“Cam, Francis!” I heard William Cano’s voice before I picked his suit out from amongst the shambling mess left after the attack. “Goddamn, I am glad to see you guys. When I saw your dropship go down, I thought all of you were dead.”
“I was kinda convinced of that myself,” I told him. “Who’s in charge of this clusterfuck?”
“We got half a squad from Charlie, three separate fire teams from Third Battalion, and Marines from all over the freaking place. I think the highest ranking is Sgt. Manley from Fourth Battalion and he’s a squad leader. But it’s most of a platoon.”
“Sgt. Manley,” I said to the NCO, “I’m Lt. Alvarez, Third Platoon, Delta Company. We’re going to designate this gaggle Fifth Platoon and you’re the acting PL. Until we can get all of you reconnected with your units, we’re going to drag you along on our mission to take down the primary power coupling for the Deltaville fusion plant. You cool with that?”
“Since I can’t call anyone to complain,” Manley said, “I guess I’ll have to be cool with it.”
“Designate your squads and squad leaders. Our No-Later-Than time to move out from the rally point to the fusion plant is in ten minutes from now, according to the op order.”
“Are you taking over the company, Alvarez?” Kovacs asked. I bit back a curse when I saw he’d asked it on the general net, where all of them could hear it. I switched to our company’s command net before I answered.
“I’m listed as next in command after the XO on the op order,” I reminded him, then shrugged, though neither of them could see it. “Either of you want to do it? Honest, guys, I have no idea which of us has more time in rank, but I have more combat experience than anyone else in the company except Top and the Skipper. If you got a problem with this, tell me now…or at least sometime in the next ten minutes.”
“No, no problem,” Cano said. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re in charge until we find the Skipper or Lt. Bradley gets back.”
That seemed to decide Kovacs. I couldn’t see his face, but I’d served with the man long enough now to know how his mind worked. The Academy grad was resenting the idea of following the orders of an OCS officer, but the part of him who wanted a spotless war record to further his career was calculating how much of a liability it would be if he insisted on leading our company and then fucked it up, either by a failing of his own skills or just from blind chance. If Cano had expressed any doubts, I think Kovacs might have objected, but now the die was cast.
“Yeah,” he said, though the words lacked conviction. “If the Skipper doesn’t show up in the next ten minutes, I’m fine with having you take over.”
“All right, then,” I told them. “Francis, go ahead and get your platoon into a defensive perimeter on the other side of the wall.” I pointed back toward the decorative barrier between the courtyard and the residential district.
I searched the opposite direction for anything that could be used as cover and discovered a parking area just the other side of the courtyard, filled with what I thought were industrial machinery, though I couldn’t have told you their purpose from just a cursory glance. But they were heavy and metal and looked to be thick enough to stop an electron beamer.
“Billy,” I told Cano, using the nickname he hated but that everyone still used anyway, “take Fourth Platoon to the other side and use those big, green metal things for cover, watch any approaches from the industrial district.”
That covered the north and south approaches. East dead-ended into a lake, maybe two kilometers in diameter and perfectly round enough that I thought it had to be some sort of big retention pond. The Tahni could attack from that direction, but they’d have to ride their jump-jets the whole way, which would make them sitting ducks for our missiles.
“Bang-Bang, set up watch on the lake over there, missile launch pattern in depth if anything tries to come that way.”
“Good copy, sir.” If Gunny Sgt. Morrel was rattled by the exploding drop-ship or the changes to the operation, it certainly wasn’t evident in his voice. He seemed as calm as if he was escorting the platoon to session in the simulator pods.
As for west, that end of the park or courtyard or whatever it was to the Tahni, butted up against a large, dome-shaped building I couldn’t identify from its location or construction, but I knew it needed investigation. It was probably three hundred meters in circumference and streets or walkways radiated out from it in a 180-degree arc opposite the courtyard.
I switched over to the general net, remembering that Sgt. Manley wasn’t keyed into our command net. “Manley, your platoon is coming with me. We’re going to check out that building. Detail two squads to guard the western approaches and send two in with me.”
“Will do, Lieutenant.” Manley might have taken offense at the detail, but his reply was mild and business-like.
No one bothered to ask why I was going with them, and why I hadn’t just stuck Manley’s hodge-podge platoon to guard the eastern approach, because they knew the answer. I didn’t trust the NCO yet and wasn’t planning on counting on him and his Marines to carry out any combat operations until I’d vetted them. And there was ten minutes’ worth of vetting to be had.
Our notional Fifth Platoon moved out with the sloppy, awkward
