by David Weber
She didn't much care for that but, to her surprise, it didn't frighten her, either. She knew what the FAK had done here on Kornati.
Yet she wasn't looking forward to it, and so she watched the brilliant, uncaring stars as Hawk-Papa-Two knifed along on the very edge of space, and wished human beings could settle their affairs with the same clean, cool detachment.
* * *
Platoon Sergeant George Antrim, First Platoon's senior noncom, stood and moved to the center of the pinnace. Unlike Lieutenant Kelso, Antrim was in a standard armored skinsuit, and he crossed to stand beside the pinnace's flight engineer at the jump master's station.
"Approaching drop," he announced, over his skinsuit com to the battle-armored Marines. "Prepare to drop."
The armored Marines stood and moved to the port side of the pinnace. The standard airlock was on the starboard side of the hull. The port side of the fuselage was configured for just this situation, and Antrim nodded to the flight engineer.
"Open her up."
"Opening now," the Navy puke replied, and a hatch four meters across slid open in the side of the pinnace. Everyone in the passenger compartment, including the flight engineer, was skinsuited or armored, with helmet sealed, for reasons which were obvious as the compartment instantly depressurized. Baffles forward of the hatch broke the slipstream, providing a pocket of protected airspace outside it, and Captain Kaczmarczyk and Sergeant Major Urizar stepped up to the opening.
"Confirm drop acquisition," Antrim said, and twenty-six armored thumbs rose on twenty-six armored right hands as every one of the queued Marines confirmed that his armor's internal computer had pinpointed the coordinates of the drop zone and projected it onto his visor's heads-up display. The sergeant nodded in approval, and checked the jump display projected into his own helmet's HUD again.
"Drop point in . . . forty-five seconds," he announced.
The appointed seconds raced away, and Antrim spoke one last time.
"Go!"
* * *
Captain Tadislaw Kaczmarczyk thrust himself out and away from Hawk-Papa-Two. His external sound pickup was adjusted to its lowest sensitivity, but the ear-piercing wail of the pinnace's turbines was still deafening. For just an instant, the air around him seemed almost calm; then his plummeting body crossed the boundary between the baffles' protective bubble and the air beyond.
Despite his protective armor, he grunted in shock as Kornati's atmosphere punched savagely at him. It was a sensation he'd felt before, although he hated to think what it would have been like for someone without armor.
He flung out his armored arms and legs, simultaneously triggering his suit's built-in thrusters, stabilizing himself in midair. This section of Kornati was virtually unpopulated, an endless forest of virgin, indigenous hardwoods and evergreens, which undoubtedly explained why the bad guys had chosen it for their installation. It also meant there were no artificial light sources below him. He gazed down into a vast, black void—the bottom of the greedy well of gravity into which he'd cast himself—and he could see nothing.
Until he brought his low-light systems on-line, that was.
Instantly, the forested terrain below him—very far below him—snapped into visibility. He was still far too high to make out details, and from his altitude, he seemed scarcely to be moving at all, despite a forward velocity of more than six hundred kilometers per hour. His rigidly extended limbs meant his angle of descent was shallow, and the glowing green crosshair of his objective floated above the horizon line projected across his HUD. The armor's exoskeletal "muscles" meant he could hold his posture forever, despite the clawing pressure of the steadily thickening atmosphere, and he adjusted his position carefully, dropping the crosshair directly onto the horizon line. A soft audio tone confirmed that he was back on trajectory, and he settled down.
Minutes ticked past as he continued to slice through the air, First Platoon's first two squads stretched behind him like some formation of stooping hawks. The ground beneath drew steadily closer, and his speed across it became increasingly apparent. He checked his altitude. It was down to little more than a thousand meters, and the crosshair began to blink—slowly, at first, then more and more rapidly. Another audio tone sounded—this one sharp and insistent, not soft—and he popped his counter-grav.
It wasn't like a standard counter-grav belt or harness. There wasn't room for one of those, or not for one with the power he needed tonight, at any rate. Instead, the backpack harness strapped between his armored shoulder blades popped open. A tether deployed from it, and an instant later, the extraordinarily powerful counter-grav generator at the tether's far end snapped to full power, with no gradual windup.
Kaczmarczyk grunted again, this time explosively, as his airspeed checked abruptly. He swung on the end of the tether, outside the actual field of the generator, and the treetops flashing past below him slowed. They reached up for his boots, but he was coming down far more gradually now, and he checked his HUD one more time.
Right on the money. Good to know I haven't lost my touch.
* * *
First Platoon hit the ground almost precisely on its objective.
Almost precisely.
Even with the best computer support available, there was bound to be at least some scatter in a HALO drop from that far out. For the most part, the error was less than twenty meters, but Private 1/c Franz Taluqdar, of First Squad, was just a bit farther off than that. In fact, Private Taluqdar found himself coming down almost directly in front of the ridgeline tower which was his objective.
Taluqdar didn't know what, if anything, that bunker was armed with. If it was armed and the weaponry was of local manufacture, the odds were pretty good that his armor would protect him from it. But "pretty good" were two words Taluqdar didn't much care for, especially not in reference to sharp pointy things and his own personal hide. He therefore decided that landing in the potential field of fire of the possible bunker's hypothetical weapons was contraindicated and proceeded to do something which would certainly have cost him his PFC stripe in a training exercise.
He jettisoned his counter-grav while he was still ten meters off the ground and hit his suit thrusters.
Battle armor thrusters, unlike the jump gear which allowed an armored Marine to cover ground at an amazing rate in long, low leaps, had a strictly limited endurance. They were intended for extra-atmospheric maneuvers, not for the bottom of a gravity well, and it was expected that their users would avoid full-power emergency burns even there.
Private Taluqdar had other ideas, which, taken all together, violated about fifteen safety regulations.
His trajectory altered abruptly, first dropping in the instant he cut his tether, and then angling sharply upward as his thrusters flared. He reached the apogee of his flight path, swept his body—and his thrusters—through a neat arc, and shifted abruptly to an equally sharp angle of descent. It was all instinct, training, and eyeball estimates, but it worked. Instead of landing in front of the tower, he touched neatly down atop it.
And promptly crashed straight through its camouflaged canopy as inertia and the mass of his armor had their way.
* * *
Captain Kaczmarczyk hit the release button to deploy his own speaker unit just before he smashed through the tree canopy and hit the ground. The self-contained unit arced away from him, ping-ponging off branches and spinning sideways before stabilizing into a hover fifteen meters in the air. He hit the ground hard, his armor—freshly smeared with the Kornatian ecosystem's version of chlorophyl—absorbing most of the shock, and tucked and rolled. He came back upright, pulse rifle ready, and heard his own thunderous, recorded voice bellowing from his speaker unit.
"Attention! Attention! This is Captain Kaczmarczyk, Royal Manticoran Marines! Surrender and come out without weapons and with your hands on top of your heads! Repeat, surrender and come out without weapons and with your hands on your heads immediately! You are under arrest for suspected illegal terrorist activities, and resi
stance or noncompliance will be met with deadly force! Repeat, you are under arrest! Surrender immediately, or face the consequences!"
The backup speakers were silent. They were scarcely needed to cover the area of the installation—even with his external audio cranked down, the sound of his amplified voice was almost -deafening—and his own unit had sent out a signal to shut the others down. Had his speaker malfunctioned, Kelso's would have taken over. And if hers had malfunctioned in turn, Sergeant Cassidy's would have taken over.
Satisfied that the warning had been issued, and leaving the speaker set to repeat it over and over again—both so there wouldn't be any question that the bad guys had been given the opportunity to surrender, and also for the morale effect it was bound to have—he turned towards the ridgeline position.
Just in time to see one of his Marines land directly on top of it and disappear.
* * *
Private Taluqdar caught a scrap of the captain's surrender demand as his armor smashed through the camouflage-patterned thermal canopy covering the open top of the tower.
The single Kornatian who had been standing there, half-asleep in the middle of his long, boring watch, had just started to jerk fully upright in reaction to the thundering voice, when two meters of night-black armor came crashing down on the log platform behind him. His surprise was as complete as surprise could possibly be, and he whipped around, instinctively clawing for the weapon holstered at his hip.
It was exactly the wrong reaction.
Taluqdar knew he was supposed to call upon any "suspects" to surrender before blowing them away. But Franz Taluqdar was also a combat veteran, and there was something about the weapon behind the sentry. Something his experience recognized even if his brain didn't have time to put it altogether. Something that changed the entire threat parameter of the operation.
Something that activated his combat reflexes, instead of the demand to surrender.
* * *
Kaczmarczyk's head whipped up as the hissing, supersonic "Crack-crack-crack!" of a firing pulser came from the direction of the ridgeline. His armor's sensors instantly identified it as the product of a M32a5 pulse rifle on full auto, and he swallowed a mental curse. So much for giving the other side a chance to surrender first!
"Hawk-Mike-Alpha!" a voice his armor's HUD tagged as one of First Squad's riflemen came up on his com. "Hawk-Mike-One, Pandora. Pandora!"
Kaczmarczyk's concern about timing and surrender demands disappeared abruptly.
"All Hawks, Hawk-Mike-Alpha!" he snapped. "Pandora! I say again, Pandora! Case Zulu! I say again, Case Zulu is now in force!"
* * *
Taluqdar heard the Skipper, but as far as he was concerned, Case Zulu had applied from the instant his conscious thoughts caught up with his reflexes and recognized the weapon mounted on the platform railing as a plasma rifle.
It shouldn't have been there. There shouldn't have been any plasma rifles on Kornati, aside from a very small number held by the System Defense Force, all of which had been positively accounted for. But there it was, and even before the warning had gone out to the rest of the platoon, Taluqdar was placing the breaching charge on the floor of the log platform, which was also the roof of the bunker beneath.
He slapped the shaped ring charge into place, thumbed the detonator, and stepped back as far as the platform would allow. Five seconds later the charge detonated with a loud "Whumpf!" which blew a gaping opening through the heavy logs. Taluqdar tossed a frag grenade through for good measure, waited for it to detonate, and then dropped through feet-first in pursuit.
* * *
Aboard the second pinnace, circling around as it prepared to land the rest of the Marines and his own SWAT personnel, Captain Barto Jezic, monitoring the Marines' communications net over a borrowed headset, also heard Captain Kaczmarczyk, and his jaw clenched.
He knew the Marines hadn't really expected to face modern, off-world weapons any more than he had. But Kaczmarczyk and his people were professionals. They'd allowed for it in their planning, and the Pandora warning had moved them abruptly to an entirely different set of rules of engagement.
They were no longer there to apprehend; they were there to "neutralize."
To destroy.
Jezic closed his eyes briefly, praying that at least some of the people down there—people who had to be terrorists, if they had off-world weapons, however they'd gotten them—would be fast enough to surrender while they were still alive."
* * *
Drazen Divkovic, "Brother Dagger," rolled out of his bunk, clawing his way frantically up out of the depths of sleep. The incredible volume of the surrender demand had penetrated into the warren of underground bunkers and passages which had been built long before the National Reformation Party had been transformed into the Freedom Alliance of Kornati. But he'd only begun to rouse when the first explosions began.
How? How?! If Camp Freedom had been spotted when the off-world weapons were actually landed, it would have been hit then, not three nights later! And how could they have—
"Drazen! Drazen!" It was Jelena Krleza, his second-in-command, screaming through the open door. "We're under attack!" she announced unnecessarily. "It's the fucking Manties!"
Drazen's heart seemed to stop. Manties? Manticorans?
It couldn't be. It simply could not be! But it was, and he cursed himself for not having set up some sort of self-destruct. But this site had been here so long, been so secure. He hadn't been able to believe it had been compromised, not after they'd landed the weapons and no one had even blinked! Only now—
"Get your weapons!" he bellowed. "Get your weapons! Man your positions!"
He snatched up the belt-fed grenade launcher he'd chosen as his own personal weapon and dashed for the door, wishing with all his heart that he'd had the opportunity to actually practice with it.
* * *
Second Squad was in assault configuration. Its regular plasma rifles had been replaced with heavier weapons, which were normally crew-served. Its riflemen had traded in their usual pulse rifles for heavy tribarrels fed from five thousand-round, backpack tanks of alternating HE and armor-piercing ammunition.
Now Second Squad went to Case Zulu, and the plasma rifles fired. The camouflaged door to the underground vehicle ramp was only earth-covered logs, less than a half-meter thick. It simply vanished, and a tornado of tribarrel fire ripped through the opening. Grenades followed, and the squad's first section went in behind them, charging into the inferno of exploding fuel tanks and blazing vehicles, tribarrels ready.
First Squad's second fire team looked for a way to dump the sleeping gas into the ventilation system, but there were no intakes. All they had was the exhaust from the system, and they moved swiftly to their alternate assigned role under Case Zulu, deploying rapidly outward to take over the perimeter while Second Squad broke in through the vehicle entrance. Even as they did, Sergeant Cassidy's team went up the ridge in the long, flying leaps of their jump gear, and more breaching charges thundered as they blew their way in through the sides of the tower/bunker and followed Private Taluqdar down into the bowels of the installation beneath.
Chapter Forty-Five
"My God, Aivars." Bernardus Van Dort's face was ashen as he looked up from the report. "A thousand tons of modern weapons?"
"That's Kaczmarczyk's best estimate." Terekhov sat behind his desk in his day cabin, and his expression was as grim as his voice. "He may be off in either direction, but I doubt he's very far off."
"But, dear God, where did they come from?"
"We don't know. And we may not find out. We only have five prisoners, and three of them are critically wounded. Doctor Orban's doing what he can, but he's pretty sure we're going to lose at least one of them."
"And your own losses?" Van Dort asked, his voice softer.
"Two dead, one wounded," Terekhov said harshly. "Either some of these people were suicidal, or else they didn't know what the hell they were doing! Using plasma grenades in an under
ground tunnel?" He shook his head viciously. "Sure, they killed two of my Marines, but the same grenades killed at least fifteen of their people—possibly more!"
Van Dort shook his head, not in disbelief, but like a man who wished he could disbelieve.
"What do we know about their casualties?" he asked after a moment.
"So far Tadislaw's confirmed at least seventy bodies. That number may very well go up. At the moment, only his Marines are equipped for search and rescue operations in there. Without armor, or at least skinsuits, nobody can get through the fires and the heat."
Van Dort closed his eyes, trying—and, he knew, failing—to imagine what it must have been like in those narrow, underground passages when modern weapons turned them into a roaring inferno.
"I don't know what I feel," he admitted after several moments, opening his eyes again. "It was a massacre," he said, and raised one hand before Terekhov could open his mouth to protest his choice of nouns. "I said a massacre, Aivars, not an atrocity. At least we tried to give these people a chance to surrender, which is more than they've done. And if we've killed seventy or eighty of them, that's a drop in a bucket compared to the thousands of civilians—including children—they and their . . . colleagues have slaughtered. But it's still—what? ninety-plus percent of everyone in their base when we arrived?" He shook his head again. "Even knowing who they were, what they've done, that kind of death rate . . ."
His voice trailed off, and he shook his head again, but Terekhov barked a hard, sharp-edged laugh.
"If you want someone to spend your pity on, Bernardus, I can find you some much more deserving candidates!"
"It isn't pity, Aivars, it's—"
"I'm a naval officer, Bernardus," Terekhov interrupted. "Oh, sure I spent twenty-eight T-years as a Foreign Office weenie, but I was a Naval officer for eleven T-years first, and I've been a Naval officer for fifteen T-years since. I've spent too many years cleaning up after people who do things like this, and that affects your perspective. We call them 'pirates,' or sometimes 'slavers,' but they're no different, when you come right down to it, from Nordbrandt and her butchers. The only difference is the justification they use for their butchery, and I, for one, am not going to shed one single tear for these butchers!"
