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  “Can we take the missile sites out by kinetic?” an unfamiliar voice from DV Eye of Solomon asked in return.

  “Negative,” Gabriel answered. “There’s a dam nearby, and a miss could cause a breach, which would kill thousands in the city.”

  “We’re going to lose some dropships if we try a landing,” Captain Daniel McDowell’s familiar brogue came over the comms. The commanding officer of the Eye had been listening in on the conversation, Gabriel realized. It made sense, in a way. The man from Kurong continued, “What do ye recommend?”

  “Orbital drop for Wraiths,” Gabriel answered immediately. “Don’t even breach the atmosphere with the fleet. Simply drop the suits well outside the range of the Ashebirs, and let gravity do the rest of the work.”

  “Ballsy,” McDowell stated, evidently pleased with Gabriel’s suggestion. “Is the CO of the Wraith regiment on this channel?”

  “He is,” Esau Morales replied. Gabriel’s longtime friend chuckled softly. “I actually like the idea. We’ll make them waste all their missiles shooting at Wraiths, and then we can land the personnel we need to police the marines safely.”

  “Not worried about the casualties?” McDowell asked.

  “It’d be blind luck if a missile hit a Wraith moving at the speeds we do,” Gabriel answered before pausing. He laughed. “Or your name is Esau.”

  “That was a lucky shot,” the Wraiths’ commander grumbled. “Stupid Abassi anti-meteorite missiles…”

  “Roger that.” McDowell chuckled darkly. “The fleet will make one more orbit around the planet to position for a mass drop. Be advised, Battle Group Four is on the far side of the planet and is attempting to intercept. Our current orbital speed takes us into combat range in roughly four hours.”

  “Which means we’ll be doing an atmo drop in the middle of a space battle,” Esau stated. His voice sounded slightly worried to Gabriel. “Oh, yeah, we sure can pick them, can’t we?”

  “If we did things the easy way, we wouldn’t be who we are,” Gabriel stated as he passed through another cloud embankment. He checked his altimeter before continuing, “I’m about to lose comms briefly. Localized jamming is still in effect. I’ll use the satellite comms and piggyback a message up if something goes tits-up and we need to abort the landing. Eye, is there anything you can do about the comms? I’d rather speak directly than rely on jammed satellites.”

  “Roger that, Darkling. We’ll come up with something soon enough. Eye, out.”

  “Got it. Omelet? Stay safe, amigo,” Esau told him before the comms were cut.

  “I’ll do my best,” Gabriel replied in a soft voice, his eyes on the landing zone.

  The target area he’d been aiming for was roughly eight kilometers due east of the missile launch site, which had been constructed by the marines. Logic suggested they knew someone would be along to try to retake the planet, though Gabriel seriously doubted they could have anticipated the sheer number of Wraiths about to descend upon them. He figured if they’d known what was coming, it would have led to a quick surrender on the marines’ part.

  He relaxed his body as the suit took control of the landing. In the past, he’d had a notorious habit of biting his tongue upon impact. The Darksuit featured enough technological improvements over a typical Wraith suit that Gabriel was, for all intents and purposes, merely a passenger when it came to a high altitude drop. Projections and calculations appeared on his HUD as the Leviathan cortex went to work, using his mind to power the quantum computer connecting him to the Darksuit.

  Too fast, he realized when he passed the hundred-meter mark. There was little he could do at that point, so he swore under his breath and prepared for the inevitable pain to arrive.

  The Darksuit kept him alive. Anticipating the rough landing, it activated the jump engines situated near the small of the back. These thrusters, emptying more than half the energy reserves of the suit in one quick go, screamed at full power as they began to slow his descent. The light provided by his HUD dimmed slightly as more power was drained by the jump engines. The grass-covered plains of the south became more defined as his speed slowed. A quick scan showed him that Marigold City was precisely where it should have been. For a change, he would land in the correct drop zone.

  “Will wonders never cease?” he muttered as his suit warned him he was about to hit the ground. He braced and absorbed the impact with his suit’s legs as he struck the ground. He threw his shoulder forward and rolled, breaking much of his momentum during the maneuver. The suit took the kinetic energy of the impact and transferred it back into the reserves it had previously drained in preparation for his landing. Topped back off at full, the HUD went back to normal.

  “Esau, Gabe,” he said over the secure comms. He wasn’t certain whether his best friend could hear him, but he had to try just in case. “I’m down. Proceeding to Observation Point One now.”

  The next part of Gabriel’s mission was easy. Near the edge of Marigold City, on the northern banks of the Coachee River, stood a satellite relay station. Dozens of large satellites in orbit around the planet fed into various communication substations, which in turn sent the messages onward to the main station at Marigold. In the midst of the collector satellites was a large tower stretching high into the sky. While not the largest or tallest tower in the region, it offered a vantage point that was practically unmatched, as well as the tactile strength to support the Darksuit.

  Plus, it was the last place anyone would think to look for him when the time inevitably came.

  Gabriel activated the Chameleon program, and the Darksuit shimmered for a second before changing to match his environment. It was similar in design to the one featured in the Wraith suit, but the technology was slightly more advanced. Instead of simply blending in and distorting the suit itself, the Chameleon program on a Darksuit actually projected what was on the opposite side, making it appear that the suit was invisible. It wasn’t, but the physics behind it were well beyond Gabriel’s understanding. All that mattered to him was that nobody should be able to see him, either electronically or physically.

  Once the program had fully kicked in, Gabriel began his infiltration of the satellite collection station. The chain-link fence providing basic security for the site was easily defeated by Gabriel’s leap over it. Landing easily on the other side, he avoided the cameras scattered around the location.

  It took him longer than anticipated, but he finally finished scaling the tower. Once there, he was rewarded with a terrific view of the western plains. The dark blue waters of the Coachee River seemed serene to him, lazily cutting across the low-lying plains. A few trees broke up the grass-covered lands, but the majority had been logged and farmed away generations before. It was flat here, and this worried Gabriel a little. He knew from scans that the marines had the massive, intimidating Goliath tanks within the city proper to quell the protestors. The tanks could just as easily turn their deadly barrels on the approaching Wraiths and use their railguns to make short work of the attackers.

  He stole a look at the sky and turned his suit’s filters off. The deep rose-colored clouds he’d dropped through previously were lit up by the mid-morning sun. The grass of the plains was a deep green with yellowed tips, and the parts of the sky not obscured by clouds were the deepest blue he’d ever seen. An almost serene sense of melancholy flooded over him. It was the first time he’d felt this way for as long as he could remember.

  “Home,” he whispered, but that didn’t feel quite right. Belleza Sutil would always be his birthplace, but he knew deep down that home was wherever Sophie was. Not where she’d died, or where they’d first fallen in love. It was a place he would never know again in this lifetime. Gabriel’s mother had once told all her sons during the Yule celebrations that home is where the heart is. He closed his eyes and heaved a deep, weary sigh. “One day, my love…but not today.”

  “Gabriel, this is Squad Bravo Red,” a call came over his comms. The tranquil feeling left him as a more comfortable and fam
iliar sensation washed over him. Hardened by war and strife, the Darkling came to the fore. It was time for war, carnage, and ruin. He instantly slaved his suit to filter out anything but priority messages before he responded.

  “Go ahead, Bravo Red.” Quickly looking up the unit in question, he was surprised to find it being commanded by an older Imperfect, taking point in the drop. This squad, along with four others, would be the initial wave. In earlier times they’d be considered the scout teams, but they were armed more like a mechanized infantry brigade. The main wave of Wraiths would be exactly fifty seconds behind them.

  “I have eyes on Goliaths,” the Wraith replied. Gabriel was impressed with the other man’s calm demeanor over the comms. Typically, if a Wraith had to go head-on with a Goliath, they were much more nervous than this. “I count four-zero tanks encircling the capitol of the city from the south, just inside the city limits, using the buildings as side cover. The area will be a killing zone if we engage in the open.”

  “Adjust drop into the city proper,” Gabriel instructed as he eyed the city’s layout on his HUD. So those are the vehicles I saw earlier, he thought. “I’m marking McCune Park as a rally point. It’s twenty acres of trees and grass, north of the large tower in the center of the city. Watch out for the jungle gym.”

  “Why? Is it dangerous?”

  “No,” Gabriel said as he closed the city schematics, “but the kids love it.”

  “Uh, Roger that. Bravo Red, out.”

  Gabriel sighed and looked back over the current position of the Wraiths as they began to fall from the upper atmosphere in clumps. The majority of them continued their original descent track, though a few squads were following the lead of Bravo Red and angling toward the inner city. Warning sirens howled throughout Marigold City as Ashebir missiles began to lift off their launch vehicles and race upward in a desperate attempt to stop the Wraiths. Explosions began to decorate the cloudless sky as the missiles struggled to hit objects that were the same size they were.

  Designed to kill targets with direct hits, the Ashebirs wasted their energy trying to chase down the tiny Wraiths as they dropped. Missile after missile exploded harmlessly, buffeting the armored suits, but not actually damaging them. He grinned. This is going better than expected. Anti-air technology was the one area in which Gabriel knew the Abassi had humanity beat. The aliens believed in overkill, whereas the Dominion tried to do with minimal force. Gabriel, surprisingly, actually agreed with the aliens in this regard, though he’d stab any man in the junk, without hesitation, if publicly accused.

  Suddenly two Wraiths disappeared from his screen. Missiles had scored direct hits, which was surprising. Gabriel tracked the descent of the suits, then correlated the data to see the projected paths of the two Ashebirs. It took his cortex a second before it found that they’d come from the same launch vehicle, located on the southwestern side of the city. The vehicle was closer to a tank than a typical launch truck, with wheels on the front, while the rear half of the vehicle was driven by heavy armor tracks. The suit identified the half-track as a TMMV-4, more commonly referred to as the Barakiel. The Barakiel was designed for defending against landing shuttles, similar to what the Abassi used. Typically they were worthless against a high altitude drop with miniscule targets, such as Wraiths or Darklings.

  More data poured into his cortex, and the suit determined that this particular vehicle, for some reason, was coming marginally closer to scoring direct hits than any other marine unit in the drop zone. Four more Ashebirs lifted off from the Barakiel, and his suit notified him that three more Wraith suits had disappeared. The cortex determined it had been this half-track that had scored those additional hits as well. It was shooting much more proficiently than anything else out there.

  That simply would not do. It had to go.

  The first time he’d done something like this, he hadn’t fully linked into his Leviathan cortex, and he’d been severely lacking in any actual combat experience. Training only covered so much, and one of those things they hadn’t taught at Wraith Tech was the ability to call in an orbital strike. He’d been made commander of the Third Regiment by pure chance, since his squad had been the only cohesive unit to survive the Ibliss Drop Massacre, and he’d been given too much information in too short a time. It would have taken months for him to parse through the data. But now, with a Darkling suit and far more experience, he knew the proper protocols for calling in a “rod from God.”

  “Eye of Solomon, this is Gabriel,” he commed the commanding ship in the small fleet Commodore Nathan Reukauf had put together back at Solomon. He hoped they’d regained control of the satellites so the Wraiths could communicate with the fleet above. His prayers were quickly answered.

  “This is Eye, go ahead.”

  “Eye, fire mission, over.” Gabriel mapped the grid coordinates of the area of the offending truck on his HUD and relayed the spotting grid to the planet’s orbital satellites, which in turn transmitted the data to Eye of Solomon. After a brief handshake between systems, the Eye was now using the same fire grid his suit was. This was done for two purposes. The first was obvious: the ship needed to know where to shoot.

  The second was for practical purposes. Not all worlds Wraiths or Darklings dropped on had prepared grids for orbital strikes. Instead of drawing up grids, it was determined to be easier and far more efficient to simply let a command suit draw out the grids in the midst of combat and relay them up to the ships in orbit. This way changes could be made on the fly, should something occur where the grid had to be altered. It also prevented multiple grids from being made by more inexperienced Wraiths who didn’t have command experience.

  “Roger that. Send, over.”

  “Eye, grid coordinates Lima one-one-four-eight-six-six-two-zero, Delta two-five-five-eight-zero-zero-one, two kinetics, five kilos only, over.”

  A second passed, then the Eye responded.

  “Gabriel, Eye. Shots, over.”

  “Roger, Eye. Shots, over,” Gabriel called as his suit began to scan the area for impacts. Any second now…

  “Splash, over.”

  “Eye, Gabriel. Spla—holy shit!”

  The offending launch truck and a hundred feet around it was instantly slagged as two tungsten-core kinetic rods reached their impact points. A white-hot flash erupted briefly before it was obscured by the twin dust clouds that raced out from the impact points. Flames raced out in front of the blast as the plumes of dust rose high. Secondary explosions from the active missiles on the rack lit up the area further, sending a near-visible shockwave out to match the one created by the kinetic impacts.

  Gabriel watched the destruction of the half-track with some trepidation. He’d just eliminated a highly-skilled crew and, while he was fighting to liberate his home world from the marines in question, killing them would ultimately weaken the Dominion as a whole. His suit’s HUD zoomed in, and he spotted what appeared to be a burning tire bouncing along the plains, apparently knocked clear by the explosions. He shook his head. He would mourn killing his fellow humans later. Right now there was a war to win.

  “That’s going to fuck up their weekend, Eye,” he told the ship high above in orbit. “Nice shooting.”

  “Thanks, Darkling,” the ship replied. “Eye, out.”

  Damn, Gabriel whistled silently as the dust began to drift away. Other than the tire that had been blown off the vehicle, there was little remaining of the Barakiel Ashebir missile launcher. There were two craters, but nothing else. Perhaps the vehicle got buried?

  “Hey, Esau?” Gabriel called after switching channels once again. He made a mental note to investigate the idea of having a mental command to switch comms via the Leviathan cortex. Calling out everyone was a pain in the ass, especially when dealing with a large number of Wraiths.

  “Yeah, Omelet?”

  “Time until drop?”

  “Airborne now.”

  “You sound a hell of a lot calmer than the first time.”

  “Pretty sure you
were the one who screamed the whole way down,” Esau reminded him. “I’ll be in the dirt in two minutes. Eleven minutes until I secure the objective.”

  “Damn, how high did you drop from?” Gabriel asked as he did the mental math.

  “High enough I wasn’t sure gravity was going to grab me,” Esau admitted, his tone carrying his amusement through the comms. “I ordered everyone to hit their boosts for five seconds, and that fixed that. Well, except for the poor bastard who skipped off the atmo because his jets didn’t kick off in time. I think the Eye’s going to pick him up in a shuttle, and he’s going to redo the drop.”

  “All right, I’ll be in touch,” Gabriel told him and cut the comms. He took a deep breath and looked around the plains from his perch. So far, nobody had seen him. Once more, he was appreciative of the smaller Darksuit. More scans of the southwestern side of the city warned him that every single Wraith down there was about to meet a quick and brutal death.

  Two Goliath tanks, which had taken positions just within the edges of the city, had angled their noses down so only the turrets were exposed. Their massive railguns tracked the incoming Wraiths. Suddenly they began to fire out into the plains, taking down the suits that hadn’t followed the lead of Bravo Red and dropped into the cover of the city. Gabriel checked his tracking and saw roughly half of the Wraiths had ignored the order and landed outside the city limits, where they would be short work for the massive tanks of the Dominion. Scanners began to scream as more Goliaths moved to defend the southern approach. These were backed up by marines armed with what appeared to be anti-tank HEAVY rounds, which were standard equipment on a Wraith suit.

  “Fuck,” he whispered as the unprotected Wraiths began to drop like flies under the withering fire. The weakness of the suits was quickly becoming apparent as the Wraiths, with no cover to use, were targeted by the advanced computer processors the marines employed. The suits were fast, but there wasn’t much out there that was faster or tougher than a railgun round traveling at six kilometers per second. Most suits were hit so hard the occupants never knew they’d been struck. The force of impact was too great for the junonium armor to deflect. He had to make a call. “Wraiths, this is Gabriel. Adjust your positions and move around the city. Do not try to engage Goliaths head-on. Those railguns will kick your ass. Confirm response.”