by Ryk Brown
As usual, her instincts were correct, and two of her three shots struck the standing marine in the chest and shoulder, knocking him backward.
Jessica pushed the dead man aside and jumped to her feet, moving quickly to the second marine, who was still alive. He put up his hands, obviously in pain from his non-lethal wounds, his eyes wide. She stepped up to him, looking down, her sidearm pointed at his head. But instead of ending his life, she reached down and picked up his rifle. “We’re on the same side,” she told him. “You just don’t know it yet.”
“What?”
The sound of men approaching from behind cut the conversation short, and Jessica charged off into the woods, staying alongside the embankment.
Josh rolled his fighter left and right as red-orange bolts of plasma streaked past him on either side. Some glanced off his shields while others missed completely, but the worst were those that struck him dead on, causing his shields to flash brightly and his tiny fighter to shake.
His threat board flashed warnings again as four more Super Eagles jumped in, raising the total number of Earth fighters chasing him to eight.
“Any time, guys.”
Kit moved quickly, dodging in and out of the woods’ edge, drawing the pursuing soldiers further from their original point of arrival, and away from Nathan and Jessica. His pace was staggered and erratic, his stride lengths constantly changing, as did his direction of travel. Red-orange bolts of plasma streaked past, slamming into trees and the ground ahead.
As skilled as he was at evasion, he knew it was only a matter of time before the six EDF marines chasing him managed to land a volley that would, at the very least, knock him off his stride. It was time to employ a different strategy; one they would not be expecting.
Kit suddenly changed direction, heading to his right, deeper into the woods. Within seconds, he was barreling down the embankment and leaping across the creek at the bottom. Bolts of plasma slammed into the opposite slope as he scampered up and crested the top, disappearing from view.
The marines pursued their target into the woods, down the side of the ravine, and up the opposite side. They crested the top, their rate slowing slightly as they anticipated seeing their target running through the woods ahead of them. But they did not.
The sergeant signaled his men to spread out before advancing, fearing a trap. He knew their target was somewhere ahead, and he wasn’t about to fall prey to the enemy’s deceptions.
Two men had gone left, and two had gone right, with the sergeant and the sixth man advancing up the middle. All of them moved carefully, their heads on a swivel as they searched for their target among the countless trees and bushes.
Something moved behind the sergeant, and he and his comrade spun around, expecting an ambush, but found nothing.
“Psst.”
Both men spun back around and were struck in the face with blinding speed by the butt end of a rifle, all without ever seeing their assailant.
“I guess Earth marines aren’t as tough as they used to be,” Kit concluded when both men didn’t get back up. A sound to his right caught his attention, and Kit again disappeared into the woods.
Loki’s eyes widened as he came out of his initial insertion jump. On his threat display, there were six Super Eagles chasing Josh, and they were closing in. “Jesus, Josh!” he called over comms. “Jump!”
“I’ve got them just where I…” There was a sudden burst of static. “Uh-oh.”
Loki maneuvered, changing course to intercept the lead Super Eagle, and then pressed his jump button. A split second later, his target was half a kilometer away and closing fast. He pressed the rocket trigger on his flight control stick, sending a flurry of mini-rockets leaping from his rocket pods.
The lead four Eagles jumped away just before the rockets reached them, and the other two pitched up and climbed to avoid flying into the path of the incoming weapons.
Multiple systems’ alarms flashed red across his forward console, and Josh could tell that something wasn’t right about the way his P-Seventy-Two was handling.
“Your six is clear!” Loki announced over comms.
“Thanks, but I told you I had this under control,” Josh replied, pressing buttons in a vain effort to correct the multitude of problems he was being alerted to.
“Didn’t look like it from here.”
“If you had attacked the shuttles, most of them would’ve broken off my ass anyway,” Josh insisted. “Which you should do right now. We need to clear that LZ.”
“Which LZ?” Loki asked.
“All of them!”
“Got it. What was that ‘uh-oh’ about?”
“Nothing big,” Josh lied. “Just a small glitch. I’ll get it straightened out. Just go and attack those ground troops!”
“I’m on it,” Loki promised.
Two EDF marines moved carefully through the forest, studying every shadow as they searched for their target. Every step was slow and careful, making as little noise as possible so as not to reveal their position.
But they weren’t as stealthy as their prey, who lay in wait, buried in the very brush through which his stalkers progressed.
Kit lunged his right hand upward, inserting his captured combat knife into one marine’s groin, eliciting a cry of pain.
The other marine instinctively turned toward his cohort, but failed to see the partially buried Ghatazhak, who had already withdrawn his blade from the first marine. The marine bent to help his comrade, only to find someone on him from behind, grabbing both sides of his head.
There was a sudden twisting sensation, and the second marine fell, his neck broken; his life ended.
The first marine watched in horror, his hands still on his own bleeding groin. “You stabbed me in the nuts!” he yelled in anger and pain.
“Consider yourself lucky,” Kit replied, before disappearing into the forest as the last two marines could be heard charging through the forest toward them.
“Come on!” Nathan urged Lynne, practically dragging her along as they moved through the dense woods.
“I can’t!” Lynne pleaded. “I can’t!”
“You have to!” Nathan insisted.
“Leave me here,” Lynne begged. “Maybe capturing me will help you get away.”
“They aren’t interested in capturing us,” Nathan told her. “They’re shooting to kill!”
As if to accentuate his point, energy weapons fire erupted, and bolts of red-orange slammed into the trees next to them, sending shards of bark showering over them.
The sound of energy weapons fire to her right caught Jessica’s attention.
Nathan.
Jessica quickly turned and dispatched the three men closing on her, whom she had been leading astray for the last minute and a half. Then she turned, heading in the direction of the distant sound of weapons fire, jumping over low brush and weaving through trees.
The Voss came out of her jump, buffeting violently as it suddenly found itself in Earth’s atmosphere.
“You’re too high!” Vladimir scolded.
“We’re as low as the AI will let us jump in!” Dylan defended.
“Switch to manual and get us down low!” Vladimir ordered.
“Manual? Are you kidding?”
“If you don’t, they’ll pick us off in seconds!” Vladimir insisted.
A flurry of enemy targets appeared on the Voss’s threat display, alert tones sounding.
“Oh shit,” Dylan said under his breath.
“Yes! Oh shit!” Vladimir exclaimed. “Now get us low!”
“I’m getting! I’m getting!”
“Fighters inbound,” Vladimir called over the ship’s intercom to his gunners. “Be ready!”
Loki came out of his jump just over a kilometer from the engagement area. At his current speed, he had only seconds to drop to t
reetop level and decelerate enough to actually get his guns on target. Fortunately, maneuverability was the P-Seventy-Two’s greatest asset.
He pushed his flight control stick all the way forward, causing his Lightning to fall from the sky like a rock. Just before the treetops were about to smack his underside, he cleared the woods and found himself over one of the fairways.
Loki pulled his flight control stick back hard, causing his grav-lift systems to hum loudly as they strained to arrest his rapid descent.
A quick twist of his stick and his nose swung around to the right, coming onto a group of marines who were jumping out of one of the four newly arrived QRT shuttles. A squeeze of his trigger, and bolts of energy leapt from his wing cannons, plowing through the soldiers and the shuttle that had delivered them. The shuttle blew apart, sending flaming debris in all directions. Several of the larger pieces found the next shuttle over as it tried to climb away to escape the assault. Its lift thrusters sputtered, and it tipped to starboard, striking the ground and rolling over, crushing half of the men who had just disembarked.
As his fighter slid sideways, less than a meter above the grassy fairway, he continued to swing his nose around, firing at the third shuttle, forcing it to abort its landing and jump to safety.
Red-orange bolts flashed to his left, the ground erupting from the impacts of plasma. Loki glanced upward and to his left, spotting two Super Eagles diving toward him, adjusting their angles to avoid over-leading him on their next volley. A glance further left revealed that he was rapidly running out of fairway. The approaching tree line would soon pose as deadly a threat.
Loki pulled his flight control stick back hard, causing his grav-lift systems to again hum loudly as it pushed his tiny fighter upward at an alarming rate. Three more bolts of plasma passed under him, striking the grass at the precise location where he would have been, had he not initiated an aggressive climb.
Loki knew that the Eagle pilots were well trained, and that they would already be adjusting their dive angle to compensate for their target’s attempt to evade. As much as he wanted to stay and engage the ground forces to keep them from joining the pursuit of the away team, he had no choice but to jump clear to avoid his own destruction. He and Josh were only two fighters against a full squadron of Super Eagles. Getting shot down in the first two minutes of the engagement would do little to help his friends.
A touch of his jump button, and Loki’s P-Seventy-Two transitioned from a meter above the surface to a few thousand. His ship buffeted wildly, the winds at altitude being far greater than those at ground level on a tree-lined fairway. And flying sideways wasn’t helping.
Loki disengaged his flight stability safeties, allowing the wind to have its way with his tiny ship, flipping it over and pushing its nose around.
Now inverted and pointing downwind, Loki spotted two Eagles jumping in a few hundred meters below him, opening fire as their jump flashes faded. Fortunately, they had not accounted for the effect the stronger winds would have on their target, and their initial volleys missed.
Still inverted and barely in control of his ship, Loki spun the jump range selector wheel on his flight control stick, selecting five light minutes for his next jump.
The Super Eagles adjusted their flight path, and opened fire again, but their target disappeared in a flash of blue-white light.
Now back in space, Loki had no problem regaining control of his fighter. The Super Eagles would not pursue him out of their assigned engagement area, but that would only buy him a few extra seconds. Earth Defense Command would have no idea that their enemy’s force size was only two fighters and one armed cargo ship. They would have more Super Eagles in orbit, ready to pounce. If he was lucky, he’d have just enough time to come about and jump back down into Earth’s atmosphere.
“We have to get to that bridge!” Nathan yelled as they ran along the top edge of the ravine. “Once past it, we can cross the creek without them seeing us!”
Lynne was barely able to keep up, her legs burning and her breath short. She had prided herself on maintaining her weight and general health, even after bearing two children, but the only running she ever did was on a treadmill or a properly maintained path in the park. Now she felt as if she were going to stumble with every other step, and she was constantly being whipped by the branches of bushes and trees. The only thing keeping her going were the bolts of red-orange plasma streaking past her and slamming into nearby trees.
As they approached the bridge, Nathan changed his course and deftly scurried down the side of the ravine, ducking under the near edge of the bridge.
Lynne was not as graceful, stepping wrong as she attempted to descend the embankment, losing her balance, and tumbling down into the creek.
Nathan ducked under the bridge and jumped the creek, but his ascent of the opposite embankment was stopped short by Lynne’s screams as she fell. He turned around, spotting her on her hands and knees in the babbling creek, appearing as if she had all but given up. “LYNNE!” he yelled, urging her to rise to her feet and continue on.
But she didn’t.
Nathan’s first instinct was to go back to help her, but their pursuers were only seconds behind them. Her fate tugged at his conscience, but Jessica’s words echoed in his mind.
He had no choice, so he turned and continued up the embankment, using the bridge to hide him from the view of his pursuers and disappearing over the top of the ravine.
Eyes wide, Dylan held his flight controls tightly as he guided the Voss lower through the Earth’s atmosphere. He tried to avoid looking at the tactical display, as the number of red icons moving around like a bunch of angry insects only made him more nervous than he already was. The only thing keeping him together was the fact that none of those red icons had attacked them.
After nearly a full minute of being unable to see anything outside, the Voss finally broke through the marine layer, revealing the twinkling lights of the city and the moonlit water. Unfortunately, the water was coming at them much faster than he felt comfortable, forcing him to radically adjust his angle of descent.
Marcus stumbled as he donned his harness, the sudden change in the ship’s attitude nearly knocking him off his feet. “Jesus, kid!” he yelled, knowing that the live intercoms would broadcast his complaints into all compartments.
“Sorry!” Dylan replied over the intercom loudspeaker.
“You need to get the ramp open!” Vladimir instructed.
“If you can hold it steady for a minute, I will!” Marcus replied as he attached one of the safety tethers to his harness.
“Incoming!” Mori warned over the intercom. “Four bandits! Bearing one two zero, twenty up relative!”
“That’s your heading,” Vladimir told Dylan.
“What’s my heading?”
“One two zero,” Vladimir explained.
Dylan’s eyes got even wider. “That’s where all the red icons are!”
“No kidding.”
“This is not good,” Dylan mumbled to himself as he adjusted course.
“You’ll have to get lower.”
“I’m already low!” Dylan objected.
“You’re not low enough!”
“Well, how low do you want me to go?”
“If you can’t see the squirrels in the trees, then you’re not low enough,” Vladimir told him.
“What the hell is a squirrel?”
“Only deploy the ramp to level,” Vladimir called over the intercom, ignoring Dylan. “I doubt it’s going to be a normal landing.”
“No shit!” Marcus snapped back.
Marcus reached the control box to the left of the aft main cargo ramp and slapped the button to start the deployment process. Cold, moist ocean air whooshed in, swirling about and making a terrifying howl. The smell was overpowering, causing Marcus’s usual scowl to become even more prominent. “God, I fucking
hate oceans.”
He turned and headed forward again, using the side rail to steady himself against the constant buffeting. Within seconds, he reached the weapons lockers their Ghatazhak contingent had installed prior to departure. He opened the first door and pulled out the largest weapon in the locker, holding it in front of him to inspect it.
“Jesus!” he exclaimed, examining the makeshift weapon. It appeared to be four of the old large-bore boomers used by the Takaran Empire, all joined together and tied into a single power and control box. The weapon had two handles, one at the back with a trigger, and one at the front, a few centimeters behind the funnel-shaped guard surrounding the muzzles. “Is this what you boys do in your spare time?”
“Just keep your forward hand behind the flash-back guard, or you’ll burn the hair off your knuckles!” Jokay warned over the intercom.
“Got it!” Marcus replied, slinging the weapon over his shoulder.
“And don’t try to fire it one-handed!” Jokay added. “It’s got a hell of a kick!”
“Yeah, I’ll bet!” Marcus said as a series of blue-white flashes lit up the inside of the bay.
Mori pulled on his shoulder harness straps, tightening them as much as possible as his turret completed its power-up cycle.
“Four jump flashes aft!” Marcus reported over comms. “Skimmin’ the water!”
“They’re all yours, Jokay!” Mori instructed as he grabbed his gun controls and opened fire on the Super Eagles approaching from straight ahead.
“I’m on it!” Jokay announced over the intercom.
“This is not good,” Dylan declared as the first energy bolts, fired by the Super Eagles in front of them, struck their forward shields, rocking the ship. “Maybe we should activate point defenses.”
“We’ll be feet dry in less than a minute.” Vladimir explained. “We can’t risk errant fire causing collateral damage. I’ll try channeling power to forward and aft shields,” he added, “but if they attack with more than two groups, I’m not going to be able to keep up.”