“I see what you did there, sir,” said Private Carrington.
“This is the real deal, Private, so cut the crap,” said Vance. “We’re not on Tibulon now – this is Basalt and last I heard, there were eighteen billion people living here. There’s a warship in an underground facility north of here and it’s packed with alien-busting technology. Without that exium module, it’s going nowhere.”
The message finally began to sink in and the newer members of the platoon shifted uneasily at the load Vance had just dumped on them. They weren’t lacking in training, they simply hadn’t been given an opportunity to gain experience and this was where they’d need good officers to keep them steady.
“Are we going to run into more of those Kilvar, sir?” asked Private Faye Raven. She was carrying two Rodans as well as her gauss rifle, and the soldiers around her were also laden with spares for Sergeant Tagra’s squad.
“Take it as given. That’s why you’re carrying guns, soldier. You use them to shoot bad guy aliens before they blow your head off and make humanity and our Daklan friends extinct.”
“Yes, sir,” said Raven, straightening. “I will shoot every bad guy alien I see.”
“There has been a facility-wide comms outage, Lieutenant,” said Corporal Charnos. “Our suit units will function adequately, but we may run into problems when we’re underground.”
“The Amber comms are more robust than those on Tibulon, soldier,” said Recker. “We’ve got hard links to ground receptors, along with battery power to every major hub. We won’t be sending any real time FTL comms, but everything on the base should work exactly as intended – it just may take a few minutes for the re-routing to happen.”
“That is good,” said Charnos. He grinned, showing both his fangs and his more humanlike teeth. “You have configured your base in the Daklan way.”
“Hey, it’s you Daklan copying us humans, my good buddy,” said Drawl.
“Enough,” said Vance at once. “Let’s get things moving while the going is good.”
He looked into the sky, expecting to find nothing but clouds. Instead, he saw a gargantuan shape descending through the developing gloom of evening. At the same time as he spotted the Kilvar warship, Vance caught the sound of its engines, which produced an oppressive resonance that made him growl low in his throat. The other soldiers looked as well.
“Damn and crap,” said Private Bautista. “Looks bigger than the one on Tibulon.”
“It is,” said Recker, who was likely to be the best judge out of anyone here. “It’s twelve klicks from nose to tail.”
The Kilvar warship wasn’t just long. By Vance’s judgement it was about eight kilometres across the beam at its widest point, with an overall shape similar to an elongated diamond. As it dropped through the clouds, Vance spotted more of the forward-jutting spines that he’d noticed on the warship at Tibulon.
“Any chance we can bring the Ixidar back into service, sir?” Vance asked Recker. “We’re going to need it.”
The Ixidar – known as the Destroyer - was a warship of immense, destructive prowess, captured from the Lavorix twelve years ago. Last Vance had heard, it had shut down and the alliance hadn’t yet figured out how to return it to an operational state.
“If I could, I would, Lieutenant.” The longing on Recker’s face was unmistakeable. “The Ixidar would turn that Kilvar warship to powder in two shots. We’ve installed the first replica of one of its cannons on the Firestorm.” He shook his head, his gaze distant. “Twelve years of research and it’s got nothing like the punch of the original tech.”
The Kilvar warship descended until it was hovering at an altitude of three thousand metres. It seemed to Vance that he could reach out and touch it from where he was standing and he stared at this enemy, like his anger could reduce it not just to powder, but to the very atoms from which it was made.
“Fleet Admiral, we should go,” said Garber. “Lieutenant Vance has this under control.”
“That he does,” said Recker. “Good luck, Lieutenant. Whatever help I can send your way I’ll do it.”
“I’m not sure this calls for thousands of troops, sir. Crowds will attract attention.”
“Let’s watch and see. This is a military base and there are tens of thousands of ground troops stationed within its perimeter. I know how vulnerable they are to an orbital strike, but I don’t want the exium snatched from our grasp by a lightning attack either.”
Vance had never been a man for bravado and figured that actions always spoke loudest. He didn’t pretend he could hold out against a thousand Kilvar ground troops and he didn’t act like this was going to be a walk in the park. “We’ll hold the device as long as possible, sir.”
“I know you will.” Recker turned and his gaze settled on Captain Flint. “I can’t promise you I won’t relieve you of this duty, Captain, but if you’re first to the Firestorm, don’t wait. Take it and do what you can.”
Flint’s voice was deep and steady. “I’m locked out of the Firestorm documentation, Fleet Admiral. If I’m to fly it, I should know what it’s capable of.”
“I’ll fix that for you once I’m at the command and control bunker, Captain,” said Recker.
Vance was impatient to be on his way, and by now, Sergeant Tagra and his squad were at the bottom of the cargo ramp, doing their best to corral a dozen of the alliance’s finest technical minds who were arguing heatedly over the exium prototype which hovered silently in the middle of them. A few bellowed orders had the scientists hurrying in Recker’s direction. Absently, Vance counted five humans and seven Daklan making up the dozen.
“A thousand metres to the command bunker? It’s going to be a long trip for the Fleet Admiral,” said Sergeant Gantry, handing his spare Rodan to Private Janie Mack.
“It’s the scientists I’m worried about,” said Vance. He spoke into the comms. “Everyone listen up! We’re moving out to the main research facility. Any sign of a Kilvar, shoot it first and ask questions later.”
Vance interfaced with the exium unit and gave it a command to follow. The fastest way to get on course was by heading underneath the shuttle. He glanced at the sky again, which had darkened appreciably since the Kilvar warship settled into its low altitude position. It wasn’t only the vessel’s bulk which was responsible – where the clouds were visible, they were darker than before.
“I don’t know if I’d prefer night or day,” Vance said, more to himself than anyone.
The underside of the shuttle was high enough that he wasn’t required to duck and he hurried rapidly towards the opposite side. Behind him came twenty-four soldiers, five members of the Loadout’s crew and an exium module which might or might not be the most valuable object anywhere in the alliance.
Holding briefly at the far edge of the transport, Vance once again looked up, just as a beam of deep red energy stabbed outwards from one of the Kilvar warship’s jagged protrusions. It struck somewhere to the south and was followed by another. A rumble followed a few seconds later, and then Vance spotted bright specks of missile propulsions coming down at incredible speed. The missiles detonated, again out of sight and the crack-boom of a sound wave came soon after.
Vance had already decided this mission was going to be a tough one and that was without the explosives. Now the missiles were raining down and he had energy beams to dodge, it had just got a whole lot harder.
Chapter Fourteen
Vance pushed the pace, but not so much that his platoon would be exhausted two kilometres from the shuttle. Gravity on Basalt was lower than the training baseline, which gave them a slight advantage, as did the higher gravity on Tibulon where the soldiers had recently been stationed. Having exited the parking lot, Vance kept it simple by choosing the main avenue north. He could have plotted a route undercover directly through the tall buildings to either side, but he took a gamble based on the Kilvar’s tactics last time he’d fought them.
The Amber base was logically arranged and the avenue stretched far into
the distance. It was cluttered with power-drained vehicles in all shapes and sizes. A column of angle-sided lightly armed transports was grounded and empty, the hundred-metre crawler they’d been escorting abandoned with them. Where the occupants had gone, it was elsewhere than here. Once the bombardment started, they’d probably decided to shelter in one of the many bunkers beneath Amber and await orders.
That didn’t mean the streets were empty – personnel ran or walked hurriedly in groups or alone. Some shouted questions and the best Vance could suggest was that they take cover wherever was available.
“Do you require assistance?” yelled one Daklan officer, who was leading a platoon in the opposite direction on the other side of the road. Weapons bristled from their ranks and they held good order.
Vance was impressed by the alien’s perceptiveness and he slowed to a walk. “We’re taking this device to the main research facility. It’s what that warship came here for. Can you follow us at a distance? The enemy may be watching for large troop movements.”
The Daklan tapped the side of his helmet and his green eyes glowed pinpricks in the shadows. “We will follow.”
“These are Kilvar and they’re tough,” warned Vance, setting off again.
“So are we, human,” said the Daklan.
Something in the officer’s defiance gave Vance a shiver of pride. The alien had been referring to the alliance when he said we, not just his own species. Respect was mutual and, when Vance thought back to his years fighting the Daklan, he knew it always had been.
A few dozen personnel vehicles had been left haphazardly along the side of the road and Vance was required to divert away from cover in order to go around them. He felt immediately vulnerable and his internal alarms started chiming. Looking up at the warship overhead, Vance saw two more of the energy beams stabbing into the Amber facility.
The first energy beam hit somewhere to the east, only three or four buildings over and the crack of sound was painful. It was followed by the squealing of tearing metal and the sharp snapping of concrete.
“Next come the missiles,” said Steigers.
In came the warheads, a couple of them landing near where the first energy beam had struck. Turning to look along the eastern side road, Vance saw the bright flashes against the matte walls of the flat-sided buildings along that way. A warm breeze washed along the street, turning rapidly into a hot wind.
“Shit, move!” said Vance, increasing his pace. It was looking like time for a change of plan and his eyes scanned ahead for options. All he saw was cars, trucks and people running.
“I thought the Kilvar wanted to capture the exium, not blow it up in a random attack,” said Private Enfield.
“You are very stupid, even for a human,” said Private Rendos. “The enemy behaviour mimics that which we saw from them on Tibulon.”
“Yeah, Enfield you dope,” said Drawl. “They’re blowing up peripheral targets, aren’t they? Like warships and stuff, just in case we manage to get them off the ground.”
“I hope they aren’t blowing up our warships,” said Lieutenant Fredericks, who was in the platoon channel along with everyone else. “I sent out instructions on how to install the old control software and get the engines running again.”
“We have forty-five warships currently stationed at Basalt,” said Flint, evidently with high-level access to the juicy stuff. “Lieutenant Frederick’s instructions went to every one of them. Sooner or later, that Kilvar warship is going to have hellburners exploding against its hull. Even if it’s no more than a distraction.”
“Do we know it’s only a single enemy vessel we’re facing, sir?” asked Vance. The last he’d heard, only one had been sighted, but after that initial report, he’d been dealing with other issues and as a ground officer he wasn’t party to discussions about the fleet.
“I’m not sure, Lieutenant,” said Flint. “I know we’ve lost our satellite ring – all of them in one go this time, not piecemeal like on Tibulon.”
Nearly ten minutes had passed since the shuttle came down and Vance thought it was time someone got a grip on the situation. Recker was the man to do it, but according to a suit comms ping, he was still four hundred metres from the command bunker.
“Shuttle!” yelled Private Raven.
The vessel flew into sight from one of the side roads a few hundred metres ahead of Vance. It was twenty-five metres long, rectangular in shape, and both ends were tapered, making it impossible to be sure which was the front. Slowing to a halt, the vessel rotated.
“Take cover!” shouted Vance. “Hold fire until I tell you.”
With that, he sprinted behind one of the personnel cars and crouched out of sight, with his shoulder pressed against the metal and his Rodan held tightly in both hands.
The platoon wasn’t spread and most of the soldiers threw themselves behind the same two vehicles which had been left on the pavement in front of a row of bushes. Amber didn’t have much in the way of greenery, so the building beyond those bushes probably housed a senior officer or two, Vance guessed.
“I can take it down, sir,” said Private Raimi.
“And then bring every other enemy shuttle our way?” said Vance, chancing a look along the street. “Don’t be stupid, Private – we’ve got a long way to go yet.”
Vance heard a thumping sound coming from somewhere else and he turned to pinpoint the sound. A pair of rockets sped along the avenue and detonated against the Kilvar transport, momentarily hiding it in the centre of a blinding flash. Whatever tech the enemy used to make their warships immune, this shuttle wasn’t fitted with it and when the light faded, its front end was crumpled from the impacts and the plasma heat. Laboriously, the vessel climbed, its engines droning like they were holding up ten times their rated load.
What Vance at first thought was two pieces of flaming debris dropped from the Kilvar shuttle and plummeted to the ground. He swore when he realised it wasn’t wreckage – it was the same alien types as he’d encountered on Tibulon. For a few seconds, the shapes lay on the ground unmoving, and then one struggled upright with plasma still chewing at its flesh.
“Want me to shoot it, sir?” asked Sergeant Gantry.
Before Vance could answer, a third rocket and then a fourth hit the shuttle. This time, the vessel was ripped apart and a shower of superheated fragments were scattered in the sky. One piece came down vertically, crushing the alien which was already tottering and with smoke billowing from its flesh.
That Daklan officer and his platoon did us a real favour, thought Vance.
He leaned out so he could see back along his route, guessing what was coming. The Kilvar warship didn’t keep him waiting and it dropped a warhead into the middle of the street about three hundred metres south. Vance wasn’t sure if the Daklan officer and his platoon had perished. Hopefully, they’d dashed straight for cover and avoided the missile blast.
“I can hear other transports, sir,” said Private Steigers. He was a couple of metres from Vance, behind the same vehicle and with his head raised so he could peer through its open windows.
“Look, the enemy warship is under attack!” said Private Banks.
Vance tipped his head back and saw lines of white and orange coming up from the surface to strike the enemy vessel’s underside. Against its enormous size, the attacks looked pitifully small, but at least it was something that might keep the Kilvar looking in multiple directions.
“I thought everything was shut down,” said Drawl.
“Almost everything in the HPA military runs on a variation of the same backend software, just tailored or developed for each particular use,” said Lieutenant Fredericks. “It’s possible some of the guys out there figured out how to kick their engines into life again.”
“Can you do the same with any of these cars, sir?” asked Drawl.
“Not likely, Private. These vehicles are locked down to stop untrained personnel screwing around just for the hell of it,” said Fredericks.
Vance ordered s
ilence and set off again. The parked vehicles thinned and he was able to hug the walls on the west side of the road. He spotted another platoon of soldiers along the next side road and most of them were carrying shoulder launchers which they aimed at the warship over the base.
“Going to need something bigger,” said Corporal Hendrix.
The increased pace Vance set had deepened his breathing and increased his heart rate. His eyes kept going to the distance counter on his HUD map, where the numbers were counting down far slower than he would have liked.
“Fleet Admiral Recker has reached the bunker,” said Captain Flint. “Maybe we’ll see a more focused response.”
Vance was sure it would happen, but doubted there was much Recker could do that would make this sprint to the research building any safer. The base was in twilight already and darkness was approaching fast, making it harder to discern shapes in the road and those in the sky. Between the warship and the rooftops, Basalt’s lone moon was rising in a crescent of pale-yellow luminance. Soon, Vance knew he’d be relying on his night sight and motion sensors. Perhaps the enemy ground troops would be hampered by darkness, but he wasn’t banking on it. Certainly, night time wouldn’t make a difference to the warship.
Over the course of the next minute, the exchange of fire increased steadily in intensity. Hundreds of tracer lines from ground-launched weaponry made patterns on the sky, while the explosions from return fire produced much larger flashes and the thunder of plasma detonations was a constant rumble which came from all directions. Watching it from ground level as he ran between the flanking buildings made Vance feel like an insect – too insignificant to control his fate and just waiting for a boot heel to descend and crush the life from his body.
Unaccustomed to flights of fancy, Vance cursed himself for being distracted. His anger gave him energy and he increased his pace once more, leaving the soldiers to grumble in the squad channel that he was killing them.
Dark of the Void (Forged Alliance Book 1) Page 15