He turned the warship to starboard and the vessel laboured towards the nearby mountains, its engines painful to hear. The largest peak had a steep southern slope and Grisham aimed the Marauder that way. For a moment, he thought his plan would fail and that the vessel was descending so fast he’d miss the incline. HF technology came through and the warship’s nose stayed high enough to pass just over the slope. The rest of the hull followed and, on the flickering sensor feeds, Grisham saw the vessel’s underside armour scrape across the stone, crushing rocks into powder.

  When he thought the Marauder was in the right position, Grisham dumped it onto the mountainside. At the moment of impact, he threw the controls to one side, and diverted all the remaining thrust into providing starboard acceleration. Aided by gravity, the warship slid down the slope, gathering velocity. The Marauder had low flanks and Grisham hoped that if the vessel came to the bottom of this incline carrying enough speed, it might just flip over.

  “Come on,” said Deneuve anxiously.

  The life support light had decided it was happier on amber than it was on red, so Grisham felt nothing of the bumping as the Marauder slid downwards. On the starboard feeds he could see that the steep slope became near-vertical as it approached the bottom, and it ended in a valley separating this peak from the one adjacent.

  Over the sheer edge went the Marauder and it plummeted the final five hundred metres, hitting the hard ground starboard flank first. At that moment, the sensors went offline again, but Grisham had seen enough that he knew what to do. He redirected what little thrust the warship had left and held the controls in place, his muscles straining as if his own physical strength might influence the outcome.

  “Bring those sensors back,” he grunted.

  “I’m trying,” said Lopez. “There!” she exclaimed in triumph.

  The feeds returned, still flickering and at an even lower resolution than before. For a moment, Grisham couldn’t understand what he was seeing. Then, to his enormous relief, he realised that the Marauder had rolled, so that its topside plating was resting across the valley floor and onto the lower edge of the adjacent mountain.

  “Lieutenant Bishop, tell me about that distress transmission,” said Grisham.

  “I have not been successful in sending one, Captain.”

  “We need to abandon ship,” said Grisham. “Is this an issue you can resolve?”

  “No, sir. I don’t believe it is.”

  “In that case, we’re getting out of here,” said Grisham. “Lieutenant Adler, is the backup power to the internal doors functioning?” Grisham already knew from looking at his own status panel that the enemy missile hadn’t penetrated the warship’s interior, though that was purely down to luck.

  “Yes, sir – the backup batteries were unaffected by the missile strike.”

  “Did Sergeant Maxwell and the others survive?”

  It was a question which had been hanging over Grisham ever since the missile impact, and he hoped his sensor officers would give him some good news.

  “One moment, sir,” said Bishop. “There hasn’t been time.”

  Grisham put on his suit helmet, strode for the bridge exit, crashed his hand onto the activation panel and held it there. “Quickly,” he demanded.

  “Sergeant Maxwell reports no casualties, sir,” said Bishop, standing and pulling off his headset. He reached down and grabbed his suit helmet. “He’s already heading to the underside bay.”

  “Let’s see if we can make it there first,” said Grisham.

  He stood aside while the other crew members passed and then he followed. The air in the passage outside was a few degrees warmer than it had been on the bridge. With the interior being so carefully regulated, Grisham guessed heat from the missile detonation was spilling through the alloys.

  The crew didn’t hang about and they dashed along the passages towards the underside bay. With each stride closer to the impact area, the temperature rose and soon it had climbed above a hundred Celsius. An HF combat suit could withstand a lot of heat and a hundred degrees wasn’t near its design maximum, but Grisham was nevertheless worried.

  Soon, he entered the underside bay. This was the interior place closest to where the missile had exploded and the air shimmered with scalding heat. Grisham couldn’t be certain, but he thought one of the side walls had been slightly distorted by the colossal energy imparted by the blast. He breathed in the scent of heated metal and wished the outcome of his visit to Ovintus had been different.

  “There’s Sergeant Maxwell,” said Lieutenant Lopez.

  Sure enough, the hulking figure of Maxwell was standing next to the open entrance hatch leading to the Marauder’s starboard deployment vessel, the top of his suit helmet brushing the bay’s low ceiling.

  The crew hurried across the bay and, without ceremony, began sliding down the ladder into the deployment vessel. Grisham met Maxwell’s eyes.

  “I have to be last man, Sergeant.”

  Maxwell nodded and dropped through the hatch with an ease that belied his size. Having taken one last look at his wrecked warship, Grisham followed.

  The deployment vessel’s interior was almost full and Grisham had to walk sideways along the aisle towards the cockpit.

  “Commander Deneuve, Lieutenant Lopez, you’re with me up front,” he said.

  Having fought his way into the cramped cockpit, Grisham took the pilot’s seat. Deneuve sat left and Lopez sat right.

  “All lights are green,” said Deneuve. She tapped a finger on the screen where the light for the launch clamps also glowed green. “Including the most important one.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Grisham.

  He looked at the sensor feeds. They were online, but showed nothing other than the darkness of the launch chute. Without further delay, Grisham entered the launch instruction into the pilot’s console and took hold of the control joysticks. A thump of acceleration followed and he sensed movement on the feeds.

  Then, the deployment vessel was ejected from the Marauder’s underside and the feeds became bright with sunlight. Grisham brought the transport under control. For only a moment he looked at the wreckage of the Marauder. The missile had inflicted shocking damage. Splayed armour glowed white around the impact crater, while a few million tons of plating was scattered across the landscape. A glance at the mountainside was enough for Grisham to see the enormous gouges formed by the Marauder as it slid into the valley.

  “A one-hit kill,” said Deneuve. “Shit luck for us.”

  Grisham banked the shuttle and guided it east along the valley. “That missile must have carried twice the payload of a normal Olin,” he said. “If the Kijol figure out how to install them onto their warships, the HF fleet is in real trouble.”

  “What’s the plan now, sir?” asked Lopez.

  “First, we have to get far from here,” said Grisham. “The Kijol may have abandoned Ovintus, but they might just come running if the ground launcher sends notification that it acquired a target.”

  “I expect any such transmission would be routed via one of the comms hubs in the main installation, sir,” said Lopez. “Since those hubs are likely out of action, it’s possible nobody will ever hear about the launch.”

  “Was it definitely a Kijol missile?” asked Lieutenant Kinsey. “Do we know?”

  “The trajectory indicated the missile was launched from a ground position,” said Lopez. “That near-as-damnit confirms it as a Kijol attack.”

  “We were almost a thousand klicks from the target installation,” said Grisham. “Our visibility range when we flew over the top of that mountain wasn’t even four hundred klicks.” He swore again that he’d underestimated the Kijol defences. “That means the surface-to-air launcher was six hundred klicks from the installation.”

  “Shit happens,” said Deneuve. “We could have done things differently, but we didn’t.”

  “I could have scanned further afield than I did,” said Lopez. “Or I could have recommended that we wait longer at a hundred thousand klicks.”

  “Let’s move on from it, folks,” said Grisham. He banked the shuttle into a narrow valley which sloped upwards, while the wind blew sand along it in a cascade of red. The tiny particles appeared like static on the feeds. “I’m sure I’ll have some awkward questions to answer if we ever make it home.”

  “About that,” said Deneuve. “How are we intending to escape from Ovintus? This deployment vessel has a maximum velocity of eight klicks per second and it isn’t lightspeed capable.”

  Grisham nodded. “A comm from the Marauder would take two-point-five days to reach base. When we don’t check in, I’d expect as much as an additional three or four hours on top of those two-point-five days to pass before anyone becomes seriously worried. Even then, the military isn’t going to send a rescue ship immediately – our fleet has its hands full.”

  “The comms amplifier on this deployment vessel isn’t intended to push a transmission either far or fast,” said Lopez. “Whatever comms we send from here won’t arrive at their destination for at least a few months.”

  “Which leaves us waiting for our flight control officers to decide something has gone wrong and to take action,” said Deneuve.

  “A fast warship might make it to Ovintus in three days,” said Lopez. “Plus all the usual overheads of comms travel and decision-making time. We’re not going to see anyone inside a week. Ten or twelve days would be a realistic estimate. Maybe more.”

  Privately, Grisham was betting on the maybe more option. In fact, he had some doubts the military would even send a vessel here to Ovintus. Warships were destroyed regularly in the field of duty. Hunting down each and every one in the hope of finding survivors would keep the fleet constantly occupied, instead of fighting the Kijol.

  “We should find somewhere to lay low,” Grisham said.

  “That’s going to suck on this deployment vessel,” said Deneuve.

  “I said we should lay low,” said Grisham. “But we’re not going to do that.”

  “Here we go,” said Deneuve. “You want to head over to that Kijol installation.”

  “That’s right, Commander.” Grisham smiled thinly and banked the transport north, between a pair of two-thousand-metre peaks. “And this time I’m going to fly so low that if you lean far enough out the side door you’ll be able to pick flowers.”

  SIX

  For a time, Grisham stuck to Plan A, that being to put some distance between the deployment vessel and the Marauder’s crash site. He kept to the mountains, which had suddenly become vastly more impressive now that he was inside a tiny spaceship. In truth, a determined hunter would locate the transport whatever action Grisham took, but he felt better for doing something rather than nothing.

  “What are you hoping to find at the Kijol base, Captain?” asked Deneuve.

  “The same answers we came to Ovintus looking for,” said Grisham. “If the Kijol are in conflict with another species, we need to gather intel on how it’s working out for them.”

  Deneuve was astute and she narrowed her eyes at Grisham – a sure sign that something had piqued her interest. “The Kijol don’t seem to be running out of warships to send against our fleet,” she said. “Unless they’re attempting to overwhelm the Human Federation quickly in order to—” Deneuve continued staring. “Do you know anything you’re not telling us, sir?”

  Grisham cursed inwardly. He didn’t want to lie to his crew – they deserved better than that. “This is what we’re here to find out, Commander,” he said. “Whatever we can learn about the Kijol will be a benefit to us.”

  It was clear that Deneuve was far from satisfied with the answer, but she didn’t pursue the matter. Grisham wasn’t fooled. She’d spend time thinking it over and then return later with some questions he couldn’t evade – not without admitting the Kijol had demanded the Human Federation’s surrender. After that, Deneuve’s interrogation would certainly step up a gear. Grisham smiled inwardly.

  “It’s possible some of the Kijol comms hardware might be usable,” said Lopez, her tone indicating she thought the opposite was likely. “We can’t use their comms consoles, but if we find a transmitter, we should be able to plug in Corporal Barkley’s booster pack and make use of the Kijol signal amplifiers – even if the consoles themselves are security disabled.”

  “Everything on the enemy base is melted, Lieutenant,” said Grisham. He didn’t want to sound like too much of a pessimist, but sometimes he felt obliged to point out the obvious.

  “You said yourself that the Kijol often install their critical hardware underground, sir.”

  Grisham chuckled. “I did say that.”

  “Word for word, you said it.”

  “In which case, we’ll use whatever we find to our advantage.”

  The conversation died off and Grisham concentrated on flying. Truly these mountains were majestic, and the lack of snow, along with the redness of the rock and the windborne sand made them appear incredibly alien. Above, the sky was the darkest of blues, like the horizon at dusk on Earth, while the ground itself was starkly illuminated by Daxin. Grisham couldn’t get enough of the sights, which came as a welcome distraction from all the crap which had happened to him recently.

  Once the transport was a hundred kilometres north of the wrecked Marauder, Grisham banked west. He’d chosen this place because a valley allowed him to emerge from the mountain range without having to ascend. Having been served a large slice of humble pie by the Kijol ground launcher, Grisham was determined he wouldn’t return for another helping.

  The foothills of the mountains were soon behind and the ground below became once more desert. The dunes were immense, forcing Grisham to vary his altitude between one hundred and eight hundred metres. Where possible, he banked around the larger dunes. In his head, he pictured the Kijol launchers, buried in the ground somewhere ahead, their automated targeting systems ever vigilant for unauthorised vessels.

  “Seven hundred klicks to target,” said Lopez. “If the Kijol positioned their surface-to-air launchers in a six-hundred-klick ring, we should be beyond them soon.”

  “But in no less danger,” said Grisham.

  “That’s right, sir,” said Lopez. “And it seems to me this installation was real important to the enemy. I’d guess there’ll be an inner ring at two or three hundred klicks, as well as other launchers positioned at the corners of the base.”

  “As long as we stay low, we should be fine,” said Grisham.

  At 620 kilometres from the installation, Grisham took extra care to ensure he flew as low as possible, guiding the transport around the dunes, even if it added thousands of metres to the journey.

  “There!” said Lopez. “North-east of our position!”

  Grisham looked at the feed. About five kilometres away, he saw the top of a wall, as red as the sand around it. The dunes blocked much of his view, but he guessed the wall was in excess of thirty metres high and it formed a square, about eighty metres along each side. He couldn’t see inside, but Grisham knew they’d found one of the Kijol launchers. It was well-disguised and, though keeping it clear of sand was probably an endeavour in itself, installing the battery out here in the desert would make it harder to spot for any enemy focusing on the main base.

  “I know that isn’t the launcher that shot us down, but—" Commander Deneuve raised her middle finger to the sensor feed and didn’t finish her sentence.

  “At least we know the surface batteries can’t launch at us from this altitude,” said Lopez.

  “Is there any chance that launcher will have its own comms transmitter installed?” asked Grisham.

  “It’s not a one hundred percent definite no,” said Lopez. “We don’t know how the Kijol have configured their defences, but best guess is still the one I gave you earlier.”

  “The launchers route their comms through a hub on the base,” said Grisham.

  “Yes, sir. If conditions at the target installation are as bad as we think, maybe we can come back this way for another look.”

  Grisham found himself greatly tempted to stop and investigate the launcher anyway. The worst that could happen was they’d waste a couple of hours breaking in before finding that Lopez was right. Kijol surface batteries were usually automated – and Grisham certainly couldn’t imagine the aliens would have left their launch crews behind – so a gunfight was highly unlikely.

  In the end, he stuck with his original plan and returned his focus to what lay ahead. He’d studied the lay of the land from the Marauder, and remembered most of the details. The desert continued all the way to the installation and it still wasn’t any clearer why the Kijol had chosen Ovintus to set up a base. Modern technology generally wasn’t vulnerable to particle ingress, but structures and landing fields would need to be kept clear and many day-to-day activities would be made unnecessarily harder if everything was covered in a layer of sand.

  The best guess he could come up with was the same as the one he’d already discussed with his crew - that the Kijol had intended to exploit the planet’s mineral wealth at some point in the future. Then, it would make sense to have a military base already set up.

  At four hundred kilometres from the installation, Lopez spotted another surface-to-air launcher, this time twenty kilometres south.

  “Just one of these launchers did a number on the Marauder, but all together they didn’t stop the attack on the Kijol installation,” said Deneuve.

  Grisham cast his mind back to Xaros. The unknown alien there had been invisible to his warship’s sensors. While the Kijol Eternus had shown no apparent difficulty in detecting the spaceship beneath the lake, maybe some of the enemy’s older hardware – perhaps these ground launchers – was unable to target the alien vessels. A feeling of unease came to Grisham. Maybe the HF sensors would also be incapable of detecting the spaceships of these new aliens. That would be potentially terrible for humanity.

  The kilometres went by and Grisham felt the early signs of fatigue. He didn’t need sleep, only a break from the constant focus required to pilot the transport vessel at such a low altitude.