Free The Siege of Earth (The Ember War Saga Book 7) by Richard Fox Page B

the other pods? Gold is supposed to meet us here. You hear from Mathias or Bronx from landing zone bravo?”
    “I saw…I saw one drop pod explode. I don’t know which,” she said.
    Ice gripped Hale’s heart at the news. An entire team of trained and ready strike Marines—his Marines—gone in an instant, gone before they could even get into the fight. And there was a fair chance Steuben was on that doomed pod. No matter the gamut of emotions running through Hale’s mind, he was the company commander. They still had a mission to accomplish.
    Hale looked at Cortaro. “Get an IR relay set up. We’re heading down as soon as it’s set up.”
    A flash of light broke across the sky. One of the frigates slumped out of the formation around the Breitenfeld , its engines sputtering. It nosed down and corkscrewed toward the planet’s surface. The ship crashed into a distant mountain face, the sound of a muted explosion echoing through the wisp-thin atmosphere.
    “They’re breaking through! Look!” Jacobs pointed to the Breitenfeld as the ship unloaded a broadside on a Xaros cruiser and blew it into burning fragments. The strike carrier and her escorts sprang through the gap in the Xaros lines.
    The Breitenfeld ’s guns slewed around and fired. Quadrium shells burst to life, tendrils of electricity leapfrogging through the Xaros ships. The stricken enemy vessels went off-line.
    Hale thought Captain Valdar would have kept his guns on the Xaros as they slowly succumbed to Pluto’s gravity. Instead, the Breitenfeld and her surviving escorts sped away on burning engines. They vanished over the horizon within seconds.
    “Where are they going?” Jacobs asked.
    “I don’t know, but Valdar must have a plan,” Hale said. He looked at Egan and said, “Can we still contact them?”
    “Not unless they left buoys, sir.” Egan took a sheet of optic camouflage from the case and unfurled it over a small satellite dish propped up on the lip of the tunnel. He poked the antenna through a small hole. “But when they’re back in line of sight, we’ll have comms.”
    “Maybe he’s scrubbed the mission,” Jacobs said. “Should we wait here?”
    “The Breitenfeld doesn’t give up, lieutenant. This fight is far from over. Get your Marines up and ready.” Hale turned and looked down the mineshaft that extended deep into the abyss. “We’re going in.”
     
    ****
     
    Hale marched through the tunnel, relying on his visor’s IR filters to see anything. The tunnel entrance was a faint dot behind them. The two teams of Marines moved in stacked wedges, Crimson squad in the lead.
    There’d been no word from the teams with Steuben from landing zone bravo. Steuben and the Marines with him knew the mission; they’d follow him through the tunnel once they found it. If they were still alive. The longer Hale went without any contact from them, the more certain he became that they were lost.
    Should have ordered the drop pod release sooner, he thought. No, I should have gone with the low-orbit, low-opening jump instead of the pods . Would have been safe in the Breit until Durand cleared out the drones. Some company commander I’m turning out to be.
    Cortaro raised a fist, bringing the teams to a halt. He knelt down next to a sparkling lump of material jutting from the wavy ground.
    “Sir,” Cortaro said, “look at this.”
    Hale motioned for Crimson squad to continue on while his team stayed put. Taking long steps in the weak gravity, he got to Cortaro’s side.
    “What is it?”
    “This…” Cortaro cocked his fist to the side twice and a Ka-Bar blade sprang out of its forearm housing. He poked the tip into the twinkling material and knocked a bit free. He scraped up the material with the edge of his blade and brought it up to his visor. “This is quadrium ore. My cousin Emmanuel worked for Ibarra Mining, was going to get me a job there when I hit my twenty years of service and retired. He told me about a drone survey of Pluto