Galactar (Savage Stars Book 3)

by Anthony James

  The rushing soldiers reached the end of the corridor before the door closed, crouched briefly to check out the room and then they disappeared inside. Recker hated having to wait for the conclusion, but his death would guarantee the same fate for everyone on this mission.

  “Clear,” said Shadar.

  Vance was crouched nearby, waiting for Recker’s command. So far, he’d been admirably restrained and hadn’t turned the incursion into a competition with the Daklan.

  “Let’s go.”

  Recker dashed into the ten-metre room and scanned the contents. A low-level console was fixed to the left-hand wall and another to the right. Three additional exits led away at the cardinal points. Two more Lavorix were dead to the recent gunfire, while Meklon corpses were on the floor near each of the consoles.

  Like everywhere else, the room was in total darkness. The consoles might have been worth investigating, but they didn’t respond to input and Recker couldn’t even hear the hum of power in their circuits. He was struck by the sudden worry that this entire area in Excon-1 might be offline, and, though he expected the control computer would have warned him, with the AI tie-ins severed the backup might lack the intelligence required to anticipate and forewarn.

  The only way to find out was to press on. Another reference to the map informed Recker that the opposite door was the way to proceed. That would lead to another - larger - room and after that, the security station.

  He considered briefly and then ordered five human soldiers to secure this room, in case the Lavorix were familiar enough with Excon-1 that they could attempt a flanking move. Once that was done, he issued a new order.

  “Sergeant Shadar, advance and secure the next room.”

  The Daklan hardly waited long enough to acknowledge the words. Without any obvious communication, he separated five of his soldiers from the others and opened the opposite door. The next passage was clear and ended at a second door – the Meklon had built the place to be resilient to decompression.

  Given the arrangement, it was impossible to open the next door without becoming exposed to potential enemy fire. The moment Shadar touched the panel and the door started opening, Recker heard the clattering of inbound projectiles and he saw the orange of movement. One of the Daklan soldiers fired into the room beyond but then went down under a hail of bullets. The others dropped to the ground.

  “Ipanvir!” roared Shadar.

  One of the Daklan, who was mean-looking even compared to his peers, was still in the room near Recker and he appeared to be waiting for the order, like it was prearranged or something the Daklan had practised numerous times. In a split-second, he spun his heavy rocket tube onto his shoulder, the coils already whining. The projectile was ejected from the barrel with a whump and it flew along the corridor just as Shadar fell flat with the others. In a blur of movement and shimmering propellant, the missile streaked into the next room.

  Reaching up, Shadar smashed his hand onto the door panel. The door started closing, though not nearly quick enough to seal in the detonation of the rocket tube. A flash of light and plasma was enough to incinerate anything living in the room and the extremes of the blast washed into the passage, turning sub-zero air into blistering heat.

  “Nice shot,” said Raimi in admiration, his own shoulder launcher held vertically.

  Ipanvir didn’t answer, he simply rolled the rocket tube off his shoulder and checked the ammunition readout like nothing was a concern.

  Along the passage, Sergeant Shadar wasn’t slowed by the heatwave and nor was he dissuaded from finding out how it had affected the Lavorix. He opened the door and surged into the room, his high-grip soles making an audible squeal as they gained purchase.

  “Move!” he yelled.

  “Corporal Hendrix!” said Recker, indicating the fallen Daklan.

  For whatever reason, Jir-Lazan hadn’t sent a medic, leaving Hendrix to look after all thirty soldiers. She darted forward with her med-box in one hand and an injector in the other. Dropping low, Hendrix unceremoniously jabbed the alien with her needle, using force to drive the sharp point through the material of the combat suit.

  “Let’s hope the Daklan can handle Frenziol.” Hendrix raised her voice. “Too late, he’s dead.”

  “Damnit! Sergeant Shadar, please report!” said Recker.

  “No hostiles remain. More will come.”

  Recker joined Shadar in a thirty-metre room, filled with more tech. Another rack of alien rifles was bolted to one wall, with several missing, and four exits led to other places. The blast from the rocket had torn several floor-mounted consoles away from their moorings, and others were half-melted. A layer of char unevenly covered a large area of the floor, as well as parts of the ceiling. However many Lavorix had been in this room, the blast had killed them all and left no recognizable trace, not even the scent of burned flesh.

  “Too many approaches,” said Sergeant Vance, using hand movements to direct his soldiers to various parts of the room.

  “Through that door,” said Recker, pointing at one of the two exits in the left-hand wall. “Another passage, another door and then the security station.”

  “And once the re-scan is complete, we go hunting for data,” said Vance. “The pressure is increasing on us, sir.”

  “Only if we let it, Sergeant. This is a big place and even with 653 troops – less those we’ve killed – the Lavorix can’t be everywhere.”

  The doubt in Vance’s expression reflected Recker’s own feelings. Whatever his worries, they didn’t matter. The job had to be done regardless, otherwise everything would be a waste.

  Recker assigned another five to guard the room – this time choosing only Daklan. The place to experiment with social cohesion was in the mess area off duty, rather than in the middle of a critical mission.

  The squads encountered no further resistance on the short journey to the security room, though Recker’s instinct told him it was only a matter of time, and not much time at that. He tested the connection to the Axiom and found it had degraded too far to carry voice comms. The discovery made Recker curse inwardly.

  He entered the security station warily. It was in darkness, but his helmet night sight allowed him to see what he needed to see. Like in the security station on Excon-18, a huge, antenna made from a dark, unknown material, extended from floor to ceiling, with its base ringed by a single wraparound console. The room itself was huge and square, with multiple exits and multiple dead bodies.

  “Not good,” Sergeant Vance commented as he directed his soldiers to cover the doors.

  Recker hurried to the console and flicked the switch to bring it out of sleep, hoping desperately that the hardware wasn’t severed from the Excon-1 power supply. For long moments, the panel remained dark. He gave the metal base an encouraging kick and the lights came on, illuminating the keys and the screens, and the face of the Meklon lying on the floor at Recker’s feet. Again, the expression on its face made him ask what had killed it so painfully.

  He averted his eyes and, shortly, the machine was ready for input. With confident hands, Recker called up the relevant menu.

  Excon-1> Welcome Captain Carl Recker. Request approval?

  “What the hell do you think I’m here for?” Recker growled, entering an affirmative response.

  Excon-1> Request submitted. Biometric re-scan in progress.

  Recker remembered how it worked from Excon-18. On that occasion, the installation had attempted to contact Excon-1 to obtain clearance. Now that Recker was on a primary Meklon facility, he didn’t expect his request to be bounced around numerous approval centres.

  He was right.

  Excon-1> Biometric re-scan successfully completed.

  And that was it.

  “Done,” said Recker. Somehow, he didn’t feel much relief. “Now let’s plug in and steal some data.”

  “Is there a port on this console?” asked Vance.

  “Several ports, Sergeant.” Recker turned and found who he was looking for. “Pr
ivate Halsey, bring that data extractor here.” He racked his brains to remember the name of the Daklan pack-carrier. “Litos!” he called.

  The two soldiers hurried across, unslinging heavy cloth-wrapped packs from their shoulders. A noise made Recker turn in time to see a door on the left-hand wall slide open, revealing dark shapes.

  “Hostiles!” he shouted, bringing up his gun.

  Gauss rifles fizzed and Daklan weapons snapped with discharge. From the doorway, Recker heard a deeper sound more like a dunt-dunt-dunt and he ducked instinctively. The two Lavorix in the passage went down and Recker heard the door behind them open to admit others.

  Nearby, Drawl whipped his arm in a blur, sending a plasma grenade into the passage. A second door opened further along the same wall and a Lavorix surged out with incredible speed, using its two lower arms in conjunction with its legs to run and leaving its upper arms free to hold a gun. Recker put a bullet through its head and saw another one behind it. He fired and the second Lavorix died. More came and suddenly everything was a tumult of movement and gunfire.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Within thirty seconds of the first shot being fired, it was clear this was a concerted effort by the Lavorix. The first few died quickly, but those coming after managed to keep the passage doors open and they fired from positions of cover.

  Unfortunately for the aliens, they were limited by the bottleneck of the passages, which cut their firing angles significantly. Not only that, they faced a determined, ruthless and prepared defence in the form of the human and Daklan squads. Recker bellowed orders. Vance and Shadar backed him up, ensuring the soldiers concentrated their fire where it was needed most.

  Recker pictured the engagement in his mind. Nine of his twenty soldiers were on the opposite side of the wraparound console, covering the security station’s other exits. Six more were on this side of the room and exchanging fire with the Lavorix. The remaining five were effectively trapped because they were close to the doors through which the enemy were attacking.

  “Move back!” said Recker. The wraparound console wasn’t ideal cover, but it was better than none and he urged the soldiers to make for it. “Gantry, where’s that MG-12?”

  “Lock down the left door!” bellowed Shadar, the harsh volume of his order making Recker’s earpiece vibrate.

  “Rocket out!” said Ipanvir.

  A missile screamed from the tube of the Daklan’s launcher into the left-hand tunnel. Even before it detonated, the three soldiers by the wall were running – either to reach positions of cover or to avoid incineration when the rocket exploded.

  Raimi was handy with a rocket launcher, but Ipanvir was a master. The Daklan landed a tight-angle shot against the far wall of the next room, filling the space with plasma fire. The extreme edge of the blast sphere was channelled along the passage and roiled eagerly into the security station. Recker’s helmet sensor registered the spike in temperature, but neither he nor any of the other soldiers were harmed, while any Lavorix in the room were certainly carbonized.

  Recker kept low and walked backwards around the perimeter of the wraparound console, keeping his rifle trained on the doorway and passage twenty metres to his left. He could see orange-enhanced movement in the second room, but with each step, the Lavorix’s firing angle decreased. The pinging ricochets and the constant dunt-dunt-dunt made it clear the aliens were spraying blind shots around the corner without showing enough of themselves that they made easy kills.

  Drawl threw in another grenade, bouncing it off the side wall. It detonated in a flash and he hurled a second with equal accuracy.

  “Their attack stalled,” said Recker. “If they’ve got the numbers or explosives, it won’t be long before they start pushing again.”

  “What’s the plan, sir?” asked Vance, calm as ever.

  “We’re not leaving. Not yet. We’ll plug in the data cubes on the far side of this console and hold the enemy until we’re done.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  On the comms, Recker spoke to the soldiers he’d left to guard the other rooms and ordered them to reinforce the security station. No sooner had he given the command than the furthest group reported a sighting and the sound of gauss fire was audible across the channel.

  “They’re coming from the left, sir,” said Private Ossie Carrington.

  “Numbers?”

  “We killed two. We’ve got more incoming.”

  “Enemy sighted,” reported Unvak, one of the Daklan in the next closest room. “We will support the withdrawal of Private Carrington’s squad and then advance to the security station.”

  A moment later, Private Carrington reported an increase in pressure on her position. “They’re attacking from two directions, sir,” she reported. “We killed another four, but they’re still coming at us.”

  “Do what you can to withdraw,” said Recker. “I need you here.”

  “Hostiles back in the left room,” said Steigers. “A shitload of them.”

  “Rocket out,” said Raimi.

  He aimed a missile along the left tunnel towards the next room in which the walls already glowed a dull patchwork of red from Ipanvir’s shot. Recker didn’t have an angle and he kept walking backwards, not taking his eye off either tunnel. A prone figure on the ground nearby was Private Hunter Gantry, with his MG-12 on its tripod before him.

  “We are pressed,” said Unvak. “Private Carrington has joined us and we are awaiting an opportunity to withdraw.”

  Under his breath, Recker cursed. He was beginning to feel like he’d been sucker-punched. He’d led the soldiers to this security station, expecting the Lavorix to be spread throughout Excon-1 and unable to mount an effective response to the incursion. Now it was clear the enemy was more organized than he’d anticipated.

  An explosive went off ten metres from Recker and the orange-red of the blast wasn’t like anything produced by an HPA or Daklan grenade. A Lavorix appeared at the doorway, one of its upper arms drawn back to throw. Gantry was ready and his MG-12 clinked with rapid-fire discharge, cutting the alien bastard to pieces and sending it backwards in a spraying cloud of blood. The grenade it had been holding went off, producing a second blast which Recker hoped took out a few more of the enemy.

  “Sir, they’ve got gravity repeaters,” said Carrington. “Shit! Redman shoot it! Left door, left door!”

  “Numbers building in the right-hand room,” said Vance. He was on the opposite side of the wraparound console and evidently with an angle to see.

  “Raimi to the rescue,” said Raimi, dashing counter-clockwise around the console.

  Recker heard the whump of a Daklan rocket blast. The central antenna concealed the explosion, but the walls were lit up in vivid white.

  “Too late, human. Ipanvir the Incinerator burns all.”

  “Shit, man,” said Raimi, stumped for a better response.

  The entrance door opened and four soldiers dashed through, followed by others walking backwards and shooting at the same time. One part of Recker’s brain counted them and he got as high as nine. He clenched his teeth and then Private Redman emerged. The soldier under-armed a grenade and then threw himself away from the door.

  “Repeater!” he shouted.

  Redman was too slow. Chunks of flesh exploded in every direction as bullets pulverised his legs. When Redman hit the ground, he was only head, torso and arms. Unbelievably, he clung onto life and produced a gurgling laugh.

  “Hold!” snapped Recker, as Corporal Hendrix broke from cover. “He’s gone.”

  Reluctantly, Hendrix slowed and returned to her place.

  “Ah shit, this is going to hurt in the morning,” said Redman. The soldier’s gun was forgotten and he tried to claw his way across the floor.

  Recker closed his eyes.

  Die, damnit and have done.

  With a hissing exhalation, Redman died in a pool of his own blood. The engagement didn’t stop and Recker urged the soldiers nearby to move further around the console.

  �
��Pack up that MG-12, Private Gantry. Move!”

  As Gantry hauled the heavy weapon further around the console, Recker listened for the sound of the repeater’s gravity drive. It was coming, but he couldn’t hear anything above the louder gunfire and the distressed notes of the Excon-1 station.

  A grey, waist-high shape raced through the doorway, travelling as fast as a champion sprinter. Recker saw the turret’s six-barrelled gun adjust as its control computer attempted to acquire a target. He dropped low at the same time as Ipanvir fired a rocket from the far side of the antenna.

  A short burst of high-calibre repeater fire drummed against the console a few metres from where Recker crouched and then the rocket exploded. With his eyes narrowed to slits, he was only dimly aware of a dark shape flying sideways through the air. The automated turret made a crunching impact with the wall and dropped to the floor, its deflective plating ablaze and its gun barrels torn free by the blast.

  “Another turret on its way!” yelled Private Montero.

  “Raimi!” bellowed Recker.

  “On it, sir.”

  A second rocket blast followed Ipanvir’s and the gunfire intensified. Recker inched his way further around the antenna and by this point, he was thinking about a withdrawal. Any hope of plugging in a couple of data extractors and then strolling back to the Axiom was long gone.

  Several Lavorix came in a rush through the visible doorway, firing wildly. One of them was carrying a chain gun or something similar. Luckily, the alien’s high-speed sprint prevented it from keeping the weapon level and the spray of bullets cut through the air above Recker’s head. Staying low, he shot it three times, and then the roaring torrent from Gantry’s repositioned MG-12 mowed the others down.

  The Lavorix didn’t give up easily and Recker spotted a metallic shape arcing through the doorway.

  “Grenade!” he shouted, hunkering closer to the console.

  The explosive went off mid-air, so near that Recker was stumbled by the blast wave. The heat from it momentarily peaked at a thousand degrees, turning the arms and exposed shoulder on his suit brown and producing a stinking acrid smoke of burning polymers.