Vance forced a smile. “Aside from the Kilvar, the hardest part of the mission was listening to RL Moseley explaining ingar reaction combinants and stasis field decay variables.”
“Listening to Drawl talk crap is usually the hardest part of any mission,” said Private Ossie Carrington. “This time, we got lucky.”
“Where is RL Moseley?” asked Recker, determining that he’d speak to Vance in greater depth as soon as he got the opportunity.
“He’s with a bunch of like-minded individuals in one of the rear bays, sir,” said Private Enfield, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “They take turns stroking the exium prototype.”
“Enfield’s been having wet dreams about blowing it up, sir,” said Private Steigers. “Just to see the look on everyone’s faces.”
“I’m glad you resisted the urge, Private.” Recker reached out and clapped Enfield on the shoulder. “Else I’d have had to insert a second, larger charge up your…”
“Sir!” said Garber, pretending shock.
Recker laughed again. “Just catching up, Lieutenant. It’s been a while.”
“Captain Flint and his crew are in the cockpit, sir,” said Vance. “I don’t think they could stay away.”
“What do you make of him, Lieutenant?” said Recker, lowering his voice again.
“I can’t tell you much about his flight skills, sir.”
“What about the man?”
Vance nodded slowly. “He’s got iron. In his own way.”
“We’re going to need officers with the instinct,” said Recker.
Again, Vance nodded. He understood. The HPA trained its officers well, but few had that unidentifiable ability to survive against the odds – not just once, but time and again. Whether it was luck or something else, Recker didn’t know, but he had that quirk about him, and Vance likely had it as well.
“About twenty klicks to the research building,” said Recker, looking at the viewscreen on the forward bulkhead. The shuttle was flying along the edge of the shipyard and the ground teams were as busy as ever, constructing warships that already seemed inadequate to face the coming threat.
“What happens after we escort the prototype to its destination, sir?” asked Vance.
“I haven’t thought that far ahead, Lieutenant.”
“I take it the retirement offer has been rescinded?”
“Would you take it if I offered again?”
“Hell no, sir.”
“I’m going to need you, Lieutenant. I have the feeling in my bones.”
A stuttering in the transport’s engines caught Recker by surprise, but he held his balance. Most of the soldiers did too, except for a couple of the younger faces who stumbled and cursed their clumsiness. The engines juddered again.
“Sir, that’s what happened…” said Garber.
“I know,” said Recker.
He’d brought his suit helmet with him this time and he dropped it over his head and tightened it in place with ease born from practice. Accessing the top-priority comms channels, Recker gritted his teeth when he heard the ground controllers talking to each other. An unidentified object had appeared above Basalt and it was approaching fast.
“The Kilvar,” said Recker through his chin speaker. “They’re here for the exium.”
Even as he spoke the words, Recker didn’t know for certain if the enemy had come to Basalt solely to take the exium prototype, or if he was witnessing the early moves in a far wider conflict.
“Sir, you need to buckle up,” said Vance.
Recker dropped into one of the seats. In five seconds, he had the padded harness around him, and the metal clip slotted into place with a sharp clack. He turned his attention once more to the comms.
“This is Fleet Admiral Recker,” he said into the ground controller comms channel. “Are there similar sightings at other planets?” he asked.
“I’m not sure, sir,” said one of the officers. He sounded predictably agitated. “Our real time FTL comms transmitters have gone offline. Some of our other comms links are showing signs of signal degradation.”
“Damnit, we’re under attack!” said Recker. “Sound the base alarm!”
“It’s already activated, sir,” said the man.
The transport’s propulsion cut out for a half-second, resumed, and then cut out again. Realising he was losing control, the vessel’s pilot reduced altitude rapidly, banking as he searched for a suitable place to land. Recker sensed the uncertainty in the pilot’s movements, like he was unable to pick which of the parking lots or base highways to set down on.
All around him, soldiers were scrambling for their seats and then the pilot spoke on the internal comms, telling everyone to prepare for a hard landing.
With another lurch, the transport lost altitude and from the feeling in his stomach, Recker knew the life support had failed. A booming resumption of thrust lasted for five or six seconds and the view screens went blank.
The propulsion went offline and this time, Recker knew it wasn’t coming back. Hardly anyone spoke and the descent was eerily quiet. It was also short-lived. With a crash that threw the bay’s occupants hard into their harnesses, the transport came down.
Chapter Thirteen
Lieutenant James Vance unsnapped his harness buckle and surged from his seat. The floor was canted, though not too badly and the high-grip soles of his combat boots coped without a problem. Glancing around, he noted that everything was seemingly intact. That was expected - any impact hard enough to warp the interior would have also been fatal to the occupants, what with the life support unit being offline. Vance took a breath and began shouting orders at the members of his platoon.
“Up!” he yelled. “We’re getting out of here! Corporal Hendrix, check for casualties!”
“Yes, sir.”
Fleet Admiral Recker was on his feet, his eyes clear and his mouth talking into the comms. Vance signalled his impatience to clear the bay and Recker nodded. At the same time, the platoon comms channel filled with noise and the activity lights for several other channels Vance was linked to lit up with traffic.
“Sir, you need to stay with me,” said Vance, staring directly into Recker’s visor, so there’d be no chance of doubt. Then, he turned and pointed at the flush door to the weapons cabinet. “Sergeant Gantry, look in there. If you find any Rodans, distribute them to the squads.”
“Yes, sir.”
Gantry shouldered his way through the mustering soldiers in his haste and Vance directed his attention elsewhere. “Sergeant Tagra, take your squad into the rear bay and make sure the evacuation happens quickly. Whatever happens, don’t lose sight of that exium prototype.”
“Will my squad get Rodans, sir?” said Targa. “They were effective against the Kilvar.”
“We’ll bring out what we can, Sergeant. Now go.”
“Yes, sir.” Tagra gave an order and the members of Squad B headed for the rear exit.
Vance didn’t stand still – he contacted the pilot and discovered that the man was already on his way to the forward flank exit, along with Flint and the rest of the Loadout’s crew.
“Where did we come down?” asked Vance.
“The sensors went offline, Lieutenant,” said the pilot. “We should be in a parking lot.”
Vance exited the channel. “Corporal Hendrix, report!”
“No casualties, sir,” she said. “I’ve spoken to RL Moseley on the comms and he says that everyone in the aft bay is on their feet.”
“We got lucky,” said Vance.
“I’d say we got real lucky, sir.”
Vance and his squads were accustomed to situations where fast recovery and even faster reactions were critical. Not much more than a minute had passed since the transport came down and he felt that a degree of order had been imposed. Now it was time to get the hell away from the crash site.
“This way, sir,” said Vance, striding towards the passage leading to the airlock.
It was a relief to find that Recker had l
ost none of his sharpness and Vance smiled inwardly when he saw the Fleet Admiral struggling against his urge to order the troops around himself. Two leaders were one too many at a time like this and Recker kept his mouth shut.
“After you, Lieutenant.”
“Here, sir, take this,” said Gantry, offering Vance one of the Rodans from the weapons locker. “There’s plenty for everyone.”
“Thanks,” said Vance, grabbing the weapon. It weighed almost three times as much as a standard gauss rifle, had a thick barrel, a wide bore and a fifty-round magazine.
“And you, sir,” said Gantry, offering a second Rodan to Recker. “If the Kilvar come knocking, you’re going to want one of these instead of a rifle.”
Vance arrived at the airlock and his eyes went to the green light on the closed inner door. Most things these days relied on a ternium power source, but the important stuff generally had a battery backup.
Once the inner door opened, Vance hurried to the closed exit, raising his free hand behind him. “Hold, sir. I doubt the enemy have landed their troops, but it’s better safe than sorry.”
The hold order didn’t apply to the other soldiers and the Daklan Londivir followed Vance towards the exit, carrying a Rodan of his own.
“Ready?” asked Vance.
Londivir tapped the side of his helmet with his knuckles and nodded, his eyes gleaming with an intensity which came when battle was promised.
Delaying no longer, Vance touched the access panel and, with a whirr of motors, the door slid into its recess. The light outside was dull and he hadn’t caught up on local time yet. He checked his HUD readout, which received time data from the local ground controller and discovered it was mid evening. Sundown was less than two hours away.
“Like the pilot told us – it’s a parking lot,” Vance said, looking outside.
On this, the transport’s starboard side, ten or fifteen metres separated the airlock exit from the grey wall of a building. Below, several gravity cars were visible, and one of the shuttle’s landing feet had come down on a truck, crushing it flat. Vance leaned out warily and discovered that three of the aft landing legs were splayed outwards, which explained the slope in the floor.
Near the vessel’s nose, the forward steps had extended and personnel were descending carefully. Towards the stern, the cargo boarding ramp was visible, but nobody was coming down it.
“What’s out there, Lieutenant?” asked Recker.
“We’re hemmed in by buildings north, south and west, sir. I can’t see what’s to the east. We should exit the shuttle and find out what’s happening.” Vance hesitated. He hadn’t asked Fleet Admiral Recker what his plans were, though they didn’t take much guessing. “What are your priorities, sir?”
“Too many to list.” Recker’s face twisted in a mixture of anger and dark humour. “It’s imperative the exium prototype reaches the main research facility to the north. You’re still on escort duties, Lieutenant.”
“Why is that destination so important, sir?”
“The test bed warship is called Firestorm and it’s ready for the exium unit to slot in place.”
“Exium isn’t affected by the Kilvar ternium drain,” said Vance, having heard RL Moseley talk about it at great length. “We only have a small cube of it in the aft bay. That’s surely not enough to power anything bigger than this shuttle, even if exium is as much of a step change as the scientists say it is.”
“It’s not the quantity, Lieutenant. We’ve spent the last seventeen days studying the data provided to us by RL Moseley. It’s our belief that exium, as well as being entirely stable itself, also acts as a stabiliser for superstressed ternium. In the past, we haven’t dared run our propulsion modules beyond certain thresholds. The exium might change that.”
Vance nodded his understanding. He wasn’t scientifically minded and didn’t pretend to know the finer technical details of warships, propulsions or even the Rodan sweeper he was holding, but he’d been around hardware long enough that he had a grasp on some of the terminology.
“Our conventional attacks didn’t hurt the enemy warships, sir.”
“No, they didn’t,” Recker admitted. “Again, the Firestorm might change all that, but only with the exium block installed.”
“The Kilvar had a nose for the prototype and my HUD map is telling me we’re eight klicks from the research building entrance, plus another long run to the lifts once we’re inside,” said Vance. “If everything’s offline and we have no air cover, the enemy are going to find us one way or another.”
“That’s the situation, Lieutenant.”
“Like always,” Vance couldn’t bring himself to smile. Time was passing, but a mission started in haste ended in failure more often than not. “Are you coming with us, sir?”
Recker was torn, that much was clear, and a dozen emotions played across his features. He’d once been the best human pilot in the fleet – maybe the best in the human-Daklan alliance – and Vance doubted the years had blunted his skills.
“Sir, I know how much this means to you,” said Lieutenant Garber. “But someone’s got to deal with everything else that’s happening. You lead from the top now, not from the cockpit.”
“Thank you for the reminder, Lieutenant Garber. You’re right.” Disappointment flashed on Recker’s face – the acknowledgement that his past would have to stay in the past. “Captain Flint and his crew will accompany you, Lieutenant. I’ll let him know you’re in charge until you make it to the research facility.”
“Where are you going, sir?” Vance had been stationed on the Amber base many times, but the place was huge and sprawling. He called up a HUD map, and searched for the nearest command and control facility.
“There’s a bunker about a thousand metres from here,” said Recker. “I’ll find protection when I arrive, but I’d appreciate it if you loaned me three members of your platoon, just in case I run into something on the way.”
“I recommend you take five soldiers, sir,” said Vance. “The Kilvar that dropped from the roof on Tibulon soaked a lot of bullets before it went down. Maybe there are other types of Kilvar as well. Bigger ones, and meaner.”
“Another feeling?” asked Recker, his gaze intense.
“These are aliens, sir. Who knows what shit they’re storing up for us?”
“Point taken. Five soldiers it is.”
Vance furrowed his brow at a sudden thought and Recker was not going to like what he was about to say. “I don’t think we can take the researchers with us, sir. I doubt half of them can run more than fifty metres and none of them are wearing combat armour.”
“And if you handed them a gauss rifle, you wouldn’t trust them not to accidentally kill a friendly,” said Recker. He twisted his face in thought. “Plus, it doesn’t make sense to keep the exium module and the scientists together. If we lose the prototype, RL Moseley and his team can show us how to make another one.”
“That is what I was thinking, sir. Perhaps the scientists should go with you and Lieutenant Garber.”
“You’ve dodged a bullet here, Lieutenant.”
Vance kept his face neutral. “Absolutely, sir.” He pointed at some of the vehicles close by. “Will the base gravity cars work? I don’t know what grade ternium they’re fitted with, but any vehicle would be a lot faster than running.”
“Best guess is no, since they use refined ternium for power. It’s low grade and nothing like we install on a warship, but it’s not the same as the raw product. Same with most of the shuttles on the base,” said Recker. “There might be a few older models which aren’t on the inventory but which are being used by a ground team somewhere.” He shrugged. “Nothing we can rely on.”
“In that case, we’d best get moving, sir.”
Vance knew he’d taken up a couple of valuable minutes holding everyone in the shuttle, but a lot was riding on this and he didn’t want to screw up a future decision just because he hadn’t taken the opportunity to ask questions now.
Do
wn the steps he went to the bottom, where he was able to look east through the armoured transport’s landing legs. He saw a road, and personnel running everywhere, their vehicles abandoned. The rain was coming down heavier than when he’d first disembarked from the Loadout, but the air carried no scents of smoke or destruction.
“No vehicles, so we are walking,” said Londivir, descending to stand next to Vance.
“Looks that way.”
The platoon descended rapidly and took up watchful positions against the nearby vehicles. The double doors to the adjacent building opened briefly, allowing the noise of the interior alarm to spill into the parking lot, and Vance saw hurried movement of personnel in the lobby area.
The shuttle’s crew and those from the Loadout joined the soldiers. Everyone was on one comms channel or the other and Vance hoped a semblance of order would soon be restored to the base. At least Flint looked calm enough and he had the foresight to have dug out a Rodan of his own from one of the forward weapons cabinets, and equipped his crew likewise.
Vance got on the comms as well, where he announced the five names to accompany Fleet Admiral Recker and the scientists. The soldiers he picked weren’t from his veterans, but they were calm, they could shoot, and he trusted them. If they needed direction, Recker could handle that well enough.
“Sergeant Tagra, I expected to see you exiting the shuttle by now,” said Vance, watching for movement on the aft bay ramp.
“RL Moseley is finishing some adjustments to the exium prototype, sir. Its original propulsion was ternium and it failed in the Kilvar attack, so the exium must be reconfigured to provide its own propulsion.” The normally forthright Tagra sounded puzzled, like he was imperfectly repeating something he didn’t understand himself.
“That’s fine, Sergeant. Is RL Moseley finished?”
“Yes, sir.”
Vance switched into the platoon channel and sent invitations to the Loadout’s crew, so they could hear what he was about to say.
“Listen up, folks, we’re at one end of shit creek and we’ve got to bring a 120-ton lump of exium to the other end. Our ternium paddle isn’t going to get us there, so it’s time to use our feet.”
Dark of the Void (Forged Alliance Book 1) Page 14
