Helfort's War Book 4: The Battle for Commitment Planet (46 page)

So what could be easier?

Yes, Michael decided, put like that, it was pretty simple … until you factored in all the problems: It would be dark, the NRA’s comms were not the best, the Hammers outnumbered them by a large margin, the NRA was desperately short of heavy weapons, they had no artillery or air support, the attacks
launched by the 5th and 12th might fall apart, the … Michael stopped there; there was no point listing the NRA’s weaknesses. Anyway, maybe they were not that important; maybe the NRA’s incredible fighting spirit outweighed all of them.

He would soon find out, he thought as he climbed to his feet and looked around to see where Lance Corporal Sadotra had gotten.

   “Confirm radio and tightbeam lasers set to receive only, infrared beacon off,” Sadotra said. “And any transmitters connected to those damn neuronics of yours.”

Michael fumbled with the unfamiliar controls on his tactical data unit, the thin box strapped to his left forearm one of thousands churned out by Chief Chua’s microfabs to a Rogue Worlds design. Compared to a Fed marine’s, it was primitive, but it was a huge advance on the disorganized grab bag of gear the NRA had been using. Even better, Chua’s people had produced a version that connected with his neuronics, so he could dispense with the awkward microvid screen and earbud worn by NRA troopers.

“Confirmed,” he said. “All set to stand by.”

“Good. Not long now.”

Michael nodded, his mouth and throat dust-dry, horribly aware of how unprepared he was. For the thousandth time he asked himself what he was doing there when all he had ever wanted to be was the command pilot of an assault lander. He had not joined Fleet to end up a grunt fighting in the mud and muck of ground combat, yet here he was, about to do just that. He scanned the operation order uploaded into his neuronics one last time; the tactical schematics showed the ground outside Juliet-24 in muted greens and browns, the whole place infested with red icons marking Hammer positions. He knew that the detached precision of the display did nothing to convey the horrors that awaited Second Platoon. With a quiet prayer that he would not let Anna and the rest of the platoon down, he reset the display to show only C Company’s part in the overall operation; what Colonel Mokhine and the other two companies of the 2/83rd needed to do to capture their objective—the Hammer’s headquarters—was none of his business.

The atmosphere was tense as the clock ran down. With seconds to go, Michael breathed in hard, his eyes locked on Anna, just another body-armored shape amid the packed ranks of NRA troopers waiting to go into action, her face invisible behind the plasglass faceplate of her helmet.

With a bang, the barbecues fired and their fuel-air charges exploded, the air filled with a thunderous
whump whump
followed an instant later by the shock wave, a giant fist smashing into the tunnel, its walls and roof shaken bodily, rock shards spinning down onto the waiting troopers.

“Holy crap,” Michael muttered, shaking his head to try to clear his mind. It was going to be chaos out there, and the last thing he wanted was to be cut off from Anna and the rest of the platoon.

Hrelitz was on her feet. “Go, go, go,” she shouted before turning and running into the dust-loaded air. As one, C Company pounded after her in a disciplined rush. With a silent prayer that Second Platoon’s new commander would keep her pretty little head down when the shooting started, Michael followed Sadotra and the rest of Anna’s troopers through the blast door and down the tunnel toward the portal, the air stinking with the acrid smell of burned fuel and something else he struggled to identify, sickly, sweet, like, like … His stomach heaved as he fought to keep his last meal down, mouth open to keep the smell of burned flesh out of his nostrils.

Emerging from the tunnel and into the portal was the work of moments. When he emerged, Michael stumbled to a stop, appalled by the sight that greeted him. “No time for sightseeing, trooper,” Sadotra barked. “Keep moving!”

Michael did as he was told, running hard, doing his best not to stand on the flame-seared bodies of dead Hammers. They lay everywhere, more than he cared to count, still smoking and tossed into charred heaps by the force of the blast, armored vehicles thrown bodily back against the rock walls of the portal. It had been a massacre; Michael could see not one living Hammer marine among the hundreds carpeting the ground. If any of it bothered the NRA troopers around him, it did not show. Stopping short of the portal’s mouth, Hrelitz and her squad leaders marshaled the platoon into formation.

Captain Hrelitz’s head swung left and right; her hand dropped, and C Company was on the move, trailed by combat engineers heavily laden with demolition charges.

Emerging into the gloom of late evening, Michael was shocked to see how far the damage extended. Barbecues firing from the plateau above had dropped a fan-shaped wave of destruction onto the Hammers’ beachhead; all human life for hundreds of meters had been obliterated. It was carnage, yet more bodies flung with careless abandon across the valley floor as far as the rock wall rising sheer on the other side. Wounded lay everywhere, untended, ignored, small islands of agony and suffering, the air filled with screams for help that rose and fell over a soft murmur of moans, sobs, prayers, and cries.

Michael had seen his share of death but had never seen anything like this. This was Armageddon writ small; for the first time he allowed himself to believe that Hrelitz’s optimism was justified.

C Company pushed on into the night, moving fast. Reaching the dead ground leading up to the vehicle park’s western perimeter, Hrelitz halted First and Second Platoons, the platoon commanders repositioning their troopers ready for the attack. Then Third Platoon peeled off and headed southeast to establish the initial base of fire, their chromaflaged shapes swallowed quickly by the night, a thin tendril of reinforced optical fiber their only link back to Hrelitz.

Staying close to Lance Corporal Sadotra, Michael threw himself down behind the shattered trunk of a tree only to come face to face with a dead Hammer marine, arms thrown out wide, head back, helmet ripped half-off, mouth open in a rictus of agony, empty black pits of eyes staring right into Michael’s. On top of the stench in the air, it was too much, and his stomach rebelled, emptying itself in a series of convulsive heaves all over the ground.

“Oh, hell,” he murmured. He wiped his mouth, ignoring the urge to take a swig from his canteen. Somehow he did not think Sadotra would approve. He shivered. Compared to the remote, clinical precision of space warfare, this was a waking nightmare.

Forcing a rebellious body back under control, Michael scanned the area around their position, looking for any Hammers who might have survived the fuel-air charges’ appalling combination of heat and blast. But nothing moved on the shock-scoured killing ground.

A blurred shape appeared out of the gloom, whispered something to Sadotra, and then disappeared. Sadotra rolled toward Michael. “Stand by. Jump off at minute 25,” she whispered. “Go pass the word to the section. Minute 25.”

“Minute 25. Got it.” Grateful that he had something better to do than lie around thinking about all the Hammers waiting to blow his head apart, Michael slithered around Yankee section before making his way back to Sadotra. “Yankee section’s ready to go,” he said.

“Any problems?”

“No. Everyone’s good.” Better than me, he wanted to say.

Sadotra nodded, her helmeted head blurred by its chromaflage skin into an elusive, shifting gray shape barely visible against the black background.

Minute 25 arrived at last. Without a single word being said, Sadotra and the rest of Second Platoon rose to their feet and moved up the slope toward the northwestern edge of the vehicle park. Then all hell broke loose; without thinking, Michael dived for the ground, scrabbling at the dirt in a frantic search for cover. Ahead and to the right of them, the searing flashes of microgrenades bleached black into white, and wandering lines of tracer fire and the streak of lasers slashed lines of white, gold, and red across the night sky, the racket of rifle and heavy machine gun fire broken by bone-jarring crump of mortars.

Michael had never experienced anything like it. His every sense was overwhelmed. Swamped by light and noise and shock and fear, his brain froze for an instant. Then a residual grain of common sense told him that nobody was shooting at him … yet. Belatedly, he realized that what he was seeing was 12 and 5 Brigades’ attacks kicking off, and now it was C Company’s turn. To Michael’s right, Third Platoon opened up on the Hammer’s left flank, a wall of tracer chewing away at the Hammer positions, golden lines interlaced with the red streaks of Stabber squad antiarmor missiles as they hunted out
and destroyed a pair of Akkad light tanks. Embarrassed, he scrambled back to his feet and ran to catch up with Sadotra, praying she had not noticed his moment of weakness.

Michael did what Anna had told him to do: keep going, stay in position, and watch for any sign of life, but there was none, only shattered trees interspersed with wrecked Hammer support positions, and everywhere dead and wounded marines. Third Platoon’s fire pounded away, but there was no response.

The hulking black shapes packed into the Hammer’s heavy equipment park were obvious now. Michael kept moving, heart pounding and skin crawling, certain that somewhere ahead a Hammer must have him in his sights. Then, without any warning, tracer rounds exploded out of the darkness. Streaking past his head, they slashed the air apart in yellow-gold lines that came and went in an instant. Instinctively he spun away, hurling himself to the ground and into cover. His neuronics computed the target data, and he rolled to one side to return fire at the unseen enemy, the assault rifle’s recoil pounding his shoulder as hypervelocity rounds ripped away into the darkness, the searing flash of a microgrenade imprinting an image of a Hammer marine frozen in the air as he was blown out of his foxhole.

The equipment park erupted.

Michael was frightened now. The darkness between him and the Hammers had filled with a lethal blizzard of rifle and heavy machine gun fire punctuated by the flat crack of microgrenades. All hope he might have had of getting out of this awful place alive was stripped away by the ferocity of it all. He lay paralyzed by the sheer weight of fire coming his way before he belatedly realized that the Hammers were firing blindly, wandering lines of tracer fire hosing the night sky wildly in all directions; anything coming his way was an accident.

To his dismay, the rest of the platoon had already worked that out. While First Platoon pounded the Hammer positions, Second Platoon stayed on its feet, swinging left to flank the enemy’s positions. With a euphoric rush, adrenaline overwhelmed fear, and Michael climbed to his feet even though the whip crack of rifle fire was dangerously close, then closer still, and fear replaced euphoria. Flinching as a burst tore past his head with a flat slap, Michael knew he was losing his grip
on the situation; unable to keep his mind focused, he was distracted and confused, head swinging wildly as he tried to work out what to do next. He struggled to control his frustration; he might have been a dreadnought captain once, but now he was just another NRA trooper, utterly dependent on Sadotra. He was no foot soldier; he had no idea how anyone could understand, let alone react effectively to, the chaos that had engulfed him.

Michael might have been confused; Anna and the rest of her platoon were not. As they stopped short of the razor wire protecting the vehicle park’s western edge, breaching charges were slung under the wire, Second Platoon untroubled by random fire wandering uselessly overhead. The Hammers and their hostile fire indicators were being swamped by the furious fire being thrown at them by the rest of C Company. With a dull crump, to Michael’s ear almost inaudible amid the racket of rifle and heavy machine gun fire, the way was clear and section by section the charges exploded, shredding the razor wire, and Second Platoon was into the vehicle park proper.

Now what? Michael’s neuronics gave him the answer, a red target indicator lozenge popping into view over a blurred shape scuttling away down a line of vehicles, the man moving too fast for his chromaflage to compensate. Without thinking, Michael dropped the Hammer in his tracks.

“Radios and lasers on,” Anna barked. “They know we’re here now.”

Michael’s neuronics burst into life as voice networks came online, orders flowing quick and fast, the platoon breaking into sections to start cleaning out any Hammers holed up among the equipment packed into the vehicle park. A quick glance at the updated tactical plot confirmed what Michael wanted to see: First Platoon had broken through the wire south of Second Platoon and was now working its way into the columns of vehicles, hounding and harassing Hammers out of cover; Third Platoon was on the move on the right flank of the attack, proceeding fire team by fire team along the park’s southern edge, channeling the fleeing Hammers away to the east, sustained heavy fire lashing them as they retreated.

For the first time, Michael began to understand fully why
Hrelitz had been so optimistic. Stunned and demoralized by the tremendous blast from the fuel-air charges that opened the attack, their commanders distracted by the attacks launched by 5 and 12 Brigades, the rear-echelon marines tasked with securing the vehicle park had no stomach for a fight. With little attempt at organized resistance, their defense collapsed into a series of isolated firefights. Outmaneuvered, outgunned, outfought—these were firefights the Hammer marines had no chance of winning.

Meter by meter, Sadotra’s section worked its way along the northern perimeter. Michael shut out the bedlam around him, lost in the mindless business of killing, his assault rifle pounding his shoulder as he fired short bursts into every target his neuronics presented, his entire existence reduced to one simple task: putting the sights of his assault rifle onto the red target icons and pulling the trigger. So absorbed was he that it came as a shock when the platoon reached the eastern edge of the vehicle park and Anna called a halt, the orders flowing thick and fast as she deployed troopers to consolidate their position.