Devotion (Ghost Marines Book 3) by Jonathan P. Brazee

Author:Jonathan P. Brazee [Brazee, Jonathan P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Semper Fi Press
Published: 2019-04-29T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 34

A sharp clap, followed by a rolling thunder, chased Leif, Star, and Corporal a’Bord from the machine shop where Leif had situated his CP. High in the sky to the east of the base, a ship was descending.

“Ayah,” a’Bord said in Uzboss. “That thing is huge.”

“Ayah,” Star repeated.

Leif was too focused on the sassares ship for the tokit’s use of Uzboss to register. A’Bord was right. The ship was huge. Maybe not by the standards of interstellar transport, but for a ship that could make landfall, it defied belief.

Large ships had three major problems with landing in a gravity well. The first was that it took an inordinate amount of power to bring large mass down under a controlled descent. The second was that the ship’s structure had to be beefed up to handle the landing and takeoff as well as the gravity while on the ground. And third, the exhaust from a large ship would fry anything on the ground.

“I want everyone under cover, now!” he shouted at his five runners, who immediately took off to pass the word.

The sassares cruiser looked like it was coming in to land at the shuttle pad, which had baffles suitable for shuttles and yachts, but it wouldn’t be too hard to let it drift over the base and cook the imperial forces.

He looked back up at the cruiser. Humans had large ships, much larger than this one, but they docked at stations, with cargo and passengers ferried to the surface by shuttles or elevators. The sassares like things big, however. Their cargo liners were the largest in the galaxy, and some of their military ships dwarfed any in the Imperial Navy. The sassares military had far fewer ships than the Imperial Navy, but the total tonnage was not that far apart between the two navies.

“Do we fire?” a’Bord asked.

Leif hesitated for a moment despite already making his decision an hour ago. Still, the thought of taking down the cruiser was tempting.

“No. Let it land.”

If he had the right weapons, he’d take the shot. But the anti-air weapons within the battalion and what they’d found in the bunkers were designed for aircraft, shuttles, fighters, and reconnaissance craft. They’d do nothing to a cruiser except make the crew mad.

They’d found more than 50 ship-killer missiles, eight of which were designed to be fired from land-based launchers. They didn’t have any launchers though, so the missiles were just big paperweights.

The three sat in silence as the sassares ship swung in to land. She was at least 150 meters long, maybe 200 meters. That was twice as large as any human ship Leif had seen that could make planetfall.

“Four hours. The sere-blue gave me ten to make a decision, and we’ve got four hours left,” Leif said.

“Hopefully we still have the full ten,” a’Bord said.

The big ship slowed, spun on its axis, then gently lowered the final 200 meters. A single puff of hot wind reached the three, but nothing else. Leif should have realized that the sassares would have solved the problem of their exhaust.

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