Hard Nova

by Casey Calouette

  Gavin skidded to a stop. A man. Not a Qin. It took him a fraction of a second to come to grips. Why was there a man with a gun here? Where were the Qin?

  The man in the gray uniform raised up his arm and swung the pistol at Gavin. He fired twice.

  Gavin felt one round slap into his armor; the other missed and clacked against a wall.

  Jack leaped up from his chair and grabbed the man’s arms. The man drove an elbow back right into Jack’s face.

  Jack fell backward and clutched at his nose with both hands.

  Gavin raised up his assault rifle and fired three rounds. Each one drove home into the man’s chest. The gray uniform grew dark where each bullet hit. The man fell and the pistol clattered to the floor.

  “Oh God, my nose!” Jack yelled.

  “Shut it down!” Gavin said. He crouched with his weapon at ready and peered into an open electrical access. The passage stretched away and disappeared into darkness.

  Jack crawled over to his console. He reached up and tapped on the screen. “He locked it out!”

  “If you don’t get it unlocked, the navy is gonna burn this place to the ground!”

  “Oh God,” Jack said. He plucked out an orange datakey from around his neck and kissed it. Then he drove it into the side of console. “Here we go…”

  “This is Nineteen, we just regained control,” Gavin said.

  “Nineteen,” the voice crackled. “Confirm secure. Is the bird in the oven?”

  “The bird is plucked.” The bird in the oven was the code phrase if the site was captured. If it was plucked, it meant they were still working on it.

  Jack stood quickly and rushed over to another console. He leaned his face close to the monitor. He slapped at a key. “Get over here!”

  Gavin ran over.

  Jack grabbed the back of Gavin’s head and pushed his eye close to the screen.

  “Calm down, you need to calm down,” Jack said. “We need a calm scan, nice and chill.”

  “Confirm Nineteen is in the oven,” the voice in orbit said.

  Gavin sighed and felt his heartbeat drop. He pictured home. The soft rivers, the silvery fish, the smell in the evening. Summer smells of harvest and home, dirt and water, baking bread—anything not here.

  Jack’s console beeped a happy sound.

  “Got it!” Jack said. “We’re secure!”

  “Command, we are secured. Nineteen is in the oven.”

  “You cut it close, Captain,” General Aker called.

  Gavin looked down at the corpse of the man. This was not what he’d expected. Where were the Qin? “General, the defenders are—”

  “Human. We’re just finding that out.”

  “Orders, General?”

  “You have your orders. Qin or Human, you kill whoever comes to take that facility.”

  “Yes, General.”

  Gavin crouched down next to the corpse and turned the man’s head. The tattoo wasn’t like any marking he’d ever seen. It was all swirls and dots. “Who are you?”

  “Cap!” Wallace called from the front entrance. “I’m gonna need some help here!”

  “Shin?” Gavin called. “Can you spare some?”

  “Gav, these tunnels just keep going.”

  Gavin slapped in a fresh magazine and started moving toward the door. “Leave a squad downstairs. Everyone else get up top. We’ve got to hold until the cavalry arrives.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  The room was quiet, like an old church. The men and women working the consoles murmured into headsets and relayed orders. Above them, a model of the planet twisted and turned. New data points slid in, one after the next.

  “Western Reach is requesting permission to launch.”

  A woman paced at the back of the room. “Negative, Davos.”

  Davos turned and flicked a nervous glance to the front of the room. “We can hit them now, Claire. They’ll never even—”

  “No. You need to have patience and faith. Faith in our pilots. And patience to let the hostiles land.”

  Davos growled and stood. His chair screeched on the floor. “We’ll prove it now. Right here. I’ve had enough of this charade.”

  Claire stopped her pacing. “We have a plan. We stick to it.”

  Davos sniffed loudly and ran a hand on his chin. “We should just let them rot in orbit till the fleet arrives.”

  “Then we prove nothing.”

  “Prove? You damned stubborn woman. We have nothing to prove. I will wake him and end this now. Letting them land is a mistake.”

  Claire grabbed Davos by the arm and led him away with an iron grip.

  “Davos, your interceptors will go out soon enough. But for now, we trust what we know. You delay launching those interceptors, and we’ll get a victory that will end this war before it’s even started. If we strike now, they’ll break orbit, and this war will drag on. Unless we prove that the Terran Union have reason to negotiate, they never will. But listen”—she glanced around her—“the Qin will finally let it end too.”

  “It’s too risky.”

  “I’m willing to disagree, but this is my command. Not yours,” Claire said.

  Davos snorted. “A puppet of a puppet.”

  Claire looked up at the hologram of the landing. Hundreds of blips were coming down all around. Some orbital batteries were firing, but most were silent.

  “Data breach! They’re in!” a man shouted. His voice echoed.

  “That’s impossible,” Davos said.

  Claire ran down past lines of consoles and halted. “What is it?”

  A man sat at a console. He hammered on the keys. Script and code flew past. With every keystroke it become more jumbled and mixed until finally it was a wall of unrecognizable text.

  Alarms sounded above. Icons blared red and orange. All across the surface of the planet, every single orbital defense battery went silent. The room erupted as the coordination teams all took alerts from everywhere.

  “You fools. You damned fools,” Davos said.

  Claire stepped away from Davos. Her eyes locked on to a set of low, armored doors at the front of the room. “Let them get a foothold, let them land armies and legions, and then lock them out of the sky.”

  “Where are you going?” Davos said.

  Claire walked slowly away from Davos. “To tell the Qin.”

  ####

  Jack Cook sprinted after Gavin and struggled to understand what was happening on his console. The orange data key held the algorithm that was his own special blend. He had a hunch that the Qin wouldn’t bother to defend against a hacking attempt. So instead of just locking out one system, he had the virus propagate and expand into every system it could get into.

  It looked like it got into a lot.

  Cross grabbed Jack by the collar and stopped him. “Hold on.”

  “Huh?”

  Two rangers were popping open a suit of Qin body armor. The panels peeled back with a clunk. Inside was the body of a man. One eye was cybernetic, and a lead trailed into armor.

  Gavin nodded to the rangers. “Drag them out.”

  At each side of the entrance, rangers worked on building up a barricade. Cross crouched down and drew out a delicate-looking reconnaissance drone.

  “Listen, I need to talk to Captain McCloud,” Jack said.

  Cross ignored the question. He attached a fuel cell to the belly of the drone. A moment later, it hovered up and darted out into the cool mountain air.

  Jack stepped past Cross. “Captain, you need to—”

  Gavin was in the midst of two conversations, one with a ranger sergeant and the other with someone on his commset. He held up a finger.

  “Oh dear,” Jack said.

  The lines of code accelerated. His virus was boring deeper and locking out more and more. He didn’t even know how much. It grew exponentially and captured data nodes all throughout the system until finally it stopped.

  Jack crouched down against the wall and propped up the console. He started a scrip
t that ran through and searched out packets with orbital tags. The number ratcheted up until it finally stopped: 472.

  He rechecked it and sent the script out again. There it was, one more time, the same number. He’d just locked out the controls on 472 individual defense batteries.

  Jack’s voice cracked and he yelled out excitedly, “Captain! You need to see this!”

  Two rangers pushed past him and started working on the next line of defenses.

  Gavin kept talking and beckoned for Jack to come over.

  Jack ran up and held up his console. “Look at this!”

  Gavin glanced at the console and then at Jack. Lines of code and bracketed text sat above the number 472. “Unless you’ve lost control of that battery, I’m not interested.”

  “But…but…”

  Gavin looked past Jack. “Cross, get him safe. We’ve got hostiles inbound.”

  Cross grabbed Jack by the shoulder and pushed him away from Gavin. “C’mon, it’s going to get messy up here soon.”

  Jack raised up his arm and shook the console. “Captain!”

  Cross pulled harder.

  “Listen! I’ve locked them all out!”

  Cross pulled on Jack with both of his arms, but still the wiry engineer struggled.

  “Wait,” Gavin said. “What do you mean, all of them?”

  Cross let Jack go.

  Jack stumbled over to Gavin and shoved the console at him. “My script just locked out every single orbital defense battery on the surface of this planet.”

  Gavin didn’t look at the console but instead stared at Jack. “Orbital, this is Captain McCloud. We’ve got a situation here.”

  The orbital comms clicked. “Is the bird still cooked?”

  “The bird is still cooked. Our locksmith thinks he cooked all the birds.”

  “Hold, Captain,” the voice called. “This is above my pay grade.”

  Two rangers ran inside, and a second later slugs clacked against the wall. The echo of gunfire drummed through the rock walls. “Contact!”

  Lieutenant Shin came running down the hall with about twenty rangers. They spread out and took positions around the entrance. A few groups ran past and crawled into what was left of the original defensive positions.

  Jack stepped back until he walked right into Cross. He gave the scout a nervous smile.

  Cross didn’t smile back. “We’ve got troop transports inbound, Captain. My recon drone didn’t last long.”

  More weapons fire rang out. The rangers at the entrance held fire and waited with weapons pointed over the barricade.

  “This is Pullings,” a woman’s voice called over the comms.

  “General, this is McCloud, Fifth Rangers. My locksmith says he’s encrypted the orbital defense network.”

  “Your facility? About eight minutes ago?”

  “All of them,” McCloud said. “The entire network.”

  “Hold on.”

  McCloud looked at Jack. “You’re sure?”

  Jack nodded excitedly. He pointed at his console and jabbed his finger at the code.

  An elderly voice came on the comms. There were loud discussions in the background with many voices all speaking at once. “Jack? Can you hear me, Jack?”

  McCloud handed the comms receiver to Jack.

  “Doctor Shan! I sent through the organic packet with the interlaced borders. Once it engaged, I—”

  McCloud pointed at Cross. “Stick with him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jack took a deep breath, tried to calm himself, and explained exactly what he did to Doctor Shan. Only then did he realize that he might have made a little miscalculation.

  McCloud ran down the hall and found Shin. “How’s it look, Shin?”

  Lieutenant Shin stopped eating from a ration pack. “Eh. Some recon elements. The main force looks to be an hour back.”

  “How’s our supply situation?” McCloud slapped at his hip and checked his own supply. He had a dozen or so magazines left. Not nearly enough.

  “Thin.”

  “What ya think, an hour?”

  Shin scrunched up his nose. “An hour, yah.”

  McCloud popped up over the barricade and took a quick glance. The infantry was supposed to move up from the hills below and relieve him. But he was supposed to be part of a strike force; now he barely had a platoon.

  “Any word on our relief, sir?” Shin said.

  “No. I’ll check with command, but assume there isn’t any.”

  McCloud went down the line and checked on his men. He stopped, exchanged a few words with each team, and then kept moving. He returned to Jack and Cross. Jack was still explaining things in terms that McCloud didn’t understand.

  “Well, Cross?”

  “I have no idea, sir,” Cross said.

  Jack talked louder. “I didn’t have an option. It was the only way to secure the feed. Two factor retinal scans bring the encryption to a point that the Qin can’t crack it.” He paused and listened. “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  A grenade exploded just outside the entrance. A few of the rangers opened fire and then stopped.

  McCloud reached over and grabbed the commset from Jack. “Put on General Pullings.”

  General Pullings came on a moment later. “Jesus Christ, McCloud, you’ve made a shitstorm here.”

  “Ma’am, any word on the relief?”

  Pullings was quiet for a second. “The dropship went down outside the assembly area. We don’t have any comms with them.”

  “We can’t hold this facility. I’ve got less than fifty rangers and hardly any ammo.”

  “Well, Captain, I suggest you choose your shots wisely. Hold on, I’ve got new orders coming in.”

  Weapons fire erupted from the line of rangers. High-velocity shells cracked into the wall. A static hiss flared through the air and a moment later a concussion echoed down the hall.

  McCloud crouched down, and Jack did the same. He looked at the commset and then out toward the exit. He could tell by the pace of the weapons fire that the first wave was pushed back. Now they were just taking shots of opportunity. He keyed up his local comms. “Shin, how’s it going out there?”

  “They brought up an arc launcher.”

  “You kill it? We take any losses?”

  “Yah, we nailed it. A few wounded, nothing serious. Recon is showing the main body; they’re almost here. They, uh, they moved faster than I thought.”

  McCloud glanced at Cross. The sniper had his eyes on the exit; his fingers opened and closed on his trigger guard. “Soon, Cross. Soon.”

  Cross grunted.

  “McCloud?” Pullings called over the comms.

  “Ma’am?”

  “New orders. Immediately extract all of your rangers. Now. Get to high ground. We’ve got a wing of Furys coming in for cover. Dropships will be right behind. Right now, you two are the most important people on that planet. Don’t get shot.”

  McCloud looked over at Jack and scowled. “What the hell did you do?”

  ####

  Kane McCloud leaned toward the orbital map and peered down at the planet below. The spiderwebs of drop ships and Fury interceptors swarmed over the invasion sites. Some of the troops in the landing zones were already driving out and taking territory, while in others they were barely holding on.

  On the ground were already a hundred thousand soldiers, and they were just the tip of the spear. Behind them was wave after wave of dropships. Five million would be on the ground in a week. After that, they’d send them down as quickly as they could thaw them out from cryo sleep.

  Around the room were a dozen view screens, each dead and black. A small table, fixed to the floor, sat in the center with three chairs around it. The only fixture was the map display.

  He called up the drone overlay and frowned. The drones that Brilliance dropped had shown a clean and clear view, except it wasn’t clean and it wasn’t clear on the planet. It’d taken them a few hours to realize that wha
t they had relied on for intel was horribly wrong. The planet was militarized to a level that they’d planned on only in their worst theories.

  “We still don’t know how the Qin hacked the drones.”

  Admiral Callie Moss startled McCloud, and he turned to see the younger woman standing next to him with her hands behind her back.

  “Were they hacked?”

  Moss paced past the orbital map. She ignored the question. “The others are coming.”

  McCloud looked back down to the orbital map and wondered where his son was. He tried not to focus on it, but he couldn’t put it out of his mind. The civilian xeno engineer, Doctor Shan, was about to explain to them how exactly the Terran Union had hacked the entire Qin defense network.

  It was a coup of epic proportions. They’d expected to fight over those sites for a month, and now the timeline had advanced.

  “What do you make of the human defenders?” Moss said.

  “Have we engaged any Qin?”

  “Negative.”

  “Hmm. We expected remnants from the original colony, possibly even some collaborators, but never on a massive scale. It changes everything.”

  “How so?” she said.

  “We came expecting to fight the Qin on the ground, where we have the advantages. Now we’re fighting the most dangerous animal: man.”

  Admiral Moss looked thoughtful but didn’t say anything more.

  McCloud keyed up the conference the moment the clock struck nine. One by one the displays lit up, with a small number in each corner showing the delay. Some of the officers were still back near where the needle dropped them, thirty light-seconds away.

  McCloud stood and cleared his throat. “First off, tell your soldiers and sailors I’m proud of them all. This operation is going better than any of us had hoped.”

  General Mahmet, the marine CO, spoke up in jest. “I’ll tell the marines too, sir.”

  McCloud smiled and noted the old joke. Marines weren’t sailors, nor were they soldiers.

  “First off, Day One objectives. How do we stand?”

  General Aker spoke first. “Half of our drops were uncontested. I’m funneling troops into those spots. The other half were rough. We encountered forces that weren’t on the drone feeds.”