“What a shit hole,” muttered Chainer to himself.
“I’ll bring us higher, so we can see down into the hole,” said Duggan. “I don’t want us to be right on top of them by the time we get a proper look.”
“This was a big mine already, from the looks of things,” said Chainer. “The surface works alone are eight kilometres across. I still can’t see the bottom from this angle. I’m starting to pick up vibrations – they’re consistent with heavy machinery.”
“You’re certain?” asked Duggan sharply.
“It’s definitely mechanical, sir.” Chainer didn’t say anything for another few seconds. “Other than that, there’s nothing. I don’t like it. I should be able to tap into their comms from here. They only have civilian kit at places like this. It leaks out for thousands of klicks if you know what you’re listening for.”
“Could the Ghasts have been here, sir?” asked McGlashan. “They might have killed everyone and left.”
“There’s no sign of plasma spill on the rim of the pit,” said Chainer. “I guess they could have dropped some missiles dead centre and I’d still not have the angle to see it.”
Duggan didn’t like it at all. This was meant to have been a straightforward escort mission. Now it was beginning to seem like something had happened to the Everlong mining operations. The one reassurance was the lack of any Ghast ships in the vicinity.
“We’ll be directly above them in a few seconds,” he said. “I’m keeping to thirty thousand klicks. We’ll get a perfect view from there.”
“I can see it now, sir. Everything looks normal. They’ve got two big grinders on the go. No sign of any operatives. I don’t know how automated the grinders are. Wait on, there’s no power to their comms mast, though I can’t see any outward signs of damage.”
“Damnit, we’re going to have to land and check it out,” said Duggan. “Try hailing them.”
“There’s no point, sir. I’ve got nothing to patch into without that mast. They’ll have a wired link to other comms units underground, but without the main one, I can’t reach anyone or anything.”
“Ribald, this is Pugilist,” said Duggan. There was no response. He looked at his tactical display – the other Gunner had drifted slightly off course. “Force open a channel,” he said to Chainer.
“My request isn’t reaching them – something’s wrong.” His voice climbed in pitch. “Sir, I’m picking up an anomaly just below the surface. Ghast military alloys.”
“There are no positrons coming from the Ribald’s hull, sir,” said Breeze.
“A disruptor!” said Duggan, pulling the nose of the ship away from the mine pit. He increased the gravity drive to full and pointed them towards the surface, hoping to cut off the angle and prevent any further attacks.
“There’s a missile launch from the surface, sir. A Shatterer,” said McGlashan, her voice eerily calm. “We’re its target. Seven seconds to impact.”
Duggan wanted to hit something in frustration. They’d been drawn into a trap and there was little he could do about it. He had the Pugilist at full power and aimed at the distant surface. The heat readings from the hull rocketed upwards as the particles in the planet’s atmosphere battered against it. He knew it wasn’t going to be enough – it wasn’t going to be nearly enough. The Ghast Shatterer missile curved in flight, adjusting its trajectory to pursue the fleeing warship. Travelling at a little under four thousand klicks per second, it struck the rear of the ES Pugilist. The missile’s warhead buried itself into the metres-thick armour, before it detonated in a blinding flash of white plasma. The warship’s armour was ripped apart, sending a cascade of burning metal in a wide arc behind.
The bridge shook violently and a deafening rumble thundered through the bulkhead walls. Chainer and McGlashan were knocked from their chairs and onto the floor. Duggan clung on grimly to his control sticks. The vessel’s emergency alarms chimed and the room was bathed in red light. Duggan scanned his status screens – one of them had gone out completely, whilst the other four poured an endless list of text and three-dimensional images of the damage for him to try and make sense of. Far from subsiding, the rumbling increased in intensity, booming against his ears.
“We’re screwed, sir,” said Breeze. “Fission drives almost completely shredded. Gravity drives offline.”
“Get them back,” Duggan said through gritted teeth.
“I don’t think there’s anything to get back, sir.”
“I don’t care. Give me something.”
Chainer dragged himself onto his chair, cursing loudly. McGlashan regained her feet. She looked dazed.
“Commander, is there any else incoming?”
McGlashan visibly shook herself and her expression was angry that she’d been unable to stop herself being thrown from her post. “Negative, sir. One was enough.”
“Engines, Lieutenant. Where are they?”
“Still offline,” said Breeze. He was too busy to say more.
“We are going to crash into the surface at almost one thousand klicks per second if you don’t do something. There’ll be a big new crater next to the mine.”
“I’m on it, sir,” snapped Breeze.
Without its gravity drive, the spacecraft was nothing more than a lump of metal. It couldn’t glide and it couldn’t change direction without its engines. It hurtled downwards, the bulkhead viewscreen showing a jumpy image of the planet, disrupted by noise from the ship’s damaged sensor arrays.
“We’ll burn up in twenty seconds,” said Duggan.
“There’s no power – nothing,” said Breeze. “The mainframe’s not quick enough to re-route in time.”
Duggan acted instinctively. He shut off the weapons and also the mainframe’s access to what little remained of the fission drive. Without access to those sub-systems, the core diverted its processing to the gravity drive.
“I’m getting a utilization spike on the engines,” said Breeze. “Come on, come on!”
“Now, Lieutenant.”
Breeze sent the command to restart the gravity drive. Something howled for a second, before fading away until it was lost in the rumbling. “What the hell?” he asked, then, “They’re online, sir! Four percent of maximum output.”
“Get me more,” said Duggan, struggling to keep the Pugilist from entering an uncontrolled spin. He detected a response from the control sticks and fought hard to correct the spiral.
“We’re not gonna burn, we’re not gonna burn,” Chainer repeated under his breath. “Come on, sir.”
At five thousand klicks above the surface, Duggan wasn’t sure if he could get the ship under control. It was responding sluggishly and the nose wouldn’t come up. The hull temperature was at one hundred and thirty percent and climbing. The speed of descent slowed, but it didn’t look like it would be enough.
“It’s going to be close,” said McGlashan. “The hull is beginning to melt.”
“Gravity engines are dropping off, sir,” said Breeze. “Back down to three percent.”
“Not now!” shouted Duggan. “It can’t happen now!”
As the atmosphere thickened, Duggan found he was able to direct the plummeting warship through the resistance of the colliding atoms. It wasn’t much – hardly anything – but it let him alter the Pugilist’s trajectory just enough to approach the surface at an angle. The gravity drives were slowing them, yet with only a fraction of their output available it wasn’t going to allow a controlled landing.
“Sergeant Ortiz, I hope you’re buckled up,” said Chainer through the comms. “Shit, the internal voice is down.”
“We’re going to hit,” said Duggan. “Hold on.”
Seconds later, the ES Pugilist crashed at an oblique into the surface of the planet Everlong, at almost two thousand kilometres per hour. It skipped up once, before it began rolling, tearing vast chunks out of the stone. Where the hull crashed through an area of sand dunes, the heat from its entry fused the grains into a coarse glass. Eventually, the ruined cra
ft came to a stop and lay motionless, while the retained heat of its alloys slowly dwindled into the thin air.
Chapter Five
Duggan coughed and groaned. His head felt like someone had struck it with a hammer and he was sore all over. He cracked an eye open and red light seeped in. The persistent background rasp of the ship’s alarm grated through his ears and into his brain. It was so hot that he felt like he was on fire. A face appeared over him, concern etched into its features.
“How long?” he asked, the words coming out as little more than a harsh croak.
“Fifteen minutes, sir,” said McGlashan. “I’ve sent Lieutenant Chainer to fetch Corporal Bryant.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Too late to say that now – there’s no way to let Lieutenant Chainer know. Pretty much everything’s out of action, or damaged.”
“Except the life support.”
“It kept us alive, sir. We’d be nothing more than bloody smears across the walls without it. I don’t know how much longer it’ll work. It’s failing. The whole ship is failing – what’s left of it.”
Duggan coughed again and unclipped himself from his seat. “What you’re saying, Commander, is that I can’t sit around in this chair doing nothing.”
She smiled, the sight of it giving Duggan some cheer. “That’s exactly what I’m saying, sir.”
“Where’s Lieutenant Breeze?”
“I’m over here, sir.”
Duggan craned his head to look, feeling a sense of relief that Breeze was alive. With a monumental effort, he pushed himself upright. Nausea threatened to swamp him for a time, until he suppressed it with an effort of will.
“What’s our situation?”
“We’ve come down less than fifty klicks from the mine. A good effort in the circumstances.” She flashed the smile again. “The rear two hundred metres of the Pugilist is gone, or at least there’s nothing usable there.”
“Any losses?”
McGlashan’s face changed. “I don’t know, sir, the internal comms aren’t going to work again any time soon. Lieutenant Chainer will get details on our casualties and he’s going to tell Sergeant Ortiz to find out what’s left in the hold. We’ll need suits to get out of here. There’s no air and we’re spilling antimatter in a ninety-kilometre arc.”
The sound of hurried footsteps at the bridge entrance alerted Duggan to the arrival of Chainer and the squad medic, Corporal Bryant. Bryant was short, slim and as no-nonsense as they came.
“Sit!” she insisted. Duggan sat. Bryant immediately linked him up to her portable diagnostic and treatment box. She watched the readouts for a full thirty seconds. “You’ll live,” she said, without any more explanation.
“How are the men?” Duggan asked.
“Two dead, sir. Howell and Schneider.”
“Damnit. What happened?”
“You’d need to check the life-support logs. They were on the bottom bunk in the same room. If I had to guess, I’d say the life support wasn’t functioning at floor level. There isn’t much of them left to bury or launch into space.”
Duggan dismissed her. There’d be time to mourn later. “What happened to the Ribald and the Goliath?”
“I don’t know, sir,” said Chainer. “The missile took out our aft sensor arrays. I’ve checked the logs and confirmed that we received no data after the impact.”
“Do we have anything left at the front to scan for them?”
“No, sir. We’re buried nose-down. The long-range comms are gone as well. We’re little more than a metal husk.”
“We need to get outside,” said Duggan. “And get clear of the area.”
“Sergeant Ortiz is heading to the hold. She’s going to gather what we need. If it’s still there.”
“The hold is right near the bottom of the ship. It’s going to be hot in there for a good while yet.”
“The squad keep a couple of suits in their quarters,” said Chainer. “Better safe than sorry, I guess.”
“I’m glad they’re prepared,” said Duggan. He had a worrying thought. “If we’re nose-down, can we get out?”
“I think so,” said McGlashan. “The secondary boarding ramp still has power. I don’t know if we’ll be able to open the primary ramp. Or the hold doors.”
“We’ll need the tanks,” said Duggan. “Assuming they’ve not been smashed to pieces.”
“I’ve checked,” said Chainer. “There are no status updates from any of the four vehicles. They could be damaged beyond repair or it could be down to the malfunction of the internal comms.”
“Follow me,” said Duggan. “We’re abandoning ship. Another Gunner under my command shot down.” He was still angry at being caught unawares by the Ghasts.
He ducked through the bridge entrance and into the corridor outside. Usually he’d have been struck by waves of colder air only a few metres from the heat of the control room. Now it was so hot he could feel the air searing his lungs if he breathed in too deeply. The hull of a warship was designed to dissipate heat quickly throughout the structure. The problems came if there was too much heat – at that point, the whole of the interior could heat beyond the capabilities of the HVAC to control. The Pugilist was dangerously close to becoming a death trap.
Duggan took the crew to the mess room – it was filled with the same red light as the bridge, but the alarm was mercifully quiet. Sergeant Ortiz would have to come through here in order to reach the bridge. They didn’t have to wait long. A figure entered, wearing one of the Space Corps’ flexible polymer space suits. The figure was Sergeant Ortiz, dripping with sweat and dragging a couple of suits behind her. Corporal Simmons was also there, similarly encumbered. Neither of them wore their helmets – it was too cramped in the ship to make easy progress wearing one.
“Sir, we’ve found suits and rifles in the hold.” She dropped the pile to the ground, taking care that the oversized helmets didn’t clatter off the floor. “The tanks are beat up – all four broke their moorings. There’s been an explosion as well – I think a plasma grenade blew up in its locker.”
“The lockers are fully insulated,” said Breeze.
Ortiz shrugged. “It was too hot to stick around, even in the suits. It’s getting hotter as well, sir.”
“That’s not good,” said Breeze.
“Will the tanks work?” asked Duggan. He picked up a suit and began to struggle his way into it.
“If we can flip them over, I’m sure we’d get at least one of them going, sir,” said Ortiz. “Three are on their roofs, one is on its side.”
Duggan needed a direct answer. “Sergeant Ortiz, is it your opinion that we should abandon the tanks?”
“Yes, sir. I believe we should evacuate the ship as soon as possible. If we manage to get one of the tanks the right way up, there’s no way to be sure we’ll be able to get it out through the launch chute. The mainframe’s locked everything down. I’m sure you could override, but there’s no guarantee there’ll be anything other than sand or dirt at the bottom of the chute. We’ve got a portable beacon with us – we’ll be able to let the Corps know we’re out here.”
“We’ll not be using that beacon yet, Sergeant.”
“Sir?”
“The Ghasts must think we’re all dead. We need to use that to our advantage and see if we can take out their disruptor and Shatterer emplacements. We’re here to escort the Goliath and until I know what’s happened to it, that’s what we’re going to do.”
Ortiz saluted. “Yes sir!”
“Gather the squad and get them suited. We’re leaving by the secondary ramp. Make sure you save a couple of rifles for us.”
Ortiz nodded and left. Five minutes later, Duggan and the rest of the crew were in their suits. The feeling of being ensconced in the material was an unusual one. Duggan could feel his skin temperature dropping immediately to a more acceptable level, while his face and head remained covered in sweat. He picked up his helmet and resisted the temptation to put it on.
Th
ey left the mess room in a line. Breathing became harder and Duggan wondered how the soldiers had managed, since they were quartered closer to the outer hull than the bridge was. It wasn’t long until he had to put his helmet on. The servos hissed as they made a perfect seal around his neck collar. At once, the onboard computer spilled information onto the mini-HUD, informing him of the temperature, his assumed state of physical wellbeing and who on the ship was sharing his open comms channel. He inhaled the cold air inside - it was redolent with the scent of rubber and sweat, but the relief it brought was immense.
It was crowded at the top of the secondary ramp hatch. There was a small room here which was much too small to fit a combined seventeen infantry and crew, so the men and women had been forced to line up against the wall of the two exit corridors. They all wore helmets – this close to the outer skin of the hull, it was far too hot for any of them to survive without one. Someone handed Duggan a rifle without being asked and he took it gratefully.
“Please confirm through the open channel when you’re ready,” said Duggan. “There’s not enough air to breathe outside and you don’t want to know how many positrons there are.” He checked his temperature reading and saw it was over two hundred and fifty degrees – already a couple of degrees higher than it had been five minutes ago.
Duggan elbowed his way to the release panel for the secondary boarding ramp. The mainframe was slow to respond to his commands and he wondered if it was dying, or if it was occupied elsewhere. Impatient to be on, he repeated the instruction. With a scrape of warped metal, the ramp unlocked from its mounting and juddered as it descended. His helmet gave a quiet chime to alert him to the dangerous levels of antimatter.
“Seems like we’re partially on our side,” said Duggan, peering along the length of the boarding ramp. It was early morning on Everlong according to his helmet. Outside, he could see swirling grey sand, blowing in waves across more grey sand. The light from Everlong’s sun was poor, or obscured by clouds of dust - it was hard to tell from where he was standing. The far end of the ramp was suspended in the air and Duggan made his way carefully along it. “Three metres to the ground,” he said, looking down. “It could have been a lot worse.”
Bane of Worlds (Survival Wars Book 2) Page 4