"Command, systems," Chief Fodor said. "Port cooling pump offline; not recoverable. Executing emergency shutdown of Fusion A."
"Command, roger," Michael said, ignoring a sudden stab of fear. Without Fusion A, the lander was down to one power plant, slow and vulnerable; he had to hope the missing Kingfishers stayed away.
Ferreira asked the obvious question. "Abort?"
For a moment, Michael hesitated. Aborting meant leaving the NRA attack unsupported. Staying risked the precious lander. Screw it, he decided; they were there to fight. "Negative, tac. Stay with it."
"Tac, roger."
Michael took a quick look at the holovid feed from Widowmaker's aft holocams as she climbed away, sluggish and unresponsive. Not a building was intact; some still had walls, but most were smoking ruins. Good one, he said to himself before looking at Widowmaker's next target: a cluster of armored vehicles trying to break through an NRA blocking force straddling the northern approaches to the town. Antiarmor clusterbots made short work of them, the Hammer armor vanishing underneath a rolling cloud of smoke and flame.
"Tac, tell our controller we have ordnance for one more run, so make it a good one."
"Stand by… on the plot… target confirmed and accepted."
Michael grunted when Mother reefed the lander around hard. Then the last target for the day was past and gone, a Hammer defensive position constructed around a cluster of wrecked storage silos disappearing behind boiling clouds of plascrete, torn apart by Widowmaker's cannons and lasers before iron bombs finished the job.
"Command, tac. Grapple Three Three says thanks. We can go home. Alley Kat and Hell Bent remaining on task."
"Command, roger," Michael said. "Go!" he snapped, and Mother pushed the lander's remaining fusion plant to emergency power, pulling the lander around until Widowmaker ran south toward safety, the icons littering the threat plot turning a comforting orange as Mother eased the lander down, the ground below a chaotic mat of gray-black streaks.
Michael was sure the threat plot was wrong. The Hammers had more than enough time to launch Kingfishers from Ojan and McNair, but ENCOMM was saying that both bases were quiet, with the marines from Amokran still committed to the diversionary attacks on Bretonville and Daleel. It made no sense. Why were the Hammers not responding to the attack on Perdan?
"Tac, where the hell are those Kingfishers?" he asked, even though he knew the question was pointless. If Ferreira knew, so would the threat plot, and it did not.
"Not seeing them," Ferreira replied, "and we have nothing from ENCOMM, either."
"I don't like this, not one bit," Michael muttered, forcing himself to sit back and let Mother get them home. "Maybe there's some-"
In an instant, the flight deck was filled with the cacophonous racket of threat alarms. "Alaric missiles inbound," Carmellini said, slapping the alarms off. "Missiles have gone active," he added. "They're in terminal guidance mode." The threat plot confirmed Michael's worst fears: too many missiles moving too fast from too many directions for Widowmaker's defenses to defeat. A pair of heavy landers like Alley Kat and Hell Bent might have a chance of surviving; a lone light lander like Widowmaker did not.
Now Michael and the rest of Widowmaker's crew could do nothing but watch. Dumping the last of her precious decoys into Widowmaker's wake, Mother rolled the lander over in a desperate bid to get even closer to the ground, ramming the fusion plant to full power in a futile attempt to outrun the incoming missiles, their terminal guidance system a lethal hybrid of optical, radar, and laser sensors even the best electronic countermeasures in humanspace would struggle to deceive.
Michael swore; maybe he should have held Widowmaker back until Alley Kat and Hell Bent came off task. Not that it mattered; it was too late. The Hammers had learned from their mistakes that making their presence known too early gave the landers the time they needed to accelerate away from the Alarics. Guided by track data from the battlesat radars overhead, they must have come in low, slow, and stealthy, probably from the sea, where there were no inquisitive NRA eyes to report their passing, before unloading their missiles. Heart hammering, Michael watched Mother do her best, the lander twisting and jinking in a final attempt to distract the missiles. But there were too many of them, and even though some were seduced by Widowmaker's decoys, even though some were distracted by jammers, the rest were not, enough getting past the defensive lasers to doom the lander.
Mother stopped trying to save Widowmaker, shifting her focus onto surviving the attack long enough to save the crew, wrenching the lander nose-up to force the missiles to impact the most heavily armored part of the hull, Widowmaker's belly, screams of pain from the lander's neural system ignored as the foamalloy wings, stressed well beyond the point of failure, disintegrated under the impossible pressure of onrushing air.
Michael swore the lander stopped when the Alarics smashed home, three of them hitting a microsecond apart, their enormous kinetic energy and explosive warheads hurling Widowmaker back, up, and over into a death roll to the ground. He lost consciousness for an instant before the automated ejection system hurled him and the rest of the crew out into the night. In front of them, Widowmaker tumbled to a fiery death on the rocks below, missile after missile smashing into her carcass, her passing marked by a spectacular white fireball when fusion plants lost containment. Barely aware of what was happening, Michael was knocked out again by the shattering crash of his escape capsule plowing into the ground.
How long he lay there, he had no idea. When he awoke, it was strangely peaceful, the only sound the rain drumming an insistent tattoo on the protective plasfiber cover of the capsule. Almost too tired to move, he commed the capsule to release him, which it did, dumping him unceremoniously down the slope.
"Oh shit," he whispered. He commed painkiller drugbots into his system to combat a growing chorus of protest from a badly abused body; as ever, his left leg was the most vocal of all. Forcing himself to his feet, he climbed out of his combat space suit, throwing it to the ground, where it lay, looking disconcertingly like a dead body. "Won't be needing that bastard thing again," he said to the night air.
Reenergized by the drugbots, he had his neuronics scan for the rest of Widowmaker's crew. To his intense relief, first one, then another and another beacon came online until the whole crew had been accounted for. Comming the rendezvous point to them, he set off.
By the time everyone turned up, Michael did not know whether to laugh or cry. A sorrier bunch he had never seen, his crew sporting an impressive collection of cuts and fast-blossoming bruises. With a silent "thank you" to the unknown engineers who had designed and built Widowmaker's crew escape system, Michael asked the question on his and everyone else's mind.
"Where to from here?"
Wincing as she lifted her arm, Ferreira pointed in the general direction of Perdan. "That way. Closest friendlies. Our bases in the Branxtons are too far away."
"Anyone disagree?" he asked. "No? Okay, Perdan it is. Anyone having trouble walking, for chrissakes let me know. Matti, take point. Single file and make sure your chromaflage capes are working and neuronics are off. I don't think the Hammers will come looking for us, but you never know. Let's go."
In silence, Widowmaker's crew set off after Chief Bienefelt. Limping along behind them, Michael knew how lucky they had been. They had been ambushed with the lander Widowmaker running slowly; if both fusion plants had been online, it would have been moving at full speed. Then no crew escape system could have saved them, ejection into the fast-moving airstream more than enough to tear capsule and occupants apart.
Bienefelt's hand went up. The small column stopped while she scanned the ground ahead. Perdan was visible beyond under a thick pall of smoke. "I think we're there. Hard to tell, but I think I saw NRA pickets up ahead, which means their outer sensor line can't be far away. According to the ops plan, the 48th has this sector. I'll go and make sure they don't start shooting at us."
"Watch out for the slugs, Matti," Michael said. Fitted w
ith optical sensors feeding a simple fire-control system linked to a pulsed laser, the ground-attack drones the NRA called slugs were deployed to secure the outer approaches to a fixed position. The size and shape of a large tortoise, slugs were cheap and nasty. The average grunt hated them. Occasionally, slugs would ignore the IFF-identification friend or foe-patches worn by every trooper in combat; they might be cheap and nasty, but they were still lethally dangerous.
"I will," Bienefelt said, dropping to her stomach and crawling forward. "I don't trust the bloody things, either. I'll be back, so don't go anywhere."
"We won't." Too tired to care much anymore, his body racked by pain, Michael slumped to the ground.
"You okay, skipper?" Ferreira asked, frowning with concern.
"Yeah, Jayla. Everything hurts like fury, but unless my neuronics are lying, it's nothing serious. Just aches, strains, and sprains, How about you?"
"Same. That was one hell of a ride."
"Those Hammers were waiting for us," Michael said with a grimace. "That was planned."
"That idea had occurred to me. Wondered why we hadn't seen them."
"Interesting, though," Michael said. "They didn't give a shit how much damage we inflicted on Perdan's defenders. All they cared about was getting us. Cold-blooded but smart, damn smart… bastards," he added with feeling.
It hit him. "Shit," he said. "What about Alley Kat and Hell Bent? You heard anything?"
Ferreira shook her head. "Nothing. I'm hoping they're okay. We'd have heard their beacons if they ejected, but there's nothing. I think we triggered the ambush too early."
"I hope so. Losing Widowmaker's bad enough, but one of our heavies? What a disaster. Losing two doesn't even bear thinking about."
The uncomfortable silence was broken by Bienefelt's return. "Come on, you lot," she said with a beaming smile. "It is the 48th NRA, and they've put the coffee on for us."
Much cheered by the prospect of one of the NRA's trademark brews, hot and aromatic, Michael climbed to his feet and trudged off after Bienefelt.
"I've spoken to brigade," the colonel commanding the 48th said. "They want you to make your way to the 120th to link up with the rest of the Feds."
Michael's heart soared, buoyed by the prospect of seeing Anna again after so many weeks apart. "Any idea what happens after that, Colonel?" he asked.
"No, sorry. Just that I'm to provide you with an escort and guide to make sure you get there okay. There are still a few Hammers we haven't accounted for. I can't spare any recon drones to watch your flanks, so keep your eyes open."
"Fine, sir. When do we go?"
"Now… Fenech!"
"Sir," a corporal standing off to one side said, stepping forward smartly.
"Off you go. Don't lose any."
"Sir."
The colonel turned to Michael. "Good luck," he said, shaking his hand.
"Thanks. You, too."
Michael started to salute, catching himself just in time. Not a good idea on the battlefield, he reminded himself. Pausing to draw assault rifles, power packs, and ammunition, they set off, Corporal Fenech's section in a loose screen around them as they moved past the blackened shells of the firebases and defensive positions the Hammers had thrown up in a ring to secure Perdan's perimeter and entered the outer suburbs proper.
To Michael's surprise, the first few kilometers showed few signs that a major battle had been fought for Perdan that day. The roads were clear of debris, and there were no barricades or any other sign of organized resistance, the only evidence of combat the odd broken window and occasionally a mobibot damaged by rifle fire. The city was eerily empty, not a single Perdan local in sight, the neat houses that flanked the road silent and dark, not a light visible in the gloom. Where the hell is everybody? Michael wondered.
Fenech pushed on fast-Michael was relieved to see that his patrol was alert, heads swiveling all the time like they were on sticks-and soon proof of the day's fighting became all too obvious. Must have been when the defenders worked out that they could no longer escape Perdan to the west, toward McNair and safety, Michael realized. The streets were filled with the remains of makeshift barricades, the bodies of dead PGDF troopers and smoke-blackened wrecks of their light armor speaking volumes about the ferocious fighting that must have taken place. Michael's heart sank when he saw the problem the NRA faced firsthand. Perdan's suburbs were indefensible: gently rolling terrain, untroubled by creeks or rivers, with broad streets flanked by low buildings set well back. Once Hammer kinetics had reduced Perdan's outer ring of defenses to smoking ruins, marine heavy armor would roll into town along the highway from Bretonville in the west and Daleel in the east, unstoppable, any serious NRA resistance blown out of the way by marine ground-attack landers. With marine support, even the PGDF would have little trouble retaking the town, its NRA defenders pushed back and back until they could retreat no more; they would die where they fought.
What the hell were ENCOMM and Vaas thinking?
By the time Fenech led them to the 120th's positions around Perdan's southeastern flanks, Michael had seen enough. Without close air support and heavy artillery, Perdan was a lost cause, an objective no guerrilla army could ever hope to hold in the face of conventional forces. Worse, even though the center of Perdan, with its narrower streets and substantial buildings, was a much harder proposition for any attacker, it was far from a natural fortress. Defended by well-motivated troops, it was a tough proposition-all urban warfare was-but not impossible. All it needed was time and an endless, relentless application of Hammer airpower supported by the marines' heavy armor, and it was all over. To add to the NRA commander's problems, there was only one way out: back into the Branxtons as they climbed steeply toward the karst plateau to the south. The problem was that when the Hammers launched their final assault on Perdan, even the dumbest Hammer commander would know he had to drop blocking forces to keep the NRA bottled up inside Perdan and where: astride the network of small rivers that cut paths through the densely wooded foothills.
Unless General Vaas had something magical hidden up his sleeve, the NRA would be fighting its way out of Perdan when the end came.
If the tactical nightmare that was Perdan was worrying Corporal Fenech, he did not let it show. "That's it for me, sir," he said cheerfully when they reached the shattered remains of a small, low-rise ware house complex beyond which Perdan's outer suburbs reached out to the forest. "This is 120th's sector. If you'd wait here, one of the regimental staff will be with you shortly."
"Thanks, Corporal. Good luck and keep your head down," Michael said, resisting the urge to comm Anna.
"Trust me, I will," Fenech said with a broad smile.
Michael and the rest sat down to wait, the minutes dragging by until broken by a familiar voice.
"Well, well, well," Kallewi said. "Look what the cat's dragged in. Didn't expect to see you guys. You all okay?"
"We are. Widowmaker's not, I'm sorry to say. How are you lot?"
"We came through okay. The PGDF put up bit of a fight, but it was halfhearted. We've had casualties. Anna's one of them, I'm afraid." Michael's heart came up into his mouth. "No, nothing serious," Kallewi added hastily when he saw the look on Michael's face. "She caught a bullet in her upper arm. She'll be fine."
"Where is she?"
"Battalion aid station. Follow me. Rest of you, coffee's that way. Go grab some. I'll meet you there."
Michael followed Kallewi through the darkness, picking his way through the chaotic mess of discarded equipment littering the ground around the 120th's rear positions. Kallewi might think it had not been much of a fight, but it did not look that way. The aid station was tucked away under a chromaflaged canopy pinned to the wall of a badly damaged building. They found Anna sitting propped against a handy block of fallen plasfiber, eyes closed, her face deathly pale in the station's cool white lights, her bandaged left arm resting on an ammunition box. Michael dropped to his knees alongside her.
"Hello, trooper," he said softl
y.
Anna started, her eyes flicking open. For a moment, confusion reigned before she worked out what she was looking at. "Oh, hi, Michael," she said, her voice slurred.
"What have you been doing?"
"Hammer sonofabitch was a bit too fast for me. I was the better shot, though," she said, closing her eyes, her mouth twisting into a small crooked smile. "Getting to be a habit, this."
"What?"
"Hanging around you getting shot. This is the second time, you bastard."
"Yeah, yeah. Let me see how you are." Heart pounding, Michael interrogated Anna's neuronics, relieved to see that she was okay. The wound to her arm-he winced when Anna commed him images of an ugly, raking gash across her upper arm-looked worse than it was, all her vitals were 100 percent, and when the drugs and shock wore off, she would be sore but fine. Knowing Anna, she would be grumpy, too, but he refused to worry about that now.
"How do you feel?"
"Bit dazed thanks to the medication; Hammer drugs don't screw around. I'll be fine. The medics stitched me up and told me to take an hour off, so if you don't mind."
Michael did not have time to reply before Anna's head rolled back and she was asleep.
"So what's next?"
Anna, still pale but looking better than when Michael had first set eyes on her, looked at him, puzzled. "You don't know?" she asked, taking a long pull at her coffee.
It was Michael's turn to look puzzled. "Know? Know what?"
"Ah, of course, I see the problem," Anna said. "You lander types didn't need to know. Operational security and all that."
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