Star Raider

  SF Books by Vaughn Heppner

  DOOM STAR SERIES:

  Star Soldier

  Bio-Weapon

  Battle Pod

  Cyborg Assault

  Planet Wrecker

  Star Fortress

  Task Force 7 (Novella)

  EXTINCTION WARS SERIES:

  Assault Troopers

  Planet Strike

  Star Viking

  LOST STARSHIP SERIES:

  The Lost Starship

  The Lost Command

  The Lost Destroyer

  The Lost Colony

  Visit VaughnHeppner.com for more information

  Star Raider

  by Vaughn Heppner

  Copyright © 2016 by the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.

  “The fixed determination to acquire the warrior soul and having acquired it to either conquer or perish with honor is the secret of victory.”

  -- George S. Patton Jr.

  -1-

  Tanner closed his eyes as the Pilum-class stealth boat dumped gravity waves in a high Avernus orbit.

  His pod shivered, causing Tanner’s teeth to rattle inside his helmet. The fear ignited deep inside him. He knew the stealth boat theoretically exposed itself to every Coalition warship in line-of-sight. The enemy had powerful battleships in orbit that could generate killing lasers. He waited for one of those lasers or a heavy space-to-space missile to pump X-rays through the stealth boat and thereby his body, killing the cells.

  The shaking grew worse, making some of Tanner’s equipment rattle. His pod lay inside a firing tube.

  I’m trapped like a rat in a hole, waiting to die of suffocation.

  “Get ready for ejection,” the strike leader said through a speaker inside Tanner’s helmet.

  He held his breath, tightening his muscles. The team had gone over this in a drop simulator many times, but none of them had ever done this in real time. Would it work? Would the pod jam? Would the pod—

  I am at peace. I am calm. I am—

  A loud clack preceded a slamming jolt. If Tanner’s mouth had been open, the force would have snapped his teeth together hard enough to bite off his tongue. He heard something else and then there was silence. He must be outside the stealth boat.

  The seconds lengthened—

  A click in the interior speaker gave Tanner a second of warning. Afterward, a small explosion blew the pod apart, exposing him to space. Tanner blinked wildly. He hung over the planet Avernus in low orbit.

  Two more clicks in the speaker informed him the team leader demanded identification. Using the tap-code, Tanner told Pugio that he was out of the stealth boat and okay. A twist of his left foot activated the flare on his boot.

  Tanner looked around. Bright, boot flares showed him the rest of the team. Six men in special spacesuits had begun to fall toward Avernus. This would be the longest dive in history—the longest anyone on Remus knew about anyway.

  Up here, Tanner could see the curvature of the hot, jungle world. The stealth boat was invisible to his naked eye and so were the Coalition battleships in orbit. He was alone in the darkness, able to see two of the planet’s continents down below.

  The next few minutes were among the most serene in Tanner’s life. The beauty was literally breathtaking. It was too bad he couldn’t stay like this forever.

  Soon, Tanner could no longer see the curvature of the planet. The starry darkness had begun to turn into a touch of blueness while the world below became fluffy white. Tanner knew that was because almost all of Avernus was under eternal cloud cover. One of the explaining scientists had called it the Venus Effect.

  Three clicks sounded in Tanner’s helmet speaker. He watched his instruments on the inside of his visor. The key to his survival was the G-meter.

  To his right, Tanner saw wild motion. One of the team members had begun to spin faster and faster. If the man spun too fast, the blood would drain from his brain, killing him.

  A huge chute appeared on Tanner’s other side. It was a drogue chute, meant to stabilize the person. A second chute appeared there, as the first had already ripped away. Ah, good, the man had stabilized.

  Tanner looked in the other direction to see how the spinner was doing. No! The man spun so fast he’d become a blur. The odds were good Markus was already dead.

  Tanner used his arms and legs as stabilization guides. He remained in a perfect skydiving pose.

  He left the glorious blue, plunging into whiteness, the clouds. Timelessness seemed to take over until he plunged through the bottom of the cloud cover. The former blue above the clouds was muted light below. Far below him spread out the tops of the giant trees that grew on the planet.

  A flick of the eyes at the visor instruments showed him his height. He needed to deploy the main chute in three, two, one—

  Tanner pulled a handle. A violent yank against his shoulders told him the chute bit the air. He began to float. As he did, Tanner began readying his jetpack. This would be tricky.

  Working by rote, he checked the intake valves, the fuel feed and the gyrostabilizer. Lastly, he snapped out the control-arm pad and tested the joystick. Everything seemed ready.

  Tanner focused on the trees. They spread out below uncomfortably near. He had seconds to do this right. With a flick, he detached the chute straps. Instantly, he fell, dropping like a rock. That was good. He needed to be clear of the silk. With his control hand thumb, he turned on the jetpack so it purred into life.

  The tops of the giant trees zoomed up to greet him.

  Remember, you’re falling.

  Within his helmet, Tanner nodded. He knew that. He was at peace. He twisted the throttle so more fuel squirted into the motor. A second later, thrust pulled at the harness around him. He lifted, twisted a little less power and floated through a tiny area between two huge tree canopies.

  With the jetpack, Tanner guided himself past vast mossy branches and onto the dark jungle floor of Avernus. Once his boots touched dirt, he flicked off the jetpack. He’d made it. He was here, ready for the next phase of the operation.

  ***

  Four space-strike team members hoofed it across the jungle floor. Two had died, the one spinning during the descent and another whose jetpack had failed. He was a mass of protein and shattered bones on the ground.

  Tanner brought up the rear of the column. They all felt the planet’s greater drag. It was slightly larger than Remus, meaning it had slightly more gravity than their muscles were used to.

  “Two more klicks,” Pugio said through the helmet speaker.

  “We should jetpack there,” Gaius panted.

  “Negative,” Pugio said. “We might need the packs later.”

  “You really think there’s going to be a later?” Gaius asked.

  “We’re the best,” Pugio said.

  “If you’ll notice,” Gaius said, “that isn’t a freaking answer. Are we going to make it or not?”

  “What do you think, Tanner?” Pugio said.

  “Yes,” Tanner said in his monotone.

  “Don’t ask him,” Gaius said. “He always says yes.”

  Harsh static came through Tanner’s interior speaker. He stopped, dropping to his knees, scanning the heavy foliage. The others did likewise.

  A click sounded in Tanner’s ears.

  He chinned a helmet control that whirred open his visor. The others did the same thing. The rotted vegetative stench hit like a hot wall. I
t took Tanner several tries before he could breathe the stuff.

  “Coalition space marines,” Gaius whispered. They had all turned off their helmet comms. “I wonder if they got a fix on us.”

  “Tanner,” Pugio said.

  Tanner glanced at the man and his motioning right hand.

  Without a word, Tanner slid a massive, material-destroying rifle from his shoulder. He worked his way to the left past huge damp fronds, soon leaving the others behind. The harsh static meant the enemy space marines might have washed the area with radar. Did the Coalition people know they were here?

  Tanner looked around. There was nothing but fronds and trees—these giant trees that poked into the heavens. He shouldered the rifle and flicked on his jetpack. With a throttle twist, he lifted two hundred meters, landing birdlike on a massive branch. Shutting the pack down, he cradled the rifle again. With great patience, he readied the heavy gun.

  Coalition space marines used power-armored suits, jumping like giant crickets with exoskeleton strength. There, he saw one, a flash of dark metal against the green.

  Tanner inhaled the heavy vegetative stench, relaxing his shoulders. He pulled the rifle’s bolt, putting a huge shell into the firing chamber. Then, he focused the sights. Once more, a leaping, jetpack-assisted space marine appeared against the green.

  Tanner squeezed the trigger. The gun bucked hard against his shoulder. The armor-piercing shell slammed against the enemy helmet, no doubt splattering the man’s brains inside it. The space marine lost his coordination, falling to the ground far below. Tanner fired three times in rapid succession, bringing down more enemy marines.

  He was the strike team’s sniper.

  After Tanner was done, he shouldered the long-barreled rifle, turned on the jetpack and dropped down to the ground carefully with the jetpack.

  By that time, enemy chainguns blasted his former branch area, spraying explosive bullets that blew leaves and bark apart. One of the space marines must have spotted him.

  During the next fifteen minutes, Tanner killed five more space marines. The enemy killed one of the space-strike members in return, Gaius the Negative. The others on the team killed three space marines, the rest of the enemy platoon no doubt sent to sweep them out of existence.

  Maybe there would have been more. Probably, most of the enemy space marines had insertion dropped to help take out the planetary SSM (surface-to-space missile) sites and mass accelerator gun silos.

  “Tanner, you’re crazy,” Pugio said once they’d regrouped. “What do you think? Can we still pull this off?”

  Tanner nodded. He did think that. That’s what space-strike training had taught him to think.

  “Okay then,” Pugio said. “Let’s keep going.”

  ***

  Forty-five minutes later, the team crept out of heavy foliage to a burning storage depot. No one moved over there as flames roared. A sickly sweet smell like roasting pork filled the air.

  The worried team leader glanced at Tanner. The lean youngster nodded his understanding.

  The other strike members’ visors whirred shut. Tanner did the opposite, stripping off his space-strike suit. The stench struck him and the planet’s heat tried to leech his strength.

  He refused to comply.

  Wearing combat fatigues, a senso-mask and a floppy-brimmed hat, Tanner raced toward the burning depot. He carried a pistol in one hand and a monofilament blade in the other. He knew what the smell meant: burning human flesh, likely the furry Avernites that those on Remus often referred to as apemen.

  The flames made it hard to close in. Tanner concentrated and rushed the final distance. The leaping flames roared over shot-up bodies, apemen with only pieces of their heads or badly mangled torsos. It told Tanner the space marines had had a target practice field day here. Using his left foot, Tanner turned over a dead man. The Avernite’s hairy wrists were badly chafed. By the marks, he’d worn handcuffs for a long time. The dead must have all been prisoners.

  Something ominous popped inside the depot.

  Tanner turned and ran before his mind started processing the noise. A subsonic explosion erupted. With trained precision, Tanner dropped into a depression. Heat and blast flashed over him. He endured. After it passed, Tanner was up and running again. A greater cauldron of flames billowed at the former depot, igniting some of the nearer branches.

  Finally, Tanner reached the team.

  “Turn around,” Pugio said, sounding worried.

  Tanner did, exposing a badly burned back. The blast had burned away most of the fire-retardant camouflage material.

  “How are you still managing to stand?” Pugio asked.

  “Pain can be ignored,” Tanner told him.

  Pugio stared at him. “Not forever,” the man said.

  “True,” Tanner said.

  Pugio cursed under his breath and dug in his pack. Soon, he sprayed the burned back with a healing salve.

  “That should feel better.”

  Tanner didn’t answer. He was too busy controlling the pain. He was nearing his limit.

  “Did you see anything back there?” Pugio asked.

  Tanner had to concentrate while the leader asked the question a second time. In short, monosyllable answers, Tanner told them about the shot-up apemen.

  “The enemy is committing war crimes,” Pugio said.

  Tanner nodded in agreement.

  Pugio clicked a map onto his visor. “There’s nothing more we can do here, not if they’re all dead. There’s another camp five klicks away.”

  Tanner began to don his space-strike suit and jetpack. His eyes fluttered and he moaned painfully as fabric touched his burned skin.

  “Be a long walk there,” Pugio said quietly.

  “We fly,” Tanner whispered.

  “Huh?”

  “We’ll use our jetpacks and fly there,” Tanner whispered.

  “If we do that, the space marines will spot us with their radar.”

  “Unless we reach their lifter first,” Tanner said, “we’re never leaving Avernus.”

  “Yeah,” Pugio said, nodding. “I know. This always was a suicide mission.”

  “At least we’ll have tried, eh?” Tanner said.

  “Okay, sure,” Pugio said. “Let’s do this.”

  -2-

  The three space-strike legionnaires flew a meter above the highest canopies, their jetpacks hissing at full throttle. Tanner led the way.

  They flew with radio and click silence. Tanner’s back throbbed, leaking pain into his consciousness. Fear flashed into his thinking as he strove for calm.

  Who shot-up handcuffed prisoners? Who burned the dead like charred burgers? Tanner knew exactly who did that: the same kind of invading bastards blasting space habitats because the people didn’t surrender fast enough.

  Harsh static burst from his helmet speaker. The space marines were using their radar again. Likely, the enemy knew they were coming.

  Tanner waved an arm, hoping the other two saw him. Then, he eased the joystick, flashing under the canopy, weaving past huge mossy branches. He would burn up the last of his precious fuel doing the weaving, but that would be better than presenting an easy target for passing Coalition jets or battleships in orbit.

  On his visor-map, Tanner saw that the next compound was almost in sight. Since the marines must know he was coming…

  Tanner dropped down, dodging giant leaves. His back throbbed, he was almost out of fuel and the mission looked more impossible by the second. It was time to end this, maybe finish his life with a flourish because what the heck…

  Tanner flew centimeters above the ground, which took perfect flying control. He burst out of the tree line, zooming over a carpet of fungus grass. The compound loomed ahead, as did a 150-ton enemy lifter. Several suited space marines stood around the lifter with their chainguns aimed skyward. At the same time, a line of handcuffed apemen filed up a ramp into the lifter.

  Within his helmet, Tanner’s features were frozen in concentration. He wo
uld have liked to draw a gun and fire on the fly, but that was beyond him. He needed every ounce of skill to fly nape-of-ground like this.

  One of the space marines saw him at almost the same moment his jetpack sputtered, running on fumes. Several things happened at once then. The space marine lowered his chain-gun, trying to get a bead on the enemy legionnaire coming at them. Tanner’s hands roved over the harness, shedding the buckles holding the jetpack in place.

  The chain-gun spat explosive bullets. At the same time, the jetpack fell away from Tanner. Just like a sabot round, the lost weight gave Tanner an extra burst of speed. The bullets shredded the jetpack, sending it tumbling backward as it bled metal and plastic hose.

  Tanner flew a short distance with his feet barely touching the ground. He ran as hard as he could, using the final burst of forward momentum from the jetpack to gain some distance.

  Maybe the sight of the man running cheetah-fast gave the space marine pause. Who had ever seen something like that or even heard of it? Besides, the freak didn’t have a gun or armor. He wore camouflage clothes. What was he thinking?

  Several Avernites on the ramp witnessed this sight. One of them was named Greco. Like most of his kind, he was short and bow-legged, hairy, long-armed and thinking about a pleasure he’d missed for a long time already. In Greco’s case that was a good stogie, a smoldering cigar to help his gray cells do some deep thinking.

  For the past weeks, Greco had realized that he was in the wrong place. The flatfoots had wanted elders, the cloud thinkers, as his people called them. Instead, they had nabbed him with their promises of cigars and good brandy. Greco wasn’t a cloud thinker but a tinkerer. He could make the most fantastic toys with a whittling blade.

  Greco had been left feeling useless. He had been bored nearly to death sitting around discussing philosophy and higher-level calculus. He could do that as an old man when the strength had left his muscles. What he really wanted was to wander the world to gain experiences so he could learn how to fashion a koholmany.