The display zoomed in again, Mercury filling most of the area. The potato was a simple black oval speeding toward its doom. The satellites surrounded us now. If they were going to fire we wouldn't know until the weapons hit us. So that meant we probably would never know. Things would just go black. The end, game over.
The potato flashed by the danger point and then if there had been atmosphere on Mercury we would've been in it. We had made it.
"Punching out," Marty said.
With a flash the potato left us behind. The rough, rocky landscape of Mercury was spread below us, seeming far too close now.
Marty jerked us around and flew us away from the potato. With a flash it impacted the surface of Mercury and threw a cloud of debris high above the rocky landscape.
Marty flew away from the impact site, dropping to the deck and weaving between the hills of rough stone carved out from either tectonic action or massive asteroid impacts like the one we had just engineered. After a moment our frantic escape was complete and we came to a stop, hovering two hundred meters above the surface.
"Alright, Boss, we're down. Now what?" Marty asked.
"Head toward the base. Keep it as low as you can and stop when we're just over the horizon. If you detect any targeting, drop in to cover. We don't know what kind of weapon emplacements they have down here, and we don't want to find out the hard way."
Marty acknowledged with a gesture, and the ship began to move again, hugging the ground.
Mercury wasn't what I had expected. When I was a kid, I thought Mercury would look like I had imagined hell to look like, without the damned souls and the demons. There'd be literal lakes and rivers of lava. The terrain below me just looked like rock. Sure, now that I was closer and studying it, maybe it had been molten once. We were on the dark side of the planet, maybe on the light side, things would be different.
A few minutes later Marty stopped the ship.
"This is as close as we can get, I think. What do you want to do, Boss?"
"I'll go in overland. I'll try to find a way in that's not covered by their security systems. If everything really turns to shit I might call you for extraction, or maybe get you to come in and do an attack run. I don't know. Be ready."
Marty swallowed, and then nodded. "You got it."
I stood up, moving to the cargo area of the Redemption. We didn't bring a lot with us since there wasn't any point. I was armed and armored, but there was something that I'd hoped not to need. I’d printed and brought it with us anyway.
Two of my Holemaker version 2.0s were embedded in a one-meter cube of impact-absorbing foam. Union packing was smart and crumbled to dust as I willed it to do so. I brushed the dust aside until I reached them. When they were exposed I pulled them free and stuck one to each armored thigh.
I had designed them specifically to be stuck there. They were rounded on one side and flat on the other. The flat part was the "front toward enemy" bit that would direct the jet of plasma when it detonated. I took comfort in knowing that even if somehow one got set off while it was still attached the blast probably wouldn't incinerate me. I didn't want to try it, but that was the idea. I'd also tuned the payload of the device and it could now be adjusted as needed from a rather anemic minimum to a very impressive maximum.
╠═╦╬╧╪
Jake's Holemaker V2, design by Jake Monde
100% Charge
Control(s) available: Detonate
╠═╦╬╧╪
With Excalibur at my hip, the drones on my back, the charges on my thighs, and the Gazer stuck to my chest, I felt prepared. Almost a little overprepared.
With a thought Redemption's forward hatch slid aside near instantly. Since both of us had been in our sealed armor the whole time, the cabin had never been pressurized. What would the point have been? I stepped forward, looking to Marty one last time before I exited.
"Wish me luck."
"Luck. Get it done. Call me if you need me.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Finding a Way In
I STEPPED OUT OF THE hatch drifting in the weaker gravity of Mercury toward the rocky soil below. With a thought I engaged my flight controls and began to fly toward the base just over the horizon. I ordered the scout drone to free itself and follow, linking its greatly enhanced sensor package with that of my armor. With luck, I would be able to detect the targeting sensors of the base's defenses before they got a lock on me.
In the end there was almost zero warning. A red alert popped up in my Interface just as I crested a rocky ridge. Without reading it or even thinking much I dove toward the ground. I reversed the gravity plates keeping me aloft. They pulled me toward Mercury as fast and hard as they could.
A barely visible cloud of flechettes flew overhead, each the size of a beer can. I slammed into the ground hard and rolled to the side as the stream of flechettes tracked me. With a burst from my boot propulsion units I got behind a towering black boulder, slumping and melted but still standing proud. The flechette stream chopped the top half of the boulder off in a spray of black rock and I rolled gracelessly backward down the hill behind me, putting more stone between
