by D. J. Holmes
After what seemed like only seconds, another shout came over the COM channel announcing that the marines had cut their way into the library’s foundations. As Somerville stepped into the hole in the sewer’s wall, he could already see another marine setting up a shaped charge on the roof.
“Stand back sir,” Cassells said to his Commodore as the demolition marine gave the hand signal for a ten second count.
All the marines crouched into a bracing position and Somerville, remembering his academy training, quickly copied them. The explosion thundered in Jonathan’s ears, enhanced by the suits sensors, before its safety sub routines kicked in and muted the sound that was reverberating around the confined sewer system. Before Somerville could look around to get his bearings, the rest of the marines were already up out of their bracing position and were charging forwards.
With the amount of dust that was bellowing around them Somerville wasn’t sure how they could see enough to be moving anywhere. Then he remembered his suit had built in radar emitters. With a flick of a finger he engaged them and a 3D overlay was projected onto his visual feed, mapping out the walls around him. As he followed the marines, a large hole appeared overhead and when it came to his turn, aided by his power armor, he jumped up through the opening with ease.
In front of him the marines were already fanning out. The schematics of the library suggested two likely spots where the Russian commander would set up his headquarters. A team of five marines was tasked with checking each spot. Lieutenant Cassells had already insisted Somerville accompany his team and so he located Cassells’ combat armor and followed him as he made his way towards their target.
The first room they entered was full of military equipment in various states of repair. There were plasma rifles stripped down into parts, a combat armor that had its an arm blown off, and even a heavy laser turret that looked nearly intact. Counting on the element of surprise, the marines had no time to look any closer as they rushed on towards their target.
After coming to the end of a long corridor, Cassells kicked down a wooden door and inside they met their first resistance. Three Russians were watching a large holo display. By the time Somerville entered the room the marines had already dispatched them. Glancing at the display, he could see the Russians had been watching the progress of the French and British attack. Again they had no time to stop and stare as Cassells lead them onwards.
At the next wooden door Cassells stopped. “Ok, this is our target. The next room is one of the largest in the library. If this is where the Russian commander has himself set up, he is likely to have a lot of back up. We’re going to need every gun we have.”
With a start Somerville realized Cassells was talking about him and so he quickly spoke up, “don’t worry, I’m not just here for the show.”
“Good,” Cassells said nodding. “Then on the count of three I’ll kick the door in. Coulter, you toss in three stun grenades. When they go off I want everyone else through the door guns blazing. Ready?”
“Ready,” came a chorus of replies.
Satisfied, Cassells held up three fingers. Moments later the door flew off its hinges and three stun grenades followed it into the room. Before Somerville knew it, he was rushing into the room behind the marines. As he crossed the threshold he could see one marine was down already. Just ahead of him there were several Russian soldiers in light combat armor on the ground, clearly dead. Further into the room, more than ten Russians were scrambling for cover. The marines were already pouring fire into them and Somerville lifted up his rifle to add his weapon’s plasma bolts to the inferno of death that had erupted all around him.
In an almost dream like state, he watched as his shots tracked in on one and then a second Russian. Both went down with gapping holes in their armor. An armored hand then roughly reached up and dragged him stumbling down to his knees. “What are you doing sir?” a marine shouted excitedly. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
Only then did Somerville realize he had been standing in the middle of the room without any cover, blasting away at the Russians. With a bit more caution he poked his head around the stack of supplies the marine had pulled him down behind. It looked like there was only three or four Russians left. As he watched, Cassells and another marine threw a pair of stun grenades over to their side of the room. When the flashes went off, two marines jumped up and began to pour fire into the positions the Russians were sheltering behind. Not knowing what else to do, Somerville added his fire to theirs.
Then out of the corner of his eye he saw Cassells charging along the wall of the room. He made it right round behind the Russians before they had recovered their wits enough to react. In four controlled bursts Cassells dispatched the last opposition in the room.
As the marines began to come out from behind their cover, Somerville took a moment to compose himself. He had never experienced close quarters combat before. Before he could really calm himself down a voice intruded upon his thoughts.
“Over here,” one of the marines called.
Staggering up from behind his cover Somerville made his way over to the marine. On the ground was a Russian soldier in heavy combat armor with two holes burnt into his right thigh. The armor was identical to the one the Russian commander had been wearing in the communication Somerville had played over and over again in his spare time.
Reaching down he pressed the release for the armor’s helmet. Initially nothing happened but then it slowly retracted. Underneath the Russian Commander was clearly in pain but he looked like he would live.
Somerville activated the release for his own helmet and when he could look the Russian in the eyes, he smiled. “Finally we meet face to face. I promised you we would. I want to make you one more promise. You’re not going to get away with what you have done here lightly. The civilians of Ouvea will see justice done.”
Content that the Russian Commander wasn’t too badly hurt Somerville began to stand to allow one of the marines to tend to his wounds. He would be going back to Earth to face charges of war crimes. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Russian reach under the side of his armor and pull out his hand. In it he was holding a small plasma pistol. As if in slow motion, he began to bring it up towards Somerville’s chest and a feral smile spread across his face.
Instinctively he threw himself at the Russian. As he pounced on him he extended his right hand and a monocular blade shout out from his wrist. The blade sliced into the Russian’s chest, easily cutting through the power armor. With Somerville’s weight behind it, the blade penetrated through the Russian’s heart, out the back of his armor and into the floor of the library. Momentarily pinned to the ground on top of the Russian, Somerville watched as the life drained from his face. With ease he summoned to mind the devastation he had seen throughout the city. “Go to hell,” he said to the Russian before the last signs of life faded away.
With Lieutenant Cassells help he managed to disentangle himself from the dead Russian and retract his blade. He had forgotten all about the weapon but thankfully his instincts had kicked in at just the right moment. Looking down, he saw that the miniature plasma pistol probably only had enough charge to fire one shot. Yet one would have been enough to blast a nice big hole in his chest. With a shake he brought himself back to reality. His anger was subsiding. He had made good on his promise. Now it was time to get back to being a Commodore.
With a couple of taps on the COM unit built into the combat armor he opened a channel to Achilles. “Hamilton, this is Somerville. You can send down a shuttle to get me, I’m ready to return to the ship. You can send a message to all the crew as well, tell them; Mission accomplished, Ouvea is no longer in the hands of the Russians.”
The End
Next in the series - The Void War: Empire Rising Book 1.
Set 26 years after the events of Stand Into Danger, The Void War is a full-length novel that follows the career of Captain Somerville’s nephew, James Somerville. An excerpt from The Void War can be
read below and here’s the blurb:
It’s the year 2465, two hundred years since the stars were opened to humanity by the invention of the shift drive. So began the First Interstellar Expansion Era, catapulting humanity into a deadly race for the limited resources of navigable space.
Now tensions between the human nations are threatening to boil over into open hostility. Into this maelstrom steps the exiled Commander James Somerville of the Royal Space Navy. Banished from London to the survey ship HMS Drake he is about to make a discovery that may change his fortunes and throw Britain into a deadly war with its closest rival.
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Excerpt from The Void War:
Prologue
July 11th 2456, Near Earth Orbit.
HMS Vulcan floated in high geosynchronous orbit over the British Midlands. With minimal maneuvering thrusters she wasn’t really a spaceship yet her designers hadn’t wished to break with tradition when naming her. If anyone asked, the explanation was that S stood for Shipyard.
Construction bay twenty seven was a hive of activity. For a number of months construction workers had been expanding its capacity to accommodate the latest designs for a new class of ship, the first British battlecruiser. A few thousand meters higher up in orbit, work was being completed on two identical giant structures, soon to be attached to Vulcan and designated bays twenty eight and twenty nine. Likewise, they too would be focused on churning out the new battlecruisers for the Royal Space Navy.
Once completed this retrofit and extension would simply become one more in a long list of alterations in Vulcan’s history. Initially constructed when Britain decided to invest heavily in interstellar expansion, Vulcan had been serving the RSN for over 200 years as its main shipyard. Once the shift drive had been discovered and the stars opened to humanity, interstellar exploration had taken off. Britain had banked a substantial percentage of her GDP on gaining a lead over the other space faring nations and Vulcan was the result.
With the discovery of Britannia this investment had paid off eighty years later. HMS Vulcan had hastily dispatched her third colony ship full of handpicked volunteers from all over Great Britain as well as her Moon, Mars and asteroid colonies. Britannia contained one of the rarest metals yet known to man. Named after its discoverer, valstronium was almost as revolutionary as the shift drive.
Officially classed as a metal, though the designation was still debated in the universities, it showed a remarkable ability to protect a spaceship from the wear and tear of space travel while blocking harmful cosmic radiation from injuring a ship’s crew. And, once fixed by a combination of electrical and thermal treatments, the metal actually flowed like a liquid in an effort to retain its original shape when damaged. This was a ship designer’s dream as it provided the perfect armor. With traditional armors, when a thermonuclear missile or a plasma bolt hit a ship it would have to return to a shipyard in order to have the damaged armor sections replaced. Armored with valstronium, a ship could take a number of hits and keep on fighting. These attributes, combined with its lightweight and the resultant gains in shift drive velocities meant that valstronium revolutionized spaceship design.
With the discovery of valstronium on Britannia, Britain gained a monopoly almost overnight. Along with this monopoly came the military power and diplomatic capital that allowed Britain to fuel its expansion beyond the Sol system and become one of the dominant space faring nations.
Despite over one hundred and fifty years having passed since the discovery of Britannia, and two hundred since the discovery of the shift drive, the exploration and colonization race between the major space faring nations showed no sign of letting up. Paid for through valstronium sales HMS Vulcan continued to churn out all kinds of civilian and military craft to further Britain’s interstellar empire. With the new construction bays about to be finalized battlecruisers would soon be added to that list.
Almost unnoticed among the hustle and bustle over bays twenty-seven, eight and nine a small ship slipped out of construction bay thirteen. Encased within its own valstronium armor HMS Drake made her way out into space for the first time. She was one of an ever-increasing number of RSN Survey Ships. With almost one hundred and fifty in commission they served the RSN by mapping the dark matter between the stars.
*
May 7th 2464. Beijing, China.
Almost eight years later Na Zhong turned from the large holographic display to face the other politburo members. As the minister for Exploration he was a junior member in the politburo and so tried to keep his head down in these meetings. Today that was impossible.
“And so you see,” Na concluded. “There are four habitable worlds and over fifty two other systems with varying degrees of resources. This is the find of the century.”
Most of the other members were still looking over his shoulders at the sphere the holographic projector was displaying. Within the sphere there were fifty-six white dots, four of which were flashing red.
Na looked over his fellow politburo members and started when he saw Chang staring at him. “Minister Na, what did your scout determine about the likeness of a shift passage into British space?” Chang Lei asked.
“As you know our scout vessel did not deem it wise to spend time investigating all the systems before coming back with this news. However, they did spend two weeks surveying the perimeter of the sphere in order to identify any passages that may lead to British space,” Na replied to the minister of Defense. “There is at least one passage leading off in the rough direction of British space, though of course without exploring it extensively we can’t know where, if anywhere, it goes.” This brought all eyes back to Zhong.
“Two weeks! You mean your Commander knew about this sphere of space for two weeks and didn’t think to come straight back to us?” Shouted the Minister for Foreign Affairs.
“I’m afraid not, but in his defense his mission was to seek out potential shift passages into British space,” Zhong said as meekly as possible, hoping to placate Fen’s anger.
“Calm down Fen,” the Intelligence Minister said as he lifted his hand towards the Minister for Foreign Affairs to stop any further outbursts. “This is useful, it may be a little later than we would have liked but at least we know the British may want to join our party. So what are our options?” he asked the room at large.
Chang Lei was the Intelligence Minister for the Chinese Communist Party and currently the power behind the President. Everyone knew he would make the final decision regarding this new discovery.
Fen was the first to speak, “Well we all know what we are expected to do. Those swine at the UN will want us to publicly declare this discovery first thing tomorrow.”
Smiling Chang shook his head, “You all know our attempts to grow our space empire have been falling behind the other major powers. This is not an opportunity we are just going to let pass us by. We only have six habitable planets colonized so far; this is our chance to almost double that. What other options do we have? Options that will ensure China benefits from this discovery and not those lackeys at the UN.”
“Well, we could send elements of third fleet into this new area of space,” began the Minister of Defense. “Once we establish military bases on each of the habitable worlds we can declare our discovery and present them with a fait accompli. No power would dare go to war with us over these planets then.”
“Ha,” interjected the Minister for Development, Wen Xiang, “and how long do you think it would take the British to figure out where our ships were going. It seems that we can’t keep anything from them.”
Chang tried to hide a grimace. The Minister of Development was his closet rival and so did not fear his wrath. Whilst Chang prided himself in the power of his intelligence services both at home and abroad, it was undeniable that the British had managed to penetrate their government and military. Not that Chang liked being reminded of that of course.
“And
don’t think the British won’t fight for what they think is theirs.” Wen continued. “Our military might out-mass theirs but whoever controls this new discovery will become the dominant power in our area of space, there can be no doubt about that. We need to present them with a fait accompli true, but one that cannot lead to war. As you all know we have one colony ship sitting in orbit waiting for just this kind of opportunity. We also have another two under construction. I suggest we rush their completion and get civilians on the ground as soon as possible. We can colonize three of the habitable planets and offer one to the UN. That way when the British demand it from the UN or us they will look like the bad guys. Plus there is no way the British will start a war over a planet already occupied by zealous Chinese nationals – even if they could win a planet from us they wouldn’t want to deal with the occupation.” Sitting back Wen looked over at Chang for his response.
Chang bowed his head in a begrudging sign of respect. “I think this will work. We will need a cover story for when we ask for colonial volunteers. I’m sure Minister Zhong and I can come up with something before your colony ships are ready to depart. How long until those under construction will be ready?
