"Of course it is, Sir," Boniface, as the senior company commander present replied. "I just don't believe even the Cadre can do it."
"According to Sir Arthur, this Sergeant DeVries does believe it," Bennett said. "And she's the one down there, not us."
"Excuse me, Sir," Delta Company's commander said, "but did you say DeVries? Alicia DeVries?"
"Sir Arthur didn't mention her first name," Bennett replied, looking sharply at the youthful captain with the Recon patch on the shoulder of her armor. "But the last name was certainly DeVries. Sergeant First Class DeVries. Why, Captain?"
"Because it sounds like you're talking about Alicia DeVries," the captain replied. "And if you are, she's Sebastian O'Shaughnessy's granddaughter."
"Sergeant Major O'Shaughnessy?" Bennett said sharply, and the captain nodded.
"Yes, Sir. And in her case, blood is definitely thicker than water."
"You know this sergeant? Know her personally, I mean?"
"Oh, yes, Sir," Captain Kuramochi Chiyeko said softly. "I believe you could say that. And if Alley DeVries says her people can do this, then I'm damned well not going to bet against it."
"I see." Bennett looked around the compartment one last time, and his lips quirked in a quick, brief smile. "Well, there you have it, people. We'll go with the original Green Haven assault landing plan. So get your people loaded up. I want the shuttles ready to separate from the racks fifteen minutes from now.
"Winchester-One, Skycap."
"Skycap, Winchester-One. Go, Uncle Arthur."
"Ctesiphon's launched her shuttles," Keita said. "At the moment, they're sticking close to the ship, so hopefully the bastards in Star Roamer won't realize they've separated. From the moment you give the insertion signal, they'll need twenty-five-I say again, two-five-minutes to hit the LZ. That's how long you'll have to hold."
"Understood, Skycap," Alicia said steadily.
Far, far above her, in Marguerite Johnsen's intelligence center, Sir Arthur Keita fought down the temptation to ask her one more time if she was certain about this.
"In that case, Winchester-One," he said instead, "the ball is in your hands."
"Understood," Alicia said again. "We will commence our attack in five minutes from … now."
A digital time display began ticking down in the corner of the mental HUD Keita's synth-link displayed for him, and his jaw set hard.
"Good hunting," he managed to say almost normally. "Skycap, clear."
Alicia studied her own HUD one final time.
Obaseki Osayaba, Alec Howard, and Serena DuPuy had the company's surviving plasma guns. Every one of them had lost his or her original wing on the nightmare journey to this point, and she'd paired them with Astrid Nordbш, Jackson Keller, and Ingrid Chernienko. Astrid, Jackson, and Ingrid had three of the four remaining calliopes, and she'd handed all of the remaining calliope ammunition to them and ditched the fourth calliope completely. The heavy-caliber, rapidfire weapons would have been of limited utility breaking into a facility crowded with civilian noncombatants.
"All units, Winchester-One," she said. "Plasma teams, remember-hit the air-defense positions and your assigned secondary targets, then get the hell out of it. The rest of us go the instant Obaseki and Serena take out the center positions on our slope."
There was no real need for her to tell them that yet again, but that was all right with her. She wasn't worried that they were going to think she didn't trust them to get it right, but she couldn't tell them what she really wanted to. Couldn't tell them how much each and every one of them meant to her, especially now, when they were the only Cadre family she had left. When she was the one who had decided for them that they were going to throw themselves into the furnace.
When so many of them were about to die.
No, she couldn't tell them that … but they heard it anyway. She knew they did, and that was enough.
"We go in three minutes," she said quietly. "God bless."
Section Leader Shwang Shau-pang of the Freedom Alliance Liberation Army hated battle armor. He'd never liked it, despite all the things it could do for him, because he'd never been able to completely overcome the claustrophobia which had plagued him since childhood. That was the main reason he preferred to leave his helmet visor open whenever he could, and he inhaled a deep breath of Green Haven's cool, late-night air.
Like most of the FALA "regulars" assigned to the operation, Shwang was himself ex-military. Unlike most of the others, however, he'd actually put in his time in the Imperial Marines. The long and tangled chain of events which had led him to where he was today would never have occurred to the long ago, long distant self who'd volunteered to be a Wasp, but the training remained. That was why he'd been tapped for this operation-the FALA didn't have all that many personnel who'd spent almost five standard years manning and maintaining Mark 18 plasma cannon.
And just between himself and the cool, breezy night, Shwang Shau-pang was grateful his experience had landed him here and not out with the screening infantry. He hated the Cadre as much as any other member of the Freedom Alliance, and he was coldly, viciously pleased by the losses the Emperor's personal storm troopers had taken this night. But he was a practical man, was Shwang Shau-pang, and he was perfectly content to let someone else do the killing.
Especially when the bastards have been so good at killing us right back, he thought with a twisted grin.
On the other hand, Comrade Omicron-even among their most trusted subordinates, the members of the Command Council went only by their code names-had finally begun letting the Empies know what the Alliance really had in mind. Shwang rather doubted that even Omicron was quite as confident they'd be able to walk away from this one as he was careful to project. Personally, Shwang figured there was no more than a forty percent chance the Empire would back off, hostages or no hostages. But every man and woman assigned to this operation had understood from the moment they took up arms against the might of the Terran Empire that the odds against their ultimate survival were steep. And if they succeeded in their actual objectives even half as well as it looked like they were going to, it would all be worth it in the end.
Not that I wouldn't like to walk away alive, he admitted to himself. It's always nicer to live to enjoy your successes, after all.
He smiled again and turned to look back towards the central building where the hostages were being held.
Which was why he was looking in exactly the opposite direction when the first plasma bolt exploded directly on top of his number three cannon and vaporized it, its crew, the central data processing unit for the battery, and one Shwang Shau-pang, who died without even knowing that he had.
Alicia watched Obaseki Osayaba's plasma bolt take out the central cannon of the northernmost emplacement. Secondary explosions and blast had probably done for the others, as well, but Osayaba was taking no chances. He fired again, and again, as rapidly as his plasma rifle's firing chamber lasers could induce fusion in the hydrogen pellets. The plasma bolts screamed out of the night, obliterating the Mark 18 cannon and the missile launcher paired with them.
Surprise was total. As she had told Keita, if the FALA infantry had suspected even for a moment that Charlie Company's survivors were anywhere near Green Haven, they would have been trying to do something about it. And, as she had also hoped, the sheer shock of the sudden, totally unexpected attack, induced a momentary paralysis.
Osayaba finished eliminating his assigned antiair weapons and retargeted. His plasma bolts shrieked over Alicia's head, shredding the night, impacting on the defensive FALA perimeter around the northern side of the hill. He continued to fire as rapidly as he could … and just as accurately. Individual armored infantrymen took direct hits, torsos vaporizing, heads simply disappearing, and a hole opened in the center of their line.