Europa Strike(62)

“Hydraulics.”

“Ready.”

“Reactor.”

“Ready, at forty-two percent output. Chamber temperature one-three-hundred. Power levels steady.”

“Pumps.”

“On.”

“Fifteen seconds. Initiate reaction mass flow.”

“Reaction mass flow, on. Pressure at one-three.”

“Checklist complete. All systems ready.”

“Pressure at two-five.”

“Eight seconds. Six…”

“Main valves open. Plasma chamber, open. Firing sequencing activated.”

“Four…three…two…one…launch command.”

“Engines activated. Throttle up to four-five.”

Silent clouds of steam billowed from beneath Descending Thunder No. 4. A moment later, the spacecraft was climbing…climbing…accelerating quickly as it grabbed for the black night at the zenith, its upward course already bending over toward the northeast as it leaned into its programmed course.

Xiang was a fatalist, to a degree. He had never read Caesar’s words at the Rubicon, “Alea iacta est,” but he would have understood the sentiment perfectly.

The die was now irrevocably cast.

Observation Post “Igloo”

Asterius Linea

Europa

1530 hours Zulu



Corporal Duane Niemeyer stooped as he shoved the white camocloth aside and reentered the makeshift shelter they’d built up around the base of the lobber. “Damn, how much longer, BJ?”

Staff Sergeant Brenda Campanelli looked up from the portable radar/lidar detector on its squat tripod. “What’s the matter, Downer? Your HUD go chips-up, or what?”

Duane squatted on the ice beside her. There was scant headroom in their OP hide-hole, created simply by draping camocloth around the base of a requisitioned civilian lobber. It didn’t keep them any warmer—they were in vacuum, and most of their suits’ heat loss was through their boots and into the ice—but it did help cut the background particulate radiation by just a small bit more. Every little bit helped, after all.

For Duane, it helped by shutting out all that awful emptiness outside—and overhead. He hated Jupiter especially, that huge, silent, banded eye always suspended above the eastern horizon, slowly passing from new to crescent to half to full and back to half and crescent and new once more as it ran through its three-day cycle of phases. He sometimes felt an intolerable itching in his brain, a sense of unease, even terror, that seemed to emanate from this place like radiation, invisible but deadly.

“Nah,” he said, in response to her question. “I just don’t want to believe the fucking numbers I’m getting.”

“Well, you might as well relax. We have six more hours.”

“What I wanna know is how come we have to be out here at all. Rali units are automatic. All we need to do is lay a string of relays back to Zebra, and we could watch that damned screen in shirtsleeves in the comm center, with a cup of coffee on the desk and Johnny Hardwire or Pain playin’ on the speaker!”

“What do you think this is, Downer, the Air Force?”

“Aw, shee-it…”

The Marine Corps had technology enough to choke an elephant, but they still ended up doing things the old heave-ho grunt work way. It didn’t make a bit of sense. Rali units, dubbed “Sir Walters” by some unsung but historically literate member of the Corps, were meter-high tripod units that could be set up anywhere in a few seconds. Their mobile, flower-petal heads contained both radar and laser ranging units, and could be set to automatically scan all or part of the sky or surrounding terrain. Duane and Brenda had set this one up on a ridge top a kilometer away from their grounded lobber; there was no sense in having it close by when its emissions might attract unwanted attention from the enemy. At the same time, without signal ground relays or communications satellites, they couldn’t be far enough from the unit that its signal would be blocked by the horizon.

Which meant that pairs of Marines had to go out on OP duty to monitor the far-flung web of ralis in place. “We don’t have enough relays for enough Sir Walters to cover every possible approach,” BJ said. “So we do it this way.”

“Yeah. The stupid way. I think old Warhorse is full of shit.”

“The Major knows what he’s doing, Downer. Bravo Company would follow him to hell!”

“We’re in hell, BJ. A frozen hell. And I don’t remember being given a choice! I think most of the guys are just in love with Warhorse because his granddaddy was a commandant of the Corps!”

“You took your choice when you raised your hand for the oath, kid. And again when you signed up for MSEF duty. So you know who to blame, right?”