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Chapters (42)
  1. Cover Blurb
  2. Contents
  3. Chapter One
  4. Chapter Two
  5. Chapter Three
  6. Chapter Four
  7. Chapter Five
  8. Chapter Six
  9. Chapter Seven
  10. Chapter Eight
  11. Chapter Nine
  12. Chapter Ten
  13. Chapter Eleven
  14. Chapter Twelve
  15. Chapter Thirteen
  16. Chapter Fourteen
  17. Chapter Fifteen
  18. Chapter Sixteen
  19. Chapter Seventeen
  20. Chapter Eighteen
  21. Chapter Nineteen
  22. Chapter Twenty
  23. Chapter Twenty-One
  24. Chapter Twenty-Two
  25. Chapter Twenty-Three
  26. Chapter Twenty-Four
  27. Chapter Twenty-Five
  28. Chapter Twenty-Six
  29. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  30. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  31. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  32. Chapter Thirty
  33. Chapter Thirty-One
  34. Chapter Thirty-Two
  35. Chapter Thirty-Three
  36. Chapter Thirty-Four
  37. Chapter Thirty-Five
  38. Chapter Thirty-Six
  39. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  40. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  41. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  42. Chapter Forty

He looked down at the final damage reports, then resigned himself to waiting – again.  They thought they’d taken out the alien cannon, but if they were wrong ... the bastards wouldn’t get another shot at his ship.  But they were almost defenceless now ... quite apart from the damage to the sensor network, their missiles were completely expended.

Pushing his thoughts aside, he forced himself to watch ...

... And wait.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Charles hadn't been sure what to expect when they plunged into the alien ship.  There had been no way to train for the mission, nor had they had any data to use in training simulations, not when the ships they’d examined after the first battle had been shattered by Ark Royal.  All they could do was improvise – and pray that the aliens didn't manage to blow the ship before they were wiped out or captured.

Tiny nanoprobes raced ahead of the Marines, rapidly sending back data to the shared combat datanet.  Charles expected to see hunter-killer probes deployed in response – it was the standard human procedure – but none of the nanoprobes vanished from the display.  Instead, they rapidly started to map out the interior of the ship, updating the HUD with notes on alien positions and internal environment.  The atmosphere was breathable, they noted, but hot and moist enough to make most humans sweaty and uncomfortable.  Charles noted it in passing – the Marines wore battlesuits, allowing them to ignore the local environment – as they slipped through a gash in the hull.  A scene from hell greeted them.

Atmosphere – the water droplets already freezing to ice – streamed past the Marines as they entered the alien ship.  The fusion flame had melted metal into molten streams of liquid, which were cooling rapidly now the flame was gone.  Even so, the interior of the alien ship looked like a melted honeycomb, with decks destroyed or warped into something unusable by human or alien.  The gravity field caught them as they pressed onwards, the stream of atmosphere coming to an end.  Their safety precautions must have finally taken effect, Charles noted inwardly.  The aliens designers, like humanity’s designers, clearly believed in devising hulls so compromised sections could be sealed off at a moment’s notice.

They saw their first alien body as they made their way down towards the closest airlock the nanoprobes could identify.  Charles was no stranger to horror – nothing the aliens had done matched the horrors humans had inflicted on other humans – but he couldn't help feeling uncomfortable at the sight of an alien torso permanently separated from the lower half of its body.  A human would probably have been killed instantly through shock, Charles knew, but would an alien be just as fragile?  There was no way to know.