“We’re going to look like a tenderised steak,” said Li. A moment later, “I hope the replicator is still working.”
“This is not a good time to be hungry,” said Roldan.
The main built-up area loomed ahead. A pair of slab-sided four-storey buildings – the Psyche Testing Centre and the Alien Languages Research Facility - flanked a wide road. It was fortunate the Tucson base was built with the foresight to expect the transit of heavy loads, since the tank was twenty-five metres wide. It roared between the two buildings, knocking over a tree and smashing a patrol truck into the wall of the Alien Languages Research Facility.
At once, the persistent thumping of enemy fire dropped to nothing and the cockpit fell silent apart from the hum of machinery.
“We made it,” said Li.
He spoke too soon.
“Wait!” said Bannerman. “I’m reading a launch from the battleship. Whoa that’s a crapload of missiles.”
McKinney jerked round in his seat – this was the news he’d been dreading. “Coming for us?”
“I don’t think so. They’re heading further into space.”
“They must have engaged with the ES Lucid!” said Li.
McKinney closed his eyes and allowed himself to hope. He was brought quickly down when he heard Bannerman swearing under his breath.
“They’ve saved six for us,” he said. “First three impacts in less than thirty seconds and the remainder ten seconds after that.”
“Why’d they need so many for a little old tank like us?” asked Roldan.
Bannerman gave a snorting laugh. “On the plus side, the battleship has left orbit. If we live through these, we’ll be home and dry.”
The tank had countermeasures in the form of a cut-down Splinter missile system called GLSS. Sergeant Li activated it and six interceptor missiles flew from launch tubes at the rear end of the tank. Their mechanical reloader clunked and boomed through the hull.
“Takes too long,” muttered Li, the tension starting to bite.
“The tank wasn’t designed to handle this sort of crap,” said McKinney.
“Second wave of interceptors on their way.”
“Time for a third?” asked Roldan.
“No chance.”
It was an uncomfortable, though short, wait for Lieutenant Eric McKinney. It wasn’t easy to manoeuvre the tank through the streets of the Tucson base and each of the first two corners scrubbed off most of their forward momentum. With no choice, he left the others to watch the computer-generated dots representing twelve GLSS interceptors as they arced towards the six much larger Vraxar space-launched warheads.
“Only got two of the first three,” said Bannerman. “Hold on tight.”
The Vraxar missile struck the tank at an angle, which deflected it the tiny fraction necessary to ensure the occupants’ survival. As soon as it detected the deviation in course, the warhead’s sophisticated onboard computer decided to initiate detonation on the basis that a proximity blast was better than having the missile ricochet away from the target.
The Vraxar missile exploded in a vast spray of bright plasma. The tank was knocked off course and it collided side-on with the half-collapsed side wall of one of the barrack buildings. Concrete, steel and grey dust showered down upon the brightly-burning vehicle, tonnes of rubble crashing against the heat-softened alloy plating.
The explosion roiled through the streets, setting fire to everything it touched. The sound of the explosion receded and the tank’s huge Obsidiar-backed gravity engines howled with the incredible stresses of the power being forced into them. The tank shot out from the dying plasma flames, black smoke pouring off, while the hull glowed a mixture of oranges and whites.
Inside, the soldiers struggled to keep it together. The tank wasn’t responding well and McKinney struggled with the controls. The cocoon of screens around him each proclaimed their own tale of woe and there were more red status lights than any other colour, with amber a distant second.
“One left,” said Bannerman.
McKinney’s eye caught sight of the missile at the same time as Bannerman uttered the words. There was a lone dot on the tactical screen and it was going to hit them in approximately two seconds.
Sergeant Li mashed the launch button for the GLSS. “Come on you piece of shit!”
McKinney had faced death many times and he was undecided as to whether it got easier with each new confrontation. He didn’t want to die and he swore with helpless anger at the enemy missile.
On the surface of the tank, the two remaining operational GLSS tubes swung open and jettisoned their contents. The first interceptor missed by a wide margin and was lost to the skies. The second interceptor struck the Vraxar missile less than two hundred metres from impact. Unfortunately, it only took out the propulsion section. Once again, the computer embedded in the enemy warhead decided to detonate.
This second explosion was in mid-air, directly above the tank. At this distance, the force of the blast was greatly diminished and it wasn’t enough to move the tank. The expanding sphere of plasma threw fiery liquid in all directions, once again engulfing the vehicle.
Deep within the hull, McKinney saw the white light through the remaining two operational sensor arrays. The control joysticks were already as far forward as he could make them go, but he pushed harder anyway, hoping to eke something extra from the engines.
And then they were through. The tank was badly damaged – its two shoulder launchers were out of action, along with the three chainguns. One weapon remained, miraculously showing the only green status alert anywhere in the tank with the exception of the replicator.
“The main turret,” whispered McKinney with a feeling of awe. “Whoever built this stubborn bastard of a tank deserves a medal.”
While Bannerman used the internal comms to let the men out back know they were in the clear, McKinney continued shaking his head in wonderment that they’d somehow lived through an attack from a Vraxar battleship. He didn’t release his grip on the control joysticks and made the final turn. A third of the tank’s engines had burned out and it was only the Obsidiar core keeping them ticking. It made the vehicle clumsy and McKinney clipped the corner of an intact building, knocking out a huge section of wall.
He worked out how to compensate and got them heading straight. Whenever he attempted to increase their speed beyond thirty-five kilometres per hour, the entire vehicle shook violently. He took the hint and guided them carefully down the long, final street towards their destination.
It had been a short journey in terms of time, but an exceptionally long one in terms of incident and McKinney grinned to the others when he parked up near to the central administration building.
“Well folks, we made it.”
“Now we’ve just got to kidnap the admiral of the fleet and cart him back to the Ulterior-2. In this tank.” said Li.
“We getting out,” said McKinney. “I’ve got no idea how long we’re going to be inside and even less idea when the battleship will come back.”
“If the battleship comes back.” Roldan saw the looks he was getting. “The Lucid might have blown it up.”
“I’m not counting on it.”
One of the tank’s external doors – the one closest to the first missile blast – was melted shut and refused to budge. The opposite door slid open without a problem and McKinney leapt out quickly in case the lingering heat damaged his suit. The others came after him and he pointed them towards the main doors for the administration building.
“Wait inside and take cover.”
As McKinney followed them, he couldn’t resist a look over his shoulder at the tank. It was still recognizable through the shimmering air which surrounded it and the steam which rose from the raindrops falling on its hull. The metal was blackened nearly everywhere and there were patches of sullen red where the heat remained. Hardly a place was free of ballistic damage, most of it caused by the Vraxar artillery around the Obsidiar Storage Facility.
&nbs
p; Through the grime, McKinney saw the words, still proud and unbowed in their proclamation of defiance against whatever might come.
Here I Stand.
With a smile, he turned away and entered the building.
The interior of the central admin building was only partially familiar to McKinney and he lowered his visor to check out the internal layout on his HUD. Before he could study it, he caught sight of the atmospheric oxygen reading as it ticked down from 19% to 18%. Time was running out.
He found what he was looking for on the map and broke into a run. “Stay here,” he shouted to Sergeant Li.
McKinney wasn’t at all surprised to find he was excluded from the group with authorisation to enter the underground command and control bunker. He was, however, able to enter one of the rooms near to the access lifts, and this room had a hard comms link to the personnel below.
He connected and found himself talking to a patient comms lieutenant called Priscilla Montgomery. What she told him wasn’t what he wanted to hear and he didn’t accept her words with good grace.
“What the hell do you mean he’s gone to Facility LT3? Why is he needed there?”
“I don’t know the reason he left, Lieutenant. If you’re thinking of going to speak with him, I must warn you it’s a restricted area. On the off-chance you do find him, please let him know we’ve received a most peculiar message from an officer who claims to be on the Ulterior-2.”
McKinney thanked Lieutenant Montgomery and hurried back to his squad. They caught his mood immediately.
“Not good?” asked Li.
“We missed Fleet Admiral Duggan and he didn’t get Captain Blake’s message. He’s gone elsewhere on the base.”
“Damn.”
“What are we going to do, Lieutenant?” asked Munoz.
“We haven’t got a choice. If we fail, then everything else fails with it. Everyone back to the tank - we’ve got to get this done before the battleship returns.”
As they climbed into the tank they’d so recently left, McKinney was left with the impression it was already too late. He was a soldier first and foremost, and a man with a sense of duty. McKinney didn’t consider giving up and he readied himself to climb the next peak, hoping this summit would be easier to reach than the last.
Chapter Fourteen
The east road was like something from a mad artist’s nightmare. To either side, the damaged, smoking ruins leaned inwards as if to peer down upon the soldiers passing beneath. The smoke billowed and swirled, whilst fires raged. In many places, the emitters which created the artificial daylight had stopped working, creating pools of street-level darkness. To Duggan, it felt as if the war between the darkness and humanity’s attempts to vanquish it was somehow allegorical with the fight against the Vraxar.
Through it all, rain fell in a fine mist which clung to the soldiers’ protective suits and made the footing amongst the rubble treacherous. For the first time, Duggan realised how much he hated the rain and how much it dictated his life here on New Earth. It was a little early to plan moving his office to somewhere warmer and drier.
The soldiers advanced with a slowness borne of caution. After the recent missile strike, Lieutenant Richards had taken to walking closer to Duggan, leaving Sergeant Demarco on point. Duggan could see the reason for it in the set of Richards’ face – the man was determined to see this through, no matter what it took.
Richards cleared his throat. “It’s another four hundred metres along here and then we cut through Barracks Block 12. After that, we should see our destination.”
“As easy as that,” smiled Duggan.
“Yes, sir, as easy as that.”
There was plenty of cover available – most it was abandoned vehicles, parked up at their destinations. As he travelled, Duggan did his best to peer into the buildings to see if there was any sign of life or activity. There were underground bunkers more or less everywhere throughout the base and he hoped the personnel were safe inside, waiting for the all-clear.
His hopes were dashed when R1T Billy Wheeler checked out the insides of a building he was passing.
“Oh shit,” said Wheeler.
Richards called a halt and went over to look. Duggan wasn’t a man to stand patiently waiting and he followed through a doorway in the concrete wall. There was no door and the frame was twisted out of place.
Through the doorway was a large, open area, with corridors leading in several directions. There were metal desks and furniture thrown everywhere, most of it twisted and crushed. Much of the roof was gone, but it was easy to see the path taken by the missile – right down the middle of the building.
“They must have guessed we’d be underground,” said Duggan, standing on the edge of an uneven hole in the floor and looking into the darkness. “They used armour-piercing warheads to achieve maximum casualties.”
The hole went down and down. Duggan used the image intensifiers in his visor and saw the sharp ends of broken reinforcement bars protruding from the sides. At the bottom, he could make out an open space – part of the bunker network in this area of the base. The detonation of a warhead in the confined area below would have incinerated everyone. If this was replicated in other areas of the base it would explain why the main command and control bunker had received so little contact.
Lieutenant Paz arrived and she stood to one side, sharing his pain.
“Perhaps the Vraxar are on to something,” Duggan said bitterly.
“Sir?”
“If you hope for a peaceful life on a planet somewhere, you’re nothing more than an easy target for whichever alien species happens by. The Vraxar never stop moving – every conflict is of their own choosing. They hit and move without suffering the vulnerabilities of other species.”
“The Estral nearly beat them. Perhaps the Antaron will go one better.”
“A fifty-year war with the Estral doesn’t seem to have left the Vraxar weakened.”
“If they fought an extended war, they’ll be down on resources, sir. There could be no other outcome. Any commander who brags about his numbers is doing so for a reason.”
“It would give me some hope to think so – that we might be facing an enemy desperate for a quick result against the Confederation.”
“They’ve made plenty of mistakes so far. They lost a lot of spaceships to the Inferno Sphere.”
Duggan turned away from the crater. “Let’s see if we can make New Earth their biggest mistake yet.”
There was movement in the doorway and Alene Krause threw herself through, closely followed by Kenny Steele.
“Mobile repeater,” shouted Krause, getting herself out of sight.
Richards swore and sprinted towards the doorway. He peered out. “Where?”
“Coming in from the right-hand intersection a couple of hundred metres along.”
“Did they see you?”
“I don’t know, Lieutenant.”
Duggan’s instincts kicked in and he joined Richards, keeping to the opposite side of the doorway. The remainder of the squad were in positions of cover outside, either behind gravity cars or crouching in the shadows of fallen masonry. Sergeant Demarco was in a doorway on the other side of the street, looking along the barrel of her gauss rifle. She lifted one hand briefly to show she was aware of Richards’ presence.
Richards leaned further out, to get a view along the street. He ducked back quickly.
“Mobile repeater,” he confirmed. “A big one.”
Duggan had to see. He dropped into a crouch, mentally thanking the battlefield adrenaline for keeping his stiffness and aches at bay. It was hard to miss the Vraxar repeater – its front protective shielding was a three-metre metal square, through which the barrels protruded. The rest of the artillery piece was made from a long frame with a gravity engine supporting the barrel. It was the sort of device which could keep a thousand soldiers pinned down indefinitely and it was on the street outside. There was a large crew of Vraxar with the gun, many of them standing on the h
ousing, whilst others milled around nearby. Duggan was sure he detected uncertainty – like the enemy troops had got ahead of their forces and weren’t sure what to do next.
“Where’s Lopez?” asked Duggan, taking command automatically. He bit his tongue – this wasn’t his squad. “Apologies, Lieutenant.”
Richards took Duggan’s place in the doorway. “He’s fifty metres east, behind a truck. He’s not looking this way.”
“It’s going to take more than a single rocket to take out that repeater.”
“Yes, it is, sir, and I count upwards of forty Vraxar with it. They’re not moving.”
“We’re stuck here whether they move or not.”
Duggan crawled back into the doorway and Richards obligingly moved aside once more.
“This is terrible luck for us, Lieutenant. Five minutes sooner and we’d have been past the intersection.”
“We’ll have to sit it out and see what they do.”
The situation was as bad as it appeared. Since there was no comms, it was impossible to coordinate an attack or a retreat without alerting the enemy to their presence. The soldiers were trained in a basic language using hand gestures, but Lopez – the furthest advanced of the squad - still wasn’t looking.
“I never did like a stalemate,” said Duggan softly.
This particular stalemate was quickly ended. Lopez, the man with the plasma tube, decided to act. He took a cursory look around and entirely failed to spot Duggan in the doorway fifty metres away. Duggan closed his eyes when he saw Lopez spin the plasma tube onto his shoulder. The blue charge-up light was like a tiny, clear pinpoint through the smoke and rain. Lopez jumped out from the edge of the boxy, utilitarian transport truck and into sight. With perfect timing, the rocket burst free from the plasma tube and flew in a straight line along the street. Quick as a flash, Lopez threw himself back behind the truck.
The Vraxar had little time to react and the rocket exploded against the front plate of the heavy repeater, the flames showing through the smoke as a muddy grey-brown. The rocket wasn’t enough to shut the gun down and it opened fire immediately. The cling-cling-cling of the metal was accompanied by the high-pitched whine of its power source. Even from this distance, the sound was clear and crisp.
Earth's Fury (Obsidiar Fleet Book 4) Page 14
