“Of course not, Lieutenant,” I told her. “It’s Marine policy that all company commanders be left strictly to their own devices during combat so they can be available to their platoon leaders at all times.”
I thought, for a second, that she was going to actually buy that one, but when she spoke again, I could hear the embarrassment in her voice. Too bad. It would have been funnier if she’d bought it.
“Oh, um, sorry, sir. But I just got the new Frag-O and….”
“And you wanted to let me know that our early abort path runs right through the fire support targeting plan?” I anticipated, my estimation of her tactical intelligence going up a notch. “Good catch, but Battalion knows and they’re working on it.”
“Oh, no, sir, I hadn’t noticed that.” Of course not. “I just had, well, maybe this is a stupid question….”
“There are no stupid questions, Sarrat, only stupid people who ask questions. Go ahead.”
“It’s just that the new Frag-O says that there’s a tropical storm coming in over the gulf outside the Tahni capital city, sir. And the Tahni are already going to be using a shitload of ECM jamming, right, sir? So, I was wondering how the assault shuttles are going to target at all? Because they won’t be able to use IFF transponders and if there’s a huge storm, they won’t have visual.”
Damn. That was a good question.
“The answer is, I don’t know, Sarrat. And while that is, indeed, a troubling question, it’s not one that they’re going to give us an answer to, because that’s Fleet’s problem. If we don’t have air support, well, neither will they. And to be honest with you, that’s about the way it’s been in every battle I’ve seen since this war started, not counting the patrols we ran against insurgents after a planet was occupied.”
Which was the only combat Sarrat had seen, so I understood her concern. She was used to being able to call in a shuttle for a gun run whenever there was entrenched opposition.
“Lt. Alvarez?” Oh good, that was Lt. Verlander. I was sure his question would be much more intelligent.
“Yes, Verlander?”
“I was looking at that Frag-O and if they shift our emergency drop zone, we’re gonna be right in the path of the fire-support targeting zone, sir!”
Breathe. Count to ten. Keep your voice down.
“Thank you, Lieutenant. I’ll pass that along to Battalion and see what they have to say about it.”
“Okay, Alvarez,” Geiger said, exasperation in his tone, “Frag-O number four. Execution, Tasks to Combat Support, Fire Support. Assault Squadron Four’s fire support targeting plan has been shifted southeast in the case of emergency drop. I should have noticed that, damn it.”
“Ma’am,” I told her, “you’re probably ten times as busy as I am and I’m barely keeping my head above water.”
“We’re all learning on the job,” she sighed. “You wanna know the big picture? They told me, for all the good it’s doing me.”
“Hit me, ma’am.” We’d all received a situation briefing on the trip from Point Barber, but it had been damned hard to get detailed intelligence reports out of the Tahni home system and I had a bet with Cano on how close the enemy strength estimates would be to reality.
“It’s not as bad as Point Barber,” she said, “but there was no way it could be. We knew they threw almost everything they had into that system. There’s maybe half the destroyers on station here, and only a quarter the number of corvettes, at least that we’ve detected so far, but they make up for that with nearly three times the static defense platforms. We could basically walk on the anti-ship missiles coming in from the defense platforms, and I’ve been advised to expect a couple of micro-Transitions to get us past them.”
“Micro-Transitions?” I repeated. “On a fucking troop transport?”
“That’s what they said,” she told me. “They didn’t say we’d like it.”
There was a reason the Attack Command missile cutters had been so successful for the Fleet in this war: they were small enough to pull off multiple micro-Transitions in a battle without ripping themselves to pieces. I couldn’t have explained the physics of it with a gun to my head, but for some reason, the more mass a ship pulled, the more energy it required to enter Transition Space and the more stress on its physical structure it endured during the Transition. Trying to jump in and out of T-space within the space of a couple seconds could damage the molecular structure of a ship as big as a troop transport.
It doesn’t matter if we lose a transport. This is the last stop.
The realization was cold in the pit of my stomach. We were burning our ships behind us like Cortes. Well, maybe not quite as dramatic as that, but it was a sign we weren’t saving anything for the trip home.
In the corner of my HUD dedicated to the tactical feed from the Hermes, something disappeared in a halo of white, a new nebula in the darkness and I changed my mind. Maybe it wasn’t so much determination to win as a fear that going anything less than balls-out was suicide.
“We have multiple Alphas inbound,” one of the bridge officers announced, as calm as if he were telling his coworkers lunch would be chicken today. “Deploying ECM’s and targeting with laser batteries.”
“Can we shake them?” That was the transport’s captain. I’d never seen her, but I recognized her voice from the announcements she made over the speakers periodically.
“Probability is pretty low, ma’am. Bravos are heading our way to try to take them out, but they’re too close.”
“Secure for micro-Transition one light-second ninety degrees from galactic north. Ten seconds.”
An alarm began whooping, a distant, mournful sound that barely made it through the drop-ship’s fuselage, though thankfully not in my earphones.
“All personnel, secure for micro-Transition. All emergency barriers up, all damage control teams to independent air sources.”
“Shit,” I moaned, then switched to the company net and tried to imitate the calm
