The Final Battle (37 page)

Hartspring’s eyes opened. He peered up at Michael. “Couldn’t do it, then?” he croaked. “You Feds always were piss weak.”

Michael put his mouth to Hartspring’s ear. “Don’t worry,” he whispered, “it’s only a postponement. I need you.”

He was wasting his time. The man had slipped back into unconsciousness, so Michael turned his attention to the rest of the survivors, though not before relieving Hartspring of his pistol.

Fifteen minutes later, he and Haditha had done what they could. It wasn’t much. Only one of the marines was conscious; the rest were either dead or so severely wounded that they would be if they did not get medical attention soon. Michael did not fancy their chances. By the sound of it, the
NRA
had launched a full-scale assault on McNair. The noise was incredible, the hull of the APC shaken repeatedly by near misses, its hull battered by a relentless shower of shrapnel and wayward gun and cannon fire.

“I think we’ve done all we can,” he said to Haditha, “but these guys need help and fast.”

“I know,” the marine said, rubbing his face with a bloody hand. “I’ve radioed for the medics, but Kraa knows when they’ll get here.”

“What now?”

“Up to you.” Haditha waved a hand at the hatch. “It’s not too good out there, so I’m not going anywhere. This is the safest place to be right now.”

“I can go?” Michael asked.

“If you want to. I don’t give a shit.”

“But I do,” a voice said from the front of the APC.

Michael and Haditha swung around to find themselves looking down the barrel of an assault rifle held in the wavering hands of Colonel Hartspring. Michael cursed his own stupidity; he’d assumed that Hartspring was too badly wounded to pose a threat.

“Now, Corporal Haditha,” Hartspring went on, his voice weak, “I will give you an order, and if you do not obey me, I will shoot you. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Haditha replied.

“Find some flexicuffs and make sure that little shit can’t go anywhere.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You don’t have to do this, Corporal,” Michael hissed.

“Shut up,” Haditha snapped, rummaging through the DocSec troopers’ jumpsuits. “Bear with me, Colonel,” he said, moving away from Michael. “I need to get cable ties from the spares—”

Haditha moved so fast that it was all over before Michael even realized what was happening. As if by magic, a stun pistol appeared in his hand, and he shot Hartspring right in the chest. The shock dropped the colonel into a trembling, shaking heap, his face a rictus of pain before his head went back and he passed out. “Fucking piece of DocSec garbage,” Haditha said. He scrambled forward to take the gun from Hartspring’s hand. “I think you’d best go,” he said to Michael.

“I will, but I’m taking Hartspring with me. I need him to get me a meeting with Chief Councillor Polk.”

“Polk?” Haditha’s eyes flared in surprise. “You’re joking.”

“No, I’m not. Now, help me get the dirtbag out of here.”

“I hope he breaks his fucking neck,” Haditha muttered as they manhandled Hartspring’s limp and unresponsive body up to the hatch and pushed him out.

“He’ll live,” Michael said, grabbing a rifle and a pistol before scavenging everything else he might need and jamming it all into a pack. “People like that always do. Right, I’m off. I’ll see you.”

“I hope not. You’re too dangerous to be around.”

Michael grinned. “True. Look after yourself, Corporal Haditha.”

Ignoring the inevitable complaints from his badly abused body, he climbed out of the hatch and dropped down to land beside Hartspring’s unconscious form. He looked around. “Holy shit!” he whispered. He was in a scene from hell. The road was littered with the shattered remnants of Hartspring’s convoy. The vehicles had been ripped apart; now their carcasses burned fiercely, sending thick clouds of acrid black smoke boiling skyward. Only one was still recognizable as an ATV. Its snout was buried under the rubble of a collapsed building. Its occupants, shocked and dazed, had taken what cover they could beside the wreck. A marine bent over one of the survivors, lurid green woundfoam on his hands as he struggled to deal with an ugly gore-spattered chest wound. Intent on his work, he ignored Michael.

Spurred on by a wayward bomb that ripped the street apart only a hundred meters away, Michael slung the rifle across his back. Stripping Hartspring of his personal comm, he took the man by the collar. With every last grain of energy he possessed, he dragged the colonel’s dead weight away, then down a side street and into the dubious safety of a half-collapsed office block. The effort was almost too much. Dropping Hartspring, he collapsed. His lungs heaved, and his heart pounded; he could only lie there, oblivious to the battle raging outside.

“This won’t do,” Michael said out loud, forcing himself to sit up. “This won’t do at all.”

Ferreting around inside his pack, he found the medical kit. Inside was what he was looking for: a blister pack of autoject syringes marked in red with the words “
CAUTION: EMERGENCY USE ONLY. MORE THAN 1 DOSE PER DAY MAY KILL
.”

“One dose per day? Well, screw that,” Michael said. He broke three out. Taking one, he smacked it into his arm. In an instant, an unholy cocktail of ampakine-derived stimulants and painkillers flooded his system. A tsunami of energy and exhilaration flushed the fatigue and pain out of his body. He turned his attention to Hartspring. Working fast, he propped the man up against the wall, flexicuffed him, and ripped the sleeve of his black jumpsuit off. He drove first one and then a second autoject home.

For a moment Michael thought that he’d overdone it, that the drugs had killed Hartspring. The colonel lay motionless. Then, to Michael’s relief, his eyes opened. He looked around in wild confusion before his body shuddered upright, quivering and shaking.

“What the hell did you just do to me?’ Hartspring asked, his voice firming as the drugs took hold, eyes now alert but wary.

“I smacked two of these babies into you,” Michael said, waving an empty autoject.

“Kraa! No wonder I feel so good.”

“I’m pleased to hear it,” Michael said. “Now it’s time to talk about how you’re going to help me.”

“Hah!” Hartspring snorted his derision. “Me? Help you?” he said with a sneer. “Why would I do that?”

“How about this?” Michael raised the laser pistol and fired into Hartspring’s shin, the sharp, metallic crack of the hair-thin laser pulse loud even over the noise of the battle raging outside. “Will that do for a reason?” he said.

Hartspring did not flinch. “You’re wasting your time,” he said. “I didn’t even feel that.”

Michael swore under his breath; he should have known Hartspring’s drug-laden system would absorb the shot without complaint. “Okay, then. Let’s try this.” Michael shot Hartspring again, this time in the stomach, low down and to one side. “I don’t suppose you felt that, either,” he went on. “Now, I’m no doctor, but my guess is you’ll be dead inside six hours if I don’t get you to a hospital. And if not dead, then pretty close to it … and in agony as those drugs wear off.”

Fear flickered in Hartspring’s eyes. “What do you want?” he said.

“I want you to set up a meeting with Polk for me.”

Hartspring stared at Michael in open disbelief. “Polk?” he said. He shook his head. “You’re kidding. Those Kraa-damned heretics are tearing McNair apart, and you want me to set up a meeting with Polk? Dream on, sonny boy. I can’t do that.”

Michael shot Hartspring in the stomach again. Hartspring looked down in disbelief at the tiny smoking hole punched through his black jumpsuit.

“How’re your guts going?” Michael said. “Not too good, I’d say. I think I’ll try for the liver next time. You’d better hope I don’t hit one of those big blood vessels, because you won’t have six hours left if I do. Hell, you might not even have one. Now, will you help me or not?”

Desperation joined fear in Hartspring’s eyes. “It’s not possible,” he said.

“That’s crap. Polk wants me real bad, remember?”

“Not anymore. Please believe me. The man’s paranoid about security. He won’t let you get anywhere near him, and even if he did, what would be the point?”

A tendril of doubt slipped into his mind.
Let it go
, it whispered.
Polk’s not worth it
. Michael stomped down hard on the slender thread. This was not the time for second thoughts, he told himself. A promise was a promise, and if he didn’t kill Polk, the man would get away. Besides, Polk would want to see him; he too was obsessed by thoughts of revenge, and that was the lever Hartspring would use.

“This is what we’re going to do,” Michael said. He tossed Hartspring’s personal comm over. “Call the man. Tell him that you’re bringing me in. Let’s start with that, and we’ll see how it goes. Come on, Colonel. Time’s running out, and don’t try anything stupid or the next shot will be through your throat.”

“Okay, okay,” Hartspring said. He fiddled with the comm, then put it to his ear.
Primitive
, Michael thought. There was a long pause. “Polk’s not answering. Nobody from his office is answering. He’s gone.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Michael shouted. “So where is the bastard?”

“No idea. Probably off-planet by now if he’s got any sense.”

“Get back on your comm and find out where he is or I’ll leave you here to rot. Do it! Now!”

“How am I going to do that? It’s chaos out there.”

What was left of Michael’s self-control vanished. Without a second’s consideration, he shot Hartspring in the gut a third time. “I don’t care. Just do it,” he said. He ignored the man’s whimpering protests.

“Polk was last seen in his office around midday,” Hartspring said ten minutes later. “After that, nobody’s seen or heard from him. I’m sorry; that’s the best I can do. Get me to a hospital, now! For Kraa’s sake.”

“You’re lying. He’s there, isn’t he?”

“Maybe, but I don’t think so,” Hartspring bleated. His face was twisted with pain. “The
NRA
attacked the Supreme Council complex this morning; the place is a ruin, and the Hammer of Kraa is finished. Why would he still be there?”

This is not good
, Michael thought, angry and frustrated.
What the hell do I do now?

• • •

The sudden appearance in the road of a Doctrinal Security colonel pointing a rifle at a disheveled man brought the mobibot to a screeching halt. A window opened. A man poked his head out. “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded. “Get out of my … oh … ah, sorry,” the man stammered when he realized who he was looking at. “How can I help?”

“Get out!” Hartspring said. “I’m commandeering this vehicle.”

The man could not get out of the mobibot fast enough; he did so without a word of protest.

As they set off, Michael took his assault rifle back from Hartspring and replaced the empty magazine with a full one. “Now, Colonel,” he said, “you sit there and enjoy the ride. We’ll be at the complex soon.”

Hijacking the mobibot had been too much for Hartspring. His face was now a death mask of pasty, sweat-slicked white. “You promised,” he whispered. “You promised to take me to the hospital.”

“Yes, I did promise,” Michael replied, “and I will, though let me see now—” He frowned, a finger tapping his lips. “—I don’t think I ever promised to get you there alive. No, I’m pretty sure I didn’t.”

“You bastard,” Hartspring mumbled. His voice was so soft that Michael had to strain to hear him.

“Yeah, yeah.” Michael shook his head. “Anyway, after all you’ve put me and Anna through, did you really think I’d let you live? You’re a damn fool if you did. But let’s look at the upside,” he continued. “Chief Councillor Polk ordered you to bring me in, and that’s exactly what you’re doing, though it’s a pity the bastard won’t be there to say hello. When he finds out, I think he’ll give you a medal. Mind you, you’ll be dead when he pins it on, but then, you can’t have everything, can you?”

But Hartspring had stopped listening. His head fell back. With a soft choking rattle, his lungs emptied for the last time.

Hartspring was dead.

Still wide open, his eyes looked back at Michael in silent reproach. Michael leaned over, closed them, and sat back. His mind was filled with a confused jumble of emotions. Nothing made sense anymore. He had killed Hartspring, so why didn’t he feel … whatever he should have felt? Fulfillment? Satisfaction? Pleasure? He felt none of those things. He just felt flat and empty.

All he wanted was for it to be over, to go home, to be with Anna, to live a normal life.

But it was not over, not while Polk still lived. The nightmare would end only when the man was dead. Michael took a deep breath and forced himself to think straight.

In the chaos raining down on McNair—as if to make the point, the mobibot shook as a flight of
NRA
ground-attack landers swept overhead, the air torn apart by the howling screech of rockets as they pounded some unseen target—finding Polk had to be close to impossible. Unless Hartspring had been lying, of course. But if Polk was in the complex, how would he ever find a way past his security detail to kill the man?

And even if he managed to kill Polk, that still left the small problem of getting back out alive.

You’re making this up as you go along
, Michael told himself.
You have no fucking plan and no fucking idea
. He would have to take things one step at a time, he decided. Much as he hated winging it, what choice did he have?

But I will find Polk
, he promised himself,
and then I will kill him, and if I can’t do that without getting myself killed, I should—I will walk away
.

There was too much to live for not to.

The mobibot swept around a long, sweeping bend. Ahead the road climbed up to the Supreme Council complex. It braked hard and stopped.

“Shiiiit,” Michael hissed. He was looking at what once must have been an imposing collection of buildings: classical in style, massive, designed to overawe the people of the Hammer Worlds, each one a monument to the brutality of Hammer power. Most had been reduced to blast-shattered shells that were sending thin skeins of smoke drifting into the sky. He’d thought the
NRA
would leave the place alone, and for good reason. This place was the single most heavily defended site on all of the Hammer Worlds. That might well have been true, but it hadn’t stopped
ENCOMM
from sending in the landers to give the place one hell of a pasting.