by John Lumpkin
That left Tom’s comms gear as the only way to reach the ship and the data he needed. Neil, for whom asserting himself was at times difficult, debated whether it was worth the effort; not because he didn’t think it was worthwhile, but whether it was worth troubling Tom, some tech on the ship, and possibly the XO.
He decided he had used up his capital by bothering Baker, so he sat on it for 90 minutes until Donovan emerged from his meeting with the camp leaders.
“We’re flying to meet with Sun Haisheng, so saddle up,” Donovan said. “We’ll leave as soon as they can get some cars for us.”
In a short time, five skycars – Neil had no idea why so many people were going – were gathered and idling along the main road through the camp. It was a motley assemblage: two Chevys painted in black-and-red camouflage appropriate to Commonwealth, an Arrow Industries Valiant 9000 in factory white, a cherry red Holden Commodore XL in sport trim, and an elderly but noble Vantage K6 in faded silver.
“Can you drive that car?” Donovan asked Neil, motioning toward the Vantage.
“Uh, sure. They can’t drive themselves?” Neil asked, nodding at a group of guerrillas.
“They can, but I’d feel better with one of our people behind the wheel. And I seem to recall you have some pilot training,” Donovan said, smiling. Rafe and Tom joined them for the ride over; Avery and Rodriguez messaged they would stay at the camp. Neil thought about ordering them to come as well – he didn’t like having his Jacintos divided between three locations – but decided against it, figuring goodwill from the guerrillas was worth more than his peace of mind.
So the five cars hummed into the air, extending short wings as they switched from vertical to horizontal flight. One of the Chevys, carrying Huang Jin as well as the camp’s commander, took the lead as they formed a loose line at 500 feet altitude. They angled northwest and headed toward Sun Haisheng’s compound, 200 kilometers distant. Neil noticed the Arrow pull in behind him.
“They really don’t like us, do they?” Tom said, looking out of the Vantage’s back window at the Arrow.
“Why should they?” Rafe interjected. “They have no particular reason to trust –”
Tom’s comms gear buzzed, cutting Rafe off. Tom reached into his jacket’s inner pocket for his handheld.
Ahead of them, a thin column of air flashed. Thunder cracked, and the lead Chevy in the convoy vanished in a fireball.
Neil’s mind did not recognize what had happened in the first instant; it was something for which he had no comparable experience.
Another flash, so bright Neil raised a hand to his eyes. A dazzling electric blue spark seared an afterimage on his retina anyway. The Holden’s two burning halves began a twisting fall toward the earth below.
The driver of third car, the other Chevy, misunderstood the threat, believing it came from below. He tried to dodge this notion by pulling back on the yoke. Too fast – the car stalled; one wing snapped off, and the car spun on its tail. Its emergency chute blossomed.
A fiery blur was moving toward Neil’s skycar. He jerked the yoke, but the piece of flaming debris, a chunk of Huang Jin’s Chevy, obstinately kept moving toward him. It struck the right forward fan nacelle with a painful, metallic thud and careened overhead, narrowly missing the front windshield. Red and yellow warning indicators lit up Neil’s dashboard – to his horror, he saw the emergency chute was wrecked – and then he heard the damaged fan blades, bent horribly, break up against the nacelle’s frame.
The car shuddered violently. The nose pushed up, then dipped and pulled right, and the car slowed rapidly and the four occupants were thrown forward in their seats. Some of Tom’s comms gear flew from the back seat into the dashboard between Neil and Donovan. Neil’s shoulder struck the yoke, but he managed to cut out the dying fans and reduced power to the two functional rear fans in an attempt to regain stability. If the other forward fan would just hang on …
Neil’s mind at last hit upon the word laser.
For no conscious reason, he jerked the car hard right.
I have to land.
The Vantage’s nose dipped again; just then, the blundering Arrow roared a few feet overhead, its fans pushing Neil’s car even further downward.
The oblivious Arrow driver probably saved the four Americans’ lives; the laser sliced through the skycar’s frame.
Neil’s Vantage was still moving forward and descending. Its frame was vibrating to the point Neil expected the car would simply come apart in the air. He struggled to keep the nose up without stalling entirely; landing the car on its belly was the only chance they had to survive.
The ground was moving closer; he saw a black patch in the valley ahead. Black equals plants … all the plants he’d seen so far were soft ferns; he hadn’t noticed any hard structures like tree trunks.
But there were plenty of rocks on Commonwealth. The plants formed a solid canopy ahead; Neil had no idea what was underneath them. As good a place as any. He allowed the nose to drop again, picked up speed until the car was five meters above the canopy, then pulled back on the yoke to level out. But something in the fly-by-wire system was damaged; the working forward fan roared to maximum power, forcing the nose up far higher than Neil had anticipated. The car stalled and vibrated wildly as it tipped to right side and went in.
Its right nacelles and wing ripped off as soon as the Vantage hit the ground. The car then fell on its belly and began a slow, left-handed spin, bleeding off its remaining momentum until it came to rest.
Neil looked around the cabin. Everyone was alive and conscious. A sudden, irrational burst of pride filled him. Nobody dies on my watch.
“What the fuck was that?” shouted Rafe. He was bleeding from a cut on his forehead.
Before Neil could answer, Tom said, “Orbital laser. We just got shot at. We should clear out of here, now, in case it tries to track us.” He was utterly calm, his voice firm and authoritative.
Amazingly, the butterfly doors on the Vantage still worked; they climbed out of the car, and no laser struck at them. Neil allowed himself a moment’s silent respect for the car that didn’t kill them.
Then they ran.
The guerrilla camp was several klicks down the valley. From that direction, they could hear the thunderous rumble of the beams cutting through Commonwealth’s atmosphere.
Neil remembered blue sparks from the strikes on the convoy. Victor-9 had two lasers that would bombard a planet in a blue-green wavelength.
“Now what do we do?” Rafe said.
Though the Americans could only identify her as Victor-9, her true name was Anjian. She was indeed a Russian-built destroyer of the Paltus class, sold to the Chinese via Kazakhstan two years prior in an off-the-books transaction.
The ship itself was copper in color and black in operation, not officially part of the Chinese military. Anjian was technically assigned to the Sixth Research Institute, the signals intelligence branch of the old PLA Air Force. Her crew was PLA Star Navy regulars; her officers were from the Ministry of State Security. She belonged to everyone, and therefore effectively no one, in the Chinese security apparatus.
She had been assigned to orbit Commonwealth four months prior for counterterrorism operations: finding and monitoring enemies of the Chinese state.
A few days ago, however, a fierce man had come on board, preceded by communications providing him total control of the ship’s actions. The captain was not pleased to give up his authority so lightly, especially to this young, arrogant operative. But when Second Bureau gives an order, one obeys.
“I can’t reach our people on the surface,” the comms watchstander said. “And still no response from Victor-9.”
Captain Thorne struggled not to show her exasperation in front of the CIC staff, but she felt powerless, and was ready to rage at Donovan, at Victor-9 and at the idiot admirals that had put her in this position, unable to defend her people. The bogey had started bombarding the guerrilla camp about half an hour ago, and she was unsure if she was
on proper legal footing to use force to stop it. All she could do was sound General Quarters, in case the mystery ship took a shot at San Jacinto.
“We could just maneuver in its way, interdict its firing solution,” Lieutenant Commander Mendoza suggested.
“We’d have to get really close for that,” Lieutenant Commander Davis said.
“That won’t work on this pass, but we’ll get in position to do it on the next orbit,” Thorne said. Like San Jacinto, Victor-9 was in a low, fast orbit over Commonwealth; it was in fact about to pass out of its firing window over the guerrilla camp. But the camp inhabitants had a second round of hell coming: Victor-9 had launched two dropships, which were barreling through Commonwealth’s atmosphere.
“I suppose I’ll read up on Frank Stahl’s assessment of Victor-9,” Thorne said.
“I’d suggest you read Mister Mercer’s as well,” Mendoza said. “It’s quite thorough.”
Thorne nodded acknowledgment at the XO. A moment later, a sensor tech alerted her that the San Jacinto’s first pictures of the camp were coming in. The destruction was immense.
“Ma'am, we’re coming up on the drop window for Lieutenant Ellis,” Mendoza reminded her. San Jacinto’s second Sabre was spooled up and ready for a rescue mission.
Thorne called up a grainy image of the camp’s airfield to one of the CIC’s main screens.
Lieutenant Rodgers’ dropship was a smoking wreck at one end of the runway.
“Damn. There’s a body,” Mendoza pointed at a collection of black pixels splayed out about twenty meters from the craft. The fern forest near the airfield was on fire, and smoke obscured some of the picture.
“That tears it,” said Davis, his voice low with anger. “That’s almost certainly one of our people. They know we landed the dropship there; they deliberately bombarded it. Hostile act. We should defend whoever’s left down there.”
“I’m not so sure,” Thorne said. “Look here.” She pointed at an image of the far end of the runway, at more destruction, including the wreckage of several small winged aircraft. “Those are combat drones. They’re a valid target. Maybe hitting the dropship was accidental.”
Davis shook his head. “Captain …”
“I know what you are going to say, Merrill,” she lied. “So leave it. We’re here openly, but the mission on the planet is covert. If we appear to be defending the guerrilla camp in any way, we could be seen as declaring against the Chinese. I have specific orders to avoid that.”
“So we still can’t do anything?” Davis said. He could scarcely believe it. American troops were dying, and this ultramodern Space Force destroyer wasn’t going to do a damn thing to stop it.
Thorne made up her mind. “No, we can drop Ellis and get our people off. Combat landing at the airfield. Comms, transmit to Victor-9 there are American civilians in the vicinity of their strike, and we are conducting a drop to recover them. Interference with our mission will be interpreted as a hostile act.”
“Aye aye, captain.”
Victor-9 did not respond.
As the bombardment ended, Neil and the others waited a safe distance from the crash site. After half an hour of silence, Tom braved his way back to the wreckage to retrieve the communications gear, only to find it badly damaged.
“Can you repair it?” Neil asked him.
“With San Jacinto’s machine shop, two techs and 48 hours … probably. Field repair? No way.”
“All right, leave it, then. Better to travel light,” Neil said. They were without a way to contact San Jacinto. The long-range comms on their handhelds weren’t operating – Tom thought they were being jammed – and the only remaining set powerful enough to break through any jamming was on the dropship.
“Where are we going?” Rafe asked.
“The airfield, right?” Tom said. “We need to contact the ship. And most of our people are there.”
Donovan shook his head. “Neil, we should really head back to the camp and make contact with whoever’s left. Sun Haisheng is still out there, and it is all the more urgent we get him off the planet.”
Neil thought it over. This was his command, sort of, though Donovan and Rafe weren’t beholden to him. He was fully aware Donovan had taken him under his wing, and he didn’t want to contradict his best advocate on San Jacinto. But he had responsibilities, too.
“I’ll figure it out. We have to head down this valley to reach either,” Neil said.
As they walked, they pushed aside the black fronds of the two-meter-tall ferns that covered the landscape. It was about a ten-klick hike, Rafe estimated aloud.
They were a half-hour along when a sonic boom cracked overhead. They saw a pair of ships descend to landing points somewhere near the camp.
Donovan’s eyes narrowed. “San Jacinto has only one other dropship.”
“Yes,” Neil said. “No way those are ours.”
“How many troops could those craft carry?”
“Between them, a platoon plus a couple of trucks, or a specialist unit, like heavy weapons, or drones, or maybe a single surface-to-orbit cannon. Whatever it is, it’s more firepower than we brought with us.”
They picked their way through the lush valley, sticking close to a stream. They heard cracks of distant gunfire.
The sudden noise caused something in the water to start. Rafe Sato, walking close to the stream edge, jumped and let out a cry as a dark shape slithered through the water.
“Fuckin’ aliens,” he said, embarrassed at his outburst.
“Hold it,” Tom said. He bent down by the water’s edge, watched as the three-foot-long creature stopped a few meters away. Then he laughed.
“That’s no alien. It’s a Chinese giant salamander. They were about wiped out on Earth, so they brought some out here and let them loose.”
Everyone stared at him.
“What?” Tom said in a mock-defensive tone. “I read the extended briefings.”
Sato said, “Fine. Fuckin’ Chinese giant salamanders.” He shook his head. Neil thought he saw Donovan’s lips start to curl into a smile, but he wasn’t sure.
The gunfire picked up again, growing into a fusillade. After ten minutes, it died down, replaced by sporadic shots punctuated by heavy booms.
“Mortars?” Tom wondered.
“Why are we walking toward this, again?” Sato asked in an attempt at humor. No one responded.
Neil had to decide: the airfield or the camp. It occurred to Neil that for all its regulations, training and emphasis on chain-of-command, the military “system” had given him almost no guidance on what to do in this situation.
Head to the camp and salvage the mission, or go to the airfield and see to the majority of his command and possibly contact San Jacinto.
He stopped walking. The others stopped, too, and looked at him expectantly.
The mission comes first.
“We’ll go to the camp.”
Rafe Sato grew angrier with each step – angry at himself for being startled by the salamander, angry with this clusterfuck of a mission, angry at Donovan and Mercer for reasons he couldn’t quite identify. He did everything he could to present himself as a laid-back Californian stereotype, but something in Mercer triggered his competitive fire. Probably the respect Donovan afforded him, for no reason that Rafe could see.
Feh. Why compete with this guy? Rafe looked him over as they trudged through the foliage. Brown hair, doughy face and gringo complexion. Luckless with the ladies, unlike Rafe. Sharp enough, but he lacked confidence. He might make a good analyst, but he didn’t belong in the field. And he’s somehow in charge down here. Way to go, Space Force.
The camp had been leveled. The solid structures were largely destroyed, although jagged cinder block walls still stood in places. The lasers had cut swaths through the tent city; the very air smelled charred. Small fires burned in several spots. Neil and his companions huddled at the edge of the fern forest to observe.
The Chinese troopers had already come and gone. A few stunn
ed survivors milled around, picking through debris and calling out for others.
“I hope Doc and Rodriguez are okay,” Tom said.
A moment later, they heard a distant buzz, growing louder. The few people in view dashed for cover.
Neil saw it first and pointed. “Han recon drone.”
“Remotely operated or on its own?” Rafe asked.
“Could be either. I’m guessing remote, though.”
It was a tilt-turbofan craft, about two meters on its long axis. It circled twice, then transitioned from plane to hover mode, and descended to begin a slow flight around this part of the camp.
After a few minutes of scouting, the drone turned abruptly and headed toward a still-intact wall about 30 meters from Neil’s position. Then, almost as if a puppeteer had jerked its strings, it rose rapidly and transitioned back to plane mode.
Someone behind the wall shot at it. At least one round sparked against its wing, but the drone picked up speed and flew away.
“I guess we’ll have more trouble coming. Maybe we should try to find Doc now,” Tom said.
Neil was about to agree when they heard an angry shout from behind the wall with the shooter.
“What the hell did you shoot for? It didn’t know you were armed! It would have probably left us alone.”
“Doc!” Tom yelled.
A head peaked around the wall.
“Tom?”
“We’re here, Doc! Get your ass over here!”
“Is Rodriguez with you?” Neil asked.
“Here, sir!” she answered.
