‘Enemy!’
The word provoked an instant response as Bra’hiv spotted movement down the ventilation shaft and saw Veng’en soldiers rushing toward them. He moved by instinct, pulling his trigger even as a dozen bright red plasma rounds rocketed through the pale blue smoke clogging the shaft and ploughed into a Marine beside him.
The soldier screamed as he collapsed, his flesh and uniform burning him alive as the Marines returned fire en masse and leaped for cover against bulkheads within the shaft.
‘Advance!’ Bra’hiv yelled.
The general fired as a Veng’en rushed toward him inverted on the shaft ceiling in an attempt to escape detection. The blast hit the fast moving soldier and blasted his right arm clean off in a spray of plasma, burning flesh and glowing embers as the Veng’en screamed and its rifle spun uselessly in mid air alongside it.
The Veng’en reached for the weapon with its remaining hand as it dropped from the ceiling, in time for Lieutentant C’rairn to fire a second shot into its face, the reptilian features vanishing in a roiling ball of flame as the creature thrashed violently in its death throes.
Bra’hiv dashed to the next bulkhead as more gunfire rocketed down the shaft toward him, the Marines dodging from one narrow piece of cover to the next. Several dropped into prone positions on the deck and fired a constant stream of plasma shots toward the advancing Veng’en.
‘Fire in the hole!’
Bra’hiv yelled the warning and switched to a detonating device, his rifle firing a three–second–delay grenade from an underslung launcher beneath his rifle’s barrel. The grenade rocketed away through the smoke and slammed into a far wall alongside the attacking Veng’en before detonating just as Bra’hiv covered his ears and ducked down with his eyes closed.
The blast hit him with a hot, hard impact as though he had been struck by a moving vehicle. Bra’hiv moved without fully opening his eyes and charged straight into the clouds of smoke and noise, firing as he went. He heard shrieks of pain as he leaped over fallen Veng’en and plunged his bayonet into their writhing bodies.
A scream of rage soared toward him and a Veng’en, half of its face a smouldering mass of burning tissue, lunged out of the smoke and grabbed hold of Bra’hiv with unimaginable strength as it ploughed into him and slammed him against the wall of the shaft.
Bra’hiv’s head hit the metal wall and his vision blurred as he struggled to breath. The Veng’en’s bared its fangs as it opened its mouth and grabbed the back of the general’s head. He smelled the foul, toxic saliva of the Veng’en as it plunged down onto his head and then he heard a dull crunch and it stopped moving, its fangs touching the skin of his face.
Bra’hiv pushed back against the creature and saw its eyes staring lifelessly down at him and a bayonet thrust through its skull, the tip emerging from the opposite side drenched in purple blood. Bra’hiv looked up and saw Djimon lift a boot and push the Veng’en off the blade. The warrior’s body slumped onto the deck alongside the general.
Djimon stuck out one big, calloused hand and Bra’hiv took it as he was hauled to his feet. His ear piece crackled as he stood up.
‘Ranger Force, pull out now!’
Bra’hiv saw the Marines blast their way out into the main corridors of the ship, the crackle and thump of plasma fire flashing like strobes through the dense smoke as the general picked up his rifle and saw ahead through a ragged hole in the deck a corridor filled with bizarre foliage, twisted vines and thick mist.
‘Negative Atlantia, objective within reach, stand by.’
Djimon ran ahead in pursuit of the other Marines as Bra’hiv followed him. Ahead, a ragged hole had been blasted through the floor of the ventilation shaft and down into the main vessel, flashes of light and a barrage of noise emanating from within. Bra’hiv leaped down through the cavity and slammed down hard onto the deck as he fired at the swiftly moving figures fighting their way toward him.
The corridor was clogged with twisting vines, the air hot and muggy and filled with smoke as Bra’hiv threw himself down into a prone position as plasma fire raced by over his head.
The Marines were advancing by sections ahead and either side of him, each covering the other amid the noise and confusion of the battle. The cruiser shuddered as impacts from the Atlantia’s guns and the asteroids around it slammed into its massive hull, the glowing ceiling panels flickering. The garish light show and flashing plasma fire gave every movement a juddering appearance, as though the depths of the cruiser were some hellish jungle nightclub filled with demonic, warring dancers.
‘Advance!’ Bra’hiv yelled. ‘Bravo Company, covering fire!’
The Marines plunged forward as the Veng’en emerged through the dense coils of foliage clogging the corridor. Bra’hiv saw them abandon their rifles as the fight closed in and they launched themselves through the dense canopy of vines and attacked the Marines head–on.
A Veng’en warrior leaped up to the ceiling and then plunged down on a Marine as the soldier aimed up at him. The Veng’en smashed the Marine’s rifle aside as his huge arms wrapped around the soldier’s body and his lethal teeth slashed deep into the Marine’s throat in a spray of dark blood. The Veng’en shook the Marine and his neck snapped like a dry twig, his head hanging backwards at an awkward angle over his shoulder.
A plasma round smashed into both of their heads and Bra’hiv saw Djimon lower his weapon and advance through the coils of vines. Bra’hiv rushed forward and took the lead, running down the corridor as a huge Veng’en rushed at him, claws outstretched.
Bra’hiv ducked down beneath the Veng’en’s reach and swung his rifle over in his grasp, the butt of the weapon flipping up to strike the warrior under his wide jaw and smash him sideways into the wall of the corridor. Bra’hiv turned, bringing his rifle back down as he screamed a war–cry and threw his weight behind the weapon. His charge drove his bayonet deep into the Veng’en’s throat, severing the warrior’s windpipe and spinal column in one brutal motion. The Veng’en gasped, his limbs suddenly falling limp by his side as Bra’hiv yanked the weapon from his body and the Veng’en slumped onto the deck.
‘Take the bridge!’ Bra’hiv yelled.
Djimon charged the bridge doors that Bra’hiv spotted through the dense coils of vapour and smoke. Fires were burning where plasma rounds had ignited the foliage, smouldering dangerously in the hot air.
‘Cover our escape route!’ Bra’hiv commanded to the men behind him. ‘Fall back to the entry point and hold the line!’
Several Marines of Bravo Company responded and dashed back the way they had come, one quick thinking soldier attaching luminous markers to the walls as he ran to illuminate and guide the rest of the Marines back out of the ship.
Bra’hiv ran in pursuit of Djimon and hurdled the fallen bodies of two Veng’en and a Marine, all of them scarred with charred flesh where searing plasma rounds had ploughed into and through their bodies.
Bra’hiv keyed his microphone and signalled the Atlantia.
‘Atlantia, we’re inside, give us just two more minutes!’
He cursed as he heard nothing but static in his earpiece.
***
The Atlantia surged forward and began to turn to starboard toward the Veng’en cruiser as her guns came to bear.
‘Pull us up!’ Idris roared. ‘Get us out of plane from her guns!’
The massive grappling cables pulled taut as the two ships manoeuvered, and instantly three of the cables snapped under the immense strain of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of metal pulled at them from each end, too much even for the carbon nanotube–enhanced cables. But the remaining seven held as the Atlantia began to accelerate.
‘She’s turning!’ Lael called, her voice a little higher in pitch.
Idris watched as the cruiser’s stern was yanked slowly around by the force being applied to it by the Atlantia.
‘Maintain full power, dead ahead!’ the captain snapped.
‘Aye captain, dead ahead, full power.’
The Atlantia, her bow raised up out of plane with the Veng’en cruiser, soared clear of her guns and the clouds of asteroids and debris around her. Mikhain stared at the cruiser through the main viewing panel and then he realised what was happening.
‘The asteroids,’ he said. ‘You’re going to drag her through them.’
‘If they don’t cut the cables first or blast us into oblivion,’ Idris replied. ‘Order all fighters to protect the cables!’
‘The cruiser’s guns are charging up and she’s rolling,’ Lael reported, and she glanced at the displays. ‘We’re not moving her fast enough!’
Idris saw the angles, the distances, the trajectories of the two ships and in an instant he knew that Lael was right. In moments, the cruiser would fight back with her own engines and hold her aim for just long enough to launch another salvo at the Atlantia from a single cable’s length, barely five hundred cubits.
‘It didn’t work,’ Lael said. ‘We’re done for.’
Idris was searching for a responsewhen he heard Mikhain’s voice again.
‘Reaper Two, rejoin formation and protect the cables, that’s an order!’
Idris looked up and saw a single Raython fighter weaving through the asteroid field at breakneck speed toward the cruiser.
*
Evelyn hurled her throttles forward and accelerated past Andaim’s fighter as she simultaneously locked onto a fleeing Scythe, fired, and pulled off the target. Her shot smashed the Scythe’s engines into a brilliant trail of burning fuel as she turned hard toward the Veng’en cruiser, determination flowing like fire through her veins as though she were a supernatural being immune to death itself.
‘Where do you think you’re going?!’
Evelyn rolled out and aimed directly at the Veng’en cruiser. ‘To make a difference.’
Evelyn focused ahead on the massive form of the Veng’en cruiser. The Atlantia’s flaming hull, surrounded by clouds of shattered asteroids all illuminated in an apocalyptic canvass by the young star, flashed by her port wing as she guided the Raython through the edge of the asteroid field.
‘They’re coming in,’ she replied.
Her voice was calm and she realised that her vision was sharper than she could ever recall. Despite the clouds of debris she realised that she was looking directly at distant stars and seeing their colours, that she had time despite the velocity of her Raython to observe her surroundings. Tiny specks and shards of rock catching the glinting light of the star, flashing past in the blink of an eye and yet seared into her memory. The flickering sunlight through the dense debris field calmed her, her control column moving in perfect harmony without thought, reacting on pure instinct to the lethal clouds of rock rocketing toward her.
She heard Andaim’s voice across the intercom, ordering her to fall back into formation, but it seemed as though she had dreamed the voice, as though she were watching events from afar.
‘Attack formation,’ she said softly into her microphone. ‘Battle flight.’
‘Negative,’ Andaim replied. ‘Form up and break off, that’s an order!’
Evelyn did not reply. Instead she weaved left and right past giant asteroids tumbling in chaotic turmoil around her, and saw through the veils of debris glowing in the sunlight the bulk of the Veng’en cruiser beyond the asteroid field as it drifted into and through the asteroids, trying to turn to bring its port hull’s massive guns to bear upon the Atlantia. Powerful plasma pulses erupted in salvos from its smaller guns and rocketed into the asteroid belt, smashing through the debris field in an attempt to sever the grappling cables attached to her stern.
‘Evelyn!’
Andaim’s voice was filled with a genuine panic and beyond the serene periphery of her drug–induced haze she recognised the fear in him, realised the emotions that must be churning within that she had not entirely admitted to herself existed, had not been able to think about or face before. For the first timer in longer than she could remember, Evelyn realised that she did not want to hide any more.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she replied.
The edge of the asteroid field flashed into view and her Raython rocketed out into open space.
Evelyn threw her throttles fully forward as she flicked two switches, one on her control column to activate her plasma torpedoes and another on her throttle to switch to a different aiming–mode. The reticlein her SAD changed to a momentum–based display as she got her first clear look at the Veng’en cruiser.
She was huge, her long hull bathed in a golden glow. Rows of specks along her hull flashed with red light as her smaller plasma cannons blasted the Atlantia, the frigate firing rounds in return in a fiery blue–white and red exchange. Evelyn pulled up over the Atlantia’s line of fire and aimed directly at the Veng’en cruiser as it rushed toward her.
‘Reaper Two, disengage!’
Evelyn did not reply as she stared at the cruiser. She realised that the giant plasma cannons glowed a faint red just as they fired: the building plasma charge expelled a fraction of a second later. Even as she thought it the charges shot toward her and she flicked the Raython to the left, the massive shots whipping past her at a blistering pace.
‘Evelyn! Her main cannons are at full charge, pull back, now!’
Her cockpit flared with red light as plasma shots raced by, smaller guns trying to track her tiny fighter as it rocketed inward. Evelyn spotted thick hull plating lining the cruiser’s hull between the plasma cannons, the shapes of the panels denoting exterior access to the massive power lines that must be concealed beneath.
The interior of a Veng’en cruiser is much like our home planet, dense foliage. It lives and breathes as we do. Our greatest threat is fire.
Kordaz’s words drifted through her mind as she dove beneath another massive plasma shot and pulled up to place her aiming reticule directly over one of the panels, just to the left of a massive cannon.
The reticule changed colour to bright red and Evelyn fired twice.
The Raython slowed as two torpedoes rocketed away, the force of the charges propelling them acting against the launching fighter. Powered only by momentum and a trajectory–based guidance system, to allow for maximum internal explosive power, the two torpedoes soared toward the panels protecting the power lines.