Burnt Worlds (44 page)

“—
Achilles
to second destroyer squadron:
 
concentrate all fire on—”

“—
Spruance
to
Corner Brook
, we’ve lost all power—”

“—our guns are barely scratching these things—”

“—the
Banting
has left the system.
 
All science vessels now accounted for—”

Dillon gestured to the Chief.
 
The volume was turned down, and the voices faded into the background.

“Fulcrum,” said Amba behind him.
 

He nodded.
 
“So, we’re at the worst-case scenario.
 
The jump gate is already open, and the cylinders are going through.
 
Chief, light times please?”

“Aye, sir,” she replied.
 
“We are four light minutes from the second planet, and nine minutes from the anomaly, sir.”

“Okay,” he said.
 
“So what we’re hearing is nine minutes old.
 
On the up side, the defences on the home planet won’t see us for another four minutes or so.
 
How many cylinders are headed toward the jump gate?”

“Four hundred underway, sir.
 
They’re moving nice and orderly.
 
A new one leaves its parking spot and starts to move every few seconds.
 
About fifty look like they are trying to get underway but are having trouble.
 
Some haven’t moved at all.”
 
Chief Black looked up from her console, her face tense as she looked at Dillon.
 
“Sir, there’s no way—”

“I know,” he interrupted. “If all two thousand cylinder ships go through there, they’d lay waste to everything.
 
It sounds like it’s just some destroyer squadrons holding them off, but even the home fleets couldn’t…” he looked at the display.
 
“What about the other ships parked around the planet?
 
The big ones?”

“Aye sir,” nodded Black.
 
“Only the cylinders are moving.
 
There are… nine hundred and seventy-four larger ships.
 
Different designs but similar to the cylinders, and they’re all just sitting there, orbiting the planet.”

Dillon glanced at Amba, then back at the display.
 
“That’s their real battlefleet, I bet.
 
The cylinders are just automated defences.
 
Status of the planet?”

“Dead, sir.
 
Plague was here.”

“Good god,” breathed Dillon.
 
“All that massive fleet, and no one left to crew it.
 
Only the automated cylinders are left to answer the call.”

“The call?” asked Amba.

Dillon nodded.
 
“Yeah.
 
Call to arms.
 
Old expression.”

“Is someone actually calling?” she asked.

The Captain turned his head to look at her a moment.
 
“Yeah,” he said pensively.
 
“That’s a good question.”
 
He turned his chair toward the Chief.
 
“Any signals from the homeworld?”

The Chief nodded.
 
“Aye, sir.
 
A constant, digital signal from the homeworld.
 
It’s very fast.”

“Okay,” said Dillon.
 
He watched the display for a few moments, then slowly put the end of his pen into his mouth.
 
He leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes, listening to the faint, clipped broadcasts from human ships on the other side of the jump gate.
 
“Damn it,” he said.
 
“We can’t stop the cylinders.
 
Our entire fleet can’t stop them.”
 
He breathed in, speaking as he exhaled.
 
“We have to get them to stop themselves.”
 
He looked up at Chief Black.
 
“Do me a favour, Chief?
 
Find something on their homeworld that looks like a headquarters, or a command centre, or something.”

Chief Black gestured to the sensors technician, while she stepped over to the Captain.
 
“Sir,” she said, through clenched teeth.
 
“You’re not going down there—”

Dillon turned to her, nodding once.
 
“I am.”

“For fuck’s sake Dillon…” she muttered, “…we’ve had this—”

He shook his head.
 
“Not now, Chief.
 
Not this one.
 
I’m going.
 
Ask Atwell to come up here and take the bridge.
 
I want Sap and Cho, plus Lee and a full armed squad, to get suited up and ready to go on the double.
 
Also, I need someone to go to my cabin and get my armour.”

“I will get it,” said Amba, walking quickly from the bridge.
 
Dillon watched her go, then turned back to the Chief.
 
She was frowning at him, her brow deeply furrowed.
 
“We’ll have to get close,” she said.

“Yeah.
 
Let’s go in nice and fast, drop the shuttle near their HQ as we go by, then
Borealis
keeps itself inconspicuous until we’re ready for a pickup.
 
Or whatever.”

“Dillon, this is the homeworld of a civilisation more advanced than ours.”

“And they’re all dead, Chief.
 
I’m betting only some automated defences are working.
 
And even those haven’t been maintained in seven hundred years.
 
I mean, once it’s out of warranty—”

“This isn’t funny, Dillon.”

He paused, his pen held between his teeth.
 
He sighed.
 
“No, I guess not, but if I don’t laugh at it I’ll probably lose my mind.”

As the Tassali returned to the bridge with his armour, he grabbed one of the red-striped pieces of grey composite.
 
“Thanks,” he said, then looked up at the sensors tech.
 
“Sensors?
 
Can you tell me where their HQ is?”

“Aye sir, I think so.”
 

Part of the window display changed to show a view of the second planet.
 
Massive space stations, a hundred kilometres long, sat empty.
 
Huge ships hung silently in space, in neat formations, slowly orbiting.
 
A few had floated away from where they'd been parked, smashing into other ships or beginning a slow tumble into the planet’s atmosphere.
 
Clouds of wreckage and small debris fanned out from some of the wrecked ships.

On the planet itself, the display had highlighted an enormous complex in the southern hemisphere.
 
It stood at the centre of a vast circular city, with spokes of highways and infrastructure radiating outward across the continent.
 
“It’s that place, sir,” said the sensors tech.
 
“Transmissions are coming from there.”

Dillon tugged at the closures on his leg armour.
 
“Okay,” he said, “well done.
 
We’ll land there, and see if we can find the ‘off’ switch for these things.
 
Helm?”

Pakinova looked up from her console.
 
“Aye, sir?”

“Helm, your job is to get us as close as we can to that building, so we can drop the shuttle as we go by.”

“Sir, there’s a lot of debris floating around.
 
How about we coast in, engines off, and try to look like debris?”

Dillon nodded.
 
“Sure, I’m sold.
 
Do that.
 
But be ready to evade.
 
They might have some defences ready to shoot, or we might attract the attention of a cylinder or two.
 
And we don’t want to land the
Borealis
.
 
Just zip by and we’ll drop out as we pass.”

“Aye aye, sir.
 
Got it.”

“Whenever you’re ready, Helm.”

As the ship began to accelerate toward the distant second planet, Atwell arrived on the bridge followed by Sap, Lee and Cho.
 
They were grim-faced and tense, and watched the Captain as he finished putting on his armour.
 
Lee checked the seams for fit and seal, while the rest of them looked out the windows at the slowly-approaching planet and its massive orbiting structures.

Dillon looked at Amba, who was still wearing her form-fitting white exposure suit, with flowing blue and white robes on top.
 
She held her mask in one hand, and was looking back at him.

“You need an armour suit?” he asked.

“No, Captain.
 
We do not normally wear armour.
 
We prefer freedom of movement.”

“Fair enough.”

“I notice,” she said with a hint of a grin, “you have neither asked if I was coming along, nor tried to dissuade me.”

He shrugged.
 
“I didn’t think it would work.”

“It wouldn’t.”

With a slight tremble, the ship’s engines powered down.
 
The
Borealis
continued hurtling toward the second planet, rapidly approaching the outer edge of the orbiting ships and stations.

Cho pointed at a huge structure that was filling the left side of their view.
 
His voice sounded tense.
 
“What’s that?
 
A shipyard?”

“I think so,” said Atwell.
 
“I think I can see the outlines of some cylinders under construction.”

The Chief was back at her console.
 
“It’s sixty-two kilometres long,” she said quietly.
 
“None of our races have ever built anything that big.”

“Sir!” said the communications tech.

“Go ahead,” said Dillon.

“Sir, it sounds like reinforcements have started to arrive.
 
The
Ontario
,
Regina
,
Yellowknife
,
Charlottetown
and
Calgary
are all reporting in.
 
There’s chatter about American, British, Anzac, Indian and Dosh fleets being en route.”

“Thank you.
 
Keep us informed.”

“Captain,” said Saparun.
 
“We should tell our fleets that we are here, and what we intend to do.”

“Agreed,” said Dillon.
 
“Good idea, we should have done that when we arrived in system.
 
Chief?”

“I’ll drop an encrypted message buoy, sir, set it to broadcast in a minute so we’re not here when it does.”

“Perfect.
 
Thank you.”

They all fell silent for a while, watching the massive shipyard complex float by.
 
Inside, they could see the outlines of individual bays, most of them filled with the thin, needle-like cores of unfinished cylinder ships.
 
All was in darkness among the framework and cranes, lit only by the occasional glaring shaft of sunlight spilling through the far end of the structure.

As they approached the end of the complex, they could see beyond it the rows of warships, silently orbiting.
 
Each ship was kilometres long, with smoothly rounded cylindrical features and the same oily black surfaces.
 
Dozens of them lined in uneven rows, while several floated out of position, rotating awkwardly or slowly tumbling end over end.

“Sir,” said the sensors tech.
 
“We’ve been scanned by a satellite.
 
An orbiting station is now tracking us.”

“Shit.
 
Okay, thank you.
 
Helm?”

“Ready to drive and twitch, sir.”

“Carry on.”

Ahead of them, they saw the planet looming larger and larger in their view, beyond the rows of silent warships.
 
White clouds swirled over blue oceans and grey-brown continents.
 
Even from this distance, the locations of great cities could be seen: concentric rings of black surrounding a central point, with spoke-like lines connecting to other cities.
 
The right side of the planet, away from the sun, was in darkness; only a few scattered lights flickered in the planet’s night.

“Sir, two stations on the planet are now tracking us.
 
But they appear to be tracking other orbital debris as well.”

“Okay, thank you.
 
We’re going to skip through their atmosphere, right Helm?”

“Aye sir,” replied Pakinova.

“Good.
 
Hopefully they’ll figure that we’re not on a collision course, and whatever's still working will ignore us.”

“Hopefully,” said Black.

Dillon watched out the windows for a few moments, then took the pen from his mouth and dropped it into the cup-holder on the arm of the Captain’s chair.

“Okay, everyone,” he said, turning to face them.
 
“It’s time to go.
 
Get to the hangar bay and armour up.
 
I’ll be right behind you.”

“Aye sir,” said Cho, leading the others from the bridge.
 

Dillon looked at Atwell, who was looking at him.
 
“Good luck sir,” she said quietly.

“You too, Lieutenant.
 
You know what to do.”

“Aye, sir.
 
Stay alive, pick you up, and get home.”

“The second part is optional.
 
Getting everyone home is more important.”

“Optional to you, skipper.
 
Not to me.”

He smiled and nodded.
 
“Thanks, Atwell.”

The Captain turned to leave, and met the Chief at the bridge hatch.

“You know,” she said calmly, “I think this is a dumb idea.”

“Yeah,” he replied.
 
“I know.”

“It’s also the only idea we’ve got,” she said, then hesitated.
 
Her reddening eyes looked into his.
 
“For fuck’s sake,” she said.