Helfort's War Book 4: The Battle for Commitment Planet (22 page)

Michael needed only a moment to think the proposition through. “Yes, sir, very,” he said, feeling like a massive load had been taken off his shoulders.

“Good. The fact that you and your people agreed to come back into the chain of command will help in mitigation if we ever get to that point. Well, I think we’re done here. No, wait, one more thing.”

“Sir?”

“Do you trust me, Helfort?”

“Yes, sir. Of course.”

“Good, because the first order I’m going to give is that you issue all of my people with weapons. I’ll be damned if I let them sit, surrounded by Hammers, armed only with sticks.”

Michael’s heart skipped a beat; if Adrissa was not the woman he thought she was, he would be dead before the week was out. “Er, yes, sir,” he said, swallowing hard. “I’ll get onto it right away.”

“Good. Now, since this is your setup, I’m happy to take your advice. What’s next?”

“Well, sir. I’ve sent a message to the NRA’s head man—his name is Mutti Vaas—outlining what we were doing and why. I’ve asked him to send us someone to take us to his headquarters. Once we’re there, we’ll make our case. Beyond that, who knows, but we think he’ll be receptive to our offer of assistance.”

“We do, too, Lieutenant. He’d be mad to turn you down. Any idea when they might—”

A tap on the door interrupted Adrissa. “Yes, come in.”

It was Ferreira. Licking her lips nervously at the sight of the assembled brass, she turned to Michael. “Sir, we’ve had—”

Michael lifted his hand to cut her off. “Jayla. Captain Adrissa is the senior officer present. Make your report to her, please.”

“Oh, right,” Ferreira said, her confusion obvious. She turned to Adrissa. “Sorry, sir,” she mumbled.

“Don’t worry about it. You were saying?”

“Umm, yes. Lieutenant Kallewi says there is an NRA patrol on its way in and can you … er, can Lieutenant Helfort please come to meet them. Kallewi’s taking them to
Hell Bent
.”

“Okay. Michael … may I call you Michael?

“Yes, sir, please,” Michael said, reddening, embarrassed by Adrissa’s sudden thaw.

“The NRA, eh? Well, that was prompt.”

“Yes, sir. It was. Their communications must be good, and obviously they had a patrol nearby.”

“Well, I’m happy to see them. I hope they’re happy to see us. Why don’t we go and find out what the NRA has to say for itself? When we know what they propose, I’ll clear lower deck so I can talk to everyone. The troops need to know how we intend to play things.”

“Sir.”

Michael and Adrissa made their way to
Hell Bent
. Kallewi stood waiting for them; Michael was relieved when Kallewi snapped to attention as the captain approached. “Lieutenant Kallewi, sir,” he said formally.

“Pleased to meet you, Lieutenant,” Adrissa said. “I hear the NRA has arrived.”

“They have, sir. They’re asking for Lieutenant Helfort.”

“I understand that, Lieutenant Kallewi,” Adrissa said, “but just so’s you know, from here on out we will do things by the book, follow the chain of command, all that boring Fleet Regulations stuff. Okay?” There was no mistaking the steel in Adrissa’s voice.

Kallewi hesitated, but only until Michael caught his eye and nodded his approval. “Yes, sir,” the marine said. “Understood. Follow me, please.”

The group made its way up
Hell Bent
’s ramp to where the NRA patrol waited. The troopers were a woeful sight: four men and two women dressed in combat overalls that had seen better days, hard faces tight with hunger and fatigue. But it was the eyes that caught Michael’s attention—a blend of fear, suspicion, and hate—and their weapons: assault rifles shiny
from months, maybe even years of hard use but clean and well cared for.

“Which one of you is Helfort?” one of the men said abruptly.

Okay, let’s not waste time on the niceties, Michael thought. “I am,” he said, stepping forward, “and this is my boss, Captain Adrissa. You are?”

“Sergeant Farsi. General Vaas wants to see you.”

“Fine. Just me?”

“Bring who you like. Provided they can keep up, it doesn’t matter. You have chromaflage capes?”

“We have.”

“Bring them, plus your personal weapons and food for a week. We leave in two hours.”

“Okay. We’ve got a few things to get done, but we’ll be ready.”

“We’ll wait for you down the ravine.”

“Hold on,” Michael said. “Want some hot food? We’ve got enough to go around.”

Farsi paused to think about that for a moment. “That would be good,” he said. His face softened; the tip of his tongue flicked out and across his lips. “Really good.”

Michael grinned. “Thought it might be. Follow me and I’ll get you sorted.” He turned to Adrissa. “Anything you need to ask, sir?”

“No. Get the sergeant and his team fed. I’ll talk to everyone. Once that’s done, we can go.”

“Sir.”

   “… so, to sum up, you have two choices: stay part of FLTDETCOMM under my command or join the NRA and the Nationalists in whatever capacity best suits your talents. It’s your choice, and you are free to decide what is in your own best interests. All I ask is that you make your minds up before I leave to talk to General Vaas if you can; it will help me tell him how many of you they can expect. When you’ve decided, let Lieutenant Commander Solanki know. That is all. Carry on, please.”

The assembled spacers and marines broke up into a milling
mass. Trying not to think about Anna—she had made a point of avoiding him—Michael set off to get his gear together, his mind worrying away at the problem of just how the hell he might handle Vaas. One thing was for sure: Vaas was no—

“Michael?”

He turned. It was Anna. She gave nothing away, her face expressionless. “Yes?”

“Can you talk?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said, eyes wary. “Over here. What’s up?”

“What’s up?” she hissed, her face flushed and her eyes blazing with anger. “What’s up? Screw you, Michael Helfort, you sonofabitch. You know what’s up!”

Michael shoved his hands palms out as if to keep Anna at bay. “Anna, please,” he said. “I know things aren’t the best, but I just … I just hoped this was going to work out. What was I supposed to do? If I’d left you to Colonel Hartspring, you’d be dead inside a month, and it was never going to be an easy death.”

Anna’s head slumped forward; face in her hands, her shoulders shook. She sobbed softly, so Michael did the sensible thing. Folding her in his arms, he held her tightly for a long time. Eventually, she pushed him back to look him right in the face, red-rimmed green eyes brimming with tears. “Oh, shit,” she said, her voice breaking, wiping the tears away, “it wasn’t supposed to end up like this. This fucking war was supposed to be over when we destroyed the Hammer’s antimatter plant, but it’s not, and the way things are going, it never will be.”

“But Anna, you’re safe,” Michael protested. “I’m safe; we’re together. What does anything else matter? It doesn’t, Anna; nothing else matters. It’s just us. Me and you, and the rest of humanspace can go fuck itself.”

Anna stared at him for an age. A smile flickered across her face, gone no sooner than it appeared. “Michael Helfort, you are thick. Thick as pig shit, you know that?”

“What? Thick? Me?” Michael spluttered, utterly confused.

“Yes, thick … dumb, stupid, dopey, half-witted. I know it’s just you and me. Why do you think I’m so upset?”

“I have no idea, Anna. Honestly.”

“Like you just said, dumbo. It’s you and me, and the rest of humanspace can go fuck itself.”

“You mean that?” Michael said, trying not to let a rush of euphoria overwhelm him.

“Sure do, spacer,” she said. “Now, even though the rest of humanspace should go screw itself, you have work to do.”

Michael’s euphoria vanished. “Ah, damn. Duty, duty, always duty. Yes, Captain Adrissa and I are off to see the Nationalists. Don’t how long we’ll be gone.”

“I’ll be here when you get back, Michael,” Anna said softly. “I’ll be here.”

   “Okay,” Farsi said, “here are the rules, and they are not open for debate.”

Off to a promising start, Michael said to himself while the NRA sergeant looked at everyone in turn.

“Rule one,” Farsi continued. “I’m in charge. Any time I’m not around, Corporal T’chavliki”—he pointed to a scrappy, underweight woman standing off to one side—“is the boss. What either one of us says goes. If one of you steps out of line, I’ll blow your Kraa-damned head off. I don’t have the time to argue.

“Rule two. For Kraa’s sake, maintain chromaflage discipline, so capes on all the time. Since we laid our hands on Goombah shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles, those Hammer fuckpigs don’t send drones across our patch like they used to, but they’re around. So are the battlesats; if the cloud cover clears, their damn lasers will fry you in a heartbeat. They might even drop kinetics on us, so don’t give them a target.

“Rule three. Keep up. If you can’t keep up, tough. Make your way back here as best you can.

“Rule four. If you look like you’re getting captured, kill as many of the Hammers as you can before you kill yourself. Trust me; you should never, ever allow yourself to be taken alive.”

Michael shivered, an image of Erwin Hartspring popping unbidden into his mind’s eye, the black uniform and pale,
washed-out eyes every bit as vivid as the last time he had seen the DocSec colonel.

“Rule five. There is no rule five, so that’s it. Any questions?” Farsi looked around again. He nodded. “Good. Let’s go.”

Without another word, Farsi waved them to move out, a trooper and Farsi up front, Adrissa, Kallewi, and Michael behind them, with T’chavliki and the rest of the patrol bringing up the rear.

Mouth open, Chief Councillor Polk gaped at the appalling sight sprawled out in front of him. Two weeks earlier, he had presided over a medals ceremony at this very base. It had been flawless. Air-superiority fighters and ground-attack fliers had been arrayed in precise lines, their crews and the base’s support personnel drawn up immaculate in their dress blacks, hundreds upon hundreds of them, all proof positive that not every part of the Hammer Worlds was a corrupt, decaying farce.

Now the place was a wasteland, a blast-smashed expanse of ceramcrete littered with the shattered wrecks of fighters, the base’s elaborate infrastructure reduced to blackened piles of rubble through which casualty recovery teams picked their way with painstaking care, a red flag appearing every time a new body was located. There were hundreds of red flags already, Polk noted, and the teams had covered only a fraction of the base.

With a start, Polk realized how dumb he must look. He turned to the latest in a long line of commanders in chief standing alongside him, his face drawn tight with shock.

“How, Admiral Belasz? How could this have happened?”

Belasz licked his lips; Polk could see a small tic working under the man’s left eye. Given that his predecessor had been consigned to a DocSec lime pit for the last disaster, he had every right to be nervous.

“Well, sir,” Belasz said, choosing his words with great care, “overwhelming force directed with great precision is how. If the Feds choose to drop hundreds of thousands of tons of armored heavy cruiser onto us, I’m afraid there’s very little we can do to stop them. That much mass moving that fast …” Balasz shrugged his shoulders. “It’s unstoppable.”

Polk resisted the urge to have the man arrested on the spot. “They’d waste ships doing that?” he demanded. “Why? It makes no sense, especially given they are so short of frontline units.”

“We don’t know the answer to that, sir,” Belasz said, “and I agree it doesn’t make sense. Yes, they’ve caused us great damage, but it’s all to the PGDF. They haven’t reduced Fleet’s capacity to wage war on them in any way. I’m sorry, sir. I wish we knew, but it’s a mystery, and without the crews of the three ships to tell us, we may never work it out.”

“Do we know the names of the ships?”

“Yes, sir. We do. They were three R-Class heavy cruisers:
Redwood, Red River
, and
Redress
.”

Polk swung around. “
Redwood!
” he barked. “Did you say
Redwood
?”

The raw ferocity in Polk’s voice made Belasz flinch. “Yes, sir,” he stammered. “
Redwood
was one the ships destroyed in the attack. It hit Perkins.”

Redwood
, Kraa damn it! With a terrible, cold certainly it all made sense to Polk. “Admiral, get your people to confirm the status of J-5209.”

“J-5209?” Belasz said with a frown. “The prisoner of war camp? I don’t under—”

“Yes, you imbecile. J-5209, the Fed prisoner-of-war camp. Now!”

“Yes, sir.”

Belasz returned a minute later. “J-5209 was attacked shortly
after the three PGDF bases were hit. Fed landers took out the defenses before leaving with all the Fed prisoners. Kingfisher fighters from Ojan took them out off the coast southwest of McNair. We found no survivors.”

Polk was silent.
Redwood
meant Helfort; it had to be him. Who else would have staged such an elaborate diversionary attack? Who else had enough of a motive? So why would he go to all that trouble only to die in the storm-wracked seas, victim of the Kingfishers’ Alaric missiles and of a complete lack of fallback planning? It was not like Helfort at all; that meant …

“Admiral.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Humor me,” Polk said. “I’m not convinced. When the weather allows, I want the crash site checked again, including a seabed survey this time. I want concrete proof those landers were shot down, and I want it soon.”

Belasz’s eyes opened wide in surprise. “Yes, sir. Will be done.”

“Good. Keep me informed.” Polk waved his chief of staff over. “I’ve seen enough.”

“Yes, sir.”

As his flier climbed away, leaving behind a scene of utter desolation, Polk patched through a call to Viktor Solomatin.

“Anything from the Feds?” he asked when the unlovely face of his councillor for foreign relations appeared in his personal holovid.

“Yes, sir. In short, they are claiming that rogue elements acting outside the Federated Worlds’ chain of command were responsible for the attack. Details to follow.”