Chains of Command (22 page)

Major Masoud opens another display square on the hologram behind him and flicks a grainy video feed onto it. It’s a maximum-magnification shot from a recon drone’s camera system—the craggy surface of an asteroid, and a clearly man-made structure protruding from it. It’s a low-slung cross-shaped structure, a central pod with four spokes projecting from it that connect to smaller pods on the ends of each spoke.

“That,” he says, “is where we’ll get the intel we need to save us having to comb through the system moon by moon.”

“Sir, they’ll see us coming and send for help,” Lieutenant Dorian interjects. “With all due respect, should we be advertising our presence in the system this early?”

“They’ll see
Berlin
coming,” Major Masoud replies. “They’ll certainly see
Portsmouth
coming, black paint or not.” He smiles sharply and nods at the corner of the briefing room where the drop ship pilots are sitting in a row together.

“But they won’t see a single Blackfly coming from the dark side of the asteroid they’re on.”

A general buzz of excitement goes through the briefing room. I look over to the pilots, and Halley and her fellow drop ship jocks are exchanging glances, undoubtedly already trying to figure out how to beat each other to the pilot seat for that particular run.

“Small installation like that, we can secure it with two SEAL teams, maybe three,” Captain Hart says. He sounds confident to the point of slight boredom, and I decide on the spot that I’ll probably never get around to liking him. But then Major Masoud shakes his head, and I see with some satisfaction that the captain’s little smirk disappears from the corners of his mouth.

“It’s an unarmed station. It may even be an automated relay. Either way, it’s a tiny outpost, and it doesn’t support more than a tech or two, if they have it staffed at all. The SI can take this one.”

He looks over to me.

“Lieutenant Grayson, I want you to get two squads from your platoon together and report mission readiness by 1730. One squad on the ground, one in reserve in case things go to shit. No point taking the entire platoon. You won’t be able to fit them all into that tiny little station anyway. You’ll be taking along one of the Fleet Neural Networks people to get the intel off the station once the place is secured.”

“Aye, sir,” I say, trying to hide my surprise. I would have bet on Major Masoud picking someone from his pet SEAL platoon for a mission like this. The SI are trained for this sort of assault, of course, but this sort of cloak-and-dagger stuff is right in the center of the SEALs’ competencies. But I know better than to answer in any other way than the affirmative.

Major Masoud turns his attention to the pilot section.

“I want First Platoon’s drop ship warmed up and ready for skids-up at 1800. We are going to nudge
Portsmouth
’s course to match the asteroid’s rotation so you can launch and approach from the station’s blind spot.
Berlin
will provide overwatch from a distance. Any questions?”

“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the amount of premission recon,” Halley says from the flight section. “Feels like we are rushing in.”

“We have to rush in, Captain,” Major Masoud replies. “For all we know, that outpost spotted us when we came out of Alcubierre. We need to assume they already know we are here. We need to grab what we need and go.”

“Understood,” Halley says, but I know her facial expressions, and I can tell she’s still not entirely happy with the situation.

“Let’s get to it,” Major Masoud says. “I want to be gone from this neighborhood before the big kids show up to give us a bloody nose.”

“Squad leaders, to me,” I call out when I get back to the platoon pod. My NCOs obey and come across the quarterdeck to where I’m standing.

“Gear up two squads,” I say, and look at the candidates: Philbrick, Wilsey, and Welch. I make my decision in a heartbeat.

“Gunny, suit up. You’re going in. Sergeant Wilsey, your squad will be backup. The rest can stay out of armor and stand by.”

Gunny Philbrick and Sergeant Wilsey both nod and walk back to the squad berths, this time with urgency in their steps.

“Am I coming?” Sergeant Fallon asks.

“I’d just as soon have you here and keep Sergeant Welch and Third Squad occupied. Do a CQB drill on the range. Have them go running on the concourse. Get their blood flowing a little.”

“Copy that,” she replies. Then she shakes her head and grins. “Still not used to you calling the shots and telling me what to do.”

“Tell me about it,” I say.

CHAPTER 18

It feels good to be gearing up for a concrete mission again after days and days of uncertainty and tension. With my battle armor and my weapon, I have a tiny bit of control over my existence again out here in the black. First and Second Squads are ready and waiting in precise lines on both sides of the passageway outside when I leave the platoon pod.
Portsmouth
has very wide passageways because of the freight and supplies that need to be moved from pod to pod in the ship, and even two full infantry squads in combat gear don’t clog it up.

“What in the fuck is that?” one of the troopers says in astonishment when we walk into the aviation pod, where the Blackfly drop ship squats on the deck with her engines silent, warning strobe at the rear of the tail boom painting the inside of the pod with bright orange streaks.

“That’s the state of the art in battlefield transportation, Giddings,” Philbrick answers. “So secret, it doesn’t even exist.”

“Sure as shit looks real to me,” Corporal Giddings says, his eyes firmly glued to the exotic and unfamiliar shape of the Blackfly.

The tail ramp of the Blackfly is much narrower than the ones on the Dragonflies and Wasps, despite the fact that the ship is quite a bit larger than either. As with the ship, there are no straight lines and right angles on the ramp, either. Its edges have a sort of serrated look to them, facets with round corners, and the ramp is slightly narrower at the bottom than it is at the top. It’s coated with some absorbent material that muffles our steps as we trudge up the ramp, which feels all wrong. I like the reassuring clatter of boot soles on steel whenever I board a drop ship with a platoon, and its absence is an unwelcome change in pre-battle ritual.

As big as the Blackfly is on the outside, the hold seems smaller than the one on the Dragonfly. Where the other drop ships have two rows of seats on each side with the troopers facing each other across the hold, this ship also has two rows on the centerline of the ship, seats that are arranged back-to-back so the troopers sitting in them face the outside rows.

“First Squad, center left,” the crew chief of the drop ship directs. “Second Squad, center right.”

The squads file into the unfamiliar ship as instructed, one squad per row. Platoon leaders usually have a seat up near the front bulkhead, and I look for my assigned spot. The crew chief points me toward it.

“Command console,” he says. “Data jack is by your right knee when you sit down.”

The command console in the Blackfly makes the ones in the older drop ships look like rows of cans on strings. I have no fewer than four large display panels in front of me, with several smaller ones arranged in a row overhead. I can command the whole platoon with the comms suite in my suit, of course, but it’s much easier to keep an eye on the big picture when you have hardwired twenty-inch display flats instead of simulated ones projected into your field of vision by your helmet. I strap myself into the seat in front of the console, connect the data umbilical from the console’s jack into the receptacle on my armor, and let my tactical computer connect to the ship’s much more powerful neural network. I’m facing the port side of the hull, so the rows of squad jump seats are to my left. Behind me, the crew chief sits down at his own control console on the other side of the drop ship’s aisle.

“Ramp up,” he announces. The Blackfly’s tail ramp creeps upward into the closed position with a soft hydraulic hiss and seals itself into place.

“Passengers aboard, verify hard seal on the cargo hold,” the crew chief sends to the flight deck. My heart skips a beat as I anticipate the reply from the flight deck, hoping to hear Halley, but the voice that replies is male and unfamiliar.

“Copy hard seal on cargo hold,” the pilot sends back. “Stand by for undocking. Turning one and two.”

The ship’s engines spring to life with a sort of whooshing roar, which is barely a whisper here in the cargo compartment. I can feel the hull vibrating slightly as both of the drop ship’s main propulsion units come online.

“Holy shit, this thing is quiet?” I say to the crew chief, who nods with a grin.

“Quieter at full throttle than a Wasp at idle,” he says. “She has noise-absorbing mounts on her noise-absorbing mounts.”

I return his grin and turn around to check my network link.

“Rogue Ops, Rogue Actual. Comms and data link check.”

“Rogue Actual, Rogue Ops. You are five by five on voice and data.”

I toggle into my platoon’s network and select the squad leader channels.

“Rogue squads, Rogue Actual. Give me a comms and TacLink check,” I say.

“Rogue One Actual, check,” Gunnery Sergeant Philbrick sends back his verification.

“Rogue Two Actual, check,” Sergeant Wilsey replies.

Twenty-six individual trooper names pop up on my display in two rows of blue lettering, two squads with three fire teams of four troopers each, along with both my squad leaders. We’re only going in with one of those squads, but it still seems like overkill to send thirteen fully geared SI troopers in to take over one little relay station. On the other hand, things in this line of business have a habit of going to shit on the ground once the mission starts, and there has never been a platoon leader in battle who thought he had way too many troops on hand to deal with a problem.

“Rogue Ops, Rogue Actual. Comms cross-check complete,” I send back to ops. “Ready for showtime.”

Outside in the aviation pod, I hear the faint blaring of a warning klaxon.

“All personnel, clear the pod for flight ops,” the overhead announcement comes. “Depressurizing pod in t-minus thirty. I repeat, all personnel clear the pod for flight ops. Depressurizing in t-minus twenty-six.”

The modular flight pod is a big compromise solution. It doesn’t have the standard docking clamp arrangement of a proper flight deck, and there’s no double airlock to enable a drop ship to launch out of the bottom hull without depressurizing the hangar. Instead, there’s a docking clamp overhead that’s attached to a rail mounted to the ceiling of the pod. As we wait for the depressurization to start, the clamp extends from the rail and attaches to the receptacles on the top of the hull. Then the clamp pulls the drop ship off the deck a very short distance.

“Depressurization in ten. Nine. Eight. Seven . . .”

The aviation pod doesn’t depressurize gently and slowly like an EVA airlock. Instead, orange warning strobes flash, and then the entire outward section of the pod opens out and into space, the outer hull panels unsealing like a huge clamshell. The drop ship rocks slightly in its clamp as all the air in the pod escapes into space at once. The pod doors swing out of the way, and the boom above the drop ship extends into the space beyond. I watch on the camera feed as the boom folds out to twice its original length and then comes to a stop.

“Launch prep complete,” the pilot announces. “
Portsmouth
Ops, Blackfly One requesting permission to launch.”

“Blackfly One,
Portsmouth
Ops. You are cleared to launch off Starboard Pod One. Initiate launch sequence and maintain heading of relative nine-zero by zero-zero after launch.”

“
Portsmouth
Ops, copy initiate launch and assume relative nine-zero by zero-zero. Initiating launch sequence.”

The docking clamp puts itself into motion and moves the Blackfly out of the aviation pod and into the open space beyond the clamshell pod doors. The ship takes up most of the space inside the pod, so our ride on the launch rail doesn’t take very long. Then we come to a gentle stop at the end of the rail. I check the camera feed and see the hull of
Portsmouth
disconcertingly close to the end of the Blackfly’s tail boom.

“Drop in three, two, one. Drop.”

I’m used to drop ships falling away from their launching hosts as the launch airlock is normally still inside the artificial gravity field of the bigger ship, but the Blackfly gently releases from the clamp and slowly floats away from
Portsmouth
as the pilot throttles up the engines very slightly. When we are several dozen meters from the launch boom, he increases thrust, and we accelerate away from
Portsmouth
. The ship is astonishingly quiet, as if someone had wrapped the engines in the world’s biggest blanket.

“Launch sequence complete,” the pilot sends to
Portsmouth
. “We are go for mission profile burn.”

“Blackfly One, resume own navigation and enter mission profile trajectory at your discretion,”
Portsmouth
Control sends back. “Good luck, and Godspeed.”

I look back toward
Portsmouth
on the camera feed, and I realize with some discomfort that I’ve never left a host ship via drop ship while my wife was still on board. Every time we were on the same Fleet vessel together and left it on a drop ship, she was in the pilot seat of that ship.

On the other side of
Portsmouth
,
Berlin
is keeping station several kilometers away. The pilot puts the Blackfly into a wide turn to port, and we accelerate ahead of
Portsmouth
and then cross in front of her bow. The rough black paint is working well—with all the position lights and hull illumination turned off, she’s pretty hard to spot against the backdrop of deep space with the naked eye even from just a kilometer or two away.

“Burning for intercept trajectory,” the pilot announces. Then he throttles up all the way, and the drop ship practically leaps away from our two-ship task force. I take another look back when we are several hundred kilometers downrange, and even the big
Portsmouth
with all her size and amenities looks almost insignificantly tiny in the black void behind us.

The transit to the target asteroid takes four hours, which is a long time when you are wearing battle armor and you’re strapped into a spartan jump seat that wasn’t built for long-term comfort. The pilot seems to know what he’s doing—every time the asteroid is at the point of its rotation where the relay station is on the side away from us, he burns the engines to accelerate us or make trajectory corrections, and whenever the station faces us, we are coasting, like a black hole in space. Seeing a ship in polychromatic camouflage from the vantage point of its hull-mounted lenses is the weirdest visual. I can tell roughly where the outlines of the ship are, but the Blackfly itself is undefined and blurry, as if it’s partially translucent. I’ve seen the effect before on a smaller scale, while wearing my bug suit on Lanky-controlled worlds, but to see it on this scale is both amazing and a little disconcerting.

On our approach, I spend my time collating camera visuals from the relay station. Every time the asteroid turns the station toward us and we cut out the propulsion, we are a little bit closer and the camera images get a little bit sharper. I share the images with my two squad leaders, Gunny Philbrick and Staff Sergeant Wilsey, to come up with a plan of attack on the fly.

“Central section looks maybe twenty-five meters across,” Philbrick says. “Ain’t much of a habitat. If it’s manned, they have a half dozen guys there.”

“Civil or military, you think?”

“What would you put there?”

“If it’s a listening post, military. If it’s a comms relay, civvie techs,” I say.

“No need to stash a full squad away on that,” Philbrick says. “They’re not there to fight, just to rotate watch shifts. Four to six, tops. Infrastructure won’t support more.”

“Worst-case scenario, we have a reinforced fire team in there. Plus side, they don’t know we’re coming. We coast up and do a stealthy insert, we catch half of them asleep or on the shitter.”

“Even if not, we’ll be ready for trouble and they won’t be,” Philbrick says. “Whatever they’re watching for, it ain’t gonna be us.”

I look over the pictures of the relay station again and mark the visible airlocks for my squad leaders.

“That hatch right there on the main would be ideal,” I say. “Gets us in right next to the reactor, and I bet their command consoles are right near there.”

“Yeah, but it’d be a bitch to coast this thing in next to the hub,” Wilsey says. “There’s not a ton of clearance between the spokes right in that spot.”