Hell's Reach (Galactic Liberation Series Book 6)

by B. V. Larson

Back at the processing room, Raj waved from his covered position behind an ore cart. “Nothing.”

  “We have to assume one of those spiders had a radio comlink,” Loco said, hawking and spitting dust. “So they know we’re coming. It’s a frontal assault. Any ideas?”

  Raj unclipped two cylinders from his harness. “Riot gas. We’re vaccinated. You have a mask, sir?”

  “No.” Loco glanced around and found what he was hoping for on the wall—a respirator box. He pulled out one of the facemask-bottle combos and slipped it on, flipped its switch. “Will the gas affect spiders?”

  “Their eyes. They have sensitive eyes.”

  Brock took out two more gas grenades. “Let’s go.”

  “I’ll take point,” Loco said.

  “Sir—”

  “Either of you have opticals?”

  They shook their heads. “Too high-tech. Do you?”

  “I do—an implant. I decided to risk it. For that matter, I’m surprised the spiders are risking lasers.”

  Brock shrugged. “If Mechron vaporizes us, at least we’ll never feel it.”

  “That’s encouraging. I go first. Be ready to roll the gas ahead.”

  “Roger wilco, sir.”

  “And Belinda, get back to the ship. Now!” he snapped at her petulant glare. “You did great, but you’re not trained for this.”

  “I just saved your life.”

  “Maybe so, but that’s irrelevant. Let us handle the rest of it.”

  Belinda rolled her eyes and walked away.

  “I wish she... ” Brock said watching her go with a wistful expression. “Never mind.”

  “Keep your head in the game, man,” Loco said. “Here, I have an idea.” He got behind an empty ore cart and rolled it to the tunnel entrance. Then he picked up a piece of spider carapace, one that still had some meat on it. “Set your gas grenade to detonate if this is handled.” He mimed what he wanted, creating a booby-trap in the otherwise empty bed of the core cart.

  Then he pushed the cart in front of him as he took point.

  Twenty or thirty meters ahead he saw movement, so he shoved the cart smoothly down the tunnel. It rolled easily around a bend and to a halt. He flatfooted it carefully forward over the tracks, tracks that would not have been out of place in the Wild West of Old Earth.

  Another flash of movement caught their eye. “Roll the gas,” Loco hissed. He wasn’t sure his muffled order had reached the badgers until a cylinder went past him, tossed ahead to clatter on the ground, also around the corner.

  When the gas gushed out he advanced. He heard a cry and another popping burst of gas, and then yells and the sizzle of a laser weapon. These sounds mixed with retching and incoherent words, along with a few vile curses and the thuds of impacts.

  As he rounded the corner he spotted a spider, but it was tangled up with humanoid figures in the gas and smoke. He walked straight up to the struggling mass and didn’t fire until the barrel of his slugthrower touched the spider’s braincase. After he blew the arachnoid’s head off, he backed off and began shouting. “Everybody freeze! Badgers, hold your fire!”

  They waited. Somebody turned on a light, then more lights. Fits of coughing sounded, and the figures resolved themselves into gasping, choking, vomiting humans.

  “Thank God you’re here, sir,” came a human voice. “We knew you’d come.”

  Chapter 13

  Hell’s Reach. Bridge of the SBS Trollheim.

  “Point defense, weapons free,” Captain Salishan ordered as the sharks shot toward them. “Manual fire confirmation. Fire on only what appears to be attacking us. Secondaries, stand by.”

  The Weapons officers passed her orders to the defensive weaponry crews, each in control of a bank of small lasers—small for a dreadnought, that is. Each was large and powerful enough to destroy a shipkiller missile or an attack craft at ten thousand kilometers.

  Only nobody had ten thousand kilometers visibility. Rather, they were lucky to see one hundred, and effective range would be measured in single digits as the gas and dust absorbed the laser energy.

  “Damn, those things are fast,” Sensors muttered. “One thousand KPH and rising.”

  Straker saw Salishan glance at him. He knew what she was thinking—should she play it safe and open fire with the longer-ranged, more powerful secondaries? Would Straker judge her for being too trigger-happy—or too reticent? What if these creatures were sentient, and simply investigating at high speed?

  He walked over to stand by her chair and spoke quietly. “Don’t worry about what I think. I don’t hang officers for doing their duty. The ship is yours. Use your best judgment.”

  She nodded once, sharply. “Secondaries, stand by. Point defense, this isn’t a duck hunt. Be sure they’re hostile before firing. We don’t even know they can damage a warship.” She covered her comlink with her hand and spoke aside to Straker. “Though we don’t know they can’t.”

  “Hard to sit here and rely on the decisions of young lieutenants and spacers, isn’t it?”

  “Burden of command. Tradeoff.” She stared at the display. “One of your struggles, I imagine.”

  “Damn right. I always want to be in the thick of it, with eyes on. It’s taken a while to learn restraint, and even then... ”

  “You can’t always hold back.”

  “Privileges of command—and a mechsuit.” He jerked his chin. “Here they come.”

  Salishan raised her voice. “Give us fused optical on the main screen. I want to see them.”

  Her order brought a picture of one of the hundreds of sharks arrowing toward them. It had a front-oriented mouth or intake like the jellyfish, but there the resemblance ended. Instead of a soft, rubbery body, it looked like an atmospheric ramjet missile, with triangular control fins protruding from its fuselage and tail. The scale overlay showed them to be about fifteen meters long.

  “Ramsharks, let’s call them,” Salishan breathed. “Lovely, scary and deadly.”

  Straker made sure his comlink external speaker was on. “Zaxby, what are they made of? Short answer.”

  “High-strength bio-metal alloy.”

  “Can they hurt us?”

  “Not if we increase shield power to maximum. They should be deflected or destroyed.”

  “If they hit us without shields?”

  “Yes, if they attack hull emplacements—turrets, antennas. There will be damage.”

  “Attack how?”

  “They appear to simply crash straight through their soft prey, ingesting nutritious pieces as they move. I have no idea how they will see the Trollheim—as a large meal, as an inedible asteroid, a competitor, or something else entirely. Also... ”

  “Yes?”

  “We don’t know if they have some other ability—attack or defense. I’m reading a high level of electrostatic charge around them as they fly, in the megawatt range. That could cause further damage if released.”

  “Thanks.” He turned to Salishan. “You heard?”

  “Yes, sir.” She waited, watching the chrono countdown until it reached seven seconds. “Shields to maximum!”

  The ship hummed with power as energy dumped from the capacitors. Maximum shields could only be held for ten to fifteen seconds before the capacitor batteries needed recharging.

  The herd—school?—of ramsharks spaced themselves out in a bean-shaped grouping, its long axis perpendicular to the dreadnought’s cigar shape. Three of the creatures drew ahead—and slammed themselves straight into the shield. They crumpled and exploded with a spectacular energy discharge.

  Zaxby spoke in Straker’s ear. “In weapons terms, the combination of kinetic and electrostatic energy created a 3.4-ton-equivalent explosion. Enough to destroy a turret.”

  “Impressive. More impressive is, they sent in scouts first. They’re smart. Look at that.”

  The school of ramsharks was already splitting in two, each end veering aside to flow around the dreadnought’s sides, outside the shell of the shield. But what would ha
ppen when...

  “Shield max ended,” the Engineering officer reported. “Recharge mode or maintain?”

  “Maintain,” Salishan replied. This would keep as much shielding up as the generators could support, but it left no energy to recharge the capacitors.

  With the change in shield power, the ramsharks sent another trio inward to crash into the barrier. These made it through, with a spectacular discharge of energy.

  “Their electrostatics allowed them to penetrate our weaker shields,” Zaxby said in Straker’s ear.”

  “Point defense fire!” Salishan barked, and beams lanced out to destroy the creatures.

  “Apparently they see us as competitors,” Straker murmured.

  “Or a big, fat whale to be taken down in a pack, like orcas,” Zaxby replied. “In fact, these creatures are acting more like wolves or orcas than sharks, attacking in a specific, coordinated manner and risking individuals for the good of the pack.”

  “Yes. They—”

  But his comment was cut off by the cry of the Sensors officer. “They’re attacking.”

  As if at a signal, the entire pack turned inward as one.

  Against a creature the size of the dreadnought this was probably an optimal tactic, surrounding it and hitting it from all sides. Unfortunately for the ramsharks, Trollheim had complete point defense coverage in three dimensions. Her lasers, made for taking down incoming shipkillers, were fast, accurate, and deadly. As the ramsharks accelerated to attack, those lasers reaped an appalling toll.

  But no defense was perfect, especially against a suicidal mass attack. No doubt the ramsharks didn’t realize the ship was clad in heavy armor. Perhaps they were attracted by the richness of its apparently nutritious carcass. And, they made the natural mistake of aiming for the skin, rather than the turrets that to them probably appeared as spines to be avoided.

  This lucky circumstance meant that those ramsharks that made it through the storm of fire slammed straight into reinforced armor, leaving shallow divots, but little else. In moments, not a living ramshark remained.

  The school of jellyfish cruised onward, oblivious.

  The entire bridge let out a sigh of relief. “No damage,” Chief Gurung reported from his station. The Gurkha had twisted arms and called in favors to take over as Trollheim’s senior noncom—no doubt eager for action after a year of boring duty parked at Utopia.

  “Secure from alert level one,” Salishan ordered. “Maintain level two. Continue on course. Chief, I could use some of your famous caff.”

  Gurung passed her a sip-mug of his triple-strong brew. Salishan made a face as she tasted it, but didn’t complain. “Breakers one, Hellheim Nebula zero.”

  “A good start,” Straker replied, “but we need to keep up that perfect score. I’ll be on comlink.”

  He left the bridge to make his rounds, as he usually did after an action. Command presence—shaking hands, calling by name as many spacers and troops as he could remember, seeing their faces—always buoyed morale. People liked to be noticed and valued. He took out his old battered handtab, pulled up the ship’s organizational chart, and checked off each section as he visited it. There were hundreds of spacers on the huge ship, with duty groups as small as two, and as large as the battlesuit company of ninety-five. He’d learned long ago that if he didn’t do it methodically, he’d end up seeing the same people over and over, and never see some of the more obscure sections. What he didn’t see today, he’d visit tomorrow, and so on.

  “You may not want to go in there, sir,” Gurung said from behind him as he left Propulsion and angled up toward Stores.

  Straker turned and raised an eyebrow in question.

  The short, smiling man took his hand in a grip of iron. “There’s not much privacy on a ship with more than one thousand crew—and this ship is more full than normal.”

  “Really?”

  He grinned wider, not letting go of Straker’s hand. “I thought it wise to reinforce our numbers of spacers, as we’re sure to be watch-on-watch. This means convenient, small rooms like those in Stores are always... occupied.”

  As if on cue, a man and a woman strolled out of the area with elaborate casualness. Upon seeing their general and chief, they both reddened. “Good day, sir, Chief,” they chorused as they slipped by.

  Straker thought he heard the woman stifle a giggle as she rounded a corner. “I see. Actually, I see nothing. Thanks, Chief. Now let me go.”

  Gurung released Straker’s hand. “Sorry, sir.” Clearly the man wasn’t sorry—he’d done Straker a favor, saving him and the enlisted from embarrassment. Officers and senior noncoms of course had their own private staterooms in which to... liaise.

  “Not at all, Chief,” Straker told him. “I trust you have the crew well in hand. Carry on.”

  “I’ll walk with you, if you don’t mind, sir.”

  “Keep the boss out of trouble, eh?”

  “I have no idea what you mean, sir,” Gurung said with a straight face.

  “I’ll bet.”

  The two men strolled to the next section.

  The encounter with the lovers turned Straker’s mind once more to Carla, causing his heart to ache with suppressed fear and worry. What the hell had possessed him to let her go along on a transport, barely able to defend itself from one ship, let alone several? He should have... but no, that was nonsense. There’d never been any problems with the trade run to the Humbar, never any inkling of the ability to intercept a ship randomly arriving from sidespace.

  Was it possible there was still a traitor or mole in their midst? Someone who’d leaked information, intentionally or not, about the Hercules, rather than some unknown tech being the cause? It seemed an unbelievable coincidence that they got Carla. Yet, if someone was talking, wouldn’t the fleet that attacked the Humbar have hit Utopia, the real prize, instead?

  All these thoughts and more ran around his head like rats in a confined space. He smiled and greeted and shook hands, not showing his feelings for the sake of the crew. Still, he kept an eye on his chrono. The target location was at least two day’s travel away. His only consolation was that the Predators had to travel the same distance. Until they did, Carla was likely to be spared the worst of... whatever was to come.

  Finishing up in Medical, he pulled Mara aside. “Does everyone aboard have the Bug? Because Gurung seems to have... reinforced the crew with a few off-the-books people.”

  “I’ll make sure.”

  “Might want to make sure everyone’s birth-control implants are up to date, too.”

  Mara made a face. “Anything else?”

  “How’s Roentgen doing?”

  “Fine. Zaxby, Sinden and some of the techs are keeping him busy, taking readings and asking questions. Providing a few interesting answers, too. It’s funny how many mistaken assumptions species can have about each other.”

  “No doubt. The fusing was... enlightening. Learn anything operationally useful?”

  “His—its, whatever—specific environmental tolerances, fuel needs and consumption... all valuable, but nothing that’s sparked any epiphanies. Derek, I know you always look for some novel insight, some surprise solution, so I’ll tell you if I get one, okay? You don’t need to keep bugging me.”

  “Fair enough. Later, sis.”

  Straker had a meal in the wardroom, alone with his thoughts. By tradition, nobody but the most senior would approach or disturb a flag officer without a pressing duty reason. That suited him right now.

  As he ate mechanically, it occurred to him how different Carla and Mara were. Carla would want him to bug her, to bring all his thoughts to her, to be a sounding board. Maybe he was instinctively turning to Mara in Carla’s absence, but his sister was more prickly and standoffish, jealous of her areas of expertise, wanting to be left alone—common brainiac traits.

  When he found his plate and glass of lemonade empty, he bussed his tray to the sanitization rack and spent the next couple of hours in his office, catching up on paperwork an
d reading Sinden’s intel briefs on Hell’s Reach.

  A klaxon sounded, raising the ship’s alert status. Straker’s intercom beeped and Trollheim’s SAI spoke. “General Straker to the bridge. General Straker to—”

  “Acknowledged.” On his way, the ship’s passageways became suddenly busy with personnel rushing to their duty stations.

  On the bridge, the holotank view showed hundreds of small proto-stars all around the ship, glowing hot only in the infrared ranges and below. Streamers of hot gasses formed an irregular structure billions of kilometers wide, a three-dimensional network. The gaps between streamers were large, allowing the ship easy access and maneuver. That’s what Straker got out of the holotank view as he stepped up to its rail, anyway.

  Captain Salishan said, “Sir, we’ve got some kind of energy vortex in front of us. When we change course or try to maneuver around, it moves with us.”

  “Blocking our path?”

  “Not yet, but it’s staying in front of us—following ahead, as my father would say about our Huskies. And it’s getting closer, slowly.”

  The Sensors officer belatedly highlighted the phenomenon in the holotank—a blob of brightness in the shape of an artistic, multi-pointed star, its points retracting and extending as it pulsed every few seconds.

  Straker asked the obvious question. “Is it any danger to us?”

  “Zaxby?”

  Zaxby’s face appeared in an upper corner of the holotank. “My Sciences team and I are still analyzing.”

  “I didn’t know you had a Sciences team.”

  “I thought it prudent to form one, given the environment.”

  “And Commander Sinden was getting sick of you stepping on her toes.”

  “I admit, there was a certain amount of inadvertent podiatric pressure, metaphorically speaking. Of course, I am far too dexterous and agile to literally step on her toes. In fact—”

  Straker raised his voice. “The threat, Zaxby? The energy vortex?”

  “Of course. As I was saying before you cavalierly diverted my report with discussions of the whys and wherefores of the formation of functional area sub-commands within the ship and their effect on the prerogatives of certain officers with low emotional intelligence—”