Earthfall (20 page)

Jackson unfolded the bipod at the end of the barrel of the heavy machine gun and rested it on the sandbags of the firing-range wall, thirty metres from the main entrance door. He checked the belt of ammo that fed out of the box and into the gun, making sure that it would run smoothly and not get caught on anything. To his left, Rachel and Sam knelt behind the sandbag wall, checking the rifles that Jack had just issued to them and stacking spare magazines on the floor next to them within easy reach. Jay and Nat were on the other side of Jackson, doing exactly the same thing, with identical expressions of nervous concentration. Ten metres to the left of the firing range Jack, Kate and Adam took cover behind a pair of overturned metal cabinets, their weapons raised and ready. Twenty metres behind them Liz, Anne and Toby were crouched down behind three of the room’s concrete support pillars, holding the rifles that they had just been issued with.

Behind them the door to the Ops Area flew open and Will ran in. Anne handed him the rifle that Jack had left for him, and he took it with the same expression that he might have used if someone had just passed him a live snake.

‘Right,’ Anne said, ‘here’s what Jack told me. The safety’s off. Don’t put your finger on the trigger until you want to shoot. We don’t open fire till the Ops Team have fallen back behind us and then we just empty our rifles into anything that’s moving. Once the ammo’s gone, drop your gun and run. The Ops Team will cover our retreat upstairs. OK?’

Will nodded his agreement and crouched down behind one of the pillars, his face pale. Anne wondered if she looked just as terrified to him and decided that, yes, she probably did.

There was a sudden loud bang from the other end of the room and the heavy steel doors rattled as something hit them hard. Behind the sandbag wall, Sam pulled his rifle hard into his shoulder and his finger slipped inside the trigger guard, gently pressing the trigger. He sighted down the barrel of the gun, aiming at the dead centre of the left-hand door as it rattled again. Flashes of green light began to appear around the edges of the door as first one and then another Hunter energy blast hit it. The buzzing coming from the other side of the door was now a cacophony. He had never heard anything like it. The tunnel beyond had to be filled from floor to ceiling with Voidborn.

‘Choose your targets, controlled bursts – I don’t want any indiscriminate fire,’ Jackson said calmly as the door started to groan and buckle under the sustained assault. ‘Give ’em hell.’

The massive doors finally gave way, blowing inwards with a blinding green flash, and dozens of buzzing Hunters flew into the room. The Ops Team opened fire immediately, the roar of Jackson’s heavy machine gun drowning out the other weapons as the first wave of attackers was cut down. The Hunters returned fire; sizzling bolts of green energy lanced through the air, blowing chunks out of the sandbags and the concrete walls as the Hunters laid down a blanket of suppressing fire.

‘Keep firing!’ Jackson yelled. ‘Push them back!’

Sam tried to concentrate on individual targets, putting short bursts of fire into specific Hunters, but it was hard to track any individual target as the Hunters continued to swarm into the room.

‘Reloading!’ Rachel shouted as the magazine slid out of her rifle and clattered to the floor and she slapped a full one into place with the palm of her hand. The noise of gunfire, both human and alien, was deafening, and the smell of gunsmoke filled the air. The area around the door was now covered in the fallen bodies of countless Hunters, pools of dark green liquid surrounding them. But still they came. There was a sudden pained scream from Sam’s left.

‘Adam’s hit,’ Kate yelled.

Behind the Ops Team, Will saw Adam go down and immediately stood up, slung his rifle over his shoulder and ran for the first-aid kit that hung from a bracket on the wall nearby.

‘What are you doing?’ Anne yelled at him as he ran towards the fallen Ops Team member.

‘What I’ve been trained for,’ Will said, sprinting towards the locker from behind which Kate and Jack were still firing. He threw himself to the ground next to Adam and gently lifted the injured boy’s hand from the wound in his shoulder. Adam groaned in pain.

‘Let me see,’ Will said. He examined the wound and quickly began to apply a field dressing. ‘Don’t worry, you’re going to be fine.’ Will secretly hoped that he was not making a promise he couldn’t keep. The wound was bad and Adam was losing a lot of blood.

Sam felt like everything was going in slow motion. The sound of the gunfire was now just a continuous roaring in his ears, and inside his head he could hear the constant screeching hiss of the Hunters as they continued to pour through the door.

‘I’m out!’ Jay yelled.

‘Fall back to the secondary position!’ Jackson barked. ‘Move!’ The end of the ammunition belt fed through the machine gun and Jackson’s gun finally fell silent too. He snatched up the assault rifle that was leaning against the sandbags and continued firing into the mass of silvery creatures as the Ops Team all began a fighting withdrawal towards the exit to the upper level of the base.

‘Help me with him,’ Will said to Jack, and the two of them carried Adam towards the rear of the room. Sam and Rachel stood shoulder to shoulder, slowly backing towards their secondary firing position, still shooting as they moved. An energy bolt streaked past, within millimetres of Rachel’s head, and she hissed in pain.

‘Are you hit?’ Sam yelled over the sound of their rifles.

‘Just a scratch,’ Rachel said through gritted teeth. ‘I’m fine.’

As the Ops Team passed the concrete supports, Liz, Anne and Toby stepped out from their cover and opened fire. There was none of the Ops Team’s trained precision, but their fire was still effective in its own way as they emptied their rifles’ magazines into the advancing wave of Hunters. Sam and Rachel both grabbed fresh ammo from the cache on the table and reloaded while Jay and Nat returned to the secondary defensive line and began firing again.

‘We’re just slowing them down,’ Jay shouted. ‘I hope somebody’s got a plan for how we’re going to get out of here.’

‘Hold the line,’ Jackson said as he too opened fire. ‘Just a couple more minutes should be all Stirling needs.’

Suddenly, Toby collapsed to the floor, a smoking hole in the centre of his chest. Will rushed over to him, but he did not need his medical training to know that there was nothing he could do for him. Will looked up at Liz and shook his head.

‘Sam, Jay, stay here with me!’ Jackson yelled. ‘The rest of you upstairs NOW! Rachel, Nat, you go with them. You’re their protection if we don’t make it.’

‘What about Toby?’ Liz asked, tears in her eyes.

‘Leave him,’ Jackson said. ‘He’ll only slow us down.’

‘We can’t just . . .’

Without warning, the room was suddenly plunged into darkness, the only illumination coming from the muzzle flashes of the Ops Team’s rifles and the glowing green energy bolts of the Voidborn forces.

‘Stay calm!’ Jackson shouted. ‘They’ve taken out the generator. Backup batteries will kick in any second.’ A few seconds later, just as he had promised, the lights on the walls flared back to life. ‘Rachel, Nat, get the others upstairs!’

‘Can you walk?’ Will asked Adam.

‘I think so,’ he said with a pained grimace as Will helped him to his feet.

‘Good,’ Will said, taking Adam’s good arm over his shoulders. ‘Let’s get you out of here.’

Jackson, Sam and Jay continued laying down a withering hail of fire on the Hunters, but now that they had successfully broken through the bottleneck kill zone at the door they were able to spread out across the room and take advantage of cover in exactly the same way the humans were. Still more of the Voidborn creatures were flooding into the room behind the first wave. There were now too great a number to count.

‘There’s too many of them,’ Sam said, ducking back behind the concrete pillar as a volley of Hunter bolts slammed into it, blowing chunks out of the surface and exposing the metal rebar beneath.

‘We slow them down for as long as we can,’ Jackson said as he stepped out from behind another pillar and brought a couple of the closest Hunters down with two short bursts of fire. The Hunters had now advanced past the Armoury door, only ten metres from where Jackson, Sam and Jay were positioned. The Hunters’ onslaught was now making it almost impossible for the last members of the Ops Team to return fire.

‘Fall back!’ Jackson shouted, pulling a smoke grenade from his combat harness and rolling it towards the approaching Hunters. The canister hissed and a billowing cloud of white smoke filled the room. Jackson, Sam and Jay took advantage of the cover the smoke provided and ran through the fire door behind them.

‘You two, upstairs now,’ Jackson said. ‘I’m just going to organise a little surprise for our uninvited guests.’ He reached into the large pocket on the thigh of his combat trousers and pulled out a block of C4. Sam and Jay scrambled up the stairs as Jackson planted the charge on the top of the door frame before following them upstairs. They found the others waiting in the corridor that led to the lounge. There was no sign of Stirling.

‘Where’s the Doc?’ Jay said.

‘Don’t worry, Jacob,’ Stirling said from behind him as he walked out of the corridor that led to the lab. ‘I just had a few things to arrange.’

Suddenly, the floor shook and there was the sound of a massive explosion beneath them. Jackson came out of the stairwell in a cloud of smoke and ran down the corridor towards them all.

‘I just brought half the stairwell down on their heads,’ Jackson said. ‘It’ll slow them down, but not for long.’

‘Good. I have everything we need. It’s time that we left,’ Stirling said. ‘Get to the lounge, everyone. We’ll be right behind you. Robert, I need to speak to you in the lab.’

Sam and the others sprinted down the corridor towards the main living area as Jackson followed Stirling to the lab. Once they were inside, Stirling turned to Jackson and let out a sigh. He took the pack off his back and handed it to his friend.

‘That should be everything you need,’ Stirling said. ‘The weapon I’ve been working on is inside along with the drives containing the crash backup.’

‘What are you talking about? Why are you giving these to me?’ Jackson asked with a confused frown.

‘Because I’m not coming with you,’ Stirling replied. ‘I have to stay here.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous – no one’s staying here,’ Jackson said, shaking his head.

‘You don’t understand,’ Stirling said. ‘The computers aren’t working. I’d just finished the server backup when the Threat took out the generator. The emergency batteries only keep the lights working down here and if the facility’s network isn’t running there’s no way to remotely detonate the self-destruct charges. If I had more time, I might be able to rig up some sort of timer delay for the detonation trigger, but . . .’

There was the sudden sound of Hunter energy weapons from below as the Voidborn forces began to blast their way through the rubble blocking the Ops Area door.

‘We don’t have any time,’ Jackson said. He looked Stirling in the eye for a second and then, holding the pack out towards him, he shook his head. ‘You’re not staying, Iain, I am.’

‘No, Robert,’ Stirling said, refusing to take the pack. ‘It’s my mistake. I never considered the possibility that we’d need to trigger the self-destruct while we were running on backup power. It was a stupid oversight. I . . .’

‘Iain, I’m just a grunt,’ Jackson said. ‘Those kids need you a lot more than they need me. I’ve taught them how to fight, but they don’t know how to do everything that you can do. In this war, knowledge is power and you might be the only man on the planet who knows enough about those things up there to be able to give us all a fighting chance. We can’t afford to lose you. You take those kids and you get them the hell out of here. I’ll make sure you’re not followed.’

Stirling stared at his friend for several seconds and then hung his head with a sigh.

‘Over here,’ he said, beckoning for Jackson to follow him to a workbench that ran along the wall. An open breaker box was fixed to the wall above the counter and two wires led down from it to a car battery. One was already attached to one of the battery’s terminals, but the other sat loose on the countertop.

‘It’s very simple,’ Stirling said. ‘Touch the wire to the positive terminal and . . . well . . . you know what happens.’

‘Got it,’ Jackson said. ‘Now get out of here.’

Stirling turned to leave and then stopped.

‘Robert, I’m . . .’

‘I know, now go.’

Stirling slung the pack over his shoulder and walked quickly out of the room without looking back. He ran down the corridor to the lounge area and saw Sam and Jay standing on either side of the doorway with their weapons raised.

‘Time to go, gentlemen,’ Stirling said as he walked past them. He had a look on his face that suggested he was not in the mood for a discussion. He walked into the lounge area and saw Will applying another dressing to the wound in Adam’s shoulder.

‘Rachel, Kate, would you move that table out of the way, please,’ Stirling said, gesturing to the large circular table that sat at one end of the room. The two girls lifted the table between them and moved it to one side of the room. Stirling walked over and pulled the worn-looking rug that had been under the table to one side. Underneath was a heavy metal hatch cover with a recessed keyhole in it. He lifted the hatch cover to reveal a ladder leading down a concrete tube that disappeared into darkness a few metres below.