by Ian Douglas
“SFA-05, you are free to cycle.”
“Copy, PryFly. Cycling down to 10 percent.”
“Hawk One, PryFly. You are cleared for launch.”
“One copies, PryFly. Anytime you folks are ready.”
“Copy, One. Launch on your mark.”
“Roger, PryFly. Starhawks launch on my mark, in three . . . two . . . one . . . shoot!”
That sharp and sudden surge of acceleration always caught Boland by surprise, no matter how he prepared for it. A giant hand pressed down over his chest, making breathing difficult. The pressure vanished as the fighter left the rail, and the space carrier dwindled away on his aft camera screens, becoming one insignificant point of light lost among thousands within seconds. Boland checked left and right; the other eleven space fighters were strung out to either side and astern, forming an enormous chevron.
“PryFly, Hawk One,” he called. “We’re clear of Big-H.”
“Copy, Hawk One. Transferring you to CIC.”
“Roger that. CIC, Starhawk Flight. Where do you want us?”
“Starhawk, CIC, you are cleared to proceed toward objective Serpo, bearing zero-five-niner by one-five-two, over.”
“CIC, Starhawk, bearing on Serpo, at zero-five-niner by one-five-two, rog.”
“Good luck, Starhawk. Our people on the ground report heavy fire and a planet full of bad guys. See if you can help ’em out.”
“Copy that. Starhawk Flight is on the way.”
The sheer emptiness of space always startled him, as well. Once the Hillenkoetter and her escorts had disappeared, there was nothing around him but stars. The local sun gleamed up ahead, but at twice the distance of Earth from Sol it seemed wan and shrunken. Boland knew of the vast torus of asteroidal debris outward—and of the enigmatic, sleeping civilization of the Xaxki—but all of that was invisible. A few of those pinpoints of light might be comets or asteroids, but damned few, and there was no way to distinguish them from stars made dim by distance.
Moments later, Serpo expanded from one of those points of light to a slender crescent bowed away from the sun.
“Right, Chicks,” Boland called over the squadron’s tactical channel. “Check out the hellpods. Power up.”
Hellpods were ventral weapons pods slung from the F/A-49s, each mounting five high-energy lasers, or HELs, designed to project five beams as a single powerful bolt of coherent light. The Navy had been experimenting with lasers both as shipboard defenses and mounted on testbed aircraft for several years now, but few realized the weapons were already in operational deployment. Acknowledgments came back from the other members of the flight.
“Hawk Seven, hot.”
“Hawk Nine, locked and loaded.”
“Hawk Three, go.”
The target planet expanded rapidly in their forward screens.
“Our target zone is on the night side right now,” Boland said. “We’ll use Opplan Delta. CIC says our people are inside a force dome, so we don’t need to worry about own goals. Get in as close as you can on each pass.”
“So what’s the target, Skipper?” Lieutenant Meyers asked. “They didn’t tell us anything!”
“All I know is multiple EBEs on the ground outside our guys’ perimeter . . . and unidentified heavy weapons sites firing at the dome. It’ll be close ground support. We take out the big guns, and we shoot up the EBEs.”
The flight was computer-guided in toward the objective. In seconds, the sun dipped beneath a curving black horizon, and Boland’s teeth rattled inside his helmet as the Stingray jolted and buffeted through thickening atmosphere. Its screens softened the descent somewhat, but it was still one hell of a rough ride.
They broke through the dark overcast. Flashes of light appeared up ahead.
The Starhawks went over to the attack.
“Hillenkoetter says the fighters are on the way, sir,” Colby said. The radioman was crouched over the transmitter they’d brought with them to the surface. The Grays were having trouble patching through to the Big-H; at least, that’s what their spokesman claimed. Hunter had his doubts that the Eben beings were cooperating fully.
But it was about damned time the aerospace assets arrived, Hunter thought. The close-air support should have been over the target area the moment 1-JSST touched down.
Now he just needed to figure out how to get a Saurian over here to open up those tubes in the basement. A direct assault on one of the other domes was out of the question. The strike force would have to go through the airlock, and that meant not one but two sealed, airtight doors. Besides, the Saurians would know when the team entered the airlock, and be waiting with their deadly weaponry by the time the humans equalized pressures and opened the inner door.
No, there had to be another way.
“Hey . . . Mink?”
“Yeah, Skipper?”
“That tunnel underneath us. It runs that way, right?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Toward one of the other domes?”
Minkowski’s eyes widened. “Yes, sir.”
“How long do you think the tunnel is?”
“Dunno, Skipper, but it’s long. Maybe half a mile?”
“That’s what I was thinking. And the next dome over that way is maybe half that distance.”
“We have a back door in.”
“Something like that. Is that dome the one with our guys in it? Or with the Saurians?”
A quick consultation with the Grays established that the second dome was one of the habitats currently occupied by the Saurians. Hunter still didn’t trust the little bastards, but either the habitat contained a mix of Grays and Saurians, or it held Grays, humans, and Saurians.
Either way, they had a chance to catch the Saurians in what Hunter was now thinking of as Dome Two by surprise. “Okay, people. Listen up! Minkowski, Daly, Taylor, Nielson, Dorschner, Brown, Mullaney, Herrera—you guys are with me. Marlow, Coulter, Alvarez, Colby, Briggs, Bader—you stay here with Brunelli and watch our backs. Keep a sharp eye on our hosts, too, okay? Lieutenant Bader, you’re in charge.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Colby, Briggs—I want you two to get in touch with those fighters. See if you can get a working circus going. Send a couple of volunteers outside if you need to, as FiSTers.” The word stood for fire support team, and referred to forward observers who could coordinate with artillery or aircraft to call in close support strikes.
“Colby, while you’re at it, try to raise the Big-H and let ’em know what’s going down.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Strike team: suit up, and check your weapons. Grab extra batteries. Everybody set? Okay—EMCON protocol, everyone. Let’s go.”
EMCON stood for emissions control—radio silence, in other words. Suit-to-suit transmissions might be picked up by the aliens.
Hunter led the way back down the ladder into the subsurface cavern. Again, he felt the eyes of dozens of people on him, awake and aware within those transparent cylinders. Poor fucking bastards. We’ll be back for you, I promise . . .
They hurried down the main, central passageway heading in the direction of Dome Two. It was distinctly possible, even likely, that the Saurians were watching their approach on their equivalent of security cams, but there was simply no alternative. Hunter hadn’t seen any cameras, though that was no guarantee with technology this advanced.
And then again, maybe they’d gotten lucky. The Saurians certainly hadn’t been expecting them, and therefore would have had no reason to put up cameras.
He hoped.
A quarter of a mile down the passageway, Minkowski tapped Hunter’s shoulder and pointed. In an alcove off to the right, a metal ladder led up a stone wall to the upper level. Hunter gestured, and the SpecOps team began filing up the stairs.
Minkowski was on point—the door kicker. Taylor and Nielson were close behind him, and Hunter was in the number four spot. They’d practiced this sort of op endlessly back on Earth, before they’d been recruited by Solar Warden. Now the
y would see if close-assault tactics worked on ugly gray aliens.
At the top of the stairs, they paused. No sign that they’d been seen, or that the bad guys were waiting for them. Hunter held up his hand and gave a countdown: three . . . two . . . one . . .
Boland pulled the nose of his F/S-49 Stingray up, the rush of dark landscape beneath his keel matching the adrenaline rush singing in his blood. At Mach 4 he would be past the bad guys before he saw them, so he began pumping hard to decelerate. The terrain ahead appeared on his IR screen in blobs of yellow, green, and blue.
And several scattered blobs of red. Those would be the objective, or they should be—hot spots against the frigid cold of this poisonous ice ball of a world. “I’ve got hot spots bearing one-niner-five!” he called. “Cut back to Mach 1 and give ’em a close flyby!”
“Copy, Hawk Leader. Right behind you.”
How well could the enemy track them? The Stingrays were stealthy, and they could selectively jam hostile radar, but after entering Serpo’s atmosphere they were hot, and must be showing up as fiercely burning bogies on any alien infrared gear down there.
Well, they’d know in a few more seconds.
“There’re the domes, people. On a hilltop, six of ’em in a circle a mile across!”
“Roger that. I’m picking up some sort of kinetic screen over the hill.”
“Hawk One, Hawk Five, I’ve got something that might be mobile artillery down there.”
“Record everything you pick up and transmit back to the Big-H,” Boland ordered. He eased back on the Stingray’s controls, pulling into a gentle left turn that would take him around the alien base.
“Hawk One, Hawk Three! I’m being painted!”
Boland’s instruments showed that he was being hit by multiple powerful radar beams, as well. They might be targeting radars for ground-to-air weaponry. “Same here, Three. Keep alert, everyone! ECM on—see if we can jam it!”
As Boland banked hard to the left, he could see the landscape surrounding the alien force dome. The ground down there appeared to be moving, though he couldn’t see details. He could also see three objects like black-and-gray toys equally spaced around the force field, definitely mechanical but of a complicated shape unlike anything with which he was familiar. Mobile batteries? Ground attack vehicles? Or static towers? They definitely mounted heavy weapons, which were playing irregularly across the dome. It didn’t look so much like a coordinated, determined attack as it did harassing fire. Boland wondered how serious the attackers were about bringing down the kinetic field. Maybe they were just keeping the occupants penned in?
And what the hell would be the point of that?
“Big-H, Hawk One,” Boland called. “I have multiple targets firing on the force field. Request permission to commence run.”
“Hawk One, Hillenkoetter, wait one.”
What the hell? They’d been deployed to provide close air support for the guys on the ground . . . and now they were supposed to wait one?
It made no sense whatsoever, but the rules of engagement said to fire only when you’d received permission to do so.
“Starhawk Flight, Hawk One. Hold fire.”
“What’s the story, Skipper?” Lieutenant Bronsky asked. “I’ve got the bastards dead to rights!”
“I have no idea, Bronsky. Just do as you’re—”
“Hawk Five! I’m hit! Mayday!”
Hawk Five was Lieutenant Robert Selby. “Selby!”
“Mayday! May—”
Boland twisted around, trying to see, but visibility in the Stingrays was sharply limited—essentially a narrow window looking straightforward. External cameras looked port, starboard, and aft, but seeing anything on the internal screen was purely a matter of luck.
“Selby, do you copy?”
He got back nothing but static.
“Hawk One, Hawk Nine. Bob just slammed into the ground outside the perimeter. I think he might’ve taken some of the bastards with him.”
“Starhawk Flight! Engage! Repeat, engage!”
They were taking fire, and that meant they could return the favor.
And Boland intended to do just that . . . in spades.
Chapter Nineteen
We have only to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.
Physicist Stephen Hawking, 2010
The lights went on once more, and Kammler caught a glimpse of movement to his right. He turned, trying to follow a number of shapes emerging from the shadows.
Human shapes! Mein Gott! Menschen! Menschen!
Kammler tried to call out, but the liquid filling his nose and mouth and throat and lungs effectively gagged him. He tried pounding with his fists against the transparency, but the liquid slowed his movements to ineffective and slow-motion thumps.
He watched as nine men moved into the light, following the passageway from right to left. He thought they were men, though the suits they wore made it hard to tell. They were twice as tall as the Grays, taller than most Eidechse, and their legs were human legs, not the up-on-tiptoes bird legs of the reptiles.
Yes—one of the men turned and looked directly at him, and Kammler could see human features behind the space suit visor! The suits were not familiar to him—they were nothing like the bulky, Michelin Man space suits of Apollo, but formfitting black and gray. The weapons they carried were strange, as well.
But they were human!
They moved in two groups, one moving forward while the other provided overwatch, then reversing roles. Now they were climbing the stairs, the metal stairs Kammler could just glimpse from his tank that led God knew where. The way they moved—cautiously, in fireteam formation, but with a casual grace and control and above all watchfulness—as well as the weaponry they carried convinced him that this was a human rescue party. For a long time, Kammler had been wondering about whether or not he was still on Earth, but the human combat team suggested that he was. He didn’t know why they were wearing space suits; perhaps the air here was bad, or it was protection against gas or noxious chemicals.
He didn’t care.
Hans Kammler was not at all religious, but he was praying desperately now. The team was probably seeking to take out the aliens. And then . . .
And then he would be rescued.
Three . . . two . . . one . . . go!
Hunter gave the hand sign, and Minkowski, at the landing on the top of the stairs, put his hand against the center of the closed door and pushed. The panel slid aside, much to Hunter’s relief—there’d been the possibility that it would be locked—and the SpecOps assault force surged forward.
Following a tightly choreographed plan, Minkowski pushed forward into Dome Two’s control center, Tom Taylor rolled through the open door to the right, and Frank Nielson rolled left. Hunter came in right behind Minkowski, quickly assessing the tacsit.
A Saurian, a big one, stood behind a table, raising its weapon. Hunter and Minkowski fired almost in unison, and the alien went down with two smoking charred holes at its center of mass. Hunter shifted his aim right, drawing down on another armed Saurian, and snapped off another shot. Unlike the first Saurian, this one was wearing some kind of body armor, and the invisible bolt from Hunter’s weapon blackened a patch on the being’s chest but didn’t burn through. The alien fired, and Lieutenant Dorschner, just coming through the door at Hunter’s back, flailed and collapsed, much of his head now missing. A second Saurian fired, and Mullaney fell, shrieking, most of his right arm missing, the stump gushing blood. Taylor took out one of the Saurians, and Minkowski the other. Hunter pivoted left-right-left, his laser pistol in an extended, two-hand grip as he searched for targets. He could see six Grays, none of them armed, all staring with wide-eyed confusion at this sudden surge of armed force from their rear. He didn’t see any more Saurians. Damn! The whole point had been to capture one alive; had they killed all of the Reptilians?
“Clear left!” Taylor called.
“Clea
r right!” Nielson added.
“Room clear!” Minkowski said.
Hunter checked a readout in his helmet, making certain that his exterior speaker was on. “You! All of you!” he shouted at the Grays. “Get down! On your knees! Hands locked behind your heads!”
This dome, Hunter noted, was quite different from Dome One. There were few electronics, few consoles, and the smaller central compartment had the feel of a lounge or a recreation room, or possibly a mess hall, with diminutive seats and sofas, and several broad tables in the center. Numerous doors around the room’s perimeter led to other rooms; one door slid open and a Saurian emerged, evidently drawn by Mullaney’s screams.
Hunter was in front of the being in three swift steps, his laser pressed against its naked skull. “Freeze,” Hunter yelled, and the being flinched. “Lose the hardware!”
The Saurian touched a point on its armor, and everything dropped to the deck, including one of the boxlike weapons attached to the chest. “Any more of your kind in there?”
The being didn’t answer, and Hunter said, “Mink! Brown! Nielson! Herrera! Check these other rooms!”
“Arr!”
Nielson’s raspy-voiced pirate yell startled Hunter. He’d forgotten about that little bit of team building he’d experimented with back on the Hillenkoetter. Nielson and the others were so jacked up by combat-generated adrenaline they probably couldn’t shout anything but “arr.”
“Daly, with me. Check Mullaney!”
They had one Navy corpsman with them on this raid, Marlow, but all SpecOps personnel received at least some training in battlefield first aid. Army staff sergeant John Daly squeezed Mullaney’s upper arm, pinching hard until the flow of blood slowed. Hunter went to Dorschner’s body, unsealing his space suit so that he could get at the shipboard utilities the dead man wore underneath. Hunter’s suit included a survival knife, and he used that to cut through the garment’s seam, then ripped off a long strip of cloth. The strip would serve as a tourniquet until Marlow could look at it. Mullaney’s screams had stopped, thank God . . . but Hunter was afraid that the man was going into shock. They used one of the tiny chairs to elevate his legs.