1st to Fight (Earth at War) Read online

  “He seems awfully damned calm for someone who’s watching one of their largest colonies get conquered,” Pops said from the rack on the other side of me.

  “I don’t know,” Jambo said. “Maybe God could tell you what a man-bear-alien is feeling, but I don’t have a fucking clue.”

  I ignored them, trying to see what everyone else was seeing on the Tactical board, but the view from the security camera was off-center from the display and I could only make out green and yellow lights. I had no idea what they signified and might not have been able to figure them out even if I’d been standing on the bridge instead of snooping on it from afar.

  “If we can get a crew on the other ship,” Julie suggested, “maybe we can do something to help fight off the Tevynians and save your colony.”

  “They have at least six cruisers in the system,” Joon-Pah said, waving a hand at the tactical display. “And even if we could win against that many ships, they’ve already begun landing soldiers on the surface. You do not have enough troops to drive them out or kill them all. If they repeat their behavior from other incidents such as this, they’ll either strip the world of all that’s useful, then leave, or they’ll occupy it and wait for reinforcements. They do not intend to slaughter our people, though they do force our engineers and technicians to work for them. The best way we can help the people of the colony is to start winning. Then the Tevynians may draw back to their own systems.”

  “I don’t like it,” Olivera declared, his anger and frustration much easier to read than whatever was going through Joon-Pah’s mind. “If it was my world, I’d be heading down there right now. But it’s your people and your decision. And if we’re not going to dig in and fight for Fairhome, we need to get to that ship.”

  “Great minds think alike,” Baldwin said. “You see those bug-eyed insect-looking things attached to the construction scaffolding beside the Helta cruiser?”

  I squinted at the image in my HUD and then remembered I could see the view directly and pulled up the feed from the shuttle’s main screen instead. It took me a second to force both feeds into different spots in my helmet HUD since the suit had this quaint idea that I should be able to actually see out of my helmet visor, but I finally spotted what Baldwin was talking about. The things didn’t look so much like insects to me as they did seed pods, but I could definitely tell they didn’t belong on the scaffolding.

  “From what the computer is telling me,” Baldwin went on, “those are boarding pods, used mostly by the Tevynians. They’re already on the ship, trying to take it for themselves.”

  “This just gets better and better,” I said and tried not to turn it into a moan. No use sounding like a whiner. I craned my head around to look at Jambo. “Three guesses what the next order’s going to be and the first two don’t count.”

  “Okay,” Olivera said, and his voice sounded louder and crisper in my headphones than it had in the security feed, “all personnel, listen up. The Tevynians have beat us to the punch and are trying to take this system, and the only remaining cruiser. We have to take the ship from them before they can get it operational. Captain Holden, Captain Chambers, you will launch at my command and dock your shuttles as close as you can to the Helta cruiser without taking enemy fire. Colonel Brooks, you and your Rangers are going to board that ship and eliminate any Tevynian troops you find on board. Master Sergeant Bowie, your Delta team will accompany our flight crew into the ship, following the Rangers. Keep them alive and get them to the bridge. That is our number one priority. You got me?”

  “Yes, sir,” Brooks and Jambo said in broken chorus.

  “Good luck and get it done. Shuttles Alpha and Bravo, you are cleared to launch.”

  “Launching in ten seconds,” Holden announced and I rolled my eyes.

  “You know, you’re right,” Jambo told me. “This shit is going to spread. We need to nip this in the bud now, before it’s too late.”

  “I’ll get right on that,” I promised.

  “Launching!”

  Sound and vibration filled my head and acceleration pushed me back into the lining of my suit and back into the tilted bracket holding the suit in place and back toward the tail of the bird as I felt thrust again for the first time in two weeks.

  “You okay?” Jambo asked me, his voice strained from the boost.

  Was I okay? Everything was going to shit and I was being sent to go kill the bad guys and blow some shit up.

  “Feels like old times.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “It’s just like the simulations,” Jambo was droning in everyone’s ear as we headed down. “Remember your training and you’ll be fine.”

  We were in free fall and I was not fine. I was trapped in a closed helmet and needed badly to puke but I kept my mouth shut for multiple reasons.

  “Flight crew,” Jambo went on, “you guys stay on our six. That means stay behind us, let us go first.”

  “We know what it means,” one of them said a bit petulantly. I couldn’t tell who it was, but since the highest-ranking member of the auxiliary flight crew was a Space Force Captain, I didn’t think Jambo was too impressed. “We’re in the military, too.”

  “Oh, I know you are,” Jambo said, his tone rich with amusement if you knew him well enough to recognize it. “So be good little Spacemen and Spacewomen and stay the fuck behind us.”

  I hadn’t wanted to do it, not in free fall when I was already having inner ear issues, but I couldn’t help myself. I touched the control pad on my left forearm and tied into the shuttle’s exterior cameras, just unable to deal with dropping blind. The other shuttle had launched first, taking Colonel Brooks and most of her Ranger company in ahead of us, and their drives were a sunburst glow hanging in space off our starboard bow. It only looked a couple miles away, but I knew things seemed closer with no atmosphere to distort the incoming light, and it could have been twenty miles away, or fifty.

  Probably fifty, given we needed to stay clear of their exhaust. They didn’t have the space warping field the Truthseeker used for sublight travel, just old-fashioned reaction drives, but ones that made ours look like Twelfth-Century fireworks by comparison. Julie had tried to explain it to me, but all I got out of it was that there was some sort of compact nuclear reactor involved and the reaction mass was metallic hydrogen but it could use any sort of metal in a pinch, which was damned good since we didn’t know how to mass-produce metallic hydrogen yet.

  If the shuttle appeared close, the shipyard drydock seemed like I could reach out and touch it. What had appeared to be smooth, featureless spider silk from a distance clarified with proximity to something rough and intricately detailed, dotted with construction machinery, airlocks, observation windows and tiny, cylindrical transfer pods with manipulator arms protruding from their noses like the claws on a crab. And as we descended ever closer, details kept emerging and my sense of the scale kept changing. Everything was so much larger than I had first thought, the windows not as tall as a man but instead taller than a ten-story building, the cylindrical pods not one person affairs but huge, nearly as big as one of our shuttles. And the spiderweb scaffolding stretching across the perimeter of the shipyard wasn’t the fifty or a hundred yards I’d supposed; it was nearly a kilometer wide.

  And the Tevynian boarding pods docked in a staggered line along the edge of the Helta drydock’s auxiliary airlocks were so much larger than I’d thought, each about as big as our shuttle, big enough for the lot of them to carry a hundred troops or more. My stomach churned, and it wasn’t just the microgravity.

  Shuttle Alpha swung its nose around toward us and gave a short, braking burst, then rode what momentum was left from their acceleration in to one of the unoccupied docking collars along the surface of what was oriented as the top of the structure. Maneuvering thrusters flared at Alpha’s nose and the aerospacecraft’s nose lowered, bringing it horizontal over the airlock before the pilot gave one last, insistent braking thrust with the belly jets, mating them gently to the lock.


  Then the camera view swung wildly and a giant banged a hammer against the hull as our own steering jets fired, flipping us end for end just before our own drives began decelerating. I was pressed into my seat with what felt like a couple gravities of thrust, and the image in the HUD of my helmet shifted to a view of the Truthseeker. The starship had reoriented itself, the nose pointing inward toward the Helta habitable. I wondered if the Tevynians had spotted us from there, or if perhaps, the ones inside the docked Helta ship had seen us and called the others. And if they did know we were here, I wondered how long we’d have.

  “Ranger one here,” Brooks reported, her voice tinny and distorted in my headphones. Probably interference from the metal in the lock, I guessed. Our radios were improved with Helta technology, but they were still using microwave communications and physics was physics. “We’re through the airlock. No enemy troops in sight, no Helta. There’s gravity inside, so be prepared. We’ll set up a perimeter and wait for you to dock.”

  “Roger that,” Jambo replied. “Leave a light on for us.”

  The deceleration burn cut off, the steady roar replaced with staccato bang of the maneuvering thrusters and I tried not to hyperventilate.

  You fought a shitload of Russians just a couple weeks ago. You’ll be fine. You can do this. That was the little angel in Marine combat utilities on my shoulder, still toting an old M16A5 with a bayonet mounted under the barrel.

  The devil was on the other shoulder, wearing a torn T-shirt and cargo shorts, one hand with a jack-and-Coke on the rocks, the other with a Glock, eyes haunted with survivor’s guilt.

  You were using science fiction tech and fighting Russians limited to the obsolete military surplus gear they could scrounge up on US soil. These motherfuckers fly between stars and they’re going to kill you.

  I wanted to tell the little devil to just go fuck off, but he wouldn’t go away, mostly because he was a part of me. The worst part.

  “The Tevynians won’t have exoskeletons,” I said out loud, as if I was reminding the Delta team of our opposition. I was really talking to myself, trying to argue my way into confidence. “Joon-Pah said their native technology was behind ours before the Helta found them. The Tevynians think of the Helta as the gold standard for tech, so they’re basically just repurposing what they can steal from them. Our most likely opposition will be light infantry in unpowered armor, carrying energy weapons.”

  “Right,” Jambo said. “Don’t get cocky though, they’re absolute fanatics. Think jihadis but with lasers.” The communications icon next to Jambo’s IFF avatar changed colors and I knew he’d switched to a private channel with me. “You doing okay, Andy?”

  “Oh, yeah, just great,” I said. “Nothing about a quart of vodka wouldn’t cure.”

  “That’s not who you are.,” he said, almost snapping at me. I blinked. Jambo just didn’t get angry. Not even when I’d run off and he’d had to rescue me from an FSB snatch-n-grab team. “You don’t need that shit to deal. Just key on my movement, stay in the center with me, okay? We’ll be fine. The Rangers are doing the heavy lifting, anyway.”

  His last couple sentences had drifted back into laid back, unflappable Jambo territory and my breathing slowed down to normal.

  Then the belly jets kicked in and slammed against the deck beneath us until metal ground on metal with a painful, wailing shriek and gravity returned abruptly.

  “We’re down,” Holden told us, as redundant as usual. “Gisecki, cycle the lock.”

  “Everybody up!” Jambo yelled, hitting the quick release for his restraints and hopping to his feet. “Rangers, you’re at the lock first! Link up with your company on the other side! Pops, you’re point for our team, and Ginger’s on drag, riding herd on the flight crew. Flight personnel, keep your helmets sealed until we have control of that ship. We don’t know how easy it would be for the bad guys to flush the atmosphere so we need to make sure they’re all clear before we take the chance.” He looked around. “Any questions?”

  “Yeah,” one of the Delta boys muttered, the deep, gravelly voice telling me it was the one they called Dog. “How do I get out of this chickenshit outfit?”

  Even Jambo had to laugh at the classical reference.

  “Stay tight, keep your fields of fire clear and don’t wander in front of anyone’s gun barrel. Good luck.”

  The shuttle’s crew chief waved us an all-clear and motioned toward the airlock set in the deck of the shuttle just aft of the passenger compartment. One of the Ranger squad leaders jumped through the hatch, disdaining the ladder built into the lock, counting on her Svalinn suit to absorb the shock of the landing. And Rangers being Rangers, of course all the others had to do the same thing. When Delta’s turn came, they made a point of descending the ladder as carefully as possible, just to prove they weren’t douchebag kids like the Rangers.

  I was a Marine, and I knew what the exoskeletons could do. I jumped. The inner lock was a ring of green, barely visible as I zipped through, then darkness enveloped me for a single heartbeat before my boots struck deck plating hard enough to send a vibration ringing through it. I didn’t take time to look around, just moved out of the way of the lock and found the nearest bulkhead to huddle against, my M900 pointed outward.

  The corridor was broad, maybe thirty yards across, the bulkhead against the inner side of it a dull orange with writings in Helta etched in white across its surface, broken up here and there by flat, two-dimensional video screens. The screens were all frozen on some sort of logo I thought might have been the Helta flag or coat of arms or something, with more alien writing scrolling up and down the sides. I had no idea what it said, and wasn’t going to spend enough time staring at it for the helmet computer to translate for me.

  All my staring was in the other direction, out the huge, impossibly clear window stretching from deck to overhead, or ceiling to floor as the Rangers and Space Force crew would say. Through the transparent material, which I assumed wasn’t glass, the vast, menacing bulk of the Helta starship hung in black nothingness, distant sunlight glinting off its polished, silvery surface. The enemy was somewhere inside her, but from without, she seemed dead and deserted, a haunted house in space.

  I tore my gaze away from the stunning view and checked behind me, saw the last of the flight crew climbing down, with Ginger in his Svalinn clambering out of the lock last.

  “We’re all in,” Jambo reported.

  “Fourth Platoon,” Brooks ordered, the transmission sent on the general band so all of us could hear it, “I want you to stay here and guard the shuttles and the approaches into the Helta starship. We don’t know that the enemy isn’t behind us somewhere.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the Fourth Platoon leader responded, not seeming very enthusiastic about the idea. Fourth had been in Shuttle Bravo with us, and I wondered if just being on the wrong bird had doomed him to rear guard duty.

  “Rangers moving out,” Brooks announced. “We can see the maintenance lock from up here.”

  We’d been briefed on this part. Oh, we hadn’t known there’d be opposition, but Joon-Pah had shown us the layout of the drydocks and given us the clearance codes to get through the locks just in case the particular Helta in charge when we arrived weren’t favorably disposed to letting us take their ship.

  With three fourths of a company of armored Rangers ahead of me, I couldn’t even see the maintenance lock until the Army grunts had moved around the curve in the hull and into the lock. It was recessed into the outer hull of the drydock, an armored, shielded collar half in and half out of the skin of the facility, enveloping the hull of the Helta star cruiser all around what seemed to be some sort of cargo lock, the hatch large enough to let a tractor-trailer through it, the lock deep enough for three platoons of Rangers.

  I wasn’t the commander, but I would have been a bit more hesitant to squeeze my whole force into the lock at once. All it would have taken was one Tevynian at the right control board to power up the ship and separate from the dock and t
he whole bunch of them would have been floating free in space.

  “Hold up here,” Jambo ordered his team and the flight crew, and I wasn’t sure if he was reading my mind or I’d been reading his.

  I guessed Brooks was transmitting orders to her troops from the hand gestures she was making, but I wasn’t tuned into her net. I got the gist of it when I saw one of the squads from Brooks’ platoons move to the control panel for the lock’s massive hatch, most of the Rangers deploying around it to pull security while two went to work on the code input. The interior of the lock and the control panels mounted there were familiar to me after a couple weeks on the Truthseeker, but might have anyway. For all that the Helta were bear people in strange, gaudy clothes, they had more in common with humans than they had any right to. Or maybe there was a pragmatism to it, form following function, but I thought I could have worked out which controls did what even without the briefing we’d been given.

  The airlock hatch slid aside and the squad Brooks had detailed to breach it squeezed through before the opening was a meter wide. The nine Rangers were lost in a cluster of red and blue cargo loading equipment, disappearing between twenty-foot-tall bulbous, bulky, machines with claws and forks and sleds and a few things I couldn’t identify on first view. Stacks of oblong cargo containers were piled high on sleds, heavy machine parts were clenched in padded claws and the loading equipment was scattered randomly in the broad lane of the cargo loading passage leading to the ship’s hold, some of them jammed against the bulkhead, some rammed into each other, as if the workers had jumped off while the machines were running.

  The light in the passage was dim, the shadows deep, and as I edged closer to the lock, passing through the lines of Delta operators and the perimeter they formed, I saw the reason for it. The light panels were in the overhead, fifty feet off the deck, and some of them had been charred black, whatever technology they used to produce illumination burned out by energy weapons. As my eyes adjusted to the lower light, I saw more blast marks on the bulkheads, charred black scars across the red and blue of the loaders.