Orphan's Triumph (Jason Wander) by Robert Buettner Page A

At best, the Scorpions would scatter like quail and sneak back to the Abraham Lincoln, and the operation would crater. At worst, pieces of these kids and of me would be scattered across the snow a hundred light-years from home.
    In my earpiece, over the beeps and chirps of telemetry, the Scorpion pilot’s intercom voice buzzed.
    “In a moment, our flight attendants will begin our beverage service for all of you back there in the main cabin. Correct change is always—”
    I slept.
    TWELVE
    “—CONTACT WITH THE WEICHSEL stratosphere in forty seconds. Some heat will bleed through from the skin into the bay back there, but nothing your armor ventilators can’t handle.” The Scorpion’s pilot was speaking again. The loadmaster’s elbow jostled me as he checked static lines in the dark. I switched to the squad net and heard the Spooks all around me grumbling and puking into their helmet disposal tubes. Evidently the younger Spooks had all been enjoying wakefulness longer than I had. Just as well. My head pounded between my temples, and risen bile seared my throat.
    The pilot said, “Hang on back there. You must be taller than the mouse to board this ride.” Inside my helmet, I rolled my eyes. If they held a comedy contest for Zoomies and drill sergeants, nobody would win.
    We dropped like the mother of all roller coasters, and six G of deceleration stuffed my stomach into my socks. Somebody moaned over the squad net. The Scorpion, and presumably thirty-five others arrayed around it, slowed from speeds measured in thousands of miles per second to a ten-thousand-mile-per-hour crawl. The Scorpion’s gravity cocoon kept us from being pulped like beefsteak tomatoes, but nobody was laughing.
    Then we stopped.
    A moment later, familiar, normal weight returned, then shifted as the Scorpion rotated until we hung in the darkness, inverted, like bats. Blood roared in my ears.
    “Take care out there, guys.” There was no hint of stand-up comic in the pilot’s voice this time. The loadmaster said, “First rank, prepare to down-rappel.”
    Then the clamshells whined open, and above my head, forty feet below, the snowdrifts of Weichsel burst so bright white that my armor’s sensors darkened my visor to blast level. The loadmaster said, “First rank out!”
    I dangled from a synlon rappel line below the Scorpion’s tail, one hand paying out line through the carabiner at my waist, while I muttered about whose bright idea it was for me to be here. I arrived on Weichsel in an explosion of snow and sank past my knees. Then a Spook landed on top of me, and pushed me beltline-deep.
    A half-dozen voices grunted and swore.
    Somebody said, “Holy moly! Isn’t this exciting?” That was Howard.
    Somebody else said, “Goddamit, Howard! Get off me!” That was me.
    I shoved Howard off into a drift, broomed snow off my visor with my gauntlet, and looked around. The infantry ringed us, galloping wide-legged atop the snow on the snowshoe webs that had jackknifed from their boot soles.
    Each platoon net I listened in on rattled with necessary communication, with no word wasted. That indicated good training. There was also heavy breathing. That indicated that running in snowshoes isn’t for the flabby.
    Above us hovered all thirty-six Scorpions, only ours and one other still reeling in rappel lines and closing their pod doors. The air above each scorching-hot fuselage shimmered. Vulnerable as they dangled like monstrous hummingbirds, the Scorpions would remain above us only until the ground commander released them.
    For a hundred-yard radius around us, the top yard of snow had been blown away by the downdraft of air pushed by thirty-six Scorpions, as they had screamed down through a hundred miles of atmosphere like hypersonic bulldozers.
    One thing I noticed was what wasn’t here. No blizzard. The sky was clear—not even a breeze stirred the snow-flakes. I smiled.
    Also, there were no Slugs. No mag-rail rifles fired, no masses of armored