‘Makes pretty decent coffee,’ said Andy, sniffing his mug, as they watched the 28’s autoloader rearm their fighters.
In the absence of the Gabriel, they’d been given permission to rearm in one of the 28’s many hangars and found themselves waiting in the pilots’ briefing room on the side of the hangar.
‘Course it does,’ said Bache. ‘Wouldn’t expect anyone to go on a two-year voyage with shit supplies. A mutiny with forty-seven thousand crew could get confusing.’
A junior officer entered the room, looked around and hurried over when he saw them.
‘Sorry to disturb you, Commander,’ he said, a little out of breath. ‘One of our array operators recorded this a few minutes ago down in the planet’s atmosphere.’
He handed Bache a tablet and Andy leaned in to look.
‘A small vessel was using its tractor beam to stabilise a larger damaged ship as it entered the atmosphere, sir.’
‘And this might be of interest because?’ Bache asked.
‘The smaller ship is registered on Earth, sir.’
‘What?’ said Andy, squinting at the hazy images.
‘It’s the Gabriel,’ said Bache. ‘It was damaged somehow and they used the Cartella’s tractor to ensure it didn’t tumble and burn up.’
‘Bloody hell, it can’t have had any drives online,’ said Andy.
The officer pointed at the tablet again.
‘Two lifeboats are launched at about a hundred thousand metres,’ he said.
‘Where did they land?’ Bache asked.
‘We don’t know, sir,’ he said. ‘We’re travelling against the spin and they were over the horizon before landing.’
Andy and Bache’s eyes met.
‘I can’t think how the Gabriel’s going to come back from this one, I’m afraid,’ said Bache.
‘Fuck,’ said Andy. ‘I hope everyone got off and – oh, no…’
‘Oh, no, what?’ Bache asked.
‘One of my bikes was in the hangar.’
Bache rolled his eyes and turned back to the lieutenant.
The junior officer realised Bache was waiting for someone to say something sensible and he pointed at one of the latest fully armed marine carriers parked at the back of the hangar.
‘The First Officer said you could take that personnel carrier over there, sir,’ he said.
‘Very generous of him,’ said Bache, eyeing the officer suspiciously.
‘We detected Captain Pickyrd’s locator chip on one of the lifeboats, sir,’ he said, looking a little sheepish. ‘The First Officer thought as we’re a little busy at the moment and you’re his friend…’
Bache smiled.
‘If you’re sure you don’t want us helping out here anymore?’ he said, nodding at the hangar exit.
‘We seem to be out of danger here now, sir,’ he said. ‘Some of the surviving Klatt ships have been jumping away.’
‘Come on, Andrew,’ said Bache, striding out towards the carrier. ‘Let’s go pick up their captain and the Gabriel’s crew.’
The personnel carrier was a monster compared to their little fighters. With lasers and missile pods hanging off every square metre and shielding that could shrug off a supernova, they felt reasonably secure popping out into the middle of a war zone.
Bache piloted and made sure the carrier was cloaked as they followed a bunch of debris into the upper atmosphere and headed for the coordinates where the lifeboats were most likely to have grounded. Sparks cascaded past the front screen as Bache presented the shielded underbelly at the thickening atmosphere.
‘We should be picking up the distress beacons by now, surely,’ said Andy, as the firework display slowly dissipated.
‘They’ll have turned them off,’ said Bache. ‘There’s a lot of Klatt activity down here. They wouldn’t want to attract them.’
‘Ah, of course, yes,’ said Andy. ‘Then again, the Theos had been fighting an underground guerrilla war here for many millennia, so I don’t imagine the Klatt ground forces are getting it all their own way.’
Even as he spoke, columns of smoke could be seen on the horizon.
‘Oh, dear – one of those could be the Gabriel,’ he said, dejectedly.
‘It’s the Klatt landing ships getting a polite hello from the Theos,’ said Bache, as they quickly got closer.
He wasn’t worried about the sonic boom the ship was creating, as the forces on the ground seemed to be making plenty of noise of their own.
The wrecks of three crumpled Klatt landing ships sat engulfed in flames, while four others had made it down and were attempting to discharge their troops while under heavy fire from a nearby hilltop.
‘This wasn’t what they planned, I bet,’ said Bache. ‘They’ve lost their air support.’
‘And more than half their forces are sitting on dead ships up there, thanks to Cleo,’ said Andy, jabbing his thumb at the ceiling.
In the distance they could see the defensive dome over one of Paradeisos’s cities, glistening in the sunshine.
‘That would have been their target,’ said Bache, pointing, as they overflew the battle. ‘They won’t have been expecting to do this in such warm weather either.’
‘I’ve got something big on the ground near that city too,’ said Andy.
Bache headed straight towards it and descended to a thousand metres. As they approached, a long trail of destruction led across the valley floor where something had come in fast and gouged a trench through the scrub and trees.
‘It’s the Gabriel,’ shouted Andy. ‘Oh, shit, what a mess, and that’s the Cartella parked next to it.’
The Gabriel sat at the end of the trench, its landing struts completely gone and the underside of the hull badly gouged and scored. It was leaning over on what was left of its starboard side, thin trails of steam and smoke emanating from exposed pipe work along the remains of the melted hull.
‘That was a controlled crash landing,’ said Bache. ‘I was expecting just a hole in the ground.’
‘About bloody time,’ boomed a familiar voice in Andy’s ear.
‘Knew it was you,’ replied Andy, also using his DOVI. ‘Can recognise your parking anywhere.’
‘Actually, it was Cleo that saved the ship,’ he said. ‘If it had been me, there’d be just a hole in the ground.’
Andy glanced at Bache and smirked.
‘Are you and Cleo okay then?’ he asked.
‘We’re okay. She’s a bit pissed off with the state of her ship, but otherwise all right,’ said Ed.
‘Who was in the Cartella?’ he asked.
‘Hello, husband,’ said Rayl, joining the conversation.
‘Oh, hi,’ he said, a smile evident in his tone. ‘I thought you were on one of the lifeboats.’
‘I used the Cartella’s tractor to help slow the Gabriel.’
‘That was a good plan,’ said Andy. ‘Tell Cleo to do what she can until we get back to recover the ship.’
‘I can hear you, you know,’ Cleo moaned. ‘I don’t think there’s much I can do without a fully equipped shipyard. I screwed up big time.’
‘You saved us and the Gabriel,’ said Ed. ‘I’ll have you both back in showroom condition if it takes every penny I own.’
‘Did he see where the lifeboats landed?’ Ed heard Bache ask in the background.
‘No, we didn’t,’ Ed replied. ‘I kinda hoped you might’ve. Doesn’t your array show where they are?’
‘There’s so much shit falling out of the sky, I’ve got thousands of potential sites,’ said Andy.
‘I take it they’ve switched off their locators then?’ Pol asked.
‘Pol?’ exclaimed Andy. ‘You’re there too. I presumed you’d be on one of the lifeboats.’
‘She was supposed to be,’ grumbled Ed.
‘Ah, right,’ said Andy, knowing from Ed’s tone he ought to drop that subject. ‘Can you find an operational airlock and we’ll pick you up?’ he said instead.
Pol and Ed found their way down to a port airlock. Opening it manually, they found, because of the ship’s tilt, the door was several metres above the ground. Bache lowered the rear ramp of the carrier and with directions from Andy, brought the ship close enough so they could hop across.
The two friends grinned at each other and all three hugged, before climbing up to the cockpit where they were able to pat Bache on the back too.
Rayl lifted the Cartella up and joined them.
‘Okay,’ said Ed. ‘We need to find the others before the Klatt do. I’m sure they’d love to capture the captain of that ship if they knew he was down here.’
‘This is the area the lifeboats were heading to,’ said Bache, taking the carrier back up to a thousand metres. ‘I’m sure we can – oh…’
The other three turned to see what had surprised their pilot.
‘You might want to hear this,’ he said, switching the ship’s communications through to the cockpit speakers.
‘…ward Virr, this is Proedros Klai, can you hear me? I know you’re out there somewhere, please respond.’