by Troy Denning
“Honey, I’m going to drop you right on top of her.”
Fred made a point of glancing at Kelly and Linda, then cocked his helmet. The original plan had called for Blue Team to insert just over the horizon from Salvation Base and approach on the Mongooses, then reconnoiter and infiltrate quietly.
So much for planning.
After a moment, both Kelly and Linda responded with brief nods.
“Understood, Claw,” Fred said. “And thank you.”
Ashveld’s only reply was to activate the red battle lamps set into the passenger-compartment walls. Linda slapped the override on her automatic crash harness, then floated over to the Mongoose and removed the equipment pod from its rear cargo shelf. They were going to need that pod, and if Ashveld was going to drop them on top of the Stolen Faith, Blue Team wasn’t going to be riding Mongooses into battle.
She was still securing the pod to the magnetic holder strip on her thigh when the Owl jinked into evasive maneuvers, changing directions so rapidly that Fred was thrown back and forth against his crash harness. Linda bounced off the Mongoose, ricocheted off the ceiling, and slammed down across Fred’s lap.
He caught her by the carapace collar and kept her pinned in place until the Owl jounced downward, making her weightless again, then pulled her into the adjacent seat. He barely had time to draw his hand away before the automatic crash harness descended from the wall and secured her in place.
“My thanks, Lieutenant,” Linda said. “I was growing dizzy.”
“No problem,” Fred said. He had Damon sync his HUD with the cockpit readouts again and quickly realized the Silent Claw had been spotted—the tactical display showed a dozen hostiles converging on her from all sides. “A quiet infiltration isn’t happening, so we’re going to Plan Delta. Everyone clear on the details?”
“Hard not to be,” Kelly said. “Shoot first and ask no questions.”
“Close enough.” Fred blinked off the cockpit feed. “Prime objective is securing the Turaco. Linda, if you can’t reach the nukes—”
“I will reach them.” Linda tapped the equipment pod affixed to her thigh mount. “I am not bringing this along just to hit SELF-DESTRUCT.”
Satisfied that everyone understood their assignments, Fred nodded. He hadn’t mentioned trying to find the Tuwa family or the missing Ferrets, because Plan Delta had no provision for it. Plans Alpha and Beta had been rendered obsolete once they realized Lopis and two of her Ferrets were MIA. Plan Charlie had been improvised aboard the Silent Joe after Captain Ewen realized Dark Moon was involved. Plan Delta was Plan Charlie’s desperation backup plan. It assumed Blue Team would be inserting under heavy fire and badly outnumbered, so it placed a premium on destroying the Keeper base and recovering the Turaco—preferably with Olivia aboard. All other objectives were strictly secondary and to be attempted only if a clear opportunity presented itself.
But when it came to finding Lopis and the other Ferrets, Fred would be looking very hard for a clear opportunity. There was plenty of latitude in their orders for that.
Fred just hoped they didn’t have to revert to Plan Echo.
“Plan Echo?” Damon asked. “Lieutenant, there is no Plan Echo.”
“What did I tell you about reading my mind?”
“I was doing no such thing,” Damon objected. “You said, ‘I just hope we don’t have to revert—’ ”
“Knock it off,” Fred said. “I didn’t say a word.”
“You kinda did,” Kelly said. “You were mumbling something over TEAMCOM.”
Before Fred had a chance to respond, a trio of sharp pongs reverberated through the Silent Claw’s hull, and the Owl rolled into a wild helix that pushed Fred and his companions hard against the wall. The forward autocannon began to chug, and a series of chuffs sounded beneath the deck as the craft began to deploy missile decoys.
“Going in hot,” Fred said. “Confirm seals and ready weapons.”
As Fred spoke, an image of his CENTURION-class prototype Mjolnir appeared on his helmet HUD. The entire image was bright green, indicating that the pressure seals were functioning properly and the suit was airtight.
Fred pulled his MA5D assault rifle off the magnetic seat mount next to his thigh. He stripped the weapon down for a close-range engagement by removing the Longshot sight and the sound suppressor, then tapped the bottom of the magazine to be sure it was properly seated.
Kelly was armed with a MA5C assault rifle with an underbelly M301 grenade launcher, but Linda had only her M6G sidearm. Her BR55 battle rifle remained on the far side of the passenger compartment, still attached to its seat mount. She might be able to grab the weapon if the Silent Claw leveled out before the drop—but with the Owl taking fire, there were no guarantees.
The hull began to crackle with friction heat as the Silent Claw dived into the atmosphere bubble above Salvation Base. The cooling system inside Fred’s Mjolnir kicked into high as the passenger compartment grew warm, and he felt himself pressing into the seat as Ashveld pulled the nose up in preparation for the drop.
“Ready for—”
A thunderous boom shook the passenger compartment. The Silent Claw’s tail sank; then she entered a flat spin and began to rock back and forth as Ashveld fought for control. Given the way the Mongooses were straining at their axle clamps and how hard Fred was being thrown toward the rear boarding ramp, it didn’t seem like a battle she was going to win.
“Claw, are you—”
“Hanging . . . on,” came Ashveld’s croaked reply. “Execute emergency—”
“Drop!” Fred finished.
The rear boarding ramp fell open, and the Mongoose axle clamps retracted. The ATVs did not roll so much as sail from the passenger compartment. Fred glimpsed them tumbling toward a blue-green expanse seventy meters below and could not help thinking of Reach, of the four Spartans who had died under his command the last time he had ridden a Pelican down; then Kelly’s harness retracted, and she was hurled after the vehicles, her armored figure rolling smoothly into a forward dive as she brought her fall under control.
Fred’s harness retracted a half second later—releases were staggered to avoid exit collisions—and he dived out the door. The landing pad was fifty meters below, a sweep of pavement coming up fast.
CHAPTER 15
* * *
* * *
1524 hours, December 13, 2553 (military calendar)
Keeper Detention Center, Salvation Base
Moon Taram, Pydoryn Planetary System, Shaps System
At the bottom of the stairs in the Keeper detention center, Veta spotted a trail of damp boot prints leading across the intake vestibule toward the exit. They were so fresh that beads of water still stood in the tracks nearest the doorway. Beyond the opening, she could see only a sliver of lake, its waves sloshing against each other in a haphazard pattern that suggested a squall had settled in.
Veta released the body she was dragging and pointed to the trail, then signaled Mark to investigate while she covered the doorway. Leaving Catalin’s and Yuso’s corpses next to their father’s, Mark shouldered his BR85, dropped to a knee, and peered around the corner.
Almost instantly, he spoke over TEAMCOM. “Ash, that you?”
“Tell me you’re not alone,” came the reply.
“He’s not,” Veta said. She peered around the corner and saw a rifle barrel protruding past the side of the counter, with a single brown eye peering over the top. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you.” Ash lowered the rifle but remained concealed behind the counter awaiting visual verification. During the Ferrets’ field training, redundant precaution had been drilled into them until it became second nature. “You recover the packages?”
“All three,” Veta said. With Mark still covering her from the staircase, she grabbed Kerbasi’s corpse by the collar and dragged it into the foyer. “Just not alive.”
“Damn.” Ash rose and started across the vestibule. He was carrying a BR85, no doubt from the sa
me weapons locker Mark had forced open earlier. “We need to get moving. Blue Team will be here any minute.”
“Blue Team?” Mark said. He remained in position, his weapon still trained on Ash’s chest. “How do you figure?”
“Temporal divergence.” Ash ignored the rifle and continued forward. “I think it has something to do the massive artificial gravity inside the base, or maybe the Forerunner vacuum energy extractor that’s powering it. Anyway, something is bending space/time around—”
“Ash . . . theory later.” Veta motioned Mark to lower his weapon. “Just give us a sitrep.”
Ash raised his eyes toward the ceiling, then exhaled sharply. “Okay, from your perspective, it probably seems like we left the Stolen Faith less than thirty minutes ago. I think it has something to do with the vacuum energy extractor and the way it bends time/space.”
“Ash!” Veta urged.
“Right,” Ash said. “To Olivia, you’ve been MIA for five hours, and she’s surrounded by Keepers, a force well in excess of a hundred. The Silent Joe pinged her a few minutes ago, so she assumes Blue Team is on its way. And she’s pretty sure the Turaco belongs to Dark Moon.”
“Dark Moon?” Veta glanced down at the corpses of the Tuwa family, and a glimmer of understanding began to tickle the back of her mind. “Ah . . . that might explain the delivery squad that arrived ahead of us.”
“To you, maybe.” Mark shot Ash a still-suspicious glare. “I’m still trying to figure out how Blue Team shows up five hours early.”
Ash shrugged. “What can I tell you? Theory later.”
“Right.”
Veta paused, considering whether to free the other captives they had seen upstairs earlier. With more than a hundred Keepers outside, there was going to be a battle, and a bunch of scared prisoners would either get in the way or get killed. It troubled her to leave them behind, but she probably wouldn’t be doing them any favors—at least not until the Keepers were neutralized.
And the safety of her own team came first.
Veta motioned toward the corpses. “We need to get these bodies back to the Silent Joe if we can,” she said. “Everybody grab one for now—but if we get in trouble—”
“Got it,” Mark said. “Don’t die defending a corpse.”
“Exactly,” Veta said. “Now, let’s go see about ’Livi.”
Mark led the way, carrying his battle rifle in one hand and dragging Catalin’s corpse with the other. Ash followed with Yuso, and Veta brought up the rear pulling Kerbasi—the heaviest of the three. That probably made sense, as Mark and Ash could actually fire accurately one-handed and would be that much more precise with lighter loads. But still . . . teenagers. Veta dug her fingers into Kerbasi’s wrist and struggled to keep up.
Leaving a trail of gore behind was hardly the ideal way to preserve evidence or respectfully transfer a body, but under the circumstances, it was the best they could do.
They stepped through the doorway onto the lake, and Veta began to hear the sound of a distant battle, mostly small-arms fire, but also the thunder of a single large explosion. The combatants remained hidden beyond the mysterious veil of the lake—as did the Dark Moon delivery squad whose tracks they had seen earlier.
But the Turaco and Stolen Faith were both visible, sitting on the surface of the lake with waves breaking against their struts from all directions. And on the far side of the spaceport, vessels seemed to be popping into existence one after the other, simply appearing on the provisioning apron every time Veta blinked.
As they splashed across the churning water toward the Turaco, the thunder of the explosion quickly died away. The small-arms fire only grew louder and more urgent, and the three of them had traveled no more than ten paces before Mark and Ash released the bodies and threw themselves prone.
Veta followed their lead and landed not in water, but on the hard-light pavement of the spaceport. Fifty meters ahead stood the Turaco, swaying on its struts as the dorsal turret pulsed blue laser fire into a swarm of charging Keepers. From the looks of it, they had emerged from the time divergence just in time for the firefight.
Behind the Keepers, the Stolen Faith was wrapped in scaffolding, her forward boarding ramp gaping open and a rectangular hull-breach just behind the cockpit.
And in the distance beyond the starsloop’s stern—two hundred meters beyond the Stolen Faith—lay the remains of an Owl insertion craft.
One of the curved wings had been torn away and lay resting on its back, rocking and spinning and spraying long tongues of burning fuel into the air. The cockpit sat nearby, a crushed metal cube smeared with blood streaks and scorch marks. The body of the craft was barely visible, a battle-pocked stretch of gray hull concealed behind curtains of flame and smoke.
“Oh, not good.” Veta felt like she had swallowed liquid nitrogen. Her stomach was cold and churning, and she ached with fear for Fred and the rest of Blue Team. “Guys, we’d better not count on support.”
“Haven’t needed it so far,” Mark said. “But we’ll definitely need the Turaco to make it out of here—which means we’ve got to stop them first.”
He pointed the tip of his battle rifle toward an area fifteen meters shy of the Turaco, where the four-member Dark Moon squad was struggling to reach their craft.
The squad was attempting to advance via the classic leapfrog, with the female operative kneeling to fire beneath the Turaco’s belly while her companions raced forward in an evasive zigzag. But one of her squadmate’s legs had been shredded by spiker fire, and he was being dragged along by the other two men, slowing their advance and making it more difficult to dodge.
As Veta watched, the female operative took a shot to the head and tumbled backward in a red spray.
“Permission to open fire on the Dark Moon squad?” Mark asked.
“We need to find out who sent them,” Veta said. They weren’t so close to the battle that she had to shout to make herself heard—but she did need to raise her voice. “It would be good to take at least one of them alive.”
“Affirmative,” Mark said. “Ash, I’ll take arms, you take legs.”
“Right to left,” Ash called back. “On my . . . mark.”
Four shots rang so close together that Veta heard them as one, and the man on the right end of the Dark Moon squad went limp, twisting first right, then left as the Spartan rounds shattered his limbs.
The operative on the left end spun toward the Ferrets and started to raise his battle rifle one-handed, but Mark and Ash were already firing again. The man’s weapon arm jerked and dropped to his side; then his knee buckled and he fell onto the man he had been dragging toward the Turaco. Two more shots rang out, and his remaining arm and leg jumped with hits.
The Turaco’s dorsal turret fell silent and swung around, then renewed fire. Pulses of laser began to reflect off the hard-light pavement, filling the air with such sapphire brilliance that it took a couple of breaths for Veta to realize the cannon fire was directed not at her Ferrets, but at the Dark Moon squad. Fortunately for the wounded operatives, the output mirror seemed to have depressed to the bottom of its guide slot, and the laser pulses were still striking a few meters beyond their position.
Veta activated TEAMCOM. “ ’Livi, cease fire! I want them alive! Repeat, alive! Cease—”
“Trying,” came Olivia’s strained reply. “But I don’t control the weapon systems right now.”
“Then who does?!” Mark’s voice was incredulous. “Take them out!”
“Trying!” Olivia repeated. “But Argie is one slippery AI. Every time I pull a circuit board, she pops up somewhere else. Pretty soon, we’re going to have to fly this—”
The transmission ended in the ear-piercing screech of a jammed channel. Clearly, the Turaco’s AI—this Argie—didn’t want anyone on the Dark Moon squad taken alive.
“Shit.” Veta lifted her torso and tried to get a better view of how close the laser pulses were landing to the wounded operatives. “Now I really want to interrogate them.�
�
“Hold on.” Ash motioned Veta back down. “As long as the AI controls that laser turret, we’re not getting anywhere near them.”
“Give me a second.” Mark rose to a knee. “If this doesn’t work, fall back to the detention center.”
Veta scowled. “Wait. If what doesn’t—”
Mark fired a long burst.
“Dammit, Mark! What part of ‘wait’—”
Veta saw sparks as a dozen rounds glanced off the laser’s output mirror. The turret swung in their direction, then erupted into crackling forks of energy as it attempted to fire again.
“Okay,” Veta said. “Permission granted, I guess.”
Mark smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, ma’am.” He reached back and grabbed Yuso’s corpse by the collar, then asked, “Permission to advance?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Veta grabbed Kerbasi’s corpse and rose. “Go!”
Mark and Ash dashed forward, carrying battle rifles in one hand and dragging bodies with the other. Veta followed as well as she could, but she lacked their strength and quickly began to fall behind.
They had taken barely five steps before Mark and Ash dropped into deep crouches and, still running, began to fire under the Turaco’s belly. Veta tried to do the same and found herself stumbling along at half their speed—which was going to be a problem. Now that the laser turret was no longer spraying bolts in their direction, the Keepers had broken into a full charge. There were probably thirty of them left, about evenly divided between Jiralhanae and other species, and the leaders were only a dozen paces from the Turaco.
Realizing she would only imperil her team by falling farther behind, Veta released Kerbasi’s body and dropped onto her haunches. She picked a Kig-Yar near the front of the Keeper charge and ran a three-round burst up his torso. The Kig-Yar toppled backward, and Veta rolled forward at an angle, narrowly avoiding the flight of plasma bolts that whistled back in her direction.
She came up firing and dodging. Over TEAMCOM, she said, “ ’Livi, I don’t know if you’re in contact—”
