“Stand by, Caesar’s Ghost, stand by. Out.” Michael tried not to laugh. Eyes screwed up and lips puckered into a grim slash as if someone had shoved the blunt end of a pineapple up his ass, the duty controller was an unhappy man, a man in considerable pain. He was not having a good shift.
“Main engine cut off … now”—the Ghost fell silent—“Serhati control, am committed to a v-max reentry direct to Norton Field. Request emergency services to meet on arrival. Caesar’s Ghost, out. All stations. Visors down and make sure you are well strapped in. For those of you who’ve not been paying attention, we’re doing a v-max reentry, so this will be rough.”
Michael flipped his visor down and waited patiently until a row of green lights confirmed that he had a good suit. He commed the seat to tighten his straps as far as they could go, the crash-resistant seat molding itself around his head and body until he could barely move. Not that it made any difference to his chances of survival; if Caesar’s Ghost broke up while traveling too fast to allow crew and passengers to eject—and there was a significant chance it would—they were all dead.
“Command, loadmaster. All suits are green, cargo compartment, casualties, and pax secured for reentry, ejection systems armed.”
“Command, roger,” Michael said. “Admiral, sir. We’re good for reentry.”
“Roger,” Jaruzelska said calmly.
“Over to you, Kat.”
Sedova just nodded, her whole attention focused on turning Caesar’s Ghost nose on for reentry.
“Caesar’s Ghost, Serhati nearspace control. Reentry approved”—yes, Michael thought exultantly. Not that it made much difference; the lander was committed, so it did not matter what the Serhatis said, but at least they were not shooting at them—“stand by reentry plan for landing at Norton Field. You are warned that any deviation …”
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Michael murmured to himself, tuning out; we’ve called that bluff. He concentrated on watching Sedova’s every move. Not that he had anything to offer her. Sedova had graduated in the top 5 percent of her command pilot class at combat flight school. If a v-max reentry was beyond her capabilities, it was definitely beyond his. Compared to Sedova, he was a rank amateur.
Sedova pitched the Ghost’s nose up for reentry. Plunging planetward, the lander started to feel the first tenuous threads of Serhati’s upper atmosphere. A thin high-pitched whistle developed rapidly into a full-blooded scream as Caesar’s Ghost ripped the air apart in its plunge to Earth, nose and belly armor glowing first red, then white-hot as ablation started in earnest, leaving a fiery tail to mark its passing. Hands locked tightly onto the arms of his seat, Michael prayed—hard—that Caesar’s Ghost would get through this. At normal reentry speeds, any lander could complete ten reentries a week without breaking a sweat. V-max reentries were another matter; heated by massive compression, Serhati’s atmosphere would reach 13,000 Kelvin as it tore past, too much for the lander’s armor to resist, the excess heat carried away by ablation of the carbon-impregnated ceramsteel, the lander tracing a blazing arc across the sky as it dropped to earth.
In the end, a v-max reentry was a race to see which happened first: a successful transition to winged flight or ablation of the armor until none was left. Without armor, Caesar’s Ghost would not survive two minutes before superheated plasma broke through her inner titanium skin and she disintegrated into a flaming shower of burning wreckage.
Trailing fire, Caesar’s Ghost plunged deeper into Serhati’s atmosphere. The lander shook violently as the aerodynamic stress built, its artificial gravity struggling to absorb deceleration, pushing the lander’s frame to its limits.
“Approaching max g,” Sedova announced, her voice calm. “Stand by pitch down. Hold on, folks.”
Michael braced himself, hands locked onto the arms of his seat. This was the most critical, the riskiest phase of the reentry; in a v-max reentry, this was the point where the command pilot risked her life and those of her passengers and crew. Reducing pitch minimized the g forces acting on the lander but exposed more of the lander’s lightly armored nose to superheated air, increasing the risk of thermal breakthrough into the hull. When v-max reentries went to shit, it was during pitch down, and everybody knew it.
When—after a lifetime—Sedova pitched the nose back up, Michael allowed himself to breathe out. Slowly the lander’s speed bled off. Maybe, just maybe, they might make it, he thought.
The rest of the flight turned out to be an anticlimax, not that Michael was complaining. He’d had all the excitement he could take. Extending the wings in small increments as the lander’s speed decayed, Sedova flew a perfect engine-off approach into Norton Field, kicking the engines back into life only when the Ghost neared the threshold. Dropping steeply and still traveling at speed, she extended the lander’s huge triple-slotted flaps, the landing gear locking down with a muffled, metallic thunk, then pulled Caesar’s Ghost sharply back onto its tail in the vomit-inducing maneuver called—without any affection at all—“walking the blowtorch.” With the lander now held up entirely by the power of its main engines, its nose pointing nearly vertically into the sky, Sedova rammed the belly-mounted thrusters to full power, killing the Ghost’s speed. Crossing the threshold, Sedova eased back on the throttles and rotated the Ghost’s nose forward and down, dropping the lander with a crunching thud onto the runway. Braking gently, she let the lander run before turning off the runway and coming to a stop. Caesar’s Ghost was surrounded immediately by what had to be the best part of Serhati’s planetary defense forces.
Sedova broke the stunned silence.
“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for flying Sedova Space Lines”—Michael noticed that her voice shook ever so slightly—“and welcome to Serhati. You may disembark now. And make it quick, please. I’ve set the self-destruct charges to blow in five minutes.”
Wednesday, April 4, 2401, UD
McNair
Chief Councillor Polk damned the vaulting ambition that had driven him to the chief councillorship, clawing his way up every blood-drenched step of the ladder. He damned the stupidities that had turned the Hammer Worlds into a crippled, corrupt shambles. He damned the incompetent fools he was forced to work with. He damned a military that once again had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. He damned the Feds for wriggling out of the death grip the Hammers had on their throats.
But most of all, he damned his nemesis, a man with an uncanny ability to be there every time the Feds kicked the Hammers in the balls.
Helfort … Lieutenant Michael Wallace Helfort, Federated Worlds Space Fleet, may Kraa damn his evil heretic soul, the man responsible more than any other for the loss of the Hammer’s precious antimatter plant.
He asked himself for the thousandth time why he was so stupid. Why had he ever allowed one miserable man to get so far under his skin? Kraa knew how hard he attempted to keep Helfort in perspective, but no matter how hard he tried, it made no difference. Not a day went by without him thinking about the man. He had even started to dream about the son of a bitch, for Kraa’s sake!
Was he asking too much? No, he did not think so: He wanted the man dead, one miserable, no-account human being dead; that was all. With the full resources of the Hammer Worlds at hand, why was that so hard? Well, he decided, maybe things were going to get easier; Helfort’s luck had run out … finally. Fate had given the Hammers the best chance they were ever going to get, and Polk intended to make sure the bungling blockheads who worked for him took it. If those useless Serhatis tried to dick him around, he would kick their Kraa-damned asses. He would give them a week to transfer the Feds back.
All being well, he decided, he would get his hands on Helfort, after all. Once the man had been tried, shot, and dumped into a DocSec lime pit—Helfort should feel right at home lying there beside Fleet Admiral Jorge and all the rest of the useless scum responsible for the Hammer’s defeat at Devastation Reef—he might be able to forget him.
Thursday, April 5, 2401, UD
Hajek Barracks
, Serhati
Michael stared out of the grimy windows of the barracks at the start of another stinking hot Serhati day. In the distance, the heat-battered landscape faded away into the brown haze before reappearing as the ground climbed into the Red Mountains, a hellish chain of splintered rock rising abruptly out of the narrow coastal plain that hosted the only settlement of note, Serhati City. Why the hell anyone would want to live on a planet like this was beyond him. The bits of Serhati that were not mountains were desert, and its one and only ocean was a fetid puddle so salty that the first arrivals called it, with the lack of originality that so characterized the place, the Great Salt Sea. Great Stinking Sea would have been more apt, though that would not have done much to encourage migrants.
Admiral Jaruzelska knew what she was talking about. She had said the place was a real shithole, and it was. It was not even a rich shithole. Serhati was one of far too many marginal planets scattered across humanspace, proof, were it needed, that optimism and hope beat common sense and rational thinking far too often. It had been settled by colonists riding the wave of euphoria that had driven millions of humans off Old Earth and across hundreds of light-years of space, looking for a better life; now they struggled to survive. When the first migrants found that euphoria was not enough to live on, most saw sense and left. Some stayed, settling down to an existence that was precarious in the extreme. For centuries the planet teetered over the abyss of economic collapse, its only income coming from exports of Serhati saltmullet—considered by some to be an exquisite delicacy when served raw; in Michael’s opinion, it tasted like mud—and a thin trickle of tourists braving Serhati’s abhorrence of customer service to gaze upon the admittedly magnificent rock formations of the Red Mountains. Even that was barely enough to maintain the fabric of civil society. In the end, all that kept Serhati out of liquidation was an annual payment from the Hammer Worlds to ensure that the Serhatis voted the way the Hammers wanted in meetings of the Humanspace Council. Needless to say, that made Serhati irredeemably corrupt.
All in all, it was a place Michael would be very happy to leave, and not just because the place was such a dump. He was interned in a Hammer vassal state, and that worried him. He knew he was dangerously vulnerable; his every waking moment was dominated by the terrible possibility that a DocSec snatch squad might break down the door and drag him away.
Heavy footsteps shook the flimsy stairs that ran up to the second floor. No DocSec this time; that could only be one person, Michael decided, turning away from the window, and it was.
“Chief Petty Officer Bienefelt. What can I do for you?”
“Briefing time, sir,” she said cheerfully.
“Oh! Forgot.”
“Knew you had. Come on.”
Michael followed Bienefelt’s enormous frame down the stairs and into the barracks mess hall. The place was packed, a soft buzz of conversation filling the room. Michael grabbed a seat at the back to see what the ambassador might have to say.
The brisk tones of Captain Tuukkanen, Jaruzelska’s chief of staff, announced the admiral’s arrival. “Attention on deck!”
“Okay, people,” Jaruzelska said over the racket of people getting to their feet. “Please sit. Morning, all. I’d like to introduce Kayleen Sharma, our ambassador to what the locals are pleased to call the Sovereignty of Serhati. She is here to brief us on our situation. Before we start. Captain Tuukkanen. The room is clean?”
“It is, sir.”
“Good. Ambassador Sharma, over to you.”
The ambassador, a woman in her early thirties with thick black hair pulled back from her face into a ponytail, stepped forward. Piercing violet eyes—the product of some expensive geneering, Michael reckoned—scanned the Feds assembled in front of her.
“Thank you, Admiral,” she said. “Good to meet you all at last, and I’m sorry it’s taken me so long. Believe me when I say we’ve been busy. To business. First of all, let me say that in my time in the diplomatic service I’ve had plenty of surprises, but nothing like the call from Admiral Jaruzelska announcing your imminent arrival. That was one hell of a surprise, let me tell you, and I never did get to finish my breakfast.” She paused to let the laughter die away. “And if you think it was a surprise for me, let me tell you that the Serhatis—forgive my crudeness, but it is the only way to describe it—the Serhatis nearly crapped themselves.”
This time, Sharma was forced to wait a long time before quiet was restored.
“Anyway,” she continued, “I say that not to make jokes at the Serhatis’ expense but to make the point that nothing like this has ever happened to them. Now that it has, they have no idea what to do, which is where we’ve been helping them. Sadly, of course, the Hammers have, too, so it will take time to get the Serhatis to agree to whatever plan we come up with to get you guys safely home and even longer to make that plan happen. Bottom line is that you will just have to be patient, I’m afraid. The Serhatis’ official position at the moment is this: Provided a state of war exists between us and the Hammers, you are internees, and in accordance with the rules, Serhati has the option, but not the obligation, to parole you so you can return home.”
A soft groan filled the room.
“Hold on, hold on,” Sharma said. “No matter what the Hammers say, I’m pretty sure we can persuade the Serhatis that it is in their interest to return you home, and that’s what we are working to achieve. I will keep you up to date on our progress. One more point to make before I deal with the specific matters you have raised.
“The Hammers. They don’t own this place, and the Serhatis get very angry if anyone suggests they do, so do us all a favor. Don’t. You’ll get your face busted, and you’ll get no sympathy from me. You’ll deserve to have your face busted. And don’t make the mistake that many do when they first come here. Serhatis are dirt poor, and they know it. But they are tough and they have their pride, and to some extent they have a right to be proud. I doubt many Feds could make this place work even half as well as the locals have. So don’t underestimate them. They deal with the Hammers because they have to, because Serhati is finished if they don’t, not because they like them.
“Me? I have a lot of time for the Serhatis. They are good people deep down, and I live in the hope that one day we can wean them off the Hammer teat. But that’s a discussion for another time. Right, what was I saying? Oh, yes, the Hammers. They have enormous influence, and when persuasion doesn’t work, they pay to get what they want. So whatever we want to do, the Hammers will be doing their best to screw us over. We know that, and we will do our best to neutralize their efforts. I will of course keep you posted as to progress.
“Now to your issues. First, vidmail. We’ve finally persuaded the Serhatis to give us bandwidth, which means the embassy mail system can be accessed from your neuronics, so …”
Michael tuned out. Even if he wanted to send a vidmail to Anna, even if he could be sure the Hammers would pass it on, writing one was beyond him. It was not tiredness so much as a … he struggled to find the words to describe how he felt, and flatness—is that even a word? he wondered—came closest. Everything he had been through had crushed him flat mentally and physically, all energy, drive, emotion, appetite, ambition, hope, longing, and desire squeezed out of him like water wrung out of a rag. He was not a person anymore. He just existed, a lump of wetware whose only task was to take things minute by minute.
He let himself slip into a semidoze.
Ambassador Sharma was winding up. “So that’s all from me. Like I said, updates from me will be daily at least, more often if I have anything useful to say. I’ll com them straight to your neuronics along with edited highlights from the holovids back home. If you have any questions, contact the embassy directly. They’ll point you to somebody who can help. Thank you all. Questions?”
After a string of questions—to Michael’s frustration, mostly asked by people who had not been paying attention—the briefing disintegrated into noisy confusion. Michael stayed seated. His plan
for the day was to find a quiet spot to sit out the hours, so he had nowhere better to be. With the room all but empty, Michael was still there when Jaruzelska spotted him. She waved him over to where she and Sharma stood.
“Sir?”
“Michael, the ambassador has some worrying news. Ambassador?”
“Thank you, Admiral. Good to meet you, Michael,” Sharma said, shaking his hand. “Yes, I have a source inside the Serhati government. It seems that the Hammer ambassador was overheard to say that his government will agree to let the internees go home if you and one of your crew, a Lieutenant Kallewi, are transferred to them for whatever passes for a fair trial in the Hammer Worlds.”
Michael’s mouth sagged open. “You’re kidding me, sir. Jeez! They never give up, do they?”
“It’s fair to say, Michael, that they seem to have it in for you.”
“And I know why,” Michael said bitterly, “but Kallewi? What’s that about?”
“He was the commander of Reckless’s marine detachment, yes?”
“Yes, he was.”
“The Hammers say he shot a civilian technician during the attack on their damn antimatter plant. They claim to have vid of the incident from their security holocams.”
For a moment Michael did not know what to say. Chances were that it was bullshit, of course, but in the heat of battle such things had been known to happen. “So where do we go from here?” he asked.
“Well, needless to say, there’ll be no trade-offs. I think we are agreed on that. Admiral?”
Jaruzelska shook her head emphatically. “We certainly are. No trade-offs.”
“Did not think there would be. So let’s sit tight and see how this plays out. Okay?”
Helfort's War Book III Page 30