by Jack Colrain
One exploded a moment later while the other was T-boned by an escort fighter that couldn’t stop in time.
Hope paled. “This is Hardcase One, we have an orbital battery on line and targeting our descent path!”
“Rerouting fighters,” Dennis Jameson, the Sydney’s CAG, replied.
Hope didn’t bother replying; she was already reacting to the sight of a group of four Gresian fighters opening fire on the remaining members of the fighter curtain that had come out to escort the landing craft. “Dammit,” she hissed. Bizarrely, Daniel thought, her level of fear and anxiety had suddenly dropped, and now she was in her element.
The LCM’s engines strained almost as much as the fittings holding the Big Mike and Super-Bradley into place as she spun the ship towards the still speeding-forward debris that used to be two LCMs and a fighter. Daniel’s heart rate spiked as sharp chunks of hurtling metal swarmed around them, and he grew convinced that something would smash through the cockpit viewport. Hope certainly knew what she was doing, though, and inserted the LCM neatly into a gap in the hurtling debris field, matching the velocity of the pieces so that suddenly they all seemed to freeze outside.
Astonished, Daniel could only gawp as she snapped, “Hardcase Two, get tucked in behind me and match velocities exactly.”
“Go into the debris?” Andrews exclaimed disbelievingly, sounding as incredulous as Daniel felt.
“That’s an order!”
Only static came back, but Daniel saw, thanks to Lizzie making the hull terrifyingly transparent in his field of vision, the other LCM somehow thread its way in to take up formation with them. Outside, the debris, which he knew intellectually was rushing towards the planet at much the same speed as when it had been three intact ships, still seemed frozen in place. That only meant that the tumbling of the stars, explosions, plasma bolts, starships, and ever-growing curve of planet all looked more bizarre and jittery, and all totally at odds with what his sense of balance was telling him.
Another golden needle came from an orbital battery below them, exploding off to one side with a blinding flash that left him seeing purple. “What the fuck?”
“This debris field kept that missile off of us,” Torres said.
“It’s thinned the field out too much to be useful for much longer,” Hope grumbled.
“Probably just as well,” Torres said. “We’re almost at our breakaway point.”
“Hardcase Two, Hardcase One,” Hope broadcasted. “Follow me.” She looped the LCM out of the debris field, and almost immediately the missile warning tone screeched again. “We have to do something about that orbital battery! Where’s my fighter cover?”
“En route,” the CAG promised.
“Too late!” Another gold needle was powering towards them from the weapons satellite below. “Countermeasures.” At Hope’s command, Torres triggered a sensor scrambling charge while Hope sent the LCM into a cartwheel. Between them, the missile’s lock was broken, but Daniel’s elation was short-lived.
“Hardcase One,” Andrews called, “we’re under missile lock.”
“Shit,” Hope muttered, and she looped up and around in what Daniel recognized as an Immelman turn. Now the missile lock alarm was screeching again, and the deadly needle growing in the viewport, but Hope looked and felt more annoyed and vengeful than frightened. Her eyes narrowed and mouth set into a frown, she turned towards the missile instead of away from it. The blazing glow from its drive grew with terrifying speed, and there was no way Daniel could see how it wouldn’t hit them.
He had no time to feel fear or anger or denial, however, so he felt nothing.
And then the LCM dipped in a brief way that somehow felt like it bent at the knees, which it didn’t have, and there was a deafening clang on the roof that shook the whole ship. Daniel looked up instinctively, expecting to see a hole or the beginning of an explosion, but instead he saw through the hull—Lizzie helping out again—to the missile deflecting upwards and away towards the stars.
Ahead, the fighters from the Sydney had finally arrived and were attacking the missile platform that was in their path. KEM rounds—larger versions of the bolts used by the Hardcases’ railguns—slammed into it, followed by several unguided and therefore un-jammable rockets. Four Gresian fighters pounced upon them then, plasma fire tearing through one human fighter almost immediately. Another of the human flight had a Gresian fighter on his or her tail, the alien keeping tight on its six despite the human pilot releasing countermeasures. Hope quickly called out to the human pilot.
“On my mark, hit your retros and slow as much as you can,” Hope instructed.
“What?”
“Just trust me, adjust your heading fourteen degrees to starboard and wait for my mark.”
“Roger,” the pilot’s uncertain reply came back. He was as good as his word, heading on a course that would take him to the right of the missile battery. Hope was following, though the LCM had nothing like the speed under the hood that the fighters had. The missile lock alarm screamed again, but Hope ignored it, and Daniel’s AI-assisted vision was able to zoom in enough to see that the launchers oriented in this direction were the ones damaged by the KEM rounds and rockets. He began to feel a smile emerge on his face.
“The launchers on the far side will have us by the ass when we pass by,” Torres warned.
“Not necessarily,” Hope murmured. She hailed the fighter. “Hit the brakes right now and break left!”
The pilot did so, and the Gresian fighter behind him suddenly slowed. Taken by surprise, the Gresian went straight on, slowing sharply and allowing the LCM to catch up. The human fighter had banked to the left, cutting across the front of the missile battery, and then suddenly the LCM was right alongside the Gresian fighter and Hope was tilting the landing craft.
A stubby wing on the side of the hull caught under the Gresian fighter’s side, physically flipping it left just as its pilot floored it. The shunt was enough to throw it out of balance so that it hurtled straight into the missile battery. Explosions rocked the orbital station as some of the missiles in its launch bays were detonated by the impact. It began to tumble out of orbit, towards the edges of the atmosphere.
Daniel and the entire passenger complement cheered as the LCM sped on towards the spreading dust cloud that was rising up in the atmosphere from the third meteor bombing impact site.
The Mike Boat began to shake and rattle as they entered the atmosphere, and Jameson’s voice came over the comms. “Hardcase One, prepare for course change to landing zone in twelve seconds.”
“Roger,” Torres replied as Hope adjusted the controls. “Everybody, hold on to your breakfasts.”
Daniel noticed that, around the ship, even twenty-odd miles above the ground, the sky was thickening with gray-brown dust and ash. A couple of fighters, Hardcase Two, assorted pieces of debris, and three other Mike Boats were coming down along with them.
“Break, break,” the CAG’s voice came over, and Hope was already guiding the LCM out of their original course. She rolled it over on its roof to starboard, Andrews just about managing to follow her maneuver in Hardcase Two behind them. Debris was falling alongside, but while the winds and rising heat currents were shaking and buffeting the LCM, they were hurling the falling debris pieces around at random, like pieces of broken glass in a blender.
In a matter of moments, they were out from what was left of the first landing formation, sweeping away from the fighter curtain and three remaining LCMs. “CAG,” Hope transmitted, “Hardcase One, now on flight path for Operational LZ.”
“Roger that.”
“ETA to landing in—” She was cut off by a sudden bang from one side of the cargo area. “What the—”
“Mayday, mayday!” Andrews called. “Something hit us. I’m losing attitude control.” Hope adjusted her heading to get alongside the other LCM. A huge tear had been ripped out of one side, to the extent that Daniel was amazed it was still flying. A chunk of coral-like hull from a Gresian fighter
was jammed tightly in at the aft end of the metallic gouge.
“You’ve been hit by debris,” Hope told him. “How is she handling?”
“Like a brick. We’re losing altitude and drifting off-course. Controls non-responsive for corrections.”
“OK. Fly as slow as you can without stalling.”
“Roger.”
Hope glanced at Torres. “Get ready to take some extra weight.” Then she slid the LCM under Andrews’ LCM and beyond to the other side. That done, Hope gently eased the ship to the right until it touched the other landing craft with a loud bump. As far as Daniel could tell, it was much the same maneuver as she performed with the Gresian fighter, except without imparting a push. “Hardcase Two, I’m going to try to guide and support you down to the surface, then separate for landing.”
“Thanks, Captain Ying. Wait… you have a few dents yourself.”
“I’ve been noticing,” Hope said with impeccable calm. “I think we’ll both have rough landings, Daniel. The other Mike Boat has a hole and loss of maneuverability, and we have some damage and no VTOL for landing.” That, Daniel knew, was a problem; the shuttles and landing craft relied on a gravity-countering field for vertical take-off and landing. They had no conventional landing gear. He trusted Hope, though, to get them down safely. Even if they’d been complete strangers, her performance on the way down would have convinced him.
Both ships plummeted through dirt and ash, trying to keep on something resembling a course for their destination, but it was almost impossible. Eventually, they emerged from the meteor-impact’s dust cloud of a few thousand feet—perhaps only a minute or so of falling time from the rolling dusky hills of the Gresian planet. “Hardcase Two, is your VTOL field operational?” Hope asked as they tumbled towards the ground.
“That’s affirmative.”
“Activate it as soon as we’re separated, and good luck.” Without waiting for a reply, Hope pulled their LCM to the left, leaving the other LCM to spin away. Daniel couldn’t keep track of it, as the sky and the ground were swapping places so often. Then Hope managed to stabilize the ship, but it was still hurtling forward at a high speed and shallow angle. “Hold tight,” Hope recommended as she played the controls like a jazz pianist, guiding the Mike Boat as gently as possible towards the flat plain of grass seen ahead in the early morning darkness.
“Put your heads between your legs and kiss your asses goodbye,” Bella Torres muttered too audibly, not quite under her breath. Daniel checked his harness and looked out with a feeling of dread as the rust-colored fields rushed up at them all too quickly. He almost wished Hope were calling out their speed and altitude, so that at least he would have some idea of when to close his eyes so as to not see the moment of his death. Or, worse, the moment of hers. For her part, however, the Chinese pilot simply operated the controls with a stony expression, her concentration and focus entirely taken up by the task at hand. Its control panel illumination flashing like guttering candles in a storm as it rattled and shook its way towards the ground, the LCM dropped from the heavy sky like a dead albatross.
It hammered loudly into the ground with a noticeable bounce, the impact slamming everyone aboard against their harnesses like dice in a shaken cup. Frantically, Hope dropped the power and shut down the engines as quickly as she could.
Lizzie vanished instantly, and the now unpowered LCM continued squealing across the field with the cry of a tortured boar. It twisted violently, the forward port quarter digging into the alien earth with smoke and sparks billowing from the lower hull. As if the nose were an axis, the tail began swinging wide to starboard, and Daniel was sure the ship was going to roll onto its roof. Hope and Torres were showered with broken glass and bounced around as the now grounded Mike Boat’s starboard edge dipped to bite into the ground like a shovel. Something broke behind Daniel, the shearing off coming through with a screech of torn metal, and he turned to look at the juddering APC in the cargo space.
Every soldier’s face he could see was a mask of horror, their eyes fixed on the APC as it strained against its bonds like a prehistoric leviathan trying to break free. Fortunately, as the nanite-based clamps responded by tightening around the APC, the LCM shuddered to a halt, a cloud of smoke and fumes rising around it.
A very bruised Hope—her nose bleeding and her eyes swelling—and a cauliflower-eared Torres fumblingly released themselves from their harnesses as an aching Daniel staggered back into the cargo and passenger hold. ‘Any landing you can walk away from...’ Hope thought to him.
The inward-bulging dents in the hatch were proof enough that it had crumpled under the impact, and it was clearly jammed solid. “Sod it,” Marty Beswick grumbled, reaching for the emergency release which would trigger explosive bolts to knock the hatch clear without harming the people inside. Daniel nodded to him, and the Englishman pulled the lever. There was a dull, echoing bang, and the hatch was blasted clean away from the Mike Boat.
Kicking a few smoking fragments aside, Daniel clambered out. Hope followed with a dazed look.
Their ears were still ringing from the crash, but the distant flashing lights that Torres pointed out in the sky were sufficient to announce the continuing arrival on the planet of other landing craft, and forces arrayed in opposition to them.
Shakily, Daniel watched Kinsella take a head count of the soldiers, making sure everyone who had been aboard the LCM was still in fighting condition. Amazingly, they’d suffered no serious injuries, though several people had some good bruises, and there were a couple of sprains and broken noses. All of their equipment was intact and fully operational, as well, though Daniel and Cole had had to use nanocharges to remove the LCM’s rear end entirely in order to get the Super-Bradley APC and the Big Mike out.
Hardcase Two had actually managed a better landing, about a mile and a half away. They’d landed vertically as intended, although the damage to their hull and controls meant that the ship would never take off again. As a result, they had unloaded their APC and Big Mike, and reached Daniel’s ship first.
At least the atmosphere was breathable, though Daniel felt a little lighter, as he had on Lyonesse. The gravity on this planet was closer to that of the abandoned colony he had lost to the Gresians than it was to Earth’s own gravity. “OK,” Daniel said, even as Torres set the ship’s self-destruct system which would release a nanite swarm to reduce it to crumbling scrap, “now that we’re boots on the ground, where the hell are we?”
Palmer consulted his tablet. “According to GPS, we’re on the right continent, at least.”
“Oh, that’s a big help,” Kinsella muttered.
“It could definitely have been worse if we weren’t,” Palmer pointed out.
“Can it. Fix the problem, then crack jokes,” Daniel snapped, bringing them back to focus. “What are our coordinates?”
“Sixteen-forty-thirty-eight by two-seventeen-niner.”
Daniel glanced as his tablet, checking that against their original landing zone. Hope looked over his shoulder, and said, “At least three hundred kilometers, I’d say.”
Daniel finally got a GPS fix. “Shit. Four hundred klicks off reservation.”
“Ouch.”
Palmer grunted. “It gets worse, L-T. As near as I can figure it, we’re just on the eastern edge of what the intel analysis of the drone passes categorized as a military proving ground. No major air or spacecraft launch site, but if they have VTOL craft equivalent to helos, or armor, we may be stuck with it.”
“Then the sooner we GTFO, the better. Map me a route to the Shaldine facility that bypasses as much of the proving grounds as possible.”
“On it, sir. The other problem with this proving ground is that intel thought it was one of the four largest military bases on this planet. Now it’s the largest.”
“Weren’t they supposed to be meteor-bombed?”
“The New Delhi was supposed to have delivered a greeting here, yeah, but it was shifted out of position when the Gresian cruisers and carriers jumped
in on it, and it never launched that rock.”
“It’s not an ideal scenario, is it?” Daniel asked rhetorically.
“Definitely sub-optimal,” Hope replied anyway.
The stuttering whine of swooping pulse-jets passed overhead, and several of the soldiers looked up instinctively. In the sky, well below the flashes of battle, a triple-pronged obsidian aircraft was heading east. It slowed a little, making Daniel a little tense, and then the whine intensified and it continued.
“That was not one of ours,” Daniel observed. Hope shook her head. “I wonder why it didn’t attack.”
“Maybe it didn’t see us,” Palmer suggested.
“Not a chance,” Lizzie said, once again only visible to Daniel now that they were outside the ship. “That was just your standard atmospheric Gresian recon drone. It’ll be happily sending lots of useful pictures and analyses of us—well, of you, since they can’t see me—to that big military base we’d do well to avoid.”
“Great,” Daniel muttered. “Never rains but it pours.” He circled his hand in the air, grabbing everyone’s attention and drawing them towards him. “We’ve just been made. Time to un-ass, mount up, and get moving. We’ve four hundred klicks to cover, and not much time to do it in. Let’s get ready to move out.”
Twelve
“Stewart, Cole,” Daniel said, marching across to them where they were setting up the second Big Mike. “Salvage what you can from the Mike Boats, then have them disassembled.”
