We blazed through the thick atmosphere of Titan like meteors, heat shields cherry red from the fireballs around us. Inside the jumpship, metal popped and creaked, the hull changing shape due to the intense pressures as the pilot shifted the angle of reentry.
“Helmets,” Ken shouted.
I looked up and down the platoon as their faces were obscured by faceplates, suddenly anonymous except for the small nameplates.
Everyone was strapped in.
Everyone quiet, determined.
“Incoming!” the pilot, Gennadiy, warned on the common channel.
“I thought they took most of it out from orbit?” I leaned forward to look up toward the front. The nitrogen clouds flickered, lit up from inside by what looked like lightning.
“The Accordance heavy contingent stopped laying it down and moved out fifteen minutes ago,” the pilot said. “Only the CPF carriers are in orbit now.”
“What the fuck?” That wasn’t supposed to happen. The fireball around us had faded. The pilot shuddered us into another curving turn down into the flashing clouds. “Where’d they go? Is it a retreat?” What were we flying down into without orbital support?
“No, not at that speed. They’re repositioning,” the pilot grunted.
“Where?”
“I don’t know” was the annoyed answer. And then we banked hard again, knocking the breath out of me as the jumpship kept turning. We flipped upside down and the engines lit up. “They were supposed to knock out the anti-orbital weaponry, but we’re getting a lot of fucking energy in the air.”
We were pointed straight down at the ground and going all out.
“Holy shit!” Vorhis shouted.
“No point in dallying around!” Gennadiy shouted back.
Energy danced across the clouds, hopping from point to point and seeking us out. A dot far below us flared and then faded away in a cloud of debris. A concussive wave slapped the side of the jumpship, punching it twenty feet to the side and denting the hull. The craft began shaking hard enough that my vision blurred.
What sounded like rain pattered against the jumpship. We were diving through the remains of someone else.
Then came the flare-out. My armor kicked in to compensate against the sudden crushing force of the jumpship reversing thrust to prevent us from becoming a stain on the ground; it gripped my body and squeezed to keep blood up near my brain. My vision blurred, a rib cracked, and painkillers rushed in from the armor.
We struck the ground and slid for several hundred feet through hydrocarbon-rich mud before coming to a stop.
My eyes wide, panting, I yanked myself out of the restraints. “Ken, Shriek, check the platoon status.”
“We’re way out of our LZ,” Amira reported.
I was looking at the map overlay on my helmet already as well. “But we’re inside the bowl.” The pilot had just pointed down and done the insane thing of running all the anti-orbital weaponry in a straight shot. Pips and information from everyone else showed most of the CPF coming down on the other side of the hills. Or getting shot down on the final approach.
“Anyone else insane enough to try the direct approach?” I asked Gennadiy.
“A few of us decided on it when we realized the anti-spacecraft came back up,” he said wearily. “They were getting shot down on final approach as well as in the deorbit. We figured, roll the dice, come in on rails, and skip the fancy dancing. We knew it was just a numbers game.”
“Everyone’s accounted for,” Ken said.
“I’m looking at the maps and seeing heavy fire from these points. Those are the anti-orbital cannons we put in place; the Conglomeration moved some of them around,” I said. There were smoking gaps in the hills where we had originally placed them. So, the Accordance had not taken the time to verify that they were melting actual emplacements. Just used the old coordinates and moved on. We showed up and were sliced and diced. “Amira? We get those knocked out, we create the space for any CPF trying to come over the hills to retake Shangri-La.”
“Well, sitting here is going to be a bad decision in about a minute,” Gennadiy said. “We have incoming. I need to get the hell out to safety.”
I thudded my way forward. “Troll.” Tons of gray armor plated hide came careening down the nearby slope toward us. “Everyone out!”
“We don’t have artillery support here by ourselves,” Ken said as I spun around. “Mortars aren’t going to slow it down. Or hit it. It’s moving too quickly.”
“Move out!” I shouted, impatient. “Gennadiy, get out of here, I’m jumping. Amira, give orbital our position and bring in a laser, danger close.”
I didn’t have to ask twice; as the last of the platoon tumbled out, Gennadiy lit up and took the air. Ken and I jumped out, last of the group, and we were already a hundred feet off the ground in the seconds it took for Gennadiy to take off.
As I fell, I looked over at the approaching troll.
Big alien fucker. Multiple eyes. Something out of a bad dream. All sharp armor plates under that rhino-thick skin. Serrated claws.
“Run!” Ken shouted as he hit ice and dirt to find a squad waiting for us.
“Incoming in three . . . ,” Amira said calmly on the common channel.
We bounced out like fleas, straining to push our armor to its limits.
“. . . two . . .”
I was in midair and flying.
“. . . one.”
I curled into a ball and looked back behind me. The orange clouds above us split. Energy lanced down from above instead of leaping upward. The beam of focused energy boiled the ground where it struck, just to the left and forward of the troll that had skidded to a stop in an explosion of gravel. The world hummed and spat.
The beam adjusted course, Amira no doubt whispering instructions. It moved inexorably over the ground, leaving a great scar in its wake. The troll ran, but there was nowhere to hide. The beam of light swallowed it up with a sudden lurch of motion and then kept on moving.
There wasn’t even a shadow.
I hit the ground in a sprawl and skidded to a stop on my belly. The orbital energy cannon snapped off. “How long for upstairs to recharge?” I asked.
“Ten minutes,” Amira said.
I’d known that we wouldn’t be able to walk up the hill behind an apocalyptic finger of energy from the carriers’ anti-ship weapons being pointed downward, but I was still disappointed. At least, I thought, they were able to give us support and weren’t under attack and needing their energy weapons for survival.
For now.
“Who else made it down into the bowl with us?” I asked.
“First Platoon, Charlie Company,” Amira said.
“I saw some other pips scattered around on the tactical when we hit; did they link up with them?”
“No,” Amira said.
They’d gone silent. I closed my eyes for a second. “Let’s get to First Charlie.”
+ + + +
We crunched across a field of dead crickets and toward a twenty-foot-long structure of cricket pieces that had assembled themselves into the form of a robotic worm. Half of its body was stuck inside the hole it had dug to try and surprise First Charlie from below ground.
The platoon had crash-landed in their jumpship and then dragged it around to the front of the crater to use as a hasty shield as they’d dug in behind it.
“I didn’t realize you guys were calling yourselves the Groundhogs,” Zizi said on the common channel after we scooted in to join them behind the blackened remains of the canted jumpship. “You dig in any deeper here, you’ll have a warren.”
“Says the platoon hopping across the basin like fleas on crack to hide with us” came the annoyed retort.
“Zizi, shut up,” I ordered. The atmosphere was still dancing with light stabbing out from the hilltops around us. The skyscraper-sized anti-orbital weaponry that the Accordance had built here in Shangri-La was now being turned against them.
I used the live tactical map on my helmet to find the command pip nearby. Sergeant Natalie Cunningham sounded tired as she leaned in to look through helmets at me. She grabbed my shoulder. The armor-to-armor contact kicked in, giving us a secure line.
“Sorry about the chatter,” I said.
“We’re actually relieved you’re in the shit stew with us,” Cunningham said. “We thought we were going to be alone here. What’s the plan?”
“Upstairs says we don’t have to make a run uphill,” Amira said. “It’s still clear in orbit, so they can keep pointing down. We point out the new coordinates, they’ll melt. Then we see what comes scurrying out. Anais is moving toward Shangri-La; they’ve rounded up a full company’s strength.”
“So, where are the Conglomerate ships? The Trojans? And where did the rest of the Accordance ships head to?” I asked.
“Lots of theories, lots of bullshit,” Amira said.
I briefed Cunningham, picked some spotters, and sent out a squad each. Zhao took Bravo squad out. The basin had quieted. And the Conglomeration hadn’t turned any heavy weaponry on the hills down into here.
Yet. I had Smalley take Alpha squad around our perimeter and start mining it.
We were keyed up, looking around, waiting for another wave of ground assault. But so far, it wasn’t coming.
“Incoming,” Amira muttered. The slopes behind us lit up. My helmet struggled to compensate as the anti-ship weapons from orbit reached down to the ground. The alien energy weapons under the beams of energy exploded, tortured matte-black and green shards flying across the basin.
No one had to be told to get low as debris larger than a jumpship struck icy gravel.
The light faded. “They’re recharging,” Amira said. “But that’s a third of their capacity, easy.”
The jagged tips of the hills were now soft and runny.
“Anais gives us ten minutes before he gets up the neutralized hill,” Amira said. “Titan’s cold enough, a crust will already be formed on the top. We’ll have backup shortly.”
“And we’re going to need it,” Zhao reported from cover against a ravine in one of the hills they’d dug into instead of coming back. “They’re coming out of the ground.”
I turned. Shielded covers were being blown off tunnel access points. Raptors moved out quickly to establish fields of fire. Then behind them . . . humans in surface suits. Hundreds of them boiled out.
“They’re not in armor,” Tony Chin said mournfully over the command channel. “All they have to fight with are small arms.”
They were going to get slaughtered. I got on Shangri-La’s civilian common channel. “This is Lieutenant Devlin Hart,” I sent. “Please, you are unprotected and barely armed. Get back into the tunnels. The Colonial Protection Forces have come to ground to rescue you and take back Shangri-La. Remain below.”
“The last thing we want is to go back to sitting under the thumb of Arvani lackeys,” the response came. “Shangri-La is a free zone for humans. We’ve held elections, we’ve built a militia. Now we’re going to make a stand.”
“What is all that about?” one of Cunningham’s soldiers asked.
“Conglomerate propaganda,” Ken said with distaste.
“They’re willing to die for it,” I said. “Look.” A wave of blue surface suits ran toward us.
“Lieutenant?” Cunningham asked on the common channel.
“Wait,” I said.
The blue line grew larger. Bullets started to smack and splinter nearby rock. One pinged off my shoulder pad.
Someone, Rockhopper or First Charlie—it didn’t matter—fired back. A clean shot, center mass. Blood exploded out of the back of one of the many blue suits and hung in the air as the figure stumbled and fell forward. The line continued to run right at us, more and more figures dropping, until they hit the mines.
Dirt fountained up, the ground thudded, and the wall of blue shattered. The dust settled to reveal them taking cover or turning back. Sixty bodies lay still in the scree between us and the main body of blue.
“Do you see that they’re willing to die for freedom?” a familiar synthesized voice said on the common channel. “Do you understand what you can all get from the Conglomeration? Something the Accordance will never give you. Self-determination. Which means they’re willing to face thugs like you to fight and keep it.”
“Zeus,” Ken said, voice dripping acid.
“I am willing,” Zeus said, “to negotiate with the Conglomeration on your behalves. You can end further bloodshed. You don’t have to keep cutting down so many, when you should all be sharing a common cause. The freedom of your kind.”
“Where’s the asshole?” I asked. “Zhao? What do you see? Do you see any Arvani out on the surface?”
“Spot five raptors, one Arvani in the mix at the center of all the blue. They’re hanging close to the tunnels,” Zhao reported. “Need us to punch in from the side?”
The moment they did, that I had a feeling Zeus would rabbit down into the tunnels. Somewhere, there’d be a plan to hole up for a siege. “No, this is an opportunity,” I said. I looked around. “We need to lure him farther out.”
I looked at the hole with the cricket boring machine slumped half out of it. A few of us could cram down in there with armor, right down the damn thing’s gullet. “I have an idea,” I said on the command channel. “To kill Zeus. But it will take just a few of us and leave us pretty vulnerable.”
“I’m in,” Ken said quickly.
“Me, too,” Amira said.
“Okay, Zhao,” I said. “I need a distraction to keep them looking your way while we get up to no good. Don’t push too hard, just get Zeus’s attention and then get holed up somewhere. Got it?”
“Yes sir!” she said enthusiastically.