“The remaining Vraxar vessels are trying to put some distance between us,” said Mercer. “I don’t think they liked that.”
“They fought the Estral and will know the limitations of the overcharge technology,” said Talley. “Commander Adams, tell me when we can fire them again.”
“They’ve got a while yet. Firing Lambdas.”
“Keep up the pressure on that first battleship.”
Although the Vraxar peeled away from the Devastator, they remained in range of the Gallatrin-9. The Devastator’s instrumentation picked up constant particle beam fire between the two sides, along with a different type of weapon which the Vraxar had deployed against Space Corps warships previously. It was known to be a disintegration beam of some kind, though as yet it hadn’t brought down the Gallatrin-9’s shields.
“First wave of Ghast missiles about to detonate,” said Adams. “No sign of enemy countermeasures.”
The Ghast missiles streaked in towards the smaller Vraxar battleship. When they were within ten thousand kilometres, the Vraxar ship demonstrated something new. A vast wave of invisible energy erupted from it, forming a perfect, rapidly-expanding sphere. Where this energy struck the inbound missiles, it burned out their onboard processing units. With their guidance systems destroyed, they were unable to track the moving battleship. Most of them missed their target entirely, whilst others crashed into the Vraxar energy shield without exploding.
“Crap,” said Adams. “That’s a kick in the balls for us.”
The Ghast Shatterer missiles were more robust than the other warheads and these flew through the anti-missile sphere, exploding in a series of enormous blasts of roiling plasma far larger than Talley was anticipating. He stared in wonder at the size of the explosions - the Ghasts had somehow managed to fit a much, much bigger payload to their own Shatterers than that on the Space Corps’ version of the weapon. In fact, they seemed to be similar in size to the Devastator’s Shimmers, six of which exploded a moment later. It wasn’t enough and the Vraxar battleship twisted and turned as it sought to bring its own weapons to bear.
The next few minutes saw a thundering exchange of fire. The Ghasts seemed eager to test their strength and Talley joined them, with battle rage swelling in his chest. The Gallatrin-9 turned a hundred and fifty Vule cannons onto the Vraxar. White streaks burned across sixty thousand kilometres of space, each one joining the two battleships. The Ghasts fired their disruptors in short, irregular bursts as they sought to bring down the enemy shield. All the while, they fired missiles and particle beams.
The Devastator unleashed its full arsenal. One hundred and twenty-eight Bulwark cannons poured out tens of thousands of slugs each second. Missiles and particle beams added their weight to that of the Gallatrin-9’s onslaught. Talley ordered the battle computer to get them close enough to use the overcharged particle beam, but the Vraxar hopped from place to place, making it hard to get within range.
The Vraxar did not stand idle under the combined attack. Their primary weapons were particle beams and the dark energy weapon. In addition, they had fast-firing turrets of their own which spilled out in response. The larger of the pair was armed with two huge guns, which fired fifty-metre balls of Gallenium at an incredible velocity with a constant thud-thud-thud. The smaller warships darted around, trying to divide the firepower of the human and Ghast vessels.
“How long can they hold their shield?” said Talley, not sure if he was referring to the Ghasts or the Vraxar.
He checked the status of the Devastator’s energy shield – they hadn’t taken anything like as much damage as the Gallatrin-9, but their shield was close to fifty percent. Something had to give and it did.
“The Ghasts have lost their shield, sir,” said Lieutenant Johnson.
With its shield gone, the Vraxar particle beams struck against the Oblivion’s hull. Great swathes of its armour glowed with the heat and two huge sections of its hull crumbled and fell away. Still the Ghast captain kept his ship in place.
“I want a short-range transit,” said Talley. “Bring us right on top of that Vraxar battleship and then hit them with both overcharges.”
The timing was tight. The Devastator flashed into lightspeed, covering sixty thousand kilometres in a time so short there was no instrument accurate enough to measure it precisely. The battleship reappeared within five thousand kilometres of the enemy vessel.
“Front overcharge beam firing.”
The Vraxar had evidently been waiting for exactly this move. Before Commander Adams could fire the rear beam, the enemy warship vanished into lightspeed, appearing another sixty thousand kilometres away. It hadn’t escaped in time and the single overcharge beam had ruptured its underside, leaving a rough-edged, burning, two-thousand metre hole. Unrestrained green-blue energy spat out through the heat in jagged spears.
“Again!” shouted Talley.
Once more, the Devastator’s Obsidiar cores hurled the vessel into a lightspeed transit. When it reappeared, both the Gallatrin-9 and the two Vraxar battleships had vanished.
“What the hell…?” Talley began, with no time to wonder how the Ghasts had managed to reach lightspeed with no Obsidiar power left. “Find them!” He scanned the tactical quickly – the two Vraxar cruisers were still in the vicinity and they resumed firing upon the Devastator. “Blow those bastards away!” Talley snarled.
“Rear overcharge firing,” said Commander Adams.
The rear particle beam dome whined and thumped in a discharge of energy that could have powered the whole of Roban for a month. The target Vraxar warship wasn’t designed to withstand so much punishment and had no way to dissipate the heat. Its fate was the same as the previous two destroyed by the Devastator and it became a searingly hot chunk of melting alloy which burned fiercely as it tumbled towards Roban.
“That’s going to land bang in the middle of their main land mass, sir,” said Ensign Banks. “I estimate thirty minutes and it’ll probably be enough to kill half of the people on the planet.”
“It’ll have to wait,” said Talley. “Where’re those damned battleships? And why is that Vraxar cruiser still shooting at us?”
“I’ve got it targeted, sir,” said Adams calmly. “Lambdas on their way and our Bulwarks are already firing.”
The Vraxar captain wasn’t stupid enough to duke it out with the Devastator. With a sudden expulsion of fission energy, the Vraxar cruiser vanished into lightspeed, leaving the Hadron temporarily alone in space and Admiral Talley nonplussed.
“Got them!” yelled Mercer. “Our sensors have just picked up the Gallatrin-9 - it’s going across the surface of Roban’s moon at more than a thousand klicks per second.”
“It’ll burn up in no time!” said Talley.
“The two Vraxar battleships are there as well, sir. They’re trying to keep up.”
Talley opened his mouth to give the order for a short-range transit to assist the Oblivion. Two events occurred before he could speak the words.
Firstly, something detonated on the red-dust surface of Roban’s moon. It began as a tiny deep-red pin-prick on the Devastator’s sensors, which expanded rapidly. It looked small from this distance, but Talley could only imagine the incredible size of the blast. It continued to spread, growing like it would never stop. Within the space of five seconds, the whole of Roban’s single moon was ablaze, like a meteor with a four-thousand-kilometre diameter.
Talley wasn’t given the opportunity to assimilate and act upon this development.
“I think the Neutraliser has decided to show its face,” said Lieutenant Mercer.
A new object was on the tactical display. It was a spaceship in excess of eighteen thousand metres long and it was flying at high speed from the cusp of Roban and directly towards the Devastator.
Split off from the Ghasts, with Roban’s moon ignited and a Vraxar Neutraliser approaching, Talley stood frozen while his brain frantically tried to think what to do for the best.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
&nb
sp; “WHAT’S HAPPENED to Roban’s moon?” Admiral Talley asked. “Quickly!”
“An incendiary, sir,” said Commander Adams. “I’ve never seen the like before.”
“It’s the Ghasts,” said Talley. “Ignore the Neutraliser. Lieutenant Johnson, I require a short-range transit to bring us with twenty thousand klicks of the moon.”
It took Johnson all of two seconds to enter the coordinates. “Activating,” he said.
The Devastator’s engines grumbled and the battleship travelled almost a million kilometres before it arrived within a few hundred metres of its intended destination. Roban’s moon was alight. It burned fiercely, without a significant source of oxygen and apparently without fuel. The flames reached upwards for hundreds of kilometres in a conflagration of monumental proportions.
“Whatever they’ve used, it’s done something to the surface,” said Mercer in disbelief. “They’ve altered the makeup of the rock and set off some kind of chain reaction.”
“Where’s the Oblivion?”
“I think they’re still in there somewhere, sir.”
“Get them on the damned comms!”
“I can’t reach them, sir. They must be out of comms sight, else there’s something in this fire that’s interfering.”
“What about the Vraxar? Have they been stupid enough to follow the Ghasts into the middle of it?”
“I’m not sure,” said Mercer. “They circled around the planet and they haven’t come into view again. I don’t know if I’ll be able to lock onto them through all this flame.”
“It’s touching four thousand degrees at the mid-point of the fire,” said Lieutenant Johnson. “Our hull will melt at four thousand two hundred degrees.”
It wasn’t entirely clear to Talley if the Ghasts had been stupid, brave, foolhardy or a mixture of all three. They’d managed to lure the Vraxar battleships into chasing them around this small moon and then used some kind of weapon to set it alight. Surely they aren’t going to stay in there until they burn up? Talley thought.
No sooner had the thought formed when a shape burst away from the moon’s surface. It exploded outwards only a few hundred kilometres from the Devastator.
“That’s the Gallatrin-9,” said Mercer. “I have no idea how its holding together.”
The Oblivion accelerated with smooth, crushing power until it peaked at rather more than two thousand kilometres per second. There was nothing visible of its hull, since it was completely alight. Orange and white-hot flames clung along the whole of its length and as the battleship reached maximum velocity, it left a beautiful trail across the Devastator’s sensors.
“Captain Rioq-Tor,” said Ensign Banks dumbly.
The Ghast captain’s voice was piped through the bridge speakers. He roared with laughter, as if he’d found the entire meaning of existence in this single encounter. “This is how we fight, Admiral Talley! Let us test their shields now they have tasted the heat of our flames!”
The Vraxar warships came into sight, emerging from the flames with equal speed. Their shields were gone, burned out by the Gallatrin-9’s incendiaries. The smaller of the two burned brightly from the heat and the damage from the overcharged particle beam was clear to see. The larger Vraxar battleship was also alight, though only in small patches here and there across its hull. It was evident they hadn’t detected the Devastator and they were comfortably within the fifty-thousand-kilometre range of the Hadron’s particle beams, which they were about to discover.
“Fire,” said Talley.
“Overcharged front beam fired,” said Commander Adams. “No angle for the rear.”
The Devastator’s battle computer caught up and spun the warship around in a circle so tight it made the hull creak and groan.
“Firing rear beam,” said Adams.
The smaller Vraxar battleship was ripped into pieces. There was nothing graceful about its destruction – it broke into a thousand pieces of vaporising metal. The force of their disconnection from the whole was such that they were thrown in a wide arc away from the moon’s surface. Here and there, sparks leapt from the larger pieces, as if some of these separate parts continued to generate power after the death of the parent vessel.
Meanwhile, the dogfight continued. The Gallatrin-9 sprayed missile and Vule cannon slugs at the pursuing Vraxar ship. Whatever the name of the countermeasures system the enemy had used to destroy the previous missiles, it was either burned out or on cooldown and the Ghast missiles detonated in their hundreds on the Vraxar hull. In turn, the Vraxar turrets launched their own projectiles, which smashed into the heat-softened armour of the Oblivion, punching huge holes into the metal. At the same time, beams of dark energy stabbed across the intervening space, causing large sections of armour to disintegrate and scatter in scorching clouds of white-hot dust particles.
Talley watched it all, this short experience of combat a thousand times more real than a decade in the simulator or talking tactics with his officers. Duggan knew it – this was the life he’d lived for years. He’d tried to make Talley see the reality - that without having once been in the middle of it, all the words were as nothing. Now I see, old friend. He was gripped by a feeling of profound sadness which lasted for only the shortest of moments. Then it was swept aside by something different and stronger. His mouth and tongue moved, activated by the primal part of his brain he thought himself completely separate from.
“Fire everything we’ve got,” he intoned. “Bring them down.”
“Launching. Shimmers, Shatterers. We’ve got a full Lambda X launch, sir. Whatever they’ve been using to screw with our guidance systems isn’t working any longer.”
“Don’t stop.”
What had started off tentatively, became bloody and terrible. The Gallatrin-9 was little more than an indistinct form of molten metal and flames. Still it fired, wave upon wave of missiles. Vule fire – much more sporadic now - tore into the Vraxar spaceship.
The Devastator’s missiles took only seconds to reach the enemy ship. Such was the quantity that exploded, it appeared as if the whole length of the Vraxar battleship was engulfed in plasma. When the fires died, its hull was a patchwork mess of impact craters and in one place there was a hole greater than a thousand metres across and five hundred deep.
The enemy weren’t finished and they pursued the Gallatrin-9 as the Ghast Oblivion spun off along a trajectory that would see it skim across the edge of the dying fires of Roban’s moon. The Vraxar’s rear turrets and particle beams took aim on the Devastator and began firing, each successful strike draining a significant portion of the remaining Obsidiar power reserves.
“Follow them!” shouted Talley. “What’s the status on our overcharge?”
“Ready whenever you are, sir,” said Commander Adams. “It’ll take our power close to zero and once that’s gone…”
“No shields, no engines and no hope.”
“We should hold off with all the beam weapons, sir.”
“Understood.”
The Devastator’s battle computer selected the most efficient course and gave the colossal engines full thrust. Even with the life support system fully operational, Talley felt the acceleration push him into his chair. He stared at the retreating tail of the enemy and dared to hope they might emerge victorious. A different thought intruded, one he didn’t welcome. Where the hell is that Neutraliser? He hadn’t quite forgotten about this largest of the Vraxar vessels, but he’d somehow imagined it would take some time while it sailed across on its gravity engines.
“Where’s the Neutraliser?” he asked.
“I can’t see it, sir,” said Mercer. “We’ve got this moon between us and Roban.”
Talley swore. “We need to finish this battleship off.”
“The Vraxar cruiser we shot down will crater on Roban in approximately twenty minutes,” said Ensign Banks, reminding Talley how much there was riding on the outcome of this encounter.
It wasn’t the Vraxar who were defeated first. The Gallatrin-9 had su
ffered catastrophic damage and it suddenly lost power and plummeted towards the moon’s surface a few hundred kilometres below. The moon was cooling, though still hot, and it had a reflective sheen in many places. The Oblivion fell and the Vraxar pursued. The Devastator maintained a withering assault of missiles and particle beams, whilst the Vraxar returned fire.
“Some of that dust has fused,” said Ensign Lewis. “It’s the only moon made of glass I’ve ever seen.”
“Sir, we’re going to need to turn off our shields,” said Lieutenant Johnson. “Each hit on them is taking away the power we’re going to require for our engines.”
“You’re right. Turn off the shields,” said Talley. “That’s what the plating is there for, right?”
As soon as the shield was switched off, the enemy projectiles began crashing into the Devastator’s nose. The armour plating was angled in such a way that the attacks were deflected, but the impacts still resulted in significant damage. Particle beams raked into the metal, along with one of the dark energy beams. Talley watched the list of damage reports speeding across his screen and did his best not to think about them.
“How many missiles is it going to take?” said Commander Adams, the first indication he was losing his composure. “We’ve hit them with more than a thousand Lambdas!”
“Don’t let up.”
The Gallatrin-9 crashed down at speed and at a shallow angle. It skipped up, turned in the air and then spun wildly over the rocks, pulverising a series of stone peaks and leaving a wide scar across the surface that stretched for many hundreds of kilometres. Talley wasn’t sure if he imagined it, but he thought he saw the shockwaves ripple away from the main points of impact.
“Come on, come on!” said Adams.
Talley turned his attention to the tactical display. A thick wave of the Devastator’s missiles was within five seconds of the enemy warship. It had to be enough.
The Vraxar used their anti-missile countermeasures again. Many hundreds of Lambda missiles screamed high and wide past the warship, their guidance systems no longer functioning. Talley felt something clench in his stomach when he realised what had happened.
Inferno Sphere (Obsidiar Fleet Book 2) Page 21