Death Skies (Fire and Rust Book 4) Read online

  “Twenty of our spaceships will be here within one hour and an additional three hundred an hour after that.”

  Stone added up the numbers. In two hours, the Fangrin would have this area of space flooded with enough of their fleet to wipe out the Raggers or send them running. His eyes caught sight of another fireball on the sensor feeds, the edges blurred by the shimmering of the energy shield which now protected the space station.

  “We don’t have two hours,” he observed.

  “No. What will come, will come.”

  Admiral Stone’s days on the frontline were long behind him. Sometimes he yearned to be back amongst the soldiers, with his rifle and squad. Those times were never coming back and, with the wisdom of years, Stone had learned that watching a battle could be far harder than actually taking part.

  Centrium was gone and now it seemed like the Raggers were about to take away his chance to see them suffer. He prepared himself for the inevitable.

  Chapter Two

  The Calisto base on Rundine was the second largest military facility in the Unity League. Several million ULAF personnel lived and worked here, and some of them never left. Calisto encompassed more than just a station for troops and a landing field for spaceships. Three separate shipyards and a rust processing facility fell within the bounds of the facility, as well as factories producing munitions, tanks, transports and everything else required to keep the ULAF troops supplied with weapons of war.

  Large parts of the base were deep underground, in order to protect the most vital functions in the event of a surprise attack formerly expected to originate from the Fangrin, but now more likely to come from the Raggers.

  Captain Jake Griffin walked through the steel-lined subterranean passages of the main command and control area. The shit had hit the fan from several directions and the entire Unity League was on full alert. The shipyards and factories were working extended shifts, leave had been cancelled and there was an air of seething fury, rather than one of panic.

  Griffin’s destination was Planning Room 1. In spite of this being the area used by high command for its most important conventions, nobody had bothered to signpost its location and he was obliged to ask for directions. The air underground was cold and he was glad that his flight suit kept him insulated.

  Eventually he found the place at the end of a corridor leading off another corridor. A squad of armed guards outside the double-doors scrupulously checked his credentials and then allowed him to pass. The doors opened and he stepped through.

  The room was more suited to conferences than anything cozy like a meeting. Tiered rows of seats looked down upon a small stage. The wall behind this stage was covered in an immense screen, which was currently blank. If anything, it was colder in here than it was in the corridors outside and the HVAC ducts thrummed in the background. The lights were also too bright and they highlighted every imperfection in the metal sheets covering the walls and ceiling.

  Most of the seats were already occupied and Griffin estimated the room contained two hundred or more personnel – all of them senior officers. A few people talked quietly, while the majority waited silently for the briefing to begin. Griffin found himself a seat on the edge of one row, next to a middle-aged warship captain whose name he didn’t remember. She smiled thinly at him and he smiled thinly back.

  At precisely the scheduled start time, several figures rose from the front row and climbed onto the stage. Griffin recognized two, while the others were unfamiliar faces. He guessed they were staff officers.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” said Admiral Arie Kolb, her voice carrying easily to the back rows. “I don’t have to tell you what you’re doing here at this early hour and I intend to keep this brief. The Unity League and the ULAF have been struck two devastating blows in rapid succession. Centrium is lost and Fleet Admiral Stone has been killed by the Raggers.”

  Everyone knew, but the words produced a hubbub anyway. The second officer on stage – Admiral Erwin Rosser, a slender man with a reputation for meticulous and incisive planning, cleared his throat loudly.

  “We aren’t going to sit on our backsides and let the enemy get away with this. You have seen how many warships we have parked on the surface above us, with many more watching from orbit. We intend to use those warships in a punitive, devastating strike upon three of the Ragger manufacturing planets. If we take out the enemy’s construction capabilities while our own remain intact, we can defeat them.”

  The screen at the back of the stage lit up on cue. On it, two columns, one headed ULAF and the other with the word Fangrin. Below the headings, Griffin read out the names of the warships committed to the coming mission by the two sides. The ULAF had a much smaller navy and had mustered ninety-five warships including three carrier groups. The Fangrin had committed more than three hundred of their spaceships. It was humbling to see the differing capabilities.

  Someone seated on one of the middle rows raised his hand.

  “Questions at the end, Captain Bowman,” said Kolb.

  The hand went down and Admiral Rosser continued.

  “To ensure the enemy have no time to react, we will divide our forces evenly into three separate attack groups. We will synchronize to ensure that each force engages at the same time.”

  Kolb took over. “Make no mistake, ladies and gentleman. This is to be a full-scale attack using every weapon at our disposal. Each one of our spaceships will be carrying multiple nuclear missiles and those capable will deploy incendiaries. This is not a time for timidity. We will strike these Ragger planets until nothing remains of their facilities.”

  “That is the outline,” said Rosser. “We have locations of planets, but that’s the extent of our intel. Therefore, we don’t know what to expect once we arrive. The enemy may outnumber us, or we may catch them so far off-guard that we have free rein to blow the living crap out of them.” Rosser smiled grimly.

  “You are all here in this room because you can pilot a spaceship,” said Kolb. “On this mission, we are asking for more than your skills and your determination. It might be that the missiles you deploy kill millions of the enemy. We don’t know much about the Raggers, but these could be noncombatants, caught up in a war they didn’t want.”

  “Screw them!” came a voice from somewhere to Griffin’s left. “Look what they did to Centrium!”

  Another voice shouted in support and then another. Moments later, the room was filled with anger. Griffin felt it too, but he didn’t allow it to spill over. He sat and waited for the noise to recede.

  Kolb and Rosser waited too. When the volume lessened, Kolb gave a loud call for silence so that she could resume.

  “Don’t let the anger cloud your actions,” she said. “Focus on the mission and ignore the distractions. If we all do that, we may succeed.”

  “We will depart no more than four hours from now,” said Rosser. “Every one of you has mission documentation which will unlock the moment you sign into the command consoles on your assigned warship. Do not expect surprises. From lift off, we will rendezvous with the Fangrin and then journey through lightspeed to our destinations.”

  “Questions?” asked Kolb.

  Griffin raised his hand. Kolb recognized him and smiled.

  “Yes, Captain Griffin?”

  “We have FTL troop transports on the landing field. What is their role in this, ma’am?”

  “They may not be required, Captain. It is my hope that we can accomplish our goals without a single one of our troops setting foot on the ground. However, we may find ourselves presented with targets of opportunity that require a physical presence on the surface. I would not like a chance be missed because we did not adequately prepare.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Details on the transports, as well as every other spaceship on this mission, will be included in your documentation. Please read it thoroughly – you will have sufficient time on the outward journey.”

  A few others had questions which Rosse
r and Kolb answered. It was clear they wanted to get things moving and the meeting wound up quickly. Griffin was near to the entrance and he was one of the first out of the room. The exits were well signposted and he hurried towards one which would lead him quickest to his spaceship.

  He stood quietly with three other officers in the airlift and waited for it to bring him to the surface. The contents of the meeting hadn’t come as a great shock. Not everyone in the ULAF knew about the data cube from Reol and even fewer knew that the intel teams had cracked the Ragger encryption. Even so, people knew that something big was coming. This was the kind of rumor that spread like wildfire until conjecture became cast-iron truth.

  When the lift ride ended, Griffin made his way out through the topside area of the command and control building. The corridors were crammed with personnel, all going somewhere fast. Officers barked out orders, while some personnel spoke loudly into their communicators, ignorant to the flow of human traffic around them. The HVAC droned in the background as if it was having a hard time keeping the temperature down and the air was filled with the scents of hot coffee and cold sweat.

  Outside, the air was so thick and heavy it was uncomfortable to breathe. The command and control facility was surrounded by small but well-maintained lawns. Griffin paused for a moment to savor the sights of real plants, a splash of green amongst the countless stone, metal and brick buildings around him. Any illusion of being in the countryside was ruined by the sounds of vehicles which filled the road a short distance away. Overhead, the limited view Griffin had of the grey-blue sky between the looming buildings was crowded with shuttles. The resonance of their engines beat upon the ground and reflected off the walls.

  A parking lot in front of the building was half full of cars reserved for senior officers. Griffin opened the door of one – an unpainted, angular mishmash of panels with a gravity engine – and climbed into the front seat.

  “Wait up!”

  The same three officers from the lift got in without waiting for an invitation. When the doors were closed, Griffin asked for the names of their warships. He provided these destinations to the navigation computer and the engine fired up with a grumble. The car lifted a couple of feet from the ground, turned and accelerated towards its destination.

  “Crazy stuff, huh?” asked one of the officers. He was ranked captain and he fidgeted in the other front seat with nervous agitation.

  “Yeah, crazy,” said another. “Alien assholes.”

  “We’re going to put an end to these Ragger bastards,” said the first officer. “And what with the dogs being onside, maybe we’ll get a chance to do normal stuff again when this mission is over.”

  Griffin wasn’t in the mood to join in. He’d have plenty of time to talk things over with his crew once he was onboard the ULS Hurricane. For the moment, he sat on the padded bench, staring out of the front windshield and trying to suppress his own anxiety to get on with it.

  The main highways through the Calisto base were busier than ever. Griffin spotted dozens of tanks, some new, some old and some being the latest heavily-armed Warrior class. The air traffic didn’t thin and when he looked hard enough, Griffin was sure he could make out the long, sleek shapes of three full-sized warships at a higher altitude.

  Twenty minutes after it pulled away from the parking lot, the gravity car emerged from between two huge warehouses which contained stacks of armor plates. One of the landing strips lay ahead and the number of vehicles reduced, though dozens of high-load crawlers were in motion to the left. The car accelerated to fifty kilometers per hour, its self-drive system predicting and anticipating the movement of the other vehicles.

  There wasn’t much room on the landing field. Forty-two of the ULAF’s fleet of warships, each parked only a stone’s throw from its neighbors, waited for their officers to board. On another day, in a different time, it would have been an awe-inspiring sight. Here and now, these forty-two spaceships were little more than a single facet in a war and mission that contained many facets like it.

  Griffin’s spaceship had been one of the last to land at Calisto, following his recall from a patrol somewhere distant and the Hurricane was parked at the far end of the landing field. Consequently, he was required to wait for each of the three officers to exit the vehicle before him. Eventually, the car pulled up in front of the Hurricane’s forward boarding ramp. A polite warning chimed, letting Griffin know it was time to get the hell out of the car so that it could return to the parking bay.

  He obliged and stepped onto the reinforced concrete of the field. The heat instantly vanquished the chill on his skin from the air-conditioned interior of the car. With the sound of the vehicle’s engine receding behind him, Griffin approached the ramp. The ULAF didn’t leave its Lansom heavy cruisers open for tourists, and a squad of twenty soldiers stood guard. Their armed transport was idle nearby, its green-painted exterior completely dwarfed by the enormity of the spaceship.

  The Hurricane was a big step up from the Star Burner and a whole staircase up from a Viper. Fleet Admiral Stone had been impressed by what happened on Reol and had personally selected this, the newest Lansom out of the yard, for Griffin.

  The Hurricane was almost five hundred meters from nose to tail, which made it a little bigger than the earlier models. It was also better armed and with thicker, more angular plating, designed to deflect or repel a railgun impact. Something in the shape of it put Griffin in mind of scarcely-restrained fury, like this creation of humanity thirsted for the death of its enemies. The thought of it made him shiver – not just with pride, but with fear at the potential.

  The lead officer of the guard squad was expecting Griffin and came to meet him.

  “They finished refueling the tharniol drive ten minutes ago, sir. The ground crews report everything’s ready to go,” the man said, much of his face hidden by the helmet of his combat suit.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant. What are your orders?”

  “We’ve been told to clear the area as soon as the ramp closes up, sir.”

  “You’ve heard?” said Griffin, continuing directly towards the ramp.

  “Only that every one of these ships is going someplace the Raggers don’t want them to be, sir.”

  “That’s right, Lieutenant. We’re going show them what happens when you kill half a billion of our people.”

  “Good luck, sir. Me and everyone else, we’re rooting for you.”

  Griffin started up the retractable steps which sprang from the surface of the ramp. Here, beneath the hull, the engine note - more felt than heard - seemed to engulf him. Two of the many landing legs, one on each side of the ramp, were almost close enough to touch. Each was thicker than the trunk of any tree and made from the strongest alloys in the Unity League.

  The airlock was lit in red. Griffin passed through, pausing only briefly to sign in to the personnel computer on the wall so that his crew would know he’d arrived. A whining motor kicked in and the boarding ramp retracted.

  Once through the airlock, Griffin made his way to the bridge. A Lansom was bigger than most other warships, but that didn’t make it spacious inside. The extra room was taken up by propulsion, armor and bigger magazines for the weapons. A heavy cruiser also had an underside bay that could hold all sorts of hardware designed to inflict widespread death upon the Unity League’s enemies.

  All the extra kit required a bigger maintenance crew and those personnel were busy everywhere. Griffin identified the lead technician – Lieutenant Jimmy Atwell – and spoke briefly with him.

  “How’s everything, Lieutenant?”

  “Looking good, Captain. We’ve picked up a couple of ambers on one of the rear comms arrays and another on the fourth tharniol detonator. I’ve got teams checking them out now, but it’s nothing we can’t handle.”

  “I’ve seen detonators blow out before, Lieutenant.”

  “This one won’t, sir. You have my word on it.”

  “Thank you.”

  Griffin squeezed past and con
tinued. The maintenance crews were all enlisted and they had a shitty job which most of them performed with exceptional skill and bravery. Although the Hurricane was due its first full maintenance strip-down in the near future, it was reassuring to hear an experienced man like Atwell say that everything was in order.

  The bridge was accessed through a blast door at the top of a short flight of steps. Griffin activated the access panel and stepped into the blue-lit space beyond.

  Chapter Three

  As well as its extensive maintenance teams, a Lansom heavy required a larger bridge crew. Griffin had his regulars back and he greeted Lieutenants Dominguez, Kenyon and Kroll warmly. The new members had proven satisfactory so far and were all time-served officers. Lieutenant Dan Faulkner was backup comms, while Lieutenant Effie Jackson looked after all the weapons apart from the nukes. The final crewmember was Lieutenant Brandy Shelton, who was backup sensor officer. They stood to salute and Griffin nodded acknowledgement as he walked to his station.

  The captain’s seat was clad in real leather which felt like it had been hand-kneaded into suppleness. It barely squeaked when he sank into it and the smell reminded him of his grandfather’s old chair which he used to sit in as a boy. He breathed in deeply.

  His flight helmet lay to one side on the floor and Griffin put it on, using his gloved fingers to fasten the clips. The suit computer booted up and the HUD filled with data.

  “What the hell is going on, sir?” asked Dominguez.

  “You’ve already guessed it’s something big.” Griffin tapped several buttons on the command console, going through the first of his pre-flight checks. He didn’t torment the crew for long. “We’re going for what we believe are the Raggers’ primary manufacturing facilities.”

  “That is big,” said Kenyon, his voice alive with excitement. “What’re we going with?”

  “Almost a hundred of ours – these ones on Calisto – and more than three hundred Fangrin. We’ll split into attack groups and we’re going to incinerate or irradiate every damn factory or shipyard on every one of those planets.”