Honor of the Clan (48 page)

"Shelly?" Mike said.

"Accurate," the AID replied. "I have been given access to the information on that. What she says is correct."

"Question for a question," the female said tightly. "More a confirmation. One of our people had the mission of removing the commander of your force."

"It was a legitimate forlorn hope," Mike said gently. "I was forced to return fire. I'm sorry."

"You're
sorry
?" the voice said angrily. "Oh, you have NO idea how sorry!"

"I take it you were close."

"You might say that," the woman replied. "He was my grandfather."

"He was very good," Mike replied. "Very, very good. I am truly sorry. But I think that this makes the obvious point that you don't have a hope in hell of surviving.
Please
surrender. I'll see what I can do about—"

"And we both know how far
that
will fly," the woman said. "I know
you
would," she said, more gently. "But we both know that the Darhel are going to pull us apart like a chicken. I've been there and most of my people know the story. We're less than enthusiastic about surrendering. A clean death is preferable."

"Always the problem of treating your prisoners badly," Mike said sadly. "I hate to kill you, you're very good."

"We'd hate to die. But we're not going to surrender. So why don't you go tell the Darhel to piss up a tree?"

"Ain't happening," Mike said, his face grim. "I guess we'll just have to do battle upon this morn. If it's any consolation, you're the best people I've ever faced. The downside from my perspective is simply that I'd rather have you fighting for me than be fighting against you. It is . . . an honor to do battle with you."

There was a long pause.

"Thank you, General," the woman said, her voice tight. "If we're going to die in battle . . . I cannot imagine a better choice than in battle against you. So, General, I say:
Cry HAVOC and let slip the dogs of war!
"

Chapter Thirty

"You are clear," the AID said.

"Are our people repositioned?" Cally asked.

"Yes," Tommy replied. "Most of the Indowy are in the tunnel. They're not far enough away to survive the blast, but they're in the tunnels. The ship has mostly boarded the dependents. The stay-behind forces are in positions that even ACS will find hard to flank. We need to leave."

"Like hell," Cally said. "I'm not going to leave people to die and then run away like . . . an Indowy."

"Thought you might say that," Tommy replied, then shot her in the back of the neck with a Hiberzine dart.

"Carry Miss O'Neal to safety," Tommy said, sitting down at the desk.

"You're not staying?" George said, picking the slumped figure off the floor.

"Not if I can avoid it," Tommy said. "AID, get me the stay-behind commander."

"The enemy forces used the period of cease fire to reposition," Shelly said. "Our forces aren't encountering any resistance."

"They have to be here
somewhere
," Mike said.

He was still in the atrium. He'd considered moving forward with the forces but there was really no need. Despite Tam's insistence, he could have run the whole thing from Fredericksburg.

He wished he had. No, that would have meant that the sniper
would
have gotten Lieutenant Cuelho. And despite the fact that the kill was naggling at him—the female commander had gotten to him—losing another man would have made him feel worse.

"Teams have searched all the upper levels," Shelly said. "That leaves Foxtrot or Gamma. Both are heavy equipment areas with limited entry."

"We can't just blast our way through," Mike said.

"No, sir."

"Tell them to stop the general search," Mike said, considering the placement of his teams. "First squad to Gamma entry, Third to Foxtrot, Second to Echo Forty-seven as reserve. Press forward until they hit resistance then . . . take open order, lie down and sit tight."

"Yes, sir," Lieutenant Maise said.

Most of the stay-behind force was wounded. In general, the weapons that the ACS were using didn't cause wounds. If a hypervelocity pellet of depleted uranium hit you going at relativistic speeds, it tended to kill any human not wearing ACS. A few of the troops had been injured, maimed or killed simply from a pellet hitting an obstacle near their positions.

Grav-guns were no joke.

But some of the injuries left walking wounded. Or, at least, wounded. Most of them weren't walking very well.

"We've got it covered. Very well, sir. Take care. Give . . . Tell Pinky I love him if you would, sir."

None of the rest of the rear-guard had children. All were volunteers.

"Maise, get the hell out," Sergeant Mike Swaim said. The sergeant had lost the lower part of his leg when an ACS round had blown out a wall. It was covered by a hasty Galplas coating and the nerves into the area had been neutralized. Otherwise he'd have screamed in agony when he shifted it. "Your kid's already lost the rest of his family." He forebore to mention that he, in turn, had lost
his
to the Darhel assassins.

"Pinky will . . . handle it," Maise said. "The kid's more grown-up than most of
us
. Proof of which is that we're stupid enough to stay behind and he's leaving."

"We got movement," Gavin "Hollywood" Harrison said. He was called that because he'd gotten the full measure of the Sunday "pretty" genes from both his maternal grandfather
and
grandmother.

The livid scars on his face from a blast of plasma somewhat marred that. One eye was barely hanging in there.

"ACS power pack and grav-cannon signatures on corridor two."

"I guess I should say something heroic," Maise said, raising his voice. "But the only thing I can think of sounds stupid and trite: I can't think of anywhere I'd rather be than here with you men, at this time, in this place."

"Hell, yeah," Swaim said. "And is it just me, or . . . was that lady right?"

"Yeah," Harrison said. "Fighting the scum that we normally fight is just . . . embarassing. If you're going to go down, the place to go is fighting somebody
worth
fighting."

"Amen, brother," Scott Bettis said. The Bane Sidhe had a big pack over an abdominal wound and was also missing a leg. If it bothered him it wasn't apparent.

"Even though," Harrison added, "the situation quite frankly sucks."

"The Spartans called it 'A glorious death,' " Bettis said. "To die in battle against an opponent that was your peer. To grapple with them to the last, for the pure glory of battling an equal foe. It's rare that a warrior gets the chance."

"I wonder if they feel the same way?" Harrison said.

"Well, this is bloody fucked," Doyle said. "General, we've found the rebels . . ."

"Not much play there," Mike said, looking at the schematic. They still didn't have a full detail of the base but as far as they'd found there were only two ways into the area the Indowy had to be hiding. Both of them were corridors with so much heavy stuff surrounding them they couldn't get in any other way. It was going to be straight up the middle or nothing.

"Thermopylae," Harkless said.

"Yeah," Mike said bitterly. "And except that we're the ones in hoplite armor, we're the Persians. And you know how
that
turned out."

"I don't see a choice but hey-diddle-diddle, straight up the middle," Harkless said. "Sir."

"Me neither," Mike admitted. "We're moving forward. With all the firepower that they've got covering the openings, we're going to take casualties. The more shooters the better."

"Yes, sir," Lieutenant Cuelho said.

"Shelly, have Third squad leave sensors at the Foxtrot opening. Have One-Alpha mark the secondary Gamma opening and have all teams move to the primary Gamma opening. Time to try to take the pass."

Corporal Doyle stuck his arm out around the corner and tossed a sensor ball. He got a brief take from it and then there was an explosion.

He popped a camera around the corner and grunted at the large crater on the floor of the corridor.

"They shot the bloody
ball
," Doyle muttered, incensed. "You don't
shoot
a bloody sensor ball. Who shoots a bloody
sensor
ball?"

"Someone who doesn't want you looking at them, Corporal," Mike said.

"Well, I can't throw it
faster
, General," the corporal pointed out. "The damned things break too much as it
is
."

"Allow me," Mike said, leaning under the massive trooper's arm and tossing another down the corridor. This one, however, skittered all over the place. Two shots were fired and the closest they got was rolling it faster.

"Just needed a little English, trooper," Mike said, considering the take. "Seven men. All wounded."

"In heavily prepared positions," Shelly pointed out. "Those are overpressure bunkers. You can't even blast them to death. Well, you might be able to but it would be tough."

"And they have a cross-fire set up," Cuelho said unhappily. "No way around them, either."

"And there's more energy readings farther in," Harkless said.

"I can
see
all that, gentlemen," Mike said, somewhat testily. "It doesn't mean we can't get through."

He considered for a moment, then sighed.

"Harkless, are you old enough to remember a game called 'dwarf-tossing'?"

"Time to buy some more time," Maise said. "Buckley, cut me into the ACS frequency."

"We're all going to die," the buckley replied. "What's the point. Trust me, I know ACS. You're going to get slaughtered."

"Then best we try to talk them out of it," Maise said. "Just get me the ACS commander."

"You got it?" Mike asked, kneeling by the opening.

"I've pretty much figured my career is toast," Harkless said. "Getting the Federation's greatest hero killed in a minor little skirmish isn't going to make things any worse."

"Uh . . ." Lieutenant Cuelho said.

"
Hey, ACS commander
."

"Stand-by," Mike said. "Who's this?"

"
The sacrificial rear guard. Wanna know how this whole thing started
?"

"Well, in the beginning was the Word," Mike said.

"
Very funny. We took down a Darhel mega-corp and a metat, one like your daughter, who had gone crazy and thought he was the Evil Overlord or something
."

"That would tend to piss off some very powerful people," Mike said.

"
And do you know how those people responded? They sent assassins after our families
."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Mike said. "If you surrender I
will
guarantee the safety of your families. Or, yeah, I'll start killing Darhel myself."

"
Too late. They killed my wife and daughter
."

It was pretty hard to pick up people's emotions through ACS but Mike had been around it a long time. That sort of hit home with the platoon.

"Mine were killed by the Posleen," Mike said, omitting the fact that, in fact, his daughter Cally had been killed by a nuke he himself had ordered. "Know what
I
was doing six months ago?"

"
Wandering around in the Blight doing dick all
?"

"My division dropped on a world where the Posleen were well on their way to recovering from ornadar and had ten ships ready for lift-off," Mike said. "Ten ships isn't much, but we've only cleared five percent of the Blight. And you can't really call it cleared. Every planet there are some Posleen. Every planet they're working on the same thing: Building ships to start conquering the universe again. So when you can explain how rebelling against the Darhel is going to keep Earth from being overrun by ravenous, carnivorous extraterrestrial centaurs I'll be happy to join your cause. Are you going to supply more ACS suits? Orbital satellites? Fleet ships?"

He waited a moment for a reply, then nodded inside his suit.

"Thought not," Mike said. "So, we gonna do this thing? Or are you going to surrender?"

"
Sorry, no, General
," the rear-guard commander said. "
To be clear, we don't hold what happened before on you or Fleet Strike. Fleet on the other hand . . ."

"Don't get me started," Mike said. "And to be equally clear, I'd much rather have you fighting for me than fighting against you. You're . . . quite good."

"
Pretty fucked up situation
."

"Standard for every day since Jack Horner called me at work," Mike said. "It has been . . . an honor doing battle with you."

"
Likewise. Well, time to die
."

"Does appear so," Mike said. "Shelly, cut the connection. Sergeant Harkless?"

"This is crazy, sir," Harkless said, grabbing the smaller armor by its lift-points.

"The situation or the method?" Mike asked.

"Both."

"Remember to bounce me," Mike said. "Maximum difficulty of targeting."

"What about
your
targeting, sir?" Cuelho said, gulping.

"Sir . . ." Sergeant Harkless said, reprovingly.

"I think what Sergeant Harkless is trying to say is that . . . I've got it, Lieutenant," Mike said, chuckling. "I've done tight targeting while being bounced about before."

"I just mean . . . Entry is what privates are
for
, sir."

"I've got it, Lieutenant," Mike said. "Corporal Doyle, some cover fire if you will."

"Right you are, sir," Doyle said. "Hutch, double up."

"This is crazy," the specialist said.

"A moment, though," Mike said, his fingers moving in the air. "It's always a tough choice at a moment like this . . ."

"Sir?" Cuelho said.

"Goth? Industrial? Heavy metal . . .?" Mike said. "There's an argument for 'Brickhouse' to tell you the truth. It's got a beat and you can dance to it. Great for skiing . . . Ah. Sergeant Harkless. 'Citadel' or 'Honor'?"

"Oooo," Hutchinson interjected. "Tough choice, sir. 'Citadel's got a great entry beat but I always find that 'Honor' . . ."