Joined In Battle Read online

  “Planetary conditions in the upper atmosphere won’t be severe,” Chappelander said. “I don’t foresee it being a problem. I mean, it isn’t like a combat drop.”

  “No, it won’t be dangerous that way—but in my experience, no drop is without significant risks. I’d feel better knowing you had run simulations.”

  “Captain Blaze,” the operator’s tone shifted slightly and Dean caught a note of condescension, “I’m rated A+ on the Raptor combat shuttle. I’ve logged over four hundred flight hours. I graduated from Gonzaga University with a degree in aeronautics theory. I can get you to the platform without wasting my time on sims.”

  Dean had met a lot of people in EsDef. Most were respectful and accommodating, but others were not. Lieutenant Chappelander seemed to think that his time at a prestigious university and months of training in OTA prepared him for anything he could encounter flying drones and shuttles. Dean knew that most operators had a sense of detachment from the aircraft they flew because of the remote nature of their jobs. Sitting at their station on board a spaceship and piloting drones was not the same as flying a shuttle. And if the inexperienced pilot made a mistake, it would be Dean and his platoon who paid the price, while Chappelander sat safe and sound on board the Hannibal.

  “Alright,” Dean said, leaning a little closer to the cocky operator. “But keep one thing in mind. If we run into trouble and need a fast evac, we’ll be counting on you. Thirteen lives, lieutenant, all depending on you. It isn’t a simulation or an unmanned drone; that shuttle is our lifeline. There’s no room for errors.”

  He got up from the table and left the Ward Room. There was nothing worse than a superior officer from another branch of service trying to tell Dean how to do his job. Every debrief he’d been through involved high-ranking administrators questioning his decisions, suggesting that he might have done things differently. He had hated every debrief, and he knew that he had just done the same thing to Lieutenant Chappelander—but he had felt the need to say something to the man piloting the shuttle that would take his platoon into the atmosphere of a massive planet that was inhospitable to humans. And Dean didn’t like placing himself or his platoon in the hands of someone he didn’t trust.

  Dean was back at his workstation in the command area of the concourse when Chappelander came out of the Ward Room. The lieutenant looked chagrined—which made Dean feel a pang of guilt—but when the operator went to his station and loaded a training simulation, Dean’s worries eased slightly. He still couldn’t shake the feeling that bad times lay ahead of him, but he would have to trust his people; there was nothing else he could do.

  Chapter 7

  “It’s so good to finally have some help,” the chief administrator for the mining complex on Faraday said.

  He was an older man, chubby and bald, with a wispy mustache and dark, puffy skin under his eyes. The Hannibal had entered the system and reached orbit more quickly than Dean expected. He’d only been able to snatch a few hours of sleep before he was beckoned to the bridge for a video conference with the mining officials.

  “Tell us what the issue is,” Dean said.

  “We’ve got a labor dispute,” the administrator said. “The technicians are refusing to work. They won’t even take their shifts down on the platform.”

  “And why is that?” Dean asked.

  “Because they say the damn place is haunted. Can you believe that? Grown men, afraid of a few noises and strange lights.”

  “There’s more to it than that, Orvil,” said another man, suddenly coming into view on the screen in front of Dean and Vice Admiral Anders. “I’m Chip Hankins, facility supervisor. There’s something strange happening down on the rig.”

  “What exactly is the trouble?” Anders asked.

  “We don’t know,” the chief administrator said.

  “So there’s no saboteurs?” Dean asked.

  “Yes!” Orvil said.

  “No,” Hankins disagreed, their voices overlapping.

  “Gentlemen,” Anders said, showing no signs of the frustration Dean was feeling, “there’s no need to argue. We’re here to help in whatever way we can.”

  Dean thought it was easy enough for Anders to make that promise when he wouldn’t be putting his life at risk on the mining platform.

  “None of my workers are sabotaging the rig. I’d stake my job on it,” Hankins declared.

  “But there have been incidents,” the chief administrator insisted. “A ruptured gasket that ruined an entire holding tank of ammonia and cost us hundreds of man hours to clean up. Severed safety lines, electrical failures. And just over a week ago an explosion that killed three technicians.”

  “It could have been a mistake, or catastrophic failure of the equipment,” Hankins said. “But my workers all agree there’s something unnatural happening on that rig.”

  “I don’t understand,” Dean said. “Are you telling us that you sincerely believe there are ghosts on the mining platform?”

  “Ghosts? Gremlins? I don’t know what the hell it is, but there’s something on that rig that is downright evil. The workers won’t go back down, and I can’t say I blame them.”

  “There’s no one on the mining platform?” Anders asked.

  “Not a soul,” Hankins said. “We’ve shut operations down until we can figure out what’s causing the problems.”

  “I was assured that you would get to the bottom of this,” the chief administrator said, with a clear note of desperation in his voice. “We’re losing millions every day. We need to get operations underway again as soon as possible.”

  “Do we have your permission to go aboard the mining platform?” Anders asked.

  “Of course,” Orvil said. “Hankins and a few of his technicians will meet you there in case you need help with anything.”

  “Captain Dean Blaze will lead his Recon platoon onto the platform. If there are saboteurs on-site, they’ll find them,” Anders promised. “Give us half an hour to launch the shuttle.”

  “Thank you, Vice Admiral. We appreciate it,” the administrator said.

  Dean was already sending word to his platoon to get ready to leave via his wrist link, which sent the simple message through the ship’s network and notified each member of his platoon.

  “Captain,” Anders said just as Dean turned to go. “Be careful.”

  “Always,” Dean replied.

  He found his platoon waiting in the Ready Room. Most were already in their armor and checking weapons. Dean pulled off his utility fatigues and stepped into the snug-fitting armor. Normally he carried an EMR rifle, but on this op he would carry two pistols. The Martin 3A was designed for close combat. They fired short flechettes or non-lethal tranq-darts. Dean snapped a belt around his waist that had six clips with twenty-five darts in each. One pistol slipped easily into the holster on his right thigh, and the second was snapped onto an electromagnet on his chest plate.

  “Alright, we’re going down to the mining platform,” Dean said, as Chavez double-checked the harnesses on Dean’s armor to ensure everything was secure. “We’ll assess just what the HA can do once we’re on-site. I want everyone armed with non-lethals. Anything that will puncture a gas container or make even a spark that could ignite something in the platform stays here. Is that clear?”

  “Yes sir, Captain,” the platoon called out in unison.

  “Everyone is present and ready to roll, sir,” Chavez said, once he had completed the inspection of Dean’s armor.

  “Alright, let’s get to the shuttle,” Dean ordered.

  They marched from the Ready Room in pairs. Dean thought his platoon looked a little anemic without their usual weapons, but the crew of the Hannibal watched them go with looks of admiration and pride.

  In the small hangar bay, the back hatch on the Raptor combat shuttle was already open. The two long benches inside were custom-made to allow Recon Specialists in full battle armor to sit down and strap in. Dean slipped his Tactical Control Unit onto his head. The HUD came to
life, displaying information on his entire platoon as well as the ship and the shuttle.

  “Good luck, Wolfpack,” Anders said from his command chair, his voice crisp and clear through Dean’s battle helmet, “and Godspeed.”

  “Thank you, commander,” Dean replied. “Lieutenant Chappelander, we’re ready when you are.”

  “Closing the shuttle hatch now,” came the operator’s voice.

  Dean thought the lieutenant sounded nervous, but he did his best to put the man out of his mind. They both had jobs to do, and even though Dean’s entire platoon was in the lieutenant’s hands, there was nothing they could do to help him. Either the lieutenant was competent or he wasn’t. Dean tried not to think of dying on a shuttle crash and instead focused on what he had control over. He brought up the various vid feeds from the exterior cameras of the shuttle. He could see the hangar door starting to open.

  “Hangar bay opening,” said Chappelander’s voice. “Preparing for shuttle launch.”

  From the opening in the front of the Hannibal, Dean could see a massive glowing planet, its surface a swirl of colors. Dean knew he wasn’t actually seeing the surface, if Faraday even had a traditional surface. What he could see was a thick layer of gases, held around the planet by gravity to create a gigantic, colorful world. The Faraday system had a distant star, shining light on the gas giant, but from where Dean watched it seemed as if the planet itself was glowing.

  Over the command channel Dean heard Lieutenant Chappelander counting down the shuttle launch. He looked around the small shuttle, making sure his platoon was ready.

  “Here we go,” Dean said on the platoon-only channel.

  “Hold on to something,” Adkins cried in mock terror.

  “Everything is a joke with this one,” Owando chuckled.

  “I love Force Recon,” Chavez said in a commanding voice. “Bring on the shit. I live for it. First in the fight.”

  “Tip of the spear,” the platoon chanted.

  Dean loved the feeling of unity he had with his platoon. They were a diverse group with different backgrounds and ethnicities, hailing from different nations, but all of them were committed to each other and to the mission. He had seen them pull together to overcome enormous obstacles. He was proud of them, and proud to be one of them. The only question mark in Dean’s mind was their new recruit. Cody Loggins was fresh from his specialist training in Coronado. He had never seen real combat, but Dean felt comfortable enough to trust the newcomer’s training. If Cody had been selected for service and had passed the training, he should be ready for anything they might encounter. But one never knows how they will react to combat. Dean was glad they weren’t going into a full-on fight on Cody’s first mission.

  The transition from the artificial gravity on the Hannibal to zero-G was like topping a peak on a roller coaster. Dean felt his stomach flip upward, as if it were going to shoot up into his head, and then he felt his body lift from the bench seat. He was held in place by a five-point harness, but there was just enough slack in the restraints that he could feel himself floating in place rather than sitting.

  The massive planet grew larger in Dean’s vid feed. It soon filled the entire field of view, and Dean searched for the mining platform. He knew the sprawling facility was quite large, but in comparison to the planet, it was too tiny to see.

  It took more than half an hour to reach the edge of the planet’s atmosphere. Dean could finally see the mining platform, although it still looked very far away.

  “Wolfpack, we are entering the atmosphere,” Lieutenant Chappelander said. “Prepare for some chop, over.”

  “Roger that,” Dean replied. “What’s our ETA, over?”

  “Ten more minutes,” the operator said. “Don’t worry, Captain. I’ll get you there, over.”

  But will it be in one piece? Dean wondered.

  They felt the shift from weightlessness to the pull of the planet’s gravity, like a gentle tug from a child. The blood began to flood into Dean’s head as the shuttle slipped into Faraday’s atmosphere. The planet rotated around the shuttle, and Dean had to look away from the vid feed, trusting the operator to get them onto the mining platform. The shuttle shook and seemed to bounce as it made its way through the frigid air currents that buffeted their ship.

  “Yaaaahoooo!” Adkins called out.

  “I been on sheep who bucked harder than this,” Ghost bragged.

  “We don’t want to know what you’ve done with sheep,” Chavez said, which brought laughter from everyone, including Ghost.

  “Where I come from, you ain’t going anywhere without hitting a few bumps in the road,” he declared. “Long live the Republic of Texas.”

  “He knows that Texas isn’t an independent nation, doesn’t he?” Tallgrass asked Harper.

  “I’m not sure,” the FAS Sergeant replied. “To hear him tell it, Texas is heaven on Earth.”

  “Perhaps, long ago,” Tallgrass said. “It was home to many people and a great abundance of wildlife.”

  “Hey, there’s plenty of wild life left in Texas,” Ghost said. “Just go to a bar on Saturday night.”

  Dean let his platoon carry on. It was healthy for his specialists to act as if they weren’t about to drop into a deadly combat zone. The mining platform wasn’t embroiled in a gun battle, but it was a dangerous place with hostile forces of some kind. Dean didn’t blame them for having a little fun first. He just hoped it wasn’t their last chance; he couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was about to happen. It was a premonition that sat heavy in his stomach. And the fear of that unknown danger danced in the dark corners of his mind, gleefully preparing to make him pay a price he wasn’t ready for.

  Chapter 8

  Dean wasn’t a part of the shipboard communications, but he could hear every word. As the shuttle bounced and shook, Lieutenant Chappelander cursed and kept up a steady report on his progress as he tried desperately to pilot the shuttle safely down to the mining platform. Just as Dean suspected, the alien wind currents along with the need to land on the bottom side of the platform made for a difficult task. It took the operator twice as long as it should have, but Dean refused to comment or even watch their approach on the shuttle’s exterior cameras. Instead, he focused on the mission that lay before him.

  When the shuttle finally landed, he breathed a sigh of relief and ordered his platoon out of the small craft. The atmosphere was thin where the platform was located, and Dean felt the blood rushing to his head even though he could feel his body pulled toward the mining platform below his feet.

  “This is some strange shit,” Adkins said.

  “What happens if you jump?” Wilson asked.

  “Why don’t you try and see?” Loggins teased.

  “Oh, look at this,” Kliner spoke up. “The new kid is ragging on Wilson.”

  “I can give as good as I get,” Loggins declared.

  “You better hope so, Private,” Chavez said. “I think you just put a target on your back.”

  “This kind of reminds me of a carnival ride I went on as a kid,” Ghost said. “I wonder how it affects your aim.”

  “Keep moving,” Dean said, trying not to stare too intently at the swirling fog around the mining platform. “Everyone get inside.”

  They made their way into a large room with tables and stools attached to the floor. Dean felt strange; his feet were heavy and his head felt light. His body was beginning to adjust, the blood settling back into a normal pattern through his body—though he could still feel the gentle tug of actual gravity despite the centrifugal force that kept the huge mining platform in the sky.

  “You the soldiers?” Chip Hankins said, moving toward Dean’s platoon from the other side of the room.

  Dean activated the civilian familiarization mode on his TCU and his battle suit projected an image of his face on the outside of his visor. Dean wanted to set the men at ease, but he knew better than to remove his helmet in a combat zone.

  “I’m Captain Dean Blaze, Off Wo
rld Force Recon.”

  “I recognize you Captain,” Hankins said. “Thanks for coming.”

  Hankins had two men with him. They were older men, both thick-bodied and gruff-looking. Dean had seen such men before—tough men who were accustomed to hard, daily labor. They were exactly the kind of men Dean expected to see on a mining platform, but he wasn’t expecting the fear he saw in the eyes of the two men.

  “We’re here to help,” Dean said. “Tell us everything.”

  “Well, this is the commissary,” Hankins said. “We’ve got dorms through those doors over there, and then walkways in either direction leading to various parts of the rig.”

  “Anyone here now?” Dean asked.

  “Not a soul.”

  “And you’re sure of that?”

  “Sometimes we have someone who pulls a double shift or misses the shuttle back to the station. Normally our crews work five days on, two off, in twelve-hour shifts. We have a day crew and a night crew. They’re all housed here when they’re on. There’s no liquor here, no drugs, no sex—just work. Our technicians eat, sleep, and work while on station. No one would stick around if they weren’t getting paid. And all my people are accounted for.”

  “You're telling me this isn’t a labor dispute,” Dean said. “Don’t waste our time if you’re just stalling or making up a story to put pressure on the company.”

  “I wouldn’t do that, Captain. You don’t know me, but this work is dangerous. We don’t monkey around when it comes to safety. I wouldn’t put your people in harm’s way; you have my word on that.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” Dean asked. “You don’t seriously believe in ghosts.”

  “I don’t know what’s going on. I just know that something is making this place unsafe for my workers, and the company will have to fire me if they think I’ll keep sending people down here to work before it’s proven to be a safe environment.”

  “And they want us to prove it,” Dean said.

  “I’m sorry you drew the short stick, but at least you’re prepared in those uniforms.”