His eyes flicked to the displays again in time to see the craft hammer on a crushing deceleration, turning its descent into a curving glide path that brought the ship out over the line of troopers strewn across the slope of the volcanic cone.

“Troopers in the air! Troopers on the ground!”

Indeed there were. Men in armor were leaping from the sides of the craft, though it wasn’t slowing at all, using some sort of physical air brake to reduce impact velocity, and landing hard but apparently intact right across his operations area.

“Lasers on that craft. Burn it out of the sky.”

“As you say, Subaltern. Targeting . . . Holy stars of the Empire!”

Penae couldn’t bring himself to chastise his subordinate for the outburst. He’d nearly done as much himself. The instant they’d achieved an active lock on the small craft, a visible beam of pure light struck down in front of them like the fire of the gods. Penae had to take a moment to recognize what he was seeing.

“Visible laser?” he mumbled, shocked to the core.

The power needed for that was immense. In fact, only a—

“Reverse screens! Show me the source of the beam!”

The display flickered, showing the black of space for a brief moment before a large cruiser with an almost mirrored hull appeared. The gas giant on the horizon was actually reflecting off the hull of the cruiser as it settled into low orbit over the moon. Penae couldn’t see where the beam originated, as there were no molecules that high up to turn to plasma. But the subaltern didn’t need to see the beam to know what he was facing.

They got past the Piar Cohn.

►►►

AEV Odysseus

► “Comm open, Captain, broadcasting on Priminae frequencies.”

“Thank you,” Eric said, thumbing the comm open on his end. “This is Captain Eric Stanton Weston of the AEV Odysseus. Targeting my Marines is a hostile act. You have one warning. Do it again, and I will end your hostilities. Odysseus out.”

He turned back to the tactical station. “If they blink, turn them to plasma.”

“Aye aye, Captain,” Sams acknowledged.

Eric glanced back to Miram. “Status on the Marines?”

She snorted softly. “They’re Marines, sir. You know better than most, this is what they live for.”

“We do indeed, Commander.” Eric nodded. “We do indeed.”

►►►

Moon Surface

► Colonel Deirdre Conner tagged three targets on her heads-up display, or HUD, not pausing in her firing, and designated them to her second fire team. “Sergeant, these boys are in my way. See to that, would you?”

“Yes ma’am.”

With fire team two moving to plow the road, Deirdre turned her focus to the objective.

“Commander Michaels, squawk location,” she said. “We’re closing on your locations.”

“Squawk out.” The answer came back almost instantly.