too much velocity. She could see their hulls glow white-hot as they tried dumping excess speed. “Target lock!” she called. “Fox One!”
But that was her last Krait. “This is Blue One!” she called. “I’m dry on VG-10s! Three on my tail! Switching to beams and guns!”
“Copy that, Blue Leader! This is Blue Five! Got you covered!”
Blue Five—Lieutenant Spaas—dropped out of empty sky, trying to get on the one of the Toads’ six, the sweet spot directly behind its tail. The Turusch fighter broke left and Spaas followed, trying to get a clear shot.
Allyn’s missile twisted around, then arrowed almost straight down, striking the lead Toad and detonating with a savage, eight-kiloton blast that sent a visible shock wave racing out through the air. The outer skin of the Turusch spacecraft peeled away from the tiny, sudden sun … and then the entire craft disintegrated in a spray of metallic shreds and tatters as the fireball swelled and engulfed them.
The last Toad boomed through the fireball. Allyn completed her loop, rolling out at the top and entering a vertical dive. Her IHD slid a targeting reticule across the Toad, which was coming up at her from below, head-on. She triggered her particle beam an instant before the enemy could fire, sending a blue-white lance of energy stabbing into and through the Toad’s hull. The fighter came apart in glowing fragments; a half second later she plunged through the debris cloud, feeling the tick and rattle of fragments impacting across her fuselage.
“Scratch two Tangos!” Allyn yelled, adrenaline surging through her. Damn, she never felt this alive, save when she was turning and burning in combat. She hated that about herself.
“And scratch one!” Spaas added, as another nuclear sun blossomed in the fire-ravaged sky over Haris.
Allyn looked around, orienting herself. The dogfight, or part of it, had drifted down out of space and into Eta Boot’s atmosphere. They were over the day side of the planet, perhaps a thousand kilometers north and east of the Marine perimeter. “All Blue Omegas!” she called. “We need to work in closer to Mike-Red!”
Turusch fleet elements were attempting to keep the Dragonfires from engaging enemy positions around the Marine perimeter. The squadron actually had two mission elements—crippling the Turusch fleet as completely as possible before the Confederation carrier task force arrived, and taking some of the pressure off of the Marines. Of the two, the first, arguably, was the most important … at least that was what they’d told her in the pre-mission briefing.
Even so, the mission was pointless if the Marine perimeter collapsed before the America arrived. The Turusch were doing their best to keep the Dragonfires away from Red-Mike, and the volume of fire directed against the Mariners appeared to be growing more intense.
Fifteen kilometers away, a nuclear fireball consumed Blue Twelve.
If the surviving fighters could tuck in close to the Marines, perhaps the two might be able to support each other.
Blue Omega Seven
Eta Boötis IV
1415 hours, TFT
Gray had to rest.
The spider strapped to his back continued responding perfectly to his movements, adding its considerable strength to his own as he staggered across the alien landscape. The planet’s gravity continued dragging at him, however, until his heart was pounding so hard inside his chest he began to fear the possibility of a heart attack.
Theoretically, the med circuitry woven into his e-suit was supposed to monitor his health, and would inform him if he was in any real danger of hurting himself, but he wasn’t sure he trusted that technology yet. He stopped and leaned against a smoothly sculpted rock outcropping, breathing hard.
Again, something moved, half glimpsed out of the corner of his eye.
His rapid breathing was fogging the inside of his helmet, and he wasn’t sure he’d seen anything at all. Turning, he stared at the patch that had snagged his attention. What the hell was he seeing? …
They looked like shadows, each leaf shaped and paper thin, gray in color, each the size of his hand or a little bigger. They flitted across the orange vegetation as though gliding over it, traveling a meter or two before vanishing again among the weaving tendrils.
Again, Gray wished he’d understood—or paid more attention to—the briefings on the biology of Eta Boötis IV. Even if he’d ignored the canned downloads, Commander Allyn had gone over it lightly in the permission briefing. What he best remembered, however, was her stressing that the star Eta Boötis was only 2.7 billion years old … far too young to have planets with anything more highly evolved than primitive bacteria. Gray was no xenobiologist, but those … those things slipping and gliding over the orange plants, or whatever they were, looked a hell of a lot more advanced than any bacteria he’d ever heard about.
Were they dangerous? He couldn’t tell, but it did appear that more and more of them were visible from moment to moment, as though they were following him.
Or might they be some sort of Turusch or Sh’daar biological weapon? Not much was known about their technology, or about whether or not they might utilize organic weapons or sensor probes.
A rumble drifted out of the sky. He looked up, trying to penetrate the low, reddish-gray overcast, and wondered if that was thunder, or if it was the battle somewhere overhead.
Blue Omega One
VFA-44 Dragonfires
Eta Boötis IV
1418 hours, TFT
Commander Marissa Allyn brought her gravfighter into a flat, high-speed trajectory, hurtling low above the surface. The orange ground cover gave way in a flash of speed-blurred motion to bare rock. The surface for fifty kilometers around the Marine perimeter was charred black or, in places, transformed into vast patches of fused glass. Over the past weeks, since the Turusch had brought the Marine base under attack, hundreds of nuclear warheads had detonated against the Marine shields, along with thousands of charged particle beams. The equivalent of miniature suns had burned against that landscape, charring it, in places turning sand to molten glass.
She checked the tactical display for the entire squadron. Three of her pilots were still in space, tangling with Turusch fighters and a Romeo-class cruiser in low orbit. Four were in-atmosphere with her, forming up with her as she arrowed low across fire-scorched desert toward the Marine defenses.
“Mike-Red!” she called over the assigned combat frequency. “This is Blue One! Five Blue Omegas are coming at you down on the deck, bearing three-five-five to zero-one-zero!”
“We’ve got you on-screen, Blue One,” a calm voice replied over her com. “Come on in!”
“Just so you don’t think we look like Trash,” Allyn replied.
“Or Tushies. I think we can tell the difference.”
“Copy! Here we come!”
“Watch out for slugs,” the voice told her. “If you can drop some salt on them on the way in, we’d appreciate it.”
“Copy,
