The bustle of Third Platoon taking cover briefly, then fanning out in the direction of the village, was only background to Kowacs for the moment. He had the whole company to control.
Bradley and Sienkiewicz covered their commander while he focused on the reports from the other three platoons—”Position Green,” the drop completed without incident—and the hologram display a meter in front of him which was more important than the trees he could see beyond the patterns of light.
“Advance to Amber,” Kowacs said. A blue bead glowed briefly in the holographic heads-up display projected by his helmet and all the others in the unit, indicating that the order had been on the command channel.
They moved fast through the forest. The Headhunters were used to woods—as well as jungles, deserts, or any other goddam terrain weasels might pick to stage a raid—and here speed was more important than the threat of running into an ambush.
Kowacs couldn’t see much more of Third Platoon than he could of the rest of the company. The undergrowth wasn’t exceptionally heavy, but there were at least two meters between each marine and those to either side in the line abreast.
“Gamma, Amber,” reported the Third Platoon leader, somewhere off to the left. Kowacs knelt with the rest of the unit around him, rifle advanced, waiting for the remaining platoons to reach the jump-off point.
“Beta Amber”/”Alpha Amber,” reported Second, and First Platoons in near simultaneity. There was a further wait before Delta called in, but they were the Heavy Weapons Platoon and had to manhandle tripod-mounted plasma guns through the undergrowth.
Anyway, Delta had reported within a minute of the others, not half a lifetime later the way it seemed to Kowacs as his fingers squeezed the stock of his rifle and his eyes watched green beads crawl across the ghostly hologram of a relief map.
The only difference between Position Amber and any other block of woodland was that it put each platoon within a hundred meters of the village. The huts were still out of sight, though Second and Heavy Weapons would have clear fields of fire when they wriggled a few meters closer.
“Alpha, charge set,” reported Daniello whose platoon had the job of driving a small bursting charge a meter down into the soil.
“Beta, sensors ready,” answered his Second Platoon counterpart who had set the echo-sounding probes on the other side of the village.
“Fire the charge,” Kowacs said.
As he spoke, there was a barely audible thump off to the right and somebody shook his arm to get attention.
“What’s going—” demanded Commander Sitterson, whose helmet received all the unit calls—but who didn’t have the background to understand them.
He didn’t have sense enough to keep out of the way, either. Kowacs was very glad that because of the angle, he hadn’t swung quickly enough to blow Sitterson away before understanding took over from reflex.
“Not now, sir!” he snapped, turning slightly so that Sitterson’s head didn’t block the pattern of lines dancing across his display as the unit’s computer mapped the bunkers and tunnels beneath the village in the echoing shock waves.
There weren’t any bunkers or tunnels. The target was as open as a whore’s mouth.
“Was that a shot?” the security chief insisted. Hesik lay just back of Sitterson, his face upturned and the big pistol lifted in his right hand.
“Assault elements, go!” Kowacs ordered as he rose to his feet himself, so pumped that he wondered but didn’t worry whether the wild-eyed Bethesdan colonel was going to shoot him in the back by accident.
First and Third platoons swept into the village clearing from two adjacent sides, forming an L that paced forward with the sudden lethality of a shark closing its jaws.
“Everyone stay where you are!” Kowacs boomed through the loudspeaker built into the top of his helmet. The speaker was damped and had a strong directional focus, but it still rattled his teeth to use the damned thing. Still, he was in charge, and the holdouts in the village had to know that.
Even if it meant that he’d catch the first round if the fools tried to resist.
The civilians in plain sight seemed scarcely able to stand up.