He paused, shaking his head in obvious disgust, and Alicia frowned.
"I knew there were a lot of them, Sir," she said, when he didn't resume immediately. "I didn't realize there were quite that many, though. Have we determined how they managed to get them onto the planet in the first place?"
"Not as … definitively as I'd like," Keita said. "In fact, nowhere near as definitively as I'd like. We did manage to take a few of them alive, and to interrogate them, which gave us some additional information. As nearly as we've been able to determine at this point, Jason Corporation, the outfit which built the Green Haven facility, has actually been a Freedom Alliance front for at least ten standard years. By the time we figured that out, unfortunately, 'Jason Corporation' had shut down all operations in what was clearly a preplanned, well-orchestrated business liquidation. Its accounts had been drained and closed, none of its senior personnel could be found, and as far as we can tell, all of the Jason employees we've been able to identify and locate were innocent dupes, unaware that they were actually working for a terrorist-financed corporation.
"At any rate, the Freedom Alliance, when it began planning this operation-apparently quite some time ago-used Jason Corporation to set up the groundwork on Fuller. It built the facility in which the hostages were ultimately held, and apparently used the 'heavy construction equipment' cover to bring in the combat equipment it required for its intended operation.
"For your personal information, and not for the official record, I'm not personally quite as convinced as the analysts who prepared this report that Duke Geoffrey wasn't directly involved in setting all of this up."
Alicia cocked her head to one side, and Keita snorted.
"There's no direct evidence of his complicity-trust me, if there were, we'd be … discussing it with him quite firmly. His Majesty genuinely is as furious over this as he's appeared in public. If we had proof, or even strongly suggestive evidence, that Duke Geoffrey had been knowingly involved, the Emperor would have formally demanded his head from King Hayden. And if he hadn't gotten it, the Marines and Fleet would be moving on Fuller to collect it.
"There is considerable evidence that Duke Geoffrey's director of industrial development, one Jokuri Asaro'o Lowai, knew exactly what was going on. We thought at first that Jokuri might have been a false identity, but we managed to trace him right back to Old Earth, and the Jokuri on Fuller was definitely the genuine article. However, he also wasn't anywhere among the dead or the prisoners we took on Fuller. In short, although we don't believe that anyone managed to get off-world after Marguerite Johnsen entered orbit, he somehow effectively disappeared. The fact that we can't find Jokuri anywhere may indicate that we're wrong about that, but the current consensus appears to be that he was working for the Freedom Alliance and that, as soon as it could dispense with his services, the Alliance eliminated him and disposed of the body. Assuming that the theory has merit, they probably got rid of him because he knew too much and wasn't one of their own inner circle-they couldn't rely on him to keep his mouth shut if we got our hands on him and he found himself facing the death penalty."
He paused again, frowning, clearly not entirely happy with what he'd just said, then shrugged.
"I don't have any better theory than that, but somehow it doesn't quite feel right. I'm not saying that it's wrong, but I've just got this feeling that there's more to it. Certainly it's a neat hypothesis. Jokuri was in a position to handle all of the details on the Fuller side of the pre-op preparations. He was the Shallingsport official Jason Corporation had to clear all of its operations and shipments with. They couldn't have pulled it off without his active complicity; that much is abundantly clear. I suppose I just can't quite shake the suspicion that it could be extremely … convenient for Duke Geoffrey for us to have such a clearly identifiable-and obviously dead-FALA accomplice. According to Duke Geoffrey, it was Jokuri who first suggested to him that granting the terrorists 'sanctuary' in Shallingsport offered the best chance of keeping them alive. There's no independent corroboration of that, however, and I suppose I just find it a little difficult to accept that whoever planned this would have relied upon a mere industrial development expert to convince a head of state to get involved in something like this. And they had to be completely confident that they'd be offered a site in Shallingsport, since that was where they built their base of operations."
He paused once more, his frown deeper, then shook himself.
"At any rate," he continued more briskly, "however they planned it and however they managed to get all of their equipment groundside, the entire operation was intended from the beginning as a giant mousetrap, an ambush. And our Intelligence people never saw it coming. We dropped you and your company right into the middle of it, Alley, and for that I sincerely and personally apologize."
He looked at her very levelly, and it was Alicia's turn to shake her head a bit uncomfortably.
"From what you've already said, Uncle Arthur, it's obvious that they planned this thing very carefully and put all of the pieces into place long before they actually grabbed the hostages. Given the amount of time that Intelligence had to figure out what was happening, I don't think anyone can blame Battalion or anyone else for not realizing that even a terrorist organization like the FALA could be crazy enough to deliberately confront the Cadre this way."
"Possibly not, once we went into emergency response mode," Keita conceded. "But looking ahead, trying to spot things like this coming, is one of the things Intelligence people are supposed to do. And however it happened, no one did that this time around."
He gave his head a little toss and let his chair come back fully upright.
"There are still quite a few unanswered questions, and the nature of the beast in a case like this is that we probably never will get answers for all of them. That doesn't mean we won't keep trying, of course. In particular, the sheer amount of money and resources that the Freedom Alliance invested in this operation is pretty staggering. It might represent pocket change for the Empire, but it came to quite a few million credits. That's a lot, even for an organization like the FALA. And there's also the little matter of our inability-to date, at least-to even begin to identify the arms dealer-or dealers-who sold them their hardware. As you suspected at the time, it was virtually all of imperial manufacture. We did find a little bit of equipment from one Rogue World or another, but almost all of it was Marine surplus, and so far we've been unable to trace how it came into their hands. We've run the serial numbers, of course, and most of it was officially declared surplus to requirements and destroyed several years back. We're trying to come at it by figuring out who was in a position to falsify the record of its destruction, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for us to get to the bottom of it.
"As I say, I don't think anyone has any intention of of letting matters rest where they are right now. When the Emperor himself demands answers, people try very hard to come up with them, and His Majesty really, really wants those answers in this case."
He paused again, as if inviting Alicia to ask any additional questions which had occurred to her. She didn't have any, however. Or, rather, she had a great many of them, but it was obvious from what he'd already told her that no one had the hard data to answer them for her, anyway.
"At any rate," Keita said after a few moments, "that's what we know-and don't know-about what happened. It's not the only thing I wanted to discuss with you, however."
"It isn't?" Alicia asked just a bit cautiously when he paused yet again.
"I'm not planning on springing any nasty surprises on you, Alley," he told her with a smile. "The thing is, there aren't that many holders of the Banner of Terra, as I'm sure you realized, growing up with a grandfather who already had it. Did the Sergeant Major ever discuss with you why he never accepted a commission?"
"He said, Sir," Alicia replied with a small smile of her own, "that he was a 'working stiff' who preferred being in a position to get his hands dirty to getting stuck in a management position. Personally, I've always suspected that he just loves what he does right now too much to give it up."
"I'm sure you're right. But I think, perhaps, I failed to phrase my question correctly. What I meant was did your grandfather ever discuss with you how he avoided accepting commission?"
"Well, no, Sir. Not in so many words, anyway. I just always put it down to the fact that he knows everyone in the Corps-most of them by first name-and that he knew how to work the system too well for anyone to push him into a commission if he didn't want one."
"Having met your grandfather, there's probably something to that," Keita allowed with a slight chuckle. "However, trust me, it isn't easy for someone who's managed to win the Banner to avoid getting turned into an officer. In fact, a commission-or, at least, the offer of one-usually goes with it. In your case, the Cadre -" he meant himself, Alicia knew perfectly well, although he would never come right out and admit it "-had already decided you'd earned a battlefield promotion before the Emperor decided to award the Banner. But there's always a lot of pressure to get anyone who's won it commissioned, because you don't pick up the Banner if you're not exactly what we're looking for in an officer."
Alicia felt her cheeks heat very slightly, but she kept her expression only politely attentive, and Keita suppressed a grin.
"The problem is that you can't really twist the arm of someone who holds the Empire's highest award for valor. In your grandfather's case, I strongly suspect that he used the Banner as a club to beat off any threat of a commission. In your case, obviously, that's not happening-of course, you were a lot younger and more innocent when you won it than he was."
This time the grin broke free, at least partly, and Alicia smiled back at him. Then he sobered slightly.
"What I'm trying to say, Alley, is that your commission came before the Banner was ever awarded. Now that you've received it, though, the tradition is that you get to pick-within reason, of course-where you go next."
He made an inviting gesture, and Alicia frowned.
"I appreciate that, Sir," she said finally. "But I'm not sure where I want to go. Except -"
She paused, obviously hesitating, and Keita cocked his head to one side.
"Spit it out, Alley," he said. "At the moment, you've got pretty much a blank check for anything you want to ask."
"Well, in that case, Sir," she said quickly, almost as if she was pushing herself to get it out quickly, "I've heard that the Company is going to be disbanded. Is that true?"
"Where did you hear that?" Keita asked.
"I'd rather not say, Sir. But, is it true?" She stared at him appealingly.
"Why specifically do you ask?" he asked in reply.
"Because it would be wrong, Sir," she said with a fierceness which surprised even her just a bit. "The Company deserves better than that. It deserves better."
"Alley, at the moment Charlie Company consists of the exactly nine people," Keita pointed out gently. "We'd have to reconstitute it from scratch. It's not just a case of transferring in a few replacements-we'd have to literally rebuild it, as if it were a completely new company."
"We've still got the support staff at Guadalupe, Sir," Alicia said, her tone diffident, but stubborn.
"None of whom are active-duty Cadre," Keita countered.
"But -" Alicia began, then stopped herself. She looked at him, her expression more stubborn than ever, and he chuckled softly.
"Relax, Alley," he said, his tone and expression both serious. "No one's going to disband Charlie Company. Mind you, we're not going to be able to put it back into the field for a while. I meant it when I said we'd have to reconstitute from scratch, and, as you know, the Cadre is never oversupplied with qualified personnel. However, I have it directly from the Emperor's own lips that Charlie Company, and its battle honors, are not to be allowed to disappear. In fact, that's where I was headed a few minutes ago."
"Sir?" Alicia sounded puzzled, although her enormous relief that the company was not going to be written off was obvious.
"You're a brand new lieutenant," Keita pointed out. "You and I both know you've still got to get OCS out of the way, but we both also know you can handle the job. In fact, I'm confident that you'll be as successful as an officer as you were as a noncom, which is pretty high praise, I suppose.
"But, it's going to be a while before we start thinking about additional promotions on your part. Even the Banner isn't going to convince the Cadre to move you up any faster than your experience, seasoning, and confidence justifies. However," he looked at her intently, "there's the little question of where the brand new lieutenant gets assigned when she reports back for duty from OCS. That's what I wanted to discuss with you. Where would you like to go?"
"I … hadn't really thought about it, Sir," she replied, and to her own surprise, it was true. "I guess I've just been worried enough about the possibility that the Company would be disbanded that it never occurred to me to think about going anywhere else. I just wanted to go back to the Company. But I can't, can I? I mean, it isn't there, anymore. And, as you say, it won't be there again for a while."
"Neither of those last two statements is completely accurate, Alley," Keita said quietly, almost gently.
She looked at him, eyebrows rising, and he waved one hand.
"Charlie Company still exists," he told her. "It has nine personnel on its roster. You're one of those nine people. As for your second statement, I didn't say Charlie Company 'isn't there' anymore; I said we're not going to be able to put it back into the field for a while. But what I was going to suggest to you is that if you want to exercise the traditional prerogative of the Banner and request a specific assignment, the one I had in mind was command of First Platoon, Charlie Company, Third Battalion, Second Regiment, Fifth Brigade."
Alicia stared at him, and he smiled.
"If you want it, it's yours," he told her simply. "It's probably going to take us the entire time you're off at OCS to get the rest of the new table of organization filled. But I can pencil in one assignment right now, if it's the one you want."
Alicia discovered that she couldn't speak, and he laughed gently.
"Should I take that as a yes?" he asked.
Book Three: Broken Sword
The darkness shuddered.
An icy breeze sighed through the heart of its warmth, and she shuddered. She tasted fire and slaughter, the sweet copper of blood, and the heady harshness of smoke, and almost-almost-she awoke.
It was there, her sleeping thought knew. It was coming closer. The echo she had sensed twice before was stronger than ever, sure in the strength of its self-knowledge, of its discipline … of its deadliness. And the potential of its futures narrowed, narrowed, narrowed … .
The constellations of potentialities were disappearing, folding in on themselves, resolving. The choices became starker as they became fewer, the alternatives more wrapped in pain.
And yet still the echo knew nothing, sensed nothing, of what awaited it. With all the dauntless courage of mortal kind, it advanced into that unknown void, prepared to accept whatever was.
But would it have been so brave if it had been as she was? Able to sense the dwindling futures which lay before it?
The time will come, she thought at it from her sleep. The time will come, Little One, when you must choose. And what will your choice be then? Will you give yourself to me? Make your purpose and mine one? And how much pain will you embrace in the name of choice?
But the void returned no answer, and the icy breeze sighed away once more into stillness.
Not yet, her sleepy thought murmured. Not yet.
But soon.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
"Look, I don't give a rat's ass what 'headquarters' says about it!" Major Samuel Truman, Imperial Marines, snarled. "I'm taking casualties, and the fucking Lizards are sitting still where I can get at them!"
"Sir," Lieutenant Hunter said, almost desperately, "I'm only telling you what they told me. They want us to hold here. Right here, they said."
"God damn it!"
Had Major Truman been able to do so, he would have snatched off his cap, thrown it on the ground, and stamped on it with both feet. Since he happened to be in battle armor at the moment, that wasn't very practical, which only added to his sense of frustration.
He counted to fifty very slowly-he didn't have the patience to make it all the way to a hundred-and then exhaled a deep breath.
"And did it happen, Lieutenant," he said very carefully, "that HQ gave you a reason for us to stay 'right here'?"
"Sir, they just said to hold position and that someone was on his way out here to explain things."
"Oh, I see," Truman said with exquisite irony. "Explain things."
Another cluster of Rishathan mortar rounds came whistling in from the far side of the ridge, and the Marines' automated air-defense cannon swivelled like striking snakes. Plasma bolts streaked upward, and the incoming mortar fire exploded well short of its intended targets. The steady, snarling crackle of "small arms" fire also came from the far side of the ridge, where Truman's forward units were exchanging rifle fire with the forward Rish pickets. The Marines' battle rifles would have been called auto cannon, had they been employed by unarmored infantry, and the Rishathan weapons replying to them were heavier still.
Truman listened to the thunder of battle, then shook his head.
"Why can I still be surprised by the idiocy REMFs can get up to?" he inquired rhetorically. Hunter, wisely, made no response, and the major sighed.
"All right, Vincent," he said to the lieutenant in a milder voice, "fire up your com and inform HQ that Second Battalion is holding its positions awaiting further orders."
"Yes, Sir!" Hunter managed to suppress most of the relief he felt, but Truman heard it anyway, and smiled with a trace of genuine humor. Then he turned away, studying his projected HUD once again, while he wondered what fresh lunacy was about to descend upon him.
The intensity of the fire being exchanged between Second Battalion and the dug-in Rish had faded into sporadic shots by the time the promised minion from headquarters reached Truman's CP. The major's initial fury at the order to halt his advance had also faded-a little, at any rate-and he was prepared to at least listen to whatever his … visitor had to say.
It had better be good, though, he told himself grimly.
Second Battalion had already taken over a hundred casualties, twenty-three of them fatal, and he'd finally been gaining a little momentum in his drive against the Rishathan lines. It was going to cost him more people to regain that momentum now that they'd stopped him in his tracks.
He growled again, jaw tightening at the thought. He hated actions like this one. The planet of Louvain wasn't even an imperial world-it was a Rogue World which had been so bent on retaining its independent status that it had rejected a defensive alliance with the Empire. Apparently, its government had believed that refusing to sign any formal agreements with either side would somehow convince both of them to leave its world alone.
Which might have worked with the Empire, but not with the Rishathan Sphere. Although, to be fair, Louvain hadn't officially been invaded by the Sphere. Technically speaking, the Rishathan troops currently ensconced on the planet represented an old-fashioned filibustering expedition. The Theryian Clan had launched the invasion purely as a private enterprise effort to extend its own clan holdings, and anyone could believe as much of that as he wanted to.
Unfortunately for Clan Theryian-or for the Sphere, depending on exactly how one wanted to interpret what was going on-Imperial Intelligence had gotten wind of the operation in time to deploy reinforcements to the neighboring Tiberian Sector. Which meant that when the Louvain Republic finally woke up, smelled the coffee, and realized it was about to be invaded, there were imperial troops available to respond to its raucous screams for help. Unfortunately, those troops hadn't been able to get there until after the Rish invasion force.
The Imperial Fleet had quickly and efficiently destroyed or dispersed the naval units which had transported and supported the Lizard assault force, but that didn't do much about the ground forces already in place. A human commander in the same predicament probably would have seriously considered surrender, or at least a negotiated withdrawal. Rish, unfortunately, didn't think that way, and Major Truman and the rest of his battalion's regiment had been dealing with the consequences of Lizard stubbornness for the better part of three standard weeks now.
Which was why he wasn't very happy about the notion of halting his advance when he'd finally found a soft spot in the Rish's final perimeter. In fact -
"Uh, Major?"
Truman looked up, his eyebrows rising in surprise at Lieutenant Hunter's tone. The younger officer stood in the CP entrance, looking-and sounding-astonished, almost tentative, and Truman frowned.
"What is it, Vincent?" he asked.
"That … representative from Headquarters is here, Sir."
Truman's frown deepened, but he only tossed his head inside his helmet-the battle-armored equivalent of a shrug.
"Well, send him on in," he said brusquely.
"Yes, Sir!" Hunter turned in the entryway, speaking to someone Truman couldn't see. "This way, Ma'am," he said.
Truman watched his com specialist stepping aside to make room for the visitor, and then the major's already elevated eyebrows did their best to disappear entirely into his hairline. The last thing he'd expected to see was someone in Cadre battle armor!
The newcomer's armor carried the rank insignia of a captain, which made its wearer effectively equal in rank to Truman himself. That was not a particularly welcome thought. Not that Samuel Truman had anything but respect for the Cadre; he wasn't an idiot, after all. But however much he might respect it, he was the fellow who'd been the officer on the ground for the last three weeks, and the thought of being ordered about buy some newcomer, who didn't know his ass from his elbow in terms of the local situation, was unpalatable, to say the very least.
The Cadre officer stepped fully into the cramped command post and saluted.
"Major Truman?" a pleasant, almost furry-sounding contralto inquired.
"I'm Truman," the major acknowledged, returning the salute and then holding out one gauntleted hand. "And you are?"
The question came out a bit more brusquely than he'd intended to, but the newcomer didn't seem to notice.
"DeVries," she said. "Captain Alicia DeVries, Imperial Cadre."
For a moment, Truman only nodded. Then he stiffened as the name registered.
"Did you say DeVries?" he said.
"Yes," she said simply, and Truman found himself shaking her armored hand rather more fervently than he'd intended to
"I'd welcome you to Louvain, Captain," he heard himself saying, "except that it's not exactly the sort of vacation spot I'd wish on a friend."
"Oh, I don't know, Major." There was something suspiciously like a chuckle in the captain's voice. "Until the present visitors arrived, it was a nice enough planet. Or so I understand."
"I've been told it was," Truman acknowledged. "Unfortunately, I've been a bit too busy being shot at to play tourist."
"Actually, that's why I'm here," DeVries told him, and smiled at him through her armor's visor. She was a remarkably attractive-and young-woman, Truman realized. Which was almost a surprise, given her … formidable reputation.
"I understand you Wasps have the Lizards pretty well contained," she continued, "but now that you've got them pushed back into their final perimeter, it's going to get nothing but uglier."
"Maybe," Truman said a bit more stiffly. "I think, though, Captain, that Second Battalion's found a weak spot. Assuming, of course, that we're ever allowed to exploit it," he added pointedly.
"My, my, you are pissed off." There was no doubt about the chuckle this time, and Truman felt his temper stir once again. DeVries obviously realized it, and she smiled again, quickly.
"I don't blame you if you are pissed," she told him. "Obviously, if you've found a weakness, you want to punch in hard and fast. Unfortunately, Major, you haven't found one yet."
"I beg your pardon?" Truman didn't care who she was, or what medals she'd won. Not when she came waltzing in and told him he didn't know how to read a tactical situation.
"Sorry," she said calmly. "I don't want to rain on your parade, Major Truman, but I've got access to some background intelligence that wasn't available to your own intel people. We developed it after you'd already deployed for the operation, which is why my company was sent along behind you."
"What kind of 'background intelligence?' " Truman asked suspiciously.
"According to a source which Cadre Intelligence considers reliable," she told him, "when Clan Theryian headed out for Louvain, it came prepared for a full-court mysorthayak."
Truman blinked. He was scarcely what he'd consider an expert on Rishathan psychology, but he'd heard the term mysorthayak before. Every Marine had.
"Jesus Christ," he said. "What the hell makes Louvain important enough for something like that?"
"We're not really positive," DeVries admitted. "There are conflicting views on that particular question. There always are, aren't there?" She gave him a crooked grin-the sort the shooters at the sharp end always gave one another. "All we can say for sure is that our source is pretty insistent. Personally, I don't think their real objective is the conquest of Louvain, at all. I think the Sphere's simply decided it's time for another test of our resolve and picked Clan Theryian to carry it out. But I think you'll agree that if they are thinking in terms of a mysorthayak, you might want to be just a bit cautious about exploiting any 'weaknesses' you find."
"You can say that again, Captain," Truman said fervently.
The Rishatha had found the technological gap between their military capabilities and those of their human-specifically, of their imperial human-opponents growing steadily wider ever since the old League Wars. In particular, the fact that no Rish could use neural receptors placed them at a huge disadvantage, especially when it came to naval warfare. Their basic weapons were as good as humanity's, as was their equivalent of the Fasset Drive, but humans' ability to link directly with their military hardware gave them an enormous advantage.
That advantage was most pronounced where the Fleet was concerned. A Rish admiral really required at least a three-to-one advantage in weight of metal if she wanted just to hold her own against a Fleet task force, which was one reason the Rishathan ships supporting this invasion had scuttled out of the system as soon as the Fleet turned up. But when it came to ground combat, the traditional human advantages got a bit thinner.
For one thing, Rish were big. At a height of almost three meters-and squat for their height, compared to homo sapiens-a fully mature Rishathan matriarch massed up to about four hundred kilos, all of it muscle and solid bone. No human could hope to match a Rish in hand-to-hand combat without battle armor, and the Rish built their own battle armor on the same scale nature had used when she built them. Their unarmored infantry routinely carried weapons which not even human battle armor could support, and a fully armored Rish infantryman (although any self-respecting Rishathan matriarch would have ripped out the lungs of anyone who applied a masculine gendered pronoun to her), was tougher than most human light battle tanks.
They still couldn't match the flexibility and "situational awareness" of human troops equipped with neural receptors, but they'd worked hard to develop ways to compensate for that. In the assault, they eschewed anything like finesse, relying on sheer mass and weight of fire to bull their way through any opposition. On the defensive, they deployed tactical remotes profusely, dug their troops in deeply with overlapping fields of fire, backed them with as large and powerful a mobile reserve as they could, and tied in multiply redundant layers of air defense and fire support from heavy weapons. Blasting a way through a prepared Rishathan infantry position was always a costly affair.
Which only got worse when they were thinking in terms of mysorthayak. Truman wasn't sure exactly how to translate the term, but he supposed the closest human concept would have been jihad, although that had overtones he knew weren't really applicable. Jihad hadn't been a very popular term for humanity for the past several centuries, and it had resonances which didn't fit very well in this case. Mysothayak was all about clan honor, honor debts, and Rish bloody-mindedness, with only a small religious component, but the Rishathan honor code was twisty enough and hard-edged enough to make "jihad" the closest convenient human analogue. Once they committed to mysorthayak, Rishathan matriarchs didn't give ground. They fought and died where they stood, and if they had the resources available, they seeded their positions with nuclear demolition charges in order to take as many of their enemies with them as possible.