A long hour later and with heated argument still raging, Polk gave up the fight. So far as he was able to determine, all the debate had achieved was to solidify the PGDF's position, and he knew the matter was lost. He cursed his own stupidity; deciding to take the matter head-on had been a spontaneous decision, one made to deny the PGDF's supporters the chance to lobby the rest of the Council. It had been a mistake. All they had done was argue more loudly and passionately than everyone else until they had ground the resistance to dust.
So they were back to square one. The PGDF would always need the marines' support. Thanks to the paranoia of the people who wrote the Constitution, only the marines were permitted to operate heavy armor and ground-assault landers. That meant the PGDF had to ask the Defense Council to approve their requests for help each and every time. It was no wonder the NRA was doing so well.
"Enough," Polk said wearily, worn out by the endless squabbling. "I will defer this matter for further discussion. Councillor Jones."
"Yes, Chief Councillor?"
"I want a draft report looking at the feasibility of a unified command structure before next week's meeting. Now, moving on. Admiral Belasz. Your report on the week's operations against the Feds."
"Thank you, sir. If you would look this way, you will see that Fleet has had a busy week, and as usual the Feds have struggled to respond. Here, here, and here we mounted…" Tuesday, October 9, 2401, UD Sector Golf, Branxton Base, Commitment
It had been a long, grinding week, and Michael was exhausted. Like all the Feds except those involved in Leading Spacer Sasaki's court-martial, he had been working long hours getting the microfabs purloined from the three dreadnoughts operational. If the Feds were to make a difference, the damn things needed to work. All things considered, the NRA was doing well, but Vaas and his commanders had admitted that it had to do better, and to do better, the NRA needed more of everything: ordnance, secure comms gear, real-time decrypters, portable electronic intercept systems, battlefield trauma equipment…
Michael abandoned his attempt to itemize all the things the NRA needed. He would be itemizing all night; the list was endless, and everything important was scarce. Thanks to a library of microfab production templates, the machines had the smarts to turn out much of what the NRA needed using only basic raw materials, geneered bacterial feedstock, and lots of power. Nothing they produced would be state of the art-after all, the templates had been bought from an information broker based on one of the Rogue Planets-but what they did turn out would be a hell of a lot better than nothing.
Best of all was something that Chief Chua had discovered during the setting-up work: Microfab machines carried microfab templates. In theory, given the right raw materials, they were able to turn out copies of themselves.
Which meant-
Michael's dreams of hectares and hectares of microfab plants busy churning out everything the NRA needed were rudely interrupted by a call from Anna.
She wasted no time on niceties. "Court-martial's wrapping up. Sasaki's been found guilty, and they're about to sentence him. Patch your neuronics into channel 36. It's the live vid."
"Okay."
Michael's neuronics filled with an image he never forgot: the face of Leading Spacer Sasaki, pale, sweating, his fear betrayed by a trembling lower lip.
The president of the court-martial panel looked just as unhappy. He peered at the piece of paper in his hands; he was clearly having trouble believing what was written there. "Leading Spacer Jon James Sasaki," he said finally, voice wavering. "It is my duty as president of this court-martial to announce that the court-martial, all members concurring, sentences you to death by firing squad."
The tiny court-martial room was silent. "Oh, shit," Michael murmured as he dropped the holovid feed.
Michael's hopes of a full night's sleep were shattered by a priority call from Adrissa. "Yes, sir," he mumbled, trying to shake off the bone-numbing fatigue of a long, hard day.
"My office, now!" she snapped, dropping the comm before Michael responded.
"Yes, sir," he said to the empty nothingness of a dead comms link. What the hell, he wondered as he slipped out of his bunk, fumbling around to find his shipsuit and boots, careful not to wake Anna.
Michael hurried through the silent corridors connecting the Feds' quarters. The sparse lighting did nothing to help him shake off a dreadful certainty that something bad was about to happen. Knocking on the flimsy door to Adrissa's office, he went straight in.
"Yes, sir?"
"Sit, Michael," Adrissa said. She looked tired, her face gray with fatigue. "I need you to do something for me."
"Of course, sir. Anything."
"I'll remember you said that," she said with a fleeting half smile. "You know the result of Sasaki's court-martial?"
"Yes, sir. Seemed right to me."
"Yes. Yes, it was right. There's no doubt Sasaki tipped off the Hammers just before we left Point Lima, none at all, so the sentence is right. This is war we're in, not a bloody back-alley brawl. He betrayed us-for money and a safe-conduct pass off-planet, for chrissakes-and it came close to costing us. Backstabbing scumbag! We had our suspicions back in 5209 but not the evidence to do anything about him. Shit! We were lucky he only managed to contact the Hammers at the last minute. Otherwise…"
Michael nodded. If Sasaki had been able to contact the Hammers an hour earlier, even the demoralized officers in charge of the Hammer's PGDF could have organized something more useful than a single missile battery.
"Anyway," Adrissa continued, "I'm not here to debate the rights and wrongs of the court-martial. I'm confident the posttrial review will dismiss his appeal. No, it's the sentence that's my problem."
"Oh?"
"Mmmm," Adrissa said, forefinger tapping her lips, eyes defocused for a moment. "Yes, the sentence. I've made sure we've followed the Court-Martial Manual every step of the way. The extraordinary-circumstances provisions allow for everything that has happened. Nobody can ever say that the man was denied due process. Nobody can complain if the sentence is enforced, but… I could never have the man shot. Never. He might be a traitor, but he's our traitor, and we do not shoot our traitors. Maybe we should, but we don't."
"No, sir," Michael said. "Must say, everyone's assumed you'd suspend the death sentence. Everyone."
Adrissa shook her head. "No, Michael. That's not right. Not everyone. Not General Vaas, for starters."
"General Vaas?" Michael said, puzzled. "How is this any of his business? This is a Fed matter, surely."
"I think so, but he does not see it that way. You see, Michael, when he said, 'Your people must be part of the NRA,' I agreed with him."
"Oh," Michael said with a frown as he worked out what Adrissa was trying to say. "So that means treating Sasaki the way the NRA treats any of its people caught dealing with the Hammers?"
Adrissa nodded. "Yup."
"And… you'd like me to go and talk to Vaas, try to talk him around?"
"Knew you were a smart boy, Michael. Yes, that's exactly what I want. We've done it informally. We've done it formally. I've tried, Commander Rasmussen's tried, Lieutenant Commander Solanki's tried, but we can't shift Vaas."
"Oh, shit," Michael whispered. "I'm sorry, sir. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"I am. I want you to see if you can change his mind."
Michael grimaced. "That's a big ask, sir."
"I know that," Adrissa snapped. "For chrissakes, Lieutenant, just do your best."
"Sorry, sir. I didn't mean to question the order. It's just… it's just, well. I-"
Adrissa's hand went to chop him off. "I know that," she said softly. "Do your best. It's all I want."
"Sir."
"General Vaas will see you now."
"Thank you, Major Hok," Michael said.
Hok waved him in without another word. Talk about mission impossible, Michael said to himself.
Vaas looked up with a smile when Michael entered his private office, a cramped space furnished with a battered desk, three chairs, and a simple bunk. Vaas looked surprisingly alert considering it was two hours past midnight, the fingers of his left hand playing with the sunburst at his neck in a restless, fretting display of the energy that drove the man. Michael knew why Vaas looked so cheerful. The previous twenty-four hours had been good ones for the NRA. Operation Fender had unleashed a carefully coordinated torrent of death and destruction on the Hammers: four DocSec convoys ambushed with every one of the black-uniformed scum they carried dispatched to meet their precious Kraa, a convoy carrying supplies to the marine base at Besud ambushed and its contents looted, a new Hammer firebase close to the beleaguered town of Daleel overrun and destroyed in one of the NRA's trademark human-wave attacks, four senior DocSec officers careless enough to travel in a thin-skinned mobibot killed by a culvert bomb outside McNair, a pair of fliers carrying PGDF brass back to McNair hacked out of the sky by Goombah missiles, and countless minor attacks against DocSec and PGDF all across the McNair basin, with yet more attacks on soft targets across Commitment. Operation Fender had not stopped there: NRA units on Faith and Fortitude, the second and third planets of the Hammer Worlds, had not been idle, launching attacks on hundreds of soft targets.