“Where’s my CASPer?” Tara reached instinctively for her earpiece only to realize it, along with her slate, was packed in her bag which she’d left in the outer area of Wood’s office. The bastard was probably going through her stuff right now. A freefall test without Lucille was destined for failure. Tara had never jumped out of a perfectly functional airplane before and doing so in a CASPer, without proper training, amounted to suicide.
Snyder stopped and turned. “You do it with our CASPer. Nothing else.”
Tara froze. “Your vehicle? What model of CASPer are we talking?”
Snyder pointed into the cavernous rear of the aircraft. A Mk 6 that had clearly seen better days stood facing the rear ramp. Tara couldn’t see any weapons loaded on the CASPer’s chassis, but the legs and jumpjets looked to be older than she was. Through the maelstrom of wind and dust from the engines, Snyder bounded up the ramp, and Tara followed. Whether it was from idle curiosity or a sense that there was no way they could be serious and this was some sort of bullshit macho test, she couldn’t decide.
No sooner had she reached the top of the ramp, than the aircraft pushed forward. Tara staggered into the seats along the fuselage wall. Through the fabric netting, she watched Snyder standing perfectly balanced and checking the CASPer as if nothing phased him. For the first time, she noticed the Army jumpmaster wings on his baseball hat. From the way he moved, Tara figured he’d been a senior NCO and a far superior soldier than Major Wood.
The aircraft turned violently to the left, and Tara could see they were on the main dirt strip, about to takeoff. Rattling like marbles in a can, the aircraft accelerated down the runway. Tara bounced and shook in her seat. She mashed her eyes closed to fight the nausea creeping into her stomach. The vibrations threatened to shake the fillings from her molars, then they disappeared in an instant. Tara opened her eyes, looked through the still open ramp, and saw the dirt airstrip and Camp Atterbury falling away. The aircraft’s nose was pointed a good forty degrees up and, based on the screaming engines, the old bird, whatever it was, was straining with the effort to climb to altitude with the 800-kilogram CASPer aboard.
“Mason!”
Tara glanced at the CASPer. The cockpit section was open, and Snyder hung onto the front. When they made eye contact, he tossed a haptic suit to her. The black and green suit smelled like hydraulic fluid and dead fish. Tara swallowed to avoid gagging. The unspoken instruction was to put the suit on. It was large enough to slip on over her clothing, which she did, undoubtedly disappointing Snyder and the two loadmasters watching her intently. Tara looked away from them and focused on putting it on.
“Four minutes, Mason!”
Tara flashed Snyder a thumbs-up without looking up. With her legs properly aligned in the suit, she stood, wrapped the torso around her waist, and slipped her arms inside. After a few tugs, she walked across the sloped deck to the CASPer. Snyder stepped out of her way.
“It’s powered up and comms are live. No weapons, minimal fuel. Drop is from 20,000 feet. No chute. Your jets are fully loaded.” Snyder looked her over.
“That’s it?” Tara asked. “Nothing else to say?”
Snyder’s eyes narrowed. “It won’t behave like a Mk 8. Don’t expect it to. You’ve got two minutes and change to get it ready to fly.”
When Snyder walked away, Tara climbed up into the CASPer with slow, methodical movements, hoping to quell the absolute panic coursing through her veins. Backing into the cockpit, she slipped her legs into position and found the master cabling trunk. Snapping the individual connections took precious time, and it was something she’d taken for granted in the Mk 8 with its automatic haptic capture system. Satisfied, she slipped her arms into the shoulder straps and initiated the haptic system. As the connections flashed green, Tara punched the CASPer’s toggle to close the cockpit. The CASPer jerked, and she looked outside as the loadmasters initiated the moving platform which would deliver her to the edge of the ramp for the drop. Tara watched the cockpit close and waited for the internal instrumentation to initialize and appear on her virtual heads-up display. There was another lurch.
End of the ramp. How much time do I have?
The first instrument to come online was the artificial horizon indicator. When the multicolored ball appeared, Tara saw that her nose indicator was showing a thirty-...forty-...fifty-degree dive. The horizon then began to tilt and spin wildly to the left. The feeling in her inner ears told her she was falling. Tara pushed the external camera controls. As the images flickered on, she saw that the aircraft wasn’t in a dive. Her CASPer was. The aircraft was above her, turning back toward Camp Atterbury.
Holy fucking shit!
Tara spread the CASPer’s arms wide and did the same with her legs. The spin slowed. Head down, altitude ticking down quickly, she pushed back against the cockpit wall willing the haptic suit to respond. She pushed her hands in front of her, and the CASPer’s face came up to a point near the horizon. The haptics weren’t great, but the suit responded to her commands and assumed a stable falling position. She glanced at the altimeter and gasped.
Eleven thousand feet.
Tara jabbed the communications panel. There was no response. She fingered the emergency communications switches, but there was no response from them either. She’d been sealed into a tomb and dropped to her death.
“Focus!” Tara screamed at herself. Of the active systems, only the jumpjets responded. Tara adjusted them and tapped them once. The reassuring kick gave her a flicker of hope. All she could do was try to fire them at the right time and attitude. Her eyes swept the panels looking for other systems she could use. The early model Mk 6’s interior instrument panels were vastly different than the Mk 8’s. In front of her waist, on the left, was a toggle switch marked auto-orientation. She flipped the switch, and the mecha jerked and attempted to stand straight up. Her rate of descent increased, and Tara felt the CASPer begin to spin again. She flipped the switch off and manually fought the machine back to a stable position.
Seven thousand feet.
Tara looked back to the communications panel, turned it on, and fingered the emergency locator/transmitter. The beacon came on, persistently beeping at three second intervals, but there was no way to see reception or hear anything in return.
Five thousand feet.
A crosswind caught the CASPer, and Tara overcorrected its body position and accelerated the tumble. She pitched forward against the shoulder restraints, and her head glanced off the front of the cockpit. One internal camera feed failed. She threw out her arms, moved her hands and fingers, and tried to get the mecha to respond. The CASPer rotated onto its back like a stranded turtle. The external cameras only showed half of the bright, blue sky.
/ANTENNA FAILURE/
Three thousand feet. Tara reached for the auto-orientation switch and toggled it. The CASPer moved on its own. Tara didn’t care if it was because of gyroscopes or accelerometers, but in a matter of heartbeats, the CASPer was feet down again.
One thousand feet.
Tara selected the jumpjets and left the auto-orientation on. Cycling once, the jets pulsed out a three second burn and slowed her velocity, but it wasn’t enough. She pulsed them again and again, but there was little reduction in speed.
/ALTITUDE! ALTITUDE! ALTITUDE!/
The CASPer’s warning systems all sounded at once in a heavily accented Japanese voice. Tara bore down on the jumpjet controls and activated them as the ground rushed up at her.
/CONFIRM EMERGENCY BURN/
“Yes!” Tara screamed, pushing the confirm button, and the thrusters rolled up to 104%. Temperature warnings displayed for both legs, but the burn continued. The CASPer’s velocity was significantly slower.
A few more seconds!
/JUMPJET FAILURE IN TEN SECONDS/
The altitude indicator was at one hundred feet and falling with almost no lateral movement. The CASPer dropped straight down. Eighty feet. Fifty feet. Thirty feet.
/FIVE SECONDS/
; At twenty feet, the vehicle’s fire lights came on. Tara yanked the emergency cockpit release handles, and the front of the CASPer flew away from the force of four small, explosive bolts. Tara reached for the haptic cord connection as the mecha thumped to the ground and started to topple backward. The long, dry grass around her caught fire in an instant. Clouds of smoke and dust rose and choked her as she yanked the emergency disconnect cable. Free of the haptic cord, Tara climbed to the cockpit rail and jumped into the smoke. When her feet hit the ground, she collapsed and rolled forward, snagging her leg on a bush she couldn’t see. Gathering her feet under her, she ran straight ahead. The smoke cleared before she’d run twenty steps, and she turned around and saw two parachutes in the sky descending toward her. One of them was a large cargo chute connected to an electromagnetic rope platform used for complex sling loading operations. The magnetized ropes hung useless under the platform and oscillated in the wind. The other chute carried a man who steered the rectangular canopy toward her.
Snyder.
His face was pale, and his mouth hung open. He landed his chute flawlessly, disengaged his shoulder straps, and stomped toward her, his mouth working from side to side. Shaking his head, he removed his helmet and ran a hand through his thick, sweaty hair. He met her eyes.
“How in the fuck did you do that, Mason? You the angel of death or something?”
* * *
“He was supposed to catch you, am I right?” Xander’s admiring smile made her feel better. “The mag-ropes?”
“Yeah,” Tara replied. “The crosswind was only twenty knots or so, but it was enough to knock me out of control and keep the chute away. I couldn’t see it because I’d head butted the camera feed. It was a test, and it would have failed spectacularly, but somehow, I got lucky and landed that thing. It was the only time it’s ever been done successfully from above three thousand meters without extra fuel or a drogue chute.”
Xander nodded. “It wasn’t lucky. You kept working, Tara. You kept trying to find something—anything—that would work. You’d never even been in a Mk 6 before, right?”
“Still my one and only ride in one.” Tara laughed. “It didn’t survive, though. The grassfire took it out. I hear they made it into a static display of some type, but I haven’t bothered to go back to find out.”
Xander laughed and shook his head. She watched him staring out over the countryside toward Mount Klatk. Every once in a while, he’d smile and shake his head more.
“What?” she asked.
“In the version I heard, they threw the CASPer out of the aircraft and sent you freefalling after it at like five thousand feet. That sounds almost easy after what you just told me. I’m pretty sure I would have filled my haptic suit.” Xander grinned and sighed. He stared at her for a long moment before he spoke. The calm confidence on his face reminded her of his younger brother. As much as it made her heart hurt, she liked seeing it. “Two things,” he said. “First, that’s where you got the callsign, right?”
“Yeah. Not a bad story, huh?”
“Most callsigns are embarrassing. So, yeah, it’s a good one.” Xander nodded approvingly. “Second, you outperformed their bullshit tactics and passed the course. From there you went to Weqq and fought your mecha like a banshee. You are one helluva pilot, Tara, yet you’re sitting here worried you can’t lead this unit. I believe you’re wrong.”
Tara watched him stand and brush sand and dirt from his coveralls. “Driving a CASPer is easier than leadership, Xander.”
“The hell it is, Tara.” Xander extended a hand to her. “Why don’t you come show Rains and Vannix how it’s done?”
“No sims tonight,” Tara said.
“How about a bottle of wine and an old movie?” Xander asked. “Beats sitting out under the stars alone like you do most nights. I don’t think you’ll find what you’re looking for there.”
Neither did she. Nor would she find it with a bottle of wine and an old movie, but sitting alone under the stars wondering what she was doing didn’t sound appealing anymore. “You’re on, but I get to pick the movie.”
“Something not from the twenty-first century? Please?”
Tara grinned. “Deal.”
* * * * *
Chapter Seven
Overlooking D’Nart Spaceport
Araf
The high desert climate of the planet played hell with the Cochkala. When offered a place in the Dream World Consortium, they’d turned their backs on planets like Araf with good reason. No Cochkala in its right mind would stay on such a world for more than a day without significant reason. Turns out a million credits was reason enough for Mnam and his team of sappers. Brushing the tan dust away from his orange fur, he adjusted his position so he could peer through the monocular periscope overlooking the rock wall of their forward position. Using his paws to focus the beam, he saw, once again, that Victory Twelve’s bay doors were open and the fueling vehicles were nowhere to be seen. Tara Mason and her team were not leaving today, and that was good. Their time had run out. In the white light of the spaceport’s tarmac, even the ground crews were paused in their operations. D’Nart was closed to traffic for four hours; it was the perfect time to attack.
Mnam rubbed his paws together and called to his team. In seconds, the four young sappers popped up from their rest positions and turned toward him. In their dark eyes and quivering faces, he saw the excitement of a mission transitioning from planning to execution. Like all soldiers, they craved it. Even Mnam felt a strange elation that threatened to make him screech aloud. It was time to earn their credits. Completion of the mission meant more credits than he could spend and an effortless life in semi-retirement. Mnam cautioned himself not to think too far ahead and to stay in the moment.
He motioned for the team to gather their equipment and prepare to move. The four young ones silently scampered around gathering their packs and the cases of heavy demolitions needed to eliminate Victory Twelve and her crew. Kr’et’Socae would have them do nothing less. Failure meant death for them and their families. Whomever the fallen Peacemaker found afterward would pay the price if Mnam and his sappers failed.
Mnam shivered and turned to the small, high frequency radio set. He turned the system on and adjusted the settings to an agreed upon frequency. Watching his wrist-slate, Mnam waited until the hour was precisely 0200 local before pressing the transmit button. With a touch of his translation pendant, Mnam called, “24219. 24219. 54. Repeat 54.”
Their code was simple and effective. On Ka band radio, something the rest of the galaxy had moved far beyond more than two millennia before, they didn’t have to seriously worry about someone listening. A simple numerical identifier for Kr’et’Socae and a simple code that the operation was a go were all that were necessary.
A response came back immediately. The digitized voice, carefully disguised to hide any indication of its sender, one of the most wanted offenders in the galaxy, replied, “1724. 43.”
The code meant Kr’et’Socae had received the message and could see the target from his current position. Knowing the Equiri was somewhere nearby, watching, sent a fresh rivulet of fear down Mnam’s spine. Since his escape from the Peacemaker Detention Facility on Kleve, the former Enforcer turned convicted murderer had dominated the “most wanted” lists for nearly two years. His name invoked silence and cowardice. No one wanted to speak of the Equiri, lest he appear. His coal black coat and dark, emotionless eyes were like something from holo-novels Mnam devoured as a child. He’d never met Kr’et’Socae, only transmitted codes agreed upon through a Mercenary Guild arbitrator, yet every thought of his employer made his legs quiver in fear. He’d been careful not to let his team know the truth. Knowing the Equiri was out there would have frozen them with cowardice.
Time to go.
He turned to the expectant, excited faces and told them to move out. The four young ones headed for their individual targets. The security forces headquarters, the crew barracks, the D’Nart Control Tower, and the instr
umentation control point were critical mission targets. They would plant small, ineffective charges at the Control Tower and ICP to decoy security forces away from the primary target. While Victory Twelve wasn’t under guard, it was doubtlessly being watched. Removing the guards left an opening for the other sapper to reach the barracks where Tara Mason and the three members of her task force were billeted by the Spaceport Authority. All of them were easy targets. Once his younglings accomplished their missions, he would see to the destruction of Victory Twelve.
Mnam tapped his wrist slate, started the timer, and scampered down the rocky hill toward the perimeter fence. They’d practiced the approach a half dozen times over the last several weeks, and he was now able to breach the fence in less than eight minutes. He grinned in the darkness as he ran forward, intent on showing the young ones he still possessed all the skills a sapper needed, and that he could breach the fence in less than seven minutes.
Speed and stealth.
He repeated it like a silent mantra as he sprinted toward Victory Twelve. For once, the slight aches in his joints no longer bothered Mnam. He ran with the spirit of a youngling and a wide smile on his face. Fleeting though the feeling would be, and oblivious to the aches and pains such exertion would bring come the morning, Mnam ran.
Speed and stealth.
* * *
Victory Twelve
Araf
The Ka band transmission again caught Lucille’s passive sensors. The transmissions were much shorter, but the signals were identical to the previous day’s incident. As with the prior transmission, it appeared both the send and receive messages came from three separate antenna complexes around the D’Nart Spaceport. Lucille engaged her sweeping capabilities but found her ability to infiltrate the spaceport’s computer architecture limited. She quickly loaded a back-up, one that had searched through the permissions application before, and found that it, too, would not work. An inspection of the error message implied the issue was on her end. Lucille accessed the change log and analyzed what she found.
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