Cradle of War (A Captain's Crucible Book 3) (20 page)

T
he three ships finally reached Anvil Prime, the planet the inner Slipstream orbited. The Gate to Delta Avalon was indeed already in place.

Apparently some surviving repair drones had fixed one of Anvil Prime’s surface-based defensive lasers days ago, and that weapon had forced the Raakarr comm node equivalents to flee through the wormhole. It was likely some of those comm nodes would be waiting on the other side. Galileo had instructed the AI operating the weapon not to fire on the
Talon
.

Jonathan tapped in Captain Rodriguez.

“Did any Dragonflies return to the surface of Anvil Prime yet to search for survivors?” he asked.

“Two of them, as requested,” Rodriguez sent. “They’ve been conducting reconnaissance with HS4s.” Those were unarmed, fist-sized airborne scout units. “It’s a war zone down there. Almost everything has been reduced to rubble, with very few buildings left intact. One of them, a warehouse, seems to have served as a makeshift hospital. Inside, the HS4s discovered the bodies of residents who had refused evacuation. Dead from radiation poisoning.”

Jonathan shook his head sadly.

“There are several surviving robots, though,” Rodriguez continued. “Some with advanced AIs, like Centurions.”

“Load as many as we can carry onto the Dragonflies,” Jonathan told the captain. “And have them return to the corvettes. The rest will have to fend for themselves until a proper rescue party can be arranged. I don’t want to delay here too long.”

“I understand,” Rodriguez said.

While Jonathan knew sentient AIs weren’t all that different from human minds, in his heart he couldn’t make himself believe they were little more than machines, and he didn’t want to tarry for them, not with so much at stake. Besides, the remaining robots could survive much better than any abandoned humans ever could, so he didn’t feel too much guilt.

T
HE THREE SHIPS departed Anvil Prime and made the journey to the Slipstream that orbited the planet. Once there Jonathan had the corvettes supply propellant to the shuttles, as the Dragonflies had nearly exhausted their supply of inert gases while ferrying the Gate back and forth, especially the two that had flown to the surface of the terraformed planet. All four Dragonflies would stay behind of course; their instructions were to hide the Gate again after the three ships passed through.

The Raakarr sent an exploratory probe through the Gate first; Jonathan noted that the alien craft was able to pass through the Slipstream even with the Gate in place. He hadn’t actually been sure whether the Raakar had been destroying the Gates because they had to, or merely because they wanted to.

But now I know.

An interesting tidbit, though he wasn’t sure how useful the knowledge would prove in days to come.

Jonathan elected not to dispatch any human telemetry drones through the Gate, in case the enemy was watching on the other side. While that meant he would have to trust what Valor reported, he preferred that to signaling the arrival of United System vessels.

Jonathan stood on the alien bridge. While he could have communicated with Barrick from the berthing area instead, the invitation from Valor to join the senior officers on the bridge was still standing, so Jonathan took him up on that offer. Mostly he did it for a change of scenery, that and he hoped Barrick would be more truthful with Jonathan standing there beside him, ready to look the telepath in the eye.

Jonathan doubted he would have allowed an alien to join him on his own bridge, but he knew nothing Valor did was without reason. Likely the Zarafe alien planned to use that to his advantage during any negotiations with the United Systems. Jonathan could almost imagine the exchange: “Yes, I have kept the captain confined aboard, but I have treated him well. I have even let him reside on the bridge with me. Ask him yourself!”

The alien probe returned a few minutes later and Barrick spoke over Jonathan’s helmet comm. “Otter says there is no sign of any Gate near either wormhole. They’ve likely been hidden. And as expected, there were two Raakarr comm node equivalents camped out near the closer endpoint. The probe eliminated them with an EMP.”

“What about ships?” Jonathan asked. “That’s what I care about.”

“The Zarafe have detected human vessels near the inner planets, on the far side of the star. They appear to be guarding the Slipstream to the next system.”

Jonathan pulled up the system on his aReal. Unlike Anvil Rappel, currently in possession of the Asiatic Alliance, Delta Avalon was entirely owned by the United Systems. A yellow giant eight times more massive than the Earth’s sun, and twenty thousand times more luminous, Delta Avalon was a classical cepheid, which meant its brightness, temperature and diameter changed over a regular period. During its thirty-five day pulsation cycle, the radius of Delta Avalon expanded and then contracted by millions of kilometers. That feature might prove useful in the coming battle.

There were five inner, uninhabitable terrestrial planets, and three gas giants beyond them. A colony and military base had been built on the nineteenth moon of the first gas giant, which had been terraformed to support life. The moon, Tau Delta Avalon VI, orbited its parent in such a manner that the gas giant never eclipsed the star; because of that, a grid of special satellites had been installed in orbit above the moon to protect against the varying radiation, as the magnetosphere by itself wasn’t powerful enough to protect the inhabitants from the emissions of both the sun and the giant.

“Can he tell what kind of vessels?” Jonathan asked.

“Three heat signatures that are consistent with the corvettes accompanying us,” Barrick replied. “They’ve also spotted two larger heat signatures, virtually identical to one another, but they’re unfamiliar with the vessel types.”

Jonathan nodded. “Those are probably destroyers.” After some further back and forth with Barrick, the telepath refined the coordinate system he had worked out with the aliens, and Jonathan plotted the location of the ships onto the Delta Avalon representation provided by his aReal.

“Is that all of them?” Jonathan asked. “There should be more ships.”

“Otter tells me they’ve identified other vessels drifting in the void, obviously disabled,” Barrick said. “Three of them appear to be corvettes, their hulls gashed in several places, with sections broken off. There is a fourth, though it’s unrecognizable: mostly because it has been cut in half. They reside halfway between the first gas giant and the second.”

Jonathan sighed. “That’s about right.” He had Barrick identify the precise position, then added in the debris to his system map. “So what about the base on Tau Delta Avalon VI? Is it intact?”

“There are no signs of life on any of the planets or moons,” Barrick replied.

Another lost colony, then. Hopefully the residents had evacuated in time. He was thankful that none of the colony worlds on the frontier had populations greater than one million, as anything more than that proved a logistical nightmare, evacuation-wise.

“What about the Raakarr themselves?” Jonathan said. “Any presence in the system?”

“Yes,” Barrick said. “There is debris, consistent with two Raakarr ships, also residing in the gap between the two gas giants.”

“Well at least we know where the first engagement took place,” Jonathan said. “But... so there’s no sign of the actual Raakarr fleet?”

“You didn’t let me finish,” Barrick replied. “The Raakarr fleet is in orbit on the closer side of the star, about the same distance away from the sun as the human fleet.”

“So the Raakarr are closer to us, or rather to the Slipstream endpoint where we’ll emerge in Delta Avalon, than the human fleet?” Jonathan asked.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Barrick answered.

He had Barrick give him the coordinates, and he recorded the location of the Raakarr ships and debris on his Delta Avalon map.

“Do we know the composition of the Raakarr fleet?” Jonathan inquired.

“Otter says it appears they have seven surviving ships,” Barrick replied. “The pyramid ship is there—two of its four stilt cannons remain damaged from our previous engagement.”

“Stilt cannons?” Jonathan said.

“Sorry. That’s what I call the particle cannons mounted on the stilt-like structures underneath the vessel.”

“What are the classes of the other ships?” Jonathan asked.

“There is another laser ship,” the telepath answered. “And the remaining five belong to the dart class of alien vessels.”

Jonathan marked the composition of the enemy task group on his aReal, then turned to Barrick: “So, no capital ships?”

“No.”

“Then we won’t have to face any fighters,” Jonathan said, adding a note to his aReal. “Unless the pyramid ship can launch them?”

“It can,” Barrick said.

“Damn.” Jonathan amended his note.
Pyramid ship: fighter capable.

“Why are both sides just sitting there?” Rodriguez asked over the comm.

“Licking their wounds, likely,” Jonathan commented. “Initiating repairs, preparing for the next inevitable engagement.” He stared at the ship positions for a moment. “Barrick, I tried to ask Valor this once before, but he refused to answer. So I ask again: does he know what their mission is? Are these Raakarr merely part of some advance party, meant to probe our defenses? Or are they here for some other reason?”

“I’ll ask him,” Barrick responded. After a moment: “Valor has decided to answer. He says their mission was to see how deeply they could penetrate into human space. None of them planned to return. Unless of course they managed to secure a planet killer.”

Jonathan felt his features scrunch up. “What are you saying, they’re here on a suicide mission?”

“Basically. What they didn’t expect was the involvement of the Elder, throwing us all into a different galaxy, nor that you, Captain Dallas, would prove quite so resourceful a foe. When they returned to Vega 951 with only six of their original number, they obviously decided to go ahead with their original mission to penetrate into human space because, according to Valor, the punishment for failure is a fate far worse than death.”

“What kind of punishment are we talking about?” Jonathan asked.

“Valor says you wouldn’t want to know.”

Jonathan shrugged. “So they’ll only return if they get their hands on a planet killer.” He remembered how hard the Raakarr had fought to secure the bomb in their initial engagement.

“No doubt as a deterrent against the Zarafe faction,” Barrick said.

Jonathan nodded. “And a deterrent against humanity, too, now. Because what they’re doing here isn’t buying them any friends.” Jonathan exhaled sadly. “The arms race. Not even alien beings are immune from its long, cold grip. The optimists among us thought the competition for weapons would end when we developed interstellar travel. With all the planets and resources available to us, they believed there would never be a reason for war. Well I’m sad to say, the optimists were wrong. As long as there are species in this great galaxy of ours, we will always be racing to find new and clever ways of destroying each other. Even if the sole purpose of the weapons we come up with is deterrence.”

“I did say they wanted the planet killers as a deterrent, didn’t I?” Barrick seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “But there is a real possibility that they actually intend to use them.”

“Like the Zarafe faction intend to do with any planet killers the United Systems gives them?” Jonathan asked.

“Yes.”

Jonathan would have tapped his lips if he were able. “You know, this whole thing—the attacks on human space, the two Raakarr factions, and the offer of help from one of those factions—it feels almost staged. Because the Zarafe will certainly get their planet killers after this, in some form anyway: humanity will definitely want to punish the Elk for what they’ve done. And it makes me wonder, how do we know these aliens aren’t actually all Zarafe in disguise, pretending to be Elk, putting on a grand show so we’ll give them what they want?”

“I don’t know what to say, Captain,” Barrick replied.

Jonathan muted the telepath and spoke over a private line. “What about you, Captains Rail and Rodriguez? You’ve been listening in.” Courtesy of Dragonfly 1. “Any thoughts?”

“If it is a ruse, it’s a damn good one,” Rail replied a moment later. “Especially considering how hard the Raakarr seemed to fight back there. I’m going to have to disagree.”