Tears of Kerberos (4 page)

“It’s me, Marcus. A few of us were shipped over earlier today to fill out some of the units in the 5
^th
. I take it you’ve already met these two?” he laughed.

The two marines had already moved away and were talking to each other quietly. They’d found themselves in a fight with Spartan on the very first day and he had no doubt they were still looking for some kind of payback from the bloody nose he gave them. Marcus on the other hand was a different person altogether. They’d fought together on the Station and Marcus was injured during the assault.

“What about the leg, I thought you’d been hit?”

“Yeah, still hurts. Took a 9mm round in the calf. They patched me up though, managed to avoid any serious damage. Somebody up there still likes me!”

The lights in the craft began flashing and the doors started to close shut.

“Secure all gear and personnel, combat drop in sixty seconds,” came the voice over the speakers.

With a loud clunk the doors shut and sealed. Almost as soon as they had shut the outer doors on the hull of the ship slid open to reveal the planet below. Spartan looked through the small slits running along the side of the craft to see the planet moving. The section the landing craft was on still rotated around the exterior of the ship. As he watched the planet appeared above and arced downwards. It was odd but the system was simple. The clamps would be released, the outwards force on the rotating section would cast the craft out into space, much like a person letting go on a merry go round though at much slower speeds.

“5, 4, 3, 2...1,” came a computerised voice.

With a shudder the craft released from the ship and pushed off towards Prime. From gaps running along the sides of his craft Spartan watched the other two landing craft launch and move into position along side them. Over twenty more were assembling in the little flotilla that would carry three full companies of commandos and CES units into action. A slight kick indicated the engines firing up and the craft accelerated into orbit and on its long arcing path through the atmosphere.

The development of capital ships started after the end of the Great War after one of the outer colonies in the Alpha Centauri had done the unthinkable and split from the Confederacy. For a time it looked like others would follow the example of Carthago and another war would split apart the fragile alliance. With eight rebel warships under their command they looked impregnable. It took an emergency flotilla to be assembled from every vessel still operational in the Alpha Centauri System and a violent battle that lasted three days before Carthago yielded. Since that fateful year the Confederate Navy has ensured it always controls larger, faster and more powerful vessels than those of the individual colonies.

Origins of the Battlecruiser

The CCS Crusader, the newest and deadliest ship in the Confederation military had just reached the outer markers around Kerberos, one of the eleven planets in the Proxima Centauri Star System. She was the flagship of the Confederate Navy and on her way home from the epic Siege of Titan after sustaining heavy damage and massive casualties. The battle had been unlike anything in the last fifty years and the repairs to the ship would probably takes months of hard work. The vessel moved into orbit around Kerberos as it steamed dust and debris from the dozens of damaged sections.

From space the planet of Kerberos gave off an odd greenish blue glow. Many people in the Confederacy considered the planet to be the most Earth-like of all the worlds but it was actually very different. The gravity and atmosphere were comparable but the air was much thinner. This made it difficult for the elderly or people with respiratory problems. This was one of the many reasons why the limited surface area had been built on so fast, creating insulated buildings with improved air supplies. Since it had been colonised the single super continent had been built up with thousands of tall buildings, a testament to the massive factories and workshops dotting the landscape.

Kerberos was an industrial world and although the factories and shipyards in Alpha Centauri were more famous for their quality and size, the new worlds in Proxima had proven cheap and competitive. The exports from the new colonies on Kerberos and Prime were almost reaching the same quantities of the old worlds. This growing competition increased the demands on the neighbouring planets and moons for raw materials. The massive increase in manufacturing had its problems though. The increase in mining and transport had created more than a few accidents. Even more of a problem was the never-ending scourge of pirates and organised crime. The riskier the businesses the more unsavoury the people involved were. Though Kerberos wasn’t the most populated of the planets it was where much of the technology and heavy equipment in the Proxima System was manufactured. Massive shipyards in orbit built transports and passenger liners that ploughed their way through the busy shipping lanes. One of the largest shipyards contained the half completed hulk of the sister battlecruiser to Crusader. This new vessel had already been lengthened by ten percent. This was to accommodate a set of hangars to carry either a number of gunboats or transports for marine detachments. A frigate was moored a short distance away keeping a watchful eye over the building project.

The main shipping lanes had already been cleared to allow the remnants of the Fleet to move into position around the orbital shipyards. Normally the vessels would have stayed at the Titan Naval Station at Prime but the Station had been badly damaged during the battle and subsequent sabotage. It was quicker to limp to Kerberos than wait for the docks and yards to be repaired sufficiently to allow work on the warships. What normally would take a matter of seven or eight hours had taken the ship three days. The Crusader was massive, though in space its size was only apparent when she approached other vessels. The hull looked as if it was wrapped in a series of bands rotating in unison around the structure of the ship. These bands along the hull provided full and half gravity to the vessel and its crew. She normally travelled with a full complement of over two thousand personnel and two hundred heavily equipped marines. Following the battle with the captured battleship CCS Victorious, the Crusader had sustained very heavy damage and the casualties amongst the crew were terrible. One of the reactors was still leaking and over half of her weapon systems were burnt out or destroyed.

Commander Anderson, the ship’s Executive Officer, was in command and his face showed sheer exhaustion from the last few days’ events. He was a man of slender build, with a freckled face and light brown unkempt hair. Like many of the naval officers he wore smartly trimmed sideburns and a small moustache. His uniform hadn’t been changed since the battle and it was crumpled and grubby. A dark bloodstain had smudged along the chest though it wasn’t clear whose blood it was. He was an experienced officer and had previously served with the Navy Cutter squadrons out in the wilderness on the Rim. It was an area of space that divided the colonised planets of Proxima and the outer gas giants. Much like the asteroid belt in the old Solar System it was packed with millions of tumbling rocks and asteroids, some the size of small planets and moons. The Rim was the heart of the mining and refining operations for many private corporations. With its many hiding places it had also become a haven for pirates and organised crime. There had once been a naval station there but it was destroyed in the Great War and never rebuilt. Commander Anderson had earned his reputation in a year-long campaign where he had led a wing of six cutters in the region. Operating from a modified frigate the group had captured over thirty known criminals as well as shutting down two of their bases. It had earned him the reputation as an aggressive but highly successful leader. He was a rising star in the Fleet. Becoming the executive officer on the CCS Crusader, the flagship of the entire Confederation Fleet, had been a great honour and the high point of his career. One day he hoped to command a vessel like the Crusader into battle at the head of a fleet. But for now he was babysitting the warhorse as she made her slow progress to the yards.

In the last few days the tense and critical role of helping to manage such a massive vessel had turned into something much more exciting. Instead of managing crew rosters and weapon systems, he had been thrown into something much more violent than anything he had experienced so far. As well as assisting in the running of the tactical operations during the Siege of Titan, he had also been on the bridge during the epic battle with the rebel battleship CCS Victorious. The battle had lasted a long time and hundreds and hundreds of crew had been lost in the desperate broadsides and boarding actions. Though Crusader had emerged the victor the ship had sustained 427 dead and 719 wounded. Only 42 of the entire 200 man marine force on board had survived boarding actions and violent broadsides of the battle between the two massive capital ships. This meant the warship had lost over half of her crew, though many of the injured were still manning their posts as she limped home. The ship was now more a slow moving memorial to the dead and injured than a deadly warship capable of facing any known vessel.

Until two days ago, Admiral Jarvis had still been aboard helping to organise the evacuation of the damaged and crippled warships. The Admiral had not been happy at sending the heavily damaged ship away, but with leaks in the reactor there was a chance the ship would lose power and end up dead in space. More ships were on their way from the rest of the Confederacy but it would be days before anything the size of the heavy cruiser or a battleship would arrive. Vessels of this size could conduct all kinds of missions from orbital bombardments to blockade management as well as the job they were mainly built for, combat against other vessels.

With space operations now focused on the blockade of Prime and the transport of personnel to the surface she had since transferred her flag to the escort carrier CCS Wasp. This vessel was almost as large as the Crusader but it was optimised as an escort carrier. As well as being able to handle the heavy gunboats used to escort shuttles and landing craft, it was also designed to operate as a command ship for amphibious operations. From there the Admiral could work alongside General Rivers in coordinating the action on and around Prime.

Hovering around the battered ship like a swarm of angry flies were gunboats of the Kerberos Squadron. This unit had already sent most of its warships to assist in operations at Prime. A number of the smaller vessels had remained, as well as the scores of gunboats that helped protect the infrastructure and ships orbiting the planet. The gunboats were tiny when compared to the warship but their size was deceptive. Each craft contained masses of weapons and electronic jamming equipment. In sufficient numbers they could take on small warships like cutters and frigates. Against civilian craft just one or two was enough to force a course change or demand inspections.

On board the Crusader lights started to flash on the communication panel. Lieutenant Nilsson, a dark brown haired officer with distinctive, green tinted brown eyes, examined the data coming from her communication desk. At first she thought it was one of the many malfunctions stemming from the damage they had sustained in battle. It quickly became clear that the indications were pointing to a narrow band burst transmission from the planet’s surface. She turned to the Executive Officer.

“Sir, I’m picking up encoded traffic on narrow band from the planet below.”

The Commander walked towards her desk and examined the data himself. His face contorted in confusion.

“I don’t understand. Narrow band is focused at a specific point. How are we picking it up unless it is meant for us?”

“It must be, Sir, unless it’s an accident.”

“I don’t think so. There’s a lot of space out here and the odds are miniscule. If it weren’t for us then who would it be for in this orbit? Can you decode it?”

I’m working on it, Sir, just give me a moment…” she replied, as she worked fervently on the system.

A series of coloured bars flashed on the display until a group of visual locks were removed to reveal a final security layer. Lieutenant Nilsson sighed before turning back to him.

“The message is encoded in a book-based cipher, only part of it makes sense without the code book, I have forwarded it to your datapad.”

Commander Anderson picked his pad up and entered his security code to gain access. He was surprised to find just a few lines of information from a source he didn’t recognise. There were details of several civilian ships and something or somebody called ‘The One’ and a list of nine buildings on the planet below. He recognised one of them as the Presidential Complex. Beneath the lists were two lines, both in some form of a cipher and one he had not seen before. At the top of the message was a coded word, presumably the name of the subject or certainly an identifying code. He didn’t recognise any of the words but the first line would be a good start. He was about to hand the material back for analysis when he noticed a prefix code used on board the Confederation ships and depots for access to low security areas. It was changed daily and this code had only been initiated in the last four hours.