Death Skies (Fire and Rust Book 4)

by Anthony James

  “This way,” said Kemp, at the other side of the wreckage. He lifted his hand into the air and made an exaggerated pointing motion. “It’s coming from here.”

  “I have recharge,” said Gundro.

  The Fangrin was the only one with a shoulder launcher on that side of the cover. He spun the tube up onto his shoulder while the soldiers nearby did their best to give him some room.

  “Ready,” he said.

  At the last moment of the two-second charge-up, Gundro leaned out from the side of what looked like the vehicle’s cabin. His rocket flew and he returned smoothly into cover. Chain gun bullets from the tank clattered off the road and the cabin, and the rocket exploded.

  “It will take another,” said Gundro with utter confidence. “Perhaps two others.”

  By this time, Axialan was in position. The rest of the platoon continued shuffling along the hauler’s length, ready to take cover at the rear of the vehicle. It was like a children’s game of hiding, only with much higher stakes and all the fun taken away.

  The Fangrin’s launcher whined and he tried to repeat the lean-and-fire routine. He either wasn’t quick enough or the tank crew were good at anticipation. Axialan’s head and upper body were pummeled by chain gun fire. His combat suit was no protection against high-caliber bullets and he was ripped to pieces. Without proper support, the shoulder launcher jumped out of control when the rocket flew. Conway didn’t even have time to think about the possibilities for his platoon. By the time his brain caught up, the explosive had raced off along the street, way too high to hit the tank.

  “That leaves you, big guy,” said Torres, stretching high to give Tenzal a comradely slap on the shoulder.

  “Yes.”

  “Ah crap,” said Barron, not far from the cabin. She tried to push the soldiers to move away quicker. “It’s aiming at the ground.”

  The troops knew what that meant – the tank was about to fire low to the side of the hauler, in order to nullify the protection it offered. As a mass, the platoon scrambled to get away.

  The tank fired its main gun and the shell exploded to the left of cover. More through accident than design, Conway was one of the furthest from it and he threw himself flat. A solid shape brushed by and Conway saw it was one of the Fangrin, carrying a shoulder launcher.

  The blast wave came, along with the burning heat of plasma. Conway kept his head low for a second, wondering what he’d find when he got up. He rolled to his feet and discovered that every member of the platoon had followed his example and hit the ground. A blackened area of ground twenty-five meters beyond them showed where the shell had struck. Conway’s heart jumped when he realized the enemy crew had fired early in their eagerness to make a kill.

  “Up!” he yelled. “Move!”

  The soldiers clambered upright, several of them with visible burns on their combat suits. Conway could hear the sound of the tank coming closer and he grabbed the first person his eyes fell upon, dragged them to their feet and hurled them bodily towards the rear of the hauler.

  Everyone hustled. The front of the tank came into sight, with its main gun turning to aim behind the hauler. Conway wasn’t so far that he couldn’t get behind the rear of the vehicle, but he could see that fifteen or twenty of his platoon wouldn’t get anywhere near.

  The tank’s chain guns spun up and chewed pieces out of the road, still lacking the angle to hit anyone. Conway shouted again, hoping the urgency in his voice would instill a fear burst of adrenaline that might give them the extra stride they required. It wasn’t going to be nearly enough.

  “Sir!” shouted Kemp. “Get away!”

  Conway’s feet were planted and he tried to shift them. Sergeant Lockhart collided with him bodily and the two of them fell towards safety. The chain guns tore into a group of soldiers who weren’t close enough to the hauler’s flank. Blood sprayed in an arc and the bodies crashed to the ground. There was nothing Conway could do to assist and he tried to get further into cover, knowing that others were going to die in the next burst from the chain gun.

  “I’ve got this,” said Tenzal on the open channel.

  The words were spoken over the crashing detonation of a shoulder-launched rocket. It was a distinctive sound which Conway had once hated. Now, he welcomed the harshness of it and hoped that it would be enough to put the tank out of action.

  “Report!” shouted Conway.

  “The tank is no longer operational.”

  Conway breathed out. “Good work, soldier.”

  The platoon spent the next few seconds getting to their feet and finding who was alive and who was dead. Along with Axialan, six more had been killed by the tank. Their bodies lay strewn across the ground with immense, glistening bullet holes clean through them. Conway didn’t know who they were and at one time it would have been important to him that he learn their names. He’d given up on that long ago.

  Tenzal appeared and a few of the soldiers, both human and Fangrin, congratulated him with dry, genuine gratitude for his ability to hit a tank at fifty meters. The alien took it in his stride and loped across to inspect Axialan’s fallen launcher. The weapon had a chunk missing from the tube where a bullet had gone through it and Tenzal dropped it to the ground.

  Nobody had enjoyed this episode and Conway didn’t want to keep them waiting here in the presence of their dead squad mates. He sized up the way ahead. It seemed clear, all the way to the target building. The structure was offset from the road and the closer buildings blocked sight of the entrance. Given the size of the place, Conway was sure it would have multiple entry points.

  “You Fangrin have a way to get through security-locked Ragger doors, don’t you?” he asked, remembering his time on the Ragger mothership.

  “Our combat suit computers have updated codes installed,” confirmed Rinzol. “That is assuming the enemy have not updated their security since we obtained these codes.”

  “If the codes don’t work, you know where to turn, sir,” said Kemp, pushing Private Eddy Lester to the front.

  “You’ve done your training.” Conway said it as a statement, since he knew it was true having organized the training himself.

  “Yes, sir. Practical training complete. The theory’s another couple of years.” Lester grinned with a confidence he’d lacked on Reol. “Set timer, run away. Easy.”

  Conway broke cover and headed for the building on the right-hand side of the road. Once he reached it, he resumed the run for the target. Less than twenty paces later, his earpiece crackled and something told him he wouldn’t like what was coming, seconds before Lieutenant Kenyon confirmed it.

  “Lieutenant Conway, we’ve shot down a Ragger spaceship at high altitude. Its descent trajectory suggests it will impact close to your position.”

  “You’re shitting me?” Conway said the words more with resignation than anger. Just another shovelful on the pile. “Which way do we go to avoid it?”

  “We don’t know. It’s spinning, breaking up and heading in fast. It might miss you by five klicks.”

  “Or it might land right on top of us. What’s the ETA?”

  “Sixty seconds. Coming from the east.”

  Conway turned and looked along the road. “At least we’ll get a good view of it.”

  Kenyon couldn’t stick around to chat. “Good luck,” he said and then closed the channel. Conway slowed his pace and made his platoon aware of what was coming.

  “I bet they’re more worried it’s going to land on Fleet Admiral Stone’s foot,” said Private Berg, betraying a streak of cynicism as wide as the road.

  “What are we going to do?” asked Corporal Barron. Her suit was brown-tinged from the tank shell explosion, but looked otherwise intact. “We can’t outrun a spaceship.”

  “We’re not even going to try, Corporal.”

  Conway had his eyes locked on the eastern skies. The view was good and only moderately impeded by the smoke and the buildings on both sides. He counted down from sixty and jogged slowly backwards at the s
ame time.

  A point of light appeared, low in the sky and bright enough to pierce the smoke. Conway came to a halt and the soldiers turned to look as well. Lockhart wasn’t happy and he snapped orders at a few of them to keep watch on the road.

  “Coming in real fast,” said Kemp.

  The speck grew larger and larger. Conway squinted and saw the outline of the hull. It was a big ship – maybe a heavy cruiser, he thought.

  The perspective was enough to fool the eye into thinking the Ragger ship was merely coming in real fast. However, the closer it came, the faster it appeared to travel. Conway tried and failed to predict where it would hit.

  “Going to be close,” was the only conclusion he could reach.

  The spaceship hit the ground at an oblique, coming directly eastwards along the road. Like Lieutenant Kenyon had said, it was spinning and it threw out burning shards of alloy in its wake. The buildings it struck were completely smashed and their walls either flattened or sent flying. For a split second, the cruiser was lost amongst the explosion of steel. Then, it skipped into sight and flew over the heads of the platoon. Conway’s head wasn’t quick enough to turn and he sensed the immense shape passing, just above the roofs of the adjacent buildings.

  He twisted around in time to see the end of the hull crash through one of the cylindrical towers and he guessed it did some damage to the target building as well. A searing, hurricane force wind, along with the strangest howling sound came after the spaceship. Conway’s body remembered the constant gales of Graxol-4 and he braced automatically against the buffeting. The shock wave from the impact was harder to withstand and the ground shook violently, knocking a number of soldiers off their feet.

  Conway kept himself upright. The spaceship disappeared from sight and, with an effort, he turned to check for any falling debris coming from the buildings it had collided with. Miraculously, none came near. A grey slab thumped down a couple of hundred meters to the east. Other than that, nothing.

  The tremor faded and was followed by a smaller one which dissipated in seconds. After that came a loud, tortured creaking and the damaged tower fell sideways across the road, crumpling one of the many warehouses that occupied this part of Qali-5.

  For a moment, nobody knew what to say. Then, many oaths broke the silence at once. It was only Corporal Misty Brice who had anything worthwhile to offer.

  “That was travelling at three thousand klicks per hour,” she said. “I got a measurement.”

  “Maybe all this crap could, you know, piss off for a while,” said Kemp, looking for something to kick. “At least until we get to the mission objective.”

  It wasn’t a suggestion that needed arguing. Conway waved the platoon into motion and they started off again. The passing of the spaceship hadn’t quite sunk in yet. While the tank encounter had resulted in a tragic loss of life, there was something about being almost killed by thirty million tons of metal travelling at three thousand klicks per hour that seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

  The series of events so far gave impetus to the platoon’s strides. It was almost as if the primary objective had changed so that the most important requirement was to make it as far as the target building. Anything after that would be a bonus.

  Only once did Conway slow, and that was when the platoon came near to the fallen tower. It was immense, with a diameter of sixty or seventy meters and had landed in such a way that they were required to pass underneath it. The damaged building which was supporting the fallen end of the tower creaked alarmingly and its walls bowed outwards under the strain.

  “That ain’t stable,” said Kemp.

  “No shit?” said Torres.

  With no easy way around, Conway took his chances and ran for it. He felt the platoon at his back and heard the pounding of their feet. Nobody was keen to stop and they kept on for a hundred meters or more. Conway refused to look up and concentrated on searching out threats at ground level.

  Their pace slowed and they approached the target building. Conway had expected it to be within a compound, but it was accessible without having to climb a fence or wall. He took in the details – the structure was much larger than the warehouses, a fact he hadn’t realized because of the way it was set back and out of sight. He estimated the far corner was a thousand meters away and the tower there was shrouded in smoke.

  As for the main building – it was huge, flat-fronted, and somehow threatening, like it had been designed as a portal to a place no sane person would venture. The domed roof only added to the feeling that the building was imbued with a medieval barbarity. Conway shook away the feeling and continued his evaluation.

  A narrow alley separated this structure from the one adjacent. It would have made good cover if it wasn’t for the fallen tower leaning over the entrance. The broken section looked hardly connected to the base, like it was ready to snap off.

  As well as the tower and the alley, Conway identified a couple of large doors close to the corner nearest and he guessed they were big enough to accommodate the hauler they’d passed on the road. Other doors had surely existed until only a few minutes ago. The passage of the wrecked spaceship had torn a vast diagonal hole across almost the entire front wall, starting from mid-way up and progressing to the far side. A huge, deep furrow indicated the place where the craft had skipped up from the ground on its progress to wherever the hell it ended up. When Conway squinted, he noted that the end tower had also suffered damage, though not enough to result in collapse.

  Through the hole in the building he saw darkness and suggestions of vast, strange technology only partially revealed.

  “This is too exposed,” said Conway, thinking of his options. They were few and he knew it was time to be bold. “We’re making a run for the opening.”

  The soldiers were still breathing hard from the dash beneath the tower and Conway demanded yet more from them. Nobody complained and he doubted they wanted to. With his eyes set on the mid-point of the front wall where the jagged opening came to ground level, Conway pushed the soldiers.

  They hadn’t made it halfway when the fallen tower snapped from its base with a crack. The end fell to the ground with an impact that Conway felt through his feet. He waited for it to start rolling towards his platoon. On this day nothing would surprise him. The tower didn’t roll, since the upper end was embedded in the roof of another building and Conway made it to the target building with his squad right behind.

  Chapter Twelve

  The walls of the building were double-skinned, with each skin being several meters thick. The opening made by the spaceship came as low as a couple of feet from the ground and Conway clambered over into the space between the walls. Through the second wall, he could see a large room filled with tech. The angle wasn’t good enough for him to see into the central area of the building where he was sure the Raggers had been working on something special.

  This was as good a place as any to stop for a catch-up. “Watch the opening!” he ordered. “Corporal Freeman, I assume you’ve been in touch with Colonel Thornton?”

  “Captain Britton, sir. He tells me they’ve met some resistance about four klicks from here.”

  “No air support?”

  “I guess not enough, sir.”

  With the main body of the ground troops so far away, it was time for an update on the orders. Conway requested a channel to Captain Britton, who was Thornton’s second-in-command. Britton accepted immediately.

  “Sir, we have made it to the target building,” said Conway.

  “Well good for you, Lieutenant,” snapped Britton. He apologized quickly and explained the reason he was so pissed. “We’re pinned down by half a damn tank brigade. We lost the single light tank we had on the transport and our launchers are out of ammo. I think it’s safe to say we’re screwed.”

  “What happened to the air support?”

  “It comes and goes - mostly goes. We need dedicated assistance, not a damn flyover every five minutes.”

  While he
was talking, Conway caught sight of another spaceship coming down a few kilometers from the target building. It blazed with such intensity that it looked like a shooting star hurtling through the smoke. He couldn’t tell if it was ULAF, Fangrin or Ragger. A moment later, it vanished from sight, far enough away that Conway didn’t have to worry about it.

  “We require updated orders, sir. We have access to the Ragger structure and I can use the comms boosters in my suit to get an approximation on Fleet Admiral Stone’s position. He’s underground.”

  “Wait up, Lieutenant, I’ll get you those orders.”

  Britton didn’t leave Conway waiting for long.

  “You are to proceed with the mission. I repeat: proceed with the mission. Colonel Thornton has emergency evac codes which I’m sending you now. Broadcast them wide-band and you’ll have every available AF2 spaceship outside your front door within five minutes.”

  “Thank you, sir. I have received the codes.” Conway hesitated. “Will any of us have further backup?”

  Britton gave a humorless laugh. “Don’t bank on it.” He sounded like he wanted to say more and Conway guessed what it was. We aren’t getting out of this.

  “Good luck, sir.”

  “And to you, Lieutenant.”

  The comms went dead and Conway filled his squad in with the details.

  “We’re going inside. Shoot every Ragger you see,” he finished.

  “Any new ideas what this NULL reading is on the environmental, sir?” asked Barron.

  “None.”

  The Fangrin environmental sensors didn’t provide clear data either. For all Conway knew, the air might be filled with emissions capable of penetrating the layers of his combat suit.

  “I could be a dead man walking,” he said off-comms. He grunted at the thought. Death had come knocking many times before and, on each occasion, Conway had escaped its clutches.