Given the magnitude of the unlawful orders they’d been sent to participate in on that last op, Green could live with that. He had thought through a few sleepless nights and decided that the O’Neals had as much claim to trying to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States as the official government, who were provably corrupt puppets for the Darhel. He had known the system was rotten, but he hadn’t known how much until Boomer took out some holos and walked him through exactly where, how, and why the voters lost control of everything. The Constitution was a dead letter, and he knew it. But he’d still sworn to protect and defend it, and at least the O’Neals would put it back if they could. It made them as close to good guys as he could find in this messed up world. Besides, they talked about your guys being your real family. It turned out with the O’Neals that was literal and the unit was about half either O’Neal or Bane Sidhe. That had been a huge shock. He’d felt like he’d been lied to, betrayed, and didn’t even know these guys he’d sweated beside, fought beside, drank with, bled with. It shook his world more than he could even describe. The atrocities on that last op, vile things done by what was supposed to be their side, had carried him along through the shock and into mutiny along with the rest of the unit.
It had been the dependent murders, and the sure and swift justice meted out by these people, that had finally made him into an O’Neal. He hadn’t made up his mind about the Bane Sidhe yet, but the service records of the O’Neals in the Posleen war and since — they were legendary. Tommy Sunday. James Stewart — who looked nothing like himself but Green was convinced. Papa O’Neal had fought beside the old man in ’Nam. The old man had never heard of these Bane Sidhe, or Clan O’Neal, before that final op. Colonel Mosovich and Master Sergeant Mueller were living legends in their own right, and the colonel had made the decision, even after what had to have been even more of a shock to him than it was to Green. What it had come down to for Green was that he trusted the old man and his brothers one hell of a lot more than he trusted the brass up a chain of command he already knew was fubar.
It had been the dependents that clinched it, though. Any side that would stoop to killing dependents, even of mutineers — he refused to flinch from the word — was no side of his.
The murders were why he had picked Maise to go with him and check out the armory. Sunday had told him to go down here and put together a wish list for what his men would be most comfortable fighting with.
Green tried to keep Maise busy with the most interesting tasks he could find, keep him involved, keep him moving. He’d have his grieving with all of them, at the memorial, when they got through all this. Right now, the best thing for him was to get him back in the saddle as much as possible. Charlie was perfect for this, because he had grown up Bane Sidhe, knew his way around even though he’d never lived on base, and knew the system.
Now he stood looking at the fucking huge room these people called an armory and his jaw dropped. From Bane Sidhe’s overall mission, number of operators, the specific missions their teams handled, the DAG lieutenant had expected a room the size of the room they’d quartered him in. Maybe double. Holy shit. He felt like a man who had expected to walk into a small chapel and found himself in a cathedral. He closed his mouth, then opened it again.
“I don’t understand. If they never expected to defend this place, why the hell do they have all this hardware?” he asked Maise, walking into the room and turning around, just looking at the rows of neatly racked rifles, the ammo bunker, and all the goodies Santa brought down the chimney.
“I mean, look at this shit!” he exclaimed, walking over to an M26 — looked like an A6 — racked a bit away from the others and picking it up. “Oh holy fuck. A thing of beauty is a joy forever, Maise. Match grade, got its own ammo — loaded special, I’m sure. Whaddya wanna bet this baby is accurized to hell and back?”
Green lifted the rifle to his shoulder reverently and sighted down the barrel. He’d heard the talk of triggers breaking like glass, but this one was sweet — just sweet.
“Nice. As to your first question, guess who made the decisions about stocking the armory?” Maise answered his question with a question.
“Oh,” the lieutenant nodded. “Yep. I’m starting to recognize the O’Neal touch. So we’re loaded for bear.”
“Dude, we’re loaded for a whole fuckin’ oolt of bears,” Maise agreed with a vicious grin.
Green nodded. “Damn, am I glad I’m on the same side as these guys.”
“God favors the side with the heaviest artillery,” he said. “Oh, now that’s a new one on me.” Maise pointed to a short row of big olive drab tubes — launchers — with red fire extinguishers banded in white underneath them.
“That gentlemen, is a B14 multipurpose rocket launcher, and you’d better bet we can and will use it,” Tommy said from the door. “That tube is GalTech, which is why it’s light as hell. The rounds are pretty light, too, but they pack a wallop. The reduced weight of the rounds means it takes less thrust to launch, substantially reducing backblast. Typical deployment in the case of a fixed position is that this baby can be dug right in if you have time to prepare. It’s called butterfly wings. You position it in the middle of a line of riflemen, just as if you were above ground. Behind each firing position you dig a cone shaped hole. Then you spray a foam to cover the interior of the butterfly wing, heavy on the outside end. That shit sets up hard as concrete, but porous. It soaks up the heat and the blast like nobody’s business. Fire that thing in a properly constructed butterfly wing and you barely get your ass warm. I’ve done it. You’ve got paired wings so you can shoot either way, obviously. You can still go up top if you need to, of course, but not taking fire in the first place is always good,” he added.
Green whistled softly before looking around further. “You’ve got a good supply of 240s. Limas? Shit, I thought those were canceled.”
“Not by us,” Sunday said. “Tie right into your goggles, just like the A6. It didn’t take much to work out the technical hitches since we didn’t have corrupt contractors and the government procurement process to deal with.”
“Wow.” Green turned full around as a big grin started to climb his face. Then he walked around the corner of a rack of shelves and stopped cold, “Wait a minute. What the fuck? You’ve got grav-guns down here? Plasma? And are those… ? This is more GalTech shit than I’ve seen in one place in my life.”
“Yeah, you don’t get to play with those toys,” Sunday said. “Sorry. We have a pretty good idea of what’s coming next, and we can’t afford to waste the good shit on mercs. Just hope you don’t get a chance to use those, because if we have to pull out the GalTech, gentlemen, we’re having a real bad day.”
It wasn’t quite dark yet. They had enough light to see by, and cold or not, after dinner was a good time for a walk on the surface.
General Sunday stepped off the elevator up top with Papa O’Neal at his side. Cally was at the edge of the barn checking the demo. The trench lines stretched right up to the edge of the vehicle elevator platform, which they’d lowered down just above man height, even with the edge of the trench. The mixed force of DAGger units and Bane Sidhe teams had constructed a standard L-shaped ambush, trench and elevator platforms covered with steel plates. Indowy workers had cut back the sides of the barn and replaced them with a thin and flammable facade to cover their absence.