“This is opened from within,” said Braler. “There might be an override accessible from the equipment in this room.”
“Can you identify it? We need to see what’s underneath.” Duggan was acutely aware of the passing seconds and knew if there was anyone alive, they could have already sent a distress signal to the main base on the planet.
“Given time I might find what you ask,” said the Ghast.
Time was something they lacked. “Rasmussen, Bonner. I need these doors open now. What’re the options?”
“I can open either,” said Bonner. “There’ll be collateral damage to whatever is behind.”
“This plasma tube will get that far door open, sir,” said Rasmussen. “I’m not sure it’ll burn through the hatch, since the rocket will come in at an angle.”
“Everyone out!” said Duggan. “Bonner, get the hatch open. Rasmussen, shoot that far door as soon as Bonner’s charges go off.”
This was the problem with time-constrained raids on enemy facilities, especially when there was no way to know what was ahead – it could rapidly descend into chaos.
The soldiers ran out through the airlock and clustered to either side of the doorway. Bonner came last, while Rasmussen stayed in the airlock.
“All set,” said Bonner, her voice and breathing elevated.
“Blow it,” ordered Duggan.
The second set of charges went off with a thud. Moments later, Duggan heard the bleeping of Rasmussen’s plasma launcher and then a second, more distant whump.
“Check for hostiles,” said Duggan.
“Looks clear,” said Ortiz.
“Squad One, back inside. Cover us!”
The plasma fires hadn’t fully burned out when Duggan and his squad entered the room again – there was a fading white glow on the floor for a metre around the hatch and the far door was gone, leaving only a ragged hole. The coldness of Astorn no longer held sway here and the temperature peaked at close to three hundred degrees, before it began to cool rapidly.
“Squad Two get through that far door!” barked Duggan. “If you see anything with buttons and a screen, tell me about it.”
He stepped as close to the hatch as he dared and peered into the shaft which Bonner’s explosives had exposed. The spacesuits could take extremes of hot and cold, but the metal floor near the edge was pushing the boundaries of what it could handle. Duggan’s feet became uncomfortably warm and he hopped from foot to foot. It was still too hot for him to get close enough to see straight down.
“Is everything okay, sir?” asked McGlashan. There was nervousness in her voice.
“Too many doors,” he said. “We’re staying to complete the mission.”
“Understood.”
There was the sound of gunfire from the far doorway. The members of Squad Two remained in cover and fired coolly into the room beyond. Squad One were shielded from return fire by the angles of the walls, though Duggan could make out something flashing in the other room.
“No explosives!” said Chainer over the open channel, his voice full of command.
“We’ve got at least five hostiles within,” said Ortiz. “They’re fully suited and armed.”
“Any sign of explosives?” Duggan asked.
“Not yet, sir.”
Duggan ignored the burning in his feet – he guessed they’d blister soon – and he stepped to the edge of the shaft. It was wide – since it was designed to be used by something Ghast-sized, and there was a metal ladder in the wall. The ruined hatch hung within, attached by a piece of heat-stretched metal. Heat came off it in waves, though it was already much less fierce than a few seconds before. There was a room at the bottom, a good thirty metres away and lit with the same blue light as the upper area. There was no sign of movement.
Now that he’d committed to it, Duggan was desperate for the mission to succeed. Since the determination was his own, he chose not to risk one of his soldiers. “Cover me,” he said calmly to his squad.
Duggan put his rifle across his shoulders and jumped into the shaft. He grabbed the top rung, arresting his fall. His feet found purchase and he climbed down. The gaps between the rungs were larger than on a human-made ladder and it was a struggle to get into a rhythm. He was effectively blind, since there was no easy way to look at the floor below and he concentrated on the smooth grey wall before him. On the plus side, the heat soon receded and the alarms on his spacesuit HUD changed from red to amber.
“Nearly there, sir,” said Cabrera.
Duggan came to the end of the ladder. The floor was laid with fine grating instead of being smooth and it vibrated slightly when he put his foot on it. He turned his head and saw that he was in a smaller square room, a few metres to each side and with an intricate, octagonal console in the centre. Then, he sensed movement and his suit registered a sound. He raised an arm and something struck him, producing a sickly crunch. Pain sparked from the injury, causing him to yell out.
He already had his back to the wall, so the best Duggan could do was pitch himself sideways in anticipation of a second blow. He heard the muted crack of a thin-atmosphere contact between two pieces of metal. Now he got a sight of his opponent – there was a Dreamer in the room with him, close to eight feet tall, clothed in a grey spacesuit and with a rounded helmet covering its head. Duggan’s own visor was opaque, but his enemy’s was not. There were grey eyes behind a clear screen and its mouth was fixed in a snarl. The alien held a length of metal bar and Duggan would have laughed at the mundanity of the weapon had he not been in such danger.
“Help,” he said into the comms, realising he’d moved away from the base of the shaft and brought his opponent with him. There was no way the troops above would be able to get a clean shot.
The Dreamer swung again, missing by a whisker. Duggan noted it was unarmed apart from the bar. It didn’t appear to need anything more – it was already far taller and broader than Duggan and would have been a difficult opponent when unarmed.
Duggan feinted one way and then attempted to run around the central console, which he felt sure was the equipment they’d come looking for. The metal bar hit him again, this time on his suit helmet. There was a sharp crack – heard within the helmet rather than without and his HUD immediately listed several critical warnings.
Instead of turning to face his opponent, Duggan darted forward, seeking to put the central console between the two of them. The pain from his arm threatened to overwhelm him and when he instructed the suit to inject a painkiller, he was dismayed to find it too badly damaged to comply.
As he ran, Duggan tried to drag his gauss rifle around from where he’d slung it across his shoulders. His damaged arm hurt too much, so he struggled to free the rifle with the other. With a twist of his body, he got the rifle free and turned, just as another blow landed on his spacesuit helmet. His HUD went blank except for the two words no soldier ever wished to see. BREACH WARNING! it said.
Duggan toppled back, firing his rifle wildly with one arm. The shape of his enemy towered above him and he fired again. It toppled over, landing heavily on his legs and chest, making him shout with the agony of his wounded arm. He kicked out, trying to roll the dead Dreamer away. It felt like it weighed three hundred pounds in its suit and he couldn’t budge it in his weakened state.
While Duggan fought against the leaden weight on top of him, his suit tried to repressurize, making a violent hissing as it did so. He felt the oxygen race past his face as it was sucked out through the crack somewhere at the back of his head. There was a kit in a pack at his belt – it contained a fast-hardening polymer designed specifically to seal damaged spacesuits. He dropped his rifle and scrabbled at the kit’s fastenings, trying to get them free with his one functioning hand. In his head, he knew it was no good – even if he managed to open the pack up, there was no way he’d be able to see where the breach was in order to apply the fluid.
The suit’s emergency burst of oxygen ended and Duggan knew the vacuum would kill him. He expelled the air
from his body to prevent it from swelling and rupturing his lungs. His hand continued to pull at the repair kit, even as he became aware of the bone-numbing chill entering the helmet from outside. He could feel his scalp tighten in the area where it pressed against the crack. He got the repair kit free and lifted it up. Everything seemed distant now and his arms felt heavy. Mercifully, the pain in his arm faded and seconds later, Duggan’s vision went with it.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Voices reached him. The words were unfamiliar and they may as well have been spoken from half a galaxy away for all the sense Duggan’s scrambled mind could make of them. He opened one eye and saw lines of red text across his HUD. At least it’s working again, he thought. Something nudged him and the pain of his arm came roaring back, jerking him into wakefulness.
“You’ll have to move, sir.” It was Lieutenant Ortiz, crouched nearby.
Duggan gritted his teeth. “Understood,” he said.
“Weiss? Where the hell are you?” Ortiz shouted, a dangerous edge to her voice that she rarely permitted anyone to hear.
With a grimace, Duggan pressed his undamaged hand onto the floor and pushed. Ortiz helped and then Duggan felt a much larger hand beneath his shoulder blades. He was hauled to his feet like a wooden puppet handled by an unsympathetic puppet master.
“We need to go,” said Braler.
Duggan’s vision finally cleared and he looked around the room – he was in the place he’d fallen, but his dead opponent had been thrown unceremoniously into the corner. The body was riddled with holes from Duggan’s gauss rifle and its spilled blood was rimed with ice.
Lieutenant Chainer was at the octagonal console. The pack containing the Dreamer core was propped against it and Chainer’s hands jumped from place to place, his fingers pressing rapidly here and there.
Someone came down the ladder at speed, the impact of their landing causing the grating to rattle. It was Corporal Weiss, arriving at the double, her medical pack of wonders held by a strap in the crook of one elbow. Without offering a greeting, she plugged a wire from her pack into the interface port on Duggan’s suit.
“One broken arm, a minor concussion, tissue damage from short-term exposure to vacuum. Furthermore, you’ll have a crippling case of the bends if you get out of that suit too quickly. Uncomfortable, but nothing fatal. I’m giving you a shot of battlefield adrenaline and some targeted painkillers.”
“No adrenaline,” said Duggan.
“Too late. Sorry,” she replied.
“There’s no time for tough guy stuff, sir,” said Ortiz. “You need to climb that ladder again.”
“Reprimand accepted,” said Duggan.
The drugs didn’t take long to work. His heart thumped in his chest, like it had been hit with ten thousand volts – Weiss had given him a big dose. The targeted pain relief kicked in moments later, fooling his brain into thinking his arm was in perfect working order.
“What’s our situation?” he asked, amazed at the sudden clarity in his voice.
“I’m just this second done, sir,” said Chainer. “I’ll tell you the good news later, but the bad news is the ship’s core fell halfway down the shaft. It appears to be working, though it’s certainly taken a knock.”
“Save it Lieutenant,” said Duggan. “Let’s get out of here first. Everyone up that shaft and onto the Crimson. I’ll come last.”
His soldiers were brave, but they were also practical. There was no way they could provide any significant assistance to a man climbing a thirty-metre shaft. Braler might have had the strength if he wasn’t carrying the core. There were no other Ghasts in the room, since Ortiz had ordered them back to the ship.
The room’s occupants climbed eagerly, soon leaving Duggan alone at the base of the ladder. When Ortiz had climbed far enough ahead, Duggan gripped the first rung. His brain felt sharp, though when he gave his broken arm a tentative shake, he could feel the pain hidden deep inside.
With no option, he climbed. The pain remained distant – it was with him constantly, yet it never became so intense that it was unmanageable. The worst part of the climb was the feeling of his shattered bones scraping together each time he pulled himself a rung higher. No matter how hard he tensed his muscles to keep things in place, the bones scratched and grated.
In order to distract himself, Duggan studied the damage readouts on his spacesuit HUD. Several of its major functions had failed entirely and many others showed amber warnings. Halfway up, its life support unit failed.
“My life support unit’s gone,” said Duggan.
“You should have sufficient heat and oxygen to reach the ship, sir,” said Ortiz. “It’s a good job Weiss pumped all that shit into you, since the decompression sickness won’t be too comfortable.”
“I’d best stop talking and move, eh?” he said.
“There are spare helmets in the forward airlock, sir. Keep going.”
Duggan didn’t slow. The thirty-metre climb felt like a thousand metres, but he reached the top. Ortiz was there to see if he needed assistance. He waved her onwards and ran behind, out through the transmission station’s outer airlock and towards the nearby spaceship. The temperature in his suit was falling and by the time he reached the bottom of the boarding ramp, he was shivering with the cold.
The next voice to reach him was McGlashan’s. “You need to move, sir. The heavy cruiser’s above us.”
Duggan swore and sprinted up the ramp, the battlefield adrenaline giving a huge short-term boost to his strength and stamina. He reached the top and saw the other soldiers inside.
“Close the ramp!” he ordered.
“Close-range missile launch detected. They’re falling in a grid pattern,” said McGlashan, before the ramp had even begun to move.
Duggan heard the familiar clunking noise of the ramp’s mechanical gears and he saw it rising to seal the hull. It was going to be too slow to prevent anyone in the airlock being incinerated if a missile landed close enough and McGlashan couldn’t open the inner airlock without jumping through a series of time-consuming overrides.
“I’m going to make an unsealed take-off,” she said across the open channel. “You’d better hold onto your hats.”
The Crimson lifted away from the ground, moving steadily to avoid crushing the soldiers with the acceleration. The life support didn’t function well if there was a breach in the hull or if someone was stupid enough to attempt take-off with the boarding ramps in the down position. Duggan’s body felt heavy and his arm throbbed under the effects of the monumental thrust from the spaceship’s gravity drive. Through the rapidly-closing gap in the hull, he saw the building below recede as they climbed away from it.
“Too late,” McGlashan said.
The enemy missiles detonated, covering a huge area of the ground in a carpet of expanding plasma. Heat and flames roared up, pursuing the Crimson as it climbed. The upper edge of the bombardment licked at the boarding ramp and fire whooshed into the airlock for a fraction of a second, before the spaceship soared out of reach.
One of the soldiers laughed. “Commander McGlashan knows how to cut it fine,” he said.
“That she does,” said Duggan, for want of a better reply.
The ramp thumped into place and the inner airlock showed a green light to indicate the occupants could leave. Duggan pushed his way through to the front, frantically trying to get out so that he could reach the bridge. Someone grabbed his shoulder and he saw it was Lieutenant Ortiz. She offered him a suit helmet. “Best wear this until Weiss gives you the all-clear from the decompression sickness,” she said.
Duggan broke the seal on his existing helmet and dropped it to the floor. “Thanks,” he said with a nod, taking the replacement. He dropped it over his head and it tightened around his neck.
Some of the troops had taken advantage of the distraction to head through the airlock. Ortiz bellowed at the others to halt in order that Duggan and Chainer could get through.
“Braler, follow us,” said Duggan. “Br
ing the core with you.”
The three of them made haste, with Duggan desperate to influence the engagement with the enemy warship. The Ghast didn’t know the way and he struggled to keep up.
“This pack is heavier than I let on,” he said, giving another indication that the alien species had a sense of humour. “And these passages are too narrow.”
They reached the bridge. Braler waited at the entrance until Duggan beckoned him in. It might have once been a significant moment to invite a Ghast onto the bridge of a Space Corps warship. In the circumstances, Duggan didn’t give it a second thought.
“Put it there,” said Duggan, pointing to the place where the core was housed. “Commander McGlashan, please bring me up to speed with our situation.”
“Sir, the enemy warship is tracking us and maintaining a distance of approximately forty thousand klicks. They have fired several waves of missiles at us. So far they have not hit us, though each miss is progressively narrower than the one which preceded it. We’re going to need that core back in place if we’re to give any sort of meaningful response.”
“That’s if it fits,” said Chainer.
“What do you mean?” asked Duggan.
Then, he discovered what Chainer was talking about. Braler lifted the core from its pack and Duggan saw that one of the bottom corners was crumpled, presumably as a result of its unwanted impact with the ground. He wasn’t happy the core had fallen and he didn’t know why it had happened. There was nothing he could do to change the past and no angry words would fix it.
“Put it there,” he said.
Braler lowered the core into place and stepped back.
“Thank you, soldier,” Duggan said through the suit helmet’s speaker, his tone making it clear he was referring to more than just the carrying duties performed by the Ghast.
“I will return to hear Lieutenant Ortiz’ debriefing,” Braler said, with the faintest hint of a smile. “She can be ferocious.”
With the Ghast gone, Duggan activated the command to reintegrate the core with the ship. The metal cube remained stubbornly unmoving at the top of its shaft. Losing patience, Duggan pressed down on the two handles with his foot. He felt it slot into place and then it slipped away into its housing below the bridge. A slab of metal slid across to cover the opening.
Terminus Gate (Survival Wars Book 5) Page 17
