Nobody was going to argue with Kowacs’ final order, anyway.
“Everybody get an extra Weasel for me,” Kowacs said, unable to see the useless holograms for his tears. “Headhunter Six out.”
Somebody grabbed his right hand.
Kowacs twisted. Another Marine, anonymous with his faceshield lowered, but Bradley beyond doubt. The field first hadn’t deployed his own static discharger yet. It wouldn’t support two, not heavily-equipped Marines. That’d been tried, and all it meant was that the guy who’d fucked up took his buddy with him.
“Let go!” Kowacs shouted without keying the commo. Bradley’s muscles were seasoned to holding his shotgun ready for use through the shock of combat jumps; Kowacs couldn’t pull his hand free.
Corporal Sienkiewicz grabbed Kowacs’ left hand. As Kowacs looked back in surprise, the non-coms popped their discharge reels simultaneously.
When the long wires were powered up, static repulsion spun them off their reels in cascades of purple sparks. They acted as electrical levers, forming powerful negative charges at the top of the wire and in the air beneath the reel itself. Their mutual repulsion tried to lift the man to whom the reel was attached—for as long as the powerpack could maintain the dynamically-unstable situation.
Static dischargers weren’t perfect. Jumping in a thunderstorm was as surely suicide as it would have been with a conventional parachute, though because of lightning rather than air currents. Still, a Marine—or the artificial intelligence in the Marine’s helmet—could angle the wire and drop at a one-to-one slant, regardless of wind direction, allowing precision as great as that a landing vessel could provide.
It wasn’t safe; but nobody who volunteered for a Marine Reaction Company figured to die in bed.
“This isn’t going to work!” Kowacs shouted over the wind-rush.
“It’ll work better than remembering we didn’t try,” Sienkiewicz shouted back. “Start pickin’ a soft place to land.”
The non-coms were taking a calculated risk which they felt was part of their job; just as Kowacs himself had done when he gave the newbie his discharge reel. Not much he could say about that.
What the hell. Maybe they’d make it after all.
Vertical insertions were scary under the best conditions, and a night drop was that in spades. Though the laser altimeter gave Kowacs a precise read-out, his eyes told him he was suspended over the empty pit of Hell—and his gut believed his eyes.
Dull orange splotches lighted three sections of the blackness, but there was no way to judge the extent of the fires. Burning cities, burning vehicles—or the burning remains of landing vessels like the Bonnie Parker, gutted in the air by Weasel defenses.
Occasional plasma bolts jeweled the night with a sudden intensity that faded to afterimages before the eye was aware of the occurrence. Even more rarely, a secondary explosion bloomed at the point of impact, white or orange or raw, bubbling red. Even the brightest of the blasts reached Kowacs’ ears as a distance-slowed, distance-muted rumble, barely audible over the rush of air.
They seemed to be plunging straight down. “Top, are you guiding?” Kowacs demanded as his altimeter spun from four into three digits and continued to drop.
“Are you nuts?” Sienkiewicz said before Bradley had time to reply. “We got enough problems keeping the wires from tangling as it is. Sir.”
“Oh—roger,” Kowacs said in embarrassment. He should’ve thought of that. When he gave himself up for dead, he seemed to have turned off his mind.
And that was a real good way to get your ass killed.
They were low enough to see a pattern of lights beneath them, half a dozen buildings within a dimly-illuminated perimeter. A vehicle with powerful headlights carved a swath through the darkness as it drove hell-for-leather toward the compound. For good or ill, the three Marines were going to land within the perimeter at about the time the vehicle entered by the gate.
“When we touch down—” Kowacs started to say.
His altimeter read 312 meters one moment—and 27 a micro-second later as a starship glided beneath them, black-out and covered with radar-absorbent resin.
Somebody—Bradley or Sienkiewicz—swore in amazed horror. Then both non-coms twisted, fighting to keep their lines from crossing and shorting out in the roaring airstream.