Cassandra Kresnov 04: 23 Years on Fire Read Online Free PDF Page A

Soon NCT on Pyeongwha was cultish, non-NCT subscribers didn’t get into good schools, or get good jobs, and were accused of pushing down “national competitiveness.” Others were told they promoted “social disharmony.” Twenty years ago, they’d begun disappearing. Escaping “subversives” had told horror stories of covert “social reorganisation” programs occurring beneath the ground, and pleaded with the Federation Grand Council to do something. But that Federation Grand Council had been locked away on Earth, and only interested in keeping the trading lanes open. Pyeongwha was wealthy and productive, and action would be expensive.
    Then the Grand Council had shifted to Callay, where the fate of Federation colonies meant far more than just economics. Finally, five years after the relocation, a decision had been made. Fleet had wanted to do it the old fashioned way, strangling and pounding from orbit, but Callay’s former CDF, now refashioned into the new Federal Security Agency, had had other ideas. Callayan and Tanushan technology, long a driving revolutionary force in Federation civilian tech, now moved into military affairs. With a new cadre of side-switching GIs leading the push, FSA commanders were adamant that now, things would happen differently.
    Differently hadn’t included getting pinned down straight out of the elevators. There were caverns here all right, heavily engineered with gantry walls, great pipes and electrical assemblies running everywhere. Not some kind of military base, just a big city’s underground infrastructure, but Anjula was certainly protecting it.
    Sandy covered on one side of a big cargo doorway, arranging her various magazines and grenades where she reckoned she’d need them. Her squad were spread across the industrial space, exchanging fire with intense resistance in the cavern beyond. Sandy saved her ammo; anything she eliminated here would just be replaced. She had an objective, and any firepower she expended that didn’t directly help her get there was wasted.
    “ Cap, ” said Rhian on uplinks, “ they’ve got an AMAPS up high somewhere, another low to the left, there’s no angle on this doorway. ”
    “Doesn’t matter, go around it,” she replied. “Take the squad, Rhi, you’re in charge. Get their damn power plants offline, we can shut down half the city from here.”
    “ You’re going alone? ” She didn’t sound that surprised.
    “You know the sims in tight spaces, once they realise they can’t get me, they’ll flank me, everything will come down on my wingman, any way they can. I’m really better at this alone.”
    “ I know. ”
    It was one of the stupid ironies about being the galaxy’s most effective 50 series GI—she was a very talented commander, yet even better in a shooting fight. In situations like this, where the objective was imperative, support only slowed her down, and all her command skills were for nothing.
    They moved, Sandy down a side corridor, then up some stairs to a gantry overlooking the cavern. It was guarded, she shot two soldiers defending it, crushed the skull of a third with a casual passing elbow, then proceeded, while running, to put bullets through the exposed faces, throats and armour weak spots of another five troops at various points about the cavern. The AMAPS Rhian had spotted was on her level now, turning with twin cannon spinning. Sandy leaped and spun, switching the rifle to her left hand to nail its sensors with a grenade while the right angled upward with a pistol to shoot two men on a gantry above her. She skidded on her back, put another grenade in the AMAPS, leaped for the overhead gantry, silenced two more shooters in mid air, then ducked into a side tunnel before the second AMAPS tore that gantry to pieces with its cannon.
    Anyone who got in her way, and was armed, died. If Rhian had come with her, she’d have lost her by now anyhow; coordination at these speeds was nearly impossible. The biggest worry