Alien Firestorm (Fire and Rust Book 2)

by Anthony James

  “Speak quickly,” the Fangrin snarled.

  “The mothership is drifting!” said Dominguez. “They aren’t firing at us and their propulsion is running at idle.”

  Griffin didn’t dare believe it and he kept up with the evasive maneuvers. The words were enough for Yeringar to hold fire and he didn’t launch a second wave of missiles.

  A few seconds passed and the Raggers didn’t fire their own weaponry. Dominguez repeated her certainty that the enemy craft was drifting and its behavior was enough for Griffin to think it was true. The disk floated in a straight line, rotating slightly as it went. It was exactly what he’d expect to see if it came out of lightspeed with nobody at the helm to correct its course or alter its speed.

  “Everyone’s dead,” he said. “The radiation killed them.”

  “Don’t they have shielding?” asked Dominguez.

  Griffin shrugged, uncertain. “Doesn’t look like it. Or not enough to block the rays from a 400-megaton proximity detonation.”

  The mothership drifted onwards and Griffin kept his distance. Dominguez scanned for outbound transmissions and confirmed the Ragger ship was silent.

  “Even a ship without a crew would broadcast,” she said. “Their kit must have been fried by the electromagnetic pulse! If their shielding wasn’t enough to protect their comms units, their sensors could be offline as well!”

  “And their stealth has failed,” said Griffin. “They’re helpless.”

  “We will take advantage of this situation,” said Yeringar.

  That was an idea which Griffin was ready to agree with. “What do you propose?”

  “I am thinking.”

  Griffin brought the Gradior to within a hundred klicks of the enemy spaceship. If any part of the mothership was operational, the cruiser would have been pulverized minutes ago.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  This was significant, though he hadn’t yet decided on the magnitude. The Gradior was only one ship and any backup was hours away.

  “Look at this,” said Dominguez.

  The plasma burned out, leaving a wide area of the mothership glowing with heat. The Tarx missiles had created a patchwork of craters and Griffin was shocked to see that not one had completely penetrated the armor plates. The railguns had done better. He saw two irregular holes right in the center of the damaged section, where the slugs had struck heat-softened metal.

  “Hull breach,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.” Dominguez zoomed in and enhanced. The heat made it difficult for the sensors and Griffin squinted at the image.

  “Clean through.”

  “We will send our troops onto the mothership!” said Yeringar suddenly. “Its command center will be filled with data that will give us an advantage over the rest of the Ragger fleet!”

  It was something Griffin had been thinking about. If the mothership was drifting, it was likely everything onboard was dead. It was probable that many of its onboard systems were burned out, but others were not likely to be vulnerable to either EMP or radiation.

  “How do we get inside?” he asked.

  “The Gradior’s transport will fit into one of those railgun craters.”

  It was dangerous and Griffin didn’t need to point it out. “What’s the primary goal?”

  Yeringar laughed. “Take over the ship of course!”

  “And do what with it?”

  “Take it elsewhere. We will learn much from it.”

  “How? We can’t just grab the controls and fly it off somewhere!”

  “Of course we can, human! The crew are dead – I doubt they bothered to shut everything down while they were doubled over in agony from their radiation sickness!”

  Griffin could think of a dozen other issues. He didn’t want to look like a naysayer but one question was unavoidable.

  “Do your troops know how to fly a spaceship? Lieutenant Conway is a tough bastard, but flying isn’t his game.”

  Yeringar paused and then scratched his head. The Fangrin were hot-headed and he’d clearly jumped at an idea without thinking it through. His next idea wasn’t any more reassuring.

  “You will go and I will remain here with Lieutenant Dominguez.”

  “What if the Raggers show up?”

  “You humans always think too much. Here is an opportunity. Seize it.”

  “We could wait for your fleet to arrive, Yeringar.”

  “If we can extract intelligence data from that mothership, we will be in a position to act immediately on our findings. The side which strikes first and with the greatest ferocity will be victorious.”

  The Fangrin sounded like he was reciting from an ancient textbook on medieval warfare. In spite of himself, Griffin knew he was caught up in the Fangrin’s enthusiasm. The Raggers had killed millions in Satra and that was just their opening shot in the war against the Unity League. Humanity was owed some payback and this was as good a time as any.

  Dominguez interrupted his thoughts with some other news. “The enemy ship is on a collision course with that nearby planet,” she said.

  “Just great,” said Griffin. “How long?”

  “Twenty-four hours.”

  “Enough time to capture it a dozen times over,” said Yeringar.

  In theory, it was more than long enough, except the combat suits probably wouldn’t last that long if the radiation was as strong as Griffin suspected. “Let’s do it,” he said.

  The Fangrin transport wasn’t much different to every other transport Conway had ever sat inside. It was too dark, too cold, claustrophobic, noisy, and it stank of paint, grease and Fangrin sweat. The craft had room for twenty, in five rows of four, with an aisle down the center. On this flight, it was less than half full.

  “Who’d have thought it?” said Barron, shaking her head. “Working together with the Fangrin to kill some other alien bastards.”

  Conway didn’t feel like answering. He watched the small viewscreen on the front bulkhead, which currently displayed one wall of the Gradior’s rear bay.

  “We’re on our way,” said Griffin over the comms. He was in the front cockpit, through a doorway a few meters away.

  “Hold tight,” said Zargol, also in the squad channel.

  Zargol had done something to the comms units that allowed the human and Fangrin kit to link effectively. Kemp didn’t like the idea of speaking to the aliens, let alone fighting alongside them. Conway didn’t feel much better about it either, but he knew when it was time to accept the inevitable. The Raggers had come and Conway suspected humanity was going to have to embrace the Fangrin like the best of friends if they were to get through the coming war.

  The clamps holding the transport disengaged and Conway experienced a momentary sense of acceleration. The grey wall of the holding bay changed to unending blackness. Conway felt his body strain against his harness and knew the transport was coming in a tight circle. More acceleration, more darkness and more muttering from the troops.

  Across the aisle, the Fangrin Akandar and Lonstril sat patiently, dressed in full combat suits taken from the Gradior’s armory. They carried assault rifles and Lonstril had a huge pack at his feet which Conway knew to be a laser cutter. In front of those two, Mavingkar lounged in his chair. The Fangrin medic had left Corporal Freeman alone in the Gradior’s medical room. It wasn’t something Conway was too happy about, but they needed everyone for this assault.

  All of the Fangrin had recovered rapidly from their time in the Ragger prison and Conway sensed their eagerness to get on with things. The aliens made challenging opponents and he was sure they’d make strong combat partners.

  “I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d rather be here than back in that studio on New Destiny,” said Lockhart with a laugh.

  “Not me, Sergeant. I was born for television,” said Kemp, rousing himself to answer.

  “With that spot on your chin?”

  “Darcy Gaines didn’t seem to mind. She gave me wink.”

  “Bullshit.”

&
nbsp; “It’s true! I swear it!”

  “Shame she’s too dead to ask,” said Barron.

  “She’d have loved to see your moves,” joked Lockhart.

  “Elvis Kemp, lothario of the ULAF,” added Barron. “Spots, bullets and bad breath in a combat suit.”

  “I know what I know,” said Kemp. “I should’ve been waking up in a nice hotel room right about now, with Darcy Gaines lying next to me. Instead, I’m sitting on a Fangrin transport waiting for deployment onto an irradiated Ragger spaceship the size of Durham.”

  It was difficult to be sure when Kemp was joking and when he was serious. Conway suspected that half of the time, the soldier didn’t even know himself. Kemp had lost his old man in the early days of the war, shot in the head by a Fangrin on a planet nobody had ever heard of. It must have been tough, finding himself on the same side as the aliens.

  “Think of the medals, soldier,” said Conway. “All the ladies like a man with a dozen bravery awards pinned to his chest.”

  “That’s what I keep telling myself, sir. More medals equals more ladies.”

  Conway didn’t keep it going and dropped out of the conversation. He couldn’t deny this felt strange – from TV studio to enemy mothership, via a 400-megaton nuclear explosion, yet his experience was enough to keep him comfortable with the change of circumstance.

  A dot appeared on the viewscreen. It grew larger, but Conway wasn’t able to see many details because the transport’s front sensor wasn’t up to the job. By the time the Ragger mothership filled the entire display, he was able to identify the pattern of plasma scarring, along with a blue-white opening directly ahead.

  “That’s where we’re going,” he said.

  “Looks tight,” said Lockhart.

  “Captain Griffin thinks it’s enough,” said Conway. It did look tight.

  “And no resistance expected, huh?” said Barron.

  “Nothing expected,” Conway confirmed.

  “Why don’t you sound convinced, sir?” asked Kemp.

  “Because I’m not. Listen, you all know the score. We might get lucky and find every damned Ragger dead from radiation poisoning. Until I’m sure, I’m going to assume the place is swarming with invisible, flesh-eating shit-headed alien bastards.”

  “I chewed on four anti-rad tablets,” said Kemp. “The radiation won’t get me.”

  “Four times the advised dose,” said Lockhart. “You are a stupid man, Private Kemp.”

  “When you’re glowing in the dark, don’t expect me to come to your rescue, sir.”

  Conway wasn’t sure if it was Griffin or Zargol at the controls of the transport. Whoever it was, they took the vessel directly towards the opening, hardly slowing.

  The comms came to life. “It’s going to be hot when we arrive,” said Griffin. “Deploy immediately from the forward exit and move away from the shuttle.”

  “Stay in your harnesses until we get the word,” Conway reminded everyone.

  A few seconds later, he felt the shuttle collide with the Ragger mothership. It was a solid, crunching impact and he was thrown against the straps. He grunted and waited for a secondary impact. None came.

  “Everyone out,” said Griffin. “Welcome to the Ragger hell-hole.”

  Conway didn’t have the knack of operating the Fangrin harness fastenings and he struggled for a moment before they came free. He stepped into the aisle and made for the forward exit. The three Fangrin got there first and Akandar lifted the thick handle on the door until it was vertical. He thumped his palm on the surface and the door swung open like it weighed nothing. Blue-white light and heat entered the transport’s passenger bay, along with enough radiation to cook a twenty-pound chicken in under fifteen seconds.

  Without saying a word, the Fangrin sprang one after another through the opening. Conway came to the doorway and found himself facing a buckled floor on the far side of a gap. He looked down into darkness filled with shapes and edges. It was getting hot and he couldn’t stand gawping. The shuttle’s engines roared, the floor tilted beneath him and the gap became a little bit wider.

  Two long strides and a jump was enough to get Conway across the gap. The floor was uneven and he stumbled forwards. A huge hand grabbed his arm and hauled him upright.

  “Don’t fall,” said Lonstril.

  Conway scrambled clear and looked about. He was standing on a relatively clear area. A few meters away, sheets of metal jutted upwards, ending in jagged edges, with some jammed against the ceiling above. The railgun shots had caused tremendous damage and the impact force had created a ripple effect, visible everywhere. The puncture didn’t go much deeper than this – there was only so much armor a slug could go through – and the projectiles were nowhere to be seen.

  To his left, the way looked passable if you crawled beneath a bent slab of metal. A depressurization wind blew through the opening, confirming it as one way to get deeper into the spaceship.

  He turned to make sure the others were coming. Lockhart jumped next, then Kemp and Barron. The shuttle was wedged into a gap in the mothership’s armor – its blunt nose forced deep into an opening that was only just large enough. The transport rocked and shook and Conway could only guess at the difficulties facing the pilot. He caught the scent of metallic smoke and saw a glimpse of it coming from both the shuttle and the surrounding metal.

  Griffin appeared in the doorway, carrying an assault rifle and still in his flight suit. He leapt clear and before he’d made it more than half a dozen paces across the ground, Zargol jumped after him, carrying one of the Fangrin’s heavy shoulder launchers like it weighed nothing.

  “What about the shuttle, sir?” asked Conway. “It doesn’t look secure.”

  “It isn’t. We’re leaving it there – it can act as a comms relay between us and the Gradior. It should give us some extra range when we’re onboard.”

  It was a good idea, though Conway didn’t like the way the shuttle bounced around inside the hole. Zargol had left its engines running to keep it in place, but it was easy to imagine something going wrong.

  “We’re here to take this ship, Lieutenant. If we’re forced back to the shuttle, it means we’ve failed.”

  If Griffin’s words were meant to be inspiring, Conway wasn’t feeling it. Somehow, he’d been given charge of this job, so it was in his hands.

  “This way,” he said, pointing towards the fallen slab of metal.

  Conway led his squad towards the unknown.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The space beneath the slab was low and Conway struggled through. It was dark and he couldn’t see much, while the metal beneath his hands and knees was hot enough to generate alerts on his HUD. His suit was designed to withstand radiation, but that didn’t stop a dedicated alarm chiming constantly in his earpiece. It was irritating and every time he turned it off, it started up again shortly after.

  Lockhart found it harder to get through the crawlspace and the Fangrin harder yet. The language modules were programmed so that they wouldn’t translate swearing, leaving Conway to guess at the meaning behind the growls and guttural snarls on the comms channel.

  Eventually, Conway was able to stand up in a room on the far side of the broken plating. The lights were on, allowing him to see everything clearly. It was a large room with one wall bowed inwards and the alloy cladding sheets split in many places. One of the cable racks had come down and it rested on the solid floor, leaving a bundle of green-sheathed cables dangling from the ceiling, many of them severed.

  Something made a droning noise and there were many different monitoring panels on the walls which could have been the source. Directly opposite, Conway saw an open door leading to another room or maybe a corridor. Air blew through it, with noticeably less intensity than earlier. To his right, another door was closed and the associated access panel glowed with a red light.

  “Another spaceship,” said Lockhart, with the cynicism of a man who’d seen many like it.

  “Yeringar believes the bridge will be
central,” said Griffin.

  “That means we go right,” said Conway. He walked towards the closed door and it suddenly struck him that he wasn’t acting with enough caution. He was starting to believe all this talk about the radiation killing the entire crew and it was making him lazy. “Secure this damned room,” he ordered sourly.

  The door was operated by a long, thin lever, similar to those he’d seen on the Ragger lifter. This one wouldn’t move.

  “The door is locked,” said Zargol. “That is what the red light means. Would you like me to open it?”

  “You can do that?”

  “We have learned much about our enemy, including how to open their doors.”

  Zargol placed a broad hand flat against the door panel and withdrew it. The light was still red. The Fangrin tried again.

  “Odd,” said the alien.

  The mundane expression of puzzlement would have made Conway laugh on another day.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Perhaps this spaceship has been placed into lockdown on account of the hull breach.”

  “That means we’ll have to do a lot of cutting. How many doors can that laser pack of Lonstril’s get through before its power runs out?”

  “Several.”

  Griffin had some thoughts. “It’s certain the lockdown only covers the area close to the breach,” he said. “Otherwise the surviving crew wouldn’t be able to move through the ship.”

  “Once we get away from here, the doors might respond,” nodded Conway. He backed away, unwilling to burn through one door when another was open close by. “Let’s go this way.”

  Conway crossed the room and noted that the door here was completely missing, which is why it hadn’t closed after the hull breach. He put his head into the wide corridor outside for a quick check and withdrew before any passing Raggers could put a bullet through his skull.

  “The corridor goes right, directly towards the center of the ship. I saw doors and intersections and maybe some steps. And Raggers – dead ones.”