“This equipment has been designed so that it is as hard to operate as possible!” the Ghast growled.
“Leave it for the moment, sergeant,” said Duggan. “You have done admirably so far, but you can’t expect to learn the intricacies of a warship like this one in a day or two. Especially when you lack the background training.”
“It is infuriating.”
“Do you fellers drink?” asked McLeod. “That’s what we do when we get pissed off with something. We get shitfaced.”
Duggan had no idea how the language modules coped with that particular delivery. Red-Gulos seemed to get the message.
“We have a variety of poisons to make life easier,” the Ghast said with a smile. “And competitions to see who can consume the most.”
McLeod shook his head in mock anguish. “We’ve been fighting for thirty-odd years when really we’re exactly the same. Except for you being grey and tall.”
“Perhaps we’re the same as all Estral?” asked Duggan.
“No,” said Red-Gulos. “We are not. You are not.”
There was no further elaboration and Duggan didn’t push. The Ghasts couldn’t possibly have any memories of their parent species, yet the hatred was clearly strong. Whatever the reason for the schism, it had brought about a lasting enmity.
Twenty minutes from Invarol, Duggan checked they were comfortable with the plan. There wasn’t much to it.
“The cores on the Valpian are fast enough that I feel confident in taking us out of lightspeed very close to the planet. The military facility is known as Dantsvar and if we’re lucky, it’ll be straight below us when we enter local space. More likely, it’ll be someway off around the planet and we’ll need to find it before they can get a general alert out. If there are any ground-based threats, we’ll neutralise them from the air so that we can deploy our soldiers in safety. It’ll be a hard landing and there’ll be no time for mercy.”
“I’d prefer to be out there with the boys and girls, sir,” said McLeod.
“I know, soldier. There are times you have to do what’s best and I need you here more than I need you on the ground. Durham knows what he’s doing with the comms pack.”
“I have no doubts about Corporal Gax,” said Red-Gulos.
“Nor I,” said Duggan. “I’ll speak to him now.”
He used the internal comms to reach Corporal Gax. The Ghast confirmed he was in place by the front boarding ramp, along with the rest of the able-bodied. Duggan had spoken at length with his officers about their preferences between a foot assault and attempting to deploy some of the armour from the Valpian’s hold. In the end there’d been no genuine choice. The soldiers weren’t familiar with the Dreamer armoured vehicles or artillery and they didn’t want to attempt their use when they were under so much pressure. That meant Duggan would have to plant them as close as possible to the location of the missing crew.
The problem he tried to avoid thinking about was his uncertainty where McGlashan, Chainer and Breeze were detained. The details they had on the base were sketchy about most things except for the size. It was big and covered many square kilometres. There was a lot of ground to cover when the enemy could have a fleet already in place or somewhere close.
Since abandoning his crew wasn’t an option, the only one left was to head in there and see what happened. As the minutes counted down, Duggan’s grip on the controls tightened.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Once again, the value of punishingly high processing brute force was made apparent when the Valpian entered normal space a mere thirty thousand kilometres from the surface of Invarol. Duggan blinked in surprise when he realised how close they were. Since he lacked the knowledge to fine-tune the lightspeed runs on the cruiser, he’d programmed in a command to arrive as close as possible, and this was what he ended up with. Given the monumental distances covered by even a short-duration trip at high lightspeed, it was incredible to think the Valpian’s AIs had been able to aim so close and get it right.
The planet Invarol wasn’t what Duggan expected. He’d assumed they would find themselves somewhere high over a bleak, featureless sphere of grey rock, or, failing that, a planet encased in snow or one surrounded by swirling toxic gases.
In fact, the first impression of Invarol was of lush, verdant forests, covering millions of square kilometres. A jagged mountain range ran across the middle like a scar across an otherwise-beautiful face. There were oceans and deserts, with signs of ice at the two poles.
“It looks like the tales I heard of Old Earth,” said McLeod. “Before it went to crap and they tried to fix it.”
Duggan wasn’t immune to the wonders of the scenery, but he couldn’t spare any time to study it.
“We’ve come in on the wrong side,” he said. “I’m taking us around to the Dantsvar facility. Sergeant Red-Gulos, I need to know if there are any hostiles.”
“First sweep is a negative, sir,” said the Ghast. “I am continuing my search. The air is clean and breathable, the surface conditions highly suitable for life.”
The Valpian raced towards the planet’s horizon as if the two were attached by an immensely strong elastic and it appeared as if the entire world rotated underneath them. There was little in the way of atmosphere so high up and the hull temperature remained low. The only thing which kept Duggan from going faster was a worry he might overshoot or simply miss what he was looking for.
“Sir? That’s a city down there,” said Red-Gulos. “A very big city – tens or hundreds of millions might live in it.”
Duggan had a look. The sensors picked up few of the fine details at the speed they were going. There was enough to see tall, magnificent towers, each decorated in one of a thousand different colours.
“No grey,” he said, scarcely believing his own eyes. The architecture looked incredible, even witnessed through the grainy high-speed focus of the sensors.
“There are more,” said Red-Gulos. “Amongst the hills and amongst the forests. This side of the planet is home to dozens of cities.”
“Aren’t we meant to blow them up, sir?” asked McLeod. There was fear in his eyes.
“Do you want to?” asked Duggan.
McLeod didn’t speak. He shook his head once.
“Let’s stick with military targets for now,” said Duggan. “The scope of our mission has changed and we need to make best use of our ammunition.”
Neither McLeod or Red-Gulos offered an argument. They were soldiers and had little appetite to drop bombs on millions of unsuspecting civilians, enemy or not.
“There are aircraft in the sky,” said Red-Gulos. “Small, non-military craft.”
“Ignore them,” Duggan replied. “We should be just about on top of the Dantsvar facility.”
The forests petered out entirely and were replaced by arid plains which extended for over a thousand kilometres in each direction. It wasn’t quite desert, being more of a dry, scrubby land with few trees and rivers.
“There it is!” said Duggan.
“I am scanning the facility,” said Red-Gulos. “On the screen.”
The base could have been lifted in its entirety from a human or Ghast world and dropped here on the plains. From high up, it was a rectangular grey slab of metal, laid flat on the ground. The majority of the buildings were clustered at the northern end. They were mostly high domes of a type Duggan had seen on one of the Ghasts’ worlds. The remainder of the base was given over to dry docks and landing fields. There were vehicles in their hundreds, each heading to wherever it was they would go. Cranes and gantries sprung up from the metal as if they were the ugliest of flowers grown from the least fertile of earth.
When Duggan studied the feeds, he noticed there were huge yellow symbols painted here and there on the ground to indicate the function of each particular section of the base. One of these symbols caught his eye and he almost burst out in laughter at the convenience of it.
“The facility is twenty klicks wide by thirty long,” said Red-Gulos, unaware w
hat Duggan had seen. “There are four trenches, two of them occupied with craft larger than ours. The longest trench is eighteen thousand metres.”
“What else?” asked Duggan.
“There are smaller craft parked towards the eastern perimeter. Two at twelve hundred metres length and one at fifteen hundred.”
“What else?”
“The three smaller vessels are powering up their gravity drives, as well as one of the larger vessels in the nearest dock.”
Red-Gulos had learned a lot about operating the comms, yet he wasn’t able to interpret and deliver the information quick enough. A good comms man or woman could feed target data into the tactical system quicker than a warship’s automated systems could manage it, since the comms officer could zero in on specifics. Without a comms officer onboard, the tactical system would update based on the broadest of sensor data and it could take precious additional seconds.
“There are ten surface-to-air clusters to the north, fully powered up and preparing to launch,” said Duggan, watching as the Valpian’s AIs populated the threat on its tactical systems. “Six more to the south. I’ve identified a preferred landing site at the northern end and I’m taking us towards it. First, we’re going to give these bastards something to think about.”
“The northern clusters have launched, sir,” said McLeod. “Four missiles per cluster. High yield from their size.”
The Valpian was at a height of twenty thousand kilometres – close enough for the inbound missiles to strike them before McLeod was able to properly announce the launch. It mattered little and the warheads exploded against the cruiser’s shields. The power gauges skittered left and right before they settled.
There were dozens of targets, each one automatically assigned a priority by the tactical system. The three smaller warships were given the highest priority. Duggan overrode the recommendation – it was the three thousand metre heavy cruiser powering up in the trench he was concerned about. It was on the ground but it wouldn’t be there for long. He targeted and sent two hundred missiles towards it.
With rapid jabs of his frost-burned fingertips, he selected the smaller craft and sent them a hundred missiles each.
“The first heavy cruiser has got its energy shield up,” said McLeod. “Zero direct strikes on its hull.”
“The warship in the second trench has begun warming up its engines,” said Red-Gulos. “It will be unable to lift off a short while.”
Duggan fired a hundred missiles towards the second heavy cruiser. The Valpian was designed to launch in groups of fifty. Against smaller targets it was overkill, whilst against bigger opponents it was a simple and convenient number.
“Whoa look at that!” said McLeod. “Got them!”
Two of the smaller warships were gone – if they’d been equipped with energy shields it made no difference and both vessels were obliterated by the cascade of missiles. One of the warships made it a few kilometres off the airstrip before it was destroyed and pieces of its hull rained down onto the surface, smashing gantries and crushing hundreds of the workers.
“Damnit, we don’t want to kill our own,” said Duggan.
“We cannot back down, sir,” said Red-Gulos.
“I know. It’s maximum force or we lose,” he replied.
The bridge lights dimmed and gauges jumped frantically. The first heavy cruiser fired three particle beams at the Valpian, none of which penetrated its energy shield. Duggan fired both of the Valpian’s particle beams in return. The weapons had zero travel time and he saw two huge circles of the enemy’s hull light up in white heat. Without warning, a huge explosion ripped through the vessel, centred near to one of the particle beam strikes. The heavy cruiser was split into two parts, one of which was thrown from the docking trench, where it rolled onto its side.
“What the hell?” said McLeod in shock.
“We must have hit one of their ammunition stores,” said Duggan. “It’s destroyed, so stop looking at it. I need to know about the live targets.”
Red-Gulos and McLeod were struggling with the overload of targets and information, so Duggan called up a view of the second heavy cruiser. It had suffered critical damage from dozens of plasma blasts. Its armour plating was ruptured and there were missile craters along its length. Duggan’s instant feeling was that it was no longer a threat. He sent another fifty missiles towards it to make certain.
Only a few seconds had elapsed since the beginning of the engagement. The north and south batteries had some type of quick-load mechanism and they fired a constant stream of warheads towards the Valpian. The third of the smaller enemy vessels was still operation. At fifteen hundred metres long, it had enough potential to make it a genuine threat and it launched its own salvo of missiles.
“The light cruiser has reached an altitude of fifteen thousand klicks,” said Red-Gulos.
“They’re firing particle beams at us,” said McLeod.
The Valpian’s energy shield continued to repel the incoming attacks. The main power gauge dropped to fifty percent and each additional strike pushed it further towards the point at which the shield would shut down.
“Those surface-to-air batteries are real high-powered stuff,” said Duggan. “The northern batteries are too close to the buildings for me to risk firing at them.”
“We can’t let them continue for much longer,” said Red-Gulos.
The southern batteries were not protected by their proximity to the populated sector of the base. Duggan sent them a gift of fifty missiles, which landed in a grid pattern amongst the six batteries. The emplacements were heavily fortified and mostly underground. It wasn’t enough to prevent their complete and utter destruction by the armour-piercing explosives which dropped upon them. When the blast fires faded all that remained was a series of deep, ragged-edged craters. Secondary explosions followed, setting off yet more of the unspent missiles within the ruined batteries.
“That damned light cruiser is still climbing,” said McLeod. “What are they playing at? Looks like they’re trying to escape.”
“They aren’t,” said Duggan. “They’ve probably guessed we’re here for something and they’re planning to get out of our reach so they can play hit and run.”
“They’re eighty thousand klicks up.”
“Not far enough.”
The Valpian’s two particle beams were recharged and they flashed on the tactical screen to show they were available. Duggan fired them at the light cruiser, along with a further two hundred missiles. The sensor feed showed the enemy vessel glowing white and orange with a ferocious heat that contrasted savagely with the infinite darkness of space.
“They’re trying to activate their fission drives,” said Red-Gulos.
“It’s too late to change their mind and run,” said Duggan grimly. The aliens on the fleeing warship were fellow soldiers, but he had no sympathy left to give them.
The smaller vessel’s energy shield had already absorbed a large number of missile blasts. The following two hundred proved too much. Many of the Valpian’s warheads exploded a few hundred metres from the light cruiser’s hull. Others got through the depleted shield and plunged into the softened outer armour.
The bridge screen went bright enough to make Duggan squint instinctively. The Valpian’s tactical system detected hundreds of new objects and assigned each a very low priority. Duggan watched the fiery wreckage for a fraction of a second before he tore his gaze away.
“This is a hard bastard of a warship,” said McLeod as if he hardly believed the carnage.
“Ruthlessness and surprise,” said Duggan, sending the Valpian at high speed towards the northern end of the landing field. It tore through the upper reaches of the atmosphere, until smoke poured away from the superheated nose and left a trail of grey vapour for a thousand kilometres behind. “And a hard bastard of a warship.”
With only a few minutes gone by, the Dantsvar base looked completely changed. There were chunks of burning wreckage spread across many kilometres of the
metal ground and fires burned in dozens of places. One enormous piece from the first heavy cruiser showed no signs of cooling down, as though a reaction was taking place within the two billion tonne irregular mass of broken engines. There was movement – smaller vehicles raced away in random directions, their drivers sent into a panic by the destruction around them.
“What about the northern batteries, sir?” asked McLeod.
“We have to ignore them,” said Duggan. “Once we get low enough they shouldn’t be able to target us.”
As it happened, his chosen landing place was within three hundred metres of the ground-to-air emplacements. The buildings on the Dantsvar base covered an area of six square kilometres, so there was little hope of guessing where the prisoners might be held. Fortunately, the enemy had made the task of locating the missing crew much easier by painting the word Detention on the ground near to one low, flat-roofed building. The bad news was that the missile batteries were only a few metres from the prison’s walls. In a way, it made sense to keep disposable personnel near to high priority targets like the ground-to-air emplacements.
“Corporal Gax, prepare to disembark,” said Duggan.
“Understood.”
At an altitude of one hundred kilometres, the missile batteries stopped firing. Duggan dropped the Valpian onto the surface as close to the prison building as he dared. He didn’t particularly want to damage the landing skids, so he pulled up sharply at the very last moment. The landing wasn’t perfect but it was as good as could be expected.
“Corporal Gax, you are cleared to disembark. Bring back our troops.”
A light on Duggan’s console indicated the forward ramp had disengaged. He accessed the underside sensors in order to watch his squad.
“Sir?” said McLeod. “There’s bad news. Four of those missile batteries have started launching again.”
“At us?” asked Duggan, realising how stupid the question was.
Guns of the Valpian Page 18
