Virtues of War (2 page)

The glare streaming through the windows was painfully bright, but her eyes adjusted enough to make out the world of Cerberus, looming huge before her. The white clouds and small blue seas were particularly brilliant, but even the ruddy land masses shone vividly under the scorching glare of Sirius. It was little wonder most of the people who lived under the light of the Dog Star went mad.

Katja strapped into her seat and secured her rifle.

Rapier
’s bridge was just large enough for two pairs of seats and accompanying control panels. In the lower front pair sat the ship’s cox’n, Chief Petty Officer Rishi Tamma, and the navigator, Lieutenant Charity “call me Breeze” Brisebois. All eyes and hands were busy—neither looked back at Katja’s arrival.

On her right,
Rapier
’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Thomas Kane, glanced at her with brows raised in query. The military-issue spacesuit he wore was no different from those of the other crew members. Although still young, he possessed the eyes of a man who had experienced much.

“Troopers ready,” she said without ceremony.

Thomas nodded, his eyes hard as he stared out at the looming planet. Even after five hundred years of space travel, atmosphere penetration was still a risky maneuver.

In the front row, Chief Tamma keyed his speaker to ship-wide broadcast.

“
Rapier
is go for strike, Captain.”

“
Rapier
is go for strike,” Thomas repeated on the broadcast. Then, “Pilot, start descent.”

“Yes, sir,” Tamma replied.

The ship had already completed two orbits, both to reconnoiter the site and to bleed off velocity, and was “hovering” in a near-geosynchronous perch. Lost among the scatter of satellites and orbital dhows,
Rapier
’s presence hadn’t yet incurred any interest from the local warlords.

That was about to change.

The looming edge of Cerberus’s visible horizon slid out of view to the left as Tamma banked the fast-attack craft into her sharp dive, and the planet’s massive, reddish surface filled the bridge windows. Faint shifts in her seat’s local artificial gravity field confirmed to Katja that they were descending. Nose down in the still tenuous atmosphere,
Rapier
saved her fuel and let the planet’s gravity well do the work.

The first moments of the fall were uneventful, the tapestry of land, lakes, and cloud far below, virtually unchanging. Then the first flickers of super-heated air wisped past
Rapier
’s nose, and Katja felt her harness pressing uncomfortably against her chest.

The pressure increased as an orange cone of gas shrouded the craft’s nose. Katja labored to keep her breathing steady, forcing air into her flattened lungs.

It was Thomas who spotted trouble first. “Viper, three-one-five mark zero-four-zero, two hundred-k, archons one-five-zero. Desig Tango-One.”

Katja strained to read her 3-D display, picking out the craft off their relative port bow, already one hundred kilometers up and climbing to intercept.
Rapier
was plunging past the two hundred kilometer mark, and was at her most vulnerable. This was not a good place to get caught.

Thomas’s voice carried firmly over the roar of re-entry. “Full power dive.”

The constriction in Katja’s chest immediately eased as
Rapier
accelerated downward. Unease kept her breathing tight, however—they would need to slow down before rendezvousing with the surface. She flicked a glance at Thomas, who appeared unfazed.

“Unknown spacecraft.”
A scratchy, heavily accented voice, speaking in English, came over the civilian frequency.
“This is Cerberan Orbital Authority. Terminate your approach and move to low orbit.”

Katja watched the symbol on her display as the warlord patrol ship closed rapidly, highlighted with a red diamond indicating Breeze’s weapons-lock.

“Authority!” Thomas screamed into the radio, in his best imitation of panic. “Mayday! Mayday! We’re going down! We’ve lost thruster control—we’re trying to air brake! Keep clear! Keep clear!”

Instantly the symbol on Katja’s display changed vector as the patrol craft altered course. It was close enough now to have a visual on
Rapier
, streaking through the sky like a meteor. Most likely the Cerberans were saying prayers already for this doomed interloper.

It was a brilliant maneuver.

At sixty kilometers altitude, Thomas ordered the engines reversed. It was like deploying a parachute, and
Rapier
shuddered with the strain of deceleration. Katja heard a groan escape her own lips as her vision faded to red. The roar of the atmosphere was drowned out by the screech of the engines. The orange gas on the nose faded, replaced by a larger cone of tortured air that was instantly superheated by the forward exhaust of
Rapier
’s accretion-thrust drive. The entire ship was enshrouded in a massive fireball.

“Ready morningstar, salvo size one,” Thomas ordered. “Target surface, dead ahead.”

Breeze’s fingers fumbled across the weapons console. “Ready!”

Rapier
’s speed faded fast as the engines countered the ship’s suicidal dive, but the orange-hot canopy grew even larger, fueled now by
Rapier
’s own reverse-thrust. To the eyes on the patrol craft, she still appeared to be plummeting to her doom. Detailed tracking analysis would reveal her speed as well below safe atmospheric levels—but it was doubtful the Cerberans were paying such close attention.

Katja’s system still showed the patrol craft loitering more than a hundred kilometers from the surface.

“Stand by to fire,” Thomas ordered. “And stand by to cut engines on my mark.”

Rapier
dropped through thirty kilometers. Twenty… Ten…

“Mark!”

Katja lurched in her seat as the engines died. The flare of superheated air faded instantly, to be replaced by a dazzling sunburst that rocketed ahead from the starboard wing. The morningstar missile took its name from the fiery nature of its fusion makeup, and for a few shining moments it burned as a second sun in the Cerberan sky.

Rapier
rolled into inverted flight as the morningstar struck the surface. The explosion tore out a small chunk of the planet and hurled it into the sky in an impressive cloud of smoke and debris. Katja, looking “up” through the bridge windows, watched the explosion with no small amount of professional respect.

Another glance at her 3-D display confirmed that the ruse had fooled the Cerberan craft, which continued its patrol high above.

The ruddy landscape seemed to close in over their heads as
Rapier
descended. The inverted flight plan allowed the bridge crew a good visual appreciation of the terrain. Tamma maintained the hypersonic flight path with the ground almost close enough to touch.

Thomas keyed commands into the console between their seats, and brought up a real-time image of the strike site. Katja peered intently at the cluster of buildings and the long, low greenhouses that stretched away in all directions. It was a large farming complex, remarkably industrialized for this part of Cerberus. The Doppler-shift of the image reduced clarity, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

The site certainly wasn’t expecting visitors.

“Commencing circle,” Tamma said.

Rapier
banked into a long, circular path around the site, maintaining five kilometers distance.

“No comms traffic,” Breeze reported. “No fire-control radars.”

Katja nodded.

Thomas keyed the ship’s intercom. “Prepare for insertion.”

At his order, Tamma flipped
Rapier
into an upright bank, maintaining her circular path.

Katja unstrapped and clambered out of her seat. As she retrieved her rifle, Thomas put a firm, gloved hand on her wrist.

“Good luck.”

Flushed with adrenaline, she nodded curtly and made for the hatch.

Rapier
’s main passageway was hexagonal for strength. And thanks to its configuration, Katja was able to walk swiftly down one of the angled bulkheads, despite the banking maneuver. The interior was dim after the brilliant sunlight of the cockpit, but she moved confidently through the shadows and quickly reached the port-side hatch.

It was open, and she climbed into the small strike pod.

Four troopers were strapped into their seats in the pod, armored spacesuits locked down and ready. Katja took a few seconds to visually inspect their gear before settling into the left front seat, next to the pilot. The engine’s rumble was barely audible through the ship’s frame. Gazing out through the windshield, past the bulk of
Rapier
’s lean, dark fuselage, she saw the broad port wing where the mighty cylinder of the port engine perched impossibly on its tip. As she watched, the red and blue landscape of rural Cerberus flashed silently past.

Looking past the pilot, she peered through the windshield of the starboard strike pod.

“Bravo-One, Alpha-One,” she said across the strike team frequency, “confirm status.”

In the other pod, Sergeant Suleiman Chang glanced her way and lifted a closed fist.
“Bravo Team ready.”

“Alpha Team ready.” She switched to the ship’s frequency. “Mother, Alpha-One. Strike team go for insertion.”

Thomas’s voice was in her ear.
“Mother, roger. Go for insertion.”

A heartbeat later, Katja felt the g-forces as
Rapier
banked hard and accelerated toward the strike site. A digital countdown appeared on the console.

Three… two… one.

The strike pod catapulted clear of
Rapier
’s hull. Katja grunted as she was compressed in her seat. The retro-rockets fired immediately, robbing the pod of both its hypersonic speed and altitude. Tears welled up in her eyes as the deceleration forced her forward against her straps, but through the blur she saw the starboard pod mimicking her maneuver, just a second behind.

Then the pressure eased, and the craft landed with a jarring bump.

Katja slammed the control to swivel her chair around as the pod’s doors flew open and disgorged the first three troopers. A second later she was unstrapped and charging behind them.

H
er helmet’s visor damped the glare of Sirius overhead as she ran down the ramp. Dust swirled on the rough ground from the pod’s vents bleeding off heat, but Katja easily recognized the off-white buildings of the farm’s central square. Residences and workshops, she recalled from the briefing, where most of the people would be at this time of day.

She saw three possible targets even before she reached the ground. Weapon raised automatically, she marched forward.

“Get down!” she commanded. “Get down on the ground!”

The first target—a man in his thirties, deeply tanned and powerfully built—raised his hands and dropped quickly to his knees, hooded eyes frozen in shock. Katja swung her weapon to take in two more targets—a pair of middle-aged women carrying plastic boxes—and repeated her order. They dropped their boxes and dove for the ground. Katja registered their screams, but focused on the snap as the second pod’s doors opened.

Four more troopers emerged.

She sidestepped the kneeling man, keeping her rifle trained on him as she scanned the narrow street between the buildings. A glance at her left forearm display confirmed that her troopers were fanning out into a perimeter around the strike pods. There were no other targets visible.

Slowly and deliberately winking her left eye, she brought up infrared in her visor, but it wasn’t much use in this heat. A longer left-wink deactivated the sensor. A right-wink brought up quantum-flux, which was more precise but shorter-ranged. It revealed the telltale outlines of organisms huddled in most of the nearby buildings, but nothing that appeared threatening.

There was no time to lose. If their objective was here, he wouldn’t be waiting around long enough to be found.

“This is Alpha-One—clear,” she said. “Sound off.”

The troopers reported clear in sequence. For now, the landing site was secure.

“This is Alpha-One,” she said. “Round up.”

She approached the kneeling man closest to her, rifle aimed at his chest. “Move there,” she ordered, gesturing with her rifle toward the strike pods.

He stared in shock.

She shuffled a step closer, staying beyond his reach and watching for any movement from the two women beyond him. She raised her weapon to point it at his face.

“Get up,” she said slowly, “or I blow your head off.”

He scrambled to his feet. Katja pointed toward the strike pods, where both pilots were organizing the various locals, having them lay facedown in rows. He nodded, holding up both palms as he stumbled away and dutifully lay down with the others.

The women needed no further convincing. Katja tracked them as they joined their comrades, then scanned the entire square. Within one hundred seconds of touchdown, the landing zone was secure.

“Mother, Alpha-One. Touchdown, ops green. Commencing search.”

“Mother, roger.”

It was reassuring to have Thomas’s voice in her ear, even if he was airborne at a thousand meters and travelling just under twice the speed of sound.
Rapier
, she knew, was circling back to maintain close air cover.

A quick count revealed seventeen detainees, yet there were supposed to be thirty people at the farm. That left thirteen unaccounted for.

“This is Alpha-One. Pair up and commence search.” She glanced down at her forearm display to confirm the designation of the building to her right, where quantum-flux revealed at least two targets. “Alpha-One takes building seven.”

“Bravo-One takes building two,”
came the immediate response from Sergeant Chang.

Alpha-Three joined Katja. He was a big trooper named Hernandez, an experienced fast-attack striker whose main job was to make sure the officer didn’t get killed.

Building seven was a laboratory. It had no windows on this side and a single door. Katja confirmed her quantum-flux sighting, then hand-signaled to Hernandez.

I see. Two targets. Inside, left, down.