by Richard Fox
“Sir?”
Valdar lifted an air line off Geller’s chair and tapped the nozzle against the navigator’s faceplate. Geller’s hand went to the back of his helmet and felt the empty spot where the auxiliary air hose should have jacked into his suit.
“Your suit can keep your air going for three hours,” Valdar said. “Do you know how long this battle will last?”
Geller shook his head.
“Do you want to be in the middle of steering my ship and find that you’re out of air?”
Geller shook his head.
“That’s why you check your lines.” Valdar snapped the nozzle into the back of Geller’s helmet. His faceplate flexed slightly as air rushed in. Valdar gave the top of Geller’s head a double pat and went back to his command chair.
“XO, void the ship,” Valdar said as he donned his helmet and connected his auxiliary lines. His void suit flexed against falling air pressure as the bridge’s atmosphere was sucked into storage tanks. Fighting in a ship full of flammable oxygen—ready to explosively decompress when exposed to vacuum—was not a smart choice during void combat. Damage during a battle might rip a sailor’s suit and spill their air, but that risk was better than losing most of the ship and crew to one hull rupture.
He swung a data slate up from an armrest and ran his touch down the line of all the ships under his command, opening a channel to the captains.
“Task Force 37, this is Breitenfeld. Our mission is to destroy the Grinder, stop the Xaros from bringing in reinforcements, and get back to Earth and join the line. Update me with your combat readiness and the Crucible will open a wormhole on my mark.”
Ship icons went from red to green up and down the board…except for the Centaur, one of his two Manticore-class vessels armed with salvaged Toth energy cannons.
The face of Commander Davies, commander of the Centaur, came up on Valdar’s screen.
“Sir, my ventral energy cannons are having fits. Engineering has a work-around. We’ll be locked and loaded in…six minutes,” he said.
“We’re waiting on you,” Valdar said. He opened a different IR channel. “Gall, how are things on the hull?”
“Itching to get going,” she said. “I’ve had to explain to some of my newer pilots your habit of kicking us off the ship every time you get the chance. The two Dotok think you don’t like us anymore.” She and the rest of the Breitenfeld’s complement of fighters and bombers were magnetically locked to the outside of the ship’s hull to make room for what high command deemed “mission critical equipment.” Durand had a lengthy rebuttal on just how critical her fighters were, which Valdar opted not to share with their higher headquarters for fear of the damage it would do to the French pilot’s future.
“Hale, drop pod status,” Valdar said.
“All systems go.” Hale’s response was hurried. Valdar had kept his distance from Hale after their conversation in his ready room. Both had men and women to lead and a battle to plan. Valdar promised himself he’d make things right with his godson once Earth was safe. If they lost this battle, then Hale’s feelings toward Valdar wouldn’t matter.
“XO, what’s happening on my flight deck?” the captain asked.
“Missile pods one through four are on rails and ready to deploy. Chief MacDougall promises they’ll be clear and ready for flight ops within ten minutes of pushing the last pod out the door. Missileers are at their stations below decks, ready to go,” she said.
During the Toth incursion, the Breitenfeld had used her jump engines to deploy guided missile pods and devastate the Toth armada. Given his ship’s unique capabilities, Valdar wasn’t surprised he’d been tasked to replicate the maneuver. He hadn’t anticipated the target being in orbit around Pluto or commanding an assault fleet at the same time, but war was full of surprises.
The Centaur’s icon flashed green.
“Main power to rail cannons and point defense turrets,” Valdar said.
“Aye, Captain,” said Commander Utrecht, the ship’s gunnery officer.
“Crucible, this is Valdar. We’re ready to go.”
“Forming your wormhole now,” Marc Ibarra said, “good hunting.”
Valdar opened a channel to every sailor and Marine in his task force.
“This is Captain Valdar. My ship has a custom before battle, one connected to the proud lineage of her name. I will remind you that as we go into battle, God is with us. Gott mit uns.”
A white disc spread from the center of the Crucible and engulfed Valdar’s task force.
Valdar’s hands gripped his armrests as the blinding light pounded his skull.
“Sir!” Geller called out. “There are some fluctuations in the wormhole. Our exit point is off by…about three thousand kilometers.”
Valdar’s teeth clenched. Once, just once, he wanted the damn jump drive to work perfectly.
“Where are we—”
The Breitenfeld broke through the wormhole and into real space. They were over Pluto. The dwarf planet’s wide swath of glaciers looked ruddy, almost smoke-stained. Valdar picked out the Grinder in the distance and just above the horizon.
Off to port, a ripple of light appeared out of nothing and danced across a cylindrical object the size of a frigate. Valdar’s heart sank as more ripples appeared ahead of his ship, each revealing a Xaros warship.
“It’s an ambush!” Valdar shouted as he opened a channel to his ships’ captains with one hand and pointed to Utrecht with the other. The gunnery officer needed no further instructions. The Breitenfeld’s rail cannon batteries slewed toward the nearest Xaros ship.
A crimson beam lashed out and hit the Breitenfeld amidships, disintegrating an Eagle before it could release from the hull.
“All ships! Charge through the ambush, weapons free!” Valdar shouted.
His bridge crew were in action before he finished his sentence. Geller pressed the ship forward with engines blazing. Ericcson overrode the Eagles’ mag locks and cut the squadrons free from their grip on the Breitenfeld.
Rail guns flashed bright enough to leave an afterimage against Valdar’s eyes as they fired. The nearest Xaros ship cracked in half from the impact and tumbled toward Pluto, burning all the way down.
There were at least a dozen Xaros construct ships, none larger than a frigate, but all were pounding his ships with the cannons running through the center of each alien vessel.
A flash of jaundiced light broke over the starboard side of his ship.
“Tyre just went critical,” Ericcson said. “Hutchinson and Erebus both reporting heavy damage.”
“Two enemy vessels just fractured,” Utrecht said, “broke into drones…they’re going for the drop ships.”
Part of Valdar wanted to scream and find out why Hale and his Marines had been let go into the middle of the battle, but the answer to that question wouldn’t do anything to help them survive the descent.
“Gall, break off and cover the pods. We’ll make do with point defense,” Valdar said.
“—good shooting, Manfred…Roger, Captain. We’re breaking off but that will leave my bombers unprotected,” Durand said.
Valdar found a trio of Condors on his screen making a hasty attack on a Xaros ship dead ahead of the Breitenfeld. They were tens of seconds away from torpedo range…and taking fire from Xaros drones.
“Recall the bombers soon as their missiles are loose,” Valdar said. Regret squeezed at his chest as he said the words. He’d just signed death warrants for those three Condors, but Hale’s mission on the surface was mission critical, the Condors surviving their attack run…less so.
The ship lurched to the side, swinging Valdar against his restraints as the Breitenfeld made a high-energy turn. A Xaros ship flew beneath the ship’s keel. There was a flash from the ventral rail cannon and Valdar felt a bone-rattling kick through his seat.
“Target destroyed!” Utrecht announced. A grimace went across his face. “Ventral battery is off-line. The buffers weren’t designed for a perpendicular shot of
f the hull.”
Charon swung into view and the ship rocketed toward the moon. Smaller ships from the task force raced ahead of the strike cruiser.
Arrowheads of white energy shot over the Breitenfeld’s bow.
“Centaur is firing,” Ericcson said, “but she’s falling behind.”
“Helm. Slow and take us to starboard enough for the ventral cannons to cover the Centaur,” Valdar said.
The ship’s prow shifted to the right and the two rail cannon batteries twisted so far Valdar could almost see down their barrels.
“Enemy ships are breaking off—” the flash of rail cannons forced Ericcson to turn her face away as she continued “—retreating back to the Grinder.”
“No, we’re the ones retreating,” Valdar said. “They don’t have to destroy us all, just keep us off the jump gate until it’s complete.”
He looked at his data pad. Two of his ships were gone, the rest damaged. Only his ship was relatively unscathed despite the pounding she’d taken.
Must thank Torni for the upgrades, he thought.
“Breitenfeld,” Durand said, her transmission laced with static, “drop pods…attack…least one.”
Valdar released his restraints and went to the holo table where a larger picture of the battle raging over Pluto’s surface came to life. The drop pods streaked toward Pluto, none on course to land where they were supposed to. Dozens of drones fought with half as many Eagles around the pods.
“Shall I send the corvettes back?” Ericcson asked. “The Scipio and the Barca could reach them soon.”
“No.” Valdar shook his head as another drop pod flashed amber. A red X appeared over the icon a moment later, destroyed. “They can’t make a difference now. Get the task force to Charon and keep the moon between us and the Grinder.”
Valdar touched the Xaros jump gate in the holo tank and dragged it closer to him. Three-quarters of the linked spike circumference was complete. Drones swarmed over the unfinished edges, transmuting omnium into the basalt-like material that made up the spikes, bringing the two ends closer and closer together.
Construction was nearly complete, and Valdar didn’t have long to stop them.
****
The drop pod bucked beneath Hale hard enough to slam the back of his helmet against his seat. His visor display and gauntlet screen erupted with warning icons and dozens of panicked voices talking over each other through the IR.
“Bridge, this is Roughneck 6, status report?” Hale asked.
“—are clear. They’re going for the drop pods. Release! Release!” Durand’s shout carried through his helmet. “They are sitting ducks!”
“Egan! Why are we still attached to the Breit?”
“Not sure, sir.” Egan sat near the apex of the drop pod in a pilot’s chair, the only one with access to a window. Egan did a double take and leaned against the view port. “Bandits coming right for us!”
“Bridge! Why are—” The dorsal rail cannon battery thundered, shaking Hale and his team against their restraints like peas in a can. Hale tried to get his senses back and felt his body weight shift against different parts of his restraints.
“Egan?”
“We’re released,” Egan said, struggling with the controls as red flashes of light came through the windows, “but the engines are off-line.”
“Egan! I am too young and beautiful to die!” Standish yelled.
“Shut up!” Egan roared back. The drop pod lurched to the side and Hale felt a strong vibration through his acceleration seat as the engines came online.
“All teams, this is Roughneck 6. We are on the way to the drop zone. Report status in sequence,” Hale said through the IR.
“Crimson has release!”
“Gold has release!”
“Slate…damage…dead stick. I repeat dead—” The lieutenant’s words ended in a wash of static.
“Damn it. Egan, do you have vis on Slate’s pod?”
A scarlet beam stabbed through the hull and gouged a line through the deck just inches from Hale’s feet. The drop pod’s electricity cut out, plunging the team into near darkness. Light from Egan’s cockpit wobbled across the pod as it lost control.
“I’ve lost engines,” Egan said. “I blow the ejection seats or we’re all dead.”
“Do it!” Hale shouted.
“Brace!” Egan opened a yellow and black panel and grabbed the neon-green handle within.
Hale pressed his head against the back of his seat and grabbed his chest restraints. There was a flash as explosive charges blew his seat out of the drop pod. Hale tumbled over and over, catching alternating glimpses of the icy plains of Pluto and the Breitenfeld and her task force locked in a knife fight with Xaros ships.
He grabbed release pins on each of his shoulder restraints and pulled. One came free, but the other slipped out of his grasp. The left half of his body sprang away from the seat, jamming his right arm against the harness. Centrifugal force pulled his free arm away. He strained to reach the other pin, but even his pseudo-muscles in his power armor couldn’t overcome the force of his mad spin through Pluto’s thin atmosphere.
Hale jerked his right shoulder and found some wiggle room. He jerked again and came free of the chair. He kept rolling end over end, the thin layer of nitrogen and methane over the dwarf planet’s surface doing nothing to buffer his fall. He keyed the thrusters in his boots every time he saw Pluto’s surface and twisted his body to plunge headfirst once his tumble eased.
Hale looked around. Gauss point defense batteries across the Breitenfeld and her task force ripped through the void. Rounds flashed as they hit drones or raked across the sides of Xaros construct ships.
Burning streaks descended across Pluto’s brief horizon. Hale didn’t know if they were disintegrating drones or dying fighter craft. He looked to the surface and saw a puff of ice and snow as something impacted against a glacier.
“Here goes,” he swung his feet to the surface and fired the thrusters attached to his boots. He felt his stomach sink and blood rush from his head as g-forces played across his body. As he tried to gauge his descent with how hard he was about to hit Pluto, he wished he’d had a few more days to rehearse this emergency landing.
Hale hit like a falling dart. Ice shattered and a fine layer of dust and snow covered his visor. Hale felt pressure against his entire body, but no pain. He raised an arm, shifting daggers of broken ice the size of his hands across his helmet. He wiped his visor clear and saw the still-raging void battle high above.
He pushed himself onto his knees and felt for the plasma rifle on his back. He breathed a sigh of relief when his hand closed around the handle. He looked around. Low mounds of rolling ice stretched across much of the horizon, but the Norgay Montes were to his north.
Another Marine landed ahead of him. Hale pressed off the ice, taking long, loping strides through the gravity barely a twentieth of Earth’s. He kept an eye to the sky, aware that his gray armor made him an easy target against the pale white ice.
He leapt over a lump of ice the size of a bus and found Egan struggling out of his impact crater.
“Everyone got clear of the pod,” Egan said. “This was not how we were supposed to get down here.”
“What about the other teams? Did they make it down in one piece?”
“No idea. I was too busy trying to fly a falling stone, then trying to do the descent math in my head before my ejection seat could kill me.” Egan drew his rifle. “Blast must have fried the seat’s thrusters. Damn lowest bidder.”
“Sir!” Standish and Yarrow waved to them from the edge of the depression. “We’ve got a beacon from the landing zone. At least one team is where they’re supposed to be.”
“Thank God for small favors,” Hale said. “Any sign of Cortaro or Bailey?”
Yarrow touched the side of his helmet and nodded.
“I’ve got line of sight and IR to them both. Cortaro is not happy with us standing out in the open,” Yarrow said.
“Let
’s get moving.” Hale bounded up the hill.
The Marines formed into a wedge formation and ran toward the beacon, picking up Cortaro and Bailey on the way.
“Just so everyone knows,” Standish said, “there’s a master release button in the center of the Y-harness.”
“Why are you telling us this now, Standish?” Egan asked.
“Oh, no reason.”
Hale didn’t have to look at Standish to know he was winking at him.
****
Hale crested a hill made of ice and stone and saw a round mineshaft big enough to swallow a Destrier transport in the side of a cliff.
He keyed his IR. “This is Roughneck 6. Anyone copy?”
“6, Crimson leader, I’ve got you. We’re just inside the opening. Plenty of room for you,” Lieutenant Jacobs said. “Mind the drop pod. We’ve got it under camo twenty-five meters from the entrance.”
“Roger, inbound.” Hale made for the opening, his team behind him. He got to the shaft and jumped over the outer edge. The shaft wall looked like the surface of the ocean—perfectly still waves a few inches high descending into a deep abyss.
Five Marines from Crimson huddled against the edge of the shaft, their attention on the horizon. A black body bag lay off to the side.
“Xaros hit Fredericks,” Jacobs said. “His armor stopped most of the beam, but it cracked his suit. He suffocated before we even hit the surface.” Her gaze stuck on the dead Marine.
“What’s the status on your equipment? Any other casualties?” Hale asked.
Jacobs didn’t answer.
Hale grabbed her by the shoulder and turned her to face him.
“Look at me and focus,” he said. “Fredericks is gone. You can’t do anything about that now. Mission. Lead your Marines that are still alive.”
“Right, sir, sorry. Pod came down intact. We got all the special equipment out. No one else is hurt,” she said.
“What about the other pods? Gold is supposed to meet us here. You hear from Mathias or Bronx from landing zone bravo?”
“I saw…I saw one drop pod explode. I don’t know which,” she said.
Ice gripped Hale’s heart at the news. An entire team of trained and ready strike Marines—his Marines—gone in an instant, gone before they could even get into the fight. And there was a fair chance Steuben was on that doomed pod. No matter the gamut of emotions running through Hale’s mind, he was the company commander. They still had a mission to accomplish.