“Yes, sergeant,” Michael said. Machine pistol in hand, he shouldered his pack and set off.
Monday, June 28, 2404, UD
NRA command center, Branxton Ranges, Commitment
General Vaas looked up when one of his personal aides led Michael in.
“Lieutenant Helfort, sir,” Major Davoodi said.
“Thanks, Major,” Vaas said. He stood and came around the desk to where Michael waited. “Reentry drop shells!” He shook his head. “Insane, absolutely insane.”
“Not the way I planned to come back, General,” Michael said as they shook hands. He thought the man looked exhausted, the lines incised over prominent cheekbones deeper than ever. But the eyes had not changed. Even when the man smiled, they stared deep into Michael’s soul.
“I can’t tell you how good it is to have you back, Michael,” Vaas said. He put a hand on Michael’s shoulder. “You got my message that Anna’s alive and well?”
“I did, thank you, General. I’ve put in a request to join her. I think my spacer days are over.”
“We’ll talk about that later. The good news is that Lieutenant Colonel Anna Cheung Helfort has been a right pain in the ass. Not to me, of course. To the Hammers.”
Michael blinked. “Did you just say Lieutenant Colonel?”
“A well-deserved promotion,” Vaas said with a huge grin. “We’ve given her command of the 120th’s 3rd Battalion. That’s where most of you Feds have ended up.” He turned to the wall-mounted holovid screen that dominated one side of the limestone cell he called his office. “Let me show you how the war’s going.”
Vaas pulled up a tactical display that summarized the NRA’s current tactical situation. Michael drew in a sharp breath at the sight.
“No, it’s not pretty,” Vaas admitted.
It wasn’t. Michael didn’t bother to count the Hammer units arrayed around the half million square kilometers of limestone karst the NRA called home; there were too many. “Lot of Hammer marines out there, General,” he said. “That’s new.”
“Even the dumbest Hammer general was able to work out that Planetary Ground Defense Force troops are no match for the NRA. I’ve lost count of how many PGDF units we’ve torn apart. So Polk managed to convince the Defense Council that they had no choice but to send in the marines.”
“Is it as bad as it looks?”
“If you’re Jeremiah Polk sitting in your air-conditioned bunker staring at holovid screens, status boards, and tactical displays and you believe the reports you’re given, then yes, it looks bad for us.”
“I hear a ‘but,’” Michael said.
Vass nodded. “You do. Let me see … this is MARFOR 8’s area of operations. They sit across our resupply routes down from northern Maranzika, and here-” He pointed to the town of Daleel. “-is where their 8th Brigade is. Five thousand well-trained, superbly equipped marines. Best unit in the Hammer order of battle.”
“Where’s the ‘but,’ General?”
“You remember Operation Medusa?’
Michael grimaced. “How could I forget?” he said. The Hammer’s operation to take the NRA Branxton base had given him his first taste of ground combat. He’d hated it: the chaos, the dirt, the smoke, the noise, the sound of hypersonic rounds tearing the air around him, the way death lay waste to those around him, the dead so close that he could smell the metallic, coppery reek of blood hanging in the air.
“Well, as is the Hammer way, Polk had anyone even remotely responsible for Medusa’s failure taken out and shot. He started with the commanding general, Baxter, and worked his way down. These guys here-” Again he pointed to the icon that marked the MARFOR 8’s position. “-lost every officer above the rank of colonel.”
“Shit.”
“And Polk did not stop there. He even had a couple of platoon commanders shot.”
“Let me guess. Polk thinks the 8th is combat-effective, whereas it’s-”
“A fucking mess. The 8th’s commanding general and his staff are too frightened to pass any bad news back up the line, so they don’t. We have our people on the inside. They tell me that if we attacked them, they’d fold like the proverbial house of cards. And the rest of MARFOR 8 is not much better.”
“What about the rest?” Michael asked.
“MARFOR 6 is probably the best of them. Of all the force elements involved in the Medusa fiasco, they performed the best, so they got off lightly. MARFOR 11’s somewhere in between. But Polk’s kidding himself if he thinks these assholes are a match for us.”
“And Anna? What’s the 120th up to?”
“They’re dug in northeast of McNair, in the Velmar Mountains. They are part of 9 Brigade, and their job is to keep some of the pressure off the Branxtons. And thanks to your Anna and the rest of them, it’s working. They’ve given the Hammers one hell of a beating. A bit too good, actually.”
Michael did not like the sound of that. “Too well?”
“Yes. Thanks to that Kraa-damned peace treaty with the Feds, the Hammers were able to transfer three marine forces-MARFORs 21, 33, and 92-in from Faith; 33 and 92 were sent south, and MARFOR 21 has been deployed across the Calderon Gap to make sure our 9th Brigade doesn’t pose any threat to McNair City. But what they don’t know is that we’ve managed to get a second brigade up there. It’s taken us months to do it, and now we’re about to teach the new boys one hell of a lesson.”
If it were possible, Michael’s heart sank even more; the Hammers outnumbered the NRA three to one. “One hell of a lesson.”
“Operation Caradoc,” Vaas said, grim-faced. “Part of the deception plan for Juggernaut. And speaking of Juggernaut, thank Kraa you got through with the latest plans and those brevity codes. There are so many damn Hammer ships over this planet, we haven’t been able to get messages in or out for the last month.”
“You didn’t have the latest date?” Michael asked, incredulous.
“No, we did not. We’d have been sitting on our asses twiddling our thumbs when your guys arrived, and that would not have been good.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” he said.
“To take the Hammers’ eyes off Juggernaut, we have to make them think the NRA is trying to break out of the Branxtons. We hope … we think Operation Caradoc will distract them enough to let our people take out the antiballistic missile installations around McNair. We’ll also mount attacks on the planetary defense bases at Qian and Kraneveldt, and speaking of Kraneveldt,” Vaas said, turning to Michael, “they still haven’t finished rebuilding after you trashed the place.”
“That seems like a lifetime ago, General,” Michael said, his voice soft as he recalled the way his hijacked lander’s Henschel HKS-30 cannons had chewed their way through billions of dollars of Hammer hardware, with hypervelocity depleted uranium slugs stitching lines of red dots across ceramcrete aprons, the towering columns of flame-shot black smoke rising skyward, and Corporal Yazdi’s adrenaline-fueled triumph as she took out another flier, only to end up in an unmarked grave on a rain-drenched hillside.
“You did well.”
“Only if we can finish this. What about the marine bases?”
“We’ll mount battalion-strength attacks against Besud, Amokran, and Yamaichi. Beslan Island we can’t do much about; it’s too hard to get to, but we will run truck bombs into its main gate and perimeter defenses. Won’t achieve anything except a lot of smoke and noise, but it’ll add to the confusion.”
Michael put his hand up. “Hold on, General,” he said. “Battalion-strength attacks against marine force bases? I’m sorry, but are you nuts?”
Vaas laughed. “Probably, but have some faith in me. They are only diversionary attacks.”
“Still a huge risk.”
“Not really. The NRA has a secret weapon: all the marines Polk had shot.”
Michael looked skeptical. “I’m sure,” he said, “that there are a lot of marines who’d happily cut Polk a new asshole, but that’s because they’re pissed at what he’s done. They won’t sit on their asses if the NRA attacks them.”