Inferno Sphere (Obsidiar Fleet Book 2)

by Anthony James

  “If I could kill every last one of them with the press of a button, I’d do so without hesitation,” he said.

  “You’d have to fight me for the pleasure, sir,” said Hawkins.

  With his palms suddenly greasy from cold sweat, Blake positioned the ES Blackbird ten thousand kilometres from the rear of the mothership. The sensor feed on the main bulkhead screen somehow managed to convey the vastness of the enemy vessel and it was hard to tear his eyes away.

  “How long do you think it’ll take them to spot us?”

  “At this distance, sir? I wouldn’t like to guess. I can run you a simulation if you want, though there are a great number of unknowns,” said Quinn.

  Blake was about to agree. Then, he experienced an unexpected moment of enlightenment, which darted fleetingly across the front of his mind so quickly he couldn’t properly form the words to describe it eloquently. “Don’t bother,” he said. “We’ll live or we’ll die whatever the simulation tells us.”

  “That’s not how it works, sir,” said Quinn. He saw Blake’s face and didn’t offer any further argument.

  “Are you getting a detailed scan of their hull, Lieutenant Pointer? And what about broadcasts from the Juniper?”

  “I’m getting plenty of scan data, sir. I’ve identified numerous areas that are consistent with weapons housings.”

  “Can you figure out what types of weapons they are?”

  “Beam weapons, sir. Capabilities unknown. I’m streaming the details away to New Earth – I’ll bet they’ve got teams of people checking it out already. I don’t think it takes a genius to imagine what those massive turrets can do. They have dozens fitted.”

  “I hope I’m never on the receiving end of anything from those guns,” Blake replied. “Anyway, once you’ve finished with the mothership, swap to the Neutralisers. It could well be they’re an overall greater threat, since we don’t have a damned clue how to combat them.”

  “Will do, sir.”

  “And what about comms from the Juniper?” he reminded her.

  “Nothing. It’s completely silent.”

  “Are there any sporadic comms? Maybe a signal that comes every few minutes?”

  “I don’t think so. I’ll keep monitoring.”

  He saw his own expression reflected in her face. If there was no outbound comms from the Juniper, it almost certainly meant everyone onboard was dead.

  “Maybe they brought the Juniper into their hangar and evacuated everyone,” she said.

  “Maybe. Keep listening out.”

  They shadowed the Vraxar for another few minutes, each member of the crew aware that the passing seconds increased the chance they’d be detected. The comms were utterly silent.

  “Patch me through to Fleet Admiral Duggan.” He had a thought. “We’re still on main comms, aren’t we?”

  “Yes, sir. I think the Vraxar have to know we’re here in order to disable our main communication systems.”

  “Get me the Admiral.”

  “I’ve got him, sir. I think he’s forgotten how to sleep.”

  “Just bring him through.”

  It didn’t take long for Blake to fill in the details and it appeared as though Duggan had already been monitoring the flow of information coming from the Blackbird to the New Earth Central Command station.

  “Are you certain there’s no one alive?” Duggan asked.

  “Not absolutely certain, sir. I’ve given you the facts as we know them.”

  “Have you checked for ground packs? Maybe one of the soldiers is using one.”

  “My comms Lieutenant has checked every possibility, sir.”

  “Gone, then,” said Duggan. A dangerous edge came to his voice – one which Blake had never heard before. “There will be a reckoning, Captain Blake. The Vraxar have murdered our people in a war we didn’t ask for. However, they’ve made a mistake in keeping three of their most valuable assets clustered so tightly.”

  “It’s ten thousand klicks from flank to flank,” said Blake, wondering if Duggan had misread the data.

  Duggan continued speaking. “We must strike before they take off to lightspeed again. They’re in our grasp and they will soon learn that humanity will not give in easily.”

  “What is the plan, sir?”

  “The weapon you’re carrying on the Blackbird is known to only a few people in the Space Corps. It has not been deemed safe for the knowledge to be more widely disseminated.”

  “What is it, sir?”

  “Something’s lighting up on the weapons panel, sir,” whispered Lieutenant Hawkins. “We’ve just received some access codes.”

  “You’re carrying an Obsidiar bomb, Captain Blake. That particular example has enough explosive force to destroy all three of those Vraxar warships. Perhaps Nesta-T3 in the process. I want you to use it.”

  Blake’s mind did the rough numbers. A blast sphere such as Duggan described was almost beyond imagination. No wonder it’s locked down.

  His eagerness to destroy the Vraxar was a strong as ever, yet he suddenly felt burdened by the enormity of the weapon he’d been given charge of.

  “The access codes have been accepted by our battle computer, sir.”

  “It’s a bomb with a fairly rudimentary propulsion system, so you’ll need to get in close to use it and you’ll need to get out of there fast,” Duggan continued. “Act with purpose, Captain Blake. Kill those bastards.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Then, Duggan was gone, leaving the crew of the ES Blackbird to contemplate the upcoming use of an Obsidiar bomb.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  MCKINNEY and his squad spilled out into the foyer of level 280, having first made sure it was clear of Vraxar patrols. They spread out quickly to positions of cover, whilst taking the opportunity to catch their breaths from the long run up the stairwell.

  There was nothing unusual here - a row of fixed metal desks and security scanners extended all the way across the lobby. In front of those were three reception booths, clad in a poor veneer of dark wood. Visible behind, numerous corridors headed off into the depths of the C&C area.

  Bodies were strewn about as liberally as anywhere else on the space station. McKinney’s eyes skated over them, his brain adding to the mental tab of payback the Vraxar were accruing.

  “Level 280,” said Corporal Li, spelling out the obvious.

  “First floor of command and control,” panted Corporal Evans.

  “All clear this way, Lieutenant,” shouted Vega.

  “And clear this side,” said Clifton.

  McKinney paused on the landing at the top of the steps and cocked his head to one side. There was lots of Vraxar activity in this area of the orbital and it was a miracle they’d made it up the stairwell without encountering any groups of the aliens. Fighting on stairs was a shitty job for those at the bottom.

  “Where now, Lieutenant?” asked Li.

  “Along that second corridor – the one with the Projections and Research sign hanging above it,” said McKinney. “Sergeant Woods is on floor 302 and we’re going to beat him to our target.”

  The game wasn’t really important anymore. It served as a distraction and caused a few laughs amongst the squad. Against the backdrop of mass murder, it wasn’t much.

  They didn’t wait and headed off in the direction McKinney indicated. The C&C area had definitely been in a state of high activity when the toxin came. There were bodies along every corridor, across thresholds of open doors and slumped face down over consoles as lifeless as their operators.

  The contents of one room caused McKinney to perform a double-take. A large, square table was surrounded by the seated figures of men and women dressed in a variety of uniforms. At first glance, they appeared to be discussing plans and tactics to combat the Vraxar. In reality they were dead, with printed reports and coloured folders spread in front of them, the words unread.

  They came upon a bank of airlifts, dedicated for the use of the C&C floors. The lifts were no more operationa
l than any of the others, but there was a narrow set of steps off to one side. It was up these steps McKinney directed his squad. It was steep and the lighting was poor. Their footsteps and clattering weapons produced no echo whatsoever.

  The steps ended at level 281, where they opened into a hub area twenty metres to each side and from which many exits were available. McKinney was momentarily lost and tried his best to combine the information from his HUD overlay with what his eyes were seeing.

  “Over here,” he said, pointing to a sign which read Target and Analysis.

  “Can you hear that?” asked Roldan.

  “No. What?”

  “That’s it, sir. It’s quiet up here. Maybe we’ve lost them.”

  Roldan was right about the silence – there was much less sound on this level of the Juniper. McKinney wasn’t convinced they’d lost the Vraxar, but he was grateful for any let-up in the pressure. He certainly didn’t want to reach the main comms room with an army of Vraxar at their heels. In reality, he was aware the walls were closing in and it was only a matter of time before they were flushed out and killed by the enemy. He couldn’t allow himself to dwell on such a future and called on his anger to sustain him.

  With McKinney guiding the others they reached another set of steps, this one wider than the previous flight. Once again, the stairs only ascended a single floor, taking them to level 282.

  “Engineering,” said Corporal Li, reading the sign at the top of the landing. “Could mean anything.”

  They entered a huge, square room, with three wide passages leading off. It was clearly a workshop of some kind and there were reinforced alloy benches arranged in long rows across the left and right sides of the floor. Along the centre, was a wide aisle. A couple of mini lifters had been grounded here, their gravity engines shut down by the appearance of the Vraxar Neutralisers. Overhead, there were runners for several winches and there were multi-jointed lifting arms protruding from each of the walls.

  The benches were covered in components, most of them unrecognizable to McKinney’s eye. He saw something which might have been the barrel of a light tank’s main armament. There were parts of a repeater artillery piece and also what looked like a landing strut from a single-person shuttle. Other objects with unknown uses filled the available bench space.

  “This must be where they fix the little stuff,” said Munoz. “Seems a bit stupid having it in the middle of the command and control section.”

  “They had to split this level and the one above,” said Sergeant Woods. “There are offices and planning areas on the far side from here.”

  “The real maintenance areas are way above us,” said Reeves. “See that tall cabinet over there? That’s a data cruncher. It analyses faults in metal so they can iron out the flaws in the manufacturing processes.”

  “You just made that up,” said Garcia.

  “I did a year of study on it. I had to drop out, but some things stuck.”

  “There’s nothing we can use is there?” asked Corporal Evans.

  “Doesn’t look like it,” said McKinney. “If there was something big enough to be of use, there’s no way we’d get it up to level 285 anyway. The cargo lifts are just as dead as the passenger lifts.”

  He set off along the centre aisle and the others followed. The workshop personnel must have been off shift and there were no bodies in sight. The comfort was short-lived.

  “What was that?” asked Mills.

  The men were instantly on their guard.

  “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “There. Listen.”

  “Sounds like someone hitting the walls with a hammer.”

  “Sounds more like footsteps to me.”

  “It’s coming from ahead,” said McKinney, suddenly remembering the words of Technical Officer Hattie Rhodes.

  He peered along the corridor. The emergency lighting was dimmer here than elsewhere, as though it was slowly failing. There was something further along – it was another of the mini lifters with an object resting on its bed. The lifter was four metres wide and its cab was over three metres tall. It didn’t fill the passage and McKinney could see beyond it to a junction. It was along this way they needed to go to reach the next stairwell.

  The sounds were clear now – metal upon metal with the regular cadence of footsteps.

  “Get into cover,” he said quietly. “Behind these benches.”

  The men detected the concern in McKinney’s voice and moved quickly to comply. They crouched under the reassuring cover of the reinforced metal, with only their heads and weapons showing. McKinney joined them, hiding near to the central aisle.

  “What is it, sir?” asked Bannerman.

  “Vraxar.”

  A shadow appeared on the far wall at the end of the passage. It grew in size with each thudding footstep. A moment before it appeared, the creature paused out of sight, as if to allow the squad a period in which to contemplate their deaths.

  Then, it stepped into view. This new Vraxar wasn’t ten feet tall like Rhodes had reported. It was closer to twelve and it was a wonder it had managed to fit through some of the tighter spaces within the Juniper. The alien was humanoid, with arms as thick as McKinney’s torso and legs that were much thicker again. Hardly a patch of its red skin was visible, since it was covered in jointed plates of thick alloy. Each plate was a different shape and size, but they were fitted together expertly. With the enhanced vision of his visor sensor, McKinney was able to see the armour across the Vraxar’s chest flex as it moved.

  Small eyes peered out through a metal faceplate – expressionless orbs which gave away nothing. McKinney wasn’t interested in what it was thinking since it was definitely here to kill him and his squad. He was far more concerned with the huge multi-barrelled chaingun it held casually in one hand. The barrels rotated slowly, giving hints of what was to come.

  “Kill the bastard,” snarled McKinney.

  The opening burst of the squad’s repeater fire was shockingly loud. Bullets racketed against the Vraxar’s armour and the flatbed lifter in front of it – a thousand rounds per second of high velocity hardened alloy. The creature staggered without falling and lifted its own weapon, aiming into the workshop.

  Beneath the apparent harshness of the discord were patterns of order – a perfection only audible to a soldier in tune with the brutality of war. In those opening seconds, McKinney caught hints of it and he allowed it to embrace him. His repeater felt alive in his hands and he rode with it, directing it towards the few places he could see the Vraxar’s bare flesh.

  Rockets whooshed overhead, aimed high by Webb and Musser to reduce the chance the missiles would be shredded by the repeater fire. Webb was the more skilful of the two and his rocket detonated against the Vraxar’s shoulder. Plasma erupted, spilling over its armour and filling the corridor for the shortest time with a heat to rival that of a sun. Musser’s rocket exploded too, adding to the ferocity and the destruction.

  The fire receded and incredibly, the Vraxar was still alive. It was on one knee and its head was bowed. Here and there, patches of its armour were alight and a thick, filthy smoke poured away from it.

  The squad didn’t let up and they continued firing. Most of the rounds deflected from its armour, but others found a way into to the skin beneath, tearing holes through its body. At last, it fell sideways into the wall before slumping forward and ending up partially hidden by the flatbed lifter.

  “Hold!” ordered McKinney.

  He stood from his crouch and looked around to check over the squad. The Vraxar hadn’t managed to fire its evil-looking gun and none of the men were harmed.

  “Sir?”

  There was a second Vraxar at the end of the corridor. In the moments it had taken McKinney to make sure his squad were alive, it had come. This one didn’t act the same as the first. With appalling speed, it launched itself along the corridor. The Vraxar trampled its dead fellow before smashing its way past the lifter, knocking the vehicle aside as though it weighed no
thing.

  McKinney opened his mouth to give the order to fire. The soldiers didn’t need to hear the word and they opened up immediately. To McKinney’s left, Webb rose smoothly, spinning his plasma tube once and dropping it into position on his shoulder. It hummed gently and fired, just as the Vraxar burst from the tunnel, still thirty metres away from the squad.

  The creature was met by a storm of gunfire and the blast from Webb’s rocket. It wasn’t sufficient to finish it off and the alien lifted its gun, the eight barrels already spinning up. McKinney predicted the path of its opening burst and threw himself to the floor behind the bench. The Vraxar chaingun thundered and its rotating barrels glowed. The weapon was every bit as savage as it looked. It sprayed out high-velocity death, throwing huge-calibre bullets in a sweeping arc across the room, punching holes into everything before it.

  A few metres to McKinney’s left, Elder and Rice were too slow to get out of the way. The two men were smashed into bloody lumps and hurled many metres away. As soon as the hail of fire swept across the aisle to the opposite side of the room, McKinney pushed his head over the top of the bench and hurled a primed grenade at the Vraxar. To his horror, he saw a third of the armoured creatures emerge into the room, armed with the same type of chaingun.

  He ducked again and heard his grenade detonate. A few of the other men copied and threw their explosives in high arcs from where they lay on the floor. McKinney crawled the short distance until he was close to the aisle and looked around. He saw a grenade explode right at the feet of the closest Vraxar, enveloping it in the blast. It hardly even flinched and continued firing, keeping the men pinned down.

  “Webb, Musser, can you get a shot off? We’ve got two of them now.”