Repulsor (Guns of the Federation Book 6) Read online

  REPULSOR

  GUNS OF THE FEDERATION

  BOOK 6

  ANTHONY JAMES

  CONTENTS

  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

  Gavax’Kol

  Also by Anthony James

  © 2022 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

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  ONE

  Almost three days had passed since Captain Jed Grisham and his crew had escaped the remote, unnamed planet where they’d discovered the alien warship Urzox. The Ax’Kol capital ship Exetran – known as the Third – had almost ruined everything, and, had its arrival at that place been only seconds earlier, Grisham was sure he’d now be dead, instead of sitting on the bridge of the Urzox as it hurtled through lightspeed.

  “Are you still planning to return us to local space at the three-day mark, Captain?” asked Commander Lois Deneuve from the station immediately to Grisham’s left.

  “Yes - four hours from now, just like we discussed,” Grisham confirmed. His fingers were wrapped around the alloy control bars for the warship, even though those controls did nothing at lightspeed.

  “It’ll be real bad news if the Exetran is able to follow the Urzox in the same way as it could follow the Voltran,” said Lieutenant Mac Adler, from his station behind and to the left.

  This was something Grisham and his crew had discussed many times, but he didn’t mind. Sometimes the repetition would lead to new ideas.

  Grisham kept his gaze on the one-point-five-metre screen on top of his ancient-looking command console. The screen curved inwards so that its contents were always within his visual arc, and alien symbols rolled upwards in several of the smaller windows.

  Through his mind link to the spaceship, Grisham could understand it all – both the script and the underlying technical meaning. The symbols were ongoing status updates, and the Urzox was operating within its expected bounds.

  One significant difference between this warship and the Voltran was that Grisham couldn’t form a mind link remotely – he could only connect here, on the bridge. As yet, he hadn’t decided if the change was significant, or if he should be worried about it. The Urzox was different and there was still plenty to learn about it.

  “We’ll find out one way or another once we exit lightspeed,” said Grisham. “Even if we have to sit on our asses and watch the sensor feeds for a week.”

  “And we’ll have a chance to try out the weapons,” said Deneuve.

  While the warship was at lightspeed, its weapons systems were unavailable, its sensors and comms were offline, and several other subsystems were locked out. Consequently, many of the Urzox’s capabilities were unknown, though none of the crew had high hopes. When they’d found the warship, it had been surrounded by hundreds of other alien vessels, few of which looked as if they could challenge a Human Federation Tibor, let alone something with real firepower.

  That left the Urzox’s psionics as the only offensive aspect of the warship likely to impress. The vessel’s consciousness was like a vast, deep ocean, and the currents of its thoughts ran beneath the surface such that Grisham could sense them, without knowing what the warship was thinking – if indeed it was thinking at all.

  On the Voltran, he’d been able to push through the protective layers around the vessel’s consciousness and communicate directly with the billions of souls from which it been created.

  Admittedly, Grisham hadn’t yet attempted this feat, which had become natural to him on the Voltran. Given his general lack of knowledge about metaphysical consciousnesses formed from the sacrifices of billions of living creatures, he thought it best to take the softly-softly approach – just in case he broke something, or the Urzox turned hostile.

  “We have a lot of testing to do, folks,” said Grisham.

  “But there’s none of us think we’ve found a tool capable of defeating the Ax’Kol,” said Lieutenant Dan Bishop. He was at a station behind and to the right of the command console.

  “Nope,” said Adler.

  So, the Urzox’s crew were far from home, in a warship of undetermined potency, and with the possibility that the Exetran was still in pursuit of the Andos artifact which Grisham was keeping in the leg pocket of his combat suit.

  At least we’re alive, thought Grisham.

  “I’m heading to the mess,” he said, rising suddenly from his seat. “You’ll all have a turn after. This might be the last chance to stretch our legs for a while.”

  Grisham exited the bridge through the three-metre door in the aft bulkhead. A passage ran port-to-starboard directly in front of him, and he headed portside. The corridors in the Urzox were well enough lit, but their tightness made everything seem gloomy – a state that was exaggerated by the near-black biological material from which much of the spaceship had been formed.

  Less than a hundred metres from the bridge, Grisham entered the Urzox’s mess room. Although the warship had the internal space to accommodate thousands of personnel, this was the only mess room which had been completed. A few other areas had also been fitted out, albeit in an alien style.

  Sergeant Tyrus Maxwell was already here, along with every member of his squad. The mess area was furnished with a dozen low metal tables, all served by highbacked padded seats clad in the same blue leatherlike material as the seats on the bridge. Despite being millions of years old, the warship’s life support systems had kept everything in perfect repair.

  A couple of the soldiers greeted Grisham as he went along the central aisle towards the Urzox’s replicator. The soldiers had brought the Human Federation replicator with them from the Voltran, but the device was parked in a room a short distance away. This, the original replicator on the warship, had been a challenge the soldiers were all-too willing to take up.

  Grisham stopped in front of the device and poked at the rudimental keypad on the front panel. Each press of the key produced a sharp click, and the green symbols on the display changed. Trial and error had taught him that this particular combination would produce an orange-coloured drink that tasted like fruit.

  The replicator gurgled and deposited a silver-coloured plasticky cup into the rectangular slot at the bottom. Grisham drained the contents of the cup in one go and then stabbed in his next se
lection. More gurgling followed, and this time, a tray appeared, upon which were a variety of pastes that might have been replicated ground-up alien insects for all he knew, but which nonetheless tasted good.

  Grisham sat with the soldiers for the short time it took him to finish his pastes. The conversation was sparse – everyone needed a break from the endless running.

  Once he was done eating, Grisham returned the tray to the replicator, where it was sucked away into the bowels of the machine. Then, he decided to take the long way back to the bridge.

  The interior of the Urzox was logically-enough laid out and Grisham wasn’t in much danger of getting lost. As he walked along the passages, he breathed in the odours of age which clung to the warship. While the scents weren’t exactly pleasant, they lacked the Ax’Kol taint, which had always been evident on the Voltran. In fact, the smell of the Urzox reminded Grisham a little of damp forests and rotting wood, and, while he couldn’t forget the origins of the spaceship, he was glad those origins weren’t continually obvious.

  Grisham paused for a short time at one of the areas intended for the warship personnel’s off-duty hours. He looked into one of the furnished bunk rooms, which contained twenty metal-framed beds. The beds were approximately human-sized and their spongey mattresses were comfortable enough. This room was empty, but the soldiers slept in another one like it, not far along this same corridor.

  Six smaller, individual rooms were accessed from a nearby passage. These rooms contained single beds and a couple of empty storage chests, as well as being furnished with desks and wall-mounted viewscreens.

  Grisham was about to look into one of the rooms, as he’d done several times since boarding the Urzox. He stopped himself. The cabins bore such a resemblance to those on a human warship that they brought out a peculiar sadness and longing in Grisham.

  He returned to the bridge, where he offered Deneuve and Lieutenant Eric Kinsey the opportunity to take a short break. Both accepted and disappeared from the bridge to do whatever they would do.

  “Three hours and we’ll cancel this lightspeed transit,” said Grisham.

  According to the Urzox’s monitoring tools, the warship’s mind had intended the journey to last fifty years, which suggested its perception of time had become distorted by the millions of years spent on the planet of its construction. Grisham was keen to stay ahead of the Exetran, but the thought of remaining at lightspeed until he was eighty-four years old had never been an option.

  “I wonder how far we’ll have travelled at the end of these three days,” said Bishop. “If we can figure that out, we’ll be better placed to reconcile the positional memories from the Voltran’s minds with the data in the Urzox’s navigational system and the star charts in our combat suit computers.”

  “I’m glad I have you and Lieutenant Lopez to handle problems like that one,” said Grisham.

  “The species which built the Urzox hadn’t travelled far, that much is sure,” said Lieutenant Kaci Lopez. “At least not compared to the Human Federation.”

  “And that’s why we’re so concerned about this warship’s lightspeed multiplier,” said Adler, not for the first time. “If the Urzox’s engines are as crappy as all the other technology appears to be, we might be looking at a five-year ride home, assuming we can work out where home is, and assuming the Exetran is no longer in pursuit.”

  Grisham knew of the many problems and hoped they would not be insurmountable. He called up the technical data for the Urzox’s weapons systems. While none of those weapons would fire at lightspeed, he could still access their specifications.

  “Alturian turret 1 and Alturian turret 2,” Grisham said, remembering how visually impressive the topside gauss cannons had seemed the first time he’d seen the Urzox.

  “The power units in those turrets aren’t good enough to generate a high projectile velocity,” said Adler, who’d done some napkin maths on the subject a couple of days ago. “I doubt those guns would trouble a Kijol cruiser, let alone an Eternus or an Ax’Kol Indredalus. Even landing a hit would be tough.”

  “Don’t keep reminding me,” said Grisham.

  He accessed the data for the Urzox’s missile systems. The warship had a paltry twenty-four launchers – that was single launchers, not clusters – positioned about its hull. Each launcher was designed to eject one Hazik missile. Those missiles had massive propulsion sections and huge warheads, but in terms of technological sophistication, they were lacking. Lieutenant Adler had expressed his concern that the weapons wouldn’t be able to outrun anything beyond a Tibor-class and even then, the manoeuvrability of the missiles wasn’t likely to be a match for a halfway competent pilot.

  Grisham thought he’d come to terms with the limitations of the Urzox, but reading the tech specs again was enough to make him feel a pang for the lost Voltran. Given the choice, right here and now, he’d have swapped his new warship for his old one in an instant.

  The time to Grisham’s intended return to local space neared. When Lieutenant Adler shouted out a ten-minute reminder, all members of the crew were on the bridge. Looking across at Deneuve, Grisham saw the tell-tale indications on her face that betrayed her inner feelings.

  Deneuve smiled thinly as she became aware of the scrutiny. “The moment of truth approaches, huh?”

  “We’ve got a few moments of truth ahead of us, Commander.”

  “Let’s hope our expectations are greatly exceeded, sir.”

  “Amen to that,” said Grisham. “We fought our way to the top, and I don’t want to sink down to the bottom again.”

  “Like hell is that going to happen,” said Deneuve. “If we make it home, you’re going to be offered command of the first available HF battleship.”

  “That’s not what I want, Commander.” Grisham took one hand off the controls and used it to indicate everything around him. “This is what I want – for the Urzox to be the Ax’Kol-destroying construction we thought it might be in those first few moments after we set eyes on it.”

  Deneuve nodded and this time, her smile was tinged with sadness. “It’s what I want too. It’s what all of us want.”

  “A tool to beat the Ax’Kol,” said Grisham. He reached out and patted his console. “Maybe we’ll be surprised by what the Urzox can do. After all, this warship contains five minds now. Even if its weapons systems are powered by clockwork, it’s got to be capable of something special when it comes to the psionics.”

  Speaking the words made Grisham feel better. At the earliest opportunity, he intended running through some comprehensive tests of the Urzox’s psionics. However, and regardless of the outcome, he suspected the warship would be crippled by the age of its propulsion and all the other linked subsystems.

  “Two minutes!” shouted Adler.

  Grisham hauled his mind into the present. In a couple of minutes, he’d bring an end to the Urzox’s lightspeed transit. Then, he and his crew would discover if the colossal Ax’Kol warship Exetran was still in pursuit. Before the answer to that was revealed, they would need to figure out exactly how the Urzox functioned, having been unable to practice while the spaceship was at lightspeed.

  Tightening his hands on the controls, Grisham readied himself.

  TWO

  The Urzox’s propulsion note changed from a soothing drone in the background to something with a harder, more guttural edge.

  “We have re-entered local space,” said Lieutenant Adler.

  “Waiting on—” Lieutenant Lopez began. “The sensors are back online.”

  “That was quicker than I expected,” said Grisham. “Much quicker.”

  Grisham discovered that his interface with the Urzox allowed him to access the feeds just by a simple thought, in a way that was indistinguishable to the method he’d employed on the Voltran. Those feeds appeared in his mind and he could switch between them at will.

  In addition, Grisham soon learned that he was able to command the feeds of his choice onto the physical screen on his console, thereby giving him the
option of how he wanted the data presented.

  So far, so good.

  “We’re not going to have any problems operating the sensors, Captain – it’s all straightforward,” said Lieutenant Bishop. “Now let’s see what they’re capable of – running local area sweep.”

  “We’re on the fringes of a solar system,” said Lieutenant Lopez a few moments later. “I’ve detected a star at an approximate distance of three billion klicks. Our arrays are gathering a crapload of data.”

  “Look for a planet,” said Grisham. “Just in case we need someplace to hide.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And so we can test out the weaponry,” said Deneuve.

  “That too,” said Grisham.

  “Uh, Captain, our sensor arrays are incredible,” said Bishop. “The local area scans are done and I was able to cover a far greater volume than I could have done on the Voltran.”

  Grisham nodded but didn’t press for specifics – he was sure his sensor officers would tell him more once they’d familiarised themselves with the hardware. He experienced a renewed flicker of excitement.

  “I’ve located a planet, Captain,” said Bishop. “Let’s see if I can put it up on the tactical.”

  The tactical was easily accessed across the interface, and a green circle appeared on it, along with overlays indicating the planet’s distance – a hundred million kilometres from the Urzox - and its velocity along its orbital track. Preferring to have this information in front of his eyes, Grisham transferred it onto his viewscreen.