Michael thought of Anna. Was she sleeping like all the rest? If she was, what was she dreaming about? And if she was awake, maybe she was thinking of him, wondering how long it would be before they saw each other again. Michael shook his head. More likely, she was wondering what the hell she was going to do with another long, empty day behind Hammer razor wire, a day like every other day, one day closer to freedom for sure, but how much closer?
As long as things went to plan, sooner than you think, Anna, he thought, thankful she had no idea what the consequences of his failure might be. He found them hard enough to bear; imagining how Anna would react when-no, if-Hartspring's thugs came calling was almost too much; his stomach turned over as he pictured the terror on her face as the colonel spelled out what the last week of her life had in store for her in excruciating detail. And he would, Michael knew he would, rage washing through him in an incandescent wave. If Anna died, he would hunt Hartspring down to the very ends of humanspace if need be, and then the man would die a death even more terrible than Anna's.
"Jesus, Michael," he muttered out loud, "get a grip. Come on, you've got work to do." Forcing himself upright, he gingerly eased his weight back onto his bad leg, relieved to find that the bloody thing had decided to behave for once. Stepping onto the ladder, he started down again.
When he got to the hangar deck, Michael looked around. He spotted a handful of marines securing the last of the untidy piles of scrap cut out of the ship by the repairbots while Kallewi and Sergeant Tchiang busied themselves running cables to the small mounds of sandbagged explosive charges that would blast the scrap out into space as Redwood approached reentry. Michael hung back to let them finish.
Finally, Kallewi pronounced himself satisfied with the last of the charges. He stood up, stretching hard. "Hello, sir," he said when he spotted Michael. "Come to see what real work looks like?"
"I was about to commend you for your diligence and devotion to duty, Lieutenant Kallewi," Michael said, stern-faced. "But since you've just done that for yourself, I won't bother."
Kallewi laughed. "Ouch," he said. "Anyway, we're done here."
"Just hope it all works."
"Oh, it will," Kallewi said. "When these babies go off"-he kicked one of the sandbags-"all that scrap has only one way to go, and that's out the door. The Hammers won't know what the hell is happening."
"You're right. Everything we know about them tells us that they are anyone's equal as long as they face a problem they understand. Their Achilles' heel is that they are worse, much worse, than most when facing the unexpected. The Hammer military does not reward initiative."
"Well, tell you what, sir. This will be unexpected."
Michael laughed; Kallewi's confidence was infectious. "I think so. How are the troops?"
"Dog-tired and asleep. Busy day tomorrow, so I want them fresh."
"Anyone having second thoughts?"
"Yes, a couple. Tedeschi and Gavaskar."
"They a problem?"
"No," Kallewi said after a moment. "Sergeant Tchiang talked to them. Turned out it was just nerves, and I can't say I blame them. I can't remember so much tension before an operation."
"Ditto. I'm not concerned about the assault on the camp. We'll have momentum, and if we play our cards right, the Hammers will be so damn confused, they won't even know what we're doing until it's too late. It's what happens after that bothers me. We'll have hundreds of Fed spacers and marines on our hands. I wonder how they'll react when they find out they've been rescued by mutineers."
"Like we decided, sir, I think the later we leave telling them, the better. When we do, provided the senior Fed officer in charge of the camp accepts what's happened, we should be okay. I don't think it'll be a problem."
Michael nodded. "I think that's right." He paused for a moment. "That leaves us with the Nationalists. Who knows what they'll think. We assume they'll treat us like manna from heaven, but we need to remember they were born Hammers. They've been raised from birth to hate us and everything we stand for."
"They treated you well last time around?"
"Yeah, they did, but it was only me, and I was moved on quickly. If Vaas decides that we're a problem…"
"You know what, sir?"
"No, what?"
"You worry too much. If the Nationalists turn us down, they're fuckwits. Three landers with crews, microfabs, trained marines, weapons, and more. If that's not manna from heaven, I've misjudged the situation… badly. Everything we know about them tells us they are a smart, determined bunch of people, fighting to overthrow one of the ugliest regimes in human history. So I don't think they'll turn down our offer of help. Doesn't mean we can go barging in. We'll need to take care, but in the end they won't say no."
"I think you're right. Anyway, enough talk. Time to turn in. I'll see you tomorrow."
Kallewi rolled his eyes. "Moving more stuff! Can't wait."
"Night, Janos."
"Night, sir." Friday, September 14, 2401, UD FWSS Redwood, in deepspace
The compartment fell silent when Michael rapped a knife on his glass and stood up.
"Sorry, folks," he said, "but you know how it is. You can't have a formal dinner without the captain making a speech. Them's the rules, you all know it, and no amount of complaining will change things."
Michael lifted his hands while a chorus of cheerful cheers and boos along with shouts of "Sit down," "Does your mother know what you're up to, sonny?" "More beer," "That's enough talk," and other time-honored and insubordinate witticisms-all sanctioned by long-standing naval tradition to the point of being compulsory on occasions like this-broke out.
"Yes, yes, yes," he said over the row. "I'll keep it short, don't worry." He waited until order returned, his eyes scanning the faces around the single large table filling what had been the senior spacers' bar when Redwood was a cruiser.
"It's been a long day, so I'll keep it short"-more cheers sprinkled liberally with calls of "liar"-"but there are a few things that need to be said. First, I want to thank you all. To those of you who know and trust me, I cannot begin to express how I feel. I promise you that I will not betray that trust. To those of you who are here because it is our best chance to hit the Hammers and hit them hard-"
Michael was forced to wait as the room filled with roars overlaid with shouts raw with hate and anger.
"-that is the best reason for doing what we are doing. I promise you that by the time we are finished, the Hammers will hate us for the death and destruction we will bring down on their heads."
The compartment erupted in an explosion of energy. The spacers and marines of Redwood's crew leaped to their feet, fists pumping the air, mouths open, bellowing hate-fueled litanies of revenge. Finally order was restored.
"And finally, to those of you," he said, "who are just along because they've got nothing better to do, thanks anyway. We need you."
Again Michael waited patiently when laughter filled the room.
"Tomorrow," he continued, "we drop into Hammer farspace"-the mood in the room changed; in an instant, all the good humor had vanished-"the start of Operation Gladiator proper. You all know why Gladiator matters to me. But if freeing the spacers and marines held by the Hammers in J-5209 was all this was about, I would never have allowed it, no matter the consequences. Never. So we need to remember that Gladiator does not end when we clear the camp. We have been at war with the Hammers for more than a century"-a murmur washed through the room-"and Fleet tells us we face another five years of fighting. Then what? A better than even chance that we still won't be able to defeat the Hammers. Worse, there's a good chance they might beat us. I am not so arrogant to think that we alone can end this war, but I think that we can bring forward the day when war between the Federation and the Hammer of Kraa Worlds is history. And we'll do that by bringing what assistance we can to the Nationalist forces opposing the Hammer government. That is why we are doing what we are doing. That is why we risk career and reputation. That is why we have broken every rule in Fleet Regulations.
"There can be no more Comdurs. When we go into battle in the next few days, remember that. Thank you."
Michael sat down, the silence absolute. A moment passed, and then Bienefelt, Ferreira, Kallewi, and Sedova were back on their feet, joined an instant later by every spacer and marine present, the air ripped apart by the Federation battle cry: "Remember Comdur, remember Comdur, remember Comdur…"
Stepping out of the drop tube, Michael walked aft down the passageway toward Redwood's hangar, the soft slap of ship boots on the plasteel deck plates the only sound over the ever-present hiss of the ship's air-conditioning. The complete absence of Redwood's crew heightened his sense of isolation. Apart from Acharya, who was standing the middle watch in the combat information center, Michael was the only person onboard awake. It was not a good feeling, and the isolation added to the crushing weight of responsibility he carried for the spacers and marines he was leading into the most harebrained scheme ever devised by humans. Yes, they were all adults, rational, sensible people. Yes, they had been given the option to bail out with the rest of the abstainers. Yes, they had all decided to go along, but none of that altered the fact that the safety of every spacer and marine rested in his hands.
If it had not been for him and Anna, none of them would have been asked to risk everything-career, reputation, family, friends, citizenship, not to mention their lives-out of a misguided sense of loyalty, lust for adventure, frustration at the stalemate in the war against the Hammers, or whatever other crazy motivation might have urged them on.
He struggled to control his stomach, a churning mess of anxiety and dread. In an instant, he was overwhelmed. He made it to the heads, just. There, crouched over the sterile whiteness of the nearest toilet, he threw up his dinner, his body driven to its knees by the spasms that wracked it, the muscles of his stomach and chest screaming in protest.
An age later his body relented, and Michael struggled to his feet to wash his face. He stared into the mirror. The man who looked back was not he. Stress had stripped kilos off a once-solid frame, leaving his face gaunt, his skin stretched gray and tight across now-prominent cheekbones, his eyes the eyes of a man condemned to die.
"How did it ever come to this?" he whispered, weighed down by the weight of Operation Gladiator. How well he managed an attack on the most heavily defended planet in humanspace would rewrite the history of space warfare. If, he reminded himself, any of them lived long enough to tell the tale.
With a conscious effort, he forced himself out of the heads and down the passageway into the hangar. He paused, taking a moment to make sure that none of Kallewi's marines were around. Satisfied they had all turned in, he walked around the hangar, eyes scanning left and right to make sure that nothing was out of place. Happy that things were all right, he made his way over to the nearest landers. Alley Kat and Hell Bent were ranged hard up against the inner air lock door with Widowmaker tucked in close behind. The landers' ramps were down, their cargo bays loaded with anything that might come in handy once the attack on J-5209 was over.
Ferreira had gone over the loads with a fine-tooth comb. Gladiator would not be much of an operation if the landers ended up so overloaded that they were forced to leave behind some of the Fed prisoners they had come so far and risked so much to rescue. Even so, they looked crowded. If he had not checked for himself, he would not have believed the landers had enough payload left to lift hundreds of Feds out of J-5209. As it was, it was going to be standing room only, the prisoners packed into the spaces around the mounds of equipment and ordnance the landers were taking with them.