"Captain Berthier," she heard her own voice say calmly, "this is Hanover, on India Mike Three. Sir, the Dog Boys have just blown Stalingrad—and Mickey—to hell."
She was still talking when the same finger which had hit the com key punched another button and alert sirens began to wail all across Industrial Module Three.
Maneka was still dripping when the lifeguard air car came screaming in to deposit her atop Lazarus'
war hull. She didn't waste time thinking about uniforms or towels. She just dashed towards the heavily armored topside personnel hatch, bare feet threading their way between the slablike missile hatch covers on pure autopilot while she barked into her hand com.
"—to the Armory now!" she snapped. "Full equipment and ammunition for First, Second, and Fourth Battalions. Deploy First and Second to the Alpha One positions, and alert Major Atwater for probable immediate embarkation."
"Understood," Brigadier Jeffords said sharply. She could hear the reverberations of shocked disbelief echoing in his voice, but he was alert and tracking well, and that was about all she could have asked of him under the circumstances.
"Good, Peter," she said a bit more gently, then ducked and twisted in a familiar contortion that deposited her onto the upper access ladder to Lazarus' command deck. She braced her bare insoles against the outside of the ladder uprights and slid down it, com dangling from her wrist by its lanyard, and the vibrations of ponderous, delicate movement shivered in her hands and feet as Lazarus maneuvered himself back up the loading ramp of the assault pod.
She left that up to him and the pod's onboard computers while she concentrated on getting down the ladder in one piece as quickly as possible. Adrian Agnelli's face already showed on one of the multiquadrant communications screens, and other members of the colony's command structure were blinking onto other quadrants even as her bare feet hit Command One's decksole with a stinging impact.
Agnelli's expression was a combination of horror, shock, disbelief, and confusion, but if there was any panic in it, Maneka couldn't see it. Fear, yes—but not, she was certain, for himself. And despite all the myriad questions which must be hammering at his brain, he didn't waste time battering her by demanding answers to them.
She took an instant to give him a sincerely and deeply grateful smile, then slithered into her command couch in her dripping wet, skimpy swimsuit.
She took an instant to give him a sincerely and deeply grateful smile, then slithered into her command couch in her dripping wet, skimpy swimsuit.
"As you're all aware, the colony is under attack," she continued in a crisp, clipped tone. "I deeply regret that I have to confirm that Stalingrad and Mickey have been destroyed."
Someone—she didn't know who, and she didn't worry about finding out—cursed in falsetto shock.
Maneka ignored the outburst and continued flatly.
"Lazarus' analysis agrees in all its essentials with Lieutenant Hanover's conclusion. The emission signature of the explosion is, in fact, a perfect match for a Puppy Bravo-Eighteen demolition charge. How they got it into position without Mickey's spotting them is impossible to say, but Lazarus has gone back over Mickey's last transmissions over the TSDS. The most likely possibility is that they managed to insert a covert special ops team into the inner system to launch it at short range. The next most likely is that they used some sort of long-range, stealthed launch vehicle to attack directly from the outer-system. In either case, it's obvious that they did, somehow, manage to follow us all the way here. And they wouldn't have announced their presence by taking out Stalingrad and Mickey this way if they didn't have some sort of plan to hit the rest of the colony.
"At the moment, we don't know what that plan might be. But it's virtually certain that whatever they've got, it isn't a regular warship. A cruiser wouldn't have needed that much stealth to get through to Stalingrad, given her alert status, and it wouldn't have had the endurance to follow us this far in the first place. So we're looking at some sort of logistics ship or transport. Under the circumstances, I see no option but to assume that we're up against an Atilla-class heavy transport."
Jeffords inhaled sharply, and she smiled thinly at the other faces on her display.
"For those of you unfamiliar with the reporting names assigned to Puppy warships, that's an atmosphere-configured assault transport, the second biggest one they have. And," her grim smile vanished, "it's capable of landing an entire heavy assault brigade."
"Dear God," Agnelli said quietly, and Maneka nodded.
"I may be wrong, and I pray I am, but I may not be, too," she said. "And whatever they've got, they're obviously very, very good to have followed us this far without being detected in the first place, and then to get through our defenses so neatly with their first strike. On the basis of my analysis of the threat, I'm officially notifying all of you that I am assuming full authority as this system's military commander, and that I've already activated Defense Plan Alpha. Brigadier Jeffords' First, Second, and Fourth Battalions are drawing weapons and ammunition now. Lieutenant Governor Berthier."
"Yes, Captain?"
"I've already informed Brigadier Jeffords that we'll be diverting all construction equipment to military uses. Most of the construction personnel have already been activated in their militia role, and the brigadier's issued preliminary orders to them. He knows what I want dug in and where, but since he's going to be busy overseeing the deployment of all of his personnel, I'd like you to take over on the construction side. You'll find the details in the construction plans queue under Delta Papa Alpha One."
"Of course, Captain!"
"In that case," she continued, turning to Agnelli's daughter, "I need you to take over organization for probable wounded, Dr. Agnelli-Watson," she said formally. "I hope there won't be many of them, but—"
She broke off suddenly, and her face tightened.
"Governor Agnelli," she said harshly.
"Yes, Captain?"
"We may have lost Stalingrad and Mickey's sensors, but the backup recon satellites we deployed are still on-line and feeding information to Lazarus' BattleComp. I have confirmation of a Melconian vessel headed for Indrani. And it is an Atilla."
"That's the bad news," she continued with a tight, teeth-baring smile. "The good news is that so far we haven't picked up anything else. She must have been accompanying the raiding squadron Commodore Lakshmaniah destroyed, and she must have used her emergency cryo facilities to stretch her endurance. It's the only way they could have followed us this long without starving to death—or eating each other. But according to Lieutenant Hawthorne, those cryo facilities aren't very good, so they've probably taken some significant personnel losses.
"What matters right now, though, is that apparently she's the only opposition we face." One or two of the faces looking back at her showed their owners' incredulous response to her use of the word "only," but she went on in that same level voice. "Assuming that they really have somehow managed to follow us here with their personnel essentially intact, we're going to be facing heavy odds—" not as heavy as Chartres, a stray thought flickered, but heavy enough ... and you don't have the rest of the Battalion for backup this time "—but without any warships to side her, at least no one's going to be bombarding us from space in the middle of the fight.
"With Brigadier Jeffords' people to watch the back door, Lazarus and I will be able to operate much more freely against any ground opposition. My biggest concern at this moment is that although we've picked up one transport, we have no positive assurance that it's the only ship out there. Personally, I think it probably is, for the reasons I've already given, but I can't be certain of that. If I had only a little more time, I'd take Lazarus' assault pod back up into orbit to engage them short of the planet.