“Another inbound message, sir.”
Griffin hurried over.
SC9> You will disembark and prepare to report.
PRIME015> We have many dead.
SC9> That is not important. I am lowering the main underside ramp on Prime015. The ship will be readied for new duties.
Griffin exchanged a glance with Conway.
PRIME015> What are those duties?
SC9> The crew of Prime015 have been relieved of duty. Your failure will have consequences.
PRIME015> We did not fail.
SC9> That is not for discussion. You will be removed from the ship.
It was tempting to tell the computer or the Ragger behind SC9 that it could piss off, but Griffin resisted. He was convinced there was a way to escape and destroy this installation at the same time, but the method wasn’t clear to him.
SC9 wasn’t finished.
SC9> I have detected an object lodged in the damaged area of Prime015’s hull.
PRIME015> We am not aware of this object. Our sensors are not operational.
SC9> Your failures are extensive. Have you been boarded?
PRIME015> It is not your place to judge our alleged failures.
SC9> Have you been boarded?
PRIME015> No.
Griffin watched anxiously for more inbound comms. The screen remained blank, though he didn’t feel any better for it. The enemy were becoming suspicious and it wouldn’t be long until the battle network update was shut off. He checked its progress again – still climbing. A light flashed on an adjacent panel.
“There goes the boarding ramp,” he said. “Anyone out there is free to come inside.”
The squad had been keeping an ear out for the developments as they happened and it was clear they weren’t pleased with how events were turning.
“I don’t want to end up on a silver platter at a Ragger feast with an apple in my mouth,” said Kemp.
“It’s the apple they shove up your ass you have to worry about,” said Barron. “That’s going to leave tear tracks in your eyeliner.”
“Great, thanks, Barron. Sounds like you’re looking forward to it.”
“I’m keeping one bullet spare for myself.”
“That transport we came over on has a nose gun,” said Kemp, already thinking of something else. “Maybe someone could fly it out on remote and chew up a few of those incoming vehicles. That would give the Raggers plenty to think about other than food.”
The words made Griffin jump like he’d been wired to a terminal. “Private Kemp, you’re a genius.”
“Thank you, sir, I am. Now if you could just make Sergeant Lockhart aware of the fact.”
Griffin didn’t respond. He used the comms unit in his flight suit to link up with the transport’s control system. These spaceships were made to be piloted remotely if necessary and the Fangrin designers had set everything up so it could be done easily. The connection wasn’t great and it dropped twice. On the third attempt, the link stabilized, though Griffin wasn’t sure how long it would last.
The bandwidth was enough for him to watch a low-res HUD stream from the transport’s sensors. The front array didn’t show anything other than the sharp edges of broken metal. The rear array gave him a view over this part of the Ragger installation and from it, Griffin was able to guess where the transport was located in relation to the incoming troops.
The transport’s engines were idling and he increased the power. The vessel shuddered, but wouldn’t move from its position.
“Stuck,” he said. “Something must have shifted since we deployed and now the transport is wedged in.”
Conway only had a vague idea what Griffin was intending. “It won’t make any difference if we shoot a few of those Ragger troops, sir. They’re going to come onboard and kill us whatever happens.”
“That’s not what I’m planning, Lieutenant. I need to get this transport free. It might have the firepower to knock out the control station antennae.”
The link carried audio and Griffin could hear the engines straining. He moved the spaceship left and right, hoping to shake it free. Metal shrieked and screeched and still the craft remained stuck.
“I can remember the way back there, sir,” said Conway. He wasn’t exactly enthusiastic, but now he understood what Griffin intended, he was willing to take the risk. “I can go with a couple of soldiers and see if grenades will shift whatever’s blocking the transport.”
“You can’t make it in the time we’ve got, Lieutenant. It’s nearly a ten-minute run and that’s if you don’t encounter any Raggers.”
“There’s got to be something, sir.”
Griffin wished he had an answer, except this was the end of the road as far as his bright ideas went. If the transport wouldn’t budge, he was going to order the squad to trash the mothership’s control panels. If they went at it hard enough, they might be able to disable Prime015 for a while and make it difficult for the Raggers to take it elsewhere for repair. In comparison to wiping out the entire enemy base it wouldn’t be much of a result.
The approaching convoy crossed the stony ground rapidly and more came from the same building. It looked as if the Raggers were sending thousands of troops in this direction and given the importance of the mothership, Griffin wasn’t surprised. He growled in anger at the transport and he threw it forward and backwards in his attempts to get it free.
“I think it’s coming,” he said.
A second forward-back movement produced a loud shriek but no escape. Griffin remembered how thick the mothership’s plating was – if one of the larger pieces had sagged the wrong way, the transport was never getting out.
“Not giving up.”
A third repetition wasn’t enough, nor was a fourth. The Raggers were almost at the ramp, their faces hidden behind the reflective screens on their vacuum-proof vehicles. Griffin almost shouted at the transport. In his fury, he activated the front chain gun at the same time as he threw the craft back under maximum thrust. The gun muzzle flashed and hundreds of bullets spilled into the metal wall opposite. It made a noise which overwhelmed everything else – like a high-speed drill, only one that could kill a thousand soldiers in less than a minute.
This time, the transport moved another meter further than last time. Griffin’s heart jumped, but then the craft got stuck. He could have punched something in frustration and he willed the spaceship to rip itself free. All the while, the recoil from the chain gun operated like an impact driver, pushing the transport through the opening an inch at a time.
With another screech of metal, the transport tore free of the mothership. Griffin was about to shout in victory when his link dropped. He ordered his helmet comms unit to re-link and it did, but the failure was enough to warn him against premature celebration.
The transport was something Griffin could fly in his sleep. Under his control, it raced backwards from Prime015, allowing him a good view of the overhanging sheet of metal which had blocked the vessel’s escape. It was darker outside than he was expecting - the mothership’s sensors were advanced enough that they didn’t require much light to fool the eye into thinking it was daytime. The transport wasn’t nearly so capable and it took Griffin a moment to pick out his targets.
He banked the spaceship hard left and sprayed the approaching vehicles with chain gun fire. The eight barrels roared and flared with light, creating a single, flickering flame. Streaks of red-orange lanced across the landing strip, connecting with the approaching vehicles and knocking them aside as if they were no more than toys.
It was incredibly satisfying to watch and five or six vehicles were destroyed in a few seconds. The rest of the convoy didn’t veer away and two of the troop transports collided with the wreckage in front of them.
Griffin felt of surge of furious vengeance at the sight of the Raggers being so easily killed by the chain gun and it was hard to stay focused on the real target. He gave the convoy another sweep with the gun, turning several more to wreckage.
“Sir, the control tower,” said the calm voice of Lieutenant Conway.
Without speaking an acknowledgement, Griffin banked the transport away from the convoy. In the semi-darkness, it was harder to distinguish between the buildings and they seemed to form a solid wall of grey, with some parts of it higher than others. Griffin worried he’d lingered too long on the convoy and that he might have blown this chance. The transport was vulnerable and a single missile from one of the Ragger ships was enough to take it out. The only advantage here was surprise and that wouldn’t last forever.
He recognized a shape on top of a building.
“Got it,” he said.
The control antennae rose a hundred meters from the roof and comprised metal bars formed into angular shapes. Griffin didn’t hesitate and he opened up with the chain gun. The pulsing lines of color filled his vision and he fired the gun for long seconds. He glanced away to check on the status of the lockdown.
“Still caught,” he said.
Griffin didn’t let up and ran the gun continuously until it overheated and shut down. Still the lockdown remained in place and he wondered if he’d guessed wrong – maybe the control station was elsewhere or maybe it only needed the antennae to reach spaceships in high orbit.
The connection to the shuttle dropped again and at the same time, the control station lockdown ended. Griffin felt himself reacting before his mind had caught up. He sent the command to close the boarding ramp, grabbed the controls and prepared to bring hell to the Ragger base.
“Let’s get these bastards,” he said.
“Hell yeah!” shouted Kemp.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Prime015 had reserves of power which Griffin hadn’t guessed at. He requested maximum thrust from the engines and the resulting noise was incredible. The sound was something like a howl, overlaid with the groans of a thousand metal supports being pushed to breaking point. The spaceship took off vertically and Griffin felt the forces of it against his body, too much for him to withstand.
He backed off and found that the spaceship was already hundreds of meters above the landing strip. Not only that, but the engines had produced some kind of expulsion which had swept the closest warships away from their original positions. It was power way beyond anything in the ULAF fleet.
Griffin was astonished, but had better things to do than gawp at the capabilities of the enemy tech. He fed in the power, this time more gradually. An alert flashed up on the tactical informing him of missile locks from several fixed emplacements.
“Ground launchers,” he said. “No more surprise for us.”
The enemy ground installations fired, hitting the mothership five times on its underside plating. Prime015 was so big that Griffin heard the detonations only faintly. The number of required actions was already threatening to swamp him and the engagement had just started. He’d experienced enough space combat that he was able to focus and deal with it.
With the Raggers on alert, the grounded spaceships would begin lifting off shortly. On top of that, there’d be others on patrol. Griffin remembered the incoming battle network data and turned his attention towards the comms screen at the same time as the progress bar hit 100 percent.
“Yes!” he shouted.
Moments later, the tactical began to build up a real-time picture of the Ragger spaceships in this area. The enemy had five warships in flight, including ZN116. The rest of them were on the ground and that’s where he intended them staying.
It was almost impossible to fly effectively and also to operate the weapons. Griffin did the best he could. The ground launchers fired again and he hunted for the countermeasures. Prime015 relied on missile interceptors, drones and numerous high-powered chain guns for protection. Griffin activated every available system.
At a height of five klicks, he dumped fifty percent of the mothership’s incendiary stocks directly onto the base underneath. The bombs could be programmed to chase a target, but Griffin didn’t have time to do anything other than let them freefall towards the ground. Prime015 was well-stocked and hundreds of cannisters tumbled from its underside bays.
The Ragger ships on the landing strip weren’t close to battle readiness. A few of them launched interceptors to knock out the incendiaries. It wasn’t enough and the bombs scattered throughout the installation. He had no idea what sort of explosives the mothership was carrying, but given the quantity he’d dropped, Griffin was sure the effects would be spectacular.
Two of the sensor feeds turned pure, bright white and he narrowed his eyes. To his shock, the mothership was caught in the upper edges of the blasts and the heat set off ever more alerts.
Griffin quickly took the controls again and brought the mothership rapidly higher. Whiteness changed to orange tinged with blue and he watched in horrified awe as the incendiaries kept on burning. The fires spread far beyond the perimeter of the base, like the Raggers had found a way to make the rock itself burn as easily as kerosene-soaked kindling.
“Holy crap,” said Conway quietly.
The flames spread as far as the mountain range a hundred klicks from the installation and Griffin was sure they’d keep going forever. They climbed to the top of the highest peaks and then stopped in the same way the ocean’s tide would be halted by the rising shore. To the north, south and east, the rock kept on burning for three hundred or more klicks. It was as if night was banished from this entire area of the planet. The ULAF had plenty of weapons that could take out enemy bases, but nothing like this.
“We’ve got to stop these bastards for good,” Griffin said. “This one ship could take out an entire continent without having to rely on nukes.”
It was something to think about later. While the eighty Ragger ships on the surface were utterly destroyed, the enemy still had five warships in the sky. Three of those were in the upper atmosphere and within eight hundred klicks, while the other two were much further away in deep space.
The tactical was still receiving live updates, which meant that the message hadn’t reached them yet – those five ships would know that the base was gone, but there was a chance they didn’t realize, or didn’t want to believe, that their own mothership was responsible for the devastation. As soon as they added up the sums, they’d cut Prime015 from the live updates.
“Got a message from ZN116 asking for guidance on the situation,” said Conway.
“If you can figure out the response system, tell them I’m about to send over a whole lot of guidance. Make sure they pay close attention to it.”
Conway understood the meaning. “Yes, sir, I will tell them exactly that.”
While Conway figured out the Ragger input panel, Griffin targeted the three closest ships with the mothership’s ballistic weaponry. He was clumsy with the system, but hoped it would be harder for the enemy to detect a weapons lock.
“Have you sent the message, Lieutenant?”
“Just this second, sir. ZN116 has not yet responded.”
“I don’t think I want to hear anything they have to say,” said Griffin.
He gave the command to fire. Prime015’s railguns fired at their targets, along with some of the upper turrets which Griffin believed fired explosive rounds. Here on the bridge, he heard only hints of the discharge. Griffin didn’t like to feel so remote from the action, but he was more than happy with the result. Three Ragger spaceships vanished from the tactical screen.
“Let’s find those others,” he said.
Prime015 climbed rapidly through the thin atmosphere. Without the heat of friction, it attained an altitude of six hundred klicks in seconds. On the surface, the incendiaries hadn’t yet burned out, though they were fading. Griffin could see enough to realize that the rock itself was blackened and scarred and that the mothership’s weaponry had left a mark that would last for millennia.
“Still on the battle network,” he said, hardly able to believe their luck.
He could almost understand how the Raggers had been fooled for so long. The aliens were probab
ly arrogant with their victories and uncapable of comprehending that an enemy would have the temerity to steal one of their capital ships and then blow the crap out of an entire installation. The thought made Griffin laugh aloud with the sheer joy of payback.
It didn’t take long to find the two spaceships. They both communicated, requesting orders and guidance. This time, Griffin didn’t bother responding and simply blew them out of the skies using the mothership’s railguns. Once the weapons had discharged, he focused the sensors on the wreckage to make sure the enemy warships were finished. Prime015’s main armaments were far deadlier than any other railgun and they made short, easy work of the Raggers.
With the combat over, he didn’t know what to feel.
“That’s the last of them,” he said. “We’ve won.”
The human members of the squad appeared shell-shocked – more relieved than overjoyed. Maybe it wasn’t a time for celebration, given the events of the recent past. Griffin felt like something was still hanging over him and he had to remind himself exactly what they’d accomplished.
The Fangrin had more history with the Raggers and they relished the extermination of their foes. Zargol laughed, deep in his chest and the others bared their teeth more than usual. Each time he witnessed the Fangrin’s response to Ragger deaths, Griffin became more worried about the future of humanity. This wasn’t a war the Unity League needed to be involved in, not that the choice had ever been offered.
Griffin spoke into the open channel.
“We stole one of the biggest ships in the whole Ragger fleet and used it to destroy their forward base,” he said. “Now, we’re going to fly it home, patch it up and use it against the Raggers again. This is great news for us and the Fangrin.”
“It is, sir,” said Conway. “I think most of us need time to think about what’s happened.”
Alien Firestorm (Fire and Rust Book 2) Page 20