STARGATE UNIVERSE: Air (9 page)

He turned and found Scott watching him with the same look in his eyes. “Follow me,” he said.

In the main corridor, Young found a sergeant handing out equipment and secured himself a gear vest, a MICH helmet, a radio and a M4 carbine in short order. Boots pounding the marble floors, the colonel donned the equipment on the run, the action as easy as muscle memory from hundreds of deployments and combat operations. He checked the carbine’s loads and then barked into the radio, ordering the technician in the ops room to get him hooked up with the
Hammond
, orbiting somewhere up above them.

When his first attempt to raise the starship failed, Young felt a stab of ice in his gut. There had been no alarm, no call from the
Hammond
or Icarus’s suite of sensor satellites, nothing to warn them of the arrival of an intruder — and that could mean any one of a whole galaxy of problems was now at his front door, throwing down fire.

If the
Hammond
is already gone…
He shook his head and pushed the thought away. There was no point in making guesses until he had the facts.

Young shouted at a pair of non-coms to make a hole, and taking two steps at a time, he vaulted up a gantry toward the battlements. He got halfway up and hesitated. If an attack was coming, he was going to need every fighting man he could muster. His
best
. Young turned and made a quick detour, grabbing some extra kit as he went.

Ronald Greer felt the next impact, and then the next, and his hands went out to walls, a sweat breaking on his forehead. Whatever the hell was going on out there, it sounded like a giant was using a sledgehammer the size of a football stadium to wale on the side of the mountain. The bombardment was rattling him around like a stone in a can, and the only thing worse than that was the annoyance he felt at being stuck in here, unable to stand a post.

Greer felt a horrible, cold chill at the idea he might die in here, locked up in a holding cell. He looked down at the bruises on his knuckles and cursed himself. It was no way for a Marine to go out, caged like an animal while the roof caved in and buried him alive.

Then keys rattled in the lock and the heavy door cranked open. Standing behind it, armed for bear, was Colonel Young. “Sergeant,” he said. Over the man’s shoulder he saw his fellow Marines Curtis and Spencer, and Lieutenant James gearing up for a fight.

Greer immediately shot to his feet and attention, ram-rod straight. “Sir!” he snapped, in his best Parris Island snarl.

“We’re under attack,” continued Young. “Don’t know why. Don’t know who.”

Greer said nothing, remaining stock still. Young was a man of few words, and the Marine liked that about him. He was okay for Air Force. If Young had something to say, he’d get to it.

“I need every able body I can spare.” The colonel had a G36 and a gear belt in his hands, and without ceremony he tossed the weapon and the kit in Greer’s direction. The sergeant caught them with ease. “Consider the charges dropped. Now go take your anger out on
them
.”

Greer strapped the belt about his waist and checked the assault rifle’s ammunition clip.
Locked and loaded
. “Yes sir,” he said, and bounded out into the corridor, without looking back.

A firestorm of energy streaked down through the darkness and slammed into the shields of the U.S.S.
Hammond
, the invisible bubble of force suddenly flashing into existence as exotic radiations collided with one another, spilling out jagged ripples of lightning.

The angular carrier ship powered into a turn, coming about to present its stronger ventral barriers to the enemy onslaught.
Hammond
’s attackers crowded in toward it, like a trio of street thugs moving in to take down a victim. The vessels were towering brass pyramids ringed with planes of black steel; the Goa’uld who built them called them Ha’taks, and these three ships had once been warcraft in the service to a minor System Lord called Zipacna, but his sigil had been burned from their hulls a long time ago.

The bombardment was unrelenting, each shot pounding the Earth ship, harrying it wherever it turned. White streaks of missile fire lanced out, scoring retaliatory hits, and
Hammond
’s railguns spat high-velocity kinetic kill rounds into the void on flickering tails of tracer. Close by, fighters hastily scrambled from the ship’s launch bay wheeled and turned as they engaged Death Glider elements launched by the Ha’taks. The battle was brutal and swift, but the balance of it was turning fast, and not in the favor of the Earth forces.

Here we are again.

The bitter thought crossed Samantha Carter’s mind as she pressed herself back into her command chair, her arms flat on the panels at the side. Through the wide viewport that filled one side of the
Hammond
’s bridge, she could see nothing but the hot orange flares of energy transfer as the Ha’taks swept around for another fusillade of beam fire. Circuit-breakers sparked and flashed and jumping-jack shorts lanced through the support systems. She took a breath and coughed, her throat seared by the acrid stink of burnt plastic.

“Missile status,” she snapped.

“Reloading…” reported Major Marks, her second-in-command. “And ready. Green lights from all gun decks, ma’am.” Marks had recently transferred over to Carter’s ship from the U.S.S.
Daedalus
, and like his new commander, he was no stranger to the brutal dance of space combat.

“Return fire. Hit them hard.”

“Firing!” Marks stabbed a control and Carter felt the
Hammond
shiver as the ship released another wave of nuclear-tipped fury at her enemies.

“Colonel! I have Icarus Base on the comm!” called a voice from over her shoulder.

Carter nodded. “On speakers.” She heard the crackle over the bridge intercom as the channel connected and spoke again. “Icarus, this is the
Hammond
. What’s your status, over?”

“
About to ask you the same thing,
” came the reply. Carter didn’t know Everett Young all that well, but she was familiar with the man’s reputation as a careful, calm operator. Young didn’t say anything to belie that now, but Carter could still sense the tension brimming in his voice. “
Who crashed our party?
”

“Three Goa’uld motherships. They started shooting the second they came out of hyperspace. Dropped out almost on top of the planet. We had no warning.”

“
Lucian Alliance?
” said Young.

Carter nodded as her ship rocked again under another barrage. “That’s my guess.” Her lip curled. “They haven’t introduced themselves and they don’t respond to any hails.” She didn’t add the question that was burning at the back of her mind:
exactly how did a bunch of space-going drug runners find out about this base?

As Greer and the others raced to their combat positions, Young strode forward over the blocky concrete battlements of the base, sweeping the night sky with a pair of high-powered binoculars, pressing his radio to his ear. “
Our shields are holding…for now,
” Carter was saying, “
But we’re not the target. They’re just making sure we keep busy.
”

Young caught sight of something high up: flashes of faint light, like distant fireworks. He let the binoculars fall on their straps and scrutinized the men and women all around him, crews on the emplaced railguns, missile quads and conventional thirty-mil cannons. They were all cranking their weapons upward, hunting for the enemy. “What’s coming our way?” he asked, for a second hearing nothing but the wind through the mountain peaks.

“
It’s not good
.” Static laced Carter’s reply. “
We read a full squadron of gliders and a heavy troop transport. Our CAP of 302’s cut them down some, but the others blew past and went straight for the surface. The rest of them will be on your doorstep in about three minutes.
”

Young considered that for a moment. A troop transport. That meant a ground attack in force. He had no illusions; this battle would be hard-fought. He sniffed the air and smelled ozone, doubtless wafting in from the places where stray shots from the Ha’taks had come slamming down into the planet’s surface. Young keyed the walkie again, talking into the general guard channel. “Received and understood,
Hammond
. We’ll take it from here. Colonel Telford, did you copy all that?”

“
Roger that,
” said Telford crisply.

Young moved to the very edge of the fortification and glanced down to the foot of the mountain, where stark sodium-white light was spilling across the runway apron from the mouth of an open hangar. Blade-winged shadows were moving down there, angling out to face the sky.

“
If we can get to the transport before they land their troops, we stand a chance of making them think twice.
” Telford’s voice was muffled by the closeness of an oxygen mask.

“I concur,” said Young. He could see the twinkling lights in the sky now without the binoculars, and they were closing fast. “Good hunting, sir.”

“
And to you, sir.
” Telford’s voice cut out and the next sound Young heard was the roar of turbojets as a flight of F-302 interceptors swept away down the runway. He watched them angle up into the night, raptors on the wind in search of prey.

“Keep moving!” Scott shouted the command and gestured with his free hand, the other staying close to the G36 assault rifle that he’d snagged on the way to the safe zone. He shot a glance over his shoulder at the disordered snake of people moving down the corridor, civilians and non-essential personnel who, according to the regs, were instantly deemed liabilities the moment the base attack alarm began to sound.

Part of him desperately wanted to be up there on the battlements behind a big thirty mike, ready to give a bloody nose to whomever it was that was knocking at their door; but Matthew Scott had his orders, and he had his duty — which was to get these people out of harm’s way.

New impacts slammed into the rock somewhere far above them, and the whole of Icarus Base resonated with the force of the blast.

At his side, Eli Wallace choked out a gasp as a lengthy crack passed down the length of the wall. “Oh crap.”

“Keep it together, Eli,” Scott told him. “It’s just a little further.”

“Shouldn’t we be, y’know, heading
out
of here, instead of deeper in?”

“Remember that ‘instant transport to another planet’ thing?”

“We’re gonna gate out of here?”

Scott nodded. “That’s the idea. We hook back up to the network, dial you out, and—”

“Kawoosh,” said Eli, with a weak grin. “And then what, you and Young and the others, you’re gonna follow us?”

Scott’s lips thinned. “If we have to.”

“But—”

Whatever Eli had to say was snatched away by another impact that hit so hard, Scott felt it in the bones of his skull. The vibration actually bounced him off his feet and he stumbled as rock and concrete gave way overhead. A rain of heavy, choking soil washed over him and he heard shouting and screaming.

Shaking himself, Scott turned to see the corridor behind him blocked by a wall of fallen rubble. Dazed by the collapse, people were milling around in the settling dust.

The lieutenant found Eli as the young man climbed back to his feet. “What was that?”

Scott ignored the question and pointed past him in the direction they’d been heading. “You know what ‘double-time’ means?”

“That’s like, military-speak for ‘run real fast’, right?”

He nodded. “So do it, Eli. Get to the gate room, and don’t wait for me.” He slapped him on the back. “Go now!”

Wallace and a few of the others disappeared off down the corridor, but enough of the civvies were still in shock. “Let’s go, people!” he called. “You need to move to the gate room!”

Scott waded through them, pushing them in the right direction. A face rose out of the dust before him and he saw the cute girl, the senator’s daughter. Her pretty face was twisted in an expression of absolute fear, tears streaking her cheeks. “It just collapsed….” she was saying, “My father… And there could still be people trapped on the other side!”

He glanced around. Senator Armstrong and a few of the other scientists were nowhere to be seen. His hand was on Chloe’s wrist, and for a long second he thought about taking her to the gate, by force if need be, but he couldn’t summon the sheer coldness to do it. “The rest of you, keep going!” he snapped. “Don’t stop until you reach the gate room.”

“I’m not going!” Chloe insisted. She went to the rock pile and pulled at the stones, dragging them away, tearing the skin on her fingers.

“Me neither,” he told her, and then spoke into his radio. “Ops, this is Lieutenant Scott, I’ve got a dozen or so people cut off from the gate room down here, corridor six-alpha.”

“
Copy that,
” said a harried voice. “
No assist available at this time, Lieutenant.
”

Chloe shot him a panicked look. “Wh-what does that mean?”

He paused for a moment. “It means we have to do this on our own.”

With the base’s meager flight of interceptors out gunning for the troop transporter, there was no air cover to stop the enemy’s aerial strike element from screaming down on Icarus Base, bringing fire along with them.

A wave of sleek-winged Death Gliders howled over the tops of the fortifications, pulse-bolts shrieking from their heavy cannons. Rocky outcrops clipped by the blasts blew apart into scattershot fragments, taking down men like shrapnel from a fragmentation bomb. Other hits seemed to simply erase whole sections of the battlements, defenders and guns turned to smoke in a heartbeat.

Young stabbed a finger into the air, yelling out his orders over the general channel. “Concentrate your fire on the gliders! Pour it on!”

Ropes of tracer snaked across the sky and clipped the wings of one of the Goa’uld fighters, ripping divots from the scarab-shaped body in chugs of thick black smoke. The craft stalled and fell away, vanishing below the line of the fortification to explode against the mountainside. The big railguns were slow to traverse and track, but when they found their mark the electromagnetically-accelerated tungsten quarrels they fired bored right though the hull metal of the Death Gliders and out the other side. Young saw one ship take a hit through the cockpit and tumble out of control, veering into the path of its wingman, destroying both craft in a ball of flame.