All Michael could hope was that they never ran into one; the Branxton Ranges was a big place, and even the Hammers could not cover every square meter of it with microsensors.
For hour after hour they did not stop, crossing a series of valleys and ridges until Anna declared herself satisfied they were clear and called a halt. Michael was beginning not to care much; his left leg was mounting its usual protest. Dropping to the ground, he fumbled around in a pocket until he found his supply of painkillers—his drugbots had run out long since—swallowing a couple with a welcome drink from his canteen.
“What a life,” he muttered. “Wha—”
Michael’s neuronics screamed a sudden warning, and without thinking, he was on his feet, dragging Anna with him. “You get that?” he said as they started to run.
“Yup. Bastards have pinged us,” Anna said while they plunged through the undergrowth away from the radio transmissions detected by their neuronics. “Those sensors were real close. All we can do is go like hell and hope they’re slow to turn up. They’ll be getting a lot of these intercepts.”
“Optimist,” Michael said, beginning to breathe hard.
“Come on, faster,” was Anna’s response.
Michael ran as he had never run before, launching himself into a pounding, driving relentless plunge through the tangled undergrowth and down into the valley bottom, slipping and sliding across water-slicked rocks, forcing a path back up to the ridge, cursing when roots snagged boots, when branches slashed savage welts into exposed skin, when tanglevine snagged rifle or helmet or backpack, heart hammering, chest heaving, legs dissolving into molten rivers of white-hot agony. All pain was ignored in a desperate race to get over the ridge and into the valley beyond, then the next, and the next, pushed on by willpower alone, on, on, on, until his willpower ran out and his body crashed to the ground in a sobbing heap, lungs fighting to drag air in to feed muscles screaming for oxygen, legs locked, unable to take him another meter.
“Stop,” he whispered, straining to make himself heard. “Stop.” It was all his tortured lungs would allow.
Anna did stop; she turned back and slid to the ground alongside him, breathing hard. “Take five,” she said. “Then we need to get into clear ground. We’ll go one more klick that way, but low and slow this time. Okay?”
Michael nodded; he could not speak. Facedown in the dirt of the forest floor, he waited. Slowly the pain from legs and lungs abated. “I’m ready,” he said at last. “Let’s go.”
“Okay,” Anna said.
Staying on her stomach, she was off, easing her way smoothly over the ground. With an effort, Michael made himself follow, even though all he wanted was to find a cool, dark, safe place to rest up. But giving up was not an option. He hated the thought that he might be the one who called it quits first. He would stop when Anna said stop, so he kept going, though for how long, he did not know.
An age later, Michael was close to collapse, exhausted, in pain, hungry, thirsty. Toward the end, the only thing that sustained him was Anna’s relentless ability to keep moving, her body sliding ahead of him in complete silence over rock, through water and undergrowth, the pace set to allow her chromaflage to blend her shape into the background, invisible to any Hammer holocam. No matter how bad he felt, he always had just enough left to follow her, his eyes locked with manic determination on the tiny ID patch on the back of her helmet.
Crossing a small ridge, they slithered down to a thin trickle of a stream where a sizable clearing opened up by a fallen tree long covered by a sprawling mass of vine dominated the gully. Michael followed Anna under the tangled mess, overwhelmed with relief when she signaled a stop. Please let that be it for today, he prayed.
“I’m not picking up any radio transmissions,” Anna whispered, “but I want a thorough check. If there are sensors around us, we need to know. If the area’s clear, we’ll lie up here while we work out what to do next. You take west through south to east. I’ll do north. Okay?”
“Yes, sir,” Michael muttered; at times Anna was more marine than the marines were.
He moved until he had an uninterrupted view of his half of the clearing. Then, with excruciating care, he scanned the area, his optronics hunting for the telltale shape and faint infrared signature of a microsensor. There was nothing, so he repeated the process a second and third time until he was certain the area was clear. Edging back under the vine, he waited until Anna had finished.
“I’ve seen nothing,” he said. “You?”
“Not a damn thing,” Anna replied. “No sensors here.”
“Problem is, the Hammers know we’re around.”
“Yes, they do,” Anna said, “but they will also know that there are only a few of us, a section at most.”
“So, the question is this,” Michael said. “Are a few NRA troopers worth bothering about?”
“Knowing the Hammers, yes, they are,” Anna said. “They are going to bomb the crap out of every last square centimeter of the Branxtons if they have to. Not that it matters. We can’t go on like this. If they’re seeding this area with sensors, we can run all we like; they’ll get us in the end, most likely with one of those fuel-air bombs they love so much. We’re safe here, so we can just drop out of sight to hide out until the Hammers lose interest. If they find us …” Anna’s voice trailed off into silence.
Michael nodded. He knew what Anna was trying to say. “I checked on the way in. If we’re flushed out, there’s a small bluff upstream. If the Hammers look like finding us, we’ll fall back to that. They’ll have trouble getting at us, and with a bit of luck we’ll take …”
It was Michael’s turn to choke. Wordlessly, he reached over to take Anna in his arms. He held her tight for a long time. “Not quite what I planned, Anna,” he said, pushing her back to look her right in the face.
“What do you mean?”
“This.” Michael waved a hand around their hideout. “Hiding from the Hammers. Knowing that we’re dead if they catch us. I’m sorry, Anna,” he said, his voice cracking under the guilt. “I’m so sorry I dragged you into this. I—”
“Shut up! Shut up!” Anna hissed, her eyes filling with tears. “At least we’re together. Better one day with you than a lifetime without.”
“You mean that?” Michael said, stunned by the raw emotion in her voice.
“Yes, Michael Helfort, I do.”
Tuesday, November 27, 2401, UD
Branxton Ranges, south of Perdan, Commitment
Michael awoke with a start, utterly lost. “What the mmmp-phhh!” he spluttered when Anna clamped her hand over his mouth.
“Stand to,” she whispered. “Company.”
Michael stifled a curse. Save for a single Hammer foot patrol that had crossed the stream a good 300 meters above their lay-up position without stopping, they had not seen a soul. Before he turned in, Michael had allowed himself to hope that they would soon be able to resume their march back to the Branxtons and safety. Moving carefully, he eased into position alongside Anna.
“What’s up?”
“Hammer recon drones. I’d say they’re screening a ground unit doing a sweep upstream.”
“Why? Why now?” he muttered, squinting hard into the gloom. Michael heard the drones passing overhead and then the Hammer grunts before he saw them. His heart sank when he spotted their blurred, chromaflaged shapes working their way slowly through the trees toward them in a loose arrowhead formation, the line pausing as possible hiding places were searched.
“Platoon strength,” he said. He did not fancy his and Anna’s chances; the vine-covered tree was too obvious a hideout. The Hammers were sure to search it, and if they did, they would have to be blind to miss them; Hammer optronics were not that bad. All of a sudden, their original plan—to head for the bluff and die fighting—did not seem so attractive. “Anna,” he hissed. “We need to go before they get too close.”
“Agreed. Go!”
Michael and Anna slithered out of the scrape, working their way thr
ough the brush in an awkward, scrambling crawl in a frantic race to get clear and still stay undetected. Throwing a glance over his shoulder, Michael saw the Hammers had closed the gap; even taking his time, a man on foot was faster than one on his belly. This was one race they were not going to win. If they kept crawling, he and Anna had maybe ten minutes before the Hammers overran them. If they made a run for it, the firepower of a platoon of Hammers would make short work of them. They would not get 20 meters before the drones picked them up.
“Anna,” Michael said. “We have to think of something. This won’t work.”
“Working on it. Keep going.”
Michael was out of ideas, so he did the only thing he could: He had to trust Anna and keep moving. She had been angling uphill; they had gone perhaps 50 meters when she pointed at a thin cleft between two rocks among a large outcrop of boulders.
“You’re kidding, Anna,” he muttered. Her choice was a good one, though. The Hammer search line would split to flow around the outcrop; provided that they did not look back, they might get away with it.
“We’re not going to do any better than this, so you first, then me on top. If we’re lucky, the chromaflage should do the job. They won’t think of looking in there.”
“We hope,” Michael said as he backed himself in between the boulders. Adjusting his chromaflage and settling his helmet down to leave only the tiniest gap to keep an eye on things, he tried not to wince while Anna, getting herself into position fast clearly uppermost in her mind, not his well-being, squirmed over him. Anna’s hand found his; she squeezed hard. Squeezing back before putting their wrists together, he made sure his rifle was to hand and resigned himself to his fate. He commed Anna. “I love you,” he said.
“Love you, too,” she replied, “but it’s time to concentrate.”
Chastened, Michael shut up. Soon it became obvious that the Hammers were less than enamored with their mission. The company NCOs maintained a steady stream of sotto voce orders: speed up, slow down, keep spacing, check this, check that, and so on. No way to run a sweep, Michael reckoned. A couple of well-positioned platoons could inflict terrible damage on the Hammers before they could react. They must be confident that there were no NRA units around to be so careless. Much encouraged, Michael allowed himself to hope.
Then the first Hammers were on them. They walked past, heads swinging from side to side as they scanned the ground, the nearest so close that Michael imagined he could smell the man’s sweat. He held his breath, willing them on, his heart pounding so hard that he had trouble believing the nearest rifleman could not hear it. Slowly, ever so slowly, they moved past.
An eon later, the last of the Hammers had vanished, and Michael allowed himself to believe that they had gotten away with it. “Let’s go,” he said.
Anna scrambled out, and Michael followed, stretching hard to get the blood flowing into cramped limbs. “Now what?” he said.
“We follow them.” Anna pointed upstream.
“What?”
“Sounds crazy, but—”
“Sounds crazy? For chrissakes, Anna! It is crazy.”
Anna shook her head. “No, it’s not. The Hammers have been dropping sensors by the landerload. If we trigger any and as long as they can’t see us, they’ll think what they are hearing is part of that patrol. They’re noisy enough. More to the point, they are heading the way we want to go.”
“Okay,” Michael said, face creased with concern. “If you’re sure.”
Anna’s mouth tightened into a thin line, what Michael liked to call her “why are you arguing with me” look. “I’m sure,” she said. “Provided we stay close but not too close, this’ll work.” Without another word she settled her pack, adjusted her chromaflage cape, and set off.
With a sigh, Michael followed.
Long hours later, Michael had to concede that Anna had been right. His neuronics had repeatedly picked up the characteristic warbling of microsensor radios reporting activity back to whoever was controlling the Hammer ground operation. They would have been dead meat blundering around the forest had they not been following what had to be the noisiest soldiers ever. Patrol discipline was non ex is tent; Michael and Anna had been able to tuck themselves in close behind. There they stayed while the patrol worked its way south, every kilometer taking them a kilometer closer to safety, climbing steadily out of the foothills and into the Branxtons proper, the forest broken open by a mixture of grassy glades interspersed with clumps of scrubby trees and granite outcrops.
“What do you think?” Anna whispered.
“Something’s happening. I think they’ve been retasked.”
“Looks like it. Another intercept, I’d say. Must have been a big one to get that lot off their fat useless asses.”
In front of them, the Hammers were breaking camp in a flurry of activity leavened with liberal doses of invective from unhappy corporals, the platoon’s recon drones bursting into noisy life before climbing away into the sky. Michael smiled to himself while he watched. The platoon commander, a tall man with an accent that marked him as a native of Faith planet, sat with his NCOs around him, clearly planning whatever came next. Michael ached to blow his head off, the man’s shock of red hair a target even he could not miss.
Ten minutes later and the patrol was on the move, this time in a column and moving fast, their screen of recon drones pushed out ahead of them in a loose line abreast. No need to worry about losing contact, Michael realized as they fell in behind. A herd of blind buffalo made less noise than these Hammers. Their casual indifference to their surroundings spoke volumes for their confidence; these men had no doubt they were in safe territory. To some extent, Michael had discounted the NRA assessments of the Hammer’s planetary defense force—poorly led and badly trained and with rock-bottom morale was the NRA’s view—but now that he had seen it for himself, he knew they were on the money. Even so, he reminded himself, the PGDF outnumbered the NRA, and they had more artillery, better communications, and an air force, not to mention marine armor and ground-attack landers to back them up when things turned bad. So, substandard or not, the PGDF was still a serious threat.
Two hours later, the patrol disappeared over the crest of a ridge, a broken line of rock 10 or so meters high. Crawling forward, Anna and Michael peered down into the valley beyond, which was lightly wooded and thickly studded with boulders tossed down from the ridgelines. The cause of the patrol’s abrupt redeployment was obvious. A kilometer or so upstream from their position, the Hammers were setting up for a major operation; the valley floor was a hive of activity, swarming with soldiers, the air overhead full of recon and attack drones.
“That’s their rally point,” Anna said. “They’re pulling in all the patrols they’ve had looking for people like us.”
“Oh, for an attack lander or two,” Michael breathed.
“Amen to that,” Anna whispered back. “Shit, they’re slack. Unbelievable. No air defense, pickets in way too close, no remote sensor chain that I can detect. Seems they are happy to rely on the feeds from their recon drones.”
“So what do we do?”
“Wait and watch. All this effort means there must be a target somewhere close, one they don’t want to spook; otherwise we’d be seeing landers landing and taking off. So, what? Five klicks away? Something like that. When they start to move, we’ll get an idea of the direction. We need to try to get ahead of them and warn the good guys.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Thursday, November 29, 2401, UD
Branxton Ranges, south of Perdan, Commitment
Chest heaving and lungs burning, Michael ran hard after Anna, her chromaflaged form all but invisible in the darkness while it ducked and weaved through the thin, woody scrub, his optronics-boosted eyes scanning for any sign of life. Be damn stupid, he said to himself, to come all this way and get shot by an NRA trooper.
That was the flaw in the plan. They knew where the Hammers were. They knew roughly in what direction they were heading,
but they had no idea where the NRA was, their only clue a wild-assed guess how far less-than-motivated planetary defense soldiers could be persuaded to walk to their start line. So now, rather than tailing the Hammers, they were trying to stay ahead of them but not so far ahead that they blundered into the waiting NRA, a process a hundred times more difficult.
Confident that they were clear, Anna stopped. “Over here,” she whispered, pointing to a clump of bushes.
They waited until the unmistakable sound of Hammer recon drones on the move broke the silence. “Moving more south, I think.”
“They are. Let’s go.”
They were off again, the stop-and-go process repeated until the group Michael and Anna had been tracking—an entire battalion, he reckoned—dropped down to take up positions in a line across what was, according to Michael’s map, the valley of the River Kendozo, here little more than a stream.
Michael watched the Hammers start to organize themselves, a large number of crew-served weapons—mortars, missile launchers, heavy machine guns—setting up under chromaflage netting, all pointing upstream. “They’re a blocking force,” he said.
“Yup, which means the good guys are that way,” Anna said, pointing up the valley. “Looks to me like the Hammers are going to try to drive our guys downstream onto this lot’s guns; anyone who tries to break out of the valley will get picked off by attack drones and landers. Simple.”
“So what do we do?” Michael said.
“We can keep heading south, or we can try to screw the Hammers’ operation. Which?”
Everything told Michael, “Go south, go south.” How were two people to change the outcome of this battle? The NRA had been harassed and hounded every step of the way back from Perdan by landers. Its troopers must be exhausted, many wounded; they had few, if any, heavy weapons; and the Hammers outnumbered them by a huge margin. This was one battle the NRA could never win.
Helfort’s War Book 4: The Battle for Commitment Planet Page 29