Dreadnought

by Mark Walden

  ‘Now we’re really back in business,’ she said to herself.

  She headed towards the door but stopped short when she heard running footsteps coming down the corridor outside. Silently Raven drew the swords from her back and waited until the sound got nearer before springing into the corridor, weapons raised.

  ‘Aaaarrrggghh!’ Franz screamed in terror.

  Raven lowered her weapons, smiling as Laura, Shelby and Lucy came running up behind him.

  ‘Sorry,’ Raven said, putting the katanas back in their scabbards, ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’

  ‘I am thinking that the new underwear might be being needed sooner rather than later,’ Franz said plaintively.

  ‘Eeeww. So much more information than necessary,’ Shelby said with a grimace.

  ‘It’s nice to see a friendly face,’ Lucy said. ‘Any idea how we get out of this place?’

  ‘No,’ Raven replied, ‘other than the way we came in, but I don’t think that’s going to be easy. Anyway, we still have to find Diabolus and Nigel. We’re not leaving the Darkdooms behind.’

  ‘They have been taken to the Dreadnought,’ Franz said quickly. ‘Nigel was locked up with me but then they took him away. I heard one of the guards saying that they were taking him to the ship. Nigel told me they had already used him to make his father do things that he was not wanting to. I am thinking that they will be doing the same thing now, ja?’

  ‘Whatever their plan is, we have to stop it before –’

  ‘This is Furan,’ a voice suddenly came over the speakers mounted in the corridor ceiling. ‘We have a facility breach. All security teams report to the Dreadnought hangar immediately.’

  ‘Sounds like someone else is breaking out,’ Laura said.

  ‘Or perhaps breaking in,’ Raven said with a slight smile.

  Otto opened his eyes and looked out through the window into the hangar. The huge doors overhead were slowly sliding apart and through the widening gap he could see the dark early evening sky. His attention was caught by a commotion on the gangway leading up to the Dreadnought as Nigel, Darkdoom and two other men were escorted up the ramp by a squad of soldiers. Otto had not seen the two men with Nigel before but he recognised one of them from the photo he had seen above the reception desk of the Drake Industries building in New York. It was Jason Drake. What did he need Nigel for? And where were the rest of their friends? He wasn’t sure if the fact that they weren’t with Drake was a good thing or not.

  ‘We have to get on board the Dreadnought and stop it from launching,’ Otto said to Wing.

  ‘You can’t do that from here?’ Wing asked, looking slightly puzzled. This room was, after all, the launch control.

  ‘I tried to while I was inside the network,’ Otto said, shaking his head, ‘but the systems that control the launch procedures have all had their control routines transferred to the Dreadnought and they’re completely blocked from external access. I might be able to get through the firewall if I had Laura’s help, but at the moment the only way to stop that thing from getting into the air is to get on board and access the systems directly.’

  ‘That is unfortunate,’ Wing said, gesturing to the large concentration of Drake’s guards that were fortifying the position around the base of the boarding ramp. ‘I can’t imagine they will be keen to welcome us on board.’

  ‘Yes, you’re probably right,’ Otto said with a frown, ‘but there has to be another way to get inside that thing.’ He looked around the hangar searching for any vulnerability, something that Drake and his guards wouldn’t expect. Suddenly an idea formed in his head.

  ‘Come on,’ Otto said, gesturing for Wing to follow him as he ran out of the room.

  The two cloaked Shrouds touched down on the desert floor in a cloud of dust and two portals of light opened as their loading ramps descended. Francisco’s men poured out and headed for the huge, brightly lit hole in the desert floor. From below could be heard the sound of distant alarm bells ringing combined with the slowly escalating whining roar of the Dreadnought’s giant engines spinning up.

  Francisco gestured for his men to spread out along the edge of the opening and prepare to descend. As he reached the edge he fired the grappler bolt into the ground and barely hesitated before leaping over the edge, the mono-filament cable taking his weight as he plummeted into the hangar, the reel mechanism in the small of his back whining as it spooled out the line. All around him his men, dressed in suits of flexible black body armour, followed his lead, dropping into the cavern like a swarm of spiders descending from their webs.

  As he dropped quickly towards the hangar floor, Francisco picked out a target, one of Drake’s guards, shouldered his weapon and fired. Quickly all hell broke loose as the two opposing forces engaged with one another. Francisco’s men scattered for cover as they landed on the hangar floor, bullets pinging off the concrete around them.

  ‘Pick your targets and watch your background!’ Francisco yelled as the firefight blazed. ‘We have friendlies down here, remember.’ These men were well trained and highly disciplined but he didn’t want any accidents.

  Up on the gangway, Drake hurried inside the Dreadnought, the main hatch sliding shut moments after he passed through.

  ‘Who the hell opened the hangar doors?’ Drake demanded as he stormed down the corridor leading to the bridge.

  ‘Somebody accessed the systems in the launch control room after it was evacuated in error,’ Furan said, listening to the panicked chatter that was coming in from across the facility over his headset.

  ‘Evacuated!’ Drake yelled angrily. ‘I gave orders that it was to be protected at all costs. Why was it evacuated?’

  ‘It’s not entirely clear,’ Furan replied. ‘Something to do with a radiation leak.’

  ‘Am I surrounded by cretins?’ Drake spat. ‘The only radiation around here is up there.’ He gestured upwards to the desert overhead. He and Furan strode on to the bridge and headed over to the primary flight controls.

  ‘Are we ready to launch?’ Drake demanded angrily.

  ‘Engines are starting up, sir,’ the uniformed helmsman responded. ‘Three minutes till launch.’

  ‘Cloaking field?’ Drake asked the tactical officer.

  ‘Charging, sir. We’re not quite ready yet. Launch wasn’t scheduled for another twenty minutes.’

  ‘Yes, well, the small army of heavily armed H.I.V.E. soldiers that just invaded the hangar forced us to move the timetable ahead a little,’ Drake said angrily, ‘so get the damn cloak online now!’

  ‘Starting to feel like everything’s falling apart yet, Jason?’ Darkdoom said from the other side of the bridge, where he stood handcuffed and flanked by armed guards.

  ‘I suggest you hold your tongue, Darkdoom, before I decide to throw you overboard once we’re airborne,’ Drake snapped back.

  ‘You’re not going to do that,’ Darkdoom said. ‘You need me for something. If you didn’t I’d be dead already.’

  ‘We may need you now, Darkdoom,’ Furan said, walking over to him and putting his face just centimetres away from Darkdoom’s, ‘but soon you’ll have outworn your usefulness and then I’m going to kill you very, very slowly, but not before I’ve made you watch me do the same thing to your son.’

  Darkdoom said nothing, just stared back at him with a look of undisguised hatred and contempt.

  ‘I assume you know where we’re going,’ Wing said as he and Otto ran up the stairs.

  ‘I got the schematics of this place while I was connected to the network,’ Otto replied. ‘Trust me.’

  The stairs were deserted, just as the corridors they’d run through to get there had been. The base personnel were either taking shelter somewhere or were engaged in the raging battle that could be heard going on in the distance. The cavalry had clearly arrived but Otto knew that they weren’t going to be able to stop the Dreadnought launching now. That was up to him and Wing.

  They reached the top of the stairs and found a steel hatch with a l
arge wheel in the centre of it. Wing spun the wheel, disengaging the heavy bolts that held it in place, and swung it open. Suddenly the noise of the battle in the hangar bay was much louder. Otto peered out through the hatch and could see a narrow catwalk that led out to a crane mounted on the ceiling of the hangar. Far below he could see the muzzle flashes of the two sides engaged in fierce combat. Drake’s men had the advantage of elevation but the H.I.V.E. soldiers were slowly pushing towards the metal stairs that led up from the hangar floor to the Dreadnought’s loading ramp.

  ‘Come on,’ Otto said, gesturing for Wing to follow him out on to the narrow catwalk and towards the crane.

  They made their way slowly along the long boom arm that extended out over the aft superstructure of the Dreadnought.

  ‘Ready?’ Otto asked Wing.

  Wing nodded and punched one of the buttons on the wrist control panel of his dropsuit. Otto did the same, just as a horrible thought crossed his mind.

  ‘Did Professor Pike mention to you if these things had enough charge for more than one drop?’ Otto shouted over the increasing roar of the Dreadnought’s engines.

  ‘No,’ Wing yelled in reply, ‘but there is, as they say, one sure-fire way to find out.’ He stepped off the crane and fell towards the Dreadnought’s deck just as the enormous aircraft began to lift from its landing supports. Otto took a deep breath and let go of the crane too. He plummeted towards the rising Dreadnought, holding his breath the whole way down.

  Francisco cursed aloud as the Dreadnought started to rise into the air, the downdraught from the clusters of giant turbine engines filling the hangar with swirling hurricane-strength winds just as the last of Drake’s men fell. Francisco and his men had almost made it to the end of the boarding ramp but they had not been able to fight past the last few remaining guards quickly enough. There was nothing they could do now to stop the giant vessel from launching; certainly none of the light weaponry they were equipped with would even make a dent in the thing’s armoured hull.

  There were a couple of cries of surprise from behind him and Francisco turned just in time to see Raven sprint past. She drew the swords from her back as she ran up the boarding ramp, past the fallen bodies of Drake’s guards, and leapt off it straight towards the flat armoured hull of the Dreadnought as it rose up in front of her. With an aggressive yell she thrust both of the swords into the armour of the giant aircraft. The adaptive forcefields that made up their blades sharpened to a mono-molecular edge that slid into the toughened steel like it was cardboard. She clung desperately to the hilts of the katanas, ignoring the protests of her battered body as the ground dropped away beneath her.

  Back on the gangway below Francisco watched, powerless to do anything, as the Dreadnought rose up through the giant opening overhead and climbed into the night sky.

  ‘Colonel!’ one of his men shouted from behind him and he turned to see Laura, Shelby, Lucy and Franz standing in the doorway leading back into the facility, looking tired and a bit dishevelled, but otherwise intact.

  ‘Well, that’s something at least,’ Francisco said.

  Suddenly a computerised voice came from the speakers in the corridor.

  ‘Facility self-destruct sequence initiated. Time to detonation: five minutes and counting.’

  ‘Oh, this just keeps getting better and better,’ Shelby said with a sigh.

  .

  Chapter Ten

  Dr Nero watched from the cockpit of one of the cloaked Shrouds as the Dreadnought rose up above the desert floor and into the sky. He cursed quietly under his breath. ‘Can we follow it?’ he asked the pilot.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the pilot replied, ‘but only until he engages the cloaking . . .’

  As if in response to the pilot’s words the outline of the Dreadnought flickered then faded from view as its thermoptic camouflage systems engaged.

  ‘Anything?’ Nero asked the Professor who was sitting at the control panel at the rear of the cockpit, analysing the Shroud’s sensor readings.

  ‘No, nothing,’ the Professor said matter of factly. ‘Its stealth systems are as efficient as the Shroud’s. I’m afraid that the Dreadnought is now, to all intents and purposes, invisible. Hold on a second . . .’

  ‘What is it?’ Nero demanded, his patience now worn well and truly thin.

  ‘I’m picking up the transponders from Malpense and Fanchu’s dropsuits heading away from here at considerable speed.’

  ‘They’re on board?’ Nero asked quickly. ‘Can we track them?’

  ‘Yes, it would appear so,’ the Professor replied happily, ‘as long as we stay within range, that is. About fifteen kilometres or so.’

  ‘Right, feed their coordinates to navigation,’ Nero said. ‘We have to keep up with them.’

  ‘No problem, sir,’ the pilot said and pushed the throttle forward.

  ‘This is Colonel Francisco to Doctor Nero, come in please, Doctor Nero,’ the Colonel’s voice crackled over the cockpit radio.

  ‘This is Nero,’ he said, picking up the handset and speaking into it, ‘go ahead, Colonel.’

  ‘I need both the Shrouds down here now, Max. Drake has activated a self-destruct mechanism with a five-minute timer and I’ve got all of my people and the Dreadnought’s original crew to evacuate.’

  Nero felt the frustration build up inside him like lava in a volcano. If he broke off pursuit of the Dreadnought now they’d have no chance of finding it again, but if he didn’t he’d be leaving some of his people to die.

  ‘Roger that, Colonel,’ Nero said. He put the handset down and spoke to the pilot. ‘Turn us around and signal the other Shroud to land with us inside the Dreadnought hangar.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the pilot replied and banked the Shroud around hard to the left, back towards Drake’s base.

  ‘Damn it!’ Nero yelled and punched the bulkhead next to him hard enough to make his knuckles bleed.

  Laura sat down at the terminal on the desk in Drake’s recently abandoned office and started to type.

  ‘Three minutes till detonation,’ the synthesised voice said.

  ‘Why do that?’ Shelby asked.

  ‘Do what?’ Laura said, sounding distracted.

  ‘Have a timer on your self-destruct device,’ Shelby said. ‘Why not just let the Dreadnought get clear of the hangar bay and then BOOM!’

  ‘It is kind of traditional,’ Laura said, her fingers flying over the keyboard.

  ‘Not to mention dramatic,’ Lucy said.

  ‘Anything yet?’ Francisco asked as he strode into the office.

  ‘Working on it, Colonel,’ Laura said quickly, ‘but the security’s pretty tight here.’

  The Colonel watched through a large window looking out on to the hangar bay as the two Shrouds uncloaked and landed in the middle of the cavernous space.

  ‘OK, there’s good news, bad news and worse news,’ Laura said, staring at the screen and looking slightly pale.

  ‘The good news?’ Francisco asked.

  ‘I’ve worked out why there was a five-minute timer on the self-destruct system,’ Laura said.

  ‘Go on,’ the Colonel said, frowning slightly.

  ‘Because five minutes is just enough time to get to minimum safe distance,’ Laura replied.

  ‘Safe distance from what?’ Shelby asked nervously.

  ‘The detonation of the one-megaton nuclear device buried under the hangar floor,’ Laura said, swallowing nervously.

  ‘There’s worse news than that?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Laura said quietly, ‘I can’t stop it.’

  ‘This is the Colonel,’ Francisco said quickly into his headset microphone. ‘All teams are to board the Shrouds now and prepare for emergency dust-off. Get the first one off the ground ASAP. There’s a nuke under our feet and no way to defuse it in time.’

  The Professor’s voice replied, ‘How large a device is it, Colonel?’

  ‘Two minutes till detonation,’ the synthesised voice reported calmly.

  ‘Miss
Brand informs me that it’s a one-megaton bomb,’ the Colonel replied, ‘and that she doesn’t think she can stop it from going off.’

  ‘With a device that size there’s really no purpose in running at this point, Colonel. Let me speak to her,’ the Professor said and Francisco pulled off his headset and handed it to Laura.

  ‘Make it quick,’ Laura said as she put the headset on.

  ‘Laura, it’s Professor Pike, are you quite certain about the nature of the device?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Laura said, ‘the specs are all here. If I had an hour or two I might be able to disarm it remotely but there’s not enough time.’

  ‘Then we need to make more,’ the Professor said. ‘The device is probably slaved to the central network . . .’

  ‘The system clock,’ Laura said quickly, ‘of course.’

  Her fingers started to fly over the keyboard again as she searched the network for the routines she needed. She found what she was looking for and opened a connection to the internet. She typed in the address of the site that she had memorised years before and silently prayed that the file she’d left was still there.

  ‘One minute till detonation,’ the computerised voice warned.

  ‘Gotcha,’ Laura whispered, opening the file.

  ‘Warning! This is an executable file and may contain harmful programs,’ the window that popped up on Laura’s screen said.

  ‘You’d better believe it,’ Laura whispered to the computer and hit the ‘Open’ button. She waited anxiously as the seconds ticked past.