With a final wrench, Gabriel and Ziegler opened the door wide enough for a soldier in full GK-3 Frontline combat armour to fit through.

  “Out!” snapped Gabriel, aiming the command at Ziegler. “The door to the next building is nearby. Get it open!”

  Ziegler scooped up his RAHD gun and stepped sideways through the opening. Meanwhile, Gabriel recovered his gauss rifle at the same time as he urged the other soldiers to move. Sooner, rather than later, the Ex’Kaminar’s missiles were going to come crashing through the roof directly overhead, and anyone still inside the building would be burned to a cinder.

  Gabriel waited until the rest of his squad had exited and then he followed. As he was crossing the threshold, he sensed the incoming missiles and wondered if his death was upon him. Private Davison was outside waiting.

  The blast came and plasma lit up the alley. Gabriel and Davison sprinted west towards the place where the rest of the soldiers were already entering the adjacent building. Alloy shrieked and the outer wall of the structure Gabriel had just vacated ruptured outwards. Plasma fire spilled into the alley twenty metres overhead, and then the entire structure began to collapse.

  The doorway to the warehouse wasn’t far. Davison was ahead of Gabriel and he threw out a hand, grabbing the edge of the entrance and swinging himself inside. A second later, Gabriel copied the manoeuvre, almost lost his balance, but stayed upright and kept on running. He was faintly aware that Corporal Hennessey was standing by the access panel, and she activated it as soon as he was past. The door closed.

  “Keep moving, Sergeant!” Hennessey urged.

  Gabriel’s mind had caught up. He was most of the way across a twenty-metre entrance room containing a few dozen crates and the gravity loader used to carry them through the wide opening in the eastern wall. The emergency lighting was active, and the siren was going as well. The sharpness of the sound felt to Gabriel like it was boring into his head. It had a lot of bone to get through if his old training instructor was right about the thickness of his skull.

  The rest of the squad had already opened one of the two southern doors leading from the room, and they were spread along the wall of a corridor, waiting for Davison, Gabriel and Hennessey to catch up.

  “Move!” Gabriel yelled.

  He accelerated into the passage. The missile detonations hadn’t ceased and now their explosions sounded like a huge metal sheet being struck repeatedly by a sledgehammer.

  “On the plus side, maybe this means the Sagh’eld aren’t expecting to find the Galos module anywhere near here,” said Ziegler from his position at the front. He waved the soldiers to follow as he got moving again.

  “That also means they’re going to bombard this storage facility when they get round to it,” said Gabriel.

  He raced into the corridor, passing the soldiers who weren’t yet at full speed. Upon reaching the front, Gabriel threw a look over his shoulder to make sure everyone was with him, and then he returned his focus to the way ahead.

  Having passed many open rooms, each with their own signs they’d been abandoned in a hurry, Gabriel came to an intersection. A sign on the wall pointed west towards Emergency Shelter 1. No signs pointed east, but the map indicated that was the way he needed to go.

  Gabriel knew he couldn’t offer any assistance to the base personnel, since they were all – his squad included - at the mercy of the Ex’Kaminar, so he sprinted east. Another south turning led to a door, signed with the words Primary Storage.

  This time, Gabriel did slow. Having given a couple of terse orders, he waited a few seconds until the soldiers were ready. Once Private Damico had deployed his Kahn-3 repeater on its bipod and Private Davison – who was an excellent shot with his gauss rifle – were in position, Gabriel touched his fingers to the door access panel.

  The door opened at once, and he stared into a huge open space. The siren was still going, and the light was still red. The warehouse was filled with high shelving units. These units were stacked with crates in all shapes and sizes, and they ran north-to-south, allowing Gabriel a view to the far wall, which a ping from his helmet sensor told him was 350 metres away.

  Halfway down the visible aisle, he saw a couple of gravity vehicles which looked purpose-built to remove and replace items from the shelves.

  Otherwise, the storage area seemed empty.

  For long moments, Gabriel stood still within the doorway, watching and trying to gain a sense of the place. It was possible Sagh’eld troops were hiding somewhere inside, and he didn’t want to become embroiled in an engagement here.

  A series of detonations coming from the north reminded Gabriel that he didn’t have the luxury of time. He indicated to the squad that it was time to move.

  “Our exit is south, but it’s not visible from here,” Gabriel said. “We’re heading straight down this aisle and once we reach the far wall, we’ll look for a door.”

  Gabriel wanted to be out of the warehouse as quickly as possible and he set a fast pace. The joints of his combat suit made almost no sound, but his feet hit the ground hard, and his breathing was loud in his ears.

  A thumping blast came from somewhere behind and Gabriel didn’t look. He still had another ten percent in the tank and he ran faster yet, his gun barrel swaying with each stride. If a Sagh’eld trooper appeared now, Gabriel knew his aim for the first couple of shots would be less than perfect, but it was a risk he was ready to take.

  Moments after the last explosion, Gabriel heard a shrieking noise coming from high up and to the west.

  Shit!

  He turned his head just as the Sagh’eld missile detonated, somewhere on the western side of the storage area. The flash was bright and transient, and then came the noise and the pressurized air. Through the rumble of the blast, Gabriel heard the shelves being torn from the floor. Smaller crates, dislodged from the adjacent unit, came tumbling down both ahead and behind, landing with a series of sharp crashes.

  Luckily for Gabriel and his squad, the closest shelving unit didn’t topple, nor did it bend enough to tip its entire contents onto the floor. Glancing east, he saw a gap in the crates on the lowest shelf and he briefly considered pushing his way through to the next aisle along, and maybe to keep going all the way to the east wall. Gabriel quickly dismissed the idea, since it would slow the squad down too much. The best hope was to simply get the hell out of the warehouse as quickly as possible.

  Just as he was running between the two parked gravity loaders, a second missile exploded, again to the west, and it was followed by a third. Although Gabriel couldn’t see the detonation points, he guessed they were farther away than the first, owing to the fact he wasn’t crushed by falling crates. Even so, a blast of hot wind swept through the warehouse.

  “Only 150 metres to go,” said Private Castle. Despite the fact the soldier was carrying both a gauss rifle and his shoulder launcher, he was rangy and showed no sign of falling back.

  Gabriel saved his breath for running. At any second, he expected two full clusters of Gorlan high-yield missiles to smash through the roof, turning him and everyone else to carbon. The thought of it made his blood boil and gave strength to his limbs.

  Another salvo of missiles punctured the storage facility, but this time they were north again, and Gabriel heard the sound only. The distance to the south wall fell below one hundred metres and a gap created by several empty shelves allowed Gabriel to see west, where a huge hole had been torn in the warehouse roof by the first missile.

  With seventy-five metres to go, the Ex’Kaminar aimed one of its Kraal guns into the warehouse. The first Gabriel knew of it was when a hundred or more jagged holes suddenly appeared in the ceiling near to the missile opening. Then, the sound came to him, like a metallic roar, but with an intensity he’d never experienced.

  The Kraal gun continued firing and its projectiles tore through everything they struck. Despite the protection of his combat suit, Gabriel could feel the overlapping shockwaves as an extra heartbeat.

  Why the hell are the Sagh’eld firing their repeaters, when missiles would do a far better job?

  In his mind, Gabriel pictured the alien weapons officers on the Ex’Kaminar’s bridge, laughing as they indulged in some target practice with their hull repeaters. His anger stepped up another notch and he longed for the impossible - to put his own stamp on this engagement, rather than be forever running.

  A single Kraal repeater wasn’t the most efficient way to wreck a warehouse, and for that at least, Gabriel was thankful. The gun’s projectiles ripped through the shelving units, sweeping east to west across the floor, but not coming closer than thirty metres to the soldiers.

  Ahead, the south wall was less than twenty metres away and Gabriel crossed mental fingers that the exit wouldn’t be far. He still had the base map on his HUD, but reading it was almost impossible when he was running full pelt.

  At last, Gabriel came to the wall, and he drew to a rapid halt. He looked east and saw the exit door, barely twenty metres away. It wasn’t yet time for a victory smile, and Gabriel headed that way at once. Hardly had he started moving when a colossal object struck the warehouse floor somewhere north. The impact was such that the few intact shelves were scattered like chaff.

  Instinctively, Gabriel braced himself. The shockwave struck him like a giant’s fist and hurled him into the wall, scrambling his brain and knocking the wind out of him.

  With his head ringing and his ears hurting, Gabriel rolled himself to a sitting position. His head thumped with the effort, and he bared his teeth in a snarl against the pain.

  “Who’s injured?” he said on the squad channel. His voice sounded distant and muffled.

  Looking around, everyone was moving, but it was hard to be sure if any of the soldiers were badly hurt. Forcing himself upright, Gabriel reached out and hauled Private Teague to her feet. Her med-box was still on her back and didn’t appear to have suffered any damage.

  “Are you good, Private?” asked Gabriel, staring through her visor.

  “I’m good, Sergeant,” said Teague, though the pain was clear on her face.

  Since nobody had reported themselves badly injured, Gabriel bellowed for them to stand. Leaving the squad members to figure out how to accomplish the feat, he broke into a stumbling run towards the exit. His balance hadn’t fully returned, and his hearing was still affected, though not so much that he failed to detect the resumption of missile detonations. Where they were coming from, he was too dazed to tell.

  The door opened at his touch on the access panel, and beyond was a short passage leading to a compact room. According to the map, this was one of the personnel exits.

  Private Galvan joined Gabriel at the doorway. The soldier’s expression was angry more than pained. “What the hell did those alien assholes fire into the warehouse?”

  “Thak cannon,” said Gabriel.

  It was the only weapon he could think of which would have caused such an effect. A Thak cannon was designed to knock out other battleships, and yet the Sagh’eld had fired one into the storage facility. The use of the weapon probably said something about the mentality of the Ex’Kaminar’s crew and their intentions for the base. Gabriel was worried about both.

  One by one, the soldiers exited the storage space. The only person to suffer worse than bruises was Private Chan, who thought he might have broken the pinkie on his left hand. He could still fight, and Private Teague promised to check it out when the squad were away from immediate danger.

  Desperate to be away from here as quickly as possible, Gabriel led the soldiers towards the exit. Over the course of the next twenty paces, the link strength on his comms unit dropped from one hundred percent to zero.

  “Area-effect comms jammer,” said Wolf.

  “Yeah,” said Gabriel sourly, directing his voice through the chin speaker on his suit helmet.

  He cursed inwardly. Although he wasn’t intending to split his squad, it might become a necessity in the future, and in that situation, the lack of comms would be a real kick in the balls.

  With no choice in the matter, Gabriel did what he always did, and got on with it.

  TWELVE

  When he opened the exit door to the storage facility, Gabriel was greeted by some slightly better news. To his relief, the Ex’Kaminar was not directly over the street onto which the door exited. Instead, the battleship was to the east, and he could see part of its undersides and flank between the high buildings adjacent to the road.

  From here, Gabriel could also see orange specks of missile propulsions racing from their clusters and into the buildings below, while the Ex’Kaminar’s Kraal guns roared, and its Thak cannons pounded with a whine and a bass thump of expulsion. The continuous detonations lit the skies as if the fires of hell burned within Cornerstone.

  As Gabriel watched, the battleship fired one of its particle beams. Spitting red energy erupted from its generator housing and lanced into the Cornerstone base somewhere a few thousand metres away. A crack of expanding air was followed by a rolling thunder.

  Withdrawing his head from the opening, Gabriel curled his lip angrily. The harsh stench of burning from outside clung to his nostrils, the rawness of it only serving to amplify his growing fury. This was a lesson in the overwhelming superiority of the Sagh’eld fleet that he’d never asked for. The battleship likely had the firepower to lay waste to the entire planet, if its commanding officer so decided, and it was sobering to imagine the vessel was holding back in fear of accidentally destroying the Galos model the aliens had come to steal.

  On the plus side, there’d been no further detonations within the storage facility, which left Gabriel hopeful that he might have some breathing room. Already, Private Teague was attending to Chan. Having instructed him to remove his suit gauntlet, Teague gave him a shot of repair fluid that would hasten the fusing of his bone. She didn’t bother offering him a painkiller, since every GK-3 combat suit had the capability to administer basic drugs to its wearer, either automatically or by instruction.

  “Less than five hundred metres to go,” said Gabriel, narrowing his eyes as he stared along the street. The night vision enhancement added an artificial, almost cartoonish tinge to the colours, which contrasted starkly with the destruction being visited upon Cornerstone.

  This area of the base had evidently been fully operational, and the road here was filled with cars. Although the incendiary fires in this area of Cornerstone had died, their aftereffects were starkly visible. Almost every vehicle had melted into a lump, their windows shattered by the intense heat and their occupants burned alive.

  Neither had the buildings escaped undamaged. Every window was gone – either melted into now-hardened rivulets, which dangled from their frames like spears, or blown clean out onto the streets. The building directly across from Gabriel appeared to have sagged, and its lower walls were bowed out. As if caught in a strong wind, the metals creaked and groaned, in a way that made him worry the whole structure might come toppling down at any moment.

  Corporal Hennessey spotted what had Gabriel worried. “Think we should chance the road instead, Sergeant? The route that way would be shorter and quicker.”

  “It could be very short if the battleship catches sight of us, Corporal,” said Gabriel.

  Even so, he was halfway tempted. The road offered plenty of cover – though it wouldn’t be effective if anyone from the Ex’Kaminar gave this area more than a cursory sweep – and travelling it would mean no more running through confined spaces, with the possibility of missiles and gauss slugs smashing through the ceiling.

  Eventually, Gabriel shook his head. “We’ll stick to the route,” he said. “If we’re seen early, the enemy might watch to see where we’re going. We’d lead them straight to the Galos.”

  Gabriel felt he was making the right call. He held for another few seconds to make sure everyone had recovered from the Thak impact, enough that they could run and fight. Each member of the squad gave their affirmation and that was all Gabriel needed.

  He darted from the exit, aiming for the nearest entrance to the building opposite. The pain in Gabriel’s head pulsed each time his foot came down on the ground and he grimaced that the headache hadn’t yet fully receded.

  Diverting around a burned-out gravity car, he couldn’t help but look through the shrunken opening which had once been its side window. Inside was all char, and the blackened lump in the passenger side had been a living, breathing person only a short time ago.

  Gabriel had seen plenty of bad shit in his time, and this only added to the pile. Tightening his grip on his rifle, he aimed for the door, which wasn’t more than ten metres away.

  A sound came to him. It was the dull throb of propulsion reverberating off the walls of nearby buildings. Gabriel snapped his head east and then west. The sound was coming from the west. About a hundred metres that way lay an intersection, and a shuttle was heading closer along one of the side roads.

  Looking quickly towards the door, Gabriel saw that it was slightly warped, and he wasn’t sure if it would open without some assistance. Not only that, there was no nearby cover. If the soldiers were trapped outside when the shuttle emerged into sight, they’d be cut to pieces by its nose gun.

  “Incoming!” Gabriel yelled on the squad comms. “Take cover!”

  He ran a few paces back and threw himself behind another wrecked gravity car. Mercifully, the roof of this one had sagged so much that the window openings were almost completely sealed. Regardless, Gabriel caught the scent of charred flesh.

  Private Castle and Private Chan joined him at the side of the vehicle and they kept their heads low. The former placed one end of his rocket tube on the ground and rested the other end against the side of the car.

  “What now, Sergeant?” asked Corporal Zeigler from a place nearby.

  Gabriel leaned out, and he could see the other man stooped behind a vehicle a few metres away. “If we’re lucky, that shuttle will cross straight over the intersection, and we’ll never see it again. If it comes our way, Private Castle is going to blow it out of the sky.”