Indomitable (47 page)

Promise unclipped and grabbed a hook from the overhead. She secured it to her utility belt and ran to the Marine's aid. The LAC shook and slammed her into the opposite bulkhead. She tried to roll into the wall to blunt the blow. Her shoulder still took the brunt of it and she felt something crunch. She quickly rotated the joint, and everything appeared to be working, though not without pain. She pushed off the bulkhead and stumbled across the aisle as the
pop pop pop
of flak buffeted the LAC. Her arm looped through webbing to secure her position. Then she drew her combat blade with her free hand and cut one strap, and then another.

“You're green-to-go, PFC,” Promise yelled, and pounded the young woman's shoulder, twice.

“Copy that, ma'am. I owe you one.”

“Drop a Grey and we're even.”

“Roger that, ma'am. With pleasure.”

Promise helped her sister to her feet and back into position, which immediately seemed like a stupid thing to do. She wasn't wearing her armor. One good bounce and Promise would have more than a bruised shoulder. They were so close that Promise could see the green flecks in the PFC's eyes. Promise lost her footing and the PFC grabbed her arm to steady her as the LAC jostled them about. The Marine opposite them, a much taller man with graying eyebrows, gave her a thumbs-up. Even in the low light, Promise was close enough to see the three inverted hash marks of a sergeant of Marines on his chest.

“Well done, ma'am,” he said over his externals.

“Good hunting, Sergeant,” Promise said in return.

The platoon sergeant waved her backward. “Strap in, ma'am. And thanks for Montana.”

She nodded her thanks, and then moved toward her seat. She removed the hook from her utility belt and was turning to sit when the armorplaste disappeared and the sergeant, the PFC, and their toon plummeted through the hull and into the flak -torn sky. Promise lunged for the webbing, just managing to grab a strap with her right hand. Her left flailed widely as the opening tried to suck her out. Her fingers started to slip as her feet lifted off the deck.

“Kathy!”

She lost her grip as the drop ring closed, and banged her chin as she hit the deck and slid feet-first into the now-closed drop ring. Her hand had web burns, her chin had deck burns, her shoulder had web cuts and was bruised, and she was pretty sure she'd just cracked a rib. Other than that she was unharmed and the LAC hadn't even touched down.
Maybe it's a good thing I didn't drop today.
Kathy was at her side in moments, helping her strap in.

“I'm okay, Kathy. Really.” Promise pushed her hands away. “Stop making a fuss.”

Kathy pulled a stick from her vest and held it to Promise's chin. “Hold still. This is going to hurt.”

The anesthetic gel lit her on fire, but it stanched the bleeding, and then congealed into a semipermeable barrier.

“There.” Kathy produced a sheath and pulled the knife out halfway before seating it properly. “Here, you might need this too.”

“What's this for?” Promise grabbed the hilt of the combat blade and spun it and the sheath in her hand without thinking.

“Yours got sucked out the drop ring. But I brought a spare. Never hurts to have a backup.”

“Says the girl with all the weps.”

“Knives have their place too.” Kathy's head jerked sideways. “Hear that?”

“What?”

“The sky's gone quiet.” The LAC started its descent and the pilot's voice rang through the compartment.

“I'm setting down. The colonel said to patch you in once they'd dropped. Stand by.”

Figures,
Promise thought. She heard landing jets fire and felt the craft brake hard as it swept in toward the LZ. The deck shook as the LAC's engines strained against gravity. Then they were on terra firma and the engines were spinning down.

“Come on up,”
said the pilot.
“I've got two jump seats and a nice view. You can follow the action while I use the head.”

 

Fifty-six

MAY 25
TH
, 92 A.E., STANDARD CALENDAR, 1937 HOURS

THE KORAZIM SYSTEM, PLANET SHEOL

SOMEWHERE IN THE RAHAT MOUNTAIN RANGE

Staff Sergeant Nia Tanner
was bounding down a rocky corridor with her external lamps set to high beam. Flecks of crystallized minerals glinted in the walls and ceiling. So far Tanner had found a torn bag of rations and a half-dozen spent tins, all crushed except for one she found sitting upright with a piece of gum stuck to the side. She'd approached it carefully to make sure it wasn't rigged before kicking it down the corridor in disgust.

“Pigs,”
Tanner said as she slowed to single-time to avoid more trash.

Promise and Kathy were seated in the cockpit watching the operation from Staff Sergeant Tanner's point of view. The feed from the staff sergeant's HUD was projected on the cockpit's armorplaste. The image was snowy and Promise wondered how long the feed would last before they were down to audio only. Promise had stolen a moment to grab a hot cup of caf from the dispenser on the bulkhead just outside the cockpit before taking her seat in the pilot's chair. She adjusted the screen's resolution as best she could, leaned back, and drank deeply. An odd concoction of smells filled her nose and lungs: cinnamon spice and honey, fresh mech lubricant, and worn utilitarian Fleet Forces gray vinyl.

The cockpit's wraparound armorplaste had been grayed to block the view to the outside, and then split into three viewing panels. To Promise's left was a roster of India Company's eight toons of five, from the seniormost officer at the top to the most junior private on the bottom, and their icons were burning green. Promise spotted Halvorsen's toon and quickly found the icon of his guardian, PFC Aimee Chua. She reached up, tapped the panel, and dragged her finger up and to the left. A window opened, displaying the five points of the colonel's toon. She tapped Chua's icon and another window opened, giving her box seats to Chua's HUD. Without enlarging the window she wasn't going to get much detail. That was okay with Promise. She wanted a general sense of the operation from multiple points of view. She pulled up a staff sergeant's HUD and those of two more sergeants and piped all their voices through the cockpit's externals.

There wasn't much to hear.
“Corridor, clear. Proceeding right,”
and
“No sign of hostiles,”
and
“It's too quiet. Where is everyone?”

Halvorsen 's voice broke through the battlenet.
“Cut the chatter, stay off the net. Report up through your platoon leads.”
The colonel added after a moment,
“Something's not right. Push your scanners' sensitivity to max. Proceed with caution.”

Colonel Halvorsen had brought a full company of forty boots. Upon landing, he'd deployed whiskers around the island's perimeter, and one had found a waterfall, and flown through it and discovered a craggy entrance on the other side. Staff Sergeant Tanner had entered there, nearly three mikes ago, with her toon, while a second stayed behind to guard the entrance and the trek back to the LAC.

To Promise's right was a map of the island, its beaches, and the front door Halvorsen had taken half of India Company through. I Company's captain was with him, while its lieutenant stayed on the beach, just in case. It wasn't so much a door as an old lava tube. Halvorsen had fallen through by accident and realized his good fortune shortly after hitting bottom.
“I meant to do that,”
he'd said after a string of expletives had assailed the battlenet. Of course the colonel had and no one was going to argue the point with him. Maybe later … over drinks … in a month or two when this was over and they could reminisce like punch-drunk Marines.

The map was expanding in real time as Tanner's and Halvorsen's columns scouted farther in; lines zigging this way and zagging that way, like a light pen on a datapad. Whiskers flew down corridors until they hit dead ends. Promise noted a handful that had stopped reporting altogether. There were more offshoots and chambers and passageways than probes and Marines to search them, and the ones they'd mapped seemed to meander without a pattern, except for one. Promise focused on a long blue streak running deep inside the dormant volcano. There at the tip. That was Tanner's toon, driving deep.

Promise's head snapped to the center panel at the sound of weapons fire. Tanner juked left, slammed into the rock wall, and fired at a small cannon mounted to the overhead.
“Fixed defense neutralized,”
Tanner said. A split second before the staff sergeant had fired, her HUD had dropped a circle around the cannon. A brief analysis appeared in a small window with a picture, the weapon's dimensions, and the type of ordnance fired. Promise let out a breath. Light penetrators posed no problem for a RAW-MC mechsuit. Then she noticed the height of the corridor, and her nerves kicked in. The passageway had been made by man. The cuts in the walls were clear evidence of that. The corridor wasn't wide enough for small vehicles to traverse, and the ceiling was at least three meters deck-to-overhead. Even the tallest Marines weren't that tall, which meant the Greys had cut this passageway for something else, and Promise could think of only one thing that something else could be.

“Staff Sergeant. Look lively. They got battle armor.”

“Who is this?”
Tanner snapped back over the battlenet.

“Lieutenant Promise Paen, Victor—”

“Lieutenant! Get off the comm,”
Halvorsen cut in.

“But, sir, the overhead, it's cut for—”

“Copy that. This isn't our first dance, Lieutenant. Now get off my net.”

“Roger that, sir.” Promise slumped in her chair and pressed her caf to her chin. She heard the burst-cough of a Triple-7 and leaned forward in her seat. Looked left and quickly confirmed the status of Halvorsen's boots.
All accounted for, all still green.
Her eyes bounced to PFC Chua's HUD and the HUDs belonging to the sergeants, and finally back to Staff Sergeant Tanner's. Tanner was nearing the end of a corridor that emptied into something huge. Massive, actually.
This could be it.
Promise started gnawing on her lip.

“Ma'am, you need to relax.” Kathy was seated to Promise's right with a bowl of snacks in her lap. Unlike Promise, Kathy had reclined in her chair and propped her feet up on the copilot's panels. “The colonel's got this,” Kathy added.

Deploy whiskers. You need eyes in the sky, Staff Sergeant.
Promise winced when she bit into her cheek.
Why haven't you deployed your whiskers?
She was now on the edge of the pilot's seat.

Tanner reached the opening and took a knee at its mouth. Her left hand rose and made a fist, which signaled an all-stop for the boots behind her. Her right arm swept her field of fire with a tri-barrel pulse rifle.
“Jazz, give me a full-up scan of the chamber.”
Jazz was Tanner's AI, and it spoke a moment later in a voice as smooth as glass.
“Negative contacts, ma'am.”

Now do it again.
Promise willed her thoughts to Tanner's ears. She inhaled and her eyes grew wide.
Tell your AI to do it again.

“Whiskers are away,”
Tanner said as a tiny swarm of probes flew into the chamber, and mapped its length and width and height, and then split toward eight different exits.

“We've got tree branches everywhere,”
Tanner said, swearing under her breath.

“So unfair,” Kathy said. Now she was squirming in the copilot's seat. The pilot was in the back using the head and the copilot was up top manning the primary turret. They'd offered their seats with their sympathies. Both warrant officers were on loan from the Navy and had told Promise and Kathy to help themselves to the caf and the view. Promise had taken the liberty of using the comm and the seat warmer too.

Promise held her breath as Tanner circled her hand and pointed forward, and then held up two fingers and pointed left, and then another two and right. Then the staff sergeant was on her feet and moving. Promise saw Marines spilling into either side of Tanner's peripheral vision. Tanner's beams went to high but didn't dent the darkness.

No, no, no … she didn't scan again.
Promise was about to comm the staff sergeant and make it an order when she heard an audible click over the feed.

Tanner jerked to a stop.
“I've snagged something.”
She looked down and flashed her lights on the ground, back and forth, and back and forth again. There. Midway through a third pass she caught sight of a thin strand of wire snagged on the instep of her right mechboot.
“Wire! Get ba—”

The holotank erupted with light, and the link to Tanner disappeared. Promise threw her hands up without thinking, spilling hot caf all over her slick armor. She rose out of her seat, rapped her head on the panels overhead. Slammed back into the pilot's seat. “No, no, no.” Her hands raced over the holopanel, shifting the screen to the next senior enlisted Marine. Promise's heart sank. She was looking through PFC Karol Makkes's HUD; two Marines were down and a third appeared to be limping. The darkness lit up with muzzle flashes and Makkes fell sideways. There was no sign of Staff Sergeant Tanner anywhere.

“Contact. Multiple signatures.”
The
wump wump wump
of launching Horde missiles filled the cockpit, and Makkes's HUD momentarily whited out. A nearby explosion pelted her with debris and her HUD actually cracked.
“There's too many. I'm falling ba—”
Her voice cut out in midsentence as her icon turned crimson on Promise's display. Crimson like Staff Sergeant Tanner's entire platoon, which shifted from the center of the screen to the bottom of the roster with the mounting list of casualties.