Fleet Vanguard (Transcended Book 2), page 4
JN> Istoliar power cells and they’re under stress.
BK> They’ve got to keep them somewhere. Maybe those power the internal systems.
JN> They don’t bother much with the lights.
BK> The size of the Trivar’s pupils suggest they were once nocturnal.
JN> Yeah, maybe.
A group of fifteen Trivar entered the room through one of the opposite passages. They strode across the room, their eyes glowing with an inner light. They didn’t speak and their bare feet made hardly any noise.
BK> Get me a scan.
JN> Will do.
Nation crouched near one of the cabinets and aimed his sensor towards the group. The results came back immediately.
JN> They have Istoliar implants in their skulls.
BK> Any idea what for?
JN> Could be anything. I’m guessing communication.
BK> Good guess. That’s what I think as well.
Most of the Trivar exited the room, though a group of four stayed behind. They gathered silently around one of the cabinets a few metres from Nation. After a few seconds, the aliens turned and followed the others.
Another, larger group entered the room.
JN> Getting busy.
BK> In a few minutes – once you’ve explored a bit more - I’ll have enough data to begin speculating on how many Trivar live on Xur’kd.
JN> Early signs are this is a low-maintenance spaceship with a lot of personnel onboard.
BK> If they’re carrying more than the necessary number of crew, it implies the ship has a purpose that is more than just war.
JN> I agree. Xur’kd is a big vessel, but I’m not sure it’s sufficiently large to accommodate an entire population. If they are travellers, they aren’t all here, unless more of them live on one of the other ships in this fleet.
BK> Do you remember your lessons on the Vraxar? They packed millions of them into tight spaces, pinned to metal posts to stop them falling over.
JN> The Trivar don’t strike me as the type who would appreciate such treatment.
The second group split and exited through three separate exits. Other Trivar arrived and Nation cursed under his breath. He was accustomed to missions in facilities where the personnel were more widely spread and he didn’t like the idea of having to dodge his way from place to place.
Nation didn’t wait to find out how many more Trivar would arrive. He chose an exit passage and made for it. Once he was away from the backup power station, he followed a short corridor, which turned left and then right. Without any explanation for the transition, the bare-metal walls became clad in a rich, dark material and a plain dark blue carpet with a shallow, tightly-woven pile covered the floor. Nearby, a holo-screen was fixed to the wall. It showed a picture of an arid mountain range on a world a million light years away. The image changed and this time the screen displayed a rocky crag, with a sprinkling of stars overhead.
JN> Analyse that feed. See if you can locate the planet by the pattern of stars.
BK> Needle in haystack work, but I’ll give it a go.
JN> And take a look at these walls. According to my sensor, this is genuine wood of a type not known anywhere within the Confederation.
BK> I’ve never seen anything like it on a spaceship.
JN> Nope.
The Space Corps didn’t go in for interior decoration. Occasionally a floor might be tiled or a wall painted, but that was as far as it went, until you were promoted to the rank of Admiral, whereupon you might be granted funds to acquire a potted plant. This corridor on Xur’kd resembled the interior of a high-class hotel. Certainly not the sort of place Joe Nation found himself in very often.
BK> You must have crossed the boundary between maintenance and personnel zones.
JN> Could be.
BK> It’s been twenty minutes since the Council representatives went through that door. If the Trivar intend serious negotiations, you’ve reached the sort of place where they would happen.
JN> Good thought. I was beginning to suspect I’d lost the trail.
Nation took himself along the passage. Every few metres, he found a closed door and he saw intersecting corridors ahead. His sensor detected the sound of footsteps on carpet somewhere close and he stepped warily, in case one of the fast-moving aliens blundered into him. A lone Trivar appeared from a side passage nearby and it turned towards Nation. He stepped to the side and allowed it to go by. The same musty smell reached his nostrils and he wrinkled his nose in distaste.
This time, the alien didn’t continue towards its destination. It slowed and stopped a few paces along the corridor from Nation. The creature turned its head to one side, revealing the hole of its ear. It turned further and Nation heard the alien drawing air in through its nose, with a quiet whoosh.
JN> Oh shit.
Nation sprinted away from the Trivar, the sound of his feet masked by his stealth modules. He reached another turning forty metres away and hid around the corner.
BK> Was it sniffing you out?
JN> That’s what it looked like.
Nation peered around the corner to see if the alien was still trying to figure out his scent.
JN> Gone.
BK> You’ll have to take care if you get too close to the Trivar.
JN> Those other ones didn’t act suspicious.
BK> That one might have had a better nose.
JN> Damnit. I’ll ask the lab guys to do some work on the scent masking once I get out of here.
BK> I’d recommend a daily shower.
JN> What made me think that comment was coming?
For the next ten minutes, Nation cautiously explored this area of Xur’kd. He didn’t open any of the doors and he didn’t venture too far, reasoning that the negotiations were unlikely to take place a great distance from the point of arrival. In addition, Nation was aware that each new passage he took reduced his chances of finding the right place. Strictly speaking, his mission brief didn’t entail looking after the Confederation Council, but he thought he could kill two birds with one stone by sticking close to the officials. His plan didn’t work.
BK> You’re not going to believe this. The SC Overland’s battle network has just this moment received a notice from the VIP shuttle. The Council members are ready to depart Xur’kd.
JN> That can’t be right. It’s only been thirty minutes.
Even as he sent the words across the neural link, Joe Nation knew with a terrible certainty that the brevity of the visit wasn’t good news.
BK> Nope, it’s definitely them.
JN> Is Lieutenant Miller onboard?
BK> I can’t reach his suit comms.
JN> He’s got to be on the shuttle. He could have taken off his visor.
BK> Maybe. Let’s wait and see.
Nation found himself in a compact, empty room with three exits and he hunkered down to hear the outcome. A few minutes went by and he became progressively more agitated.
JN> Well?
BK> One second…I’m getting something on the comms….shit.
JN> What?
BK> This wasn’t a negotiation at all. This entire trip out here was so the Trivar could dictate the terms of our surrender.
Nation pressed his back to the cold wall and dropped to his haunches.
JN> Bastards. What are the terms?
BK> Not quite what the Psi Team predicted, but not far off. We are to provide them with eighty billion tonnes of Istoliar and further tributes to be decided.
JN> Extortion. What a surprise.
BK> There’s more incoming. The SC Overland is to be permitted to return to Vinxe, while the rest of the escort will be….
The neural link ended abruptly.
JN> Hello?
Keller didn’t respond and Joe Nation found himself alone, stranded on an alien capital ship and wondering what the hell he was going to do.
Chapter Five
The Overland’s escort was spread widely around the Trivar ship Xur’kd, to minimise the effectiveness of enemy incendiaries. Even so, it was thirty versus more than three hundred, and everyone in high command was aware of the likely outcome if it came to hostilities.
Keller watched the VIP shuttle on the SC Gundar’s sensors. The transport backed slowly through the docking hatch, while messages continued to pour across the battle network. The warship AIs were concerned and they wanted to do something – anything – other than wait to see what the Confederation Council would say.
Then, the message came.
The Trivar require our surrender. Terms are – eighty billion tonnes of Istoliar, plus future resources yet to be decided.
The escort fleet required immediate guidance, but it didn’t come soon enough. The second message sent a chill through Keller’s bones.
The SC Overland is permitted to leave. The escort ships will be destroyed as an example of Trivar technological superiority.
“Like hell they will,” said Keller.
In the face of such a threat and given the disparity in numbers, the usual course of action would be for each Space Corps warship to enter lightspeed in order to minimise the risk of destruction. The presence of the Confederation Council members meant that lightspeed wasn’t an option – the defence of the SC Overland was the primary objective. The Trivar’s promises of safe passage for the Overland seemed like so much hot air in the circumstances and Keller wasn’t ready to believe them.
Time was too short for Keller to ask the Gundar’s AI for permission to take over. She felt a pang of guilt as she swept Teal aside in order that she could control the Retaliator’s weaponry. As soon as her Faor augmentation was interfaced, Keller activated the Gundar’s stealth modules and entered a short-range lightspeed transit to bring the ship within a hundred kilometres of Xur’kd.
Elsewhere, the other escort ships began their own manoeuvres. Their Istoliar clusters were far slower than Keller’s Faor and it felt like it took forever for them to activate their stealth modules.
The VIP shuttle was too close for Keller to risk deploying incendiaries. The SC Overland had an immense shield and it didn’t matter too much if it was caught in a few blasts, but the shuttle would be wiped out in an instant. Keller held the incendiaries and chose a more precise method of attack.
Keller (Gundar):: Targeting Xur’kd with overcharge repeater. Hold incendiaries until the VIP shuttle is docked with the Overland.
AI Hazer (Skyshadow):: I gotcha.
AI Ernst (Predator):: Warming up for the kill.
Keller chose an area towards the front of the Trivar ship, far from the place she expected Nation or Lieutenant Miller to be located. Less than one hundredth of a second after Keller received the comms message telling her the escort craft were to be destroyed, she fired the Gundar’s overcharge repeater at the largest Trivar spaceship. The weapon whined and thumped, sending a noticeable shockwave through the Retaliator’s hull. Keller waited to see the result of her attack and it wasn’t what she expected. Rather than superheating a huge section of the enemy hull, the overcharge did exactly nothing.
AI Rumble (Barbarian):: Transiting to the far side and back again. Gotta keep ‘em guessing.
At exactly the same moment as the overcharge fired, the Gundar’s sensors registered a surge in power from the underside of Xur’kd. Keller recognized that something destructive was about to happen and she activated a second SRT, which carried the SC Gundar half a million kilometres away.
The Trivar weapon fired. It gave no visible effect – no explosion rocked the Gundar and no disintegration beam struck its energy shield. This weapon worked differently.
Oh crap.
A pulse of invisible energy burst outwards from the Xur’kd. It expanded in a wave which travelled at a fraction below the speed of light until it achieved a radius of half a million kilometres. Twenty-eight of the escort warships, including the Gundar, the VIP shuttle and the Overland, were caught.
Immediately, the Gundar’s Istoliar cores were flushed. The cores were programmed with a thousand different intrusion countermeasures, but the best efforts of the Space Corps were swept aside in a fraction of a second. Keller was caught unawares and she watched as every trace of Teal was erased from the warship’s processing cluster. She remained interfaced and, as far as her snap diagnostic test showed, there was no other damage.
AI Hazer (Skyshadow):: Err#
AI Ernst (Predator):: ##
In the blinking of an eye, each of the twenty-eight spaceships caught in the energy wave had their AI controllers wiped clean. With nothing to pilot them and with no humans to take over, the vessels began drifting along their previous trajectories. Keller was expecting the Trivar to shoot the helpless spaceships to pieces. Instead, they let them drift.
Not much point in having stealth modules when you’re facing something like that.
With 350 enemy ships scanning local space, the stealth modules wouldn’t hold up for long anyway and Keller was sure the Trivar already knew exactly where the Gundar was positioned.
AI Dane (Heathen):: Launching Lambda sublights at the enemy. That energy wave missed me by a whisker.
The Heathen didn’t fire at Xur’kd. Instead, it launched its missiles at one of the smaller Trivar ships. The travel time was somewhat less than a second and a dozen high-yield warheads smashed into the alien ship, engulfing it in white flame. Keller focused the Gundar’s sensors on the centre of the blast and found something she didn’t want to know. The Trivar ship had no energy shield, but it was also undamaged by the explosions. The conclusion wasn’t positive – the aliens had a new kind of defence and one to which Keller had no immediate answer.
The VIP shuttle had a human pilot and it travelled at top speed towards the SC Overland. The Overland had dropped off the battle network, suggesting it was caught in the AI flush. Fortunately, it was stationary at the moment of the attack and the shuttle closed in on the docking bay. Keller accessed the Overland’s flight log and found out it had a backup human crew able to take control of the spaceship. That was assuming the Trivar didn’t shoot it down.
AI Rumble (Barbarian):: Deploying incendiaries.
The tactical screen showed the position of the SC Barbarian and Keller trusted its AI wouldn’t dump a load of high-explosives close to the VIP shuttle. The transport would be within the Overland’s shields shortly and as soon as it got there, Keller planned a big surprise for the Trivar.
Another power build-up from Xur’kd’s hull gave Keller just enough warning it was about to activate the overload weapon again. She ignored it and fired the Gundar’s repeater again and again. Every time the particle beam struck the enemy, Keller detected a reading that indicated the Trivar were shifting the entire ship out of phase, to make it immune to her attacks.
The enemy discharged the overload weapon and two of the remaining Space Corps warships were caught. The result was the same and they drifted away, uncontrolled.
What do they even need the rest of their fleet for? thought Keller angrily.
The SC Barbarian’s incendiaries exploded in a massive burst, which encompassed a third of the clustered Trivar fleet, whilst managing to completely miss the VIP shuttle. The Gundar’s sensors were capable enough to pierce the heat and light, allowing Keller to run a quick scan over several of the Trivar ships caught in the blast.
Out of phase. Damnit.
At that moment, the Trivar decided to unveil their second weapon. The Gundar’s sensors didn’t pick up the point of origin and the first she learned of it was a warning from one of the last escort ships.
AI Dane (Heathen):: Got a fault in my Istoliar core. Instability introduced. Criticality in 0.0012 seconds.
What the…?
The Heathen exploded in a vast expulsion of cold energy, which created a sphere half a million kilometres across. The Istoliar blast roiled across many of the Trivar ships, including those already caught in the SC Barbarian’s incendiary flames. The explosion touched the flank of Xur’kd and receded as quickly as it came, leaving the enemy spaceships completely unharmed.
Keller frantically checked for the VIP shuttle. The explosion hadn’t damaged the craft and it flew on towards the comparative safety offered by the SC Overland’s energy shield.
AI Rumble (Barbarian):: Same fault in my core. Attempting shut down. Shut down failed. Core critical. Bang.
The Barbarian went the same way as the Heathen. This spaceship was much closer to the VIP shuttle and the Gundar. The Istoliar blast thundered into the Gundar and the Overland’s shields, just as the shuttle reached safety. Keller watched impassively as the gauge on the Gundar’s energy shield dropped a few percent and then stabilised. Humanity hadn’t yet detonated an Istoliar bomb, but the projections were frightening. Whatever the Trivar were doing to the Istoliar on the escort ships, it was only producing a crude explosion.
But too damned effective…
The loss of the Barbarian left the Gundar alone with the Overland. To Keller’s astonishment, the Trivar showed no inclination to attack the Council members and she assumed the aliens wanted to be sure their demands would get back to base.
With only the Gundar left, an attack was inevitable and Keller waited. The delay wasn’t a long one. Whatever fired the core instability weapon, the sensors missed it again. However, Keller didn’t miss the effect. A chain reaction began on the Gundar’s Istoliar core and it swept outwards from the centre.
No you don’t.
Keller wasn’t quite sure how she managed it. She knew a lot about Istoliar and how it was turned into a stable form. The Trivar weapon simply nudged the atoms into a state of instability, which resulted in a chain reaction. Keller’s Faor was a tier up from Istoliar in speed and ability and she was able to correct the instability before the warship’s core exploded. The Trivar used the weapon again and once more, Keller put a block on the effect.
What do you think of that?
The VIP shuttle entered the open bay of the SC Overland at a velocity which breached at least a thousand health and safety guidelines. Once inside, the shuttle was sustained by the larger craft’s life support modules, so there was no requirement for the bay doors to close again. The Overland went to lightspeed and vanished from the Gundar’s tactical display.
