Dreadnought: Marauder by Richard Tongue

Author:Richard Tongue [Tongue, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-10-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

“Well,” Tarrant said, “we’ve done just about all we can do. At least we know that our signal got through, and that someone out there heard us and is going to do something about it.”

“What?” Liu asked.

“Honestly, probably run for the hills, unless Saratoga’s expecting some serious reinforcements to arrive in the very near future. That ship looked huge, even from the surface, and I can’t honestly see what they could do to fight it off.” She looked at her watch, and added, “Thirty-five minutes of oxygen left.”

“They said they were coming for us…,” Liu replied.

With a wry smile, Tarrant said, “And let’s hope that particular fairy tale ends up coming true, but at this point, I’m struggling to see it. Anyone they send down to the surface would be flying into captivity at this point, unless they have some sort of a plan.”

“Then we should consider surrender,” Liu said.

Nodding, Tarrant replied, “We’ll wait until the last possible minute, of course, but in all honesty I just don’t see what else we can do at this point. We haven’t got the ability to keep alive for long, and even if we did, we don’t have anywhere left to run to. We wanted to stay free long enough to get a warning to any American ships that arrived. We’ve done that, at least.”

Liu scanned the plain, then pointed at a pair of lights in the distance, coming from the base, racing towards them, and said, “I think you’re going to be proven right any time now. They don’t look friendly.”

“Fast buggies,” Tarrant replied. “Martian design. They must have got them down in one of those shuttle landings earlier. They’ll be here within the next ten minutes.” She looked around, and said, “We ought to think about how to get down from here. Should be easier to go down than up.”

Nodding, Liu said, “No point trying for a last stand. We don’t even have anything to fight with. Pity, though. This would be a very defensible location.”

“Just what does an astronomer know about that?”

“Three years in the People’s Militia. One of which I spent on Luna.”

Looking at her with fresh eyes, Tarrant said, “All this time you’ve been the expert in all of this…”

“Not with American technology,” Liu interrupted. “And most of what I worked with then was old, second-line, just intended to train the raw recruits. The primary idea was to subsidize training for space workers, absorbing it into the military budget.”

“Figures. I…” There was a loud buzz from her helmet speaker, and her hand instantly moved to the control panel on her wrist, adjusting channels in order to pick up the incoming transmission. “This is Lieutenant Tarrant. Reply at once. Reply at once.”

“Lieutenant Vega, on the way down to you now. I’m in a hot shuttle burning hard to get down to your location. You should be seeing our trail in the sky any time now. Can you vector us into a suitable landing zone? We have all the supplies you’ll need and a potential ride back to orbit.

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