by M. R. Forbes
She let the chant continue for another ten seconds or so, and then raised her hand to quiet them. The voices faded out until the silence returned.
"Head to your battle stations," she said, her tone confident, her posture assured. "We'll be dropping within the hour."
A single swish as two hundred heads bowed to her. Then the neatly organized rows vanished as each of the crew dispersed to their assigned places.
Millie turned to Major Long. "Major?" She had noticed his reaction to the chanting.
He didn't react to her, his eyes still fixed ahead, staring out towards the Valkyrie.
"Major?" she repeated.
"I always wanted to be a hero, Admiral," Major Long said, his voice distant while he expressed his thought.
"You're about to get your chance."
"Yes, ma'am. Riiigg-ahh." He said it softly, coldly, more a warning than a battle cry. He broke his stare and faced her, bowing sharply. She returned the bow, and he repeated it towards Mitchell. Then he stepped off the front of the crate and headed for the Valkyrie.
"Strange," Mitchell said.
"Not everyone deals with stress the same way."
"No, I guess not. Good speech."
"I don't know. I thought it sounded overdone."
"It was. There's nothing wrong with that. It got the crew fired up."
She reached out for him then, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling herself close. "Be careful, Mitch."
"You too."
"I mean it."
He leaned in, kissing her softly. "I will. I have faith in our team."
"I love you."
"Then stop worrying. Major Long might want to be a hero, but I'm the one who's destined to save humankind, remember?"
He bowed to her, jumped off the crate, and followed behind Major Long. He fought every urge to look back. He fought every desire to be afraid.
Save humankind.
Or die trying.
21
The activity inside the Valkyrie was frantic. Major Long stood near the loading ramp, his eyes twitching as he read through a number of status updates and safety checks, armament load outs, and reports. He glanced briefly at Mitchell when he climbed into the ship, turning towards the launch bays in the rear.
Shank and Cormac were already there, along with three dozen of the combined Rigger and Alliance forces. If Mitchell hadn't already known who was who he would never have been able to tell them apart. They were all moving in short, quick, certain bursts, all wearing the same focused, angry expression, all in some state of undress as they loaded into their gear. There weren't enough of the heavy exosuits to go around, and so the grunts had been organized by operational and tactical capabilities and strengths. Cormac was snapping attachments to the hinges embedded in his arms, legs, chest, and back that would allow him to step into the heavy suit while Shank was already outfitted in the lighter synthetic muscles.
He leaned against a wall of the ship with an S-4 Tactical electro-mag sniper rifle resting muzzle down on the floor, a thin wire moving from his temple to the stock. The Tacticals were some of the newest alliance tech, using the neural interface to help manage aim and calculate trajectories, and pass along an enhanced view from the scope embedded above the business end. In the right hands, with the right mind and a clear line of sight, they could punch through heavy armor from five kilometers.
"Almost time, Colonel," Mitchell said, pausing in front of him. "Your teams are ready?"
"Riiigg-ahh," Shank said, smiling and putting out his fist. Mitchell bumped it.
"I haven't been this excited since that time I was on Avalon," Cormac said behind him. "I still remember her. Damn. She wanted it so bad, too. Her-"
"Firedog, can it," Shank said.
"Yes, sir." Cormac put out his fist. "Good hunting out there, Colonel."
Mitchell bumped him, too. "You too, Firedog."
He moved through the team, offering encouragement to each. Some responded, while others were so focused on their prep they didn't even notice he was there.
He made his way through the staging area, into the first of the drop segments. Modules hung on both sides of the corridor, sixteen in all, stacked four rows high and four deep, their hatches open and waiting to receive the grunts. Expandable latches sat raised and ready, five standing-room-only spots in the small cabin. It would be released at altitude and use its repulsors and small thrusters to navigate to the drop point, absorbing as much enemy fire as it could and releasing the soldiers in emergency yokes if the onboard AI determined it wouldn't survive the descent.
Mitchell had made ground drops before, typically for tactical raids on high-value targets. A single five-person module was small and quiet enough to evade detection, assuming the pilots of the smaller launch ships could get it into position without being detected themselves. The Greylock launch pilots had never gotten caught.
He kept moving past them. That wasn't his ride down today.
Today, he was going in style.
Beyond the modules was the mech rack. It took up most of the space in the rear of the Valkyrie, a tangle of wires, actuators, and clamps keeping a tight grip on the five mechs that had been assigned to the ship. Two Zombies, two Knights, and a Dart. The Zombies and Knights were pressed close together, the smaller Knights in front of the larger Zombies, while the four-legged Dart sat in the back, taking up too much space for its size and weight. Major Long claimed that he had resisted the renovation of the mech bay and the deployment of the Dart to his ship, but of course the brass had insisted. The only good news was that its pilot, a stoic man named Raven, was good enough to almost make the thing useful.
Techs were moving back and forth on raised platforms while mechanical arms shifted weapons and ammo pods from their secure location on the outer walls into the machines. Mitchell's eyes landed on the tip of the Zombie's massive, hand-held railgun, jutting out from behind a head whose blank, metal face had been quickly sprayed with white paint, leaving a tortured, ghoulish visage. Someone had also sprayed "Riggers" in big, awkward red on one leg. "Ares" on the other. He smiled when he saw that.
He felt a presence behind him and glanced back. Raven was standing there, his face as serious as always, his eyes sharp and alert. "The others are already loaded in," he said.
His team, all of them members of Major Long's crew because the Schism had lost its only other pilot. Raven, Lancelot, Perseus, and Zed. The two Knight pilots had taken their callsigns from ancient Earth history. He had found the origins fascinating.
"Did you do that?" he asked, pointing at the paint.
Raven smiled. "It was a team effort."
"Did you have any paint left?"
"It won't dry."
"It doesn't matter."
Raven ran off, returning a minute later with a large red spray can. There was no time to mount a service vehicle and get up towards the top of the legs, so Mitchell climbed onto the foot and aimed the nozzle. A minute later he was done, and he stared down at Ilanka's name with satisfaction.
"Are we ready?" he asked Raven, jumping down.
"Yes, sir. Riiigg-ahh."
"Not bad. You need a little more emphasis on the 'Riiigg.'"
Raven smiled and bowed. A tone sounded in Mitchell's p-rat.
"Five minutes to hyperspace," Millie said. "I repeat. Five minutes."
"Time to load up," Raven said.
Mitchell carried the paint can to a passing tech, and then mounted the steps leading up to an arrangement of catwalks at the midsection of the mechs. He circled behind the Zombie, finding the back of the massive machine already open and waiting for him. It was nothing fancy. A tiny space just big enough for a person to squeeze into, occupied by a special, gel-padded seat that would mold to the shape of the body and provide the best possible support. It was nearly identical to the seats found in the Moray starfighter, with the addition of some extra hardware. A large box sat behind the head with a neural jack poking out from it. The CAP-NN interface. There were also two
diagnostic screens and one view screen for the head-mounted camera feeds, but they were the backup systems, to be used only in the event that the CAP-NN system was damaged, and the mech had to be piloted manually.
A partial helmet rested on the seat, its visor a solid line of featherlight black nanoplastic with a small opening in the rear for the jack. It was meant only to obstruct the view, to keep the pilot focused on the feed to the p-rat instead of the screens. The p-rat view was higher resolution and offered much easier access to an abundance of data.
He stepped into the rear of the mech, squeezing past the armored side wall to reach the seat. He picked the helmet off it and leaned back and down. He felt a slight pressure the moment his body made contact with the seat, a charge running through the gel interacting with the material of the flight suit, holding it, and him, secure. It would also push cool air and moisture into his suit, while pulling sweat and liquid waste from it, giving him the ability to spend an extended amount of time in the mech.
As long as he didn't mind crapping in his pants or not eating. It was better than having to leave the armored cocoon and winding up dead.
He put the helmet on, and then adjusted the chair back and up until he felt the needle end of the CAP-NN interface press into the interface on the back of his neck. There were a few seconds of darkness until his vision returned, his eyes lifted to the head of the beast. The main reactor sat below him in the crotch, and it hummed to life when he plugged in, sending a slight vibration through the alloy shell. A thought, and the heavily armored back of the mech slid down and locked into place.
Mitchell placed his hands on the armrests. Again he felt the pull, as if he were a fly sticking himself to a glue trap. He tensed slightly when he felt the pressure on his throat. It had been almost eight months since he had last been in the cockpit of a mech, and he had grown unaccustomed to the sensation of the hold. He used his p-rat to flip through the diagnostics, pull up a schematic of the frame, and check his weapon load outs.
"Is the package loaded?" he asked, sending the signal out through a channel to his team.
"Yes, sir," Zed said. She was in the other Zombie, a small woman with short golden hair and a tiny frame that had led to her secondary, less flattering nickname, "Jailbait."
Watson's broadcast software had been loaded into a salvaged processor and memory bank and packaged into a black box the size of a man's torso. Instead of having to upload it and initialize, all they had to do was plug it into the server farm and set the box to master. It would take over the whole system in a matter of seconds. Or so Watson claimed.
The package was riding in Zed's Zombie, buried beneath the poly-alloy armor, which had been modified so a second mech or a heavy exosuit could tear it off and access the box. The plan was to get the Zombie to the stream station, and then have one of the heavy grunts carry the box in while a light soldier did the setup work. That part of the mission was important enough that they had all been briefed on how to work the hack.
At least, that was what the rest of the team had been led to believe.
He didn't like the truth.
The software was a ruse. The plan to free Liberty a deception. Finding Christine was all that mattered, and all that they had come to do.
He had no idea how they were going to do it. How do you find a single person on a planet? If she wasn't in York. If she had fled Liberty. If she had died. How would they ever know? It seemed an impossible task. It seemed ridiculous that they were even going to try.
They had to try. They had to find her. His dreams of her, of futures past, of a war they had always lost, had only grown more vivid, more solid the closer they had drawn. It had left him wondering if they had done this before. Had he taken the Goliath to Liberty in another loop of time? Once? Twice? A thousand times? Had he ever found her?
Origin said she was programmed to stay near him, to protect him if she could. Somehow, she had some kind of subconscious, inert understanding of him. According to the Tetron, she would sense that he was near, even if she didn't understand the sense. She would come to him, as long as he got close enough to her.
Once that happened and they were reunited, he was to find a reason to call off the attack and get her to safety, to sacrifice the battle, and the planet, for the sake of the war. It was the plan he had drawn up in secret with Millie and Origin, a plan to maximize their chances of defeating the Tetron, all of the Tetron. A plan they knew Major Long would never agree to. A plan he knew even Shank would never have agreed to.
He had never wanted to be in charge because being in charge meant making the hardest decisions. It meant balancing people against objectives, a single planet against an entire civilization, the lives of the few for the many. He hadn't asked to be humankind's best hope for delivering them from Tetron annihilation. He didn't understand how it could be him? Why not his brother, Steven, the Vice-Admiral? Why not General Cornelius, or Ella? Why were they dead while he was still alive?
Origin said it was his fight. His war. Like it or not. He didn't like it. He didn't like making the hard choice. He didn't like being a fraud with the Shot, and he didn't like lying to the people who were following him down to the surface of Liberty.
He didn't like it.
He was still going to do it.
He was a good soldier, after all.
22
Mitchell felt the change when the Goliath came back out of hyperspace outside of Liberty. He couldn't see anything but the dim glow of the mech bay walls ahead of him, but his comm channels were open, and in any case he'd done the simulations. He didn't need to see what happened next.
"Go, go, go," Millie said into the open channel. A grid popped up on Mitchell's overlay, showing him the space around the Goliath.
Five small dots appeared beside the larger slab of color that represented the ancient ship, the starfighters launching from the hangar ahead of the Valkyrie. They had kept the doors retracted, using Origin's energy shield to protect them and dropping it the moment they came back to real space. Every second counted, and there was a whine and slight jostle as the Valkyrie's repulsors kicked in, lifting it from the hangar floor and allowing it to flow out with the atmosphere. The ship rumbled at the change in pressure, and then Mitchell saw their speck appear on the grid, the fighters circling back to gain formation around it.
Mitchell scanned the area. They were close to Liberty orbit, two minutes from getting the Valkyrie into the air, three minutes from the drop. Briggs might have been able to get the Schism in and out at a closer range. The Goliath was too big to skate like that.
"We've got incoming," he heard Alvarez say. "Two Alliance cruisers. Shit, and a Federation battleship."
A Federation battleship? Mitchell saw the dots now, approaching them from a closer orbit. The Tetron had moved a more powerful adversary into position to protect the planet. Federation battleships had twice the firepower of anything the Alliance could offer, though they did sacrifice hull integrity to do it. Still, three ships were better odds than they had planned for.
"Picking up an increased energy signature from the planet," Millie said.
The Tetron on the surface was preparing a plasma stream.
"We're clear," Major Long said.
Borov's voice was loud over the channel. "Shields at full strength. Reaching the drop point in two minutes, forty seconds."
"Fighters launching from the cruisers," Alvarez said. "I'm going in. Bear, Firestorm, stay close to the Valkyrie. Polestar, Rocket, engage the fighters."
"The Tetron is preparing to fire. I'm bringing Goliath in to counter," Millie said.
Mitchell watched the blips on his grid. The S-17 shot out ahead of the pack, making a beeline for the Alliance cruiser. It collided near the center with the incoming fighters, and he smiled as a dozen of the opposing dots vanished in a sea of amoebic discs.
The smile didn't last long. The inside of the Valkyrie began to hum as its weapon positions opened fire on the incoming battleship, smaller thrusters firing to
keep the ship on course and counter the recoil. Mitchell could almost feel the energy of the shields ionizing around them, countering the incoming attack while the dropship's speed continued to increase.
"Two minutes, twenty seconds," Borov said.
"Valkyrie, hard to port, increase your thrust," Millie shouted. "You aren't going to clear the stream."
Mitchell couldn't feel the change in direction and he couldn't see the incoming ball of fire launched by the Tetron. He clenched his teeth, waiting for the breath that would be his last.
"Bear, turn around, they're going for the mains," Firestorm said, her voice angry. "Bear-"
Her dot vanished from the grid.
"We lost Firestorm," Bear said. "There are too many of them. It's five against fifty."
"Shut up and focus," Mitchell barked. His eyes followed his pilots, swooping around the Valkyrie, doing their best to counter the Tetron offensive, outnumbered five to one in fighters alone.
"Tetron is preparing to fire again," Millie said. "Valkyrie, it's tracking you. You need to change course."
"What about the drop point?" Major Long asked.
"Pick a new one."
"I'll make it," Long insisted.
"Damn it, Major."
"I said I'll make it!" His shout echoed in Mitchell's head, and he winced at the noise. "Get that frigging battleship off my ass."
"Roger," Millie replied, her voice cold. "Firing."
It didn't matter how much firepower the Federation ship had. Two hundred tiny dots flew the thousands of kilometers between it and the Goliath, bypassing countermeasures and slamming hard into shields, obliterating shields and going full-bore into the hull.
Within seconds, the Federation battleship was gone.
"One minute fifty seconds."
Mitchell's eyes remained glued to his overlay. He saw Bear's dot vanish from the screen. A moment later, he saw Alvarez's white dot overlap the cruiser and reappear on the other side. The cruiser fell off the grid.
"One cruiser down," Alvarez said. "One to go."
