Ravi tracked the rogue vent down to a starboard nitrogen tetroxide tank, and opened the valves to drain the remaining liquid through a non-propulsive vent. Several fuel cells had been knocked out. The fuselage stress web was reporting an alarming number of punctures.
“And one dead copilot,” he muttered savagely.
Radar was still operational, reporting a massive amount of high-velocity particles sleeting through space all around him. The Thunderthorn’s primary defense against collision—the sheer vastness of space—was decreasing with every minute. The Wild Valkyries had been exceptionally successful, nuking hundreds of Zanth. Now Ravi had to live with that success. It would probably kill him soon enough. Even the surviving Zanth were taking a pounding from the fragments.
Another touch on the joystick, slowly swinging the Thunderthorn around until the nose was pointing directly down at the beleaguered world, and he fired the main rockets again. Only three were functioning, requiring him to vector them constantly. Twenty-second burn, assisting gravity, sending him powering planetward.
Gravity slowly became more noticeable as the
Bad Niobe
sank downward. Ravi changed the big spaceplane’s alignment for the last time, leveling out so the belly was presented flat to the atmosphere. Dunham’s helmet fell lightly onto the cockpit’s floor, coming to rest beside Ravi’s feet, and the headless corpse slumped forward, its arms dangling down. Bloodsplatter that was vacuum-boiling ran sluggishly down the bulkheads and console and windshield, drawing long crimson trickles as it went.
Ravi did his best to ignore the gore. Sensors retracted down into their recesses, and the hatches irised shut. Flaps and wing camber actuators ran through their test sequences. Overall functionality wasn’t too good, the tacnet surmised. Ravi had a good old fatalistic chortle at that.
The ionosphere was alive with a moiré phosphorescence, strong enough to obscure the land beneath. Hundreds of nuclear explosions launched by the Wild Valkyries and their counterparts over Tampa and Longdade had saturated New Florida’s atmosphere with high-energy particles and hard radiation, hypercharging the ionosphere. Even if the Zanth stopped their swarm immediately, the planetary biosphere would take centuries to recover from the radioactive blitz.
Bad Niobe
descended into the blazing maelstrom. Ravi felt the cockpit thrumming as aerodynamic surfaces began to cut through the thickening energized mist. A whole new set of red warning icons flashed urgently. He couldn’t see anything through the contaminated ionosphere, except for a constant barrage of flashes as Zanth debris disintegrated in spectacular fireball explosions.
“We’ll get you home,” Ravi promised Dunham’s corpse. “Don’t you worry.”
They fell fast through the atmosphere. Ravi angled the nose down, using their airfoil surfaces to convert their descent into forward momentum. Eerily distorted sunlight filled the cabin as they fell through the turgid base of the swollen ionosphere, and straight into a massive electrical storm. Lightning ripped through the air, skittering along the Thunderthorn’s wings to spit incandescent plasma balls from the tips in a segmented contrail.
Down into the cloud layer, and rain added to the hostile barrage New Florida’s atmosphere was greeting its defenders with. Ravi extended the Thunderthorn’s wings, listening to the stress structure creaking as they stretched out to their full extent. The dive angle began to shallow out. He was flying with inertial navigation only, curving around in a long arc to land at Yantwich airport, where the HDA retrieval gateway was waiting.
Ravi was seventy kilometers out, under the clouds, and traveling at Mach 2.8, when the radar gave him a proximity warning. He banked
Bad Niobe
to port and just caught sight of the intact Zanth chunk bursting out of the dark clouds ten kilometers north. It streaked on downward through the squalling rain, its facets flickering weakly in the diminished sunlight. Impact threw up a dense blastcloud ring of filthy air that obscured it from view. Ravi held his breath, hoping forlornly that the crashdown would smash the alien brute as thoroughly as any 7009. But as the grimy cloud was sluiced away by the rain he could see it sitting at a sharp angle at the bottom of an enormous crater.
But then it was never about saving the world, he reflected, just buying the people time to get out. One day maybe, HDA would find a way to repel the rents, divert the Zanth from the trans-stellar worlds where humans lived. But by then he suspected his grandkids would have grandkids of their own.
Ravi was mildly surprised when all the undercarriage bogies slid down and locked, giving him three greens. Ten kilometers out from the runway, and three of the Thunderthorn’s four turbofans lit up. Ground radar found him. He had basic communication with air traffic control. The tacnet was downloading
Bad Niobe
’s status to Groom Lake.
Even with all the damage, Ravi managed a wheels-down in the center of the runway. Emergency vehicles chased him all the way to the gateway at the end of the taxiway. As he reached it, another of the Wild Valkyrie squadron’s Thunderthorns was touching down behind.
The other side of the retrieval gateway was a near-physical jolt, leaving him faintly dazed. One moment he’d been fighting for his life on a world dying beneath a brutal alien invasion; now here he was back under the big calm Nevada sky, with the familiar buildings of Groom Lake throwing out their usual heat-shimmer welcome. Engineering vehicles converged on
Bad Niobe
. Ravi shut down the turbofans as the rad-haz trucks started spraying the spaceplane with a gooey turquoise decontamination fluid. Technicians began plugging umbilicals in. The tow tractor hitched itself to the nose wheel, and tugged him to the combat engineering hangar.
As they rolled into the vast building he could see a dozen Thunderthorns already inserted into the long line of robot repair bays. Two of them were in even worse shape than
Bad Niobe
. Tech crews in radiation suits teemed over every surface, assisted by the bay’s AI and remote tools. Cybernetic arms lifted broken sections of fuselage off the stress structure, while more arms moved fresh ones into place. Battered nacelles were simply removed and new ones slotted in. Every on-board system was modular, so any damaged component was quickly unplugged and a replacement lowered in.
Bad Niobe
was back to flightworthiness standard after two hours twenty minutes.
“Send me back,” Ravi pleaded with the squadron commander. He’d been furious when he saw Toho and Janinne waiting beneath the ladder into the patched-up cockpit.
“You lost Dunham,” the commander said.
“I didn’t! The fucking Zanth shrapnel got him. Half a meter over and you’d be talking to him not me. It was chance, is all. It’s got nothing to do with my ability. Come on! Dunham and me, we blew the shit out of fifty Zanth.”
“It was bad, Ravi, I don’t know if you can cope again.”
“It was
great
out there. I was great. Come on: fifty Zanth fucked, and I brought
Bad Niobe
back. It’s not like you’ve cloned a whole load of pilots, we’re not Norths. Come on, send me back. Give me some HiMod to keep me sharp and I’ll nail you fifty more. You can’t seriously think Toho is a better pilot?”
“Toho is just as good—”
“Fuck he is!”
“—but I don’t have enough pilots, you’re right. So you get some rest, and when
Bad Niobe
gets back, I’ll send you out again.”
Ravi wound up flying six missions against the New Florida Zanthswarm. He never thought he’d make it back after the fourth. They wound up ejecting the cockpit capsule when
Bad Niobe
’s starboard undercarriage collapsed on landing, and the spaceplane cartwheeled into a mangled fireball that even the combat engineering hangar couldn’t fix. He got his final two flights in a different Thunderthorn because of pilot attrition. Space above New Florida was becoming dangerously rad-toxic, but the Thunderthorns still flew, getting fewer D-bomb shots into rents that were now over three thousand kilometers above New Florida, smashing less Zanth chunks with each passing hour. They kept going because no one else was going to help the besieged population.
Eventually, four days after the Zanthswarm began, and to the anger and dismay of every surviving squadron member, HDA command shut down the exospheric defense flights. The rents were now opening more than five thousand kilometers above New Florida. Space between them and the atmosphere was a foul blizzard of fractured Zanth shards capable of pulverizing any spaceplane. The ionosphere was aglow with radiation, making New Florida look like a cool sun.
There was nothing left to save anymore.
*
Vance Elston kept wiping the perspiration from his forehead as the Berlin thundered over the jungle back to the accident after dropping off the injured at Wukang. It was unpleasantly hot in the helicopter’s cabin. No one bothered with aircon. Tork Ericson was leaning against the open side door, chewing gum as he stared out across the trees’ lush, glistening canopy. It was late afternoon, and St. Libra’s heat hazed air was insufferable. Bizarrely, the open side door, with the contra-rotating blades shimmering just a meter above, did nothing to circulate any cool air. But then, Vance seriously doubted there was any of the stuff on the whole planet.
“Two minutes out,” Ravi Hendrik announced.
Vance checked his safety harness and went over to stand behind Tork’s bucket seat, looking down at the rumpled ground. This was hilly country, steep but not impassable. It was only the jungle that created any difficulty, with the trees uncomfortably close together, and thick undergrowth making it difficult for any vehicle. Nonetheless, the research convoy had gotten this far from Wukang, just over fifty kilometers. Crashing down the undergrowth, using the robot buzz saws on the front of the MTJ to slice through any wooden obstacle or snag, like trunks or low branches and the unending curtain of vines. It was why they’d brought the tough vehicles on the expedition: They could push, cut, and smash their way through anything except for solid rock.
Tork thrust an arm out, pointing. “There,” he yelled above the roar of the rotors.
Vance looked out at the crash site. Strands of vapor were winding up from the vegetation, the morning rains evaporating fast beneath the raw Sirius sunlight. The thin agitated mist curled around the mobile biolab and two Land Rover Tropics parked on the top of the ravine; the vehicles were bedecked by various cases and packs, all the tents and equipment the convoy would need to make camp overnight. His gaze followed the steep muddy slope downward. There were long skid marks through the red-brown soil, pulped vegetation, and finally the MTJ on its side against a rock outcrop. Its packs had split on impact, festooning a broad swath of ground with debris, tents, and clothes flapping about in the regular breeze. A couple of Legionnaires were crouched beside the stranded vehicle, the slender, colorful threads of climbing rope attached to their belts stretching all the way back up to the top of the ravine.
“Damnit,” Vance grunted, crossing himself in reflex. DiRito should never have been driving so close to the edge. Which was a fine thing to say with hindsight, but it hadn’t been him trying to negotiate the daunting jungle.
The Berlin swept in over the parked vehicles and hovered twenty meters above them. Trees and bushes bowed and swayed in the downdraft.
“If you’re going down, sir …,” Tork said.
Vance nodded grimly, trying not to show his nerves. It had been a
long
time since he’d done this in training. “Right.”
Tork spooled out a meter of winch cable and clipped it to Vance’s harness. The winch arm swung out. Vance wanted to cross himself, but resisted the urge. Tork slapped his helmet twice, and he leaned out of the door, letting the winch take his weight. Then he was spinning slowly as the cable lowered him.
Paresh Evitts grabbed his legs and steadied him as he reached the ground. The winch cable was unclipped, and the Berlin veered away to hover directly over the MTJ.
“Sir.” Corporal Evitts saluted.
Vance returned the salute.
Paresh was covered in mud that was drying rapidly in the brilliant blue-white sunlight. His young face reflected worry, anger, and weariness. “How are they, sir?” he asked.
Vance couldn’t help glancing at the three black body bags lying next to the biolab. Corporal Hiron, who’d been in the MTJ’s front seat next to DiRito; Privates Peace-Davis and Ramon Beaken as well. “The doc thinks O’Riley will keep the leg. Tramelo and Fawkes did a good job extracting the branch. Sleath and DiRito will be okay, they just have broken limbs. But the doc’s not so happy with Guzman. They can treat his spine a lot better back at Abellia, so we’ll know more when he gets there. The four of them are being medevaced out on the next Daedalus flight. It should be landing in another hour.”
“Okay.” Paresh nodded.
Vance thought the young corporal was fighting back tears. “You ran a smooth recovery operation here, Corporal. Your squad has a reason to be grateful for your leadership.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Antrinell Viana came over and saluted. “What now?”
Vance glanced around the site. Darwin Sworowski, the camp’s ground vehicle chief, was already winching down from the Berlin to the MTJ. “You take the convoy vehicles back to Wukang. I want you to carry the bodies with you. The Berlin will recover the MTJ and airlift it back. The engineers think it can be patched up.”
“That I’d like to see,” Antrinell grunted.
“Corporal, get the bodies into the biolab, please, and wind it up here. You’ll leave as soon as the Berlin lifts.”
“Sir.” Paresh performed a mediocre salute and walked off to his squad who were sitting around the two Tropics. Vance caught a glimpse of Angela, who was slumped against one of the wheels, filthy and listless. There was blood streaked with the mud on her khaki vest.
“So?” he asked when Paresh was out of earshot.
Antrinell let out a long sigh. “Hellfire. I don’t know. Hiron was pathfinding. I was in the biolab following the MTJ. There’s no way it was deliberate. DiRito went too close to the edge in the mud. It was foolhardy, but we’ve all driven along the edge of the gorges out here. I’d probably have done the same thing if I’d been taking point.”