Shadow of Freedom

The Manties weren’t actually moving all that rapidly, yet it was painfully obvious that wasn’t because his people were stopping them. He’d expected to start inflicting casualties quickly when they had to clear their way through strongpoints, but they weren’t cooperating. Instead, they were taking their time, and they appeared to have an inexhaustible supply of grenades and demolition charges. All he was really accomplishing with his “strongpoints” was to compel them to use up a few more explosives blowing their way through them.

All right. They were clearly concentrating their efforts along Axial Three, and if they kept coming through another couple of sets of blast doors, that was going to lead them into one of the commons areas Victor Seven’s designers had laid out for the habitat’s anticipated VIP inhabitants: a spacious, landscaped compartment sixty meters, across fitted with picnic tables, scattered conversational groups of chairs, and a small ornamental pool with a fountain.

His eyes narrowed. He’d wanted short, restricted firing lines on the theory that they would favor the defender over the attacker, but this Lieutenant Hearns was obviously more experienced in boarding combat than any of his people. She was making those restricted fields of fire work for her, not the defenders, so maybe what he needed was a more extended firing range.

He considered his options. Virtually all of Kristofferson’s troopers were already parceled out across the approaches, and he didn’t dare thin out his forward defenses. The last thing he needed was to open up a second invasion route! That left him only the two platoons of Captain Ascher’s understrength company. He needed to maintain at least some reserve, but if he pulled up one of her platoons to reinforce the squad Kristofferson already had covering the compartment, then ordered the other squad which was covering the blast doors between it and the Manties to fall back…

* * *

“If this brainstorm of yours is actually working, My Lady, we’re probably getting close,” Gutierrez said over his private link to Abigail. “If I were in charge on the other side, this is where I’d be stacking my fire. Nice extended sightlines, and plenty of opportunity for converging fire on the only door the other guys could come through.”

“It does look like the best opportunity for them, doesn’t it?” Abigail agreed, studying the detailed imagery from the damage control guide. “I guess the only question’s whether or not this Major Pole’s going to pull enough strength from his reserve.”

“Only one way to find out about that,” Gutierrez said philosophically.

“I know.” Abigail smiled fleetingly. “That doesn’t mean I have to like it, though. I really don’t want to be wrong about this one, Mateo.”

“Course you don’t,” he replied in a gentler tone. “But when you come down to it, you’ve got to drop the penny. I don’t know if it’ll work, either, but I think it’s our best shot.”

Abigail nodded. Her greatest fear, really, had been that the gendarmes would drag one of their Manticoran prisoners into the middle of the firefight and threaten to kill him if she and her boarders refused to back off. Given the gendarmerie’s normal disregard for civilian life—if it belonged to “neobarbs,” at least—she’d anticipated from the beginning that the Sollies would eventually call her bluff, find out if she truly was willing to continue attacking in the face of a direct threat to the prisoners. What she hadn’t been able to estimate with any confidence was how soon they might do that. It seemed unlikely they’d risk that sort of escalation until they were convinced they wouldn’t be able to stop her any other way, however, which was the entire basis of the strategy she’d adopted.

Hopefully, Major Pole was bright enough to recognize the defensive possibilities Gutierrez had just described. If he was, and if he’d committed enough of his reserve…

“All right, everybody,” she announced over the tactical net. “It’s just about time to dance. Report readiness.”

A chorus of responses came back to her, and she nodded.

“Mateo, start the music. Nicasio, let’s be about it.”

* * *

“Get ready!” Captain Ascher snapped as “Denny” blew another set of blast doors into wreckage.

* * *

“Now!” Lieutenant Nicasio Xamar said crisply, and the Royal Manticoran Navy personnel standing on the surface of habitat module Victor Seven moved forward.

Just finding the emergency personnel locks should have been a nontrivial challenge, and even after the Manties had found them, they should have had to burn or blast their way inside. They certainly shouldn’t have been able to override the entry codes and cycle their personnel through them without anyone noticing! But that, of course, assumed they didn’t have access to Shona Station’s classified damage control files.

* * *

“They’re behind us! They’re behind us!”

“What the hell?!”