Chapter 23

DAY 43 – HADES ORBIT – BRENNER

“The Tirad is exactly where she’s supposed to be,” the pilot announced, reaching up to flip a few switches on the bank of controls above his seat. “She’s hanging out right beside the tether station – staying in low orbit above the colony, ventral guns at the ready. Never thought I’d have to sneak around a jump carrier like a fucking field mouse. Now I know how the Bugs feel when we start slinging our giant, half-kilometer cocks around.”

The bridge was small by most standards – more of a cockpit, really – but there was space for a few people to stand. The pilot was seated in a chair in front of the controls, his co-pilot seat currently empty, his hands dancing across the banks of switches and touch panel readouts with an ease that came from thousands of hours of practice. The arid surface of Hades loomed large outside the viewport that wrapped around the nose of the craft, its sandy deserts clearly visible beyond the frost that encrusted the windows, what looked like giant sandstorms racing around its equator.

“Any sign of the enemy Coursers?” Brenner asked, leaning over the back of his chair to examine one of the displays.

“I see the EWAR Courser,” he replied. “She’s being loud – screaming across every frequency. The others are no-shows. They could be anywhere, but if we can’t see them, it’s unlikely that they can see us.”

“Maintain present trajectory,” Brenner ordered. “I want you to release our reentry vehicles on the far side of the planet and then retreat behind the moon. You shouldn’t have to enter the carrier’s LoS. We’ll skip off the atmosphere like stones and come in at a low angle closer to the colony, and then we can aerobrake to reach the LZ. We’ll be too small and traveling too slowly to trip any anti-satellite alarms.”

“Roger, Cap’n,” the pilot replied. “I’ll be waiting at the coordinates for your laser transmission.”

Brenner turned and made his way out of the bridge, passing through a narrow door that opened automatically at his approach and stepping into the passenger compartment. This section of the ship was cramped and claustrophobic, the dim light strips that ran across the ceiling casting inky shadows. Visible pipes and bunches of electrical cables trailed along the walls, passing over exposed bulkheads and structural beams, the deck beneath his feet little more than textured sheet metal. Calling the design spartan or industrial seemed like an understatement. Coursers were not luxury craft – they were honed for one narrow purpose, which was to get where they were going as rapidly as physics would allow. Every bolt and floor panel that wasn’t absolutely necessary had been stripped away to reduce its mass and thus increase its jump range.

The bridge, the passenger compartment, and the small cargo section were situated towards the front end of the ship. To the aft of them, separated by a long, skeletal gantry, were the reactor and engine compartments. The Cher Ami was a little different from the average Courser, retrofitted for black ops missions. It was covered in layers of angular onyx-black armor plating that both provided some supplemental protection and reduced its radar cross-section. The gantry along its midsection was fitted with external torpedo tubes, along with a docking system for their reentry vehicles, used for covert orbital insertions where dropships would be too conspicuous. It all added mass, but the tradeoff was worth it.

The walls of the passenger compartment were lined with crash couches where the occupants would secure themselves during jumps, the spaces between them filled with equipment racks stocked with weapons and military gear. His team was preparing for their mission, checking their XMRs and tuning their prosthetics, a few helmeted heads turning to glance at him.

“We’re green,” Brenner announced. “Get to your pods.”

Barbosa had crammed as many agents as he could onto his Coursers, but Brenner had traveled further, and he had been limited by both space and supplies. He’d brought thirty-six men – three SWAR teams – along with a few tagalongs. His team of eleven had been hand-picked for this mission, and they had a skillset suited both for infiltration and urban combat if it came to that. Every one of them had fought by his side before, and they were as loyal as they came. Each of them had custom prosthetics tailored to their unique needs and tactics, ranging from massive limbs filled with bulky servos and artificial muscle designed for pure strength to slim, skeletal implements with all of their excess mass cut away. No two were exactly alike, many sporting engraved tattoos, a few of them showing off intricate Borealan damascene work or Jarilan tiger camo. The decorations told a story of where they had served, and alongside whom. One of the agents even had Valbaran color panels implanted in his forearms, the LED strips able to convey signals non-verbally, suggesting that he might have been embedded with a Commando unit.

Their weapons were no less varied. Brenner could spot everything from short-barreled PDWs with telescoping stocks to long rifles equipped with smart scopes and tripods. The XMR platform was extremely modular, and SWAR could make even better use of it, their strength allowing them to handle heavier platforms designed for larger species.

The armor that they wore was similarly tailored to their needs, but much of it was already being covered over with thick leather coats and shawls, both for protection from the Hadean climate and to help them blend in. They weren’t expecting to land anywhere near a populated area, but they might need to travel undercover during their reconnaissance. Most were already wearing their helmets, each one decorated with a decal that made them easy to identify within the group, but that preserved their anonymity around outsiders.

One of them was standing, reaching into a padded collar and fiddling with something beneath her clothing. She wore a black pressure suit that was commonly used by SWAR – a variant of the blue uniform favored by Marines. It was rated for vacuum, and it was tough enough to stop a blade, the fabric overlaid with ceramic armor panels and various carriers.

“Do we have to wear these things, Commander?” she complained. “We’re deploying to a desert planet – we’re gonna boil under all these layers.”

“That there is a UNNI survival suit,” Brenner replied, gesturing to the sliver of white that was visible beneath the black. “It’s expensive – don’t fuck with it. All those little tubes and wires are going to help keep you cool and prevent you from sweating out all of your body’s moisture while you’re down there. We’re going to be moving under the cover of a storm, so you’ll be glad of all that leather. It’s going to stop the sand from stripping your paint along with your skin.”

Grumbling to herself, she began to slide on a heavy leather duster, placing her helmet over her head. It was decorated with a stylized decal of a wasp brandishing its stinger.

“You got the merchandise, Silver?” Brenner asked as he turned his lenses to another agent. Silverback was a mountain of a man with augs fleshed out to match his build, his artificial muscles bulging from beneath his leather coat. On his visor was stenciled a snarling gorilla with a cigar clutched between its long fangs. He slung a large crate made from molded plastic over his shoulder, giving it an affectionate pat with a gloved hand.

“Safe and sound, Commander. I’ll make sure she gets to the ground in one piece.”

“That thing is worth more than you are, so make sure it’s strapped into the capsule securely,” Brenner replied. “We don’t want it banging around. Who has the transceiver?”

“I got it, Boss,” another of them replied as he waved a large satchel.

“Let’s saddle up!” Brenner barked, his men rising from their seats and collecting their gear. “Get to the capsules. We’re not turning around, so make sure you have all your shit.”

They began to file out into the storage area beyond the passenger compartment, picking up bags and filling their rigs with magazines as they went. Through the crowd stepped a smaller, more slender figure, his four arms swaying at his sides as he walked past them.

“You ready, Harley?” Brenner asked as he began to strap on his own gear. “You’ve never done a drop before, have you?”

“You kidding?” Harlequin chuckled, his feathery antennae bobbing with the motion. “We’re made to drop – have you seen those pods the Warriors use? I’ll bet I can take more Gs than you can.”

“Just make sure your harness is strapped down tightly,” Brenner warned, throwing on his duster. Wasp wasn’t wrong – the survival suit clung to him with an almost uncomfortable tightness, and the weighty jacket felt like overkill draped over his chest rig and plates, but his augmented limbs wouldn’t be hindered by the extra mass. He slotted on his helmet, then connected its seal to his pressure suit at the neck, flipping the visor closed to reveal a decal of a skull with two eye patches.

Harlequin had his own helmet. It was split into two sections – the back half sliding over the back of his head, and the front half slotting over his face, the two pieces snapping together to create a seal. He folded his antennae inside it, his eyes peering out through a pair of transparent lenses. The odd design provided room for the branching, beetle-like horn that jutted from his forehead. As Brenner understood it, the Jarilans had no need for pressure suits, as their very bodies were rated for vacuum. They descended, after all, from a species that was perfectly adapted to space travel. Their sensory organs were delicate and required pressurized protection, however. They didn’t even breathe through their mouths – their bodies were covered in small openings called spiracles that could seal shut when exposed to unfavorable conditions, and they could hold their breath for upwards of forty minutes by storing hemolymph in their tissues.

Harlequin had his own cloak that he wrapped around himself, concealing his orange camouflage and his four arms, the shadowy hood draping over his head. While it wouldn’t stand up to any real scrutiny, it did make him look like an adolescent Hadean from a sufficient distance.

The pair followed the rest of the team through a well-stocked cargo area and onto the gantry beyond. The gantry joined the two halves of the ship, and nestled inside the skeletal framework was a pressurized umbilical – little more than a floor made of sheet metal enclosed in a material that bore a worrying resemblance to a tarp. Brenner knew that there was more hull beyond it, but it always made him feel exposed, as though the slightest tear might blow him out into space.

Mounted on the underside of the gantry was another aftermarket addition to the Courser – the capsule launch bay. The bulky module was attached beneath the belly of the ship like a limpet, its purpose to house the four reentry capsules that would be their one-way trip to the ground. The vehicles were designed to carry three passengers and their equipment to the surface of a planet as rapidly as possible, dropping from beneath the Courser almost like dumb bombs and falling into the atmosphere.

The capsules had a truncated, conical shape, with a rounded base coated in heat tiles that tapered into a domed point at the top. At a little over four meters wide at the base and three and a half meters tall, they were not designed to be spacious or comfortable. They relied primarily on aerobraking to slow their descent where a dense enough atmosphere was present, helping to stabilize their fall with a drogue chute. Once they reached the appropriate altitude, thrusters embedded within the belly of the craft would fire, shedding velocity to allow for a relatively soft landing. SWAR primarily used them for combat drops behind enemy lines, or covert missions where larger craft would be too conspicuous.

There were two more narrow doors to either side of the walkway, and the team was splitting into groups of three, heading to their respective capsules. Brenner was riding with Wasp and Harlequin, the pair following him as he ducked through the nearest door.

Beyond the sliding panel was another umbilical – little more than a couple of meters of metal walkway covered with the same white tarp. Trailing along the metal supports were colorful bundles of cable – the electronics connecting the capsules to the Courser’s control systems. Brenner led the way, the deck creaking beneath his feet. He usually favored skids, but they weren’t suited to desert dunes, so he had swapped them out for some more conventional boots.

The open hatch of the capsule was waiting for him, and he squeezed through the rounded aperture, securing his weapon in a convenient rack beside one of the seats. The interior was cramped, to say the least – its white hull material exposed where the walls weren’t covered in electronics or stowage. The crash couches faced the ceiling, meaning that he had to lie on his back with his legs raised – a position that helped mitigate hard landings by preventing his spine from being compressed like a spring.

His hand found the joystick on his armrest, and he brought up a touch panel, a bank of displays mounted above his head flickering to life as he began pre-flight checks. While the capsule had very limited maneuverability, it was still possible to steer it towards a desired landing site to a degree.

His companions climbed into the seats to either side of him, stowing their weapons and strapping their harnesses across their chests. As the comms system spooled up, it began to feed data to his helmet’s HUD, views from inside the other three capsules opening in windows.

“Begin drop prep,” he ordered, watching as the men in the other pods hit switches. “Pilot – what’s our ETA?”

“Ten minutes to the drop point, Boss,” he replied. “Brace yourselves – I’m coming in low, and there’s gonna be some chop.”

“You know, Jarilan drop pods are full of squishy flesh cushioning and non-Newtonian goo that helps absorb the impact during a landing,” Harlequin began as he glanced around the compartment. “At least tell me this tin can has countermeasures?”

“The countermeasures are being very fast and very difficult to hit,” Wasp replied.

“I dunno how your species survived this long,” Harlequin muttered as he checked his harness with both pairs of arms.

They waited as the Courser moved towards the planet, the horizon growing alarmingly quickly, Brenner watching it balloon through the external cameras. Coursers were not rated for atmospheric flight, but the ship needed to come in at a low angle to drop the capsules into the right orbit. If it even ended up in the same hemisphere as the carrier, it would be spotted, and their mission would be over before it began – probably at the wrong end of a torpedo.