Cornerstone, page 3
THREE
“Ten minutes until we land,” said Turner after a short time had passed. “Unless you’re planning to treat the ground personnel to a few sonic booms, Captain.”
“Let’s do this one by the book, since the personnel here have been so nice to us,” said Lanson dryly. The roughness of the propulsion was jarring in a way he’d never heard from a Rodos drive before, and his eyes kept jumping to the status display on his console. “Besides, I don’t want to take any risks with the deceleration. Just in case.”
As the Gallivant approached the planet, Lanson watched the sensors feeds. Those feeds became steadily clearer and he saw how much activity was happening on the Cornerstone facility. The broad, main avenues were filled with a mixture of huge load-carrying crawlers, while the narrower streets were crowded with personnel cars. Shuttles flew in great numbers above the base, and Lanson guessed there were at least fifty different roof pads on which they could set down.
By now, he’d identified the main research centre, amongst all the other structures. The research complex was near enough in the middle, and it was made up from numerous linked buildings, with roofs of different heights. Something about the place made Lanson think of an ancient factory, and a dozen smoke-belching chimney stacks would have fitted right in.
“So is anyone willing to guess what kind of research is taking place here?” asked Perry.
“Don’t ask me, I’ve never even heard of this place before,” said Abrams. “What I do know is that the Confederation’s current main focus is propulsion, so maybe that’s what they’re working on.”
“What specific improvements are we chasing?” asked Lanson, though he already had a good idea.
“I don’t know, Captain - propulsion isn’t a single research field. Everyone who serves on a warship knows we need increased output from our Rodos drives, but it may be that the Rodos tech is a dead end anyway. It’s entirely possible the Sagh’eld use an entirely different method to generate thrust and to transition into lightspeed.”
“If we can’t improve our Rodos tech, we’re screwed,” said Matlock. “There’s no way we could retrofit new engines to the entire fleet, and we don’t want to make our existing warships obsolete.”
“If a retrofit is what it takes, we’ll have little choice other than to do that, Commander,” said Lanson.
The thought of it was sobering and he tuned out of the conversation. The Gallivant was approaching the Lorimos upper atmosphere and he pulled back on the controls, causing the warship to decelerate. There was hardly any cloud cover over the Cornerstone facility, and that made the approach an easy one which Lanson could manage with his naked eye.
“There’s the underground facility,” said Lieutenant Perry.
“I see it,” said Lanson.
About three thousand metres from the eastern edge of the landing strip, two vast doors, supported by invisible gravity fields, had sunk into the ground and begun sliding into their recesses. The Gallivant’s approach angle denied Lanson a view into the bay, though soon the warship would be directly overhead and he’d be able to see inside.
“I reckon you could just about fit two Carbines in this bay if you were determined enough,” said Massey.
“I wonder if this is the only underground bay on Cornerstone,” said Matlock.
Lanson shrugged, unsure if he was interested enough to talk about it. He kept his mouth shut and stared at the feeds. By now, the Gallivant was low enough to the planet that the darkness of space was steadily turning into the deepest, purest of blues. Given the lack of clouds below, Lanson reckoned it would be a beautiful day on the base. A glance at the feed data told him the surface temperature was thirty Celsius.
The doors to the underground bay receded entirely into their recesses and the progress of the Gallivant meant the warship was soon in a position from which Lanson could see into the opening. A shaft went through hundreds of metres of rock and opened into a larger space far below.
“It’s deeper than I was expecting,” said Lanson.
“Excavation isn’t a big deal, Captain,” said Abrams. “A mining vessel could have chewed up all this rock in a couple of weeks.”
Something in the man’s words made Lanson shiver. The Human Confederation was so vast that even huge facilities like this one on Lorimos were unknown to Lanson. He was no more than the tiniest cog in a machine which he had no way of ever entirely comprehending.
Drawing his mind back to the present, Lanson concentrated on piloting the Gallivant towards the shaft opening, still several hundred kilometres below. The two cargo vessels he’d seen earlier hadn’t gone anywhere, and their flank bay doors were still wide open. Other than that, the landing field played host to nothing more significant than lifter shuttles.
“Has anyone else spotted the obvious yet?” asked Matlock.
The question set Lanson’s mind working, and suddenly he realised what she was telling him. “There are no repair facilities on the surface.”
“Well, I’ll be,” said Abrams, as he spotted it too. “Since there’s a Blade class stationed here – and maybe a heavy or a battleship for all we know – there must either be another underground bay like we were talking about or—”
“Or major repairs happen elsewhere,” said Lanson.
“Why build a facility the size of this one, without the capability to repair the local defence fleet?” asked Perry.
“Because they don’t want a bunch of crew and soldiers disembarking and wandering through Cornerstone, learning things,” said Lanson.
“That would be…unusual,” said Matlock.
“Lieutenant Turner, do you have access to the Cornerstone flight logs now that we’re on the local battle network?” asked Lanson. “Purely for the sake of curiosity.”
“I’ll check,” said Turner. “Nope, they’re locked down.”
“I’m probably overthinking things,” said Lanson.
“You probably aren’t,” said Abrams. “Though one or two people have told me before that I can be a cynical bastard.”
“No shit?” said Massey.
Abrams didn’t bother responding.
Soon, the Gallivant was only five thousand metres above the entrance shaft to the repair bay. Lanson could have handed off control to the warship’s autopilot, but instead he guided the vessel in under manual control. The Gallivant wasn’t responding too well to his inputs, but he had it in hand. Besides, the opening was rectangular and there was plenty of clearance, so he wasn’t too concerned about scraping the paintwork.
From this low altitude, the structures of the Cornerstone facility appeared square and drab, and utterly devoid of any visual appeal. Of course, the military built for practicality rather than looks, but the entire base resembled a scaled up prefab habitation village, like those that were deployed on many of the far-flung worlds within the Human Confederation.
Only the main research complex looked different, with its roofs of many different heights, and the occasional sweeping and seemingly superfluous curves. Lanson guessed that parts of the research facility were bespoke and others were prefab like everything else.
He guided the Gallivant into the shaft, the sides of which were smooth, and possessed of a peculiar sheen, indicating the rock had been cut by a particle beam. Huge grey blocks were embedded into the walls not far down, which Lanson knew were the gravity field generators. Without them, the overhead doors wouldn’t function.
A couple of seconds after the Gallivant was inside the shaft, those doors began closing. Lanson didn’t pay them any attention. He brought the warship steadily lower and the vessel emerged into a bay which was approximately eight hundred metres along its sides and with a ceiling of a similar height. Repair vessels hovered in readiness, and numerous vehicles crowded the edges of the floorspace, with others parked up here and there closer to the centre.
Additional gravity field generators protruded from the walls, providing all manner of useful services, the primary one being to hold the ceiling in place, but they could also be used to carry some of the larger components required in a warship repair bay, such as Rodos blocks, which could weigh upwards of fifty million tons.
Looking at the sensor feed aimed south, Lanson saw four separate exits from the bay, these being tunnels of varying size, with the entrance to the largest being a hundred metres by a hundred.
North, was a single tunnel, again with dimensions of approximately one hundred metres by one hundred.
“What’s along that way?” wondered Matlock, pointing north.
Lanson doubted it would be anything of interest, but even so, he altered the Gallivant’s descent slightly, and rotated the vessel so that the functioning starboard array would focus along the passage.
Lifter shuttles and several ground vehicles had been parked across the far exit, about eight hundred metres away, in an obvious effort to conceal what was happening in the adjacent bay.
However, there were spaces between the blocking vehicles, through which the Gallivant’s sensors could see, albeit with a limited field of view. Lanson discerned shapes in what looked to be a much larger bay than this one.
“What the hell is that?” asked Matlock, lowering her eyebrows, and staring at the feed.
“I don’t know,” said Lanson. “I can’t see enough of it.”
“I’m running the feed through the Gallivant’s main core to see if I can get an object match from the partial image, sir,” said Perry. The search didn’t take long. “There’s a Blade class cruiser in that next bay, Captain, nose-first to our position, and get this – there’s a Vachal destroyer in there with it.”
“How accurate is the match?”
“Ninety-eight percent, sir.”
“A Sagh’eld destroyer,” said Lanson. “Maybe it’s some wreckage we recovered.”
“I think it’s more than wreckage, sir.”
Lanson was intensely curious about everything that was happening here on Cornerstone, and it was becoming increasingly apparent why most of the files were locked down. As far as he was aware, the Human Confederation hadn’t yet captured anything more than pieces from a Sagh’eld warship, while here on Cornerstone it appeared there was something far more significant than a few mangled armour plates.
“We should see what information we can sniff out when we land,” said Perry.
“This might be a time for subtlety, Lieutenant,” said Lanson. “It’s clear the personnel here didn’t want us to see that Vachal.”
He considered ordering his crew to just keep their mouths shut and pretend that they’d seen nothing. The general secrecy surrounding the Cornerstone base was beginning to make far more sense, as was the reluctance to authorise repairs to the Gallivant.
“Maybe I’ll just keep quiet,” said Perry, reading Lanson’s mood.
“That would probably be for the best.”
Since the Gallivant wasn’t designed to set down, Lanson instructed the autopilot to maintain a low-level hover above the bay floor. Once that was done, he sat quietly for a moment in thought. The capture of the Vachal destroyer was surely a positive development, regardless of the secrecy.
Aside from that, the next few weeks would be a break from all the shit he and his crew had endured over the last few months.
Perhaps it was time to embrace circumstances.
FOUR
Ten minutes later, Lanson led his crew down the steps of the Gallivant’s extendible forward boarding ramp, bringing his gauss rifle with him. The weapon was made of lightweight alloy but packed an immense punch - not that he expected to be firing it at anything while he was here on Cornerstone.
After the Gallivant’s crew came the warship’s contingent of ten soldiers – led by Sergeant Evander Gabriel. The soldiers carried a more extensive array of weaponry than just gauss rifles, and they wore full GK-3 frontline combat armour made from semiflexible alloy.
The bay itself was illuminated by multiple sources in such a way that the light was evenly distributed, though a gloominess still clung to the place. As he descended, Lanson peered around.
Towards the eastern wall of the bay, a huge repair bot hovered motionless. The bot was cuboid and with four immense cutting arms, which could slice through plates of armour and extract them from a warship’s hull.
On the ground were flatbed gravity crawlers in all shapes and sizes, cranes with tall booms, and many smaller vehicles with varying purposes. Although Lanson was sure the repairs would be mostly automated, he could still see a few groups of facility personnel, doing whatever it was they were doing. However, despite the presence of people and machinery, it was clear the repair facilities in the bay were limited.
Aside from the sights, the heavy, lumpy bass of the Gallivant’s idling propulsion was almost a physical presence, and the reflection of its sound from the walls created a constant pressure which Lanson knew would give him a headache if he was exposed to it for too long. A Rodos drive produced a sharp metallic odour and the air was redolent with it.
When he stepped onto the bay floor, Lanson was surprised when a twenty-metre transport shuttle descended from seemingly out of nowhere, its approach hidden by the Gallivant’s hull. The transport set down heavily about fifty metres away, its landing legs flexing with the strain.
“Hold,” said Lanson, raising his hand.
“What’s this, Captain?” asked Sergeant Gabriel, his eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“I don’t know,” said Lanson. He hadn’t yet filled the soldiers in on recent events and wasn’t about to start explaining now. “Let’s wait and see.”
The flank door of the transport hinged outwards and its control motors lowered it to the floor, forming a ramp. Figures inside – soldiers - emerged rapidly. These soldiers were carrying only gauss rifles and sidearms, and they were dressed in a lightweight variant of the heavy combat armour Gabriel and his squad were wearing.
“Ten, fifteen, twenty,” counted Corporal Brad Ziegler as the base soldiers continued exiting the transport.
Soon, Lanson found himself face to face with the commanding officer of the Cornerstone platoon.
“Lieutenant Tobias Aveen,” the man introduced himself.
Aveen was about thirty years old, with short-cut blond hair and unlined skin. Something about him – maybe the way he carried himself – made Lanson think this officer hadn’t seen much combat.
“Captain William Lanson,” said Lanson, returning the greeting and keeping his gaze firmly on Aveen. The other soldiers of the platoon had stopped a few metres behind and they shifted as if they were on edge. “I wasn’t expecting we’d need a full platoon to show us to our quarters.”
“The work here on Cornerstone is highly sensitive, sir,” said Aveen. “I’ve been ordered to escort you to a place where you’ll be isolated from the rest of the facility personnel.”
“Isolated?” said Lanson, using a tone that made it clear his tolerance levels were being pushed. “Are you telling me we’re about to be imprisoned?”
Aveen smiled nervously. “Not imprisoned, Captain.” He raised a hand and indicated vaguely west. “There are suitable quarters that way, in which you, your crew, and these soldiers will be staying.”
“Until the repairs on my vessel are complete?” asked Lanson.
“I have not been provided with that information, sir,” said Aveen, now visibly uncomfortable.
The man’s anxiety was doubtless magnified by the nearby presence of Sergeant Gabriel, who had moved up to stand off Lanson’s left-hand shoulder.
Gabriel was a hulking bastard with piercing eyes and a contemptuous lip curl that could just about make a superior officer shit their pants. He and the nine other soldiers accompanying him were armed to the teeth, not just with gauss rifles, but with grenades, RAHD guns, a repeater, and a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher. Their combat suits were the best the military could provide, and the scarring on the flexible metal surfaces of these suits made it abundantly clear that this squad had seen action, and plenty of it.
“Maybe I should return to my warship,” said Lanson, still not dropping his gaze.
“My orders are to escort you to your quarters, sir,” said Aveen. He attempted a conciliatory smile.
Lanson was fairly sure he’d be able to get his own way simply by exerting the power of his will over Aveen, but there again, the situation here could well escalate when there was no need for it to happen. If Lanson started making things difficult, the base commander might rescind the repair order.
“In that case, you should do as you’ve been ordered,” said Lanson, as if it were nothing. This was the moment when Aveen would ask for weapons to be handed over, if that was part of his orders.
“I need your guns, Captain.”
“On what grounds?” asked Lanson.
“Orders, sir.”
“Not good enough,” said Lanson firmly. “My crew and these soldiers are permitted to carry weapons on base. Any order to the contrary requires justification. Let me speak to your commanding officer.”
Aveen looked as if he’d been skewered. The soldier’s commanding officer would not outrank Lanson, nor would the next officer up the command tree. Escalation would end up making Aveen look bad for failing to handle the situation.
“There are secure lockers in the officer’s quarters,” said Aveen at last. “You will store your weapons there during your time on Cornerstone.”
“That’s acceptable,” said Lanson. In fact, the offer was more than acceptable, since it was one in which Aveen had conceded enormous ground and Lanson none.
Aveen looked abruptly west and then pointed. “There are ground transports over there. We’ll travel in those.”
Lanson’s gaze jumped towards a row of vehicles about two hundred metres away. Three mid-sized troop transports were parked amongst a variety of smaller cars.
