“Fine by me, sir,” Michael said, feeling anything but fine. After the transcendent peace of his and Anna’s weekend escape, the day had turned into the stuff of his worst nightmares. It was not going to get any better. Screw it, he thought, too drained to worry about what might happen. Shouldering his rifle, he set off after Anna.
“Right, any questions?” Anna paused, looking at each of her subordinates in turn. “No? Okay, good. Right, we jump off in sixty minutes, so section commanders, make sure everyone’s fed, canteens topped up, gear checked, and ready to go. You know the drill. And one more thing. The Hammers’ tunneling machines have dumped loads of caustic dust outside the portal, and the barbecues won’t have burned it all off. So watch out for any white stuff lying around and make sure your masks are secure; trust me when I say you don’t want any in your lungs. Okay, that’s it.”
Michael watched Anna’s platoon break up in subdued confusion; they were the roughest collection of soldiers he had ever seen, combat overalls tattered, faces streaked with dirt, hair tangled with sweat and dust. Rough, maybe, Michael thought, but the burning intensity in their eyes more than made up for it. Anna waved one of them over, a tall woman with eyes so dark that they were almost black, her body, like that of most NRA troopers, painfully thin.
“Michael, meet Lance Corporal Ketaki Sadotra. She has Yankee section.”
“Corporal Sadotra,” Michael said as he and Sadotra shook hands.
“Welcome to Second Platoon, C Company, sir,” Sadotra said. “The sergeant says I’m to keep an eye on you.”
“Oh, right,” Michael said, acutely aware of how inexperienced he must seem.
“You have three things to remember, Michael,” Anna said. “Just three things, okay?”
“Three things. Got it.”
“One, stay close to this woman. Two, do what she says, no arguments. Three, shoot as many Hammers as you can, and if you can’t find one of them to shoot, shoot down a drone instead. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Sarge,” Michael said.
“Good. Do that and we’ll all be happy,” Anna said. “All right, Corp, I want to borrow your rookie for a while. You’ll get him back by 21:30. Sorry to turn you into a baby-sitter, Corporal, but he can at least shoot.”
“Roger that, Sergeant. Anyone who can kill Hammers is fine by me. See you later, sir,” Sadotra said to Michael with a grin. With a casual wave of the hand, she turned and followed the rest of the platoon.
“Gee, thanks for that,” Michael said with a scowl. “Bit old for a baby-sitter, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t,” Anna said with a firm shake of the head. “Trust me. What comes next is like nothing you’ve ever been through before. You’ll be scared witless, you’ll be confused, and all your experience captaining dreadnoughts will not count for a pinch of shit out there. Don’t think I’m saying this because I love you and all that romantic bull dust.”
“Hey,” Michael protested.
“Well, maybe partly,” Anna conceded, “but it’s more because I need everyone in Two Platoon to do their bit, and as long as Lance Corporal Sadotra keeps you pointed in the right direction, I know you won’t let me down.”
“I’m not sure whether you’ve just insulted or praised me,” Michael said, “but in the interests of our long-term happiness I’ll assume the latter.”
“Good call. Right, Michael, chow time,” Anna said, pointing down the tunnel toward the mobile canteen, the NRA’s term for a ramshackle cart carrying a vat of gruel and a coffeebot.
“Not for me, thanks.”
“Listen up, soldier,” Anna said. “It might be a long time before we get to eat, and a smart trooper never argues with his platoon commander.”
Michael was about to do just that when the determined set of Anna’s jaw changed his mind. She might be the love of his life, but right now she was Sergeant Helfort and he was a no-account trooper.
“Yes, Sarge,” he said, face creased into a frown of resignation.
“That’s better. Come on.”
Collecting a bowl of gruel—garlic chicken, according to the skinny kid in charge of the canteen—and a large mug of coffee, Michael sat down beside Anna. For a while there was silence. Spooning the last of the gruel into his mouth, he set his plate down before taking a sip of coffee, as always amazed at how good it was. Under the circumstances, it was close to miraculous.
“So, Anna,” he said. “I know I’m just a grunt, but this operation … well, it looks like a recipe for disaster. It’s going to be dark, we’re outnumbered n thousand to one, Mokhine’s splitting his forces into two, and we’ll be attacking in two directions at once. I have to say—”
Anna frowned. “Yeah, well, you may be right. Probably are right, but needs must. When the 5th and 12th jump off, anything we can do to take the pressure off them has to help. As to the fuckup factor, what can I say? Yes, it’ll all go to shit, but so what? As long as we’re creating mayhem, we’ll be doing our job, and if the Hammers think they’re under attack from two directions at once, that’ll be a bonus. Remember this. We don’t have to beat them. We only have to convince them they are wasting their time.”
“Not a recipe for a long and happy life, though, is it?”
“Nope,” Anna said. “It’s not, but so be it. I’m here, I hate the damn Hammers, and I’ll kill as many of them as I can and hope they don’t kill me.”
“Wish you wouldn’t say that.”
“Sorry,” Anna said, taking his hand. “Look, Michael. Keep your head down and your wits about you and you’ll come through. And if we’re confused, the Hammers are going to be even more so. Okay?”
“Yes, Sarge.”
“Right, company orders group awaits,” Anna said, climbing to her feet, “and I am told that Hrelitz does like people to be on time. I’ll see you in twenty. Just hope the damn plan’s not changed. I just want this to get started.”
“Over would be better,” Michael said softly as Anna worked her way through the crowd milling around the mobile canteen. What a life, he said to himself as he made his way over to refill his coffee mug. Anna was right, of course. Get in there, wreak havoc, and survive if possible. What more was there?
At least the plan was simple; what Michael knew about infantry operations was not worth knowing, but he did know one thing: Keeping operations as simple as possible was one of the cardinal military virtues.
When ENCOMM fired the fuel-air demolition charges, 5 and 12 Brigades would launch their attacks on the Hammers in the valley. Amid the confusion, C Company, supported by combat engineers, would slip out of Juliet-24. Its objective was the equipment park holding the Hammers’ heavy tunneling equipment, 300 meters to the east of Juliet-24. Once there, their job was to destroy the hardware, wire up demolition charges to take out the fusion power plants, then move into a blocking position across the crudely constructed road connecting Juliet-24 with the Hammer’s forward lander base to the east. While all that was going on, the rest of Second Battalion would head for the Hammer’s command post; ENCOMM liked their chances of cutting the head off the Hammer operation around Juliet-24.
So what could be easier?
Yes, Michael decided, put like that, it was pretty simple … until you factored in all the problems: It would be dark, the NRA’s comms were not the best, the Hammers outnumbered them by a large margin, the NRA was desperately short of heavy weapons, they had no artillery or air support, the attacks launched by the 5th and 12th might fall apart, the … Michael stopped there; there was no point listing the NRA’s weaknesses. Anyway, maybe they were not that important; maybe the NRA’s incredible fighting spirit outweighed all of them.
He would soon find out, he thought as he climbed to his feet and looked around to see where Lance Corporal Sadotra had gotten.
“Confirm radio and tightbeam lasers set to receive only, infrared beacon off,” Sadotra said. “And any transmitters connected to those damn neuronics of yours.”
Michael fumbled with the unfamiliar
controls on his tactical data unit, the thin box strapped to his left forearm one of thousands churned out by Chief Chua’s microfabs to a Rogue Worlds design. Compared to a Fed marine’s, it was primitive, but it was a huge advance on the disorganized grab bag of gear the NRA had been using. Even better, Chua’s people had produced a version that connected with his neuronics, so he could dispense with the awkward microvid screen and earbud worn by NRA troopers.
“Confirmed,” he said. “All set to stand by.”
“Good. Not long now.”
Michael nodded, his mouth and throat dust-dry, horribly aware of how unprepared he was. For the thousandth time he asked himself what he was doing there when all he had ever wanted to be was the command pilot of an assault lander. He had not joined Fleet to end up a grunt fighting in the mud and muck of ground combat, yet here he was, about to do just that. He scanned the operation order uploaded into his neuronics one last time; the tactical schematics showed the ground outside Juliet-24 in muted greens and browns, the whole place infested with red icons marking Hammer positions. He knew that the detached precision of the display did nothing to convey the horrors that awaited Second Platoon. With a quiet prayer that he would not let Anna and the rest of the platoon down, he reset the display to show only C Company’s part in the overall operation; what Colonel Mokhine and the other two companies of the 2/83rd needed to do to capture their objective—the Hammer’s headquarters—was none of his business.
The atmosphere was tense as the clock ran down. With seconds to go, Michael breathed in hard, his eyes locked on Anna, just another body-armored shape amid the packed ranks of NRA troopers waiting to go into action, her face invisible behind the plasglass faceplate of her helmet.
With a bang, the barbecues fired and their fuel-air charges exploded, the air filled with a thunderous whump whump followed an instant later by the shock wave, a giant fist smashing into the tunnel, its walls and roof shaken bodily, rock shards spinning down onto the waiting troopers.
“Holy crap,” Michael muttered, shaking his head to try to clear his mind. It was going to be chaos out there, and the last thing he wanted was to be cut off from Anna and the rest of the platoon.
Hrelitz was on her feet. “Go, go, go,” she shouted before turning and running into the dust-loaded air. As one, C Company pounded after her in a disciplined rush. With a silent prayer that Second Platoon’s new commander would keep her pretty little head down when the shooting started, Michael followed Sadotra and the rest of Anna’s troopers through the blast door and down the tunnel toward the portal, the air stinking with the acrid smell of burned fuel and something else he struggled to identify, sickly, sweet, like, like … His stomach heaved as he fought to keep his last meal down, mouth open to keep the smell of burned flesh out of his nostrils.
Emerging from the tunnel and into the portal was the work of moments. When he emerged, Michael stumbled to a stop, appalled by the sight that greeted him. “No time for sightseeing, trooper,” Sadotra barked. “Keep moving!”
Michael did as he was told, running hard, doing his best not to stand on the flame-seared bodies of dead Hammers. They lay everywhere, more than he cared to count, still smoking and tossed into charred heaps by the force of the blast, armored vehicles thrown bodily back against the rock walls of the portal. It had been a massacre; Michael could see not one living Hammer marine among the hundreds carpeting the ground. If any of it bothered the NRA troopers around him, it did not show. Stopping short of the portal’s mouth, Hrelitz and her squad leaders marshaled the platoon into formation.
Captain Hrelitz’s head swung left and right; her hand dropped, and C Company was on the move, trailed by combat engineers heavily laden with demolition charges.
Emerging into the gloom of late evening, Michael was shocked to see how far the damage extended. Barbecues firing from the plateau above had dropped a fan-shaped wave of destruction onto the Hammers’ beachhead; all human life for hundreds of meters had been obliterated. It was carnage, yet more bodies flung with careless abandon across the valley floor as far as the rock wall rising sheer on the other side. Wounded lay everywhere, untended, ignored, small islands of agony and suffering, the air filled with screams for help that rose and fell over a soft murmur of moans, sobs, prayers, and cries.
Michael had seen his share of death but had never seen anything like this. This was Armageddon writ small; for the first time he allowed himself to believe that Hrelitz’s optimism was justified.
C Company pushed on into the night, moving fast. Reaching the dead ground leading up to the vehicle park’s western perimeter, Hrelitz halted First and Second Platoons, the platoon commanders repositioning their troopers ready for the attack. Then Third Platoon peeled off and headed southeast to establish the initial base of fire, their chromaflaged shapes swallowed quickly by the night, a thin tendril of reinforced optical fiber their only link back to Hrelitz.
Staying close to Lance Corporal Sadotra, Michael threw himself down behind the shattered trunk of a tree only to come face to face with a dead Hammer marine, arms thrown out wide, head back, helmet ripped half-off, mouth open in a rictus of agony, empty black pits of eyes staring right into Michael’s. On top of the stench in the air, it was too much, and his stomach rebelled, emptying itself in a series of convulsive heaves all over the ground.
“Oh, hell,” he murmured. He wiped his mouth, ignoring the urge to take a swig from his canteen. Somehow he did not think Sadotra would approve. He shivered. Compared to the remote, clinical precision of space warfare, this was a waking nightmare.
Forcing a rebellious body back under control, Michael scanned the area around their position, looking for any Hammers who might have survived the fuel-air charges’ appalling combination of heat and blast. But nothing moved on the shock-scoured killing ground.
A blurred shape appeared out of the gloom, whispered something to Sadotra, and then disappeared. Sadotra rolled toward Michael. “Stand by. Jump off at minute 25,” she whispered. “Go pass the word to the section. Minute 25.”
“Minute 25. Got it.” Grateful that he had something better to do than lie around thinking about all the Hammers waiting to blow his head apart, Michael slithered around Yankee section before making his way back to Sadotra. “Yankee section’s ready to go,” he said.
“Any problems?”
“No. Everyone’s good.” Better than me, he wanted to say.
Sadotra nodded, her helmeted head blurred by its chromaflage skin into an elusive, shifting gray shape barely visible against the black background.
Minute 25 arrived at last. Without a single word being said, Sadotra and the rest of Second Platoon rose to their feet and moved up the slope toward the northwestern edge of the vehicle park. Then all hell broke loose; without thinking, Michael dived for the ground, scrabbling at the dirt in a frantic search for cover. Ahead and to the right of them, the searing flashes of microgrenades bleached black into white, and wandering lines of tracer fire and the streak of lasers slashed lines of white, gold, and red across the night sky, the racket of rifle and heavy machine gun fire broken by bone-jarring crump of mortars.
Michael had never experienced anything like it. His every sense was overwhelmed. Swamped by light and noise and shock and fear, his brain froze for an instant. Then a residual grain of common sense told him that nobody was shooting at him … yet. Belatedly, he realized that what he was seeing was 12 and 5 Brigades’ attacks kicking off, and now it was C Company’s turn. To Michael’s right, Third Platoon opened up on the Hammer’s left flank, a wall of tracer chewing away at the Hammer positions, golden lines interlaced with the red streaks of Stabber squad antiarmor missiles as they hunted out and destroyed a pair of Akkad light tanks. Embarrassed, he scrambled back to his feet and ran to catch up with Sadotra, praying she had not noticed his moment of weakness.
Michael did what Anna had told him to do: keep going, stay in position, and watch for any sign of life, but there was none, only shattered trees interspersed with wrecked Ha
mmer support positions, and everywhere dead and wounded marines. Third Platoon’s fire pounded away, but there was no response.
The hulking black shapes packed into the Hammer’s heavy equipment park were obvious now. Michael kept moving, heart pounding and skin crawling, certain that somewhere ahead a Hammer must have him in his sights. Then, without any warning, tracer rounds exploded out of the darkness. Streaking past his head, they slashed the air apart in yellow-gold lines that came and went in an instant. Instinctively he spun away, hurling himself to the ground and into cover. His neuronics computed the target data, and he rolled to one side to return fire at the unseen enemy, the assault rifle’s recoil pounding his shoulder as hypervelocity rounds ripped away into the darkness, the searing flash of a microgrenade imprinting an image of a Hammer marine frozen in the air as he was blown out of his foxhole.
The equipment park erupted.
Michael was frightened now. The darkness between him and the Hammers had filled with a lethal blizzard of rifle and heavy machine gun fire punctuated by the flat crack of microgrenades. All hope he might have had of getting out of this awful place alive was stripped away by the ferocity of it all. He lay paralyzed by the sheer weight of fire coming his way before he belatedly realized that the Hammers were firing blindly, wandering lines of tracer fire hosing the night sky wildly in all directions; anything coming his way was an accident.
To his dismay, the rest of the platoon had already worked that out. While First Platoon pounded the Hammer positions, Second Platoon stayed on its feet, swinging left to flank the enemy’s positions. With a euphoric rush, adrenaline overwhelmed fear, and Michael climbed to his feet even though the whip crack of rifle fire was dangerously close, then closer still, and fear replaced euphoria. Flinching as a burst tore past his head with a flat slap, Michael knew he was losing his grip on the situation; unable to keep his mind focused, he was distracted and confused, head swinging wildly as he tried to work out what to do next. He struggled to control his frustration; he might have been a dreadnought captain once, but now he was just another NRA trooper, utterly dependent on Sadotra. He was no foot soldier; he had no idea how anyone could understand, let alone react effectively to, the chaos that had engulfed him.
Helfort’s War Book 4: The Battle for Commitment Planet Page 36