Then he saw the lake, long and narrow ahead, a thin slice of flatness in an unforgiving landscape. “There’s a lake!” he yelled. “We’re gonna crash, hold on!”
He clipped the last trees, and then the water was under him, and would end real soon if he didn’t put it down right now. He wanted more time, needed to calculate, to think, to reconsider… but there was none, so he pulled the nose up and cut thrust, and hit with a force that defied description…
Phoenix bridge thundered in a hard recovery burn, as Commander Suli Shahaim roared engines at full power while skimming Stoya atmosphere, far closer and harder to the exosphere than any starship captain wanted.
“Looks like they timed it so we’d be on the far side of the planet,” Lieutenant Commander Draper formulated from Shahaim’s usual post — Helm, to the right of the Captain’s chair and slightly behind, mostly invisible behind a tangle displays and heavy-G supports.
This was why Suli, like most warship pilots, hated low orbit — down this low you were jammed against the planet with limited options, and unable to even maintain direct communications, let alone support options, to a ground team. Geo-stationary orbit kept you in line-of-sight, but at a distant altitude from which fire or air support would take forever to reach the surface. And while a carrier’s engines were comfortably powerful enough to create a ‘hover’, standing a ship on its tail at one-G thrust and no lateral velocity at all, loss of control in that position meant certain loss-of-vessel, and in Fleet came with a near-automatic court-martial.
“Incoming from Tokigala,” called Lieutenant Lassa from Coms — second-shift backup now in the main seat with Lieutenant Shilu on the surface. “It’s in English, no translator.”
“UFS Phoenix, this is State Department ambassadorial vessel Tokigala. You will cease this reckless manoeuvre at once, or you will be fired upon. Please confirm your receipt of this message immediately.”
“Ignore,” Suli gasped beneath the hard Gs crushing the air from her chest. Everyone in high or low orbit about Stoya III could hear what was happening at Doma Strana, and knew exactly why Phoenix was powering at full thrust to reacquire an oversight position, and why she’d fired Anti-Atmospheric rounds immediately when the signal had reached them, in the hope of intercepting some of those attacking flyers. That Tokigala was choosing to interpret this manoeuvre as hostile indicated a high probability that Tokigala was behind the attack in the first place. Suli flipped coms to her own channel, direct to Makimakala. “Hello Captain Pram, this is Phoenix. Please tell Tokigala to stay off our backs or I promise I will destroy her.”
“Phoenix I copy,” came Captain Pram’s reply. “We are manoeuvring hard to acquire position ourselves, we have our own people down there too. Our coms are talking to Tokigala, we will try to dissuade them. Please remain calm and patient, if tavalai Fleet chooses to engage you on Tokigala’s command, even Phoenix will not survive.”
“I am aware of that, Makimakala,” Suli replied. “But I promise we will destroy Tokigala first. Make sure they know.”
She disconnected. “Won’t make much difference, with froggies,” said Draper. Tavalai didn’t change their minds just because you threatened to kill them. Head representatives of the largest tavalai government departments in particular.
“I know,” Suli replied. The tactical picture upon her visor lenses moved, increment by increment — Phoenix low and fast, Makimakala on an intersecting trajectory also low and fast, Tokigala much higher above, and various tavalai Fleet vessels beyond that, including several at geostationary. If they fired from up there, with Phoenix pressed against the atmosphere, there’d be no escape.
Suli flipped channels again. “Hello Ops, we will be flipping for braking manoeuvre in seventy-two seconds. Ninety-eight seconds after that, we will be weightless once more and PH-3 will load and launch, do you copy?”
“Operations copies,” came the Ops manager’s terse reply.
“Commander this is Jersey, I’m forty seconds out.”
“This is Dufresne, I am eighty seconds out.” Because Lieutenant Dufresne was in quarters near the bridge, while Lieutenant Jersey was quartered down by Midships, with the rest of the shuttle crews. PH-3 was Jersey’s, and Dufresne their only qualified back-seater, with even Lisbeth down on Stoya’s surface. Phoenix had one more shuttle, the civilian AT-7, but AT-7 had no weapons, and at present Phoenix had no pilots aboard who could fly her anyway. What good one more shuttle would do, in the face of what appeared to be coordinated treachery on the surface, Suli had no idea. But PH-3 was all they had to send, and so they’d send her, along with any more orbital ordinance that was requested.
“This is Lieutenant Dale,” came the gruff, familiar voice of Major Thakur’s number two marine. “Alpha will take a bit more than four minutes, awaiting the end of burn.”
Alpha Platoon’s armour suits were pre-positioned in PH-3, in case of just such an emergency. Marines practised getting into armour against the clock. Now everyone would see just how fast Alpha’s marines really were. Missing the departure window by a minute would throw them three hundred kilometres downrange, and twenty minutes late coming back. It was in moments like this that Suli was glad to serve on Phoenix, where the odds of someone messing up were low. Now, lives depended on it.
Skah was scared. He’d been headed to breakfast with Lisbeth at the temple kitchen at this level, but then lots of people had started yelling and running, and Lisbeth had grabbed his arm and run with him back the way they’d come. But by the time they’d reached the landing platform, both shuttles were gone, taking Mummy with them, and Crazy Hausler, and Steve Lee, and Julie Yun who’d shown him how to play a fun game with dice before bed last night, sitting in PH-4’s hold amidst the armour berths.
Echo Platoon marines had shouted at them to get inside, and Skah knew these marines outside their armour, when they smiled and gave him high-fives. But now they were fierce and scary, all thundering armour and massive guns, taking up cover positions in corridors as he and Lisbeth had run with tavalai workers to deeper rooms. Then missiles had started hitting outside, with big thumps! that hurt his ears, and the sound of things breaking, as Lisbeth had sheltered with him behind some desks in a big office space, with strange stone pictures on the walls from when the temple had been a real temple, and not an office.
Now he kept his head down as his heart hammered, and just hoped that it wasn’t going to be like the last time on the station a month ago, when he and Lisbeth had hid behind a bench with Jace, while a hacksaw drone had come into the room with them. At least there was no one hurt yet, like Jace had been. Jace Reddin was up on Phoenix, having recently been allowed back on light duties, his bullet wound healing well. He was one of Skah’s best friends, along with all Jace’s friends in Operations, who knew that Skah had helped to save him, and now got him extra treats from the kitchen, and invited him to play games with them in zero-G, and showed him vids of their families. It was nice to make such good friends, but Skah was sure he’d much rather Jace hadn’t been shot in the first place. Being shot was bad, and so much more scary than in movies. Jace had been in pain for so long. Skah hoped no one would get shot now, especially Lisbeth, and grasped her arm tightly.
There were more explosions down the hall, then a tavalai marine came stomping in and talked with a human marine. The tavalai marine would be from Makimakala, Skah knew. Makimakala had been friends with Phoenix now for a month. Skah knew that a lot of his human friends still didn’t like tavalai much, but they were coming to trust Makimakala. When he’d been sleeping on PH-4 with Mommy and Lisbeth, some tavalai marines had come to talk, and look at him and Mommy curiously, and shake their hands. Very few tavalai had ever seen a kuhsi, Lisbeth had said. But Skah was used to that. Once long ago, he could recall being surrounded by other kuhsi. Mommy said it had not been very long since they’d left Chogoth, and that he only thought it was a long time because he was very young. But to Skah, it felt as though he’d been an alien amongst aliens for most of his life. And gi
ven that kuhsi had murdered Skah’s Daddy, and kidnapped him and Mommy and handed them to the chah’nas, Skah thought that he much preferred the company of humans anyway. Especially Phoenix humans.
There were more explosions, then some shooting somewhere not too far away. A marine guarding the doorway shouted something to the office room of cowering tavalai civilians, plus Lisbeth and Skah.
“There’s enemy flyers landing on the upper platforms Skah,” Lisbeth told him, and Skah had to concentrate very hard to understand her. Normally his English was very good, and getting better every day. But when he was scared and people were shooting, it got harder.
“Who’s landing?” he asked Lisbeth. “Who’s attacking us?”
“I don’t know Skah.” Her voice was low and cautious, but she didn’t sound particularly scared. Skah found that reassuring. “There’s a lot of marines here, and karasai too. It’s going to take a lot more than a few flyers of enemy soldiers to get in here.”
Several karasai came lumbering through the room, heading for a far door, then out past the marine guarding that side. Skah looked at tavalai civilians hiding behind desks nearby. One of them made an expression that Skah had come to know as a tavalai smile — as much an inward swivel of the eyes as a thinning of the lips. The tavalai reached to pat Skah’s arm, reassuringly. Skah decided that it was sad that humans and tavalai had fought a war. Tavalai weren’t so bad.
Then something exploded nearby, and the lights went out. Thunder in the doorways, as marines and karasai fired at things only they could see. Something crashed over tables, and Skah scrambled beneath a table himself, seeing the entire room lit with brilliant flashes, big marine rifles in an enclosed space. Some holes were blasted in a wall, then relative silence, as Skah’s ears rang, and marines crashed into the room amongst the desks, shouting tersely at each other as their big guns panned back and forth across the tables.
Something was in here, Skah thought, and the fur prickled on his back and neck, the stub-ends of his trimmed claws catching on the carpet. The marines were wondering where it went. A flash of movement beyond the tables, dark and vanishing as fast as it appeared, but the marines didn’t shoot. They hadn’t seen it, Skah realised. Human eyesight wasn’t as good as kuhsi, Mommy had said. Nor their hearing. Only their smell was better, and that wouldn’t help them here.
He thought perhaps he should say something. But he’d been warned so many times on Phoenix, ‘don’t get in the way of marines with armour and loaded weapons’. Especially here, he thought, when they were jumpy and ready to shoot at surprises. Skah kept his mouth shut, and crept slowly to one table support, and a better view up an aisle.
Then the lights came back on, and the marines were stomping back and forth between tables, looking for whatever had been here. Whatever it was, they couldn’t find it. Skah supposed that meant it had left. It was hard to imagine anyone could stay hidden from marines for long once the lights came back on. Skah crept back to Lisbeth, to take her arm.
But Lisbeth wasn’t there. Skah looked around, expecting that she’d just crawled to another table as he had, to take a better look. But he couldn’t see her. He stood up, then jumped on a table to see, startling marines who swung weapons his way, then swore.
“Goddammit Furball. Stay down, it isn’t safe yet. Understand?”
“Lisbeth!” Skah called, ignoring them. “Lisbeth?” No reply. He spun on the marines, panicked, his heart suddenly racing in much worse fear than even when the shooting was happening. “Where’s Lisbeth? She was here! Where is she?”
5
Erik woke with a vague memory of having woken before. In that memory, he’d been in water, freezing cold and fighting to breathe. So logically he’d died, drowned in the cold mountain lake, and this was… well, an odd way to discover oneself dead, cold and wet and lying on stones.
The white glare above hurt his eyes. His neck hurt worse, and his knee. But his shoulder hurt worst of all, a throbbing pain like sticking your fingers into ice water for minutes on end. And growing worse still as his head cleared.
Voices above him, about him, hands pulling him this way and that. They were removing his clothes, he realised. Then a blaze of pain from his shoulder, as though someone had stuck a knife through it, and he yelled. More voices then, and hands feeling his shoulder.
“Captain!” Trace’s voice, demanding his attention. Again. Goddamn relentless woman, always demanding. “Captain! Erik! Erik, listen to me. Come on, wake up.” A slap on his cheek, not hard. Erik figured he’d better wake up, or she’d start punching him next. He struggled to focus, and found her over him, bleeding profusely from a gash on her forehead. That concerned him, and he woke further. “Erik, you’ve dislocated your shoulder. Does anything else hurt?”
“Your head,” he murmured, unable to feel his lips properly.
“I’m fine, pay attention. Does anything else hurt?”
“Knee,” he murmured. “Neck.”
“Can you move your fingers and toes?” He wiggled them, but it was silly, because she’d not be able to see his toes with his boots on. “Good, that looks fine. I think you got whiplashed real good, but spacers have serious G-augments, I bet that protected your spine. Now I’m going to…”
“Where’s Krishnan? Is Krishnan…”
“Private Krishnan’s fine, stop interrupting and pay attention. I’m going to put your shoulder back in. It’s going to hurt. A lot. Bite on this.”
As something pressed against his lips. “I don’t want to bite on…”
“Bite on this!” she commanded, and he bit. He could feel her hands on his arm, one under the elbow, the other on his wrist. “Now get ready, on the count of three…”
But she didn’t count to three, she pulled hard and fast, and Erik was glad for the thing to bite on after all. And spat it out, eyes watering as he somehow levered himself up on his good arm, fully awake for the first time as his head throbbed and swam, and his shoulder blazed like fire.
“Oh you bitch,” he muttered.
“Yes,” she agreed, quickly turning the belt he’d been biting on into a sling for his arm. “I’ll get some painkiller in a moment. You’re going to get into Krishnan's armour suit for a few minutes, it’ll warm you up, you were in the water for maybe a minute, and that’s enough to make you hypothermic.”
Erik realised he was mostly naked, with only briefs to save his modesty. The thought of being naked around any woman he was not currently sleeping with might have bothered him, but with Trace it hardly seemed to matter. He looked about as he half-sat, propped on an elbow as Trace put the belt around his neck and hung his forearm in it, with the expertise of a marine who’d seen much worse.
They were on the shore of the lake, pale and still in the grey light. The lake was long, but its far bank was barely forty meters away. More a widening of the river than a lake, really. Along the lake front were tall green trees, conifers. One spread directly overhead, giving them cover from more aerial vehicles. About, on all sides, were huge, majestic mountains. It would have been a beautiful scene, Erik thought, if he hadn’t just crashed his aircraft into that lake, and wasn’t currently injured and freezing to death.
“Come on, up,” Trace urged, and Erik knew better than to think she might mean ‘soon’. He struggled up, accepting her assistance on his good arm. The blood on her face was all down her chin, and dripping onto the front of her jacket.
“Seriously,” he told her, “your head…”
“Yes in a minute,” she said firmly, leading him across the gravel lakeside. Now fully woken by the pain, Erik realised he was trembling so badly from cold that he could barely stand. Ahead lay an armour suit, on its back beneath trees. Alongside it, Private Krishnan was collecting gear from a supply pouch.
Krishnan looked up at their approach, anxiously. “He okay?” Erik wanted to retort, but couldn’t get his jaw to cooperate.
“I think so,” said Trace. Both she and Krishnan seemed relatively dry, Erik noted. “Captain, you need to get
in the suit. It’s still working, environmentals will warm you up.”
He got in without protest, a bit like climbing into a coffin. He’d been in one before, sometime a long, long time ago in the Academy, familiarising himself with the crazy marines he’d have to serve with. This one fastened itself automatically to his different measurements, then sealed up with a hiss and crash. Trace put the helmet on, and then he was hearing only his own breathing… save that his toes and fingers began to tingle painfully, and then to burn as the bloodflow resumed. Despite the pain, the warmth was wonderful, and he spent several minutes regathering his memories and thoughts.
That he’d nearly just died — again — he tried not to think about. Maybe he was getting used to it. Certainly it didn’t bother him as much as previous close calls had. Perhaps that had something to do with Trace. Despite her ruthless practicality, Trace believed in karma. She seemed to think that she was on some kind of karmic quest, with this mission. Given the number of times he’d found himself miraculously still alive in her presence, when by all rights they should both be dead, he had to think that perhaps she was right.
When Trace popped the suit again, he was no longer shivering. But as he hauled himself one-handed from the armour, he felt utterly drained. Trace gave him back his clothes, and they were hot and moderately dry — from the suit powercell exhaust, he realised, and gratefully pulled them on, very careful of his shoulder. Trace, he saw, had some new, fast staples on her forehead cut, which she was now putting plaster on, then tugging a cap over the lot.
“What happened after we hit?” Erik asked the marines as he dressed.
Kantovan Vault (The Spiral Wars Book 3) Page 6