"Shit," Abruzzi muttered.
Rivera couldn't argue with that. He turned where he stood, sweeping his eyes one more time across the blazing carnage the Cadre assault had left in its wake. Then his jaw tightened as he made up his mind.
"We don't have time to stand here talking about it, Lloyd," he said harshly. "My group's in better shape than yours. I'll take the assault."
"Assault?" Abruzzi repeated. "What assault?"
Jaime Rivera blinked in astonishment.
"We've got maybe thirty minutes before we've got Wasps all over us," he said, his voice flat. "That's our window to retake the hostages if we're going to have any bargaining chips at all."
"Screw bargaining chips!" Abruzzi growled. "We said we'd waste their precious hostages if they attacked us. Well, they've frigging well attacked us!"
"Goddamn it, don't you screw around with me on this one," Rivera grated. "There can't be more than a dozen of them left, and I've got fifty men. We can still retake the place, and if we do, we've got at least a chance to get the rest of our people off this planet. If Keita won't talk to us, we can still kill them all then."
"I say -" Abruzzi started, but Rivera cut him off savagely.
"I don't really care what you say!" he snarled. "I'm senior. We do it my way. We've got them by four-to-one odds, and unlike us, they're going to be handicapped trying to keep the hostages alive. We don't care if there's a little breakage on the way in, and that gives us another edge."
"We've had 'another edge' where these bastards were concerned all goddamned night," Abruzzi pointed out angrily. "Who's to say they won't screw you over all over again if you go in after them?"
"Well, if that happens, you'll be in command. At which point, you can do whatever the hell you want to do. You've still got most of your people's plasma rifles-you think you can't take down that entire building and kill everything in it if you really want to?"
Abruzzi was silent for a moment, and Rivera tossed his head angrily inside his helmet.
"Look," he said, "I'm taking my people, and we're going in. We're losing time standing here talking about it, and we don't have much time before the Wasps get here. These people must've told them the air defenses are down and that they've got the hostages. The Marines are going to begin their drop the instant they've got confirmation of those two things, so just shut the hell up and stay out of my way!"
"All right," Abruzzi said, manifestly unhappily. "Go ahead. But I warn you, we're taking that building down the instant I see a Wasp down here, and if you're still inside … ."
"Fine," Rivera said shortly, and began snapping orders.
"Look at this, Sarge!" Tannis said, and Alicia glanced at her mental HUD as her wing dropped a wire diagram of the building into it.
"What is that?" she asked after a moment, and Tannis laughed with what actually sounded like genuine humor.
"It's a basement, Sarge! A great big, beautiful, deep basement, right under us! I figure we can get at least three or four hundred people into it, if we pack 'em in tight."
"All right!" Alicia said with sudden, matching delight, then grinned. "You found it, so packing them in is your job. Get them moving."
"Gee, thanks," Tannis replied, and an instant later Alicia's exterior pickups brought her the sound of Tannis' armor-amplified voice shouting orders.
Alicia left that up to her wing. If anyone could get a bunch of terrified, exhausted hostages moving in a hurry, it was Tannis. In the meantime, Alicia had other things to worry about, and her fleeting grin disappeared as she wiped the building diagram from her HUD and reconfigured it to tactical mode.
She didn't much care for what it showed her.
There were only eleven green icons left, including hers and Tannis'. That wasn't enough-not to hold something this size against as many battle armored attackers as she knew were still waiting out there on the slopes of the hill. Still, if Tannis could get a significant proportion of the hostages down into the basement she'd found, it would be an enormous help. Not a big enough one, maybe, but still a help.
"Erik," she said, no longer bothering with call signs.
"Yeah, Sarge," Erik Andersson replied.
"You're in charge of the calliopes. I want yours and Samantha's on the west wall. Put the other two where you think best."
"On it," Andersson acknowledged laconically, and Alicia looked over to where Thomas Kiley was examining the plasma cannon Oselli had knocked out.
"Can you get it back up, Tom?" she asked.
"I think so, but it's not gonna be pretty. Brian got so close the back blast smashed hell out of the cup generators."
Kiley pointed, and Alicia grimaced. The cannon was a considerably more powerful weapon than the plasma rifles the Cadre normally carried. In fact, it was powerful enough for thermal bloom to be a significant threat to nearby friendly personnel whenever it fired. So, like all such weapons, it projected a hollow conical force field-the "cup"-for a dozen meters or so in front of it. The force field protected anything to the cannon's immediate flanks and rear when it fired, which was exactly what Oselli had counted upon when he sacrificed himself to save the hostages. The plasma bolt's electromagnetic containment field had ruptured the instant it hit his armor, releasing the bolt's energy in a stupendous explosion. But it had been so close to the cannon that the cup had contained almost all of its fury. It had blown the cannoneer's assistant gunner off his feet, and the portion of the blast which had gotten past Oselli's disintegrating body had been enough to kill every hostage within twenty meters and burn anyone within another ten meters or so horribly. But had he not done what he had, at least half the hostages in that huge room would have died.
"How bad is it?" she asked.
"I can't tell without running a full diagnostic, and we don't have time for that," Kiely told her. "Best guess? We bring the cup up and it unbalances the driver field and screws accuracy all to hell and gone."
"And if we don't bring the cup up, it incinerates everything in front of it for twenty-five meters in every direction," she pointed out.
"So?" Alicia could almost feel Kiely's wolfish grin. "We're a little thin on the ground already, Sarge. I don't think I really mind the notion of covering my own flanks with the biggest damned scattergun I can find."
"Something to that," she agreed, and he actually chuckled over the com as he drew his force blade once again. He brought it down in a crisp, clean arc that sliced the damaged generator assembly off the end of the cannon barrel.
"Since it was my idea, I'll take it," he said, and Alicia nodded.
"All right. This wall," she pointed at the one in front of them, "is where they're most likely to come at us."
"Even knowing they had it covered with this thing?"
"Their outside forces may or may not know that. For that matter, they may figure we took the cannon completely out ourselves-God knows Brian almost did exactly that. Anyway, whatever they may or may not 'know,' the remote I left outside says that's where they're assembling."
"Idiots," Kiely muttered.
"Take what you can get," Alicia recommended, then shrugged. "Actually, they may not have much choice. That's where their biggest group of troops was dug in, and they don't have time to get fancy and try redeploying. Anyway, I don't want you out where they can see you, and I don't want you out where they can snipe you. So pull back another thirty meters. Without the cup, you'll take out the entire center span of that wall with your first shot, so I'm not that worried about your field of fire. Clear?"
"Thirty meters is a long way back, Sarge. What about the hostages?"
"Look," Alicia said, and pointed behind him. Kiely obeyed her, turning to look in the indicated direction, and she heard his low whistle across the com.