The truck was the main target of the attack. The vehicle was heavy, but the upper section wasn’t solid. The repeater slugs ripped through it like it was no more than cloth. Lopez crouched low, his shoulders hunched and the plasma tube forgotten at his feet. Duggan recognized the look – the soldier had spent everything plucking up the courage to fire and now he was lost in the aftermath.
“He’s losing it,” said Duggan. “Damnit!”
Huge figures moved through the smoke as the Vraxar spread out away from the gun. They hid behind cars and moved into shattered buildings. Duggan found his gauss rifle at his shoulder, while his eye tracked the orange shapes highlighted by the movement sensor in his visor. He put a bullet through the head of a converted Estral and did the same with a second. Across the road, he dimly sensed Sergeant Demarco firing her own rifle. The other soldiers joined in, keeping low and leaning out to shoot in controlled bursts.
The control computer in the Vraxar heavy repeater registered the presence of multiple targets and it began raking left and right across the street, whilst the soldiers supporting it crept forward outside its firing arc.
A couple of slugs pinged off the wall near the doorway, sending shards of concrete rattling off Duggan’s suit. He knew when it was time to back off and he pushed himself out of sight.
Lieutenant Richards didn’t wait idly by for his squad to be wiped out.
“Wheeler, Krause, find a way upstairs,” he ordered. “I want someone shooting from above. Steele, see if you can find a way out of this building. If we need to get the Fleet Admiral to safety I want to know where the exits are.”
“Lopez needs to get his shit together, sir,” said Steele, running after the others.
“No kidding,” muttered Richards. The failure of Lopez reflected badly on them all.
The heavy repeater followed a fairly predictable pattern of sweep left, sweep right, followed by a short burst of suppressing fire against four areas of cover which sheltered the squad. Duggan took advantage and sent another couple of shots towards the advancing Vraxar. It quickly became apparent their vision wasn’t enhanced and their return fire was badly aimed.
He heard voices nearby.
“Sir, you should stay out of the firing line,” said Richards.
Paz didn’t sound happy either. “He’s right, sir.”
As Duggan backed away for the second time, his eyes locked onto those of Lopez. For that split second, time slowed to a standstill and there was only the two of them. Through the noise, the smoke and the falling rain, the soldier’s face was frozen in an expression of terror – that of a man whose inaction meant he faced certain death, yet who couldn’t overcome his fear in order to take control of his own destiny. Only you can make the choice, said Duggan’s gaze.
The moment passed and Duggan pressed himself against the interior wall of the building. “The artillery is damaged from that first rocket,” he said. “The enemy are advancing along both sides of the street – we’ll be overrun if we can’t take out the repeater.”
“Maybe even if we do,” smiled Richards grimly. His voice hardened. “Sir, you will stay out of danger.”
There was something Duggan was driven to see, even if it cost him his life. The repeater strafed away towards the centre of the street.
“Lopez…” he said. “He can’t do it alone.”
Duggan returned to his position in the doorway. He was in time to watch R1T Bernie Stein rise from his crouch behind an uneven chunk of stone, with the barrel of his plasma repeater in hand. The weapon roared and spewed out a brightly-glowing stream of hot slugs. Too late, Stein attempted to drop back out of sight. The Vraxar heavy repeater shifted target and three or four of its bullets smashed through the soldier’s upper body. One round would have been enough, but the mobile repeaters were a brutal method of waging war and this one reduced Stein’s body to a bloody paste.
With a lightning bolt of certainty Duggan, knew what was coming. His gaze jumped to where Lopez huddled. The soldier watched his comrade die and the expression of fear vanished like it had been wiped away with a cloth. Lopez’ face become a mask of anger and he grabbed his plasma tube like it was the throat of a man he despised. His own throat, thought Duggan.
With an incoherent shout of fury, Lopez charged up the plasma tube and darted from cover. He’d barely covered two paces before one of the Vraxar hit him in the leg with a bullet from one of their hand cannons.
“He’s trying to shoot around the front plating,” said Duggan.
Lopez managed another three limping paces before the next rounds hit him. Duggan saw blood fountain from the soldier’s back and then, suddenly, he was missing the lower half of his left arm.
Lopez fell and the rocket launched. It whooshed through the clouds of smoke, leaving a pattern of steam through the rain. In a blossoming sphere of cleansing light, it exploded against the main section of the Vraxar heavy repeater, behind the protective front plate. The gun was strong, but the plasma rockets packed a real punch. When the fire receded, Duggan could make out the extensive damage to the artillery barrel housing. The protruding barrels spun slowly once or twice more and then abruptly stopped. The bodies of the repeater crew had been thrown far away and he could see several of them burning fiercely.
Incredibly, Lopez was still alive. His head was at an angle and his right cheek pressed hard against the stone-littered pavement. The man’s eyes were glazed and Duggan stared into their depths, seeing the hope of forgiveness. Duggan raised a thumb. You did good, soldier.
The man’s eyes closed for the last time and the fighting continued. Duggan fired another few rounds, scoring one certain kill and another maybe. Lieutenant Richards was angry now, but not so much that he dared manhandle the Space Corps’ most senior officer.
“Sir, come away from the doorway!”
The fault was Duggan’s and he knew it. I’m putting everything at risk! With that thought, he scrambled into cover behind the wall. A bullet ricocheted from the place he’d been only two seconds before and clattered against a pile of metal furniture across the room.
The relief on the faces of Paz and Richards was evident and Duggan knew he’d gone too far.
“My apologies,” he said numbly.
“He’s a stubborn bastard,” said Paz with satisfaction.
Richards’ eyes went wide at the familiarity and he clearly had no idea how to respond. “That’s no problem, sir,” he said in the end. “Please let my squad keep you safe.”
“I will do exactly that.”
Richards took over the position in the doorway and with a far greater caution than that exhibited by Duggan. He kept up a commentary on the events outside.
“McGraw’s a good shot. She’s taken out two there. They’re advancing too fast. Wheeler and Krause must have found a place upstairs. Those shots aren’t coming from ground level.”
“How many left?” asked Duggan.
“Twenty at a guess.”
“More than I’d hoped.”
“They aren’t well-trained, sir. A rookie could see it.”
Richards was right – the Vraxar weren’t especially good when it came to ground combat. Duggan had a couple of guesses as to why that might be – the chief one was a lack of motivation. The second reason was because the Vraxar likely didn’t resolve many important engagements by means of ground combat. Everything they did was based on the deployment of overwhelming force from space.
“We’re running out of time, Lieutenant. They only need a couple hunkered down to make it hard for us to get by.”
Kenny Steele returned from his scouting mission. “It’s not going to be easy to get out of here, Lieutenant.”
“How come?”
“I found one entrance totally blocked by rubble. There’s another exit in the eastern wall, but it leads back onto this main street. We could probably pick our way over a pile of rubble to the west…” Steele tailed off to indicate he’d already decided it wasn’t a good idea.
“Can we get
behind the enemy if we leave by the east exit?” asked Richards. Stone chips flew and he ducked.
“I don’t think so, sir. That street comes out sixty or seventy metres further along this main route.”
Richards looked outside once more. “They’ve got ten or twelve enemy soldiers still at one-fifty metres.” He swore. “Movement. There’s another bunch of these aliens coming from that intersection. They’re moving fast.”
“They must have got word from this first group. How many?”
“They’re still coming. Maybe two hundred.”
“Not good.”
With an angry sigh, Richards announced the next piece of bad news. “There’s a large-bore gun with them.”
The enemy reinforcements were enough to decide the outcome and the gun was just a cherry on top of the cake.
Duggan turned his head left and right, looking for a way out of this. The only exits would take them closer to the approaching enemy and besides, he didn’t want to abandon the soldiers still out in the street. With a grunt, he ran to the missile crater in the floor. His memory wasn’t wrong – there was no way in hell they were going to make their escape to the bunker beneath. Maybe one or two would survive the fall - it wasn’t an acceptable outcome.
There was a rattle of incoming projectiles and Duggan spun in time to see Richards crawling away from the doorway, clutching his chest.
“Damnit, hit,” he gasped.
Paz got there and did her best to check the wound. “Your suit has sealed it up. You need a medic.”
She wasn’t given the chance to say anything else. The wall exploded inwards, showering the four of them with pieces of concrete. Duggan turned instinctively, too slowly, and felt something heavy smash into his ribs. Other, smaller pieces struck him in numerous places and he was knocked to the floor. The pain was immense and his suit injected him with one of its remedies.
The painkiller kicked in and Duggan got to his hands and knees. The second Vraxar artillery gun had put a slug through the wall, knocking a huge hole in it. The projectile had continued onwards and made another hole on its way out.
Duggan crawled over to where Paz and Richards lay, half-buried beneath the remains of the wall. They stirred and he pulled at some of the larger chunks. He wondered where Trooper Steele had got himself to, and then he remembered the soldier had been standing right in the place where the slug had come through. There was nothing left to find.
Glancing through the gap, Duggan got an excellent view of a gravity car being thrown along the street by another shot from the heavy gauss gun. The vehicle wasn’t merely knocked a few yards – it was hammered away with contemptuous ease and Duggan heard it skitter and scrape somewhere far out of his sight. All that remained of the squad medic Rex Copeland, who’d been crouched behind it, was a wide smear of vivid scarlet along the centre of the road.
“The medic’s gone. We’ve got to get away,” said Duggan. “On your feet!”
Richards was more badly hurt than it appeared and he struggled to get up. Paz was dazed and Duggan noticed a crack across the middle of her visor where she’d been hit by flying debris.
The gun fired again and this time, rubble fell from the upper floors of the building. Wheeler and Krause were still up there and Duggan hoped they hadn’t been standing too close together when the slug hit. In his head, he tried to work out how many were left of the squad. Numbers had always been important to him and this one eluded him. He heard the gun fire again, and this time the target was the doorway where Sergeant Demarco was concealed. It seemed as though half of the building collapsed with the power of the shot.
The sound of footsteps from outside reached him. He saw the hulking figures of converted Estral as they approached, emboldened by the arrival of the artillery piece. It was game over and Duggan knew it. He looked at the rifle in his hand and took comfort from this oldest of friends. He lifted the gun to his shoulder and readied himself for the end.
Chapter Fifteen
On the bridge of the ES Ulterior-2, Lieutenant Maria Cruz watched the sensor feed in horror. From its position in the trench, the battleship didn’t have a commanding view of the entire Tucson base, however its arrays were still able to see the enemy dropship near to the Obsidiar Storage Facility. The sensors also afforded her an excellent view of the thousands of enemy troops and artillery flooding across the landing strip towards the spaceship.
The battleship’s advanced comms were capable of making a direct connection to the soldiers standing guard outside, but the traffic would be one-way only. Fortunately, there was a speaker system for the boarding ramp area.
“Corporal Baker, are you there?”
The response didn’t take long. “Yes, Lieutenant.”
“You won’t be able to see them from where you’re standing, so I’ll give you a friendly warning. You’ve got about fifty thousand Vraxar coming your way.”
“You’re shitting me?”
Cruz didn’t know how to respond to such a stupid question. “No, Corporal. I am not shitting you. Have you seen Lieutenant Griffin? We need to get this spaceship sealed.”
“No, ma’am. I have not seen Lieutenant Griffin.”
Baker’s voice wavered with stress and Cruz pounced on it.
“What on earth is going on with this Lieutenant Griffin? Is he some kind of a special officer who comes and goes as he pleases, leaving the most valuable warship in the Space Corps wide open during an enemy attack?”
The wavering turned into near panic.
“I don’t know, Lieutenant.”
“You damned well do know, Corporal! We are being attacked by Vraxar and you’re covering something up!”
The answer came out in a rush.
“He went for a nap, ma’am.”
There it was. An entire battleship put at risk because one man wanted to go for an on-duty snooze.
“It was his birthday yesterday,” said Baker, as if this explained everything. “He was late back.”
Cruz put her head in her hands and took a series of deep breaths to calm herself. “I’m sure nobody has to know. Tell me where he is.”
Baker sounded like a sinner in the confession box and she relieved herself of the burden. “He’s on the Ulterior-2. In the captain’s quarters.”
“Get your squad onboard, Corporal. Stay in the airlock and if you see any Vraxar, shoot them. Is that something you can understand?”
“Yes, Lieutenant. Hold the airlock. Kill aliens.”
“Once I find Lieutenant Griffin, I’ll get him to seal the ship. Until then, don’t move.”
Cruz didn’t wait for a response and she cut the connection. Were the situation not so serious, she’d have spent time shaking her head in disbelief. As it was, she ran from the bridge, questioning the intelligence of her fellow humans.
“How did he think he would get away with it?” she wondered.
The answer was only too apparent – if you had someone willing to cover for you, it was possible to get away with all sorts of indiscretions. If the base hadn’t been put on alert, no one would have ever learned about Lieutenant Griffin’s unscheduled post-birthday nap. The only wonder was how he’d managed to stay asleep through the noise of the alarms. Then she noticed for the first time that they weren’t sounding on the Ulterior-2. Maybe they haven’t installed them yet, or maybe someone shut them off.
She didn’t pursue the subject further. The crew’s quarters weren’t far from the bridge and they comprised a single corridor with a few rooms leading off. With the warship in maintenance mode, the interior security wasn’t fully operational and she pressed her hand against the access panel for the captain’s suite of two rooms. The door slid open and she went inside.
The room stank of stale alcohol. Lieutenant Todd Griffin lay snoring on the white sheets of the single bed, with a half-finished tray of curling fries and drying slices of pizza at his side. He was a middle-aged, grey-haired man, with the pinched, nasty face of someone who enjoyed belittling anyone of a more junior
rank. Cruz hated him at once and prepared to give him a vicious nudge with the toe of her boot. Then, she had a better idea. His security tablet was on the table a few feet away. Cruz picked it up and accessed the relevant screen. She didn’t have the clearance to order the ship sealed, so she lifted Griffin’s hand and pressed it to the tablet, hoping the ship’s core wouldn’t notice his comatose state.
Cruz held Griffin’s palm in place for a few seconds and let it drop. The man snuffled but showed no sign of waking up. She checked the tablet.
“Yes!” she said quietly.
Cruz exited the captain’s room and sprinted towards the bridge. Once there, she checked the sensor feeds to be sure. To her vast relief, the Ulterior-2’s boarding ramp was closed. Cruz wasn’t in the mood for socialising with Corporal Baker and, in fact, she was furious about the entire Griffin situation.
“She can stay in the airlock for all I care.”
With the Ulterior-2 sealed against unauthorised entry, Lieutenant Maria Cruz took her place at the comms console again. Outside, the Vraxar advanced and she hoped they didn’t have any special tricks which would allow them entry. Not for the first time, she tried to activate the battleship’s defence systems. Once again, the Ulterior-2’s computer rebuffed her efforts. With little else to do, she sat back to wait.
Fate had other plans for Fleet Admiral John Duggan, the man who had defied the odds more times than he could remember.
He stood with his gauss rifle jammed against his shoulder and waited for the first of the Vraxar to show themselves. A noise reached his ears – it was a harsh, rough-edged grumbling sound. Part of his mind recognized it for what it was, though it was so unexpected he couldn’t quite fit its existence into the reality of what was happening around him. He heard a gun firing – it wasn’t the Vraxar artillery, this was something larger and far more devastating.
Earth's Fury (Obsidiar Fleet Book 4) Page 15