Iron Dogs (Fire and Rust Book 1) by Anthony James

Author:Anthony James [James, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-07-09T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

In contrast to the warm-up, lightspeed travel was relatively smooth. Occasionally, the Star Burner was shaken by some kind of turbulence that the scientists couldn’t explain, the sensor feeds were all blank and even the FTL comms system wouldn’t function. Other than that, it was hunky-dory as long as you didn’t mind sitting helplessly in a metal cocoon as it defied the laws of physics in a way nobody quite understood.

“What’s the plan once we get to Zevrol?” asked Kenyon.

“Neutralize any Fangrin we come across and make a raid on their comms mainframe.”

“And this is an orbital comms hub, rather than deep space?”

“We don’t know.”

“I thought we had intel, sir.”

“We have intel which tells us the Fangrin have a comms station at Zevrol.”

Kenyon scratched his head. “An orbital hub would be made up from a network of interlinked satellites and we may not be able to identify the location of the mainframe just by looking at them. It would be far better if this was a single deep space station.”

Griffin was aware of the theory. A deep space station didn’t have to worry about planetary rotation in order to transmit. Anything in orbit would be constrained by having to ping its broadcast from one satellite to the next until line of sight with the destination was achieved. The Unity League’s newer comms stations were all deep space and the older orbital systems were being phased out or replaced.

“We’ll handle the details when we arrive,” he said.

“I’m just saying that one way will be a lot harder to pull off than the other.”

“I know.”

“Is this going to change the war?” asked Lieutenant Jeffrey.

“It has the potential to. If we can pull out the data from that comms hub and unscramble it, we should be able to find the location of every Fangrin rust mine.”

“And then we go nuke ‘em.”

“It gives us the option. Or we destroy the surface facilities to cripple the Fangrin. Or we use the intel to bring them to the negotiating table.”

“I say nuke,” said Jeffrey.

“And drag out the war for another twenty years,” said Kroll. “Count me out.”

“You’d happily have the League Council negotiate with these dogs?” asked Jeffrey in disgust.

“I’d rather we had peace on our terms than lose another few million of our men and women.”

“An eye for an eye.”

“And everyone ends up blind.”

“Murder deserves punishment, whatever it costs.”

“Let’s calm it down,” said Griffin. “We hate the Fangrin and they hate us. Let’s not keep repeating the same old crap.”

Jeffrey wanted to keep going, he could see it in her eyes. According to the files, she’d lost a brother a few years back and her last psyche evaluation listed her as borderline. Too much anger for active duty. This was the first he’d seen of it.

“I don’t want eleven days of this,” he warned.

“As long as I get to fight, sir.”

Griffin checked the instrumentation. The velocity gauge suggested they were stationary, since the hardware didn’t function at lightspeed. Other than that, everything else was in the green.

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