With all the other crap going on, Gabriel didn’t reckon the Human Confederation was ready to deal with the complication of yet more aliens and, given what he’d seen of the Galos, it seemed likely these other aliens were highly technologically advanced. It never made sense to be the weakest player in the game.

  Fighting the temptation to attempt contact with RH Rose again, Gabriel came to a halt at the next door. He checked the positions of his soldiers. There were no side rooms into which they could take cover, and that meant they had to stay in the passage. They’d positioned themselves in the best way they could and waited for Gabriel.

  A brush of his fingers on the access panel had the door open. On the far side was an empty corridor that hadn’t been touched by incendiaries. A sign dangling from the ceiling pointed to a stairwell in the northern wall. Gabriel smiled thinly at the sight.

  “These stairs head underground,” he said. “At the bottom, there’s a passage that follows the southern edge of the landing strip. If we head along that way far enough, we should arrive near the airlifts that lead down to the underground bay.”

  “And after that, there’s a four-thousand-metre run across the repair bay and into the bay holding the New Beginning,” added Hennessey. “We’re nearly home, boys and girls.”

  Gabriel strode to the stairwell entrance and then stopped. “Private Wolf, see if your booster pack will let you make comms contact with Captain Lanson.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Wolf. She didn’t need to remove the pack to use it as a booster and she leaned against the nearby wall as she attempted to reach Lanson. “I can’t reach his comms unit,” she reported shortly. “On the plus side, the failure audit tells me the outbound transmission travelled about a hundred metres.”

  “We’re coming out of the area being jammed by the Sagh’eld,” said Gabriel.

  “That’s what it looks like, sir.”

  “What happens if we do make contact?” asked Damico. “Won’t the Captain be unable to hear us because we’re talking too fast?”

  “His suit comms should automatically compensate,” said Wolf. “So we don’t need to worry about that.”

  Gabriel began his descent. The steps were wide and easily traversed, and they switched back at a landing below. He was especially eager to escape the Sagh’eld comms jammer and he quickened his pace.

  Six flights down, Gabriel exited into what he took to be a passage intended for the transport of cargo from the various underground storage areas he could see on the base map. Heading both east and west, the passage was irregularly lit and continued for a long distance. Several flatbed trucks had been abandoned, and they impeded his view.

  “No sign of the enemy,” said Gabriel, though he couldn’t be absolutely sure there were none.

  He led the squad east. The first gravity truck wasn’t far along the passage, and one of the cabin doors was open. Inside, the driver was dead in his seat, with a bullet hole in his head.

  Gabriel considered appropriating the vehicle to hasten the journey. However, he wasn’t sure he wanted to test how well a gravity drive would respond within an acceleration field. Besides, a couple of other vehicles looked to have collided in the passage ahead, and he wasn’t sure if the truck would be able to force its way through.

  “Private Wolf, attempt contact with Captain Lanson again.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Wolf. “Got him!”

  “Patch him through to my suit comms,” said Gabriel.

  Lanson didn’t speak, though the channel remained opened. It took Gabriel a few seconds to realise that the disparity in speed between them was responsible and that he should expect a significant delay. He waited impatiently, not sure how long it would take before Lanson’s words reached him.

  Eight minutes went by and Gabriel’s impatience was threatening to get the better of him. “Is this channel still open, Private Wolf?”

  “Yes, sir. You won’t hear what Captain Lanson has to say until he’s said all of it. That might take a while, but you have to remember that we’re not wasting any time – at least no more time than it takes a person outside the acceleration field to speak a sentence or two.”

  “I hear you,” said Gabriel. He understood what was happening, but his frustration didn’t subside.

  “Sergeant Gabriel,” said Lanson at last, his message compressed by the wonder of comms technology into something Gabriel could understand. “Do you have the Galos?”

  “Yes, sir. We’re on our way to the underground bay.”

  Nearly ten minutes later – as Gabriel perceived it - Lanson cursed. “It’s too late, Sergeant. My crew and I are onboard the New Beginning, but we’ve been discovered by the Ex’Kaminar and a scrambler has shut us down. We’re going to lose the warship and we’re going to be killed.”

  Gabriel opened his mouth, though he wasn’t sure what he was about to say. Certainly, there was nothing he and his squad could do against a Sagh’eld Ex’Kaminar.

  That’s when the idea came. It was risky, of that there was no doubt, and the outcome was completely uncertain. However, this was the time for risks. If the New Beginning was destroyed, the enemy would continue their search for the Galos module. Eventually, they would be successful, and the odds were that Gabriel and his squad would be killed.

  Besides, he owed Lanson.

  Striding over to the Galos, Gabriel flexed his fingers.

  “Let’s pull the rest of the plating off this device, and see what happens,” he said.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The New Beginning had not yet recovered from the enemy Scrambler attack. With its Rodos drive generating less than ten percent of its usual output, the main processing core showing crazy utilisation spikes, and many of the critical systems rebooting, the warship was a sitting duck.

  On the bridge, Captain Lanson could do little other than watch the low-resolution feeds which were the best the sensor arrays could generate in their current state. Through the wreckage of the overhead doors, he could see a section of the Ex’Kaminar’s underside, while the bay floor around the New Beginning was littered with debris.

  Having crashed down when the scrambler attack hit, the cruiser made a perfect target. A handful of Zavon missiles raced through the opening, and detonated on the New Beginning’s topside plating. The feeds turned white and, moments later, Lanson felt the shockwave sweep through the spaceship.

  Sergeant Gabriel was still on the open comms channel and Lanson opened his mouth to wish the soldier and his squad good luck.

  “Captain, can you open the exits on the New Beginning?” said Gabriel, before Lanson could say anything. “I thought we might be able to save the warship, but the acceleration field didn’t expand when we removed the external plating. We should be able to rescue you and your crew.”

  Lanson had no idea what Gabriel was talking about, but he understood the word rescue well enough, even though the soldiers had absolutely no chance of saving anyone on the New Beginning. Nevertheless, Lanson sent the command to open the warship’s exits.

  “Captain, that last inbound comm was so short it might as well have been in zero time,” said Lieutenant Turner. “I’m surprised our comms receivers even managed to pick it up.”

  “I don’t know what the hell Sergeant Gabriel and his squad have got themselves into,” said Lanson.

  Another wave of Zavon missiles struck the New Beginning. Had the Ex’Kaminar’s crew decided to launch their much higher yield Gorlans instead, Lanson knew he’d already be dead. Maybe the Sagh’eld were saving the good stuff for opponents who were capable of fighting back.

  The second missile wave created another shockwave, this one more intense than the last. Moments after, Lanson heard a shrieking noise from somewhere overhead. The New Beginning couldn’t withstand a third attack – when the next salvo detonated, the warship would be torn apart.

  On the portside feed, Lanson saw all three of the boarding ramps touch the ground at the same time. A split second later, the lights on the bridge dimmed so much that he thought they were about to fail. Not only that, a visual distortion made it appear as if the rear bulkhead was bulging away from him.

  “Sergeant Gabriel is outside the bridge door, Captain,” said Lieutenant Perry. “He’s requesting access.”

  Lanson blinked. “Let him in.”

  As he was speaking, he became suddenly aware that the sensor feeds had all become frozen. Then, when he glanced at his control panel, Lanson noticed that many of the readouts didn’t make sense.

  The thick blast door protecting the bridge slid open.

  “Captain, we’ve come to get you out of here,” said Gabriel, standing in the opening, with his gauss rifle in one hand.

  “What the hell is going on, Sergeant?” asked Lanson, rising to his feet.

  “It’s the Galos module, sir. It generates a limited-area acceleration field. Anything inside the field travels much faster than anything outside.”

  Lanson didn’t stand gawping in the face of opportunity. “Let’s go,” he said.

  “It’s important we all stay within fifteen metres of the Galos, Captain,” said Gabriel. He hesitated. “And something doesn’t seem right with the device. I remember what RH Rose said—”

  “I remember it too, Sergeant,” said Lanson.

  “We didn’t have much of a plan when we came here, sir,” Gabriel continued. “There wasn’t a whole bunch of options.”

  “I have a plan,” said Lanson. “There are two New Beginnings and we’re on the wrong one.”

  Gabriel’s eyes widened. “The Vachal destroyer?”

  “That’s right, Sergeant.”

  “It was still intact when we entered this warship, sir.”

  “And that’s where we’re going.”

  Lanson headed for the exit and his crew followed. Having taken one last look around the bridge, he descended the steps outside. The Galos was halfway down the stairwell, distorting what little light it hadn’t already drawn into itself, and lending a bizarre appearance to the soldiers waiting at the bottom.

  As he stepped past the device, Lanson felt a momentary fear – the Galos was utterly alien, and he could sense the danger of it.

  Still, for the moment, the device was saving his life, even though Lanson suspected there was a good chance it would kill him later.

  The soldiers and the warship’s crew headed towards the midsection boarding ramp. Such was the tightness of the New Beginning’s interior passages that it was awkward for so many people to stay within fifteen metres of the Galos, and the journey was slower than Lanson and everyone else would have liked it.

  All the while, a bass note played in the background, the noise possessed of a strangeness, almost like it was being slurred.

  As he travelled through corridors made intensely gloomy by the alien device, Lanson wondered what he’d find outside. Already, his brain had accepted that he was travelling in the bounds of what Sergeant Gabriel referred to as an acceleration field, and he asked himself whether it would be enough to protect everyone from the Ex’Kaminar’s weaponry.

  Soon, the mission personnel neared the exit ramp. Lanson felt both fear and anticipation in equal measures.

  The outer and inner airlock doors were both open, and Lanson followed Sergeant Gabriel and Private Wolf onto the top of the boarding ramp. From here, his view was limited by the New Beginning’s hull, but he could still see plenty that made him wonder what the hell kind of situation he’d ended up in.

  Looking south – in the direction of the Vachal, Lanson saw several huge pieces of debris, many of them alight, and which he reckoned came from the overhead bay doors. Other pieces of debris were no doubt plummeting like fireballs, but from within the acceleration field, they appeared completely frozen. As he descended the steps leading to the ground, Lanson stared, but saw no movement whatsoever, as if he were looking at a picture.

  When he turned his attention west, the sights were even stranger and far more terrifying. The New Beginning’s nose section was wrapped in plasma flame and the blasts from the missile detonations were unmoving, as if they’d been painted on a canvas.

  North, it seemed as if the missile fires had spilled over the starboard flank of the New Beginning like a waterfall of white and orange. Dark patches within – armour plates torn from the cruiser’s hull – hung suspended on their long journey to the bay floor.

  Lanson couldn’t remember ever seeing anything so peculiar as this tableau. He shook his head in awe and hurried after the soldiers, his head turning in every direction.

  “Captain, if we allow any of this debris, or any of these fires, to enter the acceleration field, they’ll return to their normal speed,” said Gabriel.

  “Understood,” said Lanson.

  He stepped off the boarding ramp and onto the bay floor. The slurred bass he’d heard while traversing the warship’s interior was still present, and the air held a warm, metallic scent.

  The cruiser’s flank was still overhead, though now Lanson had a much better view than when he’d just emerged from the airlock. The burgeoning warhead detonation he’d seen on the cruiser’s nose section had expanded a little from the last time he looked, and some of the debris had moved, suggesting it had been imparted an enormous velocity from the force of the explosions.

  Directly opposite from where he was standing, the Vachal was so far unaffected by the devastation taking place in the northern half of the bay. It was likely the destroyer would be struck by pieces of flying debris, but the Ex’Kaminar was taking no direct action against the vessel.

  And that was just how Lanson wanted it.

  “That’s where we’re headed,” he said, pointing across the bay. “Lead on, Sergeant.”

  Gabriel nodded and began jogging, even as he gave orders to his squad. The soldiers were clearly accustomed to having the Galos with them, and Lanson was glad they knew what they were doing.

  Soon, the mission personnel were out from beneath the cruiser’s flanks. Lanson couldn’t help himself and he looked upwards through the shaft. The Ex’Kaminar was there, and he hated its technological superiority and the single-minded persistence of its crew.

  As he was watching, Lanson saw a wave of six missiles descend through the opening, their nose cones burning orange. By the size of the propulsion sections, he was sure these were Zavons. In vacuum conditions a Zavon missile could achieve a velocity of nearly five hundred kilometres per second, and, although their guidance systems limited their velocity in a planet’s atmosphere, Lanson had no doubts they were coming in fast.

  However, his perception of the missiles was that they were descending at no more than a slow walk. It was another example of the effectiveness of the acceleration field and Lanson could hardly believe what he was witnessing. The thought that he could outrun a Zavon missile was incredible.

  “Captain, we’ll have to divert,” said Gabriel, pointing ahead.

  About two hundred metres away, a section of torn armour plating was heading towards the bay floor. While Lanson estimated it to be at a height of thirty metres, he wasn’t about to take risks, nor to start giving out conflicting orders by insisting everyone stay on the same course as now.

  As he took a wide arc around the descending wreckage, Gabriel turned to look over his shoulder at Lanson.

  “We have to avoid these smaller pieces as well, Captain. In case some of them are travelling at high velocity.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  By the time the mission personnel made it halfway across the bay floor, Lanson was becoming impatient at the circuitous route they were having to take in order to avoid every piece of debris. Four hundred metres ahead, the Vachal loomed like a cliff, and seemingly coming no closer.

  By now, Lanson was far enough from the cruiser New Beginning that, when he glanced behind, he could see the extent of the damage it had suffered. Almost-frozen plasma fires burned along much of its length, and several vast craters were visible in the vessel’s armour plating.

  Meanwhile, the salvo of missiles he’d seen descending slowly through the shaft opening continued in gradual motion. When they struck the warship, Lanson reckoned that would be it, and the cruiser would be torn into pieces.

  Before he looked away, he found his gaze resting briefly on the Galos module. The aura of darkness around it seemed to be deepening, and the cube itself was hardly visible, likewise the two soldiers who were still pushing it along by one of the two remaining shielded faces.

  Lanson felt a deep unease that came purely from the device, rather than from all the other crap that was going on around him. The Galos was either failing, or something else was happening to it. What the outcome would be if he managed to install it into the Vachal destroyer, Lanson didn’t know.

  Turning his attention once more to the ground in front of him, he followed Gabriel around a row of three gravity trucks which had so far escaped destruction. Beyond those, was a slab of twisted alloy, thirty or so metres wide, and several high. Lanson guessed it had once been part of the overhead bay doors. The metal was still white hot, but the light of it was dimmed by its passage into the acceleration field.

  As Lanson followed Gabriel on yet another arcing path around the debris, the light took a sudden step change towards darkness.

  Lanson slowed enough that he could look behind without risking a fall. The cube was no longer visible, nor were the soldiers beyond it. Tipping his head, Lanson stared towards the bay ceiling, but the details outside the acceleration field were hardly visible.

  “Sergeant, I don’t know what’s happening to this cube,” said Teague, from somewhere in the darkness.

  “That makes two of us,” said Gabriel, dropping his pace to little more than a walk.

  “We have to bring it to the Vachal,” said Lanson. “It’s possible there’s a containment area within the spaceship.”