“Nearly,” she said. “Didn’t want to risk it.”
Everything happened at once. A sudden thinning of the storm allowed Recker a much clearer view of the Meklon base. It wasn’t as extensive as he’d imagined, comprising a twenty-kilometre square alloy landing strip and a collection of low buildings in the north-west corner. From the roof of what was easily the largest building, four large antennae columns jutted several hundred metres into the sky.
Recker wasn’t so much interested in the buildings or the Meklon comms station, as he was in the group of five spaceships parked on the landing strip. It only required a glance for him to recognize that three of the spaceships – parked in a neat row in the centre - were Lavorix in origin, each one somewhere between the Axiom and Aktrivisar in length. The final two were stationary on the western side of the facility. Judging from their design, they were Meklon, but far bigger than the Vengeance. Neither looked in a good way.
“Four against two,” said Aston.
The largest, airborne Lavorix ship reappeared on the tactical and this time it didn’t vanish. When Recker saw that the enemy craft was stationary, his heart jumped.
“They haven’t seen us. Give them hell, Commander! We’ve got to take them out quickly, before they disable us with a core override.”
Recker prepared himself for the assault on his senses.
“Upper Ilstrom clusters one through four launched. Forward clusters one through four launched.”
The rumble of the missiles came distantly to the bridge and pinpoints of light raced off into the storm.
“Disruptor drones away,” said Aston. “Forward Hellburner tubes one and two locked and launched. Railers targeting airborne ship. Full auto activated.”
The Hellburners produced a much louder sound as their engines kicked in, and they streaked through the sandstorm, leaving thick orange trails behind them.
“Whoa crap, the Aktrivisar just unloaded,” said Burner, getting the words out a split second before the Railers started up, filling the bridge with a roaring sound that battered Recker’s senses and filled him with the exhilaration of warfare. Lines of white created by the passage of countless hardened alloy projectiles cut through the sand and crashed into the Lavorix warship far overhead.
In the briefest moment Recker allowed himself to look at the portside feed, he witnessed the Aktrivisar at its finest. The quantity of missiles ejecting in staggered waves from the desolator’s upper tubes drove home what colossal firepower the Daklan had packed into the warship’s hull. So close was the vessel that Recker saw the twin barrels of the forward two Terrus cannons kick back with the enormous recoil of their discharge. Graler fire raked the sky and pre-emptive shock-pulse bombs flashed randomly in every direction.
The enemy ship accelerated, heading directly for the Axiom and Aktrivisar. Burner locked one of the upper sensor arrays on the incoming vessel, though much of its hull was hidden amongst the overlapping Ilstrom detonations. A pair of much larger flashes made Recker squint and then came another series of explosions against the enemy warship’s armour.
Any ship in the Daklan or HPA fleets would have succumbed to the onslaught. Incredibly, the Lavorix ship kept on coming and Recker saw from the tactical overlay that it was almost six thousand metres in length and bulky with it.
Hoping to unleash the Axiom’s unspent missile clusters, Recker banked the warship, cursing its lack of responsiveness. The closest edge of the Meklon landing field wasn’t far ahead and he doubted the three enemy warships would remain quiet for much longer.
“Enemy missiles launched,” said Aston. “Disruptor drones out.”
The Lavorix warship was fitted with plenty of missile clusters and the warheads rained down into the storm of ballistic, explosive and guidance-scrambling countermeasures.
“Rear Ilstrom tubes one through four launched,” said Aston. “Waiting on front and upper reloads.”
Great swathes of the inbound missiles were wiped out by the countermeasures. Recker witnessed enemy warheads exploding fruitlessly against disruptor drones, while others were reduced to useless debris. The Axiom took several hits on its upper plating and multiple flashes on the Aktrivisar indicated the Daklan hadn’t escaped unharmed.
“Get me a damage report,” ordered Recker, ignoring the rolling shockwave of vibration which swept through the bridge. Lights went red on his console and suddenly, he was so swept up in the engagement that he didn’t care. The Axiom would hold together, either through an exertion of his will and determination or because the shipyard built it to take everything that was thrown at it and keep on firing.
“Our topside outer plating is ruptured over the rear and portside sections, sir. No breach through the inner plating.”
The Terrus cannons thundered again and Aston fired the Axiom’s reloaded forward clusters. All the while, the Railers fired at whatever their targeting system could lock onto.
“I’m detecting an energy surge from one of those parked ships,” warned Lieutenant Fraser. “The middle one is about to lift off!”
If it was ready to lift off, then it was ready to fire and Recker prepared for a new opponent to enter the fight.
“Parked warship targeted. Underside Ilstrom tubes fired,” said Aston. Her words were spoken calmly, but her eyes were unblinking and her movements quick, like the adrenaline was in control.
When Recker diverted his attention to the underside feed, he saw a pair of Terrus slugs crash into the middle parked ship. Each projectile crumpled the enemy armour and left a huge, burning hot indentation. Missiles ejected from the Lavorix craft’s topside launchers, passing the Ilstroms and Feilars heading the other way.
The Axiom’s portside flank and underside Railers acquired their targets in an instant and sprayed the inbound missile waves. A moment later, the Aktrivisar deployed dozens of shock-pulse bombs, which went off all around, concealing the Meklon base in flashes of light which threatened to overload the sensors.
“Forward Hellburners reloaded. Firing.”
“Four missile strikes on our underside plating!” said Eastwood.
A new light went red on Recker’s console and he braced for the sound of the blasts, which came with the destructive vibrancy of a technological god. With the hairs on his body standing on end, he did what he could with the Axiom, banking and making it twist clumsily through the air.
Another half dozen shock-pulse bombs went off, their light bursts fading in moments. The enemy ship laboured into the air, its upper plating ablaze. The Hellburners struck it where the fires burned hottest and the Lavorix ship was at its weakest. Twin explosions sent a half-billion tons of debris upwards and outwards like a fountain, which crashed against the two flanking warships.
One of the adjacent Lavorix warships launched missiles just as a vast sheet of wrecked plating flew overhead. Ten or more of the vessel’s own warheads detonated early and the blasts engulfed most its top section, leaving only the nose and stern visible.
“This is what it means to fight, human!” roared Jir-Lazan on a comms channel to the bridge speakers which Recker didn’t even know was open. “These Lavorix will quake at our presence and shit in their boots when we come for their planets!”
“Propulsion at fifteen percent!” yelled Eastwood. “I repeat: propulsion at fifteen percent!”
The largest of the Lavorix ships wasn’t done, though Recker couldn’t comprehend how it was holding together - it was little more than a fireball on one of the upper sensor feeds. It descended fast while launching missiles in sporadic waves. Aston responded in kind and the Aktrivisar’s weapons officers pursued the kill eagerly, bombarding the inbound warship with the desolator’s immense arsenal.
“Ah shit,” said Recker when he saw what the Lavorix commanding officer intended. “They’re coming straight for us.”
He banked again, hoping to throw off the inbound warship. The Axiom had nothing more to give and it changed course reluctantly, heading over the western edge of the landing strip. Directly
below, the two Meklon battleships were quiet and still, and Recker wished it were otherwise.
Sixty billion tons of Lavorix warship plummeted through the sandstorm, trailing flames behind and firing missiles as it went. Ignoring the ground ships, Aston concentrated on the much larger vessel overhead. Such was the intensity of the blaze that Recker couldn’t distinguish any details that might offer hope the Lavorix craft was about to break up.
“It’s slowing,” he said, hauling the Axiom’s controls towards him. The propulsion didn’t so much howl as it gave a spluttering, erratic rumble.
A renewed flash from multiple warhead strikes made Recker squint. He briefly saw a hint of darkness within the explosion and then the Lavorix battleship crunched into the Axiom’s rear section.
Alarms went off and the life support sucked precious energy from the failing propulsion in order to keep the interior stable. Even so, Recker felt the entire ship lurch from the collision and the jumping instrumentation indicated the warship was spinning around all three axes. From the corner of his eye, he saw the sensors alternate between total darkness and sun-bright light from the Lavorix craft.
The impact reverberation came and it felt like an earthquake, making the hardware fixings squeal with the strain and producing a groan from the floor and walls which made Recker wonder if the damage was terminal.
Somehow in the chaos, Aston locked and launched the portside Ilstroms. New bursts of light covered the sensors, either from missiles or shock-pulse bombs, Recker didn’t know which. He fought the controls and the controls fought back. Having stabilised the roll, he felt another collision, with what, he wasn’t sure. A distant booming hinted at the detonation of other missiles on the Axiom’s armour plating and red lights sprinkled his console in ever-greater numbers.
Then, it all fell into place. Recker’s mind identified a pattern in the Axiom’s seemingly uncontrolled spin and his hands instinctively moved to correct it. The heavy cruiser was an unwilling subject, but Recker would not accept failure. Compensating for the reduced engine output, he steadied the ship, just as he noticed how quickly it was losing altitude. He tried to correct the descent, unsure if he was too late.
“Going to crash,” said Burner.
A grey object filled the underside sensor feed – one of the smaller Lavorix warships was directly beneath the Axiom. The enemy spaceship was off the ground, though not by much, and it accelerated sideways. Pinpoints of light indicated the launch of missiles. The range was short – incredibly, stupidly short – and the detonations ripped into the Axiom’s underside plating. Once more, the sensors were made useless by the light and the plasma fires.
Instead of fighting the descent, Recker went with it and dumped the Axiom straight on top of the Lavorix warship. The renewed impact made everything shudder and this time Recker was prepared for it. Using the mass and the last vestiges of the Axiom’s propulsion output, he drove the enemy craft onto the landing strip. A second booming through the heavy cruiser’s structure indicated a collision with the ground.
The topside sensors cleared just as a flame-wreathed section of incomprehensibly massive debris fell from the sky. It was too late to avoid the incoming fireball and it struck the nose section of the Axiom, crushing it and then sliding onto the Lavorix warship beneath.
“Prepare for total engine failure!” shouted Eastwood. “We’ve taken too much damage – they’re shutting down!”
“Got you another target, sir,” said Burner.
Recker didn’t have time to curse. A red dot flew across the tactical, low and near. Lieutenant Burner locked a functioning sensor array on the enemy craft – it was one of those from the landing strip and had somehow made it into the air. Plasma burned in places on its hull, though not enough to bring it down.
“Sensor lock on the Aktrivisar,” said Larson.
The desolator was on the brink of failure and it didn’t require experience to see it. Pieces of debris dropped towards the ground like embers from a dying flame.
“Help them out, Commander,” said Recker. He pulled the controls towards him, hoping the Axiom might shrug off the weight and rise from the ground one final time. The engines were dead and the warship didn’t respond at all.
“We’ve lost our upper missile clusters, sir,” said Aston. “Wait, got two active tubes out of forty-eight. Locked and launched.”
Recker didn’t know if the Axiom’s missiles helped. In front of his eyes, the Lavorix warship crumpled in a way which only multiple Terrus impacts could accomplish. The front two hundred metres of its nose section were completely sheared off and the vessel immediately began falling towards the surface, its flank covered in circular heat patches from the Terrus slugs.
“Captain Recker, our engines have failed,” said Jir-Lazan. “We will land in your vicinity.” The familiar laugh came. “The Lavorix believed they had us! An eight-Terrus broadside proved them wrong!”
“Sir, the trajectory of the spaceship overhead suggests it will also land in our vicinity.”
Other pieces of wreckage – Recker had lost track, but he guessed they were from one of the mid-sized Lavorix warships – also dropped from the sky. One of the larger sections struck the Aktrivisar, glancing off before tumbling onto the landing strip.
“Get ready to leave,” said Recker, unable to take his eyes away from the continuing destruction.
He picked his helmet from the floor and put it over his head, while keeping watch on the sensor feeds. Many of the arrays had failed completely and others were effectively blinded by plasma fires. One of the portside arrays displayed an image of technological hell – twisted, billion-ton lumps of alloy littered the ground, and the much larger shell of a still-burning Lavorix cruiser lay half-atop a second. Much further away, a two-thousand-metre piece of another warship had landed in the centre of the built-up area of the Meklon base, crushing the comms station and many of the other structures.
The Aktrivisar landed nearby, Captain Jir-Lazan somehow eking enough from the desolator’s engines to dump it heavily on the ground instead of on top of the Axiom. The incoming Lavorix cruiser wasn’t so sympathetic and it plummeted, spinning slowly. Its nose caught the Axiom’s flank, while the rest – the heaviest part – of the warship thudded onto the spaceship underneath and then slid onto the landing strip. The sound of it happening would have been deafening and Recker was glad he was wearing his suit helmet to block out the worst of it.
For many moments, a series of grating, shrieking and groaning sounds made it seem as if the Axiom was being slowly compressed by the weight of debris. Eventually, the noise lessened and Recker immediately noticed the complete absence of a propulsion note. He checked the gauge and it was at zero percent, along with almost every other status monitoring tool.
“We’re running on emergency power,” said Recker. “Lieutenant Eastwood, find us a way to get outside. Lieutenant Burner, make sure Sergeant Vance and Sergeant Shadar are aware of our chosen exit.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Lieutenant Larson, speak to somebody on the Aktrivisar. Find out their status.”
“On it, sir.”
“You should issue a deletion command for our data arrays, sir,” said Aston.
It was a job Recker couldn’t put off any longer. “You’re right, Commander.” He tapped in a code, waited for the confirmation request and then entered a second code. “Done. There’s no going back from here.”
“The Axiom won’t ever fly again, sir.”
“I know it, Commander. I’m going to miss this warship.”
“Me too.”
“Sensors shutting down,” said Burner. “I can tap into the backup power for a low-resolution feed if required.”
Recker took one last look at the feeds and realised he was never going to make sense of the exterior. Everything was broken and bent. Fires burned and the shimmering air hid whatever details might have been valuable in building a picture of the destruction.
“Don’t bother with the sensors, Lieutenant.�
��
“The crew of the Aktrivisar are abandoning ship, sir. Captain Jir-Lazan recommends we steal one of the Meklon battleships.”
Recker couldn’t help but smile. “I thought he might say that. Tell him we like the plan and will assist – once we get the hell off this warship.”
He left his seat, opened the weapons locker and selected a gauss rifle and spare magazines. Slinging the gun, he quickly chose others for the rest of his crew and laid them nearby for easy collection. Corporal Hendrix watched him silently, her eyes wide.
“Did you think a warship crew spent all its time sipping fine wines and discussing the weather, Corporal?”
“No, sir, I did not think that.”
A combination of adrenaline and powerful painkillers hit him in a rush and he grinned at her. “Now we’re going to steal an alien battleship!”
Hendrix grinned back. “I can’t wait.”
“Sir, our upper shuttle bay is inaccessible, but I’ve located a possible green light on one of our Puncher tanks in the underside bay,” said Eastwood.
“A possible green light?”
“It’s the best I can offer you, sir.”
Recker performed a quick headcount. The Axiom was carrying more than thirty humans and Daklan, of whom about fifteen would fit inside the tank, assuming nobody was fussy about close body contact. Punchers had a gravity drive which allowed them to fall any distance without sustaining damage, but that wasn’t much use to whichever soldiers were left behind.
“What about the second tank and the deployment craft?”
“Red lights on their docking clamps. I know we can blow them out, but I’m getting error codes I don’t recognize – like something’s completely screwed up.”
“We’re going for the bay,” said Recker. “Whatever the problem with the clamps, we’ll figure a way round it.”
He waited with Hendrix at the exit door while Larson passed on the order to the soldiers, and the rest of his crew picked up rifles. A few seconds later, they exited the bridge and hurried through the interior, where the lighting had turned red and a siren came from wall speakers.
Galactar (Savage Stars Book 3) Page 16