Branxton Ranges, Commitment
Michael blinked as the black hood was removed. The sudden glare made his eyes water.
“Sit down, Michael. Please.”
Michael did as he was told, sitting in a battered old chair. The man opposite him was in his late twenties, though his eyes were the eyes of a man twice that age, bottomless and dark brown, set deep under dirty black hair. Michael’s nerves jangled. There was something about the man that was deeply unsettling, a barely concealed intensity. No, it was not intensity. It was ferocity, a single-minded purpose to which everything would be sacrificed. This was not a man to cross; this was a bad man to have as one’s enemy, Michael decided.
Michael waited. He had learned. Asking these people questions was a waste of time. If there was something he should know, he would be told.
The man looked at him thoughtfully for a long time before speaking. “I’m Mutti Vaas, Michael, and I’m happy to see you. Luckily for you, you’re now in the hands of the NRA.”
“Ah,” Michael said, “the New Revolutionary Army. Your man Uzuma said that’s what he belonged to. No details, though. So what the hell is the NRA? Didn’t feature in any intelligence summary I’ve ever read.”
“Later,” Vaas said brusquely. “Now, some friends of yours asked us to look out for you, and when we heard about the Kraneveldt business. .”
Michael’s mouth sagged open in astonishment. If Vaas and his men had been asked to look for him, his message to the embassy in McNair must have gotten through! A tiny seed of hope began to grow somewhere deep inside.
“Who? Who asked you?” He had to know.
Vaas put his hands up. “Don’t ask, can’t tell. Sorry. But I do have some good news for you.”
“I hope so. What news?”
“Well, we’re going to get you out of here. Next week probably. We’re going to hand you over to your own people. They’ll arrange to get you off-planet.”
Vaas’s words were so understated, his voice so matter-of-fact, that nothing registered at first. When it did, Michael’s heart pounded as he absorbed what he had been told. Hardly daring to breathe, he looked Vaas right in the eye.
“Off-planet? You’re kidding me, right?”
“No, I’m not.” Vaas’s voice brooked no argument. “Off-planet. That’s what they say. How, I don’t know. Not my business.”
“Oh, oh,” Michael stuttered. “Can I ask some questions?”
“You can ask, but I have some first,” Vaas said drily.
“Go ahead.”
Vaas’s face hardened. “Were you responsible for the attack on the Barkersville police station?”
Michael tried to swallow, his mouth suddenly dry. He had hoped that whole foul business would be forgotten. He certainly never intended to admit to it now that Yazdi was not there to bear witness against him. “Er, well,” he foundered, taken by surprise. “I. .” He trailed off into silence. What could he say?
Vaas whistled softly through pursed lips. He nodded. “I thought so. I’ll take that as a yes, shall I? Look, Michael.” His voice softened. “To some extent I don’t blame you; we have a pretty good idea what you’ve been through. But you need to understand something about us, about the New Revolutionary Army.”
Vaas paused. Michael sat there silent, the knowledge that he had failed a test he should never have failed gnawing at him. Vaas looked at him for a while before continuing.
“The NRA is not a bunch of psychopathic killers like those DocSec perverts. Chief Councillor Polk calls us terrorists, but we’re not. We have rules, and when you get home, when you get debriefed, make sure your people understand that. We are Hammers, true, but we’re not like the rest of them out there. Got it?”
Michael nodded his agreement.
“Good. We have rules, and believe me, I enforce them”-one look at Vaas’s face and Michael was quite prepared to believe him-“and our rules are these. Our enemy is the Hammer government, not the Hammer people. Any Hammer the NRA comes up against in combat is fair game. Don’t care who they are. If they shoot at us, if they attack the NRA, we shoot back. But we don’t kill the wounded, we don’t kill ordinary policemen just doing their jobs, and we don’t kill civilians.” Vaas paused for a moment. “There is one exception. We kill every DocSec trooper we get our hands on. We kill DocSec anywhere, anytime, even if they’re wounded. They get one bullet because that’s all the filthy swine are worth. So at least you got one right,” he said with a faint smile. “But Michael, we do not kill police.”
Michael felt ashamed, unclean, the guilt flooding back. He could not say anything. There was nothing to say. What he had done would stay with him forever. With a cold, sinking feeling he realized that the deaths back at Barkersville had placed a burden on him that he could never, ever put down.
Vaas sat back. “Okay. That’s enough from me. You have some questions?”
Michael nodded, taking a deep breath to help push the puzzled face of Detective Sergeant Kalkov out of the way. “Well, who are you for a start?”
“I’m the leader of the NRA’s Resistance Council. We’re the only effective opposition to the Hammer government, and you’ll get no prizes for guessing we want to change the way the Hammer Worlds are run.”
“Oh.”
Michael must have sounded unconvinced because Vaas laughed. “I know,” he said. “It sounds like bullshit. It’s not. The NRA is a guerrilla army. How big doesn’t concern you. We’re having some success. This part of Commitment, the Branxtons, is ours. Despite all their fancy fliers, landers, drones, survsats, battlesats, and all the rest of their damn technology, the marines and those fucking DocSec psychopaths have learned to stay well away. Took a while and a pile of bodies to convince them, but they got the message in the end. We own the Branxtons, and they know it.”
Michael still looked unconvinced.
Vaas stared at him hard. “Your neuronics working?”
“Of course. If I’m alive, they work.”
“You can record everything you see?”
“Yes.”
“Good. If you make a recording, then nobody can say we staged it, right?”
“No.” Michael was completely baffled. “But what?”
“A little operation we’ve got planned. I would like to send you along as an observer. I need a living witness to the fact that the NRA is an effective force, that we are not a bunch of psychopathic heretics. So will you record it?”
Michael shrugged his shoulders. “Of course. Why not? Provided I get out of here, I don’t much care what I do.”
“Good. That’s settled, then.” Vaas stood up. “Michael, I’m sorry, but I have to go. We won’t meet again before you leave, so good luck. I hope you get home safely. Remember one thing.” Vaas leaned forward, his eyes blazing with a sudden, frightening intensity. “Not all of us are bad. All we want from people like the Feds is help. Give us the tools and we’ll finish those Hammer scum off.”
Vaas stepped back; Michael was shocked to see how tired the man was. He looked exhausted, his face gray and drained. He waved a man forward. “Michael, this is Tabor. Please do exactly what he says. We don’t have time for games. Make the recording I want and take it with you. You’ll know who to give it to. Good luck.”
With that, Vaas was gone. Silently, Tabor signaled to Michael to follow.