Helfort's War Book 4: The Battle for Commitment Planet (30 page)

“Command, sensors. New intercept. Multiple air search radars at Red 20 … stand by … confirmed Locusts inbound from Amokran.”

“Command, roger.” No surprises there, Michael decided. He watched the threat plot update. If things—

“Command, sensors”—Carmellini’s voice was thick with stress—“new intercept. Multiple airborne search radars at Red 40. Confirmed Kingfishers. Stand by range.”

Already alerted by the threat plot, Michael was on it. “Abort, abort,” he barked, gritting his teeth when Mother threw
Widowmaker
into one of its trademark screaming turns that had the foamalloy wings screeching in protest, mashing the main engines to emergency power to send the lander fleeing for safety: Kingfishers and their long-range hypersonic Alaric air-to-air missiles were a lethal threat to a light lander. Their only hope was to get away; engines capable of driving a fully loaded lander into orbit now accelerated the lander through Mach 5 and beyond, air superheated by compression overwhelming the heat sinks, the lander’s leading edges turning cherry-red.

Where had the Kingfishers come from? ENCOMM’s intelligence people had said nothing about them. There was only one place, Michael decided; they had to have come from McNair spaceport north of the city, the only facility within a thousand kilometers that has runways long enough to launch fully loaded Kingfishers.

“Command, tac. ENCOMM has cleared us inbound direct to Bravo-26.”

“Roger.” Michael ran through the math in his head to make sure the command plot had it right. It had: just. It would be close, very close. The lander would be tucked away below Bravo-26’s limestone slab by the time the Alarics had reached them. With a quick prayer that
Alley Kat
and
Hell Bent
were okay—he resisted the temptation to check;
Widowmaker
came first—he watched intently as Mother cut the power, one eye on the command plot to make sure the Alarics were where they were supposed to be. Flaring the lander and extending the wings, Mother allowed the lander’s speed to wash off before she restored power to drive it through the slab-sided canyon leading to Bravo-26.

“Command, tac. ENCOMM reports kinetics inbound.”

Michael stiffened; this might be bad. “They have vectors yet?”

“Working on it … yes, shit … sorry, sir. Time of flight 42 seconds. Impact datum is 3 klicks north of Bravo-26, where the canyon splits.”

Michael stifled a curse. The karst that covered so much of the Branxtons was riddled with caves, arching holes in the limestone valley walls, thousands of which were big enough to accommodate a light lander. Even so, the Hammers had managed to narrow the target area down to a point just short of Bravo-26, almost certainly attracted by a large cave that could well have been a lander refuge were it not a dead end. Too great a risk of entrapment, the ENCOMM planners had said, so strictly for emergency use only. Michael had no intention of straying anywhere near it.

The instant
Widowmaker
reached the junction, Mother turned hard left to make the final run into Bravo-26; it was a closely run thing. Ten seconds later the Hammer’s kinetics smashed to ground, the impact shock visible as a rippling wave racing across the ground, the impact zone disappearing behind a boiling wall of vaporized rock. “Holy shit,” Michael muttered. Decelerating savagely now, the lander flared nose up and then leveled out before easing into the safety of the cave. “Thankchrist for that,” Michael muttered as Mother dropped the lander to the ground, its speed down to a sedate walking pace that took
Widowmaker
deep underground.

Five thousand meters in, Mother braked
Widowmaker
to a stop and shut down. Releasing his straps, Michael climbed stiffly out of his seat, his combat space suit stiff and awkward. He hated the damn thing, but procedures were procedures, though the chances of a combat space suit keeping him alive if
Widowmaker
bought it were slim. “Okay, folks,” he said to the rest of the lander’s flight deck crew, “I’ll go and plug into the network. We need to see how the rest of the op went. Jayla, can you check on the tug? I think we’re moving to Bravo-16.”

“Yes, sir. We are. It’s a long way, so I’ll let you know when the tug’s hooked up. Be a long walk otherwise.”

“Thanks,” Michael said, struggling out of his space suit before dropping down the ladder to the cargo bay to exit the lander, the familiar smell of burned rock greeting him, the heat radiating off
Widowmaker
’s armored skin forcing him to
duck his head on the way past. He found the commander of the local security detachment waiting for him.

“Sir,” the man said with the casual wave of his right hand that passed for a salute in the NRA, “Sergeant Burelli, Bravo-26 security detachment.”

Returning the salute, Michael did what he did with every new NRA trooper he met: He shook hands. Given that every last one of them had been taught from birth to think that the Feds were something unspeakably evil, it was the only way Michael knew to show them that Feds were ordinary human beings, too.

“Sergeant. Glad to be here. They tried to nail us with kinetics on the way in.”

“We know,” Burelli said. “We felt them.”

“Any sign of follow-up?”

Burelli shook his head, the look on his sun-weathered face—by Fed standards, he looked like an old man even though Michael had seen enough Hammers to know that he was probably not even fifty—making it quite clear he wanted the Hammers to try. “No, sir,” he said. “ENCOMM reports no air activity in this sector and no kinetics inbound. Portal defenses are online, so we’re not expecting any problems.”

“Any ground activity?”

“Nothing. The Hammers know better; they don’t try much anymore, ever since we trapped two entire battalions of those scum-sucking PGDF bastards inside Delta-35,” he said, a grin splitting his face from side to side. “They were so damn sure they had us on the run, they couldn’t help themselves. They kept on coming, on and on … until we blew the roof down on their Kraa-kissing heads. For some reason, the Hammer’s appetite for cave-clearance operations has never been the same since. Can’t think why.”

Michael laughed. “Good to hear it,” he said. “We’ll be hooking up any minute for the tow to Bravo-16. Good to meet you, Sergeant. Best of luck.”

“Thanks, same to you,” Burelli said before walking up the tunnel back toward the cave mouth. Michael watched him for a moment. The sergeant’s lanky beanpole frame radiated confidence and quiet aggression, a powerful reminder of just how
committed the average NRA trooper was to the cause. If commitment were all it took to win a war, this one would have long been over.

Checking with the map stored in his neuronics, he set off to find the local dataport to connect him through to ENCOMM, looking forward to the day when the NRA adopted Fed neuronics. He would probably die waiting; neuronics were yet another technology explicitly proscribed by Hammer of Kraa doctrine. He had to work at it, but he found the port eventually. Connecting the interface unit and logging on were the work of only moments—the NRA’s fiber-optic networks might be archaic, but they were fast and reliable—and Michael was in. He pulled up Operation Pendulum’s command plot and had a few anxious moments while he scanned it, hoping to confirm that
Alley Kat
and
Hell Bent
had made it back.

To his relief, they had, though not without drama. Like
Widowmaker
, they had been targeted by Hammer Kingfishers operating from McNair spaceport and then by kinetics when they returned home, but return home they had, and thanks to
Widowmaker
’s diversionary efforts to the west, they had been able to take out their secondary targets before fleeing, leaving behind them the smoking, shattered ruins of four planetary defense camps supporting operations along the main highway running from McNair through Perdan and on to Daleel. Classic hit-and-run attacks, straight out of the irregular warfare manual, attacks that came and went before the defenders ever worked out what was happening.

Problem was, irregular warfare never won wars, even if supported by the most advanced ground-attack landers in humanspace. Until NRA ground forces captured and held the fount of all Hammer power, the city of McNair, until its troopers controlled the streets, until Chief Councillor Polk and the rest of the Supreme Council had been hung in time-honored Hammer fashion by one leg from lampposts, until Doctrinal Security and its legions of black-jumpsuited psychopaths had been destroyed, this war was a long way from over.

Michael was about to disconnect when Major Hok’s face appeared in his neuronics.

“Major Hok, sir,” he said, “how’s Pendulum tracking?”

“Too early to say,” Hok said noncommittally. “Your tug arrived yet?”

“On its way.”

“Good. General Vaas wants to talk to you. Hand over to your XO and report to ENCOMM soonest. Hok, out.”

“Yes, sir,” Michael said, heart sinking. He had been looking forward to doing not much while
Widowmaker
was towed to her new location. He consulted the maps stored in his neuronics; his heart sank even more. The journey from Bravo-26 back to ENCOMM to meet up with Vaas would be a bastard: a long and uncomfortable trek through the sprawling complex of caves and tunnels that housed the NRA, by way of an intricate network of maglevs, heavy and light sleds, carbots, truckbots, and of course caves too convoluted for anything other than foot traffic.

That he did not need.

Back at
Widowmaker
, Michael climbed the ladder to the flight deck with an effort; Ferreira was waiting for him.

“Cheer up, sir,” she said with a smile. “The tug will be here in a minute, and then it’s a ten-hour tow. I feel a shitload of rack time coming on.”

“Enjoy it,” Michael said, sour-faced. “ENCOMM wants me yesterday, so I’ll catch up with you later.”

“I heard they relocated.”

Michael nodded. “Tell me about it. ENCOMM’s now halfway to bloody Daleel.”

“Shit. Rather you than me,” Ferreira said with a grimace. “That’ll take you hours.”

“Yup, it sure will. See you all later. I’ll comm you an update when I know what ENCOMM wants me to do.”

“Sir.”

   Michael was exhausted by the time he made it to ENCOMM, a journey of long hours and hundreds of kilometers. The NRA’s transport network might be a triumph of determination, ingenuity, and improvisation—all of which it was—but comfortable, fast, and convenient it was not. Climbing out of the sled that had taken him the final few kilometers, he paused in a vain attempt to stretch the kinks out of his left
leg, phantom pain from old wounds stubbornly resistant to the best painkillers the Hammer pharmaceutical industry could supply.

Limping, he made his way across the lobby, past security, and into the operations room.

Major Hok spotted him and waved him over. “About time you made it,” she grunted, turning back to the holovid screen in front of her.

“Major!” Michael protested. “Give me a break. I—”

Hok’s hand went up to stop him. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Sorry. Things around here are a bit tense.”

“Tense? Why? Last I heard the ground operation was going well.”

“It was,” Hok said, “and I’m sorry to drag you all this way for nothing. General Vaas insisted, but he’s been called away.”

“When will he be back?”

“No idea.”

Michael groaned; Vaas was one of the most unpredictable people he had ever met. He could be waiting hours, maybe even days. “What does he want me for?”

“You know the general. Brainstorming session to see if there’s something we can do about our lack of landers. He seems to think you’re one of the more creative people around. Fuck knows why.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Major,” Michael snorted. “Besides, solving that one will take more than a bit of brain-storming. Anyway,” he said, resigning himself to a long wait, “if that’s what the general wants.”

“I’m sorry,” Hok said with a contrite smile. “Not been the best of days. You eaten?”

“No,” Michael replied, Hok’s question provoking protests from an unhappy stomach.

“Nor me. Come on, let’s grab a bite to eat, and I’ll tell you all about it. I’m starving.”

Michael followed Hok out of ENCOMM to the canteen without enthusiasm. He might be hungry, but the NRA’s food was both awful and monotonous. But food was food, and he was hungry. Silence reigned as the pair shoveled food into empty stomachs.

Pushing her tray away with a soft belch of satisfaction, Hok sat back, mug of coffee in hand. “Kraa, that was good,” she said. “I do love that garlic chicken.”

“You’re kidding me, right?” Michael said, looking up in disbelief.

“Yes, I am. I hate the shit. We have the worst foodbots in humanspace. Now, where was I?”

“Pendulum. Ground ops. Not so good.”

“Ah, yeah. The good news is the diversions worked as planned. General Vaas asked me to say well done, by the way. Not too many of those DocSec scum will get home for the weekend. Millfield is a wreck.”

“Tell you what, Major. When it comes to killing DocSec troopers, I’m happy to oblige.”

Hok’s eyebrows lifted at the quiet intensity in Michael’s voice. “Don’t like them too much, do you?”

“Why would I? The way they treated me the first time around, not to mention that little stunt Colonel Hartspring tried to pull. Bastards, all of them.”

Hok grimaced. “No argument. Interesting, though,” she added. “They’re beginning to worry we might win.”

Michael’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. This was news. “DocSec is?”

“Seems so. Nothing definite, of course, but DocSec is so badly compromised that we know what their brass is planning before their troopers do. Apparently, more than a few of them are finding reasons to visit Scobie’s World, and surprise, surprise, they never come back. Changing the subject, I finally got to see the holovid, by the way.”

“The Hartspring vid?”

“Yeah,” Hok said. “Nasty piece of work that one.”

Unaware he was even doing it, Michael ran a finger lightly down the side of his face where Hartspring’s riding crop had sliced him open all those months before. “Tell me. He and I have unfinished business.” Michael breathed out slowly to help control the sudden rage. “Can we stick to Pendulum, Major?” he said.