This was the moment. It wasn’t something Griffin feared – he hated inaction more than anything. If he waited for the enemy to dictate, there was no way in hell he’d be quick enough to stop them. This was do or die.
Under Griffin’s control, the Gradior lifted vertically from the seabed. He could see the additional strain on the engines, but it wasn’t enough to slow the ship down. It erupted from the ocean, bringing millions of tons of water with it in a huge fountain of spray. Before the heavy cruiser had shaken off the water’s grasp, Griffin pushed the controls straight forward and the warship gathered speed in complete defiance of inertia.
It crossed the shore, trailing salt water and sonic booms over the land below. Dominguez knew what was expected and she scanned frantically for signs of a weapon launch.
“Nothing on the sensors,” she said. “No Ragger ship, no incendiaries.”
Griffin experienced doubt. Maybe he’d guessed wrong and the Raggers weren’t about to do what he wanted them to. Yeringar seemed to know them well enough and he hadn’t spoken against the plan. Of course, it wasn’t his people on New Destiny and it was always easier to accept the risks when someone else was taking them.
“Launch detected,” said Dominguez. “Twenty objects in freefall, coming from mid-air on the outskirts of Durham.”
Griffin couldn’t make a mistake. His hands moved quickly to the main console almost without conscious thought.
“Target lock. Firing interceptors.”
He had no idea what the Fangrin called their anti-missile system. All he knew was that they were brutally effective at knocking out Ultor-Vs in deep space. Eighty small missiles burst from the Gradior’s launch tubes, their propulsions ignited and then they were gone into the distance so fast that Griffin saw only specks of cold blue appear and then vanish in a tenth of a second. They streaked across his tactical, hurling themselves at the horizon.
Sweat dripped into Griffin’s eyes, stinging like hell. He could hardly spare the time to blink and he ignored the pain. The Gradior was at full thrust and its plating heated up fast. It didn’t have a hope of keeping up with the interceptors and Griffin didn’t try.
Twenty Ragger incendiaries disappeared from the tactical and twenty more appeared from a different location. The Gradior’s targeting computer locked on immediately and Griffin fired again.
“The enemy know we’re here,” said Dominguez. “They’ve shifted position.”
“Get a lock on them or everyone in Durham is screwed.”
Dominguez tried to predict and added an overlay to the tactical, showing the route and calculated speed of the Ragger ship. “Still over a built-up area, sir.”
The anti-missile system knocked out the second wave of incendiaries and Griffin blew out in relief. He had no idea how many of the devices the enemy spaceship carried in its bay.
No more incendiaries appeared. The Raggers evidently didn’t like the odds against the interceptors and held onto their remaining stocks. Griffin fired six shock pulse missiles, aiming for ten thousand meters like Yeringar had said. The Fangrin definitely wasn’t a foot soldier and Griffin didn’t think it was much of a gamble to take the alien’s words at face value.
As soon as the missiles launched, Griffin banked hard one way and then the other. A heat alert beeped urgently and he reduced speed in order to stop the damaged front plating becoming too soft.
“Durham ahead,” said Dominguez.
The base was a sprawling expanse of concrete and square buildings. It was originally built for dozens of spaceships until the war front moved far away from here. Now it was mostly used for training, and tens of thousands of ULAF soldiers, along with their families, lived in the town which sprung up to support the needs of the military.
Griffin didn’t watch the underside feed and concentrated on making the Gradior’s course as difficult to predict as possible. He launched another six shock pulse missiles, hoping to flush out the Raggers. The enemy weren’t playing ball and the waves of energy didn’t bring them out of stealth. His big worry was that they’d fly elsewhere and dump their cargo of incendiaries onto a much larger city before he was able to respond.
“They won’t run,” said Yeringar. “You must defeat them here.”
“Will people stop reading my mind?” Griffin muttered. He didn’t want to fight directly over the town and piloted the Gradior around the outskirts, trying not to stay over populated areas. The spaceship crossed into military airspace and the landing strip rolled by underneath.
“Shock pulse missiles launched,” he said.
The situation was bad and Griffin could feel his control slipping. The Raggers were hidden and, for all he knew, they might just wait for backup before showing their faces. Either way, each passing second increased the odds of failure. Not only that, Griffin was accustomed to flying smaller ships, where the onboard systems were streamlined for use by a smaller crew. The Gradior was clearly meant to have one or more officers dedicated to the weapons, to free up the captain to pilot the damn ship.
“Yeringar, do you know how to work that weapons panel you’re sitting in front of?” he shouted angrily.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you say? Why pretend you didn’t know?” Griffin was livid at the Fangrin for not volunteering the information sooner and at himself for not guessing.
Yeringar laughed again. It wasn’t mocking, but it did nothing to lessen Griffin’s fury. “It was important for me to wait.”
“We’re going to have a talk when this is done.”
“We will indeed talk, human.”
The distraction was enough for the Ragger ship to get a railgun shot into the Gradior’s rear section. The sound of it was distant, though Griffin wasn’t reassured. He banked again and took the heavy cruiser into a steep climb. At the same time, his eyes hunted for the damage report on his console.
“No hull breach,” he said. “Lieutenant Dominguez, did you get a reading from the railgun charge up?”
“Yes, sir. I got it. On the tactical.” She sounded angry and determined. “They’re travelling fast and changing course, so don’t rely too much on that assumed position.”
“Launching anti-stealth missiles,” said Yeringar.
The Fangrin definitely knew what he was doing. He launched a randomized pattern, set to go off at a range of altitudes in the vicinity of the reading Dominguez had obtained. The missiles didn’t have far to travel and the closest detonated within five thousand meters of the Gradior.
“I take it we’re shielded?” asked Griffin.
“You aren’t dead, are you, human?”
“Got them!” said Dominguez.
The Ragger spaceship’s stealth tech failed in the shock pulse waves and it came abruptly into sight. It was a slightly different shape to the others Griffin had fought – a thousand meters in length, with slab sides and lacking the domes he’d observed on most of the enemy ships. To his eye, it looked like an oversized transport and he assumed it was a dedicated bomber. If so, it likely had plenty more incendiaries in its hold.
The now-visible Ragger ship was also much closer than Griffin expected – barely two klicks to starboard and coming around in a tight circle directly above the center of the town.
“Assholes,” he said, sure the Raggers were leaving themselves deliberately over the most densely-populated area. “Hold the plasma missiles.”
“No missiles,” agreed Yeringar. “Railguns.”
At an altitude of four thousand meters, the enemy craft dropped another twenty incendiaries. Yeringar growled something which Griffin’s language module refused to translate.
“Alz-Tor interceptors launched.”
The Raggers kept turning in the hope that the Gradior’s front railguns wouldn’t be able to line up for a shot. The heavy cruiser was more agile than the bomber and Griffin was happy when he got the spaceship’s nose pointing in the right direction.
Yeringar didn’t wait for instructions and already had the railguns charged. The
coils of the Gradior’s two immense upper guns whined and sent a shock through the hull which made Griffin feel like he’d been given a playful kick in the guts.
The Fangrin was a good shot and the Raggers took two direct hits in the rear section. The bomber’s armor plates crumpled like paper and Griffin saw a rupture clean through to the interior.
The railgun coils greedily sucked power from the main propulsion as they charged up again. The Ragger ship twisted and turned, never leaving the town’s airspace. The sight of it made Griffin even more furious. He’d never met Lieutenant Conway’s family, yet he felt a connection to them. With a snarl, he gave the Gradior full thrust. The Ragger captain continued his evasive maneuvers, but Griffin could see the pattern of it. He watched and he anticipated. The distance between the vessels reduced at an alarming rate and two more sonic booms from the heavy cruiser shook the buildings below.
Griffin felt a surge of victory when the nose of the Gradior thumped into the Ragger spaceship. The railguns charged and Yeringar fired again, sending dense alloy slugs into the enemy at point-blank range. Griffin saw the bomber’s armor peel open like the skin of a fruit. All the while, he kept pushing it, using the heavy cruiser’s superior weight and vastly greater power to force the Ragger ship away from the town.
“They’re losing power,” said Dominguez. “And pieces of their armor.”
Griffin couldn’t do much about it, other than hope the debris landed on a park or in the river that ran through Durham. He focused everything on forcing the enemy spaceship away from the town. The bomber’s engines shut down and it went into freefall. A tiny misjudgment meant the two ships broke apart and the Gradior overshot the bomber. Griffin tried to work out its landing position from its trajectory. It was going to be a close call between crashing on buildings or the landing strip.
The result wasn’t perfect and the Ragger spaceship came down directly on top of a huge storage warehouse next to the main landing strip. The detached part of Griffin’s brain told him that in the circumstances it was a good result. He knew there’d be casualties and couldn’t bring himself to celebrate.
Griffin turned the Gradior’s nose away from the wrecked bomber, bringing the rear two railguns into play. Yeringar fired at once. The sound of their discharge was faint and distant, while the effect on the Ragger ship was immediate. The slugs struck the bomber topside and the extensive damage told Griffin that the spaceship wasn’t heavily armored on its upper section.
“It isn’t going fly again, sir,” said Dominguez.
That wasn’t in any doubt and it was the signal for Griffin to take the Gradior away from Durham.
“Speak to Colonel Doyle – advise him to kill anything living on that bomber. We don’t know what other tricks those bastards might try.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’re going north and back over the ocean in case the other Raggers start taking pot shots. Lieutenant Dominguez, the Star Burner’s nuke went off to the north – find where the blast originated.”
“You are going to hunt them down,” said Yeringar.
“I guess you won’t object?”
“This is how war should be fought, human. Seize the opportunity and exploit every weakness!”
Griffin thought the Fangrin was about to start a lecture on how the Unity League should have been more ruthless, but the alien didn’t say anything more. Land rolled by underneath the Gradior, green hills turning briefly to the yellow of an expansive sandy beach, which became the Targatic Ocean. Nothing beat seeing the beauty of a jewel like New Destiny from the vantage of a spaceship and Griffin felt his stomach clench at the thought of the Raggers taking control of the planet.
“Ah crap, we’ve got incoming missiles, sir,” said Dominguez. “Real big ones.”
Griffin checked the tactical and saw four comparatively slow-moving objects coming towards New Destiny. He had a bad feeling about the payload.
“You do not want those to hit the surface of your planet,” said Yeringar. “I have seen the outcome on a Fangrin world.”
“In that case, let’s shoot them down.”
“The scan data indicates those missiles are a type I have seen before,” said the Fangrin. “They are equipped with guidance scramblers.”
“The interceptors won’t lock?”
“That is correct.”
“I hope you’re a good shot with the railguns, Yeringar.”
The Gradior climbed steeply and the ocean receded, its colors merging into a single blue-green as the spaceship gained altitude.
“I don’t have a point of origin for those missiles, sir,” said Dominguez. “I’ve reverse-tracked their current flight path and am scanning for anomalies. The missiles were not launched from within the sphere of gamma radiation, so we either missed with the nuke or they moved.”
“I wouldn’t sit around in the middle of all that nuclear crap either.”
The Gradior climbed out of the planet’s atmosphere. Without the worry of friction, Griffin was able to give it more power and the cruiser’s engine note went from grumble to metallic howl. The output bar climbed and the velocity reading kept pace. Griffin felt himself pushed into his seat and he grimaced at the effect on his body.
It wasn’t only the spaceship that worked better away from the planet. The sensors became far more efficient when didn’t have to contend with atmospheric distortion and Dominguez found something straightaway.
“I’ve detected another eight missiles,” she said. “They’re twenty seconds behind the first wave.”
“You will need to keep the Gradior on a direct course, human.”
“You’ve got it. What sort of damage will those missiles do if one gets through?”
“If you imagine the effect of the incendiaries the Raggers dropped upon your city and then multiply it many times over.”
“At least they aren’t dropping six gigaton nukes, huh?” said Dominguez.
“They want your planet, human, not a nuclear wasteland.”
“The courses of the missiles are diverging, sir. They’re going to hit major cities on the land mass below us. I’m certain the launch position is within twenty thousand klicks of the moon and approximately 220,000 klicks from our current location. I’m focusing my search.”
Griffin didn’t acknowledge – he was too busy working out how the Fangrin was going to put railgun projectiles through twelve enormous missiles. The Ragger incendiaries could only be judged as slow in comparison to a fire-and-forget interceptor. A railgun shot travelled way faster than a missile, but the margins for error were a lot tighter when the targets were smaller than a spaceship. “Yeringar, how is this trajectory?”
“Yes, this is good.”
Griffin locked the controls and the speed, with the Gradior approaching the missiles at an oblique. The Fangrin would have to lead the incendiaries only slightly, but it was a high-pressure ask, assuming the alien actually cared. Griffin kept one eye on the tactical and half turned so that he could see Yeringar. The alien’s expression was unreadable.
“Do it,” Griffin muttered, too low for anyone to hear.
“Coils charged, firing uppers one and two,” said Yeringar.
Chapter Fourteen
Yeringar’s first shots were perfectly-aimed and two Ragger incendiaries vanished from the tactical. The lower two railguns also had a firing angle and they knocked out the final missiles from the first wave.
“Nice shooting,” said Griffin.
“Eight more to go. Waiting on railgun coil charge.”
The extra load on the engines made their note deepen and the charge levels climbed slower when all four were tapping into the warship’s reserves. Griffin tried not to watch too closely and he focused on the wider conflict at New Destiny. Something was bothering him.
“Why are the Raggers sitting back and launching their missiles from close to the moon?” he asked. “I can understand they might not want to commit everything to the planet’s surface since they don’t know how long it’ll
take the Unity League to get a fleet here, but they must know the Gradior is able to shoot down slow-moving missiles like these ones.”
“Fire and hope,” said Dominguez.
“The last-gasp effort of the losing side,” said Griffin, nodding. “Maybe their radiation shielding wasn’t up to the job of protecting them from a close-proximity nuclear blast.”
He wasn’t given time to think about it. Two railgun slugs came out of nowhere and smashed into the Gradior’s mid-section. Without hesitation, Griffin increased speed and banked away from the direction of the impacts.
“Find them!” he shouted.
Dominguez was angry to be caught out, but she made up for it. “Irradiated metal at eighty thousand klicks.”
“Locked, Tarx plasma missiles launched,” said Yeringar. “Cluster two out of action.”
The Gradior’s single remaining portside cluster opened and ten plasma missiles raced away. Their secondary propulsion fired up and their boosted acceleration was immense.
“The enemy are still in stealth,” said Dominguez. “Their countermeasures have knocked out our first ten missiles.”
The arrival of the enemy spaceship was about as welcome as a gift-wrapped scorpion and Griffin clenched his teeth to stop himself from unleashing a hundred different swear words.
“The incendiaries are no longer in the front railgun arcs,” said Yeringar. “Firing rear three Tarx clusters.”
“No hull breach from the railgun strikes,” said Griffin. “They built the Gradior to take a beating.”
“That they did, human.”
No hull breach wasn’t the same as no damage. The cruiser’s plating had suffered heavy punishment and two of the portside chain gun emplacement were out of action, along with one of the plasma missile clusters. The propulsion was still nailed on 100 percent of its maximum potential and Griffin gave it everything, turning the Gradior so that its starboard Tarx clusters were able to lock and fire. Yeringar was a mystery and his skill on the weapons console made Griffin ever more certain that the Fangrin had served for years in space.
Alien Firestorm (Fire and Rust Book 2) Page 11
