weapons and counter-weapon systems were strictly defensive.
Two hours earlier, the Monticello had exited a wormhole two light minutes northeast of Troy and slowly drifted planetward while using all of her passive sensors to search for spacecraft loitering in the area of her destination world. The warship also constantly scanned the planet’s surface for signs of life, human or alien. When no signs of any presence, human or alien, were detected either in space or on the surface, the order was given for the landing party to prepare to head planetside.
The Monticello’s equally stealthed landing craft were each capable of landing up to fifty fully armed infantrymen on the surface of a planet, or launching four “Squad Pods” into the upper atmosphere for scattered planetfall. They were called “Spirits,” both because they were as visible to standard detection methods as ethereal spirits and because they could spirit troops to or away from a planet’s surface. The Squad Pods were intended to be mistaken for meteorites during their transit through an atmosphere: an ablative coating was designed to stop burning as soon as the antigrav drive kicked in when the pod was close to the ground, giving the impression that the meteorite had burned up. The Squad Pods normally landed away from populated areas, and flew nape-of-the-earth to their final destinations.
The eight Force Recon squads landed on Troy at widely separated locations so they could cover as much territory as possible. Upon completion of their missions, the Marines would return to their Squad Pods and rendezvous with the landing craft for return to the Monticello, where she maintained station near the collapsed entrance to the wormhole.
The Monticello stood ready to reopen the wormhole on fifteen minutes notice, either to return to Earth with the Marines, or to flee from an approaching enemy starship.
Planetfall, Semi-Autonomous World Troy
Squad Pod Alfa-1, with first squad aboard, plunged to the ground near the McKinzie Elevator Base. Its meteorite-mimicking track blinked out two and a half kilometers above the surface when its antigrav engine cut in to bring the small craft down twenty-seven kilometers distant, gently enough to avoid injuring its passengers, then scooted along, barely above the ground, to its final destination. Squad Pod Alfa-4, carrying fourth squad, made planetfall on the opposite side of Millerton from the elevator base. Pods Alfa-2 and 3, and Bravo-1, 2, and 3 made planetfall in other locations on East Shapland, the primary settled continent on Troy. Squad Pod Bravo-4 was the only one to visit the continent called West Shapland, which only had one settlement; some twelve thousand souls resided in and around the coastal fishing town of Pikestown. There was less than two minutes from the time the first pod reached its landing zone until the final one touched down on its.
Foot of the McKinzie Elevator Base, Millerton, Semi-Autonomous World Troy
Staff Sergeant Jack Lummus, leader of the first squad, didn’t give any orders when his Marines dashed off Alfa-1; touchdown was a well-rehearsed maneuver, and everyone knew what to do. The five Marines darted off in five different directions and went to ground fifty meters away from the pod, facing away from it. Each Marine had his motion detector, air sniffer, and infrared receiver operating before he took cover in one of the many craters that pocked the tarmac. Lummus didn’t even say anything when his four men all reported they were in position and searching. Not that he was concerned about being overheard by whatever possible enemy that might be lurking nearby. Force Recon helmets were well enough muffled that any sounds that escaped them were unintelligible up close, and totally inaudible beyond a meter or two. Anyway, communication was via radio burst-transmissions that faded out within two hundred meters—it simply wasn’t necessary for him to say anything.
The Marines lay waiting, and watching their surroundings and various detectors for sign of anybody in the vicinity.
After half an hour, Lummus transmitted, “Report.”
The four reports came in. Corporal Tony Stein had seen a skinny dog that seemed to be scrounging for something to eat, but none of the Marines had seen, heard, or detected anything human, or even remotely resembling the aliens they’d seen in the images they’d studied on Earth and on the ship. Nobody had seen a body, or anything that looked like part of a body, human or otherwise.
“One and two,” Lummus ordered, the command for his Marines to check their first and second objectives. “Record.”
“Recording,” Sergeant Elbert L. Kinser said as he and and Stein headed