“Engine start is good,” the copilot said.
Teo’s voice vibrated as he spoke. “Control surfaces aren’t responding. Hang on, it’s going to get bumpy.”
Going to get? Wyatt thought.
The Javelin pitched all over the place. The cabin dropped away suddenly and put them back in freefall. Then it came back up and threatened to squash everyone’s insides into jelly. Four minutes of pure fright went by before Teo put them into a somewhat level approach to land in the middle of nowhere. By the time they set down, Wyatt’s hands ached so badly that he wondered if he’d embedded his fingerprints in the grab handles.
Soon, Wyatt and the rest of the squad were circling the vehicle, inspecting for damage from hostile fire and an overly aggressive atmospheric entry.
“I’m not riding in Javelins with you anymore,” Laramie told him.
Wyatt patted a nearby landing strut, wondering how pale he must still look. “We got here, didn’t we?”
Laramie shook her head and went back to inspecting her zone.
The sun hung low in the early dawn, shining its cold light over the field where Teo had set them down. No, not the sun, Wyatt thought. Alpha A. Bigger than Sol, releasing more energy, further away than from Earth. It felt different. Wyatt thought back to growing up in Michigan, how strange Florida seemed the first time he went there on vacation. Flat. Palm trees. The air, heavy and humid. He felt a similar oddity now. The blue of the sky was the wrong shade, like the waters of the Caribbean compared to open ocean. He saw no trees. Dark, meter-high grasses covered the rolling hills in all directions.
Then there was the gravity.
Anyone who spent time in zero gee felt sluggish or worse when first making landfall. But here, Wyatt felt heavy. Juliet was big and dense. And the extra ten kilos Wyatt now carried seemed to push directly down on his prosthetic. Nerves he no longer had screamed from the beyond, channeling their protest into metal fused with bone.
He hadn’t felt this in space, even in the artificial gravity of Providence Station. A flicker of doubt crept into Wyatt’s mind as he thought back to his interview with Beck.
It didn’t matter if he was ready. He was committed now. He’d have to deal.
Teo and the crew chief approached him from the other side of the aft ramp, passing a red towel back and forth to wipe grease off their hands. Wyatt looked up from his introspection.
“We got lucky, Lieutenant,” Teo said. “Two meters over and that laser blast would have vaporized the cargo bay. But it didn’t. The brunt of it got taken by the booster.”
Wyatt raised an eyebrow. “You’re saying we don’t have damage? My insides are beyond bruised.”
“Oh, we’ve got damage. The booster practically exploded. My bird has shrapnel holes all over the place. Lost fuel, too, before the starboard tank sealed itself.”
“What’s that mean for our range?”
“If I had to guess? Five hundred klicks.”
“I’m not sure that gets the job done.”
“Depends where you want to go.”
Wyatt nodded with a sigh. It could have been far worse. “Okay, let’s figure out what’s next.”
Five minutes later, Wyatt, Laramie, and Teo clustered around the holo monitor on the flight deck. Teo brought up digital charts of the surrounding area. They had landed literally in the middle of nowhere, in a broad grassland a hundred kilometers from the nearest settlement.
“Here,” Wyatt said, pointing to a large city marker. “This is Venice, by the coast? The capital?”
“That’s right,” Laramie said.
“This is your neck of the woods, Staff Sergeant. What can you tell us about it?”
“Venice?” She thought for a moment. “Population of two million, maybe. A lot of the white-collar stuff is there—business, finance, tech. Government, obviously. But it’s big on trade, too, since so much of the rest of Juliet is rural. There’s a port facility on the water that handles shipping to other cities along the coast.”
“What about inland, where we are?”
“Once you get into the grasslands, you’re going to either find ranching or farming. Go past that and you hit the mountains and the mining towns. But I don’t think anyone out that way will know about disruptions to interplanetary shipping.”
“Okay.” Wyatt felt a headache coming on and rubbed his forehead. Maybe it was from the gravity. “What sort of communications are we picking up? We just got shot down. Are we hearing anything that might explain that?”
Teo shook his head. “There’s some satellite broadcasts, mostly entertainment. Haven’t seen any news reports yet. No radio chatter or anything, but then again, we’re in a pretty isolated area.”
Laramie looked up from the holo monitor. “We need to infiltrate into the capital, LT. That’s where the spaceport is. That’s where we might find some intel.”
“Agreed,” Teo said.
“Thoughts on how to insert covertly? I’m not going to have a wounded Javelin blunder its way in.”
Laramie studied the chart some more. “We could hitch a ride on a train.”
“How do you mean?”
She pointed to a bold line that ran inland from the capital. “These lines are maglev rails. They run between Venice and the Carrell Mountains over here. That’s where the aluminum mines are. Miners extract the ore, smelt it into ingots, and ship it on the maglev back to the industrial district, here. The trains are run by computer. Why don’t we hop on one of them as it’s headed in?”
“Can we do it? Teo?”
The pilot pointed at one of the mining-town dots. “You want to fly all the way to the mountains? That’ll be a one-way trip. We don’t have the fuel to go there and back.”
“No,” Laramie said. “What I meant was, why don’t we hop on a train as it passes by us?”
“Moving?”
“Yes.”
“How fast do they go?”
She shrugged. “Pretty fast?”
Teo shook his head. “If they’re anything like the trains on Tiamat, we’re talking about hundreds of knots. Is it your life’s ambition to climb inside a leaf vacuum? There’s no way you could move from one vehicle to the other.”
“What’s a leaf vacuum?” Laramie asked.
“A machine to clean up leaves when they drop off trees.”
“Never seen a leaf.”
“What?”
“Juliet doesn’t have trees.”
“Really?”
“Enough,” Wyatt said. He pointed at the monitor. “What about here, at this curve? Most maglevs slow down so they don’t jump the track. We could come up alongside and zipline aboard.”
Teo took a deep breath. “If it slows down to forty or fifty knots. Still going to be a heck of a wind blast.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
The three of them stared at the chart.
“So, a modern-day stagecoach robbery,” Teo said.
“Something like that.” Wyatt glanced at Laramie. “It’s just a forced boarding exercise. We did them on Tiamat.”
His staff sergeant straightened her posture. “We can do it.”
Wyatt folded his arms, steeling himself. With a damaged Javelin, no refueling capability, and no booster to make it back to orbit, his alternatives were proving scarce.
“Okay. Let’s draw up the op.”
***
The Javelin skimmed along the ground at three hundred knots, slowly reeling in the distance between their initial landing point and the maglev rail. Wyatt stood near the flight deck hatch and peered out the armored canopy. Grassy hills extended in all directions. Occasional bird-like animals flew in the distance, though Laramie explained that the Julietan version of a bird was more like a bat. The off-blue sky held back any hint of clouds. The panorama drew out boyhood memories of the American Midwest that Wyatt had long since forgotten from his time in space.
“A lot prettier than Tiamat,” he said.
Teo snorted. “That’s not hard.”
/>
Wyatt ducked back into the hold and sat with the troopers to review their boarding tactics again. The plan was simple. The train was propelled by the maglev rail and would have upward of twenty cargo cars connected together. As the train took the curve, Teo would fly alongside it with the cargo ramp open. Carlos would fire the grappling hook out the back. Then Wyatt and his squad would zipline to the train, the Javelin would detach and go to ground, and the team would ride into the capital to gather intel until they ultimately arranged for extraction.
An hour from reaching the rail, Teo called Wyatt to come back to the flight deck.
“We have a visual on some kind of town coming up ahead.” He pointed out the canopy at one o’clock. “It’s not in the chart pack loaded into the computer. I can go around, but thought you might see it as a recon opportunity.”
Wyatt turned to Laramie. “Any idea where this is?”
“No.”
“None?”
“Do you know the name of every Podunk town on Earth?”
“Fair point.”
Wyatt thought about the remoteness of their location. “We’re really out here. Think we could pop in and ask some questions without drawing attention?”
Laramie peered out across the grasslands. “Just a little ranching town? Sure. They’re not going to care about us as long as we don’t hork up their stuff.”
Another decision to make. Wyatt wanted to get it right. Avoiding contact would keep them from being compromised. But they had an entire planet spread out before them, and didn’t really have any sense of what might be going on. Popping into a rural village for some local news might save them from finding out things the hard way later.
“All right, let’s do it. Teo, set the Javelin down out of sight. We’ll take a small team in and ask around. Me, Laramie, Carlos, and—”
“And Maya,” Laramie said. “She and I can go in. You guys hang back.”
“Why?”
“You want info? A pair of chicas will get it for you.” Her green eyes smiled at him. “Trust me, this is my turf, Wyatt. Let a country girl do her thing.”
***
Teo set down behind a hill a good klick away from the town. Javelins weren’t quiet, and Wyatt suspected that every resident knew some kind of vehicle had flown in. He took his small team out on foot and found a small rise a hundred meters from the edge of the town. The women shed their ARC vests and RESIT patches until they better resembled a pair of field hands. Each kept their side arms in case of trouble. Wyatt and Carlos were relegated to backup.
As Wyatt started to lie down, Laramie grabbed his arm. “No.”
“What?”
“Lie over here. Avoid the dark green grass.”
“Why?”
“This is all harpoon brush.” She pointed at the grasses around them. “The tips have a silicate barb. You don’t want that stuff getting into your clothes. Stay over to the light green, where it’s not mature yet.”
“Harpoon brush,” he repeated. Wyatt eyed where he had been about to go. “Anything else?”
She shrugged. “Not really. Watch out for hoppers, I guess.”
“What’s a hopper?”
“What do you call those green things on Earth that live in swamps?” Laramie scrunched up her face. “Cracko-dillies?”
“Crocodiles?”
“Yeah. That. Juliet’s version of that.”
“You’re saying something called a hopper, which is like a Juliet heavy-gravity crocodile, might come up and eat us while we lay in sharp grass that will slice us to bits.” He raised his eyebrow. “That about right?”
She gave him a dismissive wave. “Nah. They won’t come this close to a town. You’ll be fine.”
“Okay. We’ll try not to die while we lie completely still.”
He heard Maya chuckle as they set off. Wyatt and Carlos traded incredulous stares.
“They always said Julietans were tough,” Carlos said.
“Yeah. Can’t wait for the next surprise.”
The next one came fifteen minutes later.
“Acid One, Acid Two, do you copy?” Laramie whispered on the comm.
“Copy you, Two.”
“Town appears deserted. There was a major fight here. Rubble, lots of small arms fire. Requesting support.”
“Where are you?” Wyatt asked.
“Red two-story building. First floor. Southwest corner.”
Wyatt pushed himself off the ground. “On our way. We’ll be coming the same route you took.”
“Roger.”
Wyatt switched channels. “Acid Three, did you copy that?”
“Affirmative, Lieutenant.” Gavin and the others had remained back at the Javelin. His drawl sounded almost sedated.
“Stand by for dust off and air support. Get the others geared up.”
“Got it.”
Wyatt and Carlos set a hurried pace. Buildings made of stacked cargo containers loomed over deserted streets. They approached the reddish-brown stack Laramie had referenced, the words Harley’s Hall stenciled just underneath windows cut out of the upper container.
“Friendlies,” Wyatt called. They pressed against the wall, their L-4 Vectors ready.
“In here.”
He ducked around the corner and into the container. The interior had been fashioned into a sort of pub, with a large bar against one wall and a bank of gaming consoles in the corner. The bar was covered in broken glass. Smashed furniture filled the rest of the room.
Laramie and Maya hunched down against one of the first-floor windows. They quickly holstered their pistols in favor of the rifles Carlos handed them.
“Any signs of life?” Wyatt asked.
“Not yet,” Laramie said. “The weapon damage looks old. No smell, either.”
She was right. The burned aroma of charred flesh from laser impacts had long faded. “This fight took place a while ago. Let’s have a look. Fan out.”
Laramie nodded, but Wyatt could tell she was bothered. Juliet was her home. If a civilian town in the middle of nowhere showed signs of a firefight, what else might be waiting for them?
The troopers formed a skirmish line and walked slowly up what could only be called the main street. Most building windows were shattered and open. The charred hulk of a utility ATV sat half-crashed in a nearby doorway. Scorch marks from some homemade fire bomb shrouded the entry to another.
“See any bodies?” Wyatt asked.
“Negative.”
By the time they got to the town center, everyone had lowered their Vectors. They had clearly missed whatever had gone down. Wyatt radioed Gavin and told him to bring up the rest of the squad.
Laramie pointed at a tall structure composed of cargo containers three wide and three tall. “That building there will be the Town Hall. We should find legal documents, security records inside.”
Looking for anything that potentially chronicled what happened made sense to Wyatt. “Maya. Check the entrance.”
“Yes, sir.”
A gust of wind blew dust down the street in front of them. Maya stalked to the side of the main entrance and pushed on the door. It wouldn’t budge. She peeked into a window full of some sort of obstruction. “Looks like it’s been barricaded.”
“Barricaded? Sweep the outside for other entry points.”
A few minutes of searching found no other access. The building had been made into a bunker.
“Acid Three,” Wyatt said into the comm. “Send the rest of the squad to my position. Bring a breach charge. We’re going to have to force entry on a structure.”
“Roger.”
Wyatt and Laramie watched the perimeter as they waited. It didn’t take long for the others to appear, led by Gavin’s hulking frame at the front. He carried an L-6 Viper, a powerful rifle that had considerably more accuracy at range than a Vector.
Gavin frowned as his eyes took in the deserted street. “What happened here?”
“A bigtime rumble, some time ago,” Wyatt said. He pointed at th
e Town Hall entrance. “Maybe we’ll find some clues in there, but I need you to blast that door open.”
“On it.”
Every RESIT trooper was trained on breaching hatches and airlocks. The only difference here was that they’d be boarding a cargo container instead of a spacecraft. Gavin trotted up to the door and unfolded a satchel into a one-meter-wide oval pad. He made a quick study of the construction, the hinges, the framing. Then he pressed the adhesive side of the pad onto the door.
“Maya, Carlos—stack up on me,” Laramie ordered, moving to the side of the entrance.
“Ready.”
Gavin took cover a couple meters away. “Fire in the hole!”
Crack. A brilliant flash quickly disappeared into a cloud of rolling smoke.
Laramie held her Vector up and swept inside. Maya and Carlos immediately followed. A few moments later her voice crackled on the comm. “First floor’s clear. Maya, Carlos—take second.”
“On it.”
Wyatt pushed aside the fragments of the barricade and saw a desk now overturned by the entrance. He was surprised by the modern appearance of the interior—except now, furniture and administrative stations were strewn about in various states of disarray, intermixed with sleeping pallets and trash against the wall.
Someone had holed up here for a while. Why?
He switched on his weapon’s tactical light. The beam revealed foil wrappers and emergency rations on the floor.
Laramie swept the opposite side of the room until her light crossed his. Their eyes met and Laramie wrinkled her nose. Wyatt smelled it, too—the faint, sickly-sweet odor of decay, drifting through the air.
The comm crackled with Maya’s voice. “Lieutenant. Second floor is clear, but you need to see this.”
“On my way.” He looked at Laramie and she nodded. She would come too.
They marched up a set of stairs through a tidy opening in the ceiling. The stench of death grew stronger. When they emerged onto the second story, Wyatt immediately saw why. Half a dozen bodies lay strewn across the floor, contorted and desperate.
“Jesus,” Wyatt said. He covered his nose with a gloved hand. “What happened here?”
Escape Velocity (The Quantum War Book 1) Page 6
