Torent turned and looked to the cockpit. “Well, I’ll be kraved.”
“Bill Harts. How the krav did he get in the cockpit?”
“Are you having trouble hearing me, Marine? I said helmets on,” Finch shouted into Jack’s face.
Jack took one last look toward the cockpit, watching Bill Harts prepping the craft with the pilot. Jack knew he would have made an excellent pilot. His academics in engineering and his experience with machines would have made him a better choice. Being sent to maintenance had been an insult, but at least he’d met Reyes.
He pulled the helmet over his head. The helmet connected with the suit and Jack heard the seal form.
The visor view through the helmet was overlaid with enhancement data. Jack felt the cold fibers slither through the back of his skull at the top of his neck. Jack cried out as they drilled into his brain stem. Suddenly, Jack could access the suit’s tactical functions with the power of thought.
He turned and looked at Torent. The suit’s helmet was an opaque dark gray with darker lines across it. The visual overlay showed a name tag over Torent’s left shoulder. Squad Leader Torent.
“You look better with that helmet on,” Torent said.
“I would tell you to go krav yourself through an airlock, but I’ve got too much respect for your rank,” Jack replied.
“Say good-bye to the Scorpio, Marines,” Finch said as the landing craft lifted of the flight deck. Through the cockpit viewscreen up ahead, Jack saw the flight deck doors open to reveal the small pink moon of Kratos set in the vast black of outer space.
Chapter 9
The last time Jack had set foot on solid, rocky ground was at the Battle of Training Moon. The Scorpio was solid enough, but a moon under his feet would feel good. Through the viewscreen, Jack watched Kratos grow larger as the landing craft raced toward it. The moon was pink with white wisps of acidic gas clouds drifting over the surface. From a distance it looked serene, welcoming, friendly even. Jack realized that the reality on the ground was going to be quite different; it was the only reason the hard-pressed Scorpio battalion would be authorized to use the meat suits.
The cockpit was more interesting than the moon for Jack. He watched the pilot operating the systems and the co-pilot Harts assisting. Harts reached out and flicked a switch. The pilot slapped Harts’s hand away from the instrument panel and returned the switch to its original position. The pilot pointed at another switch on the panel. Harts flicked that switch instead.
Jack wished he could hear the conversation between the two. Jack was sure he would hear Harts getting a grilling. He had clearly flicked the wrong switch and was being given a loud remedial lesson in landing craft operation.
The moon was huge now, filling the cockpit’s viewscreen. Jack guessed the pilot would soon have to slow the landing craft for orbit before plotting a landing trajectory. The pilot was jabbing a finger at the control panel. Harts was working the instruments as the pilot directed.
Watching the pilot’s and Harts’s every move, Jack guessed they were preparing for an orbital entry burn. Harts reached uncertainly for a lever. Jack thought it looked like the life support systems, not maneuvering thrusters. Again, the pilot slapped Harts’s hand away from the console as he reached for a control lever.
Jack watched as the pilot slapped Harts around the head. He jabbed his finger at Harts and was clearly telling Harts exactly what he thought of his piloting skills.
The gravity from the moon began to build on Jack’s body, and he felt himself drawn toward the pink moon growing ever larger in the viewscreen. A message from the pilot came over his suits’ intercoms.
“Cancelling orbital transition to landing. Proceeding direct to landing trajectory. The weather on our approach vector is chaotic so expect a bumpy ride. Putting you down right on the mark. Hold tight.”
The landing craft slammed into the thin atmosphere. Jack was thrown back against his alcove, the straps straining at the sudden increase in weight. Then the craft was thrown sideways before being thrown back to the other side.
“Activate the grav break.”
The pilot had either left his communicator on or had inadvertently switched it back on due to the sudden turbulence. Jack looked nervously at Harts, who was working slowly and clumsily.
“No, not that. Do you want to kill us all? That panel, there. The third switch left, the one marked Field.”
White thin clouds flashed by the viewscreen.
“Activate the grav break.”
The pilot was a frenzy of activity operating the landing craft and instructing his inadequate co-pilot. Landing was the most challenging part of any flight. The hammerings from the turbulence grew in strength and frequency. Jack could barely focus on the pilot and his work.
“De-polarize the hull. Can’t you even do that?”
The jagged bolts of lightning came up from the ground and struck the front of the landing craft. The blue lines of force crackled over the viewscreen. Jack had never seen lightning travel upwards. Every planet in the system had its own strange twist on nature, but the reverse lightning was unexpected.
The surface of the moon began to drift as the landing craft went into a spin. The pilot reached out against the G-force, visibly straining to reach a switch that Jack thought was the emergency landing stabilizer. His finger touched the small switch and he snapped it over. The small panel behind it lit up green.
“Grav break, now. Slam it, for krav sake.”
A second major lightning strike blew out the viewscreen.
The only sound the pilot made for the next fifteen seconds was heavy breathing as he worked frantically to do his best to slow and stabilize the landing craft. It seemed to be an impossible task as Jack saw the surface race ever closer. The landing craft slammed into the moon belly first.
The straps holding Jack in his alcove stretched under his weight. The suit’s power was diverted to the vertical stabilization support field. Jack’s display dimmed as power was diverted from all other systems. The strap at Jack’s left shoulder reached its breaking point, the frayed, threaded composite snapping.
Jack slammed sideways as the strap failed. The landing craft was down. 6th squad was deployed to Kratos.
Chapter 10
Jack released himself from the remaining straps and stepped out of the alcove. He looked along the line of Marines opposite. The enhancement data showed him the names and status of his squad-mates. Directly opposite was Osho. Her heart rate was high, but she was alive and ready for action. She nodded at Jack as he placed a hand on her shoulder. Next to her stood Terry. He was also fit. He shoved Jack’s hand away as he held it out in an offer of support.
“I can stand on my own two feet, Forge,” Terry spat.
“Where’s the commander?” Torent unclipped himself and stepped out of his alcove. “Terry, find the commander. Make sure he’s okay. Forge, check the cockpit. Osho, you’re with me. Let’s check these Marines.”
Jack picked his way along the narrow gangway to the cockpit. Harts was unstrapping himself from his co-pilot seat. “Bill,” Jack called out, “you need to assist the pilot and isolate the craft from flight operations.”
“It’s no good. Krav it. The pilot is no good.” Harts was babbling to himself.
“There’s nothing wrong with the pilot,” Jack said harshly. He’d watched Harts and the pilot at work and from what Jack knew, the pilot was the only man on board who had saved them form a catastrophic crash landing, while Harts had been a hindrance at best and a culpable liability at worse.
Unclipping himself and twisting out of the seat, Harts came tumbling forwards toward Jack. He barreled into Jack and then reached up to his helmet, tugging at it.
“What the krav,” Jack said. “Don’t take that off, Bill.” Jack grabbed Harts’s hands and pulled them away from his helmet. “We don’t know if the hull is still sealed. Any breach and the air in here is death. You’ll be dead in a second.”
“Dead. Dead.” Harts pushed Jack
away.
Jack shoved Harts toward another Marine. “Make sure he keeps that helmet on,” Jack said. He looked toward the cockpit and stepped forward.
The enhanced data overlay on Jack’s view showed that the pilot was dead, impaled on a thin composite pipe that had burst upward from the conduit channel below the cockpit. The black conduit had stabbed up through the pilot’s seat, through his central body mass and out the neck just to the right of his head. Blood oozed out and evaporated in the thin, low-pressure atmosphere.
“Report, Marine.” Finch stepped up behind Jack.
Reaching out to secure the craft and isolate flight functions, Jack reported the grim news. “The pilot is dead, Commander. Ship secured. There is a hull breach somewhere. A few secondary systems have taken a beating. I don’t think we are in any immediate danger.”
“Can you drop the access ramp from there?”
“Sir, yes, sir.” Jack turned to Finch. The data showed that Finch was unhurt, but his heart rate was high. Jack guessed the commander had not crash-landed recently, if ever, at least not outside of a simulation.
Jack dropped the ramp, letting out the remaining fresh air and letting in the dull brown light of the gas giant high in the sky overhead.
“All right. Listen up, Marines. Form up outside. Double time.” Finch tugged at the thin conduit protruding from the pilot’s neck, then turned to Jack and asked, “Is that a problem?”
Jack studied the conduit and then the instrument panel. It was a secondary plating data transfer conduit. “It is not affecting any flight system. The ship should be able to fly,” Jack said.
Finch nodded. “Get that dead pilot out of the cockpit, Marine. I don’t want to be fussing over that corpse if we need to get out of here quickly.”
The squad was sitting around on the ground outside the landing craft. Finch was on one knee, a holomap spread out in air in front of him and Torent at his side studying the map.
“Is that cockpit clear, Marine?” Finch said as Jack came down the ramp.
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“Okay, listen up, Marines. We are going to scout this moon and get back aboard the Scorpio pronto. Squad leader, set perimeter guards at two hundred meters from this point. Forge, you can assist the co-pilot and scout the moon with the landing craft.” Finch cancelled the map display and stood up. “Co-pilot, you have the pilot’s chair. Go. Now.”
Harts wandered toward Jack and the landing craft ramp. Jack stayed standing where he was and prevented Harts from walking inside the craft.
“Commander. If we use the landing craft to scout the moon, we will alert any Chits to our presence. We should scout on foot and stay hidden.”
“It’ll be much quicker, Jacky,” Torent said, stepping up next to Finch.
Finch advanced toward Jack, finger pointed at his chest. “I didn’t ask for your opinion, Marine. Now get that landing craft airborne and scout the area.”
“If we were sent to conduct an aerial scout mission, we would have been equipped with drones.”
“Are you hoping to stay out of trouble? Are you hoping to cower in some corner, or maybe on a nearby hill? That’s your style, isn’t it, Marine? I won’t run this mission and deal with your cowardice. You will get a hold of yourself and function like a Marine. But if you want to find yourself strapped to a flogging post on the Marine deck, you keep on disobeying me. Is that understood?”
“Sir,” Jack went on. “The landing craft is not a suitable vehicle for an aerial reconnaissance. We can’t be sure we’ve properly cleared the area.”
“I will decide when the area is clear, Marine. Now get in that cockpit and survey the area.” Finch rubbed away some of the moon’s pink sandy soil from his suit.
Jack received a message. He accessed the message on his helmets comms. It was Torent.
“Get that crate in the air, you dumb ass. I don’t want to watch you get flogged, again.”
Bill Harts pushed Jack up the ramp. “Get up there, Forge. I’ll show you how to get this thing off the ground.”
Jack couldn’t believe the stupidity all around him. Checking the area using the landing craft was a surefire way of alerting any Chits to their presence. The Chit home world was on the far side of the system currently, but there was no reason to believe they wouldn’t have an observation post on this moon themselves. If it was such a good location for a surveillance base, then surely the Chits would know that too. And they had been in this system far longer than humans, they had a huge advantage. Scouting from the air was dangerous and stupid.
And as for Harts suggesting he would school Jack on flying the landing craft after that horrible display of co-piloting, he was stupid and deluded. Jack was caught between idiots all determined to put him in deadly peril.
“Let’s get this thing off the ground,” Jack said and walked toward the cockpit. At least he would get to fly a spacecraft. That was something, even if it might be the death of him.
The landing craft lurched into the air. Harts sat in the pilot’s chair and instructed Jack. It was possible to fly this craft from the co-pilot’s chair, but Jack had to listen to the ramblings of an incompetent pilot. Jack did his best.
The landing craft was a basic supply vessel design, customized for troop transport. It was small enough to fit inside a destroyer but large enough to cram a company of Fleet Marines inside. It was, however, totally inappropriate for surveillance operation. It was big and slow. The scanning systems were suitable for landing and docking, but nowhere near the level required for identifying hidden Chit soldiers.
It was relatively easy for Jack to fly. If only Harts would help. But Harts was arrogant and overconfident, even given his recent poor performance. How had Harts gotten into the flight deck? He was nowhere near as capable as Jack.
“Not as easy as it looks, is it?” Harts said as the raft was rocked by a sudden atmospheric disturbance. Jack navigated through the turbulence, keeping the craft steady.
It was virtually impossible to tolerate Harts. The man was devious, a cheat, and a liar. Jack suspected he had a cruel or even psychopathic streak. He would set people up for a fall, not for any personal gain but just to watch them tumble. Jack could not forget how Harts had set him and Sam Torent against each other. Harts had cleverly manipulated them just for the pleasure of watching two Marines come to blows. It could have ended badly for either Jack or Torent. And if Harts didn’t watch his mouth now, it would end badly for him. Jack was not going to tolerate this idiot.
“It would be a lot easier to fly this thing if you helped out,” Jack said.
“I am helping you, old buddy,” Harts said. “I’m instructing you. You might get good.”
Jack felt a rush of irritation at the word buddy. It grew to anger at the suggestion that Harts could instruct him. It peaked at full blown fury as he heard Harts say he might get good. Jack was a better pilot, a better engineer, and a better Marine than Bill Harts. Even though Jack had never wanted to join the Marines, he knew he was better than Harts. A sudden pang of humility slowed Jack. He bit his lip and accepted his situation; stuck on a moon with Bill kravin’ Harts trying to instruct him.
Jack had always stayed away from the kids who wanted to join the military. Jack had only ever wanted to build machines and fix machines. Machines were easy to understand. Someone like Harts was impossible to grasp. The guy just didn’t function and Jack was damned if he knew how to fix him. But in the short time he’d been training with the Fleet Marines, Jack thought he knew how to shut Harts up. One more word, Jack thought, just one more word and...
“Don’t let the nose dip, rookie.”
“Don’t speak to me, Bill.” Jack twisted in his seat, one hand on the controls. “You are the worst kind of nasty scroat. You wouldn’t know if the nose on this craft was dipped, raised, or jammed up your ass. Now shut the krav up and let me fly this circuit.”
“You don’t know this ship, Jack. I’ve been learning it for days…”
“You wouldn’t know t
he primary coil from the lift plate.” Jack turned his attention back to the viewscreen.
The moon was a strange world. The pink surface was cute at first glance, but it soon became a violent assault on the eyes. The moon had the appearance of a pink forest. The surface grew upwards in twisting, branching towers that ended with fine cobweb-like structures.
The moon interacted with the gas giant Penthos and created a dense golden aurora that shimmered across the brown sky. Jack ignored the strangely beautiful view and focused on keeping the landing craft level and steady. It was too easy to let the view take over Jack’s focus. He would love to push the landing craft to speed and follow the lines of the aurora, joy riding high above the surface of Kratos. But this was not entertainment, this was business. This was Marine business, and Jack had a responsibility to his team.
“The scanners on this boat are set on too wide a beam,” Jack said. “Refocus them for me, Harts.”
“Scanner focus is fine,” Harts said.
“It’s that panel there,” Jack said, pointing to the relevant touch screen. “Access scanner control and reset for a narrow beam. As narrow as it will go.”
“You do it,” Harts said.
“Can you take over the flight controls?” Jack was nervous about letting Harts have control. How had Harts even been selected for flight operations? If anyone should have been sent to the laundry aboard the Scorpio, it was Harts.
“I can fly this ship,” Harts said haughtily. “If you can’t handle the scanning, maybe you shouldn’t be flying.”
Jack didn’t know how long he could hold off hitting Harts. “Take control in three, two...” Jack left the controls. He was going to adjust the scan focus in as short a time as possible. It was true he would have to fly more lines to cover the area, but it did mean he could fly the landing craft. It was exciting and interesting; it was almost worth putting up with Bill Harts.
“Scanners refocused. We’re getting much better data already.” Jack looked out at the strange world below. He would never have been here, flying over this surface, if he had not been drafted. He would never be glad to have been dropped from his university course, but this was something special. And he was working on machines he could only study in simulations back in university on Eros. Jack had never wanted to be a Marine, but was starting to feel like he didn’t have any other options.
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