Damn it, where was the enemy? Was it possible that the Chinese LZ had been abandoned, that all of the PRC troops were now elsewhere—either in orbit, or, far worse, at Cadmus?
Jeff moved around the beached Manta, checking the anchor lines secured by Wojak and Cartwright. The submarine was resting on ice that appeared to be composed of many head-sized chunks and blocks refrozen together, but the surface seemed solid enough to support the vessel’s weight. He informed Carver of the fact by radio, then started following the rest. Their radio chatter crackled over his helmet phones.
“Hey, looks like nobody’s home!”
“Nah, they’ll have left someone behind to tend the fires.”
“Mind the chitchat, people. EM discipline!”
“Hey! Will ya lookit that!”
Garcia was pointing back the way they’d come. Jeff turned in time to see a black shape rise like a breaching whale from the depths, sunlight glittering from its wet curves and in the cascade of white spray exploding into vacuum.
Manta Two cleared the surface and the fog, flying toward the icy beach well to the north of Manta One. It hit solid ice and skidded forward, sluing to the side as it came to rest thirty meters from the steaming hole.
“Welcome to Asterias Linea,” Jeff called over the command circuit. “How was the trip?”
“A bit on the rough side,” Lieutenant Biehl said. “What’s the sit?”
“No sign of hostiles. Secure your boat and come on out.”
“Roger that! On our way!”
“Target alert!” Carver’s voice called. “I have incoming, straight up! Uh…bearing one-five-three relative, eighty-one degrees! Range…two-three-five-five meters, descending!”
Jeff stopped and looked up. The sun was almost directly overhead, blinding enough to darken his visor, despite its shrunken size. The Chinese had set up their camp on the side of Europa that never sees Jupiter, and the sky seemed strangely empty without the bloated world hanging overhead.
Then he saw what Carver had spotted with the Manta’s radar—the tiny, round shape of a Chinese Descending Thunder, crescent-lit by the sun as it fell slowly toward the LZ.
“Take it, Amberly!” he shouted.
Ahead, Sergeant Roger Amberly dropped to one knee, his ungainly Wyvern laid across his right shoulder, the muzzle pointed almost straight up. “I got lock! I got tone!”
“Watch the backblast, Rog!”
“I know. Firing!”
Flame splashed on the ice almost directly behind and beneath him, but dissipated in a cloud of white steam. The missile, its exhaust a dazzling white pinpoint, arrowed skyward, sluing from side to side as it went to active tracking and homed on its target.
The missile vanished—and much too soon. The Chinese lander must have spotted the launch and used its a point-defense laser to take the Wyvern out. But Amberly was already lock-snapping a fresh missile load tube home and taking aim again. And Peterson was going to one knee nearby, putting the second Wyvern into action.
“Tone!”
“Tone! Fire!”
Two missiles streaked into the sky, and this time the target was considerably lower. One missile vanished, but the second connected, a startlingly white flash clearly visible from the ground.
The lander continued to descend, apparently unharmed.
“Move up to the top of the rim,” Jeff ordered. “Get those missiles working against the grounded landers!”
Trotting through rough and broken ice, Jeff reached the crest of the crater rim. Beyond, the ice in frozen, undulating waves stretching off toward the east. The surface level was considerably higher outside the crater than within, the elevation of the rim no more than a few meters. Five kilometers away, six Descending Thunder landers rested on the ice, steam wreathing two of them from open exhaust vents; close by was a scattering of pressurized habs, surface storage sheds, tractors and excavating equipment of various types, and several of the ubiquitous zidong tanke robots on patrol.
Jeff raised his rifle, using the 580’s optics as a zoom lens to magnify the center of the base. There were a few space-suited troops about, and a lot of activity near the base of two of the landers. It looked like they were getting ready to disembark their passengers.
“Pick your targets!” he told the others. “Take down those troops!”
The Marines spread out along the rim, lying prone, triggering their weapons. The beams weren’t visible in vacuum, of course, but in the magnified view through his rifle’s optics, Jeff saw enemy soldiers pitch, drop, spin, fall…
Two missiles streaked across the ice, swinging sharply into the sides of the two recently grounded transports. White light blossomed; apparently, the point defense systems had been shut down, or someone wasn’t paying attention. The two reloaded and fired again. One of the landers suddenly erupted in incandescent violence, a savage detonation that devoured its lower half, fragmented the upper, and sent huge, curved sections spinning through the sky, all in perfect silence.