Mavericks

by Craig Alanson

  The first volley of missiles were weighted heavily toward taking out antiaircraft defenses, concentrating on destroying the single active maser cannon turret. The missiles Irene had named ‘Wild Weasels’ quickly overwhelmed the maser cannon, saturating its sensor network with submunitions that scrambled the sensor data or directly attacked the targeting sensors with their own single-use maser blasts. Within its armored turret, the computer controlling the maser cannon was calmly concentrating on prioritizing targets and trying to see through the confused sensor data, when the thick armor of the turret cracked under direct impact of two shape-charge warheads. The superheated plasma of the warheads burned through the armor and fried the power feeds to the maser, rendering it useless and shattering the maser’s exciters, before it had a chance to even detect the pair of vulnerable dropships coming over the mountain crest behind the missiles.

  The second volley of missiles went straight for preprogrammed targets, flying violently erratic courses until the base’s air defense was knocked offline, then giving up any evasive maneuvering and boring through the air straight at their designated targets. The enemy dropship was exploded, to prevent that unflyable hulk being used as a stationary missile or maser cannon platform. Missiles plunged into the base housing, killing all the guards who were still asleep or racing out of warm beds to react to the threat.

  With all primary targets destroyed, most of the last wave of missiles queried the battle control systems aboard the lead dropship, and were told to switch to secondary targets, then targets of opportunity. One missile, having already deployed its wing and opened airbreathing doors to extend the time it could loiter over the base, saw an opportunity. The base control center, considered both a hard target and unnecessary now that base air defense was down, had foolishly delayed raising the separate energy shield that protected it.

  ‘Well, ain’t that some shit?’ the missile said to a missile orbiting in the air beside it.

  ‘Sloppy’, the second missile’s tiny yet intelligent brain responded over the tactical network. ‘They are way too slow.’

  ‘I hate sloppy soldiers,’ the first missile declared. ‘I bet their bunks are unmade and their footlockers are unlocked. If there is one thing in this world that I hate, it is an unlocked footlocker.’

  ‘Damn, that defense shield is still only twelve percent charged,’ the second missile noted with surprise and disgust. ‘Hey, I have an idea.’

  The pair of missiles linked their targeting data, shed their wings and closed their airbreathing ducts. Gouts of white-hot flame scorched the air behind them as they plunged downward, zipping through the strengthening energy shield as if it weren’t there at all and detonating their warheads on wide-dispersal pattern.

  The brains of the two guards did not even have time to think ‘damn this sucks’ before they became dark stains on a wall, just prior to that wall being churned into vapor. Ironically, the original assault plan had called for leaving the control center untouched in the initial phase, because the attack planners had assumed the powerful energy shield would be active. The slow reaction of the guards prevented them from living long enough to see who had hit them.

  Surgun Jates tensed, poised at the back ramp of the second dropship. The ramp was already opening as the craft first dropped sickeningly in a high-speed descent, then stood on its nose with forward thrusters firing to slow its progress as the ground rushed up to meet it. He felt the floor tilt and he was grateful for the strong restraints that held him securely, as his powered skinsuit legs absorbed the strain of the ship flaring to land. Jates knew his genetically-enhanced body could take Gee forces that would render a human unconscious; his concern was that he could not complete the task alone and the Jeraptha was needed for breaking into the research core. That left humans as his only assistance and he was not confident as he glanced at the biosigns in a corner of his visor. All three of his team members were showing high heartrates, dangerous blood pressure and were fluttering on the verge of unconsciousness. He noted two of them were slumping against their restraints, temporarily useless. The three sergeants did not appear to be capable of performing the mission, but Jates reminded himself the warrior caste had been hurt very badly, twice, when they underestimated humans.

  Then he had no more time for worry, because the ramp was fully open and the ground was in sight. While the dropship was still five meters in the air, he popped free of the restraints and leaped out, diving headfirst through the opening then flipping to fall feet-first, trusting the skinsuit and his enhanced bone structure and muscles to survive the fall.

  He hit hard and rolled in a well-practiced maneuver, the skinsuit steadying him and helping flip him upright. As soon as his boots contacted the ground, he was running with power-boosted strides, keeping low as time in the air between strides was time his legs could not propel him forward. The crater made by the missile that had cut the datalink to the research compound was in front of him by another forty meters, according to the glowing numbers at the bottom right of his helmet visor. An idle part of his brain told him forty meters in the common human measurements the team used was thirty five latrans in Kristang terms, a bit of trivia that became useless as his boots skidded and brought him to a halt at the blackened lip of the crater. The shape-charge warhead had focused its explosive energy downward to slice the buried cable so the lip of the crater was only eight meters across, but smoke and dust obscured even the enhanced vision provided by his helmet, and the crumbly dry sand the base was built on was already sliding down to fill in the hole. He pulled a compression grenade off his belt, checking to verify it was still on its lowest-power setting, pressed the button with a thumb and dropped it in the hole. There was a blast of air but no shrapnel so he did not bother to duck out of the way or even flinch, knowing the Ruhar skinsuit and helmet would protect him.

  The blast momentarily cleared the air in the hole, creating a vacuum that was quickly erased by inrushing air that swirled with even more dust and smoke. That did not matter as Jates’ helmet sensor had built an accurate picture of the hole during the split-second his vision had been clear. “We have a problem!” He announced over the tactical circuit.

  “What is it?” Jesse asked as he skidded to a stop behind Jates almost too quickly, needing the Verd-Kris to steady him from toppling into the hole. Jates said nothing about the human’s clumsiness, merely flexing his ankles to hop down into the dust-obscured hole. “Oh, shit,” Jesse exclaimed as his visor fed him the synthetic view Jates had acquired. The missile had impacted at a junction where sometime after the base was built, someone had spliced in a cable at a right angle, running back to a building behind Jesse. The junction was not a problem, the problem was someone had the bright idea to protect the splice by encasing it in a block of some hard ceramic material. Pieces of the ceramic had flaked away and there were pockmarks on the side where the warhead had exploded, but the hard block was not cracked. “What about-”

  “Can we blow it apart?” Shauna asked behind him, already unslinging her backpack that contained a mix of explosive charges that had been selected for various yields.

  “We can try it,” Dave suggested.

  “Darlin’, no, not this time,” Jesse declared as he slid down into hole on his backside, the skinsuit automatically stiffening to protect him from cuts and scrapes.

  “I only blew up one island, Jesse, this is not fun-”

  “I’m all for blowing shit up but we don’t have time,” Jesse cut her off. “Jates, this thing can’t be that big, I can see the cable coming in from the side and it looks to me it’s not as thick as my arm is long. Can we just pull it away?”

  Jates had his gloves gripping the block on top, and had been using his suit’s power to nudge the block back and forth while the humans argued. His intent had been to judge the block’s size by his ability to move it so they could scale explosives appropriately, he had not thought of simply moving the block out of the way. The human called ‘Jesse’ or ‘Cornpone’ had a point, they had
precious little time before the data buffers overflowed. “Sergeant Colter, we can try. I will take this side.”

  Jesse grunted and strained to dig his gloved fingertips into the hard ceramic until he could see it was no use, he had to rely on the gecko-like grip of the gloves. Even they slipped and he fell backwards just as the block began to move. “I can’t get a grip, it’s too smooth,” he spat in frustration.

  Jates agreed without words, flexing his gloves that also had failed to gain a purchase.

  “Twenty eight seconds, guys,” Dave warned and just then, inspiration struck him. “Jates, Jesse, duck down,” he warned as he fell onto the block, feeling it rock beneath him. Pulling his rifle out of the sling, he selected explosive-tipped flechettes and shouted “Fire in the hole! Ow! Shit!”

  The explosive rounds barely had time to arm themselves after they left the gun barrel, as Dave had the muzzle almost too close to the block. Sharp chips of ceramic pelted his legs, faceplate and worst of all, the crotch of his skinsuit. He was saved only because the rifle had communicated with the suit, so the suit’s computer stiffened the skin before the first round left the barrel. “Ow! Uh, Goddamn it.”

  “Come on, Ski, quit whinin’,” Jesse grunted as he grabbed his friend’s legs and pulled him down to tumble awkwardly into the hole behind Jesse. He felt for a handhold blasted by the rifle and found several. “Got a grip now!”

  “Yes,” Jates acknowledged and dug three fingers into cracks caused by the rifle rounds. “Three, two, one, pull.”

  The heavy block did not move at all, then it moved all at once as it lost its grip on the soil around it. Jesse and Jates fell backward on top of Dave and the block toppled over onto all three of them.

  “Don’t you guys move!” Shauna ordered. “I see the end of the cable exposed, I’m reaching down for it.”

  “Thirteen seconds,” Dave reported unseen from the bottom of the pile.

  “I know,” Shauna snapped with irritation, tossing aside her pack to get access to the only thing she needed right then, a data transmitter the size and shape of a golf ball. The ball had a hole, which Shauna carefully fitted the cable end into. Except the damned frayed cable caught on the lip of the hole and refused to go in. “Gotta cut a fresh end,” she pulled a knife off her belt and, holding the golf ball firmly but carefully, sliced through the cable to create a clean end. She dropped the knife and breathlessly threaded the cable into the hole of the golf ball. Instantly, her visor lit up to report a solid connection. “Got it! Colonel Perkins, we have a connection. Our fake sensor data is flowing through the cable.”

  “I see it,” Perkins’ voice sounded shaky, which might have something to do with the timer showing the buffers would have overflowed in eight seconds, if Shauna had not hooked the computer into the cable. Or it could be not knowing whether the core in the research compound believed the bullshit sensor data fed into the cable. The data they fed in was simply recordings of real sensor input, with the time codes adjusted, but the team had no way of knowing whether the core could tell it was being spoofed. “Good work.”

  “Great,” Dave gasped from the bottom of the pile. “Could you guys get off of me? You’re heavy.”

  Extracting themselves from the hole was not easy, as they could not simply push the ceramic block away without risk it might fall on the data transmitter. Shauna stayed holding the transmitter, wrapping a high-tech type of duct tape to hold it in place, while Jates and Jesse wriggled out from under the block, holding it up so Dave could crawl out.

  “Thanks, guys,” Dave stood up in the hole, brushing smeared dirt off his skinsuit.

  “You Ok, Ski?” Jesse inspected his friend’s suit, not seeing any tears.

  “Yeah, I’m fine, the suit went rigid to protect me. Problem was, my legs were bent at a bad angle down in the hole when the suit locked up, and I couldn’t move. Damn,” he glanced down at his thighs and crotch, where ceramic chips had scratched the tough suit material. “I almost shot my balls off. Not doing that again,” he reached up to pull himself out of the hole, his head clearing the lip of the crater and he used the chin of his helmet to dig into the crumbling soil. “Now we-Whoa!” He slid back into the hole as gunfire erupted, rounds biting into the crater lip where his head had been moments before. “We got company!”

  “I see them!” Derek held his voice steady as he swiveled the Dodo dropship’s belly maser cannon turret and sent withering fire toward a pair of Kristang who were shooting at the away team, stitching a line across the ground and slicing into one of the armor-suited figures. “Damn it!” Derek shouted and the maser cut off. “Bring us around, that damned building got into my line of sight.”

  “What’s inside that building?” Perkins asked from her console behind the pilots while her stomach flip-flopped from the tight turn Irene pulled the dropship into.

  “Nothing important,” Derek replied distractedly, concentrating on holding the targeting sensor on the gap between buildings where the enemy had been.

  “Then light it up,” Perkins ordered. “Away team, keep your heads down.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Derek cursed himself for not thinking of that. “On the waaaay!” With the maser exciters cranked up to full power, the beam blasted the building apart, smoke, fire and debris erupting skyward. “I can’t see anything. Away team, you see any hostiles?”

  “We can’t see shit,” Jesse reported as a camera popped up above his helmet on a thin stalk, showing him only a chaotic cloud of dust and scorch-marked debris raining down. No way was he sticking his head above the crater lip until he was certain the two Kristang were dead. “Ow!” He ducked down as a chunk of debris clanged off his helmet. “We’re getting pelted with building parts down here.”

  “The transmitter is safe,” Shauna assured the team as she huddled over the device, protecting it with her body.

  “Should I hold fire?” Derek asked.

  “Hell no!” Jesse snorted. Seriously, he asked himself? The infantry have their asses hanging out to dry on the ground, and the close air support is asking whether to expend ordnance? “Hit it again! Maser beams don’t cost us nothing.”

  Derek poured maser fire to saturate the area, in case there were more Kristang hidden in the cluster of buildings, until there was no cluster of buildings, only shattered and smoking ruins, pieces of walls standing by themselves, and debris cascading down all over the area. Derek winced as he saw pieces of building spinning through the air in the direction of the research compound, and he was relieved to see puffs of dust kicked up on the ground as the chunks fell well short. “I’ve got nothing left to target, Ma’am,” he glanced back to Perkins, just as his console flashed red with a new threat. “Shit! Irene get us out of here now now now now now!!”

  The pair of Kristang who fired on the away team had intended to kill the attackers who were assumed to be Ruhar, based on their familiar flexible skinsuits, the rifles they carried and most importantly the unmistakable outlines of their dropships. The two guards had hurriedly pulled on their old third-hand powered armor suits, ignored the multiple warning lights of systems that had failed or were on the verge of failure, and emerged inside the building closest to the away team by using a tunnel that was not part of the original base construction. They did not know why the attacking aliens had bothered to drop down into a crater, in a part of the base that was not at all of any importance and was not near any of the tunnels. All they knew was they had been ordered to kill the aliens with maximum violence and that is what they did, except the ‘maximum violence’ part was inflicted upon them by a dropship flying close air support. They died not knowing whether they had hit any of the aliens.

  And they died not knowing their part of the base defense was a decoy, a mere distraction.

  A quarter kilometer away from the away team, in an area of the base that appeared to be nothing but storage sheds, dirt and dust arced upward as two large buried doors swung open, revealing a ramp and in a flash, a large vehicle was racing up the ramp to slew sidewa
ys to a halt. If the Kristang had ever seen a Mad Max movie, they might have taken their inspiration to build that vehicle. It was based on a large truck that had been retired from service because two of its four motors were burned out and the frame was cracked. In its new role, the truck did not need to drive far nor did it need to maneuver over uneven terrain, it only needed to climb the ramp into the open. Once the truck reached the surface and drove onto a hard ceramic pad that had been set down to hold its weight, it stopped, and explosive pistons fired downward to bore into the pad, holding the truck in place securely and permanently. The truck was a one-use, last-ditch measure of desperation that had been slapped together from spare parts, partly as a sign of defiance to the clan leadership who denied essential resources to the guards responsible for the base. There was no funding to install the planned antiaircraft missile batteries, and no spare parts for one of the two AA maser turrets? Fine, the defenders had said. Screw the clan leadership, we can provide for our own defense, and so they did.

  The old truck was modified to carry an active sensor array, an energy shield generator on top at the front over the cab, a thick stack of heavy powercells, and on top in the back, a box containing six portable antiaircraft missiles the humans called ‘Zingers’. The Zinger was designed to be carried by infantry, but was a versatile weapon that had been adapted for use by aircraft and even ground-launch sites as sort of a cheap and short-range AA defense. Seconds after the truck’s wheels ground to a halt just beyond the top of the ramp, the launcher pod rose up on its mount, swiveled, and fired three Zingers at the closest dropship.

  “I’m going for the deck!” Irene pushed the Dodo’s nose down in a power dive, knowing she was too close to outrun the short-range missiles. To her right, Derek was activating countermeasures to confuse the missile guidance systems, and the Dodo’s defensive maser turrets began to engage targets. With power directed to the craft’s energy shield and point-defense masers, there was no energy available for the main maser cannons and their missile bays were empty.