But, after Johnson’s feeble attempts to start a conversation on the way down, now she was studiously ignoring him.
Poulin was her name. The damn political officer the platoon had been lumbered with, to make sure they didn’t get any ideas of their own, and do something the aristocrats of Paris might regret. First they gave the Legion weapons, then they did their best to ensure those weapons weren’t turned against them.
The loose black hair dangling from the bottom of Poulin’s helmet showed that she wasn’t one of the combat troops who sat beside her with hair shaved almost to the scalp. Right now, her eyes stared straight ahead, and her long, thin fingers clung tightly to the sides of her seat.
She wouldn’t have made it through the first hour of Legion training. Probably not even the Legion’s normal physical and mental pre-recruitment screening of volunteers, to eliminate the no-hopers and time-wasters early. Legion recruitment was officially open to male or female recruits, but there was a reason few women ever made it into the combat arms. Or tried.
Poulin looked like a liability even as a political officer. Her father was something big in the Ministry of Defence, or so the rumours said. How else would she have got the job?
For the men, the Legion was life and death. For her, it was just something to put on her resume to help her progress through the bureaucracy.
“Check straps and armour for landing,” Merle yelled.
About time. Logan grabbed the straps of his chest armour, and pulled them tight. Then tightened his helmet, and pulled the seat straps until they pressed the armour against his chest so hard he had to force himself to breathe.
If the turbulence grew worse, he wasn’t going to go flying around the cabin and break his bones before they even landed.
He wriggled his feet in his combat boots. They longed to feel solid ground beneath them again.
The regiment had been packed into the assault ship Marine LePen in their cramped, temporary quarters ever since they left LeBrun’s World to pass through half a dozen wormholes to New Strasbourg. The Legion ships were designed to carry their regiment to another system, then unload them as quickly as possible. There was no space on board for luxuries like decent beds or proper air-conditioning. Just cramped dorms that stuffed bunks into every available space, each bunk shared by three men on an eight-hour rotation.
And, after being crammed into the ship with the sweat of over a thousand Legionnaires for so long, the chance to breathe the fresh air of a planet and stretch his legs was worth the risk of being shot at by insurgents on the way down.
Poulin fumbled with her own straps.
“Let me help,” Johnson said. In French, this time.
Poulin simply ignored him.
The men nearby glanced her way, but none of them offered to help. Not even the lieutenant. The last thing any sane man in the platoon needed was to offend an aristo, and disappear into some political dungeon to be tortured and sent home.
Probably in pieces. In a bag.
It was easier to just say ‘equalité’ and let her get on with it.
Then Poulin stifled a yelp as the floor dropped away again. Her body twisted and bounced against her loose straps, and she grasped the seat tighter. Logan’s body pressed back against his seat as the shuttle turned beneath him, and his head twisted to the left as the pilot threw the shuttle into a crazed, turning dive.
Some of the other new recruits had been scared of burning alive if the shuttle broke up in mid-entry. But that rarely happened. This would be the dangerous part of the flight. The best way to avoid attacks from the surface was to get down to the spaceport fast, before they could lock on and hit with whatever weapons they might have.
Logan’s heart beat faster as he felt the familiar sensation of adrenaline filling his blood. His body was preparing for fight or flight, and he could do neither. His life was in the hands of the shuttle’s crew, not his own.
He breathed deeply, and tried to concentrate on how he’d be walking out of the shuttle in just a few minutes, dragging his kit-bag behind him across the spaceport, and looking for a place to sleep. A week in bed would be nice after this trip.
If he was lucky, he might get a few hours.
The cargo pile twisted toward the front of the hold, and strained against the webbing as the nose of the shuttle dropped further. The crates and bags slid to the left, then the right, as the shuttle tilted from side to side.
The pilots were working hard on this one. Or just trying to show off, and scare the heck out of everyone on board. With no windows, it was hard to tell.
Then a siren’s harsh blare filled the passenger compartment. The drawling voice of the shuttle commander returned. And he didn’t sound bored this time.
“Brace, brace, brace.”
The shuttle tipped hard to the right, pushing Logan up against the seat straps for a split second before he fell back as the nose tilted up. Poulin screamed, and clung tighter to her seat.
Without even thinking, Logan pulled his legs up to his chest and lowered his head onto his knees, making the smallest target he could for whatever was coming their way. It might not make a difference, but it would make him feel better for what might be the last few seconds of his life.
Something thumped outside, probably the crew launching decoys, if a SAM was heading their way. Not that they were likely to do much good, as a shuttle still glowing with the heat of atmospheric entry couldn’t be a hard target to lock onto. His instincts turned his head to look behind him for a threat, before he remembered the shuttle had no windows.
But at least he would never know what hit him.
His neck twisted as the shuttle turned again, and pulled up. His body shook with another adrenaline rush.
In a few seconds, he’d be on the ground, one way or another. Hopefully in one piece.
Just a few more seconds.
The siren blared again. Faster and louder.
The floor tilted to the left.
Then the far wall exploded inwards with a boom that shook the whole shuttle, followed by the high-pitched creak of the torn metal.
Adamski flew forward across the compartment, still strapped into his seat with jagged chunks of hull still attached to the back. He smashed into the cargo crates in front of him, and the seat caught in the webbing.
Something hard and jagged, the size of a tennis ball, bounced off Logan’s helmet, knocking his head to the side. He turned back just in time to see two seats tumbling out into the air through the hole, their occupants still strapped to them, screaming and writhing as they fell toward the green leaves of a forest at least a hundred metres below.
An arm floated leisurely behind them, severed at the elbow, and spinning slowly through the air.
Something red was splattered over the wall of the hull near the hole. Johnson was still in his seat beside the hole, but his head was gone. A piece of twisted medal half a metre across protruded from where his head should have been, above the narrow gash the shrapnel had torn through the hull.
A spray of blood spurted from the edges of what was left of Johnson’s neck, hit the chunk of shrapnel, and splattered across everything nearby.
The wind howled in through the hole as the shuttle twisted through the sky. Poulin shrieked as Johnson’s blood squirted over her body armour and helmet.
His head rolled across the floor, then smacked into her boots. She pulled her legs up against her chest, and shook. The head rolled away again as the shuttle’s nose tilted up.
Logan’s stomach rose into his chest as the shuttle dropped again, then tilted hard to the left until he could see nothing through the hole but the forest of tall, warped trees below them.
Then it turned back, until he was staring out at the sky. The nose yawed to the right. Were they landing, or crashing?