Europa Strike(85)
Lucky was riding on a full house, but the others didn’t know that yet. The pot was big and getting bigger, and he could taste the winnings now.
“Two,” Wojak said. He accepted the cards from Peterson, who was dealing. “The way I see it,” he continued, “is that Earth’s gotta send a relief ship, and when they do, the Charlies’ll pack up and move out of town. They’ve only got the two A-M cruisers, right? I’ll see you, Lucky, and raise you five.”
“Unless they’ve been building ’em someplace sneaky we don’t know about,” Lissa said. “And we still have three in the inventory. See ya. Raise you five.”
“I dunno,” Campanelli said, studying her cards. “The news feeds haven’t been that encouraging. The CWS isn’t that eager to get into another war right now.”
“Well, they’re not gonna abandon us out here,” Downer Niemeyer said. “Right? I’m out.” He tossed down his cards. “I mean, they couldn’t—”
The sudden rasp of the alarm echoed through the squad bay. “Shit, no!” Lucky screamed.
“Wassamatter, Luck?” Downer said with a nasty chuckle. “Good hand?”
Lucky flipped him an obscene gesture, then snatched up his helmet.
“Attention!” It was the voice of Chesty Puller, the Old Man’s secretary, sounding over the loudspeaker system, the “1MC,” in Marine parlance. “Incoming hostile forces. Range eighteen kilometers, and descending. Two, repeat, two landers. Enemy cruiser on approach. Estimated time of commencement of bombardment run, now thirty-one seconds…”
Lucky seated his helmet in the locking ring and gave it a hard twist to seal it. After checking the connections, O2 feed, and comm and data links, he pulled on his gloves and sealed them as well too. His M-580 was on the rack with the ready weapons for the rest of the section.
By that time, he and the others were crowding into the E-DARES cargo airlock, which was roomy enough for all twelve Marines remaining in the section and then some. He stood there with the others as the seconds bled away with the atmosphere, his eyes fixed on the gray struts and supports of the lock’s overhead, waiting.
They would ride out the bombardment in here.
Over the past three days, the response to each Chinese assault had become almost routine. The Alert Five section stayed suited up inside, weapons ready and warming, until the Star Mountain had passed and the crowbars had stopped falling. Outside, the Marines on working-party details would be scattering, taking cover in shallow trenches cut for the purpose.
The first shock struck, a gentle rumble transmitted through the E-DARES’s bulkheads. It was followed swiftly by a second, a third, a fourth, each shock more powerful, more demanding than the one before.
Another shock, strong enough to make the deck shudder beneath Lucky’s cleated boots. There was no sound in hard vacuum, of course…but a kind of rattle or rumble was carried by deck plates and armor, strong enough to chatter the teeth. His grip on his weapon tightened.
The base is not going to fall off the cliff, he told himself. It’s not.
The upended ship that served as the CWS base was solidly moored to the ice cliff at the side of the Pit, and ultrastrong cables had been run over and through the ice to shore up the cliff face itself, to prevent an avalanche from calving the whole complex into the Europan ocean. For two days, now, they’d had working parties outside drilling arrays of holes in the ice, designed to absorb and diminish incoming shock waves through the frozen surface.
And hell, even if the cliff face shattered and the E-DARES facility did slide into the water, they’d been assured by the science team that the structure was watertight and would float. They would descend beneath the surface, then pop up again, dry and tight, riding like a normal ship, keel down.
But that was all theory. Suppose the facility fell with a mountain of ice tumbling down behind? Suppose it dove so deep it came back up under the ice cap? Suppose the shock was bad enough to spring some joints and flood her compartments? Suppose…suppose…
Another shock, more violent yet. A heavy wrench resting in top of a circuit box on the other side of the compartment jarred loose and fell in dreamlike slow motion, striking the steel deck plating and bouncing, all in complete silence. Kaminski had passed the word that the Charlies seemed to be trying to spare the E-DARES facility and other surface structures, that so far, especially with the shock absorber mountings designed to protect the base from Europaquakes, there’d been remarkably little damage.
We’re gonna be okay.
But he was sweating inside his suit, the stink in his helmet overwhelming now, especially after spending the past several hours locked away in this can. The Chinese could always change their minds, decide that saving the CWS buildings was more trouble than it was worth. The word was that the Star Mountain was uncannily accurate with those crowbars, dropping them on the ice within meters of the intended targets.