“I don’t think we’re hurting them, sir.”
“Right, let’s hit them with a nuke.” Griffin quickly tapped in his unlock codes and the battle computer accepted them immediately. The Hurricane still carried two Ultor-mounted nuclear warheads and he targeted the first.
“Firing.” He pressed the trigger.
The nuclear missile joined in with the next wave of conventional Ultor-VIs, launched by Lieutenant Jackson. The upper railguns recharged and she fired those again.
“Two direct hits,” she confirmed.
“No marks on the enemy spaceship,” said Dominguez.
“Seven thousand klicks between us.”
The enemy ship slowed to a halt and waited, presenting the entire length of its flank. The vessel was a little shorter than the Trojan and with a lower profile. It was still a big ship and whoever was onboard, they didn’t seem to care much what the Hurricane threw at them.
“They want to show us we’re helpless,” said Kroll. “Let’s see what they think of that nuke.”
They didn’t have to wait long. The plasma warheads and the nuclear missiles struck their target within a second of each other. A sphere of intense gamma radiation expanded from the impact zone and the Hurricane’s sensors picked up the EMP.
The gamma rays spread outwards, not interfering with the plasma burning on the enemy’s hull. Everyone waited to see the outcome of the strike.
“They’re not moving, sir.”
“Six thousand klicks,” said Shelton.
The bridge lights dimmed. At first, Griffin thought his warship was about to be knocked offline by the same weapon which had disabled the Trojan. The lights came back and then flickered again.
“They’re teleporting more of those aliens onboard,” he said.
“The game’s up,” said Jackson. “I don’t want to face those things again.”
Neither did Griffin. He had alternative plan, though he didn’t like it much. He checked out the Hurricane’s course – if nothing changed, it would fly past the enemy spaceship and miss it by fifty klicks. A slight correction on the controls made it so that the Hurricane would impact the rear section of the huge craft.
“Sir, what are you intending?” asked Dominguez.
“How long until we hit them?” Griffin said, ignoring the question.
“Three minutes at our current velocity, sir.”
It was going to be exceptionally tight. Too tight. Griffin slowed the Hurricane. “What about now?”
“That’s four minutes to impact.”
It would have to be enough.
“Lieutenant Kroll, set the detonators to fire one second before the predicted time of our collision.”
Kroll raised his eyebrows but he didn’t question the order. “I guess that means we’re getting out of here.”
“Absolutely.”
Griffin unsnapped his harness clip and got to his feet. “Everyone up!”
“That’s the timer set, sir.”
Griffin dashed for the bridge door, grabbing a rifle on the way. He knew it was useless, but it felt good to have something. There was no sensation of pressure in his head, which he hoped meant the corridor outside would be empty. He waited for everyone to gather and double-checked they were all wearing their flight helmets. He stuck his palm onto the access panel. The door opened and it was clear outside.
“This way,” he said.
“Where are we going, sir?” asked Jackson.
“Front boarding ramp.”
The ramp was several levels below, but the path to reach it was straightforward since this was how the crew normally came onboard. Griffin dashed along the corridor, turned left and then right. The pressure in his head was noticeable. In the absence of any other life forms on the Hurricane, he guessed the aliens were making a beeline for the bridge area.
They came to a lift with an adjacent stairwell. Griffin generally preferred to climb when he was in a hurry, but this time he wasn’t alone.
“Let’s take the lift,” he said.
At that moment, all the lights went out, leaving them in total darkness for a count of three, before the emergency lighting kicked in, filling the corridor with a dull redness which Griffin hated.
“They must have shut down our power,” wheezed Kroll.
“That won’t interfere with the detonator start command, will it?”
“No, sir. The timers are built into the hardware. They’ll continue until they’re told to stop.”
“Good. Now, since the lift is out, we’re taking the stairs.”
Griffin stood on the top step and leaned outwards, sliding his hand along the near-vertical railing. He took a well-practiced jump, using his hand to arrest his fall halfway down the steep steps. The metal tread reverberated beneath his weight. Without hesitation, Griffin shifted his grip and then leapt all the way to the bottom.
He got clear and stood at the top of the next flight. It was frustrating to watch the others and Kroll was clearly suffering with a medical issue that he hoped to keep secret. The man’s face was grey again and he nearly fell down the last few steps.
“Can you make it?” asked Griffin loudly.
“Yes, sir. I’ve been neglecting my fitness, that’s all.”
Griffin didn’t believe him, though he couldn’t do anything about it. He repeated his quick-descent method on the next steps, which took him into one of the maintenance decks. The emergency lighting was poor, but he knew most of the details from memory – the pipes, cables, metal cabinets and all the other business-end stuff that didn’t appear in the ULAF promotional brochures.
“Come on,” Griffin muttered. He knew words couldn’t make his crew move any faster and he bit on his tongue.
Kroll made it down this flight without slipping. He tried to smile, but his eyes held a different message.
“Hold onto him,” Griffin instructed and when Kroll protested, he told the man to keep his mouth shut.
At the bottom of the third flight, Griffin was edgy. Even with assistance, Kroll was holding everyone up and adding seconds they couldn’t afford to waste. The airlock door was nearby and Griffin hauled it open while Dominguez and Kenyon helped Kroll descend the last few steps.
“Inside! Quickly!” Griffin ordered.
They hustled into the confines of the forward airlock, which was a square space with two benches and a cabinet of emergency medical equipment. Dominguez made straight for it.
The pressure hadn’t stopped building and Griffin felt a sharp pain behind both eyes. With gritted teeth, he strode to the release panel for the boarding ramp. It ran off an independent power supply, but the control computer tapped into the external sensors. If that link was active, the computer would detect that the spaceship was in flight and the ramp wouldn’t open – not without some extensive pissing about with override codes.
Griffin activated the ramp release and waited. To his relief, the motors whined and the gears clunked. The outer hatch slowly folded outwards, using an ingenious mechanism that would turn it into a ramp with steps once it was finished. The air escaped from the room and the temperature plummeted.
“Is it your heart?” asked Dominguez. “No telling me lies, Lieutenant. I’d like you onboard my next flight.”
“When those aliens jumped us earlier, I got this tightness in my chest.” Kroll said, grimacing. “The pain went away for a while and now it’s hurting again.”
Without ceremony, Dominguez rammed an injector up against a tiny port on Kroll’s flight helmet. She pressed the button, stepped back and tossed the injector aside.
“We’ve got about eighty seconds,” said Griffin. “We need to get the hell away from here.”
The ramp was extended and he peered through the outer plating to the top steps.
“Listen up,” he continued. “When you jump out of here, you’ll still be travelling at the same speed and in the same direction as the Hurricane. That means you’ll have to make a real big leap to put you on as divergent a course as possibl
e.”
“Let’s do this,” said Shelton. For the first time, the confidence wasn’t there and she looked deep-down scared.
“That’s right, let’s do this,” said Kroll, looking stronger already. He took a run at the hatch, stooping to avoid knocking the top of his flight helmet. The moment he was clear, he launched himself off the top of the ramp, where he could be seen drifting away.
Jackson went next. It was too late for hesitation and she knew it. Four strides and she went after Kroll.
That was the moment one of the shadow aliens stepped through the door, leaving a discolored patch on the alloy. The appearance of his enemy made Griffin angry and he pushed Dominguez towards the hatch.
“Go! You too, Lieutenant Shelton.”
Neither of them questioned the order and they threw themselves off the ramp. Griffin didn’t hang about and turned to follow. The alien was joined by a second and a third. He saw others behind them, half in and half out of the solid wall.
The front alien went for him. It was fast, but on this occasion, it wasn’t fast enough. Griffin hurled himself through the airlock door and sprang headlong into the void.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
When his feet left the ramp, Griffin twisted to look behind him in case the aliens had come after him. It was a difficult and frustrating experience trying to shift position in a vacuum without any form of propulsion, but he was able to see the Hurricane easily enough and the open hatch at the lowest end of the front section. The lights in the airlock were almost out and he squinted. He saw the dark outlines of the aliens still on the spaceship. It was a hopeful sign.
“Is everyone with me?” he asked.
One by one, his crew checked in and the comms unit in Griffin’s helmet told him their approximate distance and direction. He turned his head and thought he saw a glint of silver ahead of him. It might have been Dominguez.
“How long on that timer, sir?” asked Shelton.
“Thirty seconds.”
“Think we’ll make it?”
In a plan conceived in such a hurry, there were always going to be uncertainties. Griffin almost smiled at the level of understatement in the word.
“Let’s hope so.”
He attempted to look at the Hurricane once more, aware that this would be the last time he’d see the spaceship. It was going to be destroyed and he was probably going to die. He failed to maneuver himself and shot a couple of bullets from the Gilner to give him propulsion. The force of the recoil sent him turning and he shot again, hoping to counter the rotation. More through luck than judgement, Griffin ended up facing the Hurricane.
“Our spaceship looks like it’s a billion years old,” he said. “The outer plating is corroded to hell and it’s full of holes.”
“It’s done its duty,” said Kroll. He sounded completely alert and was probably on a high from the dozen different stimulants and other lifesaving drugs the emergency injectors contained.
The Hurricane receded into the distance. Griffin wasn’t able to see the enemy ship and didn’t make much effort to do so. Its plating was dark and he doubted it would be visible to the rudimental image enhancers in his flight helmet.
The rifle had thirty-seven bullets left in its magazine and Griffin fired them in a steady, pulsing stream, aimed at the Hurricane. Each shot increased his speed a little and the spaceship vanished from sight.
“Ten seconds,” he said.
“I hope this works,” said Dominguez.
Destruction of the alien vessel was the first step out of several and Griffin wasn’t going to accept just one success.
“Five seconds.”
After shooting those bullets, Griffin had lost track of the Hurricane’s position. He aimed his head in what he thought would be the right direction and counted down to zero.
The Hurricane’s detonators went off a few thousand meters away, producing a white-orange flash which was muted by the spaceship’s hull plating. Griffin experienced a surge of disappointment at the outcome.
“Damn,” he said.
A second later, the Hurricane’s tharniol drive went up in a storm cloud of blossoming energy. Griffin narrowed his eyes and saw dark shapes highlighted in the blast. The burning tharniol appeared to spread eagerly around the much larger form of the alien spaceship, highlighting its shape and at the same time blinding Griffin to the details.
There was no blast wave in space, but the expanding superhot particles nevertheless buffeted Griffin and he felt himself moving faster. His suit computer warned him of heat, but the high temperatures didn’t last and the alarm disappeared from his HUD.
Gradually, the light from the tharniol faded and Griffin was able to discern the hull of the alien spaceship. He thought he saw cratering or heat distortion on its plating. It was impossible to be sure and he swore at the uncertainty.
“Did we get it”? asked Shelton. “I’m kind of looking straight at nothingness and I’m not able to turn.”
“I don’t know,” said Griffin, unwilling to give them false hope.
“The explosion was crazy good,” said Dominguez. “Sorry you missed it, Lieutenant Shelton.”
“Aw, damn.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I missed it too,” said Kroll.
“That makes three of us,” said Jackson.
“Four,” said Kenyon.
Griffin knew he should enjoy what could be his last few moments and he tried to smile. “I’m activating my emergency beacon,” he said.
“I turned mine on ages ago, sir,” said Kenyon.
“Good job someone knows his shit, eh sir?” asked Dominguez.
This time Griffin did smile and then he laughed. “That he does, Lieutenant.”
“Now we just wait for pickup,” said Kroll. “Maybe the guys on the Trojan will figure out a way to kill the onboard aliens as well.”
“Hey, don’t give them any credit!” said Shelton. “We spoon fed them the answer, remember? Use tharniol, that’s what we told them.”
“Yeah, that’s what I remember,” said Kroll. “What’s the range on these suit comms? I’ll get bored if we drift out of range and I have to wait in silence.”
“There’ll be an increasing signal delay, but we won’t go out of range,” said Kenyon. “The battery in your suit will run down eventually. It depends on how much you talk.”
“I’ll keep my mouth shut in that case.”
“I’m more concerned about Lieutenant Shelton’s battery,” said Kenyon, deadpan.
“Hey, are you saying I talk too much?”
Kenyon didn’t reply.
“I think he’s conserving battery,” said Dominguez.
The joking lasted a little while and nobody came to pick them up. Griffin couldn’t deny his worries, but he settled himself as best he could. He couldn’t see any of his crew now, only darkness and stars. He’d always loved space and a sensation of great contentment and comfort gripped him. Rather than feeling insignificant, he knew he was part of a much greater whole. His worries drifted away and he closed his eyes.
Many hours later, a comms link formed in Griffin’s earpiece. Words came and he smiled at them. It took the Trojan’s armored shuttle another forty-five minutes to pick him up. He was the last of his team – when it came to rescue, everyone was treated equally. Most of the time.
The interior of the shuttle was much like any other – bare walls and floor - and he made his way to the passenger bay, having been given reassurances by the pilot that they were heading straight back to the Trojan. The transport’s engines grumbled and, like always, the life support wasn’t quite enough to completely dampen the acceleration.
“The carrier took some damage, sir,” said the pilot on the comms channel. “I guess you’ll see it when we get there.”
Griffin found his crew waiting for him, all of them exhausted but too wired to sit. They looked dazed, like they couldn’t believe they were alive.
“We made it, sir,” said Dominguez, her eyes alight.
> “Yes we did.” Griffin didn’t want to bring down the mood and he gave her a wink.
“Time to go home,” she said hopefully.
Griffin nodded, not wanting to say the obvious.
“I need a seat,” he said, picking the closest chair and falling into it.
“Can I get you a drink, sir?” asked Shelton, standing by the food station. “Fruit juice, water, or coffee.”
“Thanks – I don’t want any of those.”
“Saving up for the beer, huh?”
“Yeah.”
In truth, Griffin wasn’t ready to take off his flight helmet. It had kept him safe for those hours adrift and he wanted to keep it on for a little longer.
The transport’s period of acceleration ended, which meant they were more than halfway to the Trojan. A few of the carrier’s personnel passed by, their faces locked in rigid expressions of fake normality.
“Shell shocked,” said Dominguez in the seat next to Griffin.
She removed her flight helmet and he turned to look.
“See it in me too?” she asked.
“Not yet.” Griffin relented and undid the fastenings on his own helmet. He lifted it over his head and placed it carefully on the floor next to his rifle – both of them within easy reach. “What about me?” he asked.
She smiled and the sight made Griffin feel better. “Not yet,” she said. “You look like the same old Jake Griffin.”
“It builds up,” he said, acknowledging the stress. “This mission’s been worse than the others.”
Dominguez nodded in understanding. It was one thing to shoot down your enemy in combat, another thing entirely to launch nuclear warheads indiscriminately in a surprise attack on a whole planet.
“And you promised to take me out,” she whispered.
“I haven’t forgotten.”
The transport began slowing after less than a minute of coasting. It was an aggressive approach, which was exactly what Griffin was expecting. Admiral Kolb was back in charge and she wanted to be on her way.
“We’re coming in to lands, folks,” said the pilot through the bay speaker. “I’ll put the feed on the viewscreen.”
Every wall in the passenger bay had its own screen. They all came to life at once, showing the same forward feed. The Trojan was still in one piece, with its rear bay door open to reveal shapes within. The transport’s angle of approach allowed Griffin a sight of the carrier’s starboard flank. A gaping hole was visible, mid-way along and on the lower decks. Ruptured alloy plating protruded outwards, the razor edges reminding Griffin of the talons he’d seen on the shadow aliens.
Death Skies (Fire and Rust Book 4) Page 22