Sigma (War for New Terra, Book 1) Read online

  Private Bradley nodded enthusiastically.

  “Well, today it means something slightly different. If you don’t turn up for deployment on time later, I’ll find you and throw you down to the planet myself. Understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Sorry,” he quickly added.

  “Good.” Ginger gave him two quick pats on the shoulder and then walked away. “Welcome to Fireteam Sigma.”

  Chapter Two

  Ginger took her seat next to Duke inside the drop ship. Ghost was sat directly opposite; she had already pulled her restraints down over her shoulders. Even the newbie, Private Bradley, was ready – in regard to equipment, if not psychologically – his punctuality no doubt improved by Ginger’s earlier threat.

  Fireteams Tau and Upsilon crowded into the remaining seats. Staff Sergeant Baker came marching into the back of the drop ship last of all, one hand instinctively tracing the handrail running overhead.

  Outside, troops continued to run back and forth across the battlecruiser’s hangar. Even this close to deployment, a missile was being loaded onto a gunship’s undercarriage.

  Ginger was encouraged to check her own inventory. Gone was the relaxed look she’d sported only hours earlier – her fatigues were done up over her vest top, padded armour protected her limbs and torso, and a helmet sat snugly over her skull. A combat knife was strapped to one hip and a standard-issue semi-automatic pistol lay securely in its holster against the other. In her hands she clutched her battle rifle as if it were a cane – its stock against the floor, its barrel aimed up at the ceiling, and its safety most certainly on.

  Spare ammo, emergency rations and a first-aid kit – she was pretty sure she had everything. This only made her feel marginally less anxious. The idea of going to war didn’t excite Ginger like it did some marines – it made her want to throw up. But at least it wasn’t the whiskey turning her stomach anymore – a couple of painkiller meds and a mug of artificial coffee from the Invincible’s galley had soon put that problem to rest. There would have been nothing worse than taking a drop ship planetside whilst nursing a hangover… for her or anyone sitting within vomiting distance.

  Beside her, Duke pulled his restraints down over his head. His loadout was similar to her own, except his battle rifle came with a shotgun undercarriage and his satchels were packed with explosives. Private Bradley’s kit mirrored hers even more closely, though Ginger suspected he would set his rifle to fully automatic – the Spray and Pray approach. Ginger preferred semi-auto herself; she liked to pick her targets more carefully, conserve ammo whenever she could. Only Ghost’s arsenal was markedly different from the rest of Fireteam Sigma. Her primary firearm was a sniper rifle. To compensate for its comparatively slow rate of fire, she’d been issued with a fully-automatic submachine gun for a sidearm.

  The ramp at the rear of the drop ship began its mechanical rise. Ginger realised that her own restraints weren’t locked yet. She yanked them down until they clicked into position tight against her chest.

  “Say goodbye to the Invincible, everyone,” Baker shouted over the ramp’s awful grinding noise. “It might be a while before any of us get to see her again.”

  Baker strapped himself into his own seat beside the cockpit, then rapped his knuckles against the wall separating the pilots from the troops. One of them turned their visored helmet towards him and shot him a thumbs up as the other flicked switches across the dashboard and prepped the drop ship’s thrusters for takeoff.

  Ginger craned her neck out as far as she could. The cockpit was a quick couple of steps down from their fuselage, and through its windows she could make out the colossal doors of the hangar ahead. The Earth-built ships of the UEC fleet lacked forcefield technology. Anyone in the hangar not tethered to the floor in a cosmonaut suit when those doors grunted open would be sucked out into the cold vacuum of space.

  An almighty jolt made Ginger snap her head back. She stared straight ahead at Ghost, who laughed – not that Ginger could hear her over all the noise. The hangar doors were opening, but she didn’t want to see what lay on the other side. Even after a month out in space, she couldn’t get used to the view.

  It was too… empty.

  She gritted her teeth and, keeping one hand on her rifle, clutched at her restraints. Her bowels turned to water. God, she was terrified. She could only imagine how the poor rookie felt. Hell, most of humanity’s invading force had never been inside anything more dangerous than a simulator. Fireteam Sigma had only the one drop under their belt, and their ship had crashed. Still, that pretty much made them veterans.

  “Eyes forward,” yelled Baker. “Deep breaths. Do not vomit or piss yourself over anyone you may one day come to rely on.”

  Even though the hangar was undoubtedly drained of oxygen by this point, Ginger could have sworn she felt the rumble of each drop ship as they launched out of the Invincible in turn, one by one down the line towards them…

  “Oh, and hold on tight,” Baker added. “Things might get a little bumpy.”

  Ginger’s helmet slammed into the soft padding built into the side of her restraints as the drop ship launched out of its bay towards the planet below. Many of the marines had their eyes scrunched shut and were screaming, whether they realised it or not. Everything shook. The whole drop ship felt like it was tearing itself apart.

  Then, for just a second, it stopped. With the absence of acceleration, the lack of gravity became apparent too. Ginger felt herself lift up from her seat. Her rifle grew weightless in her hands.

  But she didn’t let herself get complacent. She knew from her last trip what came next.

  The drop ship swivelled its four thrusters on their axis and began a harsh, vertical descent towards New Terra. Everyone found their shoulders rammed up against their restraints once more. One of Private Jackson’s ration satchels, having not been secured down properly, swung up and slapped him across the mouth. His sergeant, Parkins, irritably reprimanded him.

  The drop ship’s constant rattling didn’t improve. It was soon joined by a thunderous jerking sensation that reminded Ginger of going three rounds against Duke in hand-to-hand combat training. Private Bradley looked winded and a little worse for wear, but at least he hadn’t passed out… yet.

  “These ships aren’t built for this,” the private on the other side of Ginger kept muttering to himself. Blood ran from one of his nostrils. “Humans aren’t built for this…”

  A surge of bright light flooded the fuselage through the cockpit windows. They were breaking through the planet’s atmosphere. That was why they deployed the drop ship’s vertical thrusters for entry rather than flying at the planet head-on – so the pilots weren’t blinded when the heat shields started burning up. The sudden introduction of nitrogen and oxygen was probably the reason for all the turbulence, too.

  Ginger closed her eyes and counted upwards in her head, hoping to distract herself from the mutterings of the private beside her. By the time she reached twenty-three, the drop ship’s thrusters had levelled out again and, for better or worse, everyone inside was starting to adjust to New Terra’s natural gravity. Only one of their number had passed out from the g-force and was now being rather abruptly awakened by his fellow squad mates.

  They’d made it. They were flying through an alien world.

  Home.

  Not that any of them could really see it. The only lights in New Terra’s night sky were the sharp glow of fellow drop ships as they burned through the upper atmosphere like shooting stars. Even their thrusters had now been switched from fuel to fanjets. The forests below were an amorphous, shifting mass given the semblance of shape only by the galaxy’s silver starlight.

  A small amber light went on above the entrance of the cockpit. Staff Sergeant Baker unlocked his restraints and rose to his feet, holding the handrail above his head for support as the ship rocked from side to side. Everyone else’s restraints remained as painfully stubborn as ever.

  “Listen up, everyone.” Ginger wondered if anyone at the r
ear of the fuselage could actually hear anything Baker said. “We’re about ninety seconds out from the landing zone. I want everyone off-ship within ten seconds of touching down, understand? We expect no—”

  Baker’s speech was cut short as an emerald flash went off somewhere far in front of their drop ship. He poked his head into the cockpit.

  “What in God’s name was that?”

  Once more Ginger craned her neck. The vast forest below them suddenly seemed a whole lot brighter as whatever had set alight plummeted towards it like a meteor. Its bright, callous flames also revealed the dozens of drop ships flying through the surrounding airspace.

  She caught Duke’s eye, who shrugged. They both turned to look at Ghost. She mouthed something along the lines of, What the hell is going on out there?

  The drop ship closest to them exploded without warning as something crashed through its underside. Geysers of green fire erupted from its cockpit windows and out the back of its ruptured cargo ramp. The entire drop ship was a charred wreck within seconds.

  The pilots up front immediately banked to the right. Ginger winced as shrapnel peppered the side of their hull like hailstones against a tin roof. Suddenly it seemed as if the whole damn sky was full with explosions as bad as the last.

  Baker clawed his way upright.

  “So much for the cover of darkness,” he growled. “How far are we from the LZ?”

  “The LZ?” The co-pilot laughed without much humour. “Fat chance of that, pal. It’s way too hot. You’re going down via blast or you ain’t going down alive at all.”

  Blast? Ginger’s heart threatened to climb up her throat. What the hell does blast mean?

  Baker stepped back into the fuselage with the rest of the marines and punched an emergency override button on the wall of the hull. Everybody’s restraints popped open.

  “Bad news, guys. Looks like Intelligence forgot to check if the bugs weren’t nocturnal. But here’s the good news – we’re going in the old fashioned way.”

  “The old fashioned way?” Ghost furrowed her brow as she limbered up her shoulders. “What’s that?”

  “Parachutes,” said Baker, throwing the lid off a metal crate full of backpacks. “Everyone get strapped up, pronto.”

  Ginger snatched one of the backpacks from the crate and hurriedly pulled its straps over her shoulders. Her fingers trembled so much she almost couldn’t get the buckles to fasten. A parachute jump. A goddamn parachute jump. It was archaic. She tried to remember everything her instructor had told her back in their one and only lesson on the topic. Nobody in the squad had done even so much as a practice jump before. Nobody had thought they’d need to.

  Baker gave the squad a quick once-over and then gave the wall of the cockpit another loud rap with his knuckles. The co-pilot gave him another thumbs-up and the ramp at the rear of the fuselage began to lower. Wind whistled through the opening. The roar of fanjets and disintegrating drop ships outside was deafening.

  “Remember your training and you will be fine,” Baker shouted over the din. “If our great-great-grandfathers could do this, we definitely can. On my signal, Fireteam Upsilon will go first. Then Tau, then Sigma. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” came the unified voice of the squad.

  The drop ship lurched to the left as the pilots evaded yet another projectile launched from the forests and plains below. A nearby explosion showered the ship with burning flak. The light above the ramp switched from amber to green a second later.

  “Upsilon, go!”

  Two members of their fireteam quite literally threw themselves into it; the other pair hesitantly stepped off the ramp and dropped into dark nothingness. Ginger swallowed hard. She didn’t know if she could do this. It wasn’t that she had a fear of heights, exactly… just a fear of leaping out of an aircraft into an alien war zone with nothing more than a fancy rucksack to keep her from splattering across the planet’s surface.

  “Tau, go!”

  Perhaps encouraged by Upsilon’s performance, Fireteam Tau’s drop was even more professional. All four went out within a second of each other. Ginger, Ghost, Duke and Private Bradley approached the lip of the ramp with Baker following close behind.

  Ginger peered over the edge. Her vision swam; her legs turned to jelly; her breaths shot up to a rate almost as fast as her heartbeat.

  “Sigma, you’re up!” Baker’s voice sounded like it came from an inch behind her ear. “Go, go, go!”

  Duke leapt off the ramp without a second thought. Ghost tucked her arms in and violently cursed as she disappeared out of sight. As Ginger prepared to follow them, she felt a panicked bout of tapping on her shoulder.

  It was Private Bradley. His eyes looked like they were about to pop right out of his head.

  “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do!” he screamed.

  “Jesus Christ. Didn’t they teach you this back on the Constellation?”

  “No!”

  “What’s the goddamn holdup, Sergeant Rogers?” spat Baker. Any passing hint of camaraderie he’d displayed towards the squad back aboard the UECS Invincible was long gone. “Your window is closing!”

  Ginger grabbed the rip-cord on Private Bradley’s backpack.

  “You see this? Once you start falling, count to three and then pull. All there is to it.”

  “But I can’t just jump!” he spluttered, aghast. “What if—”

  They didn’t have time for this. She grabbed him by the straps of his parachute pack and shoved him off the ramp. His screams were instantly lost amongst the whirring of the fanjets.

  “Consider yourself brought up to speed,” she muttered to herself before jumping out after him.

  Ginger soon discovered why the co-pilot had referred to a parachute jump as a blast, and it sure wasn’t because of how fun it was. The frigid wind hit her like a Norse battering ram. She didn’t dare open her eyes until her parachute was deployed in case the pressure tore them straight out of her head.

  Bollocks. In her fear she’d completely forgotten to count. It had been three seconds already, hadn’t it?

  She yanked at her rip-cord and immediately felt the straps dig up into her armpits as her descent slowed. Thank goodness the old parachutes weren’t completely moth-eaten – God only knew which war they were originally produced for. She heard a reassuring frump sound as the nylon cone unfurled above her.

  Finally, she opened her eyes.

  She instantly wished she hadn’t.

  The sky was ablaze with the plummeting wreckages of drop ships. Their flaming shells made it look like dusk, not the dead of night. Even the forest canopy far below her feet sparkled with fallen embers.

  Somebody up top had made a big mistake.

  Scores of brown, mushroom-cap shaped parachutes were opening up around her. Ginger squinted through the gloom, but she couldn’t pick out Private Bradley anywhere. Goddammit. She hoped she hadn’t pushed the idiot to his death.

  She frantically looked over her shoulder, trying to figure out which direction would take her towards Rally Point Bravo. No luck. She could have drifted miles off course for all she knew. Right now, the only thing she ought to care about was reaching the ground in one piece.

  The ember-speckled treetops grew closer. She was approaching them far quicker than it had looked from a few hundred metres further up. As hard as Ginger wracked her brains, she couldn’t remember if her drill instructor had ever actually taught her a way to slow a descent down. She guessed everyone reaches the ground eventually…

  Unless they get hanged from a tree, that is.

  Ginger spotted two triangle-shaped steering toggles hanging down from the parachute. She reached up and grabbed them both, then pulled down hard on the one to her right. She started to loop back around to face the empty fields behind her… but she wasn’t anywhere near quick enough. Her boots started kicking leaves before she could even make a full one-eighty.

  She tucked her chin in, crossed her arms over her face and braced for impact.
/>   The branches whipped at her hands and slammed into her gut, knocking the wind out of her. She was dragged backwards and then thrown forwards again. Somewhere above her head, Ginger heard the terrifying sound of nylon being ripped apart.

  There was a short, sharp snap, and she tumbled through the darkness.

  Chapter Three

  Ginger didn’t know how much time she spent knocked unconscious, but when she came back around the trees and bracken were bathed in a stark, silver moonlight. There could only be an hour or two left before dawn.

  Her skull pounded. Blood trickled down into her mouth from a thin cut across one cheek. Her arms and ribs felt bruised.

  But she was alive.

  She opened her eyes and felt the cold clarity of panic wash over her. The autumnal forest floor lay a couple of metres below her swaying feet. The thin branches around her trembled in the night breeze. Above her head she heard a gentle creaking sound like that of an old door caught in a draught.

  Ginger looked up. Her parachute was snagged on a pair of branches – the awful snapping sound she heard before passing out had been one of them breaking in half. She was hanging from its ribbons like a forlorn marionette.

  First things first – she checked her inventory. Knife and sidearm, check. Ration, ammo and first-aid satchels, check. Battle rifle… missing. Bugger. It must have come loose during the crash.

  Never mind that, she told herself. You need to find the rest of your fireteam before they get themselves killed.

  Ginger hurriedly unbuckled the first of two chest-straps keeping the backpack from sliding off her shoulders. The remaining strap dug into her stomach as her weight shifted, punching the wind out of her. She unclipped the buckle before it could snap and dropped to the forest floor.

  Her landing was clumsy; she came down lopsided and crashed onto her side. Luckily there was a thick blanket of ferns to cushion her fall. She rose to a kneeling position, checked that her helmet was still strapped on tight, and then tried to get her bearings.