I glanced to my right and made eye contact with Peck. Counting down from three with my fingers, at zero I keyed the canopy’s close switch. The intent had been to show we were on the same sheet of music as everyone else. Peck did not close his canopy at the same time.
That guy, I thought with a sigh.
<
Maintenance issue?
<>
“Lead, Two. Sorry about that. Clearing a stuck cursor on my HUD. I’m good to go. Over.”
Lowering my faceplate, I gave him a thumbs-up as he closed his canopy. A touch of power gently pushed the Falcon up on her repulsors and forward toward the opening for tube ten. A yellow-suited crewman directed me forward with colored wands until my aircraft sat astride the indicator lines, ready for launch. As the door slid open, he stepped off to the side and snapped the traditional salute but with parade-ground precision. I returned it crisply.
Launching exocraft was really a simple process. Repulsors lifted the massive aircraft off the ground and easily provided taxiing capability. Once in the tube, the repulsors worked in sequence with electromagnetic rails. The tube depressurized, and I felt a soft tap as the rails powered up and the indicator lights turned green. Tube launches were supposed to be like an old steam-powered catapult launch of sea-faring carriers—but times ten or twelve. No sooner had the four indicator lights turned green than I was pushed against my seat at five Gs for a couple of heartbeats. The Falcon shot out of Elysium at more than four hundred knots then continued, nose up and climbing, the Martian atmosphere unusually bumpy for the morning flight.
“Lead, Two. On your four, close spread,” Peck called as we leveled off and started our planned route to the exercise site.
A quick look over my shoulders told me Peck was exactly where he should have been. The sleek Falcon glided through the air two hundred meters off my wingtip and about fifty meters back. Part of me figured that Peck would want to make the flight toward the objective in parade style. Formation flying was the favorite pastime of my classmates and an unrealistic indicator of flying prowess.
<
Alpha was a simple decision to go or not to go. If everyone was airborne, armed, and ready, it would be an easy decision that would set off a complicated chain of events that would unfold without much further input from me. Everyone knew their part—at least, that was what I kept telling myself. The gnawing sensation in my stomach wouldn’t stop. I suspected I felt like an expectant father or something equivalent. There was only so much I could do. On the horizon, Hecates Tholus appeared to have a thin wisp of clouds draped across its peak. One of these days, I’d climb a Martian mountain just to say I had, but until then, I had a few other things to do. I watched the timer tick down to zero and keyed button two, my command frequency.
“All Torch elements, this is Shark One Two in command. Alpha is go. I repeat, alpha is go. Good hunting. Out.”
Lily, get me Orbital Fire Control.
<
Whelan was on the radio. “Shark One Two, Warrior Six. We’re crossing the LD. Time now. Here we go.”
The line of departure was the last time I’d have any real say in the deployment of Whelan’s forces until we hit the outer defenses of the Valley of the Damned. There wasn’t anything to worry about. Whelan and his tankers would be where they were supposed to be when I needed them.
The horizon ahead gradually turned from sandy, rolling plains to rocky outcroppings. Two large peninsulas stood out in our path framing a wide, well-defended entrance.
The Valley of the Damned. A smile creased my face. We’re going to do this!
On cue, the Styrahi air-defense network came to life with a flurry of warning tones in my ears. “That didn’t take long,” I said to no one.
“Lead, Two. Radar contact,” Peck called.
The radio filled up with chatter as elements reported in to their checkpoints. It sounded like complete chaos, but everything was in place.
<
I keyed over to the frequency. Fifty thousand meters above me, racing around Mars in a low orbit, the Hamilton was a battle frigate bearing fourteen cannons—my first line of offense, so to speak. There was a brief hiss across the channel, but the connection light remained green. “OFC, preplanned fires. Target reference points one through six, full battery fire.”
The litany of the conversation was hundreds of years old and perfected to ensure that the forward unit and the rear artillery knew precisely what was being fired and when. It felt like a warm blanket on a cold night to the butterflies in my stomach.
“Shark One Two, firing preplanned fires on TRPs one through six, full battery fire.”
“Fire for effect, all planned missions. Confirmation Charlie one five seven, over.”
The voice came back one final time. “Shark One Two, fire for effect confirmed. Shot over.” Everything complete, steel would start thundering through the atmosphere.
I gazed up into the sky and chuckled. There wouldn’t be anything to see. My heart actually sank a bit. One of these days, I hoped to see orbital gunfire for real instead of in a training video. Thousands of guided meteorites crashing through the atmosphere like glowing fingers of hell would have been something to witness.
<
Shit! “Shot, out.”
“Splash in five seconds.”
I counted to five as the Valley of the Damned loomed in my canopy. Butterscotch-colored rocks towered above the sand by a hundred meters at the edges. The exposed granite faces looked like ragged teeth stabbing up against the sky. I keyed the button. “Splash, out.”
Splash was the term used for when the rounds fell. Presumably, it was because of the explosions of soil and rock that rose up from the impact sites. Pilots used it for confirmed kills, too. There were more similarities between the TDF and the Fleet than any of them really wanted to admit. Across the valley floor, the bright-yellow lights of more vehicles than I could count, most of them well hidden in defilade positions, flashed as Exercise Control determined casualties on the battlefield. A billowing dust cloud on the right caught my eye. The 73rd Tank Battalion was on the move and kicking up dust like a stampeding herd.
“Shark One Two, Warrior Six. Engaging now,” Whelan called.
Simulated tank bolts were flying across the terrain below as the Ospreys appeared over the edges of the valley and hammered the antiaircraft emplacements. A sea of yellow lights erupted as the first Devastator wave crashed into the line of troops below. The enemy was taking a serious beating as Whelan pressed into their outer line with speed and coordinated fires, punching wide holes for the tanks to exploit.
<
“Falcon flight,” I called. Originality was not something we’d planned. Falcon flight meant all of the Falcon aircraft under my command for the exercise. I hoped the term wasn’t confusing. “Engage.”
“Copy that, Shark Leader,” said a young captain whose name I couldn’t recall.
The Falcons zoom climbed vertically toward the descending threat. Hundreds of Styrahi aircraft streamed toward the planet’s surface.
Now a little surprise. I grinned. “Surprise. This is Shark One Two. You’re up.”
The Fleet corvette came in low over the horizon and trained her weapons on the Styrahi fighters. “We’re with you, Shark One Two. Shots fired.”
<
Thirty percent casualties is better than none.
“Lead, Two. We have company. Eight o’clock high and descending to intercept,” Peck called.
<
I knew what we had to do. “Warrior Six, I’m disengaged. You have command until I get back.”
“Shark One Two, need your assistance. I’ve got two vehicles in turret defilade to the front of alpha company that are pinching the line. Can you clear them? Over.” Whelan wouldn’t ask for help if he didn’t really need it.
I looked up into the chaos above. It could wait a minute. Whelan faced tanks that were dug into the Martian regolith up to their turrets. The effect was to cut off the attack, and if we didn’t take out those tanks, the attack would stall. “Two, on me. We’re going down among ‘em.”
Peck clicked his microphone twice. I checked over my shoulder and saw him swing out into a full combat spread. The snarky bastard actually gave me a thumbs-up. Diving to the right and descending, I pushed the Falcon as low as I could above the rock outcroppings on the western side of the valley. Lily identified Alpha Company’s position, and I could see the two Styrahi vehicles dig in. They’d positioned themselves perfectly to cut off Alpha Company’s advance, but I had the advantage, and it was time to get down and dirty.
“Select air-to-ground missile, and arm.”
<
“I have the left vehicle. You take the right. Follow me out,” I called to Peck. We’d reached a commit point, and I pushed the throttle forward and readied for the shot. The timer on my HUD ticked down to the best release point. At three kilometers out, the timer clicked to zero, and I fired twice, hoping my simulated missiles would find their mark in the exercise sensors. Given my angle of attack, it was like shooting fish in a barrel.
<
“Two, break right!” Peck screamed into the channel.
No sooner had I swung the Falcon into a hard climbing bank to the right, Peck screamed again, “Taking fire, taking fire!”
I glanced at the threat indicator and saw nothing to our right but rocks and cliffs.
<
Over my right shoulder, Peck reversed his turn to the left. At five hundred knots, he closed the distance between our aircraft before I could even blink. There was a loud bang as we collided, and the nose of my Falcon slewed dangerously to the right as I shot above the lip of the canyon.
Time slowed. I stared down on Styrahi gun emplacements, the tall, ethereal aliens watching me. One, with long black hair hanging out of her gold-adorned helmet, locked eyes with me for a long moment as the caution and warning system, “Bitching Betty,” screamed at me to eject.
The Falcon’s ejection system was a simple handle on the right edge of my seat pan. Midroll, the aircraft departed controlled flight and started to tumble. The horizon spun clockwise. I tried to time the rotation and pull the handle when the sky was above me.
Now!
There was a flash of heat below my feet, and the system detached with a head-snapping jerk. G forces piled on, pressing against my body from every direction. Seconds passed, and there was Lily talking in my ear, something about engaging a stasis field, as my vision became a tunnel of black and white before fading to black. For a brief moment, I could hear the chaos around me before total silence fell.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Neige felt like celebrating. One of her brightest young agents, a Fleet pilot trainee named Peck, confirmed personal interactions with a fellow trainee named Kieran Roark. The agent also confirmed that Roark was dead. The official TDF story was that Roark had been killed in a tragic training accident less than an hour before. Neige could read between the lines. When Peck sent a confirming picture of Roark before the training accident, Neige neurally consulted Chastity, who confirmed it was the man she’d known in Memphis. For a moment, Neige considered telling the girl that Roark was dead, but she decided against it. Chastity had work to do if they were going to bring in the second subject and put an end to the whole damned program.
Peck’s discreet confirmation came through just as Penelope Neige finished an appointment with the cartels of South America. Legalization of all recreational drugs, with commensurate taxation, had funded many Terran Council initiatives over the last two hundred years. As such, she had to occasionally listen to the needs of the providers, even to the tune of four-hour meetings that usually devolved into someone testing a new drug variation and asking the council to enjoy it. Neige always abstained, preferring a good French wine to almost anything else the universe could provide. Good news, as it were, usually brought out the best in her private collection. An opened and properly chilled bottle of 2242 Narrobian Red and a single goblet rested on her desk when she strode into her office above the Seine.
Perhaps a toast is in order? She grinned. “To long-dead soldiers. May they stay dead”?
Lighting a cigarette instead, Neige dialed Adam Crawley’s personal communicator, only to hear the same message as the last fifty times she’d tried to reach him over the past several days. Her internal questions about his whereabouts became staff directives to “find the Terran Defense Force general, or else.” Nothing turned up. He’d managed to get out of France without incident. Intelligence sources said he had returned to Australia, but since the plane had landed, there was simply no record of him even being on the continent. Perhaps it was a good thing. Playing her cards too soon could have adverse effects. That he’d lied to her for the better part of a decade would arrest any conversation they could possibly have. No doubt he had his reasons, but he was ill prepared for any of her possible responses. When Crawley surfaced, her teams would be ready to carry out her orders against him and the missing subject.
When pressed about whether the obscure neural connection was still active, the girl confirmed it was active but that it was not on Mars. That meant two things—one, Roark’s original protocol was on Earth, and two, Roark was really and finally dead. It gave her a little solace in the face of the missing second subject. The rogue walkabout had caused another gruesome scene at Mountain Home and disappeared with Terran Council property. They had failed to locate her by any means available. Crawley might know the protocol’s whereabouts, but even if he answered Neige’s calls, she was certain he would say nothing. Holding his cards close to his vest, even when the game was over, would be his response. Crawley was the only person who collected and kept more secrets than she had in her career. She would miss him.
She collected the goblet and poured the rich, dry wine. The late-afternoon sun streamed in across the Seine with the Pont Neuf and the Tour Eiffel in the distance. Her favorite chaise longue called to her. For a few minutes—thirty-two, to be exact—she could relax before her next appointment, followed by dinner with the Pan-Mediterranean representatives from Egypt, Israel, and Syria.
Her mind, though, was elsewhere. Her old friend, the one she was always smarter than, had taken advantage of her somewhere. His first viable subject, Roark, had indeed integrated successfully. Knowing that the Terran Council would euthanize him in favor of more docile, controllable subjects familiar with the ways of modern Earth, Crawley faked Roark’s death and then created a thorough identity for the man. However, simply having the man alive for the second time in a millennium was not enough, so Crawley pushed Roark into the Fleet as a pilot trainee. By all reports, he was good but constantly challenged authority, exactly as she’d feared.
Again, perhaps it was for the best that Crawley did not answer his communicator.
Yet Roark’s integration and subsequent demise were just the tip of the iceberg. The girl, whoever she had been, appeared to have been taken over by Roark’s original protocol. In the event of a subject’s illness or death, the protocol would complete reporting requirements and any o
pen integration requirements before termination. A protocol was designed to help the subjects, even when they could not help themselves. Yet none of them had ever attempted what Mally had done.
Neige smoked for a long moment, considering the effects of Roark’s integration, had he lived past the exercise on Mars. Roark had argued for, and been awarded, a change in the rules. General Faraa and Admiral Winters would have to answer for what they had allowed, but in the end, it wouldn’t matter. Roark’s concept read well, but it would never see deployment under her watch. The Terran Defense Force did not like risking human life beyond their models and forecasts. No human commander could possibly field a unit the way Roark described without a significant amount of risk. No human…
What if Crawley’s plans were meant for a self-aware protocol to execute Roark’s memories and ideas?
No. The protocol wouldn’t be able to see the battle space as Roark did, would it? Is that the point?
The damned thing had found a way to preserve itself on Luna and then download to a new subject with considerable risk. It wanted the chance to be alive, and chances were that Mally remembered more of what Roark knew than any of the advisors had considered.
That meant Roark, despite whatever made him unique in Crawley’s eyes, did not really matter in the experiment. The human element was expendable. Crawley would have guessed that a successful subject would have been given an untested AI interface by the Terran Council to speed development toward integration. So he allowed it to happen but deployed his ace in the hole, Berkeley Bennett, at the same time to emotionally manipulate the subject.
Bennett’s whole research package was designed to determine how to integrate a subject with a self-aware protocol! Marrying human traits with the ability to process millions of terabytes of information effortlessly had been Crawley’s goal. The best of both worlds.
Vendetta Protocol Page 25
