John Ringo - East of the Sun, West of the Moon

“It’s his job ,” Megan snapped.

“Yes, it is,” Herzer said, chuckling blackly and finally looking at Courtney and Joie. “It is my job to determine who is to be put in harm’s way. That’s the commander’s job, being the chooser of the slain.” His jaw worked for a moment and then he shrugged. “That’s why I get paid the big bucks.” He paused and frowned for a moment. “And what happened to the other shuttle?”

“We’ll be able to find out when we get up to the ship,” Megan pointed out.

“Hey, you might want to take a look at this,” Yetta said, getting to her feet, her eyes fixed on the window by her bunk. She’d been looking out the window and studiously ignoring the argument.

“Oh, cool,” Layne said, glancing outside, then darting to the door and throwing it open.

The ship dropping out of the low-hanging clouds should have been impossible. It seemed to stretch for miles but was, in fact, less than three hundred meters long. Three hundred meters of ceramic and steel was still one hell of a sight, as it settled to the ground with hardly a thump. The ship was a long cigar shape, the rear apparently blunt with a rounded nose. There were no wings or vanes or portholes, just smooth ceramic hull that settled onto the pad on three broad skids.

As they watched, massive metal hoses trundled out of the side of the reactor and headed for the ship as portions of the hull slid back and sideways to reveal attachment points. In moments the massive ship was discharging its long awaited cargo into the tanks of the hungry reactor.

“That’s it,” Herzer said. “Now we start getting it on. Megan, I need all team leaders.”

“Coming up,” she said, smiling faintly. “Boss.”

“We only have five shuttles,” Herzer said to the team leaders. “That means Team Graff won’t be shuttling up in the first load. We have three, four, five, seven and twelve. That means we have four to port and only one to starboard. Team Massa is going to be cut off in shuttle five, starboard. All the rest of the shuttles on that side can be assumed to be New Destiny. They will attempt to EVA after disabling the shuttle. Lieutenant Cruz.”

“Go,” Cruz said, his handsome face cold.

“You’re twelve. Go for Maintenance and secure it as best you can; don’t bother disabling your ship. Have Geo secure the injectors as fast as possible and keep them secure. Hide them if you’re hit, destroy them if you think you’re going to lose them. Clear?”

“Clear.”

“Captain Van Buskirk,” Herzer continued. “Your team and mine will rendezvous in section A, port and proceed to link up with Team Van Krief at the personnel lock of shuttle seven. Assure that your ship is disabled before egressing. Ditto Van Krief but secure your doors and await our arrival. New Destiny should have eight and eleven but they bracket the control room; they should head there if they act as we expect. We will attempt to slip past them to Maintenance. If we are unable to screen past them I’ll make the decision whether to EVA or try to force past at the time. Do not engage New Destiny forces if you can avoid it.”

“We’re going to be down to slim chance on fighters,” Cruz said unhappily. “No joke we don’t want to engage.”

“If there is time and opportunity in the movement we will disable ships as we pass,” Herzer continued. “With the exception of eleven and twelve. If we can get more fighters up before New Destiny reacts to our plans, we’ll enable nine and ten. But as soon as we’re assembled, we start hitting the ships and taking them down.”

“You guys have fun,” Mike said, thinly.

“I’ll see you all in Maintenance,” Herzer said, nodding.

“Now we get it on?” Megan asked.

“Now we get it on,” Herzer agreed, walking to his locker and pulling it open. The females had gotten adjusted to disrobing in front of the men and, truth to tell, nobody had much interest in looking or even bitching. The room was silent except for the occasional grunt of effort from pulling on the skin-tight suits or a groan as a catheter was inserted. Even the normally voluble Courtney was subdued.

“We’re going to be really short on fighters,” Megan said, finally, breaking the silence.

“That we are,” Herzer said. “We’re not going to have Team Graff and I was counting on them. But I think we need Nicole and Josten more than we’ll need fighters. If I’ve completely miscalculated, though, we’re not going to win or even stalemate. Losing a shuttle has pushed us really close to Go-To-Hell-Plan and I’m tempted to use it.”

“Pure Blood Lords?” Megan asked. There was a backup team at each reactor for just such a choice.

“But that would mean we probably couldn’t take the shuttles out of operation,” Herzer said. “That would put just me up there who has a clue how to do it, much less put them back once they’re broke. And no computer techs so we couldn’t shut down systems or even monitor what they were doing. All we could do is go for the orcs and hope to win with no way to be sure we had any reinforcements. Not my idea of a good plan.”

“Stick with Plan A, then?” Megan said, smiling faintly.

“Oh, no,” Herzer pointed out, finally getting the suit all the way on and standing up. “Zip me? This is, oh, Plan L at least. Plan A assumed that we’d either be close together or, best of all, all close to Maintenance and Engineering. Stick Graff in the most cut-off shuttle and assume they could hold the doors until the orcs gave up and headed for Control. As it is…” He frowned and shrugged as she finished zipping and sealing him up and turned to be sealed as well. “We’ll still get it done. But it’s going to be ugly. I knew this would be a cluster fisk. Christ this thing’s hot.”

“That it is,” Megan said, chuckling. “But the shuttle’s got environmental plug-ins.”

“I’m dialing mine all the way down ,” Courtney said, picking up her helmet and wiping at sweat that was already forming on her brow.

“We still need to rig our armor,” Herzer said. “There won’t be room in the shuttle.”

That took another fifteen minutes but finally the last strap was buckled and tightened.

“Right, let’s waddle out,” Herzer shouted through his helmet, opening the door. “Evan?”

“Yeah?” the engineer grunted.

“Next time we do this, we need some sort of cooler pack for the ground portion.” The hand-cranked system on the suits would recirculate the air but didn’t run the cooling system.

“We’re only going to do this once, right?” Evan said, puzzled.

“He was joking,” Megan yelled. The field was empty except for the members of the Blood Lord backup team who were scattered around the ladder that led to the belly of the beast. It was a long two-hundred-meter walk from the crew quarters to the ship.

“I’ve seen pictures from the early days of space flight,” Evan panted. “They used to line up to watch the pilots and mission specialists go out to the ship. There was always somebody helping them along and, yeah, come to think of it, they had ground packs. They even had somebody to carry the pack for them.”

“We need that job,” Layne said with a chuckle.

“What, the pilot?” Joie asked, puzzled.

“No, the guy carrying his gear,” Layne replied. “Hell of a lot better than what we’re going to do.”

When they reached the ladder, Herzer waved Evan forward. “You first, Evan.”

“Right.” Evan grunted, putting his foot on the bottom rung. He lifted himself up and swayed backwards from the weight of the environment pack on his back. “This was one training portion we forgot. Next time, right?”

“Just climb, Evan,” Herzer said, chuckling. “Courtney, Layne, Yetta, Megan, me, Joie.”