Invardii Box Set 2

by Warwick Gibson

  Despite that, the Javelins had to buy time for the staff of the complex to make it to safety, and he gave the order to attack. The ships of his squadron closed to rake the massive orange ships with salvos of super-dense slugs.

  Ayman watched as dull red stains spread across the Reaper ship hulls. It was annoying, but he had expected that. The Invardii had recently developed a way to burn off the slugs as they entered the fiery shields of their ships.

  Hoping for the best, he barked a quick command, and his weapons officer sent two of Carlos Paula’s shield-busting missiles curving in toward the nearest enemy ship. A thin violet web built itself out from several of the ships around it, and toward the incoming points of light.

  The missiles detonated before they were even half way to their target, and the shields remained unaffected. Ayman sat up in his seat. He ordered the same maneuver again, with the same result, then ordered a general attack by the Javelins.

  The pattern was repeated again. The missiles never even came close to their targets.

  The Invardii had found a way to stop the missiles as well! Ayman dropped his head and gripped the armrests of his chair. What was he supposed to do now? The Javelins were still protected by the Druanii shields, but they had no other way to take the fight to the enemy ships. It was a desperate situation.

  CHAPTER 8

  ________________

  As Ayman Case looked on helplessly, the Reaper ships turned their attention to the accelerator complex in the ice field below. More shuttles had risen from the ports at the top of the complex, and were heading for safety, but now bright fireballs began to rain around them.

  The first fireballs hit the ice and earthed in crimson flashes, leaving behind small lakes of melted water. Gouts of sublimated gases coalesced above them and rained back down as crystals. The lakes froze, leaving what looked like dimples in the ice from Ayman’s great height above the ice field.

  Then several of the fireballs landed on the complex, and seared through the uppermost levels. The one atmosphere pressure within blasted debris into the sky like a giant geyser.

  Heaven help those poor bastards if they’re not in the shuttles by now, muttered Ayman, as he thought desperately of ways he could keep the Reaper ships from destroying the accelerator complex completely.

  A shuttle rose out of the damaged ports and was struck by a fireball. It spun erratically until it stabilized again, but the craft had clearly lost power. It drifted sideways and down, landing on the ice a short distance from the complex. Another shuttle made it clear of the complex, saw the situation, and landed beside its comrade. The enemy ships were intent on the destruction of the complex, and overlooked the rescue operation as suited figures transferred hastily between the shuttles.

  Ayman cheered quietly to himself. Then he snapped out a series of commands to his squadron. The only thing that might still work against the Reaper ships was to overload their plasma shields. The Alliance had done it before, defending Earth, but on that occasion the Sumerian warships had been there to add their energy weapons. What would happen this time round was unknown.

  Down on the ice plain the last of the figures scrambled into the rescuing shuttle, and Ereth turned to the fresh-faced young technician who was nervously piloting the small craft.

  “Go, go, go!” he yelled, and the technician scrambled to obey. The shuttle lifted off, a little erratically, and resumed its journey toward the mountains on the far side of the ice plain.

  Above the planet Ayman Case led his squadron in close formation past one of the enemy ships, and the impact of super-dense slugs built to a frighteningly fast crescendo. The Reaper ship’s shield dulled, then flickered out altogether. A cheer went up from the officers on Ayman’s bridge, and Ayman smiled to himself.

  More slugs rammed into the structure of spars and hubs inside the ship, and it blew apart in a great cascade of explosions. The new ‘seek and destroy’ mode for the slugs was working perfectly. The improvement in the homing capabilities of the slugs allowed them to home in on vital spots inside the enemy ships, and not just pass straight through. Ayman was extremely grateful for that.

  The destruction of one of their own didn’t deter the remaining Reaper ships, and they continued raining fireballs onto the accelerator complex. Ayman glanced at the scene below him. A shuttle took advantage of a moment’s respite to climb quickly from the shattered remains of the complex, before veering sideways as a fireball nailed the spot it had occupied a second before.

  Now that’s one damn good pilot! thought Ayman appreciatively. The shuttle made two more sudden moves as it cleared the site, anticipating fireballs each time, and accelerated toward safety. Ayman wondered about the pilot, and decided he or she must have had combat experience. The shuttle pilots were usually technicians who had little more than basic training. All they had to do was ferry staff and materials up and down to supply ships.

  The comms officer relayed a message to Ayman from the shuttles.

  “Zeus command, all personnel clear,” came the message over an open channel.

  Ayman felt relieved. His first priority had been the people who crewed the accelerator complex, and they were now safe. His next priority had been to save the complex. He looked below him and decided it was too late for that.

  The precision-made nuclear accelerator under the complex would have collapsed long ago under the attack, though some of the parts might still be salvageable. The mines around the planet that fed the complex were much deeper under the ice, and that would make them more difficult for the Invardii to destroy. It was ironic that the ice fields made mining difficult, but were the best defense they had.

  Ayman targeted another Reaper ship, and his squadron moved in to rake it with broadsides once again. This time the enemy ships moved to defend the one that was threatened, and the arcs of fire from their plasma hulls built up until there were continuous flares like the coronas of suns around the attacking Javelins. Ayman worried how much stress the Druanii shields could take, and decided to ease his ships back to a safer distance.

  It was a stand-off, but numbers were on the side of the Invardii. Ayman estimated there were over a hundred of them, though no more had entered the system for some time. That was more than enough to keep his squadron busy, and still leave a sizable force to go about their destructive business at the mining bases.

  As if in response to his thoughts, more than half the Reaper ships stood off from the complex, and began to make their way toward the twin peaks of Celimeesi, the highest mountain on the planet. The largest of the Alliance mining centers had been built at the foot of it. The center coordinated the smaller mines, and housed a permanent squad of maintenance engineers.

  Ayman swore vigorously. The Invardii were not content to destroy the nuclear accelerator, they wanted to wipe every trace of the Alliance off the planet! He ordered another coordinated attack on one of the enemy ships, and in the pandemonium of battle his navs officer failed to detect eight more Reaper ships come out of star drive. They dipped below the horizon, and came at the small depot in the mountains from the opposite side.

  By now those shuttles that had escaped the complex had landed at their destination, and their inhabitants were taking up residency in the cramped quarters at the depot.

  “Not good, not good. Very not good!” said Serostrina, Ereth’s second-in-command, as she picked up eight Reaper ships entering the thin atmosphere of the ice planet some distance away. Then they headed for the depot. Ereth left his position supervising the setting up of a more permanent life support, and came to her side. When he saw the feed from the small dish on top of the building, his mind raced with the implications.

  The Javelins were too busy to come to their aid. The first fireball that hit the depot would breach the roof, and expose them all to the poisonous atmosphere and freezing temperatures. Though the temperature was far beyond freezing, they would be solid in an instant.

  He was trying to find a solution. Should they take to the shuttles again? Ho
w long would the shuttles last if all the mining bases were wiped off the planet? What if the Invardii left a few ships around to pick up any stragglers like themselves?

  “The heat exchanger shaft,” said Serostrina, jumping up from the comms panel and heading for the maintenance room behind them. Ereth followed, trying to get his head around the idea.

  The heat exchanger used the heat difference between the warmer layers under the planet’s rocky mantle and the frozen surface to generate electricity. He soon discovered there was a maintenance shaft wide enough for them to enter but it went straight down, absolutely vertical, and how would they build a top onto the shaft before the Reaper ships destroyed the depot?

  “There,” said Serostrina, pointing to a booster station on the schematics diagram of the shaft. It wasn’t that far down from the top, and it might be a place where they could seal themselves off from above. It would have to be a good seal. The Reaper ships were about to unleash unbridled destruction on the building they were in.

  “We’ll need to be suited up,” said Ereth, thinking of the cold in the shaft, as well as the thin, unbreathable atmosphere. “Everyone, not just those who’re already suited up from the downed shuttle, and we’ll need to break all speed records on this one!”

  Serostrina nodded, and ran to organize the small group of Mersa and handful of Humans who were working to get the depot systems on line.

  Ereth called one of the engineers over, and explained the plan to him.

  “That’s not much of a plan,” said the engineer in disbelief.

  “What do we seal the shaft with?” he continued. “How long will the suits last? How do we stop the air in the shaft from eventually killing us?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ereth. “Just grab everything you think we could possibly use.” He looked the young engineer straight in the eye.

  “I’m relying on you, Sebo. Do you understand?”

  The young man looked back for a moment, then smiled a thin, crooked smile. “Yeah,” he said, nodded briskly once, and departed.

  Sebastian reminded him of himself at that age, thought Ereth. He was so sure of himself on the inside, yet frightened to put up new ideas in case they got shot down.

  This time, though, Sebo needed to hold everything together or they would all just be more statistics in this damn war. Ereth hurried toward the heat exchanger shaft, his vast experience throwing up and discarding ideas to keep them all alive one after the other. Nothing seemed to work, but maybe part of this one, and if he could adapt that one.

  The thin sunlight was already receding from the mountains surrounding the depot. A brilliant flash registered on the outside cameras as a fireball earthed nearby, and Ereth realized they had less time than he’d thought.

  A barrage of explosions followed, and most of the outside cameras went off line. Serostrina examined one of the remaining pictures, a strange montage of dirty whites cut by thin green lines and odd crystalline shapes.

  More explosions followed, but these were more distant, as if the bombardment had moved on to another location. For a moment Ereth felt an irrational hope that the Invardii had for some mad reason of their own decided to leave the depot alone.

  “Avalanche!” said Serostrina, after a moment’s thought. Ereth saw what she meant at once. Somehow the barrage had loosened millennia of ice and snow accumulated on the slopes nearby, and now it lay over the depot. Ereth’s eyes lit up. This would buy them more time!

  “Come on people,” he roared, a lion’s voice for an old man. “It’s life or death, don’t be standing around. Everyone in full suits in two minutes flat and we’re going underground.

  “Now move!”

  The booster station was a place where the shaft widened, though it was still difficult to move about in the bulky surface suits with their face plates.

  Ereth worked furiously on the panel set into the thick cable running down the length of the shaft. Sebo worked above him, as the others climbed past the two of them three at a time. At least in this section the metal rungs circled half the shaft and helped them down.

  CHAPTER 9

  ________________

  “That should close the isolation doors above the booster station,” said Ereth. He was speaking over a private channel to Sebastian, and checking the authorization code at the same time.

  “And this should collapse the shaft on top of the doors,” said Sebastian, checking that the ring of thermal cutters was firmly in place. He punched in a code and handed a small box to Ereth.

  “Push the central button and the cutters will melt the retaining walls onto the isolation doors,” he said. “That should leave a solid plug of rock and metal above us, when it’s all cooled.”

  Ereth nodded. He tapped in the ‘go’ command for the doors to close, and multiple alloy leaves slid over one another to seal off the shaft. The two men climbed down to join the others, further down the shaft.

  He was about to activate the small box Sebastian had given him when there was a massive detonation far above them. The rungs they were clinging to juddered against their hands.

  “Reaper ships!” exclaimed Ereth sharply.

  He looked at Sebastian, and they moved further down the protruding rungs. Ereth stopped when he judged they had a wide margin of safety below the door.

  “Brace yourselves,” he said over the open channel to those below him, and Mersa and Human alike took a firm grip on the rungs. Ereth pushed the button on the small box Sebastian had given him. A dull thump echoed above them and the leaves of the door, folded over each other to give a multiple thickness, began to glow red-hot.

  Hold for me, muttered Ereth. Don’t give way under the heat, you little composite wonders, and hold up the molten plug above us until it hardens.

  The ruddy color of the door changed to a brilliant orange. But then, ever so slowly. it began to dull. It was soon obvious the isolation doors were going to hold.

  One problem down, one to go, muttered Ereth. The Invardii could bomb the depot into a pile of twisted metal and it wouldn’t matter to the staff from the complex now. But the cold, the lack of breathable air, suit failure, or the immense vertical depths below them, could kill them just as easily.

  In the skies above the ice planet, Ayman Case watched as a second Reaper ship detonated from within. Some outrageous maneuvres had split the Invardii forces just long enough for his squadron to mount another coordinated attack against one of the enemy ships. He exulted at the success, but he knew that was the last one they were likely to destroy today.

  The Reaper ships had become very wary, and the defensive arcs from a dozen or more of them at once produced a firestorm that the Druanii shields might not hold against.

  “Squadron leader, you’ll want to see this,” said his navs officer, putting pictures from the surface onto the overhead screen. Ayman recognized the location in the mountains immediately. The depot was a smoking ruin. All that remained was a handful of twisted supports poking up out of a steaming lake.

  His heart sank. Dammit, when did that happen? He knew the enemy ships meant to cleanse the planet of any trace of the Alliance. He had deduced that when part of their forces split off and headed for the main mining center. But he hadn’t thought the tiny emergency depot would be targeted as well.

  It was a hard decision to make, but he wouldn’t be checking on the people in the depot. There was no chance that anyone was alive down there now, and he couldn’t spare ships to check out the site anyway. His squadron was outnumbered five to one, and the mining center at Celimeesi was a higher priority.

  “Entry points forming,” said his navs officer suddenly, and switched the picture feed to a point half way round the planet. In the front of the image were a number of low buildings, most of them covered in strangely colored ice and drifts of hardened snow.

  High in the atmosphere above them was a scattering of bright orange shapes. Ayman realized he was watching Reaper ships closing in on the mining center at Celimeesi. It would be the same ones th
at had split off from the force opposing him here at the accelerator complex.

  “72 hostile vessels,” said his navs officer, “and 30 more entry points forming above them.”

  Ayman swore under his breath. That made it even worse. Another 30 enemy ships would bring the total to more than a hundred, all converging on the Celimeesi center. He was helpless to do anything while he was blockaded here by the remaining enemy ships.

  Would he have to watch helplessly as the mining base was completely destroyed, and every one of the Mersa and Human population went to their deaths?

  “Starships now emerging,” said the navs officer, monitoring the complex signals as the space-folding wave patterns ahead of the ships died away, and they emerged into normal space.

  “Those aren’t Reaper ships!” said Ayman in surprise, as a scattering of silver hulls blinked into existence high above the mining center. Then he recognized what they were. The long, tubular shapes were modified Javelins. Cordez had sent the Valkrethi!

  A comms signal identified Air Marshall Cagill in the leading ship.

  “I think it’s time we gave these marauding thugs a little taste of our indignation, people,” he said on an open channel, and Ayman could see him grinning happily.

  Two squadrons of specially trained pilots, and a research team of four – along for ‘observational’ purposes only – nodded firmly in response. Half a dozen support ships, made up of comms, strategic command and backup, made ready for the destruction to come.

  “Mount up!” came the familiar command, and 24 enormous figures in outlandishly long cargo bays stirred and began to stretch in the standard Valkrethi warm up routine.

  Celia felt that same moment of panic as the panels in the back of her mount slid closed behind her, and then relaxed as air began to circulate inside her helmet. She moved her hand and brought up the optics, feeling confined as she lay staring at the cargo bay doors underneath her.