David Weber - Old Soldiers

Jeffords inhaled sharply, and she smiled thinly at the other faces on her display.

"For those of you unfamiliar with the reporting names assigned to Puppy warships, that's an atmosphere-configured assault transport, the second biggest one they have. And," her grim smile vanished, "it's capable of landing an entire heavy assault brigade."

"Dear God," Agnelli said quietly, and Maneka nodded.

"I may be wrong, and I pray I am, but I may not be, too," she said. "And whatever they've got, they're obviously very, very good to have followed us this far without being detected in the first place, and then to get through our defenses so neatly with their first strike. On the basis of my analysis of the threat, I'm officially notifying all of you that I am assuming full authority as this system's military commander, and that I've already activated Defense Plan Alpha. Brigadier Jeffords' First, Second, and Fourth Battalions are drawing weapons and ammunition now. Lieutenant Governor Berthier."

"Yes, Captain?"

"I've already informed Brigadier Jeffords that we'll be diverting all construction equipment to military uses. Most of the construction personnel have already been activated in their militia role, and the brigadier's issued preliminary orders to them. He knows what I want dug in and where, but since he's going to be busy overseeing the deployment of all of his personnel, I'd like you to take over on the construction side. You'll find the details in the construction plans queue under Delta Papa Alpha One."

"Of course, Captain!"

"In that case," she continued, turning to Agnelli's daughter, "I need you to take over organization for probable wounded, Dr. Agnelli-Watson," she said formally. "I hope there won't be many of them, but—"

She broke off suddenly, and her face tightened.

"Governor Agnelli," she said harshly.

"Yes, Captain?"

"We may have lost Stalingrad and Mickey's sensors, but the backup recon satellites we deployed are still on-line and feeding information to Lazarus' BattleComp. I have confirmation of a Melconian vessel headed for Indrani. And it is an Atilla."

"That's the bad news," she continued with a tight, teeth-baring smile. "The good news is that so far we haven't picked up anything else. She must have been accompanying the raiding squadron Commodore Lakshmaniah destroyed, and she must have used her emergency cryo facilities to stretch her endurance. It's the only way they could have followed us this long without starving to death—or eating each other. But according to Lieutenant Hawthorne, those cryo facilities aren't very good, so they've probably taken some significant personnel losses.

"What matters right now, though, is that apparently she's the only opposition we face." One or two of the faces looking back at her showed their owners' incredulous response to her use of the word "only," but she went on in that same level voice. "Assuming that they really have somehow managed to follow us here with their personnel essentially intact, we're going to be facing heavy odds—" not as heavy as Chartres, a stray thought flickered, but heavy enough ... and you don't have the rest of the Battalion for backup this time "—but without any warships to side her, at least no one's going to be bombarding us from space in the middle of the fight.

"With Brigadier Jeffords' people to watch the back door, Lazarus and I will be able to operate much more freely against any ground opposition. My biggest concern at this moment is that although we've picked up one transport, we have no positive assurance that it's the only ship out there. Personally, I think it probably is, for the reasons I've already given, but I can't be certain of that. If I had only a little more time, I'd take Lazarus' assault pod back up into orbit to engage them short of the planet.

Unfortunately, it will take a minimum of thirty-five more minutes to re-mate him with the pod. I'm proceeding with that—we can disengage a lot more quickly if we have to, and the pod will give us much more flexible deployment options—but the Melconian ship is only twenty-eight minutes out. We can't get orbital in time to intercept it, and from its present profile, it looks as if it intends to land far enough around the curve of the planet to protect it from direct fire from Landing, as well.

"All of which suggests that they have a very good notion of what we have. I've transmitted a warning to all our shipping and deep-space work parties, because if they did use some of their special operations troops to carry out the attack on Stalingrad, they may have tasked those troops with secondary missions, as well. Their special ops troopers have very, very good individual stealth capability, and that may well mean we have an unknown number of Melconian special operations troopers already in or about to penetrate the orbits of our infrastructure.

"I'm afraid we're going to take some additional losses there." She made the admission unflinchingly.

"Brigadier Jeffords has already scrambled his company of vacuum-trained militia and both of our armed cutters to repel attacks on our industrial platforms or the transports, but if the Puppies timed this properly, they may already be working on breaching the hulls of their targets. If all they want to do is destroy them, I'm afraid there may not be a lot we can do to stop them. We'll just have to hope they'd prefer to capture the capacity instead of destroying it. Or that they're shorthanded enough they didn't spare a lot of personnel to go after orbital installations that can't run away anyhow. After all," she gave them another tight smile, "they apparently know they have a Bolo to face down here."

She paused to draw a deep breath.

"Until they actually hit planet, I can't do much more than we're already doing. Lazarus and I need a better feel for the forces they actually have to deploy and what their axes of approach are likely to be.

For now, I suggest we all do everything we can to reduce the possibility of panic and to get as many as possible of our noncombatants under cover. I want to leave Brigadier Jeffords' other two battalions of infantry available to assist in digging in for as long as possible, but I want both air cavalry platoons ready to lift immediately. And if any of us have a free moment here or there, spending it asking God to give us a hand probably wouldn't be a bad idea.

Ran the margin too fine this time, his mind told him distantly. He blinked, trying to focus on the range-to-target reading on his HUD, but the numbers remained obstinately blurred. Of his thirty-seven troopers, at least a dozen green lights had turned crimson. He couldn't see them well enough to be certain which ones they were, but he thought Corporal Na-Sath's was still green.

Good. That's good, he thought blearily. At least his people could be sure of taking out at least one more of the Humans' ships, whether they could capture their secondary objectives or not. He wished he could be with them when they did, but the insistent computer voice warning him of oxygen exhaustion was growing less and less distinct in his ear.

His right hand groped for the suicide button. There was no point going by centimeters when his chance of survival had become nonexistent anyway. His fingers found it, and started to press. But a new, strident audio tone made him pause.

His wavering vision sought out the HUD once more. It was impossible to read, but despite the anoxia, a remote corner of his superbly trained brain recognized the sound.

Proximity alarm, he thought, and turned his head just in time to see one of the colony's two armed cutters in the instant before its two-centimeter Hellbores fired.

"Go down there and help her get that locker open now, Jackson," Lieutenant Edmund Hawthorne said flatly.