“They aren’t leaving,” said Hawkins.
“They will. They’ve got to.”
“What if they decide to go back? Or scan through all of these drones?” asked Quinn.
“We don’t need to hear the possibilities, Lieutenant!”
The battleship jumped for a second time and Blake held his breath while he waited for the sensors to get a lock on it.
He sighed in relief. “They’ve gone after the Lucid.”
“Maybe we didn’t need to abandon ship after all,” said Hawkins.
Just then, something else appeared, come from the far side of New Earth. Ix-Gorghal emerged into local space, less than ten thousand kilometres from the shuttle. Its propulsion systems fired up and it moved towards the tiny craft at the kind of leisurely speed which suggested it wasn’t in a hurry for anything.
“Oh crap,” said Quinn, his voice hoarse.
Even at this distance and viewed through the shuttle sensors, there was no mistaking the incredible size and menace of the Vraxar capital ship. It approached head on and Blake looked into the wide, wide bore of the front disintegration tube. There was a green light somewhere deep inside, strangely mesmerising to his eyes.
A hush fell upon the crew, as if the outcome could somehow be influenced if only they remained as quiet as possible.
“Have they seen us?” whispered Pointer.
“If they have, we won’t live long enough to know it.”
Ix-Gorghal turned side-on and sailed past, only five thousand kilometres from the edge of the shock drone cloud. Blake cut the shuttle’s engines and shut down the non-critical systems, hoping the reduced power signature would make them less visible. He couldn’t tear his eyes from the vast spaceship before him. Its surface was covered in more turrets than he could remember and he was beginning to think many of the outer structures were power housings. The whole thing might be hollow, he thought. Half of the Vraxar race in that one ship.
Ix-Gorghal came to a halt. It was cold on the shuttle, but sweat dripped from Blake’s forehead and ran down his back in a stream.
“Go on, piss off,” he said.
“If they wait much longer, we’ll miss our chance anyway,” said Pointer.
The seconds dragged out and Blake found it hard to keep himself steady. “The Lucid’s jumped again,” he said, his voice scratchy.
“I always did like that ship,” said Pointer. “Better than the Abyss.”
Just when he was beginning to think luck had deserted him, Ix-Gorghal vanished from sensor sight.
“Where did it go?” asked Quinn.
In a way, it was irrelevant. Blake didn’t spend time searching for the enemy ship. He pressed a trembling finger onto the activation panel for the shuttle’s engines. As soon as he felt them kick into life, he pushed the control joystick forward, giving the tiny vessel full thrust. The engines grumbled and the power readings from the life support system spiked as it struggled to cope with the unexpected burst of acceleration.
“Got it!” said Hawkins, making some adjustments to the console from the shuttle’s second seat. “It’s gone after the Lucid!”
The Lucid’s battle computer made another short-range transition and it disappeared from the sensors. Ix-Gorghal and the Vraxar battleship vanished a few seconds later.
“Still in pursuit,” said Blake.
“Looks like. The Lucid’s going to run out of tricks soon.”
The Lucid had been doomed from the moment the plan was conceived and agreed. There was no way Ix-Gorghal was going to stay out of the fight once it started. It could be that the Lucid’s battle computer would come up with a way to keep the ship intact for the sixty minutes it was programmed to maintain the engagement. In that case, it would make its escape into a much longer lightspeed jump. If that happened, Ix-Gorghal might follow, but Blake was absolutely certain the capital ship would break off and return to New Earth, rather than being led on a wild goose chase.
“Eight minutes until we reach Tucson,” said Blake. “That’s when it starts getting really interesting. How is everyone holding up back there?”
There were only three seats in the shuttle’s cockpit and Pointer was the lucky one standing. She opened the door into the passenger bay and made a cursory look around at the troops crammed inside.
“I can’t hear anyone complaining.”
“That’ll do for the moment.”
The shuttle forged on. The fight between the Lucid and the Vraxar ships was far behind and the shuttle wasn’t packing a good enough sensor array to keep track of the events. It was unfortunate, since Blake wanted advance warning of the enemy’s inevitable return to New Earth. It doesn’t matter much – if they destroy the Lucid and return before we reach Tucson, there’s no way we’ll be able to slip in without being noticed. He looked at the distance counter.
“Seven minutes,” he said.
“It’s going to be the longest seven minutes ever,” said Pointer.
Blake tried his best to think of something else. He directed the sensors at New Earth instead, reminding himself how many billions of people were left on the planet, each of them lost and frightened, with no idea what was going to happen. Amongst them was his only grandmother, though he hadn’t seen her in months. Life in the Space Corps didn’t leave a lot of time for family.
The shuttle continued its journey and Blake wondered what the hell he was going to do once he made it to Tucson.
Chapter Thirteen
With a deep breath, McKinney brought the Colossus tank out of the main Obsidiar storage building. He sent the command for the door to close behind and waited for the few moments it took to seal the building.
“No point in leaving the door open,” said Roldan.
“Absolutely. Is everyone set?”
The Space Corps trained its soldiers to be multi-skilled. If you chose a squad at random from any base throughout the Confederation, you could be sure at least one of them could fly a shuttle, pilot a tank, operate a comms pack or safely blow a hole through a sealed blast door. Those in McKinney’s squad were no exception and he was able to call upon men who could do the business in a Space Corps tank, not that many of them had operated a weapon so rare as the Colossus tank before.
“All set,” confirmed Li.
“Yep, good to go, Lieutenant,” added Bannerman.
“Roldan?”
“Let’s do this.”
There were so many screens within the cockpit it took a few seconds for McKinney’s brain to settle. When it did, he knew he was going to have some fun - for however long it lasted until the tank got torn apart.
McKinney turned the tank, aiming it along the inner compound to the place the Vraxar had breached the perimeter walls. He pushed the control sticks away from him and with a grumbling roar, the engines overcame the tank’s inertia and hurled it forward. McKinney was pressed firmly into his seat and the muscles in his neck struggled to keep his head level. This wasn’t the time for a softly-softly approach and he planned to give the enemy a nasty surprise. He got one of his own first.
“That battleship hasn’t moved, Lieutenant. I can see it straight overhead,” said Bannerman.
McKinney swore and very nearly swung them around. Something inside wouldn’t let him. The die is cast, he thought.
“Keep me informed.”
“Yes, sir,” said Bannerman.
Not one of the crew suggested they stop and go back. They’d been cooped up for too long and bringing death to the enemy in this tank was too good an opportunity to miss.
The tank reached a speed of forty kilometres per hour and the outer wall of the main facility building sped by. The east wall was directly ahead, though there was no breach through this section and he was going to have to make a turn.
At the last second, he pulled the sticks to the right. The tank tilted to one side, its left-hand side lifting a few feet higher off the ground. The grumbling in the cockpit became louder and the tank executed the turn with a nimbleness McKinney had
n’t expected. It was so agile, he nearly cut the corner too close and the right-hand side of the tank came within a metre of striking the wall of the building. He straightened the tank’s course and, on the sensor feed, he saw the wide breach through the inner wall. There were Vraxar soldiers everywhere – in the few minutes since McKinney had left the security monitoring room, the aliens had decided to make their move and hundreds had already poured into the opening.
“Left! Now!” shouted Roldan.
The closest part of the breach was ahead and McKinney pulled the tank towards it. A cluster of Vraxar small-arms fire pattered against the hull, the sound lost before it reached the cockpit. The enemy soldiers were too insignificant for McKinney to change course in order to run them over. He didn’t need to – hardly any of the Vraxar tried to get out of the way and they thumped against the tank’s nose like flies on a windscreen.
“Plasma rockets incoming,” said Bannerman. “Negligible damage.”
At the far end of the breach, six or seven Vraxar carried shoulder tubes. They launched a second uneven volley towards the tank. The rockets screamed across the intervening space and burst against the tank’s hull.
“Setting chainguns to auto,” said Li, making no effort to hide the relish in his voice.
The Colossus tank could track and prioritise several thousand individual targets. Its main processing cores were running far slower than usual, but that didn’t stop them from identifying the Vraxar carrying plasma tubes. The front chaingun turret rotated sharply and fired. In the cockpit, the men heard it as a metallic grinding sound. Outside, the barrels spun and heavy gauss slugs poured from the main gun. They punched into the Vraxar, smashing them into an unrecognizable mess of dead flesh and metal. The bullets weren’t slowed by the bodies of the aliens and they spent themselves against the broken wall of the compound, throwing shards of stone into the other Vraxar nearby.
With its primary targets eliminated, the gun swept on, mowing down the enemy soldiers with an effortlessness that made the weakness of flesh all too apparent.
The tank reached the opening with undiminished speed. There were many larger pieces of rubble where the wall had been and they formed a low mound. The tank didn’t even slow – it crashed into the three-metre pile of broken wall, casting the pieces in an arc in front and to the sides. Some of the pieces weighed many tonnes, yet the onrushing tank treated them as little more than pebbles on a beach.
“We’re past the first wall,” said McKinney. “What’ve we got?”
“Ten thousand Vraxar and a dropship,” said Li.
Bannerman added his own shit to the mix. “The battleship doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere.”
Don’t let us down, Captain Blake.
Before them was the main body of the Vraxar forces which intended to take the OSF. The eighteen pieces of artillery were in the process of coming through the outer wall, spread in a line and with their gravity engines carrying them easily over the scattering of rubble. Amongst them were the soldiers – there was no way to count the numbers, but there were thousands. Behind it all was the dropship, its flank doors open to release a new wave of artillery and soldiers.
“They’re going to flood the whole damn base,” said McKinney. “Let’s see what we can do to that dropship while we’re passing.”
“I thought you’d never ask,” cackled Li. “Activating main gun and shoulder launchers. I almost feel sorry for the bastards.”
There was no doubt the Vraxar were taken by surprise, though even if they’d been aware of what was coming, their casualties would have still been immense. The tank’s front chaingun selected the nearest artillery unit and sprayed it with an extended burst. The armoured gun was knocked back and flipped over onto its side, crushing a dozen Vraxar soldiers.
The rest of the artillery was spread and able to fire unimpeded. One of the large-bore guns got a round into the Colossus tank’s armour. The projectile deflected somewhere a hundred kilometres into the distance, leaving a deep furrow through the tank’s plating. Meanwhile, the Vraxar heavy repeaters opened up, battering the tank with thousands of high-velocity slugs.
The main turret on the tank offered its retort, though not at such small targets as the Vraxar artillery. Its targeting computer took aim at the dropship and fired. Most gauss launchers were designed to have little or zero recoil. The gun on the tank was different and when it fired, the entire hull shook as the forces were carried through the metal. A half-metre ball of metal punched clean through the dropship’s side, leaving a wide hole as a sign of its passing.
“If that spaceship is hollow, the shot might have gone out the other side and still be travelling,” said Bannerman in wonder.
The words hadn’t left Bannerman’s mouth, when two missiles from the tank’s shoulder launchers exploded on the upper section of the enemy spaceship. Compared to a full-sized, dedicated ground battery, the payload was small. It still gave McKinney a great feeling of satisfaction to watch.
Realising he was being distracted by the results of the tank’s barrage, McKinney snapped his attention to his own task. The tank was almost at the outer wall and, in spite of the surprise, the Vraxar had recovered quickly and were directing a considerable amount of firepower towards the vehicle. The sound of heavy repeater fire against the hull reached the cockpit as a thrumming sound, similar to heavy rain on a steel roof. Once or twice, McKinney heard and felt the deep booming sounds of large projectiles colliding against the tank. Afterwards came another sound – this one a deeply-muted rumble and hiss.
“They hit us with two missiles,” said Roldan. “They’re going to need more than that.”
The tank’s heavy chaingun chewed up the closest mobile launcher and moved onto the next. The gun had more than enough penetration to wreck the artillery, but it still took a couple of seconds to put each one out of action. The main armament fired a second time, this time throwing its projectile directly through one of the side openings on the dropship. The carnage must have been incredible and not one of the crew cared at all. While the tank continued its headlong flight, the Vraxar kept up their fusillade, their numbers too great to be neutralised quickly by a single opponent.
The breach in the OSF outer wall was huge and there was plenty to aim the tank at. On this occasion, McKinney allowed himself a slight change in course, directing the tank straight at one of the mobile launchers. The tank struck the launcher at the same time as it fired. The plasma explosion ripped the artillery and its crew to pieces and covered the tank’s nose in dark flames, which scattered to the sides where they bubbled and spat on the ground.
The Colossus tank climbed up and over a fifteen-metre pile of broken concrete and twisted rebar. It dropped down the other side, the immense gravity drive keeping it above the surface.
“We’re clear,” said Bannerman.
“Come on!” shouted Roldan.
It wasn’t all good news and there were a several alerts on the tank’s status readout. “The damage is going to become an issue soon,” said McKinney. “We can’t take them all out.”
His brain reminded him of the eight-thousand-metre battleship watching from forty thousand kilometres above. Each passing second increased the chance the Vraxar warship would lock onto the tank and hammer it with missiles. It felt like an indescribably heavy weight around his neck.
The main gun fired for a third time and the shoulder missiles shrieked off through the rain-laden skies of the Tucson artificial day. McKinney didn’t try to guess how many Vraxar died and instead did his best to work out the clearest path to their goal. The OSF was positioned away from most of the base – somewhere between the main population centres, the shipyards and the landing strip. There was a lot of open space and a lot of Vraxar. The crew already had a good idea what the enemy targets were and sure enough, there were many of their soldiers and artillery pieces heading straight for the built-up area of the Tucson base. There were a few maintenance buildings and a warehouse nearby. Other than that, little els
e.
McKinney got the tank on course and the vehicle sped away from the OSF. The Vraxar at the facility showed no signs of following, while those heading towards the Ulterior-2 were no longer in sight. That left those heading towards the centre of the Tucson base. These Vraxar aimed everything they had at the Colossus tank.
“Can’t you redirect those guns?” asked McKinney. “We’re still firing at the dropship and the OSF.”
“I’m on it,” said Li. “We’re acquiring additional targets.”
“I’ve got you a new heading, Lieutenant,” said Bannerman, calm and collected.
“Send it to my console.”
“You got it. This way cuts left, right, left and then goes straight through the centre, past one of the plazas and on to our destination. It’s a little slower than the primary route, but it’ll take us away from those Vraxar. It also affords us a bit more cover from above.”
McKinney hunched forward. “We’re running out of time in more ways than one.”
“Yup.”
The tank’s engines showed no sign of degradation and they topped out at fifty kilometres per hour. The exchange of fire between the two sides was a brutal one for the Vraxar. With little in the way of shelter, the tank’s chainguns cut them to shreds. The slow-firing main armament crunched its way through metal, flesh and the concrete walls of a warehouse without discrimination, whilst the equally-slow firing shoulder rockets dropped amongst the scattered alien forces.
In return, the hull of the Colossus was struck countless times by small arms, heavy repeaters and large-bore gauss projectiles. McKinney glanced at the external view – the tank’s armour plating was a mess of dents, scrapes, and ragged holes, many of them several metres deep. In time, it would bring them to a halt and it was a wonder there were no critical alerts yet.
Earth's Fury (Obsidiar Fleet Book 4) Page 13