“You liked Captain Jir-Lazan,” said Hendrix. It wasn’t a question.
“I did. I’ve seen nothing about any of these Daklan that makes me want to pick up a gun and shoot them.”
“Me either, sir. Maybe we’ll get back home and find things have changed.”
“Maybe.”
In truth, Recker thought any thawing of HPA-Daklan relations hinged on the outcome of this mission. If it came back a success, then the next steps would happen. He hoped it would happen anyway – Admiral Telar had a gift and Recker suspected the man juggled a hundred plans. Perhaps he’d pull something off, regardless of whether the personnel on this mission returned.
Private Montero entered the cockpit and helped Corporal Hendrix tip Jir-Lazan unceremoniously onto the floor.
“The dead don’t care,” said Montero firmly, like the words were a shield.
“No they don’t,” said Recker. “They leave that job to the living.”
Montero dropped into the second seat. “What about your crew, sir?” she asked.
“They can sit this one out,” said Recker. “If I had any doubts about your ability, rest assured you’d be out back chewing the fat with those squads of Daklan.”
“This hardware’s the same as ours,” said Montero after a few seconds spent staring at the panel in front. “Or near enough the same.”
“We’re going straight up and over,” said Recker. “The only threat is ground-launched missiles and I don’t think this shuttle is going to withstand a direct hit.” He turned his gaze to the hull breach. A rocket strike anywhere nearby would fill the cockpit with plasma heat, incinerating everyone inside.
“Corporal Hendrix, get out,” he said.
Once she was gone, Recker flicked the switch to close the cockpit door. At least if he and Montero died, someone in the passenger bay might live to take his place.
“I think I’ve got the hang of the sensors,” said Montero.
“Good, because we’re not waiting any longer.”
Recker fed power into the engines and the shuttle climbed strongly enough to reassure him that the propulsion was fully operational. The sheer cliff of debris sped by on the forward sensor feed and then the transport rose above its highest edge. From here, Recker had a much better vantage of the battlefield.
Ahead and in the distance, the immense Meklon battleships filled the visible horizon, their front and rear sections lost in a sudden thickening of the storm. The top section of the nearest was a pattern of angled plating, here and there burned and cratered, yet with no sign of a breach.
“Scan those battleships,” he said, guiding the shuttle slowly over the top of the wreckage.
“I can only see a limited area with any certainty, sir.”
“Do what you can,” said Recker, not taking his eyes from the feeds as Montero adjusted and enhanced them. He saw no sign of movement on the target battleship, but it was the further one which had him worried.
Having allowed Montero a few seconds, Recker flew them past the debris. The shuttle’s sensors detected no movement on the ground directly below, and he was sure any Lavorix troops in the vicinity had been cut down by the two Puncher tanks.
The distance from the wrecked warship to the battleship was only 1200 metres and the shuttle covered it in a few seconds. Montero talked nonstop under her breath as she scanned for anything hostile.
“Midsection clear, left thousand, clear, right thousand, clear. Limited view of the second battleship.”
Recker listened and he watched. If the Lavorix had somehow got themselves topside, they weren’t showing their faces. The shuttle crossed over the edge of the first battleship and the underside feed reminded Recker of a dark sea, frozen in time. He shook off the thought and concentrated on locating a way in.
“Where’s the most likely place for a hatch, sir?” asked Montero. “Otherwise this is going to be a real needle-haystack kind of search.”
Recker’s only experience with Meklon warships was the Vengeance, which was enough to make him sure the operational area of the battleship would be confined to a tiny section of the interior, somewhere between the middle and the nose.
He flew the shuttle slowly across the hull about fifty metres over the plating and heading for the starboard side. He breathed slowly and deeply and watched for incoming attacks.
“Any hatch would have a light on it, right?” asked Montero.
“More than likely. Unless the warship is completely out of power.” Recker judged they were near the mid-point of the beam and it felt like approaching an invisible line over which he was reluctant to cross. The further battleship was still obscured and for all he knew, the Lavorix might have a dozen rocket troops up there, waiting for the shuttle to appear in their sights.
“There’s a light over there, sir. About two hundred metres closer to the nose.”
The words were enormously welcome and Recker banked the shuttle immediately.
Montero focused the forward sensor on a tiny section of the battleship, a little way ahead and Recker spotted a glum orange light, a static pinpoint amongst the moving sands.
“Nice work, Private,” he said, guiding the shuttle closer.
Recker set the shuttle down on what was the highest point of the battleship. He’d given the soldiers in the passenger bay advance warning and they acted immediately by opening the transport’s side door.
Dim shapes appeared on the portside sensor feed and one of them crouched over the hatch.
“This is a way in, sir,” said Vance. “Want me to see if I can open it?”
“Don’t bother, Sergeant. I’m on my way.”
Recker climbed rapidly from his seat and headed for the exit. He experienced a momentary sadness when he passed the body of Jir-Lazan, since the Daklan had fought so well and had done so much to bring the mission this far.
Leaving the body behind, Recker made his way through the passenger bay, in which the soldiers waited for their next order. The expressions on the human faces gave away little, though Recker could sense the mood – uncertainty vied with an eagerness to get on with things and to get away from this shuttle before it was struck by something explosive launched from the darkness.
The open side door allowed the wind to blow directly inside and the floor was slippery with loose sand. Grabbing the support handle at the doorway, Recker jumped onto the hard surface of the battleship.
Up here, the wind was stronger than at ground level and it tugged angrily at him, while his feet slithered on the sand. All around was darkness, with nothing to betray that the soldiers were several hundred metres above the surface.
Vance and Shadar were at the hatch, along with a couple of others and they shuffled back at Recker’s approach.
“All yours, sir.”
“The moment of truth,” said Recker.
The hatch was about two metres square, its seam almost invisible. An access panel was embedded in the surface nearby. It was fitted with a stiff, hinged lid to keep it protected and that lid was currently open.
“Did the Lavorix get in this way, sir?” asked Vance. “I was told they had a shuttle up here.”
Recker had been wondering the same thing, but text on the panel readout gave him reassurance.
“Negative, Sergeant – the last activation of this access panel happened several weeks ago and there have been no failed attempts to open it since then.”
“But the protective cover is open,” said Vance.
“So it is.”
The wind couldn’t have blown it open and, since the Lavorix hadn’t tried the access panel – maybe hadn’t even seen it - Recker could only think that one of the Meklon technicians must have forgotten to cover the panel during the warship’s last maintenance check.
Every time I curse my bad luck, I’ll remember this access panel and remind myself it all balances out, he thought, knowing he was lying to himself.
“Does this mean there are no Lavorix inside?” asked Private Gantry.
“D
on’t get your hopes up, soldier.”
The access panel’s amber light turned green when Recker touched it. Then, the hatch sank eight metres into the hull and the alloy rungs of a ladder emerged from the wall. At the bottom of the shaft, a crawlspace led to a place unseen. Everything was dark and, though Recker both felt and listened for an indication the propulsion was online, the wind made it difficult for him to be sure of anything.
“Can we get into the main part of the ship from here, sir?” asked Vance, peering doubtfully through the opening.
“There’ll be a way, Sergeant. The Meklon built the maintenance access in such a way that it didn’t weaken the armour too much – in case a bunch of missiles landed near the hatch. I’m sure we’ll have to pass through several more hatches to reach the control areas.”
“That passage looks tight.”
Recker nodded. “I’ll have to go first. With any luck there’ll be an interface panel somewhere in the maintenance passages. From there, I might be able to do something useful like give everyone access to the doors.”
He leaned forward, grabbed the top rung and swung himself into the shaft. Descending rapidly, he came to the bottom and dropped onto his knees. The image enhancers in his helmet visor turned up the green and added a few bonus patches of darkness. It was enough for Recker to be sure the way was open.
“Everyone off the shuttle,” he said. “We’ve got a battleship to capture.”
With the order given, Recker crawled into the tunnel, hoping fervently that the entirety of the Lavorix forces were on the other battleship rather than this one. Inside, he knew it wasn’t to be, no matter how often he reminded himself about the open access panel lid.
On he went, into the Meklon warship.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The crawlspace went on for sixty metres before Recker came to a two-metre-square space where he could just about stand. A panel on the wall made him think this was a second lift, heading deeper into the armour, and he stood adjacent to it while other soldiers climbed out of the passage.
“There’s no way we’re all fitting on here,” said Recker, calling a halt with eight of the soldiers, including Sergeant Shadar, standing upright. “The rest of you stay back.”
He activated the panel and, sure enough, the lift went down, this time stopping after twenty metres. A passage led off, not quite a crawlspace, but with a ceiling too low for even a short human to stand upright.
The rungs of another retractable ladder emerged from the walls, allowing the soldiers to descend. Recker crouch-crawled into the exit tunnel, waving the other eight to follow in order to make room for the rest.
Two more lift descents later and Recker was impressed by the thickness of the battleship’s armour, even though it was slowing him down considerably. Not many of the soldiers liked being so confined and several of them grumbled until they were ordered to stop.
The fifth lift shaft from the outer hatch was longer than all the others and Recker was certain this frustrating part of the mission was almost over. No doubt the danger level would rise significantly once they entered the battleship’s personnel areas, but at least the human and Daklan squads knew how to storm an enemy position in difficult circumstances.
Best of all, Recker could now hear the distant rumbling of active propulsion, which increased his optimism tenfold that he wasn’t wasting his time on a warship that was either completely offline or in a state of failure.
A passage led from the bottom of the shaft and this time it emerged into a much larger space – not enough to hold even half of the squad, but enough to allow the first few inside the comfort of moving their arms freely. Two exit passages led away and he aimed his helmet flashlight along both, finding no clues as to which was the best option.
“This is a technician’s monitoring station,” said Recker, pointing at a row of three wall-mounted screens. “The shipyard would have run final checks from here, and the maintenance teams might have visited to track down some of the more elusive hardware problems.”
He touched one of the screens and it came to life, showing a menu of options.
“Can you do anything that gives the rest of us control over the doors, sir?” asked Vance. “You shouldn’t be leading from the front.”
Recker searched quickly through the menu functions and found no way to access the warship’s security.
“Not from here, Sergeant. We’ll have to move on.”
“Which exit, sir?”
“That one,” said Recker, choosing randomly. “We’re close to the operational part of the interior - I’m sure of it.”
The chosen passage turned left after a short distance and ended a little way further at another door with an access panel. Recker halted in front of it.
“This is the place,” he said, having travelled on enough spaceships to get a feel for them.
“We are ready,” said Sergeant Shadar, who’d positioned himself second in the line.
“Where’re Raimi and Ipanvir?” asked Recker. “There’s nothing like a shoulder-launched rocket to clear out hostiles from a place you don’t want them.”
Raimi wasn’t far back, but the Daklan was towards the rear. Fortunately, Zivor, with his high-powered repeater, was amongst the first group and that was a reassurance.
“Let’s do this,” said Recker.
He touched the panel and the five-feet-high door slid quietly into a side recess. The space outside was in darkness, but Recker’s night vision allowed him to see that he was on the threshold of a much larger passage, which went left and right in front of him. His sense of direction told him that left would take him towards the battleship’s nose and it was that way he expected to find the bridge.
Listening carefully, he detected no indication of a nearby enemy presence, though the floor was so dense the Lavorix would have to be really trying hard to produce footsteps audible over the propulsion.
“We must watch for internal defences,” said Shadar.
“Any such defences would target the Lavorix as well as us,” said Recker.
“Not you, Captain Recker. You will be safe.”
“I can’t take this battleship alone, Sergeant. Either way, the internal defences will be switched off.”
Recker leaned into the corridor and checked in both directions. Proving his point, a ceiling-mounted minigun was visible twenty metres away. It should have turned to track his movement, but it remained still and silent. He informed the squad and then spent a few moments on tactics.
“What if the internal doors are closed?” asked Vance. “That will make it impossible for you to stay in the centre of the pack, sir.”
“I’m hoping they’re open, Sergeant. Assuming the Meklon thought they were safe on this facility, it’s unlikely anything was locked down.”
In truth, Recker didn’t know one way or the other and his only point of reference was the methods employed by the HPA military, which he wasn’t stupid enough to believe were universal and observed by every other species.
“Whatever we find, we can’t piss about,” he concluded. “This is balanced on a knife edge.”
“Those Lavorix on the second battleship aren’t going to blow this one to pieces if they know their buddies are onboard, are they?” asked Drawl.
“I’m not taking bets on anything, Private. It’s best we don’t give them the chance to show us.”
While Recker didn’t have an answer, the question nevertheless got him thinking. At no point since the Axiom crashed had he seen an indication that the Lavorix were making a concerted effort to access this battleship. That got him worried – it meant the enemy either had enough soldiers onboard for them to close the access ramps, or they already knew this spaceship was out of action.
Only one way to find out.
Recker stepped out into the larger passage and stood to one side while the soldiers emerged. A total of forty had come with him into the battleship. Most went left, towards the bridge, while Corporal Givens and four others turned rig
ht with instructions to explore and report.
With seven soldiers in front of him, Recker went left, and Lieutenant Burner followed directly behind.
“Still holding up, Lieutenant?”
Burner’s face didn’t even hold a flicker of humour. “Yes, sir.”
With no way for the Lavorix to know about Recker’s ability to access the Meklon hardware, he felt this attack had a good chance of surprising the enemy. Once that surprise was lost, the real test would come.
“Intersection ahead,” said Sergeant Shadar.
A moment later, shots came with a crack-crack in the battleship’s sub-zero air. Recker heard a thud and Shadar grunted on the comms. More shots came and one of the soldiers in front swore.
“Clear,” said Shadar, with unmistakeable satisfaction.
More shots sounded and Recker felt his squad’s moments of surprise were already ebbing away. Any organised enemy would have comms and once word got out about this attack, the Lavorix would either hunker down or swarm the area with overwhelming numbers, depending on their confidence.
“Move!” yelled Recker, wishing he knew the distance to the bridge. He was certain the battleship’s interior would occupy only a small fraction of the hull’s 4500 metre length, but that still didn’t mean it was close.
He turned right at the intersection, following Private Gantry. A dead Lavorix almost tripped him and he called out a warning to those coming after. Just ahead, a few more corpses lay on the floor, two of which were Lavorix and three being Meklon. Splattered blood on the walls already glistened with ice crystals.
The pace increased and Recker found himself watching his feet as much as anything else, in case he fell over other dead bodies. It already seemed likely the Meklon crew had succumbed to the same bloodless attack which had allowed the Lavorix to take over the Excon-1 station.
The next turning brought him into an expansive room with rows of bolted-down tables and benches and a single offset exit in each wall. Two flat-fronted machines were embedded in the right-hand wall, which Recker imagined were food replicators, and twin minigun auto-defences hung uselessly from the ceiling. Several Meklon were slumped face-down in trays of whatever food they’d been eating before they were killed, and others were on the floor.
Galactar (Savage Stars Book 3) Page 20