<You can’t be serious.> The AI was beginning to sound rather put out. <How’d you get debarkation clearance?>
<Our primary systems were spot on, and we were to get repairs on Venus. That’s why I’m not sure I want to trust your assessment,> Katelyn replied. <We’ll have recalibration done in a moment; still plenty of time to correct, if you’re right.>
<I am right,> the AI retorted. <You have twenty seconds to get back in your lane.>
Rory stifled a laugh. “Only you could enrage an AI.”
“It’s a gift,” Katelyn replied with a wink and a grin.
She burst into laughter at Aaron’s muttered, <Tell me about it.>
She reviewed her approach vector. Her breakaway burn was set for three seconds after the AI’s deadline. That was all she needed. Just three seconds of leeway.
“Gonna be close,” Rory muttered as she watched the ship’s nav systems ready the maneuvering thrusters.
Venus grew larger on the holo showing their rear view. They closed to within seven thousand kilometers as the ship continued to decrease burn.
<Kestrel, you have—what the hell are you doing?> the STC AI exclaimed as the ship spun one hundred and ten degrees and fired its engines, streaking across Venus’s southern pole and over to the daylight side of the planet.
The burn was too exacting for a human to manage. Aaron knew it, too.
<Core, please tell me you aced your math classes.>
His caustic comment deflected Katelyn’s own worries over her calculations being correct, and she smothered another grin.
Stars, I think I’ll actually miss him when he’s gone.
She wondered what her brother, the former hotshot TSF pilot, would have thought of this daring maneuver. The Damus streaked through the skies of Venus, only one hundred kilometers above the surface. From the ground, the ship would appear to be a raging ball of fire, racing toward the south pole.
Joe would be in stasis right now, safely away from the insanity that raged across the Sol System these days. She didn’t blame him for leaving. After Makemake, she would have left too—had it been an option. Still, he was one of the best pilots she knew. With the mods the military had given him, he could have arced around Venus without a preprogrammed flight path to aid him.
This one’s for you, Joseph.
The STC AI was shrieking—something Katelyn had never heard an SAI do before, although Aaron had come close a time or two—and she shut off the comms as they reached Venus’s south pole.
There, the ship spun once more, completing its braking before dropping to a dozen meters above the Prelandra Sea, and skimming the wavetops on the way to the Teka continent.
“No one shot at us,” Katelyn mused.
<Oh, they shot at us all right,> Aaron interjected.
“Shit! Really? Why didn’t you say something?” Katelyn asked.
“No worries. You seemed really focused,” Rory replied, “so I just dropped a trio of scrambler drones. Two of them are marked by craters in the ice behind us now.”
Katelyn nodded absently as she checked their velocity and scan visibility. To the casual observer, the Damus may have looked like just another freighter plying the black, keeping to the commercial lanes, but the Cause had set it up with an impressive stealth suite. This close to the surface, even the TSF cruisers overhead would be hard-pressed to find the ship.
“I was thinking of Joe,” she replied when her review of the ship’s flight path checked out.
Rory nodded. “I do too, sometimes—especially when we do crazy shit. I wonder if he would have joined us—if he hadn’t gotten out.”
“Who knows,” Katelyn replied. “Stars, if you think about it, the Intrepid is still within the Oort cloud…. I hope no one in the SDA gets any bright ideas and tries to stop them.”
“No chance,” Rory replied. “No one wants to mess with the GSS. No lie, though, you’d take the first colony ship outsystem, too, if you got a berth.”
Katelyn shrugged. “Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn’t. Hard to say. If all the good people leave, who’s going to be left in Sol?”
“Seriously, Katelyn,” Rory said with a snort. “What do you think’s happened already?”
<She has a point.>
Aaron’s tone sounded…. Katelyn searched for the right word. Jaded? Disappointed?
Weary, she decided. I guess war will do that to anybody.
The ship’s sensors picked up the edge of the continent, and Katelyn increased the Damus’s altitude to climb over the coastal hills to the steppe that dominated Teka’s southern reaches. They had five hundred kilometers to go, and then they’d be at their destination.
Katelyn set her jaw. “Tarja, here we come.”
FUEL DEPOT
STELLAR DATE: 3227474 / 06.04.4124 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Outskirts of Tarja, Teka Continent
REGION: Venus, InnerSol, Sol Space Federation
Williams leaned his back against the low wall at the edge of the field and slid to the ground. He was exhausted.
Bravo Company had been on the move for two days. A few minutes of sleep here and there was all anyone had managed to catch. But now their target was in sight: a deuterium fuel depot that the separatists were using to power their surface-to-space batteries along the northern edge of the city.
Williams’ armor’s hydro reserves were dry, so he split the front of his helmet wide enough to put a bottle of water he’d scavenged to his lips. The liquid was cool and refreshing, though the night air that hit his face was not.
“What a shit-show,” Williams muttered aloud after drinking half the bottle. He looked to his left where Sergeant Kowalski had hunkered down.
“You can say that again, Gunny,” Sergeant Kowalski replied as he cracked his helmet and drank from his own bottle. “I don’t get why this planet is so damn hot. Fleet shut down their little suns.”
Williams gazed up into the sky. The blue point of light to the south was Earth; he could see the twinkling halo around it—the High Terra ring—from here. A nimbus glow caused by the thousands of ships coming and going created a haze around both the ring and the planet that was both beautiful and indistinct. Larger lights, much closer to Venus, also hung overhead. Those were the ships of the Terran Space Force and the civilians caught up in the blocAaron beyond.
A burst of light flashed across the sky: a surface-to-surface strike from further south. The flash was followed by a resonating boom, and a staccato echo of rail fire. All around Tarja, the Marines were moving in.
The city would fall in a matter of days.
The cruisers in orbit of Venus had enough firepower to raze the planet, burn it to ash. But it was bad form to burn a member world. Williams—and the brass, it would seem—believed that the majority of the populace did not support the separatists.
As far as he had seen, most of the enemy troops were Diskers—mercenaries from the edge of the Sol System and the worlds of the Scattered Disk Alliance. Hardly any of the enemy combatants were locals. One could almost say that Tarja was an occupied city at present.
But all of that was politics and positioning. The reality was boots on the ground. Kill the Diskers and separatists, and try not to hurt too many of the innocents—so long as they could tell them apart from the enemy.
Williams pulled his gaze away from the night sky, and squinted at Kowalski, remembering that the sergeant had asked him about the heat. “Do I look like a weather satellite? Venus is close to Sol. Even with its thinner atmo, it still heats up. Ever heard of convection?”
“They shoulda moved it further out,” Private Weber said from where he crouched. “I remember learning that there’s room for another planet between Venus and Earth—if the orbits are tweaked just right. Not sure why they couldn’t shift Venus into the goldilocks zone.”
Williams leaned over and cuffed Weber upside the head. “Seriously? ‘It’s too dark, it’s too hot, it’s not far enough from Sol….’ Is there anything else you’d like me to do for y
ou today, or would moving a planet be enough?”
Weber grinned. “Well, Gunny, now that you mention it, I—”
The Marine stopped talking when Williams’ hand rose in the air once more. “You were saying, Private?”
Weber rested his head against the wall and didn’t reply.
“Thought so,” Williams grunted in response. <Jansen, what’s the word on the northern approach?>
He sent the message over the Link, directly from his mind to hers. She was one of his most reliable fireteam leaders. Give her a task, and she’d see it done, no matter what. Right now, she had fireteam one/one scouting the northern route into the fuel depot.
Jansen’s rueful laugh came into his mind, followed by her smooth, no-nonsense voice. <Better than I expected, Gunny. There’s a platoon of Diskers and what looks like some local militia folks set up around the front gate, but their positions are shit. Half of them are milling around, and their pickets are only a klick out. We could take ‘em and then use beams on the ‘toon at the gate.>
<OK, you hold tight with one/one. We can’t fire beams around the depot—the colonel says the brass doesn’t want us to blow it, so we’re going to have to get strategic on this one.>
<Shit, Gunny, really?> Jansen asked. <Would the brass like us to wipe the enemy’s ass while we’re at it?>
Williams chuckled. <Don’t give ‘em any ideas, Corporal. You’d be holding Disker dicks while they piss before you know it.>
<Nice alliteration there,> Jansen said with a snort.
<I'll be here all week, try the veal. Now tell your pizza-box wearing fireteam not to shoot the effing tanks, got it?>
<Damn, Gunny! You know how to hurt a Marine.>
Williams smirked as he sealed his helmet back up and summoned an overhead view of the fuel depot on his HUD. Four hundred massive deuterium tanks lay in orderly rows, protected by a tall fence and electronic countermeasures. Data on the depot said that there were some autoturrets out there, too, and he had to assume that the enemy had control of them.
The fuel depot was on the northern edge of the city of Tarja; only five klicks from the spaceport. Commander Lauren had the rest of Bravo Company headed there, but from what he could see on the combat net, they were still an hour out. Cutting off the fuel supply for that port would certainly help.
Some ships were still making it through the blocAaron with supplies. If they could choke off the refuel supply for the port, it would go a long way. Ships would be able to land, but without refueling, they’d be grounded—few captains would take that risk just to deliver supplies.
Not unless they were nuts.
As he considered their options, Lieutenant Grenwald, Fourth Platoon’s CO, broke into Williams’ thoughts.
<We’re down to twenty-two Marines, Gunny. This ain’t no cakewalk. There’s gotta be at least a hundred of the enemy out there.>
Williams nodded. Grenwald was echoing his own thoughts. <We need to divide their forces,> he suggested. <Best way in my mind is to take out the pipeline between the depot and the spaceport. They’ll send out a team, and we’ll hit them at the same time we strike from the southwest.>
<Got it. I’ll send teams two/one and two/two out to hit the pipeline,> Lieutenant Grenwald replied.
<You asking or telling, Grenwald?> Williams snorted. <You’re the LT; I’m just here for emotional support.>
Grenwald laughed in his mind. <You’re the surliest sonuvabitch in the Corps, Gunny. I’ll let you know if I need my nose wiped.>
<I’ll do it with Perez’s ass,> Williams replied with a grin. <On second thought, he might like that.>
<That he would,> Grenwald replied. <Staff Sergeant, you been listening?>
<With all my heart,> Staff Sergeant Green’s mental avatar grinned in their minds. <I’ll escort the fireteams to the fuel line. We’ll hit it a klick out.>
<Good. Williams, you mind babysitting Chang at the southwest corner?> Grenwald asked.
Williams nodded and rose to a crouch. <Watching Chang’s team mow down asshats is the highlight of any day.>
<Good,> Grenwald replied and began disseminating the orders to Fourth Platoon’s squad sergeants.
The countdown was set. In t-minus twenty, they’d hit the pipeline, and all hell would break loose. Just the way it was meant to.
ABORT
STELLAR DATE: 3227474 / 06.04.4124 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Outskirts of Tarja, Teka Continent
REGION: Venus, InnerSol, Sol Space Federation
“Shit! Katelyn, those AA towers are hot!”
Katelyn saw it too; the four anti-air towers to the north of the spaceport were supposed to be controlled by Disker forces, but they were online and turning toward the Damus.
“Hitting the deck,” Katelyn called out as she pushed the ship down toward the ground, leveling off just five meters above the tall grass that covered the steppe.
It had been a while since she’d flown nap-of-the-earth. The SWSF fighter pilot who’d been assigned as her flight instructor when she’d joined the resistance after being released from prison had drilled this method into her.
Not having military-grade pilot’s mods limited the speed at which she could execute this maneuver. Still, it was a rush, and a grin played about her lips as she worked the controls, slaloming around clumps of trees and dipping into shallow depressions.
Her mind was fully integrated into the ship’s three-hundred-sixty-degree sensor sweep. It provided spherical situational awareness, projecting a ghostly overlay of the landscape around her. She prayed there weren’t any cloaked buildings or stealthed comm towers that scan hadn’t picked up as they raced over the terrain.
That could ruin their day real fast.
Overhead, flak from the AA guns exploded in the air after being sent out to light up the ship’s shields and make better targets for the secondary rail systems on the towers.
“They’re missing us—we’re too low for the flak,” Rory said with a smile.
The moment the words passed Rory’s lips, flak fire began to rain down onto the steppe on their starboard side. The ship’s wraparound sensor suite included an audio feed that projected threat alerts from the direction of the source. The sound of the rail shots striking the prairie at her right shoulder had Katelyn swinging the ship hard to port, speeding away to the west.
<You just had to say something.>
An explosion flared dead ahead, and Rory let out a cry of dismay. “What was that?”
“That wasn’t something shot at us,” Katelyn assured her. “We should be close enough to pull comms from our people down here. Why don’t one of you guys see what’s up?”
Rory bent over her console, and a moment later gave a nod. “OK, there we are…. Damn, there’s a lot of chatter.”
<Here. Let me see if I can filter it down.>
Katelyn banked the ship further west and then back south, evading the AA fire while still trying to stay on course for Tarja.
“Try to raise someone in charge, too. We need them to advise where we should drop off Aaron.”
“Yeah, sure,” Rory replied, her voice absent as she surfed through the news coming across the comm channels.
<You say that like you’re the one doing the work,> Aaron grumbled, and Rory shot the cube an exasperated look.
“Whatever.” She returned her attention to the com and whistled. “Damn! That explosion? TSF just blew the line between the fuel depot to the east and the spaceport. Their Marines are holding the northern edge of the port.”
“Dammit,” Katelyn muttered. “Any luck raising anyone?”
<Patching him through to the shipnet now.>
The voice that came through sounded harried.
<Damus, this is Major Suats. You still intact? We can see the guns up north blasting away at something.>
<Five by five,> Katelyn replied. <For now.>
<We’re getting our asses k
icked out here. I need to get your data packet safely into Tarja before the Marines move further into the city. You need to set down at the southeast corner of the fuel depot. We’re pulling back through there and can secure your payload.>
Katelyn pulled up a display of the area the man had indicated. It was filled with warehouses right up to the edge of the fuel depot, less than fifty meters between the last tank and the first building.
<You got it, sir. Piece a pie to set down there. You’ll need to string us a fuel line, though.>
<Deal. ETA?> the major asked.
<Three minutes, provided the Marines don’t blow us out of the sky between now and then.>
<See you on the dirt, Damus. Suat out.>
Katelyn glanced at Rory. “Well, we always did want to see what ground combat looks like….”
“We did?”
STRIKE FORCE
STELLAR DATE: 3227474 / 06.04.4124 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Outskirts of Tarja, Teka Continent
REGION: Venus, InnerSol, Sol Space Federation
Williams crouched behind a basalt boulder that lay a dozen meters beyond the fence at the fuel depot’s southwest corner. To his right, in position behind a pair of similar rocks, was Chang’s fireteam with their crew-served railgun. The weapon would be able to reach out and touch anyone along the south and east sides of the fuel depot. In a pinch, it could fire clear through the first few rows of tanks—though no one wanted to be around for that.
Further to the north were squad three’s three fireteams, ready to breach the fence on the depot’s western side. Once the pipeline blew and the Diskers moved out to investigate, squad three would advance into the fuel depot. Kowalski would lead one/one and one/three in from the north, and fireteam one/two would hold the depot’s southern edge.
The plan required the Marines to strike hard and fast in order to make their smaller numbers feel like the hammer-blow of a much larger unit.
Williams watched the countdown on his HUD tick past the one-minute mark, then thirty seconds. He mentally counted down the last five seconds with the timer.