The hard part was in the timing. If the Ragger ships remained in the atmosphere, the nuclear blast would take them out easily if the lifter came close enough for the blast sphere to hit them. Other complications arose if the Raggers stayed above a populated area – such as Durham - or flew into space where the nuke wouldn’t do much other than send out catastrophic quantities of gamma radiation. Conway was pretty sure the Raggers wouldn’t enjoy the experience of being irradiated, but nothing killed with the finality of a nuclear explosion.
On top of that was the small detail of escaping. Conway didn’t want to die and he doubted anyone else in the party felt much different. It was a bad job and he knew it.
“They don’t pay me enough for this shit,” he said, reaching for the handle of the inner airlock door.
“Remember – the Star Burner took a lot of damage,” said Griffin. “I don’t know how much access we’ll have to some of the internal areas.”
“And we’ve got to murder every last alien to make sure no one lives to tell the tale,” said Kemp, enjoying his use of the word murder.
Conway switched off his HUD overlay and turned up his microphone. The airlock handle lifted smoothly and the door fell open silently. He looked into the corridor outside and withdrew his head. It looked empty, but for all he knew, a dozen Raggers could be twenty meters away.
He took one final glance outside and saw the building in which he’d briefly sheltered with Griffin and guessed the Star Burner was twenty or thirty meters above ground.
The corridor beyond the airlock was much quieter than Conway was ready for. His brain had become accustomed to the ever-present sounds of the distressed city and now they were gone it took a moment to adjust.
Conway was familiar with the layout of the Star Burner. He’d been on the warship before and besides, most Hunter light cruisers were built from the same plans. Once you’d seen one, chances are you’d seen them all.
The bridge lay to the right and he thought most of the Raggers might have gone that way. For some reason, it seemed like a natural destination, even if you didn’t have the first damned clue how to fly a spaceship.
He advanced cautiously. His squad knew about close-quarters fighting and they came afterwards, not too close but still able to provide supporting fire. The passage was narrow, low ceilinged and one of the lighting strips buzzed loudly.
“We might find a few Raggers in the mess room,” Conway said. Like Griffin promised, the comms worked fine and it was an immense relief to have them back.
“Won’t they lock down the bridge once they hear gunfire, sir?” asked Barron.
“They can’t keep Captain Griffin out. He’s got the codes for everything.”
Conway came to one of the thick, auto-sealing doors that were part of the damage control systems. The Raggers had opened this one and not bothered to close it after them. He stepped across the raised threshold and took another three quick steps until he reached the left turn that led to the mess room. Ahead, the corridor continued for a short distance to a second left turn. This led to a maintenance ladder which descended to the lower levels, including the weapons bay.
Griffin had counted twenty aliens boarding the cruiser – the confines of the interior levelled the field a little, but Conway was eager to catch a bunch of the Raggers unawares in order to make things even better.
“You should have brought silencers when you were grabbing all this kit from the base, Sergeant,” said Kemp.
“I was a teacher not a fortune teller, Private. Count yourself lucky your gun’s loaded.”
Conway inched left, listening carefully. The mess room was dog-legged off and he couldn’t see too clearly inside. His mike picked up something coming from that direction – a pattering that could have been feet or could have been a different thing.
Another step and he spotted Raggers. They crossed the mess room at a diagonal, having entered it from one of the forward doors. Conway remembered their rapid gait which had always struck him an unpleasant – like a video of a string puppet played at twice normal speed.
He stepped out of sight, having seen something which made him feel better about the coming engagement.
“The Star Burner can’t have been their first stop, since they’re covered in dust or grime from the city,” he said. “It makes them a lot easier to see. Not as easy as we are, but it gives us something to shoot at without worrying about every shadow.”
“Sounds good,” said Lockhart. He smiled nastily – an expression Conway had seen before. It usually came before a few dogs found themselves filled with high-impacts. This time it was the Raggers who would suffer.
By the time Conway checked the mess room for the second time, the two aliens were nowhere in sight, though he could hear footsteps. He walked quickly into the room, with his eyes trained down the barrel of his rifle.
“Empty,” he said, not slowing down.
The forward exit led to a left-right intersection, then came two short passages which merged. After that, the bridge was up some steps.
“Incoming!” said Barron urgently. “Same exit they just left through!”
Barron opened up with her Gilner. The low ceiling and the denseness of the walls suppressed the discharge and gave it a duller edge. Griffin joined in, firing on auto into the passage.
This was the moment when anonymity was gone and a trained soldier hoped that confusion amongst his enemy would buy a few seconds. Conway strode through the forward exit. The grey shape of a Ragger hurtled around the corner, horrifically fast. It was slender but its long limbs seemed to fill the corridor.
Conway didn’t take any chances and emptied half his magazine into the alien. Its suit failed and it toppled towards him. He stepped calmly to the side and dropped out his magazine, swapping in a new one from his bag. The gunfire behind was over and Barron reported two kills.
At the intersection, Conway stopped for a moment until Freeman joined him. Kemp came next, while Dominguez waited in the mess room, looking out of her depth. It wasn’t time for lessons and Conway kept his fingers crossed that she wouldn’t be a liability.
A fleeting grey appeared to the right and then vanished. Conway fired three rounds and wasn’t sure if any landed.
“We’re not getting any more surprise kills,” he said. “Freeman – move!” he ordered, pointing left.
With that, Conway stepped quickly across to the opposite wall on the left-hand passage while Freeman did the same to the right. Both men advanced in quick strides. Most enemies expected you to respect their cover and take a cautious approach. Doing the expected was often a sure-fire way to an early grave.
At the corner, Conway poked the barrel of his rifle into the next passage and sprayed a dozen rounds, holding the gun one-handed. The weapon jumped and rocked in his hand and it was a fight to keep it level. He heard return gunfire and enemy bullets smacked into the wall.
While he fired, Conway pulled a plasma grenade free from its clip, counted away the timer and then threw the explosive back-handed around the corner.
“Grenade out!” he yelled, stepping quickly away. The device went off, closer than he expected. The blast wasn’t enough to damage his combat suit and he swapped magazines again, while more enemy gunfire thudded off the corner wall, leaving a pattern of indentations.
A dark grey cylinder, about the size of Conway’s clenched fist, bounced into view with a clink. His heart fell when he saw the enemy grenade and his legs bunched as they prepared to hurl him away from the explosive.
Sergeant Lockhart stepped across calmly and swung his foot. The grenade arced out of sight and detonated a second later. This time the blast was close enough for Conway to feel and it caught Sergeant Lockhart too, knocking the man back into the wall, his chest alight with plasma.
“Shit,” swore Lockhart, throwing himself into the corridor and away from possible return fire.
Conway stepped into the passage once again, just in time to see the grey ghost of a Ragger lean around the next corner
, ten meters away. Three rapid shots sent it to the floor. Conway was a deadeye with a rifle and he rarely missed. He put three more slugs into the twitching body to make sure.
This short stretch of corridor was a bloody mess. Grenades and gunfire had been enough to kill four Raggers, one of whom was ripped into glistening, plasma-burned chunks.
“Clear left!” shouted Freeman. “Shit, not clear!”
“Grenade out!” said Barron.
The firing resumed and another two grenades went off. Conway didn’t like the situation and considered calling for a withdrawal. He reminded himself how limited their time was and how much they had to accomplish.
With a snarl, he stalked along the corridor, his feet leaving prints of Ragger blood in his wake. He caught sight of movement and heard gunfire as an alien around the corner fired blind at him. A bullet skimmed past his torso and a second hit him in the guts. It felt like he’d been punched but he didn’t look down. He fired at the grey hand holding the gun. It flinched and withdrew. Conway got to the corner and returned the favor, firing his Gilner into the next corridor without putting himself into sight.
He didn’t stop until the magazine was empty and he switched in a new one, letting the empty fall to the floor. His guts hurt like hell and he checked out the state of his armor. The enemy bullet had produced a plate-sized mark without getting through. Another one in the same place and he’d be finished.
Two more grenades went off and then a third. Conway glanced around the corner, saw enough and leaned out far enough to shoot. Twenty shots later and another two Raggers were down.
“Clear!” he shouted at the same time as Freeman yelled it too.
The steps to the bridge went left through the wall a few meters ahead. Conway couldn’t see the top from here, but he remembered it well enough. The steps ended in a short landing and after that was the blast door protecting the bridge. Freeman peered around the far corner and Conway motioned towards the bridge steps.
“Cover me.”
He reloaded and marched quickly to the bottom. They were clear.
“I hope those override codes of yours work, Captain Griffin,” he said. “The blast door is closed.”
Griffin appeared next to Freeman. Conway beckoned him to approach and then set off up the steps. On the comms, Lockhart was swearing about his combat suit at the same time as he organized defensive positions.
There was a problem. The Raggers had fixed something to the access panel for the bridge door. It was a computer of some kind, with a small display and a row of buttons. Griffin walked up to the device, tore it free and let it clatter to the ground where he smashed it with his heel. It was the first time Conway could remember seeing him lose his cool.
“The Raggers have overridden the door codes to get inside the bridge,” said Griffin. “Cover me while I try my own codes.”
Conway’s squad didn’t need reminding of the basics and they took up positions that would allow them to fill the bridge with slugs. Kemp had a grenade in his spare hand, ready to throw if necessary.
Griffin stabbed his finger at the panel. “Crap,” he said, letting everyone know it was bad news.
“Try again?”
“I think we know the result already,” said Griffin, trying again anyway. “Nothing.”
“This way, sir.” Conway waved the man away from the landing – it was too exposed if the Raggers tried something unexpected.
They retreated out of sight and around the next corner. “Can you enter the detonation command directly into the warhead, sir?”
“Negative. The missile is buried beneath about six meters of plating. It’s loaded from the underside.” Griffin’s expression indicated he was thinking. “However, the access panel for the bridge door links in with the main security computer on the maintenance decks. I’ll be able to enter my codes directly into the terminal which will bypass the bridge door panel.”
“Let’s go for it,” said Conway. “We’ve got ten confirmed enemy kills, leaving another ten to go. That means we don’t split up.”
The squad withdrew from the bridge access corridor and returned to mess room. Conway wasn’t concerned about this extra step required for completion. These days he didn’t expect anything to be easy and it saved on the disappointment.
He led them onwards.
Chapter Seven
The squad made it past their entry point without encountering Raggers. At the airlock, Conway paused for a moment in order to check on the progress of the lift. The Star Burner was high enough to grant him an unwanted reminder of exactly how much devastation the Ragger incendiaries had brought to Satra. Seeing it from ground level was one thing, witnessing it from three hundred meters in the air was another thing entirely.
“They enemy are making good progress,” said Griffin. “We’ll be inside the bay shortly.”
“You mentioned fine-tuning, sir.”
“That won’t take them too long.”
Conway returned to the passage and continued towards the rear section of the spaceship. Everything was cramped and it would make it hard to obtain a tactical advantage against a determined resistance. On the plus side, the human attackers had the advantage of comms and knowledge of the spaceship’s internal layout.
“Any Raggers this way shouldn’t know we’re coming,” Conway said. “That’s our opening.”
“What if they’re all on the bridge?” asked Kemp.
“We’ll kill them just the same.”
Griffin was third in line behind Conway and Lockhart. “Take that next turning up ahead, Lieutenant,” he said. “After that, we should come to steps leading to the lower levels.”
Conway came to the turning and checked it was clear. He detected no movement and the only sound came from distressed metal contracting as it cooled. Straight ahead, the passage dipped sharply and he could see snapped pipes and severed cables. He had no desire to observe the results of half a dozen plasma missile strikes first hand and was glad that the security computer wasn’t in the tail.
The steps to the lower level were steep and with twin railings. Conway preferred speed over caution and he descended as quickly as possible. The lights on this lower level were failing – half were off, while the rest either flickered or glowed dimly. It was much hotter than the level above and he guessed the spaceship retained a lot of heat from the plasma explosions.
Conway got his bearings while he waited for the others to join him. He knew the medical bay was along here somewhere and the next two right-hand doorways led to quarters for the maintenance crews as well as some of the ship’s stores. The Raggers had no reason to be here, not that logic made him feel any better.
“Down the next flight,” said Griffin. “That’ll take us to the maintenance area.”
Five seconds later and Conway’s boots thudded on the solid floor of the warship’s second-lowest level. The lights were completely out, except for the orange glow coming from door access panels further along the corridor. The temperature was another thirty degrees higher and it smelled sharp, like hot alloy mixed with greasy air. Everything beneath this level was weapons and propulsion – strictly off-limits for sightseers.
Conway didn’t know anyone who liked fighting in the dark and he was no exception. He turned on his image enhancer and remained still while it adjusted. The details weren’t clear, but he could see a noticeable twist in the passage as it went towards the rear section and the floor was pushed upwards in places.
“We’re aiming for the second access panel along from here,” said Griffin. “Judging from the damage on this level, there won’t be much left of the lowest section.”
The second panel wasn’t too far – twenty-five meters according to Conway’s step counter. Something brought him up short before he got there. One of the doors in the opposite wall was open and he looked inside to check for hostiles. It was another of the maintenance rooms with a few offline monitoring screens and some keyboards fastened to the wall. As well as that, human bodies, piled up on
the floor.
“Shit,” he said. “Sir, you need to take a look at this.”
Griffin came fast and stood in the doorway without saying anything. From the set of his shoulders, Conway could see the other man was close to doing something they might all regret.
“The Raggers brought the bodies here, sir. They did similar on Graxol-4.”
“My crew.” Griffin took a step into the room and crouched next to the corpse of one of the maintenance team. “Teeth marks in his face. I don’t recognize him now.”
The Raggers had bitten huge chunks of flesh from the exposed parts of the body. The blood was crusted but there was no doubt this had happened recently.
“They’ve done it to those ones as well,” whispered Kemp from the doorway. “What sort of scumbags…?”
“The wonders of the universe,” spat Conway bitterly. “Is this why the Raggers came to New Destiny? Food?”
With an obvious effort, Griffin recovered himself. “Look at this and remember it in the times you ask yourself why we’re fighting.”
Conway nodded, while his treacherous mind made him imagine his family being killed and served up at an alien feast. A red mist descended and he thought it might be too much for him to stay on top of it. He took in deep, shuddering breaths and felt sanity return.
“Let’s move,” he snapped. “Get away from here.”
A few hurried strides brought him to the access panel for their destination. He stopped next to it, while his squad secured as best they could.
“You’ll need to open this, sir,” said Conway.
Griffin’s command codes changed the door access light to green. “Last opened two hours ago, according to the panel readout,” he said. “There should be no Raggers inside.” He lifted the handle and pushed the door inwards.
It wasn’t quite so dark inside. This long, narrow room ran crossways through the spaceship and many different status panels were fastened to the front wall. Conway also saw levers, buttons, keyboards and other stuff he didn’t recognize. This was the real hands-on part of a spaceship.
Alien Firestorm (Fire and Rust Book 2) Page 5
