The angle wasn’t good, but it was enough for Conway to distinguish a few individual details of the facility. Not much of it was standing and he thought the devastation was more likely caused by seismic activity. Tall towers and intricate masts leaned crazily, with many others in a state of total collapse. The lower structures were cracked and not one looked intact.
Conway knew it was possible to construct a building that could withstand even the most violent earthquakes. However, he doubted the Hantisar were expecting the Sekar to show up and split the whole planet in two with the biggest damned rift the universe had ever seen.
Or at least the biggest damned rift Conway had ever seen. Maybe the two weren’t the same.
“We must fly closer if we are to see the forces arrayed against us,” said Isental. “I do not enjoy waiting.”
The shuttle accelerated around the planet and Isental took it gradually lower. Bit by bit, the sensors picked out more details and the picture was as bad as Conway imagined. The Dominion base was in ruins, but it had once been a place of alien beauty. Rather than building with drab concrete and rebar, the Hantisar had used polished stone of subtle hues. From afar, the settling dust gave everything an appearance of grey, yet as the distance decreased, Conway noted the reds, whites and yellows underneath.
“They used the rocks from the planet and made them wonderful,” said Isental thoughtfully. “I would have appreciated this place before it became rubble.”
“Me too,” said Conway.
The Dominion facility was so vast the numbers lost meaning. The buildings covered a meaningful area of the planet and Conway suspected that billions had once lived here. Wide avenues, mostly blocked by collapsed buildings, linked together in an endless grid. The widest converged on the only visible airstrip, upon which an incredible fleet of warships was left parked. Parts of the airstrip were empty, leading him to wonder if sections of the Hantisar fleet had evacuated.
Beyond the airstrip, Conway was confronted by an improved view of the main chasm which jagged over the base and for long moments he couldn’t take his eyes away. The rift’s sides were rough and crumbling, leaving huge, dislodged pieces to fall into the depths. At the same time, other areas fountained upwards either in loose showers of smaller stones, or in much bigger pieces. The sight would have been beyond comprehension were he not here to watch it first-hand.
“The smallest stones are not escaping the planet’s gravity,” said Isental. “I may have been hasty in dismissing them as a threat.”
“They’re hitting the surface?”
“Yes, and they are doing so unpredictably. This shuttle is not equipped to track so many objects.”
“Another shovel of dung on the mountain, sir.”
Isental laughed. “We Fangrin have many similar sayings.”
Once the shuttle came within twenty thousand klicks of the facility, its limited tactical system began tracking numerous smaller objects, as well as the larger pieces of rock. Isental’s expression was one of concentration and he made increasing adjustments to the shuttle’s speed and heading.
“I do not wish to come much closer without fully committing.”
“I’ll get the squad ready.”
Conway could have used the comms. Instead, he stepped through the cockpit exit and passed on the orders through his helmet speaker.
“What’s happening outside, sir?” asked Lockhart. “The Hantisar didn’t install a bay screen for passengers.”
“We’ve got a ruined military base, billion-ton rocks, Sekar as big as houses and a rift you couldn’t jump over on a motorbike.”
“Same as it was when we departed the Nullifier.”
“And not likely to get any better before we’re done, Sergeant.”
“All in a day’s work, sir,” said Kemp. “Deploy next to the target and then leave it to the boy to blow a hole in a tharniol wall.”
“I’m no boy, Kemp,” Private Lester protested.
“You’re younger than me and that makes you a boy.”
“Enough please,” Conway warned. “Get ready for a rapid exit and don’t forget your shit.”
“What about that nose cannon I saw on our underside?” asked Corporal Barron.
“That’s going to be my first question when I return to the cockpit. I think the flight control computer is well underground. We may not be able to get a clear or safe shot at the protective casing.”
“Yeah, that’s the way it’s heading,” grumbled Corporal Freeman. “Maybe we’ll get a break.”
“This is your break, Corporal. It’s your big chance to free up a bunch of friendly spaceships and bring them back to the ULAF. They’ll give you a medal for this.”
“I’ll wear it proudly in my coffin, sir. And you can pour that beer over my cold, dead body.”
“Hell no, I’m drinking that one myself,” said Conway.
With that, he returned to the cockpit and asked Isental about the underside gun.
“It fires tharniol shells,” said the Fangrin. “I haven’t looked at the technical documentation – if I get the chance, I’ll shoot something and see what happens.”
It was as practical a method as any and Conway approved. A single tharniol bullet from a Gilner produced terrible injuries in the Sekar and he was very interested to discover what a high-caliber shell would accomplish.
“We are beginning our approach,” said Isental. “I will come in perpendicular to the rift and we will see what we find.”
“When will Captain Griffin fire the dark cannon, sir?”
“He is concerned that the Sekar will be alerted by the discharge and will hold fire until we are ready to deploy.”
“Cutting it fine.”
“The best attacks work on fine margins.”
“Amen to that.”
Captain Isental didn’t hold back. He tipped the shuttle’s nose down and gave the engines full power. The acceleration was abrupt and brutal, accompanied by a much louder whining from the propulsion. In seconds, the spaceship was hurtling towards Dominion in a sharp dive.
“With no atmosphere to burn us up, I can fly as quickly as my reactions allow,” said Isental.
He levelled out at an altitude of one hundred kilometers. The sensor feed was pin-sharp and when he looked, Conway thought he detected a strange powdery quality to the stone. It didn’t look natural and it made him ask if the Sekar could make even rock decay, like their mere presence aged it by a hundred billion years.
Soon, the shuttle was travelling so fast the underside feed became an undulating blur of changing colors. Conway gave up looking at it and instead he watched what was coming to him. The planet’s curvature still hid the Dominion base, but it didn’t prevent him from seeing the upward cascade of rocks, which he was sure would continue until the planet was irreparably damaged.
Without any visible concern, Isental executed a sharp turn left and then he banked right. The life support module was stressed enough to whine in complaint and Conway was almost thrown from his seat. He heard a couple of the squad complaining out back and he reminded them to hold on tightly.
“Falling rocks. The facility will shortly be in view,” said Isental. He laughed. “The remainder of our lives may only be measured in moments, but I will damn well enjoy every last one of them!”
Conway had never seen his existence in the same way. Part of him envied those who could take such joy in every fleeting second, but not too much. He accepted his responsibilities and he was happy with them.
“Our destination,” said Isental.
The outer buildings of Dominion rose over the horizon, ragged and broken. As the shuttle approached, Conway realized exactly how large these structures were. He’d expected them to be comparable to a human city; instead, they were massive, like each one was built to house thousands.
“Five hundred kilometers to target,” said Isental.
The shuttle passed over the outskirts and now Conway was able to see the details which distance had so far denied him. Not on
ly had the facility suffered greatly from the seismic activity of the rift’s widening, it had also been struck by a rain of the smaller rocks which hadn’t escaped Dominion’s gravitational pull. In this instance, smaller didn’t mean small and Conway saw plenty which he guessed weighed a million tons or more and the buildings underneath were utterly crushed.
Below, a dark shape emerged into sight from a sheltered place behind a half-fallen wall. Conway caught a glimpse of the enormous Sekar, its exact form unclear, and then it was lost in the shuttle’s wake.
“Life is gone, yet still they linger,” said Isental.
“A welcoming committee for whatever’s coming through that rift,” said Conway.
“I cannot imagine it will need protection, human. Assuming it is coming.”
“You have doubts?”
“We must always have doubts. Nothing is perfection.”
“I’ll say it up front, sir. Something’s coming and I don’t want to be here when it arrives.”
“We will finish this and escape. I have no desire to watch this unfold – not when I only have a shuttle around me.”
After spotting the first Sekar, Conway was suddenly able to see dozens – hundreds – of them. They were enormous, though he never quite saw one for long enough or from the best angle to determine what appearance they’d taken on. Certainly, if these Sekar had adopted the forms of a species they’d killed, Conway had no desire to see the originals either.
“Ahead lies part of the space fleet we have been promised,” said Isental.
The landing area was surrounded by what had once been warehouses and storage yards. Piles of armor plates were strewn everywhere as if they’d been petulantly kicked from their original positions. Then came the section of the Hantisar fleet which was parked on this area of the facility. Like everything else here, the warships were oversized and Conway estimated that many were a thousand meters or greater in length and probably weighed five or six times as much as a ULAF heavy cruiser.
Other ships were larger yet, though in shape they didn’t differ too much. To Conway’s eye, they looked mean and purposeful, tapered and angular in the classic design of vessels built for war. In spite of their immense weight, the Hantisar craft had been thrown around in the same manner as everything else. Rocks had crashed amongst them, rupturing the hulls of some and knocking others onto their sides.
“Many are damaged beyond repair and many more are recoverable,” said Isental. “Their age does not discourage me.”
“Nor me,” said Conway. He didn’t know spaceships as well as some others, but he felt encouraged at the sight of this fleet. Maybe the Hantisar couldn’t use their ships anymore – that didn’t mean the alliance would turn away the gift.
“The flight control computer is at the far end of this landing area,” said Isental. “I will contact the Nullifier and request their assistance.”
That assistance came within a few seconds of the Fangrin’s comms call. A dozen kilometers ahead, a cloud of thick dust exploded from the surface. Within seconds, the edges of the cloud became indistinct as the particles fell towards the ground. The Nullifier’s dark cannon fired again and new dust joined with the old.
“Has that got it?” asked Conway.
“I am awaiting confirmation. The dark cannon will not fire again for thirty seconds.”
Conway knew what the target area looked like from the images copied to his suit computer. What he saw on the sensor feed looked completely different after the dark cannon’s twin activations. The expected piles of ground-level rubble were gone, replaced by a skeletal frame of alloys and metal plates, the lower sections of which descended into a square-edged pit formed by the cannon’s discharge. Conway did his best to figure out a way inside but the shuttle’s approach path made the task impossible.
“I will circle the area and see what is to be seen,” Isental reassured him. “If there is a blockage, I will attempt to clear it and minimize your time on the surface. I cannot risk hitting the flight control computer – if it suffers damage, the security lockdown on this fleet will remain in place.”
The shuttle slowed with inertia-defying suddenness and Conway put out a hand to brace himself. As yet the dust clouds had not settled and they added a graininess to the sensor feed. The Nullifier was a million klicks further away and Conway had no doubt Lieutenants Dominguez and Shelton had their work cut out to make sense of the ground beneath.
Enough details were apparent to make Conway feel doubts about the mission. The flight control computer had originally been housed in an extensive building complex and though the dark cannon had disintegrated the walls, the underlying tharniol casings were intact and they resembled a complete, low-level building, made entirely of metal sheets. How far it went below the surface, Conway wasn’t sure. Further north, rubble was piled onto the roof of the casing where the dark cannon had failed to clear it.
It got worse. A few hundred meters to the south, south-west and west, spaceships were parked and Conway spotted the dark outlines of Sekar amongst them. Now he was close enough to see their shape they appeared like monstrous, bipedal giants with broad chests and long, thick arms ending in the talons he was so familiar with.
“They have not reacted to our presence,” said Isental.
“The moment the side door opens, they’ll detect life and they’ll come at a run, sir,” said Conway. “It might be they sniff us out through the hull walls anyway. They seemed to have knack for it in Refuge 9.”
“The dark cannon is ready to discharge.”
Isental and the Nullifier were evidently well in tune and the ground erupted for a third time, so close that the mushrooming grit clattered against the shuttle like a million tiny hailstones – a sound which brought Conway back to his recent time on Glesia.
“The outer casing is now completely exposed,” said Isental. “Let us find an entrance.”
He circled the building once again and Conway saw that it was no use. The Hantisar had built the outer structure to completely enclose the inner casing. The dark cannon had disintegrated much of the surrounding stone to a depth of several hundred meters and still Conway couldn’t make out where the tharniol ended. In his mind, the outer casing resembled a massive lift shaft, sunk deep into solid rock.
Only one approach remained.
“The north-eastern corner,” said Isental. “Captain Griffin has left a section of the surface rock intact, which will allow you to make it to the structure.”
“There’s a section of stone wall standing at that part of the building,” said Conway. “We’ll be able to blow through it with charges, but it’ll be a larger blast than I intended.”
“I will put a hole through the side,” said Isental. “While you venture within I will do what I can to discourage the Sekar from investigating.”
Isental wasn’t prone to hesitation. He brought the shuttle to an immediate standstill, a hundred meters in the air and a similar distance from one of the casing’s side walls. The Fangrin’s hand jumped across the control panel and he pressed two buttons in quick succession.
In vacuum silence the cannon fired, and the shuttle rocked with the recoil. A moment later, an impressive quantity of dust and grit hid the impact area from view. When the dust cleared, Conway saw an uneven, five-meter hole.
“An impressive result for such a small weapon,” said Isental. “I would like to see what happens when it connects with a Sekar.” While he spoke, the Fangrin brought the shuttle vertically towards the ground. “I feared having to land in a trench produced by the dark cannon. However, this mound of rubble below us slopes directly towards the opening in the target building and will ensure the Sekar are not able to attack the shuttle before deployment.”
With that, Isental dumped the shuttle onto an extensive pile of debris, which didn’t exactly look stable. The craft tilted to one side and Conway heard stones crunching beneath its weight.
“Go,” said Isental, without waiting for the shuttle to settle in place.
Conway was almost surprised by the suddenness of the order. He sprang through the cockpit exit into the passenger bay, yelling at his squad to get ready and not doubting for a moment that every one of them would be prepared. Rapid strides brought Conway to the shuttle’s exit and he activated the panel. The door opened and light – the blinding white light of midday – lanced inside, along with a heat that was near enough two hundred degrees Fahrenheit.
With his eyes narrowed against the glare, Conway descended the five steps to the ground with the Hantisar gauss weapon in his hand instead of the Gilner. His feet crunched against broken sections of what had once been a building and he strode away to make room for the next soldier. An object lay in front of him, seemingly intact and out of place amongst the desolation. Conway lowered his eyes briefly to see what it was.
A picture, framed in a rectangle of steel, stared up at him. The Hantisar in the photograph looked almost human, with grey skin and a faintly alien appearance. A father, a mother, a daughter. Conway couldn’t look and he stepped over it.
The rubble mound gave a good vantage of the surrounding area – a slope led directly towards the opening in the tharniol casing. Although the dark cannon had reduced the outer structure to a still-falling dust, other buildings within a few hundred meters loomed higher than the rubble. The nearby spaceships seemed larger yet – a clear reminder of the Hantisar technological and industrial might.
Conway turned to make sure his squad was with him and then he informed Captain Isental. The transport took off without a sound, its landing feet sending pieces of stone bouncing away.
“Let’s go,” said Conway, starting down the slope.
The pieces of rubble were varied, as though the original building had been completely shattered by a hammer blow. It was easy to descend and Conway half-walked, half slithered down a slab of polished brown stone which was covered in a layer of coarse grit. He hadn’t gone much further than a few meters towards the opening when movement in his periphery made him turn. A Sekar was coming towards them from between two of the spaceships, with the kind of languid strides which made it appear like it was approaching at a gentle pace, yet which was in fact far quicker than any human or Fangrin could run.
Nullifier (Fire and Rust Book 6) Page 17
