“Yes, sir, I’m aware of that. But she is designed to carry a dropship via external link with only minor compromises to her stealth and sensor properties, and only a two percent reduction in acceleration.”
The leaned back in his chair. “Are you sure about that?”
“Certain, sir. They covered it in officer school. Everything above a Mark Five LSS uses the new design, and all the Mark Fours that have been in dry dock since the modification came online have been retrofitted. I believe the Banshee is a Mark Seven.”
“You remembered that from officer school?”
Cora chuckled. “No, sir, I looked it up last night. One of the stranded marines is the last survivor from my platoon.”
The ice was gone from the admiral’s face. “I see. And how are we going to get them all up on one dropship?”
“We may not need to. They have four of their own dropships down there, so that adds up to two more than we need to get everyone off. They may have enough fuel to make orbit with the dropships. If they don’t, the one we take can make multiple trips down to the surface. Banshee is big enough to hold everyone. It’ll be tight, but not impossible.”
“But that would leave everyone exposed while you make the trips up and down to the surface.”
“Yes, sir. That’s the main risk to this plan, but it’s the best I’ve been able to come up with.”
“Is it a risk you’d be willing to live with if it was your own ass on the line?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good, because if my team tells me it passes the feasibility analysis, you’re leading this crazy stunt.”
“Me? I think I might be out of action for a few more days.”
“Yes, Lieutenant, you. The choice of marine officers is currently between you and the major. Even though you were injured in the first attack, you’re still a better choice than that guy. I’ll have the Lapland send you nanite treatment packs for whatever is still bugging you.”
“We’ve got the medical nanite facilities back up?”
“Yes. We were expecting people needing medical care following the attack on the moon and the planet.” He paused, eyes cast down. “Which means that we’ve got a lot of unused medicine to share.”
“Then I’d be happy to do it, sir.”
“Good. How many men will you need?”
“The fewer the better, maybe a couple of shock marines for ground support, suits and all. Any more and I won’t be able to bring everyone up in three runs.”
“You have them.”
“Thank you, sir.” She gave the admiral a crisp salute.
“Don’t thank me yet. I meant what I said about the feasibility study. Even though this is the first plan I’ve heard to try to get them back that has even a remote possibility of succeeding, if the eggheads crunch the numbers and decide that the probability of failure is too high, you don’t get to leave.”
“I understand that, sir. That’s not why I thanked you. I thanked you for acting the way an officer should.”
“Ah. All right, then.”
***
The admiral signed off and turned away from the screen. The lieutenant’s call had reached him during one of his off hours, in which he was actually in the captain’s quarters—commandeered by the admiral for the trip.
He wrote a quick summary of the plan and sent it off to the analysis team. Despite the fact that he admired the girl’s spunk, he was serious about not risking ships unnecessarily. If the probability of success for the mission proved too low, he’d discard it as quickly as he’d discarded the two plans he’d thought of himself. He had to weigh the effectiveness of his fleet against the lives of the soldiers abandoned on the planet.
Of course, he also needed to consider the morale boost that would come with a successful rescue. Right now, his troops were tired, confused, and scared. Most of them knew that they were well beyond the outer bounds of anything humanity had explored before, and that there was no realistic possibility of going back—assuming there was even anything left to go back to. Even the tiniest of successes would be a godsend.
He sank down onto a chair. He was too old for this. He’d expected to wake from stasis to find himself staring into the jaws of a huge enemy battle fleet. His fleet would then do some damage and hopefully wreak a lot of havoc, mainly because no one was expecting them to pop up suddenly.
And then they were supposed to be wiped out to the last man and woman, leaving nothing but carbon and hydrogen fumes for the blobs to feast on. A clean, glorious end which might or might not achieve something, but which was all that humanity’s forces could do against the advancing aliens on such short notice.
To think that he was in officer school when the first news of the massacre on Epsilon Canis Majoris reached them. It was difficult to comprehend after all his years that officers on Tau Ceti II were trained to fight against other humans. He’d taken courses in psychology, hours and hours of it, to understand what an enemy commander might be thinking. All the colonies were at peace with each other, but human history had taught them that it couldn’t last.
The fleet that had rushed from several colonies at once to attempt to stop the blobs had taken that baggage with them, and it hadn’t taken long for the invaders to make them learn the error of their ways.
He’d been a gunnery lieutenant in the very first battle of humanity’s fleets against the aliens. He’d been assigned command of a partially automated battery facing away from the main battle lines, and was only expected to see anti-fighter action if the enemy employed small craft to swarm around the bigger ships.
All he could see from his position was the support fleet: three huge hospital vessels and myriad transports and mail ships which wouldn’t participate in the fighting. They’d been placed out of the way, behind and to one side of the well-armed main fleet which had already begun to pour its long-range ordnance into the enemy in front of them.
The admiral’s first indication that the blobs were defending themselves was when an enormous enemy battle cruiser, venting gas from a dozen direct hits, flew past his position and headed straight for a hospital ship.
He was so surprised that his battery only managed one shot before the blobs moved out of range.
He also got a ringside view as the blob cruiser, soon joined by six more, calmly incapacitated the three hospital ships and sent boarding crews aboard to harvest the doctors, nurses, crew, and patients for their protein.
The battle ended with a stalemate and the outnumbered human fleet moved back to the next system, but what affected the admiral most from that day was that the enemy had assaulted the hospital ships. Deep inside, he’d been certain that hospital ships were sacrosanct, that no one would ever stoop so low as to attack one.
That was the moment he finally understood that he was no longer fighting anything he could comprehend, and that if he wanted to succeed, or even to survive, he needed to adjust to that.
And he’d been doing it well, probably better than any other human, for the rest of his life.
He’d earned the chance to have it end quickly and without complications.
The universe, as usual, had other ideas.
Chapter 15
Tristan trudged thankfully back onto the flat stone of the parade ground or landing field or whatever it was that they’d been camping on. He’d spent the past four hours hacking his way through the dense forest surrounding them. In order to conserve the ammo he still had, he’d used his suit’s good hand—conveniently reconfigured as a cutting edge—to slash through obstacles.
The suit made the movement effortless, but it was mind-numbing work which had yielded no reward. His path had described a long loop out into the trees and back and simply confirmed what they already knew: there was no recognizable animal life and no fruit on the trees in the vicinity.
He was just one person, however, and he hadn’t wanted to get too far from the Recon flyer and the pilots in case anything threatened them. Another, larger group, led by the sergeant had s
truck out in the opposite direction, exploring a small river valley beyond the ruined installation.
His stomach rumbled. “Any luck?” he called over the Tacnet.
“Nothing at all. The trees keep getting thicker, especially the short spiky ones, but we haven’t seen anything that looks like a fruit or an animal.”
“Maybe we can eat the trees.”
“You’re welcome to try, marine. Be sure to let me know how that works out for you.”
“Yeah, right.” He ambled over to where Melina and Ian, along with the dropship, pilots were sitting. They’d chosen a clear area of the stone-like flooring material under the shade of one of the tall trees. “How’s it going?”
“The gravity’s a bitch,” Ian replied, “but at least there aren’t any mosquitoes. That’s something at least.”
“I wouldn’t mind a bug or two. I’d eat as many as I could catch.”
The night had passed without incident, but it had been more than three Earth days since anyone had last eaten. Water, of course, wasn’t a problem—both the marines’ suits and the Recon flyer were designed to recycle all excreted liquids, which could really stretch out their water supply.
Food, on the other hand, was turning into a serious issue.
“We’ve got an idea,” Ian told him.
“What?”
“When we were coming in, we saw another major facility a few hundred klicks north. We chose this one because the landing pad was bigger, but maybe the other one isn’t as badly torn up. And if it isn’t, there might be something to eat inside.”
“There’s two things wrong with the plan. The first is that if it isn’t demolished, the facility will likely be full of defensive weaponry. The second is that any food inside will probably be thousands of years old.”
“You’re right,” Ian conceded. “But unless you have a better idea, we need to try this. We’ve already discussed with the sergeant and he said to take a couple of volunteers on the flyer and go have a look. It’s just a ten-minute flight.”
“All right, count me in. Might as well finish getting the rest of my suit blown apart if there’s a chance for some food at the end of it.”
Another of the marines who hadn’t gone out into the jungle, a kid named Tom, also volunteered, and the two of them grabbed the cargo bar. Ian jumped into the copilot’s seat. Melina, as usual, was driving.
The trip was much less harrowing than the descent from orbit. Tristan was confident that, falling from their current low height, his suit thrusters could probably scrub off enough speed for a soft landing. Falling from orbit had been a very different proposition.
They touched down on a small square of the same stone-like material and studied their surroundings. The smaller patch was just large enough to accommodate their flyer, while trees encroached on every side. The facility they’d come to see was a small stone cube with a tall narrow slit for an entrance, just wide enough for a single person to enter without brushing against the sides, but tall enough to accommodate two people—one standing on the other’s shoulders. The suits would have to enter the facility sideways.
“Doesn’t look like much,” Tristan said.
“Don’t let the entrance fool you. There’s a huge complex underground,” Ian replied
“What is it with these guys and building things underground?”
“Maybe they wanted to avoid being shot at by things in the air,” Melina replied. She walked over to the cube and ran her hands along the walls. Shallow, flaked holes dimpled the surface. “If this was done by the flying black things, then this stone is a lot harder than it looks. They barely scratched the surface… and they use some seriously heavy slugs.”
Tristan wondered how the things could maneuver so quickly while carrying such destructive ordnance. And then he wondered what would happen when they ran out of bullets… he was pretty sure they would come back here to reload.
Maybe getting underground was a good idea.
The design of the entrance worried him as he led the way into the corridor which spiraled down into the dark. It was clearly a defensive measure, something that was driven home when the tall thin passageway suddenly became a wider—albeit much shorter—square. The suit could crawl through, but he’d never be able to stand.
“What’s this all about?” Ian asked.
“I think it’s meant to keep something out,” Tristan replied.
“But what?”
“I’d bet on the flyers,” Melina chimed in from behind. “Their wings won’t fit into this square tunnel, so even if they got this far by flying sideways through the part before, they’d be trapped inside. I doubt that would be good for them. I was just thinking how little I’d like to have to try to navigate the tunnel before this one with one of those things. This constriction here just makes it worse.”
“Hmm. You might be right.”
The square tunnel continued through solid rock for about ten meters before finally opening out into a cavernous chamber that lit up as soon as Tristan set foot in it.
The room was completely unlike anything that he’d encountered in the other facilities. If he’d been pressed, he would have said that they’d been built by completely different species. The room they were in seemed to have been carved out of brilliant white stone, completely unmarked and polished to a deep shine. Yellowish light poured from the floor, bathing the walls, which then suffused the rest of the room with a warm glow.
The floor, also brilliant white, had a black stripe running down its center, leading to a door in the far side. The room had to be at least thirty meters long, fifteen meters wide, and about that same amount high.
“Crap. They know we’re here now. Stay in the tunnel,” Tristan told them.
He sealed the suit’s helmet against the likelihood of flying shrapnel once the defenses started shooting at him and strode into the chamber. He didn’t bother trying to run. Speed wasn’t going to help him; the room was long enough that he could be tracked perfectly easily by any sensor systems. Besides, with the amount of light available, he thought it would be a better bet to try to spot the cannons as they appeared out of the walls or roof or whatever.
He made his way cautiously across the entire length of the room without incident. “Well, I don’t know whether it’s not booby-trapped or whether they’re just waiting for all the rest of you to come inside so they can shoot us all at once,” he radioed Tom over the Tacnet. “I think you’ll need to decide whether to cross or not.”
It didn’t take them very long to discuss it. Melina and Ian were soon striding in his direction across the black line in the center of the room. The other suit brought up the rear.
For Tristan, watching them cross was worse than doing so himself. The sight of two people not encased in body armor slowly traversing potentially hostile territory made his skin crawl. He imagined an armor-piercing round slamming into Melina’s soft torso and bursting it like a water balloon.
He only began breathing again when they were safely beside him, where he could place the bulk of his armored exoskeleton between any threat and their unprotected bodies.
Ian was inspecting the door. “I wonder how to open it.”
The door was different from anything Tristan had ever seen. Nearly three meters tall and two wide, it looked like it must have been carved from a single piece of wood. His first thought was that it had been installed before the roof was put on the chamber because there was no way they could have gotten it through the entrance.
Melina was studying the carvings. Myriad creatures seemed to spring out of the plane and blend into each other. Fantastic shapes, stylized animals, and even what seemed to be machinery had been laboriously worked into the grain. Then she smirked at Ian. “I think you turn the handle.”
“Huh?”
“Right here.” Hidden behind one of the carved protuberances was a bar of metal that looked exactly like a door handle. It was even set at exactly the right height to be operated by an average-sized person. Melina turned it a
nd the door swung open silently.
“Must have some huge hinges,” Tom remarked.
Before Tristan could stop her, before the door had even opened far enough for him to be able to maneuver his suit through, Melina crossed the threshold. “Wait.”
But she’d disappeared into the darkness with Ian close behind.
Tristan pulled the door all the way open and followed. He could hear his footsteps echoing in a vast space.
Then the lights went on and he gasped.
They were standing on a balcony overlooking a huge conical room. Each level had a balcony and a bannister that was closer to the center of the room than the one above, creating a semi-circular cone. At the bottom, between the rings, was a colossal ebony obelisk set in a round pedestal made of what, from their vantage point, appeared to be blue light—the illumination from which bathed the room.
“Holy shit. What the hell is it?” the other trooper said.
“I have no idea. But I don’t think it will shoot at us.”
Ian groaned. “Yeah, but to find out we’ll need to get down the ramps. I’m not looking forward to climbing back up in this gravity.” He indicated the gently sloped spiral ramp leading to the level below.
After only a few floors, Tristan realized that Ian was right. Even the descent took a lot out of both him and Commander Coloni. He would offer to carry them back up using the suits.
The good thing about his companions’ slow progress was that he had plenty of occasions to look around the chamber. The installation had long since stopped feeling threatening. He was no longer looking for places where the builders could have hidden a gun emplacement.
He didn’t relax completely, of course. His training had stressed that the best place to mount an ambush was where the enemy least expected it. So he kept half an eye open, but he was pretty sure that this didn’t count as a ‘least expects it’ situation. The room they were visiting had been built to be seen, not as a place to catch an enemy unaware and destroy them.
The filter was the entrance: the flying wings would be physically unable to enter, so everything beyond belonged to the builders and those who came to visit.
Incursion: Shock Marines Page 17