Crystal Venom (6 page)

The major went to his main weapons expert. ‘Harry, quick idea?’

‘Well, if that sub is tough enough to withstand those critters, it could probably survive smart depth charges, sir.’

The major gave a curt nod. ‘Fritz, flash her the specs of what’s coming down the chute, advise her we are trying to help.’

The seconds ticked past before Fritz spoke. ‘She acknowledges, sir, but is being very rude about it. Says she has some missiles left and if she goes down, we will as well.’

The major shrugged. ‘Fire the squibs. Watch for missile launch. Deploy craft Orbital countermeasures. Marko, get the drones to clear the blast area.’

They could feel the thumps on the outer hull as the packages of mini-explosive squibs were fired from their mortars. Harry had suggested, before they put to sea, that they would be perfect for the octopoids. Dozens of the fist-sized directional grenades, each with a pair of high-speed water jets attached, sprayed out to circle and sink around Fritz’s ‘anomaly’, the mercenary sub.

Marko could see the aerial missile countermeasures drones start to circle
Mudshark,
as
Mudshark
itself continued to orbit above the ocean waves with the sub at its centre. The drones spaced out so that any three of them could see each quadrant around
Mudshark.
The teardrop-shaped lifting bodies had stubby wings, carried six short-range micro-missiles each, plus a small powerful pulse laser, with a comms system that created a swarm mentality between them.

The submerged drones moved at full speed out of the blast area but he noted that two were very slow. ‘Five and Seven appear to be damaged. They will probably not make it. Replacements on standby.’

The rail guns started firing as targets were acquired around the comms buoy. Fritz saw how close the octopoids were to the buoy so he brought another one online, then held it in the launch mortar tube on standby.

Fritz took down all communications a fraction of a second before the squibs’ detonation and then brought them up again just as the comms buoy was destroyed by a ricochet with a howling screech erupting from all their headphones. With his ears ringing, Marko advised, ‘Drones Five and Seven destroyed, replacements away. Reserve down to five. Aerial drones reconfigured for water surface operations if required. New comms buoy in position in thirty seconds.’

The major growled. ‘OK. Jan, watch that shooting, we only have one other comms bouy in reserve!’

Jan yelled back. ‘Sorry, the round bounced off a large octopoid which was on an intercept with us. It is no longer.’

The major resisted the urge to glance over his shoulder at her, looking down at his screens instead, only to see more of the creatures rising to the churning sea surface. ‘Damn! Increase speed to max, height to max. I wonder if these things can launch themselves out of the water? Jig and jive, Harry!’

Bugger, Marko thought, as he always hated that movement. He loaded a motion-sickness package into his bloodstream from his bioware as Jan yelled again: ‘Sir, we have octopoids, big bastards, landing on the rear housings! So, yes, they most definitely can launch themselves from the water! They are ripping the covers off the AG units!’

‘Shit! Jan, deal with them as best you can; I am releasing the AI proxies to your control.’

Seconds later Marko saw the titanium-clad proxies appear on each side of the rear deck, firing slow-speed big-calibre gel rounds at the octopoids. As the gel rounds hit, they ripped away great lumps of flesh and gristle, injuring the main body parts of the creatures so that they slumped and slid off the casings into the sea below.

Marko’s system warnings were starting to go off as his hearing recovered. ‘We have critical damage. Port-side AG unit is dropping power, sir; down nine per cent and falling. I have compensated. Coolant levels are also down; if we can get it, we need additional fuel water.’

‘Do the best you can, Marko, I will not risk sucking some of those critters into the water tanks.’

‘Understood. I have maxed the atmospheric collection,’ Marko said, as Fritz interrupted.

‘Gjomvik pilot says she is going to surface, then eject. At her current speed she will surface in five minutes. Says she is covered in the octopoids, with a very large one trying to drag her back down. She has a major problem with her propulsion system. Says she is going to go for a rapid surfacing and try to get clear as her craft hits the surface. Gutsy!’

‘Fritz, kamikaze the nearest drone into that big octopoid!’

‘On it!’

The closest drone peeled in towards the slowly surfacing submarine and accelerated to its maximum speed, driving itself deeply into the giant squid-like creature before collapsing its tiny antimatter core containment, with the resulting explosion shredding the creature into dozens of pieces. The submarine accelerated upwards, no longer being held back, although smaller creatures still attempted to intercept it, as the major barked out, ‘Glint, get to the Manta. I will open the main hangar door so you can launch the Harpoon. Do this right, people, and we will get the pilot and the sub.’ They all nodded as he added: ‘Fritz, get the specs on the sub’s ejection pod. Tell her she will not survive if she goes into the ocean with those bastards down there. We are going to have to go for an aerial recovery.’

Fritz spoke while his fingers flew in a blur over three separate touch panels. ‘Acknowledged; have the info. Pod is basic teardrop configuration of 1200mm diameter, 3200mm long. Has a small antigravity unit capable of sustaining the pod at ten metres up for three hours.’

‘Good. Fritz, put two of the airborne drones on the surface to act as backup comms links.’ The units instantly decelerated and dropped down onto the water, watching for the ascending sub.

Fritz counted down. ‘Two minutes to surface on my count. Stand by, stand by, five, four, three, two, one, mark! I have the emergence point, as indicated on screens.’

The major took control and swung
Mudshark
in a hard banking turn, which it was probably never designed to do, then deployed the main air brakes, dropping the speed to one hundred kilometres per hour as he yelled out, ‘Jan, everything you have across the emergence point, please. Door coming open; hang on everyone — this is going to be interesting. As soon as you get a target, Glint, fire!’

Mudshark
was pitching, rolling and yawing in an alarming fashion. The major and Harry, even with the aid of the computers and the AIs, were barely maintaining control of the craft as they approached the emergence spot at speed. Between them they were all furiously compensating for the now-open front hangar door and ramp and the constantly moving turrets of the rail guns. Jan timed it perfectly, halting fire and switching targets just as the Gjomvik one-man sub erupted out of the water, rising a full four metres or so from the surface with another large octopoid clinging to its stern.

The Harpoon flashed across the rapidly closing space between them and the sub, as the ejection system ripped the entire front cone, housing the cockpit, off the wasp-shaped machine, and blasted it into the air. Simultaneously, something — and Marko could only presume it was Glint — engaged the largest octopoid on the remains of the sub as it started to splash back onto the surface. The entire head portion of the creature disintegrated and the thought flashed through his head: That’s some very efficient shit in action!

The major hauled the nose of the protesting
Mudshark
high into the air, following the ejection pod, as two large octopoids exploded through the ocean’s surface, seizing onto the pod. An instant later the entire assemblage of pod and octopoids smashed in through the open hangar doors to crash hard against the left side of the enclosure, shoving
Mudshark
hard to port.

Marko’s control panel was going berserk. The ammunition power feed onto the starboard guns had become intermittent and Jan was yelling in his ear to get it back online; the ramp hydraulics were jammed solid as linear gun rounds from Glint blew the remains of an octopoid right through it. The starboard main propulsion was rapidly going offline with small octopoids slithering into its air intakes and causing it to rapidly drop thrust, slewing the whole craft sideways as the port-side thruster tried to keep forward speed. Marko cut power to it and ramped up the centre thruster to one hundred and ten per cent.

The port-side AG unit was also failing, further dropping them dangerously towards a rollover point as the major, who was hell bent on legging it out of the area, poured on the power. They had a flash message from Fritz that he had the sub under his command and had it making best speed full astern, away from the area. Marko overrode the major’s command protocols and lowered the front cockpit as best as he could to try and tidy up the airflow, and at the same time Harry was overriding Jan’s control of the guns, hauling them back towards the body of the craft.

The sea, twelve metres below them, was a boiling confusion of small octopoids trying to launch themselves on board; the countermeasure orbiting sentries destroyed most of them but dozens still made it onto the ship. As Marko glanced into the side monitor to see what was happening in the hangar, it appeared to be complete bedlam. Glint seemed to be trying to shoot the remaining large octopoid in the head, without destroying whatever was in line of sight behind it. The octopoid seemed more determined to get at the sub’s pilot, with the engineering proxy arriving to try to get to her first and protect her.

Marko shunted all the remaining hydraulics into getting the guns snug against the ship’s body again as the starboard ammo feed failed completely. He equalised the power to the starboard AG unit and fired up the main hover fans as their craft sank closer to the surface. The major was yelling at Base for immediate air support, and if possible bombardment from the Orbitals. The Games Board were, of course, countering the requests, citing that the crew’s predicament made for really good AV. The Games Board monitors seemed to be smiling at everything, to say nothing of the bandwidth they were hogging while they uploaded the action.

The Intel AI proxy had disappeared from the rear deck as there were no more larger octopoids to engage and seconds later Marko watched as it powered out of the hangar with the now battered octopoid in tow and Glint still attached, dragonlike, biting deeply down into its head. The octopoid was flung sideways into their slipstream as an obviously protesting Glint was unceremoniously seized by a leg and dragged off the creature by the proxy who, with its full flight systems engaged, looked like an avenging angel towing the devil’s own hound. The sight obviously delighted the Games Board monitors as one of them actually laughed, something Marko had heard only very rarely.

Marko’s control board was, if anything, getting worse. The port-side weapon was no longer moving towards the body of their ship. Jan was still engaging as many targets as possible with it, including some rather nice shooting blowing the smaller alien creatures off the housings of
Mudshark.
He was trying to get the starboard ammo feed sorted while balancing the craft at the same time, but it was no use. They still had a dangerous list to port, and at their current speed there was no way they could make a safe transition to full hovercraft surface mode. The only good thing was that fewer octopoids were presenting themselves on the surface.

Marko made his assessments. ‘Boss, we have to lose the port-side gun assembly. Starboard one is offline, although the Tech AI says he needs five minutes to sort it with Glint’s help, and requests Flint as well. In four minutes we will impact the surface anyway.’

The major, who was still wrestling with the controls, barked out, ‘Lose it!’

Jan yelled in response. ‘Give me five seconds, Marko!’

She fed commands to the pod and stopped the ammo feeds as Marko engaged and then fired the cut-away charges when she nodded at him, the whole assembly dropping and spinning away to clip the port outer thruster with the resulting bang felt right through the ship. The craft now rolled until it was only a few degrees off the horizontal.

‘Rigged for surface operations, pilot,’ Marko said.

‘Stand by, stand by, gun pod detonation in five seconds,’ Jan called.

The major smiled, thinking what an excellent crew he had. ‘OK Jan, nice work, that will sort out some of those bloody things at least.’

The sea hundreds of metres behind them suddenly heaved as the rail guns were deliberately electronically overloaded some twenty metres down under the water.

‘Transitioning to surface. What can you give me, Marko?’

‘Basically full hover, sir. The fuel feeds can now be augmented with the sea water. Will be a dirty oxygen/hydrogen catalytic cracking, but considering we will be with friendlies soon, I hope, the converters will hold out. I can now also cool the port-side AG unit and hopefully get that back online. Best speed in our current state is seventy-five kilometres per hour. Glint reports that the starboard ammo feeds have been further damaged by small octopoids. They may be able to get one single gun operational within fifteen minutes.’

The major nodded and turned to Jan. ‘Status?’

‘The surviving probes have either been recovered, or are covering the Gjomvik sub. The pilot has been identified as Squadron Leader Eva Marks. Intel considers her an important capture, as she is a senior member of Leopard Strike and is their Intel analyst. She is currently in sick bay, unconscious. The octopoid came very close to killing her. She is stabilised but needs major reconstruction work on her skull and upper body.