by Evan Currie
“Yes, Lieutenant Commander.”
“And now that the comms are off,” Washington said, taking a breath, “well, fuck us both! How the hell are we supposed to provide close air support with non-coded friendlies in the mix!?”
“Who are we talking about, anyway?” Lieutenant Geoff Molen asked.
Washington checked the intel download as the atmosphere outside thickened enough to really start kicking them around.
“Looks like the Alliance Special Ops guys,” he said. “At least we should be able to tell them apart from the shooters, assuming we get in that close.”
“I can’t believe we’re about to lay down fire on humans to save a bunch of Alliance troops,” Molen muttered.
“We’re not. We’re about the lay down fire to save our Special Forces team and help extract an asset and prisoner,” Washington growled. “We’re going to avoid killing any Alliance soldiers because we’d rather not start the war up again. That’s it.”
“Yes, sir.”
An alarm sounded and Washington turned his focus back as they continued to drop.
“SOL, Viper One. Viper One is dropping past angels ninety,” he said, turning the comm back on. “Nosing down, angling toward the AO. We’re running hot and clear to the engagement area.”
“Roger, Viper One. You are cleared for weapons hot.”
Washington flipped the safety-off switch and thumbed it over, lighting up another bank of displays to his right as well as changing his HUD to red.
“Viper One is weapons hot.”
The Saddleback shook as the weapon pods opened up, catching the air and altering the already crude aerodynamics of the heavy-duty ground support drop ship. Nose down, reactors burning hot, and weapons winding up, the Saddleback was going to war.
*****
Sorilla landed in a crouch, extending her guns in front of her as she picked out targets and opened fire.
Her team leapfrogged back under the cover she provided, their rifles roaring as they lay down suppressive fire to keep the enemy from regrouping or returning fire with any organized intensity.
“Colonel Aida, Viper One inbound,” the voice broke into her comm link on the command channel. “We have a package for you.”
“Good to hear, Viper One,” Sorilla responded as she leapt back, arcing over ten feet in the air and fifty along the ground to evade a warp pulse that tore apart her previous position. “Standby for priority tasking.”
“Standing by.”
Sorilla emptied the remains of her magazines into the man who’d fired on her, then started tagging the enemy vehicles.
“Viper One, prioritize enemy mobile vehicles,” she said. “When those are neutralized, orbit and provide general cover as possible.”
“Roger that. Piece of advice, Colonel?”
“Speak.”
“I’d duck if I were you.”
“Roger that, Viper One. Bring the heat,” Sorilla said, opening up to the general combat channel. “Heads up, boys, close air support is inbound. Unless you want to be hit by friendly fire, you might want to stay closer to the ground.”
Everyone hit the confirmation tags, and she hoped that was enough. Close air support was a chancy thing at the best of times, but with as many people mixed up in the mess as they were dealing with now, it would a minor miracle if someone didn’t at least catch a stray.
*****
“Angels seventy, boss.”
Washington nodded, pushing the throttle forward to keep up their speed as they continued to dig deeper into the ever-thickening atmosphere.
The Saddleback was the latest in a long and distinguished line of close air support craft, and like its predecessors, it was in many ways a gun that someone designed an aircraft around. The hundred-millimeter auto-cannon Washington was currently straddling ran the entire length of the Saddleback, powered by twin reactors and enough capacitors to light up a small city. Five rails and a ten-thousand-round-per-minute feed rate would put ten-centimeter-diameter depleted uranium slugs wrapped around a tungsten core downrange at hypersonic velocity.
There was little that existed that could take that kind of heat and come out unscathed.
“Target acquired,” Washington said. “Confirm lock.”
“Lock confirmed,” Molen responded. “No tagged friendlies in the line of fire.”
“Let’s hope the untagged ones got the message,” Washington said as he cleared the last safety. “Viper One. Guns, guns, guns.”
He stroked the firing stud, barely bridging the circuit for an instant, and in that moment the Saddleback rattled around him as the gun loosed just over forty rounds downrange. The rounds hit the air in front of the Saddleback with enough speed that the friction lit the oxygen in the atmosphere on fire. Streaks of fire rained down from the cannon, reaching out into the distance and vanishing into a cloud between him and his target, but Washington was already shifting to the next target.
“Target acquired. Confirm lock.”
*****
Sorilla dropped when the alert hit her HUD, trusting everyone else on her team to do them same, but she was far from certain about the Lucians.
“Kriss!” she called over the open air, amplifying her voice. “Get down!”
The cloud cover overhead parted like the hand of God had punched a hole through it, which wasn’t a bad description, in Sorilla’s opinion. The hundred-millimeter rounds lit straight lines of fire as they slammed into the ground and destroyed anything between them and the ground in the process.
The first burst tore a four-by-four to shreds in midair, the vehicle having been caught after going over a particularly large bump. The strike perforated the vehicle’s battery core, which was already operating on a heavy load, the heat and chemical reaction exploding the batteries in some rather impressive fireworks.
Huh, they’re using old-style batteries, Sorilla noted idly as she gingerly stuck her head back up to survey the situation.
Another burst parted the clouds, slamming into a second vehicle and turning it into flaming shards. She looked around, making sure to get her implants enough scans to match up with the data she was still getting from the SOL’s overhead scans.
The APC was still moving away, now putting some distance between them and the enemy formation…such as it was. The strikes from the Saddleback had scattered the enemy in all directions.
The second the Saddleback signaled the end of the strike, Sorilla was moving even before the shots landed. She charged directly into the lines of fire as they burst through the clouds and tore apart another vehicle, both guns blazing as she charged.
*****
In the back of the transport drop ship, Staff Sergeant Manuel Gutierrez stomped across the bay.
“Get in your racks!” he bellowed. “Every last living one of you better be in your racks before I turn back around!”
He made his way to one end of the bay, pivoting on his heel when he got there and freezing as he noted every single Special Forces man in their rack as he’d ordered…and every single Lucian standing there in the middle of the bay, staring at him.
Gutierrez took a breath, muttering under his breath, reminding himself not to cause an interstellar incident. SOLCOM did not need a new war with the Alliance because he tossed a bunch of Alien pansies off his plane without chutes.
“What in the ever-loving hell are you lot doing?” he demanded finally, glaring at them.
“You do not give orders to Sentinels,” one of them growled in rough English.
Gutierrez stared for a moment, just restraining himself from laying into them. Finally he just shrugged and walked over to his own rack and pulled down the restraints.
“You know what? Stand right there,” he said, all smiles and pleasantries. “Just a heads up, though, we’re about to do a hot retrieval. That means this bird is about to rock and roll, and that floor your standing on is about to be open to the atmosphere. I highly recommend you hang on, cause we’re about to have one hell of a ride.”
<
br /> The Lucians exchanged glances, confusion pretty clear in their posture.
“What does this mean?”
“It means, you dumbasses,” Gutierrez swore, “that if you don’t get in your damn racks, this flight is about lose a bunch of extra weight that is apparently too stupid to be worth the space it’s taking up. So rack the fuck up!”
Reluctantly, the Lucians moved over to their side of the drop ship hold and finally got themselves locked into the racks that secured them properly. Gutierrez looked them over, checking that all the telltales were green, then connected to the cockpit comm.
“We’re all locked in and ready here.”
*****
Caliph acknowledged the staff sergeant’s report as she trimmed the drop ship’s flight profile and bumped up the throttle just a bit. They were circling the fighting, coming around on the APC from the west as she tried to avoid any ground-to-air potshots from the locals.
“Keep an eye on that Saddleback,” Caliph ordered. “We don’t want to stray into his line of fire.”
“You can say that again,” Ensign Gin snorted.
The cannon on a Saddleback was a very real threat to anything short of a starship hull, and while the SOL could laugh off anything the ground support drop ship could dish out, her transport sure as hell couldn’t. Getting between it and what it was shooting at was a sure-fire way to ruin your day.
Caliph opened up the comm to the back. “Captain, Staff Sergeant, we’re about to open up the doors. Keep your hands inside the vehicle at all times; otherwise you damn sure will lose them. Cheers.”
She closed the comm and flipped off the safeties, then triggered the lower bay doors. The drop ship shuddered as the bay opened up, pressure differentials rattling everything as the bay equalized.
“Ping the APC. Get me sub-centimeter location and vector information,” she ordered her RIO. “I don’t want to bounce that thing around the back. If that happens, we’ll be lucky if we only lose men back there.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Gin answered, “pinging the APC.”
Caliph hit the thrusters as she decided on her approach vector, and they were pushed hard back into the seats as the transport drop ship accelerated into the running firefight.
*****
“Dust-off inbound!”
Strickland looked over to where Chavez was sitting. “ETA?”
“Two minutes, sir.”
“Roger that,” Strickland said, shifting in the command chair of the APC and accessing the team communication channels. “Two minutes to dust-off. I say again to all units, two minutes to dust-off!”
The steady roar of the APC’s gun had dropped off, targets getting smarter about presenting themselves now that fire from the sky had joined the fray. Hammers of the Gods slamming your ass into the ground had a tendency to make even the most hardened fighters question their life decisions.
The APC was rattling them around like dice in a box, though Strickland was thanking the designers of his suit for having put an integral air supply and really good filters. Both Eri and the prisoner had thrown up several times already, and he didn’t envy whoever was going to clean that up.
Chapter 16
“Angels twenty!”
“Got it,” Washington said, not looking up. “Hold on, this is about to get fun.”
“Angels fifteen!”
Washington didn’t acknowledge the update, though he noted it as the drop ship continued to plummet through the lower atmosphere. He deliberately moved through the checklist, his motions unhurried as the ground level practically screamed up toward them, flipping over a bank of switches.
“Angels ten!”
“Retro thrust engaging,” Washington stated simply.
The Saddleback shook even more violently than when the gun was fired, and they were slammed down into their seats. Washington felt his spine compress as the thrusters roared and smoke surrounded the cockpit.
“Angels seven!”
Seven thousand feet, still dropping hard and fast, Washington kept on the thrusters as the Saddleback flattened out its flight pattern and changed from a steep drop to a sharp arc.
“Angels six!”
“Initiating variable flight geometry,” Washington said, pushing a lever forward.
The Saddleback rattled ever harder for a few moments as wings swiveled out from armored compartments, and then smoothed right out.
“Angels five…and holding,” his RIO said, sounding a lot calmer.
“Viper One has transitioned to low atmospheric flight mode,” Washington announced over the comm. “Coming around to orbit the area of operation.”
“Roger, Viper One, good hunting,” the SOL’s communication’s officer replied.
“All hunting is good hunting. Viper One out.”
Washington looked over his shoulder. “Line ‘em up, Lieutenant. I’ll knock ‘em down.”
“Yes, sir, Lieutenant Commander. You want it, you got it.”
Washington nodded as the Saddleback arced around and switched his focus again. “Peregrine, Viper. Make your pickup run. We’ll cover you.”
*****
Caliph nodded, flipping a couple overhead switches. “Thank you, Viper. We’re making our run in thirty seconds.” She looked over to where Gin was sitting. “Tell me we have the positioning and vector data.”
“We’ve got it, updating five times per second,” Gin responded. “I’m trying to get it faster, but there’s some interference in the air.”
“Five times per second is enough for the job,” Caliph said, pushing the throttle forward and putting the nose down. “We’re going in. Signal the APC. Ready or not, they’re about to be caught.”
“APC signaled,” Gin confirmed. “They’re waiting on us.”
“Alright, let’s do this.”
Caliph pushed the stick and the throttle forward, dropping the transport low to the deck as the speed increased. Ahead she could see flashes and smoke from the fighting, so she hit the alarm to tell everyone to buckle up.
“Setting countermeasures, twitch settings,” Gin said.
“Won’t do much good, but if it makes you feel better…” Caliph replied. “They’re using manually operated Alliance warp blasters. If one of them has decent aim and gets off a shot, we’ll be hit before the countermeasures notice anything.”
“Cheery,” Gin said. “Thanks for that.”
“Any time.” She grinned. “All part of the fun.”
“You need help, Peregrine,” Gin told her. “Just so we’re clear on that, okay?”
“Crystal, Gin. Crystal.”
*****
Sorilla hit the ground as warp blasts rained down around her, the fire far less focused but a lot heavier as the enemy fired blindly but enthusiastically as they tried to substitute that enthusiasm for discipline. It was a common tactic, especially among weaker and lesser trained forces, but not one that generally worked.
She pushed her guns out ahead of her, taking time and aiming carefully, each shot dropping a target with methodical precision. Controlled fire around her from the rest of the team told her that the others were doing the same.
Briefly she glimpsed figures moving in and out of the smoke of the battle, the Lucians taking the fight right to the teeth of the enemy despite the threat of a blue-on-blue strike from her, her team, or the air support Saddleback.
Sorilla admired their guts, if not their brains.
A rumble built up, penetrating her focus and armor, causing Sorilla to glance up as the transport drop ship came in low and fast, though decelerating quickly. The belly of the flying beast was open, and she could see men and Lucians strapped into racks within as the craft slid on by overhead.
“Anyone close enough to get to the APC, here’s your ride,” she called over the team comm link, not really expecting anyone to take it.
“I’m good here if you are, Colonel,” Nicky said over the comm, a chatter of gunfire in the background.
Sorilla shook her head, unsurprised
by the response but exasperated all the same. “All right, you lot, cover the APC’s pickup and then get ready to E and E.”
Escape and evade would be their next step, once the primary objective was accomplished, at least until the SOL could send another craft for an extraction. Her team was all well-versed in such things, of course, but she really didn’t know about the Lucians. She had to assume they had some version of the standard course, but what sort…well, she supposed there was always time to find out.
*****
Major Strickland surreptitiously doubled checked his restraints, not wanting to freak out the two civilians about what was to come.
“Hang on, everyone. About to get rough here,” Chavez said from the gunnery station. “I’m securing the gun for transport.”
The whirr and clank of the gun rotating back into its housing vibrated through the armor to the interior as they were rocked and bounced around the interior of the APC. The driver was fighting to keep them on the straight and narrow as the pickup closed in, and that was making for a rougher ride as the driver stopped trying to find smoother paths.
“What’s going on?” Eri asked, ashen-faced from where he was secured into a trooper rack, looking undersized in the space intended for a big man in full armor.
“Standard extraction,” Strickland answered brusquely. “Just hang on. It’ll be fine.”
Chavez choked off a strangled laugh, earning him a glare from Strickland.
“Shut up, Master Sergeant.”
“Sorry, boss,” Chavez said, switching over to a private channel, “couldn’t help it. I notice you didn’t tell him that no one has tried this move in an actual fight yet.”
“It worked fine in field trials. We’ll be fine.”
“Famous last words.”
*****
The transport drop ship cut speed as it approached, matching the running APC as it settled in a few dozen feet off the deck to give Caliph a moment to double check her assumptions. When the math checked out, she dropped the stick and sent the big transport descending at a faster pace than any sane person would ever try outside of an emergency.
The open belly of the transport loomed over the APC as the craft jittered around while the computer made the last-second adjustments needed to keep from crashing and killing everyone on both vehicles in a fiery ball of death. Then the transport steadied and came down quick, swallowing the APC in an instant.