by Jamie Sawyer
“I’d prefer something better than that,” I replied.
“From the look of these near-space scans,” Zero said, “you’re going to need it…”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Zero,” I said. “California out.”
“Lock in, people,” Riggs said.
I heard the Lynx’s two-man aerospace crew canting back orders to one another from the cockpit. No matter what Heinrich wanted to talk to me about, it could wait. I was about to do what I loved, and my blood had started to sizzle with excitement.
“Permission to launch in three … two… one…” came the voice of Navy Command.
The slow trickle of adrenaline had started. My breathing had become more intense, heartbeat increasing just ever so slightly.
It’s been too long since I’ve felt this way, I thought.
“We’re a go,” the Lynx’s pilot declared. “Hold tight back there.”
The attack ship fired from the belly of the Bainbridge like a bullet from a gun, gaining speed as it hit the mothership’s mag-rails, thrusters igniting. Multiple gravities pinned me to my seat.
“We’re clear,” the pilot declared. “Dropping to Daktar.”
Launch diagnostics fluttered across my HUD, but I mainly ignored those. The suit could also read my squad’s condition-status and that was of a lot more interest.
Of course, the Jackals had trained for this. No matter where they had come from, they were now Alliance Army. All soldiers had to complete Basic—Initial Entry Training, better known since the start of time as “boot camp”—and the Jackals were no different. They’d all done hostile-environment and hot-deployment courses, with varying degrees of success. They were also members of the Simulant Operations Programme, which made them the best that the Alliance Army could offer. The Sim Ops version of Advanced Infantry Training required several hundred hours of immersive VR interaction, in an effort to acclimatise operators to simulated death: far and above what was expected of a typical Army grunt.
But none of that made them ready. The drop to Daktar was real.
The Jackals were struggling, and their bio-signs showed it. Heartbeats and respiratory levels fluctuated wildly. The recon-suit was equipped with an onboard medical-suite, which would automatically administer combat-enhancing drugs to keep the wearer at peak performance, but even those weren’t enough. Feng looked like he might stop breathing at any moment, and Lopez’s pulse was so erratic that she was verging on cardiac arrest. Riggs, who had racked up dozens of drops as a Marine aviator, was shaking inside his armour; whatever his previous training, this experience was something different and so much worse.
Only Novak seemed untouched by the proceedings. He sat across from me, his pointed jaw set, face dancing with waves of kinetic force.
“Is good launch, yes?” he asked.
He looked far more menacing without the security-drone at his shoulder, and the glow cast by the ship’s interior consoles made his face appear almost demonic. No one bothered to answer him.
I opened the command stream between my sim and my recon-suit. The armour used by Sim Ops was top-end shit; while it’s not quite telepathic, it’s pretty close. I could control several of my suit’s facilities just through the neural-link, and I wanted to get a proper look at our destination. I thought-commanded my recon-suit to open the Lynx’s external camera feeds.
A grainy image appeared on the interior of my HUD. Daktar 436 was a grey and featureless C-type asteroid, one of a few thousand in this sector, caught in the gravitational pull of Daktar Star. Data on the objective filled my HUD: the combined intelligence pool of all Alliance assets that were currently operating in the area. There was a sudden flash of light across the display.
“What’s that, ma’am?” Lopez asked, peering at the image on her own HUD.
“A null-shield,” I said. Frowned. “And it looks functional.”
The null-shield was a ubiquitous piece of Alliance engineering: a projected anti-energy field, designed to repel incoming weapons fire. The shield was particularly effective at dispersing laser-based weapons, but in a pinch could be deployed against railgun and flak munitions as well.
“Shouldn’t that be turned off?” Lopez asked.
“Don’t ask me,” I said. “I’m not in charge.” But that development was worrying, and Lopez had a point. I pulled up the briefing packet, and rapidly absorbed the contents via my suit’s neural-link. Just another added advantage of being in a simulated skin. “Intel insists that they managed to switch off the station’s defences on the approach. The base was equipped with a Class Three null-shield, and a full anti-aerospace defensive array.”
“Is getting interesting, yes?” Novak said.
“Can we fly through the shield?” Lopez muttered.
“You worried we’re going to get wasted by a damned null-shield?” Riggs asked, sighing. “Course we can fly through it. The shield won’t be strong enough to repel something this big—”
“No, but they’ve hacked the defence array,” said Feng, “and that will definitely be able to stop us…”
There were laser batteries mounted across the outpost, and they swivelled to track incoming targets from every angle. Feng was right: the Black Spiral had somehow hacked the outpost’s automated defence systems. Alongside the Lynx attack ships, the Bainbridge had also launched her entire complement of robot fighters—automated drone-ships, light assault boats that carried limited offensive weaponry—at the outpost. The fighters were already meeting resistance, becoming tiny but brilliant stars as they reached the perimeter of Daktar’s defence grid, within range of the laser batteries.
“Nothing is getting within landing range,” Lopez said.
At the centre of the matrix of light sat a small, irregularly shaped asteroid—grey and dusted, honeycombed in places—moving so slowly that to the naked eye its spin was imperceptible. Closing at high speed, I could make out a trio of landing spires on the asteroid’s surface. Those were Towers One, Two and Three: the strike team’s primary entry points. The Towers were actually docking platforms, designed so that each could accommodate a dozen or more starships.
“Has anyone made it down so far?” Feng asked, almost superfluously. His early enthusiasm for the mission was quickly waning, replaced by grim realisation that all we could expect to find on Daktar was an early death.
“No,” I said, hurriedly checking the strikeforce shared-intel pool. “It doesn’t look that way…”
Just then, I received a battle-space update. Two teams had already made extraction: that is, the simulants had “died,” and the operators made the jump back to their real bodies aboard the Bainbridge. Sure, the strikeship carried a stock of replacement sims, and more could be launched, but we only had so many transports, and those Lynxes were wasted. This was also a time-sensitive operation; unless the situation changed, those teams were as good as out of the fight. Bright flashes marked the demise of two more simulant squads—their transports destroyed before they could even make planetfall. Rapidly cooling debris showered near-space, and the nearest attack ships and robot fighters dodged to avoid being hulled.
The communicator bead in my ear chimed with an incoming message.
“This is Bainbridge Command,” said a familiar voice: Heinrich. He liked to make these addresses himself, micromanaging the activities of every simulant squad under his command. “All squads should be aware that the area is hot. Expect heavy resistance until you breach the station.”
“Man can stop stating obvious,” Novak said, rolling his eyes. “Is FUBAR, yes?”
“The situation on the ground is fluid,” Heinrich said. “Tactical objectives are currently being updated. Things are worse than we thought. It goes without saying that the Gate cannot be allowed to fall into enemy hands.”
The Lynx’s camera system glitched as it focused on the Shard Gate, straining to comprehend that area of non-reality beyond Daktar Outpost. Inactive at present, the Gate’s interior was a deep bluish colouration: emptied of s
tars, hard light dancing around its edges. Even inert, the Gate still put out a constant wave of exotic energy.
“And we most definitely cannot have that…” Riggs said, mimicking the timbre of Heinrich’s voice.
At its most basic, each Gate was a wormhole: a tunnel connecting two distant points in time-space. The Gates were abandoned alien technology, made by the Shard—a machine-species that had been largely absent from this sector of the Milky Way for the last few millennia. The Gates had the potential to revolutionise space travel, offering instantaneous transport across the Shard Network. Many had been mapped, made safe and predictable, but just as many remained unknown quantities. I could well see why Command didn’t want the Black Spiral commandeering an operational Shard Gate…
I received a further battle-space update as another transport exploded behind us. More simulant teams had extracted, with over half of the original strike team now neutralised. Our ship vibrated, shook; debris smashed into the flank.
“Fuck!” Lopez screamed. “We’re hit.”
Up front, the anonymous pilot—a simulant just like the rest of us—began shouting coordinates into his communicator. The co-pilot activated weapons systems, and flares of light sprang across the ship’s flight path.
“Deploying counter-measures,” she declared. “Tracking multiple threats!”
“Ease up,” Riggs moaned. “Try pulling back on the acceleration—”
“You’re going to have to bail out,” the pilot yelled to me, plugging a respirator over his lower face. “I can’t compensate for this sort of damage.”
“But we’re running scout duty!” Lopez argued. “We’re supposed to land on the other side of the outpost!”
The irony that Lopez, just a few minutes ago, had been complaining about assignment to scout duty wasn’t lost on me, but now wasn’t the time to make a thing of it.
“Try telling them that!” the co-pilot shouted back, waving at the cockpit screens. “For terrorists, they sure know how to—”
Before she could finish the sentence, a beam of hard light slashed through the armourglass of the Lynx’s cockpit. Had to be the laser array. The beam punched the co-pilot, went through her seat and then the ship’s flank.
“Check your suits are sealed!” I ordered.
My body was tugged by escaping atmosphere, my recon-suit bucking against the safety harness.
“We’re going down,” the pilot declared. “This is Lynx Six, preparing for extraction—”
The view through the cockpit windshield span and span and span.
“Ready for impact,” I said. “This is about to get real.”
“You heard her,” Riggs said to the rest of the team. “Get ready to bounce.”
Jinking past laser fire, amid a zero-gravity storm of shrapnel and debris, the Lynx fell to the waiting asteroid.
CHAPTER THREE
DAKTAR OUTPOST
There are, contrary to popular belief, certain advantages to crash-landing in a vacuum. Sure, it’s brutal, and if you want to be picky about it there’s a very high probability that you won’t be walking away from the mess that follows.
But while it isn’t something I’d recommend, it also has benefits.
Namely, shit doesn’t burn. And that was probably what saved us as the Lynx went down.
The pilots were both wearing simulants. Those skins are specially adapted, specifically designed to fly ships or die trying. The Aerospace Force uses next-generation simulants, which aren’t anywhere near as durable as combat skins, but they sure are fast. Their senses are extreme: needle-sharp.
The co-pilot had extracted—there was no way she was coming back from full-vaporisation via a laser beam—but the pilot must’ve taken evasive action at the last moment, because he managed to pull up the Lynx’s nose just before impact. That was a selfless but final act: in the split second that followed the manoeuvre, part of the cockpit’s frame gave way and sheared the pilot in two, triggering immediate extraction. The Lynx—now pilotless—grazed a kilometre-long furrow into the rock.
Less than two seconds later, it came to a stop. Surrounded by a plume of grey surface dust: temporary cover for the downed ship.
It took me another second or so to get my jumbled thoughts in order.
“Is good landing, yes?” Novak growled over the squad’s communication channel.
“Is good landing,” I said back, on autopilot. The rational part of my brain was having some difficulty accepting that I was still alive.
“We are not dead, yes?” Novak said. “Is good.”
“I’ve survived worse,” I said.
My simulated body sagged in the safety harness, forehead pressed against the inside of my helmet. The diagnostics on my suit kicked in immediately and my medi-suite took care of any minor injuries I’d suffered. The medical tech was top-quality combat-gear, and my armour knew exactly when to give me uppers or downers. Had I been in my real body, I’d probably be a shaking mess right now, but inside the sim it was a different story. I felt the drugs hitting my system hard and fast, and threw off the vestiges of unconsciousness.
The cabin was drenched in red light from a security lamp set in the deckhead. Around me, the team were stirring in harnesses, bobbing in the micro-G of the asteroid’s local gravity. The attack ship had landed at a forty-five-degree angle, the deck listing uncomfortably.
“Everyone alive?” I asked.
“Christo…” Riggs said. “I think I should’ve done the flying.”
Another voice broke in on the comms. Lopez. Screaming. “I’m trapped!”
I thought-ordered the suit: UPPERS. IMMEDIATE.
Feng lurched out of his seat, crossed my vision. Full of twitchy movements. “I’ll help.”
Lopez’s legs were caught beneath a weapons locker that had fallen from the deckhead, but as Feng pulled the crates clear it became obvious that she wasn’t seriously injured. Riggs went to help, and the debris was quickly cleared. Then the uppers hit Lopez’s bloodstream, and her breathing calmed over the comms channel. Her vitals stabilised too.
“I—I thought that I was breached,” she stammered.
“Stay with it, kemo sabe,” I said. “We’ve a long way to go yet.”
My HUD rebooted and gave me a summary of our situation. SQUAD COMBAT-CAPABLE, it told me. The Jackals were—incredibly—in one piece.
“Combat-capable means mission-capable,” I said to myself, unclipping the safety harness. “Up and out, everyone! Riggs, distribute weapons.”
Riggs busted open the weapons locker, and tossed shotguns across the cabin. I scooped an A600 as it drifted past. It was a nice weapon: a tactical combat shotgun, cleared for use in a pressurised environment. Command wanted the Daktar Outpost intact, and breaching the outer hull with a plasma pulse wasn’t compatible with that objective, so we’d been equipped with shotguns and fragmenting anti-personnel rounds.
“We need to get out of here,” Feng said. “I’m getting readings across the board: the boat’s drive is going to spill any minute.”
He was poised at the cockpit door. It was open, and the two Aerospace Force pilots were dashed across the console: little more than red stains in flight-suits.
Lopez grimaced. “Look at the state of them.”
“Someone want to check if Lopez shit herself on the way down?” Novak asked.
Riggs nodded. “Suits are sealed, keeps the smell in…”
“Fuck you,” Lopez said. “Both of you.”
“Any time, Senator,” Novak said.
“Stow it,” I said. “The dead don’t care, Lopez, and unless you want to end up like them we need to get out of here. Riggs, do your job and get this sorry outfit into shape.”
“Understood,” Riggs said. “Novak! Get that hatch open, and Lopez: you cover him.”
The Russian kicked at the Lynx’s rear access hatch. The recon-suits carried manpower amplifiers that augmented the simulant’s physical strength. While the man-amp wasn’t comparable to that found on a suit of full
combat-armour, it was strong enough. The ramp gave way with ease, revealed a stretch of stark, open landscape beyond.
“Form up on me,” I ordered, bouncing out of the wreckage. “We need to get clear of the boat!”
Feng tumbled down the ramp, then froze, shotgun up, face scanning the horizon.
“Was it supposed to be like this?” he asked. “Place is a fucking warzone!”
The others paused as well.
It was hard not to be impressed by the sight. In a vast pyrotechnics display, the defence grid was making short work of the Bainbridge’s fleet, reducing the fighters and attack ships to molten slag. Like a deadly rain, pieces of debris flashed across the asteroid’s face, appearing deceptively close to our position. This op was going south, and fast.
The Jackals scrambled across the rock. We’d dropped way off course, and our objective, Tower Three, was a good distance from our location. I needed new orders.
“Bainbridge in the blind,” I said, talking as I bounced. “Bainbridge in the blind! Requesting orders. Do you copy?”
COMMUNICATION LINK UNAVAILABLE, my suit insisted. PLEASE RE-TRY LATER. I cycled through the available comms bands, trying to make contact with the rest of the strike force, but there was no response at all.
“No one can hear us,” Feng said. He panted as he moved. “We’re on our own down here.”
“Is the Bainbridge safe?” Lopez asked. She flinched every time something cooked off above us. “Our bodies are on that ship!”
“Heinrich’s up there,” I said. “And we’re still moving, aren’t we? If the Bainbridge gets hit, we’ll know it.”
“Will hardly feel a thing,” Novak taunted.
“Incoming!” Riggs interrupted.
The rock face beside him exploded, and reflexively I went to ground. The rest of the squad did the same, scramble-rolling in micro-G. Their response was hardly textbook, but at least no one died in the second that passed.
“Where’d that come from?” Lopez said, craning her neck to scan the horizon.
“Just stay down,” I said. “Do as I tell you.”
The asteroid had been worn smooth by millennia in space, and surface cover was limited to vague banks and troughs. The jumble of metallic towers and modules that made up Daktar Outpost appeared in the distance. Glowing icons indicated Tower Three, our objective, and from there several ruby-red lights shone.