“You good to go?” Fellsworth asked. “See the green spot?”
“Yes,” Michael said; he licked lips that were suddenly dry.
“Remember, never give or transmit any operational information to anyone unless that green spot is showing. If it turns red, the neuronics bomb will arm; any breach of security after that and it will trash your brain, and you’ll be dead two seconds later. If it’s flashing amber, you are outside a secure facility and must talk neuronics to neuronics, nothing out loud. Got all that?”
Michael nodded; he didn’t trust himself to speak.
Fellsworth laughed. “Cheer up. You’ll get used to it, I promise.”
“I hope so.”
“Right, you asked if what we’re planning will work. Your question is actually two questions. The first is whether we can keep Juggernaut secure until we are ready to launch.”
“And can we?”
“It’s a huge ask, but yes, I think we can. As you now know, everyone involved has a neuronics bomb uploaded; all mission information is security-tagged, even the lowest of low-grade stuff; and the overall environment is very good.”
Michael shook his head. “The environment?”
“The people we work with, even if they are not part of the conspiracy.”
“Ah, you mean Jaruzelska’s psyops campaign.”
“It’s worked, a bit to my surprise. Fleet and the Marine Corps are where they need to be, not every last one of them of course, but enough to put a shell around Juggernaut that Ferrero’s people will find almost impossible to penetrate.”
“But Ferrero’s not alone in this, is she?”
“No, she’s not. The police are … well, they’re the police, so they’re being kept completely in the dark, and so are the intelligence services.”
“What about planetary defense?”
“Well, they’ve never had to fight the Hammers face to face, so they are much more equivocal. Like most Feds, they now see you as a bit of a hero, and they think Ferrero’s gone too far to keep the Hammers happy, but they’re also frightened enough not to want to rock Ferrero’s boat.”
“Which is why General Yilmaz is onboard.”
“Yes. Her first job is to convince the planetary defense brass that the Hammers are not to be trusted; her second is to persuade them to stand back and stay out of our way.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it,” Fellsworth said, her voice flat. “They’ll stick their heads up their fat butts while Fleet and the Marine Corps take all the risks and do all the dying, but as long as that’s all they do, then that’s enough.”
Michael nodded. “Okay. Next question. Let’s assume that we can maintain operational security. What are Juggernaut’s chances of success?”
“Not good enough. The last simulation we did says we have a fifty-fifty chance of meeting our mission objectives.”
Michael blinked. “Wah!” he said softly. “That’s not good. Why?”
“Thanks to the goddamned peace treaty, the Hammers have been able to withdraw most of their fleet to home space. They are many more ships around Commitment than when you dropped dirtside with your three dreadnoughts. But we’re working on it.”
“Kat Sedova. What’s happened to her? And Cortez and Hok.”
“Sedova’s tucked away safely. We’ve relocated her to … well, let’s just say somewhere the Feds and the Hammers won’t find her.”
“Good. I was worried. Cortez and Hok. What about them?”
“They are an integral part of the Juggernaut planning team, right here in Karrigal Creek. They’re running a sim at the moment, but they’ll catch up with you as soon as they can. The admiral’s asked them to brief you on the situation back on Commitment. Now, I should get back to work. You have somewhere to get your head down?”
“I do, thanks.”
“Good. We’re doing another sim of Juggernaut tomorrow morning. Since you’re the only person who’s actually planned and executed an opposed landing on Commitment, the admiral wants you to sit in.”
“Love to.”
“08:00, Conference 4.”
“I’ll be there.”
Michael lay on his bunk and stared at the ceiling.
His mind raced as he churned through all that had happened that incredible day. He shook his head. Dead man walking one minute, alive and kicking the next. So why did he feel so disheartened? No, it was worse than that. He felt terrible, his mind blanketed with a sick, flat feeling, a feeling that everything he had done, all he had been through, all he had put Anna and his family through, none of it mattered a damn.
But he knew why. Anna; that was why. While he was out saving humankind-not that the vast majority of them knew it, and even if they did, they probably wouldn’t gave a shit-she could well be lying dead in the mud back on Commitment with a bullet in her brain, yet another life wasted in the century-old battle to defeat the Hammer of Kraa.
And for all Jaruzelska’s cautious optimism that Juggernaut would succeed, Michael was not so sure. When he had ridden his dreadnoughts down to their fiery deaths on Commitment, the Hammers had been preoccupied fighting the Feds to a standstill. And nobody had ever seen an operation like his Operation Gladiator. Nobody-not the Hammers, not the Feds-would have imagined sacrificing three good ships in a Trojan horse assault the way he had.
Gladiator had succeeded, in part at least, because it had never been done before. So for all Jaruzelska’s talk of diversionary operations, surprise, weight of numbers, superior technology, and so on, the Hammers would never allow it to happen again.
Still, he reminded himself, Jaruzelska was the Federated Worlds’ most experienced combat commander. All he could do was hope that she would find a way. She had to. If she did not, he would never see Anna again.
Exhaustion washed over him, and he closed his eyes. Sleep was beginning to claim him when there was a knock at his door. “Goddamn it,” he muttered, forcing his eyes to open. “Yes, come in,” he called out, forcing an unwilling body to its feet.
The door opened. It was Cortez and Hok. For a moment, they all stood staring at one another. Then Cortez stepped forward and folded Michael into a bone-crushing embrace that left him gasping for breath by the time the NRA general released him. “Michael,” Cortez said, his voice soft, “we owe you.”
Michael flushed, his head bobbing with embarrassment. Then it was Major Hok’s turn to take him in her arms, her body soft and welcoming where Cortez’s had been solid and unyielding; just the smell of her-the soft scent of flowers-was almost overwhelming. For a moment, there was nowhere Michael would rather be, the hard, tangled knot of fear and uncertainty in his stomach easing for the first time since he had been abducted from Asthana.
Hok let him go and stepped back. “Like the general says, we owe you.”
Michael could only shrug his shoulders; he did not trust himself to speak.
“I’ll catch you later,” Cortez said. “Admiral Jaruzelska wants to talk to me.”
“I won’t ask how you’ve been,” Hok said once Cortez had left.
“Just look at me,” Michael said, finding his voice with an effort. “I feel like I look: a million years old.”
Hok broke the awkward silence that followed. “I know it’s late,” she said, “but I was born a Hammer, so I need coffee and lots of it. I’ll fill you in on what’s been happening back home while we get our fix.”
“That would be good. Lead on.”
Michael stared at the holovid screen long after Hok had finished speaking. It was an ugly sight, the cordon of red around the Branxton Ranges speaking more than words ever could of the pressure the Hammers were putting on the NRA’s heartland bases. “That doesn’t look good,” Michael said.
“From a purely military point view, no, it doesn’t,” Hok said, “but we shouldn’t be too pessimistic.”
“Hard not to be.”
“Look at this way. First of all, the Hammers still have not been able to penetrate our perimeter. Two months ago,
the Hammer’s MARFOR 3 tried here-” A finger stabbed at the screen. “-with massive support from Fleet assets in low-earth orbits, and the NRA handed them their asses. All the marines had to show for their efforts was rubble and a shitload of casualties.”
“Just like the last time,” Michael said. “Slow learners, those people.”
“Come, come,” Hok chided, “be fair. We both know it has a lot more to do with the fact that our bases in the Branxton Ranges are close to invulnerable. We have hundreds of kilometers of caves and tunnels buried deep below tens of thousands of acres of limestone karst. They can drop all the bunker busters they like, but in the end they’ve got to come in after us. And when they do, we both know they’ll never get more than a few klicks inside, ’cause that’s when we blow the roof down on them.”
“Which is why we are all here,” Michael said. “Thanks to its bases, the NRA can survive until hell freezes over, but it cannot defeat the Hammers. Well, not unaided, that is, and that’s what Juggernaut is all about.”
“Exactly. But there’s one more thing working in our favor, and that’s the way Chief Councillor Polk and his cronies like to deal with the threats facing them.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Michael said with a shake of the head. “From where I sit, Polk’s tactics have been spectacularly successful. He’s screwed the Federated Worlds over every which way, and he’ll do the same to the rest of humanspace if we’re not careful.”
“All true, but he’s been able to screw you over only because your government played to his strengths.”
“Let me guess: Polk’s willingness to use massive force?” Michael said.
“The Feds believe him capable of anything, even destroying an entire system and killing billions,” Hok replied after a moment’s thought. “Not that he has to go that far. The threat is enough. He fires a couple of antimatter missiles into Terranova nearspace to make the threat real. That scares the crap out of your people, so they elect Caroline Ferrero as moderator, and she promptly folds. In the end, Ferrero gave Polk what he wanted without him actually having to use force.”
Michael grimaced. “He would if he had to.”
“Don’t doubt it. Power is all he cares about. And Polk takes the same approach with his own people: kill thousands to put the fear of Kraa into billions. But he’s a fool. Our assessment is that Polk would have won a free and open election in the first few weeks after the peace treaty simply because people believed that things would change for the better with the war over. Well, they were wrong. Things did not get better; they got worse. Four weeks after the treaty was signed, Polk not only ordered the biggest crackdown on dissidents in Hammer history, he told DocSec to purge the marines and planetary defense as well.”
“What, again? I’m surprised there’s anyone left to purge. Why the hell would he do that?”
“Simple: He doesn’t need them anymore. Oldest trick in the dictator’s handbook.”
“Because if he didn’t, they’d go from asset to threat?’
“Exactly. Anyway, it took DocSec a while to get organized, but when they got going, they really got going. We don’t have accurate figures, but we think the arrests run into the tens of thousands on Commitment alone, and there are a lot more to come.”
Michael shivered. “I suppose that means the DocSec firing squads have been busy?”
“Oh, yes,” Hok said. “They arrested fifty officers from the 5th Marine Brigade three weeks ago; two days later, after a mass show trial lasting all of five minutes, they were all taken out and shot.”
“Okay, I get it,” Michael said. “By cracking down on the minority, Polk thinks he can bluff the majority into falling into line.”
“Precisely.” Hok shook her head. “Bloody man is a fool. If he’d eased up, the Revival would have lost much of its political legitimacy in the eyes of the average Hammer, and the flow of recruits the NRA depends on would have dried up, along with money and supplies. We’d have withered on the vine, and our Branxton bases would have dropped into Polk’s hands without him having to send in the marines. Instead, our support has never been stronger.”
Michael looked skeptical. “That doesn’t help much, surely,” he said.
“It does. Let me tell you; when we launch Juggernaut, we’ll be pushing on an open door. Polk won’t last a month, and that’s because the marines and planetary defense will refuse to fight. Deserters are telling us that the marines are close to mutiny and planetary defense is the same.”
“So why isn’t Polk worried? He should be.”
“Yes, he should. But we think he’s decided that they don’t matter anymore. The marines and planetary defense have both let him down: the marines by failing to destroy our Branxton bases, planetary defense because they let us escape. Now, thanks to the Pascanicians, he will have his antimatter missiles sooner rather than later, and when he does, nobody in humanspace will be able to stand up against him. To rule humanspace, all he needs is the Hammer Space Fleet, and he’s being nice to them … for the moment, at least. So who needs the marines? Who needs planetary defense? Polk doesn’t, not anymore.”
“The man’s insane,” Michael said.
“Maybe, but thank Kraa for it. Makes our job easier.”
“I hope so,” Michael said with obvious feeling.
“Which brings us to the subject of your Anna.”
Michael’s gut twisted. “Ah, yes,” he said, trying not to sound as anxious as he felt, “I was about to ask.”
“Relax. Major Anna Cheung Helfort is fine.”
Michael’s eyebrows shot up. “Major?” he said, incredulous. “I thought she was a captain.”
“Oh, she was.” Hok chuckled. “But we’ve just had word she’s been promoted.”
“What a surprise.” Michael sighed. “I always wondered why she didn’t join the marines, since being a grunt is obviously what she likes doing.”
“She has a gift for it, that’s for sure.”
“Has she stayed with the 120th?” Michael asked, hoping against hope that she’d been transferred somewhere safer.
“She has. She’s been given command of a company.”
Michael’s gut twisted some more. “Good for her,” he forced himself to say. “The 120th is still in the Velmar Mountains?”
“They are, along with the 443rd and the 22nd. They’ve taken a lot of pressure off the Branxtons and have tied down an entire planetary defense division. The latest intelligence summaries say that those Hammers have been hit so hard that only a handful of their formations are fully combat effective.”
Michael knew he should take some comfort in the fact that Anna was up against second-rate troops, but he couldn’t. Anna being Anna, she’d be in the thick of it. “Good to hear,” he said. ”I just wish she knew I was okay.”
“Shit! I’m so sorry, Michael; I meant to tell you earlier. I know what Admiral Jaruzelska said, but General Cortez overruled her. He’s made sure she knows.”
Relief flooded Michael’s body. “That was good of him.”
“Least we could do.”
“Don’t let me forget to thank him.”
“I won’t,” Hok said, getting to her feet. “Now, I’ve got some things I need to do, and if you’re half as tired as you look, I think you should turn in.”
“You’re right, Major,” Michael said, all of a sudden conscious of just how exhausted he was. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“You will.”
Friday, January 2, 2404, UD
Hendrik Island antimatter plant, Commitment
“If you’d like to come this way, gentlemen.”
Trailed by his chief of staff, Polk followed Doctor Ndegwa past a massive blast door and into a tunnel cut through meters of granite. He tried not to think about the billions of tons of rock that lay between him and fresh air. Past a second blast door, the tunnel opened onto a catwalk overlooking a long cavern. The sight took Polk’s breath away. Below a roof studded with massed banks of lights and hung with power cables a
nd air-conditioning ducts, the cavern was packed with a mass of stainless steel pipes and cylinders studded with sensors, valves, and controllers, all hung with thick bundles of cable in a rainbow of colors. It was an enormous three-dimensional puzzle free-to Polk eyes, at least-of logic or structure. How the engineers were able to make sense of it all, he had no idea. His brain ached just looking at it.
“This is Low-Energy Antiproton Facility Number One,” Ndegwa said, waving a hand across the chaos. “LEAF-1 we call it, and it’s the first of the twenty LEAFs we plan to construct.”
“Is it working?” Polk asked, casting a skeptical eye around the cavern. Apart from the rush of the air-conditioning and a myriad of status lights, there was nothing to say that the facility was actually functioning.
“Yes, it is. LEAF-1 came on-stream five weeks ahead of schedule. It’s currently operating at 15 percent of its planned capacity, though we plan to be at 100 percent within six months.”
“Good. I do not want this project to take one day longer than it absolutely has to. The Hammer of Kraa needs its antimatter capability sooner rather than later. Understood?”
Ndegwa nodded. “Yes, sir. And while we’re talking about schedules, there’s something I’d like you to see. This way, please.”
Polk followed the man along the catwalk and into a small meeting room that was empty except for a table on which sat a plasfiber box.
“This,” Ndegwa said, reaching in to pull out an object two-thirds the size of a shoe box, its metallic surface polished to a mirror finish and unbroken except for two ports and a digital readout, “is an antimatter container from our new Mark-5 °C warhead, and it has been charged with antihydrogen produced by the Hendrik Island plant.”
Polk reared back; knowing how close he was to the unimaginable power contained inside the container, he could not help himself. “Kraa’s blood,” he hissed, “are you fucking mad?”
“It’s quite safe, sir,” Ndegwa said, dropping the warhead back into its box with a thud that rattled the table and made Polk flinch.
“I know it is,” Polk said, cursing himself for letting Ndegwa see his fear. “It was just … wait. Did you just say it’s filled with antihydrogen produced here?”
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