The ship fell like a rock at the end, and I soon saw why. A missile had finally come at us, but it was a small one, of a familiar AA design. I glimpsed it as the cameras tracked it. A sliver of dull, unfinished metal with a flaring red exhaust. A contrail ran behind it, pluming out as billowing white vapors.
“Evasive action,” Sloan ordered.
I would have answered with a few curses, but I could barely breathe. Sloan was piloting this ship, and he clearly didn’t intend to get hit by that missile. He swung and whipped the ship from side to side. I felt the guns stuttering as they tracked and tried to shoot down the incoming weapon.
I looked at the screens, but it must have been too close for the cameras to track it now. I flicked my gaze to the front wall, which showed a rust-red finger moving very rapidly to intersect with our ship, which was represented by the nanites in the wall as a golden bead of metal. I gritted my teeth and tightened my shoulders, bracing for impact. With luck, even if the ship was knocked out, some of us would survive to continue the mission.
Then a second later, it was over. The missile was gone.
“We must have shot it down,” Sloan said. He asked the ship what had occurred, and Barbarossa confirmed the missile had been taken out.
“Ha!” I shouted. “That’s just the sort of flying I expected to see out of you, Sloan. That’s why I brought you along. The Macros don’t have a chance of shooting us down with you aboard.”
Sloan tossed me a grin, then went back to studying his boards intently. When off-duty, he was quick to slam down a beer and seemed half-asleep at meetings. But when he was under fire, the man was all business.
“That was an AA shot,” I said. “The kind the big Macros put on their backs. I bet there’s at least one of those machines down there.”
“We have not seen any of that type of unit in the vicinity,” Marvin said.
I glanced at him. “Believe me, they’ve been building like mad down there.”
“Trouble, sir,” Sloan said.
I snapped my helmeted head around and examined the big screen again. “Seven more incoming? Is someone transmitting my name from this ship? I briefed you about that.”
“No sir, not to my knowledge,” Sloan said. He was making the ship buck and weave again. If I’d been a person who got seasick, I’d have filled my helmet by now.
“We can’t get away from three-what the hell are you doing, Marvin?” I broke off and stood up, but was tossed back into my crash seat.
Marvin was sprawled on the floor, using his numerous tentacles to cling to anything solid. He had a hand- held laser out, a short-ranged type we used for welding. He was intent on what he was doing, and only a single camera swung my way when I spoke to him.
“I’ve calculated a ninety-seven percent probability this ship will sustain a hit.”
“So, you’re cutting your way out?” I asked. “I give you an ‘A’ for effort. Sloan, we are in the atmosphere now. Order everyone to abandon ship.”
Sloan did so, and as part of the ship’s programming, the floor of the bridge vanished.
We all fell, not out of the ship entirely, but down into another subchamber under the one we’d been in. This was the empty landing pod. I looked up and saw Kwon and the rest of our team were coming down into the pod with us. A few were already there. We bumped heads and helmets. Fortunately, all of us were too armored to get injured.
“Can we pilot this down?” I asked.
“No time,” Sloan said. “Barbarossa, release landing pod!”
There was a sickening lurch. I looked over at the situational diagram on the wall. Three missiles, still incoming. Our ships were around, firing at it. None of them had any missiles targeting them. Dammit. As I watched one of the AA shots vanished, but there were two more, and that was going to be more than enough.
Macro AA missiles weren’t like Earth equivalents, especially now that they’d become accustomed to our defensive fire. These missiles were painted with textured, reflective matter. They also spun on their central axis. It was like shooting at a disco ball, and our lasers tended to bounce off. Worse, they pumped out mists and chaff to put a diffusive shield around the tiny vehicle. It wasn’t hard to lock onto one of them, but it was extremely hard to beat their countermeasures and bring it down.
“Barbarossa, open the floor of this pod!” I roared. “Dissolve it now, all of it!”
I think it was the last command the ship ever executed. We dropped out into open space, the wind whistling over our armor in a buffeting, screaming rush. We were in free-fall when the streaking missiles plowed into the ship and the pod above us-one hit each. It was more than enough firepower. Both the ship and the pod fireballed and fell apart in burning scraps.
We fell faster than the debris overhead, being lower and denser than the rain of burning, squirming smart metal.
“No one apply any thrust!” I ordered over our short-range, tactical com system. “Just fall with the rest of the debris. Wait until they engage someone else.”
My men obeyed me. We fell the last three or so miles to the surface in a relative peace and quiet. The wind whistled, and raindrops formed a slipstream over my armor.
While we fell, the world swam up to us with sickening, spiraling speed. It looked ugly down there-all charcoal and dirty, grinding machines.
I had time enough to wonder about the Macros and their targeting. Had someone told them it was me in that ship? Had I blown my own cover somehow? I wasn’t sure, but if I lived for another few hours, I was determined to find out.
— 14
We applied power only when we had to, braking hard at the end so as not to crash into the planet’s crust with killing force. When we did finally thump our boots down on the crunchy surface of silt and mud, we scattered as quickly as we could, taking cover. I eyed my sensors and the sky overhead, hunching my shoulders reflexively in my suit. I hoped they hadn’t prioritized our group of small, power-emitting targets. Just in case we were more important than we thought we were, I headed for distant cover. Everyone else had the same idea and we didn’t stop running in every direction like rats until we went to ground and crouched there, sides heaving, watching the skies.
I didn’t see anything nearby on my scope, my HUD or by visually scanning the skies. No flaring streaks of death rained down on my squad. Up above the cloud cover, however, it was a different story. Tight flocks of eight missiles sought one ship after another. The Fleet people were adjusting to this tactic. They regrouped themselves, and now moved into a cone-like formation. They arranged their ships so the open mouth of the cone was directed toward the oncoming source of fire. This provided every ship with a clear field of fire at the missiles as they entered the cone. The beams were intense, lighting up the air with blasts of radiation. The raindrops were instantly turned to plasma when the hot energy passed through them and turned into puffs of superheated steam.
The beams had to be held on longer to burn through the growing murk and the enemy countermeasures. Using less power for a longer duration beam was an effective way to overwhelm defenses and strike through to the missiles one at a time. Unfortunately, it slowed down the rate of fire. Twice, one got through and another ship was lost.
Part of me wished I was up there with the squadron of destroyers-only seven were left out of the nine, now. But I could tell their commander knew what he was doing. He had them all linked and firing in unison. Each missile was being struck from all sides by over twenty probing beams. Each one popped, then the turrets retargeted and popped the next. Following their orders, the ships pressed toward the source of the missiles, all firing as they went.
I turned away from the action overhead and waved to my men, who’d begun to gather themselves and their fallen equipment.
“Any casualties?” I asked.
