Incansable (61 page)

Geary tapped a control, getting the health stats for the Marines in Third Company. Lieutenant Tillyer’s status readouts were all zeroed. “One hundred fifty meters,” he murmured.

“Sir?” Desjani asked.

“It’s funny, isn’t it? In a space engagement, one hundred fifty meters is too small a distance to worry about. At point one light speed we cover that distance in a tiny fraction of a second. It might as well be nothing. Except for weapons targeting. Then it means the difference between a miss or a direct hit. And for a Marine on a planet’s surface that small distance decides life and death. He takes the chance of calling in our own fire right on top of his own position, he leads his unit to safety, and just short of safety, he dies.”

Desjani looked away for a moment. “The living stars decide our fates. It often seems random, but there’s always a purpose.”

“You truly believe that?”

Her eyes met his, and Geary thought for a moment that he could see reflections of every death Desjani must have witnessed in this war, every friend and family member she’d lost. “If I didn’t,” she said quietly, “I couldn’t keep going.”

“I understand.” Not for the first time he remembered that the people around him had grown up with this war. So had their parents. He couldn’t begin truly to feel the pain they must have endured as the casualty tolls mounted ever higher with no end in sight.

“You didn’t always.” She gave him a sad smile. “You couldn’t handle even minor losses once. Now, you can endure them and keep on. But I felt sadness back then, seeing your reaction to the loss of a single ship, and wishing I hadn’t been born in a time when such innocence could never be.”

“I can’t remember the last time I was called innocent. Back when I was an ensign, I guess.” Geary took a deep breath. “Let’s get this battle done with and make sure we lose as few more people as possible.”

The watch-standers and automated combat systems would alert him to anything he needed to know, but Geary made a last check of the larger picture before diving back into a close-up of the action in the POW camp.

On the overhead image of the POW camp, a swarm of human bodies could now be seen clustered near the large, open center. Left open in the middle was the landing field where Alliance shuttles were touching down and lifting off in what appeared a calmly choreographed operation. Geary called up a screen for one of Marines controlling the evacuation and saw a scene of seeming bedlam, the sky painted with the aftereffects of Alliance bombardments and hell-lance fire, peoples rushing here and there, shuttles dropping fast, loading liberated POWs as quickly as they could pack the bodies in, then leaping back upward. It took a moment to spot the order hidden behind the frantic activity.

The officers among the POWs were apparently keeping the other POWs in clusters until called to send people for a shuttle, and the Marines were sorting out and guiding disoriented former prisoners while shouting everyone into maintaining discipline. To one side he saw battle armor labeled with Colonel Carabali’s ID huddled next to a Marine shuttle with a couple of other Marines standing watch over her while she doubtless concentrated on the movements of her units.

“I wonder,” Desjani remarked, “if those former prisoners are trying to figure out if they’re being rescued or if the apocalypse has come.”

“Maybe both. Colonel Carabali, when opportunity permits I’d like your assessment of the operation.”

Her image appeared instantly. “Better than I’d feared, sir. We’ve taken casualties in almost every unit as we withdrew toward the center of the camp, but only Third Company got badly beat-up. Apparently they did stumble into an area intended as a last-ditch defensive zone for the Syndic guards. The evacuation of the liberated POWs is proceeding with no other holdups. I estimate forty minutes until the last POW is off, then another twenty minutes before the last Marine shuttle lifts.”

“Thank you, Colonel. We’ll try to keep the Syndics off your backs until then.”

Carabali frowned in surprise and it took Geary a moment to realize it wasn’t in response to his statement but to something that had come in to her over another channel. “Sir, we’ve got guards and their families trying to surrender in exchange for safe passage out of here.”

“Families?” His stomach clenched as Geary thought about the bombardments hitting the camp.

“Yes, sir. We hadn’t seen any, either. Just a moment, sir.” Carabali turned to some nearby POWs and spoke quickly, then reactivated her circuit with Geary. “The former prisoners say the guards’ families lived outside the camp. The guards must have brought them in for safety when the fighting started on the planet.”

“And then invited a battle on top of their heads?” Geary barked in disbelief.

“Agreed, sir. Our personnel who were imprisoned here say there are extensive underground storage areas in the north portion of the camp and are guessing the guards kept their families safe in those.”

Geary checked the display of the camp quickly, seeing that the northern areas were almost unmarked by fighting. “Thank the living stars they had the brains to do that and not to resist our Marines in that area. What does safe passage mean? Where do they want to go?”

“Wait one, sir.” Carabali passed on the question, then waited for it to be passed to the Syndics and a reply to come back. “Off-planet, sir.”

“Out of the question.”

“They say if they’re left here, it’ll be a death sentence. The revolutionaries in the city demanded the Alliance prisoners from them, and the guards refused to turn them over without proper orders. The guards claim they held off the revolutionaries until we got here, but with the camp shot to hell and so many casualties when they tried to fight us off, they can’t hope to hold out once we leave.”

“Damn.” Geary turned and explained the situation to Rione and Desjani. “Suggestions?”

“If they hadn’t fought us,” Desjani pointed out with some heat, “they’d be able to defend themselves once we left. Besides, we can’t lift them off the planet. None of our ships are configured for that many prisoners. And in any event we don’t owe them any favors after they did their best to chop up our Marines. They dug this hole for themselves.”

Rione looked unhappy, but nodded. “There doesn’t seem any way to assist them at this point, Captain Geary.”

“Yeah, but as long as they keep fighting, we keep losing people.” Geary sat and stared at the display for a moment, letting options cascade through his mind. One caught his attention, and he focused on it, then called Carabali back. “Colonel, here’s what you offer them. They stop all resistance and we stop killing them. Once we’ve lifted all of our people off, we’ll bombard the approaches from the city while the surviving guards and their families withdraw in the other direction. If anyone tries to hit them while we’re still within range, we’ll provide cover. That’s the best deal they’re going to get.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll pass that on and see what they say.”

Five minutes later, as another flight of Syndic aircraft was torn apart in midair, and two more Alliance bombardments blew apart another surface particle-beam battery and a missile launch site preparing to fire, Carabali came back on. “They agree, sir. They say they’re spreading the word for all of the guards to cease resistance and withdraw with their families toward the east side of the camp. They ask that we not engage them.”

“Agreed, Colonel, unless they start shooting at us again.”

“I’ll pass the word for cease-fire, but we’ll keep a strong force watching them, sir.”

Over the next few minutes the movements of the Marines closing on the center of the camp changed, some speeding up to reach the center quicker and others veering off to form a defensive line between the center of the camp and the enemy symbols, which began appearing as the guards broke cover to withdraw toward the east. Geary zoomed in the view, seeing through the dust filling the air infrared signatures that indicated groups of humans appearing and joining the withdrawal. Switching views again gave him a series of windows showing what was being seen by Marines watching the Syndics pull out. Targeting solutions danced on the Marine HUDs as they caught sight of Syndic guards in light battle armor shepherding civilians with no protection at all through the streets of the camp. Weapons were aimed and ready, but the Syndics behaved themselves, moving with haste, and the Marines held their fire.

He paused in his sweep through the Marine views as a sergeant’s voice crackled. “Don’t even think about it, Cintora.”

“I was just practicing aiming,” Cintora protested.

“Pull the trigger, and you’ll be up on charges.”

“Sarge, they messed up Tulira and Patal—”

“Lower your weapon
now
!”

Geary waited a moment longer, but Cintora had apparently realized he wasn’t going to get away with anything and remained silent. If the sergeant hadn’t been alert, or had been as angry with the Syndics as Cintora, it wasn’t hard to imagine what would have happened.

Another urgent message drew Geary back to the big picture. “Our recce drones have spotted a third ground convoy en route the camp from the northwest, and what looks like infiltrators on foot closing from the southwest,” Colonel Carabali reported. “Request both targets be taken under fire by the fleet.”

Geary took a moment to look over the combat systems’ firing solution, then hit approve and watched another barrage of kinetic projectiles hurled down toward the planet.

“Sir, the Free Heradao governing council is requesting a cease-fire.”

“Free Heradao? Weren’t they just the Heradao governing council before?”

“Uh, yes, sir. It’s the same circuits they called on last time and the same transmission ID.”

Geary glanced at Rione. “Any idea what the name change means?”

She looked frustrated. “Probably not a lot. They may have merged with another group of rebels and picked up the ‘free’ from that, or they may have decided ‘free’ sounded better, or there may have been a turnover in their leadership. Or it could be something else. In any event, I wouldn’t assume the name change has any significance for us.”

“You’ve talked to them, though. Are they worth talking to again?”

“No.”

Desjani raised her eyebrows in surprise. “A short and straight answer from a politician,” she muttered too low for Rione to hear. “The living stars have given us a miracle.”

“Thank you, Captain Desjani,” Geary said. “Madam Co-President, please inform the Free Heradao governing council that we will engage any threat against our ships or our personnel on the surface or any forces heading toward the POW camp. If they refrain from posing such threats, we will not strike at them.”

“Sir, we’ve got another problem.” Colonel Carabali looked unhappy, which was a clue that this was a major problem. “My screening forces on the west side of the camp are picking up signs that highly trained enemy forces in maximum-stealth gear are trying to infiltrate past my Marines. Detections are fleeting and small, but our best estimate is that we’re facing perhaps a squad of Syndic Special Forces commandos.”

“How much of a threat are they? Are they just scouts?” Geary asked.

“Their mission profile and some of the signs our gear has picked up indicates they may well be equipped with hupnums, sir.”

“Hupnums?” It sounded like some whimsical creature in a fairy tale.

“Human Portable Nuclear Munitions,” Carabali elaborated.

No wonder Carabali was unhappy. Geary checked the time line. “Colonel, it looks like you’re getting close to being able to pull out. Even if those Syndic commandos manage to plant those things, they’ll have to set the timers to give them time to get free of the blast zone. Why can’t we get out of there well before the timers set off the nukes?”

Carabali shook her head. “Sir, I trained on Alliance hupnums, and everyone in my group, instructors included, believed that the timers on the hupnums were fake. We reasoned that any target worth sneaking in a nuke would be too valuable to risk failing a strike and perhaps having the nuke taken by the enemy during the time required for an individual to egress following planting the weapon.”

Geary stared at her. “Are you saying you assumed the nuke would go off as soon as it was armed?”

“Or very soon afterward, yes, sir. I assume the Syndics would be even more inclined toward that logic, sir. We have to presume the hupnums will detonate immediately after they’ve been placed and armed.”

That blew Geary’s time line all to hell. “Recommendation, Colonel?”

“I’ve diverted two of the shuttles on their return trips long enough to pick up two Persian Donkeys. With those -”

“Persian Donkeys, Colonel?”

Carabali looked surprised that he didn’t know the term. “Mark Twenty-Four personnel grouping simulators.”

“Which do what?”

“They . . . each simulate a large group of personnel. Each Persian Donkey uses a variety of active measures to create the illusion of many people. Seismic thumpers create ground vibrations appropriate to a crowd moving around, infrared bugs generate heat signatures all over the place, other bugs create audible noise, transmitters generate a level of message traffic and active sensor activity matching that of a military force around the site, and so on. For someone using remote nonvisual sensors, the Donkeys make it look like plenty of people are in a location.”

He got it then. “You want to fool the Syndic commandos into thinking their targets are still present until it’s too late for the Syndics to hit the real evacuation.”

“Yes, sir,” Carabali agreed. “But I need to keep a screening force in place, and by the time I get everyone else lifted, those commandos are going to be close. We can slow them down, but we can’t stop them.” An image appeared on Geary’s display, showing the colonel’s tactical planning screen. “I’ll put the Donkeys here and here, with any line of sight to them blocked from the directions the Syndic commandos are coming in. I’ll need to have platoons of Marines here, here, and here.” Rough, bent arcs formed of individual Marine symbols flashed into existence. “Right after my last evac shuttle lifts, three shuttles will ground at these spots along the edge of the landing area closest to my people. At that point the last three platoons run like hell for the shuttles and boost out of there. The Donkeys will be set to self-destruct immediately afterward.”