“We’re about to be treated to a space battle.”

  There were few things a ground-pounder liked less than sitting in a tin can while fleet-types tried to kill each other. We were like kids strapped into car seats, hoping our drunk parents were going to make it home this time out.

  Each side blazed with fire. Big guns were going off, and I felt the kick from ours. Dominus had launched sixteen fusion warheads toward the enemy.

  Sateekas’ battlecruiser, ever seeking glory, had insisted on leading the charge. Now, he was spinning around in a panic, firing every gun he had, and I wondered if it would be enough.

  On the red planet’s horizon, more ships kept sailing into view. We were already outnumbered, and the odds kept getting worse.

  Missiles, fighters and smart-shells flew in both directions. It would take a few minutes for all this destructive firepower to land on target, so we had some waiting to do.

  It was kind of weird, knowing that my death was possibly out there in space somewhere, hurtling toward me at a hundred thousand kilometers an hour.

  We were glued to our screens, and soon all my officers and most of my noncoms joined us on the pirated feed. I couldn’t blame them. The news of the battle outside the thin hull of Dominus spread like wildfire through the lifters.

  All of a sudden, the Mogwa battlecruiser’s salvo struck the attacking vessels. Two blew up—then five more. Moments later a cloud of enemy fighters flashed close to us, engaging our protective screen of ships and force fields.

  The fighters chewed on Sateekas’ ship more than any of the others, but they couldn’t get through her defenses. Point defense cannons all over Dominus began to blaze away, setting up a hammering sound that rang throughout the hull. You could feel the vibration in your boots.

  “Looks like we’re gonna win!” I shouted.

  War-whoops echoed all down the rows in the lifters. Everyone was watching the action now, whether it was sanctioned to do so or not.

  Then the enemy heavy salvos reached our ships. Fusion shells came pouring in, having taken a while to reach our lines. The big Mogwa battlecruiser took the worst of it, a vicious pounding. Worse, our own cruisers and destroyers were being pelted. A few gushed fire, venting a mix of lavender gas and flame into space.

  Our initial wave of excitement quickly died, and we began to wince and gasp. It was less than a minute later that we saw Sateekas’ battlecruiser veer away. She was retreating, having taken too much punishment. We felt our stomachs lurch and heave as we felt Dominus turn away, too.

  I felt pretty sick. Could this actually be happening? Was Earth’s grand fleet defeated? Were we going to have to retreat after having come so very far across the heavens?

  -22-

  “Legion Varus,” Tribune Winslade’s voice was broadcast to our headsets. His tone was a bit tremulous, as if he was shaken up. Not even I could blame him for that. “We’re switching tactics. It has been decided that Dominus will jump past this conflict and unload her most precious cargo onto the target planet. Good luck to you all.”

  Harris turned to me with huge eyes. “Don’t tell me they’re going to dump us? McGill, tell me this isn’t happening.”

  “Sounds like we’re being hot-dropped into Hell itself,” I admitted.

  “You’ve got to do something, Centurion. Work some of your crazy magic.”

  I blinked at him, wondering what the hell he thought I could do to change the course of a pitched battle. I was a glorified grunt in fancy armor. “What’s happening today is whatever the brass wants to happen, Adjunct. Get a grip.”

  Harris bared his teeth and stared straight ahead. He no longer wanted to peek at my tapper, or anyone else’s. I could tell he’d seen enough of the savage battle raging outside the hull of our transport.

  Not ten seconds after Winslade’s announcement, we felt a sickening, wrenching sensation in our guts. The world went white—and we knew we’d gone into warp. That lasted for about five seconds, and during that short span of time we all got a heavy dose of rads. There had been no time to set up the ship’s shielding properly. Every safety protocol had been ditched.

  Dominus jumped and came out of warp again moments later. Every light on the lifter changed color, going from our red running-lights to brilliant green. The lifter’s ramp dropped open, falling down to the boarding decks with a tremendous clang.

  Graves overrode all our confusion. His voice rang in every helmet in our cohort. “3rd Cohort, your lifter’s ramp is down. Move out of the vehicle! Proceed to the drop-pod cannons on the double! Move, move, move!”

  We were surprised, but we hustled to obey. We scrambled, slapping at our harness release buttons and ripping at oxygen hoses. Many men, including myself, slashed at these obstacles. As a result, I was one of the first men to get to his feet.

  “Let’s go, let’s move!” I shouted, charging for the exit. Fortunately, it wasn’t all that far away. 3rd Unit had been one of the last to board the lifter.

  Hundreds of troops poured out of the ship. We hadn’t been properly released, and every safety protocol in the book was being broken—but that’s how things went sometimes. This wasn’t a drill, this was go-time. For all we knew, Dominus had been hit hard and was going to be vaporized in the next few minutes.

  Pounding over the deck plates in heavy boots, we rushed to the drop-pod cannons. These were also built into Red Deck, an improvement in modern transport design. Taking a glance at my tapper when the mass of men was pressed together into a traffic jam at the cannons, I saw some of the lifters were launching. Half of them had taken flight.

  I knew right off what the plan was. We’d drop half our men in pods and half in lifters. One group might fare better than the other, but without good intel on the target we were hedging our bets.

  Overall, I wasn’t sure how I felt about being slated for drop-pod delivery onto a hot LZ. In the lifter, it only took one lucky hit to wipe out the entire cohort. On the other hand, drop-pods were tiny flying coffins that were much harder to target individually. They were more likely to land, but there was no way all of them were going to land safely. Which was better? I supposed it depended on whether you were one of those who died or not.

  As luck would have it, our group got to the cannons relatively quickly. We didn’t have to worry about much. We just stepped out into open space and dropped into a chute, which slammed a pod around us. The pod was then spun around and aimed at the planet.

  A massive jolt struck the bottom of my boots, and fortunately I was set for it. My knees didn’t buckle or crack. In an instant, I was sent headfirst on a screaming dive toward the target world.

  My modern officer’s helmet allowed me to “see” outside the capsule virtually as my pod dove into the atmosphere. This was a mixed bag, both a blessing and a curse. Although it allowed me to satisfy my curiosity, it also allowed me to glimpse my doom.

  The space battle was still raging. If anything, it was more chaotic than ever. Earth’s fleet was now split, with the two transports delivering legions over the world, having jumped past the defenders.

  The defending ships were now between our warships and our more vulnerable transports. They would have to choose between chasing down our retreating fleet or turning around and destroying the ground forces we were dropping on the target world.

  Was that the true purpose of this mad maneuver? Had the brass decided to feed Varus and Victrix to the enemy? Were we only doing this to provide cover for the retreating ships?

  It was a grim thought. For a few moments, as the enemy slowly reacted to the changing battlefield, I was in suspense.

  The planet itself was a glory to behold. It was a reddish world, perhaps heavy in iron content like Mars back home. The Mogwa city was a soap bubble of light on the eastern flank of the world, stretching over a big chunk of land. Eventually, I knew, if the Mogwa were allowed to build and breed indiscriminately, they’d cover every meter of the world’s natural surface. It would transform into a single conglomeration, a City World of epic proportions.

  But Segin wasn’t quite there yet. Although they’d built a city big enough to contain billions, a true Mogwa City World could hold trillions.

  All around my capsules, hundreds of others rushed toward the atmosphere. Some struck the smoky surface of it, blazing alight immediately. Every capsule became a burning meteor, a shooting star in a vast shower of shooting stars.

  Just before I plunged into the troposphere, I swept my field of view up to see the fleet again—and I felt a jolt of alarm.

  The enemy fleet had decided to follow both options. They’d split their fleet. Two cruisers now stalked our transports, while the rest of them pursued our warships, chasing them from the field of battle.

  Even as I watched, I saw pinpricks of flame blossoming near Dominus and the Victrix transport. For a moment, I was baffled—then I realized what I was seeing. Those explosions had appeared below the transports, between the transports and the planet itself.

  They could only be one thing: lifters. They were shooting down our lifters.

  Right about then, I hit Segin’s envelope of atmosphere and plunged into it. A blazing inferno encompassed my drop-pod, and all communications were cut off. I could no longer see anything outside the capsule.

  Blinded and screaming down toward the planet surface, I experienced the most gut-wrenching part of the drop. This was when anything could happen. My pod could fail in a thousand ways, each of them fatal. The enemy could shoot me down. Anything could happen.

  At times, men in my situation had sunk into lakes of fire and been cooked. They’d smashed down too hard into the ground, every bone crushed to jelly. They might even die from simple causes, like a failed oxygen pump. This was when every splat earned his nickname.

  Gritting my teeth, I found the blindness to be the worst part. Somehow, being locked into a space tighter than an Egyptian sarcophagus was worse than watching the enemy shoot at me. Not knowing your fate was tougher, because there was nothing to occupy an active mind.

  To pass the crucial time period, I watched the clock count down. I should reach ground zero in less than two minutes…

  With thirty seconds to go, the pod inverted itself and the retros fired. I was now flying feet-first instead of head-first. That switch around was a relief, really, as it meant the pod was still operating properly.

  Just before touch-down, however, I felt a shock. My pod was knocked to the left. It was a hard blow, and my helmet thumped into the side of the capsule. This was followed by a screeching sound of metal being torn up.

  Was it anti-air fire? A sharp gust of wind? Or maybe I’d hit some cliff face on the way down and caromed off a wall of stone. I wasn’t sure. I didn’t even really know where I was landing. No one had bothered to tell us.

  Whatever the cause, the rest of my descent was done at an angle. As the pod landed I tried to set myself, to be ready for anything. The pod landed and flopped over on its side. I was left lying in my coffin now, and I was faced with some choices.

  I could study my environment, using cameras and transponders—or I could get the hell out of my pod. Deciding to risk everything to get out and on my feet, I blew the explosive bolts. The pod split in two, with the smoking husk of the top half blowing away from the bottom.

  Rolling out to my left, I levered my morph-rifle up with my right arm. The moment I came out of my pod, I was struck by a spray of projectiles.

  At first, I thought I was under fire—but it wasn’t so. Another pod had smashed down very close to me, spraying up stones and debris.

  Scrambling away from more falling pods, I sought cover. Once I found a small indentation scooped out of the earth, I huddled in a ditch and took a second to look around.

  My surroundings were uninviting. The land was indeed reddish brown. There were some greens, but they were muted and dark. The leaves on the various twisted plants were purple in most cases. A deep color like that of plum trees or eggplant.

  Craning my neck and looking back toward my crash point, I saw a strange thing—a shimmering wall that resembled liquid glass. The wall shot up into the sky, merging with the brown-orange clouds themselves. It rippled as I watched it, and after a second, I understood what I was looking at.

  My drop pod had come down at the very edge of the force dome that protected the great city. I’d slid down that dome, and I was lucky I hadn’t been smashed to a pulp. Only the fact that my capsule had been decelerating hard and had enough smarts to reroute to a new LZ had saved me.

  -23-

  Once I had my bearings and no longer believed I was going to die instantly, I got into the game. “3rd Unit, this is your centurion. Sound off!”

  They began reporting in. Not everyone had made it to the ground safely. Leeson was dead, as was Natasha. I counted the missing and dead carefully. Twenty were gone. Exactly twenty.

  All and all, it wasn’t a bad start. I’d definitely seen worse.

  “All right, let’s try moving into that dome.”

  “Sir?” Harris called. “I already made an attempt to penetrate. No dice.”

  “Not even at walking speed?”

  “Nope. It’s like trying to walk into a glacier. That dome is solid.”

  Internally, I cursed. It made sense that the Mogwa would have built something that didn’t allow invaders or bombs to enter—whether they were moving quickly or not—but I knew of other domes that worked differently.

  “All right. I’m not in communication with Graves yet, so we don’t have operational orders other than to survive and hold whatever ground we’ve landed on. Let’s do a tactical scan and look for something defensible.”

  At the moment, due to the sheer chaos of the pod-drop, I was in charge of my own unit. We hadn’t really had time to draw up sophisticated invasion plans. We’d simply arrived in the middle of a space battle and been dumped on Segin. Apparently, they’d seen fit to put us at the very edge of the city’s dome. That was fine—if we could get in, and if the Mogwa inside believed we were friendly.

  Outside the dome, it was a torn up landscape. Bombs had clearly pockmarked every inch of the territory surrounding the force field that protected the great city. I was mildly surprised that the Mogwa defense batteries hadn’t fired on us in our drop-pods. Maybe all the pillboxes had been destroyed already. Maybe the ones inside the dome didn’t dare to drop their protective cover long enough to take a shot at us—or maybe, under the best circumstances, the defenders here knew we were landing to help them.

  It really didn’t matter much which theory was right. We had to get into that dome to help the defenders before we were annihilated by the enemy ships in orbit.

  “Barton, you find us a bolt-hole to crawl into. A bunker, a tunnel, a sewer—I don’t care. Take your lights and scout the area.”

  “On it, Centurion.” She raced away, whistling and calling for her light platoon. They scrambled over jagged rocks and crusty surfaces that had obviously once been open dirt. Whole regions had been blasted by terrific heat and were glassy in spots like frozen puddles.

  Buzzers flew as well, searching the land from the air. About ninety seconds later, I made a discovery.

  “Harris! I see a good piece of defensive ground about a half a kilometer to the west.”

  He cranked his neck and looked skeptical. “That’s a crater, sir. Should we really shelter in a spot the enemy has already zeroed?”

  I waved a big arm, indicating the whole fried landscape around us. “You see something better? Feel free to make a suggestion!”

  He shook his head, and we took his heavy platoon and Leeson’s support teams to the spot. With Leeson dead, I was commanding the auxiliaries myself. Every bio, weaponeer and tech in the unit looked freaked out. It was never good for troop morale to know your direct commander had died right off the bat. The trick was not to give them too much time to think about it.

  We hustled for the crater, struggling to carry our heavier pieces of gear. As the specialists were trained for that, I had the heavy troops help by stripping the dead and taking their gear with us. You never knew how long it would be before you got resupplied—especially since our fleet seemed to be bugging out in the skies above us.

  Kivi was helpfully sending me texts and streams still. They were snatches of the action, really. Things caught from the skies above and captured by her com gear. I saw ships burning, some winking out as they warped away, and others exploding as they succumbed to too many fusion shells. It was depressing, so I didn’t spend too much time studying it.

  The glassy dome, on the other hand, looked intact. Inside you could tell the landscape was untouched. I could see regions that were unspoiled and purple-green. The ground in there wasn’t as red or as burned. For a moment, I studied the land under the dome, seeing this planet might have been beautiful once. Maybe, out somewhere on the opposite side of this globe, everything was lovely and peaceful.

  Farther in, of course, the great city loomed. Tall buildings stood like mountains. They weren’t as rectangular as human construction. Instead, they were more jagged and angular. Most of the biggest were massive pyramids, like Central back home.

  Like a vast mountain range seen from a distance, I couldn’t see the far side of it. All my eyes could grasp was the side facing me. The tops of the tallest buildings in the center were bluish and indistinct due to the distance.

  “Centurion?” It was Kivi, and she looked worried. I didn’t take this too seriously, because she practically always looked worried.

  “What do you have, Specialist?”

  “Rads. We’ve gotten a lot of them, and we’re getting more every minute. This land is hot, sir.”

  That didn’t overly surprise me, but it was a concern. The human body could suck up a lot of radiation for a while, but eventually those tiny particles popped too many of your cells and you began to die. It was like being hit by thousands of tiny bullets every hour. Eventually, we would begin to bleed and turn to sludge inside.

  “How long have we got?”

  She shrugged. “In a few hours, we’ll start to taste metal. Then, we’ll become fatigued. After a few days out here we’ll have difficulty fighting. That is, if we don’t find shelter from the radiation.”