drainage ditch beside it.
Crossman’s head swam, his vision blurred and he couldn’t seem to make his arms and legs obey his commands. Slowly, his sight cleared enough that he could see, through a web of cracks in his fractured faceplate, another of his men lying in the ditch beside him. It had to be Mathers, part of his mind realized through the fog of concussion, the junior NCO who’d been setting one of the other charges. His chest was riddled with bullets and his armor was soaked in blood; he looked very dead, and Crossman wondered if he himself looked any better.
There wasn’t any pain yet, but he knew there would be, and he would have welcomed it if only he could have made himself move faster. He managed to get a hand beneath him and push himself up enough to look over the edge of the ditch. Three biomechs were moving towards him-their armor was scorched and bloody but they were still upright and functioning, which was more than he could say for himself. He patted at his chest, trying to find his carbine, not coherent enough to be desperate but knowing somewhere deep down that he should have been. He felt the buttstock of his carbine and yanked at it with all the strength he could muster, but it was trapped under his body and he just couldn’t move fast enough to free it…
When the grenade exploded, his first thought was that it was aimed at him and he ducked his head instinctively at the flash and gut-punch percussion, but the fact that he was still alive made him look back up. Two of the biomechs were down, one of them in pieces-the grenade must have hit him directly, Tom thought. The third was staggered but still on its feet, trying to swing its rifle around.as the smoke from the detonation swirled around it.
Tom’s ears were battered from the explosions, the noise-cancelling headphones in his helmet damaged by the grenade blast that had shattered his visor, so he didn’t hear the gunshots, but he saw the biomech stumble backwards, saw the bullet holes punch through its chest then climb upwards to penetrate its helmet in a spray of blood. The thing fell to its knees, then collapsed forward to the pavement, motionless.
When the lone shooter stepped forward, Tom could barely see it in the spare moonlight-his helmet’s night vision was gone with the broken visor-but he could tell immediately it wasn’t a biomech. It was short, and not wearing a helmet, and it was limping badly, a carbine cradled in one arm. Tom gave up clutching at his trapped carbine and pulled a flashlight from his belt, shining it on the approaching figure.
Tanya Manning’s spiky hair was matted with blood from a nasty gash on the left side of her head, and her armor was scorched and battered, stained with blood in at least four places, including a nasty gunshot wound on her calf that was causing the limp. Her eyes looked nearly vacant, but there was a grim and relentless purpose to the set of her mouth.
Tom tried to speak and had to cough his throat clear and spit through his broken visor before he could manage it. “Manning,” he said hoarsely. “Gotta set off these charges. Helmet controls are fragged.”
“A grenade should do it,” she said in a voice curiously cool and casual, except for the way she slightly slurred her words.
She stepped over to the cratering charge, still sitting in the middle of the road, and knelt down next to it. She pulled a rifle grenade from a bandolier on her chest and methodically unscrewed the base, discarding the tail portion that held the propellant for launching it from the tube beneath her carbine’s rifle barrel. Inside that base was a simple dial with time measured out in seconds and minutes around its perimeter. She twisted the timer, set the bomb down next to the lump of hyperexplosives, then pushed herself slowly and painfully to her feet and limped towards Tom.
“Five minutes to get clear, Sgt. Crossman,” she murmured as she pulled him to his feet. Crossman bit back a gasp as a wave of agony went through his right leg, and leaned into her for support.
“Anyone else alive?” he managed to ask her as they limp-jogged down the road. He knew the answer, but he had to make sure.
“No, Master Sergeant,” she told him, eyes fixed on the road ahead. “Just you and me.”
“Damn,” he hissed, pain and exhaustion and a sense of utter hopelessness filling his voice. “This had better mean something.” He glanced upwards towards the stars and what flew among them. “They’d better win this fucking fight.”
Chapter Forty-Five
“Five minutes to orbital insertion,” Bevins reported, watching the blue green image of the planet growing huge in the holographic display.
“Where’s our friend, Larry?” Minishimi asked, absent-mindedly tugging her harness tighter in anticipation of impending zero gravity.
“Still on course to Earth orbit, ma’am,” Larry Gianeto told her, nodding toward the red icon in his Tactical projection. “Depending on how fast they decelerate, somewhere between 30 minutes to an hour behind us. The
“Why’s he heading for orbit?” Franks wondered aloud. At Minishimi’s questioning look, he went on. “Ma’am, it’s just that… last time around, Antonov parked his flagship in orbit and threatened to nuke our cities if we didn’t surrender. We haven’t heard any demands this time and he knows that if he drops field and tries to hit ground targets, we’ll be there taking potshots at him.”
“Maybe he’s going after Fleet Headquarters?” Commander Lee suggested. “They haven’t attacked it yet.”
“They don’t need an FTL cruiser to take out Fleet HQ,” Gianeto pointed out. “They still have enough conventional ships out there to do that, if we aren’t able to take them out.”
“He’s here to take us out of the equation,” Minishimi said, nodding. “Everything about this attack has been about stripping away our defenses… and they knew there would be at least one FTL cruiser insystem. The ramships were the first wave, and when they didn’t work, they sent their biggest gun.”
“So why’s he heading for Earth orbit then?” Lee asked, confused.
“Because he knows we’ll have to try to stop him,” Minishimi answered her. “And he’s right.”
“We’re at minimum safe distance for field activation,” Bevins announced, reaching out to slide down a control. “Drive at station keeping.” Gravity faded and Frank’s stomach fluttered with the sensation.
“Helm,” Minishimi ordered, “link the drive field controls to Tactical. Mr. Gianeto, prepare to deactivate field when the enemy does and target him with Gauss cannon and forward lasers.” She swung around in her chair. “Communications, signal the
“This is going to be a huge cluster-fuck,” Captain Nunez said so quietly that only Admiral Patel, seated just behind him, heard it.
“Yes it is, Steve,” Patel agreed, his voice pitched just as low. “I’m sorry you had to be saddled with this situation.”
“Not like you asked for any of this, sir,” Nunez returned, smiling sadly, eyeing the security guard who was strapped into one of the emergency couches at the bulkhead, watching Patel carefully.
“The
“Put me on general address, Lieutenant,” Nunez ordered. At the Communications officer’s nod, Nunez spoke and his voice echoed through the halls of the ship and every duty station from Engineering to the hangar bay. “This is Captain Nunez. The Protectorate has a fully equipped
“If we drop our shields and engage them, they will use our own ground-based defense lasers against us and try to shoot us down. Together with the
“If we are in too low of an orbit to engage our field, we will still attempt to shield the other ship.” At this, Nunez saw a couple doubtful glances from the bridge crew and he fought back a rueful smile. “We are likely going to
