Chains of Command (29 page)

“Drop her another two thousand and make a little loop to starboard,” Philbrick instructs Private Rogers. “Let’s get some beauty shots from all angles.”

The tactical computer diligently updates the map with the information fed to us by little drone 34, turning a racetrack pattern in the sky over a hundred kilometers to our west. The settlement is two hundred and fifty kilometers away, in a wide plain with rolling hills. There’s a river just a few hundred meters outside the settlement, making a loop around it and forming sort of a natural moat on three sides. On the other side of the river and opposite from the hill with the terraformer, there’s a separate cluster of large buildings, and a long runway that stretches out behind them.

“O-hooo,” Philbrick croons when the drone’s camera pans over the area around the runway. “Look at that. Hangars. And Shrikes parked in front of them.”

An icy trickle runs down my spine when I see the unmistakable shapes of the NAC’s lethal ground-attack craft lined up on the tarmac between runway and what I’m guessing to be a pair of hangars. We have one drop ship and a platoon of troops, and one single Shrike could turn us all into finely shredded hamburger if we found ourselves on the receiving end of its weapons. And there are four of them sitting on the tarmac, with God knows how many more stashed away in the hangars behind them.

“They must have offloaded the attack birds from the carrier for ground use when they got here,” I say. “That’s bad fucking news.”

“Only if they get wind of us,” Gunny Philbrick replies. “So let’s keep a low profile.”

Next to me, Sergeant Fallon chuckles.

“I don’t think we’re here to keep a low profile, Gunny.”

The drones return to Deployment Point Alpha an hour later, whirring back into the clearing and setting down on the grass one by one with computerized precision. The last one to return is drone 34, which puts down with Private Rogers’s display showing two percent of power left in its battery pack. Philbrick’s squad collects the miniature aerial flotilla, dismounts the propulsion units, and plugs the drones back into their case for recharging and automatic servicing.

“Those just saved us a week of foot patrols,” Sergeant Fallon remarks. “Handy little things.”

“Yeah, we use ’em on Lanky worlds where we can’t get regular aerial recon,” Philbrick says.

With the drones back in the barn, we have a full tactical picture of the situation on the ground in a three-hundred-kilometer circle around Deployment Point Alpha. With the other three platoons at their own deployment points sending out their own drones, our little recon company will have scouted several thousand square kilometers of ground in just a few hours, without any of our squads ever moving more than a few hundred meters from the drop ships. If we stay out of sight of those Shrikes and don’t draw any undue attention in this place, we will have mapped the entire moon in detail within a week. I send the data from our TacLink out to the other platoons via data link, which takes less bandwidth and transmitting power than voice comms.

>
ENEMY INSTALLATION LOCATED AT PLANETARY GRID DELTA-28. SETTLEMENT, EIGHTY-PLUS BLDGS, AIRFIELD, FOUR PLUS GROUND ATTACK CRAFT-TYPE SHRIKE. RECON DATA FOLLOWS. REQUEST INSTRUCTIONS FOR NEXT DEPLOYMENT POINT. ROGUE ONE MSG ENDS.

The reply from Major Masoud comes not even fifteen minutes later. I bring the message window up to read the content, and immediately sit up straight in my jump seat, jolted wide awake.

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ACK RCPT OF RECON DATA 5/5. ROGUE ONE PLT IS ORDERED TO PROCEED TO PLANETARY GRID DELTA-28. PLAN AND EXECUTE ASSAULT ON ENEMY AIRFIELD. IMPERATIVE RPT IMPERATIVE PLT DESTROY OR DISABLE ANY GROUND ATTACK CRAFT. ACK RCPT OF ORDER AND PROCEED NO LATER THAN 2200Z. ROGUE CMDR MSG ENDS
.

“Gunny!” I shout. “Sergeant Fallon. To me, double-time.”

Both my senior sergeants rush up the ramp and over to where I am staring at the display, reading the message from our company commander a few more times to make sure I didn’t misunderstand it.

“What gives?” Gunny Philbrick asks. “Incoming visitors?”

I rotate the display so Philbrick and Sergeant Fallon can see the text on the screen. Philbrick does a little double take. Sergeant Fallon just folds her arms across her chest and smiles the tiniest bit.

“Well,” Philbrick says. “I guess this isn’t strictly a recon mission anymore, is it?”

He turns to Sergeant Fallon and shakes his head.

“Are you some sort of damn psychic, Master Sergeant?”

“Negative,” she says. “I just have a really good bullshit radar.”

CHAPTER 23

Ten minutes to target.

I don’t know how Sergeant Fallon can stand in the cargo hold while we are doing a nap-of-the-earth run over rolling hill terrain at full throttle, but it seems to be a particularly developed skill of hers. She’s hanging on by a single hand strap, swaying along with the jolts and bounces of the Blackfly, and drilling the platoon on the details of our speedily concocted battle plan for the second time while I can barely manage to keep my lunch in the command console jump seat.

“First Squad—ingress on foot along the riverbed from Drop Zone One. You are setting up a blocking position by the bridge and greasing anyone and anything that tries to make it across to reinforce the airfield. If needed, you will play backup to Second Squad. Second Squad—you are with me. We are going in from Drop Zone Two along the unfinished fence perimeter and past the refuelers. Once we are in, we set demolition charges on anything in there with wings on it. Egress via the slope on the south side of the field and to the bridge, where we meet up with First Squad. Third Squad—you are moving west half a klick from Drop Zone Three and providing long-range fire support from the hill overlooking the runway and east end of the apron. Anything tries to take off, you shoot it down.”

I check the video feed from the Blackfly’s nose array and immediately wish I hadn’t. We are barreling across Arcadia’s landscape in the darkness that descended on this hemisphere an hour ago, and we’re so close to the ground that I swear I can count individual blades of grass. The pilot is flying the bird with the terrain-following radar disabled because we don’t want to give our approach away with emissions, so he’s flying the seventy-ton ship by hand, just using night vision and raw skill on the stick. I used to think Halley was by far the best drop ship jock in the Fleet, but it turns out I just didn’t have enough exposure to her SOCOM colleagues yet, because this kid is just about as good as she is.

“The drop ship will circle around and stand by in case things go to shit. We don’t want to burn the fuel or use the ammo unless we absolutely have to, and we don’t want to risk having to walk all the way home.”

Some of the troops laugh nervously. The junior enlisted look particularly anxious—I know that the senior NCOs are just as tense, but they’ve learned to mask their fear. I don’t sense any fear on Sergeant Fallon, masked or otherwise, and I don’t think I ever have, not even when we were hobbling down the street together in Detroit almost eight years ago, gunfire coming in from all directions.

“Loadouts,” Sergeant Fallon continues the litany. “First Squad—rifles and MARS rockets. Two launchers per fire team and at least four rockets each. Rifle grenades, as many as you can carry. Don’t start bitching about the weight—you’ll be happy for it if they start rolling armor. Second Squad—rifles and demo packs. Two packs per head. We want to be able to blow up everything essential twice. Third Squad—two AMRs and two MARS launchers per fire team. If one of you sons of bitches gets killed for lack of shooting back because you ran out of ammo, I will personally violate your carcass. Understood?”

“Yes, Master Sergeant,” the enlisted grunts shout back. I grin behind the shield of my visor. Nobody does motivational premission pep talks better than Sergeant Fallon. I have come to believe that everyone alive has one talent, something they were born to do, and which they can do better than most other people. For Halley, it’s flying a drop ship. For Sergeant Fallon, it’s leading small groups of young men and women into the teeth of the dragon.

“This will be a sucker punch,” she continues. “They have no idea we are coming. They’re loafing around, watching some canned network shit, stuffing their faces at chow, or jerking off in the head. They have no idea about the world of shit that is going to rain down on them. They are garrison troops. They were not picked for this job because they’re good at what they do. They were picked because they can follow orders and keep their mouths shut. We are not garrison troops. We are in the business of killing people and breaking their shit. So let’s get ready for business.”

We got the attack order only three hours ago, so we didn’t have much time to come up with a battle plan for the assault, but improvisation is the name of the game for SI most of the time, so the platoon rolled with the punches. I don’t know what caused the major to shift the focus of our mission from recon to commando raid, but I know that he wouldn’t have shared his motivation even if I had asked. I can only trust that the other platoons are involved with something that requires the neutralization of that air power, even if it means blowing up Shrikes that would have been assets in the upcoming Mars battle.

“Three minutes to Drop Zone One,” Lieutenant Dorian says from the flight deck. He sounds tense and focused. I check the tactical display again and watch as the little arrowhead icon representing Blackfly One creeps across the topographic map inexorably toward the red rectangle in map grid D28.

“First Squad, get ready,” Gunny Philbrick shouts. “Tail ramp goes down, you grab your gear and hustle. I don’t want to see those skids on the ground for longer than a second.”

I’ve not been in real battle for over a year. The raid on the relay station was a brief battle for one of my squads, but I sat it out in this jump seat in front of a console while my troops did the fighting. This time, I’ll be out there with them, holding a rifle and sticking my head into the line of fire again. It’s the scariest thing in the world, but Halley was right—it’s also the most exhilarating, and I did miss the intensity of it all, that sustained push of adrenaline that makes you feel vividly and intensely alive.

The pilot pulls up the nose sharply, banks to starboard, and almost reverses course for a few seconds before swinging the ship back to its original heading. The tail ramp starts coming down before we are at zero airspeed, and by the time we are hovering a meter or two above the ground, the ramp locks in the horizontal position.

“First Squad, move, move, move!”

The troopers of First Squad file out of the ship at a fast shuffle, every trooper carrying personal gear and probably fifty pounds in extra weaponry or ammo. They leap off the edge of the tail ramp one by one and disappear in the darkness beyond.

“Kick some ass,” I send Philbrick over private comms. The tall gunnery sergeant gives me a thumbs-up without turning around or taking his hand off his gun. Then he’s gone, out in the darkness with his troops.

“First Squad delivered,” the crew chief sends to the flight deck. The Blackfly launches itself upward and forward again.

“Second Squad, get ready,” Sergeant Fallon calls out. She checks the loading status of her rifle and the locking hood on her sidearm’s holster. Then she looks over to where I am sitting, and we exchange a glance. For just a moment, I have a powerful premonition of my old squad leader dead on a rubble-strewn tarmac, fléchette holes in her battle armor, dark blood pooling underneath her. I look back at my console and shake my head to clear the entirely unwelcome vision. I shouldn’t be here, sitting in this chair, pulling the strings that may lead her—and everyone else—to that fate. But I am, because somebody has to, and they follow me willingly, because I asked them to.

The drop ship changes directions as it follows the river that snakes past the settlement—right, left, then right again. Then we are over Drop Zone Two, coming to a hover once more.

“Second Squad, go,” Sergeant Fallon orders. They file out of the ship and off the edge of the ramp. Six seconds later, the second row of seats in the Blackfly’s cargo hold is empty as well. Sergeant Fallon follows her troops out into the night, and she doesn’t look back or give a thumbs-up.

“Second Squad delivered,” the crew chief calls out. The Blackfly roars upward and pitches forward to pick up speed again.

“One minute to Drop Zone Three,” Lieutenant Dorian sends.

“Third Squad, get ready.” Sergeant Welch gets out of his seat and grabs one of the overhead handholds. The troopers of Third Squad check their weapons one last time, even though I know their loading status has been checked several times already since we left the deployment point almost an hour ago.

The Blackfly descends again and touches down on the ground almost gingerly. I hit the quick-release button on my seat’s harness, grab my rifle from its storage bracket next to the seat, and stand up to join Sergeant Welch and his troopers.

“Good luck,” the crew chief says behind me. I give him a thumbs-up. In front of me, Third Squad is rushing down the ramp, with Sergeant Welch bringing up the rear. I take a quick look around the hold, nod at the crew chief, and run down the ramp to join the rest of my platoon.

The night outside isn’t as pitch-dark as it had looked from inside the cargo hold. The moon’s parent planet, Leonidas c, is coming up on the eastern horizon. Just the top of the planetary orb is peeking over the far-off mountain ridges, and the planet’s iridescent blue glow gives the nighttime landscape on this moon an eerie, otherworldly quality.

Drop Zone Three is a depression behind a low hill that sits three hundred meters from the river that passes by the colony settlement, and close to five hundred meters from the runway of the airfield. Third Squad scales the hill and splits up into fire teams, four and four. Two troopers in each team have MARS launchers in addition to their regular rifles, which they lay out on the ground next to them, along with the rocket cartridges they brought for the launchers. The other two in each team have AMRs, which are large precision rifles for long-range fire support.

I crawl up to the crest of the little hill and switch my helmet optics to night vision and maximum magnification. The settlement is a typical colony town, prefabricated buildings lined up in a regular pattern along two main roads that meet in the middle of the town. The installation next to the town is very clearly a military airfield. There’s a three-thousand-foot runway, two hangar buildings with large sliding doors, and a main building with a small control tower at the top. Parked on the apron outside the hangars are the four Shrikes we saw on the drone footage. They don’t have ordnance on their pylons, and their engines and gun muzzles are capped with red maintenance covers. I check the range from the hilltop to the nearest Shrike with my rangefinder: 477m.

“Look at that fence they’re putting up,” Sergeant Welch says. He points out the unfinished fence line we spotted with the recon drone. There’s a partial fence structure running in front of the airfield’s cluster of buildings, support posts that are thirty meters tall. Some supports have heavy-duty steel mesh fencing strung between them, but most don’t, and we can see construction supplies stacked up nearby.

“What are they looking to keep out with that?” one of the troopers asks, and Sergeant Welch snorts.

“Let’s think about this for a second, Benavides. What’s about that tall and likes to wreck colony towns?”

“Benavides’s mom,” someone else contributes in a low voice, and there’s muffled laughter on the squad channel.

“Cut the chitchat,” Sergeant Welch says. “Check your fields of fire and dial in that main building over there. Benavides, park yourself fifteen meters further left so you can get better dope on First Squad once they set up shop by the bridge. And nobody touches a trigger until I say so.”

“Copy that, Sarge.” Benavides grabs his gear and sets up in the spot indicated by his squad leader.

“I can’t believe what sort of shit security they’re running down there,” Sergeant Welch says. “Bunch of mess cooks with butter knives could walk in there and fuck shit up.”

“I don’t think they’re expecting people,” I say.

Below us, the two other squads are moving into position. First Squad is making its way along the river and up the incline toward the spot where the flat steel bridge connects the settlement promontory with the military airfield. Second Squad and Sergeant Fallon are almost at the unfinished fence line that borders the airfield perimeter.

“Watch for perimeter surveillance,” I warn the squad leaders and Sergeant Fallon. They send back their acknowledgments silently.

Philbrick’s First Squad reach their position first. They cross the bridge swiftly and quietly, then take up covering positions on the far end, facing both town and airfield with their two fire teams. Two of Philbrick’s troopers return to the bridge a few minutes later and rig something up in the center of the steel structure. I check their video feeds to see that they’re preparing demolition charges, flattening out two strips of plastic explosives and weaving them through the weight-saving holes in the steel of the bridge surface. When the charges are prepped, the two troopers rush back to their fighting positions, a hundred meters away.