Gate Crashers by Patrick S. Tomlinson

Author:Patrick S. Tomlinson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

CHAPTER 25

A blue-green jewel hung in the endless black, illuminated by ten-minute-old light from the system’s lone sun. A thunderstorm raged just across the terminator into night. The shape of the continents was the only clue reminding the observers that this wasn’t Earth, but Solonis B.

Twin shuttles burned through Solonis B’s upper atmosphere like comets riding streams of superheated plasma. Magellan’s shuttle was svelter, intended for carrying researchers and surveying equipment. By comparison, Bucephalus’s shuttle was a brute. It was designed to carry a rifle team of a dozen marines, who tend to be larger than your average researchers, along with all their armor, weapons, and equipment.

Lieutenant Harris studied the shuttle’s displays and then looked to his pilot. “Simmons, how are we looking?”

“We’re about to start our braking S-turns, sir. Hull temp is holding steady at 80 percent of maximum.”

“Good, alert our friends in the other shuttle, then start your turns. Let me know when our altitude falls to ten thousand meters.”

“Yes, sir.”

Harris turned to face the shuttle’s passenger compartment. “How you holding up back there, Felix?”

“Swell, Thomas. Just peachy.”

Judging by Felix’s pallid face, Harris knew he was lying. He wasn’t exactly sure why Felix had insisted on tagging along, but he suspected the presence of a certain brunette flight ops officer on the other shuttle was related in some way. The deck under Harris’s feet shifted as Simmons threw the shuttle into the first high-banking turn. Harris turned to the cockpit and the shuttle’s electronic warfare officer.

“Devor, how long before we can switch on the active camouflage?”

The young lance corporal looked to her screens for a moment before answering. “Hull temp is still a couple of hundred degrees too high. We should be fine once Lieutenant Simmons completes his braking maneuvers.”

“Are we getting signal from the Gargoyles yet?”

“Yes, sir. Gargoyle platforms are five by five.”

“Excellent. Network their feeds to my link, and fire control as well.”

Devor pulled up a new menu on her display and entered a code. “Done, sir.”

“Thank you.” Harris rested a big hand on her shoulder as he sorted through the new stream of telemetry coming from the sensors and cameras mounted on the OOPs tens of kilometers above.

Harris didn’t really believe they’d need the Gargoyles during the mission. Their initial scans had only located a scattering of settlements on the planet’s entire surface, and low-tech settlements at that. He was confident anything his men or the survey team encountered could be dealt with using small arms.

But his OCS instructors had taught him never to make assumptions, and this low-risk mission would provide his platoon with an excellent dry run. The beginning of any expedition was a time to do things by the book, even if they were writing most of the chapters on the fly.

Once the delicate choreography of braking maneuvers was complete, they found a natural clearing in the forest to serve as a landing zone for the shuttles. There was a hissing outside the exterior hatch while the pressure equalized with the surrounding air.

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