by David Weber
"Then finish them off!" the operation's overall commander shouted back from his Green Haven communications center. "Finish them this time, damn it!"
"We will!" the XO promised, and turned his attention to doing just that.
He wasn't as comfortable or well trained as Burkhart had been when it came to interpreting his battle armor sensors' reports, but it didn't take a genius to know the Cadre bastards were screwed. He'd never really believed they'd be stupid enough to hit the action group's positions head-on this way, but they had. Oh, they'd hurt the FALA fighters with that initial deadly volley, and whoever those bastards behind the plasma guns on the other side were, they were a hell of a lot better than his cannoneers. He admitted that, but they weren't enough better. The sheer weight of his own cannons' suppressive fire had driven them to ground—they weren't even shooting back at all, now, assuming they were still alive—and the entire crazy assault had bogged down almost instantly.
He squatted in the cramped CP and glared at the holographic HUD projected before his eyes. He couldn't sort out the details any longer, and he switched to a direct visual. The schematic's confusing iconology disappeared, and he smiled viciously as he watched the muzzle flashes and lightning bolt-streaks of plasma flay the darkness with an ugly, lethal beauty. The sheer volume of death and destruction his people were pouring out filled him with almost erotic pleasure, and he didn't need any frigging HUD details to know the cadremen were being hammered into dog meat.
Alicia crouched a little lower as a plasma bolt streaked past the boulder she was using for cover. The plasma impacted on one of the local conifers, and a five-meter chunk of the thirty-centimeter tree trunk vaporized. The upper two thirds of the tree plummeted downward, already flaming, and crashed half across Alicia's position. The main trunk missed her, and her armor protected her against the branches which did slam down across her, but it still felt as if a giant hand had just slapped her against the earth like a pesky bug.
"Sarge!"
"I'm okay, Tannis!" she replied quickly, and she was—for the moment. But the flames roaring around her as the rest of the tree caught fire would be a problem if she stayed where she was very long. If nothing else, the ammo for the CHK she'd appropriated from a Second Platoon trooper who no longer needed it would start cooking off. But for now, her armor was handling it easily, and she drew her vibro blade one-handed. The force field lopped through the thirty-centimeter trunk effortlessly, and she cut her way clear of the tangle, then deactivated the blade, hit her jump gear, and vaulted over to join Tannis.
A heavy-caliber penetrator from one of the terrorist calliopes spanged off her left pauldron just before she hit the ground again. It hit too obliquely to penetrate, but the impact slammed her down, and despite the armor's anti-kinetic systems, she grunted as she landed.
She hardly even noticed. Her attention was on her HUD, where eighteen fresh green icons, led by Celestine Hillman's, had suddenly erupted into the blocking position's rear.
The new FALA commander never realized just how badly he'd misread the situation. His CP was, indeed, exactly where The Book said it should be. Which, unfortunately, meant Celestine Hillman knew exactly where to look for it when she emerged from the fold in the ground Cornelius Burkhart had overlooked.
Perhaps it would have been unfair to expect Burkhart to have noticed it. It wasn't much of a terrain feature, after all—only the meandering ravine of a dry, seasonal streambed, nowhere more than a couple of meters deep. Besides, it hadn't really been inside Burkhart's perimeter. It was between his position and the action group which formed the easternmost anchor of the blocking line, and it was supposed to be covered by fire from both sides.
Except for the minor fact that neither position had actually had a line of fire into the streambed . . . or realized that it needed one.
The first plasma bolt from Hillman's scratch-built squad impacted directly on the CP, obliterating Burkhart's successor and simultaneously destroying the position's primary sensor array. The defenders were thrown back on their armor's individual sensors, and—like their obliterated XO—they simply weren't as good as the Cadre at interpreting them.
They were still trying to figure out what was happening when Hillman's people swarmed over them from behind, shooting and grenading as they came. Some of the FALA infantry turned in their positions just in time to meet deadly bursts of battle rifle fire. Others never got even that far.
"Go, go, go!" Alicia barked as the enemy's fire faltered suddenly. It stuttered uncertainly for another moment, and then died almost entirely as the people behind it suddenly realized they'd been flanked.
Panic set in, exactly as Alicia had hoped, and as the terrorists wavered, she and the rest of the company came charging up the slope directly into them behind the deadly muzzle flashes of their rifles.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sir Arthur Keita watched the repeater plot as HMS Ctesiphon decelerated towards Fuller orbit. The battlecruiser still wore her freighter's electronic mask, although he had no way of knowing whether or not the terrorists aboard Star Roamer were still buying the deception.
Of course, I don't know whether or not they ever really bought it in the first place, either, he thought, and looked back at the holograph of the Shallingsport Peninsula on the main display in Marguerite Johnsen's intelligence center.
That holograph was nowhere near as detailed as he wished it were. The icon which was supposed to indicate the position of Charlie Company—or its survivors, he thought grimly—strobed to indicate that it was only an estimate. They still had communications with DeVries, but they'd become increasingly sporadic, and they'd lost virtually all tactical telemetry channels even during the windows when the transport's orbit took her directly over Shallingsport.
Keita felt his belly muscles tightening once again. God, how he wished he knew what was happening down there! Not that knowing would have done him any good at the moment. He realized that only too well, however little he wanted to admit it. Never before in his entire Cadre career had he felt as helpless as he felt at this instant, and guilt hammered in the back of his brain. It was irrational, he knew, but that made it no less real. He was the one who'd ordered Madison Alwyn's men and women into this holocaust, and now he sat safe and sound aboard Marguerite Johnsen while they died beyond his reach. While he couldn't even be down there with them. While —
He cut that thought off and made himself push it down once again. He couldn't do anything about that, and he made himself reconsider what he did know.
At least if DeVries was right—and she probably was, he thought—the terrorists were probably even more uncertain of her position than he was stuck here in Marguerite Johnsen.
The Cadre brigadier shook his head and thanked God for Sergeant First Class Alicia DeVries. He'd lived through enough cluster fucks in his own career, if none quite this bad, to appreciate the magnitude of her accomplishments. Of course, Charlie Company was the Cadre, composed of the most rigorously selected and trained soldiers in the galaxy, but not even the Cadre could train people to take situations like this one in stride. Without her to hold them together, keep them moving . . . .
His last message from DeVries was almost thirty minutes old. She'd reported the assault on the FALA blocking position in a terse, matter-of-fact tone which had fooled no one aboard Marguerite Johnsen. The disguised Fleet transport had worked with Charlie Company for over three standard years. Her crew had become part of the Charlie Company family, and Keita could feel their shock and grief all about him. But there'd been no trace of that shock or grief in DeVries' voice—only the clipped cadences the tick induced.
Keita would have been tempted to hate her, if he'd thought she truly were as unmoved, as machinelike, as that voice had sounded. But he knew better than that, because his own voice had sounded like that once or twice during his career. Because he knew all about locking down the pain until there was time to face it and taste it to the full.
"We're down to thirty-two effective
s," she'd said. "We lost nine breaking through the saddle. We've lost five more since then, including Sergeant Hillman, when their air-cav came in to strafe, but they aren't doing that anymore. I think we've finally convinced them it's a losing proposition; they seem to be down to only two aircraft, and they're staying at extreme range."
She'd stopped speaking for what would have been a very brief pause for someone Keita hadn't known was riding the tick, then resumed.
"I think we've shaken them off, Uncle Arthur. We're not getting any more active sensor hits from their air-cav, and the two mounts they have left seem to be running a search pattern well behind us. I think they let us break contact after we nailed that last pair of strafers, and they haven't found us again."
"What's your ammunition state?" he'd asked, and hated himself for asking.
"Low," she'd replied. "We're down to an average of thirty-seven rounds per rifle. We're almost entirely out of of grenades, and we've got less than fifteen hundred rounds for the calliopes. We're down to only three plasma rifles—we lost Corporal Doorn and his weapon on the last strafing run—and we've only got a couple of dozen hydrogen pellets for the three we've got left."
"Understood," he'd said, then paused and drawn a deep breath. "What are your intentions?" he'd asked then.
"Unchanged," she'd said flatly. He'd opened his mouth to protest, but she'd continued before he could.
"We're most of the way to the objective, and I don't think they know where we are—not accurately, at any rate. Even if they've got a better idea where we are than I think they do, the only place anyone could get in here, whether with assault shuttles or recovery boats, is Green Haven itself, and our intel on that sucks. I haven't been able to get a good look at the spaceport there yet, but if they've got the kind of firepower and weapons we've seen out here in the mountains, they've got even more of it covering Green Haven, and you need to know how much when you start considering options. That means we've got to get in close enough to eyeball the situation there for you, at the very least, and we're almost out of sensor remotes. These people have demonstrated that they're pretty good at picking them off, too, so I've got all but one of the five we have left tied down until we get close enough for them to do us some good. I'll contact you again when we have. Winchester-One, clear."
That had been—he looked at the time display—twenty-eight minutes ago, and he hadn't heard a word from her since.
Where are you, DeVries—Alley? he worried. He longed to contact her, demand an updated situation report, but he suppressed the temptation sternly. If she was right, if she had managed to break contact contact, the less communication between them the better. And in the meantime —
"Sir Arthur?"
Keita turned quickly to find himself facing Marguerite Johnsen communications officer.
"What, Lieutenant Smithson?" he asked the Fleet officer.
"Sir Arthur, we've just received a communications request," Smithson said in an odd tone, then grimaced. "He says he's the terrorists' commander, Sir."
Keita's expression went more granite-like than ever, but his eyes narrowed slightly. He gazed at the lieutenant for perhaps three seconds, then shrugged.
"Put it through," he said.
"Yes, Sir." Smithson entered a command through his own neural headset, then nodded to Keita, indicating a live mike.
"This is Sir Arthur Keita," Keita said flatly. "What do you want?"
"Sir Arthur Keita? 'The Emperor's Bulldog' himself?" a voice replied, and its owner laughed mockingly. "I am honored! Of course, calling someone a bulldog is just another way of calling him a son-of-a-bitch, isn't it?"
"You're the one who asked to speak to me," Keita said, his voice still flat as hammered steel. "Was there something you wanted to say, or do you prefer simply asking rhetorical questions?"
"My, aren't we testy?"
"Com me back when you've got something to say," Keita said, and started to gesture to Smithson.
"You might want to remember that I've got six hundred Empies down here," the voice said, suddenly harsher and colder. "Cut this connection, and I'll send fifty of them back to you in body bags."
"You can do that any time you want to, regardless of whether or not I talk to you," Keita said unflinchingly. "Of course, doing that would constitute a different sort of escalation, wouldn't it? I really don't think you'd like what will happen if I decide you're going to kill the hostages anyway."
"Do you really think we're stupid enough to believe you wouldn't kill every one of us the instant you thought you could, whatever we do here?" the man on the other end of the com link sneered. "We don't have anything at all to lose from that perspective, Sir Arthur!"
"Except that if I believe you're going to start killing hostages for no better reason than the fact that I've hurt your feelings, then I'll decide there's no point in trying to get them out alive, anyway," Keita said levelly. "And in that case, I'll solve the entire problem very simply with an HVW strike."
There was silence for several seconds.
"You're bluffing," the FALA spokesman said finally.
"Maybe," Keita acknowledged. "And maybe not. Remember, you've given me a lot of reasons to want to see you dead. The only thing keeping you alive right now are those hostages. You convince me they aren't coming out alive, anyway, and I don't have any reason to keep you alive, do I? So suppose we both stop threatening one another and you tell me why you commed?"
"All right, I will. You say you don't have any reason to keep me alive if you think the hostages are going to be killed. Well, I don't have any reason to keep the hostages alive if I think my people are all going to be killed, either. Which is why Star Roamer had better not see any assault shuttles heading for the planet from that battlecruiser—you know, the one pretending to be a freighter—when it joins you in orbit up there."
So much for whether or not Ctesiphon's EW has them fooled, Keita thought.
"Before you waste any time lying to me about it," the terrorist continued, "I should tell you that Star Roamer's sensor arrays have been watching your precious battlecruiser ever since she arrived. Just as they were watching you, Sir Arthur. The Marguerite Johnsen might be able to fool some people, but we did our homework a little bit better than that. We knew who you were from the moment you arrived, and we were expecting your drop. Just as we've been expecting the arrival of reinforcements. I'm sure you have quite a few Marines aboard that battlecruiser, but I'd strongly recommend that you keep them there."
"And I'm sure you can hardly wait to tell me why I should take your recommendation to heart," Keita said when the other voice paused.
"Actually there are several reasons," the other man said, "but two big ones come immediately to mind. First, as I'm sure you've already realized, we have a lot more military capability down here than you assumed we did. In addition to what you've already discovered, we have ground-to-space defenses dug in around Green Haven. We can't stop an all-out assault, I'm sure, but we can kill all the assault shuttles you can pack aboard a single battlecruiser. So if you really want to send your Marines in and see them all as dead as your precious cadremen, I'm sure we could oblige you.
"Now, it's possible you're thinking that I'm bluffing, or maybe you're thinking I'm overconfident about what our defenses can do. I'm not bluffing, but it is possible I'm overestimating our capabilities . . . the same way you overestimated yours when you decided to land Charlie Company. Which brings me to my second reason you shouldn't try dropping Marines on our heads; if you do, and if it turns out we can't stop them after all, we will kill the hostages. We won't have any reason not to."
"I see."
"I imagine you do," the FALA spokesman said mockingly. "And while we're on the subject, if you try to land Marines somewhere else, outside our defensive perimeter, Star Roamer will inform us. And the instant she does, we'll kill three hundred hostages. Please note that I'm not threatening to kill them out of hand, or as a bargaining ploy, or even in a fit of pique. We won't kill them unless
you try to get fancy, so you've still got six hundred—well, three hundred—reasons to keep me alive, don't you?"
"To what final end?" Keita asked. "It's obvious your original demands were nothing but a way to pass the time while you waited to ambush our people. Surely you don't think the Empire is going to leave you or your organization alive in the long run after something like this?"
"We've all been on your proscribed list for years," the other man said. "You can't kill any of us more than once, however much you'd like to. And just this minute, I think you should be worried more about who we might kill. We'll tell you what our final demands are when we're good and ready. In the meantime, keep your Marines the hell off this planet. Is that understood, Sir Arthur?"
"It is," Keita grated. "And if I do, what happens to my people on Fuller?"
"Why, they die, Sir Arthur," the terrorist spokesman jeered. "That was the whole point of our little visit here—or one of them, at any rate. They've butchered enough of our friends over the years, after all, so it's only fair we get a little of our own back, and we're looking forward to it. We've already killed most of them; in the end, we'll kill them all, and enjoy doing it. Unless, of course, you're prepared to commit to a major assault to save the handful of them who are still alive knowing all your precious civilians will die before the first Marine boot hits the Green Haven ceramacrete. Somehow, I don't think it would look very good in the Empire media if word got out that twenty or thirty cadremen were more important to you than six hundred of your Emperor's loving subjects, now would it?"
Keita said nothing, and the terrorist laughed.
"That's what I thought, too," he said. "Don't go away, Sir Arthur. I'm sure I'll have something else to say to you . . . eventually."
"Well, you were right, Sarge," Tannis Cateau said softly.
Alicia made an equally soft sound of agreement. She and Tannis lay side-by-side along the crest of a ridge overlooking the Jason Corporation facility and the not yet officially open Green Haven spaceport. Their armor's active sensors were shut completely down, and their passives' resolution wasn't all that great at this range, but what they could see was bad enough.