Read on for a preview of Chapter One
of Dreadnaught.
“Preliminary examination of the exterior housing reveals no obvious damage or evidence of tampering.”
Bao Cheng spoke clearly into his spacesuit’s audio pick-up. He wanted to be sure that he made a complete and accurate record of his findings. Not only were his words being recorded by his suit, but his transmissions were being monitored by the flagship of the peacekeeping fleet patrolling this section of the border. Out of all of the technicians in the People’s Space Defense Forces, he had been selected to lead the investigation into the recent failure of several deep space detection buoys that comprised the Great Net. For more than a century the network of sensor stations had guarded the sovereignty of the People’s Republic of Na. In all that time there had never been any failures in any of the buoys—if you believed the official reports.
Of course Bao had been in the service of the state long enough to know that buoys did go off-line from time to time. It didn’t happen often, but it was a fact of life that from time to time electronic systems failed. This was invariably due to the usual causes—meteoroid collisions, spikes in EM radiation, or just plain age.
Of course this was something that could never be admitted to publicly. As far as the rest of the universe was concerned the Great Net was an impenetrable barrier comprised of hundreds of thousands of sensor buoys completely englobing the People’s Republic. By sending out regular electronic pulses the buoys kept watch for any ships approaching the sovereign space of the People’s Republic, both stealthed and unstealthed. And it was Bao’s duty to ensure that those buoys remained in operation. Officially, whenever a buoy went off-line, the reason given was that it had been shut down remotely for routine maintenance. A repair crew would be sent to the site and the unit brought back up as soon as possible. Over the years the repair crews had become proficient at resolving most of the usual causes of buoy failure. But this time was different.
Nine sensor buoys had gone off-line over a period of several hours, all in the same area, and all without any warning that the systems were in trouble. Considering that less than twenty buoys on average went off-line in a twelve month period, the failure of this number of stations all at once was highly unusual. A repair crew had been dispatched to the first buoy that failed but the technicians had been unable to determine the cause of the failure. To be more precise, they knew what had caused the failure, but not why it had happened. When the crew inspected the buoy they found that its systems had been shorted out by a massive power overload, its circuit boards fused into useless lumps of silica. The damage was extensive though not irreparable. The trouble was they had no idea what could have caused such an overload.
Then, as more and more buoys went down, the Ministry of National Defense placed the entire nation on a state of heightened alert. Patrols along the borders were doubled, with extra forces diverted to the region where the buoys had gone dark. The concern of course was that this was a prelude to invasion. Having a single buoy go dark was a relatively minor concern since there was so much overlap in the system. But the loss of nine buoys in the same area created a gap in their defenses that could allow an entire enemy fleet to slip though. That was when Bao and his team had been called in.
The Chairman himself would be receiving a copy of his report. By that time of course he needed to have resolved the issue. If he could not find the reason for the mysterious failures and correct it he would surely be called before the People’s Internal Security Committee for questioning. Few ever returned from such sessions.
“Li, hand me a number four socket wrench,” Bao said.
He was about to remove the access panel to the buoy they had just grabbed with their ship’s manipulator arm. It would be the fourth buoy they had examined. Like the others it showed no visible damage externally and if the pattern held he would find its circuits burned and fused. He had already stuffed his pouch with the replacement boards he would need and he should be able to have the buoy up and running again in short order. But first he needed to remove the access panel.
“Li, I need that wrench,” Bao said, irritation evident in his voice.
His assistant, Li Song, was usually quick to follow instructions. The number four wrench was the standard size used to open the buoy panels. They had used it for every other job and she should have had it ready in anticipation of his needing it. When it wasn’t pressed into his hand after several moments he looked around for his assistant. He finally saw her floating several meters out from the buoy at the end of her tether.
“Li, what are you doing? We have a job to finish here.”
In response Li raised her arm and pointed. Bao turned around to look in the direction she was pointing.
At first he saw nothing. Then he realized that most of the stars had disappeared from the space above them. A large section of the sky was mysteriously blank. He remembered that the Waterfall nebula had been visible when they first arrived at theses coordinates. Its broad swath of color had been a prominent feature of the nearby space. Now there was nothing but blackness above.
Then he saw it.
The stars and nebula had not disappeared, something was out there, hanging above them, something dark and ominous. Bao craned his neck and looked around. It was difficult to judge its size without a point of reference but some gut instinct told him it was huge.
At that instant a series of lights blinked to life across the surface of the object. Running lights. It was a ship, but a vessel unlike anything he had ever seen before. Then, as he swept this gaze across its hull, his engineer’s eye began to recognize details of its construction. It took his mind a moment to accept what his eyes were telling him. The ship was farther away than he had first thought. Yet for it to occupy that much space it had to be larger than any ship he had ever seen. He did a quick mental calculation and realized that it was even larger than the carrier flagship of the peacekeeping fleet that had escorted them here. Much larger.
Bao scrutinized the ship as it continued to hang overhead. It was definitely not a ship of the People’s Republic. It lacked the brutish starkness that was typical of his nation’s constructions. It also had no identifying markings, nothing to indicate what nation it did belong to, but there was definitely something familiar about its lines.
He found himself transfixed as he gazed at the intruder, fascinated by the mystery it presented. Something about it was disturbing, leaving him with a sense of foreboding. Then he recognized numerous gunports along all sides of the craft—rail guns, blasters, lasers, particle cannons—as well as projector cones for powerful battle shielding. Whatever else it was this ship was a predator.
A moment later his suit radio burst to life. Panicked transmissions were being broadcast by the ships of the peacekeeping fleet as the intruder suddenly appeared on their sensor screens. That could only mean that the ship was outfitted with a stealth system and had just now dropped its screen.
Something bad was about to happen.
He turned his attention back to the buoy and began releasing the manual locks on the manipulator arm’s clamp so that they could disengage their ship from it.
“Li, I think we should get back to the ship and move away from here,” he radioed to his assistant. There was no answer.
As soon as he finished with the manual locks he turned around to look for her. She was no longer floating at the end of her tether where he had last seen her. Instead, he looked toward their ship and saw that the cabin lights were on. Through the cockpit viewport he could see Li at the controls, her hands darting from control board to control board as she frantically readied the ship to get under way. She was going to leave him behind.
He was just reaching to unclip his tether line when the ship’s engines flared to life.
“Li! Wait! I’m coming in!” He radioed to her. She either didn’t hear him or was not listening. Before he could fire his suit thrusters and start back
to the ship it was backing away and starting to spin around. In her haste Li had forgotten all about the manipulator arm and it barely missed swatting Bao in his head as she raced to put as much distance as possible between herself and the intruder.
As Li fired up the ship’s main engine and started pulling away, Bao cursed himself for not thinking to hang on to the manipulator arm. He knew that his suit thrusters were not powerful enough catch up with the shuttle so he didn’t attempt to go after her. When and if anyone thought to come looking for him, the first place they would look would be here with the buoy.
As much as he was angry with Li, he also understood her actions. She wasn’t abandoning him as much as she was simply fleeing in a blind terror. They had worked together for several years and he had come to know her as well as he knew anyone. She had suffered a lot during her life and ever since he had known her she had been extremely skittish. She was a brilliant scientist and one of the most talented programmers he knew. She could design sophisticated computer systems on a scrap of paper and debug a thousand lines of code in less than an hour, but she jumped at sudden noises and could not sleep without a light on.
He was just thinking about what he was going to say to Li the next time he saw her when a series of brilliant flashes lit the space around him. The intruder had fired on the fleeing shuttle. It was a short burst of high intensity blaster fire, delivered dead on target. The ship erupted in a blinding fireball.
Before he had the time to fully digest the fact of Li’s death, the space around him was suddenly filled with gunfire. The peacekeeping fleet was closing with the intruder and it looked to Bao as if every ship in the fleet had opened fire on it. Particle beams and blaster fire stabbed across the intervening space and slammed into the intruder’s shields.
Pulling himself into the questionable protection offered by the sensor buoy, Bao watched as some of the most powerful ships in the People’s space forces unleashed their full fury against the intruder. As the fleet drew closer missiles were unleashed as well, their fiery tails streaking across the sky.
For a time the intruder was obscured by the pyrotechnic display of its energy shields as they repelled the assault by the peacekeeper fleet. Like a cocoon of light the glowing energy barrier pulsed around the intruder forming a protective bubble. All during the assault the intruder remained motionless, appearing almost haughty as it hung suspended before the full onslaught of the fleet bearing down on it. But that would soon change.
Shielding his eyes from the worst of the brilliant display, Bao watched as the missiles closed with the ship. While the intruder’s battle shields were powerful, he knew they could not stop the spread of missiles that were homing in on it. In moments those missiles would begin to exact revenge against the cowards who had taken the life of a frightened little woman who had never harmed a soul in her entire life.
Just as he was thinking this, the first of the missiles exploded. One after another the rest of the missiles reached the intruder and erupted into searing fireballs. There were so many that he quickly lost count and was forced to opaque his helmet visor to protect his eyes as he clung to the buoy and rode out the shockwaves.
The bombardment seemed to go on for a long time, but eventually the explosions stopped. Bao waited for several seconds to be sure that the last of the missiles had found their mark, then cleared his visor and peered around the buoy.
The intruder was still positioned above him just where it had been, appearing completely unscathed. The engineer in Bao was impressed by what he saw. Even a ship the size of the intruder should have sustained some damage from such a concentrated barrage. Shields could not stop matter, only energy. Yet somehow this ship had withstood the combined firepower of an entire peacekeeping fleet without any damage. It didn’t seem possible but Bao had seen the proof with his own eyes.
From the corner of his eye, Bao saw the first of the peacekeeping fleet pull into position facing the intruder. It was a battleship, the Emperor’s Hand if he was correct. He had actually been aboard that particular ship for the journey out here. Their shuttle had been transported aboard the Hand while he and Li had been given racks with the general crew. Normally they would have spent the entire trip aboard their cramped shuttle, but the Defense Ministry wanted them on site as quickly as possible and they had docked their ship in the shuttle bay and rode in unaccustomed comfort out to the site. He remembered thinking how big the ship was while they had been aboard it for the outward journey. Now, as it faced the far larger intruder, the battleship looked like a toy in comparison.
Immediately behind the Hand the other ships of the fleet pulled into formation, spreading themselves out in a line facing the larger ship, while the carrier took up position above them with a clear line of fire on the enemy ship.
The frequencies had been cleared and Bao heard the commanding admiral of the fleet order the captain of the intruder to surrender. It was a gutsy move considering that the fleet had launched everything they had against the intruder with no effect.
For a long time the fleet held their position, waiting for a response from the intruder as the admiral repeated his demands. More than a minute passed before there was a response, but it was not in the form of a message on one of the comm frequencies.
Instead, the intruder opened fire. The first attack was against the Hand. A single blaster cannon opened fire. For a time the Hand’s shields withstood the assault, the brilliant patches of blaster energy flaring against the invisible barrier. But under the overwhelming power of that cannon, the Hand’s shields soon failed. Once the shields were gone the powerful blasts began hammering into the ship itself, blowing gaping holes in its hull. In seconds the Hand was reduced to a battered hulk.
As soon as the intruder opened fire the other ships of the fleet returned fire. Like before, the intruder remained motionless as it withstood the assault, but this time the ship struck back as well. One by one each of the attacking ships was targeted by the intruder. Bao watched as it opened fire with first one weapon and then another as it systematically took out the ships arrayed against it. One ship would be pounded with blaster fire until it was destroyed, the next would be bombarded with projectiles from a rail gun, another would have its shields overloaded by a powerful laser.
To Bao it looked as if the intruder were using the opportunity to test the effectiveness of its weapon systems. As he watched the one sided battle it seemed more and more likely to him that this was exactly what the intruder was doing. Eventually, there were only two ships left of the original peacekeeping fleet—the carrier flagship and a heavy battle cruiser. While the carrier and the battle cruiser continued to fire on the intruder, the other ship ceased fire.
Bao was confused by this sudden turn of events. As far as he could tell, the fleet had had no more effect on the intruder this time than it had during the first engagement. He wondered if something could have gone wrong aboard the other ship, perhaps the strain of battle had overloaded some of its control systems. Then something completely unexpected happened.
The battle cruiser suddenly stopped firing. To Bao the ship seemed to shudder briefly, almost as if it had been struck by some invisible force. Its engines flared briefly and the ship began to tumble out of control. A moment later its engines exploded, sending the ship tumbling off into space, powerless and completely out of control.
Now only the carrier remained.
The flagship of the peacekeeping fleet continued to fire on the intruder with everything in its arsenal. It had launched all its fighter squadrons early on in the battle and the small ships buzzed around the intruder like a swarm of angry honeybees attacking a bear, with as much effect. For the time being the intruder completely ignored them.
Then the intruder opened fire on the carrier. It was a single blast from a particle beam cannon. The beam was so powerful that even though he had not been looking directly at the beam Bao was momentarily blinded. The powerful beam punched right th
rough the carrier’s battle shields as if they weren’t there and bored a hole completely through the ship. Secondary explosions erupted from within the ship spewing flames briefly through the rent in its hull before the lack of oxygen suffocated the fires.
Half of the carrier’s cannons stopped firing after the ship took that hit. For a time the intruder held its fire while the carrier regrouped and turned to align its remaining guns at a better angle on its opponent. But nothing the carrier fired at the intruder could penetrate its shields. Even missiles had no effect on the enemy raider.
Then the intruder opened fire again with its particle beam cannon. This time the beam completely severed the command sail from the main body of the ship with a single shot. All return fire ceased then. Its engines failed as well and the mighty carrier began to drift. A short time later the intruder unleashed one final blast which bored into the engineering section of the ship. The carrier exploded in a brilliant fireball, showering glittering debris in all directions.
The battle was over.
Now that the carrier had been destroyed, the intruder finally turned its attention to the nuisance of the fighters buzzing around it. Previously unnoticed anti-aircraft batteries which studded the intruder’s exterior came to life and opened fire on the fighters. The deadly hail of slugs tore though one ship after another, making short work of them. A few of the fighters broke and ran, but each one was tracked and cut down by blaster cannons. In minutes there was nothing remaining of the fleet.
Bao didn’t hesitate. He knew that he had no chance of surviving out here on his own. It would be hours if not days before more forces could be mobilized and sent to investigate the scene here. His suit was not equipped with a recycler for extended EVA. It was a basic suit intended for short excursions. He would run out of air long before any help could arrive.
There was only one place he could go.
Once he was sure that the shooting had stopped, he popped out from behind the buoy and used his thrusters to accelerate toward the intruder. After it had destroyed the last of the fighters it continued to remain in position. Bao didn’t know if the crew was running internal system checks or scanning the area to admire their handiwork, but as long as the ship was there he had a chance.
He fired his suit thrusters at maximum and accelerated toward the looming ship. If he could just reach it before it moved off he might have a chance.
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