“On it, sir.”
“We’re no longer moving,” said Dominguez. “And we’re right up against one of those platforms.”
“Good timing.”
“Any Raggers?”
“None in sight. Their stealth suits won’t fool the Star Burner’s sensors.”
The words gave Conway a little confidence and he exited the bridge, making sure everyone was aware of the plan. Within five minutes, the soldiers and the two members of the Star Burner’s crew were assembled at the airlock.
“Right back where we started,” said Kemp, kicking another lump of Ragger flesh along the corridor. “Dirty pieces of shit,” he added.
Conway approached the outer door. The panel light indicated the seals were in place but Griffin had disabled the security locks from the bridge. The others kept out of sight.
He opened the door. It was much darker outside than expected and he assumed the Star Burner’s sensor arrays were able to do a lot with what little light there was. There was a breathable atmosphere, not that Conway planned to inhale any of it since he was wearing his combat suit.
Right on the edge of hearing, he detected a droning sound. It had an unpleasant edge to it, like it was destructive to living tissue. A glance upwards revealed the source. A row of dark grey – almost black – cubes were fastened to the top of the bay. These were the gravity lifters – immense power sources which could pull nearly anything into the air, no matter how heavy the object.
The Raggers had brought the cruiser up against one of the platforms. The positioning wasn’t exact and Conway turned his attention to the one-meter gap separating the warship and the platform. He could see the bay doors a long way below. Conway ignored the sight, took two strides, jumped and landed on the platform.
“Move,” he ordered.
Conway had taken a long look at the available cover before leaving the bridge. One of the storage crates lay at an angle, twenty meters away. It resembled a shipping container, made from corrugated metal and with alien symbols painted on the sides. His helmet computer surprised him by translating.
Miscellaneous.
He grunted at the mundanity and sprinted to the container’s side. It was bigger than it looked and offered plenty of cover. He made his way to the edge, wary because he could see numerous personnel doors leading onto the walkways. They were closed, but that didn’t mean the situation wasn’t about to change.
Lockhart joined him, with the rest close behind.
“We move to the crane and then the door,” Conway said.
“No movement. Easy.”
Conway led. He broke cover and ran hard, his kit making its familiar sound. Loose bullets rattled in his bag, his boots thumped and his rifle clattered against the grenades on their side clips. Conway wasn’t so much worried about the sound as he was about the monitoring systems the Raggers had in the bay. He couldn’t see any, though it was unlikely they’d be visible.
The crane’s cabin was ten meters high, with the boom another forty on top of that. It was a flat-sided vehicle that ran on a gravity drive instead of tracks. Its engine was silent and the crane was unoccupied.
The side wall of the bay wasn’t far and Conway counted three personnel doors, along with one much larger door for vehicles. Jostral, the Fangrin captain, believed he and his crew were being held close to the mid-point of the lifter. The alien wasn’t sure, but there again he wasn’t here as a guest.
“Left-hand door,” said Conway, repeating the instructions he’d given earlier. “Freeman, move up in case we need that cutter.”
Private Barron came with them, while everyone else held at the crane to provide covering fire if it was needed. A short sprint and Conway pulled up at the personnel door. It appeared the Raggers did doors the same as everyone else, though this one was three feet taller than a standard human door and operated by an especially long vertical lever. Script on the adjacent access panel told Conway it was sealed and locked. It wasn’t surprising – operations on most worlds would leave the main bay in a vacuum.
“Cut it open. Do it fast. As soon as the Raggers detect a breach, they’ll come running.”
“Yes, sir.”
Freeman was more comfortable with a comms booster, but he knew how to operate the cutter. He thumped his fist against the door, muttered something and changed one of the settings on the laser cutter nozzle. With that done, he snapped a piece of darkened plastic into place over his visor.
The laser crackled, while Conway and Barron stood to either side of the door, keeping their eyes averted. Seconds passed and Freeman offered constant updates on his progress.
“Ten percent, twenty. Any alarms and we’ll hear them soon.”
Sometimes alarms were visible – red lights, sirens. Other times, they were purposefully hidden from intruders. Conway didn’t have any idea what to expect on a Ragger lifter. He saw nothing and heard nothing unusual and hoped it was a good sign. Not all security was efficient.
“Nearly done,” said Freeman.
The light from the cutter went out and Freeman gave the door an enthusiastic shove with both hands. The metal was thick and it made a solid noise when it hit the floor.
On the other side was a large room, lit in the same way as the bay and with another door opposite. Conway stepped inside without waiting for the rest of the squad to catch up. A row of cabinets was fitted to the left-side wall with no obvious way to get them open. A filtered duct in the ceiling pumped out cool air.
Conway approached the door. Everything about it was the same as the outer door, except the panel on this one indicated it would open manually. Conway was happy to accept the gift. He waited until everyone was ready and then gripped the top of the lever. It shifted with hardly any effort, reinforcing his view that the Raggers were technologically advanced, but physically weak.
“Two airlock doors open at once?” said Kemp. “If the outer door didn’t make the Raggers jump, that’ll do it for sure.”
Conway didn’t get so far as opening the door before he was interrupted by the sound of distant thunder. He froze, with one hand on the lever.
“The engines,” said Griffin. “They’re getting ready for something.”
The sound came again and Conway thought he could feel it through the floor. It happened once more and this time it didn’t go away, remaining as a constant, uneven grumble.
Griffin hit on the answer. “They’re preparing to enter lightspeed,” he said.
It was another unwanted variable. Conway tried to work out what it meant – he doubted it was good news, but was open to suggestions.
“What now, sir?” he asked, happy for Griffin to make this decision.
“Not much we can do, is there, Lieutenant?”
“If I open this inner door while the outer one is open, it should trigger an alarm. They might abort the lightspeed transition.”
Griffin’s expression said he wasn’t sure. Still, he was a man accustomed to acting fast when time was against him. “Open the door. Our enemy is here and now. So is the nuke.”
Conway pushed. The door opened smoothly and soundlessly, even though it probably weighed eight or nine tons. On the far side, the same light as the bay illuminated a wide corridor with a high ceiling.
The alarms didn’t come and the lifter’s tharniol drive continued warming up.
Chapter Nine
Since the Raggers seemed determined to enter lightspeed anyway, Conway motioned the squad back into the airlock so he could think about what to do.
“I thought you said this would draw their attention, Lieutenant?” said Griffin. He didn’t sound angry, which made Conway think the recent decision to open the door had been a close-run thing.
“Must be that the Ragger environmental sensors detect pressure shifts, sir. The bay isn’t a vacuum, so the pressure change will have been slight when we opened the door.”
No doubt the monitoring systems were more sophisticated than that, but Conway didn’t know what aliens classed as safe.
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“Or maybe the alarm went off and the Raggers aren’t of a mind to stop what they’re doing,” offered Kemp. “Could be it’s real important for them to get the Star Burner and the Fangrin ship off to wherever it is they’re going.”
“It’s not worth overthinking,” said Griffin. “Plan A was a good one before the tharniol drive warmup and it’s still a good one.”
“Mid-section of the ship,” muttered Conway, remembering the details from his brief look into the passage outside. To the left, it continued for a hundred meters or so and turned into steps. To the right, more steps. “That could be a lot of ground to search.”
“The personnel areas will be directly above the bays,” said Griffin confidently. “A ULAF lifter doesn’t require a huge crew and the Ragger equivalent will probably be the same.”
“How many is not many, sir?” asked Sergeant Lockhart.
“We don’t have a lifter as big as this one, but the closest in size has a crew of 120.”
“Hmm,” said Lockhart.
Griffin didn’t take offense. “They’re technicians, Sergeant. Most of them don’t carry weapons and those that do usually have a sidearm.”
“These Raggers will be easy meat,” said Kemp. “We’ll kick their skinny asses.”
Time was passing and Conway was eager to move. He repeated the plan again for those who’d missed it the first time. “Move fast, shoot straight. Kemp, feel free to use that launcher. Don’t forget to shout up first. Freeman, don’t lose that cutter.”
He opened the door for a second time and looked outside to find something new coming towards him.
“Raggers,” he said.
Four of the aliens approached from the left with the repulsive gait that made Conway’s trigger finger particularly itchy. These ones weren’t dressed in stealth suits. In fact, they were completely naked. They carried what Conway took to be diagnostic tools, with no sign of weaponry.
He emptied most of a magazine into them. Three shots – change target, three shots – change. Lockhart helped out and the Raggers went down in a mess of blood and bone. The weight of the ship suppressed the noise of gunfire, but Conway wasn’t sure if it was enough to stop other aliens nearby from hearing it.
“Come on.”
He took one look behind him – no movement – and then sprinted for the left steps, switching magazines as he went. This corridor ran parallel to the secondary bay, which meant no side turnings and no distractions. At the bottom step, he crouched and looked upwards. The steps went upwards a long, long way, with several intersecting passages which he assumed led towards the walkways in the cargo bays.
“Long climb,” said Lockhart.
What he meant was long climb into possible enemy fire.
“Got no choice,” said Conway. “We advance in stages. Stay left on the steps, Barron and Freeman stay here to provide covering fire. Lieutenant Dominguez, can you shoot?”
“Yes, Lieutenant, I can shoot.”
“It’s your job to watch Barron and Freeman’s back. Holler if you need spares.”
Dominguez patted the leg pocket on her flight suit. “I’ve got four fully loaded magazines.”
“Good.”
Given the choice, Conway would have been without both Griffin and Dominguez. Not because they were a burden – though he wanted to see how Dominguez handled her gun – but because their flight suits weren’t made to absorb high-impact rounds. Anything bigger than a pistol would punch right through.
Conway did what he always did and played the hand he was dealt. He started up the steps. They were solid metal and his boots produced almost no sound on them. The risers were high – made for eight-feet Raggers instead of humans.
Freeman was third in the line and he stumbled when his foot caught the top of a step. “Dammit,” he said. “I hate aliens.”
The sound of the lifter’s propulsion climbed without warning and Conway felt it through the wall where his shoulder was pressed against it.
“Close to launching,” said Griffin. “Five minutes – that’s damn quick.”
“Everything the Raggers make seems to be more advanced than our kit, sir.”
“We probably shouldn’t be on these steps,” said Griffin.
The lifter shook, though with much less violence than Conway was expecting. He experienced the same unpleasant dislocation, like his body was one place and his mind somewhere else. It wasn’t too bad and then the thunder died away, leaving them in comparative silence.
“I could get used to that,” said Kemp. “Smoother than a diamond class carrier.”
They came to the first landing. Conway and Griffin crouched in the right-hand passage, with Lockhart and Freeman on the other side. Dominguez, Barron and Kemp started the climb from the bottom while those on the landing watched the opening at the top. It wasn’t a perfect method, but the nuke in the Star Burner’s weapons bay was due to go off in fifty minutes and nobody wanted to be there to see it happen.
Conway’s impression that the intersecting corridors led to the bay walkways appeared to be correct. The left-hand passage ended at a door marked with the words Bay Upper 9. To the right, the passage went on for a surprising distance – beyond what Conway expected to be the outer hull of the spaceship.
“Double hull,” said Griffin, seeing his interest. “They must have storage between the outer and inner skins.”
“Doesn’t that make the ship vulnerable to incoming fire?”
Griffin shrugged. “You build it for war or you build it for other things. But don’t be fooled - this lifter could withstand any small-scale attack. It’s only the real big stuff that’ll take it out.”
They repeated the method up to the next landing. Conway felt it was going well until he saw another group of Raggers appear all the way at the top. He could only see the head and shoulders of the lead aliens and the sight of pallid skin made him think they were also naked. His Gilner thumped into his shoulder as he put bullets into them. Kemp and Barron helped out from the lower landing and between them, they killed most of the aliens.
“One got away,” said Conway. He swore. “We need to move it.”
The muscles in his legs complained as he forced them to carry him up the stairs. The Raggers were such an unknown he didn’t have any idea how to anticipate their next moves. He guessed they’d have dedicated security, while the rest of the crew would tool up with whatever they could lay their hands on.
Conway was dismayed at what he found once he got high enough to see over the top step. This level of the spaceship wasn’t exactly open plan, but he saw many wide passages, laid out in a grid. Doors led away from the corridors, no doubt to rooms behind the walls. Everything was featureless metal, with a few alien symbols painted directly onto the exposed surfaces.
He bent his neck - the ceiling was fifteen meters high and lighting strips cast dull illumination onto the space below. The sight of it put him in mind of an underground city, only this one wasn’t hollowed from the rock so much as it was forged from military alloys and put into a huge spaceship designed to carry stolen hardware from distant worlds.
The place wasn’t empty. He spotted movement from most directions and he ducked down in case any bullets were coming his way. It wouldn’t be too long.
“Kemp, get up here!”
As the words left his mouth, a couple of Raggers appeared at the top of the steps, their mouths open to reveal needle-sharp teeth and their huge, black-orb eyes betraying nothing at all. Conway hadn’t seen them coming and he chastised himself for underestimating their speed.
“Ragger!” one of them hissed.
Barron was on good form and shots from below smashed into the aliens. They pitched to the floor, making gurgling sounds that Conway’s suit was unable to translate.
“Ragger to you too, alien scumbags,” he said.
“Hostiles below,” said Dominguez from the lower landing. The sound of rifle fire reached Conway.
“Bad situation,” he said.
Lockh
art knew it too – they were disadvantaged by the steps and also by enemies potentially coming from several directions.
“Clear below,” said Barron,
“Move up! Fast!”
Conway heard the sound of return gunfire, so far only small arms. He chanced another look over the steps onto the upper level. It was getting busy. Raggers sped from place to place, while others leaned around corners with guns in their hand. One of the aliens wasn’t fast enough into cover and Conway managed to put a high-impact round into its chest. It pitched over and thrashed on the ground.
Kemp made it to the top, hardly slowed by the weight of the shoulder launcher. “Orders, sir?” he asked.
“Give them something to think about.”
“Yes, sir.”
The shoulder launchers were fearsome weapons when used at the right time. Kemp stood and fired the weapon towards one of the intersections directly ahead. He dropped out of sight, grinning.
Light and intense heat washed down the steps, offering Conway the reassurance that many Raggers had perished. He clambered up two of the steps, staying close to the wall. His eyes scanned the surroundings as he attempted to gauge the effect on the enemy. It was hard to be sure through the smoke.
Barron and Dominguez weren’t at the top yet. A glance was enough to tell Conway that they were concerned about Raggers coming from behind. They climbed awkwardly, trying to keep their rifles pointed towards the lower landing.
“Give them some help,” Conway ordered. The chance to take advantage of the first rocket blast had slipped away.
Lockhart trained his rifle down the steps but wasn’t required to fire. Barron and Dominguez joined them and the short delay was enough for the launcher to recharge.
“Go,” said Conway, scrambling closer to the top. Freeman joined him and they laid down fire to keep the Raggers pinned. Smoke from the first rocket worked to their advantage and the return fire was sporadic. Enemy bullets thudded into the walls and the ceiling above, without striking any of the squad members.
Kemp repeated the action from before, except this time he climbed higher, until he was almost in the room. He aimed the launcher to the left and the rocket shrieked away. With that done, he stepped smoothly into the stairwell and crouched, the grin on his face wider than last time.
Alien Firestorm (Fire and Rust Book 2) Page 7
