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  Davis turned and looked at him, knowing where he was headed with this. “They do, but they’re no good to us if we can’t laze any kind of extraction request up to them.”

  “Yeah, but what if we could.”

  Now Wilson looked away from his scope to throw Matt an incredulous look. “How? We have no mobile illuminator capable of reaching orbit.”

  “I’m not talking about a laser signal. I’m talking about - what if we could send up another type of signal. A thermal one. Something that will give off a heat signature those USC assets are designed to look for. Something hot enough and bright enough to catch their attention.” He could see Davis, Wilson, and Lopez now looking at him like he was crazy. “We know they perform a spectral analysis across the surface every few hours. Every grid is eventually swept. They do this to track enemy units trying to reposition across the field.”

  “We don’t even know what this fucking grid is,” Lopez responded.

  Matt turned to her. “Yeah, but the USC does.”

  At this point, all options were on the table, but Davis was far from convinced. “Hate to rain on your parade, Reeves, but the nearest orbital asset to us could be anywhere right now. It could be somewhere on the other side of the planet. How do you suggest we get its attention?”

  Matt pointed to the pod’s free-standing stem in the middle of the structure. At the base of it were two small metal containers. “Every pod has an emergency flare kit.” He then pointed to the rim of small thruster jets at the base of the nearest wall-petal that had automatically collapsed when the pod performed its discharge sequence. “And every pod has a small ion core that powers its thruster system. It’s independent of the other guidance systems.”

  Keeping his skeptical eyes leveled at Matt, Davis could not help but scoff. “You must be the only greenie in the USC who actually bothered to read their drop-pod manual.”

  Matt ignored the dig and kept going. “Stay with me here. This isn’t even the good part yet.”

  “Oh, in that case, please continue,” Davis replied.

  “We know our ammo is highly incendiary. Our grenades are too. Why can’t we use them to ignite the flares and the core at once?

  “Because that would blow this pod to smithereens in a nano-second.”

  “Exactly. That’s the idea. The steel around the core is reinforced, but if we drilled a few rounds into it, this pod would go up like a Roman candle. Any nearby asset would be drawn to something burning down here. They have extremely sensitive instruments that are designed to look for anomalies in the field. Once detected, it would move to our position to investigate further. I’m also willing to bet there’ll be a human somewhere on the other end of that data feed, so it won’t take them long to realize our burning drop-pod is not where it’s supposed to be.”

  Now it was Beckett’s turn to look at Matt like he was a lunatic. “Hang on, you want to blow up this pod to send a smoke signal?”

  Matt gave him a confident nod.

  “Hoping the USC might notice it… from space?”

  Matt gave him another confident nod.

  “Smoke signals. That’s your plan?”

  Once again, Matt nodded. “One of the oldest forms of military communication there is... well, technically it’ll be the heat from the explosion, not the smoke that gets their attention.”

  “Yeah. Good luck with that, dude,” Beckett said before turning away and shaking his head.

  Lopez could not resist a jab at Matt either. “And where the fuck are we supposed to go when our only source of cover is destroyed? Not sure if you noticed, but there’s a sniper out there with his eyes on us.”

  Matt turned and pointed to something at their ten o’clock, about twenty meters away from the pod. “When I was with O’Donnell and Jackson, we passed a small crater. It was pretty shallow - only a few feet across in diameter - but still deep enough to keep us below his direct line of sight.”

  “Oh, so we just pack everything up and take a nice afternoon stroll over there?” There was a hard smirk now etched across Lopez’s mouth. She was almost enjoying this.

  “First, we obstruct his view. We’ve each got one incendiary nade, and one smoke nade. Let’s use them to our advantage. We pop smoke, then haul ass. Two at a time. Once we’re all safely across, we shoot the flare box, the grenades, and the exposed thruster core. Ka-boom.”

  “As soon as we do that, he’s gonna know we’re trying to move position,” Maynard added. Her face was also a mask of skepticism.

  Matt gave her a glib shrug. “Doesn’t matter. By the time the smoke clears, we’ll already be gone.”

  “I doubt that’s gonna stop him from taking blind pot-shots at us,” Davis replied.

  “Or the possibility he may have a thermal scope that can see our heat-sigs,” said Beckett.

  Matt took that in and blew out a sigh. “Look, I know it’s risky, but what else have we got?”

  Lopez hacked out a laugh and turned back to her rifle optics. “You are legit bat-shit crazy, Reeves. I kinda like it.”

  “Maybe crazy is the one thing that can save our asses out here.”

  “Or make a bad situation worse,” she huffed.

  “Lopez, if you’ve got a better idea, I’m all ears. That goes for any of you.”

  Judging by the silence, Matt assumed no one did.

  “It might just work,” added Lee, his eyes churning behind his faceplate. He was staring at the ground, mentally assessing the logic of Matt’s plan. “Our exojackets are flame retardant, though. Even if ignited at once, the flares, the grenades, and the core won’t burn long enough.”

  Matt swung his head to Lee. “They don’t need to. They just need to burn hot enough.”

  Davis refocused his eyes on Matt and worked his jaw. “Assuming we do get their attention, what makes you think we won’t be waiting a few more hours for anyone to show up?”

  “You’re right, we could be. But like I said, what else have we got? It’s gonna be nightfall soon, so if you don’t buy this plan, we better start thinking of another one fast.”

  Davis looked away, his troubled mind bristling with more questions than answers. “And what happens if we do get their attention, and by seeing nothing in the pod except discarded exojackets, they decide to level this entire area?”

  “I never said this was perfect, Davis. There’s a lot that can go wrong.”

  “Damn right.” Lopez broke from her scope again and wheeled to Matt. “Like Maynard said before - that sniper could have already called in a patrol or airstrike of his own. They could be inbound.”

  “Either way, I’d rather be taking cover in that crater before that happens.”

  “Makes no difference if we’re here or there, Reeves,” she said. “We’re still gonna be outnumbered if more Wraith show up.”

  “If only we could get a lock on that sniper’s position,” added Davis. “At least then we’d know exactly where the shots are coming from.”

  Lee looked at Davis and nodded as if already knowing the answer to their problem. “I think we might be able to. We’d have a short window, but while he can’t see us, we could create a decoy between two exojackets.”

  “How?” Maynard asked. “We’ve got no holo-decals.”

  A tiny grin formed in the corner of Lee’s mouth. It was barely visible, but Matt caught it. “Again, we go old school: helmet on a stake. Except, we use a rifle. We bury it high enough for him – just so he can see the top of it. When he takes the shot, we’ll already be in the crater scoping for him.”

  “And we’ll be able to range his position and get a lock the second we spot any muzzle flash,” Matt said, a small grin now forming in the corner of his mouth as well.

  “What if he’s using some type of flash suppressor?” said Beckett, still meticulously panning his scope across the area in front of them.

  Lee turned to Beckett. “He’s not. I saw a flash in my peripheral before the first shot hit Jackson. I know I did.” The certainty in his tone also carr
ied a faint glimmer of hope.

  Davis kept his eyes on Lee, chewing his lip in silence.

  Lee took that as his cue to continue. “Assuming any of this works, and we get the USCs attention, we can use one of our short-range comms tablets to verify that sniper’s position. Then we can sync up the coordinates with our rifles and request a guided strike before we extract.”

  “We’re not authorized for that level of engagement,” said Wilson.

  “True, but we can mark a target and still request a strike. That’s all we’d be doing. Asking for one and being denied is still better than doing nothing at all.”

  Matt met Lee’s gaze and held it, nodding in agreement. He liked the sound of that. A lot. “A guided strike would certainly make egress a little less stressful.”

  “It would. But I have an even better idea.” Lee was now fully on board with this plan. “We could find a way to make the thruster core part of the decoy. Make the sniper think he set off the explosion.”

  Matt liked this addition as well. It was the kind of tactical planning and out-of-the-box thinking he admired from his days on the force. “We’d have to sacrifice someone’s helmet.”

  Lee shrugged. “We can use mine.”

  “We’d also have to set it up to ensure his round could penetrate the core’s protective shell.”

  “Those hypersonic plasma rounds can turn diamond into dust. It’ll penetrate.”

  Davis chuckled at the audacity of it all. He was still firmly sitting on the fence. “A lot of planets will need to align for even half of this plan to work, Reeves. You realize that, right?”

  “I do,” Matt replied. “But again, have you got something better?”

  Davis’s lip curled at that. He didn’t. This was their only roll of the dice. He pivoted to Matt again, now unable to hide the fear in his eyes. “I can’t die mad at you for going after Jackson. You were right about that; he should have kept his ass here at the time. But if he did, there’s still a chance we’d have no idea that sniper is out there… whether you get the USCs attention or not, this is going to draw a lot more enemies to our position.”

  “Davis, that sniper had us in his sights the moment we landed. For all we know, they could have tracked our vector from orbit and dropped him into the area.” Matt waited for Davis to finishing sucking the hydration straw inside his helmet. He turned to survey the country before them, his mind still deep in thought. Despite all being equals in rank with little combat experience in the field, Matt needed everyone on board for this plan to work. Davis was also the oldest among them, therefore the others naturally gravitated towards him as the squad’s leader. Even if only symbolic, Matt still wanted his blessing. “Listen, I need all-hands-on-deck for this to work. If we pull this off… who knows, maybe we’ll get to sleep in a cot later tonight with some AC blasting down on us.”

  After another moment of uncertain silence, Davis flicked his faceplate up and spat at the ground as if rebuking the hostility of this planet. “Fuck it. Let’s do it.”

  Five

  Peering between the metal shins of her exojacket’s legs, Maynard kept watch while the others began to execute the plan. She lay prone; her eyes fixed on the three structures Matt had pointed out to her earlier.

  Through her scope, the distant outline of their shapes wobbled in the heat. At times, they seemed to disappear, only to reappear moments later. She quickly flipped her faceplate up to wipe a trickle of sweat that had snaked its way down her forehead into her left eye. Despite the cushioned layers of thermal cooling, she could still feel the sun’s rays beating down on her.

  She could also hear the frantic buzz of blot flies swarming nearby that had been attracted to the remains of Jackson and O’Donnell. Each fly was as large as a Japanese Hornet, distinguishable by their unique red markings that looked like ink splotches.

  Using both visual and chemical cues to direct colonies to potential food sources, blot flies were intensely predatory insects, known to hunt medium-to-large-sized prey across all regions of Epsilon, particularly the lower, southern areas where temperatures were more humid. Extremely aggressive, they were fond of disabling prey via a toxin that coagulated blood to the point where the heart stopped beating. While human deaths were rare, the USC still issued regular warnings to all personnel to avoid contact with them wherever possible.

  “What’s your vote, Maynard?” Matt asked, taking a short pause from piling five signal flares together. “Is our man out by those silos?” He shoved a few basic medical supplies that came with the flares into his haversack, then tossed the empty container aside.

  “Still hard to say,” she replied. “No movement or shadows from this distance. I’m looking at hot air for the most part. What’s our time?”

  Matt glanced at the digital watch display on his forearm plate. “Just shy of three hours. Sun will be gone soon. But I doubt this low light will be much of an advantage for us, especially if he’s got thermals attached to his scope.” Matt then turned to the others who had already begun digging the pod’s thruster core out from the sand. “Our best hope is that his optics can’t penetrate our smoke nades. That’s what we were told they were designed for.”

  “Yeah, let’s just hope they weren’t bullshitting us when they said that,” Maynard scoffed.

  Edging forward on his elbows, Matt nodded in agreement while watching the others work.

  The pod’s thrusters had created a rim of small craters before it came to rest, but the ion core was housed underneath the pod’s central flooring plinths. They were extruded magnesium panels that had been covered in a non-skid surface, riveted together in hexagonal sections. Each panel was connected by a gutter of bolts hidden under a protective sheath of heavy non-flammable plastic. These were separate from the larger flooring panels that were fixed to the brackets, treadways, and litter supports that secured each exojacket.

  While Maynard, Beckett, and Lopez kept watch, Davis fished around in his haversack and pulled out a mushy protein bar that had just about melted, gnawing off a chunk before tucking it away to continue assisting Lee and Wilson with the core extraction. “Push it… push it in,” he said in-between chews. “You need to jam it in harder.”

  “I am. Can’t get it deep enough, though.” Lee wiggled the tip of his small folding knife underneath one of the protective caps. They needed to dismantle at least one plinth to be able to dig out the thruster’s core.

  Davis rolled onto his belly and crawled towards Lee. “Here, let me try.”

  “Give me a second.” Lee was now determined to somehow pop this protective cap off, but he didn’t have the strength in his arms to loosen it.

  “Come on, let me take shot at it.” Davis was practically holding Lee’s arm now. Lee sighed with frustration and surrendered the knife. They switched places, Davis gently pressing the tip of the blade into the thin crevice that separated each plinth. It was like trying to bring up some old tiles, except each one weighed about the same as a cast-iron manhole cover. Davis leaned on top of the blade handle, putting his full weight against it. After a second or two, there was the sharp pop of broken plastic. “Think I got it…” Davis eased off and began jiggling the blade in a see-saw motion.

  “OK, spread out. Let’s lift it.” Matt said, slipping his gloved fingers underneath one corner of the panel.

  Lee and Wilson wiggled into place and did the same.

  “Please don’t drop this on my fingers,” pleaded Wilson.

  Davis was now straining to keep the panel elevated by the blade, high enough for the others to get their grip. This was an extremely awkward angle to be lifting something heavy, especially as everyone was prone. “Be quick... not sure how much longer I can… hold it...”

  Matt waited for everyone to get their fingers underneath the plate. “On my mark… three, two, one, lift.”

  Mustering all their upper body strength, the three of them grunted as they shifted the plate a few feet to their left. When they let go, it thudded into the other plates with a d
ull clang.

  Chest heaving, Davis collapsed onto his back and sucked his hydration straw. “Fuck me, that was heavy… I need a beer.”

  “Unfortunately, I can’t arrange that.” Wilson slid back into cover behind the leg of his exojacket. “What do you like to drink?”

  Still trying to catch his breath, Davis thought about that before answering. “Usually anything that’s in front of me. But there was this one I tried just before I shipped out. Think it was called something like Smokehouse 35K. It’s a local Kentucky brand.”

  Matt’s ears piqued up upon hearing that. “I know that one. Yeah, 35K - it’s a milk stout, right?”

  Davis smiled at the very thought of drinking one in a nitro-chilled glass. “That’s the one. It really is something. Quite a unique and hearty flavor. Goes great with some low-and-slow ribs.”

  As the others began to reflect on the wonders of craft beer and barbequed meat, Matt slid into the small crater underneath the exposed flooring, deftly removing rubble and sand to expose the heavy cabling attached to the core’s shell. “Um… got some important-looking cabling here. Anyone know which one I’m meant to be yanking at?”

  Lee shimmied over to Matt’s position and helped him dig out some more cabling. This was a lot thicker and had a protective sheathe around it. “Should be this one.” Lee yanked the primary cable out of the dirt. It had been buried like a root.

  “How do you know that?” queried Matt, worried he might prematurely blow up the pod, along with everyone in it.

  “This is a standard coaxial the USC use for short-range power transmissions. It’s copper-plated and surrounded by a dielectric insulator that’s always marked green. Also has a distinct look to it, like snakeskin. See?” Lee glanced up at caught Matt’s look. “Don’t worry, I studied systems engineering before the war. This is the kinda basic stuff you learn in the first week.”