Lost Vikings by JJ Wolficus (good summer reads txt) 📗

since the protoss blasted the whole place clean."

"Have you seen pictures of how it looked before?" Scorch said. "Mostly flat and round as a marble, with a mountain range here and there. Pretty standard stuff. Not now, though."

Erik had spent a lot of time flying high over the planet's icy surface. Some called Braxis a

frozen graveyard. Erik preferred to think of it as a clean slate.

He marveled at the way it had re-formed after the apocalyptic heat from the protoss

cleansing had turned every bit of water on the frozen planet to steam. From what Mr.

Wotan—one of the first terrans to resettle Braxis—had said, most of the planet's surface

might have vaporized, but that didn't mean it had disappeared.

After the horrifying job had been done and the protoss had left, the planet had cooled

again, and al that water vapor in the sky had turned into snow and hail. The storms must

have been almost as terrifying as the cleansing that had preceded them, vast oceans' worth

of precipitation fal ing back to cover the scoured lands, which had been exposed for the 9

first time. The insane weather had created gigantic crystalline structures that seemed

impossible, jutting from the surface like monstrous works of art or some dead god's toys.

In many places, the ice had re-formed solider than ever. In others, it had formed a

fragile latticework that looked stable but couldn't be trusted. It might be able to hold tons

of frozen water without col apsing under its own weight, but the right amount of pressure

at the wrong angle could cause the entire area to give way. Although he'd never had to

make an emergency landing in the wastes, Erik had heard tales of those who had, only to

have the ice swallow their transport whole.

"Yeah," Erik said. "It feels alien, but it's beautiful."

The words escaped his lips before he realized that he meant them. He'd learned to care

about his new home since he and his family had moved here. Too bad he'd come to

recognize it only now, when the zerg were about to drive them out.

"You got this far; you're going to do fine, kid," Varg said. "Time for us al to shut our yappers and concentrate on the task at hand. We hit the LZ in 60 seconds."

Despite Varg's encouragement, Erik winced at how il -prepared he felt for this mission.

The viking didn't help. The way it moved read wrong to him, at least compared with the

Wraiths he remembered so wel .

"We're coming in hot," Varg said. "We need to put down a few klicks out from the site of the zerg infestation and leg it from there. Command thinks that should let us get closer to

the trouble spot before they start firing at us."

Rumor had it that the zerg had landed on the far side of the planet, a preliminary force

that would soon blossom into a ful -scale invasion. Braxis might be big enough to hold both

species, but the zerg didn't like to share.10

The Dominion had launched an airstrike against the infestation, but the zerg had

brought the terran flyers down before they'd completed their mission. That was when

some bright bulb in the command structure came up with the idea of sending the vikings.

Soon after that, Erik was called in.

The evacuation of all non-essential personnel had begun, and Erik had been planning to

leave with the rest of his family. He hadn't thought the Dominion would need him if they'd

already decided to abandon the planet. Maybe he shouldn't have answered when they came

calling, but the moment he heard who it was, he knew his hiatus from combat had ended.

Sif and Kyrie were still slated to go out with the second or third round of evacuees. They

said good-bye to him that morning. Erik and Kyrie had agreed not to let Sif know what was

happening, tel ing her only that she and Mommy were leaving on a trip and that Daddy

would catch up with them as soon as he could.

Kissing them before he left—knowing that he might never see them again but unable to

say anything that might tip off his sharp little daughter—was the hardest thing he'd ever

done.

Right up until now.

"We're here, Erik," Varg said as the vikings skimmed down toward a bare patch of snow.

"I want you on the ground first. Switch to assault mode now!"

Erik hauled the viking back as hard as he could and punched the button to lower the

aircraft's legs. With any other machine, doing something like this would cause it to stall out,

which would be fatal at this altitude. The rapid stop hurled him against his harness, but it

held him tightly against the wild inertia. Now he understood why the viking had more than

double the straps, pads, and packing that the Wraith had. Al of the crazy ups and downs

the craft went through as it switched from one mode to the other were brutal. 11

As Varg had ordered, Erik was the first to get his walker's feet on the ground. Landing a

viking was one of the trickiest maneuvers in the entire fleet. If he was going to crash, it was

better if he didn't land on any of the others and take them out, too.

Erik had flown over the frozen wasteland that made up most of Braxis on more trips

than he could count, but he'd always been safe inside his transport, a klick or higher in the

air. This was the first time he'd been this close to any part of the planet's surface outside of

its few settlements. He wondered if the snow would hold him or if he'd sink right through

to whatever it was covering—and he wondered how far down that would be.

The snow did give under the several tons of the viking's weight, but the walker's legs

found solid ground to stand on only half a meter down. Whether it was ice or rock or

something else entirely, Erik couldn't tell. He just felt grateful it was there.

Enveloped by the dense white cloud his landing had kicked up, Erik couldn't see a damn

thing. He pushed the machine forward, and it slogged through the thick,