“I’ll take a near miss over a glancing blow.”

  Grisham wanted to watch, but he couldn’t. The reality of the situation within the bunker came crashing back. He heard a grenade exploding somewhere close by. Gauss rifles fired nonstop and he could hear Sergeant Maxwell, Corporal Fine and Corporal Barkley giving orders.

  “Sergeant Maxwell, the cruiser is finished,” said Grisham loudly on the squad comms. “We should head for the surface.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Maxwell. “Retreat to the control room!” he yelled on the comms.

  The soldiers came at a run through the north entrance. Sergeant Maxwell was third to enter the control station. “Move,” he urged. “That way.” He pointed along the west exit. “Follow Private Chau.” Maxwell’s eyes landed on Grisham and his bridge crew. “Go now, sir.”

  Before Grisham got his feet moving, he looked through the north entrance. The rest of the soldiers were beating a fast retreat, albeit with some control. A Kijol corpse emerged into view and it was struck in the forehead by a gauss bullet. It fell out of Grisham’s sight.

  He entered the west passage and ran after the others to the intersection. South would take him back to the narrow stairs, but Chau had gone north. Grisham followed. His legs still felt weak and he knew he’d need some rest soon, just like everyone else on this mission. The chance of it would be a fine thing.

  Grisham passed through an open door and the passage turned west. A short distance further, a corridor branched north, while the main passage continued. Chau led the way north, across a second control room, through another open door and then west again.

  “Not far,” he said.

  Stairs ascended from an opening in the corridor’s north wall. The way was narrow and Grisham’s heart fell when he saw how many steps there were.

  Chau hadn’t left the passage and he waited with Private Vaughan, having evidently been given orders to help cover the retreat.

  “Sir, you need to go,” said Chau, pointing urgently up the steps.

  Grisham hadn’t hesitated for more than a moment and he entered the stairwell. His leg muscles complained at the renewed effort, but he ignored the pain. Commander Deneuve was directly ahead and the distance between the two of them was increasing. With another curse, Grisham increased his pace.

  “What’s our status, Sergeant Maxwell?” he asked, between laboured breaths.

  “Corpses, sir,” said Maxwell. “They found a way in. There’s been no sign of aliens. I’m not expecting that situation to last.”

  “If any follow, maybe we can ambush them once we’re on the surface,” said Grisham.

  “I’m hoping we won’t have to,” said Maxwell. “Private Chau found some metal bars he reckons will jam the hatch shut from the outside.”

  “I’m glad to see you’ve been thinking ahead, Sergeant. All of you.”

  “It’s the best way to avoid death, sir.”

  As he climbed, Grisham pictured the Achirus coming down onto the planet’s surface. When the cruiser landed, it might well create a shockwave that would crumple the walls of this missile battery. The velocity of the warship’s impact depended on many unknown variables and Grisham tried hard not to think about it. He heard a grenade explode somewhere behind and the sound of it focused his mind. Grisham pressed on, each step a little harder than the one before.

  “Nearly there,” said Lieutenant Adler from a distance ahead. The man sounded exhausted.

  The stairwell emerged into another compact room, with the usual alloy cladding. Against the eastern wall was a half-full weapons rack. Grisham saw Kijol rifles and a couple of sidearms. Where the rest of the weapons had gone, he didn’t know, but whoever was carrying them was certainly dead.

  “Private Diaz went that way,” said Lieutenant Kinsey, pointing towards a metal-rung ladder.

  This ladder rose through a circular shaft in the centre of the north wall. Grisham hurried over and looked up. The shaft was lit and Private Diaz was near the top, holding a rung with one hand and gripping a lever on the underside of an alloy hatch with the other.

  Diaz looked down and somehow managed to recognize Grisham. “I’m opening the hatch, sir,” she said.

  With a wrench of effort, the soldier rotated the lever a quarter turn. Then, she slid the hatch sideways into a recess. It wasn’t dark outside, nor was it light. Wind blew through the opening and sand whispered down the shaft. Another sound was audible over everything else. The cruiser’s Charos drive was still active and its immense bass had an underlying howl of distress.

  “Go!” said Grisham.

  He began climbing at once. The cruiser hadn’t struck the ground yet and he wanted to watch it come down. Private Diaz vanished outside and Grisham soon reached the top. Since Commander Deneuve was right behind, he didn’t pause to look around once his head was showing. Instead, he joined Diaz on what turned out to be the edge of the missile battery’s retaining wall. This wall was about four metres thick and its edge was about twenty metres above the sand. Wind buffeted Grisham, threatening to send him to his death if he wasn’t careful. He crouched low next to Diaz.

  Glancing over his shoulder, Grisham saw the rest of the wall as well as the six immense hatches which covered the missile launch tubes. Desert surrounded the emplacement, though the sand had been partly fused into glass.

  Grisham stared into the sky. It was gloomy, but not yet night and the temperature was falling. He could see the Daxin star low to the horizon, looking more remote than anything he could imagine. His eyes searched south-east for the cruiser.

  “There it is,” he said.

  The Kijol cruiser was at an approximate two-thousand-metre altitude, and three thousand metres south-east. In that direction, the sand had suffered even more from incendiaries, and it was turned into rough glass which followed the contours of what had once been immense dunes.

  Even at this distance, the warship appeared vast. Its visible flank was burning orange from nose to stern and Grisham couldn’t believe it hadn’t broken up. He stared, but the windblown sand made it impossible to discern anything more than the shape and the light. The sound of the spaceship’s Charos drive seemed to beat against him from every direction.

  “It’s coming down slowly,” said Diaz.

  Grisham nodded. “A soft landing will be better for us than a hard one. Sergeant Maxwell, what is your status?”

  Before Maxwell responded, a deep, rumbling boom was carried up the shaft, and Grisham recognized it as the sound of a rocket.

  “We were under pressure until Private Lowe fired that missile, sir,” said Maxwell. “The last of us are almost at the shaft. We’ll exit at once.”

  “I’m heading to the ground, Sergeant,” said Grisham. His eyes found the top of a ladder leading from the retaining wall to the sand below. “We’ll be safer there.”

  The rest of the mission personnel continued emerging from the shaft and Grisham was in danger of blocking the way. He grabbed the top of the ladder and descended rapidly. He didn’t want to imagine how the surface would react if the cruiser landed with any great velocity, but here at the north end of the battery, he hoped to be at least partially shielded from the shockwave.

  Grisham stepped off the ladder. He guessed this side of the battery was sheltered from the prevailing winds, since the coating of sand on the glass was thin. A few hundred metres away, the fused dunes appeared like hills.

  From here, Grisham couldn’t see the stricken cruiser, so he headed east to gain a view of it. The sand wasn’t all fused and it crunched beneath his feet. He glanced once over his shoulder and saw that his crew were on their way down, while a couple of soldiers were just visible near the edge of the wall.

  He arrived at the corner and looked around. The cruiser seemed to have dropped another thousand metres, though from ground level the dunes to the south-east limited his ability to judge altitude.

  Without warning, the Achirus’s Charos drive cut out. Usually a complete propulsion failure would be signalled by a shrieking from the overstressed modules. On this occasion, the warship’s engines simply fell quiet. As Grisham watched, the vessel began its freefall descent.

  “The cruiser is coming down!” he yelled. “We need to shelter behind the battery!”

  He turned and found that most of the mission personnel were already on the sand, with another couple on the ladder. Grisham made a short run north so that he could see who was left. Two figures were just visible, wrestling to jam the hatch closed.

  “Sergeant Maxwell, you have about fifteen seconds before that cruiser impacts and another few seconds before the shockwave hits us.”

  “We have to make sure this hatch stays shut,” said Maxwell, his voice strained with effort.

  Grisham returned to the corner and watched the cruiser as it fell vertically towards the surface. The vessel struck the ground and its upper section remained visible over the dunes.

  “Be ready!” he yelled.

  The shockwave would come in seconds and Grisham had no idea what effect it would have on this battery or on the mission personnel relying on it for protection.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Sprinting away from the corner, Grisham headed diagonally north. He didn’t want to be right up against the battery wall and he didn’t want to be too far away from it either. In truth, Grisham had no idea what to expect and he was relying on guesswork to keep himself alive.

  He hadn’t gone far when the ground seemed to jump beneath him. At the same time, he heard a thudding sound that carried with it a vast weight, which momentarily quelled the howling wind. The ground jumped again and Grisham was thrown into the air. He landed off-balance and stumbled face-first into the sand. Everything was shaking and he scrambled to his feet.

  Nearby, the mission personnel were either fighting to remain upright or they were on the ground. On top of the wall, Sergeant Maxwell and another soldier – Private Chau, Grisham thought – were holding on to something that wasn’t in sight from ground level.

  For many seconds the ground continued to shake, and gradually the intensity of it lessened. When Grisham was confident he could remain upright, he hurried across the sand to check on the others. Nobody had suffered a serious injury, though Lieutenant Lopez had collided shoulder-first with the battery wall and was winded because of it. She’d recover.

  “Sir, you need to see this!” yelled Maxwell on the comms. “Quickly!”

  Grisham had no idea what had got the soldier interested and he ran for the ladder. The ground rumbled again as he ascended and he felt the vibrations through the rungs. Emerging on top of the wall, he braced himself against the wind and hoped no more aftershocks would come.

  “Over here, sir,” said Maxwell on the comms. He and Chau had made their way almost to the south-east corner of the wall and were staring in that direction.

  Taking care to remain in the centre of the wall, Grisham headed towards them. He passed the hatch, which the soldiers had jammed by wedging a couple of metal rods between the topside release levers and the frame.

  Joining Maxwell and Chau, Grisham stared across the glass dunes. The cruiser had landed flank facing, shattering the hard coating on the surface and creating a huge, circular crater. The outer rim of this crater was a mixture of translucent boulders and sand, and it hid the warship’s lower third.

  It wasn’t the impact crater which had caught Maxwell’s attention. He pointed to an area of the crater’s rim on the visible edge closest to the missile battery. Grisham narrowed his eyes and zoomed in his helmet sensor. The cruiser’s impact had altered the surface in a significant way and had revealed something which must have been buried beneath the glass. An expansive area of a near-black material was now exposed.

  Grisham felt an emotion that was mostly excitement, but with some other things mixed in. His brain told him what he was looking at, though he couldn’t believe it was possible.

  “A warship,” said Grisham.

  “That’s what we figured,” said Chau.

  “It reminds me of the spaceship on Xaros,” said Maxwell. “What I can see of it does, anyway.”

  “The Kijol must have shot it down when their installation was attacked,” said Grisham. “Then, the incendiaries came and it was locked beneath a layer of glass.”

  “It doesn’t look much damaged to me,” said Chau.

  About five hundred metres of the vessel was visible and Grisham didn’t know how much more was hidden. His eyes followed the shape of the dunes and he guessed that beyond the impact crater’s rim, more of the vessel would be exposed.

  “Most of that spaceship is still buried, Private,” said Grisham. “Whatever damage it suffered is hidden by sand and glass.”

  “What’re we going to do, sir?” asked Maxwell. It was a loaded question.

  “We should check it out,” said Grisham. “We’ve got nowhere else to go.”

  He stood where he was for a few seconds longer, wondering what events had led to this alien vessel becoming sealed in glass. Tearing his gaze away, Grisham hurried for the ladder and descended to the base of the wall.

  “What’re we planning to do when we arrive at this alien warship, sir?” asked Corporal Fine.

  “I don’t know,” Grisham admitted. “This mission was all about finding intel and here’s our chance to learn something about a species that’s been making the Kijol sweat.”

  “And us too,” said Lowe. “Wouldn’t we be better off heading back to the facility and looking for an escape shuttle, sir?”

  “The facility – topside and underground – is destroyed, Private,” said Grisham. “Whatever wreckage is left will be too hot for us to explore anyway.”

  The soldiers knew they were out of options, though nobody wanted to come right out and say it. Grisham got his bearings and set off into the desert, with Maxwell alongside. The nearest dune was steep and a thin layer of glass lay just beneath the surface. With every step, Grisham’s combat boot broke the glass and plunged into the sand below. It made the going incredibly tough.

  Grisham leaned into the climb, feeling the glass crack and his feet slide with each step. The wind pushed him sideways and the sand raced past. By the time he reached the top, Grisham was hot with the effort and breathing heavily.

  “Damn,” he swore. “This is slow.”

  From the top of the dune, Grisham could see more dunes, as well as the Achirus and part of the unknown spaceship. He didn’t pause and descended carefully to the bottom.

  Another dune rose high above, though here the layer of glass was much thicker and Grisham’s feet didn’t go through. He was sure this area marked the boundary of where the incendiaries had burned the hottest.

  The solid glass was no easier to walk on, since the wind had coated it in sand which made the footing treacherous and slippery. In addition, the shockwave from the cruiser’s impact had seemingly broken the subsurface glass into pieces and those pieces shifted with Grisham’s weight. As a result, the journey took more than thirty minutes and, when he stood atop the final dune and looked upon the high rim of the impact crater, he felt enormous relief.

  “I’m glad the Achirus didn’t come down at a greater velocity,” said Maxwell.

  “Me too, Sergeant,” said Grisham.

  He’d once seen an HF destroyer impact with a planet at a hundred kilometres per second. The outcome had not been pretty. In comparison, an Achirus hitting Ovintus at three hundred kilometres per hour was tame.

  Grisham spent a moment studying the terrain. From where he was standing, the walls of the crater were huge slopes of medium steepness, comprised of glassy boulders, smaller pieces of glass, and sand. The crater walls curved south and north and they made Grisham think of flood defences, but on a vast scale.

  A few hundred metres south, the buried alien vessel protruded from its shattered coffin. Now that he was closer, Grisham felt he was looking at its topsides, though he had no evidence to back up his opinion. He was also sure it was a large vessel with a high mass, and that much of it was below the surface. What overall shape it possessed, he had no idea.

  Grisham narrowed his eyes at a series of enormous dunes that came right up to the impact crater. Much of the recent sand had been shaken off by the tremors and he could see cracks in the glass. He thought maybe part of the alien vessel had formed those dunes.

  “Let’s take a look,” he said.

  “We should head to the top of the crater edge, sir,” said Maxwell. “If any of those Kijol survived, we’ll see them if they’re coming our way.”

  “They didn’t survive, Sergeant,” said Grisham. “When their propulsion failed, their life support system would have gone offline.” He stared at the slope, trying to identify the best way to the top. “But I’d like to go up there anyway, to see the lay of the land.” He pointed between two of the glass boulders. “That way.”

  Grisham carefully descended the sand dune. The closer the mission personnel came to the impact site, the less suitable the ground was for walking. When he reached the bottom, Grisham paused to catch his breath. The route he’d chosen to the top of the impact crater’s rim appeared much harder to climb than he’d first thought.

  “Let’s get it done,” said Grisham.

  He went up. The slope was not at all stable and the fine sand holding the glass in place shifted beneath his feet.

  “We should tell the others to wait,” said Maxwell.

  “I agree,” said Grisham, staring ahead. The two huge boulders – each about fifteen metres high - he’d seen from the opposite dune hadn’t moved, but if he was wrong and one of them slid down the slope, it could potentially kill everyone on the mission.

  Maxwell gave the order without slowing and the two men continued.

  “Just to be sure – if the Achirus’s engines failed, there’ll be no power to its weapons either?” said Maxwell.

  “We don’t have to worry about missiles or Dasor fire,” Grisham confirmed.

  The climb took no more than five or six minutes, but it was stressful, and, when he came to the top, Grisham breathed deeply in relief.

  “I’ll order the others to follow,” said Maxwell.