“Roger.” Michael checked that the AI had gotten it right before he patched his neuronics through to the lifepod holding the spacers. “Command, 7-Golf.”
“7-Golf.” Petty Officer Krilic accepted the comm.
“We’ll be launching you shortly. You guys all set?”
“Yes, we are, sir,” Krilic replied. “Both lifepods are nominal, and we have everyone’s mail. We’re ready.”
“Good. We’ve confirmed your position and vector; they are so close to what I’ve advised Nyleth that it makes no difference. It’ll take them a while to get to you, but they will make it, so hang in there.”
“Will do, sir. Thanks and good luck. 7-Golf, out.”
Two minutes later, two faint thuds announced the launch of the lifepods. Phase 2 of Operation Gladiator was over. He commed Sedova.
“Alley Kat, this is command.”
“Command, Alley Kat. Go ahead.”
“You all set?”
“In two, sir. The marines and their repairbots are loaded. Acharya and his team are just securing the demolition charges.”
“Roger that. You are approved to launch when ready. Advise when locked in to Red River.”
“Command, Alley Kat, roger. Approved to launch, advise when locked in. Alley Kat, out.”
Michael commed Ferreira. “How are things?” he asked.
“Bienefelt and her team have locked out and have started work. She estimates she’ll have all excess antennas and equipment cut away and jettisoned inside three hours.”
“Roger.”
Michael sat back and commed Mother.
Her avatar popped into his neuronics. “Yes, Michael?” she said.
“The missile off-load. How’s progress?”
“Just about to get the first batch outboard. I hope Fleet appreciates the effort we’re making.”
Michael chuckled; the chances of Fleet appreciating anything he did were zero. “How long?”
“At least twelve hours. We have, let me see … yes, we have 4,212 missiles to off-load, and it’s a slow process.”
“I know. Keep me posted.”
“Roger.”
Michael hated the idea of cutting his missile load down to only three salvos of Merlins fitted with reentry-hardened warheads, but there would be no time for the dreadnoughts to fire any more. The additional missiles had to go; they only added unnecessary mass. He started to think of what problems not having enough missiles might create when Sedova brought his review to a halt.
“Command, Alley Kat. Locked in to Red River. Off-loading pax and cargo. Will keep you posted on progress.”
“Command, roger. Out.”
Michael switched the holovid to Red River’s hangar deck. Kallewi had wasted no time. Already the cavernous space was a hive of activity. Repairbots had started to cut redundant equipment away from the ship’s hull; while their laser cutters worked away, Kallewi’s marines dragged what was little more than expensive junk across the hangar deck before piling it into untidy heaps close to the main hangar air lock doors. The sight of what amounted to the wholesale trashing of a perfectly good dreadnought made Michael’s heart sink, even if it was all in a good cause.
Michael turned his attention to the second of the teams rigging Red River for the assault on Commitment. He commed Acharya, who was at work deep inside one of the starboard driver mass bunkers.
“How’s it going, Dev?”
“Getting there, sir,” Acharya said, his helmet-mounted light splashing across the grimy figures of the rest of his team; their space suits were coated with dust from crushed driver pellets. “I never imagined I’d be using what they taught me on my basic demolition course to blow holes in the hull of one of Fleet’s finest, but there you are. Needs must.”
Michael laughed. “Quite so. Any problems?”
“Only this damn dust,” Acharya said, “of which there is an endless supply. We have to make sure we keep it out of the cable connectors; otherwise the firing sequence is screwed.”
“And can you?”
“We can, sir, thanks to these.” Acharya raised a small cylinder. “Compressed air. Works a treat.”
“Good,” Michael said. “Let me know how you’re doing, but take your time. I want those charges rigged right, not rigged quickly.”
“Roger that, sir. They will be.”
“Good. Command, out.”
Michael allowed himself to relax a fraction. Preparing the three dreadnoughts for Operation Gladiator was scheduled to take the best part of two days, time well spent, Michael knew, because it kept everyone’s mind off the coming battle. Happy that there was nothing more to be done, he commed his neuronics to bring up the time line for Gladiator. Not that he needed to—he knew the plan by heart—but given what was at stake, he would not take the chance that something, however small, might have been missed.
Friday, September 7, 2401, UD
FWSS Redwood, in deepspace
Michael was relieved when Redwood finally jumped into pinchspace. It had been a long, hard two days. Like everyone else onboard, he was exhausted thanks to the combined effects of no sleep and long hours of hard physical work, not to mention the stress of knowing that they would drop into Hammer farspace in little over a week’s time. Not that the 411-light-year transit to Commitment offered any respite. Redwood’s crew still had two more days of hard labor loading the landers with all the equipment and supplies to go dirtside; once that was done, Michael had scheduled an intensive program in the simulators. Gladiator was not the most complex operation of all time, but no operation in all the history of the Federation had been played for such huge stakes. Gladiator had to succeed, and if that meant spending hours and hours in the sims, so be it.
After a last check that all of Redwood’s systems were nominal and that she was established on a stable pinchspace vector, Michael turned to Ferreira.
“Okay, Jayla. You have the ship. I’m off down to the hangar deck to see how the marines are getting on before I turn in. Who’s your relief?”
“The coxswain, sir,” Ferreira said, her face a gaunt, exhausted mask. “I stood her down to get some shut-eye before she takes over at midnight.”
“Let me guess. It needed a direct order?”
Despite her obvious tiredness, Ferreira grinned. “Sure did. You know Chief Bienefelt.”
Michael returned the grin. “I know Chief Bienefelt,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”
“Sir.”
Michael made his way down to the hangar deck. The process was a painful one; his overused muscles protested every step of the way, his leg, as always, protesting more than all the rest of his body put together. “Goddamn thing,” he muttered as he negotiated a ladder steeper than his leg liked. When was it ever going to be right? With one more deck to go, he had to stop, the pain from his leg forcing him to wait. Leaning against the bulkhead, he eased the weight off his bad leg, the relief immediate, the pain abating to a dull, nagging ache, leaving his mind free to roam after the hours of relentless activity prepping Redwood and her sister ships for the jump to Commitment.
What a life, he thought, looking down the empty, echoing passageway, riding the best warship ever built on its last voyage, a one-way trip into flaming oblivion, from which he and the rest of the Redwoods would escape at the last minute to snatch Anna and the rest of the prisoners of war incarcerated in Camp J-5209, whether they liked it or not, before flying off into the arms of a grateful NRA, dodging missiles and vengeful Hammer fliers. He shook his head and smiled wryly. It was comicvid stuff, it really was.
He checked to see what time it was with Anna: just past midnight, according to his neuronics. He smiled again as he remembered what nights were like in a Hammer POW camp: a long shed filled with serried ranks of bunks, each filled with the huddled shapes of sleeping spacers, the air full of the small noises people made: coughs, moans, soft cries, the occasional half-heard word blurted out from the depths of a dream.
Michael thought of Anna. Was she sleeping like
all the rest? If she was, what was she dreaming about? And if she was awake, maybe she was thinking of him, wondering how long it would be before they saw each other again. Michael shook his head. More likely, she was wondering what the hell she was going to do with another long, empty day behind Hammer razor wire, a day like every other day, one day closer to freedom for sure, but how much closer?
As long as things went to plan, sooner than you think, Anna, he thought, thankful she had no idea what the consequences of his failure might be. He found them hard enough to bear; imagining how Anna would react when—no, if—Hartspring’s thugs came calling was almost too much; his stomach turned over as he pictured the terror on her face as the colonel spelled out what the last week of her life had in store for her in excruciating detail. And he would, Michael knew he would, rage washing through him in an incandescent wave. If Anna died, he would hunt Hartspring down to the very ends of humanspace if need be, and then the man would die a death even more terrible than Anna’s.
“Jesus, Michael,” he muttered out loud, “get a grip. Come on, you’ve got work to do.” Forcing himself upright, he gingerly eased his weight back onto his bad leg, relieved to find that the bloody thing had decided to behave for once. Stepping onto the ladder, he started down again.
When he got to the hangar deck, Michael looked around. He spotted a handful of marines securing the last of the untidy piles of scrap cut out of the ship by the repairbots while Kallewi and Sergeant Tchiang busied themselves running cables to the small mounds of sandbagged explosive charges that would blast the scrap out into space as Redwood approached reentry. Michael hung back to let them finish.
Finally, Kallewi pronounced himself satisfied with the last of the charges. He stood up, stretching hard. “Hello, sir,” he said when he spotted Michael. “Come to see what real work looks like?”
“I was about to commend you for your diligence and devotion to duty, Lieutenant Kallewi,” Michael said, stern-faced. “But since you’ve just done that for yourself, I won’t bother.”
Kallewi laughed. “Ouch,” he said. “Anyway, we’re done here.”
“Just hope it all works.”
“Oh, it will,” Kallewi said. “When these babies go off”—he kicked one of the sandbags—“all that scrap has only one way to go, and that’s out the door. The Hammers won’t know what the hell is happening.”
“You’re right. Everything we know about them tells us that they are anyone’s equal as long as they face a problem they understand. Their Achilles’ heel is that they are worse, much worse, than most when facing the unexpected. The Hammer military does not reward initiative.”
“Well, tell you what, sir. This will be unexpected.”
Michael laughed; Kallewi’s confidence was infectious. “I think so. How are the troops?”
“Dog-tired and asleep. Busy day tomorrow, so I want them fresh.”
“Anyone having second thoughts?”
“Yes, a couple. Tedeschi and Gavaskar.”
“They a problem?”
“No,” Kallewi said after a moment. “Sergeant Tchiang talked to them. Turned out it was just nerves, and I can’t say I blame them. I can’t remember so much tension before an operation.”
“Ditto. I’m not concerned about the assault on the camp. We’ll have momentum, and if we play our cards right, the Hammers will be so damn confused, they won’t even know what we’re doing until it’s too late. It’s what happens after that bothers me. We’ll have hundreds of Fed spacers and marines on our hands. I wonder how they’ll react when they find out they’ve been rescued by mutineers.”
“Like we decided, sir, I think the later we leave telling them, the better. When we do, provided the senior Fed officer in charge of the camp accepts what’s happened, we should be okay. I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”
Michael nodded. “I think that’s right.” He paused for a moment. “That leaves us with the Nationalists. Who knows what they’ll think. We assume they’ll treat us like manna from heaven, but we need to remember they were born Hammers. They’ve been raised from birth to hate us and everything we stand for.”
“They treated you well last time around?”
“Yeah, they did, but it was only me, and I was moved on quickly. If Vaas decides that we’re a problem …”
“You know what, sir?”
“No, what?”
“You worry too much. If the Nationalists turn us down, they’re fuckwits. Three landers with crews, microfabs, trained marines, weapons, and more. If that’s not manna from heaven, I’ve misjudged the situation … badly. Everything we know about them tells us they are a smart, determined bunch of people, fighting to overthrow one of the ugliest regimes in human history. So I don’t think they’ll turn down our offer of help. Doesn’t mean we can go barging in. We’ll need to take care, but in the end they won’t say no.”
“I think you’re right. Anyway, enough talk. Time to turn in. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Kallewi rolled his eyes. “Moving more stuff! Can’t wait.”
“Night, Janos.”
“Night, sir.”
Friday, September 14, 2401, UD
FWSS Redwood, in deepspace
The compartment fell silent when Michael rapped a knife on his glass and stood up.
“Sorry, folks,” he said, “but you know how it is. You can’t have a formal dinner without the captain making a speech. Them’s the rules, you all know it, and no amount of complaining will change things.”
Michael lifted his hands while a chorus of cheerful cheers and boos along with shouts of “Sit down,” “Does your mother know what you’re up to, sonny?” “More beer,” “That’s enough talk,” and other time-honored and insubordinate witticisms—all sanctioned by long-standing naval tradition to the point of being compulsory on occasions like this—broke out.
“Yes, yes, yes,” he said over the row. “I’ll keep it short, don’t worry.” He waited until order returned, his eyes scanning the faces around the single large table filling what had been the senior spacers’ bar when Redwood was a cruiser.
“It’s been a long day, so I’ll keep it short”—more cheers sprinkled liberally with calls of “liar”—“but there are a few things that need to be said. First, I want to thank you all. To those of you who know and trust me, I cannot begin to express how I feel. I promise you that I will not betray that trust. To those of you who are here because it is our best chance to hit the Hammers and hit them hard—”
Michael was forced to wait as the room filled with roars overlaid with shouts raw with hate and anger.
“—that is the best reason for doing what we are doing. I promise you that by the time we are finished, the Hammers will hate us for the death and destruction we will bring down on their heads.”
The compartment erupted in an explosion of energy. The spacers and marines of Redwood’s crew leaped to their feet, fists pumping the air, mouths open, bellowing hate-fueled litanies of revenge. Finally order was restored.
“And finally, to those of you,” he said, “who are just along because they’ve got nothing better to do, thanks anyway. We need you.”
Again Michael waited patiently when laughter filled the room.
“Tomorrow,” he continued, “we drop into Hammer farspace”—the mood in the room changed; in an instant, all the good humor had vanished—“the start of Operation Gladiator proper. You all know why Gladiator matters to me. But if freeing the spacers and marines held by the Hammers in J-5209 was all this was about, I would never have allowed it, no matter the consequences. Never. So we need to remember that Gladiator does not end when we clear the camp. We have been at war with the Hammers for more than a century”—a murmur washed through the room—“and Fleet tells us we face another five years of fighting. Then what? A better than even chance that we still won’t be able to defeat the Hammers. Worse, there’s a good chance they might beat us. I am not so arrogant to think that we alone can end this war, but I think that we can bring forw
ard the day when war between the Federation and the Hammer of Kraa Worlds is history. And we’ll do that by bringing what assistance we can to the Nationalist forces opposing the Hammer government. That is why we are doing what we are doing. That is why we risk career and reputation. That is why we have broken every rule in Fleet Regulations.
“There can be no more Comdurs. When we go into battle in the next few days, remember that. Thank you.”
Michael sat down, the silence absolute. A moment passed, and then Bienefelt, Ferreira, Kallewi, and Sedova were back on their feet, joined an instant later by every spacer and marine present, the air ripped apart by the Federation battle cry: “Remember Comdur, remember Comdur, remember Comdur …”
Stepping out of the drop tube, Michael walked aft down the passageway toward Redwood’s hangar, the soft slap of ship boots on the plasteel deck plates the only sound over the ever-present hiss of the ship’s air-conditioning. The complete absence of Redwood’s crew heightened his sense of isolation. Apart from Acharya, who was standing the middle watch in the combat information center, Michael was the only person onboard awake. It was not a good feeling, and the isolation added to the crushing weight of responsibility he carried for the spacers and marines he was leading into the most harebrained scheme ever devised by humans. Yes, they were all adults, rational, sensible people. Yes, they had been given the option to bail out with the rest of the abstainers. Yes, they had all decided to go along, but none of that altered the fact that the safety of every spacer and marine rested in his hands.
If it had not been for him and Anna, none of them would have been asked to risk everything—career, reputation, family, friends, citizenship, not to mention their lives—out of a misguided sense of loyalty, lust for adventure, frustration at the stalemate in the war against the Hammers, or whatever other crazy motivation might have urged them on.
He struggled to control his stomach, a churning mess of anxiety and dread. In an instant, he was overwhelmed. He made it to the heads, just. There, crouched over the sterile whiteness of the nearest toilet, he threw up his dinner, his body driven to its knees by the spasms that wracked it, the muscles of his stomach and chest screaming in protest.
Helfort’s War Book 4: The Battle for Commitment Planet Page 11