Flying high cover above the base in her Vulture, Tutula had been frustrated and bored, irritated to be kept out of the action. She knew her part in the operation was vital and still she chafed at being inactive. Even when defenders attacked the away team, she had been forced to hold fire because the other dropship was in the way.
Now she had a threat she could engage, though her own missiles had all been expended. The last two missiles were loitering above the base, being held in reserve to deal with unexpected threats. With the other dropship fully busy fighting for its own survival, she retasked the pair of missiles onto the enemy truck, seeing them instantly shed their wings and streak down at full power. As she pulled her craft into a tight diving turn, she warmed up her maser cannons and began hammering the truck’s energy shield.
Irene dove straight away from the oncoming missiles, being careful not to make a turn that would cause the tail of the dropship to block a maser turret from line of sight to the missiles. The point-defense masers were on automatic and she had faith in their abilities based on her training and simulations, but the system was not perfect, and the pilot operating manual stated it worked best when the ship they were attached to flew straight and smooth. Yeah, she thought, try doing that when people are shooting at you. The Zinger was not a sophisticated opponent, its warhead could only switch between direct impact and proximity-kill modes, not having the capability to project its own maser beams and not containing submunitions or countermeasures to spoof defenses. Regardless, her trainers had emphasized that the Zinger could be a deadly threat to a dropship at low altitude. Even her small Dodo dropship was larger than a Boeing 777 and ungainly in an atmosphere. Fly, she told herself, fly the ship and let Derek and the automated defenses do their jobs. She aimed for a gap between two tall warehouse-type buildings, beginning to reduce throttle and pull the nose up.
“One down,” Derek’s terse report was delivered in a strained voice befitting the occasion. A maser turret had scored a direct hit on a Zinger, getting lucky as the wildly jinking missile flew into the path of a beam. The missiles had popped up after launch and were now above them, he knew Irene was hoping ground clutter would confuse the missiles’ sensors and he prayed she was right.
“Pulling up,” Irene announced, having no choice unless she wanted to pancake the ship into the ground. The maneuver worked as planned, between the countermeasures scrambling the Zinger sensors and ground clutter making the dropship hard to find, both of the enemy weapons temporarily lost target lock. One of them slowed and turned aside to get a wider-angle perspective, its momentary straight flight making it an easy target for defensive masers that cooked off its warhead, sending shrapnel in every direction.
The second missile never hesitated, as it had expected to receive sensor data from the missile that sacrificed itself. It did receive data from its own sensors, backscatter from maser beam that pinpointed the location of the dropship inside its fuzzy stealth field. Instantly, the missile resolved the target from the ground clutter and adjusted course, deciding to detonate its warhead on proximity-mode at the last second.
“We’re hit,” Irene grunted as alarms blared and red lights flashed in the cockpit. One engine began to tear itself apart, she reached for the controls to eject it from its pylon but Derek had already acted, and the craft jerked again with the sudden loss of weight as explosive bolts blew the pylon away from the wing. Irene almost lost control, the flight management system not wanting to do what she needed to do. Didn’t the stupid computer see the warehouse they were about to crash into? Going to full power on the remaining engine, she rolled the ship to one side to avoid the starboard wing clipping a rooftop as they roared past.
“More missiles inbound,” Perkins warned. “Tutula, we could use some help here.”
Tutula was having her own problems. Both of the missiles she tasked to take out the truck had been intercepted and destroyed by Zingers launched in quick snapshot that she had to admire, and now the truck’s missile launcher was swiveling upright to reload from the magazine below. Hits from her maser cannons only made the truck rock side to side, its energy shield deflected the maser pulses aside to sear the ground around it. She needed to get closer so the energy of her maser beams was not weakened by passage through the atmosphere. She needed to get closer without being shot down or she would be no use to anyone. “Coming,” she acknowledged and turned toward the other dropship that was wobbling and trailing smoke. Her only hope would be to draw attention of the missiles away from the crippled ship.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“They need our help. Colter, you are with me,” Surgun Jates ordered as he flexed his powered legs and jumped upward out of the crater.
“What about me?” Dave’s own suit was flashing yellow warnings that the nanomotors in the legs were not operating at full capacity.
“You and Jarrett remain here,” Jates steadied Jesse as that soldier landed heavily from his own leap out of the crater. “That transmitter must not be damaged or this whole mission is for nothing.”
“But-” Dave began to protest.
“Dave, cover me,” Shauna cut off the argument. “I’m a sitting duck down here.”
“Gotcha,” Dave readied his rifle and extended the sensor mast atop his helmet to pop up above the lip of the crater. “Cornpone, man, via con Dios.”
“Take care of my girl,” Jesse answered without thinking, then there was no time for thought as he dashed off after the Verd-Kris soldier.
Surgun Jates had a simple plan; hit the truck and hit it hard. He knew from the taclink sensor feed what the truck looked like and where it was, and he also knew from experience that an energy shield was weakest where it contacted the ground. The shield was designed to protect from threats above, it could not be strong everywhere. “Colter, go right,” he instructed as he came around a low building and caught a glimpse of the makeshift air defense vehicle. As he turned to run straight at the truck, there was a loud whoosh sound accompanying the launch of two more missiles. Jates held his fire, knowing his maser beam and flechette rounds would only bounce off the shield and alert the enemy to his presence. When he was less than thirty meters from the target, a searing maser beam from above struck the shield, deflecting from the shield and blinding the sensors of Jates’ suit for a long second. If he had been next to the truck when that beam struck, the backscatter would have boiled him alive despite the best efforts of the skinsuit to protect him. He crouched to his knees behind an elevated pipe, shaking his head and blinking to clear his own innate senses as the suit’s systems cycled through a restart. It took less than two seconds, during which time he was blind and exposed and useless, hoping the soldiers in the truck had been similarly blinded and unaware of his approach.
The sensors came back on abruptly, blinking a yellow warning about the outer layer of the suit’s shell being scorched and recommending him to be careful. “Be careful in combat?” He snorted in a bitter laugh at the Ruhar suit designers. Then he was up and racing forward, leaping over the pipeline and gaining speed. To his right, he saw Sergeant Colter closer to the truck and guessed that human had been masked from the maser blast by the building.
Jates used his superior speed to reach the truck just before Jesse, gesturing for Jesse to get on the ground and roll like the Verd-Kris did. As Jates hit the ground and rolled, his sensors went blind again and he felt a fiery tingling like he was being bitten by thousands of poisonous ants, then he was through the energy shield and most of his sensors came back online. A quick glance upward revealed no Kristang looking down for threats on the ground. Jesse wriggled through the shield, coming to his knees and shaking his helmet before looking over to flash a thumbs up gesture Jates had become familiar with.
Jates pointed to the missile launcher box on the back of the truck above Jesse, and spun to hop onto the truck frame behind the cab.
Jesse did not need engraved instructions on what to do, he figured the situation called for blowing shit up and doing it right fucking now. H
is rifle was already selected for flechette rounds in armor-piercing mode, he held the weapon above his head to clear the big truck’s frame rails and used the pop-up sensor mast of his helmet to get a clear view of the target. The Ruhar rifle did not have a full-auto feature, so Jesse depressed the trigger button repeatedly to send three-round bursts of flechettes into the swivel mount under the launcher box. The first three rounds penetrated the makeshift mount, locking it in place and skewing the box above. Subsequent rounds automatically switched themselves from armor-piercing to explosive mode based on sensor data from the suit’s computer, and the tiny but powerful explosive tipped flechettes ripped into the unarmored launcher box, tearing it apart like tissue paper and setting off the last three Zingers.
The truck rocked as the Zinger motors were set off by the explosive energy, and the damaged missiles rocketed unguided out of their tubes to pinwheel across the sky. One Zinger, so badly damaged to have its casing nearly cracked in half, broke apart while still in the launch tube. What remained of the launcher box was shredded and then the missile’s warhead exploded after it had thudded into the ground no more than twenty meters from the truck. The explosion knocked Jesse off his feet and sent him skidding across the ground past the front of the truck, his boots clipping a wheel along the way. Jesse spun as he slid across the dusty ground, one arm firmly gripping the rifle while the other flailing to halt his uncontrolled skid. The rifle was torn from his grip and his helmet bashed into something hard. Jesse slumped in his suit as he rolled to a stop, blinking and seeing only stars in his vision.
Surgun Jates cursed words that could not be properly translated. He had been about to fire rounds into the truck’s lightly-armored cab when the explosion knocked him off his feet and he had fallen heavily to the ground on top of his rifle, cracking the casing of the weapon’s control system. He tossed it away in disgust and extracted a sidearm as the truck’s cab door creaked open and the muzzle of a Kristang rifle poked out, mercifully at a bad angle to target Jates. The Surgun grasped the door with one glove and reached around to pump shots into the cab with his sidearm, emptying the weapon’s sixteen-shot magazine then tossing the spent pistol away to grasp the dead Kristang’s rifle and haul it out of the cab. He no sooner held the rifle’s stock when it was shot out of his hands, the rounds coming from inside the cab. Reacting, he reached back for a grenade on his belt and tossed it into the cab, slamming the door closed and using his weight to hold it there until the grenade detonated and the door came flying off, Jates with it. He lay momentarily stunned on the ground before popping to his feet in a smoothly gymnastic move assisted by the skinsuit’s stabilizers, the top of his helmet crashing into something unseen and making him fall again. When he was able to roll onto one side, he saw a figure in Kristang hard armor facing him and holding its helmet with both hands, just as stunned as Jates. The rifle the figure had about to use to shoot Jates had gone flying away beyond reach, but farther from Jates. For a split-second both soldiers looked at the lost rifle then each other, both judging they did not have time to dive for the weapon. The Kristang reached behind his back for some type of weapon, so Jates did the only thing he could do; he launched himself through the air to tackle his opponent before the man armed himself. Too late, a pistol came around toward Jates, who survived only by ducking his head and using the top of his helmet to smash the other under the chin. The blow made them separate and the pistol soared up onto the truck that was still rocking from mini explosions.
The Kristang howled and an evil-looking knife appeared in one hand, having slid down from a sheath on his forearm. Holding the knife for slashing rather than stabbing, he held his other arm out wide and stepped sideways to trap Jates against the truck so Jates responded by racing inside the man’s guard and wrapping him in a crushing bear hug. The knife came down into Jates’ back—
Where it snapped and slid away just as the Verd-Kris had known it would, the skinsuit having stiffened and produced a slippery hump in the area where the knife was projected to impact.
“Ruhar weakling scum!” The enemy soldier screamed, spittle flinging onto the inside of his faceplate to drop down against the repulsor field.
As they struggled, the enemy to break away and Jates to gain a grip on a weak area of his opponent, Jates eyeclicked his faceplate to go clear and he was rewarded by a gasp and brief hesitation by the other man. “I am no Ruhar,” Jates grunted, using the all-too-brief moment of surprise to get both hands firmly around the other man’s left arm. “I am true Kristang.”
“Liar! Traitor!” The opponent screamed and used the full power of his hardshell armor in a futile attempt to break free of the crushing grip exerted by the Ruhar skinsuit’s gloves.
“You are the traitor to our heritage,” Jates’ words came out in a bubbling gasp as the two spun around and slammed each other repeatedly against the truck.
“You are slaves to the Ruhar.”
“We are all slaves. My masters have better technology.” Jates butted a shoulder under the man’s chin then pressed a knee on his chest, ordering his skinsuit to exceed its safety limits. The two powered armor suits strained and whined, warning lights flashing in each visor until Jates gave a mighty jerk backward and the enemy’s left arm tore away at the weak shoulder joint in the armor, taking the flesh-and-bone limb with it. The soldier slumped backward as blood spurted out only briefly before a seal formed over the wound. Nano machines injected into the man’s spine kept him from going into shock, he actually tried to stand and face Jates defiantly. The Verd-Kris soldier viciously swung the torn armor limb like a club straight into his injured opponent’s faceplate; once, twice, three times until the man went limp on the ground, and Jates finished him by stomping hard on the neck joint of the suit, snapping the bones beneath.
“Holy shi-” Jesse was on one knee, his rifle barrel wavering as his vision had not cleared completely. “I couldn’t get a clean shot,” he explained.
“It is finished,” Jates wriggled inside the skinsuit, his real limbs and joints aching terribly from the strain. When the armored limb tore loose, his skinsuit was using so much power, it almost popped Jates’ shoulders out of their sockets.
“You done tore his arm off and beat him to death with it,” Jesse’s pupils were as big as they could get. “I mean, damn, I heard people say that before, but I never seen anybody do it.”
Ignoring the human’s comment, Jates turned away so he wouldn’t show the pain on his face, he feared he had torn muscles and eyeclicked to damp down the painkillers the suit was injecting into him, he couldn’t afford the brain fuzziness that the painkillers sometimes caused. “My rifle is broken,” he explained as he picked up the Kristang weapon.
“Uh, yeah,” Jesse carefully poked his head around the missing door to see the bloody carnage in the truck’s cab. What was left of the missile launcher box had stopped shaking from explosions, and the flickering haze of the energy shield was gone, a fact Jesse verified by looking up at the shield projector dome above the cab. The dome was peppered by shrapnel, and sparks arced inside it. “Uh, maybe we should get away from here, in case this thing’s powercells blow.”
“Good,” Jates gasped, falling to his knees, “idea.”
“Hey. Hey, man. Surgun, you Ok?”
“I could,” Jates swallowed his pride, “use assistance.”
“Sure thing,” Jesse knew how much that admission must have cost the proud warrior. “Up you go,” he said, not knowing what else to say. Jates put an arm around Jesse’s shoulders and Jesse carefully stood up to his full height then they took slow steps forward.
“I feel like I got hit by that truck,” Jates groaned.
“If’n it makes you feel any better,” the after-effect of combat making Jesse’s accent thicker than molasses in January as his grandpappy would say, “the other guy looks a lot worse. Hey, uh,” he eyeclicked to open the taclink as they shuffled away from the truck quickly as possible. “Colonel Perkins, that truck is out of action, you copy? Colonel?” He
shared a frightened look with Jates. “Colonel? Anyone?”
Irene had her full concentration simply on not crashing, as the big and awkward Dodo zoomed sickeningly between and just above buildings. One engine had been ejected by blowing explosive bolts where its pylon connected to the hull, the other engine was severely overheated, the rear control surfaces were sluggish from battle damage, the aft point-defense maser turret was still rebooting and they had an unknown number of missiles on their tail. None of which Irene could pay attention to at the moment, she had to focus on the most basic rule of aviation: fly the aircraft. Everything else could and would have to wait or be handled by someone else, until Irene could get the dropship flying steady and not wobbling as if about to auger into the ground at any second. The asymmetric thrust from the one remaining engine was trying to flip the clumsy craft on its back.
Derek forced himself to tear his eyes away from the cockpit display windows, to ignore the sight of the ground that was right there as the dropship skidded across the sky tilted on its side. He poured emergency coolant into the overheated engine, wasting hours of precious coolant in seconds and wishing the controls didn’t keep warning him of the totally obvious dangers. Yes, I know we are missing an engine, thank you very much you piece of shit. The missile threat warning hooting annoyingly in his ear was also unnecessary.
“Ok Ok Ok,” Irene felt her stomach muscles unclench painfully as the big dropship steadied at a twelve degree angle to the port side and she was able to gain altitude in a controlled manner.
“Not Ok!” Derek couldn’t wait any longer for the balky topside aft maser turret to make up its mind and finish rebooting. The damned thing was stuck somewhere in its cycle, he guessed some physical component had been damaged and the point-defense system was waiting for a reply that would never happen. “Yaw starboard thirty degrees then roll us another ten degrees to port.”
Mavericks Page 29
