“Remotely operating a warship isn’t anything like as efficient as it having a full crew,” said Matlock. “Plus, whoever was controlling it, would be less effective at their own station.”

  “I know,” said Lanson.

  Nevertheless, he believed there was an opportunity here, even if he couldn’t yet see what it was. Of course, the Vachal might have been configured to accept a specific set of command codes, accessible to Cornerstone personnel only, or this entire remote linking function could be experimental and might not even work.

  “Instruct the destroyer to extend its boarding ramps,” said Lanson.

  “Instruction sent,” said Turner. “The boarding ramps are now extending.”

  “We can’t leave the New Beginning, Captain,” said Matlock. “What if the Sagh’eld discover this bay as we’re crossing the floor, or what if Sergeant Gabriel returns while we’re on the other spaceship?”

  “I accept what you’re saying, Commander,” said Lanson, returning to his seat. “It just feels as if we need something more – that even if Sergeant Gabriel brings the Galos here, we’ve still lost, because the Ex’Kaminar is far more of an opponent than we can handle.”

  Lanson was certain that if something didn’t change, then the Sagh’eld would come out on top. There was a chance they would fail to recover the Galos module, but then it would be lost to humanity as well, and the Human Confederation was far more desperate for new tech than the enemy.

  A couple of minutes went by. The Rodos drive output continued to climb, but the weapons systems didn’t become available. RH Rose had mentioned the New Beginning had been subjected to additional modifications beyond the Galos propulsion module, but until the weapons systems came online, Commander Matlock had no way to find out what they were.

  Gloomily, Lanson thought that if the New Beginning’s weapons were a step change better than anything else in the fleet, the shipyards would already be fitting the new technology to existing warships. Since that wasn’t happening, it was certain the cruiser’s weaponry wasn’t ready for the frontline yet. And if it wasn’t ready for the frontline, it definitely wasn’t going to spring any surprises on an Ex’Kaminar battleship.

  As he pondered the situation, Lanson rolled his shoulders to ease some of the tension in his muscles, keeping his eyes on the external feeds. Without warning, flames erupted through the gaps in the makeshift barrier of shuttles and ground vehicles which separated this bay from the one adjacent.

  “Shit!” said Lanson. “The Sagh’eld are trying to enter the bay.”

  Several additional missiles detonated in rapid succession. The blasts were relatively small, which meant they were warheads launched from a combat shuttle, rather than a Sagh’eld warship.

  “They haven’t broken through yet,” said Abrams. “Those lifters can’t shoot back, but they’re plenty tough.”

  “Not tough enough,” said Lanson, as the Sagh’eld shuttle fired again and again into the far side of the barrier.

  Plasma flame wrapped the lifter shuttles and the ground vehicles, reducing them to mere dark shapes in the glare. For a few moments, Lanson wondered if the combat shuttle would run out of ammunition before it broke through. Not that it mattered much – once the Ex’Kaminar crew became interested, they’d soon locate the surface door and then blow it open.

  The propulsion failed on one of the lifter shuttles and the vessel dropped the short distance onto a gravity crawler directly beneath, before sliding onto the bay floor. A second lifter shuttle fell a few seconds later, landing on another shuttle and creating a gap in the barrier several metres high.

  For a short time, the bombardment continued, wrecking a third lifter shuttle. Then, the combat shuttle struck the far side of the barrier, knocking one of the broken lifter shuttles onto the bay floor. A second impact followed and then a third. On the fourth impact, the Sagh’eld combat shuttle finally smashed through and emerged fully into the bay, its hull scoured by fire of its own making.

  “Our weapons systems have just come online, Captain,” said Matlock.

  Lanson’s eyes lingered on the enemy vessel for a short time. The combat shuttle measured about eighty metres from one end to the other, and its midsection was bulkier than its nose and tail, from where the Sagh’eld had packed in some additional engines. Both side launchers were visible to the New Beginning’s sensors, and they were no longer firing.

  “If we blow it up, we lose. If we don’t blow it up, we also lose,” said Lanson. “The enemy can’t fail to have noticed that our engines are online, and we all saw what happened to the Gallivant in the same circumstances.”

  A shockwave just passed through the bay doors overhead, Captain,” said Lieutenant Perry. “The energy wave was consistent with that of a missile strike.”

  Just when Lanson thought the situation couldn’t get any worse, Lieutenant Turner proved him completely and utterly wrong.

  “Oh crap,” she said. “Captain, I—”

  The disbelief in her voice was enough to make Lanson twist around in his seat. “What is it, Lieutenant?”

  “Captain, I’ve been attempting to circumvent the comms systems block on the Vachal, to see if it’ll allow a remote injection of your command codes. One of the query results turned up the warship’s name.”

  As soon as he heard the words, Lanson felt his heart sink. He closed his eyes. “Tell me.”

  “The Vachal is called New Beginning as well, sir.”

  “What the hell?” said Abrams.

  Lanson pieced things together. Although RH Rose had referred to a Void class warship, she hadn’t stated which of the two spaceships in the bay that might be, only that it was unique in the Human Confederation fleet. Remembering the pride in her voice, it suddenly seemed all too clear that Rose had been talking about not just her work on the Galos module, but her work on the Vachal destroyer as well.

  “The Cornerstone techs must have copied the control systems from this cruiser onto the Sagh’eld destroyer,” said Lanson. “And in the process, they transferred the warship’s name.”

  “Which would explain why there’s hardly anything different about this old gen Blade class,” said Abrams. “All of the modifications were made to the Vachal. I can’t believe it.”

  “We thought we’d done well to make it here, but we’re sitting on the wrong damn warship,” said Matlock.

  Fury rose within Lanson. “And now it’s too late to change.” He snarled. “Commander Matlock, destroy that damned enemy shuttle.”

  “With pleasure, Captain.”

  Matlock targeted and fired a single Fury missile. The range was short and the detonation came almost immediately. One Fury was enough to enact the destruction of the Sagh’eld combat shuttle, and its burning hull crashed to the ground.

  “The overhead bay doors have sustained additional missile strikes, Captain,” said Turner. “It won’t be long until the Ex’Kaminar breaks through.”

  “Well folks, we’ve come to the end of the road,” said Lanson. His crew didn’t need him to sugar coat the truth. “We don’t have nearly enough time to exit this New Beginning and make it over to that other New Beginning. We’re left with no choice other than to engage the Ex’Kaminar, so let’s find out for ourselves what happens when an old gen light cruiser takes on a Sagh’eld battleship.”

  “Our propulsion is almost at one hundred percent of its expected output,” said Abrams. “So at least the New Beginning will fly.”

  “And we have weapons,” added Matlock. “The way I see it, this fight is ours to lose.”

  Lanson couldn’t bring himself to smile. He reached out and rested his hands on the horizontal twin control bars. On the topside feeds, he could see the overhead bay doors bulging inwards, and they were glowing red from the heat.

  With steady hands, Lanson brought the New Beginning up from the bay floor. Unfortunately, the shaft leading to the overhead doors wasn’t wide enough to accommodate the cruiser unless it was nose or stern first. Choosing the former, Lanson manoeuvred the New Beginning so that it was in a position to erupt from the shaft as soon as the bay doors ruptured.

  A couple of high yield Gorlan missiles were enough to finish the job, and the bay doors split along the middle. At the same time, a huge slab of one door tore free, and began its descent straight down towards the New Beginning, while a rain of smaller debris fell with it.

  Readying himself for an engagement he had no chance of winning, Lanson requested maximum power from the cruiser’s Rodos drive and pushed the control bars all the way to the end of their guide slots.

  The New Beginning didn’t get very far. In front of Lanson’s eyes, the Rodos drive output gauge plummeted and the weapons systems went offline. Hardly had its ascend begun, than the warship began falling.

  A deep faraway thud indicated the door slab had struck the New Beginning’s hull, but that was the least of Lanson’s worries. The Ex’Kaminar had fired a scrambler, shutting the cruiser down. Soon, the battleship would launch yet more of its missiles, only this time it wouldn’t be targeting the bay doors.

  “Our life support should stay online long enough to keep us alive when we impact with the bay floor, Captain,” said Abrams.

  “We aren’t going to recover from this, Lieutenant,” said Lanson.

  “I know, sir, but—” Abrams couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence.

  As he waited for death, Lanson found himself furious rather than calm. He hated to lose, and this time, he’d been well and truly beaten.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Sergeant Evander Gabriel’s grenade landed on the far side of the Galos device and then detonated with a flash and a crack of expanding air. Two other grenades, thrown by other members of the squad, went off at almost the same moment. Simultaneously, gauss bullets thudded into the Galos, and RAHD shells burst against the device’s dark exterior.

  For a short time, it appeared as if the attacks were having no effect, and the module seemed entirely unharmed. Then, and completely unexpectedly, part of the cube’s facing side cracked and then dropped to the ground. The moment it happened, Gabriel felt a rush of energy surging through him. The force of it was such that his mind couldn’t comprehend the experience. Then, a word jumped into his head from out of nowhere.

  Accelerator.

  For a moment, his eyes lingered on the cube. Gabriel realised the dark exterior of the Galos was either armour, or a containment shell for whatever lay within. More than half of the plating on the facing side had broken off and his eyes couldn’t quite decide what had been revealed, since the material inside drew in the light with far greater effect than when it had been fully encased. As he stared beyond the Galos, across the cracked face, everything looked as though it were being stretched and pulled towards the device’s interior.

  The thought which came into Gabriel’s head was that the Galos was a contained black hole, or something like one, though he got no impression that it was affecting gravity. Certainly, he hadn’t been dragged over the event horizon to a crushing death.

  “Cease fire!” yelled Gabriel.

  As he gave the order, movement over the top of the crater caught his eye. The top of a Sagh’eld head came into sight. At first, he thought it was standing still and watching him, but then he realised it was moving exceptionally slowly. Raising his rifle, Gabriel put a bullet through the visible part of the alien’s skull. The enemy soldier’s head exploded messily.

  “What’s going on, Sergeant?” asked Corporal Ziegler. “It feels like I’ve been plugged into a Rodos drive.”

  Gabriel had some ideas, but he wasn’t ready to share them. He spun round and clambered rapidly towards the rim of the crater. Despite the weight of his combat suit, he hardly felt the need to breathe, and his limbs felt almost nothing of the effort required to climb.

  Halting at the top, Gabriel looked north, towards the overturned gravity truck. Dozens of Sagh’eld soldiers were in sight – some running with agonizing slowness towards the crater, while others were looking out from places of cover.

  It’s like they’ve been slowed down fifty or a hundred times, thought Gabriel. Then, he remembered the thought he’d had earlier. Except they haven’t been slowed down – I’ve been speeded up.

  Gabriel shot the nearest alien twice in the chest. Twin patches of blood appeared immediately, but the enemy soldier didn’t fall nearly as fast. In fact, its gradual motion continued, as if it hadn’t yet realised it was dead.

  Changing aim, Gabriel shot a second enemy trooper, then a third. The other Sagh’eld were just beginning to turn towards him. Gabriel killed two more and then dropped out of sight.

  “This Galos module has done something to us,” he said. “We’re moving a hundred times faster than before. I’d say there’s an aura around that cube, and if we venture too far away, we’ll drop to our normal speed.” Gabriel knew he was guessing but he had a feeling he wasn’t too far from the truth.

  Several members of the squad – those who’d already been right up at the crater’s edge – rose from cover and fired their weapons, before sliding down once more out of sight.

  “What the hell?” said Chan.

  “This is our chance, Sergeant,” said Corporal Hennessey, her eyes wide in disbelief.

  “Damn right it is,” said Gabriel. “We’re going to make another run for the target building before the crew on the Ex’Kaminar realise what’s happening. If they decide we’re about to make a getaway, they might do something stupid, and I’ve got no illusions that we’ll be able to outrun a plasma missile or a Thak projectile.” He pointed at Davison and Teague. “You’re still on cube pushing duty. I’d suggest you keep your hands away from the insides of that thing.”

  Davison and Teague descended rapidly towards the cube, while Gabriel returned to the crater’s rim. Pushing the cube back onto the street would be awkward, but that gave him and the others a chance to clear the way.

  “So what happens if any of the Sagh’eld make it inside the acceleration field, Sergeant?” asked Castle.

  “I think you can guess the answer to that as well as I can, soldier,” said Gabriel. “If it happens, I reckon they’ll be as fast as we are.”

  He didn’t know over what kind of diameter the Galos was generating its aura, and maybe he’d find out sometime soon. However, it seemed to Gabriel like the best thing he could do was to shoot the alien scumbags before they came close enough to provide an answer.

  With the squad arrayed along the edge of the crater to either side, Gabriel fired at the Sagh’eld, putting them down one after the other. He felt no guilt whatsoever. In fact, he relished this opportunity to turn the tables on the enemy. After what they’d done to Cornerstone, they deserved no mercy.

  When the last of the visible Sagh’eld had been killed, Gabriel’s eye went briefly to the clock displayed on his HUD. To his surprise, the seconds were passing as normal, which made him think that even his suit computer had been accelerated, along with everything else.

  After he’d dropped out his rifle’s empty magazine and swapped it for a full one, Gabriel scrambled up onto the street and then turned to find that Davison and Teague were making good progress with the cube. With one joint forceful push, they sent the Galos up onto the street, where it stopped within a couple of metres of Gabriel. Then, the two soldiers climbed the short remaining distance to the top. Reaching down with one hand, Gabriel hauled Davison out of the crater, and nearby, Ziegler did likewise for Teague.

  “It’s time to move,” said Gabriel, sweeping his gaze across the street to the north and then turning so he could do the same for the south.

  At that moment, he spotted one of the Sagh’eld, crouching behind the wall of a burned-out building over the road and to the south. The barrel of the alien’s gun was pointed directly towards Gabriel, and he saw, even from this distance, the enemy soldier pulling the trigger.

  Without thinking, Gabriel stepped to one side, at the same time as he took aim. Whatever came of the enemy’s bullet, it didn’t strike its target. Gabriel’s shot, on the other hand, was far more accurate. It punched through the Sagh’eld’s visor, killing the alien instantly.

  The same as Gabriel had already witnessed, the effects of the bullet – the detonation of blood it produced – happened at once, while the alien he’d shot toppled only in slow motion.

  It’s like the bullets are wrapped in a tiny acceleration field of their own, which stays with them all the way to their target, thought Gabriel. Whatever’s inside that acceleration field – the head of that alien – speeds up for a brief moment, while the rest of the alien stays slow.

  The mechanics of what was happening were still somewhat of a mystery and, though Gabriel would have dearly loved a chance to experiment, he wasn’t likely to have that opportunity anytime soon.

  Setting off north, Gabriel kept a sharp eye out, unwilling to be caught out again.

  “Did you just dodge a bullet, Sergeant?” asked Davison, who’d evidently seen it happen.

  “I don’t think we’re moving fast enough for that, soldier,” said Gabriel, as he covered the last few metres to the overturned gravity truck. “But I definitely think we’re moving faster than a Sagh’eld trooper can adjust its aim.”

  The entrance to the target building was visible from the truck, just like it had been before. Unfortunately, the Sagh’eld from the two shuttles had managed to deploy and they were heading south towards the crater. Gabriel’s snap estimate of their numbers was two hundred, and he was sure more were coming from the behind the debris which littered the road.

  Although it was tempting to spend a few happy moments mowing down the Sagh’eld troopers, Gabriel felt like he was on borrowed time. The Ex’Kaminar’s targeting systems and guns were designed to strike opponents moving far faster than Gabriel and his squad, even though they were in the middle of the acceleration field.

  The only thing preventing the Ex’Kaminar from opening fire, was the enemy’s desire to steal the Galos. Gabriel fervently hoped the alien crew still retained a hope of capturing the device.