Twenty-thousand meters.
“Anytime now, Sergeant!”
Corporal Ubu’s finger hovered above the button to deploy the arresting descent mechanism.
“Hold . . . hold!” Dawes replied.
Ten-thousand meters. Five-thousand meters. One-thousand meters.
“Sergeant!”
“Deploy braking chute!”
The corporal stabbed the button and several chutes shot away from the insertion pod, connected to it with spider silk.
Lee breathed. How long had he not been breathing? He shook his head looking at the sergeant.
“I think that was a record,” Dawes said to Ubu.
“I do believe so, Sergeant.” The corporal nodded.
The insertion pod hit the ground with a bang. Immediately, angled legs deployed to keep it up right. Lee unclasped his harness and stood. Never again. Not even the Commander could make him do another drop with Sergeant Dawes anytime soon.
He had the sneaky feeling marines did these things for fun in their spare time. If Flaps had been here, he no doubt would have enjoyed it. Good thing he wasn’t. The scrawny little runt would never let Lee live it down.
Chen grabbed a deployable turret and Lee grabbed the deployable barrier. Never knew when an old school deployable form of cover might come in handy. Dawes was the point man. He carried the recon-drones. The base was ten kilometers away. A paltry sprint.
Lee couldn’t shake a terrible, nagging thought at the back of his mind. The large sensor contact they’d detected hounded his thoughts. Although its last known vector took it away from Indri, who knows what exotic technology it might possess. It might arrive in orbit using some sort of quantum jump or other theoretical travel mechanic.
All he knew was he didn’t want to be on Indri-3 if or when it arrived.
Chapter 23 – Good Odds for Any Marine
“We’ll call that ballsy pilot down on top of us and improvise” – Sergeant Randall Dawes
Main Bridge
Phoenix
“One damn minute, Commander. I was busy. Disengaging and returning to Phoenix.”
One damn minute? Aaron was going to have to inform Flaps that swearing while addressing ranking officers wasn’t proper use of the colorful metaphors he’d adopted lately.
The other two ships came around the curvature of the planet. Aaron wasn’t waiting. The micro-jump capacitors were charged.
“Engage,” he ordered.
“Jumping, three-two-one. Phoenix jumping.”
This time Phoenix emerged from the micro-jump directly ahead of the ships.
“I’m locking on,” Aaron said.
The railguns tore into the first target. He still had the biting feeling he’d need the havocs in the near future and decided to conserve them. The target aligned directly for Phoenix and accelerated hard.
“Is he trying to ram us?” Herman asked.
Aaron worked and re-worked firing solutions aided by the tactical computer. “I don’t know, but he’s cutting off our angle of attack on the other vessel.”
They were close now. The enemy plasma cannons struck Phoenix.
Herman was right. The ORA vessel continued to accelerate. The enemy captain’s intent was clear. Aaron had two choices, brake and thrust to one side. Or go all in.
“XO, ahead full. Stand by on my mark for a full burn from dorsal thrusters.”
If he slowed, it would make it easy for the enemy ship to adjust for any sudden evasive. The only option was to increase speed and cut off the time the enemy vessel would have to realign for its ramming maneuver.
“Now, Ayres!”
The sudden push from the dorsal thrusters nudged them down a mere one-thousand kilometers beneath the ORA ship. He’d focused on the calculations to be certain and handed over control of the guns to the computer. The railguns shredded the ORA ship.
This close, the optic feeds revealed the severity of the damage, it looked like a meteor shower had torn through the enemy ship. It drifted lifeless and powerless. Not every critical hit caused some grand explosion.
The ORA ship would drift until it was salvaged or it would forever remain among an eternal graveyard of ships in the black.
Perhaps certain the ramming tactic would succeed, the doomed ORA ship hadn’t even fired. The other vessel had continued accelerating away but not before launching missiles of their own. This close, the point defense didn’t have enough time to get all. Several hit the ventral bow. This is what Aaron had hoped to avoid. A chase.
“Ayres, bring us around, pursuit course.”
Although Phoenix would have to slow to execute the tight turn, his ship’s extraordinary acceleration curve should negate the lead the other ship had. But it would take them away from the planet.
“I’ve got a lock on him, Commander,” Flaps announced over the comm.
Aaron hadn’t even noticed Hammerhead—after all it was friendly so the computer wouldn’t pay it much attention.
Hammerhead had egressed the planet along a vector to cut off the escaping ORA ship. Flaps fired the auxiliary craft’s complement of ten fusion torpedoes, ending the ORA vessel’s bid for freedom.
“Bring it in, Flaps. I don’t know if they got off a comm burst. They had more time than the others. We won’t know if it penetrated our jamming until someone shows up—or doesn’t."
It could be their extraordinary tactical capabilities with Phoenix, but Aaron felt it had gone too easy.
He had a lingering feeling the ORA was holding back.
***
If Lee even had in-laws, he wouldn’t recommend they visit Indri-3 for vacation.
It wasn’t even much of a planet. Barely the size of Earth’s moon. Still it was a planet by definition—it orbited Indri’s star, was round, and it had cleared celestial debris from its orbit—according to astronomy-101.
Perhaps they should revise the definition of a planet. It seemed to change at the whim of every generation of astronomers.
As soon as they disembarked the insertion pod, the rush of wind made it clear this wasn’t a friendly place. What should have been an easy ten-kilometer jog, now turned into a slog against forty-kilometer winds. Fjords spread for miles out to the east and west. Tall blue and white mountains and glaciers mocked them as they trudged along. In some parts it was relatively flat and yet nearby mountainous regions extended as far as the eye could see.
Two hours later they’d reached it. The ORA base.
Lee was down on one knee. He studied the information on his HUD. Distances, power readings, thermal readings, motion readings. Like his suit, the enemy should have equipment to detect and mask these things. His suit blended its temperature and outer material to the environment. Its material could deflect lasers probing for motion.
Lee zoomed in on the ORA structure. It was rather boring to look at. A prefab base no more than a thousand square-meters. It was new, and it was temporary. Four large towers on each corner of the square compound extended about forty feet skyward with mounted turrets. More anti-personnel turrets littered the perimeter. No human sentries spotted, but it wasn’t likely they’d be outside in these conditions. It wasn’t even necessary with modern detection technology.