by Richard Fox
Hoffman, thoroughly stuck, found nothing of immediate interest on the feed.
“Steuben,” the lieutenant said. “You were with Colonel Hale and his team back during the Ember War. What did they do before missions?”
“The same thing as all of you,” the Karigole said. “Talk too much.”
“Steuben, why do you hate the Toth?” Max asked.
“All hands, hear this. All hands, hear this,” came through the ship-wide IR. “Prepare to make Crucible jump. Stand by for Admiral Lettow.”
Hoffman rubbed the back of his head against his helmet, trying to deal with a bit of sweat antagonizing his scalp.
“Ardennes, this is Lettow. Earth, the Terran Union, and every last man, woman, and child in this galaxy are counting on us to win this fight. Our duty is all that matters. Adversus et admorsus.”
“Adverbs and morels?” Gor’al asked.
“‘Resist and bite,’ Dotty,” King said. “Just leave it at ‘resist and bite.’”
“Why can’t humans speak just one language in battle?” Gor’al asked. “Mr. Steuben, did you never try and fix that when you were training them?”
“We were too busy fighting,” Steuben said. “As we’re about to be. Focus.”
“Stand by for jump,” came from the bridge.
Hoffman managed to turn his head slightly to see Opal. The doughboy was impassive, his face darkened.
Like he was already dead.
Chapter 5
Hoffman blinked hard as the eye burn from the Crucible gate jump wore off. He tapped the refresh key on his controls several times until a data feed from the fleet came up on his visor. Warships were spread over the void near a planet, it being just a wire sphere on his screen as more information trickled in.
“Sir? We in the right spot?” Garrison asked. “A little warning before we—”
His IR cut out and Hoffman saw Garrison and King in a private channel.
“Casting my feed to you all,” Hoffman said, tapping through a menu and sharing everything he saw with the team. He could barely see Opal if he looked to one side. Steuben, directly across from the lieutenant, seemed impassive.
“We’re not in position,” Hoffman said. “Fleet was supposed to come in with a tight formation, stop the Kesaht claw ships from swarming any lone ship.”
“No plan survives contact with the enemy,” Steuben said. “For our jump to be disrupted like this…there must be a gravity well of some sort. That would distort the gate.”
Hoffman moved a cursor over the grid sphere and a small text box popped up labeling it “Kesaht’ka” and displaying some temperature readings.
“There’s supposed to be one…here.” Hoffman zoomed out and found a moon. The image resolved as more data came in, and the lieutenant frowned at what he saw. A belt formed around the moon—bits and pieces snapping into focus—looking like a framework.
“Since when do moons have rings?” Max asked. “Gravity of the planet should strip all that away if there ever—”
“Not rings. A space dock,” Steuben growled. “The Toth built one around their world before it was destroyed. The overlord, Bale, must have been homesick.”
Alerts popped up on Hoffman’s visor as the Ardennes’ rail gun turrets opened fire. Munition icons zipped away from the ship on his screen and into the void over Kesaht’ka.
A smear of red diamonds—enemy ships—popped up. Hoffman felt the blood drain from his face as he realized just how many Kesaht ships were out there, a force at least twice the size of the Terran Union’s fleet.
“Well…shit,” Duke said.
“This is not…” Garrison said, his voice straining, “this is not where I want to be right now.”
“Stow it, Marine,” King said. “We wait until the Ardennes finds the target. Then we’ll get into the thick of it.”
“I want to do something useful,” Garrison said, his voice raised to the edge of a shout. “Squids are running around, fighting. I’m sitting here with both thumbs up my—”
“Target acquired,” Steuben said. The Karigole pinged the massive space dock stretching around the moon and a miles-long Toth starship as its hull—deep red, irregular and rough like the shell of an ancient crab—appeared. The ship was docked, but the engines were lit and crystal weapon batteries glowed.
“Oh good,” Garrison said. “A stationary target for us.”
“Its shields are likely off-line,” Steuben said. “This is poor news.”
“Why? Fleet can just hit it with rail shells,” Hoffman said. “Fish in a barrel.”
“Because then I can’t kill Toth with my bare hands,” Steuben said.
“I could be home right now,” Gor’al said, “with a team of very sane Dotari that don’t want to be shot into…my mic is on? And I’m speaking English?”
The ship rumbled with an impact and the feed to Hoffman’s visor cut out. He cursed and tried linking back to the Ardennes, but got nothing but repeated error messages. He felt the thrum of more action from the ship through his acceleration couch, but it was hard to gauge whether it was from the ship firing or being hit. Either way, the Ardennes was in the middle of one hell of a fight.
“Everyone stay calm,” Hoffman put out through an IR transmitter in his helmet, his visor showing only Steuben, King and Opal linked to him. The line-of-sight restrictions from the limited comms annoyed him, a design flaw if ever there was one.
“I got the rest of the team, sir,” King said. “I’ll keep them focused.”
“Sir?” Opal asked. “Sir, don’t be scared. Dark. Opal is here.”
“I’m not scared. You’re the one that’s scared, Opie,” Hoffman said, rekeying the ship’s comms again and again, getting nothing.
“Let Opal out. Fight the dark.”
“That’s not how this works, buddy. Just stay calm…it’s not like we’re sealed inside a torpedo…that’s loaded into a launch tube surrounded by hull plating…on a ship that might be dead in space,” Garrison said.
“You just described our most likely situation,” Steuben said. “If the ship does not regain power, we will asphyxiate in less than twelve hours. Twelve very long hours.”
“You’re scaring Opal. Stop it.” Hoffman tried to beat his head against the back of the couch pressed around him, but it was no use. He was held fast.
The very real possibility that Steuben was right made his mouth go dry and his breathing quicken. He’d missed the reaper’s scythe many times over the years, but to die in the dark…helpless…this wasn’t how he wanted to go. Wasn’t how a Strike Marine should die. He mentally kicked himself for not going to St. Kallen’s service before the battle.
His visor lit up, blasting data.
“I take back everything I said about your mother,” Garrison said, chuckling nervously. “See, the fight’s still going on and…we’re missing ships. And why does Kesaht’ka’s moon have…a moon? That moon has rings and a moon? What the hell?”
Hoffman cancelled system messages and found what the breacher was talking about. A rough diamond cleared the orbit of the moon. It was smaller than the moon by far, but still larger than any ship in the Terran Union and it dwarfed the Toth dreadnought.
“That…is a space station,” Steuben said.
“I don’t remember a giant space station in the intelligence briefing,” Booker said. “Or any mention of that many Kesaht ships.”
Alert icons lit up from the station and followed energy projectiles as they closed on the Terran fleet.
“This operation…is doomed,” Gor’al said.
“What did I tell you about jinxing us?” Duke asked.
“Ridiculous human superstition,” the Dotari replied.
A yellow triangle with an exclamation mark inside it pulsed on Hoffman’s visor. “Prepare to launch. Prepare to launch. Target data reconfiguring,” sounded in his helmet, the voice level and mechanical.
“Gor’al! This is your fault!” Duke shouted.
“No! I…can I take it back?
How do I do that?” Gor’al asked.
Hoffman’s heart beat faster as the engines in the torpedo fired up and a steady vibration sent his teeth chattering.
“Where are we going?” Hoffman tried to access the torpedo’s target data, but the system kept kicking him out.
His team shouted in near panic, demanding more information and cursing everything from the Navy to lady luck.
The torpedo fired, slamming Hoffman back as the acceleration pressed against him like the palm of a giant’s hand. Hoffman struggled to breathe and the skin of his face tugged back. The pseudo-muscle layer of his power armor squeezed like a vice against his legs, keeping blood up in his torso and head as the missile’s trajectory curved.
The acceleration couch swung in its frame, adjusting Hoffman’s body to compensate for the direction of force against him. Maneuvers slapped him from side to side and his vision went gray as blood drained away from his face and eyeballs.
The couch pitched up and all sense of motion cut out.
Hoffman’s face and tongue stung as blood rushed back into place. He tried to call out to his Marines, but all he could manage was a series of vowels.
“Error. Error,” came from the torpedo’s onboard system. He tapped an unfeeling fingertip against the controls.
The engines reignited and the craft banked hard—too hard for the acceleration couch to compensate in time.
Hoffman blacked out.
Chapter 6
A doughboy sat in front of Hoffman, the battle construct’s mottled skin pitted and scarred from years of combat. A cybernetic hand held the haft of a war hammer laid across his lap.
Diamond 99 looked at Hoffman.
“Getting dark.”
The memory vanished as something assaulted the lieutenant’s sinuses. He gagged and thrashed around, his armored limbs managing to move and strike something metal. He sat up, his vision blocked by his helmet’s cracked screen.
“There we go,” he heard Booker say. “Little ammonia spritz always does the trick.”
Hoffman touched the emergency release on his helmet, but his hands were pulled away.
“We’re dirt-side, sir,” King said from one side. “Got atmo, but there’s issues.”
“Can’t see a damn thing.” Hoffman touched his visor.
“Got your spare from your kit bag,” King said. “He good, doc?”
“Winds up, lot of particulates…don’t inhale while we do a hot swap,” she said. “Eyes shut. Breathe out on three…two…”
Hoffman flashed a thumbs-up and scrunched his eyes closed. He felt a tug against his helmet as his visor was removed and then a gust of hot, dry air against his face. He heard a click and King tapped his shoulder twice.
Hoffman opened his eyes. King and Booker knelt next to him. The medic had a line from her gauntlet connected to a port on his neck. They were in a ruined structure, its walls and roof caved in. He did a quick check of his armor and noted only a few scrapes and dents.
King helped him up. The sky was an ugly brown, overcast and dim. The crew compartment of the team’s torpedo had been torn away from the rest of the missile and had crashed through a brick building. His team formed a loose perimeter around him.
“All present and accounted for,” King said. “You were at the bottom of the wreck, had to dig you out last. Sorry.”
“Where are we?” Hoffman unlocked his gauss rifle from his back and charged it up with the flick of a switch.
“Welcome to Kesaht’ka, sir,” Duke said, motioning Hoffman up to his vantage point atop a pile of loose bricks and shattered mortar. The sniper knelt next to a wall, rifle held at low ready.
Hoffman climbed up and froze, stunned at what he saw.
The city was dead—long dead, judging by the state of decay. A cluster of skyscrapers in the distance looked like a stand of rotten trees, and a pall of dust clung to every building, mirroring the overcast skies’ dull and lifeless expanse.
“We came here to wreck the place until the Kesaht surrendered,” Garrison said from a different corner. “Looks like someone beat us to it.”
“Nukes,” Booker said. “Radiation in the atmosphere, in all the dust…Geiger counter has fits every time the breeze picks up.”
“How bad?” Hoffman asked.
“We stay sealed in our suits, we’ll be fine,” she said. “Crack and we’ll be at millirems just from breathing. Without treatment…dead in seventy-two hours.”
“My physiology is different,” Steuben said. “I can last perhaps another day.”
“Guess we know who’s digging the graves,” Garrison said.
A bit of broken brick struck Garrison’s helmet.
“I deserved that,” the breacher said.
“What about Opal?” Steuben asked.
The doughboy stood at a half-collapsed doorway, gazing down a street marked by crumbling ground trucks built too large for humans.
“He doesn’t have DNA to degrade,” Hoffman said. “But his processors…I don’t know. Fresh doughboys off the assembly line weren’t meant for this sort of combat environment, too many additional safety measures to keep straight. Opal’s been around for a long time, he’s learned. Just don’t let him crack open his armor for anything.”
“My Dotari radiation tolerances are adequate,” Gor’al said. “In case anyone was wondering.”
“You were next on the list,” King said.
“Max, you have comms?” Hoffman asked.
“I’ve got jack and shit on the IR,” Max said from where he stood beside a small satellite dish he had pointed to the sky. “Same atmo scramble here that we encounter every time the Kesaht hit a planet. I’m not sure if the sky’s always like this or if they scragged the place because we set down.”
“We’ve seen a couple more T-I-Ts come in,” King said. “Landing craft. We’re not the only Union personnel down here. Just don’t know where everyone else is.”
“I’ve got something,” Duke said, peering through his optics. “Two somethings, actually.”
“Can you cast it?” Hoffman asked.
Duke tapped a button on the side of his rifle and a small screen came up on Hoffman’s visor, full of static and chop.
A clear dome rose in the distance, half-obscured by a mountainside. Inside were pristine skyscrapers packed close together, lit with power.
“So that’s where they live,” Max said. “Bet there’re more underground. Figures the Kesaht are a bunch of troglodytes.”
“That’s not the only dome,” Duke said. “I saw a couple more through infrared. Dust storms are killing visibility.”
“I doubt we’re going to take any of those cities with just us,” Hoffman said. “That all you got?”
“Nope.” Duke swung his rifle around and the screen shifted to a patch of sky. Motes of light traced down from orbit and explosions punctuated the cloud cover.
“Looks like a landing zone,” King said. “Not a secure one, but a beachhead all the same.”
“How far?” Hoffman asked.
“Fifteen kilometers,” Duke said. “Ish. Fifteen-ish.”
“And all of it urban terrain,” King said.
Hoffman looked over his Marines, their body language revealing that they’d just crash-landed on a hostile planet with no contact with friendly forces—or any way to get off world. Only Steuben and Opal seemed unaffected.
“All right, Hammers, listen to me,” Hoffman said. “This isn’t the first time a plan’s gone straight to hell. We’re Strike Marines. We adapt and we overcome. The Toth dreadnought will have to wait. New objective is to link up with any and all Union forces that make landfall. Admiral Lettow’s got the fight going in orbit. We’ll do what we can down here to punish the Kesaht. I don’t know what else is down here. You don’t know what else is down here. Everyone keeps their head on a swivel.”
“Stay alert,” King said.
“Stay alive,” the team intoned.
“Set direction of travel to…” Hoffman activated his suit
’s internal compass and sighed inwardly as it spun around.
“Streets get straighter and longer as we get away from the domes,” Duke said. “Just stick to this road. Stop and reshoot our bearing every kilometer?”
“That’s the plan,” Hoffman said. “I’ve got pace count. King has lead element security. Stay in IR range. This place ain’t friendly to our comms.”
“Least it ain’t cold,” Garrison said. “And we’re not schlepping a pair of Ibarran spies through the snow.”
“Yeah, we’re just stuck in an irradiated wasteland this time,” Booker smirked.
“Can I sing the song?” Gor’al asked. “The bright side of life song?” He began whistling a tune.
“Ain’t that bad yet.” Duke tapped a pouch on his belt. “Shit…is my dip radioactive?”
“You’ll probably get gum cancer even faster if you chew any of that,” Booker said.
“How much faster?” Duke worked his jaw from side to side.
“Enough goldbricking,” King said. “There’s fighting in the distance and we didn’t come all this way to watch someone else do all the shooting.”
****
Lines of dust snaked across the cracked road, pushed on by Kesaht’ka’s poisoned wind.
Hoffman stepped around the cab of a truck, the driver a skeleton against the windshield. Judging by the corpses he’d come across, the lieutenant gathered the city had once belonged to the Sanheel. The centaur-like aliens utilized long, winding staircases in their buildings and drove vehicles with space for a single one of them, always standing.
He passed by a shadow burnt into the wall—an adult and juvenile Sanheel, caught the moment a nuclear weapon went off. Two heaps of bones and clothing lay on a nearby corner.
“They weren’t ready,” King said. “All these Sanheel caught in the open…maybe this was one of the first places that got hit. Word gets out about nukes dropping, you get in a bunker. Don’t have to be that smart to figure it out.”
“Bunkers,” Max said as he quickly peeked into a broken window. “God, I hope my family’s in one right now. We should be teaching the Vishrakath a lesson, not…not poking around this shithole. Bet it glows in the dark.”
