“How long since you heard from the ES Blackbird?”
“Back in the storage area, sir. They’re still shadowing the Vraxar spaceship.”
“It’s been about fifty minutes since they first made contact. Another ten minutes and they’ll be ready to start firing.”
“If everything goes to plan, sir.”
Just then, McKinney felt a surge of acceleration, savage and crushing. He stumbled and Bannerman did likewise. The sensation passed quickly and he steadied himself. A few of the squad were picking themselves up from the ground. They threw questions into the open channel.
“We’ve gone to lightspeed,” said McKinney. “I don’t know what that means, so don’t ask. We’re sticking to the plan and going to the hangar bay.”
“I don’t know if the Blackbird’s comms will be able to reach this pack now, sir. Comms don’t work at lightspeed,” said Bannerman. “I can’t detect them as a receptor and we should assume they will have the same problem. We’re blind to each other.”
“Just another thing to add to the pile, Corporal.”
The high-pitched whine of gunfire brought McKinney back to the present.
“Report!” he shouted.
“There’s movement at the storage room entrance, sir,” said Woods. “They’re coming after us.”
McKinney glanced over his shoulder. There was no sign of enemy reinforcements spilling through from the mothership – not yet. They’ll come, he thought, increasing his speed.
They entered the enormous expanse of Hangar Bay One, travelling at little more than a jog. Webb was slowing them up and, in addition, the front squads were required to provide cover to Squad D as those men fell back.
The bay was a stark, cold place. It was partly lit in blue-white, whilst in other places the red warning lights cycled in warning. The external doors were to McKinney’s left – they were gargantuan slabs of metal which, when retracted, could allow smaller warships to berth inside the orbital. The wall opposite the bay doors was punctuated by deep alcoves, which were used by the maintenance teams for minor works and also for storage.
There was a Space Corps prospector in the bay, resting on its support legs in the middle of the floor. This model wasn’t much more than a few hundred metres long and with a pitted hull which spoke of many years in service. The prospectors were mostly comprised of sensor arrays tuned for geological investigation, along with an engine that was only just suitable for carrying them around Confederation Space. They were rarely armed and this one was no exception to the rule.
McKinney strode deeper into the bay, doing his best to spot the place where T.O. Rhodes had managed to hide not only herself and twenty other technicians, but also an operational shuttle. She’d provided a description on the comms, but it wasn’t easy to join her words with the picture.
“T.O. Rhodes. We are in Hangar Bay One. Please update us as to your exact location.”
“I can see you, Lieutenant,” she said. “I’m waving.”
McKinney had already gathered that T.O. Hattie Rhodes was one of those people. A person who was perfectly decent and hardworking, but who wasn’t quite able to grasp when it was time to be serious.
“This is not the time!” he said. “We are taking fire and Captain Blake is going to blow the main doors open in less than ten minutes.”
A figure emerged into view, a good distance to McKinney’s right. The figure was waving vigorously in his direction. McKinney suppressed a sigh.
“We’re over here, Lieutenant! In this maintenance unit.”
McKinney didn’t respond immediately. Instead, he beckoned his squad onwards, urging them to make haste out of the maintenance area. Once done, he turned his attention to Rhodes once again.
“What maintenance unit?”
“This one,” she repeated, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
McKinney was about to make a sharp retort. He held his tongue and stared past her at a section of the wall in the corner of the main bay. At first glance, it appeared as if there was nothing there. When he focused, he saw that there was, in fact, another one of the alcoves, with something squeezed in so tightly there was hardly any room around it. When he realised this, the additional details become clear – this was the square rear-end of an ancient shuttle behind which the technicians must have taken refuge. If you weren’t looking and had no need to go any closer, it was very easy to miss, though the hiding place wouldn’t have fooled the Vraxar forever.
“Is the shuttle warmed up?”
“Just like you ordered, sir!”
“Start backing it out.”
“We can’t.”
“What’s wrong? Is it stuck?”
“No, sir. None of us knows how to fly it.”
“Why didn’t you say so earlier?”
“You didn’t ask.”
McKinney gritted his teeth. “Can you at least get the rear door open so we can come onboard when we reach you?”
“Of course, sir. How else could I have come out to see you if the door wouldn’t open?”
On any other day, Rhodes might have been entertaining to speak with. On this day, she was particularly infuriating. McKinney couldn’t allow himself to be angered by such little things and he did his best to ignore her obtuseness.
Nearby, Squad D completed their retreat from the maintenance area. Sergeant Woods was the last man out and he threw himself around the edge of the doorway between the two zones. Movement in the air suggested a fusillade of shots had followed his escape.
“Looks like we poked them too hard, sir,” he warned. “Got a small army of them coming out of that mothership.”
As Woods spoke, a Vraxar rocket shot through the wide doorway. It continued across the bay and detonated in a blossom of dark energy against the side of the prospector, leaving a smouldering patch on the vessel’s outer armour.
“Definitely time to move,” panted Garcia, joining the men and women sprinting towards Technical Officer Rhodes.
While he was running, McKinney saw the entire rear section of the shuttle dropping away, to reveal the interior. The surviving technicians were inside, milling around with the uncertainty of people who had never dreamed their jobs would bring them face to face with murderous aliens. The passenger area was easily big enough to carry everyone, but there’d be a few people standing.
With a burst of speed, McKinney dashed past the lone figure of Rhodes and reached the shuttle first. T.O. Rhodes stopped waving and she turned her head to follow. His feet clanked over the boarding ramp and he barged his way along the central aisle between the bare metal seats as he made for the cockpit door. One of the technicians – a man from his build - wasn’t quick enough to move and he was knocked to the floor as McKinney went by.
“Everyone onboard!” McKinney shouted. He wasn’t certain if his command reached every one of the technicians. “Are all your group in the passenger bay?” he asked Rhodes.
“Yes, sir!” she replied. Then, with significantly more doubt in her voice. “One of you can fly this thing, right?”
McKinney was trained to fly shuttles, though it was a while since he’d been on anything as old as this one. “Yes,” was the only response he gave.
The cockpit door had a No Unauthorised Personnel and No Decaffeinated Beverages sign on it. The door was attached to the frame by stiff hinges and it shuddered as he wrenched it open. When he saw the cockpit, he felt a momentary dismay at the age of the equipment. It was so old he wouldn’t have been shocked to find a reinforced clear windscreen to look through. There wasn’t one – only the sloping front inner wall of the shuttle’s wedge-shaped nose.
“When did they build this thing?” he asked Rhodes over the comms.
“Seventy-five years ago,” she replied proudly. “There are only five of this exact model operational within the Confederation and you’re standing in one of them.”
McKinney sat himself on the single seat. It had grey cloth upholstery which the technicians hadn’t yet got a
round to replacing and there was something that looked like dried chewing gum on the backrest. The single control panel was battered and no doubt had more than its fair share of coffee spilled on it over the years. It was still functioning and McKinney was relieved to find it was loaded with the familiar Space Corps interface which had seen decades of refinement, whilst remaining recognizable no matter which version you were using.
“Seventy-five years old is a good thing?” he asked.
“I think most people would say so.”
“I’m not one of them.”
“You’re a grouch, Lieutenant. I hope you know that.”
McKinney suppressed a grin and proceeded with the standard list of pre-flight checks. The Juniper’s technicians were capable of fixing pretty much anything in the fleet, so it was no surprise to find the onboard systems were fully operational. He activated the front sensor feed and an image appeared, covering the front inner wall of the cockpit. The screen showed the area in which the technicians had taken refuge – it was a mess of discarded cups, trays and wrappers.
From the sound of it, he could tell it was getting busy in the passenger bay. Only a couple of minutes remained of the hour Captain Blake said he would wait before destroying the outer doors. The timing was tight.
“Are you ready?” he asked on the comms.
“We just got Webb up the ramp, sir,” replied Corporal Li. “You’re going to need to close this back door before the enemy get around the corner.”
The rear door was activated by means of a mechanical switch. McKinney pressed it firmly and heard the whirring sound of motors. The shuttle itself might have been seventy-five years old, but he guessed the original design went back another fifty on top of that. The button light changed from red to green once the door was closed. It wasn’t a moment too soon – immediately the shuttle was sealed, McKinney heard the sound of small arms fire against the rear door. The vessel’s armour would be proof against the small stuff, but he didn’t want to test it against anything heavy.
The shuttle’s engines had a coarseness to them – the sort of charisma McKinney admitted was lacking in modern craft. They responded readily enough when he fed the power into them and he was satisfied they’d do the job.
He counted himself a skilled pilot, but there was no way he intended scraping them out of this alcove inch by inch. There was an autopilot option, buried away in a sub-sub-menu. He turned it on, keeping his fingers crossed that the navigational system wouldn’t refuse to operate in such a tight space. It seemed that this shuttle predated the safety-above-all era and the autopilot happily accepted McKinney’s command to get them the hell out of the alcove.
The cabin shook and the engines rumbled. McKinney heard the screeching sound of metal dragging over metal. Slowly, the shuttle’s engines dragged it out of the alcove. The intensity of small-arms fire against the rear door, which had been sporadic at first, increased until it was a constant rattle. An explosive of some type thumped beneath the shuttle, rocking it against the side walls. McKinney swore under his breath and tried not to think about the damage they were taking.
There was a second blast, larger than the first. The shuttle was so old it didn’t even have a way of communicating the nuances to the pilot. Instead, it simply flashed a big, red Warning! notice on the second of the four console screens.
“It’s getting warm back here, Lieutenant,” said Corporal Li. “And there’s none of us dressed for sunbathing.”
“I hear you, Corporal. Steady as it goes and we’ll be out of here soon enough.”
“Captain Blake’s late, sir.”
“Yes, he is. Try not to think about it.”
At that moment, the shuttle was enveloped in the thunderous clashing noise of a thousand wide-bore repeater projectiles raining against the hull. The comms became filled with curses and a dozen overlapping questions until McKinney shouted for silence. The only thing he could imagine was the Vraxar had managed to haul another repeater off the mothership and brought it to bear on the shuttle.
“We’re going to suffer a breach soon, Lieutenant,” said Sergeant Woods. “This heap of crap wasn’t made to stop bullets.”
“Heap of crap?” came the indignant voice of T.O. Rhodes.
“That’s what I said, ma’am.”
With one final shudder, the shuttle’s autopilot guided it free of the alcove. McKinney grabbed the control sticks at once. He hauled the vessel backwards until there was room to turn. He has happy to discover his knack hadn’t deserted him and he spun the shuttle around on the spot, turning it to face whatever was firing at them.
He saw it at once - the fourth of the big Vraxar was there. It stood near to the bay doors, its chaingun pointing directly at the shuttle, spraying thousands of rounds into the hull. Other, smaller Vraxar were scattered close by, firing their own guns.
McKinney wished they’d installed nose guns on these old shuttles. The weapons control software was loaded, but they hadn’t thought to fit a chaingun at the same time.
There were two choices. The safest of the two was to use the inactive prospector vessel as a shield and keep it between the shuttle and the Vraxar. However, McKinney wasn’t in the mood for running. Seeing the alien standing emotionless as it tried to deny him and his squad everything they’d fought for filled him with anger.
“Let’s see how you like this,” he growled.
With that, he jammed the shuttle’s joystick forward. Part of him expected the action to produce a steady movement across the bay floor. It didn’t. With a harsh resonation of overstressed engines, the shuttle accelerated with incredible speed.
The armoured Vraxar had little time to react. The shuttle impacted with the alien at a speed of several hundred kilometres per hour, shattering its bones and organs, crushing its armour. The Vraxar was hurled away by the force, and it slithered over the bay floor until it thudded against one of the walls. It didn’t try to get up.
In the cockpit, McKinney pulled the shuttle in a sharp turn, whilst decelerating as quickly as possible. The vessel missed the bay doors by a matter of metres – it was far closer than he’d intended. He brought the shuttle higher above the floor and steadied it over the prospector. He flexed the tension from his shoulders and emptied the air he’d been holding in his lungs.
The Vraxar didn’t give him time to settle. Barely five seconds passed before the hammering on the hull resumed. With horror, McKinney realised it was coming from several directions. He saw the cause – there were at least two more of the armoured Vraxar in the hangar bay. He had no idea where they’d materialised from. He banked the shuttle away, hoping to buy them some time. It was no good and he couldn’t seem to find a place where the aliens had no clear line of sight to the shuttle.
“They just popped a hole in us, Lieutenant,” said Corporal Li without any obvious sign of panic. “Make that a few holes.”
“Stay down!”
“The holes are in the floor, sir.”
McKinney was starting to ask himself if he was trapped in some kind of nightmare where everything was deliberately weighted against him. He kept an eye on the bay doors, becoming increasingly convinced that something had gone wrong with Captain Blake’s brave plan.
At that point, something exploded in the bay. This time it wasn’t small-time like a grenade. A thunderous blast rolled across the entire space, filling it with flames. The blast expanded with hideous speed, emanating from an unknown source. The shuttle was picked up by the force of the explosion and thrown across the bay. All the while, McKinney fought with the controls and uttered curses at everything he could think of.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
ADMIRAL HENRY TALLEY was in conversation with Fleet Admiral Duggan when the Ghast battleship Gallatrin-9 detected them.
“They got a ping off our hull, sir,” said Lieutenant Mercer. “It won’t be enough for them to pinpoint us, but they’ll know we’re here.”
Talley raised a hand in acknowledgement and continued talking to Duggan. He was
aware that each passing minute without action was time wasted and he spoke quickly.
“There’s enough Obsidiar to transform both of our civilisations, John. If we try to deny the Ghasts access to it, they may well feel obliged to fight for it. Their claim is just as strong as ours.”
“I know it, Henry.”
“Neither the Devastator nor the Gallatrin-9 has a way of carrying the spoils. We could likely recover some of the smaller pieces of Obsidiar using our shuttles and a gravity winch.”
“Yes – the Devastator is a warship, not a cargo vessel.”
“It’ll need specialist equipment. We may need to cut the Estral carrier open.”
“And if the Ghasts won’t cooperate, we’ll have a real job getting to the Obsidiar,” said Duggan. “Especially so since we’re currently at war with the Vraxar. The last thing we want is the Ghasts shooting down our recovery vessels.”
“Will the Confederation Council buy my suggestion?”
“They won’t be given the opportunity to say no.”
“You’ll speak to the Ghasts?”
“I’ll contact Subjos Kion-Tur immediately and put forward the offer. A fifty-fifty split on what’s on that Estral vessel in return for their full military assistance against the Vraxar.”
“Will they go for it?”
“I think they’re waiting for the chance to get involved. What you’ve discovered on Vontaren is the game-changer we needed.”
“What if they don’t like the offer?”
“If they play hardball, I’ll tell them the Devastator will turn Vontaren into a ball of flame that won’t cool down for a thousand years.”
“I don’t know whether to believe you.”
“I don’t know if I believe me either. Let’s not worry about it until it happens.”
“I agree. And when they commit to an alliance?”
“Go back to Roban with the Gallatrin-9. The Confederation Council has denied the secession, so, for all their idiocy, the people of the so-called Frontier League are still a part of us. We’ll do what we can for them.”
Inferno Sphere (Obsidiar Fleet Book 2) Page 18