“Does this mean you’re going to fly the Ulterior-2, sir?” asked Blake.
“I don’t see an alternative.”
“It’ll be good to have you back in action.”
“This isn’t what I wanted – I’m old and slow.”
“We’ll see.”
Duggan waved off the compliment. “I’ll need to keep some of your crew.”
“I can probably handle the Earth’s Fury alone, sir. It’s just a flying gun.”
“You’ll need additional expertise to get it up in the air, Captain, and a dedicated officer for the main armament.” Duggan cast his eyes around the room. “Take Lieutenants Pointer, Quinn and Hawkins.”
That left ensigns Toby Park and Charlotte Bailey in control of several major systems on a Space Corps battleship. Their thoughts on the subject were plain on their faces, yet neither hid behind excuses.
“I’ll do my best, sir,” said Bailey.
Park nodded in agreement. “You can count on me, too.”
“That’s it settled,” said Blake.
“Not quite, Captain. The targeting software for the Havoc cannons is based on the same systems built into the Colossus tank we recently dropped onto the roof of this battleship. Send Sergeant Li up here – he seems to have an aptitude for it.”
“I’m sure he will be delighted, sir.”
“Go. The lack of comms between our two ships will make things difficult. If you get far enough from New Earth, they may become available again. This will require more than teamwork. I’m trusting you with everything, Captain Blake.”
“We won’t let you down.”
“I know. As soon as I see you on the roof, I’ll turn on the Ulterior-2’s countermeasures to knock out the enemy missile launchers. And everything else, for that matter.” Duggan smiled without humour. “It isn’t a healthy time to be a Vraxar on the Tucson landing strip.”
Blake and the others made haste through the bridge exit door and Lieutenant Paz sat herself in the corner out of the way. Her areas of expertise didn’t encompass bridge duties. A little while later, Sergeant Li sauntered in with the confident air of a man who’d been asked to show someone how to turn on a television.
“Sergeant Li, please take a seat next to Ensign Park. You’re in sole charge of the Havoc cannons. We’ll be lifting off soon, so if you have questions, now is the time to ask them.”
Li didn’t sound perturbed and poked at the targeting console. “Four upper guns, two lower and one each near the nose and tail. It’ll be like controlling eight tanks at the same time.”
“You’re aware there’ll be no time for pissing around, Sergeant?”
“I might talk, but I always get the job done, sir.”
“That’s what I wanted to hear.”
It would take Blake a few minutes to reach the shuttle and Duggan spent the time familiarising himself with the Ulterior-2’s onboard systems. In truth, there was little change in the interfaces since he’d last flown in anger and he also was part of the team which approved major software changes. The comms were updated, but Lieutenant Cruz seemed to be on top of things. His hands moved of their own volition, without conscious thought. The body has aged, but it still remembers.
“Ensign Bailey, update me on the engines.”
“Lieutenant Quinn managed to get the fission suppression set to cover their warmup, sir. We could get off the ground right now if you wanted to.”
“How long until we reach a state of full readiness?”
“Ten minutes.”
“That’s faster than I was expecting. What about our other critical systems?”
“Both Obsidiar cores are at 100%. The energy shield is fully charged and awaiting activation. Stealth systems online and available. Eight dedicated Short-Range Transit cores running within expected parameters.”
“Lieutenant Cruz, any response from the Sciontrar?”
“They’re silent on the comms, sir.”
“Watch out for Captain Blake and tell me when you see him on the roof.”
“The maintenance lift has just reached the outer hull. The Earth’s Fury crew are running for the shuttle.”
“Ensign Park, please activate the Ulterior-2’s external countermeasures. Set them to fire indiscriminately until there’s nothing left.”
“Yes, sir!” said Park. “Countermeasures activated.”
“Keep your eye on the sensor feed and remember this is payback for what they’ve done.”
“Projecting our external feeds onto the main viewscreen,” said Cruz.
It began at once. The Ulterior-2 was equipped with 184 Bulwark cannons, which could shoot down incoming missiles at two hundred thousand kilometres. This wasn’t their only use - they were versatile weapons and could be instructed to target more or less anything.
The Bulwarks sprang from their hidden compartments on the battleship. They appeared tiny against the might of its hull, yet Duggan knew exactly what they were capable of. At precisely the same moment, every gun which could identify a target started firing. Slugs poured into the tens of thousands of Vraxar gathered around the Ulterior-2.
The crew watched the bulkhead screen in silence. Bulwark projectiles tore through the massed ranks of alien troops, reducing them to unrecognizable pieces and leaving greasy liquid upon the concrete. The artillery fared no better – where the slugs struck them, they were knocked backwards, deformed and then broken into pieces.
Still the onslaught continued. Once the final artillery gun was destroyed, the Ulterior-2’s battle computer directed the Bulwarks to strafe the landing strip and shipyard. The underside cannons ripped through the troops at the bottom of the docking trench. The Vraxar were scythed down like wheat.
Many of the enemy were hidden from sight by the shipyard machinery. It didn’t save them. The indiscriminate firing mode on the guns directed them to keep shooting until every identified target was eliminated. The Bulwarks pounded the cranes, crawlers, robots, reducing them to scrap. Here and there, a cane toppled, crushing the Vraxar behind. In other places, the sustained Bulwark fusillade went clean through the solid machinery and maintained fire until there was nothing left to shoot.
Once the numbers surrounding the Ulterior-2 thinned, the battle computer took aim at the clusters of troops around the Earth’s Fury. This new carnage was accomplished with similar efficiency. There were thousands of Vraxar hidden from sight around the far side of Earth’s Fury and since Duggan couldn’t remote active the second spaceship’s Bulwarks, those remaining would have to wait for later.
One-by-one, the Bulwarks ran out of targets and stopped firing. The statistics for the short engagement appeared on the tactical display, as though the battle computer had a sense of pride in its achievement.
> Targets Identified: 88,300. Targets Eliminated: 88,299. Time Elapsed: 72 seconds. Estimated Targets Untracked: 12,093.
“Twelve thousand remaining?” asked Park.
“Out of sight, behind the Earth’s Fury,” said Duggan.
“What about this single enemy left from the identified targets?” asked Li indignantly, as though it was an affront for a single Vraxar to have escaped.
“If you chase perfection, you’ll spend your life in frustration, Sergeant.”
“Captain Blake is on his way,” said Lieutenant Cruz. “The shuttle is up in the air and it’s a short trip.”
“Is he carrying the Obsidiar magazine?”
“Yes, sir. No signs of additional damage to either the lifter or its cargo.”
“We might get something out of this yet,” said Duggan.
He checked through the Ulterior-2’s onboard status displays. It would take another few minutes to reach 100% on every system. All things considered, the battleship was about as ready as it would ever be. It wasn’t a moment too soon.
“Sir, there are two incoming spaceships, travelling fast and low. They’re heading our way.”
“The Sciontrar?”
“With the battleship coming after.”
A familiar calm descended upon Duggan. The excitement of battle – a joy he couldn’t resist – gripped him. His skin went cold, his pupils widened and he prepared for the fight.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Sciontrar appeared on the horizon as a fast-moving meteor of flame and burning anger. It flew over the Tucson base so fast it was a wonder it didn’t burn up from atmospheric friction. The Ghast battleship followed, hot with its own fires and hardly two thousand metres above the surface of New Earth. In its wake, it shook buildings and heat spilled into the rain-heavy air, turning it into thick clouds of steam.
And then, the two ships were gone, heading towards the horizon.
“Sergeant Li, target and fire as soon as you’re able.”
“Yes, sir. Let’s see what a real big bastard of a gun can do.”
Duggan took the control bars of the Ulterior-2, as smooth and cold as he remembered. They ran with precision through their runners and he pulled them towards him. The Hadron’s gravity engines were beautifully smooth and they gave no sign of stress at the lift-off. The Ulterior-2 rose from its trench, thirty-seven billion tonnes of engines, weapons and armour climbing into the darkness of the New Earth skies as if the battleship weighed no more than a feather.
There was no time for subtlety and a trail of sonic booms followed the immense craft’s vertical climb, rattling windows and shaking the damaged buildings all across the base.
“Activate stealth modules and our energy shield.”
“Stealth modules and shield online.”
“I have locked onto the enemy spaceship,” said Li. “The horizon won’t save them from this...”
Sergeant Li fired two of the upper Havoc cannons. Duggan knew the design difficulties only too well and he was expecting the result. The guns fired and a pair of twenty-metre, hardened Gallenium slugs, each weighing 146,000 tonnes were propelled from zero to 200,000 kilometres per second in the blinking of an eye.
The sound and the recoil were tremendous. The Havoc cannons gave off a whining boom which reverberated through the entire ship, shaking the walls and the equipment. The projectiles struck the rear section of the Vraxar battleship. Its energy shield was already gone and the slugs plunged through a thousand metres of armour plating and engines, leaving two enormous holes as evidence of their passing.
“Whoa,” said Li.
The Hadron was far too heavy to be thrown off course by the recoil, but Duggan felt movement in the control rods and he kept a tight hold. He fed a surge of power into the engines and turned the nose at the same time. As the spaceship tilted around and gathered speed, the Colossus tank on the upper section slid off the back, plummeting towards the ground. Duggan couldn’t afford sentimentality and put it from his mind.
“It wasn’t enough to finish them. Let’s have another go,” he said.
The Ulterior-2 responded well to the controls and its speed climbed rapidly. Soon, the Tucson base was far behind and a few seconds later the Hadron crossed over the coastline of the Postern Ocean. Duggan took the spaceship higher and higher, trying to open up a firing angle onto the Vraxar battleship. Below, the white-capped waves merged together until it seemed as though a carpet of cold grey-blue rolled away in every direction.
“The Vraxar energy shields have failed,” said Ensign Bailey. “Doesn’t that suggest the Ghasts have the upper hand?”
“It does.”
“Why is Tarjos Nil-Tras still running, then?”
“You don’t think he’s running from the battleship, do you?” asked Duggan.
“In that case…”
“Ix-Gorghal could be anywhere.”
“Why isn’t it still following?”
“Only a fool gets dragged into a low-altitude pursuit, Lieutenant. Ix-Gorghal’s captain likely broke it off some time ago and will be waiting for the Sciontrar to come to him. In the meantime, the Ghasts will keep running and hope to evade Ix-Gorghal – they’re buying time and nothing more.”
Another thought came to Duggan and it worried him. What if Ix-Gorghal is already following with its stealth modules activated? It could be ten klicks away, ignorant of our location, but close enough to hit us as soon as we reveal our presence.
“Hold fire for the moment,” he said. “There’s something about this situation I don’t like. Lieutenant Cruz, try contacting the Sciontrar again.”
“There’s no comms response, sir,” said Cruz. “Whatever is keeping New Earth quiet is working on the Ghasts now they’ve come close enough. I can talk to them, but they can’t answer back.”
“Let them know we’re following close by and are evaluating.”
“Two of the Vraxar satellites are in view, sir,” said Park. “I can hit them with Shimmers, which might allow comms in this area.”
“Hold fire, I said! It’s important the enemy think the New Earth prize is still theirs for the taking. I don’t want to push them into a position where it’s more convenient to simply blow the whole planet to pieces and move on to the next one. And a weapon launch will give our position away if Ix-Gorghal is close.”
“Oxygen levels at 15%,” said Cruz. “Not a good time to be living at altitude.”
Even with the Ulterior-2 operational and up in the air, the situation was a poor one. Havoc cannons or not, the Hadron wasn’t going to worry Ix-Gorghal for long and a confrontation was inevitable.
“There’s only one thing with a chance of hurting that bastard,” said Duggan under his breath.
“What’s that, sir?”
“The Ulterior-2 isn’t made to beat Ix-Gorghal, Lieutenant Cruz. Our sole purpose should be to keep the enemy ship away from the Earth’s Fury and give Captain Blake an opportunity to test out that gun. The Vraxar battleship is a variable I don’t want in play – we’ll have to take it out without making ourselves vulnerable to a surprise attack from Ix-Gorghal.”
“Won’t that give the Vraxar an excuse to blow up New Earth?”
“It might, so we’ll need to engage Ix-Gorghal quickly, keep it occupied and hope the distraction is enough.”
Sergeant Li was sharper than his easy-going manner suggested. “The enemy spaceship will leave a pretty big hole in New Earth if we shoot it down from here, sir.”
“It’s not travelling with anything close to sufficient velocity to escape New Earth’s gravitational pull if we destroy it on its current vector,” confirmed Ensign Bailey. “However, it is definitely travelling with enough speed to kill half of the population and wreck several million square klicks of the surface.”
“Let’s see what we can do to draw them away,” said Duggan.
The Ghast and Vraxar warships were four thousand kilometres ahead and one thousand below, each of them leaving a thick trail of grey smoke which extended for twenty thousand kilometres or more. They traded blows, with the Vraxar spaceship unloading everything it had, whilst the Ghasts launched missiles in smaller, staggered clusters of four or five.
Duggan increased the Ulterior-2’s speed. The Hadron was built to withstand repeated particle beam strikes and an unintended consequence of its heat-dispersal technology was an ability to fly at greater speed through a dense atmosphere than any other ship in the fleet.
The gap closed steadily and the nose of the Ulterior-2 started warming up.
“Sir?” It was Lieutenant Cruz and she sounded worried.
“Tell me.”
“There’s an anomaly two thousand klicks behind us and slightly to one side. A large object is displacing the positrons we’re leaking from our uncovered engines.”
It was a good spot. The Ulterior-2’s gravity drive was partially exposed and the shielding applied in the shipyard was only a temporary measure until it could be properly covered up by the outer plates. The Hadron was likely spilling a handful of particles through the air as it travelled. There was only thing big enough to have a measurable effect.
“Ix-Gorghal. So, they are here. Are there any clues as to whether its seen us?”
“Gut instinct tells
me we’d be dead by now. I’ve seen first-hand what it can do and I wouldn’t expect it to be long before it finds us.”
“Seems like we were lucky just getting off the ground,” said Duggan. “We must have activated the stealth modules with moments to spare.”
It was going to require a fine balancing act to destroy the Vraxar battleship whilst also allowing the Sciontrar and the Ulterior-2 an opportunity to stay ahead of Ix-Gorghal. Nil-Tras was a wily captain and he was somehow managing to keep the cusp of New Earth between himself and Ix-Gorghal, whilst at the same time holding the Vraxar’s interest by leaving his stealth modules switched off.
The Ghast was also lucky. At any point, the capital ship could fly higher in order to get a firing angle, or it could simply adopt a high, stationary orbit and wait for the Sciontrar to pass underneath.
At which point Nil-Tras would enter lightspeed again, thought Duggan with a smile of admiration.
He increased the Ulterior-2’s speed further and the battleship skimmed effortlessly above New Earth, coming closer to the enemy spaceship with each passing second.
“One thousand klicks,” said Cruz. “Five hundred. Two hundred. I am no longer able to pinpoint Ix-Gorghal.”
“Descending to three thousand metres.”
Duggan pushed forward on the control sticks and the Ulterior-2 plummeted towards the ocean below. The spaceship’s altitude dropped rapidly and he hauled it level at exactly three thousand metres. Pieces of ice floated amongst the waves and the water looked as cold and uninviting as anywhere out in space.
“Pray that Tarjos Nil-Tras is in a listening mood,” said Duggan. “Lieutenant Cruz, contact the Ghasts and ask them to climb directly away from New Earth.”
Cruz hurriedly passed on the message. “Done.”
“The Vraxar haven’t stopped firing their missiles at the Ghasts, sir,” said Ensign Bailey. “I think the Sciontrar’s energy shield is on the brink of failure.”
“In which case they’ll be glad when they find out what we’re going to do.”
Even though Duggan knew it was coming, the steepness of the Oblivion’s climb caught him unawares. The Sciontrar hurtled towards the edges of space, leaving the Vraxar battleship far below.
Earth's Fury (Obsidiar Fleet Book 4) Page 22
