by M. R. Forbes
The starfighter slipped silently into the open lane, racing past the satellites within seconds. Gabriel eased up on the throttle then, changing course and heading further down toward the thermosphere. The satellites ceased operation behind him, their instructions limited to monitoring space outside of the ring.
He dove quickly, keeping his eyes open and scanning the field ahead of him. The satellites were dangerous, but they were the least of his concerns.
"Entering the thermosphere," he said, using the two sticks to maneuver the fighter. He flattened out some, running a horizontal arc along the upper atmosphere. All of the debris from the initial attack had long ago burned up or had drifted unencumbered out into deeper space, yet somehow a few non-functional human satellites had managed to remain in their orbit, unaware of what had become of the people who had put them there.
He took his hand off the thruster control and moved it to the touchpad. He tapped in a rapid sequence, opening up the onboard receivers. He wouldn't know if he had gotten anything until he returned to Delta Station, but it was better that way. To pause or hesitate for even a moment would be the difference between life and death.
"Activating receivers. Let's hope we get something this time."
He kept his head moving side to side, while at the same time watching the HUD for any hint of motion from his sensors. He knew this was the calm before the storm, even if he wouldn't see the storm coming until it was almost too late.
He swept along the atmosphere, racing over the northern hemisphere, not too far from the Tropic of Cancer. It had been so long since they had captured anything, Gabriel wondered if there was anyone left down there to transmit, and if not, how they would ever know it.
It was a wayward thought that almost cost him his life.
SEVEN
Donovan didn't hesitate as he tapped out orders with his foot, getting the team moving. Three to try to draw the enemy away, five to keep a tight defense on the needle, and the rest to hold the perimeter. He didn't need to be quiet, but some directions were more efficient to issue by feel.
"Diaz, go," Donovan said, choosing her as one of the decoys. Not because they were usually able to escape alive. She was their fastest runner.
Diaz looked like she was about to argue, but then she hopped to her feet and ran, sliding down a fallen girder with acrobatic ease. Plasma rifle fire blasted into the space behind her as the enemy soldiers tried to get a bead.
"Fox, cover her," Donovan shouted.
Private Fox aimed his rifle, opening fire with conventional bullets. The weapons were vastly inferior to the alien plasma rifles, but they were all the resistance owned, taken years earlier from gun shops and homes from as far south as Acapulco and north into the southwestern United States. It didn't matter that much, anyway. There was nothing the humans had that could pierce a Dread soldier's carapace armor.
The slightly better news was that the Dread rarely sent their real soldiers after t-vaulters.
Donovan felt his watch again. The flyby would take about eight minutes, but only twenty seconds or so would put the pilot in range of the transmission. There was a small switch on the computer that would pop out when a connection had been made, and the signal sent. Sanchez had her hand on the box, waiting to feel it happen.
Thirty seconds passed. Mexico City was a nightmare, lit by the flashes of plasma as the bolts poured into the surrounding concrete and steel, burning into it where it hit. Donovan heard a thud, turned and saw Amallo was down. He unslung his rifle and rushed to the Corporal's position, looking down toward the street.
A half-dozen enemy combatants had gathered behind the charred wreckage of a car. They were the typical Dread response to a transmission, what the resistance called HSCs or human simulacrum combatants. Clones. They were all identical in appearance: six and a half feet tall, bald, muscular, and wearing simple cotton shirts and pants.
From what Donovan had heard, the clones were easier for the Dread to make than the impenetrable armor they used to build pretty much everything else, and so they would grow them out, program them, and send them to find the resistance. Once in awhile, after an HSC put eyes on a t-vault, a real Dread soldier piloting one of their mechanized armor would show up. It would then blow the hell out of everyone and everything nearby, ending the transmission and the t-vault team in a hurry.
At least, that was the rumor. Donovan was still alive, which meant he had never seen it happen.
The clones stared back at him, finding him with alarming ease, genetically modified to see in the dark. Donovan barely slipped behind the wall before a gout of plasma fire spewed up at him.
"What have you got, soldiers?" he shouted.
"Counting twenty-four, Major," Rollins replied. "They aren't going easy on us today."
Twenty-four? Not going easy was an understatement. That was twice the normal number of clones scouting for a t-vault squad.
"Sanchez?"
He looked back at the Private. She shook her head. The transmission hadn't been sent yet. Damn.
He peeked around the corner of the building, taking a quick shot at the clones below. His bullets hit the car in front of them, and they returned fire, sending him back to cover again.
A shout and Rollins was down.
"Come on," Donovan whispered, glancing up at the sky.
He could see the dark splotch of the Dread's orbital defenses blotting out a pattern ahead of the stars. He knew it wasn't easy for the pilots to get through that mess.
It wasn't exactly a cakewalk on the ground, either.
A groan and Mendoza fell off the side of the building, her head torn in half by plasma. Davids went to cover her position, firing a steady stream down at the clones. His gun clicked empty, and he ducked to the ground, grabbing a magazine from his pocket and slapping it in. They had been traveling light and fast, and only had two reloads.
"Sanchez?" Donovan asked again. Only a dozen seconds had passed, and he was getting a bad feeling about this one.
She shook her head again.
He glanced down at the HSCs. They were gone.
What?
They wouldn't have retreated. It meant they were either making their way up through the building or the decoys had managed to pull them away. Except the decoys rarely worked anymore.
"Stay on it," he said to Sanchez, putting a hand on her shoulder. "I'm going to intercept."
Sanchez's eyes opened wide. He might as well have told her he was going to kill himself.
Donovan reached the steps and started down, leading with his rifle. He could hear the plasma sizzling against the walls above him and the echo of the return fire from his squad outside. It was nearly pitch black in the stairwell, good for the clones and bad for him. He dug a small wrist light from his pocket, slapping it on. It gave him just enough illumination to see the stairs before he tripped down them.
A plasma bolt lit the area, and Donovan threw himself to the ground, barely avoiding being hit. He rolled down the steps, feeling the edges of the concrete digging into him, leaving cuts and bruises as he fell. He hit a landing and rolled to his feet, directing his rifle down while he tried to get his bearings. That had been too close.
He kept his back to the wall while he listened for the footsteps of the clones climbing the stairs. When he picked them up, he started to descend again, his bare feet silent as he went down. In the glow of the wrist light, he noticed he had lost a lot of the clay that would hide his heat signature. It didn't matter much in here, but if he survived long enough to run?
He would worry about surviving that long first. He hadn't made it to Major by being stupid.
He stood still again. The clones were getting closer. He pulled the wrist light off and turned it over. There was a small switch on the bottom, and in one motion he flicked it over and threw it down the steps.
The light flared from it, a bright flash that revealed the enemy position and blinded their sensitive eyes. Donovan charged at them, weapon firing, cutting them down in a hail o
f bullets. He didn't stop shooting until his magazine was empty, reaching them as the last one hit the floor and stopped moving.
He knelt down and grabbed one of the plasma rifles. It was rounded and slender, designed to rest on the forearm of one arm and stabilized with the opposite hand. It deactivated as it left the clone's grip, and he tossed it aside. It was a foolish hope to think they might forget to pair the weapon.
He slapped a new magazine into his gun and continued the descent, feeling his watch as he did. Four minutes had passed, and the fire from both sides had calmed somewhat. The transmission had to have been sent by now.
He reached a pile of rubble, stepping carefully out onto it and surveying the area. Gomez's body lay at a crude angle across the lower portion of the debris, his arm blown off by a plasma bolt. A dead clone lay nearby.
"Sanchez," he shouted, his voice echoing. He looked back and up. Her face appeared over the edge a moment later, illuminated by her wrist light, and she gave him a thumbs up. The transmission was sent. "Where are the clones?"
She put her arms out to the side and shook her head. She didn't know.
"Grab whoever's still alive up there and let's get the hell out of here. The stairwell is clear."
A heavy vibration shook the ruins, sending small bits of debris rolling down and a cloud of dust into the air. A second rumble followed. Then a third. He heard the soft whine of moving parts. What was that? He crouched low, scanning the buildings around them. The vibrations were steady, and getting stronger. He caught a bit of motion in the corner of his eye and turned to aim his rifle.
"Donovan," Diaz said. Sweat had washed the clay away from half her face and left her hair a damp mess. "Run."
EIGHT
The enemy starfighters came out of nowhere, darting through the cover of lower clouds and taking a direct vector toward him. His sensors beeped in a panic as they picked up the burn from the thermosphere, and he cursed himself for letting his focus slip for even an instant. He put his hands on the controls and added thrust, shooting ahead of the enemy ships and forcing them to tail behind.
He kept an eye on them on his HUD. They appeared as red triangles there, but he knew what they looked like. Wide and slender, the wings rounded and sharp at the fore and aft, with a cockpit that swept up from an inverted center. They were made of the same ridged black carapace as the satellites and the alien buildings. Some pilots called them Bats. Others called them Rays. To Gabriel, they were nothing but trouble.
There was still some debate about whether the alien craft were piloted manually, remotely, or autonomously. Since no one had ever shot one down, it remained a point of contention. Unlike a human starfighter, the cockpit had no obvious viewport, but that didn't mean the aliens weren't using some advanced tech, or even something as simple as camera feeds, to see out of the ship. They certainly didn't fly like they couldn't see, and they hugged Gabriel's aft as he juked and jived across the sky, doing everything he could to prevent them from getting a lock.
His heart was racing while his head remained calm. If he panicked, if he lost concentration now, he would die. No matter how the enemy ships were flown, they were extraordinarily skilled and impossible to defeat. The only option was to keep going, to keep trying to avoid their efforts to bring him down.
Gabriel threw the stick hard to the right, and the starfighter tipped over and turned. He threw it to the left, and it rolled back the other way. His computer complained as it registered the enemy fire, and Gabriel felt his first pang of true fear as a shot from a plasma cannon nearly tore a wing from the fuselage. As it was, it left a long, trailing scorch mark on the back of the fighter.
"Come on, come on, come on," Gabriel said, forgetting about the recording. "Is that all you've got?"
His hands worked the sticks, keeping the fighter from ever flying a straight vector that the enemy ships could target. He checked his mission clock. Two minutes to egress. The run was almost complete.
The sensors cried out again as a second pair of enemy ships were detected, coming at him from the front.
"Damn," Gabriel said, throwing both sticks forward. The fighter dipped and headed down toward the surface as the four enemy ships blew past one another before circling back to follow.
Gabriel's eyes jumped from the mission clock to his power reserves. He had gotten closer to the surface, and deeper into Earth's gravity than he had wanted. It was going to cost him. He couldn't shake the enemy fighters and make it back to the slipstream in time.
A million calculations darted through his head. A million options for how to make his next move and try to get back to Delta Station. He had outmaneuvered four enemy ships before, and he could do it again. The one place the aliens didn't have human starfighters beat was in overall thrust.
He slowed down, easing off on the throttle once more. The enemy fighters were wedges on his display, sliding into position behind him and gaining.
Good. He wanted them close.
He was more cautious with his maneuvers now, making short, tight jumps and turns that were just enough to keep the alien fire from scoring a direct hit. Plasma cannons sent bolts scattering around him, close enough to scorch the frame and raise more warnings from the computer. He ignored it, keeping his focus on the result.
He slowed even more. The alien ships continued to close in, their shots drawing dangerously near as he dangled the bait. What he was doing was insane, and he hoped he would never have to do it again.
The four alien fighters were only a few hundred meters behind him. At their current velocity, if he had cut his thrust they would slam into him and tear him apart without taking a hint of damage themselves. In fact, one of the ships began to accelerate harder, inverting the idea.
That was Gabriel's cue. He pulled back hard on the left stick while pushing the right stick forward. The fighter changed direction as the thrusters went to full burn, and he shot up and away from the enemy. They were too close to change direction easily and too slow to catch up.
They were smart enough not to try.
Gabriel kept going, watching his power levels sinking further and further. He could see the orbital defense ring up ahead, and he narrowed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He couldn't risk slowing down or he might not have the power or the velocity to get back into the slipstream.
His eyes scanned the ring, picking a path through the round devices. He wasn't worried about their fire on the way back out, especially not at this velocity. He would blow past and be gone before they could touch him.
He was only seconds away from the ring when he saw the wedge enter his display, coming on from his left faster than anything he had ever seen before. He turned his head to watch one of the alien starfighters bearing down, using constant heavy thrust to gain a velocity that would be unmanageable for maneuvering.
Except it didn't need to maneuver. It was headed right for him.
Gabriel couldn't believe it. After sixty-seven missions, had his luck had finally run out?
Not yet.
"Pic kee toi, asshole," he said, using one of his father's favorite cajun cusses. He flipped a switch next to the thrust stick, engaging the emergency overdrive. It would nearly drain his fuel cell but it was either that or die.
The fighter's velocity jumped, throwing him into the midst of the satellites at high speed. He deftly shifted the vectoring thrusters, whipping the craft this way and that, somehow managing to avoid the satellites, in some cases by a meter or less.
The incoming enemy fighter tried to follow. Gabriel looked back over his shoulder, watching as its plasma cannon loosed a stream of bolts into the satellites to clear a path, his eyes opening in wonder as the satellites blew apart beneath it. There had been rumors forever that the aliens' weapons could overcome their shields, but there had never been any definitive proof.
Until now.
Gabriel put his eyes back forward. The enemy fighter was still behind him, but the obstacles had forced it to slow, its design not able to maneuver quite as well
as he could. He angled the fighter to the inception point, checking his velocity. Then he hit the touchpad to activate the quantum phase generator.
The wings began to blur, the ship shaking heavily as the unharmed phased surfaces compensated for the damaged ones. The computer continued to beep warnings; a new one added as his fuel cell reached critical levels. There would be just enough juice to keep the QPG powered and to run life support.
Gabriel found the enemy ship still racing toward him. He had never seen one so intent on stopping a sortie before, and he wondered if he had picked anything up from the resistance on the ground, and if so what it was. The intel he had just gathered on his own was more than enough to have made the trip worthwhile.
Watching the enemy's plasma beam pass harmlessly through the fighter as he joined the slipstream was even more rewarding.
"This is Captain Gabriel St. Martin," he said, a little less calmly than before. "Mission complete."
He switched off the recorder and leaned back in the seat.
It was going to be a nice, quiet ride home.
NINE
Donovan didn't question why Diaz had come back. He spun around again, looking for his team. The vibrations were getting stronger and closer, the whine louder with each passing breath.
"Damn," he said, returning to the mouth of the stairwell. He found the remainder of the t-vault squad almost down. Sanchez and Cameron. Were they the only ones left?
They had abandoned the needle and the equipment, carrying only their rifles. Donovan waited until they caught up to him, putting his hand on their shoulders to guide them out the door. He heard Sanchez gasp as she exited.
"Dios Mío," she said, her face pale and afraid.
Donovan followed her eyes out to the corner of a distant building. A dark shape had emerged from behind it.
It was easily twenty meters tall, a wide, squat body resting on massive mechanical legs that ended in three claw-like toes that dug deep into the broken pavement. A massive plasma cannon rested on either side of the torso, serving as arms, while smaller weapons jutted out on either side of a rounded bulge in the center that had to be a cockpit or remote control unit of some kind. The whole thing was a rippled black, covered in the protective carapace.
