Mission eradicate obsidi.., p.25
Mission: Eradicate (Obsidiar Fleet Book 6), page 25
“I’m not giving up, soldier.”
“I didn’t think you would, Lieutenant. You’re like a machine. Me? I find it hard to keep going sometimes.”
“You know what keeps me going, soldier? I tell myself the future hasn’t happened until it happens. We aren’t dead yet and Old Earth is still here.”
“Coming up to the five thousand klick perimeter, after which we’ll enter the same phase as everyone else in the Confederation,” said Li. “This comms panel should light up at any moment.”
The shuttle crossed the boundary and immediately, the ES Cataclysm vanished from sensor sight. McKinney took the vessel a further few hundred kilometres, just in case.
“Send the message, Sergeant.”
“I’ve sent it,” said Li. “How long are we expected to wait for a response?”
McKinney shrugged. “The Aranol is due any minute, so it may be that everyone’s too busy to answer. Is there much hardware waiting for the enemy?”
“I thought we left it all at Rangel-3,” said Roldan.
“There might be a few stragglers that didn’t make it to the Alliance Fleet.”
Li checked the sensors. “There’s only one Space Corps ship in the sky, Lieutenant. It’s not even a fighter – looks like a cargo vessel of some kind, maybe a cross between a lifter and a freighter. It’s a million klicks ahead and coming our way at high speed.”
“What the hell would that be doing up here?”
“Dunno, sir. I reckon it’s going flat out.”
“Why don’t you ask them what’s happening? The ground stations aren’t responding.”
Li tried to contact the freighter. “I’m getting an automated response, sir.”
“Rude bastards,” said Roldan.
“Maybe it’s unmanned,” said McKinney.
“What would an unmanned cargo vessel be doing out here in the middle of nowhere when the largest spaceship anyone’s ever seen is due to arrive in…how long until it’s here?” asked Roldan.
Sergeant Li wasn’t a man to show his emotions, but on this occasion his jaw dropped open. “It’s here,” he said.
The Aranol appeared on the front sensor feed. The shuttle’s array was crude but it provided enough image enhancement for the men to see that the enemy ship was badly damaged. Where it had once been a perfect sphere, now it was misshapen. Rivers of Obsidiar had coursed over its surface before hardening once again, leaving valleys and mountains. The heat from the overcharge repeater was gone, and the Aranol was as cold as the vacuum around it.
“Looks like a real moon now,” said Roldan.
McKinney wasn’t too concerned with the Aranol’s physical appearance. He was more concerned with the zoom level on the sensor feed, which confirmed the enemy spacecraft was less than ten thousand kilometres away.
“We’re not sticking around for a response from Old Earth,” he said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
He pulled hard on the joystick, bringing the craft around. At that precise moment, he guessed why there might be an unmanned cargo vessel out here all on its own.
“A bomb,” he said, suddenly wishing he’d kept right on the edge of the ES Cataclysm’s phase perimeter. “We have to get back.”
At that moment, the comms came to life and a woman from one of the Old Earth command stations spoke, her tones clipped and laden with stress.
“We got your message. We are about to detonate an Obsidiar bomb. Can you go to lightspeed?”
“Of course we can’t go to lightspeed,” said Sergeant Li. “We’re in a damned shuttle!”
McKinney clenched his jaw and pushed harder on the joystick, willing the shuttle’s engines to give them some extra speed. The vessel crossed the perimeter and into the ES Cataclysm’s phase.
A fraction of a second later, the Benediction bomb onboard the cargo ship ML Butterfly went off. As with many which had gone before it, the bomb significantly exceeded expectations and its blast enveloped the Aranol. Without its energy shield to protect it, and now that it existed in the same phase as the bomb, the planetship was disassembled and thrown into the void – a god defeated and broken.
On Old Earth and elsewhere, the Space Corps personnel who knew what was coming cheered when the explosive sphere of the Benediction bomb left the planet untouched. It was a close-run thing.
The Bar
Charlie Blake remembered this place well. The wooden floors, the appalling decoration and the bad smell which came into the room every time someone opened the toilet door. There was music playing tonight – music he remembered from his childhood which he’d hated at the time, but which now made him nostalgic. The bar was crowded and lively, in stark contrast to the previous visit.
“Is this where you spend all your time off-duty?” asked Caz Pointer with a smile. She was dressed in civilian clothes tonight and her blonde hair fell down her back, glittering in the light whenever she turned her head. She took his breath away.
“This is only the second time I’ve been here,” said Blake. “I think it’s one of Garcia’s watering holes.”
“And you thought it would be a good place to come on our first date?” She arched one eyebrow.
“I don’t know what I thought,” he said. “It just seemed appropriate somehow.”
“Maybe you didn’t want us to be seen together, so you brought me to the biggest dump on Prime?” She was teasing.
“It’s a connection, that’s all. A memory of times past and I thought maybe we should be here together for it.”
Pointer took a sip of her drink and wrinkled her nose. “This smells like cow’s piss.”
“That’s how I remember it.” He grinned.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought it would be good to have a second opinion. Do you want something else?”
She took another sip. “It tastes better than it smells.”
A draught of warm evening air wafted through the room and Blake caught sight of two people coming through the entrance.
“Hey, look at that!” said Pointer. “It’s Eric and Maria! He looks different when he’s not dressed in a spacesuit and carrying a rifle. He’s holding the door for her as well, like a proper gentleman.”
“I held the door…” He caught sight of her smile and he closed his mouth.
Caz Pointer wasn’t shy. She stood up and waved vigorously. “Hey!” she shouted.
Cruz waved back happily and McKinney gave a self-conscious half-wave.
“I do believe I saw the good Lieutenant McKinney turn pink,” said Pointer.
“I’m sure it was a trick of the light.”
“Should we go over and see them? Would it be rude if we didn’t?”
“This is their night. Let them have it and we’ll have ours.”
Caz Pointer was excellent company and Blake tried to forget that he’d once held a much lower opinion of her than he did now. The past was gone and the future was ahead. Blake caught himself thinking of the Vraxar and the Aranol. He wasn’t going become one of those people who couldn’t escape the memories of what they’d done, so he cut off the thoughts – for now at least.
“Are you okay?” asked Pointer, catching his expression.
“I’ve never been better.”
He meant it.
End
John Nathan Duggan rose to leave his office for the final time. He spared a moment to take it all in and told himself he wouldn’t miss any of it.
“It’s time to move on,” he said, sighing in spite of everything. The hardest person to lie to was always himself. A promise was a promise and his family deserved the father and the grandfather he’d tried so hard to be. There were never enough hours in the day and he hoped they recognized there was no choice for him. Duty above all.
No longer, he thought. My duty is done and it’s time to discover the man I could be once the chains are gone.
He strode across the room and the door opened for him.
“Goodbye, Fleet Admiral,” said Cerys. “It was a pleasure working with you.”
Duggan felt his throat tighten and he hurried from the room. It was getting late, though many personnel remained at their desks in the open plan area outside. He’d delivered his leaving speech hours before and now the people kept their heads down, as if acknowledging his presence would be the wrong thing to do.
His wife waited for him, leaning against one of the empty desks. She came across and linked her arm through his.
“Is everything okay?”
“It will be.”
Lucy Duggan understood perfectly.
Duggan’s pace quickened and they left the administrative building. He breathed in the still-warm air and cast his gaze around the hulking grey buildings of the Raksol base. “I wish I’d knocked them all down and started again.”
“It’s not your concern.”
He laughed. “It’s my legacy.”
She squeezed his arm. “No, it isn’t. Your legacy is a lot more than square-edged concrete and steel. Let’s take a car and go see what’s been happening out there – in the places away from fear and death.”
“I can’t wait.”
They got into a gravity car and Lucy gave it directions. Duggan sat back in the foam seat and smiled.
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Anthony James, Mission: Eradicate (Obsidiar Fleet Book 6)
