Obsidian Fleet: A Military Sci-Fi Series (Omega Taskforce Book 4)

by G J Ogden

  “Try over here,” said Keller, who had traced the path of the cold breeze further along the wall. “There’s a seam here.”

  Banks dusted off her hands and moved to the section of the wall that Keller had indicated. This time she pressed her back against the surface and leaned into it, digging her heels into the deck. The muscles in Banks’ thighs rippled and the wall began to slide back.

  “Keep pushing,” said Sterling, joining in with the effort.

  “Don’t just stand there, Ensign,” Banks said, speaking through gritted teeth. “Push!”

  Through the combined effort of all three officers, the wall slid open more freely, driving back a thick layer of black grime in the process. Sterling dusted off his hands then shone his torchlight inside the opening. Unlike the storage areas they’d worked their way through previously, the room was completely empty. Then as Sterling stepped further inside, the light from his torch shone on a corridor that led deeper into the research station. Sterling examined the new space more closely, recognizing the style of architecture at once.

  “This looks like Sa’Nerran design,” Sterling said, shining his light around the room. “My guess is that they added this section after driving out the human colonists.”

  “Why though?” said Ensign Keller. “What is this place?”

  Sterling shrugged. “I don’t know, but there’s only one way to find out.”

  “Should we call for backup?” Banks asked.

  It was a reasonable precaution, though Sterling could tell that his first-officer had only asked the question out of protocol. The glint in her eyes suggested she was eager to continue exploring.

  “I think three of us is enough for now,” Sterling replied. He had the same itch to continue. He felt like an archeologist in ancient Egypt, discovering the tombs of the Pharaohs for the first time. “Weapons out and ready, though. We don’t know what to expect down there”, he added in a more cautionary tone. The stories of ancient tomb raiders also included tales of booby-traps and ancient curses. While he knew that these were apocryphal, at least when it came to ancient Egypt, an alien addition to an abandoned research station was another matter.

  Sterling led the way down the steeply sloping corridor, until it eventually widened into a larger space. It was now pitch black and also freezing cold. Sterling hugged his jacket tighter around his chest, but the cold had already begun to creep into his bones.

  “Over here,” said Banks, who had moved over to the far corner of the room. “It looks like more storage containers.”

  “Check out the other corner, Ensign,” Sterling said to Keller.

  The helmsman nodded and disappeared into the darkness. Sterling swept his torchlight over to where his first officer was standing and cautiously approached. As he got closer, he could see rows of the containers Banks had described, lined up alongside each other with narrow gaps between them.

  “Can you scan inside them?” asked Sterling, while examining the container next to the one Banks had found.

  “I’ve tried, but the readings are inconclusive,” Banks said. Her face was brightly illuminated by the computer screen. Set against the pitch-black backdrop of the room, it gave her a ghostly, disembodied appearance. “I’m picking up some low-level power readings, and the temperature of these containers is twenty degrees warmer than the ambient temperature in here.”

  Sterling frowned and ran his hand along the top of the container. It was wet with condensation. Then he shone his torchlight onto the surface and his heart leapt inside his chest for a second time. Staring up at him from inside the container was a Sa’Nerran warrior in hibernation stasis.

  “I think I’ve found something!” Ensign Keller called out.

  “Nobody touch anything!” Sterling shouted back, but it was already too late. Moments later, lights blinked on inside the room, temporarily blinding him. The thrum of power generators began to rise.

  “We have to get out of here, right now!” Sterling called out. However, he had barely made it three paces before a door dropped down from above, sealing the exit.

  “Crap, these are Sa’Nerran stasis pods,” said Banks, squinting down at the container to her side, while shielding her eyes from the overhead lights. “There’s a warrior inside this thing.”

  “And we’re trapped in here with them,” replied Sterling. He tried to force the door that had sealed them inside the room, but it wouldn’t budge. Cursing he ran back to Banks.

  “See if you can get that open,” he said, nodding toward the exit. “Otherwise, we’ll have to cut through.

  “Captain, I don’t think we’ll have time,” said Ensign Keller, hurriedly backing toward him.

  White clouds of gas had erupted from beneath the stasis pods. Sterling grabbed Keller and dragged him clear of the mist, though it still stung his eyes and burned his throat.

  “We only have a couple of minutes before these things activate,” croaked Sterling, coughing into his sleeve. “We have to destroy the pods before the warriors come out of hibernation.”

  The covers of three stasis pods at the far end of the room shot open. Long, leathery fingers rose out of the mist and Sterling heard the distinctive hiss of the alien language.

  “I can’t get the door open,” Banks said, returning to Sterling’s side, breathing heavily. “Cutting through is our only option.”

  Sterling cursed again then grabbed Keller’s arms and turned the ensign to face him. “Start cutting, Ensign,” Sterling said, grabbing the helmsman’s pistol and adjusting the power setting. “We only need a hole big enough for us to crawl though, understand?”

  “Aye, Captain, I’m on it,” Keller said, as Sterling slapped the weapon back into his hand.

  “It would be quicker with two people cutting,” Banks pointed out, as four more pods opened, spilling more white gas into the room. It was now impossible to see more than ten meters in front of them.

  Suddenly, Sterling saw a warrior approach out of the haze. Its yellow eyes were dry and bloodshot and its leathery, gray skin was wrinkled and tight, like the fingertips of someone who’d spent too long in the bath. Sterling raised his pistol and blasted the warrior in the head, adding the smell of burned alien flesh to the heady mixture of odors already filling the room.

  “I think we’re going to need every last shot we have,” Sterling replied, as more hisses filled the room. “And even then, it might not be enough.”

  Chapter 16

  A fight to the last

  A second Sa’Nerran warrior advanced through the fog and Banks raised her weapon and fired. The blast carved a chunk out of the alien’s neck and it went down hard. However, behind the body, Sterling could already see more aliens clawing themselves out of stasis pods and advancing toward them.

  “Reduce the power setting on your pistol to the lowest you can get away with,” said Sterling, flicking the dial on his pistol down by two notches. “We only need to hold them off long enough for Keller to cut us an exit.”

  Banks nodded and made the adjustments before firing at a third warrior. This time the blast burned a hole in its head three inches deep. The warrior initially appeared confused and reached up, pressing a long finger inside the cavity and touching its freshly singed brain. Then it fell forward, like a felled tree.

  “These things are giving me the creeps,” said Banks, dropping to one knee and sweeping her pistol around the room. “It’s like they’re damned zombies or something.”

  “It’s stasis sickness,” replied Sterling, tapping his neural interface and trying to reach out to Lieutenant Shade. “If a human had been woken that quickly, they’d already be dead.” Sterling then focused on the link, but he couldn’t make the connection.

  “Hurry, Ensign, I can’t reach Shade to call for backup,” Sterling said, glancing back to his helmsman. Keller had so far managed to cut through a meter section of the door. “We’re on our own down here.”

  “The metal is thick, sir, it’s going to take some time,” Keller called back. Swea
t was pouring off his face from the heat of the cutting beam.

  “Time is the one thing we don’t have, Ensign. Work faster,” Sterling ordered.

  Suddenly another warrior staggered through the haze and Sterling raised his pistol, ready to fire. However, the warrior fell as if it had been smashed in the back with a sledgehammer. He checked on Banks, but she was engaging two other warriors across the other side of the room.

  “If we’re lucky, these things might drop dead without us needing to kill them,” Sterling called over to his first-officer.

  Two more warriors then advanced and this time Sterling was forced to fire. The first blast struck the warrior’s chest, but the alien continued on. Sterling cursed and fired again, killing the warrior with the second shot. Damn it, aim for the head… Sterling thought, chastising himself for wasting a shot. He knew he perhaps had at most twenty more before his power cell was empty.

  “Cap…n…is th... you?”

  Sterling received the words through his neural link, but the signal kept cutting out, like a weak FM radio.

  “Lieutenant Shade?” Sterling replied, moving around the room in an attempt to get a stronger link. “If you can hear me, we need you, right now.”

  “Wha… is your… loc...n?” the voice replied. Sterling couldn’t be sure that it was his weapons officer on the other side of the link, but so long as he could reach someone, he didn’t care who it was.

  “Sub-level two, north perimeter,” Sterling replied, closing his eyes in an attempt to focus harder on the link. “Send a squad, now!”

  “Aye…” came the single word reply before the link was severed.

  Sterling cursed then opened his eyes to see a Sa’Nerra warrior charging at him through the mist. Raising his weapon, he blasted the alien at close range. The energy hammered into the warrior’s hip, but its momentum carried it on and Sterling was tackled to the deck, his pistol spiraling from his grasp. A second later, the warrior was on top of him, clammy, leathery fingers clasped around his throat. The alien was so close that he could taste its foul breath and see every line of detail in its shriveled, grey skin. Sterling broke the hold, finding it easier than he expected to overpower the creature, then spun the alien onto its back. Grabbing the sides of its head, Sterling drove his thumbs into the warrior’s yellow eyes, causing them to explode like pus-filled balloons. The warrior hissed wildly, but Sterling didn’t let go. Using his hand-hold he repeatedly hammered the alien’s head against the metal deck until its body became limp.

  With no time to recover, Sterling was grabbed from behind and he felt the clammy grasp of more alien fingers digging into his flesh. Thudding an elbow into the alien’s ribs, Sterling threw the warrior over his shoulder. It landed hard on the deck, already looking half-dead. Recovering his pistol, Sterling blasted it in the head at point-blank range then spun around to cover his rear.

  “Commander, report!” Sterling called out into the haze. The room was now equal parts vapor from the stasis pods and smoke from the burning bodies of dead aliens.

  “I’m already on my second cell,” Banks called back.

  Sterling then saw his first-officer backing toward him through the smoke. He was about to go to her when a warrior rushed out of the haze and drove its shoulder into Banks’ gut, pushing her deeper into the smog. Sterling set off in pursuit, but was tackled by another alien. He fought the creature, but this warrior was far stronger than the one he had easily overpowered. Leathery fists pounded into Sterling’s face, forcing him to raise his arms to block the blows. The warrior switched up its attack, hammering him in the gut instead. Winded, Sterling was unable to retaliate, allowing the alien to continue its assault with relentless brutality. Then the fizz of a plasma pistol pierced his ears and the warrior suddenly went limp and slid off his body.

  “Captain, are you okay?” asked Ensign Keller, dropping to a knee by his side and offering Sterling a hand. Sterling took it and Keller hauled him to his feet.

  “I’m fine, Ensign,” Sterling replied, clutching his ribs with one hand and recovering his weapon with the other. “Now get the door open, or we’re dead.”

  “My cell is empty,” Keller replied. “That last shot used everything I had left.”

  Sterling thrust his pistol into the ensign’s hand. “Then use this, instead,” he said, shoving the helmsman back toward the door. “I’ll strangle these bastards with my bare hands if I have to.”

  Keller ran back to the door while Sterling headed into the fog, looking for his first officer. “Mercedes!” Sterling called out. Through the gloom, he could hear the hiss of alien warriors and human grunts of pain. “Mercedes!” Sterling called out again, feeling panic rising in his gut.

  A warrior flew over his head, missing him by inches. Banks appeared through the smoke; her hands drenched in dark crimson Sa’Nerran blood. As she got closer, Sterling could see that her eyes were wild. He knew he wouldn’t get any sense out of her at that moment, but he didn’t need to. All he needed was her brutality.

  Standing back-to-back, Sterling and Banks fought off more warriors. Recovered from his earlier battering, Sterling focused on the weak points of the aliens’ anatomy, cracking knees and hammering his elbows in the backs of their necks. Banks, in contrast, displayed no such finesse. She had given herself over to rage and blood lust, resorting to cracking bones and tearing out the throats of the warriors that were foolish enough to stand up to her. Yet, despite their efforts, the enemies continued to come, and soon Sterling’s strength failed him.

  “Ensign, report!” Sterling called out, dropping to one knee, gasping for breath. “We can’t hold them for much longer.”

  “It’s no use, sir!” Keller replied. “The metal is too thick. This cell is depleted too.”

  Sterling cursed and backed up against the wall. Five more warriors were approaching through the bitter-tasting smoke, all advancing cautiously on account of the bodies piled up around them.

  “Then get on your feet, Ensign,” Sterling said, spitting blood onto the deck. “If you’re going to die in here then die with your hands wrapped around their throats.”

  Keller tossed the expended pistol away then rose up and raised his guard. Sterling glanced across to his young helmsman and was impressed to see there was no fear behind his eyes. There was only anger and frustration and a will to survive.

  Maybe we can still do this… Sterling told himself. We’ve faced worse odds.

  Then the dark silhouettes of three more warriors appeared in the distance and Sterling felt his conviction waver. Five on three was perhaps manageable, even in their battered and exhausted condition. Eight on three, though, was impossible, even with Mercedes Banks at his side. However, it no longer mattered how many there were. All that mattered was how many of the alien bastards they could kill before they fell. Sterling sucked in a lungful of the foul air and prepared himself to attack.

  “Captain Sterling, please respond.”

  It was Opal Shade, reaching out through the still-open neural link. The connection was strong.

  “Hold here!” Sterling called out to Banks and Keller, barring both from advancing with his outstretched arms. He then focused on the link. “Lieutenant Shade, tell me you’re outside the door?”

  “Aye, Captain, what is your condition?” Shade replied, as cool as ever.

  “Just blast through the damned door and get in here!” Sterling called back. He could now see the yellow of the warriors’ eyes. The aliens were hissing in harmony, like some sort of chant. “Everyone, get down!” Sterling yelled, throwing himself to the deck.

  Moments later, Sterling’s body was blanketed in a shower of sparks and he felt hard chunks of metal land on his back and legs. Plasma blasts then raced inside the room, thudding into the bodies of the warriors that had come so close to ending his life. Shade charged in, almost stepping on Sterling in the process and continued to unload into the room. Four commandoes followed, each with ‘Homewrecker’ heavy plasma rifles in hand.

  Sterling p
ushed himself up and withdrew into the corridor outside the smoke-filled room, still coughing and holding his bruised side. Likely he had a cracked rib or two, but all considered he’d gotten off lightly, he told himself. Banks then appeared with Keller at her side, closely followed by Lieutenant Shade.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant, that was too close,” Sterling said, resting against the wall to regain his breath.

  “I’ll have a team sweep through sub-levels one and two to check for other hidden spaces, sir,” Shade said. “My guess is that the Sa’Nerra were using Far Deep Nine to store reserve forces close to Fleet space. It would allow them to quickly gather reinforcements, without having to return to their half of the Void.”

  “What’s the betting that asshole Colicos knew about this place all along?” said Commander Banks.

  Sterling’s first officer was covered in blood, but Sterling could tell from its color and thickness that it was not her own. As usual, Banks’ resilience and strength had resulted in her suffering few injuries.

  “That’s something I intend to find out,” replied Sterling. His loathing for the traitorous scientist had reached a new high.

  Sterling was about to set off back up the sloping corridor to sub-level two when he felt a link form in his mind from Commander Graves. Frowning, he stopped and allowed the connection to take hold.

  “What’s up, Commander?” Sterling asked. His medical officer was the last person he’d expected to hear from at that moment.

  “Captain, we have a situation,” Graves said, sounding unusually ill-at-ease. “Five warships have surrounded the station and locked weapons onto the Invictus.”

  Sterling pressed his eyes shut and shook his head. “Sa’Nerran?” he asked, fearing the worst. “Is it MAUL?”

  “No, Captain,” Graves replied. “They are ships from the Void. A man from the lead vessel said you would remember him.”

  “Who is it, Commander?” asked Sterling. There was a brief pause before Graves answered, though he had a sinking feeling he already knew what was coming.