The fourth pulled up frantically, toggling a pair of cluster bombs as it clawed for altitude. It twisted into an evasion maneuver, but too late. Obaseki Osayaba's second plasma bolt struck it full in the belly and spat its flaming fragments across the night … just as one of its cluster bombs spewed its submunitions across Йdouard Bonrepaux's position. Doorn's wingman hit his jump gear in a desperate effort to evade the bomblets, but he didn't have enough time. The submunitions exploded, and they were anti-armor weapons, not antipersonnel, designed to take out heavy armored units. Not even Cadre battle armor could stand up to that, and Bonrepaux simply disintegrated.
Alicia watched it all in the tick's slow motion, and her heart twisted as she lost yet another of her people. But at least the immediate air threat had been neutralized, and she and the rest of First Squad's survivors plunged up the valley slope on Yussuf's heels.
That slope was the anteroom of Hell. Outnumbered four-to-one or not, Charlie Company's Second Platoon tore into the ambushers' positions like an old-fashioned chainsaw. They came up the slope, battle rifles spitting sub-caliber penetrators, and Corporal Mayfield, Second Platoon's sole surviving plasma gunner, laced the steep mountainside with concussive fists of lightning as she covered their counterattack.
Storms of plasma streaked back at Mayfield as the dug-in infantry's armor sensors back-plotted her fire. The cadrewoman danced and spun at the heart of a forest fire inferno, evading bolt after bolt while she fired back with the deadly precision of a Cadre trooper riding the tick.
But no evasion pattern could avoid those scores of plasma bolts for long. Mayfield killed nineteen of the ambushers, but in the end, there was one bolt too many, and her green icon turned abruptly crimson.
Yet before she died, she'd opened a hole in the middle of the enemy's line, and Yussuf and her people slammed into it. Fire ripped back and forth, battle rifle penetrators crossing with the fusion-spawned fury of plasma. The men who'd set out to slaughter Charlie Company found themselves suddenly face-to-face with the most deadly combat troops in the history of mankind. Taken completely by surprise, outgunned and disorganized by their savage initial losses, charging dug-in positions in a headlong, uphill assault, and outnumbered four times over, Pamela Yussuf's people hit their enemies like the wrath of God incarnate.
Men cursed and screamed as penetrators hammered through their armor at point-blank range. Grenades added their fury to the violence-sick night, and plasma bolts shrieked back in answer.
Seventeen men and women of the Imperial Cadre went up that slope at Yussuf's heels. Nine of them lived to break through the line and continue their charge straight into the support cannon dug in behind the infantry. They exploded into the heavy artillery's position, rifles thundering on full automatic, only to be met by the fire of the cannon themselves and the multibarrel calliopes dug in to cover them.
They rampaged through the position, killing cannoneers, taking out calliopes, raging through the darkness and the flame and the confusion. Sixty-seven armored plasma gunners lay dead on the slope behind them, and another thirty-eight died as Second Platoon's surviving troopers came out of the night. Yussuf's attack knocked out eight of the cannon and half a dozen of their supporting calliopes, and panic swept the ambushers.
The surviving cannoneers abandoned their weapons, running towards the beckoning concealment of the night-struck forest with the fury as of Hell on their heels. Three calliope gunners stood their ground, sending thousands of rounds shrieking into the cadremen's faces. Then there were only two calliopes in action. Then only one.
Then none.
Alicia watched the icons of thirty-plus surviving hostiles fleeing into the night as she and her people came bounding up through the roaring, wedge-shaped forest fire which marked the line of Yussuf's attack. There was no more shooting, because there was no one left to shoot … yet. Her hovering remote was already detecting a fresh wave of inbound aircraft, as well as the traces of additional ground units threaded along the line of the river valley like beads on a string.
But no one was shooting at them now, and she cleared the edge of the valley shelf where the cannon had been emplaced and braked to a halt.
There were only three Cadre icons waiting there to greet her. First Sergeant Pamela Yussuf's was not among them, and Alicia's mouth tightened as the gold ring designating the company's commanding officer settled at last.
It gleamed around the icon representing Sergeant First Class Alicia DeVries.
"All units," she heard someone else say with her voice, "Winchester-One. Form on me at Alpha-One-Bravo."
Chapter Twenty-Three
"Winchester-One, Skycap," a voice said in Alicia's mastoid.
"Skycap, Winchester-One," she replied, speaking with one corner of her mind while the rest watched the last tattered icons of Charlie Company bounding up the cliff-like slope Pamela Yussuf's people had cleared at such terrible cost. "Go."
"Winchester-One," Sir Arthur Keita's voice sounded as strong and powerful as ever, but Alicia sensed his own shock echoing in its depths, "we've lost our direct LOS to your position. I've got a feed off a civilian comsat, but it doesn't have enough bandwidth for your telemetry channels. Are you in a position to give me a sitrep?"
"Skycap, our situation is … serious," Alicia replied, her voice more flattened than the tick alone could account for. She watched Celestine Hillman, the only other surviving squad leader, sorting out their survivors and directing them into a hasty defensive perimeter. "I count sixty-three effectives," she continued, not adding that there were no wounded. The sorts of weapons the company had encountered seldom left anything behind but the dead. "My heavy weapons are reduced to five plasma guns and three calliopes. We've confirmed about a hundred enemy dead, but our planned approach route is covered by additional dug-in forces."
"Can you reach the backup recovery site?" Keita asked. His voice still sounded calm, but even nowAlicia felt shocked by the implications of his question. The Cadre never abandoned a mission when civilian lives were on the line.
But then she looked at her HUD. Charlie Company had gone in with two hundred and seventy-five men and women; she had less than seventy left, and she was forty-plus kilometers from her objective in a straight line. The mission was a bust, whatever else happened, and she knew it. But even so … .
"Skycap, Winchester-One," she said, after moment. "Negative. I say again, negative. My tac remote shows two fortified positions with heavy weapons support between us and the backup recovery site."
There was silence for a second or two before Keita spoke again.
"Winchester-One, do you have an enemy strength estimate?" he asked at last, and Alicia smiled without any humor at all.
"Skycap, I'd say our enemy capabilities estimate was just a bit off. Remote reconnaissance confirms a current hard count of eight hundred and eleven-I say again, eight-one-one-hostiles within six kilometers of the LZ. They're dug in deep and camouflaged and stealthed well enough we never spotted them from orbit on passives. They have plasma cannon, heavy calliopes, and battle armor, and we found an old Groundhog-Three ground-based surveillance array when we overran their heavy weapons position. All of their other hardware looks like Marine-issue equipment that's been surplussed, too; it's not new, but on the basis of its performance, it's in good shape. We've also downed four mil-spec sting ships … and I have additional aircraft circling ten klicks out."
The fresh moment of silence wasn't actually all that long; it was Alicia's tick-stretched time sense which made it seem that way.
"Winchester-One," Keita said finally, "can you evade?"
"Skycap, there's no point," she said quietly. "You can't land recovery boats in this sort of terrain. In fact, the backup recovery site and the objective itself are the only spots you can get them in, and we can't stay away from them forever when they've got air support and we don't. Besides, wherever they got them, these people have enough heavy weapons down here to take out even an assault shuttle. Even if we could manage to find some place else recovery boats could set down, they'd probably nail them on the way in."
"Winchester-One … Alley," Keita's voice was equally quiet, "you're the woman on the spot. Call it, and I'll back your decision, whatever it is."
"Thank you, Skycap," she said, and meant it. "But I only see one option. I'm going for the objective."
"Are you sure about that?" Keita asked. "If the enemy's present in such numbers … ."
"Skycap, they were waiting for us," Alicia's voice was harsher, and her attention strayed back to the icons of the orbiting aircraft. They were starting to edge in a little closer, and she used her synth-link to nudge her hovering remote towards them.
"I don't know where they came from, or how they got this many people and this many heavy weapons into place without anyone spotting it," she continued, "but they figured out exactly where we were coming in, and the Groundhog gave them the tracking ability to zero us from the get-go. They were shooting fish in a barrel, Uncle Arthur. And it's obvious from the positions our remote recon's already picked up that they've got the rest of this valley covered just as thoroughly as they did the LZ.
"But if they've got that many people out here in the boonies, they can't have the direct line between here and Green Haven covered this heavily. Unless you directly forbid it, I'm heading for the objective on the theory that it's the last-place they'll expect us to go after a reaming like this one."
"The terrain between you and Green Haven is awfully rough," Keita replied. "And if our original estimates were so far off, you can't count on their having insufficient manpower to cover the direct approach in overwhelming strength, as well."
"Uncle Arthur," Alicia said with a tight grin, "if they've got that much manpower, we're screwed, whatever we try to do. I say we roll the dice."
A warning blinked in the back of her brain as the tactical remote picked up active targeting systems from the aircraft. From their emissions signatures, they were lighter craft than the sting ships Doorn and Osayaba had downed-probably only two- or three-man air cavalry mounts. But she had five of them on her HUD already, and she was bleakly certain she hadn't seen all of them yet.
"And the hostages?" Keita asked in a painfully toneless voice.
"If they really intended to kill them all if a rescue was even attempted," Alicia replied unflinchingly, "then they're all already dead. I don't think they did, though. I don't know what the hell is really going on down here, but whatever it is, it's a damned sight more than a simple hostagetaking. They've already hammered us. Our loss rate's been over two-to-one so far, and given the numbers we've already detected, they have to be pretty confident they can do that to us again. At the same time, they aren't going to be in a hurry to kill their bargaining chips-especially not after something like this. They're going to need something awfully significant if they're going to have a prayer of talking their way off Fuller now."
"You're figuring that if you get there fast enough, you may be able to break in to the hostages before they kill them."
"Something like that, Uncle Arthur. I'm not saying it's a good option. But I don't think we have any good options left, and whatever we do, we're going to have to do it quick. I've got three more aircraft inbound from the east. If I hold here much longer, they're going to try swarming us."
"Understood." Alicia thought she might have heard the sound of an indrawn breath, but she might not have, too. Then, "All right, Alley. I said it was your call. It is. Good hunting."
"Thank you, Skycap," Alicia said formally. "Winchester-One, clear."
She changed circuits, dropping into the company-wide com net.
"All units," she said, her voice flat and hard with purpose, "Winchester-One. We're going to Green Haven, people, and these bastards aren't going to stop us."
There was no response from the other troopers-not in words, anyway, but any wolf would have envied their snarl-and she continued.
"Mauser-One."
"Winchester-One, Mauser-One," Hillman acknowledged.
"You've got our six," Alicia told her. "I'm designating units now." As she spoke, icons on the HUD started changing color as she selected the wings she was assigning to Hillman. "I figure they're going to press us hardest from behind," she continued, "and I'm especially worried about their aircraft. That's why I'm giving you three of the plasma guns."
"Understood," Hillman replied tautly.
"Lion-Alpha-Three," Alicia went on.
"Winchester-One, Lion-Alpha-Three," Sergeant Jake Hennessy, the senior surviving member of Francesca Masolle's platoon, responded.
"You're in charge of our reserve, such as it is and what there is of it," Alicia told him with a gallows grin. "I'm designating units now." Another dozen pairs of wings changed color, and her armor computer simultaneously set up new dedicated communications nets for Hillman and Hennessy's scratch units. "I want you in the middle, Jake, where you can support Celestine or me. And I'll expect you to use your own judgment if it hits the fan again."
"Understood, Winchester-One."
"The rest of you are with me," Alicia continued, as the final fourteen icons shifted color. "We're point. And this is where we're all going."
She dropped yet another mental command into the HUD, and and a new line drew itself across the mountainous terrain.
"It's going to be tough, it's going to be ugly, and we're going to get hurt, people," she told Charlie Company's survivors harshly. "But the only way out is through, and we owe these bastards. Any questions?"
There were none, and she nodded sharply inside her armored helmet.
"In that case, let's go kick some ass."