by David Weber
There was a moment of fulminating silence, and then, abruptly, the connection was terminated.
My, that didn't go too well, did it? Palacios thought, and looked at her com officer.
"Get me Kuramochi."
"Yes, Ma'am."
"Kuramochi," a voice said almost instantly, and Palacios heard the crackle of small arms in the background.
"Chiyeko, this is Major Palacios. What's your estimate to contact with the militia's forward positions?"
"Five minutes, max, Ma'am."
"Well, be advised that that contingency you and I discussed vis-à-vis Brigadier Jongdomba may well be in effect."
"Understood, Ma'am." Kuramochi's voice was flatter than it had been, and Palacios smiled without any humor whatsoever.
"Sorry to drop it on you, Lieutenant," she said. "Just remember, you're covered by my orders to you. You do what you have to do; I'll worry about the repercussions afterward."
"Yes, Ma'am. I'll get it done."
"Never doubted it, Chiyeko. Palacios, clear."
"What's that?"
"What's what? Where?" Sergeant Thaktok demanded.
"Over there." The militia private sharing the sergeant's hole pointed out into the smoky afternoon. "I saw something move over there."
"What?" Thaktok repeated, peering in the indicated direction. There was enough drifting smoke and dust hanging in the air, especially in the area where the sudden barrage of mortar fire had plowed through the attackers' positions, to restrict visibility badly. It was like a heavy fog, swathing the battered landscape in obscurity. But still, if there were anything out there he should have seen something.
"I don't know what," the private said, exhausted enough—and frightened enough—to sound belligerent. "I just saw some sort of movement and —"
"Holy shit!" Thaktok blurted, flinching back in his hole, as the air seemed to shimmer right in front of him. His bayoneted rifle jerked up in automatic response, but a hand reached out and gripped the barrel, pushing its muzzle back down.
"Let's not have any accidents here, Sergeant," Gregory Hilton said pleasantly as his chameleon camouflage blended out of the background smoke.
Thaktok gawked at him, then twitched as additional Marines began to materialize. The militia sergeant was still trying to come to grips with the apparent wizardry of the Marines' sudden appearance when he found himself face-to-face with a short, slender lieutenant.
"Sergeant . . . Thaktok," she said, reading his name off of his own breastplate, "I'm Lieutenant Kuramochi. I need someone to direct me to Brigadier Jongdomba's CP."
"Uh," Thaktok said. Then he shook himself. "Yes, Ma'am! Right away."
Alicia followed Lieutenant Kuramochi through the combat-spawned debris which littered the once splendidly landscaped Capital Mall. Lieutenant Kuromachi hadn't invited her along, but Sergeant Metternich had glanced at Alicia, then pointed at the lieutenant, and made a waving gesture which Kuromachi had obviously missed. And so Alicia found herself tagging along, feeling a bit like an anxious puppy as she wondered how the lieutenant was going to react when she noticed her shadow.
Prior to this day's madness, the Mall, with its reflecting ponds, fountains, gracious buildings, statuary, and flowering fruit trees had been the most beautiful spot in the entire capital city. That beauty had been sadly damaged, however, and the smoke hovering above it was like a shroud of despair. One of the larger multi-jet fountains was still up and running, a gorgeous, perpetually moving water sculpture in the square in front of the Presidential Mansion, despite a wide crack through one retaining wall of the catch basin, but the others were dead, and she wondered if incoming fire had cut the water supply.
The South Garden, leading to the Mansion's main façade, was ugly with foxholes and emergency aid posts, and the building itself—like the Treasury Building, which faced it across the Plaza of the People—had been heavily damaged. The Mansion's broad granite steps were pitted with bullet marks and littered with bits and pieces of the façade which had been blown out—probably by rockets, she thought, looking at the angle from which the fire had come in. Wisps of smoke blew from the shattered windows of the previously gracious building, and she was surprised that it was only smoke. The Mansion's sprinklers and fire suppression system must be better than she would have expected from the rest of Gyangtse's indigenous tech base.
Most of the militiamen they'd passed on their way here had seemed happy to see them. They were too exhausted, too worn out, for exuberance, but she'd seen the relief in their faces. In fact, it had gone far beyond simple "relief" in several cases, and she wondered just how much of the Battalion these people thought had arrived to save them. Did they realize Major Palacios had sent only a single platoon? And if they didn't, how where they going to react when they figured it out?
But the closer they got to Brigadier Jongdomba's command post, the less jubilant the faces around them seemed. Not that Alicia was all that surprised. The Imperial Marines believed in keeping their people in the loop, so even Alicia knew Jongdomba wasn't going to be happy with their orders from Palacios.
They reached the Presidential Mansion, and the private Sergeant Thaktok had assigned to guide them led them down into the hole-pocked garden. Brigadier Jongdomba's CP was in a hastily sandbagged dugout hard up against the inner face of the tall, semi-ornamental brick wall around the Mansion's grounds. Two rifle-armed militiamen—one a lieutenant and the other a corporal, both sporting a non-standard unit flash Alicia had never seen before on their left shoulders—stood outside the CP's entrance. A quick query of her helmet computer through her synth-link identified the crossed-lightning-bolts shoulder flash as the emblem of Jongdomba's "Headquarters Guard Company," whatever that was. She'd never heard of it, and her helmet database showed no such unit on the militia's official table of organization and equipment. At the moment, they struck her as improbably clean and neat against the littered chaos around them, and Lieutenant Kuramochi's guide came to a halt in front of them as the lieutenant held up a peremptory hand.
"What do you want?" the militia officer growled at the dirty, battle-stained private without so much as looking in Kuramochi's direction.
"The Marines are here," the guide replied. "This is Lieutenant Kuramochi. She needs to see the Brigadier."
"Oh, she does, does she?"
The militia lieutenant turned his attention to Kuramochi at last, and Alicia's instincts kicked her hard. There was something about the Gyangtsese's expression, something about his eyes, that twanged mental alarms.
"Yes, she does," Kuramochi said, her voice cold. "And her patience is in rather short supply at the moment."
"Oh, forgive me, Ma'am!" the militiaman replied, coming to an elaborate caricature of attention and saluting with a mocking flourish. "I'll just run right in and see if the Brigadier wants to waste his time seeing one of the useless wonders who've been sitting on their gutless asses while the frigging city burns down around us."
Alicia didn't see or hear any communication between Lieutenant Kuromachi and Gunny Wheaton. Maybe, she decided later, it was telepathy. Or maybe the big gunnery sergeant was simply pissed off enough that he didn't need any signal from his lieutenant.
There was a brief, sudden blur. Wheaton didn't even seem to move. One moment he was standing at Lieutenant Kuramochi's elbow; the next moment, the militia officer was flat on his back on the ground, his combat rifle was in Wheaton's hands, and one of Wheaton's boots was pressed firmly against the other man's throat.
The militia corporal started to move, then froze. Only when he stopped moving did Alicia realize that he'd frozen because her rifle muzzle was aligned directly with his belt buckle. He stared at her for a heartbeat, then very carefully lowered his own rifle's butt to the ground.
"I believe," Wheaton said pleasantly to the still-standing corporal, ignoring the man on the ground as he flopped about, making strangling sounds while both hands wrenched uselessly at the Marine's immovable combat boot, "that the Lieutenant would like to s
ee the Brigadier now. Is there a problem?"
"Just what the hell do you mean, attacking my people?" Brigadier Jongdomba raged as Lieutenant Kuramochi was shown into his damp, muddy-smelling command post. Gunny Wheaton followed her, and Alicia continued to tag dutifully along, as well. As she'd started down the dugout steps, Alicia's HUD had picked up the green icons of the rest of the platoon drifting gradually into a loose necklace around the CP.
"I don't know what you're talking about, Brigadier," Kuramochi said levelly, looking him straight in the eye.
"Oh, yes, you do, Lieutenant!" Jongdomba spat.
He pointed at another militia officer, this one a captain, standing to one side with a pair of sergeants. All three of them wore the "HQ Guard" shoulder flash, and their expressions were belligerent as they glared at Kuramochi and Wheaton.
"I have a report of the entire incident," the brigadier continued, "and it's obvious to me that your commanding officer's cowardice is exceeded only by your arrogance in the execution of her gutless orders! But while you may cherish the mistaken belief that you have some God-given right to assault any of my people who get in your way, I assure you that you and she are both wrong about that, Lieutenant! I fully intend to press charges against both of you to the full extent of military law!"
"Apparently, there was some difference of opinion as to the degree of military courtesy which should be shown to a superior officer, Sir," Kuramochi replied, and Jongdomba's face tightened dangerously at her not particularly oblique reminder that a Marine officer was legally a full grade senior to any planetary militia officer of his own nominal rank. "Your lieutenant expressed his opinion of me and my Marines in somewhat intemperate language. My gunnery sergeant took exception to his manner and . . . remonstrated with him. Since Major Palacios has declared martial law in the name of the Emperor, not the local authorities, the Imperial Marine Corps would have jurisdiction over any military infractions which may occur during the present emergency. I'm sure that if you choose to press charges, the Corps will be perfectly willing to empanel a court-martial to consider the behavior of everyone involved. In the meantime, however, Sir, with all due respect, my orders are to evacuate the members of the planetary government to the safety of the spaceport."
"The planetary government isn't going anywhere!" Jongdomba glared at her. "As I've already informed Major Palacios, President Shangup and the Delegates have no intention of being driven out of the capital by this pack of gutter scum!" He snorted contemptuously. "Pack of useless drones and parasites, the lot of them. It's time we taught them a long overdue lesson in deportment, and we're not about to let them take over the official offices of government and get any uppity ideas above their stations!"
"Brigadier Jongdomba," Kuramochi said, "you were the one who informed Major Palacios you could no longer hold this position or guarantee the safety of your governmental leaders. Accordingly, the Major has dispatched me to escort those leaders to a place of safety. If they choose not to accompany me, that will be their own decision. Major Palacios regrets the probable outcome of that choice, but she will not seek to dictate to them."
"You wouldn't dare simply abandon us—them!" Jongdomba sneered.
"On the contrary, Brigadier," Kuramochi said calmly, "it would be their decision, not mine."
"And what if I choose not to let you abandon us?" the brigadier asked in a suddenly much softer voice.
"Brigadier, my people and I aren't under your command," Kuramochi said. "I have my orders from my own superiors, and I will obey them."
"Somehow," Jongdomba said, "I rather doubt your precious Major Palacios or Governor Aubert will be quite so quick to throw us to the wolves if a platoon of their own precious Marines are stuck here with us. If I'm wrong, your people should still be a worthwhile addition to our firepower."
"Brigadier Jongdomba," Kuramochi's tone was flat, "I think you'd better reconsider your position. My people aren't here to reinforce your perimeter, and that's not what they're going to do. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to speak to President Shangup myself. I'd hate to think that the nature of my orders might have been—unintentionally, I'm sure—misrepresented to him."
"I suspect your people will be more willing than you think to do as I ask when they discover that you and your sergeant here are going to be my 'guests' until order is restored to the capital on the planetary government's terms," Jongdomba said.
Alicia felt a sudden, icy calm descend upon her. Despite the briefings, despite the incident with the militia lieutenant outside the CP, she couldn't quite believe Jongdomba could be as crazy as his last sentence suggested. He was surrounded by heavily armed insurgents, and now he was prepared to court a shooting incident with a platoon of Imperial Marines in the very middle of his position? What could he be thinking? Or was he thinking at all? Surely he couldn't believe that the commander of a Crown World planetary militia could get into a pissing contest with the Corps and survive?
"Brigadier," Lieutenant Kuramochi said softly, "you're about to make a serious mistake. I recommend that you let this drop right here, right now."
"I don't really care what a cowardly little bitch with delusions of grandeur recommends, Lieutenant," Jongdomba sneered. Then, without turning his head, he said, "Captain!"
The militia captain standing behind Sergeant Wheaton had been primed and waiting. At the brigadier's one-word command, his hand flashed down to the weapon holstered at his hip. The two sergeants with him were armed with combat rifles. They'd been standing there, with the weapons over their right forearms, like hunters carrying their rifles across a field somewhere. Now, they brought the muzzles up, swinging them towards Lieutenant Kuramochi.
But things didn't work out exactly as Jongdomba had intended them to.
Gunny Wheaton took one quick step backward, and the armored couter protecting his right elbow drove unerringly into the militia captain's chest. The other man's breastplate blunted the hammer blow, but its sheer power drove the smaller Gyangtsese back into the earthen wall behind him with stunning force. Wheaton turned in place as the militiaman cried out and mingled surprise and pain. The captain tried to bounce back upright, only to find his right wrist locked in the viselike grip of Wheaton's left hand, and then the gunnery sergeant's right hand fastened itself about his throat like a hydraulic clamp and yanked him up onto his toes.
The militia sergeants hesitated. It was a brief thing, no more than a single breath, or half a heartbeat. Wheaton's instant reaction had taken them both by surprise, and they began to turn their weapons towards him, and away from Kuramochi, in automatic response.
Unfortunately for them, however, the Marine lieutenant was already in motion herself. At the same instant Wheaton neutralized the captain, Kuramochi spun like a dancer to face the sergeants and took one long step towards them. Her right hand swept down to her hip and came up with her own sidearm even as her left hand caught the nearer of the two sergeants' combat rifle and heaved. The rifle's unfortunate owner stumbled toward her, off-balance and astounded by the force of the petite Marine's pull, and her left kneecap drove up into his groin.
He screamed, dropping his rifle and clutching at his crotch as he went to his knees, and his fellow sergeant suddenly found himself looking down the muzzle of Kuramochi's pistol at a range of twenty centimeters.
That quickly, Wheaton and Kuramochi had neutralized all three of Jongdomba's people. But Kuramochi had miscalculated slightly. She hadn't realized there was a fourth militiaman with the lightning bolt flash hidden behind the bulk of Jongdomba's com center. Now that man came to his feet, and the weapon in his hand was no pistol. It was a neural disrupter, coming to bear on the back of Kuramochi's head from a range of less than five meters. His finger was on the firing stud, and his lips drew back in a snarl as it began to squeeze.
Thunder exploded in the command post.
Alicia's M-97 was just a little long to be truly handy in such relatively close quarters, but that didn't matter. As the unexpected fourth member of the brig
adier's insane ambush stood, her rifle muzzle tracked up from the floor. There wasn't time for a head or chest shot; she squeezed the trigger when the rifle was only hip-high and let recoil push the muzzle further upward as a sharp, chattering burst of tungsten-cored penetrators shattered the communications console before they smashed into the man on its other side.
The militiaman screamed as Alicia's first round hit him just below the navel. The second hit him half-way between the first and his breastbone. The third hit squarely at the base of his throat, its trajectory still upward, and his chopped-off scream died abruptly as it exited through the back of his neck and eight centimeters of his spine was reduced to paste. His gun hand closed convulsively, and the disrupter's emerald bolt slammed into the dugout wall. It missed Kuramochi entirely, but the very fringe of its area of effect caught Wheaton and the militia captain he had immobilized. Both of them went down, arching convulsively as energy bleed from the near-miss ripped through their nervous systems. They hit the floor, thrashing helplessly, an instant behind the man Alicia had just killed, and Brigadier Jongdomba snatched for his own sidearm.
PFC Alicia DeVries took two steps. The militia commander's eyes snapped to her just as her combat rifle drove viciously forward. Unlike his subordinates, Jongdomba wore no body armor, so there was nothing to protect him when the smoking flash suppressor of Alicia's M-97, with its bulbous under-barrel mounted grenade launcher, rammed into his belly like a pile driver.
The brigadier jackknifed around the rifle with a high, hoarse grunt of agony. His pistol flew from his hand as he clutched at his belly, and Alicia's rifle twirled. Its butt came up in a perfectly measured arc that hammered into Jongdomba's descending shoulder, just low enough to catch and smash his collarbone as it straightened him back up .
The militia's commanding officer went up and over, then down, stunned, two-thirds unconscious. He landed on his back, whooping and coughing for the breath which had been driven out of him, then froze as he found himself staring up at the muzzle of a rock-steady combat rifle trained on the bridge of his nose.
