The Andos Vector (Guns of the Federation Book 5) Page 2

  Dodaxa wasn’t much to look at, being a grey-red sphere approximately two-thirds the size of Earth. From half a million kilometres, the surface details weren’t clear, and if there was a Kijol installation on the planet, it would require some effort to locate.

  “Area scans complete and nothing to report,” said Bishop. “I’ve also located the central star – it’s about a billion klicks from our position. Should I scan for other planets, Captain?”

  “Not just yet, Lieutenant,” said Grisham. “Run a sweep for comms receptors.”

  “Yes, sir, running a comms sweep.”

  “Lieutenant Lopez, enhance the feed of Dodaxa.”

  “Already on it, Captain.”

  “The comms sweep has not detected any receptors,” said Bishop.

  “Give it a minute and then run another one,” said Grisham. “And expand your sensor scan range.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Grisham turned towards Deneuve. “It doesn’t seem like the Kijol have a welcome party waiting for us.”

  “They might not know when we’re arriving, sir. If there are any enemy—” Deneuve gave a rueful smile and quickly corrected herself. “If there are any friendly ships in the vicinity, they’re likely to be operating under their usual comms lockdown protocols.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, Commander.”

  “The feed enhancement is complete, sir,” said Lopez.

  Like Grisham had expected, the enhanced feed revealed little more than the unenhanced version. Dodaxa’s surface was a mixture of craters, mountains, and fissures, just like trillions of other planets in the universe.

  “What the hell would the Kijol be doing out here?” Grisham wondered aloud.

  “There’s got to be some strategic interest we’re not seeing,” said Deneuve. She shrugged.

  Ten minutes passed, during which the Voltran’s sensor team hunted for signs of the Kijol. Grisham wasn’t in any particular hurry, but he felt a growing impatience, along with an irritation. He kept reminding himself that the Kijol didn’t know when or where the Voltran was going to arrive, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t leave a comms receptor open.

  After another ten minutes, Grisham decided it was time to approach the planet. Lopez had scanned its surface and declared her certainty that no significant installation was on the visible side. Before Grisham could initiate the approach, Lieutenant Bishop announced that he’d detected a comms receptor.

  “The receptor must have been opened within the last sixty seconds, Captain,” he said.

  “Does the receptor give away any information? Is it a warship or an installation?”

  “There’s no information,” said Bishop. “Should I request a link?”

  “Do it.”

  “Link requested.” Bishop drummed his fingers on top of his interface post. “Link request accepted. I have Captain Riondalix of the Eternus battleship Tuvandor on the comms. Should I make it an open channel?”

  “Please,” said Grisham.

  “Captain Grisham,” said Riondalix. The Voltran’s comms system added the same clicking sibilance to the alien’s voice that was common to all Kijol. “You have come.”

  “Captain Riondalix,” said Grisham, suddenly wary at the alien’s choice of words. “I was told the Kijol have a way to resupply the Voltran.”

  “That is correct. We must approach the planet.”

  “Our surface scans revealed no installations.”

  “The facility is located on the blind side, human. I will transmit positional data for the Tuvandor and you will follow my warship to Dodaxa.”

  “Acknowledged,” said Grisham. He looked towards Lieutenant Lopez and raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “Got it,” said Lopez, off comms. “The Tuvandor is more than a hundred thousand klicks from our position.”

  “Captain Riondalix, we have your location. I’ll set a course and we’ll be with you shortly.”

  “Very well.”

  The Kijol exited the comms channel.

  “Not very talkative, was he?” said Deneuve.

  “I’m sure we’ll find ourselves dealing with many like him if the peace holds,” said Grisham. “After a decade of fighting the Human Federation, I doubt the Kijol will be all smiles and handshakes. There’ll be plenty of suspicion among our own military as well.”

  “I have a sensor lock on the Eternus, Captain,” said Lopez.

  Grisham accessed the feed. At the current distance, it was difficult to be sure if the Tuvandor was a new gen or an old gen model. Either way, it would be a fearsome warship.

  “Let’s go make friends,” said Grisham.

  Soon after, the Voltran was racing towards the Kijol battleship. Grisham made sure to demonstrate that his own vessel was possessed of a higher maximum velocity than that of the Tuvandor. This was not intended as a display of petty chest beating, rather Grisham wanted Riondalix to be dissuaded from any treachery, should he be an officer who did not believe in peace.

  “That’s a new gen model,” said Lopez, as the distance between the two vessels decreased.

  “They all seem to be these days,” said Adler. “I wonder where the Kijol sent all the old gen models that were already adept enough at giving our fleet a hard time.”

  “Another war in another place,” said Kinsey.

  “It wouldn’t surprise me,” said Grisham.

  The Tuvandor was pushing four thousand metres in length and its mass was enormously higher than that of the Voltran. Huge Axar gauss turrets were mounted on the Kijol battleship’s forward and aft topside plating, and the rest of the vessel’s hull was fitted with Dasor repeaters, missile clusters and various launchers for incendiaries and countermeasures.

  As Grisham stared at the Eternus’s high flanks and its scimitar blades, he felt a shiver of the awe he’d first experienced as a much younger officer when he’d first seen one of these alien battleships. Now, he was commanding a vessel that – even unhealed from its recent combat over Talior – could defeat this pinnacle of Kijol war technology.

  Not that Grisham was here to fight. He guided the Voltran closer to the stationary Tuvandor, decelerating late and bringing the Ax’Kol vessel alongside at a five-thousand-metre distance.

  A few seconds after the Voltran became stationary, the Eternus accelerated hard towards the planet. Grisham commanded his own vessel to follow at a matched velocity.

  For more than ten minutes, Captain Riondalix held his vessel steady at six hundred kilometres per second, which Grisham knew from experience was at least a hundred kilometres per second less than a new gen Eternus could achieve. Then, as the planet neared, the Kijol decelerated and altered course onto a trajectory that would take his warship around to the far side of Dodaxa. Grisham kept the Voltran following closely.

  By this time, the view of the planet – ten thousand kilometres below - was perfectly clear, though the surface had become no more interesting as a result. There was nothing about Dodaxa to draw the eye, so Grisham didn’t pay too much attention to the feeds. He’d seen enough rugged mountains and plains of stone over the course of his travels.

  “What do you reckon we’re going to find?” said Bishop, directing the question at no one in particular.

  “Something bigger than we’re expecting,” said Adler.

  “We’d have seen more Kijol warships if there was anything significant here,” said Grisham. “So far, there’s only the Tuvandor.”

  “The Eternus is slowing again, Captain,” said Lopez in warning.

  “I see it,” said Grisham, reducing the Voltran to a hundred kilometres per second. The Tuvandor was about four hundred kilometres ahead and on the same heading as before. “Keep an eye out – we must be almost at our destination.”

  “There’s nothing visible on the surface,” said Bishop.

  “I’ve detected an object in the planet’s orbit, Captain,” said Lopez. “It’s at a similar altitude to our own, and it’s enormous.”

  Grisham accessed the feed at once.
Far ahead, an immense platform of dull grey alloy hovered high above the planet. The platform was side-on to the Voltran, so Grisham couldn’t see every detail. From here, he could tell that the Kijol structure was in excess of six thousand metres in length, with flat, thousand-metre flanks. At each end – on what he thought were its topsides – square buildings had been fitted, leaving the centre 4500 metres of the platform completely flat.

  “That’s a deep space landing pad,” said Deneuve.

  “Looks like,” said Grisham.

  He altered course to obtain a better view. Deneuve’s description was an accurate one – the platform was almost three thousand metres in width, and with this improved angle, Grisham could see huge loading vehicles dotted about the landing area, while shuttles hovered above the forward and aft ends of the platform.

  “I have Captain Riondalix on the comms, sir,” said Lopez.

  “Put him on an open channel,” said Grisham.

  “Welcome to the Andorol deep space resupply platform,” said Riondalix, with a note of unmistakeable pride in his voice. “You should feel honoured that the Kijol High Command have chosen to divert it here for your use.”

  “I appreciate the gesture,” said Grisham, not sure what else to say. Certainly, the Andorol platform was an incredible piece of engineering and he suspected it was a genuine sacrifice to send it here to Dodaxa.

  “You have clearance to land, Captain Grisham,” said Riondalix. “The Andorol will not stay here forever. Your warship’s magazines will be refilled and then it will leave.”

  “I’ll set down at once,” said Grisham, closing out of the channel. He looked over at Lopez. “Is the platform showing any open receptors?”

  “No, Captain.”

  “Then I guess we’re going to do this without any comms from the Andorol,” said Grisham.

  He piloted the Voltran towards the platform, which was now less than a thousand kilometres away. The Andorol had no external lights whatsoever, and with all the shuttles and vehicles motionless, it seemed to Grisham as if it might be abandoned – a forgotten hulk built by a long-dead species.

  Once the Voltran was fifty kilometres directly over the platform, Grisham guided the warship towards the landing strip. From here, he could see all of the topside structures, the majority of which were storage facilities. Grisham was sure that those facilities continued into the thousand-metre depth of the platform and he was also sure that the Andorol could hold enough ammunition to keep hundreds of warships supplied.

  With that thought came the realisation that the Kijol must have – at one time, or maybe even now – fought wars so far from home that they saw the need to create a structure like the Andorol to ensure their fleet could remain at the war front, rather than having to return to base once the missiles in their clusters became too few to stay in the fight.

  Grisham’s head swum at the thought. In previous conversations with Admiral Danner, he’d been told that the Kijol Empire went far and wide. Here was an indication that the aliens had fought much further afield than the Human Federation military analysts had considered, and yet all their resources hadn’t been enough to counter the Ax’Kol.

  Or perhaps the Kijol are fighting a dozen other species and humanity is intended to be no more than useful idiots in this one war out of many.

  The thought wasn’t helpful, though Grisham couldn’t deny that it may well be true. Right now, he just wanted the Voltran’s resupply to be over, so he could return to Loxor. Whatever the truth about the Kijol, he was sure it would be revealed in time.

  Grisham turned his attention once more to the Andorol, and saw that it wasn’t lacking in defences. Angular Dasor turrets in their hundreds were installed along the edges of the landing area and on the roofs of the storage structures. The platform’s flanks bristled with hundreds more.

  Offensively, the Andorol was visibly weaker than it was defensively. Grisham was sure that in other situations, the platform would always be protected by members of the Kijol fleet, so it probably didn’t need to be packing the missile clusters.

  “There’re signs of damage on the landing area, sir,” said Lopez. “And a couple of the forward storage structures have been repaired at some point in the past.”

  “Is there any way to tell what caused the damage?” asked Grisham.

  “No, sir, other than it definitely wasn’t a Human Federation vessel.”

  Grisham was enormously curious about the resupply platform. He couldn’t deny that it was a technological marvel, though not so much, he reckoned, that the Human Federation couldn’t build one like it, given the necessity.

  Slowly and carefully, Grisham brought the Voltran closer to the Andorol. With each passing moment it became clearer exactly how superior the Kijol structure was in size and mass. It utterly dwarfed the Ax’Kol battleship, and the landing field had space for two other vessels like it at the same time.

  The Voltran wasn’t designed to set down, so Grisham matched velocity, with the lowest part of the warship’s undersides twenty metres above the Andorol. The platform was travelling at a couple of kilometres per second around Dodaxa, and Grisham left the Voltran’s mind with the task of ensuring the two vessels didn’t drift apart.

  With the Voltran in position, Grisham watched expectantly to see what would happen next.

  THREE

  The Kijol appeared to be in no great hurry, though Grisham reflected that it was unlikely their usual reloading machinery would be compatible with Ax’Kol ammunition, so perhaps they had to bring out some special hardware from deep inside the Andorol.

  Twenty minutes went by without any obvious developments. The many shuttles which served the platform remained motionless above the landing area, while the vehicles Grisham had seen on the way in, likewise stayed put. Meanwhile, the Tuvandor was five hundred kilometres away and at a matched velocity to the platform.

  “Is this what’s meant to be happening?” asked Adler eventually. “If the Andorol was designed to operate on or near the battlefield, the Kijol have done a shitty job at making it efficient.”

  Grisham was on the verge of requesting a channel to the Tuvandor, when a slab-like door in one of the larger forward structures began descending into a ground recess.

  “Here we go,” he said.

  Beyond the opening, Grisham saw what he believed to be a cross between a massive flatbed crawler and a gravity crane. A metal framework holding a dozen missiles was resting on the crawler’s load bed. Grisham hadn’t ever seen one of the Ax’Kol Death missiles in the flesh, though he’d viewed them in the Voltran’s memories.

  “They’re big,” said Deneuve.

  “Bigger than a Fury missile, I reckon,” said Bishop.

  “I hope the Kijol know what they’re doing,” said Adler. “The Voltran has no onboard way to initiate a reload, so there must be automated mechanisms positioned around the hull.”

  The crawler wasn’t fast and the storage building was a thousand metres away. Grisham watched with a rising sense of frustration. The Voltran’s magazines were hundreds of missiles below their maximum capacity and if the speed of the crawler was indicative, the resupply would take many hours. Days, perhaps.

  “Looks like we’ll be here for a while,” said Deneuve. “At least the scenery is impressive – if you like alloy.”

  “Have you been sending updates to Shesa-2, Lieutenant Lopez?” asked Grisham.

  “Yes, sir, and I’ve just issued a transmission to say we might be stuck here on the Andorol for some time.”

  The transmission would take more than a day and a half to reach its destination, but at least it was on its way. It was the best Grisham and his crew could do to keep Senator Maynard informed about the progress of the resupply.

  “Nothing’s ever straightforward,” muttered Grisham. “We need the resupply, but we need to be back in Human Federation territory as well.” He cursed a couple of times and then got over it.

  The flatbed crawler continued on its way and went beneath the Voltr
an. A short time later, the vehicle stopped almost directly beneath one of the forward underside launch clusters. The crane arm on the back of the crawler unfurled and the elaborate claw on the end of the boom picked up the missile rack.

  Grisham watched in fascination as the crane lifted and oriented the frame. The boom extended further and then held the ends of the missile propulsion sections against the protective hatch covering the missile cluster. The hatch opened and the crane pushed the missiles into the four-by-three launch chutes. As if they were being sucked up by a vacuum cleaner, the missiles slid inside.

  “Well I’ll be,” said Adler.

  “The ammunition readout on underside cluster two just went up by twelve,” said Deneuve.

  “Captain Riondalix is on the comms, sir,” said Bishop. “He wants us to confirm if that worked.”

  “Let him know we’re pleased with the outcome,” said Grisham. “And maybe suggest that communication would be easier if we could talk directly with someone on the Andorol.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll let him know.”

  The flatbed crawler was already heading back to the storage unit, but a second was emerging, this one also carrying an alloy frame holding twelve missiles. Grisham perked up at the sight of it.

  “Maybe this will be quicker than I feared,” he said.

  “I’ve asked one of the comms team on the Tuvandor if they know how many of those dedicated crawlers the Andorol has available,” said Bishop. “The Kijol I spoke to didn’t know.”

  A few moments later, a comm came through that was entirely unexpected and which left Grisham reeling with shock.

  “Sir, we’ve received a transmission from Senator Maynard,” said Lopez. “Apparently the Loxor satellite monitors detected the presence of an unknown warship in the Altarn-4 system, less than fifty million klicks from the planet.”

  Grisham’s blood ran cold. “What else does the transmission say?”

  “The monitors didn’t detect the warship’s arrival, so it isn’t clear how long it was in Altarn-4 before it was spotted. The vessel entered lightspeed a short time later.” Lopez was still listening to the transmission and she went quiet for a few moments. Her face turned pale. “Mass estimates for the warship were fifty billion tons and its length was estimated at more than 5000 metres.”