Death Skies (Fire and Rust Book 4)

by Anthony James

  He let that sink in. It was one thing to shoot down an enemy spaceship, another thing entirely to saturate a planet with high-yield nuclear warheads.

  “This is the real deal, isn’t it, sir?” asked Lieutenant Shelton.

  “It’s always been the real deal. Ever since the Raggers showed up at New Pacific. They’ve given us no choice.”

  As soon as he spoke the words, Griffin asked himself if they were true. He didn’t beat himself up over the answer – the Raggers had launched an unproved attack on the Unity League and then they had betrayed their word about giving safe passage to the recent ill-fated peace mission. The aliens weren’t anything like humanity and nobody had come up with a viable way to deal with them that didn’t involve mass destruction. The Raggers were so different that they managed to put the Fangrin in perspective. Now, every time Griffin saw or spoke to one of the dogs, his brain was making unconscious, positive links between them and humans.

  “All the documentation is locked down, sir,” said Kroll. “Any chance we can take a sneak peek at it?”

  “There’ll be time when we’re in flight.” Griffin finished another series of checks. The Hurricane was ready to go. “Lieutenant Dominguez, confirm we aren’t sitting on top of twenty of the ULAF’s finest.”

  “No sir, our guard unit is on their way back to headquarters.”

  “In that case, get us a slot. Lieutenant Kenyon, please confirm we’re on the local battle network.”

  “We’re comms linked to everyone on Calisto, sir,” said Kenyon. “I guess we’ll have an open receptor to the Fangrin once we hit the rendezvous.”

  Dominguez came into the channel as soon as Kenyon was done speaking. “There’s a slot open for us now, sir. Twenty seconds to confirm or we lose it.”

  “Take it.”

  “The next lift-off slot is ours.”

  “Here we go.”

  The controls of the heavy cruiser were solid bars of cool alloy that jutted out from the front of the wraparound command console. Griffin brought the engines out of idle and they responded with a smooth humming sound. He drew back the sticks. They were tailored to each commanding officer in order to provide the perfect level of resistance and just the right amount of responsiveness. Griffin felt a lurch as the landing gear came off the ground and then the spaceship was airborne.

  Gently at first and then with increasing speed, Griffin piloted the Hurricane vertically away from the landing field. With each passing second, the view became more breathtaking.

  At first, the underside feeds were of the landing strip and its forty-one parked spaceships. Then, the view expanded until Griffin could see the buildings around it and one end of the northern shipyard. The construction crews were working on two new Lansoms and one was close to completion. Higher still and the second landing strip came into view with forty more spaceships and several gaps in the line to show where some had already departed.

  Griffin turned his head and saw a second shipyard, with work underway on yet more additions to the ULAF fleet. Crawlers and gravity cranes swarmed like ants on their way between warehouses and the construction trenches.

  The last thing Griffin noticed before the Hurricane entered the low-lying clouds was the three diamond class carriers parked on the third landing strip. The last of the Vipers was vanishing into the launch bay of Admiral Kolb’s ship, the ULS Trojan. Then the grey mist obscured the view and the ground was lost far below.

  “Want me to filter out the nimbostratus, sir?” asked Dominguez.

  “Don’t bother. I’ve seen enough.”

  The Hurricane reached what they called a safe altitude and the airfield mainframe told Griffin no other vessels were in proximity. He smiled to himself and increased thrust rapidly and steadily. The Hurricane surged away from the surface of Rundine, its hull so well-constructed that only the faintest sounds of flexing alloy reached Griffin’s ears.

  The propulsion was less restrained. It produced a howling unlike anything in nature and the velocity gauge raced upwards. Griffin was pressed into his seat and the muscles in his arms and shoulders fought against the tremendous accelerative forces.

  “Getting warm,” said Dominguez. “Atmospheric friction.”

  “We’ll cool down in space,” said Griffin, trying to keep the exultation from his voice.

  Almost everything about the Hurricane was new and its propulsion was a step change from the old. Expensive and difficult to manufacture but damn it made the Hurricane as fast as its name suggested.

  “Ground control asks if we’re in a hurry, sir.”

  “Tell them we’ve got a score to settle.”

  With its topside plating burning a dull red, the spaceship left the thin, ice-cold air of Rundine’s outer atmosphere. The upper and flank sensor feeds turned from the darkest of blues to absolute black and more of the planet was revealed on the underside arrays. Rundine had often been likened to Earth and in that one moment, the sight of it made Griffin’s heart swell with emotion. The vibrant greens, blues and yellows somehow represented everything he lived for and everything he’d die for.

  “No time for sentiment,” he said to himself off-comms. “Got a job to focus on.”

  At ten thousand klicks from Rundine, Griffin removed the electronic locks from the mission files, so his crew could take a look.

  “Lieutenant Kroll, the coordinates of our rendezvous are in there. Find them and send us on our way.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kroll was quick and the tharniol detonators thundered less than two minutes after Griffin gave the order. The force of the controlled explosions was enough to make the spaceship shudder and he remembered Lieutenant Atwell’s words about the fourth detonator.

  “Any alerts?” he asked.

  “No, sir. There’s an amber on number four, but we only used one and two for the startup.”

  The Hurricane was new, but the tharniol drive wasn’t any better than that found on other Lansoms. The noise level built and Griffin could feel the vibration in everything he touched. One-by-one, the other spaceships from Calisto emerged from orbit and activated their own lightspeed drives. Griffin tapped his helmet twice for luck and hoped that the mission would get off to a good start without any detonator blow-outs.

  He didn’t get a chance to watch for long. The Hurricane’s tharniol drive reached a crescendo and held.

  “Any second!” yelled Kroll over the din.

  The transition happened. The instrumentation went screwy and the crew felt like shit. Once everything had settled, Griffin requested updates while he completed his own routine checks. The crew were experienced and didn’t require micromanagement. Everything was as expected, with no known or anticipated hardware failures.

  It didn’t matter how many lightspeed runs Griffin experienced, the same sense of relief came every time he learned a transition was a successful one.

  “That’s a good jump,” he confirmed.

  “Five hours to rendezvous,” said Kroll. “We got a head start over the others, so we’ll be scratching our asses while they catch up.”

  The turbulence started not long after. The Hurricane was big enough to ride it, but the shaking and bumping was unwelcome. On a smaller craft like a Viper, bad turbulence could knock you off your feet. On a Lansom, the ups and downs were a little smoother. Griffin had always figured it was like the difference between an ocean liner and a rowing boat on a rough sea.

  With no choice, the crew put up with the bumps. They discussed the mission outline and Griffin answered what he could. When everything was boiled down, neither the Unity League nor the Fangrin had the faintest idea what they’d find at their destination.

  “In, nuke, out. Easiest mission ever,” said Shelton. She was pretty enough that she’d probably always got her own way when she was growing up. Some of that carried over to the ULAF, but not enough that it was a problem and Griffin found her likeable enough.

  “Except that we might turn up and find a thousand Ragger spaceships,” said Kenyon.


  “Or the decrypted data might be a digit wrong and we find ourselves in the middle of a star, or fifty billion klicks from an unoccupied gas giant,” added Dominguez.

  “Or we show up, bomb some Ragger be-hinds and then fly off home to receive a medal and a fifty percent increase in our rate,” said Shelton.

  “You gotta love the optimism of youth,” laughed Kroll. “Not that I can remember too much about that myself.”

  “Hey, Lieutenant, I earned the right to be here,” said Shelton, only half-feigning indignance.

  “Come on folks, settle down,” said Griffin. “We’re in Attack Fleet 2, led by Admiral Kolb. I guess we should count ourselves lucky the Fangrin are understanding enough that they let us lead one out of three.”

  “Who’re the Fangrin group leaders?” asked Lieutenant Faulkner.

  “We’re in good company,” said Griffin. “I know both of these. Attack Fleet 1 is led by Admiral Enixlan Yeringar and Admiral Zevin Akaxz is in charge of Attack Fleet 3. Both of them are mean, tough and competent.”

  “How’d you know them, sir?” asked Shelton.

  “A story for later, Lieutenant. I feel better knowing they’re with us.”

  The five-hour journey felt like it was over in the blinking of an eye. Lieutenant Kroll called out time ten minutes in advance and the crew fastened their harnesses. After that came the transition, the nausea and the sense of being separate from the world around. Griffin told himself he was accustomed to it and knew he was lying.

  The sensor feeds turned grey with static to indicate re-entry into local space. Griffin wasn’t expecting trouble, but he began evasive maneuvers as he waited for his crew to update him. Several utilization needles hit one hundred percent and the acceleration felt like a kick in the spine.

  “No hardware faults on propulsion or life support,” said Kroll.

  “Sensors updating. Come on, come on,” said Dominguez.

  “Comms still dead. Shouldn’t take long…”

  Griffin held the controls tightly. The moments after arrival were when a spaceship was an easy target.

  “Sensors online, beginning local sweep.”

  “Comms up!” said Kenyon. “Checking for battle network…got one! Sir, we are now joined to AF and AF2.”

  “Get me updates.”

  “We are asked to bring the Hurricane to a standstill before we crash into something.”

  “Fine,” said Griffin dryly.

  The deceleration pressed him hard into the straps of his harness and made it difficult to breathe. It didn’t take longer than a few seconds for the velocity gauge to hit zero.

  “Local area sweep is clear, sir,” said Dominguez. “Except for the presence of 120 Fangrin spaceships. The remaining 200 are further out and reporting their positions via the battle network. Want me to do a wide-area?”

  “Don’t bother. The Fangrin know what they’re doing. I doubt there’s anything bigger than a pebble within half a million klicks they don’t know about.”

  Griffin relaxed a little and sat back to wait. The warships in the attack fleet appeared as a list on the comms panel and he read through the names. Several warships from Calisto were already here, with the majority yet to arrive. Griffin didn’t recognize many of the Fangrin ship names, though he’d encountered the battleship Zundar in the past and had considerable experience with the heavy cruiser Gradior. The names embodied the strength of the Fangrin and it was good to see them here.

  “The Gradior’s with us in Attack Fleet 2,” he said.

  “Patched up, but still mean as hell,” said Dominguez. “Here, I got it on the upper feed.”

  It felt to Griffin as if his time on the Gradior was years ago rather than a few months and the sight of the broad, thickly-armored hull, bristling with weaponry, was like a vision from a war fought long ago.

  “How did the Raggers ever get on top?” said Griffin.

  “Stealth tech and nothing more, sir.”

  “Yeah, I know it.”

  “More ships from Calisto have joined the battle network,” said Kenyon. “At this rate, we’ll be at full strength and ready to go within thirty minutes.”

  Soon, the remainder of the ships coming from Rundine finished their journey and joined with the combined attack fleets. The orders were not to cluster and the warships spread across an extensive area. This was the first time Griffin had been part of such a large force and he switched between sensor feeds, taking it all in.

  “I wonder how many more the Fangrin could muster if they weren’t committed elsewhere,” said Shelton, clearly hoping someone would answer.

  “Someone in the ULAF must have an estimate,” said Kenyon. “I thought we paid people to work this stuff out.”

  “I’ve heard the Fangrin command more than three thousand spaceships,” Griffin admitted.

  “Whoa, that many?” said Shelton. “They must have a lot to defend if they can only commit ten percent here.”

  It was well-observed. “Our contribution is about twenty-five percent of the ULAF total,” Griffin replied. “We’ve recalled almost the entire fleet and stationed what we can around New Pacific, Involar and Runston. Other planets require defense as well, even if we don’t think the Raggers know where they’re located. We’re spread too thinly. This mission needs to be a success.”

  The enormity of it wasn’t lost on the crew and they fell silent in order to think and to concentrate on their duties. When the final stragglers joined the combined force the fleet split into three, each of which flew into a closer formation to maximize the chance that every ship would arrive within support distance of the others.

  Under orders from Griffin, Lieutenant Kroll fired the tharniol detonators and the countdown started for lightspeed drive activation. A short while later, the Hurricane, along with 414 other warships and numerous transports, entered lightspeed, their speeds calculated to ensure that each of the attack fleets would arrive at their separate destinations at the same time.

  Griffin settled himself for the journey.

  Chapter Four

  Once the post-launch technical checks were complete, the crew began talking over the details of what was to come.

  “Qali-5 is the furthest out from the rendezvous point,” said Lieutenant Kroll, referring to the name given to AF2’s target planet. “Therefore, we’re travelling at the fastest speed of the three fleets.”

  “Nine days out and a whole lot of fuel,” said Shelton from the rear bulkhead, where she waited for the food station to deliver a tray of something unappetizing.

  “Makes sense to keep your factories far away from the frontline,” said Lieutenant Jackson.

  “Maybe in the past it did,” said Kroll. “Not so much when an enemy can drop in whenever they choose.”

  “Yeah, I suppose.”

  Griffin unfastened his harness and stood up to stretch, just as the Hurricane encountered more turbulence. He steadied himself and waited for the shaking to end before heading for the food station as well. “If these planets are where the Raggers build all their crap, I wonder if they have their original home world someplace close by.”

  “Are you suggesting the enemy might get worried that we’ll find them and offer another shot at peace negotiations?” asked Dominguez, not entirely serious.

  “Nope, but this has to end somewhere and somehow. We can’t allow the Raggers to do this again.”

  “I reckon the dogs will nuke the crap out of them whatever happens,” said Kroll. “Why wouldn’t they?”

  “I don’t well enough know how the Fangrin think, so I can’t answer that, Lieutenant,” said Griffin, studying the options list on the food station. “It won’t be for us to decide. For once, I’m not looking beyond what’s on my plate today. If we shut down these Ragger manufacturing bases, we’ve taken a big leap towards long-term certainty for the Unity League.”

  Griffin punched in his selection and the food station groaned as it attempted to combine flavorless ingredients into something that would fool h
is taste buds.

  “Assuming the dogs don’t start shooting at us again,” said Jackson.

  “I think they’ve had enough of it too.” Griffin withdrew a cup of wretched coffee and a tray with two protein pastes and a block of something carbohydrate.

  “What makes you say that, sir?”

  “I don’t know - just a feeling. Maybe I’ll speak to the next Fangrin I meet and ask for their opinion.”

  “If they’ve got three thousand warships I hope they’re happy to shake hands. Or paws,” said Shelton. “Do they have paws?”

  Griffin wasn’t sure if Shelton was joking or not, but he felt obliged to respond. “Hands, Lieutenants. They have fully-functioning hands.”

  “I know that, sir.”

  With a shake of his head, Griffin returned to his seat. Staring at the contents of the tray didn’t make them look any more palatable and he got on with the duty of putting fuel into his body. The pastes were nutritionally engineered to make ULAF personnel feel great, but all Griffin wanted was a slice of pizza, dripping with cheese grease. The nutritionists knew how to feed the body, but they didn’t have a clue about how to feed the soul. That was why most personnel filled their faces with junk food at the first opportunity when they got off base.

  “I’ve read these mission documents like fifteen times already, sir,” said Dominguez. “Trouble is, I can’t find any mention of an actual plan.”

  “What were you expecting, Lieutenant?” asked Griffin, chewing stolidly on his carb block.

  “Guidelines, perhaps. I understand we don’t know much about the enemy defenses, however that doesn’t mean high command shouldn’t offer recommendations.”

  “We’ve got formations and attack patterns.”

  “Yeah. What about escape plans, or the sub-grouping of the attack force, or search patterns?” Dominguez’s voice was filled with doubt. She’d make captain soon and Griffin was happy to deal with her questions.

  “You’re overthinking it, Lieutenant. AF2 has a clearly-defined command structure of time-served officers who are capable of reacting to circumstance. Too many guidelines add an extra layer of complexity to a situation which might call for instant reactions.”