“I think this is it, gentlemen,” I said, raising my voice. “We have reached a hot enemy system. Sensors, zoom us in. I don’t care about the red giant or whatever else is floating around farther than a million miles out. Give us only local contacts.”
“Working on it, sir,” Raphim said.
The image on the screen wavered, then faded away. The planet loomed now, large and to my right. Behind us was the ring. It slid away astern quietly, gently. Five smaller contacts surrounded us, they had to be the cruiser escorts.
“I don’t see any enemy ships,” I said.
“Maybe the planet is firing at us, sir,” suggested Captain Sarin.
“How are we getting hit by the planet?” I asked. “A missile couldn’t get up here this fast. We just arrived in the system.”
Another shudder rocked the ship. This one was much worse. The nanite restraints tightened to keep me from being thrown across the computer table.
“Sensors? Talk to me, Raphim.”
“No enemy ships. No enemy missiles. I’m not sensing anything moving or emitting, other than the Macro vessels.”
“What hit us then? Replay that strike recording. Where was the energy released? Is there any radiation?”
Raphim was quiet for a second. I would have yelled at him again, but I could see his long fingers working swiftly on his board. “Radiation, yes. Gamma. And it was pretty close, sir. I’d say it was a nuclear warhead.”
“Missiles, then,” said Captain Sarin.
There was another less violent rocking sensation. One of the escort cruisers blew apart. The contact separated and flickered out. Everyone watched and breathed hard.
“Any incoming missiles?”
“Nothing sir,” Raphim said. “No heat signatures. No motion sensors are being tripped. If they are missiles, they might be too small to detect, or they might be coasting in, cold. I don’t know sir.”
“Mines,” said Captain Sarin suddenly.
I looked at her and nodded. “Makes sense. The enemy laid mines in front of the ring. They knew the Macros had to come this way, so they set up a trap for them—for us.”
“The Macros are adjusting their formation, sir,” said Raphim.
I watched the screen. The Macros seemed to have figured out the mines, too. They put every cruiser in a column, with us at the rear. The ships now followed one another in single file.
“At least we know they care about us,” I said.
We all watched tensely as we arced down closer to the planet, decelerating into orbit. Two more cruisers vanished by the time we reached a stable orbit.
“Contingency plans?” I demanded.
“What plan, sir? What can we do?” Major Robinson asked.
“I want you to tell me,” I said.
“You mean in case this vessel is hit? I don’t know. We could try to bail out.”
I stared at him. “We’d have to blast the rear doors down.”
He nodded. “We could do that, then release the magnetic clamps on the bricks, letting them fall out the rear of the ship.”
I pointed at him. “Good idea,” I said. “We can get out a few of the tanks and take out the back door when the last cruiser is destroyed.”
“Won’t work,” said the navigator.
“Why not?” I snapped.
“We are still decelerating, sir—flying backward,” said the navigator. “With our engines forward and our noses aft. Even if we blast the doors wide open, we won’t fall out. The G-forces will push us back into the Macro transport, not out of it.”
“We could pump gas into the hold,” Captain Sarin suggested. “Then there would be a pressure release when we blast the doors. Wouldn’t the escaping gas propel us out the back?”
“Maybe it would at first,” the navigator said, tapping out calculations. “But as long as the ship’s engines are firing we’ll be thrown back into it.”
I heaved a sigh. “Set it up anyway. Deploy two hovertanks for the job. Maybe the ship will swing around into an attack posture soon. I at least want the option.”
“If we are hit while the men are rolling out hovertanks…” said Major Robinson, shaking his head.
“Marines aren’t people who want to live forever,” I said. “Besides, I’d rather lose ten men than thousands. Relay the order.”
Over the next hour, we reached a stable orbit and watched as the cruisers steadily fired those big belly-cannons we’d spotted back on Earth. Whatever they used for ammo, each salvo went down as a radiation-emitting fireball, pounding the planet. For the most part, they shot at the mountains. I suspected enemy bases were in those areas. Strangely, no counterfire came back to greet us.
We’d almost relaxed when one more cruiser was destroyed by what appeared to be a mine. The last cruiser survived, however. We breathed more easily after we’d made two full orbits around the target world without being hit. We figured that by then, the Macro ships had cut a path around the planet that was free of mines—even if they’d done it by hitting every mine in orbit. The cruiser had stopped firing by then. I suspected it had run out of targets. In the end, I never had to give the order to blast down the hold doors—or the order to take the Macro ship by storm.
“You know,” I said to Major Robinson, “the mines were a pretty good idea. Very effective against the Macros. They tend to fight to the death once they decide to go for it. That’s a weakness in my opinion. After losing the majority of a force, most human commanders would pull out. But the Macros don’t like to retreat once they engage.”
“The Macros are our allies, sir,” said Major Robinson with mock severity. “Didn’t you get the memo?”
“I wrote the memo,” I said, smiling with half my mouth. “I’m just thinking of the future… I’m thinking we could lay a few of our own near the rings to keep out intruders. We could nail a lot of them early without losses.”
Robinson stared at me and grinned. “One more piece of critical intel gathered on this mission.”
I nodded. “One more reason to make it home.”
We stared at the planet’s surface which showed some details now. With our passive sensors, it took several passes to piece together the landscape, to determine what was land and what was sea. The world looked huge, rocky and dry. There were oceans, but they were small and deeply sunken into holes—like dried-up mud puddles. I imagined the Earth might look like that if had been punched a few times to puff up some higher crags and to make the deeper holes. Then, if you dried up about half the oceans and drained the rest down into the craters… it might look something like this place.
“Inviting, isn’t it?” I asked no one in particular.
“Maybe it’s green and idyllic on the surface,” suggested Captain Sarin. “It’s hard to tell from up here with nothing more than a relief map to go by.”
“An optimist, huh?” I said. “But let’s hope you’re right. We’ll find out soon enough.”
We spent three more hours orbiting. Occasionally, the big belly-cannon fired. This became increasingly infrequent, but always seemed to happen at the same point of our orbit.
“They are down to pounding that one spot, the base of that triple-peaked mountain,” I said.
“It could be a major base,” said Robinson. “One of their seas comes up to the root of the peaks. Let me check something.”
He put both hands on the screen and worked with the image, turning it and zooming in. He put a scale graphic up next to it and whistled. “Look at this, from sea-level to the tallest peak—that’s measuring over fifteen miles. It’s eighty-thousand feet high.”
I nodded, impressed. “That’s taller than our system’s highest, Olympus Mons back home on Mars.”
“Let’s hope we don’t have to climb it,” Major Robinson said.
I looked at him sharply. “Are we descending?”