by Rick Partlow
“This is not merely the most significant operation in my career, it may be the most significant operation in the history of the Supremacy. And as much as I appreciate the leadership abilities of Captains Jeffries and Singh, I am not going to trust the future of the Starkad Supremacy, not to mention the future of my career, to a couple of junior officers who’ve never once gone head-to-head with elite Spartan troops.”
She didn’t seem convinced, but she’d stopped arguing, which was good enough. Kuryakin pulled on his boots and strapped them tight, checking his wrist computer to see how much time he had left before the drive cut off and left them all in microgravity.
Ten minutes. Just enough to get down to the drop-ship.
He tapped a code into the security pad of a small locker set into the bulkhead and pulled out a pair of service automatics, the same 10mm caseless weapons the Starkad military had been issuing since before the last time he’d taken a mech into combat. He held them in the palms of his hands, feeling the balance, knowing they were identical but checking to make sure there wasn’t some esoteric sense of advantage to one over the other.
He sighed. He hadn’t even stepped into the cockpit and he was already indulging in soldiers’ superstitions. He flipped the pistol in his left hand around and offered it to Laurent, butt-first. She took it carefully, hesitantly, but with a firm grip, her trigger finger kept straight along the grip just as they’d taught her at the tactical range. She popped out the magazine, then checked the chamber to make sure a round was loaded, not trusting the indicator on the side of the receiver. Satisfied, she slapped the magazine home, then shoved the pistol into the chest holster of her tactical vest.
Kuryakin nodded his approval. He didn’t know if she would hit anything when the real bullets started flying, but he at least had confidence she wouldn’t shoot herself in the leg by accident. He holstered his own weapon, the feel of the grip in his hand like the caress of an old lover.
“I’ve never been in combat before,” Laurent admitted. It was an irrelevance; he knew her record and she knew he knew it. But he understood. It was her way of saying she was afraid without putting the admission into words.
“The way of the samurai,” he quoted softly, the words coming on their own as if they were spoken through him by the beneficent spirits, “is found in death.”
“Sir?” she asked, frowning with incomprehension.
“Something my military history teacher told me in my first year at the Academy. It means that to be a warrior is to accept the reality of death, not to treat it as a dreaded fate to run away from but an acceptable end to a well-lived life.”
He smiled at the young officer, a gentler, kinder smile than he’d offered in the past.
“Death may be an undiscovered country, but it’s surely more desirable than spending your retirement years fishing.”
“They just launched drop-ships and assault shuttles,” Tara reported.
She sounded normal, matter of fact; only someone who’d known her the last twenty years could have picked up the edge of fear.
“You could have gone down with the others,” Donner Osceola reminded her. “I wouldn’t have thought any less of you.”
“Oh, right,” she scoffed, a bit of her normal irreverence returning. “Like your overstuffed teddy bear here,” she gestured towards Kammy, “could fight this ship for you.”
“Hey now, sis,” Kammy protested gently, more as if he was going through the motions than from any real offense taken, “I’ve helmed this ship before in a fight. Like the time you were sitting in your cabin crying over that Shang shuttle pilot who dumped you, and we got hit by pirates just out of Kochi. Or the time you were sleeping off the epic binge you put on for your fiftieth birthday and that Clan Modi customs agent decided he could blackmail us and sent three of his cutters after us. Or…”
“Oh, sweet Mithra,” she blurted, “I know you’re as big as an elephant, but do you have to have a memory like one?”
Kammy frowned. “What’s an elephant?”
“Like a hairless mastodon,” Osceola supplied. “We still on course for intercept?”
“Oh, yeah,” Tara assured him. “The Valkyrian, she ain’t changed her heading a degree. She wants a fight. Both of us accelerating at one gee for now, and I figure she’ll try to reverse thrust and decelerate about halfway in to get more time on target for us with her beam weapons.”
“You want I should flip us and hit the brakes, too, boss?” Kammy asked him.
“Naw,” Osceola decided. “Matter of fact, when he goes into his braking turn, I want you to take us up to three gees. We need to draw this out as long as we can to buy time for those folks on the ground to figure something out. We need to take shots at him from max range with the railgun, rake him with the lasers as we pass. If we decelerate, we’re just opening ourselves up for a missile attack.”
“So, you think if we keep this a hit and run fight,” Kammy asked, his rounded face lifting with a hopeful smile, “we might actually be able to take them out?”
Osceola looked carefully around the bridge, and the rest of the crew there met his eyes and they passed over them. Nance was still at the Commo board despite an offer to let her go with the drop-ship. Ortiz was at the Engineering station, having taken the place of Cheryl Mendelson now that Kenyatta was the nominal chief engineer. The woman was an enlisted reactor tech for the Spartan Navy, so she had the training to monitor the readouts from Engineering and relay commands back to Kenyatta and his people.
That should have been it. He’d tried to get everyone else to leave the ship, but some had refused. Norris was one of the stubborn ones. Osceola knew of him, knew he hadn’t gotten along with Wihtgar and perversely resented him for it, even though the man had turned out to be right. Norris was another enlisted spacer from the Spartan Navy, a repair tech specializing in the sort of impromptu hot-patching necessary in combat. He’d plopped his stubborn ass down in the usually-uncrewed damage control monitoring station shortly after the drop-ship and shuttle had launched, and he hadn’t moved since.
They seemed the sort who could handle the truth, and his people deserved it from him.
“No, Kammy” he admitted, facing back to his old friend. “We’ll give them a good fight, the best we can, but the only way we’ll beat them is a miracle straight from Mithra.” Osceola laughed, not with the cynical bitterness he’d expected but honestly, openly. “Somehow, I don’t think Mithra’s going to waste a miracle on a beat-up piece of shit like the Shakak…or me.”
“I dunno,” Kammy said, only half kidding. “I mean, I’ve been a pretty good dude. You think he’d at least consider the fact I’m on board…”
“Just in case,” Tara suggested, “maybe we all oughta’ get into pressure suits while we got a little time.” She shrugged. “God helps those who help themselves.”
Osceola did the count in his head. There were maybe fifty personnel left on the ship and, with the extras the Spartans had brought with them, they should have just enough suits.
“Right.” He speared Norris with a glance. “Make yourself useful, Navy boy, break out the suits.”
While the big, pugnacious enlisted man followed Tara’s gesture back to the lockers set into the bulkhead near the bridge hatchway, Osceola steeled himself with a breath and hit the all-ship intercom.
“Shakak, this is the captain. Get into your suits and lock down all pressure seals. We’re sailing into the fight of our lives and whether we win or lose, we’re not going to let these Starkad assholes forget us.”
“Stirring,” Norris commented with dry humor that belied his looks and his reputation. He shoved a suit and helmet at Osceola and the older man rose from his acceleration couch to accept them.
The suit went on with rote motions, practiced tens of thousands of times over a life lived in space, gaskets sealed to the gloves at the wrists and the boots at the ankles, and the helmet came down over his head, the darkness of its edges shutting out the bridge lights.
He felt his breath catch in his chest at long-suppressed memories of days on end spent inside a helmet just like this one, of the stale smell of air going bad as the recyclers slowly ran out of power and raw materials, of the bodies floating aimlessly, trapped inside a man-shaped coffin.
He snatched the helmet off his head, holding it at his chest, trying to slow down his respiration and heartbeat, fighting the panic.
“Something wrong, boss?” Kammy wondered, eyeing him with the shrewd insight of someone who’d lived on the same ship as him for almost two decades.
“Nothing,” Osceola insisted, falling back into his acceleration couch, the helmet resting on his lap. “Just going to enjoy the fresh air while I have a chance.”
Kammy nodded, accepting the lie even if he didn’t believe it.
“Everybody set?” He saw helmets latching onto neck yokes and one thumbs-up after another across the bridge.
“All right then,” Donner Osceola said, settling back into his chair and tightening the restraints. “Let’s go show them who we are.”
Katy didn’t look happy. That was okay, though, Jonathan decided, because she was alive to look unhappy. She glanced backwards at her assault shuttle every few steps, as if she were afraid she’d never see it again; when she wasn’t looking at the aerospacecraft, she was glaring at him. Acosta, for some reason, was wearing a grin like the cat who ate the canary. Maybe he was just glad they weren’t going to get blown up by the Starkad ships.
“So, where’s this ship you want me to fly?” Katy demanded, stopping in front of him, hands on her hips.
“Inside,” he told her, motioning back at the tunnel entrance. “Terry is waiting there for you. It’s a haul and he didn’t want to go look for it without you.”
“You better be right about this, Captain Slaughter,” she said. “Remember a little conversation we had about not trying to keep each other safe and putting the mission first?”
“I swear to Mithra, we need a pilot—Terry told me so himself. And are you or are you not the best pilot we have?” She frowned, seeming to consider the question. “Anyway,” he went on before she could come up with another argument, “I have an ulterior motive for wanting all our aircraft on the ground.”
“Is that why you’re out of your mech and down here with us crunchies?”
The question came from behind him, but he wasn’t surprised by it or by who asked it. Lyta had been inside, arranging her troops for a defense-in-depth, but he’d asked her to join him outside when she had a chance. He did a double-take at the sight of her, though—he rarely got a chance to see Lyta in full battle rattle, and it was an impressive sight. The Ranger armor added bulk to her, the helmet and the spiked soles of her combat boots bringing her height above his. Her carbine was tucked under her arm, hand always on the pistol grip, and he had the sense it wasn’t from innate paranoia so much as a desire to be an example to her troops.
“Yeah,” he admitted. “There are some things I don’t want to say over open radio.”
“Well, while we’re sharing secrets,” Katy interrupted, jerking a thumb at Acosta, “it turns out Francis here is a spook.”
Jonathan couldn’t see Lyta’s eyes through her visor, but he had to assume they were as wide as his and staring at the copilot’s bland expression.
“Yeah, yeah,” he acknowledged, rolling his eyes at the theatrics. “General Constantine wanted an inside man to keep an eye on you. Are you shocked? Should I reserve a few minutes for righteous indignation?”
Jonathan had to admit righteous indignation had been his first instinct, but he bit down on it and used his forebrain instead of his hindbrain. It made sense and it made even more sense for him not to have told anyone. He’d been around Constantine since before he could walk and he knew how the man’s mind worked.
“You’re probably just the man I need to talk to, then,” Jonathan told him. He let some of the anguish running through him show on his face. “I’d do it myself if I could, but I can’t so…” He hissed out a breath. “How do I pick someone for what’s probably going to be a suicide mission?”
16
The yawning mouth of the tunnel reminded Aleksandr Kuryakin far too much of a Venus flytrap, a reward too good to pass up but with a grim fate waiting those who tried to seize it lightly.
“You’ve checked the drop-ships carefully?” he asked Captain Jeffries, knowing he was repeating himself but also knowing young Marine officers could be headstrong and lose their attention to detail.
“And the assault shuttles,” the man confirmed.
He was just another anonymously armored figure standing at the feet of Kuryakin’s Scorpion, a toy poodle yapping at the heels of the fifteen-meter mech. He waved an arm back towards the four aerospacecraft lined up end-to-end across the shore of the lake, only a hundred meters or so from where their own landing craft had touched down.
“The systems are locked tight and powered down, and there’s no one on board.” An expressive shrug, exaggerated to be seen through the thick armor. “I suppose they could have sent some people up the canyon to find a hiding place, but if I were asked, my opinion would be all of them are in there.” He pointed a finger at the tunnel.
“And you’re probably right,” Kuryakin acceded. “But humor an old man who’s seen one too many sure things go bad. Captain Singh!”
Singh’s Vindicator was ahead of his mech, standing just meters from the tunnel opening, poised like a sprinter waiting at the blocks.
“Yes, Colonel?” she replied. Her voice was as eager as the stance of her mech, ready to be sent into action.
“Detail one of your platoons to stay here with a platoon of Captain Jeffries’ Marines and guard our rear while the rest of us head inside. Leave the Arbalests; their long-range missiles won’t be very useful inside, anyway.”
It wouldn’t be a significant attrition of their forces—he’d called up two companies of mecha before they’d left on the Valkyrian and put them both under Singh’s command. As for Jeffries’ ground forces, his Marine company had been augmented by the reaction force platoon on board the Valkyrian, and if the man had any sense, he’d leave the platoon outside on guard duty so as not to mix up his command structure. He’d leave the decision to Jeffries, though, as he was not, nor had he ever been, a Marine.
Once he’d received confirmation the reallocation of forces had been achieved, he finally gave the word to advance. To Singh’s disappointment, he sent the Marines in first.
That’s what crunchies are for, he mused with the spiteful humor of a trained and experienced mech jock, to spring the traps and detect the mines set for the armor troops.
The tunnel walls blocked out the radios less than a hundred meters in, just as Kuryakin had suspected they would. It made the tunnel and whatever lay just beyond it a perfect place for an ambush. The possibility itched on the back of his neck, but he waited, forcing patience where none came naturally.
“What do we do if they don’t come back out?” Captain Ruth Laurent asked him over his cockpit radio, too young to have learned that particular discipline. “What do we do then?”
It took him a moment to locate her: she was standing on the grounded belly ramp of the nearest drop-ship, one hand touching the hydraulic strut as if she felt letting go would make her too vulnerable and exposed.
“It would be troublesome,” he admitted, “but not totally unexpected. We would send in a heavier force of Rangers, backed up by a platoon of assault mecha, and recon by fire, force them into open battle. It would be expensive, we’d lose more people, but we outnumber them too badly for them to win that sort of fight. But let’s not give up hope just yet.”
“The scouts are back, Colonel,” Jeffries informed him just as he was about to give in to Captain Laurent’s anxiety and start organizing the next entry force. “They reported no enemies detected but they discovered a huge storage area. I’m sending you the video they took inside.”
He could see the returning Marines spreading out to take up t
he gaps in the defensive perimeter around the mecha, except for the squad leader who’d made the scouting run. She was tapping at her wrist computer and no sooner had she finished than he saw the video feed pop up on his cockpit commo display.
He didn’t curse, though he surely wanted to. He allowed his jaw to drop open in shock and wonder because none of the others could see his face. The chamber was enormous, larger than any of the Starkad military depots on the homeworld, and filled from wall to wall with heavily armored machines. It was a toy shop for a mech jock, or for the ordnance officer who supplied them. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever seen so many mecha gathered in one place, much less designs he’d only imagined in his dreams, impossible doodles by a child dreaming of fantasy machines.
“We’re in the right place,” he declared with affected casualness. “The question is, where are they?”
“What are your orders, sir?” Singh wondered. He half expected her Vindicator to be dancing from one foot to another as if it had to pee. “Should I lead the company inside?”
She was beginning to wear on his nerves, a puppy who needed her nose swatted, and he wondered if he shouldn’t have given overall mech command to the junior of the two company commanders, Captain Byrne.
Gunfire erupted from off to his left, muted and distant through the filter of his cockpit, but experience and the mech’s audio sensors told him it was close by, friendly, and outgoing. It jumped up in intensity gradually but inevitably as Marines shot at phantoms, hoping to get in on the action and “suppress the enemy” even if they had no real target. Kuryakin’s eyes snapped to the camera view, searching not for the source of the rifle shots but for any sign of what they were trying to hit. He saw nothing, not on infrared nor thermal nor even active radar and lidar.
“Cease fire!” Jeffries bellowed. “Cease fucking fire!”
The order filtered through the company’s First Sergeant, down through the gunnies, and on to the squad leaders. Then the raging thunderstorm died down to a spring shower before spluttering away entirely.
