Andy had insisted he do something to help Cleo sabotage as many ships as possible by slowing the recommissioning of vessels down on the surface of Uskrre. Rayl had firstly and vehemently disapproved of him leaving the safety of the Gabriel. She’d only relented when he asked her to join him on the Cartella, although he had to promise they wouldn’t be landing or leaving the relative safety of the ship.
Recently, Andy had been reading a book on Second World War armaments and was intrigued by the British-invented sticky bomb, an anti-tank grenade covered in a particularly viscous glue that you could slap on the armour of an enemy vehicle as it passed. He’d asked Cleo if she could create something similar, only magnetic.
A few hours later, he piloted the cloaked Cartella down into Uskrre’s atmosphere on the opposite side of the planet. Rayl and Bache, who’d also wanted to come along and help, sat either side of him. They kept a watch on the fleet movements above them, hoping their local disruption of the air currents wasn’t noticed.
‘Anything?’ Andy asked, keeping their trajectory dead straight, mimicking a meteorite.
‘No unusual movements so far,’ said Rayl.
He nodded while reducing the speed slowly. At fifty thousand feet he braked hard and turned, heading straight towards where the dome had been on the second biggest continent. When they arrived, the huge round treeless area stood out like a crop circle. Now the dome was down, the lines of ships could be seen from miles out. Although well over half of them were already in space, it was still a spectacle and reminded Andy of a huge military aircraft graveyard he’d witnessed in Tucson, Arizona during their astronaut training.
They watched the hive of activity from five hundred feet, four kilometres back, hiding under the protection of the hills to the north.
‘Busy, isn’t it?’ said Rayl, as they watched dozens of trucks milling around the front rows of vessels.
A constant stream of atmospheric freighters ferried personnel, food and armaments down from the bigger ships in orbit, only staying on the ground just long enough to discharge their loads onto the queue of trucks, before leaping up and away, their antigrav drives screaming as they hurled themselves back up, eventually disappearing into the high clouds.
‘What do we concentrate on, the military ships or the freighters?’ said Andy. ‘What would create the biggest delay?’
‘I’ve noticed that when a newly commissioned ship from the middle of the row leaves, it flies straight over the landing zone for the freighters,’ said Bache. ‘If we could drop one of the bigger ships right in the middle of that and on top of a freighter or two, that could hold things up for a while.’
‘I’ve got just the ship,’ said Andy, pointing at one of the larger battle cruisers parked right in the middle and in the next row to fly.
‘There’s so much noise with all the constant ship movements, the racket our antigravs make shouldn’t be noticed,’ said Bache. ‘Those vessels have four antigravs. They can fly on three, but not on two, so we’ll have to stick a charge on both the front or rear motors.’
‘Where are they?’ Andy asked.
‘I’m reasonably familiar with those Klatt designs and if I remember rightly, the rear ones are just behind those upper rear cannon nacelles.’
Andy crept the Cartella closer while Rayl prepared two magnetic charges, giving one to Bache. She opened the inner airlock door and they both lay down on the floor facing the outer door. Once Andy was happy that they were ready he brought the ship quickly in over the parking lot of ships then, dropping down low over the rear of the target ship, he estimated when the outer door was above the drive housing, turned ninety degrees and opened the outer door.
‘Down a bit, right a bit,’ said Bache, then when he was happy, he dropped the charge.
It clunked down on the hull and stuck fast. Andy moved the ship forward to the opposite side of the cruiser and Rayl did the same with hers.
‘Away,’ shouted Bache, looking over his shoulder and waving his arm.
Andy didn’t need to be told twice and had the Cartella up and scooting back to the relative safety of the hillside in a matter of seconds. It was fifteen minutes later that the big cruiser, its huge antigrav drives spooling up to a deafening bellow, lifted sluggishly, dragging its landing struts out of the loamy soil where it had sat waiting for a hundred and fifty years.
‘Go on, you big bastard – go straight ahead,’ whispered Andy, his finger wavering over the initiate icon.
As if listening to him, the Klatt pilot did exactly that and as the lumbering giant gained height and overflew the freighter unloading pads, Andy blew the explosives.
The detonations were small, but Cleo had deliberately shaped the charges to punch downwards and into the giant spoolers. The secondary explosions were a little more spectacular, as the spooler blades disintegrated and punched their way out through the hull in all directions. The monster ship shuddered and as if in slow motion the rear end slowly drooped. The pilot tried valiantly to compensate with just the front two motors, but the vessel was just too back-heavy.
Andy had timed the explosions just right, as the cruiser’s forward momentum took it down onto two freighters. Soldiers could be seen running in all directions as it completely crushed one and its front end caught the tail of a second one. The crushed freighter must have been carrying munitions of some kind, as the resulting slightly delayed explosion from underneath the cruiser blew it into two pieces. A third freighter that had been in the process of landing was caught in a storm of shrapnel and blown onto its side. It proceeded to catch fire, which spread quickly into the adjacent buildings.
‘Fucking outrageous,’ said Andy, turning to smile at Bache. ‘I think we can call that a success.’
‘I think you’re right,’ said Bache. ‘Four ships with only two small charges was very—’
A flash had all three of them turning their heads, blinded and disorientated for a second as the inside of the cockpit became flooded with bright white light, followed shortly after by a deafening crack.
‘Height, height,’ shouted Bache.
Andy had registered the danger at the same time and had the ship immediately ascending vertically and back. The Cartella shot upwards and then savagely backwards as the shock wave from a nuclear detonation hit them front on. If they’d stayed where they were, under the lee of the hill, the blast would’ve blown them into the ground. As it was, they only missed the rocky hilltop by a couple of metres.
The ship’s shields and inertial dampers did their jobs however, and when Andy was finally able to regain level flight and turn back east, they were several kilometres further away from the Klatt base.
‘Shit,’ said Rayl, craning her neck to try and see the top of the mushroom cloud looming over them.
‘Well!’ said Bache. ‘That was unexpected.’
‘To say the bloody least,’ said Andy, taking the ship north and upwind to avoid the soaring radioactive cloud. ‘Did that emanate from one of the ships or a building?’
‘It was from one of the buildings suddenly engulfed in fire,’ said Cleo, her voice echoing around the cockpit. ‘Is everyone okay?’
‘I guess so,’ replied Rayl, getting reassuring nods from the other two.
‘Get back to the Gabriel quickly,’ Cleo added. ‘All hell’s broken loose up here.’