“Are there any?” I asked him, using my external speakers. “Reinforcements coming, I mean?”
I hadn’t seen any, and Geiger hadn’t mentioned them, but if this guy was a spook, he might know more about it than us average grunts. His lips thinned out and I had the impression that this was as close to a smile as he ever gave anyone.
“The cruisers have been taking out any concentrations of troops in the open,” he told me, “but there’s an underground bunker at the military base north of here. Your Alpha Company has been keeping an eye on it, but they’ve been hunkered down up till now. Our intelligence estimates that, once we enter the palace itself, they’re going to push outward and come for us.”
“Why not just take out the bunker from orbit?” I asked him.
“Because the collateral damage would kill somewhere on the order of five thousand civilians.” He shrugged. “It’s not my call. We’re heading in. The mission is to find and capture or kill the Emperor, which will, effectively, end this war. We show him or his corpse to his generals and political and religious leaders, this thing is over. We won’t have comms once we’re inside, so you’re our last line of defense.” He inclined his head toward me. “Don’t let us down.”
“Right,” I said, then added, “sir. I guess. I mean, I have no idea what your rank is.”
That half-smile again.
“I’m Major M’Voba. Do your job here, Lt. Alvarez, and you’ll never hear my name again.”
He turned and left us there, and the Force Recon straight-legs followed him.
“Don’t seem fair, sir,” I said privately to Top, watching them go, “that we fought all the way here and all we get to do is watch them fire the last shots.”
“Oh, don’t be worrying about that, sir,” she said, laughing softly, without humor. “I have this feeling we’re all gonna have an excellent opportunity to get shot.”
27
“Zero Four Actual, this is Delta One Actual,” I called, feeling like I was back at Armor School. “How copy? Over.”
Nothing moved in the city around us, not so much as a stray bit of debris carried on the wind. No civilians flocked to the palace to save their beloved Emperor, apparently convinced their version of God would prevail. Delp was out farthest, which seemed natural, a good two hundred meters from the ruined remains of the front entrance way. Stone columns had collapsed into the center of the broad passage, some sort of performance-art commentary on the fate of the Tahni Imperium.
“This is Zero Four Actual,” Geiger responded on my third try. The damn drone relays kept getting blocked by clouds of smoke drifting from parts of the city that were on fire. “What’s your status, Delta? Over.”
“We’re dug in like a tick on a dog, Zero Four,” I said, using a phrase I remembered from Scotty. Gunnery Sgt. Scott Hayes had been a farmboy on Hermes and was full of more down-homey bullshit sayings than I’d heard on the dumbest parodies of colony-dwellers on the ViR-net back in Trans-Angeles. I missed hearing them, sometimes. I missed Scotty all the time. “Heavy assets deployed high and low.” By which I meant I’d stationed a couple of Boomers on top of intact sections of the palace’s support wall, tucked into the niches between the wall and the half-dome. “Intelligence sources tell me you should expect a significant breakout attempt from Objective Two. Over.”
“Haven’t heard that one, Delta,” Geiger said, uncomfortably close to a blithe dismissal. “We’ve called in air support for a push on the bunker entrance, but we’ve been put on hold. Will let you know when we’re clear to proceed. Over.”
“Copy,” I said, trying not to grind my teeth as I said it. Vicky’s company was with Geiger. “Do you need me to split out a platoon to reinforce your position? The threat will likely come from there and I think we can handle anything here with three platoons and the Boomers. Over.”
“Negative, Delta, we can handle it. Hold your position. Over.”
“Copy, Zero Four. Out.”
I made sure I’d logged off the command net before I swore. But I swore loud, maybe loud enough to be heard by someone standing beside my armor. Like Top. The two of us were side by side up on the parapets next to one of the Boomers, looking out over what we could see of the city from here.
“Problem?” Top asked me.
“Don’t know yet,” I admitted. “I guess that depends on who’s right about how many troops are in that bunker.”
“Major Geiger is….”
Whatever Top thought of Major Geiger, it was lost in the distant explosion. There’s a sequence to an explosion, and you can see it all in order if you’re far enough away that it doesn’t all seem to hit you at once. First, there’s the flash. It’s moving at the speed of light, so of course it comes before anything else, and in this case, it shone through the intervening buildings like the primary star glinting off glass and reflective metal, not the second sun of a nuclear device, but a big conventional blast.
“What the fuck?” Delp asked on an open net.
As if in answer, the shockwave came next. It wasn’t huge, wasn’t enough to bring down buildings, just a hot wind passing through along with the crack-rumble of the sound, something gut deep, vibrating up through the ground, sending a cloud of dust and debris floating upward in its wake. By the gap between the flash and the shockwave, I knew exactly how far away the blast had been. Three kilometers.
Three kilometers in that direction was the military base.
“Zero Four!” I yelled into the mic. “Zero Four, what’s your status? Do you copy? Over!”
A black cloud was rising into the sky, huge and ominous, the sort of cloud I would have expected from an orbital strike. I repeated my call, waiting, hoping someone
