Michael was out of ideas, so he did the only thing he could: He had to trust Anna and keep moving. She had been angling uphill; they had gone perhaps 50 meters when she pointed at a thin cleft between two rocks among a large outcrop of boulders.
"You're kidding, Anna," he muttered. Her choice was a good one, though. The Hammer search line would split to flow around the outcrop; provided that they did not look back, they might get away with it.
"We're not going to do any better than this, so you first, then me on top. If we're lucky, the chromaflage should do the job. They won't think of looking in there."
"We hope," Michael said as he backed himself in between the boulders. Adjusting his chromaflage and settling his helmet down to leave only the tiniest gap to keep an eye on things, he tried not to wince while Anna, getting herself into position fast clearly uppermost in her mind, not his well-being, squirmed over him. Anna's hand found his; she squeezed hard. Squeezing back before putting their wrists together, he made sure his rifle was to hand and resigned himself to his fate. He commed Anna. "I love you," he said.
"Love you, too," she replied, "but it's time to concentrate."
Chastened, Michael shut up. Soon it became obvious that the Hammers were less than enamored with their mission. The company NCOs maintained a steady stream of sotto voce orders: speed up, slow down, keep spacing, check this, check that, and so on. No way to run a sweep, Michael reckoned. A couple of well-positioned platoons could inflict terrible damage on the Hammers before they could react. They must be confident that there were no NRA units around to be so careless. Much encouraged, Michael allowed himself to hope.
Then the first Hammers were on them. They walked past, heads swinging from side to side as they scanned the ground, the nearest so close that Michael imagined he could smell the man's sweat. He held his breath, willing them on, his heart pounding so hard that he had trouble believing the nearest rifleman could not hear it. Slowly, ever so slowly, they moved past.
An eon later, the last of the Hammers had vanished, and Michael allowed himself to believe that they had gotten away with it. "Let's go," he said.
Anna scrambled out, and Michael followed, stretching hard to get the blood flowing into cramped limbs. "Now what?" he said.
"We follow them." Anna pointed upstream.
"What?"
"Sounds crazy, but-"
"Sounds crazy? For chrissakes, Anna! It is crazy."
Anna shook her head. "No, it's not. The Hammers have been dropping sensors by the landerload. If we trigger any and as long as they can't see us, they'll think what they are hearing is part of that patrol. They're noisy enough. More to the point, they are heading the way we want to go."
"Okay," Michael said, face creased with concern. "If you're sure."
Anna's mouth tightened into a thin line, what Michael liked to call her "why are you arguing with me" look. "I'm sure," she said. "Provided we stay close but not too close, this'll work." Without another word she settled her pack, adjusted her chromaflage cape, and set off.
With a sigh, Michael followed.
Long hours later, Michael had to concede that Anna had been right. His neuronics had repeatedly picked up the characteristic warbling of microsensor radios reporting activity back to whoever was controlling the Hammer ground operation. They would have been dead meat blundering around the forest had they not been following what had to be the noisiest soldiers ever. Patrol discipline was non ex is tent; Michael and Anna had been able to tuck themselves in close behind. There they stayed while the patrol worked its way south, every kilometer taking them a kilometer closer to safety, climbing steadily out of the foothills and into the Branxtons proper, the forest broken open by a mixture of grassy glades interspersed with clumps of scrubby trees and granite outcrops.
"What do you think?" Anna whispered.
"Something's happening. I think they've been retasked."
"Looks like it. Another intercept, I'd say. Must have been a big one to get that lot off their fat useless asses."
In front of them, the Hammers were breaking camp in a flurry of activity leavened with liberal doses of invective from unhappy corporals, the platoon's recon drones bursting into noisy life before climbing away into the sky. Michael smiled to himself while he watched. The platoon commander, a tall man with an accent that marked him as a native of Faith planet, sat with his NCOs around him, clearly planning whatever came next. Michael ached to blow his head off, the man's shock of red hair a target even he could not miss.
Ten minutes later and the patrol was on the move, this time in a column and moving fast, their screen of recon drones pushed out ahead of them in a loose line abreast. No need to worry about losing contact, Michael realized as they fell in behind. A herd of blind buffalo made less noise than these Hammers. Their casual indifference to their surroundings spoke volumes for their confidence; these men had no doubt they were in safe territory. To some extent, Michael had discounted the NRA assessments of the Hammer's planetary defense force-poorly led and badly trained and with rock-bottom morale was the NRA's view-but now that he had seen it for himself, he knew they were on the money. Even so, he reminded himself, the PGDF outnumbered the NRA, and they had more artillery, better communications, and an air force, not to mention marine armor and ground-attack landers to back them up when things turned bad. So, substandard or not, the PGDF was still a serious threat.
Two hours later, the patrol disappeared over the crest of a ridge, a broken line of rock 10 or so meters high. Crawling forward, Anna and Michael peered down into the valley beyond, which was lightly wooded and thickly studded with boulders tossed down from the ridgelines. The cause of the patrol's abrupt redeployment was obvious. A kilometer or so upstream from their position, the Hammers were setting up for a major operation; the valley floor was a hive of activity, swarming with soldiers, the air overhead full of recon and attack drones.
"That's their rally point," Anna said. "They're pulling in all the patrols they've had looking for people like us."
"Oh, for an attack lander or two," Michael breathed.
"Amen to that," Anna whispered back. "Shit, they're slack. Unbelievable. No air defense, pickets in way too close, no remote sensor chain that I can detect. Seems they are happy to rely on the feeds from their recon drones."
"So what do we do?"
"Wait and watch. All this effort means there must be a target somewhere close, one they don't want to spook; otherwise we'd be seeing landers landing and taking off. So, what? Five klicks away? Something like that. When they start to move, we'll get an idea of the direction. We need to try to get ahead of them and warn the good guys."
"Sounds like a plan." Thursday, November 29, 2401, UD Branxton Ranges, south of Perdan, Commitment
Chest heaving and lungs burning, Michael ran hard after Anna, her chromaflaged form all but invisible in the darkness while it ducked and weaved through the thin, woody scrub, his optronics-boosted eyes scanning for any sign of life. Be damn stupid, he said to himself, to come all this way and get shot by an NRA trooper.
That was the flaw in the plan. They knew where the Hammers were. They knew roughly in what direction they were heading, but they had no idea where the NRA was, their only clue a wild-assed guess how far less-than-motivated planetary defense soldiers could be persuaded to walk to their start line. So now, rather than tailing the Hammers, they were trying to stay ahead of them but not so far ahead that they blundered into the waiting NRA, a process a hundred times more difficult.
Confident that they were clear, Anna stopped. "Over here," she whispered, pointing to a clump of bushes.
They waited until the unmistakable sound of Hammer recon drones on the move broke the silence. "Moving more south, I think."
"They are. Let's go."
They were off again, the stop-and-go process repeated until the group Michael and Anna had been tracking-an entire battalion, he reckoned-dropped down to take up positions in a line across what was, according to Michael's map, the valley of the River Kendozo, here little more than a stream.
Michael watched the Hammers start to organize themselves, a large number of crew-served weapons-mortars, missile launchers, heavy machine guns-setting up under chromaflage netting, all pointing upstream. "They're a blocking force," he said.
"Yup, which means the good guys are that way," Anna said, pointing up the valley. "Looks to me like the Hammers are going to try to drive our guys downstream onto this lot's guns; anyone who tries to break out of the valley will get picked off by attack drones and landers. Simple."
"So what do we do?" Michael said.
"We can keep heading south, or we can try to screw the Hammers' operation. Which?"
Everything told Michael, "Go south, go south." How were two people to change the outcome of this battle? The NRA had been harassed and hounded every step of the way back from Perdan by landers. Its troopers must be exhausted, many wounded; they had few, if any, heavy weapons; and the Hammers outnumbered them by a huge margin. This was one battle the NRA could never win.
"Easy," Michael said, all of a sudden sick of the endless running. "We screw the Hammers."
"Knew that's what you'd say, you sonofabitch," Anna said with a grin. "So how do we do that and live long enough to tell people what heroes we are?"
"Hell, I don't know. You're the closest thing to a marine around here. You tell me."
"Hmmm… there's only one thing we can do: force the Hammers to go early, before they are ready. That should buy the good guys enough time to disperse before those goddamned landers turn up. You have any microgrenades?"
Michael checked his pouches. "Two magazines of ten."
"Same. That should be enough. Let me see… yes. Okay, here's the plan…"
With a flat crack, the microgrenade arced away into space, a blurred black dot plummeting into the valley, with four more following in quick succession. Michael did not wait to see what happened next; clawing his way across the scree, he threw himself under cover as a storm of mortar fire dropped onto the outcrop he had been hiding behind, rock splinters plucking at his body armor as he dived for cover. "You sonsofbitches," he shouted, flinching when another salvo smashed home. The Hammers might be second-rate, but there was nothing wrong with their counterbattery systems.
The instant Anna opened fire, Michael was on the move again to a new firing position on the ridge, the air torn apart by the sound of more counterbattery fire. Trying not to think what a single mortar shell could do to Anna's body, he settled himself and aimed carefully. This time he could not help himself. He watched the second salvo of microgrenades climb into the sky before dropping among the Hammers, the valley walls echoing with the flat, slapping crack of grenades exploding, screams of pain rewarding the wait.