He looked back over his shoulder. Lieutenant Commander Hugin was on the suite com, conferring with Chief Pilaskov. The recruiting mission had gone well, and Monkoto expected Simon to be pleased when he arrived. Over a hundred experienced personnel, including twelve officers, could certainly be put to excellent use.
He started to open the balcony's French windows to join Hugin, and something flashed behind him. Eye-tearing light bounced back off the window glass, and his shadow was suddenly etched stark and black against the wall.
He whirled in disbelief, trained reflexes already throwing him face-down, as a huge, white fireball devoured Adcock Field.
"Launch shuttles!" Howell barked as Intolerant's HVW obliterated the port. Each of the big transports normally mothered eight heavy-lift cargo shuttles; for this operation, they'd been replaced with twelve Bengal-class assault boats each, and thirty-six deadly attack craft shrieked downward. Thirteen hundred grim-faced raiders rode them. For many this was their first mission, and they were determined to get it right. Others were the survivors of Elysium … and they were even more determined to avoid another disaster.
Arlen Monkoto staggered erect like a punch-drunk fighter. His nerve ends jittered with echoes of heat and blast, but it must have been an HVW. If it had been a nuke or anti-matter, he'd be dead, and he was only singed a bit. Fires roared and fumed along the city's eastern edge, and he doubted there was an intact window in Raphael, but otherwise the damage hadn't been severe.
He wheeled back to the French windows and froze. He'd been wrong about the severity of the damage, an icy voice told him. The windows had been blown across the hotel suite like glittering daggers, and bloody bits of Lieutenant Commander Hugin's mutilated body were sprayed across the far wall.
Monkoto made himself pick his way into the wreckage, and his hands were a stranger's as they moved what remained of Hugin gently aside. His exec's body had protected the com unit, and Chief Pilaskov was still on it. The burly NCO was half shouting, though Monkoto's stunned ears could hardly hear him, and his brown eyes widened in relief as he saw his CO.
Fresh explosions thundered behind the captain, and his mouth tightened as he looked over his shoulder and saw the contrails slashing down the sky.
"Can't hear you, Chief." He tapped an ear, and Pilaskov's mouth snapped shut. "It doesn't matter. Break into the ordnance order and get our people moving. The primary LZ looks like Toledo U. I'll meet you there."
Surprise was total.
Adcock Field had known the freighters and their escort were friendly. No one at the port lived long enough to realize he was wrong, and sheer shock-not disbelief so much as a desperate need to be wrong-stunned Raphael motionless until the shuttle contrails were sighted.
By then it was far, far too late, and Howell's raiders carried through with merciless precision. Individual shuttles peeled off and streaked in to lay smaller HVW and guided bombs on every police station and substation in the city. Entire blocks went up with them, and other shuttles swept a circle about the raider's target with rocket clusters and incendiaries. A curtain of flame sealed their objective off from relief while two more shuttles took out the militia armory, and twenty Bengali grounded on the university campus, disgorging seven hundred heavily armed raiders who charged straight for their objectives and killed anyone in their path.
Stunned university security forces tried to stop them, but they had only side arms and Howell's raiders were in powered armor with heavy weapons. The university's director of research raced for the computer center to purge her data, but a squad of invaders burst through the doors and cut her down before she reached her console. Teams of technicians followed the assault wave, setting up their portable terminals and transmission dishes while the thunder of weapons and screams of the dying shook the building about them. More raiders broke into the labs themselves and massacred the researchers, and a fresh flood of technicians poured in in their wake, heaving specimen cases, hard-copy records, and lab animals onto counter-gravity pallets while their boots slipped in their victims' blood.
Monkoto found Chief Pilaskov more by luck than any other way. The petty officer had his recruits mustered near the roaring wall of flames sealing the university off from the rest of the city, their uniforms a black-and-gray knot of order in a sea of chaos.
They were more heavily armed than Monkoto had hoped. They'd been quartered in the warehouse district to keep an eye on the Maniacs' ordnance order, but it was obvious Pilaskov had helped himself generously from the arms merchant's other wares. Half the recruits wore light armor, and Monkoto saw squad heavy weapons as well as personal arms. Best of all, Pilaskov had snagged a half-dozen Stiletto units. By the time Monkoto arrived, the chief had the remote launchers deployed well away from the fire control units.
"Glad to see you, sir," he said as Monkoto panted up to him. "Where's Commander Hugin?"
"Dead." Monkoto sucked in air, feeling the fire's heat in his lungs, and tried to think. A Bengal passed overhead, and he straightened quickly as one of the Stiletto crews began to track.
"Hold your fire!" he snapped, and the crew chief jerked in surprise. "We don't want the flankers," he continued when he was certain the other man was listening. "We want the main body. Wait till they lift out."
The crew chief nodded, face tightening in understanding, and Monkoto turned back to Pilaskov. He jabbed a thumb at the roaring flames.
"HE or straight incendiaries?" he demanded.
"Mainly incendiaries and just enough HE to bust things open, I think."
"We have a com on the secure police frequency?"
"Yes, sir. Not much traffic-only whoever was on the street when they hit."
"It'll have to do." Monkoto held out one hand and gestured at the rubble-strewn sidewalks with the other. "Find me a manhole, Chief."
"Aye, sir!" Pilaskov's face lit with understanding, and he started shouting orders as Monkoto raised the com to his mouth.
"This is Captain Arlen Monkoto, Monkoto's Mercenaries," he said crisply. "I am at Hadrian and Stimson. My people are going in in five minutes. Anyone who can reach us in time, get your ass over here now!"
The raiders crushed the last resistance, and small parties broke off to loot secondary objectives in Admin and the library building. The computer techs hovered over their equipment, draining the R amp;D data base and beaming it up to the freighters, and fire teams set up along the campus approaches in case anyone found a way through the fire wall. There was little wasted motion, and the situation was a far cry from the chaos of Elysium. Another forty minutes and they could lift the hell out of here again.
A manhole cover grated quietly well behind their outer perimeter. A cautious head poked up out of it, and two hundred men and women-mercenaries, police, and civilian volunteers inextricably mixed-flowed upward from the sewers and service tunnels buried meters beneath the interceding inferno.
Howell's ground commander was reporting to the flagship when bedlam exploded behind him. He wheeled in shock, gaping at the wave of El Grecans corning at him, then hit his jump gear to put a solid wall between him and them as grenades ripped into his temporary CP.
Where had they all come from? Damn it, they couldn't be here! But they were, and panicky reports flooded in. The bastards were hitting him everywhere at once, and memories of Elysium echoed through his raiders.