“Gravity’s going to make us her bitch then?” Esau asked carefully, avoiding the real reason they had rushed to Ptolemy in the first place.
“Yep.”
“Joy.”
“Think of it like this,” Gabriel began, his voice quiet and reflective. “You get to see a nuclear explosion from fewer than five kilometers. Four if you don’t let go when I give the order.”
“I’d rather pass, truth be told,” Esau admitted. “There’s just something about surfing the pressure wave of a nuclear explosion that doesn’t send the jollies coursing through my soul.”
“You get to kill some Abassi.”
“That, however, does give me all sorts of tingly feelings,” Esau stated. “Just like when you punched the shit out of that enlisted Navy asshole.”
“I’m certain an unnamed enlisted Perfect didn’t think it tingled in any way, Esau,” Gabriel reminded his best friend. “Please don’t tell me you actually felt bad for the man.”
“Not really,” the man from Solomon replied jovially, all vestiges of nervousness gone in the blink of an eye. “You’re a one-man wrecking crew. Loads of fun to watch you destroy some hapless ass monkeys.”
“You’re weird,” Gabriel muttered and checked the readings on his screen.
“You’re ugly,” Esau retorted quickly. “You’re also really short.”
“I’m tall for my family,” Gabriel grunted as the derelict Nuevo Esperanza grew rapidly. “Wraiths, prepare to dock. Twist, Beeker, round up our rides and keep them close to the hull in case we need to get the hell out of Dodge in a hurry.”
The missiles closed rapidly on the dead ship. The missiles began to fire bursts of air as they tried to match the speed of the Nuevo Esperanza, which was in a degrading orbit around Ptolemy. Gabriel knew one day in the far future unless the ship were moved by the Navy or some other entrepreneur, it would enter the atmosphere and possibly destroy a good chunk of land when it crashed.
He approached the derelict cautiously, the slow and leisured maneuver almost causing him to forget they were travelling at well over twenty-eight thousand kilometers per hour. Gabriel watched his readings carefully as they approached, ignoring the vastness of space which threatened to overwhelm him. He waited until the speed of the missiles was only slightly faster than the ship before he looked back at his visual display. He grinned.
“Two hundred years since physics were perfected to this stage and advanced theoretical mathematics were realized,” Gabriel said as he reached out to snag the ship. A brilliant flash shot out from the ship and arced onto his suit, as he had expected. The suit absorbed the static and transferred it to his own power reserves. He smiled as the others latched onto the ship, their surprise evident as the static electricity from the derelict’s hull jumped over to their suits. “And I’m riding a nuclear-tipped missile to a destroyed space ship across occupied enemy territory like a drunken cowboy from the old west. Yeah, this is why Wraiths don’t have a long life expectancy.”
Gabriel watched as Twist pulled his powered-down missile along the hull, a cable dangling from his hand. Gabriel accepted the cable and ran it carefully through the handle he had welded onto the missile. He handed the cable back to Twist, who carefully passed it over to the recently-arrived Esau.
“No sign of bodies so far,” Gabriel said as he scanned the outer hull. It was partially destroyed, though there was evidence a large portion of the ship had maintained integrity for some time in the immediate aftermath of the ambush. He spotted a few relay ports within the ship that were still active as well. “There’s still some energy on this ship still.”
“Aft looks to be mostly undamaged. Some minor damage to the engine compartment. I’ll know more if we go in,” Esau reported.
“Gabe, I got signs of a forced docking over here,” Beeker reported a few minutes after the rest of the squad was attached to Twist’s safety line. Gabriel turned around and looked aft. He could see Beeker’s suit easily against the backdrop of the ruined space craft, the Wraith highlighted by Gabe’s IFF tracking feature.
Gabriel shifted his scan and found what Beeker had been talking about. It was a massive hole, larger than four suits combined. He glanced around and saw the edges of the hole were smooth, consistent with a secure air lock during the boarding process. He frowned, deep in thought, as he inspected the entire hole.
“Beeker, Esau,” Gabriel decided after a moment. “Check out the areas where you can and look for bodies.”
“Bodies?” Esau asked.
“Yeah, bodies.”
“Okay.”
Gabriel watched as Esau, with Beeker right behind him, entered the hole, squeezed into the narrower passages of the ship and disappeared from view. His suit continued to track the two Wraiths, and as they explored further into the derelict vessel a clearer picture of the interior of the ship came to light.
“Only one body, Omelet,” Esau reported five minutes later. “Cause of death looks like asphyxiation. Probably was in the cabin where the boarding took place and didn’t have a chance to grab a mask. Male, I’d say middle-aged.”
“None back here,” Beeker announced soon after. “None in engineering, either, despite the slagging that happened to the engines. Low levels of radiation coming from the failed containment unit, but nothing bad for us. I’m still showing green.”
“Found one more in the cabin,” Twist said. “Male, decapitated. The captain, I’d say. Fired off the warning beacon, which probably pissed off the Abassi. They rewarded him for his bravery, I suppose. Fucking aliens.”
“No bodies, except for an accidental and the captain,” Gabriel breathed. “You know what this means, Esau?”
“That I’m going to learn how to surf?” he asked rhetorically. Gabriel paused before replying.
“Well, okay, yeah. But it also means Sophie could be alive. She could be down there on that planet, right now, waiting for me.”
“Omelet,” Esau began, his voice gentle. “I want her to be alive as much as you do, but it’s been almost two years since the raid. Even if they had taken her down to the planet, it’s probable she died afterwards, like those poor bastards back on Ibliss. You saw what their scientists did to the captured humans.”
Gabriel did not respond, so Esau pressed on.
“They probably jettisoned the bodies into the star, or they fell out during decompression and burned up in orbit. It’s sad, yeah, and I hate telling you this, Omelet, but I think she’s dead. All of them, all five hundred or so human beings. The best we can hope for is vengeance.”
“They’re on the planet!” Gabriel snapped suddenly, cutting off any further argument. He felt the ache in his heart press painfully against his chest. He ignored it as he had for almost a year. He forced any doubts out of his mind as well. “She’s down there, they’re alive! No more discussions. You’re either with me or you can ride your ass back to the Eye, your call.”
“We’re with you, Omelet,” Esau whispered as he grabbed his missile and pushed away from the hull. He drifted into space and waited. The others followed, joining their leader. The blue-green planet shone beyond the wreckage of the Nuevo Esperanza. Esau sighed, uncomfortable. “We’re always with you.”
“Then prove it,” Gabriel snapped and activated his missile’s targeting system. It came alive once more, searching through stray pieces of the ship before it detected the planet. It continued to scan until it found the main Abassi base, located near one of Ptolemy’s four oceanic bodies in the polar north. A few jets corrected the angle, and the propulsion activated, rocketing the missile towards the planet’s surface. Gabriel did not look back to see if anyone was with him as he accelerated towards the planet, nor did he spare the Nuevo Esperanza a final glance.
His destiny was before him; his love, awaiting his return.
Chapter Nineteen
The engines fired again just before they began their entry.
“This was a stupid idea,” Gabriel muttered as he leaned forward on the missile, the
legs of his suit straddling it. The air around him began to glow as the friction of the atmosphere heated their suits. He wasn’t too worried about the suit overheating. They were rated for much higher, and he already knew from first-hand experience they could take it. He was far more concerned about the nuclear weapon he was sitting on.
“Listen up, Wraiths,” he broadcasted to his squad. “When I give the signal, spread your arms out and get away from the nuke. The wash from the engine should push you off to a side. Once clear, activate your inertial compensators and get away from the missile. You need to be at least four hundred meters away. Everyone got that?”
“Look upon the moons, little boy, and you shall see the sea of stars,” Twist sang gently, eliciting a laugh from the Wraiths. Gabriel grunted as Twist explained. “My mother used to sing it to us when we were out doing our nomad thing. It put us to sleep at night when we could look out and see the moons high above. I thought it was appropriate, given how we’re pretty much going to be blown up by a small star.”
The others laughed some more.
“Okay, prepare to release,” he ordered. He tried to steady his breathing but the exhilaration, the rush and absolute insanity of what they were doing was threatening to take over all his senses. He felt a strange sensation in the pit of his stomach, looked at his screen and decided the time was almost at hand. Complete and utter insanity, he thought as his whole body shook from nerves and the vibrations of the missile. He looked at his screen and double-checked the trajectory before making his final decision. “Release now! Release! Release!”
“Thank you for flying Nuke Air,” Beeker called out, his voice giddy and bordering on the brink of insanity while, as one, the Wraiths let go of their missiles and flew free, leaving the decelerating warheads to their fate.
“Prepare for the airbursts,” Gabriel warned as he watched the timer on his display. “You can watch if you want, by the way. The viewscreens will filter everything. I think.”
“Really?” Markus asked. As they slowed in the atmosphere, the missiles pulled away, their exhausts pushing and buffeting the Wraiths. “This’ll be new,” Markus finished, his suit tossed further away as Esau’s missile flew past.
Gabriel checked his altimeter and saw they were roughly fourteen kilometers above the surface of Ptolemy. He did some mental math and realized the air burst would be high enough so the Compton Effect would cool the expanding fireball and allow them to easily watch it. He watched the bright flames of the missiles disappear as their engines died, already kilometers away. Then–
“That was brighter than expected,” Gabriel said as the missiles simultaneously detonated, creating a flash brighter than the star Ptolemy orbited. He blinked away the tears as the white fireball threatened to overload his eyes, the viewscreen barely compensating for the bright contrast against the deep blue atmosphere. He looked at his readings and saw everyone had definitely survived the heat from the initial explosion. He keyed his mic. “Five seconds until those pressure waves hit.”
“Prepare to surf, Wraiths! Hoorah!” Twist screamed ecstatically as the pressure wave struck him first, flinging his suit haphazardly towards the north. Gabriel only had a brief instant to wonder why the insane Boer from Ibliss was enjoying himself before he, too, was tossed about like a ragdoll as the wave struck him squarely in the back.
For the briefest of moments, Gabriel was awash in the simple exhilaration of riding a nuclear explosion through the air. The pure, unadulterated power which was set loose upon one of the Dominion’s own worlds was awe inspiring by itself. Gabriel knew he was riding a terrifyingly euphoric wave of emotion as he rode Death, the pale horse attempting to lose him as it tossed him about like a leaf on the wind. It was...insanity.
This is why they chose us for these half-assed missions, Gabriel thought as the pressure wave began to dissipate. We get off on this shit. Sanity should be left at the door, along with your coat. Thank you for understanding.
As quickly as the blast had hit them it was gone. For a moment Gabriel thought he had been wrong, and had died from the force of the explosion as everything grew deadly quiet. Then the air began howling past him again and his nuclear flight turned into a deadly plunge towards the ground far below. His compensators began to howl as his speed began to climb. He checked and realized they were about to reach the troposphere of Ptolemy’s thin atmosphere.
“Gabe, I’m getting intermittent fire from the ground,” Esau stated as they entered the troposphere and continued to accelerate, their steep angles leaving the impression of asteroids entering the atmosphere, under the cover of the nuclear explosions. At least, that had been Gabriel’s plan.
“Scattered?” Gabriel asked, searching the sky frantically for any signs of the blue lasers which had shredded the division on Ibliss.
“Concussive missiles,” Esau replied, his tone eerily calm. “They’re trying to track asteroids but I think we caught them off guard. They– oof!”
“They what, Esau?” Gabriel looked back at his friend. His face paled as he saw Esau’s suit begin to tumble wildly. “Esau? Esau?!”
The suit of his best friend fell, out of control, smoke trailing in a thin tail as it plummeted towards the ground. Gabriel watched in horror as the suit continued to gain speed, achieving terminal velocity as gravity claimed him. He cued his comm and tried to slave Esau’s suit to his. He was only partially successful.
“Esau? Buddy, I’m going to try to slow you down,” Gabriel said, trying to regain control of the free-falling suit. However, a quick diagnostic of the suit caused his heart to sink.
Esau’s suit was working, though the shock from the missile had actually managed to knock him unconscious inside it. The massive dent in the back of the suit showed him just how hard the missile had struck. Gabriel was mildly amazed at the amount of force caused by the direct hit. He began to scan the suit to see if anything could be done for his friend.
The main engine which powered the inertial dampeners was destroyed, having taken a direct hit from a lucky Abassi missile; the ‘golden BB’ he had seen mentioned in his military readings. Gabriel quickly ran another test on the directional engines and found he could only yaw the suit to one side or the other. He switched to his viewscreen and looked around before he saw something promising. That’s going to be one hell of a target, he decided quickly. I better not miss or he’ll never let me live it down.
“I hope this works,” Gabriel whispered as he angled Esau’s suit to the left, towards the vast ocean beyond. He fired the last of the directional engines and watched as they sputtered briefly before kicking Esau over, sending him tumbling faster offshore. “I’m pretty sure you can survive this; I’m not going to be court-martialed and hung alone, damn it.”
“Gabe?” Beeker called out over his comm, startling Gabriel. He had forgotten about the rest of the squad in his mad rush to save Esau.
“Go ahead,” Gabriel said, hoping the suit would keep his friend safe and alive until a rescue operation could be mounted. Assuming any of us are left to rescue, a darker part of his mind thought. He shoved the thought aside.
“We’re thirty seconds out from landing,” Beeker reminded him, his tone carefully neutral. Gabriel glanced at the readings on his screen and nodded.
“Good,” he said. He began to issue orders. “Beeker, secure the landing site when we’re down. Joshua, find a good spot to set up comms. Twist, Markus, set up a two-klick perimeter.”
“Not taking any chances, doos?” Twist asked as Gabriel’s compensators began to howl, slowing his descent as they had on Ibliss.
“No,” Gabriel answered forcefully. He checked his readings, then shifted his eyes back to the altimeter. He stared at it for a moment, the back of his mind kicking him for some reason. Something was different on this drop, he thought as he stared at the altimeter. “Well duh, jackass,” he muttered to himself as he watched the numbers quickly slide downwards. “This time you had a nuke.”
“Gabe, my suit isn’t talking to me,” Ma
rkus abruptly interrupted his private musings. If Gabriel could have slapped his head, he would have.
“Yeah, I just figured that out, too,” he said as he eyed the approaching ground warily. “I think we’re good, just nothing-”
Impact imminent, the suit suddenly notified him. He grinned.
“And we’re back,” Gabriel said, his suit lurching violently as the compensators kicked into overdrive in a last-minute effort at keeping him alive.
Five seconds until impact, the suit informed him. Four, thr–
“Oomph!” he grunted as the suit hit the ground, the compensators shutting off the moment his mechanical feet struck the dark, rich soil of Ptolemy. Shocked by his sudden arrival planet side, he rolled and tried to use the momentum to rise to his feet. He ended up on his backside instead as the weight of the suit dragged him down. He flailed a moment as he struggled to dig himself out of the dirt kicked up around him upon impact before he managed to roll to one side. Giant clods of dirt and grass stuck to his suit and he mentally swore. His mouth filled with the coppery tang of fresh blood and he grimaced as he realized he had, once more, clipped the tip of his tongue with his teeth.
“I’m never going to get that part right,” he predicted and pushed himself to his knees. He looked around as the rest of the squad landed solidly as well, the weight of the suits pushing them deep into the soft soil. He was mildly thankful the soil was damp and soft. He couldn’t imagine how violent his landing would have been had the ground been rock. He swallowed the blood and watched Markus, who had landed a few seconds after he had, begin push himself out of the dirt and establish a security perimeter. He nodded and waited for a status update from the rest of his squad.
“If I could have sprained an ankle there,” Beeker complained as he rolled to his feet, apparently unimpressed with the rough landing. “I would have. That was damn fun, Gabe.”
“Glad someone had a good time,” Gabriel said as the Zulu warrior jogged back to help dig Joshua out of the ground. The man from Avalon was apparently having a difficult go at getting out of the soft dirt and was swearing profusely.
Wraithkin (The Kin Wars Saga Book 1) Page 27