by Marko Kloos
When the entire leadership echelon of the company is in the briefing room, Major Masoud turns on the holoscreen behind him, which pops into life showing Portsmouth’s logo again.
“Dim lights,” he says, and the environmental AI obeys and turns the overhead lighting down. The low conversations in the room come to a halt.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have them by the balls,” he says.
Some of the present officers and senior NCOs let out muffled laughs or chuckles, but Major Masoud’s face does not let on that he was joking in any way.
“You think I am being facetious,” he says. “Rest assured that I do not have any interest in humor at present.”
He taps the screen of his remote control, and the ship’s seal disappears from the holoscreen. In its stead, there’s now a three-dimensional situational display, with the parent star of the Leonidas system in its center and the closest three planets in elliptical orbits around the star. There’s an asteroid belt just past the orbit of the third planet, and a small pair of blue icons shaped like lozenges standing on point are on the outer edge of it.
“Task Force Rogue,” he says, and circles the ship icons on the screen. Then he zooms part of the display in on the task force ships to show their labels: BERLIN and PORTSMOUTH.
“We are just outside the substantial asteroid belt that is orbiting Leonidas between the orbits of the third and fourth planet. The station we raided yesterday was an observation post and communications relay on one of those asteroids. Lieutenant Grayson’s SI team made successful entry and obtained the intelligence off the station’s data nodes with no casualties on our side.” He nods at me, and heads turn in my direction, which makes me feel more than a little uncomfortable.
“We have the coordinate data from their antenna array, so we know which way the antennas were pointed whenever they made a transmission. We also have all their message traffic. The traitor settlement is here, on the third moon of the third planet, Leonidas c.”
The Major zooms the map out again and pans over to where the holographic representation of Leonidas c is wobbling along on its elliptical orbit. If the hologram is an accurate depiction of reality, Leonidas c is a bright blue gaseous planet.
“The moon in question is a little over half the size of Earth. The renegade sons of bitches call it Arcadia.”
The conversations in the briefing room start again at low volume. Major Masoud observes the room while he zooms the display in on the hologram depicting the third moon of Leonidas c.
“We don’t have detailed maps of the place—yet. But the stuff we got off the data nodes in that relay station is good enough to plan a full recon drop. And while I wish we had more time to send out drones and prepare the field before we go in, we don’t have any time to spare.”
He increases the display scale until the star map is showing a large enough slice to show our task force at the edge of the asteroid field on one side and Leonidas c in its orbit on the other side. There’s a lot of empty space in between, but I can see that the asteroid field orbits along the same sort of long ellipse as Leonidas c, only with a few million kilometers of space in between them.
“We know what they have in this system, but we don’t know where they’re keeping it. Lieutenant Colonel Renner?”
The skipper of Berlin gets up from her first-row chair and joins Major Masoud at the front of the room.
“Our best guess is that they are keeping the defensive force concentrated near their home base,” she says. “They don’t have the number of ships needed to have an effective patrol pattern in a system of this size, and their force composition practically requires them to operate in task groups. But whatever’s out there, it’s running silent like we are. We haven’t picked up any radar or active radiation source in this system except for the burst traffic the drone caught when we discovered the relay station. Not that I’m complaining, mind.” Lieutenant Colonel Renner allows herself a small smile.
“And this is where we have the advantage right now,” Major Masoud adds. “We know exactly where they are, and what they have in-system. They don’t know where we are. If they even know we are here.”
“Figure they’ll come checking when they notice their relay has gone off the air, sir,” Halley says, and several heads nod in agreement.
“Of course they’ll come check. We already have the drones looking along the likely line of approach,” Lieutenant Colonel Renner replies. “We’re kind of hoping they’ll check soon, because then we can verify without a doubt where they’ve staged their little fleet.”
“But we have to proceed with the battle plan either way, because we don’t have the time to sit and wait. Not when our fuel and food stores get depleted more every day while we are a hundred and fifty light-years from our supply lines.” Major Masoud takes over the holographic map again and zooms in on the third moon of Leonidas c.
“We know where they are,” he repeats, and stabs the hologram with his index finger. “Leonidas cs3. Arcadia.” He pronounces the name the renegade settlers gave their new home with a sarcastic little bite in his voice. “Whatever we call it, it’s their little clubhouse. And Rogue Company is going to sneak in and spoil the party.”
The briefing is long, but far from boring. In fact, in all my years doing rash and daring podhead missions in the Fleet, I’ve never seen someone put together such a breathtakingly bold and cocky mission plan. But not everyone seems convinced that the major still has all his marbles.
“You are going to send the drop ship wing on a three-million-kilometer insert?” Halley says in an incredulous voice when the major diagrams the insertion plan for the company—all four drop ships, launched from Portsmouth while she’s making an elliptical orbit just out of the predicted optical detection range of the known units in the renegade fleet.
“The alternative is to get this ship closer to the target moon and risk detection and destruction,” Lieutenant Colonel Renner replies for the major. “The Blackflies can make that run, and they are a hundred times stealthier.”
“That’s way out of range even for a minimum acceleration burn, and that would take us weeks,” Halley objects. “Unless we load the external hard points up with fuel tanks and take absolutely no external ordnance along. And then we can’t do fire support once we’re dirtside.”
“You’ll carry all the fuel you can cram into the externals,” Major Masoud says. “If you need to do fire support on the ground, you’ll be limited to cannons and wingtip containers. And Berlin’s two Wasps will fly along with buddy tanks in the hold and refuel your flight about halfway to the target.”
Halley ponders the major’s statement while her fellow pilots talk to each other again in low, excited voices.
“I’ve never made an insert from that far out. Not even close.”
“Nobody has, Captain. You’ll be setting a new Fleet record.”
“If we make it back,” the pilot sitting next to Halley says to her in a low voice, and she rewards the comment with a smirk.
“Look, you know your hardware better than I do,” Major Masoud continues. “The Blackflies are the stealthiest small units in the entire Fleet. Whatever they have in orbit, I am certain you are going to be able to sneak past it and deliver the grunts dirtside.”
“Oh, I’m not worried about being seen,” Halley replies. “I know that I can coast right past a cruiser and take samples of the hull paint without being seen. It’s the ‘getting back’ part that worries me. Even if the Wasps top us off on the way in. Atmospheric flight burns a lot of fuel.”
Major Masoud nods at Lieutenant Colonel Renner, who steps up to the display.
“Optimal launch point for low-energy trajectory to Arcadia is here”—she marks the point on the task force’s orbit—“and pickup point is going to be here.” She marks another point on the other side of the orbital ellipse. “That’s nine days later. Berlin and Portsmouth will remain on the far side of the asteroid field and keep using it as cover against optical detection. Subtrac
ting transit time, that will give you seven days to accomplish your mission on the ground. You are to keep enough emergency fuel to make orbit and set yourself on a low-energy trajectory to the rendezvous point, and we will send the Wasps back out to meet you and refill your tanks.”
Halley and the pilot next to her exchange looks again. From Halley’s carefully neutral expression, I can’t really tell what she thinks of that plan, but she doesn’t object outright, which I know she’d do if she found the idea idiotic, no matter what the rank of the officer who proposed it.
“One company, four drop ships, one week in enemy territory,” Sergeant Fallon says next to me. “Bringing only what fits into the ships. No backup. And if things go to shit, no friends overhead.”
“In other words, business as usual,” I reply.
Of course, Sergeant Fallon and I know from personal experience that when things really go to shit for the squad on the ground, it doesn’t matter much whether the support ship is thirty minutes or thirty light-years away. Still, as I study the plot on the holoscreen, I can’t help but notice just how big this system is, and just how isolated and far from home we’re really going to be.
We spend the next hour or so in the briefing room going through the details of the mission with the whole command team, Fleet and SI alike. It’s a bold mission, but other than the extreme range of the drop ship insertion—which according to Halley is three times longer than any infiltration run she has ever done—it’s a fairly standard long-range reconnaissance run in company strength, the kind that is pretty much the bread and butter of the podheads. And knowing that we are going up against other humans—and fellow North Americans at that—makes the whole thing feel a little less perilous. But when I say this out loud to Sergeant Fallon, she laughs and looks at me as if I just told her a dumb joke.
“You of all people should know better,” she says. “Like your own people can’t shoot you up just as well as the SRA.”
“Point taken,” I concede, and touch the spot on my side where I have scars from fléchettes fired by an NAC Defense Corps rifle, with a hand that has two prosthetic fingers that replaced the ones shot off by an NAC security officer last year.
Major Masoud concludes the briefing by clearing the holoscreen of all ancillary windows and projections until only the system map remains. He zooms out the scale until it includes the target moon—Arcadia—and our orbital trajectory. The lonely little blue icons labeled BERLIN and PORTSMOUTH are inching along on the dotted ellipse that marks our course.
“Jump-off is in thirty-nine hours,” he announces. “The company will be ready to embark at t-minus thirty-six hours. Double- and triple-check your kit. If it isn’t on the drop ships when we push off, it might as well be on the other side of the Alcubierre node. Pilots will cross-check and synchronize their navigational data with Portsmouth Ops.”
He looks at the assembled officers and senior NCOs in the room with a stern face.
“Make no mistake, ladies and gentlemen. I know this is going to sound like most motivational prejump pep talks you’ve heard, but this is probably the single most important mission you’ll ever be a part of. This isn’t about taking some dusty piece of shit moon away from the SRA, or scraping some Lanky town off the face of a colony planet. Our success or failure may decide the outcome of the greatest battle in the history of humanity. Our hundred and fifty troopers can be the weight that makes the scale tip one way or the other.”
He smiles grimly.
“And if we can serve these traitorous, thieving sacks of shit the bill they deserve for leaving the rest of us at the mercy of the Lankies, then I’m going to count that as a perk. Dismissed,” he shouts into the chorus of cheers that follows his declaration.
Next to me, Sergeant Fallon does not cheer. Instead, she looks at me and smiles her sardonic little lopsided smile.
“Ooh-fucking-rah,” she says mockingly.
CHAPTER 21
Thirty-nine hours—it’s amazing how they can simultaneously feel like an eternity and no time at all.
As an enlisted podhead, you mostly only have to worry about yourself and your own gear prior to a drop. I am not used to having to worry about forty troopers and their gear, but Sergeant Fallon is, and she gently waves me off after I check on the platoon for the tenth time in as many hours.
“Leave the nuts-and-bolts shit to your NCOs,” she says. “You need to learn the magic word. Delegate.”
“Delegate,” I say.
“That’s right. Now get the fuck off my quarterdeck, sir. The junior enlisted get jumpy when the lieutenant looks over their shoulders too much.”
“Carry on then, Sergeant,” I say. “See? Delegating.”
She makes a sweeping-away motion with her fingers, and I resist the urge to make a one-fingered motion in return, just in case some of the privates are looking our way.
The module section of the ship is abuzz with prelaunch activity. The platoons are checking their gear and putting on battle armor, and the drop ship crews are loading their birds and checking systems. Halley is the pilot of Second Platoon’s drop ship, and I meander over into their section of the ship, astern from ours. I find my wife in the aviation module, where she is checking the gear her platoon has tied down in the cargo hold of her Blackfly.
“Shouldn’t you be checking on your platoon?” she says when she spots me by the hatch. She gives one of the tie-down straps on the pallet next to her an experimental tug and then walks down the tail ramp and over to where I am standing.
“Sergeant Fallon kicked me out because I was doing too much of that.”
Halley is dressed in her combat flight suit, which is a one-piece jumpsuit with about a million external pockets. Over the suit, she’s wearing a light armor vest. Her sidearm is strapped to her thigh, and she’s as dressed and ready for battle as drop ship pilots get, minus her helmet. For my taste, that armor vest doesn’t cover nearly enough essential parts of her anatomy.
“That’s a lot of fuel,” I say and nod at the enormous external fuel tanks hanging from the wings of the Blackfly. Like everything else on the drop ship, they don’t have straight lines or right angles anywhere.
“I’ve never taken along four drop packs,” she says. “That thing is going to handle like a wallowing swine when we hit atmosphere.”
“I wish you were in the driver’s seat of my bus.”
“I don’t,” she replies. “Too much pressure. You have Lieutenant Dorian. He knows his shit. He’ll get your mudlegs down into the dirt in one piece.”
“He can handle that ship,” I concede. “But I like having you close.”
“I’ll be close, Andrew. We’re going in ten-minute intervals. I’ll be right behind you.” She looks around the hangar pod and flexes her hands. “God, it’s been a while. First combat drop since Earth last year.”
“Good times,” I say, and she laughs and shakes her head.
“God help me, but I do love it. All of it.”
“You aren’t right in the head,” I say.
“You love it, too,” Halley says. “And don’t pretend that you don’t. You wouldn’t have taken that mission otherwise. You love it just as much as I do. Getting ready for a fight, being scared shitless, all your nerves on edge. But you feel more alive than ever.”
“I guess we’re both nuts,” I say.
Halley looks around the hangar pod again. There are techs near the front of the drop ship, unhooking hoses and data umbilicals, but nobody is paying any attention to us this very moment. Then she pulls me close and kisses me.
“I am so glad for all of this. You, me, us being here, everything that happened to us since Basic. I wouldn’t trade it for the world, Lankies and all. If we end up a frozen cloud of stardust today, I know that I’ve fucking lived.” She lets go of my tunic and straightens out the fabric gently with her hand. “And we’ll be together out here until the universe collapses. Beats the shit out of having your ashes packed into a stainless steel capsule and shoved into a hole in the wa
ll.”
“Now, see,” I say, “and you thought you had absolutely no romantic bones in your body.”
“Go and gear up,” she says. “I’ll see you out in the black. I’m right behind you. Wherever it is we’re headed.”
Standing there in the hangar pod with my wife, her excitement and her confidence, surrounded by all this gear and about to drop into combat and mortal danger again, I suddenly feel a brief and powerful gladness as well. Halley is right, of course. We may die today, or we may live to be a hundred and fifty, but we will have directed our own course a little, and that’s much more than most people get these days.
“Now hear this: t-minus fifteen to launch. All mission personnel, board your ships. I repeat: all mission personnel, board your ships.”
The platoon has been ready and assembled on the quarterdeck for a while, double-checking each other’s armor latches and equipment while engaging in the traditional predrop joshing and trash-talking. Now the mood turns businesslike and serious as the squad leaders line up their charges to get ready for the short walk over to the flight module.
“All right, people. It’s showtime. Time to do something for the exorbitant salaries they pay us,” Sergeant Fallon declares.
We file out of the platoon bay by squads and cross the passageway outside to enter the flight module, where our drop ship is waiting with its tail ramp open. Because the flight module is so small, they can’t fire up the engines while there are still personnel in the pod, so the boarding process is eerily quiet aside from the chatter of the infantry grunts as they trudge up the ramp and take their seats in the hold.
“Remember the good old days back at Shughart?” Sergeant Fallon says as we watch the loading process from the back of the module.