A nearby corpse gave Recker his clearest view yet of the Meklon features – this one had larger eyes than a human, with pale irises. Its nose was less prominent and its part-open mouth revealed square, proportional teeth. On top of its head, grey hair was only a little darker than its grey skin.
“Hostiles,” said Shadar, over by the exit in the left wall. The Daklan poked his head into the corridor and withdrew it rapidly. “Five total, forty metres. Safe shot available.”
Gunfire started, coming from the Lavorix in the corridor. Recker turned and ordered the soldiers in the passage to hold.
“Raimi!” he barked.
“On it.”
The soldier was midway towards the passage already. He lifted his rocket tube into firing position and positioned himself to one side of the opening.
“Get down,” he ordered.
Shadar and a couple of other soldiers near the door moved quickly away. A half-step to the side and Raimi fired into the passage. It intentionally wasn’t a precision shot and didn’t need to be. Sergeant Shadar had called it safe, which meant the blast had somewhere at the far end to channel, ensuring the explosion wouldn’t all come back into this mess room.
The passage filled with light and even though Recker had turned his head and closed his eyes, the intensity was painful. A split-second after the light, the explosion rumbled and heat came with the noise.
Hardly waiting a moment, Sergeant Shadar dashed back to the corridor and put his head around the corner.
“Clear,” he said, not that the deaths of the Lavorix had been in doubt.
“Hostiles!” shouted Private Gantry. He dropped his MG-12 to the floor, kicking out the tripod as it fell. Within five seconds he had it aimed through the gaps between the chairs and tables into the opposite passage. The weapon roared and Gantry held the trigger down for a long time. Then, he scrambled aside dragging the heavy weapon after him.
“Shit, turret!” he yelled.
Recker heard it then, a whine of gravity motors. The soldiers in the mess room hurled themselves away from the corridor, rolling across tables and clambering over benches in their haste. A spray of inbound slugs tore through the air, pulverising the furniture. Recker saw a spray of blood from a Daklan soldier who’d been too slow to escape.
Raimi fired again and his second rocket left a trail of blazing propellant as it accelerated into the tunnel. He dropped low and checked the reload timer.
“Direct hit,” he said coolly.
“The enemy have mobilised their turrets quickly,” said Shadar. “This is not a positive development.”
Recker heard a second gravity engine, this time coming from the left where Raimi had launched his first rocket. “Where’s Ipanvir?”
The huge Daklan erupted from the tunnel where Recker had ordered the soldiers to wait, his launcher in position to fire. More gunfire came and this time it was from the right-hand exit. The human and Daklan soldiers fired in response and Drawl side-armed in a grenade.
“Lavorix from three directions,” said Recker bitterly.
“No hostiles this way,” said Unvak from along the entrance passage.
The whump of a rocket firing brought Recker’s attention back to the room. Faced with the lightning and murderous reactions of a Lavorix automated turret, Ipanvir hadn’t risked showing too much of himself and had launched the missile at an angle. The explosion boomed and a wave of superheated air struck Recker like a physical force as he crouched behind the scant cover of a table.
Gunfire cracked and fizzed. Projectiles thudded into the solid walls and then a torrent of slugs poured into the room from the third exit. Drawl threw in a second grenade and then a third. At the same moment, Private Gantry shouted a warning about an attack from the opposite passage.
“Raimi!” yelled Recker.
“Yes, sir.”
The soldier’s rocket disappeared into one of the passages, producing another explosion. Ipanvir fired as well, into the right-hand passage. The lull didn’t last more than a few seconds – only long enough for the soldiers to find better positions that covered the entrances. Gunfire resumed, inbound from three directions. The Lavorix were keeping themselves out of sight and Recker guessed their intention was to keep the attackers pinned while they brought up another turret or something explosive. So far, Raimi and Ipanvir’s launchers had made the difference, but their ammunition was limited.
A fist-sized object arced into the room and clinked against the floor ten metres from Recker. Reacting quickly, he threw himself flat in the opposite direction, while the other soldiers nearby did likewise. The grenade went off in a blinding flash. Recker heard a truncated scream and a heavy object fell on top of him. Heat alarms went off in his earpiece. He grunted and rolled, pushing the weight off him, trying to ignore the sweet smell of burning meat and the greasy astringency of suit polymers.
As Recker scrambled to his feet, he discovered what the object was – perhaps he’d known it all along – and he stared at the upper half of a human soldier. Private Bonnie Stevens was dead, with her legs torn off in the blast and the terrible wound cauterised by the heat. A wave of guilt crashed into Recker because she’d taken the worst of the blast and likely saved him from death.
And then he was away, jumping over a mess of twisted tables and benches until he reached one of the side walls, out of the Lavorix firing arcs.
Another grenade went off, missing the soldiers but scattering loose metal. Ipanvir and Raimi both fired, each into a different passage, the immense rocket explosions buying time, but not enough of it. A few Lavorix burst from the third passage, running on two legs and two overlong arms, their spines curved unnaturally to keep their torsos upright.
Recker shot the first and then Gantry’s MG-12 started up, cutting the Lavorix down at their waists, as if in belated justice for Private Stevens and Private Redman back on Excon-1. A grenade detonated in the hand of one enemy and the blast sent pieces of blackened flesh and wet entrails in every direction. In the distance, Recker heard the whining of a gravity-engined turret and knew that time was running out.
“Retreat!” he shouted, waving the soldiers towards the passage through which they’d first entered the mess room.
With the Lavorix pressing, escape was not easy and one of the Daklan died when an enemy soldier dashed into the room at full pelt while firing a chain gun. Recker took it down, but the damage was already done.
Recker and his soldiers exited the mess room under heavy fire that would have produced more casualties had Ipanvir not spent his last rocket to provide some cover. The engagement had been bloody and – in terms of the mission objective – fruitless. On the other hand, it had taught Recker several valuable and painful lessons about his opponents. The Lavorix were organized and they would sacrifice their own lives in order to win. If they located any more HPA worlds – assuming they hadn’t already done so – the fighting would be brutal.
Snarling with anger, Recker sprinted deeper into the ship, the actions of his enemy forcing him ever further from the bridge.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Lavorix didn’t immediately follow the fleeing soldiers, either because they needed to regroup, or because they were content to hold in one area of the battleship. Recker headed back for the maintenance entrance. He remembered the place where two passages led from one of the rooms and he intended to explore the second exit to find out if it would bring him and his soldiers to a more advantageous position, ideally forward of the enemy.
“Where’s Corporal Givens,” he asked, wondering why the man hadn’t re-joined the squad like he’d been ordered.
“He was off comms when we were in the mess room, sir,” said Vance. “Too much intervening metal for a signal to get through.”
“We’re closer now,” said Recker, suddenly worried he might have lost five soldiers. The flickering green connection lights on the open comms channel told him otherwise. “Corporal Givens, where are you?”
Givens’ voice was faint and
he sounded surprised when he answered. “We’re holding a room about a hundred metres from the entry point, sir. It’s quiet, except for the squealing noise coming from all this alien shit.”
Recker almost missed his stride. “What sort of alien shit?”
“Consoles and stuff, sir. I don’t know what any of it’s for.”
“I asked you to report what you found, Corporal.”
“The comms link dropped, sir. We thought you’d send someone back to get us.”
“Those weren’t the orders.”
“It’s just warship tech, sir,” Givens repeated, in the tones of a man who suspected he might be trouble. “Tech - that’s what the squad calls it when we don’t know.”
It was difficult not to shout at the man and Recker took a deep breath. He reminded himself that he’d expected to locate all the important kit on the bridge and maybe he hadn’t made it clear enough to the soldiers that he wanted to know about everything they found, no matter how unimportant they thought it was.
“Never mind,” he growled. “I’m coming your way.”
Raising his voice, Recker snapped out a couple of orders, telling Sergeant Shadar to choose five soldiers and head for Givens’ position. Sergeant Vance he told to secure the route to the maintenance passages in case the Lavorix appeared.
“This is not a good place to hold, sir,” said Vance. “If we’re forced to retreat into the maintenance area, you’ll be cut off from the rest of us.”
“It’ll take me less than two minutes to reach Corporal Givens and find out if he’s discovered something useful.”
“Yes, sir.”
The first soldiers to make it to the maintenance passage didn’t really have anywhere to go and they pressed themselves against the side wall to allow Recker, Shadar and the other chosen soldiers to run past. After that, Vance’s bellowed orders imposed a greater degree of purpose on them and Recker noticed that the Daklan were responding without complaint to commands from a human superior officer. It was a significant development, though something to think about later.
With Sergeant Shadar in front and four others behind, Recker dashed along the passage, turned left and continued towards the centre of the battleship. At an intersection, Shadar paused to check he was heading the right way. Along the straight ahead, Recker detected the orange of movement and a shape came around the far corner. For a split-second he thought it was Givens or one of the soldiers with him. The sight of extra limbs and the strangeness of the gait were enough to convince Recker this was no human.
“Incoming,” he said calmly.
A spasm of movement from the Lavorix indicated it had become aware of the danger and its limbs flailed as it sought to escape into cover. Recker’s first shot took the creature in the head and was certainly fatal. He didn’t leave anything to chance and put another two slugs into its body as it fell.
“Corporal Givens is this way,” said Sergeant Shadar, indicating the branch from the main passage.
Recker was torn. The appearance of the Lavorix here might just be the start of an attack that would separate him from the rest of his soldiers. On the other hand, if he could access a console that was linked to the battleship’s critical onboard systems, he might be able to pull off a few tricks, like sealing the internal doors. He glanced at the two-foot barrels of the stubby minigun directly over his head.
Or activate the defences.
He pointed at one of the accompanying Daklan, a soldier called Lumis. “Stay out of sight and watch this main passage,” Recker ordered.
Lumis returned an unnervingly wide smile, providing an excellent view of short, upturned fangs and the rest of his more humanlike teeth. He tapped the side of his helmet in a manner which Recker understood to be the Daklan equivalent of an affirmative.
“Sir,” came the voice of Sergeant Vance. “The Lavorix are not holding their positions. We have sighted them close by and I anticipate an attack as soon as they can organise.”
“Damnit, hold the corridor, Sergeant, and we’ll make a run into the maintenance area if we need to. We’ve encountered one of the bastards this way as well – they’re likely hoping to encircle our position.”
“Yes, sir.”
Vance was the kind of soldier who had the experience to recognize a mountain of shit when he was standing in the foothills, but who would nevertheless accept his orders without complaint unless he had a better suggestion for dealing with a situation. Recker was grateful to have the man with him.
Twenty metres along the new passage, Corporal Givens appeared out of a doorway and gestured for the approaching soldiers to follow him inside. Moments later, Recker entered a ten-metre-square room in which four human soldiers crouched behind a central console and kept their guns trained on the single doorway.
Seeing the console made Recker’s heart jump in anticipation. The hardware was unlit, but like Givens had said, it was squealing. Rather than finding the noise an irritation, Recker was invigorated because it meant the console was online.
“Should it be making that noise, sir?” asked Givens. “And what’s all this stuff for?”
Had Givens apologised for screwing up, maybe Recker would have had a bit more tolerance for the banality. The man had also been lacking during the assault on the Interrogator’s inner cube and it was hard not to immediately relieve him of his rank and give the job to someone more capable. As it was, he resisted the urge to discipline Givens during an ongoing mission and put the task aside for now.
“I’d suggest you remain quiet, Corporal,” snapped Recker as he approached the console.
The device lacked seats, but the operator panels were the right height for easy use. Flicking a blue switch brought the console out of sleep and the screens illuminated shortly after. Drumming his fingers, Recker waited for the input prompt.
During the brief delay, Lumis came onto the comms to advise he’d sighted and shot a second Lavorix.
“Private Carrington, Reklin, go help him out,” Recker ordered. The prompt appeared on the screen. “Here we go,” he said, entering the command to access the software.
A new menu appeared instantly.
“Is it what you seek?” asked Sergeant Shadar with interest.
“Yes,” said Recker. “This room must be the place where the technicians can run maintenance checks without interfering with whatever’s happening on the bridge.”
“What advantage will this offer us, Captain Recker?”
“See this menu?”
“Automatic defences,” said Shadar with a note of approval.
“All I’ve got to do is set target exclusions,” said Recker. “If you notice, the onboard security has already scanned every living organism inside and categorised it.”
“Daklan. Human,” said Shadar, leaning closer to read the small text on the screen. “How does the security system know that is how we call ourselves?”
“That’s a question I wish you hadn’t asked, Sergeant,” said Recker, understanding the ramifications at once. “It’s something to think about later.” He tapped at the console keys. “For the moment, I’m adding every human and Daklan to the excluded list.”
“Will it take long?”
Recker shook his head. “Not long at all.” He poised his finger over the Activate? option on the screen. “Ready for the fun and games, Sergeant Shadar?”
Shadar unleashed a grin that was even wider than the one Lumis had shown earlier. “Yes, I am ready.”
A gentle touch on the screen was greeted by a confirmatory message from the security system. At once, a faraway, pulsing noise came to Recker’s ears. It sounded exactly like what it was - a multi-barrelled automated gun punching a few thousand rounds into a bunch of four-armed alien scumbags.
“Sergeant Vance has your burden been lifted?” said Recker on the comms. While he spoke, he added every human and Daklan to the security group personnel, which would allow them to operate doors and perform other tasks normally required on a warship.
“Yes si
r, and just when the weight was becoming too much.”
“Casualties?”
“No additional injuries to report.”
“We’re heading back your way. Our next target is the bridge.”
“Sounds good.”
Recker got moving, bringing the other soldiers with him. The pulsing of the miniguns had stopped, though a heat shimmer rose from the one at the intersection.
“Dead Lavorix,” grunted Lumis, gesturing along the passage towards the starboard flank of the battleship.
“You’d better watch your feet from here, soldier – there’re going to be a whole lot more of them where we’re going.”
Leading the way, Recker arrived at the entry point where he found that Sergeant Vance had already organised advance parties to check the way ahead.
“There’ll be no blind spots in the auto defences, Sergeant.”
“What about the bridge, sir?”
Recker nodded reluctantly. “Maybe the bridge.”
The squads headed once more towards the mess area, since Recker felt sure the forward exit from the room would lead most efficiently to the bridge. Almost every step of the journey required him to avoid bloody pieces of Lavorix and the floor was slick and crispy with crystallized blood. Recker didn’t try counting the enemy casualties, but the quantity of gore made it clear they’d begun a forceful effort to flush out the human and Daklan squads. The miniguns overhead steamed in the blood-moist air and they tracked the passage of the soldiers.
“Shit man, that makes me nervous,” said Drawl, his tones reverent rather than fearful.
Arriving at the mess area, Recker was confronted by a much greater scene of carnage. A hundred or more Lavorix must have been on their way through when the ceiling guns fired upon them. The enemy had brought two more gravity repeaters, both of which had been smashed to pieces by the ferocity of the battleship’s miniguns.
Galactar (Savage Stars Book 3) Page 21