Angles of Attack (Frontlines #3)(75)
“Let’s get the hell out of this place,” Sergeant Fallon says when I walk up to her and the lieutenant colonel. “Let’s give these people their little moon back.”
“How many of ours are staying?”
“Thirty from the 309th,” Colonel Kemp says. “Eleven from the 330th.”
“We put them under the administrator and Constable Guest,” Sergeant Fallon says. “Camp Frostbite is keeping a garrison in place, too. One reinforced company of SI.”
“They know nobody’s going to relieve them again if things go to shit?”
“They do. Figure they’ll take the devil they know over the devil they don’t.”
“That’s it, then,” I say, and look across the windswept tarmac toward the waiting drop ships.
“That’s it,” Sergeant Fallon confirms. “Now let’s get those civvies strapped in and ready for dustoff. I never was a big fan of garrison duty. Too much idle time.”
We board the drop ships in mostly segregated fashion. The Homeworld Defense troopers claim one of the drop ships, and the crew chiefs load the civilians on the other three. Some of the smaller kids fuss and cry when they are led up the ramp of the forbidding-looking war machines, and it occurs to me that they are young enough never to have been on a spaceship despite being colony-born.
I get on the ship with the civvies just so they have someone else in battle armor on their ship other than the loadmaster if things go wobbly. Atmospheric flight in a drop ship can be alarmingly shaky even when you’re not on an ice moon with a volatile atmosphere, and my presence may give some reassurance.
We leave the ground at precisely 1800 hours Zulu time and begin our ascent. I don’t bother putting on my helmet and asking the flight deck for data-link permission for my usual external-view sightseeing. I’ve seen enough snow and ice down here to last me for a few years at least.
Good luck, Constable, I think. May you live a long and uneventful life with your family down there.
The flight deck on the Regulus is huge and very empty. Our four Wasps are the only drop ships on the deck when we depart New Svalbard orbit. There are three Shrikes parked on the other side of the flight deck, and a whole lot of bare deck in between. A Navigator-class carrier, built for housing a planetary-assault task force, usually has thirty-two drop ships, enough to launch two full battalions of Spaceborne Infantry, but Regulus was in the dock for refits when the Lankies arrived, and her usual complement of Shrikes and Dragonflies was either assigned to other ships or lost in the Mars battle. On the plus side, we have more than enough elbow room for the civilians and the almost three thousand troops of the 309th and 330th Autonomous Infantry Battalions who are already busy erecting makeshift privacy walls and rows of collapsible cots on the flight deck.
As a fleet NCO, I have the right to claim whatever open berthing space they have on this ship, but it wouldn’t feel right to run off and leave the HD troopers I’ve fought with against my own command, so I go and find Sergeant Fallon to stay close to her gang of rogues.
“We’re claiming those drop ships,” she says to me when I get to where the command section of the 330th is milling around and supervising the construction of their section of Tent City.
“Claiming them for what?” I ask.
“Command posts. One ship for the 309th, one for the 330th, one to store all the emergency rations so we can supervise the distribution. They’re taking up space on the deck anyway. Might as well use them for temporary berthing. They’re big enough inside.”
“Might as well,” I concur.
Overhead, the 1MC trills its ascending two-tone signal for the beginning of an all-ship announcement.
“Now hear this: All hands, prepare for departure. Repeat, all hands prepare for departure. Secure all docking collars.”
“Well,” Sergeant Fallon says after the end-of-announcement trill. “It’s all or nothing now. Earth or bust.”
“Earth or bust,” I agree, but without enthusiasm. I’ve seen too many times what it looks like when a warship in space goes bust.
CHAPTER 21
We decelerate for the transition point four days later in deep space way out in the Fomalhaut system, the strangest and most colorful task force I’ve ever been a part of.
We have three carriers: Regulus, Minsk, and Midway. Regulus is as large by displacement as the much older Minsk and Midway put together, but they are still three carriers in close formation, and I’ve never seen that many together in one spot. There are the two cruisers, Avenger and Long Beach. One destroyer—the Chinese Shen Yang—and three frigates. With the three SRA supply ships and our own Portsmouth fast fleet oiler, there are thirteen ships from two different navies and four separate nations in battle-group formation in front of the SRA transition point. Dmitry is undoubtedly back on Minsk with his marine comrades, and I imagine their flight deck is probably even more crowded than ours.
“Commencing resupply operation,” the refueling operator on Portsmouth says as Avenger comes alongside to take on reactor fuel.
I’m in the cargo hold of the Wasp drop ship serving as the command post for the 330th AIB. As a fairly junior NCO, I have no business in the carrier’s CIC, but I don’t want to stay out of the loop and stare at a flight deck ceiling while we are in the middle of combat ops. So I’ve used my data access as a combat controller to patch into the nonsensitive parts of Regulus’s shipboard tactical network. We liberated a holographic projector, and the forward bulkhead of the drop ship is serving as a display screen, showing the feed from the drop-ship computers that are talking to the tactical network. It’s a nonregulation setup, but the Regulus crew either haven’t discovered it yet or simply don’t care. I put the ship-to-ship channel on the overhead speakers, and the screen is showing the feed from multiple external cameras on the Regulus. All around the carrier, ships are coasting into and out of formations. We are refueling all the ships in the task force from the supply ships before accelerating through the Alcubierre node and into the solar system.