“Where?”
“They’re cloaked. Lieutenant Cruz is sending us a series of coordinates to show their vector.”
“Put it into my screen. Quickly!”
The details appeared as a constantly changing series of eighty-digit numbers.
“I’ve pinpointed them, sir! You should be able to see them on your console.”
A dot appeared, showing the Ulterior-2 moving at high speed across the surface of New Earth’s moon.
“Can you predict their course from this?”
“I don’t think so, sir. They could change direction at any moment.”
“They’ve been around the moon and they’ve come out the other side,” Blake mused. He snapped his fingers. “They’ve got Ix-Gorghal following them and the Vraxar have their stealth modules activated.”
“I can’t shoot what I can’t see,” said Hawkins, frustration spilling over.
“Admiral Duggan will know that, Lieutenant. He’s going to do something.”
“The Sciontrar must have crashed into the moon!” said Pointer. “The Ulterior-2 is on an intersecting course.”
“I know what he’s going to do!” said Blake. “Lieutenant Hawkins, aim the Shield Breaker towards the Sciontrar. Get ready to fire!”
“The barrel is moving too slowly. You’ll need to turn the ship, sir!”
It took all of Blake’s skill and concentration to pull it off. He made the tiniest of adjustments to the controls and the Earth’s Fury began the slowest of rotations.
Quinn thumped the arm of his seat. “Where the hell are they?”
A comms message reached the Earth’s Fury.
“Lieutenant Cruz says get ready!” shouted Pointer.
The sensor feed picked up signs of warheads detonating above the surface of the moon and the front section of an immense shape was highlighted briefly. A new fire came, flooding over the intensity of the Shimmer fires. Suddenly, Ix-Gorghal was surrounded by the blue heat of the Sciontrar’s Particle Disruptor. The ovoid shape of the Vraxar capital ship was cast in relief against the grey background of New Earth’s moon, the colour as pure and deep as an Atlantis sea.
“Fire,” said Blake.
With a sound no louder than a whisper, the Shield Breaker fired.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The Ulterior-2 was in a bad way, its plating battered, crushed and split by Ix-Gorghal’s gauss turrets. Duggan’s console was covered in red alerts and the control bars were unresponsive. He roared in anger, refusing to give up hope.
On the viewscreen, Ix-Gorghal burned, not for a moment letting up in the bombardment. Duggan raised his fist towards the image and then…
Something crashed through Ix-Gorghal’s weakened shields, leaving a black plume through the disruptor fire. The Shield Breaker’s projectile struck the flank of Ix-Gorghal, travelling just shy of lightspeed. It punched through the spaceship’s thick hull, leaving a tiny, insignificant hole in one of the outer structures.
The unstable Obsidiar didn’t quite explode. Rather, it ruptured into a vast arc of unstoppable energy, which burst through the centre of Ix-Gorghal, reducing metal and a quarter of a billion Vraxar into their individual atoms. At the opposite side from the entry point, the depleted remains of the projectile smashed free, its speed hardly diminished. In its wake was a huge, gaping hole, two hundred kilometres across.
Incredibly, Ix-Gorghal was not destroyed. It stopped firing at the Ulterior-2 and began turning, slowly and ponderously. Duggan saw into the depths of the weapon tube at its nose and watched the green light building within. The Vraxar ship turned inexorably towards New Earth.
“Fire!” said Duggan.
The Ulterior-2 unleashed its arsenal, sending wave upon wave of missiles into the damaged enemy ship. With its energy shield burned out, there was nothing to prevent the Shimmers exploding against Ix-Gorghal’s dark armour. Havoc slugs tore through, each hit doing untold damage. It wasn’t enough – the Vraxar capital ship was far too large to succumb to a single salvo.
A second round from the Shield Breaker crashed through the enemy ship. The effects of the unstable Obsidiar were difficult to model and this second projectile had an even more catastrophic effect than the first. It caught Ix-Gorghal at an angle and this time the disintegration arc travelled lengthways through most of the structure, before finally blowing out the rear third of the ship.
The green light faded from the front tube and gradually Ix-Gorghal began to break up.
“Should I hold fire?” asked Park.
“Never stop until you’re sure, Ensign.”
Sergeant Li knew the truth of those words and he fired the Havoc guns as quickly as they would reload. Another turret ripped free and still the soldier didn’t stop.
Blake knew the truth as well and when the third round from the Shield Breaker hit Ix-Gorghal, it was finally clear the job was done.
Scarcely able to believe it, Duggan didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He felt a hand rest gently on his shoulder. He looked into the eyes of Lieutenant Paz.
“We got them, sir.”
He nodded. “In the end.”
“Is this how it always is?”
He choked back the tears. “Mostly.”
“Time to go home.”
The return flight was difficult. The Ulterior-2 was badly damaged, though not so much that it couldn’t launch two of its shuttles to find out how many of the Sciontrar’s crew still lived. The battleship limped towards New Earth with only a fraction of its engine power available. There was little conversation and not one of the crew dared to mention that Ix-Gastiol was still somewhere in Confederation Space.
A million kilometres behind, a vast cloud of debris slowly scattered, the pieces spinning and turning on their journey to nowhere. Duggan couldn’t bring himself to look at it.
The comms were still jammed and Duggan ordered a circuit of the planet, shooting down each of the remaining Vraxar satellites.
“Only 12% oxygen remaining,” said Cruz.
“We have generators,” Lieutenant Paz replied. “Old Estral technology.”
The comms returned with the destruction of the final satellite. Duggan spoke to Blake and wasn’t surprised to discover the Earth’s Fury was back on the ground.
“Our turn next,” said Duggan.
“A fine job, sir.”
“From every one of us, Captain.”
“You haven’t forgotten, have you?” asked Paz.
“No, I haven’t forgotten about Benediction.”
“We should hurry.”
“There must be hours left.”
“Three hours, sir. These satellites took a long time, and there are plenty of Vraxar on the base.”
“Very well, let’s get a move on.”
There were still twelve thousand Vraxar on the landing strip and in the shipyard, as well as thousands more in the streets and buildings. Those in the vicinity of Trench Two lacked guidance and waited patiently while the Ulterior-2’s bulwarks cut them to pieces. A few minutes later, the battleship joined Earth’s Fury on the landing strip. One spaceship looked incomplete, whilst the other looked like it had been struck a thousand times by a billion-tonne mallet. Duggan boarded one of the remaining shuttles and got on his way, bringing Lieutenant Paz and an escort of soldiers with him.
Benediction
Benediction was exactly as Duggan remembered it. His brain didn’t register the shape or the colour, so much as the terrible promises it whispered.
“The ultimate trade,” he said.
Paz knew exactly what he meant. “I get the feeling it’s desperate to be used. I don’t know why.”
“It’s not evil, Lieutenant.”
“I don’t think it’s evil, sir. It’s just…chaos. The unfettered joy of destruction for the pure hell of it.”
Duggan glanced at Paz, wondering just how much she knew of his own feelings on the matter. She didn’t say anything else and he didn’t ask.
“There’s the timer.”
000:000:0
2:21:09
“No joking around, sir. Can you just turn it off so we can get out of here?”
Duggan accessed the bomb’s security computer and disabled the timer. The display went blank, awaiting input. His shoulders sagged and he sensed the relief in Lieutenant Paz.
“You have to carry the weight of this around with you all the time.” The words were neither a statement or a question.
“Someone’s got to do it.”
“You won’t let us down.”
“No, Lieutenant, I won’t let us down.”
They exited the facility. The defeat of Ix-Gorghal was a monumental achievement, but Duggan couldn’t allow himself the time to celebrate. The war wasn’t over and there was still so much to do.
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Earth's Fury (Obsidiar Fleet Book 4) Page 25
