by Dan Worth
‘How the hell did you get us out of the gate?’ said Katherine.
‘Luck,’ Farouk replied. ‘I stole a Sergeant’s suit and as luck would have it, the guard at the gate was green as hell. He probably only came in a few days ago. In any case, he didn’t question my identity when I told him I was taking two civilians outside to make some emergency repairs.’
‘Your one resourceful man, Farouk,’ said Rekkid. ‘That was some quick thinking. You avoided killing him and attracting too much attention to us.’
‘Yes well, I do not like the idea of having to kill anyone… on the other hand, it may not make much difference by the end of this. We need to get moving, come on, this way.’ He started up the hill at a lively pace.
‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ said Katherine, looking back at the now distant dig site base, its ring of defences now largely reduced to molten slag. Another series of explosions marked the demise of another gun position, the cracking noise of the impacts arriving a split second later and echoing off the distant hills.
‘Yes, I wonder what his friends have in store for Admiral Cox and his precious dig site?’ mused Rekkid. ‘I’m not sure I’d like to stick around to find out, come on.’
Cox was already airborne. The dig site possessed a Condor class landing craft to act as an escape shuttle in case of emergencies and this definitely qualified as such. He, a couple of aides, Reynaud and a squad of fully armed marines were ensconced into the rear compartment of the sleekly angular craft as it sped away from the base at low level and then began to slowly circle outside the perimeter of the combat zone. Reynaud looked decidedly green from the bumpy ride through the turbulent atmosphere and the continuous rising and falling of the ship as its pilot hugged the ground as far as possible to disguise their stealthy signature against the background clutter of the terrain features and atmospheric conditions. No-one would be able to see the Condor unless they were deliberately searching the exact area around it, or if they got extremely lucky. Nevertheless, it made for a poor makeshift command post. The craft’s facilities were minimal, the usual c & c suite used by field commanders for co-ordinating assaults having been stripped out to accommodate more seats, and it was impossible to put out a distress signal and a request for backup whilst Rhyolite itself lay between them and both Barstow and Centre Point Harbour. The co-pilot had tried to access the hypercom node back at the dig site, but discovered that it had been destroyed by the attack. Their only option appeared to be to sit tight and hope that someone would pick up their broadcasts and send in the cavalry. The vessel was armed with a variety of weapons, but none would be effective against the attacking vessels from this range and the ship itself wasn’t suited to a dog fight, not to mention the fact that they would be hopelessly outnumbered.
Cox strained to listen as he clamped the earpiece of the shuttle’s communication suite to his head. The transmission back to the dig site was of very poor quality. The only transmitters still in operation were relatively short ranged and intended only for local communications and lacked the power to penetrate the volatile atmosphere. Cox struggled to hear the agitated voice of a young Lieutenant using an emergency set over the sounds of the shuttle in flight.
‘Say again Lieutenant. What is the status of our defences?’
‘Only two batteries remaining sir, one kinetic…’ the transmission was interrupted for a second by static ‘…particle beam cannons. It’s only a matter of time before…’ more static, ‘…base directly.’
‘Any sign of help arriving?’
‘Sorry sir, I’m having trouble reading you,’ came the crackly response. Cox frustratedly repeated his question. ‘Yes sir, we’re being pinged by a wing of recon fighters. Signal IFF verifies them as being from the Churchill. We have no voice comms to them but my guess is that help is on the way.’ The man’s voice distorted oddly from signal attenuation. One of the marines came forwards and adjusted the comms gear, boosting the signal quality.
‘Good. That’s good. You hang in there soldier, the Churchill’s a fine ship. They’ll get us out of this mess.’
‘Yessir. Sir, there is one other thing: base security have just informed me that the prisoners being held under guard in the accommodation block have escaped. It seems that the marine guarding them was incapacitated somehow. Looks like a stun gun of some kind.’
‘Shit. Why was the guard reduced?’
‘I don’t know sir. I guess someone decided that we needed all hands for our defence.’
‘Are they inside or outside the base?’
‘Unknown. But two emergency suits were discovered stolen from the supply locker of the security post in the accommodation block. One of the guards did report two civilians leaving the base in the custody of a marine sergeant that he didn’t recognise, but he was as green as they come.’
‘There’s only one way out of the base and they won’t get far in this place with just emergency suits. Someone must have arranged to meet them. My guess is that this was an inside job. How long have they been gone?’
‘The man guarding the room thinks that he was attacked shortly after the raid started, sir. They can’t have got far on foot.’
‘No, that’s true. Alright, we’ll circle and see if we can spot any vehicles in this mess. I want our people out of the line of fire until help arrives. Get them dispersed and undercover until help arrives. Keep me informed Lieutenant. Cox out.’ He leant forward over the shoulders of the pilot and co-pilot. ‘Gentlemen, if this flying door-stop has any ground sweeping sensors at all I want them turned on. See if you can find any vehicles out here as we circle around, especially ones heading away from the dig site. Cor and O’Reilly have escaped somehow, and I intend to find them.’
From the rear of the craft came the sound of Reynaud retching.
The battered yellow crawler crouched low in the shallow depression before them, its dusty features almost blending in with the surrounding rocks. Farouk, Rekkid and Katherine staggered gratefully towards it as a figure inside the glassed in cab waved at them. Farouk’s brother, Ibrahim had waited for them as promised.
As they approached the crawler he lowered the loading ramp at the rear vehicle to allow them easier access in their ungainly outfits. Katherine’s foot touched the lip of the ramp just as Ibrahim started the engine on the massive vehicle; she felt the vibrations through the corrugated metal as she hurried inside, Rekkid close behind her. Farouk lingered for a moment as if scanning the horizon, then followed them into the vehicle, his progress aided by the ramp that started to rise as he walked up it.
With the door closed, the rear cargo bay sealed and pressurised and the hatches to the rest of the vehicle unclamped, then the trio felt the vehicle begin to move over the bumpy ground.
Rekkid wrenched off his helmet with a sigh of relief.
‘Thank fuck that’s over with,’ he gasped. ‘I thought I was going to cook inside that thing.’
‘You want to try adding claustrophobia as well,’ Katherine commented, her face slicked with sweat that stuck strands of her red hair to her forehead. ‘I’ve had walks that were more fun. Still, Farouk, I don’t think we can thank you enough.’
‘We’re not out of this yet,’ said the bear-like man as he struggled out of his suit. ‘We must rendezvous with our pick up, then we must get off this moon, then we must reach safety, then you can thank me.’ He stepped out of the greaves of the suit and stood before them in work overalls that were drenched in sweat, the suit he had been wearing having been designed not to be worn with full clothing. ‘Excuse me, I must go to the cab and give my brother the transponder frequency.’ He sniffed at one damp armpit and grimaced. ‘And then I must burn these clothes, I think.’
The crawler sped onwards, its over sized tyres making light work of the rough terrain as it steadily widened the distance between itself and the dig site. Outside, the yellow tinged winds howled.
The Profit Margin was also closing in on the rendezvous point. Isaacs was slowing the ship from its
almost suicidal speed as she thundered across the face of Rhyolite mere tens of metres from the ground. As the ship braked to a less insane speed he saw Anna visibly relax in the co-pilot’s chair.
Not far now, thought Isaacs as the figures next to the waypoint on his HUD counted down. The rendezvous point was still a few kilometres over the horizon, placing the green marker below the rippled line of low hills that marked that line.
‘Anna,’ he said. ‘You got our comm. system tuned into that transponder frequency?’
‘Of course,’ she said through gritted teeth as a rocky outcropping swept by in a heartbeat. ‘You think I’ve just been sitting on my arse here?’
‘No, sorry,’ he muttered. ‘Anita!’ he called into the ship’s internal comm. ‘You get those cannons fired up. We have to consider the possibility of a less than friendly reception.’
‘You think?’ said Anita. ‘Farouk’s pretty good. I reckon he got those two out of there without anyone noticing a thing.’
‘Yeah well… just in case, you know?’
‘Alright Cal, I’m on it,’ said Anita in reply.
‘She’s never fired a weapon in anger you know,’ said Anna. ‘She might hesitate if we do encounter hostiles.’
‘Yeah well, she’s gotta get used to this sometime. Thirty seconds to landing, everyone!’
In response to Isaacs’ braking manoeuvre, the Profit Margin’s reverse thrusters howled in protest.
‘Sir we have detected a large vehicle on the ground about two clicks south west of the dig site,’ the co-pilot of the shuttle reported to Cox. ‘Looks like one of the crawlers we’ve been using to haul supplies. It’s heading at speed away from the dig site. Jesus, the driver must be a mad man, either that, or he knows the terrain around here like the back of his hand.’
‘Close in on them and order them to halt. Fire on them if you have to disable the vehicle.’
‘Yessir. Arming weapons now,’ replied the pilot swinging the ship around and powering towards the blip that had appeared on his cockpit display. He flicked the cover from the firing stud on his control column. There was a mechanical ‘thunk’ as the chin mounted rail-cannon deployed from its stowed position and then swivelled towards the crawler, already designated as a target by the co-pilot.
Isaacs saw the Condor at the last second as it sank, vulture-like over the bulky yellow crawler. Swearing, he instinctively yanked the controls to avoid the collision and gunned the engines, pulling the Profit Margin out of the landing manoeuvre and swinging her back around into an attack posture. The crawler continued to bounce heavily over the dusty earth, kicking up yellow clouds as it went.
Inside the crawler, Farouk strained to see the Condor as it hovered behind and above them. The sound of Cox’s voice resounded loudly over the comm. system as the ship’s engines roared loudly outside and the crawler’s engine throbbed as Ibrahim, hunched intently over the controls, expertly guided the vehicle over the boulder strewn terrain.
‘I say again. Crawler XC5063, you are ordered to halt immediately. Failure to do so will be treated as an indication of guilt and you will be fired upon.’
‘Nice,’ said Rekkid. ‘I love Admiral Cox. Always a man with his eye on the letter of the law.’
‘He sounds pretty pissed off to me,’ said Katherine. ‘Can’t imagine why…’
‘Mmm…’ replied the Arkari. ‘We do seem to have that effect on people. Farouk, when is this contact of yours going to pull us out of this mess?’
An ear splitting roar and a buffeting shockwave answered his question as the Profit Margin overshot the crawler and began banking around in front of them, a flurry of dust whipped in the wake of its passing.
‘About now I’d say,’ said Farouk, and grinned.
Isaacs levelled the Profit Margin off and aimed the sleek vessel at the dark, angular shape of the landing craft pursuing the crawler across the sulphurous desert. Downwash from the landing craft’s VTOL engines caused the yellow dust to billow outwards on all sides, however the crew of the Condor had obviously woken up to the fact that they were not alone in the sky as the craft began to turn to face Isaacs’ ship. A lock-on warning tone warbled in the cockpit as the Profit Margin’s weapon system computed its own firing solution. Isaacs jinked the craft and yelled to Anita, now at the controls of the dorsal and ventral turrets.
‘Anita! Put a shot across their bows. Try to get these fuckers to back off. Let them know that we’re armed.’
‘Roger that Cal,’ replied Anita excitedly. Seconds later and the Profit Margin’s new particle beam turrets stitched a line of fire across the desert mere metres away from the landing craft’s port wing as the fast-moving vessel swooped around for another run. The bright, lancing beams stabbed outwards at an ever increasing angle as they sought to maintain their aim at the target Anita had given them.
‘Why didn’t you tell her to shoot them down?’ said Anna. ‘It’d solve our problem.’
‘Yeah, but what can I say? I thought I might give them a chance to back off first. Let’s try and keep the body count as low as possible today eh?’
‘A shame that they don’t appear to feel the same way,’ Anna replied as the missile lock tone rang throughout the cockpit.
Cox hung on for dear life inside the Condor as the pilot banked wildly to avoid the lancing fire coming from the speeding vessel.
‘For Christ’s sake man, he’s only trying to scare us off,’ he barked at the pilot. ‘Don’t you think he’d have been able to hit us easily from that range?’ He watched the sleek vessel recede into the distance and begin to bank into another turn. ‘Well what the hell are you waiting for son? Shoot him down!’
‘Yes sir,’ replied the pilot and depressed the trigger on his control column. Two guided missiles sped from their under-wing pods towards the Profit Margin.
Hammering the countermeasures button on his controls, Isaacs swept the Profit Margin into a turn so tight that the vessel practically stood on the tip of its stubby starboard wing as Anna operated the ship’s jamming suite to little avail. The missiles were coming about.
‘It’s not good Cal,’ she said through a voice choked with fear. ‘The fucking things keep switching between guidance modes.’
‘I’ll take us lower, try to block their line of sight until they go ballistic,’ Isaacs muttered, throwing the ship into another tight turn, the desert outside whipping by almost close enough to touch.
‘Jesus, you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me!’ Anna almost screeched.
‘Hey, you wanna drive?’ he shot back.
The ship juddered suddenly.
‘The fuck was that!?’ Anna exclaimed.
‘It’s me!’ yelled Anita over the comm. ‘I’m gonna see if I can shoot the things down. The tracking software in these turrets is pretty good. I should be able to use them as defensive turrets at a pinch.’
‘Worth a try,’ Isaacs replied, and then breathed in sharply as a series of tall boulders shot past mere metres from the ship. The juddering had settled into a steady series of bursts as Anita fired furiously at the closing missiles, the targeting software struggling to compute the variables of the wildly jinking ship and the rapidly moving projectiles.
Isaacs braked suddenly into a turn. The two missiles overshot. He saw the particle beams from the ship reach out and claim one of them and heard Anita’s whoop of success. As Isaacs turned rapidly in the opposite direction the other lost its lock and flew dumbly onwards before ploughing into a cliff and exploding.
Cox had ordered the crew of the Condor to return their attentions to the crawler, which had slipped further away in the confusion and was still refusing to halt. The pilot now began firing at the fleeing vehicle’s wheels with the chin mounted rail cannon in an attempt to disable it. A stream of high velocity shells spat forth from the powerful gatling weapon with a loud tearing sound.
Inside the cab of the crawler, the occupants felt the vehicle shudder from the impact of the rounds hitting the rear wheels. Farouk looked grimly a
t the others.
‘Bastards are trying to knock out the tyres.’
‘Can we withstand it?’ said Rekkid. ‘Just how tough is this thing?’
‘For a while, yes. The tyres are solid and heavily reinforced for operating in terrain such as this, but eventually they will disintegrate. It’s just as well that the engine on this thing is underneath the main chassis. No chance of them hitting it unless they blow us up, however soon that may be…’
At the controls, Ibrahim swore as he felt the vehicle veer to one side, as the left-hand rear tyre started to come apart under the assault.
Isaacs had brought the Profit Margin around and was powering back towards the signal from the crawler. They were receiving a frantic radio transmission from Farouk now, alerting them to the fact that the vehicle was being fired upon. Drastic measures would be required.
‘Anita!’ yelled Isaacs over the comm. ‘Be ready with those turrets. We need to take down that ship as quickly as possible if this rescue’s going to work!’
He could see the Marine Corp vessel and the crawler now as approaching specks amid a cloud of yellow dust.
‘Anita!?’
‘I can’t…. I can’t, I’m sorry Cal.’
‘What!?’
‘I can’t shoot those people… I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, fucking hell!’ Isaacs spat. They were almost on top of the Condor now. In desperation, Isaacs slammed on the reverse thrusters to kill their speed and swung the Profit Margin’s nose around to come to rest pointing at the rear of the landing craft. He flipped the safety from the trigger from the twin rail cannons, newly mounted in the vessel’s wing roots, and fired.
Two streams of high velocity case-less shells collided with the landing craft at the base of the rear starboard wing and tore the wing clean from the main fuselage. The force of the impact span the vessel round, causing the line of impacts to tear across the VTOL engine nozzles located on the starboard side of the craft. It sagged visibly, slewed sideways and then fell the ten metres into the yellow desert sands, where it crashed in a shower of dust.
