Prologue

New Mexico tether car,

Entering Earth’s atmosphere

Sergeant Sorilla Aida looked out over the curvature of the Earth as the black of space began to give way to the faded blue of the sky. The tether car was in the hold of the Earth’s pull now, descending by gravity instead of the push of its electric motors, heading for the New Mexican space port another 20,000 meters below. Her mind wasn’t on the return home, however; she was thinking about the people she’d left behind on Hayden and wondering how they were holding out.

The final action of her tour on that world had taken out the enemy gravity valve and ended, at least for a time, the threat of nuclear retaliation from the alien invaders. What she hadn’t been able to do, however, was eliminate their presence entirely. Some had escaped the destruction of the base, and the detection systems of the supply convoy hadn’t detected any other ships than the last cruiser destroyed in orbit by the Socrates. There was no way for that ship to have picked up the survivors of the base, and Sorilla knew that the aliens had already been moving operations away from the center of Hayden resistance as a result of the guerilla campaign she and the Hayden pathfinders had engaged in.

Being pulled out before the job was done rankled on her, but she also understood the need. The brass wanted observational data, not to mention a total dump of her armor and implant memory, and even her opinions on everything she’d seen. Debrief was scheduled to take months, a process already itching at her spine. For now, she was under orders to take a week and go home. Once debrief was over, it was pretty clear that she was going to be thrown back into the fray.

All the better, in her opinion.

Desks and padwork were for the birds.

“Please ensure all items are secured and fasten your restrains,” a voice chimed in from the speakers. “This car is about to initiate braking procedures. When the brakes engage, microgravity will cease and any loose items may become damaged.”

It repeated itself, but she ignored it. She hadn’t even bothered to undo her straps and float around like the tourists behind her. Sorilla worked in space, and while microgravity was fun, it was old hat. She heard the others in the car cursing softly as they tried to get their straps done up or catch a runaway camera, but none of it was coming in her direction, so she just let her mind drift again.

The aliens weren’t really what she’d expected, to be honest, not after all those months of fighting the hulking Golems and smaller Goblins they sent out to do their grunt work. Inside the base, she’d encountered at least two distinct species, a large, furred, meat shield type, and a smaller, more frail-looking “Roswell Grey” type. She presumed that the Greys were the ones in charge. They seemed to be the technicians, at least, while the other “Cat People” ones seemed like little more than hired muscle working security.

That rankled her more than she wanted to admit, the fact that it had been so easy to clean out that base. She’d fought in all kinds of wars in her day, and even the stupidest third world soldiers were more competent than what she’d seen. They really felt like rent-a-cops protecting an office building, which jived with some of her other experiences on Hayden. The Golems and Goblins weren’t warriors, they weren’t even combat drones, they were overblown bulldozers and forklifts doing construction.

But then there was the gravity valve.

If any culture issued access to a weapon of mass destruction to glorified security guards and construction workers, Sorilla figured they were a culture that needed to be reeducated on the meaning of the word sanity.

Post haste.

“Please place your tray tables and seats in their upright and closed positions. We will be landing in Spaceport America in twelve minutes. Thank you for traveling Maiden Solar.”

Sorilla snorted softly. As if it mattered which I picked. They all lease their cars from the USF.

The sensation of gravity returned with ever-increasing speed as the gradual braking continued to increase until they came to a stop just above ground level at the New Mexico facility, where they waited for the car ahead of them to be shifted to the return tether so they could disembark.

Unlike the colony tethers, Spaceport America was home to a dual band system, permitting continuous transport in both directions. It made the lives of the maintenance crews interesting, Sorilla supposed as the car shuddered into motion again, but that was life.

“Welcome to Spaceport America,” the cheerful voice chimed as the car dropped into the large terminal building. “Please remember to gather up all belongings prior to disembarking, and please don’t leave your seat until the car comes to a complete stop. Thank you again for traveling with Maiden Solar. Have a nice day.”

*****

USF Cheyenne

Outer Sol System

“Admiral.”

Nadine Brookes twisted in free fall, catching her hand on a section of the bulkhead to steady herself as her aide floated through the access hatch and dragged her own body to a halt on the handle it presented.

“What is it, Denise?”

Denise Milan took a second to orient herself relative to her CO, not bothering to salute. While respectful in theory, a zero gravity salute stood roughly even chances of looking completely ridiculous, and there was no one here to see anyway. She then pulled a chip from her pocket and extended it for the admiral to take.

“Orders?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Denise answered, “The collier task force just got back from Hayden a short while ago.”

“I know, what about the military force?” Nadine asked, a question that had been burning in her since she saw the squawk codes of the returning ships. She hoped that they’d remained behind to patrol Hayden.

“Word came down, ma’am,” Denise said, shaking her head sadly.

Nadine winced, “Damn it. All of them?”

“Yes Ma’am.”

Nadine rubbed her face, “How did the colliers survive? Did the task force somehow fight the enemy to some sort of mutual destruction?”

“Nearly Ma’am, one enemy cruiser survived. Captain Petronov of the Socrates finished it off in Hayden orbit.”

That surprised her, to be honest. Nadine, like most of the fleet, didn’t have much faith in the converted science ships as weapons of war. “Alexi Petronov? I honestly never thought the man had it in him. He’s civilian science track, all the way.”

There was a certain irony to her saying that, given that she was science track herself, but Nadine Brookes had come up through the military ranks despite her educational career. She’d known Petronov, hell she knew every captain in the fleet, and the man was about as close to a pacifist as you got. Hearing that he’d notched up a kill on the aliens was about the last thing she expected.

“What is the status of the collier ships?”

“They’re being refitted and reloaded.” Denise said, “Crews get some leave, but they’ll be reassigned shortly I expect.”

Nadine nodded, taking the chip and swinging herself into the command station that took up the central area of the flag deck. She pushed the chip into the slot then signed into the system with her biometrics and started to read. When she was done, she leaned back thoughtfully.

“Escort run.”

“Pardon, ma’am?”

“Relief supply to the Ares mining system,” Nadine explained. “New tether, weapons, food, and medical supplies, those sorts of things.”

Denise nodded. It made sense. A lot of the people on Ares had been killed in the initial attack, but it was all relative. Most people living and working planet-side had been well underground, in the mines and other facilities that existed there. Those people were all stuck there. Even with a new tether in place, she doubted that the USN had anywhere near the needed lift to transport that many people at the moment, but Fleet still had to do its best by them.

Still, Taskforce Five was the only mobile division available to the USN at the moment, since One was composed of the ships that would undoubtedly make up the relief column and Four was the newly commissioned “Home Fleet.” Sending Five out on an escort mission seemed a little wasteful, in her opinion. They were a heavy combat force and should be taking the fight to the enemy.

Of course, since the enemy hadn’t been seen since the assault on Hayden, that was proving difficult.

Nadine nodded once, closing the screens before keying into the ship’s internal comm.

“Bridge here, Admiral.”

“Is the captain available?”

“I’ll transfer you.”

“Thank you,” Nadine said before the com closed.

A moment later, the captain’s voice came back. “Roberts here, Admiral.”

“We’ve received orders, Captain. Squadron conference in twenty.”

“Aye, ma’am. I’ll be ready.”

“I know you will. Brookes out,” she said, closing the com. “One down, the rest to go.”

“I’ll start getting the conference set up, then, ma’am.”

“You do that, Denise,” the admiral said, not looking around as she opened a channel to the HMS Hood.

*****

Getting the captains together took a little more than twenty minutes, even using conference signals, but thanks to Denise, they pulled it off. Nadine shortly had her captains briefed and leaning in the right direction when the final orders were cut and the force was ordered to the primary jump point to rendezvous with the Taskforce One supply train.

The squadron of Cheyenne and Longbow class ships powered their VASIMR drives to one gravity and made for the jump point at a leisurely pace. By the time TF1 got organized and underway, Nadine expected to have been waiting at least another day, but that was fine, too. Despite the extended shakedown period, there were still a near constant trickle of new bugs to be found every time they altered their procedures even slightly. Both ship classes were among the heaviest and most powerful starships ever built by man, but they’d been rushed through the construction process and it showed.

The time spent at one gravity acceleration would make it easier on the inspection crews anyway. While moving around in microgravity was both fast and fun, working in it was another matter.

*****

On the bridge of the USF Cheyenne, Captain Patrick Roberts was overseeing the seemingly endless list of checks and rechecks that had come with his new command. Life before the war had been dull, but at least he hadn’t felt like a damned clerk. Such was his punishment for competently executing his duty, he supposed as he thumbed open a com line to engineering.

“Engineering here.”

“Captain Roberts here,” he said. “Is the chief available?”

“He’s trying to hammer down a flux in the Tok, sir.”

Roberts grimaced. The irregular readings from the system that generated their antimatter was one of the things he wanted to talk with the chief about. “Does he know what’s going on there?”

“Yes, sir, we pinned down the cause a while back. Right now it’s a matter of just confirming with eyes on what the math is already telling us.”

“All right, tell the chief I need to talk as soon as he’s free.”

“Wilco, Cap.”

“Roberts out.”

He sighed, trying not to pay too much attention to the shivers running down his spine as he thought about what an out of control Tokamak could do to his ship.

This is going to be such a fun-filled mission.

*****

Aida Family Hacienda

Outside Ciudad Jaurez

Sorilla slung her duffel as she stepped over the broken cobbles that littered the front of the long drive up to her family home.

Nothing changes around here. She smiled inwardly as she started to walk up the road, the searing, dry heat of the Mexican sun warming her bones in a way that the muggy heat in Hayden’s jungles never had.

The barking of the dog almost startled her, despite her knowing it was coming. Sorilla turned in time to catch the mongrel as it jumped at her, letting her duffle hit the ground as she swung the dog into her arms.

“Good to see you too, mutt,” she laughed, the dog’s barks changing to yelps as she swung him in her arms. When she dropped him to the ground, he ran around her legs as she retrieved her duffle and continued up to the house.

“Hello!” she called, nudging the door open with her feet. “Dad? You in here?”

With no answer, she tossed her duffle down by the kitchen table and walked through the house to the side door and headed out into the garage, where she could hear tool work as she approached.

“Dad!” she called from the door, knowing better than to get too close to a man with an angle grinder. “Dad! Turn around, you old coot!”

The hunched over figure paused, looking up curiously, as if wondering if he’d really heard someone, and then finally looked behind him. The angle grinder hit the floor, tossed casually aside as Cassius Aida grinned widely and strode over to his daughter.

Much as she’d done to the dog, Sorilla found herself picked up and flung around wildly as her father tossed her around like a ragdoll.

“Put me down, you crazy coot!”

Cassius laughed, a deep, booming sound that reverberated through the shop as he set her down. “Now, why didn’t you tell me you were back?”

“Just off the tether this morning,” she told him, smiling warmly. “It’s good to see you.”

“And you, kiddo,” he said, glancing out past her. “You alone this time?”

“Yeah.” She nodded, lips pursing as she remembered that, the last time she’d been home, half her squad had been with her.

Cassius Aida was no man’s fool, and he’d served his time in the army before retiring to Mexico to spend his time with his wife and daughter. He knew the look on her face, had seen it in the mirror, and grimaced slightly as he shook his head.

“How bad was it, Hija?” he asked after a time, walking across the shop to put his tools away. Anything to keep his hands busy so she wouldn’t see him clawing at the air as he thought about what she did for a living.

“It was bad,” she confirmed quietly, leaning back against a stool.

“Yeah, I can see that in your eyes,” he told her, ironically with his back to her as he did. “How many?”

“Everyone.”

A hammer hit the cement floor, bouncing under the car he’d been working on. Cassius Aida ignored it.

Everyone.

He looked up at the ceiling, eyes searching for something that even he knew wasn’t there. “Accident?”

“No. No, Papa,” she said, calling him papa for the first time in a couple decades as she crouched by the car and picked up the hammer. “It was no accident.”

He nodded slowly, accepting the tool from her when she passed it to him. “You get the people who did it?”

She laughed bitterly. “If I missed any, they’re still running.”

“Good. You able to talk details?”

“Not if you don’t know about it already.” She sighed.

“All right,” he said, wiping his hands clean with a rag from the counter. “Supper’s in an hour. You need anything?”

“I need a civie pad, one with telecom access.”

He nodded, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “Fab’s in the corner, same as last time. New model, but the OS is pretty much the same. You know the code to my net.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll see you for supper?”

Sorilla nodded, smiling soberly. “You bet.”

He spared a long look in her direction then nodded again and headed out. Sorilla knew her father, knew he wasn’t one for words, but sometimes the way he shut down in emotional situations hurt. Of course, she was just as often glad of the space he offered, so Sorilla tried to put it out of mind as she walked over to the fab in the corner, already linking her implants into the household network and skating through the global web for popular pad designs.

She wasn’t looking for anything complicated or stylish; it wouldn’t leave her pocket since she could use her implants to access the device, so it only took a few minutes to find a model that would suit her. Once it was downloaded to her implants, Sorilla just shot it over to the fab and waited while the machine printed out the device for her.

She wished she could just use her implants, but the military frowned on hacking directly into civilian communications channels with military hardware. Both because it was lousy discipline and because of the risk of picking up a virus from the network. Patching into the home network was skirting the rules a little, but she didn’t feel like pushing her luck with the high-band civilian frequencies. She took the device from the fab, checked the battery to be sure it had been printed with a full charge, and dropped it in her pocket after linking it to her implants.

Then she walked back into the house as she called up her mail, waving to her father as she went through the kitchen.

“Going for siesta, Dad,” she called. “Let me know when supper is ready.”

He waved in her direction, not speaking much as he took some rice from the big pot and scooped it over into the pan next to it, along with a large serving of beans and some pork strips. “You can eat when you’re hungry, Hija. It’ll be ready when you are.”

“Thanks, Dad,” she said, letting herself into her room and tossing herself on the bed.

Sorilla closed her eyes as she lay there with raw data flowing along her corneal implants, checking her mail and looking over the social pages for anything of interest, mostly just trying to forget again, really. She hadn’t thought of her lost team in over a year, closing on two. Getting lost in that hell would have been a bad idea on Hayden, and since she’d been recalled, she’d been active pretty much every waking hour, answering questions or preparing reports to answer questions no one had thought to ask just yet.

After shooting off some replies to friends and updating her status on the social pages from “off-world” to “home,” she told her computer to prioritize the rest of her backlog, and then she shut down the HUD so she could sleep for a time.

Chapter One

Five days later –USF Cheyenne

Jump Point Beta, Ares System

“Element Alpha,” Nadine ordered, “assume point. Beta will provide cover while Gamma remains in close support of the convoy.”

The commanders of the taskforce elements acknowledged, Alpha’s group already flaring its drives to four gravities as it moved out ahead of the relief column while Beta took a little more time to fill in the cover position. The Cheyenne held back with its escorts, taking the drag position of the formation, covering the column directly while Admiral Brookes settled in to wait for the results of long-range sensing systems.

The Ares System was so named because the closest thing in the entire godforsaken place to a habitable planet was Mars’s long-lost twin brother. Someone took a look at that and decided to get cute with the mythology and give the Greek god of war his own planet to match his Roman counterpart’s back in Sol. Were that all it had to recommend it, the name probably would have been the only thing worthy noting about the system.

Initial surveys, however, had thrown the astro-mining companies back home for a loop when they reported absolutely insane densities of both transuranic and so-called “rare earth” minerals. The whole planet was made of the stuff, to the point that had it been back on Earth, all a prospector would need to strike it rich would be a shovel and a jeep. Even when you accounted for shipping costs, living expenses, and all the associated insanity of living and working off-world, Ares was still profitable enough to break several monopolies of material back on Earth and completely shake up the balance of economic power.

There are a few nations back home that aren’t shedding any tears over the loss of these facilities, Nadine thought to herself as she began examining the data that was starting to filter in from deeper in-system.

Things looked quiet on the passive scanners, nothing throwing up red flags around Ares or its moons. Knowing the enemy’s penchant for hiding in the glare of the sun, however, that gave her cold comfort.

The gravity sensors were reading exactly as predicted, no unusual accelerations that might indicate someone playing with the fabric of space-time. Nadine finally forced herself to relax a bit, keeping a close eye on the system’s primary but otherwise turning her focus to deploying her ships and getting the relief column to its destination in good time.

The convoy took two days after arriving in-system to make planetary orbit of Ares, keeping to a leisurely pace that permitted the lead elements to coordinate on a full system scan. Not that she expected to find anything, but it was nice to have an up-to-date scan for stellar cartography to file. The space of even a relatively small system like Ares was so impossibly vast that, unless you knew what you were looking for and roughly where it was, you were highly unlikely to find it.

In Sol System, they were still finding planet-sized objects, even after more than a century of interplanetary space travel. Nothing close in-system, of course, but there were plenty of planetary objects floating around within the orbit of Pluto that just happened to be off the normal orbital plane. Several had been found, and claimed, by various nations, who set up deep-space research bases and mining facilities on them.

And those were planets. A ship, even a big ship, could hide almost literally anywhere.

With that in mind, Nadine redirected her military units to covering the orbitals and likely approach vectors with an eye to ships hiding near the sun or the system gas giants. With that done, her job was pretty much superfluous as the relief column took over.

She watched as they sent down shuttles, containing both relief supplies and the construction material needed to anchor the new tether. Installation would take days, at best, assuming any of the old fallback sites were still intact. Weeks if they had to survey for a new one before they could begin construction, but for her and her taskforce crews, it was now a waiting, and watching, game.

*****

USF Fleet Offices

Spaceport America, New Mexico

What once had been one of the sleepiest offices in the entire city was now constantly buzzing with activity. The United Solarian Fleet had operated on a shoestring budget for so long, they’d had to cannibalize most of their shoes. Now, however, even with the Americans and British taking the lead in Fleet operations, their budget had increased a hundredfold, leaving the beleaguered administration of the USF with what might be termed an embarrassment of riches.

Admiral John Givens had long been the voice of the USF’s frustration and anger at the way the organization that manned, maintained, and generally kept over eighty percent of space travel running had been marginalized. And now, for his sins, he was in charge of the newly expanded budget and found that there weren’t enough hours in the day to spend it all.

Oh, it wasn’t like they had too much money. No such thing, especially in a time of war. The problem was that, in the sleepy peacetime leading up to the invasion of Hayden, many of the infrastructures that they now desperately needed had either degraded or simply were never built in the first place. As a result, he was swamped in grant applications, contract bids, and new personnel applications. The grant requests he tossed down the line, letting his aides filter through those to look for anything that might be interesting. Contract bids got sent over to the spending committee; he was the chairperson, but he’d let the rest of them shoulder that weight for a while. Givens kept the personnel applications, however.

One thing that the USF was, now, was people poor.

They’d lost better than eighty percent of their experienced military personnel in the opening rounds of the war. Between Jorgen and Shepherd alone, Givens could almost despair for the future of the planet. Those two had been among the finest men he’d ever known, and combined, they had held more than fifty percent of the Fleet’s strategic command experience. Their crews had held over eighty percent the Fleet’s practical spacer experience, and the captains lost in each taskforce had shattered the Fleet’s tactical experience.

That wasn’t to say that Nadine Brookes was anything but competent, Givens immediately corrected himself. However, she was one of the many science-oriented commanders in the Fleet for whom the military tactics and strategy classes were little more than an abstract game to be played.

Another thing that bothered him, not that he’d say it aloud anywhere a member of the fairer sex might hear him, was that a side effect of the losses they’d suffered had left more than seventy percent of their captains of the female persuasion. Now, Givens wasn’t one to discriminate intentionally, but it came back to what had been bothering him earlier. Most of their military captains had been men, and most of their science track captains were women.

Without intending any offense to the ladies, Givens was desperate for more military experience.

With that always strongly in mind, he gave an increased priority to applicants with command experience from active military positions. That gave a slant to men, but there was nothing to be done about that. Givens wanted captains with proven mettle in command of the new Cheyenne class ships he was getting from the Alamo over the next year.

The next taskforce the USF put together wouldn’t be slyly referred to in the back corridors of the Solari Organization as “Taskforce Valkyrie.”

*****

Fort Bragg, Carolina

Sorilla waited in the medical division’s offices, having taken a bullet train from New Mexico to Carolina at the request of the brass. Normally, she could have done anything they wanted from the USF offices in New Mexico, but apparently someone wanted her up to Bragg in person.

“Sergeant Aida?”

She looked up to see a woman in army uniform approaching and nodded. “That’s right.”

“Doctor Prescott will see you now.”

“Thank you,” she said, getting to her feet.

Time to see what this was all about.

Prescott was a big man, and not in the good meaning of the word, she supposed. Probably fifty kilos overweight and balding, but he completely lacked the stereotypical cheer you tended to associate with a chubby figure. Instead, he seemed as stern and disciplined as anyone she’d met, which seemed an odd dichotomy to her.

“Sergeant,” he said, not looking up as she entered, “take a seat.”

She considered standing, but this whole situation had the air of something that would probably take a while, so she sat and waited. Finally, he closed the file he was reading and looked up at her.

“I’m sure you’re curious about the summons.”

“Somewhat, sir,” she admitted.

He crooked his lips into a half smile, one that held no real humor, just an acknowledgement of the situation, for whatever it was worth. “After you were recalled from Hayden, your file came under review. Probably wouldn’t have been sent here at all under normal circumstances, but the war changed some procedures.”

“Oh?”

“Basically, your implants are due to be upgraded in two years, correct?”

Sorilla nodded. Computer core implants, and the other little enhancements that made up the differences between one of the elite SOCOM teams and army grunts were rated in decades, if possible, but often only in years. The army tried to hedge its bets by implanting bleeding-edge technology, often years ahead of the curve, and performing software updates to keep the gear competitive. As a strategy it was marginally successful, but regular surgery was still required to keep implanted electronics from becoming obsolete.

“It was noted that there was every chance that you’d be deployed at the time your next upgrade session was scheduled, and given the nature of your likely deployments,” he told her evenly, “it was decided that we may want to move your upgrades forward.”

She had to cover a grimace at that, though it was far from bad news. The idea of them cutting into her eyes again just really tweaked every flight instinct she had. Not that it hurt, honestly; with the local anesthetics and nerve blockers she didn’t feel a thing during the session, but since the doctors needed her cooperation to ensure that the devices were properly calibrated before they closed up the incisions, she had to be awake for the whole process. Being awake and watching someone slap chop a razor blade across your eyeball so they could open up a flap to get into the cornea was not a pleasant experience, pain or no.

If he noticed her discomfort, Prescott didn’t seem to care. He just thumbed open another file on his pad and continued talking.

“We have a new computer core for you, along with some gene work that’s recently been cleared for human trials. Since surgery for those will put you down for a month, it’s been suggested that we may as well do the job right the first time. Technically, you’ve already agreed to all of this when you were passed into the SF, but as many of the proposed additions are still classified as experimental, we wanted to walk you through them with extra care.”

Oh joy. She groaned as quietly as she could. Technology was a vital piece of any battlefield, she knew, but sometimes it felt that the brass wouldn’t be happy until they’d turned her into some kind of remotely-operated drone soldier that they could steer by keyboard from their offices.

“Recovery and training would normally prevent us from doing this, given the need for people at the moment, but you’re scheduled to be debriefed for that long and more, so we have a window,” Prescott said idly, flipping through a few more digital pages. “So, shall we begin the briefing?”

Masking a scowl, Sorilla nodded in a clipped motion. “Yes, sir.”

“Excellent.”

*****

USF Cheyenne

High orbitals, Ares

“The captain of the Prometheus reports that they’re tethered and rotating normally, Captain.”

Patrick nodded, not looking up from the notations he was making. “Good news, Lieutenant. How long until they can test the tether?”

“Another few hours, sir.”

“All right, I’ll pass the report along to the admiral. Thank you.”

“Sir.”

He finished the notes he was taking and then turned his focus to the status of the Prometheus. Like most of the older class survey ships, the USV Prometheus had been built with an eye to being used as a tether counterweight if needed. The ship would park itself in orbit over a world, VASIMR thrust ports pointed down to the planet, then it would drop one of the 120,000-kilometer tethers down to where ground crews were waiting to anchor the ship in place.

Once that was accomplished, the tether kept the ship from being flung out into space by centripetal force while providing an efficient and effective method of orbit access from the ground. The Prometheus design even allowed the counterweight crew to launch ballistic packages using the planet’s rotation, useful for a mining facility, to say the least.

But a sitting duck as far as defense goes, Patrick thought grimly.

Oh, they’d loaded it with enough ordnance to fight a couple dozen terrestrial wars, and would soon load it with even more now that it wasn’t carrying better than a 100,000 klicks of carbon ribbon. Everything from nukes to Kinetic Kill, or Kilo Kilo launchers, but the damned thing still couldn’t maneuver. Worse, more than half the approach avenues to the planet were covered by the planet itself. If the enemy ships came in from behind Ares, the counterweight station’s weapons wouldn’t be able to target it until it was far too late.

There were some plans to deal with that, a satellite network would be the first step, but by and large, until R&D found something to defend against the enemy gravity valve technology, there just wasn’t much that could stand. Normally, Patrick would say abandon the world. Get the survivors off, or resupply them and tell them to go to ground, but putting another tether in place was just lunacy. Unfortunately, the mineral wealth of Ares was such that the UNF couldn’t lose this system.

So they’d retrofitted the Prometheus with more weapons than the old hull could actually fire and manufactured a custom cable specifically for this job. Most carbon tethers were capable of conducting enough power to run the tether car, provide emergency backup to the counterweight from the surface, or vice versa. This one, however, was a little different.

The carbon molecules that made up the core of the super-strong ribbon cable had been painstakingly aligned, a process that alone had taken months and billions of dollars of man and machine hours. The perfect alignment of atomic bonds gave the cable a near superconductive core, which, when combined with the large military reactor they were prepared to install on the surface, would give the counterweight all the power it needed for the electricity-hungry magnetic accelerators that powered the Kilo Kilos.

He sighed, unstrapping from his station, and keyed in the command to save his data. Then he pushed off and glided across the bridge to the access tube that would take him up to the admiral’s command deck. When he pulled himself out of the tube by the ladder for use while under acceleration, Patrick noted that the admiral was strapped into her station, likely doing pad work while her aide was free floating at the far end of the room, checking a repeater display.

“Ahem.” He cleared his throat slightly, just to be noticed.

Admiral Brookes half turned her head, catching sight of him in the corner of her eye. “As you were, Captain.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He relaxed. “Permission to enter, ma’am?”

“Granted.” She tapped her pad closed and slapped the straps free with the quick release, floating clear of the station and turning around to watch him approach. “What brings you here, Captain?”

“Prometheus reports that they’ll be testing the tether in a few hours, ma’am. Combined with all other reports, we’re running two days ahead of schedule.”

“Excellent. I know the system is important, but I’ll be glad to be clear of it,” she said. “TF5 has more important tasks to be doing at the moment. They’re not coming back here, not soon anyway.”

“Ma’am?” Patrick didn’t exactly disagree, but he was curious as to what she was thinking.

“They’re searching for us, for Earth,” she said, shaking her head, “and we know they don’t have an unlimited fleet to throw at us. If they did, we’d never have regained a foothold in Hayden. No, they’re not going to waste resources on a system they’ve already hit and apparently have little interest in.”

He nodded, more or less agreeing with her statement. The enemy obviously was working on a budget, otherwise they’d have seen more ships already. The USF had posted pickets across over a dozen systems between Hayden and Ares, and only a few reported seeing any enemy ships. Of those, they were never spotted in groups of more than three or less than two.

Most likely they were dealing with a forward scout element, the alien’s version of destroyers, or maybe cruisers. No battleships yet, was his guess, and certainly nothing like an aircraft carrier had popped its head out of the black. Whether the enemy had units that paralleled those was a subject of much debate, but Patrick felt it was reasonably likely that they had something heavier that hadn’t been seen yet.

Of course, given the nature of the enemy weapons, it was also possible that he was completely wrong. The mind boggled at what might constitute a heavier weapon than a big, bloody gravity cannon. Still, the ships themselves could be larger, better-equipped with point defense, and maybe have longer range on their primary weapons.

Any or, worse, all of those elements would make engaging even one enemy ship very nearly impossible for anything short of a full taskforce.

“Most likely correct, ma’am,” he said finally, “but Ares is a vital resource point for our supply chain. If they’d known how vital, they would never have left in the first place.”

Nadine sighed. “I know, but after what happened to TF3, I want them in my sights, Captain.”

Patrick masked a frown. Did she know someone in Shepherd’s battlegroup?

He mentally berated himself almost instantly for the thought, however. Of course she knew someone. We all did, the USF isn’t that big. But this sounds deeper, personal. I hope she’s not on some vengeance kick. That’s bad juju for a Fleet commander.

Something in his face must have tipped her off, however, because she smirked at him tiredly.

“Don’t worry, Captain, I’m not going to take the fleet haring off on some idiotic mission of revenge. We’ll get them in our sights soon enough, I have no doubt. They won’t let us avoid it, even should we want to,” Nadine said. “Honestly, as frustrated as I am, I’m glad of every second we get. We have to hope that research figures out that damned gravity gun of theirs, otherwise this is going to be a short, little war that probably won’t even make a footnote in their histories.”

Patrick nodded, wishing he could disagree. “You want a chapter to ourselves then?”

Nadine smiled then, a nasty, feral look crossing her face. “If we have to go down as a species, Patrick, I want books, movies, and ballads. I will not settle for less.”

*****

Aida Family Hacienda

Cassius Aida carried a tray into his daughter’s room, momentarily flashing back to old memories as he crossed through the door. It had been many years since he’d done this for her, and the last time was for nothing more than a simple flu, but it felt good all the same.

“Dinner for you, Hija,” he called softly.

Sorilla groaned a little, shifting in bed so that she was sitting up. The doctors had locked out her spinal shunt to prevent her from injuring herself; long experience told them that people who signed up for the sorts of things she did weren’t likely to lay around voluntarily, so the choice had been stay in the hospital for the duration of her recovery or have the shunt locked down. Sorilla despised hospitals far more than she did pain.

“Thanks, Da,” she mumbled, slurring her words a little against the painkillers fuzzing up her brain.

Doctors were strange, to be honest. The nice, clean neural block was a no-no, but apparently getting shot full of morphine or whatever the synthetic version was called these days was perfectly fine.

Probably has something to do with the fact that I can’t fucking walk with this crap in me, Sorilla thought, disgustedly.

Her father set the tray across her body and helped her into position, grimacing as she groaned again.

“You all right?”

“I’ll live,” she told him with a wan smile.

He sighed, shaking his head. “In my day, we kept our gear outside our bodies, where it belongs. Spent a goodly amount of time working very hard to keep people from sticking things in us, one way or the other, I’d like to add.”

She snorted softly. “Pull the other one, Dad. You’ve got as many implants as I do.”

“Only because I wasn’t very good at keeping people from sticking unwanted things into my body,” he replied sourly. “I’m not referring to medical implants, and you know it.”

“Times change,” Sorilla sighed theatrically, forcing herself to eat some. “I guess the army got tired of you old codgers losing all the gear you didn’t keep inside your body.”

Cassius smirked in response. “Must be. I see you’re feeling a little more fit, though. Enough to fight your old man in a battle of wits.”

“Baiting me with an obvious opening for a comment about beating up on unarmed opponents isn’t going to distract me from the soreness,” she responded dryly.

“And aware enough to spot an intentional opening in your opponent’s defenses,” he chuckled, rising up as he patted the bed. “You’ll be fine in a few more days.”

“Two weeks,” she mourned. “Two weeks before they’ll let me start working back up again.”

“You’ll live,” he responded, rolling his eyes at her sulky expression.

As a former Ranger, Cassius was well aware of how it felt to be lying in bed while your conditioning seeped away. The frustration for someone who defined her life by her active style was palpable, but he also knew that there were times you fought through the pain and times you surrendered to it. This time, his lovely daughter would simply have to learn that surrendering simply meant preserving herself for a fight on another day.

Sorilla watched him go for a moment then continued eating distractedly while looking through her corneal implants at an augmented world. The new OLED screens were light-years past her old second gen version, which had been limited to green and red colors and very limited graphics. The new ones were in full color, with almost life-scale definition to the overlay. As she looked at the food she was eating, her computer core watched alongside her and offered up its opinion of the meal in real time.

Amusingly, her computer wasn’t impressed with her father’s cooking.

Capable of hyper-spectral analysis, the new lenses in her eyes were able to break down chemicals in substances by the color of the light they reflected. It wasn’t exactly new technology, Sorilla had worked with handheld units before, but this was the first time she’d even heard whispers of it having been compacted to this degree.

The downside of it all was that, after a few moments of reading the analysis, Sorilla turned off the display and tried to eat her meal in peace. She really hadn’t needed to know all the trace elements in her food; despite being knowledgeable enough to know that it was neither uncommon nor truly harmful, it was nearly enough to put her off her meal. Her new implants were several generations ahead of the latest civilian tech, which was an uncommon situation, to be frank. Normally, the military was issued tech a generation or two behind the curve, for various reasons that ranged from older tech being generally more durable and reliable to the fact that it took years to pass through government testing to be cleared for issue. Some units, like herself, were designated for advanced testing, however, so she’d field the latest stable release and come back and tell them what needed to be fixed before they shoved it into some grunt’s innards.

The multi-core processor in her chest was one thing, but Sorilla could swear that the ones implanted through her neural and endocrine systems were itching every time she thought of them. The last time, they hadn’t had to cut open her head, and the idea of it was just creeping her the hell out.

The military had considered various combat-oriented drug programs for years, even to the point of implanting them in some soldiers as part of the combat set, but the negative factors of such setups had always kept them from doing it on a large scale. Sorilla now found herself the proud owner of the Army’s alternative program to such things, a series of tiny processor implants designed to trigger her own glands’ production of chemicals used in fight-or-flight situations.

A little more adrenal production here, a little dopamine to smooth out the shakes and anxiety, and so on until they got the effect they wanted. The whole cocktail list was several pages long, but they were all produced by the human body and weren’t subject to being used up. Given time, her body would be able to replenish the implants reserves, which was a real asset for someone whose job description included living off nature’s land along with mixing things up hand to hand.

All of which was great, but she was going to be another month in rehab, just getting her body back into proper conditioning, and then at least two more months in training to learn to optimize her use of the implants. At least three months before she was back on active duty, and the worst of all of it was the fact that she was going to be spending nearly all of that time answering whatever inane questions the brass came up with about her encounters on Hayden!

Training she could hack. Hell, even the pain of rehab wasn’t anything but weakness leaving the body. But she joined the Green Berets to get the hell out of offices and conference rooms!

Next time I hide in the bush until the fucking shuttles leave, she thought sourly.

*****

USF Cheyenne

Ares, high orbitals

“Tether checks out, Admiral,” Commander Elize Vasquez said from the screen she was on, “and we’ve completed full transfer of weapon stores and supplies.”

Nadine nodded thoughtfully. “Very good, Commander. We won’t be staying much longer, so you’ll be on your own soon.”

“Understood, ma’am.”

“Now, you’re going to have a couple refitted destroyers under your command, but take my advice on this, Elize,” Nadine said, leaning forward. “Keep your head down. Observe radio silence, police any and all transmissions, including lightband, and just try very hard not to be noticed. If you have to use those weapons, you’ve already half failed your assignment.”

“Aye aye, ma’am.”

Nadine fell silent, trying not to let her grim mood show on her face. The young woman across the screen didn’t need that weighing on her now, of all times. It had been a long two months, getting the tether in place, setting up the new facilities planet-side, and making the place ready for war… Productive as well, but long.

Now it was time for TF5 to move on. They were scheduled to do a sweep of the Hayden System before patrolling a series of stars that the enemy was likely to pass through in the next few weeks and months if they were following a logarithmic search pattern as the intelligence people predicted.

With so much strategic depth, the human worlds would be difficult to find, but the flipside was that it was damned near impossible to track the enemy ships. No one had ever bothered setting up pickets through empty star systems, there had never been a need until now. And while the UNF was rushing to make up for that oversight, it was still almost impossible to locate two or three starships in a sphere of space measured in hundreds of light-years.

She sighed. There was so much work to do, and they were working against a clock no one could see.

Nadine focused on the screen again. “Commander. Good luck with your new assignment.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” Elize saluted.

Nadine returned the salute then shut the com link down before keying into the inter-ship com and contacting the main bridge. “Status, Captain.”

“We’re primed to move on your orders, ma’am. The squadron shows all green on all boards,” Patrick returned confidently. “We are ready, ma’am.”

“Very good, then, make for Jump Point Alpha. One gravity acceleration.”

“Aye, ma’am. Jump Point Alpha, one-g.”

The ships of the squadron rumbled to life, their VASIMR drives warming from standby to full operation. She watched with satisfaction on the screens as the ships broke orbit in formation, starting to build speed as they adjusted their trajectory to intercept Alpha Jump Point. She checked her numbers quickly, a recheck really, to ensure that they would catch the point on time, but wasn’t really concerned about it.

Jump points waxed and waned according to a complicated set of interactions that still puzzled researchers after several decades. Partly it was the gravetic interactions of a complex system, particularly ones with several large gas giants in the outer orbits, but gravity tides alone only explained part of the mystery that was the jump points. The rest of the numbers were believed to be split among distant pulsar interaction, uncharted singularities, so-called dark matter, and god alone knew what else.

The only positive side, from the point of view of ship handlers, was that the waxing and waning was predictable. They had two days to catch the peak gravity tide at Ares’s Jump Point Alpha, which would give them best speed to Hayden. From Hayden, the squadron would circle back towards Earth Space, along the west galactic edge of the explored systems, where the aliens were expected to be searching if they followed the pattern the few bits of available data suggested they would.

*****

Hayden

Jump Point Alpha

The squadron punched through the fabric of space-time, bleeding speed unnaturally as it roared into Hayden’s gravity well and its systems rebooted.

“Screens up!”

“Report,” Patrick ordered from where he was strapped into his station.

“Local zone, all clear.”

“Long-range data compiling now. We’ll have eyes on in twenty seconds.”

“We’ve got telemetry incoming from the picket drones.”

“Put it on my screens,” Patrick ordered.

“Aye, Captain.”

He examined the incoming code then opened the inter-ship com to the admiral’s flag deck. “Admiral, recon data from the picket drones indicates that, while Hayden itself is still being contested, there are no enemy ships in-system. Close range scans concur. We’re waiting on long-range resolution to clear up.”

“Understood, Captain. Have the squadron stand down from battle stations, but remain at general quarters.”

“Aye, ma’am,” he replied then switched to the squadron frequency. “All ships, stand down from battle stations, but remain at general quarters until further notice. I say again, all ships are to stand down from battle stations but remain at general quarters.”

“We’ve got long-range visuals now, Captain. System looks quiet.”

“Yeah, let’s not count on that,” he replied, flipping on the squadron channel again. “Spread out, Formation Gamma Delta. I say again, Gamma Delta.”

Formation Gamma Delta was specifically designed to maximize the effectiveness of the gravity detectors on each ship. Using a matrix of highly sensitive accelerometers, the squadron began to map the vagaries of the local space-time fabric. The trick was figuring out what was supposed to be there and what, precisely, was not. Planets, the local star, and larger planetoids such as moons, asteroids, and the like were easy enough to map into the system. The issue came from smaller debris, chunks of rock and iron a quarter the size of the Earth’s moon, that might be floating unnoticed nearby. Such flotsam was nearly invisible to passive sensors, only showing up if you happened to catch it obscuring a star, and, depending on the composition, could even present surprisingly small profiles to conventional sensors. They all showed up on the gravity traps, however, and that made differentiating between them and an enemy ship a tricky bit of business.

“Captain, priority mail from the pickets!”

Patrick shifted his attention away from the gravity trap sensors. “Send it to my station.”

“Aye, sir.”

The message showed up in his inbox a couple seconds later, and he quickly opened it and read through the brief.

Well, that’s a fine mess, he thought a moment later, hand reaching for the com. “Admiral, priority message from the detachment on Hayden. They say do not approach the planet, the aliens have brought another gravity valve online. They’re trying to locate it, but it’s on a separate continent, and that’s making things…difficult.”

“Understood,” Nadine replied a moment later. “The intel from the operator on Hayden was apparently correct, then. We’ll do a flyby just the same. Plot a trajectory to keep us out of reach but close enough to get a good scan of the entire planet. Let’s see if we can’t find that valve for them.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

*****

USF forward operating base

Hayden

Lt. Commander Jean-Paul Rivers ducked his head under a thick tree root as he stepped into the cut out room that served as a planning chamber for the Hayden ground command. He’d just gotten back from a field op to the far side of the continent, a bit of a dirty run but only because the local fauna had taken a liking to his group in a decidedly unwelcome manner. It figured, in his opinion, that the enemy would pack it up to another continent just before he arrived.

That Sergeant Aida must have been something else, the way they seem to have showed their heels around here, he thought with a certain grim admiration. It was mucking pure hell with his deployments, though, since the aliens had managed to fall back to a secondary position and activate a new gravity valve.

With their weapon active, the aliens ruled Hayden’s skies with a gravity-clad fist, and the bulk of human forces were half a planet away.

“Commander. Good to see you back.”

“General!” Rivers stiffened to salute. “Sir.”

“At ease, before you break something,” General Isaac Kayne growled, eyes focused down on the situation table and its computer display. “We’ve got company.”

“Sir?”

“USF squadron punched through into Hayden space about twelve hours ago,” Kayne said. “We warned them off, but they’re pulling a flyby anyway in hopes of getting some intel on the location of that damned valve. You find anything out there?”

“No, sir. West coast seems clear, no signs of the enemy.”

“Well, didn’t expect it,” Kayne mumbled, disappointed all the same. He reached out to zoom out of the frame, bringing the local continent on the display out to a view of Hayden from orbit, then swept his hand idly to rotate the planetary view to show a different continent. “We’ve cleared this continent with patrols and low-flying drones. Took us more than two months to do it, but we did it. We’ve also made solid inroads around neighbors here, here, and here…”

The general tapped three smaller continental masses that were relatively close, their displays dimming slightly. “Given what we know about the aliens and their requirements, that places their most likely position on one of these two continental masses.”

Rivers eyed the map, grimacing as he recognized two of the largest and more remote continents on Hayden. Just bloody lovely. Had to chase them all the way to the other side of the be-damned planet, didn’t ya, Aida?

Then he slowly frowned, leaning closer to the display table. “Is this…real time?”

“Not quite, but closer than we’ve had since we landed,” Kayne told him. “These are computer-enhanced images streaming from the TF5 Squadron. About twenty minutes old now.”

“Well hallelujah,” Rivers said, planting his hands on the edge of the table. “Maybe we can find those bastards now.”

“We find ‘em fast enough,” the general told him, “and the nice lady-admiral in charge up there tells me she can do us a favor and drop some heavy objects on their heads.”

“How long have we got?”

“Squadron is on a reciprocal orbit, so they’ll pass by again in a little less than a day. If we’ve got a compelling reason, she says she can delay their departure, but they’re on a schedule they can’t mess up without cause.”

“All right,” Rivers said. “Let’s parcel this imagery out to every man and woman we’ve got and get them looking. More eyes on this, the better.”

Kayne shook his head, grinning a little. “Lord, boy, if the brass back home heard that idea, they’d either stick you in the lowest pit they had or promote you. Maybe both. It’s a good plan, though, let’s do just that.”

*****

“Ok, folks.” Old Man Silver clapped his hands as he walked through the gathered people. “The military boys have a job for us.”

“We going back out in the field, Sil?” Jerry asked, rising up from where he’d been slumped, a certain eagerness gleaming in his eyes.

“You want to take a walk any time, you go ahead, but that’s not the job.” Silver shook his head, tapping something on his pad. “I’ve just sent each of you a piece of imagery taken less than an hour ago of Hayden from beyond orbit. We need to find the enemy base, wherever they’re hiding, since the Sarge chased their butts off the old colony site. If we can do it in the next twenty-two hours, the USF squadron that took those shots will be available to hammer them for us… Take longer than that, and we do it the old-fashioned way. I don’t know about you lot, but since the Sarge ain’t here, I’d rather not do things by hand this time around. Fair?”

Several people laughed openly, most grinned, and a few answered him.

“Fair, Sil. Fair.”

“All right. Get to work. You can let me know if you find anything, I’ll pass the word up the chain,” he told them before he opened his own section of real estate on his pad and began painstakingly examining the imagery section by section.

Things had been quiet for the refugees since the Sarge left. Mostly, that came down to two big factors. First, the new soldier boys didn’t really trust the militia a whole lot, though they did use the pathfinders regularly. More importantly, however, with the beating the Sarge had given them, the aliens didn’t seem interested in tangling with the colonists, or even mucking about on their continent anymore.

If they’d come down with that attitude in the first place, we could’ve avoided this whole mess, Silver thought darkly as he zoomed in on a section of the map for a closer look then decided that it was a natural rock outcropping and zoomed back out.

As he looked, Silver wondered what the big picture looked like from back home. He was pretty sure that the governments would be keeping it as quiet as they could, but equally obvious was the fact that they couldn’t keep it entirely under wraps. You don’t lose two squadrons of Los Angeles class cruisers and sweep it under the rug, nor do you easily explain the kind of military building programs that had to have been spun up in the aftermath of the invasion here on Hayden.

From a purely military point of view, though, Sil pitied the guys in charge of planning this little war. Unknown enemy, unknown weapons, unknown supply chains. It had to be a freaking nightmare, and that was being nice and polite about things. Still, someone had something on the ball, he supposed. There was a nice and helpful squadron up there, waiting for a target to smash, and that wasn’t a bad place to start from, in his opinion.

Of course, first, they had to find something for the Fleet boys to hammer.

*****

With dozens of eyes going over every individual section of the imagery, finding the location of the enemy installation actually took about five and a half hours. Forty minutes of that was dedicated to confirmation by intelligence analysts after a thirteen-year-old girl beat them to the initial observation.

Snide comments aside, it was something of a miracle that it had been found as quickly as it had. While the aliens hadn’t gone to extreme levels to hide their new facility, it was at least as well hidden as the original had been, and that was pretty impressive on its own. In the end, it had been the lack of a human settlement to hide under that had given it away; they simply hadn’t been able to disguise their construction in a more natural area and were given away by that alone.

With all that complete, the mood in the hastily dug underground base was buoyed by the knowledge that Fleet would soon be raining hell down on the invaders that had come into their world and disrupted their lives to such an incredible degree.

The military hierarchy quickly analyzed the location, cross referenced it with old survey maps of the planet, and put as many notes as they could into building a fire plan for the squadron that was still rounding the local star and out of communication for the moment. Shortly after that was done, there was really nothing left for them to do but wait.

The hours that had begun flashing by so fast when they had a job to do now slowed to an interminable crawl that left even the most patient Hayden citizen or military man ready to crawl up the walls and across the ceiling out of pure frustration.

As the countdown clock hit three hours, however, they got their next message from the inbound squadron and quickly sent off the compressed and encrypted intelligence.

Then it was time to wait again.

*****

USF Cheyenne

Hayden approach

“We just received a priority tasking request from the Hayden ground command.”

Patrick Roberts nodded. “Excellent. We won’t have to reschedule our departure then. Send the coordinates to my station.”

“Already there, sir.”

Patrick nodded in response and walked over to his station, swinging himself easily down into the chair. He didn’t bother with the straps, they were under one gravity acceleration as they pulled away from the star, making things much simpler across the board when compared to microgravity conditions. He called up the targeting data and checked it quickly before shooting it off to the weapons stations so they could plot a solution.

“I’ll be on the flag bridge,” he then told the others in the command bridge.

“Aye, sir.”

Patrick made his way over to the access tube and hooked the ladder casually, not bothering with the rungs, as he just grabbed the sides and then tucked his feet around the metal and dropped. The flag bridge was aft of the main bridge, meaning he could drop in on the admiral but would have to crawl back up when he was done.

All right, so not everything was better with gravity.

He found the admiral and her aides pouring over a projection of Hayden’s surface, approach vector calculations littering the screen.

“Ma’am,” Patrick said as he saluted.

“As you were,” Nadine Brookes told him, not looking up. “Did we get the targeting data we needed?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, approaching. “I have tactical working up a targeting solution now.”

“Good. The sooner we can do this and move on, the better,” she said calmly. “There’s still no sign that they’ve come back to this system, despite the fact that it seems to be an important one to them. I’m starting to wonder if we’ve overestimated their shipping capacity.”

“More likely, ma’am, that they haven’t shifted significant numbers over to this side of their frontier,” Patrick offered. “We are at the back end of a galactic arm, ma’am. Might be they have a ways to travel to shift gear and ships along their supply line.”

“More power to us, if that’s the case,” Nadine said coolly. “Though that doesn’t help us with the ships gallivanting around within our borders as is.”

“No, ma’am.”

Nadine nodded, wiping the board with a wave of her hand that sent the work into a folder for later. “All right. First thing first, get that solution plotted and passed around the squadron. We’ll swing close enough to hammer that valve then move on to the next system on our patrol schedule.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Patrick left, leaving Nadine examining Hayden thoughtfully while her aides cleared up the work they’d been finishing before he came in. She didn’t know what to think about the enemy’s strange behavior. Some of their actions were textbook military, and then others were haphazard and almost casually negligent. Hayden had to be considered a valuable piece of real estate to them, but if so, why hadn’t they sent more ships?

Did they simply run out, as Patrick seemed believe? Fleet had taken four of their cruisers out in this system; maybe they simply didn’t have any more available when you worked in the ones that raided Ares and were now running through human space like rampaging bulls. A long supply chain might explain that, but then why stretch themselves out so badly?

She called up what little data they had on the aliens’ activities, most of it sourced right back to one woman. From Sergeant Aida, brought back by Commodore Petrov’s convoy. Her personal notes made for interesting reading, with similar speculations concerning their ground forces to what Nadine herself was questioning concerning the enemy ship deployment.

It’s like there’s some weird split personality at work. Maybe tactical command is at odds with the strategic deployments?

Unfortunately, without a lot more information, Nadine didn’t think that they’d be working that little puzzle out anytime soon. For the moment, she focused on the immediate future, calling up the survey maps they’d overlaid the latest imagery on so she could examine the target while the solution was being plotted.

They had set up near the equator again, causing her to wonder if that was a necessary part of their gravity tech. Nothing she knew about the theories behind the manipulation of space-time seemed to indicate that the location on a planet would make the slightest bit of difference. Perhaps in some certain, extremely sensitive applications, but then she’d expect the location to favor areas that were, or weren’t, rich in heavy elements that might throw off local gravity slightly.

She zoomed out a bit, examining the jungle around their new location. It didn’t take long to spot their construction efforts, now that she knew where to look.

They’re building that strange “collector” again. Why? What does it do? She refrained from actually growling at the screens, but the frustration was clear on her face when Denise approached her.

“Are you all right, Admiral?”

“Fine, Denise,” she said, shaking her head slowly. After a moment, she nodded to the screen. “What do you make of this?”

Denise examined the imagery closely, face shutting down in the way it did when she became intent on something. “They’re building it again. It’s further along this time, but it looks like they’ve taken some pains to hide it.”

“Yes, but what is it?”

“I don’t know.” Denise shook her head. “There’s nothing in any of the theories of space-time manipulation that includes anything like that.”

“There’s precious little about turning ships into flying singularities either,” Nadine countered, frustrated by the lack of information.

“That’s true enough.” Denise shrugged. “All I can say is that it seems important to them.”

“Right. Ok, contact tactical and tell them to budget some of our Kilo Kilos to take it out…” Nadine grimaced. “Whatever the hell it is. If they want it, I don’t want them to have it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

*****

Taskforce Five, known by the oft whispered yet rarely acknowledged name “Taskforce Valkyre,” cut acceleration as they approached Hayden. The targeting solution for the planet was sent across the squadron’s combat network, the job efficiently split across each of the ships as the taskforce auxiliary ships dropped back and left the warships to their work.

The Cheyenne and Longbow class ships continued on ballistic, their crews double-and triple-checking the strike solution as they approached launch point.

“All right, we’re on automatic now, sir.”

Patrick Roberts nodded. “Very good. Signal the Fleet, send fire control over to their computers. We’ll make this as effective and total as we can.”

“Aye, sir… Message sent, Fleet confirms.”

“Good. Now we wait, I guess,” he said, a little put out, in all honesty.

It seemed that waiting was always part of a navy man’s life, but in space it was so much worse. Even in the middle of combat, it was all about waiting. Weapons could only cross intervening space just so fast, after all.

A harsh buzz snapped him out of his thoughts, and Patrick turned his head. “What’s that?”

He knew every alarm on his ship but found his mind clawing to identify that particular one.

“Minor flux on the accelerometers, sir. Probably an unmapped planetoid…”

Gravity alarm. That was it.

Patrick shook his head. “That wouldn’t set off the alarms!”

“That’s all we’re showing, Captain.”

“Correlate against the squadron’s sensors!”

He saw the brief moment of shocked embarrassment that told him he’d been dead on; the young woman had forgotten to check the Cheyenne’s readings against those of the rest of the squadron. If there was a significant variance, then it meant that they were in range of…

“Gravity event detected!”

“Fuck!” Patrick cursed. “On who?”

“It’s the Apache, sir! She’s accelerating out of formation!”

“Good! Godspeed to them,” he growled, accessing the short to midrange scanners as he tried to find the source of the attack. “Where the hell are you?”

“Shouldn’t we move, sir?”

“Negative!” he snapped. “We’re locked on a firing solution, and we only get one pass at this without screwing our plans to hell and back. Hold course.”

“A…aye, sir.”

On a side screen, he watched the Apache pull clear of their formation, accelerating at better than fourteen gravities in a bid to clear the area before the weapon could be brought fully to bear. They didn’t know why, but it was assumed that the enemy weapon had a positioning mode that locked onto a target before they applied the full force of their assault. It was that targeting mode that most members of the USF thought they were detecting before a ship was attacked.

“Gravity event! Apache again. They’re hit!”

His screen whited out for a moment, nuclear fission radiation causing the fail safes to kick in and shut down the cameras for a moment. Patrick grimaced, teeth clenched in anger and frustration.

“Two minutes to launch point!”

God, we’re sitting ducks, he groaned. Two minutes was an eternity, an unreal length of time in the space of their lives to this point.

“Captain! The Apache, she’s still there!”

Patrick’s head snapped up, eyes falling on the screen that had now cleared up. Sure enough, the big ship was still there. Its acceleration was dead, but it was intact save for a large chunk torn off the rear end. He whistled in shock.

“Did she really just survive a hit from that thing?”

“First time we’ve pitted a Cheyenne class destroyer against the enemy weapon, Lieutenant,” Patrick answered. “Looks like they only clipped her, and her armor held against the nuclear reaction. She’s dead in space, however.”

“Shall I dispatch search and rescue?”

“Hell no,” he ordered instantly. “You want to help them, find me the source of the enemy shots!”

“Aye, sir.”

“Gravity event detected! Centered on the Sherwood Forest! She’s already accelerating out of formation!”

“Wish them luck and make sure the rail cannons are cleared to fire!” he ordered the tactical station, more to keep their minds off the shooting than anything else.

“Aye, Captain!”

“Where the hell are they?” he growled quietly, flipping through the close-to medium-range scans, looking for the enemy ship. It had to be there!

“Captain.”

He almost snapped until he recognized the admiral’s voice. “Yes, Admiral?”

“I’m not locating a ship either. It may be that there is no ship.”

“What? Then what…?”

“The facility on the planet is the only confirmed valve in-system. Continue with the firing plan as plotted.”

“Aye, ma’am,” he agreed easily enough, eyes still looking for the ship he felt had to be out there. They were so far out from the planet, well beyond any previous engagement range. Those attacks couldn’t be coming from the planet!

That said, his fire mission was the priority at this point in time, and he hadn’t intended to break off until and unless he had a clear idea of where he was breaking to .

“Sherwood has broken clear, no sign of damage!”

Patrick’s mind whirred. The fact that there was no actual attack supported that the attacks were coming from a long-range source. Closer in and they’d have been able to confirm the lock better and adjust their aim to track the accelerating ships.

Could the planet really be the source? he wondered, mentally calculating the range and working out light-speed propagation in both directions as he tried to figure the numbers.

“Gravity event!” The alarms sounded as the call went out. “Centered on the Shilo, Captain!”

“Damn it!” Patrick cursed as the Shilo Warrior was forced to drop out of the formation, pulling away on a random tangent to confuse the enemy targeting.

Unfortunately, the Shilo had occupied a keyhole position in their attack plan, and its loss was going to open huge gaping holes in the squadron’s firing solution.

“Sir, HMS Hood is accelerating. Incoming contact from Captain Mackay!”

Patrick flipped open the com. “Captain.”

“Sir, the Hood stands ready to assume the Shilo’s position.”

“Slide on in then, Hood. Welcome to the front ranks.”

“Honor to be here, Captain,” Jane Mackay’s voice sounded confidently over the speakers as the HMS Hood took the Shilo’s position in the attack formation, shouldering the brunt of the other vessel’s firing orders in the process.

“Launch point in T-minus forty seconds, Captain.”

“Roger that,” Patrick gritted out, eyes on the accelerometer data, trying to pinpoint a pattern he could use to isolate where the shots were coming from.

He ticked down a count, mentally tallying how long it took the enemy to retask their weapon onto a new target. So far, it was almost half a minute between targeting impulses, which argued heavily in favor of the admiral’s hypothesis that the enemy weapon was located at extreme range…possibly even Hayden. If that were the case, though, it made things seriously dicey for assaulting a valve-defended world. He wasn’t sure if they were going to be able to guarantee a successful strike this time, though it seemed likely, all the same.

Kinetic Kill weapons weren’t nukes. They required reasonably accurate strikes to be effective. Close did count, but you still had to put them in the neighborhood. Unlike the enemy, who tossed around gravity-induced fission attacks like so many play toys, humans were loath to use nuclear weapons on a planet. It was culturally ingrained that you just didn’t do that and had been since the second World War.

“Gravity event detected, Captain!”

Patrick snapped his head up, a vile epithet on his lips. So damned close to the launch window.

“Target is the Cheyenne!”

Patrick winced. “Time to launch point?”

“Eight seconds!”

“Hold course and speed,” he ordered through clenched teeth.

“Captain?” The lieutenant half turned, face turning a pasty white as he stared in shocked disbelief.

“You have you orders. If we miss this window, we’ll just have to do this all over again!” Patrick snarled, opening the ship-wide. “All hands, all hands. Secure for full military power. I say again, secure for full military power!”

The clock ticked down as he finished the tally in his head and prayed that the admiral was right. If the valve was on the planet, they should have enough time, just.

“Three…two…one… Kilo Kilo launch away!”

“Get us out of here! Fifteen-g, emergency acceleration!” he snapped, throwing open the squadron channel. “Break! Break! Break!”

He and everyone else on the Cheyenne were slammed back into their bolsters as the VASIMR thrust opened up at fifteen gravities, throwing the Cheyenne forward through the fire. The squadron blasted along with them, each ship changing vector in a blossom break, each flying headlong into the black on their own vector as everyone onboard prayed for the best through the sounds of the deep grunts and panting they made as they tried desperately to keep blood from being pulled from their brains and causing them to black out.

*****

Fleet Kinetic Kill, or Kilo Kilo, weapons were really just twenty-kilogram steel bars launched from a series of high-velocity magnetic launchers built into the superstructure of the Cheyenne and Longbow class starships. Once launched, they fell into a ballistic trajectory, spiraling down the gravity well of the planet in this case, continuing to accelerate until they hit the atmosphere.

The fin-stabilized bars continued to fall, striking the surface with a variable force that could range from several dozen tons of TNT to upwards of almost a megaton of deep-penetrating power per bar.

The launch set from Taskforce Five entered Hayden atmosphere on schedule and slammed into the surface with roughly 800 kilotons of force each, delivering their energy deep into the ground at the target point with devastating effect on the local geology and anything that depended on it.

The impact was visible from orbit and for hundreds of miles in every direction around the alien facility. Seismic sensors on the other side of the planet itself registered the strikes shortly after they impacted, informing the Hayden civilians of the attack before radio transmissions from the squadron could, in fact, reach them.

*****

Patrick was slumped at his station, only the straps having kept him upright through the wrenching motion the Cheyenne had suffered moments after they’d opened up the VASIMR drive to full military power.

He groaned, throbbing pain informing him that he wasn’t dead yet, and stirred slowly in place. Faintly, through a cloud almost, he could hear others groaning and moving and slowly forced himself back to consciousness.

The ship wasn’t under acceleration, he could feel the effects of microgravity as he woke. But none of the alarms were blaring either, so they seemed to be more or less intact.

“Ship’s status,” he called out, croaked out, really.

There was a long pause before he heard a low moan turn into mumbled words from another station.

“Board is showing green and yellow, Cap… More details when I’m not seeing double.”

Patrick laughed painfully, turning it into a coughing fit that brought flecks of blood to his lips. “You do that. Anyone have any red on their boards?”

A slow chorus of negative responses left him feeling a lot better about the situation. No red lights meant that nothing was busted and no immediate risk to life and limb was evident. Well, as long as there wasn’t an alien ship out there waiting to smash them like a beer can, that was.

“Ok, ok,” he mumbled, slapping the quick release on his restraints and letting himself float free. “Enough sleeping on the job!”

He floated from one station to the next, shaking his bridge crew back to consciousness if they seemed to need it, and moved on when they were able to answer a few straight questions. They didn’t have time to mess around and needed to get the Cheyenne back to fighting form as quickly as they could.

“Coms! Get on the horn to the squadron, see if they’re all intact. Then contact the Apache and see what kind of shape they’re in. Goddamn it, Stew, wake the hell up. I need you on the detection gear. We may still have a bandit out there!” he growled, shaking the man awake.

“Mmm up!” the young man mumbled. “Ahm up!”

“Good, now uncross your eyes and get on the early warning systems.”

“Right…on it, Cap.”

With the bridge crew roused and rousing, Patrick floated back to his own station and opened a channel to the admiral.

“Admiral, bridge here,” he said then waited. “Admiral, this is the bridge. Come in. Please respond.”

He was about to head up there himself when he heard Nadine’s voice come weakly back.

“We’re intact, Captain. See to your ship.”

“Aye, ma’am. Good to know you’re up and about.”

“We’ll be about when the ship stops spinning, Captain.”

“That’s not the ship, Admiral.”

“Oh. Well, we’ll be about shortly then. Have medical send up something for motion sickness, would you?”

“On their way,” he said, concerned as he signed off and keyed over to medical.

“Medical here.”

“This is the captain. Send someone up to the admiralty deck. Admiral Brookes is complaining about motion sickness. I don’t know if it’s that simple or if she struck her head when we got belted around.”

“Right away, Captain.”

Patrick closed the com and swung himself back into his station, strapping back in before he looked over the situation boards. He wasn’t seeing any lost transponders across the fleet, though they were a few light-seconds away from the farthest ships. So far, so good.

He opened the fleet-wide, keeping one eye on the accelerometer displays as he did so. “All ships, this is Roberts on the Cheyenne. Report in with current status.”

One by one, the others reported in, culminating in the Apache checking in as intact but damaged. Still eyeing the accelerometers with the thought of a lurking ship in the back of his mind, he keyed the channel over to the Apache’s dedicated link.

“Apache, this is Cheyenne. Report specifics on your status.”

The delay due to their range caused several seconds to pass before the response came back from the Apache.

“We lost fifteen people in lower engineering during the attack, but the seals held and we’re not currently composed of expanding plasma, so we’re all right I guess,” Captain James May came back, sounding seriously pissed.

“Can you effect repairs?”

More time passed.

“Negative. Apache is most likely bound for the breakers,” James answered, his response clearing up why he was so pissed.

“Say again, Apache. Are you unrecoverable? Should we evac your crew?”

“Negative,” James answered when he came back. “Apache can make it back to Earth Space, Cheyenne. We’ll have to patch the VASIMR and run the system by hand, but we can make Earth Space. Apache’s superstructure is compromised, however.”

Ouch, Patrick winced. The Cheyenne class hulls were cast-nickel-iron. If the superstructure was compromised, her captain was right. The Apache was heading for the breakers, though maybe she might be repurposed if the Fleet admiralty decided to patch her up and sell her for civilian use.

Patrick sighed. “Roger that, Apache. Effect repairs and wait for orders.”

“Roger, Cheyenne. Wilco. Out.”

Well, one ship lost but not destroyed in an engagement with a gravity valve. Patrick frowned. It wasn’t as bad as the others who’d mixed it up with the aliens, but it wasn’t a great start just the same.

He looked over to the rest of the bridge crew. “Anyone have anything that indicates we still have a bandit out there?”

“Negative. No gravity events since our Kilo Kilo hammered home.”

“All right, Commander.”

“Yes, sir,” Commander Gere said, looking over.

“You have the bridge, XO. I’m going up to check on the admiral,” Patrick said, unstrapping.

“Aye, sir, I have the bridge.”

*****

When he got to the admiral’s flag deck, Patrick found a medic patching her up with a gauze wrap that was stained already with the pink telltale of blood.

“How is she?”

The corpsman glanced up. “Banged up, mild concussion. She’ll be fine, Captain.”

Patrick nodded, relieved, as he floated over. “Admiral.”

“Captain. Anything to report?”

“Looks like you were right. We were being targeted from the planet, ma’am,” he conceded. “The Apache is damaged, probably unrecoverable, but her captain says he can get her home on his own.”

“Damn,” Nadine mumbled, fingers coming up to her temple.

“Could have been worse, Admiral.”

“Could have been a hell of a lot better, too, Captain,” she growled then forced herself to relax. “All right, order James to take the Apache home, most direct route possible. If he needs supplies or fuel, make sure he’s topped off before he leaves.”

“Aye, ma’am.” Patrick nodded. “And the rest of the squadron?”

“Reform and proceed on schedule to the next stop on our patrol route,” she said, blinking her eyes slowly. “Check with the planet, see if they need anything before we leave.”

“Wilco, ma’am. You get some rest. I’ll let you know when we’re ready to jump from Hayden.”

She nodded slowly. “Thank you, Captain.”

“Just doing my job. Go with the corpsman now. Get checked out proper down in medical,” he said, nodding to the corpsman, who took the hint and started to bundle her up for moving. Patrick slipped in the hatch ahead of them but headed up to the main bridge instead of down toward medical.

“Captain on the bridge!”

“As you were,” Patrick ordered as he looped about and floated into the bridge, heading for his station.

“How’s the admiral, sir?” Gere asked.

“Bump on the noggin, XO. She’ll be fine,” he said, nodding once. “I have the bridge.”

“You have the bridge, Captain.”

Patrick slid into his station and pulled the straps down again before he reached for the com controls to break the news to Apache.

*****

Fort Bragg

Carolina

Sweat beaded and ran down her face in rivulets as Sorilla pushed through the pain and exhaustion, racing along a narrow beam that bridged a four-meter gap over a five-meter-deep ravine. She could have probably jumped it, certainly if she’d been permitted to go all out and tap her new implants, but this was a basic physical retest to see that she was ready for field operations again. No implants, no armor, no joke.

She hit the wall running, planting four steps up the vertical surface before gravity decided it had had enough, then jumped with hands outstretched to hook the edge of the twelve-meter stack of wood. She grunted as she pulled herself up, rocking her legs back and forth enough to build momentum before scissoring over the top and dropping into free fall on the other side.

Sorilla rolled along the packed dirt, coming up running as the nets came into view ahead of her. She dove under them, skidding through mud and muck with her face in the worst of it, but never stopped moving as she crawled the length with her head half under water and mud, popping up on the other side with every muscle in her body screaming against the flagrant abuse.

She’d been bedridden for the better part of two months since the surgery to update her bionetics, or close enough as to make little difference, shooting her physical conditioning to hell, and her body was now making sure she was well aware of the fact.

She collapsed across the finish line as her leg gave out, going numb and toppling her to the left as she rolled to a stop and flopped onto her back, panting.

Steps approached, combat boots coming into view and stopping just a few feet from her position as the owner of the boots leaned over and her face came into view.

“You know, Sor,” the annoyingly chipper blonde smiled widely at her. “If you’d signed up for a sane occupation, like say the medical corps, you wouldn’t be lying on the ground in pain right now.”

“Oh shut it, Jen,” she muttered from her back. “You know I can’t stand the sight of blood.”

“Not unless you’re the one exposing it to sight,” the medic countered with a roll of her eyes. “Oh, just for the record, doc sent me down here to tell you to cut this shit out, you’re overdoing it.”

“Tell that interfering prick that a lady needs her privacy some times and he should keep his nose out of my implants.”

Jennifer Ransom chuckled. “Really, Sor? I thought those were all natural.”

“Oh stuff it.” Sorilla forced herself to sit up, her abdomen protesting the strain she was putting it under. “How was my time?”

Jen snorted but checked the clock just the same. “Well, the course record isn’t in any risk of being broken, but respectable for an invalid.”

Sorilla grabbed the watch from the medic and checked it herself then flopped back down. “Damn it.”

“You’re doing fine,” Jen offered as she crouched down, hands hanging loosely between her thighs as she rested her elbows on her legs. “Despite trying to tear yourself open again, you’ve healed well, and all the new implants check out. Doc says you’re cleared for active duty, so you can stop trying to pretend you’re a tough bitch and go back to being one for real.”

“About time,” Sorilla grunted as she snapped herself up again, getting her legs under her and rising to her feet. “Implants?”

“Unlocked. You’re cleared for active, like I said.” Jen shrugged. “Don’t take that as an excuse to be stupid with your pacing, Sor.”

“I know my way around a recon schedule, Jen. I’m a big girl now,” Sorilla smirked tiredly as she walked over to a bench and grabbed a water bottle.

She took a long drag on the liquid, until the rawness of her throat was soothed, then she swished the rest around her mouth and spat it out. “Any word on assignments?”

“Not through us, but you know that’s not our department.” Jen shook her head. “I expect you’ll get a call.”

Sorilla nodded. “All right, thanks. I’m going to shower and grab a bite. Tell the doc I better not catch him accessing my implant videos again.”

“You need to learn to shut the video feed off if you’re taking some ‘me time’.”

“Damn things used to be off by default,” Sorilla grumbled.

“That’s before they figured out how to record the data holographically,” Jen smirked. “It’d take you twenty years to fill your banks now.”

“Great,” Sorilla grumbled, unenthused.

“Now, now, don’t blame the doc for checking your vitals. I’m sure he was just doing his job.”

Sorilla shot her friend a dark look then rolled her eyes and snorted. “How long before he came out of the closet?”

Jennifer laughed openly. “After you scared the piss out of him? Almost two hours.”

“Good.”

Chapter Two

USF Offices

New Mexico tether counterweight, Earth orbit

“We’ve had sightings of the alien squadron near the Atlantis Colony,” Admiral Jason Sawyer said grimly as he dropped the bomb on the assembled group.

Their reactions didn’t disappoint, ranging from cries of shock to moans of what had to be despair from the representatives of the aquatic colony world.

The Atlantis Colony was a free-floating city on the surface of a world with effectively no landmasses to speak of. A few island chains were occasionally revealed by shifting tides, but they invariable vanished again as the cycle of the planet’s moons went on. The world’s distance from the system’s primary kept it cool, but above freezing temperatures, which meant that on the whole it was a relatively placid world by most measures, and while not comfortable for humans, it was livable. It also produced a great deal of valuable algae and algae byproducts, used for fuel, food, and oxygen production across Earth and the colony worlds. Valuable, but not as vital as the mining facilities at Hayden, Atlantis was similar to every other colony in that it really didn’t have any way to defend itself against the current threat.

“How close are they to the system?”

Sawyer glanced over at the representative of the Atlantis System and shook his head. “One jump out, picket spotted them at Draconis Minor. They were headed for the Beta Point.”

The men and women at the table winced, looking anywhere but at the representative for Atlantis. The Beta Point was the straight line to the Atlantis system.

“We sent word ahead. They may have time to evacuate the counterweight at least,” Sawyer offered bleakly.

“They struck the mining facilities on Ares after they took out the counterweight, didn’t they?” the representative asked with her eyes closed.

“Yes, ma’am” he confirmed. “Most of the survivors were in the underground facilities on Ares.”

“There are no underground facilities available on Atlantis. The entire population lives on the floating city.”

A long silence filled the room before the chairman tiredly spoke up, aiming his question to Sawyer.

“Admiral, how far out is Taskforce Valkyrie?”

Sawyer grimaced at the unofficial name that had been pinned to the Fleet squadron but checked the numbers without comment.

“Schedule puts them in Hayden, but they should be jumping back towards Earth Space shortly. If you want to get a message to them, best bet would be a courier ship to…” He frowned, checking the schedule briefly. “S9X Dash 53P. I’d advise sending them within the hour, however, in case TF5 is ahead of schedule.”

“Send them. Issue orders to Admiral Brookes to take Taskforce Five directly to Atlantis by the fastest route possible and provide all defense…or succor, she can.”

“Aye, sir.” Sawyer nodded as he stood, saluted briefly, and left the room.

*****

Fort Bragg

Carolina

Sorilla stood at attention in the small, well-lit office, eyes focused on the wall just above the head of the man sitting across the desk from her. He didn’t look up at her for a time, reading something with deliberate slowness. Finally, he set the pad aside and focused on her features.

“Read your report about what happened on Hayden,” he said, face impassive. “Bad bit of business.”

“Started that way, sir.”

He grunted, but nodded after a moment. “Got better, did it?”

“Less bad, sir.”

“Yes, I suppose that was about the best you could hope for after that start, Sergeant,” the brigadier said finally. “For god’s sake, relax before you pop your stitches.”

Sorilla marginally relaxed, clasping her hands behind her back. “They don’t use stitches anymore, sir, and the glue broke down weeks ago.”

“You always were a smartass, Sergeant,” Brigadier Maxwell Graves said, nodding to the chair. “Sit down, Sergeant. You’re not here to be debriefed. I know everything I need to know about the mission on Hayden. Should never have happened, you were supposed to be on a training run. You should have been invisible, you should have been a lot of things that didn’t happen.”

Sorilla didn’t know what to say to any of that, so she stayed silent and took a seat.

“You were about due to pick up a rocker before you left for Hayden,” he told her, sliding a case across the desk to her. “Brass decided you earned a bit more.”

She frowned, taking the case and opening it. Her eyes flew open in shock as she recognized the three rockers on the master sergeant’s patch.

“Sir, I…” Honestly, she knew she was due a promotion and had half expected to skip to first class, but a double bump seemed excessive.

“Relax,” he told her again. “If you didn’t earn it already, you’re about to.”

That caught her attention. Her focus flew to him as he went on.

“USF wants a new unit, a SOCOM team to call their very own. Your name was requested,” he told her. “If you accept, you’ll be seconded to Fleet SOCOM for the duration. No more tango hunts in third world countries, but from the sounds of it, you won’t be lacking for action.”

The idea of not traipsing about the world looking for terrorist enclaves was something of an attractive one, despite everything Sorilla defined herself by, but the last she checked, Fleet could barely afford to run their ships and keep their crews paid, let alone an effective strike force. Training costs on good Special Forces teams were enough to break budgets, to say nothing of equipment and combat pay.

She eyed the assignment page on the pad the general was holding with a skeptical eye. “Can they afford to run a team, sir?”

He chuckled. “Things changed while you were slogging about on Hayden, Sergeant. Fleet’s star is in ascendancy at the moment. They’ve got a better budget than I do.”

Sorilla held back a whistle but nodded appreciatively all the same. That really only left one other question. “If I take this, am I out of the Army, sir?”

He took a breath, scowling at the pad. “Officially, no. You’ll be seconded to Fleet SOCOM to fill out your thirty however, so when you’re done, you’re out as a civilian. Something happens, you could be transferred back, but I wouldn’t count on that.”

“I understand, sir.”

“I don’t like losing you, Sergeant,” he told her, “but most of our actions in the foreseeable future will be coordinated through Fleet SOCOM. If you want to be on the sharp end, this is the position that will put you there. Flipside, you take this job, you will be on the sharp end of a lot of nasty missions. Think on it, Sarge. You’ve got a little time, they’re still hunting down those ships that came in through Hayden and nailed the Ares Colony. Probably no need for our like until they hammer them back a step or two anyway.”

“Yes, sir. I will, sir,” she said.

“Good. Dismissed.”

*****

USF Cheyenne

Jump Point Alpha, S9X-53P

The system was barren by human standards, one of very few they’d encountered that never developed even the most rudimentary forms of life. Most systems had an ice moon somewhere that had bacteria living in some crack or crevice, or an old planet with fossils to track. They’d even found a couple planets that were filled with oil fields the likes of which the richest oil barons of the twentieth and twenty-first century could never even dream.

Not this place, though. S9X-53P was a wasteland; the system had never really had a chance, as at some point in its early development, the large gas giants that formed in the outer system had destabilized in their orbits and began to spiral inwardly at incredible rates, effectively bulldozing the entire system clean of anything that might support life in the process.

Given the system’s limited value, even scientifically, when the couriers’ emergency contact hit their FTL receivers, the members of TF5 were understandably taken off guard. That didn’t prevent them from rallying quickly as the situation was uncovered, and their new orders delivered.

“We’re three jumps from Atlantis, ma’am. No chance we get there in time.” Vincent McDermott was the captain of the Shilo Warrior, and while Nadine Brookes didn’t much like his opinion on the matter, she couldn’t find a way to refute it.

“Fine. That means we probably get there a day late and a dollar short,” she said grimly, shaking her head. “Well. Good news is that any survivors probably won’t tax our life support.”

Which was about as cold a comfort as she could imagine, but it literally the only good news about the whole situation.

“We can do it one jump.”

All eyes snapped to focus on the screen occupied by Jane Mackay, captain of the HMS Hood.

“Impossible,” several voices opined.

“Explain.” Nadine cut them down with her tone.

“Cheyenne and Longbow class ships have a lot more power than the Los Angeles and older classes,” MacKay said calmly. “We can supercharge the drive as we jump, get between two and three times the range and speed. Getting there isn’t the problem. If we slip up our entry coordinates, however, we could punch through space-time inside the heliopause.”

Several hissed at that, and Nadine understood why. For a brief moment, when a ship punched through space-time to return to the gravitational influence of the “real” universe, it was actually still traveling much faster than light, relative to the space it was entering. The duration of this period was infinitesimal, but the destruction potential of slamming into solar winds at those speeds was…incalculable.

“If we do that,” MacKay said, “we all know what happens. We’d have a better chance running a shuttle through a sandstorm at Mach Five, but the navigation problem isn’t insoluble.”

Nadine frowned thoughtfully, trying to make a decision. Unfortunately, while her specialties included gravitational physics, specifically jump point dynamics, she knew just enough about navigation to know that if they missed it wouldn’t be pretty. She leaned back from the screens for a moment and looked over to where Patrick was sitting.

“Thoughts?”

He muted his display with a flick of his finger and shrugged. “Risky. She’s right, though. We’ve got the power to launch clear of space-time long enough, and fast enough, to make it to Atlantis in one jump. Problem is, accuracy at that range is going to be spotty. Safest option would be to aim for a jump point well outside the system. There’s usually one or two caused by rogue planetoids beyond the heliosphere. Problem with that idea is that it’ll take us almost as long to get deep enough in-system to do any good as if we took the long way round.”

Nadine nodded. “Right. Well, you have any opinions?”

“On whether we try or not?” he shrugged. “Go for it. Last I checked, there were four million people on Atlantis.”

Nadine nodded grimly, shifting back into view of her screens.

“We’re already en route for the Beta Jump Point. Is this the same point you think we can make a single hop run to Atlantis with, Captain Mackay?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. Calculate your navigation numbers,” Nadine ordered. “If you can convince me we’ve got a reasonable chance of not ripping the ceramics from our hulls on arrival, I’ll give the order to try your idea. Otherwise, we’ll proceed as quickly as we can through normal routes.”

“Aye aye, ma’am,” Jane MacKay replied seriously.

*****

HMS Hood

Jane MacKay had come up the ranks through the science and research ladder, as had most of the people she worked with now. She’d spent years working under Alexi Petronov, one of the finest captains and men she’d known, and had been afforded many opportunities in his command to push the limits of jump space physics research.

Most people who were partially familiar with jump points tended to assume they were like wormholes that interconnected star systems. In many ways, they were the precise opposite, however. Instead of direct roads from one point to another, a jump point was a point in space-time where the fabric of universal gravity was particularly…thin, for lack of a better term. A ship could punch through, like a fish jumping out of the water, and for as long as the ship stayed outside the effects of universal gravity, it wasn’t precisely contained by the laws of space-time.

This gave ships an unparalleled ability to travel at FTL velocities relative to the known universe . Some of the mathematical concepts actually stated it as the ship holding still while the universe moved around it. It was a simplistic concept, but not entirely incorrect. It was more true to say that the ship moved one way while the universe moved another, and the two created a combined relative velocity that exceeded light by several times…something that couldn’t happen within the normal rules of space-time.

Now, to return to the jumping fish analogy: what MacKay was trying to do was calculate the exact speed the taskforce needed to have, along with the precise angle of departure, in order for them to land back at a point of their choosing. In theory, it wasn’t a lot more complicated to work out than the simple ballistics trajectory of the aforementioned fish. In practice, again like the fish, the farther you were jumping, the more small factors came into play. Like making a sniper shot at better than three kilometers from a ballistic rifle, you had to factor in things that seemed infinitesimally small. Air temperature, gravity, wind speed, the rotation of the earth under the bullet…and so on. In this case, she was trying to land her bullets…the ships of Taskforce Five…on a point of space that roughly equated to getting that perfect headshot at five kilometers, or the proverbial fish jumping the length of two football fields and landing in a glass of water.

And it had to be done right, the first time. Every time.

Luckily, she had some advantages that fish and ballistic snipers didn’t have. For one, she knew to the kilo what the mass of each ship in the squadron was. Every piece of gear, every crewmember, even the waste products produced were carefully tallied and updated as needed. They didn’t keep track of what everyone onboard weighed, or anything that ludicrous, but it didn’t matter, either. What mattered was that she knew what they massed when they arrived onboard, and she knew precisely the mass of every item that had since left the ship…barring some escaping atmosphere that seeped through the hull as part of normal operations, and even that she had a good estimate of.

Coupled with the precision control the VASIMR system provided over thrust, MacKay was confident she could meet the admiral’s requirements. There was no reason why it couldn’t be done. After all, the math was reasonably straightforward. It was just that no one had the power on tap until now, nor the specific need to take the chance.

With the Cheyenne and Longbow class destroyers, and this current situation, they had both.

She ran the numbers through the system, adjusting for all the variables she could find, and then told the computer to run the numbers twice to confirm the results. When they came back, she stared at the results for a few minutes, then keyed open the squadron data-link and forwarded the results to the public folders with a high priority request for confirmation.

*****

USF Cheyenne

“Captain Mackay submitted navigation data to the ship’s cloud for confirmation,” Denise Milan said as she stepped carefully across the flag deck of the Cheyenne.

They were under two gravity acceleration, heading for the Beta Jump Point as quickly as they could without undue stress on the systems and crew, which made movement a pain, but it was still possible to do the needed preparation work to get ready for the jump when they arrived.

“Have you looked it over?” Nadine asked seriously. While she might not know much about navigation, at least not at the level of intricacies involved in this case, she knew that Denise did.

“I have. It looks good,” Denise said as she collapsed painfully into her bolster. “Computer agrees, says it should work.”

Nadine grimaced. “I want to hear ‘will work,’ Denise, not ‘should’.”

“No one has ever jumped this far before, Admiral.” Denise shook her head. “It’s a risk. The math says it’s good, and I don’t see any variables missing from the plot.”

Nadine nodded. “All right. Shoot it to the squadron, command channels this time. Let the captains see it officially, if any haven’t already peeked.”

Denise snorted softly. She’d checked the access logs. Everyone had looked, not just squadron captains. “Yes, ma’am.”

“If no one has any substantive objections, we’ll follow MacKay’s nav calcs,” Nadine said simply. “Inform the resupply and refueling ships to continue on to Atlantis by conventional routing. As I understand it, they don’t have the power to make this jump?”

“That’s correct, Admiral. Our logistics ships are based on older hulls,” Denise answered. “They can keep up with us in normal space because of the limits of acceleration force, but they don’t have the reactor power for a jump like this.”

“Ok, well, make sure everyone is topped off before we part ways,” she ordered. “We’ll rendezvous with them in the Atlantis System.”

“Aye, ma’am.”

*****

SF Shoot House

Fort Bragg, Carolina

The rifle slammed back into her shoulder as Sorilla stroked the trigger, unloading a trio of rounds into the target at point blank range. It went back, hitting the ground with a solid clang, but she was already moving on. The Special Force Shoot House was one of the most fun places on Earth for her; it was the greatest game every conceived.

Constantly changing, with targets that could fire back, the Shoot House absolutely destroyed every other training sim she’d ever dealt with. Normal Army used video sims, three dimensional projections, dummy guns, the works. They were decent for what they did, introducing the shooter to the madness of combat, but they didn’t have a patch on the Shoot House.

She cleared the room, moving on to the next, and was startled when the door slammed shut on her just as she stepped through. She half turned back on it then corrected to bring her rifle to bear on the open door across the room as it, too, began to slide downward. A hiss caught her attention, leading Sorilla to glance up to the vents in the walls.

Her implants were on full combat processing, the computer feeding intel to her according to its programing. Part of the training was to teach her implants to respond better to her personal habits and to display information she was likely to consider relevant. With the valve wide open, anyone would be overwhelmed by information overload, leading to indecision, hesitation, and likely death for an operator.

Those limits on the data feed didn’t even think to stop her implants from displaying the results of the hyper-spectral scan they automatically took of the air coming in from the vents.

VX? Shit! Sorilla blanched white as paste, her body moving on automatic even as her mind boggled at the deadly gas leaking into the room. Are they insane? They never use worse than CS!

VX was a known nerve agent, outdated by and large but still in use by some terrorist states and organizations. Just a small amount was lethal without immediate attention, and it could be spread across an insanely large area. Just what it was doing in the Shoot House was something she was going to beat out of someone in short order, if she lived.

She hit the floor, sliding as the door on the far wall slid down, jammed her rifle into the space, and crawled the rest of the way through as the polymer frame of her assault weapon cracked. Sorilla rolled to her feet, pulling her newly issued sidearm as she automatically moved on with the scenario despite the fact that someone had just tried to kill her.

The lights shifted, brightening as a voice came down from the ceiling.

“Scenario paused. Holster and secure firearms. Scenario paused. Holster and secure firearms.”

Sorilla automatically lowered then slid her sidearm into the thigh holster and waited as a door opened and a man walked in.

“Excellent score, Sergeant,” he told her, not looking up from the pad he was reading. “Not sure about using the rifle to jam the door, mind you, that’s a little pricey. You should have been able to make it without getting so flashy.”

“Screw that!” she snarled, pointing back in the room. “What’s with the nerve agent?”

“Relax. It was CS, we just hacked your implants.”

Sorilla froze, staring in total shock as her mouth went dry. She barely managed to rasp out a response. “You can do that?”

“Of course,” he said, as if it were obvious.

“You little shit!” She picked him up bodily, sending his pad clattering across the floor. “If you can do it, so can the enemy! I wasn’t briefed on that! My old implants were designed specifically to outright refuse outside access for a good, goddamned reason!”

The man, a lieutenant by his bars, struggled awkwardly in her grip. He was taller than she was but built like a paper pusher and really didn’t stand a chance as she shook him wildly.

“Calm down, Sarge.”

Sorilla looked behind her to see Brigadier Graves step into the room. “Did you know about this shit, sir?”

“Drop the louie, Sarge, he’s just a clerk recording your results,” Graves ordered, rolling his eyes.

She looked back at the young man, who was now turning a little blue, and let him go. As he fell to the floor, she turned back to Graves. “Sir? Did you know?”

“Yes, I knew. And you can relax, you weren’t hacked.” Graves said as he looked at the kid on the floor and snorted, annoyed. “It was an incredibly poor choice of words.”

She glared down at the man but quickly turned her focus back to the General. “You still had my implants feed me false information, sir.”

“That we did, but you let us do it.”

“Excuse me?” she snarled, knowing she was bordering on insubordination but really not caring in the least. Having large parts of her reality being defined by her implants made Sorilla really quite touchy about hackers in general.

“When you put everything into training and diagnostic mode, Sergeant,” he told her calmly, “a hardware connection was automatically made that lets us access your systems. Come out of training mode and your system defaults to no external access and you can’t be hacked…well, not without an axe or something similar, anyway.”

She grimaced at that imagery but didn’t comment.

Graves walked around her, glancing down at the fallen man. “You all right, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir,” the young officer croaked from the floor.

The general looked back over to Sorilla. “You do realize I should have you up on charges, right?”

“Sir.”

“Oh, don’t give me that boot camp shit, Sergeant. I’m neither that stupid nor that old,” he growled. “You’re lucky that this is Bragg and we somewhat expect our officers to get scuffed up from time to time around here.”

Sorilla didn’t say anything; nothing particularly intelligent came to mind.

Graves walked over to the door, which was still jammed down on Sorilla’s rifle. “Nice move. Figured you’d make a slide for it, myself.”

“I figured if someone was twisted enough to pump VX into the room, the door might just take one of my legs off if I miscalculated.”

The general nodded. “Check into that, Lieutenant, I never asked how much force the door had.”

“Yes, sir,” the young butter bar croaked out again, rubbing his throat and trying not to glare at the woman who could, and likely would, cheerfully break him in half.

Sorilla suppressed the urge to glare at the general. It was one thing to scuff up a new butter bar… A sergeant , especially a master sergeant, could just possibly get away with that. Glaring openly at a brigadier, not so much.

“Word came through from Fleet,” Graves said casually. “They want you now.”

Sorilla actually took a few moments to work out what he was talking about. “Sir? I thought you said I had more time to decide?”

“I thought you did. Something changed,” he told her. “Don’t know what, but they want an advanced recon team in the worst way. You in, or do I send someone else?”

She didn’t really have to think about it. If Fleet was after their own SOCOM team, that meant that they had a use for it. At the moment, there was really only one thing that use could be, and Sorilla was looking forward to another shot at the aliens. She had a few questions she wanted answered, and they were the only ones with the answers.

“I’m in. I’ll be in New Mexico in three days. That all right, sir?”

“Perfectly fine, Sergeant.”

She nodded, idly kicking her rifle out from under the door and wincing as the heavy door slammed shut with enough force to shake the Shoot House. Sorilla shot a glare at the lieutenant, who suddenly found something very interesting on the other side of the room.

Sorilla rolled her eyes and threw the general a salute, which he returned casually.

“Go on, Sergeant. Give ‘em hell for the SF.”

“Bet on it, sir,” she replied before turning on her heel and striding out.

His eyes followed her departure as he nodded.

“Already have, Sarge.”

Chapter Three

USF Cheyenne

Jump Point Alpha–Atlantis System

Despite an uncharacteristic shudder as they reentered normal space-time, Patrick was surprised how smoothly things seemed to have gone. He checked a couple readings from internal diagnostics then addressed his officers.

“Clear the heat shields, let’s get a look around.”

“Aye, sir.”

The Cheyenne’s external sensing systems slowly came back online as the heavy heat shields were retracted. Given the danger of slamming into excited particles at high velocity, the admiral had ordered that they jump blind in order to preserve the more delicate systems from possible damage. It wasn’t a bad thought, but it did limit how quickly they could begin gathering information about their immediate location.

Long-range data wasn’t an issue; there was always a delay there, but jump points were known locations in space-time. It was only a matter of time before the enemy began picketing them the way Fleet had, only likely with heavier weapons.

“Close-range systems online. We’re clear.”

Patrick nodded, relieved. “Good. Get me a good look at Atlantis as soon as you can.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Squadron data-link is coming back up. All ships accounted for.”

Patrick nodded his thanks. “Sound general quarters, signal the squadron to do the same.”

“Aye, sir. General quarters.”

The alarm began to sound as the Cheyenne’s reactor spun up, bringing the ship to ready stations across the board. The ship’s powerful Tokamak reactor was the only way to generate enough power to run the VASIMR drive at the levels needed for a military ship, but it couldn’t run in jump space. The lack of gravity and other effects of space-time actually played holy havoc with magnetic containment, and no one had figured out a way to compensate, as yet.

That meant that they couldn’t store anti-hydrogen pellets during a jump, nor could they run the fusion reactor, so the ships were forced to run on straight battery power during the initial few minutes after exiting jump space.

“We have Atlantis onscreen, sir. Information is about seventeen hours old.”

“Onscreen.”

“Aye, sir.”

At extreme long-range, the most they could make out with only a few seconds exposure was the soft blue of the planet along with the light of its moon peeking out from one side.

“Looks quiet so far, at least.”

It did at that, but Patrick knew that looks could be very deceiving at this range. “Do we have anything across the spectrum?”

“No, sir. Radio and laser frequencies are quiet.”

More news that was either good or bad, but without context there was no way to tell which. All they could do was wait for better data, but he wasn’t sure they could afford to be patient. Patrick opened a channel to the admiral.

“Ma’am?”

“I’m following, Captain. As soon as the squadron is spun up, take us in-system at best action speed.”

“Aye, ma’am. Best action speed.”

At best action speed, they’d reach planet in a little under a day, accounting for acceleration and deceleration, while maintaining combat-fit levels of crew health and welfare. It worked out to between three and five gravities acceleration, on average, but fluxed in order to allow for some breaks to keep the crew from being injured or just simply worn down to nothing by the time they arrived.

Patrick set to work, getting his ship in readiness while monitoring the squadron’s preparations at the same time. It took them almost an hour to secure all stations and wind up enough power to continue, but shortly after that, they were underway and under military power as they tipped their bows sunward and drove in-system.

*****

Trying to sleep in four-gravity acceleration was akin to trying to run in molasses: it could be done, but it took a lot of effort and a surprising amount of practice. So when the alarm sounded, Nadine Brookes awoke far easier than she had nodded off and struggled from the straps of the acceleration couch as she pawed at the console near her for the com panel.

“Bridge here.” A voice came back over the comm a moment later.

“Brookes,” she growled, trying to mask the sleep in her voice. “Status.”

“Accelerometers are showing gravitational anomalies, Admiral. I’ve brought the fleet to battle stations,” Patrick told her calmly. “They’re out there somewhere.”

“Understood.” She painfully swung out of the couch and planted her feet solidly on the floor. “Do we have contact with the planet?”

“Negative. Looks like a signals blackout, same as Hayden, ma’am.”

“Damn it,” she swore. “Visuals?”

“We’ve confirmed that the counterweight is still in orbit, ma’am.” His voice was mildly optimistic as he said that. “Still appears to be connected.”

“Well, that’s good then,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

If the counterweight was still tethered off, then the city was still there, as Atlantis used a floating facility for its tether. Partly this was a concession to the fact that there were no significant landmasses to build on, but it also served as a valuable safety measure in case of storm fronts. The city of Atlantis was quite capable of steering clear of most storms, even outrunning them in a pinch, and bringing the tether along with it.

All of that did mean, however, that if the counterweight was still being flung around by the orbit of the planet, then it was certain that the aliens hadn’t unleashed one of their gravity valve assaults on the city, because the first thing such an attack would do would be to likely destroy the tether base.

Nadine pulled a wet wipe cloth from a dispenser by her couch and scrubbed her face and hands while she considered the information she’d just received. The accelerometer system was quite sensitive, able to detect gravitational effects over several light-minutes or even farther, depending on the strength of the originating warp in space-time.

The trick after that was to filter out all known causes, and then eliminate any unknown causes that could be traced to explainable sources. In a system like Atlantis, that was a tricky proposition given the sheer number of planetoid and larger bodies, but with full active scans running, she was reasonably certain that Patrick wouldn’t be crying wolf over a predicted or predictable anomaly.

Slowly and carefully, Nadine got to her feet and stalked across the deck to where her aides were already working. She lowered herself gratefully into the bolster reserved for her station and sighed from the lessened strain before speaking up.

“Report.”

“Gravity detection across the squadron is tracking a source of gravity in motion,” Denise said crisply. “Subject is not natural. We’ve observed three distinct changes in angular velocity that don’t relate to any noted sources of local gravity.”

“Location?”

“Ahead, ma’am. Between us and the planet.”

“Damn.”

“Captain Roberts has issued squadron-wide battle stations alert. Weapons are free and charging.”

“Good.” Nadine nodded, eyeing the plot on her repeater screen carefully before she opened the command channel to the squadron captains. “This is Admiral Brookes speaking. Given what we know of the enemy and the intelligence from the Fleet courier, I believe we have to assume that the unknown contacts have hostile intentions toward Atlantis. Spread formation, standard counter-gravity tactics are in play.”

She paused for a moment, her lips twisting into a wry parody of a smile. “Remember…the center cannot hold. Let’s play this by the book, fight well, fight together… I’ll see you on the other side. That is all.”

She switched over to the Cheyenne’s closed circuits. “Captain? Take us in. If it’s not supposed to be here, make sure it isn’t here when we’re done.”

“Aye, ma’am.” Patrick replied.

A few moments later, his voice came over the ship-wide, calmly informing the crew of the impending action with no more emotional inflection than if he were blandly reading the menu at his preferred restaurant. She’d heard men sound more excited about the mystery meat ration packs that occasionally made the rounds.

The ships of the squadron spread out as they approached the planet, both to minimize damage should one of them be caught by the enemy weapons but also to maximize the effectiveness of their accelerometer detection grid through parallax. By gaining bearings from different angles, it was mathematical child’s play to triangulate the source of the rogue gravitational fields mucking about the local space-time.

It also let them recognize that there were at least two of the anomalies moving close enough to one another that they hadn’t been detected until the ships broke formation.

With all weapons hot, Taskforce Five threw its combined weight of active detection power into the direction of the rogue gravity well and quickly received a bounce signal.

“That’s them”

Patrick nodded, eyes on the initial ghost signals they were processing. Similar to the signals intercepted by the gravity trap accelerometers, they were still getting somewhat amorphous return signals off their forward sensing gear. At the ranges involved, it wasn’t a huge shock, however, particularly given that they knew these aliens had some form of electromagnetic jamming that covered almost all frequencies aside from visible light and some of the infrared and ultraviolet extensions.

They knew something was there, even knew where they were to a reasonably high degree of certainty, but they were still waiting on the long-range scopes to gather enough light to determine a high-resolution scan of the targeted objects. Their passive scopes were the highest resolution devices in the squadron, but since they were limited to EM frequency, radiation either emitted or reflected by the target they were scanning, it could take considerable time to build good quality images.

“Launch the Electronic Warfare Drones,” Patrick ordered, sounding rather bored with the whole affair as his hand danced over the controls in front of him.

“Drones launching, sir.”

He didn’t expect them to be much good, unfortunately, but they were there to be used and he didn’t see any downside to putting the drones into space. The Fleet records from Hayden, however, strongly indicated that the aliens didn’t pay a lot of attention to the more common electromagnetic spectrum that the drones were designed to imitate. It was the prevailing opinion of the Fleet officers who’d studied the battle that they most likely had extremely advanced gravity detection systems, likely enough to plot and track even items that massed as little as a Los Angeles destroyer. If that were the case, then they wouldn’t be fooled by the likes of the EW Drones, but if they provided even a few moments’ distraction, he’d consider it money well wasted.

“Visuals on the enemy, sir. Three ships turning away from the planet and toward us.”

Patrick raised an eyebrow. They’d been cutting it close, then. All accounts said that the planet was still intact, though it was under some sort of EM jamming field, so either the aliens were just entering their terminal attack run now or they’d been studying Atlantis for some reason.

He pushed it aside, deciding that it hardly mattered. Makes for a better story over drinks if the squadron cut it close anyway.

“They’re reversing acceleration, coming our way. 150 gravities.”

And there’s that damned speed advantage of theirs, he mentally growled. Bad enough they’ve got a weapon we can’t do anything but pray they miss with, but they’ve got to be able to run circles around us, too.

He glanced down at his status board, a much-simplified version of the boards his subordinates were dealing with. Where they had numbers and countdowns and all kinds of detail, all Patrick had to deal with were status bars. Green meant a system was above eighty percent, yellow went as low as forty, and red was everything below that. As long as it was all green, he was happy.

Everything was, at the moment, not only green but full bars, and so Patrick Roberts was about as happy as a man about to go into battle could get.

A full stomach and a loaded gun, can’t ask for more than that.

“Five light-minutes now and closing, Captain.”

“Standby the torpedoes.”

“Aye, sir, torpedoes standing by!”

With the extreme accelerations of the enemy ships, Patrick was aware that he’d have to get closer than he’d like to ensure decent strikes. That meant that they had to dodge the gravitational attacks for at least five minutes before the squadron could launch, despite the fact that their torpedoes could track and home in on targets. The lessons learned from Hayden, both times, had been hard won, but hopefully he could make the most of what those before him had purchased in blood.

“Signal the squadron, assume combat stance,” he ordered. “Evasive action is to be taken on individual initiative. However, ships should remain with their cohort.”

“Aye, sir. Signaling the squadron.”

As the signal propagated through the squadron, the ships broke from their “best detection” formation, used to maximize the value of the accelerometers and the squadron’s scopes, and shifted to attack formation. Since the last battle at Hayden, Patrick knew that the admiral had spent most of her available time attempting to devise a workable strategy for fighting the aliens with conventional weapons. He wasn’t certain it was really possible, at least insofar as truly leveling the playing field, but he had to admit that she had gotten creative with her tactics.

Taking a book from other services, she’d divided her squadron into cohorts, assigning two ships to operate together in combat, much the way fighter jets operated with a wingman, or a sniper with a spotter. Most often, since the first interplanetary ships were commissioned, ships had operated alone. This was due as much to availability as anything else, but it became something of a habit, possibly a bad one, he supposed.

Now, Taskforce Five aligned itself in its cohorts and continued to close with the enemy.

The Cheyenne and the Hood formed the first cohort, with the HMS Hood leading the initial strike while the Cheyenne provided cover, command and control, and additional electronic warfare capabilities.

The theory was sound, but Patrick believed it would work a hell of a lot better if the enemy capabilities weren’t effectively overwhelming. That said, at the very least, they were doubling up their throw weight at any given point, and being able to send twice the torpedoes down range wasn’t going to be a detriment to the mission.

“Four light-minutes, closing fast now, sir.”

“Signal the Hood,” he ordered, his tone practically apathetic, as though he honestly couldn’t care about any of what was transpiring. “We engage on their mark.”

“Aye, sir. Hood signaled.”

*****

Captain Jane MacKay of the HMS Hood watched the numbers fall with ever increasing speed, the distance between the squadron and the enemy formation dropping faster than any sane person would like.

“Signal from the Cheyenne, ma’am.” Her comms specialist looked over in her direction. “They say we’re to initiate the run; they’ll follow on us.”

“Signal to the Cheyenne: message understood, Wilco,” she responded, wishing she could lean forward in her seat, but the straps prevented such an affectation.

“Aye, ma’am. Signal sent.”

“Enemy at three light-minutes and closing, ma’am.”

“Thank you, Raymond.”

Raymond Siri was the Hood’s resident sensor specialist and the man who rode herd on the positive army of people maintaining and running the various long-range systems on the ship. He’d come over with her from the Socrates when MacKay had been promoted, and she was as glad to have him now as she was then. Siri had one of the fastest analytical minds she’d ever known, able to spot things at a glance that most needed hours on a computer to prove. It was almost criminal to waste him on something as dangerous yet straightforward as the detection and ranging station of a warship.

“Watch for gravity events, Raymond,” she ordered softly. “They’ll open fire any moment now.”

“Aye, ma’am.”

Not that she was going to complain about having his mind at her disposal, of course. As they said, waste not, want not…and right now, boy oh boy, did MacKay want .

The HMS Hood led its cohort as the squadron bore down on the alien ships, the ships sharing all available data across the squadron battle network. The water world of Atlantis was just becoming a bluish disc in the distance when the first gravity event was signaled and the captains of fourth cohort were forced to take evasive action. The two ships, the Shilo Warrior and the Chippewa, rolled to port, peeling out of the assault formation long enough to avoid the dimensional collapse at the focal point of the gravity valve, then reversed acceleration to come back to formation.

At still more than two light-minutes, MacKay knew that she didn’t have much to worry about. It would take more than four minutes for the enemy to adjust to any evasive action the squadron would take, and four minutes was far too long a time to accurately track a ship across these ranges. As the numbers fell below one light-minute, however, the game space would change. The enemy weapon was something akin to an energy projector in that it seemed to propagate at the speed of light, so as tracking gear began to approach reasonably real time reactions, dodging would become more and more difficult until, at less than ten light seconds or so, it became entirely impossible.

If the enemy cruisers survived to within that range of the squadron, then the odds favoring any survivors of Taskforce Five dropped very nearly to zero. Almost all of TF5’s effective engagements would occur between one light-minute and thirty light-seconds, at least by the revised engagement doctrine developed since the Hayden battles.

Any more distance and the enemy would dodge; any less…and the USF vessels would be destroyed, or at least the squadron would be crippled beyond effective readiness in the ensuring bout of annihilation.

Unfortunately, at the closing velocities involved, a window of thirty light-seconds translated into an abysmally short period of time to make or break the engagement. Particularly when you calculated the travel times of any weapons used in the exchange. While they could have between a minute and ninety seconds technically available to them, their missiles would take at least thirty to forty seconds to travel between launcher and target, which really limited them to two distinct volleys, at most, while they were in their golden window.

“Enemy ships entering extreme engagement range.”

Jane MacKay returned her full attention to the distant ships shown on her displays. “Plot me a targeting solution for the lead ship.”

“Aye, ma’am.”

Now it was just down to the last interminable seconds of eternity before the shooting began. She examined the plot carefully, watching as the computers worked to firm up the lock as best they could without access to real time location data. They wouldn’t have a solid lock by the time they had to engage, but it was important to get it as hard as possible before the missiles launched, otherwise the odds of clean misses increased markedly.

It was a challenge to develop a solid lock across distances of more than a couple light-seconds. In fact, it quickly became a game of intelligent divination more than traditional targeting. You took what you knew about the enemy, his motion, and his motivations, and from that starting point you made your best guess as to where he would be when the missiles landed.

You didn’t need to be perfect, the weapons were guided, after all. And even in space, when you were talking about nuclear weapons…close counted.

“Gravity event detected, ma’am. Centered on the Hood.”

“Evasion!” she snapped, calmly but probably a little louder than she strictly had to. “Pattern Beta.”

“Evasion Beta, aye!”

Even as the answer was being spoken, the ship was already beginning to nose up, relative to the system elliptic, and the HMS Hood shook as the gravity collapse warped space-time nearby.

“Put the nose down,” she growled as the gravity event faded. “Get our tubes back on target.”

“Aye, ma’am. Coming back down, engagement range in twenty seconds.”

“Torpedoes, standby to engage,” she ordered automatically.

“All tubes standing by.”

MacKay examined the approach, noting the closest lock with a critical eye. She’d never expected to be sitting here with her thumb resting on the stud that would end lives, whether they were alien lives or not. It just wasn’t somewhere she’d ever thought to be, not really. There had always been the possibility, given the increasing push into space by varying nations of Earth, but honestly, she and most of her peers expected it would be another generation or three, at least, before space war was even possible.

None of them had seriously considered the intervention of aliens, of course.

“Engagement range in T-minus four seconds…three…two…one…”

“Weapons free,” she ordered, giving the command to have the nuclear warheads brought online.

“Aye, ma’am. Weapons free.”

“Fire.”

*****

At the head of first cohort, Taskforce Five, the HMS Hood was tasked with the right to open the engagement, and it did with its tubes rapid firing from one light-minute out. On their signal, the other cohort heads opened fire as well, guided weapons launching from eight ships at a rate of one every two seconds. Twenty seconds after the first shot was fired, there were eighty high-yield nuclear warheads accelerating downrange at better than 150 gravities.

The new weapons designed and built for the Cheyenne and Longbow class of ships had been designed with higher acceleration of the Mark I-guided munitions, considerably higher yield warheads and, possibly most importantly, vastly more sophisticated countermeasure suites implemented in the hopes of decreasing attrition rates during the terminal moments of weapon guidance. In short, they were bigger, badder, and hopefully smarter than anything ever deployed by man.

For all those sophistications, however, those weren’t what Jane MacKay and the other Captains of TF5 were counting on most in this fight. If not for the straps holding them tightly in place, all of them would be literally on the edge of their seats as the weapons approached terminal guidance and got close enough to their targets to be engaged by the aliens’ point defense systems.

Buried in each of the torpedoes fired was a miniature version of the accelerometer network that provided the squadron with an early warning system against the alien gravity attacks. When the enemy point defense opened up on the incoming missiles, they tripped this cruder system and the weapons’ onboard computers automatically initiated terminal guidance by detonating before the enemy weapon could do the job for them.

Each of the warheads exploded away from the main weapons, some hitting accelerations in excess of 200 gravities as the warheads split into eight micromunitions apiece, scattering ahead of the enemy point defense like so many pellets from a shotgun.

Taken by surprise, the alien ships failed to react in time as the smaller, yet still nuclear, munitions slammed into them at a relative rate better than half the speed of light and with enough force to tear through the ships’ armor like icepicks through cardboard.

Gouts of nuclear fire exploded from the apparently small holes, signifying the successful strikes across the three enemy ships with flares visible across half the star system.

*****

The roar that went up across the bridge was echoed through the ship as the word was passed, but Captain Jane MacKay kept her eyes on the screens as the light of the nuclear fire filtered back to their scopes. They’d struck all three, but each of the submunitions was smaller than the larger warheads earlier engagements had used, so until she saw them die in her scopes, she wasn’t going to count them down.

“Rail cannons! Status!” she snapped, startling the people around her back to their jobs.

“Capacitors charged, ma’am, cannons primed and loaded.”

“Time to torpedo reload?”

“Thirty seconds, Captain. We need to shift weapons from stores to the magazines.”

She nodded, having expected as much. “Signal the Cheyenne. HMS Hood is passing the ball.”

“Aye, ma’am. Signaling the Cheyenne.”

Behind and to the portside of the HMS Hood, the USF Cheyenne acknowledged the signal and accelerated ahead of its cohort. As the Hood pulled back, the Cheyenne took its place as lead cohort

“Cheyenne is firing, ma’am.”

MacKay nodded absently, eyes on the accelerometer display. The Cheyenne would shoulder its fair share of the assault, she had no doubt. Her job right now was to watch the gravity display and stand ready to warn the Cheyenne while its accelerometers were being thrown around by the recoil of its own torpedoes.

The second salvo of torpedoes slammed away from the squadron, the weapons crossing much lesser distance in much, much lesser time. This time, the alien counterattack came faster and led the weapons more. The flashes of nuclear fire erupting in space between them served notice that the second barrage was markedly less successful than the first.

MacKay hissed her displeasure. “Damn, they learn fast. Standby the rail guns!”

“Rail guns standing by!”

“We’re going to interlace our lines incredibly fast,” she snapped. “I want all cannons linked to computer control. Have them fire as we bear!”

“Aye, ma’am, linking firing orders now.”

“Gravity event!”

MacKay didn’t have time to issue an order this time; the HMS Hood slammed her hard into her bolster as emergency acceleration kicked in automatically, clawing the ship away from the detected warping of space-time. She panted desperately as she tried to keep from blacking out, working with the compressive material of her flight suit to try and keep blood pressure within operating levels in her brain.

Around her, the rest of the bridge crew and, she knew, the entire ship were doing the same under the oppressive twelve-gravity slam the ship had smashed them with. Clenched teeth, hissed panting, and grunting sounds were the only thing she heard other than the emergency alarms, until the Hood suddenly shook like some giant had picked it up and rattled them around to see what might be hidden inside the funny-looking package.

Then the acceleration cut out, and MacKay took a deep breath as her lungs screamed for oxygen.

“Report!” she called out, gasping.

“We just lost the Shilo Warrior and the Sherwood Forest, ma’am.”

MacKay closed her eyes, face setting in stone. “Bring our guns to bear and open fire.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

The HMS Hood’s thrusters flared in conjunction with its control moment gyroscopes to bring their bow about. The instant the computers determined that the ship had borne into the firing solution for her rail cannons, the big capacitor driving magnetic accelerators opened fire on full automatic.

One hundred-kilogram carbon steel bars erupted from the Hood’s cannon ports with enough force to shake the big ship from stem to stern, exploding into space at better than half the speed of light. Only the counter thrust of the finely controlled VASIMR drive kept the guns themselves from throwing the big ship backwards. Given the closing speed of the opposing fleets, they slammed into the alien ships only seconds later and sent plumes of explosive gases erupting from the big ships.

MacKay and her crew were slammed into their seats as the Hood pivoted under them, keeping its gun ports locked as it continued to empty its magazines and drain the ship’s reactors and capacitors.

“They’re past us!”

“Watch for their turn!” MacKay ordered. “We can’t lose the track when they come around, even for a second, or we’re dead !”

“One ship down! Acceleration dead!”

MacKay snarled, showing teeth in her satisfaction. The amount of force they’d poured into those ships would have glassed entire continents, but she’d take one victory if that was all that was being offered.

“Captain! They’re not shifting course!”

“What?” MacKay demanded, calling up the plot on her repeater display.

Sure enough, the crewman was right. The ships were barreling on and clearly heading for the outer system. MacKay frowned for a second then suddenly cursed.

“Torpedoes!” she snarled. “Rapid fire, wide spread! All tubes! Fire !”

“Firing!”

The HMS Hood again led the squadron, opening firing with all tubes into the aft side of the fleeing ships. With their damage, the aliens couldn’t outrun the torpedoes’ acceleration, but they were now moving away from the squadron and had already built significant speed. So, while the torpedoes from the Hood and the other ships that joined in were overtaking them, they were too slow, and the aliens’ point defense systems easily picked them off.

“Damnation,” MacKay hissed, shaking her head. “Cease fire. Open a channel to the Cheyenne.”

“Aye, ma’am. All tubes, cease fire.”

“Captain Roberts is waiting, ma’am.”

MacKay turned to the com channel, hoping she was wrong about what she was seeing but figuring she wasn’t that lucky.

*****

USF Cheyenne

“I agree, Captain,” Patrick said tiredly as he spoke with Jane MacKay. “They’re running.”

“We hit them hard, took them by surprise. If they escape this system…” MacKay shook her head. “We’ll not do that again, not this way.”

“I know, but we just don’t have the overtake to catch them. Not if we want to live to actually do anything.” He sighed, eyes on the plot of the ship that was no longer accelerating. “I’m dispatching ships to pull that hulk into tow. When our auxiliary ships arrive, we’ll tear it down of anything that looks salvageable. Maybe we’ll get lucky this time and get enough of the drive intact to make sense of it.”

“Aye, sir.” MacKay nodded. “The Hood volunteers to reel it in.”

“Once we’ve confirmed that they’ve jumped clear, go to it. Take the Shil…” Patrick closed his eyes. “Take the squadron with you. I’ll take the Locksley and go check on the colony.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Chapter Four

Outer Hayden System

What humankind referred to as jump space wasn’t really anything of the kind. It was, in fact, an absence of space. The universe, in totality, wasn’t infinite in either space or time, though there was significant discussion on whether that held true in the other known dimensions. The laws of physics as they applied in Einsteinian space were tied directly into space-time itself, so the advantage of “jump space” was in completely leaving those laws behind along with the rest of the universe.

For a ship, punching out of space-time was really only possible at places where gravity waves intersected to level space-time to almost perfectly cancel gravity out entirely. In normal space-time, no matter where you went in the entire universe, you were never in true zero gravity. The correct term was microgravity, the warping of space-time by any mass within the universe. Jump points were small segments of space time where microgravity itself was almost entirely negated, opening the door to actually leaving the material universe and entering…the true void.

Coming back, that was both easier and more complicated at the same time. Easier because nature abhors a vacuum, and matter wants to be in contact with matter. Similar to water droplets absorbing one another, all you had to do was bring your ship close enough to “real space” and it would be sucked back. It was more complicated, because without a jump point to act as a beacon of sorts, it was extremely difficult to determine where you were reentering space-time. Plus, if you entered too deeply into a gravity well, the shock could shake you back to your component atoms.

For human ships, despite the cast-iron construction of their hulls and advanced composites of their armor, reentering space-time anywhere but a jump point was nearly suicidal.

The same didn’t hold true for a species with a higher mastery over gravity field generation.

Deep in Hayden’s outer system, well within the heliosphere, a gravetic pulse temporarily collapsed space-time. The solar wind and local particles were blown back by the pulse just long enough for the ship to arrive.

Compared to previously encountered ships, this one was small. Barely a third the mass of the cruisers that were responsible for the destruction of Taskforces Three and Four, and putting out a EM silhouette less than a tenth of those ships. It barely paused upon reentering space-time before angling for Hayden’s World and immediately accelerating to 300 gravities.

Within minutes, it crossed the system and decelerated into Hayden orbit, assuming a geosynchronous plot over the secondary alien base. The ship paused there for a time then shifted orbit back to the primary continent and settled into place directly over the former colony of Hayden itself. Then it slowly dropped from orbit and landed in the jungles 300 kilometers northeast of the colony site.

*****

Hayden’s World

USF underground military bunker

“Report came back from the overseas units,” Lt. Commander Rivers said as he walked into the briefing room. “The aliens have gotten a perimeter defense set up, lot like they had at the colony site here, according to reports. It’s tough, but we can break it down as long as they don’t get the valve online again.”

General Kayne nodded. “Good. We’re going to have to shift at least a third of our troops over there to supplement the current group. Do we have enough to ferry that many people?”

Rivers shook his head. “No way, sir. We lost too many air units when the valve came online originally. Sir, I know this is a bit off the wall, but what about naval units?”

“Naval units? Son, have you picked up some weird alien jungle fever?”

“Hear me out, General,” Rivers said with a hand up to ward off the strange look the general was pinning him with. “I’ve been running a side project since we got here. May I show you, sir?”

Kayne got up, clearly curious. “Something tells me you’d better.”

Rivers guided him down to the exit of the underground facility, where it opened up overlooking the ocean to the east and then down to the edge of the river mouth that lay south of them. “Right there, sir.”

“How in the hell did you get anything like that built?” Kayne asked as they approached a camo-covered building that was hanging out over the river. Inside was a surprisingly large boat, floating serenely in the easy current.

“We needed transport, and it was pretty obvious that it’d be a while before we got anymore from Earth, sir,” Rivers said. “And we have some skilled hands here sitting around doing very little, so I requisitioned some of the civilians’ time and pulled the data from the historical banks. We’ve had a few fits and starts, but I think we’ve got it figured out.”

The general eyed the masts on the boat warily. “You’re not planning on using sails are you?”

“No, sir,” Rivers chuckled. “Just wanted somewhere to put the com gear. We fabbed twin engines for this baby. They’ve got a four-day charge and enough solar gear to prime them again in about a week. We can build another three like this in a few weeks, General. That’ll be enough to move men anywhere we need them, as long as we’re careful about the weather.”

Kayne nodded. “I like it. Get it done, Commander.”

“Yes, sir.”

Kayne shook his head as he left the boathouse, surprised but certainly not displeased with the initiative displayed by the commander. He honestly wouldn’t have thought of seafaring himself; most of his experience involved flying from one AO to another. The last time he was on a ship was his honeymoon, the third one.

Being effectively cut off from resupply was certainly keeping things interesting. As far as Kayne was aware, no one on Earth had fought a war like this in better than a century, no one from any first world nation, certainly. On Earth, you were never further away from resupply than an overnight airdrop. Trying to fight any enemy that had global presence was tough enough, but doing it with extremely limited supplies and without airstrips, orbital access, and straight up air superiority was just plain screwing with him.

Kayne paused before going back into the underground bunker they’d dug out, eyeing the sky thoughtfully.

The sun was going down, and if he shut his brain off a bit, he could almost believe that he was working out of Panama again, or perhaps somewhere in Africa, the deep reds and oranges of the sunset turning the green jungle black as the shadows began to draw across the land.

Even the sounds were similar, at least at first. Insects were insects, in Kayne’s experience, and there were only so many ways the little buggers could make sounds, so the buzzing and chirping of crickets or whatever the locals called them was dead on. It wasn’t until the call of a predator echoed out of the jungle that a shiver went down his spine. Something about the timber of the larger beasties’ roars just didn’t sit right with him, likely because he couldn’t place the sound and that bugged the crap out of him all on its own.

Kayne turned his back on the setting sun and walked down and around into the entryway to the bunker. He had work to do, and listening to the jungle wasn’t getting it done.

*****

“We’re not going to make base camp tonight.”

Jerry Reed sighed but nodded in agreement. “Yeah, Dean, I know.”

He’d told the soldiers that if they didn’t keep up the pace, they’d be stuck out in the jungle an extra night. Unfortunately, there weren’t too many jungle men in the lot, and certainly none to equal the Sarge. Between tripping over roots and stumps, or having to be hauled out of standing water where the Kaeroptis were breeding, Jerry was having flashbacks to escorting students around the jungle on day passes.

He kept from sighing too loudly and lifted his fist, stopping the march in place as the lieutenant in charge of the platoon stepped up to him.

“We’ll camp here,” Jerry told him. “Make base camp tomorrow afternoon. No sense in stumbling around the jungle at night. Nothing out there can digest us, but nothing out there is smart enough to know that, either.”

“All right.” The man, Lieutenant Brecker nodded. He wasn’t happy about it, but pushing on through an unknown jungle after dark wasn’t really a good idea in anyone’s book, so he didn’t complain. In the months they’d been on-world, he’d learned enough to recognize that there were some significantly different risks on Hayden compared to Earth. “I’ll post sentries and get the men bivouacked for the night.”

“Remind ‘em to have their rifles set to supersonic,” Jerry said. “No point hiding out here, and a shot won’t scare the bigger beasties off if they can’t hear it.”

“Right, I remember,” Brecker said, waving idly as he wandered off.

Jerry set his rifle against a large tree and settled into a crook of the old hardwood’s gnarled roots. “I miss the Sarge.”

Dean chuckled. “Lady was here for the better part of two years and you didn’t make a move, man. Showing some regrets?”

“Dean, kid, let me give you a hint… You never hit on someone called Sarge.” Jerry chuckled. “They hit on you, or you risk them just plain hitting you.”

Dean made a face, rolling his eyes. “Never stopped you before.”

“Never knew a woman who could break my neck as an afterthought before.”

Dean shook his head. “Whatever you say, man.”

Jerry just shook his head. “Look, go back and make sure that the grunts aren’t pissing on the plants. They didn’t listen to me the last time and we spent all night chasing off the scavengers sniffing after the acid.”

“Right, got it.” Dean nodded, getting up. “Still think you missed the bus, though, Jer.”

“Get out of here.”

Dean laughed at him but got going, leaving Jerry to watch the sky darkening as the orange glow faded to the west. Dean was probably right, he supposed. It was weird, honestly. He’d spent most of his life mucking about the jungle, had a few flings in his day, but if someone…someone other than the Sarge…put a gun to his head, he’d probably admit that he spent more time thinking about her than he had any other lady he’d met.

Which doesn’t mean I’m dumb enough to get my neck broken , he thought wryly, standing up to stretch out a bit. It had been a long day, and with night falling, Jerry was looking forward to some rest before the hike back to camp.

*****

It was the middle of the night. Hayden’s moon was full and casting deep shadows through the jungle when a low rumble woke Jerry from where he was bivouacked. He half turned, cracking his eyes open slightly.

“What the hell?” He crawled out of the bag, shaking himself awake as he crawled up and hooked a lower limb of the tree he was hunkered under. He looked around, trying to place the source of the sound. It wasn’t anything natural to Hayden, which was why he woke up so quickly. After a few years, you got used to the normal sounds and tuned them out, unless you knew it was a threat.

Ever since the night of ghosts, when the aliens had taken their home, anything they couldn’t identify was considered a threat by Hayden colonists.

“You hear that, Jer?”

“No, I slept so much yesterday that I couldn’t catch a wink tonight,” Jerry replied sarcastically as Dean crawled up behind him.

“That wasn’t no animal.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “You’re in a mood tonight.”

“I just got woken up in the middle of the night by something I can’t identify. I can’t imagine why I’d be in a mood.”

“What do you think it was?” Dean asked, ignoring Jerry’s tone.

“I don’t know. Wasn’t a nuke.” Jerry shook his head. “Never heard anything like it.”

“Same here.”

Jerry frowned, thinking about it, then nudged Dean. “Go wake the soldier boy, would you? I want to see what their armor computers think about this.”

“Right. Be right back.”

Jerry kept his eyes on the jungle, climbing up a little so he could see out over the hill and to the jungle beyond. No sign of blade wings in the air, but it’s so dark I could be missing them.

Hayden blade wings were the apex aerial predator on the planet, and while not normally nocturnal, they could get pretty riled up by anything intruding on their sleep. He was waiting impatiently when Brecker arrived, blurry-eyed and lugging his helmet along.

“What is it?” the lieutenant mumbled.

“Check your recorders. They were on, right?”

“Yeah, they’re never off,” Brecker replied, rubbing his eyes. “Why? What happened?”

“Just check what they recorded about eight minutes ago.”

“Right, ‘kay. One sec…” the lieutenant said as he pulled on his helmet and adjusted the HUD visor carefully.

Unlike the armor Sorilla had worn occasionally on Hayden, the soldiers wore modular kit that was considerably bulkier and didn’t seem to do near as much, from what Jerry could tell. On the other hand, they could only take the helmet with them if that’s all they needed, unlike Sorilla’s kit that was basically fully integrated and you either had it or you didn’t. Brecker took a moment to access the rollover memory and run it through the time stamp Jerry asked for.

“Whoa.”

That’s a pretty useless comment. Jerry rolled his eyes. “A little more detail than ‘whoa’ would be nice.”

“Don’t have much. Weird signal, though,” Brecker said, sounding a lot more awake.

“Yeah, I figured that much on my own.”

“It’s low-frequency. A lot of it is way below human hearing. Not an explosion, doesn’t fit any known natural causes of ultralow frequency sounds.” Brecker went on, probably not having even heard Jerry’s sarcasm. “I think this is one of theirs.”

“Theirs?” Jerry shot him a sharp look, again something that went totally over the soldier’s head, as he was focused entirely on his computer display. “You mean the aliens?”

“Yeah. Sergeant Aida reported that they used ULF sound to cause panic,” Brecker said, “probably aimed at animals more than humans, but it’s enough to freak us out too if we don’t know the cause. This isn’t a perfect match for their signals, as far as the sergeant’s recordings give, but it’s close.”

“Can you tell where it came from?”

Brecker shook his head, pulling his helmet off. “No. ULF is pretty much omnidirectional. It’s really tough to get a good fix on its source, especially in this kind of environment.”

“Nothing? Nothing at all?”

“Maybe a general direction. It looks…northerly. More or less.”

Jerry turned to face the north, eyes flicking as he examined the stars above, and mentally called up their current location.

“You mean around the old colony site,” he said finally.

“Generally…” Brecker said, clearly not liking being pinned down on the subject. “Could be there, or not. I really can’t say.”

“Right.” Jerry frowned. “Check it out?”

Now it was the lieutenant’s turn to frown as he considered.

“No,” he said finally. “We’re half a day from base camp. Let’s go back and report in. We’ll tell the general what we picked up, maybe take the rest of the day to analyze the signal. With some time and better computers, maybe we can figure out what it was or where it came from. Worst case, we only lose a day and we can come back out or send another squad.”

Jerry nodded slowly. “Right. Ok, I’m up for the night now, but you may as well crash.”

“Yeah, ‘kay. Thanks.” Brecker crawled back down from the crook of the tree Jerry was camped in, heading back to where he was bivouacked with his squad.

Jerry listened to him leave but remained focused on the distant skyline. Against the moon and stars he could just make out the horizon where the black of the jungle tried to get lost in the black of the night sky. He couldn’t help but think back to the night of ghosts, that terror-filled night of madness that had sent everyone he knew running for the jungles around the colony, even when they all knew that they’d starve to death with no Terran food to eat. Sorilla had told him about the ultralow frequency sound, and now this lieutenant said as much himself, but knowing what caused it just couldn’t blot out the terror he remembered from that night.

Jerry shivered against the warmth of the jungle, part of him screaming that the ghosts weren’t as banished as he’d hoped.

*****

To the northeast

The jungle world was a dark place for the Lucian Sentinels, but dark was good. They left the lander buried in the local mud and set out on foot toward the original landing site. Things were well and truly buried in something deeper and less pleasant than mud if the Sentinels had been summoned to a planet, but even in his experience, Squadron Deice Kriss had to admit that he’d rarely seen things quite this bad.

The forward development corporation of the Alliance was, more often than not, the poor dumb fools the Sentinels were tasked with pulling out of a stellar mass, but this time they’d stepped in something especially pungent.

Forgetting for the moment the loss of at least six starships, a matter well beyond Kriss’s purview, the Lucian couldn’t believe that they’d lost two dimensional singularity devices. One of which to orbital bombardment, no less! A DSD on full automation could take out multiple targets from any approach, even shooting through the planet if needs be. Kriss figured that someone had to have completely stuck their targlia where it didn’t belong on that one.

The internal assault was the one of interest to Deice Kriss, however. Surviving records indicated one combatant took out the entire base, actually being so completely insane as to actually use explosive charges on the DSD core itself! It gave Kriss shivers even thinking about it.

Oh, certainly, the safety procedures and implementations on the DSDs were such that there was no official risk of imploding the device into a stable singularity, but he’d not risk that on any world he was currently occupying.

Which meant that the combatant involved was either ignorant of the technology, or one stone-cold targlian .

Kriss was really quite curious to work out which it was. As a Sentinel, he and his were more often underused on these clearing missions. He, personally, was getting tired of being called in to deal with random vermin that were killing off the idiot guards assigned to DSD installations. Because the installations were supposed to be so well-defended, no one in the Alliance bothered to assign real troopers to them. The forward development corporation that was assigned to this frontier hired Porra guards. The Porra were big and looked fierce to most Alliance species, but there wasn’t a decent trooper in the whole race.

They’d have been better off with the Parthalians.

Kriss put a fist up, stopping his squad in place. Ahead of them, they could see the recorded location of the DSD, noting that the crater left behind by the destroyed installation was clearly visible, even in the distance.

That was one hell of a blast. Kris admired the work, leaning his squat form against one of the local trees. The best he could tell from the distance was that someone used some pretty effective explosives to open the facility like a sealed lunch pack. Honestly, Kriss was more impressed that it had been accomplished by one agent. That spoke of some pretty compact explosives, which told the experienced Sentinel that they were dealing with a highly proficient military culture.

That wasn’t as common as he personally would have expected, but it wasn’t unknown on the frontier, either.

Idiot DevCorp probably doesn’t even have the proper authorization forms to occupy this world, Kriss figured. Not as is, at least . He was pretty sure that the correct forms were certified and on file back in the core, but he’d be honestly shocked if they included a militarized population already in residence, to say nothing of an interstellar one.

That wasn’t his concern, however. His orders had come down through the chain; he harbored no doubts as to their authenticity. Six ships and now two DSD facilities had been destroyed by a non-aligned species, so he and his squad were to reconnoiter and eliminate the local threat, or report back if such proved impractical.

For that to be accomplished, he had to locate the locals, but there was no sign anywhere of anything more than local predators. They’d already had to pop off a couple low-band rumblers to scare off the larger predators in the area. Not something they’d normally do, but the predators were getting persistent, and the rumblers were less noticeable than opening fire.

If the opposition is living in these jungles, I’m impressed. Kriss had seen worse jungles, had survived worse even, but things were always a lot more complicated when you had a group. One man could avoid predators easily enough, but even a squad tended to attract more than could easily be avoided. For any significant force to be living in these jungles and still have enough energy left after survival to start kicking the DevCorp around spoke either of some tough people, or a hidden technical base.

In either case, he and his squad had to find them first.

Kriss flicked his hand twice, gesturing his squad to move to the south, circling around the former location of the primary DSD. It was clear that the location was now deserted. The entire area was clearly radiating at the same level as the rest of the jungle, so while it was a good starting point for their search, he wasn’t going to take his squad anywhere near it. Compared to the thick, local jungle, getting caught like fools in an artificial environment would be as bad as having your own DSD facility blown out from under you by a single trooper.

He and his were Lucians; they didn’t do stupid.

*****

USF underground base

Outside the base, the sun was high in the sky when Lieutenant Brecker brought his squad in, and Kayne was waiting by the time they’d been fully checked in.

“You’re late,” Kayne said when the lieutenant was standing on the packed dirt of his office floor.

“Jungle ruck took longer than I figured.”

Kayne nodded almost imperceptibly. He’d expected as much when the schedule was filled out but had let it pass to give the younger officer a bit of a lesson.

“Next time, listen to your NCO,” he advised. “I remember Burke told you that the men weren’t up to the pace you expected.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That said, I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.” Kayne shrugged, looking up to smirk at the surprised look on the kid’s face.

“Sir?” Brecker blinked.

“I expect you to make mistakes, Lieutenant,” Kayne told him. “I also expect you to learn from them. Next time, listen to the sergeant, and when you sign off on a schedule…you better be able to keep it. I’ll forgive delays for reasons you can’t control, but your initial report indicates nothing of the sort. We run the schedules so we can properly deploy squads and know when they’re overdue. If I can’t tell when you’re supposed to be back, I can’t tell when I should be sending out search and rescue. Get it right in the future.”

“Sir!” The lieutenant nodded, standing straight at attention.

“Now, stand at ease and tell me about last night.”

Brecker nodded, shifting his stance as he described the incident of the night before.

“You have it recorded?” Kayne asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Get your team squared away, then grab some chow and take a day. Once I get the word back from the tech boys, I’ll probably have another assignment for your squad,” Kayne told him. “You heard it, you’ve got dibs on the investigation if you want it.”

“Yes, sir, my team wants it.”

“Good. I’ll let you know. Go see to your squad.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

*****

Jerry tossed his pack down, the heavy kit thudding as it landed on the packed dirt beside his bunk. A two-week patrol with the soldiers was tiring, mentally more than physically. Pretty much none of them had any real experience in the jungle, and for those that had some, it was all Terran jungle experience. Hayden was a little different from Earth, and keeping everyone from making rookie mistakes took a lot of focus and concentration.

The worst of it was that Hayden wasn’t visually all that strange. The trees looked like trees, the insects looked like insects, and by and large the animals looked like you’d expect. The theory behind that was called parallel evolution, and basically it came down to the idea that since evolution was largely in response to environment, if you had fairly close environments, you were probably going to get pretty close evolutionary development. Since the big attraction of Hayden was how very close it was to Earth, well, things got eerily familiar by times.

Hell, while there were no local examples, Jerry was fully aware that there were some very close simian analogues on a couple of the other continents.

The problem was that the sense of familiarity Hayden bred also bred carelessness. Soldiers with experience in Panama or other jungles on Earth tended to react to animals and plants the way they would back there. That was a pain, especially for Jerry and his pathfinders, because there were a few Hayden insects and animals that looked very much like harmless Terran beasties, although they were anything but.

He really knew he shouldn’t be comparing these guys to the Sarge, but even when she didn’t know what she was dealing with, Sorilla wasn’t a rookie. Being a newbie like this was a state of mind; you didn’t have to know everything to be an old hand in the jungle, you just needed to know that you didn’t know everything. Rookies always knew everything, which was what got them in trouble.

He slumped into his bunk and leaned over his knees, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Lord save me from people who know everything,” he mumbled as he tried to stretch out some of his muscles.

“Speaking as a nurse, I feel your pain,” Tara said, smirking as she walked up to him. “As I recall, someone in this room has a habit of telling me how to treat an infection from a wulve bite.”

“Oh spare me,” Jerry grumbled. “I knew more about local biology than you do.”

“As long as you don’t count human biology as ‘local,’ sure.” She nodded in agreement.

He shot her a scowl but only shook his head and refused to be baited any further. Tara chuckled at him and dropped a bag on the bunk beside him.

“What’s this?”

“Chicken nuggets,” she said. “Got ‘em fresh out of the tank this morning. Figured you might like some.”

“Thanks,” he said, honestly grateful.

Protein cultures had always supplied the bulk of the colony’s meat, but the vats had all been lost when the counterweight was ripped away from the anchor. What few had been located on-world were now in the old colony site and pretty much off limits. Jerry had read that you couldn’t mimic a lot of the texture of real meat with vat-grown, but he grew up on chicken nuggets and hamburgers, so who cared what the texture was? It was all getting ground up anyway, and like most colonists, he couldn’t imagine killing some poor beastie for food.

As he slowly chewed the nuggets and savored the taste, which was a nice step up from the fresh salads and vac-packed military meals that he had been eating, Jerry started to ease back into his bunk. “I love these jungles, Tara, but I’m telling you, I’d kill for access to the tether and a shipping catalog.”

She nodded, taking a seat by him. “What did you want to order?”

“Honestly? I miss my subscriptions,” he admitted.

“Playboy ?” she asked, smile on her lips.

He shot her a scowl, but there was no heat behind it. “I was thinking about the scientific journals, actually.”

She smirked but nodded.

“I always scammed my porn off some pals anyway,” he laughed.

She rolled her eyes. “The image of you lot skulking around the dark corridors of the colony, swapping porn files, is one I wish was harder to believe.”

He grinned, shaking his head. “Seriously, though, I miss my job.”

She laughed openly at him.

Jerry rolled his eyes. “At least you’re still nursing. I’m playing scoutmaster to a bunch of rookie jungle bunnies that can’t learn from their own mistakes, let alone others’.”

“And that’s different from research students, how exactly?”

“I don’t have to worry about research students shooting me with military-grade ordnance,” he countered darkly.

“They can’t be that bad.”

Jerry sighed. “No, not mostly, but I swear one of the buck privates almost shot me a couple weeks ago. Me! Thought I was some alien badass sneaking up to slit his throat while he took a leak or something. At least with students I can ride them about gun safety.”

Tara winced, knowing that this was one area that Jerry and Sorilla had always clashed on. Jerry and the colonists were strongly passionate about gun safety, including the use of gun locks, biometrics, and what was generally considered common sense safety procedures, like leaving the gun unloaded. Sorilla, on the other hand, refused to let them do any of that. It wasn’t that she felt that safety wasn’t important, just that she believed it was more important to have the weapon on hand, loaded, and ready in the very second you needed it.

“Good rules for a hunter with kids in the house were very bad rules for a soldier in a warzone” was a common quote from Sorilla, something she hammered into them every day they trained, and many of the days they spent in the field.

Tara wondered, sometimes, how hard it was going to be to get people back into the proper habits of firearm safety when this was all over and done. And not just that, but all the little parts of their lives that just wouldn’t fit back into a peacetime world. She’d never given any thought to it in the past; war was something for the ARVids, not a serious part of her life, but there were a thousand and one little things that she did and expected every day now that she could never have imagined just three years earlier.

Tara desperately wanted it all to be done and life to go back to normal, but she was also terrified by the prospect.

And that just didn’t seem right.

*****

The incongruence of the room full of high-end electronics, supercomputers, displays, and the like all placed on a packed dirt floor with tree roots growing out of the walls and ceiling struck Kayne every time he stepped into the analysis center.

They didn’t have a lot of options when it came to building their base of operations, particularly not given the technical sophistication of the enemy. In the end, they had to count on the fact that scanning through dense jungle and meters of packed dirt, plants, and animal life was basically impossible. It didn’t matter what kind of tech you had. That sort of cover was pretty much bullet proof…and, if it wasn’t, well, you were in so much more trouble than you knew, anyway.

So they wound up in situations where they had computers packed into dirty holes dug deep in the side of hills, praying that the dirt and jungle above them would hide the inevitable heat and electronic signature. More often than not, it was sweltering inside, even though they were using river water as coolant, just from the electronic waste heat. Once you figured in the body temperature of the people, well, they said war is hell… What no one seemed to realize was that if the blood and guts of battle were hell, then the waiting and preparations were surely purgatory.

“Have you got anything on that recording yet?” he asked, walking over cables that had been spiked down to the floor.

“Sir, I didn’t see you come in…”

“As you were, Darla,” he told the specialist. “I just need to know what you’ve learned.”

“Yes, sir,” she told him, shaking her head. “It’s definitely alien in origin, fits what we have from the colonists’ records of the invasion and what Sergeant Aida picked up. ULF sonic pattern, very complex. Reads almost as if it were coming from a natural source, and that’s probably intentional. But the specific pattern is too even and repetitive for that, even if there were any local sources it could be mistaken for.”

“Can you pin down where it came from?”

“No.” She shook her head. “ULF isn’t very directional, so without better distance between the pickups than we have, I can’t say.”

“Well, we know they’re back on this continent now, at least,” he said.

“Yes, sir. Judging by this…” She hesitated, considering. “I’d say they’re certainly within three hundred klicks.”

“Right in the range of the old colony site.”

Specialist Darla Kinds nodded. “That’s about right, yes, sir.”

“All right, thank you.”

“Doing my job, General Kayne.” She shrugged.

He just nodded as he turned and walked back out.

They were back on the local continent, which changed the shape of the playing field once again. Kayne knew that he needed to figure out what they were up to, especially whether they were planning on rebuilding the base at the old colony site now that Fleet had slammed the hell out of their fallback. He couldn’t let them set up another one of those valves, especially not in his backyard.

That meant putting more patrols into the field, probably a lot more.

Kayne headed over to the planning room, calling up a map on the table they’d put in the center. In order to get decent coverage of the area, he’d have to field at least a half dozen teams, and the farther afield he needed information on, the higher that number was going to get. They had some communications capability, but Kayne had ordered a large-scale coms blackout as a precaution. As long as the enemy showed any capacity for radio direction finding, he was planning on erring on the side of caution.

It was going to make organizing patrols a living hell, both in the field and from the command bunker, but that was just the hand he was dealt. The next thing he had to do was figure out who he could spare for deeper patrols and who he needed to keep closer to base.

Kayne had to admit, this assignment was one for the books. In some ways he was fighting a modern war, but in others he was being forced to step back as much as three centuries in time. Cut off from regular resupply and tied down to some pretty heavy movement and communications restrictions, they were certainly playing by a new rulebook this time out.

“Sheila.”

“Yes, sir?” his aide said immediately as she appeared at the door that led off to his office.

“Get me Rivers and Colonel Silver in here in an hour,” he said after a moment’s thought.

“Very well, General. Anything else?”

“Make sure we’ve got coffee and some food. It’s going to be a long night.”

“Yes, sir.”

*****

Hayden Jungle

Northeast of USF basecamp

The Lucians didn’t know nearly enough about the local fauna for Kriss’s comfort, making establishing a decent camp a difficult matter. That was the problem with frontier worlds, especially the ones DevCorps took an interest in. They were always full of complex life forms, most of which were generally hostile.

If DevCorps would expedite the surveyor data, it wouldn’t be so bad, but that never happened.

Which was the reason the Lucian Sentinels drew duties of this nature. Lucians had a well-deserved reputation for being among the toughest and deadliest species in the Alliance. Most of that reputation was built on the shoulders of the Sentinels as the elite of the Alliance military. That didn’t mean they were invincible, however, and there were a lot of very big predators on this world with teeth plenty sharp enough to get through even thick Lucian hides.

Kriss casually slipped his lisk blade from the arm sheathe and drove it into the body of a multi-limbed pest that was creeping up on him, holding the wildly wriggling beast up by the blade as he eyed it critically.

He didn’t know if the pest’s poison sacks were filled with anything that would have an effect on a Lucian, but it looked nasty enough. He flicked the blade, cleaving the rest of it in two, and let it flop to the ground, where it continued to wriggle around.

Too simple to know it’s dead. He grunted, stomping it to its final rest as he moved back to camp.

They’d spent two day-cycles establishing camp and observing the local area, all basically to learn that there was nothing here they could eat and nothing that could eat them…but unfortunately, there wasn’t anything smart enough to realize that besides the Lucians themselves.

Of the mechanized and organized military threat that destroyed the DSD, there wasn’t a hint. Oh, they’d found plenty of signs to indicate the presence of another sentient group. Trails had been cut, paths marched down, and there were even artifacts all over the place. Some probably lost when the DevCorps moved in, some obviously lying around long past that, the common sort of detritus Kriss expected of any developed species. It was pretty clear to him that, whoever they were, they’d been here for several decades at least, and he was honestly more and more curious to see the files DevCorps had signed off on for this whole sector.

The idea that they’d completely missed a sentient spacefaring species with several decades of history right on the Alliance frontier was laughable. For a species to have this kind of capability, and be this close to the Alliance, the Sentinels should have been briefed on them a long time past.

For them to have gone unnoticed was either an example of extreme incompetence, or someone in DevCorps was covering something up.

It happened from time to time, he knew. DevCorps received a slice of the developmental proceeds from opening a new frontier. It was a huge initial investment, but long-term proceeds from frontier planets could often amount to enough to fund entire system governments for centuries. Unfortunately, that occasionally led to corner cutting and the usual sorts of governmental back dealing, which inevitably led to the sorts of situations Kriss was now in.

It was academic to him, of course. Kriss and his team didn’t care, really, they just had a job to do. It would as likely kick off another scandal if it came out, but again, it wasn’t his concern.

He figured someone was going to lose their DevCorps position over it, though. Probably not whoever was actually responsible, but someone.

In the meantime, he and his squad would simply have to be about the business of securing DevCorps’s position here. Kriss supposed it was a nice enough world, though the local gravity was a fair sight too light for his bones. If the assignment lasted overly long, they were going to have to spend a long time on Luca, working themselves back up to regimental form.

All the more reason to figure out what we have to do here and get it done, he decided as he walked across the clearing and kicked the closest man out of his slumber.

“Up,” Kriss growled. “Sun is dropping, time to work.”

The Sentinel grunted in acknowledgment and twisted in place to shake his neighbor awake. The camp slowly came to life while Kriss shouldered his kit and walked over to the edge of the hill so he could again eye the former DSD site.

They obviously built it right on top of a previously occupied position. Kriss was surprised at the hubris involved, particularly given that whoever was in charge hadn’t ordered it blown to particles to cover up that particular fact.

Every moment he spent on this world made the situation stink just a little bit more.

Kriss sighed and signaled his men.

It was time to start hunting down the opposition on this heat-soaked rock.

*****

Hayden Jungle

North of USF basecamp

Jerry hooked his foot in the crook of a tree, boosting himself up a bit so he could get a look at the valley ahead of them.

They’d only been back in basecamp for two days before he’d been sent back out with Brecker’s squad. Dean wasn’t with him this time. Sil had assigned him to his own squad to guide. He hoped the kid was up to it; not that he doubted Dean’s skill, but some of the troops were less than polite when dealing with civilians, let alone younger ones.

“Anything?”

Jerry looked back from where he was crouched in the tree and shrugged. “Not so much, Lieutenant. Seems quiet.”

“Good.” Brecker nodded, looking up to the sky. “Moon’s waning.”

“Yeah. It’s going to be dark in another couple nights,” Jerry said, hopping down. “Really dark.”

“We have night vision.” Brecker shrugged. “Stars will be out?”

“As long as the clouds don’t move in,” Jerry said. “Why?”

“With starlight, we can run passive light enhancement,” Brecker said. “I’d rather not use active night vision if we can avoid it.”

Jerry nodded, remembering some of Sorilla’s comments. “Probably for the best. This time of season, though, we’re likely to see it go overcast.”

“Damn,” Brecker muttered. “Well, nothing to do about it. We can use straight thermal for close-range stuff, at least. It’s not the best for serious precision, though.”

“If we can’t find these bastards,” Jerry shrugged, “we won’t need precision.”

Brecker grimaced, but that was true enough. On the one hand, he wasn’t exactly eager to cross swords with a group that used strategic weapons as a tactical option. But the gravity valves were destroyed and Sergeant Aida’s encounter with them didn’t exactly portray them as military geniuses, so he was pretty confident that his squad could handle any light encounters as long as they didn’t run into any of the heavier combat drones Aida had reported.

Luckily, those things were pretty easy to spot before they came into engagement range, and in the jungle, they had a hard time spotting people compared to animals, so he wasn’t too worried about them. In fact, his squad had a few heavy weapons he knew the general wanted tested against those particular targets, so Brecker figured that he wouldn’t turn down a chance to take a few of them on if he could do it on his terms.

“I don’t get it,” Jerry said after a time. “Where the hell are they? I mean, they didn’t hide from us before.”

“They did all the ass kicking before,” Brecker countered with half a smile. “In their place, I’d be really careful about who knew where my basecamp was located.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Jerry replied, shaking his head.

“Something wrong?”

“You weren’t there when they invaded, Lieutenant,” Jerry said. “Never seen anything like it, but since that night, there’s not a man or woman who lived through it that doesn’t see it every night in their nightmares.”

“I read the reports,” Brecker said. “I think Aida had it dead on. The terror response can be generated by hitting the right low-frequency sound. It’s instinctual in most animals. Even off-Earth, since it’s one of the common signs of an impending earthquake. These buggers are better at playing with it than anyone I’ve heard of, but it’s nothing we haven’t played with in the past ourselves.”

“I know, she told me,” Jerry said. “Doesn’t matter. If you weren’t there, you can’t imagine it.”

Brecker shifted uncomfortably, not really having anything to say to that. Anything he could think of would be either patronizing or mealy-mouthed, and neither would have any positive effect. Objectively, it seemed pretty clear to him. Aside from the low-frequency sound, the other reported effects were just as easy to explain. Invisible attackers were actually expected. He’d have been surprised if it wasn’t in the report. While true invisibility was tricky as hell to pull off, there were dozens of ways to come close, and even without that kind of tech, a well-trained assault could be so fast and effective that witnesses wouldn’t see a damned thing.

The reports of a sudden chill were more interesting, but again easily explained. Environmental energy conversion technology was experimental on Earth, but what it did was convert energy from the local environment into something useful. A major side effect of that was a sudden drop in temperature as environmental heat was tapped and turned into useable energy.

That said, trying to explain all that to someone who was emotionally tied to an event was a losing proposition. Brecker just shrugged instead. “Well, we have to find them first at any rate.”

“Yeah,” Jerry said, looking out over the darkening skies.

He watched the shadows fall across the valley, lengthening through the jungle foliage as the sun slowly descended to the horizon.

“We’ll find them,” Jerry said finally. “I don’t think you need to worry about that, Lieutenant.” He hopped off the tree branch and landed easily beside Brecker. “No,” he went on, “I wouldn’t worry about that at all. We’ll find them, Lieutenant…or they’ll find us.”

Brecker cringed as Jerry walked back to where the others were finishing up with setting up the camp.

He really wished that the pathfinder hadn’t put it quite that way. It sounded rather…final.

The Army lieutenant shook his head before taking another last look out over the valley before he turned and followed the pathfinder back to the others.

No matter what, it was going to be a long patrol.

*****

New trails were exactly the sorts of things the Sentinels wanted to find, but even Kriss had to admit that there were better ways to do it than to accidentally stumble into the middle of your quarry’s camp.

In defense of his people, this group was very competently camouflaged and decently disciplined. They’d brushed their own trail neatly, hidden their personal shelters well, and were apparently resting when the Lucian squad bumbled right into the middle of the camp.

Kriss brought his fist up, instantly, silently, but far too late to do any good as two of the locals appeared from the jungle and the two groups found themselves staring at one another in stunned silence.

That didn’t last long.

One of the two, the one wearing what appeared to be a uniform and armor, went for a weapon at his side, faster than Kriss would have guessed. Faster than a Lucian could manage, but the Sentinels already had their weapons drawn.

The crack of a gravimetric bolter filled the area, almost startling Kriss as much as it clearly did the unknown species. The warp pulse slammed into the uniformed subject, blowing out a chunk of his flesh the size of Kriss’s fist and threw him back into the jungle and out of sight. Movement erupted from all around them, and Kriss could have cheerfully strangled the idiot who’d opened fire while they were effectively surrounded.

He didn’t have time to worry about it, though, so he pivoted to the left while his mate moved right, and they both brought their bolters to the ready. They opened fire, the entire team, razing the local jungle with warp pulses from their bolters.

Explosive cracks began to sporadically sound from the jungle, weak and barely noticeable over the roar of their bolters, but when one Lucian went down hard with a hole in him big enough to house much of Kriss’s arm, it was pretty clear that the weapons weren’t to be taken lightly. The Sentinels took a knee, holding line discipline as they kept firing in response to the weak fire coming from the jungle. The warper pulses blew apart the jungle and anything else that crossed their path. The return fire was weak, poorly aimed, and becoming more of both after just a few seconds of saturation fire tearing through the area.

Several seconds after the fire from the jungle finally petered out, Kriss lifted his fist high, and the Sentinels’ pulse fire ended as well. He rose from where he was kneeling, his gravimetric bolter swiveling as he looked for any sign of movement.

“Report,” he finally commanded when nothing showed itself.

“Siek is down.”

“Recoverable?”

“No.”

Kriss bared his teeth. Among the only features visible on a Lucian’s face, the ragged edges of their teeth were the clearest sign of what any Lucian was feeling. Right now, Kriss was anything but happy or satisfied. They should never have just stumbled into an enemy camp like this; it was a sign of complacency. Well, it was also a sign of their lack of knowledge and comfort in the area. Whoever these people were, they were far more experienced in the local jungle than he and his Lucians.

Not that it did them any good.

Kriss stepped over his fallen troop, examining the wound. Interesting.

“Find me one of their weapons,” he said. “Secure the area in the meantime.”

Kriss didn’t bother to watch them move off, he knew they’d do their job. He knelt and closed Siek’s mouth, prying the fallen troop’s lips open to show his teeth.

Falling in a fight was far from the worst way to go, but it would have been more satisfying if it hadn’t been due to some impotent, blasted fool getting lucky.

He was still angrily reprimanding himself for the stupidity of just wandering blindly into an enemy camp when a flurry of motion and sudden squall of sound erupted from the edge of the camp.

*****

Jerry couldn’t believe his own eyes when he walked back to their camp. He and Brecker coming face to face a group of grey-skinned humanoids, the likes of which he’d never imagined. Stocky and solidly built, they had the two legs and two arms one might expect as a human, but where the face should be was leathery blank, save for an overly large mouth filled with teeth he could see even in the low light of the area.

When Brecker went for his gun, Jerry instinctively threw himself aside as the world exploded around him.

Brecker hit the ground a dozen meters back the way they’d come, unnatural rumbling explosions shaking the air and ground like thunder and lightning called down by the gods. Jerry cast about, eyes falling on his rifle where it was resting against a tree almost a dozen meters away.

I officially owe the Sarge an apology, he groaned, ducking his head down in the mud.

The sound died down, the shaking calmed, and slowly Jerry lifted his face out of the mud to see what had happened. He was shaking, unable to keep his hands from shuddering as he tried to take in everything he saw.

The greyish figures were moving out from where they had been, covering the ragged remains of the jungle and temporary camp with the strange-looking weapons they carried. The survey scientist in him clinically noted that the aliens seemed to have two opposable thumbs, gripping the guns oddly from either side, and the one that had been put down seemed to be bleeding a fluid almost the same color as his skin tone.

Then one of them started in his direction, and the scientist in him fled.

He froze, the shivering abruptly stopping as he watched the…creature, thing, person…whatever-it-was amble, almost swagger, in his direction. Jerry’s eyes stayed glued to it, whatever it was, and the gun it was swinging around even as he relaxed his head back down to the ground and lay there as dead-looking as he could possibly be.

It stopped, standing over him, and he found himself staring at a pair of boots that looked like they’d been compression molded over the feet. He didn’t see any laces, straps, or even seams. The sole looked soft, but the boot itself gleamed with the sheen of hard plastic, ceramic, or maybe some sort of metal. He just couldn’t tell, really, and supposed that it didn’t actually matter, but just then the question of it wouldn’t leave him.

Weird. The thing, soldier, whatever-it-was crouched down, pushing him over onto his back, and Jerry figured that it was now or never.

As he was thrown over, he let his hand drop to his belt and pulled the big bowie knife in a fluid motion that swept it up and across the alien’s wrists. The thing roared. Jerry didn’t know if it was surprise, pain, or if the thing was just plain pissed off, but he took it as a good sign right up until he realized that his blade had barely left a mark.

Now, Jerry didn’t have one of the military model blades like the Sarge. His didn’t run on power packs, and the edge sure as hell wasn’t monomolecular, but it was quality steel mined from the local asteroid belt. He’d had it hand-forged by a woman he knew who was no slouch with a hammer and furnace. It was as sharp as any blade had a right to be, wasn’t an animal on Hayden with a hide tough enough to turn it, but while this one was nicked enough to make it drop its weapon, Jerry was certain he’d barely scratched it.

He rolled to his knees then threw a punch from the shoulder into the alien’s abdomen, not quite able to hold back the cry of pain when he felt his wrist crack. It felt like punching a frozen slab of meat, enough give that his knuckles were probably intact, but he was pretty sure he’d fractured his wrist.

Jerry looked up as the alien looked down at him. He thought it was looking down at him, though, honestly, it didn’t seem to have any eyes to speak of. It didn’t look especially happy, however, and Jerry figured that since he was pretty much all in, there was no sense in folding the hand now. He drove up from his knees, aligning himself with the ground, and put his whole weight into the point of his blade as he drove it forward.

It sank in this time, about halfway to the hilt, before the alien grabbed his wrist and seemed to grin at him. He found himself staring at the twin rows of jagged teeth as the alien pulled his wrist back, drawing the blade out until the grey-slicked blade was held up between the two of them.

The alien grunted something at him, and Jerry felt his life flashing in the back of his mind as his wrist was easily turned around and the blade forced back on him.

Another yelled something from a distance, but Jerry didn’t know what it was saying and the one holding him didn’t seem to care. Jerry struggled, but he couldn’t hold back the immense strength of the thing as it drove his wrist, blade and all, back and into his guts.

Jerry felt the thing let him go and fell back, eyes dropping to where his own blade was deep in his abdomen, then back up to the toothy monstrosity snarling in his direction.

Well, so much for that idea.

He stumbled back, half turned, and broke for the jungle with as much speed as he could muster considering the blade digging around his insides.

*****

“By all the be-damned foreseers!” Kriss snarled as he watched the soft-skinned local turn and bolt. “Stop him!”

Three Lucians gave chase, with Kriss bringing up the rear as they raced after the wounded local. Kriss was surprised it could move this fast with a blade in its internals, let alone through terrain this rough. He signaled the rest of his squad to hold back and secure the area then continued on.

They tracked it easily; it wasn’t taking time to cover its tracks this time, but it was smaller than a Lucian and seemed more supple, slipping through areas that they had to bull through or go around.

Kriss wanted that one. It was the only one that he was sure was still living. There were questions that had to be posed, if they could break the language issue. The Alliance had ways of managing that. They weren’t always pleasant, but language was almost universal. There were very few languages in Alliance Space that couldn’t be broken in a few hours by a computer, at least not among spacefaring people. Some aboriginal species were completely incoherent and almost impossible to translate without a speaker to do the heavy lifting, so to speak, but among advanced species, languages were generally uniform.

Math and physics were universal, or at least galactic, and that meant that any sufficiently advanced species would have to build a considerably large chunk of their communications method around things most species held in common.

There were exceptions, the Ross Ell didn’t speak or make sounds. They didn’t have any concept of verbal communication, and much of the Alliance suspected that they experienced the universe with very different senses than most. Some believed that they could see the gravetic warping of the universe, which accounted for their mastery over the dimensional singularity technology, but for whatever reasons, they were effectively impossible to talk with or to.

Kriss hoped that these things weren’t another species like that.

The war with the Ross Ell had decimated dozens of star systems before any sort of communication was broached, and even then it took another small eternity before peaceable relations were established.

Kriss strongly doubted that this species was going to be anywhere near that disruptive, but even the outside possibility sent chills down his internal organs. Blasted Ross Ell have no idea how to fight an honorable war. Destroying planets is no way to wage a war. That’s just killing for the sake of killing.

His thoughts were pushed aside as Kriss broke into a clear area in time to see the subject of their hunt be thrown to the ground.

*****

Jerry barely held back a scream as he thudded into the rocky ground near the pond, head bouncing off the surface like a ball on a playground. His eyes crossed, vision blurred as he heard a ringing in his ears eclipse the sound of his pursuers bulling through the jungle after him. When it faded, he heard them again and twisted his head painfully about to see two come out of the jungle and stalk in his direction.

That’s it, he figured. There was nothing left. He relaxed in place, head lolling to the side so he could see the water ripple.

The lights were beautiful, shimmering off the surface. He stared for a couple seconds, thinking about the last time he’d seen something that beautiful, until it hit him.

What light?

Jerry frowned, squinting and trying to focus. There was a luminescence in the water, and it was slowly moving.

Kaeroptis. It’s mating season.

He rolled to his feet, getting his legs under him painfully, and stumbled out into the water. He placed his feet as carefully as he could, stone to stone, always avoiding the glowing sections of the water as he ran. Behind him he heard the aliens splash through the water after him, and Jerry grinned through bloodied teeth what was possibly the single evilest and cruelest smile the normally gentle man had ever grinned.

Come and get me.

*****

Kriss chased after his troops as they surged into the water after the fleeing local, only to haul himself up short when the lead trooper, Brask, suddenly started screaming.

Screaming.

Lucians didn’t scream.

Kriss swung his gravetic bolter about, looking for the source of the attack, but saw nothing anywhere to account for the horrid sound coming from his trooper. He and the third, a trooper by the name of Ern, stared for a moment, both of them completely at a loss.

Ern started forward, intending to help his comrade, but Kriss lunged and just caught him.

“What are you doing, Deice? He must be injured severely!”

“Look to his legs.”

They looked down and their flesh crawled as they saw a strange bio-luminescence climbing up the Lucian’s leg, already starting to work on his lower torso. Below, the water was filling with grey life-fluid in a staggering amount. Kriss cast about, spotted more of the glowing form circling their position, and quickly pulled Ern back and out of the water.

“We can’t leave him!”

“He’s gone. Look to the water about us, fool!” Kriss snarled, angry at the trooper, but even angrier at himself.

One rule he knew, one rule every Sentinel was hammered with through their careers, and he’d broken it like a stupid child.

You never chased a sentient into his own environment unless you absolutely had to and you had sufficient forces to handle ten times the force you could see. Break that rule at your peril, as the poor screaming bastard in the water was now learning.

Kriss looked across the water but couldn’t see the runner any longer. He was gone, vanished into his jungle like a ghost.

“Blast,” Kriss hissed under his breath, eyes coming back to the dying Lucian that was still being eaten alive by whatever the hell those glowing things were.

He sent Ern back to the squad but remained to watch until there was nothing left of Brask but grey life-fluid in the water.

Efficient, he thought grimly, but I’ll not forget this, local. You will not catch us this way again.

Only then did Kriss, squadron deice of the Lucian Sentinals, turn and stalk back into the jungle to where his somewhat reduced squad was waiting.

*****

Jerry collapsed against a tree. He didn’t know how far he’d gone, but neither could he quite believe he was still breathing. He looked down to see his own blade still jutting from where it was buried in his abdomen and debated the pros and cons of pulling it out.

Con, I yank that bastard out and bleed to death internally, he thought sourly. Pro, if I yank that bastard out, it won’t slice me up anymore inside while I’m frickin’ stumbling and bumbling through this godforsaken jungle.

Honestly, for all he knew about human biology, and specifically the medical treatment of same, it was a coin flip. Pull it out or leave it, either way he figured he wasn’t making it back to basecamp.

The pathfinder took stock of what he had on hand, which was pretty much limited to the clothes on his back and the knife in his gut, before making his choice. Finally, he just went for it and bit down on a branch before pulling the blade out as straight as he could.

Teeth bared, chest heaving, all he wanted to do after that was lie there and bleed to death, but Jerry was and always had been a pretty stubborn man. He forced himself to sit up against the tree he was using for support, wadded up a piece of his shirt, and jammed it into the wound. He leveraged his belt up and over it, tightening it around his abdomen to hold the makeshift bandage in place, then actually slid the knife back into the scabbard it had come from before crossing his fingers and hoping he’d made the right move.

If he had a chance in hell of being rescued, Jerry probably would have left it in place, but since he had to move, to run and stumble and most likely run into trees, branches, and god knew what else…well, he felt better with the blade in its scabbard than in his guts, even if it might have been holding back some of the bleeding.

Time to see if I’m right.

He pushed himself up and off the tree and staggered southward. The people there needed to be warned, because Jerry had a feeling that they weren’t facing bulldozers and forklifts any longer.

Chapter Five

USF Deck Nine

New Mexican counterweight, Level Three

Sorilla was sweating under the extra half-gravity the third level of the New Mexican counterweight offered, finally feeling like she’d recovered from the enforced inactivity of her implant operations. The New Mexican counterweight was built in three separate stages, the first being the primary tourist attraction, which was established at 35,000 kilometers above the planet, where the force of gravity was entirely canceled by the centrifugal force of the rotation. Visitors liked to spend a few days in zero gravity, relaxing, playing, and often getting up to certain more mature types of games while they looked down at the planet below.

The second level was located farther along the cable, where the centrifugal force created an apparent gravity of Earth normal. More serious business was done there, including embarking outbound spacecraft and other such vital interests.

The new third level was built above that again, and it provided a high-intensity training area for people bound for higher gravity worlds, as well as those who might have to endure the higher accelerations of spacecraft and other physically demanding tasks.

It also, as Sorilla was learning, made for a superlative training center for special operations.

She arrived on the counterweight station a few weeks earlier, along with several hundred others from allied Special Forces units. SF, SEALS, JTF2, SAS, SBS, Shayetet 13, the list went on and on. She knew a few of them, worked with fewer still, enough to know that they were all considered among the best their nations had to offer.

USF isn’t taking the piss on this one, she thought with grim satisfaction.

About two weeks into the training, that idea was driven home when the first Russian Spetznaz showed up. The tensions between them and the allied groups weren’t as bad as it might have been back in the late twentieth century, but they’d clashed a few times since then, and while working with the Russians was certainly not unusual, it wasn’t precisely common either. Once the Chinese PLA-SOF started to trickle in, it became damned clear that things had turned a corner.

The PLA groups were the opposing forces in a lot of the more serious operations Sorilla had been on in the past. Oh, she and they had never intentionally exchanged fire, but they’d both sure as hell trained people who’d then gone out to kill one another. More than once Sorilla had picked a Chinese 4mm round out of her armor, or her flesh, and she was pretty sure that one or two of theirs had done the same with her 6mm rounds.

The tensions between the American and Chinese forces were nothing compared to those that soon ratcheted up between the PLA and Spetznaz, though. Breaking up those fistfights became fulltime jobs for the officers, especially since even light roughhousing was likely to break bones in one-point-five-g.

Thank god no one was stupid enough to bring any Egyptian or Saudi guys up here.

Tensions in the Middle East hadn’t dropped any since the bottom fell out of the oil market. Apparently, despite all the complaints they’d made over the years, the people there found that they didn’t much like it when no one on the planet really gave a damn about what they did any more than they liked every one poking their noses in. With oil only being useful for making plastics and a few other esoteric items, the remaining reserves in Canada and the US were enough to provide for pretty much all the world’s needs unto the next millennium with ease, so no one save the Israelis really gave a damn what anyone in those countries did.

The loss of the world’s attention seemed to hit them in the breadbasket even more than the loss of oil revenues did, and a whole new terrorist movement had grown up from the idiots who missed seeing themselves on the news every night. Luckily, they mostly couldn’t afford to do much more than blow up their own backyards…well, luckily for the rest of the world.

It sort of sucked for anyone living within driving distance, mind, which included the Israelis. Poor training and poor mental conditioning probably kept them out of this program, so at least there probably wouldn’t be any improvised explosives hidden in the private quarters this time around.

For the most part, the operators’ community wasn’t as small or as hidden as most people tended to believe. In the world as it had existed over the last century and a half, it was common for people to casually visit even hostile nations for various reasons that had nothing to do with the job, and while someone like Sorilla would certainly be watched if she flew into Beijing for vacation, she’d most likely not be approached or interfered with unless someone got it into their head she was on the job at the time. Similarly, she’d actually run into people she’d normally be shooting at on the beaches along the Pacific coast while she was surfing.

It was always a little awkward but generally didn’t end in anything worse than some thinly veiled threats spouted with half a smile over a mug of beer.

War had become almost civil in a very odd way, at least among first and second world nations. Not that they’d be so quick to chug a brew if they met in a warzone, but with the world growing as small as it had, those operators who spent their lives fighting covert battles had to learn where the lines were drawn and how to keep work separate from their civilian lives.

It was an odd dichotomy, but it was also what allowed members of the PLA SOF to sit across the table from Russian Spetsnaz and share a drink with only a few humor-veiled death threats bouncing back and forth. For Sorilla, things were a bit more laid back. As a member of the USSF, she didn’t actually come into direct conflict with the PLA forces, even in disputed territories. At most, some of the people she had trained scuffed up some of the people they had trained, or vice versa.

She did recognize a face or two that she knew from official briefings, though. Men she’d faced off against across the figurative game board, and judging from the occasional glance in her direction, they knew her much the same way.

It’s a brave new world, Sorilla supposed, smiling tersely as she wrapped up her workout.

The real trick to working out in one-point-five-g was not causing yourself injury. Even a slight misstep could break an ankle; a fall could break any number of bones. Even on the more prosaic side, the level of work needed to stay active more than doubled the need for hydration.

She grabbed a towel from a rack as she passed, each step made with deliberate forethought and follow through, wiping down the perspiration from her face and throat. She tossed it into a bin near a drink machine and slapped a button to get it dispensing her preferred energy drink. Stuffed with nutrients and electrolytes, the taste wasn’t much to write home about, but it went down smoothly and was cold, so it was better than she was used to.

“You’re Aida, right?”

It wasn’t a question, more of a semi-polite statement, but that wasn’t what piqued her attention. It was more the fact that the voice was coming from over her head, and a lot closer than she expected. Sorilla leaned back, craning her head to look up and just slightly behind her. The gleaming teeth of the big black face were the first things that stuck in her mind, but really, it was the sheer size of the man that startled her.

Sorilla wasn’t short. That wasn’t a statement meant to be used with the words “for a woman” attached, either. She wasn’t short, period. This man dressed in USMC digicams, however, was a freaking monster.

He had to be near a foot taller than her own five eleven stature, six one in boots, putting the crown of that fat head she was looking at well over seven feet. Now, she’d seen taller, believe it or not, in the service and without…but this particular Frankenstein monster had apparently snuck up on her in one-point-five-g . That was seriously not on. She must have been distracted, that was the only damned way something that big could move around that quietly in this high of gravity.

Right?

“How the frigging hell did you fit on a tether car?” she demanded, half turning so she could crane her neck the other way to look up at him.

“Funny.” He smirked down at her, obviously less than amused but equally more than willing to humor her attempt at hiding her discomfort.

He probably gets a lot of practice at that, she thought as she looked him over a little more thoroughly.

A lot of very tall men are gangly, all legs and arms, nothing in between. This guy was most assuredly anything but. He was a slab of meat from head to toe, and a 150 kilos if he weighed an ounce, and that was in normal g. She noted the Detachment One pin on his uniform, along with a slew of ribbon code that told her he’d been under fire in at least the last six major operations, Earth-side.

“The name is Washington,” he told her, extending a hand. “Friends just call me Ton.”

“I wonder how they came up with that?” Sorilla asked dryly as she shook hands with him.

Her hand vanished into his giant mitts, but there wasn’t a thing she could do about that. There weren’t too many people who’d ever call her “dainty,” and none of them would do it to her face, but this was one of those guys that made Sorilla feel more like the little girl she’d never really been than just about anything else in the galaxy.

“No idea,” he grinned toothily at her. “You are Aida, right?”

“That’s me.” She nodded, not really surprised that he’d guessed as much. While the ground force’s exclusion regs had been lifted decades earlier concerning women in front line positions, the percentage of women who chose to take on such roles was still extremely small. That said, the percentage of women in elite units like Sorilla herself was three times the normal average. Women who wanted to fight also tended to be uncommonly good at it.

Still, even for all that, she only knew of three other women among the operators invited to the USF’s playpen this time around. Two were USAF PJs and the other was a Shayetet 13 commando from Israel. So picking her out wasn’t exactly a monumental achievement.

“You looking for me for a reason?” she went on to ask.

“A few of us have been doing our homework,” Ton told her after she took her hand back. “We read the brief on the Hayden job.”

“Good for you.”

He snorted lightly. “Wanted to pick your brains, if you’re amenable.”

Sorilla’s eyebrow rose slightly at his vocabulary. Obviously not one of those guys who gets by on his brawn alone . Of course, from his general posture and sentence construction, she thought he was used to hiding his brain behind the meat.

She shrugged after a bit. “There’s not really a lot more that wasn’t in the briefs. I know, I wrote ‘em.”

“Figured that. They read like an operator put them together,” Ton nodded. “Still would appreciate the time.”

Sorilla considered then nodded. “Sure.”

“We’re camped out in the commissary. I figure you can work out which table is ours,” Ton chuckled. “See you there.”

I’d have to be blind and stupid to miss any table you’re sitting at, buddy. Sorilla just waved as she took another deep draw on the energy drink. “See you.”

This time, she was listening when the big man walked away, and Sorilla was disturbed to find that he really did move as quietly as she initially suspected.

How do you do that in combat boots?

She shook off the question and took another long pull of the bottle, emptying the drink quickly, then headed for the showers. It was an exercise in futility, honestly; a shower would only clear the sweat off her for ten or twenty minutes, but it just felt good, so she took her luxuries where she could. Odds were she’d soon be off somewhere where a shower was something she might score once ever few weeks, on average.

Unlike some of the places she’d trained, the showers here weren’t co-ed. The USF had enough women coming through Level Three for conditioning that there was no way they’d get away with completely communal showers. She didn’t care all that much. Her early training had pretty much eliminated what few elements of personal modesty she had left after growing up spending more time in the wilderness than at home, but there was a level of relaxation that came from being secure in multiple ways, and again she luxuriated in that while she could.

When she’d cleaned up and dried off, she dressed in USF fatigues and headed for the commissary. Unlike the aptly named Ton, she didn’t feel the need to wear her SF uniform, dress or otherwise, though she did pin her space wings and rank to the blue fatigues. She was here, she was jump qualified by the USF, and that was all anyone in this place needed to know. Particularly since the USF was specifically a space-based organization, if they certified you as jump capable, well, there really wasn’t any higher qualification…in every sense of the word “higher.”

A USF jump master was qualified to do everything from straight up EVA to orbital drops to the more mundane skills of HALO and HAHO. Combined with the complexity of armor operations and the paraglide packs they favored, Sorilla was qualified to do everything from fly pretty much anything one person could fly, to all the exceedingly complex tasks of extra-vehicular activities for whatever the mission called for. USF jump qualifications were basically the most sought after badge in the solar system, and there wasn’t a man or woman on Level Three who wouldn’t recognize it…and desperately want it for their own if they didn’t have it themselves. You just couldn’t qualify for it unless you were serving with the USF, and until very recently, Fleet just couldn’t afford to train or payroll that many people.

Perfect.

In the commissary, Sorilla had no trouble picking out Ton’s table. Despite being filled with an entire group of big guys, it was the one that looked that it was going to tip over on the side the marine was sitting on. She glanced them up and down but didn’t go over right away. Instead, she headed to the food and stocked up. While she was pretty close to being back in form, Sorilla knew that she had a ways to go before her physical form was solid through to the bone.

Despite common misconceptions, protein wasn’t the key to building muscle, so there were no protein shakes or the like. She grabbed a plate of enhanced chicken nuggets, then topped off some assorted engineered greens, and finished the plate with some fries. Pretty much everything on the list had been molecularly altered, crammed with trace nutrients, vitamins, and the research scientists alone knew what else.

Her dad was old school, liked to grow his own food from heritage seeds, kept his own chickens, and so forth. For herself, well, she’d grown up on one side of the argument but had been eating military-enhanced food most of her adult life and never felt any ill effects, so she ate what was available and didn’t worry too badly about it either way.

With the plate filled, and another fortified energy drink on the tray, Sorilla finally turned to the nearly full table at the other end of the room. They’d left one seat open, in the center of the long side of the table, so she figured that was where she was going to sit.

She set the tray down before maneuvering around the chair and into place, always the extra half gravity at the forefront of her mind. One mistake would end with all her food on the floor, likely with her face first in it and nursing one or more broken bones. In one-point-five-g, everything was training. Even getting ready to eat lunch after a workout.

“Sarge.” Ton nodded in her direction, his eyes flicking over the deep blue of her jumpsuit and falling, as she knew they would, on the space wings pinned to the left breast.

“Ton.” She returned the gesture, though she’d already checked out his pins, so she glanced quickly about to take in the others.

Mostly American unit pins and patches, though there were a couple Canadian JTF2 as well as SAS, SBS, and Israeli all positioned around the table.

“I take it you all know each other?” she asked, recognizing a couple faces, but no one she’d worked with.

That wasn’t as surprising as it might have been, since Sorilla had been assigned to the USF for several years. She hadn’t worked Earth-side since that assignment began, and honestly, even in a world with as many life extension processes as Earth now had, special operations was a young person’s game. She probably would have retired by this point if the USF hadn’t taken her on; there were only so many years any sane person could take of getting shot at.

They nodded, and Ton spoke up. Apparently, he’d won the right to be their spokesman, probably by beating the rest of them down .

“We’ve all been operational with each other at one point or another,” he said. “Most of us have had applications into the USF for years as well.”

That didn’t surprise her in the least. The USF enjoyed a massive level of interest across the board. Any position they offered was always swamped with applicants. From pilots to researchers to soldiers, the USF always had more applicants than it could afford to hire. She knew she’d been lucky to be chosen when she had, though the debacle on Hayden certainly put that luck into perspective.

“All right, so what do you want to know?” she said before popping some fries in her mouth.

“We’ve been briefed, as I said, but what are these things really like?”

Sorilla was quiet for a moment, taking another drink and thinking it over. Finally she just shook her head. “You know…I’m not sure I can say.”

“What kind of answer is that?” a guy in a basic black SAS sweater demanded.

“The only one I can give. I’m pretty damned sure that we didn’t tangle with their military,” she explained. “At least, not by the time I got there.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“No. I wish I were,” she told them. “I’m pretty sure that our initial contacts were all worker drones. Robotic bulldozers and the like. We didn’t see combat chassis until we started sabotaging their work.”

“Makes sense,” Ton grumbled, though he was frowning. “What about the initial invasion?”

“Nothing.” She shook her head. “Colonists reports conflicted, no one saw anything anyway, so the best I can do there is make a few guesses.”

“So guess.”

The others around the table nodded in agreement, leaning in. They’d take what they could get, especially from an experienced eye on the ground.

“Ultrasonic frequencies, tuned to trip every ‘run for your life’ switch you’ve got,” she said seriously. “Use your armor to filter it out. Some of the colonists’ reports seem to indicate advanced stealth at first, but I didn’t see any sign of it when I went in. I think that was actually an example of their gravity tech in action, making it seem like there were things in the area people couldn’t see.”

She paused, thinking about the things she’d seen. “At first, I also thought they used environmental energy converters, which would account for the sudden chill you feel around the base…but I think that’s the sonics again, and more a nervous reaction than actual cold.”

“What about the actual aliens?”

“Two types, at least,” she said. “Big, furry meat shield type, looks mean but dumb as a post, and a smaller, frail-looking Roswell grey alien type. They don’t talk, don’t make any sounds I’ve been able to find in my recordings, but they seem to be in charge.”

One of the men, in an Army Rangers uniform, grimaced and let his head thump to the table. “You mean the probe-happy aliens are real? Aw man.”

Sorilla chuckled. “I never let them get ahold me to find out.”

The men around the table laughed, some agreeing that was probably the best plan.

“Seriously, though, they do have some combat drones, but I’m almost certain that I only saw their light units,” she said after things had calmed down. “There’s tons of things that make no sense about what I saw, and very few things that do.”

“Light units with nuclear bombs, lovely.” Ton grimaced.

“That’s not quite it,” she corrected him. “It’s the enemy’s gravity valve tech that gives them nuclear response capability. That’s from a central firebase, or a ship, not the light drones.”

“Well, that’s something, at least. It’s still a bloody hazard to one’s health, I say,” the British SBS man grumbled from farther down the table.

“You could put it that way, yeah,” Sorilla answered with a grin. “Still, there’s something to be said about dodging nuclear strikes every time you make a move…”

“Oh yeah? And what’s that?”

“It sucks,” Sorilla returned dryly.

The table laughed, getting attention from the rest of the room, but Sorilla just leaned in and got serious. If this group wanted details, she’d dig in and find some for them. Anything was better than what happened to her last team, and without the right intel, that was just as likely what these guys would be facing.

*****

USF forward operating base

Hayden

Hayden had many attractions as a planet, being the closest to Earth-normal of any world discovered in all human-controlled space, but when compared to worlds like Ares, with its nearly unlimited quantities of rare earth metals, or even Atlantis and the incredible biological wealth of that world’s oceans, Hayden often seemed to come off second best in the number cruncher’s balance sheets. Even so, the planet was consistently profitable after only two solid generations and exported a significant portion of the Earth’s medical pharmaceuticals. What Hayden was most well-known for, however ironic it may be, was its food exports.

While not digestible by humans, there were several Hayden-born plants that were completely nontoxic and surprisingly tasty to the human palate, which led to Hayden produce being in some of the most popular diets on Earth. The dream of people in the Western world since the mid-to late-twentieth century: eat all you want and lose weight in the process.

Even Hayden-born sometimes partook for many of the same reasons, though the good-tasting product had become something of a ugly joke among the colonists in the years since the invasion forced them away from their colony. To have some of the most sought after luxury foods in all of human-controlled space in near unlimited quantity and still be on the brink of starvation seemed like some cruel joke of the gods.

As the USF presence began to be felt, first with Sorilla and later the supplies left to them by the doomed Taskforce Three, and finally with the arrival of the relief force that now occupied the coastal base near the old beta site, the joke faded, but the taste of the local food still came off a little bitter in most of their mouths. It was still served, however, to supplement the sometimes bland flavor of the flash-grown foodstuff from military nutrient vats.

It was for this reason alone that a group of civilians were combing the river bank, harvesting some of the tastier plants as well as some of the very few that humans could absorb at least some nutrition from, when the bloodied form of Jerry Reed fell from the jungle and collapsed.

A scream went out from the woman he almost fell on, bringing everyone else, including over a dozen heavily armed soldiers. They called in emergency response, and five days after his own blade had been driven into his guts, Jerry Reed rode the last kilometer to base cocooned in the protective embrace of a small robotic field ambulance.

Back at the base, the word spread quickly, moving faster than the field ambulance could manage, despite the edict against transmissions. Field phones had been installed all around the area, linked by fiber-optic cables. All someone had to do was reach one of the hidden phones and call it in, so by the time Jerry arrived at the base, there was a crash team waiting, including several colonists and the general himself.

Kayne watched the action from a distance as the pathfinder was examined in place, the robotic ambulance converting automatically to a clunky but functional gurney that chased the doctors into the medical facilities, as it had been programmed to.

God damn it. I was planning on reading Lieutenant Brecker the riot act for being late this time. What the hell happened out there?

His thoughts immediately went to the other teams in the field. Two of them were slightly overdue, and now he had reason to start worrying. That boy looked like he’d been through the grinder. Probably slogged for days to get back here, so even taking his injuries into account…

Kayne pivoted, heading back into the base and directly toward the command center, where he had the estimated locations of patrols plotted.

The computer system still had them onscreen, and Kayne leaned over the table with his hands planted widely for balance. Somewhere out there, someone or something had obviously nailed one of his patrols. That meant that the others were at risk as well, and the only hope he had of getting more information was buried in a wounded man’s head. That meant he was fighting blind and didn’t even have a way to contact and coordinate his squads.

Kayne grimaced, baring his teeth in an impotent snarl.

Time to make a call.

He debated it for a moment then slammed his fists down on the table and marched across the hall to the very quiet room next door. Inside, there was one man sitting at a console, looking bored as he listened to something on a pair of headphones. Kayne stopped behind his back and calmly reached out to touch the man’s shoulder.

Corporal Savez was one of the best com men in the business, but he was a little high-strung, as he proved when he nearly went through the ceiling from that simple touch. He landed on his feet, one hand on his chest as he spun around.

“Jesus! Don’t do that…uh…” He swallowed hard, staring at the general. “Sir?”

“I need a message coded and sent.”

“Right. I’ll get it ready for the next pass of the satellite…” Savez mumbled. “The laser is ready to go.”

“No. Not the laser. Pulse transmission, encrypted, scrambled, wide band.”

Savez’s eyes widened. “Sir? That’s against your standing orders.”

“I know. What can you do to minimize the risk to us, here?”

The corporal’s jaw worked for a bit. “You’re serious, sir?”

“As a heart attack.”

“Right. Ok, balloon.”

Kayne waited, but it quickly became clear that none was forthcoming. “Son, I need a bit more than that.”

“Oh, right. Sorry,” Savez blurted in a rush. “It’s like this, sir. We get a transmit package, lash it to one of the weather balloons we keep here. Have some guys take it out to sea or upriver a few dozen klicks, fill it with hydrogen and let it loose. Once it’s up a few thousand feet, we bing it with a laser and it sends whatever we want. Can’t be traced back here. Won’t help the guys in the field, though, unless they’ve got portable laser coms and can get a line of sight.”

Kayne stared for a long moment, mind wrapping around that idea. “Why are you only mentioning this to me now, Corporal?”

Savez looked a little embarrassed. “Honestly, sir, I’ve been pretty bored here. That’s just one of the doodles I’ve been mocking up to pass the time.”

The general glowered at the young man but didn’t say anything beyond a curt, “Get it done.”

Savez looked surprised for a moment. “Sir?”

“Yesterday!”

“Yes, sir!”

Kayne watched him run off and grumbled to himself as he headed back for the command center. For an idea so simple, he’d love to know why no one suggested it long ago. Probably because no one in the service has fought a war without satellite support in over a century.

He opened up his personal notepad on the table when he arrived in the command center and made a note to issue portable laser coms to all the patrols.

Now, with all that set in motion, Kayne headed for the medical rooms to see what the docs had to say about Jerry. He really hoped the pathfinder pulled through, for more reasons than he could count.

Jerry was probably the most experienced pathfinder they had, and he was well-known and respected among the locals. Losing him would be a big hit to the colonists’ morale, and that was something they could ill afford. Beyond all that, though, Kayne wanted…no, he needed to know what the hell happened out there in the jungle.

Wake up, Reed. You ain’t done with this world yet.

*****

Hayden Jungle

Northeast of USF basecamp

Kriss was far from pleased with the start of his current mission. He’d lost two men, one of whom to the stupidity of bumbling into the enemy camp like a pack of fools. The second loss had been just as stupid. Chasing a local into an environment he knew and you didn’t was a violation of more tenants of war than he could recall at first blush.

That said, he still had the majority of his squad, and they’d met the enemy and gotten their measure over the last few days. After tracking down another two of the units and eliminating them, Kriss wasn’t particularly impressed.

Oh, they were on par with most Alliance worlds’ militaries, but they weren’t going to give the Sentinels a serious challenge.

Their weapons were outdated tech but still lethal enough to take on any light to medium ground and air units in use in the Alliance, but he just wasn’t seeing the threat DevCorps was screaming about. EM weapons and radio gear weren’t going to stand up to gravetic bolters and warp coms, even if the troop were as good as the Sentinels. He couldn’t evaluate their starship technology, but the light brief he’d received said basically the same thing.

Low performance technology, at least a century behind anything the Alliance used, skill on par with Alliance regulars at best. They’d torn up some DevCorps mercenaries and did a job on the support ships, but those were hardly active duty naval units or soldiers.

Give them a century or so and they’ll be a threat, maybe, assuming we stand still, he thought idly, composing his report. And there’s no chance in hell of that happening.

It didn’t change anything as far as his current assignment went, but Kriss figured that there was no point in sounding the alarm all across Alliance Space over something like this. A couple squadrons of navy units would be enough to put an iron lock on this system, then bring in the DiploCorp. If the race was remotely sane, it would be over in a few weeks of talking, and DevCorps would have their world to develop.

That just left him with the problem of securing the local area so DevCorps could plant one of their DSDs again, this time a frontline model intended for combat coverage of a disputed planet instead of one of the lower cost, single-core models.

A five-core system this time, I think. Five cores would be able to cover all approaches to the system, with enough range to take out any ships before they could get close enough to get accurate targeting data on the planet, let alone plot a strike.

“Do you have the medical scans finished yet?”

The Sentinel scanning the body on the ground nodded. “Yes, Deice.”

“Good. When you’re done, string the body up with the others,” Kriss ordered, walking away.

He looked back to where the other bodies of this particular unit were being strung up to a copse of trees at the crossroads of three well-travelled paths. They’d drop monitor drones here before they left but wouldn’t engage the first group or so that tripped them. They’d taken a couple prisoners already, but language work was proving more difficult than he’d expected. Kriss supposed he should have known better, since most every successful use of translation systems had involved at least one willing person on each side.

Whatever else they are, they are soldiers, he thought grimly, and they have no interest in talking to the enemy. Better now to let them run back to their nest and spook the rest of the pests.

*****

Atlantis System

Admiral Nadine Brookes looked out through the large, transparent, aluminum bulkheads that permitted her to watch over the ship with her own eyes. It was a design compromise in some ways, but like the designers, Nadine couldn’t quite imagine being completely restricted to repeater displays.

The entire observation deck could be sealed off in emergencies, along with the entire island that sat along the rear of the Cheyenne class hull. She wasn’t alone on the deck; it was a popular place whenever there was anything worth looking at in the immediate environs, and this time there certainly was something worth looking at.

Their colliers had arrived in-system several days after the battle had ended, and they were now parked all around the damaged alien warship. Their crews were swarming all over the imposing bulk of the ship, tearing it down with laser cutters as they sliced the big ship into pieces small enough for the squadron to haul back to Earth.

By the time anyone had gotten to Hayden to check on the last ships destroyed by Earth vessels, they’d actually been nowhere to be found. Given the extreme speeds they’d been travelling at when they were finally destroyed, it seemed likely that the hulls were either speeding off into the galaxy at large or were caught in an extremely long orbit of Hayden’s star.

This time, Nadine had sent most of her squadron to anchor the ship and pull it to a stop. A messy and dangerous business, they’d still managed to bring it to a rest, relative to the local star, and now Earth had a shot at a real, good look at the guts of an alien ship.

All depending on how much of it survived the nuclear weapons detonating inside its armor.

Still, even pictures of destroyed technology might yield clues for the researchers back in Earth Space, so no matter how badly the interior was torn up, Nadine wasn’t about to pass up this chance.

Still, the sheer size of the alien ships necessitated taking their time and cutting it up. When they had it down to manageable-sized chunks, they’d chain them to the hulls of the Hood and Cheyenne class warships and jump them home using the more powerful reactors on those ships. For the moment, however, it was up to the colliers and support ships and crews to get in and see the job done.

“Admiral.”

“Captain,” she returned without looking away from the vista beyond the bulkhead.

“I’ve finished speaking with the colony administrators,” Patrick said, his tone clearly relieved.

“And did they finally accept that we don’t have remotely enough lift to evacuate them?”

“I think so,” he replied, sighing. “Though I expect that the USF is going to be getting a request for significant transport over the next few months.”

She nodded, accepting that. “Might be for the best. We just don’t have enough ships to protect all the colonies and outposts.”

“True, but we can’t abandon the investments we’ve put into these colonies, Admiral”

“Patrick, if we can’t protect it, we’ve effectively already lost it.”

Patrick didn’t know about that, but he decided it wasn’t the time to argue the point with his admiral either. He could see her point, but if they just packed it up and ran home with their tails between their legs, then what had all the work done over the last century been for?

No, he couldn’t see just packing it up and running home. These worlds had been under human control for decades with no signs of any alien civilization showing up until the assault on Hayden. While there was a time to cut your losses, Patrick didn’t think they’d reached that point yet. Not when their losses would be uncountable trillions of dollars in investments, untold years of labor, and innumerable lives sacrificed to bring each world to its own unique place in the Solarian Civilization.

If they want it, they’ll have to damned well take it.

Chapter Six

USF forward operating base

Hayden

The first thing Jerry saw when he opened his eyes was the blinking lights of the monitoring electronics hovering over him. He blinked once, then again, and shifted painfully. Beside his bed, Tara was asleep in what looked to be an insanely uncomfortable position. Jerry painfully shifted as he rolled over on something. He flopped his hand around until he felt it and pulled out a summoning buzzer.

He stared at it, both surprised and confused for a moment. He’d not seen one of those in use since before the invasion forced them out of the colony. Jerry found himself just staring at it for a long time.

“It doesn’t turn on by neuro-link.”

Jerry started then winced painfully in reaction before turning with deliberate slowness to look to where Tara was now awake and looking at him.

“Hey.”

“Hey yourself.” She scowled at him. “I don’t suppose you’d care to explain how your own knife wound up in your belly?”

“I don’t suppose you’d buy it I said I tripped while showing off?”

“Actually, yes, I think I might believe that,” she told him sourly. “Or I would if you hadn’t come back alone.”

He winced. “I’m the only one left of my squad.”

“Yours isn’t the only one.”

Jerry sat up, about to demand more information, but his breath and his voice died in his throat as pain tore through his gut. He screamed, almost silently, as Tara bolted up from her chair and helped him settle back down.

“Stupid, thick headed, ignorant…” She cursed him liberally while thumbing the buzzer and checking around his wound. “I may have been forced to put up with this when dealing with Sorilla, but you’re not some military superman. I should insist on having you stitched up with actual thread and left to heal naturally.”

He paled, swallowing hard as he looked down at his wound. Jerry let out a breath when he saw that he’d already been glued shut, and from the healing he could see that Tara hadn’t been the one to make the treatment call. He slumped his head back as a nurse came into the room, looking surprised.

“Oh, he’s awake.”

Tara rolled her eyes but nodded. “Yes. Let the doctor know, please.”

“The general will want to be informed as well.”

“The general can damned well wait,” Tara snarled.

“No.”

The two looked down to where Jerry was weakly shaking his head. “I need to talk to him.”

“Fine.” Tara glowered. “Call him too.”

Jerry snickered softly, earning him another glare from Tara.

“Don’t you start or I’ll strap you down to this thing and program it to drive into the river,” she snapped again.

Jerry just lay back as far away from the scary nurse as he could and nodded. “Yes’m.”

While Tara fussed around him, the military nurse made her retreat, apparently intending to call in reinforcements. He didn’t blame her. He was already plotting to hack the automated field ambulance, if only to secure its code from tampering by a certain redhead.

*****

General Kayne stomped through the medical wing, eyes on the goal as the doctors and nurses parted like the sea before Moses. He stopped outside the room he was heading for and grabbed the closest doctor, pulling him to one side.

“How is he?”

“He’ll live,” the doctor replied. “The blade missed most of his internal organs, just nicking his intestines. A little deeper and he’d probably be dead of sepsis now. He’s a damned lucky man.”

“Given that none of the squad I sent out with him came back, I’ll decide how lucky he was when I hear his story,” Kayne growled, pushing the door aside and walking into the room with the downed pathfinder.

Jerry looked up as he walked in, and Kayne could see a darkness falling across the man’s face in that moment. He’d seen the look before, too many times.

“Lay it out for me, son,” he said after a long moment.

Jerry nodded slowly and started to talk.

*****

Later, Kayne found himself sitting alone in his office pondering the story.

These don’t sound like the aliens Aida described. More and more it’s looking like she guessed right when she said we’re not dealing with a single species. It has to be a federation or empire or something.

The only thing Jerry’s aliens had in common with either of those reported by Sorilla was the fact that they were grey-skinned. What hit Jerry wasn’t some fragile, big-headed probe wielder. He didn’t need Jerry to tell him that, though. While they hadn’t been able to locate Brecker’s unit, some of the returning patrols brought back imagery of what was left of some of the others.

They’d been strung up, their weapons torn down, but whoever they were missed the internal implants. Downloads of those were mostly useless. Whoever this group was, they were good. They left little to no trace, even after wiping out a platoon. The action records were the stuff of ghost stories, which was one of the reasons Kayne was in a seriously bad mood.

The only hard data they had came from after the men were killed. If the enemy had figured on them having implants and records, they apparently didn’t know that the implants continued to work after the men died. Unfortunately, the imagers were implanted in the corneas, and a lot of the imagery was badly fogged by the dying eyes of the fallen.

Kayne called up the one piece of clear data they had, a single image through the eyes of a man who was dying when the data was captured but still alive enough and in control of his implants. The slightly off focused image showed a dark grey shadow, carrying the heavy rifles that Jerry had described.

And another player in the mix. How many more are out there, then? he wondered, examining the weapon in the alien’s hands.

The recorded damage was shocking, especially considering that they hadn’t located any trace of projectiles. Flesh, bone, even armor was nothing to it. Kayne had redirected some of his Cougars and DOGs to cover the holes in the patrol routes, but he wasn’t certain that the heavier drone armor was going hold up any better than the soldiers’ had.

We need to capture some of those weapons. Would have been a lot better if Aida had managed to snag one on her way out of the valve.

Unfortunately, there was nothing to be gained by crying over spilt milk, so Kayne abruptly slapped off the computer image and determined to get his ass back to work.

If the enemy had brought in heavier reinforcements, it was time to let the USF know about it. He keyed open a file and began filling out a report. When he finished it, he appended the relevant data recordings and the conversation with Jerry before queuing it to be lasered up to the SatCom in lunar orbit.

The USF SatCom in lunar orbit over Hayden’s World was one of the smallest and stealthiest of its kind ever developed by men. Massing no more than a few dozen pounds, the powerful device was able to store enough data to manage two wars and a peacekeeping mission and had the tasking capacity to shift orbit and perform as a spy bird in a pinch.

For General Kayne, at the moment its most important capability was about to come into play. When the new message arrived, the stealth bird noted immediately that the priority was the single highest it had ever received. While that didn’t precisely impress it in anyway, it did trip a series of prearranged responses.

The SatCom turned on gyro-guidance as it cleared the dark side of the Hayden moon and pointed its powerful com laser toward the Alpha Point far out-system. A brief, coded pulse later and its most important of jobs was complete, leaving the bird to swing back into position to continue its mission as planned.

The laser pulse, meanwhile, began its several-hour trip out of the system to where it was finally intercepted by a much larger unit. The automated picket drone processed the information, then detached from its receiver unit and turned away from Hayden. It was the first automated jump-capable drone built by Earth, and less than twelve hours after the general had sent his report, it was screaming toward the closest USF-controlled star at a relative velocity that exceeded a hundred times light.

*****

Beta Point starbase

Sol System

The jump point starbases were really little more than a series of standard shipping containers vacuum welded together then bolted to a collection of heavy launch tubes, rail guns, and every sensing system known to man.

Thrown together in a hurry, they weren’t remotely cutting edge in anyway, but they were among the heaviest armed and most far seeing installations in human space. They were not, however, known for creature comforts.

Floating in as close to zero gravity as you found without punching out of the known universe, the only comfort you found in the cramped and cluttered interiors was floating in one of the rare corners that had enough room to fit a person trying to sleep.

That was where Lieutenant Sinj was when the alarms went off, startling her into jerking around and slamming her arm into a computer.

“Oh, son of a bitch!” She started cursing fluently in four languages as she kicked off the side and aimed for the control console.

She alit, clumsily swinging into the chair and strapping down as the station’s captain arrived. Lieutenant Commander Beaufort wasn’t looking much better than her as he caromed off a manual control panel and snagged the seat beside her.

“What’s going on?” he growled.

“Gravity event,” she said tersely, eyeing the accelerometers. “Incoming unidentified on universal penetration path. It’s big.”

“Big? How big? We’ve got a taskforce out there.”

“Bigger,” she said, eyes flying over the data. “Twice the size, easy.”

“Shit,” Beaufort muttered, hand swiping a bank of switches that brought everything he had fully online. “Weapons going hot. Targeting systems?”

“Online,” she answered. “Stand by for penetration in…ten seconds.”

The countdown was agonizingly long, each second churning their stomachs and taking a year off their lives. They were the only two onstation, since the entire place really only needed people there to make fire/no fire decisions, and suddenly they felt far more alone than they ever had.

“Three…two…one…” Sinj droned, her training keeping her voice steady even as she wanted to jump up and run around gibbering. “Penetration.”

Ships barreling their way through the space-time barrier should have been a spectacular event, something astonishing, epic, and truly memorable. In reality, however, they just came out of nowhere so fast that, to the human eye, they appeared to be decelerating from a distance, the same as you’d expect to see on Earth if you were dealing with something that could move that fast. This time, the appearance of the ships so startled the two observers that Beaufort’s hand started to come down automatically on the fire controls.

“IFF challenge response passed!” Sinj called out, startling him so badly he almost leaned on the firing pad anyway.

“What?” he blurted, eyes flickering from the mess outside to look at her. If there was one thing that mass wasn’t, it was something built by humans.

“It’s Taskforce Valkyrie, sir.” She smirked, looking a little smug.

Beaufort rolled his eyes at the appellation the taskforce had been saddled with, but he knew that a lot of the female officers were taking pride in the term that had originally been tossed around more than a little insultingly. That, however, wasn’t his problem at the moment. He looked out through the scopes again. “No way that’s anything we ever built.”

The grouping of ships looked like some insane kinetic sculpture, designed by a fool and marketed by an idiot. There were no clear lines, he couldn’t see a single thing that looked like USF markings, and the whole damn thing massed way too damned much.

However, the IFF handshake was pretty clear.

“Hail them,” he growled.

“Aye, sir.”

*****

USS Cheyenne

Alamo shipyards, Sol Space

“Good to be home,” Patrick said as he unstrapped and floated clear of his station.

They were parked in the middle of the Trojan belt, a few hundred miles from the Alamo facility, and pretty much every ship in the squadron was currently covered in men from said shipyards as they stripped them of their trophy.

Well, at least Fleet command is happy. He smirked, still amused by the reactions of the people staffing the jump point fortress. Happier than that lieutenant commander was, at least. I thought he was going to start cursing at the admiral.

In one way, he couldn’t blame the poor guy, but it was pretty funny to see the angry face start sputtering as he slammed on the brakes at the sight of the admiral. Once they’d talked their way through jump point security, Nadine brought them directly to the Alamo. Hundreds of Alamo techs were waiting for them by the time they arrived, and Patrick had actually been shocked by the number of spacesuited figures that had swarmed his ship and the others of the squadron.

The recovered wreck was quite probably the most important, or potentially important, discovery in recorded history, particularly given the current situation. Patrick was certain that the researchers would be chomping at the bit to get their hands on even shattered pieces of the alien tech, and he just hoped that they could do something with it.

Without it, we don’t stand a chance in hell if these people decide to get serious.

*****

USF counterweight, Level Three

New Mexican tether

“All of you are familiar with most of the gear you’ve been assigned, I presume?” Lieutenant Commander Nelson Figgs looked around the room, eyes open for anyone disagreeing.

No one did, so he just nodded and went on.

“There are no significant changes in the operators’ Model Power-Enhancing Armor, so we’ll set that aside for the moment,” he said, pausing only briefly beside the empty shell of armor before he moved on. “The current issue rifle is also the same as you should all be used to, though this model makes use of some new generation power cells, so it’ll fire longer and more effectively. Again, however, all the changes are in its capacity, not its capability. The same holds true for the standard issue knives, grenades, and so forth. We’re giving you better medical gear than any other frontline group has ever enjoyed; you’ll be receiving in depth courses on its use shortly.”

The assembled operators listening to his lecture nodded along, some taking notes but most not bothering. Sorilla herself was listening, but in a half attentive sort of way as she used her new implants to analyze the room in minute detail while practicing neural control over the various pieces of bionetic gear buried in her body.

In a controlled environment, hyper-spectral analysis was really fascinating. She could “see” the brand of aftershave in use by the presenter, note that his sweat indicated that he was a controlled diabetic, and spot a hint of some rather illegal tobacco smoke on his uniform.

He’s lucky no one else has these implants just yet, she thought wryly.

There were some strong limitations becoming evident, however. Even in a controlled environment like Level Three, it was clear that the danger of data overload was extreme. If she relaxed her attention and let her eyes wander while in hyper-spectral mode, she’d be assaulted by dozens upon dozens of trace readings from those in the room and those who had been in the room in the past.

In a natural environment like the jungle, hyper-spectral would be effectively useless in manual search mode. She’d have to rely on the computer to analyze and report on any flagged or dangerous substances, which meant that anything the computer didn’t recognize would be ignored.

That wasn’t really the best way to run things when you were going to be scurrying around one alien world after another and doing pretty much nothing but encountering new and unknown compounds.

“One new piece of kit, as you can see, is the new issue pistol.”

Sorilla refocused her attention on the lieutenant commander as he picked up the large handgun from the table in front of him and turned it so they could see it from different angles.

“As you’re all aware, magnetic accelerator technology has never been particularly effective in anything significantly smaller than a rifle.”

That was true enough. Though some civilian weapons had been made using the technology, there were finite limits to how fast you could accelerate a useful projectile along a short barrel. Long guns simple worked better, which was why Sorilla’s preferred backup for armor operations was a SOCOM modified Smith 500. Revolvers were rugged and durable and could take much hotter loads than comparable automatics.

What he was holding up, however, wasn’t a revolver.

“This is the M-Tac Model 50,” he said, cracking the gun open like an old school shotgun and drawing a long box from his belt. He slid it right into the barrel section of the gun and snapped the weapon shut with a flick of his wrist. “A Metalstorm configuration weapon, the 50 has no magazine in the grip, so the ergonomics are reasonable for just about any size hands, whether you’re in armor or not. The over and under two-barrel magazine holds fifty rounds in each barrel, each round a fifty caliber smart type capable of independent seeking or being fire controlled through your implants.”

That was impressive, Sorilla decided. Her standard issue rifle could do that, but pistol calibers generally had to make do with dumb munitions.

“Like all MS class weapons, rate of fire is a moot point,” he said with a wry smile. “While technically capable of firing a million rounds per minute, I don’t know of anyone who’s ever managed it.”

Several people chuckled at that, but it was the strict truth. MS weapons were theoretically capable of incredible rates of fire, but for practical purposes, you rarely saw the potential realized except on some shipboard designs that really couldn’t compete with magnetic accelerators for power, speed, and effect.

Still, from what Sorilla was aware, the ROF was so high on handheld MS weapons that you could fire the entire magazine’s worth in one burst before the recoil of the first round translated to your hand. It was as close to an old sci-fi “beam gun” as you got in the real world, with the capacity of putting a hundred heavy-caliber rounds right through the same hole in a split second. Combined with guidance tech and military payloads, it was potentially a good replacement for her revolver.

She’d have to run a few thousand rounds through one before she made an initial judgment, however.

Looks too good to be true, sounds too good to be true, probably is too good to be true.

“Naturally, the loaded barrels make this weapon a little nose-heavy,” the lieutenant commander droned on, “which isn’t a problem in armor, or when making quick shots while out of armor. It can make aiming at longer ranges an issue, so you just snap down this section here…”

He broke a section away from the bottom of the barrel, and it folded out into a second handgrip, allowing the lieutenant commander to steady his control of the weapon and use it as a PDW, or submachine gun.

“All ranges will have these available for practice with military dummy rounds,” he said after he’d snapped the grip back into place. “No one will be issued live ordnance until after you leave the space station.”

He gave them all a look that indicated very clearly his doubt that they’d be able to control themselves from trying outlive explosives, even onboard a space station. Honestly, she’d be more annoyed, but Sorilla was having a hard time keeping from laughing at the looks on some of her comrades’ faces. All except for two of them, who she swore were looking quite chagrined and were obviously trying to avoid meeting anyone’s eyes.

Those two scared the piss out of her.

Best not ask any questions. I so don’t want to hear it while I’m stilling sharing bulkheads with that pair.

*****

The Alamo shipyards

Jovian Trojan Point

Nadine was floating in one of the Alamo’s observer’s lounges, looking out over the number eight slip and the floating hull of the Apache Warrior.

“I understand she’s not recoverable,” she said softly.

“That’s right, Admiral,” Captain May said softly. “The valve assault cracked open the hull along the aft section. Destroyed most of the VASIMR control circuits at the same time. Those can be repaired, but the hull would never be the same after a patch job.”

She nodded solemnly. The cast-nickel-iron nature of the hull took strength from its intact design; any flaw in the integrity of the superstructure would be an unacceptable compromise during high-stress maneuvers. A few years earlier, it might have been overlooked for a time, at least until another hull was ready to enter service, but with the current military situation, any ship that couldn’t be certified to handle at least fifteen-gravity maneuvering had no business being near the front lines.

Still, it was something of an unfortunate thing to see a new ship already heading back to the forge.

“Have you been reassigned?” she asked May softly.

“I’m in charge of sim training, at least until another hull becomes available,” James May said with a soft sigh. “We may have a shortage of experienced captains, ma’am, but the ship side of things isn’t exactly any better. Until an unassigned ship is completed, I’m riding herd on captains already assigned ships that are coming out of the forge over the next few months.”

“Naval Warfare Center in the UK?” she asked.

“No, the USF has leased the Dubai tether,” he corrected her. “Installing new facilities on their cargo line. It’s actually pretty impressive. The new sims can go from microgravity to four-g’s by travelling along the tether line.”

“Very impressive,” she agreed.

“Yeah.”

There was something in his tone that might have concerned her if she didn’t know precisely what the cause was and already sympathize with him.

“It’s an important duty, James,” Nadine said seriously.

“Yeah, but it’s not the duty I want.” He shrugged. “So be it. I can’t expect anything more…not after losing my ship first time out.”

“James,” she cut him off sternly, “you may have lost the ship, but you kept the crew alive. There were a lot of good men and women before you who didn’t manage that much.”

He nodded reluctantly then smiled in a self-deprecating manner. “I suppose I’m feeling a little sorry for myself is all, ma’am.”

“Understandable, but training up-and-coming command officers is going to be at least as important as commanding any ship, James,” she told him simply. “Likely more important.”

“I know, ma’am,” he acceded. “I’m not taking it lightly, I assure you.”

“Never crossed my mind that you were, James,” she told him. “Just wanted to remind you that you weren’t.”

He nodded, smiling at the twisting words. “Message received and understood, ma’am. Wilco and out.”

“Careful, Captain,” she told him in a slightly acerbic yet mocking tone. “Captains who act too much the smartass with admirals often find themselves regretting it sooner than later.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Admiral. I’ll keep that in mind.”

“See that you do.” She snorted softly. “Now, if you don’t mind, I want to check up on the status of my squadron.”

“Aye, ma’am.”

Nadine kicked off from where she had been drifting and headed back to the corridor access, hanging a graceful right turn, and drifted up the hall to the facility command deck. Admiral Pat Gates was there, as he’d been all day, every day she’d been onstation at the Alamo. He glanced up in the direction and nodded.

“Nadine.”

“Pat,” she returned, nodding to the repeater screen behind him. “I’m sure you can guess why I’m here.”

“We have about half the junk unloaded from your squadron,” he said, not looking over his shoulder at the screens. “Another few days for the rest. You’ve about tripled our work load here, you realize.”

She snorted. “I can take it back and dump it where I found it, if you prefer.”

“Thanks, but no,” he said dryly. “I think we’d both rather not be court martialed for treason. Your squadron was the first to kill one of these suckers and still have enough ships left over to retrieve the hulk. I suspect that every man and woman on your crews is up for medals for this alone.”

“They deserve it,” she said simply.

“I won’t be disagreeing,” Gates agreed. “We’ve already started to get an idea on some of the gravity tech, just from the materials they used. Originally, we’d wondered if they’d tamed a singularity, but there’s no evidence of anything in there that could manage containment on something like that.”

Nadine shuddered. “I don’t know if I’m happy to hear that or chilled that I might have been hauling a black hole in potentially damaged containment through jump space.”

“Yeah, better you than me on that one,” Gates smirked. “But in all seriousness, there’s no indication of anything we’d equate with that kind of containment system.”

“We could have blown it apart back there. We did use nukes…many of them,” she reminded him.

“Yes, but if you’d done that, there would have been a runaway black hole sitting in the center of the ship,” he countered. “In which case, I doubt you’d have managed to bring back as much as you did.”

She considered that and finally nodded. “Fair point.”

“Which brings us to one of the earlier theories that’s been under fire for being a little too far out,” Gates said. “We’re hoping to confirm or disprove with what you’ve brought us.”

“And that is?”

“Basically, it’s what gave the ‘gravity valve’ its name,” Gates said. “The idea of a higher level dimensional collapse, projected into a target. If we can prove that, it’ll go a long way to solidify a lot of high-energy, quantum theories.”

“As long as that translates into something we can use in the black, I’m all for it,” she said soberly. “The acceleration on those monsters is just unreal.”

“Yes, I’ve seen the chips with battle recordings.”

“Until you see the plots in real time, you can’t understand how it really hits you, deep down,” she said with a shake of her head. “We need something to cut that advantage down. Otherwise it’s just a matter of time before we run out of tricks and they bulldoze right over us.”

“Right,” he agreed. “Well, one thing I can tell you is that they build lighter than we do. Stronger, too, at least on a per weight basis. We’ve already started analyzing the armor shell we took off your ships. A lot of elements you wouldn’t expect in a ship, given the relative rarity of the material. We could never round up that much titanium, even mining the belts, the cost would just be prohibitive. Some synthetics I don’t recognize, but we’ll soon have it tested and then sent to some Earth-side labs to be replicated if it’s of any value. We also found one group of components that our people recognized on sight, interestingly enough.”

“Oh, and that was?”

“Radio and tracking equipment,” he told her. “If this was a representative of their radio tech, I can tell you why that sergeant on Hayden was never tracked and valved when she used her suit com on-planet.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, our radio tech is at least five decades ahead of this. This ship just didn’t have the capability to detect our spread spectrum encrypted signals, let alone track them,” he said. “I’ll be able to tell you more for sure once we’ve had time to sift through the remains here, but it looks like they barely use the EM spectrum, and probably not at all for communications.”

“Yet obviously they seem aware of its potential in that area, otherwise why target strong signals?”

“Well, everything we’re finding out about these people, aliens, whatever…” He shook his head, frowning for a moment, then went on. “As I was saying, everything we’re learning seems to indicate some sort of multi-species empire. I’d say that they’ve encountered other species that use the EM spectrum in the past, but they likely use some sort of FTL com themselves. I’m just guessing there, but it seems a safe bet.”

“Indeed,” Nadine agreed, nodding.

“In the meantime, Admiral,” Gates said, gesturing to his computer, “I have work to do. I’ll keep you apprized.”

“Thank you, Admiral,” she replied, pushing off from the terminal and drifting back out of the command center.

*****

Level Two ballistic range

New Mexico tether counterweight

This will do, Sorilla thought as she cracked the pistol open and casually lifted her hand to let the barrel/magazine assembly eject out over her shoulder. She already had a replacement in hand and was reloading the weapon before the assembly hit the ground.

She could see the range master wince in the corner of her eye and knew he was a little miffed by the mistreatment of the range’s barrel assemblies. She knew that they were a little expensive, particularly given that these were specially-loaded dummy assemblies that had been machined by hand instead of the field issue, mass produced models.

Well, stuff him, she thought irately. If I’m going to carry this sucker, I want to see how it handles in field conditions.

So far, she was impressed, and everything she knew about guns told her that the design should be about as mechanically perfect as was possible. There was no action to let in dirt, dust, or even liquids, so that was one point of failure that had been eliminated. The hundred-round magazine was entirely contained and about as simply perfect as anything she’d ever seen. Packed nose to tail inside the barrels of the gun, the heavy caliber rounds weren’t triggered by a firing pin like her revolver or the colonists’ hunting rifles. Instead, these rounds were fired by a receiving chip built into the round itself in response to a near field radio transmitter set off by the trigger stud. With no action to slow the weapon, the rounds could be fired off in rapid succession, ripping through targets like a buzz saw.

So far, she’d put it through every test she could think of, including deliberately inducing failures to see how the weapon reacted, and Sorilla was impressed. Even when one of the bullets “failed” to fire, the gun cleared itself by firing the next round in order. The very thought sent shivers down her spine, but the iridium-enforced barrel handled the pressure with no issues, as one bullet pushed the next out of the barrel and the gun was instantly back in field effective form.

The gun looked like something out of a bad animation that came out of Japan, and she wasn’t the only one who thought that, though she was one of the few who added the word “bad” to the description. The barrel was long, and the lack of a magazine in the grip made the rear of the weapon look off-sized, smallish in comparison.

To someone who’d spent a fair bit of her formative years in and around the New Mexican culture of space exploration and Wild West legends, the M-Tac Model 50 felt like a science fiction version of the colt peacemaker.

She had to admit, she really liked the feel.

It felt… right. Like it fit her hand better than anything she’d ever used before. Sorilla knew that if it performed on par with her old 500 Smith, she’d found a new standard weapon, no matter what the military decided. As a SOCOM operator, she had enough leeway in her gear choice to make that decision for herself.

She linked to the computer in the gun, tying her implants to the weapon through near field communications. The computers in weapons were generally fairly simple as far as such things went. Built more for durability than intelligence, they were more than enough to manage the functions of the weapon, sending trajectory modification orders to the smart rounds, and could even calculate ballistics. They weren’t able to handle targeting, however, or any of a myriad of advanced weapon functions that skilled operators loved to bring into play when possible.

“Going hot,” she called out.

She tagged the targets downrange in her implants, sending the data to the gun, then mentally toggled the weapon from “safe” to “hot” as she brought the weapon up and swept it across her field of vision in a single smooth motion.

The M-Tac roared in rapid fire as the computer opened fire automatically, emptying the weapon in under a second. She winced as the heavy kick of the weapon pushed her arm up, pointing the barrel to the ceiling, but kept it under control as the roar echoed through the range and finally died out.

“Weapon secure,” she said casually, cracking the weapon open again with a flick of her wrist and ejecting the barrel assembly out over her shoulder.

The range master grimaced again but said nothing as she just smirked without looking in his direction. Sorilla set her weapon down on the table in front of her.

“Range clear,” he intoned. “Targets coming back.”

The range wheeled in, bringing the targets back up to where Sorilla was standing. She watched them approach but didn’t bother waiting. Instead, she zoomed in with her implants, the liquid lenses on her eyes focusing on the yellow marks of her rounds’ impact points.

Perfect score.

Sorilla snapped her weapon shut, leaving it empty, slid it into the holster on her hip, and started to leave without waiting for the targets to arrive.

“See you later, Sarge.”

Sorilla nodded to the range master on her way out. “Have a good one, Ray.”

“You too, Sarge.”

*****

USF offices, Level Two

New Mexican tether counterweight

“Sir, we just picked up an alert from the Beta Point fortress.”

Admiral Sawyer stiffened at that report and couldn’t help but wonder if that was it. Did they find us?

“Let me have it, Sarah.”

“Jump picket out of Hayden, sir.”

He sighed, relieved then rubbed his face for a moment. “Right. What does General Kayne have to say?”

“Encrypted, sir,” she told him. “The file is on your station.”

“Thank you,” he said, rolling his chair over to the station, where he called up the file and hammered in the decrypt key.

The file took a few moments to fully open. The encryption key was immensely complex, and even his powerful work station took time to decode it. Once it was complete, he settled in and glanced over the file briefly. When he was finished with that, he began to read it in detail, noting the new developments on-planet.

That makes at least three confirmed species on the other side of this little war. Sawyer didn’t like the sound of that to say the least.

Statistics alone said that, for three species to be part of the same empire, the area of space it encompassed almost had to be inconceivable. Certainly humans had never encountered another intelligent species across their region of space, which spanned more than a hundred light-years. So for this alien…empire, for lack of a better term, to have at least three, the odds were in favor of them having expanded to cover a significantly larger section of space than humans had.

That, in turn, indicated that they’d been spacefaring for a comparatively longer time. Certainly their technology seemed to imply that they had advanced well beyond the levels humans were at, though more and more there were some oddities showing up that indicated that, in some areas at least, they weren’t quite as advanced as they appeared.

It was a puzzle, and one that he didn’t think would soon be resolved. Certainly not until they’d managed to start talking to these people, things, whatever they were…or, barring that, started investigating the remains of conquered planets and colonies.

He really hoped it didn’t come to that, if only because the odds weren’t strongly in favor of humans being the ones doing the investigations, in his opinion.

For the moment, the crux of the war was Hayden. The planet was hardly one of the most valuable worlds in human controlled space, for all its Earthlike nature, but for some reason, the aliens seemed incredibly focused on it. Which, in turn, meant it was worth more to Earth than it had been previously, as well.

If only as a choke point to keep the alien resources tied up and away from Earth.

Sawyer closed the file and checked his schedule. He was going to need to talk to the admiralty and oversight committees again and most likely get more reinforcements assigned to Hayden.

We’ll send them a few SOCOM units this time, as well, see if we can’t get a better measure of this new species. From the reports, it sounds like these guys know their way around field craft.

Chapter Seven

USF Level Three

New Mexico tether counterweight

Pushups done under one-and-a-half-gravity acceleration were an exercise in frustration and pain management, as was pretty much everything else, if Sorilla were to be honest with herself. That said, this was most certainly the sort of pain that signified weakness leaving the body, so she pushed through the aches and burning that enveloped her arms as she completed ten pushups in just under twenty seconds and moved on to the next part of her workout.

Her goal wasn’t a series of impressive numbers in her routine, but rather a fast and explosive completion of the total workout in about five minutes. Then she’d relax and do armor sync exercising for the next hour or so before another five minutes of heavy work to prime her muscles. It was an old adage, but working smarter instead of stronger had become the motto of SF training over the decades. It was especially important since the mental requirements for the job had increased exponentially as technical expertise continually trumped field craft.

Oh, knowing how to live in the jungle, or the desert, or anywhere else was still of vital importance. You had to know all the tricks from the Stone Age, all the tricks from the Bronze and Iron Age, all the tricks from the age of gun powder…but you couldn’t stop there. Now you needed to know all the tricks from the Digital and Nano Ages as well. If training methods hadn’t adapted along with the times, there was simply no way anyone could cram that much information and experience into a single lifetime…not even one that had been adjusted for increased duration through modern medicine.

High-intensity burst workouts were proven to be on par with longer repetitions over longer time. The muscles used kept working long after you’d stopped, so it was possible to be as fit as humanely possible while spending only a fraction the time it used to take maintaining. Combined with military tweaks, like Sorilla’s implants adjusting her hormone and bio-chem levels, Sorilla had crammed years of workout results into a few months and was now back at the top of her game.

She had been for a couple weeks, in fact, and was now just relaxing into a holding pattern while she waited for Fleet to get off its ass and give her an assignment. She was ready, damn it.

As she’d been prone to do with increasing frequency over the last month, Sorilla pinged her official messages queue for any new entries, preparing again to be disappointed. This time, however, she was greeted by a single line with her MSIN in the header.

She almost lost her balance during a deep knee bend, catching herself in time as she examined the message closer and finally smiled.

How nice of them to finally wake up and get their backsides in gear.

For Master Sergeant Sorilla Aida, it was time to go back to work.

*****

USF Cheyenne

Holding station at Alamo shipyards

“Priority Fleet com, Admiral.”

“Thank you, Denise,” Nadine Brookes said as she drifted over to her station and keyed in her decrypt.

The message was short and to the point, leaving her to ponder it for only a moment before she opened a com to the bridge.

“Yes, Admiral?” Captain Patrick Roberts asked almost instantly.

“Have the Alamo crews finished clearing the Cheyenne?”

“Yes, ma’am, but the rest of the squadron…”

“That’s fine, Captain. I just need the Cheyenne. Have the other squadron captains stay onstation here, but prepare the Cheyenne to a short run to Earth.”

“Aye, ma’am,” Patrick acknowledged.

She closed the com and turned back to her station, rereading the message.

“Anything important, Admiral?” Denise asked as she arrived with a sealed container of coffee.

“I suspect that we’re going to be redeployed,” she told her aide, taking the aluminum mug and sipping idly on the bite valve.

“Another sighting?” Denise asked, concerned.

“Not specifically, no.” Nadine shrugged. “And they didn’t say, but these orders read like they’re preparing for something big.”

“Hayden, then,” Denise said calmly.

“Likely,” Nadine agreed. “Unless they’ve located an enemy system of greater value, Hayden is the only place we can tie up significant forces on the enemy’s side of things. They’ve shown far too much interest in that planet already. Better to keep their interest focused than to let them get too curious about where our forces are centralized.”

“That works both ways.”

“True.” Nadine nodded grimly. “However, for the moment, at least, we simply don’t have the forces to go looking anyway.”

“Also true,” her aide sighed, drifting over to her station and logging in.

“What are you up to?”

“I need to see if the special orders I made are en route or if I can redirect them to the New Mexico counterweight. If not, I’ll have the Hood pick them up and transship later.”

“I don’t want to know,” Nadine said dryly.

“You never do, ma’am.”

*****

USF offices, Level Two

New Mexico tether counterweight

Sorilla looked around the large room, noting the faces carefully. She recognized most of them from Level Three, mostly representing first world militaries. She wasn’t surprised by that, however, judging from the large planetary image on the screen at the front of the room.

Hayden.

If they were going back to Hayden, it made sense that most of the new teams would be from first world-aligned nations. Hayden was a joint discovery of an American and British expedition, and while there had never been any formal restrictions on immigration, the planet was still populated primarily by people who could trace back to those roots.

“As the more astronomically minded of you have probably divined from the image on the screen,” General Craig Zimm made his presence known abruptly, “we’re preparing another expedition to Hayden. New reports have arrived via a picket drone that seem to show a new force making a move on Hayden. Unlike the previous occupation, this group appears to be proactive. They’re in the jungle, hunting down our patrol units.”

Sorilla sat up straight, attention focused forward with laser intensity. That was a massive shift from the previous operational standard the aliens had shown. They didn’t chase people into the jungle; it went against everything she knew about their SOP.

The image on the wall screen flickered, showing a blurred image of a humanoid form standing against a dark background.

“With a lot of work, we managed to process this image, among others, retrieved from deceased soldiers’ implants,” the general said, “and this is the result.”

A computer-generated image appeared, showing a stocky alien with greyish skin and strange-looking hands. Sorilla had to stare for a moment before she realized that the creature seemed to have two thumbs, one on either side of three thick fingers. It certainly wasn’t anything she’d seen on-world during her previous tour.

“We don’t have any official name for this species, so for the moment, it’s simply Type Charlie. The third extraterrestrial sentient we’ve encountered. Unlike Type Alpha, whom Charlie does resemble superficially, Charlie is stocky and powerfully built. While it does seem to wear a uniform of some sort, Charlie eschews even the basic armor of Type Beta. Don’t be fooled, however. One Hayden pathfinder attempted to plant his personal blade into one of these aliens, and all he got for his trouble was a snapped wrist and his own blade driven into his gut. Even with two successful strikes, all he managed to do was scratch his opponent.”

“What kind of blade was he using?” Ton spoke up from behind Sorilla.

“The pathfinder in question was using a meteor steel, hand forged bowie, Captain Washington. Heavy and about as sharp as any normal blade has a right to be.”

“Damn.”

“No way they can do that against a molecular blade,” Another man, a SEAL named Crow, said confidently.

“Likely not, but let’s not get too overconfident, Lieutenant,” Zimm countered sternly. “Hayden command is currently missing over forty men, at last count, all of them credited to this group of aliens. In return, we have two enemy casualties, both unconfirmed.”

Several people cursed at that bit of intel, and Sorilla almost joined in.

“Just to be very clear, that puts this group on a considerably higher lethality level, estimated death-for-death ratio, than the alien forces using gravity-induced fission attacks.” The general glowered at them all. “We’re sending in more troops to relieve some of the pressure on Hayden command, but you are going to be the sharp point of the spear. Your mission will be to get into the jungle, track these aliens down, and neutralize them.”

He looked around the room, but no one seemed to question the orders. Zimm nodded, satisfied, and then went on.

“We’ll be dividing you into three teams. Team Alpha will take point and be in overall command of the mission,” he said. “Captain Washington, this is your squad.”

“Sir.” The big black man nodded, saying nothing else.

“Master Sergeant Aida, you’re senior NCO on the team.”

“Sir,” Sorilla said, hesitating slightly.

Zimm must have noticed it. “I know that you’re a trainer by profession, Aida, but you also have the most complete hands on experience with Hayden jungles and these aliens.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Glad to have you, Top,” Ton said softly as he leaned forward.

She just nodded.

“Crow, Simmons, Mackenzie, and Kormon…you round out the team.”

“Yes, sir,” they called in unison.

The general went on to detail the beta and gamma teams, but Sorilla tuned him out as she considered the current situation. Not that she was opposed to being on a straight up strike team, her primary assignments were normally educational. That didn’t mean she spent much time in a classroom, though it did happen that way from time to time, but even after the repeal of the ground forces exclusion laws that kept women off the front line, the Army was uneasy with women in higher risk roles.

This was one reason she’d picked the SF over, say, her father’s Ranger unit. With an education track career in the SF, as long as she could hack the physical requirements, Sorilla was able to get out in the field as much or more than many of her male comrades who specialized in more straight forward professions. When it came to training guerillas, your classroom was their entire country.

By the time Sorilla signed up, the Special Forces had one of the highest percentages of women in the American military, because teaching was so core to their existence and women were often able to get some types of information across with less trouble than men. Particularly in some of the Middle East regions, where women were now fighting for their version of suffrage against a militantly patriarchal society. It had yet to blow up into full bore guerilla warfare, but many suspected that was where the situation was heading.

At any rate, to be assigned to a straight up strike team was unusual but certainly not unwelcome. She was looking forward to touching dirt on Hayden again and seeing just what this new group was really up to.

“You’ll all be hitching a ride with the Cheyenne when she leaves orbit in two days,” the general said finally. “That won’t leave time to get most of you your space wings, but Sergeant Aida is master jump qualified and a certified instructor. The trip to Hayden is going to take several weeks, so I’d suggest you make the most of your time. That is all.”

Sorilla masked a grimace.

Qualifying for your space wings was hard enough, but to pull it off onboard ships that were going to be drawing at least a full g most of the way was bad. Being the person who had to teach it, well, that just sucked. That said, she knew that there was no chance they’d be able to earn those wings on this trip. You needed to do orbital drops, and there was no way she was taking that chance in a warzone with unqualified jumpers.

“Sergeant Aida. A moment before you go.”

Sorilla paused, half turning back to see General Zimm motioning her over. He had a wry look on his face that told her he had again been reading her mind.

“We both know they won’t qualify before you reach Hayden, but so as not to worry you about it, you should be aware that the Cheyenne and Hood class ships all have integrated OIS.”

Sorilla nodded. “Understood. Thank you, sir.”

“Do try and get them ready to take their quals before they get back, though.”

“Absolutely, sir.”

“Excellent. Good hunting, Top.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said before leaving.

OIS, or Operator Insertion System, was a shipboard design intended to do exactly what the name implied. The only catch was that it required the ship in question to get pretty deep into the atmosphere to pull it off if the operators weren’t orbit certified, and no starship was able to exactly take its time in atmo.

The idea of being ejected from a multi-million-ton starship moving at hypersonic speeds in atmosphere was a far from enjoyable thought. That said, it was better than trying to keep three teams of rookie jumpers in formation during a space jump that spanned better than 500,000 kilometers. Just keeping them together would be damned near impossible, but landing at the right LZ?

Sorilla had chills at the very thought.

*****

USF forward operating base

Hayden

Kayne detested fighting guerillas.

Not that he’d ever had this sort of experience in the past, most of his counter-insurgent experience involved distinctly urban or desert environments, actually, but the same basic principal held. Guerillas were the most aggravating pains in the ass he’d ever encountered. Even when they were on his side, Kayne didn’t much like dealing with them. Not that he questioned their effectiveness. Operators were just pains in the ass.

And this bunch of new aliens were most certainly operators.

If it weren’t for the completely different description of the aliens in question, Kayne would have considered putting black marks all over Sergeant Aida’s jacket for the horribly faulty intel. However, it was clear that this group was not the one she encountered, being of a completely different species by all appearance and using completely different tactics.

Over the last two months, they’d ambushed his patrols with increasing frequency, striking from long-range with a new set of unknown weapons that were reasonably effective within the jungle environment, striking farming settlements that survived the original invasion and generally making outright pests of themselves.

Unfortunately, most of the common methods for countering insurgents weren’t available to him at the moment. He was as much out of his element as they were, and if they didn’t have access to fire support from those damned gravity valves, then neither did he have the air and artillery support he was used to operating with.

It was rapidly turning into a slugging match in the jungle, and as much as Kayne hated to admit it…his people weren’t cut out for going head-to-head with operators of this class.

They were learning, however. The ones who survived.

Since he’d sent the drone out, they’d confirmed at least one enemy casualty, to a punji pit of all damned things. Using stakes topped with molecular blades, they’d sliced one of the bastards to ribbons when he and his unit pulled back from hitting a farmstead. The civilians hadn’t survived, but at least they’d blooded the aliens and recovered one of their weapons.

Not that anyone was able to figure it out.

Oh, it worked.

The gun operated close enough to a rifle that it didn’t take any work to figure out how to fire it, but that was all there was on it that anyone recognized. It seemed to be cast construction, some lightweight alloy that didn’t match with anything in the records, but had no seams and only the one moving part. Except for the trigger, there was nothing else on the damn thing they could manipulate, and not a single one of the eggheads on the planet could figure out how to take it apart.

He’d get it on the next ship heading back to Sol and hope someone there could figure the thing out.

In the meantime, attempts at securing the continent had mired down as they were forced to relocate more and more of their forces to protecting the areas they already controlled. He’d give his eyeteeth for better intel on the enemy forces, but they’d become jungle ghosts that showed no signs of their passage.

Even the best of the Hayden pathfinders could only find occasional tracks as the teams scoured the jungles between the FOB and the old colony site.

Best intel indicated that there couldn’t be many of them, at least they hadn’t shown any significant numbers, but Kayne’s attempts to secure the surface of Hayden had been stalled in its tracks by them. They had to be an advanced force, though, because as dangerous as they were, Kayne was certain that there was no way in hell a force as apparently small as this one could really do crippling damage to his own. And even if they could somehow take out his troops, they couldn’t secure the planet.

No, they were here to delay humans from reestablishing control and putting defenses into place. Somewhere, out there beyond Hayden’s star, the real enemy was coming. Kayne just hoped to hell that Fleet got here first.

*****

Sentinel basecamp

North of the abandoned colony

Kriss noted the change in status on the mission board as he entered the command post they’d set up and nodded with satisfaction.

These soldiers aren’t bad, but they’re certainly no better than any of the regular forces of the Alliance worlds, and most certainly no match for Sentinels.

Since the first blundering encounter, one that Kriss would likely forever use as an example of what not to do when on a mission, they’d had some close calls here and there but mostly managed to avoid serious casualties. Three more dead, one they hadn’t been able to recover due to the time press and the rather extreme method of trap the enemy had used, along with a smattering of minor to moderate injuries.

Nothing that significantly affected the strength of the squad they’d landed on-world with, so Kriss hadn’t had to put in for reinforcements to date, which was good, as his team had a reputation none of them wanted tarnished. In return for those minor losses, they’d managed to effectively grind enemy movements to a halt, globally, and force them into an area a few thousand mid-breadths’ diameter on the coast of the primary continent.

It didn’t take a Sentinel Warmaster to determine that their basecamp had to be inside that region, likely toward the center of the range along the coast or near one of the major river systems that ran through it.

Likely both, actually, Kriss supposed, eyeing the map. There were a half dozen river deltas that emptied into the ocean within the likely range, and those were often the preferred place for regular forces to make camp.

In situations like this, where they were cut off from air travel, the sea and rivers would offer an attractive mode of transport to many commanders, so there was a strong possibility that they were within close range to one of those deltas.

For the moment, however, that was outside his purview. He didn’t have enough of a force to wipe out a credible military installation, and even regular soldiers were dangerous if you put enough of them in one place and didn’t have a DSD firebase to call on for support.

His job was simply to delay the enemy, make them waste resources and people, and wait for the Fleet taskforce to reinforce the system. If Fleet took their time, Kriss hoped to bankrupt the enemy military entirely.

It wouldn’t be the first time a Sentinel team destroyed the government of a world they never once set foot upon.

With that thought in mind, Kriss examined the patrol charts and noted that another of his teams should be in position to cost the enemy a little something extra shortly.

*****

Grand Hayden River

The electric motors the military had fabbed for the boats were powerful enough to handle some serious seas, so the relatively small patrol boats they’d built from Hayden hardwood trees whirred along at a brisk clip as they made their way upriver. Each of the two boats carried full squads and were staffed by crews of six, two of whom rode the fore and aft cannons while scanning the jungle along either side of the wide river with every scanner tech in their kit.

Unfortunately for them, they were learning what the aliens had learned the hard way when they attempted to trace Sorilla and her Hayden pathfinders during the opening shots of the war. That is, no matter how advanced your tech was, penetrating more than a couple meters of thick jungle was effectively impossible.

Heat scanners were pointless, the teeming jungle was filled with hot-blooded (for lack of a better term) animals that were constantly on the move. Even if you could differentiate between them, you only got maybe a dozen meters of penetration through the thick jungle plants. That barely reached the banks of the river in some places, let alone somewhere where an enemy might be positioned.

Similarly, most other penetrative technologies were as limited, with the x-ray scanners being the most effective overall. They got about forty or fifty meters on those, but the resolution degraded almost exponentially past the first dozen or so. Since the systems relied on reflected radiation, they were pushing things to get that much.

The best solution available was to use multiple drones to scour the jungle ahead of the boats as they advanced and then compile the cross referenced data with the penetrative scanners and basically hope for the best. Under ideal situations, it was an almost effective method of securing the route the boats were travelling along.

Unfortunately, it was also tedious and slow-going, and after a few dozen trips, the crews had begun to get sloppy and complacent, thinking the area secured.

Sloppiness in a warzone inevitably led to sorrow.

The first hint of the attack came as a warping of the air along the north bank of the river just ahead of them, easily missed or dismissed as heat haze. The soldiers on the first ships became aware of the threat when the accelerometers onboard suddenly started screaming into their implants a fraction of an instant before everything seemed to explode in the faces.

The first strikes from the enemy weapons took out the weapon stations on the lead boat, with follow up strikes nailing the boat itself just below the waterline. The computer cores of the two boats responded with automatic return fire, triangulating based on accelerometer readings, and the second boat roared as hypersonic rounds slammed into the jungle ahead. Razors and flame tore the jungle to pieces, shredding leaves, trees, beasts, rocks, and anything else that lay in their path as the surviving men on the two boats scrambled to get a handle on the situation.

The deck of the lead boat was splattered with flesh and blood from the man manning the forward gun. His remains had practically been atomized and splattered back across the windscreen and men beyond, while those of the man in the rear position were now sinking to the bottom of the river and poisoning any unfortunate aquatics that happened to feed on them.

From the other side of the river, another warp blast erupted, tearing into the second boat just seconds behind the first, silencing the automatic fire from the patrol boat in a single moment of explosive carnage. Men were thrown to the deck hard, skidding into the bulkheads or right over the side in a couple cases, but quickly managed to get back to their feet…or more often, their knees as they finally managed to bring their own guns into play.

Guided by implants, the boats’ computer cores issued orders automatically, and the men leveled their weapons at the triangulated origins of the attack and opened up with their rifles on full auto.

Again, the jungle was shredded, literally cutting down the flora as if with a scythe and leaving nothing but the skeletal remains of the trees intact this time.

The roar went on for long seconds, soldiers reloading and emptying the second load into the jungle before the captains of the boats stepped in and ordered them to check their fire.

“Anyone see any of the fuckers?” Lt. Jay Smith growled as he crouched low enough to get some cover, relying on his implants to relay data from the boat’s scanners. “Even one of them ?”

A long silence passed before people slowly started to admit that they’d seen nothing but jungle.

“FUCK!”

“Lead boat is foundering, sir. They’re running the pumps on full, but they’ll be lucky to get back to the FOB. They’re not going any farther upriver.”

Smith snarled, showing teeth as he considered his options, and finally made a decision. “Neither are we. I’m calling a mission abort, we’re RTB.”

“Yes, sir.”

He glared into the jungle, wishing he could at least report that they’d taken some of their attackers with them but knowing damned well that the odds were against it. In just under five seconds, they’d lost four high-powered weapon turrets, near shattered two boats, and lost four good and nearly irreplaceable men in the process.

If we don’t get a handle on this, we’re going to be mired down on this planet for decades.

*****

USF Cheyenne

On Hayden approach

The Cheyenne was on silent approach to Hayden, a tactic that was adding another week to their travel time, but as no one could be certain that another valve hadn’t been brought online, Admiral Nadine Brookes had ordered a different approach from the last time.

Any observer on a planet would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb in every sense of the word to miss a VASIMR pulse drive decelerating in their direction, so they were coming in slow on a ballistic overtake course that would use Hayden’s lunar gravity to slow the ship just before they hit Hayden atmo. It was risky, since they’d be a slower target than usual for a prolonged period on approach, but the admiral and captain had cooked up some answers for that as well and everyone was aware that things were going to get exciting when they made final approach.

The rest of the squadron was blasting around the star system on the other side of the planet from the Cheyenne’s approach, under full acceleration and with every com channel they had blaring for the universe to hear. The hope was that people would be looking over there while the Cheyenne pulled a fast one and dropped up the operator teams in advance of the planned landing of reinforcements.

All of this was the reason why the three squads of operators were floating in microgravity, occupying one of the larger conference rooms on the Cheyenne as Captain Washington issued the final mission brief.

“All right, we’ve picked up the latest data chirp from Hayden, and the situation has continued to deteriorate along the lines we’d half expected,” he said calmly, looking the teams over. “All indications are that this new group are operators of some respectable skill. I think it’s fair to say that we’re seeing the other side’s varsity now, which is going to make things really interesting for us.”

Some good-natured groans and banter were passed around, but on the whole, the group stayed focused, as they knew that the countdown clock was already winding down to zero hour.

“Our job is simple enough, in theory, but is likely to be a bitch and half in practice,” Washington said grimly, nodding to a map of Hayden on the wall screen. “We know that the enemy forces are operating in the vicinity of the old colony site, which could be in response to our troops’ presence on the same continent, or it could be because they’re preparing to secure the site for a new valve installation.

“In either case, we can’t let that stand. Our job will be to tie up and inflict significant casualties on the enemy operators, allowing our ground troops to continue their actions in securing the continent. Until we complete that, TFV won’t be able to come in with the resupply shuttles and weapon satellites.”

They all knew it was coming, but they groaned anyway. Counter insurgency ops were bad enough as a general rule, but when you had to run your missions against experienced and skilled operators, things quickly got dicey. In this case, it likely meant shadowing their own ground forces as they patrolled the jungle, which meant that they were risking being shot at by the aliens and the friendly ground forces in the area.

It was a fairly common mission profile back on Earth, however, so they all knew the drill.

“Unfortunately, while the local FOB will be aware of our presence, we won’t have reliable communications,” Ton went on. “That means that field teams will not have any idea where we are, and I can’t see the brigadier in charge issuing orders to his patrols telling them not to engage unknown contacts…so we’ll probably be shot at by our own boys. Everyone, triple-check your IFF transponders before we leave the Cheyenne. They might be the only thing between you and a high-ex round detonating inside your chest plate.”

The Identification Friend/Foe system was a very limited range radio challenge system integrated into all first world armor and arms, designed to limit friendly fire casualties on the battlefield. While not perfect, particularly when dealing with small arms fire in mid-to close-ranges, it was a fair site better than nothing when it came to at least keeping friendly munitions from detonating in your face.

“This brings us to the insertion phase of our mission.” Washington grimaced slightly. “For that part of the briefing, I’m turning things over to our jump master, Sergeant Aida. The floor is yours, Top.”

“Thank you, sir,” Sorilla said as they shifted their attention to her.

Since the conference room, like the rest of the Cheyenne, was in microgravity while the ship overtook the planet on a ballistic trajectory, she didn’t bother moving to a better position. Everyone just shifted around where they were until they could see her.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to get the teams certified for their space wings,” she said, nodding to those who were still training. “However we probably wouldn’t have used that approach this time anyway, as it didn’t work out so well the last time.”

No one commented. They all knew she was speaking about her former team, and a silent moment of respect was offered up…and accepted.

“Instead, we’ll be using the Cheyenne’s OIS,” she said after the moment passed. “This isn’t a completely untested system, naturally, but as far as I’m aware, the number of people who’ve used it comes in well under forty. Luckily, I was one of the early guinea pigs when they first retrofitted the USS San Diego with a prototype OIS five years ago, so I can give you an idea of what is going to happen.

“First, the Cheyenne will hit atmo fast, hot, and explosively,” she said grimly. “It will not be a smooth ride, not for you, not for anyone on board. We’ll actually be accelerating into the atmosphere, because a pure ballistic trajectory is too easy to predict and we’d like to avoid being compressed into a ball the size of a marble before the whole thing turns into expanding gasses.”

A few people chuckled at that but mostly just nodded and paid attention. A couple were even taking notes.

“The increased hydrogen in the upper atmosphere is going to react explosively to the heat and shockwave, but the mass of the Cheyenne will keep most of that from being felt inside. We, on the other hand, won’t be inside for long,” she told them with wry humor. “We’re going to be ejected from the Cheyenne in ablative capsules at just over 80,000 feet, while moving in excess of eight times hypersonic velocities. Decel is going to kick like a mule when we leave the ship. We’re gonna get bruised, it’s going to hurt. Don’t get distracted. The first few seconds are critical after the ablative shield is blown off. You have to stabilize your fall quickly and bank into a hard dive. If you don’t, it’s possible to get blown up and into the backwash of the ship, and I’d like to take this time to remind you that the ship will be firing its VASIMR drive at this time.”

She looked around the room, making sure they all understood the consequences of that. Normally, getting caught in the ship’s dirty air would be dangerous, certainly, but likely not fatal unless they were knocked unconscious by the buffeting forces and their chute failed to deploy automatically. Even then it was potentially survivable, as Sorilla herself have proven a couple years earlier on her first visit to Hayden.

Then, despite her chute having deployed, it had failed to completely open. She had fallen with only the drogue slowing her descent until she crashed into the canopy of the jungle. Her armor kept her from breaking bones and ultimately saved her life that day.

Getting thrown around in the radioactive heat of the Cheyenne’s VASIMR drive, however, was a fair site beyond armor specs. It would be a spectacular ride, but it would be their last.

“Once we’re clear of the backwash, we stay on a fast dive,” Sorilla said. “I’ll be in the lead, with Captain Washington following tight. Each of you will have your assigned position in the formation. Once we’re down into the lower atmosphere, where it’s thick enough for our control surfaces to get a real bite, we’ll pull out and glide to our landing zone. Is everyone clear?”

The group all nodded. At this point, it was really just standard operating procedure for them. Once they were clear of the ship, the whole thing became an advanced HAGLO (High Altitude, Glide to Low Opening) approach. Tricky, potentially deadly, but something they’d all done in past. Hell, many of them did it for fun.

They didn’t jump from a starship at 80,000 feet, but the principal was still there.

“Good. Once we’re down, things get fun.” She grinned.

Captain Washington nodded, speaking up. “Command of individual teams falls to your squad leader, while I will coordinate. We’ll come down in the area near the old colony site and hike back via separate routes until we cross paths with the ground forces’ patrols. Do not make contact. Pick up a patrol and tail them, keep watch for the aliens. If the patrol comes under attack, only intervene if you can get a clear vector to engage. Otherwise, your orders are to circle around, locate, and shadow the enemy back to their FOB. I’m not telling you to leave anyone out to dry, but don’t give away your positions unless you’re certain you can do some good for them. Clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Clear, sir.”

Washington nodded at the murmured responses. “From there, things get pretty clear cut, in theory at least. Find their FOB, acquire intel on the enemy forces, then begin harassing maneuvers. Booby trap their most-travelled areas, snipe them from extreme range, hell, if you can get an IED in their toilet, do it. These bastards no longer feel safe anywhere on Hayden soil, am I clear ?”

“Yes, sir!”

*****

On the bridge of the Cheyenne, things were quiet, as everyone was either deeply focused on the approach to the planet or trying desperately to find something else to be deeply focused on. They knew that the strength of their current approach was its stealth, and if they were spotted, they’d probably only get a few seconds’ warning before everything went to hell. Which was why the captain ordered everyone into acceleration positions as soon as they were within twelve hours of Hayden.

Coming in quietly meant crossing Hayden’s orbit at one point and overtaking the planet from the sunward side across the system. They were using the gravity of the sun to start the deceleration, a maneuver that would be completed as they crossed Hayden’s lunar, orbit only to be reversed just before they hit Hayden’s atmosphere.

It was a complicated plan, involving several counterintuitive maneuvers that would hopefully keep the Cheyenne from becoming the latest victim of the enemy’s gravity tech.

For Captain Patrick Roberts, however, it all came down to one hope. He just prayed that they hadn’t already spotted the approach.

They knew too little about the enemy’s detection tech to be sure. In fact, Patrick was well aware that they knew far, far more about the enemy gravity tech than they did their targeting and detection systems.

All of which made the inbound flight to Hayden a nerve-wracking affair that was proving to test the mettle of the entire crew. Sometimes it was when all you had was the anticipation that everything seemed to weigh against you. He could feel the tension building as Hayden loomed in the distance, slowly changing from the blue-green disk to the familiar cloud-speckled globe of a life-bearing world.

“We’ll be crossing Hayden’s lunar orbit in fifteen minutes, sir.”

“All right.” He nodded. “So far, so good. Signal to all stations, standby for maneuvering.”

“Aye, sir, signaling to all stations,” the watch officer replied, murmuring quietly into her headset until she turned to look back at him. “All stations, standing at the ready, Captain.”

Patrick nodded to her but didn’t say anything as she turned back to her station. With the Cheyenne on a ballistic drop into Hayden, they were entering the most dangerous part of the approach. They were now well within the range of enemy gravity valves, and the time it would take to wind things up to full combat response level would like as not end them before they got started.

A few more minutes passed before the next report, and when it came, Patrick had to keep from jumping in place at the unexpected sound of someone’s voice.

“Hayden’s moon, approaching from portside aft.”

The Cheyenne’s rear cameras were put up on the screen, showing the dark of the moon, barely visible against the black of space, as the huge chunk of rock hurtled along toward them as it spun around Hayden. The lunar gravity pulled the Cheyenne back, slowing them more relative to Hayden as the moon continued to overtake them. At its closest pass, the moon’s surface was only a few thousand meters below the starship before it began to pull away from them, and the Cheyenne was slowed even more before it began its final free fall approach to Hayden.

Hayden’s moon was closer to the planet than Luna was to Earth, but the final approach was still going to be almost another day, even though the Cheyenne was still pushing more than twice the maximum speed of the Apollo moon shots. It was going to be a long, hard day and night for the crew of the Cheyenne, as they couldn’t unstrap without risking being broken against the bulkheads if the ship had to maneuver suddenly for any reason.

Once the moon’s gravity well was cleared and they were in final approach, however, Patrick took the chance to order a shift change. For the most part, people didn’t even bother moving; they just shifted responsibility over to another station and then settled in place to sleep, read, or just watch canned broadcasts from Earth. Service crews risked their lives to deliver coffee and meals, knowing that if the ship came under attack while they were floating around, they’d probably have only seconds to strap in. They knew at the same time, however, that the ship lived and breathed on its stomach, and a hungry or tired crew was one that would respond just an instant slower in a crisis.

Such was life on a warship in space. Mission elements once measured in minutes were now days or longer, and even delivering coffee was a potentially lethal occupation.

Patrick wasn’t so sure that he’d consider it to be progress, if all truth were told.

*****

Final armor checks took up the time between sleeping as they watched the clock count down in the back of their eyeballs, their implants fully unlocked from standby modes and now running at full combat capacity.

They didn’t run like that fulltime because the overclocked cores would burn out eventually, but when seconds counted, it was more important to get answers than save circuits. It was the difference between years of active lifespan and decades, on average, but the last thing any soldier wanted was to count on averages, because while you had high averages, you also had low ones. No one wanted to roll the dice and crap out.

Sorilla was suited up, fully linked in to her armor even while she was strapped into place inside the breakaway capsule as she waited to be ejected from the ship. Everything had been checked by hand before she suited up, and even now she was running diagnostics in the background as she waited with the others for the clock to end its count.

It was all nothing but make-work, though. Her suit was fine, her weapons were primed, and her kit was good to go. She’d personally checked the flight packs of every man on the teams, so she knew that there was nothing wrong with any of their kits.

Despite it all, though, she was running out of things to occupy her mind, and the surroundings were bringing back memories of another ship, another team.

They hadn’t spent as long on the ship that time, making their jump from well out beyond orbit and coming in unpowered on pure ballistic trajectories. Just over a day, all of it in armor that was blacked out by ablative spray on material designed to let them survive reentry. It was so thick that they couldn’t move, couldn’t do more than breathe and squirm while they waited for the atmosphere to burn the material off enough for them to break loose. Mere meters from her team the whole way in, yet unable to talk to them in their last hours because of radio silence.

She closed her eyes, killing her implants just as she wished she could kill her memories.

“Atmospheric entry in twenty minutes, VASIMR burn will commence in ten.” The captain’s voice woke her up just as the images were fading. “Op teams, standby for insert. I say again, ops teams, standby for insert.”

Sorilla wished she could stretch out a bit, work the kinks out of her muscles before the mission officially kicked off, but that wasn’t in the cards. Sometimes the ability to do literally nothing was the most valuable skill she’d picked up in the military. It was harder than it sounded, to be honest; muscles balked at that sort of treatment, but it had to be done so very often that, in certain professions, you either learned it or you washed out.

Sorilla damned well refused to wash out of anything she did.

*****

“VASIMR coming online!”

“Engine burn in thirty seconds!”

Admiral Nadine Brookes listened in on the bridge chatter as the Cheyenne prepared for the acceleration into the planet’s atmosphere. The most technically dangerous part of the insertion plan, atmospheric entry was always an exciting time for a starship.

Like the Los Angeles class before it, the Cheyenne class starship was most certainly not rated to land on a planet. It also wasn’t rated to fly in an atmosphere, which meant that the art of flying a starship through planetary atmosphere was a matter of learning to throw yourself, your ship, and your entire crew at the ground…and miss.

Of course, that left out the fact that you’d be on fire the whole way, with constant explosions in the kiloton range detonating all around you as the air itself tried to kill you.

The ceramic plates on the exterior armor were rated to stand a lot more than that, thankfully, and the thick nickel-iron hull made sure that human-forged starships, as tough as they were, could easily stand the forces at play. With the VASIMR providing the motive force to help them miss the ground, Nadine knew that the maneuver itself wasn’t the really dangerous part.

The real issue came in that it was impossible to miss a starship tearing through the atmosphere; you could see it across continents .

If there was an active gravity valve on Hayden, they were about to make themselves one unmistakable target.

“All hands, this is the captain. Stand by for VASIMR firing in ten seconds.”

The hull of the Cheyenne was just starting to feel the kiss of Hayden’s atmosphere when the VASIMR drives went to one-gravity acceleration. Its nose tipped down into the planet’s gravity well, the Cheyenne penetrating Hayden atmosphere at five times the recommended entry velocity and accelerating.

The air exploded ahead of them, wings of fire erupting out around the nose of the Cheyenne and sweeping back to envelop the entire ship.

“Cheyenne computers advise we deploy aerobraking systems.”

“Belay that!” Patrick ordered. “Maintain acceleration.”

“Aye, sir, maintaining acceleration.”

He stabbed his finger down on the panel in front of him, linking into the operator channel for a moment. “Operators, standby for deployment.”

*****

Her vision was clouded in red, her implants coloring her view as the jump warning activated. Her eyes glowed red as she opened them in her armor, the HUD coming online from sleep mode.

“Operators, stand by for deployment.”

The captain’s voice was distant, Sorilla’s heartbeat already winding up as she fully awoke. She kept her breathing controlled, but everything else about her was preparing for what was to come as the red light pulsed behind her eye.

“All teams, this is it,” Washington said calmly. “Once we launch, we won’t have access to the Cheyenne’s fiber network. That means we go com-silent. I say again, com-silent. Remember your training, follow your lead man down, and don’t forget the lessons you got from Top. Ton out. Ohh rah.”

“Hoo rah!” they all called back automatically.

The light behind their eyes turned yellow.

“This is gonna SUUUCKKK!” someone yelled just as the light flashed once and turned green.

Sorilla went first, a mule kicking her right between the shoulders as her capsule was blown clear of the Cheyenne. The same blasted mule kicked her again, this time across her whole body, as the capsule hit the airstream and suddenly decelerated down and away from the starship.

She felt the capsule crack under the pressure, its job of protecting her from the first sudden whiplash done. As the capsule split open and blew away, Sorilla threw her arms and legs out to catch the wind, stabilizing her fall, and then leaned back into a dive as she watched the flaming mass of the Cheyenne rumble away above her.

Then it was gone, and she was looking down at the dark side of Hayden as she tucked her arms in close, legs together, and dove for the deck as fast as she could fall.

She couldn’t see behind her but trusted in her team.

They were there.

*****

“All operators away.”

“Increase thrust to the VASIMR. It’s time to leave before we overstay our welcome,” Patrick ordered calmly.

“Aye, sir. Increasing thrust.”

“Two gravities, Mr Graham.”

“Aye, sir, two gravities,” the helmsman responded.

The crew and captain of the Cheyenne were slammed back into their acceleration bolsters as the big ship missed plowing into a mountaintop by only a few thousand meters then slowly climbed away as the curve of the planet fell out beneath them.

Behind the flaming starship, invisible in the night, three teams of combat operators plummeted to the jungle below. As night sky gave way to space-black, the Cheyenne once again missed the ground it had thrown itself at.

Chapter Eight

Upper Atmosphere, Hayden

It was silent as Sorilla plummeted through the dark of the Hayden night, only the stars overhead to provide illumination now that the Cheyenne had thundered out over the horizon. The armor was filtering out the roar of the wind, and her face was bathed in the green light of the helm’s HUD as it flickered in light-gathering mode to show her the ground rushing up to meet her.

She adjusted to the south slightly, still in a steep dive, already eyeballing the mountains to her right as she began to approach their peaks. A couple thousand meters over the top of the mountain range, Sorilla snapped her arms out and opened the glide wings attached to her armor for this entry.

There was a brief crush of acceleration as she slowed rapidly, her dive turning into a fast glide that took her into the mountains just as the sheer faces of those mounds of rock began to rocket skyward all around her. She banked hard to the right, turning into the range and circling around one of the mountains, following the contours of the valley down to the jungle below.

Behind her, like raptors on a hunter’s dive, her team followed while the other two teams split off to the north and south.

Sorilla remained focused on the LZ, however, aiming for a familiar logging road that ran north to south from the old colony site out through the jungle. Once she had it in sight, Sorilla closed up her wings and dove again, picking up speed as the others in her team followed one by one in single file.

She snapped out the glide wings again as she approached the last few thousand feet to the jungle below, flashing over the colony site like a wraith in the night. A few last-minute adjustments were made, lining her up with the road, and Sorilla led her team down into the jungle at more than 800 kilometers per hour.

The jungle canopy began flashing by in her peripheral vision as she descended to the last fifty meters or so, flying along the old logging road at insane speeds. As she reached the last ten meters, Sorilla flared her glide wings and pulled up into a climb as she bled speed in exchange for altitude, just moments from a lethal crash landing.

The timing was tricky on this maneuver, as she had to slow enough that, when she deployed her chute, it would be able to keep her from plummeting the last little distance to the ground and possibly injuring herself, but not so much that she actually stalled her glide and was going too slowly to properly deploy her chute. In either case, she’d plummet maybe fifty or sixty meters to the ground and probably injure herself to one degree or another.

Ironically, Sorilla knew that she’d probably break something more serious than when she’d originally slammed into the Hayden jungle floor at near terminal velocity a couple years previously. That time, she’d be unconscious and totally limp when she hit, leaving her body more able to take the impact. If she screwed up now, she was going to see it coming, and there was almost no way she’d be able to force herself to relax before striking the ground.

As she started to climb, still moving several hundred kilometers per hour, Sorilla triggered her chute and felt it snap her back hard. She swung crazily under the large cargo class chute, like an out of control pendulum, but the timing was right and by the time she landed she was only moving two or three times the normal speed for a sky diver on Earth.

Normally, that might be a problem, but in armor Sorilla took the impact without so much as a grunt and instantly pivoted as she dropped to one knee and started reeling her chute in.

There were those on Earth who could pull off the landing maneuver without a chute, though the majority of them wouldn’t dare try it with 150 kilos of weapons and kit. Sorilla had done it more than once, including a few times in full kit as part of earning her space wings. But no one on her team was trained for it, and even she didn’t care to try it on Hayden, where the air pressure and gravity were both different from Earth.

As she bundled her chute, Sorilla watched Ton hitting the ground like a sack of rocks as the next three chutes became visible against the night sky just beyond him.

So far, so good.

She checked her gear then tossed it under a tree by the side of the road before walking toward where Ton was getting his chute under control. As she approached, Sorilla activated the NFC com channel.

“You good, sir?”

“All good, Top,” Ton replied calmly over the same channel.

The Near Field Communications channels were specially designed radio frequencies that were completely undetectable past about fifty meters. Originally designed for secure communications between things like credit cards and cashier stations, NFC turned out to be very useful for military communications between squadmates when you didn’t want to use longer-range frequencies…even encrypted ones.

Sorilla nodded quickly as she sprinted past him, grabbing Crow’s chute and helping the lieutenant pull in the mass of material. Before they were done with that, Ton had moved past them to help the next in line, and then Sorilla finished up by helping the last man down. It took only moments to get all the gear organized and the group ready to move, and then they vanished into the jungle, leaving only a half a handful of footprints to show their passage.

*****

USF forward operating base

Hayden

Brigadier Kayne growled as he read the latest list of memos from the lunar satellite. The fact that the USF had elected to deploy operators to the theatre didn’t surprise him, but he would have preferred if they’d cycled through the FOB before entering the AO. Now he’d have to try and keep his people from shooting at them.

On the plus side of the equation, that wouldn’t be as hard as it normally was. The enemy used significantly different weapons and really didn’t look anything like humans beyond a general humanoid shape. Compared to some situations he’d encountered in the past, this was reasonably safe and clear cut.

There had been times when he was in charge of peacekeeping units who had to be ordered not to return fire against sniper threats, because there were operators in the field conducting counter-sniper missions and it was fifty-fifty that they’d shoot the wrong guys. Those situations were always a public relations nightmare on the home front, since reporters invariably would tell everyone about the “no shoot” orders. But since they were unaware of the classified actions of the operator teams, the people at home were constantly under the impression that their sons and daughters were being tied out to slaughter and not even permitted the right of self-defense.

Speaking of which… Kayne paused for a moment before smiling. I knew I was feeling too relaxed. No reporters. That’s a big plus about this duty assignment, that’s for sure.

That amusing thought aside, he had a fair bit of work to do now that Fleet had shown the flag back in the system again and was looking to hang around a little longer. Due to the problem with the new aliens ambushing his patrols, he’d pulled them back into closer areas where they could better support one another and be supported by drones.

Now they were going to have to start pushing out again and hope that the operator teams would be able to change the tide of the battles.

*****

North of USF FOB

Hayden

Locating one of the patrol units was child’s play for the operators, and by morning Sorilla was looking down from a thickly covered hill at the passage of a standard reconnaissance platoon being led by a Hayden pathfinder she recognized from her time training the man.

Richard Devon, she thought idly, eyes flicking over the platoon as she noted the implant signatures from each of them. Good jungle hand, not so good with his rifle.

Indeed, the man had opted not to carry a rifle on this patrol, apparently sticking with a heavy caliber, auto-loading pistol he must have pulled from base stores.

No way a civilian picks one of those up otherwise, Sorilla knew.

There was a significant difference between civilian weapons and military issue, starting with the caliber limitation that kept handguns and rifles to fifty caliber or smaller. Larger military calibers were also generally harder hitting, often explosive or incendiary, and usually packed significant smart circuitry. Just firing a single magazine from a military issue weapon was usually more than a casual civilian could afford.

She was just close enough to the platoon to have riffed their gear, much the same way she’d used her IFF sensors to locate them in the first place. The local battle network wasn’t as complete as it would be on Earth, but Sorilla and her team had enough to know that there were three patrols in the area plus two squads of Cougars rolling backup a few kilometers behind them.

She was mildly surprised to see that they didn’t have any of the smaller and nimbler DOGs with them, however.

She looked over her shoulder, farther back up the hill she was squatting on, and held up her hand then showed one finger before closing her fist.

A second later, from a hundred meters up the hill, she saw Ton appear from the jungle for an instant and lift his own hand, circling it vertically.

Sorilla dropped her arm and moved north, paralleling the platoon as they made their way through the jungle. It was going to be a long day, but as distasteful as it was, it was a lot more effective to use the patrols as bait than it would be to stumble around the jungle looking for them.

To the east of her position, two of the people she was watching were holding a quiet conversation as they moved through the jungle. Had she been close enough, Sorilla probably would have smacked them for the slack discipline, particularly the man she’d personally spent time training.

“It feels like we’re being watched every time we go out now,” Richard said as he fingered his pistol, eyes scanning the jungle.

“Assume that we are,” The lieutentant, a man named Chisholm according to her database, told him as the two walked in the center of the platoon’s formation, heading north toward the old colony site. “It’s safer that way.”

“The general said that Fleet sent in some new people…”

“Yeah,” Chisholm nodded, “operators. Warfare specialists. They’ll be out looking for these bastards.”

“Like the Sarge.”

“Yeah, probably.” The lieutenant shrugged. “But they’ll be strike teams this time.”

“What’s the difference?”

“I haven’t checked the files, but word is that Aida was part of a recon team. Their job is to move in, check out the area, and signal Fleet,” Chisholm said, head moving on a swivel as he examined the jungle they were passing through. “The group they’ll have sent this time will be on definitive search and destroy. Your ‘Sarge’ was an SF trainer, her specialty was teaching people to fight. You got lucky there, I’d say. That was the one specialty you guys needed in the worst way.”

“I’m not going to argue with you on that. So, this group is different?”

“Yeah. Snipers, jungle warfare specialists, demo men,” Chisholm said. “The sort of guys you don’t invite to a party unless you know for a fact that you’re not on their shitlist.”

Richard chuckled softly. “I ran patrols and deep strike missions with the Sarge, Lieutenant. If I wasn’t sure that I wasn’t on her shitlist, I wouldn’t want to be on the same goddamned planet , never mind at the same party.”

Chisholm just shrugged this time. He didn’t know Aida personally and was sure she was good at her job, but it was pretty clear to him that Richard didn’t really get what he was talking about. He’d met a fair few operators since he’d signed up, and there was just no way some teacher, even one wearing a green beret, held a candle to the guys he was thinking about.

When night fell, Sorilla found herself perched about twenty meters over the jungle floor with the local patrol setting up camp a quarter kilometer away. She had line of sight on them from her position, but it had been a long day and it was shaping up to be a longer night.

She tossed a strap over one of the thick branches above her then clipped a quick release clamp to her armor’s shoulder and let herself hang in place. With her armor set to monitor the local area using passive systems, she settled in to get a little shuteye while she could.

Out there, somewhere in the Hayden jungle, she was pretty sure that the rest of her team would be doing much the same. They hadn’t had any contact in hours, but that wasn’t surprising. They were all good operators, so she knew they’d kept up fine, and when the time came, they’d be where they needed to be.

Bird dogging a patrol was tedious work: long hours of following your own people while working like hell to keep them from knowing you were there, all the while knowing that the odds were that some of them were going to die before you could do anything, even if it all went according to plan. At the end of the tedium, there would be terror and rage and sorrow, and though she could see it all coming, there wasn’t a damned thing Sorilla could to that would stop it.

Some days you got to be the rescuing hero, some days you had to settle for the avenging angel.

*****

USF Cheyenne, Taskforce Five

Outer Hayden System

Admiral Nadine Brookes was quietly reading over deployment maps and charts of the local system when Denise pulled herself into the room without signaling. Nadine looked up, surprised at that. Denise was the only person on the ship who’d even think of doing that, but even she wouldn’t barge in on a whim.

“Yes?”

“Accelerometers registered a gravity event, ma’am.”

Nadine slapped the folder shut on the pad with the maps, automatically strapping it down so it wouldn’t fly around, and she then slipped clear of her own light straps and pushed off. “With me.”

“Aye, ma’am.”

Nadine swung through the bulkhead door and kicked off the corner, flying up to the admiralty deck, where she immediately dropped into her station and strapped in. “Report.”

“Not much yet, ma’am,” Ensign Colbert, one of her staff, replied without looking up. “The gravity event was very small, or very far away, but it was most likely a non-natural event, ma’am.”

“Valve use? Or incoming jump?”

“Signature is consistent with a jump, ma’am, what little we’ve got. We’re coordinating with the rest of the squadron now, triangulating and layering the data to get a higher resolution.”

“So,” Nadine said softly, eyes on the system charts open across her screens. “They’re here then.”

“Looks that way, Admiral,” Denise said softly.

Nadine glanced at the squadron status and noticed that they were still as she’d left them when she retired to her cabin earlier. VASIMR drives were powered down as the ships floated near the Trojan point of one of the system’s outer worlds.

While not quite the mass of a gas giant, the huge “super-Earth” class planet was big enough to have stabilized some of the system’s asteroids into two points near its orbit. They’d parked the fleet there, because it was within range of two of Hayden’s three most stable jump points while still remaining within reasonable strike range of Hayden itself.

With their drives down and communications link limited to laser coms, they were about as invisible as they could be. Even if the enemy had space-time gravity detection systems, as most researchers on Earth believed, the taskforce was parked amid a substantial asteroid field.

They can probably see us on those systems, but our hulls are mostly nickel-iron. We are asteroids to anything but visual detection.

“Find them,” she said finally. “They’ll be on track for Hayden orbit and most likely coming in from the direction of the Alpha or Beta Jump Points.”

“Ma’am, we know they jump farther in-system than that.”

“Yeah, they, but even if they play with gravity better than we can, they have to have some limits,” she said. “Previous tracks showed that they were still using the same jump points we use, Denise. They just can warp space in a much larger radius than us. Focus on direct and ballistic trajectories from Alpha and Beta to Hayden.”

“Aye, ma’am, I’ll pass those orders along.”

“And bring the squadron to general quarters,” Nadine said grimly. “But do it very, very quietly. We’re hunting aliens tonight.”

“Aye aye, ma’am.”

*****

“Oh, motherless void.”

Patrick considered reprimanding the ensign who’d cursed, but honestly, he had a few more colored phrases in mind, himself. They’d located the enemy ships, right on the track the admiral predicted, but they hadn’t expected what they’d found.

“Count is up to fifteen of the expected class starships, plus three of the new type.”

Aye, yes. Patrick examined the screen. The new type.

The new ships massed twice the first class and easily kept pace with the rest of the flotilla they were watching, despite them being tracked at 150 gravities’ acceleration as they came into the system. He watched the track for a few more seconds, trying to wrap his mind around what he was seeing.

What the hell do we do about this?

“Captain…sir, we need to…”

“Yes, I know.” He shook himself to try and break the feeling then turned and keyed a channel to the admiral. “Ma’am. If you want to intercept, we have to act within the next few minutes.”

There was a long silence from the admiral’s deck.

“Ma’am,” he said again, softly. “They’ll slip past us and get to Hayden if we don’t…”

“I am aware of that, Captain,” she finally cut him off. “Have all ships adjust profiles to intercept.”

“Aye, ma’am.”

“Do this quietly , Captain,” she stressed harshly. “We get one shot at this, if we’re damned lucky.”

“Copy that, Admiral,” Patrick said tersely. “I know my job, ma’am.”

“Go to it then, Captain.”

“Wilco.” Patrick closed the channel, turning his focus to his bridge crew.“Helm, thrusters only! Make our heading four three niner, mark five to the negative three!”

“Aye, sir! Making heading four three niner, mark five to the negative three!”

“Coms! Send to all squadron ships!”

“Squadron channel open.”

“All ships, all ships, stand by for vector and maneuvering directions,” Patrick belted out. “Orders are to remain at maximum stealth. Do not deviate from these directions. Collier ships are to remain onstation until action is completed and either rendezvous after…or leave the system with all due haste. Copy and confirm.”

He slipped his straps, kicking out of the chair even as the thrusters continued to twist the Cheyenne around, and clumsily made his way over to the flight suit locker located nearby. “Close squadcom.”

“Squadron com closed.”

“Open ship-wide.”

“Ship-wide open.”

Patrick pulled a flight suit out of the locker. “All hands, all hands, this is the captain. We are preparing to engage an enemy squadron. Flight maneuvering at high-gravity acceleration is expected. All hands are ordered to suit up and strap down. Vacation is over, ladies and gentlemen. Time to put on the monkey suits. That is all.”

“Com closed.”

Patrick pulled his suit closed and tightened the straps around his legs, arms, and body so the suit could do its job. The Cheyenne’s thrusters retro-fired then, causing him to catch himself against the bulkhead before being tossed around, then microgravity was restored and he looked around.

“You heard me, people. Suit up.”

*****

“Is this the right move?” Nadine asked softly, enough that no one could have heard her.

No one except Denise Milan, who was approaching from behind her station. Denise leaned over her, close enough to whisper without attracting attention.

“Ma’am?”

“If we lose Taskforce Five, Earth doesn’t have a lot left.” Nadine leaned back, barely moving her lips.

“If these ships slip through unchallenged, we lose Hayden,” Denise reminded her, playing the advocate role.

“I know that,” Nadine replied. “So now I have to balance the survival of this squadron against the war effort and Hayden’s continued value. If these pieces of filth would just talk to us, I’d surrender Hayden to them in exchange for opening a dialogue. It’s not that valuable a planet.”

“It is to them,” Denise countered quietly. “And we need time.”

Nadine sighed softly, nodding. “You’re right. You always are, aren’t you Denise?”

“I do try, Admiral.” The raven haired woman smiled, her expression melancholy.

She knew that she’d just talked her admiral into committing the squadron, including the ship she was sitting on, to a battle they very possibly could not win. Oh, that wasn’t exactly true. The admiral had already made the decision; she just helped her feel better about it. It still sucked, however.

Denise stepped back, finished tightening the straps on her flight suit, and slid down into her station. It was strange, to be honest. When she’d joined the USF, she had thought she’d prepared herself for pretty much everything she could think of in terms of ways she could die. Strangling in the vacuum of space, burning up on entry to some alien world’s atmosphere, even being eaten by some creature like those that inhabited Hayden…all of those had crossed her mind.

Being compressed into a point of space so small you’d need an electron microscope to see it, then being converted to energy and expanding gasses by an alien super-weapon?

Well, that hadn’t really crossed her mind.

Nonetheless, as she strapped herself in, Denise couldn’t find it in her to regret her decision. One way or another, this was where the future was being decided. History in its purest form.

“All ships have maneuvered to new heading,” Colbert announced, distracting them both. “Captain Rogers is requesting the green light.”

Nadine nodded. “The light is green.”

“Aye, ma’am. The light is green”

Just instants after she gave the order, the Cheyenne’s VASIMR drive rumbled to life, and they were pushed back hard into their acceleration bolsters as the squadron moved out of its position amid the asteroids and headed to intercept their target. The deck was soon filled with the gasping grunts of people clenching their abdomens and using their breathing to force blood from their extremities to their brains.

Nadine pulled her repeater closer, eyes carefully watching the twin tracks of her squadron and the aliens. The success of her maneuver here would depend entirely on being able to hide the radioactive thrust of the VASIMR drives from the enemy ships for as long as was humanely possible.

That meant that they had to get tricky.

She’d timed the green light order close, but they were accelerating into the super-Earth as hard and fast as they could. At better than ten gravities’ acceleration, they’d normally stand out like roman candles in the night, but the enemy squadron was directly ahead of them and on the other side of the planet. Their drives were aimed directly away, and like lasers, the plume of a VASIMR drive was very directional. With the planet to cover any bleed, they should still be entirely invisible as they prepared to slingshot around the super-Earth.

The alien squadron was still a lot farther out than Taskforce Five, but they were building velocity at insane levels. TFF had the inside track, but the engagement window was going to be tight and there would be no second chances. If they didn’t pull off the strike with near perfection, the aliens would annihilate them as they passed…or, barring that, pick them off later at their leisure.

“Time to intercept…” Colbert said through clenched teeth. “Twelve hours, eighteen minutes, thirty-eight seconds…we’ll engage them in Hayden orbit.”

Damn, but this is cutting things close.

*****

Jungle north of FOB

Hayden

Sorilla woke an hour before local sunrise, her HUD flashing to life and bringing her out of her semi-sleep with quiet but quick efficiency. She instantly checked on the patrol but found them in the same place they’d been the night before.

They were bunked out in the camp they’d cut out of the jungle. She easily picked their sentries out of the foliage, with no signs of moving just yet. The jungle was as dark as it got, no hint of the breaking dawn visible yet as Sorilla unstrapped and queried her computer on why it woke her.

Sonic anomaly.

Sorilla raised an eyebrow, subvocalizing her next order. ‘Locate source.’

Unable to comply. Insufficient directional data.

No shit. Sorilla resisted the urge to roll her eyes. In the jungle, it was next to impossible to get decent directional vectors, but she figured she’d give it a shot.

‘ Proc, play anomaly. ’

Sorilla listened to the sound, eyes half lidded. It was pretty much as described, which was anomalous. It wasn’t natural, though, she was pretty sure of that. There was a distinct hint of metal on metal toward the end of the noise, and she wasn’t aware of anything natural on Earth or Hayden that did that.

It was also close.

She quietly shifted her position and re-clipped the strap to her waist this time, then inverted and slowly lowered herself down until her head was just penetrating the canopy. Twisting about silently, Sorilla scanned the immediate area around her but found nothing that jumped out at her.

Which was good, really, since anything so close that it jumped out at her would likely really jump out at her.

With the area cleared, Sorilla withdrew back into the canopy and unclipped from the tree again while she considered her options. If the sound was one of the enemy operators, then they’d be zeroing in on the patrol camp.

Which way? She brought up an overlay of the area below her on the HUD. Not direct. They’ll come in from better cover than that route provides.

Unslinging her rifle as she balanced on the thick branch, Sorilla began to pace off from the central trunk, feet carefully coming down on the intertwined branches of neighboring trees as she slowly inched her way from one to the next, her rifle to her shoulder as she examined the area through the canopy through thermal enhancement.

Come on, Marvin. Where are you hiding?

One foot in front of the other, test the strength of the branches, examine the area below the canopy through thermal, then and only then shift her weight. Pause a moment, again check the area under the canopy, and repeat.

Each step was deliberate, made with machine-like precision, but fluid as a panther prowling. She proceeded through the jungle canopy, moving faster than you might expect, given her precarious position so far above the floor. Every time she spotted a heat source, which was often, she had to pause to confirm that it was a local beast, and every time, that was precisely what it turned out to be.

As she neared the camp’s position, Sorilla was beginning to think that it had been a false alarm.

Then the world exploded beneath her.

*****

Richard Devon awoke in the jungle darkness, blinking in confusion.

What woke me up?

He sat up, stripping the jungle netting down from around his position and frowning as he got to his knees and cast about in the dark.

“What’s wrong?”

He recognized the bleary voice as belonging to the lieutenant.

“I don’t know,” he said, looking around. “Something’s wrong.”

“What?”

“I don’t know, ” Richard hissed.

“All right, I’m waking the platoon,” Chisholm decided, pushing himself up and grabbing his helmet.

Chisholm was strapping his helmet and HUD on when Devon’s mind caught up to his jungle sense.

“The crickets. They’re quiet.”

“What?”

“We call them crickets,” he told the lieutenant. “Same thing as on earth, really. Noisy bastards, but I don’t hear them.”

Devon frowned, looking around as he realized the man was right. He’d gotten so used to them that he’d tuned them out, but now that it had been pointed out, the silence was, as they said, deafening.

“Right,” he decided. “Everyone up!”

As he crouched down to retrieve his rifle, a crack of sound erupted above him, and the tree near where he’d slept exploded to splinters. Chisholm threw himself across the ground. “Alert! Fucking alert! We’re under attack!”

He couldn’t see a damned thing other than the members of the platoon struggling to their feet, couldn’t tell where the guards were or what the hell was going on, but Chisholm had heard the strange hum-crack sound of the enemy weapons before. Granted, never this damned close, but he knew them when he heard them.

His HUD was lit up as he twisted around on the ground, aiming his rifle one way and then the other, but nothing was showing up.

“Where the fuck are they?” he snarled into the darkness.

The whole area was lit up in the thermal scanner, aside from the obvious soldiers he was seeing. It took him a moment to realize what was causing the trees and ground to glow so obviously warm compared to the rest.

Blood. The whole place is coated in fucking blood.

The jungle fell silent, and crawling itches started to move along his back as he cast about for any sign of the attackers. A sound above him started Chisholm’s motion to roll over, but before he could finish it, a weight slammed into his back and drove his face into the soil. In the reverse imager of his HUD, he could see the strange form, barely distinguishable from the jungle, and the glint of a blade against the blackness.

As he was about to die, all he could think of was the taste of the dirt in his mouth. It reminded him oddly of chocolate, with a hint of coffee.

Chapter Nine

“Fuck me,” Sorilla said in shock.

The entire initial attack was over in seconds, and she still didn’t have eyes on the targets. The camp below her was completely in disarray, and several of the soldiers had been spread across a couple dozen square meters of Hayden jungle by the enemy weapons. Sorilla was about to expand her search area in hopes of finding just one of them when a commotion below caught her eye.

A solid form was looming over one of the downed soldiers, only really visible because it was blocking the human’s body heat from reaching Sorilla.

Thermally neutral. Can’t be natural. They must be using similar tech to my armor. Damn.

She could feel the slices of time counting off as other blank spaces began to show in the camp, grabbing soldiers and obviously preparing to finish the job they started. She wondered briefly why they’d get in so close to do that, but really, it didn’t matter a lot. Hubris maybe, perhaps it was part of their psychwar tactics, it didn’t matter.

She set her rifle aside, knowing that, amid all the friendly IFF signals in such close range, it would be useless unless she disabled the recognition systems. If she did that, in such close quarters with a military rail gun and explosive munitions, well, she’d inflict more damage on allied troops than the aliens had. The heavy assault weapon just wasn’t designed for the sort of duty she was about to demand.

Sorilla palmed a flash bang and a flare in each hand then jumped up, picked her spot, and punched through the canopy. She thumbed the activators on the devices in her hand on the way down, throwing them out to the side as she fell below the canopy. They exploded in the clearing, bathing the area in blinding light and sound, all of which her armor conveniently edited out in real time.

She landed on the shoulders of the figure below her, falling into a squat as she grabbed his head and then kicking off with a flip and a twist.

He’s not wearing armor. Interesting.

She felt and heard the bones in what passed for the alien’s neck splinter into shards as she wrenched it around. Sorilla brought her leg down in a heel strike against the next closest target, hitting with enough force to shatter concrete, but was surprised when she felt her heel bounce without seeming to cause much damage.

Great. Tough bastards to take a hit like that without a flinch. Best not take chances.

She reached down and pulled her blade with her left hand, thumbing the molecular edge to full power before driving it back into the alien she’d just half-twisted the head off of. It sank in to the hilt, so she adjusted her grip without looking back and simply wrenched the blade up to gut the target where he stood.

As her blade cleared, Sorilla spun around and slashed the throat of the closest alien before it could finish the charge it was obviously preparing to make, then drew her M-Tac with her right hand and extended the weapon out to her side at another of the aliens that had noticed her entrance.

The heavy caliber Metalstorm weapon barked twice, so quickly that it sounded like one shot, and put two heavy explosive rounds in the creature’s center mass. When he kept coming, Sorilla switched to auto-fire and emptied another dozen rounds into him, stepping back a pace to let the body slide in front of her when it hit the ground.

Three down, two left in sight.

She stepped over the body at her feet, put two rounds in the one whose throat she’d slit, then focused on the next.

They’d recovered from the flash bangs quicker than un-augmented humans could have, despite having no sign of armor or head and ear protection. Assuming, of course, the flaps she saw on their skulls were ears. She noted it distantly but didn’t have time to worry too much about it at the moment.

The last two had their shit together, she would certainly give them that. They grabbed for cover before she could draw a bead on them, already abandoning their little psywar games with the close quarters and grabbing for heavier artillery. She didn’t feel like testing her armor against their pop guns, however, so she went for a powered leap that brought her to one of the lower branches of a nearby tree. About fifteen meters up, Sorilla cleared the cover they had ducked behind and put half her remaining rounds into the closest.

He was rocked back, thrown to the ground as explosive spurts of grey fluid and matter exploded from his body. His comrade began backpedalling, bringing his weapon up to spray the trees.

Sorilla dropped under the blasts, landing in a crouch, and rolled forward to bring her M-Tac back into play. She had to reevaluate on the fly when he adjusted faster than expected and threw herself to the side as his weapon chewed up the ground around her.

Fast. Tough. Disciplined. Most would be running in terror by now. She analyzed the situation in the back of her mind, even as her body continued on autopilot.

She hit the ground in a shoulder roll, coming up behind a tree, and snapped her hand out to put a burst downrange in his direction. The smart rounds fired from her pistol had nothing to track on as they exploded around the target, but the detonating munitions forced him back a pace as he continued to fire.

Sorilla flinched as the tree itself shook at her back, the three-meter-thick Hayden hardwood trunk being torn apart by the alien weapon. Sorilla leaned over just far enough for her armor’s cameras to find the alien then extended her gun out slightly farther as she zeroed in on his weapon and fired another burst.

The hard-hitting rounds tore the gun from his grip, and Sorilla was moving before it could hit the jungle floor. Her M-Tac snarled, winging the dodging alien at least three times as he gave up the fight and bolted for the jungle. She continued to fire after him as he ran but intentionally led her fire short and wide to spur him along.

PsyOps work two ways, you fucker , she thought grimly as he vanished into the jungle as fast as he could run, presumably, at any rate. Her pistol went red in her HUD, signifying that it was empty, just after the target vanished.

Sorilla cracked the pistol open with a flick of her wrist and thumb then lifted it up over her shoulder. The barrel assembly slid out of the forward casing, bouncing off her shoulder on its way to the ground, and Sorilla calmly replaced it with a fresh dual barrel assembly from her thigh pouch before snapping the weapon shut.

She turned as she holstered her sidearm, retrieved her knife from where she’d dropped it, and then sheathed that, as well. Finally, she turned to the soldiers who were not quite aiming their weapons at her.

“Go back to base. Your patrol is over,” she told them, walking back to where she’d made her entrance.

“Who the fuck are you?” one of them stammered out.

“Shut your mouth, Jace,” the lieutenant snapped as he wiped grey fluid from his face. “She’s obviously one of the operator team we were briefed on.”

“Not bad, L.T.,” Sorilla said as she reached his position. “You chew gum and walk at the same time?”

“Only if a noncom is around to tell me how,” the man countered dryly. “Right, Sergeant?”

“He does listen most of the time,” a squat man with sergeant’s rockers on his sleeve said as he walked up.

“Better than most then,” she said calmly before repeating herself. “Pack up and head back. These boys are ours now. You can take the corpses, though. Someone will want to study them, I’m sure.”

“S…Sarge?”

Sorilla half turned to look at where Richard Devon was hesitantly approaching. “Hey, Rich. Tell Sil and Sam I’ll see them when I get into base, all right? Oh, and give Tare and Jerry my best.”

“You got it,.” Richard nodded quickly. “Hey, uh…it’s good to have you back on-world, Sarge.”

“Always glad to be in an honest jungle, Rich. I’ll catch you later,” she said, tossing a half salute to the lieutenant before she crouched down and leapt up to the lowest tier of the canopy, quickly vanishing into the foliage above.

“That was Aida?” Sergeant Jeremy Craig asked, sounding surprised. “I heard she was a school teacher.”

Lt. Chisholm peered up at the flickering canopy above them and then looked over the bodies around him. “Yeah. That’s what I heard, too.”

“If I had teachers like that back in the day, I would have been too damned scared to drop out and join the Army.”

“Oh man,” Richard was grinning ear to ear. “Wait until I tell the rest of the pathfinders that the Sarge is back on Hayden. Hua!”

*****

After recovering her rifle, Sorilla headed off in the direction the alien had taken. She stayed in the canopy until she was far enough out from the camp then dropped back to the floor to check the trail.

As the alien was wounded and running, she quickly spotted his trail and settled in to track him back to his own base camp. Taking them by surprise had given her an advantage that she’d used effectively, but there were elements of the fight that concerned her.

She’d hit the first one hard enough to put a rhino face first in the dirt, yet he’d held his balance and taken her full, armored weight from a twenty-meter drop as if it were another day at the park. Then she nailed the second one with a heel strike that would have utterly shattered a human’s collar bone. Basically no effect.

It wasn’t until she brought out the artillery that she started getting real, confirmed kills, and without the surprise of the attack and the distractions of the other soldiers, as well as the flash bangs, there was a very real chance that she wouldn’t have gotten the chance to do that much.

These boys were fast, tough, and disciplined.

That was such a bad combination from where she was standing. Sorilla took a chance with the spread spectrum transmitter and sent a pulsed update to her team, letting them know what had happened and her current vector and plan. Shortly after she sent that out, another pulse came back from Lt. Crow advising that he and Simmons were 400 meters ahead of her, already tracking the fleeing target.

I do love working with professionals.

Now that they’d baited in the tiger, they just had to run it down.

*****

“Move!” Kriss snarled, shoving one of his men along as he joined them.

What the hell had gone wrong with the mission he had no idea, but they only had a few minutes now to get ready for the company the survivor of the strike was leading in their direction. The idea that one of these people, one single enemy soldier, had eliminated four Sentinels in the space of a few bare marks was…unreal.

He’d called in all the Sentinels he had in the immediate area, barely a twelve’s worth, and they were hurriedly setting up an ambush to greet the pursuers coming on the tail of the running Sentinel.

That one thought it was real cute, putting a scare into my Sentinel. Too cute. Good enough with a bolter to shoot the weapon from someone’s hand, then missing with a dozen shots after? Unlikely.

It was a move he’d used himself in the past: put a fear into a surviving soldier so he wasn’t as careful as he might be, then follow him back to his troop.

It was effective against normal troops, but not against a Sentinel.

He settled into his place, eyeing the area to see if he could spot the locations of the other Sentinels from where he was. When he couldn’t, he nodded in satisfaction.

If they were hidden to his eyes, then they were more than likely hidden from anyone else.

*****

Newly minted Lt. Joshua Crow had a hard time believing how life turned out sometimes. He’d just passed BUD/S class 1023, hadn’t even gotten a chance to pin his BUD, when he was called in to the admiral’s office and offered a shot at something else entirely.

Much of his life, from shortly after adolescence onward, all he could think about was becoming a SEAL. His father had been Navy and tried out for the Teams but never quite made it. Even so, Crow had heard nothing but respect for the Navy Special Forces and set his sights early. So when he was offered a place in Fleet, he turned it down with a polite but firm, “No thank you.”

He’d never been one of the Fleet fanboys; going into space wasn’t something he dreamed about as a kid. He knew that most kids had that dream by times, but for him it was always the Navy when he was younger and the SEAL Teams when he grew a little.

Very little, as his mother and girlfriends of the past would agree and point out. And, oh boy, would they point it out. Often. And with great enthusiasm.

That aside, he was standing there in the admiral’s office, on the cusp of achieving his first major life goal, and some brass in Fleet wanted him to become some sort of fricking Space Ranger?

No, thank you.

Sir.

That was when Admiral Jacek, the man in charge of Coronado’s training facilities, laid it on him.

Aliens. Real, honest to freaking god, aliens.

And they were picking a fight.

Today, as the dawn slowly began to make itself known in the sky over the alien jungle he was running through, Crow could admit that he’d been played like a cheap fiddle. Oh, certainly the admiral hadn’t said a word of lie to him, but it was clear that the Teams wanted to handpick who they were sending to the Fleet teams, and for whatever reason Crow made the list. Since putting him in a spacesuit was on the Navy’s agenda, the admiral didn’t slack any when it came to making it happen. Three and a half minutes after his polite but firm, “No, thank you…sir,” Crow was shaking the Fleet admiral’s hand and thanking him for the assignment to Fleet SOCOM.

He spent the better part of the next two days staring into a mug of beer that kept emptying and refilling somehow, wondering how the hell that had happened. Later, once he’d sobered up, he had been willing to admit that he’d probably been drinking from it, but at the time he really didn’t think that far into the situation.

He would have to thank Jacek when he saw the old bastard again, though. Tracking an alien operator through dense jungle at damned near a dead run, well, it was what he’d been born for.

The little bastard he was chasing was canny, though, he’d given it that much. Considering how fast he was moving, he was hiding his trail with surprising skill, but there was just no way to cover the occasional broken branches while maintaining the speed he was keeping. Crow was pumped, his adrenaline and other hormones releasing well above any normal human and several degrees above those of a professional athlete due to his implants, so he had no trouble keeping up. He passed off the lead position to Simmons as he paused to check the trail, his armor HUD in full combat tracking mode, spotting broken branches, footprints, and even the anomalous chemical trail that Crow had tentatively labeled as alien blood.

Top really did a number on these buggers.

If they hadn’t picked the fight, Crow would probably feel a little sorry for them, to be honest. That said, her quick notes on the fight made it clear that they shouldn’t underestimate these buggers. Tough, fast, and disciplined.

That was a dangerous combination in any soldier, and if they’d been trained and equipped to match their physical and mental skills, then the admiral had been right when he said that these were probably the enemy’s varsity.

That thought was sticking in his mind when he chased his prey into a small ravine gully just a few steps behind Corporal Simmons, and the sound of a branch snapping to his left was suddenly haloed in his peripheral HUD.

Oh, fuck me. Crow was already throwing himself down as he snapped out an order to Simmons, “Ambush! Hit the deck!”

He hit the creek bed, rolling through the shallow water as the enemy fire tore through the air over his head, his armor tracking and triangulating the sounds as best it could while he just tried to avoid getting himself killed by the near perfect ambush that had closed around him.

Near perfect. One of them got a little overeager, stepped on something he shouldn’t have. Against anyone else, it wouldn’t have been noticed, but SOCOM operators were walking, talking, supercomputers. Everything around them was analyzed in real time; it had to be since their lives were so often on the line.

Now, though, he was still in the middle of a sprung trap, and the jaws were closing too fast and too well for him to see any way clear. Crow threw himself under one of the bank overhangs, blocking shots from half the positions around him as he brought his rifle up and returned fire with short bursts into likely positions of origin.

Since he’d already been spotted, he didn’t worry about stealth, and before his finger stroked the trigger the first time, he simply accessed his gun’s controls and turned every option as far up as it would go, using override codes he’d been issued when he qualified for SOCOM.

The gully exploded as heavy, depleted uranium slugs tore the air apart at such high velocities that the air itself ignited in their wake. His normally silent and stealthy rifle was spitting flames that extended the entire distance from the muzzle to the target in the close quarters he was dealing with, the slugs themselves tearing the opposite bank to shreds with both kinetic energy and their QTex explosive cores.

With his immediate reaction over, Crow spared a moment to cast about for Simmons, only to find the man sprawled face down in the stream, his blood coloring the running water. Crow smothered a curse a pinged the armor.

Damn.

Nothing from his medical link, at all.

‘ Proc,’ he subvocalized as his finger stroked the trigger, almost gently despite the violent bucking of the weapon in his hands, ‘ send ambush beacon.’

*****

Kriss involuntarily hit the ground, backside first, when the bank he was using as cover exploded in his face.

Breaker! What was that?

The air itself was burning, the local temperature rising several degrees in an instant just from being in the same range as the enemy weapon. The brief glimpse he’d had of the weapon in the soldier’s hands was enough for him to assume it was the same as the others they’d seen so far, but no one had fired on them like that before.

He quickly signaled to the Sentinels on the other side of the ambush to move in, close the door as quickly as they could, and eliminate the target. They’d apparently only managed to ensnare one of the enemy, which made it possible that there was only one of this new type in the area. Possible, but not likely, in his mind. Soldiers worked best in teams, with two being the smallest team he’d ever heard fielded as a general rule, and that was rare. Sentinels preferred teams of five or more as the rule, and smaller teams were only considered for specific missions.

That meant that the odds were very good that this little soldier had allies of his own in the area, probably already closing in. They’d probably entrapped the forward reconnaissance element in the ambush, which meant that the bulk of the enemy would be closing on them if they didn’t get this target eliminated in a hurry.

He made a decision quickly then signaled the heavy element of his force forward and clenched his grip tightly for them to see.

*****

Captain Isaiah Washington could kill Crow, if the little twerp weren’t about to beat him to it. Running dead on into an ambush like an amateur was the sort of thing that got people killed, case in point. When his ambush alert went off, Washington called his team in fast, circling the wagons as they took stock of the situation and prepared to pull the lieutenant out of the mess he’d got himself and his partner in.

“Top, you’re with me. We’re going to close and pull his arse out of the fire,” he told Sorilla as soon as her near field icon came online, showing that they were within fifty meters of each other.

“Got it.”

“Mack, Korman, you two are on overwatch. Find a place with a line on the action and cover us as best you can.”

“Aye, you’ve got it, boss,” Corporal Mackenzie, late of Her Majesty’s Special Air Service drawled easily, grabbing Corporal Korman by the shoulder and turning immediately away from the group.

Sorilla landed easily by Ton as the two took a few seconds to review the data retrieved from Crow’s SOS pulse.

“They’re good,” Sorilla said tersely.

“They are that. Circle left, hit them at point beta,” Ton ordered, highlighting the section he was talking about on their shared map. “I’ll come in from alpha over here. The trees look thick enough to cover you as you approach.”

“What about you?” she asked, eyes flickering over the area he was talking about. He’d be coming right up the gully with no hard cover to speak of.

“Have to get Crow’s arse out of that pincer,” Ton growled. “Then decide if I want to perforate it myself. Once you hit beta, I’ll come down like lightning from Olympus itself. Grab Crow on the way through, and keep on belting out through your position while you cover us.”

“What about Simmons?”

“We get the living out first,” Ton said in clipped, harsh tones, “Then we worry about the dead.”

“Got it.” Sorilla nodded, swallowing.

“Good. Go.”

Sorilla jumped away, her armor plotting a least time trajectory through the trees, which involved a lot of dodging branches and trunks as she hooked and swung her way through the brush. Just before she lost NFC contact with Washington, she called out one last message. “Watch your ass, Ton. As big as you are, they’re not going to miss easily.”

Her NFC icon blinked out before he could respond.

“That lady is such a smartass,” he grumbled, jumping off to head for his own destination.

*****

Crow was starting to feel a little unappreciated.

His impromptu dance of flames and thunder had certainly given him some breathing room from across the gully, but if he moved from where he was covering (not cowering, just to be clear), then he’d be turned to a fine red mist by the enemy above his position. He couldn’t open fire on them since he’d have to shoot through the dirt embankment to do that, and that would be the equivalent of calling an artillery strike down on his own position.

Effective, perhaps, but only if survival wasn’t a priority.

Besides, that would blow away the overhang along the edge of the gully, and that was the only thing currently giving him any cover from the aliens moving around above him.

He ejected the magazine from his rifle, idly kicking the metal box before it hit the ground, and slapped its replacement in position before the first clattered to the creek bed below his position. He’d blown out the last one in what was practically one long burst of local Armageddon, leaving the barrel of the weapon smoking in the aftermath. The manual said that you couldn’t do that to an assault rifle, not without warping the barrel and potentially cooking off rounds sitting in the receiver. The latter was unlikely, since Qtex was about as stable an explosive as could exist. Heat, no matter the amount, wouldn’t set it off. Only the electronic detonator buried in its core could do that. The first problem, however, was a little more significant. It wasn’t as bad as they told grunts and regulars, since the brass had learned the hard way that you didn’t trust your average soldier with the expected capability of their weapon. It was just so much safer to let them think that it was only capable of about seventy or eighty percent of what it could really do. That way, when they tried to push their luck, they were rewarded with a rifle that worked every time instead of one that blew up in their face or jammed when it had been pushed just that smidge too far.

That said, even the tough, alloyed barrel of his weapon would warp if he tried that enough times. As it stood, he could probably rock and roll another mag through it, but that would be it until he could cool it down.

If I could get down to that creek, I could do a quick job of cooling it off.

Crow considered that option for about a second but quickly tossed it out. He had a bunch of killer aliens looking to do him in, and the creek lay right smack in the center of a long stretch of no man’s land.

He froze, shaken from his ponderings as he heard a soft sound above him, and some dirt fell from the overhang to sprinkle across his helm.

They’re closer than I thought. He pressed himself tighter into the dirt packed along the side of the gully, almost literally keeping one eye on the far bank and one on the shaking dirt above him. Nothing on thermal, but I doubt they can spoof something a little more old school.

Shifting his rifle over to his left hand, he kept the muzzle of the assault weapon aimed at the far bank, looking for any hint of motion with the weapon keyed over to automatic operation. If his armor or the weapon itself detected motion, it’d put a round in it. His right hand slid down to his thigh, drawing the molecular-edged blade from its sheath there.

The edge glowed slightly as he had his armor send out a series of ultrasonic pulses. Used by bats, cetaceans, and a few other species on Earth, sound echolocation was pretty hard to spoof as a general rule, unless you were to use active countermeasures. He didn’t detect any of those so decided to take his chances.

The sonic density of the area around him was quickly mapped, and Crow spotted what had to be the bugger knocking dirt in his face. Not quite directly above him, but obviously close enough to peer over the edge in search of his position.

Too close. Bad mistake, sucker.

*****

Sentinel Roark inched slowly around the edge of the cover the enemy soldier had pressed himself into, leery of exposing himself to whatever void-spawned beast the enemy wielded as a weapon. He’d thought gravetic bolters were ugly ways to die, but while he didn’t think the enemy had actually hit any of his fellow Sentinels on the other side with his little fire breathing trick, that slice of the inferno was insanity defined.

He repressed a growl as he looked over the edge but couldn’t find any sign of the target and lifted his hand up with a waggle to signal the others. They started to move forward, flanking his position as Roark moved a little closer to try and see over the edge.

He was caught literally flatfooted as an armored hand burst up through the packed dirt, blade in its grip, and stabbed him through the ankle. He didn’t even have time to yell before the hand wrenched back down, filleting his ankle with a clean cut right through the heel, which left him pouring life fluid over the soil and falling to his side, as his foot no longer supported him.

The pain didn’t really strike him, however, so he rolled clear while snarling to his comrades. “He’s there! Right there! Kill him!”

*****

That may not have been the best course of action. Crow scrambled as the dirt rained down on his position, covering him as he tried to run while simultaneously remaining glued to the embankment. Was really satisfying though.

Another series of blasts from the enemy weapons destroyed part of his cover, forcing him to move quickly to stay out of sight as best he could.

Ok, Mom was right. I really need to learn to delay satisfaction.

A glimpse of motion from his right caused Crow to drop to the ground as a shot from across the gully tore through the position he’d been at. He rolled onto his side, leveled his rifle, and fired a three-round burst that again ignited the very air itself as it passed. They hammered into the far side, tearing up more of the ground, but he was pretty sure that he’d missed hitting anything important.

Bet they put their damned heads down again.

When another round of slammers blew his cover to fine, wet particles, Crow again found himself scrambling along the side of the gully, hoping that something changed in a hurry.

*****

Sorilla skidded to a stop a short distance from her target, sliding in behind a thick tree and risking a glance out and around it. The aliens had set a perimeter, but from the look of the destruction she was seeing, it had been pretty badly stressed by Crow’s little concerto earlier. In the grayish dawn’s light, she could see forms moving around in an attempt to get a better angle on him.

Nothing on thermal, and their visual camo is sophisticated…but nothing active. Interesting. Sorilla had almost expected to see adaptive camouflage making her job a lot harder, but this group was using what looked like an advanced fractal derivative, similar to old military digicam.

Once again, a lot of what she was seeing just didn’t quite add up with what she expected to see. Advanced military weapons, obvious military training and tactics this time, and yet they seemed almost underequipped for the job. The only reason her armor didn’t have advanced, adaptive camouflage was because those systems were still a little too delicate to use on anything intended to survive orbital reentry…and it would be costly as hell to replace a suit of armor every time someone had to do a drop.

Of course, they’ve been tearing all holy hell out of the regulars stationed here over the past couple months, so “underequipped” could be a relative term, she admitted privately as she dropped to her belly and crawled into position. Still, every time I learn more about these people, more things don’t make sense. One thing for sure, however, these guys aren’t rent-a-cops. They’re the real deal.

Reaching her chosen shooting position, Sorilla unslung her rifle and pushed it out ahead of her until it was settled in position and she’d only have to set her hand on the grip to bring it into play. Next, she unclipped her two remaining anti-personnel grenades and set them by her right hand.

By her calculations, Washington should be in position shortly, so she’d have the honor of kicking off the next party.

She loaded a message into her pulse system, set it to send when she fired the first shot, and then shouldered her rifle and started picking out targets with motion tracking systems and straight up visual spectrum spotting. It wasn’t quite what they used to call “eyeball Mark I.” Hell, even her eyeball wasn’t Mark I anymore, but it was as close as she got in armor, which was pretty old school as far as it went.

A moment later, she started cursing.

Almost immediately after she’d halo one in her armor, she’d lose it in the background noise of the jungle. Whatever they used to spoof her thermal gear was also pretty effective at preventing her computers from keeping track of them when they moved around.

Going to have to do this really old school. One shot, one kill. Damn.

She’d gotten lazy, too used to letting her processors do the heavy lifting. Sighing, Sorilla settled in and picked her first target while trying to keep the others in her mind’s eye as the clock started to wind down.

Ton should be in position right…about…now.

Her finger gently stroked the trigger, and her rifle pulsed once against her shoulder as the round was sent out just under the speed of sound.

She was already moving before the round impacted, her rifle swinging to the next target. She steadied on it for a second then lightly stroked the trigger a second time. By the third target, they were reacting, twisting and taking cover. Sorilla took her shot quickly but was pretty sure that the target went to ground too quickly.

She grabbed one of the grenades and tossed it overhand into the brush that seemed to be where most of them ducked for cover.

That should set this party in motion. Go, Ton, go.

*****

Kriss threw himself to the ground when the whine-zip echoed in his ear, punctuated by a wet slap and a sharp bang. He rolled to see Sirk lying on his back a short distance away, clutching at the left side of his chest.

“Sirk! Status?”

“Hit, but operable.”

Kriss was both surprised and not by the answer. Lucians were notoriously difficult to injure seriously, but the enemy had already shown themselves to have weapons that were up to the task. From the lack of sound, this one had tuned their weapon down for stealth purposes.

“Does anyone know where the shot–?” He was cut off from asking by another whine-zip that catapulted yet another of his men to the ground. “Breaker blast it all, take cover!”

For once he almost wished he’d had a couple of the Ross Ells’ trinkets along; they were good at locating things invisible to damned near anyone else. It went against Sentinel preference to war that way, however, and there wasn’t a single Sentinel who would trust the Ross Ell not to drop a dimensional singularity point on their position. The species was cold in a way that even the Lucians had no taste for.

“Circle left, kill that one we have trapped before we’re caught between their forces!”

Kriss shielded his face as an explosive went off nearby then glared at those around him. “Well, move!”

They scattered, leaving Kriss to glare at the jungle from his position for a long moment before he finally smiled slowly, showing sharp teeth.

Well, now, this little group is getting more interesting by the moment. They have Sentinels of their own.

*****

Washington was moving before the sound of the second shot detonating reached him. He, too, was having the same issues Sorilla had run into but didn’t have time to worry about it too much. He told his armor to ignore thermal and focus on motion detection and pattern recognition. The best he could do would be to pick out profiles from the background as they moved, but honestly, he was better at doing that than his armor computer was.

Like Crow before him, Washington blew all the safeties off his rifle and went full power as he rolled in. Crow had done a good enough job keeping the heads down on one side of the gully, so he focused on the other.

His assault rifle roared like the wrath of an angry god, the shockwave of the hypersonic rounds second only to the gouts of flame as they ignited the air in their passage. He hammered the untouched side of the gully, well away from Crow’s position, not taking time to aim so much as just generally lay waste to the jungle there and forcing anything around to grab some cover.

“Move!” he yelled as he burst into the gully, grabbing Crow out of the dirt he’d been half buried in and swinging him up to his feet. He propelled his junior officer in the direction of Sorilla’s cover then followed as they both bolted full speed to clear the trap Crow had blundered into.

They were about to clear the gully when a figure loomed up ahead of them, and Washington could see the alien weapon bearing down on them. He was bringing his rifle around but knew it would be too late, when a sound like a bee passing his ear filled his hearing, followed by a wet slap, and the grey figure went down in a crumpled heap with half his head missing.

God bless snipers, he thought grimly as he pushed Crow along, but only when they’re on my side.

The broke for the jungle as the world erupted into hellfire and damnation behind them, thowing Washington into Crow just as they reached the jungle. The two operators slammed into the ground, rolling into a copse of trees, and came to a rest as the war raged on over their heads.

The two snipers previously in question were perched a good deal closer than men of their chosen profession generally prefer to be located relative to the battle, but the density of the jungle made the choice of site location for them.

“Computer can’t track them,” Korman said.

“Hmm.”

“Old school?”

“Mm.”

“You snipe, I spot,” Korman continued, barely noticing that his companion was communicating in single syllable grunts as he lowered his own weapon and started focusing on his armor HUD.

“Three o’clock, against the burnt stump. Enemy combatant,” Korman stated, using the center of the gully as their twelve o’clock. He also sent the haloed target to Mackenzie’s HUD, but the Scott had already fired his shot by the time it appeared.

Mackenzie’s magnetic rails pulsed once, sending its deadly payload along at supersonic speeds. He was riding the upper level of what the book claimed the rifle was capable of, not pushing its capabilities but not worrying about stealth either. The crack of the round breaking the sound barrier rolled all through the jungle along its path, until it finally tore into the figure at the end of its flight and dropped him where he stood.

“Nine o’clock, beneath the burning bush. Enemy combatant.”

The rifle beside him pulsed, another rolling crack of thunder sent through the jungle.

*****

When the first shot came in from beyond the current engagement range, Kriss decided enough was enough. He sent the withdrawal order, calling back his men as he ordered those to the rear to cover the retreat.

His bolter was joined by others, hammering the jungle with gravetic blasts to force their enemy to put their heads down as the Lucians pulled back.

“We are withdrawing?”

Kriss didn’t bother to dignify the incredulous tone with a glance in the direction of the shocked Sentinel.

“We were not expecting a force of this capability, Sirk. They’re skilled, they have discipline, and they are well-equipped,” he countered, backing away as he waved two more to recover their injured. “These are Sentinels. Show them respect, or they will kill you.”

“Sentinels? We’ve been slaughtering these for…”

“Not these ,” Kriss corrected the man, backhanding him hard enough to put him back a couple paces. “Now, do not argue with me in battle. Another word and I will kill you myself.”

The recalcitrant Sentinel shut up, falling back by rote as his bolter joined the others. They were pulling their forces out of the fight, battered but mostly operational. The enemy used light-to medium-level personal weapons, aside from the ones that apparently breathed fire. Luckily, those seemed a bit difficult to control, so they hadn’t suffered any direct strikes in those attacks.

Several Lucians were sporting wet wounds, including deep shrapnel penetration, but one of the things that made a Lucian a Lucian was the deeply ingrained redundancy of their natural systems, so few had more than moderate injuries on that count.

The worst of the injuries in this battle were from Roark, Kriss noted as he covered the last movements and ghosted into the jungle. The blade had cleaved his foot in two, eliminating him from the active duty roster. Healing that would take months at best, and he would never fully regain mobility without an Alliance regen facility.

Kriss made a note to see if they’d captured any of the enemy blades, because that scale of injury would tax even a Lucian blade. He wanted to see how it had been done and whether he could prevent it in the future…or, more likely, if it would be possible to improve their own blades to such a degree.

The silence was pervasive as they ghosted the jungle, Kriss signaling the others to move on ahead while he and two more stayed behind to ensure they were not followed. They needed time to regroup and determine new tactics for the current situation. What worked against conventional troop was suicide against fellow Sentinels.

*****

“They’re breaking off,” Sorilla announced over her NFC link. “You all right, boss?”

She waited a moment, covering the jungle the aliens had vanished into, but when a reply didn’t come immediately she got a little concerned. A quick ping of the implants in the local area showed that Ton and Crow were just ahead of her, buried under a whole crap ton of shredded jungle that had dropped on them when the aliens opened fire to cover their retreat.

She cautiously made her way over to them, shifting from the command channel to the squad frequency. “Crow, you alive there?”

A groan greeted her, so the answer to the question was yes, but his exact state was yet to be determined. Sorilla linked into Ton and Crow’s armor as she worked to dig them out and found that Crow was intact but had apparently been banged around a fair bit. Ton, however, was showing several warning lights on his med readouts, including a drop in blood pressure.

“Damn it. Crow! Wake the hell up, L.T!” She snarled, picking up chunks of trees the size of compact cars and tossing them to one side with grunts of effort augmented by her armor.

“Wha happened?”

“The world fell on you,” she replied sarcastically as she finally managed to dig enough to reveal the dull, dark metal and carbon of her teammate’s armor.

“That explains the headache.”

She found Ton lying on top of Crow, the back of his armor blown open and a fair spread of blood seeping through the shattered pieces.

Damn. She’d not seen damage like this short of being way to close to an IED detonation. His armor’s automatic systems wouldn’t be able to compensate for the injuries, not with that level of damage across that much of the shell.

Sorilla pulled a cable from her armor at about the center of her abdomen, where a belt would normally be buckled, and snapped it onto Ton’s armor at the shoulder. Then she physically dragged him clear of the mess and out onto firmer ground.

“Hey! What about me?” Crow whined.

“Dig yourself out. The cap’s hurt.”

“What? How?”

“Probably when the world crashed down on you, idiot,” Sorilla muttered as she surveyed the damage and picked pieces of shattered carbon plate out of his wounds.

She slapped a couple emergency compress pads onto the captain’s back then sprayed the whole section shut with oxygenated foam from her emergency supplies. By the time she finished that, Crow had dug himself out and Mac had arrived with Korman in tow.

“Two carry, two cover point and drag,” she ordered, ignoring that Crow outranked her. “We swap every six hours. The lieutenant and I will carry him first. Let’s go.”

“What about Simmons?” Crow looked back to the contested gully they’d fought over just moments earlier.

Sorilla grimaced in her armor, “Tag the location. We’ll retrieve the body later.”

“But…”

“We can’t carry both and provide security as well.”

Crow was silent for a long time, eyes remaining on the gully. “We can’t leave him there, face down in the water.”

Sorilla hesitated, then finally nodded. He was right about that much, at least.

“Ok, we’ll wire him up above the canopy.” She decided finally, “This is Hayden, not Earth, there’s nothing here that’s going to eat human carrion, but that’ll keep the enemy from finding him if they come back.”

Crow winced, but finally nodded. “I’ll do it.”

Sorilla nodded, and they waited while Crow retrieved Simmon’s body and pulled it back to the jungle. He set the lines, looped them over a thick branch, and pulled the shattered remains of armor and man up above the jungle canopy where he secured it in place.

“Where?” Crow finally asked as he landed back on the ground, eyes still on the spot where his partner had died.

“Fleet FOB on the coast,” she replied curtly as she reeled in the line linked to Washington’s armor, lifting him up enough for Crow to link a similar line to his other shoulder. Between them, with the captain’s armor holding him stiff, they had a makeshift litter to drag as they made their way south and west.

*****

“They’re not following.”

Kriss nodded, but he privately wondered why. He would have pressed the advantage in their place, though possibly they were wary of walking into another ambush despite their relative success in escaping this one.

“All right,” he said finally, waving his Sentinels back. “Fall back to the base camp. We’ll review the engagement there and decide on new tactics.”

He and his men turned and headed into the jungle, taking their time now and being sure to clear their trail as they went. For Kriss, he focused on what had just happened and tried to get an idea of what he was dealing with based on what he knew of the new soldiers’ tactics.

They didn’t work in tight groups but remained close enough to support each other. Sentinels preferred closer groups, pairs at least, teams of five in a sector being the lowest normally seen. This group seemed to spread out more, working alone to cover more ground but staying close enough to provide quick support.

Fast, tough, and disciplined.

They weren’t Lucians, Kriss could smell the armor on them. Lucians didn’t bother with heavy armor, particularly since there was pretty much none made that could stand up to a bolter. Armor was something regulars wore, generally to protect themselves against explosive shrapnel or incompetence.

That said, they were certainly this species’ closest equivalent to Sentinels. Small squad, hit fast and hard, then vanish into the smoke of the battlefield like a specter. They showed all the qualities of a Sentinel-level force. Obviously superb training, conditioning, and equipment coupled with what had to be extraordinary examples of their species, though he had to admit that he was judging that by an extremely limited personal experience.

So the problem he was now facing was the fact that their presence made his duties far more complicated. Tying up the local military had been easy to this point; they were vulnerable to fast strikes that crippled their patrols and forced them to pull back to tighter and tighter zones. By keeping them contained like this, Sentinels could simply lessen their attacks and make the enemy feel powerful within their controlled area and weak beyond it. In this way, they easily controlled them until more forces could be dispatched to secure the planet and system.

Unfortunately, with the arrival of enemy Sentinels, that equation was no longer operable.

There was no way to tie down the regular soldiers if they also had to contend with unconventional forces engaging them at random intervals, even deep within territory they controlled. Were they engaging on an Alliance planet, Kriss would raise local forces as part of his plan. However, this wasn’t an Alliance planet, and his resources were too limited for that.

Kriss marched back into his camp, still thinking about the problem before him, only to be greeted by one of his sub-alterns, who was looking far too pleased with himself considering the fact that one of their teams just got reamed on a mission.

“Deice, message from the Alliance.”

Kriss snapped the data reader from the man, examining it quickly before he smiled slowly, showing his teeth.

Well, that solves that problem. With the Alliance here, reinforcements will enable us to mop up the regulars with minimal troubles, even considering the new Sentinel-level forces.

*****

“Send it again.”

Jerry Reed was in no mood to argue, so when the military officer turned to respond, he just glared at the man. Since their arrival on Hayden, Jerry had learned that most of the soldiers were nothing like the Sarge. He’d never have had the guts to try that bullshit with her, but the kid captaining the river patrol boat they were on was just that, a kid. He folded under the glare and ducked back inside to send out another compressed com pulse.

Jerry, in the meantime, was scanning the bank of the wide river with military issue lenses. He’d learned his lessons from Sorilla, and the model he’d swiped from stores was a passive information gathering set that used parallax to determine range, along with a whole host of other things. Like most of the gear he’d borrowed from the military, it was bulky and over-designed, but did its job with reasonable reliability.

When Devon made it back to base with the bleeding remnants of the squad he’d left with, spewing news right and left about the Sarge being back on-world, Jerry managed to bully his way onto the next patrol up river.

They still controlled a fair bit inland. The enemy didn’t want to push too far into the areas secured by the Terran soldiers. So as long as they didn’t stray too far beyond that Earth-controlled sector, it was reasonably safe. He wasn’t sure if the Sarge would be heading in or pushing further out, but he wanted to be there if it was the former. Convincing the kid in charge of the boat to send recognition signals took some doing, but dammit, Sorilla was one of theirs. If she needed them, Jerry intended to damn well see that she got what she needed.

“What’s that over there?”

Jerry glanced back to see the man at the rear gun pointing and swiveled to bring his lens to bear. He didn’t see anything for a moment, and then a glint caught his eye. He waited and was rewarded when it repeated. After several flashes, he lowered his lens and smiled.

“Head for the bank over there.” He pointed.

“You sure?”

“That’s the Sarge,” Jerry nodded confidently. “No one else would be using our signal code out here.”

“Alright,” the lieutenant said, spinning the wheel.

The electric motors whined softly as the river patrol boat turned in toward the bank, slowly edging under the cover of the jungle overhang. As they nudged up against the river bottom, Jerry saw a familiar armor appear from the jungle. He stepped over to the side of the boat and waved casually. “You need a ride?”

The armored form stepped down, looking one side and then the other. “Wouldn’t turn it down if it’s secure.”

“As it can be,” Jerry replied. “We control the river up to about fifty kilometers inland from here. Beyond that, it’s pretty much no man’s land…or water.”

“Right,” the figure said, waving a hand.

Three more appeared from the jungle, or rather four more. One was being carried, and Jerry frowned quickly.

“How bad?”

“Bad enough,” the figure said, jumping aboard.

They all quickly helped pull the injured man onboard, and the lieutenant reversed the engines. The boat pulled back out into the current, turning around, and headed back downriver.

Sorilla Aida popped her helm as she took a seat on a bench with her back to the cabin and smiled at Jerry. “So, Jer, you come out this way often?”

Jerry grinned wide. “Only when I have to rescue damsels in distress, Sarge.”

“Fall out of the sky one time,” she said, shaking her head.

He laughed. “Good to see you and have you back on-world, Sarge.”

She took her first real deep breath of unfiltered air since leaving Earth and smiled back at him with a hint less enthusiasm in her eyes than he’d sent her way. “Good to be back.”

Chapter Ten

Brigadier Kayne was far from a happy man.

Another of his teams had been mauled while on patrol, which was always guaranteed to put his good mood in a tailspin, and by their own accounts only got out of it by the intervention of a SOCOM operator. Normally, this wouldn’t bother him exactly, but it was more than a little galling to have one woman carve up an enemy that had been giving him so much trouble. More irksome was the fact that she’d obviously been using them as bait, something he never liked but often had to accept.

He’d never gone the operator route himself and had been used as bait more than once by the arrogant pricks. They may get jobs done, but frankly, he never figured they made for much overall effect on a war. When it came down to it, it was the steady pressure of an organized, regular force that won wars.

That said, as much as he didn’t like dealing with them, he liked to think that he wasn’t a stupid man. If the operator teams could give his men the slack they needed to start pushing outward again, to gain control of this continent, then so be it. He just wasn’t convinced that they were the answer this time.

In his experience, when you fought fire with fire, you just got burned twice as bad.

So as he watched the river patrol pull back into the rough dock they’d built just inland of the delta, he forced his personal feelings down and waved the medical teams forward. By all accounts, the team had at least managed to severely maul the alien teams that had been harassing his men. That, at least, earned them some professional courtesy from him, no matter how little he thought of their methods.

They pulled the injured off the boat, face down on a stretcher, and Kayne had to mask his surprise that the man was still breathing. The entire back of his armor had obviously been replaced by spray-on coagulating foam, and the level of force it took to crack powered armor at all usually killed the soldier inside flat out.

The rest of the team, three men and a woman, hopped clear and landed easily on the bank without bothering to use the extended plank. The uniform action almost made him roll his eyes. He’d seen it before; operator teams liked to make a show of acting as one, and their armor network let them do it with seemingly supernatural aplomb.

They said it was to condition themselves for teamwork in battle, but he always saw it as plain showing off.

He kept his emotions off his face as the foursome stepped up to his position and stopped in unison, saluting with their helms under their left arms, waiting just an instant longer than normal before he snapped a return salute and they shifted to at ease positions.

“Debrief in the base planning room,” he said curtly. “Take time to get out of those suits and clean up.”

They didn’t say anything for a moment, but he’d have been surprised if they had, then one stepped forward.

“Sir. We’ll be heading back out shortly, no reason to shuck the shells, sir.”

“Fine. Fifteen minutes,” Kayne responded.

“Yes, sir,” the spokesman said, stepping back into line.

Kayne turned and walked away, heading back to the FOB.

“Nice guy,” Korman said dryly.

“He’s brass, what do you want?” MacKenzie responded in kind.

“All right, belay the noise,” Crow said tiredly. “Let’s grab some real chow, if they’ve got anything hot.”

“You heard the lieutenant,” Sorilla seconded the order. “Head for the FOB. I’ll grab a guide and meet you there.”

“Right on, Top.”

Crow led the two men away while Sorilla turned back to the river and approached Jerry. He smiled as she approached, accepting her help to carry a box up the bank from the boat.

“How have things been?”

“Rough,” he admitted. “Smooth for a while after you left, but then they put another one of those damn gravity things on the other continent and things went to shit. After Fleet took that one out from orbit, well, next thing we know, we’re dealing with those guys you fought.”

“Yeah, they were operators, sure as shit,” she said casually as they walked toward the FOB. “Tough as hell, seemed smart and well trained, and they were disciplined, too.”

“You took them on and kicked their ass,” Jerry countered, a little annoyed.

“We got ‘em by surprise,” Sorilla retorted. “They didn’t expect us, and even then they got their licks in.”

“That should be your goddamned motto, Sarge,” Jerry told her ruefully. “You ain’t gonna see me coming.”

She chuckled easily, shrugging. “Sounds good, but I always liked the motto of the SF. De oppresso liber.”

“To free the oppressed,” Jerry nodded. “That how you see us?”

“They’re trying,” she said as they walked past the sentries and into the base. “But when I left, they hadn’t managed to oppress you yet, no.”

He nodded, and they walked in silence as he guided her to the commissary. Just before they walked in, he stopped her. “Thanks for that, Sarge.”

“Keep fighting, Jer,” she responded before she headed over to where her team was sitting.

“Hayden hua, Sarge.”

*****

USF Cheyenne

On Hayden approach

The ship was quiet, no one wanting to breathe loudly, as if their quarry might be able to hear them through the hull and millions of kilometers of vacuum that separated them. Even Captain Patrick Roberts could feel it, the tension rising with every passing minute that flung them ever closer to the inevitable confrontation.

“Midway, sir.”

“Thank you, Commander.” He nodded to his XO, Commander Ashley Sear. Like many of the command officers of the Fifth, Sear was a woman who had come up through the science track to starship command.

Now, Patrick wasn’t one to discriminate based on anything other than hands on personal experience, but he’d originally been more than a little apprehensive when he’d seen the makeup of the command ranks on Taskforce Five. Not so much because of the women, at least he hoped that had been his reason, but because of the lack of military experience. They’d lost almost all their experienced military spacers in the first two disastrous encounters with the aliens, leaving the fleet a choice between putting non-military track officers in command or promoting inexperienced military captains ahead of them.

The debate had been furious among the civilian and Fleet politicians and officers, with both sides marshaling strong and compelling arguments. The fact that a majority of the science track officers had been female hadn’t become part of the official debate, but he’d heard enough of the backroom arguments to know it provided a very strong subtext to the entire thing. Patrick himself hadn’t been able to decide which he thought was the right way, but luckily no one asked him, either.

Since then, he’d come to believe that what may have been lacking in experience was made up for in brains and competence. In choosing to go with experienced spacers over experienced military, he thought that they’d made the right call.

There were so few comparisons between a fleet battle and a planet-side conflict that he now felt the experience in space far outweighed combat experience as a whole. He’d still rather have had both, but with it presented as an either-or, he’d take Admiral Brookes over some hopped up blue Navy admiral.

He unstrapped from his station, gesturing to Ashley to have her take over, and kicked off for the access tube to the admiral’s deck. He glided easily through and swung around as he arrived, waiting to be noticed.

“Captain,” Nadine said, not looking up from what she was working on. “Welcome.”

“Ma’am,” he said before pushing further in. “We’ve reached point midway. Interception in six hours.”

Nadine nodded, looking up at the large repeater screens. “Any signs they see us?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Let’s hope it holds.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he agreed fervently.

“You’ve been a military man your whole career, right, Captain?”

“That’s right, ma’am.”

“What do you think of our chances here?”

Patrick frowned. Honestly, he’d rather have been asked that before they committed themselves, but he understood the admiral’s reasoning behind the decision.

“If they don’t see us coming, we’ll maul them pretty badly,” he said finally. “With our MRV nukes and rail cannons, we should be able to destroy or cripple most, if not all, of the enemy ships.”

“And Taskforce Five?”

He grimaced. “If everything goes perfectly? Minimal losses.”

Minimal losses. Those words stuck in his throat, since even the most minimal losses in a battle like this would be at least one ship and all hands.

“And if things don’t go perfectly?”

“You know the answer to that one, ma’am.”

Nadine nodded but slowly turned to look right at him. When she spoke, it was quiet; he doubted anyone could have heard her if they were even just a little farther than he was.

“Is this the right move?”

He hesitated, uncertain, and finally admitted as much. “I don’t know.”

The admiral nodded slowly, sighing as she turned away.

“I do know we had to make a choice, and we had to make it then,” he told her. “Not making a choice was the same as choosing to retreat. You chose to advance. It’s a gamble, ma’am, but a lot of military decisions over the centuries have been gambles. One thing every great commander has had in common is that they don’t shirk from risking it all, if that’s what it takes to bring the enemy down.”

“And the not-so-great commanders?” she asked, her voice light, but he could see a dark undercurrent in her body language and face.

“If they went down in flames, they shared the same trait mostly,” he admitted with a smile. “But commanders who didn’t risk always lost everything anyway. You just don’t read about them in the history books because when they went down it was with a whimper, not a bang, ma’am.”

“Well, Captain, we aren’t going down with a whimper.”

“No, ma’am. That we most certainly are not.”

*****

Conference room

FOB Hayden

“Take a sea—” Kayne started to say but then recalled that everyone he’d ever met in full powered armor tended to prefer to stand. “Sit, stand, whatever.”

The four in armor stood.

“What were you able to learn about our latest adversaries here on Hayden, then?” he asked, straight to the point.

They glanced at each other then Sorilla stepped forward.

“They’re operators, sir. No doubt,” she told him simply. “Strong, tough, fast thinkers. Disciplined as hell, and they knew their way around the jungle. They’re not unbeatable, but I’ve seen them get up from hits that would take me out in armor.”

Brigadier Kayne turned to Crow. “Lieutenant?”

“Concur with Top, sir,” he said, grimacing. “I got careless chasing one. The guy was wounded, and he had to be freaked out by the show Top put on for him, but he still held pace and led me right into an ambush. If they knew our armor’s capabilities, I’d be dead.”

“You say they’ve taken hits that would put you down in armor, Sergeant… We’ve never taken one of their bodies wearing any armor.”

“They don’t fight with it, sir. That’s not really a surprise, however.” Sorilla said.

“Explain.”

“Armor falls out of fashion, sir, depending on weapon capability. They’re using some sort of mini version of the gravity valve as a hand gun.” She shrugged. “Near as I can say at least. We’ll have to have them taken apart to be sure. What I do know is that the odds are a direct hit from those weapons probably crushes any armor you can build, so they don’t use it.”

She paused a moment. “They’re not as soft and squishy as a human either, sir. Tough doesn’t begin to cover it. I put rounds in them, multiple times, and some of them got up afterwards. Who gets up after taking a hit from an explosive round?”

Kayne grimaced. That was more information than he’d gotten from his own troops, but it wasn’t a surprise. They’d managed a kill or two themselves, after all, and the base medical staff had already commented on how bloody tough the aliens were. Literally tough, they’d snapped several scalpels in the process of autopsying them and finally resorted to molecular-charged blades.

“We’ve been reviewing our mission recordings,” Crow stepped in, “and near as we can tell, anything less than the book’s full power to the rails isn’t going to penetrate their hides. If the round explodes outside the body, it’ll hurt them, but not lethally…and possibly not crippling, either.”

“We suspect that we’d be able to tear them to bloody chunks with full military power to the rails,” Sorilla added. “But it’s so damned hard to control your rifle when it’s bucking like that, even in powered armor. We’ve only used it to make them duck to this point.”

“Understood,” Kayne said, face a mask. “That brings me to a problem I have. We have.”

“Sir?”

“Over the last few months, we’ve not exactly been sitting around on Sergeant Aida’s laurels,” the general said dryly. “While working to secure this continent, we also laid several thousand kilometers of fiber, tens of thousands, actually. Along with those, we’ve placed secure sensor nodes at key areas, one of which was the old colony site.”

He stepped aside, bringing up an image on the screen behind him. “They recorded this just two hours ago.”

The screen showed the old colony site, now looking noticeably overgrown with Hayden plant life, but above it there was a ship slowly dropping down into the crater Sorilla had blown open on her last visit.

“They’re moving back in,” she blurted, shocked by what she was seeing. “They can’t be that confident that they’ve secured the area, can they?”

“We asked the same question,” Kayne growled, nodding as the screen changed again. “This is a live view from out lunar orbit satcom.”

At first it just seemed to be stars, but after a moment, it became clear that some of the lights were all wrong. They were moving against the background, but the computer imagery was also showing them as heavily blueshifted.

“Ships,” Crow ground out. “A lot of them.”

“Almost twenty is our best guess at the moment. They’ll be here in six hours.”

“Holy shit,” Sorilla mumbled, glad for her armor as her knees suddenly felt like they wanted to go out on her.

Just three of those things had torn the ever-living hell out of Taskforce Three, and while TF4 had given them a better fight, they still came out on top. If Fleet hadn’t armed the hell out of the civilian vessels sent along to help resupply the colony, the survivor would have been more than enough to reestablish orbital superiority over Hayden. Twenty of the goddamned things was a living nightmare.

“If we let them get entrenched again, there’s no way their security will be so lax as to allow what Sergeant Aida did happen again,” Brigadier Kayne said flatly. “However, it seems like even if we send forces against the old colony site, we’ll be hammered from orbit anyway. From where I’m standing, this is a force majeure. Once those ships hit orbit, we can’t pop our heads up without having everything for three klicks blown to hell.”

“Then let’s do some damage before they make orbit, sir,” Sorilla suggested.

“You think you can?”

She looked over at the others, then slowly back to Crow. “Lieutenant?”

Crow considered for a moment. “Give us a lift upriver to the edge of the secure zone. We can hump in and be onsite…five hours?”

“Four if we risk the logging road,” Sorilla said. “That runs right up to the river.”

“Four, then. No sense playing if we’re not willing to go all in,” Crow nodded. “Right. General, can you move some Cougars into range of the colony site?”

Kayne considered then nodded. “We can do that. We also have two Excaliburs I’d be willing to risk, and I’ll up our fleet of Raptor drones at your disposal.”

“Really?” Korman blurted, shocked into speaking in front of the Brigadier.

“Once those ships hit orbit, they’re just scrap plastic,” Kayne said sourly. “Nothing that flies will be of any value to us then. If you can use them now, let’s use them before we lose ‘em.”

“Yes, sir.” Crow nodded. “All right. We can do this.”

“What about the alien ‘operators’?” Kayne asked.

“Bravo and Gamma are working in nearby AOs,” Sorilla offered. “We’ll try and hook up with them, and then start an operator war they’ll not soon forget.”

“All right,” Kayne said when Crow nodded in affirmation. “Make it happen.”

“Yes, sir!”

*****

Lucian base

North of former colony site

“Deice!”

Kriss looked up as his sub-altern rushed in. He could already feel the pain forming deep in his mind just looking at his expression. “What is it?”

“It’s the Ross Ell, they’re on the move.”

“What?” Kriss surged up, pushing his work station aside. “To where?”

“The original DSD installation. They’re preparing to install a new device.”

Kriss frowned, considering it. On the one hand, a new DSD was precisely what they needed. With that on call, his Sentinels would easily end the problems on this planet within no more than a lunar cycle. On the other hand…

“They’re on the move, you say? Where?”

“They’re at the site now.”

“What?” Kriss swore in three Alliance languages as he strode out of the room, heading for the main command center of his base.

When he got there, he swore in another two languages.

What are they thinking? Openly moving like that when we haven’t secured the entire continent is madness. He stared at the screens for a moment. “Do we have anyone patrolling that area now?”

“No, Deice. After your squad was…”

“Right.” There was no need to say more. His squad had been in charge of covering that area, and he’d personally ordered them out. Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t make the slightest of differences, but with the Ross Ell apparently losing their collective minds , things had changed.

“Half a damned cycle. That’s all they had to wait. Half a cycle, and we’d control the orbitals of this world,” he muttered as he stomped out of the base.

It was probably nothing, really. With only a few marks before the fleet took up positions in orbit, the window for their enemy to make use of was extremely narrow.

But they have Sentinels…and what would I do?

Kriss knew damned well what he would do in their position.

“Sentinels! To me!”

*****

Rio Hayden

Sorilla was impressed at how fast the Hayden-built river patrol boats were. The electric motors the base fabbed were powerful enough to pick the front end of the boat up and put them on a hydroplane as they whined upriver. The deck was inclined more than twenty degrees, and she found herself holding onto the railing much the way she would brace herself during minor acceleration onboard a ship. The wind was rushing by, but she could neither feel nor hear it in her armor, as her attention was focused on the jungle ahead of them.

Despite being well within the “secure” area, she wasn’t taking chances and neither was anyone else. The two mounted rail guns pivoted at the slightest provocation as they scanned ahead, looking for anything out of place, and her fellow operators were just as vigilant. This was the most vulnerable they would be on the upcoming mission, the lack of cover on the river making them nothing more than sitting ducks.

They needed the speed offered by the river, however, to get within striking range on the timetable the approaching ships had set for them. So they sucked it up, putting their heads on a swivel and trigger fingers on speed.

Ahead of them, the second river patrol boat was taking point, and they had best be as vigilant as Sorilla and her team, because if they weren’t they didn’t have to worry about the aliens killing them. Sorilla would personally make sure that they wished the alien operators got to them first.

Jerry had told her about the previous incident on the river, one reason why they were going to stay as far back from the edge of the secure zone as they possibly could. Complacency would get more than yourself killed in a warzone like this, and she had no desire to die because someone else got sloppy.

“Five minutes to the preliminary AO,” Crow announced as he stepped out of the cabin of the boat. “We’re going to cast from the boats.”

Sorilla just haloed the green light on her HUD, flashing Crow a thumbs up. Casting meant that the RPB wouldn’t even slow down when they reached the AO, and the team would cast out into the wake of the boat in as low a profile as possible. From there they’d make their way to shore underwater while the boats continued upriver some distance before turning back.

If anyone was watching, there was at least a reasonable chance that they’d be able to hide their insertion point that way, and it also reduced their exposure over slowing the boats and disembarking normally. Given Crow’s SEAL training, Sorilla was far from surprised to hear him choose that method of insertion.

They moved down to the aft of the boat, waiting for the turn in the river to come up as planned. When it did, they waited for the boats to power around the turn, and as soon as the river behind them was obscured by the bank, they cast over the side and into the roiling water of the boat’s wake. Muddy brown river water filled her HUD; nothing but silt and foam was visible as Sorilla let herself sink to the bottom before gaining her bearings and moving to the bank.

She paused as the water grew shallow, unlimbering her rifle while she waited for the others to get in position, then rose from the water and moved forward to the bank of the river. Crow, Korman, and Mackenzie appeared alongside her as they made their way into the jungle. Once inside cover, they paused to gather their kit from the waterproof bags then headed for the old logging road.

They hit the road in a sprint, racing along the rough gravel and packed dirt as fast as the four of them could run in armor while carrying their kit. There was something of an art to really hitting high speeds in armor, and strength wasn’t the key. Push off the ground too fast and you’d spend more time in parabola slowing down due to air resistance the whole way. The secret was short, fast hops that were very shallow and didn’t expose the runner by doing anything silly, like flying above tree level.

By risking the logging road, the four managed to turn the last half of their trip into a sprint that took up less than a tenth the time of the first, only stopping at the last hill before the road headed down toward the colony plateau.

The last ten percent of the journey wound up taking as long as the first ninety percent as they all but crawled into position, Crow finding the location of the buried fiber optics line the general had spoken of and following it to the sensor that had brought them out all this way.

The four knelt at the edge of the Hayden jungle and watched the activity around the old colony site with cold eyes as they considered their next action.

“All right, I’m into the base network,” Crow said quietly, though he could have screamed and it wouldn’t have penetrated the armored helm. “I wish they’d briefed us on this before we came down. Would make linking up with the others easier.”

Sorilla nodded. “Yeah, but I suspect we’ll be able to get their attention shortly anyway.”

Mackenzie chuckled. “That’s a wee bit of an understatement, Top.”

“All right, enough fun,” Crow said. “Top, take Mack and circle east around the base. K and I will go west. Spot and report targets for artillery and drone strikes. Everyone synced? Good. Coordinate strikes in fifty-seven minutes. That’s ten minutes before the enemy fleet reaches orbit; we don’t have any more time than that. Clear?”

“Clear.”

“Good. Go.”

Sorilla and Mackenzie headed east as ordered, stopping at various vantage points to code in new targets for the Cougars, Excaliburs, and Raptors to take out. They kept on the move, trying to find a compromise between stealth and speed. They didn’t want to be spotted, but they had to key in the target coordinates before the time was up, otherwise it was all over.

So when Sorilla heard a sound that didn’t quite fit into the jungle around her, she almost ignored it against her better judgment, the need for speed was so great. Her instincts won out over the pressures of the mission, however, so she took a knee, and her fist came up to stop Mackenzie in his tracks.

He edged forward, his hand coming down on her shoulder to both let her know precisely where he was and to initiate the induction link between them.

“What is it, Top?”

“Something is out here with us,” she replied over the induction link. “Hold tight, I’m going to check it out.”

“Wilco, Top,” he said just before she moved forward, breaking the induction link between their armor.

Sorilla crept ahead, slinging her rifle and pushing it behind her back as she tried to figure out where the sound originated. It took a few moments, but she slowed to a crawl as she heard it again and found herself peering through the wide leaves of the jungle at the first daylight sighting of the new aliens she’d had the opportunity to make.

Three of them. Are they alone? Sorilla shifted but didn’t move as she tried to see any others. If I take them with my rifle, the stealth portion of this mission is officially over…

She laid a hand on the hilt of her blade, debating her options as she watched the three enemy soldiers confer about something. If they don’t move soon, I’ll have to risk it.

Heartbeats passed, and just as she was about to chance taking action, the trio broke up and moved off in another direction. Sorilla breathed a sigh of relief and slowly pulled back, finding Mac and reconnecting via the induction link.

“Enemy operators in the AO,” she said. “We should avoid contact if possible. They aren’t our problem.”

“Right.” Mac nodded. “On your lead, Top.”

She broke contact and started moving again, adjusting her direction to give the enemy some space. The time would come to engage them again, but the time wasn’t now.

Soon.

*****

Near the old colony site

Kriss growled in frustration as he watched the materials being lowered into place by the Ross Ell construction ship. Despite his efforts, they refused to delay construction by just the few hours it would take for Fleet to properly secure the orbitals of this world, leaving him in an awkward and vulnerable position.

Actually, they refused to even acknowledge that he was trying to speak to them. The Ross Ell were like that, often entirely ignoring other species’ existence. Their presence in the Alliance was a constant struggle just to keep them from running through allied territories with blithe ignorance of what they were doing. Only a few species were able to get instant recognition from them and, unfortunately for Kriss, the Lucians weren’t one of them.

Unsurprisingly, they don’t ignore any species that’s kicked their bulbous craniums in a fleet action, he thought sourly as he checked in with his teams.

This was the worst sort of situation for him and the most vulnerable he could imagine being. He and his men were caught with their backs to a wall they had to defend, the enemy…if the enemy was out there, they could hardly miss the construction being undertaken. He couldn’t prove that they were, in fact, out there, but Kriss had that sinking sensation that told him he wasn’t about to be so lucky as to find that they weren’t.

Just a short time more and it’ll be done. The Fleet will be in orbit, and this world will be secure.

As the time slowly passed away, however, Kriss kept thinking about the last short time before security could be established.

If I were the enemy, this is when I would strike.

*****

Joshua Crow held up his fist, signaling a stop, as he crouched in the thickest part of the underbrush and waited for the three aliens to move past his position.

The whole place is crawling with ETs, he though sourly, holding in place until they had moved on past before he opened his fist and gestured ahead, signaling to Korman that they were moving on.

He felt Korman’s hand on his shoulder as they moved, the induction link coming active.

“What are we going to do about all of them, boss?”

“Nothing,” Crow replied. “Not until we have to. If we get spotted, or we hear that Top and Mac have kicked off the party, then we do what we have to. Until that, however, we do nothing until the clock counts down.”

“Right, ok,” Korman said hesitantly. “You think we can avoid them that long?”

“I pinned my BUD, you’re Shaytet 13. You think we can’t ?” Crow challenged him.

Korman paused then simply dropped his hand and nodded. Crow smirked under his helm, and the two moved on. He’d learned early from his instructors in BUD/S that the best way to motivate an alpha personality type was to say they couldn’t do something.

Honestly, he figured that they had maybe an eighty-twenty chance of getting through the whole mess unnoticed until strike hour. The advantage was certainly resting on their side for once. With only four of them in a section of jungle the size of New York state, he didn’t care how good the enemy was; they were playing with a handicap.

That said, they did have to observe target locations well enough to gather strike coordinates for the artillery and drones, which would put them more in the open than he’d prefer. So the enemy could find them with advanced sensory gear during those moments, or there was always the dumb luck possibility of stumbling over them in the jungle.

Either were possible, and both were bad news for Crow and his team, but those were the cards they’d been dealt.

*****

Sorilla checked the time and decided that they were done. She put her fist up and waited for Mack’s hand on her shoulder to initiate the induction link.

“What’s up, Top?”

“We’re done. Scout for one of those fiber links the regulars ran through here.”

“No problem, we passed one just a little ways back.”

“Show me.”

They pivoted, Sorilla now taking the drag position as they retraced their steps through the jungle to where Mack had spotted the fiber line. It was buried, but he’d noticed the telltale disturbance of the ground. A few more months, if that, and it would be completely invisible, even under their advanced sensing systems, but for the moment they were just as glad that they weren’t.

Sorilla carefully cleared out the dirt from the line, digging it up before she pulled her knife and a small box from her kit. A swipe of the blade severed the link, then she stripped the protective covering before inserting both ends into the box and reburying it.

“I’m in,” she said a moment later, connecting to the USF network. “Transmitting coordinates…done. We’re clear.”

She quickly buried the box and line, dusting the area and laying some leaves and brush over it before standing up.

“We’ve got maybe fifteen minutes, Mack. Where was that last patrol we passed?”

Mack nodded. “I like the way you think, Top. Back about a half a klick, heading around to the east.”

“Let’s go pay them a visit, right?”

“Right you are, Top.”

Job done, they doubled back, paying less attention to stealth this time as they quickly picked up the enemy’s trail and tracked them back around. They wanted to be in position when the strikes came down; it would hide their own actions effectively in the larger chaos of the assault. With the clock now running on its own time, they focused on maximizing the bang they got for their buck.

*****

FOB Hayden

Kayne examined the changes in the tactical board as they came in. The new coordinates from the operator team showed clearly against the map of the old colony site. He looked over at the real time imagery he was getting from the fiber cable sensors, along with the overlay, and nodded with some satisfaction.

“Are the Cougars and Excaliburs in position?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Launch the Raptors,” he ordered, taking a little satisfaction in the order. The skies had been a no fly zone almost the entire time he was on Hayden, and it chafed at him. Fighting under an unfriendly sky went very much against his training and everything he’d ever experienced. At worst, a US Army officer learned to fight under a neutral sky, with short, hostile periods. On Earth there were no nations that could hold the skies against the stealth and air superiority of first world air forces, and there hadn’t been for two centuries.

Oh, some second world nations, and the occasional third world nation had the anti-air capability to make air operations chancy, but there were none that could hold the sky against a concerted effort of first world air forces.

Here on Hayden, however, things had flipped on him. He was hiding underground, half afraid to pop his head up for fear of nuclear retaliation. The sky, while not overtly hostile because the aliens didn’t seem to care enough to secure it for themselves, was far from a friendly place. They’d launched stealth drones early on, but they’d all been annihilated when the second gravity valve came online, and since then Kayne had been hesitant to waste what he had left.

Now, however, there seemed no point to hold anything back.

When they lost the orbitals, fighting on the ground would become far more dirty and dangerous. It wasn’t going to be a war he was trained to fight, Kayne knew. He fought wars from high ground, positions of power. In the dirt, the way it was going to be, was beyond his experience.

Honestly, he wasn’t certain he could fight and win that kind of war. So he was going to start it off with as big a bang as he possibly could.

“Raptors in the air.”

“Slave them to the firing solution. Put them at the disposal of the operator teams.”

“Yes, sir, General.”

On his board, the Raptors’ icons went live as they climbed to 50,000 meters and circled in toward the area of operation.

The clock on the screen was now counting down from three minutes.

*****

Unlike the Cougars, the heavier Excalibur units weren’t entirely automated. The big tracked platforms housed three-man crews, who were generally charged with emergency tasking and rearming the beasts they rode, as well as the general command and control of the automated Cougars that often rode escort.

For the first time since they’d landed their big beasts on Hayden, those crews had them out in the open and out from under the camo netting. They’d surveyed ideal firing positions when they arrived and now had moved their Excalibur and Cougar units into those positions, aligned with the lines to the old colony site.

Two of the big Excaliburs, their heavy power generators already rumbling as they charged the multiple redundant capacitors of the rail cannons, were sitting in the center of fifteen automated cougars. All the cannons were pointed very nearly vertical, the angle all but invisible to the naked eye as they waited for the final fire order.

With just over two minutes to the strike time, their firing light went green, and the first hypersonic blasts roared from seventeen high-powered rail cannons. The ground on the big hill shook, dirt and dust being blown into the air by the shockwave, and for a moment everything was blown away from them.

Then the rails lowered their angle just slightly, and the world rocked again.

The sound was heard for kilometers, the shockwave uprooted smaller trees for almost two hundred meters, and a moment later, the rails dropped again and once more they roared.

Time and again, the rails would drop their angle just slightly, while the crews monitored the charges of the rails, and they would fire again. The first shots were actually peaking just in sub-orbital space as the rails dropped to forty-five degrees and fired their twenty-fourth shot. The smart rounds slowed their ascent and started to fall back to Hayden’s surface, actually catching up with the second rounds fired as they built speed back up.

Then the first and second rounds started to catch up to the third, and then they all caught up to the fourth, and it continued in such manner. Finally, almost two minutes after the first shots had been fired, more than forty salvoes were crowded in the same airspace as they slammed into the old Hayden colony site at the same time.

At the plateau chosen for the Hayden colony, the whole world exploded.

The strike was simultaneous. The last rounds fired from the Cougar and Excalibur units had been over-the-horizon shots that barely arced at all before they slammed into their targets, while the first were effectively orbit-to-surface kinetic strikes. The positions spotted and chosen by the operator team were annihilated in the same instant, the alien ship holed through as if it were made of paper.

The shockwave threw everyone present who hadn’t been killed to the ground, scattering them like debris in a windstorm.

Kriss, a veteran of many Sentinel campaigns, recognized the strike for what it was even before he hit the ground, but he was also aware that the knowledge was completely useless.

Breaker, there were no indications they had weapons this heavy on-world!

He covered up, rolling under a concrete partition, and hugged it against the flying debris and shrapnel hurtling above him. For them to have timed their assault so precisely, he knew beyond a doubt that they had seen the Fleet coming and decided to hit hard while they could.

A tearing sound screeched above him, and he risked a look up in time to see the Ross Ell ship tilt dangerously to one side and then slip away as its drive lost stability. He had to admire the audacity of the assault and its carefully played timing, but damned if it wasn’t going to look bad on his record.

Of course, the Ross Ell ignoring his warnings would offset that with the Alliance itself, but Kriss was under no illusions that the Lucian Overseers would see it kindly. They didn’t much care for excuses, and the Overseers were all former Sentinels who had pretty much zero tolerance for failure.

After the rolling thunder of the initial strike, Kriss began to get to his feet, only to be thrown down again when a single, sharp crack tore the air asunder and another strike slammed into the ship as it went down. Kriss kept low as another supersonic explosion tore through the area, eyes on the skies as he realized that the strikes were coming in damned near horizontal from over the horizon to the south.

“Move!” he snarled. “They can’t hit us from that angle!”

He rose up himself, rallying the Sentinels around him. “Watch for ground forces! They’re firing from over the horizon, they must have local observation!”

He knew that to be true; they’d swept all the satellites from orbit in the original landing by the records he’d seen, and he’d confirmed that there were none when he brought his unit in. That meant someone or something on the ground with a line of sight.

Unfortunately, with all that cover, he scowled at the jungle pressing in around them from all sides, they could be almost anywhere. One thing he hated was being tied down to the defensive role. That was something for regular military; the Sentinels were bred to attack. Yet he found himself forced now to try and protect the damn fool Ross Ell, while his enemies roamed freely and struck as they would.

“Did any of the patrols report any sightings at all?” he demanded as he slid into a sheltered area with two of his sub-alterns.

“No, Deice! No reports.”

“Damn!”

Kriss reached out for a comm, “Get me a link to the fleet! We’re going to need fire support!”

Chapter Eleven

The rumble of thunder in the distance, shaking the ground and rattling the trees, those were the signs Sorilla and Mack were waiting for as they shadowed the alien patrol. While the three aliens were looking around in shock, they ghosted from the jungle and simply leveled their rifles as they stroked the triggers.

Set to full military power, select fire, the rail guns roared as a hypersonic gout of flame temporarily connected the two operators with their targets and simply vaporized large chunks of the aliens’ center mass. Unlike previous engagements, Sorilla and Mack elected to forgo control for power this time and ignored the suggestions of the weapons’ manual. The result was fast, messy, and lethal.

In less than two seconds, the three enemy soldiers were on the ground, only one of them in what was mostly one piece. The two veteran special operations soldiers exchanged brief glances before they stepped over the bodies and vanished again into the jungle, already on the hunt for more targets.

Despite the incredibly loud nature of the brief clash of violence, the sound of their rifles firing had been totally lost in the general roar of the artillery strike on the old colony site.

*****

The rolling thunder of the artillery barrage was a signal to Crow as well, but for him it was time to take a knee while Korman covered him. He loaded up a pulsed message and shot it out, hoping that the enemy counter signals would be distracted by the commotion. Once it was sent, he got up and nodded to his partner.

“Let’s move.”

The two quickly put some distance between themselves and the transmission point, not wanting to be around if the enemy still had valve capability.

“You think anyone got that?”

Crow shrugged as they ran. “If they didn’t, they didn’t. Nothing we can do about it now.”

As the thunder of the artillery strike rolled over the Hayden jungle, however, they needn’t have worried about others taking notice. Bravo Team was almost fifty klicks away, and after they’d figured out the direction it had come from and finished cursing, they immediately set out to investigate. Crow’s pulse signal just quickened their pace, as the operators of SOCOM Team Bravo really didn’t want to miss the party.

Charlie Team was only a few kilometers away on the other hand. They’d heard the rumble in the distance but were unable to pin down the direction until the strikes hit home. The loud cracks drove them to take a knee and evaluate whether they were under attack until Crow’s signal hit their coms.

“Damn. Alpha’s kicking off a major party. Think we can get there before there’s nothing left but cleanup, boss?”

The team leader, a British Navy commander by the name of Simon Conroy, considered their position against the time he had available. Crow’s data download included information on the inbound fleet and the military outlook once they took up their orbital positions. Despite that bleak set of projections, his job remained unchanged.

“All right, we turn our arses around,” he decided. “Even if the party’s over before we get there, that’s where the players are.”

Charlie Team nodded, changing direction quickly as they redirected to the old colony site to join their comrades and meet the enemy where they stood.

*****

FOB Hayden

Kayne eyed the screens arrayed around him with a critical eye, knowing what was coming and hating it all the same. Still, there was no rule that said he had to like his job, just that he had to do it.

“All right, get the Cougars and Excaliburs under cover. Time’s up,” he said finally.

His people sent the orders out without question, just entered the new status into their computers and seconds later the Cougar and Excalibur units were tucking their rails down in the locked position as they prepared to move out.

He would also have ordered the forward spotters back, but the operator teams had their own mission, and while they were under his command, they also had a lot more leeway concerning the interpretation of their orders compared to the regulars he controlled. Also, while he could give them orders, technically, he did not have the authority to change their overall mission.

So the operators would continue on their own authority, and he’d leave them to it. His responsibility was now to his own people and the colonists. They had to pull their heads in under some cover, and preferably pull everything that might show a hint of their position in along with them.

With the orbitals soon to be under the control of the enemy, his mission was about to go from securing the planet for the USF to disrupting the enemy’s attempt to do the same for their own purposes.

Not the job I was sent to do, but needs must when the devil drives, he thought tiredly, eyes on the screens around him. And the devil’s got the pedal to the metal now, that’s for sure.

*****

Near the old colony site

Sorilla and Mack crouched, looking out over the deep jungle lowlands that surrounded the now devastated colony plateau. They could see enemy soldiers digging themselves out of the rubble and moving into the jungle under the command and rallying cry of one central figure.

“What do you think, Top? Officer?”

Sorilla eyed the figure at the distance. “Yeah, looks like. Senior noncom, at least.”

Mack grimaced as he steadied his long gun. “I hate shooting grunts.”

“You think you can make that shot? It has to be four klicks,” Sorilla said skeptically.

Normally, he’d have been insulted by the insinuation, but honestly, this time around, Mackenzie wasn’t certain himself. A pure ballistic shot at that range wasn’t impossible, but if he were being honest with himself, it would test his luck more than his skill. The aliens’ natural or technical ability to spoof his more common tracking and targeting methods made it iffy. He’d have to actually adjust the round manually as it crossed the distance between them if he wanted to have a good chance at making the shot, and that wasn’t going to happen while there was a possibility of the control signal being tracked back to his position.

“Don’t know,” he admitted finally, crosshairs on the figure giving orders. “Say, ninety-ten against.”

Sorilla grimaced. Those weren’t the odds she wanted to hear. “What power rating are you at?”

“For this shot? Eighty plus,” he replied, watching the distant figure giving orders and sending troops off the plateau and into the jungle in their direction. “Green light, Top?”

She hesitated then shook her head. “Negative, Mack. Check fire, we’ll get him later. We’d expose our position for sure with that shot.”

The corporal sighed, looking up from his scope. “Right you are, Top.”

Sorilla cocked her head as an icon lit up on her HUD, showing that an IFF challenge had been issued over near field transmitters and passed.

“Commander Conroy,” she said in acknowledgement. “Bravo Team, welcome to the party.”

“Good to be here. Where’s Captain Washington?”

“Casualty,” she responded curtly. “Being treated at the FOB.”

“That’s a bloody bad break,” Conroy responded, appearing from the jungle along with his team. “So, what’s the sitrep then ?”

“Strike proceeded as expected. We’ve taken out a few stray combatants since we kicked it off, but the general has recalled our artillery and we’ll be losing the neutral sky shortly.”

“So, bollocked to hell, as it were?”

“If by that you mean fucked in a bad way, yeah,” Sorilla countered.

“Familiar territory, I suppose.”

“Quite,” she drawled in a not-so-subtle mockery of the commander’s accent.

He laughed, looking around. “Suggestions for deployment then, Master Sergeant?”

“Crow and Korman should be to the west,” she said. “And from the looks of it, we’ve got a small flood of meat shields and Charlie types coming from the north…so, deploy northwest?”

“Hook up with the rest of your team and kick some arse.” He nodded. “Works for me. Joining us?”

“That is the plan, Commander,” she said as she hefted her weapon.

“Good show. Let’s go have some fun then, shall we?”

They broke position and spread out as they headed northwest, keeping individuals within twenty-five meters of each other in order to provide some redundancy in their NFC systems as they swept through the jungle. This far out, the enemy patrols were still few and far between, so they made quick time as they dropped down into the lowlands and made their way in a tightening spiral around the ruins of the colony site.

With the mass of enemy soldiers being pushed down into the lowlands, it was no surprise that they quickly ran into some, nor did it surprise Sorilla in the least that it was the ones she privately and publically termed “meat shields” that were leading the way. She mentally nudged her weapon down to the book-recommended maximum power and told Mack to do the same before opening a link to everyone in their network.

“Watch for the Charlie type aliens, they’re likely using these idiots to draw us out.”

The men of Bravo Team acknowledged the warning as they shifted into position to ambush the approaching enemy. For Sorilla, this was rapidly turning into the sort of fight she’d rather have a division handle, with air support and Cougars at their back. Slugging it out with even dimwitted types was a losing proposition, considering their numbers.

Still, playing the cards they were dealt was often the name of the game, and Sorilla wasn’t about to flinch from a hand she still felt could be turned into a winner. They took their places as they monitored the approach of the alien forces, mentally preparing for the worst outcomes while planning to ensure the best.

Only moments before the two sides were about to clash, however, both sides were frozen in their tracks as a blinding light erupted in the skies over their heads. Bright enough to make itself seen through the jungle canopy and on the opposite side of the sky from the local sun.

Everyone froze for a moment, then scrambled as they tried to figure out what happened.

From a clearing, Sorilla found a patch of sky with the view she needed and was staring in shock at the multiple fireballs erupting against the blue-green sky.

“What happened?” Mack asked, skidding to a stop near her.

“A lot of ships just died up there, Mack. Don’t ask me whose. I don’t have a goddamned clue.”

*****

FOB Hayden

“Get me data I can use!” Kayne snarled as he leaned over the large planning screen. “I know those are explosions, now tell me who the hell exploded!”

The information he had on deep space, hell, even close orbital space, was basically zero. They had one bird they could retask, but it was sitting way out in lunar orbit, because anything closer was sure to be spotted and taken out by the enemy forces. Ground-based systems were a little more useful in many ways, but they couldn’t risk using any active systems, and the aliens didn’t seem to use anything remotely like the EM spectrum for communications, so radio telescopes weren’t the most useful things to have, even if he had the space to install them.

That left optical systems, mostly, and those were far from their best in broad daylight.

All of that meant that even while he’d been tracking the enemy ships, he had no clue what happened, because every system available to him was currently blinded by staring into what appeared to be numerable mini-suns.

It must be TFV, he thought grimly, but the idea of even the new Cheyenne class ships taking on an enemy fleet that size was ludicrous.

What the hell was she thinking? he wondered, scowling at the thought of the science track admiral in charge of the taskforce. Damned fool waste.

*****

USS Cheyenne

Hayden Orbit

“I can’t believe they haven’t spotted us.”

Patrick frowned slightly at the random comment that floated up from the lower stations but didn’t say anything. Mostly because he was thinking pretty much the same thing.

The ships of Taskforce Five were only a few million kilometers away from the alien squadron now and closing at an insane rate due to the rapid deceleration of the alien ships. As they slammed on the brakes, TFV continued to fall into the planet at the same speed they’d gathered by their use of the slingshot maneuver around the distant super-Earth class planet behind them.

That meant that the closure rate was rapidly approaching danger levels and showed no sign of slowing. They would intercept and pass the enemy starships with only an engagement window of a few seconds before they tore past and were sitting ducks to the enemy weapons.

“Captain.” Admiral Brookes’s voice came clear through to his station, any hint of the earlier doubt she felt completely absent from her voice. “Stand by to engage targets.”

“Aye, ma’am. All stations show ready, all tubes have been rammed and primed.”

“Very good. On my mark, Captain.”

“On your mark, Admiral.”

The words were rote, calmly spoken, but underneath it, Patrick Roberts felt like he was a shaken soda. Fizzing and ready to explode at the slightest provocation. So much of him wanted nothing more than to open fire now, before they were spotted and everything went to hell, but he knew objectively that would give very little advantage, if any.

Better to finish closing to the optimum range than to fire early, but as the ships began to loom in their scopes, he couldn’t help but ask the same question as his subordinates.

Why the hell haven’t they seen us yet? It’s like they’re distracted by something.

*****

As the captain of her flagship was privately panicking while working very, very hard not to show it, Admiral Nadine Brookes was finding herself feeling calmer and calmer as it became ever clearer that she was committed and there was no longer a decision to be made. Now it was only a problem to be solved, and that was something so much easier to deal with.

She felt almost casual as she did the math in her head one more time and then reached out to open the squadron com. The laser link that was keeping the ships of TFV in communication was already active, so she literally just had to turn on her side of the mic and begin speaking.

“All ships, this is Admiral Brookes. In a few moments we will be engaging the enemy over the world of Hayden. We have a parity of numbers in this engagement. However, all of you are aware as am I that numbers have never been our weaknesses in our encounters with this enemy. Remember, please, we are fighting for the preservation of one of our worlds…the lives of our civilian and military comrades…and we are blessed with the finest ships, minds, and bodies Earth has ever had to offer.”

She took a deep breath before going on. “We may not win, but we will never be defeated.”

After a moment, she switched over to the command com. “All captains, stand ready to engage.”

Lights flickered from amber to green across her board as the ships acknowledged her orders, and Nadine knew that it was time.

“All tubes, all rails…” she said, taking a deep breath. “Fire.”

*****

Heavy MRV torpedoes exploded from the ships of Taskforce Five, a hundred in the first salvo and another hundred following just seconds behind as the tubes cycled on full automatic fire. They began accelerating on their smaller VASIMR drives as soon as they were safely clear of the ship, screaming silently through space at better than one hundred gravities of acceleration.

The heavy hundred-kilo kinetic kill slabs of nickel and iron launched from the rail cannons were already racing ahead of them, however, the force of their launches noticeably shaking and slowing the ships as they fired.

The slugs arrived first, apparently going unnoticed until it was far too late, and slammed into the ships ahead of TFV like the hammer of the gods. The sudden conversion of mass and kinetic energy to heat was visible on every screen in the fleet, and had there been anyone watching through the clear screens of the now sealed upper decks, they would have been able to see the explosions with the naked eye.

Spectacular or not, however, the slugs were not enough to destroy or even cripple the enemy ships, and after what seemed to be a moment’s confusion, the big ships began to react.

The spun with unearthly speed, their point defense systems coming up to start picking some of the incoming fire from their sky, and Admiral Brookes winced in response.

I should have timed the strikes to be simultaneous, she thought, closing her eyes for a moment. God, they reacted with such speed…but I was too worried that they’d detect the torpedoes and stop both. Was I wrong?

It didn’t matter now.

The die was cast, and all she could do for the moment was ride out the storm. The enemy still hadn’t started targeting them, no signs of gravity events on any of the accelerometers that weren’t expected given their position in the system.

The USF ships were still firing, each salvo topping one hundred torpedoes into space, all screaming on ahead with their nuclear warheads primed. Given the nature of the speeds they were engaging at, however, those warheads could almost be considered superfluous. The enemy ships were still decelerating relative to TFV, and that just meant that the incoming fire was going to hit them that much harder.

It wouldn’t have mattered if they tried to run, at least not in terms of being able to outrun the weapons. They couldn’t, simple as that. However, had they immediately accelerated away from the attack, they could have bought more time for their countermeasures to take effect.

Just as those thoughts crossed Nadine’s mind, she saw four of the ships do just that. The new class ships, ones they had never seen before, reversed their reactive turn and began to accelerate away.

They’re leaving the others behind? What’s going on?

She had an overpowering urge to lean forward, but her straps kept her in place as she pondered the enemy actions.

“Gravity event detected!”

Her eyes widened as Nadine waited for more details to filter through and privately began to brace in case the event was localized on the Cheyenne.

“They’re engaging missiles with gravity valves!”

She almost breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that, for the moment, none of her crews were going to be dying, but at the same time they desperately needed those weapons to get through.

“Torpedo countermeasures active! Warheads separating!”

The multiple warhead cones of the torpedoes exploded away from the doomed bodies of the weapons, accelerated several times more by the separation explosions as they continued on their paths. One hundred torpedoes turned into four hundred warheads, devilishly small and impossibly fast, that slammed into the alien ships at speeds beyond the comprehension of anything that had ever evolved on a planet.

Nuclear blossoms erupted in space ahead of them as the taskforce ships continued their dive, weapons still firing fiercely…desperately, if anyone were being particularly honest.

Caught by surprise, the alien ships were rocked by nuclear fire, and for a moment Nadine had hope that things had gone beyond their best case scenario for perfection. Then she noticed one of the unknown class of ships had vanished from her plot.

Hurriedly, she called up the history of its action, eyes following it as it dove into the planet. Then she glanced up at the live plot to see another vanish around the planet, and the other two on course to follow.

Nadine slapped open the command com. “All captains, watch for ships coming around the curve of Hayden! I say again, enemy ships are performing a slingshot around Hayden!”

She cast her eyes to the plot and paled as she realized that, by the time the alien ships came around the world, they would be caught in a pincer. For just a few seconds, they would certainly be between the guns of two groups of starships, and neither were likely to be feeling particularly charitable at the time.

She keyed open a com to half her ships, the ones closest to the likely path of the second group’s approach. “Redirect fire to intercept them as they clear the planet.”

Those ships fired thrusters, fighting to bring their weapons to bear in time. They just made it as the first hint of the dark ships appeared around the edge of Hayden, and they opened fire at their new targets.

The ships of the squadron were shocked when their fire was answered in kind, blazing blasts of energy racing back across space toward them in dazzling, rapid fire. For a few seconds, they were at a loss. Staring at a weapon that actually looked familiar to them in some way jarred their minds, as they were expecting the invisible crushing killer of the gravity valve.

The first blast struck the HMS Longbow along her port side, annihilating her ceramic plates as they detonated their active countermeasures. The ship shuddered, but the active armor worked as the shaped charge of plasma blew out and destroyed whatever the enemy blast was.

“Evasive action!” Nadine ordered over the com.

The squadron began to break up, drives now flaring in response as more of the enemy pulse fire raked their hulls and the gravity event alarms began to sound as well.

The Kiowa Warrior shook and then was crushed like a tin can under the pressure of an enemy valve, and then a raking blast of pulse fire caught the Longbow along her naked flank where the active armor plates no longer protected and holed through. She vented atmosphere and bodies a moment later, peeling away from the blast either from the force of explosive decompression or the impact itself.

Nadine sent out new orders, most just modifications on her original plan, and watched as the ships formed up around the USF Cheyenne and the HMS Hood. They fired their VASIMR drives and drove into the enemy at their front, pushing away from the ships coming about to flank them, tubes still firing as the ranges closed so tightly that she knew to blink would be to miss the entire passage.

It was then, though, at that last second, that one of the enemy captains did something so insane that she would have been stunned into inaction even had she the time to react. They swung about directly in front of the Cheyenne, either by some suicidal impulse or sheer incompetence, and all she could see was the gleaming white of their hull filling her screens.

“All hands,” Captain Roberts’s voice called over the com, sounding so oddly calm in that moment. “Brace for impact.”

It was automatic, she supposed. It had to be, since there was no way to brace for what was coming, but it sounded good.

The nose of the Cheyenne punched through the enemy ship like it was made of tissue paper. The Cheyenne class, like the Los Angeles ships before, were cast-iron construction made from a single, huge asteroid that had been melted down and shaped through centrifugal force. Her armor was a meter-thick ceramic composite, backed with shaped explosive charges to defeat plasma weapons. Her hull, however, was over a dozen meters thick in places and composed entirely of cast-nickel-iron.

The alien ship was built of super-strong, but lightweight, composites unknown to Earth technology.

Pound for pound, the alien ship was immeasurably stronger and more resilient. However, it massed a mere two million metric tons. The much smaller Cheyenne weighed in at over fifty.

The result was a sudden and catastrophic failure of the alien ship as the Cheyenne punched through her armor and inner decks like a bullet through cardboard. Ceramic plates exploded as they passed, causing additional (yet totally superfluous) damage and calamity within the doomed ship.

Then the ragged and tattered hull of the Cheyenne, still completely intact and spaceworthy, exploded out the other side as the alien ship died in her wake.

Nadine was stunned for a moment as she saw stars again on those screens that were still active.

We didn’t actually just do that, did we?

“Damage control teams to port side, forward! Damage control teams to starboard side, forward!”

I guess we did.

She shook herself, pushing it aside. She’d hyperventilate over it later.

“Captain, can we survive atmospheric entry?” she asked tersely.

“I’d advise against it, ma’am. Our heat shields are gone!”

“Understood. Standby to bring our tubes about to bear on our pursuers then.”

“Aye, ma’am. Coming about!”

As the ship slowly twisted around, Nadine was treated to an image of the devastation in their wake. The ship they’d plowed through was nothing but scrap now, obviously, but the disastrous pass had left enemy and ally aflame in their wake. Three other ships of the squadron were down and gone, their icons vanished from the plot, but so were the majority of the enemy ships. One of the new class ships was burning as it drifted close to Hayden, and all but two of the others were floating unresponsive in the planet’s orbit.

My god. Did we really do that?

The sheer level of devastation was such that she almost couldn’t grasp the death she had wrought, even only in human terms. The alien losses had to be astronomical, but they were so unreal to her just then that she had to stifle a giggle at the enormity of it. Nadine was self-aware enough to know that she was likely slipping into shock and just hoped she could keep a grip until it was over.

One way or the other.

“Captain. I don’t believe that there’s any point running now.”

“No, ma’am,” he said in reply over the com. His voice came over the ship-wide a moment later. “All hands, brace for acceleration.”

The Cheyenne’s drives flared first, but one by one, the remaining squadron members of the slyly nicknamed Taskforce Valkyrie lit their drives and began to decelerate right into the faces of the few survivors of their death dive. As their weapons once more began to belch flame and death, it quickly became clear that the enemy had no more stomach for the fight.

The five remaining ships that could move, or at least limp, turned tail and began to accelerate out of orbit and head for deep space.

Nadine stared for a moment then reached for the station controls. She had to slap her hand twice to keep it from shaking.

“All hands…we’ll be decelerating into Hayden orbit, where we will remain while damage control proceeds. I have never been more proud to serve with anyone before in my life, and I sincerely doubt that I will ever surpass that no matter how long I live.”

She took a few breaths, willing her heart to stop beating in her chest, and then signaled FOB Hayden.

“FOB Hayden, this is Task Force…” Nadine paised, a quirk of a smile on her lips, “Valkyrie. We hold the orbitals. I say again-”

As she spoke by rote she briefly wondered what they’d think of her taking on the mantle others had directed at her and her crews with snide undertones in the past. There was nothing to be ashamed of in living up to the name and, by the Gods if they existed, Nadine was certain her crews had done just that.

*****

FOB Hayden

Kayne was in shock when he heard Brookes’s voice come over the com lines.

“… I say again, FOB Hayden. This is Taskforce Valkyrie. We hold the orbitals.”

He stared for a moment then dove for his station.

“Get the Cougars and the Excaliburs back in the field!” he growled. “All ready teams are to deploy immediately! Transports, get ready! We’re moving on the old colony site!”

*****

Old colony site

Kriss stared at his coms for a moment, unable to believe the last message that came through before everything went dead.

How did a fleet get so close without being seen?

He was still stunned when the first sonic shockwave woke him from his stupor, and he looked up to see the low angle contrail cross the sky.

Damn! They hold the orbitals, and they knew we can do nothing about it.

The resumption of the long-range fire was proof of that. No way they would risk exposing those weapons with Fleet ships in orbit, but now there was no support coming for him. No pickup either.

Kriss snarled, signaling his men. “Fall back and regroup! Fall back!”

He signaled the remaining Ross Ell and their Porra guards. He would need every hand, claw, and mind he could get for what was coming. They didn’t have the forces to secure the world, but these people had no idea what a Lucian could do when there was nothing left to lose.

He would fall back into the jungle. The first goal was to secure their landing craft and the supplies and equipment within. It would do them no good to leave the world in it, since it was a local craft only, but they would need those materials.

When they had secured a safe place to use as a base and determined what, if anything, they could eat on this world…well, then they would do what Lucians did.

They would wage war.

*****

“They’re falling back. What the hell is going on?” Mack mumbled, confused.

Sorilla shook her head but didn’t answer. Instead, she consulted her map of the base fiber lines and found a sensor point near their position. She broke off from the group and quickly linked into it, consulting the battle network.

“Holy shit,” she whispered over the team link.

“What is it, Master Sergeant?” Commander Conroy asked as he approached.

Sorilla looked up to where the fireballs in the sky were dying down, being replaced by trails of smoke as debris was flung into Hayden’s atmosphere to burn.

“They did it.”

“Who? Taskforce Five?”

Sorilla grinned.“I think they want to be called Taskforce Valkyrie now, sir.”