Death Skies (Fire and Rust Book 4)

by Anthony James

  “Sounds good,” said Shelton.

  It sounded good to Griffin as well. Kolb was a skilled organizer and she soon had tailored orders sent to each individual spaceship.

  “We’re in AF2-4,” said Griffin. “As soon as we’re within five hundred klicks of Qali-5, we sweep north, hitting any targets we encounter. If we find no targets, we’re expected to adapt and assist the other sub-fleets.”

  “Admiral Kolb orders every spaceship’s commanding officer to remove the security locks from their nuclear missiles and incendiaries.”

  “Roger,” said Griffin. His hands were steady when he entered his codes. The Hurricane’s battle computer requested confirmation, which he tapped into the keypad. An acknowledgement light appeared. “Locks disabled.”

  Admiral Kolb didn’t give the go order immediately and Griffin drummed his fingers. Time was passing and they couldn’t afford to wait any longer than was absolutely necessary. He checked out a couple of the sensor feeds. Most of the warships in AF2-4 were Fangrin and one was the Gradior under the command of Captain Isental. Aside from that, AF2-4 was a mixture of light and heavy cruisers, each carrying a monumental payload.

  “There’s the order, sir!” said Kenyon, his voice full of nervous excitement. “We’re to go immediately.”

  The adrenaline which had faded from Griffin’s body returned with a sudden jolt that made his breathing deepen and his skin turn cold. The navigational computer was loaded with the details he required and without delay, he fed in a burst of power. The Hurricane accelerated hard, easily holding its position amongst the other members of the fleet.

  One million klicks away, Qali-5 waited.

  Chapter Six

  At a distance of ninety thousand klicks, the fleet came under attack. One of the lead ships winked off the tactical like it had never existed.

  “What the hell was that?” shouted Griffin. Instinctively, he added an erratic element to the Hurricane’s flight, making it harder for the enemy to target or hit the heavy cruiser.

  Dominguez swore. “I don’t know, sir. I’m trying to get a sensor lock.”

  “Quickly!”

  A second warship vanished and this time Dominguez was fast enough to pick up the cloud of plasma before it dissipated. The blast had been colossal and the vessel caught in the middle was utterly destroyed.

  “Lieutenant Kenyon, as soon as someone discovers what fired that, I want to know about it.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m on it.”

  A third and then a fourth spaceship vanished in the white heat of immense plasma detonations. Dominguez and Shelton were not able to detect the launch position and couldn’t even confirm if the attacks originated from the surface of Qali-5 or a platform somewhere in space.

  A fifth warship, this one a Fangrin heavy cruiser ten klicks to the Hurricane’s starboard, went the same way as the previous four. The weapon was so effective, the captain of the vessel didn’t even have time to send a distress signal.

  “Dammit, we need to know where the attacks are coming from!”

  “Multiple sources, sir,” said Dominguez. “Surface launched – I can confirm they are coming from Qali-5.”

  “Trace back to source. I need a target.”

  “One source located, sir. Twenty klick margin of error.”

  Griffin was in charge of the nukes. He fired two from the Ultor tubes, aiming at the spot Dominguez had identified. The real big warheads were slow and had no hope of evading ground-launched interceptors, but the smaller ones were mounted on Ultor propulsion sections. They flew damn fast.

  The missiles streaked away. Other members of AF2 had the same idea and a sporadic few Ultor-mounted nukes headed towards different locations on Qali-5.

  “Seventy-five thousand klicks till we split,” said Shelton.

  “Watch for surface countermeasures. I want to see what happens to those missiles.”

  “No change in orders, sir,” said Kenyon. “Maintain course.”

  The Raggers destroyed another couple of the AF2 ships. This time, Dominguez was able to detect one of the incoming missiles in flight.

  “Some kind of shell, sir, coming at the same velocity as a railgun slug.”

  It was a type of weapon Griffin hadn’t seen before and he wondered if any of the Fangrin had encountered these surface-launched shells before. They were shockingly effective.

  “Sir, I am detecting multiple railgun coils in a tight arc dead ahead. Range: thirty thousand klicks.”

  “Lieutenant Jackson!”

  “Firing Ultor-VI missiles, sir.”

  The old Ultor-V missiles were unable to lock onto a railgun coil charge-up. The Unity League weapons labs had worked hard to fix that oversight and the new Ultor-VI missiles didn’t have the same limitation. The thickness of the Hurricane’s hull wasn’t enough to completely hide the ignition of the Ultor-VI propulsions. Griffin felt and heard the missiles launch and many tiny green dots appeared on the tactical.

  AF2 shared a wealth of experience gathered from constant warfare. The crews of the other ships were equally quick to react and they fired their own missiles – a mixture of Ultor-VI and the Fangrin equivalents, known as Izivals. The tactical became flooded with data and it almost ground to a halt. Griffin wanted to switch off some of the data, but he needed to be aware of exactly who was firing at what.

  “The ULS Stalwart reports it has suffered a railgun strike,” said Kenyon. “Same with the Silzian and the Magvinar.”

  “I am not reliably able to target a stealth-cloaked enemy with our own railguns, sir,” said Jackson.

  Griffin knew that well enough. “Once those missiles light up their hulls you’ll have something to shoot at.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Sixty thousand klicks until we split,” said Shelton.

  “Our nukes just vanished from the sensors,” Dominguez reported. “Approximately one thousand klicks from Qali-5.”

  “What happened to those warheads, Lieutenant Jackson?”

  “Sir, I am reading the missile logs and I can confirm they have not detonated.”

  “Damnit!” Griffin felt the temptation to launch again, but it appeared as though the Raggers were capable enough of shooting them down. It might be possible to overcome their ground-air interceptors by launching more warheads than they could handle. Equally, the enemy might be up to the task and those nukes would be wasted.

  The attack fleet continued its approach, with each individual member twisting through space in an attempt to throw off the Ragger defenses. Unfortunately, the plasma shells travelled so fast and had such an enormous blast radius, that it was difficult to completely avoid them. Still, the casualties lessened, though they weren’t eliminated.

  The first wave of Ultor-VIs and Izivals found their marks. Griffin counted four Ragger ships of varying sizes being torn to pieces by the explosive force of the human and Fangrin missiles. Lieutenant Jackson fired the Hurricane’s upper two railguns into the hull of one stricken enemy craft, breaking it apart.

  “How many are we facing?” asked Griffin.

  “Best guess is ten, sir,” said Shelton. “I anticipate substantial reinforcements from either the planet’s surface or those already in space and not currently close enough to engage.”

  “The comms team on the Trojan report a total of fifteen railgun coil charge-ups from different locations, sir.”

  “Fifty thousand klicks till we split.”

  “Whatever tech the Raggers are using to hide the surface projects to an altitude of one thousand klicks,” said Dominguez. “That’s where those missiles vanished.”

  “They must be hiding the whole damn planet,” said Griffin. “What the hell are they building here?”

  “A war machine capable of defeating the Fangrin, sir.”

  “I’m detecting missile launches from at least eight different locations,” said Shelton. “Some coming our way.”

  “Ready on the Shredders,” said Jackson. “Firing.”

  The Shredders were
faster than pretty much anything that travelled sublight, other than a railgun slug. They appeared on the short-range tactical and then were gone.

  “Firing second wave of Shredders. Ultor-VIs locked onto railgun coil. Firing. Bon voyage.”

  “Keep up the attack. Everything we’ve got.”

  “Our Shredders have knocked out the enemy missiles targeted on us, sir,” said Jackson, the first signs of stress creeping into her voice. “More incoming. Shredders away.”

  It seemed as though every single warship in AF2 was unloading missiles towards the known enemy spaceships. The tactical became so crowded that it flickered, while the green and red dots danced jerkily across the display.

  A plasma shell detonated ahead of the Hurricane, close enough to see with the naked eye. Griffin was already midway through executing a spiral and the heavy cruiser burst through the edges of the blast. The heat alarms went off and then the expanding sphere of plasma was behind them.

  “Nasty shit that,” said Dominguez.

  “I know it.”

  “Someone doesn’t like us,” said Jackson. “Another twenty missiles incoming.”

  “Show them what the nose cone of a Shredder looks like.”

  “Shredders in flight.”

  The distance between the opposing sides was reducing fast. The Shredders took out most of the enemy missiles, but a handful escaped destruction. Griffin hauled desperately on the controls, trying to evade the attack.

  “Too late.”

  The expected missile strike didn’t come. Just when Griffin thought his warship was about to suffer an impact, the green dots of friendly interceptors flashed once on the tactical and then vanished. Griffin saw a silvery flash on his HUD and then it was gone.

  “What the…?”

  “I think those interceptors came from the Gradior, sir.”

  “Lieutenant Kenyon, pass on our thanks,” said Griffin. His mouth said the words, but his brain was focused on everything else. He didn’t let up on the controls and he banked the Hurricane erratically. Each violent maneuver threw him against his harness and strained his muscles.

  “Thirty thousand klicks till we split.”

  A warship close to the Hurricane’s portside was lost to another searing plasma detonation. Dominguez plotted the location of each launch site and fed the data into the battle computer. Still Griffin held off launching the nukes.

  “The Trojan reports further sightings on our starboard flank,” said Kenyon. “Twelve confirmed, more expected. No change in orders.”

  The Hurricane flew on. Warships on both sides were wrecked in the punishing exchange. The Ragger ships were heavily outnumbered, but the ground launchers were doing their best to level the odds. Lieutenant Jackson scored a kill on an enemy cruiser and contributed to the destruction of a second. Meanwhile, the warships on the starboard flank fired every missile they had in the hope of finishing off the newly-arrived Raggers before they could influence the result.

  Griffin did what he could to keep the Hurricane on course for Qali-5 and gave Lieutenant Jackson free rein to shoot whatever target she could lock onto. The plasma shells continued to burst and more often than not, they finished off or badly damaged one of the AF2 warships.

  “So much for in, nuke, out,” said Kroll.

  “The best victories are the hardest fought, Lieutenant.”

  “I always preferred the easy ones, sir.”

  “Twenty thousand klicks.”

  The casualties mounted on both sides. The Raggers came off worst, but every time one of their ships exploded in a storm of debris, another appeared to take its place. Griffin suspected that the enemy had many spaceships distributed on and around Qali-5.

  “We’ve got them outnumbered for the moment,” he said. “That might not be the case for much longer.”

  “Gotta get this done,” said Shelton.

  The bridge filled with the sound of Ultor-VI and Shredder launches, the booming detonation of their propulsions vibrating through the dense hull of the Hurricane. The spaceship’s own engines rose and fell in response to Griffin’s sharp movements on the control bars. Planet Qali-5 came ever-closer, the vision of its rocky surface an illusion which continued defying the sensors.

  “Ten thousand klicks.”

  Another wave of the enemy missiles streaked by, close enough to touch. The Shredders were mid-reload, so Lieutenant Jackson was unable to offer a defense. Fifty klicks behind, a Fangrin warship was struck multiple times and it spun uncontrolled off course.

  “I can’t say that makes me feel lucky,” said Kroll.

  Griffin didn’t feel lucky either. This was how it happened sometimes – life for one, death for another and if you were the living, you got on with the job and did your damnedest to avenge the dead.

  “Five thousand klicks,” said Dominguez. “Not a flicker on the data stream to suggest Qali-5 is anything more than rocks. The Ragger tech is too good for our sensors.”

  “Not too good for our bombs, Lieutenant.”

  The distance counter sped downwards and the warships nearby altered heading, diverging slightly from the others in AF2. Across the tactical, Griffin saw the other attack groups doing likewise, preparing to divide and annihilate the Raggers.

  A railgun shell struck an adjacent ship and a thickly-clustered wave of enemy missiles plunged into a Fangrin heavy cruiser. The sight of it was enough to produce a tight knot of fury in Griffin’s stomach. He didn’t expect war to be easy, but the Raggers were an opponent who made a battle out of every forward step.

  “We’re going to finish these assholes.”

  “Amen to that, sir.”

  “We’re about to break through the enemy projection, sir,” said Shelton. “Any moment.”

  “Let’s see what they’re hiding from us.”

  The Hurricane was at the front of AF2-4, alongside the Gradior and a couple of Fangrin light cruisers. At an altitude of exactly one thousand kilometers, the sensor feeds jumped like a poor-quality FTL video link. When they updated a fraction of a second later, Griffin was granted his first real sight of the Ragger manufacturing planet.

  Chapter Seven

  The Raggers had not been kind to Qali-5. Much of the surface was ocean, muddy in color like water from a drain rather than clear green or blue. All of the visible land masses were cloaked in toxin clouds and these clouds extended hundreds of kilometers out over the seas. They also hung low to the ground and made it difficult for the Hurricane’s sensors to build up a clear picture of what lay beneath.

  “This place is predominantly made up from metal, desert or dried mud,” said Dominguez.

  Griffin couldn’t spare much time to try and figure out the sensor feeds. He caught glimpses of metallic grey, along with colors of brown and dark yellow-grey. The toxins didn’t appear to move at all, as though they had become a fixture of the planet’s atmosphere.

  “Atmospheric friction, reducing speed,” said Griffin. “Lieutenants Dominguez, Shelton, please identify targets.”

  “On it, sir. First impressions, there’s going to be plenty of choice,” said Shelton.

  “Those railgun shell launchers are number one priority.”

  “They’re somewhere under the smoke, sir,” said Dominguez. “There’s no way we can target for a precision strike.”

  “It’s nukes or nothing,” said Griffin. “We’ll take those launchers out in clusters.”

  For a few moments, Griffin held course, aiming directly for the ocean far below. At an altitude of five hundred kilometers, he pulled on the controls to bring the Hurricane towards the nearest landmass. Dominguez and Shelton worked hard on the sensors, adding filters to try and clean up the image. It wasn’t enough and Griffin wondered if he’d be required to launch his missiles without a clear idea what he was aiming for.

  “Sir, Admiral Kolb orders that we deploy as soon as possible,” said Kenyon.

  “No pissing around waiting for something better,” Griffin replied. “I understand.”

  At
an altitude of two hundred kilometers, the Hurricane entered the toxin cloud. In places it was so dense that the sensors couldn’t see much more than a few thousand meters. Even where it was thinnest, anything on the ground was hard to distinguish. It was the filthiest industrial crap that Griffin had ever encountered and worse than anything on Reol.

  “The Broadsword, Viking and Duelist report their deployment of nuclear warheads, sir. The Fangrin ships Ternius and Vichun have begun launching as well,” said Kenyon.

  The moment Kenyon said the words, the radiation alerts went off on Griffin’s console and a series of overlapping EMPs struck the warship’s hull.

  “How’re the comms, Lieutenant?”

  “One antenna failure, sir. Otherwise, the shielded units are holding up.”

  “The Ice Cold just got knocked out, sir,” said Shelton. “The enemy haven’t stopped shooting.”

  “I am detecting a mass launch of nukes, sir,” said Dominguez. “Better hold tight.”

  Suddenly, it appeared as if everything turned to fire. Where a moment ago the toxic cloud hid the surface in gloom, now came the brilliant light of hundreds of nuclear explosions. They detonated in every single direction for dozens, perhaps hundreds of kilometers. The Hurricane’s sensors couldn’t cope and square blocks of static interfered with their feeds. One of the underside arrays shut down and Dominguez swore loudly.

  “Getting hot,” said Griffin. He listened to the plaintive wailing of several alarms for a few seconds before his patience ran out and he stabbed at the button to shut them off.

  The members of AF2-4 spread out as they flew north, in order to distribute their warheads across as much ground as possible. This left the Hurricane out in front and Griffin’s thumbs hovered over the launch buttons for the enormous missiles contained in the heavy cruiser’s underside bay. He held fire, not wishing to hit one of the areas already targeted by the other craft.