Waiting outside until he was called in, Grisham studied the other soldiers, as well as the Marauder’s crew. The troops were outwardly calm, though watchful at the same time. Meanwhile, Grisham’s crew were coping well enough. He met Commander Deneuve’s eyes and she offered him a smile.

  “Captain Grisham, it’s safe for you to enter,” said Maxwell.

  “Acknowledged.”

  Grisham passed through what had originally been an airlock space. The wind lessened immediately and much of the noise went too, though he could still hear it rushing by outside.

  A few metres away, the inner airlock door was open and its access panel was also green. A layer of char covered everything. Where outside, the sand had scoured the walls clear, here where it was sheltered, everything was filthy.

  This was the start of the search and Grisham hoped it would be a short one. Luck hadn’t been on his side so far on this mission, but he always tried to look on the bright side. Once he sent that comm to base, he’d have plenty of time to find out what had happened here on Ovintus.

  EIGHT

  Grisham stepped out of the airlock and into an expansive, high-ceilinged space that was likely once an operational area of the building, filled with consoles and other tech. Now, everything was melted into lumps and the stench of burned plastics lingered.

  Three exits led from the room – one in each of the north, east and west walls. Under Maxwell’s guidance, the soldiers were soon heading deeper into the building. The squad comms was muted, except for updates necessary to coordinate the search.

  “If this is what the rest of the comms hub is like, we won’t be sending a transmission anywhere,” said Lieutenant Lopez. “That booster pack needs to be plugged in via an interface port.”

  “First we have to confirm this is a comms hub,” said Grisham. “So far I haven’t seen any proof.”

  A fist-sized sphere lay on the floor nearby, covered in char, and he stooped to pick it up. When he rubbed the object on his combat suit to remove some of the grime, he discovered it was made from glass or a similar material. Inside were colours of red and green and blue, like splatters of paint were suspended within. How this trinket had survived the heat, Grisham didn’t know, and he placed it back on the floor.

  The figure of Sergeant Maxwell appeared in the north door. “Captain Grisham, I’ve located something that might be the comms antenna.”

  Grisham hurried for the door and his crew followed. The floor was littered with indistinguishable lumps and he had to watch each step. A short corridor outside led to another room, this one about ten metres square and with a similarly high ceiling. This place was also thoroughly burned out. The consoles in here had been larger than those in the previous room and they’d been arranged in a circle around a three-metre cube.

  “Data storage?” said Lieutenant Adler.

  “Maybe,” said Grisham.

  “Through here, sir,” said Maxwell, gesturing towards the next door, again in the north wall. Then, he pointed at the floor behind one of the consoles. “These might be bodies. I’ll get Private Franklin to check them out later, though there’s not much left to plug his med-box into.”

  Grisham crossed the room. He paused to look where Maxwell had indicated behind one of the ruined consoles. Two roughly Kijol-sized smears of carbon lay on the floor. When Grisham squinted, he could just about imagine them to have once been bodies, but he had no way to be sure.

  “If you knew whether or not those Kijol were dead before the incendiaries came, it would give you an idea of the situation on this installation, sir,” said Maxwell.

  “That’s good point,” said Grisham. He lifted his gaze. “Unfortunately, I don’t think we’re going to get answers from these marks on the floor.”

  Maxwell didn’t reply and he exited the room into another corridor. This passage led to yet another room – one that Grisham reckoned occupied the central area of the building.

  “Bingo,” said Lieutenant Lopez, entering the room right behind him.

  This space was twenty metres along each of its sides and with a ceiling twenty metres above. From here, the building’s lean appeared even more pronounced and the creaking of the walls echoed around. The floorspace was occupied by more burned-out tech, and Grisham spotted some other marks on the floor that, now the idea was in his mind, he thought might have once been Kijol.

  A square post, four metres wide, rose from the floor and went through the ceiling. It was the housing for the comms antenna. Grisham had seen similar before – the antenna itself would be cylindrical and this cladding was here for support and protection, and possibly to keep the comms personnel shielded from emissions.

  “What do you think, Lieutenant Lopez?” asked Grisham.

  “The tilt of the building is likely to have damaged the antenna,” she said. “If we can find someplace to plug in Corporal Barkley’s comms pack, it should be able to run a resistance check that will give us an idea of how badly any of our transmissions will degrade.”

  Lopez crossed to the base of the antenna and walked around it slowly, hunting for a physical port. Every now and then, she reached out and wiped at the grime coating the metal. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Bishop cast his eye over the surrounding console hardware.

  “There’s no way in hell we’re going to plug into any of these,” he said, giving one of the consoles a casual kick.

  “And the antenna housing down here is too badly burned,” said Lopez. She wiped again at an area near the base. “I think this was an interface panel, but it’s unusable now.”

  “Corporal Fine is searching for a way up,” said Maxwell. He looked around “I know this place is a mess, but I’ve seen worse. It’s likely the upper levels escaped the worst of it.”

  Grisham agreed. The incendiary flames would have washed through the open doors and melted everything they touched. However, the upper levels might have only been subjected to scalding hot air. It was possible some of the tech had survived.

  At that moment, Corporal Fine spoke on the squad comms to announce she’d located steps to the next level up.

  “Let’s go check it out,” said Grisham.

  The steps were on the north side of the building and to reach them, Grisham and his crew had to cross another two rooms, these appearing to mirror those through which they’d passed on the way to the antenna.

  Private Vaughan was waiting at the entrance to the stairwell. “In there,” he said, thumbing over his shoulder.

  Maxwell went first, his gun ready, even though Fine had reported no threats. Following after, Grisham climbed the steps quickly, his footsteps producing no sound. The tilt of the building had distorted the stairwell, adding enough of a slant to the treads that he preferred to keep one hand on the wall to steady himself. All the while, the groaned of overstressed alloy continued and he could feel the structure swaying slightly with the wind.

  Welcome to the Kijol House of Fun.

  The stairs emerged onto the upper level. Wind blew strongly through the broken windows Grisham had seen from outside, bringing sand with it.

  He could straightaway see that the incendiaries had caused much less damage here than they had below. While the consoles were badly burned, their screens blistered and their input panels useless, the hardware at least retained its shape. The wind and sand had removed much of the char, but now everything looked centuries old, rather than cutting edge.

  “I’m not sure any of this will be usable,” said Deneuve.

  “I think our best hope is to plug directly into the antenna,” said Lopez. “Failing that, we might find some operational hardware on the next floor up. Or the floor after that.”

  Grisham didn’t much want to go any higher than this storey. At least here the mission personnel had a chance of surviving if the building fell.

  “The antenna is through the south door, sir,” said Maxwell. “Corporal Fine is waiting for us there.”

  Grisham was about to leave when he caught sight of a shape through one of the two windows in this room. He took a few steps closer. The aperture was chest high and a metre deep, and its window was completely gone.

  Peering into the sandstorm, Grisham realised the shape he’d seen was the deployment vessel. Private Law was holding it steady at a two-hundred-metre altitude over the southern edge of the landing strip. The Daxin star was a pale orb overhead, descending as the planet’s day approached mid-afternoon.

  “Anything to report, Private Law?” asked Grisham on the comms.

  “Negative, sir.”

  Grisham was about to turn away, when he spotted a flicker of orange in the gloom. “Shit!” he yelled.

  The deployment vessel erupted into a vast explosion of white-hot plasma flames. Instinctively, Grisham averted his eyes and the visor on his suit helmet darkened automatically.

  “The shuttle is down!” he yelled.

  As soon as the blast had faded, Grisham looked outside again. Little remained of the deployment vessel other than a few pieces of blazing debris on the ground.

  Maxwell sprinted over and stood on the opposite side of the window. He looked out quickly and then withdrew his head. “What did that, sir?”

  “It’s got to be the Kijol,” said Grisham.

  “What if it was those other aliens, sir?”

  “I have a feeling we’ll soon find out.”

  The distant sound of a Charos drive came to Grisham and he turned his helmet microphone towards the window aperture to see if he could pinpoint the direction it was coming from. Not that it mattered. The deployment vessel was down and whatever was piloting the inbound warship was sure to investigate further.

  “There,” said Maxwell. “It’s heading north-east.”

  Grisham saw it too. The familiar shape of a Kijol Achirus flew directly in front of the sun. It was travelling faster than sound and the bass of its engines trailed it across the sky. Then, the warship banked south and Grisham knew exactly where it was heading.

  “That’s an Achirus cruiser,” he said. “We’re in the shit,” he added, in case Maxwell hadn’t already figured it out.

  “The place I spend most of my life, sir,” said Maxwell. To Grisham’s surprise, the soldier grinned broadly.

  “Those cruisers sometimes carry more than five thousand troops, Sergeant,” said Grisham, without a smile to return. “We should get the hell away from here.” He stepped away from the window, taking care that he wouldn’t be visible from outside. “But first we’re going to check out that comms antenna.”

  “We might still have time to make it out of here and into a different building, sir,” said Maxwell, his face grim again.

  “There’s not a chance of that, Sergeant,” said Grisham. “The first thing the enemy vessel will do is park over this area of the installation and scan for ground movement. Our only hope is that if it finds nothing, it’ll move east or west.”

  “After landing a bunch of Kijol soldiers,” said Maxwell.

  “If you know what it’s like to be deep in the crap, you must know what it’s like when your head goes under, Sergeant.”

  “Yes, sir.” Maxwell looked like he was done talking, but then he asked another question. “What’s the likelihood the crew on the Achirus will decide it’s easier to saturate the area with missiles?”

  “Let’s hope they don’t, Sergeant.”

  Grisham hurried across the room to the south door, cursing his continued bad luck. With nowhere to go and no spaceship to get him there anyway, it would be only a matter of time before this game was over.

  Assuming the cruiser didn’t simply bombard the area with missiles – which was a real possibility – its commanding officer had other options. A large-scale troop deployment, with cruiser assisting in the search, would soon locate Grisham and everyone else. The enemy were persistent and the chances of them giving up on the search were slim.

  Exiting the room, Grisham followed a corridor. Sergeant Maxwell was a couple of paces behind, telling the soldiers about the downturn in their fortunes and giving out orders.

  The next room had the same arrangement of consoles around a central cube that Grisham had seen on the floor below. He didn’t stop, though Lieutenant Lopez slowed to inspect the hardware. It didn’t take her longer than a couple of seconds to decide that salvation did not lie in this room.

  Entering the central area, Grisham strode directly across to the antenna housing. Over the course of the last few seconds, the sound of the cruiser’s Charos drive had become more pervasive, and still it rose in volume. Grisham had no doubt the warship would soon be directly overhead.

  “That Achirus is new-gen model, Captain,” said Deneuve. “When we were on Bastion, I checked out some of the feed recordings from our recent engagements with similar vessels.”

  “As did I, Commander. I’d like to say it’s a shame we know so little about that vessel’s enhanced capabilities, but we’re a problem that doesn’t require an entire Achirus cruiser to resolve, whatever generation its hardware.”

  While he talked, Grisham searched clockwise for an interface port on the antenna housing. Meanwhile, Lopez went the other way, also searching. Lieutenant Bishop went from console to console, hunting for somewhere to plug in the comms booster.

  “Here!” said Lopez. She switched to the squad open channel. “Corporal Barkley, can you—”

  As if by magic, though more likely because he was already heading this way, Barkley emerged through the eastern door before Lopez had finished speaking.

  “Here’s the booster, ma’am,” said Barkley, striding over and dropping one shoulder so that the comms pack slid down his arm. “Tell me if you need anything.”

  Lopez got down in front of an interface panel that was part char and part grey. She opened the front flap of the booster pack and then pulled out a wire from the side. Inspecting the plug at the end of the wire, Lopez nodded to herself that it would fit.

  Grisham stood nearby, diverting his attention between what Lopez was doing and the sound of the cruiser’s Charos drive. The propulsion was so loud that he doubted he could have made himself heard were it not for the comms unit in his suit. Everything vibrated with the bass, yet still the creaking of the tower walls was audible.

  “Just need to clean this up a bit,” said Lopez. She’d found a piece of cloth somewhere and gave the interface panel a wipe. To Grisham’s eye it looked as if she were only moving the dirt around.

  “Done,” said Lopez.

  She pushed the business end of the booster pack wire into the interface panel. At first, the plug wouldn’t go in, but with a few curses and some additional force, it clicked into place.

  “I’m going to run a resistance test,” Lopez said, pushing a couple of virtual buttons on the comms pack’s screen. “Let’s see what happens…shit.”

  “That isn’t what I wanted to hear, Lieutenant.”

  “We won’t be getting rescued anytime this year if we send a transmission through this antenna, sir,” said Lopez. “The resistance test failed with a zero-point-three result.”

  “What kind of result did we need?”

  “A seventy or higher.”

  “So we’re way off.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Every pair of eyes went to Grisham. As the senior officer, the next decision would fall to him. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any ideas – or none that would do anything more than stave off the inevitable. Even without the Achirus cruiser hovering overhead, the mission personnel were stuck here on Ovintus.

  After many years of fighting and many skin-of-the-teeth escapes, Grisham knew his luck had finally run out.

  At that moment, Private Chau reported on the comms that he’d sighted an armoured Kijol transport coming in from the north.

  The end of the road was near.

  NINE

  Grisham sprinted north through the building and joined Private Chau at the left-hand window. Maxwell and Fine weren’t far behind, though Grisham’s crew and Corporal Barkley remained in the antenna room in the hope they could figure out a way to send a fast transmission to an HF proxy hub.

  “I’d say it’s a three-hundred-seater out there,” said Chau. He had his back to the wall next to the window and he was holding a thin, extendible rod with a half-inch sensor on top. Raising his arm, he poked the sensor a little way across the window aperture. “Maybe four hundred.”

  “Too many for us to handle,” said Maxwell.

  “Pass me that sensor,” said Grisham.

  Chau obliged and Grisham linked to the device. The sensor began streaming a feed onto his HUD and he lifted the rod so he could view outside.

  “The Achirus is right on top of us,” he confirmed. “I’d guess its altitude is three thousand metres.”

  “You saw the transport, sir?” asked Chau.

  “Yes,” said Grisham. “It’s stationary a couple of hundred metres up and a few hundred metres north of where our deployment vessel came down.”

  “How many shoulder rockets could it soak?” asked Maxwell.

  “Four, maybe more.”

  “Private Lowe is a good shot, so I’ll call it four,” said Maxwell. “And that’s two more than he’ll be able to land before all hell is unleashed upon this building.”

  Grisham thought hard. He was accustomed to fighting his way out of tight corners, but it was different on the ground. “Sergeant Maxwell, do you have any suggestions?”

  “I promised my wife I’d never give up while there’s breath in my lungs, sir, but I can’t see a clean way out of this one.” His expression showed he was still trying figure something out. “My recommendation is that we gather up on the ground floor and make a run through the south door. There was an entrance to another building directly opposite, no more than thirty metres away. Maybe the sensor crew on the Achirus will be looking the other way when we make our run.”

  “Then that’s what we’ll do,” said Grisham. He didn’t mention what everyone was thinking – that the Achirus crew already knew HF military personnel were here. It was sure they’d be looking straight down into the installation. “Like before, you handle the squad and my crew will stay close.”