“No problem. Now, I was talking about coincidences, so I think you’ll enjoy this.” Vaas tossed a small packet to Michael. “One last thing: The next time I see you, I want you in NRA uniform. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
• • •
Tucked away in a corner of the staff canteen with a fresh mug of coffee, Michael opened the packet and spilled the contents onto the table: a handwritten note and a gold sunburst on a thin chain.
He picked up the note.
Michael,
One of the NRA’s deep penetration units ran into an old friend of yours, a Colonel Hartspring, a few months ago. His unit, a composite DocSec and marine unit; we don’t know what they do, blundered into one of our operations. Sadly, the bastards managed to fight their way clear. Hartspring was lucky to get out alive, but he did lose the enclosed in the process. The unit’s commander knew about you and Hartspring. He thought the sunburst would look better around your neck, so here it is.
We might have missed him this time, but trust me, his day will come.
Never forget.
Vaas
PS: If that sunburst’s not around your neck next time we meet, I will kick your ass.
Michael rolled the sunburst between his fingers. “Oh, yes, Colonel Hartspring,” he said under his breath, “your day will come, and that’s my promise to you.” The pain and suffering the man had promised Anna drove a wave of white-hot anger through his body; fists clenched, he drove his fingers into his palms so hard that the nails drew blood. He took a deep breath to steady himself as he put the sunburst onto the chain and around his neck.
He finished his coffee and set off to find Shinoda to tell her that that he would not be going with her to join the 120th.
• • •
The conference room was set with rows of seats arrayed in half circles around a small table and, off to one side, a lectern. As usual, Michael arrived early and slipped unnoticed into a seat at the back.
Slowly the place filled up. Michael checked the face of each new arrival, looking for anyone he knew. But every face was a stranger’s except that of Major Davoodi, Vaas’s aide, and they’d met that morning for the first time. He’d expected to see Captain Adrissa and the rest of the Fed spacers on her staff, but they were nowhere to be seen.
Strange, he thought. I wonder where they are.
Two minutes after the flow of arrivals had slowed to a trickle and then stopped, Davoodi called the gathering to attention as Vaas bustled in, followed by his new chief of staff and two more officers, one of whom he did recognize: Colonel, no, make that Brigadier General Pedersen, Vaas’s intelligence chief. As the rest of the brass took their seats at the table, Vaas remained standing, his eyes scanning the room.
Michael’s heart sank as he spotted Major Davoodi cutting a path right to him.
“The general would like you down front, Lieutenant,” Davoodi whispered.
Oh, damn, Michael thought as he followed the man to where Vaas waited. Davoodi motioned for him to stand alongside the general. “Don’t move,” Vaas said with a smile.
Michael stood there, baffled.
Vaas turned to look at the assembled officers. “In a moment,” he said, “we will start the briefing for what I sincerely hope will be the final battle sim for the NRA’s operations in support of Juggernaut. But before we do, I have a presentation to make. All of you here know this man—” To Michael’s acute embarrassment, Vaas put his arm around his shoulders. “—if only by reputation. Now, the lieutenant will be pleased to know that I will not prolong his agony much longer, but I do have to say that the Revivalist movement and its military arm, the New Revolutionary Army, owe him an enormous debt of gratitude, a debt we will never be able to repay. But what we can do is make some small recognition of the contribution he has made to our cause, a contribution made in the face of great risk and suffering.” Vaas nodded to Davoodi, who stepped forward and handed the general a small box.
Please, no, Michael thought. I don’t want a damn medal; it wouldn’t be right.
“Michael Wallace Helfort,” Vaas went on, lifting his voice to fill the room. “By order of the Resistance Council, you are hereby promoted to the rank of colonel in the New Revolutionary Army, effective immediately.”
Michael’s mouth sagged open as Vaas pinned the eagles to the lapels of his shipsuit and shook his hand. “Congratulations,” he said; he leaned forward, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “Call me a misogynistic old Hammer, but we can’t have a man outranked by his wife, can we?”
“Er, no,” Michael mumbled, more embarrassed than he had ever been, “and thank you, sir.”
“Nothing to thank me for,” Vaas said. “You earned those eagles.” He turned to the crowd. “Colonel Helfort, NRA,” he declared, and the room erupted in a storm of applause and cheers that rapidly settled into a rhythmic chant of “N-R-A, N-R-A, N-R-A …”
Vaas let things run for a minute, then lifted his arms to call a halt. “Now, go back to your seat,” he said to Michael. “I want you to say nothing and do less. Just listen and watch. I’ll hear what you think once the sim is over, okay?”
“Sir.”
Vaas turned to address the room. “Time to get down to business,” he continued, “but before I do, let me just say one thing. Operation Juggernaut is our last and best chance to take the fight to McNair City, and it is up to each one of you to do whatever it takes to make the operation the success it has to be even if that means sacrificing your life, because we cannot live under the Hammer of Kraa any longer.”
A murmur ran through the room; angry or excited, Michael could not say. Whatever it was, he knew Vaas would get what he was asking for.
“Now,” Vaas went on, “General Pedersen will run us through the latest intelligence. Once she’s done, we’ll start.”
• • •
The disembodied voice of one of the umpires triggered a flood of noise as the ENCOMM staff in command of the NRA forces for the exercise stood down. “End of exercise,” he said.
Michael stretched to try to ease the kinks out of his back. He was exhausted. And he had to go talk with Vaas once the hot wash-up was over; that could take hours. He knew Vaas. The man could be up half the night. He sighed. Vaas might be able to get by on four hours of sleep a night, but he couldn’t.
• • •
“… all of which are relatively minor issues, General, and therefore easily fixed. The only significant weakness I can see is your ability to talk to the task force commander as the operation progresses. As things stand, you will have to rely on the brevity codes I brought in, and even though they are pretty comprehensive, Murphy’s Law says one of you will want to say something that’s not in the code book.”
Vaas nodded. “Anything more we can we do?” he asked.
“No, sir,” Michael said. “Not as long as the Hammers dominate nearspace. As fast as you put microsats up, they will hack them down. They’re soft targets, and there’ll be no shortage of Hammer ships to deal with them.”
Vaas sighed. “You’re right, of course. We’ve looked at the problem every which way, and we’ve end up chasing our tails. We’ll have to live with it, I’m afraid.”
“I think so, General … though I do have an idea.”
“Oh?”
“It’ll be chaos out there—”
“That is the general idea,” Vaas said with a smile.
“—so can we exploit that to get close to the Hammer brass? We know from experience that they are very top-down, even more so now after all the heads Polk has chopped off. The guys responsible for nearspace defense won’t break wind unless some fat-assed flag officer says it’s okay.”
“That’s true.”
“So why not add to the chaos by taking out some—hell, make that all—of the key Hammer commanders. Then nobody will know who to ask for orders. They’ll be paralyzed. Not forever, of course, but every minute counts.”
Vaas shook his head. “Nice idea and we did look at it, but it’s a
nonstarter, I’m afraid. The minute the shit hits the fan, those bastards will be locked up in their bunkers underneath 10 meters of ceramcrete.”
“Not necessarily,” Michael said. “Do we know who the commanders are?”
Vaas leaned forward. The fatigue had gone. His eyes sparkled. “You’ve spotted something, haven’t you?”
“Not sure yet, sir.”
“We’ll see. Now, Hammer commanders. Let me see … yes, we know everyone in the Hammer chain of command, from Polk right down to the commanders of every unit and ship, provided they haven’t been shot since we last checked, of course,” he added.
“Do you know where they live, where they work, what their routines are?”
“Wait!” Vaas snapped. He jumped to his feet and made for the door. “Major Davoodi!” he shouted. “I want to see General Pedersen. And see if you can find Colonel Tekin. I want him too. Yes, now!”
Vaas dropped back in to his seat. “I think I see what you’re driving at, and this is why I promoted you. Ah, good,” he said when Pedersen and Tekin appeared. “That was fast.”
“Here to serve, General Vaas,” Pedersen replied, rubbing a hand across her stubble-cut hair, a faint smile crinkling the skin around her piercing blue eyes.
Vaas chuckled. “Colonel Helfort, this Colonel Tekin,” he said, “head of our Hammer personnel intelligence division.”
“Michael Helfort. Good to meet you,” Michael said, shaking hands with Tekin, a thin, cadaverous man. Like most of the staffers who worked in ENCOMM, the yellowing skin of his face was drawn tight by overwork, stress, and fatigue. Michael wondered when the man had last had a day off.
“So what’s up?” Pedersen asked.
“We’ll come to that, but first Colonel Helfort has some questions.”
“Thank you, sir,” Michael said. “How much do we know about the Hammer’s senior commanders?”
“What specifically?” Pedersen asked.
“Who they are, what their routines are, where they live, where they work, what watches they stand if they do.”
Pedersen turned to Tekin. “I think you’d better take this one, Colonel.”
“Wait one … Okay, this org chart,” Tekin said when the holovid screen came to life, “shows the entire chain of command: Polk and the Defense Council at the top obviously, the commander in chief, Admiral Kerouac, and then something new, the Commitment Unified Military Command—UNMILCOMM for short; it’s the equivalent of our ENCOMM—and on down through the various force elements assigned to the defense of Commitment. And we know pretty much all there is to know about most of them. Not all, of course. We don’t have unlimited resources, and given how often Polk purges these people, it can be hard to keep up sometimes.”
“So,” Michael said, “if I nominated, say, thirty officers in key positions, you would have good up-to-date information on them?”
“Pick one.”
“Hmmm, let me see … Let’s try Colonel Cerutti, commander of the 455th Antiballistic Missile Regiment.”
“Stand by … This is everything we know about the man,” Tekin said.
“Wah,” Michael whispered. The level of detail impressed him. Even the fact that Cerutti kept a mistress in an apartment ten minutes from his headquarters outside McNair was a matter of record. “So if I said I wanted, say, thirty officers like Cerutti, you could give me that?”
“I could,” Tekin said firmly. “More if you wanted.”
“This is my suggestion, General,” Michael said, turning to Vaas. “Your covert ops people tell you how many two-man hit teams they can put in the field before J-Day. Colonel Tekin selects that many targets; they’d have to be key members of the Hammer chain of command and vulnerable as well. When that’s done, the teams are briefed and sent out. Time is short, so they’d have to wing it a bit. That’ll make it risky and reduce the chances of success, but hit the right people at the right time and the payback could be huge.”
Vaas sat for a moment, then nodded. “General Pedersen?” he said.
“I like it, sir,” she said, “and we are good at this sort of operation. Like Colonel Helfort says, hit the right people at the right time and we should be able to turn chaos into catastrophe.”
“I agree,” Vaas said. He turned to Michael. “Colonel Helfort. I’m putting you in charge of the planning this operation. Colonel Tekin, you’ll be part of the team, of course. Major Davoodi!” Vaas bellowed.
The aide stuck his head in. “Sir?”
“Where’s Major Gidisu?”
“Wait one, sir … She’s on her way back from Yankee-34. She’ll be here in two hours.”
Michael suppressed a sigh. There would be no sleep for him tonight.
“Get a message to her: ‘Expedite return. Need to see you soonest.’ Got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay,” Vaas said after Davoodi vanished, “are we missing anything? No? Over to you, Colonel Helfort. I’ll send Gidisu to join you when I’ve finished with her.”
“We’ll get started, sir.”
• • •
Major Gidisu sat back. She was a small woman, chunkily built, with dark eyes and skin so black that it looked blue in the harsh light of the meeting room. “It’s a great idea,” she said at last, “and I wish we’d thought of it weeks ago. I’ll be pushed to get people out there to do this what with Juggernaut so close now, but let me get back to you.”
“How soon?”
“08:00 tomorrow.”
“I’ll have a list of targets by the same time,” Tekin said.
“We’ll meet then,” Michael said. “Well, I think that’s all we can do for now. See you tomorrow.”
Tekin nodded. “We’ll be here,” he said.
All but overwhelmed by exhaustion, Michael set off to find his rack. Getting a few hours’ sleep was all he cared about right now. But he hadn’t gone more than a few meters when a familiar voice brought him to a halt.
“As I live and breathe, it’s Lieutenant Helfort.”
Michael swung around. “Well I’ll be! Matti Bienefelt!”
“The very same,” the woman said. She swept Michael into a bone-crushing embrace he could not resist; Bienefelt outmassed him by a good fifty kilos, not one gram of which was fat. She was huge. “It’s good to see you again,” she said, pushing him back. “And what the hell are those?” she asked, stabbing a finger at one of the eagles on his lapels.
“You know perfectly well, you insolent dog. I should have you flogged, chief.”
Bienefelt laughed, a rumbling belly laugh that shook her enormous frame. “I’d like to see you try, and it’s Warrant Officer Bienefelt now, by the way.”
“Another undeserved promotion.”
“For sure. Speaking of undeserved promotions, I hear your Anna is now a lieutenant colonel.”
“Watch it,” Michael said with a grin. “But I worry about that woman.”
‘Well, don’t. She’s a legend.”
“So I’m told. How’s the arm?”
Bienefelt held up the stump of her left arm. “This?” she said. “It’s fine. Itches like hell sometimes, and I can still feel the fingers, which is weird. They keep promising me a biomech hand, but I think I’ll be dead by the time one turns up.”
“You still with the 246th?”
“Yup. We don’t do much, though a Hammer special forces team had a go at us a week ago. We sent them home wishing they hadn’t.”
“Where’s the rest of the team?”
“Chief Chua and Petty Officer Lim are still running their microfabs; everyone else has joined the 3rd.”
“Anna’s battalion? What, all of them?”
“Every last one.”
“Captain Adrissa too?”
“Yup. She’s a grunt. Battalion tried to promote her to lance corporal. She told them to fuck off.”
“Captain of a heavy cruiser one day, private soldier the next.” Michael shook his head. “Hard to believe.”
“You should. Anyway, there are so man
y Feds in the 3rd, it’s unofficially called the Federal Battalion. The Hammers loathe them. Anyway, I’ve got to get back. Nobody will tell us what’s going on, but there’s something in the wind; I know it.”
“You don’t—” Michael said before common sense stopped him.
Bienefelt looked at him, a faint smile on her face. “You know, don’t you?” She put up a hand the size of a tray to preempt Michael’s response. “Don’t say anything. We’ll find out what when we’re supposed to.”
“Thanks, Matti. You look after yourself.”
“I will. You too, okay?”
“I promise.”
Tuesday, June 29, 2404, UD
NRA command center, Branxton Ranges, Commitment
“That’s a damn shame,” Major Gidisu said as she frowned at the long list of names Colonel Tekin had put up on the holovid. “I’ve scraped every barrel and shaken every tree, and the best I can do is sixty-five teams.”
“So few,” Michael said. “Sorry, Major,” he went on, seeing the scowl on Gidisu’s face. “I’m not being critical. I know how stretched you are with Juggernaut. It’s just a shame we couldn’t target everyone on Colonel Tekin’s list.”
“It is,” Gidisu said, “and trust me, I’m sending anyone who can walk and shoot a gun at the same time. I don’t have anyone left.”
“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.”
The Final Battle Page 16
