Vertigo: Aurora Rising Book Two (20 page)

He had no way to know where the dragon’s lair was located, if it possessed a lair at all, and if it did whether the beast had taken Alex to it. The wooded mountains provided poor distance visibility and no opportunity to see potential shelters. He had nothing but an indefinable perception he traveled in the correct direction—a perception now bolstered by the cry of an animal as it became a meal for a dragon.

She could be dead. As a rational being he had no choice but to recognize it as a possibility. He’d lost people on missions. He’d lost Samuel, though he had been powerless to prevent it. He wasn’t powerless now.

So while he recognized she
could
be dead, he refused to believe she was. He was going to save her; there was no other acceptable outcome.

When he thought about her being dead he felt as though he were suffocating, as if he had been robbed of the capacity to breathe. So he didn’t think about it. He put distance between himself and the thoughts by pondering the mystery of this planet.

Hidden in the blackness of an utterly empty space where time sped forward, it orbited no star and rotated on no axis. Visibly devoid of civilization, it nonetheless exhibited an artificial day/night cycle mimicking that of Earth.

Then there were the dragons. They protected this region—a region which actively repelled technology, an act feasible solely through the use of technology. Something lay hidden in these mountains, something more than merely a dragon lair. Something highly intelligent, highly advanced and highly secretive.

Which was why though she could be dead, in fact she was alive.

The obsidian orb hovered a meter above the ground. Its surface reflected not a spec of light, such that in the corner of Caleb’s vision it resembled a hole in the world—absence where there should be detail.

He crouched to study it at eye level. Fifteen centimeters in diameter, it exhibited no motion: no vibration, no rotation, no wobbling. It hung still as death. The metal was seamless and unmarked to the naked eye. It would be helpful to be able to scan it—with a tool, with his implant, with
something
—for non-visible light characteristics. No such luck.

He slowly eased his hand toward it, and felt resistance. A repulsive energy fought against him but not overwhelmingly so. When his hand was several centimeters away, he thrust it forward and wrapped the orb into his palm.

Now it did move, vibrating fiercely as it struggled to escape his grasp. A stinging sensation raced through his fingers and up his arm inside his skin. The orb did not care for his cybernetics. He brought his other hand up to grip it securely and yanked it toward him.

The orb went dead. All movement ceased, along with whatever energy it had been generating. The surface color faded to a dull pewter. It now resembled a syncrosse ball and while there was no way to be positive absent a full analysis, it appeared inert.

He tossed it in the air a few times. It was extraordinarily light, weighing a hundred grams or so. He considered it a moment, then opened his pack, dropped it inside and continued his trek.

Thirty minutes later he located another. Now that he recognized what to look for, they weren’t quite so invisible. He wondered how many he had missed in a day of hiking. Judging by the spacing at least two dozen, possibly more.

Once he had disabled and collected four of them, he leaned against a tree and contemplated his options.

The orbs were generating the tech repulsion field; he was sure of it. An argument could be made he should return to the ship and acquire a more formidable weapon at a minimum, and possibly locate the necessary equipment and reactivate his eVi as well.

The round trip would be two days. Though he knew the way now, he’d need to stop and disable every orb he came upon on the way back to the ship, then retrace his steps precisely if he wanted to avoid getting tossed a couple of hundred kilometers.

He did not have the time—unless it meant the difference between success and failure. So the question became this: did he genuinely believe he was going to be able to kill a dragon using nothing but a makeshift sword and his own unenhanced strength and reflexes?

Goddamn right he did.

19

DESNA

E
ARTH
A
LLIANCE
C
OLONY

S
PACE OUTSIDE THE SHUTTLE
looked calm, even peaceful. Stars glittered against an empty landscape marked solely by a faint gleam originating from Desna’s sun, which remained outside his field of vision.

The shuttle banked to port, the planet came into view and Malcolm patted the pilot’s shoulder. He then found his seat and strapped in. The ride in was going to be rough.

As if on cue, the sky lit up with the first volley of what would be the largest battle thus far in the Second Crux War. Then the atmosphere engulfed the shuttle and he could see no more. He wished them luck, but his mission was on the colony below.

At General Foster’s order the entire 2
^nd
Division of the Northwestern Regional forces was assembled to retake Desna from the Federation. Four cruisers, the largest carrier in NW Command, twenty-two frigates, over eighty fighters and ten electronic warfare vessels now approached Desna from the west.

Reconnaissance had confirmed a similarly substantial force patrolled the area. Given that the orbital defense array was in shambles and the likelihood of the Alliance attempting to retake the colony, this wasn’t much of a revelation.

Malcolm and a small strike team approached from the south. Their orders were to infiltrate the colony’s single city and extract the governor and his family. Should the Alliance win the day it would be an easy matter to return the governor to his home. But should the battle go the other way, this likely represented the only opportunity they would have to retrieve him.

The shuttle shuddered from the buffeting atmosphere. The single corridor pair would be heavily guarded and thus not an option for entry or exit. As a military shuttle it sported upgraded defenses and a dampener field, but only a single tiny laser weapon. It was hardly ideal for infiltrating enemy territory, but an attack or stealth craft didn’t have room for his team of six plus the governor’s family. So they would land back from the town, camouflage the shuttle and go in on foot.

Part of him was glad to be commanding a ground mission again. This was what he should be doing; this was where he belonged. But he had to admit he regretted the loss of the
EAS Juno
as well. Though he had served barely a month as its captain, it was possible he had grown a bit fond of it, and its crew. He and most of said crew had been lucky to get out of the last battle alive, but the
Juno
had not shared in their luck.

As civilization had expanded across interstellar space over the last two centuries, the Navy had risen to a dominant role in the armed forces. While the importance of Marines deployable to any planet increased, practicality dictated the lines between Navy and Marine forces blurred. An officer who could serve on a ship one day and a ground team the next was a valuable officer to have on hand.

So while the enlisted ranks remained largely separate, today all but the lowest-ranking officers were proficient in both naval and marine roles—which was why though he preferred serving with soil rather than stars beneath him, Malcolm had needed the
Juno
command if he wanted to promote.

And now he found himself back at Desna once more. But this time he held a weapon and at least the illusion of control in his hands.

The flight leveled off as the sky cleared outside the viewport. It was dusk planet-side and long shadows transformed the marshy terrain to the color of moldy laurel.

If asked for one word to describe Desna, it would unequivocally be ‘wet.’ Much of the planet consisted of uninhabitable swamps, bogs and fens. The region the colonists settled was higher in elevation, where foothills rose out of the water and achieved some level of relative dryness. Above pervasive waterways and lochs Desna’s single city nestled against gradually sloping land. The small spaceport sat on a ridge above and behind the town and was a hike on foot. But they weren’t going to the spaceport.

The shuttle pilot flew low over the rolling terrain, using the geography as cover. When under Alliance control the town hadn’t possessed much in the way of ground defenses and the Senecan occupiers would not yet have been able to add more than provisional additional measures, if they had erected any at all. They likely hacked the two surface-to-air defense turrets for use, but those would now be pointed toward the sky.

The battle overhead had begun in earnest, and live chatter scrolled along a whisper in the right quadrant of his vision. He wouldn’t be able to focus on the play-by-play, but it would tell him how much time he had or, as the case may be, didn’t have.

Since Desna was an Alliance world, Malcolm and his team possessed detailed maps of the topography and structural layout. The pilot landed in a small crevasse cut into the hillside 1.2 kilometers from the governor’s residence. In a stroke of luck the residence was on the more accessible side of the settlement. Were it located on the opposite side they’d have been forced to sneak or fight their way through the city, which would have made his goal of minimizing loss of life difficult.

“Great job, Flight Lieutenant.” He unlatched the harness and stood. “Sit tight and do what you can to not attract attention.”

“Quiet as a mouse, sir.”

He turned to his team. He’d only worked with one of them before—Captain Brooklyn Harper—and it had been five years ago when she had barely cleared Marine Recon. But they were all special forces and according to their records, both talented and not overly bloodthirsty. This was a rescue mission, not a hit squad.

“You guys have been briefed and you know the drill. The governor and his family are being held under house arrest at their home 0.8 kilometers outside the city center. We move quickly but quietly and try to delay detection for as long as possible. Until we reach the governor’s residence encounters are likely to be civilian, so watch your trigger finger but be ready.

“Our intel is sketchy on perimeter security. There may be snipers, so stay in cover. We can expect eight or more guards in and around the home. Bet on more. The governor does not know we’re coming and we couldn’t take the chance his personal communications have been hacked, so things are going to get a bit twitchy once we’re inside. After we acquire our targets, their safety is of paramount concern on our retreat. We’re here to rescue them, not get them killed.”

He nodded sharply. “Move out.”

The damp, marshy soil sucked at their boots, trying to draw the team into its grasp and reducing their progress along the hillside. With this level of exertion the oxygen-rich air should have made them high—which would have constituted an unacceptable danger—but nanobots coursed through their bloodstreams, busily working to counteract the effect.

The last rays of light sank beneath the loch to the left, right on time.

Harper served as the forward scout and moved ahead to the residential area situated beyond the last curve of the hilly terrain. Malcolm held up a hand to signal a halt until she reported in.

Hold 15 for civilian foot traffic. Two skycars in visual sight departing area.

Acknowledged.

The seconds ticked away, and they continued forward. It was a slippery, muddy sprint down the hillside before they reached the stone sidewalk which marked civilization.

There existed little in the way of cover now beyond the occasional thin, reedy tree. Should they be spotted in the neighborhood civilians were expected to be friendly once they realized the soldiers were Alliance, but any interaction increased the probability of conflict. So they used the darkness and shadows and moved rapidly.

A bright flare in the sky lit the street, sending them deeper into the shadows. A large ship—likely a cruiser—had exploded, and the sLume drives’ chain reactions combined with conventional explosions to create a churning tempest of white-gold flames. Malcolm focused the whisper. A Senecan ship. The battle continued, but he had been granted a fraction more time.