“In the storm?” she asked, seeing the slight falling of the visored helmet she looked down to as he silently acknowledged the potential issue.
“Yeah, it’s being thrown all over the place,” the pilot admitted.
“Well, bring it to us if you can, and if not, we’ll have to go fetch it.”
“I have Doctor Paterson,” Specter’s voice said over the channel; not in the slightest bit out of breath, despite having sprinted almost half a mile over rough terrain faster than a professional athlete could cover a hundred meters. “He has lost consciousness again.”
“I’m not surprised,” Turner said, “Commander, he’ll probably be out for a while. I need to get him somewhere I can monitor him. I… er… I gave him a little more than was strictly safe to get him moving...”
“Understood, Turner,” she interrupted the medic, not judging in the slightest. “Zero? Got anything for us?”
“Ridgeline, five clicks southwest,” her marksman and second in command replied stoically, “probably caves and cover there, plus hard to assault without air superiority, which in these storms is unlikely.”
“Good, take point,” she told him, “everyone else stack up, fifteen-meter-intervals an…”
“Whoa there, Chief,” Horne’s gravelly voice said, “we need to prioritize the recovery of the emergency kit and get a subspace beacon set up to call down a rescue bird.”
Everyone stopped, the challenge of Brandt’s command obvious and ominous.
The battle mech rig turned to face the mercenary and looked down at him. Brandt was cautious to keep her hands down and not raise the massive cannons.
“No,” she said in a calm and steady voice, “we find a defensive position, we consolidate, and then I decide when we go for the supply crate. Staying in the open and using subspace is likely to bring down a storm of Va’alen on us, so why don’t you leave the thinking to me?” She turned away without waiting for any response. “Move out,” she ordered.
Chapter Six – Proxima Centauri b Orbit
“Hammer to Vengeance,” the captain of the lead frigate said confidently into the comm.
“Vengeance actual, go ahead,” came Halstead’s quick response, showing Hayes on board the other ship that his opposite number was never far from the controls.
“Vengeance,” he asked in a serious tone, despite his excitement at preparing to go into combat, “can you tell me what time the little hand says it is?”
“Hammer, I do believe the little hand says it’s time to rock. See you on the other side, out.”
A casual onlooker peering from one of the few portholes on the ship that was their home, gazing out into the deep, black expanse of space saw the two squat and square-edged ships bristling with quad-cannons dimly lit by the light of a nearby red dwarf star. Those two ships, seemingly so close together when viewed from that certain angle in the reality of space were in fact so far apart that it would take a person almost six hours to walk the relative gap between them without stopping; such were the distances in play when humanity left the comfort and safety of Earth’s surface.
That same onlooker, marveling at how small the two vessels seemed, each as long as a twenty-floor apartment building was tall, saw the dimly-lit hulls shimmer as though looking at them through a heat haze.
That’s not possible, she knew, you had to have atmosphere to have heat haze. You had to have heat.
The shimmering hulls wobbled out of existence with the dullest of flashes, making the watcher imagine a muted pop and almost disappointing her with a feeling of anti-climax. She turned away, feeling some small sense of achievement like a bucket list item had just been crossed off but had left her feeling empty and let down by the display; as though the reality were less impressive than the concept. Walking through the corridors and stepping through the sealed compartment doors as they hissed open, she settled herself at a terminal in an empty section of the ship and typed in a complex sequence of instructions to access the subspace communications array. The message to Earth, to her true employers, was buried inside the transmission data burst and thrice encrypted using a protocol not favored by the United Nations, so she doubted anyone in the Ninth Fleet would be able to crack it, even if her hidden words were discovered. The transmission was a sitrep, an update on what was happening in the fleet and also further schematics gleaned from the unsuspecting mainframe as plans and technical specifications were downloaded, encrypted, and sent to their competitors.
Finishing the task and inputting another long coding sequence for the terminal to re-route through other ships before finally using the Indomitable’s array to send the burst, she wiped down first the electronic evidence and then the physical evidence of her use of the terminal.
Standing and smoothing her uniform, she went to get some food and carry on her life as though she wasn’t betraying every man and woman risking their lives alongside her.
~
“Shields to maximum,” Hayes barked from his command chair. “Active sensor sweep in all directions; talk to me, tac.”
“Two signatures on long-range sensors, Sir,” the tactical officer answered, “heading away at the very limit of our sight… they’re gone.”
“Runnin’ scared,” Hayes crowed, managing to leave off a near-involuntary whoop, feigning a simple satisfaction of the enemy’s unwillingness to engage them to reassure and stiffen the resolve of his crew. He was no fool, far from it, and he was painfully aware that both his and Halstead’s original surviving crew from their last mission to the system had left a lot of good people dead and even more apprehensive to return. He had done everything he could to show confidence in their new upgrades; the shields, which were four times more powerful, and the new weapons. The shields were running at seventy-five percent above their original maximum through a stupidly simple new design – they installed three new shield generators in empty cargo holds with additional power sources and layered them over one another with non-conflicting resonating harmonics to give them four protective skins over their reinforced hulls against the savage power of the Va’alen weapons.
They had their own weapon upgrades too, courtesy of the rescued Kuldar, who were mostly back on Mars, where a dome had been set up for their particular environmental needs. Not all of them had stayed behind. In fact, a dozen were onboard the Indomitable as advisors and even more were on the Venture and the Anvil as part of the engineering teams repairing and constructing, as well as those hastily connecting the collapsed prefabricated sections of the small space station to provide a semi-permanent floating base in the system.
Both frigate captains had been formally asked to welcome a Kuldar representative on their crew, but as the matter hadn’t been pressed and their departure had been moved up, they never got around to taking them on.
Their new weapons, essentially the same technology as the ones which had nearly destroyed both ships the last time around, were powered and installed under the concept of what Hayes called ‘P for Plenty’. Where their original cannons sat, now three of the new quad-guns bristled the surface of the ship in eager anticipation of conflict with their enemy. The sting of their near-defeat was still sharp in their sides; more so for Halstead, who was forced to abandon her original ship and use it as a trojan horse suicide bomber before they fled back home, having dealt a crippling blow to the Va’alen.
None of them was so naïve as to think that the enemy would forget that.
“Skies are clear,” the tactical officer reported smugly.
“Stay on the sensors,” Hayes ordered, “Comm, hail the Vengeance.”
“On screen,” the comm officer answered after a brief pause. Hayes smiled up at the face of Halstead displayed on the screen.
“Captain,” she said.
“Captain,” he replied, trying to keep the smirk from his face.
“Sit tight and wait to see if we get a reception committee? Then spread out one light year apart and scan?” she ordered in the subtle form of a suggestion.
“Sounds like a plan. Keep the line free. Hammer out.”
After an hour with no response to their arrival they moved apart, each performing a very short jump to allow sufficient distance to maximize their combined sensor reach, and they began searching the sector for enemy activity. Both ships ran at battle stations, and both had almost no personnel onboard who weren’t operationally vital. They were warships, plain and simple, stripped down and modified for one purpose alone.
Their scans yielded no signs of the Tanto, and Hayes’ restlessness prompted him to rise from his chair to hand over control to his flight officer, the position once called the executive officer or XO, and instruct the communications officer to request the other ship’s captain to connect on private comm.
He walked to the captain’s quarters, much smaller and less grand than the equivalent quarters on every other ship in their fleet, and he sat at the simple terminal beside the regular cot. The screen came alive, showing the face of Halstead.
“Nicola,” he said in greeting.
“Craig,” she replied, mirroring his smile easily now that their entire bridge crews weren’t watching their interactions.
“We got nothing over here,” he said as he tried not to show his impatience, “what do you say we just drop in to their last known coordinates?”
“I’m in,” she replied as she pushed an errant strand of hair behind her right ear, “on your mark.”
Hayes stifled his smile at her actions. “Weapons hot,” he said, feeling instantly childish and embarrassed as though one of the Kuldar were in the room with him and had forced the emotions on his brain and body. She smiled back at him, saying nothing but cutting the comm link.
“Weapons hot?” Hayes asked himself out loud. “Dammit, Craig, you’re such a dick…” He rose, walking back to the bridge wearing his captain’s expression again.
“Helm, lay in a course for the last known location of the Ichi,” he said. “The Vengeance will follow our lead… on my mark…” the pilot turned and nodded to him in readiness, “hit it.”
~
“Break here,” Brandt ordered, “find cover. Specter? Can you take a look ahead?” He didn’t acknowledge his orders, just stepped onto the arid plain from the small depression they occupied and scanned his visor left and right. Brandt looked at the more in-depth atmospheric report her suit had taken and checked the important facts. “Atmosphere is breathable,” she told the team, “nitrogen levels are a little high and O2 a little low, but it’s essentially all good. Think prehistoric Earth and you’re there. Stay closed down in your armor unless you have to.”
“Cave,” Specter said as he stood stock still and stared ahead, “just over one kilometer. Single approach, high ground.” Brandt looked down at him from her higher vantage point, seeing the unconscious Paterson lying limply in his arms and being carried with as much effort as she would carry an empty paper bag.
“Zero,” she said as she pointed to a small outcrop off to her left, “Overwatch. Payne, watch his back.” Both of them jogged away to carry out their orders as Brandt turned to instruct the others. Turner was marching beside Perez who still struggled to move and coughed horribly to the extent that the medic made him mute his link to the team channel and kept a private one open between them. The main hood of Brandt’s mech was open, and the way Turner’s visor stayed glued to her made her open a private channel of her own to connect with the medic.
“What’s up?” She asked.
“Perez isn’t doing great,” he said, “he’s aspirated his own vomit. I need to work on him or he’ll end up with pneumonitis and probably die within forty-eight hours.” That got her attention. “I need to check Paterson over too.”
Brandt nodded. She was also only too aware of the deadweight burden attached to the back of her mech and knew that they had to bury McMarrow before his armor became unusable for anyone else. If they had any luck at all, it was that their dead man and their un-armored scientist were both well above average height. The thought of Paterson back in armor beside her and Jake once more gave her a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach; like something between excitement and sadness at how much they had changed and lost since they’d first became inseparable a decade before.
“Commander?” Turner prompted.
“What? Sorry, I was on another channel at the same time,” Brandt lied smoothly, “you were saying?”
“I was saying that Perez is in a bad way and I need to get to work on him before his situation becomes critical. Paterson might have some side-effects too, seeing as how I gave him enough stims to make an elephant do a Zumba class…”
“Understood,” Brandt said in her most commander-like voice, “stay here with the others.” She switched back to the team channel and hit the eject sequence for the mech. “Specter, on me. Horne, provide cover for Turner and the rest. Use the mech.”
“Listen, Chief,” Horne stepped forward and began in a tone of voice that made his unhappiness at being ordered around by her palpable. She could feel the other visors turning to face the two of them expectantly.
“No, civilian, you listen. First off, asshole, it’s Commander.” She jabbed an armored finger into his chest plate. “Not Chief.” Another jab. “Not darlin’. Commander. You got that?” She paused for a heartbeat but carried on as though she didn’t expect an answer. “Secondly, in case your dumb ass hasn’t noticed, we are stranded on a hostile planet with next to no supplies and little chance of a rescue any time soon. We have one dead, one potentially critical and one unconscious. Our situation, Mister Horne, is tenuous to say the least. Now what I need is for you to climb your short ass up into that mech and provide cover for the others while we go and clear a defensible position where we can consolidate. Questions?” The last word rang out like a gong and challenged him; dared him to push back. Her faceless visor showed no features, but anyone who knew her, like Zero, who listened with amusement while he was jogging over the rocky ground to his overwatch position, knew that her eyebrows would be meeting in the middle and her mouth would be pursed tight to stop her saying anything else. Anything… unprofessional.
“Not at this time… Commander,” Horne finally said with an amused tone.
“Good,” she replied curtly, “Specter?”
“Ready to move,” the cyborg answered flatly.
“I’ll come,” Rogers offered in a voice that made him sound far younger than he was. Brandt stifled the loud sigh which threatened to come out of her mouth and transmit over the team channel.
“Lieutenant,” she responded formally, “you stay and cover Turner. Assist him with the casualties if he needs your help, okay?”
Somehow, even through a mirrored visor, she could sense his face falling in disappointment. He slowly holstered the pistol by mag-locking it against his right thigh and squared his shoulders to do what was asked of him. Truth was, their only pilot was what the SpecOps community called PC: precious cargo. If there was any settlement on the surface, any vehicle capable of taking them out of the atmosphere, then Rogers would become their principal and not just a team member.
“You got it, Commander,” he said, keeping the disappointment out of his words well.
They moved. Fast at first, then more tactically when the available cover left them potentially exposed to anyone or anything on the high ground. Regular reports of clear skies and no movement came from Zero in his implacable voice.
“Defilade, three hundred meters to your eleven o’clock,” he called out, alerting them to the slim possibility of an ambush ahead and to the left of their approach.
“Gotcha,” Brandt replied, breathing a little harder than normal thanks to the uneven, rocky surface.
“Maintain comm discipline,” Zero said back to her in a flat and businesslike tone which masked the heavy sarcasm she alone heard. It took a while to get to know the marksman, to understand his unique brand of humor, and Brandt doubted that the others heard the mockery which went back long enough to their shared past before either of them h
ad made the cut of the harsh CP training program.
“Understood, overwatch,” she crooned in her imitation of a dropship pilot’s voice, “adjusting approach vector to clear defilade. Specter?”
“I’ll take left, you take right,” he said, cutting across her path with ease. She let him go, seeing how he moved with far more ease and grace than her own legs managed. The powered armor made rough terrain much easier to cover, especially when the driver was as practiced and experienced as she was, but the balance and strength, although heavily augmented, still came from the person inside the high-tech shell. Specter, with his endless power supply and cybernetic arms and legs, made it look like he was floating. Everything about him, about how he moved and the effort he used, was different. He was graceful almost.
They both paused at the lip of the dead ground hidden from their approach until Brandt counted them down from three. On the command to go, both of them popped their heads up over the rocky ledge and levelled their weapons.
Brandt tucked her submachine gun in tightly to her right shoulder with the short barrel gripped hard in her left gauntlet. Her HUD scanned the ground faster than her eyes, locking onto the movement on the far side of the small crater.
“Animal,” Specter’s voice said, “didn’t get a good read on it.”
“Predatory?” Brandt asked, keeping the worry out of her words as they still transmitted on the team channel.
“Insufficient data,” he said.
“Break right, I’ll cover,” Brandt ordered to change the subject. Specter gave no answer, merely holstered one of the two pistols he carried to give himself a free hand and crossed the ground fast to reach the approach to the cave. Brandt followed as soon as he had adopted a defensive position and trained a weapon on the black maw of the cave’s entrance. Dropping in beside him, she asked his opinion on the best way to approach it.
“Suit lights?” she said, meaning to light up the approach with the powerful LED floodlights hidden in the front of their armor.
Conflict: The Expansion Series Book 3 Page 8
