Old Soldiers Page 16

  "Captain Trevor has informed me that Brigadier Jeffords' troops will be at full readiness by the time the Dog Boys can put down on Indrani. The attack that took out Mickey was almost certainly carried out by their special ops company, though, and it's entirely possible that they're also going after our orbital units. Brigadier Jeffords has Sierra Company headed up as a precaution, but we all know Sierra Company isn't exactly the Concordiat Marines. Well, neither are we, and Thermopylae might not be able to say boo to a Dog Boy destroyer. But we do have half a dozen suits of powered armor on board, and I have Ms. Stopford bringing it on-line now. She estimates that will take another twenty-two minutes

  ... which means it ought to be ready long before we reach Indrani orbit.

  A shrill, ear-piercing alarm wailed.

  "Hull breach," Thermopylae's AI's melodious contralto announced. "Multiple hull breaches between frames one-five-niner and two-zero-seven."

  Hawthorne wheeled towards the damage control schematic and swallowed a vicious curse as fifteen bright red icons glared along his ship's port flank. They'd come in through the Number Two vehicle hold, which suggested they knew exactly what they were doing. The vehicle holds were much less intricately compartmentalized than the personnel sections of the big ship. And they were far less lavishly equipped with automatic pressure-tight blast doors to contain atmosphere. Worse, Number Two was the central of Thermopylae's three vehicle holds. From there, they could move in almost any direction.

  "We have boarders, people!" he barked. "Vehicle Hold Two! You've got fifteen seconds to get to your Zulu Internal stations, then I'm locking her up!"

  He watched the chronometer's digital display tick over exactly fifteen seconds, then nodded to the exec.

  "It's time, Jackson," he said grimly, and cleared his throat. "Iona," he said to Thermopylae's AI,

  "close all internal doors."

  "Closing internal doors," the AI announced.

  "Good," Hawthorne said. He paused a moment, then continued. "Iona, set Condition Zulu Delta."

  Jackson Lewis flinched, but none of his bridge crew said a word.

  "Order acknowledged," the AI said. "Self-destruct orders require command authorization, however."

  "Understood." Hawthorne inhaled deeply. "Authenticate my voice and ID."

  "Authenticated. You are Lieutenant Edmund Harrison Hawthorne, commanding officer CNS

  Thermopylae."

  "I now authorize you to set Condition Zulu Delta," he said flatly. "Authorization code Baker-Seven-Two-Alpha-Niner-Whiskey."

  "Authorization code receipted and recognized," Iona told him. "Condition Zulu Delta has been set."

  "Thank you," Hawthorne said, and looked down at his hands. In theory, the AI would destroy the ship the instant the Melconian boarders secured control of its critical systems. Unfortunately, Thermopylae was a transport, not a proper warship. Her web of control runs and communications circuits were tougher, more dispersed, and more redundant than they would have been aboard a civilian-design vessel her size, but they were scarcely armored or protected against people inside the ship itself. There were at least two ways he could think of offhand for the Puppies to take out her AI before they took control of the Bridge or Engineering, and if they did that ...

  "Jessy," he said quietly over a private channel to Jessica Stopford, "I think it would be a very good idea to expedite that armor."

  * * *

  She/they were once again joined, and she/they felt the locking clamps engage firmly as Lazarus' huge tracks settled into place in the assault pod. She/they reached out, bringing the pod's internal systems fully on-line, and the Maneka component of her/their personality allowed herself a moment of intent gratitude that she had kept the pod fully fueled and charged.

  "We're in position, Peter," Maneka's com image informed the militia commander. "Is Fourth Battalion

  "Affirmative," Jeffords replied tautly. "I still say you ought to take Jessup's company with you, too."

  "No," she said firmly. "They don't have the armor or the firepower to go toe-to-toe with a Puppy medium, much less a heavy. But they could be a nasty surprise for any air cav that get around us."

  Jeffords looked rebellious, but he didn't argue. Mostly because Maneka was his commanding officer, but also because he knew she was right. Captain Jessup's single company of light, manned tanks had never been intended to stand up to the sort of firepower which was probably headed Landing's way.

  She/they considered the numbers once again. A full-strength Melconian heavy assault brigade had a roster strength of over three thousand. Sixteen hundred of that total were in the three battalions of its infantry regiment, but the real heart of its striking power was its armored regiment. The twelve Heimdalls of its recon company could probably be handled by Jessup's fifteen Whippet tanks, but the six Surturs and twelve Fenrises would smash anything short of Lazarus himself with contemptuous ease.

  It was a sobering comment on the sheer size of an Atilla-class transport that it could pack that much armor aboard, the Maneka component of her/their personality reflected. The Surtur was at least as big as most Bolos—over twenty percent larger than Lazarus himself, in fact—and even the Fenris came in at over nine thousand tons. Thermopylae could carry a maximum of two Bolos plus another hundred thousand tons of lighter vehicles or seventy-five thousand tons of vehicles and up to five thousand infantry and their equipment. But the Sleipners carried their Bolos externally, whereas all of the Melconian transport's personnel and vehicles were carried internally. And unlike Thermopylae, she was atmosphere-capable and designed for rough-field landings. If the Melconians had been prepared to accept externally-mounted transport for their heavy armored vehicles, they could have packed even more punch aboard the big ship. But they would have had to sacrifice its ability to land its troops directly, and that was strictly against Melconian doctrine.

  "Which is a damned good thing," the Maneka component thought at the Lazarus component. "Six Surturs are bad enough."

  "True. But we do possess significant advantages the Battalion lacked on Chartres," the Lazarus component observed in reply.

  Which was true, Maneka realized. The only question was whether or not their advantages would be enough.

  * * *

  "We've got a hull breach!"

  Lauren's jaw clenched, and her eyes darted over the schematic in front of her.

  "Pressure loss in Sector Bravo-Seven-Charlie," a computer voice remarked calmly. "Initiating containment."

  A strident audio alarm began to sound, but the voice continued in those same, calm tones.

  "Containment procedures terminated," it announced. "Atmosphere loss has ceased."

  "And you think that's good news, you stupid bitch?!" one of her watch-standers snarled. Lauren was too busy to endorse the remark, but she certainly understood it. India Mike Three's AI was an idiot, compared to a Bolo. All it cared about was that the hole in the module's skin was no longer leaking air.

  The fact that whoever had made the hole must have sealed it behind them didn't mean a thing to the computers.

  "They're into Bravo-Seven," she said over the all-hands channel. "Alf," she looked at the tech who'd replied to the AI, "close the blast doors manually. Then start locking down every powered door you can.

  Hannah," she turned to another woman, "get on the horn to whoever's running the cutters. We need somebody in here with some damned guns—fast!"

  * * *

  Death Descending bulleted downward, shrieking through the ever thicker planetary atmosphere at a dangerously high velocity. Unlike Human military transports, Death Descending's huge hull was sleekly aerodynamic, designed for atmospheric insertions exactly like this one, but Captain Na-Tharla was painfully well aware of the fact that there was a Bolo waiting for him. Everything suggested that the Bolo in question would be unable to engage his ship as it descended, but the fact that everything suggested that would be very cold comfort if it turned out not to be accurate. At the moment, he missed the rest of Ad
miral Na-Izhaaran's squadron more acutely than he had in many months, because they were supposed to be there to offer supporting fire as he penetrated his objective's atmosphere.

  On the other hand, he reflected as he watched his ship's skin temperature climb, our original objective would have had orbital defenses worth worrying about, too. Which this target doesn't, thanks to Lieutenant Sa-Chelak's platoon.

  He spared a tiny corner of his brain to send a silent prayer winging to Sa-Chelak's family gods on the lieutenant's behalf. It was all he could afford to spare, and he returned his total attention to his radar-mapping display as Death Descending screamed towards its selected landing site at three times the speed of sound.

  * * *

  More crimson lights glared on Edmund Hawthorne's damage control panel as the intruders burned their way through the blast doors. Those doors were intended to contain atmosphere, and to resist fairly severe explosive damage, but they weren't exactly slabs of duralloy armor. No one had ever intended them to serve as armored bulkheads capable of containing energy-weapon armed infantry for any length of time, after all.

  The pattern of damage control reports told him what objectives the Dog Boys had selected for themselves, for all the good it did him. They were headed for Engineering ... and the Bridge.

  Exactly where I'd be headed myself, he conceded coldly. Which isn't a great deal of comfort just this moment.

  At least he'd managed to get all of his people armed, however barely, before their unwelcome visitors arrived. And he'd managed to figure out how those visitors had gotten aboard his ship in the first place once Master Chief Halberstadt had maneuvered one of Thermopylae's external hull maintenance mechs around to the area of the hull breaches.

  A single Melconian special ops insertion boat was mechanically grappled to Thermopylae's skin.

  Hawthorne had never encountered one of the insertion boats, nor had anyone else in his ship's company, but Iona's memory had obediently disgorged more information than he could possibly use about them.

  The two really relevant facts, as far as he was concerned, were, first, that the insertion boats were pure transport vehicles, with no onboard armament. And, second, that they had a maximum capacity of twenty, falling to only fifteen if the personnel aboard them were suited for vacuum ops. Which told him that his twenty-two-person crew had the invaders outnumbered.

  Except, of course, for the fact that we're scattered all over the ship. And that these are highly trained special operations troops and we're Navy pukes. Not a Marine among us.

  "Open Gamma-Seventeen, Jackson," he said to the exec. "Let's get Mallory and his team up here to the command deck before the Doggies get here. There's no point leaving them where they are, and I want as much firepower as we can get on this side of the shin-breaker."

  "Aye, aye, sir," Lieutenant Lewis acknowledged. He unlocked the indicated blast door long enough for the power tech petty officer to lead her three-person party through it, and Hawthorne tried to look confident.

  It wasn't easy. Given the speed at which the Dog Boys were moving, they'd get to Engineering at least ten minutes before Jessica Stopford could get the powered armor up and running. And they'd get to the Bridge deck a good minute before that. Mallory's people probably weren't going to make enough difference when they got here, either. On the other hand, there was the shin-breaker. And despite their rapid progress, it was unlikely, to say the least, that the Dog Boys knew about it.

  And in the meantime, she didn't need anything else to worry about.

  * * *

  Death Descending's landing pads hit the surface of the alien planet almost precisely on schedule.

  The transport's huge hatches gaped open, and the first air cavalry units were whining out of her upper cargo decks almost before the landing legs had stopped flexing and fully stabilized. Vehicle ramps slammed down, and lightly armed and unarmored infantry carriers went grinding down them and raced outward to the preliminary perimeter positions General Ka-Frahkan and Colonel Na-Salth had preselected.

  The first of the medium combat mechs followed on their heels, and the massive heavy mechs trembled as their four-man crews brought their drivetrains to full power.

  * * *

  Sergeant Major Na-Hanak had witnessed Lieutenant Sa-Chelak's death.

  There hadn't been anything he could do about it. Their preoperations briefing had considered the possibility that the Humans would have armed small craft available, but there'd been no way to know for certain whether or not they did. Nor had there been any way to neutralize them before the insertion.

  The good news was that the Humans appeared to have only a very few of them. Na-Hanak's sensors could detect only two, in fact, and the special ops troopers were extremely difficult to spot, even at such close ranges. Lieutenant Sa-Chelak had been unlucky enough to be in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time, although just how unlucky that had actually been was debatable, the sergeant major reflected. He'd known as well as the lieutenant that Sa-Chelak wasn't going to make it, and the officer's death appeared to have attracted both of the Human cutters to the volume of space where he had died.

  Which was what had given Na-Hanak and his three-man section the opportunity to reach the hull of their own objective unmolested.

  Of course, there had been supposed to be eight of them, not four, and even then they would probably have been grossly outnumbered by the Humans aboard this vessel. But unlike those Humans, his troopers were heavily armed and knew exactly what was happening.

  He patted Private Ha-Tharmak on the shoulder, and she fired the breaching charge.

  * * *

  "They're down, Peter," Maneka's image said from the brigadier's com screen. "Almost exactly where Lazarus projected."

  A scarlet icon blinked on the electronic map at Jeffords' right elbow, and he frowned thoughtfully as he studied the display.

  Landing was located on a large, roughly triangular coastal plateau, bounded by the ocean to the east and by a tangled range of mountains to the west. The final decision had been made by Adrian Agnelli, but Jeffords knew Maneka had pushed strongly for this particular site. The only suitable landing zones from which the plateau could be threatened—and which could be reached without exposing the landers to Lazarus' Hellbore fire from Landing—all lay on the far side of the mountains, which created a formidable defensive obstacle for armored units and infantry. Air cavalry would be another matter, but Captain Jessup's Whippets, combined with the air-defense systems which had been positioned as a first priority even before construction on the city itself began, should have an excellent fighting chance against the couple of hundred air cav mounts of a Melconian heavy assault brigade, even without Lazarus' presence.

  From dug-in defensive positions they might be able to hold their own, at least against Dog Boy infantry. In any sort of battle of maneuver, though, they would be hopelessly outclassed and their advantage in numbers would be virtually meaningless.

  The sole possible exception to that was Major Mary Lou Atwater's Fourth Battalion. Atwater, one of the relatively few combat veterans in the colony militia, had been a Marine sergeant who had retired from active service eight years before the current war began. She'd maintained her reserve status and tried to go back on active duty when the shooting started, but the Concordiat had declined her offer.

  She'd had the poor judgment—as far as reupping was concerned—to become an expert in the field of industrial robotics, and she'd been too valuable in that capacity to put back in uniform. But that dual capability of hers had made her ideal for Operation Seed Corn. She'd fought tooth and nail against accepting a commission, even in the militia, but she'd given in in the end. And she'd been fortunate enough to have almost the total personnel of her battalion assigned to the same transport ... where she had made herself immensely unpopular by goading them through regular weapons drill and the best simulations she'd been able to cobble up on the transport's electronic entertainment systems.

  "What route do you th
ink they'll take, Maneka?" Jeffords asked now.

  "That depends on a lot of factors," her image said calmly. He knew she was actually fused with the Bolo's psychotronics, and he found himself wondering suddenly if she'd bothered to change out of her swimsuit. It was an insane thing to be wasting mental effort on at a time like this, and he knew it, but the electronic image in front of him was neatly turned out in regulation uniform.

  "We don't know how much they actually know about our situation," she continued. "If they realize just how old Lazarus is, they may decide in favor of a brute force approach and opt to take him on frontally. In that case, they'd probably come down Route Alpha."

  A crimson line threaded its way through the mountains, following the line of the river which thundered over the bluffs into the sea to the south of Landing.

  "The going is easiest coming that way, although they're wide open to air attack, if we have the capability for it, and the terrain here and here—" stars blinked at two points along the length of the thread

  "—would give both sides excellent fields of fire. We could begin picking them off with direct fire at over fifty kilometers at either of these points, but their Surturs could engage us in return. I doubt they're going to want to give a modern Bolo a shot at them at that sort of range, but they could be foolish enough to try it against an older model like Lazarus. I'd really like them to be, but I'm not going to plan on it.

  "If they follow either Route Bravo or Route Charlie," she went on, while two additional threads came alive, "the terrain is a lot closer, which would let them use infantry and their lighter mechs to try to work around our flanks without exposing their heavy armor to our fire at such extended ranges. Right now, Lazarus is projecting a probability of seventy-five percent for Route Charlie."