“The Feds believe him capable of anything, even destroying an entire system and killing billions,” Hok replied after a moment’s thought. “Not that he has to go that far. The threat is enough. He fires a couple of antimatter missiles into Terranova nearspace to make the threat real. That scares the crap out of your people, so they elect Caroline Ferrero as moderator, and she promptly folds. In the end, Ferrero gave Polk what he wanted without him actually having to use force.”
Michael grimaced. “He would if he had to.”
“Don’t doubt it. Power is all he cares about. And Polk takes the same approach with his own people: kill thousands to put the fear of Kraa into billions. But he’s a fool. Our assessment is that Polk would have won a free and open election in the first few weeks after the peace treaty simply because people believed that things would change for the better with the war over. Well, they were wrong. Things did not get better; they got worse. Four weeks after the treaty was signed, Polk not only ordered the biggest crackdown on dissidents in Hammer history, he told DocSec to purge the marines and planetary defense as well.”
“What, again? I’m surprised there’s anyone left to purge. Why the hell would he do that?”
“Simple: He doesn’t need them anymore. Oldest trick in the dictator’s handbook.”
“Because if he didn’t, they’d go from asset to threat?’
“Exactly. Anyway, it took DocSec a while to get organized, but when they got going, they really got going. We don’t have accurate figures, but we think the arrests run into the tens of thousands on Commitment alone, and there are a lot more to come.”
Michael shivered. “I suppose that means the DocSec firing squads have been busy?”
“Oh, yes,” Hok said. “They arrested fifty officers from the 5th Marine Brigade three weeks ago; two days later, after a mass show trial lasting all of five minutes, they were all taken out and shot.”
“Okay, I get it,” Michael said. “By cracking down on the minority, Polk thinks he can bluff the majority into falling into line.”
“Precisely.” Hok shook her head. “Bloody man is a fool. If he’d eased up, the Revival would have lost much of its political legitimacy in the eyes of the average Hammer, and the flow of recruits the NRA depends on would have dried up, along with money and supplies. We’d have withered on the vine, and our Branxton bases would have dropped into Polk’s hands without him having to send in the marines. Instead, our support has never been stronger.”
Michael looked skeptical. “That doesn’t help much, surely,” he said.
“It does. Let me tell you; when we launch Juggernaut, we’ll be pushing on an open door. Polk won’t last a month, and that’s because the marines and planetary defense will refuse to fight. Deserters are telling us that the marines are close to mutiny and planetary defense is the same.”
“So why isn’t Polk worried? He should be.”
“Yes, he should. But we think he’s decided that they don’t matter anymore. The marines and planetary defense have both let him down: the marines by failing to destroy our Branxton bases, planetary defense because they let us escape. Now, thanks to the Pascanicians, he will have his antimatter missiles sooner rather than later, and when he does, nobody in humanspace will be able to stand up against him. To rule humanspace, all he needs is the Hammer Space Fleet, and he’s being nice to them … for the moment, at least. So who needs the marines? Who needs planetary defense? Polk doesn’t, not anymore.”
“The man’s insane,” Michael said.
“Maybe, but thank Kraa for it. Makes our job easier.”
“I hope so,” Michael said with obvious feeling.
“Which brings us to the subject of your Anna.”
Michael’s gut twisted. “Ah, yes,” he said, trying not to sound as anxious as he felt, “I was about to ask.”
“Relax. Major Anna Cheung Helfort is fine.”
Michael’s eyebrows shot up. “Major?” he said, incredulous. “I thought she was a captain.”
“Oh, she was.” Hok chuckled. “But we’ve just had word she’s been promoted.”
“What a surprise.” Michael sighed. “I always wondered why she didn’t join the marines, since being a grunt is obviously what she likes doing.”
“She has a gift for it, that’s for sure.”
“Has she stayed with the 120th?” Michael asked, hoping against hope that she’d been transferred somewhere safer.
“She has. She’s been given command of a company.”
Michael’s gut twisted some more. “Good for her,” he forced himself to say. “The 120th is still in the Velmar Mountains?”
“They are, along with the 443rd and the 22nd. They’ve taken a lot of pressure off the Branxtons and have tied down an entire planetary defense division. The latest intelligence summaries say that those Hammers have been hit so hard that only a handful of their formations are fully combat effective.”
Michael knew he should take some comfort in the fact that Anna was up against second-rate troops, but he couldn’t. Anna being Anna, she’d be in the thick of it. “Good to hear,” he said. ”I just wish she knew I was okay.”
“Shit! I’m so sorry, Michael; I meant to tell you earlier. I know what Admiral Jaruzelska said, but General Cortez overruled her. He’s made sure she knows.”
Relief flooded Michael’s body. “That was good of him.”
“Least we could do.”
“Don’t let me forget to thank him.”
“I won’t,” Hok said, getting to her feet. “Now, I’ve got some things I need to do, and if you’re half as tired as you look, I think you should turn in.”
“You’re right, Major,” Michael said, all of a sudden conscious of just how exhausted he was. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“You will.”
Friday, January 2, 2404, UD
Hendrik Island antimatter plant, Commitment
“If you’d like to come this way, gentlemen.”
Trailed by his chief of staff, Polk followed Doctor Ndegwa past a massive blast door and into a tunnel cut through meters of granite. He tried not to think about the billions of tons of rock that lay between him and fresh air. Past a second blast door, the tunnel opened onto a catwalk overlooking a long cavern. The sight took Polk’s breath away. Below a roof studded with massed banks of lights and hung with power cables and air-conditioning ducts, the cavern was packed with a mass of stainless steel pipes and cylinders studded with sensors, valves, and controllers, all hung with thick bundles of cable in a rainbow of colors. It was an enormous three-dimensional puzzle free-to Polk eyes, at least-of logic or structure. How the engineers were able to make sense of it all, he had no idea. His brain ached just looking at it.
“This is Low-Energy Antiproton Facility Number One,” Ndegwa said, waving a hand across the chaos. “LEAF-1 we call it, and it’s the first of the twenty LEAFs we plan to construct.”
“Is it working?” Polk asked, casting a skeptical eye around the cavern. Apart from the rush of the air-conditioning and a myriad of status lights, there was nothing to say that the facility was actually functioning.
“Yes, it is. LEAF-1 came on-stream five weeks ahead of schedule. It’s currently operating at 15 percent of its planned capacity, though we plan to be at 100 percent within six months.”
“Good. I do not want this project to take one day longer than it absolutely has to. The Hammer of Kraa needs its antimatter capability sooner rather than later. Understood?”
Ndegwa nodded. “Yes, sir. And while we’re talking about schedules, there’s something I’d like you to see. This way, please.”
Polk followed the man along the catwalk and into a small meeting room that was empty except for a table on which sat a plasfiber box.
“This,” Ndegwa said, reaching in to pull out an object two-thirds the size of a shoe box, its metallic surface polished to a mirror finish and unbroken except for two ports and a digital readout, “is an antimatter container from our new Mark-5 °C warhead, and it has been charged with antihydrogen produced by the Hendrik Island plant.”