Ricky Vega was next and he called up the stairwell. “You need to boost, sir.”
The soldier was right and Duggan requested another injection of adrenaline. The spacesuit micro-computer evaluated his physical state and considered his age. To Duggan’s chagrin, it refused his request. He cursed and overrode the software. Needles jabbed into him and a fresh dose of adrenaline roared through his bloodstream. He felt his heart give the familiar kick. It missed two beats and the visor computer sent numerous warnings to his HUD. Duggan’s brain viewed the situation dispassionately and without panic. His heart started up again, the aches faded and his strength returned.
A few paces from the top he could see the tiny antechamber leading into the cockpit. He surged up the remaining steps, just as a shout came from the shuttle entrance.
“Man down! Man down!”
“Get him, quickly!”
The voice of Medic Sandoval was added to the chorus. “Get him onboard!”
Any delay would jeopardise everything and Duggan left the soldiers to seal the shuttle and get the injured man up the steps. He reached the landing and activated the cockpit door. It opened and inside was space enough for one to sit and four or five to stand shoulder to shoulder. It was years since he’d flown anything like this and time hadn’t improved the comfort offered. The lifting shuttles were meant to be directly controlled by the shipyard computer and as such, they were only fitted with the most basic pilot consoles. It would have to do.
Duggan threw himself into the foam seat, his hands and eyes already preparing themselves. The shuttle’s engines were running at idle, which was good news since he wouldn’t need to waste time bringing them out of sleep.
“Is everyone in?” he asked.
He sensed Lieutenant Paz at the open cockpit door. “Yes, sir.”
Duggan activated the 360-degree sensors and turned off the autopilot. The security software requested confirmation, which he provided by briefly touching a biological reader between two of the feed screens. His hands fell onto the control bars and instinct took over. He drew the controls back and the shuttle’s engines hummed smoothly, lifting the craft off the ground.
As soon as the shuttle lifted off, the Vraxar realised what was happening. They began firing at both the shuttle and the now-exposed Colossus tank. The lifter wasn’t specifically made to take a beating, yet it was near-solid Gallenium and untroubled by repeater slugs, large or small.
The shuttle climbed rapidly and as soon it reached an altitude of one hundred metres, Duggan targeted the gravity chains onto both the Colossus tank and the crawler it was towing. It wasn’t a complicated system – the chains locked on, a light went green and that was it.
“Here we go,” said Duggan. “Nice and easy.”
The tank and crawler were heavy. Even so, the lifter was made to carry far, far greater weights. Its engine note changed slightly with the added load, the difference hardly noticeable. The shuttle climbed, the tank and crawler coming with it.
Lieutenant Paz put her hand on his shoulder and bent forward to watch the sensors. “Where are those missile launchers?” she asked.
“They’re down there somewhere.”
This was just one immensely risky episode amongst many. Duggan had no idea how many ground-launched missile strikes the shuttle could survive, if any, and he had a distinct preference to remain ignorant. He didn’t waste time trying to point the lifter’s nose towards the Ulterior-2. Instead, he flew it at an angle, pushing the engines to maximum. The shuttle had vast wells of power, but it wasn’t designed to use them for speed. Even so, it wasn’t as slow as Duggan had initially feared and it rose quickly, following a direct line from its landing place towards the top of the Ulterior-2.
The ground below was covered in a writhing swarm of Vraxar. The shuttle’s sensors picked them out easily enough – the majority were Estral, their grey faces a mask for the anguish of whatever lay within.
“There must be fifty thousand,” breathed Paz.
“More,” said Duggan. “Look at the Earth’s Fury.”
The second ship was also surrounded by the alien troops. There weren’t so many as there were near the Ulterior-2, yet there were still thousands of them on the edges of the docking trench.
The lifter wasn’t fitted with missile detection systems and at this short range it wouldn’t have made a difference. One of the ground multi-launchers fired upwards. It was difficult to miss and several plasma explosions struck the Colossus tank. The vehicle was sent rocking by the force, but the gravity chains held it tight and it stabilised.
A second volley came, this time hitting the crawler. Like the shuttle, the crawler was little more than a block of metal. The blasts sent it wobbling and from above it looked almost unscathed. Duggan was sure looks were deceiving and he hoped it would stay together since it was acting as a shield for the magazine of Obsidiar ammunition.
A third series of missiles crashed into the crawler and the heat seeped through to the top plate, giving it a dark red glow. The magazine remained fixed in place, held by the gravity load bed. To Duggan, it felt as though the Vraxar had chosen to piss him off by shooting at something which was, to all appearances, the lowest-priority target, instead of trying to knock out the shuttle.
“What are they playing at?” said Paz angrily.
“They’re just doing what they do.”
“The crawler doesn’t look as if it can take much more punishment.”
“It can’t.”
“What happens to the magazine…?”
“I don’t think we should test it out.”
The next round of missile launches saw one warhead explode off the rear of the lifter, with the remainder striking the crawler. The metal of the vehicle burned and the crawler sagged across the middle. It was still held tightly by the shuttle, but the heat was spilling into the Obsidiar magazine.
With a prescience which had served him well in the past, Duggan’s mind knew what was coming. He glanced at the sensor feed and saw one of the mobile launchers completing its final adjustments. The lifter was nearly at the Ulterior-2. Not close enough, he thought.
With a rapid movement, Duggan banged the side of his hand onto the purge mechanism for the gravity chains. The tank, the crawler and the magazine of ammunition dropped away.
“What?” said Paz.
Without a word, Duggan, retargeted the tank and the magazine with the chains. The tank jerked to an immediate halt and swung, scraping into the side of the Ulterior-2. The second chain latched successfully onto the magazine. The weight of the crawler ripped it away from its cargo and it continued downwards. A fraction of a second later, the missile launcher fired and the crawler was engulfed in flames. If the magazine had been in place, it would have likely been ruptured or warped out of shape by the heat.
The top section of the Ulterior-2 filled the underside view feed and the lifter shuttle made it to safety. Duggan let the tank fall from ten or fifteen metres, relying on its engines to cushion the blow for the occupants. He spent a few seconds longer with the Obsidiar magazine and made absolutely certain it was treated to the softest of landings. Once the magazine was released, he landed the shuttle on top of the battleship, eschewing finesse and dumping it down hard.
“Time to move,” he said urgently.
“Let the Fleet Admiral exit first!” bellowed Sergeant Demarco.
Duggan worked his way through the press of soldiers in the antechamber. Clifton was full-length on the floor with his eyes closed, and Sandoval crouched nearby. It made the tight space even more uncomfortable. The medic met Duggan’s eyes.
“Induced coma. I think he’ll make it.”
It was enough and Duggan set off on the stairs, with Paz following and the rest of the squad preparing to get Clifton down the stairwell. Outside, the closest Havoc turret loomed high above their heads and its long, long barrel pointed into the sky. It nearly had sufficient bore to fire the entire Colossus tank that was currently heading across the armour plating
towards them.
“Which way?” asked Paz, her eyes seeking an entrance.
“Here,” said Duggan. He marched confidently towards the location of an entrance hatch.
“How did you know?” asked Paz, watching as he pressed the access panel.
“You do realise I approve the design of these things?” he asked mildly. “Do you think I just write my name on the signoff sheet and not bother checking what’s going to come out of the shipyard at the end of it all?”
“I am slandered by the accusation, sir,” Paz replied, glimpses of her usual good humour showing through.
They got onto the lift and it descended through the armour and into the depths of the Ulterior-2. Duggan breathed deeply, taking in the scent of pure Gallenium and the far more ephemeral sensation of raw, unadulterated power which came with every Hadron in the Space Corps fleet. There was something extra with the Ulterior-2 – it felt new and different. It felt special.
Chapter Twenty-One
It was good to step onto the bridge of the Ulterior-2. The people onboard – faces Duggan knew well – were already standing and they saluted his arrival.
“Captain Blake,” smiled Duggan. “Good to see you got here in time.”
“Good evening, sir. Do I need to bring you up to speed with anything?”
“Soon. Firstly, I need to send the final authorisation codes into the Ulterior-2’s core cluster and then take this ship out of maintenance mode. After that, she’s all yours. I assume you have a plan?”
Blake faltered. “I have been discharged from the Space Corps, sir, and am therefore unable to fly the Ulterior-2.”
“What is this nonsense?” asked Duggan, looking for signs that Blake was making an inappropriate joke.
“Sir, please bring the Ulterior-2 online,” Blake insisted, ushering Duggan towards the captain’s seat.
Duggan sat, wondering what the hell was going on. It could wait for a couple of minutes. He tuned out everything around him and logged into the main console. There were several layers of security to work through in order to sign a fleet warship off for duty and a new Hadron had several layers more than anything else.
The Ulterior-2 offered up some unexpected resistance.
“Missing, presumed dead?” said Duggan, when he saw why his first attempts were denied. “I am very much not dead, nor am I missing.”
The core cluster took some persuading. Finally, a combination of biological data, in conjunction with several command codes, convinced the battleship that reports of Duggan’s death were likely the result of human error.
Immediately the sign off was complete, numerous additional options appeared on the crew’s console screens and several previously-empty menus filled up with an array of options.
“Lots of stuff still offline,” said Lieutenant Hawkins.
“Wait,” said Duggan. He sent one final command and the ship came out of maintenance mode.
“That’s more like it.” Hawkins’ eyes gleamed. “The Havoc cannons will be ready to fire in less than two minutes.”
“Activating fission suppression systems,” said Quinn.
“You’re trying to conceal the engine warmup?” asked Duggan.
“That’s the hope, sir.”
“Good plan. We don’t know when Ix-Gorghal will return and we need to keep its crew in the dark.”
“What next, sir?” asked Blake.
“What’s next is you tell me how you got yourself discharged.”
Blake told him and Duggan was less than pleased about Admiral Morey’s conduct.
“I won’t accept cowardice amongst my junior officers, let alone my second in command!” Duggan roared. He was absolutely livid. “How dare she! The total, unmitigated gall of it! We are the Confederation and we do not abandon entire planets to our enemies!”
“Can you reinstate him, sir?” asked Pointer, her soft tones cutting through Duggan’s anger.
“Of course, I can reinstate him!” he said, his anger directed at Morey rather than Pointer. “Except it’ll take twenty-four hours before his rank becomes active again.”
“With no way to move things along?” asked Hawkins.
Duggan calmed himself. “Yes, I can do that. I’ll need to sign into each of the new personnel records and give them an approval stamp. Then, I’ll need to manually re-approve each and every one of his training entries before the Ulterior-2 will accept his competence.”
“Will that take long?” asked Cruz.
“At least an hour. More likely two.”
Blake jumped up from one of the spare seats. “We don’t have one hour, let alone two!”
“Then what do you propose?” asked Duggan.
“Activate the Earth’s Fury, sir. Bring it into service, the same way you did for this one,” he said with sudden enthusiasm. “With the comms lockdown, it won’t have received the updated personnel records from the Space Corps databases.”
Duggan nodded in approval. “It won’t know you’ve been discharged. What then?”
“I’ve seen the design plans for the Earth’s Fury, sir. I know how to load the gun. If I take that lifter shuttle off the Ulterior-2’s roof I can drop the magazine into the loading chamber. After that, I’ll go onboard and shoot it at Ix-Gorghal.”
Duggan was familiar with such makeshift plans as this one, having come up with more than a few himself in the past. He therefore felt uniquely positioned to spot the inherent flaws.
“I don’t know if Earth’s Fury is ready to fly and it doesn’t have life support.”
“It might not even need to fly, sir!” said Blake, warming to his idea. “As soon as Ix-Gorghal returns, we’ll shoot at it from the ground. The worst that can happen is it destroys the ship.”
“No, Captain Blake. There are worse possibilities than that.”
“Like what, sir?”
“If by some stroke of luck you force Ix-Gorghal into a position where its commanding officer feels the requirement for an overwhelming response, there will be unintended consequences.”
Blake had a mind capable of making huge logical leaps. “You’ve activated Benediction?”
“I have. It’ll explode in less than six hours. If we accidentally push the Vraxar into destroying New Earth before then, the bomb will be destroyed with it.”
“We have to take this chance!” said Blake with fervour.
“No, Captain Blake, we don’t.”
“What if I promise to hold fire until Earth’s Fury is far enough away from New Earth that it’ll be the sole target of reprisals?”
“If that is what you promise, then that is what I will accept.”
It was a long shot, but Duggan attempted remote activation of Earth’s Fury. To his surprise, the Ulterior-2’s comms systems were able to make the link.
“The weakness of our comms systems has been a concern for some time,” he said. “If this battleship is anything to go by, we may be close to overcoming those problems.”
“You’re able to sign off the Earth’s Fury?” asked Blake.
“I’ll tell you shortly.”
It took far less time to activate the second warship. The Ulterior-2’s AI clusters already trusted Duggan’s position as Fleet Admiral and the Earth’s Fury was set to trust other fleet warships. Therefore, the process was finished in moments.
“Is it done?” asked Blake.
Duggan sat back and pushed his fingertips through his short hair. “It’s done. I don’t know for certain how much of the Earth’s Fury is operational. I’m sure you’ll find out once you get over there. One thing I do know - the gun definitely works.”
“Whatever the problems, we’ll deal with them, sir.”
“That’s what I like to hear.” Events were moving on and Duggan was keen to bring himself up to speed with the remaining details. “What of the Sciontrar?” he asked. “Is it still fighting the enemy?”
The high-spirits faded. “We don’t know, sir,” said Lieutenant Pointer. “They’ve entered lightspeed several tim
es since the beginning of their engagement with the Vraxar battleship. This latest time has been longer than the others.”
“We’ll keep our fingers crossed Nil-Tras comes out of it in one piece. Until then, we’ll assume the Sciontrar is missing or destroyed and act accordingly.”
“There might be another problem, sir,” said Cruz.
“Lieutenant, if there’s a lesson for you to learn, it is to never use the word might when what you really mean is definitely.”
“Sorry, sir. The Earth’s Fury wasn’t sealed after the base alarm. It is definitely filled with Vraxar.”
“Failure upon failure,” muttered Duggan. He flexed his hands, which were powerful even now. “I wonder what it would feel like to…”
“We have the officer responsible locked in the brig,” said Pointer helpfully. “I’m sure we can keep a secret.”
“That won’t be necessary, Lieutenant.” He put it from his mind for the time being, conscious that base-wide failures were his responsibility as well. Instead, he focused on those matters he could influence in the immediate future. “Did I see soldiers in the corridors leading to the Ulterior-2’s bridge, Captain Blake?”
“Yes, sir, you did. Those are the ES Lucid’s complement.”
“I assume from that you’ve lost a second heavy cruiser?”
“In a good cause, sir.”
“You’ll need those troops on the Earth’s Fury. It is equipped with internal countermeasures which should have activated the second I brought the ship into active duty. Those countermeasures may not clear out a strong enemy presence, particularly if they’ve been disabling the ceiling guns on the way.”
“I hope the corridors are filled with the chewed up remains of Vraxar soldiers,” said Blake with relish.
“The only way you’ll find out is by getting over there. I’ve remote-activated the seals, so whatever Vraxar remain inside should be the last.”
Blake took the hint. “The Ulterior-2 is already secure, so I’ll take most of the soldiers with me. I’ll leave enough to guard the bridge.”
“That will be fine.”
There was an unspoken question hanging in the air which couldn’t be put off any longer.
Earth's Fury (Obsidiar Fleet Book 4) Page 21