"Maybe I shouldn't've argued against two ships," Alexsov said sourly.
"Don't blame yourself. Ortiz blew it, and you were right. Control's cover story only allowed for one 'legitimate' ship. We couldn't know he'd-"
The commodore broke off with a curse. His light-speed sensors hadn't been able to see the SLAM drone rise from the planet on counter-grav, but the blue spark of its lighting Fasset drive was glaringly obvious.
"Send the code," he rasped, and the ops officer nodded.
"Sending-now," Commander Rendlemann replied, and Howell sat back in his command chair to wait. His light-speed destruct command would require thirty-one minutes to overtake the drone; by the time he knew whether or not it had succeeded, his ships would be within assault range of the planet.
Chapter Forty-Two
Sirens continued to wail as the raiders decelerated towards Elysium. There had been no communication from the "Fleet" ships, and that, in light of what had just occurred, was more than sufficient proof of their purpose.
The governor sat in his communications center and watched his staff coordinate Elysium's mobilization. The planetary militia-such as it was and what there was of it-was marshaling with gratifying speed... for whatever good it might accomplish. The militia was considerably stronger than it had been as little as a single standard year earlier, but he'd launched his effort to recruit it up to strength as a backup for the single reinforced Marine company of the planetary garrisons purely as a morale-booster to prove he was Doing Something. He'd never anticipated that it might actually be called upon, and the rest of his careful plans were a shambles. The evacuation centers were already madhouses, and the background crackle of reports from their managers grew more frantic with every second.
A dedicated screen lit, and Captain von Hamel, Elysium's senior Marine, looked out of it and saluted. His eyes were level despite the strain in them, and he already wore his battle armor.
"Governor. My people are heading for their initial positions. We should be at full readiness well before the bandits launch their shuttles."
"Good." The governor tried to put some enthusiasm into his voice, but he knew as well as von Hamel just how little chance the Marines had.
"Brigadier Ivanov tells me his people are running a bit behind schedule, but I anticipate they'll be ready by the time anyone hits their local perimeters," von Hamel continued, and this time the governor simply nodded. Even von Hamel, who'd supported the militia recruiting drive strongly from the beginning, had trouble sounding confident over that, and he leaned closer to his pickup.
"Sir, I've heard some strange reports on that battlecruiser, and-"
"They're true." The governor cut him off grimly and von Hamel's face went even tighter. "Orbit Command confirmed she was Fleet-built, and we caught a last-minute transmission from Hermes just before she rammed. They definitely identified her as HMS Poltava. According to the records, she went to the breakers twenty-two months ago; apparently the records are wrong."
"Shit." The governor, normally a stickler for decorum, didn't even frown at von Hamel's expletive. "That means these other bastards are probably real Fleet designs... with a real ground element." The captain was thinking aloud, his eyes darker than ever. "We can't hold the capital against that kind of attack, and they've got the orbital firepower to take out any fixed position. I'm afraid Thermopylae's our only option, Sir."
"Agreed. We're trying to evacuate now, but we expected at least six hours of lead time. We're not going to get many of them out."
"I'll buy you all the time I can, Sir, but it won't be much," von Hamel warned, and the governor nodded his thanks.
"Understood, Major. God bless."
"And you, Sir. We're both going to need it."
***
Commodore Howell watched his plot, eyes glued to the fleeing SLAM drone, as his ships slid into assault orbit, their energy batteries busy systematically eliminating every orbital installation to eradicate any record of their identity. A backwash of assault shuttle readiness reports murmured in the back of his brain, relayed from Rendlemann's cyber-synth link, but Howell wasn't concerned about this phase of the operation. He knew all about Elysium's militia, and he and Alexsov had anticipated from the start that the defenders would be forced back on Thermopylae. It was the only one of their contingency plans that made any sense.
He caught a hand creeping towards his mouth and lowered it before he could nibble its fingernails. The drone was up to ninety percent of light-speed now; their signal had barely three minutes to catch it before it wormholed, and it was going to be close. Assuming, of course, that catching it did any good. If they'd been locked out.... God, he hated this kind of waiting! But he couldn't cut it any shorter, and he turned resolutely to the holo image of the planet in an effort to think of something-anything-else.
Thermopylae was going to make things messy. Although Elysium had become an Incorporated World with direct Senate representation twelve years ago, its population was scarcely thirty million-too many for an all-out raid like Mathison's World but too few to provide the industrial and financial districts which concentrated wealth for easy picking. Only one thing made Elysium a target: GeneCorp's research facility. Every secret of the Empire's leading biomedical consortium lay waiting in that facility's data banks. That was Elysium's true treasure: a cargo that could buy Howell's entire squadron twice over, yet be transported abroad a single ship.
But GeneCorp's HQ lay in the center of the planetary capital. It wasn't a large city, little more than a million people, but built-up areas could exact painful casualties, and the defenders knew what his objective had to be. That was why Thermopylae called for them to center their defense on GeneCorp's facility, where he couldn't use heavy weapons to support his ground elements without destroying the very data he'd come to steal.
It was going to be brutal, especially for the city's civilians, but that, too, was part of his mission plan. Maximum frightfulness. A terror campaign against the Empire itself. There had been a time when James Howell would have died to stop anyone cold-blooded enough to mount such an operation.
He bit his lip, cursing the way his mind savaged itself at moments like this. Past was past and done was done, and the final objective was worth -
"Got it, by God!"
Howell's head jerked up at Rendlemann's exultant cry, and wan humor glittered in his own eyes as he realized how successfully he'd distracted himself from the drone. But the blue dot had vanished, and he exhaled a tremendous sigh of relief.
"Begin Phase Two," he said softly.
***
The governor stared at his tracking officer.
"But... how? It was over fourteen light-minutes down-range!"
"I don't know. It was out of beam range, and none of their missiles could even catch it. It's like-"
The tracking officer broke off, her face sagging in sudden, bitter understanding and self-hate.
"The destruct code!" She slammed a fist against the side of her own head. "Idiot! Idiot! I should've guessed from what happened to Hermes' drone! How could I've been so stupid?!"
"What are you talking about, Lieutenant?" the governor demanded, and she fought herself back under control.
"I knew they'd taken out Hermes' drone, but I assumed-assumed-they'd done it with their weapons. They didn't. They used a Fleet self-destruct command and ordered it to suicide."
"But that's impossible! There's no way they could-"
"Oh yes there is, Governor." The lieutenant faced him squarely, her voice harsh. "Those aren't just Fleet-built ships out there. I figured some son-of-a-bitch at the wreckers must've disposed of the hulls on the sly-God knows they're worth more than reclamation, even stripped-but they've got complete Fleet data bases, as well, including the security files."
"Dear God," the governor whispered. He sagged back into a chair, hands trembling as he realized the monumental treason that implied.
"Exactly. And thanks to my stupidity-my stupidity!-we don't have a drone lef
t to tell anyone."
***
The assault boats sliced downward through Elysium's night sky. The raiders' carefully hoarded Bengals led the first wave, fleshed out by older but still deadly Leopards. A handful of local defense missiles rose to meet them, and a pair of unlucky shuttles vanished in direct hits.
It was the defenders' only luck. Imperial assault craft were designed to attack heavily armed ground bases; Elysium's pitiful weaponry was less than nothing in comparison. Hyper-velocity weapons screamed down in reply, relying solely on the kinetic energy developed at ten percent of light-speed, and high kilotonne-range fireballs annihilated the missile sites.
More HVW launched, targeted with cold calculation on the evacuation centers and the governor's residence. Fresh flame shredded the darkness, and Captain von Hamel cursed the minds and souls behind the weapons. This wasn't an assault-it was a massacre. An intentional massacre of civilians by people who knew where the evacuation centers were. He and the governor hadn't saved anyone; they'd simply gathered them in convenient targets for mass murder!
But why? Von Hamel had read the reports on the other raids, but they were nothing compared to this, and it made no sense. A demand for surrender on pain of such an attack might have been reasonable. This wasn't.
More terrible shockwaves rippled through the ground, and he began barking orders. With the governor dead, he was on his own, and there was no point in a phased withdrawal now. The civilians he'd hoped to cover were already dead, and he sent his Wasps charging back to their inner perimeter.
***
Howell watched the gangrenous light boils bite off chunks of the holo-imaged city, and part of him shared von Hamel's sickness. But the people in those centers would only have lived a few more hours whatever happened, and the panic of the strikes might hamper the defenders' coordination. Anything that reduced his own casualties was worthwhile, he told himself... especially when it only meant killing people who simply hadn't yet learned that they were dead.
***
The first-wave shuttles grounded, and armored figures spilled from the ramps. Powered battle armor gleamed and glittered in the hellish light of the city's fires as the assault teams formed up and swept into its heart.
***
Captain von Hamel watched his tactical display, and he was no longer afraid. Fury still crackled in his blood, but even that was suppressed, buried under an ice-cold concentration. He and his troops were Marines. There were only three hundred and twelve of them, but they were the Empire's Wasps, products of a four-century tradition, and they were all that stood between a city and its murderers. They couldn't stop it, and every one of them knew it... just as they knew they were going to die trying.
The bastards were mounting a concentric assault, hoping to overpower his people in the first rush, and their assault routes were moving directly against his original prepared positions. The captain watched them come and bared his teeth, unsurprised after the accuracy with which the evac centers had been taken out. They had to have detailed information on all of Elysium's defense planning, but there was one thing they didn't know: virtually every one of his original positions had been relocated in the wake of last week's tactical exercise. He keyed the master tac link.
"All Wasps, Alpha-One. Hold your fire. I say again, all units hold fire for my command."
More shuttles streaked downward, probed by his tactical sensors as they planeted, and his face tightened. Those weren't assault boats; they were heavy-lift cargo shuttles, and their presence this early could only mean the raiders were putting in heavy armored units.
***
The assault teams converged on the defensive strong points with cautious confidence. Reports flowed back and forth as the first tanks disembarked from their shuttles and began to move forward. No one expected it to be easy-not against Imperial Marines-but knowing precisely where their enemies were turned it into something more like a live-fire exercise than a battle.
***
Von Hamel watched his display. The raider spearheads were inside his perimeter in a dozen places, and if his people weren't where the raiders thought they were, they weren't far away, either. There were only a limited number of positions which could cover the same approach routes.
One column of invaders moved towards his own CP, a tentacle of death reaching into the mangled city's heart, and he gathered up his rifle. He had far too few people for him to stay out of the fire fight.
He raised the heavy weapon-a thirty-millimeter "rifle" only a man with exoskeletal battle armor "muscles" could possibly have managed. It was loaded with discarding sabot tungsten penetrators four times heavier than those of the rifles unarmored infantry carried, and he slid it cautiously over the edge of the office building roof.
"All Wasps, Alpha-One!" He barked "Engage!"
***
The orderly advance exploded in chaos.
Raiders screamed and died in a hurricane of high-velocity tungsten. Three hundred rifles-auto-cannon in all but name-blazed at point-blank range, and not even battle armor could stop fire like that. Fifteen-millimeter penetrators hurled them aside like shattered dolls, support squads' launchers spat plasma grenades and HE, and Captain Alexsov's careful briefing had become a death trap. The raiders knew where the defenders were, and their point men and flankers had succumbed to overconfidence.
Even taken by surprise, they had the firepower to deal with their enemies. What they no longer had was the will. They didn't even try to return fire; they simply broke and ran, scourged by that deadly hail of fire until they managed to get out of range.
***
"Regroup! Assume Position Gamma. I say again, Position Gamma."
Von Hamel's people responded instantly, withdrawing from the positions their attack had marked for the raiders, and this time the smoke and confusion and terror helped them. There was no way the other side could track them through the chaos as they dashed for their new stations.
They'd done well, von Hamel thought. Barely half a dozen Marine beacons had gone out, and the raiders had been brutally mauled.
But they wouldn't get another chance like that. The other side might not know his troops' exact positions, but they knew his general battle plan. They wouldn't come in fat and stupid a second time, and they had that damned armor to back them, not to mention the assault boats.
***
Howell watched Alexsov's face as the reports came in. Another man might have sworn. At the very least he would have said something. Alexsov only tightened his lips and started sorting out the chaos.
The commodore looked away, grateful for Alexsov's calm yet constitutionally incapable of understanding it. His eyes swept his command deck, and he frowned. Commander Watanabe sat stiffly in the assistant gunnery officer's chair, sweat beading his brow, and his face was pale as he stared at the fires spalling the darkened city.
Howell turned his head, looking for Rachel Shu, and found her. She, too, was watching Watanabe, and her eyes were narrow.
***
A smoke-choked dawn, smutted with cinders and the stench of burning, painted the sky at last.
Captain Marius von Hamel hadn't expected to see the sun rise, and now he wanted to, more than he had ever wanted anything before, for he knew he would never see it set. But it was grim, vengeful satisfaction that pulsed within him, not fear. He and what remained of his reinforced company, little more than a single platoon, had withdrawn to their final positions, and the streets behind them were thick with the dead. Too many were his own, and far, far too many were civilians, but there were over seven hundred raiders and nine gutted tanks among them. His air-defense platoon had even added a trio of Bengals to the carnage, for the enemy dared not use HVW this close to GeneCorp's HQ. They had to strafe if they wanted his Wasps, and that brought them into reach of his people's stings.
Yet the end was coming. Only the tight tactical control he'd managed to maintain had staved it off this long, but ammunition was running low, and his last reserve had been committe
d. He was spread too thin to hold against another determined push, and once the final perimeter broke, his control would vanish into a room-to-room insanity that could end only one way.
He knew that. But he'd also realized something else during the nightmare night. These weren't pirates. He didn't know what they were, but no pirate commander would have continued such a furious assault or accepted such casualties, and if he'd tried, his men would have mutinied. These people were something else, and the carnage they'd wreaked on the evac centers filled him with a dreadful certainty.
They were going to destroy this city. They were going to wipe it from the face of Elysium, whether they gained their prize or not. It was part of their pattern, and there was something more than brute sadism to it. He was too exhausted to think clearly, but it was almost as if they needed to eliminate all witnesses to protect some secret.