Conflict: The Expansion Series Book 3

by Devon C. Ford

  “What is it?”

  “The enemy trajectory, Captain,” he replied, “it’s a direct course for Proxima b.”

  “The fleet,” Torres said out loud, putting the forefinger of his right hand to his lips and holding his breath in thought, “calculate their ETA.”

  Choices, he said to himself, thinking faster than he could explain in words, attack now and take out some of them? Jump back and warn the fleet? Contact the frigates on subspace and get them to jump in to help ambush the enemy?

  No, he realized, a jump or a subspace comm would alert them and we’d have to jump away to save our own skin anyway.

  “Anyone care to take a guess at how far away they can detect our subspace communications?” he asked the bridge in general. “Don’t be shy, people, the time and place for modesty is not here and not now.”

  “Going on the theory that they detected our jump signature almost a quarter of a light year away,” the comm officer started but paused to try and work out the relativity of her train of thought.

  “Jump signature and subspace communications differ by a magnitude of almost a thousand percent,” the ensign on the tactical station offered. “Nine point four six trillion roughly divided by four is two trillion-three-sixty-billion. Our jump signature radiates that far…ish, which means that at best guess we’d need to be a little over two billion clicks away to be safe?” Torres stared at him again, totally blown away by the young man who had clearly been hiding an incredible intelligence behind a nervous inability to make words when he was asked to.

  “Too far,” the captain said eventually. “We either give away our position and run away, or we give away our position, cripple them as much as we can, then run away.”

  “What are you suggesting?” Eze asked carefully, speaking for the first time since giving her orders to the standby gun teams to get to work. In response, Torres smiled and spoke out one corner of his mouth as he kept his eyes on hers.

  “Mister Sarvanto? How quickly can we unload all of our nukes?” Sarvanto almost did a double-take but answered the question.

  “We have thirty-six warheads on board and twelve launchers. That’s three full launches and reloads. I’d say thirty to thirty-five seconds?”

  “Helm, bring us towards the head of the distortion and prepare a jump course back to the fleet. Comm, prepare a subspace communication to both the fleet and the search teams, advising them of what we’ve discovered. Tell them that we’ve laid down as much firepower as we are carrying and if we don’t make it back, to prepare for an assault. Send it the second we start firing warheads. Are you ready, Flight Officer?”

  “Target coordinates laid in, Captain,” Sarvanto called out, “Targeting the head of the distortion with a maximum spread. The second and third waves of missiles have a wider spread to hopefully catch any ships taking evasive maneuvers.”

  “Excellent work,” Torres said as he took his chair again, “fire when ready.”

  Chapter Eleven – Unnamed moon surface

  “Everyone take five,” Brandt said tiredly as they approached the cluster of trees that offered a reprieve from the harsh sunlight. They had marched for almost four hours in the direction of their emergency kit crate, which had got lost up in the storm clouds and pushed far away from where the shuttle actually went down. The theory behind the kit crate being ejected in the case of a crash landing was for the precise reason they had encountered; emergency equipment was no good to anyone when it got vaporized or crushed by an explosion or a collapsing singularity drive that lost containment.

  The theory was that the surviving crew could scout and secure a safe location, then the slowly descending crate would come to them and remove any need to haul the heavy lifesaving gear with them. The crate itself was designed to fold out into a small, rudimentary shelter, but having seen the schematics, Brandt doubted they could get even half of them under cover using it. What they needed, desperately, was the power source to recharge their suit batteries and the ammunition resupply along with the emergency subspace beacon which she had thought long and hard about using; run the risk of discovery by the enemy or never be found.

  “It’s like it was back in Turkey outside,” Zero said quietly. He had that manner, that of speaking softly so much of the time that you were never quite sure if he was thinking out loud or talking to you. Brandt, the only other person to have been with him in Turkey not that long ago, made a noise of agreement. Outside their suits the external temperature read close to a hundred and five degrees, which meant that the battery life of their armor was being greatly reduced as its internal air conditioning worked hard to keep them from becoming boil-in-the-can meals like the old field rations before their time.

  “Same at night,” Brandt agreed with the marksman, “cold when the sun goes down…”

  “Hot as balls in the day,” Paterson finished loudly and crassly, “like our training exercise in the Sonoran Desert back in the day.” At his casual mention of the training exercise, their soldier on point stopped hesitantly and turned to look back at Paterson. The scientist noticed Horne tap at his forearm device and saw Specter waver before returning to his task.

  “Out of interest,” Rogers asked over the comm channel with that tone of voice that told everyone he was thinking of something funny, “how hot are balls?” Nobody answered him, and Brandt didn’t have the energy, mental or physical, to save him from himself.

  “Anyway,” Zero said to change the subject, “everyone take on water and sound off a battery percentage.”

  “Fifty-nine,” Brandt said flatly.

  “Sixty-three,” Payne responded, “the rig is at twenty-nine.”

  “Fifty-five,” Turner mumbled, only half concentrating as he was checking Perez’s vital signs, “Perez is at sixty-four.”

  Paterson chimed in next with, “Seventy-four. My err, my armor wasn’t used for the first couple hours.” Nobody answered that as the memory of McMarrow’ body was fresh in their minds.

  “Fifty-six,” Horne grumbled.

  “Fifty-eight,” Rogers added in a serious tone of voice.

  “And I’m at sixty flat,” Zero finished. Specter didn’t involve himself in the roll-call as his battery wasn’t an issue having a micro-singularity inside him. Nobody could miss the tall man in the unique matt-black armor who stayed unnervingly, inhumanly still when he didn’t need to move, so it wasn’t as though they were worried he hadn’t kept up.

  “Okay, like Zero said,” Brandt told them, “get some fluids and take a ration pill; we could all do with the calories and the stim boost.” A couple of groans rippled over the channel at her last instruction, and she knew it was because the ration pills affected everyone differently.

  The pills, the emergency rations developed to replace the bulky, ultra-high-calorie packs issued to all UN personnel on active service in the field, were a masterpiece in science and research. That was how they were sold to the recruits, but in reality they were dry, gray lumps which were almost too large to swallow in one go but snapping them in half meant letting out the taste from inside that stayed on a person’s tongue for about a month. They were packed with tiny particles that expanded to fill the stomach and release all the nutrients the body required, along with a sizeable dose of stimulant that was proven to increase a soldier’s productivity, but also their odds of committing suicide or suffering from psychosis if used regularly for extended periods. That last part wasn’t in the educational video given to new recruits.

  One by one, visors on suits hissed open and faces were pulled as the pills went down. Brandt took hers first, knowing that the size of her stomach was marginally less than the amount the pill would expand to, so she suffered the taste by biting the end off a capsule and restoring it to the tiny pouch hidden in her armor. She restored her helmet and took long pulls on the drinking tube to wash it down with the cool water and gave no thought to where the filtered, purified and chilled fluids had come from.

  “Keep your lids on,” she reminded them, “y
ou’ll lose too much battery power cooling you back down else.” They complied, unhappily, but they did as they were told. In truth, even Brandt, who was well-accustomed to spending long periods of time closed down in her armor, was starting to feel the rub of claustrophobia. “How far to the crate, Rogers?” she asked.

  “A little under six clicks,” he said without checking, “but with the terrain change I don’t know how long that will take us.”

  “Hmmm,” The commander let out involuntarily. The pilot raised a good point, in that their endless trek over rock-strewn wastelands had come to an abrupt end at a watercourse with trees and low bushes dotted all around. The foliage grew thickly around the banks of the stream and the air suddenly possessed a significant amount more humidity than the arid plain they had crossed. Luckily, they had seen no more flying reptiles or dog-sized scorpions, and amazingly, nobody had lost their mind over it either. Paterson had been right in saying that they had landed on a planetoid that possessed most of the same qualities as Earth for life to thrive and evolve, but also that it was younger in evolutionary terms. Their suit HUDs worked overtime to capture and log every new detail on the strange surface they found themselves on, and now as they moved into a world that was green instead of the reddish-brown plain that reminded all of them of Mars, they faced a whole new ecosystem.

  And nobody needed to point out that that meant a whole new set of potential predators with no clue what the little metal mammals were, or whether they were food.

  They moved out slowly after a short break. Staying still too long was never a good idea as their bodies would automatically want to shut down, especially after ingesting the ration pills. But the risk was weighed against giving the injured sufficient time to recover before moving again.

  They went slowly, Paterson fully in possession of his faculties after the side effects of too much adrenaline substitute had worn off, but Perez was still weak and breathless. In the tight confines of what was evolving from a wooded area to something resembling a jungle, the overly-loud movements of the mech rig made them all feel like they were advancing ahead of a marching band. Brandt’s nerves couldn’t take much more of it, as she expected an attack by something at any point and called a halt in a clearing.

  “Rogers, distance and bearing to target,” she said.

  “Twelve hundred meters, dead ahead.”

  “Zero, set up three-sixty defense here. Specter, Paterson, Rogers – on me.” The start of a protest began from the pilot but was rapidly abandoned as Brandt’s visor swung to face him. “March order; Specter, Rogers, me, Paterson.” They formed up, spreading out so that they weren’t packed tightly together and able to fit into the targeting scope of any weapon pointed in their direction, but still close enough to maintain visual contact at all times. Weapons drawn and advancing tactically, they moved through the forest with as little disruption as possible. Their HUDs flickered with half-seen movements as the software tried to recognize and catalogue the tiny creatures stirred up by their presence, which luckily all seemed too small and solitary to pose any kind of threat to them inside their armor.

  “Fifty meters,” Rogers said, “must be just beyond those trees.”

  “Hold here,” Brandt ordered as she stepped up beside Specter and met his mirrored gaze. She nodded to him and both set off cautiously forwards until the audible sound of the crate reached their suits. They were standing directly on the target coordinates and could hear the muted ping sounds of the supplies, but it was nowhere to be seen. As one, they both craned their necks to look upwards.

  “Shit,” Brandt said.

  “Hijo de puta,” Specter added, startling his commander as she hadn’t heard him utter a curse in Spanish since he had been Jake Santana.

  “Come again?” she said.

  “Someone needs to climb up,” he said, stating the obvious and returning to his normal Specter self as though he hadn’t just spoken.

  “Are you volunteering?” she asked him, but getting no immediate reply, she called the others forward. They joined them in a little over a minute, and both looked up to offer their own opinions on the situation. The supply crate was hung up in the trees by the deployed canopy that slowed its descent back to the surface. The crate, too big for any two people to carry alone, swung ponderously in a gentle breeze that didn’t exist on the leaf-strewn ground.

  “Any takers?” Paterson asked before slapping the back of an armored hand against Specter’s arm for his attention. “Want me to hold your beer?”

  Specter stared at him for a few seconds before turning to look at Brandt. She didn’t know why he did that, because if he was looking for help in understanding Paterson’s humor, her reflective face shield would offer nothing.

  Unless those artificial eyes can see through my visor, she contemplated fleetingly before shaking her head to dismiss the frivolous thought. Specter mistook the slight shake for a negative from her and turned back to the scientist.

  “You used to say that to me… to Jake… before you did something stupid,” he said quietly.

  “What the hell’s going on there?” Horne’s angry voice filled the channel, “You stop messing with our asset’s head, you hear me? I swear, you godda…” Brandt didn’t respond, merely muted his mic from the channel, as was her privilege as commander.

  “I did, buddy,” Paterson said kindly, “now which one of us dumbasses is climbing up? I’ll be honest, I think you’re in better shape than I am and there’s no way we can let the girly go instead of us.”

  “Hey!” Brandt started, stopping when she realized both men were laughing lightly at her sudden anger as she primed the gender equality cannons to fire. She smiled, stepping back and giving a lavish gesture for them to proceed to the base of the tree. “After you, dumbasses.”

  The two men exchanged a look before Specter mag locked both guns to his thighs and stepped forwards. He looked around for a low hand hold but found nothing under about thirty feet which was beyond the limit of his augmented vertical leap.

  “Need a boost?” Paterson asked him.

  “No, I need to be lighter.” With that he stepped back and exited his armor after it unfolded to his silent command, stepping forwards out of it to expose his black-suited body. Brandt knew that the suit was actually part of his augmentation, one that made his artificial limbs seem more human than robot. He walked forwards, building up speed as he went until he reached the base of the wide tree trunk at a sudden sprint before leaping into the air and planting a foot hard against the moist bark. His leg tensed as his body still moved in the air before he straightened it explosively to launch his body up and away from the trunk where he gained the same amount of height again to reach out and grasp the lowest branch thirty feet up and fifteen feet out. He swung for a while until the pendulum action of his body wore off, then did a two-handed straight arm pull-up which he effortlessly turned into what the sadistic PT instructors called a muscle-up. He balanced his feet on the wood of the branch as it wobbled and flexed under the weight of him walking back towards the trunk. He performed a further series of jumps and muscle-ups until he was nearly a hundred feet in the air nearing the top of the canopy.

  “You know,” Paterson said quietly to Brandt on a channel he opened just to her, “I think little Mister Horne is hitting our boy with dopamine every time he has a Jake memory glitch.” Brandt turned to stare at Paterson, visor to visor, before she spoke.

  “That little son of a bi–”

  “Stand clear,” Specter said over the team channel, interrupting them and surprising Paterson who had never experienced him using the radio transmitter embedded in his brain. The sound of cracking wood and falling leaves echoed down to them as both retreated a few steps. A direct hit from the crate might not kill them, but their armor might not operate as well afterwards.

  It hit the leafy ground and embedded one corner so that there wasn’t a single inch of bounce. Specter followed, taking the quicker route down in three leaps between big branches before hitting the so
ft earth with both feet and cushioning the fall by sinking to one knee and arresting his forward momentum with an outstretched hand. He stood straight, cracked a toothy smile at them and said in a deadpan voice, “superhero landing.” Brandt and Paterson looked at one another in disbelief.

  “Dude,” Paterson said, somehow conveying so much thought and emotion into the single syllable that mere words could not do justice, “you okay? Are you… you?” Specter walked to his armor and turned to back into it now that agility was no longer required. He ignored the question and spoke.

  “I saw something when I was up there. Looked like an artificial compound with at least one building.”

  “Man made?” Paterson asked before correcting himself, “You know what I mean…”

  “There was a faint energy signature coming from it, we should check it out.”

  Chapter Twelve – Unnamed moon surface

  “Hold there,” Zero’s whispered voice sounded softly in their earpieces. Quite why he whispered when the suit contained his voice was a mystery, but something in the way he spoke radiated caution to all of them. Brandt had gone ahead with just the cyborg and the scientist, who she had remind herself was a scientist now and wasn’t at the sharp edge of tactical movement and combat skills. He had been once, years before, but those years spent in classrooms and laboratories had softened their former squad mate.

  “What do you see?” Brandt murmured back as her HUD flickered ahead at the plethora of new shapes and movements it was trying to catalogue. She had turned it off before as the constant working of the software annoyed and distracted her, not to mention removed vital memory capacity should she need to fight. But when the energy reading matched the signature of the Va’alen ships, she turned it back on in a hurry. Seeing the hulking, looming, four-armed outline of one of the huge warriors, one of the cockroaches as they had been dubbed, occupied a significant amount of her brain’s concentration. She feared them, as any sensible person would, but her fear was not to be mistaken for cowardice.