“I’m detecting signs of small-arms fire within the bay,” said Pointer.
“That can only be a good sign,” said Blake. “Find out who is shooting at who.”
“There’s a shuttle!” said Pointer excitedly. “And about three hundred Vraxar on the ground firing at it.”
Blake watched the sensor feed, trying to make out the details. He could see many small shapes moving around inside the Juniper, along with what appeared to be several much larger Vraxar. The angles looked entirely wrong – because the orbital was on its side, the floor was at ninety degrees to the floor of the mothership’s hangar bay. It appeared as if those fighting inside should simply fall to their deaths. Blake knew the only explanation for them remaining in place was for the mothership’s life support to extend to everything within its bay. This life support was somehow keeping the entire interior of the mothership’s bay pressurized, even with the breach in the outer hull and this new breach into the Juniper.
The Blackbird wasn’t equipped with full-sized Bulwark cannons owing to the constraints of its size and the requirement to fit other hardware into the places a Bulwark might otherwise be installed. It did, however, have a total of eight heavy repeaters mounted in various places about its hull. These were adapted versions of ground artillery guns intended for use against light-to-medium armoured vehicles, though they would happily mow down anything they were aimed towards.
“Set our repeaters on auto,” Blake instructed.
“We’ve only got two turrets with a firing angle,” said Hawkins. “Setting those to auto.”
The moment of truth. “Will they fire into the Juniper?”
“Yes, sir. They’re acquiring targets.”
“Good. Let’s see how the Vraxar like it.”
The sound of the Blackbird’s repeaters was audible on the bridge as a distant pulsing. The effects within the hangar bay were more immediate. The guns raked a great swathe through the enemy soldiers. Where bullet impacted flesh, there was no subtlety in the result, nor any chance of survival. The Vraxar were smashed away, their bodies flung towards the far walls of the bay.
Blake watched impassively as one of the larger Vraxar succumbed to the onslaught. It was clad in armour of some sort. Its protective coat didn’t help and the creature was punched dismissively to the floor, a hundred slugs reducing its body to something unrecognizable.
“Where’s that shuttle?”
“Near to the prospector vessel, sir. They’re full of holes and I can see where our Shimmer blast caught them. I don’t recognize that type of shuttle either. When I spoke to Lieutenant McKinney earlier he said it was an old model. He wasn’t wrong - it looks like it came straight from a museum.”
“Is there anything we can do to get a message to them? Even if I have to stand on the Blackbird’s nose and wave a flag?”
“No, sir. They can’t have failed to notice our arrival. It’s down to them now.”
The Blackbird’s repeaters didn’t let up and they killed every Vraxar in line of sight. There were others – they hid to the sides of the hole in the Juniper’s bay doors and they attacked from the rooms adjoining the hangar.
“Come on,” said Blake. “Take the chance and escape.”
McKinney remained true to his type. With the crew of the ES Blackbird urging it on, the shuttle emerged from the far side of the prospector. It paused briefly as if it needed time to gather its energy and then it accelerated towards the hole in the doors.
“They’ve taken too much damage,” said Quinn. “Look at the state of it.”
“Positive thoughts, please,” warned Blake.
The shuttle came under a fresh barrage of gunfire and it lurched to one side when a low-yield explosive burst against its underside. Still it came, flying onwards until it exited through the rapidly-cooling hangar doors. Behind the shuttle, Blake saw a large, elaborate object slide into view. He swore when he realised what it was – it was a mobile missile launcher.
The Blackbird’s repeaters opened up again, pummelling the missile launcher with several thousand rounds of hardened Gallenium. The crew cheered when the launcher broke into pieces. A second later, it exploded, spilling a cloud of caustic, dark energy in a wide area around it. The shuttle was unaffected and it completed its escape from the Juniper. Once it was clear of the doors, Lieutenant McKinney changed course to take it out of the firing line as quickly as possible. The crew on the Blackbird cheered again.
“Should we move into a better position for him to dock?” asked Pointer.
The best place for McKinney to take the shuttle was the rear docking iris – there were closer ones, but they would be in view of the Vraxar on the Juniper.
“We’re not moving an inch,” said Blake. “Once he’s through our shield, he should be safe enough from any of these Vraxar rockets.”
The next step was uncertain. The Space Corps had only introduced docking irises forty years ago and they required a compatible spaceship in order to latch. Subsequent revisions had seen the release of what were termed universal docking mechanisms, meant to work with anything in the fleet. The designers probably hadn’t expected the end product to be tested against anything quite so old as McKinney’s shuttle. The small vessel came closer, its course erratic. The Blackbird’s battle computer made a hole in the energy shield and the shuttle flew through.
“I can’t tell you what model engine they’ve got, but I can definitely tell you their power readings aren’t very high. Their propulsion system is failing.”
“Will they make it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe you should land the Blackbird, sir,” said Pointer. “We could lower one of the boarding ramps.”
“We’ll give Lieutenant McKinney a chance to succeed at Plan A.”
The wait was a nervous one. The Blackbird’s sensors showed the shuttle coming in close to the iris. McKinney was clearly flying on manual for whatever reason. His first three attempts to make the connection failed and on each occasion the shuttle bounced away from the iris. There was no way to be certain if these failures were caused by an incompatibility, or if it was because the shuttle was so badly damaged it couldn’t hold steady enough to latch.
Blake was just about ready to change his mind and set the ES Blackbird down, when the fourth attempt saw the shuttle hitch onto the iris and remain in place.
“Yes!” roared Blake. “See if we’ve got comms!”
The hull-to-hull connection created a route for the internal comms system. Lieutenant Pointer got a patch through to the shuttle’s cockpit.
“There’s no one there,” she said.
Blake’s heart fell until his brain registered Pointer’s follow-up words.
“I’m picking up fresh life signs entering through the rear iris,” she said.
“How many?”
“They’re still coming. They’re in a real hurry to get off that shuttle.”
“I’m sure.”
After a couple of minutes, the last of the new arrivals entered the Blackbird’s rear airlock. The numbers were both a triumph and an incredible disaster at the same time.
“There are forty-six additional people onboard,” said Pointer.
“Out of how many on the Juniper?”
“Ninety-one thousand five hundred and twelve according to the Space Corps’ database, sir.”
“Forty-six is something?” he asked, numbness spreading through his limbs at the enormity of the loss.
“It’s infinitely better than nothing, sir,” said Pointer. “I figure we still owed Lieutenant McKinney after Tillos.”
“There wasn’t much between us on the scales.”
“And now there’s nothing between us.”
“A debt I’d gladly have weighing me down if we could have rescued another few hundred from the Juniper.”
“Better that it had never happened at all, sir,” said Hawkins. “We need to prepare ourselves for whatever comes next.”
“You’re right, Lieutenant. Our
next challenge is how to escape from this mothership and deliver the Obsidiar bomb without killing ourselves and everyone else we’ve just rescued.”
Blake tried his best to avoid dwelling on the downsides. They’d accomplished something, even if it could be taken away from them at any moment. The Vraxar knew the ES Blackbird was inside their hull – the situation would definitely become interesting once they got to their destination. Blake mulled over the idea of trying to send the spy craft to lightspeed to see what happened – there were proven instances of the transition allowing a vessel to ignore such trivialities as physical objects. On this occasion, escape was still secondary to finding where the Vraxar were going and then destroying them.
Unable to leave his seat in order to visit the new guests, Blake sent a message to Lieutenant McKinney to welcome him onboard. McKinney reported casualties and advised he would come to the bridge as soon as he was able.
With nothing to do other than wait, Blake remotely activated the purging mechanism on the rear docking iris. The attached shuttle dropped away and crashed to the floor below. He stared at the smoking, bullet-riddled shell for a long time. It seemed a shame to treat it with such contempt, but there was no way he was going to leave it attached to the side of his spaceship.
Meanwhile, the Vraxar mothership continued with its flight, taking them to a place Blake was sure he would rather not arrive.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE ENGAGEMENT BETWEEN THE DEVASTATOR, the Gallatrin-9 and the Vraxar ships was in the opening phase, and already it was looking like it would be a hard clash of technologies. The Ghast captain Rioq-Tor had thrown his vessel into the fray with an unsurprising joy. The Ghasts were a military race and they’d been at peace for a long time. Missiles spilled from the Gallatrin-9’s launch clusters in their hundreds, crowding the skies as they fought to reach the closest of the Vraxar warships. The range was extreme and Rioq-Tor was evidently trying to saturate the enemy countermeasures and then overcome their shields.
On the Devastator’s bridge, Admiral Henry Talley looked at his tactical screen, trying to make sense of the hundreds of objects crowding the display. Amongst the chaos flew a total of six Shimmer missiles, those being the Devastator’s sum contribution to the total.
He felt as though his preconceptions of space combat were already being tested. In the scenarios played through in his mind and in the simulators, it was like a strategy game with much higher stakes. Each piece on the board moved in real time, with the captains of the warships doing their best to anticipate and counter. He’d spoken about his methods with Fleet Admiral Duggan over late-evening drinks on occasion. Duggan usually just laughed the laugh of a man who truly knew. It’ll come as a shock to you Henry. Space combat is harsh and it can be utterly unfair. Sometimes I think I must be the luckiest man ever to have lived. Give it everything you have and pray that luck is on your side.
Inside, Talley felt something click. It was as clear in his mind as two pieces of a metal jigsaw snapping into place. Rioq-Tor knew exactly the way to play it, whilst Talley was tiptoeing around, timidly looking for an opening when his opponent wasn’t going to give him that chance. The only openings were the ones he made for himself.
“Target Shatterers. Focus on that lead Vraxar. If we can knock it out before the rest engage, we’ll have this battle half-won. Give them every available Lambda X cluster. Tell me the moment we come within particle beam range.”
“Yes, sir!” said Commander Adams. “Sixteen Shatterers launched. Five minutes to impact. We have only a thirty percent success rate on Lambda X launch, which makes two hundred and forty in flight.”
“Prepare Splinter countermeasures and I want shock drones ready to deploy.”
“Sir.”
“Try hitting them with a full sixteen-chain disruptor chain as soon as our Shimmers come close. This is the Space Corps’ first engagement with this type of Vraxar ship. I’d rather we counter any surprises before they spring them on us. Lieutenant Johnson – do we remain undetected?”
“I can’t tell you for certain, sir. They know we’re here because of our weapons launch. I doubt they can target us directly yet.”
“Good. Keep me informed.”
“The Ghasts don’t seem to have any targeting problems, sir. They’ve launched another nine hundred missiles and a second wave of Shatterers,” said Adams.
“They’ve always been ahead of us when it comes to guidance systems,” Talley replied. “I’m not surprised to find there’s no change.”
“I’ve launched a second round of Lambdas. Waiting on reload for Shimmers.”
At this point, the space between the two sides was filled with missiles, all of them heading in the same direction. There were sufficient warheads to take a big chunk out of even the strongest shield, Talley felt sure. On the other hand, he realised it was foolish to expect the Vraxar to fly meekly into the storm.
“Wait on Shimmers,” he warned sharply. “They’ll do a short-range transit once we’ve committed half of our missile stocks.”
“Waiting,” Adams confirmed. “Looks like the Ghasts are doing the same, sir.”
“Lieutenant Mercer, let’s have a look at our enemy.”
“Bringing the lead Vraxar battleship onto the main viewscreen. It’s hard to fix on them.”
The smaller of the two Vraxar battleships appeared on the main bridge display. It was V-shaped and built from near-black metals. The outline put Talley in mind of some of Old Earth’s earliest aircraft, except there was nothing noble in the alien design. The Vraxar ship’s hull was covered in round lumps, along with thousands of short-protruding antennae and dozens of rotating turrets. Its armour crackled with filthy green-blue energy and sparks of it leapt out into space like greedy tendrils seeking life. Every few moments, its outline blurred and it disappeared, before reappearing a few thousand kilometres closer.
“I wonder if they’ve mastered a way of jumping to lightspeed when it suits them,” said Talley.
“I don’t think that’s the case, sir,” said Johnson. “There’s no energy build-up, nor any sign of a fission expulsion. Whatever this is, it’s a different line of tech to anything I’m aware of.”
“The smaller spacecraft look identical to the ones which engaged the ES Lucid over Atlantis,” said Mercer.
“What about this biggest ship?” asked Talley, watching the second Vraxar battleship on his tactical screen.
“I’ve just about got lock on them…there!”
The view changed to show the largest of the Vraxar battleships. At eight thousand metres long, it was larger than anything in active service in the Space Corps. It didn’t look much like the smaller battleship. This one was a long, bulky cuboid with rounded edges. A series of flat, square wings were fixed along its length. It was equipped with many particle beams and there were two, much larger, squared-off turrets at the top. Its nose curved down slightly, which was the only way to distinguish the front from the rear.
“I don’t like the look of those turrets,” said Adams.
“Ask the Ghasts if they have any idea what they are.”
“They’re in the dark the same as we are, sir,” said Mercer when she’d finished speaking to her counterpart on the Gallatrin-9. “They recommend we don’t find out.”
Talley kept his eyes on the tactical screen for the next few seconds, wondering when the Vraxar would make their move. The swarm of missiles closed rapidly on the V-shaped battleship, but still it made no effort to evade them.
“Fire another two hundred Lambdas,” he said.”
“Two hundred Lambdas on their way, sir.”
“There’s a power surge on the front battleship,” said Johnson. “Make that all of the enemy spaceships.”
“Here they come,” said Talley. “Make sure the Ghasts know it.”
There was no time to communicate the details with the Gallatrin-9. Simultaneously, the two Vraxar battleships and the four smaller escorts vanished into lightspeed. They reappeared a fraction of
a second later, arranged in a semi-circle around the Gallatrin-9 and at a distance of less than fifty thousand kilometres.
Immediately, the Ghast battleship began spilling missiles from its launch clusters. On one of Talley’s status displays he saw needles jump to indicate the discharge of high-intensity particle beams from both the Gallatrin-9 and the Vraxar warships.
“Holy crap, the Ghasts must have been holding back earlier,” said Lieutenant Poole. “I count eighteen hundred missiles in that wave.”
“Let’s help them out,” said Talley. His tactical screen showed there were only two Vraxar support vessels within range of the Devastator’s overcharge. “Split front and rear overcharge between those two,” he ordered. “Fire immediately. Launch our second wave of Shimmers, stick with the original target.”
“Overcharging particle beams, firing,” said Adams.
The overcharge was technology stolen from the Estral by Fleet Admiral Duggan several decades before. It used the power of Obsidiar to magnify the strength of a particle beam, allowing it to ignore the protection of an energy shield and to inflict incredible damage. The only downsides were the short range and the immense power draw.
Two wide, invisible beams flickered from the ES Devastator’s beam domes, draining several percentages from the battleship’s Obsidiar reserves. The effect was instant. The closer of the two cruisers turned from near-black to bright white. Its alloys expanded far quicker than they could cope and the Vraxar ship split into many different pieces, each as bright as a distant sun for a few seconds until the heat ebbed into the chill of space
The second Vraxar ship fared no better. The overcharged beam plunged through its energy shield and into the flattened cylinder of its hull. The rear two-thirds split from the front and spun wildly away, sending showers of incandescent sparks in an oscillating spiral for hundreds of kilometres all around. The crew of the Devastator cheered loudly.
Inferno Sphere (Obsidiar Fleet Book 2) Page 20
