“Peace-loving my ass,” Sky said bitterly. “They’re the sons of slime fired on the Zrínyi.”
“Ma’am . . .” Keyshon said in an almost-but-not-quite-scolding tone.
Sky raised her hand to forestall any more and said, “I know, I know. I’ve got to play nice. No accusation, no incriminations. I can’t mention the Lore system.”
Keyshon nodded, and the two kept walking. Sky shouldn’t bring up the attack on the Zrínyi, unless the bishop mentioned it, and even if he did, she had to move beyond that to the larger issue. Somehow, she had to convince the bishop that the Klethos threat was real and not a political ploy. The inherent problem with that was that if she convinced them that the Klethos were a threat, then that would buttress their claim that the UAM was playing with fire by cooperating with the Klethos in the first place.
She’d spent the morning with the best minds in the Federation, trying to come up with the best tack to take. At one point, the First Ministry vice-minister had threatened to take over, but this was a Second Ministry responsibility, one that the minister was not going to simply hand over to the First.
Part of Sky wished that the First Ministry—or anyone else, for that matter—would take over. She was feeling the pressure mount. She wasn’t even convinced that this should be a Federation effort, but the professional diplomats adamantly insisted that since the Brotherhood alliance was completely controlled by the Brotherhood itself, then the Federation had to act on an equal-basis.
Sky would have welcomed Confederation, French, or any other assistance, if for nothing else than to give the threat credence. That was out of her hands, though.
They turned left on Rue de la Loi and walked the half-block to the ancient white-brick embassy. There were no guards standing post, unlike most embassies, and Keyshon rang the bell. A moment later, the twin doors swung open, and an officious-looking young lady in an oh-so-proper gray suit, welcomed them and asked that they follow her.
The meeting with the bishop had been set up through numerous channels, with the Swiss Ambassador as the official host. This was to be low-key, without the pomp and formality of most such meetings. Sky and Keyshon would meet the bishop and his assistant. No one else. Sky was going to calmly lay out the situation to the best of her knowledge and then hope that the bishop would pass it on up their chain. It would be nice if she could convince the bishop, but as long as he passed it up, that would suffice.
Sky didn’t even know who she’d be meeting, only that he was of bishop rank. The political division had briefed her on the six most likely choices, based on who was in Brussels at the time.
“Dr. Ybarra, if you will. The bishop is already here,” the young woman said, opening up two doors, then stepping aside.
Sky pulled herself up and strode into the room, trying to look confident . . . and almost faltered.
Bishop Grandice van Meter stood up at her entrance, his face cold and hard. The political team had made van Meter the fifth most likely choice, given his antipathy towards the Federation and what bordered on hate for the Klethos. The fact that he was sent to the meeting had to reflect on the Brotherhood’s willingness to listen to what she had to say.
Sky plastered a slight smile on her face and strode up to the table, hand out to shake, saying, “Bishop van Meter, thank you for taking the time to meet me. I’m Assistant Vice-Minister—”
“I know who you are.”
Sky kept the smile, but she nodded and sat down.
This isn’t going to be easy, Sky, but just make it work.
LORE
Chapter 23
Hondo
Hondo took one last breath of fresh air, then grabbed the donning handles and twisted his body up, making the circus-worthy contortion needed to get into his PICS. He’d been out of it for seven hours, cleaning himself, getting some chow, and taking a quick nap. He’d thought their fight was over.
Thinking had a habit of getting him into trouble.
Now, he was going back out with the 17 other PICS Marines, led by the lieutenant. Sixty klicks away, the Brotherhood force was making its presence known, the ship’s commander demanding that the Federation Marines and Buddie sailors lay down their arms. He promised Alezerdes Black that no one would be hurt, but given their unprovoked attack on the Zrínyi, neither the ship’s commanding officer nor Captain Ariç were inclined to believe the man.
They refused the demand, with the CO quoting Harbin Accord rules for shipwrecked passengers. The Brotherhood commander refused to acknowledge those rules, and said that the Marines and sailors would suffer the consequences of that decision.
If the Brotherhood was planning anything, the UAM force had to find out, so the PICS Marines were going to go take a look. Sixty klicks were nothing when compared to the size of Lore, but it would be quite a hike for those Marines on foot.
Hondo ran through his diagnostics. With a new powerpack, everything was green. He was good to go. Switching over to the rest of his squad, he ran their numbers, and they checked out as well.
“Five minutes,” Staff Sergeant Rutledge passed on the net.
“How’s Bunyansarn?” Hondo asked Wolf on the P2P.
“I don’t know,” Wolf said. “It’s not like I’ve had any time to get to know her, you know.”
After their assault on the frigate, the squad was down to ten, including Hondo and Doc Leach. With eight in the teams, he was going to go down to two four-man teams, with Wolf and Ling as the team leaders, but PFC Nok Bunyansarn, one of the Charlie Company survivors, had managed to get her PICS aboard the shuttle with Cara. The skipper, now the senior Marine with Captain Warrant KIA, assigned her to Hondo’s squad.
That left him with nine trigger pullers, so he went to three three-man teams, moving Tony B to First Team.
“You watch her. I heard Pickerul calling her the DMS. We don’t need that.”
“Tammy didn’t mean anything,” Wolf protested.
“Yeah, she did, and you know it.”
“That’s just Tammy being Tammy, Sergeant.”
“Which is fine if the other person knows her. Bunyansarn doesn’t know Pickerul.”
“DMS” was the acronym for “Dead Man’s Slot,” (sometimes called a “redshirt” for reasons lost to time) given to a newbie who was a replacement to a KIA. In Hollybolly tradition, which had since gravitated to real Marines, the DMS was always the next to die. Bunyansarn wasn’t actually a newbie, having served with Charlie Company, and she’d been one of only 12 survivors of the company when the ship had been hit. If anything, she had lady luck looking down over her shoulder.
“Just watch her,” Hondo told Wolf. “And make sure she isn’t in hero-mode.”
That actually concerned Hondo more than Pickerul’s teasing. Bunyansarn had lost almost all of her friends, and she might be looking for revenge.
“Let’s go,” Staff Sergeant Rutledge passed. “Limited comms from here on out.”
Hondo thought that might be overkill. The Brotherhood forces had evacuated their ship pretty quickly, and he doubted they had much in the way of sophisticated surveillance. The comms shielding on a modern PICS was excellent, so Hondo felt the risk of comms being not only intercepted but cracked was small. It wasn’t his call, though.
First Squad moved out in a squad wedge, Second Team at the point, First Team on the left, and Third Team on the right, with Hondo and Doc in trace of Second. The lieutenant was on his ass, and the staff sergeant, Cara, and her depleted squad pulled up the rear. At their ground-eating jog, they could cover the 60 klicks in a couple of hours, but the Brotherhood Saul XBs had pretty good shielding themselves, and the lieutenant didn’t want to jog into an ambush. They conducted the advance to contact at a much slower 20 KPH for an hour, then down to 15 KPH, the wedge formation flat and covering almost 500 meters of frontage.
With only nine trigger pullers, Hondo would have liked to tighten that up some, but the lieutenant wanted to cover as much ground as possible while still keeping reasonable security and th
e ability for the Marines to support each other should something go down. Still, given the terrain, a battalion of the host could be heading to the UAM camp without being spotted, two fighting forces passing in the night, so to speak.
It won’t be a battalion of them, though, at least we know that.
At best, no Sauls had made it to the surface. At worst, maybe 40. Some of the host had been killed on during the fight, and others almost certainly had to have died when their ship went out of control. If Hondo was a betting man, then he’d guess the armor was about even, while the Marines had an advantage in straight infantry.
To his right, Third was beginning to bunch up slightly. Hondo wanted to tell Ling to keep his dispersion, but the lieutenant wanted limited comms.
Does this count as limited?
He peered through the scrub, trying to catch sight of the corporal, who was crossing a dry creek bed. After a moment, Ling came into view, and Hondo waved his gauntlet, trying to get his attention.
It took a moment, but Ling waved back, and Hondo put both gauntlets together, palm-to-palm, then spread them out. Ling raised one gauntlet in acknowledgment and turned to Hanaburgh just as there was a flash, then an instant later, a huge explosion rocked the corporal, his PICS almost blowing apart.
“Second, assault right, First, provide a base of fire,” Hondo shouted before everything had completely registered. “Arrays on max!”
There was a second flash that lit up the scrub, but no resultant explosion.
“Second Squad, envelope right,” the lieutenant passed, as arrows appeared on Hondo’s display.
A moment later, Cara’s squad broke their formation to begin a quick movement around a piece of high ground.
Hondo broke into a run, his combat AI determining the POO, or Point of Origin, of whatever had hit Ling. He fired his M44 at the position, five of the 60mm grenades arching up to land at the spot, gouts of dirt and vegetation shooting upwards, but no confirmation of a kill.
Hanaburgh, who’d been off of Ling’s flank, fired his Chimera, the missile whooshing into the vegetation. This time, there was a flash of light as the missile struck true, and Hondo’s AI was now able to pick up the wreckage of the Saul.
Rounds were flying, the traces crisscrossing Hondo’s display as his AI struggled to catch them all. A PICS’ AI worked best in conjunction with other surveillance sources, but with no Navy ship overhead nor drones in the air, the AI network had to rely on the organic sensors on each combat suit.
A PICS’ prime counter-surveillance was the use of the Variable Fractured Array, a much-improved version of the original FA. A random number generator in each PICS both boosted and cloaked the combat suit’s emissions in alternate waves, essentially simulating a PICS jerking back and forth every microsecond. Incoming weapons had extreme difficulty determining the exact location of a PICS, and they couldn’t adjust quick enough for a hit once they were close enough to break through the array.
The Brotherhood Sauls, however, relied on cloaking, “hiding” the combat suit in plain sight. The Marine’s PICS were having difficulty finding the Sauls in order to target them, but the Sauls were having an equally hard time simply hitting the PICS.
Something clanged off of Hondo’s leg. Ordnance did not have the Sauls’ ghosting capability, and with a direct hit, his AI identified the POO, the Point of Origin. Hondo shifted his direction and charged, firing a string of grenades before launching a salvo of three shoulder rockets at a blank spot ahead. The dust from the grenades seemed to coalesce around a large, man-like figure for an instant before at least two of the rockets struck home. The Saul immediately became visible as it was blown over backward.
Two more Sauls were destroyed, and the incoming fire began to slacken, finally coming to a halt. Hondo stopped, taking stock of his squad.
Corporal Ling was KIA, but no one else was out of commission. RP had expended too much power, and was at 76%, but that was still well within combat parameters. His AI identified four downed Sauls.
“Sir, I think we’ve broken the ambush. One friendly KIA and four enemy.”
He knew the lieutenant, who was only 43 meters to his left, according to his display, could see that, but it wouldn’t hurt to make sure.
“Form a perimeter oriented to 330 while we wait for Second Squad,” the lieutenant replied.
“Aye-aye, sir.”
Hondo’s instinct was to push forward. The squad hadn’t cleared the ambush site yet, and someone could still be out there. The lieutenant has seemed a little withdrawn since the fight on the ship, and Hondo wondered if something was eating at him—not just the normal feeling of loss, but something deeper.
Forget it McKeever. He’s just being prudent. Better to wait for Cara.
“Doc, how’s Ling?” he asked.
“Not much hope. I’m putting him into stasis.”
Shit, shit, shit!
“OK, do what you can. After you’re done, take Tony B and check the Brotherhood KIA. If they can be resurrected, zip-lock them.”
“And then what do we do with them?”
“Upload their coordinates to the Red Cross, you know that. Then it’s out of our hands.”
Hondo positioned the rest of his Marines looking forward, checking each position for their fields of observation.
“How do we see if anyone is out there, Sergeant McKeever?” Bunyansarn asked, as he checked her position.
“Just look where there isn’t anything,” he said, immediately realizing that didn’t make any sense. “What I mean is that their ghosting hides whatever is behind them, too. Just look for a spot that is a little blurry, OK? And keep an eye on your displays. Our AIs aren’t that great all alone like this, but they can sometimes pick up something.”
“OK, Sergeant. Thanks.”
“How did Bunyansarn do?” he asked Wolf on the P2P.
He could pull up her track, but he didn’t want to take the time.
“No problem, Sergeant. She was fine. Don’t worry about her,” the team leader responded.
“Well, here comes Second Squad, so get ready to move out.”
“Rodger, dodger,” Wolf said, ever flippant.
“Sergeant McKeever, to me,” the lieutenant ordered.
Hondo pulled his platoon commander up, located him, then jogged over to where they were joined a minute later by Cara.
“Listen up. We know the host are here, and they know we are, too. The skipper still wants us to advance, so we are going to change to a bounding overwatch.”
Hondo shrugged. It made sense. A bounding overwatch was a leap-frogging-type movement where one element set up a base of fire and provided covering support for the other element as they advanced. The lead element would then set up their own base of fire so that the trailing element could advance past the lead element of fire and set up a new base of fire. This way, only one unit was moving at any given time, and that unit was always covered by the other. It made for slower going, but it provided far greater security.
“Sergeant McKeever, your squad is taking the lead. I don’t want you more than 500 meters before you assume the support mission. Sergeant Riordan, you don’t move until I say so, and that isn’t going to happen until First Squad is set.”
“Where are you going to be, sir?” Cara asked.
“I will always be with whichever one of you is the forward-most element at the time. Don’t worry about me, you just lead your squads. Any questions?”
“Arrays on?” Hondo asked.
The major problem with the arrays was that they pulled an inordinate amount of power.
The lieutenant mulled that over for a moment before he said, “No, we can’t. We’ll never make it over and back if we do.”
“What about Corporal Ling?” Hondo asked.
“Doc got him zip-locked?”
“Yes, sir. And one of the soldiers.”
“Mark him. Both of them. We’ll retrieve Corporal Ling on the way back. Anything else?”
“No, sir,” the two chor
used.
“Then let’s move it. Keep on the alert.”
Hondo returned to his squad, got the teams ready to move out, and did a quick terrain study while he waited for Second Squad to get into position. From where he was, the terrain descended in a gentle slope dotted with acacia bushes, each about five meters tall. Acacias were commonly used in terraforming due to their hardy nature and easy propagation, but they offered plenty of cover for opposing forces. At about 400 meters, the slope reversed, climbing to a low hump at 575 meters, according to his display. That was a little farther than the lieutenant wanted, but it offered the only reasonable location on which to set up the next base of fire so that Cara and her squad could displace forward.
“Move out, First,” the lieutenant passed.
Back in their wedge, the Marines stepped off. Hondo felt blind without better surveillance, but it did feel good knowing that Cara and her Marines were behind him providing support.
He strode past one of the dead Brotherhood soldiers, the one Hanaburgh had taken out. The remains were a mangled mess, and not much of what had been a human body inside the wreckage was recognizable as such. Doc Leach hadn’t bothered wasting a zip lock on that poor soul.
“Watch your dispersion, McKeever,” the lieutenant passed.
The squad looked pretty good to him, but Hondo repeated the platoon commander’s orders.
As they advanced, Hondo’s display showed flickers of activity, but nothing solid. Flickers could come from small animals, feedback from his own Marines, abandoned objects, or a host of other things—including a cloaked enemy. His AI ran through huge amounts of computing power separating the wheat from the chaff, analyzing the slightest emission before eliminating it as a threat.
Hondo hadn’t spotted anyplace that would serve as an effective overwatch position by the time Second Fire Team reached the upslope, so he sent the lieutenant the location he’d previously selected, another 150 meters ahead. The lieutenant approved, and Hondo told Corporal Marasco to reach the brow of the slope and stop. As Hondo approached, he could see over the brow, and 350 meters ahead and slightly to the right, was a small knoll that looked like it offered excellent fields of observation and fire that would serve Cara and Second Squad well.
The Price of Honor (The United Federation Marine Corps' Grub Wars Book 2) Page 14