His touchdown was akin to an aircraft recovering aboard an old water-borne aircraft carrier—more of a controlled crash than an actual “landing.” Within a few seconds, Morgan and Loftis touched down within 50 feet of him, and they backed toward each other, surrounded by 19 armed MinSha troopers and the two anti-aircraft vehicles. All the weapons seemed to be pointing at Walker—both anti-aircraft guns included—even though he knew they were probably equally divided.
“You will now turn off your suits and exit them to surrender,” Colonel Diskayl said. “You have until the count of 20 to do so.”
“And why would we do that?” Walker asked. “I like our odds against you.” Over the laser connection, he said, “We’re not giving in to them. When I say so, Morgan, you have the anti-aircraft gun closest to you; Loftis, you’ve got the other.” He switched his monitor to infrared.
“Surely you have to know your suits are compromised,” the colonel replied. “Yes, you may kill one of us each, but then your suits are going to die. My command would like to take the suits intact, without the destruction the shutdown will cause them. In fact, they would like to have them so much, they have offered a healthy bonus for us if we are able to capture them. If you simply step out of the suits, we will share the bonus with you.”
Walker surveyed the infrared signatures until he found the one moving. Gotcha, bitch. He marked that MinSha as the target for the MAC on his right arm.
“I have two questions for you before I decide,” Walker transmitted. “First, which one of you is the second-in-command?” He saw one of the MinSha tense. It wasn’t much, but his suit caught the movement. Bingo. He assigned that target to the heavy laser on his left arm.
“I’m not telling you, of course,” Colonel Diskayl said. “What is your other question?”
“I would like to know the name of your third-in-command,” Walker replied while privately messaging Morgan and Loftis: “Get ready to fire.”
“Why do you want to know that?” the colonel asked.
“Because I want to know who to negotiate with after you’re both dead.” He switched frequencies. “Fire!” Both of Walker’s arms flashed up, and a round fired from each. Several rounds from Morgan and Loftis went through both of the anti-aircraft vehicles.
Before the MinSha could flinch, both of their leaders dropped with holes through their heads.
“As you can see, the problem with our suits has been corrected,” Walker said. “I never did get the name of your new commander, but if you’d like to tell your troops to drop their weapons, no one else has to die.”
There was a pause for a few seconds, long enough for Walker to start marking his next few targets, then the MinSha began setting their weapons on the ground.
“Now, if you’d like to step back from them, we can—”
“Staff Sergeant, look out!” Morgan yelled. “From the right!”
MinSha Fighter, Approaching Trigar 2-B, Trigar System
Frantically, Thorb looked at the fuel management panel. There was still electricity—the RAT was still spinning—and the gauges still worked. He still had fuel. There was still some in the auxiliary tank under the fuselage. There was also plenty of the oxidizer—the liquid oxygen—in the fuselage. The main fuel tanks in the wings were empty, though. They had been pressurized when the craft had been hit, and all of the fuel had bled out. He turned off the transfer from the wings and closed the valves, then opened the valve from the auxiliary tank and pressurized it—fuel began transferring into the motor!
He could see the ground whipping past on both sides of the cockpit and knew he didn’t have long. He pushed the start button and watched as the left motor ran through its start sequence. The fighter jumped suddenly as it hit the top of some tall plant—a tree, said the information in the download—but as the back end of the fighter started to come up, the motor roared to life. Thorb jammed the throttle as far as it would go and pulled back on the controls. The ground flashed in front of his eyes, and then the sky. He pulled back until he was looking straight up, sucking water in and out as fast as he could. He almost had his breath under control when the stall warning screamer went off again.
No airspeed? Why not? The motor was running wasn’t it? Yes. He looked at the indicator as the last bit of airspeed trickled off, then the fighter suddenly became uncontrollable, and it flipped over to the side and pointed its nose back at the ground. Within a few seconds, the airspeed was building rapidly and the fighter was flyable again.
Walker hadn’t trained him to fly in the atmosphere beyond what he needed to get out of the atmosphere to space. Why hadn’t it worked this time? He looked at all of the gauges again, then looked down at his foot-paws in shame. He had forgotten to start the right motor, and Walker had said he needed both to get to space.
Easy enough; he would start the right motor and go home. He pushed the button, but the motor didn’t start. He let go, then pressed it again. Still nothing. He looked up, and all he could see was ground again—it was coming at him way too fast. He pulled back on the controls until he was level so he could look at what was wrong. He pushed the start button two more times, but it still wouldn’t work.
He wasn’t going home.
He didn’t want to stay on this planet. While his world was almost all water, this one was almost all desert, with a few patches of foliage around the small water holes that existed. The tree he’d hit while starting the motor had been at one of these. The planet was as inhospitable a planet as he could imagine.
Suddenly, it hit him—he had to find Walker.
The tracker had gone off when the power went off, so he turned it back on. It flashed some screens at him for a while—Walker had said this was boot up, but he never saw any of the alien’s footwear on the screen—then the display came on. He was in luck—there were three of the Human’s tracking devices. He turned the fighter toward them, and it calculated the distance; he would be there in 15 minutes…whatever that was. It seemed like a long time, so he pushed the throttle all the way, and the craft jumped forward. The time rapidly clicked down and reached zero. They were somewhere beneath him…but he was going too fast and was too high and rocketed past them. He pulled the throttle back and pushed forward on the controls as he turned back—so many things to think about!
He got the fighter down to 1000 on the altimeter. He didn’t know what it measured, but it seemed far enough from the ground that he wasn’t in immediate danger of running into it, yet he still was able to see what was happening below him. As he came back by he saw his friends—their suits were hard to miss—but the enemy was holding them captive! The Humans were going to be killed, after all. He had to save them! He didn’t know how to operate the laser, and he didn’t want to accidentally shoot the humans, but he had an idea.
He turned back around, climbing a little bit, and then pushed the nose of the fighter down so it was aiming at the biggest concentration of the enemy. He adjusted the trim so the controls would stay where he put them, then watched as the enemy base got closer and closer. When he was able to see his friends, he adjusted the impact point a little—he didn’t want to hit his friends.
The group continued to grow, and he smiled. He was going to win this game after all.
Fourth Squad, Approaching Trigar 2-B, Trigar System
“Incoming!” Walker bellowed over his external speakers as he triggered his jumpjets. The MinSha scattered as the humans rocketed backward away from them, and the space fighter impacted just to the side of where the humans had been standing. Walker estimated the craft was going over 500 miles an hour when it hit, and the fireball consumed most of the MinSha and one of their anti-aircraft vehicles.
Walker jumped back into the devastation, looking for the SalSha, but there was nothing left of the fighter. There was nothing left of the MinSha in the area either, so he jumped back out of the crash site to where Morgan and Loftis were trying to gather up the remaining MinSha before they got any ideas about recovering their weapons.
�
��Did you find him?” Morgan asked.
“No, damn it,” Walker said. “It’s too bad, too. I was kind of getting to like the little mercenary critter.”
“Well, you can continue doing so,” Loftis said. She pointed and Walker turned to look—the cockpit of the fighter was floating gently to the ground under a triple-canopy parachute. The damned otter had remembered the ejection system!
The cockpit landed just outside the impact area, and the canopy flew off with a deluge of water from inside. Thorb crawled out of the cockpit and sauntered over to the group. Walker shook his head and forced himself to close his jaw.
“That was fun,” the SalSha said. “Can I do it again…after I’ve had a little more training?”
Operations, Main Base, Trigar 2-A, Trigar System
“Hi, Colonel,” Captain Anderson said as Sansar and Mun walked into Operations. “We just got word from Staff Sergeant Walker. They lost Corporal Smith and the space fighter, but are returning in the MinSha’s dropship. They report that the MinSha fighters were both destroyed, and the MinSha base has been neutralized.”
“Good news,” Sansar said. “Too bad about Smith and the SalSha. We’ll make sure the SalSha are well compensated for his loss.”
“The SalSha somehow survived the crash of the fighter, ma’am. He’s returning with the rest of the squad.”
“Outstanding,” Sansar said. “Have we had any word on our employers?”
“No ma’am,” Captain Anderson said. “No one’s transitioned into the system in the last 24 hours.”
“They’re late.”
“Yes, ma’am. They should have been here two days ago.”
“Damn it.”
“Any ideas?” Mun asked.
“Not at the moment,” Sansar replied. “There isn’t much we can do; we certainly aren’t walking home.” Sansar almost couldn’t stand it. She had information which could save a large percentage of Earth’s population from dying horrible deaths, yet she was stranded here at the ass-end of nowhere without a ride home. She wanted to walk outside and scream, but knew that wouldn’t have a positive effect on her troops’ morale. “Okay,” she added, “let me know as soon as we hear from them.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Sansar turned to leave. “Let’s go, Mun.”
“Wait!” a tech called. “Colonel Enkh! I’ve got a transition into the system!”
Sansar raced over to look over the tech’s shoulder at his screen. “Our employers are finally here?”
The tech tweaked his console’s settings before answering, trying to refine the data he was looking at. Finally, he said, “No, ma’am, it isn’t. It looks like a transport, but I think it’s a MinSha one. Its trajectory is a little off, too; it looks like it’s headed for Trigar 2-B. I’m definitely going to have to call it a MinSha, ma’am.”
“Shit,” Colonel Enkh said. “It’s probably bringing in more fighters and defenses for them. They’re going to get stronger, and it’s going to be harder to get out of the system when our employers finally do show up. I wish we still had the fighter so we could at least shoot them up a bit.”
“Humor me for a second, ma’am,” Mun said. “I’ve got an idea—it’s something I saw once before…it’s kind of crazy, but it just may work…”
* * * * *
Chapter 22
Outside the Dropship, Trigar System
Walker turned off his exterior cameras. You could only look at so much black before you went crazy, and he didn’t have time for crazy. He sighed and tried not to think of all the things that could go wrong. This mission was a lot more fun in the simulator. Mounted with his feet toward the front of the dropship’s wing, he couldn’t even see where they were going.
A window opened in Walker’s mind. Sergeant Loftis. “All things considered,” she said, “I liked doing the planetary assault better. Although we had to fly through more enemy fire, and we could have burned up on re-entry, and we could have gone splat when we hit, at least we didn’t have a chance of flying off into the black to die alone in the darkness of space.”
“Yeah, so let’s try not to do that, okay?”
“Works for me,” Loftis replied. “How did you get us picked for this anyway, especially since we did the planetary assault? Wasn’t it a different squad’s turn to do the dangerous shit?”
“Having done this before, I guess they thought we’d be less likely to say, ‘Hell, no!’ than everyone else.”
“You mean you’ve actually done something like this before?”
“Hell, no!” Walker replied with a chuckle. “The only time I’ve done anything this crazy was in the simulator, the time I was getting my squad leader quals.”
“Oh.” Several seconds went by, then she added, “I had hoped you’d actually done it before and were going to tell me everything was going to be all right. You know what? This was a lot more fun in the simulator.”
“I was just thinking the same thing,” Walker said. “Hey, Loftis?”
“What?” Loftis asked.
“It’s going to be all right,” Walker said, and Loftis laughed. “Look at it this way,” Walker continued, “at least we’re all mounted outside, so we’re all going to be aimed at the target, and we’re all tied together, so no one is going to go Dutchman by themselves. If nothing else, we’ve got that going for us.”
“You know what’s even better?” she asked.
“No. What?”
“At least you don’t have to carry a live MinSha into battle with you this time. Any MinSha you see, you can kill.”
He laughed. “True.”
Walker felt himself pushed down into his suit as the ship accelerated. “Here we go,” he said to the other nine troopers. If they hadn’t been secured to the ship, Walker didn’t think he could have held on. As it was, one of the maneuvers must have approached seven Gs, and the sudden onset of it made everything go momentarily gray.
What the hell was Thorb doing? Walker turned his cameras back on, but didn’t see any enemy fire. Walker realized his suit wasn’t showing laser fire and turned it on. Laser bolts streaked past the ship like drops in a rainstorm. He turned it back off again. He was happier not knowing.
“10 seconds,” Thorb announced on the common frequency. “I will level out for three seconds.”
“Find your release points now!” Walker ordered. “Remember, release, but do not push off from the ship.”
The ship yanked back and forth, then stilled. “Release, release, release!” Thorb directed.
Walker signaled his suit, and it released the tie down fittings holding him to the shuttle. Two seconds later, the shuttle maneuvered away from them, and the squad was on its own as it hurtled toward the enemy ship.
“So…umm…, Staff Sergeant,” VVR said, “how hard are we going to hit?”
“A little late to worry about that now, don’t you think?”
“Well, I haven’t had time to think about it much until now…and now it’s all I can think of.”
“The last I saw was that we were going about three hundred miles per hour.”
“Is that survivable?” VVR asked
“Well, I heard the boarding pods the Hussars use hit the enemy ship at about 500 miles per hour, but I’m sure it has some sort of shock absorber to make the impact less violent. Our suits are programmed to brake us before impact. As long as we’re close and don’t have to use too much fuel maneuvering, we should have enough to brake. The hard part is going to be braking without throwing ourselves all around and missing the ship. That’s why my suit is going to run everyone’s braking, got it? No one hits their jets, even if it looks like something’s wrong. You all have to trust me, okay?”
“Holy shit!” Loftis said. “Has anyone else looked at all the laser fire the transport’s putting out?” Loftis opened the laser reflector on her suit’s arm and held it open in the direction they were travelling.
“Do you really think that’s going to work against an anti-ship weapon?” Walker asked.
/> “A girl can hope, can’t she?”
Walker shrugged inside his suit. “Hey,” Walker said; “the fire’s shifted off of us. Looks like it’s tracking the dropship.”
“Why’s that?” VVR asked. “Wouldn’t they be more worried about us?”
“Probably not,” Walker replied. “The target’s a transport; they’ve probably got their defenses on automatic. Since we came off the dropship, we haven’t accelerated or done anything to make us look like weapons. For all the defenses know, we are either pieces that were shot off or fell off while the dropship was maneuvering. I mean, seriously. Who’s stupid enough to try something like this?”
“You mean, besides us?”
“Yeah.”
“Probably no one.”
“That’s why it’s going to work.”
No one said anything else for a while, which was fine with Walker. He had enough negative thoughts running through his head on his own; he didn’t need the squad to put any more there.
“Hey, I think I see it,” said Sergeant Kane. Walker synched up his targeting display with Kane’s and magnified the view to its maximum.
“That’s it,” Walker replied. The transport wasn’t much, just a couple of big engines, fuel tanks, a lot of large cargo bays, and spaces for commanding and controlling the vessel. The two most important modules were the bridge and engineering; if he could take both of those, and if they could hold onto them long enough for reinforcements to arrive, they’d be all set. If, if, if.
Walker’s targeting system picked up the ship and began making calculations. The system was operating at the limits of its operational capability—no one ever thought to program the suits to figure out landing speeds on something going as fast as the transport was, while flying through space tethered to eight other CASPers. Although they were all locked together to avoid a ‘crack the whip’ scenario, it still encompassed more math to figure out than Walker could have done in a lifetime. Walker got a flash of “Maneuvering,” then his jets gave a burst of fire, in coordination with the rest of the suits.
The Golden Horde (The Revelations Cycle Book 4) Page 27
