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He sat, and every eye followed Ludmilla as she crossed to a covered mapboard, twitched back the cover, and reached for a pointer. They'd seen the valley before, but not the carefully marked overlay showing the results of Jayne Hastings's reconnaissance photos. Nor had they known before this evening that "Captain Ross" was what the mission was all about; that it all came down to getting her in range for a single shot at the Troll. That information had prompted some radical revision to speculation about where she came from.

"This," Ludmilla said calmly, "appears to be a fairly standard Kanga encampment. If so, it should house between seven hundred and a thousand men." She faced them levelly as they digested the numbers, then continued, identifying scanner posts, the armory, barracks.

" ... and these are the weapon positions." She swept over them with her pointer. "It's possible we'll encounter some energy weapons here, but our best estimate is that they can't have many. From the disposition, it appears their fields of fire are planned to cover approaches from the road at the southern end of the valley. This-" she tapped a grease-pencil star above the camp "-is probably an access tunnel to Grendel's fighter.

"Now-" she turned to another map "-this is our LZ. As you can see, it's about a thousand yards from the southern end of the encampment, just over seventeen hundred from the fighter access way, but the slope doubles that. It doesn't look like Grendel has his sensors or defenses set up to cover that approach, but we'll still be exposed to accidental detection, if nothing else, while we cover the distance. That's why the armored assault and heavy weapon platoons will start in along the road ten minutes before we come in. They'll make lots of noise to attract the defenders' attention while we come over the ridge."

Aston surveyed the assembled Marines. They looked grim, but it was the grimness of purpose and tension, not fear. He nodded to himself, watching them weigh Ludmilla's words, and knew Abernathy was allowing "Captain Ross" to handle the final briefing for a very simple reason: these men now knew she was the source of all their information. They deserved the chance to weigh her own certainty for themselves, and he saw them drawing confidence from her as she spoke.

" ... once the CP's in place, Lieutenant Frye's heavy weapons platoon and Sergeant Sanderson's antitank squad will set up here," she was saying. "When Grendel realizes we're on top of him, he's going to counterattack, probably with one or more of his combat mechs. So get those Dragons set up early and nail them."

She paused as a hand was raised. "Yes, Lieutenant?"

"If he knows we're coming, Captain, how do we keep him from just flying out on us?" The question was reasonable, but the look in the lieutenant's eyes said he'd heard about the nuclear option, and she met his gaze squarely.

"The fact that we're above him, I hope. He can't be immediately certain what weapons we have, and until he gets clear of his hide, he'll have to move slowly-a sitting duck for heavy weapons. We can hurt him under those conditions, and if Grendel runs true to form for a Troll, he won't risk it. He'll try to clear us off the slope with his mechs first. If they can't, he may come up himself, or he may try to fly out after all. But by the time he reaches that point, we ought to have air support, and then we can really nail him if he moves."

"With what, Captain?" The lieutenant wasn't waffling, Aston thought. He just wanted any suicide missions clearly labeled as such.

"With nukes, if we have to," Ludmilla said, and her level confirmation sent a wave of tension through her listeners, "but if we catch him within forty meters of the ground, we've got a good chance with Dragons or Mavericks. Above that, he can reconfigure his drive field to interdict conventional missiles; below it, he has to rely on active defenses, and over half of them cover his belly and stern, not his topsides." She paused. "Does that answer your questions, Lieutenant Warden?"

"Yes, Ma'am. Thank you."

"All right. Now, while Second Platoon sets up to cover the Dragons here, First Platoon, with Admiral Aston and myself, will move down here-" her pointer traced a line "-to reach the valley floor. We'll have to take out weapon pits here and here, then rush this barracks. From there, we'll have a good field of fire back towards the camp and I should have a clean shot at Grendel when he pokes his nose out. Meanwhile, Major Abernathy will shift his CP down the ridge. He'll move Third and Fourth Platoons, plus Lieutenant Atwater's antitank platoon, this way to cover ..."

Aston watched officers and sergeants scribble notes. It sounded good, he thought. But, then, it always sounded good. The problem was that it never worked out quite the way you'd planned, and the real test was how well your men adapted under fire.

He ran his own mind over the operation. Sixty-forty in their favor, he thought. Maybe seventy-thirty if everything broke just right. Even if it did, their own casualties might be heavy. If it didn't ...

He hid his own shudder as his mind filled with the image of a nuclear fireball-or far worse-in the heart of the North Carolina mountains.

Jeremiah Willis looked down from the sixth-floor window at the trucks and armored personnel carriers parked around the hotel. He would have felt happier in his own office, but the emergency command post had been set up here, three blocks from City Hall. It made sense. There was plenty of room, and the Patton Avenue-Broadway Street intersection gave ready access to any part of the city.

Not that it seemed to be doing much good, he thought grimly, lifting his eyes to the bloodred night sky to the west. He could smell the smoke, even through the air-conditioning.

"We're still holding on Nineteen and Twenty-Three," Brigadier General Evans said, "but they keep filtering past us down the secondary streets. It looks like they're flowing around towards Weaverville Road now, and there's a couple of hundred coming down Six-Ninety-Four, but Captain Taylor's got a rifle platoon and a heavy machine-gun section waiting for them at Merrimon Avenue." The general looked harried, and well he might. He'd started out with a full brigade of Guardsmen, but that impressive troop strength was stretched perilously thin by the city's sheer size, and the dense road net made it even worse.

"What about west Patton Avenue?" Chief Campbell asked. "Can you spare anything there?"

"I don't know." The general ran fingers through his hair, staring at his maps. "We've got a firefight going on out New Leicester Highway right now. What's your situation?"

"We're back almost as far as the post office," Campbell said grimly, "up against two or three hundred bastards with rifles and automatic weapons. I'm losing men, and I didn't have that many to start with. If they push us another six hundred yards, your boys on the highway could be cut off."

"All right," Evans sighed. "Al," he turned to his exec, "shake loose a platoon of APCs and send 'em out to stabilize the position."

"Yes, Sir."

"It's all I can give you, Chief Campbell," Evans said grimly. "The crowd coming up from the south is just as bad. The South Carolina Guard's holding them south of the state line on US 25, but they've just crossed it on I-26, and I can't weaken myself any more south of town."

"I understand, General.

"I'm sorry," Evans said gruffly and turned back to his commo section.

Willis watched the APC crews racing for their vehicles. At least the handful of Guardsmen who'd started shooting at their fellows had been eliminated, he thought coldly. There'd been only a few, but that had been almost too many. Evans had a right to be proud. His "weekend warriors" had almost broken-they'd never expected to face anything like this-but they'd rallied, and now they were fighting doggedly to save his city. Not that it looked like they were going to succeed.

"Jerry." He looked up as Campbell touched his shoulder. "Some son-of-a-bitch just firebombed Saint Joe's," the police chief said, and the mayor closed his eyes, thinking of fire raging through the city's largest hospital. "I've got a report from Bill McCoury, too. He says Biltmore House is on fire."