For all his argument with the other group leader, Abruzzi would never have believed a handful of exhausted infantry-even Cadre infantry-could have held against Rivera's assault. But they had held, and even as he watched, the five fleeing survivors went down one by one, picked off by murderously accurate bursts of calliope fire.
Those bastards, he thought venomously. Those fucking bastards!
All the hatred Lloyd Abruzzi had ever felt for the Terran Empire and the Imperial Cadre flamed up within him, and his lips drew back from his teeth in an ugly snarl.
So we do it my way after all, he told himself, and punched into his own action group's command frequency.
"Plasma gunners! I want that fucking building flattened! Open -"
Lloyd Abruzzi never had time to realize Rivera had been wrong.
Sir Arthur Keita and Major Alexander Bennett hadn't waited for the Cadre to confirm the destruction of the antiair defenses around the objective. Alicia DeVries had told them her people would neutralize them, and they'd begun their assault insertion the instant Charlie Company's survivors launched their attack. Abruzzi had thought he had at least ten or fifteen more minutes to complete the destruction of the fire-wracked building on top of his hill, but he, too, had been wrong.
The precisely targeted pattern of hyper-velocity weapons came down out of the Shallingsport night like solid bars of light, far, far ahead of the sound of their passage, and the glaring fireballs wiped Abruzzi's action group away like the fists of an angry deity.
Alicia's sensor remote saw the shuttles coming in, saw the explosions, saw the handful of surviving terrorists turning to race desperately for the illusory sanctuary of the mountains even as three of the shuttles banked after them, heavy cannon thundering mercilessly. She saw it all, but she had no time for it. She was on her knees beside Tannis, desperately accessing her friend's med panel while Tannis' flickering vital signs dimmed towards extinction.
"DeVries! Sergeant DeVries!" someone was shouting over the company command circuit.
"Medic!" she shouted back. "I need a medic right now!"
"Over there!" she heard, and then Marines in battle armor were all around her, impossibly neat and clean amid the chaos and destruction, the filth and the blood and the bodies.
"Medic!" she screamed yet again as Tannis' heart suddenly stopped. She hammered at the med panel with both hands, but other hands reached down for her-battle armored hands, whose strength was a match for her own, hauling her to her feet, pulling her away from Tannis.
She fought madly, but there were too many of them. It took four Marines to hold her, but they pinned her, held her, pulled her back.
"Alley!" a fresh voice shouted as another armored Marine went to her knees beside Tannis. "Alley!"
There was something about that voice. Something familiar, and Alicia's eyes widened.
"Lieutenant?" she heard the disbelief in her own ragged voice. "Lieutenant Kuramochi?"
"It's me, Alley," Captain Kuramochi said. "The medics are here. Do you hear me-the medics are here." Two more gauntleted hands reached out, settling on either side of Alicia's helmet, holding it motionless while Kuramochi Chiyeko leaned towards her. Their visors touched, and Kuramochi spoke slowly, distinctly, looking directly into Alicia's exhausted eyes. "The medics are here, Sergeant. You've got to let them help her. Do you understand, Alley?"
"Yes," Alicia whispered, sagging inside her armor at last. "Yes."
"Then let's get you both out of here," Kuramochi said softly, tears sliding down her own cheeks. "Let's get you home."
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Lieutenant Alicia DeVries marched through the cavernous arch in Sligo Palace's inner wall. It was October, and autumn's paintbrush had been busy. The magnificently landscaped grounds of the immense Court of Heroes spread out before her, its autumn-splashed trees and gardens, its fountains and reflecting pools, all arranged to lead the eye inevitably to the Cenotaph at its center. The square, flower bed-defined courtyard around the Cenotaph's plain, polished marble shaft was large enough to parade an entire battalion and paved in oddly mottled-looking stone, not ceramacrete.
There was a reason for that courtyard's odd texture and coloration; every individual block of stone in it was from a different planet or inhabited moon of the Terran Empire.
Alicia still felt odd in the uniform of a Cadre lieutenant, but it was legally hers, even though she had yet to attend the OCS course which went with it, as she marched steadily, slowly down the long, straight pathway leading from the arch to the Cenotaph. That pathway was lined with simple battle steel plaques, each engraved with the names, branches of service, and serial numbers of men and women who had died in the service of the Terran Empire.
It seemed to take forever to reach the Cenotaph, and she kept her eyes fixed straight ahead, focused on the four individuals standing all alone on that plain of stone in the obelisk's shadow. There were others present, of course, seated in the reviewing stand along the southern edge of the Cenotaph courtyard, but there weren't that many. Not physically present, at least.
She crossed the edge of the stone paving, her boot heels sounding suddenly crisp and clear on its surface, and more boots sounded behind her. They hit the stone in perfect unison, their sounds echoes of her own, and she felt them at her back.
There weren't very many of them.
Tannis Cateau was there, finally released from hospital care two days earlier. And so were Erik Andersson, Alec Howard, Jackson Keller, Alexandra Filipov, Digory Beckett, James Krуl, whose hospital stay had ended one day before Tannis', and Karin de Nijs.
Nine men and women, including Alicia. The only survivors of Company C, Third Battalion, Second Regiment, Fifth Brigade, Imperial Cadre.
They marched steadily across the stone pavement, turned sharply to their left, then wheeled back to their right. Their left heels struck the stone in a single perfectly coordinated instant, and they snapped to attention facing the four men who had awaited them.
The only sounds were the cool October wind in the trees, the sharp popping of the flags atop their poles around the Cenotaph, the splash of water in the fountains at its base, the almost inaudible hum of the HD cameras hovering on their counter-grav floaters, and the distant cry of birds.
"Charlie Company, Third Battalion, reports as ordered, Sir!" Alicia said crisply, and her hand flashed up in salute.
General Dugald Arbatov, the Cadre's commanding general, returned the salute. Then he looked at the man standing beside him.
"Call the role, if you please, Brigadier," he said.
"Yes, Sir!" Sir Arthur Keita replied. Then he raised the old-fashioned, anachronistic clipboard he'd had tucked under his left arm and turned to face the nine men and women standing at attention before him in that space which would have held a battalion.
"Alwyn, Madison!" he said, not even glancing at the neatly printed columns of names on the clipboard he held.
"Present," Alicia replied, her voice firm and clear.
"Andersson, Erik!"
"Present," Andersson responded.
"Arun, Namrata!"
"Present," Tannis Cateau replied.
"Ashmead, Jeremy!"
"Present!" Alec Howard barked.
The names and responses rang out in slow, clear cadence in the quiet, quiet afternoon. Two hundred and seventy-five names Keita called out, and two hundred and seventy-five times the response "Present" answered.
"Yrjц, Rauha!" Keita called the final name.
"Present!" Alicia answered for the last name, as for the first, and her voice was just as firm, just as clear, despite the tears shining in her eyes.