Hard Nova

by Casey Calouette

  The ECM had fooled it before, but now there was no escape.

  ####

  Jack gritted his teeth. It was the most horrible feeling in the world to just wait, but most of all to wait and know that he was powerless to do anything.

  The dropship slammed from one side to the next. The nose dropped down, and they went into a steep dive.

  A cord of datakeys rose up from Jack’s neck and clattered against his face. Pinks and blues and oranges. Encryption keys. Works of art. Digital pathways that opened things no man had ever seen.

  The first few were basic. They hammered and traced pathways. Then Jack came along and set it straight. The patterns in the Qin computers were subtle things. They were efficient and took multiple data paths on occasion. That ended up being the key, arriving with the proper data at the proper time.

  Another lurch, and the datakeys slammed back down. They were struggling to rise. Time seemed to stand still as the engines groaned.

  Time. He’d had so much time years before. Or so he thought. He’d studied on Luna and then Phobos, and partied on Deimos. After that, the postdoctoral studies and finally the day when the officer arrived.

  He resented the army. There was no other way around it. So close to his dreams in life, and then they came and took him for his essential skills. Cryptographer in one age. Hacker in the next. Xeno engineer in the present.

  For a moment, a summer spent studying in a town called Houghton came back to him. The old mining university had a functioning Qin starship buried deep in a copper mine. There was never a better Faraday cage, that wispy jail that locked up all electromagnetic radiation.

  He’d made the discovery then, in that cool summer in the breezes off Lake Superior. With it, he and Doctor Shan unlocked the treasures of the Qin starship. Two months later, and he was boarding a troopship for the largest invasion ever.

  A sucking sound rushed through the cabin, followed by a quickfire thud against the hull.

  “Chaff gone! Drones out! Tail fire!”

  “I can’t hit him! Drones are clear! No contact! Good God, he’s right on us!”

  The crew comm was loud in Jack’s ear, like someone was narrating his own death.

  “One minute! Almost! Shoot that bast—”

  A row of holes blasted into the hull. Daylight exploded into the dropship. Fires flared out from a bulkhead and engulfed a row of rangers. A moment later, the entire rear of the dropship tumbled away.

  Jack stared out and saw a Qin interceptor. It was so close he could see the glow from the kinetic cannon.

  The nose lifted, and the interceptor was gone.

  It was only then that Jack realized they were about to crash.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Captain Gavin McCloud latched his hands onto the armrests. The dropship slammed him from side to side. The restraints cut into his shoulders, hips, and body armor. His head bounced in his helmet and rattled the data connections that ran to his back. He focused on the threads of fighters weaving through the clouds and wondered if death was coming for him.

  A flaming dropship appeared through the clouds and disappeared again. Troops streamed out the back, the last ones wreathed in flame.

  Behind the trails of flames, the orbital defense facility came into view. The rock was carved and gouged with a small entrance burrowed into the stone. On either side, defensive positions flanked the approach with antiaircraft cannons spouting angry pearls into the sky. It was night.

  The pilot yelled over his shoulder, his voice too loud in the comms, “The Old Man is dead! You’ve got command!”

  Gavin clenched his jaw. This was all turning into one giant clusterfuck. The Terran Union interceptors had fled early on, unable to cover the dropships. Now they were almost to the ground and being eaten up the entire way.

  “Stay on the flanks!” Gavin keyed up the unit comms. “Deploy piton drones immediately and get out of that line of fire. You know the rest.”

  Gavin knew he didn’t need to tell his troops what to do. The Fifth Ranger Company was among the finest in the Terran Army, second only to the spec ops boys. Though he felt that was open to debate…

  The dropship swooped low and followed the contour of a ridge before dropping into a rocky draw. Rocks thundered down as the dropship blasted past.

  “There it is! On your call!”

  Gavin had one chance to abort. One opportunity to pull the plug. If they couldn’t take the orbital cannons, then the starships would slag the whole area from orbit. But he knew as well as anyone they needed those orbital cannons. Because when the Qin fleets showed up, they’d need every gun they could get.

  “Go, go, go. Green, green, green.”

  The pilot grinned and hammered on the accelerators. The dropship plunged, and it felt like they’d crash at any moment. At the very last second, the pilot changed the arc, pivoted the massive engines, and set the bulky dropship down.

  Gavin punched the release on his seat and grabbed his assault rifle. When he turned, he saw that half of his company was already out the hatch. They sprinted under their massive loads and disappeared into the dark. Icy-cold air shot at him as the mountain breeze punched in. He changed his goggles to night vision and ran after.

  In a briefing not long ago, he was told by The Old Man that he was, under no circumstances, to be the first man out. “You’re worth more alive, Gav. We’ll have enough dead heroes soon.”

  The colonel was one of those first heroes, but he wouldn’t be the last.

  Lines of rangers rushed out, all in heavy body armor, climbing gear, and full combat kit.

  “The Fifth is the only unit that made it down!” the pilot called to Gavin.

  What was supposed to be a battalion assault was now down to a single company of rangers.

  Gavin waddled as he ran. He wore plates of heavy, flexible armor. On his back were a rucksack, a data cube, satellite radio, batteries, water pack, electrolytes, and his medical box. On his front were ammunition, demo charges, ropes, a pack of climbing pitons, a snow axe, and a little collapsible tent. On each leg were more ammo and spare food. Under all of that was a winter uniform, insulated and thick.

  Gavin clicked the safety off his rifle, and then he was out. He ran past a wounded ranger and helped him hobble to the cover of a gravel pile. He took in his bearings. “Drones go!”

  A pair of drones flew up from the dropship, each one racing along the rock wall. Pitons fired out and bored themselves into the stone along a line parallel to the access road. A second later, rangers were rigging ropes to the nanofiber pitons and hauling themselves up.

  Gavin sprinted after two rangers and knelt down at the edge of the road. He snapped off three rounds toward the defensive positions. Going that way was suicide. Muzzles flashed all throughout the stone; the defenders were buried in tight.

  “Second up!” Lieutenant Jakob Shin called. His voice wavered on the comms. “Locksmith is hit!”

  Gavin swore. Locksmith was the xeno engineer whose job it was to hack the Qin computers and take control of the cannons. But it was too late to back out now. If all else failed, they’d blow the cannons.

  “First and Second, go!” Gavin called. “Third and Fourth, report.”

  “Third, center!” a sergeant called back.

  “Fourth, on the rear.”

  “Fourth, move up and support Shin.” Gavin figured if they couldn’t secure the facility fast, covering the road up wasn’t an issue.

  Tracers flew through the air, and the antiaircraft fired nonstop. A rocket leaped up from behind one of the dropships and shattered against the nearest AA position. A few more rockets followed, and then the AA was clear. Two squads of rangers joined up with Gavin, their rocket launchers still smoking.

  “Here we go, Cap!” a wide-eyed sergeant called.

  “Lines up!” Gavin called.

  The first rangers snapped on auto-ascenders and were pulled up the stony slope like bulky rag dolls. Behind them, a heavy line rose up and they snapped it on. Then they
snapped onto the next line and leapfrogged ahead. Gavin watched the rangers on either side rise up until finally they were almost all the way past the defenses. The farthest ranger was rigging up the final line.

  “Infantry!”

  Gavin snapped his eyes away from the line of rangers snaking along the wall. There, rushing out from the gate, were dozens of soldiers in heavy body armor. They looked too large for Qin troopers, but he assumed it was the body armor. “Central, open fire!”

  A line of rangers, still in the cover of the stone, opened fire. A handful of mortars fired with a dull thud. Two of the rounds landed among the defenders, and a few suits of body armor writhed on the ground.

  The cheerful sergeant snapped up his rocket launcher and let fly. The rocket split into three pieces a dozen meters away from the hostiles, and each piece homed in on the armored suits.

  “In position!” Lieutenant Shin called.

  Gavin sprinted toward the western wall. A ranger held out a line for him, and he snapped on the auto-ascender. He slapped his hand against it, and the little mechanism lifted him into the air. The rock wall zipped past, and he took in the sight beneath.

  “Armor!” Shin called, his voice excited.

  Gavin turned his head and watched as the front of a small tank plowed through a service door. The tiny turret slung up, and the barrel pointed right at him. It fired, and splinters of rock exploded around him.

  Gavin bounced off the rock wall. The shock blasted him out into the air, and then he slammed back into the rock wall. It almost knocked the breath out of him, but his bigger worry was tumbling to the ground.

  The auto-ascender kept plowing up and, just when he was almost to the piton, one of the tank rounds snapped the main line.

  Gavin reached out a hand and watched as the rope disappeared.

  ####

  The dropship swung in a slow, gentle arc. Smoke rippled up and filled the inside compartment. The force of the spin pinned all of the survivors tight to their seats.

  “Brace!” the pilot called out.

  Jack Cook closed his eyes and tightened all of his muscles. He wasn’t sure what else to do.

  They swung low and clipped the edge of a mountain, and the dropship flipped completely over. Its nose crumpled like an eggshell. A gust of debris and electrical sparks blasted out. Half of the dropship collapsed upon itself, crushing most of the rangers.

  Jack hung upside down and could only see smoke. He fumbled with the straps but couldn’t find the right clasp. His hands were numb, his breath ragged; it all felt wrong, upside down.

  A flame burst out right beside him, and a hydraulic line started to sputter oily fluid. In seconds it would burst and engulf him in flames.

  Jack furiously clawed at the straps.

  A knife appeared and sliced through the straps. A ranger in scout gear ripped Jack clear and tossed him aside just as the hydraulic fluid exploded out in a rain shower of flame. Then he was pulling Jack up, and the pair rushed out.

  Jack hacked and coughed. Alive. Alive. He couldn’t believe it.

  The ranger unslung a case from his back and knelt down. His hands quickly screwed a long barrel onto the body of a weapon. A scope glowed a dull green. He racked in a stout round. “Get your weapon ready, we need to get with the team.”

  Jack reached down and found an empty holster. “I lost it.”

  The ranger looked up and shook his head. “Come on.”

  The two ran away from the torched dropship. The ranger halted on the edge of the mountain. Below them, a battle raged. Rangers were swinging from one piton to the next, struggling to get past the defensive line. A group of hostile infantry was firing up at them. A small tank was crawling out and adding its fire.

  “Cap, this is Cross, I’ve got the locksmith. We’re up high.”

  “Cross! Give us a blessing!” Lieutenant Shin called.

  Cross, the ranger sniper, dropped himself down onto a knee. He aimed the rifle down and snapped off one round after the next. With every round, one of the defending infantry fell in a cloud of sparks.

  Jack stood dumbfounded and didn’t dare speak out. He hated heights. Hated them. Couldn’t stand a ladder, even. He watched as the sniper fired one round after the next, the timing as crisp as a metronome.

  “Get back!” Cross yelled. He dropped his rifle and dove at Jack.

  A cloud of rock splinters exploded into the air. A dull roar rocked through the clouds. The tank round had almost got them. Cross’s rifle, balanced on the edge of the crater, tipped precariously toward the edge.

  Cross rushed back to the edge, and his fingers just missed the rifle. It tumbled into the dark.

  “Church is done. We could use a ride down.],” Cross called.

  “Toss your line over and prep to rappel,” a strained voice called.

  “Aye, aye,” Cross said. He pulled out a coil and tossed it over the edge. Then he drove a fusion piton into the stone. “Well?”

  Jack looked down at his own rope pack; his mouth was too dry to speak.

  Cross rolled his eyes, tossed Jack’s line over the edge, and started rigging him to rappel. “Am I going to have to push you over too?”

  ####

  Gavin snapped his hand out and grasped the nanofiber rope. The slender rope cut into his gloves, and it took all of his strength to latch two hands onto it. It was designed to hold a special ascender; he prayed it would take his weight.

  Below him, the tank still fired. A sniper opened up and caught some of the infantry unaware. Gavin grinned as he swung; he knew Cross’s work. Was his comms dead? He couldn’t hear any comms chatter.

  He glanced at his wrist and saw that his comms system had shut down. He grunted, held onto the line with one hand, and keyed the comms back on. A second later came the reassuring sound of his unit going on without him.

  Gavin had always said that a good ranger company could function with a CO. Now he got to watch the reality. His unit moved like it should and advanced without him having to give a single order.

  The tank fired again at something just above him.

  Gavin gripped tight and tucked his head. A second later, a shower of broken stone and rocks clattered onto him. One hand lost its grip, and he yelled out in pain as the nanofiber cut deeper. He just managed to grab back on again. Below him, the ground was a hard one hundred meters down.

  “Church is done. We could use a ride down,” Cross called.

  “Toss your line over and prep to rappel,” Gavin said.

  A second later, a thick line flew past him and disappeared below. Gavin took a breath and released his bloody hand and snapped a spare auto-ascender onto the heavier line. He let go and felt his body rising up past the rock wall.

  Then he saw the flaw in his plan and felt the rock slamming into him as the auto-ascender tried to pull him up where the rope met the rock ledge. He keyed it off just in time and hung a dozen meters below the edge.

  “Cross, I’m coming up,” Gavin called.

  “Yes, sir,” Cross called.

  Gavin pulled himself up, one hand over the next, and levered himself away from the wall with his feet. A minute later, he was up on top and looking at Cross and the locksmith. He grunted at the pair and started rigging up his rappelling gear. There was a battle going on, and he’d be damned if he was going to miss it.

  A set of rockets roared down from the opposite rock wall, and the little Qin tank crunched to a halt. The barrel drooped down like a sad elephant’s trunk.

  “Go, go!” Lieutenant Shin called.

  “Come on,” Gavin said. He grabbed the locksmith and hauled the little man to the edge. He double-checked the ropes and adjusted the descender rig. “Haul up on this when you see me stop. Got it?”

  “Oh God.”

  Gavin grasped the locksmith’s shoulder and looked the man in the eye. “You can do this. I’ll be right next to you.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  Gavin nodded and hopped backward. A second later, Cross pushed the locksmith off.


  The two men sailed through the air. Gavin, graceful, with only the hiss of the rope. Jack Cook, locksmith, was a mess of legs and screaming like a girl.

  Below them, the rangers descended on ropes onto the defensive ports and tossed in demo charges. A second after, explosions blasted out and silenced the defenders. The Qin infantry fell back to the main door and fired out into the rangers. More than one ranger hung dead in his ropes.

  Gavin pulled up on his descender twenty meters above the ground and hoped that the locksmith remembered to pull his. The little man slid past and just barely stopped before he swung out and clacked against the rock wall. Gavin dropped the rest of the way down and pulled the locksmith out of his gear.

  “Wait here.”

  The locksmith was pale and nodded quickly.

  Gavin sprinted past smoking bunkers. He grabbed a rifle from a dead ranger and cleared the action. A line of his men were just in front of him and holding tight. Rockets exploded next to the facility entrance, but still the defenders fired.

  “Looking good, boys!”

  Rangers grinned back and kept firing.

  Lieutenant Shin looked up; blood ran down from a giant gash on one cheek. “Ideas, Captain?”

  A priority tone sounded in Gavin’s ear. “Colonel Beau, report.”

  “Beau’s dead,” Gavin said. The comms system must have auto-routed the call. “We’re going to assault the facility now.”

  The voice on the other end was cold. “Yours is the last facility in this area.”

  “Acknowledged. We’ll take the facility.”

  Gavin knew that the Ninth Army was waiting for the rangers to clear the orbitals. Without the orbitals down, the massive landers would be slaughtered. Now it made sense why his dropships were mostly undefended—they were keeping the friendly interceptors with the fatties. What happened to the element of surprise? How had the Qin known?

  “You have fifteen minutes. Then the orbital bombardment begins.”

  CHAPTER FOUR