Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Fiction River: Valor: Fiction River: An Original Anthology Magazine, #14
    Fiction River: Valor: Fiction River: An Original Anthology Magazine, #14
    Fiction River: Valor: Fiction River: An Original Anthology Magazine, #14
    Ebook329 pages4 hours

    Fiction River: Valor: Fiction River: An Original Anthology Magazine, #14

    By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Future wars will be fought with new technologies and even on new planets, but one military constant will remain: the need for human valor.

    Eleven skilled authors explore science fiction’s military dimension as they rocket toward a doomed interplanetary invasion, grapple with cold-hearted aliens on the galaxy’s lonely rim, and outwit space conquerors with nothing but their wits and two strong fists.

    This latest volume of Fiction River celebrates the bravery and courage beating within the human heart.

    “[Fiction River] is one of the best and most exciting publications in the field today. Check out an issue and see why I say that.”
    —Keith West, Adventures Fantastic

    Table of Contents

    “H-Hour” by Steven Mohan, Jr.

    “John Henry” by Steve Perry

    “Charlie Company” by JC Andrijeski

    “Jelly’s Heroes” by Louisa Swann

    “The Happy Man” by Jamie McNabb

    “Ice Dogs” by Kris Austen Radcliffe

    “Embedded” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

    “Neo Nihon” by Paul Genesse

    “In the Shadow of Pittsburgh” by Kara Legend

    “Milk Run” by Lee Allred

    “Beloved of the Electric Valkyrie” by Scott R. Parkin

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWMG Publishing
    Release dateNov 18, 2015
    ISBN9781519946270
    Fiction River: Valor: Fiction River: An Original Anthology Magazine, #14
    Author

    Kristine Kathryn Rusch

    USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award. Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award. She writes goofy romance novels as award-winner Kristine Grayson, romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter, and futuristic sf as Kris DeLake.  She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own. To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon.

    Read more from Kristine Kathryn Rusch

    Related to Fiction River

    Titles in the series (14)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Anthologies For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Edward Wilson

      Dec 3, 2020

      Edward Wilson immigrated to the UK from America after serving in the Vietnam War. After his teaching career ended, he became the author of eight highly acclaimed books, including the Catesby spy thrillers as well as standalones. ‘Portrait of the Spy

      6 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Jul 13, 2023

      James Wright’s letter [FT431:62- 63] rightly points out that the film Poltergeist was allegedly ‘cursed’. However, he gave me a laugh when he mentions actress “JoBeth Williams, who won the part for showing precocious reading ability at her audition”.

      14 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Aug 11, 2022

      Walter Sickert was a painter of extraordinary artistic prescience and skill and took an interest in the Jack the Ripper killings as well as many other aspects of working-class London. The Ripper killings were a very pertinent working-class issue at t

      8 min read

    • Article

      Toxic Masculinity at the End of the World: On David R. Bunch’s ‘Moderan’

      Jan 18, 2019

      1. “Quaint they were, these records, strange and ancient, washed to shore when the Moderan seas finally unthawed.” So begins David R. Bunch’s first book, Moderan, which appeared as a paperback original from Avon in 1971. It was to be his only book re

      11 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Sep 7, 2023

      In his article on Wyndham Lewis’s novel The Childermass [FT430:51], Richard George said he was not sure if Lewis ever met Aleister Crowley. Perhaps a meeting would not have been to Lewis’s advantage. Here is ‘The Great Beast’ from a 1919 edition of T

      3 min read

    • Article

      Martail Arts Worldview

      Nov 26, 2019

      Martail Arts Worldview
      6 min read

    • Article

      Most Anticipated: The Great 2023A Book Preview

      Jan 9, 2023

      Welcome to our biannual Great Book Preview! We’ve assembled the best books of 2023A (that is, the first half of 2023), including new work from Nicole Chung, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Claire Dederer, Brian Dillon, Samantha Irby, Heidi Julavits, Catherine La

      29 min read

    • Article

      Must See, Must Read

      Aug 22, 2023

      Must See, Must Read
      11 min read

    • Article

      Extinguishing the Self: On Robert Stone

      Nov 25, 2020

      Stone's work reads as if it were composed to the tune of clanging blacksmiths and left to cool under the stars somewhere far from land. This is the conundrum of good writing. It can take you anywhere. The post Extinguishing the Self: On Robert Stone

      18 min read

    • Article

      Seven Books the Critics Were Wrong About

      Mar 28, 2023

      Despite their initial mixed reviews, each of these titles is fascinating, complicated, and worth a try.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Tip Of The Spear Life After Vietnam

      Jan 21, 2021

      For many people, the Vietnam War was a loss of innocence for an entire generation. Young American men volunteered or were drafted to fight in a conflict that polarised opinion in the United States and across the world. Over 58,000 American personnel

      12 min read

    • Article

      The Spectacle of Cruelty: The Millions Interviews Phil Klay

      Jun 10, 2022

      "Simply showing the grotesque and cruel and darkly funny things that happen in war is not enough. One must have a moral vision." The post The Spectacle of Cruelty: The Millions Interviews Phil Klay appeared first on The Millions.

      10 min read

    • Article

      International Books

      Feb 10, 2020

      How to make a novel seem... novel? Ben Lerner walks a fine line between erudite and esoteric, but what this coming-of-age story lacks in plot and momentum it makes up for in characterisation, imaginative detail and profundity. (I now want to seek out

      4 min read

    • Article

      We Are All Cold Callers Now: Sam Lipsyte’s Savagely Satirical Fiction

      Jan 7, 2019

      He explores with merciless and lacerating precision the demoralized state of the urban man-boy and alterna-dad. Lipsyte Man—a baffled and wounded specimen. The post We Are All Cold Callers Now: Sam Lipsyte’s Savagely Satirical Fiction appeared first

      12 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Fiction River

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Fiction River - Kristine Kathryn Rusch

      Foreword

      Editing with Valor

      Kristine Kathryn Rusch

      As I went deeper and deeper into my Diving science fiction series, I realized that I was venturing into military science fiction. And I had not planned for it. I had no outline of the military system, no idea how the ranks worked, how the structure was set up—nothing.

      Yet I needed it, and I needed to backfill it.

      So I went—hat, ignorance, and miniscule data in hand—to my friend, Master Sergeant (Retired) Lee Allred. He smiled at me, then outlined things, and gave me books to read.

      He knew what I needed because, in addition to his military career, Lee writes award-winning science fiction and scripts comics for Image, D.C., and Marvel. Plus, he’s been a military science fiction reader as long as I’ve known him.

      After he (kindly and gently) helped me get the details right, I got what writer Steve Perry calls a wild-hair idea. I wanted Lee to edit an issue of Fiction River. I mentioned it to the other series editor, Dean Wesley Smith, and Dean wholeheartedly agreed.

      We had one condition: We wanted a story from Lee in the volume. It’s the only story he didn’t edit. I did. (Just so that you know, whenever an editor has a story in the issue that he edits, one of the series editors edits that story. We’ve done that from the beginning.)

      Lee picked the topic and he picked the writers. He worked with some of the writers at a science fiction craft workshop that I ran just after we came up with the idea for this volume. He made the assignment and had some very strict rules about his military sf. He lectured the entire class in two different sessions—the first as he assigned the anthology, and the second as he discussed the stories.

      I learned a lot from his lectures. And I learned what a military sf reader is looking for, which I hope will inform my military sf going forward.

      Some of the stories in this volume came from that workshop, but not a lot. A good military sf story is hard to find. A good military sf story that focuses on valor, not on cowardice or venality or mercenaries, is much harder to find.

      Lee dug deep, asking some of his favorite writers for stories, finding excellent stories from newer writers, and coaxing great stories from writers who wouldn’t normally write military sf. His own story has both valor and heart.

      I’m so pleased to include Valor in the Fiction River family. This volume does exactly what Dean and I wanted when we put the series together: the volume provides a voice neither Dean nor I would have edited one half as well, if we thought of editing it at all.

      Here’s Valor. Enjoy.

      —Kristine Kathryn Rusch

      Lincoln City, Oregon

      March 22, 2015

      Introduction

      The Path to Valor

      Lee Allred

      As I write this introduction, news comes today that Tataouine, the city in Tunisia used as a filming location for the Mos Eisley cantina scenes in Star Wars, has fallen to ISIS and is now a real-life wretched hive of scum and villainy.

      To some, the physical destruction of our childhood Mos Eisley comes as a surprise, but the true surprise is that Tataouine—or any spot on Earth for that matter—was ever peaceful enough no matter how briefly for something so miraculous as a movie shoot. What we call peace is not the historical norm, nor is civilization.

      Blame it on our lizard-brain medulla oblongatas. Blame it on our fallen state from grace. Blame it on whatever cause—biological, evolutional, or metaphysic—you wish to assign to it, but there is something in the very makeup of human beings that makes war inevitable. Civilization is such a fragile soap bubble, as substantial as dew under the morning sun. Only the most strenuous efforts manage to keep its dissolution at bay.

      It was the great George Orwell, no stranger to either science fiction or war, who wrote that people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

      Sometimes that mere standing ready is not enough; sometimes those rough men and women who guard us in our sleep have to actually commit that violence, have to place themselves bodily between their homes and loved ones and a war’s desolation.

      This military sf volume of Fiction River is a tribute to those men and women and their bravery—sometimes a quiet bravery, sometimes a desperate kind, and sometimes not enough. This volume is a tribute to their valor.

      In putting this volume together, I was very pleased to solicit stories from a wide spectrum of top-notch authors. I was even more pleased with what came back across my desk.

      I think you readers will be pleased, too, whether you’re an old hand at reading military science fiction or whether this is your first foray into the sub-genre. Stories like Steve Mohan’s H-Hour or Scott Parkin’s Beloved of the Electric Valkyrie are as fine a military sf story as being written today. JC Andrijeski’s David Drake-like claustrophobic Charlie Company is one of the particular gems of this volume. Each of the other stories touch upon a variety of themes and military situations and I’m happy to have them all part of Valor.

      During the story solicitation phase, my only guideline to authors was that the concept of military service (not necessarily the particular individual wearing the uniform) be afforded at least a minimum of respect and that the authors keep the title of the anthology, Valor, in mind.

      I didn’t ask authors about their politics or military background or lack of same. (One of the reasons I put on a uniform myself was in defense of the ideal that differing opinions are allowed in the marketplace of ideas.) I just asked for good stories.

      After the fact, however, after I’d selected the stories, I did ask the authors if they’d please list any military background when they sent in their author biographies used to write up the story introductions as such is often of interest to aficionados of military sf. I quite enjoyed reading through these biographies and was pleasantly surprised to learn of authors with fathers who served in the WWII spy organization OSS, the number of military brats who penned such great stories, and of authors who have worked treating vets for physical wounds and those who have counseled those with mental trauma.

      But enough about the inside baseball of putting this volume together. I’m sure you’re all just as anxious as I was to start reading these stories. That’s why you bought it, after all.

      Sit back, then, and relax. Let our authors weave fantastic tales of unearthly blob-to-blob combat, desperate planetary space invasions, unstoppable alien invaders, nervous newbie second lieutenants, god-like artificial intelligences, tea-serving space sailors, buck-naked ground pounders caught behind enemy lines, snoopy reporters spilling the beans on military secrets, defeated peoples practicing the gentle art of misdirection against their conquerors, and bored rear echelon officers suddenly finding themselves on the front lines.

      Each and every one of these fines stories pay tribute to those of whom, in the words of Admiral Chester Nimitz, uncommon valor is a common virtue.

      —Lee Allred (MSgt. Ret.)

      Lincoln City, Oregon

      March 26, 2015

      Introduction to H-Hour

      Author Steven Mohan, Jr. opens our Valor anthology with a story of a desperate frontal assault on an impregnable position. It’s a chilling story, not only of the fire and fury of a battle, but of the human beings who know going in what probable fate awaits them.

      Steve served as a US Navy officer aboard the USS Bristol County (LST-1198) during Operation Desert Storm.

      He writes: I’ve always been interested in amphibious assaults—the fight to get ashore. I wanted to show an immense attack, a spaceborne assault that took place literally on a planetary scale. These kinds of battles are complex and majestic undertakings, but they are also costly. Casualty rates are terrifically—almost unbearably—high. We crawl ashore over the bodies of our fallen comrades. It made me wonder, why would anyone choose to go to war? The answer is as varied and individual as the number of human beings who serve.

      Steve has ten novels out and nearly a hundred short stories, including to such venues as Interzone, Polyphony, On Spec, DAW anthologies, and of course Fiction River. His novel Winter Dragon (written as Henry Martin) spent a year on the Amazon technothriller bestseller list. He is a former Pushcart Prize nominee. Steve lives and works in Pueblo, Colorado.

      H-Hour

      Steven Mohan, Jr.

      It began, as these things always did, with the big guns.

      As soon as H-Hour ticked down to zero a string of nuclear detonations blossomed diamond bright against the red-orange backdrop of Mars, a dozen stars suddenly going nova high in the thin atmosphere. No doubt the Chinese electronics was hardened against EMP, but the flood of Compton scatter electrons would crash large chunks of the civilian network and cut off some of the PLA’s infantry. It was a small advantage, but a spaceborne assault was a fragile thing.

      They would take whatever edge they could.

      And Master Sergeant Shane McCullum, locked down in his launch tube, saw it all.

      The Skytrains were staged half a klick above the main naval line, using station keeping thrusters to hold posit, so he had the best seat in the house.

      For the worst show of his life.

      He saw the blossom of light through his facemask, right under the running clock in his heads-up display, the clock that had been counting down for weeks and weeks, so long it was universally called the red clock. Only when it hit 00:00:00:00.0 it blinked white for a second and then changed to green, and now it was counting up.

      He supposed they would have to start calling it the green clock.

      At H plus twelve, the preparatory phase of the landing would cut out and his Skytrain would launch its stick of paratroopers.

      Twelve minutes. It seemed like a million years.

      It seemed like the blink of an eye.

      Many of the paratroopers didn’t bother to watch the prep phase. It was unnerving watching fire pour down on the planet. It was worse watching the planet pouring fire back up. Especially knowing that was what waited for you once the jump master decided it was time for you to go.

      So some troopers polarized their facemasks, not watching, just mindlessly reciting prayers or dictating last letters home or, if they had nerves of steel, sneaking in a little nap.

      Not McCullum. He was his stick’s senior noncom. He was responsible for getting his people down on the ground alive.

      So he watched the terrible flash of apocalypse as the red clock, er, the green clock, counted up, numbers flickering and dancing on their way up to twelve.

      At H plus thirty seconds, the U.S. Navy opened up.

      It was the second element of the preparatory phase right after the zero point nuclear det. Seventh Fleet had detailed four battleships to the landing to provide naval gunfire support: Washington, North Carolina, West Virginia and Manitoba. The four battlewagons were monstrous—a kilometer from stem to stern—sleek and fast and loaded with weapons: missile tubes, lasers, rail guns. They and their escorts—a cloud of cruisers and destroyers and frigates—were turned broadside to the planet.

      As the green clock hit +00:00:00:30.0 a thousand thousand lines of shimmering green fire lanced out from the Task Force 71.3, laser light sparking off the clouds of dust in low orbit, the pulverized remains of the Chinese orbital defenses.

      A heartbeat later the world’s red face blossomed with hundreds, thousands, of fireballs, bright pinpricks of molten orange light.

      There was absolutely no sound save for the tinny rattle of his own breathing.

      The warships worked quickly through their preselected targets, pounding gun emplacements and runways with millions of terajoules of laser fire and thousands of kinetic slugs.

      The People’s Liberation Army elected not to fire back.

      This stage of the landing was a tough problem for the planet’s defenders. They had nothing that could stand up to a naval barrage from orbit. If their shore batteries opened up, they’d be quickly targeted and taken out. And there was little chance that groundfire would cut through the fire of the screening units to punch through the armor of the four battlewagons or the carriers Saratoga and Midway. So the defenders dug in and kept quiet.

      Their chance would come later.

      This is Tango Actual, said a strong, deep voice in McCullum’s head.

      Tango Actual. The admiral commanding the naval task force.

      NGFS cutout, said the man, in three...two...one.

      And just like that the lines of fire disappeared, as if a switch had been thrown.

      The green clock read: +00:00:06:00.0

      Five and a half minutes of sustained naval gunfire.

      Now they’d see how much good it did.

      There was a second’s pause, no more, and then the ships launched their spider drones, thousands and thousands of them, like a field of dandelions, their parachute seeds suddenly scattered by an obliging wind.

      Now the PLA batteries opened up.

      McCullum had grown up in Indiana and what he was seeing now was like a cloud of fireflies on a hot summer night, flashes of green light in the darkness, fading quickly to black.

      This part of the landing was a game of tit for tat. Every Chinese muzzle flash killed a falling drone—but the Navy gunners turned every muzzle flash into a firing solution.

      Fire sparked intermittently as gun directors found targets. The naval guns moved precisely, the U.S. fleet not wanting to fire through its own falling drones. Now it wasn’t a barrage. It was frenetic dance of light.

      And for the first time since H-Hour, the Chinese had the advantage.

      McCullum watched in horror as a shattering explosion shook Manitoba, tearing a long ugly scar through the ship’s armor plating before arcing up to cut away the number three turret. There was a brief flash of molten orange light as something, ammunition probably, exploded and then hard vacuum smothered the flames leaving nothing behind the ship’s frozen atmosphere sparkling in the distant sunlight, that and dozens of bodies. The lost crewman struggled for a desperate clutch of seconds, kicking and flailing, and then one by one they went still, just drifting.

      McCullum’s mouth tasted as dry as bone and as bitter as ash.

      My God, he thought, the PLA did that to a battleship.

      Manitoba shuddered beneath her armored hide as fire cooked off secondary explosions.

      What would the PLA gunners do to his troopers? Next to the thick armor of a battleship, his people were practically naked.

      McCullum was unsettled, he even would have admitted to being frightened, but he wasn’t terrified until his eyes flicked up to the green clock and he saw how much time he had left before H plus twelve.

      Heedless of his panic, the green clock counted serenely up: 11:47...11:48...11:49...

      ***

      They were swimming in a high mountain lake, the water a deep blue, almost the cobalt of the ocean. The water was icy, but the sun was summer hot. If you did it right—staying in the water just long enough until you didn’t feel the cold then climbing out shivering and flopping yourself down on one of the flat rocks to let the sun bake you dry—it was wonderful. Lodgepole pines ringed the lake, filling the world with their clean smell. From somewhere far away, McCullum heard the shrill cry of a Steller’s Jay.

      The only wrong note was the red clock, high up in the sky, counting down. Right now it said: -00:00:18:22.7.

      Eighteen minutes and change.

      The red clock was the only part of the consensual reality that they couldn’t control. You could relax if you wanted, but high command never wanted you to forget where you were.

      Or what you were doing.

      McCullum closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to look at the red clock.

      Consensual reality was great for keeping the troops loose. There was no need for a giant room filled with holographic projectors, much less genuine leave. Not when you remembered that all experience was filtered through the brain anyway. All you had to do was correctly calibrate the neural implant that threaded its way through the brain and it would trigger the right neural pathways.

      You could be anywhere you wanted.

      What is this place, Campo? he asked.

      PFC Abner Campo was from Colorado, so they’d let him choose this time.

      Sprague Lake, said the kid. Estes Park.

      You done good, trooper, said Sumiko Arikawa her voice slow and distant, like she was half-asleep.

      Thanks, Sergeant. said Campo.

      Man, when this is all over, I’m going to find this place and ain’t never gonna leave, said Lisa Douglas.

      Something about that sentence rang alarm bells in McCullum’s head, so he opened his eyes and propped himself up on one elbow. He peered at the wayward corporal. She was swimming—naked, of course—her skin fish-belly white, her coppery red hair tied back in a pony tail, her freckles dark against her pale face, the water too dark to see anything except her bare shoulders and the flash of a hand or arm as she treaded water.

      Why did we ever leave in the first place? said Douglas dreamily.

      McCullum said nothing, but he was frowning.

      He wasn’t sure he liked this conversation.

      But his troopers were about to drop on a heavily defended world. If they had a good day, the 101st Airborne would take fifteen, twenty percent casualties. If they didn’t have a good day, everyone lounging in this mountain lake could end up dead before H-Hour plus one. No matter what, it was a stone cold certainty that some of them were going to die.

      He glanced up at the sky. -00:00:17:59.8.

      And he didn’t want to tell them how they could or couldn’t spend their last hours. Maybe their last minutes.

      PFC Rhodes, a rangy black kid from Chi-town, snorted. No one axed my opinion, he said.

      I just wanted to go airborne, said Douglas. Gotta love that male to female ratio in jump school. She gave a loud whoop. Go, Screaming Eagles. I just love me a boy who knows how to scream.

      Hoo-rah, said Arikawa.

      So that’s why you’re here, Lisa? said Charlie Li. For the guys? That’s pretty stupid. There are easier ways to get laid.

      Douglas flashed a crooked grin. Honey, I’m just here ‘cause I couldn’t figure a way to not be here.

      Campo was sitting on a rock, dangling his feet in the lake. He wore black swim trunks. His young body was bronze and hard. He frowned at Douglas.

      What is it, Abner? asked McCullum gently.

      The kid shook his head. I don’t mean to cause no trouble, Master Sergeant.

      Go on, kid, said Douglas, take me on. She flashed him a lascivious grin. If you think you can.

      Campo’s dark eyebrows knitted together, he licked his lips.

      Look out, he’s thinking now, said John Callis.

      Callis sat on a rock clad in an olive green tee, camo fatigue pants, and combat boots. He was honing a knife with a stone—which was pretty weird when you considered that none of this was real.

      Campo ignored the comment. I love my country, he said softly.

      Don’t all Mexicans? said Callis. He was a mean SOB.

      My people lived in Colorado a long time, longer than Colorado’s been part of the states, Campo shot back, hot. My people have probably been Americans longer than yours.

      Don’t listen to him, said McCullum. "You know Callis spends all his time polishing his, uh, knife."

      An appreciative chuckle ran through the troopers.

      Callis scowled, but he didn’t say anything. He just went back to sharpening a blade that didn’t exist anywhere except inside his own head.

      It’s just in the States, began Campo earnestly, you can be whatever you want. You can have something. No one can tell you what you have to be. And if you don’t like something you can change it if enough people agree. Not all places are like that. China’s not like that. I think— He thrust his chin out defiantly. I think that’s worth fighting for.

      For a long moment there was nothing but silence.

      I think that’s beautiful, said Charlie Li softly.

      Most fairy tales are, said Callis and everyone laughed.

      Campo flushed, that handsome bronze face turning red.

      McCullum glanced up into the sky. The clock read: -00:00:13:47.2.

      ***

      All paratroopers stand by for launch, said a woman’s voice in McCullum’s helmet. He recognized her as the division XO, Colonel Jacobsen. This is the ten second warning.

      There was a series of small hisses and whirs as the umbilicus that linked him to the Skytrain sealed off and detached. Now his suit was on its own air supply, its own power.

      For a scattered stretch of seconds, McCullum heard nothing but the sound of blood rushing in his ears, felt nothing but the throb of it in his wrists.

      Then Jacobsen said: "Drop, drop, drop."

      Small pyro charges blew the bolts that locked him to the launch tube—pop, pop, pop, he could hear the sound through his suit—and he went rigid, he couldn’t help it, laid out in his tube like a human torpedo. The last bolt exploded and a slug of compressed air punched him into open space.

      He hurtled toward the red planet.

      McCullum didn’t break profile, didn’t turn his head, but he did shift his eyes, looked right, looked left, saw the rest of his stick, the rest of the 101st.

      Beams of incandescent emerald light knifed through silent space, some flashing so close his facemask automatically polarized to preserve his vision. McCullum gritted his teeth. There was nothing he could do. The suit’s guidance system was nimble—but nothing was nimble enough to dodge a blade of light. It was either going to get you, or it wasn’t.

      Despite the laser fire, his troopers were holding profile, bodies straight, arms pressed to their sides, presenting minimum target, ready to knife through the Martian atmosphere like a high diver knifes through turquoise water at the end of his dive. They were holding it together, despite the pressure. He was proud of his kids.

      His eyes flickered right again—

      Just in time to see his el tee get it.

      One second the lieutenant was laid out just like the manual said and then light sparked emerald bright off his helmet, his air flashing to steam and then freezing. And then the kid was tumbling through space, arms and legs flopping around, a maroon frost coating the inside of his facemask.

      McCullum’s stomach clenched and for a moment he felt like he was going to throw up. It wasn’t really because he liked Lieutenant Vernon so much. Oh, the whole platoon liked the el tee, he was likable enough, and not totally stupid. But what really bothered McCullum was that if that laser had been three meters to the left it would have been him who bought it.

      Three meters.

      From a weapon a hundred thousand meters away. What was the chance they wouldn’t get him on the very next shot.

      But he didn’t have time to worry about it. Because he was starting to hear a shrill keen, growing louder and louder.

      Which meant he was in the most dangerous phase of the drop.

      His eyes flickered up to his HUD. The clock read: +00:00:15:06.9.

      ***

      I’ve been hearing that Peacock ain’t shit, said Rhodes, the kid from Chicago.

      No one said anything.

      Their objective was a Chinese anti-aircraft battery southeast of the volcano Pavonis Mons. Pavonis. Peacock. The mission of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions was to take out triple-A, blow maglev tracks, and seize and hold the flanks of the invasion LZ. In other words, they were to clear the way for the two divisions of Marine armor and six divisions of mechanized infantry that were coming in after the paratroopers.

      Pavonis wasn’t exactly a cakewalk. But it sounded a lot

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1