“Christ,” Fenaday said, remembering the mutiny in orbit of Enshar. “Not again.”
Mmok shook his head. “I don’t think it’s an inside job. I’d have detected this much explosive on the ship before this. This is top professional. Look at this,” he gestured. “The placement is superb. Everything in this area is vital. It’s a small charge but it is in the right place. This is how you bomb a warship,” he said with professional satisfaction.
“Can you disarm it?” Fenaday asked.
Mmok gave his sardonic grin. “With a toothpick.”
Fenaday smiled broadly.
“What are you so damn happy about?” Mmok asked.
“Victory goes to the side with the fewest fuckups,” Fenaday replied. “This is their first. While they were ignoring us, we couldn’t do a thing. Now they’ve struck, badly. It gives us an opening for a counter.
“This bomb is going to be our ticket onworld,” Fenaday said, his mind clear and racing. “We’ll move it into the ordnance handling room next to the shuttle bay. That space is outside the main armor belt, designed to blow out in case of accidental explosion. We detonate it ourselves, just after we launch a shuttle. Sidhe will declare an emergency. She’ll demand immediate descent onto the capital’s spaceport. They won’t be able to turn it down. Sidhe will advise they have lost contact with the shuttle launching at the time of the explosion.
“The shuttle will be the Intruder with the assault force in it. We enter the atmosphere and do a HALO insertion into the target area. The shuttle will land in a remote area and wait for a call for extraction.
“Meanwhile, we’ll have the Sidhe down in the capital raising hell,” Fenaday concluded.
“Not bad,” Mmok said. “They may believe the shuttle was destroyed, especially if we blow out a little radar/microwave chaff with the explosion.
“Now, will you get the hell out of here so Cobalt and I can tame this firecracker? The timer says there are two hours left. I don’t trust it.”
“With pleasure,” Fenaday returned. “I’m on my way to the shuttle. Keep me informed.”
Mmok grunted a response as he closed the clearplast visor of his body armor and headed toward the bomb.
Fenaday wormed his way back to the entrance then hit his throat mike. “Fenaday to Sharla; put me through on a discreet channel to Lt. Rask and then Corporal Schiller.”
“Rask here.”
“How fast can you get the assault team ready for insertion?”
“We’re on fifteen-minute standby,” Rask replied. “We’ve been practicing the drop for the last three days. All the equipment is pre-positioned and ready in the shuttle. We can go when you give the word. ”
“You have the word, Mr. Rask. I’m en route to the shuttle.”
Mmok’s voice came on the net next. “Fenaday, I popped the casing and I am working on the bomb. Indigo is bringing the robot team to the shuttle and will attend to the loading of the mech-force. She’ll be at the shuttle.”
“Affirmative,” Fenaday said. “Fenaday to Corporal Schiller. Get Risky into a drop chute and report to the shuttle.”
“Aye, sir.”
Telisan waited for Fenaday in the corridor. He wore a headset; his command privileges allowed him to listen even on the discreet channel.
“Telisan,” Fenaday began, “you’ll take Sidhe in. Demand to be part of the search for us. Get the embassy involved, as well as the Confederate military liaison. Don’t let them stop you.
“We’ll try for Pard sometime within twelve hours of insertion, barring a problem. You’ll have to monitor Mmok’s channels. He’ll fire off a micro-squeak on the prearranged frequency before we go in.”
“As we planned,” Telisan said. “Do not fear. I will not let you down.”
Fenaday gripped Telisan’s forearm Denlenn fashion. “They say a man who has found even one friend in life is rich. I have been lucky enough to have Lisa, Duna, Shasti and you. It’s been a rich life, no matter how the next few days go.”
The Denlenn gripped back equally hard. “Bring yourself and Shasti back. There will be other days to deal with Pard.”
Fenaday nodded with a shy smile. He headed for the shuttle bay, leaving Telisan to make his way to the bridge.
*****
Fenaday ran into the organized chaos of shuttle bay. The skeleton shuttlebay crew, all of whom were in on the deception, raced to finish preparations on the high-tech vessel. No one else was allowed into the bay. The assault team surrounded the matte-black Intruder. HCRs marched into the shuttle; they would jump with the team. Crab robots and the airbot latched to the shuttle’s belly. A flight crew put a drop-shield over the machines to protect them from the heat of reentry. They would then parachute from the exterior of the shuttle.
The live complement of the assault force was a mixture of ASAT Rangers under Rask with some of Sidhe’s LEAFs, including Li, the Toks, Morgan, and Schiller with his charge, Risky. Risky snuffled and licked Fenaday’s hand. The genetically enhanced German Shepherd’s intelligence kept him quiet and tractable despite the frantic activity. Risky knew it was work time. If the dog got within several hundred yards of Shasti, he would home in on her like a missile.
Fenaday ruffled the dog’s fur and hugged the shepherd. “Last time, it was she and I who found you. Now we have to go find her. Right boy?”
Risky whined an agreement. Fenaday released him to go back to Schiller.
Fury piloted the shuttle with Kieran McLoughlin in the second seat. Both worked furiously on the pre-launch checklist. They gave Fenaday a thumbs-up as he entered the shuttle, reaching for his jump suit and equipment. Detailed planning was paying dividends. In minutes the shuttle would be loaded and ready to go.
Fury waved a hand at him. “Mmok on Channel One, sir. Putting him on speaker.”
“Fenaday here,” he said, struggling into his harness.
“Mmok. The timer was a trap, just as I expected. The bomb was actually set to go off in fifty-three minutes. I like this guy. He’s devious. I’ve dismantled it, stabilized it and put a reliable trigger on it. Cobalt’s moving it into the handling storeroom. Sapphire’s rearranging the stores to dampen the blast. I’ve added some nano-cutter bombs on the outer hull side to shape the charge so it will blow outward and minimize damage. We can set it off any time we want.”
“Excellent, get down here as soon as you can.”
“Is there anything in there that could cause damage to the ship?” Rask asked.
Fenaday controlled a stab of irritation. After all, Rask was a ground-pounder.
“No, there isn’t. I didn’t want to empty the storeroom. There might be port police and inspectors coming aboard. It would look suspicious if the store room was completely devoid of debris.”
“Fenaday to Telisan.”
“Telisan, here.”
“It is T-minus ten and counting. Prepare to execute Plan ‘Milton.’”
“Affirmative. We are ready to initiate a synchronized orbit over Marathon and can begin a descent at anytime. All Operation ‘Milton’ communications are being encrypted. Only secure personnel are on the bridge. We are go.
“I must advise though, it is a very uncomfortable feeling waiting for a bomb to go off on one’s own ship. My previous captain would have never approved.”
“True,” Fenaday said, “I derive some pleasure from imagining myself presenting the repair bill to Mandela. I’ll see you if we live.”
Fenaday turned to Angelica Fury as she moved to the copilot seat, displacing McLoughlin. He’d take out the shuttle, turning it over to Fury when they reached jump altitude. “OK, Trouble, let’s fly.”
Fury grinned at the mention of her nickname and reached for the controls.
*****
At midnight, Sidhe advised Marathon ground control of the launching of a shuttle. This was not unusual. Fenaday had been joyriding fighters and shuttles around Sidhe on one pretext or another since they arrived. He insisted on providing his own local security with the ship’s Wildcats and Dakotas. M
arathon ground control was unhappy about it but they had no legal right to interfere with a captain in such a high parking orbit so long as he didn’t drop into an active control zone. It was also rather impolitic to annoy a visiting dignitary, especially one whose ship had been fired on when he entered the system.
The Intruder hadn’t left the shuttle bay since they reached Olympia. Fenaday had changed the names on the Dakotas to make it look like Sidhe had her regular complement of three Dakotas aboard. Since Sidhe had not come into atmosphere, there had been no customs search of the starship. An inspection would have quickly discovered the Intruder, despite Fenaday’s best efforts at camouflage and concealment.
Fenaday piloted the Intruder out the port side of the starship, away from the planet, hoping to foil observation for a precious few seconds. Sidhe’s engineers had altered her silhouette with plastic and metal panels so that, at first glance, she resembled a Dakota. These improvements would not stand any close examination and could be blown off by remote control. The Intruder moved a few meters away from the bay entrance. Then all hell broke loose.
The bomb exploded in the handling storeroom; its external hull bulkhead bay, weakened by Mmok’s nano-cutter shaped charges, bulged and blew out. Explosive decompression quickly cut off as the warship’s emergency systems activated. Sidhe had been designed to survive worse.
A cloud of Dakota parts, general debris and chaff, pre-positioned in the shuttle bay, exploded outward, blown into space by compressed air from the main airlock. On radar and microwave scanners, Sidhe shattered into hundreds of targets, shooting off in mostly planetward vectors. The Intruder shed her camouflage, blown off by explosive bolts. It would add a convincing touch. Fenaday sent the matte-black Intruder flashing downward, screened by the thousand bits of wreckage and her nonreflecting surfaces. Above them, in a dramatic touch typical of Telisan, the frigate began to tumble.
*****
On the bridge, Telisan hit the general quarters klaxon. “General quarters. General quarters,” he called. “All hands man your stations. Explosion onboard amidships. Fire and rescue parties to the shuttle bay. Medical teams to the infirmary. Shuttle bay, report on shuttle status. We were in launch mode. Stand by for search and rescue. Damage control report to the bridge.”
All this was in the clear, for the consumption of anyone, particularly news media, who might be listening. There was little danger of casualties. Telisan had rearranged work schedules so the area, usually unoccupied anyway, would have no one near it.
“Sir,” Sharla called, in a panicked voice, “Pooka’s signal has broken up. She must have been hit while launching.” Sharla, a veteran of the Conchirri fleet battles at the end of the war, was also hamming it up for anyone listening in on the ship’s intercom frequency. She wouldn’t lose her cool had the Conchirri themselves suddenly appeared in orbit.
“Attitude control is off-line,” Graglia said. “We are out of control and dropping from orbit.”
More of Sharla’s doing. From her computer station, she manipulated systems to make the damage look worse. It was convincing and would be undetectable afterward.
“Sidhe to Marathon Control,” Telisan called. “We are declaring an emergency.”
“Marathon Control to Sidhe,” the voice was male, controlled and professional. “We acknowledge your distress call. Please state the nature of your emergency.”
“We have an explosion amidships in the hanger bay area. We have lost attitude control and are dropping from orbit. The shuttle Pooka was launching from the bay when the blast occurred. We have lost radio and radar contact. She may have been destroyed.”
“Sidhe, this is Marathon. An emergency has been declared. All traffic below you is being re-routed. Are you able to restore sufficient control for an atmospheric entry? Do you have casualties?”
“Marathon,” Telisan said, signaling Sharla and Graglia, “we are regaining control of our attitude. Thrusters remain off-line. We do not have sufficient speed to maintain orbit. With the thrusters possibly compromised, I do not want to risk a manual burn for higher orbit. If it fails, I could lose any useful landing window we have. We are lining up for the current window to Marathon.”
“Damage control reports we are again spacetight,” Sharla reported. “All shuttles have received damage. We have no power to the wing-mounted fighters. There is no chance of an SAR launch for the Pooka. We have no visual contact with the Pooka from any station.”
“Marathon, did you copy?” Telisan demanded. “We are vectored for atmospheric entry on a glide path. We have lost contact with and cannot launch search and rescue for our shuttle. Captain Fenaday was aboard with twenty other people. Do you have a fix on them? Request immediate SAR for the shuttle.”
“Marathon here. We are passing your SAR distress call to Space Guard. We have no vessel in an orbit compatible with immediate SAR at your altitude. You were above all other traffic. We will give you a Space Guard ETA as soon as we know. We have no lock on your shuttle. Radar and microwave show hundreds of targets. We have no visual on your shuttle.
“You’re cleared to descend as best you can. Do not use any vector between two-one seven and two-two-zero. Those would put you on a course for the city. If you can vector two-two-five, that will set you up for a bay landing. Weather conditions are nominal for a water landing.”
“Affirmative Marathon,” Telisan said. He turned to the helmsman. “Down angle on the bow, seventeen degrees. Begin giving me heat readings as we hit atmosphere. Check computer generated approach vectors.
“Sharla, sound the atmosphere warning. We are going in.”
Sidhe dropped planetward, pelted by questions.
*****
A dozen kilometers below Sidhe, the Intruder shuttle entered the atmosphere of Olympia, heading for the outskirts of Marathon and Pard’s desert complex. Its matte-black, incredibly expensive surfaces absorbed microwave and radar transmissions. Her hull vectored heat around so that to a heat detector she appeared as a much smaller object, a piece of debris little bigger than a baseball. It did make the interior of the shuttle damn hot, despite the air conditioning. Everyone inside who could shed heat by sweating did so.
The heat finally lessened as the shuttle reached the freezing dark of the upper atmosphere. Now cool and invisible, she would appear to have burnt up in reentry. Fifteen minutes later, Fenaday slowed the Intruder, not daring to approach Pard’s high-tech complex any closer, even with all the shuttle’s stealthy refinements. Quickly, he turned the flight controls over to Fury.
“Good luck, Skipper,” she whispered, as if Pard might overhear.
“You too, Angie,” he replied. “I’ll see you at the pick-up point or in Marathon.”
On the shuttle’s underside the heat shield fragmented. Airbot and the crab gun robots dropped off like fleas into the night below. The Intruder’s rear ramp ground down as her red interior lights cut back to minimum. Cold air blasted into the shuttle. Fenaday felt his stomach clench. He stood at the back of the company of troopers, a dense, dark mass of shuffling people, heading for the yawning black at the end of the ramp. All he could hear was the roaring of wind and muffled curses from the troops near him. Mmok and the HCRs jumped first. The others piled off right after. He spotted Risky an instant before the dog and his handler vanished off the ramp. Fenaday rushed toward the ramp’s edge and into emptiness.
An icy wind slapped Fenaday’s body as he flung himself into space. HUD data reflecting off the inside of his visor gave him an artificial horizon and a fall direction for their landing zone. For a few seconds, none of this helped. He fell through the dark, flailing wildly as if trying to swim. Everyone disappeared, and the world became a formless black pit. His last jump had been over a decade ago. He’d forgotten the sensations. After a few panic-stricken seconds, he managed to get himself spread-eagle, stabilized to the earth. He remembered how to steer and aimed himself in the direction of the HUD arrow, trying to head for the LZ. The HUD now painted tiny sparks on the visor, other memb
ers of the team in free fall.
Falling from ten thousand feet seemed to take forever. Fenaday fought a growing nausea and the feeling that the automatics had failed, leaving him to plunge into the ground. Suddenly the canopy deployed, jerking him upright with a groin-straining jolt.
The smallish Olympian moon was a quarter full, giving a pale light that did not seem to touch the ground. The ice-ring glittered all the brighter for the moon’s weak competition. He didn’t need either. His HUD painted the ground an eerie, glowing green. Feeling more confident, Fenaday steered the chute in the direction of the arrow. A jump computer in the canopy reformed it into the optimum shape for steering in the direction he wanted. The small sparks of the other team members disappeared into the glowing green ground like snowflakes. Below, details appeared all at once, rock, scrub and small gnarly trees. At the last second, he remembered not to look to the ground, raising his eyes to the horizon. Never pull your legs up, he thought, it just bangs your ass on the ground. Fenaday kept his legs tight together. No sense in getting a tree limb in between either. He dropped his weapon bag on its lanyard. His parachute automatically flared into braking mode.
He hit hard and rolled on rough, rocky ground. A stiff wind at ground level battered him against a scrubby tree before the chute automatically collapsed itself, rolling into an easily buried ball. He stood shakily, clawing open his weapon bag to reach the carbine tri-auto. To his alarm, he saw no other Confed troops. Quickly he buried his chute and the empty weapons bag, then moved off in the direction of the LZ. He powered up the carbine and flicked off the safety. For good measure he loosed the tie-downs on his Martini laser pistol and Scottish dirk. He stared anxiously at the strange plant life, much of which looked like crosses between cacti and bare, twisted oak trees.
After a few minutes walking, he heard something coming down the draw toward him. Heart hammering, he dropped into cover behind a rock and brought up his carbine, trying to sight through the washed out green of night vision. It gave the world an unreal, nightmarish feel. Dirt crunched under feet, ahead of him. He sighted on the sound.
Fearful Symmetry (The Robert Fenaday and Shasti Rainhell Chronicle Book 2) Page 19