Lucky kept firing, switching from east rim to west rim and back again, with an occasional shift to check the south. There were too many Chinese troops inside the crater now to count, and at least five of those damned robot tanks.
A zidong tanke fired, the bolt exploding Mayhew’s helmet in a gory flash. Owenson kept running, slipped and fell on the ice, then got up and made it to the ladder. A sniper fired from the south rim, and missed.
It was just him, Coughlin, and Pope left now, and entirely too many Chinese troops. “Coughlin! Leckie!” Pope called. “Take off!”
Instead, Lucky rose from his foxhole and bolted for Riddel’s firing position ten meters away. The Wyvern was lying on the ice; Riddel’s body, horribly twisted and torn, was inside the position—most of it.
“Leckie!”
“You two move! Now!” he shouted back. Slinging his 580, he shouldered the Wyvern, checked its system readouts, and connected its data link with his helmet HUD. Red targeting brackets appeared, which he swung to embrace one of the zidong tanke.
A soundless explosion gouted the foxhole he’d just left. He felt the jolt through his boots. He pressed the acquire switch, saw the brackets flash to green, heard the tone of a target lock, and squeezed the trigger. The missile slid free of the launcher, wobbling a bit as it streaked across the ice, its white-hot tail flare matched by a skittering patch of reflected light on the ice beneath.
He didn’t have time for a reload or a second shot. Turning, he jogged back toward the E-DARES facility, following Coughlin and Pope. A trio of laser blasts sent a shudder rippling through the ice. He landed on his face, sliding the last five meters to the ladder.
Pope extended a hand and helped him up. Coughlin braced himself at the entryway to the ladder, firing his SLAW in short, precise bursts. “C’mon, Cog!” Pope shouted.
“You two get down there!” he replied. “I’m right behind you!”
Lucky tossed the missile launcher over the railing and into the Pit. It would be useless inside the E-DARES, and this denied it to the enemy. He jogged down the steps, pausing once to fire at snipers lining the south rim.
Then he was at the still-open airlock. The others were crowded inside, waiting.
“Where’s Cog?”
“He was right behind me!” Lucky said. Turning, he saw the ladder up was empty. “Cog! Where are you?”
“Seal up!” Coughlin replied. “I’ll hold ’em off while you do!”
“Get the hell down here, Coughlin!” Pope yelled. “That’s an order!”
“Negative! Gotta get the flag!”
Pope and Lucky stared at each other for a moment. In the rush, they’d forgotten the American flag raised on a radio mast atop the E-DARES’ stern six days ago.
“I’ll go get him,” Lucky said.
“Uh-uh,” Pope said. “You stay here. I’ll—”
“Get the fuck inside!” Coughlin yelled. “There are too damned many of them. Seal up! Now!” They could hear the soft stuttering of EMP static over the radio each time his rapid-fire laser cycled. He was firing continuously now. “Take it, you bastards! Take it! Take it, take it!…”
Silently, they slid the outer hatch shut. Air hissed in, and the inner lock opened.
Graham, McCall, and the two Navy lieutenants, Quinlan and Walthers, were all inside the squad bay as they stepped through from the airlock. They wore space suits and carried M-580s.
Graham slapped the charge lever on his 580. “It won’t be long now,” he said,
Asterias Linea, Europa
0735 hours
Jeff stood face to face with Lang in the tiny airlock, so close their suits touched and he felt the powerful, repulsive shove of her SC fields. Slowly, the outer hatch slid open, and she slid past him into a dense white fog.
He followed close behind her. Tiny ice particles began coating his suit and rifle almost at once; clouds of steam, freezing almost instantly to fog-ice as it hit vacuum, roiled past from the hole blasted in the ice by the improvised A-M torpedo. The black hull of the Manta was already largely covered. He watched where he stepped, following a rough-surfaced tread line in the CB2F weave of the hull, where fuselage blended smoothly to wing.
Three meters ahead, the tread ended with the wing, and he leaped off into whiteness.
The crater blasted into the ice by the International Gun was perhaps a hundred meters across, and with a fairly flat slope to the rim. The Manta had surfaced on the eastern side of the crater floor. As he kept moving, he cleared the fog, and saw the rest of the squad strung out ahead in a ragged line, moving toward the eastern rim, about thirty meters away. Sergeant Lang was just ahead, running across broken, packed ice to join the others.