Alicia saw Oselli go down. Back blast from the plasma bolt slammed into the gunner's assistant, staggering him, and then Alicia brought her captured calliope to bear. Her eyes were merciless emerald ice as a shrieking burst of penetrators swept the terrorist away. Then she was swinging the weapon again, piling a dozen FALA terrorists in a single shredded line of corpses as they came charging out of a hallway from one of the office blocks.
Erik Andersson had another of the calliopes, and his fire slammed down, joining hers, raking the terrified terrorists who ten seconds before had been so certain they were in control of the situation.
And then the firing suddenly died, and there were no living terrorists left inside all that cavernous structure.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
"What the fuck happened?" Group Leader Rivera demanded, staring in stunned disbelief at the shattered, blazing ruins of the antiair defenses.
"Why the hell ask me?" Group Leader Abruzzi snarled back. "It had to be the fucking Cadre-that's all I know!"
Rivera throttled a raging desire to peel Lloyd Abruzzi out of his battle armor and strangle him with his bare hands. Not that the other group leader was any more to blame than Rivera himself.
And not that there's time to be worrying about who's at fault, he told himself grimly.
"I can't raise Omicron," Abruzzi continued. "Or Star Roamer."
"They must've taken out the com center," Rivera replied.
"Then we don't know whether or not the Wasps are on the way." There was a note Rivera didn't much care for in Abruzzi's voice. Not panic, really, but something else. Something....
He pushed that thought aside, too, and shook his head.
"They'll be on the way soon enough," he said grimly. "We've got to assume these people -" he swept one armored arm at the huge building above them, oblivious to the fact that Abruzzi couldn't actually see him from his own position on the far side of the hill "-told Keita when they planned to attack. For that matter, they're probably in communication with him right now."
"Shit," Abruzzi muttered.
Rivera couldn't argue with that. He turned where he stood, sweeping his eyes one more time across the blazing carnage the Cadre assault had left in its wake. Then his jaw tightened as he made up his mind.
"We don't have time to stand here talking about it, Lloyd," he said harshly. "My group's in better shape than yours. I'll take the assault."
"Assault?" Abruzzi repeated. "What assault?"
Jaime Rivera blinked in astonishment.
"We've got maybe thirty minutes before we've got Wasps all over us," he said, his voice flat. "That's our window to retake the hostages if we're going to have any bargaining chips at all."
"Screw bargaining chips!" Abruzzi growled. "We said we'd waste their precious hostages if they attacked us. Well, they've frigging well attacked us!"
"Goddamn it, don't you screw around with me on this one," Rivera grated. "There can't be more than a dozen of them left, and I've got fifty men. We can still retake the place, and if we do, we've got at least a chance to get the rest of our people off this planet. If Keita won't talk to us, we can still kill them all then."
"I say -" Abruzzi started, but Rivera cut him off savagely.
"I don't really care what you say!" he snarled. "I'm senior. We do it my way. We've got them by four-to-one odds, and unlike us, they're going to be handicapped trying to keep the hostages alive. We don't care if there's a little breakage on the way in, and that gives us another edge."
"We've had 'another edge' where these bastards were concerned all goddamned night," Abruzzi pointed out angrily. "Who's to say they won't screw you over all over again if you go in after them?"
"Well, if that happens, you'll be in command. At which point, you can do whatever the hell you want to do. You've still got most of your people's plasma rifles-you think you can't take down that entire building and kill everything in it if you really want to?"
Abruzzi was silent for a moment, and Rivera tossed his head angrily inside his helmet.
"Look," he said, "I'm taking my people, and we're going in. We're losing time standing here talking about it, and we don't have much time before the Wasps get here. These people must've told them the air defenses are down and that they've got the hostages. The Marines are going to begin their drop the instant they've got confirmation of those two things, so just shut the hell up and stay out of my way!"
"All right," Abruzzi said, manifestly unhappily. "Go ahead. But I warn you, we're taking that building down the instant I see a Wasp down here, and if you're still inside...."
"Fine," Rivera said shortly, and began snapping orders.
***
"Look at this, Sarge!" Tannis said, and Alicia glanced at her mental HUD as her wing dropped a wire diagram of the building into it.
"What is that?" she asked after a moment, and Tannis laughed with what actually sounded like genuine humor.
"It's a basement, Sarge! A great big, beautiful, deep basement, right under us! I figure we can get at least three or four hundred people into it, if we pack 'em in tight."
"All right!" Alicia said with sudden, matching delight, then grinned. "You found it, so packing them in is your job. Get them moving."
"Gee, thanks," Tannis replied, and an instant later Alicia's exterior pickups brought her the sound of Tannis' armor-amplified voice shouting orders.
Alicia left that up to her wing. If anyone could get a bunch of terrified, exhausted hostages moving in a hurry, it was Tannis. In the meantime, Alicia had other things to worry about, and her fleeting grin disappeared as she wiped the building diagram from her HUD and reconfigured it to tactical mode.
She didn't much care for what it showed her.
There were only eleven green icons left, including hers and Tannis'. That wasn't enough-not to hold something this size against as many battle armored attackers as she knew were still waiting out there on the slopes of the hill. Still, if Tannis could get a significant proportion of the hostages down into the basement she'd found, it would be an enormous help. Not a big enough one, maybe, but still a help.
"Erik," she said, no longer bothering with call signs.
"Yeah, Sarge," Erik Andersson replied.
"You're in charge of the calliopes. I want yours and Samantha's on the west wall. Put the other two where you think best."
"On it," Andersson acknowledged laconically, and Alicia looked over to where Thomas Kiley was examining the plasma cannon Oselli had knocked out.
"Can you get it back up, Tom?" she asked.
"I think so, but it's not gonna be pretty. Brian got so close the back blast smashed hell out of the cup generators."
Kiley pointed, and Alicia grimaced. The cannon was a considerably more powerful weapon than the plasma rifles the Cadre normally carried. In fact, it was powerful enough for thermal bloom to be a significant threat to nearby friendly personnel whenever it fired. So, like all such weapons, it projected a hollow conical force field-the "cup"-for a dozen meters or so in front of it. The force field protected anything to the cannon's immediate flanks and rear when it fired, which was exactly what Oselli had counted upon when he sacrificed himself to save the hostages. The plasma bolt's electromagnetic containment field had ruptured the instant it hit his armor, releasing the bolt's energy in a stupendous explosion. But it had been so close to the cannon that the cup had contained almost all of its fury. It had blown the cannoneer's assistant gunner off his feet, and the portion of the blast which had gotten past Oselli's disintegrating body had been enough to kill every hostage within twenty meters and burn anyone within another ten meters or so horribly. But had he not done what he had, at least half the hostages in that huge room would have died.
"How bad is it?" she asked.
"I can't tell without running a full diagnostic, and we don't have time for that," Kiely told her. "Best guess? We bring the cup up and it unbalances the driver field and screws accuracy all to hell and gone."
"And if we don't bring the cup up, it
incinerates everything in front of it for twenty-five meters in every direction," she pointed out.
"So?" Alicia could almost feel Kiely's wolfish grin. "We're a little thin on the ground already, Sarge. I don't think I really mind the notion of covering my own flanks with the biggest damned scattergun I can find."
"Something to that," she agreed, and he actually chuckled over the com as he drew his force blade once again. He brought it down in a crisp, clean arc that sliced the damaged generator assembly off the end of the cannon barrel.
"Since it was my idea, I'll take it," he said, and Alicia nodded.
"All right. This wall," she pointed at the one in front of them, "is where they're most likely to come at us."
"Even knowing they had it covered with this thing?"
"Their outside forces may or may not know that. For that matter, they may figure we took the cannon completely out ourselves-God knows Brian almost did exactly that. Anyway, whatever they may or may not 'know,' the remote I left outside says that's where they're assembling."
"Idiots," Kiely muttered.
"Take what you can get," Alicia recommended, then shrugged. "Actually, they may not have much choice. That's where their biggest group of troops was dug in, and they don't have time to get fancy and try redeploying. Anyway, I don't want you out where they can see you, and I don't want you out where they can snipe you. So pull back another thirty meters. Without the cup, you'll take out the entire center span of that wall with your first shot, so I'm not that worried about your field of fire. Clear?"
"Thirty meters is a long way back, Sarge. What about the hostages?"
"Look," Alicia said, and pointed behind him. Kiely obeyed her, turning to look in the indicated direction, and she heard his low whistle across the com.
She didn't blame him. Hostages were flowing steadily towards the two broad flights of stairs Tannis had discovered, and it looked like at least a hundred of them were already down into the basement. It was nowhere near deep enough to protect them against a direct hit with modern weapons, but it would get them out of the way of near-misses and well below the direct line of fire.
"Howdy, Sarge." Alicia looked up as Tannis suddenly appeared at her shoulder.
"How'd you get them moving so quickly?" she asked.
"I put Star Roamer's crew in charge of it," Tannis replied simply. "I figured they'd probably been trying to do what they could for their passengers all along. Looks like I was right-at least there's still some cohesion there."
"Good call." Alicia rested one hand on her wing's armored shoulder, then drew a deep breath.
"You and I are the roving reinforcements, Tannis," she said.
"Check." If Tannis was worried, her calm voice gave very little indication of it. "How you fixed for ammo, Sarge?"
"I'm almost dry," Alicia admitted. "Three rounds, as a matter of fact."
"Not much of a roving reserve," Tannis noted. "I, on the other hand, have forty-one."
"Showoff," Alicia said with a tired laugh. Tannis Cateau was the only person who could make Alicia DeVries feel inadequate on a rifle range. Tannis simply didn't miss... ever. And not just on the range. She actually got more accurate, more economical in the expenditure of her ammunition, under combat conditions.
"I thought you were probably pretty close to dry," Tannis continued, "so I brought you this."
Alicia took the M-97 Tannis had liberated from one of the dead terrorists and checked the magazine while Kiely picked up the plasma cannon and moved it to its new position. At least her new rifle was loaded with heavy penetrators that would have a fair chance of penetrating Marine battle armor at the sort of point blank range this fight was going to be, she thought. It was a pretty poor replacement for the battle rifle built into her armor, but it was a lot better than nothing, and Tannis had scrounged up a half-dozen extra magazines.
"Didn't think I'd see one of these again," Alicia said as she sent her armor the command to jettison the battle rifle which had served her so well. She followed that command up with one which reset the governors on her battle armor's gauntlets-it wouldn't do to absent-mindedly crush her new rifle-and ordered her armor's computer to find the interface with the M-97's onboard systems.
"Beggars can't be -" Tannis began.
"They're coming in!" Andersson announced sharply.
***
"Kill the bastards!" Jaime Rivera shouted, and his action group charged up the slope.
There wasn't much finesse to it. The tactical situation was brutally simple, and it had taken him longer than he'd anticipated to get his people turned around. That meant his time window was probably even narrower than he'd thought. The Empies wouldn't have dared to start their assault shuttles moving until they knew the Cadre troopers had neutralized the defensive batteries and secured the facility. That gave him at least a few extra minutes, but not enough to waste any of them trying to get fancy. He was going to lose more people going in fast and dirty instead of organizing properly, but that was better than losing all of them, which was what was going to happen if they didn't get the hostages back.
He bounded along, holding his place in the center of the second rank, and he felt almost relieved as his entire world focused down into the narrow imperatives of combat.
***
"Let them get close," Alicia said as she and Tannis bounded to a central position between the hostages and the threatened wall. Star Roamer's crew was still hurrying people down the stairs, and it looked like Tannis' original estimate of the basement's capacity had actually been low. But there were still well over a hundred civilians on the main floor when the building's end wall began to disintegrate under the punching of low-powered plasma bolts.
Alicia heard screams from behind her as the explosive effect of the plasma's transfer energy- even a "low-powered" bolt packed a brutal punch-blasted splinters loose from the wall panels. Some of those "splinters" were fifteen and twenty centimeters long, and the force of the plasma strikes sent them hissing further into the building. Three of them hit her armor and shattered, but others, obviously, had found unarmored targets, and she tried not to think about the kinds of damage those knife-edged projectiles could inflict.
She checked her HUD. Andersson had taken her at her word, and completely repositioned the captured calliopes. He'd moved them down from the catwalk level and placed two at the extreme corners of the western wall. He and Samantha Moyano had also pulled the heavy weapons off of the tripod mounts their original terrorist crews, with their unpowered armor, had required and used force blades to cut small, unobtrusive firing slits right at floor level. Now Andersson lay prone at the northern corner, using his battle armor "muscles" to handle the massive weapon as if it were a simple combat rifle, while Corporal Ewan MacEntee from First Platoon's Second Squad-Andersson's third wing of the night-crouched close enough to cover him and also watch for possible flank attacks. Moyano, a corporal from Second Platoon, had the southern corner with Corporal James Kr¢l, from First Platoon's Third Squad as her wing.
Alexandra Filipov had the third calliope on the building's northern wall, with Corporal Adam Skogen as her wing, while Digory Beckett had the fourth calliope on the southern wall, with Karin de Nijs as his wing.
Kiely had no wing, and Alicia and Tannis were the only original wing pair still alive. So far, at least.
Eleven men and women, exhausted, battered, and armed with captured weapons, against fifty battle-armored foes desperate to kill them. Every one of those eleven knew exactly what their odds of living through the next three minutes were, but it didn't matter. They were all that stood between six hundred civilians and cold-blooded murder, and Alicia's green eyes were hard as she watched the gaps being punched through the western wall.
"Make it count, people," she said, almost conversationally.
***
Rivera felt his confidence soar as his assault thundered up the hill. Not a shot had been fired against them-not one! Maybe he'd given the Cadre bastards too much credit. Maybe they wer
e crouching in hiding somewhere, too terrified to show themselves. Or-more likely, he thought, even now-they were simply out of ammunition. Or maybe they'd all been killed breaking in. Or -
Erik Andersson opened fire as the first battle armored terrorist came within a hundred meters. The heavy calliope's feed mechanism howled as the disintegrating link ammo belt blurred into the feed chute, and the penetrators shrieked downrange.
Battle armor shattered, and FALA terrorists screamed in agony, but the charge kept coming.
Samantha Moyano opened up from the other corner of the wall, swinging her weapon to scythe down the attackers. More armored bodies crashed to the ground, but the second wave of the attack back-plotted the fire killing their companions, and plasma bolts came howling back.
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.