McKinney really didn’t want to enter the conduit and every fibre of his being screamed at him to close the door again. He refused to listen to his fears and stepped through.
The central area was exactly as he remembered it – a cylindrical room with a ceiling a thousand or more metres above and an entwined bundle of black metal threads running from one end to another, alive with sparks of filthy Vraxar energy. The pressure in the air felt much greater than last time and it pressed against the material of his suit. There must be even more power running through here now, he thought.
The walkway was only about a metre wide, with a railing and grated floor he hadn’t noticed last time. He began to run along it, checking once over his shoulder to see if his men followed. They were close behind and each had his neck craned to see the sights of the conduit.
They’d covered fifty metres or so when McKinney felt his heart thump wildly in his chest. He roared out a bestial sound of anger, as if his fury and the strength of his will could impose a rhythm onto the beating of his heart.
“Urgh,” said Roldan behind.
The man stumbled and fell forward, with one arm clutching his chest. McKinney spun around and caught him, putting his hands beneath Roldan’s arms. Garcia was also struggling and he wheezed out a panicked cry for help into the comms channel. Webb was the last man - he put both arms around Garcia’s chest and arched his back as he squeezed once, twice, three times.
“Come on,” gasped McKinney. His HUD beeped, the noise almost lost in the background droning buzz. He didn’t need to read the medical computer’s report to know that his heartbeat was dangerously irregular. The suit defibrillator gave him a shock. The electrical charge felt like the punch from a champion boxer in his chest and he thumped his ribcage repeatedly with his palm to try and lessen the pain.
Roldan fell from McKinney’s grasp and dropped to all fours, with his head bowed and his life signs winking out.
“No!” shouted McKinney.
He planted his feet on the floor and pulled at Roldan’s arm. The soldier’s body stiffened and then spasmed violently. He coughed and his vital signs reappeared on the local network.
“I can walk,” he said.
McKinney let go and tried to get his bearings. He was suddenly confused and couldn’t figure out which was he was meant to be going.
“That way!” said Webb, his arm raised to point.
With a feeling of intense weariness, McKinney turned and staggered off. He was already running above the maximum permitted dose of battlefield adrenaline, but his spacesuit medical computer was able to take whatever steps it thought necessary to preserve his life. It squirted him with a colossal dose of the stuff, along with a vast quantity of nausea suppressants to stop him from retching up his guts inside his visor.
Through it all, a number on his HUD taunted him, telling the tale of how little progress they’d managed.
500 metres to go. Surely we’ve come further than that?
The fresh dose of adrenaline kicked in. His body was far past the point where more of the drug would give him a significant boost. He experienced a faint surge, which allowed him to press on at a staggering run. There were access doors in the wall at regular intervals, each one giving false promises of safety.
Every ten metres, he turned to see how the others were getting on. Roldan was keeping up, though he wasn’t managing to run in a straight line. At the back, Webb had Garcia over his shoulder and he strode after the others, the set of his shoulders indicating he had no intention of stopping for anything.
The inexorable approach of the soldier gave McKinney impetus to stay ahead and he found new strength in his legs. It became a competition in which they all either won or lost, but within the competition itself was an individual need to keep going so that everyone could take hope from the display of certainty and push themselves to the limit and beyond.
“How far?” asked Roldan, his voice hardly more than a whisper.
“Two hundred metres. Nearly there.”
McKinney’s breathing became ragged, and he drew in painful, shuddering gulps of air that never seemed enough to feed the demands of his body. He heard the thud of a falling body. He turned, dazed, and saw Roldan had fallen face-down onto the grating, with one arm caught on the railing.
“I can’t get past,” said Webb, sounding lost.
McKinney stooped and grabbed Roldan’s arm. “Up you get,” he said.
Roldan was past the point of getting his feet under him. “Sorry, Lieutenant,” he mumbled. “Leave me here.”
“Everyone lives or everyone dies.”
With those words, McKinney drew on the last vestiges of his energy and hauled Roldan upwards. The soldier tried to straighten his legs but flopped down. McKinney didn’t let go and began walking backwards, pulling Roldan with him.
A hair-thin thread of green energy flicked between McKinney and the central conduit bundle. His heart missed one beat, two and then kicked in again. He gritted his teeth and did his best to ignore it.
“Come on, sir,” said Webb.
McKinney raised his head slightly, wondering how the soldier remained so strong that he was able to carry Garcia over his shoulder and keep walking.
“If there’s one thing going to keep me running away,” McKinney gasped, “it’s the sight of your ugly face and Garcia’s backside.”
Step by step, they continued. With his reserves spent, McKinney saw that the distance counter had dropped to minus fifty metres. They’d travelled further than expected, yet there’d been no exit door for a longer interval than normal. He was still walking backwards and did his best to look behind. There was no sign of the conduit’s end and he guessed it continued into the middle of the nullification sphere.
“Where’s the next damn door?” he said.
“I see one!” said Webb. “Fifty metres!”
It was the longest, hardest fifty metres of McKinney’s life, but he made it. Roldan felt like he weighed a thousand pounds and the soldier’s lower body scraped and bumped over the flooring.
As soon as he came within five metres of the door, McKinney dropped Roldan and dashed for the flat section of the wall. These few paces were enough for him to obtain a better view along the conduit. It appeared to end after another thousand metres or so and opened into an even larger space, where the bundle of metal formed a different, more spherical shape. The front nullification sphere was extensively damaged and the interior was badly malformed as a result. The green light flickered, producing countless shadows onto the warped metal.
McKinney found the lever and pulled. The door moved aside, offering sanctuary within the darkened interior. Webb squeezed past the fallen Roldan and was dutiful enough to wait for instruction.
“In!”
Webb didn’t need to be told twice and he hurried past into the small room beyond. There wasn’t enough room to keep Garcia over his shoulder and he dropped to one knee in order to lower the soldier onto the floor.
Meanwhile, Roldan had tapped into his own final reserves and he half-walked, half-crawled towards the opening. McKinney put an arm across the man’s shoulders and assisted him for the final few steps.
With the four men inside, Webb pulled the lever and the door closed behind, leaving them in a darkness so complete that McKinney’s scrambled brain wondered if he was dead.
Chapter Twelve
McKinney was not dead, nor were the men with him.
“We can’t sit here, Lieutenant,” said Webb. “We’ve got to move.”
Now he was away from the energy-draining aura of the conduit, with its grating, persistent buzzing, McKinney felt something return to him. Strength wasn’t the correct word to use, since he knew he was as weak as a kitten. Nevertheless, the conduit’s suppression of his body was gone and the battlefield adrenaline reasserted a tiny measure of control, urging him to rise and start shooting some Vraxar.
He tried to smile at this sudden understanding – how obvious the drug’s manipulation of his
thoughts was becoming. The spacesuit and the adrenaline had saved his life and he wasn’t about to criticise. He switched on his visor torch and its light illuminated the three men squashed into the space. They looked spent.
“Roldan, are you ready to face the enemy?”
“Ready when you are, sir.”
“You sound like shit.”
“I feel a whole lot worse.”
“Garcia?”
“What?”
“Are you awake yet?”
Garcia mumbled something which may have been piss off but McKinney gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed the words were Wide awake and raring to go, Lieutenant!
“There are four heartbeats on the suit medical network. That means it’s time to move.”
“Can’t we wait here for a while? To gather our strength?”
“Negative. We went through that crap to get a lead on the Vraxar. If we wait here, we’re going to give them a chance to get ahead of us. Then we’ll die and next thing you know you’ll find you’ve been converted and all you’ll want is to shoot the soldiers who were once your friends.”
McKinney led the way, climbing over the exhausted limbs of his fellows in order to reach the exit passage. There were no complaints, only weary sighs of men who wanted nothing more than to be gone from this place and never return. It was a motivation of sorts.
“Think of your beds,” said McKinney. “I’ll ensure you get a private room and seventy-two hours of undisturbed sleep on the Abyss.”
“There are no private rooms on the Abyss,” said Roldan. “Except for the crew and I doubt they’ll be giving them up for unwashed grunts like us.”
“I’ll have a word with Captain Blake. I promise.”
“I’m going to hold you to your word, Lieutenant.”
“I always keep my promises, you know that Garcia.”
The conversation was enough to distract the men from their physical pain and it rallied them a little. McKinney had no idea if the Abyss’s crew would give up their cabins but in reality, it wouldn’t come to that since there were a few spare rooms in the officer’s quarters for the times when the heavy cruiser had a larger contingent on the bridge. The soldiers would get their three days of rest, though it was more likely to be spent in the medical bay.
They reached the hatch above the main corridor which led to the entry point.
“Get ready,” said McKinney. “I estimate there could be anything up to one hundred metres of running until we reach the way out. If there are lots of Vraxar, we’re screwed.”
“You’ve got your repeater, sir.”
“It’s not going to kill them all.”
He pulled the lever and the hatch slid quietly into its recess. McKinney felt despair when his visor earpiece picked up the sound of footsteps, somewhere ahead.
“We were too slow.”
He tried to work out how long they’d been in the conduit and came up blank. It had felt like forever but wasn’t anything more than a few minutes. Evidently it was sufficient for the Vraxar to either overtake them along this corridor or find another way around.
“What now?” asked Roldan.
“We’ve come this far,” said Garcia. “Why don’t we take a few down with us?”
Against any other opponent, the idea of going out in a blaze of glory might have been tempting – to whittle away at the enemy in order to give your fellows a greater chance in the future. With the Vraxar, every corpse could simply be added to their numbers.
Unless we blow ourselves up with grenades, thought McKinney.
He wasn’t ready for suicide. “Hold my legs,” he said.
With Roldan and Webb sitting on his upper legs, McKinney leaned carefully out through the hatch. They were tantalisingly close to the entry point room – only a few metres away, in fact. There were Vraxar inside the room and he tried to count the numbers.
“Maybe twenty or thirty of them in the entry point room,” he said. “It’s hard to be certain.”
McKinney twisted until he could see in the other direction. His movement sensor picked up shapes a few hundred metres towards the steps.
“There’s a group of six coming from the other way,” he said. “I can’t make out if there are any more coming after them.”
McKinney attempted to curl himself back up through the hatch and found his stomach muscles unwilling to comply.
“Pull me up.”
Roldan and Webb dragged him unceremoniously into the room and McKinney lay panting and waiting for the blood flow through his brain to normalise.
“Can we make it?” asked Garcia.
“It’s going to be tough. We’ll need to get through this hatch fast, clear out the smaller group and then make a run for the entry point room.” He eyed up their grenade bandoliers and noted that each man had plenty spare.
“It’s a long way down,” said Webb.
“Hang and drop. It’s not far,” said Garcia.
“We can’t wait any longer,” said McKinney. “I’ll drop first, then Roldan, Garcia, Webb.”
He didn’t give them a chance to ask any further questions. He stood over the hatch and looked down – it seemed much further to the bottom when he was on his feet. He dropped into a crouch and turned around so that his back was to the opening. He used his right hand to pull his gauss rifle free and kept a tight grip on it, leaving his left hand to deal with slowing his fall.
“Here goes.”
McKinney slid backwards into the hatch opening. His shins scraped painfully on the metal lip and he dropped through. As he fell into space, he grabbed at the rim with his left hand. His fingers gripped for just long enough to snap him to a brief halt and then his weight tore them free. He fell the final two metres and the high gravity of Vanistar caused him to hit the floor with a heavy, painful thump. He bent his knees to reduce the impact, which helped only a little.
With the wind knocked out of him, McKinney took a hurried stride forward to clear the area beneath the hatch and lay flat on the floor. He pulled the gauss rifle tight against his shoulder and took aim at the group of six Vraxar coming towards him. The lights were on, but the enemy showed no signs of recognition and McKinney was glad they were too far away to realise he was human instead of Vraxar.
His first three shots were accurate, each one striking a vital area. He fired again, this second volley not so effective. The survivors of his ambush fell flat to the floor, using their fallen as cover.
Roldan landed next to McKinney with a crunch and stumbled into the wall. He recovered quickly and lay prone. The two men fired another couple of bursts. The gauss rounds had enough power to penetrate several opponents before they were spent and the Vraxar discovered that the bodies of their fellows were ineffective protection. The remainder of the aliens died quickly, though the two men fired several more times to ensure the job was done.
With the first group defeated, McKinney spun around to look into the entry point room. It had been a gamble to take out the rear group first, but the few seconds spent were intended to allow everyone time to reach the floor so they could make a combined assault on the larger group of Vraxar. The gauss rifles killed in near-silence and so far, there was no sign the aliens had detected anything was wrong.
Garcia dropped from the ceiling. He got his timing wrong and landed awkwardly, twisting his ankle. McKinney heard the sickening pop of breaking bones.
“That is going to hurt like a bastard when these drugs wear off,” said Garcia happily.
McKinney rose into a crouch, keeping himself pressed close to the wall. He slung his gauss rifle and lowered the barrel of his repeater. The enemy were in groups in the entry point room, though they had set no guard and showed no signs they were interested in their surroundings. It was like they’d chased the fleeing soldiers off the Neutraliser and now they didn’t have a clue what they were going to do. McKinney was more than pleased to take advantage and crept along the corridor towards them, with Roldan following and Garcia limping.
We
bb arrived, plummeting from the ceiling with the grace of a hippo. His landing was more successful than Garcia’s and he righted himself quickly and hugged the wall. This time, the movement caught the eye of one of the Vraxar soldiers. It didn’t make a sound, but the other aliens in the room responded immediately by reaching for their guns.
“Time to move,” said McKinney.
The closest group of Vraxar was thirty metres away – near enough for the plasma repeater to chew them up in less than a second. McKinney gave them a long burst and the glowing arc of projectiles ripped them to pieces, hurling chunks of flesh and armour across the floor. The standard repeaters were enormously effective shock weapons and the plasma versions were a step up. The Vraxar fell, given no chance to respond with fire of their own.
With grim satisfaction, McKinney turned the weapon onto the next group. The aliens had already started to spread themselves out. Some dropped prone, whilst others tried to cut off McKinney’s angle by moving away from his line of sight. The repeater ploughed through many more, churning up flesh and bones, spitting the pieces dozens of metres to collide with the walls and the floor.
“Holy shit!” laughed Roldan. “Look at them fall!”
When it came to the Vraxar there was none of the sympathy one soldier might feel for another. Instead there was a hungering lust to destroy as many of these abominations as possible. McKinney felt the craving and kept the trigger on his repeater held tightly against the barrel. Its ammunition reserves dropped rapidly, but so too did the enemy fall.
A few Vraxar survived the withering hail of plasma slugs and made it out McKinney’s line of sight.
“Go!” he shouted.
Roldan and Garcia needed no more encouragement. They stepped clear of the wall and pitched grenades one after the other into the room, doing their best to catch the enemy in the blasts. Webb crossed to the opposite wall of the corridor and tried to get a firing angle. The coils on his rifle whined again and again.
“Got three!” he shouted.
“Don’t stop!”
McKinney inched forward while Webb maintained his suppressing fire and the others continued to throw grenades.
God Ship (Obsidiar Fleet Book 3) Page 11