The Final Battle (4 page)

“I’m still glad to see you,” Michael said. He wondered just who had leaned on K’zekaa; the woman’s body language screamed her protest. “Did my lawyer give you the background?”

“He did, and I am not convinced that you are at any risk from the Hammers … or anyone else, come to that. Jamuda is a neutral system, Helfort, and I am sure the Hammers will respect that. They’re not complete animals, you know,” K’zekaa added with a condescending curl of the lip.

Michael stared wide-eyed at the woman. “Not complete animals?” he snarled. “You are fucking joking.”

“I am not in the habit of saying things I do not mean, Helfort. And watch your language.”

You are such a pompous asshole
, Michael thought, all his good intentions flying out the window. If the woman wanted a fight, he’d give her a fight. “You’re a colonel in planetary defense, am I right?” he asked.

K’zekaa frowned, clearly puzzled by Michael’s sudden change of tack. “Yes, I am. But I don’t see what that’s—”

“I’ll tell you what it’s got to do with things … sir,” he said, using the pause to make certain K’zekaa did not miss the calculated insult.

K’zekaa didn’t; her face flushed with anger.

“So far as I know,” Michael continued, “planetary defense has not seen much combat against the Hammers, so I’m guessing that means you haven’t either.”

“I don’t like your tone, Helfort.”

“Like I give a shit, Colonel. You are yet another rear-echelon motherfucker, so don’t talk to me about the Hammers. I know them, I’ve fought them, I’ve been wounded by them, I’ve been tortured by them, so you can trust me when I tell you that you are wrong. They are animals, and they will come for me. So you can either get off your ass and do something to help keep me alive or piss off and leave me to take my chances. Your call. Which is it to be?”

K’zekaa sat staring at Michael, her mouth working as his angry tirade washed over her. It was a while before she could speak.

“I will ignore all that. You are in enough trouble as it is, so I will put it down to the stress you must be under …”

“Thank you so much,” Michael muttered, his voice all acid.

“… but it does not change my view. The chances of the Hammers coming for you are remote, so you have nothing to worry about. And that’s not just my opinion. It’s the embassy’s opinion as well. But I will do one thing, Helfort: I will pass your concerns on to the people responsible for security around here. Provided they are not insulted by your lack of faith in their ability to protect you—and I wouldn’t blame them if they were—maybe they will take steps to address those concerns, however ill considered they might be.” K’zekaa stood and pushed her chair back. “And don’t talk to me about what I have and have not done, Helfort, because I have always done my duty … which is more than I can say for you.”

With that, K’zekaa turned, banged on the door to be let out, and was gone the instant the door opened.

I do like it when things go well
, Michael thought, the anger-pumped adrenaline in his system ebbing fast. Now what would he do? The Hammers would come—of that he was certain—and he did not want to find himself alone and cornered in his cell like a rat when they did.

But just how he could avoid that fate, he had no idea.

Friday, May 24, 2402, UD
Kovak Remand Center

Michael cringed as he stepped into the sunshine to cross to the slab-sided mobibot waiting to take him to court.

He could not help himself. To the north, the remand center was overlooked by a park that rose to a ridge and by commercial buildings to the west and south. A hit team in any of those places would see him. They’d have to be blind not to; the fluorescent orange jumpsuit he was forced to wear as a dangerous, high-flight-risk Category 1 remand prisoner would make sure of that.

And the bad guys would know what time he would be returning after his hearing: the minute the mobibot left Kovak’s courts complex. The Hammer hit team would plenty of time to set up.

Michael stepped up into the mobibot’s coolness. He allowed the guard to push him into his wire-mesh cage. As usual, the man used more force than he had to. Michael did not complain; not only was it pointless, it provoked the guards. Today he was the last one in, the cages around him full of prisoners headed for their day in court, his arrival greeted as always with a mix of abuse and welcome. Michael ignored it. It was the same old bullshit, and it took a while for him to realize that the prisoner next to him—like Michael, a Cat 1 prisoner in orange—was trying to get his attention, the man’s face hard up against the micromesh between their cages.

“Helfort,” he whispered. “For fuck’s sake, talk to me.”

“What do you want? Who are you?”

“I’m Max Hardy. I’ve got a message for you. I—”

“Who from?”

“Don’t know; doesn’t matter, so listen up. There’s to be an attack on the bot—” Michael’s heart began to pound; he wondered how he’d survive handcuffed inside a cage. “—just before we get to the court, as we approach Shanghai Boulevard.”

“Thanks for the heads-up, but what am I supposed to do?” Michael demanded. “I’m not going anywhere.” He rattled his wrist and ankle chains to reinforce the point.

“Pull your chains apart. Pull hard.”

Mystified, Michael did as he was told. To his surprise, the restraints fell away. “What the hell,” he hissed. “How did—”

“Don’t ask,” Hardy said. “Now, one of the guards will unlock the doors before we get to Shanghai. The moment we’re hit, wait for my word, then kick your cage door open and follow me out. And stay close.”

“What then?”

“I’m going to run. Unless you want the bad guys to blow your brains out, you should do the same.”

“See the orange jumpsuit, sport?” Michael hissed. “I won’t get 5 meters.”

“Better than having your brains blown out. When the bad guys get inside, it’ll be a bloodbath, so I know where I’d rather be. Just follow me out and run like hell. You’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” Michael said, “and thanks.”

Hardy did not respond, so Michael sat back. His mind reeled. Hope flickered into life, but only for an instant. The whole thing smelled wrong. It was all too pat, too neatly packaged, too convenient. It was a Hammer setup; it had to be. But why would they want him out of the mobibot? If they wanted him dead, why didn’t they just blow the bot apart? They wouldn’t give a shit about the collateral damage; they never did.

Then it came to him.

The Hammers wanted him alive. That was why they wanted him outside. They couldn’t risk trying to extract him. The ever so helpful Max Hardy had been right. It would be absolute pandemonium: smoke, gunfire everywhere, prisoners running around like headless chickens, guards trying to contain the situation until reinforcements arrived. And Michael wasn’t the only Cat 1 prisoner onboard. The Hammers would have to pick him out of the eight other Cat 1s, and that would be difficult in all the confusion.

Now it all made sense to Michael.

The Hammers could force their way in to get him, but that would be time-consuming, and the chances of his being killed would be too high. It was all too uncertain, too hard to manage, so the Hammers needed him to get out of the bot under his own steam, and that was the job of Mr. Hardy.

The second Michael appeared, the Hammers would scoop him up and be gone before the Jamudans even had time to think, let alone react.

High risk but high return, and it would have worked if he’d gone along with Hardy’s plan.

For a moment he thought he’d found the way out of the trap that had been laid for him: He would stay in the mobibot and keep his head down until it was all over. But it was only for a moment. That would not work. If he failed to show, the Hammers would come in after him. They had to, and they would, guns blazing. That way Michael would die sooner rather than later and a lot less painfully, but that was scant comfort.

He’d rather not die at all.

Much faster than he wanted, the clock ran off the last few seconds. His strategy for survival was little more than a half-baked idea when, with a violent crash, an explosion lifted the front of the mobibot up into the air and dropped it back down with a crunch of torn metal. The impact smashed Michael’s head against the side of the cage and tore his scalp open. Blood ran hot down his face and neck.

“Now!” Hardy shouted.

Michael kicked his door open.

“Follow m—” Hardy said.

But Michael was already moving. His arm came up fast from below waist level and drove a fist into Hardy’s throat that dropped the man as if he’d been shot. Michael did not waste a second; he plunged into the smoke that was fast filling the prisoner compartment and threw himself at the exit.

The door offered no resistance. Michael tumbled out and hit the road hard. He scrambled to his feet and waved an arm at the door. “Helfort’s coming!” he screamed. “Helfort’s right behind me.”

It was not hard to work out why the Hammers fell for it. Michael was supposed to be the second orange suit out, not the first, and so they waited. Their indecision gave Michael the chance he needed, and he took it. He sprinted to the front of the blazing wreck of the mobibot. Flames scorched his face, smoke eddying and twisting around him as he ran for his life.

Then the Hammers woke up, sending a blizzard of rifle fire in Michael’s direction, the air flayed by hypersonic rounds whiplashing past before whanging off into the mobibot’s armored skin. But only for a few seconds, and then Michael was around the front of the flaming carcass. He plunged through air thick with acrid fumes that ripped at his throat and lungs. On he ran, keeping the wrecked mobibot between him and the Hammers, praying that his ambushers had been too confident to position anyone to cut him off.

Michael burst clear of the smoke into a scene of complete chaos. The road was choked with bots of every shape and size forced into emergency stops by the city’s traffic management system, the spaces between them fast filling with confused and uncertain passengers, most slow to realize that they too were in mortal danger, with barely a handful taking cover as rifle fire filled the air. On Michael ran, barging the standing aside and hurdling the rest.

Just as Michael allowed himself to think he had escaped the Hammer trap, two men, one white-blond and the other with his head shaved so close that the sun glistened off his scalp, stepped from behind a cargobot, assault rifles pointing right at him, rock-steady. “Stop, Helfort!” Baldy screamed. “Stop and drop, right now!”

Michael ignored them, but only until the pair sent a burst of fire shrieking past his head. Sick with defeat, he skidded to a halt. “Okay, okay,” he said.

The two men were on him in an instant. Michael screamed as they yanked his arms behind him, brutally indifferent to his pain. Cuffing him, they dragged him to his feet and hustled him away down Shanghai Boulevard.

“Zero, Six. We have him,” Michael heard Blondie say.

“Roger that, Zero,” the man said a few seconds later. “Egress Bravo, understood. Six, out.”

On they went. Michael knew that his chances of survival were fading fast. He had one chance, and he took it. Without warning, he exploded, a single violent movement that drove a shoulder into Baldy even as he rammed his left leg into Blondie’s knee, He took both Hammers by surprise, and the three of them fell to the road in a twisted, tangled mess, with Michael kicking out in all directions in an attempt to slow things down.

“You little fucker,” Blondie snarled, struggling to get his rifle free.

The fight did not last long. Baldy finished it with a crushing blow from his rifle butt to the side of Michael’s head, a blow that drove him to the edge of unconsciousness, the pain blinding in its intensity. But he clawed his way back to the light; to survive, he had to take whatever chances came his way, however slim, however transient.

Cursing, Baldy and Blondie hauled Michael to his feet, and they were on the move again, his body dragged along limp between the two men and into a narrow lane. A few meters down, a small cargobot waited for them.

“Thank Kraa for that,” Baldy muttered. “I’ve had enough of this.”

The words snuffed out the last tiny flicker of hope left burning in Michael. It was over; the Hammers had him.

“Me, too,” Blondie grunted.

Just short of the ramp, they stopped. “You hold him here,” Blondie said, “while I get the ramp down.”

“Roger that,” Baldy said, dropping Michael to the ground. “You move one millimeter and I’ll blow your leg off. Got it?”

“Yeah, yeah … asshole.”

Baldy laughed. “Nice try, Helfort. I’ll tell you this,” he went on as the ramp started on its way down, “I think I’ll enjoy—”

A soft, wet slap cut the man off. Baldy stood swaying, his mouth open, a look of surprise on his face. He stayed upright for a few seconds, and then with a soft grunt he crumpled to the ground alongside Michael.

First one and then another and another and another person rushed past, their black jumpsuited figures hung with equipment.

“About time, guys,” Michael said.

Saturday, May 25, 2402, UD
Kovak Military Hospital

“I think I owe you an apology, Lieutenant,” Colonel K’zekaa said, her head bobbing in embarrassment. “You were quite right about those goddamned Hammers, and I was wrong.”

“Thank you, sir,” Michael said, his smoke-damaged voice a hoarse croak, “and I’m sorry I was so rude.”

K’zekaa waved the apology aside. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I did talk to the Jamudans, though, and they told me they’d take the threat seriously.”

“What happens now?”

“Your lawyer hasn’t seen you yet?”

“No. You’re my first visitor. I told the hospital to tell everyone that I was too tired to talk to them. You must be very persuasive is all I can say.”

“Oh, I am. Anyway, to answer your question, nothing happens until a court-appointed doctor says you are fit enough to appear.”

“Shit!” Michael said.

“I thought you’d be happy about that. You know what might be waiting for you?”

“I do. My lawyer has been telling me the same thing.”

“So why the rush?”

“Two reasons. First, I don’t need to worry about the death penalty. The Feds will never execute me. It won’t happen. Ever.”