The Final Battle (21 page)

“Your list,” Michael said to Tekin, “it’s been prioritized?”

Tekin nodded. “Yes. The people the Hammers can least afford to lose are at the top.”

“Do you need any more from us?”

“No,” Gidisu said. “My ops planners will brief the teams; they’ll go out tonight.”

Michael frowned. “The Hammers have the Branxtons well and truly sewn up. How will you get everyone out?”

Gidisu smiled. “With the help of our friends inside the Hammer marines, usually in one of their truckbots. And if that’s not enough, we’ll do what we always do: resort to bribery, corruption, and threats of extreme violence. Works every time. Chief Councillor Polk likes to talk about the ring of steel he has put around the Branxtons, but that’s bullshit Hammer propaganda. His ring has more holes in it than a colander. We can always get our people out.”

“What about DocSec?”

“After what they’ve done to the marines, it’s a brave DocSec trooper who tries to stop a marine convoy to run identity checks. DocSec won’t try unless they’re in company strength, and even then they prefer not to.”

“It gets better,” Tekin said. “Last week we airlifted an entire battalion and all their gear from the Branxtons to the Velmar Mountains, 3,000 kilometers, and all courtesy of a friendly heavy lifter crew from the 662nd Marine Squadron.”

“How the hell did you do that?”

“The lifter was returning to Yamaichi for routine maintenance. It made an unscheduled landing to check out a problem, and our guys hopped aboard. Of course, it never went anywhere near Yamaichi. The lifter’s now tucked away in a cave in the Velmars. You never know; it might come in handy one day.”

Michael shook his head at the brass-balled audacity of it all. “General Vaas said the marines weren’t all they seemed to be.”

“They’re not,” Tekin said, “though the general is more positive than we are about the marines’ combat ability. Even after all they’ve been through, they’ll still fight if they have to.”

“We’ll see,” Michael said. “Anyway, I think we’re done here. Can you keep me posted, Major?”

“Of course.”

Michael followed Tekin and Gidisu out and headed for the
ENCOMM
canteen. He grabbed a bowl of gruel—the only way to describe the green-brown slop produced by the antiquated foodbots—and a mug of coffee and found a quiet corner to eat a belated breakfast. It was a struggle, and not because the food was so indifferent. No, it was something more basic, and it took him a while to work it out.

When he did, it was simple: Right now, he had nothing to do. Of course, Vaas being Vaas, there’d be another task for him, but only when the general found the time to dig one out.

Until then, he would be just another staff officer hanging around headquarters doing not much while others risked their lives.

Screw that
, he thought. Back on Terranova, he had promised to hunt down and kill Polk and Hartspring, and that was what he would do. But Anna came first; more than anything he wanted to be with her again, if only for an hour.

And he knew exactly what he needed to do to get away from
ENCOMM
and back to her. Dumping the remains of his meal in the recycling, he set off to find General Vaas.

• • •

“Sergeant Shinoda. Can you spare a minute?”

“Sure.” Shinoda stopped; her eyes narrowed. “Hey, wait! Are those colonel’s eagles?”

Michael’s face flushed with embarrassment. “Uh, yeah, they are.”

“Colonel Helfort … hmmm,” Shinoda said. “It does have a certain ring to it.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Michael muttered; he knew he’d never hear the last of it. “I know you were planning to join the 3rd of the 120th, but I need you for a mission.”

“Best I hear what it is, then.”

“You will, but before I do, you need to know that it’s risky, so you can say no.”

“Okay.”

• • •

Shinoda stood silent for a while when Michael had finished. “Hell of a mission,” she said, “not that I’m all that much the wiser.”

“Sorry about that,” Michael said, “but that’s just the way things are. Think of it as taking the long way around to get to the 3rd.”

“So why me? There must be hundreds of people here who could do the job.”

“Two reasons. First, I’d trust you with my life. Can’t say that about anyone else.”

“Okay.”

“Second, after we’ve rubbed in a bit of dirt and put on crappy clothes, we look like Hammers. Unlike most of the Feds around here; they’re all too big.”

Shinoda sighed. “Makes sense,” she said, “so I suppose I’ll have to say yes. I don’t like pissing off colonels.”

“Thanks.”

“But you’ll need to explain to me where we’ll get our IDs from. Without them, we won’t last an hour out there.”

“I don’t know how, but Major Gidisu says she can organize them. They’ll be good for only forty-eight hours, but that should be enough.”

Shinoda nodded. “I’ll tell the team I’m not going with them.”

Michael put a datastick into Shinoda’s hand. “Ask one of the guys to make sure my wife gets this,” he said. “I’ll be in
ENCOMM
reading intelligence reports if you need me.”

• • •

Two hours later, Michael shut down the workstation he’d been allocated by Major Davoodi—an antique holovid atop a battered plasfiber desk tucked away in a laser-cut alcove away from
ENCOMM
’s barely controlled chaos—and sat back. The strength of the
NRA
’s intelligence networks was impressive. Some of the reports he’d read had come from senior sources, some inside the Hammer military and others inside DocSec.
None of them are patriots,
Michael decided, turning to the next report.
They’re just rats leaving a sinking ship, and nobody should forget it.

A voice broke Michael’s concentration. It was Davoodi; he put down a welcome mug of coffee. “Thought you might like a brew.”

“You’re a mind reader, Major,” Michael said gratefully. “I’ve just read the reports on those poor Hammer bastards in the 288th. They must regret the day they decided to mutiny.”

“They won’t have long to regret anything.” Davoodi’s face was grim. “We’ve just got word that DocSec is planning to execute the ringleaders tomorrow.”

“They don’t waste time, do they?”

Davoodi laughed, a short, bitter laugh without the slightest trace of humor. “They convened an investigating tribunal, mustered what was left of the regiment, found them all guilty, sentenced some to be shot and the rest to the mass driver mines on the Moons of Hell … and that all took less than five minutes.”

Michael broke the silence that followed. “But it is significant … that even the Hammer marines have had enough, I mean.”

“You’re right. People like Polk don’t seem to understand that you can’t go on beating people forever. In the end, they will fight back.”

“And they are, which is good for us, I guess.”

“It is. And it’s not just the marines. The riots on Faith have flared up again, only this time they’ve spread to Ksedicja and Cascadia. With a little help from Revivalist agents provocateurs,” he added with an evil grin.

“I’d say the Hammers made a big mistake transferring
MARFOR 21
back to Commitment. The guy in charge of security on Faith—”

“General Killian.”

“Yes, Killian; he must be really pissed.”

Davoodi nodded. “That’s what we hear, not that complaining is doing him any good. Even though the transfer of
MARFOR 21
to Commitment left him dangerously understrength, we don’t think he’ll get his marines back no matter how stretched planetary defense and DocSec are. All Polk cares about is keeping us bottled up here.”

“He’s right about that,” Michael said. “Once the
NRA
takes McNair, it’s game over, and he knows it.”

“Here’s hoping,” Davoodi said, raising his coffee, “and here’s to Juggernaut. The beginning of the end.”

Michael raised his mug in response. “To Juggernaut,” he echoed. “The beginning of the end.”

Wednesday, June 30, 2404, UD
Branxton Base, Commitment

“I’m letting you do this only because we need all the help we can get making Juggernaut a success. You do know that, Colonel Helfort?”

“I understand, General,” Michael said with a smile.

Vaas shook his head in mock despair and patted Michael on the back. “Just don’t mess it up, that’s all. And stay on Tactical Alfa. J-Day might change, and it’s critical that you don’t go early.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You must be Shinoda,” Vaas said when the sergeant appeared. “Good to meet you,” he added. “Now, your job is to keep this man safe and well, and if there’s a choice between getting out alive and completing the mission, then getting out alive takes precedence. Is that clearly understood?”

“Understood, sir,” Shinoda replied.

“Good luck, Colonel,” Vaas said as he turned to leave.

“What was all that about?” she asked as they watched Vaas walk away.

Michael sighed. “He didn’t want me to do this, so I had to lean on him a bit. It turns out I have a talent for emotional blackmail.”

Shinoda shook her head. “Obviously,” she said. “Come on; we should go, col—ah, husband.”

“Fall in behind me, woman,” Michael said.

“Why are Hammer men such pigs?” Shinoda grumbled sotto voce as they set off.

• • •

Shinoda looked around with ill-concealed disapproval as they emerged from the maglev station onto what the maps said was Gwalia’s Grand Plaza. “What a total shithole,” she said.

Michael had to agree.
Grand Plaza, my ass
, he thought. Dominated by an ornate temple to the Hammer of Kraa, it was a tired and dirty town square much like thousands of others across the Hammer Worlds, he supposed. And there were an awful lot of DocSec personnel around. He swallowed hard. The sooner they were out of the place, the better.

Michael spotted a battered mobibot off to one side of the plaza, its green paint barely visible under what looked like a century’s worth of mud, dust, and dents. “There,” he said.

“Nothing but the best when you work for you know who,” Shinoda whispered.

“I don’t care as long as the damn thing works.”

And it did, surprisingly well for something that looked like it belonged on the scrap heap, humming softly as it sped out of Gwalia down the main highway northeast to Martinsen.

Ten minutes later, Michael slowed the mobibot. “Bit of history coming up,” he said, “on the right in a couple of klicks.”

“What history?”

“Gwalia planetary ground defense base … what’s left of it. I crashed the
Red River
into the place,” Michael said, his voice matter-of-fact, “More than half a million tons of perfectly good dreadnought moving very, very fast. Needless to say, it was completely trashed. Here we are—holy fuck!”

Michael had seen holovids of the Gwalia base both before and after the
Red River
had come calling, but the sheer scale of the destruction his attack had inflicted still took his breath away. Even now, many months later and with reconstruction work well under way, the place was a wasteland of flame-scarred ceramcrete studded everywhere with the shattered remains of buildings and wrecked aircraft bulldozed into sad heaps.

“You did this?” Shinoda whispered as the devastated remnants of Gwalia rolled past.

“Yup. Taught the Hammers a lesson they won’t forget in a hurry, that’s for sure.”

“I’m not surprised the bastards want to get their hands on you.”

Then the base was gone. Nothing was said for a long time.

Eventually a sign appeared. Gwalia County Park, it read. Michael found the turnoff. Another twenty minutes saw them in the park, a sprawling well-forested reserve dissected by creeks feeding into the Jerzic River, which flowed westward to the sea north of McNair. To the east, lay the enormous bulk of the Velmar Mountains. Like the Branxtons, they were a single expanse of limestone lifted into a high plateau that dominated the horizon.

And somewhere in all that vastness were Anna and her battalion. Michael forced himself not to think about her.

The briefing they had been given by Gidisu’s people had said the park was busy only at weekends, and so it proved to be. For a good hour they cruised its network of narrow lanes, methodically working their way over to the eastern boundary in the process. They did not see another soul.

“I think that’s enough, and that’ll do nicely,” Shinoda said finally. She pointed to a small picnic area that was set back from the road. “Park up over there.”

Michael eased the mobibot off the road. He stopped out of sight of any passersby and under the canopy of a massive fig tree. He climbed out and stretched to ease the stiffness from his back. He looked around. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s been here for a while,” he said.

“It’s as good as we’ll get.” She looked around to get her bearings. “Okay,” she went on, pointing to the east. “The Jerzic River’s half a klick that way with the missile base another five after that— Down!” she hissed as, without any warning, she hurled herself at Michael and knocked him to the ground. “Make it look real,” she whispered.

“What the—”

Whatever Michael was about to say was lost as Shinoda’s lips clamped down onto his. He was too surprised by the sheer speed and ferocity of Shinoda’s attack to put up anything more than token resistance, resistance that vanished altogether when his senses were overwhelmed by the warmth and scent of her body, his tongue flicking out to meet hers.

Shinoda lifted her head only a fraction but enough to break the kiss. “I know we have history, and I know I said to make it real,” she whispered, her breath warm and sweet on his face, “but don’t get carried away, spacer boy.”

“Like to tell me what you’re doing?” Michael whispered back.

“Drone, you idi—sir.”

Shinoda didn’t have to say it. Michael did feel like an idiot. He could hear the steady, thrumming resonance of engines. A minute later a drone shot overhead and disappeared into the distance.

Pinned to the ground, Michael waited for Shinoda to let him go, something she appeared reluctant to do. Finally she rolled off him and onto her back. She lay there, staring up into the dense mass of greenery that hung over their heads. “Pity about that,” she said.