Honor Bound

began to erupt as explosive shells ripped into the midst of them, targeted at the spots from which the missiles had been fired. Most of the team had moved, but Ari saw one trooper flying backwards in a rain of dirt and sod.

“Heads up!” He heard Roza’s voice on the net as the incoming fire began to slack off. “They’re coming up the ditch!”

Ari lunged up over the berm, bracing his carbine on the hard dirt, linking the weapon’s optics with his helmet’s targeting system. The Protectorate troops were barely visible, their grey armor dampening their thermal and IR signature, but the helmet’s targeting computer enhanced the picture using their movements and Ari focused on the closest of them, a shadowy figure clambering up the side of the ditch. A steady press on the trigger sent a three-round burst of 8mm slugs screaming from the carbine’s barrel and punching into the biomech’s head, sending it sprawling back into the dry creek bed. He shifted aim to the one just behind it and took it down as well, then took a moment to roll over to the other side of the berm, vacating the spot just as a cannon round hit not a meter from where he’d been.

Ari ignored the explosion and the clods of dirt that spattered against his side and picked out his next target…

“There are not enough of us,” General Kage told Shannon Stark over the command channel, not looking up from the barrel of his rifle as he put another round downrange, blowing the head off of an armored biomech. “They will overrun us when we run low on ammunition.”

He didn’t flinch as a cannon round struck near their position and a CeeGee trooper fell back, writhing and clutching at his side, where shards of shrapnel had penetrated his armor. “We must pull back and regroup at a more advantageous spot.”

“There is no more advantageous spot,” Shannon reminded him, squeezing off a burst from her carbine. “If we seek hardened cover, Dominguez will drop kinetic weapons on us and kill us even faster.”

“Then we will be forced to retreat and strike at them from the roadsides after they clear the bridge,” Kage said. “Or we will die where we stand. We can’t win without the defense satellites or air support.”

Shannon grunted, jerking back as an enemy bullet grazed the side of her helmet, setting her ears ringing and filling her vision with stars. She ducked down below the cover of the low, rock wall, hearing bullets punch into it from the other side. Cursing softly, she shook her head to clear it, then checked the time on her helmet display.

“We have to hold out a bit longer,” she told Kage, climbing back to a knee and bringing her weapon to her shoulder again. “I’m hoping for some good news on both fronts.”

“I recall one of your American sayings,” Kage growled. “Hope in one hand and shit in the other and see which fills up first.”

“I personally am Irish, born and bred, General,” she corrected him absently, most of her brain working on ranging a rifle grenade. “But as we seem to have a double-handful of shit right now,” she went on, launching the grenade into a clump of biomech troops coming over the bank of the dried-up stream, “we really don’t have much to lose by hoping.”

* * *

“Prepare to drop the drive field,” Nunez said, trying to make his voice sound calm and self-assured… but Patel noticed that his eyes kept darting back toward the main viewscreen, where the image of Earth continued to get larger and closer. “Commander Pirelli, we’re only going to have one shot at this before they target us with the lasers, so make it count.”

“You won’t be able to access the feed from the defense satellites,” Patel reminded her, feeling like he was backseat driving sitting in the acceleration couch behind the command station. “But you might try the news net sats. Their resolution is nearly as good.”

“I’ll cross-reference Colonel Stark’s comm signal,” Pirelli said, nodding sharply, “and drop the shots across the bridge from their position.” Her eyes flickered towards the countdown on her station’s display. “Ten seconds till we’re in range.”

“Lt. Sweeny,” Nunez said, “drop the field.”

Sweeny’s hand played over the control projection and the one g deceleration ceased abruptly, leaving them all in zero gravity. “Commander Pirelli, do you have a target lock?”

“Give me a few seconds, sir,” she said in a distracted voice, drawing a line from her sensor projection to the glowing avatar of a news net satellite, then tracing another from the satellite to the glowing signal from Shannon Stark’s communications ‘link.

I’ll give you all the time you want, Patel thought but didn’t say, but the Protectorates might not be so patient. But that was something the ship’s Captain would say, he reflected bitterly, and that was no longer his job.

Patel could see Nunez starting to fidget as nearly a minute passed, but then a satellite image came up on the Tactical display, showing a thermal/infrared rendering of the battlefield far below them on the darkened circle of a sundown Western hemisphere. Dim yellow-green humanoid shapes scurried here and there, and swarmed across the black gap of the dry creek bed, and here and there flares of white and red erupted where chemical hyperexplosives unleashed their fury. But what shown brighter were the ruddy glowing turbines inside the appropriated Marine armored vehicles that the Protectorates were using, arrayed in a semicircle on the other side of the bridge.

“Targeting the vehicles closest to the bridge and working outward,” Pirelli announced clinically, tracing the intended arc of fire across the image projected in front of her. “Firing Gauss cannons… now.”

Patel started to say something to Nunez, but forced himself to wait, and just as he thought he would have to step on the man’s toes…

“Mandel,” Nunez said to the Communications officer as they all felt the far-away jolts of the electromagnetic coilguns opening up. “Tell McKay it’s time to launch.”

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,” Jason McKay muttered as the assault lander kicked free of the Sheridan‘s hangar bay with the sharp bang of maneuvering thrusters.

“Not too crazy about the idea of closing the wall up with our English dead,” Jock commented drily from the row of seats behind him. More loud, abrupt bangs echoed through the packed rows of the lander as the maneuvering rockets shifted their attitude, swinging the drive bells parallel to the course of the Sheridan.

“You know your Shakespeare, Jock,” McKay said, raising an eyebrow in slight surprise as he glanced back at the NCO.

The big, blond Aussie looked even bulkier than usual in the full battle armor and HALO parachute rig they all wore, his battle rattle overflowing the edges of his acceleration couch and the safety harness straps pulled to their maximum extension. “Not too many buggers in the military that don’t know Henry V,” he said, shrugging it off.

“Don’t let him fool you, sir,” Vinnie said with a snorting laugh. “Jock was lead in a high school production of Henry V that got picked up by Republic HoloNet Entertainment’s Asia Talent Search. He was a minor celebrity in Sydney for weeks.”

“Oh my God,” Sergeant Watanabe spoke up from the seat on the other side of Jock Mahoney, his normally morose face breaking into a smile. “I saw that broadcast! That was you?”

“Hold onto your butts, ladies and gentlemen,” Commander Villanueva’s voice sounded over the speakers from the cockpit. “We’re going in.”

“The wardrobe girl was a smokin’ hot Sheila,” Jock muttered, half to himself.

Then the lander’s drive ignited and the two dozen Special Ops and Marine troops were pushed back into their seats as it moved from behind the shelter of the monolithic star cruiser and headed for the atmosphere below.

* * *

The Protectorate gunners were beginning to get the range, walking round after round in towards the CeeGee positions, and Shannon was about to admit to General Kage that he had been right and they were going to have to pull back, when it seemed like God Himself reached down and smote the enemy. Claps of thunder sounded as sonic booms echoed through the sky and trails of ionized vapor connected the heavens and the Earth for an eyeblink. The