Grisham turned to where Sergeant Maxwell was jogging north. The cruiser’s starboard flank was about two hundred metres from the north wall, its jutting blades preventing it from setting down any closer.

  About fifty metres from the truck, Maxwell stopped where the nose section had sloped closer to the ground – the cruiser’s midsection being flat to the floor. The soldier took a few extra steps north, his gaze turned east. For long moments, Maxwell said nothing. Then, he spoke.

  “Everyone back on the truck. There’s a way north about five hundred metres from here.”

  Grisham returned to the cabin and, a short time later, Maxwell guided the flatbed into the gap between the cruiser and the north wall.

  “The flank blades are higher than the roof of this cabin,” said Maxwell. “We’ll pass right under them.”

  He was right. Those blades were high overhead and Grisham stared as the truck went beneath them. The Kijol had given the alloys sharp facing edges that looked as if they would make a clean cut through a ripe tomato. He had to keep reminding himself it was all for show.

  “This is the place I saw,” said Maxwell, bringing the truck to halt beneath the second blade. He looked out of the cabin’s open side into a passage heading north.

  Grisham, meanwhile, peered east. “I can see other exits. Three in total.”

  “The Kijol used at least one of those other exits, sir,” said Maxwell. “I figured we should take our chances with this one.” He shrugged. “This is the enemy’s base, so they’ll know the most efficient way to travel it. We’ll likely run into them wherever we go.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, Sergeant.”

  “Everyone – off this truck!” Maxwell ordered, sliding out of the cabin.

  “What’s along here, Sergeant?” asked Private Lowe.

  An expression of long suffering appeared briefly on Maxwell’s face and then vanished. “That’s what we’re going to find out, Private.”

  When Grisham stared into the passage, it gave up none of its secrets. Its dimensions were identical to the tunnels from earlier and it continued north for a distance before coming to an east-west intersection.

  Maxwell led the way once more and at a faster pace than before. Grisham could sense the man’s impatience – the northern end of the base was many kilometres away and arriving there would only herald the beginning of a search for a second comms hub. On top of that, the Kijol were also underground, their whereabouts unknown, while the active cruiser had dropped an incendiary into the repair bay. It was a recipe for hard times ahead.

  Having paused at the intersection to check for dangers, Maxwell indicated the squad should head west on the basis that it would take them further from the known deployment place in the repair bay. It was possible the Kijol were also approaching from the north, but there hadn’t been enough time for them to cover so much distance, unless they’d entered through another repair bay.

  “Be on your guard,” said Maxwell, as he set off again.

  The western corridor was featureless and cold. Five hundred metres from the intersection, it turned north. Midway along the corridor, Maxwell stopped at a lone door. The room beyond contained more crates.

  Maxwell stared and then shook his head. It was clear he wanted to find out if the crates contained more archaeological treasures. Grisham was also keen to know, but this time, he didn’t say anything. He valued his life above a few old statues.

  “Let’s move,” said Maxwell.

  At the turning north, Maxwell’s face twisted in momentary frustration. “Another five hundred metres to the next intersection.”

  “This is a warship-scale installation, Sergeant,” said Grisham. “We’re the insects running beneath the floorboards.”

  Setting off once more, Maxwell ran with his gauss rifle in both hands, the stock in the crook of his elbow and the barrel at forty-five degrees. It was clear the man was becoming increasingly on edge and was expecting to run into the Kijol soon.

  The journey continued for several kilometres, through the same drab tunnels and without a shot being fired. At the intersections, Maxwell alternated between the east and west turnings. Travelling west at every opportunity might have been the safest way to the far end of the installation, but it would leave the soldiers in the western corner of the base and far from the assumed location of the comms hub.

  And that was the problem, Grisham thought to himself. Everything was a guess. Maybe the comms hub was north-west. Maybe the west would be a good place to hide out for a few days. At any other time, Grisham would have favoured the laying low option. Here on Ovintus, he knew without a shadow of doubt that, before the Achirus went elsewhere, it would detonate a crapload of incendiaries. It was only a matter of when.

  So, if the mission personnel were successful in sending a comm to base, they’d have to find a way to get far from the installation. Grisham cursed inwardly at the obstacles piling up.

  The first encounter with the Kijol did not happen in a way anyone had expected. Running along a westward passage, about seven kilometres from the nearest buildings at the north end of the installation, Maxwell slowed as he approached a turning north. He stopped, checked the way ahead, and then swore loudly.

  Grisham took the man’s place and put his head around the corner. A few metres along the passage, he saw two dead Kijol soldiers. He knew they were dead because they were in a heap on the floor, their blood all over the nearby surfaces. The passage itself continued to another intersection about three hundred metres away. A couple of doors faced each other halfway along.

  “Those Kijol didn’t kill themselves,” said Maxwell, having informed the other soldiers of what he’d seen.

  “They’re cut up bad,” said Grisham.

  “One of those aliens from Xaros,” said Diaz. “Shit, I knew I should have stayed in bed.”

  “Another damn complication,” said Maxwell.

  “Maybe it’ll work to our advantage if it keeps the Kijol distracted,” said Fine.

  “We had little control over this situation to begin with, Corporal,” said Maxwell. “Now we have even less. Private Franklin, confirm when those Kijol died,” he said.

  Franklin hurried around the corner and held a probe from his med-box to the bloody throat of the nearest corpse. The Kijol’s helmet had been torn off and it was on the floor ten metres along the passage.

  “The med-box estimates its time of death as thirty minutes ago, Sergeant.”

  Grisham added up the minutes, trying to figure out how the alien soldier had made it here quickly enough to have been killed thirty minutes ago. The Achirus must have launched all its shuttles and landed one at the northern end of the base. Even then, seven kilometres was too long a distance to cover in the time available.

  “There must be a second subsurface bay nearby,” said Grisham. “If the Kijol landed a shuttle inside, that would explain how these ones managed to be here.”

  “Is finding another bay going to help us, sir?” asked Maxwell.

  “Only if we avoid it,” said Grisham. “I’m just saying we’ve got trouble coming soon.”

  “I don’t want to run into another of those aliens,” said Chau. “Not down here. Not anyplace.”

  “Will this prompt the Kijol to withdraw?” asked Lieutenant Kinsey.

  “Wise money says no,” said Grisham. “The Kijol can fight and they clearly have more experience with these new aliens than we do. Unless they believe they’re going to be completely overrun, they’ll stay until they’re ready to leave.”

  “And then off go the incendiaries,” said Corporal Barkley.

  “More than likely,” said Grisham.

  Maxwell was ready to move again. “Private Lowe, move up near the front and be ready with that rocket tube,” said Maxwell. “Private Vaughan, stay at the rear. Private Lyles will be your spotter so you can concentrate on carrying that repeater.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Maxwell set off north again, with Private Lowe behind him, and Grisham third in the line. With so many variables at play, the mission to escape from Ovintus was becoming increasingly difficult to predict. Death remained comfortably the most likely outcome.

  Grisham was determined his fate would be otherwise.

  FIFTEEN

  The second encounter with the Kijol came soon after the first. Having arrived at the next intersection, Maxwell checked the way was clear. East, the passage opened into a space about four hundred metres away. West, the tunnel came to a corner after about 250 metres, and then went north. Here, the alloy cladding was blackened and heat-damaged, though it was cool to the touch. The flames were long gone.

  “The Kijol incendiaries burned this area,” said Grisham. He looked in both directions. “It’s hard to tell which direction the fires came from. Maybe they came from both sides.”

  “We’ll go west,” said Maxwell.

  He set off into the passage and the soldiers followed. Grisham noticed that Maxwell had once again increased the pace and it was a test of his stamina to keep up. He could only marvel at the fitness of Private Lowe and Private Vaughan, who each had a heavier loadout than the others. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Adler – who was by almost two decades the oldest member of Grisham’s crew – was finding it the hardest.

  “I won’t slow us down, Captain,” Adler panted, after Grisham asked how he was coping.

  That was enough reassurance and Grisham didn’t ask again.

  When the far corner was no more than a hundred metres away, he saw a sudden movement. A head appeared and then was withdrawn.

  “Sergeant Maxwell!” shouted Grisham in warning.

  Again came the movement and this time, it wasn’t a head, but a Kijol shoulder launcher. The alien holding the weapon didn’t expose much of itself. Maxwell reacted quickly, firing his gauss rifle towards the corner. He was running hard and his shots missed.

  “Get down!” he yelled.

  It was too late. Grisham could see it already. In the confines of this passage, a single Kijol rocket might easily kill every one of the mission personnel. Even so, he threw himself towards the left-hand wall and fell flat, his rifle underneath him. Maxwell had gone right, leaving a gap through which Grisham could fire. He got off a couple of snap shots, knowing they weren’t anywhere close to hitting.

  Private Lowe stayed on his feet. Reacting even more quickly than Maxwell, he spun his launcher onto his right shoulder. The weapon’s coils whined.

  A rocket burst from the Kijol launcher at the same time as a missile flew from Lowe’s shoulder tube. Grisham readied himself for burning death. The incineration of his killer would be little consolation.

  Incredibly, the Kijol rocket missed everyone. It raced along the corridor at chest height. Grisham felt it pass by overhead. A split-second later, Lowe’s return shot struck the far wall near the floor. Somehow – and miraculously given the pressure – the soldier had managed to aim his shot so that much of the blast was channelled north around the corner.

  Not all the explosive force went north. Pressurised and searingly hot air washed along the corridor eastwards. Grisham kept his head down and felt the shockwave through the solid floor beneath him. The rumble of the blast was physical and incredibly loud, and he knew he’d been given a fleeting glimpse of what the soldiers had endured on Xaros when the Kijol destroyer was bombarding the jungle.

  “Up! Move!” yelled Maxwell.

  Grisham responded automatically and got his feet under him. He joined the soldier in a sprint for the corner. Other footsteps were close behind and, somewhere faraway east, he could hear the fading thunder of the Kijol rocket.

  The alloy cladding at the corner was glowing with heat and the rocket’s impact had ripped some of the thick sheets from the stone. Maxwell was careful he didn’t touch anything. He leaned out quickly and then withdrew his head.

  “Clear,” he said.

  Grisham also checked north. Nearby were carbonized remains that might have recently been two, three or four Kijol soldiers. The enemy rocket tube was on the floor, blackened and out of shape. Beyond that was another long passage, which came to an open space about four hundred metres from the corner. The walls of this passage were filthy and uneven from the incendiaries the Kijol had dropped on the base.

  “Those explosions will bring others if they were close enough to hear it,” said Maxwell.

  “What’s a damn rocket soldier doing here?” asked Private Lyles angrily.

  “Waiting for one of those aliens to come along,” said Grisham. “It just happens we got here first.”

  Private Lowe was shaking his head and staring at what remained of the enemy soldiers. “Always aim for the feet, you assholes.”

  “Whichever one of these pieces of charcoal launched that rocket at us, it screwed up the shot,” said Corporal Fine. “But they probably weren’t expecting return fire. That’s what caused them to miss.”

  “And maybe something else, Corporal,” said Grisham. “If these Kijol really were on the lookout for one of those aliens, they were probably shitting themselves already.”

  During this short conversation, Maxwell kept his gaze north, along the barrel of his rifle. “No Kijol yet,” he said. “If they were coming to the sound of that blast, we’d have seen them already.”

  “We should put in some distance,” said Corporal Barkley.

  “We’ve got another hard run,” Maxwell confirmed. “Starting now.”

  He jogged for a few paces to allow the other soldiers to get themselves into gear. Then, Maxwell accelerated to a pace that wasn’t quite a full sprint. It was a gamble, Grisham knew. If the Kijol appeared at the far opening, the soldiers wouldn’t be able to fire accurately.

  Halfway along the passage, Grisham was breathing heavily and by the time he joined Maxwell at the far opening, he was panting for air.

  “Another bay,” said Maxwell. “More alien shit.”

  Grisham stared into the bay, his breathing and heart rate slowing. “What the hell?” he said.

  This bay was far smaller than the last. Its ceiling was three hundred metres overhead, and the opposite wall less than a thousand metres away. The eastern wall was about eight hundred metres from where Grisham was standing, while the west wall was fewer than two hundred. A shaft, two hundred metres square, went up through the ceiling. From here, Grisham couldn’t see what was at the top, though he was sure it extended all the way to the surface.

  Many large objects had been placed on the bay floor. These objects had suffered badly from the incendiary drop and it was hard to be sure what they’d originally been. The closest to Grisham was a roughly hemispherical lump with a diameter of fifty metres. Its surface was black with char and pitted from the heat.

  Elsewhere, the objects were shapes that had no name. The largest was in the centre of the room and it must have been a tight fit through the overhead shaft.

  “What are these?” asked Corporal Fine.

  A possible answer came to Grisham. “Warship parts,” he said.

  “They must have been the inside bits,” said Private Diaz. “Because none of these resembles any warship I ever saw.”

  “There’s no sign of Kijol,” said Grisham. “I’d like to take a look at that.” He pointed at the hemisphere.

  “This place could be crawling with enemy soldiers, sir,” said Maxwell. “There are plenty of places for them to hide.”

  “We have to cross this bay floor regardless, Sergeant.”

  “True enough,” said Maxwell.

  He organized the soldiers, looked at Grisham and then indicated the hemisphere. Grisham ran the forty metres, with Maxwell and Lowe alongside, and some of the others following. Half of the soldiers remained in the passage, as did Lieutenant Kinsey and Lieutenant Bishop.

  Standing at the base of the object, Grisham rubbed at the layer of char. The surface felt rough and below the grime was a colour that was only a fraction lighter than black. Grisham scraped it with his fingertips. It felt different to metal – yielding almost, yet still hard.

  On a whim, he leaned closer and sniffed. He caught a scent he didn’t much like. It was biological, like charred flesh, but at the extremes of his senses. Grisham sniffed again and this time his nose didn’t pick up anything at all.

  “I don’t know what this is,” he admitted.

  “Part of a warship like you said, sir,” said Private Lyles. “But a bad alien warship, not a plain old Kijol one.”

  “You might be on to something, Private,” said Commander Deneuve, rapping on the object with her knuckles.

  “The Kijol captured an enemy vessel and brought it here for dismantling,” said Grisham. “And then they had to destroy their prize.”

  As he was talking, something hit the edge of the hemisphere near his head, tearing a furrow through the grime. Sergeant Maxwell calmly lifted his rifle and pulled the trigger. From the passage entrance, Private Vaughan’s XR repeater droned.

  “Kijol,” said Maxwell.

  Grisham spun east, cursing himself for having been caught unawares. A couple of hundred metres away, two Kijol were dead on the ground. They’d emerged from behind one of the warship components, got off a single shot and then been killed by gauss fire.

  “Private Vaughan, did you see others?” asked Maxwell.

  “No, sir.”

  “We can’t stay here,” said Maxwell. “I doubt the Kijol were expecting us to be this far north. It won’t be long before they come running.”

  “Let’s hope much of their attention is elsewhere, Sergeant,” said Grisham.

  “Enemy sighted!” shouted Vaughan. “East – where we killed the other two. One Kijol. There may be others.”

  “The west wall,” said Maxwell. “There has to be an exit that way.”

  He organized the retreat. The soldiers had evidently executed similar manoeuvres many times before and they acted quickly. Grisham followed Maxwell directly west. The moment he was beyond the hemisphere, he could see north. Other pieces of burned debris lay that way, but he saw no sign of the Kijol.

  “If that third enemy soldier is alone, it’ll keep its head down while it reports on the comms,” said Maxwell as he ran. “If we’re lucky, the enemy will think we went south. At the very least, they’ll have to split their forces between two possibilities.”