by David Weber
“Time to go,” Indy said, and lowered his helmet’s visor as he headed for the lead air lorry.
* * *
Mackenzie Graham checked her chrono and tried very hard to look calm. It wasn’t easy, and she tried equally hard not to rip a strip—mentally, at least—off her brother. He was undoubtedly correct that one of them had to man the SIM’s communications center, but she knew perfectly well why the “man” in question happened to be female. And if she was reasonable about it—which she really didn’t want to be—she had to admit he was better at the sort of physical violence his current mission entailed. So it made impeccably logical sense for her to be the one who stayed behind to manage their communications and coordination. It even made her technically the commander in chief of the Seraphim Independence Movement at this historic moment. The fact that it also let him protect her hadn’t played any part at all in his thinking. Oh, goodness, no!
She gritted her teeth, then made herself inhale deeply.
“Communications check,” she said, and the three men and two women manning the center with her bent over their panels.
That was one thing Mackenzie was profoundly grateful Firebrand’s people had gotten to them. Unlike the civilian coms they’d originally planned on using, the military coms the Manties had supplied were capable of setting up secure networks using sophisticated frequency bouncing and encryption. It was entirely possible—probably likely, actually—that the Army would detect those networks’ existence. Truth be known, she and Indy were counting on the Army’s picking them up, but pinning them down or penetrating them, especially with the repeater sites they’d established to throw off triangulation, would be a much greater challenge. This would be the first time they’d brought those networks online anywhere close to the capital, however, and they needed to know if they’d gotten it right.
“Saratoga,” she said, “Magpie. Communications and status check.”
“Magpie, Saratoga,” Leonard Silvowitz replied instantly, and despite her tension she smiled, remembering Silvowitz’s reaction when he’d discovered that his old friend and business partner’s little boy and girl were the ones who’d organized the Independence Movement. “Communications good. Standing by.”
“Copy standing by,” she replied, and shifted to the next channel on her list.
“Osiris, Magpie. Communications and status check.”
“Magpie, Osiris,” Janice Karpov replied. “You sound good. We’re ready.”
“Copy ready,” she replied, and shifted channels again.
“Tannenberg, Magpie. Communications and status check.”
“Magpie, Tannenberg,” Tanawat Saowaluk answered. “Communications good. Standing by.”
“Copy standing by.” Another channel shift. “Juggler, Magpie. Communications and status check.”
“Magpie, Juggler,” Thanakit Saowaluk replied. “Communications good, we are in position.”
“Copy in position,” she said and shifted channels yet again. “Firebrand, Magpie. Communications and status check.”
“Magpie, Firebrand. Communications good. We’re ready.”
“Copy ready,” she said, and shifted channels a final time.
“Talisman, Magpie,” she said much more quietly. “Communications and status check.”
“Magpie, Talisman,” her brother’s voice came back over the off-world com which had replaced his helmet’s original equipment. “Communications good. We’re in position.”
“Copy in position,” she said. Then, softly, “Be safe.”
“Affirm,” he said, equally softly, and she drew a deep breath. Then she straightened her spine, squared her shoulders, and pressed the button that dropped her briefly into all of their communications nets.
“All primary strike groups, Magpie,” she said, and now her voice was strong and clear. “Execute!”
* * *
The crumpled ball of paper arced across the office and landed neatly in the waste basket against the far wall. Lieutenant Bassett Juneau, Seraphim System Army, made another tick mark on his blotter, then began crumpling another impromptu basketball. So far, his average was up to almost seventy-five percent, which, given his “basketballs’” aerodynamic qualities, was actually pretty good.
And it was nice that something seemed to be working out well. The three days since Seraphim One’s destruction had seen plenty of gathering tension, but not much in the way of resolution. In theory, Vice President Tanner was in charge, but he’d been conspicuous by his absence. According to General Shelton, Tanner was alive, well, and preparing for an orderly succession of authority. And just this very morning he’d named General Shelton—whose troops just happened to have ringed the Presidential Palace to protect the remaining civilian government—Minister of Defense in place of the recently deceased Simon Goforth.
Exactly who was protecting whom—and from whom—remained an open question, however. And in the meantime, tensions between the Army and Tillman O’Sullivan’s scags continued to rise, especially since the Army’s move on the Presidential Palace. Even more ominously, from Juneau’s perspective, the regular Cherubim Police Department seemed to be inclining towards the SSSP. Probably not too surprising that police would find another police organization less threatening than the Army, he supposed. Especially when the Army appeared to be holding the current legal President hostage in his own palace.
Except, of course, he thought sardonically, that everyone knows that’s a self-serving lie being put out by that arch traitor O’Sullivan. Or something to that effect, anyway.
In the meantime—
* * *
“Ready,” Leonard Silvowitz, a.k.a. Saratoga, said. His voice was taut, but he forced his body language to remain relaxed as the air van which had acquired the livery of the Seraphim System Security Police came to a halt at the Harris Street Arsenal’s security checkpoint. The bored-looking Army corporal in charge of the five-person gate guard stiffened, obviously unhappy at finding a trio of SSSP vans calling on an Army installation—especially one as important as the Harris Street Arsenal—during such a…fraught time. She touched the stud on her helmet, clearly checking with higher authority, and listened for several seconds.
* * *
Lieutenant Juneau’s desk com buzzed. He dropped his current wad of paper and punched the acceptance key.
“Juneau,” he said, grateful for a distraction from his anxious boredom.
“Wittek, Sir,” Staff Sergeant Louisa Wittek, his senior NCO, replied. “Sir, we have a situation at the front gate.”
“What kind of situation?”
“Sir, Corporal Terahaute says we’ve got three six-meter SSSP cargo vans.”
“What?!” Juneau sat up suddenly. “What do they want?”
“Terahaute hasn’t asked them yet. She commed me for instructions before she talked to them.”
“Well, tell her to find out what they want but to keep the gate closed while she does it,” Juneau said.
It was only a civilian-grade rolling gate, unlikely to stand up to any serious assault, but at least it was something. And, he reminded himself, there was no reason—yet—to believe these Scags were up to anything the least improper. Somehow the thought didn’t keep him from wishing General Shelton had considered augmenting the arsenal’s normal guard force at the same time he was moving in to protect Vice President Tanner.
“Yes, Sir,” Wittek replied, and Juneau climbed out of his chair and reached for his pistol belt.
* * *
“Take us in, Ning,” Tanawat Saowaluk said flatly.
“Yes, Pôr,” the young woman in the pilot’s seat replied, and Saowaluk’s face tightened as she called him “daddy.”
He and Sirada had argued ferociously against their widowed daughter-in-law’s participation in the actual fighting because they loved her…and because they didn’t want their granddaughters fully orphaned. But Ning Saowaluk was a determined woman whose hatred for the entire McCready government burned with a white-hot flame. Despit
e their arguments—despite even Saowaluk’s abortive attempt to simply forbid her from joining the fighting—they’d been unable, in the end, to stop her. And so Saowaluk had done the best he could to keep her safe, assigning her to pilot the genuine (if stolen) SSSP Vencejo tactical van transporting the first wave of the attack. It was remarkably well armored, despite the Vencejo’s original civilian pedigree, it was fast, and once its troops had disembarked, its job was to sit tight and wait to pick them up again.
She’d protested that he was treating her specially because she was his daughter-in-law, and he’d agreed with her. But he’d also pointed out that she was one of the best pilots they had…and told her flatly that it was the only way she was coming.
He was pretty sure she’d forgive him someday.
Now he sat in the front passenger seat, watching through the windscreen as she took them directly down the long, straight approach corridor to Fort Silvano Nagpal, the Swallow System Army’s major armor park.
* * *
“Here she comes,” Silvowitz murmured as the corporal stepped through the small personnel door in the main gate and walked towards the lead van.
A soft chorus of responses came back from the cargo area behind his seat, where eighteen additional men and women in SSSP uniforms and light body armor waited. Silvowitz pressed the button that lowered his pilot-side window and the corporal flipped up the visor of her Army-issue helmet.
“Good morning, Corporal,” he said.
“Good morning, Sir,” she replied, her expression about as neutral as it could get, as she responded to the major’s insignia on his uniform. “Can I ask what brings you here, Major?” she continued.
“Well, Corporal, I’m here to oversee a weapons transfer,” he told her.
“Weapons transfer, Sir?” she repeated dubiously, and he nodded. “Sir, I haven’t seen any paperwork on that.”
“I’m not surprised, Corporal. It came up rather suddenly.”
“Major, I’m afraid I’m going to have to see some kind of authorization before I can allow you on to the Arsenal’s grounds.”
“Of course, Corporal,” Silvowitz replied, and nodded to the SSSP lieutenant—or what looked like an SSSP lieutenant—in the passenger seat beside him. “Here it is.”
Ginger Terahaute’s eyes widened. That was all the reaction she had time for before the pulser dart hit her squarely in the center of her forehead.
The corporal’s body tumbled backward, although at least the helmet contained the explosion of gore that would otherwise have covered several square meters of pavement. The instant the “lieutenant” fired, Silvowitz opened the throttle wide, and his air van exploded forward, smashing through the civilian-grade gate as if it hadn’t existed.
The other members of Terahaute’s guard detail stared in stunned disbelief—disbelief which held them three fatal seconds too long. They were beginning to bring up their weapons as Silvowitz’s air van went past them in a howl of turbines and a hurricane of pulse rifle darts exploded from the concealed gun ports in its sides. Two of them had time to scream; neither of the others managed even that much, and the three vans sped into the Arsenal.
“Magpie, Saratoga!” Silvowitz said over his com. “Kickoff!”
* * *
“Magpie, Teacup,” the voice said into Mackenzie Graham’s earbug.
“Teacup, Magpie,” she replied. “Go.”
“Magpie, Fort Silvano’s at a higher degree of alert than we thought it was.” It was Lieutenant Alfredo Duncan, Seraphim System Army—otherwise known as “Teacup”—and assistant logistics officer, Fort Silvano. “Just got a look at the duty roster. They’ve doubled the regular watch and issued extra ammo.”
Oh, shit, she thought. Damn it! I was afraid of this!
The possibility that one or more of their targets might go to a higher degree of readiness had always been the greatest risk for this particular operations plan. But Shelton and O’Sullivan had been so careful about denying one another excuses to escalate, and none of their inside people at the other targets had reported anything like this. Yet she wasn’t even tempted to dismiss “Teacup’s” warning; Alfredo Duncan was one of the most reliable people she knew.
“Teacup, Magpie copies,” she said, then punched channels.
“Tannenberg, Magpie,” she said harshly. “Teacup says they’ve doubled the regular duty watch and issued extra ammunition. Abort. I say again, abort.”
“Magpie, Tannenberg.” Tanawat Saowaluk’s voice sounded preposterously calm to her. “I’m afraid we can’t. We’re coming up on the main gate, and they’ve already signaled us to stop.”
Mackenzie bit her lip, desperately tempted to repeat the order. But she wasn’t there; Tanawat was, and it was his mission. She could only hope he had a better feel for the actual situation than she did.
“Understood, Tannenberg,” she said, instead. “Good luck.”
* * *
“Sir, we’ve got several Scag vans at the main gate,” Staff Sergeant Martin Rucelli told Captain Salvador Vasilev, the morning duty officer at the Henrietta O’Byrne Arsenal. “They say they’re here for some sort of weapons transfer.”
“What?” Vasilev frowned. “I haven’t heard anything about any weapons transfers—especially to a batch of Scags!”
“Just telling you what the gate detail says, Sir,” Rucelli said with a shrug.
“Well, tell them they’re just going to have to wait while I clear this!”
“Yes, Sir.”
* * *
“Major,” the senior noncom of the gate guard told Janice Karpov, “I’m afraid Captain Vasilev says he’ll need to confirm your orders. If you’d park your vans over there—”
He was raising his hand to point when Karpov put three pulser darts into his chest. Her air vans—there were five of them, this time—charged through the gates in a tornado of turbine wash.
“Magpie, Osiris,” she said into her com. “Kickoff!”
* * *
“I need to see some authorization, Major,” the Army sergeant told Tanawat Saowaluk rather more coldly than a noncom should address a field-grade officer.
“Of course, Sergeant,” Saowaluk said, and opened the passenger side door.
The sergeant backed a couple of paces as he did, and Saowaluk made himself keep smiling despite the other man’s obvious wariness. He kept his hand well away from the butt of his holstered pulser and unsealed his tunic so that he could reach into it.
“And you’re right,” he continued. “Until we get a better handle on what the hell is going on, it’s a lot better to be safe than sorry.”
“You’ve got that right, Sir,” the sergeant said, still watching him carefully.
“Wish I didn’t,” Saowaluk said wryly…and the sergeant’s torso exploded.
The other eleven men and women of the reinforced gate guard, just like their sergeant, had been watching the Scag major, not the Vencejo’s rear doors. In fairness, they couldn’t see the rear doors from their position, and so they hadn’t noticed the quartet of riflemen who’d silently eased through them. Two of those riflemen had gone prone, crawling forward underneath the air van as it hovered on its counter-grav. The other two waited, hidden behind the vehicle’s bulk until their companions suddenly rolled out on either side. Then all four of them opened fire on the gate detail which hadn’t been quite suspicious enough.
“First Team, unload here!” Saowaluk barked over the tactical net. “We go in on foot. Second Team, once we clear the gate, you’re go for the south vehicle park! Third Team, take the north park! Get those charges placed, and then get the hell out!” Then he drew a deep breath and punched another channel.
“Magpie, Tannenberg,” he said crisply. “Kickoff!”
* * *
“Talisman,” Mackenzie’s voice said over Indy’s com, “Magpie. We have kickoff. I repeat, we have kickoff.”
“Magpie, Talisman copies kickoff,” he replied, and nodded to Alecta Yearman, sitting in the pilot’s seat.
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br /> “Go, Naak,” he said, and three Mastodonte air lorries, packed with a hundred and twenty armed and armored men and women went racing towards Terrabore Maximum Security Prison.
* * *
Tanawat Saowaluk swore viciously and hit the ground behind the barely adequate cover of a parked ground car as the burst of darts hit Jessica Lambert squarely in the chest. Her light body armor—they hadn’t dared risk anything heavier than normal SSSP issue—never had a chance. She went down, twitching but already dead, and Saowaluk hosed a burst of fire at the position which had killed her.
It did no good. The improvised strong point wasn’t a true bunker or pillbox, only a maintenance shop where the better part of a platoon of SSA troopers had hastily forted up. Unfortunately, its ceramacrete walls were proof against pulse rifle fire, his fire team had no tribarrels, and they’d already used all three of their rocket launchers. And, even more unfortunately, it had his seven survivors pinned.
The rest of the attack seemed to have succeeded in most of its objectives, although casualties had been far higher than they’d hoped. If he’d been willing to poke his head up where it could be shot off, he could’ve seen the clouds of smoke rising from the primary vehicle parks. He was sure there had to be at least some operable vehicles in the midst of all that smoke, but there couldn’t be very many. And if he’d only been able to get inside the maintenance shop, he and his team would have eliminated the possibility of any damaged vehicles being quickly repaired. But they weren’t going to get there.
In fact, they weren’t going to get out, either.
“Team Two and Team Three,” he said over the net, “pull out. Head for Rally Point Six.”
“What about you?” Anson Tolliver, Team Three’s leader, demanded.
“We’re not going anywhere,” Saowaluk said bleakly. “They got too many people into the shop, and we’re pinned on the approach. The rest of you get out.” His smile was as bleak as his tone. “We’ll hold their attention while you get clear.”