“I’ve got an idea,” he said. As he spoke the words, he’d already convinced himself it was the quickest option available and one which put the fewest lives at risk.
“I’m all ears, sir,” said Chainer.
“Put Commander McGlashan on. She’ll need the details.”
McGlashan’s familiar voice replaced Chainer’s and Duggan explained his plan.
“The timing will need to be perfect, sir,” she said. “And there’ll only be one shot at it.”
“I know, Commander. If we had the heavy repeaters we wouldn’t need to resort to this sort of crap.”
“We can’t launch the Lambdas quickly enough to hit the gauss emplacement and the pyramid,” she said.
“We’ll lose the tank. I can’t think of a better way.”
“You could call it off and retreat to safety until we get things figured out up here.”
“Time is against us, Commander. The reasons we discussed earlier still hold true – we need to destroy this object. I can’t accept another war with the Ghasts.”
“Nor I, sir. Tell me when you’ve made the preparations.”
“Will do.”
Duggan used his headset to create an open channel to the troops on the surface. “Listen up, we’re pinned down by an enemy gauss emplacement which is protected by a force shield. Every time it fires, the shield drops for a fraction of a second. We’re going to send the tank ahead without a crew and the Terminus is going to try and get a Lambda through when the coil gun fires.”
“The tank will be destroyed, sir,” said Hammond.
“Almost certainly,” said Duggan. “There are still problems on the Terminus. I’m confident the crew will be able to resolve those problems, at which point they’ll send the shuttle to pick us up.”
“What if they don’t, sir?” said Reed. She had a right to ask the question.
“If they can’t get the shuttle to launch, we’re stuck here with just our suits, our rifles and each other. This doesn’t change anything – we’re stuck here anyway. The Space Corps may or may not come for us, so I’m not making you any guarantees.”
A few of the soldiers muttered about their lot. In reality, this was what they’d signed up for and none of them came close to mutiny.
“Sir?” said Quinn. There was an unexpected timidity to his voice.
“What is it, soldier?”
“You said you planned to send the tank ahead, didn’t you?”
“Unless you want to pilot it yourself?”
Quinn took an audible breath. “We don’t carry a remote box for the Colossus tanks unless specifically requested. The crew is expected to stay onboard at all times.”
“There’s no remote box?” asked Duggan, closing his eyes briefly. He left the open channel and spoke to the Terminus. “I need you to patch into the tank and have the AI ride it out towards those emplacements.”
The line hummed quietly for a few moments. “I’ve just tried to access the vehicle’s mainframe,” said Chainer. “It’s not going to work well on the backup comms.”
“Speak clearly, man!” said Duggan. “What do you mean it won’t work well?”
“I should have been more precise, sir,” said Chainer. “I should have said that it won’t work.” He launched into a hurried explanation about interfaces and the sizes of data packets.
“That’s fine, Lieutenant,” said Duggan. He turned to the other three on the bridge. “Get your helmets on and go outside with the others. I’ll take it from here.” They stared blankly at him for a moment as his words sunk in. “Go!” he repeated.
Galvanised into action, the tank’s crew released the locks on the exit doorway and went through without a further word. A couple of minutes later, the internal sensors reported there to be only a single occupant. Duggan looked around at the banks of screens. One of them showed the soldiers gathered in a group outside. They milled about with uncertainty. While he was working the steps of his plan through his mind, Lieutenant Ortiz spoke to him privately.
“Need any company?”
“Thanks for the offer, Lieutenant. The troops need you to look after them if something goes wrong.”
She didn’t push it. “Good luck.”
“I’m told these tanks are built to last,” he said.
“That they are.”
Ortiz wasn’t one to overstay her welcome and she left the comms. Duggan felt he was as ready as he’d ever be. He picked up his own suit helmet from where he’d left it on the unpainted metal floor next to his seat and put it on, breathing the scents of rubber and stale sweat like they were old friends. He felt enclosed and safe within the suit, even if it offered no protection against gauss rounds.
“Commander McGlashan. I’m taking manual control of the tank. Please commence your firing routine upon my word.”
McGlashan was a professional and knew when it was time to keep her mouth shut and follow orders. “I’ve programmed in the instructions, sir. The missiles are loaded and ready. We’ll need to utilise the rapid reload function on the tubes, so we’ll only be able to maintain full launch density for thirty-two seconds. After that, our firing rate will fall by more than half.”
“What’s your altitude?”
“We’re at forty thousand klicks, sir. Sixteen seconds from launch to detonation.”
Duggan moved himself to Corporal Hammond’s chair and looked at the instrumentation before him. He gave the tank’s engines one final check. They were down five percent from one of the earlier gauss impacts. It wouldn’t have an appreciable effect on the vehicle’s top speed of fifty kilometres per hour and he was just shy of a hundred seconds away from the energy shield. Chainer had sent some additional data from the Terminus to show the overlapping fields of fire from the gauss emplacements. Two hundred and fifty metres’ worth. Less than twenty seconds. It was going to be rough if he even managed to get that far. His eyes drifted to the external display which showed the place where a single one of the gauss rounds had hit the tank, leaving a two-metre-wide furrow across one of the angular front panels. A direct hit would be far more devastating.
With an effort of will, he buried his doubts and placed his hands on the control bars. “Commander McGlashan, please launch.”
Duggan scarcely heard her acknowledgement. He increased the tank’s gravity engines to one hundred percent and pushed his right-hand control bar as far along as it would go. The tank had a tremendous amount of power – enough to overcome the inertia of such a heavy object. It burst forward and up the slope which led away from the channel, scattering stones and dust behind it.
Chapter Fourteen
The tactical screen flashed red, before the tank had gone more than fifty metres over the open ground. The vehicle’s sensors detected the output from a coil gun and relayed the information to the cockpit. A grooved metal ball, the size of a man’s head, thundered into the heavily-armoured front of the tank and ricocheted dozens of kilometres away. Inside, Duggan felt the force of the blow through his seat and through the palms of his hands where they rested on the cold metal of the control bars. The sound of the contact chimed harshly and he was thankful the spacesuit helmet automatically reduced the volume to a safe level. A second round followed the first, again deflecting away from the warship-grade alloy of the tank’s armour.
During the earlier engagement, Duggan had discovered the Dreamer gun had a firing interval of four seconds – plenty of time for it to get away a couple of dozen shots. He’d programmed the details into the tank’s mainframe, in the hope the computer would be able to calculate all the necessary speeds and distances that would allow it to fire the main turret just when the energy shield dropped. Something rumbled deep within the tank as the mainframe decided it was time to fire. A half-tonne projectile screamed away at such a velocity that it left a bright orange trace in the sky behind it. Two kilometres along its path, the slug struck a shimmering barrier in the air. Streaks of pale blue snaked away from the impact, like sparks of electricity jumping through cl
ear water. The sparks faded and the flattened globe of depleted uranium fell to the ground. On the other side of the energy shield, the Dreamer gun fired again.
Far overhead, the first of the Terminus’ Lambda missiles hit the top of the shield. The warhead exploded into blinding white, expanding to fill several hundred metres with tumultuous fire. The blast wasn’t able to complete its natural desire to form a sphere. Rather, it spread over the dome-shaped barrier generated by the pyramid beneath. A fraction of a second later, another Lambda hit in the same place, followed by another and another. Instead of firing in waves, Duggan had given instructions for the missiles to be launched with a tiny interval between each, in the hope that one might get through when the energy shield was down.
Within the tank, Duggan gritted his teeth as another round hit the tank. The main turret fired again and the shoulder-mounted plasma launchers ejected their own explosives towards the barrier. He’d set up a distance counter to show how far the energy shield was from his position. It already felt as if he’d been under fire for hours but when he checked, the tank was still seventeen hundred metres away. Duggan didn’t know quite what he intended if he made it to the perimeter. He had no intention of crashing into it and killing himself. What he did know was the longer the tank kept moving, the greater the chance one of the Lambdas would hit the pyramid. It had damn well better be enough.
Duggan quickly learned why there was room for four in the cockpit. An endless quantity of text was thrown across his screens and it was a fight to keep on top of it. On a spacecraft, he’d have managed; on the tank, everything seemed to be in a different place or accessed in a different manner. With little time to think, the overload of data threatened to swamp him.
“Come on!” he shouted.
Another thumping blow shook the tank and the damage reports came in. Amber warnings changed to red and the sensors reported a breach through the tank’s front plating where two projectiles had struck near to each other. Other sensors reported garbage – lines of unintelligible code to indicate their failure. Several of the viewscreens merely showed grey static, which seethed in quiet anger.
“Fourteen hundred metres,” he said, watching the number count down another digit with painful slowness.
“Sir? You’ll be entering the overlapping field in twenty seconds.” It was Chainer, his voice welcome but the news not.
“Any luck?” said Duggan, tersely. He was too occupied to say more.
“A couple of near misses,” said Chainer.
No luck, in other words, whispered the thought in Duggan’s mind. “Tell me when there’s good news.”
The next gauss round destroyed one of the shoulder launchers, catching the plasma round halfway out of the tube. The missile exploded with a low thump, ripping out a lump of the armour. Plasma spilled across the rear quarter of the tank, blistering and softening the alloy. The tank’s mainframe fired in response, a nanosecond later than it needed to, leaving the Dreamer weapon unharmed behind the shield.
“Entering the crossfire, sir,” said Chainer. “Good luck. I’ll let you know if we score a hit.”
“Roger.”
Dense metal smashed against the tank’s front plating. The force of the blow heated the enemy projectile to an extreme temperature, flattening it to a thin disk. It fell away, to be left behind amongst the rocks and gravel. Where it struck, there was a deep crater in the armour, the metal sundered and battered. The projectiles came at two second intervals now, the sound of their blows echoing in Duggan’s head with a rhythm of death and ruination.
The tank ploughed on, a damaged mass of plasma-scoured metal. Giddy with battle, Duggan shouted incoherent words of encouragement to the machine. Pride filled his chest at the defiance it showed against the incoming assault - that this projection of the Space Corp’s capabilities could deny the inevitability of its own destruction for so long.
Ten seconds. He didn’t know if he’d spoken the words aloud or imagined them in his head. Eight. Still the barrage persisted. The tank was slowing – one of the slugs had put a hole clean through the armour and into the gravity drive. Four seconds and we’re clear. The tank and me. The last few seconds lasted forever as this battle within a battle struggled on to its conclusion. When the tank finally broke out of the crossfire, it was a mess of burned, punctured metal and still at seventy-five percent of its maximum speed. Bathed in the glow of red, critical alert lights, Duggan had no idea how it was moving so quickly.
“Sir, one of our missiles got though,” said Chainer. “It struck the pyramid dead on. The energy output went haywire for a second and then it stabilised.”
“Keep firing,” said Duggan, his own voice sounding distant to his ears.
“We’re not letting up,” said Chainer.
The tank had come to within thirty seconds of the shield. Its speed was tapering and the mainframe had to constantly recalculate the time. For each digit the counter fell, it seemed as if another was added to take it back to where it had been. One by one, the sensor feeds winked out as they became too damaged to function. Throughout it all, the Dreamer gun maintained its constant rate of fire, pummelling the tank into a shape that looked like nothing it had been before. Duggan shook his head in wonder – there was no way the tank should still be moving and he should have likely been dead long ago. He was faintly aware of the heat in the cockpit. It had risen past two hundred degrees. Nothing the suit can’t handle.
With twenty seconds to go, one of the incoming rounds buried itself deeply into the body of the tank. The compressed slug burst through the cockpit wall and fell to the floor near Duggan, glowing fiercely. A siren added itself to the cacophony, warning of a breach into the control room. Duggan crunched his fist against the speaker. The alarm continued to sound, ignorant of his efforts to silence it.
“A second successful strike on the pyramid,” said Chainer. His voice squawked and crackled. “The shield is still up.”
“I think the comms are failing,” said Duggan, raising his voice in anticipation of the next impact. “The tank’s dying.”
“Hang in there, sir.”
Duggan took another look around the cockpit. There were hardly any screens running and the temperature had climbed past two hundred and forty degrees. The suit was an exceptional insulator, but he could feel heat from the burning slug beating against him. Metal shrieked against metal somewhere above the ceiling. Main turret disabled.
The tank was travelling at what felt like a crawl, with one side barely an inch above the ground. Duggan checked the timer – one of the three displays which remained active. Still on fifteen seconds. It was beginning to seem as if he’d never reach his destination – a long walk where the end faded ever further into the distance. He wondered briefly if he’d live through it. The enemy would surely stop firing once the tank was broken into enough pieces. Perhaps they’d continue their attack long after a human would have stopped. Thirteen seconds. McGlashan’s unlucky number. Today it’s mine too.
One of the sensors was still operating – miraculously it was pointing forward. Duggan peered at its feed and saw his goal. The gauss emplacement looked exactly as it had on his screen earlier, yet bigger than he’d expected it to be. Another punishing strike cracked against the tank. The projectile was far too fast for the human eye. The sensor detected it, however, and showed it as a streak of orange over the display. The trace faded and was replaced by another. A hole appeared in the ceiling, wide and ragged. Duggan noted it calmly without spending time wondering where the projectile had finished up. Thirteen seconds still on the clock. A sign that my number’s up.
“Sir, we’ve hit them again! The shield is down!”
Duggan sat bolt upright, the dreamlike quality of the last few seconds banished as if it had never existed. “Get that coil gun for me! I’ll be dead in a few seconds.”
“You’re too close, sir. Commander McGlashan’s trying.”
Plasma ignited a few hundred metres beyond the gauss gun. It spread with blinding sp
eed, the extremes of the blast engulfing the emplacement. The tank was struck again. When the flames receded, the coil gun was still intact, mocking and stubborn. Here and there, patches of the metal smouldered. There was a second detonation, this time a few metres closer. Once more the plasma fire raged, this time licking across the hull of the tank. Any closer and Duggan could see he’d be burned to a cinder.
“Hold fire!” he said.
The entire structure of the tank shuddered. The engines howled, though to Duggan it sounded like a scream of agony.
“Don’t give up!” he roared, thumping his palm onto the console before him.
He had no idea how the tank had so much resilience – a battered husk of metal and engines with its single functioning sensor and a mainframe that seemed to be as obstinate as Duggan himself.
“Get out, sir!” shouted Chainer.
“Negative, Lieutenant, I’ve got this one,” said Duggan.
A third hole appeared in the cockpit and this time he could see clear daylight through it. He looked out, seeing the emplacement only a few metres away, red hot and smoking, with the air shimmering above. The gun fired again. Duggan had no idea what happened to the slug and he didn’t care. Through the hole, he watched the tank collide with the structure supporting the gun. The tank was down to eight kilometres per hour, yet it had lost none of its weight. The emplacement was much stronger and heavier than it appeared. Nevertheless, the tank carried a vastly greater bulk and it hardly slowed as it crashed through, bending and twisting struts and beams. The gun barrel was knocked away and the hull of the tank thumped into the housing for the power supply and ammunition. The housing was thick-walled and strongly moored - not enough to prevent it being tipped over and pushed aside.
Chains of Duty Page 10