by Evan Currie
“True,” he admitted, “but it still feels wrong.”
“Yeah,” Sorilla admitted in turn, albeit reluctantly.
She wasn’t going to admit more than that, especially not while on a sanctioned joint op with the Alliance, but even she wasn’t immune to the feeling of being the betrayer. She’d been there before, more than once, however, and ultimately Sorilla wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.
“Lay down suppressive fire,” she ordered, changing the subject. “Keep their heads down and distracted.”
*****
The volume of fire from the depot doubled, and then redoubled, forcing the militia to hit the ground in all directions as they scrambled for cover from the blistering hail of destruction rained down on their positions. Rounds whined off the ground and surrounding buildings, whirring past overhead, and men pressed themselves into the ground like they were trying to burrow through to the other side of the world by sheer force of will.
If they were in range, they scrambled for the closest building; if they weren’t, then they would just freeze and cover their heads as best they could in the hopes that the angry swarm of bees buzzing around them would somehow choose to move on.
One man, realizing that there was cover to his right, tucked his rifle in as close to his chest as he could and rolled for his life in that direction. He ended up on his back behind cover, eyes wide with terror as he pondered mortality, the stench of fear, and the sound of those rounds tearing at the air around him.
It took several seconds before he realized that he was looking at the sky, and then a few more before he noticed something unusual overhead.
A crack of thunder out of the clear orange sky left him with one confused thought.
“What the f—?”
*****
Bravo Squad’s armor had ablated away the last of the sprayed carbon ceramic heat shields, pre-forming their terminal flips to orient themselves feet-down to the target LZ, and all systems were in the green as they crossed angels forty at well over terminal velocity and slowing as the air thickened.
“Everyone, sound off,” Strickland ordered as he got his bearings, feet down, moving at better than mach three, friction giving him enough of a hotfoot that he was starting to feel it through the heavily insulated armor.
The rest of the team signaled back quickly, confirming their positions as they arrayed about the sky, falling on target to the LZ.
“Blitz the landing,” Strickland ordered. “I want military dominance clearly established on our side the second we hit Arkana. Confirm.”
Lights on his HUD swapped to green one by one as the team signaled back their confirmation as the whole group passed angels twenty and slowed to just over mach one.
Normally, by this point, Strickland would have ordered deployment of their flying wings, both to slow decent as well as to fine tune their descent and ensure they hit the LZ clean. In this case, however, they’d launched from low orbit. They were going to hit the LZ with sub-centimeter precision, and he had zero interest in slowing down.
At angels ten, the last of the team dropped below mach one, taking a few seconds to recover from the transition through the mach interface. The distant boom of their passage rolled over them as they slowed, rocking the suits and even being felt all the way through to their bones, but they’d all felt worse.
In fact, they were all about to feel a hell of a lot worse.
Angels five.
The ground was now starting to approach exponentially faster, even as they continued to slow from just air friction. Buildings were growing in size, and with their suit and implant enhancements, they could not make out the figures on the ground that had only been represented by icons on their HUDS.
As they crossed the last thousand meters, impact alarms began to sound in every man’s armor. Warnings sounded that they’d passed the suggested minimum pull altitude for best deceleration on their airfoils at current speeds. Strickland ignored it as the numbers continued to plummet crazily, waiting as he mentally counted down the last possible seconds.
Just under a hundred meters, his chute blew, snapping into position above him and crushing his spine into the base of his armor as he began decelerating crazily. The ground rushed up, buildings twisting as he rocked back and forth on the carbon-reinforced cables keeping him secured to the chute.
With a dozen meters to go, he flexed his legs and gritted his teeth, knowing it was about to hurt.
Strickland slammed into the surface of Arkana, kicking up an explosion of dust and actually cratering the ground slightly as he was driven to his knees, even in powered armor. Pain tore through his legs, and he was pretty sure he felt something else tear in there as well, but the nerve block kicked in almost instantly and it was gone. He rested for a moment, on one knee, as the dust settled slowly around his position.
All around him, the other seventeen men of Bravo Squad were in similar positions as roiling dust was blasted out from their positions.
Men lying on the ground, already terrified by the extreme suppressive fire they’d been under just seconds earlier, stared in stark horror as the black-clad monsters rose from their knees and reached behind their backs as one entity to pull rifles forward and level them in their direction.
The snarling, tearing roar of half those rifles exploding into action sent men again scrambling in terror of the dragons in their midst. When the fire ended, the half that hadn’t opened up now let their weapons loose as the first group reloaded.
Strickland keyed to his loudspeaker channel as he strode forward with the rest of the team.
“All hostiles,” he said, “lay down your weapons now, or die here. Your choice.”
There was a terrified pause before the words sank in, and then the first rifle clattered to the ground. In seconds it was followed by more and more, until the last of them had given up.
“Strickland to Aida. Op cleared.”
“Roger that, Strickland.” Sorilla’s voice sounded tired on the radio. “Confirmed, and thank you.”
“Standby for EOD arrival,” he said. “I hear you have some bombs to take care of.”
“You could say that. Inform higher we require Alliance EOD,” Sorilla sighed. “These things are…more finicky than I would have believed.”
Strickland shuddered slightly, not wanting to go anywhere near that depot when she said that, but just confirmed the message receipt.
“Don’t stub your toe, Colonel. That would be one stupid ass way to meet our maker.”
Epilogue
USV SOL
The SOL was the center of discussion, hosting a meeting of local Alliance officials as well as the district politicians, military, and intelligence coordinators assigned to the issues that had brought the humans and the Alliance together. Neither side was particularly happy with the way the situation had turned out, for differing reasons, but Sorilla didn’t much care.
Eri had been sent back home, and was now cooperating with Alliance Intelligence, at least to some degree. Sorilla privately expected him to flip sooner than later, while he might not be insane, he was a product of his culture. She had already advised that SOLCOM approach him on the side to work for them, which would put the man in a tight spot as a possible triple agent in any future events, but with as many lives on the line as there were she wasn’t going to go soft on him.
In the meantime, she, Kriss, and Seinel listened to the bluster moving back and forth between the various groups, doing their particular species’ version of rolling eyes with numbing regularity.
Finally, Sorilla stood up and met eyes with Seinel across the group, cocking her head to one side. When he nodded slowly, she turned and excused herself, leaving the SNAFUed political discussion behind.
It only took a few minutes before Seinel and Kriss joined her outside in the hall, Sorilla gesturing the Marines back when they attempted to intercept the pair of aliens.
“Well done,” Seinel told her as he came to a stop a few feet away. “Those weapons would ha
ve murdered many.”
Sorilla snorted. “They’d have probably killed themselves with them. We both know that.”
Seinel nodded simply. “Likely, however, many others would have died first. The odds of at least one of those weapons detonating unintended, in hands as inexperienced as those, is a near certainty…but likely not the first one.”
Sorilla sighed, but nodded. “We still have a problem. The mission isn’t over.”
“She’s right, and you know it,” Kriss grumbled, unable to hide his injuries any longer as he winced with almost every motion. “The poisoners are still out there.”
“The other colony?” Seinel suggested lightly.
“To begin with,” Sorilla agreed, “but we all know, even if they did it, I doubt they developed those weapons themselves. You’ve got an internal problem.”
Seinel grimaced, looking away.
“My superiors are…unwilling to entertain that belief at this time,” he admitted.
“Fools.”
Sorilla wasn’t surprised, nor was she inclined to disagree with Kriss’s estimation of the politicians’ faculties at the time.
“We’ll do the rest of the mission,” Sorilla said. “I speak for SOLCOM on this. From me to you, this is their voice. We value our truce and tentative…friendship…with the Alliance.” Sorilla grimaced. “However, my voice now. Not SOLCOM, me. The Alliance has an internal problem. If you can’t find and fix that, none of this is going to matter. I would rather not deal with Alliance strategic weapons accidentally finding their way to Hayden. I have a nice little place there; I’m looking forward to retirement. I don’t want it sucked into a black hole, however temporary. Gentlemen, get your house in order.”
Kriss laughed, amused, but Seinel was less so.
“That is going to be a more difficult task to accomplish than to order,” he said, holding up a hand. “However, I will personally see that an investigation is launched. No matter what else, we agree on this. Whoever is behind this must be brought to task.”
Sorilla nodded, extending her hand to Seinel.
The alien regarded it for a moment before he took it and the pair shook firmly.
“You see to that, and I’ll do everything my power to help you accomplish that task,” Sorilla said. “No matter how much harder it is to accomplish than to say.”
END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
About the Author : Evan Currie is a Canadian author of science fiction and fantasy novels whose work has been translated into multiple languages and sold around the world. Best known for his military science fiction series’ Odyssey One and On Silver Wings, Evan has also dabbled in far flung Space Fantasy like Heirs of Empire and steampunk-ish alt-history among other worlds.
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