"I'll have to get back to you on that one, Skipper," Paбl said with a tight grin. "Right off the top of my head, though, I can't think of one."
That evoked a brief chuckle, and Alwyn leaned forward, studying the tactical table's imagery.
"Did you run an analysis of other possible approach routes, Wadislaw?" he asked.
"As a matter of fact, I did. There are a couple of others which would give you cover that's almost as good, but they all start from even further out than this one does. Your approach march would be longer for any of them, and, frankly, I think they'd have a better chance of spotting you on most of them. Do you want to look at all of them?"
"Yes. Although, if this really is the shortest, fastest way in from a point where they won't be able to see our arrival, it's probably the way to go," Alwyn said.
"Unless they expect us because it is the shortest, fastest way in from someplace where they wouldn't be able to see us drop, Sir," First Sergeant Yussuf pointed out. "And if I were a terrorist worried about a visit from someone like us, Skip, I'd be keeping a real close eye on this gorge here." She flipped her own cursor into the display and indicated the river line's closest approach to their target.
"Maybe," Alwyn conceded. "But I'm a great believer in KISS. We'll scout ahead with our remotes, just in case, and we'll plan alternates, but this really does look like the best approach. Besides, if we let ourselves get too involved in double-think and second guessing, I'm sure we'll be able to find a reasonable objection to any approach route."
"There's also the fact that they just plain can't have the manpower to scatter people all over the countryside watching for us," Strassmann observed. "Even taking Battalion's most pessimistic numbers, they can't have more than a couple of hundred people actually on-planet. And they've got three times that many hostages to ride herd on. They've got to be thinking in terms of economizing their manpower."
"Lieutenant Strassmann has a point," Watts said. "Obviously, as I've already pointed out, our numbers on how many people the FALA actually has down there are all inferential. We could be off by a fairly substantial margin, but that's why Battalion's been working from a worst-case set of assumptions. And there's another point to consider. I pulled detailed terrain maps on Shallingsport before Battalion sent me to Guadalupe to brief you. But when these people arrived in the Fuller System, they demanded sanctuary from King Hayden, not Duke Geoffrey. On that basis, it seems unlikely they ever actually planned on ending up in Shallingsport. So even if they'd been inclined to do a detailed study of the terrain around their eventual 'sanctuary,' could they have known which maps to pull? It's possible they did a radar map on their way down from Star Roamer, but by that point they were into improvisation mode after King Hayden turned them down and Duke Geoffrey accepted. Besides, the shuttles they used to get dirt-side were standard civilian models-Jason Corporation cargo birds provided by Director Jokuri and Duke Geoffrey. There's no way they had the sensor suites to do a detailed mapping job."
"I was thinking along those lines myself," Alwyn agreed. "They may be already in place on the ground, but that isn't the same thing as being intimately familiar with the terrain. And as Tobias says, they can't have manpower to spare. So, if I were them, and if I only had a couple of hundred people, and if I had access to decent tactical arrays, I'd be inclined to fort up at the center of the area I could cover. And this valley of yours gives us our best chance to get inside their perimeter, or at least right up to it, without being spotted on the way in."
He sat for a moment longer, gazing down at the dotted line Watts had drawn. Then he nodded and looked back up again.
"Francesca," he said to Masolle. "I want you to sit down with Wadislaw and look at the other possible LZs and approach routes. Give me your best analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of each of them."
Masolle nodded, and he turned to Strassmann.
"Unless Francesca comes up with some fairly compelling reason for us to go another way, I'm thinking we'll probably follow Wadislaw's recommendation," he said. "On that basis, I want you to rough out a covert drop plan. Go ahead and set up for a 'light' drop. Given how far we've got to go, the fact that the bad guys can't have very many heavy weapons of their own, and that we're going to have to execute a break-in to the hostages, we're going to need speed, precision, and flexibility more than brute firepower."
"On it, Skipper," Strassmann agreed, and the Cadre captain turned his attention to Paбl.
"Бgoston, while they do that, I want you and Pam," he nodded to First Sergeant Yussuf, "to work up a plan for the approach from Tobias' LZ to the objective. I think Pam may have a point about their picketing the gorge, so plan us a couple of alternatives that avoid that particular stretch, as well. Let's look at all the possibilities and run them through the sims before we decide."
"Yes, Sir."
"Okay, people." Alwyn pushed himself back from the tactical table and stood. "Sic 'em. We'll meet back here in four hours."
"Hey, Alley! I've been meaning to ask you how the Lizard Mind-Reading 101 is going. Are you starting to feel like going out and eating your mate yet?" Alan McGwire asked with a grin.
Alicia opened her eyes and looked up from the careful check of her powered armor she'd been carrying out through her synth-link. She and a dozen other troopers were in Marguerite Johnsen's "Morgue"-the storage and service area for Charlie Company's battle armor. Although the company was supported by a team of armor specialists assigned by the Marines to the Cadre on a semi-permanent basis, much as Captain Watts was assigned to provide intelligence support, most cadremen preferred to handle the regular maintenance and combat prep on their armor themselves. Those highly trained armor specialists were responsible for major repairs, upgrades, and modifications, but in Alicia's opinion, anyone who didn't want to stay hands-on with the standard maintenance and, especially, troubleshooting of her own armor just before a drop ought to be confined somewhere in a nice, soft-sided room where she couldn't hurt herself or anyone else.
Besides, up-checking your own armor before a drop was a company tradition, especially in First Platoon. Even if you knew your armor was in perfect condition, you dropped by to "make certain" … which just happened to give you an opportunity for an informal little get-together with men and women who were important to you. Men and women, some of whom might not be alive a day or two later. It let you have that moment with them when you "coincidentally bumped into them" without anyone ever admitting that that was what any of you were doing.
And under the unwritten rules, it was unforgivable to say anything maudlin or-God forbid!-serious.
"I'll have you know, Sergeant McGwire," she said severely, "that the rumor that Rish matriarchs eat their mates raw is totally unfounded, a legacy of humanocentric prejudice and rank xenophobia. The Rish haven't eaten anyone raw at least since they discovered fire, and the Rishathan Sphere represents a mature and highly developed society, however it may look to uneducated barbarians like yourself."
"Sure, sure!" McGwire rolled his eyes.
The Alpha Team leader had been twitting Alicia ever since she signed up for the xenopsychology course. Cadre troopers were strongly encouraged to pursue additional education and training. Obviously, anything which contributed directly to their ability to perform their missions was a good thing, but the Cadre also believed that keeping its people mentally supple was as important as keeping them that way physically. Equally obviously, anything which would help a cadrewoman better understand the Rish who were humanity's primary nonhuman competitors came under the heading of enhancing mission capability, but Alicia had found the course fascinating on its own merits, as well. She wondered sometimes if that was her father's genetic heritage coming out in her.