The silver fleet the com.., p.106
The Silver Fleet: The Complete Series, page 106
Then it was just a matter of waiting.
Five minutes in, Barnes said, “LaCruz, what would you say if I told you I had a confession to make.”
“Not now, Barnes. Tactical security.”
In other words: zip it.
“No, seriously, I’ve screwed up. Big time.”
LaCruz sat there, listening to the sound of her own breathing.
“What is so damned important?”
“The detonator. You know, the thing we use to set off the explosives?”
“What about it.”
“I don’t have it. I thought I did but then when I looked …”
“Where do you think it is?”
“Oh, I know where it is. I can see it. Over there on that rock.”
LaCruz checked the surveillance camera. Yeah, there it was.
“Barnes, how long did it take you to plant those explosives?”
“Oh, a long time. Do you think I should go and get it?”
If Markham had been there, she knew what he’d say: get into position and stay there.
Don’t break cover under any circumstances.
Only, without the detonator, their plan just wouldn’t work.
In fact, without the detonator there was no plan.
“Be quick.”
LaCruz watched as Barnes appeared from inside the fissure he was using for cover and headed off down the pass.
“Can you hear that?” his breathing was ragged. “I think that’s them.”
“Then you’d best haul ass.”
The detonator was standing upright on top of one of the many boulders which littered the area. It was bright orange colour with a long thin aerial, the idea being that it would be easy to spot even when half covered with debris. Barnes’ big metal hand closed on it at the exact moment a group of Da’al soldiers entered the pass for the first time.
There were three of them and they moved jerkily in their smoothly articulated armour. They were differently arrayed to the one’s she’d encountered previously, more assured in their movements, wearing blue protective vests across their upper thorax. Some kind of extra protection, she guessed.
Their view of Barnes was initially blocked by a large rocky outcrop midway down the path but as soon as they caught sight of him they quickly fell back. That started off a whole host of clicking and buzzing noises as they discussed how best to proceed.
Then the largest of the three went over and flattened itself against the side of the outcrop and began to inch forward. When it reached the apex it raised its rifle and took a quick look.
“They see you,” she said over the comms-link.
Barnes raised a hand in acknowledgement, taking the detonator and starting back the way he’d come. Big, deliberate steps. The Da’al soldier checked its sights before opening up. A brief blast of automatic fire lasting no more than a couple of seconds. Most of the shots went wide but a handful hit home, striking Barnes across the legs and lower torso.
The attack brought all of Barnes’ systems into play, his big guns cycling around to track this new opponent but, surprisingly, he didn’t retaliate.
“What should I do now?”
“Stick to the plan: get back into position and we’ll take it from there.”
“But they know where I am, now – what’s the point?”
By this time, the shooter, backed by its two companions had taken a few cautious steps around the outcrop. The Da’al bringing up the rear of the group clearly had misgivings about this, its rear legs moving fretfully.
The sight of Barnes scrambling up the short incline towards his makeshift hiding place must have convinced them that they had this giant on the run, especially when the rocky scree gave way under his left foot and he started to backslide. Very quickly, they spread themselves along the path before they began firing. Gravel flew around Barnes as most of their shots went wide but one of them caught him with a solid ‘clonk’ on the back of the head and they all froze.
“Don’t do it, Barnes,” she warned.
“Too late,” he said as he removed his weapons’ safeties. “I’m already doing it.”
He’d switched the machine gun to fully auto, whipping it across to the far end of the pass where the three Da’al were standing. He managed to unleash a truly staggering number of rounds in such a short space of time though very few of them managed to hit their target. He’d been off balance to begin with, with no firm footing. Not a great combination.
The one in the lead took the brunt of the impact. It was hit repeatedly in the upper body, shredding its protective vest. It went down in a flurry of movement and didn’t get up again. The one standing behind fared a little better, taking a number of hits, none of which were life threatening but then a ricochet took off part of its front lower leg, causing it to stagger backwards. The one in the rear had seen enough and started to pull back behind the outcrop.
Barnes looked over to where LaCruz was dug in and held up the detonator. “What do you think? Should I blow it?”
“No, not yet. We’ve got to get them into position first.”
The chatter of small arms fire told her that the remaining Da’al trooper was still in the game, prompting Barnes to return fire with his chain gun. But the trooper had chosen its cover wisely and all Barnes managed to do was send bullets ricocheting off in all directions.
“That’s it,” Barnes said. “Cover’s blown. I’m coming over to you.”
“Negative. Do not do that. Return to your position and dig in.”
Barnes was considering this when a fresh group of five Da’al troopers spilled onto the path. One of them stood out from the rest. Twelve feet tall, encased in a military exoskeleton with reinforced metal pincers for arms: a heavy gunner. LaCruz would have recognised the turquoise glow from its energy weapon anywhere.
“Get out of there, Barnes. Now!”
She activated her system’s re-boot but wasn’t prepared for the length of time it took to kick in. For a long time, all she could focus on was the heavy gunner drawing a bead on Barnes. The creature didn’t panic, taking its time to track its target as Barnes attempted to reach the top of the slope.
Her systems swelled to life just as the gunner fired, a purple particle beam punching Barnes in the small of the back and knocking him to the floor. The other soldiers, uncertain of their own marksmanship, had grouped themselves together for safety. Focussed as they were on defeating Barnes they were blind to the threat posed by LaCruz.
Situated directly across the other side of the pass, the Da’al were precisely side-on to her. She had them in a classic flanking maneuver and she hadn’t had to move an inch to achieve it.
Since Grimes’ death she’d been reading a lot of Sun Tzu. She’d found his mixture of the prosaic and the poetic oddly reassuring. One phrase occurred to her now.
He who is prudent when his enemy is not, will be victorious.
Rising to her full height, LaCruz was able to acquire her targets without even being noticed. The obvious temptation would have been to strafe the lot of them with automatic fire but, at nearly thirty metres distant, she didn’t fancy her chances. So, instead she went for accuracy, switching to single shot mode.
The gunner could see that even though Barnes was down he was still moving, so came forward another five metres in an effort to finish him off.
But before it could even raise its particle canon, LaCruz was already moving. A head shot at that distance would have been too risky and so she focussed instead on the central mass. Unsure of even the basics of Da’al anatomy, she figured that this had to be her safest bet. Why did they have such a thick carapace if there was nothing there to protect.
The shot went a little high in the end but that was alright, there a sound like a wet slap when it hit, spinning the gunner around, a big section of its thorax gaping open. It staggered to one side before collapsing in stages.
Immediately, she dropped back down behind the rock, speaking directly to Barnes.
“You still with us?”
“I guess so,” but there was something off about his voice.
“Think you can get back to that fissure?”
“No, but I’d be happy to give it a go.”
LaCruz stood up again. There were more troops flooding onto the plateau now, probably another ten or twelve all told. Roughly seventeen of them although what concerned her most was that two of them were carrying particle canons. The question was whether she could nail the second one before the third one realised where the shots were coming from? In that regard, the mountains were on her side as the sound echoed off the walls making it difficult to pinpoint where they had originated.
Two of the creatures moved along the path in the direction of where Barnes lay. They had their weapons raised but they weren’t aiming them yet. They were too busy stepping over the body of their fallen comrade. LaCruz couldn’t ignore them but she waited until they were almost standing over Barnes before opening up with her machine gun. She caught one of the Da’al full in the back but the bullets, other than chipping its carapace, did very little damage. It was a different story with the other one which had been turning when she’d fired.
It was struck in the neck and face, ripping away some of its soft mouth parts. It tottered forward, missed its footing and tumbled headlong over the edge of the cliff. It made no sound as it fell.
Suddenly there were bullets ricocheting off the rock all around her. She’d been spotted. She ducked behind the wall of rock and waited. Her surveillance camera was still transmitting and she could see that there were at least twenty-five of them crowding onto the path.
Tactically, it didn’t make sense. Better if they’d fallen back leaving just a few of their guys to flush her out, but then the Da’al footsoldiers didn’t seem particularly good on tactics. They knew where she was and as far as they were concerned it was only a matter of time before they managed to take her out.
Even if LaCruz’ original plan had worked and there’d been two of them sniping at the Da’al from cover, twenty-five of them was a big ask.
She checked that her rail gun was fully charged before she got to her feet and started laying down suppressing fire. She began raking the big gun systematically from back to front. She didn’t want them trying to stage a tactical withdrawal – not at this stage. She had big plans for these guys and, for the time being at least, she wanted them out in the open. Exposed and vulnerable.
The rail gun wouldn’t have been her weapon of choice – it wasn’t renowned for its accuracy – but for situations such as this, it was as good as she was going to get. It emitted a hideous shrieking noise, sending a solid hail of projectiles straight into the ranks of the assembled troops. Three of the termites went down straightaway with smoke belching from their wounds.
Things started to change when the particle canon operator began targeting her. Its first shot hit the slab of rock she was crouching behind sending a hail of razor-sharp rock fragments flying in all directions. In all the confusion, LaCruz lost sight of who it was she was supposed to be shooting at and by the time she had picked out the particle canon and brought her sights to bear on the Da’al that was wielding it, it’d found its range, sending off a second and then a third blast. The second was angled all wrong and flew harmlessly overhead but the third shot was dead on and would have taken off her head if she hadn’t ducked down. She felt the searing heat of it through her helmet and, when it hit the back wall, it showered her with thousands of glittering fragments.
In the midst of this, her targeting software struggled to make sense of all that was happening.
LaCruz suddenly felt very vulnerable indeed and heard, rather than felt, something hit her chest before bouncing off again. She cursed as she realised that, despite all of her suit’s supposed sophistication, she couldn’t look down to see what was directly in front of her.
All she could do was raise a hand before the thing exploded, shunting her into the side wall. Her head struck the rock wall and she dropped down onto one knee. She doubted that if she’d been knocked over she’d have been unable to right herself on the uneven floor. But when she did finally manage to regain her feet, she found that she couldn’t focus. Her ears were ringing and her HUD kept cutting out only for it to come back on again assaulting her senses with a range of incomprehensible alerts.
But then, in the centre of all this, still red and still flashing she saw: Target Acquired.
LaCruz pushed herself away from the wall, the missile pod needing a clear line of sight in order to function properly.
She felt the judder of propellants igniting as her two remaining missiles sped away. Thirty metres might be a difficult distance when operating a machine gun but it was perfect for an anti-personnel missile. The first missile veered off to one side, hitting the far wall before exploding but the second one was pinpoint accurate. The particle canon operator was protected by a complex exoskeleton but this offered little protection as the second missile punched straight through its armoured chest plate. The creature’s bubbling scream was cut short as the missile detonated.
LaCruz’ view was marred by smoke and she had to switch to the surveillance camera for a better look but even then she struggled to make sense of what she was seeing. A jagged hole had been torn into the rockface by the first missile and the remaining troops littering the path seemed to be in a state of shock.
But there were still more than enough Da’al troops cluttering up the cliffside, although now they were divided into two distinct groups. One group of about eight clustered together over towards where Barnes was lying while a much larger group was located around the rocky outcrop.
“Barnes, you still with us?”
“You don’t get rid of me that easy.”
His voice sounded pinched, like he was holding himself in.
“I need you to do me a favour, you think you can handle that?”
“You’re not thinking of proposin’ are you? I’m not sure I’m ready for that kind of commitment.”
“No, nothing like that,” when she smiled, she could taste blood. “You still got that detonator handy?”
“Big orange thing with a kill switch. That the thing you’re talking about?”
“Yes, that’s the one. You care to do the honors?”
“Thought you’d never ask.”
The rumble seemed to issue from somewhere deep inside the mountain itself, causing the ground to vibrate violently. LaCruz felt a primeval urge to stagger out into the open and just run but her suit seemed to have shut down. Only the most vital services appeared to be operating. Added to that was the fact that she was still dizzy from where she’d hit her head. But it was probably a good thing that she couldn’t move because suddenly the whole world seemed to be crumbling.
She looked up to see a huge section of rock detach itself from the wall high above and pitch over, out into the abyss.
The walls around her began to shudder violently accompanied by the sound of the heavens being torn apart. It was a horrible, all pervading noise which vibrated up through the soles of her feet.
And then everything on the opposite cliff face disappeared, obscured by a vast, swelling cloud of dust.
It took her awhile to go through her suit’s systems in an attempt to try and determine how much damage had been sustained. It turned out that the answer was: quite a lot. Whole sections had just shut down, denying her access of any kind. She was forced to bring up a series of checklists as a way of trying to isolate the problems. Even when she’d done this, the suit still resisted her attempts to get it going again.
In the end, and with the light starting to fade, she’d had to shut down most of her systems individually. It was a messy and inefficient way of going about things with her then having to fire them all up from scratch but once she’d got the gyros up and running things got a lot easier. From there it was just a matter of following the simple prompts which kept popping up on her visor.
She made slow but steady progress getting the suit up and running again but it was all so basic. And while she was able to walk to the edge of her little plateau easily enough, she found that the suit really struggled with the sharply inclined surface which led down to the main path.
It was only then that she thought to activate her floodlights, only she couldn’t think how. Previously, they’d come on automatically, leaving her to simply adjust their brightness, so she had no idea where to start. In her frustration, she stabbed at a load of buttons, only succeeding in firing off a massive flare. It rose straight up into the air, reaching a height of two thousand feet before exploding, washing the mountain tops in an eerie yellow glow.
She found the bulb icon on one of her screens and as soon as she activated it, the path was immediately blasted with a million lumens of light. And, while it was nice to be able to see where she was going, it was disconcerting to see how the lights only served to highlight the precipitous drop off which awaited her if she misjudged her footing.
So, instead of pressing on, she took the opportunity to swing her lights around so she could survey the other cliff face.
Only, the other cliff face wasn’t there.
It was gone. Gone completely.
The path, the outermost ridge, the rocky outcrop.
Everything.
It was as if it had never existed. In its place was a magnificent, vaulted archway which reminded her of the cathedrals her mother had talked about back on Earth Prime. The fact that this arch was suspended seven hundred feet above the ground only added to its sense of majesty. She stood there for longer than she’d intended, marvelling at the way the floodlight illuminated the huge, cavernous space bringing out the rich colours of the rock: yellows through to russet and clay brown. She found herself swaying slightly, watching the play of shadows over the walls.
It was only as she played the lights over to her right that she saw something she thought she recognised. She brought the two floodlights together until she was able to pick out the figure of Barnes draped over a rock, mere feet from the edge of the abyss.
With obvious effort, he attempted to push himself upright, only managing a forty-five-degree angle.
