"Yeah, Jayla. Everything hurts like fury, but unless my neuronics are lying, it's nothing serious. Just aches, strains, and sprains, How about you?"
"Same. That was one hell of a ride."
"Those Hammers were waiting for us," Michael said with a grimace. "That was planned."
"That idea had occurred to me. Wondered why we hadn't seen them."
"Interesting, though," Michael said. "They didn't give a shit how much damage we inflicted on Perdan's defenders. All they cared about was getting us. Cold-blooded but smart, damn smart… bastards," he added with feeling.
It hit him. "Shit," he said. "What about Alley Kat and Hell Bent? You heard anything?"
Ferreira shook her head. "Nothing. I'm hoping they're okay. We'd have heard their beacons if they ejected, but there's nothing. I think we triggered the ambush too early."
"I hope so. Losing Widowmaker's bad enough, but one of our heavies? What a disaster. Losing two doesn't even bear thinking about."
The uncomfortable silence was broken by Bienefelt's return. "Come on, you lot," she said with a beaming smile. "It is the 48th NRA, and they've put the coffee on for us."
Much cheered by the prospect of one of the NRA's trademark brews, hot and aromatic, Michael climbed to his feet and trudged off after Bienefelt.
"I've spoken to brigade," the colonel commanding the 48th said. "They want you to make your way to the 120th to link up with the rest of the Feds."
Michael's heart soared, buoyed by the prospect of seeing Anna again after so many weeks apart. "Any idea what happens after that, Colonel?" he asked.
"No, sorry. Just that I'm to provide you with an escort and guide to make sure you get there okay. There are still a few Hammers we haven't accounted for. I can't spare any recon drones to watch your flanks, so keep your eyes open."
"Fine, sir. When do we go?"
"Now… Fenech!"
"Sir," a corporal standing off to one side said, stepping forward smartly.
"Off you go. Don't lose any."
"Sir."
The colonel turned to Michael. "Good luck," he said, shaking his hand.
"Thanks. You, too."
Michael started to salute, catching himself just in time. Not a good idea on the battlefield, he reminded himself. Pausing to draw assault rifles, power packs, and ammunition, they set off, Corporal Fenech's section in a loose screen around them as they moved past the blackened shells of the firebases and defensive positions the Hammers had thrown up in a ring to secure Perdan's perimeter and entered the outer suburbs proper.
To Michael's surprise, the first few kilometers showed few signs that a major battle had been fought for Perdan that day. The roads were clear of debris, and there were no barricades or any other sign of organized resistance, the only evidence of combat the odd broken window and occasionally a mobibot damaged by rifle fire. The city was eerily empty, not a single Perdan local in sight, the neat houses that flanked the road silent and dark, not a light visible in the gloom. Where the hell is everybody? Michael wondered.
Fenech pushed on fast-Michael was relieved to see that his patrol was alert, heads swiveling all the time like they were on sticks-and soon proof of the day's fighting became all too obvious. Must have been when the defenders worked out that they could no longer escape Perdan to the west, toward McNair and safety, Michael realized. The streets were filled with the remains of makeshift barricades, the bodies of dead PGDF troopers and smoke-blackened wrecks of their light armor speaking volumes about the ferocious fighting that must have taken place. Michael's heart sank when he saw the problem the NRA faced firsthand. Perdan's suburbs were indefensible: gently rolling terrain, untroubled by creeks or rivers, with broad streets flanked by low buildings set well back. Once Hammer kinetics had reduced Perdan's outer ring of defenses to smoking ruins, marine heavy armor would roll into town along the highway from Bretonville in the west and Daleel in the east, unstoppable, any serious NRA resistance blown out of the way by marine ground-attack landers. With marine support, even the PGDF would have little trouble retaking the town, its NRA defenders pushed back and back until they could retreat no more; they would die where they fought.
What the hell were ENCOMM and Vaas thinking?
By the time Fenech led them to the 120th's positions around Perdan's southeastern flanks, Michael had seen enough. Without close air support and heavy artillery, Perdan was a lost cause, an objective no guerrilla army could ever hope to hold in the face of conventional forces. Worse, even though the center of Perdan, with its narrower streets and substantial buildings, was a much harder proposition for any attacker, it was far from a natural fortress. Defended by well-motivated troops, it was a tough proposition-all urban warfare was-but not impossible. All it needed was time and an endless, relentless application of Hammer airpower supported by the marines' heavy armor, and it was all over. To add to the NRA commander's problems, there was only one way out: back into the Branxtons as they climbed steeply toward the karst plateau to the south. The problem was that when the Hammers launched their final assault on Perdan, even the dumbest Hammer commander would know he had to drop blocking forces to keep the NRA bottled up inside Perdan and where: astride the network of small rivers that cut paths through the densely wooded foothills.
Unless General Vaas had something magical hidden up his sleeve, the NRA would be fighting its way out of Perdan when the end came.
If the tactical nightmare that was Perdan was worrying Corporal Fenech, he did not let it show. "That's it for me, sir," he said cheerfully when they reached the shattered remains of a small, low-rise ware house complex beyond which Perdan's outer suburbs reached out to the forest. "This is 120th's sector. If you'd wait here, one of the regimental staff will be with you shortly."
"Thanks, Corporal. Good luck and keep your head down," Michael said, resisting the urge to comm Anna.
"Trust me, I will," Fenech said with a broad smile.
Michael and the rest sat down to wait, the minutes dragging by until broken by a familiar voice.
"Well, well, well," Kallewi said. "Look what the cat's dragged in. Didn't expect to see you guys. You all okay?"
"We are. Widowmaker's not, I'm sorry to say. How are you lot?"
"We came through okay. The PGDF put up bit of a fight, but it was halfhearted. We've had casualties. Anna's one of them, I'm afraid." Michael's heart came up into his mouth. "No, nothing serious," Kallewi added hastily when he saw the look on Michael's face. "She caught a bullet in her upper arm. She'll be fine."
"Where is she?"
"Battalion aid station. Follow me. Rest of you, coffee's that way. Go grab some. I'll meet you there."
Michael followed Kallewi through the darkness, picking his way through the chaotic mess of discarded equipment littering the ground around the 120th's rear positions. Kallewi might think it had not been much of a fight, but it did not look that way. The aid station was tucked away under a chromaflaged canopy pinned to the wall of a badly damaged building. They found Anna sitting propped against a handy block of fallen plasfiber, eyes closed, her face deathly pale in the station's cool white lights, her bandaged left arm resting on an ammunition box. Michael dropped to his knees alongside her.
"Hello, trooper," he said softly.
Anna started, her eyes flicking open. For a moment, confusion reigned before she worked out what she was looking at. "Oh, hi, Michael," she said, her voice slurred.
"What have you been doing?"
"Hammer sonofabitch was a bit too fast for me. I was the better shot, though," she said, closing her eyes, her mouth twisting into a small crooked smile. "Getting to be a habit, this."
"What?"
"Hanging around you getting shot. This is the second time, you bastard."
"Yeah, yeah. Let me see how you are." Heart pounding, Michael interrogated Anna's neuronics, relieved to see that she was okay. The wound to her arm-he winced when Anna commed him images of an ugly, raking gash across her upper arm-looked worse than it was, all her vitals were 100 percent, and when the drugs and shock wore off, she would be sore but fine. Knowing Anna, she would be grumpy, too, but he refused to worry about that now.
"How do you feel?"
"Bit dazed thanks to the medication; Hammer drugs don't screw around. I'll be fine. The medics stitched me up and told me to take an hour off, so if you don't mind."
Michael did not have time to reply before Anna's head rolled back and she was asleep.
"So what's next?"
Anna, still pale but looking better than when Michael had first set eyes on her, looked at him, puzzled. "You don't know?" she asked, taking a long pull at her coffee.
It was Michael's turn to look puzzled. "Know? Know what?"