Miles Errant - Lois McMaster Bujold [218]
Quinn acknowledge this with a nod. "Key to Channel 9-C. We got trouble outside."
A kind of dreary curiosity winkled through Mark's numb shock. He turned his own headset back on. He'd had it helplessly and hopelessly turned off for hours, ever since Thorne had snatched back its command. He followed the captains' transmissions.
The Blue and Orange Squad perimeter teams were under heavy pressure from beefed-up Bharaputran security forces. Quinn's delay in this building was drawing Bharaputrans like flies to carrion, with a buzzing excitement. With over two-thirds of the clones now packed aboard the shuttle, the enemy had stopped directing heavy fire toward it, but airborne reinforcements were gathering fast, hovering like vultures. Quinn and company were in imminent danger of being surrounded and cut off.
"Got to be another way," muttered Quinn. She switched channels. "Lieutenant Kimura, how's it going with you? Resistance still soft?"
"It's hardened up beautifully. I kinda got my hands full right now, Quinnie." Kimura's thin, weirdly cheerful voice came back cut by a wash of static indicating plasma fire and the activation of his plasma mirror field. "We've achieved our objective and are pulling out now. Trying to. Chat later, huh?" More static.
"Which objective? Take care of your damn shuttle, y'hear, boy? You may yet have to come for us. Report to me the second you're back in the air."
"Right." A slight pause. "Why isn't the Admiral on this channel, Quinnie?"
Quinn's eyes squeezed shut in pain. "He's . . . temporarily out of range. Move it, Kimura!"
Kimura's reply, whatever it was, broke up in another wash of static. No program regarding Kimura and his objective was loaded in Mark's helmet, but the lieutenant seemed to be transmitting from somewhere other than the medical complex. A feint? If so, Kimura wasn't drawing nearly enough enemy troops away from them. Sergeant Framingham's channel, from the drop shuttle, broke in urging Quinn to hurry, almost simultaneously with an Orange Squad perimeter team reporting themselves forced off another vantage point.
"Could the shuttle land on top of this building and pick us up?" Quinn inquired, gazing at the girders overhead.
Thorne frowned, following her eyes. "I think it would cave in the roof."
"Hell. Other ideas?"
"Down," said Mark suddenly. Both Dendarii jerked, catching themselves from flattening to the floor as they realized what he meant. "Through the tunnels. The Bharaputrans got in, we can get back out."
"It's a blind warren," objected Quinn.
"I have a map," said Mark. "All of Green Squad does, loaded programs. Green Squad can lead."
"Why didn't you say so earlier?" snapped Quinn, illogically ignoring the fact that there had hardly been an earlier.
Thorne nodded confirmation and began hastily tracing through its helmet's holovid map. "Can do. There's a route—puts us up inside the building beyond your shuttle, Quinn. Bharaputran defenses are thin, there, and all facing the other way. And their superior numbers won't help them, down below."
Quinn stared down. "I hate dirt. I want vacuum, and elbow room. All right, let's do it. Sergeant Taura!"
A flurry of organization, a few more doors blown away, and the little party was on the march once more, down a lift tube and into the utility tunnels. Troopers scouted ahead of the main group. Taura had half a dozen clones carry Phillipi's wrapped body, laid across three metal bars she'd torn from the catwalk railings. As if the bike-trooper still had some forlorn hope of preservation and revival.
Mark found himself pacing beside the cryo-chamber on its float pallet, tugged along by the anxious medic. He glanced from the corner of his eye through the transparent cover. His progenitor lay open-mouthed, pale and gray-lipped and still. Frost formed