The Dragonflies break off their practice runs and take up their designated patrol patterns overhead. Being armed for light air-to-ground action, they aren’t terribly useful for fending off an air assault, especially if the strike package contains Shrikes. But I want our valuable Dragonflies in the air and moving around, not sitting ducks on the landing pads.
“All shuttle flights, stay out of the weeds and watch your EMCON. Snowbird One-Four, expedite your approach and descend to four thousand as soon as practical. You want to get out of that airspace pronto.”
Snowbird One-Four is one of the colonial puddle jumpers, slow and unarmed cargo aircraft. We still have half of our HD troopers in transit or awaiting pickup from their terraforming stations. If only one of the fleet jocks has an itchy trigger finger, we have the setup for a quick and thorough bloodbath.
“I’m stretching us thin everywhere else, but I’m sending most of a company over to you,” Sergeant Fallon sends. “They’ll hit you first—bet on it.”
“I know. I’d do the same. They don’t need to get the drop ships back if they can park a squad or two on the refueling station.”
“So keep your head low. And don’t let them have that airfield, or our little mutiny is over.”
“I’ll do my best, Sarge.”
“If they blow you up, I want you to know that I think you’re a pretty able grunt for a fleet puke. Must be that superior TA influence you got before you had to get all snobby and run off into space.”
I smile at the holographic display in front of me. “Too bad we didn’t get to spend more time catching up and drinking without getting shot at.”
“Stare down the fleet and get rid of that SI regiment for me, and I’ll take you out for all the fucking coffee you can drink, Andrew.”
“Piece of cake,” I laugh. “Be easier if we had some nukes of our own to aim skyward, though.”
On my holotable, the display shows a brief red blip at a bearing of 230 degrees. Somewhere out there, one of the land-based sensor arrays picked up a brief return from a drop ship or Shrike that popped up out of the mountain valleys for just a moment too long.
“Incoming, vector two-three-zero, distance one-five-zero.”
If that raid package includes Shrikes, we’re completely outmatched. With our heaviest antiair ordnance being the shoulder-launched MANPADs from the drop-ship armories, there’s not much we can do if there’s a pair of ground-attack craft out there intent on blowing our infrastructure into rubble. The best defense we have is the fact that we’re embedded among ten thousand civilians.
At the front of the holotable, there’s a console with a set of red hardware buttons. I smack one of them with my palm, and a moment later the harsh trill of air-raid sirens comes from every corner of New Longyearbyen.
“Air raid, air raid. All personnel, seek shelter.”
As new and sophisticated as the civvie air-traffic control system is, it has a major shortcoming. On a military system, I would be able to let the network tie together all the assets and control every last bit of hardware automatically. The grunts on the ground would just have to aim their missile launchers in the general direction of the threat, switch their fire control to TacLink, and the computer would scan for threats and fire whatever missile is within intercept range. The civilian system has no such amenities. All I can do is to direct all my assets manually and hope I make the right calls.
“Rogue Three, Tailpipe One. Reverse course, point yourself to two-three-zero, and take up station at Delta Two. Keep EMCON, but I may need you to play radar picket on short notice.”
“Copy that, Tailpipe One. Wilco.”
Rogue Three swings his ship around and moves up to cover the likely threat axis.
The plot chirps again as two contacts materialize on the plot, right along the bearing where I saw the echo a little while ago. They’re rushing in at low altitude, six hundred knots, which means they’re either drop ships at full throttle, or Shrikes on economy cruising speed. For our sakes, I am hoping for the former. Their transponders are turned off, their contact icons a hostile crimson. Then two more icons detach from each of the incoming craft and streak toward the center of my plot at hypersonic speed.
“Vampire, vampire. Incoming missiles,” I call out on our emergency channel. “Threat axis two-three-zero. All units, defensive. Jammers hot.”
My plot projects the course of the incoming missiles, and the time to impact. The first pair is aimed right at the center of my holographic hemisphere, where the radar and lidar transmitters of the main sensor station pump out energy and radiation.
“Rogue Three, drop down to one hundred and go goalkeeper on your turret. They’re shooting HARMs at the radar.”