“Alvarez, this is Lt. Abanks.” Abanks sounded almost normal despite the pressure of the boost, inured to it by experience, I suppose. “We have positive IFF transponder readings on nine of the twelve drop-ships from your battalion, plus another six from Force Recon.” He hesitated. “And twelve of twenty assault shuttles on launch prep when the…,” he trailed off. “When the missile hit. According to the troop manifest, the full complement of Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta and Echo companies launched and are under boost.”
I frowned. That was all of us, wasn’t it?
“Who didn’t make it, then?”
“Battalion Headquarters and staff.”
Shit. Colonel Voss, Major Anderle, her XO. Sgt.-Major Martelle. All the staff, all the communications gear and drones.
“Do you have comms with any of the other birds?” I was sure of the answer, but I had to ask anyway.
“Negative. Even if there wasn’t active jamming, there’s so much ionization, particulate scatter, and radiation out here, no one could get a signal through.” A pause. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”
“Thanks, sir.” It took me a second to remember to add the honorific, not that he would care. Fleet lieutenants were the equivalent of a Marine captain, which was confusing and based on a fixation on tradition that I didn’t understand. I switched back over to Kovacs. “Delta is good to go,” I told him. “The other companies too. But we lost Battalion.”
“Oh, man,” he hissed. “Does that mean the Skipper is in charge?”
“By date of rank. But that won’t mean anything unless we make it to the ground. Listen up, Francis, we have to be ready for an early drop.”
“That could kill us all,” he reminded me. I didn’t need the reminder, but he hadn’t been around for Brigantia.
“So could staying on this bird if she gets shot out of the sky. Point Barber is a little under Earth standard. I think we could get most of us down and operating if we don’t drop before 500 meters, so let’s plan on that, right?”
“Right.” He sounded relieved to have someone else to give orders, which I also couldn’t blame him for.
“Get with your platoon sergeant and get your people ready. Don’t let them think about the Iwo or the rest of the flight to the planet. There’s nothing they can do about it except panic, and we don’t need panic.” More panic, I added silently.
“Will do. Thanks, Cam.”
I focused on the front camera feed, allowing myself just a few seconds to consider how close all those explosions seemed, how many enemy ships were in front of us, trying to kill us. Then I switched over to Bang-Bang and told him what I’d told Kovacs.
“You dropped early once,” he said. I was impressed. He must have looked up my history. It was a very platoon sergeant thing to do. “Didn’t go so well for the other people in your bird.”
“And it’d be worse this time, with a planet crawling with enemy and a not a single human colonist to be found within twenty light years. Improvise, adapt and overcome, though.”
“Ooh-rah, sir.”
“Third Platoon,” I said to the Marines, “listen up.”
They needed calming, I thought, but they needed me to be honest with them, too. I’d let Bang-Bang give them the details, but they needed to hear from me, if for no other reason than to let them know I wasn’t gibbering like an idiot.
“We’ve lost the Iwo. She took an anti-ship missile.” I paused, knowing they’d be cursing inside their helmets, not wanting them to miss the next part. “But we have nearly the whole battalion intact and all of Delta. I can’t promise you for sure we’re going to make it to the planet—that’s up to the Fleet boys running interference for us. But I can promise you that if we do, the operation is still a go, and we are just the Marines to pull it off. Gunny Morrel is going to give you some last-minute guidance on what to do if we have to drop early, and I want you to listen to him like your life depends on it, because it does. Are we clear?”
“Clear, sir!” Kries yelled it out first, then the rest echoed it.
Warmth spread through my chest, not just at the trust they were showing in me but at the balls it took not to give in to the fear. And it was quickly replaced by a sick feeling. I was giving them false hope. But it was the only kind I had available, and it would have to be enough, because all I had left to do was stare out at a battle I couldn’t affect, at the very finger of chance writing her twisted tale through the fire and destruction around us and hoping she’d miss me.
“Uh-oh,” Abanks said in my ear. It’s never good when your pilot says something like that. “Everybody hold on back there.”
Like we had a choice.
I tightened the muscles in my gut even more than they already were and the six gees turned into zero, followed by a thunderous hammering against the hull, the sound of the maneuvering thrusters changing our trajectory. And then God stomped me into a paste and I blacked out.
I don’t know how long I was out, but I woke to the sound of someone retching over their suit comm pickup, then two more someones who couldn’t take the sound and I was lucky I wasn’t one of them. We were accelerating again, though not as hard, and somewhere, an alarm blared, letting us know we were taking laser fire. The ship went into a spin on a staccato chain-fire of steering jets and the angular momentum of the spin didn’t just add to the three or four-gravity acceleration, it squared it or maybe cubed it. I was never very good at math, and worse at it when my inner ear was screaming obscenities at me and swearing to kill me if we both survived this.
I had no concept of what
