Neither did Cruz.
“They’re not in this bunker for the good of their health,” she said. “Whatever it is they’re up to, they have the expectation it’ll produce results.” Then she realised. “The Lucid’s data arrays will hold plenty of useful information.”
“They can’t have that ship,” said Gibbs with surprising fervour. “It’s already a shame the Space Corps has decided to hobble it by taking away the Obsidiar. That ship is a marvel – an absolute marvel.”
“If your tablet has an interface with the Lucid’s AI, could you activate the automatic weapons systems? That would give the Vraxar something to worry about.”
Gibbs laughed bitterly. “I work on life support, Lieutenant. I certainly don’t have clearance to start the weapons. Can you imagine if they allowed everyone working on the ship into every single system? The Lucid is carrying twelve thousand Lambda X missiles! What if someone accidentally triggered a launch?”
“I assume there’d be fail safes in place,” said Cruz drily.
“Yes, one might think. Anyway, you’d need the codes from an active duty warship captain in order to trigger a weapons launch. Or Colonel Tenney, though I expect he’s no longer with us. As for my own capabilities? I can perform any number of functions relating to the life support. Not much use against rampaging aliens, I shouldn’t imagine.”
“I work in the comms hub. I might have clearance to use the Lucid’s comms systems – if I could get a message to Sergeant McKinney he’ll know what to do. Can I have a look at your diagnostics tablet?”
“Here you go. I believe each tablet requires specialist setup,” Gibbs warned.
Cruz took the tablet and entered her biological data. The screen didn’t quite go blank, but it showed only a top-level overview of the Lucid’s comms system. Gibbs leaned over to look.
“That’s all I would see as well – the bare minimum required in case I needed to check if two systems are speaking to each other. This tablet isn’t set up for comms.”
Another bright idea. “Larry was carrying a tablet and he worked in comms. I don’t want to look at him.”
Gibbs’ expression softened. “I’ll get it.”
The technician walked quietly towards the doorway and looked furtively outside. Then, she dashed out of sight, returning a few seconds later with a second tablet and a gauss pistol.
Gibbs handed over the tablet and Cruz signed into it, trying to ignore the misting of her eyes and the physical pain hammering through much of her body.
“I’m getting the same on this tablet.”
“Trust the bloody Space Corps,” said Gibbs. “Each man or woman given only one specific task and not trusted with the access to do anything else.”
“Where are the offices for the comms team working on the Lucid?”
“I thought you might ask that,” Gibbs replied. “They are on the bottom floor, not too far from the guard’s station.”
“There might be a comms-enabled tablet in one of those offices.”
“Almost certainly. Equally, there are likely to be many of these Vraxar on the lookout for survivors.”
Cruz smiled tiredly. “I’ve come this far, I’m not going to stop now. Will you help me?”
“I’m not convinced this is the best plan to ensure our personal survival. I’ll come.”
“I’ll need to lean on you. And I don’t know the way.”
“I was aware of the ramifications when I agreed to help,” said Gibbs primly.
“You’ll need Lieutenant Reynolds’ pistol. Was there a rifle outside this office?”
Gibbs reluctantly picked up the second gauss pistol between her forefinger and thumb. “I didn’t see a rifle. Maybe the Vraxar took it.”
After a minute’s preparation, during which Cruz tucked the gauss pistol into her belt and Technician Gibbs listened out for approaching enemies, the pair of them set off. Cruz was in great pain, particularly her eye where Reynolds had struck her, and also her broken ankle. She was pleased to note the fog had lifted from her brain and she could think clearly. There was no doubting her need for medical attention, but she pretended to herself it wasn’t urgent.
“We’ll need to move faster than this,” said Gibbs, looking over her shoulder.
“I’ll give it my best shot.”
With her teeth clenched, Cruz dug deep and the two of them headed towards the underground bunker’s comms offices.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Vraxar rocket flashed across the room with a shriek, missed an overturned cabinet by inches and entered the south corridor leading from the room. It struck the wall a dozen metres along at a shallow angle and exploded in a thunderous roar, discharging plasma in a blossoming cloud of sickly green. It washed along the corridor, much of it roiling away from McKinney and his squad. The heat came after, sending a wave of scalding air over the closest of the men. Their spacesuits blackened and charred, but the material held up and didn’t break.
McKinney didn’t have time to offer thanks for the lucky escape. His brain took over his mouth and he started barking orders.
“Squad C, into position east. Squad B cover west. Not you Alvey. Grover, watch south. Shout if you see movement. The rest of you, keep your heads down. Repeaters, not rifles – spray those alien shitheads with everything you’ve got. Squad A, we’re north. Webb, Alvey, plasma tubes with us. Two rounds of two. Take out that bastard firing at us. I don’t want to see any more rockets coming this way.”
The men scrambled into position, doing their best to keep out of the firing arc of the Vraxar along the corridors. Webb was quickest with his plasma tube – with impressive timing and dexterity, he charged the weapon, leaned sideways and launched a rocket along the north corridor.
“Yee-har!” he shouted in exhilaration. “Charging for the next shot.”
Repeater fire started up from the men hiding behind the toppled cabinets. The ching-ching-ching sound of two or three weapons combined with that of another three, the sound building up to a roaring clatter of dense metal punching through the air at unimaginable velocity. There was something primal about the sound that made a soldier feel simultaneously unafraid and invulnerable, as if there was nothing which could withstand the onslaught and the grit behind it.
McKinney felt it too – the bloodlust coursed through his veins, urging him to throw caution to the wind and advance upon the Vraxar with his repeater cutting down everything which tried to stop him. With an effort he suppressed the desire and tried his best to do his duty as the commanding officer of these men.
More plasma rockets screamed away, fired by Alvey and Webb. The explosives detonated to the north in ferocious light, heat and sound.
“Webb – east. Alvey – west. Two shots.”
The enemy responded. Their slugs poured into the room, pinging off the walls and the solid sides of the cabinets. McKinney’s squad returned fire, whilst others threw primed grenades along the corridors, hoping to catch the Vraxar in the blasts.
“Got one!” shouted Musser.
“More coming north!”
“I’m out of grenades!”
Doing his best to keep a level head amongst the chaos, McKinney crouched behind cover to one side of the north corridor and evaluated their position. He checked his HUD map overlay to get an idea how easy it would be for the enemy to reinforce their positions and what scope they had to move from one cardinal point to the next. He listened to the reports from his troops and did what he could to ensure each of the corridors was defended. His movement sensor picked up shapes of orange. They came in and out of sight, never showing themselves completely. He put the barrel of his repeater through a gap between two cabinets and held down the activation trigger. The sound and recoil were brutal, and the muscles in his arms and shoulders fought to keep the weapon steady.
Brogan went down, his head shattered by a gauss slug ricocheting from the sloped edge of the cabinet in front of him. Roldan took a round in the shoulder and screamed in pain. Armand Grover wa
s the only one who had any training with a med-box and he came around the edge of the room, half-crawling and half-running.
The clatter of metal grew in volume and intensity, until it was a constant droning thrum.
“They got a heavy repeater turret somewhere down here!” said Evans across the open channel. “Shit, that’s the west. We need a launcher west!”
“Alvey get there,” shouted McKinney.
“I’ve got this, Sergeant!”
The figure of Alvey rose up a few feet from where McKinney was positioned, the plasma launcher over his right shoulder. The coils whined and the projectile vanished along the corridor. Before he could get back into a crouch, bullets smashed into the soldier’s body. A dozen high-velocity slugs meant for use against lightly armoured vehicles hurled him away as if he’d been picked up and thrown by an invisible giant. McKinney heard the soft impacts and he saw the blossoming cloud of red droplets scattering in the air.
“Shit, he missed,” said Musser.
The heavy repeater turret continued firing, its slugs pummelling an ever-changing tapestry of dents and gouges into the metal wall.
Anger came upon McKinney, gripping his body and challenging him to defy it. He didn’t try. The fallen soldier’s plasma tube lay on the floor next to his mangled body. In four quick crouch-steps McKinney covered the distance and scooped up the launcher, clutching the heavy tube to his chest like it was an infant.
There was an art to the plasma tube. Men like Dexter Webb could spin the tube onto their shoulder at the same time as it was charging to fire. They could launch the rocket and be back into cover within a second. McKinney didn’t have the knack and in the face of a devastating hail of gauss fire he’d usually have perished.
Something happened to him – the anger sharpened his senses and his brain began to detect patterns amongst the irregularities of the fighting. The shouts of his squad faded into the background and their movements slowed. His eyes recognized the swaying pulsation in the incoming gauss fire – how it moved this way and that, leaving streaks across his vision.
McKinney rose to his feet outside the arc of repeater fire. His hands swung the tube upwards even as his fingers pressed firmly on the activation trigger. His feet took him a step to the side, the movement perfectly in time with the dance of the Vraxar repeater. The orange shapes were still there – large shapes moving through clouds of smoke - not as quick as a human but stronger and tougher. They clustered around the mobile turret, using it as cover.
The rocket shot from the end of the tube, curving gently through the air. McKinney didn’t need to watch it.
“Boom!” shouted Mills.
“Good shot, Sergeant!”
More smoke poured into the room and the heavy repeater stopped firing. The enemy fire was sporadic from every direction.
“Looking clear to the north,” said Elder.
“Not much return fire to the west.”
“It’s time to move,” said McKinney loudly enough to cut across the comms chatter. “We’re going north before a thousand of these bastards arrive to reinforce their friends. Webb, send them a friendly warning that we’re coming.”
“You got it, Sergeant.”
Webb fired his tube and ducked into cover, waiting while the others crawled amongst the wrecked cabinets to gather against the wall to either side of the north corridor.
“Musser, take this plasma tube off me,” McKinney continued. “I could never aim them straight.”
“Don’t stand too close to him, that’s all I can say, sir,” warned Elder. “He’s been known to point them the wrong way.”
“This isn’t the time - shut up.”
McKinney checked to see if Roldan was able to continue. The material of the soldier’s spacesuit had sealed over his wound and his face had the pale, frozen expression of a man pumped full of adrenaline and whatever other crap the suit and Grover’s med-box had chosen to ensure his wellbeing.
“Squad A – it’s your lucky day. We’re going first. B and C follow when we’re clear.”
“Aw, shit,” said Elder without noticeable rancour. “We get all the best ones.”
“Webb, fire another one.”
“There are only got three more rockets left in this tube, Sergeant. Just so you know.”
Webb fired again. McKinney didn’t wait to see the result; he gripped the barrel of his repeater and sprinted around the corner. The plasma rocket detonated with a thump, flooding his visor sensor with information. In the split second it took to adjust, he was at a full run, his repeater swaying from side to side in his grip. Smoke and heat came, producing alarms on his HUD. He ignored them and kept on running, the others from Squad A visible at the extremes of his periphery.
His movement detector highlighted an enemy soldier stumbling across the room ahead. McKinney shot from the waist, sending a spray of slugs into the Vraxar. It went down and another appeared. He realised he still had the trigger held and it was the easiest thing in the world to alter his aim a fraction to the left. The second fell, torn to pieces, and a third followed. The others of his squad dropped behind, unable to keep up with his pace even over this short distance.
Before he knew it, he was in the room. His eyes swept from corner to corner – the place was a mess of burning, twisted technology. Melted consoles and instrument panels glowed with heat, many of them torn from their fixings by the force of multiple grenade and rocket blasts. There were bodies amongst the wreckage, their flesh blackened and split, metal augmentations ripped away. Smoke rose, greasy and thick.
“Clear!” he shouted. “B and C move up on the double!”
The others of Squad A entered the room and instantly moved to positions of cover. McKinney felt his chest swell with pride – these men hadn’t seen real action, but here and now when it counted, their training and instinct was taking over. Let’s show these Vraxar we’re not so easily beaten.
McKinney used the moments it took for Squads B and C to arrive to check his HUD map overlay. There were two additional exits from this room – one north and another to the west. Both passages led to the same place and were more or less the same length.
“Which way, Sergeant?” asked Bannerman.
“We’re going west,” McKinney replied. “One guess is as good as another.”
“I see movement both ways,” said Garcia.
He and Clifton fired their rifles, aiming to the west. Return fire pinged off the far wall of the room behind them.
“Crap,” said Garcia, trying to shuffle to one side while firing again.
“I hit something.”
“Clear.”
“Sure?”
“Definitely clear, Sergeant.”
“Squad A on point again,” said McKinney. “Let’s move!”
This time there was no grumbling. They ran along the corridor to the west. Aside from the sound of boots thudding against the floor, it was eerily quiet. It seemed to McKinney as though this engagement with the enemy had paused only long enough for a deep intake of breath, after which it would surely resume with a much greater intensity than it had before.
The west corridor wasn’t long. It continued for twenty-five metres, past a series of deserted offices and then it turned north. McKinney paused only briefly to check for movement.
“Clear,” he called, aware the rest of Squad A were crowded at his back. Now they’d had their first experience of combat the men had the rookie’s eagerness for more. It was best to lose the taste quickly, McKinney knew – the first into battle was the first to be ripped to shreds by repeater fire.
He became aware of gauss fire behind him – his sensor picked up a short volley of it.
“I’ve got a group of them coming from the north,” said Corporal Li.
“Where’s Musser?”
“With me, sir. He just took them out.”
McKinney made a decision. “Squad C, hold that room. We’re close to our target and I don’t want to be cut off when we come back this way. Where’s Cl
ifton?”
“With me, sir.”
“We’ll need his explosives. Send him up. Mills, you drop back and reinforce Squad C.”
“Roger that.”
“Move,” said McKinney, stepping around the corner and breaking into a run.
There was a stairwell near here which led up to the ground floor, as well as to the levels below this one. It was the likely direction from which reinforcements would come and McKinney didn’t want to stumble into hundreds of the enemy if he could avoid it. Although it felt as if they’d been fighting for hours, in reality it was only minutes. He didn’t know how long it would take the Vraxar to muster a full response, but his squad’s advantage of surprise was definitely running out.
The corridor executed an inexplicable dog-leg left-right at the end. McKinney stopped again and looked around. The corridor stretched on for another seventy or eighty metres.
“Movement,” he said, ducking out of sight.
He found himself in a situation where his eyes absorbed the scene, but it took his brain a few moments to interpret the details. By the time he realised something was amiss, the finer edges of the memory had begun to blur.
“What is it, Sergeant?” asked Webb.
“Wait,” he snapped. “There are Vraxar coming towards us – six, maybe seven. I think there’s someone with them.”
“Like a person type of someone?” asked Webb.
“More than one. I don’t know.”
Webb wasn’t the quickest thinker. “We’ve got to do something,” he said.
“That’s right, soldier, we’re going to do something.”
The sound of a woman’s voice reached them. The voice was raised in anger and it didn’t care who heard. “Put me down you stinking shitbag!”
“Whoever that was, she doesn’t sound happy,” said Garcia.
McKinney looked at the soldiers with him, deciding who he trusted most. “We’re going to use rifles. Garcia, Elder, Causey – come up here. The targets are coming our way. We’re going to step out and shoot them, taking great care we don’t hit anyone human.”
Negation Force (Obsidiar Fleet Book 1) Page 20
