“Good job he’s off the relay network so we can’t speak to him,” said Dominguez, shaking her head.

  The battle group accelerated around the planet. Griffin kept one eye on the instrumentation and another eye on the ground rolling by far below. The bleakness of Zevrol fascinated him. Every planet had a story – an origin born from cataclysmic destruction, and Griffin never grew bored guessing what lay behind the craters, the canyons and the mountain ranges which seemed so vast it was difficult to imagine them being created naturally.

  “We’re two thousand klicks from the location of Sat #1,” said Dominguez. “At this speed I’m not going to detect the charge-up of a railgun coil.”

  “Wait for the order to decelerate and then do what you do, Lieutenant.”

  “We’ll be able to reach them on the comms shortly,” said Kenyon. “Right, let’s give it a try….no response.”

  “Is the planet’s curvature in the way?”

  “Negative, sir. Trying again…no response.”

  Griffin didn’t need to tell everyone that something was wrong. The other warships in the fleet were aware and the comms remained busy. With the Fangrin satellite still in the distance, Griffin slowed the Star Burner at the same time as the rest of the battle group decreased their speed. The vibration of the engines made his bones ache and he felt the straps of his harness pressing into his shoulders.

  “We just lost a piece of plating near the site of the railgun strike,” said Jeffrey. “The area seals remain intact.”

  Griffin let up on the control sticks and allowed the Star Burner to coast in for the last few kilometers. The cruiser was damaged and he didn’t want to exacerbate it unless the situation was critical. By the time he brought the spaceship to a standstill, the other warships had gathered enough information.

  “The coupler is gone,” said Kenyon.

  “Do we know where?”

  “The sensor guys are working on it, sir.”

  “Any sign of conflict?”

  “Yes and no. Sat #2 isn’t showing up on the sensors and we’re not getting a response from the troops onboard. This satellite here is the same as we left it. The Tundra found the hole where the Raggers went in – it’s directly facing the planet. No wonder we missed it the first time.”

  “Lieutenant Dominguez?” asked Griffin. “Time to show everyone you’re the best.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve got my work cut out watching for the Ragger ship at the same time.”

  She got one of the sensors fixed on the Fangrin satellite. Nothing had changed since last time, except for the opening made by the coupler. From two thousand meters away, the hole looked insignificant.

  “Ideas?” asked Griffin. “We’ve got a missing squad, a missing transport and an enemy warship somewhere in the vicinity.”

  “I’ve got no doubt that Sat #2 is gone – probably destroyed a short time after we left it,” said Kenyon. “That’s why it stopped routing data packets.”

  “You don’t think the Raggers got the dropship here at Sat #1?” asked Griffin.

  “Maybe not, sir. At the very least, Lieutenant Conway managed to get onboard and the coupler made it away from here.”

  “Could they travel far enough to be out of comms sight?”

  “You bet they could,” said Dominguez. “I don’t know why they’d do that, though. If this satellite holds the master data, you’d expect them to extract the data and then just sit tight until pickup.”

  Kenyon figured it out. “Unless the mainframe isn’t on the satellite and it’s somewhere else.”

  “The only other place is the planet’s surface,” said Dominguez.

  “The original comms station might have been installed there. The Fangrin might even have a network of them on the surface, most of them redundant once they lifted the operations into orbit.”

  “The satellites are stationary,” said Griffin. “The broadcast station has to be directly beneath.”

  “Not necessarily, but that’s probably where it is.”

  “I’ll see what I can find,” said Dominguez.

  “We’re four thousand klicks up. The Star Burner can easily push a comms signal that far,” said Griffin.

  “And the combat suits could definitely pick it up, given the lack of atmospheric interference.”

  “So why aren’t they?”

  The possibilities were mostly bad.

  “Lieutenant Conway and his squad might be dead,” said Kenyon. “Or they might have made it to the surface and into a comms-shielded facility.”

  “One thing you forgot,” said Dominguez. “They could be on the surface and within range of a comms jammer. Like on Graxol-4.”

  A moment later, she found something which made Griffin feel sick to his stomach.

  “I think this is the coupler, sir. On the main screen.”

  The wreckage was a long way distant, but Dominguez managed to enhance the image enough for the crew to discern the mangled lump of metal on the planet’s surface.

  “That’s about the right size and it’s still hot,” she said. “Missile strike, I guess. And what’s this?”

  Dominguez shifted the image and adjusted it once more. Griffin stared at the hexagonal arrangement of antennae.

  “That’s where they were heading.”

  “Doesn’t seem like they made it,” said Kroll.

  Dominguez wasn’t one to admit defeat. “Sir, can you take us another hundred klicks directly east from here? It’ll give me a better angle.”

  “Get me some clearance, Lieutenant Kenyon. Explain what we’re doing.”

  “Looks like the entire carrier group is coming with us, sir.”

  “Admiral Kolb sounds like she’s done with risks,” said Jeffrey.

  Griffin took the Star Burner into a position from which Dominguez could achieve a better view of the wrecked coupler. That wasn’t the only thing she saw.

  “These are doors into the facility,” she said, putting the image onscreen and adding a red circle around an area that looked like a lighter grey than the surroundings. “And in the center, there’s a hole.”

  Griffin squinted. “You sure?”

  Dominguez didn’t hesitate. “Yes. I’m sure.”

  “Dammit!” said Griffin. The more of the picture was revealed, the less clear the overall image became. He tried to patch everything together. “Lieutenant Conway attacked the base and got inside. The Raggers attacked and destroyed the coupler. They’re here for the same thing we are, so they deployed their own ground troops. Now their spaceship is somewhere nearby, watching us and waiting to see what we do.”

  Dominguez did it again. “Those stupid, stupid, bastards,” she said, triumph in her voice. “Look at this, sir.”

  Once again, the image was hard to make out. When Griffin realized, he smiled. “Stress fractures in the rock and only two hundred meters from the entrance to the Fangrin installation.”

  “Yes, sir. A spaceship set down. Something much heavier than a supply ship.”

  Griffin didn’t want to get his hopes up. “Those marks could have been made any time.”

  “The coupler hasn’t finished burning. I think the Ragger ship set down to deploy its troops and then we showed up. It’s keeping a low profile in case we detect it lifting off.”

  “Or they’re too arrogant to think we’ll see them.” Griffin smiled again. “It won’t harm to try a couple of railgun shots.”

  Admiral Kolb was in agreement. She ordered the Star Burner and the Lexicon to adjust their positions so they could fire into the place where Dominguez believed the Ragger ship was still landed.

  “Best do this quick,” said Griffin.

  The front railguns allowed some adjustment, but it wasn’t extensive. Griffin turned the Star Burner’s nose until it was pointing in the right direction and then he allowed the targeting computer to calibrate.

  “The Lexicon is ready, sir. Both barrels in place.”

  “Firing now.”

  The Star Burner’s railgun coils whined and thumped with the expulsion of power. The recoil was heavily deadened, but Griffin was sure he could feel the discharge through the control sticks. The railgun slugs weighed several tons and they travelled faster than any missile. He watched the viewscreen to see the result.

  One of the projectiles smashed into the ground, creating a visible cloud on the sensor feed. Three of the others hit the Ragger ship. It came abruptly into view, a low shape, not quite so large as a Lansom heavy cruiser and with the same domes Griffin had seen during the previous engagement.

  “It’s trying to lift off,” warned Dominguez.

  The enemy spaceship didn’t get very far. It launched a wave of missiles towards the Imposition and then the Star Burner’s railguns were charged for another shot. Griffin fired both guns and scored two hits. The Lexicon did likewise a fraction of a second later. The Ragger ship crashed to the ground and tipped onto its side.

  “Admiral Kolb orders us and the Lexicon to fire two more rounds,” said Kenyon.

  The enemy warship was out of action, but Griffin was happy to comply. While the railguns charged again, he got a Shredder lock on the inbound alien missiles and sent the Star Burner’s countermeasures out to join those from the other ships in the carrier group. The Ragger missiles didn’t make it close to the fleet.

  “Last two railgun shots on their way.”

  A total of four more rounds thundered into the broken ship and part of its front section broke away. Admiral Kolb was evidently satisfied and didn’t repeat the order for more shots. It was the right choice – the railguns took a lot out of a spaceship’s power reserves and Griffin didn’t want to waste their reserves firing into a dead target.

  “Four down, none to go,” said Jeffrey.

  “I’ve got receptors,” said Kenyon. “Lieutenant Conway and his squad have appeared on the comms.”

  “Listen in, please.”

  The Imposition was the primary contact point and it was down to the carrier’s comms team to speak with the surface troops. That didn’t stop any other ship from tuning in.

  “Lieutenant Conway believes the mainframe is somewhere within the facility,” said Kenyon, relaying the words as he heard them. “He’s going to try and capture the data or use the antennae to stream it to us. He’s under pressure and requests reinforcements.”

  “We’ve got troops on the carrier,” said Jeffrey.

  “And no way to deploy them,” said Griffin. “Since the main dropships won’t fit out through the damaged bay doors – only the couplers.”

  “They’ll have to land,” said Kroll.

  Dominguez wasn’t convinced. “Not easy. The Imposition is twelve hundred meters long – there was plenty of space for the Ragger ship to land close to the facility, but there’s nowhere within three klicks big enough for a carrier to set down.”

  “Well ain’t that just great?” laughed Kroll bitterly.

  On this mission all the soldiers were onboard the carrier. The crews on the other ships could fire a gun well enough, but they weren’t best suited for ground combat.

  “What now?” wondered Dominguez.

  “Either we pick up some of those couplers or Admiral Kolb puts the Imposition on the ground and offloads some troops.”

  The situation suddenly became far more complicated.

  “The Dog Days reports a sighting in the direction of Sat #2,” said Kenyon.

  “You’d best get on it, Lieutenant Dominguez.”

  “Warships, sir.”

  There was no point in asking if they were from the Unity League fleet. If Dominguez could see them, it meant it wasn’t Raggers, which left one possibility.

  “Fangrin.”

  “Yes, sir. A shitload of them. Come to take back their comms hub.”

  “How many in a shitload?”

  “Eighteen…no…twenty-two. A few heavies in there with them.”

  Griffin couldn’t picture a realistic way the situation could get worse. He closed his eyes and prepared for a battle he couldn’t possibly win.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Lieutenant Tanner Conway took his remaining forty-two soldiers from the entry point room and led them deeper into the Fangrin facility. Indoors fighting could be messy and bloody, prone to stalemate and high levels of casualties if you took the wrong approach. Conway had learned the hard way how to make it work and he was determined to finish this quickly.

  The passage had walls of smoothed stone and a steel-reinforced ceiling. It was dingy and Conway caught the reek of age, like the Fangrin had built it long before they’d figured out how to make space flight work. The way ahead was clear and he saw a number of turnings, along with a couple of sealed doors.

  “The Fangrin must have dropped back,” he said to Sergeant Lockhart.

  “Yes, sir. If we don’t move fast, they might have a way to put a temporary lock on the mainframe or shut it down so we can’t access it.”

  The words gave Conway impetus and he strode along the corridor. The level of oxygen was falling fast and he hoped it would kill a few Fangrin caught without protective suits. The aliens were tricky bastards and didn’t usually make life easy for ULAF troops. At one time, the thought would have angered Conway. Here and now, it somehow made the Fangrin more predictable. As opponents went, you could always assume they were going to do whatever it was you least wanted.

  With no idea where the Fangrin would store their mainframe, Conway went for speed mixed with caution. He took the first turning, in order that his squad wouldn’t be visible to the Raggers he felt sure were incoming. This led to another corridor. More doors, more turnings.

  “My comms went out,” said Private Kemp through his chin speaker. His voice was muffled by the decreasing atmosphere.

  “Mine too.”

  “The Raggers have brought up some jamming hardware,” said Conway. “Stay tight. Watch out for hand signals – once the air goes, our voices go with it.”

  “Ironic that a comms hub got jammed,” remarked Torres.

  “Yeah, I’m laughing so hard,” said Kemp, deadpan.

  “Shut up!” ordered Lockhart.

  Conway came to opposite doors, both open. He looked inside one – it was what passed for an office amongst the Fangrin. A sturdy chair sat in front of an iron-topped desk covered in miscellaneous bits and pieces. Also on top of the desk he saw an alien terminal, currently powered off.

  Through the opposite door was similar, except this time with a dead Fangrin. The alien’s body was covered in a polymer suit, but it hadn’t been able to find a helmet in time to prevent death from hypoxia. Conway only looked for a second and then he ran on towards the next turning, halfway along the passage.

  “Left – clear,” he said.

  “Right – clear,” said Kemp, his voice distant and flat.

  Conway made a signal. “We’re going left.”

  He glanced behind him. Forty-seven soldiers seemed like a lot when they were in a confined space. It made him uncomfortably aware of their vulnerability to explosives. He doubted the Fangrin had any shoulder launchers in the hub, but didn’t want to speculate when it came to the Raggers.

  Twenty meters further along, Conway reached a set of wide, concrete steps, leading down, which ended at electronically sealed double-doors. He shouted for Crawford and descended the stairs. The control panel for the door glowed and it was tempting to push some of the buttons, so he did. It had never worked for him in the past and it didn’t work now. The doors stayed closed.

  “This looks like the way,” he said. “The scientific method of hunch. Cut it open.”

  Crawford rapped on the door with his knuckles to gauge the thickness. He adjusted the laser cutter and got to work.

  “Don’t get yourself shot, soldier.”

  “No, sir.”

  Conway ordered five more of his squad to join him and they stood to either side while Crawford cut a hole around the vertical seam between the doors. The white-blue of the laser illuminated the stone walls, highlighting the tiny imperfections in the Fangrin workmanship.

  “I’ve got air coming through,” said Crawford, his voice a little clearer than before. “We’re breaking into another sealed area.”

  At the top of the stairs, Sergeant Lockhart set guards and ordered a very limited exploration of the nearby rooms. Lockhart was a good man to have around and he rarely needed guidance when it came to doing the right thing.

  “Nearly done,” said Crawford.

  “Kick it open and then get out of the way.”

  Crawford did like he was asked. He took one step away and then planted the bottom of his foot hard on the door seam. The cut was clean and it didn’t take much. A section of each door fell inwards and Crawford threw himself to the side. He wasn’t quick enough and a bullet took him in the shoulder.

  Conway and the man opposite him threw in stun grenades. The twin flashes came a moment later and then the cracking sounds of detonation a fraction later.

  “In,” said Conway.

  He glanced inside and then went through the opening first. The room was filled with comms tech – control stations and floor-to-ceiling data pipes - and several Fangrin. The aliens crouched behind two of the consoles in the center of the room, a few meters away. They wore armor and protective helmets and carried wide-bore rifles.

  The flash grenade had caught the enemy unawares. They knew Conway was coming and they kept shooting in the direction of the door. A bullet struck his arm with a thumping impact. He ignored it and fired his Gilner into the closest Fangrin. The alien’s combat suit absorbed the first three shots before the fourth got through. He shot it twice more and switched targets.

  To his left and right, Conway heard the sound of Gilner discharge. His backup swept the room with fire, forcing the aliens to stay low. Conway stepped sideways, still shooting. On the far wall, display screens shattered and went out and bullets thudded into stone or steel. A remote part of his mind registered the existence of two further exits, one of them an open corridor.

  “Enemy down,” he intoned, pouring half of his magazine into one of the Fangrin before it could recover from the effects of the grenade.