Ure Infectus (Imperium Cicernus Book 4) Read online

  Thankfully, the bar was barely at five percent…but even as she watched, it ticked up to six. Then it passed seven percent, and more quickly even than the previous increases it shot almost completely past eight and went to nine.

  “That doesn’t look good,” she said warily.

  “No…it doesn’t,” Jericho agreed as the craft wobbled slightly and the sensation of falling forward against the restraints intensified enough that Masozi realized they were engaged in an atmospheric braking sequence of some kind.

  Sure enough, she cycled through the craft’s menus until coming to the vessel’s relative velocity indicator which had already been set against Chambliss’ own speed and vector through the system. The number was slowly, but steadily, decreasing from a mind-blowing four thousand five hundred meters per second.

  “I’m not sure that was a good idea,” Jericho said evenly, and Masozi was forced to concur as she struggled to grasp their current velocity—which would have allowed her to orbit Virgin at its equator in less than two and a half hours! She reached up to deactivate the velocity indicator but Jericho gently grabbed her wrist and shook his head, “But there’s no going back now.”

  Nodding her agreement, she settled back into her form-fitted seat and only then did she realize that it had been form-fitted perfectly to her body’s dimensions. She looked over at Jericho’s seat and found the same to be true for him.

  “Hadden knew Blanco’s fleet was coming before he let on,” Jericho explained. “That physical you were so fond of probably let his people put the finishing touches on this thing’s launch profile—as well as our clothing,” he added with a pointed look at her bodyglove.

  She nodded slowly as she realized that the bodyglove was almost certainly a highly-advanced flight suit of some kind. It hugged her soft, fleshy parts in a flattering manner precisely because it was preventing excessive blood pooling in those areas, and she shook her head in a mixture of wonderment and irritation.

  “Don’t be upset,” Jericho said in a conciliatory tone, “you only get one chance at a first time—don’t begrudge the circumstances which bring it to pass.”

  The gee forces continued to grow until the craft wobbled again, and Masozi looked down to see their craft’s external temperature had reached twenty three percent, and their deceleration was still sluggishly decreasing their speed as it ticked just below forty four hundred meters per second.

  The craft began to wobble with alarming consistency, and before Masozi could ask what was happening the entire vehicle spun violently a hundred and eighty degrees and continued to wobble side to side for several seconds before its movements calmed and eventually abated. When they did so, the deceleration forces were sucking Masozi and Jericho deeper into their seats than against the restraints which kept them securely in place.

  “Now the real fun begins,” Jericho said grimly, and Masozi felt the urge to grab a hold of something but resisted as she clenched her fingers into tight fists while the gee forces increased dramatically. “The whole deceleration process should take about six minutes if we were launched with the correct course and speed, after which the attitude control systems will keep us in a more or less stationary position within the planet’s atmospheric enveloped.”

  “And what happens then?” Masozi asked heavily as apparent gravity met, and then exceeded, those she had come to think of as ‘normal’ on Virgin.

  “Either someone comes along to pick us up,” Jericho said conversationally, “or the pod runs out of station-keeping fuel and we discover just how much pressure this little egg can take before cracking.”

  In no way comforted by his reply, Masozi closed her eyes as the g-forces steadily increased until they were a significant fraction of those they had experienced during their launch from H.E. One.

  Several minutes passed, during which time Masozi fought to keep her breathing calm and controlled while keeping her eyes closed. She was able to rationalize several aspects of the craft’s flight—including the incredible accelerations out of the rail gun, or coil gun, or maglev, or whatever it had been—but on the whole, the experience was simply more than she could wrap her brain around. She had never taken much interest in astrophysics but, as their craft continued to shed its velocity by interacting with Chambliss’ outer atmosphere, she dearly wished she had paid more attention during Mrs. Anderson’s patient lectures on the subject in school.

  “Last jolt,” she heard Jericho say, and this time she grabbed the harness criss-crossing her torso as she sought something to hold onto. A few seconds later, some sort of massive explosion occurred near the craft’s rear and her body was flung violently sideways as the ship lurched sideways while the gee forces more than doubled. Her vision blacked out, and Masozi was vaguely aware of waking up after what she assumed had been several seconds.

  When her senses returned she noted that the craft seemed to have stabilized with what felt like a crushing amount of gravity that was very nearly that of their deceleration’s peak.

  “Are you all right?” Jericho asked as he cycled through the craft’s screens in apparent futility. “I could use some help with the vid feeds.”

  Masozi blinked her eyes hard for several seconds before nodding and assuming the task of interfacing with the craft’s computer. “I am,” she replied hoarsely as she found the external video feed of their craft’s various cameras. “How long do we have?” she asked as she called up the various feeds and set them to run parallel on the screen.

  “You can do the math better than I can, Investigator,” he replied as he gestured to the craft’s fuel indicator—which was now reading as only forty percent full. “But we burned up most of our fuel settling into a relatively stable trajectory to maximize our remaining angular momentum, and the rest is just going to fight against the planet’s gravity until it’s gone…my guess is we’re looking at about eight minutes before we essentially go into freefall.”

  “That’s an awfully narrow window,” Masozi said just before a large, green light began to flash above the console. “What is that?”

  “That,” Jericho said with more than a hint of relief, “would be our ride.”

  The light continued to flash, increasing the speed at which it did so until it was nearly solid—a sequence which took nearly two minutes—after which time an alarm began to beep urgently.

  “There might be a—“ Jericho began, but was interrupted when the craft lurched violently, snapping Masozi’s head to the left hard enough to crack her neck. The g-forces intensified once again and the craft assumed a new trajectory. “Little bump,” Jericho finished lamely.

  Twenty minutes later, the hatch to their tiny craft popped open and an insectoid alien’s visage greeted Masozi. It was wearing a similar uniform to the ones the rest of the H.E. employees had worn, with a white base and blue trim, and it gestured with an appendage which ended in a trio of long, narrow pincer-like ‘digits.’ As Masozi was nearest the hatch, she exited first and descended a short set of moveable stairs to find herself inside a small shuttle bay of some kind.

  Jericho followed behind her, and Masozi looked around to see a handful of people—three of which were distinctly different aliens, including the insectoid which had opened the craft’s hatch from the outside.

  “Jericho,” she heard a vaguely familiar man’s voice say, “right on time. We’ll have to skip the formalities.”

  Jericho stood to his full height and Masozi turned to see the source of the voice. She quickly recognized him as the same man who had ‘captured’ them beneath the Aegis Spaceport, and he was wearing a uniform with thicker bands of blue trim than the rest of the crew, in addition to a small series of what looked to be rank insignia over his chest.

  “Can we outrun them?” Jericho asked as he moved to join the other man, who had already begun to move toward the bay’s primary exit.

  Masozi turned to see a large, sleek-looking craft seemingly attached to their egg-shaped pod, and the bay was barely large enough to accommodate the impressi
ve looking vehicle. Then she realized that it wasn’t exactly attached to the pod, but it had used a set of grappling appendages—which had clearly been designed for their current purpose—that had secured the egg pod to the nose of the craft. She saw a quartet of letters along the sleek-looking craft’s main body which were ‘NdGT.’

  But she didn’t want to be left behind, so she turned and quickened pace to keep up with the others and heard the H.E. officer reply, “Yes, but I’ve got two H.E. ships in the area that haven’t yet reached their Phase Thresholds. If I bug out now the VSDF ship sent to pursue them will acquire firing solutions before they can escape.”

  Jericho looked like he wanted to argue, but instead he said, “You’ve got your orders just like I do, Captain.”

  “Correct,” the other man said with a curt nod as they entered a lift—which was far smaller than the ones on H.E. One, and barely fit the three of them without forcing bodily contact. “We’re to destroy the pursuing ship before assuming a supporting role to your mission.”

  “Is there any way we can assist?” Jericho asked.

  “Just try to stay out of the way,” the Captain replied before adding matter-of-factly, “this shouldn’t take long.”

  Chapter XX: The Sleeping Dragon’s First Breath

  The doors to the lift opened and the Captain stepped out onto the bridge before Jericho and Masozi did likewise. “Report,” the Captain commanded in a crisp, carrying voice as he made his way to the command chair near the center of the bowl-shaped room.

  “The VSDF Destroyer, Kathryn Janeway, has cleared Chambliss’ horizon and is moving to intercept the 355/113, Captain Charles,” an operator reported promptly. “The 4.669 is also well within the Janeway’s zone of control, even assuming a maximum-length engagement with the Pi Slice.”

  “Official vessel designations only, Tactical,” Captain Charles rebuked before calling up a series of commands on his chair’s control interface. “Helm, I think it’s time this dragon came out of hiding: plot an intercept course with the Janeway and push the secondary engines to full.”

  “Aye, Captain,” the helmsman replied eagerly, and Masozi was vaguely aware of the deck moving beneath her feet. Still gun-shy from the experience in the egg pod, she reached out to steady herself and her hand came up against a nearby bulkhead. Her fleeting look at that bulkhead revealed a small, bronze plaque which read: CSS-001 Zhuge Liang.

  “Tactical,” Captain Charles continued professionally, “estimated time to engagement using Tier Two armaments only?”

  “Tier Two range in…fourteen minutes, Captain,” the Tactical officer replied.

  The view screen at the fore of the bowl-shaped bridge flared to life, and Masozi saw what appeared to be a cloud of milky, white, gas which slowly began to dissipate until the Virgin star field was visible. The rings of Chambliss were also prominently displayed, and she once again felt the ‘ground’ beneath her shift as the ship lurched forward.

  “Get those gravity generators aligned on the double, Engineering,” Captain Charles barked, irritation creeping into his voice. “You’ve got thirteen minutes before we exchange fire with the enemy—fix it before then.”

  “Yes, Captain,” a woman replied from the far side of the room.

  Jericho tugged at Masozi’s elbow, and she turned to see him gesturing to a pair of apparently unoccupied workstations with chairs—and, more importantly, safety harnesses.

  Masozi realized that everyone else on the ship was securely fastened to their workstations, so she did as Jericho had silently suggested and a few minutes later they were locked into the empty seats.

  “The Janeway is adjusting her heading, Captain,” the Tactical officer reported after a few minutes of relative silence. “She’s now pursuing the 4.669; new estimated time to engagement, T minus fifteen minutes thirty seconds.”

  “Thank you, Tactical,” Charles acknowledged. “Helm, adjust course for new intercept trajectory.”

  “Yes, Captain,” the helmsman said, and the ship’s view screen shifted its view to the left about ten degrees. “New course plotted and laid in, sir.”

  Masozi felt utterly useless as she sat there, awaiting the inevitable engagement between the two vessels. She had no idea of the technical specifications of either ship, but even if she knew that information she wasn’t trained to do a single useful thing on the bridge of a warship.

  She turned to Jericho and whispered, “Did you know about this ship?”

  Jericho shook his head. “We knew that some of the equipment transfers weren’t going to the usual customers, but we also knew that if we were supposed to know where they were going then we would have been told. Most of us kept our questions to ourselves.”

  “You just blindly went around following orders even when things like warships were being built under your noses!?” she hissed, unable to believe what she was hearing.

  “We weren’t ‘blindly’ doing anything,” he replied with a piercing look, “for all his flaws—and they were many—the Director was a fair man. We mostly trusted in his vision, without which none of us would be here right now.” His eyes softened for a moment and he added, “Sometimes sticking your nose into dark places is a good idea, and other times it’s not. I’m sure you can appreciate that.”

  She took his meaning plainly enough, but focused on a word he had just used. “You ‘mostly’ trusted his vision…which suggests that you, yourself, had reason to doubt it?”

  Jericho stiffened almost imperceptibly. “That’s right, and it led me to learn certain things…and for a long time I wished to God I could have just had faith in the man instead of doubting him.” He shook his head and focused on the view screen, “But that time’s long past.”

  “The Janeway will enter her maximum firing range in twenty seconds,” the Tactical officer reported. “Our Tier Two armaments won’t reach effective range for another three minutes.”

  “Thank you, Tactical,” Captain Charles said before turning to face the Engineering officer. “Have you got those gravity generators recalibrated?”

  “Yes, Captain,” the Engineer replied frantically, “I’m running it through the final diagnostic cycle right now.” Tense seconds ticked by until she declared, “Gravity generators are operating within combat specifications, Captain.”

  Not two seconds later, the ship was shaken by a rapid series of impacts enough that Masozi’s head was snapped sideways hard enough to pop several joints in her neck, had they not recently undergone the same kind of whiplash in the egg pod.

  “Shields holding, Captain,” the Tactical officer reported promptly before another series of impacts could be felt throughout the ship. “Forward shields are still at eighty percent, sir.”

  “I want precise strikes against that destroyer’s engines, Tactical,” Captain Charles instructed as he steepled his fingers before his face while his eyes snapped back and forth between the multiple tactical readouts flanking the main viewer, which was now filled with a magnified image of what Masozi assumed was the Kathryn Janeway. The image on the screen adjusted its heading until it was driving directly toward the view screen’s pickup.

  “The Janeway has adjusted her heading,” the Tactical officer reported—unnecessarily, in Masozi’s opinion—before adding, “new time to engagement: one minute twenty seconds.”

  “Make up your mind, Captain,” Captain Charles muttered before raising his voice, “bring a concentrated burst of all forward weaponry to bear on her forward shields. I want to end this quickly.”

  “Yes, sir,” the Tactical officer reported, and Masozi saw a countdown timer appear below the view screen which ticked down from sixty three seconds. When the timer reached zero, Masozi instinctively gripped the arms of her chair and a salvo of bright, blue energy bolts flared against the Janeway’s shields. The assault continued for nearly two seconds before the other ship’s shields disappeared and several of the energy bolts hammered into her hull before the barrage briefly ceased.

  “She’s turning to pre
sent her flank, sir,” the Tactical officer reported just as another salvo of energy pulses smashed into the Janeway’s shields on that facing. Several indicators beside the main view screen, which appeared to indicate power levels of the Zhuge Liang’s systems, were reading as less than half full on what Masozi assumed were the ‘Tier Two’ weapon systems, whatever those were.

  Captain Charles leaned forward as he obviously processed the information arrayed before him. “Divert power from the primary engines to the particle cannons,” he instructed. “That should buy us enough extra firepower to take them down before they have a chance to change their priorities—again,” he added derisively.

  “Diverting power now, Captain,” the Engineer reported, and several of the power indicators beside the main viewer began to adjust until the primary weapons read nearly full power.

  Another volley if white-hot fire erupted from the Zhuge Liang as the Kathryn Janeway rolled to present the opposite flank’s shields before returning with a volley of her own.

  The ship juddered, but significantly less than the opening exchange had done. Masozi’s confusion at the difference in the apparent severity of the impacts was dispelled when the Engineer reported, “Gravity generators are nearly finished calibrating to maximum, sir. Another thirty seconds and they’ll be aligned within 0.02% of the specs.”

  “Good work,” Captain Charles said with an approving nod.

  “Their shield grid has collapsed,” the Tactical officer reported. “She’s launching torpedoes, Captain,” she added tensely, “I’m reading eight warheads inbound.”

  “Activate point defense grid,” Charles ordered in a level voice. “But keep our fire on the Janeway—let’s give her wreckage a metallic hydrogen bath—in Chambliss’ core.”