On this day, luck was smiling on Blake and the occupants of the shuttle. The craft entered cover at the top of the battleship and the eight inbound missiles exploded against one of the Havoc turrets.
“Down we go,” Blake said.
The landing wasn’t gentle, but in the circumstances, it was one he was extremely proud to accomplish. He heard the exit doors drop open and the sound of people running down the ramps.
“Nice work, sir.”
He climbed from his seat, his eyes drawn to the wide split in the cockpit floor. “I’m glad it’s over.”
“Me too.”
Blake and Hawkins exited the cockpit, to find the passenger bay already close to empty. They joined the back of the pack and were soon outside. There was no need to repeat the instruction to move away from the shuttle and the soldiers ran hard for the cover offered by the nearest Havoc turret. It was windy up here; the gusts buffeted them and soaked them with sheets of rain.
“Where’s the nearest hatch, sir?” asked Hawkins, running alongside Blake.
He wiped the rain from his forehead. “Damned if I know.”
“Oh.”
The front portside Havoc turret was enormous and showed no sign of damage from the eight Vraxar missile strikes, apart from a slight smouldering. By the time Blake reached it, there were more than one hundred and twenty people hiding behind it, with plenty of room to spare.
“Damn, this thing is big,” said Quinn.
“What now, sir?” asked Lieutenant Evie Wilder, the commanding officer of the Lucid’s soldiers.
“We hunker down until we see if they’ve got anything which can hit the top of this battleship.”
“How long will that take?”
Blake turned his gaze towards the battered shuttle. It was a crumpled mess of impact damage and looked far worse than he’d imagined when he was in the cockpit. No further Vraxar missiles landed on it. Beyond the shuttle, his eyes were drawn to the pall of smoke which hung over most of the Tucson base. If they ever got out of this, it was going to take a lot of rebuilding.
“I think we’re already in the clear, Lieutenant. Tell your squads to spread out and find an access hatch.”
Wilder was admirably short of pointless questions. She spun on her heel and bellowed at the troops. “We need to find an access hatch into this spaceship.” She raised her voice further. “Why are you still standing here?”
Driven by the desire to avoid death at the hands of either the Vraxar or their commanding officer, the soldiers ran. Blake joined them in the hunt, sprinting through the wind and rain in the hope it wouldn’t take long to find what he was searching for.
The upper area of the Ulterior-2 was extensive and with the utter smoothness which only unlimited funding could afford. Blake looked for a blemish of some kind, which might indicate the presence of a hatch.
“The internal area isn’t huge, so the hatches must be somewhere towards the centre,” he said to the troops nearby.
His logical thought was no match for random chance.
“Here!” shouted one of the soldiers from sixty or seventy metres away.
Blake was one of the first to reach him, along with Lieutenant Pointer.
“Good work,” he said to the soldier, clapping him on the back. “Move aside, please.”
“Yes, sir.”
As it turned out, the hatch was flush to the hull and its seam was nearly invisible. There was an access panel next to it, again flush to the alloy plating. Blake knelt next to it and punched in his code. The effect was immediate – a two-metre, square section of the hull dropped downwards with a hiss. It descended a metre and then stopped.
“It’s a lift, sir,” said Pointer, nudging him with her elbow. “I can see a lift control pad.”
She was right and Blake jumped onto the top of the plate. “You, come with me,” he said, singling out his crew.
“What about us?” asked Wilder.
“I’ll send the lift back up. If it needs access codes, I’ll override them as soon as we reach the bridge.”
A soldier’s lot was to accept vagaries of fortune such as this one and Wilder stoically accepted. “Yes, sir.”
Blake activated the lift and it slid deeper into the inside of the Ulterior-2. At some point, the lighting kicked in, filling the shaft with the usual white-blue. The lift ride was not suitable for the claustrophobic and fortunately none of the crew were afflicted. After a gradual descent which lasted sixty seconds the lift stopped, level with a narrow passage leading towards the middle of the ship.
Blake led the way. “Send the lift back up,” he called over his shoulder.
The maintenance corridor was long and straight, with few side-turnings. There were consoles in the walls at regular intervals and Blake marvelled at the engineering work involved in building something as massive as a fleet warship. He had a passing interest in the construction, but usually only saw the finished product. These hidden passages were where the technicians worked long, hard hours, installing and checking the hundreds of systems of which a spaceship was comprised. It was an eye-opening experience.
The passage ended at a blank wall. An access pad gave the game away and Blake once again punched in his authorisation code. The wall slid aside and he stepped into a more familiar part of the warship. While he waited for the others to emerge, he poked at a console on the wall next to the opening – it was the same type of console that was dotted through every warship. Eventually, you just stopped noticing them.
“This is how you reach the passage from the main personnel area,” he told the others.
“Yeah.”
It wasn’t important and they didn’t dwell.
Blake set off at once. “The bridge has got to be this way.” He heard the others running after.
His instinct didn’t fail him. His feet guided him along the wide corridor, through a mess hall, along another two corridors and up some steps. The bridge door opened at his approach and he stepped through.
“Hello, sir,” said Lieutenant Cruz.
“Well met, Lieutenant. How are things here?”
“Quiet.”
“All right for some. What have we got?”
“Very little. No weapons, offline engines and an extremely suspicious main core. Most importantly, no enemy battleship.”
“Good and bad in equal measures.” He took his seat. “Let’s see what I can do. First things first…” he muttered, remembering his promise to set the upper maintenance lift to free access. It was easily done and he turned his attention to the next step of his semi-formed plan, which was to stealthily bring a few of the Hadron’s engine modules online and keep them running at a whisper to avoid detection.
The other crew members didn’t take long to sort themselves out and find seats at the appropriate stations.
“Lieutenant Quinn, I would like you to see if the fission suppression modules can be used in order to conceal the build-up in our engines.”
“I can’t do much at the moment, sir,” said Quinn. “You should be able to assign a higher-level access to our consoles and then we can begin helping you out.”
“I’m on it.”
Something was wrong and Pointer was the first to notice the frustrated set of Blake’s shoulders.
“What is it, sir?”
“This isn’t right. Even when the ship’s in maintenance mode I should be able to bring the engines up and order a limited test firing of the weapons systems.”
“My console is still pretty much locked down,” said Hawkins.
“I’m denied access,” said Blake, tapping repeatedly at one of his screens.
“How come?”
A terrible realisation came and Blake made some additional checks. It was as if he had the same level of access as any random civilian who somehow found themselves on the bridge of a fleet warship and decided to see what happened if they pressed a few buttons. He checked the personnel files and discovered he had access to only one – his own.
“Ad
miral Morey went and did it,” he said. “Shit.”
“What is it, sir?”
“I’m not, sir any longer, Lieutenant Pointer. Admiral Morey managed to get me dishonourably discharged from the Space Corps less than five minutes ago. Now I’m just plain old Charlie Blake and our chances of salvaging anything at all from this mess have just fallen to effectively zero.”
“How did the ship know?” asked Hawkins. “There are no comms, so its databanks shouldn’t have received the update.”
“No comms, except on this warship,” said Cruz.
“Oh, of course.”
It was a terrible development and Blake felt numbness spreading throughout his body. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
Chapter Seventeen
Facility LT3 was a plain, six-storey square building, without windows and with only two ways inside. A high wall surrounded the central building and there was no need for a road, since the facility was built on an area of the Tucson base which was already concreted over. It wasn’t a huge distance from the closest building, yet it was somehow quite clearly aloof. There were no signs advertising the purpose of the facility – it was simply there, an anonymous block with vague notices warning against unauthorised attempts to access.
Most of Facility LT3 was intentionally designed to operate without personnel and the many security systems were fully automated. There was a guardhouse outside the wall, still occupied by twenty-five soldiers who didn’t have any idea what they were guarding. The tank came to a stop outside, whilst the guards did their best to come to terms with this unexpected arrival.
“Still at their station,” said Sergeant Li.
“Can’t blame them for that,” said McKinney.
“They’re not wearing their visors and we’re down to 17% oxygen,” said Roldan. “I bet they’ve been wondering why they get out of breath taking a crap.”
“Any sign of the Vraxar on the rear sensor?” asked Duggan.
“No, sir. If that was an advance force, we wiped them out.”
“I’ll need to hurry. Tell those soldiers outside I’m coming.”
“I’ll organise my men to assist you.”
“I don’t need a guard. It’ll just be me and Lieutenant Paz.”
“Negative, sir. You will have an escort. I will come, along with four others.”
Duggan saw from McKinney’s face that he wouldn’t be dissuaded. Lieutenant Richards tried to be as forceful, he just didn’t have the depths of confidence which came from experience.
“Who will pilot the tank?”
“Sergeant Li knows enough to get by, sir. It doesn’t matter that he’s only trained in light tanks, since this one won’t be going anywhere until we return. Isn’t that right, Sergeant?”
“We’ll be glued to this spot, Lieutenant. Who’s in charge of the gun?”
“I’ll send Clifton up.”
“Are you sure that’s safe?”
“I’ll rely on you to keep an eye on him.”
With that, it was sorted.
“Fine, let’s go,” said Duggan.
He ducked out of the cockpit, with McKinney and Paz following. Behind, he could hear Li changing seats, while Corporal Bannerman gave the anxious guards outside a heads up about who was coming.
“That side,” said McKinney, indicating one of the passages. “The opposite one got melted shut.”
“The battleship?” It was the first chance Duggan had been offered to ask about the extensive damage.
“One missile hit and a second near-miss.”
“We’re still moving.”
“This tank is going to do whatever we need it to do, sir.” McKinney leaned into the passage leading to the personnel bay. “Vega, Webb, Garcia, Whitlock! Get your guns, you’re coming with me.”
Two minutes later, Duggan and his escort were outside the tank. The facility guards didn’t have much idea what was going on, since they were effectively cut off from the rest of the Tucson base by the lack of comms and the requirement to stay at their post. Duggan didn’t want to spend time explaining, so he simply told the man in charge to put on his visor and shoot any Vraxar who came near.
Facility LT3 possessed a brooding menace which only became apparent from close up. It put Duggan in mind of an Old Earth castle from millennia ago, perched high on a hill and looking down on the villages below.
There was a metal gate through the outer wall, which was wide enough to allow the transit of several specific objects, with a few inches to spare on either side. The gate was closed, though there was a secondary gate nearby meant for those on foot.
“What is this place?” said Vega, more to himself than anyone else.
“That’s classified,” said Paz.
The personnel gate was a featureless block of alloy, sheltered by an overhanging slab of concrete. A weatherproof access panel was fixed to the wall next to it. Duggan walked towards it, glancing up at the two miniguns hidden underneath the roof of the shelter. The soldiers didn’t fail to notice the weapons and he heard them muttering amongst themselves.
Duggan planted his hand onto the panel. “Command Code: Duggan. Six guests with my approval.”
The access panel stayed red for a long few seconds while the facility computer performed a multitude of checks. It abruptly changed green and the door slid open, revealing a fifteen-metre tunnel through the wall, with a second door at the end.
“It’ll only remain open for ten seconds,” said Duggan. “Get in quickly.”
It was the sort of command the men could understand and they hurried through. Duggan marched ahead to the next door, ignoring the four additional miniguns inside which tracked his movements. He pressed the panel and repeated his command code. Once again, the door opened and the group passed beyond.
The inner compound was a hundred metres across and with an illumination which was intentionally much lower than the rest of the base. The two doors into the main building were identical to those on the outer walls. Dozens of camouflaged ground-level repeater emplacements aimed their multiple barrels at the group. A couple of the soldiers swore quietly and they stuck close to Duggan, worried they might be torn to pieces if they got too far away. They were right to be concerned, though they had a bit more leeway than they realised.
When they reached the central building, Duggan repeated the procedure of opening first an outer door and then an inner one. They emerged into one end of a long, narrow room which went from the centre of the building, along the inner wall to the left of the main cargo door.
“A window,” said Whitlock, walking towards the viewing panel which ran much of the room’s length.
“A replicator,” said Webb, pointing at the latest-model device embedded into the wall near the door.
“It’s not time to eat,” growled McKinney.
Duggan beckoned them onwards and strode along the room. He looked through the window into the big open space inside the facility. It was brightly lit, affording an excellent view of the flat, cuboid Obsidiar-powered gravity winch on the ceiling. Directly below was a cargo lift, also powered by Obsidiar.
“Maybe they should wait here, sir,” whispered Paz.
“They can come,” said Duggan.
There were two hidden airlifts at the end of the room, their doors indistinguishable from the walls.
“Command Code: Duggan. Nine-nine-five-gamma,” he said.
Both airlifts opened. They were large enough to fit a dozen inside and the group followed Duggan into the left-hand lift. Inside, it looked like any other airlift and Duggan pressed the single destination button.
“Is there something down here that is going to defeat the Vraxar, sir?” asked Whitlock.
“Kind of. There’s something important I need to do and then we can go back.”
The airlift took a few seconds to reach the bottom of the shaft, indicative of how far it had travelled. The door whooshed open and Duggan stepped out into a large, square room with a pair of multi-purpose consoles, a few
chairs and a table. There was another door leading out of the room, as thick and strong as every other door in Facility LT3.
“This place is deserted,” said Garcia.
“You sound spooked,” said Vega.
“I don’t like it.”
“Sheesh, you’ve run through the centre of a Neutraliser and you let a couple of empty rooms on a Space Corps base get to you?”
“Shut up, man! I can’t explain it.”
Duggan walked to one of the consoles and checked the audit reports for the facility. There were no ingress requests since the delivery team a few hours ago. He navigated his way to a secondary menu and found what he was looking for.
>>> Benediction: Assembly Complete.
Paz leaned over. “Was there any doubt?”
“No. Putting the final pieces together was straightforward.”
McKinney was getting edgy. “Sir, we don’t have long.”
“I know, Lieutenant. I need to do this next part alone. There are no Vraxar in here.”
“Want me to come?” asked Paz.
“This needs a witness.”
With that, Duggan used the console to activate the access panel on the far door. He stepped away and then paused in thought. He looked at McKinney and found the other man looking back at him, carefully studying. Duggan had read plenty of reports on the soldier’s combat performance and his instincts told him that McKinney was as trustworthy as they came.
“Do you want to see what’s at stake, Lieutenant?”
McKinney knew, or at least he’d guessed close.
“I’m not sure that I do, sir.”
“There are some things you can’t close your eyes to, soldier.”
“That’s the truth. I’ll come.” McKinney gave the order for the others to stay put and then he followed Duggan.
Without hesitation, Duggan opened the door. It glided into its recess, revealing a red-lit corridor.
“There are a series of explosives throughout this facility,” said Duggan. “If we ever get the comms back or install a hard link, I could seal it from anywhere in the Confederation. You’ll soon see why that might be necessary.”
Earth's Fury (Obsidiar Fleet Book 4) Page 17