March Upcountry

But as they neared the planet and landing, the hammocks and loose gear were secured, and the troops buckled down and put on their mission faces. It had been a nice little interlude, and everyone felt fairly refreshed.

Of course, there were still a few small problems to deal with.

“Hold on a second,” Julian said as the shuttle began to skip through the outermost reaches of atmosphere. “Are you trying to tell me that they think there’s a landing zone?”

“More or less.” Despreaux smiled. “It looks like there is, but, you know, we don’t exactly have the best maps in the galaxy.”

“Oh, this is truly good,” Julian said, slamming his helmet into place while the assault shuttle began to shake and shudder. “Wrrflmgdf,” he continued, as the helmet muffled his voice.

“What was that?” Despreaux held a hand up to her ear as she reached for her own headcover. “I think I missed it.”

“What I said was,” Julian cut in his suit speaker to tell her, “this is truly fucking good!”

“What’s the problem?” Despreaux settled her helmet and brought her own speakers online. “Just another day in the Marines.”

“This is the sort of shit I wrangled my way into the Regiment to avoid,” Julian snarled, wiggling deeper into the enveloping memory plastic of his cocoon as the shuttle hit another bump. “If I wanted to make lousy drops on hostile planets under insane commanders I could’ve stayed with Sixth Fleet.”

Despreaux laughed.

“Oh, Zeus, that’s rich! You were in the Sixth?”

“Yep, under Admiral Helmut, Dark Lord of the Sixth.” He shook his head in memory. “Now there was a character. Kill you as soon as look at you.”

Despreaux smiled, and her eyes crinkled as the shuttle gave another lurch. “You know you love it.”

“Like hell!” Julian shouted as the roar of reentry filled the compartment and began to grow. He worked his tongue at a bit of ration caught between his teeth for a moment, and looked around quizzically.

“Is it just me, or do we seem to be coming in a little faster than usual?”

“We’re too steep!” Bann shouted, and his hand cocked, ready to override the automated reentry system if the computer got confused.

“Stay on profile,” Dobrescu said calmly. “We’re in the pipe. It’s just a shaky pipe, is all.”

“We’re exceeding parameters!” Bann snapped. Shuttle Four felt as if it were shuddering apart, and there was zero maneuver fuel left. All the pilot could do was hang on and hope she stayed together. “I’ve got overheating on all surfaces, and stress warnings on the wings!”

“We are exceeding the manual numbers,” Dobrescu admitted as his toot flashed a series of numbers across his vision. Every system was in the yellow, but he’d performed over two thousand drops in training and combat, and had a far better feel for the real, as opposed to the specified, capabilities of the rugged drop shuttles than whatever dweeb had written the manual. “The computer doesn’t like that, but the numbers are conservative. We’ll be fine.”

“This is insane!”

“Hey, you’re the one who said ‘go for the lakebeds’!” Dobrescu chuckled nastily. Then shrugged. “Would you rather be target practice for that carrier?” he asked in a milder tone. There was no answer. “Then shut up and hang on.”

The shuttles flashed across the eastern ocean at five times the speed of sound, and the thunder of their crossing hammered the uncaring waves. Their speed dropped steadily, and the outer barrier range of mountains— the upthrust giants that turned the region beyond into a desiccated wasteland—reared before them. They swung out their wings, clawing now for enough speed and lift to make the tiny dots of their possible landing areas, and the faces of their pilots were grim and taut.

The craft were heavily laden, and even with their wings swept forward for maximum lift, their greatest danger now was that they would simply fall out of the sky. They had to retain altitude to cross the soaring ranges, yet maintain a tightly calculated flight path to their hoped-for landing areas, and the final descent would be steep and tricky.

Shuttle Four cleared the final ridge by barely nine meters, and Warrant Officer Bann let out a whoop.

“Yeeha! That’s a dry lake if I’ve ever seen one!”

The glittering white salt bed reflected the intense G-9 sun like a mirror. The pilots’ helmet visors darkened automatically, and their eyes swept back and forth over the glowing instrument readouts projected onto their visor heads-up displays.

The dangers of landing on salt lakes were as old as flight. The flat, white expanses made perfect airports but for one thing: perspective. With nothing to give a feeling of depth, a pilot trying to land visually was unable to determine whether he was going to land or just dig a big, nasty hole. The answer, of course, was technology, and the shuttle pilots pulled in their heads like turtles and shut out everything but their instruments. Radar and lidar range finders measured airspeed, velocity over ground, flight-angle, and all the other myriad variables that made the difference between a landing and a fireball and pronounced them correct. Nonetheless, each pilot continued to monitor his systems, hoping that no further demons would rear their ugly heads at the last moment and snatch defeat from victory.

Chief Warrant Dobrescu checked his instruments, studied the computer-calculated glide path on his HUD, and shook his head. They were actually doing it. He’d given up on performing any sort of decent landing when they picked up the Saint carrier; now it seemed that the entire company might actually make it to the ground intact.

Then the hard part would start.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Julian popped the seals on his helmet, took a sniff of the air, and grimaced as the temperature overcame the residual cool from his suit chiller.

“Christ, it’s hot!”

The sweat that instantly popped out on his skin disappeared just as quickly. The blinding light from the salt flats was mixed with a light, parching wind, and the temperature was at least forty-nine degrees Standard—over a hundred and twenty degrees in the antiquated Fahrenheit scale still used on a few backward planets.

“Whew, this is gonna be funnn.”

He gave a brief, unamused chuckle, and beside him Lance Corporal Russell juggled her grenade launcher into the crook of her arm and popped her own helmet.

“Yah! It’s like being in a furnace!”

There was nothing to be seen but the four shuttles, scattered over a kilometer or so of blazing, empty salt, and the distant mountains. Julian’s squad, as the only one with armor, had been unloaded first. The ten troopers had spread out with scanners on maximum, but they were barely detecting microorganisms. The salt was as dead as the surface of an airless moon—deader than some, for that matter.

Julian sent a command to his toot and switched to the company command frequency.

“Captain Pahner, my squad doesn’t detect any sign of hostile zoologicals, botanicals, or sentients. The area appears clear.”

“I see.” The captain’s tone was as a dry as the wind in Julian’s face. “And I suppose that’s why you took off your helmet?”

The sergeant rolled his tongue in his cheek and thought for a moment.

“Just trying to use all possible sensory systems, Sir. Sometimes smell works where others don’t.”

“True,” the captain said mildly. “Now put it back on and set up a perimeter. I’ll have the rest of Third move out to support. When they’re in place come into the center as a reserve.”