The next landing came in seconds and Conway kept going. Lockhart was keeping pace, his own torch off and his head raised to catch a glimpse of anything coming down.

  “Movement,” said Conway, spotting an imperfection on the next landing – something shifting against the blackened stone where the explosive had burned the surface. He fired his Gilner from chest height and held down the trigger. Bullets spilled out and he caught a hint of the spindly Ragger as his rounds thumped into it.

  The alien fell and its stealth suit failed before it hit the floor. Another came and Conway sensed return fire hitting the wall next to him. Lockhart fired and Kemp likewise from behind. The impacts of their bullets knocked the alien’s aim wide and it died like the first.

  “Stun grenade,” said Barron. She arced one over Conway’s head and he watched it silently contact the wall. He averted his eyes and the flash was still bright. Lockhart recovered first and made it to the upper landing, hurling a second grenade to the landing above and then opening up with his Gilner.

  Conway surged up to join him, switching magazines on the run. A shape collided with him, more sensed than seen. He had a firm grip on his rifle and pulled the trigger, feeling the Ragger spasm as his point-blank shots ruptured its stealth suit and the flesh underneath. He found himself seething with so much anger it threatened to push out conscious thought. With a twist, he threw the alien down the stairs. It was lighter than he expected, as if it possessed hardly any muscle tissue.

  Lockhart emptied his magazine and took a large stride down the steps in order to swap in a new one. A shape bounced into sight, coming from the steps – it was a tube about four feet long and as thick as Conway’s forearm. He guessed what it was and snatched it up with his free arm.

  “We’ve got what we came for,” he said, hoping this was the only shoulder launcher the chasing Raggers had brought with them.

  The four of them backed down the stairs, not dropping guard for a moment. Talk on the comms channel informed Conway that the door at the bottom was open and his soldiers were already through.

  He trod on something and without a free hand to steady himself, he almost tripped.

  “Careful,” warned Barron, bracing him with her arm.

  Conway saw that he’d stood on the arm of the Ragger he’d thrown down the steps. He got a good look at this one – the silver-meshed black suit was exactly how he remembered them from Graxol-4.

  “No prettier than last time.”

  “I hoped we’d seen the back of these on Graxol-4.”

  “Me too,” said Lockhart. “I bet the Fangrin aren’t any happier to see them either.”

  “Yeah.”

  They came to the bottom of the steps without encountering any more Raggers. Conway knew he and his three soldiers had performed a suicide charge and got away with it. He smiled to himself at the accomplishment. Sometimes you had to take a risk. Once in a while, the enemy weren’t expecting anything so stupid and you got away with it. As long as you didn’t start convincing yourself you’d become invincible.

  “Let’s get this done,” he said, still without any clear idea of how it was going to end.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Private Crawford had cut a slightly irregular hole through the door at the bottom of the stairs and then dumped his cutter pack once its power cell ran dry. Conway went through the opening and found himself in a short tunnel which ended at a lever-operated door, currently closed.

  He didn’t bother knocking and lifted the lever. It was stiff and he grunted with the effort. The door shuddered when he pushed it and air rushed through from the other side. The four of them hurried through and Lockhart slammed the door shut before moving the lever to create the airtight seals again.

  Conway found himself in a large, square room with three exits and no doors. He got an immediate sense of age and he wasn’t sure why, since one rock was pretty much old like any other - as far as he reckoned it. The stone was darker here and it seemed to glisten in the beams of the many torches.

  The floor was rougher too – as though it had been scraped out and left unfinished. Racks of pipes and cables ran along trays eight feet up, and, since they hadn’t let all the air escape, he could feel the thrumming of a power source, though he couldn’t pin down the direction of it. A huge, square duct on the ceiling went from left to right, throwing out breathable air.

  The soldiers were amongst the best and his officers knew what was expected of them. They’d already done some cautious exploration and set the troops defensively. A group of six watched the entrance door Conway had come through, and one of them gripped the inner lever to make it harder to shift from the far side.

  “What have we got?” asked Conway, straining his eyes to see along the passages. Even with the torches, it was too dark to make out details.

  “I’d say this is the original facility, sir,” said Corporal Freeman. “The stuff above us probably came later.”

  Conway was stumped. “They started below ground and then somehow dug upwards?”

  Freeman laughed. “Not exactly, sir. The Fangrin dug as deep as they needed to in order to be sure their power generators and other important kit was far enough underground that a surface strike couldn’t reach it easily. I’ll bet the antennae come all the way from the top and join up with some hardware on this level.”

  Conway nodded like he was starting to understand, though he wasn’t sure he did. “When they needed more personnel space, they dug upwards, rather than downwards?”

  Freeman nodded in return. “It’s the only reason I can think of. A few years ago, I was part of an attack on a place similar to this, way out on the edge of Daxon. Damned if I can remember what it was called.”

  “Go on,” said Conway impatiently. Freeman was building to something.

  “On that facility, the Fangrin had tunneled in from elsewhere when they created the lowest levels. It was only when they decided to dig upwards that they added in nice things like doors onto the surface. My old sergeant was a geologist before he decided to enlist. He knew all sorts of crap about rocks.”

  The pieces began to drop into place. “This place in the Daxon sector – what did they have on the bottom level?”

  “A mainframe and a regenerating power unit with a thousand-year lifespan.”

  “So we’re not finished yet,” said Lockhart with the tones of a man who’d believed exactly the opposite only sixty seconds beforehand.

  “Exactly how long was this tunnel the Fangrin dug from the surface to the lowest level?”

  “Ten klicks, sir. I guess the dogs decided that made it harder for an orbital attack force to know exactly where to drop their missiles or their nukes.”

  Conway wasn’t sure exactly what had just fallen into his lap. Part of him suspected it was a nicely-wrapped gift that might yet contain horse droppings underneath the bows and ribbons. Another part of him wondered if this might be the chance he was looking for. He double-checked the comms link to the Imposition to see if anyone up there wanted to offer advice.

  “No link,” he said. “We’re on our own.”

  He recalled the soldiers from the side tunnels. None of them had gone very far and they sprinted back in seconds. Conway was aware of the passing time – it wasn’t long since he’d charged up the steps, but he was under no illusions that the Raggers were finished. They’d be coming and soon.

  “Any way to block that door?” asked Lockhart. “To hold off whichever alien bastards want to come through it first.”

  The lever moved upwards, which made it harder to jam. Conway cast his eyes about and couldn’t come up with an idea. He dismissed it as a problem he couldn’t solve in the time available.

  “Let’s go that way,” he said, pointing to the square passage in the opposite wall.

  He strode off, carrying both his Gilner and the Ragger shoulder launcher. He looked at this new weapon again – it was made from a dark material which might have been metal or might have been something else. It had a stubby handle near the muzzle and at the back, a rectangular housing jutted downwards. Most of the weight was in the housing and he assumed it contained ammunition. If the rockets were the same size as the barrel, the magazine could hold a total of five.

  Other than that, it had a fold-out display next to the front handle. When Conway pulled it open, the three-inch screen showed a series of symbols his HUD couldn’t translate. Alien mumbo-jumbo. It was another weight to carry but he didn’t want to relinquish it, so he used the leathery strap it was fitted with to sling it over his shoulder.

  Conway set a fast pace. It wasn’t the kind of place to be dragging his heels and he didn’t want to come up against the Raggers again – not while they were so hard to spot. The passage walls and floor were uneven, as if the Fangrin had dug them out using hand tools instead of dedicated machinery. The ceiling was supported by steel beams at regular intervals, but here and there, pieces of stone had fallen onto the floor. It didn’t inspire confidence. As well as that, it was cold, even though the HVAC was apparently still operational.

  They came to a turning and he took it, in order to lose line of sight to the entrance door behind. A storeroom in the left-hand wall was filled with crates, along with a pile of enormous power tools, all of them covered in dust.

  A short distance further, Conway detected a movement in the grit particles on the floor. They flowed away from him in a gentle grey tide. He knew what this was even before his HUD informed him about the reducing levels of oxygen.

  “The seal on this level is broken,” he said.

  “And not coming from the door we opened,” said Lockhart, unconsciously bringing his rifle into a firing position.

  “Makes sense that there’s more than one way in.” Conway got onto the open channel to make sure the squad was aware of the situation.

  He moved on, wary for sound and movement, not knowing if it was Fangrin or Raggers who’d entered this level of the facility. When it came to the Raggers, he got the impression that his engagements so far had turned out better than they might have done. He didn’t want to run into a bunch of them where the aliens had the opportunity to accomplish a successful ambush.

  They came to a room housing the main HVAC system. The machinery was sprawling and ancient, like a spiderweb of intertwined ducts leading from the misshapen central body. Conway didn’t pay it much attention. The oxygen levels were still falling and the depressurization breeze was becoming stronger.

  The squad got a break.

  “Mainframe – no admittance,” said Lockhart, peering at a dusty sign hanging from the ceiling along a passage to the right.

  The new passage ended at an electronically-sealed metal door twenty meters away. It was something Conway had feared and hoped might not happen. They no longer had a laser cutter and the door was locked.

  “Grenades might get through,” said Kemp.

  “If we threw enough of them.” Conway lowered his Gilner and unslung the Ragger launcher. He sized up the range and tried to calculate the effects of the explosion. It was too much of a risk and he didn’t relish the idea of being stunned by the blast wave and then burned alive. “Grenades it is.”

  The door was thick and required many plasma grenades before it finally sagged and collapsed under the combined heat and explosive force. After it was done, the walls and half-melted door remained so hot that it was an impatient wait until it was safe enough to proceed. Conway began to wish he’d taken the risk and fired the launcher.

  “Come on, let’s go,” he said, advancing along the passage. He didn’t have the angle to see anything more than railings and a gantry on the other side of the door. The burning metal stank and he was glad the filters in his combat suit stopped him from breathing in the toxins carried in the smoke.

  The door had fallen awkwardly and he was forced to take an exaggerated long stride over it onto the gantry. The grating rattled underfoot and he stepped across to the nearby railing.

  “Are we in the right place?” asked Lockhart.

  “Looks like.”

  The mainframe room was lit in the deepest of reds and occupied two levels. Conway had entered by the upper one and he leaned on the railing to get a better look. The gantry ran along the perimeter of the square room, with several ladders leading down. Conway wasn’t much into computer hardware, but even he could tell that this one was very old.

  The mainframe occupied the center of the lower level and extended halfway into the upper one. It resembled many individual steel boxes, bolted together to form something rectangular. Conway had expected more cables, but the mainframe appeared to be linked to the facility by no more than seven or eight bundles of them – each as thick as a human torso. These bundles went vertically from the top of the mainframe and vanished into the ceiling.

  “That’s our baby,” said Corporal Freeman.

  “You reckon?” Conway headed for the ladder. “We’ll get what we came for and then see if we can break the Fangrin’s comms hub.”

  Everything about the mainframe room indicated it would be dangerous to spend much time here. It had multiple entry points on the floor and gantry levels and any cover available to Conway’s squad would also be available to an enemy.

  He slid down the ladder to the stone floor and continued giving instructions. Freeman joined him, carrying the data extractor, and then came other members of the squad. Lockhart set up covering fire along the gantry and descended the ladder to join Conway.

  “Not many of us left,” said Lockhart.

  He was right – the squad seemed pitifully few to be taking on two separate, hostile alien species.

  “At least these doors will open from the inside,” said Torres, leaning casually against the mainframe and pointing with her rifle at the green lights on the door panels. “I guess the Fangrin didn’t want people getting trapped in here.”

  “I think this is a comms station,” said Freeman, walking over to a grey-framed screen next to one door.

  “It looked like an access panel to me,” said Conway, taking an interest. “Can we speak to the carrier group from here?”

  “Maybe.” Freeman shrugged. “If we had time to piss about trying.”

  “Best not. Here’s the mainframe. Find somewhere to plug in.”

  The mainframe didn’t look any more interesting from ground level. Freeman seemed to have a knack for the hardware and he walked directly to a foot-square panel which Conway hadn’t spotted.

  “Twenty percent already stolen. Let’s hope we can pick up where we left off.”

  Freeman jammed the business end of the data extractor into a port and poked a finger on the tablet that went with it. “It’s starting already. Piece of cake.”

  It was as though the words were an enticement to bad luck. The ground level door a few meters to Conway’s left turned from grey to red and then orange within a second. It bowed inwards and ruptured. Superheated air poured into the mainframe room and, through the opening, Conway saw hints of movement. Not Fangrin – Raggers.

  “Incoming!” he yelled, sprinting to the side in order to cut down the enemy’s firing angle.

  Projectiles came through the door from outside and smacked into the cladding on the mainframe, making a pattern of indentations. Freeman reacted fast and hurtled off. The cable from the data extractor stretched and tore free, trailing after him.

  Private Otto Vargas was caught in the middle and was struck several times. The chest plate of his combat suit buckled and even from the corner of his eye, Conway knew the bullets had gone in deep enough to kill him outright. The soldier fell to the floor with a thud and his Gilner jumped from his dead fingers.

  Rifle fire from overhead told Conway that his soldiers on the gantry were shooting back. He turned and shot blindly into the passage, hoping to keep the enemy pinned inside. A grenade sailed through the opening from the passage and went off with a deep whump. The blast wave broke against Conway’s suit, staggering him, and the sphere of expanding plasma almost reached him.

  He retreated in long, backward strides, until he was at the corner of the mainframe. As soon as he was out of sight, Conway switched magazines and then stuck his rifle around the corner. Another grenade went off, too far to hurt him.

  “Shit!” said one of the men on the gantry. “Incoming! Must be about fifty dogs.”

  The gunfire intensified until it filled Conway’s senses. He caught sight of an imperfection in the mingled red and torchlight. A shape rocketed through the breached lower level door. It moved with sickening speed, but not faster than the bullets he put into it. The Ragger tumbled and its suit failed. Others came after, swarming through the door.

  On the gantry above, a Fangrin soldier appeared, carrying a stubby cannon which Conway knew could clear out a room in only a few shots. Another joined it and they began firing. Conway shot one, smashing its facemask with a dozen bullets. More came to take its place. Two grenades exploded, lighting up a section of the room. Fragments of stone, thrown up by a slug hitting the ground nearby, struck Conway in the arm and shoulder.

  Caught in the middle, it was a real bad time to be in the ULAF.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The minutes dragged on and Captain Jake Griffin found the waiting increasingly hard to handle. The Fangrin dropship had unloaded what seemed like far more troops than should have been able to fit inside. That was fifteen minutes ago and now everything looked serene to the naked eye.

  The break had given Jeffrey time to obtain a total on the casualties from the earlier railgun strike on the Star Burner. Fifteen technicians were killed outright and no one else injured. The area was locked down and the surviving crew members weren’t going to attempt any kind of repairs until the cruiser docked at base. Griffin felt terrible, but if he allowed it to distract him, everyone would be let down.

  “Still nothing from Lieutenant Conway,” said Kenyon. “I wonder how deep underground that place goes.”