“All green, sir,” came the replies. The voices were thick with apprehension.
The clock ran off the seconds, and the time arrived. Michael armed the emergency jettison mechanism and blew the airlock doors off. Explosive decompression turned the air inside the pod to a thick white mist. His skinsuit stiffened around his body against the hard vacuum. He hoped that Shinoda and her team were okay.
Michael took a deep breath and threw off his safety harness; he forced himself into the airlock, his efforts to squeeze his skinsuited body through made more difficult by the drop shell strapped to his back. “See you on the other side, guys,” he said.
He pushed himself out into space and was greeted by the awful sight of the dying Starlight. She was finished, her hull slashed and lacerated by antiship lasers. As he watched, the first of the antiballistic missiles punched deep into her carcass; its warhead exploded, blasting a massive cloud of flame and debris outward. A second missile followed, then another, and another.
The end came fast. A missile lanced down to the Starlight’s core. An instant later, the ship shivered, then vanished, enveloped by a searing blue-white flash that consumed the entire hull and sent a sphere of incandescent gas into the void.
And when the gas had gone, so too had the Starlight.
Clear of the lifepod, Michael tumbled through the vacuum of space. Now all that mattered was survival. Shinoda and her marines either made it or they didn’t, and there was not a damn thing he could do to change things.
Thanks to the hours spent in the sims, it was all very straightforward as long as he did not think too long or too often about Commitment’s unforgiving surface, which was invisible in the darkness below him. A final check confirmed that the drop shell was good to go. Michael gave the go-ahead. High-pressure gas drove reagents into containers of polymer smartfoam. Foam boiled in the vacuum. Foam expanded to fill the preformed plasfiber shell. Foam wrapped itself around Michael’s skinsuited body.
The foam hardened, and Michael was sitting in a crash-resistant cocoon inside a heat-resistant shield. The master AI orchestrating the process fired the solid-fuel boosters to align the shell for reentry. The deceleration kicked Michael hard in the back.
He steeled himself for the ride down and prayed that he would look like just another piece of debris from the ill-fated Starlight heading out of orbit for cremation in Commitment’s atmosphere, a piece of junk that Hammer planetary defense would not think worth a second glance.
It was a rough ride down, worse than anything the sims had put him through. It was so rough that Michael gave up worrying about the Hammers shooting at him, worrying instead about whether his brain would disintegrate under the pressure of a relentless battering, worrying about being consumed in the ball of fire marking his fall to ground, worrying that the flimsy shell would fall apart in the face of the unbelievable punishment.
When will this ever end? he wondered.
But it did end. So slowly Michael was not even sure it was happening, the pummeling eased and the fiery trail thinned until the shell was no longer needed. The AI blew the shell off and dropped his body into a sickening free fall that ended only when the container on his back popped open. Michael came to a vicious stop as his parachute bit into air thick with cloud and rain, the AI steering him down through the murk toward a rendezvous that only it could see.
“Two hundred meters,” the AI told him, “one hundred … fifty … brace … thirty, twenty, ten, brace!”
Michael smashed down through a thin canopy of trees and hit the ground with a thud. His legs absorbed the impact, and he was thrown sideways onto the rain-soaked ground. “Fuuuuck,” he whispered. He flicked his visor up to let the rain fall cool and sweet on to his face, “I made it.”
Seconds later, a black shape thumped into the ground only meters from where he lay, followed by three more in quick succession. There should be one more, Michael thought. He scrambled to his feet to strip off his skinsuit and begin the painful business of gathering in a wet parachute.
Shinoda emerged out of the gloom. “You okay?” she said.
“Sure am,” Michael said. “Anyone not make it?”
“Spassky.” She paused and spit on the ground. “His shell never deployed; bloody thing was a piece of garbage,” she went on. “Next time I’m on Scobie’s, I’m going to kill that son of a bitch Chang.”
The loss of the lance corporal hit Michael hard. “The poor bastard,” Michael muttered. “He must have known he wouldn’t make it.”
“Yeah.” There was a moment’s silence. “Anyway,” Shinoda said, “now we need to get the hell out of here.” She looked around. “First thing, chromaflage capes on and weapons checked … all green? Good. Nugget, Mitch. Start digging. Give me a 2-meter-deep hole in ten minutes or I’ll kick your asses. Stick! Find everything we don’t need and put it in the hole.”
“Yes, sarge,” Prodi said.
Shinoda turned to Michael. “You get up that hill and keep an eye out,” she said. “I don’t think the Hammers were too interested in us, but you never know. They might send drones to have a look.”
“Yes, sergeant,” Michael said. Machine pistol in hand, he shouldered his pack and set off.
Monday, June 28, 2404, UD
NRA command center, Branxton Ranges, Commitment
General Vaas looked up when one of his personal aides led Michael in.
“Lieutenant Helfort, sir,” Major Davoodi said.
“Thanks, Major,” Vaas said. He stood and came around the desk to where Michael waited. “Reentry drop shells!” He shook his head. “Insane, absolutely insane.”
“Not the way I planned to come back, General,” Michael said as they shook hands. He thought the man looked exhausted, the lines incised over prominent cheekbones deeper than ever. But the eyes had not changed. Even when the man smiled, they stared deep into Michael’s soul.
“I can’t tell you how good it is to have you back, Michael,” Vaas said. He put a hand on Michael’s shoulder. “You got my message that Anna’s alive and well?”
“I did, thank you, General. I’ve put in a request to join her. I think my spacer days are over.”
“We’ll talk about that later. The good news is that Lieutenant Colonel Anna Cheung Helfort has been a right pain in the ass. Not to me, of course. To the Hammers.”
Michael blinked. “Did you just say Lieutenant Colonel?”
“A well-deserved promotion,” Vaas said with a huge grin. “We’ve given her command of the 120th’s 3rd Battalion. That’s where most of you Feds have ended up.” He turned to the wall-mounted holovid screen that dominated one side of the limestone cell he called his office. “Let me show you how the war’s going.”
Vaas pulled up a tactical display that summarized the NRA’s current tactical situation. Michael drew in a sharp breath at the sight.
“No, it’s not pretty,” Vaas admitted.
It wasn’t. Michael didn’t bother to count the Hammer units arrayed around the half million square kilometers of limestone karst the NRA called home; there were too many. “Lot of Hammer marines out there, General,” he said. “That’s new.”
“Even the dumbest Hammer general was able to work out that Planetary Ground Defense Force troops are no match for the NRA. I’ve lost count of how many PGDF units we’ve torn apart. So Polk managed to convince the Defense Council that they had no choice but to send in the marines.”
“Is it as bad as it looks?”
“If you’re Jeremiah Polk sitting in your air-conditioned bunker staring at holovid screens, status boards, and tactical displays and you believe the reports you’re given, then yes, it looks bad for us.”
“I hear a ‘but,’” Michael said.
Vass nodded. “You do. Let me see … this is MARFOR 8’s area of operations. They sit across our resupply routes down from northern Maranzika, and here—” He pointed to the town of Daleel. “—is where their 8th Brigade is. Five thousand well-trained, superbly equipped marines. Best unit in the Hammer order of bat
tle.”
“Where’s the ‘but,’ General?”
“You remember Operation Medusa?’
Michael grimaced. “How could I forget?” he said. The Hammer’s operation to take the NRA Branxton base had given him his first taste of ground combat. He’d hated it: the chaos, the dirt, the smoke, the noise, the sound of hypersonic rounds tearing the air around him, the way death lay waste to those around him, the dead so close that he could smell the metallic, coppery reek of blood hanging in the air.
“Well, as is the Hammer way, Polk had anyone even remotely responsible for Medusa’s failure taken out and shot. He started with the commanding general, Baxter, and worked his way down. These guys here—” Again he pointed to the icon that marked the MARFOR 8’s position. “—lost every officer above the rank of colonel.”
“Shit.”
“And Polk did not stop there. He even had a couple of platoon commanders shot.”
“Let me guess. Polk thinks the 8th is combat-effective, whereas it’s—”
“A fucking mess. The 8th’s commanding general and his staff are too frightened to pass any bad news back up the line, so they don’t. We have our people on the inside. They tell me that if we attacked them, they’d fold like the proverbial house of cards. And the rest of MARFOR 8 is not much better.”
“What about the rest?” Michael asked.
“MARFOR 6 is probably the best of them. Of all the force elements involved in the Medusa fiasco, they performed the best, so they got off lightly. MARFOR 11’s somewhere in between. But Polk’s kidding himself if he thinks these assholes are a match for us.”
“And Anna? What’s the 120th up to?”
“They’re dug in northeast of McNair, in the Velmar Mountains. They are part of 9 Brigade, and their job is to keep some of the pressure off the Branxtons. And thanks to your Anna and the rest of them, it’s working. They’ve given the Hammers one hell of a beating. A bit too good, actually.”
Michael did not like the sound of that. “Too well?”
“Yes. Thanks to that Kraa-damned peace treaty with the Feds, the Hammers were able to transfer three marine forces—MARFORs 21, 33, and 92—in from Faith; 33 and 92 were sent south, and MARFOR 21 has been deployed across the Calderon Gap to make sure our 9th Brigade doesn’t pose any threat to McNair City. But what they don’t know is that we’ve managed to get a second brigade up there. It’s taken us months to do it, and now we’re about to teach the new boys one hell of a lesson.”
If it were possible, Michael’s heart sank even more; the Hammers outnumbered the NRA three to one. “One hell of a lesson.”
“Operation Caradoc,” Vaas said, grim-faced. “Part of the deception plan for Juggernaut. And speaking of Juggernaut, thank Kraa you got through with the latest plans and those brevity codes. There are so many damn Hammer ships over this planet, we haven’t been able to get messages in or out for the last month.”
“You didn’t have the latest date?” Michael asked, incredulous.
“No, we did not. We’d have been sitting on our asses twiddling our thumbs when your guys arrived, and that would not have been good.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” he said.
“To take the Hammers’ eyes off Juggernaut, we have to make them think the NRA is trying to break out of the Branxtons. We hope … we think Operation Caradoc will distract them enough to let our people take out the antiballistic missile installations around McNair. We’ll also mount attacks on the planetary defense bases at Qian and Kraneveldt, and speaking of Kraneveldt,” Vaas said, turning to Michael, “they still haven’t finished rebuilding after you trashed the place.”
“That seems like a lifetime ago, General,” Michael said, his voice soft as he recalled the way his hijacked lander’s Henschel HKS-30 cannons had chewed their way through billions of dollars of Hammer hardware, with hypervelocity depleted uranium slugs stitching lines of red dots across ceramcrete aprons, the towering columns of flame-shot black smoke rising skyward, and Corporal Yazdi’s adrenaline-fueled triumph as she took out another flier, only to end up in an unmarked grave on a rain-drenched hillside.
“You did well.”
“Only if we can finish this. What about the marine bases?”
“We’ll mount battalion-strength attacks against Besud, Amokran, and Yamaichi. Beslan Island we can’t do much about; it’s too hard to get to, but we will run truck bombs into its main gate and perimeter defenses. Won’t achieve anything except a lot of smoke and noise, but it’ll add to the confusion.”
Michael put his hand up. “Hold on, General,” he said. “Battalion-strength attacks against marine force bases? I’m sorry, but are you nuts?”
Vaas laughed. “Probably, but have some faith in me. They are only diversionary attacks.”
“Still a huge risk.”
“Not really. The NRA has a secret weapon: all the marines Polk had shot.”
Michael looked skeptical. “I’m sure,” he said, “that there are a lot of marines who’d happily cut Polk a new asshole, but that’s because they’re pissed at what he’s done. They won’t sit on their asses if the NRA attacks them.”
“No, they won’t, but we don’t need them to. All we need is panic and indecision, and thanks to the ax that Polk hangs over the neck of every planetary defense and marine commander, believe me when I say there’ll be plenty of that about.”
Michael did not look convinced. “And how can you make sure of that?”
“Let me see … Take Yamaichi. The commanding officer of the marine air wing is one of ours, along with most of his staff. The man’s uncle was shot after Medusa, so he didn’t need much persuading to lend us a hand. And Besud will find that a large percentage of its ground-attack landers are combat-ineffective as well.”
“You can do that?”
“We think so. We own the specialist unit that maintains their fire-control systems.”
“What about Amokran?” Michael asked even though something told him that he would not like what Vaas was about to tell him.
“Best we could do is a couple of senior officers in one of their combat logistics battalions. We’ve given Amokran to Anna’s battalion …”
“Oh, no,” Michael whispered.
“… and that’s because the 3rd is one of the best units we have in the NRA, so I’m afraid they get the hardest targets.”
“Can’t argue with success, I suppose,” Michael said, his voice stiff.
“No, you can’t, not in this business. Now, what’s next? Oh, yes. What to do with you. Now, I know this will come as a disappointment, but I don’t want you joining the 3rd.”
Michael blinked; he had assumed the transfer was just a formality. “It doesn’t bother me that Anna’s the battalion commander, sir.”
“I’m sure it doesn’t, but it’s not that. I have other plans for you. Others may have taken the Juggernaut idea and run with it, but it was your idea, just as what comes next was your idea. Sending you out there,” Vaas said, waving an arm, “in the field with an assault rifle in your hand would be a criminal waste of your talents …”
Maybe so, General, Michael thought, keeping his face wooden, but that means I’ll be spending far too much time away from Anna.
“… and before you tear my head off, I know what you’re thinking. Anna, right?”
“Was I that obvious, sir?”
Vaas chuckled. “I’m psychic, remember?”
“So everyone keeps telling me.”
“Look, seeing her won’t be a problem, because I want you to be my roving eyes and ears, someone who’s not part of the formal command structure, my Devil’s advocate, if you like.”
“If that’s what you want, sir.”
“It is. You’ll be … let me see … yes, let’s call you my aide-de-camp.”
“Sounds good, sir,” Michael said. “For a moment I thought you wanted to bury me somewhere in the bowels of ENCOMM.”
“Not a chance, my boy. So trust me, you’ll find plenty of opportunities to visi
t the Velmars.”
“Thank you, General.”
“Right. The final run-through for Juggernaut is this afternoon. I’d like you to sit in on it, tell me what you think.”
“I’ll be there, and thanks for giving me so much time. I know how busy you are.”
“It’s nothing less than you deserve. Anything else?”
“Colonel Hartspring?”
“Now there’s a coincidence.” Vaas’s eyes narrowed. “I haven’t forgotten what Hartspring tried to do to you and Anna, and I don’t suppose you have either.”
“How can I? He hasn’t given up.”
“What’s the scumbag up to now?”
“He runs a unit called Team Victor. It’s a personal project of the chief councillor’s. When I was in jail waiting to be … you know … a message was smuggled in to tell me Team Victor was planning to kidnap Anna and hand her over to DocSec, and … you can guess the rest.”
“That’s answered a few questions we had,” Vaas said. He shook his head, his face a puzzled frown. “But why would they do that?”
“Polk didn’t think I was hurting enough, so he decided to make me really suffer. which I did,” Michael whispered.
“Kraa!” Vaas hissed. “They are something, those people. But why are you telling me?”
“I’m going to hunt Hartspring down and kill him, and when I’ve done that, I’m going after Polk. The time’s not yet right, but when it is, I want your word that you’ll let me do what I have to do.”
“Ah,” Vaas said, “that’s a tough one. You are one of my best assets, Michael. What if I still need you?”
Michael shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll go anyway,” he said, “but I’d feel a lot better if you said okay.”
“What the hell, fine.” Vaas sighed. “When the time’s right, come and ask. Unless you are the only thing that stands between us and total defeat, I’ll say yes.”
Vaas’s aide appeared. “General, the staff meeting?” he said.
“Yeah, sorry, Major,” Vaas said. “I’ll be there in a second. Michael, I have to go.”
“Thanks for everything, General. I know how busy you are.”
The Final Battle Page 15