“We don’t have five days, XO,” the CO said. “We’re on a rescue mission.”
“Agreed, sir,” Coldsmith said. “Would you care to venture an estimate on how long it will take to refill at a Jovian with the new systems?”
“Go.”
“Twenty-six hours, topped off.”
“Damn.”
“Suspend operations,” Commander Coldsmith said.
“Why?” Weaver replied.
“Commander, I know you haven’t been an officer for as long as your rank might suggest, but in the Navy when you’re given an order…”
“Sorry, XO,” Weaver said. “I meant to say ‘aye, aye, sir.’ ”
“There’s good news, though,” the XO replied. “The CO owes you a dollar.”
“Damn,” Spectre said, looking at the readings. Entry to the system and approach to the Jovian had taken less than an hour. Set up had taken less than fifteen minutes with the installed system. He’d gone off-watch, done some paperwork and come back to find the tanks almost filled, O2 and H2O.
“Good job, Commander. You were r… You were ri… Damnit, here’s your dollar!”
“I won’t say I told you so, sir,” Weaver replied, taking the dollar primly. “I’m too tired and much too big of a man to say anything like—”
“Thin ice, Astro,” the CO said. “Thin ice.”
“Yes, sir. And I’m sure no pun was intended.”
12
“Set Condition One! Prepare for HD 36951 system entry!”
“Thank God,” First Sergeant Powell muttered. “Please let there be something to fight!”
“Tactical, Conn,” Spectre said, watching the forward view. The approaching planet looked somewhat like Mars, one of the standard “looks” he’d seen at least a hundred times on the previous mission. But on this one there was a gate. And at least at one time there had been enemies. “Anything?”
“Negative, Conn,” the TACO replied. “No emissions beyond what we’d expect from the sun and the gate.”
“I’m getting the take, too,” Weaver said. “All normal. No electronics from the planet. If there are any survivors who avoided the blast, they’re keeping quiet.”
“Okay, let’s take her down,” Spectre said. “Land a klick from the edge of the blast area and send in the Marines. Make it so, XO.”
“Dust ball,” Berg said as the team deployed out of the aliglass elevator. “We’re going to have to go over the Wyverns when we get back and get every scrap of this dust out of the joints or it will wear like a bitch.”
“Make you an armorer for a couple of days…” Himes said.
“I’m more worried about what we’re going to find,” Smith said as the elevator touched the red soil.
The boat had landed on a broad plateau near the site of the gate. The blast effect area from the nuke was evident, a broad, shallow crater the size of a large factory. The Looking Glass was also visible, floating in the air above the center of the crater.
The gate was located in a narrow valley between two plateaus, one the ship had landed on and the other occupied by ruins of the ancient civilization that had, presumably, emplaced the Looking Glass boson in the first place. The ruins were visible as well but they were so worn by time they looked barely different from their surroundings. The ruins had been surveyed, though, before the blast, and there were tunnels that could have sheltered survivors of the initial attack and the response. Checking them out was first priority.
“The ship didn’t see anything on the pass,” Two-Gun replied, stepping out and moving forward as the elevator doors opened. “If there were major threats they’d have seen it. Just deploy and cover for the rest of the company. We’re not going to be getting busy till we get down into the valley.”
As each team moved out of the elevator, Berg’s moved forward, keeping the bombing site and the distant ruins in view. It took a while. Only three Wyverns would fit in the elevator, a fact that had been a problem more than once on the previous mission. It was simply a pain exiting the ship. Retreating into it was damned well nightmarish.
Finally both of the platoons that were going on the mission were down and deployed. Berg anticipated the ping from his platoon leader and started picking a path down the slope to the valley. Where the gate had been was a glassy crater, pointless to examine not to mention still rather radioactive. But there might be indicators to either side. His platoon was detailed to take the north side in a sweep across the valley while Third swept to the south.
The slope down was slight but tricky. The Wyverns always had a problem with rough ground, especially on the downslope. But Berg’s team quickly reached the bottom and started to sweep across the valley as teams deployed to either side.
“I’m glad we’re in the middle and don’t have the south side,” Himes muttered. “I’m getting readings off that crater all the way over here.”
“Nothing that’s going to hurt us,” Berg said. “Less chatter, more looking.”
“And I think we’ve got something,” Smith replied, pinging for a stop.
“Is that something?” Berg asked, walking over and taking a look. The “something” was a narrow hole that appeared to have been punched into the red soil. “It could be sampling from the scientists.”
“What’s up, Two-Gun?” Top asked, bounding over in his Wyvern. “A hole?”
“It looks like it was pushed in, Top,” Smith said. “Like a big… toothpick?”
“Sir, I need a science team,” the first sergeant said over the company freq. “Bio or Geo.”
Master Sergeant Max Guzik bounced over and looked at the hole.
“It’s not a standard auger hole,” the geology specialist said. “And the edges are tapered, indicating that whatever made it was shoved into the ground under high pressure.”
“I’ve got another one over here,” Lieutenant Monaghan said. “First Platoon, spread out. See how many of these we’ve got.”
Eventually sixteen separate holes in an oval pattern nearly a hundred meters across were found. By that time, Sergeant First Class Darren Hanel, the biology specialist, had taken samples from the first hole.
“I’ll say this,” the sergeant first class said, straightening up. “Whatever it was was hot. Did you notice the sides were partially melted?”
“Yeah,” Master Sergeant Guzik said. “But it wasn’t nuclear. No radiation readings. But I’m pretty sure the team that was here didn’t make it.”
“Concur on that,” Hanel said, putting the sample away. “I’ll see what I can get off of it. Probably nothing. Anything that can punch a hole like that and melt the sides of the hole isn’t going to spall off much material.”
“Pardon me,” Lance Corporal Smith said. “Laser?”
“You wouldn’t have had that dug-up lip,” the master sergeant replied. “And I don’t see the hole being tapered. No, I think we’re looking at some sort of landing jacks.”
Berg looked around at the flags marking the perimeter of the anomaly, then at the narrow hole and whistled.
“Master Sergeant,” he said, carefully, “if they’re landing jacks, then whatever they were supporting was at least a hundred meters long and about forty wide.”
“And they’re very narrow,” Guzik growled. “Figured that one out, Two-Gun. But thanks for the input. We’re looking at something that displaced over ten thousand tons, minimum, but which lands on sixteen toothpicks. Well, railroad spikes.”