“Ragger transport.”
“We should move, sir.”
Kenyon wasn’t going anywhere. He was flat on his back on the tiny section of floor which Griffin had cleared of broken masonry.
“Keep still,” said Dominguez. “They don’t know we’re here.”
Griffin dropped to his haunches close to one of the openings in the wall and watched the sky for signs of the dropship. The stench of burning everything was acrid and he was sure it would never leave him. The Star Burner didn’t look like a spaceship anymore. It was scrap – a misshapen lump of twisted alloys that would never fly again. For some reason, he didn’t experience a feeling of loss.
The wreckage of the Ragger bomber was partially visible. Its front section protruded over the top of a gargantuan mound of broken stone about three hundred meters to his left. Smoke wreathed the metals and a fire burned somewhere in the vicinity.
Griffin found the proximity between the two spaceships fascinating – as though they were destined to crash down so close in order that something be allowed to happen. He tried not to think too hard about it. The people of Satra deserved vengeance and Griffin couldn’t let himself believe that it was ordained – that somehow, he was fated to take part in it here and now.
He rubbed at a mark on his Gilner assault rifle. He’d taken this one from the airlock weapons cabinet. Dominguez had one as well, as did two members of his maintenance team who’d made it out alive. The rifle was a comfort, though not a great one.
A muffled groan made him turn. It was Lieutenant Kroll. The man lay unconscious next to Kenyon, his fevered mumblings audible through the visor of his flight helmet. Lieutenant Jeffrey was dead, as was everyone else.
“Maybe we should just get out, sir,” said Dominguez. “When Lieutenant Conway gets here, we can pick up the injured, find a car somewhere that escaped the worst of the blast and then take them to a medical facility.”
“We can’t,” Griffin said softly. “The Raggers killed millions of people. We can’t run away.”
“It’s not about running away, sir.”
“It would feel like it to me.”
She sighed. “Me too. It’s just that I don’t want to see more death added to the heap.”
Griffin raised his hand for quiet. “Look there,” he said, pointing towards the bomber. A dark shape descended rapidly through the smoke, the echoing of its engine coming from many directions. Pieces of loose stone and mortar rattled from the inside of Griffin’s building and he looked up anxiously in case it was time to move.
“Definitely not one of ours,” said Dominguez. “If it was ever in doubt.”
“They have plenty of transports on the Durham base.”
“I thought you said Colonel Doyle would keep them grounded.”
“I did say that.” He shrugged. “Maybe Colonel Doyle saw things differently.”
“It didn’t look like a big shuttle,” said Dominguez. “Thirty, forty meters long.”
“Enough to carry more troops than we can handle.”
“And more than Lieutenant Conway’s squad can handle.”
“Maybe.”
With nothing else to do, they watched and waited. The transport’s engine cut out and the sounds of the dead city came once more to prominence.
“At least we’re safe here, huh?” said Dominguez. She didn’t sound like she was convincing herself, let alone anyone else.
“If they know we’re here, they’ll find us.”
“Why bother, sir? They’ve killed plenty of us already. Why would they come back for the scraps?”
“They’re here for the same reason we want to get onto their bomber. They’re going to extract whatever intel they can find and take it back to their mothership.”
“Once they’re done, they’ll bombard this place with missiles until there’s nothing left of their ship or ours.”
Griffin nodded. “That’s what I reckon.”
“What could they take from the Star Burner? Everything’s locked down.”
“The Raggers evidently think it’s worth checking out. Maybe they have something like a data extractor. A device that can suck information straight out of a spaceship’s mainframe.”
“It’s time the Fangrin shared a bit more of their intel with us, sir.”
“I won’t argue that. It’s politics – that’s what I’ve heard. We won’t commit to helping out, so the dogs won’t tell us what they know.”
“So much for trust.”
“It goes both ways.”
Dominguez dropped down beside him. Her flight suit was filthy and a layer of dirt covered her visor. Griffin pulled out a cloth and wiped it clean before doing the same for his.
“I can see!” she joked. The smile faded, replaced by something else. “I can see. Look at that.”
Griffin followed the direction of her finger. At first, he didn’t notice anything more than smoke and rubble. He narrowed his eyes and thought he saw a shape. Something moved through the smoke, coming slowly down the side of a pile of debris near to the Star Burner. Once he’d seen the first shape, he was able to discern others – tall, spindly shapes only made visible because the smoke appeared attracted to them.
“Raggers,” he whispered.
“It’s like their stealth suits pull in the smoke,” said Dominguez.
The aliens weren’t entirely visible. The wreaths around them made it appear as if an army of specters had come to this part of the city. Griffin shrank back, deeper into the shadows of the building.
“They’re going for the Star Burner,” he said.
The two of them watched. One of the maintenance team – Tech Officer Matt Olson came over and Griffin waved him back. The man carried his rifle comfortably enough, but he looked as if he’d rather be anywhere else. He nodded and returned to the others.
The Raggers approached the flank of the Star Burner. Its landing legs had collapsed on impact and the hull was flat to the ground. The open airlock door was clearly visible, four meters above the ground and easily reached by climbing up the wall of rubble the spaceship had pushed ahead of it when it crashed.
“They’re going straight inside,” said Dominguez.
“Leaving six to stand guard.”
It was frustrating to watch the enemy board his ship, though Griffin wasn’t stupid enough to think it was a good idea to intervene. He checked how long it was since he’d spoken to Lieutenant Conway – a few minutes had passed and he didn’t want the soldiers to run into trouble. The grey of the comms receptors angered him and the Raggers angered him more.
A new sound came. It began as a faint bass note in the distance, which grew in volume and intensity. It was deep enough to burrow into Griffin’s bones and he already knew it was the engine of something much, much larger than a troop transport.
“The big boys have come to play,” he muttered, scanning overhead for whatever was making the sound.
“Too much smoke,” said Dominguez. “It’s helping us stay hidden and helping these bastards as well.”
“I think I know what’s coming,” he said. “That’s not an engine meant for speed.”
“A lifter?”
“Maybe. You can feel it, right?”
Dominguez was experienced enough to tell the difference. Spaceships designed to haul heavy loads required a different kind of propulsion.
“It’s going to flatten everything that’s left standing.”
She was right. A lifter wasn’t meant to be used anywhere near built-up areas. Griffin crawled away from the opening in the wall and spoke to the Star Burner’s surviving technicians – TO Russ Vance being the second one of the two.
“I think that’s a lifter incoming. Can you move Lieutenants Kroll and Kenyon underneath that beam over there? If the walls come down, I’d rather they had a fighting chance.”
They got on with it and Griffin returned to his place near Dominguez.
“No change, sir, and no sign of the lifter.”
The sound of it be
came so loud that Griffin assumed it was approaching from above and behind, where he couldn’t see it. A few loose bricks thudded to the ground outside and he heard something much heavier cascading through the interior of the building.
When the Ragger lifter appeared, it was far larger than Griffin expected. Its front section became visible, barely three hundred meters overhead, travelling slowly and reducing speed. The hull kept on coming, until it seemed like it filled the sky. It was a broad craft, dull grey and with a rounded underside. The seams of its main bay doors were almost invisible and when Griffin squinted, he could see a smaller, secondary bay towards the rear.
“Holy shit, that’s got to be fifteen hundred meters long!” said Dominguez, cupping her hands in front of her chin speaker and shouting. There was no chance the Ragger soldiers were going to hear anything above the noise. “You could almost fit a carrier inside that thing!”
Griffin could only nod. The appearance of such a vast spaceship made him worry that this wasn’t the Raggers trying their luck with a few ships to see if they could force the Unity League into surrendering this world. The lifter suggested they’d come prepared.
The enemy craft came to a halt, directly over the Star Burner. Its engines reduced slightly in volume, though not enough to stop the physical effects on Griffin’s body. The vibration dislodged pieces of rubble from the pile near the Ragger bomber and tons of masonry slithered towards the ground.
He turned and watched the two technical officers drag Lieutenant Kenyon under the cover of the beam. TO Olson caught him looking and gave a thumbs up. Griffin didn’t feel like returning one of his own.
Outside, the spaceship was so low that the noise of its bay door motors carried over the bass of the engines. The secondary doors rumbled and whined, before retracting slowly between the double hulls.
“I guess we’re too small for them to bother opening up the main bay.”
“Or the main bay is already full,” said Griffin. He was intensely curious to know what else the Raggers might have captured.
The secondary doors opened fully and stopped with a booming clunk. Griffin and Dominguez strained to see what lay inside.
“No lights,” said Dominguez. “I think it’s empty.”
“The Star Burner will take up a lot of room.”
Movement in his periphery made Griffin turn, expecting the worst. Figures entered the room through one of the doorways, taking care to remain hidden from the opening in the outer wall. It wasn’t Ragger troops. Lieutenant Conway and his squad were even dirtier than the survivors from the Star Burner. The soldiers resembled something from a nightmare, like creatures burned beyond recognition yet still somehow clinging onto life and too damn stubborn to ever let go.
Conway offered a salute and made his way through the shadows until he was close enough to speak.
“What the hell is going on, sir?”
“The Raggers are about to steal my spaceship, Lieutenant.”
“It looks like junk, sir. What the hell do they want with it?”
“The memory cores. They must think they can extract useful data from them.”
“Can they, sir?”
A warship’s memory arrays were heavily encrypted – this was one area the Unity League were years ahead of the Fangrin. Even so, Griffin was worried. “We don’t want to find out.”
Conway’s attitude couldn’t be faulted. “How do we stop them?” he asked.
It was a question Griffin had been asking himself in the few minutes since he first heard the lifter. Up until this moment, he didn’t have any kind of answer. Now he did.
“We’re going to jump onboard the Star Burner and let those alien bastards carry us up to their lifter.”
It wasn’t the answer Conway had expected – it was clear in his eyes. He adapted quickly. “I like that plan. Let’s get it done.”
Griffin smiled and gave the briefest outline of what he intended.
“I thought I’d seen everything, sir,” said Conway. “Prided myself on it. This is something new.”
“Let’s hope it works out.”
Conway’s expression hardened and Griffin could read the thoughts going through the man’s mind. “The Raggers wiped out a city when they didn’t need to, sir. I don’t want to think about what they’ll do if we don’t stop them first.”
“That’s how I figure it, Lieutenant.”
Conway waved his squad to join him and they waited out of sight for the opening that Griffin promised them would come.
Chapter Six
A couple of minutes went by, during which Griffin spoke to the two technical officers. The Ragger soldiers remained on guard near to the Star Burner’s side entrance and the lifter waited stationary overhead. Conway was getting fidgety.
“What if those Raggers don’t move?” he asked.
“We’ll have to kill quickly them and hope nobody on the lifter realizes what’s happened.”
The answer wasn’t the reassurance Conway was looking for. He chastised himself for expecting more. In an uncertain situation like this one, he ought to be ready for anything.
Sixty seconds later, the lifter’s engine note dropped even lower, bringing down more loose masonry. The sonic energy gave Conway an overpowering nausea and he breathed deeply to keep on top of it. The others were affected too and Kemp offered up curses to every alien in existence.
It was too much for the Ragger soldiers as well. They climbed the slope with their jerky movements, entered the Star Burner’s airlock and vanished inside the spaceship. As soon as the last one was gone, Griffin indicated it was time to go. Conway had the skills and the experience and he was in charge of this part of the job.
“It’s all yours, Lieutenant. They’re fixing the lift chains now – I reckon we’ve got about two minutes.”
Conway didn’t delay and he broke from cover with his squad, Captain Griffin and Lieutenant Dominguez close after. The ground was uneven and he couldn’t run as hard as he wanted. He kept his eyes glued to the airlock in case any of the Raggers showed themselves. It was difficult to avoid all the loose stones and he stumbled once, before righting himself. Lockhart and Griffin pulled into the lead.
“Stay back, sir,” Conway shouted. “If you get shot, this won’t work.”
Griffin heard and did as he was asked, falling away a few paces until the ground soldiers were in front. The nausea in Conway’s stomach hadn’t gone away and he gritted his teeth at the physical effects the lifter was having on his body.
The Star Burner was only a light cruiser – the next smallest warship after a Viper class. Even so, it was damned big up close and spaceships had the power to make Conway feel insignificant. This one was wrecked beyond repair, with its hull flattened and indented. He could see how the rear section had melted and reformed into a completely new shape.
A lot of soldiers thought warships were noble things – greater than the humans who’d built them. Conway didn’t think that. Inside, he realized he didn’t like them at all. His mind found diversion at the strangest of times and he pushed the thoughts aside.
The gravity chains used to haul up cargo were invisible, so Conway couldn’t see any change in the ship itself that might indicate when the lift was due to start. The uncertainty made him take greater risks and he sprinted faster than before. He overtook Sergeant Lockhart and made it to the pile of rubble below the airlock door. It was a scramble to climb with one hand gripping his rifle and his feet dislodged a few bricks. The others with him were careful enough that they didn’t get hit and Conway reached the top.
The airlock was five or six feet above and it looked empty. He placed his rifle over the edge and used both hands to climb inside. Once there, he picked up the gun and turned, offering his hand to Sergeant Lockhart.
Lockhart was a big, heavy bastard, even more so in his combat gear. Conway grunted and dragged the man onto the spaceship.
“Move inside,” he ordered. “Watch that door.”
Private Barron came next and
then Corporal Freeman. They weighed far less than Lockhart, and Conway was able to pull them inside with ease. After that, Griffin, Dominguez and lastly, Private Kemp.
“Don’t go letting that shoulder launcher off in here.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, sir.”
The airlock space wasn’t enormous, but it was able to accommodate seven easily enough. The inner door was mechanically operated and Lockhart watched it closely. Conway felt the Star Burner shift beneath his feet and he reached for one of the handles fixed to the wall to steady himself.
“Just in time,” said Griffin.
“Yes, sir.”
The cruiser lifted slowly from the ground, its hull scraping against the mountain of debris it was resting on. The view outside shifted, but not much – lifting something as big as the cruiser required a careful approach and Conway wasn’t expecting the Star Burner to start swinging like a pendulum.
“How long will it take to bring us into their hold?” he asked.
“Depends how much of a hurry the Raggers are in. The Star Burner’s a heavy ship – it’ll require fine-tuning in order to orient it correctly for storage.”
“An estimate will help us, sir.”
“Ten or fifteen minutes until it’s finished.”
“Not long. The Raggers onboard definitely won’t be able to communicate with their base through the Star Burner’s hull?”
“No – their comms will be actively blocked until they find a way of patching their own gear in with ours. I doubt they’ll bother trying while the lift is happening.”
“And our comms will work fine.” Conway wanted to hear confirmation.
“Our units will automatically link with the internal network. For once, it’ll be the Raggers who are comms blind.”
It was enough. “Let’s get on with it,” said Conway.
The plan combined the positive element of simplicity with the negative one of being incomplete. In the Star Burner’s weapons bay, a nuclear warhead awaited the command to detonate. The detonation codes needed to be issued from the main console on the bridge. Griffin planned to detonate the warhead. That was the simple part.
Alien Firestorm (Fire and Rust Book 2) Page 4
