David Weber - The Shadow of Saganami

"All Hawks, Hawk-Mike-Alpha!" he snapped. "Pandora! I say again, Pandora! Case Zulu! I say again, Case Zulu is now in force!"

Taluqdar heard the Skipper, but as far as he was concerned, Case Zulu had applied from the instant his conscious thoughts caught up with his reflexes and recognized the weapon mounted on the platform railing as a plasma rifle.

It shouldn't have been there. There shouldn't have been any plasma rifles on Kornati, aside from a very small number held by the System Defense Force, all of which had been positively accounted for. But there it was, and even before the warning had gone out to the rest of the platoon, Taluqdar was placing the breaching charge on the floor of the log platform, which was also the roof of the bunker beneath.

He slapped the shaped ring charge into place, thumbed the detonator, and stepped back as far as the platform would allow. Five seconds later the charge detonated with a loud " Whumpf! " which blew a gaping opening through the heavy logs. Taluqdar tossed a frag grenade through for good measure, waited for it to detonate, and then dropped through feet-first in pursuit.

Aboard the second pinnace, circling around as it prepared to land the rest of the Marines and his own SWAT personnel, Captain Barto Jezic, monitoring the Marines' communications net over a borrowed headset, also heard Captain Kaczmarczyk, and his jaw clenched.

He knew the Marines hadn't really expected to face modern, off-world weapons any more than he had. But Kaczmarczyk and his people were professionals. They'd allowed for it in their planning, and the Pandora warning had moved them abruptly to an entirely different set of rules of engagement.

They were no longer there to apprehend; they were there to "neutralize."

To destroy.

Jezic closed his eyes briefly, praying that at least some of the people down there-people who had to be terrorists, if they had off-world weapons, however they'd gotten them-would be fast enough to surrender while they were still alive."

Drazen Divkovic, "Brother Dagger," rolled out of his bunk, clawing his way frantically up out of the depths of sleep. The incredible volume of the surrender demand had penetrated into the warren of underground bunkers and passages which had been built long before the National Reformation Party had been transformed into the Freedom Alliance of Kornati. But he'd only begun to rouse when the first explosions began.

How? How?! If Camp Freedom had been spotted when the off-world weapons were actually landed, it would have been hit then , not three nights later! And how could they have-

"Drazen! Drazen! " It was Jelena Krleza, his second-in-command, screaming through the open door. "We're under attack!" she announced unnecessarily. " It's the fucking Manties! "

Drazen's heart seemed to stop. Manties? Manticorans?

It couldn't be. It simply could not be! But it was, and he cursed himself for not having set up some sort of self-destruct. But this site had been here so long, been so secure. He hadn't been able to believe it had been compromised, not after they'd landed the weapons and no one had even blinked! Only now-

"Get your weapons!" he bellowed. "Get your weapons! Man your positions!"

He snatched up the belt-fed grenade launcher he'd chosen as his own personal weapon and dashed for the door, wishing with all his heart that he'd had the opportunity to actually practice with it.

Second Squad was in assault configuration. Its regular plasma rifles had been replaced with heavier weapons, which were normally crew-served. Its riflemen had traded in their usual pulse rifles for heavy tribarrels fed from five thousand-round, backpack tanks of alternating HE and armor-piercing ammunition.

Now Second Squad went to Case Zulu, and the plasma rifles fired. The camouflaged door to the underground vehicle ramp was only earth-covered logs, less than a half-meter thick. It simply vanished, and a tornado of tribarrel fire ripped through the opening. Grenades followed, and the squad's first section went in behind them, charging into the inferno of exploding fuel tanks and blazing vehicles, tribarrels ready.

First Squad's second fire team looked for a way to dump the sleeping gas into the ventilation system, but there were no intakes. All they had was the exhaust from the system, and they moved swiftly to their alternate assigned role under Case Zulu, deploying rapidly outward to take over the perimeter while Second Squad broke in through the vehicle entrance. Even as they did, Sergeant Cassidy's team went up the ridge in the long, flying leaps of their jump gear, and more breaching charges thundered as they blew their way in through the sides of the tower/bunker and followed Private Taluqdar down into the bowels of the installation beneath.

"My God, Aivars." Bernardus Van Dort's face was ashen as he looked up from the report. "A thousand tons of modern weapons?"

"That's Kaczmarczyk's best estimate." Terekhov sat behind his desk in his day cabin, and his expression was as grim as his voice. "He may be off in either direction, but I doubt he's very far off."

"But, dear God, where did they come from?"

"We don't know. And we may not find out. We only have five prisoners, and three of them are critically wounded. Doctor Orban's doing what he can, but he's pretty sure we're going to lose at least one of them."

"And your own losses?" Van Dort asked, his voice softer.

"Two dead, one wounded," Terekhov said harshly. "Either some of these people were suicidal, or else they didn't know what the hell they were doing! Using plasma grenades in an underground tunnel?" He shook his head viciously. "Sure, they killed two of my Marines, but the same grenades killed at least fifteen of their people-possibly more!"

Van Dort shook his head, not in disbelief, but like a man who wished he could disbelieve.

"What do we know about their casualties?" he asked after a moment.

"So far Tadislaw's confirmed at least seventy bodies. That number may very well go up. At the moment, only his Marines are equipped for search and rescue operations in there. Without armor, or at least skinsuits, nobody can get through the fires and the heat."

Van Dort closed his eyes, trying-and, he knew, failing-to imagine what it must have been like in those narrow, underground passages when modern weapons turned them into a roaring inferno.

"I don't know what I feel," he admitted after several moments, opening his eyes again. "It was a massacre," he said, and raised one hand before Terekhov could open his mouth to protest his choice of nouns. "I said a massacre, Aivars, not an atrocity . At least we tried to give these people a chance to surrender, which is more than they've done. And if we've killed seventy or eighty of them, that's a drop in a bucket compared to the thousands of civilians-including children- they and their… colleagues have slaughtered. But it's still-what? ninety-plus percent of everyone in their base when we arrived?" He shook his head again. "Even knowing who they were, what they've done, that kind of death rate…"

His voice trailed off, and he shook his head again, but Terekhov barked a hard, sharp-edged laugh.

"If you want someone to spend your pity on, Bernardus, I can find you some much more deserving candidates!"

"It isn't pity, Aivars, it's-"

"I'm a naval officer, Bernardus," Terekhov interrupted. "Oh, sure I spent twenty-eight T-years as a Foreign Office weenie, but I was a Naval officer for eleven T-years first, and I've been a Naval officer for fifteen T-years since. I've spent too many years cleaning up after people who do things like this, and that affects your perspective. We call them 'pirates,' or sometimes 'slavers,' but they're no different, when you come right down to it, from Nordbrandt and her butchers. The only difference is the justification they use for their butchery, and I, for one, am not going to shed one single tear for these butchers!"