“And?”
“It’s up to me now. I can’t ask you to go with me into Cooperbr-”
“Whoa!” Shinoda said. “Hold it there just one fucking second, sir. I don’t know about the rest of the team, but I haven’t come all this way to stop now. I want Hartspring almost as much as you do.”
“Look, sergeant. I appreciate the sentiment, but you’ll have to tell me how we’d get past the military police. We’re talking about going into a combat zone without valid orders. We belong to a unit that does not appear in the Hammer order of battle, and we have IDs we know are useless. They’ll nail us in a heartbeat.”
“And you do have valid orders to show the MPs?” Shinoda said. She looked exasperated. “And which unit do you belong to? Show us your ID; who are you, exactly?”
Michael put his hands up in defeat. “I know, I know, but one man on his own has a chance of getting through. Five don’t.”
“That is a complete crock, sir, and you know it. If we go as marines, then you’re right. We will get nailed. But a bunch of civilians has a chance. The marines are not DocSec. They won’t give a shit who we are. Even if they look at our IDs-which they won’t-they won’t check them out. They have better things to do.”
Michael knew all that. He’d just been hoping that Shinoda wouldn’t pick up on the flaws in his argument. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Decision’s made. I’m going in on my own while you guys go to ground until the NRA gets here.”
“What? You want me to sit around on my ass waiting?” Shinoda shook her head dismissively. “Forgive my language, sir, but fuck that.”
“This is my fight, Sergeant Shinoda, not yours. So butt out and let me fight it, okay?”
“My fight’s killing Hammers, sir, and I’m not too fussy about which ones, so this is what we’re going to do: We’ll go to Cooperbridge, find Hartspring, and when we do, you can kill him. Okay?”
Michael’s head dropped; he could see the determination on Shinoda’s face and knew when he was defeated. “Why can’t you just do as you are ordered?”
Shinoda grinned at him. “I’ll take that as a yes, shall I?”
“Suppose you’d better. Go talk to the guys, make sure they’re okay with it, then we’ll move out. We need-” His fingers plucked at his combat fatigues. “-to find something to replace these.”
Michael checked to make sure his assault rifle was safely tucked away under his coat. It was. He turned to look at Shinoda. He threw an admiring glance at the heavy skirt and embroidered blouse favored by older Hammer women. “I must say, you do look very fetching, Sergeant Shinoda,” he said. “All those rough, tough Hammer marines will not be able to keep their hands off you.”
“You may be a colonel now, sir,” Shinoda growled, “but that won’t stop me from belting you. Besides, you look like a pig farmer fallen on hard times.”
Michael laughed. Shinoda was right; he did. “We all set?”
“We are.”
“Let’s go, then.”
Michael followed Shinoda and the rest of the team down the road out of the village to the junction with the Cooperbridge-Kumasi highway, the ceramcrete road already hot in the midmorning sun. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Dressed in clothes dragged from the shattered ruins of a small village mall, they were a sorry-looking lot. But so were all the other civilians they had seen, and Michael knew they’d be all but invisible to the Hammer marines.
Because they were lost amid the flow of Hammer truckbots forcing their way down a road clogged with civilians, the walk into town was uneventful. The Hammer military police showed not the slightest interest in their small group. Since they were the only people heading into Cooperbridge while every other civilian was getting the hell out, Michael had thought they would. But they hadn’t. The marines were content to wave them through without even the most cursory check of their IDs.
Michael called a halt just short of Cooperbridge’s plaza. Like all Hammer towns, it was a massive space dominated by the inevitable temple. It was still intact, but its facade was badly scarred by shrapnel. The buildings on either side lay in ruins, now just piles of smoking rubble.
Michael waved the team to close in. “Right,” he said, “you’ve all got your search areas. We meet at the corner of Herriot and Chang in eight hours. Keep an ear on channel 643; any problems, let everyone know. And remember, if you locate the target, call it in, get as many holocams set up as you can, then bug out. I do not want Hartspring getting spooked. Any last questions? … No? Okay, let’s move out, and remember, keep your heads down and try to stay clear of the surveillance cameras. There’s a lot of them, but they’re very easy to spot.”
The team split up, and Michael set off. He tried not to be daunted by the size of the task that lay ahead. Cooperbridge was a big place. Finding Colonel Hartspring’s unit would have been difficult at the best of times, let alone amid the chaos of the last major town before the front line. And it was chaos. Hammer units-some in good order and going up the line, others tattered, some badly mauled, coming back down-clogged the streets. Truckbots hauling supplies made the confusion worse. They forced their way through the mayhem, weaving around the debris from destroyed buildings and between armored, air-defense, and antitank units parked and waiting to move.
Something tells me, Michael thought, that the Hammers are not planning to give Cooperbridge up without one hell of a fight.
Michael walked down the shattered remnants of what must once have been an attractive tree-lined boulevard. His eyes never stopped moving in the search for surveillance cameras. He was relieved to see that he was not the only one with a death wish. There weren’t many civilians around, but enough for him not to stand out. They were a sad-looking bunch, poorly dressed and dirty. They all had looks of shocked disbelief on their faces.
Michael rounded a corner and was confronted by the sight of a Goombah air-defense battery. Its tracked launch vehicle, power plant, and command trailer all but filled the road. He started to make his way toward the battery. The screeching of a siren brought him to a stop; he wondered what it meant. And then he realized. Frantic now, he turned and threw himself over a small wall in a desperate attempt to reach the safety of a small concrete enclosure. He crashed into the ground and slid to a stop. He clamped his hands over his ears even as the world around him was torn apart by the savage back blast from missiles screaming skyward. Rocket motor efflux hit the ground and exploded outward. Fingers of hot gas lashed his body, scorching his hands and neck.
The silence that followed was shocking in its intensity. Michael lay there for a minute, breathing air bitter with the acrid smell of burned propellant. He stumbled to his feet. He shook his head to clear the ringing from his ears and tried to ignore the pain from his burned hands, his body racked by coughs as it fought to expel the crud from his lungs.
It wasn’t until a hand fell on his shoulder that Michael realized somebody was talking to him. It was a while before he could make sense of what the hulking Hammer marine was saying.
“Can’t you read, you idiot?” the man was saying, pointing to a small dust-coated sign sitting a good 50 meters away.
“Sorry,” Michael mumbled, “didn’t see it.”
The marine shook his head. “Fucking civilians,” he said. “You are damn lucky you weren’t killed … Kraa! Look at your hands!”
Michael did, then wished he hadn’t. No wonder my hands hurt, he thought as he looked at the blistered red skin.
“Go down there,” the marine went on, pointing along the street, “about 300 meters. You’ll find an aid post. They’ll fix you up. What are you waiting for?” he said when Michael hesitated. “Go on. It’ll be okay. Tell them Sergeant Jalevi from the 654th Air Defense sent you.”
A marine aid post was the last place Michael wanted to go, but with the man so insistent, he didn’t have much choice.