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"You're saying we were set up," Cateau whispered.
"Exactly. You were supposed to be wiped out and 'push' the terrorists into massacring their hostages, thus blackening the Cadre's reputation and branding the Emperor with the blame for a catastrophic military adventure. That plan failed for only two reasons: the courage and determination of your company and, in particular, of Master Sergeant Alicia DeVries."
Alicia glared at him, hands, taloned in hen lap under the table edge, and horror boiled behind her eyes. Captain Alwyn and Lieutenant Strassman dead in the drop. Lieutenant Masolle dead two minutes after grounding. First Sergeant Yussuf and her people buying the breakout from the LZ with their lives. And then the nightmare cross-country journey in their powered armor, while people — friends — were picked off, blown apart, incinerated in gouts of plasma or shattered by tungsten penetrators from auto ca
It was impossible. They couldn't have done it — no one could have done it — but they had. They'd done it because they were the best. Because they were the Cadre, the chosen samurai of the Empire. Because it was their duty. Because they were, by God, too stupid to know they couldn't ... and because they were all that stood between two hundred civilians and death. To my parents, who said I could.