Alicia was firing herself, picking her targets, and still more of the defenders went down. But not enough. The ones they'd killed in the initial volley had been the careless ones, the ones taken unawares. The ones who were still left were the cautious ones, the careful ones who returned fire without exposing themselves any more than they had to, and their weapons were heavier than the Cadre troopers'.
"Hold what you've got!" she said over the tactical net as the advancing green icons on her HUD reached the points she'd selected ahead of time. Not all the positions she'd chosen were as good as she'd hoped they would be, but all of them offered at least some cover, and her people went to ground, continuing to fire but obviously pinned down by the fire coming back at them.
Alicia bared her teeth in a fierce grimace as the enemy's fire redoubled.
That's right, she thought viciously at them. You go right ahead and pin us down. You've got us, don't you?
"We've got them-we've got them!" Cornelius Burkhart's executive officer screamed into his com.
"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 -