Gamma Nine (Book One) (22 page)

“Its
destination is unknown, it keeps changing course every few minutes,
picking its direction at random. It’s either going deeper in or
escaping the asteroid field. Just keep following it,” Remy said
over her shoulder to her Captain, adding a slight tone of sarcasm
to the last part.

Gray smiled as
he wrenched the controls attached to his arms, flipping the
Hyperion upside down to pass through an opening between two
drifting rock mines. At least her mind was not stuck on Nox’s death
anymore, the current task taking focus off the horrible fate of the
billions of people on the destroyed planet they were now flying
through.

The Fateful
Moment changed course again, bringing its enormous metal body into
a sweeping turn, diving as it turned, causing even more confusion
to Remy and her calculations.

Remy sighed as
she watched its manoeuvre through the bridge’s view ports, blowing
loose hair from her face in mute frustration. She bit her lip,
undoubtedly holding back a string of curses. “This is impossible
sir, it’s just too unpredictable. I can only guess what the pilot
of that ship will do next.”

“I don’t think
that is a pilot, no-one in their right mind would be so foolish,
burning their engines like that through a mine field of asteroids.
It’s something else, something that has no fear.” Gray kept
following the Fateful Moment, matching the cargo vessel’s turn and
dive, slipping back into its fire trail. “Give it up my dear, help
with the communications problem; find me a voice on that ship.”

“On it
Captain,” Remy said, stalking over to the consoles where the
communication officers were seated, ordering one of them to stand
and give her a seat.

Gray was too
busy trying not to hit anything to hear what Remy said to the
officer she stole a seat from, but it was probably extremely rude,
knowing the girl’s temper very well. He checked the timer at the
bottom of his central display, it did not look good, the chase had
already been going on for forty-five minutes, they were almost
half-way to the Fateful Moment’s reactors going critical from the
strain the thing operating it was putting it under. Soon the
engines would begin to flare and crack, leaking extra fire into the
silent void as the metal casings around the engines disintegrated.
Not long after that the reactors would go critical, and then there
would be nothing left of the vessel the Hyperion was chasing.

Captain Gray
needed to talk to Locke, or Sabian, or even Gunn, anyone would do
at this point in time. Time, he thought, something that was always
in such a short supply.

The battle
inside the ventilation system was becoming a stalemate, neither
side making any ground, both sides taking losses. All of the Wolves
still fought on, their armour baring only superficial damage from
scrapes caused by claws and bone blades. The Lancers were the ones
suffering the most, their numbers down to only three capable
fighters. Four had died already, and one man was never going to see
daylight again, his chest plate was a carved mess of flesh and
armour. He was slumped against the opposite side of the
intersection, firing down the line Xander was not covering with his
nearly depleted pistol. The dying Lancer was named Randal, and he
was one of the bravest and strongest men Pyoter had ever seen. Even
as he was dying, knowing full-well that he would not get out of the
ducts alive, he still fought on. Using one of his legs to rest his
rifle on, he fired down the tunnel in front of him, killing the
beasts in droves that tried to get close to the middle of the
line.

Borstil was
crouched next to Randal, almost sitting on top of him, helping the
man reload his rifle once he had emptied a clip. Randal coughed
blood as he fired, but he never let up, even firing anti-personnel
grenades from his barrel-mounted launcher down the duct,
obliterating the duct and whatever was moving through it.

Randal was
single-handedly clogging up the cross tunnel, stemming the flow of
monsters converging on the rag-tag squad.

Pyoter reached
for a fallen Lancer’s rifle that lay nearby in a pool of blood from
its previous owner. He gripped it with is right hand, Locke had
stopped firing, giving the giant Titan some breathing room, room to
move his arms at least.

Pyoter threw
the rifle closer to Randal, nodding at the dying man with his
utmost respect. He spoke as Randal’s weakened neck tilted his head
to look at Pyoter. “End it...Hero,” Pyoter said to the Lancer.

Randal
understood immediately, as did Borstil. Borstil lifted Randal’s
other leg and positioned the second rifle to rest on top of it. He
loaded both rifles with a high-explosive grenade and tapped Randal
on the shoulder. Xander had followed the exchange as he was
reloading his pistol, inserting one of his last three clips into
his beloved weapon.

Xander
holstered it the moment Borstil tapped Randal on the shoulder,
unhooking two devices from the belt around his waist, priming them
with a click and turn, waiting for the terminal Lancer to say his
most favourite phrase.

“Fire in the
hole!” Randal announced with rasping breaths. He pulled the trigger
on the both rifles; the launchers clicked and made a hollow thunk
sound as they hurled the high-explosive rounds down the ventilation
duct.

Xander threw
both primed devices he was holding in his hand down the same duct
less than a second after Randal had fired.

There was an
eerie silence from all of the squad members as they braced
themselves for the fire storm that was about to break out.

Jay, Borstil
and the third surviving Lancer, Stevens, dropped to the ground the
moment the fire erupted down the dark tunnel, the Wolves did not
move, showing no fear.

A cacophony of
sounds washed over the squad, the screams of the dying beasts mixed
with the deafening sound of a powerful blast. The fire erupted from
the tunnel, engulfing everything down the other three tunnels. The
fire burned with hellish heat, as if the flames were summoned from
Hades itself.

Fire never
discriminated when it burned, burning metal and organic as it ate
at everything in the confined spaces of the vents. Luckily the
Wolves and Lancers were protected against such hazards. The Wolves
could withstand thousands of degrees inside their suits without
breaking a sweat from the heat. The Lancer’s basic armour offered
less protection, but was enough to protect them from the fire storm
rushing over their prone bodies.

The fire ate up
all the oxygen inside the tunnels in mere seconds, and it
spluttered out as the last sparks of flame vanished in unseen
corners of the ventilation system.

In its wake,
the storm had charred everything charcoal black, scorching armour,
removing paint, melting weaker metals and burning organic matter
into ash.

The two
monsters Nathan was fighting were reduced to smouldering heaps of
melting flesh and bone. Nathan lowered his shield and scanned the
scene around the intersection as he caught his breath. Nothing
moved except the Wolves and Lancers, and nothing could be heard
down the tunnels leading into the intersection. Everything was
silent, that strange silence that followed death wherever it
went.

Bodies of dead
Lancers and beasts were nothing but paste on the floor, the fire
finding purchase inside the armour of the dead or dying Lancers.
The beasts never stood a chance once the fire started eating at
their flesh, consuming their matter with ease. It was almost ironic
in some way, how the monster’s hunger was nothing compared to the
hunger of the inferno.

Randal was
dead; his body was vaporized below his legs, having had his legs in
the direct blast of the fire storm. His eyes were closed and his
head rested on his chest, the metal from his helmet melted into his
chest plate.

Borstil, Jay
and Stevens had survived, their armour blackened, but intact. The
parts that were less protected between the metal plating of the
Lancers had suffered some warping, but nothing that compromised the
integrity of their standard armour.

Christian had
seized the opportunity the fire storm had created and had severed
the head from the slab of meat he had been grappling with. He had
pinned it against the duct wall with his shield as the flames
consumed its flesh, using a back-handed swipe with his combat blade
to detach the thing’s awful head. Christian stood, his armour
steaming from the heat, breathing deep as his suit filtered the
thin scorched air in the duct. He looked at Nathan, and for the
first time his brother gave him a nod, it might have been a tiny
gesture, but to Christian it meant so much more. Christian did not
dwell on it for too long, they were far from escaping the trap. He
turned and walked to the intersection. He assessed the rest of the
squad, taking deep breaths as he tried to calm himself after the
adrenaline rush from battle.

Rivers’ back
was scorched and he was complaining about how he would have to
repaint his suit again. Locke, Pyoter and Xander were not fazed by
the fire. Xander was helping the remaining Lancers, gathering ammo
from the weapons that did not completely melt during the blaze.
Pyoter was sitting on his knees, just looking at the dead men in
the intersection.

Locke was
tapping his helmet with his armoured fingers, shaking his head as
if trying to clear something from it.

Christian was
about to ask his captain what he was doing, but Locke spoke
first.

“Can you hear
that?” Locke asked the rest of his squad.

“Captain, I
found someone, patching it through to your station,” Remy yelled
over the bridge, she was almost as relieved as Gray was,
almost.

“Thank the
stars,” Gray whispered to himself with a sigh of relief. He
mentally pressed the incoming transmission button he saw in his
mind, his connection with the Ship’s OS made it possible to see
virtual representations of the entire Hyperion’s systems.

The voice he
heard was the one he was hoping to hear, it sounded hollow as if
the person on the other end was speaking into a metal can, an
anomaly attributed to the filtering on all military analogue
channels. But it did not matter to Gray; he was just overjoyed to
hear the voice of Locke on the other side of the transmission.

“Willis? What’s
going on? Remy sounded...troubled,” Locke asked the old ship
captain.

“There is no
time for the long version, so here are the details as things
developed out here. Nox is gone. We are currently flying through
what is left of it. That damned ship you are on is making a run for
it, we don’t know where it is going, but we are following it,” Gray
said, pausing as he dodged another ship-sized asteroid. He wanted
to continue but Locke cut him off before he could speak again.

“Do you have
any good news Willis? You are seriously darkening my mood.” Locke’s
sarcasm was obvious as he waited for Gray to reply.

There was that
rebel soul he liked in the Titan captain. Gray grinned at the
sarcasm; even in such dire circumstances Locke still had a sense of
humour. “I don’t want to spoil you Gabriel. You might just get an
even bigger ego.”

“Anything else
you want to spoil my day with?” Locke chuckled between words. The
light-hearted comment from Gray helped to take Locke’s mind of the
current situation, if only for a moment.

“Well, just
because you asked. It’s burning its engines at maximum, and has
been for more than an hour, meaning...” Gray trailed off, waiting
for Locke to complete the sentence.

“Meaning we are
in serious trouble.”

“You have about
an hour before she goes critical, and less if you want to escape.
The Hyperion will pursue as long as we can, probably until the end,
we won’t leave you.”

“It’s the AIE,
it’s trying to kill us and everything nearby, and the Hyperion
seems to be on the list of things that need to be wiped out.”

Gray’s blood
went ice-cold. “Impossible, none of those things survived the
war.”

“Trust me
Willis. That was my first reaction as well, it’s very possible.
It’s an AIE, and it’s very angry at us.”

Only you could
piss of something like that, Gray thought before he replied. “That
complicates things, you know that right?”

“You don’t know
the half of it, but we can talk about it later. Try to get Sabian
or Gunn on the analogue channels; they need to be informed about
the situation.”

“Remy is busy
with that,” Gray said as he nodded towards Remy, who was looking at
him with her big eyes, mostly out of shock from hearing the
confirmation of an AIE presence.

Remy nodded
back after a few moments and resumed her work, trying to contact
the other members of the party on-board the Fateful Moment.

“Locke?” Gray
had to ask the next question, he wanted to know something before
Locke terminated the transmission.

“Yes, Willis?”
Locke replied.

“How many do we
have to mourn?” Gray asked, knowing Locke would understand the
question.

“Seven,” the
Titan captain replied before continuing. “Seven Lancers, The Wolves
are all still alive.”

Gray said
nothing. He just grunted an acknowledgment, seven lives already
wasted in the trap, and probably more he did not know about yet. It
always bothered him if people under his command or people part of
his ship lost their lives.

“We are heading
for the reactors on the way out. Tell Sabian to hold fast and Gunn
to warm up the Maiden.” Locke went quiet, probably already relaying
his orders to the rest of the Wolves and the surviving Lancers.

“Understood,
good luck Gabriel,” Gray said, trying to shake the feeling that he
might not ever talk to the Titan again. “Die well if you must.”

“Very dramatic
old friend, but I plan to get through this.” Locke said nothing
more as he cut the transmission from his side.