The Siege of Earth by Fox Richard

Author:Fox, Richard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Triplane Press
Published: 2016-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

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Hale’s good arm grabbed the edge of the pit and he hauled himself onto Pluto’s surface. Gravity lessened instantly as he moved beyond the effects of the last glowing orb. A brown haze of dust filled the sky directly over the pit, giving way to blue as the distant sun scattered through tholin particles in the upper atmosphere.

He searched the sky and found no sign of the Grinder…or the Breitenfeld.

“Egan, get comms going. Find our ship,” Hale said.

“I don’t think I can get anything through all the particulates in the atmosphere,” Egan said. “We could go radio,” he said, pointing to Abaddon cresting over the horizon, “but that’ll bring every Xaros drone still out there right on our heads.”

“Try,” Hale said.

“Sir,” Jacobs came over to Hale, “where did the task force go? The Grinder would have burned up if it was destroyed. It’s gone…shouldn’t the ships be out here trying to find us, at least send something down the tunnels to look?”

“Valdar wouldn’t leave us behind.” Hale felt a chill spread from his gut to the rest of his body. Where was the Breitenfeld?

Hale looked at his air and battery gauges; both were amber and dangerously close to low.

“Steuben, where is your drop pod?” Hale asked.

“Clear over those mountains.” The Karigole pointed to distant icy peaks. “It took significant damage when we landed.”

Hale scratched that course of action off a shrinking mental list of ways his Marines could survive.

“Sir,” Cortaro got close to Hale, “Drebin in Slate has life support for the next fifty minutes. His O2 scrubber got banged up and is malfunctioning. Rest of us have between one and four hours.”

Fifty minutes before his Marines started to die.

“What do we do, sir?” Mathias asked.

“Get Drebin back in the pit where there’s still atmo. Have him breathe that instead of his suit reserves until we’re ready to move,” Hale said. “Worse comes to worse, we’ll send a radio beam to Earth, see if they can—”

“Sir, got something.” Egan waved to Hale from a satellite dish stuck in the dirt. “Distress beacon on the search-and-rescue freq.”

“SAR freqs are radio spectrum. Are you sure?” Hale asked.

Egan’s face fell. “Yes, sir, I’m sure. Coming from an escape pod, telemetry says it’s off the Scipio.”

“Got it.” Niles held his rifle steady and pointed to the sky. “Sending.”

A pic of a corvette came on Hale’s visor. A tear in the hull ran across the rail gun; one vane was bent and misshapen. The ship lolled on its side, trailing debris.

“That looks like the Scipio,” Hale said. “I wonder why we’re getting a life pod hit off it and not the ship’s distress signal.”

“Hold on.” Egan touched the side of his helmet. “Getting another transmission off the beacon…dot dot dot, dash dash dash, dot—SOS. There’s someone up there, sir.”

“Doubt they can come pick us up,” Cortaro said.

“You ever serve on a corvette?” Hale asked Cortaro. “How bad does the Scipio look?”

“Did a few Luna jumps off one. Didn’t get a real good look around, but you look at her on the infrared spectrum and her battery stacks are still hot.

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