The shuttles flashed across the eastern ocean at five times the speed of sound, and the thunder of their crossing hammered the uncaring waves. Their speed dropped steadily, and the outer barrier range of mountains—the upthrust giants that turned the region beyond into a desiccated wasteland—reared before them. They swung out their wings, clawing now for enough speed and lift to make the tiny dots of their possible landing areas, and the faces of their pilots were grim and taut.
The craft were heavily laden, and even with their wings swept forward for maximum lift, their greatest danger now was that they would simply fall out of the sky. They had to retain altitude to cross the soaring ranges, yet maintain a tightly calculated flight path to their hoped-for landing areas, and the final descent would be steep and tricky.
Shuttle Four cleared the final ridge by barely nine meters, and Warrant Officer Bann let out a whoop.
"Yeeha! That's a dry lake if I've ever seen one!"
The glittering white salt bed reflected the intense G-9 sun like a mirror. The pilots' helmet visors darkened automatically, and their eyes swept back and forth over the glowing instrument readouts projected onto their visor heads-up displays.
The dangers of landing on salt lakes were as old as flight. The flat, white expanses made perfect airports but for one thing: perspective. With nothing to give a feeling of depth, a pilot trying to land visually was unable to determine whether he was going to land or just dig a big, nasty hole. The answer, of course, was technology, and the shuttle pilots pulled in their heads like turtles and shut out everything but their instruments. Radar and lidar range finders measured airspeed, velocity over ground, flight-angle, and all the other myriad variables that made the difference between a landing and a fireball and pronounced them correct. Nonetheless, each pilot continued to monitor his systems, hoping that no further demons would rear their ugly heads at the last moment and snatch defeat from victory.
Chief Warrant Dobrescu checked his instruments, studied the computer-calculated glide path on his HUD, and shook his head. They were actually doing it. He'd given up on performing any sort of decent landing when they picked up the Saint carrier; now it seemed that the entire company might actually make it to the ground intact.
Then the hard part would start.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Julian popped the seals on his helmet, took a sniff of the air, and grimaced as the temperature overcame the residual cool from his suit chiller.
"Christ, it's hot!"
The sweat that instantly popped out on his skin disappeared just as quickly. The blinding light from the salt flats was mixed with a light, parching wind, and the temperature was at least forty-nine degrees Standard—over a hundred and twenty degrees in the antiquated Fahrenheit scale still used on a few backward planets.
"Whew, this is gonna be funnn."
He gave a brief, unamused chuckle, and beside him Lance Corporal Russell juggled her grenade launcher into the crook of her arm and popped her own helmet.
"Yah! It's like being in a furnace!"
There was nothing to be seen but the four shuttles, scattered over a kilometer or so of blazing, empty salt, and the distant mountains. Julian's squad, as the only one with armor, had been unloaded first. The ten troopers had spread out with scanners on maximum, but they were barely detecting microorganisms. The salt was as dead as the surface of an airless moon—deader than some, for that matter.
Julian sent a command to his toot and switched to the company command frequency.
"Captain Pahner, my squad doesn't detect any sign of hostile zoologicals, botanicals, or sentients. The area appears clear."
"I see." The captain's tone was as a dry as the wind in Julian's face. "And I suppose that's why you took off your helmet?"
The sergeant rolled his tongue in his cheek and thought for a moment.
"Just trying to use all possible sensory systems, Sir. Sometimes smell works where others don't."
"True," the captain said mildly. "Now put it back on and set up a perimeter. I'll have the rest of Third move out to support. When they're in place come into the center as a reserve."
"Roger, Sir."
"Pahner, out."
"Modder pocker."
Poertena dropped the case of grenades onto the stack, wiped sweat off his face, and looked around. He'd spoken quietly, but Despreaux heard him, and she snorted as she ticked the item off her list. Despite the intense heat, she looked as cool as if she were standing in snow.
"Don't worry," she said. "We're nearly finished unloading. Then the fun begins."
Poertena took on the cross-eyed, inward look characteristic of someone communicating with his toot.
"Modder... we've been at t'is for hours!" He looked toward the horizon, where the sun was still well up. "When do tee sun go down?"
"Long day, Poertena," Despreaux said with another cool smile. "Thirty-six hours. We've got nearly six more until dusk."
"Pock," Poertena whispered. "T'is suck."
"And you know what's really gonna suck?" Lance Corporal Lipinski demanded of the universe in general as he affixed a large square of solar film to the top of his rucksack. All members of the company had been issued squares. The combined area was designed to partially recharge the powerful superconductor capacitors that drove the human technology. While the power gathered would never support the company's bead guns, plasma rifles, and powered armor, it would serve to maintain a charge in their communicators and sensors.
"What?" Corporal Eijken asked.
The Bravo Team grenadier jerked at the belt feed over her shoulder. If the feed wasn't aligned perfectly, the grenades had a tendency to jam, and that was something she really didn't want to happen. They were going to be walking a long way through really bad stuff. That much had already become evident.
The company had unloaded and prepared through the remainder of the day and into the night. As the sun went down, the temperature went with it, and by local midnight it was well below freezing. Even with their chameleon blankets, it had been a long, miserable night, and many of the troopers remembered why they'd signed up for the Regiment in the first place. Pride of position was certainly one reason, but another was so that they wouldn't have to do stuff like huddle under a thin covering in below-freezing temperatures on a surface hard enough for an interplanetary transport landing apron.
They'd been up and at it again before dawn, loading rucksacks and overbags, piling the spare gear on stretchers, and generally preparing to move out. As the sun came up, the cold came off, but now it was building into another scorcher. Which made for a certain amount of bitching, no matter how good the troops.
"What's really gonna suck," Lipinski replied, "is humping all of his gear."
He gestured cautiously with his chin in the direction of the prince, and Eijken shrugged.
"It's not that much spread across the Company. Hell, I've been in companies where the CO makes his clerk carry his gear."
"Yeah," Lipinski agreed quietly, "but they're not good companies, are they?"
Eijken opened her mouth to respond, but stopped as Despreaux left a gaggle of NCOs and headed their way.
"Company," the grenadier said instead, and she and Lipinski trotted towards the sergeant as she made an "assemble here" gesture at her scattered squad. Despreaux waited until everyone had gathered around, then pulled out her water nipple.
"Okay, drink."
The water bladders were integral to the combat harness of the chameleon suit: a flexible plastic bladder that molded into a trooper's back under his rucksack. The bladder held six liters of water, and had a small, efficient chiller driven by a mechanical feedback system. As long as the trooper was moving, the chiller was running. It didn't make icewater, but what it produced was generally at least a few degrees below ambient temperature, and that could be awfully refreshing.