The descent was uneventful. At an altitude of ten thousand meters, I took manual control, broke from the few remaining dropships and flew toward the life energy of the people I intended to rescue, who were currently unconscious and dreaming about their families back home. I looked around: steep mountains of rock towered several kilometers over deep ravines and canyons, covered in 'ice' and 'snow' made of frozen methane. Wispy white clouds of the same material hug the mountain sides in places. The horizon in front of me glowed a faint scarlet red from the sunrise and above me to my left, nitrogen atoms glowed in violet curtains that waved silently in the solar wind, just like the northern lights of Earth minus the green due to the absence of oxygen.
Beautiful.
The ground was too steep to land the raider just outside of the cave, so I searched for the nearest flat spot. There was a huge sheet of snow that looked too flat to be bedrock, so I concluded that it must be a frozen lake. I looked around for some other place to land, wanting to avoid that spot if possible, but I did not see such a place, so I reluctantly decided to land on the lake. I flew south and then turned around and glided through the jagged canyon nervously, weaving around spires and trying my best not to get too close to the sides as I descended toward the flat.
"Pull up, Pull up, Pull up," an unemotional female computer voice repeated over and over, warning me not to do a slide-out landing with the landing gear retracted. I ignored it because a belly landing would be less likely to break the 'ice.'
As soon as I felt the impact with the ground, I deployed the air brakes and thrust reversers in hopes of coming to a stop before I hit the cliff face in front of me. My body tensed and my heart race as the huge wall of rock raced toward me, seemingly unstoppable. An alarm klaxon added to the commotion, warning me that I was about to collide with the wall.
"Come on!"
And then, as if hearing me, the raider stopped moving, with just a over a hundred meters to spare. I took a deep breath and relaxed for a few seconds, and then switched the MFDs to the ship schematics to check the load sensors and make sure there was no structural damage from the landing. Once I saw that there was no damage, I unbuckled my safety harness and walked back into the troop compartment, which is stocked full of more than enough supplies that we will need for the return trip. I got into my Mark Six powered combat suit, grabbed my Mark Forty Eight automatic rifle and extra ammunition, as well as the first aid kit.
After double checking to make sure everything is secure, I stepped into the air lock and activated the cycle. As soon as the atmosphere was purged, the outer door opened to the harsh environment. The landscape looked even more spectacular than it did through the view screens, especially with the unbelievably bright galactic core on one side of the sky and part of the nebula on the other. What stood out most is the utter silence, interrupted only by the sound of my own breathing and crunchy footsteps as I walked across the powdery 'snow.'
I noticed a structure in the distance and brought my rifle up to look at it through the hazy green hue of the light amplifying scope: the remains of an escape pod. My guess is the aliens destroyed it earlier, explaining why the survivors took shelter in a cave. I then looked back and noticed vapor flowing off a long stretch of the frozen lake's surface. The vapor was the result of the surface 'ice' that was melted and boiled off from the heat of the engines. The communists were sure to spot this source of heat at some point.
Time is of the essence.
The climb to the cave entrance was long because of the terrain's extreme ruggedness.
"Enlai, we have a mysterious heat signature in grid Charlie Foxtrot One Two," the squadron leader said.
Curiosity shot through Iban's mind.
"Red leader, you are clear to investigate." "Roger that. Time on target: twelve minutes." It took me ten minutes to climb up to the cave entrance. The cloak was useless on most planets because modern militaries could spot even the stealthiest vehicle by magnetic anomaly detection if close enough.
They have for all intents and purposes found me, so I might as well engage them on my terms, so I voice commanded the raider’s defenses to turn on. Instantly text confirming the activation is projected directly onto my retina.
"Enlai, we have picked up a very weak radio signal in grid Charlie Foxtrot One Two." Yusef concluded that the Asgard Space Corps had at least a small presence here, possibly a special forces company.
"Re-route two dropships to those coordinates." Tong repeated Yusef's order. Images of a triumphant return and a shot at the the position of war minister or higher played in Iban's mind as the dropship pilots carried out their orders. Even if I shot down Red Squadron, ground forces will still be here in thirty minutes and there will be far too many of them for me to fight alone. I turned on the head lamp and walked on into the cave, hoping for the best.
The cave was rugged, steep and full of twists and turns, but the side tunnels are few and the survivors have obviously kept to the widest tunnel. I emerged into a large cavern, about sixty meters wide and a hundred tall by my guess. In a relatively flat spot about thirty meters ahead is an inflatable survival shelter. Wasting no time, I activated the airlock cycle and stepped inside.
Three people lie inside, unconscious but living. I can tell who they are by reading their minds.
One of them is a black-haired Japanese-American woman: Anna Tanaka 23, chief navigator.
To her right is the blonde Danish man from my dream: Sergeant Thomas Jensen, 26, security officer.
To the left is an old American man: Jason Flannigan, 52, ship commander.
I looked into their minds a little further and noticed that an Israeli woman helped Thomas cover the escape, presumably at the cost of her own life. Their escape pod was the only one that made it to the surface. They were sleeping in cryogenic stasis tubes so that they could survive longer, which makes my job easier since all I have to do is drag them out. Wasting no more time, I collected all of their data-slates and their few personal belongings.
"M.A.D. is picking up a large object; size and shape of anomaly is consistent with Sleipnir-class Assault Transpor-" Red leader's life and the lives of three other pilots disappeared the moment a very faint hiss echoed through the caverns, confirming to me that the defensive lasers were doing their job.
"Red Wing, you are clear to engage," Yusef said, not surprised that it was the Asgard Space Corps that had a presence here; the only known jump line to Ragnarök was through the Æsir system and the ultra-capitalists had been covertly taking the fight to his fellow comrades ever since they were driven off two years ago during the so-called 'Storm War,' which was named that because both the army and militias launched hit and run strikes on the communists during the blinding snow storms that were frequent during the long winter season.
"All units: red four taking comma-" His life energy disappeared too, and so did two more: the other two managed to eject.
"All units: red nine, taking command. Engage with heaters." The term 'heater' was short for heat seeking missile.
"Red Nine: fox two." "Red Eleven: fox-" Two more members of Red Squadron got seared by beams of light and two thundering explosions followed soon after. My HUD confirmed that their missiles were also stopped.
"This is Red Ten. Break." Retreating was a wise choice if they wanted to survive.
Yusef was briefly furious that his forces were calling off their attack, but quickly got a new idea.
"Mister tong," he demanded.
"Call off the dropships; load and arm one strategic missile." It was now a race against time.
"Launch tube one loaded, silo door opened," Tong replied.
"Enter arming code one zero two five one nine nine seven." "Arming code authenticated. Warheads active." "Set ground zero to grid Charlie Foxtrot One One," Yusef ordered coldly.
"Warheads to twenty megatons, airburst detonation to two kilometers, dispersion radius to twelve kilometers." Yusef was clearly anticipating the secondary blast effects that vaporizing several million tons of snow would produce, which would more than make up for the attenuation that the surrounding mountains would cause.
"Warhead parameters set," Tong answered.
"Retrieve the launch keys from the safe." Tong did just that and handed Yusef one of the keys.
"The release of strategic nuclear weapons is authorized" Yusef said eagerly and then inserted his key into its slot.
I no longer had to worry about their ground forces, but that was hardly comforting considering that eight 'city buster' sized warheads were to rain down on us and explode with a combined yield of one hundred sixty megatons. I tied the cryo-tubes together with their climbing equipment and then opened both airlock doors simultaneously with an override.
"All fighter squadrons, break for high orbit." "Awaiting your command," Tong replied hesitantly.
I moved as fast as I could, which was not very due to all of the weight.
"Launch the missile." Both officers twisted their launch keys within one second of each other as they were trained to do.
"Missile away," Tong said.
"Time on target: twenty six minutes." He knew it was a shot in the dark but was desperate to stop the perceived special forces company. Whatever the case, it meant twenty six minutes of needing to drag three bodies down a rocky slope, load it into my ship and get clear of the blast zone.
After fifteen eternally long minutes, I was at my raider. I looked up into the northern sky and saw the eight bright streaks of light that seemed to hover but were falling toward me at several kilometers a second. Wasting no more time, I opened the outer door and override the airlock cycle so I can get all three people inside at once. Once they were in, I re-pressurized the compartment, then hurried to the cockpit and started the engines.
After what seemed like a hundred years, the raider's four Variable Specific Impulse Fusion Engines were fusing enough Helium Three and Deuterium to produce enough heat for both thrust and self-heating. I pushed the throttles slightly forward, sending more plasma to the ship's magnetohydrodynamically driven turbines to force atmosphere through the compressors and into the reaction chamber to be heated and shot through the ducted thrust nozzles, which in turn lifted the big ship off the ground. As soon as I was far enough up, I pointed the ship vertical like a rocket and pressed the sliders all the way forward and sent us up and out of the blast zone with about five minutes to spare. The bright nuke flashes lit up the few clouds above me, reassuring me that I was in fact still alive.
"I am picking up a large plume on infrared, ascending rapidly," Red Ten reported.
"Close in and engage," Tong ordered.
I had to reach orbit because the raider was not stealthy when hot air or reaction mass was shooting out of the engine nozzles.
Alarms blared, warning me of what I already knew: incoming missiles, twenty of them. The two pilots fired their whole loads at me, hoping their sheer numbers will overwhelm my defenses, but they failed. They fired their gauss guns in desperation from two kilometers out, but the rounds hit the superheated thrust exhaust and melted into droplets that lost energy and fell short.
"Break," Red nine ordered.
Yusef's anger burned bright; he contemplated sacrificing all of his remaining pilots and their fighters and dropships to overwhelm me, but knew it would be a futile gesture.
When the atmosphere became sufficiently rarefied, the turbine and compressor blades retracted and the inlet spikes moved forward as powerful engines automatically switched from turbojet mode to ramjet mode, and when the atmosphere reached a second threshold of density, the engines switched from ramjet mode to a rocket mode fed by the ship's own supply of reaction mass in the form of liquid hydrogen. Nothing saps away more reaction mass than liftoff, even when you have an atmosphere to use as reaction mass for the initial start of the climb; of the fifty three thousand nine hundred and three meters a second of delta vee capacity I started out with from Asgard four months back, I have forty eight thousand eight hundred and two, after the took six thousand to get to a base orbit. It will take me a little more to maneuver into a high polar orbit so that my missiles won't have to use too much of their own delta vee to escape the planet's gravity well if I have to fire them, but that will have to wait until the right window of opportunity, so that the planet itself will hide the thermal signature of any burns I make with the main engines from the communists. As soon I programmed the proper maneuvers into the autopilot, I focused on what to do now.
Boarding the Virulent ship was out of the question right now because there were still thousands of them on board, and destroying the communist ships would obviously mean being stranded here, but there was one thing we could do; I maneuvered us slightly to an orbit that will over-fly the Commune's encampment and then headed back and activated the warm-up cycles on the stasis tubes. It would take thirty minutes for them to thaw, so I grabbed the data-slates and bring them to the main computer terminal. I know from their minds what information they contained, but I want to see with my own eyes the object worth killing for.
The first four slates contained data collected on Ragnarök over a period of thirteen days, most of it unremarkable. The last two of the seismographs however were remarkable. The crew of the
Columbus fired a number of kinetic impactors at various points on the surface and recorded how the shockwaves bounced off different materials within the planet's crust to get a glimpse of what materials it contained. The seismographs detected a very strange looking object forty kilometers in diameter and sixty kilometers deep, which meant that the object was strong enough to survive the intense temperature and pressure of the planet's molten depths. Twenty four 'spikes' extended in all directions from a central source and tapered to sharp points. A mysterious shaft extended from the surface to the uppermost spike. A photo of the shaft's entrance showed the shattered remains of some mysterious structure surrounding it. The Columbus's crew believed it to be the remains of some alien civilization, and so did the communists who were constructing their camp around it.
I checked out the last slate, which contains Jason's personal logs; or rather what was left of them since most of the data is corrupted.
TIMESTAMP: 20:51 05-03-2508
LOG ENTRY NUMBER: 8712
USER: JASON FLANNIGAN [COMMANDER]
I have just finished debriefing Dina Ivgi, our newest security officer. She has developed a reputation for sleeping around, and it seems that her activities have turned up a Commune spy. The missing data slates apparently fell out of his during his zeal to get out of uniform and into bed with her, although she did not notice them until she saw them on the floor this morning. When she examined them closely and found out what they were, he attempted to attack her, but she managed to escape. He confessed his orders and real identity shortly before he died. Fragments of a tiny explosive capsule were found in what remained of his brainstem, confirming his confession. The data slates contained seismographic data, including the seismographs of the mysterious object we found in the southern hemisphere. Could the commies know something about it that we don't?
Dina was the same woman who covered the other survivors along with Thomas from what I sensed. The spy was the reason the communists even know about this place.
TIMESTAMP: 8:21 05-04-2508
LOG ENTRY NUMBER: 8713
USER: JASON FLANNIGAN [COMMANDER]
First a spy and now four very large contacts on a trajectory headed for Ragnarök. The radar and visual signatures do not match any known ship, colonial or communist. However, it is evident by their shapes that they are not natural. All communications have gone unanswered and one thing I know from my Navy days is that refusal to respond during a time of war is a strong indication of hostility. I have ordered that we break orbit and head back to the jump point.
TIMESTAMP: 12:38 05-04-2508
LOG ENTRY NUMBER: 8714
USER: JASON FLANNIGAN [COMMANDER]
The four ships have changed trajectories to intercept us and will be on top of us within twenty hours at their current velocity. Although I have ordered my crew to battle stations, as we still have the defensive weapons installed during the Storm War, and of course the mass drivers, but this vessel is not meant to slug it out with warships. God help us all.
Various radar and visual images were attached to the log file. They were the same type of ships that attacked this morning. The memories of the survivors fill in the rest. The aliens disabled the Columbus with their opening shots and then boarded it. The battle inside the ship was spirited but futile and almost all of the crew was either abducted or killed trying to resist. Thomas's and Dina's covering fire allowed the survivors to get into an escape pod.
The appearance of the creatures was absolutely disturbing. They were somewhat insectoid arthropods, averaging three meters tall and almost as wide. They had four arms that tapered into three pincer-like 'fingers' which had three joints of their own, and four double-jointed legs, which meant that the only way to effectively neutralize one with bullets was to hit its heart or nerve center.
My passengers have just woken up; they are cold, feel week and cannot believe their new surroundings, wondering if it is a dream. The moment they saw me, happiness radiated very strongly from them.
I helped them out of the tubes.
Thomas's presence was electrifying. An aura of strength and authority surrounded his tall and strong body.
"Where are we?" asked Anna.
"I think I'm in heaven," he replied in a charming Danish accent while staring at my tits, his icy blue eyes expressing the lust I already sensed from his mind.
The feeling was mutual, as I expressed with a seductive smile. "I'm Miya."
"Jensen," he replied, "Thomas Jensen."
"Anna Tanaka," she said flatly in English, with an American accent. I sensed a hint of jealousy from her over the way Thomas focused on me.
"Jason Flannigan, commander of the Columbus," he said, also in an American accent.
"I never thought anyone would find us out here," Jason said flatly. He looked around the room recognizing the transport he piloted during his military service. "A Sleipnir class Raider, I have not set foot on one of these for twelve years. Is Asgard after the damn object too?"
"I am not part of the Space Corps or any military," I replied.
Jason cannot believe what he heard. "What?"
"Are you a merc?" Thomas asked.
I shook my head and decided to change the subject. "Come up to the mess deck, you three need something to eat."
"You're lying," Jason said in disbelief as they floated through the various compartments. "I see enough military hardware and supplies in here to outfit a whole platoon and keep them supplied for a month of heavy combat."
He wanted to believe that his beloved Asgard Space Corps was here, but the lack of any troops made it self evident that he was wrong.
"The only military presence here right now is communist," I replied.
Pessimism ran strongly through Flannigan's mind and it showed in his wrinkled face. "Then we're probably too late."
"The Enlai battlegroup was attacked by the same ships that attacked the Columbus."
All three of them were curious. I grabbed the field rations out of a cabinet and handed them to my passengers. "All I have are MREs."
They hid their displeasure well but I felt it strongly.
Try eating nothing but these for four months, I thought.
"Did they blast motherfuckers?" Thomas asked, slightly ashamed that he was rooting for the communists, who he held a highly personal hatred for.
"The communists destroyed two of the four combatants but lost five ships in the process."
"Good god," Jason said, stunned at the lopsidedness of the battle. "There's no way the Space Corps could repel even a few of those ships, not after the losses we took against the commies, and even the Federation and Commune could not repel a whole invasion."
Anna came to a chilling conclusion. "They may have been watching and waiting for humanity to weaken itself."
It could be true, but I didn't sense any of them in the colonized systems or anywhere else. The fact that I could not even sense them at all led me to conclude they are not even from this universe. "I get the feeling they are willing to murder our whole species over that object for sure," I replied, implying what I sensed from them.
Thomas was surprised that I knew about the object but did not say anything.
"Yeah but now they've gotten a taste of how well we can defend ourselves," Jason said, pessimistic. "They'll attack again."
They finished their meals and not surprisingly, they did not want seconds.
"We need to gain control of the shaft entrance."
"Just a few of those things tore us to shreds on the Columbus," Thomas said, thinking I was talking about the aliens. "We don't stand a chance against a whole army of them."
"The communists are setting up an encampment there."
Jason's face became visibly angry. Memories of the slaughter aboard the Columbus played through his mind; he felt responsible for the loss of his crew. "I say we just nuke the site from orbit so no one can get their hands on the damn thing."
"I agree," Anna said.
They both made sense, but a shaft could be rebuilt with enough effort. The object itself needed to be destroyed. Thomas came to the same conclusion just as I was about to speak up. "I think we should destroy the object itself, nuke it from the inside."
A strong feeling of dread overcame me. It radiated from the object itself, yet I did not sense any life energy from it.
Thomas saw a sad expression on my face. "Are you okay?"
The feeling quit as suddenly as it begun, replaced by his concern for me.
"It's just..." I stopped short of telling them what I just felt.
"The death and destruction?" Anna asked.
I just remembered the encampment again. "I need to be in the cockpit," I said anxiously and then hurried out of the mess deck.
I switched on the video feed and waited, it was about ten minutes before we fly over the enemy camp.
My passengers decided to use their newfound privacy to talk about me.
"I want to know just who the hell this woman is and who she works for," Jason demanded.
"She has be a mercenary of some sort," Anna replied.
"Or one of Lady Crimson's people; remember the agreement we made for her help to fight the commies a few years back." Jason's sudden distrust of me was mostly the result of the trauma he faced, but it was still upsetting. "I risked my life and you think I have some kind of ulterior motive!?" I mumbled.
Thomas came to my defense.
"She risked her life to save us; I think we should be grateful for that." Jason was skeptical.
"That doesn't mean she doesn't have some sort of ulterior motive."
"Let's not jump to conclusions here," Thomas snapped back.
"Tom has a point," Anna said.
"Fine," Jason said, reluctantly conceding his argument.
Thomas exited the mess deck with the intent of finding his way up to the cockpit. He mainly wanted to tell me what they discussed but he also wanted to get to know me more. Anna's jealousy returned but she did not follow him.
Thomas knocked on the door. "Come in," I said.
He sat down next to me and looked into my eyes, admiring their graceful shape as he did in my dream. "So, what's a cute little lady like you doing way out here?" he asked, as visions of ripping my clothes off and taking me played through his mind.
His fantasy both flattered me and sparked a desire of my own. "Because I found out that the communists wanted to get their dirty hands whatever is down there," I answered with a seductive smile on my face.
My accent made his desire burn even hotter. "Sexy accent, sounds Russian."
"I am from Mongolia."
"Miya is a Japanese name."
"It is not my real name."
"Do you work for anyone?"
"I think killing for the highest bidder is wrong."
"So you're not a merc," he replied curiously. "Are you a black op of some sort?"
I shook my head. "I fight because I want to destroy tyranny."
He was unsure whether to believe me or not, because it was unlikely that a mere freedom fighter would have access to a top of the line special forces transport used by the Asgard Space Corps and the rogue known as Lady Crimson, who obtained a small number of these ships through an agreement with Asgard.
"Then why not join the army?"
"Because a nation's political interest always outweighs doing what's right."
He liked what I just said. "That's very true in the colony region, where overpowering government is the norm, but on Asgard we have a strong tradition of political and economic freedom; no need to worry about mass surveillance or political correctness and hate speech laws or government looters to confiscate your wealth," he said, extremely prideful about that fact. "You can also own any weapon you want and say what you will and practice any religion without fear of persecution. That's why I moved there as soon as I got out of socialist Denmark, off of socialist Earth and away from the socialist Colonial Federation. Anna and Jason also moved there from the colonies for the same reason."
"The closest I've ever got to Asgard was the Ell-Five skyhook," I replied, remembering that was where I went to take on some extra rations and reaction mass while Yusef's battlegroup took their time to slingshot around the outer planets to avoid provoking a fight with Asgard's forces. "But I hear it is a wonderful place to live."
"The extreme cold is unforgiving -- a factor in the commies getting their collectivist asses kicked a few years back during the Storm War -- but you'll never find more freedom or a higher standard of living anywhere else."
I saw the camp in the corner of my eye and turned to face the screen.
"Is that the base we're going to attack?"
"Yes," I said, pressing a button to take a still.
He became concerned about the other two. "Neither Jason or Anna have the strength or training for ground combat."
I hit the print button then turned to face him. "They can load magazines into an automatic mortar."
"What about counter battery fire?"
"They will be covered by the raider's anti-missile defenses."
His concern turned to depression and guilt over a tragedy in his past. "I spent four years in the Asgard Defense Force," he said depressingly. "Honorably discharged after I lost an arm when attempting to disarm some grenades that were part of a clever booby trap that trapped us, shortly before the Storm War ended, but I still know how to shoot."
I grabbed the print-out and then looked back over at him.
"I suppose you're wondering why I didn't reenlist after having my arm re-grown," he said in an unhappy voice. I already knew. "Let's just say I didn't want to fuck up again and get more good soldiers killed."
His squadmates were also members of a musical band he fronted, and not surprisingly, they were very close friends.
"I'm sorry to hear about your loss."
"Thanks."
I placed my hand on his arm; the feel of my touch triggered a feeling of appreciation, and reignited his sexual desire for me. "It was a communist trap. Think of our mission as a chance to get some revenge."
He suddenly became more enthusiastic about the battle. "Yes, I look forward to murdering those bastards."
I got up and looked back at him as I drifted toward the door. "We have only a few hours to plan and prepare."
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Dina returns about a third of the way through the novel and becomes part of the group of people Miya leads. You remember Vasquez from Aliens? She is badass like that and has a similar attitude, and makes some points about historical revisionism along with Miya (in this future, few people outside of Asgard know of the great massacres in history, including the mass murders done by the Nazis, Communists, Fascists and Islamofascists, because socialism has done its best to wipe any memory of those atrocities).
