by Nic Plume
She shook her head. "That’s not what I said."
"Close enough."
She laughed. "All right. Now that you’ve succeeded in leading me off our original subject…do you feel any better?"
"I never said I felt bad."
"Not with words, anyway."
He snorted and smiled. Just like Kay to know the right words. A skill she and Sal had down pat, though Kay relied more on logic and her quick wit, while Sal made much more use of her feminine arsenal, even in combat gear and strapped into a crash seat.
Salayla returned his glance with a smile and a wink. She looked almost fragile beside Tonee’s bulk. But that was as deceptive as her flirtations. Salayla could hold her own in any fight, and her gregarious personality and seemingly endless data stream of knowledge about cultures and etiquette, coupled with her training as intelligence officer, gave her an advantage most people underestimated. He had yet to see somebody she couldn’t enchant.
"Five minutes to drop."
Taylor’s eyes flicked to the intercom. The pilot’s voice sounded bored, as if announcing the next stop on a regular shuttle route. Having done this countless times, he might well have been. Kaydeen, on the other hand, was not. Her fingers almost left marks on Taylor’s arm. She relaxed almost as quickly as she had tensed, but the damage was done. It took a sharp rebuke from Unit Commander Tess, seated at the front of the troop bay, to stop the ensuing remarks from some of the veterans.
Taylor was sharply reminded of how unwelcome the timing of their arrival in the unit had been. Nobody wanted to be burdened with an unproven team during a major mission, no matter how well they had performed at the Academy. He had heard rumors suggesting each teammate be assigned to a different squad, a severe insult to teams with even the slightest experience. But they were CHiTs—Combat Heroes in Training—and as such had no status within the unit, no honor to be sullied. They would have to earn it first, and their trainer at the Academy had said it took at least five successfully completed missions to earn an SF Unit’s respect. Taylor intended to do it in three.
The instant the ‘Ready’ signal in the cabin activated, Taylor’s hand was on the buckle of his crash webbing. He didn’t release it. He didn’t know why. No, he knew exactly why. His surroundings came into sharp focus as adrenaline rushed through his body. Minute details became snapshots, instantly dissected and analyzed as if his brain had hours to study them, not the moment it took his body to flood with the chemical. Something was wrong. It was a thought, a feeling, a certainty; but what, he didn’t know. It didn’t work that way. Just enough info to steer his next move, but not enough to explain it. He knew to trust it and follow its impulse. And right now, the last thing he wanted to do was to unbuckle his crash webbing. His hesitation confused his teammates, but his instincts had proven themselves many times during training, and they followed his lead without hesitation.
"You guys sleeping?" Commander Tess called from across the cabin. The rest of the squad was out of their seats and prepping to jump.
"Looks like our Ace Cadets are nervous," Dieran, standing halfway between Tonee and Tess, jeered. "The real thing’s different than the sims, huh?"
The words had barely left Dieran’s mouth when an explosion in the cockpit rocked the ship, buckling part of the bulkhead and tossing people and equipment around like rag dolls. Commander Tess, who stood within arm’s reach of the bulkhead, was thrown across the cabin and smashed with a splattering crunch against the rear access hatch where he hung suspended for a moment before slipping lifeless and broken to the floor grates. A gagging stench of burned metal, plastoids, and flesh filled the cabin as the ship tilted and started to tumble.
Taylor reached for his pack, but his chair’s Active Protection System kicked in. His crash webbing tightened, pulling him deep into his seat and in the process nearly cutting off his air supply. The sudden impression of possible asphyxiation brought his attention, and limbs, back where they should be. As soon as his arms returned inside the APS’ safety zone, its Softshell deployed, cocooning him into his seat. Sound and light still filtered through, but details were lost in the shield’s opaqueness. For that, he would need to access the bay’s cameras via his Heads-Up Display. His training kicked in. ‘Arms across chest to loosen the Fast Capture System to a breathable setting, then check oxygen flow and HUD, and report your status.’ He felt the airflow against his neck and cheek—the oxygen was flowing—but his helmet, which would normally block the air from reaching his skin, had not deployed. He retracted the glove around his right index finger and touched the side of the headband wrapping around his forehead, temples, and occipital bone, to activate the manual switch. The helmet deployed with quiet clicks that he felt more than heard as the links locked into place. His neck and the lower half of his face stayed uncovered. His visor, which looked like oversized eye protection, polarized to combat mode.
The HUD activated but the Squad Net indicator blinked red, signaling the squad’s network was offline. He switched to the UNet, the unit’s network, which was also offline, and then to his team’s network. Kaydeen, Tonee, and Salayla were all in the green. Hix, their Team Chief, wasn’t listed. What the—? But Taylor didn’t have time to ponder this oddity since he was busy refraining from ducking every time something impacted his seat’s Softshell. It was easier said than done to stay upright and seemingly fully exposed to whatever was trying to punch through the malleable membrane less than thirty centimeters from his vital organs.
As the screech of mangled metal and the increasing whistle of the wind overpowered the screams of the injured, Taylor could only guess if the impacts were caused by objects or people.
2
Chaos
Commander Dean Richards stood stunned as the large communication screen turned to static.
As Intergal’s liaison to the Tinaree Resistance Movement, or TRM, Dean had spent the last two years laying the groundwork for this mission. First, by contacting and organizing the planet’s resistance, and then, by helping to plan and coordinate its liberation from its two-year-long Traverse occupation. His hard work had finally paid off and the Task Force had been dispatched. On board the flagship, the battlecruiser Cartage, Battle Group Commander Kilrian, leading the Task Force, had invited him to observe the mission’s progress from the BCC, the Battle Coordination Center. As S11 Commander, Dean held the same rank step as Kilrian, although not the same command authority, but his operational authority as mission advisor and TRM liaison should have given him automatic and unrestricted access to the BCC and not required an invitation. But, shoving one’s rank or position into people’s faces rarely facilitated positive work relations—though it did get the job done at times.
A hush had fallen over the BCC. Not five minutes before, everything had gone according to plan. Now, all was in shambles and four hundred thirty-one of Intergal’s best-trained troops were either dead or in enemy hands.
The mission had begun as expected. The fleet had stayed at the edge of the solar system while its advance forces, composed of the 215th, 315th, and 415th Special Forces Units traveling in their specially-equipped frigates, had easily made it to the planet’s moon. From there, each unit’s three commando squads had used SILCs, or Stealth Infiltrator Landing Craft as they were officially called, to reach the planet. The squad-sized ships were fast, highly maneuverable, and equipped with the latest stealth technology Intergal had to offer and could easily slip past passive and active sensors and visual scans. Everything had gone well, and the ships had been past the planetary defenses and approaching the assigned HALO drop zones when the proximity alarms had sounded. With only seconds to react to the sudden missile attacks, few of the pilots had been able to maneuver and none had escaped. The missiles hit the nine ships almost simultaneously and either destroyed them on impact or damaged them enough to crash. Onboard computers from only five of the SILCs were able to send damage reports to their frigates.
The mainframe of the 315th SF Unit’s frigate had received its squads
’ reports at the same time as its sensors had registered a large number of Traverse starfighters, bombers, and other small attack craft. Comparing threat level to defenses, maneuverability, and escape vector, it had calculated the probability of escape at 3.937 percent and crew survival at 9.738 percent, warranting the commencement of emergency protocols. So, 0.263 seconds after receiving First Squad’s report, it had opened a communication channel with the Cartage’s BCC, dumped all data in its memory banks, and had proceeded to transmit ongoing battle reports. The battle had been over within minutes, the sheer number of attacking ships overwhelming the three frigates like ants swarming over a piece of candy dropped on their hill. The 315th had held out the longest, its last transmission reporting critical system failures in shields, hull, and life support right before its communication link to the Cartage had cut off.
Battle Group Commander Kilrian, standing beside Dean, cursed quietly. Under normal circumstances, nobody but Dean would have heard it, but in the dead silence, everybody did. It broke the spell that had fallen over the BCC and loosened an avalanche of activity and noise as everybody jumped to the task of figuring out what happened and why.
"What the hell just happened?" Kilrian shouted over the chaos. "Where did these ships come from, and why didn’t we see them? I want answers, and I want them five minutes ago!"
Dean stepped out of the way as Kilrian charged past him, shouting orders and instructions, and made his way to the BCC’s exit to work his assets. The hatch didn’t open—of course not. The ship, and the fleet for that matter, had gone to Full Battle Alert. Now the question was if Kilrian had given him unilateral access as he had indicated during their last meeting. Dean waved his hand over the hatch access panel to activate the embedded ID reading sensor. If he had full authority, the motion should override the lockdown and allow him access to the panel.
It stayed dark.
Dean sighed. So much for working on equal footing. It seemed that having someone of equal rank but technically outside his chain of command run loose on his ship intimidated Kilrian more than he had let on. Well, he wasn’t the first and wouldn’t be the last. Dean settled into the corner next to the hatch and pulled out his comm. He would have to do his job the hard way—nothing new there, either.
The SILC bounced, tumbled, and skidded violently before coming to a smoldering stop. The Softshell retracted and Taylor, spitting out a glob of blood, was out of his seat before the ship had fully settled. Seeing Kaydeen up and moving without hesitation or impairment, he turned to scan the nearly destroyed cabin.
It was hardly recognizable. Loose and even some previously tied down equipment was mangled and scattered among buckled or collapsed bulkheads, dislodged seats, and storage bins. Blood and bodies, or parts thereof, were everywhere—some obviously dead, others, possibly still alive. The air had taken on a milky consistency, a yellowish haze that stung his eyes, scratched his throat, and thickened as it oozed to the lower parts of the wreck, making him wonder about its toxicity as he breathed. He focused on the equipment icon in the lower right corner of his HUD to deploy his helmet’s fullhead mode and lock it into his armor to provide a self-contained environment, but the icon was grayed out. He tried the manual switch, but it didn’t work either.
Shit.
No time to troubleshoot. He moved on. The noise level finally subsided. The screaming and screeching of the crashing ship had given way to the creaking and hissing of the settling wreck and other more subtle and less distinct sounds—some possibly human-generated. Noting the locations of potential survivors, he continued searching for the familiar forms of Salayla and Tonee. His HUD marked both as alive, though Tonee’s indicator was blue, implying he was impaired. That could signify anything from being knocked out to having a broken bone or other wound. At least it wasn’t tinged purple, as that denoted critical wounds or dropping vital signs. He tried to raise them on the comm, but that was offline, too. Maybe there was something actively interfering with his system.
Kaydeen, who had moved away from him, spotted Tonee at the same time he spotted Salayla. They quickly climbed over the rubble to the debris pile where the two were buried, still strapped into their seats. Unlike Tonee, Salayla was conscious and had already manually retracted her seat’s Softshell. They soon had enough debris cleared to allow her to slide out of her seat and crawl out of the pile. Tonee, on the other hand, was not as easily freed. The teammates had to remove most of the debris around him before they could reach the external access hatch of his seat’s control panel. Taylor had barely opened it when he heard the rumble of an approaching vehicle. He twisted toward the only visible exit from the wreck, a jagged hole in the bulkhead that used to be the access hatch to the cockpit, and watched Salayla look outside. Her tensing posture told him their chance of escape was dwindling before she signaled the arrival of a tracked Tinaree Guard Troop Carrier. Most likely, they were mercenaries the Traverse had hired to replace the original Tinaree Guard personnel.
He turned back to work the manual controls without waiting for her report on how many disembarked. It didn’t matter if it was five or fifty, it would take only one shot into the ship’s fuel cells to bring all resistance to an instantaneous and fiery end. No, if they wanted to fight and survive, they needed to escape the wreckage before they were surrounded or vaporized. But first, he had to get Tonee on his feet.
"Commander Kilrian requests your presence in the Situation Room, Sir."
Dean looked up at the young man in front of him. He was in his late twenties and looked like a typical staff officer who had never seen a battlefield in person.
"Thank you, Mr. Bastogne, but I need to check in with my team."
"You can do that from the Sit-R, Sir."
Dean knew that, but would prefer to talk to them in private first. Commander Kilrian obviously had other plans. Bastogne didn’t budge, so Dean followed him across the BCC to the adjacent conference room.
His concern that he wouldn’t be able to vet his information and reactions before presenting it to Kilrian and his staff was short-lived. The Sit-R was nearly empty. Only two officers occupied the alcove workstations surrounding the large central display table. Dean couldn’t see their insignia, but guessed they were intelligence specialists gathering and sifting through the information that wasn’t readily disseminated by the personnel in the BCC.
Bastogne followed his gaze. "They’re Intelligence Officers supporting the BCC staff," he explained, mirroring Dean’s thoughts.
"Only two?" Considering the myriad of minor battle and intelligence details the BCC personnel didn’t have time for or outright ignored because it didn’t seem important at the time, Dean would have at least a team of IOs in here.
"The Intelligence Section handles the rest."
Dean raised his eyebrows, "Do they, now?"
"Yes.” Bastogne nodded. "Commander Kilrian receives regular reports."
"I’m sure he does."
Bastogne bristled at his tone. "Those reports are objective and inclusive."
"I’m sure they are." Dean smiled at Bastogne’s misinterpretation of his comment, though his tone did not. His tolerance for people jumping to conclusions without verifying facts wasn’t very high.
Flustered, Bastogne showed him to a comm station and asked for his team’s comm codes. Transferring the codes to his hand-held without so much as a second glance, he left Dean alone to stare at the blank terminal screen.
Within moments, the screen came to life with the list of his team members and the message ‘Active and notified’ blinking beside each. The first to check in was his assistant, Robert Teak, who had been making his way toward the BCC. Since a call to Battle Stations included sealing all hatchways and shutting down lift tubes to unauthorized personnel, his progress had been slow. However, his S9 rank and training as a Psychological Operations Specialist had, as usual, gotten him where, by regulations, he had no authority to be—three decks up and within four hatchways of the BCC.
It took only a few min
utes to update him on the status of events and lay out their next steps. Robert signed off, and Dean leaned back and stared at the blinking status indicators on the screen in front of him. Five names, two of which, Teak and Nick Torrents, a cyber specialist on loan from the battleship Cooley, were the only ones Dean could trust the status indicator was correct about. The other three were located on Tinaree, high-ranking members of the Tinaree Resistance. And, while the comm signal might have gone out to them, Dean had no way of knowing if it had made it to ground. For that, he needed Torrents, and the slicer took his time to check in. Robert had warned him about that. Less than a year out of the Academy, the nineteen-year-old had already been repeatedly flagged, getting himself into trouble even while still at the Academy. But, he was one of the best in his field, and that was exactly what Dean had been looking for.
3
Wreck
Taylor pulled the last of the crash webbing out of the way, when Tonee finally stirred. "About time you chose to join us.” He grinned. "I was starting to think you expected us to carry you out of this thing."
"You wouldn’t be able to lift me." Tonee touched the contusion above his right temple and flinched. His helmet’s headband was mangled, but probably saved his skull from being caved in.
"We would’ve managed, but I’m glad we don’t have to." Taylor pulled the pain patch Kaydeen had handed him from his pocket and carefully applied it to the bruise.
Closing his eyes, Tonee’s face softened as he relaxed back into his chair with a sigh.
"Better?" Taylor asked as he stole a glance at Salayla.
"Much. The hammer in my head is shrinking rapidly." Tonee’s previously glassy and unfocused eyes had cleared up. "Why aren’t we moving?"