Killswitch (45 page)

Tac-net then linked the feed from Mekong through the bridge, and suddenly she could see the entire, doughnut shaped station, the positions of all the ships, and now the new flood of Third Fleet marines pouring onto the docks from the Mekong's position.

"Watch your spacing!" a sergeant was yelling as Cal-Ts established firing positions about the docking crates, then raced across the open docks toward the inner wall. "Don't bunch up, watch your spacing!" Along the inner wall, the few civilians allowed on the docks during the Fifth Fleet's curfew quickly scurried into doorways. Several spacers were sprinting toward their berths, for the safety of their ships. Well, Vanessa thought as she watched the CDF's first major combat action in its history unfold across the tac-net, at least they had the first element achieved. Surprise. And then she had com with the bridge.

"Bridge is secure," came Reichardt's voice upon the command channel. "I reckon you've got twenty minutes until they get the equipment up and cut through these doors. "

"We'll be there," Vanessa replied. "I'm not getting a feed on station systems yet, what can you tell me?"

"We're still accessing it ... we've got just four people here to run bridge systems and none of us are experts. Section seals we can't guarantee, nor the other emergency overrides, a lot of them are activated by local emergency systems in case of fire, decompression or GBS. But if you move quick, we reckon we can get you where you need to go. "

"Speed's our plan, Captain," said Vanessa, as soldiers clattered past her, headed into dockside doors and through the passages beyond. All were on tac-net, and saw what she saw, but tac-net only knew what was fed into it, and those sources were always less than perfect. A shot cracked past from somewhere up the curving slope ahead-and was returned instantly, rounds zipping just under the low overhead, striking on a down-angle amidst a cluster of shipping crates and transport flatbeds. "Give us a fix on the other captains as soon as you can if any of them are off their ships, and keep an eye on Corona. We'd like to get Takawashi too, if we can."

`Just take the damn station first, Major, then we'll worry about the details. "

Still the Cal-Ts came, in pairs at several points across the dock, supported by sporadic covering fire. Tac-net showed squads forming up within the corridors, then moving out in tight, coordinated formations. Just like Sandy had trained them. Vanessa gritted her teeth and stayed low in the cover of her window. Her own squad were well back in the departure order from Jennifer, and tactical doctrine said that effective second-in-command could not lead the main formations into the station's guts, however determined she'd been to lead them out, for morale alone. In the corridors, pointmen were always first to hit the GBS, as Reichardt had put it-marine slang for General Bad Shit. CDF majors were not, she'd had it forcibly explained to her, expendable.

Upon that thought, tac-net highlighted a particular red dot coming across the docks, and she turned her head to watch a tall, loping suit of armour come to a crashing halt beside one doorway, covering as his squad went through behind. Then General Krishnaswali followed his troops in at speed. Some damn argument that had been. But if second- and third-in-command were going in, there was no way in hell anyone was going to be able to tell the General that he had to watch it all from an armchair in Tanusha.

As for the acting third-in-command, who had so valiantly delegated her command position to Vanessa ... well, Vanessa reckoned she ought to be making a move right about ... now.

The shipping crate's seal exploded outward as Sandy and Rhian's armoured feet hit it simultaneously. Cold air flooded in, or at least the armour suit sensors said it did, and Sandy rolled quickly from her cramped containment and swung a rifle about the edge and down. Two young men stood frozen in the below-docks gloom, staring first at the quarter-ton side of metal that had boomed to the decking before them, and then at the mean, visored figure levelling a rifle at their heads.

"Commander?" one of them said, recovering faster than his friend. A tall, broad young man in his late teens. "Hafez Bhargouti. My friend, Simon." With a gesture to his companion. Sandy rolled from the crate and thudded neatly to the ground two metres below. Rhian did similar, facing the other way.

This portion of the lower-decks cargo space was a long conveyor of overhead grapples, holding crates suspended along a gloomy passage of bulkheads, exposed pipes and internals. It was chillingly cold. Beyond Hafez and Simon loomed the huge scanner paddles, four metres tall on either side of the conveyor, peering into the contents of every container as it passed. Unmanned for now, its marine contingent fled topside now that the shooting had broken out.

"Where are they?" Sandy asked, rifle levelled past the two young men.

"There's a guard," said Hafez, eyes more urgent than scared. He couldn't have been more than sixteen, Sandy reassessed, despite his size. But immediately she was impressed. Given the reputation of his father-Mohummed Bhargouti, leader of the Nehru Station dockworkers' revolt and unseen since the Fleet had thrown him and most of the station crew into confinement-that was hardly surprising. "One section across, you'll run into him if don't know where."

"Stay between us," Sandy told him, "someone might come to check out that noise." She edged past and advanced at a walk, rifle levelled. Her suit uplinks found the local network nodes, and locked in ... tacnet unfolded in a rush, the assault shown well under way, CDF thrusts penetrating rapidly into the station bowels, headed for the captured bridge, the rail transit system, key local control nodes to secure life support and other systems in their sector, and into the station's main three-arm, the only way up to secure the station hub, and thus the powerplant.

In fact, it all looked extremely familiar. Mekong's troops were out on the docks too, five berths down from Jennifer. Defensively, that entire section of docks was solid. But Nehru Station was the central hub for the Fifth Fleet occupation, and currently docked two carriers and four other, smaller contingent warships. Maybe 1050 Fleet marines, plus a hundred spacer personnel who might fight, if they couldn't make it back to their ships. CDF stealth shuttles had docked with the Jennifer three days ago, on approach from a far-side trajectory and unnoticed by Fleet vessels, which were more worried about potential Third Fleet reinforcements than CDF launches from the ground. Let alone CDF launches from Deccan, the third continent, upon the far side of the planet from Tanusha. Jennifer's captain had not been happy at the forced conversion to the CDF's trojan horse, but it was a Callayan registered vessel, and if its owners wanted to keep their licence (and not get thrown in prison for obstructing Callayan security) they were strongly advised not to protest. Jennifer had held 245 of the CDF's best troops, crammed into its various holds. Mekong provided another 300. The numbers were not on their side. But as she'd always told those under her command-it wasn't what you had, it was what you did with it. And what help you got along the way.

Hafez directed them past where the conveyor rail doglegged toward main storage. They ducked under suspended, unmoving containers, then edged quickly through a narrow serviceway alongside massive fuel pipes that ran to the berth umbilicals from the station's own storage tanks. There was no gunfire or general activity to be heard above the whine of generators and section pumps, a familiar, industrial white noise that permeated everything, like the dim fluorescent light. From the worn state of their heavy jackets, boots and dockworker overalls, Sandy reckoned Hafez and Simon were familiar enough with the environment. Some station kids grew up in orbit above planets they'd never even visited, nor wanted to. These two looked like dock rats through and through.

Sandy followed Hafez's directions up a service ladder, along a cramped walkway above the fuel pipes, avoiding turnoffs and crawlways that tac-net told her would serve, but Hafez insisted were rigged with Fleet sensor gear the dockers had somehow noticed without detection. Then they ducked into a cramped metal engineering space that Sandy was sure would have smelled of lubricant grease and bad ventilation, if such things could have penetrated her faceplate. Under more pipes, then, and into a crawlway, within the mouth of which waited another teenager-a girl this time-looking pale and scared, to assure them that the coast was clear.

Crawling in armour through a cramped metal crawlway with a weapon in hand was not an easy thing to do silently, even for a GI. Sandy knew, as she concentrated on that task, precisely why her guides were all children. Most of their parents were either locked up, or missing, having refused to work under Fifth Fleet control, even when threatened at gunpoint. Some, reliable reports from inside had indicated, had been beaten. Or worse, many feared, in attempts to root out the remaining rebels, who were hiding in the dark, cramped places like this, places that engineers and dock rats knew well, but suits and topsiders rarely ventured. Although many of the suits hadn't fared much better, and were even protecting and assisting the rebels ... or were rebels themselves. Indeed, word was that relations between topsiders and dock rats had never been so good, two disparate, mutually disdainful cultures united by a common threat. And if that wasn't a good metaphor for much of Callay at this moment, Sandy reckoned, then she didn't know what was.

A narrow service well climbed up to dock level. Sandy pushed the manhole aside and found herself in yet another engineering space in a narrow access corridor. She climbed swiftly out, murmured "Stay here," to Hafez and Simon, and stalked down the corridor to a main hatch. Tac-net told her that it opened into the rear of a dockside restaurant, of all places. She opened it, weapon ready, and surveyed a gleaming, stainless steel kitchen that looked far too clean and unused for any such establishment she'd frequented in her spacer days. Business couldn't have been good lately.

She ducked out, swept it quickly, then did a fast visual out the doorway at the restaurant beyond. It was deserted, tables arrayed in an orderly fashion before broad windows that looked onto the docks. And now, for the first time, she could hear the clear, staccato crackle of gunfire. Could tell the type, range and direction of fire just by the sound. Tac-net showed her some of the dots, where friendly forces, and sensors, had a read on the opposition, here in front of the Euphrates' berth. A lot, she knew, would not appear on tac-net. But she'd fought Fleet marines for the majority of her life. She knew their patterns, defensive or offensive. Knew how they thought, how they operated, how they talked, moved and reacted. She knew their weak points. And she knew their greatest fears ... mostly because they were also her own.

She turned back, and found Rhian waiting patiently against the kitchen wall, and the two kids nearby. Hafez seemed eager to see what lay outside. Simon seemed eager to be elsewhere. Obviously the junior of this pairing, he appeared to have come along mostly to cover his friend's back-it would have been very dangerous to move alone, as one pair of eyes barely covered half of all there was to see. She could only admire the bravery.

"You two," she told them, "turn about, and get as far away from here as possible."

"But we want to help!" Hafez protested.

"If you stay here, you'll get killed. I can nearly guarantee it." The visored stare and stern, metallic tone must have done the trick, because Hafez seemed to reconsider. Simon tugged at his arm. "And thank you," she added as they departed.

Tac-net indicated a light, defensive formation about Berth Four, but offered little information on Berth Two, having no sensors or IFV, as regular tac-net users called it-Integrated Field of View. Sandy got down on her hands and knees, and crawled out along the restaurant floor between the tables, Rhian following. Once at the windows, Sandy leaned against the corner potplant, and extended the helmet eyepiece out, to peer above the lower window rim. More light cover about defensive positions, many shipping crates and other vehicles positioned for cover about the gantries and elevated hatchway.

Tac-net took milliseconds to analyse the image, and then a new set of red dots arrayed themselves across that section of the dockside. Anyone on tac-net now knew that someone had IFV on Berth Two. Most of the two Third Fleet carriers' marine complement had been outwardly deployed, manning all the station posts the local station workers had refused to fill. Now, the reserve rotation had also deployed, following the initial alarm. The defences that remained were easily strong enough to guard open docks against regular assault. But GIs were a different question.

"Twelve immediate points of fire," Sandy observed in a low voice. "Thirty total. I've got the right, you go straight and clear out."

Their own, private subchannel sorted the details, a rush of data that illuminated primary and secondary targets, fields of fire, projected trajectories, fire-shadows and multilayered kill zones. This, more than anything, was what GIs were designed for. Open combat, multiple targets, fast motion. Corridors were a leveller, and gave smart opponents a good chance ... or better, against regs. Out here, with surprise and fire support on their side, even twenty-to-one odds weren't bad.

At some other time, in some other mood, Sandy might have felt that some intimate, personal gesture to Rhian might have been in order. Now, as they prepared weapons and double-checked armscomp interface, it barely occurred to her. They'd done this before. The future did not exist. There was only the present, and nothing else mattered.

"G-squad," Sandy announced on directional com as she and Rhian traded places so Sandy could cover the more distant right flank, "request status on fire support."

"Any time you're ready, Snowcat," came Lieutenant Bjornssen's reply. Already there was limited fire engagement with Euphrates' perimeter, lots of noise and heads being kept down. Smoke grenades sprewed a thick, white wall between opposing forces, giving Fifth Fleet troopers some cover.

"Ready in three, two, one, go."

She and Rhian leaped, and exploded through the window in a simultaneous rush. Reflex pulled her rifle's muzzle toward preestablished targets behind cover off to her right, a rapid volley of six bursts as bodies more than a hundred metres distant toppled in near unison, highvelocity rounds punching through faceplates that were the only parts of the Amazon marines visible. Sandy ran on an arc out from Rhian's right, aware of Rhian's fire upon the Euphrates' positions toward which they ran, aware of explosions amidst those positions as Cal-Ts shot grenades into their positions. There was very little return fire. Startled Amazon marines tried, and were killed as soon as they entered Sandy's line of fire. She pumped a couple of grenades into choice locations to flush out the cover, then simply stopped forty metres from the Berth Four cover positions, confident of her back as Rhian dove in amongst the smoke and chaos behind, gaining a better field of fire across the entire docks, up along the possible points of cover along the upward-curving inner wall.