The image shifted at her manipulation and we were looking at a view from far above a massive city, not nearly as big as Trans-Angeles or Capital City, but as large as Tartarus, the military base on Inferno, or even Hesperides, the capital on Eden, Inferno’s more temperate twin sister. But the size seemed almost irrelevant compared to the strangeness of the design, the shape of the buildings, the arrangement of the streets and green belts. It looked as if it had been designed by a toddler savant, who somehow understood how to operate an AI architectural engineering program without actually grasping why humans used buildings or how they should be organized. Except for the spaceport, the design of which was dictated by practicality, since cargo shuttles and landers needed a large, flat area to put down and a certain sort and size of machinery to unload them.
And one other area, catty-corner to the spaceport, where the structures were boxy and ugly in their stark pragmatism. Deflector dishes surrounded the city, giving it full coverage from overhead bombardment, though I wouldn’t have wanted to live in the clusters of what looked like communal housing at the outskirts. Probably where the females had their enclaves, if our intelligence analysts were right.
“This is the closest image of the capital city on Point Barber that we’ve been able to acquire from Scout Service drones before Tahni vessels detected and destroyed them. The city has a Tahni name, too, but we’re calling it Target Delta, or Deltaville if you find that too impersonal. If you’ll note the square structures near the spaceport, you’ve probably already guessed that these are their military barracks.” The optical-spectrum image switched to a thermal filter and the buildings lit up in various shades of yellow, orange and red. “There’s a lot of energy signatures in these buildings.” She raised an eyebrow. “A lot. And that could mean older, second-tier forces with tanks and armored vehicles, or it could mean the largest collection of High Guard battlesuits and fire-support mechs we’ve ever seen. Together with the sheer number of deflector dishes and four separate fusion reactor power plants to feed them, this will be a ground battle until we clear the ground.”
The deflectors and the thermal readings that I assumed were fusion reactors morphed into wire-drawing, each lit up red on the screen.
“Our targets will be the deflectors and the fusion reactors which power them. Our battalion will be split into four parts during this operation. Bravo, Charlie, and Echo will each be assigned one of the deflector dishes and the anti-aircraft batteries surrounding them. Alpha and Delta will be leading a strike on the fusion reactor connected to those deflectors, together with a full company of Force Recon. You’ll hold the enemy armor off until the Force Recon units can take down the reactor.” Her eyebrow quirked upward. “And yes, I am aware those missions are redundant, and yes, it is because we don’t expect both of them to succeed in the face of opposition we expect. Ladies and gentlemen, I won’t bullshit you. There will be heavy casualties. Some of you will not be coming back from this battle. Now is not the time to indulge in petty, personal differences. Put that shit behind you and pull together, because we need each other now more than ever.”
I grunted, feeling like that had been a swipe directly at Cronje and me and I wondered how many other people got it.
She swiped her hand across her ‘link and the hologram faded away as if it had never been.
“Point Barber is a big planet, but most of the ground defenses are clustered around the capital, Deltaville. The Tahni aren’t big on decentralization, and they figure, rightly to some extent, that gathering all their forces in one place will mean we have to go there to meet them. Conversely, this also means that taking this one city is the key to the success of the invasion.” She held up a hand as if she’d sensed a question was about to be asked. “And before someone brings it up, yes, the high command has considered bypassing this planet and going straight on to Tahn-Skyyiah, and no, they aren’t going to. Why? Complicated question involving morale, alien psychology, and a bunch of other things above my pay grade. It’s not our concern. We have a job to do, and we’re going to do it.”
“We should just drop a damned rock on the bunch of them like the bugs they are.”
Cronje. He’d said it way too loud, not like an aside to another Marine that I’d just happened to overhear, but like a challenge to Voss…and to me. I felt his stare boring into me, but I didn’t bother to look up at him. It was what he wanted.
He wasn’t through, either. I think Voss would have ignored him too if he’d just shut up right then. But Cronje was Cronje, and shutting up wasn’t in his genetic code.
“I don’t mind dying to kill these bastards, but no Marine should die trying to save them.”
Now I did look up. I couldn’t help myself, the same way I’d stared at drunks wandering down the street outside our house at night back
