Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast

by Jack Campbell

  Right now, all that the virtual windows revealed was the interior of the shuttles and the other Marines, but soon that would change. “Commander Nkosi, feel free to stand close enough to me to view my display. I want you to be confident that we hid nothing from you.”

  “Thank you, Admiral.” Nkosi looked around the bridge of the battle cruiser, one hand reaching to touch the rough edges of Geary’s fleet command seat. Geary remembered being startled himself at such rough edges on Dauntless, the marks of a ship built as quickly as possible with the expectation that it would soon be destroyed in battle. “I have never seen a purely military ship before. A true warship. It looks like what it is. An instrument of war.”

  Geary was pondering a reply when an alert flashed on his display. “Here they go.”

  The Marines were standing up and forming lines facing the hatches leading to each shuttle’s exit ramp. Inside the confines of the shuttles, the Marines in their battle armor moved with slow, careful grace, like elephants around stacks of eggs still in their shells. “How much damage could they do to a shuttle interior if they bumped into it or hit it by mistake?” Nkosi asked.

  Desjani shrugged. “How hard do they hit and where do they hit? It’s not usually any problem. Our Marines actually take dance classes to learn how to move like that, to avoid hitting things by accident, you know.”

  “I did not know.”

  On the window for each Marine, Geary could see all of the data that Marine was being shown on his or her helmet display. External pressure readings were dropping rapidly as the shuttles pumped out the air in their passenger decks. As the readings hit zero, the hatches swung open, revealing the shuttle ramps leading downward a short distance before ending against the black nothingness of space. Europa was below them, unable to be seen from this angle. The great bannered spectacle of Jupiter itself was almost directly above and also couldn’t be seen.

  “Go,” Gunnery Sergeant Orvis commanded.

  The Marines shuffled forward, heading down the ramp, until the first in line reached the end and stepped off with a small leap to get clear. The next followed two seconds later, then the next, then the next, until every Marine was dropping through the very thin wisps of Europa’s atmosphere. Dropping toward the most fearsome place in human-inhabited space.

  Some of the Marines looked down as they fell kilometer after kilometer, tipping themselves forward until snarls from Orvis or one of the other Marine sergeants or corporals brought them straight again. On their displays, a small fragment of a sphere marked the surface they were plummeting toward, along with a number helpfully counting down the rapidly diminishing distance to that surface.

  The images jerked as the assist jets began kicking in on the Marines, the thrust still gentle, just enough to control the descent. Even though the Marines were all looking straight ahead as they dropped feetfirst, more and more of the edge of Europa’s horizon was appearing within their vision. “How can something so pretty feel so ugly?” one Marine whispered across the comm circuit linking them together.

  “Yeah,” another answered. “Like that lance corporal you used to date. What was her name again?”

  A chorus of low laughter was cut short by Gunnery Sergeant Orvis. “Stow it! Eyes and heads on the mission!”

  “They are nervous,” Commander Nkosi commented. “I recognize that sort of talk. It is comforting to realize you people from the stars are not all that different from us.”

  “That’s comforting?” Geary asked.

  “Perhaps it should not be,” Nkosi admitted.

  Geary had focused his display on the drop zone, so by looking to one side away from the views from the Marine armor, he could see a segment of Europa’s surface, the stealth craft resting on it, and the gently curving lines marking the projected paths of the falling Marines.

  “Should we deploy chaff?” Corporal Maya asked Orvis, using the generic term for materials and devices that confused detection and aiming.

  “Negative. If they haven’t spotted us, we don’t want to attract their attention, and if they have seen us, we don’t want to advertise that we’re coming in on a combat footing.”

  “How could they not see us, Gunny?” a private asked.

  “If they’re not looking,” Orvis explained. “Did you apes listen to the predrop brief? The last thing those guys on the surface expect is for us to drop in, so even though we don’t have stealth gear, we might still achieve surprise.”

  “What if we don’t?”

  “Then I’ll tell the Admiral you were upset about getting shot at and sing you a lullaby to help you sleep when we get back to the ship! Everybody shut up and prep for landing! Weapons tight!”

  Geary had kept one eye on the grounded stealth craft, watching for signs that those inside it had spotted the Marines and were preparing to fire. But as the Marines dropped the final kilometer to the surface, their assist jets braking them hard at the last possible moment, no reaction could be seen on the craft.

  Watching the stress readings that jumped into red on the helmet display of every Marine, Geary winced in sympathy at the forces they were enduring as the jets labored at full thrust to slow their fall.

  “If something goes wrong, will they break through the ice?” Senator Sakai asked.

  “No, sir,” Geary said. “The ice sheets are too thick and too hard. If the jets on any of the Marines fail, they will crater on the surface. It will crack the surrounding ice, but not enough to shatter or hole it.” It all sounded so clinical when describing it, as if such a crater would not be the grave marker of a Marine who could not possibly survive such an impact. But he thought they were already past that point, the Marines’ falls slowed enough that they could survive the impact if their jets failed now.

  Orvis hit the ice hard enough to create some fine cracks under his armored boots. The gunnery sergeant tottered on his feet, facing the stealth craft, his weapon aimed and ready. He slid out his right foot to maintain his balance instead of following the normal practice of bending into a roll that would have ended up with him lying prone on the ice in a less exposed position. “Everybody remember to stay on your feet and minimize contact with the surface!”

  All around him, the rest of the platoon landed in a staggered series of similar wobbly stances. None fell even though two had to take a few rushed steps to keep from losing their balance. Europa’s extremely thin atmosphere could not generate any winds or resistance capable of pushing the Marines off their trajectories, so they had landed in almost perfect alignment, forming two bent lines around the sides of the craft.

  Geary could see dozens of different views of the scene, each from one of the Marines. On the side with the ridge, the Marines were slightly higher and had a marginally different view of the stealth craft, but, otherwise, the views were similar. The surface ice of Europa here was darkened by minerals to a light khaki color and scored by low ridges and lines. The stealth craft had been brought to rest near a low, curving ridge that offered as much cover as could be found anywhere on the surface. It was small in relation to Dauntless, only perhaps three times the size of one of the battle cruiser’s shuttles. From this close, however, the craft was impossible to miss, a smooth, curving shape rising above the skyline. The sky itself was as black as space, the atmosphere being too thin to catch sunlight, but the landscape was eerily lit by the faint light of Sol and the light reflected from the huge many-banded globe of Jupiter that dominated the view above this side of Europa.

  “Move out!” The last Marine had barely come to a stop when Orvis called out the command and began running toward the spacecraft, along with half of the other Marines on each side. He and the others covered about a third of the distance to the craft, then stopped, weapons aimed and ready. Behind them, the other half of the platoon dodged forward, running through the area where their comrades now stood, covering the charge.

  The sensors on the Marines’ combat
armor worked automatically and efficiently, scanning the spacecraft and identifying even subtle surface features. On the Marines’ helmet displays, markers sprang to life over the image of the ship, designating various kinds of sensors, a few weapons designed for space combat, and maneuvering thrusters.

  “Admiral, either we’ve achieved surprise, or they’re waiting for us in there,” Orvis reported.

  Geary nodded from habit even though the gesture couldn’t be seen by the Marine sergeant. “Make sure they can’t lift. We can’t afford to have them run.”

  “Yes, sir. Second Squad, Fourth Squad,” Orvis called out as he dashed forward again. “Attack plan Alpha. Take out all assigned targets.”

  Ten Marines on one side of the ship halted, their weapons steadying before opening fire, as did ten Marines on the other side. The spacecraft’s maneuvering thrusters were knocked out in a rapid series of shots that crippled the spacecraft’s ability to control its movement if it tried to lift. Shoulder-fired weapons sent projectiles into the craft’s single main propulsion unit at the aft end, doing enough damage to the external components to render the drive useless but not enough harm to threaten catastrophic failure of the drive components inside the hull.

  Only seconds had gone by as the stealth craft was permanently grounded. The Marines who had continued running forward with Orvis were once again coming to a halt and raising their own weapons. “First Squad, Third Squad, engage assigned targets.”

  Energy pulses and projectiles from the Marine rifles slammed into the few weapons visible on the hull, destroying the external portions or sealing firing ports. Sensors on the spacecraft’s outer hull were also knocked out by carefully aimed shots. “They’re grounded, helpless, and blind, Admiral,” Gunnery Sergeant Orvis reported.

  “Good.” Geary looked toward Desjani, who shook her head to indicate that no communications had been received from the stealth craft. Very likely the external transmitters on the craft had just been destroyed by the Marines, so if nothing had been heard before now, the kidnappers had lost their chance to try to negotiate. Nonetheless, he felt a strange reluctance to issue the next command, a hesitation that vanished in a flare of anger at the fools on the stealth craft who had made this necessary. “Get inside and finish the job.” He could feel the weight of those words, as if they had real mass that settled on him and came to rest in his chest.

  “Yes, sir. First Squad, Third Squad—”

  “Gunny! There’s something under the air lock on this side!”

  Orvis opened a virtual window on his helmet display that gave him a view of what Corporal Maya had spotted. That gave Geary a window showing Orvis’s view, with Maya’s view in it in miniature. He actually wasted a precious second wondering how to enlarge it before mentally slapping himself and just looking directly at his own view from Maya’s armor.

  The image tightened and grew within the window as Maya magnified her view. “Got a body, Gunny,” she reported.

  A body? Geary heard a sharp intake of breath from someone on the bridge, but otherwise a tense silence had fallen.

  “I don’t see a suit,” Orvis noted.

  “Ain’t one,” Maya said tersely. “IR shows body temp matching surface temp. Must be frozen solid. Body is flat, but arms are locked into position slightly elevated.”

  “Been out here a little while, then,” Orvis commented. “Sounds like whoever it was died while trying to climb back to the hatch and fell already half-frozen. Get in close while we cover you.”

  Maya flitted forward, her armor’s sensors scanning the body for any signs of booby traps. Geary almost flinched again as he saw the object closer up. A woman, wearing only lightweight coveralls, lay splayed on her back on the ice of Europa, her body already frozen as hard as the ice beneath it. Her face, distorted by death and the physical damage caused by Europa’s surface environment, was only partly visible beneath a coating of frost and icy strands of hair.

  Geary stared at the image, trying to make out if the face was that of Lieutenant Castries. Had the hostage-takers decided that at least one of the Alliance officers had outlived her usefulness? Had they decided there was no sense in keeping alive another mouth to feed, and used a cruel and vicious means of disposing of her? Was Yuon’s body also lying somewhere nearby, camouflaged by death and frost?

  Had the Marines arrived too late?

  FIVE

  CORPORAL Maya crouched next to the body, not touching it and being careful not to let any part of her armor except the soles of her armored boots touch the surface of Europa. “I don’t think she’s one of ours,” she reported, her voice professionally unemotional. Maya moved her rifle’s muzzle with surprising gentleness to sweep some of the masking hair away, the frozen strands snapping like tiny icicles.

  “That’s not her,” Desjani said, her voice rough. “That’s not Lieutenant Castries.”

  “Did you copy that, Gunny?” Geary asked.

  “Roger, Admiral. We’re looking, and this is the only body out here.”

  “Air lock is right above me,” Maya continued as she stood straight again. “She’s got an empty holster. This wasn’t a suicide. Somebody took her gun and tossed her out. You’re right, Gunny. She was trying to climb back in when Europa got her.”

  Geary looked to another virtual window open next to that of the Marines, this one showing Dr. Nasr as he and the quarantine doctor watched the same events. “Doctor, is there any way to tell whether or not that woman was infected before she died?”

  “No,” Dr. Palden answered shortly.

  “Do you mean was she ejected from the craft because she was ill?” Nasr asked. “It is very hard to tell with such little data, but if the reports we have of the plague are accurate, if she had been infected and showing the illness, she would have been too sick to try climbing back up. Once the plague manifested, disorientation and weakness came quickly. The others may have suspected she was infected, or the cause of her ejection may be unrelated to that.”

  Dr. Palden frowned but did not dispute Nasr’s words.

  “They pushed her out alive,” Desjani said. “They wanted her to suffer. This was about thieves falling out, not the plague.”

  “I agree with your captain,” Commander Nkosi said. “I have seen people shoved out of air locks by criminals like these before. They even call it walking the plank, as if they were romantic pirates rather than vicious murderers.”

  Orvis must have reached the same conclusion. “One less for us to worry about. All right, they know we’re here because we had to knock on the outside of this bird to ground it. First Squad, Third Squad, commence forced entry. Weapons free. Take out any threats, but make sure you don’t shoot until you’re sure the target isn’t one of our officers. No grenades or other area weapons. This is a hostage rescue, not an assault. Second Squad, Fourth Squad, provide cover, and make sure no one drops out of any secondary hatches.”

  Corporal Maya beckoned to her squad, bent her legs, then jumped nearly straight up, aided by the weak gravity of Europa and the power of her battle armor. She grabbed the outer hatch and brought her boots down on a narrow ledge running along the hull just below it, waiting while three of the Marines from her squad joined her. The rest of her squad gathered beneath them. On the other side of the ship, Sergeant Hsien and his squad did the same at the air lock on that side. The squads commanded by Corporal Bergeron and Sergeant Koury held their positions, their weapons aimed toward the stealth craft, ready to fire.

  “Outer hatch is locked,” Sergeant Hsien reported.

  “Same here,” Corporal Maya said.

  “Crack them,” Gunnery Sergeant Orvis ordered.

  A private whose window data indicated a subspecialty in Demolition and Entry edged next to the air lock and placed a small box next to the external controls. “What is that?” Senator Sakai asked from the back of the bridge, jarring Geary out of his absorption in the events on the
surface.

  “It’s called a skeleton key,” Geary replied. “I’ve seen the Marines use them several times. They’re designed to open doors by any means they can access.”

  But after several seconds, the private shook his head, producing a dizzying effect on those watching the view from his armor. “No go. Our gear can’t get a grip on the software these guys have. It’s nothing weird like the Kick junk, but it’s too different from the stuff we or the Syndics use.”

  “Can you do a mechanical-override entry?” Hsien asked.

  “Trying.” Another couple of seconds passed. “It’s hard to read stuff even just under the hull’s outer surface with these stealth coatings in the way.”

  “Got a lock mechanism,” the Demo and Entry Marine working on Maya’s side reported. “Look about here.”

  “Where? There? Got it. Thanks. That looks close to our own designs. A mag field right here . . . got it.”

  Two Marines hauled the outer air lock hatch open while their companions held weapons at the ready. “Looks clear,” Sergeant Hsien said, peering into the small compartment beyond.

  “Open and clear,” Maya reported.

  “Fry ’em,” Orvis directed.

  One of the Marines on each side tossed a round object inside the nearest air lock, then joined their companions in huddling away from the outer hatch. Geary saw alerts flash on the display of each Marine as electromagnetic pulses flared inside the air locks, frying all but the most heavily shielded electronics, hopefully including any booby traps, weapons, or sensors.

  “Ready,” Maya said.

  “Ready,” Hsien echoed.

  “All right. Inside.” Orvis waited while some of the Marines crowded into the two air locks, and others jumped upward as space on the ledges cleared.

  “Got some lightweight composite armor inside the hull,” Maya reported. “Nothing on the inner door, though.”