David Weber - Old Soldiers

He gazed around the briefing room once more, then flipped his ears in satisfaction at what he saw in their eyes.

"Very well, gentlemen," he said. "That's the bare bones of our intentions. Now to more specific details. Colonel Na-Salth?"

He touched another button, and military mapping icons appeared in the holo.

"In conjunction with Colonel Ka-Somal's infantry, you will establish a basic defensive perimeter along this line," he continued, indicating the positions on the map. "After that, you will deploy reconnaissance elements along these axes... ."

Lieutenant Guthrie Chin sat back, arms crossed, and frowned at the chessboard. Staff Sergeant Yolanda Willis grinned cheerfully at him as he contemplated the unappetizing situation into which she had backed him.

"Your position does not look promising, Guthrie," a pleasant baritone remarked over the compartment's bulkhead speaker.

"And don't you dare give him any hints, Mickey!" Willis said sternly.

"How can you believe I would think of such a thing?" the speaker inquired in innocent tones.

"Possibly because I know you?" Willis shot back. The speaker chuckled, and she grinned. "If, on the other hand, you should happen to succumb to that ignoble temptation, just remember who's in charge of making sure your wiring keeps on doing what it's supposed to do."

"Such crude threats are unbecoming to a noncommissioned officer of the Brigade," Chin said severely. "Besides, I—as an officer and a gentleman, by act of the Concordiat Assembly—am fully capable of resolving your petty threat to my queen entirely on my own."

Willis made a most disrespectful sound, and he gave her a dignified look.

"I'm sure," he continued, "that the aforesaid resolution will come to me ... presently."

Lauren Hanover checked her boards with a feeling of profound satisfaction as she took over the duty watch. With Kuan Yin's loss, she'd been out of a job as a second engineer, but Henri Berthier, never one to waste talent, had assigned her to Sherwood Forest, instead. It wasn't exactly what she'd been trained for, but she'd had plenty of time on the extended voyage to get herself brought up to speed, and she'd been more than ready when they assigned her to command Industrial Module Three.

At the moment, India Mike Three was still in what she thought of as the setting up stage. The automated fabrication node's admittedly simpleminded AIs were working from stored plans to build the bare-bones platform into a complete deep-space industrial facility. Progress was slower than originally projected because of the loss of the orbital smelter—multicapability resource extraction facilities, really, but "smelter" was a much handier term—yet they were beginning to make up the lost time. It would be at least another three or four months, by her most optimistic estimate, before they could actually catch back up with the official schedule, but that was all right. When India Mike Three really hit its stride, it would be able to build anything the inhabitants of Indrani needed, from screwdrivers to complete superdreadnoughts, and it would be only one of six such centers. Given the circumstances and the whole reason Seed Corn had been mounted, plans called for Indrani to eventually have an industrial base which not only matched that of the average Concordiat Core World, but actually exceeded it (on a population basis, at least) by a factor of more than ten. And for that ratio to be maintained indefinitely.

It was always impossible to predict exactly how rapidly any specific, individual trooper would consume the endurance of his suit. Averages could be predicted with a high degree of reliability, and the suits' designers had allowed a margin of redundancy. But individuals always varied at least a little, and that margin had been calculated sitting in comfortable offices in rear area research and development establishments. Special ops units in the field routinely ran right up to the limits of the projected safety margins, and this operation had stressed them even harder than most.

He'd already lost one trooper. Sergeant Na-Rathan hadn't exhausted his life support. Sa-Chelak wasn't positive exactly what had gone wrong with his suit, and the sergeant hadn't told him. He'd simply reported across the short-range whisker laser com net in a completely calm voice, less than fifteen hours into the mission, that he had a problem. Then he'd gone off the net and the green light indicating a live trooper on Sa-Chelak's HUD had blinked suddenly red.

The sergeant's body had accompanied them for the remainder of their ballistic insertion. Corporal Na-Sath had removed the backup fusion warhead from Na-Rathan's body, and when they'd finally activated their suit-mounted thruster packs to begin decelerating, the sergeant had continued silently onward towards the system's primary.

At least he'll find a proper pyre, Sa-Chelak thought. And he's earned it.

The lieutenant hoped he would earn the same, but it was beginning to look as if his own life support was going to run out before the rest of the platoon reached its secondary objective among the orbiting Human transports. At least six more of his twenty-four remaining troopers were in the same or little better situation, but that wouldn't keep them from executing their primary mission, he thought grimly.

He looked at Sergeant Major Na-Hanak. Since they'd begun decelerating, even the whisker lasers had been shut down. Sa-Chelak had enormous confidence in the capabilities of his troopers' stealth systems, on the basis of hard-won experience, but getting this close to one of the accursed Bolos was enough to chill any veteran's blood. He had no intention of running any avoidable risks when he and his men had paid—and were about to pay—such a high price to get here.

The sergeant major was watching him alertly. Sa-Chelak made a hand gesture, and Na-Hanak replied with a gesture of his own, acknowledging receipt of the unspoken order.

Sa-Chelak wished he'd been carrying the weapon himself, but this was a job for a demolitions expert, and that described Na-Hanak perfectly. The lieutenant watched as the sergeant major's gloved fingers quickly but carefully armed the warhead—a stealthed demolition charge, actually. Na-Hanak completed his task, then paused for several seconds, clearly doublechecking every single step of the process. When he was satisfied, he looked back up at Sa-Chelak and made the "prepared to proceed" hand sign.

Sa-Chelak nodded inside his helmet, then chopped his arm in a gesture towards the distant dot his suit's computer assured him was the Bolo transport. It was little more than a speck, gleaming faintly in the reflected light of the system primary, but they were more than close enough for their delivery vehicle.

Na-Hanak entered a final sequence on the weapon's control pad, then punched the commit button. A

mist of instantly dispersed vapor spurted from the weapon's small thruster, and it accelerated away from the platoon.

Sa-Chelak watched it go. It was fitting in many ways, he thought, that the very primitiveness of their weapon helped explain how it would penetrate the Humans' vaunted superior technology. Its warhead actually relied upon old-fashioned chemical explosives to achieve criticality, and the total power supply aboard warhead and delivery vehicle combined was less than would have been required to supply a pre-space hand lamp. Its guidance systems were purely passive, relying upon an optical lock on its designated target, and the control systems for its primitive, low-powered, but effective thrusters used old-fashioned mechanical linkages. Not that more modern technology was completely absent from its construction. In fact, it was built of radiation-absorbent materials so effective that at a range of barely two meters (with the access ports closed to hide the glowing giveaway of its displays), it was impossible for the Melconian eye to pick out against the backdrop of space. It was, in fact, as close to completely invisible and totally undetectable as the Empire's highly experienced design teams could produce.