Mutti Vaas had aged since Michael had last seen him, skin washed gray by the cold lamps set around the wall of the cave and stretched over hunger-sharpened cheekbones, stress lines cut deep. His eyes had not changed: Dark brown, almost black, they looked right into him, unwavering, unblinking, unforgiving. Interrogator's eyes, hard, penetrating, cruel even, the eyes of a man used to untangling truth from lies. The eyes of a man not to be crossed.
"Can't say I blame you," Vaas said with a broad grin. He leaned forward as if to reassure himself that he really was looking at Michael Helfort, the fingers of his left hand fiddling restlessly with a small charm hanging from a thin gold chain around his neck. A tiny shiver caressed Michael's spine when his neuronics identified the charm. It was no charm; it was a gold sunburst, the insignia found on the lapels of every DocSec officer's dress uniform. Pity the poor bastard from whose uniform the sunburst had come, Michael thought; he would have died a bad death.
"After the Bakersfield business, after what you did to the Hammers at Kraneveldt," Vaas continued, "why would you? The Hammers still have warrants out for your arrest. Anyway, enough history. Michael, you'd better introduce me."
"Yes, of course. This is Captain Adrissa, our senior officer, and Lieutenant Kallewi."
"Captain Adrissa, welcome," Vaas said with a smile. "All a bit unexpected, I gather."
"Thank you, sir," Adrissa said, "and yes, it has all been a bit unexpected. This is not quite how I imagined spending the rest of the year, I must say."
Michael sympathized. "Unexpected" did not come even close to describing what Adrissa and her people had been through. Less than a week ago, she had been the senior officer of a Hammer prisoner of war camp, an unhappy but predictable existence. She might be forgiven for wondering what she had done to deserve this.
"Lieutenant Kallewi," Vaas said. "I don't suppose you ever imagined you'd get dirtside on Commitment after Comdur?"
"No, sir," Kallewi said, grimacing. "I wanted to but was beginning to think I never would."
"This," Vaas continued, "is my chief of staff, Brigadier General Cortez, and my intelligence chief, Colonel Pedersen."
Cortez, a heavily framed man, stocky, powerfully built, and Pedersen, a tall, slight woman with hair stubble cut down to her skull and piercing blue eyes, both nodded. Neither smiled; neither spoke.
"This might not look much"-Vaas waved a hand around the cave-"but it's secure. The Hammers don't know it even exists, and even if they find out, it's too deep for their ordnance to reach. Right," Vaas said. "We've studied the message you sent during your attack, and I must say it raises more questions than answers. I imagine your Lieutenant Cheung is someone very special, Michael."
"Yes, sir, I think she is," Michael said, his face reddening with embarrassment.
"I'd hope so, after what you've done." Vaas paused. He nodded, his lips ghosting into a brief smile, fingers still playing with the sunburst on the chain hung around his neck. "But I think I understand now," he said. "We didn't enjoy Colonel Hartspring's performance, not that we were surprised. He's a bad one, a view I know Colonel Pedersen will agree with. Her parents were rounded up in one of the Hammer's purges. Hartspring killed them both during interrogation. He likes to do that, so you were lucky, very lucky. He's not a man used to failure."
Michael had glanced at Pedersen while Vaas talked. The woman's face was impassive; not a muscle moved.
"I digress," Vaas said. "The question we want answered is this: Why in Kraa's name should we have anything to do with you? Why shouldn't we just cut you loose? We have enough to worry about what with the Hammers calling us Fed-loving traitors, something they like to do all the time. How is having you here going to help us? We've studied every guerrilla war in recorded history, and history shows that we risk our legitimacy by working with you. This is our war; this is a people's war. It has nothing to do with the Federated Worlds. It's not your business."
Michael shot a glance at Adrissa; she nodded.
"Look, General," Michael said. "I study history, too, and I-we-understand the point you make, but you said something last time we met, something I've never forgotten."
"Oh?"
"Yes. You said, 'All we want from people like the Feds is help. Give us the tools, and we'll finish those Hammer scum off.' "
"I said that?" Vaas said, eyes narrowing into a skeptical frown.
"Yes, General, you said that," Michael said firmly. "So that's what we're here to do: help. If you and your people want to pretend we don't exist, that's fine by us. We'll still help, but if you didn't mean what you said"-Vaas's eyebrows lifted-"if you're not interested in three assault landers, you're not interested in our microfabs, you're not interested in hundreds of well-trained military personnel, that's fine. We'll go and start our own guerrilla war somewhere else. It's your call, sir."
Michael sat back, his eyes locked on Vaas's. Vaas stared back, and there followed a long and uncomfortable silence. Michael sat unmoving, praying that he had not overplayed his hand.
The corners of Vaas's mouth turned up a fraction before his mouth opened wide into a broad smile. "Oh, you Feds," he said, shaking his head. "Some things never change. Self-doubt never was a problem with you people."
"Nor with yours," Michael said.
Vaas laughed. He turned to Adrissa. "You know what, Captain?"
"No, General. What?"
"We were all raised to regard all Feds-and everyone else in humanspace, come to that-as Kraa-less heretics, evil and corrupt. The Kraa-less bit is no problem; there's not one NRA trooper who doesn't think it's all fundamentalist bullshit, but we have to be careful. There can be no 'you' and 'us.' Your people must be part of the NRA, must commit to the Nationalist movement. You must share everything: what we stand to win, what we stand to lose. They must live with us… and die with us. Your people cannot be different. It won't work otherwise."
Adrissa considered that for a moment before she nodded. "I agree, but I'll not allow the NRA to coerce my people into anything, and I'll still be responsible for their overall welfare. How that works in practice is something we can sort out later."
Vaas glanced at his chief of staff. Cortez nodded. "Good," said Vaas. "I think we are agreed. However"-he raised a finger-"I report to the Resistance Council. I can, I will recommend acceptance of your offer, but only they can accept it. That said, I don't think there'll be any objections. We have a war to win, and we need all the help we can get. Now, we have some holovids you might like to see."
Adrissa nodded. "Sure," she said.
Two troopers wheeled in a holovid projector, and the room darkened. "I think you'll enjoy this," Vaas said. "I know we all did."
For a moment, Michael struggled to work out what he was looking at; then it clicked. The unmistakable layout of a Hammer base appeared through driving rain. Perhaps 5 kilometers away, the sprawling base was outlined by hundreds of floodlights that bounced a ghostly orange glare off hectares of ceramcrete up into the thick clouds scudding overhead. Quickly, he searched through his neuronics knowledge base. "Perkins," he said softly. "It's Perkins."
"Quite right, Michael," Vaas said. "That is-that was the Perkins planetary ground defense force base. We have a network of holocams monitoring the base, so we know when they're sending fliers to bother us."
Save for the rain picked up by the holocam's microphone, the silence was absolute while the holovid played. For a while, there was little to see, the only movement the flashing amber lights of trucks and service vehicles as they crawled around the base. Then the sky flared into life, a momentary white light that flickered across the clouds before vanishing.
"That's the debris field hitting the upper atmosphere," Michael said, entranced by the sight.
An instant later, all hell broke loose. As fliers started to move out of their open-sided hangars, air-defense sites protecting the base exploded into life, missile after missile after missile streaking skyward, lines of searingly bright light disappearing up into the night. Intense flashes tur
ned the clouds milk white; the dull thumps of warheads exploding unseen overhead filled the air. A second later, the clouds turned red, gold, then white, and an instant after that-so fast that it was over before the image even registered-a pillar of fire reached down out of the storm clouds and smashed into the Hammer base with all the force of a tactical nuclear weapon, the holovid whiting out when the blast wave incinerated everything in its path.
"Jeez," Adrissa hissed. "What the hell was that?"
"That, sir, was Redwood on its final mission," Michael said. "I loved that ship, so I'm glad. She did well; she died bravely."
The show was not over. The holovid came back online to reveal a scene of utter devastation. Redwood had blasted an enormous crater into the ground close to the base's main taxiway, leaving its sprawling collection of hangars, workshops, armories, and administrative buildings blast-shattered shells that were burning fiercely, the clouds overhead painted a lurid red-gold, bleached white repeatedly when fusion plants lost containment and blew. Then, starting off to the left, a single explosion smeared white light across the clouds, followed by another and another until the entire area was carpeted. Bursting too fast to count, they left the base a raging inferno, columns of dirty black smoke twisted through with veins of red and yellow fire climbing away into the clouds.
"I think," Michael said, "those were our Merlin missiles. It's hard to know, but it looked to me like at least half slipped through."
The holovid ended, and the lights came back on.
"Unbelievable," Vaas said, shaking his head. He looked at Michael. "What you did to Perkins is the reason," he continued, "why we'd need our heads examined not to accept your offer of help. That place has been a thorn in our side for far too long. Somehow, I don't think it will be again, not for a while, anyway. Still, enough of that. We have a lot to get through. The Resistance Council wants to talk to me. While I do that, Colonel Pedersen will bring you up to date with what's happening politically, then General Cortez will outline the military situation. Once that's done, we need to work out how to get all of you back to Branxton Base. You're okay where you are for the moment, but we shouldn't expose your people or those landers of yours any longer than we have to. Andrika?"
"Thank you, General," Pedersen said. "The first thing to say is that the government of Chief Councillor Polk is not doing so well. If we look at the holovid, we can see…"
Exhausted though he was, sleep was the last thing Michael wanted. He was happy to lie in the darkness as his mind ran through the briefings Pedersen and Cortez had provided.
Polk and his crew of incompetent, murderous thugs were in trouble, that much was obvious. Fueled by the NRA's military successes and urged on by an increasingly effective Nationalist movement, civil unrest was at levels not seen in decades. A hard-pressed DocSec was running out of places to jail everyone they arrested-they had taken to shooting people out of hand instead-the economy was falling apart, and desertion from the military, especially from planetary ground defense and DocSec, was at an all-time high, a reflection of poor morale compounded by bad leadership from corrupt officers.
It was a bad situation for any authoritarian government, but Michael did not share Pedersen's view that the Hammer government was at a tipping point. Yes, things were bad, but the resources Polk and crew commanded were still enormous. Worse, not once since the establishment of the Hammer of Kraa Worlds had the government come close to collapse, not even during the darkest days of the Great Schism. Backed by the enormous spiritual authority of the Teacher of Worlds and his legions of priests, together with the elaborate apparatus of state-sponsored religion, the Hammers were formidable opponents still.
Pedersen's briefing had been optimistic. It needed to be. The hope that there was some point to the terrible sacrifices the NRA was making day in, day out was probably the one thing that sustained her and everyone else in the NRA.
Michael was not so sure her optimism was justified. For sheer animal brutality, the Hammers had no equal. For centuries now that brutality had kept a lid on things; maybe it might slam the lid down on the NRA this time around. He sighed; with all his heart he wanted Pedersen's optimism to be justified. If it was not, the NRA's war would end up the way all previous insurrections had: in a chaotic welter of betrayal, blood, and death as the Hammers took back control.
It did not bear thinking about. If the Hammers regained the upper hand, he and Anna were trapped. They would never get off Commitment, never see home, never see family and friends again, condemned to live their lives hunted by vengeful Hammers.
As for the military situation, it was no worse than he expected. Given their lack of hardware, Vaas and the NRA were doing well. They had pushed the Hammers out of the Branxton Ranges, where, protected by the appalling terrain, the NRA had been able to build a secure base of operations. Cortez had said that the Hammers had abandoned their air assaults on NRA bases in the ranges-too difficult, too costly, the payoff never enough to warrant the lives wasted-and now the NRA had started to move out onto the low ground that led to the city of McNair and the end of the war.
That was where it all began to fall apart. The NRA's nascent air force totaled two heavy landers, four ground-attack Klaxons, and a single air-superiority Kingfisher fighter, all suffering from an acute shortage of spares and ordnance. With limited air support and protected only by Goombah light surface-to-air missiles, NRA forces that tried to stand and fight were easy meat for planetary defense fliers and Hammer marine ground-attack landers. That, of course, was where his three landers came into the picture; it was no wonder Vaas was keen to work with the Feds.
Three fully operational landers were not much, but they were a start. If the NRA was able to lay its hands on some more, maybe they had a chance.
Buoyed by that prospect, Michael allowed himself to slip away into sleep. Friday, September 28, 2401, UD Offices of the Supreme Council for the Preservation of the Faith, McNair, Commitment
Fleet Admiral Belasz cleared his throat before continuing. For once, Polk sympathized with the man. It had been a long Defense Council meeting. For most of it, Belasz had been on his feet talking, and no doubt he wanted it to be over. By Kraa, Polk did. He had had enough for one day; convincing the council to do what had to be done was never easy, with every issue ending up trapped in one of the many fault lines that scarred the political landscape, lines that marked the endless struggle between power, duty, privilege, corruption, obligation, clan, not to mention-this was the Hammer Worlds, after all-blackmail and threats of violence. It was a nightmarish business, and he hated it because it reminded all present of the limits to the chief councillor's powers.
"Let me now sum up," Belasz went on. "The attacks on the three PGDF bases were the action of a small group of rogue personnel led by Lieutenant Michael Helfort, captain in command of the heavy cruiser Redwood. I will not comment on the man's motivations; that is for others to do. Thus far, we have no evidence that any of the Fed landers involved in the subsequent attack on J-5209 have survived, but the search of the crash datum continues, and I will report any results. Suffice it to say, the attack has reduced our ability to support operations against the NRA, thanks to the loss of three entire air wings along with all of their supporting infrastructure and personnel. The latest estimates I have suggest that it will be two years before Gwalia, Yallan, and Perkins PGDF bases are operational again, which will of course limit our ability to contain the NRA. That concludes my report. Are there any questions?"
Councillor de Mel was the first to speak. "Yes, Admiral. The marine bases at Besud, Serkovitch, and Beslan were untouched. Why can't they make up for the loss of PGDF capability?"
Belasz tried to suppress a frown; he failed. "That is a good question, Councillor," he said warily, aware that at least half the councillors at the table enjoyed the support of the Hammer Corps of Marines and its legions of allies. "The problem is the Constitution. The marines are to be used for internal security purposes only and, I quote, in 'the exceptional and rare ev
ent of Planetary Ground Defense's inability to contain a serious internal threat to the integrity of the Hammer of Kraa Worlds,' a form of words which successive commanding generals of marines had always interpreted literally… as General Baxter is doing now."
"For Kraa's sake!" de Mel protested. "Like we don't have a serious threat to the integrity of the Hammer of Kraa Worlds? What is the NRA if not a serious threat? Schoolkids just messing around? I think not." He turned to Polk. "Chief Councillor," he said. "You know how often I have to come to this council to ask for marine backup for DocSec operations. PGDF has to do the same any time they need heavy armored support. Far, far too often. I think it is time to bring the marines face to face with the cold, hard realities of life."
Hand grenade thrown, Polk watched de Mel sit back as the meeting dissolved, as it always did, into a heated debate between supporters of the marines' hard-line position and their opponents. Polk had no illusions that anything would change; it never had before and never would, forcing DocSec and PGDF to come cap in hand to the Defense Council each and every time they needed support from the marines, an ever more frequent occurrence as the NRA became increasingly aggressive.
What a way to run a war, Polk thought despairingly. What a way to run a war. Tuesday, October 2, 2401, UD West Branxton Ranges, Commitment
Adrissa's voice cut through the usual premission chatter that filled Widowmaker's flight deck. "All landers, this is command. We are good to go. When the NRA confirms the Hammers are responding to the attack on the ordnance depot at Chalidze, we'll launch. Good luck. Command, out."
Michael turned to look over his shoulder at Anna. "Set?"
"Yes, skipper," she said with a smile from the comms station. "We're online with the NRA."
"Good." He turned back to look at Ferreira. "Okay?'
"Yes, sir. I swore that I'd never set foot on the flight deck of this thing after the last time, but here I am. Slow learner, me. How come there's not one lander tactical officer out of all those prisoners of war?" She shook her head in disbelief.
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