Deathangel
Page 30
The nozzle exploded, and the dropship wobbled. She lost her footing. Sliding across the top of the fuselage, Tara tried to latch onto the surface, but she couldn’t. She tumbled, hitting the upper deck hard with the mecha’s right shoulder before rolling off into open space.
She glanced at the barometric altimeter. 16,000 meters.
Gods, that thing was moving! As she tumbled, she saw the lander racing to meet the Cochkala mother ship. She couldn’t watch for long. She heard a distinct whine as her systems initialized now that she was away from the lander. The instrument panel came online seconds later, and the laser altimeter, far more accurate than the barometric one, showed 11,000 meters and falling.
Tara flattened the CASPer out into a neutral body position. Arms and legs out to catch air, torso angled up slightly, she stabilized the mecha quickly.
10,000 meters.
Watching her systems come online, Tara realized the irony of the situation and smiled. Once the story of her jump at the CASPer school got out, the typical response had been that she was lucky and she’d never be able to do it again. They said it was luck, not skill.
Time to prove them wrong.
Her multifunction displays came online. Tara scrolled quickly to her fuel status and frowned. It wasn’t optimal, at least according to what she remembered from the Mk 5 jump, but it might work. She heard a squeal in her ears, and the communications system come online. Lucille was there, too.
<
“I’ve got this, Lucille.” Tara flexed her fingers. “I did it once, I can do it again.”
<
“You’re saying I can’t do this. That I was just lucky.” Tara clenched her fists in anger.
8,000 meters.
<
Tara looked through the cameras. Lovell City was out of view, hidden behind the massive escarpment and wide canyon valley the Swigert River had been carving out of the terrain for a few millennia. What looked like the staked plains of the American southwest, the llano estacado, stretched out in all directions.
<
Tara glanced at the instrument panel. CASPers weren’t meant to fly, so there was no indicator of how fast she was falling or how long it would take her to fall the remaining 6,500 meters to Victoria’s surface. There had to be something, anything, she could do. She’d done something in the Mk 5 that worked. Was there a similar system aboard the—
“Deathangel Two Five, this is Mako Thirteen. Have you in sight. Standby for rendezvous.”
What?
“Deathangel Two Five, do you copy?”
“I’ve got you, One Three.” She checked her cameras. “I don’t see you.”
“Your six o’clock, low, moving fast. Get ready for a little jolt. We’re going to come up underneath you.”
4,000 meters.
Tara adjusted the CASPer’s position and saw them underneath her, very close, and rising. “Mako Thirteen, did you deliver the Peacemaker?”
“She’s stable, Two Five, and Peacemaker Rains is being retrieved now. Get ready. When we take your air, you’re going to fall onto our fuselage.”
“Copy,” Tara replied. Sweat formed on her brow and her palms felt slick. “Ready.”
<
Mako One Three boosted under her, and the air resistance Tara felt dropped precipitously. She pitched forward and fell. The cockpit of her CASPer impacted the top of the dropship’s fuselage so hard her head bounced off the cockpit wall, and she saw stars. She thrust the mecha’s hands forward with a stabbing motion. Her right arm bounced harmlessly off the fuselage, but her left pushed through a soft spot in the skin. Tara clenched her arm as if trying to hug the dropship to her chest. Her fall abated. Mako One Three slowed, then dropped vertically toward the ground 2,000 meters below.
“We’ve got you, Two Five. Hang on.”
<> Lucille said. <
Tara didn’t speak. Holding the fuselage tight, she caught sight of the Cochkala mothership high above them, boosting for orbit. She couldn’t see the lander. Perhaps she hadn’t—
An orange and brown explosion rocked the Cochkala ship. The massive vehicle strained to climb, its nose pitched far up as the rear of the ship detonated multiple times. For a moment, the long, gray shape seemed frozen in space.
Then it fell.
<
Tara watched the ship fall to the ground, where the remainder detonated soundlessly. She heard Lucille tell her to punch the fuselage with her right arm. She did, and she felt the CASPer’s hand push through. The arm was locked in place. She was safe. Lucille told her all of this, but Tara wasn’t paying attention. Tears filled her eyes, and she sobbed from a combination of relief and adrenaline. She sobbed for the lives lost. She cried as she waited to hear whether more forces were on the way to wipe them out, but nothing came. The radios were silent, leaving Tara Mason alone in the cockpit of her CASPer, but for the first time, not alone in her fight.
They stood together.
We stood.
The thought brought a new rush of emotion. Pride, loss, and elation mixed with the salty tears running down her cheeks. Tara was still crying when Mako 13 touched down in the desert, and the crew silently waited for her to disengage from the fuselage for the trip back to Lovell City.
* * * * *
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Victoria System Gate
Victoria System LaGrange Point Five
One moment the gunnery frigate was on course, heading for the gate, and the next moment, it was gone. As it jumped into hyperspace, two additional enemy ships came about and pushed out of orbit. Sensors showed that they were using their power cores to charge hyperspace shunts. They were leaving, and there was nothing Victory Twelve or the gate master could do about it.
Xander bit his bottom lip and fought off a rolling wave of anger. These bastards had it all planned, didn’t they? Hit us hard and run.
<>
Xander turned to the gate master. “What does that mean?”
“They’re likely changing their transponder code. It’s not uncommon for mercenary forces that fail a contract to do so.”
“A common practice is for the transponder to feed an emergency error at the instant of transmission,” Bukk said. He spoke while looking through the porthole at the ships turning for deep space. “When they transition, they dump the old transponder signal—sometimes the whole system—in hyperspace. They select a new code from their system, likely something falsely registered with the help of the Merchant Guild, and when they re-emerge, they’re broadcasting a new signal.”
“Isn’t that traceable?”
The gate master sighed. “No. The Merchant Guild doesn’t bother tracking them because they make a significant amount of credits through illegal sales and the guild’s silence.”
“We won’t find them again,” Xander stated. There was no question in his mind. A pursuit would be a wild goose chase.
“Maybe we will,” Bukk replied. A warning chime sounded from the gate’s control board. Xander saw two green, triangular icons appear at the emergence point.
The gate master trumpeted. “Autolock on transponders. Initiating communications procedures in twenty seconds.
“It takes that long to talk to them?” Xander asked.
“No,” the gate master replied. He took a deep breath, and his dark gray ears twitched. “It takes that long to translate, process, and return a signal.”
Xander turned back to the porthole. He couldn’t see the new arrivals in the void, but they were there somewhere. After a minute, he glanced back at the command screen to verify their position. They came into view a moment later silhouetted against the brown and green disk of Victoria Bravo. Nothing appeared to be happening.
“They should be replying, shouldn’t they?” he whispered to Bukk. “Why aren’t they responding?”
Bukk’s antennae bobbed in the Altar approximation of a shrug. “Maybe they are collecting intelligence on the situation. Trying to ascertain what they’ve jumped into before initiating whatever operations they intend to?”
“Or identifying firing solutions,” Xander said softly.
“That is a distinct possibility,” Bukk replied.
Xander nodded but said nothing. All they could do was wait.
* * *
Aboard the Dauntless Cloud
Above Victoria Bravo
Regaa fumed on the command bridge but said nothing. The entire attack was a stunning failure. Not only had the forces on the planet’s surface failed to fully eliminate the Victoria Forces, but both Cochkala ships failed to return to orbit. Her counterpart was unwilling to launch the remainder of the forces without establishing a supplemental attack position. She’d unsuccessfully argued that the landers were out of position. Equiri weren’t known for changing their minds, and Thraff was no exception. When the Humans defeated the first three landers, he barely registered any emotion. As the second phase of landings stalled and failed, he’d watched the sixth, and final, lander drift toward the city. She’d realized then that he hadn’t cared about landing and destroying things.
The attack’s intent was something different, and that was fine with Regaa. Her forces remained prepared for launch and attack until Thraff canceled general quarters aboard his ship and cycled the Noble Spear’s hyperspace shunts. His call had been simple.
“Noble Spear breaking contact. Prepare to jump for destination Bravo.”
Regaa’s crew remained at their posts as she ordered Vaahn to bring the ship around and prepare to jump. She looked at the Jivool. “Time to jump?”
“Twenty-eight seconds. There are some anomalies on the forward shunts, but they appear to be holding.”
“Anomalies?”
Vaahn waved his heavy paw dismissively. “Engineering assures the commander it was a power surge and nothing more. We had several during transit, if you’ll recall.”
Regaa clicked her jaw shut, but let her antennae vibrate in silent assent. The damned ship was underpowered, underarmed, and barely able to hold her 200 mercenaries and their weapons. Hyperspace travel was dangerous in a perfectly functional ship, but with an unreliable tub like the Dauntless Cloud?
One more transit. Just one more. Regaa believed her options were simple. Bravo was a code name for a little-known colony in the Torgero system known to the Humans as Stockdale. The colony had been a Human colony until the water soured and the agriculture station designed to hybridize fauna from Earth failed. The Selroth maintained a sizable colony there and were more than willing to hide transients for profit. From there, Regaa believed she could opt out of the current contract given the lack of leadership and the sizable losses at Victoria Bravo. If that meant forfeiting her credits, so be it. They could buy her silence. They would not hold her hostage to lead a force that had no intention of fighting.
“There are two ships emerging from behind Victoria Alpha, Commander,” Vaahn said. “Transponders are negative at this time.”
Regaa consulted the Tri-V screen. The second phase of the attack was to have been five ships arriving at thirty-minute intervals starting in five hours. Those vessels were not hers. She ground her lower jaw is disbelief.
No one else is coming. This is a damned trap.
Two weeks before, she’d read the entire attack plan and believed it would succeed far in advance of the final wave. Kr’et’Socae was set to sweep in and lay waste to anything remaining before taking the planet as their own. Thraff said it would be a grand statement, and Regaa and her forces had believed them. No one else was coming. They’d attacked a colony under the guise of stealing something from the Cartography Guild’s forward station and failed. That Thraff hadn’t sent a search party meant he and his boss were more than willing to let it go. This was an exercise. A deception.
Of what? Human competence? Or to see what their response would be in other areas?
Regaa thought about it for a moment and decided the former Enforcer’s reputation spoke volumes. He’d wanted to see the Human response. He’d wanted to test the allegiance of the Cartography Guild. As conflict spread throughout the galaxy, Kr’et’Socae schemed. There was something else he wanted. Victoria had been a test of his forces and the Human response.
It will be interesting to ask him when we arrive at Stockdale.
Bing!
The tone in her headset indicated a call on the private command channel. Thraff had been silent for several minutes, save for the jump order. Their contingency plans were clear. Radio silence was the order of the day, yet Thraff was blatantly disregarding the order. Failing to execute radio silence fully and failing to adhere to the plan were offenses that would have seen him removed had he been a MinSha. Plans were the foundation of all successful conquests. Creating plans and not following them was a very...Human thing, and she disapproved.
Regaa tapped her microphone. “Regaa.”
“Standby to jump. Thirty seconds.”
She took a careful breath. “The ships in the rear quarter? They are not reinforcements?”
“I do not know, nor do I care.” The Equiri’s laugh grated against her sanity. “Our mission here cannot be attained, and I will not risk capture or death.”
“We failed Kr’et’Socae,” Regaa remarked and closed her mouth before the rest of her statement escaped. We failed him, and he will surely execute us. Thraff was an Equiri, and she was not. If anyone were to bear the blame for this failure in Kr’et’Socae’s eyes, it would be her.
The Noble Spear disappeared, leaving her questions unanswered. She turned to Vaahn. “Time to jump?”
“Fifteen seconds,” the Jivool replied. “Power levels at ninety percent and holding. All decks report ready for transition.”
Regaa adjusted her body position to be ready for the ship’s transition. She glanced at her Tri-V display and watched a small window displaying jump data scroll wildly with coordinates and ship’s data in preparation for—
WHUMP!
WHUMP!
Alarms rang. The nose of the ship pitched wildly toward the surface of Victoria Bravo.
You bastard.
Regaa grasped the console as the fuselage rolled wildly. She looked at Vaahn. The Jivool’s face was calm. He sat with his heavy arms in his lap, a content smile curling his maw.
“Report!”
“There is nothing to say, Regaa. We failed, and we must cut our losses. That includes you.”
She clicked her jaw. “And you?”
He laughed. “My job is done, and I did not fail.”
She understood. He’d overseen the sabotage of their ship. The landers were heavy with MinSha forces. Her forces. They were never meant to reach the surface. The entire plan was a deception for what Kr’et’Socae really wanted. He’d picked a fight as a distraction.
Victoria Bravo filled the forward screens. The ship’s thrusters fired in bursts, setting a trajectory and speed that would cause them to burn up in the planet’s atmosphere. Her console was locked, and no weapons were within reach. She looked down and considered her options. Killing the Jivool would give her great satisfaction, but given the wildly rolling deck, her chance of getting to him was small.
The ship buffeted as it hit the upper reaches of the atmosphere. On the forward cameras, Regaa could see orange flickers of ionized plasm
a reaching over the bow.
She tapped her console and directed a communications array to call for assistance. There was likely no one to answer her call, but she had no other options. She selected the system distress frequency.
“This is Regaa of the Dauntless Cloud declaring an emergency and requesting assistance.”
There was no response. She tried again.
“This is Regaa of the Dauntless Cloud declaring an emergency and requesting assistance.”
“Dauntless Cloud this is Gate Control. Unable.”
Regaa gripped the console tighter as the ship buffeted wildly. Damage control warnings from the forward decks indicated the ship was seconds from catastrophic departure. A new laser communication dinged in her ear.
The voice was MinSha, and its tone was ominous. “Regaa, this is Lieutenant Colonel Tirr of the Taal Regency. You are charged with treason against the Galactic Union, convicted of this crime by your actions, and sentenced to death. There shall be no escape for you. You must pay for your crimes against humanity.”
“You do not have the right, Tirr!” She spat and clenched the console as the ship rolled violently to the left.
“You forfeited your rights by disobeying your hive,” Tirr replied. “Humans are not our enemy.”
“Fool! You will—”
Gravitational forces took over, and the ship rolled through the upper atmosphere, disintegrating as it did. In milliseconds, the Dauntless Cloud spread fiery debris across the Victoria sky.