Keller saw her stop and did the same, lowering himself into a crouch of his own. The action caused his diagnostic tablet to spill from the wide pocket in his uniform. Cruz watched it happen in slow motion. The heavy tablet turned in the air as it descended towards the floor – she saw its display showing the utilisation bar of the Obsidiar processor, still pinned at maximum. There was no way the carpet tiles would muffle its landing.
Quick as a flash, Keller reached out and caught the tablet in a pinch-grip between fingers and thumb. It was like he was so used to dropping stuff he’d developed superhuman reactions to stop himself from breaking his equipment. Cruz looked at him and he winked back, though it wasn’t enough to disguise the fact he was mortified.
Once the diagnostics tablet was tucked away, Cruz did her best to make Keller aware of the situation. She raised two fingers, at the same time as she mouthed the words two soldiers – we wait.
He nodded in response and hunkered down next to her. He was desperate to talk – to ask questions that would allay his fears. In a way, Cruz was relieved he wasn’t able to speak. She had no truthful reassurances to offer him and she wasn’t about to lie.
There was no way to sneak into the room without being seen, so they waited – desperately hoping the aliens would move on. As the seconds went by, Cruz found memories from her training swirling around her head. The thing which interested her was the limited number of enemy soldiers in the comms building. The Space Corps taught that you hit a primary objective hard and once you’d taken the objective, you held it with tenacity and high numbers of your best troops. She didn’t know how many of the enemy were in the underground complex, but she was sure the numbers weren’t sufficient to take or hold the area if they met any significant resistance. It was as if they were mopping up or simply investigating what they’d captured.
Her thoughts led inescapably to the conclusion she’d discussed with the operators earlier on – the invaders’ main target was likely to be elsewhere on the base. That left one place, which was the Central Command Building. The CCB couldn’t send comms, but it had access to everything. If this was nothing more than a surprise strike by the aliens, they were unlikely to have huge numbers of troops with them. It made sense for them to focus their efforts on one main objective.
A minute passed. Cruz wasn’t sure which way the two enemy soldiers were facing – she’d only caught a glimpse. She’d already witnessed how quickly they could react when the one in the control room shot Ramprakash, so she wasn’t keen to stick her head into the line of fire if it wasn’t necessary.
After two minutes, Cruz was getting edgy and no amount of regulated breathing would calm her down. Each second felt stretched out, though her brain operated at normal space within this distortion of time. She chanced another look – the aliens were still in the same place, as though they’d been positioned exactly here with the express purpose of pissing her off.
Keller reached out and patted her urgently, several times on the shoulder. She turned her head and that’s when she heard it – something was coming from behind them. Heavy footsteps came down upon the floor tiles. At first, Cruz wondered if it was the patrol they’d sneaked past earlier coming back along this route. There were too many footsteps – there were four or six of the aliens coming, not just two.
Cruz was torn by indecision. Part of her wanted to crouch in place and hope she and Keller went unnoticed. The realist within her knew that was the coward’s way out. It’s what Lieutenant Reynolds would do an insidious voice tormented her.
Without humour, Cruz realised her own mind knew exactly where to poke in order to produce action. She shuffled closer to Keller so he could hear what she was about to say.
“Two targets, fifteen metres to the left of the doorway. I’ll take the right, you take the left. Aim for the chest. Press and hold the trigger button. Understand?”
Keller looked petrified, but he nodded all the same.
“You move up to the edge and prepare to take aim. I’ll get in position when you’re set. When I nudge you with my foot, go. They’re fast – whatever you do, don’t miss.”
This time, she didn’t wait for a response. She moved to let him pass and he brushed by. Close in, Keller smelled of aftershave and sweat. The scent clung to her nostrils and she breathed it in, while listening to the approaching footsteps. They were close now and it sounded like six or eight of them, instead of the four or six she’d first guessed. Her eyes rested on the grenade bandolier across her chest, with its coating of drying blood. A plasma grenade would bring every one of the bastards in the hub running towards us and we’ll still have these other two at our back, she told herself. Let’s see how Larry performs with the rifle first.
Keller was in position, kneeling on one knee and with his rifle held vertically so it wouldn’t protrude around the corner. Cruz came up close behind, standing upright. The edginess was still present, but it didn’t affect her as much as before. The trembling in her muscles was gone and her grip on the gun barrel was solid. She raised her foot and gave Keller a nudge with the instep of her military-issue boot.
As soon as she sensed Keller respond, Cruz took a sideways step, with her eye looking along the length of the barrel. The targets were in the same place, as though they lacked interest in moving even an inch from where they were standing. The aliens reacted with terrifying speed, thick grey arms bringing short hand cannons upwards, swinging them towards the corner of the exit passage.
Cruz pressed her finger on the activation button. The rifle’s coils whined softly and it thumped with gentle force into her shoulder. Slugs spat from the muzzle with incredible, lazy speed, punching through the air with their distinctive hum. The first shot missed its target by a hair’s breadth. The second punched through the metal plating over the left-hand side of the alien’s chest. The third round followed a moment later and six inches to the side.
The two enemy soldiers fell at the same time. It was like a strange, synchronised dance in which their knees buckled, their backs arched and they fell onto their fronts.
Cruz strode quickly into the room, keeping out of Keller’s arc of fire. As she walked, she fired in controlled bursts, sending round after round into the two prone bodies. She heard Keller come after her.
“Hold fire,” she hissed, all the while continuing to fire her own rifle. The last thing she wanted was to watch one of his gauss slugs rip a foot-wide exit hole in her chest if he was jumpy enough to try and copy her.
The aliens were dead, but Cruz didn’t stop moving. She swung around, checking for movement, in case there were others in the room sitting out of sight somewhere. They were alone. She looked at Keller to check if he was keeping it together. Something had changed in his face, though she didn’t know quite what it was.
“Keep watch,” she told him.
She darted across to the entrance passage and listened. A grenade had found its way into her hand – a cold, five-inch cylinder of high-explosive with a timer and a proximity sensor. She knew it would feel good to throw it into the middle of a squad of the enemy soldiers and had just about made her mind up to do so if they ventured this way. The two she and Keller had just killed were far too heavy to drag out of sight and they’d be discovered immediately.
The patrol didn’t come towards them. Cruz found relief and disappointment vying to be her primary emotion. She put the grenade into her pocket and crossed over the room, beckoning Keller to follow.
“How far?” she asked, standing a metre inside the corridor leading from the room.
“Just down here, Lieutenant.” He pointed ahead to where three corridors converged. There was a doorway in the wall at the end, twenty metres away.
“It’s open,” she said. “Looks like our security didn’t stop them for long.”
“Ever get the impression this is something these things have done many times before?” he asked.
A memory of something Cruz couldn’t remember learning came to her. She had no idea where it sprouted fr
om – maybe she’d seen it in a file somewhere, or heard it mentioned in a lesson long since forgotten. “Vraxar!” she said. “That’s what these are!”
“I’ll take your word for it,” he said with a shrug. “I’m sure they won’t mind if I refer to them as alien bastards or whatever else comes to mind.”
“Call them what you like, Larry,” she said. “Come on, let’s get that processor pulled before any more of the alien bastards show up.”
They hurried along towards the open doorway, wary for sounds that would indicate there were Vraxar close by. A sign dangled above the entrance. Hub Core Processing Area. There were no additional warnings of punishment for unauthorised transgressors into the area. If you’d come this far, you were probably looking over your shoulder already.
At the junction, Cruz looked both ways. The right-hand corridor was deserted. To the left at a distant junction, there were shapes, twisted in death. She stared hard – there’d been a big fight here and both human soldiers and Vraxar had died. The walls were scarred from repeater or gauss fire which had left countless furrows and gouges. There’d been at least one explosion and several of the wall plates had melted away, before solidifying into new, uneven shapes.
Cruz looked away from the mangled bodies. In contrast to the nearby carnage, the interior of the processing room was mundane and apparently empty. There was no sound from within except for a low humming, emanating from an unknown source.
“Wait,” she said.
Cruz dashed over and through the doorway, her rifle sweeping into the corners of the processing room. To her relief there were no Vraxar soldiers, waiting patiently out of sight to shoot any humans who might happen by. After the effort it had taken to get here the room itself was surprisingly small, especially considering the importance of what was within. There was a single, modern console to one side, whilst the centre of the room was taken up by a smooth, floor-to-ceiling square-edged pillar of metal which was a little less than a metre wide.
Keller joined her in the room.
“Around this side,” he said, heading straight around the pillar.
Cruz joined him, shivering in the cold of the room. From this side, the pillar had a row of square handles jutting from its surface. Each was clearly numbered in red, starting from number one near to floor level and going up to number fifteen which was high enough that a ladder was required to reach it.
“We don’t have fifteen clusters,” she said.
“Redundancy. Or maybe if they ever wanted to beef it up.” He raised his hands in a who knows? gesture. “It’s always better to have the option to add more processing grunt if you need it.”
“Number Five?”
“Yep. Just grab the handle and pull.”
“That’ll put the data array into a static state?”
Keller pulled out his tablet and showed her the screen. “There’s only one core running. Once that’s removed we can all go home and put our feet up.”
“Funny guy,” she said.
“Go on, Lieutenant.”
Cruz put out a hand and wrapped her fingers around the handle. It was ice-cold and damp. She pulled and a square block slid partway clear.
“There,” she said.
“Keep going,” Keller urged.
She pulled it further, until the entire unit came free. It was heavier than she was expecting and the end of the drawer fell, striking the floor hard.
“If you break it, just hope they don’t start docking the cost of a replacement from your pay.”
In spite of the situation, Cruz couldn’t help laughing. “Is that it done?”
Keller brandished his tablet at her. “All clusters dead, gone and offline. Well done, Lieutenant, you just saved humanity from the rampaging Vraxar hordes.”
It was a success, but Cruz couldn’t help feel like they’d only accomplished a part of what was needed. She put the processor drawer carefully onto the floor. It didn’t look like much – a flat slab of metal with a six-inch square etched into the middle which she presumed housed the core.
“It’s small.”
“Every generation is smaller than the one before. These Obsidiar cores are something entirely new.”
“What will the Vraxar do now?” she asked. “This should slow them down until the Space Corps can get its act together and send a fleet here.”
“Maybe they’ll fly away home and leave us be.” He saw the seriousness in her face. “They’ll have to take the data arrays. Get them to a facility that can analyse the molecular arrangement of the units. Then, they’ll need to piece it together again. It won’t be easy, especially since the last encryption lock will remain in place.”
“Hard, not impossible.”
“With the right gear, they could do it.”
“Where are the arrays?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“The CCB?”
“Not hard to guess, was it?”
“Seems not. How would we get there?”
“Out the door, turn right, according to the sign hanging over the passage. There must be an underground link.”
“I didn’t see the sign. Too many bodies.”
“You’re not seriously thinking of going to the CCB? The place must be crawling with Vraxar.”
“Yeah. Do you know exactly where the data arrays are located in the CCB?”
“I haven’t got a clue, Lieutenant. I was here to work on the hub – they don’t give guided tours of the Colonel’s office. Besides, the arrays won’t be small like this CPU stack – they’ll fill a big room. All those grenades you’re carrying probably won’t be enough to wipe it out.”
Cruz sighed. Having come this far, she was reluctant to give up. On the other hand, she knew they’d been lucky to get as far as this. Once they started running into big groups of Vraxar, she and Keller would be killed in no time. Bravery was encouraged in the Corps, suicide generally not.
“We’ve done our bit, Larry. Let’s cut and run.”
Keller didn’t ask if she wanted to change her mind – he’d clearly had enough.
“Back the way we came,” he said.
She gave him a half-hearted thumbs-up in response and tried to smile. It didn’t feel quite like a failure under the circumstances, but she couldn’t shake the feeling of disappointment.
The corridors outside were clear and the pair of them set off with caution, retracing their footsteps.
Chapter Seventeen
Fleet Admiral John Duggan was still in his office, though he wished he was elsewhere. He was frustrated beyond measure - every time he came up with a new idea or approach to this catastrophe, something outside his control interfered with his plans. The most galling aspect was that the largest obstacles were put in the way by his own side.
“What came from your informal meeting with Subjos Kion-Tur?” asked Councillor Stahl. “Our attempts at negotiation through the standard channels are ongoing. I assume you obtained a more straightforward response?”
“The Ghasts will help, Councillor. In exchange, they want Obsidiar.”
Stahl’s expression didn’t change, nor did the tone of his voice. “They can’t have any. The Confederation Council has plans for our reserves and those plans don’t involve giving it to the Ghasts.”
“They will put three Obsidiar-cored battleships at our disposal in return for half a million tonnes – twenty percent of our stocks.”
“I hope you left the Subjos suitably rebuffed, Fleet Admiral?” asked Councillor Watanabe.
“I told him I would bring his offer to the Confederation Council. Three Ghast Oblivions would provide an incredible boost to our offensive capabilities.”
“We have six operational Hadrons, do we not?” asked Stahl.
“Only one powered by Obsidiar, which is too far away to be immediately useful. You already know this.” Duggan paused. “There is news from Response Fleet Alpha. Not ten minutes ago I received a communication from Captain George Kang on the New Beginning. Response Fleet Alp
ha was defeated – destroyed - and Captain Kang was lucky to escape.”
The group of Councillors arrayed against him shuffled uncomfortably – something they were getting good at. Duggan knew them well enough to realise they’d pinned their hopes on Response Fleet Alpha outperforming expectations. Whilst that operation was ongoing, they could put off the more difficult decisions. Now, they no longer had the luxury of wasting time.
“Do you have details?” asked Councillor Kemp.
“I will provide a full report later this morning. In summary, our warships were attacked without provocation by a superior foe. Alien ships equipped with energy shields, Councillors.” Duggan faced the group through the video screen – these were the most influential members of the Confederation Council and could usually sway the others if they desired it. “Please bring forward your decision on whether we can refit our fleet from the Obsidiar reserves. You should also reconsider the ban on nuclear missiles. They are an efficient way to disable an energy shield.”
Councillor Monkton stepped forward. “The utilisation of nuclear weapons is a touchy subject. Our citizens do not like to think we rely on such outdated, dirty methods of warfare.”
“I think they would prefer to know we are using every means possible to ensure their survival.”
“We will add it to the agenda. In addition, you will have our answer on the Obsidiar in due course, Admiral. Rest assured we are aware of the importance.” His eyes narrowed. “I hear the ES Maximilian has been diverted from its usual patrol route.”
“One of our planets has been attacked,” Duggan replied. “Of course I am making preparations for the unknown.”
“Then why have you summoned it to New Earth, Admiral?” asked Monkton, a note of triumph creeping into his voice.
Negation Force (Obsidiar Fleet Book 1) Page 14
