Prometheus and the Dragon (Atlas and the Winds Book 2) (17 page)

She nodded, and Tony switched the call to her station.

“This is Commander Winslow,” she said. “Go ahead
Draco.”

“Susan? This is Dave. We’re about 2,200 miles above the surface and closing. What’s your status?”

“We’re under attack by unknown forces from several locations along the southern rim. So far it’s been mostly rocket mortar rounds, and we’ve taken some minimal damage. Mostly to power and communications with the ridge,” she said, her emotions flashing up in a strange mixture.

“We’ve got troops trying to overrun their positions, and as of a couple minutes ago they broke off the shelling.”

“Copy that Susan,” he said. “We’ve got a good perspective on you and we can see that you’ve got four—“

“Incoming landers,” Tony barked. “They look like they’re heading over the colony toward Prometheus.”

“Yeah, we see them,” she said. “You’re flying a carrier aren’t you?”

“Roger that,” he said. “But we’ve got some teeth if we need them.”

“We’ve got the
Draco
onscreen,” Randy said from the approach control station. “Holy shit! They’re in a full-on power dive and still accelerating.”

“We’ve got help coming from Sentinel too,” Dave said. “ETA eight to ten minutes. So where do you want me to point myself?”

“I don’t know,” she said, shrugging and looking over at Randy, who was their only military officer in Ops at the moment.

“If they’ve got a C&C unit, have him focus his attack there,” he suggested. “If we can take that out, they might be blind.”

“I heard that,” Dave said. “We’re working ... on ... it.” He paused for a second. “Got it. He’s up on the top in a small lander.”

“The
Draco
is altering course and starting to brake,” Randy said.

***

Mount Weather, Virginia:

Her clock said it was 4:21 AM when the pounding on her door rolled her out of bed in a panic. The darkness in her cave was as absolute as the thundering was excessive. “Madam President,” the voice of one of her guards came through the door. “Prometheus is under attack.”

Her heart stopped beating, and then came back as a roaring in her ears. She knew the room was spinning, even though she couldn’t see a thing. “When?” she croaked out, forcing her mouth to move by sheer determination.

“It’s an ongoing situation. It started six or seven minutes ago,” he said.

“Do we know who’s attacking?” she asked, standing up and feeling for her robe.

“Not yet,” he said. She already knew the answer, even if they didn’t. She threw the terrycloth robe over her shoulders and stepped toward the door.

“Get John and Gene online now. I’ll be in my office in two minutes. I want their faces on my screen when I get there.”

“Yes ma’am,” he said. By the time she opened the door he was already gone.

***

Bridge of the Draco, approaching the rim of Plato:

Dave took control of the G/I lasers and left the driving to his pilot. “I want to clear the rim and pass to the left of those two boulders as close as you can call it.”

“At this speed that’s going to be a few hundred feet,” she said.

“Perfect, just keep our inertia and let’s take it as fast as possible. I don’t want to give any warning, and I really don’t want him to get off a shot.”

“Roger that,” she said. “Twenty seconds.”

Dave lit up the guns.

***

On the rim of Plato:

Lieutenant Yu stood in the back of his lander, staring down at the crater floor. His troops were still repositioning but would be on the ground within a minute or two. Even if he hadn’t been focused on them, he’d never have been able to see the
Draco
as anything more than a black shadow streaking across the dark sky.

His first indication that something might be wrong was the feeling that someone had turned his space suit into an ant farm. And then lit the ants on fire. In the next instant, a slightly glowing wave of dirt leapt up in front of him. He’d almost had enough time to ask if his pilot was seeing it, when the fire on his skin turned into a thousand little explosions. He tried to scream, but the air refused to move in his lungs, like a solid chunk of concrete. Even his blood refused to move.

Fortunately for him, he passed out before the hundred-ton boulder to his right rolled over onto his lander like a tombstone falling into a grave. Yu and his pilot had the ignominious claim of becoming the first two casualties of the battle.

***

Chapter Eleven:

The Battle of Prometheus Ridge

Mount Weather, Virginia:

“They’re refusing to accept my call,” John said. “This isn’t even like they’re saying the Ambassador is unavailable, they’re saying they can’t even be bothered to take a message.”

“We’ve got a war going on,” the President said, slamming her palm down on the desk. “What the fuck are they thinking?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “We’ve had a history of being soft on their hard line stances. They’re probably figuring that we won’t escalate.”

“But they’re attacking Prometheus,” she said. “That’s not just us.”

“I don’t think it matters,” he said.

“We don’t have time for this,” she snarled. “If they’re refusing diplomatic contact, we’re going to have to do something to get their attention.”

She turned to the other screen, where Gene Reynolds was blinking his red eyes. “So what can we do to get their attention right now?”

“A strategic nuke attack?” he said, looking like he was serious, but she couldn’t be sure. “That might take a half-hour to order up.”

“In a half hour they’ll have pounded Prometheus to death,” she said.

“The only thing we’ve got that could deploy faster than that is the array, but honestly we’ve never used it against a foreign power.” He was talking about the High Altitude Atmospheric Research Project. It had been set up for more than four decades in far northern Alaska, and had been designed to study the charged waves that ran through the upper atmosphere. After its deployment, they discovered it could also be used as a weapon if they drove energy into the ionosphere from the huge antenna array. By shaping the sequence of pulses over the 10,000 square mile facility, they could cause the ionosphere to bounce downward toward the Earth. It had been tested several times against missile drones and was extremely effective, but it wasn’t something they wanted to expose where there might be witnesses.

“How long would that take?” she asked.

“Five minutes ... ish,” he said.

“Do it. Pick a target that will get their attention but minimize collateral casualties.”

“Understood. You want to kick them in the nuts.”

***

Prometheus Ridge, Plato:

Carter shoved the two engineers into the airlock and slammed the door behind them. The small lock didn’t have room for three of them in suits, so he’d opted to wait. The explosions had stopped for the moment, but he had no delusions that it was over. Over the suit radio he could hear troops talking to each other as they climbed the crater wall. He’d also heard them swear as the landers arced high over their heads, not knowing if they should continue up, or turn around and try to meet them back on the crater floor.

As far as he could tell they were coming back, but they’d be at least ten minutes away. Unless there were more soldiers coming out the locks in New Hope, they were going to be on their own for a while.

He watched as Shona worked the manual valves, venting the air out of the lock manually. He could hear the distant shriek as the pressure dropped rapidly in the lock. “Come on. Hurry up,” he whispered, watching the mechanical gage drop toward zero.

Suddenly the ground shook, bucking violently under his feet. He spun sideways and the wall beside him bulged out with the pressure of the Control Room’s air. “We’ve been hit! The side of the building’s about to blow,” he yelled, listening to the adrenaline cranking his voice up an octave. “The Control Room is under fire,” he said, forcing his voice to sound closer to normal.

Another explosion shattered the airlock door inward, and tore a hole through the wall beside it. There was a second’s hesitation as the expanding fireball fought for dominance over the atmosphere’s need to escape into the vacuum. Then he felt a hurricane force wind slam him in the back and hurl his body through the jagged maw.

***

Bridge of the Draco, above Plato:

They never let up on the acceleration, holding the ship at a steady four-G in an overhead loop that brought them around and back into the battle. The
Draco’s
AI, one of the best in the fleet because of its experience level, fed a real-time situational plot to Dave’s screen. He hadn’t had to ask for it, it just appeared in front of him.

“This is the
Draco
, to the incoming Sentinel Attack Units, I am assuming Command of the operation. Link to my AI for situational awareness updates,” he said. “Please Confirm?”

Four indicator lights blinked on his SA map, as the minies linked their telemetry into his ship’s computer. They were approaching the northern rim of the crater.

“Dave, this is Sophie. I was on the ground in Sentinel when the call came in. I’m in the front mini. We’re each loaded with six heavy MMU and ready to deploy. What are we looking at?” She sounded as cool as any fighter jock he’d ever heard over the radio.

“Looks like we’ve got four landers on the ground near the guns. They’re probably unloading hardware, and then I’d bet they get the birds out of the way.” He watched as his map evolved in front of him. The AI was adding new data as it became available.

“We can deploy in about twenty seconds,” she said.

“You’ve got too much speed,” he said.

“That’s what we’re hoping for,” she said. “They’re wearing packs. If we can get them out without slowing, we’ll get the first strike while they’re harder to hit.”

“Gotcha. Have them focus on any troops on the ground. I’ll stay high guard and work on defending the guns. Once you’ve unloaded, come back around and focus on the landers.”

***

New Hope Colony, Plato:

“Jesus Christ! I’m glad they’re on our side,” Randy said. He was watching the tracking images. “I can’t believe what I’m seeing here.”

“What is it?” Susan asked.

“They’ve got four of their little utility ships on fast approach. Pushing two thousand MPH and they’ve got guys jumping out the back like paratroopers,” he said.

“At 2K?” Tony said, leaning around the end of his console to look at the display.

“Yeah, no shit,” he confirmed. “I’m showing twenty-four human sized targets
accelerating
toward the landers.”

“They’re fucking insane,” he said.

“God I hope not,” Susan said, shaking her head.

***

Prometheus Ridge, Plato:

The landers were unloading troops as fast as possible. They’d lost contact with Lieutenant Yu and had no intel on what they might be facing. Each unit commander knew the plan. They could execute it without Yu, so it wasn’t a crisis.

It was going well, almost textbook perfect, in fact. Everything according to the plan. Draw whatever security forces they had up onto the rugged terrain of the rim, and then overrun them back to the crater floor. Attack the guns fast, and then load out before they could get into trouble. Surgical precision and massive surprise. So far the only units they’d seen were the twenty-four that had started up the crater wall as they were loading out to redeploy.

The first men on the ground as the landers touched down were the RPG teams, two for each of the landers. They were to provide cover for the rest of the teams, suppressing any retaliation and destroying buildings that might be Command or Control. Once they were sure they could hold their positions, they were to bring out the heavier antitank missiles to go after the towers and turrets of the weapons themselves.

The RPG troops fanned out around the landers, while the remaining ten men in the rocket squads unloaded and uncrated their missiles.

Ming Jen-Wo stood at the base of his lander scanning the horizon with his starlight scope. One eye, the one that would have normally had the Telemetry data the Lieutenant’s lander had been providing, stared uselessly out into the real light of the lunar night. It didn’t matter to him. He focused his attention on what he could see.

“We have incoming missiles,” the lander pilot called over the radio. “From the north. Bearing eighteen degrees and closing at 3,300 KPH.”