The entire building shuddered in agony as dozens of plasma bolts-these fired at full power, like brimstone buzz saws-sliced through the wall which had already begun to disintegrate. Andersson seemed to flatten into the ceramacrete floor, spreading out in an impossibly thin layer, while he continued to pour back a torrent of fire. But one of those plasma bolts slammed directly through the opening Moyano had cut for her weapon and killed her instantly.
***
"Right!" Rivera shouted as the southern calliope suddenly stopped firing. "Bear right!"
His men obeyed, curling away from the calliope still flaying their ranks from their left flank.
"Now go right through them!" he bellowed.
***
Alicia saw Moyano's icon flicker crimson. An instant later, Ewan MacEntee's followed suit as a plasma bolt streaked in through a gaping hole and impacted with freakish accuracy on his armor.
"They're coming through, Tom!" she snapped.
"Oh, no, they're not," Kiely said flatly.
***
"Keep going! Keep going!" Rivera screamed. He'd lost a quarter of his plasma gun-armed troops coming up the hill, and his fifteen remaining plasma gunners were at the point of his charge. Now they lowered their heads, hit their jump gear, and smashed straight through the riddled, weakened wall.
***
Corporal Thomas Kiely squeezed the firing grips, and a massive blast of plasma enveloped the center of the terrorists' charge. Most of the building's western wall-the part of it that hadn't already been blown to bits, at least-disappeared. Three of the fifteen men who'd smashed their way through it lived long enough to shriek in agony; the rest died too quickly even for that.
It staggered Rivera's action group. It ought to have broken their charge, stopped the attack cold, but Kiely hadn't had time to run a diagnostic on the weapon. Which meant he didn't know the firing chamber's containment field had been damaged.
The back blast from the disintegrating weapon killed him instantly, despite his armor, and bowled Alicia off her feet.
***
Rivera flinched as the entire end of the building exploded in eye-tearing brilliance and took a third of his men-and all of his remaining plasma rifles-with it.
For just an instant he wondered what additional horrendous surprises the Cadre might have rigged, but then he realized what that had to have been.
"Follow me!" he howled, bounding straight ahead through the charging infantry who'd faltered as their companions were killed. "Follow me!"
***
Alicia bounced back upright, her mind clear and cold even as grief hammered at its corners. Three of her eleven defenders were already down, and the orange icons which had hesitated when Kiely fired came flooding forward once again.
She brought up the M-97 and opened fire as the first FALA battle armor came through the flaming wreckage which had once been the wall of the building.
***
Rifle fire blasted Rivera's battle armor, but his breastplate held. The three men directly behind him were less fortunate, and his own rifle snapped into firing position.
***
Alicia dropped one of the attackers while Tannis' fire-as deadly accurate as ever-took down two more with perfect helmet hits. Alicia swung her manual rifle towards another target, but the terrorist fired first, and Alicia staggered as penetrators slammed into her. Her Cadre armor-tougher and lighter than Marine-issue equipment-held, but at least one of the heavy rounds smashed into her borrowed M-97, transforming it abruptly into so much shattered, useless wreckage.
She dropped it instantly, and her hands swept down. Her CHK seemed to materialize in her left hand, her force blade in the other, and she heard someone else using her voice to shriek a Valkyrie's war cry as she lunged forward.
***
Jaime Rivera gaped in disbelief as the cadreman took at least five direct hits and didn't go down. And then the trooper who should have been dead was coming straight at him, pistol in one hand and some sort of sword in the other.
The pistol came up, and Rivera recoiled as the first penetrator spalled his visor. It didn't punch through, but the incredible impact, less than ten centimeters in front of his eyes half-stunned him. It was only for an instant, no more than a single heartbeat, but that was long enough.
His vision had just begun to refocus when the force blade in Alicia DeVries' right hand decapitated him in a fountain of blood.
***
Chaos overwhelmed Alicia's ability to multitask at last.
Blood exploded over her, obscuring her visor, as she cut down the terrorist who'd smashed her rifle, but her armor sensors were still up, and some fragment of her concentration saw Adam Skogen's icon charge towards the breakthrough. He came bounding to meet it, battle rifle flaming as he burned through his remaining ammunition in a handful of seconds, and then he, too, went down. James Kr¢l was down on one knee making every round count, firing steadily, accurately into the armored terrorists charging past him. Most of them didn't even realize he was there, and he dropped at least five of them before two more spotted him and turned to engage him. One of them went down, as well, and then Kr¢l was down, badly wounded, his armor critically damaged, and more terrorists flooded past him.
Alicia slashed down another terrorist. Her pistol came up-by instinct, not conscious thought-and she slammed the muzzle into direct contact with another enemy's visor. She squeezed the trigger, and the terrorist flew backward as the light-caliber penetrators smashed through the only part of his armor they could have hoped to defeat.
She heard Tannis screaming a warning and whirled towards the fresh threat, then staggered as another burst of penetrators shrieked off her armor. The sudden impact threw her off-balance as a trio of terrorists came at her, still firing. More penetrators whined and crashed off of her armor, hammering her backward. She went to one knee and the terrorists closed for the kill, but then Tannis was there, battle rifle flaming in full auto.
Alicia's attackers tumbled away, awkward in death, but even as they fell, she heard Tannis' scream over their dedicated link. Her wing went down, life signs flashing luridly on Alicia's monitor, and Alicia shrieked herself-in rage and fury, not pain-as she lunged back upright over her friend's body. Her force blade sliced effortlessly through the terrorist who'd just shot Tannis, and Alicia DeVries charged.
***
The men who had followed Jaime Rivera up the hill, through the tornado of calliope fire, through the devastating blast of plasma which had killed a third of their entire action group, wavered as their leader went down. And then, coming at them through the flame and the smoke and the thunder of a man-made hell, they saw a single figure in filthy, blood-splashed, battered and gouged battle armor. It didn't even have a rifle-just a pistol in one hand and a force blade in the other-but it came straight at them. Penetrators hit it again and again, but it was moving too quickly, the impacts were too oblique to penetrate, and then that dreadful force blade was among them, slicing through their armor as if it didn't even exist.
A head flew, someone else howled in agony as the force blade slashed straight through his armor and lopped off his right arm at the elbow. Another armored figure went down, shrieking, gauntleted hands clutching uselessly at the blood-spouting wound where the force blade had punched straight through his armor and the belly under it.
It was too much. They'd come up that hill with fifty-two men; now the five survivors turned and ran as that terrifying figure came at them. And as they fled back down the hill, Erik Andersson's calliope was waiting.
***
Group Leader Lloyd Abruzzi stared in disbelief as five men-only five-from Rivera's action group fell back.
For all his argument with the other group leader, Abruzzi would never have believed a handful of exhausted infantry-even Cadre infantry-could have held against Rivera's assault. But they had held, and even as he watched, the five fleeing survivors went down one by one, picked off by murderously accurate bursts of calliope fire.
T
hose bastards, he thought venomously. Those fucking bastards!
All the hatred Lloyd Abruzzi had ever felt for the Terran Empire and the Imperial Cadre flamed up within him, and his lips drew back from his teeth in an ugly snarl.
So we do it my way after all, he told himself, and punched into his own action group's command frequency.
"Plasma gunners! I want that fucking building flattened! Open -"
***
Lloyd Abruzzi never had time to realize Rivera had been wrong.
Sir Arthur Keita and Major Alexander Bennett hadn't waited for the Cadre to confirm the destruction of the antiair defenses around the objective. Alicia DeVries had told them her people would neutralize them, and they'd begun their assault insertion the instant Charlie Company's survivors launched their attack. Abruzzi had thought he had at least ten or fifteen more minutes to complete the destruction of the fire-wracked building on top of his hill, but he, too, had been wrong.
The precisely targeted pattern of hyper-velocity weapons came down out of the Shallingsport night like solid bars of light, far, far ahead of the sound of their passage, and the glaring fireballs wiped Abruzzi's action group away like the fists of an angry deity.
***
Alicia's sensor remote saw the shuttles coming in, saw the explosions, saw the handful of surviving terrorists turning to race desperately for the illusory sanctuary of the mountains even as three of the shuttles banked after them, heavy cannon thundering mercilessly. She saw it all, but she had no time for it. She was on her knees beside Tannis, desperately accessing her friend's med panel while Tannis' flickering vital signs dimmed towards extinction.
"DeVries! Sergeant DeVries!" someone was shouting over the company command circuit.
"Medic!" she shouted back. "I need a medic right now!"
"Over there!" she heard, and then Marines in battle armor were all around her, impossibly neat and clean amid the chaos and destruction, the filth and the blood and the bodies.
"Medic!" she screamed yet again as Tannis' heart suddenly stopped. She hammered at the med panel with both hands, but other hands reached down for her-battle armored hands, whose strength was a match for her own, hauling her to her feet, pulling her away from Tannis.
She fought madly, but there were too many of them. It took four Marines to hold her, but they pinned her, held her, pulled her back.
"Alley!" a fresh voice shouted as another armored Marine went to her knees beside Tannis. "Alley!"
There was something about that voice. Something familiar, and Alicia's eyes widened.
"Lieutenant?" she heard the disbelief in her own ragged voice. "Lieutenant Kuramochi?"
"It's me, Alley," Captain Kuramochi said. "The medics are here. Do you hear me-the medics are here." Two more gauntleted hands reached out, settling on either side of Alicia's helmet, holding it motionless while Kuramochi Chiyeko leaned towards her. Their visors touched, and Kuramochi spoke slowly, distinctly, looking directly into Alicia's exhausted eyes. "The medics are here, Sergeant. You've got to let them help her. Do you understand, Alley?"
"Yes," Alicia whispered, sagging inside her armor at last. "Yes."
"Then let's get you both out of here," Kuramochi said softly, tears sliding down her own cheeks. "Let's get you home."
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Lieutenant Alicia DeVries marched through the cavernous arch in Sligo Palace's inner wall. It was October, and autumn's paintbrush had been busy. The magnificently landscaped grounds of the immense Court of Heroes spread out before her, its autumn-splashed trees and gardens, its fountains and reflecting pools, all arranged to lead the eye inevitably to the Cenotaph at its center. The square, flower bed-defined courtyard around the Cenotaph's plain, polished marble shaft was large enough to parade an entire battalion and paved in oddly mottled-looking stone, not ceramacrete.
There was a reason for that courtyard's odd texture and coloration; every individual block of stone in it was from a different planet or inhabited moon of the Terran Empire.
Alicia still felt odd in the uniform of a Cadre lieutenant, but it was legally hers, even though she had yet to attend the OCS course which went with it, as she marched steadily, slowly down the long, straight pathway leading from the arch to the Cenotaph. That pathway was lined with simple battle steel plaques, each engraved with the names, branches of service, and serial numbers of men and women who had died in the service of the Terran Empire.
It seemed to take forever to reach the Cenotaph, and she kept her eyes fixed straight ahead, focused on the four individuals standing all alone on that plain of stone in the obelisk's shadow. There were others present, of course, seated in the reviewing stand along the southern edge of the Cenotaph courtyard, but there weren't that many. Not physically present, at least.
She crossed the edge of the stone paving, her boot heels sounding suddenly crisp and clear on its surface, and more boots sounded behind her. They hit the stone in perfect unison, their sounds echoes of her own, and she felt them at her back.
There weren't very many of them.
Tannis Cateau was there, finally released from hospital care two days earlier. And so were Erik Andersson, Alec Howard, Jackson Keller, Alexandra Filipov, Digory Beckett, James Kr¢l, whose hospital stay had ended one day before Tannis', and Karin de Nijs.
Nine men and women, including Alicia. The only survivors of Company C, Third Battalion, Second Regiment, Fifth Brigade, Imperial Cadre.
They marched steadily across the stone pavement, turned sharply to their left, then wheeled back to their right. Their left heels struck the stone in a single perfectly coordinated instant, and they snapped to attention facing the four men who had awaited them.
The only sounds were the cool October wind in the trees, the sharp popping of the flags atop their poles around the Cenotaph, the splash of water in the fountains at its base, the almost inaudible hum of the HD cameras hovering on their counter-grav floaters, and the distant cry of birds.
"Charlie Company, Third Battalion, reports as ordered, Sir!" Alicia said crisply, and her hand flashed up in salute.
General Dugald Arbatov, the Cadre's commanding general, returned the salute. Then he looked at the man standing beside him.
"Call the role, if you please, Brigadier," he said.
"Yes, Sir!" Sir Arthur Keita replied. Then he raised the old-fashioned, anachronistic clipboard he'd had tucked under his left arm and turned to face the nine men and women standing at attention before him in that space which would have held a battalion.
"Alwyn, Madison!" he said, not even glancing at the neatly printed columns of names on the clipboard he held.
"Present," Alicia replied, her voice firm and clear.
"Andersson, Erik!"
"Present," Andersson responded.
"Arun, Namrata!"
"Present," Tannis Cateau replied.
"Ashmead, Jeremy!"
"Present!" Alec Howard barked.
The names and responses rang out in slow, clear cadence in the quiet, quiet afternoon. Two hundred and seventy-five names Keita called out, and two hundred and seventy-five times the response "Present" answered.
"Yrj”, Rauha!" Keita called the final name.
"Present!" Alicia answered for the last name, as for the first, and her voice was just as firm, just as clear, despite the tears shining in her eyes.
Keita nodded, tucked the clipboard back up under his left arm, turned to face Arbatov, and saluted sharply.
"Charlie Company, Third Battalion, Second Regiment, Fifth Brigade, all present and accounted for, Sir!"
"Thank you, Brigadier," Arbatov replied quietly, returning his salute, and turned to the third man present.
The third man wasn't especially tall. He was fair-haired and blue-eyed, on the young side of fifty, and he wore a green-on-green uniform very like the one Alicia wore. But his uniform carried no rank badges or unit insignia, and a simple golden circlet rested on his head.
"Your Majesty," Arbatov said with a deep bow,
"I beg to report that Charlie Company, Third Battalion, Second Regiment, Fifth Brigade, of your Cadre is all present and accounted for."
"Thank you, General," His Majesty Seamus II, Emperor and Prince Protector of Humanity, replied in a beautifully trained tenor voice, then turned to face Alicia and her eight fellows directly.
"For four centuries," he said, after a moment, "the Imperial Cadre has served Our house and Our empire with a courage and a devotion seldom if ever matched in human history. The Imperial Marine Corps, and the Imperial Fleet, have fought and died with supreme gallantry. We and the Emperors and Empresses who have come before Us have been humbled again and again by the sacrifices of the men and women of the Empire's regular armed forces. We are deeply and humbly cognizant of all they have accomplished, and of the price they have all too often paid in the Empire's service. But it has been Our Cadre which has carried Our personal banner and served as Our personal sword, Our paladins and Our champions.
David Weber - In Fury Born (ARC) Page 42