Empires in Ruin Read online

  Empires in Ruin

  Savage Stars Book 6

  Anthony James

  Contents

  The Control Core

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Other Science Fiction Books by Anthony James

  © 2020 Anthony James

  All rights reserved

  The right of Anthony James to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed upon the subsequent purchaser

  Illustration © Tom Edwards

  TomEdwardsDesign.com

  The Control Core

  The air was chill and the light in the metal-clad viewing room was oppressive, as if the walls exuded their greyness and made everything seem dimmer than it was. An oversized steel table had been pushed against one wall and the chairs had been removed. Given how much tech the Daklan had crammed into this underground facility, the only sign of it in this room was an ancient-looking communicator over by the door.

  Captain Carl Recker stared through the single window into an immense, square room, the alloy floor of which was two hundred metres below. Despite the chill and the gloominess, he felt a sharp-edged excitement, as if this part of the operation was on the brink of success.

  In the centre of the huge room, a thirty-metre cube of near-black material was suspended in the air by gravity chains mounted in the ceiling above the viewing window. The cube’s housing was dented and scraped. Considering what had befallen the Aeklu’s control core, the damage was surprisingly minimal.

  Surrounding the control core, dozens of much smaller Obliterator processing units were contained within dedicated floor-mounted cooling blocks which maintained an inside temperature close to absolute zero, allowing the Obliterator cores to overclock – not strictly an accurate term, but one which even the tech teams still clung to - and run far beyond their design tolerances.

  Torso-thick data cables linked everything, and teams of human and Daklan engineers crowded around a circular console directly below Recker, studying the output data.

  “Soon,” said Ilsre-Lunei in a voice that was harsh and rasping yet delivered with a contrasting melodious lilt. “It will happen soon.”

  Recker turned his gaze from the viewing window to the second occupant of the room. Ilsre-Lunei was female and, like most of the other Daklan females Recker had met, startlingly attractive in an alien way. Her skin was red, her eyes glowed the deepest of greens and her thick hair was dark as night and tied in an elaborate plait. Unlike the males, she was slender and not much taller than six feet.

  “How do you know?” Recker asked, wondering if he’d get a straight answer this time.

  Ilsre-Lunei grinned, showing perfect, humanlike teeth - humanlike except for the two upward-curving fangs which protruded even when her mouth was closed.

  “Do you need to ask, Captain Recker?”

  “I guess not.”

  The Daklan took pity on him. “When you work with the unknown long enough, you get a feel for it.”

  “It’s been eight months,” said Recker. “Eight months with those Obliterators running nonstop. I’d like to believe the breakthrough is coming.”

  Ilsre-Lunei narrowed her eyes. “Now,” she said.

  At that precise moment, the team of engineers below began clapping each other on the shoulders and one of the human members punched the air in celebration. Then, suddenly, they stopped like the enormity of the outcome was sinking in.

  “Done?” asked Recker.

  “Yes, Captain Carl Recker. It is done.”

  “What now?” asked Recker.

  “Now we take the fight to our enemies.”

  “How long until we can use the data, I meant.”

  Ilsre-Lunei shrugged, somehow making even a dismissive gesture seem elegant. “As long as it takes.”

  “I thought you had a feeling for the unknown?”

  The Daklan grinned, part in happiness and part predatorially. “You itch to be away from here. Pitting yourself against our opponents.”

  “They’re coming for us, Ilsre-Lunei. The Laws of Ancidium. They’ve had time to modify their Extractors. If we don’t stop them, we’ll suffer losses beyond imagining.”

  “This I know,” she said.

  Ilsre-Lunei stepped back from the window and headed for the door. “Come.”

  Recker followed.

  Chapter One

  The planet Trinus-XN was a barren sphere of red rock, with a meagre atmosphere of nitrogen, carbon and oxygen, the latter in quantities too low to sustain life, even had the extremes of temperature not been so hostile to its formation. During the long day, the blistering heat of the WDE421-3T star turned the surface into a stark, burning hot oven, while at night, the cold was enough to create a beautiful layer of ice crystals upon every surface. In that darkness, the clear skies allowed a breath-taking glimpse of faraway stars drawn towards the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s centre.

  Upon Trinus-XN, the Daklan had built a sprawling facility of monumental proportions - a facility they had named Ivisto. Alloy structures of all shapes and sizes, constructed off-world and transported here, covered hundreds of square kilometres, while the shipyards and landing fields occupied many hundreds more. Six massive ternium plants – two of which were sub-surface - provided endless power, while the nearby mining facilities and refineries allowed Ivisto to create its own alloys and machine them into every conceivable shape and size.

  The only thing Ivisto lacked was its own food supply and, every few days, a trio of cargo vessels brought in a shipment of biological matter suitable for use in the base replicators.

  The Ivisto base was, Recker believed, the single main reason the less populous Daklan had pulled ahead in the now-settled war with humanity and he wondered if, several decades ago, some bright spark within their military had looked into the future and seen the requirement for a massive shipyard capable of turning out twenty new warships every year. Had the war persisted, it would have been the deciding factor.

  Certainly, the Daklan knew how to commit, which was more than could be said for the old guard within the HPA – an old guard which was no longer an effective force since Recker had cut the head off the snake when he fired a lightspeed missile into Fleet Admiral Solan’s holiday home from twenty-five million kilometres in space.

  The old bastard hadn’t seen that one coming.

  “What time is your FTL comm with Fleet Admiral Telar, sir?” said Commander Daisy Aston on the suit comms.

  The words startled Recker out of his reverie, bringing him back to the present. He looked at the Frenziol-13 injector in his hand and stabbed i
t into his leg. Everyone on Ivisto took a quarter dose every three hours and a bigger dose before lights out - just in case the Lavorix dropped by to say hello - and the flesh on Recker’s thigh burned constantly from the needles and because the Frenziol tended to accumulate in the place it was injected.

  Fortunately, he had another thigh, a neck and a couple of ass cheeks – all of which were approved locations for injection – so maybe it was time to share the load.

  “You know what time it is,” he growled, his irritation at the needles making him sound angrier than he intended. Aston didn’t deserve his temper and he forced a laugh. “Or are you just checking to see if I’ve learned anything more in the ten minutes since last time you asked?”

  “This is a fast-moving situation, sir.”

  Recker turned briefly as he headed for the door. His room was built for a Daklan, which made it surprisingly big compared to the usual fare offered by the HPA. The furnishings weren’t much of an improvement, consisting of a bed, a communicator and his own shower cubicle. It certainly wasn’t any worse than he was accustomed to. “I’m heading there now. You still want to tag along for the ride?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Don’t take long. I’ll meet you at the airlock.”

  Recker exited his room into a long corridor, wide enough for two Daklan in combat suits to pass. The airlock was a short distance right, while to the left, other doors led to other rooms occupied by other officers.

  He waited at the airlock, drumming his fingers and checking his gauss rifle. Less than two minutes later, Aston emerged from one of the airlifts in the corridor, forty metres away, wearing full combat gear and carrying her own gauss rifle. Moments later, she was standing in front of Recker and through the visor of her helmet, she grinned.

  “I haven’t checked on the construction progress for a few hours,” she said in mock apology.

  “A watched spaceship is never built,” said Recker.

  “You look worried, sir,” said Aston, frowning and peering at him closely.

  Recker didn’t answer at once and he touched the access panel for the airlock. A light went green and then he pulled a horizontal lever in the middle of the door into its upright position. The door swung open soundlessly to reveal the three-metre-square airlock room. “It’s been two months since we cracked the Aeklu’s control core. Each morning I wake up asking myself if today’s the day the Laws of Ancidium will drop into Earth orbit and start firing their Extractors.”

  Aston tried to smile. “The construction work is coming along well. Last I heard, we’re a month ahead of schedule on both ships.”

  “Those are long build schedules, Commander.”

  “I know. But they’ll be ready soon.”

  Soon was a word Recker had heard too often of late. Everything was coming soon. Not now, not today, not yesterday, but sometime in that vague, undefined future known as soon.

  “Come on,” he said, hauling open the outer airlock door.

  Bright light and the beating notes of a thousand propulsions flooded in, and Recker’s suit HUD told him it was hot enough outside to boil an egg. He stepped over the raised lip of the doorway and onto the planet’s desert-red stone which the Daklan had built directly onto.

  A few metres out of the airlock and Recker turned briefly. Behind him, the building in which he was quartered was a three-storey, windowless, flat-fronted affair accessed by half a dozen ground-level doors. Similarly uninspiring buildings rose left and right, these ones housing many of the human technicians who’d been shipped in to work on the project which had taken up the entire output of the base.

  To the left, one of the huge construction domes loomed, and it had always made Recker think of an alloy moon dropping below the horizon. Beyond the dome and higher yet, the eight-thousand-metre tenixite converter recovered by the Daklan only two years ago, seemed to reach for orbit in an unwelcome reminder of the Lavorix’s technological might.

  This was one of the quieter areas of Ivisto, with the only visible personnel being a few small groups of technicians, mostly heading for the elevated concrete shuttle pad a short distance away. A row of bulky Daklan gravity cars was parked in a line at the base of the ramp leading to the top of the pad, and several humans were talking animatedly nearby.

  “Let’s get to the shuttle,” said Recker, pointing at the row of eight vessels on top of the landing pad.

  He set off. Despite being stationed here for so long, Ivisto still felt utterly strange – a clash between technology and the barrenness of the universe. When he looked up, the sky was dark, while the ground was lit. All around, the mishmash of prefabricated buildings seemed like they had no place here. Yet somehow it all worked and Recker was comfortable.

  “Have you spoken to Joe and Lois today?” said Aston.

  Recker had never got used to hearing his parents called by their first names. “On time, like always. How’s your brother?”

  “Being a little shitbag.” Aston smiled. “Like always.” The smile fell away. “Everyone’s scared, Carl. They don’t say it and…” she faltered. “…and it sucks that we have to live with this hanging over our heads.”

  “I tell myself I can only do my best,” said Recker. “It’s going to be enough. And if it isn’t…” He forced a smile of his own. “This is what Ivisto is here for, right? The big project to fix everything and make it right.”

  The concrete ramp leading to the top of the shuttle pad was fifty metres long and it was steep. By the time he reached the top, the muscles in Recker’s legs were filled with the pleasant glow of exercise. The landing pad was 250 metres wide and the parked vessels were identical round-edged rectangles with squared-off noses, chain guns and armour. They didn’t look much different to the models Recker had encountered in the past – in the times he’d have been exchanging gunfire with them.

  “That’s our shuttle,” he said, pointing left.

  A few mixed squads of human and Daklan soldiers patrolled the top of the shuttle pad, the latter appearing like giants in their combat suits. Recker glanced at one of the alien soldiers as he went past. The Daklan met his gaze and offered him a nod of acknowledgement.

  “It’s like the war never happened,” said Aston.

  “Maybe one day I’ll understand it all,” said Recker. “Right this moment, I’m happy to accept the Daklan for what they are – strong, reliable allies.”

  He climbed up the steps leading to the side door in the shuttle’s nose and thumped his hand on the access panel. The door opened and he squeezed into the smallest of airlock spaces along with Aston. Moments later, the airlock cycled and they entered the cockpit.

  “Let’s get going,” said Recker, hardly noticing the rudimental console, nor the overly wide bucket seats. He wrapped fingers around the controls, while Aston brought up the sensors.

  Like a car windscreen, the forward bulkhead became transparent and the feed wrapped 120-degrees around the cockpit. Nothing had changed outside, though visibility from the shuttle’s greater elevation hinted at the extent of the base.

  “We’re clear on the flank and rear feeds,” Aston confirmed. “And no passengers in the bay.”

  Recker checked in with the base mainframe and obtained flight clearance. Then, he brought the shuttle vertically into the air, leaving a gap in the parked row of transports.

  “Comms Hub 3,” said Aston.

  “Yes. Our flight path goes straight past the main trenches.”

  At an altitude of five thousand metres, Recker turned the shuttle and aimed it towards the comms hub. The sky was crowded with silvery movement from the countless smaller vessels flying to and fro across Ivisto. A lower ranking officer would be required to activate the autopilot, but the Daklan gave senior officers more leeway. Compared to the HPA’s safety-first mentality, the aliens were decidedly hands-off - something Recker found liberating.

  Engines grumbling, the shuttle accelerated across Ivisto. From this altitude, it was clear what an incredible quantity of resources
had gone into the base, and not all invested by the Daklan. The aliens had laid the groundwork and much more, but in the ten months since the formal peace was signed, the HPA had done everything possible – financially and militarily – to assist with the expansion of Ivisto.

  “There’s the shipyard,” said Aston.

  Way across the tops of warehouses, domes and towers, the main shipyard was situated on a fifty-by-fifty-kilometre square of alloy-clad stone. To form the northern end of the square, the Daklan had been forced to excavate a high ridge, which they done – Recker believed – with the assistance of high explosives. Now, a five-hundred-metre vertical wall rose from the northern edge of the construction yard and this marked the perimeter of the base.

  “The Aeklu and the Verumol,” said Aston, shaking her head in awed wonder.

  Recker felt the same emotions when he gazed at the two incredible hulls side-by-side in their construction trenches. They were so vast, they filled the shipyard and left no room for anything besides the stacks of ternium modules, the armour plates and the piles of control tech that needed to go inside to replace the Lavorix originals.

  Aside from the hope and expectation, Recker also felt a clinging fear, which hung about his shoulders like a cloak of blood-sopping rags. The memory of what these two spaceships had once been was still strong.

  “The Aeklu and the Verumol,” he repeated quietly. “Disabled by the Dark Bomb but not destroyed.”