“Well, I for one don’t mind a bit of peace and quiet while someone else roughhouses with the bad guys,” Vince said. “Just for a change. Gimme one.”
“Yeah, it’s a tough job, sitting around on your ass,” Dave said, “but someone’s got to—”
The alarm brayed, shrill and insistent. Cards scattered as the Marines scrambled to their feet and jogged for the gear lockers. Other members of the Alert-Five were already there, snapping gloves to wrist locks, pulling on helmets, dragging weapons off the racks.
“Battle stations, battle stations,” Lieutenant Quinlan’s voice called from the overhead speaker. “We have Charlies on the east and west rims, repeat, east and west rims! Recommend Defense Delta.”
A two-pronged attack, then. They’d tried it before, an obvious enough plot since they had three intact ships out there, to the east, west, and south of Cadmus Crater. They’d had trouble coordinating their attacks in the past.
Unfortunately, with only fourteen defenders, the Marine garrison wasn’t going to be able to rush to meet any of the attacks on the high ground of the crater rim as they’d done in the past. Plan Delta, devised for a flexible defense with too few personnel, called for them to take cover on the ice near the E-DARES facility itself, and pick off the enemy as they came over the rims in any direction. Trenches, foxholes, and firing pits had already been dug and were waiting for them. All they needed to do was get there before the enemy reached the high ground where he could begin firing down into the crater.
Lucky crowded through the airlock with his squad, listening to the helmet tone as his 580 charged to full power. The outer hatch opened, and he filed out into the Europan night, careful to watch his footing on the slick metal walkway above the Pit.
Jupiter glowed balefully at him above the east rim, a vast, orange eye. Beneath him, the black, boiling water of the Pit was nearly obscured in a fog of tiny crystals of ice. He started up the zigzag ladder to the surface.
The laser pulse came from behind, from the south rim, catching Mike Vottori in the upper right arm. Lucky was immediately behind and below Mike, and saw the intolerably brilliant flare of reflected light from his Mark II armor, the silently vicious puff of vapor as the material ruptured and atmosphere exploded into vacuum, heard his shriek over the squad channel. He twisted and spun, left glove trying frantically to grab the hole and hold it shut. Lucky was reaching for him, trying to help, wondering if he had time to get at one of the sealer patches in his thigh pouch, when Vottori slammed into the guard rail, overbalanced with his backpack PLSS, and toppled, arms flailing, backward into the Pit. He fell a lot more slowly than he would have on Earth, taking long seconds to plummet twenty meters, his body punching out a man-shaped hole through the fog, then plunging into the cold boiling water with a noiseless splash.
Mark II suits were heavier than water; Mike was gone, vanished into the depths.
Lucky spun, trying to spot where the shot had come from. Switching his HUD to IR imagery, he spotted the enemy sniper, a blob of yellow against blues and greens, prone on the south ridge. He brought his 580 up and triggered three quick pulses in reply as the rest of the Marines filed up the ladder. The yellow blob vanished from sight, though whether Lucky had hit him or simply driven him behind the rim, he couldn’t tell.
Tom Pope was on the open ice, waving the rest of the Marines to their positions. “Move it! Move it!” he yelled. “We don’t have all day!” Ice erupted in a silent geyser of steam to his left. Chinese zidong tanke were on the east rim, taking aim at the tiny Marine detachment on the ice below.
Pope continued to stand in the open, yelling out orders. “Coughlin! Owenson! Get those SLAWs in action. Hit those tanks on the east ridge, damn it!”
Dave Coughlin and Kelly Owenson were humping the squad’s SLAWs. They began hammering off short, accurate bursts of rapid-fire bursts of laser light, sending up blossoming plumes of exploding ice along the eastern rim.
Lucky had already spotted the Chinese troops coming over the west rim, and concentrated his fire there.
Damn…there were a lot of them.
TWENTY-TWO
27 OCTOBER 2067
Manta One
Asterias Linea, Europa
0715 hours Zulu
“Hold it!” Hastings said. “I’m getting something!”
The SEAL was crouched over the Manta’s pilot console, listening intently to a headset pressed against his ear. “I think I’m getting something.”
“Confirmed,” Chesty’s voice added from the console speaker. “I am getting definite ice-cracking noises.”
“Put them on the speaker,” Jeff said.