The soldier’s gauss rifle lay across his torn chest. She stooped and pulled it free in one movement. Larry was behind and she handed it to him. A few seconds later, she was holding a second rifle. The pistol was now effectively useless, but she tucked it into her belt anyway.
“Grenades,” said Larry.
Four of the soldiers carried grenades in bandoliers. Cruz managed to get one of the straps free and put it across her chest, doing her best to ignore the wetness of the blood. She was willing to trust Larry with a rifle, but there was no way he was allowed to handle grenades. The Corps made its soldiers go through an extended course before they were allowed to use them and they were a lot more sophisticated than the old pull-pin-and-throw type. The civilian course in firearms Larry attended didn’t qualify him to handle explosives, no matter how many aliens there might be hiding around the next corner.
“Along here and turn left?” she said.
“Yes.”
Before they could take more than a dozen paces, the sound of gunfire came again. This time it was much closer than before. Without knowing what she’d find, or if she stood a chance of overcoming whatever was ahead, Maria Cruz pressed on, her gauss rifle braced against her shoulder and the muzzle pointing unerringly in front.
Chapter Thirteen
Sergeant Eric McKinney stared in horror. The Tillos base looked like something from a madman’s nightmare. Piles of rubble reached dozens of metres above the ground, extending as far as the eye could see. Red-orange flames licked up into the sky with such ferocity that the sensors on the spacesuit visors struggled with the contrasts of heat, light and darkness.
Across from the Section D exit ramp, there was a series of deep craters covering the visible area of the landing pad, their edges scarred by plasma. The ES Impetuous continued to burn with an intensity that gave the impression it would continue for a hundred years or more. Positrons spilled from the area, setting off alerts on the watching soldiers’ HUDs.
To the east the explosions continued, their blasts hidden by mounds of rubble, twisted metal rebar and charred bodies. There was a small craft in the air a good distance away and only visible with assistance from the spacesuit visor. The shuttle’s design was alien and unfamiliar. Light flashed from a weapon mounted on its nose. Tracers streaked to the ground, projectiles spilling heat into the air as they travelled.
McKinney was most of the way up the Section D exit ramp, using the lip as cover. This was the first time he’d been confronted by the reality of war and it left him numb. He’d grown up reading heroic tales of the Ghast wars, but this was the first time he’d seen it for himself.
Before the attack, the base had been home to tens of thousands of personnel. They’d lived and worked in the countless buildings which covered many square kilometres. The base had been in place for decades and now it was reduced to flames and rubble.
“They hit the barracks hardest,” said Webb grimly. “The bastards must have known that’s where most people were sleeping.”
“Where’s the hub?” said McKinney. The base he remembered was no longer reflected by the reality. “Hang on, let me check the HUD.”
The tiny computer in the spacesuit visor showed him a topographical view of the base as it had been a few hours before. It showed McKinney’s squad as a series of orange dots and then added a vector which pointed towards the comms hub.
“Six hundred metres! Stein, I thought you said we’d come out right on top of it!”
“It’s the closest entrance to the hub, sir.”
McKinney got himself oriented. There was a hundred metres of clear ground before the nearest piles of rubble started – huge quantities of rubble, with no clues as to what lay beyond. He zoomed in the visor’s sensor and tried to figure out the best way to proceed. At the top of the Section D ramp was a wide, pedestrian walkway. The walkway branched off into several directions. The northern path looked as if it came within a short distance of the hub building, though it was hard to be sure since it was piled up with yet more debris.
There was no movement on his visor sensor and the only visible sign of an enemy presence was the shuttle. His HUD told him it was three thousand metres away and when he zoomed in, McKinney saw it was a boxy thirty-metre vessel of dark metal, vaguely slug-like in shape and with four landing feet. The shuttle’s nose cannon continued to spew its projectiles at something on the ground.
“I don’t like it,” said McKinney. The shuttle would chew up his squad if it caught them in the open. He waved Webb forward. “Think you can hit it from here?”
Webb spun the plasma tube around in a smooth action, resting it on his right shoulder. Two blue lights glowed faintly at the middle of the launcher – the only visible adornment.
“I can hit it, sir. The question is, will it go down in one shot? There’s a ten-second recharge on the tube.”
“That gets you two shots easy.”
“And alerts every enemy soldier on the base that we’re here, sir.”
It was a decision McKinney didn’t enjoy making. He knew perfectly well what the capabilities of a Space Corps’ shuttle were, but he could only guess what the alien equivalent might be able to do. If it was heavily-armoured and two shots failed to bring it down, they’d be forced to retreat into the bunker.
The decision was taken from him.
“Movement,” said Elder. “Six hostiles. What the hell are they?”
From the north, six figures emerged into view. They came along the remains of a road and began walking over an area of comparatively open ground about two hundred metres from the top of the ramp.
“Shit, they’re coming this way!” said Boon.
McKinney gave an angry wave of his arm to silence the men. He put his head over the edge of the ramp again to get his first sight of the enemy.
Mechs was his first thought. They’ve sent machines to do their dirty work. When he looked more closely, he saw that he was mistaken. The approaching enemy was made up from more than simply metal. They gave off a heat signature consistent with that of a living organism. They had the appearance of Ghasts in that they were broad and strong. They were also different, having metal plates embedded in their faces and chests, with more covering their shoulders. One of them had an arm made entirely of alloy.
McKinney stared with revulsion. Each one of the creatures was slightly different to the others. Some were well in excess of seven feet tall, others were closer to six. Some looked shrunken and atrophied as if they’d sent the oldest members of their species to fight alongside the youngest. Two were bald, others had hair. One had hardly any biological face, the rest being metal formed into a poor copy of a mouth and nose.
“What are those cannons they’re carrying?” asked Garcia.
“I don’t want to find out,” McKinney replied.
The cannons Garcia referred to were thick tubes about two feet long, with short stocks and an uncomfortably wide bore. Each of the aliens carried one.
“That’s what we’re facing, folks. Those are what killed our men and women.”
Rage surged up in McKinney. He crawled a little way further up the ramp and crouched down so that only his eyes were showing at ground level. The tube of his repeater was in his hand and he ached to use it – to spray his opponents with a deadly arc of projectiles. The repeaters weren’t subtle and he unslung his rifle instead.
“Elder, Stein, Boon, McCall, Garcia. Rifles only.”
The soldiers crowded in alongside McKinney, forming a line. They aimed their gauss rifles over the ramp’s edge. McKinney glanced across, trying to gauge their state of readiness.
The tiny delay was enough to spoil their surprise. As a unit, the approaching enemy dropped into a crouch.
“They’ve seen us,” said Boon.
“Fire!” said McKinney, surprising himself with the calmness of his voice.
Six gauss rifles whined as their coils hurled slugs of dense alloy across the intervening space. Something made a cracking sound on the far side of the r
amp channel. McKinney felt shards of stone pinging away from his back. He fired again and again, pressing the activation trigger on his rifle, feeling the thud-thud-thud of its recoil as it kicked into his shoulder. There was a second and third sharp crack from behind as the enemy’s response fire struck the concrete edge of the channel.
The enemy fell beneath the withering hail of gunfire. They toppled over without sound, thumping heavily onto the concrete. The men of Squad A didn’t let up, firing volley after volley into the prone bodies of their opponents.
“Stop!” shouted McKinney at last.
The gauss rifles fell silent and there was a moment during which nobody moved and nobody spoke. McKinney broke the spell.
“Up! Move!” he said.
As a group, the soldiers of Squad A sprinted along the last few metres of the ramp, emerging onto open ground. With the die cast, McKinney didn’t hesitate. He got his head down and ran to the north, aiming for the cover offered by the ruins of the nearest building. The bodies of the alien soldiers were in front of him. Such was their aura of strangeness, he half-expected them to stir, to raise their snub-nosed hand cannons and begin shooting again. They did not and McKinney looked into the open, staring eyes of one as he jumped over it. The part of the creature that was flesh looked like it was taken from the body of a Ghast and joined with metal components created in a factory.
Without knowing quite what made him so sure, Sergeant Eric McKinney was suddenly convinced these weren’t Ghasts at all. They may have contributed the flesh, but they’d done so unwillingly. He wasn’t used to having insights and it wasn’t the time to think about where this one had risen from.
The squad reached the edges of the rubble, their pace slowing as they wended through the larger pieces. A fire simmered somewhere deep beneath the ruins, as though waiting for its chance to burst free. Dust floated in the air, motes of it highlighted in the wavering orange light.
“We have to go over,” McKinney said across the open channel.
He looked up – the Tillos base had been a visual monstrosity – a shrine to mundanity. That didn’t mean it was built from anything less than the strongest concretes, fixed and reinforced with a hundred thousand kilometres of steel bars. Here, slabs of concrete made a series of overlapping slopes, leading to a height of fifty metres or more. There was a twisted chair, precariously balanced halfway up, along with something which may have been a bed or a desk.
Trying hard to ignore the unspoken tales of this tragedy, McKinney began the climb. From below, it looked like an easy scramble up the slope. It wasn’t long until he realised the surface was treacherous with loose grit and the slab he climbed bounced underfoot as if it were suspended by overstressed rebar.
The others came after him, their weight and footfall increasing the bounce until McKinney became concerned something would give. Whatever was holding the slab held and he jumped across to the next, working his way ever higher. McKinney prided himself on staying fit, but his breathing sounded loud in his ears. His HUD told him his heart rate was high and his adrenal glands were working flat-out.
Just below the top, he looked back and saw his squad had fallen behind. While he waited for them to catch up, he crouched below the top of the pile and looked away over the landing field to the south and west. He zoomed in his suit sensor and searched for signs of the enemy or any indication there was continued resistance.
The darkness of night combined with running at maximum zoom ensured the cut-down sensor model fitted into his visor struggled to cope. He saw speckled green shapes that were so indistinct he had no idea what they were. He activated his movement tracker. Here and there he saw flickers of orange, far away in the distance.
The first of his men – Webb – joined him, hunkering down awkwardly on the slope.
“What a shit job this is, Sergeant,” he said.
It wasn’t clear exactly what Webb was referring to and McKinney was too preoccupied to ask. He crawled up the last few metres to the highest point of the rubble and looked cautiously over. The enemy shuttle was hovering to the north-east, closer than it had been before. Its nose cannon was still and McKinney’s brain registered the fact that there were no more explosions and the previously constant sound of small-arms fire was now little more than the occasional shot.
“We’re losing,” said Bannerman.
“We lost this one long ago,” said McKinney.
Bannerman stood a little higher and leaned forward to point. “There’s the main comms hub, Sergeant. I see they left it well alone.”
McKinney had seen the comms hub hundreds of times. It was a low, square construction, close to three hundred metres along each side. All across its roof there was a series of dull pillars made of metal and varying in length from a couple of metres to fifty or more. These pillars were the antennae – from atop the rubble they appeared slender and delicate.
The hub was set in an area of ground which was mostly unoccupied, aside from two buildings which McKinney remembered housed generators. These equally low buildings were also intact, presumably saved from destruction by their proximity to the hub.
There was movement around the building. McKinney counted four separate groups of six enemy soldiers. More appeared – dozens of them coming from amongst the ruins or whatever was left of the original roads and footways through the base.
McKinney spoke over a private channel. “Bannerman, get on the comms again and see if there’s anyone out there.”
The soldier put down his pack. “Let’s give it a go, Sergeant. I think it’s probably a waste of time.”
“What else can we do?”
“I’m not giving you an argument, sir. Nitro Bannerman doesn’t argue with his superiors. I’m just telling you how I think it is.” Bannerman kept low as he operated the comms pack. It didn’t take him long. “There’s some of our fleet up there!” he said excitedly.
“Can you get a signal out to them?”
“Yes, sir. It’ll take a few minutes for it to reach them. There are seven spaceships operating on a closed network. Which one should I send the message to?”
“How should I know?” asked McKinney, trying not to sound angry. “Send it to the biggest one. Tell them we’re stranded down here and the Tillos base has been overrun by some kind of mech-suited aliens that look like Ghasts but might not be. Tell them they’ve come for the ES Lucid.”
The ground comms pack was an exceptionally robust piece of kit, with an incredible amount of functionality. However, it couldn’t access a spaceship fleet’s closed comms network in order to find out which was the most important ship. Bannerman knew all this, but he didn’t bother to tell Sergeant McKinney. The soldier simply picked one of the seven warships at random and sent his message.
“That’s done, sir,” he said. “A few minutes and they’ll know we’re here.”
McKinney felt like a weight had been lifted from him. “We might get out of this yet.” He crawled back to the top of the rubble pile and studied the comms building again.
Bannerman joined him. “There’s no way we’re getting through all those soldiers.”
“Maybe we should back off, Sergeant,” Garcia suggested.
“Why would they leave the hub alone when they destroyed the rest of the base?” McKinney pondered. “Look – they’ve established positions all around. It’s like they’re keeping it safe.”
“It’s just comms stuff, sir,” said Bannerman. “Anything that goes off world comes through here.”
“That would include our most important military secrets?”
“Yeah, Sergeant, good point. Also, the routing data for the other Confederation hubs is held in there as well.” Bannerman paused, lost in thought. “If they lifted that stuff, they could go to anywhere else in the Confederation. If they haven’t already done so.”
“That must be what they’ve come for,” said McKinney. “Maybe not the ES Lucid after all.”
“We can’t let them have access to our data,” said Bannerman. “T
hey could wipe us out if they knew where the rest of the Confederation planets were.”
“If we get in there, can we blow the arrays up or something?” asked McKinney.
“I wish I could tell you, sir. I’ve only been inside the hub a couple of times and they keep people like me away from the sensitive stuff. It goes a long way underground and it could be filled with those metal bastards already.”
McKinney ducked out of sight and sat on his haunches, thinking. The place was crawling with the enemy and he was sure the most experienced of troop commanders would have second and third thoughts about charging in. He had another fourteen men in Squads B and C, but it would take them a good few minutes to get here. Since the last pockets of human resistance were evidently overcome, it was minutes they didn’t have to spare. In addition, he wasn’t quite ready to relinquish the idea that the ES Lucid was the main target – or an important secondary one.
Endless training is no replacement for experience, he thought, not for the first time. He was struggling with the situation and his limited options to make it better. Just when his mind was closing in on a decision, Doug McCall provided some unwelcome information.
“There’s a second shuttle coming, sir,” he said.
McKinney’s eyes darted left and right across the sky. The far horizon was becoming the perfect blue of dawn, but it was still too dark for him to easily find an approaching object and it took a moment before he saw the orange blob of a distant craft.
“That’s not a shuttle,” said Boon. “Crap! Look at the size of it!”
The bad news didn’t stop.
“The first shuttle is moving, sir,” said Bannerman.
It was. The vessel accelerated slowly, before banking through the air in a wide arc which would carry it directly to the place Squad A sheltered.
Negation Force (Obsidiar Fleet Book 1) Page 11