Virtues of War (35 page)

All the troopers were by design facing aft in their seats—easier for rapid exit and safer for crash landings. She and her sergeants were facing forward to maintain command appraisal.

The ground was getting close. She reached down and activated the emergency switch on her seat. It swiveled to face aft and locked into place. The sergeant to starboard did the same.

Drop Command freq. “Drop Command, Papa-Five. We’re going down! Request immediate retrieval!”

“Drop Command, roger.”

Her back was turned to the pilots, but she could hear them shouting.

“Oh my God! Oh my God!”

“Climb, you bitch!”

She leaned back in her chair and grabbed the armrests.

Platoon freq. “All units! Brace for shock!”

The first hit was a glancing blow, and they were airborne again. A second later her seat slammed into her back so hard she saw stars. Her ears filled with a roar. An unseen force pulled her slowly but inexorably starboard. The deck shuddered.

She couldn’t say exactly when the drop ship became still. But suddenly she realized that it was.

Katja forced herself to unbuckle and stand. Her legs wobbled but held. To her left, the sergeant was slowly rising. To her right, the forward-facing body hung lifelessly in its straps. She leaned on her seat and looked forward. Both pilots were slumped over their consoles under the cracked windows.

She turned to the surviving sergeant. He was the one to whom she had spoken earlier. “What’s your name, Sergeant?”

“Rao, ma’am.”

“Sergeant Rao, we’re deep in hostile territory. Get the troops ready to defend our position. Check on the ship’s turrets. Sergeant Chang can assist you.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She leaned over the unmoving sergeant as Rao struggled to slide open the door to the main cabin. She vaguely heard him barking orders as she checked the casualty. It didn’t take long to figure out that this sergeant was dead, probably from the flak impact. With a stony heart she examined the pilots as well. They had both died ensuring that their passengers would live. Katja quickly checked their tags and typed their names into her forearm display.

Like Alpha Team over Laika, they would not be forgotten.

The flight consoles had buckled from the impact. The entire drop ship was listing to port. Through the windows, she could see that they were in a field in a narrow valley. She tried the comms. There was no response from Drop Command.

She clambered through the tilted cockpit and into the main cabin. The rear door was already lowered, she saw, and troopers were busy gathering up all the emergency gear.

Chang approached her. “Ma’am, all four turrets are operational and manned. Two heavy fire teams are taking covered positions forward and aft of the ship. Two dead, including Sublieutenant Wei. Three walking wounded. No joy comms with Drop Command.”

She jerked her thumb back toward the cockpit. “No comms with the ship systems either. The jamming must be in place again. Three dead up front. This ship can’t fly.”

No expression clouded his olive features. “Recommend you assess the terrain, ma’am.”

She nodded. Together they descended the aft ramp and stepped onto Cerberan soil. Once again she breathed in the harsh, hot air with its odd, metallic tang.

The drop ship had crashed in a long river valley with flat farmland stretching several kilometers either side of the slow-moving waterway. Steep hills rose up in the distance, with terraced farms cutting long steps right to the top. At a glance, Katja guessed that at least a thousand people had seen them land.

An ugly trench ploughed back from the ship, curving slightly away to the right for hundreds of meters through fields of some kind of grain crop. Scraps of metal and twisted polymers littered the trench. A group of troopers were hunkering down in the ditch fifty meters away, taking advantage of the only cover available.

She walked around to the front of the ship, noting the manned turrets above her as she did, and briefly inspected the half-buried nose and the shattered port-side hull just aft of the cockpit. Not that it mattered—the drop ship was wreckage now.

Ahead in the distance, she saw the other group of troopers spreading out in a defensive line in the waist-high grain. With no cover to speak of, they were scattering to minimize the possibility of mass casualties. One trooper was jogging through the field toward her. Beyond, she could see some kind of settlement, about half a kilometer distant.

The approaching trooper revealed himself as Sergeant Rao. He was breathing heavily but seemed otherwise unaffected by his run in full armor.

“Defensive positions in place, ma’am,” he reported. “But we’re sitting ducks if there’s an air attack.”

She nodded, feeling very exposed.

“There’s at least another five hours until dusk,” she said. “Anywhere we go right now will be seen by all these civilians. But we can’t stay here.”

“There’s more cover in the hills,” Chang offered.

Katja pursed her lips as she looked up and down the valley. She was loath to abandon the drop ship, with its technology and the dead inside. She also appreciated the four turrets, which represented the only really heavy firepower the platoon had available. But Rao was right.

They were sitting ducks.

“The turret cannons are easy to remove,” she said, thinking out loud. “I’ve seen it done for maintenance. Chang, check to see if it’s viable for us to carry the guns with us, and enough ammo to make them useful.

“Rao,” she said, turning, “see if you can booby-trap the drop ship. First, blow up the flight consoles. Then put the dead in the cockpit and trap the door. Once we’ve taken everything we need out of the ship, trap every entrance to the main cabin.”

The sergeants moved off without question.

Standing alone amidst the alien grain, partly shielded from the blinding light by the wreckage of her drop ship, Katja felt the familiar feeling of uncertainty well up in her gut. Two hours ago she had been safely aboard
Normandy
. Now she was commanding a platoon of strangers in the middle of a hostile nation. Was it really best to leave this position? Where would they go? How would the EF find them?

She forced down the uncertainty with a cold slam. There was no time for doubt. Tactically, they had to move or they’d wind up dead or captured. And she knew well what Cerberans did to their prisoners. A quick image of Jack Mallory’s face was all the motivation she needed.

T
homas instinctively shielded his eyes as explosions blossomed at close range. The projection of space outside the ship was so realistic against
Normandy
’s bridge that he might as well have been looking at the actual battle itself.

Normandy
’s point defense cannons blazed to life again. Another pair of incoming missiles exploded.

Thomas forced his eyes down to his display, and to the battle he was supposed to be directing. At least twelve hostiles had popped up out of nowhere amidst the orbital traffic. The destroyer
Baghdad
had taken the brunt of the initial attack, and was still struggling to clear to deep space. The cruiser
King Alfred
had plunged into the battle at point blank range, scattering the Cerberan gunboats.

The lone battleship
Jutland
was still twenty thousand kilometers distant, and not in a position to engage.
Artemis
had scrambled her star fighters. The other two cruisers,
Admiral Nelson
and
Admiral Halsey
, were providing close support to the three invasion ships.

His display flashed with new, red symbols. The Centauri frigates had fired another volley from their positions over the Cerberan pole. At that distance none of the EF’s weapons could reach them.

“
Halsey
, this is Echo-Victor,” he said on the AVW circuit. “Break from close support and take hostiles one-zero to one-two!” It was a risk, stripping the main body of one of its two escorts. But the Centauri weapons were just too dangerous to ignore.

Acknowledging his signal,
Halsey
broke formation and accelerated to flank speed, firing missiles as soon as she was in range. The Centauri frigates turned and disappeared over the Cerberan horizon.

Predictably, several Cerberan gunboats made a charge for the opening in the EF’s defensive wall.
Nelson
opened fire, but the little boats were hard to hit.

“Drop Command,” he heard Chandler saying from his position nearby, “what’s the ground situation?”

The ground battle was being directed from the separate command center known as Drop Command, located in a chamber abaft the bridge. Thomas heard the harried reply.

“Still no comms. Assess ground forces under fire. We are launching the backup platoon and a spare drop ship for retrieval.”

“Roger,” Chandler replied. “We’re pulling back for high orbit.”

On one speaker, Thomas could hear the repeated hails from Drop Command as they tried to connect with the troops on the ground. The raid had been progressing well until comms went silent. Moments later Cerberan aircraft had attacked the strike fighters in atmo and the orbital battle had exploded into existence.

On the large 3-D display that formed the centerpiece of the command station, Thomas noted the position of the EF’s assets. Six individual stations like his wrapped around the base of the display. Commodore Chandler sat in the seventh seat, raised higher than the others to give him the overall perspective.

Normandy
had put a hundred thousand kilometers between herself and Cerberus. She was likely out of range of any planetary weapons, but she was more vulnerable to stealth attack. Not that stealth was Thomas’s concern. The EF had other specialists to deal with that threat. His job was to coordinate anti-vessel warfare. For now his life revolved around a pack of Cerberan gunboats and the three Centauri frigates which had turned this entire raid into a debacle.

The gunboats were a nuisance, but they were only dangerous if they came really close.
King Alfred
was still in low orbit trying to hunt them down one by one.

“
Alfred
, this is Echo-Victor. Break off your pursuit and take station as main body close support.”

Thomas watched the 3-D display as the blue symbols of missiles sped away from
King Alfred
and impacted with the red hostile of a gunboat. The hostile symbol flashed for several seconds, then disappeared. The cruiser then rose swiftly to move deeper into space. Her weapons engaged the gunboats still trying to get past
Nelson
.

Another hail went out from Drop Command. Thomas’s ears pricked as he heard a scratchy, familiar female voice respond.

“This is Papa-Two. We are under heavy fire from Alpha-Papa-Romeos! Our drop ship is broken—request immediate fire support and pickup!”

Katja? Where was the platoon leader, Scott Lahko? Thomas listened as Drop Command gave a quick sitrep and she responded.

“This is Papa-Two, roger. We will hold position and await retrieval.”

Flashes to the left caught his eye, and he watched as a gunboat raced past
Normandy
at visual range, guns blazing. Bigger tracers chased it as
Nelson
rolled in to attack. The gunboat took several hits and broke apart.

Admiral Halsey
had almost disappeared over the horizon in pursuit of the Centauri frigates. Thomas didn’t want to lose them, but he didn’t want to stretch his forces, either.

“
Halsey
, this is Echo-Victor,” he said. “Do you still hold hostiles one-zero to one-two?”

“This is
Halsey
, negative. They’ve gone low and silent and are mixing in with orbital traffic. I am dropping to archons one-zero-zero to sweep.”
The cruiser was dropping nearly into the atmosphere to continue the hunt. Thomas knew a thing about going low into atmo during a battle.

“This is Echo-Victor. Negative. Break engage and return to main body close support.” A long pause preceded the sullen acknowledgement.
Halsey
turned and began to climb.

The battleship
Jutland
was nearly in range, Thomas noted. With the EF’s massed firepower they’d be able to close Cerberus again and recover the troopers. The drop ships would be vulnerable crossing a hundred thousand kilometers of open space. The troopers were already in the air, so he vectored a squadron of star fighters to guard the extraction corridor over the strike target.

“This is Papa-Two,”
he heard,
“atmo free and climbing.”

That sounded like Lahko. So at least Katja and her strike team were clear. He felt himself relax slightly. The last of the gunboats were running for cover and there was no sign of returning Centauri frigates.

“Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! Papa-Five hit! We’re going down! We’re going down!”

The panicked call got everyone’s attention. Thomas quickly scanned his display. Had the gunboats attacked the second drop ship? Katja and the first drop ship were safely clear and under fighter escort, but the second drop ship had never even cleared atmo.

A new voice crackled over the radio from the doomed drop ship.

“Drop Command, Papa-Five! We’re going down! Request immediate retrieval!”

Thomas’s eyes snapped to the console. He knew that voice only too well. What was she doing on the wrong ship? He looked up at Chandler. The commodore was grim, though apparently unmoved by Katja’s final call.

“Sir,” he said, “the extraction corridor is clear. Recommend we move in for a full bombardment while we retrieve Fifth Platoon.”

From across the console, the operations officer stabbed a finger at Thomas. “That’s not your call, Lieutenant. Keep your eye on those gunboats and those frigates!”

Chandler didn’t look at him, or acknowledge the exchange.

“Fleet, Drop Command,”
a strong female voice said,
“request full cover for a retrieval of Papa-Five.”

Chandler keyed his circuit. “Negative, Drop Command.”

“Fleet, Drop Command, we assess that the drop ship landed and that there may be survivors.”