral place. When the Ransor-D doesn’t arrive, we’ll tell them you’ve gone rogue and chosen of your own volition to go all the way to Vempor. Like a man chasing infamy and glory, if you will.”

“This is a suicide mission!” said Duggan.

“I said you wouldn’t enjoy what I had planned,” said Teron. “Once you’re there, you have my blessing to do whatever you wish to escape, short of starting hostilities again.”

Duggan didn’t know what to say. He sat in thought for a few seconds, while Teron watched impassively through the video screen. “Assuming I agree to this, how am I expected to fly the damned thing? Or use the onboard systems? They look similar to ours in design, but I can’t read their language.”

“We’ve installed some of our own systems. Language modules and a few of our sensor arrays. After all, the Ghasts can’t expect us to have left a captured warship entirely untouched. Naturally we were going to learn what we could from it!”

Duggan thought long and hard. “If I agree to this, will I be left high and dry?”

“I don’t make promises lightly, Captain Duggan. If you do this, we’ll do what we can to get you back.”

“I want more than that, sir.”

Teron raised an eyebrow - a gesture it looked like he’d practised often. “What do you want?”

“I want the opportunity to get the soldiers back from Kidor, sir. A ship and a crew, if I can find one willing to give it a try.”

“I can’t give you the Aristotle, if that’s what you’re looking for. Very well, I’ll give you the commitment you’re asking for, as long as your expectations are reasonable.”

“They will be, sir.”

“Does that mean you’ll take the Ransor-D to Vempor?”

“It does.”

Teron cleared his throat. “It needs more than one to fly the Cadaveron.”

“I know, sir. With permission I’ll speak to my usual crew and see if they want to come along.”

“If not, you’ll be assigned the required personnel. I doubt there’ll be many volunteers, but I’m sure we can find the people you need. You’ve got four hours to get back to me with an answer. Time is short and now you’ve agreed to this, we’re going to give the Ghasts a time and place to return their ship.”

Duggan nodded his acceptance and waited until Admiral Teron ended the connection. With the room silent, he shifted in the hard-backed chair while his mind turned over the details of what he’d heard. There was a part of him wanted to call Teron immediately and say he’d changed his mind. The trouble was, he couldn’t do it. He felt entirely caught up in a web that was partially his own making, and partially woven by the machinations of other people he couldn’t control. The only way out was to reverse his decision, yet his stubborn loyalty wouldn’t let him. There was more than that – this was a war he’d fought for the whole of his adult life. He was tied to it and couldn’t let go, whilst still being desperate for the chance to put it in his past and move on. This mission could make a difference. It could bring peace from uncertainty or it could reveal treachery before any harm could result.

Duggan wasn’t prone to flights of fancy, but an image came to him. In it, he was holding the strings of a puppet and making it dance stiffly at his command. When he looked closer, he saw the puppet was a perfect likeness of himself. He shook away the thought and opened up a communication channel to Commander McGlashan.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Minimum crew of four, eh?” asked Chainer, looking up the scarred side of the Ransor-D.

“Apparently so,” said Breeze.

“I think he just wanted the company,” said McGlashan. “After all, we won’t need to fire the weapons.”

“Yeah, it’s not as if we’re going into a combat situation,” said Chainer. “Not from what he said, anyway.”

“Fly in, do a bit of surface scanning, get arrested for spying and get thrown into a Ghast jail,” said Breeze. “I don’t see why that needs more than one person to accomplish.”

“I wonder if the Ghasts have the death penalty,” said Chainer.

“They might inject us with a lethal dose of hi-stim,” said Breeze. “Except there’s not enough of it available to kill you, Frank.”

“Come on,” said Duggan, recognizing the nervousness beneath the light-hearted conversation. “We’ve got to get used to the bridge if we’re to fly this thing.”

“I’m excited,” said McGlashan. “And worried.”

“Me too,” said Duggan.

“It can definitely fly, can’t it?” asked Breeze. “I mean, the hull looks okay, if a little beat up. It took a lot of damage when it crashed.”

“Apparently it flies perfectly well when they run the simulation,” said McGlashan. “Goes like a charm.”

“That’s good enough for me,” said Chainer sarcastically.

It appeared as though there were still hundreds of people and machines working on the ship. They acted with purpose, as if there was much left to do. It didn’t inspire confidence, though Duggan knew the Space Corps well enough to trust the ship would get off the ground. There were likely to be a few things unfinished, which he hoped wouldn’t impact on the warship’s effectiveness.

There was a boarding ramp right in the middle of the underside. It was steep, with metal steps ascending into the cold-blue light of the interior. Duggan went first, finding it an effort to climb smoothly. McGlashan came next, with Chainer huffing and puffing behind her.

There was an airlock at the top, with a team of three technicians studying a readout from one of their hand-held analysis devices.

“Is everything in order?” asked Chainer. “You know we’re meant to fly this thing away in an hour or two, don’t you?”

“Last minute checks, sir,” said a woman. She smiled disarmingly, cutting off Chainer’s smart reply.

“Fine, fine,” he muttered, suddenly lost for words.

“When will the vessel be clear of shipyard personnel?” asked Duggan.

“We’ve been asked to keep working right until we receive your confirmation that you’re ready to leave,” the same woman answered.

Duggan wasn’t entirely pleased with the idea of having repair crews scrambling to exit at the last minute. On the other hand, he wanted everything to be ready. “Very well,” he said. “Do what you can to patch us up.”

“The patching up finished a while ago,” the woman replied. “We can’t get the hull looking any prettier than it is without a complete rebuild. It should hold together, which is all we’ve been asked to achieve. The life support took a lot more work and we’ve only recently finished testing it.”

“Why all these people, then?” asked Duggan.

“We’ve been studying and mapping the design,” she said, laughing at the look of realisation on Duggan’s face. “Not only that, we’ve fitted a number of our own systems to run in parallel to the Ghast ones. Not our latest hardware, for some reason. Most of it’s at least ten years old. What are they planning to do with the ship? It’s not going out to fight is it?”

“It’s going to a museum,” said McGlashan.

The woman’s smile faltered as she tried to decide if she was being mocked. She recovered quickly. “We’ve replaced some of the control systems. The missiles and countermeasures work fine. There’s a disruptor that works sporadically and one of the beam weapons operates at a reduced output. You probably don’t want to let people onto the bridge when it goes on display at the museum, in case there are any accidents.”

“What about the Shatterers?” asked Duggan.

“I believe it has two theoretically functioning launch tubes. Most of the missiles themselves have been taken away for reverse-engineering.”

Duggan wasn’t reassured by the technician’s use of the word theoretically. It wasn’t her fault, he knew, since the Space Corps couldn’t make these weapons from scratch, let alone repair broken ones.

“So, everything that runs the ship will be familiar to us?” asked Breeze.

“As best as we could make it in the time available,” she replied. “Haven’t they briefed you on this?”

“They’ve done the best they could in the time available,” said Duggan, echoing her words. “Thank you for your time ma’am.” He made to walk past her and then pulled up short. “Which way is the bridge?”

The technician smiled and pointed through the wide exit doorway. “Then you turn left. It’s much smaller inside than it is out, something I’m sure you’re familiar with.”

They followed her directions and entered a wide, high corridor, lit in the blue which the Ghasts seemed to favour. Duggan had been on this ship before, yet it looked completely different to last time. Circumstances were different and he’d come in through the access ramp instead of a missile crater in the armour plating. They passed a couple of large rooms, devoid of feature or furnishing. There were screens in the walls at intervals, some of them dark, while others showed gauges and level meters.

“This is still in the Ghast language!” said Chainer. “I thought they’d stripped this lot out.”

“I doubt they’ve had time for a complete refit,” said McGlashan. “Look – here’s one of our own screens. I can read what’s on this one.”

“We shouldn’t need to leave the bridge,” said Duggan. “If we do, something’s gone so badly wrong we won’t be able to fix it whatever language these screens show.”

The corridor branched right and a set of wide steps went up before them. Memories flooded back and Duggan knew the bridge was just ahead. He walked faster and climbed the steps to the top.

“They fixed the door we blew off,” said Chainer.

Duggan didn’t answer. The replacement bridge door was activated by a panel to one side, which responded to his palm print. The heavy door slid open and revealed the bridge. “They’ve changed this around,” he said.

“The blue light is like I remember, but not much else is the same,” said Breeze.

McGlashan hadn’t been here before and she looked with curiosity. “This is a big space,” she said.

“There were more than thirty seats last time,” said Chainer. “They’ve pulled most of them out, as well as a lot of the Ghast consoles.”

The bridge was fifteen metres square. Previously there had been chairs, along with clusters of screens against the walls and in the middle of the floor. Since then, it had been transformed into something which closely resembled the control deck of an Anderlecht cruiser, albeit bigger. There were eight seats, divided between comms, weapons and engines, with a single, additional chair for the captain to sit in. The room was too large for its contents and the consoles looked small and lost in the middle of the floor.

“There’s a locker here,” said McGlashan, looking at the adjacent security panel. She tentatively pressed her fingers against it and the locker opened to reveal a row of spacesuits and some light armaments. “We won’t have to go far if there’s a hull breach,” she said.

“They’ve had to make a few holes in the floor to patch everything in,” said Breeze, looking under a number of the fixed consoles. “Quite a few holes.”

“As long as it works,” said Duggan. “We need to get to going. The trip to Vempor is a long one, so there’ll be plenty of time to learn how it works on the way, but we need to get this ship off the ground first.”

Chainer practically leapt into one of the comms seats, his hands sweeping across screens and touchpads. “This is standard kit, sir,” he said, “Just like the lady said.”

“Yeah,” said Breeze in agreement. “The designs are a bit old. I’ve not seen this particular interface since I was fresh on a warship.”

“The technician said they were fitting older systems,” said Duggan. “We don’t want the Ghasts to have a copy of our latest designs.”

“They must have begun fitting this before the decision was made to return the ship,” said McGlashan, furrowing her brow as she worked out the timescales.

“I imagine they planned to send it out against its makers,” said Duggan. “It’s got a disruptor onboard, which our own ships don’t.”

“I can’t believe we’re giving the ship back with all its weapons,” said Chainer. “Particularly the ones the Space Corps is lacking.”

“You heard the technician say they’ve removed most of the Shatterers,” said Duggan. “I think it’s a safe bet that if the disruptor is still here, the Space Corps is close to being able to make its own. They’ve had plenty of time to study the Crimson.”

Duggan took his seat and glanced at the screens around him. As Chainer said, everything was familiar, though some of the secondary displays updated sluggishly instead of instantly. The Ghasts’ AI technology was good, so he assumed the tiny delays were a result of the interface between the Space Corps equipment and the Cadaveron’s core. It wasn’t bad enough to be a concern.

“Begin your checks,” said Duggan. “If you see something you don’t like, tell me at once.”

There was little sound on the bridge for fifteen minutes while the crew did their checks and tests. If this had been a Space Corps warship, Duggan would have been confident to take it straight out of the dry dock. While simulations had their value, he wasn’t willing to trust four lives to one, particularly since he’d witnessed how much damage the heavy cruiser had suffered when it crashed on Everlong.

“Update me with your findings, please,” said Duggan when he felt enough time had passed.

“Looks good to me,” said Breeze. “We can output ninety percent of our maximum power according to the readouts. There might be a little more, depending on what the core can do with the burned-out sections of the engines.”

“Funnily enough, the sensors and comms are in tip-top shape,” said Chainer. “We’re covered in them and they’ve installed some further processing hardware on the underside arrays.”

“Those are the important ones,” said Duggan. “We won’t have long to do what’s necessary.”

“If the Ghasts are allied to the Dreamers, won’t they block our comms?” asked McGlashan. “I assume we’ve got a backup system, but does it have the capability to transmit to Monitoring Station Beta?”

“There’s plenty of bandwidth to send at a low-to-medium resolution. Full details will take longer. I think we’ll be okay.”

“Is everything ready on the weapons?” asked Duggan. “If we need to use them the mission has gone disastrously wrong, but I’d prefer to know they’re available.”

“They’re all in order, sir. The Ransor-D is low on ammunition – it must have been away from its base for an extended period.”

“As long as there’s something in the arsenal,” said Duggan. He cleared his throat. “I’m going to bring the gravity engines online.”

“Should we ask the technicians to get clear?” asked McGlashan.

Duggan knew it was the right thing to do and he didn’t want to risk other lives through his own impatience. “Lieutenant Chainer, order everyone onboard to leave. There shouldn’t be a problem at this stage – they’ve had long enough to get it ready.”

“I think I’ll strap in,” said Breeze. “Just in case.”

It took twenty minutes before the warship was clear of personnel. As soon as the last technician had gone, Duggan issued the command to feed power into the engines. The whole ship vibrated faintly, before it settled into a low hum.

“Nothing to worry about,” said Chainer.

“Sounds like one of ours,” added McGlashan.

“They use the same metals in the same way,” said Duggan. He’d been on an Oblivion before and had known what to expect. “I’m ordering the shipyard mainframe to remove the cranes and gantries.”

“You think we’re ready, sir?”

“As ready as we’ll ever be.”

It took another twenty restless minutes before the hundreds of machines surrounding the Cadaveron were moved away from the hull. During this time, Duggan and Breeze cycled the engines through a series of tests, to see if they could trigger an alert. The monitoring tools remained green.

“Everything’s clear, sir,” said Chainer. “The shipyard has informed me we’ve got a fifty-minute opening to leave.”

The heavy cruiser had been fitted with a standard Space Corps pilot’s console. Duggan gripped the bars and pulled them carefully back. The humming increased in volume and there was an imperceptibly slight feeling of weightlessness. Outside, thousands of men and women stopped to stare as the Ransor-D rose silently from its berth. Higher it went, until the watchers had to shade their eyes against the strong desert sun. The huge warship became smaller as it accelerated, until all that remained was a tiny dot in the clear blue sky. Then, the dot vanished from sight and the workers at the shipyard returned to their duties.

Chapter Thirty

At ten thousand kilometres, Duggan released the breath he’d been holding. The monitoring readouts were a sea of green, reassuring calmness. “Do you have the coordinates, Lieutenant?” he asked.

“I do, sir. Vempor is a long way from here. I can’t tell you how long it’ll take until we reach lightspeed and see what sort of speed we can achieve,” said Breeze.

“I assume we’ve stripped out the ship’s monitoring logs, so it can’t report the location of Pioneer when we hand it over?” asked McGlashan.

Duggan hadn’t thought about it. “They can’t have missed something so obvious, surely?” He wasn’t certain enough that he was willing to leave it to chance. He made a snap decision and used his command authority to push open a priority channel to Admiral Teron.

“What is it?” asked Teron. He didn’t sound particularly flustered or upset.

“Have we cleared every scrap of data from the Ransor-D’s memory arrays, sir? I realise it’s an obvious question, yet I don’t want to leave without knowing for definite.”

“There’s nothing there which can betray us,” Teron said. “I’m assuming none of you have memorised the five-hundred-digit coordinates of our populated planets?”

Duggan looked around and was greeted with shrugs and headshakes. “Doesn’t appear so, sir.”

“You’re clear what you have to do. Good luck, if I haven’t already said it.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Duggan, switching off the comms channel. He turned to the others in disbelief. “We’ve had clearance to leave on a mission of such importance and only now does he remember to ask if we’ve memorised the coordinates of Confederation worlds.”

“I know the first fifteen or twenty digits,” said Breeze. “There didn’t seem much point in remembering the others, since computers do the hard work.”

“Even so,” said Duggan, wondering if Teron had thought this whole mission through properly. It wasn’t too late to turn back, but there’d be repercussions if he did. The questions about the Ghasts’ allegiances needed to be answered and time was a luxury they didn’t have. “Prepare us for lightspeed,” he said.

“Beginning the preparations,” said Breeze. “Fifty-five seconds. A little slower than the Terminus and Rampage.”

Chainer looked about with a worried expression. “I hope they’ve fitted decent life support.”

The technicians at the shipyard had worked hard on the Ransor-D and installed equipment which was adequate for the task of keeping the crew alive. When the warship switched from gravity engines to deep fission drives, there was a noticeable bump. Otherwise, the sense of dislocation was muted.

“We’re at Light-L,” said Breeze. “That’s what I’d expected to see.”

“How long to Vempor?” asked Duggan, aware it was going to be a long trip.

“Twenty-eight days,” said Breeze, “With a likely margin for error being an hour or two either side, judging from the processing power of the AI.”

“Twenty-eight days to contemplate our fate,” said Chainer. “I feel like I’m on death row and we’ve only just set off.”

“You should have told me if you had doubts, Lieutenant,” said Duggan. “I asked you to come because you’re one of the best. I would have found someone else if I’d thought you weren’t certain you wanted to be involved.”

Chainer had always been a man of highs and lows. He laughed, tinges of bitterness in the sound. “You aren’t the only one tied to your duty, sir. We’re here because we’re the same as you. We follow you and we put ourselves on the frontline because we’re driven to do it. I could have requested a transfer dozens of times over the last few years and I’d have got one.” His voice strengthened. “It’s never been an option, sir. Never has and never will, just like it is for you.”

Duggan nodded and looked at the other two. It was McGlashan who spoke first. “I’ve given up everything to be here. There wasn’t a chance I’d refuse to come along. In truth, you knew it when you asked, sir. I don’t blame you and I chose to come willingly.”

“You’re not as willing as you think,” said Duggan quietly. “There’s not one of us who could let ourselves do otherwise. I’ve often wondered if I’m exercising free will, or if I’ve taken that away from myself, leaving me incapable of escape. I don’t know if I’ll spend my life taking risks in the name of duty until my luck runs out - or I meet an opponent who’s just plain better than me.”

“Have you found answers?” asked McGlashan.

“Not yet. One day I’ll be old and wise enough to let go. If I live that long.”

“We’re still needed,” said Breeze. “If we get back from this one alive, maybe I’ll hand in a request for early retirement. That should get me out of the Corps in four or five years. I don’t think I can face the rest of my life fighting.”

“Perhaps you can, if you decide it’s what you want” said Duggan. “One thing is sure – while the Confederation is facing the possibility of war with two different enemies, I’m going to offer everything I have to give.”

“What do you think will happen when we get to Vempor, sir?” asked Chainer. “I agreed to come but I don’t really want to die if I can avoid it.”

“Me neither, Lieutenant. You’re not permitted to die. Admiral Teron’s made a promise that he’ll support a mission to Kidor to rescue the men and women I left behind. I’ll need a crew I can trust.”

Chainer laughed, this time it was filled with unsullied humour. “You don’t demand much, do you?”

“I take it the Space Corps aren’t planning a rescue?” said McGlashan.

“I don’t think so.” Duggan sighed. “From a purely logical standpoint, I don’t blame them. Even if we sent half the fleet, there’s no guarantee they’d be able to destroy the Dreamer warship at Kidor. We’re only talking about a few soldiers and a shuttle. We lose people every day and in greater numbers.”

“Doesn’t it make you angry?” asked Chainer. “They’re still our people.”

“At what point do the risks become too great?” asked Duggan. He looked at McGlashan “Someone recently told me that these are the hardest decisions to make. Besides, I blame myself for it happening. It should be me – us if you’ll come – who attempt the rescue.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” said Breeze. “A blind man could see as much.”

“I can’t help but take responsibility for what happens as a result of my actions,” said Duggan. “I’ll never be able to change that.”

The conversation ended and the crew turned their attention to their consoles. The controls and interfaces were familiar and presented no obstacles. However, this was still a Ghast ship and many of its operating methods were unusual or activated in a different manner. It was mostly subtleties and when Duggan stopped to think about it, he realised what an awe-inspiring job the Corps had achieved in such a short time. He was a believer in underlying order and the notion that different species would find broadly similar methods to perform a given task appealed to him. None of that detracted from the accomplishment of making it comparatively easy for humans to pilot a Ghast heavy cruiser. However, there was one disappointment, which Chainer felt most keenly.

“Look at this crap the replicator spat out!” he cried. There were items on his tray which he insisted on showing to everyone in turn.

“What’s that?” asked Breeze.

“Precisely my point! What is it? I asked for a cheeseburger and this looks nothing like a cheeseburger!”

“That clear fluid could be liquid grease,” said McGlashan.

“It should be inside the burger, though. Not in a puddle on the plate.”

McGlashan wasn’t able to take the matter seriously. “It’ll do you good to cut down, Lieutenant. Just think what you’d look like after twenty-eight days of eating decent-quality replicated cheeseburgers. At least now you might consider getting some decent proteins and fats instead.”

“No chance of that,” muttered Chainer, taking a bite of the lumpy, off-colour product. “It’s going to be a long journey.”

“It appears the Space Corps is concerned about sharing our latest food replicating technology with the Ghasts,” said Breeze. “Hence they’ve installed one of the older models.”

“One of the very oldest, it would seem. Closer to an antique if this stuff is anything to go by.”

Duggan didn’t wait to hear the conclusion of the discussion. With the Cadaveron travelling comfortably towards its destination, he set out to explore the interior. A greater proportion of the vessel was given over for soldiers and crew than was usual on Space Corps warships. Duggan remembered how some Cadaverons had been known to carry more than a thousand mech-suited Ghast warriors. More recently, the Ghasts kept fewer of their soldiers onboard. The nature of the war had changed until there was little need for warships to deploy enormous numbers of soldiers and armour onto a planet’s surface. Battles were usually won and lost in space. Afterwards, dedicated transport vessels would be used to deploy ground forces if they were needed in significant numbers.

The Ransor-D was an older design, with plenty of rooms and open areas. He remembered finding smashed lockers and broken chairs in one such room. Now, that room was spotlessly clean, with the contents removed and presumably disposed of at the Atican shipyard.

Duggan found his way to one of the barrack rooms and recognised it as the place he’d first boarded the vessel after it had smashed into the surface of Everlong. The light here was more muted than elsewhere and a shiver ran down his spine when he contemplated the living beings who had been killed in this room. There were other barrack rooms close by and Duggan found himself counting the bunks. At the end, he estimated the Ghast ship could have housed approximately eleven hundred soldiers, plus whoever else might have slept elsewhere within the labyrinthine interior of the hull.

Aside from the troop-carrying potential, the Cadaveron was remarkably similar to a Space Corps warship. Internally it looked the same, sounded the same and had its own unique odour which filled every room. The smell wasn’t unpleasant, though Duggan wasn’t able to pin down exactly what it was. He discovered several rooms, separate from the others and clearly intended for officers. There was bedding here, laid out on the oversized beds. There was no decoration and everything was plain and for a specific purpose.

After a few hours, he returned to the bridge, to find it exactly as he’d left it, with everyone at their stations and focused on a variety of minor tasks.

Chainer looked up. “Where do we sleep?” he asked.

“They’ve fitted out a few rooms,” said Duggan. “Probably where the Ghast officers bunked.”

Chainer nodded and returned to what he was doing. Duggan took his own seat and tried to busy himself with the onboard systems. It only took a few minutes to realise he was wasting his time. He’d not used these older interfaces in many years, but for some reason they were still as fresh in his mind as they’d ever been. He sighed and looked at his wrist for the watch he no longer wore. It was going to be a long trip.

Chapter Thirty-One

As Duggan feared, the days dragged slowly by and each one which passed brought them closer to an uncertain fate. Duggan hated the helplessness of being unable to face the coming challenge. He knew he should savour the time, since it could be the last remaining to him. He’d told himself similar things in the past and it had never been enough to alleviate the boredom of travel - Duggan would always be a man who preferred to arrive, rather than depart.

Time seemed to pass gradually, yet its progress was inevitable. Twenty-eight days become twenty, then ten and then seven. With excruciating slowness, the seven days were reduced to one, until all that remained was a short time before the Ransor-D’s planned arrival at the Ghast home world of Vempor. The crew were rested and at their posts, awaiting the Cadaveron’s emergence from lightspeed.

“We know absolutely nothing about Vempor, right?” asked Chainer for the dozenth time since they’d left Pioneer.

“The Ghasts won’t allow us near any of their worlds as a condition of the ongoing peace negotiations,” said Duggan. “I can understand why.”

“So, they’re going to be pretty angry when we show up out of nowhere,” said Chainer, again for the dozenth time.

“We’ll have to handle it, Lieutenant,” said Duggan. “There’s no point in trying to make predictions about this. Once we arrive, there’ll be a short time during which we will attempt to gather the information requested of us.”

“I’m not sure what I want to find. Nothing would be better than something,” said McGlashan.

“If we find sign of Dreamers, I imagine it won’t be long until the ESS Crimson turns up in Vempor’s orbit, with the Planet Breaker refitted,” said Duggan. “I can’t imagine either the Space Corps or the Confederation Council will be willing to sit back if they think those two races are collaborating against us. Far easier to neutralise one threat quickly – a lesson they’ve learned the hard way.”

“If we find nothing then there’ll be a few insincere apologies about a rogue captain and his crew seeking to overturn the peace process?”

“We’re meant to be glory-seekers, not peace-breakers” said Duggan. “We’re here to show off to all and sundry how brave we are for facing the Ghasts alone.”

“We’ll either be shot down by the Ghasts or thrown to the wolves by our own side,” said Chainer. He raised his hand to acknowledge he’d been made aware of the threats long ago.

“We know the score,” said Duggan. “From now on, we play it by ear and hope we can somehow obtain a good outcome.”

“I really hope we get a clear look at the surface and find nothing unexpected,” said Breeze.

“That’s what I’d prefer,” said McGlashan, repeating her stated view. “It’ll still leave questions unanswered.”

“Let’s not worry about the aftermath before we’ve arrived,” said Duggan. “I want everyone on top form for the task ahead.”

“It’ll not be long,” said Breeze. “I’ve got a peak arrival likelihood of fifty minutes from now.” There was a rumbling, which caused one or two of the retrofitted consoles to buzz loudly. “Well damnit, we’ve just exited lightspeed.”

The news caught Duggan off guard. He sprang into action. “Give me a sensor scan of the vicinity. I want to know what’s about. Prepare countermeasures against possible attack.”

“We’ve come in pretty close,” said Chainer. “Large sun, seven planets. The middle one is above average in size with surface patterns indicating the presence of life forms.”

Duggan didn’t wait to hear anything more. He pushed the Ransor-D to maximum velocity. “We’re hardly making a thousand klicks per second,” he said angrily.

“We’ve benefitted from that before,” McGlashan reminded him. “Lots of wasted space in these old models where they could have fitted engines.”

“Nine minutes until we reach a high orbit,” said Chainer. “I’ll have a good chance of gathering what we need from twenty thousand klicks up.”

“Any sign of alarm?” asked Duggan.

“Nothing yet. There are two small objects between us and the planet – they’re moving slowly. Civilian transports I’d guess.”

“What can you see on the planet?”

“It’s heavily built up on the exposed side, sir. There might be more than twenty billion Ghasts living here.”

“We’re sending this data back, aren’t we?” asked Duggan, unwilling to leave it to chance.

“Yes, sir, though there’s nothing much to tell yet. The surface is too crowded to make much sense from this distance.”

“Commander McGlashan, please assist Lieutenant Chainer until I say otherwise.” She nodded in response. McGlashan had once been a comms officer and she’d spent a couple of years assigned to that role.

Duggan tapped into one of the sensor arrays and fed the image onto the bulkhead screen. It showed a planet covered in mighty oceans, with comparatively little land mass. He zoomed in and saw the signs of vast, sprawling cities, which covered huge areas of the surface. There was one large continent visible and this too was covered in cities - they showed as irregular grey-white shapes, with mottled greens spreading away.

“Vempor,” said Duggan quietly. The original home of mankind’s once-deadliest enemy.

“Something’s pinged us,” said McGlashan.

“What was it?”

“It wasn’t hostile. I think it’s one of their ground bases querying our arrival.”

“I wonder how long until they realise who we are,” said Duggan.

“The ship has sent a response,” said McGlashan. She held her hands out to show it wasn’t something she’d intended. “The Cadaveron must have a system to respond automatically to signals from its base or other Ghast warships.”

“A friendly handshake,” said Duggan. “They must be aware there’s something amiss – that we shouldn’t be here.”

“I’ve located two areas on the surface which may be military bases, sir,” said Chainer. “They’re damned big.”

“Are they scrambling to meet us?”

“There’s one gravity drive burning hot. Otherwise, nothing.”

“If the Ransor-D has provided the correct response to base, they might not have realised yet.”

“The response will surely have contained encoded information specific to the ship,” said Breeze.

“You’d have thought,” said Chainer. “There’s no sign of alarm yet. No, here we go - perhaps I spoke too soon. There’s someone hailing us.”

“Ignore them,” said Duggan.

“He’s quite insistent,” said Chainer a few moments later. “The shipyard technicians have installed the language modules on our ship and the instructions we’re receiving are very clear. The Ghasts want us to stop pissing about and tell them who we are.”

“I don’t think that’s wise,” said Duggan.

“There are other signs of activity on the surface,” said Chainer. “Seven more engines have lit up. Some big, some small.”

It was the expected response. Duggan clenched his jaw, partially relieved to have had even this short respite before the Ghasts became alarmed.

“Got twelve engines in total now. One is certainly an Oblivion. The rest are smaller – mostly Kravens.”

“It doesn’t matter since we’re not going to fire at them,” said Duggan.

“Four minutes till we can establish a suitable orbit,” said McGlashan.

“Can you pick up much surface data from here?”

“Bits and pieces, sir,” said Chainer. “We’re logging the top-level details as we go and sending them to the monitoring station.”

“Two Ghast vessels have left the surface of the planet,” said McGlashan. “Kravens, I think.”

The image of Vempor gradually increased in size on the bulkhead screen. Previously unseen details were resolved into shapes of huge structures, while areas of green became a patchwork of fields. Farming was still a vital industry within the Confederation and it was no surprise to find the same on this Ghast planet. There were some things technology couldn’t entirely replace.

The Cadaveron had been fitted with a huge number of extra sensor arrays and the data they gathered streamed into the core’s memory banks. Duggan kept a close eye on the utilisation. “Any sign of us choking yet?” he asked.

“Not a chance, sir. We’re hardly tickling our available capacity. We could gather at ten times our current rate without concern. When we get closer we’ll see if the comms can send it off quickly enough.”

A number of circles appeared on Duggan’s tactical display. He didn’t know what colour the Ghasts used for friendlies, but the Space Corps equipment showed the inbound ships as green circles. The largest dot moved faster than the others – an Oblivion battleship had been sent to investigate. Other ships appeared on his screen, some coming from the dark side of Vempor. Duggan counted them at fifteen in total.

“How many orbits will you need, Lieutenant?”

“As many as you can give me, sir. The more time I have to look, the surer we can be.”

Duggan checked how far away they were from the planet. They were approaching a distance of twenty thousand kilometres and he adjusted their approach to ensure they’d come into orbit heading in a direction which would allow the first circuit to cover as many of the populated areas as possible. The Oblivion had almost reached them and it, too, changed course in order to follow the Ransor-D at a few hundred kilometres away.

“Think they’ll fire at us?” asked Breeze.

“Definitely,” said Duggan. “Keep your fingers crossed we can find what we need before they think it’s necessary.”

“Let’s have a quick look at what we’ve got,” said Chainer. The bulkhead view split in two. The left-hand image displayed a feed of the surface beneath. To the right, the Ghast Oblivion shadowed them, keeping exactly parallel to their course. The clean lines of the battleship were marred by pits and scars caused by strikes from missiles and particle beams. Duggan had to do a double-take when he saw what it was.

“The Dretisear,” he said.

Chapter Thirty-Two

“We’re being hailed again, sir,” said Chainer. “This time from the battleship.”

“Who is it speaking?”

“It’s Nil-Far. He wants to know what the hell we’re playing at.”

“Maintain silence,” said Duggan.

“He wants to know why we’ve come to Vempor instead of the prearranged meeting place.”

“Sounds like our secret is out,” said McGlashan.

“Have we found anything from the surface scans?” asked Duggan.

“Nothing that springs out as unusual. We’re gathering sights, sounds and thousands of emission types. It’ll take me a while to make sense of the raw data.”

“We don’t have a lot of time, Lieutenant. Once we’ve found what we’ve come for, I’m going to surrender the ship.”

“I’ll tell you anything of significance, sir.”

Duggan kept the Cadaveron on its course, wondering how long until the Ghasts decided enough was enough. They’d already held fire for longer than he dared hope. In a way it was a hopeful sign – if the Ghasts intended treachery, they would have destroyed the heavy cruiser already.

“It’s Nil-Far again. He’s asking to speak to you. They are prepared to launch missiles at us.”

“Talking might buy us some time,” said Duggan. “Patch him through on the speakers.”

The connection was made. “Captain John Duggan, you are a long way from the place we’d expected to meet.” There might have been the subtlest hint of anger in the Ghast’s words.

“We’ve brought your warship,” said Duggan.

“So I see. You were not invited to our world. It was agreed in the first week of peace negotiations that your Space Corps would not come to any of our planets.”

Duggan took a deep breath. There was no doubt Nil-Far had already heard the pre-planned response about maverick captains taking matters into their own hands. He didn’t want to jeopardise the Space Corps’ position by saying otherwise, but he wanted to see if the Ghast would offer up more information about what had occurred on Trasgor.

“I have seen things which throw doubt over the Ghast commitment to peace,” he said.

“What have you seen?”

“Ghasts on a Dreamer world.”

“The pyramid,” said Nil-Far. “Are you convinced we will always be your enemy?”

“I would prefer to be sure before I accept there is no hope of peace.”

“You have come here seeking evidence of treachery? There is none to be found.”

“Without certainty there will never be trust.”

“You will find no answers here John Duggan, only more questions.”

“I thought the Ghasts took pride in speaking the truth.”

“We do and I have told you no lies.”

“You may not have told lies, but you evade the truth by refusing to answer the questions, or giving only partial answers. Amongst humanity, that is tantamount to lying.”

“Will you land the Ransor-D and hand it over peacefully?”

“I will not fire upon your spacecraft,” said Duggan.

“Now who is giving incomplete answers?” asked Nil-Far. He made a sound which may have been laughter.

“He’s gone,” said Chainer.

“Keep scanning,” said Duggan.

“We’re not going to stop?” asked Breeze.

“Not until we’re done. We didn’t expect to be greeted with open arms.”

“We didn’t know what to expect,” said McGlashan.

“There’s something strange happening on the AI core,” said Breeze, raising his voice to be heard over the others.

“What’s wrong?” asked Duggan, frowning.

“I don’t know. The utilisation gauges are jumping all over the place.”

Duggan checked their speed and saw a problem immediately. “We’re slowing down.”

“The core is getting flooded with data,” said Breeze. “It’ll affect most things onboard.”

“Whatever’s happening, it’s holding things up, sir,” said Chainer. “The core acts as the conduit for sending the data we’re gathering. It’s getting patchy.”

“You mean we’re losing data?” asked Duggan sharply.

“No, sir. It’s simply taking longer to send what we’re picking up. There’s already a five second backlog.”

“Can anyone tell me what’s happening?”

“I think they’re trying to take control of the ship, sir,” said Breeze.

Duggan wanted to reject the idea out of hand. Then, he remembered some of the earliest Space Corps warships had been equipped with the facility to take over control of other fleet warships. He vaguely recalled it was intended as a protection against officers who went off the rails and decided to use their warships to commit mass murder - they could be shut down before they caused too much damage.

“You might be right, Lieutenant. Can we stop it happening?”

“Maybe. I’m sorry but I don’t have a clue how,” said Breeze.

Duggan looked at Chainer and McGlashan in turn. Both shook their heads.

“Twenty seconds backlog on our data stream.”

“Can you compress the data?” asked Duggan. “We need to get it back to base.”

“I can knock it down to ten percent of its original size if you want. It’ll lose some detail and we could end up missing what we’re looking for.”

“Do it anyway,” said Duggan. He stared briefly at one of his screens and found he’d just been locked out of the weapons systems. It didn’t matter – they weren’t going to get out of this with missiles and disruptors.

Chainer pressed furiously at his console, a look of consternation on his face. “Too late. They’ve blocked our transmission.”

Duggan cursed and suppressed the urge to kick his console in pointless anger. “What’s left?”

“The engines have dropped below twenty percent,” said Breeze.

“They’re not going to let us crash, are they?” asked Chainer.

“I think it’s more likely we’ll be brought in to land slowly under the control of the Dretisear,” said Breeze. “They’re not going to want a huge crater or mile-high tidal wave that would result from letting us come down without guidance.”

Duggan was shortly locked out of each major system on the heavy cruiser. He tried a few things to get his access back – nothing worked. The control bars would still move, though they no longer affected the direction of the warship.

“I think we’re coming to the end of the road,” he said.

“Yeah, I can’t get anything working over here,” said McGlashan. “I can view a few bits and pieces, but they won’t respond to my commands.”

“Can we get through to the Dretisear?” asked Duggan.

“Certainly can, sir. That’s something I’ve not been denied access to,” said Chainer.

“Get Nil-Far.”

The Ghast spoke almost at once, as though he’d been waiting patiently for Duggan to make contact. “We have control of the Ransor-D, John Duggan. We will take it to one of our landing fields and set it down.”

“What will happen to my crew?” asked Duggan. “They were obeying my orders.”

“Everyone is responsible for their actions,” said Nil-Far.

“What will happen?” repeated Duggan.

“I am not sure,” said Nil-Far after a pause. “You will be detained for a time. After that, I cannot say.”

“Very well,” said Duggan. He cut the connection to the battleship.

“He didn’t give much away,” said Chainer.

“I wouldn’t read too much into it,” said Duggan. “Keep your fingers crossed that Admiral Teron is as good as his word.”

Chainer was too worried to attempt a wisecrack and he simply nodded in response.

“I wonder if we got enough data away to the Space Corps for them to learn something,” said McGlashan. “It would be a shame if we were shut down before it could happen.”

“At the very least, they’ll know a bit more about the Ghast home world. Whether it’ll do them any good is another matter,” said Duggan. An idea came to him. “Lieutenant Chainer, can we still access the data we gathered?”

“There doesn’t appear to be anything stopping us looking,” he said. “In fact, we’re still gathering. It’s like we’ve been put in a position where we can’t escape or do any harm, but are permitted to observe.”

Duggan checked their speed again – the Dretisear was taking them to their destination at a much-reduced velocity. “I don’t know how long until we get to where we’re going, so we should make good use of our time. Why don’t we analyse what we gathered and see if we can unearth what we came for? Once the Ghasts take this ship from us, there’ll be no way to access the data again.”

Chainer’s expression changed until it showed something akin to eagerness. “I’ll give everyone an equal section of the data to view. I usually rely on the AI to flag up points of interest, but sometimes there’s no replacement for watching something with your own eyes.”

“Let’s do it,” said Duggan. A series of files appeared on his main screen – they were colossal in size, being a raw capture of everything the warship’s sensors had gathered. He didn’t hesitate and opened the first one.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Duggan had no idea how long remained until they were marched off the Ransor-D. He’d spent the last ten minutes studying video streams of Vempor’s surface, whilst trying to identify signs of a Dreamer presence on the planet. Several of his files showed nothing apart from the blue-green of deep oceans and he was able to check through these ones quickly. Some contained high-resolution videos of lush countryside and farmlands. He learned little from these and was left with the impression much of the planet was used exclusively for growing an unknown type of grain. At another time, he’d have permitted himself a minute or two studying it closer.

When ocean and countryside ended, there were cities – vast, neatly-ordered metropolises, which must have been home for tens of millions of Ghasts. The architecture in these cities bore little resemblance to anywhere found within the Confederation – the alien species eschewed concrete and nearly everything was built from metal.

“Domes everywhere,” said Breeze. “Some of them are huge.”

“I’ve seen one or two which could house a million people,” said McGlashan.

“There’s lot of heavy industry,” said Chainer. “They’re throwing all sorts of crap into the sky. It’s no wonder they’ve got no windows.”

Chainer was the man to spot these details and Duggan hadn’t even noticed the high levels of pollutants in the air. The Confederation planets had tightly-controlled guidelines on industry and you could go more or less anywhere without fear of having your lungs clogged up with airborne toxins. One or two of the military labs operated under looser rules, though they were required to be many kilometres from populated areas.

“Lots of soot, not much else,” said McGlashan. “There’s nothing here which suggests the Ghasts are in alliance with the Dreamers.”

“They’ve got more planets than this one,” said Chainer. “Each world might set its own rules. We know so little about their politics. So little about anything related to the Ghasts, come to think of it.”

“This is the world they first came from,” said Duggan. “The data which the Space Corps pulled from the Ransor-D’s memory arrays referenced this world as their seat of power. If there’s something to find, it’s most likely to be here.”

“Not definite, though,” said Breeze.

“This is where we’ve come, Lieutenant,” said Duggan, dismissing any further talk on the matter.

“We’re slowing,” said Chainer. “Coming in to land soon.”

“What’s our destination?” asked Duggan, his eyes not moving from the rolling images on his screen.

“There’s a landing area dead ahead. We passed near it when we first arrived.”

“We don’t have long,” said Duggan. “Keep searching.”

A few minutes later, the Ransor-D’s automatic landing systems kicked in. The warship descended vertically for a thousand kilometres. Below, the Ghast base beckoned. Duggan spared himself a moment to look – it was as though the land had been clad in metal. Dozens of square kilometres of dull silver-grey lay beneath them, completely flat in places and with dome-shaped buildings in others. There were more than a dozen Kraven light cruisers, lined up neatly. A few kilometres away, there were two Cadaverons – they looked subtly different to the others Duggan had seen.

“New models,” he said.

“There’s no need for them to stop building,” said McGlashan. “The Confederation has imposed nothing upon them yet.”

“They need to, and soon,” said Duggan. “Even if the Ghasts aren’t allied to the Dreamers and even if we need them to fight with us, we can’t permit them to outgun us again. Not after last time.”

The lower they came, the more details were visible. Aside from the spaceships, there were smaller objects moving across the open spaces. Some of these objects gathered around the docked ships and Duggan guessed them to be maintenance vehicles. He was right – there were many cranes, along with other vehicles he didn’t recognize. They were of different shapes and sizes, moving about with purpose.

“We could be back on Pioneer,” said Chainer. “They aren’t far removed from us.”

“I never thought they would be,” said McGlashan. “If you examined the minutiae, I bet everything would look strange and different. When you pull away and look at the broad picture, the similarities are striking.”

“I don’t know if that makes me happy or sad,” said Breeze.

“It doesn’t make me either,” said Duggan. “Except to say that it’ll be easier to deal with a species which is similar to us than one which is vastly different.”

The Ransor-D landed, away from the other warships berthed here. There was no perceptible sensation of setting down – the Cadaveron was too heavy to land at anything other than a snail’s pace. The outside view was one of activity – vehicles closed in, several of them quite obviously troop transports.

“Here they come,” said Breeze.

“The centre boarding ramp is opening, sir,” said Chainer.

Ghasts climbed from the transport vehicles. There were dozens of them, dressed in grey uniforms that blended in with their skin. They were armed with heavy gauss rifles and they ran beneath the Ransor-D. Duggan wasn’t sure if they’d be carrying interpretation modules and he didn’t want to be shot because of an early misunderstanding. He opened the bridge locker and pulled out two of the helmets, meaning to activate their translation facilities.

“Sir, you’ve got to see this!” said McGlashan.

There was something in her voice which made him set the helmets down with a clatter on the floor. He ran past his console to stand next to her. Chainer and Breeze joined him.

“What’ve you got?” Duggan asked.

McGlashan said nothing and simply pointed at her display.

“Shit,” said Chainer. “Is that what I think it is?”

“It can’t be anything else,” said McGlashan. She called up further details on what she’d discovered. “It’s too dense for the sensors to provide an exact reading from the height we crossed over it. The estimate is that it’s several hundred years old.”

“How long ago did we capture these images?” asked Duggan.

“Not long after the Dretisear showed up, sir.”

Duggan put a hand on top of his head, rubbing his short-cut hair. “Did we get it away to Monitoring Station Beta?”

“I don’t know, sir, I’m sorry.”

“I’ll find out,” said Chainer.

He sprang away and threw himself into his seat. Before he could settle, the door to the bridge opened and Ghast soldiers came inside with rifles levelled. Their grey uniforms rustled and swished as they spread out to either side. Fifteen or twenty of them entered, the shortest of them towering over Duggan. Their expressions were not friendly and there was little mistaking the message behind the gestures they made. Through the bridge door, others were visible, lined up against the corridor walls.

“Stop what you’re doing and act friendly,” said Duggan to the others.

They did so, taking their hands away from their consoles and remaining in place. The Ghasts didn’t relax and kept their rifles steadily aimed. Minutes passed and nothing happened. Duggan asked questions, without getting a response. He pointed towards the spacesuit helmets on the floor and made a careful step towards them. The reaction from their captors made him stop in his tracks.

After another ten minutes, there was movement outside the bridge and another Ghast came through. This one was dressed in the same stiff cloth uniform as the others – just as he had been when Duggan first met with him. The Ghast spoke in short, harsh phrases. When his words ended, they were replicated in the Confederation tongue by a small amplifier badge he wore on his chest.

“You have caused much trouble, John Duggan,” said Nil-Far. “Your actions have brought us anger and uncertainty.”

“I have fought too long to desire anything other than peace,” said Duggan. “I came here to discover if your species is planning an alliance with our enemies. I have acted of my own free will and without sanction from the Confederation. I was asked to hand over the Ransor-D in neutral space and I chose to come here.”

“You’ve risked much in your cause,” said Nil-Far. There was no reproach in the words. “Tell me – have you found signs of deception?”

Duggan shook his head, not sure exactly what to say. “I don’t think so.”

“You are not certain?”

“You took over our ship before we had enough time to finish,” said Duggan with a half-smile.

“You will have to come with us.”

Duggan had already asked what the Ghasts planned for his crew, without receiving any assurances. There seemed no reason to ask again. “We’ll come,” he said.

The crew were led away from the bridge one-by-one. Each had two Ghast soldiers in front and two behind. Not once did their escorts speak, nor did they drop their guard for a moment. There was no point in resistance and Duggan allowed himself to be taken from the bridge, keeping his eyes fastened on the broad shoulders of the soldier in front.

The four of them were taken to the top of the boarding ramp. Heavy, warm air filled the airlock. It was brighter outside than it seemed from the sensor data and much hotter than Duggan had expected. He idly wondered if Vempor was as hot as this across much of its surface. Heat and pollution would explain why the Ghasts chose to live in sealed domes.

Outside, the feet of humans and Ghasts made little noise on the thick metal ground. Duggan looked around him. He was familiar with the feeling of insignificance that came from standing amongst the gargantuan spaceships of the Space Corps fleet. Here, the feeling was exacerbated somehow, though the Ghast machinery didn’t look any larger than its human equivalent. A figure loomed at his side.

“We are taking you there,” said Nil-Far, lifting an arm to point at a distant building. It was another dome, over a kilometre away.

“What will happen to us?”

Nil-Far shrugged, a startlingly human gesture. “We’ll see, John Duggan.”

Duggan was herded towards an opening in the rear of a fifteen-metre-long transport vehicle. It made the Space Corps’ designs seem like an indulgence of frivolous bells and whistles, since it was little more than a hollow metal box with a gravity engine. He climbed the high steps and one of the soldiers indicated a nearby metal seat. Duggan sat, breathing the warm air in through his nostrils. Sweat was already running down his spine. The others were in front of him, though none turned to catch his eye.

As the transport headed off, carrying the four of them into the unknown, Duggan’s mind spun in turmoil as it searched for an answer to what McGlashan had found on the Ransor-D’s sensor feed. There had been a pyramid of black metal, with a base measuring fifteen hundred metres to each side. Buildings surrounded it – enormous industrial complexes with unclear purposes.

The transport came to a halt. In the journey’s short time, Duggan had only been able to reach a single conclusion and was unsure if it was even remotely correct. The presence of the pyramid suggested that far from being allied to the Dreamers, the Ghasts and Dreamers were, in fact, one and the same. What this meant, Duggan couldn’t begin to imagine, but it had become imperative that he get back to the Space Corps and tell them what he and his crew had discovered on Vempor. One thing was certain – nothing would be straightforward in the months to come.

* * *

The Survival Wars series continues in Book 4, Fires of Oblivion!

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The Survival Wars series

1. Crimson Tempest

2. Bane of Worlds

3. Chains of Duty

4. Fires of Oblivion

5. Terminus Gate

6. Guns of the Valpian