"Operational security? About what?"
"I'm not sure you've got clearance."
"Anna!" Michael snapped. "Stop talking in riddles and tell me what the fuck you're on about. Oh, shit, sorry," he added. "It's just… just that I can't…"
"Look who's talking in riddles," Anna said. "Let me guess. You're not stupid; well, most of the time you're not, that is."
"Gee, thanks."
"Don't mention it, spacer. Anyway, I take it you've worked out that a hut in the middle of the desert would be easier to defend than Perdan. Am I right?"
Michael nodded. "I had, and it's been bothering me. The thought of you trapped here…" His voice trailed off.
"You are such an idiot, Michael Helfort."
"Me? Why?"
"Well, for not having faith in ENCOMM, that's why. I know they'll throw troopers at the Hammers, but the sacrifice has to be justified by the payoff, so trying to hold on to a town like this… well, Vaas and his staff aren't that dumb."
"They're not? What happened to all that 'hold at all costs' stuff they included in our briefing?"
Anna snorted. "Window dressing."
"Had us fooled," Michael muttered.
"Can't be helped; it was meant to, and if it convinces the Hammers, fooling a dim-witted Fed flyboy will have been well worth it."
Michael did not know whether to laugh or scream, so he contented himself with a stern look. "Anna! Tell me what the plan is or I'll… I'll…"
"What, flyboy? What will you do?" Anna said, her face lit by a mischievous grin. "Do tell."
"Anna, please," Michael said, trying with no success to keep the pleading out of his voice. "I hate it when you do this to me. Come on! I've been worried sick about you."
"Okay, okay. Simple fact is we're not staying here. We're not going to try to hold Perdan."
"What? You're not?"
"No, we're not. See them over there?" she said, pointing at a small collection of plasfiber crates.
"Yeah. Mortar rounds, judging from their markings. So?"
"They're not what they seem. Each one of those holds a nasty little NRA invention. They call it the area denial weapon, ADW for short."
"Never heard of it."
"Nor had we until last week. Here, let me send you some vid. It shows one in action."
Half closing his eyes, Michael ran the vid Anna commed him. The clip started with a close-up shot of what looked like a large beach ball, its silver skin marred by mounting brackets and junction boxes sprouting a mix of power and data cables. It looked familiar, but try as he might, Michael could not work out what it was. Four pairs of hands reached into frame and, with an obvious effort, lifted the ball bodily and dropped it onto a foamalloy insert inside a case. A pair of hands connected a cluster of wires coming from a small gray box mounted inside the case to wires from the beach ball, then put a foam-padded lid in place. The image pulled back to a long shot as the handlers withdrew; Michael now saw that the box was sitting alone in a small clearing surrounded by trees. A voice started a countdown. At zero, the holocam shook violently, overwhelmed by a savage flash of white. When vision returned, Michael was shocked to see the results: For hundreds of meters all around, trees had been stripped of their leaves, trunks flayed back to bare wood, smaller branches torn off and hurled outward.
"Holy shit," Michael said, stunned. "What is that?"
"Neat, eh? That, my flyboy friend, was a microfusion plant stripped out of a truckbot. Impressive, eh?"
"You're kidding me!"
"No, I'm not. Hammers must have been confused, wondering why so many truckbots have been stolen in the last few months."
"How the hell were they shipped in? You can't backpack them in. They weigh a ton." Something clicked. "Oh, shit," he said. "Don't tell me. Those containers we brought in this morning. They weren't… Tell me Widowmaker hasn't airlifted in tons of stolen mobibot microfusion plants. Please tell me."
"Yeah, you did." Anna grinned and nodded her head. "You're not so dumb, after all."
Michael's head went down. "Oh," was all he could say.
There was a long silence while Michael struggled to decide whether to be angry at the NRA's deceit or impressed by its ingenuity. Since he and the rest of Widowmaker's crew had survived-how he had no idea; the Hammers had a relaxed attitude to safety, and their truckbot engineering was a good fifty years behind the Fed's-he picked the latter.
"I think I get it now," he said at last. "Perdan is seeded with the nasty little fuckers, especially around the airport. Meanwhile, convinced that the NRA will fight to the death, the Hammers scrape together all the troops and armor they can lay their hands on. Just before they attack, the NRA sneaks away, leaving behind some brave sucker to fire the ADWs. The Hammers discover Perdan is theirs, walk in, put landers down after their combat engineers have made sure the city isn't littered with claymores-nobody would think to worry about old mortar boxes-and then, while they are all standing around scratching their nuts, wondering what the hell the NRA was playing at… bingo. Up go the ADWs, taking with them the best part of the Perdan relief force."
"There you are," Anna said. "I keep telling everyone you're not as dumb as you look!"
"You are a heartless bitch, Lieutenant Anna Helfort."
"Respect, flyboy, respect. Trooper Anna Cheung Helfort, please."
"Sorry," Michael said.
"Come on, help me up here. Once I've checked in with the medics, I need to get back. Don't want my section leader thinking I'm loafing."
Late that night, Michael lay alongside Anna, the pair of them curled under her chromaflage cape, incessant rain driving cold out of an overcast sky, fingers of water worming their way past his defenses to soak into his clothes. It was miserable, and Michael would not have swapped it for anything.
For the umpteenth time, he wondered about ENCOMM's plan for Perdan. If the deception held, the NRA was going to hand the Hammers their bloodiest defeat ever. It was a breath-takingly ambitious plan, and Michael prayed with every fiber of his body that it worked.
But…
For all its ingenuity, for all the damage it would do, for all the lives it would snuff out, the victory ENCOMM hoped to achieve at Perdan spoke volumes for the fundamental weaknesses of the NRA, weaknesses that condemned them never to be able to hold their battlefield gains outside the Branxtons. That was what troubled Michael to the point where a corrosive mix of self-doubt and guilt was beginning to eat away at him.
Even if the Hammers recaptured Perdan, even if its recapture cost the Hammers thousands of PGDF and marine lives, ENCOMM's victory would be a hollow one; it would contribute nothing to ending the war. Tuesday, November 20, 2401, UD Perdan, Commitment
A shape slithered out of the darkness. "Helfort," it whispered.
Michael started to reply before realizing belatedly that he was not the only Helfort around.
"Yes, Corp?" Anna said.
"Pull back to Papa Golf in five minutes," the shape said softly. "You're the last to leave in this sector, so for Kraa's sake, keep quiet. The Hammers have settled down for the night, and we want it to stay that way. Trip wires and claymores set?"
"Yes, Corp. All armed."
"Good. Five minutes."
"Roger that." The figure slithered away. "Michael," Anna said. "You ready?"
"Yes," Michael said, trying not to think about the fact that less than 500 meters separated where he and Anna were holed up and the Hammer's forward defenses-a shifting chain of slugs backed up by sensors linked to fixed defenses: mines, claymores, autofiring cannon, and microgrenade launchers all programmed to scour the ground clean of anything that moved. Behind them, dug in along the banks of a small stream, was a battalion of PGDF soldiers, and farther back was what ENCOMM intelligence reports said was a company of heavy artillery. It was a terrifying proposition to be so close to such overwhelming force, to be so alone, with only a handful of slugs for support if the Hammers tried anything.
The seconds ticked away, one eternity at a
time. "Time," Anna hissed at last. "You go first."
Michael started to protest, then decided not to. Anna was ten times the foot soldier he would ever be. Taking firm hold of his rifle, he adjusted his chromaflage cape and backed out of the foxhole on his belly, eyes scanning the ground toward the Hammer front line for the slightest movement. There was none, and Anna followed, a shapeless blur of black oozing its way backward.
It was a long, painful crawl; finally, Anna signaled Michael to stop. "That's enough. We can walk out from here but stay low. Come on."
With that, she was off, leaving Michael to wonder how she kept going. Jeez! She had been wounded only days before, and here she was, acting like nothing had happened. Anna might look like a china doll, but underneath she was pure unalloyed steel, and he should never forget it.
Papa Golf was the section rally point, a small rock outcrop thrusting up out of the forest 100 meters from the Manivi River, an exit route cut through the encircling Hammers and kept open only after a series of bloody engagements had persuaded the Hammers they had better things to do than worry about a few NRA troopers getting away from certain defeat. Anna and Michael were the last to arrive, her section corporal waving her on.
"Where the hell have you been, Helfort? Come on, for Kraa's sake!"
"Yes, Corp."
With that, the last of the NRA slipped south and away into the night. Behind them, Perdan was empty save for a few brave souls waiting for the Hammers to arrive.
"What the hell do you want?" the Hammer general charged with retaking Perdan growled, glaring from sleep-gummed eyes at the man standing over his cot. "Kraa's blood! What time is it?"
"It's 00:15, sir," the young officer said, nervously. Major General Horovitz, Hammer Planetary Ground Defense Force, was a man who held the unshakable view that military operations should not get in the way of a good night's sleep.
"This better be good."
"Chief of staff's compliments, sir, and would you please come to the operations center?"
"If I must."
***
"This seems too good to be true, General. I think we need to be careful."
General Horovitz snorted in derision. Kraa! Why was his chief of staff so damn cautious? "It's obvious, man. Those NRA scum know they can't hold on to to Perdan, so they've done what they do every time. Run away like the gutless cowards they are. Get things moving. I want to tell the chief councillor that Perdan is back in our hands before daybreak."
"Sir," Horovitz's chief of staff said.
An hour later, Hammer kinetics fell on Perdan's outer defenses, a storm of high-velocity tungsten-carbide slugs that reduced earth and equipment to a rolling cloud of ionized gas and dust. Before it had even cleared, Hammer forward elements moved into the outer suburbs, the air ripped apart by ground-attack landers orbiting overhead. Screened by marine heavy armor, they moved along the main highway heading for the center of town. The city was deserted. Not a soul moved amid the debris of war, the only sounds the periodic flat crack as a main battle tank's hypervelocity gun replied to some imagined threat and the occasional crackle of rifle fire from nervous patrols flanking the main advance, both underscored by the never-ending howl of patrolling marine landers.
It was hours before General Horovitz allowed himself to be convinced that Perdan was his. Now he was. The NRA had gone, every last one of them. Satisfied, he called Chief Councillor Polk to give him the good news.
Call over and basking in Polk's approval, Horovitz waved his chief of staff over. "Colonel Madani. You said General Baxter wanted to speak to me?"
"Yes, sir. He does," Madani said.
"Fucking marines," Horovitz said, his good humor evaporating fast. "What in Kraa's name does he want?"
"I don't know for sure, sir," Madani said. "He refuses to talk to me. I suspect he wants his marines back."
"Oh, he does, does he? Didn't think he wanted to congratulate me. Well, he can have them back. Get onto it. I want orders cut withdrawing them back to the airport. They can damn well wait there until their landers arrive to take them home."
"Is that wise, sir?"
"Wise?" Horovitz barked, rage reddening his face. "Why would it not be?"
"We've not swept the airport, sir. Kraa knows what the NRA has left lying around."
Horovitz waved a dismissive hand. "The marines can look after themselves. They have combat engineers, don't they?"
"Ah, no they don't, General. Combat engineering support is our responsibility, planetary defense's responsibility."
Horovitz waved his hand again. "Well, that's not my problem. Ours have better things to do than sanitizing an airport. Anyway, the NRA aren't miracle workers. Even they can't mine Kraa knows how many hectares of ceramcrete, and if they did, even the dumbest marine could see what they'd been up to. Provided the marines stay well clear of the buildings and don't touch anything, I can't see a problem. Kraa, what am I saying? They should know that."
"Yes, sir."
Horovitz waited patiently while his chief of staff went off to issue the orders to the marines. "Done?" he said when the man returned.
"Yes, sir. They'll start pulling back inside the hour. They're not happy about the lack of combat engineering support, but Brigadier Agnelli says he can cope."
"Pleased to hear it," Horovitz said venomously. "I'd be happy if we never worked with those arrogant pricks ever again. How are we doing interdicting the NRA withdrawal?"
"Well, sir. We are dropping blocking forces right across their egress routes back to the Branxtons as we speak, backed up by ground-attack fliers-"
"Do I detect a note of disapproval?" Horovitz said. "Yes, Colonel… yes, I think I do."
"No, sir," Madani protested. "I made my point at the time, sir. You made your decision, I accepted it then, I accept it now. There's nothing more to say."
Horovitz glared at his chief of staff. He refused to trust the man any farther than he could spit. The fact that Colonel Madani belonged to a clan with higher-placed connections than his was a constant irritation. He would have gotten rid of him months ago otherwise. Horovitz's nephew, a young and ambitious man, was ideal for the position, and it galled him that he had not been able to persuade the PGDF's commanding general to sack Madani.
"Don't think I don't know what you're thinking, Colonel," Horovitz said finally. "I know you wanted the blocking forces dropped into position early. In my opinion, that was too risky. We needed to secure Perdan first. I thought I had made myself clear."
"Yes, sir, you did."
"Good. If I hear my decision being criticized, I'll know whom to blame. So, you were saying?"
Loneliness threatened to overwhelm Trooper Chou; he had never felt so cut off, so isolated, so exposed, his only connection to the small handful of NRA troopers left behind in Perdan a hastily buried fiber-optic cable. Tucked away under his chromaflage cape, he was hidden in rubble around a fire-damaged ware house positioned on a small ridge overlooking Perdan's airport, a tangle of ceramsteel beams balanced overhead to form a precarious roof. The airport's sprawling ceramcrete aprons were a shambolic mess of abandoned equipment scattered between the blast-blackened wrecks of planetary defense trucks and light armor. Long after the last of the NRA had pulled out, nothing had moved except for the rain dropped by a passing monsoonal rainstorm. Soon afterward, a gray light announced the arrival of a new day. Recon drones arrived overhead, then attack drones, and then the first chromaflaged shapes drifted into view, indistinct blurs that Chou struggled to identify. Backed up by armor, some moved past the shattered ruins of the airport's terminal buildings before spreading out to secure a perimeter while the rest made their way out onto the aprons and taxiways. Hammer marines, Chou decided, judging by their obvious discipline and efficiency.
Some time later, things began to pick up. First, a second convoy of marine armor arrived, followed by a steady stream of marine units on foot until the airport apron was crowded. Heart in mouth, Chou watched one marine start to rearrange a pile of morta
r-shell boxes into the makings of a crude shelter. He did not get far before a passing corporal yelled at him, abuse pouring down much like the rain. Chou smiled. The corporal was dead right. Fiddling with battlefield debris that had not been declared safe by the combat engineers was bad for one's health. Relieved, he watched the corporal harangue the miscreant to rejoin the rest of his unit.
Chou waited. Hour after hour, unit after unit, the marines kept coming until the ceramcrete aprons were thick with marines sprawled out in untidy lines as they waited for their rides home, a sea of combat-armored bodies interrupted by laagers of every vehicle in the marines' air-mobile inventory. Chou licked his lips, his throat parched ash-dry. He had never seen this many Hammer marines in one place before; it was a frightening sight. "Kraa help us," he whispered as an awful truth hit him. What he was staring at was a small part, a tiny fraction, of the Hammer war machine the NRA faced. The NRA could kill every last marine sitting on the airport aprons, and what difference would it make? There were thousands more, tens, hundreds of thousands more marines where these had come from. All of a sudden, victory seemed a long way away.
The distant rumble of incoming landers broke the silence, distant dots appearing, quickly taking the unmistakable shape of Hammer heavy transport landers. This was as good as it was going to get, he decided. Chou activated his whisper mike.
"Jackass, this is Joker Three Four," he said.
"Joker Three Four, Jackass."
"I have multiple heavy landers inbound. Estimate fifteen hundred marines plus support vehicles on the apron. Recommend we go when the landers touch down."
"Jackass, roger that. Stand by."
Chou said a quiet word of thanks to the Feds; they had provided the fiber-optic network connecting the observers to each other and to their improvised charges. He still was not sure about them, but the communications gear coming out of their microfabs was a hundred times better than anything the NRA had been able to steal from the Kraa-damned Hammers.
The faceless NRA trooper controlling the operation was gone only a minute. "Joker Three Four, Jackass."
The battle for Commitment planet hw-4 Page 26
