“That’s Ragger warship number ZN116 on our tactical, Lieutenant. They only sent one to greet us.”
“They didn’t realize it was their mothership.”
“More luck. Let’s enjoy the ride while we can.” Griffin reached across to the comms input panel.
PRIME015> We have restored basic sensor functionality.
ZN116> Follow to base.
PRIME015> It will take a short time for our tactical to update.
ZN116> Understood.
Something Griffin had already worked out was how to pilot the Ragger mothership. No matter how sophisticated a warship’s autopilot, you always needed a manual input. He positioned himself in front of a row of six control bars, which were surrounded by buttons. It resembled the control system on a ULAF heavy lifter and he was confident he could handle it.
“Lieutenant Conway, you’re promoted to comms officer. Anything appears, you give me a shout.”
“Yes, sir.”
Conway was clearly reluctant, but he didn’t complain. Griffin had another thought.
“If we can do it without making the bridge vulnerable, I’d like someone to look at the exact arrangement of wires on these replacement comms and sensor modules and copy it to some of these other spares. Maybe we can improve our capabilities.”
“I will do that,” said Zargol without hesitation. He loped over and got started.
The sense of elation was still with Griffin and he placed his hands on the controls, ready to follow the Ragger ship ZN116.
Chapter Twenty-Four
A few long moments passed and the mothership’s sensor didn’t obtain a visual on ZN116. The single active array only had 180-degree horizontal sight and 90 degrees on the vertical, making it limited in what it was able to detect.
It was time to take matters into his own hands and Griffin pushed on two of the control bars in order to rotate the mothership. The note of the engines reached him as a distant hum, hinting at near-limitless reserves.
Griffin kept a close eye on the sensor feed to his left, hoping it was set to automatically snap to target. He cursed a few times under his breath and then he noticed the sensor going through a zoom-adjust-zoom routine as it attempted to acquire a target.
“Got them.”
ZN116 appeared on the display – it was a cruiser with a low profile and domes positioned on the front and back. The readout indicated the spaceship was 312 meters in length and additional text provided data on its displacement and classification.
“There they are,” he said. “Politely waiting for us.”
With a stretch, Griffin was able to access the weapons panel. The battle computer had identified ZN116 as a friendly and the firing options were greyed out. An override option was available and Griffin smiled when he saw it.
“There’s a message on this screen saying they’re returning to base, sir,” said Conway. “They must have had enough of watching us do nothing.”
“We’re ready to follow, Lieutenant.”
The tactical screen added vector data for the Ragger cruiser and Griffin did his best to copy. The mothership’s controls were well-calibrated and he found it easy to feed in the right amount of power. Erratic flying would invite further enquiries from the crew on ZN116 and he didn’t want them becoming suspicious. Not when everything was going so well.
The cruiser flew along a gentle curve and the planet which Dominguez had identified as home to the Ragger base came gradually into sight, with the red-grey-black coloring that Griffin remembered from the Gradior’s sensors.
“Let’s see where we’re going,” he said.
On a more familiar spaceship, it would have been straightforward to predict the destination of Ragger cruiser, assuming it remained on the same course. Since he was juggling far too many tasks, it wasn’t quite so easy for Griffin and he was reduced to tracing an imaginary line across the tactical and trying to picture how that related to the visual feed of the planet.
“Dammit,” he swore.
“Anything I can do to help, sir?” asked Conway, clearly hoping the answer would be no.
“I’ll let you know, Lieutenant. What I really need is to have another few of these sensor and comms modules online. Once that happens, the battle computer can do most of the work.”
Griffin leaned sideways to see how Zargol was getting on. The Fangrin was picking his way through hundreds of different cables, none of which seemed to be plugged in yet.
“This will not take long,” said the alien without looking up. “Once I have the method, I will be able to replicate it quickly.”
“Fine,” said Griffin, not exactly reassured.
The Ragger ship didn’t fly at excessive speed and it wasn’t hard to keep up. It provided Griffin with a good opportunity to learn and he found himself becoming more competent with each passing second. In the absence of a crew, he was always going to be limited, but at least his hands were falling into the right places when he needed to access something.
A few minutes passed and the enemy craft accelerated, doubling its speed in a few seconds. Griffin followed it exactly and part of him was glad that the period of steady travel was over.
“I think I can predict our destination,” he said. “Let’s see if the sensor will get a fix.”
He believed the Raggers were heading towards a flat area to the east of a mountain range, the peaks of which extended thousands of klicks north and south. The stone in this area was a rich, deep red color and it looked as inhospitable as any desert.
Griffin’s efforts to get a clear visual on the destination weren’t successful. The single sensor array was operating at much less than maximum – a limitation of the replacement module. Not only that, a warship usually relied on input from several different arrays in order to combine separate data streams into something more accurate.
“Is there a plan here, sir?” asked Conway. “It feels as if we’re willingly following the enemy into their lair.”
“We are, Lieutenant. At first, I hoped to get us away from here with this mothership we stole. The longer this goes on, the more ambitious my thoughts become. This is the Ragger forward base – maybe we can do some real damage to it before the enemy catch on.”
“Think they’ll fall for it?” The doubt in Conway’s voice was clear.
“They have so far. The biggest limitation in this is me. I can’t operate an unfamiliar spaceship by myself, especially not when most of the sensors are offline.”
“There is one less sensor offline,” said Zargol. “I have plugged a second module into the console.”
The news was a pleasant surprise and Griffin watched the new module come online. It still didn’t provide 360-degree coverage, but its visible arc overlapped with that of the first module and gave an improvement to the detection range.
“We might get something now,” said Griffin.
He operated the sensor panel with one hand and attempted to zoom into the planet’s surface. The distance was great and the image was far from perfect. However, it was enough for Griffin to detect a blurred greyness, though without enough details for him to make out specifics. The sensors provided him with a size estimate.
“Four hundred square klicks,” he said.
It was bigger than he was expecting and was confirmation that the Raggers were here to stay. Griffin tried to increase the clarity on the feed but the installation remained elusively indistinct.
Ten minutes later, Zargol got a third sensor module plugged in. This gave the mothership full 360-degree upper sight, though it was still limited when it came to detection of anything on the underside. It was enough for Griffin to order a change.
“Zargol, we require additional comms modules in order to receive the battle network data. At the moment, the single module is choked.”
“I will begin at once.”
The Fangrin was efficient and Griffin suspected that, in spite of Yeringar’s assertion to the contrary, Zargol was more than a foot soldier. Maybe he was high-ranked. I
t wasn’t the time to pry out the truth and Griffin left the alien to his work on the comms module.
The planet grew larger on the feed and soon, Griffin was able to obtain a much better image of what the Raggers had brought here. It wasn’t good.
“A massive landing strip,” he said. “I count eighty warships parked up, with room for many more.”
“Maybe they haven’t committed any more of their fleet to this base, sir, and what we see here is what there is.”
“I don’t get that feeling, Lieutenant.”
“Plenty of supply buildings around the perimeter,” said Conway, taking a look at the feed. He tapped one part of the screen where a grainy object moved slowly towards one of the parked spaceships. “Loading up with something.”
“It’s a standard forward base, Lieutenant, just bigger than any other one I’ve seen. The ground crews will work day and night to keep the warships fully loaded for operations. When the order comes, the fleet will fly out, kill a few million humans and Fangrin, and then come back.”
“And this is our chance to stop them.”
“Yes,” said Griffin, realizing he’d let himself travel too far down that path already. It was as though the unconscious part of his mind had tricked him into thinking he had a choice, when that was never the case. They were going to attack this Ragger base, whatever the consequences. “When we’re close enough, we’re going to blow the crap out of this installation,” he said.
“How long until we’re within range, sir?”
“We could fire missiles and railguns already. Those won’t be enough. We’re carrying hundreds of incendiaries and those are the only weapons that’ll wipe out eighty Ragger ships before they take off and kill us. In order to deploy the incendiaries, we’ll need to be close to reduce their opportunity to use countermeasures.”
“We put our head in the lion’s mouth.”
“Sometimes it’s the only way to get things done. We have another problem – the Raggers will have patrols in the air nearby. I have a feeling our sensors won’t detect any local ships with active stealth modules – those are the ones best placed to knock out our incendiaries and us with it. As soon as the live battle network updates start coming through, we’ll know exactly where every Ragger ship is located.”
“How long until that happens?”
Griffin took a look at the progress of the battle network update. The data continued trickling in and until it was complete, the live updates wouldn’t show. The mothership’s sensors could detect local ships and add them to the tactical, but Griffin couldn’t spare the time to do the work manually.
“I don’t know.”
“I could assign another couple from the squad to patching in these replacement modules.”
“That’s going to leave the bridge defense weak.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Full comms functionality won’t be much use if we’re dead.”
Soon, the mothership was within fifty thousand klicks of the planet. Griffin did his best to become familiar with the layout of the weapons panel. It wasn’t any more complicated than the ULAF kit and he was sure he could operate it effectively. He itched to start shooting the Raggers, but the range was still too great to guarantee success.
As each minute passed, Griffin became more agitated. It wouldn’t be long until someone with real seniority on the ground came onto the comms and began demanding answers to tricky questions. Once that happened, the game would be up and if the moment came too soon, Griffin knew he would be unable to prevent the mothership being destroyed by the Ragger ships.
“We need that comms unit, Zargol,” he said, suddenly wishing he’d asked the Fangrin to deal with this first instead of the sensors.
“I am almost finished.”
True to his word, the Fangrin tied in the comms module shortly after. The mothership’s bandwidth doubled and the battle network data flowed in noticeably quicker.
“Plug in one more comms unit, please,” Griffin ordered. “Then back to the sensors.”
“We’ve received a message from ZN116, sir,” said Conway, sounding worried.
“What does it say?”
“It says we are coming into range of flight control. Is that important?”
“I don’t know,” Griffin replied. “It shouldn’t be. Every base has flight control.”
“Ah crap,” said Conway. “Here’s another message, this one from a new source calling itself SC9. We’re going to be brought in.”
Griffin took his hands off the controls and dashed around the console until he could see the comms screen. He had to be sure of the exact wording in case Conway had misunderstood. The inbound message from the Raggers’ flight control station was unambiguous and Griffin returned to his position, not exactly sure what he was going to do.
In the end, his intentions didn’t matter. The controls had become unresponsive and the propulsion system no longer responded to his input. Griffin frantically searched for a way to override the Ragger flight control system. He was certain there must be a way, but he was unable to locate it.
Under the command of a new entity, the Ragger mothership descended rapidly towards the installation below.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Can’t we wait until we’re within a few dozen klicks and then incinerate those bastards?” asked Conway. “That should take out their flight control at the same time.”
“A good plan, Lieutenant. Except we’re frozen out of the weapons systems as well.”
Now that he wasn’t flying the ship, Griffin was able to spend more time on the sensors. He focused on the installation, hunting for the source of the control signal. The Ragger base was filled with hundreds of boxy structures – each built for speedy deployment rather than to win an architectural competition, and it took him some time before he located what he thought was the place.
“See those antennae on top of this building, Lieutenant? That’s where the enemy flight control computers are located.”
“Do you think they are suspicious, sir?”
Griffin wasn’t sure. “Maybe the Raggers don’t allow their spaceships to come in on manual.”
“I thought everyone used autopilot.”
“It’s not unheard of for mistakes to happen.”
“They’re taking the risk out of it.”
“And catching us out at the same time.”
Griffin wasn’t one to give up and he kept on searching through Prime015’s onboard systems for some kind of override. It soon became apparent that even if the original Ragger captain was still alive, he wouldn’t have been able to cut off the flight control system. The ground station computers were imbued with a higher authority level than the spaceship and could therefore do whatever their programming dictated.
“They’ve got some big ships down here,” said Conway.
The mothership was close enough now that its sensors could pick out many more details. The eighty Ragger ships came in many shapes and sizes, and five of them were close in length to a ULAF carrier. Griffin traced a fingertip along one of them – it was square-edged, with few external armaments and resembled a cargo ship more than anything else.
“You have not encountered all of these types before,” said Zargol, looking up from his work on the comms station. “The Raggers have technologies that are difficult to counter. As soon as we Fangrin think we have the measure of their warships, something new appears.”
“What are the capabilities of these large craft?” asked Griffin, pointing them out.
“They carry many sorts of cargo. Predominantly meat.”
“What sort of sick bastards are these Raggers?” spluttered Kemp from across the room.
“It’s not the time, Private,” warned Conway. “We’ve seen well enough what they’re capable of.”
The Ragger flight control system brought the mothership vertically towards one of the many gaps in the airstrip. The place was as busy as Griffin expected. Hundreds of vehicles sped from place to place, whilst mu
ch larger flatbeds hauled in the heavy ammunition. He didn’t see any sign of large-scale repair facilities, which was a minor positive. It meant that any Ragger ships damaged in combat would have to return to one of their main bases, hopefully many days flight away from here.
The mothership wasn’t designed to land. Instead, it hovered a couple of meters above the ground. Its engines weren’t strained and Griffin could only hear them running when he listened carefully.
One of the sensor feeds showed the flight control station only a few hundred meters away, with nothing in between. The closest Ragger warship was about three hundred meters away, lined up with half a dozen others.
“Here come the soldiers,” said Conway.
Vehicles flooded through the huge open doorway of one of the larger buildings a couple of klicks away from the mothership. Griffin wasn’t familiar with the vehicle types but it didn’t take a genius to identify the troop transports amongst the variety of other gravity-engined trucks which formed the incoming convoy.
“Not looking good,” he said to himself.
The situation was becoming desperate. The mothership was locked down and Griffin was helpless to do anything about it. Soon, the Raggers would come onboard and capture or kill the human and Fangrin squad. The battle network data was still uploading, which was kind of a relief because it suggested the Raggers weren’t suspicious after all. However, without control, Griffin had no way to take advantage, even if the upload completed.
And there was still the matter of the transport vessel jammed into the Tarx missile craters somewhere in the mothership’s hull. Not one of the sensors had an angle to show him exactly where the transport was located. Wherever it was, the Raggers would be able to see it and it wouldn’t be long until they started asking questions about it.
“I have tied in a third comms module,” said Zargol. “Should I continue with the sensors as you requested?”
“Yes. For the moment.”
Once again, the battle network updated faster. It wasn’t nearly done, but it wouldn’t be too much longer. Griffin’s racked his brains for a way out. He tried again to reach the Gradior using the transport’s comms as a relay. Still the Fangrin cruiser’s receptors were grey. Griffin was becoming seriously worried that the Gradior had been found and destroyed.
Alien Firestorm (Fire and Rust Book 2) Page 19