Without giving the matter anymore thought, Duggan slung his rifle over his back, crouched at the edge of the ramp and dropped off it. He used his hands to grab the edge and arrest his fall. From there, he dropped the remaining three feet to the ground. Above him, a figure loomed – his suit told him it was Sergeant Ortiz. Seconds later, she was on the soft, sandy ground with him. It wasn’t long until the rest of the ship’s occupants were outside. From this close, it was impossible to see what state the Pugilist was in, but the alloy hull creaked and pinged loudly as it cooled. The mine was to the north-east of their position and Duggan led them that way at once.
“Lieutenant Breeze, I was told by Commander McGlashan that our engines are throwing out positrons in a ninety-kilometre arc.”
Breeze responded on the private channel. “At least ninety kilometres. It won’t die down for a thousand years either, unless the mainframe’s able to do some major rerouting. Even that might take months.” He glanced over his shoulder to the stricken warship. The damage was much easier to see now they’d made it a hundred metres away. “Years,” said Breeze, when he saw the vast rip through the metal. “How the hell did we live through that?”
Duggan didn’t know. He stopped for a few seconds to study the spacecraft. When the wind died down and the sand stopped swirling, he could see how the front of the ship had melted until it was almost unrecognizable from what it had once been. It had cooled and hardened already, leaving the once sleek craft looking lumpen and ugly. The rear of the ship – or at least the part which Duggan could see – was splayed outwards, with the alloys burned and grotesquely twisted. Given the opportunity, the Corps might one day attempt a recovery in order to re-use the precious metals it contained. Certainly, it would never fly again as the ES Pugilist.
“I’m glad the hole is pointing away from us,” said Duggan at last. “I wouldn’t have felt comfortable walking for fifty klicks with an open fission drive pointing straight at us. I’m not sure how long the suits would hold up against that.”
The going was rough – underfoot it was a mixture of ankle-dragging sand and strewn rocks. The soldiers and crew were fit, but even so they had to watch the ground carefully to be sure they didn’t suffer an unwanted fall. On the plus side, the ground was relatively level. Duggan was keen to make quick progress, since he didn’t know if any of the miners were alive, or what had happened to the Goliath and the Ribald.
“I hate going blind,” he growled to McGlashan.
“Only forty-seven klicks to go, sir,” she said, realising at once why he was so frustrated. “The days here are twenty-two hours long. We should get there late tomorrow.”
A voice broke into the conversation as one of the soldiers swore loudly into the open channel – it was Santos. “Shit man, what’s that?”
Duggan spun around, trying to see what had caught the man’s attention. It didn’t take much to find – something had exploded behind them. The visibility was poor and it looked like a grey-blue light had surrounded the Pugilist’s crash site.
“Is that the engines?” asked Friedman. “Hell, I’m glad we got away in time.”
Duggan felt cold, even in the cocoon of his suit. “That’s not the engines, soldier,” he said. “Something’s just hit it from orbit.”
No one spoke as they digested this information. Duggan didn’t need to spell out exactly what he meant – a Ghast ship had arrived and it had decided to finish the job started by the ground-launched Shatterer missile. What Duggan hoped to achieve was about to become a whole lot harder.
Chapter Six
They picked up the pace, risking their safety in order to increase their distance from the ES Pugilist. Duggan watched his pounding feet as they left a trail of shifting imprints, which were quickly swept away by the buffeting winds.
“Lieutenant Chainer, what are the chances of the Ghast ship spotting us?”
“That really depends, sir. If they’re specifically looking for us in this area, they’re definitely going to see us. If they’re doing a random, high-level sweep, they’ll probably miss us. On top of that, you have to consider what sort of ship it is. If it’s a light cruiser, it’ll take them more effort as they’ll have fewer sensors. If it’s something like a Cadaveron, their AI could well spot us even if their comms man doesn’t. Assuming they even have a comms man.”
“And assuming you can call whatever it is a man,” said Duggan wryly.
“You’ve gotta call them something, sir. Man is as good a word as any. Woman just wouldn’t seem right for some reason, given what warmongering bastards the Ghasts are. The only real warmongering bastard I know who’s a woman is Sergeant Ortiz. No offense meant, of course.”
Duggan smiled to himself. “That’s fine, Lieutenant, I know what you mean.” He considered his next words carefully. “We’re likely to see some fighting. How are you with a rifle?”
“I’m a good shot, sir. I came third in my year. Just because I’ve not fired one in anger for a while doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten how to aim. We’ve faced death many times before on the bridge. In my eyes that’s no different to facing it when you’re carrying a rifle.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant, that’s what I needed to hear.”
“One last thing, sir. We should keep comms talk to a minimum. Our channels are well-shielded and the signal doesn’t have far to travel between us, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.”
“Agreed. I’ll let the squad know.”
They pushed on for the remainder of the planet’s day. It made no difference to a warship’s sensors if it was light or dark, so Duggan felt it best they press on rather than waiting for night. On board a spaceship, night and day lost a lot of its meaning, but Duggan knew most of the people who served on one tried to keep to a routine.
“Any of the squad going to fall asleep on us, Sergeant?” he asked at one point.
“I don’t think so, sir. A few of the guys have their own sleeping patterns. If I catch them flagging, I’ll make sure it’s the last thing they do.”
She said it so calmly that Duggan half believed her words. “Don’t shoot anyone until you’ve spoken to me first, Sergeant.”
“I’ll keep it to flesh wounds only, sir,” she said.
Mindful of Chainer’s words about keeping comms noise down, Duggan didn’t say anything further. Night came and the temperature fell far below freezing. It was nothing too extreme and Duggan hardly registered the fact. His suit kept his body at a comfortable temperature, as well as recycling his waste. On top of that, it kept him in tip-top physical shape by injecting him with a tiny quantity of a complex stimulant every three hours to ensure he was able to keep going. The drugs could keep the suit’s occupant functioning for a month – longer in some cases. At the end of it you’d feel like crap, but it was mostly better than dying. Some of the men and women who saw a lot of surface action developed a craving for what they called suit time – their fix of the stimulants. It was an addiction that Duggan had no wish to acquire.
They stopped for a time – it could hardly be called a camp. It was nothing more than a cluster of seventeen men and women in a loose circle, clutching their gauss rifles as they tried to catch some sleep. One or two lay on their sides, hoping the coarse sand would act as a cushion against the discomfort. Duggan had been out in places like this before and he didn’t even try to lie down – he knew it wouldn’t help him sleep. He looked around, willing his eyes to pierce the gloom. There was nothing to look at – the Pugilist had come down on a bleak, open area of the planet where the wind never seemed to stop blowing and the sand didn’t end. The utter darkness above was dotted with an unfamiliar pattern of stars. The speed at which a modern warship could travel meant you never got the chance to become familiar with the skies. In truth, Duggan didn’t especially care. He was fascinated by space, yet he’d never developed any romantic notions about what lay there.
One or two voices carried across the open channel and Sergeant Ortiz cut them off with a sharp command. Soldiers ne
eded the camaraderie of hearing each other’s voices and Duggan felt bad for them. It could be lonely when you had to travel in silence. It was easier if your team mates were able to push you onwards.
After six hours of discomfort in impenetrable darkness, Duggan gave the command for them to break camp. The suits could enhance the landscape sufficiently to enable travel even in the blackest of nights, but the squad still needed a break and night had been as good a time as any. Duggan hadn’t slept well and he was sure he wasn’t alone. The temptation was already there to instruct the suit to inject a booster stimulant into his bloodstream. He resisted for the moment, certain that many of the people around him wouldn’t be so stubborn.
He picked up his rifle. “Let’s go,” he said.
The day progressed in the same manner as the last one. The wreckage of the ES Pugilist was far behind now and Duggan was sure they’d remain ignorant even if the Ghasts fired another dozen missiles at the shell. The tedium of silence gave him a chance to think. He wondered why the Ghasts would go to the effort of installing a disruptor and a Shatterer launcher on such a forsaken planet as this. He was forced to concede that whatever the reasons, it had allowed them to take three Corps spaceships completely by surprise.
He permitted himself a modest gamble by speaking to Lieutenant Chainer. “You detected the presence of Ghast alloys on the surface just before they launched the missile at us.”
“I did, sir.”
“How big?”
“It was big. I can’t think of a more technical term for it and I didn’t get time to obtain an estimate of the measurements. The missile launcher was a lot bigger than a Lambda cluster – even bigger than the ones we had on the Crimson.”
“Maybe that’s why we’ve not seen such a weapon on anything smaller than a Cadaveron,” mused Duggan. “It might need to be mounted on a large platform.”
“When the Ghasts attacked the Archimedes, their newest Oblivion only launched six Shatterers at a time. In the circumstances, we have to assume they weren’t holding back. There was a long delay between launches.”
“It must have been a reasonable investment in time and effort to bring their hardware all the way here and then install it.”
“It implies a certain inclination towards permanency, sir.”
“Up till now they’ve shown no sign they want to do anything other than destroy our resource-gathering operations. Yet here they are, putting in enough defences to knock out a couple of Gunners. Perhaps even an Anderlecht cruiser if one happened by.”
“With something else in orbit as well, sir.”
“They’re pushing outwards and holding onto their gains, Lieutenant. If they’re increasing their presence in the Larax Sphere, it doesn’t bode well for the occupied Confederation planets.”
“I thought it was only a matter of time anyway?”
“It is, Lieutenant. I had hopes that maybe they’d be looking in some other direction for a while. Instead, they’re getting ever closer and we’re definitely not ready for them.”
“The topographical scans I made before we were shot down detected the presence of Gallenium, sir. Fragments on the surface and borne in the sand. The place must be rife with it for it to be just blowing around.”
“If they’ve found big deposits of Gallenium, I’m not surprised the Corps sent a heavy lifter here,” said Duggan. “I think there are only five or six known planets with significant quantities of the ore in Confederation space.”
“Are we running out of it, sir?”
“As far as I’m aware, we’ve got sufficient proven reserves to put engines in hundreds of new Hadrons. Perhaps the Ghasts are running out. I can’t think of any other reason they’d want to establish a base here.”
“Why isn’t the surface overrun with their soldiers?”
“You don’t need a significant force on the ground to run a mine, Lieutenant. All you need are enough people to keep the machines ticking over and to say hello when the supply ship comes by. The strength comes from what you keep in orbit above.”
“It’s not likely to be a Kraven, then, is it?”
“I’d guess at something a little bit bigger,” said Duggan.
“Damn. It’s not looking good for us down here.”
“We’ll see, Lieutenant. We might get a chance to throw a spanner in their works.”
They trudged on through midday. The temperature remained cold and the sun had a peculiar blue halo as it shone through the billowing sand. The land began to climb steadily upwards and Duggan remembered the open area of the mine had been hollowed out from a series of hills. Mining operations tended to grind up a huge quantity of surface rock and filter out the metal-bearing ores they were looking for. By the time the open cast part of the mine had gone deep enough, the operators would have identified the richest seams and would be able to focus their efforts on following these under the ground. Duggan had only seen one or two such places and his mind retained an image of ragged, dirty pits, with enormous tunnels snaking away into the earth as the miners pursued the veins of metal.
As they climbed, the surface covering of gritty sand gave way to rough stone. Visibility improved as they rose above the swirling sands and Duggan realised how oppressive it had been walking in silence and with reduced sight. On the other hand, he now felt exposed with the obscuring veil of sand gone. His suit outlined Sergeant Ortiz in red and Duggan tapped her on the shoulder. She turned and he made the signal to indicate it was time for additional caution. Ortiz gave a strange bobbing motion – it was the only way to nod in a spacesuit.
Duggan checked his helmet’s positional display and found they were less than three kilometres from the south-west lip of the mine workings. The Pugilist had managed to keep the spacesuits fed with data until a point only a few nanoseconds before the Shatterer had hit them. The suits couldn’t store a huge amount of information, but the onboard computer and databanks had enough space to hold specifics on distances, heights and terrain type. It was hard to get lost when wearing one, though not completely unheard of.
“Sir?” It was Breeze.
Duggan knew the man wouldn’t have broken comms silence without good reason. “What is it?”
“The suits aren’t particularly good at detecting positrons – they don’t need to be. However, I’m getting some fluctuations in the atmosphere away to our left. I’d say two or three klicks, not far off our path.” Breeze raised a suited arm and pointed.
Duggan looked in the direction indicated. The land continued to climb all about them – they were more than halfway up a long, gentle rocky slope that stretched off to the left and right. Rocks and boulders provided some cover and also blocked Duggan’s ability to see as clearly as he’d have liked. He changed course slightly and waved the squad to follow. They wended their way upwards, taking greater care to stay in cover. There was no indication of a Ghast presence, but there was no sense in taking unnecessary risks. Duggan’s movement and heat sensors remained untriggered, though the cluttered rocks meant he couldn’t be fully sure there were no surprises ahead.
After ten minutes, Breeze spoke again. “The rocks are shielding the source of the positrons. There must be some real dense metal in this hillside. It means the emissions are all going upwards into the atmosphere.”
“Missile emplacement?”
“I don’t think so, sir.”
The squad emerged from a cluster of large boulders. Duggan couldn’t help but glance into the sky, as if his eyes could somehow see a Cadaveron circling forty thousand kilometres above him. Nevertheless, he felt a menace that he couldn’t shake off.
The place which Breeze had directed them turned out to be the beginning of the mine pit, just a few hundred yards from where they’d been originally going. It was almost impossible to keep hidden from eyes above, so Duggan had to trust to luck that they’d not be struck by a Ghast missile as they came closer. The squad lay flat on the edge of the pit and looked over – the amount of rock which had been chewed to make the hole wa
s hard to believe. Duggan remembered it to be eight kilometres across and it looked as big as it sounded – a roughly circular pit with sloped sides of hewn stone that dropped at least a kilometre down, with narrow tiers every hundred metres or so. The bottom was just about flat and covered with a layer of grey gravel, the pieces crushed by heavy machinery and scattered about because there was nowhere else to put them. That same machinery was in evidence, dotted around the pit floor. That wasn’t what caught Duggan’s eye. There was something else in the pit – something which had crashed into the side wall with such velocity that it had left a kilometre-wide crater off to the north. Fissures spread away from the crater, upwards and across the pit floor.
Now they had a clearer view of the source, Duggan finally realised what it was. The positrons were coming from something ultra-dense - a mixture of elements bonded together in such a way that they could produce sufficient power to propel a ship many times faster than the speed of light.
“It can’t be the Goliath?” Duggan asked Breeze.
“No sir. Too dense for an MHL’s engines.”
“How much to make that hole?”
“Twenty square metres if it was travelling fast enough. If they’d slowed their fall like we did, a whole lot more. It’s definitely not the entire ship.”
Duggan swore to himself. This was what had happened to the Ribald – blown into chunks somewhere in the sky above the planet and left to rain down in pieces across the surface. Whatever tiny hope he’d retained that the young captain Mason Graham and his crew might have survived and escaped to safety, were dashed by the sight of the wreckage in the mining pit below.
Chapter Seven
Bane of Worlds (Survival Wars Book 2) Page 5