“How long?” asked Duggan, his voice muffled by the thickness and solidity of the surrounding alloys.
“You only just made it, sir,” said Breeze.
“Less than twenty seconds till we’re in range of their missiles,” added Chainer, watching a tiny display screen that showed an information feed from the Detriment’s main core.
The inner chamber of the tank was eleven feet long, six wide and slightly more than five high. There were three forward-facing seats to each side, all of them with tiny screens and cut-down control consoles. The central walkway was only two feet wide, with a smooth metal floor. The walls were a mess of pipes and wires, leading off to who knew where. The tanks were tough and reliable, yet disposable. If something went wrong, there was no expectation they’d undergo any sort of field repairs. If you found yourself stuck on one that broke down or suffered damage, all you could do was cross your fingers and hope someone would come and pick you up. In a way, they were the same as the Gunners – a mass of engines, weapons and armour, wrapped like a cocoon around the vulnerable human cargo. Duggan had always felt at home riding in one.
“The Detriment’s just taken a beam hit aft,” said McGlashan coolly. She’d reached her seat only seconds before Duggan and patched herself immediately into the ship’s computers.
“Damage?”
“Twenty percent of our engine capacity fried. That Cadaveron must be fresh out of the yard,” said Breeze. “They shouldn’t be able to hit us from so far out.”
“How long till we’re over our drop zone?” asked Duggan.
“One minute and eight seconds,” said McGlashan.
“It’s going to be a close one.”
“They’ve launched missiles. I’ve got two waves of twelve. And here comes a third. Twenty of our own going back towards them.”
“They’re holding back,” said McGlashan. “They must be expecting an easy kill. Normal recharge time on their particle beam is up in eight seconds. Our first wave of shock drones is gone.”
“Missiles will impact in fifty seconds, ours in less than twenty.”
“We’ve taken another beam hit. That one’s burned out approximately thirty million tonnes of our engines,” announced Breeze. “Bang goes anything above Lightspeed-A. That’s if we can even get that online.”
“At least their recharge is working exactly as expected,” said Chainer. Everything else about this Ghast ship seemed to be more advanced than they’d expected.
Duggan wasn’t paying attention to the consequences. He hadn’t expected to get away on the Detriment. All he wanted was to escape to the planet’s surface without the enemy ship detecting them. He paged through the updates and status reports on his own screen. “Second wave of shock drones away,” he said. “And another twenty Lambdas.”
“We need fifteen seconds lead time to make a clean launch for the tank,” said McGlashan.
“I know, Commander. We’re pushing it.” Duggan laughed, the sound stark and without humour.
“None of our first wave of Lambdas got through, sir.”
“Understood,” said Duggan through gritted teeth. It looked like he was going to be denied even the modest satisfaction of giving them a bloody nose.
“We’ve got another two waves of twelve on the sensors,” said Chainer. “They’re spacing them out nicely.”
The next few seconds tested Duggan’s determination to the full. If they escaped the Detriment too early, they’d have a longer journey to make contact with Sergeant Ortiz, which would vastly increase the chance that the Ghast ship would detect them on the surface. If they waited for even a second too long, the hold of the Detriment would become their coffin. How much longer till their particle beam recharges? he asked himself.
“Yes!” shouted McGlashan. “We got a hit right on their nose!” Her words were strangely reminiscent of Duggan’s own thoughts just a moment before. “Sending them another twenty Lambdas. Let’s see how they like that.”
“We might have knocked their particle cannon out,” said Chainer, frantically looking through the sensor readouts for any sign of positrons leaking from the Cadaveron’s hull. There was nothing, though the range was extreme.
“Their missiles have passed our first drones.”
“How many’d we get?”
“Nine, six and one,”
“That leaves only twenty,” said Breeze ruefully.
“Two, three and five of their missiles taken out by the second wave of drones.”
“Initiating tank deployment,” said Duggan, reaching forward to authorise the launch.
“What about our third wave of drones, sir?” asked McGlashan.
“Leave them to me,” said Duggan. In his head, he counted down. Twelve, eleven, ten, nine.
“Bulwark cannons firing,” said McGlashan.
“Come on,” muttered Chainer under his breath.
Eight, seven. Duggan initiated the release of the final shock drones. A dozen launch tubes on the top of the Detriment spewed a glittering cloud of metal into the void above the ship.
The first Ghast missile impacted at the rear of the Detriment. It punctured halfway through the twenty-metre thick alloy armour, the warhead exploding and tearing out a huge chunk of the armour plating. Three more missiles struck in the vicinity of the first, shredding the super-dense materials of the ship’s already ruined fission drive. The hull of the Detriment rocked and shuddered.
Four, three. In the Detriment’s hold, sheltered for the moment from the worst of the explosions, a shaft opened beneath the tank. It was a perfect fit for the armoured vehicle. The tank’s passengers got a sensation of movement. Two, one. The tank was sucked down the shaft and expelled into darkness, a little over one hundred kilometres above the planet’s surface. Outside the tiny vehicle, dozens of kilometres away, four of the missiles from the Cadaveron’s third wave detonated fruitlessly amongst the shock drones. The final two evaded the single Bulwark cannon that remained functional on the Detriment and plunged into the crippled vestiges of the spacecraft. The last Captain John Nathan Duggan saw of his ship was a crude, grainy image relayed onto his screen from the tank’s feeble sensor array. In a flash of reds and intense blues, the Detriment was reduced to chunks of molten hot pieces and cast in a chaotic pattern across the planet’s black sky.
The pain of the loss took hold of Duggan, much stronger than he’d expected it to be. He closed his eyes for a time. When he opened them, he was gripped with a determination he’d never felt before.
“Those bastards are going to pay for everything they’ve done,” he said.
Chapter Nine
No one spoke as the tank dropped from the sky towards the planet below. In the cramped interior, the occupants looked at the limited information from the vehicle’s rudimental sensors and propulsion systems, as if the intensity of their study could somehow influence their helplessness.
“Any sign of the Cadaveron?” asked Duggan at last.
“There’s something big way up there,” said Chainer. “It’s slowing.”
“Try and keep the drones between us and the Ghasts,” Duggan instructed McGlashan. “If we’re lucky they’ll either not bother looking or they’ll see us as a piece of debris.”
“Doing my best, sir,” said McGlashan. The tanks were designed to fall and land safely. The pilot had only a limited amount of control over the direction since it was expected that the vehicles would be accurately dropped in the first place. The tanks were definitely not manoeuvrable.
“Eighty klicks and counting,” said Duggan. It was peculiarly silent, ensconced in the tank’s hull. There was a faint vibration and a humming from the machinery locked away behind the inner walls. Otherwise, the only sound was that of the people within. “On the bright side, it looks like we’re coming in less than forty klicks from our target.”
“The terrain’s not perfect,” said Chainer. He’d fed the results of the Detriment’s surface scans into the cores of each of the four tanks before the soldiers had left for
the surface.
“Nothing this baby can’t handle,” said McGlashan.
Duggan called up the details. The ground was rugged and covered in loose rocks, gravel and dust. He asked the tank’s guidance to plot the best route – forty-seven kilometres, taking into account a more circuitous route they had to take in order to avoid a mile-high vertical crag that the tank wouldn’t be able to climb easily.
“A little under an hour to get where we’re going,” he said. “That Cadaveron’s going to get plenty of opportunity to spot us on the way.”
“It wasn’t circling directly above where the soldiers came down,” said Chainer. “Could be that they’re hunting in the wrong place.”
“That might buy us enough time,” said Breeze.
“Yeah - it took us a while to find the right place.”
“That’s if we’re at the right place,” said McGlashan. “If the Crimson isn’t there or if it’s nothing but a lump of metals, we’re a long way from rescue.” The tank could send out a low-speed distress signal. This far out it would be hit and miss as to whether or not anyone could get to them before they ran out of power. That’s if anyone even bothered to try. The risk versus reward wasn’t high, particularly given how much the Ghasts had the Confederation on the run.
“They won’t come for us,” said Duggan. He didn’t mean to sound fatalist and just wanted them to know what he felt was the truth. “They’d need a fleet of Anderlechts to ensure success. They don’t have the ships to spare and we’re simply not important enough.”
“We may not be, but perhaps the Crimson is,” said Breeze.
“Don’t overthink it. We’re what they sent, not a fleet.”
“Aye, that’s right enough,” said Chainer.
“Coming in to land,” Duggan told them.
The vehicle’s landing routines were almost entirely autonomous. Two kilometres above the surface, the tank’s gravity engines slowed the hurtling descent towards the rocks below. On board, the occupants were given a ride that was rough in comparison to what they’d have felt on a spacecraft. The tank’s life support systems were much more limited in their capabilities.
“A bit choppy,” commented McGlashan. The tank’s hull flexed and creaked to accompany the increasingly intrusive howl of the engines.
“I’ve not been on one of these since training,” muttered Chainer. “I’d almost forgotten what it’s like.”
“Cheer up, Lieutenant. Soon we’ll have landed on a hostile planet with no backup and no-one coming to our rescue.”
“That’s not what I wanted to hear, Commander.”
The tank landed with a surprising smoothness. The vehicle’s guidance system dropped them onto a clear area of the ground, hardly disturbing the gritty dust that was strewn thickly all around. The tank hovered for a second or two, a little more than a foot above the ground. Then, it rotated until its wedge-shaped nose was pointing towards the east and moved away on its pre-determined course. Its engines gave out little signature of their operation and the angular hull was designed to show an almost-invisible profile to hide it from sensor detection. It wasn’t fool-proof, but there again, nothing was.
“Might as well sit back and enjoy the trip, folks,” said Duggan, sounding more cheerful than he felt. His chair crackled as he tried to get comfortable. It felt like it had been designed for a person with much shorter legs than his and Duggan found his knees pressed tightly against the console in front of him. He brought up the sensor feeds from the outside. The place was as bleak as any he’d seen. Some planets had atmospheres that were hostile beyond measure, where even the tanks couldn’t stay for long. For some reason, Duggan had always loved the thrill of danger. Here it was barren and lifeless. Just another planet amongst countless others that had nothing of interest to bring anyone to visit. Except that this one DOES have something, spoke his inner voice.
Duggan watched the terrain pass by. The tank scooted over the undulations without any ceremony. There was the occasional sensation of ascending or descending, which was a similar feeling to that of being in a lift. The onboard computer showed a countdown of both time and distance to indicate how long till they’d arrive. With twenty minutes to go, Duggan succumbed to the inevitable and set to the task he’d been putting off.
“We should get into our suits,” he said. “One at a time.” They were bad enough to get into with plenty of space in which to operate. Inside the cramped cockpit of the tank, it would be an exercise in frustration and futility.
Duggan made his way to the locker where Breeze had stowed away four of the life-support suits. He pulled one free without much relish. It was cumbersome, though not as heavy as it looked.
“I never like wearing them either,” said Breeze with a chuckle when he caught Duggan’s expression.
After a short struggle, Duggan was enclosed in the dark grey polymer suit. It was about a centimetre thick all over and proof against a huge variety of atmospheric temperatures and conditions. Inside the gloves, his fingertips registered the feel of the material – it was somewhere between a plastic and a dense rubber. It resisted movement, but only slightly. After a few days in one, the wearer could usually operate almost like they weren’t encumbered.
“Leave the helmets till we’ve arrived,” he said. The helmets were oversized spheres filled with complex technologies and they were unpleasant to wear at the best of times, let alone in the bowels of a tank.
Duggan returned to his seat and left the others to don their own suits. He kept his gaze on the external sensors and watched as the vehicle entered the lee of a sheer cliff. To the other side, a flat plain of gravel and scree rolled away for what might have been a hundred miles.
“Want me to try and reach Sergeant Ortiz, sir?” asked Chainer.
“Maintain silence. We know where they are.”
“Roger.”
“If they broadcast a signal, shut them down fast.”
“Will do.”
On his screen, Duggan watched the cliff recede gradually into the distance. “Five minutes to go. We should start our descent any moment.”
The tank’s front sensors showed what looked like the lip of a cliff a short distance ahead. The edge appeared to be almost smooth, as if it had been filed down by three billion years of abrasion from wind-borne dust. The tank didn’t slow and it glided easily over the edge. There wasn’t a sharp fall - in fact, the lip was the edge of a crater. It was only because the Detriment’s sensors had told him it was a meteorite scar that Duggan knew as much. Before them lay a long slope that curved to the left and right, further than the eye could see. The meteorite had struck at an angle, leaving something between a furrow and a crater that was five kilometres wide and over twenty long. Their course had intersected the crater close to their destination. At the end of the furrow, the meteorite had smashed the rock into a huge cliff with a wide, vertical fracture running from the bottom to a point halfway up. It was here that Sergeant Ortiz had gone.
McGlashan gave a low whistle when she called up a view of the crater on her screen. “This must have been a big one. It looks painful even after all these years.”
Duggan thought it a strange choice of words but didn’t wonder about it. “We need to get underground as soon as we can. Turner said it was rough for the tanks so we might have to get out and walk sooner than we’d hoped. There should be room for us to get under cover before we have to ditch it.” He planned to pilot the tank straight into the gap under the cliff, to minimise the chance that the Cadaveron would pick them up.
The tank cut down the slope at an angle. It made good speed and the ground soon levelled out. The cliff was visible in the distance – high, looming and rugged. It came inexorably closer and Duggan studied his viewscreen for a sight of their destination. The tank’s sensors struggled to cope with the contrast between the shadows, so he wasn’t able to get a clear view of the place he hoped to find the Crimson. They were still over three kilometres away when a voice scratched into being, piped into the tank’
s interior through a metal-grilled speaker.
“This is Infantryman Turner, hailing Detriment Tank Four. Do you copy?”
“Infantryman Turner, this is Lieutenant Frank Chainer. Shut down your broadcast immediately and await our arrival.”
Turner didn’t need to be told twice and the speaker fell silent.
Duggan swore at the unwanted communication. In his head, he willed the tank to move faster, cursing again at the thought that the Cadaveron might have detected their presence.
“I’ve got nothing incoming,” said Chainer.
“Don’t waste your time,” Duggan told him. “If they send a missile at us, we’ll not get more than a couple of seconds’ notice. These are surface vehicles.”
“Definitely not equipped to pick up incoming missiles from space,” added McGlashan.
“Fine, I get the message,” said Chainer. He was used to working with equipment that was a lot more sophisticated than he had available to him now. The limitations were already bugging him.
“Best get your helmets on and break out the rifles,” said Duggan. He clambered to the rear of the cockpit and picked up his own helmet. It was completely opaque from the outside – the computers within fed through all the details the wearer needed. Duggan crouched low and dropped it over his head. He felt a tightening around his neck where the tiny motors in the helmet forced a seal with the rest of the suit he was wearing. The feeling was disconcerting – like the suit could strangle him if it ever malfunctioned. There was a wraparound screen within the helmet, which automatically projected a copy of the outside world, enhanced to provide the most comfortable view for the human eye. There was the smell of decades-old stale sweat that every helmet Duggan had ever worn seemed to carry, as if the material was impregnated with it at the factory.
There was a second locker in the tank, set against the left-hand wall. Duggan gave the spoken command for it to unlock, his suit’s comms unit relaying the detail to the tank’s onboard computer. The locker door slid open with a faint hiss. Inside, there were six gauss rifles, resting horizontally on deep shelves. Duggan reached within and snapped the top one free of its mounting. He turned it over in his hand – a dull silver tube about three feet long and with a diameter of six inches. It had a hand grip at one end and another in the middle, with a recessed switch to fire. Duggan considered himself a good shot and he felt comfort from holding the weapon. Next to him, McGlashan had put her helmet on and snapped out a second rifle.
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