Field Of Dishonor

Scotty Tremaine settled himself in the copilot's seat of Nike One, Colonel Ramirez's command pi

"Looking good so far, Mr. Tremaine," Horace Harkness a

"Good, Chief. I'll keep an eye on things from up here," Tremaine replied with no expression at all.

"Yes, Sir."

Harkness disappeared, and Tremaine's earbug crackled with Colonel Ramirez's voice.

"How's it looking, Hudson?"

"Hatches sealed... now, Sir," Hudson replied as a red telltale flicked to green on his panel. "Docking tube retracted. Ready to launch, Sir."

"Good. Inform the duty control officer and proceed on his release."

"Aye, aye, Sir," Hudson acknowledged, and switched from intercom to his intership link.

Seven pi

Noses and leading edges of wings and stabilators began to glow as they hit atmosphere. Their passengers had been briefed on the flight conditions they could expect and clung grimly to their equipment as the pi

Howling winds and driving snow awaited them, and their pilots were in airfoil mode, without even counter-grav as they drove into the teeth of the winter storm. Pi

Turbines howled louder than the storm, slicing down to get below the worst of the weather and close on their designated LZs, and Captain Alistair McKeon smiled at his tracking reports. Six of the pi

Senior Chief Petty Officer Harkness poked his head back into the cockpit with a toothy smile.

"Yes, Chief?" Tremaine never looked up from his instruments. PO Hudson was doing a dynamite job, but these weren't the weather conditions for anyone's attention to wander on the flight deck.

"Just thought you'd like to know, Sir. The nav systems must've just packed up completely, 'cause they say we're over thirty degrees off course."

"Scandalous, Chief. Just scandalous. I suppose you may as well shut the recorders down. No point logging an erroneous course, after all. PO Hudson and I'll just have to do the best we can."

Tomas Ramirez patted his equipment with an absent hand, checking his gear out of ingrained habit even as he watched his display. Nike One was further off course with every second—because of the storm, no doubt. The colonel smiled thinly, then looked up as someone appeared beside him.

"Why aren't you strapped in, Marine?" he began, then stopped, and his eyebrows knitted in an ominous frown before he shook his head with a sigh.

"Sar'major Babcock, would you mind telling me just what the hell you think you're doing here?" His tone was more resigned than his words might have suggested, and Iris Babcock snapped to attention.

"Sir! The sergeant-major respectfully reports that she seems to have become confused, Sir! I was under the impression this was one of Prince Adrian's pi

Ramirez shook his head again. "Won't wash, Gu

"Sir, I—"

"Hold it right there." The colonel turned to glare at Francois Ivashko, his own battalion sergeant-major. "I don't suppose you happened to log Sar'major Babcock as an observer supernumerary, did you, Gu

"Uh, no, Sir," Ivashko said. "But—"

"Well, in that case, get her logged now. I'm surprised at you, Gu

"Yes, Sir. Sorry, Sir. I guess I just dropped the ball, Sir," Ivashko said with a sudden, huge grin.

"Don't let it happen again," Ramirez growled, then shook a finger under Babcock's nose. "As for you, Sar'major, get back in your seat. And stay where I can keep an eye on you to make sure you behave dirt-side. Understood?"

"Aye, aye, Sir!"

"Nike Flight, this is Nike Two," Susan Hibson said into her com, her voice clear and composed. "Nike Two has lost track on Nike One and is assuming command until Nike One reestablishes contact. Two clear."

She leaned back in her seat and smiled down at her panel with a trace of regret. Life's a bitch, she told herself, but someone has to mind the store... and the Colonel outranks me.

"Snowfall" was too passive a word for what was happening around the isolated hunting chalet. A sixty kilometer-per-hour wind drove the flakes before it like a solid wall, screaming around the chalet's eaves so violently no one could have said where the ground ended and the white hurricane began, so one might reasonably have expected any sane person to be safely indoors.

One would have been wrong. Five men and women huddled in the lees of walls and exterior stairways, cursing their employer and themselves for ever taking this job while they peered halfheartedly out into the night. Their cold weather gear was excellent, but the wind was hitting gust speeds of up to a hundred KPH; even at max, the heating systems were losing ground to that sort of cutting bite. All of which only went to prove they were out here on a fool's errand. Exterior security might have made sense under most conditions, but only a lunatic would be out in weather like this!

None of them saw the huge, swept-wing shape come slicing in from downwind, turbine scream lost in the gale. PO Hudson threw it into vertical hover at three meters while his landing legs deployed, and it bucked and staggered in the gusting wind. Then it dropped like a rock, and massive shock absorbers soaked up the impact as it touched down on the flat sheet of rock Hudson's belly radar had mapped for him. The pi

"That, PO Hudson, was good. It was better than good—it was outstanding!"

"Thanks, Sir." Hudson gri

"All them grunts are getting ready to jump ship, Sir," he said to Tremaine. "Reckon we better go keep an eye on them?"

"In this weather?" Tremaine hit the button to slide his seat back from the controls. "Chief, it's the Navy's job to look after the helpless. We couldn't possibly trust a bunch of Marines to find their way home without us on a night like this!"