Death's Bright Day by David Drake

Author:David Drake [Drake, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, military, Action & Adventure, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781476781471
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2016-02-16T19:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

Benjamin

Cory had lighted the thrusters as soon as Adele ordered the attack, but it was almost a minute before he was willing to tighten the sphincters. Adele felt the Princess Cecile lift as smoothly as if she had been on water. They rose vertically until they were comfortably above the lip of the swale which had sheltered the ship while Vesey’s party advanced.

The message came from a laser emitter, but it was so weak and distorted that only a system as sensitive as the Sissie’s could have received and enhanced it: “Beta Six to Beta. Cazelet down, need Medicomp soonest, out.”

Adele forwarded it as a throbbing purple text crawl at the bottom of Cory’s display. She didn’t think there was anything Cory could do about it, and maneuvering a starship at low altitude was more than most captains could have managed even without distractions. It was all Adele could do, though, so she did it.

“Command to Barnes,” Cory said on the command channel. “We’re going to open up as soon as we get down. I want your crew in hard suits so you can lay the boarding bridge while the ground’s still hot. We’ll have a stretcher coming aboard and they won’t have suits, over.”

“Roger, out,” said Barnes, the acting bosun while Woetjans was aboard the Katchaturian.

“Ship, this is Command,” Cory said, keying the general push so that everyone aboard could hear him. “We’re going in hard, so brace yourselves. Command out.”

The Princess Cecile was at a hundred feet. They had porpoised slightly when they lifted off, but Cory had held the ship steady as soon as it had built forward motion. They speeded up slightly as they slanted downward; Cory had adjusted the angle of his thrusters.

Adele switched her display to a real-time panorama, reducing her communications duties to a sidebar. Benjamin in close-up was the same gray-dun blur it had appeared from a light-minute out. Small bushes wriggled in the Sissie’s bow wave, sometimes releasing a fluff of white seeds before the plasma exhaust incinerated them.

The village—Beta—came in sight ahead. One of the huts was burning.

“Ship, hang on!” Cory repeated. The ship bucked as he opened the throttles. The Sissie was beginning to slow when the outriggers touched, first toward the stern.

There was a rending crash and one of the worst jolts Adele had ever felt aboard a starship. Automatic restraints clamped her about the waist, so that she wasn’t flung off the console. The only worse one was when a missile hit the Milton…and that wasn’t much worse.

Sand and dust sprayed up, filling Adele’s display. The Dorsal A antenna, raised as a communications mast, carried away. The butt end rang on the Sissie’s bow on the way past, certainly hard enough to dent the steel hull.

“Opening main hatch!” Cory warned. The dogs withdrew; their hammer-on-anvil chorus seemed muted after the landing itself.

The ship shuddered. There was a muted shock and the hatch began to hum downward.

Though only a few feet away from one another, Cory and Adele sat back to back.

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