Evan Currie - Heirs of Empire

Jessup nodded, not that bombs would do much to the palace or the Caleb Bar anyway. Still, she puzzled something over in her mind, trying to figure out why that number sounded familiar to her.

“Do we have visuals?” she asked.

“At that speed? No. We’re trying to track and magnify, but with velocities like that at this range, we’re pretty much stuck picking one or the other,” he said. “It’ll get worse the closer they get too. We’ll have to zoom out constantly to keep them in sight, and as it is, we’re just getting vapor trails from the condensate they’re causing.”

“Great,” Jessup growled. “What about the skimmer? Is it damaged? Is the crew calling for help?”

“No to both. The ship’s still on course as if they didn’t notice what happened.”

Damned fools. Probably running some old heap that shouldn’t even be in the air, let alone chasing wind three layers up.

She sighed. “All right, where and when?”

“Impact well outside of the city, looks like … two minutes and counting.”

“Do our civic duty,” she ordered. “Put out a heads-up. Tell the authorities to evacuate the area. No chance they’ll be able to in time, but at least we’re covered.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Now if I could just figure out where I know that number from …”

“Number, ma’am?”

“Eight hundred and forty …” Jessup trailed off, something snapping into place just before she let out a curse.

“Ma’am?”

“That’s the terminal velocity of a Cadre jump team!” she snapped, reaching past him to hammer her hand down on a large button.

Alarms began blaring as the interior of the Caleb ’s bridge darkened to an angry red.

“Track and shoot them down!”

“Weapon stations booting … thirty seconds.”

Jessup watched the track intently as the numbers continued to fall as fast as the signals they were tracking. She was doing the math in her head, figuring how long until the guns came online and whether they’d be able to track and intercept the ballistic targets fast enough.

“Targets still ballistic. Weapon stations online. All stations track and calculate firing solution.”

The systems on the Caleb could do that job in less than a second, but it took the people manning them a hundred times longer to give the order and clear the system to fire. They were tracking the targets for almost two minutes when the first lase blaster opened fire for a ranging shot.

The plasma burn off of the lase beam lit up a streak across the air below them like a flare.

Mira had been expecting a response, even one a little earlier than this, so she wasn’t perturbed. She checked the chronometer on her armor and then glanced at the altitude to make sure that they were still on track.

“We have maybe fifteen seconds before the Caleb Bar plots our ballistic course and blows enough holes in us that we whistle on the way down,” she announced calmly. “Stand by to alter our trajectory.”

She was going to have to slice the maneuver terribly close to the bone; otherwise they’d have to choose between overshooting their target or landing a lot hotter than her people could reasonably survive in fighting trim. A real Cadre deployment wouldn’t be flying in formation and wouldn’t have to worry about how hard they were going to hit the landing zone.

Her team, however, did.

She sent the command to deploy wings just seconds before the traces of red plasma began slicing through the air, and she swore slightly. She could have waited a whole three more seconds and been that much closer to the ground.

Damn.

The armor projectors were unconcerned with Mira’s annoyance and slight case of OCD. They functioned as designed, materializing large wings of linked photons behind each of the falling team members, turning ballistic trajectories into guided parabolas that swept them in toward the capital itself.

From below, the red plasma traces continued to track, but Mira’s crewmembers were still going faster than sound, and now much of it was horizontal motion.

At ranges under twenty miles, there wasn’t a tracker in the empire that could keep up with them.

“Plot their landing zone!” Jessup ordered as more of the crew poured onto the bridge in response to the battle stations order. “I want legions mobilized to intercept as soon as we have a location!”

On the displays around her she could see the projected landing area already, but it was based on probabilities and thus was a circle over five miles in diameter. Every passing second shrunk in considerably but also put the Cadre deployment that much closer to their target with no mobilized resistance.

“How many are we tracking?” she demanded of the signals officer.

“At least thirty, ma’am!”

Jessup paled.

Thirty. Burning skies, where did they find thirty Cadremen for this? I thought they’d all gone to ground.

Thirty blazingly fast-moving, living weapons of mass destruction were about to rain down on the capital and all she could do was watch helplessly as the computer tightened the landing zone probability down to a projected circle.

By the time she knew where they were going to land, they would almost be on the ground.

Mira banked slightly, altering the angle of her approach just to throw off the tracking systems that were no doubt trying to figure out her landing site. Behind her, the rest of the team followed suit as their armor mimicked Mira’s actions precisely through their slave link. They cut through the air in formation, slowing now as air resistance took its cut of their stored energy.

The plasma traces still filled the skies around them, but Mira wasn’t overly concerned. She knew they were only in the air for another thirty seconds, and the shots were still so far behind them that not even a lucky strike was likely to score a hit.

The black silhouette of the Caleb Bar was looming just ahead and below them now, and she adjusted to a steeper dive as some of the guns opened fire well above them. The team followed, sacrificing altitude for speed again as they raced downward.

A hundred yards from the Caleb Bar , they were skimming the city’s skyline with the gigantic ship now above them. She could already imagine what was going on in the minds of those on the ship.

Too bad for them, they’re wrong.

She abruptly shifted the projected wings she was flying on, tightening her arc into a stomach-curling climb that bled speed in exchange for gaining altitude once more, and the deck of the Caleb Bar was suddenly right in front of them.

“They’re going under us!” Jessup snarled. “That puts their landing zone just inside the palace perimeter! Alert the guards!”

“Captain! Course change!”

Jessup spun back around. “Are they turning?”

“No, ma’am! Slowing and climbing!”

“What? That would ram them right into—” Jessup paled and suddenly jerked her head up to look at the display that showed the forward deck, just as the gleaming armor of the deployment suddenly rose up over the rails of the Caleb Bar , all members retracting their wings.

They hit the deck in a slide, guns already out and firing.

Jessup slammed her hand down on the ship’s comm channel. “Armsmen to the top deck! All hands, stand by to repel boarders!”

Mira hit the deck first, holding her lase blaster in her right hand while she used her left to steady herself. She crumpled down to one knee, skidding along as she fired suppressive fire to keep those on deck from mounting any sort of resistance while her team landed and recovered.