Helfort's War Book 4: The Battle for Commitment Planet (26 page)

“Not before time,” he said with considerable feeling, throwing off his safety straps and removing his helmet. “Anna, can you liaise with the NRA. Check that their local security detail has the tunnel secured behind us and see what they want to do about off-loading the cargo.” Anna nodded; she still looked shocked. “And Jayla, can you finish the shutdown? I want to see how the hell the Hammers knew we were coming.”

“Sir.”

The air outside the lander was thick with dust laced heavily with the unmistakable smell of ionized driver mass from the landers’ engines. Michael jumped down and made his way past
Hell Bent
to
Alley Kat
; her enormous bulk loomed black and menacing over him. As he approached, red lights started to flash and the cargo ramp hissed down, thumping into the ground with a dull thud. Captain Adrissa walked down, followed by Rasmussen and Solanki. Anger blazed in their eyes.

“You thinking what I’m thinking, sir?” Michael said.

“We are. Some traitorous sonofabitch tipped the Hammers off, and we think we might know who it was. Follow me.”

“Oh,” was all Michael said. Adrissa pushed past him and made her way back to
Hell Bent
. Scrambling to catch up, Michael followed. When they made it there, it was obvious that something bad was happening. Two of Kallewi’s marines had a man—Leading Spacer Sasaki, Michael’s neuronics told him—grasped firmly, a small crowd of curious spacers standing in a loose circle around them.

“Lieutenant Acharya!” Adrissa barked.

“Yes, sir?”
Hell Bent
’s command pilot replied, his face a tangled confusion of surprise and shock.

“Last time I looked, you were
Hell Bent
’s ranking officer,” Adrissa snarled. “So take charge of this rabble. You understand me, spacer?”

“Yes, sir,” Acharya stammered, clearly startled by the ferocity of Adrissa’s verbal attack. “Yes, sir. Understood.”

“I hope so. You two,” Adrissa said to the two marines. “Come with me and bring that man with you.”

Without another word, Adrissa turned and started to walk back to
Alley Kat
. She managed only a few meters before Vaas and his chief of staff appeared out of the gloom.

“You and your ships okay, Captain?” Vaas said.

“We are, thank you, General,” Adrissa replied, grim-faced, “but I think we have a problem. Is there somewhere we can interrogate one of our people?”

“There’s a small cave 50 meters past your first lander,” Cortez said. “It has lighting and a table and chairs.”

“That’ll do. Take Leading Spacer Sasaki there,” Adrissa said to the two marines. “I’ll be along presently.”

She turned back to Vaas and Cortez. “I’m sorry, sirs, but it seems we may have a traitor among us.”

Vaas nodded. “We suspected that much. The Hammers were tipped off. They never operate in that area. There’s no point, ’cause we don’t, either. Seems you were lucky, though, very lucky. I think they received word too late to lay a proper trap. Otherwise …”

“Quite so,” Adrissa said. “Anyway, we’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“I think you will, but I want one of my security people to sit in. Maria Dalaki. She’ll be able to verify any Hammer-related information you uncover. She’ll be with you in ten minutes.”

“That’s fine, General. Let me get things started here.”

“When you’re ready, just follow the signs to the NRA’s command center,” Vaas said. “We call it ENCOMM for short; easier to say than NRA Command. I’ll be there. Nine hundred meters up the tunnel, you’ll find a sled station off to your left. It’s marked. Take a sled heading west and get off at the end of the line. It’s obvious; you can’t get lost, and for Kraa’s sake, if you open a blast door, make sure to close it.”

“Blast door?” Adrissa said with a puzzled frown.

“The Hammers like to push missiles carrying thermobaric warheads into our tunnels,” Vaas said. “We get most of them, but some slip through, hence the blast doors. We’ve learned the hard way that fuel-air explosions and tunnels are a bad combination.”

“Ah, right. I’ll make sure everyone knows that. If it’s okay, I’ll send Helfort on ahead.”

“Fine. I’ll have someone meet him,” Vaas said. “Okay, unless there’s anything else, I’ll see you back at ENCOMM.”

Adrissa watched Vaas and Cortez walk away before turning to Rasmussen. “I need two officers with interrogation training to get the truth out of Sasaki and a third to witness the proceedings. If there’s enough evidence that Sasaki betrayed us, I’m court-martialing the bast—I’m court-martialing him.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll get onto it.”

Adrissa waved Michael over. “You get to the command center, ENCOMM or whatever it is they call it,” she said. “We need someone they trust to stay close; at the moment that’s probably only you. Your neuronics online?”

“They are, sir.”

“Okay, if you need me, just comm me. I’m going to try to get a neuronics network set up.”

“Sir.”

Michael set off. He had not gone far when Anna commed him.

“Hi, Anna. What’s happening?”

“I’ve been pinged to be part of the interrogation team.” Her avatar grimaced; clearly, she had no stomach for the task.

“Didn’t I tell you never, ever to volunteer for anything, Anna?” Michael shook his head. “Never!”

“Volunteer? Me? Hell, no, but Adrissa’s nothing if not efficient. We downloaded our service records when we arrived in 5209. Knew I should never have agreed to go on that damn interrogation course. Anyway, that’s where I’ll be.”

“When you’re done, I’ll be in the NRA command center—sorry, ENCOMM—or back onboard
Widowmaker
.”

“Okay.”

After wrestling with two heavy and uncooperative blast doors, Michael found the station down a narrow tunnel. A westbound sled waited. He tried not to let the state of the machine—a double car capable of carrying ten people—concern him as he climbed in and pushed the button. With a screech, the battered antique started off, accelerating at an impressive rate, racketing down the laser-cut tunnel. According to Michael’s neuronics, the sled traveled 25 kilometers before it slowed, emerging into a small lobby before decelerating to a halt in front of an NRA
trooper who, like all of them, was dressed in faded combat overalls and carried a well-worn assault rifle in immaculate condition.

“Lieutenant Helfort?” the man said.

“That’s me.” Michael replied, climbing out of the sled.

“This way.”

Michael followed the man out into a concourse so large that the cave roof was lost in the darkness; it was busy with NRA troopers in well-worn combat overalls. The command center was right ahead of him, guarded by four heavily armed troopers behind a crude security desk.

Even though they must have been briefed to expect him, the mouths of all four troopers were half-open in amazement as he approached. He was probably the first real, live spawn-of-the-devil Fed they had ever seen, Michael realized.

“Lieutenant Helfort, here to see General Vaas,” his escort said.

“Ah, yes,” one of the troopers said, recovering himself with an effort. “If you’d please carry this with you at all times”—the trooper handed Michael a small card on a neck lanyard—“that’ll identify you. Please go in. Ask for Major Hok.”

“Thank you … ?”

“Corporal Vasili Banic, sir. 556th Regiment, NRA.”

“Thank you, Corporal Banic.”

“Sir.”

ENCOMM took Michael by surprise. He expected the operations room from which all NRA operations were planned and controlled to be something out of ancient history: state boards covered in handwritten information, maps, telephones, paper, all the things he remembered from his one and only visit to the Museum of Twentieth-Century Warfare. How wrong could he be? He stared at the tidy arrays of holovids, wall-mounted in front of neat ranks of workstations, the room filled with the susurrus of quiet conversation underscored by the hiss of air-conditioning. Apart from the telephone handsets scattered everywhere—neuronics were proscribed by Hammer of Kraa doctrine, and head-mounted microvid comm sets were obviously scarce—it might have been an old, battered, and well-worn Fed command post.

A woman spotted him and waved him over. Save for a pair of embroidered rank badges, she was indistinguishable from all the other NRA troopers he had seen: the same buzz cut, the same worn combat overalls, the same lean and hungry look on a face stretched tight by privation and hard work.

“Major Hok, sir?” he said.

“That’s me,” she said, shaking Michael’s outstretched hand. “I’m on General Vaas’s personal staff. Welcome.”

“This is impressive, sir.”

Hok’s eyes narrowed; Michael cursed under his breath when he realized how patronizing he must have sounded. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean, you know …”

Hok’s face cracked into a broad smile before she surprised him by laughing out loud. “Relax,” she said. “We’re not that precious, you know.” She led him by the arm to a group of empty workstations set into a large recess complete with its own suite of wall-mounted holovids.

“This’ll be your space. Take a seat, we’ll get your authorizations organized, and then I’ll show you how the system works.”

“Okay, but one question.”

“Shoot.”

“The Chalidze operation. How’d it go?”

“Okay, let’s do that first. Hold on … right, here we are.”

Michael watched while Hok brought one of the holovids online and a three-dimensional representation of the Chalidze ordnance depot popped into view.

“Things went to plan,” Hok said. “Supported up by an air-defense company and combat engineers, we infiltrated the 22nd’s Fourth Battalion into position over a forty-eight-hour period before the attack. They hid up here”—she stabbed a marker at a cluster of heavily wooded ravines a kilometer south of the depot—“and moved up to the start line two hours before the operation kicked off. One klick to the east, and close to the main access road into the depot, were the transport elements … that’s code for NRA troopers, by the way.” She threw a grin at Michael. “We may not have many trucks,” she continued, “but by Kraa, we’ve got plenty of troopers, and it’s amazing how much they can carry.”

Hok jumped the holovid forward. “The operation was simple. The Hammers’ security was piss-poor, and they don’t like patrolling in the dark. So when our guys hit them, they were tucked up in bed here”—another stab at a long building close to the southern perimeter of the factory—“and in the security strongpoints around the perimeter. One razor-wire fence, no mines, no remotely operated lasers, no chain guns. Their perimeter sensors are the usual mix of acoustic sensors and holocams. Give our engineers enough time and they don’t trouble us much,” she added, flicking a dismissive hand.

“When the engineers blew the wire here and here, our guys went in. One company took down the security force—not that that was hard—while the rest moved into the depot, some to take out the strongpoints, some to blow the ware houses open. By the time the transport arrived”—another grin—“all three hundred of them, the whole joint was wide open. We grabbed what we could and pulled out. By the time planetary defense turned up, we were gone. They put two heavy landers down on the depot’s main landing site. That was a big mistake. Arrogant pigs! They still take us for granted. Our combat engineers had rigged claymores down one side, and we reckon that we wasted most of them when they debarked. After that, it was the usual: us running like hell while Hammer landers beat the crap out of anything they could see. Cost us about forty dead and maybe the same too badly wounded to move. They will have sold themselves dearly.”

Michael must have looked surprised as Hok stopped. “That shock you, Lieutenant?”

“Yes. Yes, it does.”

“Get used to it. All that Geneva Convention stuff doesn’t apply, not to this war. Being captured by PGDF is a bad way to die. If you’re lucky, they question you for a few minutes, then shoot you. If you’re not lucky or if you’re taken by DocSec …” Hok’s voice trailed away. “The marines aren’t so bad,” she continued. “They don’t make a habit of shooting prisoners, but since they always hand them over to DocSec, it’s all the same in the end. So you kill as many of them as you can before turning the gun on yourself.”

Michael nodded. If Hok was right, this was not war the way
the Federated Worlds understood it. “I’ve been in DocSec’s hands, Major,” he said softly. “I have some idea what you mean.”

“I’ve heard,” Hok said. “You’re one of the lucky ones. No NRA trooper has ever survived capture by DocSec. Not one, and DocSec made sure every last one was a long time dying. They like to send us holovids so we know exactly how long. I hope your people know that.”

“Not yet, but they will. Sorry, go on.”

“That’s about it. We pulled back into the forests to the south of the depot. The Hammers dropped blocking forces along the obvious escape routes back to the Branxton Ranges, and all but one company managed to get around them. We think they killed their share of Hammers before they were overrun. We expect survivors back within the next week, hopefully bringing lots of goodies with them. So that’s about it. Any questions?”

“Just one.”

“Okay.”

“Our landers were bushwhacked by the Hammers on our way in.”

“We know. Seems we’re not the only ones harboring Hammer spies.”

“No,” Michael said with a scowl. “Anyway, why just a single missile battery? Why didn’t the Hammers mount a bigger operation? After all, three Fed landers are high-value targets. Why didn’t they divert the marine landers from the Chalidze operation?”

“Good question. We wondered the same. We think there were a couple of reasons. First, the guards at 5209 were planetary defense troops, right?”

“PGDF? Yes, they were.”

“That means anything your man … what was his name?”

“Sasaki.”

“Yes, him. That means that whatever Sasaki told the Hammers ended up with PGDF intelligence. Given that PGDF hates the marines—and by Kraa they do, more than they hate you guys—there is no way they’d have told them even though the marines were much better placed to react quickly. Knowledge is power and all that. So that’s one reason. The other is command
paralysis. We have intelligence reports from inside the PGDF that tell us your attacks on their bases have triggered the usual response. PGDF headquarters has been purged of anyone even remotely to blame. At last count, more than two hundred officers have been arrested by DocSec, and we all know none of them will be around to collect their pensions. Everyone left is scared shitless, and the place is paralyzed.”