Authors: Evan Currie
“You’re leaving?” He asked, shocked.
“Orders, Jer.” She said flatly, “Brass wants me to debrief. They order, I jump. That’s the way it plays, my friend.”
“Sergeant,” Rivers broke in, “Did anyone else from your squad make it down.”
Her face darkened for a moment, then she shook her head. “Negative.”
“Understood. I’m sorry, Sergeant.”
She shook her head, “How long before dust off?”
“As soon as I can lay hands on Bethany Connors, you’re all packed off and shipped out.”
Bethany squeaked, “Me?”
“Why her?” Sorilla glanced at Bethany.
“She’s on my list, that puts her on the shuttle when it lifts off.” Rivers said simply, not wanting to get into it with any of them. “Five minutes. Say your goodbyes, I’m letting the pilots know to wind up the turbines.”
“Five minutes. Got it.”
Lt Commander Rivers nodded and then left, leaving Sorilla with the Pathfinders she’d trained.
“So that’s it then?”
“That’s it.” She confirmed, face flat and unexpressive, “For now.”
“For now?” Reed asked.
“They ordered me out because they want my experience with these aliens,” She shrugged, “That’ll mean lots of debriefs, but sooner or later they’ll be done with me and it’ll back to the field.”
“Back to Hayden?” Dean asked from where he was standing.
“No way to know.” She said, “Somewhere they figure I can do some good. This war, I expect it’s going to be a bad one.”
“Not going to be the same around here without you, sarge,” Reed told her wryly, forcing a smile.
“Yeah well, I’m not looking forward to desk work for the next few months myself,” She responded dryly, “I was born in a jungle, Reed. This is what I live for.”
“You need a better life.” He told her in no uncertain terms, “When you finish up with this silly war business, drop by and I’ll show you how to really live a jungle life.”
She favored him with a mock smokey look, “You couldn’t handle me, Jer.”
“Probably not,” he grinned as the others laughed, “But I’d be willing to try.”
She just smirked at him and clapped him on the shoulder, “Don’t die, Jer, and I may take you up on that in twenty years.”
She turned to look at the others, “Same orders. Don’t die. Give ‘em hell. And stay on the Path. Hayden Hua.”
“Hayden Hua!” They yelled back at her.
“Don’t take too much shit from the regulars either,” She said with another grin, “They don’t know squat about jungle fighting.”
Amidst the chuckles, she put a hand on Bethany’s back. “Time to go. We have a shuttle to catch.”
“But…” Beth looked over her shoulder.
“I know, but we’ve been called off.” Sorilla shook her head, “We don’t question why, Beth.”
“Like hell, I’m a civilian!”
“In a warzone, Beth,” Sorilla smiled wanly, “not to mention that you’re a civilian who volunteered for the Hayden militia…”
“Oh that’s bullshit!” She protested as she was led away.
“Tell it to the brass, girl.” Sorilla continued to lead her away, “I’m just a grunt.”
“Oh keep feeding me that bullshit, maybe it’ll start to taste better.”
Sorilla just laughed as she walked the woman to the shuttle, ignoring any and all protests.
Reed and Dean watched them go, both sporting somber expressions.
“Got used to having her around,” Dean said, “even if she was a hardass.”
“Rather liked her ass, myself,”
Dean snorted, “You’re only saying that cause she’s about to be safely off this rock and about as far away as possible.”
Jerry gave him a serious look, “Damn right. That lady
scares
me.”
He then laughed, along with the rest of the bedraggled looking Pathfinders as they watched two of their own board the waiting shuttle.
*****
The shuttle was one of the USF’s vip jobbies, Sorilla noted as she climbed aboard and into the large open section that made up the passenger compartment. There were others she recognized from the jungle camp, and she nodded to them while strapping Bethany in to a free bolster.
“Sergeant?”
Sorilla turned, careful not to hit anyone while she moved about in her armor. “Yes?”
“Good to have you aboard. The Thomas Edison is on course to pick us up, we have to move.” The pilot said, nodding to the front of the shuttle.
“Right, I’ll strap in as soon as I ditch the armor.” She said.
“What are you wearing under that?”
“What I was born in,” She grinned.
“Don’t take it off, we’re likely to be slapped all around this thing.” He told her, “those straps will slice you up against bare skin.”
“I’m not going to fit in one of these acceleration bolsters,” She shook her head.
“We’ve got cargo straps against the back wall,” He offered, getting a scowl from her that only resulted in a grin from the pilot, “Or you can strap in up front. The cockpit has bolsters designed for vacuum suits.”
“Let’s do that.” She said dryly.
The pilot chuckled but led her up to the front of the craft and saw her strapped into the bolster directly behind his before he dropped in beside his co-pilot.
“Jace, meet Sergeant Aida. Sergeant, this is Jace. If he hits on you, don’t kill him. I need him breathing.”
“I’ll just break his legs. He doesn’t need his legs to fly a shuttle, right?”
“Yeah, I’m just going to keep my mouth shut and eyes forward,” Jace put in dryly. “Everyone aboard?”
“Yeah, we’re good.”
“Excellent, the Ted just re-entered atmo.” Jace said, “They’ll orbit once and pick us up on their lowest pass in about ten minutes.”
“Alright, let’s not miss our bus.” The pilot said, flipping switches to bring his bird to life. As he did that, he glanced over his shoulder, “Oh, I’m Roger Sterling by the way, Sergeant. Good to meet you.”
She nodded to the displays in front of him, “Watch the road, Sterling. We can do the introductions thing when we’re off world.”
“Yes ma’am.” He grinned, but turned back to the controls as the big craft began to whine with tightly controlled power.
The shuttle vibrated for a moment before the engine smoothed out and began to pick up speed, the pilot pushing forward on the engine throttle.
“Turbines to speed, all systems check green.” He said.
“Roger that,” Jace said with a smirk, “Ground is clear, we’re good to go.”
“Redirecting exhaust thrust to vertical ports.” Sterling replied, flipping an entire bank of switches with a sweep of his hand.
The shuttle shook for a moment, then slowly began to rise up on a plume of superheated plasma exhaust that charred the ground beneath it. Sterling brought it up about fifty meters, then slowly stood the shuttle on its tail as he cut power from the vertical ports and put full throttle to the main engines.
They rolled slightly to the left as the power fluctuated, then slowly began to climb as the system stabilized.
“Airspeed approaching two hundred knots,” Jace said a moment later, surprising Sorilla. She’d barely felt the acceleration.
“Roger. Leveling out, increasing to max cruise.”
Sterling leveled them out around twenty thousand meters, bringing the shuttle up to just under the speed of sound.
“Scramjet systems read clear.”
“Go for scramjet.” Sterling said, swiping more switches.
“Scramjet is go.” Jace said just before they were all slammed back into their seats as the immensely powerful systems kicked in and boosted the rocket past the speed of sound, heading for its maximum hypersonic speed.
“There’s the Ted.” Jace said, nodding to his screen.
“I see her, port side.” Sterling replied, causing Sorilla to glance out the thick port glass where an approaching fireball could be seen. “Bringing us to matching course.”
The USV Thomas Edison was technically still on a ballistic orbit of Hayden, just one that had taken it insanely low in the planet’s atmosphere. As it hurtled along at increasingly dangerously low speeds, the shuttle struggled to speed up fast enough to catch the larger space craft or, rather, to make a speed that wouldn’t result in everyone on board being torn to pieces when they were picked up by the faster moving Edison.
They turned the shuttle onto a matching course, pushing its scramjet engine as fast as they could, and waited for the larger ship to overtake them. As it closed on them, the shuttle jerked in place.
“What was that?” Roger frowned, “Turbulence?”
“Area checks clear. Shouldn’t be any…” Jace said, frowning himself, “Must be the heat from the Ted.”
“They’re still behind us and moving hypersonic. No way their heat has messed up local air yet.”
Sorilla’s attention was diverted from their discussion when her armor sent a warning straight to her ocular implants, using the priority codes she’d put in herself just a day earlier.
Warning. Gravity event detected.
She leaned forward, actually snapping the straps holding her in place, and put a hand on Sterling’s shoulder.
“Enemy fire incoming! Evade!”
“What!?” he and Jace half turned to look at her, but she just reached over and put a hand on his, shoving the stick hard to the right.
The shuttle’s engines whined as it was thrown off course, both pilots refocusing in a hurry to keep from spinning out at hypersonic.
“Lady you crazy bitch! You’ll kill us all!”
“Get fast! Get moving! And get us the hell out of here!” She snarled in reply, “There’s a bad guy with a Big
BAD
GUN
out there somewhere, and he’s aiming it in our general direction!”
They were about to reply when there was a flash of light in the sky that nearly blinded them all, and every system on the bird seemed to start screaming as one.
“Radiation alerts! EMP wave detected!” Jace called out, “Crap! It’s a nuke!”
“I can’t find the Ted on screens!”
“it’s gone.” Sorilla said, eyes staring out at the fireball in the sky to their left. “That wasn’t a nuke, it was the Thomas Edison.”
“Holy shit.” Sterling cursed, pushing the stick forward. “I’m getting low and fast. Hang on to your hats.”
The shuttle screamed in protest as he dove her hard, heading for the jungle below.
Sorilla, bracing herself with the full strength of her armor, found herself staring out the large screens, fascinated. “What the hell is that?”
Jace looked over at her, then at what she was looking at. His jaw dropped, “I have no idea…”
It was a fireball, so low that Sorilla could hardly believe it hadn’t hit the ground already, racing along the curve of the planet with such speed that it was leaving a wake of destruction behind it the likes none of them had ever seen.
“Is it… them?” Sorilla asked, completely at a loss.
“N-no.” Sterling replied, checking his instruments. “It’s us.”
“What?” Both asked him together.
“If I’m reading this right, that’s the Socrates!” he said, barely believing his own words.
“They’re flying under one thousand meters!” Jace objected, “That’s insane!”
“Who’s in command of that thing?” Sorilla found herself asking in total shock.
Modern space craft, shuttles and the like notwithstanding, were NOT flight capable. They didn’t ‘fly’ in atmosphere, they fell with style. If things were all plotted correctly and they used a little engine power they could even manage to miss the ground they had aimed at, but for all that they did not
fly
.
Taking one into the atmosphere was an exciting maneuver, but as crazy as it all seemed it was reasonably routine. Especially on pre-colonial worlds where no tether had been established yet, you needed to duck into the atmosphere to pick up shuttles. It was a lot cheaper to burn some antimatter than it would be try and give a shuttle all the fuel, support, and other things needed to give it trans-orbital capacity.
Even so, you never took a ship down into the thicker atmosphere near ground level. It was exponentially more likely to do something untoward like, you know, crash. To go that low while moving as fast as this ship was moving wasn’t insane, it was suicidal.
“Vacuum sucking…” Jace whispered, “They’re off my speed charts, I can’t calculate for them without recalibrating my displays.”
The Socrates, if that was what they were watching, was pulling away from the jungle canopy now and they could quickly see why it was going so fast.
“They’re firing their engines, full burn!”
“Snap out of it, Jace, plot me a course that stays way the hell clear of that!” Sterling ordered, “We’d fry like bacon strips if we got within a kilometer of them at the rate they’re going!”
The Socrates stood itself on end, engines sending a plume of particles that marked their passage like a ribbon in the sky, and powered its way back into orbit.
“What the hell is he doing!?”
“That’s an attack vector, gentlemen.” Sorilla said, “I suggest you brace for more EMP hits.”
*****
USV Socrates
15 Grand over Hayden
“Sookin syn!” Alexi swore in his native language, infuriated by the situation. “Where did they come from, damn it all!?”
“Admiral Shepherd must have missed one, Captain.” Commander Ashley said grimly.
“Exterior heat!” Alexi commanded, not acknowledging the statement.
“Too hot, Captain. We’re still blind here!”
“Bozhe!” he cursed again. “Position?”
“twenty thousand meters and climbing hard, Sir.”
If they see us, we’re dead. And how could they possibly miss us?
Alexi thought grimly. His only hope was that his ship was moving fast enough, close enough to the planet, to come up on their target before they could retask their weapon from the Edison.
“Ninety thousand meters! Heat is falling off!”
“Retract heat shields!”
“We’re still too hot, Captain!”
“They’ll survive long enough! Do it!”
There was a pause, then, “Aye Sir. Retracting heat shields.”
“Commander, now is the time for you to do your thing, yes?”
“Aye Captain,” Ashley said, keying his board to life. “Permission to remove weapon safeties?”
“Granted!”
“Safeties off. Weapon systems are live. Awaiting targeting data…” Ashley said, eyes on the screens that had come to life showing the blue skies of Hayden giving way to the black of space.