Cassandra Kresnov 5: Operation Shield (56 page)

Fleet didn't bother her: they couldn't do anything from orbit. Getting through that final defence grid without losing nearly everyone bothered her. And the prospect of doing so while Ibrahim and Amirah were still alive did too. There were pedestrians here in the ’burbs, she noted, hiding in their yards, filming her with devices. A few, seeing the FSA insignia on her armour, were waving, yelling encouragement. Good lord, one incoming artillery round, and they'd all die.

She kicked thrusters again as a new rendezvous point established, and now she had a Fleet frequency incoming, as the burb blasted away beneath her…Captain Tsien of the carrier
Danube
. “
Commander Kresnov, this is an act of war against the Federation. This action will be met with counter-attack by Fleet, you cannot hope to hold your objective even should you achieve it
.”

“Hello, Captain,” she said, zipping past the top floors of low-rise residentials. “The first thing I'll do when GC is captured is gain full control of planetary defences. The second thing I'll do is remove you and your warship from Callayan space by ground-to-orbit strike. If you start running now, you might get clear in time, reaction missiles move much faster than carriers.”

Well, at least Operation Shield's friends in Fleet were revealing themselves. Then she saw the rendezvous site ahead and landed hard to cool before one last kick.

The explosion blew in the wall to Ballan's office waiting room and took all merely human visibility with it. Ibrahim had been expecting it, thanks to Amirah's warnings that it was imminent, and was hiding under the heavy secretary's table, two legs collapsed to make a shield. Even so, the force of it deprived him of air and sense, ears ringing and only barely aware of shooting now in the
neighbouring
room, from where the explosion had come. Amirah had warned him of this too.

The shooting stopped. Amirah could be dead in there, but this was the plan, so he scrambled from under the table, slipping on shattered wall and dust, hand over his mouth, AR glasses shielding his eyes from the worst of the dust, they and uplinks giving him some kind of fragmented vision overlaid onto swirling dust…here was the hole, roughly a meter and perfectly circular, the wall not wide enough for multiple entry points without risking bringing down the roof.

He scrambled through, into a nearly identical office waiting room, the visibility much better here, and found Amirah already arming herself with better weapons. The armoured corpses of the assault team who'd blown the wall were splayed about the room, their injuries horrific, armour crushed. Explosive entry into a room containing a high-designation GI was ill advised at such close ranges, because she could be through the hole before your follow-up grenades and flash bangs. And then, at point-blank range, you got this, a slaughter.

Amirah tossed an automatic at him, then a pair of attached mags, which he somehow caught, then went to the hallway door and tossed out a couple of newly acquired grenades on an impact fuse. They blew the corridor beyond to hell, and then she was gone again, with another flurry of shooting, into the hall from one doorway farther around the bend than she was supposed to be.

Then a yell, as they were still without uplink coms, “Sir, on me!” Ordering him like a private, and he ran, expecting to be shot in the back at any moment from someone Amirah had missed in that direction, but nothing came. And here against the inner curving wall, as he kept running, were more dead personnel,
nearly all headshots, five of them…but their weapons and armour were nowhere near as advanced as their previous opponents. This was all?

And here at a junction hall was Amirah, standing left shoulder to the outer wall for the best angle both ways, rifle ahead left-handed, big auto pistol on the right hip in case someone came at them behind—she'd see that on her headset's rear cam, literally eyes in the back of her head, and her right hand could draw that weapon and put rounds precisely on target within milliseconds. And to think that Amirah was dismissive of her abilities next to Sandy.

“Where to, sir?” she asked, seeing from his run that he was relatively unhurt. His suit was a mess, he had cuts and bruises everywhere, but on this much adrenaline with all augments hypercharged, he barely felt a thing. “I'd like to put some armour on you, we're so exposed to shrapnel out here, but we're short of time.”

“Only five in the hall?” he asked, crouched low by her leg so he wouldn't block her line of fire in either of direction.

“Plus five more in the assault team,” said Amirah. “I think five more up the other end of the hall, but they'll be having a crisis of confidence by now.” Given that every time one of them showed himself or got a bit too close, he died. “They'll be moving most of their numbers to the outer defences now, they thought fifteen was enough to bottle us up.”

And then made the mistake of trying an assault with numbers only sufficient for containment. “We'll only have a clear run until they realise we're loose,” said Ibrahim, checking his rifle, AR glasses trying to display GC schematics, but the GC network terminating the graphics before they could fully form. “Our best bet is strategic command, you know where that is?”

“The war room, yes, sir. Sir, try to stay forty-five degrees on my forehand flank…” she indicated his present position.

“I know, and keep low.” He was baggage to her, though thankfully self-propelled baggage. He wasn't sure his dignity could survive being thrown over her shoulder. “Let's go.”

With one hopper clinging to each side of its bodywork, the taxi cruiser could barely get airbourne. But once airbourne, it could maintain 300 kph at low altitude without having to stop every few hundred meters. Sandy hung off its right side, Gamma 4 off its left, like two giant insects hitching a ride
on some unwilling host. Steering was by uplink, largely reflex, and now as a number of other units copied her manoeuver, they were rushing onto the enemy hoppers faster than they could retreat. Deprived of network cover, FSA troops were lobbing mini-missiles at them that countermeasures were no longer defending, and enemy hoppers were either hiding or dying.

“
This is Red 1. I've got some surrenders here!
” came a call, six Ks north.

“Make them crack their armour and climb out,” Sandy replied. “If they don't comply immediately, it's a trick, so kill ’em.” And switched to Ragi's link. “Ragi, get me some progress on the GC, we can't control planetary systems without it.”

“
It's a heavily secured command system, Cassandra
,” came Ragi's voice. “
It's mostly output and very little input, I must admit it's very hard to penetrate, even for me
.”

“Well, get it done, because that grid has magfire defences; you can't just turn them around like missiles once they've been fired.” Though God knew how he'd been doing that, because those missiles were supposedly autistic too…though she knew of some technologies that used main net frequencies in urban areas to penetrate even missile guidance…but take
control
of them?

They were six Ks out from Montoya District now, and she knew there were units on the streets that extended the air grid, probably tanks or AMAPS of some sort, the towers would block line of sight of those extended units, but there were precious few fire shadows showing on tacnet, and most of those shadows became traps once you were stuck in them…

Another feed showed her CSA SWAT now descending on Callayan Parliament. Parliament hadn't shut down aerial defences either, so SWAT had simply bombarded them from range, and for whatever internally chaotic reason, anti-missile defences weren't working. It was creepy, seeing those red brick arches and domes obscured by smoke from massive explosions. In the midst of the confusion there was more shooting, flashes of staccato fire as SWAT stormed various entrances, but she didn't have time for a direct feed and had to trust Arvid could handle it…which she had no doubt.

Suddenly a new feed, tacnet couldn't ping the location, so that meant somewhere heavily shielded, ID coding lost somewhere in the replication. “
This is Agent Teo, FedInt, I have an outside line for the moment. Mr Ragi, can you backtrack this connection into the GC main grid?
” So Teo was with Ibrahim, Sandy
supposed. And FedInt were suddenly being useful…only now that it was clear who was going to win.

“
Mr Teo, I can't gain direct access from here, but I can overload their processing, hold on…
”

Sandy's visual managed some fast gymnastics, showed her the massive graphical shield of Grand Council's construct, and around it…something ridiculous, golden and clinging like some hyper-dimensional parasitic vine, flickering and replicating around the barrier, destroying interactive functions before they could even propagate, with careless flicks of golden tendrils. But Ragi couldn't fully penetrate. Capabilities still somewhere short of Cai then.

“
Cassandra
.” Ragi again. “
Their internal feeds are now self-replicating; they'll have to devote massive processing to shutting it down. It should slow down everything by a second or two. Including fire control
.”

On the other side of the cruiser, Gamma 4 looked at her. Marco, his name was. “Should?”

“Okay, guys, time the approach. Full speed down the middle.” She illustrated what she meant, a fast manoeuvering of icons, tactical formations, and how it ought to play out. If Ragi was right.

“
That looks interesting
,” Rishi remarked drily. Sandy did a fast double check—she hadn't even noticed Rishi was one of those who'd grabbed a taxi cruiser; everyone was using unfamiliar IDs, and she hadn't had time to check everyone's identities. Or perhaps was subconsciously preferring the luxury of not knowing who was dying when.

“You guys are all volunteers,” Sandy replied, broad-net. “You can opt out if you want.”

“
If I ever meet the people who made me
,” Rishi replied, “
I'll be sure to thank them for volunteering me for everything dangerous and scary
.”

Sandy was astonished. Not that Rishi showed no signs of bailing, but at the obvious and intentional sarcasm. A high designation, Rishi. Like Amirah. A few months ago she wouldn't have understood something that sarcastic if spoken to.

“Hey, Rish,” said Sandy, still on broad-net. “Love you guys. Thanks for coming.”

“
Those Krishna priests who lived where we were building our houses said none of us are in control of our destinies anyway
,” said Rishi. “
So what the hell, right?
”

“Hey, did they get out?”

“
No
.” A silence from Rishi. “
They refused to leave. Another reason why I'm not bailing
.”

“We may yet prove them right,” Sandy murmured.

Ahead lay Montoya. Even now, several defensive missile emplacements were firing, and almost immediately the missiles looped back upon themselves, or took abrupt turns, and blew each other to pieces.

“
Damn, that's a nice trick
,” said Lorenz, one of Rishi's friends. “
Can you do that, Sandy?
”

“Sure,” said Sandy. “Give me a week to plan and half an hour to execute.” And one-handed, pumped three magfire rounds into another battery that was holding fire. Her rounds streaked two kilometers, a brief high-velocity arc toward the base of an apartment building, then two small explosions followed by a massive one as the ammunition detonated. She hoped the civvies in the building were well gone from there. The recently free-and-lively net was full of warnings for locals to get away from anything that might be targeted, and showing easy-to-read locations. There were commercial buildings nearby that would have served as cover just as well, all empty, but Operation Shield wanted propaganda corpses for the cause.

The Grand Council was three Ks out, invisible at this low altitude, weaving now between lower buildings, over a stretch of suburban houses, a lake, some sports fields by a school…. “We need to overload them, everyone max v, mix up the altitudes, crisscross vector so we overlap their fire zones.” With real-time illustration, assigning roles. There were only five cruisers, ten hoppers total. And now tacnet was finding more information on defensive emplacements, cross-referencing from her own schematic files, plus all the additional wheeled units Shield had been placing around it. Magfire, not missiles…and even without tacnet drawing all the kill zones onto the map, Sandy could see that without Ragi's armscomp delay, they'd be one hundred percent KIA within ten seconds of entering range. With the delay…well, local armscomp could realise its circumstance and recalculate. They had to take out most of those units on the way in. And if they did…she figured sixty percent casualties.

Meaning the odds suggested that, most deadly combat GI ever built or not, she was more likely than not about to die. She took a deep breath.

“Hit ’em with everything,” she said. “We need as much distraction as…” And suddenly tacnet was showing vehicles airbourne about Montoya, abruptly changing direction and heading toward the GC. Some civvie cruisers, taxis, all on automation—empty, she presumed.

“
Got you some help
,” said Ragi. “
Good luck
.”

GC defences opened up on them as soon as the complex became visible, the big O-shaped building emerging behind towers amidst a drifting cloud of glowing, incoming fire. Sandy stayed with the cruiser as long as possible, as the first magfire flashed past at armour-shredding speeds, explosions on proximity charge…then leaped, as Marco jumped from the opposite side, hit the thrusters and smashed at ten Gs as the cruiser was hit repeatedly, smashed instantly to pieces that got progressively smaller as fire shredded the wreckage of the wreckage, leaving nothing more than an expanding cloud of metallic debris.

Tacnet returned missile fire on automatic, their remaining missiles leaping from back racks, hoppers streaking along a deliberate scatter of trajectories as suddenly defensive fire was readjusting to the unburdened cruisers that came rushing at them from the surrounding towers. And then it was all crazy, cruisers exploding, anti-missile defences erupting about the grounds like some crazed, explosive sprinkler system, and Sandy herself pumping magfire as fast as she could into the mess, calculating how many shots it might take to penetrate the heavy armour of defensive emplacements, and reckoning most of the use might be in distraction. She twisted repeatedly as magfire ripped close to her path, Gs levelling out as thrusters reached maximum and rapidly overheating, took shrapnel from proximity blasts, saw one of her friendly icons on tacnet abruptly vanish, then another.