Death Skies (Fire and Rust Book 4)

by Anthony James

  “I guess we’ll have to see how it goes, huh?”

  Griffin understood the concerns, but he was content with the mission organization. This wasn’t exactly a precision assault where minimizing collateral damage was a priority. The sole purpose was to blow the crap out of absolutely everything by launching thousands of nuclear missiles as rapidly as possible.

  The thought made him check the Hurricane’s arsenal. Two of its Ultor clusters carried low-yield nukes instead of their usual plasma warheads, whilst the main bay launch tubes were packed with ultra-high-yield warheads which could incinerate a small country and irradiate a large one.

  And the Hurricane was just one ship. Every other vessel in the fleet was armed to the teeth with the most destructive weaponry available. Now all they had to do was drop it on the Raggers.

  “There’s another thing the mission documentation isn’t clear on, sir,” said Shelton, grinning in what she probably thought was a disarming manner.

  “And what’s that, Lieutenant?”

  “These coordinates for Qali-5. Are they centered on the planet itself or somewhere close by?”

  It was a reasonable enough question that Griffin would have been happy to address, with or without the grin. “We believe the coordinates are for the precise center of the planet. It doesn’t matter too much – we’re aiming for a million klicks out in case the attack fleet arrives too widely dispersed and with too large a delay between first and last ship. The moment we’re ready, that’s when we move in.”

  “Not much data on Qali-5,” said Kroll.

  It was as understatement. The planet’s sun – Serin-L didn’t even appear on the Unity League’s star charts. The Fangrin knew about its existence, but only to add it to a register of known stars. They hadn’t sent scouts and knew nothing about the orbiting planets. Until a few days ago, Serin-L was just another name on a list.

  “If the Raggers have a base, Qali-5 is going to have a solid surface,” said Griffin. “That’s as much as we know.”

  “That’s as much as we’ve assumed,” said Dominguez.

  Griffin turned and now it was the turn of a second one of his officers to smile disarmingly.

  “Thank you for identifying a minor error in my words, Lieutenant.”

  “No problem, sir!”

  Not wanting to be caught smiling in return, Griffin directed his attention once more to the command console. Everything was in order, the same as it was five minutes ago when he last checked.

  “Going to be a long nine days,” he said, not caring who heard it.

  He was right. The Hurricane had better crew’s quarters than a Viper or a Hunter class, but inch-thick foam mattresses and a databank of on-demand TV channels were no substitute for being home.

  Through necessity, Griffin made the best of his free time. He prowled the interior of the ship and engaged with the maintenance personnel who’d come onboard at Calisto. The amber alerts which Lieutenant Atwell had identified pre-flight were now green after a concerted effort to fix the underlying causes.

  Knowing that he could rely on Atwell and his team was a great relief to Griffin. The Unity League had fought for so long that most personnel were fully competent, but a few less motivated individuals occasionally slipped through the net. Put enough of them together on the same spaceship and it was a recipe for disaster.

  Other than that, Griffin did what he could to put the coming attack from his mind. He wasn’t nervous about the raid, it was just that thinking too long about anything never did him any favors. The thoughts would end up whirling around his head until they made sleep difficult.

  The warship’s automatically-generated duty roster meant that Griffin and Dominguez’s off-shift time coincided more often than not. She was easy company and made it clear she didn’t want to talk about the war except when she was on duty. That suited Griffin fine.

  On day eight, they sat together in one of the two mess areas. A few of the maintenance staff talked business around the food station, while others stared glumly at the bland heaps on their trays. Griffin tried his best to get comfortable on the hard-backed chair, while Dominguez leaned forward and lowered her eyebrows at him.

  “What?” asked Griffin.

  “I hear Grandma Griffin turned ninety a couple of weeks ago,” she said.

  “Just before we left on patrol,” Griffin confirmed. “Aunt Jane organized the party and Gran loved it. She looked like a sixty-year-old again.”

  The eyebrows went lower. “Why didn’t I get an invite?”

  Griffin’s mouth fell open. “Did you want one?”

  “Of course I did. You know how much I like Grandma G.”

  “You’ve only met her twice.”

  “She’s an old woman. She needs company. When we get back you should take me to see her again.”

  “If you want that, we can do it.”

  “And afterwards, you should take me out somewhere nice. Just you and me.”

  It was a real struggle for Griffin to act cool. “Okay, we can do that too.”

  “Don’t you forget.” Dominguez gave him a wink and then rose from her seat. “Eight hours till we break lightspeed. I’m going to get some shut-eye. See ya on the bridge. Sir.”

  A stunned Griffin sat alone for some minutes, wondering what signs he’d missed. Maybe he was just an idiot. He drank the last of his orange juice, rose and put his half-full tray of pastes into the disposal slot. After that, he made his way to his quarters. As captain of the ship, he was granted a bit of personal space, though it didn’t amount to much. He kicked back and looked for something worth checking out on the archived TV shows. A couple of series looked interesting, but he couldn’t focus on them.

  Griffin was an honest man, most of all to himself.

  “Dammit, she could have picked a better time,” he said.

  He wasted an hour doing nothing and then switched out the lights. Sleep didn’t elude him and he awoke to the alarm, sixty minutes before the Hurricane’s tharniol drive was due to shut off. Griffin took a shower and the hot water washed away the last vestiges of tiredness. He shaved, dressed and made his way to the bridge, where he found himself the last arrival.

  The crew greeted him and Griffin was pleased to note that the atmosphere was calm. His officers knew their business and they got on with it. He took his place and ran his checks which took less than five minutes to complete. As expected, everything was within parameters and Griffin was left with time to make sure his crew fully understood what was coming.

  “The possibility of death or a long stride down the road towards victory,” said Kroll. “I know which of the two I’m gunning for.”

  “Yup, me too,” said Shelton. “And you know what? Even if we blow a zillion Raggers to kingdom come, I’m going to sleep easy at night. Safe in the knowledge that I helped kick alien butt.”

  Griffin wasn’t surprised when he first learned that most people lost their compassion when it came to the Raggers and he couldn’t judge them for it. He had to constantly remind himself that these were living creatures. It kind of lost meaning – the fact of their existence was only critical because it threatened his own.

  In the end, it didn’t matter. Griffin wanted the Unity League to come out on the winning side and he’d do pretty much whatever it required to ensure it happened.

  “No hesitation and the time for mercy is past,” he told himself.

  “Ten minutes!” yelled Lieutenant Kroll.

  The lightspeed calculations had a certain margin of error, which meant that a predicted emergence into local space could be late or early. A few of the theorists believed the variability was caused by turbulence. All Griffin knew was that it was a pain in the ass when you were trying to coordinate a large-scale attack.

  “Five minutes!”

  The tharniol drive went quiet. The electronic hum of the bridge equipment rose to prominence and it felt as though the Hurricane was gliding serenely through empty air. Then, the transition happened and the heavy cruiser was
deposited into local space.

  Griffin clenched his teeth at the physical discomfort and waited to find out what fate had in store both for Attack Fleet 2 and the Raggers.

  Chapter Five

  “Nothing on the battle network,” said Kenyon. “Either everyone else got shot down or we’re here first.”

  Griffin was already guiding the Hurricane through a series of tight turns, in case the enemy had a presence near to the arrival place. So far, no sign of inbound fire.

  “Sensors clear, commencing wide-area sweep.”

  “As quick as you can please, Lieutenants.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Shelton, all trace of playfulness gone.

  “Wide-area sweep clear, sir,” said Dominguez. “I’m searching for Qali-5.”

  “Anything on the comms, Lieutenant Kenyon?”

  “Still nothing, sir.”

  “Keep me informed.”

  “Second wide-area sweep also coming up blank,” said Shelton.

  “I’ve got Qali-5 on the forward underside array, sir.”

  “Show me.”

  The image appeared on Griffin’s HUD, overlaid with distance and dimensions. Qali-5 was mid-sized and, at first glance, appeared just like most other planets in the universe.

  “It’s a ball of rock,” he said. “Lieutenant Dominguez, continue the search for hostiles. We’ll focus on the planet when you’ve made sure of our safety.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The sensor team continued and Griffin studied the planet for a few moments longer. He couldn’t deny the disappointment he felt. Qali-5 was barren and rocky, with the usual fissures, craters and extensive mountain ranges.

  “Maybe all the Ragger facilities are on the far side,” said Kroll. “Or underground.”

  “We’re too far out to make that call, Lieutenant,” said Shelton. “If we don’t find anything after a couple of full orbits, then we’ll turn to the in-depth surface scans.”

  Griffin knew enough about sensor tech to realize that the Raggers wouldn’t be able to hide a significant presence for very long, especially with 140 spaceships hunting together.

  “The ULS Trojan and the Gradior have joined the battle network.”

  “Ask what took them so long,” said Griffin dryly.

  “They’re all coming now, sir. Ten just arrived at once. Make that thirty…forty.”

  The tactical display filled with green dots and information on relative positions, speeds and distances. It was too much for the mainframe node to keep up and everything ran sluggishly. Griffin switched off some of the extra data labels and it ran smoother.

  “Contact the Trojan and make them aware of our findings,” he said.

  “Yes, sir. Not much to tell them.”

  Within ten minutes of the Hurricane’s arrival, the final warship from AF2 entered local space and joined the battle network. With so many different sensor arrays working at the same task, it wasn’t long until the conclusion was unavoidable.

  “The Raggers aren’t on the visible side of the planet,” said Dominguez. “Not on the surface, and if they’re underground it won’t be a significant presence. No doubt whatsoever.”

  “You’ve begun checking out the other planets in Serin-L?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve got a definite sighting of a second planet, approximately 800 million klicks from the sun and approximately 650 million klicks from our current position. Anything further out or blindside is going to take time and effort to locate.”

  “What about this second planet?”

  “Here it is on the lower-aft arrays, sir.”

  The image was exactly what Griffin expected it to be – a wavering point of light, zoomed in, yet not enough that he could distinguish any specific details.

  “Composition?”

  “It’s probably a gas giant, sir. I’ll be able to tell you for definite once I’ve analyzed the data readings.”

  “Put it on hold for the moment, Lieutenant. Let’s see what Admiral Kolb decides.”

  Griffin had worked with Kolb enough times that he wasn’t expecting to wait for too long before she came up with a plan.

  “Orders incoming,” said Kenyon.

  “Not going to be a surprise,” said Shelton.

  The feasible options were limited to a single one and Kenyon shortly confirmed it. “We’re going to maintain a minimum distance of a million klicks from Qali-5 and keep flying until we see what’s on the far side.”

  For reasons he couldn’t explain, Griffin had a bad feeling about this. He’d prepared himself for the devastation of a planet and the adrenaline was in his veins. A delay wasn’t welcome and his reactions would lessen the longer it continued.

  “The flight data is coming in now, sir,” said Kenyon. “I’ve sent it to your console.”

  A green line appeared on the tactical. “A period of high acceleration along an arcing path,” Griffin said.

  A synch code arrived from the Trojan and Griffin accepted it. The code would keep every ship within a set range of every other, to ensure none drifted off course, fell behind or, in the case of the Hurricane, got too far ahead.

  “Time to go,” he said.

  Sublight acceleration was physically draining if it exceeded the ability of the life support systems to nullify the resulting forces. Admiral Kolb was understandably eager to get on with the primary mission objectives and Griffin knew he was going to be tested over the coming minutes.

  The fleet moved off as one, the outlying ships diverting closer to the core to join with the computer-generated randomized formation. With his hands tightly around the control bars, Griffin felt the strain in his neck muscles and shoulders, while the howling of the propulsion battered his ear drums. He grimaced and kept one eye on the velocity gauge in order to judge how much longer until he could let up and allow the Hurricane to coast through the vacuum.

  Fifteen minutes was sufficient and Griffin cut the power. The engine note mercifully receded to a background hum, only rising in volume when he was required to make an adjustment to follow the prescribed course.

  “No amount of gym work is enough for that crap,” said Kroll. “And I never seem to have time to go there anyway.”

  “In three hours, we’ll be in a position to scan the remainder of the planet’s surface,” said Griffin, reading figures from the navigational computer.

  “That’s for 100 percent certainty, sir. The longer we keep on this course, the more of the planet we’ll see while we’re in motion.”

  An hour passed and more of Qali-5 was revealed. Griffin saw rocks, mountains and craters, but no sign of Raggers. While a million klicks was generally considered a safe distance from which to observe an enemy, the longer this mission took, the greater the chance they might blunder into a Ragger fleet or be otherwise detected by whatever monitoring tech the enemy had stationed in the area.

  “Nothing, nothing, a-a-a-nd nothing,” said Shelton. “What if they’re not here, sir?”

  “The distance is too great for us to get a fast response from the other attack groups, even if we send an FTL comm. I’d guess that Admiral Kolb would therefore order us home, Lieutenant.”

  “That would suck.”

  It would definitely be a major disappointment and one which was looking more likely with each passing minute. Qali-5 was as average as anywhere Griffin had ever visited and he’d been to some pretty average planets during his career.

  “That’s eighty-five percent of the entire surface scanned,” announced Dominguez. “I guess you can cram a lot of factories into the last fifteen percent.”

  “Ah, shit,” said Griffin. “What an ass I’ve been.”

  “Sir?”

  “What if the enemy have installed camouflage domes like we saw on Reol?” he said. “I bet the Raggers are right under our noses and we just can’t see them.”

  “I’ll get on the comms, sir,” said Kenyon.

  “Please.”

  Griffin didn’t expect an immediate change in orders – it was still impo
rtant that the fleet completed the scanning of Qali-5. Even so, he was angry at himself for not imagining the possibility sooner. For some reason, he’d expected the Raggers to assume their manufacturing facilities were safe because their locations were unknown.

  “Admiral Kolb notes your observation. We are to continue until one hundred percent of Qali-5 is scanned.”

  “After that?”

  “To be decided, sir.”

  The fleet held its course and the scanning continued. Griffin was convinced the enemy were using technology to hide themselves on Qali-5, so it didn’t shock him when Dominguez announced that she was finished searching and with no sighting of Raggers.

  “I’m getting the same reports from the Trojan, sir,” said Kenyon. “Wherever the Raggers are, we can’t see them.”

  “The options from here aren’t pleasant,” said Griffin. “We’ll have to fly in blind and hope we locate the enemy installations before they can coordinate an effective response. This could become messy. Real messy.”

  Admiral Kolb ordered a halt. The fleet came to a standstill, one million klicks from Qali-5. Griffin had a couple of ideas his mind, but he knew that Kolb would ask if she wanted guidance.

  “Will we divide or stick together?” asked Dominguez. “Or try to flush out the enemy by launching a couple of nukes from long range?”

  “We’ll attack from close range,” said Griffin with a feeling of certainty.

  “How many groups?”

  “That depends on how Admiral Kolb wants to play it. She usually hits a good balance between attack and caution.”

  “I’m receiving the details, sir,” said Kenyon.

  Griffin waited for the orders and when they came, he was in mental agreement with the strategy Kolb had devised. “We’re dividing into four separate attack groups,” he said. “The entire attack fleet will approach on the same vector and then divide at the last possible moment. A total of thirty vessels, including the troop transports and the carriers, are designated comms stations and reinforcements. These craft will park at high altitude to relay comms data and, if necessary, assist other members of the fleet.”