“The son of a bitch. Well, fuck Polk. Didn’t work, did it? I’m here with you.” Anna sat back. She looked at Michael for a moment; her eyes narrowed. “I know you, Michael Helfort, and well enough to know that there’s something else you’re not telling me.”
Michael threw his hands up. “Okay, okay,” he said. “ENCOMM told you that I’m one of Vaas’s aides?”
“They did. Aide-de-camp or some such bullshit title. Too good to join us grunts down in the mud, eh?”
“No!” Michael protested. He paused. “I am his ADC,” he went on, “but when the time’s right, I’m going after Hartspring, and once I’ve dealt with him, Polk’s next. I just wanted you to understand why.”
“Dealt with him. You mean kill him, don’t you?”
Michael nodded.
Anna stared at him; her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Michael,’ she said, a catch in her voice, “let it go. Forget Hartspring, forget Polk … please. The Revival and the NRA will deal with them. Do your best for Vaas and help us finish this damn war. Then we can all go home and get on with our lives.”
“I can’t do that,” he said. “Not after what those two have done.”
“You can’t do that? That’s it?”
“I’m sorry, but yes, it is. I love you more than I can ever say, but I have to do this. Tell me it’s okay.”
Anna stared at him.
The silence dragged on until Michael could not stand it anymore. “Anna,” he said, “Anna, please-”
“I can’t say it’s okay,” Anna said, “because it’s not. It’s crazy, it’s stupid, it’s dangerous-”
“But Anna!”
“-and it frightens me to death just thinking about it. After all you’ve been through, don’t you think you’ve done enough, taken enough risks?” Anna rolled her eyes and sighed. “Why am I saying that? Of course you don’t. Look, if going after Polk and Hartspring is what you have to do, then go ahead. Nothing I can say will stop you. Just promise-” The words caught in her throat and forced her to stop for a moment. “-that we will leave this pissant planet together when all this is over.”
“I promise … and no more of that crazy marine shit from you,” he added.
Anna smiled through tears. “I promise. Oh, crap! Look at the time. I have to go.” She got to her feet. “My leave pass expires in … let me see, yes, in ten minutes.”
“Leave pass?”
“Colonel Balaghi said he would kick my ass all the way to McNair if he saw me back in battalion headquarters before 22:00. But I do need to go. I’ve got a lot to do. I’ll see you back at my billet, though who knows when.”
“Go,” Michael said. He climbed to his feet and folded Anna into a clumsy one-armed embrace. “I’ll be waiting.”
She kissed him, then pushed him away. “You’d better be,” she murmured.
Saturday, July 17, 2404, UD
Sector Kilo, Velmar Mountains base, Commitment
“Come on, lard ass. Colonel Balaghi and the 120th Regiment await the arrival of General Vaas’s illustrious aide-de-camp.”
“Piss off, you heartless woman,” Michael muttered.
“I’ll see you later,” Anna said, pushing his head back to kiss him full on the mouth.
“Okay.”
Forcing his unwilling body upright and out of the bunk, Michael groaned as the weight came onto his left arm. The medics had said his shoulder was healing well, but that didn’t stop it from hurting like hell. He was soon dressed and on his way, the battered buggy rattling and banging along the tunnel to where the 120th had its headquarters.
Colonel Balaghi turned out to be a man of Michael’s height and, unusually for an NRA trooper, well padded to the point of being rotund. His face was open and welcoming, with deep laughter lines etched around warm brown eyes and a mouth that smiled a lot, his teeth brilliant against mahogany skin.
Michael liked the man the instant they met.
“Welcome, Colonel Helfort,” Balaghi said, crushing Michael’s hand in his. “Call me Joe.’
“Michael Helfort,” Michael said, doing his best to crush Balaghi’s hand back and failing.
“This way. Coffee?”
“Yes, please.”
Michael followed the man through the regimental command center and into a small cell-like office. He felt awkward. He had checked Balaghi’s bio. The man was many years his senior and had picked up a gun to fight the Hammer before Michael was born, yet they were equals as far as the NRA was concerned.
Awkward? he thought as he took a seat. This is downright embarrassing. I feel like a fraud.
If any of that bothered Balaghi, it did not show.
“General Vaas said to expect you,” Balaghi said once the coffee had arrived, “though I’m assuming your visit had more to do with seeing the other Colonel Helfort.”
“I cannot tell a lie, Joe, so yes, it was.”
Balaghi laughed, a rich, infectious laugh that had Michael laughing too. “Vaas tells me you’re his new aide-de-camp.”
“I am.”
Balaghi leaned forward, the smile gone. “I think that’s good,” he said. “The NRA is getting so big, it’s hard for the brass to know what’s really going on sometimes. But …”
Oh, shit, Michael thought. He thinks I’m Vaas’s spy.
“… you should understand one thing,” Balaghi said, the sudden steel in his voice taking Michael by surprise. “You can go anywhere, talk to anyone about anything you like, but if there’s something I should know, you must tell me. Okay?”
“I wouldn’t do it any other way,” Michael said, reminded again that he would have to tread carefully.
“That’s good,” Balaghi said, sitting back with a huge smile. “Now that the end is in sight, there are far too many politicians crawling out of the NRA’s woodwork for my liking.”
“You think the end is in sight?”
“I do, though it’s not a done deal. We still haven’t worked out how to deal with John Calverson.”
“Calverson? The Teacher of Worlds?”
“Yes, him. He’s the man Jeremiah Polk fears more than anyone else. Calverson snaps his fingers and his priests can have 50 million Hammers on the streets, and they wouldn’t be rooting for us, I can tell you.”
“And will he snap his fingers?”
“Of course. We might win this war-we will win this war-but winning the peace is another matter. Calverson knows the threat we pose to all that fundamentalist bullshit the Brethren depend on. The Word of Kraa is the single largest organization in the Worlds, and it is the most corrupt. He will fight us to a standstill to make sure it survives. He has to.”
“So what are we doing about it?”
“Nothing, which is why I’m dropping the problem onto your shoulders.”
“Ah, okay. I think I’ve just found my first assignment.”
“You have. Look, the problem is this: ENCOMM is a military beast; its solutions are military solutions. The Resistance Council is a political beast, so its solutions are political.”
“Why isn’t the Resistance Council concerned about Calverson?”
“It’s ironic. They’re not concerned because of the success of Juggernaut. It delivered everything ENCOMM wanted and more. It even delivered a solution to those Kraa-damned orbital kinetics the Hammers love to drop on us.”
“The mobile laser batteries, you mean?”
“Yup. We’re very happy to see them, I have to tell you. We can cope with almost everything the Hammers throw at us, but not tungsten-carbide slugs spearing down out of space.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“ENCOMM says it can finish off Polk and his apparatchiks quickly and effectively.”
“A military solution to a military problem?”
“Exactly. And they’re wrong. Calverson has to be neutralized. If he isn’t, we’ll still be fighting this damn war in ten years’ time.”
“How do we do that?”
Balaghi threw up his hands. “That’s the problem,” he said. “I have no idea. That’s why I can’t convince the brass they’ve got it wrong. And there’s no way I can talk to anyone outside the NRA. Vaas would kick my ass if I tried.”