Test of Mettle (A Captain's Crucible Book 2) (13 page)

There was a long pause. Then: “Okay.”

“I’m transmitting the access code now,” Jonathan said. “You’ll have read-only permission to Commander Cray’s feed.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Chopra transmitted.

He closed the connection, only to open another one from McNamara.

“The aliens have transmitted the final coordinates,” the ops officer said.

“Dispatch them to the away team pilot,” Jonathan instructed McNamara.

He terminated the line and watched Robert buckle himself into the Dragonfly.

A tingling sensation passed up and down Jonathan’s spine. He couldn’t shake the feeling that a trap awaited below. Clairvoyance, or mere intuition?

He suppressed the urge to swap out the commander for someone else. He had to stick to his decisions. Second-guessing and indecisiveness were the downfall of many an officer before him. Robert would simply have to take care of himself down there. He was certainly capable. Besides, he had the indomitable Chief Galaal with him, and a platoon of combat robots spread across two shuttles.

The commander was completely safe.

At least, that was what Jonathan told himself.

R
obert took a few deep breaths, trying to accustom himself to the stale air of the spacesuit. The suit had already injected the necessary accelerants into his body via the radial venous network of his hand: it would help him adapt faster to the inner environment of the suit, allowing him to avoid the effects of any decompression sickness. 

“Prepare for launch,” the pilot said.

The ramp closed. Robert felt the compartment shake as the engines ignited. Through the small window across from him, between the shoulders of Chief Galaal and another MOTH, Robert saw the hangar bay doors open, revealing the bare stars. The curved profile of the planet consumed the entire right side, those yellow-brown clouds concealing its surface.

The craft countered the artificial gravity of the hangar bay and floated into the air. The aft thrusters ignited and the bay slipped away. He could already feel his stomach doing flips—with the ship behind them, the artificial gravity had lifted, and in the ensuing weightlessness he had no sense of balance or direction. Was he upside-down or right side-up? It was difficult to ignore the confused signals his inner ear was sending his brain.

In his helmet, slightly damp electrodes rested just below each ear. These were supposed to fire signals into the vestibular nerve to restore a sense of balance, but it never really worked for Robert. There were similar headphones designed for VR that utilized galvanic vestibular stimulation to help counter sim-sickness by making the brain believe its body was moving in relation to the camera in a virtual experience—but those never really helped him, either.

He glanced at the science officer beside him. O’Rielly was holding up quite well. The last time they had gone on an away mission the man had vomited in his helmet because of the nausea-inducing weightlessness, but he seemed fine today.

“Are you all right?” Robert asked him over the comm anyway.

The science officer forced a grin. “Peachy.”

“Initiating deceleration,” the pilot said.

Reverse thrust apparently engaged, because the craft began descending toward the upper atmosphere. Thanks to the inertial compensators, Robert felt no Gs. Probably a good thing. But what the engineers really needed to do was come up with shuttle-based artificial gravity, because seeing that planet tilting outside made him feel queasy all over again. It didn’t seem like such a great technological leap to Robert to extend the inertial dampening to provide the feel of gravity, but the scientists claimed there was more to it than that.

Beyond the window, the curved surface quickly became planar, swallowing the horizon on both sides. The view abruptly vanished in a haze of red-and-orange as the shuttle initiated atmospheric entry. All it would take was one heat shield to fail at that point and the Dragonfly and her occupants would incinerate. There was no other indication of the danger they were in: no shaking, not even a subtle vibration. The wonders of super-gimballed seats.

The flames cleared, leaving behind a brown sky as the craft continued its descent into the upper atmosphere. The free fall continued for several minutes. 

“I’ll be stabilizing our descent shortly,” the pilot announced. “Prepare for realization of gravity.”

Robert felt his weight slowly increase as the descent abated, and his sense of up and down returned. When he thought the craft had stabilized, he checked the current gravity as recorded by his helmet aReal: point nine Earth G’s. He had felt no other G forces during the process: the compensators were designed to counter local inertial effects, not the external influence of a gravity well such as a planet. The strange choices of engineers...

Beyond the window lurked a twilight landscape of black rock and yellow snow. The icy crags and glacial plains ranged as far as the eye could see.

“I thought the scientists said this planet was supposed to be warm?” transmitted the human MOTH seated next to Chief Galaal. Robert’s aReal identified him as Aaron “Helium” Johnson. He was leaning forward, obviously looking out the portal behind Robert. “Something about a greenhouse effect?”

“It
is
warm, given its location from the sun,” the science officer, O’Rielly, replied. Was that a slight nervous tremble in his voice? “What were you expecting, a tropical paradise?”

“Let’s just say, when I hear the word warm, I think of green grass and blue skies, not some snowy landscape from hell.”

“Shouldn’t hell be fiery?” O’Rielly said.

“Maybe yours,” Aaron said. “Not mine. Mine is a very cold place. Sign up for MOTH training sometime and you’ll understand.” He paused. “Look at that. Yellow snow. It’s not often we can take a piss in the ice without leaving any evidence.”

“Helium,” Chief Galaal said. The warning was obvious in his tone.

“Sorry, Chief.”

“I’m doing a fly over of Calypso,” the pilot announced. That was the code name of the target site. A moment later: “Looks no different than the surrounding territory.”

“Any odd gravimetric readings?” Robert sent the pilot.

“I’m not getting any from up here. I am, however, detecting a temperature drop of at least a hundred degrees directly around the site.”

“Why didn’t we detect that from orbit?” Robert asked.

“There’s a warm inversion layer on top of it,” the pilot explained.

“It’s probably a natural phenomenon,” O’Rielly said. Definitely a slight tremble in his voice. “Imagine that. The aliens made us come all this way to explore a natural phenomenon.”

“Do we have a bead on Charon yet?” Robert sent the pilot. That was the code name for the Dragonfly the aliens had captured.

“Roger that,” the pilot sent. “Check your HUD.”

Barrick had apparently reactivated the comm node in the shuttle, because the craft appeared as a blue dot on the map that was part of the heads-up-display built into their helmets. It was situated roughly five hundred meters to the north.

“Land us as close to Calypso as you can,” Robert instructed the pilot. “But no closer than two hundred meters to Charon.”

“Roger that.” A moment later: “This looks like the best spot for our two crafts to set down. Preliminary scans indicate a stable snowbank. I can try to get closer to Calypso, but the terrain becomes increasingly more jagged.”

Robert accessed the external video feed. The icy surface below was relatively flat compared to the surrounding terrain. “Take us down, and transmit the location to Bravo.”

“Roger that.”

The Dragonfly touched down and the seats shook as the internal gimbals deactivated.

Robert glanced at Chief Galaal. “Take it from here, Chief.”

“Pilot,” the chief said over the comm. “Confirm that local atmospheric conditions allow for the use of grenades and other incendiaries.”

“Usage confirmed,” the pilot returned. “The local atmosphere is predominantly carbon dioxide and fluorocarbons, with roughly three percent oxygen content. Just like the drones predicted: flames will burn, though only at a sixth of the intensity found on Earth.”

The chief glanced down the robot ranks, at the four M-4 Centurions and lone Praetor unit that composed the remaining members of Alpha Squad. He focused on the featureless metallic face of the Praetor, which was essentially the commanding officer of the robots. “Prepare to deploy. I want defensive perimeter Cigar.”

Fighting back a rising sense of nerves, Robert studied the humanoid automatons. Sometimes he wished he could have the same emotional detachment as them. There were certain performance drugs that could achieve the effect, but he had never tried them, because while he might wish for calm in the face of fear, he refused to pay the price of his humanity.

The robots carried either M114 laser rifles or the heavier M1170 variety. Both types had been modified to penetrate the alien darkness shields. A few AR-52 plasma rifles and L22 incendiary throwers remained racked in the loadout area; those would likely be left behind, as they had proven useless against the aliens. The AR-52s had, anyway.

“Alpha-5,” the chief said. “I want you to grab an L22.”

“Roger that,” the addressed robot answered.

Chief Galaal turned to Robert. “Commander, stay aboard with the science officer until I give the all clear.”

“Understood,” Robert said.

“Pilot?” the chief said over the comm.

“Opening up,” the pilot replied.

The ramp folded down and Robert’s shoulder and waist latches clicked open.

“Deploy, deploy, deploy!” Chief Galaal said.

Robert watched as the mechanized squad moved out at a crouch. The chief and Aaron brought up the rear.

On Robert’s helmet HUD, he saw the green dots of Alpha assume a cigar shape around the shuttle. The Centurions of Bravo surrounded the second Dragonfly in a similar manner.

There were no dots around Charon a hundred meters to the north.

“Launch HS4s,” Chief Galaal said. HS4s were small, battery-powered surveillance drones. These would be the rotor-based variants, meant for operation in atmospheres.

“HS4s away!”

More dots appeared, representing the HS4s, colored blue on the map overlay. Some of the drones proceeded toward Calypso, while others fanned out toward Charon.

“HS4s report all clear, Chief,” one of the combat robots said.

“What about Charon?” the chief asked.

“No one has emerged, yet,” the Centurion said.

“And there’s no sign of the telepath or the aliens at Calypso either?” the chief asked.

“Negative. Though the scouts have discovered a series of cylindrical objects near the center of the site. Barely detectable gravimetric distortions appear to emanate from them.”

Robert switched to the view from the lead HS4, which had taken up a hovering position above Calypso. The auto-iso on the camera brightened the scene so that the twilight seemed almost broad daylight. Just underneath the small scout, several cigar-shaped objects lay in the snow. They were yellow, and nearly indistinguishable from the surrounding terrain. Robert counted five of them.

“You seeing that, Commander?” Chief Galaal asked.

“I am.”

“You can exit the shuttle, by the way,” the chief added.

Robert got up. He turned toward O’Rielly and beckoned toward the ramp. “Lead the way.”

He realized O’Rielly had thrown up at some point after all—the vomit stains were obvious on his faceplate.

The captain probably should have sent a robot science officer,
Robert thought.

When O’Rielly stood, Robert accessed the man’s health status on his aReal: life signs seemed normal, and his breathing apparatus was apparently unaffected by the vomit.

Following him outside, Robert stepped down from the ramp and emerged into the twilight. An external microphone retransmitted the sound of his boots crunching in the snow to his helmet speakers. With all that yellow ice to bounce around the photons, the illumination was roughly equivalent to a winter night on Earth under a full moon. The auto-iso in his faceplate quickly compensated for the dim light and the scene brightened. He couldn’t actually see the binary suns above, not with all those clouds: it was like an extremely overcast day on Earth, except that these clouds trapped most of the heat and light that entered. Hence the greenhouse effect.

He saw movement at his three o’clock: one of the spherical HS4 drones hovered there, acting as an escort.

The digital pattern on the jumpsuits of the two MOTHs had changed colors to the yellow-white of the surrounding snow, with a spattering of black to match the occasional rocks. The polycarbonate skins of the combat robots and Dragonflies were similarly hued, and neatly blended into the landscape. Robert’s own spacesuit had the same camouflage ability and he activated it via the faceplate aReal.

Satisfied with the patterning, he glanced at O’Rielly. The science officer’s white and blue spacesuit stood out against the snow.

“O’Rielly,” Robert said. “Your suit.”

The science officer glanced down. “Oh.” A moment later the coloration changed to match the dreary landscape.

“So what do you want to do, Commander?” Chief Galaal asked over the comm.

Robert switched his remote feed to that of the HS4 closest to Charon. The dark metal of the captured shuttle stood out in stark contrast to the surrounding white: Barrick hadn’t bothered to activate the camouflage feature. The craft simply squatted there, inactive in the snow. Waiting. Lurking.

“I’m going to assume Barrick is inside the shuttle with a few aliens,” Robert said.

“That would be a reasonable guess,” the chief agreed. “Although... if he wanted to ambush us that would probably be a good spot to do it.”

“What would you do if you wanted to ambush us?” Robert asked the chief.

“I’d abandon the shuttle and take up a hide anywhere from five hundred meters to a kilometer away,” Chief Galaal said. “In this terrain, you’d never even see me. One moment you’d be walking, the next you’d be dead on the ground.”

Robert nodded slowly. He glanced at the shuttles. “Pilots, keep the down ramps lowered. Be ready for a hot extraction.”

“Roger that,” came the reply.