by John Ringo
“The point being that they are a serious threat,” Tam said. “The good news, as of last night, was that their main base had been identified. Further, that due to the… Indowy-hunt the Darhel have been doing off-planet, most of their ringleaders have fled here to Earth. To that base. Which is, by the way, in Indiana.”
“Indiana?” Mike crowed. “Indiana? You know the only thing in Indiana? H-wheat!”
“Corn, I think,” Tam said.
“I guess you don’t get the reference,” Mike said, grinning.
“Not a time to joke,” General Wesley pointed out. “Deadly serious stuff.”
“Time to round ’em up then,” Mike said, shrugging. “FBI, DOD, Fleet Penal guards all come to mind.”
“Which, of course, just makes sense,” Tam said, shaking his head. “Except to the God-damned Darhel.”
“What did the Darhel do?” Mike asked, lowering his head into his hands.
“Hired a group of mercenaries to attack the base,” Tam said neutrally.
“On U.S. Territory?” Mike shouted. “Are they flipping insane?”
“No,” Tam said. “Just very powerful, very ruthless, very alien and amazingly incompetent at combat.”
“My God,” Mike said. “You just described the entire Galactic Federation in one sentence. Did anyone survive?”
“Remember your description of the suicide bomber?” Tam said. “Ruthless, dedicated, competent?”
“Yes.”
“Then the answer is: No. None of the mercenaries survived.”
“Holy crap,” Mike said, his eyes widening. “These guys are good! Can I have ’em?”
“Not a time for jokes, Mike.”
“Who was joking?” O’Neal replied. “I need good troops. But what, other than recruiting, does this matter to me?”
“The Darhel have officially requested Fleet support in apprehending ‘highly armed and dangerous paramilitary rebels operating in the Contiguous United States.’ The President, reluctantly, has signed off. With the caveat that, to the greatest possible extent, none of this sees the light of day.”
“Are we just talking rebels?” Mike asked, tightly. “People have kids. With people like that, kids are often present. And there’s no way to cover it up with kids present. Unless you’re suggesting that we take out everybody. In which case, General, you have my official and formal opposition. In fact, if you try to hand it off to someone else I’ll place the charges against you myself.”
“It’s not caedite eos for God’s sake, Mike,” Wesley said, shaking his head. “You know I’d never suggest that! I’m, frankly, insulted that you’d suggest it.”
“Sorry, man,” Mike said. “But I’m old enough to remember Waco.”
“So am I and I’d completely forgotten it,” Tam said, his eyes wide. “Good God, it is really easy to forget something like that after all the hell of the war.”
“I’m sending the ACS platoon and you,” Wesley said. “This thing is the political hot-potato to end all political hot-potatoes. And it has to stay totally black. I don’t even have an ACS suit anymore and I’ve got the feeling that managing something like this, from back here, isn’t going to cut it. We need someone with, let’s just say more experience than an LT, on site.”
Mike put his face in his hands again and shook his head.
“Problem being, as discussed, I’m not sure I disagree with their objectives,” Mike pointed out.
“Which we’ve discussed,” Tam said. “And my counter arguments. Bottom line, General. Are you willing to take this mission and carry it out to the best of your ability?”
“Define the mission clearly,” Mike said.
“The mission of the 29th ACS Platoon (detached) is to locate and eliminate hostile insurgents at specified location and to detain any Indowy there present pending charges of conspiracy, rebellion and treason against the Galactic Federation.”
“ROE?” Mike asked, not looking up.
“As much force as is necessary for completion of the mission,” Tam said. “Noting that the primary mission is the capture of the Indowy there present. Try not to kill the Indowy and, frankly, try to keep all casualties to a minimum.”
“Enemy forces?” Mike said.
“About eighty insurgents with light to medium Earth weaponry,” Tam said. “They had some rocket launchers. Most of the rest of the stuff was pretty standard rifles and machine guns.”
“Sounds like we can take them all alive,” Mike said. “Except…”
“They’ve had Indowy support for an unknown time and to an unknown level and therefore…”
“May have GalTech standard weaponry,” Mike said. “And may or may not contain elements of DAG. Joy. What’s the nature of this enemy base?”
“No real clue,” Tam said. “It’s all below ground. But there are one hell of a lot of people in there and they’re packing Indowy in like there’s no tomorrow. Guess? It’s a Sub-Urb.”
“How the hell do you put a Sub-Urb in in Indiana as a secret base?” Mike asked.
“If it dates back to the war you build one and then lose it off the books,” Tam said, shrugging.
“Lose it off the books?” Mike asked, incredulously. “Tam, how much are you not telling me?”
“I’m telling you everything you need to know, General,” Tam said. “Hell, I’m telling you everything that I know. There is a rebel force of about eighty shooters and an unknown number of supports dug in in Indiana. The mission is to detain them, primarily the Indowy, and then turn them over to Fleet Penal. How you do that is up to you. Do you accept this mission?”
“I wonder if this is how General Lee felt at Harper’s Ferry?” Mike muttered, putting his head on the table. “Or if he just viewed it as a perfectly acceptable mission. Yes, I’ll do it. I’m sure as hell not going to throw it on that poor lieutenant. And at least it gets me out of these Goddamned meetings!”
“Thank you,” General Wesley said.
“If you would, please, General,” Mike said, lifting his head. “Get those jokers back in here and have them clear out all this junk. Then if you would, please, ask Lieutenant…”
“Arthur Cuelho,” Shelly prompted.
“Cuelho and his platoon sergeant…”
“Sergeant First Class Thomas Harkless,” Shelly added.
“To join me here,” Mike said without a pause.
“Done and done,” Tam said, standing up.
“One other thing,” Mike said.
“Yes?”
“Shelly, do you know that from time to time you get… balky when sticky little questions of Galactic politics come up?”
“I am never balky!” Shelly said.
“Riiight,” Mike said. “I don’t know what I’m going to need to know. And I can’t be worried that my AID is suddenly going to not be able to tell me things. Or lie. Send word to whoever needs to know that I need to know. I’m not going to ask questions I don’t need answered. I have come to the conclusion I don’t want to know. But when I ask a question, I’m going to need a clear and honest answer.”
“I’ll… try,” Tam said.
“Try,” Mike said. “Try very hard.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“We just got an intel dump,” Monsignor O’Reilly said. “They’re sending the ACS platoon.”
“And that is the ballgame,” Tommy said. “How fast can we get everyone out?”
“If they’re pulling in ACS it means they’ve got full authority to use anything,” Papa said. “At this point we’ve probably got laser interdiction topside.”
“So we are now trapped,” Aelool said, softly. “I will inform my people. When will you set the self-destruct?”
“Who says we’re trapped?” Papa asked. “We just use the back door.”
“What back door?” Aelool asked, his face wrinkling.
“The one I had installed cause I wasn’t going to be in a place without a back door?” Papa replied, grinning. “We did it through the Himmit. It’s miles long. We st
art everybody out that way and by the time we have to blow this popsicle stand they’ll be behind enough blast shields they’ll survive.”
“I will inform my people,” Aelool said, nodding. He looked… discomfited.
“Hey,” Papa said. “Be glad we didn’t tell you. It seems like they know pretty much everything the Bane Sidhe know.”
“You must stop them!” The senior Indowy had not been introduced. Everyone just turned and looked at him.
“Stopping them is out of the question,” Tommy said. “We’re going to be lucky to slow them down.”
“If we are captured,” the Bane Sidhe said, desperately. “If we are destroyed… It will be the end of everything!”
“And that means exactly what to us?” Cally snapped, rounding on him. “Now that you need us, all of a sudden our ‘evil skills’ are important?”
“Cally,” Nathan said.
“No, Nathan,” Cally said. “If they don’t like what they do then why don’t they have the moral fortitude to just give themselves up? They can’t have it both ways. Either our skills are important, and the little issues that go along with them, honor and duty as humans view it, are part of those skills, or they are not. So they need to choose. Now, here, this moment, they need to choose.”
The Indowy looked as if he could not decide if he was more afraid of the woman… or what she had just said.
“It is a point I have been trying to make with them for some time,” Aelool said gravely. “But not one they appear possible of grasping.”
“Also beside the point,” Papa said. “You needed the intensive course in alien diplomacy I just went through, Granddaughter. Whether they like our skills or not, the fact that we are using them to save their sorry asses is all that matters. As of the first contact with ACS, the debt the Bane Sidhe owe Clan O’Neal is unpayable. They will never have the credit to pay for our sacrifice. Effectively, we own them, not the other way around. Am I wrong, Master Indowy?”
“You are not.” Indowy could whine just like puppies when they were distressed enough.
“If any of us survive!” Cally pointed out.
“As long as they don’t find out about Edisto, the Clan survives,” Papa said.
“That is a remarkably Indowy way of looking at things, Clan Leader,” Aelool said.
“So we’ve got some overlap,” Papa said. “But we can’t hide them in Venezuela forever. Or even for very long. These guys are hot as a nuclear potato.”
“You will not need to,” a Himmit said, fading into sight.
“I hate you guys!” Papa said. “Dammit, how did you get in here?”
“We have managed to secure a ship large enough to transport all of your dependents and the Indowy in one load,” the Himmit said, not bothering to answer. “It is stationed off your Gamma tunnel. They will be transported to a point of safety until this blows over. They will be safe and impossible to find. You have the guarantee of the Himmit Empire.”
“Empire?” Cally said.
“There is not much time,” the Himmit continued. “Begin your evacuation at once.”
“So we have no idea what’s down there, General?” Sergeant Harkless asked, looking at the hologram with an unhappy expression.
The Banshee shuttle, there not being a danger of ground-fire, was cruising along at 70,000 feet. Mike had been on enough bad Banshee flights in his time that he’d asked the pilots to avoid turbulance.
There wasn’t much turbulence at 70k.
“Nada,” Mike said. “What you’re seeing is what we’ve got. Remote sensing indicates it’s the size of a Sub-Urb but there’s more power than normal. Also some antimatter, possibly from weaponry but it might just be power sources. There are at least one thousand Indowy and an unknown number of humans. Humans have been shown to have high skills but only light weapons. Don’t bet on the last part. They have extensive Indowy support.”
“ACS, sir?” Lieutenant Cuelho asked. The LT was a bit taller than Mike with short-cropped hair. He was starting to get over wagging his tail to be in the same shuttle as “Iron Mike” O’Neal. Mike hoped that he settled down before the bullets started flying. The fact that he could think clearly enough to ask a question helped.
“Probably not,” Mike said. “But ACS-killing weaponry? Possibly. For that matter they might have the sort of modified Posleen weaponry the Ten Thousand used.”
“Juvs, sir?” Sergeant First Class Harkless asked. Long-life soldiers tended to be a force multiplier. Harkless was a prime example. He looked in his mid-twenties but had all the tells of a juv. And that long face was familiar. Mike was sure he had seen him before but he’d told Shelly not to tell him where. He liked, at least occasionally, to bank on his overfull protoplasmic memory system.
“Almost assuredly,” Mike said. “Indowy can produce rejuv drugs fairly easily.”
“Until we see what we’re facing I don’t think we can come up with much of a plan, sir,” Lieutenant Cuelho said, nervously.
“Won’t be the first time I’ve done something with damned little intel and no real plan,” Mike said, shrugging. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“Looks like a good plan,” Papa said. “About as good as we’re going to get.”
“Glad you’re here to run it,” Cally said, grinning.
“Not going to,” Papa replied, standing up. “Not my forte. I know that Nathan said I’ve got to quit being a captain. Thing is, I was never even a captain. There was more than one reason I let you handle the teams. Could I run this? Yes. Could I run it better than you? No. Running a large force is an art and it’s one I’ve never really had.”
“Bullshit,” Cally said. “You’re much better than I am.”
“At certain things,” Papa said, patting her on the shoulder. “Which is why I’m taking the hide in the atrium.”
“Oh, hell no,” Cally said, her eyes blazing. “That’s suicide!”
“The ACS mostly fights outdoors,” Papa said. “The commander is going to feel more comfortable there than anywhere else. Lots of sight-lines. He’s going to have a bodyguard group. The guy who takes the shot is going to have to be very good if he’s going to survive. It’s really me or you if we’re going to try it. And as I just pointed out, you’re better at running a battle like this than I am.”
“You are not going to die on me,” Cally said, angrily. “It’s not that important.”
“Taking out the commander will throw them off,” Papa said. “It’s important. Just as you surviving is important. And it’s not suicide. Trust me. I’m going to take one shot and be gone before they can react. If he’s not right in my crosshairs, I’ll just evac.”
“Papa,” Cally said.
“Hush, child,” Papa replied, putting his finger on her lips. “I’ll see you at the extraction point.”
“Placerville,” Mike said out of nowhere, his head gently rocking to the movement of the hard-maneuvering shuttle. His chin was resting on interlaced fingers which were, in turn, resting on the butt of his grav-rifle.
Mike had pointed out to the pilots that whereas he didn’t like Nap of Earth flying, he preferred NOE to being shot out of the sky. So when they got in reasonable range of antiaircraft — with GalTech that was about two hundred miles — they had dropped down to ground level and were hammering hard at about two hundred feet AGL. North Kentucky had some relief to it, not to mention power lines, so the shuttles were bucking up and down like a bronco. If the general found that uncomfortable it wasn’t apparent.
“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Harkless said. He’d clipped off his weapon and was leaning back, his helmet in the seat next to him and his arm resting on it.
Mike leaned over and spit in his helmet, the biotic undergel consuming the organic material as it did sweat, wastes and, occasionally, puke.
“The rank threw me,” Mike said. “Sorry. RIFed?”
RIF stood for “reduction in force.” After the war there were too many Chiefs and not enough Indians. A lot of officers who wanted to stay in
had been reduced in rank.
“Yes, sir,” Harkless said.
“You were a major then,” Mike said. “501st. Whadja make?”
“Colonel, sir,” Harkless said. “Got out. Didn’t find anything worth doing. Joined back up as a private. Rank’s… slow these days.”
“You were a colonel?” Cuelho asked, his eyes wide. “Sir?”
“I sir you, Lieutenant,” Harkless said, chuckling. “Not the other way around. You’re the boss, sir.”
“Hell,” Mike said with a chuckle. “I was a major general. Then a brigadier. Then colonel. Then a major general. Then a colonel again. Now I’m a lieutenant general. Way things are going, I’m bucking for private.”
“Yes, sir,” Harkless said, chuckling in turn. “If you want a job as an instructor… I can hook you up.”
“Thanks,” Mike said.
“Seriously,” Harkless continued. “I know people. Have your people call my people.”
“I’ll do that,” Mike said, laughing. Then he grunted angrily. “Dammit! That’s it!”
“What, sir?” Cuelho said, his eyes wide.
“I’ve done this shit a lot,” Mike said. “Enough that I get déjà vu… A lot. I was trying to figure out what this reminded me of.”
“Which battle was it, sir?” Cuelho said, a touch eagerly. The chance to hear someone as legendary as General O’Neal reminisce about a battle didn’t come often.
“Harkless,” Mike said. “Rebel force. Light weapons. In what could be for all practical purposes a space-ship even if it’s underground. The attacking force—”
“Is in armor!” Harkless said and then began laughing so hard he’d have fallen out of his seat if it wasn’t for the straps. “Oh, God, sir! You’re killing me!”
“I need to get my helmet configured!” Mike said. “It needs to have these sort of wing things coming out of the bottom! Hey, Shelly, any way you can make this armor black?”