Hard Drop (3 page)

“My mistakes?” Sorenson answered, momentarily unsettled but already smiling as he prepared to answer. This was a game he knew how to play. “I’m flattered,
Drop Commander
, but honestly I just follow orders.” He smiled even wider as he played his hand. “Just like I know you will.”
 

Tyco’s knuckles went a paler shade of white against the amulet. He stood stiffly, chastened, saying nothing. He had done all he could, offered what resistance he could muster, and now he could do no more but wait for his dismissal. Tyco was beaten, he knew it and accepted it. As it stood, he hadn't had much hope at the outset of getting their orders changed.

“Will that be all,
sir
?” He asked quietly. There was murder in his eyes, but a sudden calm in his voice as the hollow, well-worn resignation of years of service broke through. His mind had moved on already, shifting to the logistics of the ill-conceived jump and deployment ahead of him.

Sorenson smiled again. Victory seemed to have whitened his teeth even further. “Your drop’s in ten. You have your orders.”

Tyco stared at him icily before slowly turning away and striding the length of the bridge, feeling the eyes of pretty-boy stewards and junior officers fixed on him as he swept past.
 

“Oh and Commander – “ Sorenson called, just as he had reached the door. Tyco turned slowly, staring hatefully over his shoulder at the grinning Lieutenant. “Break a fucking leg, sweetheart.”
 

Tyco nodded, forcing himself to smile, and imagined a second bullet slicing through the Lieutenant’s skull. He stepped stiffly out into the hallway, waiting until the door had closed behind him before slamming his helmet against the wall with full-forced, trembling fury. He had had a front-row seat of this same awful combination of bad intelligence work and intractability in the face of high odds for the last decade. It made him furious, but he knew its cause: the Orbital Tactical Legion were legend, but they were also anonymous, its soldiers an interchangeable force of untouchable warriors. Their reputation made them famous, but it also made them expendable. The result was that the Admiralty used them as good-luck charms, a last option when all else had failed and the odds were impossible. He had seen too many troopers die on missions lost before they started.
 

He stood there, quietly, letting the cold air of the hallway surround and overwhelm him, sinking back into a levelheaded calm. He picked himself, forcing his heartbeat down until it was quiet, regular and calm. With a heavy sigh, he turned and headed down into the ship. Every step he took made him calmer, taller, and more focused, until his encounter with the young Lieutenant was gone from his mind.
 

He stopped at the top of a short flight of stairs, staring at the arrow above that pointed him onwards and down towards the cargo area, checking to make sure the red jump light was not yet flashing. It was not; there was still some time left. He took a deep breath and steeled himself for what came next. The jump was all that mattered now.

And then he strode down the stairs and pushed through the doors below, into the open bay, in front of 40 pairs of expectant, wary eyes. He moved with raw, unquestionable confidence, without a trace of anger or frustration left in his bearing. It was time to go to work.

TWO: ZERO HOUR
 

“Ten minutes!” Tyco roared as he entered the tight, echoing confines of the cargo bay. In the launch bay, he was king, untouched and unbothered by the interference of the Admiralty's men. He had learned to appreciate this moment of calm before drop over the years.
 

The cruiser had been converted for drop, and badly. The cargo area that doubled as their preparation room had not been reconfigured to make it more comfortable or effective. Crammed next to the engine room, with the searing heat pouring through the walls, the tight space was almost unbearably warm. Sweat ran freely down any exposed skin.
 

Tyco’s troopers were in various stages of readiness. Most wore at least part of their armored, heat-protected jumpsuits, while some were already fully ready, visors locked in and clouding over with perspiration. Those were the greenhorns. At 18 and 19 years old, they were the youngest of the group. Veterans here were 21, 22 – by 25, if you made it that long, you were a legend, a cold-blooded killer. At thirty, Tyco was both ancient and venerated, though he had not lost a step. He strode through the bay with purposeful, efficient calm, focused energy in every step.

Despite his years with the unit, Tyco knew only about half of the men and women in his unit. The OTL had an extremely high casualty rate: greenhorns were many, and most didn’t last long enough to become veterans. There were just too many variables involved in deployment, too much that could go wrong. Entry alone claimed a significant number of casualties: no amount of training could prepare you for it adequately, even under perfect, non-combat conditions. Legion training consisted of simulators and water tanks, loose approximations of the violent, final reality of drop. The margin of error built into the simulator, slim though it was, was far more generous than it would be in the field.
 

As a result, the unit had a tradition of marking each successful drop on their survival suits: one mark each for the first five, then one more for each five after that. A large X for your twenty-fifth successful drop, if it came to that. Any soldier bearing an X was an unquestioned, respected veteran.

Tyco’s suit boasted two neat Xs, but he had stopped counting long ago. There didn’t seem to be a point to marking the whims of chance. After a point, it just felt like tempting fate. The marks he’d received since then had come unintentionally, the results of several close calls: burns, shrapnel scars, and a handful of divots where a vindictive Enceledan rebel had tried to push a knife through the overlapping armor. He had almost succeeded, too.
 

“Once we break atmo, you have 30 seconds to make your pod before your heat shields burn through.” Tyco had recited it many times, and the veterans, with their single Xs and burn marks, nodded along in time. For the rookies, Tyco knew, these were terrifying words, as they had been for him. There were at least a dozen ways to die even before entering your pod, let alone launching, and there were a thousand ways to go before firing a shot. If you did it right, you had nothing to be afraid of.
If.
“Make slow movements in the draft. You’re strapped down.” He continued, glancing at a sweating, white-faced young kid barely visible through his clouded visor. “You won’t go flying.” Even through the sweat, the kid visibly blanched. Tyco nodded to him briefly, curtly reassuring, and moved past. For the really fresh ones, there was nothing to be said. It was sink or swim, best of luck, see you on the ground.
 

Tyco continued on through the troops, professional and efficient, unhurried but unhesitating, until he found himself face-to-face with the toughest, darkest, most uncompromising eyes ever given to a woman – and smiled. Hog, as she called herself, was one of the oldest soldiers in the unit, almost as old as Tyco. She had well over twenty-five drops under her belt, but Tyco loved her above all for three: the first, early in his command, when she had dead-eyed that same knife-wielding Enceladan rebel inches from his throat from a hundred and seventy yards, and the two since, when he had returned the favor. She had turned her X into a skull-and-crossbones, with a matching tattoo on her shoulder. The mark stood in stark contrast to the old-fashioned, wood-cut rosary that hung around her neck. As far as Tyco knew, she had never seen the need to reconcile the contradiction. He had tried to have her promoted more than once, but the Admiralty didn’t appreciate her attitude any more than his, and anyway, she wanted no part of it.
 

The tense frown on his face told her everything she needed to know about his encounter with Sorenson.

“Save me a seat at the court-martial?” She asked, spitting out the words with a dignified venom. But her eyes shimmered faintly, and Tyco knew she was amused.
 

“Hell.” He said. “You can have mine.” And then raised his voice for the benefit of the greenhorns around. “Locked and Loaded, Hog?” He asked.
 

“Sure as shit, Cap.” She replied, easily, and he nodded, their habitual pre-drop two-step completed.

“When she’s all the way open,” Tyco continued his speech. “You’ll see some flames on your armor.” His eyes rested on Poke, a young trooper with three drops under his belt. He was trying hard to look like he belonged, but his eyes were wide open, and the vein on his neck stood out sharply. “Do not be worried.” He said, taking on a kindly, chiding tone. “Your armor will protect you at up to five thousand degree temperatures for half a minute. For those thirty seconds, you are god.” And he smiled at Poke. “What’s the matter, kid, you scared?” He teased.

Poke stuck out his chin as far as he could, set his jaw, furious, eyes flashing. “No sir!” he responded emphatically, loud enough for Hog to glance over at him, amused.
 

Tyco put his arm on Poke’s shoulder paternally. There were those who argued it was best not to get attached to the recruits too early, not before at least ten drops, but then again, Tyco thought, they might last longer if you did. He had waited three drops to do even this much, and it was a calculated gamble. He had lost too many veterans in the past three missions, and he needed experienced troops to take their place. Taking out thirty greenhorns a mission did nothing for the odds of success.

“Stay out of my slipstream, count to thirty, and pull the chute.” He said, quietly. “The computer will do the rest.” He smiled again, coaxing the boy into a focused calm. “Got it?”
 

The kid nodded emphatically in response, then flashed a half-hearted thumbs-up.
 

“Good enough.” Tyco moved on, turning to stare at a big, burly brute of a man currently engaged in strapping a machete against his side. This was Ringo. A veteran of a half-dozen ground conflicts, he had joined the Orbital late in his career. As he had explained it, the thrill of basic combat had worn off, and it was time for something new. No one knew how many drops Ringo had gone on – he didn’t even know, because he didn’t count them. But his kills, those were marked clearly, in small, checkered death’s heads carved into the body armor of his suit with the sharp point of his jungle knife.
 

“That’s still not regulation.” Tyco said, nodding at the machete strap. Ringo stared back, baring his teeth.
 

“So?”
 

“Kinda looks like a purse.” Tyco grinned. Had he been anyone else, Ringo would have buried the blade in his neck, but he just grunted instead, and smiled back easily.
 

“Real funny.” He said. “See you planet-side.”
 

“Yes you will.” Tyco responded, turning back to the others: “This is a basic search and neutralize, so let’s do this like the drills. Hit the ground running, find the rendezvous, and form up. Coordinates will appear on your weapon monitors.”

“What are we neutralizing, Cap - ?” Ringo called out.
 

Tyco didn’t answer, but he smiled as he continued through the troops. “Final objective is
classified
until rendezvous. That means need to know, which means don’t ask me. Speed saves, so get to that rendezvous as fast as you can. We’ll be out before they knew what hit them.” Tyco stressed each element:
Coordinates. Rendezvous. Need-to-know
. They were standard terms, but they needed repeating every damn time. Someone always forgot, fucked it up, and mistakes meant death. That’s why the final objective was classified until they had reached the staging area, even for Tyco: if they were captured early, the ultimate mission remained unknown, safely beyond their knowledge. It made sense, but it didn't exactly inspire confidence at the outset. “Maintain
radio silence
until you reach rendezvous or I give the ok. Is that clear?”

“Yes sir!” They responded, as one, and he nodded, hearing them fall in together. They would have to be, to get through what was coming.

Ghost stared quietly at Tyco, smiling as he went through his preparations. He met Tyco’s eyes, tapped his chest, and nodded; it was his version of a salute, an acknowledgment that he was here, and ready to go. Ghost was a veteran, focused and intense; he rarely spoke, rarely needed to, but always did what he had to. Tyco needed nothing more. Tyco nodded in response and swung on.

“Let’s be fast, let’s be clinical, and let’s be clean.” He shouted, raising his voice as he reached the end. “Remember, Soldiers.” He called, turning on his heel to face the waiting troopers. “We don’t make mistakes. We fix them.”
 

That got a few loud grunts of acknowledgment from the veterans. The rookies nodded nervously, a bit more emphatically than was natural, but that was alright too. Anything that loosened them up would do.
 

Tyco turned to finish his rounds and found Chip staring back him with the cold, malicious eyes of a confirmed sociopath as he reached for a cigarette from his pocket. The resident sniper, Chip had lasted longer than everyone but Hog and Tyco, and was friends with no one. From what Tyco could figure out, he’d just never seen the point of making friends.

“Wait ‘til we’re out of pressure to light that.” Tyco said, and then regretted it immediately. Chip’s fragile psyche was the difference between a quiet entry and an all-out firefight; it meant that critical quarter-inch of aim between forehead and thin air, and it wasn’t worth chancing it on a casual, off-hand comment.
 

“I look like a greenhorn to you?” Chip growled back.
 

“Nope.” Tyco said evenly, staring straight back at Chip’s blank expression. “Just hoping you don’t run out this time.”
 

Chip smiled, and Tyco sighed inwardly. All clear, then. “No shit.” Was all Chip said, but it was alright. He would be ready.