Squad Bay, E-DARES Facility
Ice Station Zebra, Europa
0750 hours Zulu
“What the hell are they doing out there?” Lucky demanded.
“Overriding the airlock controls,” Melendez replied from C-3. “I’m trying to block them, but they’re bypassing the computer lockout and using the manual controls. Hang on down there. It looks like they’re going to try to open both doors at once.”
“Shit!” Pope said. “They’ll evacuate the whole facility!”
“We’re sealed down here. We should be okay if you guys are buttoned up.”
“We’re suited and sealed,” Lieutenant Graham said. “But when that door opens, there’s going to be quite a—”
A shrill whistling pierced their ears as the inner airlock slid open. The whistle grew to a roar, then crashing thunder as the air inside the Squad Bay blasted out into Europan emptiness. Four soldiers in white armor and colored helmets were visible inside the airlock, safety lines clipped to their combat harnesses as they crouched against the howling gale. As soon as the inner door was halfway open, they began to fire, sending a fusillade of full-auto rounds hammering into the squad bay.
But the Marines had used the last few minutes to drag equipment racks, lockers, tables and chairs, and everything else that wasn’t bolted down into the middle of the bay, where they’d created a makeshift redoubt. As the wind howled around them, a chair fell from the stack and slid across the deck, but the rest held firm as bullets cracked and snapped—almost unheard beneath the thundering wind—past the waiting Marines.
“Fire!” Pope yelled, and bullets were met with hissing, snapping lasers.
Asterias Linea, Europa
0751 hours Zulu
The enemy was trying to get sorted out, but complete chaos had descended on the Chinese base. Men ran for cover, cowered in the shadow of the landers, or crumpled and died. A trio of robot tanks started trundling toward the crater, but Nodell and Campanelli took aim with their Sunbeam M-228 Squad Laser Weapons, set to rock and roll at five 10-megawatt bursts per second. Tanks that small couldn’t carry armor more than a centimeter or so thick, and the staccato rattle of bursts each equivalent to 200 grams of high explosives quickly degraded armor, shredded tracks, punched through to vital circuitry. One of the tanks stopped, frozen in place. Another skidded to the side and pitched, nose down, into a missile crater. The other backed away into cover.
Jeff risked another look up. The lander overhead was still descending, passing well toward the southeast now. It didn’t appear outwardly damaged, and was still under power. Amberly sent another missile toward it, but its antimissile defenses were engaged and the Wyvern SAM flashed into white vapor halfway to the target and vanished.
Moments later, the ten-meter sphere lightly touched down on the ice half a kilometer away. One of its landing legs, however, didn’t support the craft’s weight as it settled, and the sphere pitched to the side, the useless leg crumpling beneath its weight. The leg’s hydraulics must have been ruptured by the hit. The sphere lay almost on its side, its main hatch blocked shut by the ice and the ruin of the leg.
Several Marines cheered. “Keep firing, damn it!” Jeff yelled. “Hurt them! Hit ’em where it hurts!” Seconds later, a Wyvern streaked low through the encampment, baffling the tracking radars aboard the ships, swinging suddenly left and flying right up the ramp of one of the Descending Thunders. The interior cargo bay of the vessel flashed brilliantly, and then all of the internal lights winked out.
The Marines cheered again. One of the seven landers was destroyed, three more either destroyed or badly damaged and certainly out of the fight.
Lieutenant Biehl reached the crater rim at a jog with his eleven people, but the tide already seemed to be turning. With surprise lost, the Chinese were beginning to return fire, both from robot tanks and from the point defense laser weaponry mounted in ball turrets on the upper hulls of the landers. Carver warned of more incoming, two more landers at high altitude, and they appeared to be maneuvering to stay clear of the deadly crater.
“Major Warhurst!” Biehl said, striding to the top of the rim. And then the upper quarter of his body was gone, vanished in a sudden burst of light and fine, red mist. His M-580, his gloved hand and forearm still grasping the pistol grip, landed on the ice half a meter from Jeff’s boots. Fifteen meters away, Peterson fell back from the rim, a gaping hole opened in his chest. Wojak scooped up the dropped M-614, locked in another round, raised the weapon to his shoulder, and fired. The missile slammed into a pressurized hut on the ice, detonating with savage brilliance.