The oxygen levels weren’t sufficient to support life, so there was a chance she was right. Duggan itched to face this new enemy, to see what they were made of. If they’d perished inside, the opportunity would be gone.
“I don’t care how they die, as long as they’re dead,” said Cook with uncanny timing. “It means I’ll be alive for the next time we fight them. Or the Ghasts. I suppose I don’t care who it is.”
“There’s no way we’re getting this open by force,” said Garvin. “The tank would have been enough if it still worked.”
“No point in crying over it,” said Ortiz. “The tank’s gone.”
“We’ll have to wait,” said Duggan. “See if the Terminus comes back. If not, we’ll be here a while.”
“Permanently, if you ask me,” said Quinn unhelpfully.
“I’ve been to worse places than this,” said Reed. “Admittedly not many.”
The squad talked lightly, but the situation was serious. Everyone knew it, though they chose to pretend otherwise. The conditions on Trasgor weren’t harsh enough to threaten them while the spacesuits functioned. Regardless, it would be an unpleasant few months counting down the time until the helmet power units failed and they suffocated.
“Should we head back to the tank?” asked Garvin. “One or two of us know how to fix things. Maybe there’s something we can do to get it moving.”
“It’s not going anywhere,” said Duggan. “If it’s ever recovered they won’t even try to repair what’s left.”
“And there’s all that shit spilling out if its engines,” said Hammond.
“If we’re going to die, we may as well do it trying,” said Duggan eventually. “We’ll head back and see what we can do. We should finish looking around this pyramid, in case there’s a door open on one of the other sides.”
They continued onwards until they had completed a full circuit of the pyramid. It was tightly sealed, with no sign of another door. Duggan hadn’t pinned any hope on it being otherwise, so he got his bearings and began to walk purposefully back towards the ruined tank. The others came silently after, with no one offering an opinion or alternative.
They reached the tank without incident. Seeing it anew, Duggan was certain there was nothing they could do to fix it. He didn’t wish to lower the squad’s morale by repeating his earlier words about how broken it was, and regretted saying them. Still, a realist would know any attempt at repairs was a lost cause. Sometimes, a futile task was enough to hold people together and Duggan hoped it would be the case here.
“There it is. I expect it to be running smoothly within four hours,” he said, attempting to spur them on with humour.
“Nice one, sir,” said Alvarez. “Give me your magic wand and I’ll wave it for you.”
“I want another search of the shell,” said Duggan. “Whatever you can find, bring it outside. Corporal Hammond, I want you in the cockpit. If there’s life in any of the systems, bring them online and see if there’s something we can use.”
A number of the squad got to work with enthusiasm. Others were noticeably less keen and they trudged around the edges of the tank, trying to look busy. Ortiz went amongst them, shouting words of encouragement. No one was fooled, though their activity levels increased.
There wasn’t much of the day left and the squad worked for two hours before the light became too bad to work without image intensifiers. It was possible to continue and Duggan considered doing so. In the end, he called a halt for the day. They’d worked hard on fixing the tank and accomplished nothing. All of the internal screens were dead and Hammond hadn’t been able to get any form of response from the mainframe at all. The spacesuits were giving amber warnings about positrons, so they couldn’t stay here forever. There was little point in trying to outdistance the leakage and they stayed close to the vehicle, with a few attempting sleep in the half-dozen seats that remained intact within.
Duggan sat with his back to the tank’s side wall, staring into the distance. Intensified greens and blacks from the landscape mixed into an array of shapes that looked utterly different to how they had during the day. It was tempting to switch off the sensor and enjoy the solitude of darkness. There was little chatter and those voices which spoke lacked their usual humour. There was no anger either and for that Duggan was thankful.
He’d been lost before on other planets and in circumstances as bad as this. He’d been younger then and it had felt like an adventure. Not once had he considered his death as the outcome. Here on Trasgor, the weight of his mortality pressed heavily against him. It wasn’t so much his death he feared as it was dying with his duty left undone. Failure was a word he’d spent his entire life running from in one form or another. The older and wiser he became, the harder it was to escape. I’ve managed it so far, he thought, shaking away the gloom. What’s the point in a life without challenge?
He worked through the possibilities, trying to see if there was a glimmer of a way to control events. The Terminus had been gone for too long and it was increasingly likely something was amiss. Lieutenant Chainer had said their initial distress signal through Monitoring Station Gamma would take a couple of days to reach its destination. After that, it could potentially be several more days until a rescue ship got here – perhaps another of the vessels the Space Corps had sent to look for the SC Lupus was close enough to arrive sooner. The thought gave him some hope – the Corps might risk a disposable craft if it was in the vicinity. If they lost a Gunner, there’d be little impact on the fleet’s capabilities. The biggest unknown was the Ghasts. Nil-Far’s interest in the pyramid had been intense and Duggan dearly wished he knew why. Then, there were the Dreamers. While he sat thinking, they could have a dozen warships coming towards Trasgor to find out what had happened here.
His mind wandered off to encompass other ideas, none of which would benefit the stranded troops. Circular thoughts pursued each other, eventually driving him into a fitful doze. Even in sleep there was no freedom from the helplessness and his dreams were vivid representations of death. In the end, he stood and took himself for a walk. When he returned a few hours later, the horizon was brightening and the squad were getting themselves prepared for another day attempting to repair a tank which everyone knew would never move again.
Chapter Seventeen
The morning passed slowly. They’d exhausted their few options when it came to repairs. Without proper tools and with only a passing knowledge of how the tank worked, they ran quickly into a dead end. Corporal Hammond had found a hand-held analyser, which he’d plugged into one of the mainframe’s interface ports. The device ran through a number of routines to try and kick-start the vehicle’s main computer. After a while it, too, gave up, having exhausted its own pre-programmed list of options.
Duggan was just about to call for them to return to the pyramid and plant every last explosive device they possessed onto the door and see if it would blow open, when his suit comms crackled faintly. He jerked in surprise. The crackling didn’t go away and he heard a voice amongst the harsh static, repeating a message over and over. He tried to respond, convinced his words would be lost in the noise. After a few minutes, he was able to make it out what was being said.
“This is Terminus Shuttle One. Do you copy?”
“This is Captain Duggan. I copy.”
“Captain Duggan, this is Sergeant Washington. We’re approaching your coordinates. Please hold your position. ETA twenty minutes.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” said Duggan, relief flooding into him. He spoke into the open channel. “We’ve got a rescue coming. Everyone get off the tank and be ready to give them a wave.”
“Damn, I’m glad to hear those words,” said Ortiz.
Duggan had plenty of questions, which he kept to himself for the moment. Twenty minutes wasn’t long and the shuttle was soon visible in the distance. The vessel was about fifty metres in length and it hovered for a few seconds while its landing computer checked the solidity of the ground below. When it was s
atisfied, the autopilot set the craft down a short distance away from the tank. The squad ran over, as the boarding ramp folded quietly outwards.
“Sergeant Washington, I’m glad to see you,” said Duggan to the first man off the ramp.
“I thought you might be, sir. Want me to fill you in on the details?”
“Fire away, Sergeant. Where’s the Terminus?”
“The ship’s still up there, sir. Commander McGlashan spoke to me directly. The Ghasts are following some crazy pattern around this system. She isn’t certain, but she thinks they may be purposefully taking a route that keeps us out of contact with the ground deployment.”
“She said that?”
“Yes sir. The Ghasts finally responded to our request for information and they claim they’re doing engine tests after the recent damage they suffered.”
“What did Commander McGlashan say about it?”
“She believed them, sir. She also believes their deep fission drives have sufficient output to take them into a medium lightspeed. The engines on the Terminus won’t be ready for another few hours. Commander McGlashan is continuing to shadow the Dretisear as per orders.”
“How did you get here? There were launch problems.”
“Those problems remain unresolved, sir. However, the men and women onboard have worked tirelessly with metal cutters and managed to remove the magnetic clamps from this craft, thereby allowing it to leave the Terminus. The Ghast ship came close enough to the dark side of Trasgor for the shuttle to launch. Here we are, sir.”
Duggan clapped Sergeant Washington on the shoulder. “Well met, Sergeant. How long till the Terminus comes within range again?”
“Hours, sir. We’re to fly to a pre-arranged meeting point for an attempted pickup.”
“The Terminus is moving fast?”
“Too fast for the shuttle to keep up, sir.”
“Well, we can’t have everything, Sergeant. I don’t suppose we can expect a tank to be following in your footsteps any time soon?”
“Not a tank, sir,” said Washington, sounding pleased. “We did manage to fit a heavy repeater into our hold. It didn’t leave much room for anything else and it’s given the engines a workout.”
“Sergeant, the news keeps getting better,” said Duggan. He climbed up the ramp and looked inside the shuttle. The heavy repeater was fifteen metres long and five wide – a cube of metal with a rounded front and a three-metre-long turret on top. Someone had painted the words Suck me on the barrel in rough green letters. The repeater hovered a few inches above the floor and the top almost reached the ceiling. The seats in the personnel bay hadn’t been cleared before the gun was loaded and struts of crushed metal were visible, poking out from beneath. There were a few soldiers in the bay as well, waiting to see what was expected of them.
“You powered the gun up to stop it from sliding around?”
“Yes, sir.” It was against procedures, since unsecured artillery had been known to rupture the hulls of transport vessels in the past. Duggan recalled it was something about the onboard positioning systems becoming confused by the motion of a shuttle. Here and now, it didn’t matter one bit.
“We’re coming onboard,” said Duggan. “I want to test out the repeater on something close by.”
The men and women of his squad scrambled up the ramp. There wasn’t a lot of room left once they gave the repeater a wide berth. Nobody wanted to be crushed to death when they were on the verge of rescue. Duggan climbed into the small cockpit, though he let Washington continue as pilot. The shuttle took off with a rumble of stressed engines. Duggan glanced back through the cockpit door and saw the heavy repeater sway gently in position. The troops watched it nervously.
Moments later, the shuttle landed in the valley, about five hundred metres from the pyramid. The occupants jumped out, grateful to be away from the unsecured gun.
“Unlatching the side panel,” said Washington, pressing a button on his console.
There was the hiss of a seal breaking, followed by a whining noise. The entire side wall of the shuttle opened outwards, coming to rest gently on the solid ground. These vessels weren’t expected to carry large loads, but they’d been designed with flexibility in mind - there were times the normal boarding ramp wasn’t big enough. Sergeant Washington left his chair and climbed onto the back of the repeater by means of a set of rusted iron rungs. There was a platform with railings, big enough for a single person to stand on. The gun was controlled remotely, though there were times it was easiest to have someone onboard to fine-tune its movements. When there was a long way to walk, it wasn’t uncommon to find the top platform of one of these crowded with men and women.
Duggan jumped off the shuttle, landing with a crunch on the ground. Sergeant Washington rotated the gun with the utmost care. The hull of the shuttle was strong, but it wasn’t proof against a collision from an object as heavy as this artillery piece. Slowly, it came down the wide ramp, until it was clear of the vessel. A few of the squad expressed their relief over the comms channel.
“Where should I point it, sir?” asked Washington.
“Over there,” said Duggan, pointing at the pyramid.
“This is a big bastard of a gun but I’m not sure it’ll go through something as strong as that.”
They had landed opposite the single door into the pyramid. Duggan jogged over and indicated the area he wanted the repeater to aim at.
“There’s a door. You can’t see it unless you’re close up.”
“Everyone back!” shouted Ortiz. “This is going to be loud.”
“What about ricochets?” asked Quinn. “I’ve seen people killed by the ricochets.”
“New model,” said Washington. “The firing computer won’t eject a projectile if it believes there’s a chance of a bounce back.”
“I’ve heard that before. Shouldn’t we get the shuttle away just in case?”
Washington laughed richly, the sound carrying undertones of barely-contained madness. “Trust in technology, soldier. Trust in technology.”
The soldiers sprinted towards the far side of the shuttle. In reality, a ricochet would smash the vessel apart easily and it might have been for the best to take it a few dozen kilometres away in order to minimise risk. Duggan was high after the turnaround in his fortunes and wasn’t in the mood for delay. On top of that, he wanted to be prepared for whatever lay inside the pyramid. He strolled away from the door. The barrel of the floating artillery was a fist-sized circle of impenetrable darkness, pointing directly over his head. He came level with it and thumped the palm of his hand against the side wall.
“Fire,” he said.
The repeater poured out its fury. The floating base shook as its gravity drive fought to correct against the recoil. The barrel of the gun rocked violently, its targeting computer making thousands of tiny updates to account for the kickback. The grumbling noise of slugs racing through electromagnetic coils was overwhelmed by a gargantuan clattering of depleted uranium striking a dense alloy surface at several thousand metres per second. Duggan’s suit helmet attenuated the sound, reducing it to a level that was just below the pain threshold. He stared impassively at the door as it was subjected to an immense and unrelenting crushing force. The surface began to glow, starting with a dull red and increasing in brightness until it was a vivid orange. The metal swam with movement, reminding Duggan of fingers being pressed into dense clay. Through it all, Sergeant Washington laughed with pure delight.
The door held up well against the assault. The clattering merged into a single, constant sound, which droned and buzzed in Duggan’s ears. The Space Corps heavy repeaters fired faster and faster as they warmed up, until eventually the control computer had to shut them down. Without that restraint, they would continue to the point of self-destruction. Duggan pressed his hand gently against the floating base. The metal felt warm, even through the insulation of the glove he wore. It would likely shut down soon.
The fusillade continued unabated and, without warn
ing, a hole appeared in the door. A moment later, it was torn away from its mountings, crumpled and pulverised into a twisted slab of glowing alloy. Sergeant Washington didn’t stop and the door was punched away from the doorway and hurled into the pyramid, spreading heat and light around it.
Duggan ran to the back of the gun, meaning to give Washington the signal to stop. He was too late – the noise ended abruptly, leaving Duggan with a ringing in his ears. The Sergeant chuckled to himself as if remembering the greatest joke he’d ever heard.
“Enough,” said Duggan.
“Man, I love this shit,” said Washington, leaning around the gun to admire the damage he’d caused. Before he could say more, something hit him in the head, taking it clean away along with half of his shoulder and one arm. His body was smashed to the floor, his life taken instantly.
“Get down!” shouted Duggan to the rest of the squad. “We’re taking fire!”
Chapter Eighteen
Sergeant Washington was dead, pieces of his body carried away by whatever it was that hit him. Duggan left the corpse where it lay and looked around the side of the repeater. The doorway was three hundred metres away and the ruined door smouldered sullenly in the space beyond. Its glow had faded to a red which showed nothing of the surroundings and also conspired to interfere with the attempts of Duggan’s helmet sensors to pierce the darkness.
“Where did the shot come from?” he shouted. There was nothing moving in the Lambda crater above, so the only place was the doorway.
“I’m not detecting movement,” said Ortiz. “The repeater’s in the way and there’s no angle to see in the door.”
Something thundered into the base of the artillery gun, knocking it a few centimetres towards Duggan. A second strike followed the first and the repeater was again pushed away. Duggan patched into its computer using his helmet to interface. It was down to thirty percent of its ammunition and several damage warnings flashed up. The gun was hit again.
Chains of Duty Page 12
