Indomitable

by W. C. Bauers

  “Took you long enough, Lieutenant.”

  Promise was T minus ten seconds and didn’t see the problem.

  “What’s with the gear?” Halvorsen was pointing at Kathy’s seabag, which was bursting at the seams. Promise could see his eyes through his faceplate shift from her guardian’s gear to her own.

  Careful, P. Remember, a Marine never lies to her superior officer.

  “Medkits, rations … because my guardian is a bottomless pit, small arms in case we have to defend the ship. Just the usual gear, sir.” The colonel didn’t need a line-by-line manifest of the bag’s contents, right?

  They reached the top of the ramp and the colonel still looked unconvinced. His brows nearly met as he scowled. Promise held her breath until the colonel turned around and tromped back into LAC. “Take us up.” The ramp retracted as they hit the top and the blast door slammed down on their heels. They secured their gear in an overhead smartrack and strapped themselves into webbing. Promise tore her rebreather off and let it hang loose around her neck.

  “See,” Promise shouted to Kathy over the up-spin of the LAC’s engines and the chatter of Marines headed toward a hot zone. A few gave them puzzled looks before returning to their conversations. “Easy.”

  Kathy subvocalized through her mastoid implant. “We’re going to get shot at … aren’t we, ma’am.”

  “Want a new lieutenant to shadow?” Promise crossed her arms, somewhat annoyed.

  “Don’t joke like that.” Kathy smiled. “After this op, I just might.”

  Promise broke into a smile and held up a hand in apology. Kathy and Promise started chuckling lightly. A moment later they were laughing full-throat. A Marine next to Halvorsen motioned toward them. The colonel leaned into view from midway up the compartment and raised an armored finger to his faceplate. His voice boomed over his externals. “Shut it or I’ll toss both of your asses out the nearest drop ring.”

  “Sorry, sir. Inside joke,” Kathy shouted back before she made the switch and turned back to Promise. “If we get shot at I get to shoot back, right?”

  “That goes without saying,” Promise said.

  Kathy leaned back in her webbing and closed her eyes. “Good, I’m counting on it.”

  * * *

  Colonel Halvorsen’s voice boomed through the LAC’s compartments. “Seal up. Lock and load. We reach the LZ in three mikes and—”

  Concussions rocked the LAC’s hull, interrupting the colonel’s final instructions before landing. He could have spoken over the battlenet instead. He hadn’t and only one explanation made sense. Her. He still hadn’t looped her in.

  Colonel’s got a soft spot, Promise thought. Just not too soft.

  “Looks like a hot entry. Prep your armor for drop,” the colonel added.

  The pilot’s voice filled the compartment a split second later. “We’re taking heavy flak. Prepare for emergency drop. I’ll meet you at the rendezvous in Sector Thirty-Four. Godsspeed. Hell’s teeth.” The cabin’s interior lights cycled to a low-light red as the LAC banked hard and pitched forward. Promise heard the staccato burps of the LAC’s forward minigun and the muffled thrush thrush thrush of missiles bursting from their hard points along the sides of the hull. She couldn’t hear the point defenses striking down incoming birds with their diminutive beams, or the offensive energy mounts targeting the launchers on the ground. A Scourge-class assault LAC had both in spades and she knew the air outside had just become a killing field. The craft shook off a direct hit and banked to the opposite side, and Promise’s gut floated toward the overhead.

  “Fun, right?” Kathy said as she bounced in her seat.

  Promise bared her teeth as ordnance pounded the hull. Her hand reached into her pocket and retrieved her tube of lips. Never leave home without it. As the LAC bounced and ordnance peppered the hull, she stroked the cool metal tube, and focused on its smooth hard surface, on the cap that popped on and off. The explosions seemed to fade and she found herself thinking of Sephora. She wondered what the girl was up to. Perhaps she and Great-Grans were in the general’s kitchen baking cookies. Great-Grans didn’t strike her as the baking type. Then again, Great-Grans didn’t strike her as the type to do much besides bash skulls.

  The LAC lurched violently and the webbing cut deep into Promise’s shoulders. She winced and said a quick prayer. Sir, cover them. And Jupiter, wherever she is. Help us get her out.

  Another lurch and Promise yelped in her seat.

  “You’re not afraid of a little flak, are you, ma’am?”

  The Marine across from her and one seat down chuckled over his externals. His faceplate was down and his eyes were lit by his HUD, and they were smiling. Promise wanted to wipe the smug right off of his face.

  “No, Staff Sergeant,” Promise had scanned his armor for his rank and found the embossed Vs riding the staff sergeant’s chestplate, three up top and one below. The Vs were obvious to a jane or jack who knew to look for them, providing she or he was up close. Otherwise they blended in with the armor to prevent the enemy from picking off senior noncoms or officers from sniper range. “But my shoulders are screaming at me.”

  “Gotta love the suck,” the staff sergeant said.

  “Ooh-rah,” Promise replied.

  Several helmets snapped toward her, veteran grins plastered on the faces inside. The whites of their teeth shone brightly in the lights of their HUDs. Then the staff sergeant slammed his fist on his thigh and cried out, “We love the suck, oh yes we do.”

  The rest of the compartment bellowed in response, “We love it like a RAW-MC screw.”

  Promise saw a much younger woman who looked scared to death on the opposite side of the LAC and one seat down, and gave her two thumbs up. The woman smiled weakly and closed her eyes. The LAC shuddered violently and the woman screamed in her helmet. Her externals were off so Promise couldn’t hear her, but she felt for the young woman anyway. Probably her first hot drop. She might not be blooded. That brought back memories. Promise caught her attention when she opened her eyes, and mouthed, It’s going to be okay.

  “Drop in one mike. Toons to your assigned drop rings,” the pilot said evenly. He might as well have been ordering his meal at chop for all the emotion that was in it. “Repeat, drop in one mike. Toons to your rings.”

  Pairs of metal rods descended from the overhead. They were as tall as a suited Marine, and comfortably spaced for grabs-and-holds. At the bottom of each pole was a large textured grip fit for a giant’s hand, or a mechanized Marine’s. Two platoons unstrapped from their webbing and took their places around the rings. Five by five they circled up and gripped their drop poles, five around the forward ring and five around the aft. Promise heard their maglocks bolt to the deck. They exchanged thumbs-up and fist pumps and Promise knew the platoon sergeants were giving last-minute instructions. “Look lively. Trust your training. Stay on me.” That sort of thing. Promise wished she could join them. She couldn’t help thinking how unfair it was that she wasn’t dropping with them. It should have been her leading one of those toons. Her dropping in first to extract her Marine. Her rushing the danger because that’s what a lieutenant of Marines did.

  The toon nearest her came to attention in their armor, backs ramrod straight and boots locked tight, which told Promise they were on a final countdown. Ten seconds later the deck beneath their feet pulled away, the howling wind and sky was visible beneath them. Only a thin layer of magnetic armorplaste separated them from the torrent outside. Then the armorplaste vanished and they fell through the hull and disappeared. The ring sealed and the next toon rose to take its place until just two toons of Marines remained.

  The young woman she’d encouraged only moments before got up to drop, and turned to face Promise. She still looked nervous but seemed to have it under control. The single flat stripe or “runway” of a PFC stood out slightly on her armor.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll get some for you … and we will bring PFC Cervantes home.”

  Promise went to speak and
couldn’t. Her throat felt thick, her words dissolved in an incomprehensible mush. All she could do was nod and look away. The PFC joined her toon and the deck disappeared. Without warning, flak exploded directly below the ring, and fragments struck the armorplaste shield, which cracked through but held. The light of the explosion briefly lit the overhead of the LAC. The blast knocked the PFC out of the ring. Her arms swung widely as she careered backward, into the bulkhead webbing.

  Promise unclipped and grabbed a hook from the overhead. She secured it to her utility belt and ran to the Marine’s aid. The LAC shook and slammed her into the opposite bulkhead. She tried to roll into the wall to blunt the blow. Her shoulder still took the brunt of it and she felt something crunch. She quickly rotated the joint, and everything appeared to be working, though not without pain. She pushed off the bulkhead and stumbled across the aisle as the pop pop pop of flak buffeted the LAC. Her arm looped through webbing to secure her position. Then she drew her combat blade with her free hand and cut one strap, and then another.

  “You’re green-to-go, PFC,” Promise yelled, and pounded the young woman’s shoulder, twice.

  “Copy that, ma’am. I owe you one.”

  “Drop a Grey and we’re even.”

  “Roger that, ma’am. With pleasure.”

  Promise helped her sister to her feet and back into position, which immediately seemed like a stupid thing to do. She wasn’t wearing her armor. One good bounce and Promise would have more than a bruised shoulder. They were so close that Promise could see the green flecks in the PFC’s eyes. Promise lost her footing and the PFC grabbed her arm to steady her as the LAC jostled them about. The Marine opposite them, a much taller man with graying eyebrows, gave her a thumbs-up. Even in the low light, Promise was close enough to see the three inverted hash marks of a sergeant of Marines on his chest.

  “Well done, ma’am,” he said over his externals.

  “Good hunting, Sergeant,” Promise said in return.

  The platoon sergeant waved her backward. “Strap in, ma’am. And thanks for Montana.”

  She nodded her thanks, and then moved toward her seat. She removed the hook from her utility belt and was turning to sit when the armorplaste disappeared and the sergeant, the PFC, and their toon plummeted through the hull and into the flak -torn sky. Promise lunged for the webbing, just managing to grab a strap with her right hand. Her left flailed widely as the opening tried to suck her out. Her fingers started to slip as her feet lifted off the deck.

  “Kathy!”

  She lost her grip as the drop ring closed, and banged her chin as she hit the deck and slid feet-first into the now-closed drop ring. Her hand had web burns, her chin had deck burns, her shoulder had web cuts and was bruised, and she was pretty sure she’d just cracked a rib. Other than that she was unharmed and the LAC hadn’t even touched down. Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t drop today. Kathy was at her side in moments, helping her strap in.

  “I’m okay, Kathy. Really.” Promise pushed her hands away. “Stop making a fuss.”

  Kathy pulled a stick from her vest and held it to Promise’s chin. “Hold still. This is going to hurt.”

  The anesthetic gel lit her on fire, but it stanched the bleeding, and then congealed into a semipermeable barrier.

  “There.” Kathy produced a sheath and pulled the knife out halfway before seating it properly. “Here, you might need this too.”

  “What’s this for?” Promise grabbed the hilt of the combat blade and spun it and the sheath in her hand without thinking.

  “Yours got sucked out the drop ring. But I brought a spare. Never hurts to have a backup.”

  “Says the girl with all the weps.”

  “Knives have their place too.” Kathy’s head jerked sideways. “Hear that?”

  “What?”

  “The sky’s gone quiet.” The LAC started its descent and the pilot’s voice rang through the compartment.

  “I’m setting down. The colonel said to patch you in once they’d dropped. Stand by.”

  Figures, Promise thought. She heard landing jets fire and felt the craft brake hard as it swept in toward the LZ. The deck shook as the LAC’s engines strained against gravity. Then they were on terra firma and the engines were spinning down.

  “Come on up,” said the pilot. “I’ve got two jump seats and a nice view. You can follow the action while I use the head.”

  Fifty-six

  MAY 25TH, 92 A.E., STANDARD CALENDAR, 1937 HOURS

  THE KORAZIM SYSTEM, PLANET SHEOL

  SOMEWHERE IN THE RAHAT MOUNTAIN RANGE

  Staff Sergeant Nia Tanner was bounding down a rocky corridor with her external lamps set to high beam. Flecks of crystallized minerals glinted in the walls and ceiling. So far Tanner had found a torn bag of rations and a half-dozen spent tins, all crushed except for one she found sitting upright with a piece of gum stuck to the side. She’d approached it carefully to make sure it wasn’t rigged before kicking it down the corridor in disgust.

  “Pigs,” Tanner said as she slowed to single-time to avoid more trash.

  Promise and Kathy were seated in the cockpit watching the operation from Staff Sergeant Tanner’s point of view. The feed from the staff sergeant’s HUD was projected on the cockpit’s armorplaste. The image was snowy and Promise wondered how long the feed would last before they were down to audio only. Promise had stolen a moment to grab a hot cup of caf from the dispenser on the bulkhead just outside the cockpit before taking her seat in the pilot’s chair. She adjusted the screen’s resolution as best she could, leaned back, and drank deeply. An odd concoction of smells filled her nose and lungs: cinnamon spice and honey, fresh mech lubricant, and worn utilitarian Fleet Forces gray vinyl.

  The cockpit’s wraparound armorplaste had been grayed to block the view to the outside, and then split into three viewing panels. To Promise’s left was a roster of India Company’s eight toons of five, from the seniormost officer at the top to the most junior private on the bottom, and their icons were burning green. Promise spotted Halvorsen’s toon and quickly found the icon of his guardian, PFC Aimee Chua. She reached up, tapped the panel, and dragged her finger up and to the left. A window opened, displaying the five points of the colonel’s toon. She tapped Chua’s icon and another window opened, giving her box seats to Chua’s HUD. Without enlarging the window she wasn’t going to get much detail. That was okay with Promise. She wanted a general sense of the operation from multiple points of view. She pulled up a staff sergeant’s HUD and those of two more sergeants and piped all their voices through the cockpit’s externals.

  There wasn’t much to hear. “Corridor, clear. Proceeding right,” and “No sign of hostiles,” and “It’s too quiet. Where is everyone?”

  Halvorsen ’s voice broke through the battlenet. “Cut the chatter, stay off the net. Report up through your platoon leads.” The colonel added after a moment, “Something’s not right. Push your scanners’ sensitivity to max. Proceed with caution.”

  Colonel Halvorsen had brought a full company of forty boots. Upon landing, he’d deployed whiskers around the island’s perimeter, and one had found a waterfall, and flown through it and discovered a craggy entrance on the other side. Staff Sergeant Tanner had entered there, nearly three mikes ago, with her toon, while a second stayed behind to guard the entrance and the trek back to the LAC.

  To Promise’s right was a map of the island, its beaches, and the front door Halvorsen had taken half of India Company through. I Company’s captain was with him, while its lieutenant stayed on the beach, just in case. It wasn’t so much a door as an old lava tube. Halvorsen had fallen through by accident and realized his good fortune shortly after hitting bottom. “I meant to do that,” he’d said after a string of expletives had assailed the battlenet. Of course the colonel had and no one was going to argue the point with him. Maybe later … over drinks … in a month or two when this was over and they could reminisce like punch-drunk Marines.

  The map was expanding in real time
as Tanner’s and Halvorsen’s columns scouted farther in; lines zigging this way and zagging that way, like a light pen on a datapad. Whiskers flew down corridors until they hit dead ends. Promise noted a handful that had stopped reporting altogether. There were more offshoots and chambers and passageways than probes and Marines to search them, and the ones they’d mapped seemed to meander without a pattern, except for one. Promise focused on a long blue streak running deep inside the dormant volcano. There at the tip. That was Tanner’s toon, driving deep.

  Promise’s head snapped to the center panel at the sound of weapons fire. Tanner juked left, slammed into the rock wall, and fired at a small cannon mounted to the overhead. “Fixed defense neutralized,” Tanner said. A split second before the staff sergeant had fired, her HUD had dropped a circle around the cannon. A brief analysis appeared in a small window with a picture, the weapon’s dimensions, and the type of ordnance fired. Promise let out a breath. Light penetrators posed no problem for a RAW-MC mechsuit. Then she noticed the height of the corridor, and her nerves kicked in. The passageway had been made by man. The cuts in the walls were clear evidence of that. The corridor wasn’t wide enough for small vehicles to traverse, and the ceiling was at least three meters deck-to-overhead. Even the tallest Marines weren’t that tall, which meant the Greys had cut this passageway for something else, and Promise could think of only one thing that something else could be.

  “Staff Sergeant. Look lively. They got battle armor.”

  “Who is this?” Tanner snapped back over the battlenet.

  “Lieutenant Promise Paen, Victor—”

  “Lieutenant! Get off the comm,” Halvorsen cut in.

  “But, sir, the overhead, it’s cut for—”

  “Copy that. This isn’t our first dance, Lieutenant. Now get off my net.”

  “Roger that, sir.” Promise slumped in her chair and pressed her caf to her chin. She heard the burst-cough of a Triple-7 and leaned forward in her seat. Looked left and quickly confirmed the status of Halvorsen’s boots. All accounted for, all still green. Her eyes bounced to PFC Chua’s HUD and the HUDs belonging to the sergeants, and finally back to Staff Sergeant Tanner’s. Tanner was nearing the end of a corridor that emptied into something huge. Massive, actually. This could be it. Promise started gnawing on her lip.