‘
You getting this
, Pathfinder
?
’ That was Perry’s voice.
‘
A firmative
.’
‘
Why would they bring them down here, sir?
’ That must have been another marine.
‘
Dunno
.’ Perry’s voice was taut with anger.
‘Because they’re trying to return our worthy sons!’ Gilmore shouted. ‘They said so!’ Some observers looked at him, then turned away; the others just ignored him.
‘
But bear this in mind, people
,’ Perry added. ‘
Just
remember what we’re dealing with here.’
‘
Sir! We don’t show mercy, because we can’t expect any,
sir!
’ It was an unidentified marine who spoke. Gilmore thought: Perry, shoot that fool now.
‘
You don’t have to enjoy this, Private Jarnegan.
’ To Perry’s credit, he sounded as fed up with the bloodthirsty speaker as Gilmore felt.
‘
Captain!
’ someone shouted.
The image blurred suddenly. It swept across the bodies and fixed on an entrance into the cavern.
Two XCs stood in the entrance. The aliens just stood there and didn’t have time to move, because with a triumphant cry of ‘
No mercy, you bastards!
’ (‘
Jarnegan! No!
’) one of the marines had raised his plasma carbine and fired, and the left hand XC’s chest erupted with gory vapour.
‘The outlander soldiers have opened fire, My Mother.’ First Son’s tone crackled with battle readiness. Barabadar could read the displays with her own eyes; yes, the outlanders had indeed opened fire. More to the point, they had picked the fight.
So, a fight was what they wanted. Good.
Barabadar spoke the words of the Ritual into the microphone.
‘We deny you this land. You may not eat the food here nor drink of the water. The food creatures are ours. The crops are ours. The sleeping and the waking places are ours.’ The rush of battle hormones swelled within her as she spoke; the feel of the plains, the light, the wind through her mane. She was defending a barren and airless asteroid with the words that were used to defend fertile, well-watered land but the incongruity didn’t bother her. ‘We have taken this land and it will never be yours.’
It was done, she was committed. Perhaps she and all her people would die out here in space, but it should assuage the outlanders’ anger and Homeworld should be spared.
‘All ships, open fire,’ she said. ‘All troops, the outlanders are to be repulsed.’
‘
Hold your fire! Hold your fire!
’ The members of Charlie Platoon cocked their ears as the noises of Able Platoon came over the comms link.
‘They’ve engaged the enemy,’ Sergeant Quinlan murmured.
‘Keep going,’ Donna said tightly. She had heard how the fighting got started. She profoundly wished some XC luck in picking Jarnegan off. A slow, ritual execution would be even better.
Charlie Platoon were much further into the rock; they had entered earlier and they hadn’t been distracted by dead bodies. The platoon moved as a unit, its members facing in every direction so that whatever kind of junction they came to, someone was facing that way. The rearguard faced backwards, their suits co-ordinating with the others to guide them on their way.
In some ways, Donna thought, it really was like the jungle.
They just had to cross one more junction and they would be at the computer centre. It was just ahead . . .
A plasma shot rammed into the rock just by Donna’s shoulder and debris clattered against her helmet. Charlie Platoon quickly withdrew.
Donna extended her suit probe into the open area. The image it sent back clearly showed XCs lurking in the entrance to one of the other corridors. The one they had to go down.
One of them brought his gun up and the image vanished as it took out her probe.
‘They let us get this far and then they pick us off?’ Quinlan said.
‘That will do, Sergeant.’ Donna was crisper than usual. Quinlan had said exactly what she had been thinking. Another explanation was, of course, that the XCs had been prepared to be friendly until Perry’s people went and opened fire . . . Well, who could say? They were here now.
She thought, hard and quick. ‘I saw four; there may have been a fifth hiding further back. They’ll have sent for reinforcements and we’re almost at our destination, so we take them now . . .’
Charlie Platoon came out of the corridor in cone formation, and they came out firing. They spread out into the corridor junction, each moving aside above and below to make room for their fellows, each pouring fire into the corridor that held the XCs. The corridor before them disappeared in a cloud of plasma propellant.
‘Hold fire,’ Donna ordered. She jetted cautiously forward and, now the probe was out of action, had to peek around the corner of the target corridor herself. Charred remains of XC floated away from her, quite clearly dead. And just beyond them, the hatch to the computer centre. It had been cut open by a high energy tool; someone must have barricaded themselves (himself?) in there.
‘Wait here,’ she said, and jetted forward. ‘Cover me. Keep an eye on all exits and especially down this corridor.’ Then she was at the hatchway, and she went in.
One look at the ruined crystal banks told her what she needed to know; there was no danger of Commonwealth secrets falling into enemy hands.
She looked at the ruined hatch and tried to imagine it. Had he come in here, locked himself in, set off the charges and then waited? No, of course not; he would have wanted to set them off and then head for the lifeboat as quickly as he could. So if he had been locked in, it must have been because the XCs were outside.
What had it been like? It might have been the last five minutes of his life, with that countdown getting shorter and shorter as the cutting beam progressed around the hatch. Donna had chosen a profession where she expected to be shot at from time to time; he hadn’t. And he had done this.
If there had been any doubt in her mind at all, it was gone. She had waited a long time and looked hard to find the right man, and she knew who it was. She wasn’t going to let the XCs get him first.
A renewed clamour in her earphones said that Able Platoon had encountered the enemy again.
‘Captain Perry,’ she said.
‘
Lieutenant?
’
‘I confirm that the banks have been destroyed.’
‘
Well done. Pull back to the ship
.’
‘Can we offer you assistance, sir?’
A pause; either for thought or to fire at an XC.
‘
Negative. You’ve done your bit. Do as I say.
’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ she said. ‘Charlie Platoon, stand by to pull out.’
Four of the XC ships, the four in direct line of sight with
Pathfinder
, opened up their fire on the Commonwealth vessel.
Pathfinder
’s defence fields took the laser energy and splashed it harmlessly out into space.
Gilmore’s heart pounded. It wasn’t like the Battle of the Roving – the ship he was on this time was far superior to the enemy and everyone on board was well prepared – but that feeling of going into combat was all too familiar.
And this time he was just a passenger. He didn’t like the feeling of helplessness. He sometimes suspected that Andrew McLaughlin sneakily regretted missing the Battle of the Roving; now was his chance to shine.
The data feed was humming with information from the flight deck.
‘
Forward battery, target the lasers on those ships. Take
them out
.’
‘
Unable to lock on, sir
.’
‘
Target manually. Go for their laser turrets
.’ Gilmore remembered that bit from the report of the attack; the XC stealth tech was good.
‘
Aye aye, sir
.’
Three of the ships immediately fell silent. They were the three that had attacked SkySpy, and presumably lasers were all they had, lightly armed as they were for their stealth attack. The fourth ship, one of the conventional ones, began to manoeuvre the moment Pathfinder’s own laser hit it. So, the XCs didn’t have defence fields; good. It was heading for the SkySpy horizon, and just before it passed over it unleashed a burst of torpedoes.
Someone squeaked; no-one looked round to see who it was. The torpedoes were designed along exactly the same principles as the grapeshot that
Ark
Royal
had faced five years ago – chunks of debris designed to smash and damage spacecraft directly, in the airless medium of space where no explosions had any real force.
Pathfinder
’s lasers picked them off one by one.
‘My God.’ The Slavic Commonwealth observer sat back and looked around at the others, a huge smile on her face. ‘They can’t touch us. This is amazing.’
Gilmore had already seen the tell-tale data on the display. ‘Andy! Stand by stern turret . . .’ he shouted, forgetting for a moment that McLaughlin couldn’t hear him.
There were two conventional XC ships in this vicinity of space and only one had just disappeared behind the asteroid. It would take a while for it to come round the other side, if it did at all.
But the other ship emerged just then from under the asteroid’s horizon. It came up aft and pumped torpedoes at point-blank range into
Pathfinder
.
Pathfinder
’s defence fields flared and not one got through. The stern battery opened up and laser fire gouged along the XC ship’s flank. Molten steel blazed the length of the ship and it began to tumble, its power knocked out. It fell out into space, away from the asteroid, and didn’t open fire again.
The observers breathed again; Bakan looked abashed. She gave Gilmore a weak smile.
‘Maybe Katia’s right?’ she said.
Gilmore grunted. ‘
We’re
doing fine,’ he said, thinking of the sixty marines out there who weren’t so lucky. He had had one man die under his command and he knew what it was like. It was one too many.
Perry and his surviving marines were war machines, their plasma carbines blazing away at their owners’ behest and their shoulder lasers under computer control, aiming and firing at anything that moved and wasn’t a marine. Perry’s philosophy was simple; XC soldiers could work themselves up into a fighting frenzy, and the only way to get past them was to be equally frenzied.
They were deep within the heart of the asteroid. Another junction, another knot of XCs, another fire fight; searing bolts of plasma blazing across the vacuum and splashing into walls, tearing into suits, charring the flesh and fluids within.
And at last they were at the hatch whose markings matched the glyphs shown in Perry’s orders.
‘We’ll have to cut through,’ he said. ‘Corporal, Private, set carbines to torch mode. The rest of you, spread out, mount guard . . .’
Another XC patrol came around the corner. More fighting while the two marines worked on the hatch. They got through just as the last XC was despatched. Behind it was a darkened room, unadorned by anything except three boxes secured to one wall. Each was a metal cube, four or five feet on a side. Perry checked the glyphs against the copy of his orders that showed inside his visor.
‘This is what we need,’ he said.
‘Do we destroy them, sir?’ said Sergeant Cale.
‘No, we take them back to
Pathfinder
.’ An immediate general mutter of protest. ‘And I know they’re big and bulky, so now would be a good time to start, wouldn’t it?’
Barabadar studied the data from the probe that she had sent over the asteroid’s horizon. The outlander ship just sat there, apparently not going anywhere. It could have finished off any of the three attack craft if it had wanted, but it hadn’t. Nor was it coming for her. It was just sitting and waiting.
Well, it wasn’t going to abandon its troops, was it? She wondered what they were doing in there. One lot had made for what seemed to be the computer centre; she could understand that. The other had disappeared into the lower levels. Were there scuttling charges down there, perhaps? Something to destroy the entire base? Well, that suited her.
She still wasn’t entirely sure why the outlanders were so determined to contest her victory here. If only the outlander commander’s mother was on board! Surely she would talk sense. Was it even possible that her First Son didn’t understand the Ritual . . .?
Barabadar vaguely remembered Oomoing’s report. It had speculated that the Great Hunt had gone differently on the outlanders’ world; different gods, different societies. Surely not
that
different, though; maybe their mothers just stayed behind and gave orders from afar. It was what she would expect of an inferior species, especially one that would rather pick a fight than pick up its dead.
‘My Mother!’ Barabadar’s attention was drawn back to the display; the outlander troops were returning to their ship. Rather, half of them were. Therefore, half the outlander mission was presumably accomplished. The other half was still going on. Maybe
then
they would retrieve their fallen sons.
It was a hopeful train of thought. Her thoughts raced. They had fought her soldiers . . . but they had spared the three attack craft, and not damaged Oomoing’s ship more than necessary to put it out of action, and they had not come after her at all. Maybe they weren’t determined to visit their wrath upon the Kin. So much uncertainty; she had to determine their intentions. What better way than to ask? Surely even a motherless First Son would recognize a flag of truce.
‘Order all troops to disengage the enemy and withdraw to prior positions,’ she said. ‘First Son, bring us – slowly – up over the horizon. Just enough to clear the antenna.’
This is Marshal of Space <
On the flight deck, McLaughlin scratched his head. ‘What does it take to make you listen, lady? Reply: to retrieve what is ours.’