It was lunacy. Whoever had thought up the plan ought to be shot; he just wasn’t sure how he could shoot himself inside the pod. He put the thought away and concentrated on the input coming to him.
“Fighter One, Horde Base; we have launch indications from the MinSha base.”
“Fighter One copies,” Walker said. “Okay,” he added, directly to Thorb, “it’s game time.”
“But Staff Sergeant Walker, this is no game. If what you said is true, they will kill us if we do not kill them first.”
“Yeah, that’s just a saying; sorry. What I meant was that we need to be ready. We are coming up on the launch point. After you launch us off, you need to do a nice, easy, six-G turn away, just like we talked about, and then accelerate away from them at six Gs.”
“And they will come after me?” That was the part Thorb hadn’t liked very much. He was used to predators in the ocean, particularly the grahp, and being chased was something the SalSha were pre-disposed to hate.
“Yes, they will. You’ll have to continue accelerating away from them at six Gs.”
“But they can go much faster than that, correct? What if they get to me prior to realizing you are the bigger threat?”
“Then you’ll be a hero to your people, and we’ll reward your family handsomely. You will be the greatest provider ever.”
“But I’ll be dead.”
“If you’d rather turn and fight, you can, but that will let them catch up to you much faster. There are two of them, and they can turn circles around you. The only chance you’re going to get at them that way is a shot in their faces as you approach them, which is the hardest type to hit; after that, they’re going to spin in behind you and will be able to take their time killing you. You will not be able to get away.”
“It seems like I don’t have much of a chance either way.”
Walker hated putting the SalSha into that position, but there wasn’t any other choice. There was one thing he could do. “Launch us now,” he said.
“But we are not at the launch point.”
“It’s okay, we’re close enough. We’ll still get there, and you’ll have a little more time to get away.”
“If you say so.” Walker watched at Thorb reached forward and pushed a button. “Good luck,” the SalSha said. Thorb pushed forward on the controls to get some separation from the drop pods, then turned away from Trigar 2-B.
“Thanks,” Walker replied. “Good luck to you, too.” Walker shook his head. They’d both need all the luck they could get.
* * * * *
Chapter 20
MinSha Base, Trigar 2-B, Trigar System
“Ma’am!” the MinSha tech called. “It looks like the enemy ship fired something at our fighters. Wait! There are several objects, and they aren’t maneuvering—they can’t be missiles! They’re going past the fighters. Four orbital bombardment rounds, inbound!”
“Let me see,” the colonel said as she looked over the carapace of the young tech.
The tech pointed to four small returns on her scope. “Right there ma’am. They’re really hard to see, but I’m getting intermittent hits from four separate objects.”
“I doubt those are bombardment rounds; their signature is more indicative of CASPers in their assault pods. Tell the fighters to destroy them now!”
“But the fighters are going to destroy the Human fighter.”
“I don’t care!” the colonel exclaimed. “I want those CASPers destroyed right now! They can go back and kill the fighter afterward. It can’t keep up with them. I want the CASPers destroyed before they hit atmosphere—once they’ve slowed they will shed their pods and be harder targets to find and hit. Kill them now!”
Fourth Squad, Approaching Trigar 2-B, Trigar System
“The fighters just turned away!” Thorb exclaimed over the comm link. Although he had remained outwardly calm before, his excitement showed he had been worried after all. Of course, Thorb’s excitement was Walker’s nightmare—now he had to count on the SalSha to come and save him before the MinSha fighters were able to kill Fourth Squad.
“Good,” Walker transmitted with more confidence than he felt. “Give them 10 seconds, then wrap it around as hard as you can.”
“How long is 10 seconds?” Thorb asked.
“Oh, fuck; just count to six slowly and go after them.”
“How slowly?”
He could feel the fighters closing on him. “Never mind! Just turn and come get them!” He felt the first bump as he hit the edge of 2-B’s atmosphere, and he knew it wouldn’t be long before superheated plasma would be streaking down the heatshield fairing. When that happened, he’d lose—damn it! He’d waited too long to turn the SalSha back in. “I’m going to lose radio contact with you for a few minutes,” Walker transmitted. “Just do it like we discussed.”
Thorb’s reply was lost to static. Unable to affect that problem any longer, he turned his attention to one of his own more direct needs—his reentry—and he watched the suit’s program run. He immediately wished he hadn’t. Everything was at least yellow, and some of the indicators were orange and tending toward red. Thorb had been slightly out of parameters when he had released them, and they were going to have to burn a lot of their jump juice to create a viable reentry angle.
His view inside the suit grew as the drop pod went from black to orange to cherry red as he plunged into 2-B’s upper atmosphere, and his jumpjets finally fired. The burn corrected some of the parameters and brought most of the readouts from the orange back into the yellow range. Walker breathed a sigh of relief. Even if he wouldn’t have a lot of extra jump juice to use once he was down, at least he wouldn’t go splat.
Of course, it wouldn’t matter much if the fighters shot them out of the sky.
MinSha Fighter, Approaching Trigar 2-B, Trigar System
“Just do it like we discussed.” The Human was leaving him alone? That had never been discussed! Thorb had an instant of panic—he’d never flown a fighter and knew nothing about tactics.
The feeling passed, the way the terror of being chased by a grahp faded when you made it into a cave system it couldn’t follow you into. The Human obviously trusted him. Why else would he go out of communication if he didn’t? The Human was right to trust him. Even though he hadn’t flown a fighter before, he had been swimming all his life, and he understood three-dimensional movement far better than Walker. The Human had told him to pull around to the right to intercept the enemy, but he knew if he pulled straight up and did a half loop he’d be in a better position to pounce on the MinSha fighters from above them.
He pulled the controls back toward him as hard as he could and felt the g forces build. The seat dropped down to horizontal, a feature he’d been told would help him withstand the g forces; he had no idea whether it did or did not.
By the Three, though, Walker hadn’t told him how much it would hurt!
He could barely breathe—it felt like a grahp was sitting on his chest and flaying the skin from his entire body at once. His arms fell from the controls as the pressure built and they became many times their normal weight; he was forced to control the fighter with the mini-controller on the left panel. He pulled like Walker had told him—until things started to go gray at the edges of his sight, and then he released it slightly.
His eyes caught sight of the accelerometer, and he would have given it a hunter’s grin had he been able to move any of the muscles in his face. Just over 20 Gs. They’d never see him coming.
MinSha Base, Trigar 2-B, Trigar System
“The first Human CASPer has been destroyed, ma’am. Our fighters are lining up for shots on two more.”
“Very well. Let me know when all of them have been destroyed.”
“Ma’am, it…it can’t be! The Human fighter just pulled around in a 21-G turn. How is that possible? It must be remote-controlled! A Human couldn’t do that!”
“No, a Human couldn’t do that. You must be reading your equipment wrong. When was the last time
it was calibrated?”
“When I came on shift ma’am. It’s correct. That fighter just pulled a 21-G turn, and now it’s accelerating toward our fighters at 15 Gs.”
“Perhaps one of our pilots is a traitor. Send our fighters after the Human fighter,” the colonel said, turning toward the door; “I will deal with the remaining CASPers.”
Fourth Squad, Approaching Trigar 2-B, Trigar System
The G forces decreased as the pod continued to slow, and Walker was able to breathe again. Another minute passed, and the computer controlling his reentry blew the fairing, the individual sections arcing away as they were designed, creating extra sensor echoes to confuse the ground forces.
MinSha Fighter, Approaching Trigar 2-B, Trigar System
The maneuver worked even better than Thorb had hoped, and he was almost within missile range when the lead MinSha began firing at the CASPers. The fighter fired a number of times as he lined up on it, but it didn’t appear to hit any of the CASPers. The MinSha appeared to be targeting the CASPer on the right—the one they called Corporal Smith. He had been very helpful in explaining how the missiles worked. The “In Range” light came on at the same time a light flashed in front of him. No! The MinSha had killed Smith! Thorb had never allowed anyone under his protection to be killed—he had failed!
He would beg forgiveness later; for now, he wanted blood. He would not let them kill any more of the Humans. Enabling two of his missiles, he adjusted his aim and received a noise in his head. His missile could see the MinSha fighter! Launch! Launch! Two missiles streaked off after the lead fighter. At the last second, the enemy—and they were now his enemy—must have received a warning; it pulled up and left while ejecting things that hurt his eyes to look at. Flares. One of the missiles went after a flare, but the other followed the fighter and the rocket exhaust.
He got it! It was destroyed!
He turned to look for the second one, but it was gone.
There were a number of predators in the seas of his home world, and some of them were pack hunters. He fell back on his conditioning—the first maxim of a hunter was you never spent time looking for the predator that disappeared; you simply assumed he was behind you.
Thorb pushed the fighter down and left until the planet filled the canopy. Even laying down on the fully-reclined seat, all he could see was the planet, and his heart started racing uncontrollably. He had never experienced falling before, but he knew instinctively he had to do something quickly, or he would fly into the planet.
Several streaks of light went past him. Was that laser fire? The space fighter rocked, and a number of caution lights illuminated on the right wing. The enemy was behind him! Worse, he was hit!
He couldn’t slow down—he had to go faster! Flee! Escape!
He couldn’t go faster; the enemy behind him could go just as fast, if not faster. He had to do something else. He flipped the fighter upside down, yanked the throttles all the way back, and commanded the fighter to do a maximum-G turn to the left.
The gray came on faster than he was prepared for, and his eyes shut of their own accord. When he opened them again everything was flashing in his display, then it all disappeared. What had happened?
He tried to pull on the controls, but they didn’t move. He tried to call Walker for help, but that didn’t work either. Nothing was working; what was wrong?
Thorb’s eyes scanned the cockpit, trying to determine what had happened. As they reached the throttles, he realized what he had done—he had gone past the detent at “Idle” and all the way to “Off.” He had turned off the motors! He tried to start them again, but nothing would come back on. Why wouldn’t they come on?
Oh, Thorb remembered, the fighter needed the thing called “power” in order to start. But there wasn’t one of the little carts to give him power—what was he going to do? Walker had said there was another way…in case a malfunction knocked out your motors. Thorb hoped it would also work if you were dumb enough to turn them off on your own.
What had Walker said? He visualized Walker alongside the cockpit. “That’s what the rat is for.” Rat? What’s a rat? His download supplied a picture; a rat was a fuzzy little animal. It almost looked like a miniature version of the SalSha, although it was not as cute and had a disgusting leathery tail.
He glanced up—all he could see was planet, everywhere he looked. He didn’t have much time.
Nor did he have any rats. The entry said they were air-breathers; if there had been one in the cockpit when he started, it would be dead now, drowned. Maybe it was somewhere else in the fighter, and it would turn some sort of equipment that would make power. No, that couldn’t be; it wouldn’t have survived the Gs he had pulled. Walker couldn’t have meant a real rat. What had he meant?
He knew all of the instruments on the front panel; Walker had grilled him on those. Instruments to fly the fighter and operate the weapons systems; it wasn’t any of them. He looked at the left panel. Throttles, a panel labeled “Communications,” and one labeled “Expendables.” Not there.
The right panel was no help, either. The electrical panel was dead, no matter how many times he flipped the switch. Then he saw it—the Ram Air Turbine. R-A-T. Walker had explained about acronyms when he told him what a laser was; could RAT be an acronym? The bar labeled “Ram Air Turbine” was a pull lever; he pulled it and motion caught his eye—something extended on the right wing! It had some things that started spinning, and then all of the dials in the cockpit illuminated!
He had power!
He pulled back on the controls. Nothing! They wouldn’t budge.
He needed to start the motors.
Start the motors! Start the motors! He tried to start both at the same time, and the lights in the cockpit dimmed. The fighter didn’t like that. He slammed the right throttle off again and tried starting the left one. It seemed to take forever for the motor to light off, but finally the gauges indicated it had, and he felt an extra bit of acceleration. No! He did not want to go any faster toward the planet. He pulled back on the controls and the craft rocked. What? He was hit again!
The enemy fighter screamed past him, unable or unwilling to go as slowly as Thorb’s fighter was going, but Thorb saw an opportunity. He flipped on the armament panel and commanded all four of the remaining missiles to launch. Two never saw the MinSha fighter and flew off…somewhere. Another tracked off on one of the bright things the MinSha fighter ejected. The fourth one chased down the MinSha fighter and blew off its left wing. Although not aerodynamic previously, the fighter needed the control surfaces on the wing to fly, and it spun out of control. Going several times the speed of sound, the G forces ripped it apart.
Thorb didn’t feel the exaltation of the kill this time, only the relief of having survived. He pulled the controls to the right to return to Trigar 2-A, but the controls were mushy. With a start, he realized there was a new light flashing: “Low Fuel.” He looked out the cockpit—the left wing had a number of holes through it, and the last vestiges of the fuel it held wisped away in the wind. His head spun around—the other wing was similarly holed. He looked back inside in time to see the motor die, and the controls locked up again in his paws. The stall horn sounded; he was almost out of airspeed. Frantically, he looked out the canopy—he was almost out of altitude, too. He was in the one place Walker had said he never wanted to be—low, slow, and out of ideas.
* * * * *
Chapter 21
Fourth Squad, Approaching Trigar 2-B, Trigar System
Corporal Mike Smith was gone; at least he didn’t answer any of Walker’s check-in calls. That left himself, Sergeant Morgan, and Sergeant Loftis. He’d tried to check on Thorb, but couldn’t get a reply. The camera in the craft wasn’t transmitting. Unfortunately, Thorb was probably dead too. Fuck, that was a tough introduction into the world of mercenary life.
“Human troops descending on Trigar 2-B,” a voice said. “Do not fire, or you will be destroyed!”
Obviously, the MinSha had noticed t
he check-ins and figured out the frequency they were using.
“You will surrender,” the voice added, “or you will die.”
“You hearing this shit on the primary freq?” Sergeant Morgan asked via the laser backup.
The ground was already starting to rush toward him, and Walker ran the magnification on his cameras to full zoom. Shit. There were two laser anti-aircraft batteries in the target zone. They were so screwed.
“Morgan, Loftis, hold fire,” Walker transmitted on the primary frequency so the vice would hear him. “Who else is on our frequency?”
“This is Colonel Diskayl, the commanding officer of the mercenary unit, On a Wing and a MAC. We hold the base here. You will safe your weapons and surrender upon landing.”
“I ain’t surrendering shit to the damn bugs,” Morgan said on the backup.
“Hold fire!” Walker repeated on the primary frequency. “Everyone hold fire!” Despite all the new processors in his head, he didn’t have time to try to work the problem with the ground rushing up at him. Besides, if they could make it down safely, they would have a lot more options than they currently did, highlighted against the sky.
The computer counted down to the final burn, and his jumpjets fired. The ground rushed up at over 200 mph, and he turned off all of his magnification. It didn’t help—the feeling he was going to crash was still too strong. He pointed his toes, and the computer initiated the final burn at 500 feet. The jumpjets roared, and the ground rush slowed but didn’t stop. Walker bent his knees in preparation for landing as the jumpjets cut out at 15 feet, hoping the suit would take as much of the impact as possible.
The Golden Horde (The Revelations Cycle Book 4) Page 26