Riding the Red Horse (23 page)

Fans of the QM universe will want to read “Tell It To The Dead” for the fleshing out of Tower’s background that it offers. I’ll be very surprised if readers of “Tell It To The Dead” won’t, likewise, feel a strong urge to delve into the QUANTUM MORTIS universe.

There was a loud metallic screeching, and then the men of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines were slammed back into their AG-powered supports as their rapid-insert transport was fired out of the Rhysalani assault cruiser at a velocity of 425 meters per second. Every Marine there, including PFC Graven Tower, knew that if the inertial compensators failed, he would be crushed flatter than a bug hitting the windscreen of a speeding aerovar, battle armor or no battle armor. Even with the anti-gravity protecting them, the g-forces still pressed them back uncomfortably in their pods, into which they were inserted like so much ammo.

The
Lightning
-class transport was little more than a very large projectile with inertial compensators and an engine, although in the place of explosive fills it was packed with concentric rings of cells that each contained a single Duke's Marine. Or perhaps
loaded
with a Marine would have been a more accurate description, as the cells were designed to literally fire the Marines out of the transport at low altitude in a horizontal plane. The transport was only provided with enough shielding to permit a hot entry through the atmosphere; it was designed to protect the troops it carried with speed, not armor.

But it wasn't only speed that helped them avoid the planetary defenses. Deception played a part too. Bravo Company's transport had been fired in the cruiser's fourth salvo; the fifteen other projectiles fired were HE missiles that gave off an electronic profile identical to that of the transport. They were aimed at specific targets; if there were any anti-bombardment systems active, the transport was unlikely to be prioritized.

PFC Tower knew all this, and yet he couldn't help tensing his muscles, as if doing so would help ward off an autoplasma or anti-missile from shooting down the transport. At least it would be quick, he reminded himself. At the speed they were traveling, even a misplaced piece of space debris would be sufficient to end everyone's day in a hurry.

“Your heart rate says you're either cranked up or trying to shit a brick, Tower,” the sergeant said. He was positioned two cells to the right of Tower and he sounded amused. “Relax, Private. This is the easy part. Hell, Chadwick's taking a nap.”

Tower looked at the numerical readout of his platoon. To his amazement, he saw that Chadwick's heart rate was showing only 80 beats per hecto. His own was nearly twice that!

“Don't you think you should wake him up, Sarge?”

He heard a ghostly chuckle in his ears. “If he can sleep through the popper, let him.”

Tower shuddered. As terrifying as their rapid descent through atmo was, the popper was even worse. Once the transport punched through the planet's atmosphere and plunged most of the way to the surface, its engines would fire and direct it towards its destination. As it approached the almost comically misnamed “landing zone”, it would begin rotating and ejecting Marines from their cells. The problem was that the ejection meant that the inertial compensators protecting them from the crushing G-forces would no longer be doing so; it was an extremely unpleasant experience.

There was the silver lining, he thought. At least if they were shot down in the next few hectos, he'd be spared the popper.

“Clearing atmo,” the pilot said. In truth, it was more of an honorary title. At the moment, he had no more control over the transport at the moment than Tower did. “Engine firing in three…two…one.”

Other than the vague sense of a roaring sound in the distance, Tower couldn't tell that the engines had engaged. But he felt a pressure on his chest as the transport leveled out, now fighting the planet's gravity instead of using it.”

“We're clear of the black-space defenses,” the pilot commented. “It's your lucky day, Marines. They're not even shooting at our dummies.”

“They don't know we're coming, gentlemen.” The lieutenant spoke on the platoon channel. “Now that we're level, it's only a half-kaysec to the zone. Team leaders, confirm that your exos are slaved.”

“Team Go,” he heard Sarge say, but on the team channel this time.

“Ready Go,” Baudet, the team's rifleman confirmed.

“Fire Go,” said Hall.

Tower glanced at his team readout. A green frame was flashing around the figure that represented him, the fire team's missileer. “Arrow Go.”

Once popped, each Marine's fixed exo-wings would spread out and the four of them would fly down to ground under Team's control. Tower had the vague notion that the team leaders were themselves slaved in some manner to the squad and platoon commanders, based on how smoothly they flew in formation through the sky. They had no thrusters or chutes; the key to a safe landing was to hold still and let Team's AI make whatever adjustments were necessary. The best way to ensure one augured in and created a man-sized crater was to panic and start thrashing around, sabotaging one's own glide path. While the individual Marine could control his exo-wings, they were tricky and even battle armor might not be sufficient to save a Marine who hit the ground at too steep an angle.

He wondered if anyone had woken Chadwick up yet. He glanced at the platoon summary and saw the man's heart rate was up over 100. Apparently someone had.

“Stay cool now,” Sarge urged. “After we pop, just stay loose, and we'll glide nice and easy to the ground.” Alpha pops in ten, then Bravo, then us.”

The transport rotated to line up the appropriate ejectees. So did Tower's stomach, or at least it felt as if it was. He tried to breathe slowly and count to ten, but he reached fourteen before the sergeant interrupted his counting. The transport rotated again.

“Alpha is go. We pop in twenty.”

Okay, so twenty. He could count to twenty. One, two, three.... He tried not to think about how fast they were moving, about the fact that he was about to be fired out of the rapidly moving transport by a mechanism that was essentially a large, single-shot gun. Or about how close they were to the very hard alien ground below.

“Bravo is go.”

The ship rotated again. It took everything Tower had not to scream as the green glow of the transport's interior suddenly vanished into pitch black as a mighty hand seemed to pluck him out of the safety of the ship and hurl him, helpless, into the night sky. He shut his eyes tightly and panted, resisting the urge to try to curl himself into a ball. Not that he could, of course, the rigid exoskeleton attached to his armor was already extending its stubby wings as it stretched out his legs and forced his arms against his sides.

Before he had even opened his eyes, he'd been forcibly transformed from a tumbling body into an aerodynamic glider capable of soaring for kilometers.

“Wee-ha!” someone shouted. He thought it was Hall.

“Pipe down, Fire,” Sarge ordered. “Ready, Arrow, you with us?”

“Roger, Team.”

“Arrow?”

“Roger that,” he managed to say. The four of them were now swooping in a tight arc towards the southwest, and the sergeant's AI was adjusting their flight paths to bring them into closer formation. He knew from his insertion training that the machine intelligence was capable of landing them within a meter of their rendezvous point with the rest of the squad, but it was still nerve-wracking to feel his body being constantly moved and adjusted.

The ground was flashing by rapidly underneath. No one was shooting at them, he was glad to see, although at the speeds they were moving, it would take a fairly serious fire-control system to even target them and according to the briefing, the Pandorians they were nominally attacking didn't have anything of the kind. The real concern was the cadre of Unity officers that were the Marines' primary target; the posthumans had been the key to reversing Pandorian losses in the Techno-State's war against the Kingdom of Bever.

“Exo-blow in ten,” Sarge announced, just as Tower was beginning to wonder how much closer to the ground they could get without auguring in at speed. He counted silently to himself, then felt as if he'd slammed into a brick wall as his armor shed the winged exoskeleton in a manner that abruptly reduced his speed by a considerable margin. “Exos off, now tuck and eat dirt!”

Tower's battlesuit curled itself into what he hoped was an impenetrable ball of metal. He couldn't see anything, but he really didn't want to anyhow. He struck the ground with a glancing blow, bounced into the air, then slammed down again, harder this time. Four more bounces and he finally came to a halt and leaped up to his feet, completely unharmed thanks to the miracles of Twenty-Fifth Century engineering.

“Get your bang on, boys,” Sarge said. Tower felt a vibration as the X42 missile launcher slid up from its slot on the back and activated; a purple crosshair joined the green and yellow ones that were tied to the plasma beamer on his left arm and the laser built into his right. All three crosshairs were actively scanning the horizon, locking momentarily on objects in the distance as his suit AI indicated passive fire mode. “Follow me!”

Tower was pleased to see that his heart rate was lower than two of his teammates. It was the insertion that frightened him more than the prospect of combat itself. Then a flashing orange icon appeared on his display, coming in airborne at speeds that indicated a hovercraft. As he focused on it, it turned red.

“Troop transport, knock it down!” Sarge called out to him.

Tower blinked twice with his left eye to select the purple crosshairs, then to the red icon with his eyes. The crosshairs flashed green as he achieved lock, and then he felt a kick to his right shoulder followed by a bright flash as the X42 launched a Hellraiser at the transport some two kilometers away. The missile closed in rapidly on the hovercraft, which took no evasive maneuvers. A moment later, orange-red clouds billowed in the night sky.

“One transport KIA,” he reported gleefully.

“First blood to Arrow,” Sarge said. “See that building 800 meters ahead? That's Primary. Remember, the Major wants us to capture one of them Unity freaks if we can.”

They managed to get within 400 meters of the building before the first lasers flashed out in their direction, forcing them to take cover. One hit Ready, but ablated harmlessly against his armor. Three of them returned fire while Ready lay down and supported his projectile-armed right with a nearby rock. With his enhanced oculars, he was able to drop three enemy soldiers with headshots in rapid succession.

“How many do you make?” Sarge asked Fire, who had a better view of the enemy position as he was pouring intense plasma fire toward what looked like an emplaced two-man laser cannon. The cannon was firing deep red high-intensity beams that were considerably more dangerous to them than all the laser rifle fire combined. The scarlet beams were powerful enough to burn through the Marines' armor if contact was maintained long enough, and they were forced to take shelter behind a hill, out of the cannon's line of sight.

“Suit's saying fifty-four, not counting the six KIA.”

A burst of fire came from their left and the laser cannon abruptly stopped firing.

“Looks like the rest of the gang finally showed up. Let's move in before they can re-man it.” Sarge paused for a moment. “All right, we've got suppression fire in three…two…one!”

Hell erupted from their left and right as the squad's other two teams opened fire on the Pandorian position. Red lasers and purple plasma streams carved chunks out of the buildings and cut down the lightly armored natives with equal indifference, and the incoming fire abruptly stopped as the Pandorians took cover.

“Follow me!” Sarge was the first to his feet, but Tower wasn't far behind him. They charged forward, powerful servo-mechanicals hurling them forward faster than any unassisted man could hope to run. As they moved towards the small complex, Tower switched his target-assist to full active for his plasma arm, leaving his laser arm and the X42 on passive. No sooner had he done so that his left arm moved of its own accord and fired two quick bursts at someone he hadn't even seen.

Fire had done the same, as Tower could hear the whining sound of the pair of flechette cannons swivel-mounted on his teammate's shoulders that were spitting out hypersonic streams of the thin metal projectiles. One hundred meters out, Sarge aimed his left fist at the door and launched two grenades at the door of the largest building. Even as the grenades blew a large hole in the building front, he launched another one, this time from his right forearm. Although they were still outside and protected from the brunt of the 25 million-candela flash, the burst of light caused Tower's faceplate to dim momentarily.

And then they were inside. The number 15 flashed on his display and his plasma auto-burned through three men before he registered that the enemy soldiers were offering no resistance. He switched it to passive, but not before blowing the head off a fourth Pandorian who was stumbling about with both hands pressed to his blinded eyes.

“On the floor!” Sarge's voice boomed through his exo-mike. “Now, bitches!”

The survivors hastened to comply. Sarge scanned the room, then, satisfied there was no immediately pressing danger, turned to face Tower. “Turn it off sooner next time, Arrow. Last thing we need is you launching a Hellraiser in an enclosed space.”

“Aye-aye, Sarge.” The X42 wouldn't launch at anything closer than 200 meters, but Tower knew this wasn't the time to argue. And even hyped up as he was, he did feel a mild twinge of guilt about unnecessarily killing the four soldiers. It was funny, he thought. He'd probably killed an entire platoon, maybe two, when taking down the transport, and that didn't bother him at all. But then, he wasn't standing over their burned bodies lying in improbable positions at his feet either. Sorry about that, he apologized silently to the corpses. No hard feelings, aye?

The sergeant was interrogating what appeared to be the senior surviving officer. “Fire, Arrow, down the stairs and to the right. This guy says there is a Unity officer in the comms room there. Look sharp and try to capture him if you can. And make damn sure your actives are off!”