drop pods were loaded and ready to be ejected once the ship was in position. Sixteen of the capsules contained one cyborg and one bio bod each, plus a thousand pounds of food, ammo, and other gear required to support them on the ground. The remaining pods carried RAVs, each of which was loaded with additional supplies.
The problem was that unlike military drop ships, which were equipped to jettison up to thirty-six pods at once, the Solar Eclipse didn’t have drop tubes, which meant that Thraki crew members would have to push Team Zebra’s containers off the stern ramp two at a time. And no matter how quickly the mercenaries completed the task, the pods were going to hit Jericho’s surface miles apart, thereby forcing the legionnaires to waste precious time coming back together. But there was no way around it, so as a team of four space-suited crew members waited to propel the pods down the roller-equipped ramp, the beings sealed inside the entry vehicles continued to communicate with each other on a low-power, short-range com channel. Each eggshaped container was pressurized and divided in half. That meant that as Santana stood on a compartment packed with supplies he was effectively face-to-face with his tenfoot-tall T-2, even though a well-padded partition served to separate them. The idea was to make sure that each twoperson fi?re team hit the dirt together, thereby enhancing their chances of survival as well as their ability to engage the enemy within minutes of touchdown.
But it was claustrophobic inside the module, and Santana was extremely conscious of the way the hull pressed in around him, so much so that DeCosta’s prayer came as a welcome distraction. And even though the platoon leader wasn’t a religious man there was no denying the beauty and power of the ancient words.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: For thou art with me; Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. . . .”
And as the words went on, Santana’s thoughts turned to Vanderveen, and the very real possibility that he would see her soon. But what if he didn’t? What if it turned out that she was dead? That possibility brought a lump to the legionnaire’s throat as the prayer came to a close.
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.”
“After I kill every frigging bug on this planet,” squad leader Husulu Ibo-Da put in, his words serving to drown out DeCosta’s “Amen.”
There was a chorus of laughter, and Santana couldn’t help but smile knowing that the response would drive DeCosta crazy, assuming the little bastard was sane to begin with. The major started to speak but was cut off for a second time as the Thraki pilot overrode him. And the words were familiar since Santana had been required to write them at DeCosta’s behest. “All personnel stand by for launch. . . . Check onboard nav functions and reset if necessary. . . . The ship is now in orbit. . . . Stand by for launch in thirty seconds. . . .”
And so it went until Santana felt the pod start to move, followed by a sudden bout of nausea as the module fell clear of the argrav fi?eld, and the steering jets fi?red. Because there were thousands of pieces of space junk circling Jericho, the offi?cer was fairly confi?dent that the pods would be lost in among them. But if the Ramanthians took issue with the sudden appearance of twenty-one additional blips on their tracking screens, then the Solar Eclipse’s pilot would admit to dumping garbage and accept the inevitable tongue-lashing. Then, having delivered a cargo of delicacies that the Ramanthian command structure hadn’t ordered but was unlikely to refuse, the freighter would depart.
In the meantime the computer-guided drop pods were following trajectories calculated to reinforce the impression that they, like the hundreds of other objects that entered the atmosphere each day, were about to burn up. Santana felt the pod begin to vibrate, and even though he couldn’t see the three-thousand-degree envelope of plasma fl?owing around him, he knew it was trying to fi?nd a way in through the capsule’s thermal protection system. And the offi?cer could feel the heat start to build up inside the pod as the vehicle shook violently. The legionnaire chinned the intercom. “Snyder? How are you doing?”
“I was taking a nap,” the cyborg lied. “Until you woke me up that is.”
Santana laughed. “Sorry about that. . . . Go back to sleep.”
And, had such a thing been possible, the next few minutes would have been the time to try. Because once the pod lost a suffi?cient amount of altitude, parachutes were deployed, and Santana felt a distinct jerk as the vehicle slowed. That was followed by a gentle swaying motion—
and the sure knowledge that they would be on the ground soon.
However, pod Bravo Two-Four, which carried bio bod Jamie Ott, and cyborg Bindi Jasper was in trouble. Both legionnaires felt a jerk, followed by continued free fall, as a buzzer began to sound. The NAVCOMP triggered the reserve chute, which turned into a streamer, as the capsule continued its plunge toward the jungle below. Ott took over at that point, fi?red all of the drop pod’s retros, and was still punching buttons as the vehicle hit the ground. There was no explosion, but the impact crater was fi?fty feet across, and at least fi?fteen feet deep.
But the jungle had covered other secrets over the ages, thousands of them, and the force of the impact brought long dormant seeds to the surface, where the sunlight could fi?nd them. And even before the wreckage could cool, vines had already begun their slow-motion advance in from the margins of the newly created clearing to reclaim what was rightfully theirs.
The sudden loss of Ott and Jasper was immediately visible to the entire team as the Integrated Tactical Command (ITC) system threw a revised TO chart up for the legionnaires to see. But there was no time to mourn for lost comrades as their pods hit the jungle’s topmost canopy of vegetation, where they paused for a fraction of a second before crashing through a second layer of foliage to land on whatever lay below. Which in Santana’s case was soft loam.
The capsule bounced once, landed at something of an angle, and blew itself apart. Santana fell free, rolled into the shelter offered by a fallen tree, and brought his assault rifl?e up. Snyder broke out of what remained of the shell, shook off some loose pieces, and began to scan. If there was some sort of threat in the immediate area, the cyborg would fi?nd it.
A variety of jungle smells fi?lled the legionnaire’s nostrils as he came to his feet and eyeballed the data provided by the ITC. The good news was that there was no sign that a Ramanthian reaction force was on the way to intercept them, and all of the surviving pods had landed safely. The bad news was that Team Zebra was spread out along a twenty-mile-long axis. But DeCosta had a plan—which the impatient offi?cer was quick to implement. “This is Zebra Six. . . . All team members will form on Bravo Six and myself. And let’s fi?nd those RAVs. . . . We’re going to need them. Over and out.”
DeCosta’s reasoning was sound as Santana could see on his HUD. Because Bravo Six, which was to say Farnsworth, was closest to the coordinates where the POWs were being held. So it made sense for both the platoon leader and those fi?re teams closest to him to remain stationary, while the rest of the team hurried to catch up. The mission clock was running, and there was no way to shut it off.
