Rich Man's War (13 page)

“Acknowledged,” said Kelly, her tone flat and firm. “Glad to hear you won’t fire on us. We will continue on our way and we will stay out of yours.”

The new officer seemed only slightly less taken aback by her words than the first. “Are you mad? Do you not see the active guns down there? They will shoot you, too!”

“You look like you’ll clear a path for us quickly,” Kelly replied. “We’ll take our chances. Stay out of our way and we’ll keep out of yours.
Joan of Arc
out.” With that, she cut the channel with
Ambar
. Her communications with
Argent
remained live. “
Argent, Joan of Arc
. We are continuing on our mission. Transmit peaceful intent on all channels while you land. Hopefully the guys on the ground will get the message, but there should be a clearer path by the time you hit the atmosphere. Good luck.”

With that, she turned to her ops chief
. “Okay, now we should probably slow down a bit. I’m gonna take over the helm from you, Chief.”

* * *

Casey flicked the mute button on his chair controls and turned his eyes toward his first officer. Hawkins looked on in shock as
Joan of Arc
screamed into the outer atmosphere of the planet, darting past a frigate and its ongoing exchange of fire with a pair of ground-based laser cannons.

“Christ,” Casey grunted, “I might actually like that bitch.”

* * *

Artificial gravity generators offered a great deal of stability and protection within a vehicle, canceling out the internal effects of a vehicle’s momentum. Even within an atmosphere,
Joan of Arc
could jink, wheel and roll while her crew stood upright and steady. Sudden shocks could cause the interior to shake and rumble—though the computers controlling the internal environment adjusted with amazing speed, nothing was truly instantaneous. Still, as long as the grav systems held, everyone could remain on their feet with a little effort.

None of that prevented
Joan of Arc
from shaking violently as she entered Scheherazade’s atmosphere. On the bridge’s canopy projection, the eternal night of outer space shifted into the light purple shades of the planet’s sky. Multicolored streaks of lasers, plasma blasts and missile contrails shot back and forth all around the rattling ship as her hull grew hot and smoke began trailing in her wake.

Alarms blared on the bridge. “We’re being targeted!” warned Stan. “Chaff and ECM deploying!”

Kelly watched and waited, holding the ship on a steady course with only minor corrections. The corvette’s defensive measures worked well, distracting missiles and energy blasts, but not every single shot was led astray. She waited until a particularly close explosion gave the ship a good jolt and then wrenched the manual controls low and to starboard. Kelly put
Joan of Arc
through a long, loose roll, orienting her course more directly toward the ground. “Cut the ECM!” she ordered. “No more chaff! Let it go!”

Joan of Arc’s
systems complained in a variety of ways, mostly through audible alarms and buzzing warnings, but Kelly held firm. Soon, much of the blaring stopped. “And that,” she huffed, “is how we make the anti-air guns think we’re falling debris until we’re too low for them to target us.”

Her eyes flicked up to her stunned bridge crew. She threw her ops chief a wink. “You said something about improvising, right? Anyway, check the planetary chart,” she instructed. “Make sure we aren’t on the wrong hemisphere right now, or I’m gonna feel like a complete idiot.”

* * *

“Jamming is pretty bad around here. If they’re sending anything out, we can’t pick it up.”

“I thought it would be more chaotic,” mused Stan. His table now offered a downward view of the city below the ship.
Joan
flew only a hundred meters over the tallest of the towers and stylized minarets. “People running around in the streets and shooting at each other and stuff, y’know?”

Standing near
by, Tanner shook his head. “Most people are already hiding in basements and shelters. Anyone old enough to have grandkids lived through the last war on this planet. They know what to do.”

The ops specialist blinked. “How do you—?”

“I read a lot,” Tanner answered. He didn’t need to look up to know the question was coming. “We’ve been waiting for this for three weeks now. Figured I should probably read up on the local history and stuff.”

“Jesus, is that a blood trail on the roof there?” The XO brought up a mobile holo of the overhead view of the simple, rectangular consulate building, moving it to where the captain could see it from her seat.

Tanner brought up a similar picture from
Joan of Arc’s
optics at the astrogation table. Several metal boxes on the flat rooftop sat smoldering in the sun. A wide trail of blood led from a spot near those boxes to a rooftop access hatch nearby. “Those boxes look like comms gear, ma’am,” he suggested. “You can see permanent fasteners there. Looks like they were slagged. Either someone was right next to them when they blew, or whoever went out to fix them got hurt. Or maybe shot. Look at the blood splatter.”

The neighborhood offered
many buildings that rose taller than the consulate’s few stories. The lack of traffic made it impossible to determine who, if anyone, controlled the area. Nobody saw people in the open inside the consulate’s small walled perimeter. Yet apart from the rooftop, the building seemed undamaged.

“That would explain why they can’t power through any jamming,” Kelly
mused. “Chief, take the helm back. Go in low and swing around in a wide angle. We’ll see if anyone waves to us from a window or something.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am, I have the helm on manual,” said the chief, taking her place at her chair as she stood and went to the astrogation table. The usual bubble had been replaced by a partial view of the skies above, showing the Hashemite warships up in orbital distance along with various debris that would eventually fall back to ground. At the bottom of the table, the ship’s systems worked up a three-dimensional map of the nei
ghborhood around the consulate.

“Aw, shit,” said Tanner, his eyes still glued to
Joan of Arc’s
tactical displays. “Ma’am, there’s a group of tanks and other vehicles approaching the neighborhood from the northeast.” He thought quickly as he spoke, checking the map on his other screen. “That’s almost a direct line from the spaceport. I can’t make out any flags or symbols, so I’d guess they aren’t local.”

“And that implies they aren’t friendly.
Dammit, we could hover over the rooftop with the gangway down and let people run up,” Kelly muttered, “but if we wind up taking serious ground fire it could get ugly. Tanner, can you give me an ETA on those tanks?”

He already had the computer working it out. “
Ten minutes at the earliest, ma’am. There’s some traffic and obstructions in their path. Hard to say for sure.”

“A tank like that could actually do some damage to us,” concurred
Booker, “particularly if it’s loaded with anti-air missiles. And I don’t know why it wouldn’t be.”

“
We can’t get away with shooting first,” Kelly grunted.

“They’re waving, captain!” called out Stan. “I saw someone in a window. Looked like a marine uniform.”

Anticipating Kelly’s next command, Romita reversed course and swung the corvette back the way she came. Given the ship’s antigrav capabilities, he didn’t need to reorient the ship.
Joan of Arc
could move sideways at these speeds with no trouble.

“There. I see him,” Kelly said, spotting the figure in the window. “He’s not staying visible long, though.”

“Even if they lost the gear on the roof, they should have portables capable of cutting through the jamming,” Booker thought aloud. “Shouldn’t they?”

“You suggesting we toss them a radio, sir?” asked Chief Romita.

Booker turned his attention to the captain and said, “No. I’m suggesting we go one better.”

Tanner kept his eyes on his screens throughout the conversation, but he followed their thinking just fine. He didn’t need the XO to spell out his offer any more than the captain did. A familiar feeling of dread suddenly announced its presence in Tanner’s gut. He’d had no time to think about himself since the call for help reached the bridge, but the sensation couldn’t be ignored any more than Booker’s unspoken suggestion.

“XO,” Kelly began, “this is already getting away from us—“

“If I had another option, I’d suggest it,” said Booker. “They can jam all the signals they want, but they can’t jam face-to-face communication.”

“Yeah,” she exhaled, “I just wish I could go instead.”

“It’s my job, captain.”

“Okay. Go.”

Tanner winced as Booker took off. He cursed inwardly, already knowing where this would go.
At least I won’t be jumping into a void
, he told himself.
Or jumping alone
. “Send me with him, ma’am,” Tanner spoke up. “I’m a spare hand on this ship anyway. Less shuffling on the stations bill if I go.”

Kelly hesitated for only an instant before she agreed with his assessment. “Okay
. And Tanner!” she added as he moved out, catching his attention before he made it off the bridge. “Bring my people back alive.” With that, she activated the ship-wide comm net and announced, “I need two volunteers to go ashore…”

He didn’t listen to the rest. Tanner followed the XO, hustling through the passageway and down the nearby ladder to the lower decks. They encountered no one in their brief rush through the ship. With a crew of only sixteen—seventeen with Tanner on board—everyone had a specific place to be at a time like this. Tanner was, indeed, somewhat superfluous.

So instead you’re about to jump out of the ship into a warzone
, he thought.
Good job, Malone. Way to run out the clock.

Coming out into the cargo bay, the two men found Ordoñez pulling gear from the weapons locker and tossing it onto a nearby countertop against the bulkhead. Once again, Tanner felt a flash of gratitude for whoever decided his experiences justified the expense of
buying combat jackets for the Navy. Not every crewman got one—the cost was prohibitively high, even with domestic manufacturers and Archangel’s military expansion programs—but
Joan of Arc
carried enough to outfit a boarding team.

“You coming with us, Ordoñez?” Tanner asked as he threw on his jacket and pulled the seam tabs to adjust the fit.

“No. I’m here to get you set up, then I gotta run back to the main gun.” She quickly laid a pulse rifle and one of the riot guns on the table, then disappeared back into the locker. “I offered, but the captain wants me here.”

“It’s always the thought that counts,” Tanner grunted.

Ordoñez appeared again, setting down bandoleers with pouches of ammunition for each weapon. She glanced over at Tanner. “Everyone volunteered.”

The comment made him stop and blink. “This ship really is different.”

Two more men arrived in the cargo bay then, each of them promptly joining Tanner and the XO in collecting gear. He glanced up and took stock of the team. Cervantes hadn’t spoken with Tanner much, but the ship’s electrician’s mate seemed solid enough, and having a tech along was wise. The final member of the team also made sense: Sanjay had been through the same sort of extended basic training program as Tanner.

Ordoñez appeared from within the weapons locker once more, this time holding up a black backpack with padding shaped around its boxy metallic conten
ts. “Who gets the comms pack?”

“I’ve got it,” said Cervantes, stepping up to take the pack from her.

“Anything else?” asked the gunner’s mate.

“Tanner, Sanjay, grab medic packs,” instructed Booker. “We don’t know if anyone’s hurt down there. Ordoñez, I think we’ve got it from here. Head back to your station.”

“Aye, aye, sir. Good luck, guys,” Ordoñez added, punching Sanjay in the arm on her way out.

“Hey, all I get is a pulse rifle?” Sanjay called after her.

“They won’t let me stock anything bigger!” she complained before closing the hatch to the cargo bay.

“Guys, the ship’s moving in over the consulate now,” explained the XO. “We step off the ramp and get inside as fast as we can. Whatever happens, remember that we are here only to take our own people home. This is an evacuation, not an intervention.
Do not
fire on anyone unless you have a target who is threatening us or Archangel citizens. And don’t spread out too far. As soon as we step off the ship, we’re probably gonna lose holocom signals. Got it?” With that, Booker turned toward the cargo bay ramp and hit his holocom. “Captain, we’re ready when you are.”

Mild tremors rippled through the cargo bay as the engines shifted and the antigrav generators did their work. “Acknowledged,” came the captain’s voice over the holocom net. “Moving into position now. Ramp is coming down. Get to cover and try to establish comms as soon as you can. Remember the
evac plan, gentlemen. If we can’t stay overhead and we have to set down, we’ll stick to our original landing site priorities.”