“The core is linked,” said Vance, shooting the Kilvar as he spoke. “I’ve instructed it to crack the turret security. Once that’s done, I’ll order the gun to fire.”

  “Maybe we should run to the farthest side of the room, sir?” said Private Banks. “That gun is pretty big to be firing it in a little space like this one.”

  “It doesn’t fire explosives,” said Vance, relying on experience and a hunch to reach that conclusion. Even so, he waved the soldiers into a controlled withdrawal to the rear wall.

  Without any indication it was preparing an attack, the Kilvar released another death wave. The dark energy pulse thumped into Vance and even with the fresh dose of Frenziol, it felt as if an ice-cold hand had grabbed the blood vessels leading to his heart and tried to yank them out. He groaned with the pain and shot the Kilvar in his fury.

  “How much longer for the hack, sir?” asked Private Carrington.

  Carrington knew the answer without asking and Vance knew the answer as well.

  “When it’s done,” he growled, cutting her some slack because everyone was in the same shitty place and everyone just wanted to get this finished and get the hell away from the Ancidium.

  Nevertheless, he checked on the obliterator core. Its utilisation gauge was at ninety percent and that meant it was still working.

  “Come on!” he said, glaring at the core as if the strength of his will could make it chew faster through the Lavorix security.

  The Galkintor made another convulsive surge and this time when it stretched out an arm, it hooked the end joints of its fingers onto the corner of the doorway. Each finger was about the thickness of Vance’s wrist and they ended in cracked, grey fingernails.

  A few of the soldiers reacted by shooting their Rodans into the creature’s hand, hoping to dislodge its grip. One of the fingers was blown to pieces, but the others clung on even when they were reduced to little more than bones.

  Vance realised the efforts to prevent the creature entering the mess room had failed. “Back into the corridor!” he shouted.

  The soldiers were on edge and they didn’t wait for a second invitation. Doubtless everyone in the platoon had their own dark imaginings about what would happen once the Galkintor emerged into the mess room and started swinging those enormous arms.

  Not wishing to have his life energies sucked out, Vance took a couple of steps away from the turret and then broke into a run after the others. He was too stubborn to give up and fired on the run, hitting the Galkintor with no more effect than the thousands of shots it had already soaked.

  “What’s keeping you, sir?” asked Drawl, haring it into the passage behind the rest of the platoon and leaving Vance as the last man in the mess room.

  The corridor was still twenty-five metres away when the Kilvar, with its dead muscles and tendons straining, dragged itself into the room. Its legs were long and single-jointed, and the flesh clung so tightly to its torso that its ribcage was visible. To Vance, it looked like the skeletal husk of a colossus from a faraway world, brought back from the dead and imbued with a near-invulnerability that allowed it to smash through enemy lines, however much punishment it received.

  The creature raised its head, revealing a face out of nightmares. Empty eye sockets larger than dinner plates fixed on Vance and in their depths, he saw hatred, hunger and longing. The Galkintor’s mouth was elongated and it sucked in the air noisily, as if to taste the souls of the living. Inside the mouth was a long, grey tongue, which stabbed out and in before running across a row of inward-curving fangs.

  Without slowing, Vance half-turned and fired his Rodan with one hand. The weapon jumped with recoil but he knew how to control it and the shot hit the Kilvar in the mouth, shattering one of the fangs. Still it made no sound and it attempted to unfurl its limbs. The ceiling was higher than the corridor but nowhere near enough for the Galkintor to stand, and Vance wondered what the hell it was doing on the Ancidium given how much the confines limited its effectiveness.

  The Kilvar haven’t been here before. Maybe they sent in their big guns without knowing what they’d find.

  While the ceiling wasn’t high enough for the creature to stand, the additional space allowed it to move more freely and it came after Vance, in a half-crawl, half-slither that knocked tables and bodies aside.

  “Shit,” said Vance. He was going to reach the corridor first, but whether he’d make it far enough along to escape the Galkintor’s reach wasn’t so sure. The other members of the platoon had retreated halfway towards the intersection and they watched anxiously.

  An update from the obliterator core appeared on Vance’s HUD.

  Task complete. Device security status: 0.

  Vance darted around an overturned table and jumped two Lavorix corpses. He could hear the Galkintor close behind and he chanced a look over his shoulder. It was nearer than he’d expected – less than fifteen metres away and soon it would be able to swing one of those arms and kill him with a single blow.

  “Target, damnit,” said Vance. Several automated routines were built into the obliterator core’s hacking software and he activated one.

  Straightaway, the turret hummed and whined and it seemed to Vance as if the lights dimmed, like the weapon was drawing power from every nearby source. He swore and wondered if he’d screwed up. A voice in his mind told him it would be better to die to the turret than the Galkintor, but Vance was just as worried for the rest of his platoon.

  Over the duration of a single second, the pressure in the room built rapidly and then the turret fired with a dense, thumping expulsion. Vance was hurled forward with such force that he believed the Kilvar might have struck him. At the same moment, he heard a dreadful ripping sound and dark shapes flashed in his periphery. He collided with a solid object and felt consciousness fading. Gritting his teeth, Vance fought against it and wasn’t sure if he succeeded.

  “Sir?”

  Vance felt dazed. He was lying on his back and evidently alive.

  “What?” he mumbled.

  “Get up, sir, we have to leave this place.”

  It was Corporal Hendrix and she was about to plug him into her medical box.

  “Is it dead?” he asked.

  “Dead and in pieces, sir,” came the voice of Private Steigers. “Lots of pieces.”

  “Pick him up,” said Hendrix, to someone out of Vance’s sight.

  “Hell no,” said Vance. “I can stand.”

  He struggled upright, feeling more alert with every passing second. Pride told him he was recovering so rapidly because he was fit and healthy. Reality told him the Frenziol was doing most of the heavy lifting.

  Gloved fingers snapped three times in front of his face. “Look at me,” said Corporal Hendrix. She tapped her visor. “Can you focus?”

  Vance looked and Hendrix sighed.

  “Any other time, I’d tell you to take a back seat,” she said.

  “I’m fine,” said Vance.

  It was only a partial lie. In a minute or two – maybe less – he knew he’d be fully recovered from what he realised was the discharge shockwave created by the Lavorix turret. That shockwave had hurled him twenty metres into the passage and that’s where he was standing now.

  “We’re getting out of here,” he said.

  Vance’s first few paces were unsteady. Quickly, his body recovered and by the time he was in the mess room, he felt as strong as ever. The Galkintor had been blown into chunks of shrivelled flesh, grey and bloodless, by the Lavorix turret. Pieces of it were scattered everywhere, though the majority were piled against the wall adjacent to the corridor. Vance spotted jagged bones, dry entrails and misshapen organs, as well as a severed finger and a piece of jawbone with a fang still attached.

  “That cannon really did a number on it,” Steigers remarked.

  “Don’t touch anything,” Vance warned, concerned in case the flesh retained the ability to drain life.

  Carefully, the platoon picked their way across the room. Midway to the exit, another company of Lavorix arrived at full pelt through one of the other doors and stopped at the floating turret.

  “What kept you?” asked Drawl.

  The Lavorix didn’t pay him any attention. Using a nonvisible method, the aliens took control of the turret and headed straight for the left-hand door. Vance held his platoon long enough for the aliens to take the lead and then he set off after them.

  The Galkintor was destroyed and he hoped he’d never see another.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The moment the Firestorm emerged from lightspeed into the Ancidium’s construction bay, Captain William Flint prepared himself for an almost immediate resumption of battle. Within seconds, the sensors had come online and he took in the multitude of details. The bay was even more impressive than he’d imagined and the scale of everything was awe-inspiring.

  Ten kilometres starboard, the Vengeance was still stationary, while on one of the portside feeds, Flint saw the dodecahedral warship he’d heard about. One of its massive cannons was pointed directly at the Firestorm. Not far beyond, the Gorgadar hung in the vacuum, a 29,000-metre dormant killer which had brought the Ancidium to its current state.

  “If only we could use some of this hardware,” said Maddox wistfully.

  “We can’t,” said Flint. “So let’s get ready for the attack.”

  “We’re in the middle of the bay, sir,” said Maddox. “That’s as good a place as any to fend off those Kilvar assholes.”

  “Admiral Aston said that bay door in the left-hand wall was open before and now it’s closed,” said Becerra. “She’d hoped for a greater freedom of movement within the Ancidium.”

  “We’ve got this bay,” said Flint. “It’ll have to be enough.”

  A minute went by and no enemy warships appeared.

  “Where are they?” muttered Flint. His eyes kept jumping to the Gorgadar and the dodecahedron. Even though they were created by the same species, it made him think of two colossally powerful rivals butting heads.

  “Maybe the Kilvar don’t understand they can mode 3 into this bay,” said Fredericks.

  “They do understand,” said Becerra. “At least one transport entered before us. It’s not on the sensors, so it’s got to be behind one of these Lavorix warships.”

  “We’ll deal with it later,” said Flint, unwilling to go hunting while he was so concerned about Kilvar warships arriving in the bay.

  “I reckon they’re waiting for a weapon to arrive,” said Garrett. “A weapon capable of slicing open the Ancidium’s hull.”

  Flint wasn’t sure what he believed. “This is probably new for the Kilvar as well,” he said.

  “There’s light and heat over at the far opening, sir,” said Becerra. “I think the enemy are trying to make the opening wider with missiles.”

  “Let’s take a look,” said Flint.

  He rotated the Firestorm and guided it along the bay, above the incomplete warships below. Not willing to venture too close, he positioned the vessel higher than the opening and a few kilometres back. White light filled the hole and spilled into the bay. Every second or two, that light would turn briefly pink as the red of the Kilvar particle beams mixed with it.

  “How long before they realise the method isn’t working?” asked Maddox.

  “Not long,” said Flint. He turned the Firestorm again and headed once more to the middle of the bay.

  The short journey wasn’t complete when an eight-thousand-metre Kilvar warship appeared directly in front of the Firestorm, less than ten kilometres away.

  “We’re lined up! Fire the cannon!” shouted Flint.

  “Destroyer cannon fired!” said Maddox.

  The shot punched an enormous hole in the opposing warship. Simultaneously, a flash of dark energy discharged by the Vengeance’s Executor struck the Kilvar vessel on the opposite flank. The twin attacks had surely been enough, but Maddox launched a dozen hellburners into the cannon hole to finish the job.

  Flint squinted against the sudden brightness on the feed and began rotating the Firestorm to bring the other loaded clusters into play in case they were needed.

  “It’s breaking up,” said Maddox.

  A second Kilvar warship appeared, eighty kilometres closer to the far end of the bay and part-hidden by the Gorgadar. Flint cursed and brought the Firestorm’s nose around as quickly as he could.

  “Ready the cannon, Commander.”

  The moment this second warship came into the cannon’s firing arc, Maddox unleashed the shot, disintegrating much of the other vessel’s nose section. Flint didn’t wish to be caught in this open area of the bay and he accelerated directly for the Gorgadar’s topside, hoping to use it as cover.

  “Portside hellburner clusters one and two: fired,” said Maddox. “Holding the countermeasures.”

  “Enemy transport detected,” said Becerra. “It arrived directly behind the Gorgadar with only a hundred metres showing from our current position. It isn’t moving, so it’s probably still sensor blind.”

  The hellburners smashed into the cannon-damaged warship, creating a huge blast that looked impressive but probably wasn’t fatal to such a large vessel. Flint didn’t stare and concentrated on piloting the Firestorm at high velocity over the top of the Gorgadar so he could open up an attack on the transport.

  “The Vengeance is heading our way,” said Garrett.

  Recovering from its SRT, the five-kilometre transport accelerated from cover, heading towards the vessels in the construction trenches.

  “Portside hellburner cluster number three: fired,” said Maddox. “Underside hellburner clusters one to three: fired.”

  The missiles streaked into the darkness and crashed into the transport a split-second later. A second salvo, launched by the Vengeance, struck a moment after and the Kilvar vessel dropped like a stone, burning like a sun as it went down.

  “Two more enemy warships detected,” said Becerra. “Make that three more.”

  “Accompanying transports also detected,” said Garrett.

  A glance at the tactical told Flint the Kilvar vessels were at the far end of the bay, out of the destroyer cannon arc, but targetable by the rear clusters.

  “Target: transport. Rear hellburner clusters one to three: fired,” said Maddox. “Railers set to auto. Holding the shock pulse.”

  Bringing the Firestorm into the tightest of curves, Flint intended to line the destroyer cannon up with these new opponents. In his heart, he knew this was all spitting in the wind. The Kilvar were too numerous and they would keep on coming until they’d captured the Ancidium. Even if Lieutenant Vance and his platoon showed up right this second, there was no way to make the pickup.

  “Destroyer cannon: fired,” said Maddox.

  An immense hole appeared in one of the enemy warships, and the hellburners engulfed a transport in plasma flame. Another Kilvar vessel appeared on the tactical and then another.

  “It’s getting crowded,” said Flint, feeling more anger than despair.

  Away to starboard, an enemy spaceship climbed vertically from between the two largest construction trenches. It ejected missiles and its particle beam stabbed out once, twice and then a third time. The Firestorm’s mesh deflector activated and the same happened on the Vengeance.

  Flint didn’t let it distract him, though he suspected his death was imminent. With a wrench on the controls, he brought the destroyer cannon onto target. Maddox fired it without a word and the far end of the bay filled with dust.

  Another energy beam lanced across the darkness and once more the Firestorm’s mesh deflector activated. The red failure light appeared and then vanished, and the cooldown timer plummeted to zero. The deflector activated for a third time, while Maddox fired hellburners and deployed a shock pulse.

  The intensity of the burst illuminated everything and, for the shortest of times, it seemed to Flint as if he were gazing at a picture depicting warfare at its most cruel and destructive, yet also at its most falsely romantic – the lure of oblivion captured in this single instant.

  As quickly as it came, the shock burst died and the moment passed. Missiles raced across the bay and Flint aimed his warship for cover. The Vengeance was hit – once or twice, he didn’t know – but Aston retained enough control to fly it with incredible velocity low beneath the Gorgadar. Flint banked to follow, bringing up a new target for the destroyer cannon at the same time.

  “Destroyer cannon: fired,” said Maddox.

  Instead of a bass thump, Flint heard the shriek of tearing metal and a section of the Firestorm’s nose exploded outwards. Warning lights appeared on his console and he swore in fury.

  “We lost the cannon, sir,” said Maddox.

  The cannon was gone, but the mesh deflector was still available. It activated, preventing the Firestorm’s destruction once again. This time, the red light stayed on and Flint knew he was too far from the cover offered by the Gorgadar’s underside to escape the next attack.

  From out of nowhere, a darkness appeared on the rear and portside feeds, blocking out everything. Flint’s first thought was that a Kilvar attack had knocked out the arrays, but then he felt a shock running through the Firestorm’s hull and knew the warship had suffered a collision. Not only that, the force of the impact had sent it on a rapid trajectory towards the Gorgadar’s flank.

  Working instinctively, Flint regained control of the Firestorm, while his brain wondered what the hell had just happened. The darkness had moved from the portside feed and now it appeared on the forwards.

  Not darkness. A spaceship. The dodecahedron.

  The sensor focus adjusted and Flint saw the vessel clearly. It was rotating as it flew towards the far end of the bay. One of the Kilvar vessels was on the same feed, accelerating and banking away from the incoming Lavorix warship. Too late, the eight-kilometre spaceship was disintegrated by one of the huge cannons.

  Flint didn’t forget he was meant to be piloting the Firestorm out of harm’s way and he succeeded in getting it beneath the Gorgadar. Amongst the forest of turrets and launch clusters, the Vengeance also waited, a quarter of its starboard flank glowing hot and with a single huge crater in the centre of the heat patch.