by David Weber
Alicia felt her eyebrows rise. Murphy—and not a member of the imperial house—could be counted upon to put in an appearance on any operation. A swamp landing, even for drop commandos with Cadre armor, was guaranteed to screw up any tactical plan. Combat armor didn't exactly touch down lightly, and swamp mud made an efficient substitute for glue if you hit hard enough and drove deep enough. But how in heaven's name had the pre-attack intelligence managed to miss a little thing like a swamp smack in the middle of their planned axis of attack?
"It wasn't there the last time we looked," Onassis continued. "Remember that pond just downstream from Beech Tree One? Seems like the dam must have broken, or else they decided to drain the damned thing, and all that nice, flat dry ground north of our objective turns out to be a floodplain."
Alicia grimaced.
"Anyway," Onassis said, "that means Third Platoon's not going to be in position to back us up on Beech Tree Two for at least another twenty minutes, and we can't wait that long without letting the birds we want out of the net. So your assignment just changed. Instead of covering Gilroy's flank, you're going to have to sub for Paál's people and come in at Alpha-Five."
A bright icon danced in her HUD, indicating the point at which a dry stream bed—and at least it's still dry, she thought wryly—intersected the perimeter of the training facility codenamed Beech Tree Two.
"Now," Onassis went on, his voice deepening just a bit, "I'm going to be a bit busier than anyone counted on, given this little change in plans. In fact, I'm not going to be able to go in with you the way we'd planned. What I'm saying is that the squad is yours after all. Understood?"
"Understood," she said, and she was pleased at how level her voice sounded. And she also sounded just a little bit distracted, she felt pretty sure, because her mind was already busy, grappling with the suddenly altered situation with all of the tick's flashing speed.
"One last thing." Onassis' voice was a bit flatter. "Lieutenant Masolle has positively confirmed the presence of children and apparent noncombatants in Beech Tree One. Rules of engagement Delta are in effect as of now."
"I copy ROE Delta," Alicia confirmed in an equally flat voice.
"In that case, good hunting," Onassis said with what she privately suspected was a much more cheerful confidence than he actually felt. "Clear."
The icon which had indicated they were speaking privately disappeared, and Alicia's mental command shifted her com into the dedicated First Squad net.
"All Winchesters," she said, "Winchester-One. There's been a change of plans, people. Lieutenant Paál's people aren't going to make the opening on time, so we're going to have to do a little improvisation. Winchester-Alpha-Seven, hold where you are," she continued, studying the icons of her squad's personnel as they glowed on the detailed topographical projection.
Corporal Michael Doorn's icon stopped moving instantly, and the icon of his wingman, Corporal Édouard Bonrepaux, took only two more jumps before it, too, froze, perfectly positioned to cover Doorn's flank.
"All other Alphas will form on this line," Alicia went on, even as she changed her own course, with Cateau bounding along in perfect formation through the rugged terrain. She used her synth-link to draw a green line across the HUD's terrain map. "Alpha-Seven will anchor one end; Alpha-Three will anchor the other. Alpha One, I want you in the center to coordinate Alpha's advance to contact."
"Winchester-One, Winchester-Alpha-One copies," Sergeant McGwire acknowledged. He and his wing, Corporal Chul Byung Cha, went bounding towards the indicated position. Winchester-Alpha-Three, Corporal Erik Andersson, didn't respond verbally, but his icon blinked in the two-two-one pattern which indicated that he understood, and he and Corporal Vartkes Kalachian, his wing, went slashing towards their own assigned positions.
"Winchester-Bravo-One," Alicia continued, turning her attention to Sergeant Abernathy's team. "We're not going to be able to leave a proper reserve—we were the Platoon's reserve—but I want you and your people in overwatch for the initial break-in. Put yourself and your heavy wing right here." She dropped another icon onto the tactical map, directly on top of a small hill just to the east of the point at which the stream bed crossed Beech Tree Two's perimeter. It was high enough to give Abernathy a clear direct line of sight along the streambed and well into the camp itself.
"Use your own judgment placing the rest of your wings," she told him. "I need you watching Alpha's back until they're in. Then I want you to come in along roughly this axis here."
She drew another line, this one with a bright arrowhead at one end. It crossed the perimeter east of the streambed and headed south, directly towards a block of barracks designated Rathole One on the map. Under the original ops plan, one of Lieutenant Paál's squads had been tasked to deal with Rathole One. Onassis hadn't specifically told her that those barracks were now her responsibility, but he had told her she would be "subbing" for Paál's missing squad. Besides, the streambed at Alpha-Five was the closest entry point for any of First Platoon's units.
"Remember," she said, blessing the hours she'd spent studying the ops plan she'd never had the opportunity to rehearse with the people who had suddenly become hers, "Rathole One is where their permanent training cadre bunks and messes. If anybody's going to have her head out of her ass by the time we go in, it's going to be someone over there. So watch yourselves. And if we get too much fire out of Rathole, go to ground somewhere along here —" a bright amber line in the HUD circled a rocky ravine which ought to provide pretty fair cover against fire from the barracks "— and wait instead of wading straight in. I'll bring Alpha in to support you ASAP."
"Bravo-One copies, Winchester-One," Abernathy replied, and she was pleased by his tone. His voice was clipped, businesslike and focused, but she heard the confidence in it. Confidence in her, in the evidence that the newbie giving his people orders really had done her homework.
"All Winchesters," she said, hoping that she wasn't about to knock that confidence on its head, "there's one more thing. Tiger-One has confirmed the presence of children and noncombatants—repeat, children and noncombatants—in Beech Tree One. Rules of engagement Delta are in effect. Confirm copy."
There was an instant of silence, despite the tick, as her people adjusted to that unpleasant news. Then the cascade of confirming responses came back to her, and she nodded. None of them sounded particularly happy, but that was fair enough—she wasn't particularly happy about it herself.
"All right, Winchesters," she said after the final confirmation had come in, "let's get to it."
It took less than five minutes for First Squad to shift to its hastily redesignated jumpoff point. To Alicia, riding the tick, it seemed more like five hours, but she knew better, and she made herself stifle her impatience. That was one of the major drawbacks to the tick; things frequently seemed to be taking far too long, and one had to remind oneself that it didn't look that way to the rest of the universe.
"Rifle-Two, Winchester-One," she reported finally, "Winchester is in position at Alpha-Five."
"Winchester-One," Onassis came back almost instantly. "Copy. Hold position for Weatherby."
"Rifle-Two, Winchester-One copies, hold position until Weatherby is in place."
She settled back very slightly, allowing herself a modest gleam of satisfaction. First Squad had had farther to go than either of First Platoon's other squads, but it had gotten there before Staff Sergeant Gilroy's people had reached their new jumpoff point.
She spent the brief delay scrutinizing the objective.
Beech Tree Two was an untidy gaggle of structures clustered around an unkempt looking "parade ground." Most of them had been identified by function, with a fair degree of confidence, on her HUD. One or two were question marks, and one of those—designated B13 on the tac overlay—lay squarely in front of First Squad.
There was movement on the camp's grounds. It had been slow to start, she thought, given the fact that the attack on Beech Tree One, which had been supposed to go in simultane
ously with the attack on Beech Tree Two, had actually gone in almost eight minutes ago. She hated the thought of giving the camp's inhabitants any additional time to get themselves organized, start to cope with the paralyzing surprise of a totally unanticipated attack out of the darkness, but that wasn't up to her. Besides, Lieutenant Strassmann—or, more likely, Captain Alwyn—was probably right. Taking the time to get themselves properly reorganized after such a major change in plans was almost certainly worth more to Charlie Company than a handful more of minutes could be to the people inside that camp.
"All Rifles," Lieutenant Strassmann's voice said suddenly, "Rifle-One. Go. I say again, go!"
"Winchester-Alpha-One, Winchester-One," Alicia said sharply. "Go!"
Corporal Vartkes Kalachian, call sign Winchester-Alpha-Five, was the first member of Alicia's squad to actually cross the wire around Beech Tree Two, and he did it with panache.
His armor's sensors had probed the ground between his jumpoff position and the camp's perimeter, and its sonar-imaging capability had picked up the "low signature" anti-personnel landmines which had been planted to protect the perimeter wire. It was unlikely that any less sophisticated sensors would have been able to "see" the mines, and Alicia had frowned as their icons had appeared on her HUD, cross-relayed from Kalachian's sonar. She'd wondered, as she passed the warning up the line to Onassis, where a bunch of terrorists had gotten their hands on them. The mines' composite cases contained no metallic alloys, and instead of the low-tech, chemical bursting charge she would have expected to find protecting a facility like this one, they used small, powerful, superconductor capacitor-fed gravitic fields. Which meant that there was nothing to alert chemical "sniffers" to the presence of their nonexistent explosive compounds.
Kalachian, however, knew exactly what was out there now, and he hit his jump gear hard. The sudden surge lifted him over the minefield and across the razor wire, and his armored body tucked and rolled neatly as he hit the ground inside the camp. Clearing the mines and the wire in a single jump had required a higher trajectory than The Book really liked. Had anyone been waiting for him at the moment that he topped out, he would have made an excellent target. But no one was waiting. Despite how long it had seemed take, to Alicia's tick-accelerated thoughts, for the platoon to get into position, and despite how the tick translated Kalachian's eighty kilometer-per-hour jump into floating slow motion, the denizens of Beech Tree Two were still trying to figure out what was happening when he touched down.
The rest of Alpha Team—with Alicia and Tannis Cateau attached—was on his heels. Alicia and Cateau were actually the last wing in. Alicia's job was to control and coordinate, to impose order, not to get bogged down in the fighting itself unless she absolutely had to. And Cateau's job was to keep any ill-intentioned individuals off Alicia's back while she went about managing the squad.
They might have gotten across the wire without taking any defensive fire, but that wasn't the same thing as crossing it without getting any response. Alicia's armor picked up the infrared sensors guarding the camp's wire as she broke one of the beams, and once again the sophistication of the defenses surprised her. The camp's powerful perimeter lights must have been directly coupled to the sensor net, because they switched on even as her people hit the ground.
The multi-million candlepower lights glared out of the darkness like suddenly ignited suns. There was no warning—only that instantaneous, stunning burst of brilliance, directly into any attackers' eyes, with what ought to have been equally instant, blinding disorientation. But Alicia's people were the Cadre. The enhancement of their vision let them decrease its sensitivity, as well as increase it, and they'd spent endless hours mastering their augmented capabilities. More than that, every one of them was riding the tick, and their vision compensated almost as quickly as the lights came on.
There was still a brief, fleeting instant before they adjusted, but that didn't matter, either. Every one of them was synth-link-capable, and every one of them was literally fused with his or her armor's systems. And those sensor systems didn't rely on anything as easily befuddled as the human optic nerve.
Alicia's rifle snapped into firing position. It wasn't like her Marine-issue M-97 had been. Instead, it was an integral part of her armor, mounted in a power-driven housing that brought its muzzle to bear on the nearest of the camp's spotlights with viperish speed. There was no trigger, no sights. A crosshair simply appeared, floating in her field of vision, and she moved it by thinking it into position. The "rifle" followed the crosshair, and her armor's onboard computers evaluated temperature, air pressure, local gravity, windage, and the ballistic performance of the three-millimeter caseless ammunition in the tank behind her shoulders and automatically corrected the crosshair for exact point of impact at any effective range. It happened with blinding speed, and yet the crosshair seemed to float slowly, so slowly to someone riding the tick, towards her chosen target. But then it was where she wanted it, and another flickering thought squeezed the "trigger."
A crisp, precise three-round burst ripped from her rifle. The needle-slim penetrators, formed of an artificial alloy considerably heavier and harder than tungsten, screamed across the sixty meters between her and her target at well over fifteen hundred meters per second. At that velocity they would have slammed through the breastplate of Marine powered armor like white-hot awls through butter. The unarmored spotlight offered exactly zero resistance to their passage, and its brilliance died in a spectacular flash.
Every single one of the other lights in their immediate front died within the space of less than two seconds as the even-numbered half of each wing of cadremen opened fire with the same blinding speed and deadly accuracy. The odd-numbered half of each pair continued forward, slicing straight towards their objectives.
Alicia's rifle muzzle snapped back up into "safe" position as Cateau loped past her. The corporal was no longer riding her jump gear; she wanted her feet firmly on the ground if she needed her own rifle.
"Alpha-Two, one o'clock!" Alicia snapped as six or seven figures suddenly appeared around the side of one of the barracks. She detected weapons on all of them, and they were headed directly towards Corporal Chul.
Chul didn't respond. She probably hadn't needed Alicia's warning, either, but that was all right with Alicia. She'd rather be considered a worrier than take any chances. Nor was Chul Byung Cha in any mood to take chances. Her own rifle swept into firing position and spat perfectly-targeted death. Three of the camp's defenders were dead before the others even realized they were under fire. Two more died before Sergeant McGwire, Chul's wingman, could target them. The last pair died almost simultaneously, even as they tried desperately to fling themselves flat on the ground, as McGwire and Chul switched their attention to them.
"Winchester-One has Bravo-One-Three," she announced, changing course slightly to make for the building whose function the Intelligence weenies had been unable to determine. That had been Chul's and McGwire's objective before they were delayed to deal with the counterattack, or whatever that had been. She probably should have left it to someone else, Alicia reflected, remembering her own earlier thoughts. But she and Cateau were closest to it, and she wanted the rest of the Alpha wings moving forward, not slowing down and diverting to clear a building whose purpose they didn't even know.
Cateau, she noticed, didn't say a word. Which wasn't necessarily the same thing as approving of her decision, of course.
There were more figures moving out there now, and it was obvious to Alicia that the camp's inhabitants still didn't realize what was happening. Those figures were moving towards her people, reacting defensively—possibly even instinctively, without conscious thought—and they wouldn't have been doing that if they realized they faced the Cadre. Heading away from the Cadre, as rapidly as possible, would have been a vastly more prudent response.
On the other hand, panicked people did stupid things—especially inexperienced panicked people.
"All Winchesters, remember the r
ules of engagement!" she said sharply. It was probably totally unnecessary, but it was also her responsibility, and she continued to move forward, heading for the building designated Bravo-One-Three.
She was only about thirty meters from it when the door slammed open and a figure stumbled out of it.
The crosshair reappeared in Alicia's HUD, floating slowly across it as her rifle flashed into firing position with blinding speed. It settled on the figure's chest, but she didn't fire. As she'd just reminded all of her people, ROE Delta was in effect, and she held her fire while her sensors probed the target.
Male, adult, height one hundred and seventy-one centimeters, they reported. No shirt, despite the cool night air. A red outline highlighted the short, broad bladed knife in the sheath on his right hip, but there was no sign of a rifle or pistol.
She swore silently to herself and let her rifle swing away from him. The odds were overwhelming, whether he carried a firearm or not, that he was one of the terrorists they'd come to kill or capture. But at this particular moment, he didn't have any weapon on his person which could threaten her or any of her people, and the rules of engagement were clear in that case.
But if she couldn't kill him, that didn't mean she necessarily had to be gentle. Nor was she about to take any chances that he might find himself a proper weapon after her back was turned.
"Mine!" she snapped over her dedicated link to Cateau, and charged him.
Her hapless target probably never saw her coming at all. The glare of the surviving perimeter lights and the blinding, stroboscopic eruptions of muzzle flashes—including the blind fire some of the camp's defenders were beginning to hose uselessly in every conceivable direction—had to be playing havoc with his vision. And despite how long it seemed to Alicia that the attack had been underway, little more than fifteen seconds had actually elapsed since Lieutenant Strassmann's order to move in. His confusion must have been as close to total as it was possible to come, and the chameleon surface of Alicia's armor would have made her all but invisible even without the blinding effect of so much gunfire.