by Marko Kloos
I take control of one of the external camera arrays and point it toward Independence Station as soon as we have a clear line of sight to it. There’s not a single ship on any of the docking outriggers, military or otherwise. The section where Indy tore loose, the docking berth that took a direct hit from the destroyer Murphy’s missile fire, is half-obscured by the bulk of the station, but I can see buckled and torn hull plating and long streaks of scorch marks around them.
“Something isn’t right with the comms,” I say to no one in particular.
“Why is that, Sergeant?” Lieutenant Colonel Kemp asks.
“Do you have a connection on your PDP, sir?”
The CO of the 330th looks puzzled for a moment, as if he has a hard time remembering just what exactly I am referring to. Then he takes his PDP out of the gear pouch on his leg armor and turns it on.
“Connection, yes.” He taps the screen with the thumb of his armored glove. “But I am not getting any updates. Not even the time sync.”
Sergeant Fallon takes her own device out and tries it. “Same here.”
“I had that problem when we got here a month ago,” I say. “Network’s up, but it’s like it’s throttled to death. And I get a ton of comms chatter from a hundred different sources, but I’m not getting shit from the main comms relay. The one above Luna.” I point in the general direction of the relay, invisible at this distance in its orbit over the optical sensors. “That thing and the one above Mars route every scrap of comms and data in the inner solar system. We know the Lankies blew the other one up. If this one’s gone, too, comms are going to be all kinds of fucked up from here to Titan.”
“HD command staff, to the flag briefing room. Command staff, to the flag briefing room,” the announcement comes over the 1MC outside.
“I guess we’ll find out what’s going on,” Sergeant Fallon says, and gets up from her seat. “Nice of them to think to keep us in the loop.”
“May I come along?” I ask. “I know I’m not part of the command section, but . . .”
“Do come along, Staff Sergeant,” Lieutenant Colonel Kemp says. “Least we can do after you rigged us up with eyes and ears down here.”
I shut down the display and get out of my chair. Outside on the flight deck, dozens of troopers look over with interest as the senior battalion staff come tromping down the cargo ramp and start the long walk to the access hatch in the flight deck’s forward bulkhead.
“The situation is a gigantic Charlie Foxtrot,” Colonel Aguilar says, his Spanish accent putting a little trill into the r’s. “Nobody—and I mean nobody—is in charge. I’ve contacted Gateway Control, Fleet Command down in Norfolk, and the orbital-ops center, and they are all giving me different instructions.”
The briefing room isn’t as spacious as I had expected for a ship the size of Regulus, but it’s more than big enough for the four NCOs and two staff officers that make up the senior command staff and—in my case—hangers-on. Colonel Aguilar has his XO with him, a tense-looking female major named Archer.
“Truth be told, I’d just as soon ignore everyone right now,” the colonel continues. “Midway has started to load up her drop ships, but we have no place to unload troops. Can’t put them all into Gateway, and planetside . . . Well, take a look.”
He gestures to Major Archer, who picks up a controller and turns on the holoscreen on the bulkhead. We’re treated to a panoramic high-definition camera feed of the northern hemisphere. It’s mostly cloud-covered right now, but there are enough clear spots down by the Gulf of Mexico and the southern part of the Eastern Seaboard to know we’re looking at most of North America.
“Goddamn,” Sergeant Fallon says. “That’s a lot of heat.”
Even through the cloud covers, we can see the ember-like glow of multiple massive conflagrations in several spots on the continent. The NAC’s metroplexes have finally erupted on a grand scale.
“Half the PRCs down there are ablaze. We have riots from California to Florida down in the South, and halfway up the East Coast. Looks like New York–Boston and the northern cities are fairly quiet, but the South and West look like they’re in the middle of World War Four right now.”
“Bet you they had a bit of time to regret that they shipped off two full battalions of trained riot troops to the asshole of the galaxy,” Sergeant Fallon says dryly. “Looks like what was left wasn’t enough to keep a lid on.”
“I don’t know about that,” Lieutenant Colonel Kemp says. “We’re looking at the apocalypse. I don’t think we ever had much of a chance keeping a lid on that.”
“What about the task force we spotted at that deep-space anchorage?” I ask Colonel Aguilar. “All those cargo ships?”
“I think Colonel Campbell was correct,” the Regulus’s CO says with a resigned shrug. “I think whoever put that fleet together is already gone. So they won’t have to deal with that.” He nods at the holoscreen. “I sent Indianapolis ahead to scout out the anchorage again. Colonel Campbell says he left something behind, and he wants to collect it.”
“The recon drones,” I say. Sergeant Fallon looks at me quizzically.
“We left a mess of stealth drones at that anchorage,” I explain. “We left them on station and with their drives shut down.”
“What are we supposed to do now?” Lieutenant Colonel Decker asks. “Between us and Colonel Kemp’s troops, we have three thousand people sitting on their asses on the flight deck while that is going on.” He nods at the display, the clouds-and-fire tapestry of our home continent spinning slowly in space a hundred thousand kilometers in the distance.
“You want to have them jump into that?” Sergeant Fallon asks. “Be like trying to piss out a million-acre wildfire.”
“We can land at—” Lieutenant Colonel Decker begins, but then the lighting in the room switches from white to crimson, and the alert begins to trill.
“Combat stations, combat stations. All hands, combat stations. This is not a drill. I repeat: combat stations, combat stations. Commander to CIC immediately.”
Colonel Aguilar dashes to the hatch with a speed that belies his stocky build. We almost fall over each other getting out of our chairs, and follow him at a run.
“Status report,” Colonel Aguilar barks when we reach the CIC. “What the hell is going on?”
The tactical officer by Regulus’s situation table is white as a bedsheet. “Sir, we got an emergency signal from the picket we passed on the way in.”
I know precisely what the tactical officer is about to say, and from Colonel Aguilar’s pained little groan, I know that he does, too.
“Barroso is destroyed. Odinn is damaged and on the way back to Earth. Sir, they have Lankies on their tail. They must have followed us all the way from the transition point.”
“How much time do we have before that seed ship gets here?” Colonel Aguilar asks.
“Four hours, thirty-five minutes.”
“How the hell did we not see them in our wake?” Lieutenant Colonel Decker asks. He looks like he wants to either punch something or throw up, possibly both at the same time. The Regulus’s CIC is awash in conversation at a noise level that is unusually undisciplined for a carrier’s nerve center, but considering the circumstances, I’m surprised it’s not complete chaos in here.
“Because they’re stealthy sons of bitches who don’t show up on radar. Because you can only pick them up on optics at short range if you know just where to look. Because we were hauling ass at full burn and blinded our own wakes,” Major Archer says. “Doesn’t matter right now, does it? They’re here.”
“Or they will be,” Colonel Aguilar says, and looks at his chrono. “In four and a half hours.”
“We need to get all the troops and civvies off the flight deck and down to Earth,” Lieutenant Colonel Decker says.
“They have little chance on the ground against those things,” I say.
“They have no chance at all sitting in that hangar while those things shoot us to pieces, Sergeant,” he
says sharply.
“We have four drop ships in that hangar,” Sergeant Fallon interjects. “Get ’em warmed up and start hauling people down to Earth, right?”
“A round-trip from orbit takes a Wasp seventy minutes under ideal conditions,” Colonel Aguilar says. “Thirty people at a time. Forty or maybe fifty if we ignore every single safety regulation and risk a few broken bones. With only four ships—”
“We’ll get less than a third of them out of here,” Major Archer finishes.
The lightbulb that goes off in my brain is about the size and brightness of a tactical nuclear explosion. I have to restrain myself from bouncing up and down in a very undignified manner, but the idea that just popped up in my head makes for a better sudden high than a whole tube of Corpsman Randall’s magic painkillers swallowed all at once.
“How many drop ships can Regulus receive and launch at the same time?” I ask.
“She’s built for large-scale planetary assault, son,” Colonel Aguilar replies. “We can launch thirty-two drop ships simultaneously. But we don’t have those. Midway is already using hers for evacuating her own regiment. They’ll never be done on time.”
“I know where we can get a whole bunch of drop ships,” I say.
“Admit it,” Sergeant Fallon says in a low voice as we stand a way from the CIC pit to give the command crew space at the comms consoles. “You just came up with that so you can boff your cute little fiancée one last time before the world ends.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I reply. “No disrespect intended, ma’am.”
“No reply from Luna Control, sir,” the comms officer says. “It’s like nobody’s picking up. What the hell is going on over there?”
“I’m getting zip from the relay. Anyone know what kind of network the Combat Flight School birds are tied into?” the comms officer says.
Colonel Aguilar curses softly.
“We’re running out of time,” Major Archer says.
“XO, call flight ops,” the colonel says. “Tell them to get one of the Wasps ready. And tell them to do the fastest preflight they’ve ever done in their lives if they want to see another sunrise over Earth.”
Then he turns toward us.
“You,” he says to Sergeant Fallon. “Héroe de guerra. Take the staff sergeant here and a platoon of good troops. Race over to Luna and claim every single drop ship in the Flight School hangar on my authority as the acting commander of what’s left of the fleet. Anyone tries to stop you, shoot them twice.”
“Aye-aye, sir.” Sergeant Fallon grins.
The deck crews have already hauled the empty Wasp out of its parking spot and over to the refueling station when Sergeant Fallon and I arrive back on the flight deck at a run. Two thousand sets of eyes are on us when we come through the access hatch, with the older and slower staff officers a little behind us, still catching up in the passageway.
“Sergeant Benoit!” Sergeant Fallon shouts, and one of the NCOs standing near the tail ramp of our repurposed headquarters Wasp snaps to attention.
“Yes, ma’am!”
“Get first platoon of Alpha ready on the triple, full battle rattle. Two minutes,” she shouts.
“Yes, ma’am,” he shouts back. Behind him, in the nearby makeshift berthing area, the troopers of First Platoon, Alpha Company, are already springing into action without having to have the order relayed to them.
Behind us, the deck crew are pumping fuel into the Wasp as fast as the refueling unit will let them. I have a brief but intense flashback to another hasty refueling, this one on the flight deck of the doomed Versailles five years ago, shot full of holes and careening into the atmosphere of the colony planet Willoughby, Halley running through all the preflight motions with grim and focused efficiency.
The grunts are ready in a minute and a half. They assemble on the flight deck in front of Sergeant Fallon, armor sealed, helmets on their heads, rifles slung in front of their chests.
“Not bad for a shifty bunch of fucking slackers,” she says. “Now get on board. We have a few dozen drop ships to steal.”
The pilot wastes no time getting up to full throttle right out of the docking clamp. He banks the ship to port even before we’re all the way out of Regulus’s artificial-gravity field, and the troopers in the back hoot and holler like we’re on the way to some long-anticipated sporting event.
Outside, in the stretch of space between Luna and Earth, our task force has begun to segregate. The SRA ships have assumed their own formation around the carrier Minsk, and the NAC ships have taken protective positions around Regulus and Midway. Our drop ship banks again, this time to starboard, to avoid running into the hull of the frigate Tripoli, which has taken up station in the shadow of Regulus’s hull.
“ETA eleven minutes,” the pilot says into the ship’s intercom. “Still no reply from Luna Control.”
Next to me, Sergeant Fallon holds up her wrist and shows me the chronometer she has strapped to the outside of her armor. The little screen shows “04:21:33.”
“Four hours, twenty minutes until the end of the world, Andrew,” she says. “This may well be the day we both cash in our chips for good.”
“You believe in an afterlife?” I ask, and she laughs.
“Nice thought, but no. Although there are some I wouldn’t mind. That Viking shit. Valhalla?”
“Where the brave go when they die,” I say. “Fight all day, feast all night.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad. Hope they sort me into that one, not the flaming purgatory shit.”
“I think you have the entrance requirements licked for Valhalla,” I say, and outline an imaginary medal ribbon around my neck.
“That stupid thing,” she says. “I didn’t get that for being braver than everyone else that day. I got it for not being dead like everyone else.”
We coast over the huge fleet complex on Luna’s surface at a speed that’s most definitely well above regulation. Combat Flight School has its own little spaceport facility, with hangars for their training ships, and it’s as large as the main spaceport on New Svalbard. Our pilot comes in hot over the base’s large VSTOL pad, puts the skids down, and initiates the automated docking sequence, all without bothering to ask for air/space traffic-control clearance. We rumble through the airlock into the cavernous drop-ship hangar of the fleet’s Combat Flight School, where every aspiring pilot of any combat spacecraft learns the ropes. Inside, there are rows and rows of ships in different sections: Wasps, Shrikes, a few Dragonflies, and two or three designs that are either too old or too new for me to know, because I’ve never seen them in the fleet.
There are maintenance crews milling about on the hangar deck, and some of them look rather alarmed when the tail ramp of our drop ship opens to disgorge thirty HD troopers in battle armor and with weapons slung across their chests. Some of the deck hands hurry out through the nearest access hatches as Sergeant Fallon’s troops spread out around the drop ship.
“Well, there’s no shortage of rides here,” Sergeant Fallon says.
“You,” I holler to a pair of deck personnel in mechanics’ overalls standing nearby and looking indecisive at this unusual display. “Go and get whoever’s in charge here. And hurry the fuck up.”
A very short time later, a group of officers in flight suits come running into the hangar from one of the access hatches. All of them have pilot wings on their suits. The officer in the lead is a soft-around-the-edges major who looks like he sits in a chair much more often than in a cockpit these days.
“This facility is not open for regular flight ops,” he says as the group approaches us. “What are you doing here in full combat gear, people?”
“Getting ready for combat, obviously,” Sergeant Fallon says. “We’re going to need every last drop ship in this hangar and enough pilots to fly them out of here.”
“Those are training ships,” the major says. “They’re out of the regular fleet rotation. I couldn’t sign those out to you even if you had the authority to ask.”
“Training is over. We have a Lanky seed ship inbound. They’ll be here in four hours. There’s a carrier with three thousand troops in need of a lift. If you want to start playing protocol games, I will shoot your ass and ask the next ranking officer in this place.”
The major looks from Sergeant Fallon to me, the only person in the group who is wearing fleet instead of Homeworld Defense armor. “Is this a joke?”
“I wish it were, Major,” I say. “I really do.”
“You are now part of what’s left of the global defense,” Sergeant Fallon says to the group of pilots. “Authority of Colonel Aguilar. He’s in charge of that big carrier floating in space nine hundred kilometers that way. How many pilots can you get on deck in the next fifteen minutes?”
“We have twelve instructors left on duty,” one of the officers behind the major says. He’s wearing the three stars of a captain. “We’ll be lucky if we can find all of them right now. It’s 2100 hours.”
“Get whoever can fly a drop ship,” Sergeant Fallon says. “What about the flight students?”
“None of them are qualified yet,” the major says. “The senior flight have solo hours, but they haven’t graduated. It’s still a month away.”
“They don’t need to fly combat,” I say. “Gear up whoever can get a Wasp out of a docking clamp and ferry it down to Earth. Tell the rest to take shelter. This is the big one, sir.”
“Sweet mother of God,” the major says in a shaky voice. Then he turns to the captain behind him. “Full alert, all hands on deck. Pull the qualified Shrike instructors, too. And all the flight deck crews you can find. Have the senior flight students assemble in the mess hall. Move it.”
The captain and two of the other officers dash off without even a salute. A few heartbeats after they’re gone, the base alarm sounds.
“Sir.” I catch the major by the sleeve of his flight suit as he turns away. “I need to find one of your instructors. First Lieutenant Halley.”
