"Not if you value your life, I wouldn't," the corporal said. "She'll be asleep and probably wants to stay that way."
"Oh! Okay, in the morning, then. Thanks, Corporal. Catch you later." Friday, January 4, 2402, UD 120th Regiment billet, Sector Mike, Branxton Base, Commitment
Anna plowed her way through two bowls of whatever gruel the 120th's foodbots were dishing out that morning followed by a mug of coffee before she said a word.
"That's better," she said, pushing her tray away. "So when did you arrive?"
"About 03:00. You were snoring, so I decided I'd live longer if I left you alone."
"Huh! Good call, and I'm glad you did," Anna said, sipping her second mug of coffee. "First decent night's sleep in ages. I needed it."
Michael nodded; Anna's face was pale and drawn. Her honey-gold skin had faded to a washed-out gray, but her eyes were the same, bottomless green pools that had entranced him from the first day they had met.
"So," he said. "What's this I hear about you being a sergeant or something?"
"No something about it, flyboy. Yeah, as of two days ago, I am officially Sergeant Anna Helfort, NRA. Has a certain ring to it, don't you think?"
"It does," Michael conceded. "So let me guess. You were promoted because you are a careful soldier who refuses to risk her own life or those of her troopers. Tell me I am right."
"Umm, well… yeah, sort of. Yeah, I think that's right."
"Anna, Anna!" Michael shook his head in despair. "I'm the certified lunatic around here. I'm not sure this relationship can accommodate two. So what happened?"
"Oh, not much," Anna said, waving a hand. "Last week, B Company found themselves in a firefight with a PGDF battalion probing our sector. They were pinned down, and we were sent to bail them out. My platoon CO and sergeant were hit, so I took over, we killed a shed load of Hammers, and brought everyone home. Not much more to say."
"Yeah, right," Michael said, looking skeptical. "What about your section leader?"
"Section leader? Umm, let me see. Oh, yes, that would have been me."
"Anna!" Michael snapped. "That's two damn promotions, and you didn't tell me? No, make that three. I forgot trooper to lance corporal."
Anna shrugged her shoulders. "I didn't want to worry you," she said, not looking at all apologetic.
Michael tried to glare at her. He abandoned the attempt when Anna fluttered her eyelashes at him, eyes the color of deep jade drawing him in and down. "Oh, please," he muttered. "Stop that."
"Come on, flyboy. Janos Kallewi's been moved to our local rehab center, so why don't we go and check on him before we get the hell out of here. Battalion's given my platoon leave until Monday morning, and I intend to make the most of every second."
"Lead on, Sergeant Helfort."
"How you feeling, Janos?"
Kallewi scowled. "The honest answer, Michael, is bored," he said, "bored shitless. This rehab stuff is a pain, and all the more because it takes the Hammers a month to do something we'd get done in a week back home. They've got a lot of catching up to do, and the food's shit."
"No kidding," Anna said with a laugh. "Tell us something we don't know."
"So, Janos," Michael said. "How's the brain?"
"Getting there. Hammer medical technology might be slow, but it does the job… in the end. The headaches have gone."
"When are they releasing you?"
"Another couple of weeks, I think. I've been posted to one of the training battalions, the 774th. Can't say I'm too unhappy about that. I was lucky to get away. Did I ever say thanks for that?"
"You don't have to," Anna said. "We were there anyway."
"Oh?" Kallewi said. "That's not quite what I've been told. Not that it matters. I'm here, and I owe you both, and that's a fact." He leaned back in the battered armchair, eyes closing for a moment. "Sorry," he said, opening them again. "I still get tired. The doc says it'll pass."
"We'd better go."
"Yeah. Try me next week. I'll be better." Kallewi's head fell back, and his eyes closed.
Michael flicked a glance at Anna, his face twisted with concern. "Okay," he said. "Next week, then."
Kallewi said nothing, a nod of the head his only response.
"See you later," Michael said softly as they left.
Anna's hands slapped the tabletop with a flat crack that echoed around the empty canteen.
"For chrissakes, Michael," she said fiercely. "It's not your fault. Janos is a big boy. He makes his own decisions. He's here because he decided this was where he should be, fighting the Hammers, not because you forced him. He's a marine. Killing Hammers is his job, and that's what he's been doing."
"Yes, but-"
"Don't 'yes but' me!" Anna snapped. "There's no buts about it, so stop it. You are not responsible for any of this. Anyway, what's happened has happened. It's history now, and you can't change it. So stop trying to."
"Okay, okay," Michael said, raising his hands in defeat. "I get it, I get it." He rubbed eyes gritty with stress and tiredness. "I want another coffee, then let's go. You?"
"No, I'm fine."
Michael made his way across to the drinkbot; by some miracle of Hammer engineering, the battered relic produced the excellent coffee every Hammer needed to get through the day.
Anna was right, he thought as his mug filled, but only up to a point. Yes, Janos and the rest of Redwood's crew had made up their own minds to be part of this whole insane project. So yes, he bore no responsibility for what might happen to them, but what about the prisoners of war from J-5209? They were a different matter altogether. He had given them no time at all to think through the question: stay a prisoner or come with us. What a choice! Of course they came; as far as they knew, the rescue was a Fleet operation, not some lunatic scheme dreamed up by mutinous spacers. Now some of those prisoners were dead; for them he bore absolute responsibility, and nothing Anna said would change his mind about that.
In the end, it was simple. It was up to him to honor that responsibility by returning them home, and the only way to do that was by finding a way to end what he, along with an increasing number of the Feds, was beginning to think of as a war without end. Shaking his head at the arrogant stupidity of it all, he took his mug and walked back to rejoin Anna.
Talk about hubris, he said to himself as he sat down, disheartened by the enormity of the problem he felt compelled to resolve.
"Right, then," he said, forcing good humor into his voice. "Where to now?"
"Well, remember that place we went to last month?"
"The cave with the pool? I sure do," he said, leering at her.
"Don't be such a pig, Michael. Anyway, I've checked with my contact in Juliet sector security. It's ours until Monday, so what are we waiting for? Come on, drink up."
Michael did just that, his heart soaring at the thought that for a few precious days he and Anna could pretend that the rest of humanspace did not exist. Sunday, January 6, 2402, UD Sector Juliet, Branxton Base, Commitment
The rest of the universe had faded away into irrelevance; for the first time in a very long while Michael felt at peace. Feet propped up on a handy rock, he lay flat on his back, looking up into the thick canopy of tangled branches that concealed the small cave and its idyllic spring-fed pool of cold, crystal-clear water. Alongside him, Anna slept, curled into a ball and snoring softly. She had been much more tired than she had let on; she had slept much of the weekend. When not sleeping, she seemed content to let the hours slide past nestled into Michael's shoulder in between breath-catching dips in the rock pool.
Not that Michael minded. The absolute quiet of the place had allowed him to think his way through the tangled mess of guilt and emotion that cluttered his thinking. For the first time in days, he knew he was thinking straight; it was a good feeling, even if the conclusions he had reached were nothing to celebrate.
"Screw it," he muttered. So what if the NRA was bogged down in an unwinnable war? He was alive, Anna was alive, both of them dragged back
from the brink of horrific deaths at the hands of Colonel Hartspring. Even if they were on borrowed time, even if every day might be their last, being alive and together was better than being dead. As for the future, it would take its own path; he might as well get used to the fact that he could only do his best to nudge it in the right direction. If things did not work out, then so be it.
Anna stirred. She rolled over and lifted her head. "Morning," she said, peering at him from sleep-clouded eyes. "I think. Where's my frigging coffee, flyboy?"
"What did your last house bot die of?" Michael grumbled. Climbing to his feet, he went back into the cave to get the stove going.
Twenty minutes and two cups of coffee later, Anna was sitting up, her back against the wall of the cave. Michael's spirits soared at the sight of her. All the tension had gone from her face, her skin restored to the honey-gold he loved, her eyes glittering with life, two pools of spark-shot jade.
"Mmm, that's better," she said. "So what's for breakfast?"
Michael rolled his eyes. Anna was not a morning person, and he knew from bitter experience that she had to be humored until coffee and food had time to work their magic.
"Coming up," he said, face set in a resigned frown, getting back to his feet.
"I should hope-hey, what the hell is that?" Anna said leaning forward, eyes narrowed as she scanned the trees that framed the mouth of the cave.
The rumble was so faint that Michael was not sure what he was hearing. Then he was, a sudden stab of fear forcing his heart to skip a beat. Without thinking, he reached back and grabbed his assault rifle. Anna followed suit. She slithered across to him, head tilted to one side.
Anna's face went ashen. "Those are landers, Michael. Landers, and a lot of them!"
Acting on instinct alone, Michael reacted, every neuron in his brain screaming at him to get away. "Back, back!" he shouted, grabbing Anna's hand and dragging her bodily after him. Frantic now, they fled deep into the cave, on and on, scrambling across rockfalls and through squeezes heedless of grazed hands and knees. Michael's eyes watered with pain when a moment's inattention allowed his head to smack into an unseen protrusion.
"Screw this fuc-"
The whole cave seemed to lift under their feet, a photoflash of intense light searing an image of white rock and black shadows into Michael's retina; an instant later, a thunderous crack ripped the air around them apart a second ahead of a shock wave that turned the air into a wall of steel, hurling them both off their feet and onto the floor of the cave, shock-blasted splinters of rock spalling off the cave walls and into their bodies. There was another, and another, until Michael had to fight to hang on to consciousness, his only link to reality Anna's hand clutching his in a death grip as dust and splinters filled the air.
The explosions stopped. Anna and Michael lay unmoving facedown in the dirt for a long time, a steady shower of shattered rock raining down. "Shit," Anna said at last, her voice muffled.
"I think the Hammers have come calling," Michael said, rolling over and shaking his head in a vain attempt to dampen the savage ringing in his ears.
"You think it's their big push?"
"Has to be," Michael said. "So much for the NRA's much-vaunted contacts inside DocSec and the PGDF. Seems the Hammers managed to keep a lid on things this time. You okay?"
"Think so. Bit bruised, bit woozy, but otherwise fine. Glad we got as far in as we did. I think the sonsofbitches just dropped every last kinetic and fuel-air bomb they could muster. I'm surprised they didn't nuke us."
"Maybe they did," Michael muttered. "It sure as hell felt like it. Bastards. Come on. Let's get back, but for chrissakes take it slowly until we know what's going on. Too early in the day for me to be swapping small talk with the Hammers, and I'm in no mood for a firefight."
Collecting his rifle, Michael followed Anna as she started off down the cave, on and on until the low-light processor in his neuronics was struggling to generate an image in the darkness. Cautiously, they made their way in until Anna's hand went up. "According to my map, the feeder tunnel taking us back to sector control is just up ahead," she said.
"My map says the same thing, but where the hell are the lights?"
"Off, so the main power supply has failed. Our network's down; my neuronics won't connect. This does not look good. The Hammers must have broken in, and if they-"
Again the floor of the cave lifted as a single crunching thud shook them. "Holy shit," Michael hissed, fighting to stay on his feet. "Does that mean what I think it means?"
"Yup," Anna replied. "The Hammers are in, and ENCOMM's blowing the tunnels. Unless they've changed the plan, we need to fall back to area headquarters."
"Plan?" Michael said with a baffled frown. "What plan?"
"Operation Counterweight. The 120th was briefed on it last week. We haven't seen the final operation order yet, but I guess that doesn't matter now."
Michael swore under his breath. FLTDETCOMM had been left out of the loop again; sometimes the NRA took operational security too far. He swore some more. "What's the plan?"
"Follow me. If we're separated, follow this route here"-a ghostly red line overlaid the map in his neuronics-"to sector HQ; they'll tell you what to do. Let's go."
By the time they made it back to headquarters, Michael no longer noticed the thumping crunch as another tunnel was blown in. The explosions were too frequent and the implications too depressing to worry about.
"Jeez," Anna said as they emerged from the latest tunnel through the labyrinth to find themselves outside sector headquarters, a cluster of small laser-cut rooms packed with bodies and alive with the buzz of conversation and the snap of orders. A series of small tables had been set up outside under a crude sign that said ORDERS. Michael and Anna joined the line of NRA troopers, a motley crew, every face painted with the same mix of fear and determination.
"Next!" a harassed corporal barked.
"Sergeant Helfort, 120th, and Lieutenant Helfort, FLTDETCOMM."
"Don't care where you're from. Get your asses down to Six Brigade; it's pulled back to Karavakis-4. Go! They need all the help they can get."
"Where's the 120th?"
"Don't know, don't care. Go! Next!"
As they turned and started to run, Anna shot a worried look at Michael. "That doesn't sound too good," she said.
"Why?"
"The Karavakis-4 cave complex is part of our inner defensive line," Anna said. "If Six Brigade's there, that means the Hammers have broken through this sector's main defensive positions and we've fallen back."
"Shit."
The pair ran on in silence for a while, two more anonymous figures in a stream of anonymous troopers running hard around them.
"How?" Michael said, beginning to breathe hard as he tried to keep up with Anna. "How did they get in? I thought ENCOMM had all the access tunnels mined."
"They did, every last one, big or small, so I don't know. Only thing I can think of is that they blew their way in. Bring in high-powered laser rock borers and plenty of explosive, and even limestone won't stand in your way for long. Once they broke into the inner caves, then…"
"No more mines."
"Yup."
They ran on. Rounding a corner, they could run no more, their path blocked by the bloodstained clutter of a battalion aid station, fresh casualties arriving even as they threaded their way through the mess of stretchers. Anna stopped one of the walking wounded. "Where's the brigade command post?" she asked a trooper sporting a bloody bandage across half his face.
"Keep going. One hundred meters on your left."
"Thanks."
"Good luck," the trooper said with a cheerful grin, waving an arm wrapped in bloodstained dressings. "Kick some Hammer ass for me."
"We will," Anna promised.
The brigade command post occupied a cramped room cut out of the cave wall. "Wait here," she said. "I'll get our orders."
"Yes, sir," Michael said to Anna's back. She was not gone long.
"Hope you'
re feeling lucky, flyboy," she said, waving him to follow.
Michael's heart sank. "That doesn't sound too good."
"They were real happy to see us."
"Why?"
"Because we're Feds, the Feds have low-light processors in their neuronics, and the NRA's desperately short of imaging equipment. Brigade wants us to guide an attack into position behind the Hammer front line. Come on, pick up the pace. Lieutenant Colonel Mokhine and the Second Battalion, 83rd NRA, await."
"Terrific."
Michael had shut down his neuronics transmitter in case the Hammers had scanners; it made the isolation total, his assault rifle his only comforter. Before Mokhine called a halt, Michael had spent hours working his way through the near darkness of a cave so tortuous and narrow that progress was measured in centimeters at times. Now that darkness pressed down on him with an oppressive, almost physical force that squeezed the air out of his lungs until he had to fight to breathe, knowing with absolute certainty that each lungful might be his last. He hated it; every second was a struggle to keep claustrophobia-fueled panic under control, to ignore the terrible fact that billions of tons of rock lay between him and fresh air, to reject the conviction that he was about to die in this awful place. This was nothing like being in space: so empty, so clean, so sterile, ship sensors reaching out hundreds of thousands of kilometers, pulling data back by the terabyte until there were no secrets left, the risk of death quantified to five decimal places.
Unlike this grim place, a narrow passage water-dissolved through limestone. All he knew was what he could hear, smell, or feel. His awareness reached no farther than those senses did. It was a bad sensation; a rockfall might be seconds away, a Hammer ambush might lie in wait ten meters farther on, and nobody would know until rocks fell or assault rifles ripped air and bodies to shreds.
Worst of all, he had no way of talking to Anna. An hour earlier, Mokhine had divided his command into two; Anna had led her group into a narrow cleft in the rock, heading for the other side of Karavakis-2, a massive cavern connecting the Hammer front line to the outside world, a cavern now only meters ahead of him.
The battle for Commitment planet hw-4 Page 32
