Dark of the Void (Forged Alliance Book 1) by Anthony James

Author:Anthony James [James, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-01-31T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Fleet Admiral Carl Recker stood on the edge of the Amber landing strip, his gaze aimed at the sky. It was raining a fine mist which left a sheen on his combat suit, and soaked his hair and exposed skin. Nearby, his shuttle idled in a quiet hum. Overhead, the throbbing notes of lifters and the deeper, faraway sounds of the landed fleet warships, created pressure in the air. Recker breathed in steadily until his lungs were full. This late afternoon on Basalt was dreary, but there was a crispness of autumnal chill that he loved.

“The Loadout is due to exit lightspeed in five minutes, sir,” said Lieutenant Christy Garber. Following Recker’s lead, she also wore full combat gear which surprisingly didn’t look out of place on her. “Like you ordered, it has priority clearance to land.” She levelled a finger at the empty space ahead – a space into which a heavy cruiser would neatly fit. Beyond that, three other heavies were landed for routine maintenance. “It’s going right there.”

“This rain can go away,” said Lieutenant Thad Vogel.

Recker sighed inwardly when he saw the other man making a useless effort to wipe rain from his combat suit and reminded himself that Vogel was employed because he was a damned good liaison officer, not for his ability to put a gauss slug through an alien skull at fifty thousand metres in vacuum conditions.

“Captain Osteen, have there been any reports of a Kilvar appearance at the scatter points on the Loadout’s return journey?” asked Recker.

Captain Bobby Osteen was broad-shouldered, short-haired and curt with people he didn’t like – a curtness which was the main obstacle between him and promotion, since it tended to rub other vital personnel the wrong way. He was also one of the diminishing number of officers with extensive combat experience from the Daklan wars, and often came up with a different take on a situation, which was an ability Recker appreciated.

“No reports of enemy activity at either scatter point, sir.”

Recker was uneasy, but he’d done what he could to protect Basalt. During the Lavorix wars, he’d once been pursued by a vast enemy warship which could detect and follow lightspeed tunnels, and the extended engagement had been one of the most stressful times of his life.

Subsequent to the war’s conclusion, he’d created numerous scatter points between alliance planets. These scatter points were clusters of shuttles, transports and old-model warships stationed together in remote locations. The idea was for a threatened warship to stop at a scatter point midway to its destination and for every gathered spaceship to then enter lightspeed at the same time, creating dozens of lightspeed tunnels heading to different places. Of course, only one of those tunnels would lead to a populated planet, but any pursuers wouldn’t know which it was.

Given the appearance of a previously unencountered alien species – likely Kilvar - Recker had ordered the Loadout to return via two of the scatter points, introducing an exponentially larger delay to the enemy if they gave chase by exhaustively following each lightspeed tunnel.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.