The Final Battle (34 page)

Good thing I ordered Shinoda and the rest to go when I did
, he consoled himself.
My conscience is bad enough without adding them to the list of people I’ve gotten killed
.

Now Michael could see Hartspring’s plan as if it had been drawn on the ground in front of him. It was obvious. Backed up by Team Victor’s firepower, DocSec would throw a cordon of laser trip wires around the area, one even a flea couldn’t get through. When the perimeter was secure—
it already is
, he realized—Hartspring would send in the search teams to flush him out. And they would. It was only a matter of time.

Michael’s time had all but run out. He had to find a way out of the trap Hartspring had laid for him. The man had played him for a fool, and what a fool he was.

Of course
ENCOMM
always knew where Team Victor was. Hartspring had made sure of that. And he’d changed his strategy. Kidnapping Anna might have been his original plan, but that would have been all but impossible in the chaos of combat. So instead of going after Anna—or Michael, come to that—he had sat back and waited for Michael to come to him. Which he had just done.

Michael cursed his stupidity, his pride, his arrogance.

He took a deep breath. Beating himself up was only wasting time. He had to get out. But how? A careful look around the ruined warehouse provided no options. It was built on a ceramcrete slab, and so there was no way into any sewers or drains that might run below it. The building’s simple plasfiber-covered frame and handful of offices offered nowhere to hide, and even if they had, the searchbots would sniff him out. Make a run for it? No, that wouldn’t work. He had delayed too long. He’d never get past DocSec’s trip wires.

With fear now threatening to turn to panic, Michael cast about in a desperate search for a way out. But no matter how hard he looked, there was none. As if he were looking for divine intervention, his head went back. That was when he spotted the control cabin on the massive gantry crane spanning the warehouse.
Wait
, he thought with mounting excitement.
My breath is warm, and warm air rises, which means the searchbots won’t be able to detect the carbon dioxide I exhale. It’ll mix with the sun-heated air under the ceiling and escape through the holes in the roof.

“Yes!” he hissed, exultant now that he had a real chance to escape Hartspring’s trap. He should be safe. Searchbots couldn’t climb ladders as far as he knew. Better still, their infrared sensors would not see him. The metal cabin would be so hot that any heat his body added would go unnoticed.

If the Hammers wanted to find him, they’d have to climb the ladder, and even then they had to spot him under his chromaflage cape. But Michael hoped they wouldn’t even bother to look for him in a place so exposed, so obvious.

He did not wait. Jumping to his feet, he ran hard for the ladder, pulling himself up rung by rung, wincing as flame-seared hands took his weight; then he moved along the access catwalk and into the cabin, its interior hot in the sun-baked air.

Forcing the safety gate half shut, Michael went to the very back of the cabin and slumped to the floor, all but his boots and head tucked away out of sight behind a large junction box. Pulling his cape over his body, he did the only thing he could do: wait.

• • •

Michael awoke with a start, for a moment confused by the unfamiliar surroundings. Then it all flooded back; he cursed his lack of discipline. This was not the time to be snoring his head off; searchbots had all the senses except touch, and so they would hear him if he did.

His heart thudded in his chest when he heard a skittering, scratching sound: the sound of dry leaves being blown gently along, the sound of a searchbot legs as they made their way across the ceramcrete floor of the warehouse. And not just one set of legs; there were lots, and for all its gentleness, it was a truly frightening sound: the sound of mindless machines hunting for him.

There was a heavier sound now: the noise of boots. “Dubcek, Carmichael, take that end,” a voice boomed, rattling and echoing around the warehouse, “Mishra, Kowalski, the other.”

Don’t look up,
Michael prayed, heart pounding and mouth ash-dry with fear.
Please do not look up.

The boots crashed their way up and down. “Nothing, sarge,” one of the men said.

“Okay, outside. Mishra?”

“Nothing here. The bots say the place is clean.”

“Fine.”

Michael had been holding his breath so long that his chest burned in protest; exhaling in a long, slow silent hiss, he let a tiny flame of hope spring to life.

It did not last, snuffed out by a few simple words. “What about up there?” the corporal said.

“Kraa’s blood,” a voice protested. “Nobody’s going to hide up there.”

“Get your fat ass up that ladder, Kowalski, and make sure that’s the case.”

“Oh, come on, corp. What’s the point?”

“The point, Marine Kowalski, is that I will kick you from here to sunset if you don’t. Now move!”

“Yes, corp.”

“What the fuck are you doing, Kowalski? Take the damn probe with you.”

“Do I have to?” the voice whined. “Those things are heavy.”

“Kowalski!” the corporal roared; his voice was incandescent with rage.

“Okay, okay. I’ll take it.”

Michael looked around, frantic now. His chromaflage cape might fool Kowalski; nothing would fool the probe. At best he had thirty seconds left before the marine found him, and then his life was over.

Defeat swamped him. He slumped back. Thirty seconds or thirty years; it made no difference. This was the end, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it except raise his pistol and wait, peering at the door to the control cabin through the tiniest of gaps in his cape.

He counted down the seconds as booted feet clumped along the catwalk. The man stopped. “Like I said, Corporal Shit-for-Brains,” he muttered when he looked in, “there’s not a damn thing up here.”

For one glorious moment, Michael thought the man would leave it at that. But it was not to be.

With a grunt, Kowalski lifted the probe—a bulky box, its front studded with sensor wands—and balanced it on the safety gate. Buttons were punched; a soft hum told Michael that the machine had started to work.

Michael let the cape slip away from his face. It took Kowalski a few seconds to notice; by then Michael had his pistol pointing right at the man’s face. He put his finger to his lips. “Shhhhh,” he hissed.

The man stiffened. He blinked and stared back but said nothing. But only for a few seconds. “Corporal!” the man shouted, starting to back away.

Michael shot Kowalski between the eyes. The crack of the laser pulse sounded horribly loud. Dropping the pistol, Michael scrambled to his feet. He lunged out even as the body started ever so slowly to fall away from him. Hampered by the gate, Michael was not fast enough. His hands flailed the air, but now Kowalski was toppling to one side, his head and chest already over the guardrail, the rest threatening to follow. With one last desperate effort, Michael locked one hand into the man’s assault vest, the other grabbing the probe an instant before Kowalski’s hands let it slip.

“What’s up now, Kowalski?” the corporal shouted.

“Having trouble with this damn probe, corp,” Michael said, wincing at his piss-poor attempt to copy the man’s voice. He pulled Kowalski back and let the body slump forward over the safety gate. “I’ll be a while.”

Michael might have been unhappy with his impersonation, but the corporal wasn’t. “Just get a move on, you fat fuck,” he yelled.

“Yes, corp.”

The boots walked away; Michael urged him on. He let a minute drag past. Gun in hand, he ran along the catwalk, half climbing, half sliding down the ladder until his feet crashed into the ground. He turned and headed for the door, then stopped.

Killing Kowalski had changed nothing. He was still trapped with nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

Corporal Whatever-His-Name would be waiting outside, wondering what the hell had happened to Kowalski. He would come back, Michael would shoot him too, and then all hell would break loose as the rest of Team Victor came crashing in and shot the shit out of him.

The corporal did come back. “Kowalski, you useless toe rag, what the—”

Michael shot him, the racket of the assault rifle shockingly loud, then dived for cover. “Come on, you fucking Hammer bastards,” he shouted. “You want me, you come and get me.”

The silence was complete. It dragged on. Michael wondered what was going on. Where were they?

He got his answer soon enough. A series of flat cracks preceded the arrival of more microgrenades than Michael could count. The small black shapes arced through the warehouse door and landed on the ceramcrete floor, bouncing for a few meters before bursting into boiling clouds of smoke.

Oh, shit
, he thought as the clouds rolled across the floor toward him.
They’re gassing me. It’s over. Survival; that’s all that matters now
. He ripped off the chain holding the gold sunburst Vaas’s troopers had taken from Hartspring and tossed it away. Then his lungs caught fire, and the lights went out.

• • •

Pain hammered at Michael’s skull, his mouth and throat burned, and his chest was a searing ball of flame. When he tried opening his eyes, he wished he hadn’t. It just made things worse.

A pair of hands dragged him upright; the pain redoubled. “Come on, you little bastard. I know you’re awake. Throw some water on him, sergeant.”

The water hit Michael full in the face. A hand followed, a stinging slap hard across his cheek. He cringed back, hands coming up to keep his unseen attacker away.

“Open your Kraa-damned eyes, Helfort, or I’ll make you wish you had.”

Michael did, squinting through agony-filled eyes at a face he had hoped to see only on a dead man, a face dominated by eyes so pale that only a hint of amber remained, the eyes of a killer.

“Fuck you, Hartspring,” Michael whispered, “you asshole.”

Hartspring’s fist lashed out, stopping only millimeters from Michael’s face. For an instant, it hung there, utterly still. Then it pulled back. “You are lucky, Helfort, that Chief Councillor Polk has ordered me to deliver you to McNair without a single scratch on that pretty face of yours.”

“Good for Mister Polk, you piece of Hammer sh—”

This time Hartspring’s fist did not stop. It smashed into Michael’s stomach with tremendous force, hitting just below the ribs to blast the air out of his lungs. The enormous power of the blow lifted him bodily into the air to drop with a sickening crash on the floor.

Thin, bloodless lips pressed tight in a sneer of disdain, Hartspring leaned over Michael as he lay on his back with his mouth working to drag air back into tortured lungs. “Unfortunately for you, Helfort,” he said, “Chief Councillor Polk said nothing about not hurting you.” He straightened up. “Let’s get you cleaned up, and then I’ll tell you what happens next. I’ll come back in an hour, and when I do, I suggest you cooperate. If you don’t, I will hurt you, and I will go on hurting you until you do.”

“Screw you,” Michael whispered to Hartspring’s back.

• • •

“A public trial?” Michael said.

Hartspring nodded. “That’s what I said. A public trial in front of the full bench of the Supreme Tribunal for the Preservation of the Faith.”

“Why bother? Everyone will know it’s a farce.”

“We both know that,” Hartspring said, “though I’d prefer, let me see … yes, I’d prefer to call it a piece of political theater. You’re a celebrity, you see, a bit of hero to many, so we can’t just shoot you out of hand. We need to be seen to be doing things in the right way.”

“What a crock.”

“It certainly is a crock, but what do I care? There will be a trial, you will be found guilty, and you will be sentenced to death, only this time your friends won’t be there to help you escape justice. Oh, no; when the Hammer of Kraa sentences someone to death, they die.” Hartspring paused. “The only difference with you,” he continued, “is that you won’t be shot. No, that’d be too quick. No, we’ll make sure you die the slowest, the most painful death a man can suffer …”

Michael shivered, the fear all-consuming.

“… because after all you have done to us, it’s the least we can do to you. Now, enough talk. We leave for McNair in an hour.”

• • •

“Where am I being taken?” Michael asked the man sitting opposite him as they waited for the armored personnel carrier to take him to McNair. As much as he could like any Hammer, he liked Corporal Haditha. He was one of the few marines to treat him with any consideration, not that he deserved any. He had shot one of Team Victor right between the eyes, after all.

Haditha took a while to answer. “The Gruj,” he said at last. “Where else?”

Of course, thought Michael, his pulse accelerating as a frisson of fear shivered its way up his spine. Where else? He had spent long enough with the
NRA
and the Revivalists to know all there was to know about the Councillor Carlos C. Grujic Building. There were precious few born on the Hammer worlds who did not know some poor unfortunate who had been through the place—there had been tens of millions of them over the years—and every last one of them feared and hated it.

The Gruj’s reputation as the very heart of the Hammer’s all-pervading system of state terror was well deserved.

Michael had talked to an
NRA
trooper who’d been through the place, one of the very few to survive the experience. Her story had been one of pure horror, and Michael was not looking forward to sharing the experience.

Below what looked like an office block no different from any other lay a cold world, a world silent apart from the subdued hiss of an air-conditioning system set to maintain a temperature not far above freezing, a world that never slept, a world created for the endless stream of black trucks that shuttled DocSec’s prisoners into the Gruj.

Hounded mercilessly from the arrival dock down bleak corridors, the new arrivals were fed through the heavily armored security post, then down to the first of four levels of unpainted, bare-floored plascrete rooms and into the massive in-processing center on Level A. There the bewildered and terrified sweepings of three worlds were stripped naked, searched with callous indifference, doused in icy water, and microchipped before being bundled, dripping wet and shaking with cold, into orange coveralls and plasfiber boots, their identities torn away along with their clothes and dignity, their identity a number stenciled front and back.