Hunt for the Saiph (The Saiph Series Book 3) (24 page)

BOOK: Hunt for the Saiph (The Saiph Series Book 3)
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A raised hand from Rebecca stopped his narration. "Play the recording, Issac."

The POS agent tapped a key on his PAD and after a moment, a gravelly voice emanated from the room’s speakers.

"Mr. Anderson sends his regards, Bradshaw."

Rebecca could see the shock on the faces of the gathered men and women. "This is an enhanced recording of what the microphone in the rear of the car picked up. It clearly identifies a ‘Mr. Anderson’ as the man behind this. I believe this man to be Seaton Anderson and your job is to get me a watertight case that will see Seaton Anderson sent to the deepest, darkest hole of a prison we possess. Not a word of what we know leaves this room. This individual has attacked the state and he will be treated as an enemy of the state and so will anyone helping him. Am I clear?"

The nodding heads and mumbled acknowledgments from around the table reassured Rebecca that they got the message. As she stood, the rest of the room got to its feet.

"I shall leave you to it, then."

Rebecca was met outside the room by Joane Goode who matched her pace as they headed back to the president’s office.

"Senator Madkin is out of surgery and expected to recover well. With the pioneering nanite regeneration processes, the doctors expect him to regain full use of his left arm and shoulder within a few months. The doctors will keep him in for observation for a couple of weeks..."

Rebecca stopped walking and faced Joane. "Yes, yes, but the longer he spends in the hospital, the longer the presidential race is effectively being controlled by Grant, or should I say more correctly, Senator Dikul. By the time Kris is back on his feet, the race will be all but over. The question is... how do we keep Kris in the running? The vid reporters can't get anywhere near him in the hospital..."

"Excuse me, Madam President." Issac Sounder's unexpected interruption was something so rare, it took a moment for Rebecca to realize it was he who spoke.

"Of course, Issac, what is it?"

Issac looked unusually hesitant to speak, but when he did he did so with his usual matter-of-fact voice. "The footage of the incident was taken from the vid cameras which are the property of the restaurant and the restaurant owner has no obligation under law to keep those recordings private. They are his to do with as he will."

The political machine that was the brain of Rebecca Coston whirred into action. "You, Issac, have missed your calling as a political hack! Joane, why don't you make a call to a few news outlets and happen to mention while giving them an update on Senator Madkin that the authorities are examining video recordings of the incident. That should be enough of a hint for them to start searching for the footage themselves. Let’s see how Grant and Dikul try to spin footage of Madkin not only saving Clement's life by putting himself in the line of fire, but taking down the attacker while mortally wounded himself!"

For the first time that day, Rebecca felt the spring returning to her step.

 

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Fanning the Flames

 

SELENE SYSTEM - 272 LIGHT YEARS FROM EARTH

Sub Leader Norava adjusted his position in his command chair on the small flight deck of the Persai destroyer
Hovval
. It felt like he had been in the seat since time immemorial, but knew it had only been some fourteen hours by the ship’s clock, which advanced ever so slowly. Only another two hours until he was relieved by his second in command, Tollan, and he could head off for some well-deserved sleep. Sitting on the edge of a system where the occupants had made it clear you were not welcome was not good for one’s nerves. Never mind the fact that virtually every electronic system on the
Hovval
was closed down to minimize any chance of stray electronic emissions. This extended to the lighting on board and it had turned the whole ship into something resembling a cold, dark morgue. This thought brought a bare-toothed smile to his face. If the Turak caught them sneaking around out here, there was a very good chance the
Hovval
would indeed be his and his crew’s final resting place. When the orders came down from the fleet for Norava to take his little destroyer to the Selene system, he had queried them but when he was informed the orders came directly from Chancellor Volak's office, he had immediately complied.

The
Hovval
had been floating here on the edge of the system for nearly two weeks now and his passive sensors were recording constantly. The four Turak cruisers which the humans faced down when the Turak had first made their appearance were long gone. In their place was what Norava was sure was a slow but steady naval buildup. Even at this extreme distance, the computers were able to tell him that the Turak were busily constructing an orbital station and surface support facilities. A space elevator was being built which would link the station to the surface and a steady flow of freighters emerged from fold space to dock with the station. Of more concern to Norava was the growing number of warships that were entering the system.
Hovval
was too distant to make out any sort of fine details, but the size and energy readings the ships were giving off put them in the heavy cruiser/smaller battleship range and there were a lot of them. Some twenty-five at the last update. The Commonwealth only knew the areas bordering the Commonwealth that the Turak laid claim to. They still had no idea of the true size of Turak space or what resources they were able to bring to bear, but from what he had observed it was apparent they fielded a significant navy.

An unexpected flurry of activity around the tactical section caught his eye.

"Report!" He called gruffly.

The fixed features of the section chief turned to face him as the remainder of the section continued to work frantically.

"Sub-leader, we are reading multiple nuclear explosions and energy weapons fire emanating from the area of the Turak space station and the nearby shipping. Our passive equipment is not good enough to give a clear image of what exactly is happening but everything I am reading here points to a battle taking place."

Norava’s boredom vanished instantly. "How long before we can get visual imagery?"

"6.2 hours at this distance, sub-leader."

"Very well. Ensure all recorders are running and I want the communications probe constantly updated in case we need to launch. Engineering. Get our drive back on line but keep energy output as low as possible. For the time being, we will wait and see what happens and hope no one stumbles across us."

#

The battle, and the sensor and imagery data left Norava in no doubt that that was what it had been, had ended eight hours ago. It had lasted less than twenty minutes. Norava could still picture the holographic images of mighty warships, their color as dark as night and weapons’ pylons jutting out from the flattened, broad hulls as they emerged from fold space almost directly atop the Turak space station. Without hesitation, powerful grazers spat their murderous beams and the station rocked as the colossal amount of power contained within the energy fire lashed at the station’s armor. In what seemed like only seconds, the station came apart under the intruders’ withering fire. With the station gone, the warships switched their fire to the Turak ships. Norava could only imagine the blare of the alarms as the ships’ crews raced to their battle stations. Many never reached them. A wave of missiles speared out from the black ships and caught the majority of the Turak before even their point defenses became operational. It was a slaughter. Ship after ship succumbed under the impact of nuclear-tipped missiles. Hulls buckled and failed. Explosions racked the damaged ships until they could withstand it no more and the ships and their crew joined those of the space station in the cold embrace of the long night. The few Turak ships that did manage to put up a fight did so in an uncoordinated and sporadic fashion. How they fought! Energy beams flashed across the vacuum of space to strike at the intruders. Missiles darted back and forth. In the end though, it was all for naught. The intruders’ hulls seemed impenetrable. Energy weapons fire seemed to have no effect and nuclear detonations, which completely enveloped more than one of the intruders, were useless. The intruders emerged from the nuclear fire apparently undamaged. Outnumbered and outgunned, the remaining Turak soon joined their brothers. With the warships dealt with, the intruders split their force. One half began the methodical slaughter of the defenseless freighters, while the other half began a surface bombardment of the planet. The atmosphere was soon obscured by the radioactive dust clouds as debris was flung high into the stratosphere. Their mission of destruction completed, the intruders formed up once more and disappeared into fold space.

As the black angels of death fled the system, Tollan urged Novara to take the ship in closer to the planet. His second-in-command argued that now was a golden opportunity to recover pieces of the floating Turak debris. The intelligence that could be gathered from recovered hull plating, interior design, weapons and power systems and perhaps, the holy grail, complete or partial body parts. The Commonwealth still had no idea of the genetic make-up of the Turak and if Novara was to return to Pars with even a DNA strand, then the plaudits he would receive from the Chancellor would allow him to choose any ship he wished as his next command. Novara, however, wavered. He could see the benefits of Tollan’s argument but against this he must way up the reaction time of the Turak. What if one of the destroyed Turak ships or the space station had managed to get off a communications drone and a Turak force was even now on its way here? The destroyer would be swatted like a fly by a single cruiser. No. Better to remain here at the fringes of the system and observe. Let us see how the Turak react and in what force. Tollan again voiced his opinion, as was his duty as second-in-command. Let them wait twenty-four hours before returning to Pars. If a Turak relief force had not arrived in the system by then, it was a safe bet it was not coming. Novara saw the logic of the suggestion, so the crew of the
Hovval
settled down for a tense wait.

The wait lasted less than an hour and a half. From fold space emerged a flotilla of the largest ships Novara had ever seen. Six behemoths, which made the smaller battleships and cruisers that surrounded them look like minnows swimming alongside whales. Novara had fought against the Others and he had seen their mighty Vulture class battleships up close but even those ships at 2300 meters long and weighing in at 330,000 tonne seemed medium-sized in comparison to these Turak vessels.

Without moving his eyes from the tactical hologram that showed the Turak flotilla, Novara called out to his Tactical section. "Tactical, tell me you’re getting all this."

"Yes, Sub-leader. All data recorders are running... Standby! Aspect change! The Turak flotilla is dispersing... it looks like they intend on carrying out a sweep of the entire system, Sub-leader."

Novara had no intention of letting the Turak find him. "Navigation. Plot us a course for home and fold when ready." Novara sat back in his command chair with a sense of satisfaction edged with apprehension. The Chancellor had been correct in his decision to send the
Hovval
to keep watch on the Turak. The sensor data they had managed to gather was a veritable gold mine for the intelligence analysts, who would hopefully use it to identify the strengths and weaknesses of both the Turak and the mysterious black-finned warships. The appearance of the second flotilla of Turak ships was an unexpected bonus that had given them good sensor reads of the larger elements of the Turak fleet. The Chancellor’s gamble had been well worth it. Time now to head home with their winnings. The familiar disorientation of the shift into fold space enveloped Novara as the
Hovval
vanished from the Selene system.

#

DAGGER STATION - ASTEROID BELT - GARUNDA SYSTEM

Rear Admiral Pallas was quietly pleased with the progress the construction crew were making on the station that would be the lynch pin in the defense of the Garundan system, not that he would ever let them know this. The Garundan admiral was always an unwelcome sight as he conducted his unannounced spot inspections of the nearly completed station and more than one construction foreman had been the object of his scathing remarks when one piece of welding or siting of framework was not up to his standards of excellence. Pallas cared naught for what the builders of Dagger Station thought of him. Garunda may still not have the vast industrial or technological base of some of the other planets of the Commonwealth, which was why Dagger Station was built in the system’s asteroid belt rather than the Kuiper belt like its Terran equivalent, Gateway Station. No matter. He was determined to ensure his station would be seen as a shining example of how far Garundan technology had come from when humans had first introduced the people of Garunda to the wonders of space travel. Garunda would be forever in their debt. It was a measure of the high regard in which his planet and his people held the humans that this very station was named for the human frigate whose captain and crew had risked their very lives in the First Battle of Garunda to prevent the Others from laying waste to his home world.

With a touch of a key, his desk and the seat he was on began to rotate ninety degrees and one entire wall of his office receded into the roof to expose the humming brain of Dagger Station. The Central Operations room. Located at the very core of the massive station, rows of terminals manned entirely by native Garundans filled the expansive room, which was broken down into four key sections. One area was responsible for traffic control. Maneuvering and prioritizing shipping that intended to proceed sun-wards toward the inner system, or transship their cargo in one of the hundreds of large docking ports adorning the skin of the station. Another section commanded the growing fields of weapons platforms armed with ten centimeter grazers, high velocity anti-ship and anti-missile missiles and, more importantly, the buoys which generated the disruption field and which allowed no gravity drive ship to operate beyond the asteroid belt and extending inward to blanket the entire inner system. When completed, these weapons would form the outer shell of the station’s defensive belt. Pallas still considered it an error not to equip the station with a Garundan home-grown version of a space fighter as the humans had their Gateway Station, but the men who held the purse strings informed the navy point-blank that there simply was not the money at this time to design and build a Garundan space fighter, so that was the end of the argument. A third section of the room housed the operators who controlled the station’s integral weapons systems. Mounted on the hull of the station were over 200 heavy grazers, the like of which was found only on the heaviest Nemesis class battleship. Complementing the array of energy weapons were the armored missile silos, which covered the outer hull like sea barnacles. Their missiles were easily capable of hitting a target out to a range of three million kilometers from the station. And finally, there was the Engineering section, which ensured the vital organs of the station, the power plants which supplied the light and heating, the atmospheric recycling plants which provided air for all aboard to breathe and the thousand and one other things which were required to sustain life in the inhospitable habitat of space. This station would be the most powerful piece of military hardware anywhere in the quadrant when it was completed. The thought brought a frown to Pallas' forehead. He knew more than most that until the station was completed, it was still vulnerable. This was why he had requested Vice Admiral Kerta to station elements of Third Fleet adjacent to Dagger Station until such time as Pallas was satisfied the station was fit to take over the role of guardian to the gateway of the Garundan system. The sight of BatFor 3.2 floating serenely 500,000 kilometers from the station was one Pallas was glad to see. Only another three or four months, and the station would be able to dispense with their protection. Pallas sighed quietly to himself as he touched the key that would lower the wall back into place while he returned to the reports that were stacked on his terminal and seemed to grow more numerous every day.

A few tedious hours later and Pallas was ready for a break. The digital clock showed it was early afternoon and the admiral decided to sample the fare of the officers’ mess. Closing down his terminal, he stood and stretched his weary muscles.
Too much time sitting at your desk, Pallas
he berated himself mentally, promising himself an hour in the gym later in the day. He headed out of his office and it was only a short walk to the elevator bank, which would whisk him up the twelve levels to the mess. He was a few short steps from the elevator when the screaming of the battle station’s alarm resounded down the corridor. Spinning on his heel, he quickly retraced his steps, entering Central Operations just as the solid weight of the battle armor door slid into place with a loud bang, sealing the room off from the outside. Striding through the sea of sailors still scrambling to their posts, Pallas made a beeline for the duty command officer’s position located on a raised gantry giving them a commanding view of the entire room.

BOOK: Hunt for the Saiph (The Saiph Series Book 3)
9.59Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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