First Deployment (Corporate Marines Book 3) Page 25

  By the end of their journey, the ship had come out of star drive far out of the system so that they could advance stealthily. The switching around of personnel between the ships, always awkward in space, had gone well.

  The advance had also gone well. The two scout or courier ships had accelerated and then gone silent for the flight in. The freighter was much slower but had done the same.

  Days sitting quietly playing tactical board games had passed the time, but while Shiv was better than most of the warriors on the ship, he often wondered if they were deliberately letting him win.

  There had been limited communication with the other ship. If necessary, a tight band laser would pass on information, but there was presently no need. All plans were in place.

  As the ships sped in, they had noted what satellites they could note under passive observation. It was guaranteed that they would miss many of them, but it didn’t matter. After the outpost was taken there would be no one for the satellites to report to.

  The ships had come sliding in gracefully like a thrown dagger, silent death. Then the burst of the engines as they were picked up minutes from orbit. The assault shuttles had been deployed immediately, while down below the site had turned into a nest of activity. But too late.

  The assault had been fast, with one of the shuttles landing almost on top of one of the secondary domes. The defences had been pitiful. Then the teams had breached the dome and cut the feeds to the antennas. The entire site had been taken and everyone was rounded up in the main dome within a very short time.

  The freighter had brought engines from standby and accelerated in as soon as the antennas were down and they could not be observed. They had only arrived in orbit a short time ago and he had come up in a shuttle with Kaza while the shuttles on board had already headed down packed full of equipment, including part of a survival dome.

  They were here to stay. That made Shiv nervous for some reason. He could already see issues arising down below and he knew deep down that they should simply load the material and leave. Yet that was not their orders.

  The door opened quietly and several members of the ship crew left. Kaza came down the passage and nodded at Shiv as he walked past and into the room beyond. Shiv followed, stopping at the entrance and saluting first before entering. He took a position behind a chair and waited for orders.

  The Representative sat at the head of the table with a small plate of delicacies next to him. He smiled and gestured at the chairs. “Please, my honourable warriors, do sit. Shiv, I would like you to tell me how the assault went with an assessment of the enemy.”

  Shiv paused in the middle of sitting and then continued. This should be presented by Kaza as the senior leader on the ground, he knew.

  Shiv took his time talking. “My honour for you and your command.” He bowed his head. “The enemy was not expecting us and we caught them very much by surprise. This surprise meant that their defences were not fully ready. Only one of their automatic defensive guns was starting to fully come online and it only fired two rounds before being destroyed by the warriors. There were only six of those systems in place here and they were all light. They would not have given our heavy armour any problems at all. The warriors performed admirably and with great restraint. They captured all forty-three of the Hoomans and are even now finishing inventory on the material that had been mined and processed. It appears that the Hoomans have been mining for a while without shipping out, as there must be several months’ worth of material, enough to easily fund our operation here as long as we do not lose any starships. All the Hoomans are in the main dome and have been stripped of anything that could be a weapon. They have only been left basic ship suits. There are six guards: four in heavy armour and two warriors that have the training to run the medical scanners. Hacking into the enemy computers is very difficult as their concepts are so different from ours, but the warriors set up the transfer box and data is being copied off their mainframes. With time, our technicians should be able to translate the data.” Shiv stopped talking and looked over at Kaza and the Representative. “This entire operation has been almost perfect so far. If everything continues on the same way, then the domes should be set up for habitation within two cycles and we should be able to stage completely off the moon within four cycles.” He paused.

  The Representative raised one eye delicately. “Something is wrong, Shiv. What concerns you?”

  “Most honoured one, I have been on several operations and I have trained for many years. I have never been on any mission where everything goes as smoothly as it has so far. Something is due to go wrong. I would almost rather have had the defences be much stronger and have taken some casualties than a dome blow out when we transfer down to the surface. The longer it takes, the bigger the problem ends up being.”

  The Representative eyed Shiv with no expression. To the side, Kaza had not said anything and was also expressionless. The Representative spoke mildly. “I agree with you, Shiv. It has been my experience that in any venture something will go wrong. The comical helper from our own background, Del Es Krett the fool, is a perfect example of that. I also know that you and Kaza here, along with your warriors, are the best and we will be ready for anything that goes wrong. Unfortunately, I am likely going to cause a problem for you. As soon as the domes are up I will transfer myself to the surface of the moon and I will inspect these Hoomans.”

  Shiv sat back and a shudder ran through his frame. He looked over at Kaza, who was still sitting impassively. He knew that the warrior was stroking his sword handle as he always did.

  There was only one answer. He bowed his head again. “As you command.”

  The Representative smiled. “Of course, I will make every effort to not be in the way or to be the cause of the problem that arises. For now, continue the operation. The plan continues and the fast ships will carry on.”

  Shiv nodded and stood. The meeting was over. He bowed deeply before leaving the conference room to continue preparations for down below on the moon.

  Incoming

  I have gone into and come out of star drive many times now. It is distinctly different from a normal ship drive. The engines pound away and in a smaller ship there is always a powerful hum in the background. Yet when you go into or come out of star drive, it’s different. There is a power buildup, and then, according to the scientists, all that power is released and the ship pushes through into a dimension that runs under ours. It allows us to go faster than we could normally and gets us around the normal rules of real space.

  When you are in a ship, though, it always feels a bit different than it should according to that cute description. When you enter star drive there is a feeling almost like static electricity running around you, but you never get shocked. Coming out of star drive feels the same except that sometimes it feels like you are being turned inside out. I have met a few people that said that they have nightmares shortly before and after entry.

  I can believe it.

  It does tend to put you on edge, which is good as something could be going wrong and mellow is not how anyone wants to be at that point. Not that you can really do anything about it.

  Yet we had exited star drive and everything was normal, until the ‘general quarters’ alarm sounded. We had all been expecting it because of the briefing. Yet we were in normal space for a few minutes before anything happened. I would have thought that we should be on alert before we even exited star drive and I could picture was some crewmember getting a serious yelling at over this. If the captain didn’t just space whoever had messed up.

  We were under emissions control and had exited farther out of the system than normal. The captain had wanted to come in under emissions control and make sure that there was no enemy in the area, which made sense. But the thought of a dozen missiles floating in the system waiting for us or any other ship to launch on made me shiver.

  Why the hell hadn’t the
nut bar scientists that the Corporation seemed full of come up with defenses or shields? Oh, right—we couldn’t do that with our technology. Thank goodness that we weren’t a warlike race and had never had to worry about any sort of missiles before!

  I had to take a deep breath and used my implants to monitor my vitals. They were bad. I’d just gotten into my armour and suited up. I dropped the temperature and tried to put myself in a meditative state. It didn’t really work, but I was able to ease myself down a bit. I couldn’t monitor anyone else in their suit but I was hoping everyone else was having the same issues.

  We were armoured up but hadn’t loaded into a lander yet. We were just sitting in the armour room and while we were on emissions control, we were not fully powered down this time. Two has us hardwire connect into the umbilical system and we watched a low-level sim of our progress in-system.

  We spent hours there watching and waiting. Thankfully we had brought some food in and were able to take the helmet off for a while as we sat and waited.

  I was pretty sure that most of the section was playing some sort of game while the first three hours passed. The ship icon never changed as it slowly moved inward and after the first ten minutes it was just . . . boring.

  I had just polished off some soup when the main lighting died and the emergency lights came on. I crammed the cookie I had in my hand into my mouth and grabbed my helmet, sealing up. I was trying not to choke on that cookie and I could hear quiet cursing from around the room. The feed had died on the sim and we were on the most basic life support now.

  Something had gone wrong.

  After a few minutes the first mate opened the hatch and stepped in wearing a ship suit. He looked calm. He walked over to Two and started talking quietly to her. She held a hand up to have him pause and then popped her helmet open and motioned for us to do the same.

  She looked at the first mate. “Start again, please. I missed the beginning and it’s better if everyone gets this at once.”

  The first mate nodded. “We came into the system under emission controls. We came in nice and slow on a flight path that we don’t use often. We have just come in range of one of the farther satellites out and we sent a message to it on tight beam comms laser. It responded a few minutes ago. The outpost was attacked a few weeks ago by an unknown force. There were similarities to a Kah-Choo raiding force, as the ships and attackers were using their equipment. There were two ships moving in and they dropped assault forces. A large assault force. The defences didn’t do any good and were down in the first few seconds. The transmission ends right after that. They mentioned that they were going to have all satellites conduct passive observation of the moon and any ships. The captain is upstairs with the navigator trying to figure out if we can get close enough to any of those to download any data. There may be one close enough, but we won’t get much. They aren’t meant to scan a planet. They are mostly meant to evaluate signals or radiation.”

  Two nodded. “Is there any information on the size of the raiding party or anything else we can use?”

  The first mate shrugged. “Aside from being Kah-Choo, there is a mention of heavy and medium armour in two shuttles but no details on number of attackers or weaponry. At this point the outpost could be gone, and so could the attackers. It has been weeks since the data was squealed out.”

  Two shrugged. “Good enough. We’re ready. As soon as we know if they are there or not, we can figure out what plan to go with. We’ll deal with it when we get there.”

  The first mate nodded. “We are staying on emcon now until we are close enough for a scan. Our engines are just ticking over, though. If there are missiles out there, the captain wants the best chance of outrunning and evading them.” He turned and left, closing the hatch and securing it from his side manually.

  Two looked around. “Okay, you heard what he said. That is all the data that we have right now. Everyone seal up and I’ll have the suit administer a mild sedative. It’ll be better to be well rested, just in case. I’ll be going down myself until we get a bit more information. Everyone will be awake six hours before the estimated landing so we can eat and carry out final prep. Questions?”

  Ten stuck her hand up. “How do I get out of this chickenshit outfit?”

  Two glared back at Ten. “You secure that shit, Hudson!”

  I just stared at the two of them while everyone else laughed and then sealed up. I didn’t get whatever the reference was, so I sealed up and felt the injection. I started to feel woozy; I had really wanted to view that sim footage from the last outpost attack. I had put it into my suit for a situation like this and it wasn’t going to do any good now. I had just locked my suit in the sitting position and rested my head to the side when I started drifting gently away with a light breeze blowing in my face. . . .

  Alarms

  I woke up suddenly with the screaming of alarms in my suit and flashing red lights blinking into my eyes. I would have stood up, but I had thankfully locked my suit into position. As much as I was trying to throw myself around, I didn’t move at all. The moment I started trying to move, the flashing red light dimmed back down and then I hit the toggle to turn off the alarm. From what I could see, Nine was flopping on the floor and then sitting up. Obviously he had forgotten to lock his suit. Thankfully, they were all powered down. I was impressed that he had been able to throw himself forward from a deep sleep.

  A comm link opened just as I felt a tremendous kick of acceleration. It felt like we were heading for full emergency speed.

  The captain’s voice came over the line. “We have just passed a line of sensors that picked us up. They are not ours. As soon as we passed them, they started beaming signals back toward the planet. We were still several hours out at a coast. We’re now at—” His voice paused and then he was talking to someone else. “No, stand by ECM and other systems. I want to know when there is a launch. They already have a read on us in profile! Give your head a shake and stand by. We need to know if there are launches.” Then he came back talking to us. “Yes, right, we are approximately thirty minutes out at full burn. If I take us in at full burn and then launch you short of the moon, you should be coming in fast enough. It’ll be a rough ride but it’s better than trying to get us into orbit and dropping from there. I don’t know how much time until they have the info from the sensors, but hopefully not enough to get their defences fully up and running. Load now and be ready for when we release you. We are going to slingshot around one of the planets and head back on a different vector so we can pick you up or pass, slow down, and come back. It looks like the enemy is here. Good luck, Two.”

  That was it; the line clicked off. The ship was still accelerating and it felt like someone was sitting on my chest.

  I powered up and stood up, disconnecting from the umbilicals before carefully moving toward the hatch and our lander. Nine was still struggling to get up and ignored everyone’s offer of assistance.

  Down the passage and in. I hooked myself up to my umbilicals in my bay, mag-locked myself to the wall, and strapped myself down as well. My rifle was racked just to my right on the wall. I had the feeling that when we hit, it may not be a gentle landing.

  The feeling of acceleration continued. I didn’t know why. We should be at maximum speed now, so the pressure should have been constant for a bit and then eased off a little.

  Nine entered the cabin and the hatch closed behind him. He was just attaching the umbilicals when Two opened a link and another low-level sim appeared. It showed the outpost and the terrain. A numeral one appeared over the open field off to the side, a two appeared in some slag heaps, and a three was a good distance away from any of the domes. “Okay, everyone. Target one is the normal landing field that is used all the time. We are going to aim for that as it puts us right next to the base and it will likely be under direct observation. Target two is an open area a bit farther back from the slag heaps. These heaps were creat
ed by all the ore processing done in the area—that and laziness. Lots of cover, and I expect the enemy would have that area full of troops. Target three is too far away as far as I am concerned. They store all the material that has been processed in that area while waiting for the freighters to come and take it away. They can’t have a lot of troops, so three is likely not even guarded. All the other potential areas are useless to us as there is so much rubble in the area the ship would have to come in slow or end up blowing landing gear. So we are coming in fast and we’ll evaluate and change landing zones as the sensor data comes in.”

  Ten came on. “That’s it for landing zones? Who designed this place, and why didn’t they put better defences in? Six automated weapon systems? Really?”

  I could hear the shrug in Two’s voice. “Blame the civvies. They laid it out and, in all honesty, the outpost used to be the farthest one out. All that happens there is some low-level mining and a lot of sensors staring at the star and the surrounding area. Not exactly a rich target.”

  There was a chime and everyone paused. We were detaching from the ship. But we were too early. A second later the captain’s voice came over the comm line. “We have just detached you now. We have some sort of signal coming from ahead and it appears to be bigger than us by a good bit. It’s also coming up fast, so we are dropping you here and we’ll try to swing around. We’re a nice, big, juicy target, so they’ll follow us. That should limit what they have on the ground for you to deal with. Get in, see what you can see, and get ready to get out. We should only be a few hours.”

  The line clicked off and the engines on the lander came on, jerking us around and off at a different angle.

  No one was speaking. I knew our sensors were tracking what was ahead of us and creating a map so that Two could make the decision on where to attack.

  The pressure on my chest increased as the lander accelerated to a much faster speed. We started rolling back and forth suddenly, and there were flashing lights in the module. I blacked my screen out. It was just noise and light that would distract. I pulled the data up through my suit.