Helfort's War Book 4: The Battle for Commitment Planet (53 page)

He sighed, wondering if the new Michael Helfort was any better than the old. He was not at all sure he was.

But one thing had improved. He had always known there were good and bad people, with everything in between. But he had not understood what made people truly good.

He thought he did now.

Good people were those he could trust with his life, who meant what they said, who did not try to blame others for the consequences of their decisions, not even with so much as a careless word or sideways glance, who never made promises they could not keep, who never allowed self-interest to overrule the common good.

Anna was one of those, his parents, Jaruzelska, and Bienefelt, too, of course, and there were many more, some of whom, surprisingly, he disliked so much that he could not imagine sharing a beer with them. Vaas’s intelligence chief, Colonel Pedersen, came to mind. She was good people even though she had the social skills of a DocSec trooper.

And good people did what no material thing ever could: provide the foundation for his life, a foundation infinitely more solid and more lasting than the hundreds of meters of limestone that lay beneath his feet.

Getting to his feet, he smiled to himself, struck by the absurdity
of it all. The material world sustained him and every other human alive, but it and all its works were less important than the good people he knew. They were the ones who had shaped his life, and they would go on shaping it until the day he died.

Which day, he reminded himself with a shiver of fear, might come rather sooner than he wanted.

Michael walked into
Hell Bent
’s cargo bay. It was a shell; the lander was a shell. Everything Sedova deemed non-mission-critical had gone in a ruthless drive to reduce the lander’s takeoff weight, tons and tons of redundant mass torn from every corner of the lander and dumped.

Hell Bent
was ready: The heavy lander would accelerate faster and turn more quickly than any lander in history. It was just a pity, Michael thought as he made his way over to where Sedova stood, that
Hell Bent
might also die faster than any lander in history.

Sedova’s eyes sparkled, her weight shifting from foot to foot in excited anticipation. Some things never change, he thought. “Find anything?” Sedova asked.

“Of course not,” Michael said. “This lander is good to go.”

“Well, in that case, I think it’s time for coffee.”

Michael groaned. Much as he loved coffee, its cult status in Hammer society was beginning to wear thin. Without a precursory mug, nothing happened, and Sedova had become an enthusiastic convert to the coffee obsession thanks to Trooper Zhu. “If we must,” Michael said begrudgingly.

“Yes,” Sedova said, heading for the drinkbot. “You know the rules. We must.”

Sedova handed Michael his mug, steam spiraling up in
lazy curls heavy with the fragrance of perfectly roasted beans, and sat down alongside him. There was silence, a moment of simple plea sure, a moment to be enjoyed, a moment out of the insane pressure getting ready for Long Shot had created.

“You know something, Kat?” Michael said finally.

“What?”

“I look back at all the big decisions I’ve had to make—telling Admiral Jaruzelska not to risk her ships trying to protect
DLS-387
after the Battle of Hell’s Moons, ignoring Admiral Perkins’s orders to turn the dreadnoughts back during the Battle of Devastation Reef, Operation Gladiator—and at the time, each one was the biggest decision I’d ever made. Now Long Shot comes along, and everything’s on the line, everything. My life, Anna’s life, your life, the lives of all the other Feds who are here because of me”—he put his hand up to forestall Sedova, whose mouth already was opening in protest—“the NRA, the Nationalist cadres and all the rest of those poor bastards out there having the shit kicked out of them by DocSec day in and day out, the Federated Worlds, and as if all of that’s not enough, the rest of humanspace if Emperor Jeremiah Polk the First has his way. Now ENCOMM tells us the Pascanicians have started to deliver—”

“Slimy, money-grubbing scum,” Sedova said, grim-faced.

“Understatement,” Michael said. “What a mess, what a bloody mess.”

Sedova laughed. “For chrissakes, Michael, stop complaining,” she said, slapping him on the shoulder. “Lighten up, for fuck’s sake.”

“Easy for you to say,” Michael said. “You have to be humanspace’s biggest optimist.”

“You know what?” Sedova said, all traces of humor gone from her face. “I have to be. This damn war would destroy me otherwise. Besides, you think Adrissa and Cortez can do this on their own?”

“Yes, I do.”

“So what’s bothering you?” Sedova said. “Okay, you won’t be in charge, but Adrissa still needs you. This business will not turn out the way it’s planned to. Things never do. Too much at
stake, too little time, too many players, too little trust. You know how it goes.”

Michael just shook his head.

“Ah,” Sedova said softly. “It’s not the mission. It’s not that at all, is it?”

“No,” Michael conceded reluctantly.

“It’s Anna, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Michael said, his face twisted into a bitter scowl. “I asked Adrissa if she could come with me. Never seen her so angry. Shit!” he added, the scowl replaced by a grin of rueful embarrassment. “When I told Anna, she was even angrier. I thought her head was going to explode; she was that fired up.”

“Michael!” Sedova shook her head in despair. “You know what? For a very bright boy, you can be so dumb sometimes, Michael.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, but I came here because the Hammers would have killed Anna if I hadn’t, so I could be with her whatever happened. Now I’m pissing off and leaving her. I can’t even say goodbye properly.”

“The 120th’s out doing its bit again?”

“Yeah. ENCOMM’s infiltrated them into the Velmar Mountains northeast of McNair. Hit-and-run operations. Part of Long Shot’s deception plan”

“Shit! The Velmars? That’s a long way to go.”

“It is. Once Long Shot’s over, the 120th will establish a base of operations there. Anna says ENCOMM wants to put more pressure on the marine bases at Beslan and Amokran. Like the Branxtons, the Velmars are karst—millions of hectares of limestone, countless caves, and none of it mapped by anyone—so I’m hoping they’ll be safe. Can’t say I’m happy about it, though, not that there’s much I can do about it. Did I tell you Anna’s been promoted?”

“What, again?” Sedova said, eyebrows arched in surprise. “That has to be a record.”

“Maybe, but when you have to throw back an attack involving a hundred thousand Hammer marines, you end up a bit short of officers. She’s a captain now, second in command of First Battalion’s H Company.”

“Jeez. She’s going to end up running the whole damn NRA the way she’s going, but H Company? That’s good, isn’t it?”

“You’d think so. I assume a headquarters company is a safer place to be. Knowing Anna, though …”

Sedova nodded. “She likes a fight, that one.”

“She does,” Michael said. “I keep telling her to keep her head down, and she just tells me to piss off. I wish—”

“Listen to me, Michael,” Sedova said, chopping him off. “Anna believes in what she’s doing, and she’s a Fed, so she’ll do things the best way she knows how. Leave it at that and let the fates decide how this whole shitty business turns out. Just do your job. What more can you do?”

“I know, I know. You’re right, not that it makes things any easier.”

“No, it doesn’t. I have the same problems with my man. Never thought I’d feel that way about another human, never mind a Hammer.”

“Shouldn’t that be ex-Hammer, Nationalist, or whatever?” Michael said.

“You know what I mean. Anyway, that’s enough of this soul-searching. Where the hell are Cortez and the rest of his team? The tug’s due any minute.”

“I’ll go check,” Michael said. “You chase up the tug. General Vaas will kick our asses if we hold things up.”

   “All stations, this is command,” Kat Sedova said. “We’re at the departure point, and the tug is disconnecting now. So faceplates down and make sure you’re well strapped in. Don’t have to tell you that this could get rough. Command out.”

Michael took a sip of water to moisten bone-dry lips before slapping the plasglass faceplate of his helmet down into position. He hated being tucked away down in the cargo bay with nothing better to do than to keep an eye on the three very unhappy people seated opposite him.

Unhappy was an understatement. Nothing would have prepared them for the ordeal to come. Major Hok’s face was dead white, her lips compressed to a single laser-thin line, and General Cortez looked as if he was about to lose his last meal, his eyes casting left and right in an endless hunt as if looking for
a way out. The Nationalists’ political affairs commissioner, Shalini Prashad, a scrawny woman with stringy brown hair that hung down to bony shoulders, already looked dead: hunched down in her seat, unmoving, head down, eyes closed, face a death-mask gray.

Not that he felt much better. His body was doing what it always did before combat: His stomach seethed and boiled and churned with a fear-fueled fire that stabbed acid up into his throat, his chest had tightened to a point where breathing became labored, his mouth had dried to dust, and his face was slick with a thin veneer of sweat.

“How are you doing, General?” Michael forced himself to say.

“Kraa’s blood,” Cortez croaked. “I did not join the NRA for this.”

“Nor me,” Hok muttered. “I never liked landers.”

Michael smiled. “Don’t worry about it, sirs,” he said, forcing a cheery confidence into his voice. “
Hell Bent
is a good machine, Sedova’s a good pilot, and Long Shot is a good plan. We’ll be fine.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Lieutenant,” Cortez growled. “I’ve sat through every sim of this mission. I know the odds of us surviving, and they are a lot less than I’d like them to be.”

Michael’s stomach churned some more; Cortez was dead right. “Sims always overstate the risks, General. That’s why we use them: to make sure that we don’t take things for granted, that we are ready for every eventuality.” For chrissakes, shut up, Michael told himself, conscious he was beginning to sound like a salesman.

“Humph,” was Hok’s response. Cortez looked sick. Prashad moaned softly but still did not move.

Michael decided that anything he said would only make everyone more stressed. No matter what the sims said, deep down Michael had faith in the operational plan. Thanks to the chaos inside the Hammer military, he was pretty sure their response would be slow, ill coordinated, and in effective.

Who needs the NRA? Michael wondered. Chief Councillor Polk was doing a great job wiping out the Hammer’s armed forces all on his own.

“All stations, this is command. Stand by … launching now.”

Hell Bent
’s main engines burst into life to kick the lander from its hiding place with a heavy metallic thud up and out into the rain-lashed air of late evening. Then Sedova rammed the engines to emergency power and turned hard away from the portal’s rock walls, foamalloy wings deploying as the lander accelerated down the valley, speed building fast through Mach 1 and beyond, faster and faster until Michael’s hands locked onto the armrest of his seat in a death grip, hypnotized by the awful sight of rock walls screaming past in a blur of limestone so close that the lander’s wingtips looked certain to hit. The forest beneath
Hell Bent
’s nose was speed-smeared into a chaotic mess of greens and browns and grays, on and on, the lander twisting and turning to follow the valley south.

Michael switched his neuronics to the threat plot, unable to watch anymore. He knew to the last second what
Hell Bent
and the rest of the forces involved in Long Shot should be doing. What he did not know was how the Hammers would react. Nobody did.

If the Hammers got it right, if they destroyed the lander before it reached the safety of pinchspace, Long Shot was over. The Hammers would crush the Federated Worlds and the rest of humanspace, system after system after system blasted into the maw of a rampant Hammer empire by the irresistible force of antimatter weapons until all that was good and decent and honest had vanished.

And humankind’s greatest experiment would have failed.

The stakes could not be higher. Michael did the only thing he could do: He sat back to pray that Long Shot would pull humanspace back from the brink of a new Dark Ages.