Cauldron of Ghosts (55 page)

“I see.”

Dusek took it well, she thought. On the other hand, she was none too sure he’d ever really believed the entire Grand Alliance would drop everything and send a rescue fleet just because Victor Cachat and Anton Zilwicki asked it to. As she’d gotten to know him better, she’d come to the conclusion that he probably would have done exactly what he was doing even if he’d
known
there would be no rescue in the offing. There was an unexpected streak of the berserker in Jurgen Dusek. If the Mesan government had finally decided to slaughter the seccy population down to a manageable size, then he was going to kill as many Safeties and Misties as he possibly could first. And if it turned out that there really was a fleet coming to save him, that was only icing on the cake.

She nodded to him and turned back to the displays. Yana and Victor were both occupied preparing fighting positions under Andrew Artlett’s guidance. Andrew and Nolan Olsen, the man who’d been Neue Rostock Tower’s Building Supervisor, were in the process of doing some profoundly unnatural things to the tower’s internal systems. Olsen’s family had already departed through the escape tunnels, but no one else knew Neue Rostock the way he did. On the other hand, Andrew had grown to adulthood surviving on a steadily disintegrating orbital habitat, and he’d learned to do some . . . highly inventive things with environmental systems along the way. Between them, they’d come up with several surprises for anyone foolish enough to walk into their parlor, and Andrew had the tower’s schematic—the
real
schematic, the one that showed Dusek’s alterations, not the one any invaders would have—on his display. At the moment, he was directing Yana in the placement of shaped charges in some of the corridor walls.

Victor had his own copy of the schematic, and he and Triêu Chuanli had their people building firing positions, cutting loopholes, and laying out routes to move from one position to another under cover. They didn’t have anything like the MISD’s utility armor, but the weapons Dusek had stockpiled over the years were almost as good as anything the security forces had—especially given the short range at which any combat would occur—and their knowledge of the building’s layout would be a huge advantage.

Thandi would really have preferred to be out there herself. At heart, when she came down to it, she was still really a company grade Marine officer, whatever other hats she’d had to take on since meeting Berry Zilwicki and Victor Cachat. But if they were going to have a chance of winning this thing, it was going to depend on her ability to exercise tight tactical control over fighters who’d never received the training and experience she had. Yana and Victor had plenty of combat experience, although most of it had tended to be . . . idiosyncratic, to say the least. Many of the others had been in gunfights, knife fights, brawls in plenty, but that was a far cry from the sort of concentrated mayhem they were about to encounter. When the time came, they were going to need a voice—a calm voice—telling them what to do, when to do it, and where. And for her to be that voice, she needed to be exactly where she was at this moment, tapped into all of the tower’s internal surveillance equipment.

She smiled thinly, fingers moving briskly as she scrolled through view after view of corridors, apartments, shopping malls, cafeterias, gymnasiums, freight passages, grav shafts, stairs, ventilation ducts. The entire tower was there at her fingertips, which meant she was going to have a degree of situational awareness better than anything even the finest utility armor’s sensors could provide to the other side.

You just come right
on in, you bastards
, she thought, glancing sideways again after the exterior views of the approaching MISD troops.
We’ll be sure you get a warm reception
.

Chapter 61

Gavin Shultz scowled as he raised his helmet’s visor. The stink of smoke was everywhere—he wouldn’t have thought there were enough flammable materials even in a seccy district to produce that much of it—but it still smelled better than the inside of his utility armor after an entire day of combat.

He didn’t like the losses Bravo Company had taken, especially in 2nd Platoon, and there wasn’t much of an excuse for them, in his opinion. They were only fucking seccies, after all, and he’d gotten enough hands-on experience of his own during the day to confirm his opinion of them. He’d tried conscientiously to bear in mind that his own experiences might not be representative of what had happened elsewhere, but still . . .

He lowered his visor again—not all the way; he still wanted the fresh air, smoky though it was—far enough to bring up the map display on his HUD as an armored air car settled on the far side of the jury rigged command post. The swaths of green indicating pacified areas in the approaches to Neue Rostock and Hancock were smaller than they ought to have been, and Colonel MacKane wasn’t delighted about it. Well, neither was Gavin Shultz, but—

“Where’s Colonel MacKane, Trooper?” a voice demanded, and Shultz turned towards it in amazement.

“Commissioner Howell!” he blurted, then snapped to attention as Bentley Howell turned from the corporal who’d been unfortunate enough to be standing there when he climbed out of the air car. The commissioner wasn’t in armor, but he wore a vehicle crewman’s helmet with the visor down. Unlike the utility armor’s visors, it was only lightly tinted from the outside. It was enough to project the necessary HUD for its wearer, but Shultz could see through it more than clearly enough to recognize the MISD’s commanding officer.

“I didn’t expect to see you here, Sir!” the captain added as Howell scowled.

“Well, Captain . . . Shultz, isn’t it?” Shultz nodded, impressed by the commissioner’s memory for faces, without even thinking about the possibility that Howell’s helmet systems had pinged his UA transponder’s ID code. “I didn’t expect to be here,” Howell continued. “I
expected
to hear that my advanced elements had already closed up to Neue Rostock and Hancock.”

Schultz swallowed. The commissioner’s tone was not happy, and it seemed prudent to keep his own mouth shut.

Howell regarded him for a moment, then smiled unpleasantly.

“Don’t worry, Captain. I’m not going to rip
you
a new asshole. But I do need Colonel MacKane, so where is he?”

“Sir, I’m not really certain, but Major Myers is about two hundred meters in that direction.” He raised his hand, pointing in the proper direction. “Can I escort you to him?”

“No. I’ve got his icon now,” Howell said, manipulating the data pad on the side of his helmet. “And it looks like Colonel MacKane’s with him. Good. Thank you, Captain.”

He nodded curtly to Shultz, then jerked his head at the two utility armored troopers who’d unloaded from the air car behind him, and headed off in the indicated direction.

Shultz watched him go, bodyguards at his heels, then turned his attention back to the map display.

* * *

“Well, Colonel,” Howell said. “Would you care to explain why you’re no further forward than this?”

“Resistance is being a lot stiffer than our intelligence estimates predicted it would be, Sir.”

Teodosio MacKane’s tone was perhaps a bit more pointed than it should have been for a mere colonel addressing a commissioner who carried the equivalent of lieutenant general’s rank. There wasn’t much give in his eyes, though, and Howell reminded himself not to rip out the man’s lungs.

“I am aware of that, Colonel,” he said instead. “What I want to know is why we haven’t done something about that.”

“Commissioner, we’ve cleared this area here, and this one, this one, and
this
one,” McCain said, jabbing his finger at the indicated points on the map as he spoke. “That’s basically all the ground level approaches to Neue Rostock from the east. We haven’t been able to get around the far side of the tower yet, but we’re making progress. And, Sir, I have to point out that I’ve taken over two hundred casualties so far, twenty-three of them fatal.”

Those hard eyes met Howell’s, and the commissioner grimaced. That was a casualty rate of over ten percent. How the hell could a mob of
seccies
be inflicting that kind of loss rate on armored MISD troopers?

He scowled down at the map, thinking about all the other reports he’d received during the day. Much as he hated to admit it, MacKane had a point about the intensity of the resistance. His original plan to sweep the areas around each of the seccy towers, driving them into neatly confined centers that could be dealt with one at a time was working, but it was costing more than he’d anticipated. The two regiments he’d committed to the Neue Rostock and Hancock areas were spread over too great an area, and the losses they’d taken were undercutting their fighting spirit. On the other hand, it was obvious that the seccies in and around Neue Rostock and Hancock were putting up the toughest resistance. Or inflicting the most casualties, at least. The question was whether that was because the seccies were better organized and better equipped or because 4th Regiment and 19th Regiment were more ineptly led?

“All right,” he said finally. “I want you to leave one battalion to secure the approaches to Neue Rostock. But I want your and your other battalion to support Colonel Perelló. Colonel Metz and the Seventeenth Regiment will be joining you and Colonel Perelló. We’re going to knock Hancock out first, and then we’re going to take Neue Rostock down, understood?”

“Understood, Sir.” MacKane didn’t sound as if he were filled with enthusiasm, and Howell smiled thinly.

“I know it sounds like a tough assignment, Colonel. And I know you’ve been out here all day already. But they’re only seccies, and now that we’ve driven them to ground, they have to stand and fight—they can’t fade away the way they’ve been doing out here in the open. It may seem that I’m asking a lot of you and your people after everything you’ve already been through, but I’m not going to ask any of you to do anything I’m not willing to do myself.”

“Sir?” MacKane’s eyebrows rose, and Howell’s smile grew still thinner.

“I’ve got my UA in the air car, Colonel MacKane. I’ll personally be leading this attack.”

* * *

“Captain Shultz?”

Gavin Shultz turned and found himself facing Section Sergeant Kayla Barrett. She had her helmet under her left arm, and her dirty face looked drawn and anxious.

“Yes, Section Sergeant?” he acknowledged a bit impatiently.

He couldn’t believe Commissioner Howell planned to lead the assault on Hancock in person, and he wasn’t at all sure it sounded like a good idea. Howell was a great man, someone who obviously understood the nature of the seccy problem, but he hadn’t held a field command in at least fifteen or twenty T-years. On the other hand, it sounded as if he was going to be going in with Colonel MacKane at his elbow. That should preclude any
serious
mistakes . . . Shultz hoped. And in the meantime, he had things to do that were a hell of a lot more important than taking some kind of report from a section sergeant.

“Sir, it’s about Lieutenant Ferguson,” Barrett said, and Shultz’s jaw tightened.

“What about him?”

“Sir, I’m not sure exactly how it was reported, but—”

“Section Sergeant Barrett, we’re about to kick off an assault on an entire tower full of seccies,” Shultz said. “I’m sure there will be plenty of time to sort out exactly what happened to Lieutenant Ferguson—and any of the other people we’ve lost today—after it’s over. Just this minute, though, I’ve got about a dozen other things I need to be doing. Can this wait?”

It had damned well
better
wait
, he thought grimly. He had a pretty good idea of what had happened to Ferguson. There wasn’t any evidence to support his theory, but the fact that there wasn’t
any
evidence, of any sort, of what had actually happened strongly suggested that he was correct.
And if I am, this isn’t a can of worms I need to be opening right now, especially with Commissioner Howell himself right here on top of us. Besides, Ferguson was a whining, holier-than-thou pain in the ass when he was alive; I’ll be
damned
if he screws up my career now that he’s dead. The son of a bitch probably had it coming, anyway
.

He held the section sergeant’s eye, his expression less than encouraging, and silence hovered for a half-dozen heartbeats. Then—

“Yes, Sir,” Kayla Barrett said softly. “Yes, Sir. I guess it can wait.”

* * *

“How stupid do you think I am, Kyle?” Audrey O’Hanrahan demanded.

Kyle Fraenzl clamped his teeth tightly on what he
wanted
to say in response to that acid question. The problem was that the one thing O’Hanrahan most definitely
wasn’t
was stupid. It would’ve been so much simpler if she was as clueless as the journalists covering the
Magellan
sinking, he reflected.

“No one thinks you’re ‘stupid,’ Audrey,” he said in his most soothing tones. “It’s just that you seem to have gotten hold of some garbled information, and you’re really too well known for any of us in Culture and Information to feel . . . comfortable letting you get too close to the shooting.” He shook his head, expression grave. “The truth is, we can’t afford the bad PR if we let you get killed on our planet, and it’s really, really bad out there, Audrey. The seccies are shooting at anything that moves.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” O’Hanrahan glared at him in searing, disgusted contempt. “The
seccies
are shooting at anything that moves? That has to be the biggest piece of bullshit anyone’s ever tried to hand me, even here on Mesa!”

Fraenzl’s lips thinned and his face darkened, and she shook her head.

“I have not gotten hold of any ‘garbled information,’ Kyle.” There was less searing disdain in her voice this time, but the slow, patient tone she’d adopted—as if she were speaking to a five-year-old—wasn’t much of an improvement. “I’ve gotten hold of perfectly
accurate
information, quite a bit of it from your own security forces’ electronic chatter.” She smiled sweetly, holding up a Solarian made security band scanner which should have been confiscated from her coming through Customs, and Fraenzl felt his teeth grate on one another. “And I do have other sources, even here. That’s why I know it’s not the
seccies
shooting people out there. Or, at least, if they
are
shooting anyone at the moment, it’s almost certainly in self-defense!”

“Now you wait one damned minute!” Fraenzl snapped, abandoning his effort to stay focused and professional as fury flashed through him. “Whatever’s happening out there ‘at the moment,’ as you put it, don’t you forget for one instant who was setting off nuclear explosions here on
my
planet! It’s not Public Safety or the Security Directorate running amok out there in the streets—it’s the fucking seccies and their Ballroom friends!”

“The hell it is,” O’Hanrahan shot back, and this time her voice was lower, almost soft. “I don’t know for sure who was responsible for those terrorist attacks, Kyle. I’m inclined to take them at face value, as genuine Ballroom attacks, even if it isn’t really their usual style, but I don’t
know
that, and before you get all fired up again, don’t you pretend to me that the Mesa System government is a staunch champion of freedom of the press. We both know differently, Kyle. And we both know it’s your job to tell me exactly what your superiors
tell
you to tell me, no matter how little resemblance to the truth it may bear. So why don’t you save yourself a lot of trouble and effort and simply admit what we both know is true. Your security personnel took casualties when they set out on a general punitive sweep of the seccy districts, and they got out of hand as a result.
They’re
the ones committing atrocities out there.
You
know it,
I
know it, and your superiors know it.”

Fraenzl drew a deep, deep breath, held it for a ten-count, then exhaled hard.

“I apologize for losing my temper with you.” His tone was utterly sincere; his eyes were not. “In my defense, I can plead only exhaustion, stress, and grief. I lost several close personal friends in the Dedrick Tower attack, and one of my wife’s cousins is—was—a Security Directorate lieutenant who was killed today. So, yes, I’m just a little personally invested in this story, and my professional detachment is a bit lacking. I’m even prepared to admit—off the record and not for attribution—that there have been
some
instances in which some of our troopers, reacting in the middle of a combat situation, probably
have
used excessive force. You’ve covered enough military actions in your career to know that sort of thing happens, even with the best troops, sometimes. But there is not a general pattern of ‘atrocities’ on the part of our troops, and there
certainly
is no truth to the rumors that any Public Safety or Security Directorate officer has ordered, authorized, or turned a blind eye to those excesses. I assure you that any provable instance of the use of excessive force will be thoroughly investigated and prosecuted in the fullness of time.”

“You actually managed to make it sound like you believe that,” O’Hanrahan said in a tone of mocking admiration, then snorted harshly. “Kyle, I’ve covered Frontier Security operations. I’ve seen the Gendarmerie at its worst, and I know damned well what I’m seeing when I look at that HD or when I go out on my balcony and look at the smoke rising from the seccy districts. You can deny me access to the scene where all of this is happening if you want. If you do, however, please be sure that Director Lackland and the rest of your superiors understand that I’ll be reporting to all of my viewers that despite repeated requests on my part, the Mesa System government refused to allow me to cover this story. They might want to think about how that report from me is going to impact the amount of credence the public in general will extend to
their
account of what’s happened here.”