The rest of the group were scattered about like insects; as she watched, Elvira managed to reach the ledge, collapsing as she had done, gasping from the exertion. She dared a look at her watch, praying she would have a little time to recuperate; twenty-five minutes to go. They could afford five; indeed, to get the timing of their surprise attack right, they'd need to hold on.
Gradually, the rest of the squad managed to make their way to the top; Clark was ready to just continue on over the top before Orlova pulled him back down onto the ledge. They sat for a minute of silence, taking quick swigs from their canteens, checking their rifles one last time, making themselves ready for the action. Caine spotted Hawk at the edge of the ledge, and with some difficulty managed to inch her way over to him.
He looked up, grinning, "Don't worry, it'll work, Lieutenant."
Running her eye over the gimmicked collection of wires and circuits, she had her doubts, but hid them, "I know. I've got a special job for you."
"What?"
"I need you to stay here."
His eyes widened, "You'll need me for the attack."
"I need you here, operating that radio."
"Anyone can do that. You. Orlov."
"But not anyone can fix it if it goes wrong. I mean it, Hawk; I want you to wait here on the ledge and call the shuttles as they come down. Or warn them off if the attack fails."
"It won't fail."
She placed a hand on his shoulder, "Thirty people on those shuttles. Thirty. I don't want them shot out of the sky for nothing, and neither do you – and you know it."
For a second she thought he was going to push the radio over the edge of the cliff in frustration, but instead he nodded in silence, pulling it from his back and starting to set it up near the ledge. Nodding, she made her way cautiously back to the middle of the group, looking at them. A motley group of troops; the average age was only pushed over twenty by the forty-five-year old Orlov; most of the kids here would be turned away from a recruiting station and sent back to school. Not that there was any choice, and not that they would go back now even if she ordered it.
"Right, here's how it goes. We go over the top on my signal, in two minutes. That'll give us ten minutes to get to the launcher and blow the damn thing up. That has to happen at all costs, no matter what. That's got to be the first order of business. After that, mop up the rest and get to defensive positions. If I get shot, Orlova's in charge. Both of us, Orlov. More than that, and you've got bigger problems than working out the command structure."
Orlova added, "If in doubt, shoot at a bad guy. That'll do it. And make sure you find some decent cover when you get to the top."
"Go in shooting; we need to catch them by surprise. They've got numbers and positioning, so let's just hope we can balance that out."
"Don't worry, Lieutenant," Clark said, "We'll send'em to hell."
Inside, she counted down the seconds, tensing herself up for the attack, pulling her pistol out of its holster. With ten seconds to go, she placed her hands on handholds, looking left and right to see everyone else in the same position. Mentally running through what she needed to do one last time, she missed the count by two seconds. Hopefully they wouldn't be too important.
"Go!" she yelled, pulling herself onto the top of the plateau. Quickly, she took a quick visual scan of the terrain; the missile rack was almost a hundred meters high, controlled from a small bunker at its base; a trio of bored looking guards were standing outside, and worse luck – a larger truck was pulled up nearby, a dozen men wearing some sort of ceremonial uniform hastily disembarking as they saw her rogues emerging from the cliff face, getting themselves into cover. They had plenty; sandbags set up all over the place, but someone had done a thorough job of getting rid of any cover they might have used.
Clark beat her to the first shot – not unexpected. One of the more careless legionnaires fell into the dust, his bad choice of cover proving a fatal mistake. A fusillade of shots rang out from her people as they sped forward, trying desperately to get to the cover of the sandbags before any retaliation could be unleashed on them. Caine sprinted forward, all thoughts of an organized assault wiped from her head as dust began to kick up all around her, a pair of screams telling her that at least some enemy fire had hit home.
As she slid into the dust behind a heap of sandbags, she looked around to see what was left of her command; two of Clark's gang lay jerking in the dust to the rear, but the rest seemed to have managed to get into cover, scattered into three clumps. A couple of grenades would have dealt with them; fortunately the enemy didn't seem to have any, though the rattling of a machine gun suggested that they were still a dangerous force to be reckoned with. Orlova skidded in behind her, Clark just on her heels.
"We've got to stop that machine gun, Deadeye!" she yelled, gesturing to the right; a team of three legionnaires were manning an archaic looking death-dealer, well protected by sandbags. There was nothing but clear ground between them, and no prospect of getting across the cover without being gunned down. The other enemy troops had taken positions by the door, forming a perfect killing zone between them and their objective.
"They've got us pinned down," Caine replied, shaking her head.
Orlova shook her head, "We've only got four minutes before we need a big explosion."
Nodding, Caine turned to Clark, "Orlova and I are going to try and get to the door. You give us covering fire. Keep their heads down."
Smiling, Clark gestured to his men, but it wasn't anything like the gesture she had been expecting; he waved his arm over his head, signaling for his men to charge the enemy. Before she could stop them, before she could do anything about it, he'd jumped over the sandbags and was running forward, shooting wildly at the enemy positions, screaming a battle cry, his men along side. The machine gun started its deadly work, and four of the gang dropped to the sand with cries of agony while the rest pushed forward to get the attack home.
Transfixed, Caine could only watch as the force raced forward. Orlova, Orlov and Elvira put their rifles into position and took pot shots at any incautious figures that exposed themselves, working to even the odds a bit. With another manic scream, his knife held high, Clark threw himself behind the enemy position and out of their sight; the sounds of vicious hand-to-hand fighting the only evidence of his continued survival. The rest of his people were stranded all over the place, most of the wounded but still shooting from scraps of cover they'd managed to find. The whole charge had taken less than ten seconds.
"Those damned fools," Caine said, hearing the rattle of the machine gun; their advance had curved well away from it, leaving it intact and shooting.
"They've got the main body of the attack distracted, Deadeye. We're going to have to run for it."
"How did we get this desperate?"
"Remember – zig-zag or die."
Taking a deep breath, clutching her pistol again in her hand, she rolled out to the side of the sandbags and started to run towards the door, the longest fifty yards she would ever run in her life. The staccato fire of the machine gun immediately sprang into life, sending more dust flying to her left and right; a few pot shots from Orlov and Elvira, still concealed in cover, were not enough to stop the crew from continuing its deadly work. Everywhere she could hear the screams of the dead and the dying from both sides.
Orlova was just ahead of her, weaving from side to side on a path to the door, a few bullets leaping from her rifle at odd seconds, wildly flying nowhere near the enemy, but at least serving as a distraction. Caine tried to increase her pace, but then found herself sliding, falling, rolling to the side; her boots had slipped on something on the sand, and try as she might she had lost her balance and collapsed into a heap on the ground. Ahead, Orlova continued to run for the door; in a split-second Caine was cheering her on, hoping that she could finish the job she had failed to do, and she waited for death to take her. Three shots rang out, one after the other.
"Get moving, Lieutenant!" she heard from the rear, Hawk running and d
iving forwards with his gun. The machine gun was finally silent, the crew killed with three expert shots. Not hesitating any longer, she crawled to her feet and raced for the door, getting into the cover of the wall before any of the other troopers could hit her. Hawk was sprinting behind her, jumping over cover in a bid to reach the door, before himself falling to the ground, clutching his shoulder and screaming in pain.
Tensing to move, every sinew in her body, every thought in her head demanding that she run forward to retrieve the boy who had saved her life just a few seconds before, she felt a restraining hand on her shoulder, pulling her back to the door. Writhing and wriggling to try and escape the grasp, she gave up as Hawk's eyes began to slide shut, a low moan coming from him.
"Let me go!"
"No!" Orlova said. "We've got a mission to complete, or everyone out there is dying for nothing!" She began to rattle the door, cursing at the lock, then pulled her pistol out of its holster and shot the lock twice, the loud report echoing around inside. Holding three fingers of her hand up, she lowered them one at a time in quick succession then kicked the door open, firing blindly with her rifle at the inside. The shots were inspired; two guards collapsed to the ground.
Caine took one last glimpse at the carnage outside, the fighting finally beginning to subside – though she had no idea who was winning, if anyone – and ducked into the building. Inside was a long metal staircase leading up to a mesh platform halfway to the top; a couple more figures were moving about up there, and Orlova was already firing at them to little effect.
Jumping over a table, Caine clambered onto the staircase, the metal rungs rattling as she sprinted up them three at a time, Orlova hard on her heels. Bullets danced past her, missing her by inches as she ducked and weaved her way upstairs, her comrade providing her with covering fire.
Almost before she realized it, she'd reached the level, facing a pair of dangerous-looking legionnaires armed with guns. Without hesitating, she threw herself at one of them, smacking him across the head with her fists; he was obviously not prepared for the attack and crashed down, struggling in her grip. Over her head, a pair of shots rang out, and the other legionnaire collapsed on top of the two of them, blood splattering onto her clothes as she rolled to the side.
She felt a sharp blow to the chest, another to the leg, and a third to the head before her wits recovered enough to fight back with a pair of savage kicks; before she could attack again, there was another shot, and her opponent fell limp in her arms, sliding down onto the deck, his eyes rolling back as a horrible gurgle rattled in his throat. Orlova was looking down on her, a pistol in her hand.
"Interesting tactic, Deadeye. Come on!"
Running across the platform, they made their way over to a ladder heading up through a hole in the ceiling; again Caine took the lead, ducking her head inside to see if anyone was looking down, her pistol at the ready to take a shot if needed. Rung after rung, her muscles were unpleasantly reminded of the agony they had endured on the cliff climb. The occasional bang resounded from outside, and she tried not to think about what was happening out there.
Bursting through a hatch cover, Caine rolled out onto the ground, knocking a surprised operator to the ground; he seemed to be the only one in the room, which was otherwise filled with complicated machinery and equipment. He swore something at her in French, then threw himself at her, only to be felled in mid-air by a shot from Orlova, who climbed into the room and closed the hatch cover behind her. There was a narrow vision slit of the ground below, not enough to see any detail, but enough for them to tell that the firing had stopped outside, at least for the moment.
"Well, we're here, now what do we do?" Orlova said.
"We're improvising, Maggie. Any ideas?"
"I was rather hoping we'd capture some explosives. That we might have trouble blowing the damn thing up was something that hadn't occurred to me."
Caine looked at the control panel, sliding into the operative's chair. As she expected, all of the instruments were in French; she'd be pushing buttons at random rather than to any actual effect. Her eyes ran up and down the controls, looking for anything that might be a missile self-destruct – but if there was such a control, she couldn't work out what it was.
"Damn it, this is ridiculous. Each of those missiles could blow up ten of these platforms!" she yelled in frustration.
Orlova peered over her shoulder, "Let's start pushing buttons. We're trying to make a mess of things."
"We could launch them at the shuttle if we aren't careful." She turned around. "Can we hold this for long enough to get the shuttles down?"
"I wouldn't want to bet on it. There could be a dozen legionnaires running up the ladder in two minutes."
Trying to calm herself, Caine closed her eyes, attempting to visualize the launcher as she had seen it from outside. A dozen missiles pointed at the sky, all locked into a launcher and ready to fire. She couldn't see any sort of targeting controls, but they would be there somewhere – but without knowing what to break, they wouldn't be able to do it in the time.
Locked into a launcher.
"Got it!" she yelled, turning to Orlova, "Run for it."
"What?"
"If I get this right, they'll be a huge explosion in about a minute. Get moving."
Reluctantly, Orlova hefted her rifle and started to slide down the ladder as Caine began to push buttons, now with a sense of some kind of purpose. She might not be able to read the dials, but she could certainly identify manual overrides; they were usually set to make themselves as obvious as possible. And there was a bank of twelve switches that had to be some sort of launch system. She threw all twelve of them, pulling the switches down and to the left with a sweep of her hand, then started pushing every button that flashed red.
As the last of the buttons went dark, a loud siren began to echo through the chamber, almost deafening her; she barely retained the sense to follow Orlova down the ladder, not bothering with the rungs, instead just sliding down the outside with her sleeves. With a crash, she landed on the platform, almost falling over again, but knowing what was about to happen she sprinted across the platform and down the steps, taking them three at a time, nearly tumbling twice in her desperate bid to get to the ground as fast as she possibly could.
Without checking to see if the coast was clear, she ran out of the building, running as far as possible. Shouting and voices followed her on the wind, rendered inaudible by the reverberating siren, that suddenly switched to a very final countdown. She was waiting for the crack of a bullet, but none came; in the corner of her eye she could see another couple of figures running as fast as she, and she hoped they were on her side. As the countdown came to a stop, she dived for the floor, holding her hands over her eyes to protect them.
The explosion deafened her, roaring with a terrible thunder across the plateau, and the flash of heat on her back was testimony to what she had accomplished; rolling on her back, she saw a column of fire running up to the sky, the missile installation now nothing more than a twisted jumble of wreckage surrounded by corpses.
By her side, in the dust, she saw Orlov and Elvira, shaking the dust from their clothes, she gave them both a quick nod, then climbed to her feet, hands on knees, slowly walking towards the ruin she had created. She looked down at her pistol, still in her hand, only belatedly realizing that she hadn't fired it once in the whole battle.
Orlova sprinted over to her, shaking her head, "We're not going to need a radio after all. Alamo will have seen that from orbit!"
Ignoring her, Caine walked over to the bodies in the sand, some of them still groaning. Hawk hadn't even got further than the first layer of sandbags; she knelt by his side, running her hand over his face, and felt breath on her palm. She looked down at him, her eyes widening, then up at Orlova.
"He's alive!"
Orlov ran forward, pulling an improvised medical kit out of his pocket, looking up at her – and nodding. His arms were twisted unnaturally, his wounds were terrible, but
he was breathing strongly. Orlov poured something into his mouth, and he began to settle a little.
"That will keep him unconscious until help arrives. I don't want him waking up until we can get him some pain relief. Go see if there are any others."
As she walked forward, Orlova mute by her side, a few other figures stumbled out of the dust cloud, most of them wounded to some degree or another; amazingly, five of Clark's gang had managed to survive the attack. As she walked around the last layer of defenses, she found Clark himself, a grin still on his face – now there forever. He was surrounded by a pile of bodies, his knife still locked in his hand in an iron grip. It was obviously not the explosion that had killed him; a bayonet was sticking out of his back, but he'd managed to have his revenge before he died.
"I hope he got all the notches he wanted," she said. "Damn it, this is stupid."
"It's always like this, Deadeye. Always." Orlova looked up at her, "We both need to know that there was a reason for all of this. They died for something. Something damned important. And they all volunteered, none of them wanted to be left behind."
"That doesn't make it any easier."
"But it's something to tell their ghosts when they come to you late at night."
Cheers were rising up from the rear, the survivors gathering around to celebrate their victory. Not a single legionnaire had survived – between their attack and the explosion, all of them had been killed. Walking past the celebration, Caine looked out to the main compound a mile away, shaking her head. Already a thin cloud of dust was beginning to gather, reinforcements obviously on the way. They'd have about twenty minutes at the most before they were going to have a counter-attack to worry about, and none of them were in any shape to fight, or to retreat.
"This could be a short celebration," she said to Orlova. Then she heard a loud roar from above, a sonic boom high in the atmosphere, and looked up.
"What the hell?"
Chapter 26
For once, Marshall had ordered the bridge cleared of all but essential personnel, despite the near-demands of half of the crew to find excuses for coming up for the ride. Ryder was sitting next to him at the Watch Officer's station, pulling at the strap that Quinn's work crews had installed just an hour ago after Dietz had realized that the ride would be rough enough to catapult them out of their chairs, not something that was usually a problem in deep space.
Victory or Death Page 20