by Sam Bradbury
Dimly, I became aware of two things. First, that there was a fourth capture trooper thundering along the walkway towards the decking and that meant I had no chance, not with three of them; me, dazed and unable to fight back.
The second thing I became aware of was the roar of an Intruder and weakly I raised my head to see the ship draw level with the deck of the platform. On it was Jammer, alive. She sat at the rear as though wounded. In front of her, facing towards my position, was Narville – again, a very much alive captain Narville – and he was holding a minigun. The two capture troopers screamed and went down in a welter of blood as he raked gunfire across the platform, saving my skin, and then I heard rather than saw the fourth capture trooper running onto the platform and found myself squeezing my eyes tightly closed, expecting him to ram the knives home as he reached me. But instead his target was Narville and without breaking stride he jumped to the hand rail and leapt off the elevator platform and on to the Intruder.
For a moment the capture trooper was dangling from the cockpit of the Intruder, then he brought back his blade and smashed through the glass of the cockpit and I caught sight of a shocked-looking Hooper within, the Intruder immediately beginning to lose altitude and spin as he grappled to steer and fend off his assailant at the same time. But the Hig wasn’t interested in Hooper; he wanted Narville and Jammer, and even as the lurch sent them sprawling he was hauling himself up to the main deck.
I saw Narville pull himself to his feet to meet him, the minigun having gone over the edge. Bravely, he moved forward to protect Jammer who knelt injured at the rear of the Intruder. Face to face now. The capture trooper moved forward, his knife hand raised, ready to finish Narville, and I watched, helpless, from the freight elevator platform.
Then, suddenly, came the roar of another Intruder and rising level with us was Rico. He stood on the deck holding a grapple launcher, and for a second we all stared open-mouthed at him – including the capture trooper. It was just the distraction Narville needed, and he leaned back and kicked the Hig in the chest, shoving him backwards from the deck of the Intruder just as Rico opened fire with the grapple launcher.
The capture trooper was sent flying, speared by the grappling hook that slammed through his head and then plummeting to the ground below.
And somehow, against all the odds, we were all still alive.
We looked at each other: me, Rico, Jammer and Narville. We’d shared something, though nobody wanted to give it a name.
‘Sev, are you okay?’ called Rico. I put a hand to my forehead and checked out some blood there, but it was nothing.
‘Yeah,’ I grinned, ‘I’m okay.’
Not that we had time to celebrate the fact that everybody was alive and ass-kicking, because the MAWLR chose that moment to open fire on our position. It was still some way off, but was making its way towards us. Sensors must have picked us up. And it still remained between us and the space elevators.
As though I’d suddenly remembered the threat to Earth, I looked up into the sky to see the empty space where the enemy fleet had been. Just us now.
Rico indicated the MAWLR. ‘Dammit,’ he exclaimed, ‘it’s blocking the elevator.’
‘Rico, go,’ said Narville to him, and as they looked at one another I could see them putting their differences behind them. ‘I’ll follow your lead. We’ll do this together.’
Rico nodded then spoke to me, ‘Sev, you’re with me,’ before barking orders into his pick-up. ‘Raiders, this is Raider Command. All groups on my vector. Let’s finish this.’
We looked over to where the MAWLR was beginning to lumber towards us.
Either we died or it did.
Chapter Thirty-four
The MAWLR must have been weakened. It didn’t look to me as though it was at full strength. Even so, an under-strength MAWLR was more of a daunting prospect than a full-strength anything else, but we had four Intruders and we were swarming all over it, opening fire with the onboard miniguns, bullet strikes sparking on the cabin of the MAWLR as we raced around it.
‘Proximity defences coming online,’ warned Jammer. ‘We got rockets inbound.’
The MAWLR was doing everything it could to protect itself from the onslaught. It was desperately trying to keep us away from its arc cannon. But Intruders are agile and fast. No, they may not be installed with a rappelling system, but they sure as hell can move quickly in the air.
Somebody screamed that the cooling panels were open and we raced round to the side, pummelling the open vent with bullets until fire began pouring from it. All the time the MAWLR blaring.
‘What does it take to kill this thing?’ shouted Rico.
More than we had? I wondered. Not for the first time. Because now came more inbound missiles, a salvo of them passing so close to us that Hooper had to execute an immediate evasive manoeuvre.
‘We need to get that last panel,’ shouted Rico now. The smoke billowing from the MAWLR was thicker than ever and we could hardly see the Intruders on the other side, keeping up their barrage of the cabin. For a moment we thought that we had finally defeated it when there was a great explosion, but then Jammer detected an auxiliary power supply kicking in and – for Christ’s sake – it still would not die. I began to worry that we were going to run out of fuel or ammunition, that the MAWLR was simply impregnable, that it couldn’t be beaten and we were going to have to retreat and find some other way through to the space elevators.
Then, at last, chains of explosions erupted along its hull. Then more. Until the MAWLR was finally crumpling to the ground and suddenly the comlink was alive, everybody celebrating the fact that it was finally dead.
Meanwhile, the ground troops finished clearing up the rest of the Higs, and we moved through to the space elevators. We were there, at last.
And disappointment doesn’t cover it.
Because there we found that the set-up was not as grand as it had looked from the distance. Sure, there were the four space elevators side by side, stretching up into a limitless sky, but at their base we had expected there to be at least the remnants of an operation: vehicles, some kind of operation centre, some comms equipment at least.
But there was nothing. Instead there were simply metal steps leading up to concrete bunkers in which were the huge pods used for the elevation.
We looked in vain for ships. What we needed most were ships, so that we could get off this rock and warn Earth of the invasion. But there were none and we were standing around struggling to process that information and somehow deal with the almost total crushing dismay of knowing that all our efforts had been for nothing when Rico arrived in his Intruder, the ship settling to the ground and dispensing one very happy grunt, who without picking up on the general mood, indicated the MAWLR behind him and announced, gleefully, ‘Now that’s what I’m talking about.’
Behind him, the MAWLR continued to flame and smoke, and every now and then a chain of small explosions fireworked across it. When I looked across the rubble of the city to see the crippled MAWLR, it felt good; when I remembered that we had pushed our way through here to find ships that did not exist, I didn’t feel so good.
Now Rico picked up on the atmosphere and he looked around the yard, perhaps for the first time taking in that the elevator station was a bare-bones facility, and not brimming with the equipment we needed, and that standing around it was a threadbare unit of dejected grunts. The MAWLR had killed almost half our guys and I could see the reality of the situation hit home on Rico’s face as he gazed at the remaining survivors.
Hooper stepped forward to explain. ‘There are no ships down here,’ he said, his voice flat and emotionless, drained of life and hope. ‘Our only way off this planet are these space elevators,’ and with that he signalled behind himself.
‘There’s just not enough of us left,’ said Narville, shaking his head, staring at the ground, looking like the rest of us felt: defeated.
It wasn’t like Rico to accept defeat easily, though. ‘Look,’ he said def
iantly, ‘if we’re going down, then let’s take as many of these bastards with us as we can. I want it to mean something.’
He was just venting, though. What bastards to take with us? Where? There wasn’t an enemy to be seen. Where were the enemy right now? They were on their way to Earth. And once they had Earth that was it. They were on course to dominate the known universe.
Jammer stepped forward. You could almost see her mind working. She was another one who never gave up.
‘They gotta have a communications room up in the station, right?’ she said, waiting for someone to take her up on it.
Narville nodded. ‘We could still warn Earth,’ he agreed, and Jammer moved over to a primitive-looking console at the base of the nearest elevator and began poking around.
Rico still wasn’t convinced. ‘Is that all we can do?’
Heads went down. Narville moved over to Rico, and in a quiet voice said, ‘You did your best, son. We all did.’
And now, for perhaps the first time since I’d known him, I saw Rico Velasquez’s shoulders slump as he began to admit defeat.
I stepped forward, took a deep breath, knowing that next thing I said could change everything. My next word had to be the most important of my life.
‘Bullshit,’ I said.
They all looked my way. I swallowed. Okay, I’d hoped for something a bit more profound than ‘bullshit’ but, even so, I carried on. ‘Do you know the odds against us still being here?’ I added. ‘Right here, right now? They’re astronomical. That means something. Now maybe we can’t stop the invasion. But warning Earth? There’s nothing more important. Jammer, get on that console. Pull up the layout of the station at the top of the elevator.’
Jammer flashed me a smile. ‘I’m on it,’ she said with renewed purpose.
I turned to the other survivors. ‘Listen up. If I’m going down, I want to make sure all these bastards remember my name.’
As though to add a touch of drama to my speech, the crippled MAWLR behind me exploded, and I stood there as the shockwave rode past me.
Rico looked my way, grinning and pointing at me. ‘And that is why you don’t fuck with the ISA.’ His announcement met with cheers from the other men, suddenly raring to go, spoiling for a fight.
‘Jammer, Hooper, which elevator will get you closest to the communication centre?’
Jammer pointed. ‘That one.’
‘Take that one and get a warning out. We’ll take the other one. Find a way to delay the launch.’
‘How?’ asked Hooper.
I looked at him. ‘We’ll de-orbit the space station,’ I said.
Chapter Thirty-five
De-orbit the space station. Create a diversion for Jammer to reach the comms room.
Which meant reaching the space station. Which meant penetrating the heart of the biggest enemy force this side of Archangel.
It was a suicide mission, and we knew it. The mood? Well, it was no pity party. There was no wailing and gnashing of teeth and nobody had to be talked into going. We were ISA; we had a job to do; we were going to do it, and every man among us wanted to be a part of it.
On the other hand, we weren’t exactly laughing and giggling either.
We took secondary elevators up to the main pods, most of us standing in one of them, with Jammer, Hooper and a smaller team in the other, each rattling to the uppermost portion of their respective elevator pod. Sixty exhausted guys trying a final roll of the dice to save an Earth that had sold us out.
If we succeeded, Earth owed us an apology, that much was sure.
A posthumous apology, it would have to be.
The main pod was the size of a small hotel – a hotel designed to blast off and shoot up the elevator cables to the space station. There were sections of it designated for supplies, weapons and goods, and we passed these as the elevator took us to the passenger section of the main caddie. They were empty, the other sections. Not long ago they would have been full of cargo destined for the space station, all helping to supply the Helghast for their invasion of Earth. But the time for preparation was over; as far as we knew, the invasion itself was imminent.
If you’re one of those guys who likes to look for the silver lining, then you might say that with the invasion imminent at least the Helghast would be focusing their resources on that and hopefully not monitoring events back on their home planet nor on the space elevators. It also meant that the elevators themselves were empty and would travel more quickly, ultimately delivering us swiftly to the space station where every second would count when it came to the element of surprise.
And that would be your silver lining. That would be about the extent of it.
The secondary elevator stopped at the passenger caddie and metal gates slid aside to allow us out. We walked onto the main gantry, with boots clanging on the metal, and it struck me that after the fury of the battle with the MAWLR, the world was suddenly still. I could hear the whistling of the wind through the elevator structure, and from somewhere came a ringing sound as a loose cable was blown against the metal. Otherwise, there was silence, each man contemplating his end, thinking that maybe he wouldn’t die, but most likely he would, because one thing we knew about this space station for sure was that whether it was Jorhan Stahl’s personal army or the massed forces of the Helghast military it would be well manned. We had to expect some serious resistance, whether we caught them by surprise or not.
If we did get out of this alive – just on the off chance that we might get out alive – then I was going to buy that girl a beer.
We moved into the pod where there were racks for passengers and an operations centre. Narville took a seat, wheeling himself along the panels to get the measure of the control system, then beginning to flick switches. Initializing lights came on in the panel. Then bright white illumination flicked on along the whole of the length of the pod, and I knew how a bug feels trapped in a light unit. Looking across I saw the same thing happening in the elevator next door as Jammer flicked switches too, caught a glimpse of her before the lights flared on and her pod was turned into a huge shining lantern, suspended in the sky.
We moved to the racks, sat down and reached for overhead harnesses to secure us in, and for the first time in what felt like hours, someone spoke.
‘Hey, how come there’s no cup holder?’ said Gedge, and we laughed at that, maybe longer and louder than the gag deserved, but enough to remind ourselves that we weren’t dead yet.
The humming grew louder. Again I looked to the side and now saw Jammer’s elevator begin to vibrate. I craned my neck to look down at the ground and could see the boosters engaging, creating huge, billowing clouds of smoke at the base, then suddenly the white, illuminated pod was away, racing up high-tensile carbon nanotube cable towards the space station, and I felt as though I’d just seen an apartment block blasting off into space.
Meanwhile, our pod was ready to go. Narville wheeled himself into the centre of the console and latched into the Frontier base, ready for launch, checking the pilot’s seat was secure then reached behind to pull on his harness. He checked over his shoulder that we were secure and we regarded him balefully.
Satisfied he turned to the front. ‘Prepare for laser ignition,’ he said.
Then flicked a switch.
And suddenly we were pinned to seats, immense G pressing down upon us. The feeling was like being in a drop, except in reverse, the speed seeming to increase, then increase further, until I began to wonder if we were going to be able to take it any more. After all, we were human and the elevator was designed for Helghast, and did they have superior physicality? I wasn’t sure. I don’t remember learning about that. I wish I’d paid more attention in sch– argh.
And then just as it felt as though the flesh of my face was about to pull away from my bones, and as though my entire body was about to be shoved through the floor of the space elevator, we broke free of the Helghast atmosphere and my next thought after the relief of being freed from the G was, At last. At
last I’m off that godforsaken planet, and even if I do die up here on this space station the one good thing about that will be the fact that I didn’t die on that shitty rock below.
Suddenly the pod began to slow and we went from being pummelled with G to experiencing a sudden, nauseating sense of drag. I looked to the aperture and saw space outside, immediately aware that we’d blasted our way right into the heart of enemy territory. Around us was the fleet: thousands of cruisers, battleships, dropships and fighters. Supply ships moved between them. I saw smaller shuttles, not like anything I’d seen before. Strike ships. They were making runs between the fleet and the main space station, and now I got my first good look at that too, the sight making my jaw drop.
If Helghan on the ground was a planet of ruin and wreckage, uninhabitable ice flats and hostile jungle, a place where its naturally occurring features and its inhabitants had somehow colluded to make it the most hostile, dangerous and unwelcoming place in the entire universe, then here was its polar opposite.
Here was a man-made city in the sky. Here was the ultimate expression of the Helghast dedication to the war machine and to the expansion of their race. It began with the most advanced vehicles and cruisers and breathtakingly sophisticated weaponry, and it ended here with a city in space: a modular station with a huge main stem hanging in the air, its core unit surrounded by a series of further ring modules, all of which had their own docking station and all of which now buzzed with traffic, the whole thing hanging in geo-stationary orbit.
And now, looking out at the massed Helghast army, I had to pray they hadn’t got their shit together enough to realize that we’d hijacked their space elevators. We were sitting targets if they decided to blow us out of the sky right now. I saw Jammer’s elevator reaching a module above our heads and found I was holding my breath, half expecting to see it suddenly rupture and shatter as the Higs opened fire, either from space or within the space station itself. Nothing. Christ, the thing was bright enough. It was like a huge beacon shouting, ‘Shoot me,’ up there.
