by Richard Fox
Durand and her fighters hovered over the Vimy Ridge; her remaining bombers were on the other side.
“Task Force 37,” Valdar said, “we’ve got one shot at this. If the Xaros get the Grinder up and operational, they will flood our solar system with drones. If this ship’s maneuver fails, we will ram the construct.”
Durand swallowed hard. If Valdar was willing to send the Breitenfeld on a suicide run, then the captain didn’t expect anything less from the rest of the task force. France did not have a tradition of kamikaze attacks, but if she had to turn her fighter into a human-guided missile, she would do it. Probably.
“Centaur, begin your attack,” Valdar said.
The lead ship’s engines flared to life and she accelerated forward. Durand cut ahead of her fighters and led them around Charon. The task force picked up speed and left the Breitenfeld behind.
The task force cleared the horizon and rose away from their close orbit of Pluto’s largest moon and angled toward the Grinder.
“Pull it up,” Durand said and banked higher, clear of the line of fire between the ships and their target.
The Centaur’s energy cannons let off a ripple of energy blasts that streaked toward the Grinder. A loose coil of burning points of light closed the gap to the Xaros jump gate in seconds.
The defending constructs snapped away from their position around the Grinder and made for the attacking human ships. The Centaur’s attacks smashed into Xaros ships well short of their intended target. The Xaros pulled damaged ships away from the leading edge of their swarm.
“They’ll take hits, but not lose any part of their line,” Glue said. “I hate how smart these things are.”
Rail cannons from every other ship but the Centaur fired. Red beams from Xaros point defense stabbed out and destroyed most of the shells before they could connect. Two Xaros ships fell back, cracked and burning.
The Centaur opened fire again.
Durand’s hand tightened against her control stick. She hated watching a fight, but her Eagle would make about as much of a difference as a sparrow between two fighting elephants if she tried to get between the two fleets.
The disintegration beams stabbed through space and hit the Centaur, leaving deep dents as it burned through the aegis armor. One beam struck a Toth energy crystal, shattering it into a cloud of tiny shards.
The ship rolled on its side, a substance like white smoke trailing from the shattered cannon.
One of the corvettes, the Scipio, swooped down and put itself between the Centaur and the focused fire from the Xaros. A scarlet beam raked across the corvette’s rail cannon and cut into the starboard engines. The Scipio spun out of control, taking another hit that tore through the shuttle bay door.
One of the Xaros ships began to spin on its axis as lumps of its hull flew off and morphed into drones.
“Here we go!” Durand shouted and brought her fighter about to intercept the new targets. “Take them out before they can reach the ships. The Breit should be here in—” a white portal opened several miles above the Grinder and collapsed, leaving the strike carrier in its wake “now. She’s here right now.”
Durand flew straight at an incoming drone and fired the gauss cannon slung beneath her fighter. The bullets ripped the drone apart and Durand flew through the debris. Burning stalks bounced off her canopy.
Four cubes slid out of the Breitenfeld’s flight deck. Missiles slid out of the cubes and streaked toward the Grinder, each IR guided by a sailor inside the ship.
Durand snapped her Eagle to the side and got on the tail of a drone as it made a mad dash back to the Grinder. She destroyed it with a blast of gauss bullets and dove back to the dogfight…which had turned into a chase as the Eagles pursued drones fleeing back to protect the jump gate.
“Xaros ships are breaking off!” announced Nag, another of her Chinese pilots.
Guided missiles struck the Grinder. The denethrite explosive warheads broke thorns off and sent them spinning through the void where they disintegrated seconds later. The Grinder broke in half under the onslaught of more missiles.
Rail cannons from the task force kept firing, catching the Xaros as they tried to maneuver back to the dying jump gate.
Guided missiles kept coming from the pods, now steering toward the Xaros ships. The Breitenfeld and her task force had the Xaros in a deadly crossfire. The rest of the battle was over within minutes.
“All ships, pull in tight around the Breitenfeld. We will jump out as soon as we’ve recovered the Scipio’s life pods,” Valdar said.
“Wait, what about Hale and the Marines on Pluto?” Durand asked.
“Negative contact,” Valdar said. Durand could have sworn she heard a tremor in the captain’s words. “Admiral Garret wants our ships back in the fight as soon as possible. We’re to jump to Mars immediately. This isn’t my decision, Gall. The situation on Mars is in doubt.”
Durand looked down at Pluto, watching as slag spewed from the giant mineshaft running beneath the Norgay Montes. She had no idea if any of the Marines were even alive. She hated the idea of leaving the Marines behind…but there was more at stake than just their lives.
“Manfred, Lothar, stay with me out here until the life boats are recovered.” Durand said to her squadron, “The rest of you get back on the Breit and get ready to fight again.”
CHAPTER 14
Egan felt his gauntlet vibrate. A data packet arrived, streaming through IR relays from the Crucible to the display on his forearm.
“Got it, sir!” Egan swiped images showing cross sections of Pluto’s crust and blotchy engineering schematics that he had no idea how to interpret. “Definitely got something…”
Hale looked over Egan’s shoulder at the images.
“What do they mean?” Hale asked.
“Hell if I know. I only set up an IR channel from the distant edge of the solar system through five different relays and established a discrete packet cipher with Ibarra’s probe to get this data. Guess I forgot to tell him to send us something a grunt could figure out,” Egan said.
“Ay dios mio.” Cortaro ran a line from his gauntlet to Egan’s and copied the data. He looked over the pics for a few moments then pointed to the wide opening on the right side of the cavern. “There’s a quadrium vein the size of Standish’s mouth through there. Other side looks like it leads to another of the smaller shafts we came through…which connects to drop zone bravo.”
“If the other teams survived, they’ll come through here,” Hale said.
“How will they know which way to go?” Jacobs asked.
“There’s the trail of our dead.” Hale nodded at the two corpses.
“I’ve got it,” Cortaro said. “Standish, tag that wall.”
Standish, crouched next to the tunnel leading to the large quadrium vein, drew his Ka-Bar and began carving into the rock.
“Between me and Crimson’s commo tech,” Egan said, “we’ve got five more relays. Not sure how far we can get before we’re out of comms with the surface. Pluto’s rotation is so slow we can stay in touch with Earth for days.”
“Leave a team behind?” Jacobs asked. “Maybe two Marines to stay in contact.”
“No, we’ll need every rifle if we come across a mass of turned humans. We’re staying together,” Hale said. He went to the sled loaded up with omnium cubes and gave it a gentle push. It floated away easily, remaining perfectly level.
“I’ve got an idea.”
Standish looked up from his work, the words GOTT MIT cut into the rock. He leaned toward Orozco. The big Marine had his plasma cannon aimed down the dark tunnel. “You hear that, Oro? Captain’s got an idea. He’s had the rank for barely two days and he’s already talking like old Captain Acera during field ops. I swear they really do sprinkle pixie dust on officers to make them lose their damn minds.”
“We had Lieutenant Hale so well trained,” Orozco said. “Got us almost killed a couple times. Almost never got lost. You think Cortaro can keep the good-idea
fairy away from him?”
“Not since he became a goddamn movie star,” Standish said through grit teeth. He opened his visor and blew dust out of the word UNS.
“Heh, so I was going through all my email, right?” Orozco gave Standish a punch on the shoulder. “The ‘us’ in the movie—well, not you—look just like us. No actors. So I’ve got thousands—thousands!—of letters from beautiful babies saying they just can’t wait for me to get back to Earth. They sent pics. Video clips. It’s amazing. Don’t worry, Standish. I’ll ask if they have any ugly friends for you.”
“Well, aren’t you just one heck of a pal?” Standish slapped his visor down over his face.
****
A wraith pointed the spike protruding from beneath her wrist at a glittering rock wall. A short blue beam snapped from the spike and traced a line through the quadrium ore. The ore dissolved into glowing smoke and traveled down the spike and across the wraith’s chest and along her other arm. The smoke coiled around an omnium cube floating above several other wraiths. The cube expanded slowly as the smoke from the wraiths curled around it.
A hover sled drifted behind the work party. It bumped against another waiting sled, sending the two drifting apart like billiard balls. One of the sleds hit a wraith carrying an omnium cube, knocking him to the dirt. The sled spun around, dumping cubes over the side.
Instruction queries alerted the Xaros drone overseeing the dig site to the disruption. The drone flew from its perch in the ceiling and redirected wraiths to deal with the disruption. The wraiths had limited capabilities, defaulting to the drone anytime they were confronted with something more complicated than moving to assigned workstations or transmuting quadrium.
A wraith grabbed the edge of a loose sled. It pushed an omnium cube back into place, then froze. The wraith transmitted data from its visual cortex to the drone. Between the cubes were several blocks labeled DENETHRITE. EXPLOSIVE CHARGE, 1 EACH.
The drone activated the wraith’s aggression programming a split second before the charges erupted with a thunderclap of noise and light. A wave of overpressure slapped the drone into the ceiling, breaking off several stalks.
Wraiths picked themselves off the ground, their armor saving all but the closest to the blast from injury. The remains of much of the drone’s work crew were red stains against the walls or scattered across the floor.
Marines rushed into the cavern. Plasma shots hit the drone before it could attack, breaking it into a dozen pieces that disintegrated before they hit the ground.
****
Hale shot two bolts of plasma into a charging wraith. Its armor cracked like glass struck by a rock and it stumbled to the ground. Hale pressed his muzzle against the temple of a one-armed wraith struggling to get to its feet and blew a hole through its head.
“Gunners, lay down covering fire!” Hale shouted to Orozco and Crimson’s gunner, a short Marine named Lin, as they ran into the cavern.
“Incoming!”
A dozen wraiths materialized through the smoke and dust. One leveled its spike at Hale. A red beam cut through the haze and struck Hale’s arm. Pain lanced through Hale’s shoulder and sent his rifle flying as his hand went into spasms.
He backpedaled, his mind struggling to focus against the inferno raging against his arm and the muted shouts from his Marines. A plasma bolt snapped over his shoulder. He looked up and caught a wraith’s bull rush against his chest. Hale hit the ground hard and the wraith landed on top of him with enough force to push the air from his lungs.
The wraith’s face pressed against his visor, a mask of atavistic rage screaming at him. Hale snapped his Ka-Bar out of the sheath and slashed across the wraith’s neck. Blood gushed out, splashing over Hale’s helmet. He shoved the slack body off and slapped at his face, trying and failing to clear his vision.
Hands grabbed him beneath the arms and dragged him away. Hale ran a thumb across his visor and swiped a clear patch. Dead wraiths littered the ground, tripping up their reinforcements. The heavy gunners’ cannons knocked wraiths off their feet and blew limbs away with each hit.
Hale struggled to draw his gauss pistol with his off hand. A red beam cut through the dust and gouged out a burning trench that missed Hale by inches. He aimed for the source of the beam and snapped off shots until the pistol clicked empty. He tried to drop the magazine with one hand but succeeded in dropping his weapon.
The drag stopped behind a wrecked sled. A Marine with a corpsman’s stencil on his armor set Hale’s back to the sled then grabbed Hale’s head with both hands.
“Are you OK?”
Hale managed a groan. His right arm felt like someone had stabbed it with a burning-hot fork and was trying to stir it around.
“Pain is good.” The corpsman—Niles, according to the name on his armor—ran a line from his gauntlet to a port on Hale’s chest. “OK, good news is we’re in atmo. I need to remove the damaged armor before it…let’s just remove the armor.” He touched his gauntlet.
The armor sleeve covering Hale’s right arm went slack. Niles tugged at the deltoid plate and an electric charge of pain went up Hale’s arm.
“Sorry! Sorry, sir,” the corpsman said.
“What’re you doing to my patient?” Yarrow slid to a stop next to Hale and knelt down.
“He’s my patient and I’ve got this,” Niles said, reaching out and trying to push Yarrow away. Yarrow slapped the hand away.
“His pseudo-muscle layer melted.” Yarrow shook his head. “The heat’s burning through the pressure lining but hasn’t melted all the way through. We need to get it off before it hits his bloodstream and shuts down his heart.”
“How do we do that without further—”
“Hold his arm.” Yarrow braced his forearm against Hale’s chest and looked into the captain’s eyes. “Sorry, sir.”
Yarrow grabbed the melted armor plate and ripped it off Hale’s arm. Hale fought against a scream as searing pain erupted across his arm. Yarrow pinned Hale to the sled as his commander struggled to get loose.
“Nu-skin spray. Now,” Yarrow said to Niles. Hale heard a hiss and the pain in his arm subsided to mere agony. “I know this isn’t much of a consolation, sir, but it was just a flesh wound.”
Hale breathed hard. Control over his hand came back slowly. He cocked his head up, waiting for the sound of plasma rifles or screaming wraiths but there was nothing but background noise through his IR.
“Jacobs, Cortaro, status report,” Hale said.
“All hostiles down,” Jacobs said. “We’re securing the cavern.”
Hale tried to get up and but the corpsman pushed him back down.
“Skin hasn’t cured yet, sir,” Niles said. “Stay still for a few more minutes.”
“You lost everything covering your bicep.” Yarrow held up a small armor plate, still dripping with blood. “The environment layer that protects you from vacuum is quite toxic if it melts. We don’t treat that often in void combat as casualties tend to expire from other injuries before toxic shock.”
“If you want a thank you for ripping my skin off, you’re fishing in the wrong pond,” Hale said.
“Just be glad Steuben isn’t here,” Yarrow said.
“Sir, try not to get shot again,” Niles said. “I’d rather not have any more stories about treating you while under fire.”
“Don’t waste your breath. The good captain’s always looking for trouble,” Yarrow said. “Sir, can you flex your arm for me?”
Hale pulled his fist to his shoulder, stopping halfway when pain that felt like a live wire came to life in his arm. He swore and let his arm flop down.
“Bet you’ve got some tendon damage.” Yarrow pressed Hale’s injured arm against his torso. Mag locks pinned Hale’s arm in place. Niles took out a roll of tape and fastened it over Hale’s arm.
“How am I supposed to shoot like this?” Hale asked.
“Sir,” Cortaro said, handing Hale his gauss pistol, “you worry about controlling the battle. Let us grunts do
the trigger pulling.” Cortaro held out a hand and helped Hale to his feet.
Dead wraiths littered the cavern floor. The heavy smell of copper—spilled blood—filled the air.
“Any other casualties?” Hale asked.
“Egan got a little singed. One of Crimson took a punch to the helmet that cracked her visor. Both say they’re fine. Armors are still void capable,” Cortaro said.
“We made a hell of a noise. Won’t be long before the Xaros come looking for us,” Hale said.
“Every minute they’re running around is a minute they’re not working on that gate, right?”
“We’re not here to distract them.” Hale pointed to two tunnels he could make out through the floating dust. A low thrum came through the tunnel on the left. “That sound like drones to you?”
“No, sir. Pitch is higher. Cycle’s faster than what we’ve heard before. Makes you wish Steuben was here, don’t it? Swear he can tell us apart by our heartbeats.”
“If there’s something unusual down that tunnel, then that’s where we’re heading.” Hale stepped over dead wraiths and kicked one over. He picked up his plasma rifle and shook off dirt and blood.
Hale pointed his barrel toward a tunnel.
“Follow me.”
****
Standish felt vibrations pulse through his feet. The tunnel ended a few dozen yards ahead. He saw what looked like a rapid-flowing river past the exit. He continued on, glancing at a Marine on the opposite side of the tunnel and a few steps behind.
“Why am I on point?” he muttered. “Crimson. They’re all the new guys. They should be on point. I bet putting me up here was Orozco’s idea. Most dangerous spot in any formation is the point man. He doesn’t want me to get my spot back in that damn movie and get a chunk of his royalties. I want my movie cash too, damn it.”