Branxton Ranges, Commitment
“Right, Michael. Briefing time.”
Michael sat up. About bloody time, he thought. He was tired of sitting around waiting for something to happen.
“You recording?”
“I am now,” Michael replied.
“Good. Okay, here’s what’s going down.” Quickly, Tabor scratched a mud map in the dirt floor of the cave. “This is the road from Cordus-here-up to Merrivale-here. Merrivale is the Hammers’ forward base for operations in the northern part of the Branxton Ranges. The road is pretty narrow, and here”-he stabbed his stick into the map midway between the two towns-“where the valley closes in, is the killing zone. This is where we are going to ambush a DocSec convoy an hour after first light tomorrow. Ten heavy trucks escorted by four DocSec armored personnel carriers. Your job, Michael, is to watch and record what happens. Then we’ll move to the handover point, here”-another stab-“about twelve hours’ hard march west of the ambush site. We move out well before first light. Any questions?”
Michael sat with his mouth half-open. He had a hundred questions.
“Yes. How on earth do you know that a convoy-”
Tabor cut him off. “Can’t answer that, sorry. Next question.”
“Um, okay. Why are DocSec running resupply convoys by road? Why not resupply Merrivale by air?”
Tabor nodded thoughtfully. “Good question. Several reasons. Arrogance mostly. We pulled our 2nd Regiment out of this area months ago, and we think DocSec has convinced itself that things are back to normal. The heretic NRA is finally on the run, defeated, demoralized, and dispersed; you know the sort of thing.”
Michael looked skeptical. “Even so, trucks? Escorted by thin-skinned APCs? They must be mad.”
“No, not mad,” Tabor said with a shake of his head. “Stupid, yes, though it’s not all DocSec’s fault. Keeping Merrivale supplied by air has been a real problem for them. It’s a big base, and supporting it by air alone has been a nightmare. This is the third convoy they have run and the biggest; if it gets through, they will resume road resupply to ease the load on their air assets. We intend to show them that would be a really bad idea.”
“Sounds good to me. But why no proper armor?”
“Lack of armor’s not their only problem. This convoy ought to have close air support, but it will have neither, and that’s because of politics.” Tabor grinned fiercely. “Kraa, I love the Hammer sometimes. We’d be screwed if the military didn’t hate DocSec more than they hate us.”
“Sorry, Tabor, what do you mean, politics?”
“When DocSec needs heavy armor or close air support, they have to ask the military: the Planetary Defense Forces usually, the marines sometimes. The powers that be won’t let DocSec have their own. Kraa knows,” Tabor added bitterly, “DocSec’s dangerous enough as it is. Anyway, the PDF hates DocSec and vice versa, so DocSec finds it hard to ask for help, and even if they do, the PDF finds it real easy to say no. This time, they asked, and guess what? PDF said no.”
Michael shook his head despairingly. What a way to run military operations. No wonder the NRA was flourishing, and long may that prevail, he thought.
“So the convoy’s on its own?” Michael tried not to sound incredulous.
“Not quite. When the shit hits the fan, even the PDF has to get off its ass. The nearest PDF base is Perkins, a bit over 200 kilometers away. If they had aircraft on Alert 5, we’d expect a response within twenty minutes. But”-Michael could see that Tabor was enjoying this-“that won’t happen.”
“Go on, then,” Michael said resignedly. “Tell me why.”
“Lieutenant General Portillo is the commanding general of the PDF. He hates. . no,” Tabor added after a moment’s reflection, “that’s not right. Portillo loathes DocSec. Seems like the dimwits shot one of his brothers out of hand. Big mistake. Turned out an informer fingered the wrong Portillo. Another family altogether, it seems. What a shame.” Tabor did not look sorry at all. “Anyway, Portillo refuses to keep aircraft on Alert 5 just to bail out some incompetent bunch of DocSec troopers stupid enough to get themselves in trouble. All Portillo will allow is Alert 15, so we will get a response from Perkins, but it won’t be quick enough to save DocSec and its precious convoy.”
Michael was impressed. For all its shortcomings, the NRA’s intelligence seemed remarkably good. He could only hope the intelligence matched reality.
“One last question, Tabor.”
“Go ahead.”
“Are you sure this is not a trap, with the convoy as bait.”
“No, we can’t be sure. But we’re pretty certain it’s legit. Let’s just say we have good sources. Now, I’ve got things to do, so is that it?”
“That’ll do for now, thanks.”
“Good. Remember, we move out well before first light, so be ready.”
“I’ll be ready.”
“And remember, Michael. This is our ambush, not yours. Your job is to record what happens and get away safely. That’s all. You’ll have a gun, but you are not to get involved. Understand?”
Michael nodded. “Understood.”
“I really hope so.”
Michael watched Tabor disappear into the darkness. He hoped the man was right when he said the convoy was not a trap. If it was not, he could not even begin to imagine what the hell DocSec thought it was doing. Everything he learned about the Hammer reinforced his growing view that never had there been a bunch of people more willing to believe their own propaganda. They seemed to have developed selfdelusion into an art form, a fatal art form.
Why DocSec had decided to be so stupid he did not much care about one way or the other. Michael had not been completely honest with Tabor. Yes, getting a good neuronics recording was his priority, but he had sworn an oath over Yazdi’s grave, and he meant to honor it irrespective of what Tabor or Vaas or anyone else from the NRA might have to say. He had a score to settle with those black-uniformed DocSec rabble. He could only hope he got the chance to make a start.
The lead armored personnel carrier appeared from around the corner, its speed quite slow, exactly as Tabor had said it would be, as the green-and-black camouflaged vehicle slowed to negotiate the tight, nearly right-angle turn. Michael watched as the APC crawled up the road, the rest of the convoy following it, tucked in tightly behind. The trucks were like nervous sheep, Michael thought, and the APC was leading them to the slaughter.
The lead APC closed in on a small chalk mark on the road. The instant the APC hit the mark, two missiles streaked across the valley to smash into its lightly armored sides. A microsecond later, the vehicle, spewing smoke, swung off the road, toppling in slow motion down the slope and coming to a rest with a sickening crunch against a huge boulder.
The flat ripping crack of heavy machine gun fire as it flayed the rest of the convoy signaled the next phase of the operation. Chips of basalt splintered off the cliff and were whining viciously overhead. The task now was to pick off the DocSec troopers as they struggled to get clear of vehicles slamming to a halt in confusion behind the second APC, which was now a smoking ruin slewed across the road.
The DocSec troopers spilling out of the trucks had nowhere to run. Every direction they turned, they faced a lethal blizzard of carbine and heavy machine gun fire. In minutes it was all over. The convoy was jammed nose to tail in an untidy, crumpled line of smoking, ruined wrecks strewn along the road, with the bodies of the DocSec troopers lying where they had been cut down. NRA troopers were walking down the line, the flat crack of a single shot now and again ringing out as any DocSec troopers still left alive were consigned to Kraa.
Beyond the carnage, a thin plume of smoke marked where the surveillance drone had plunged to earth.
Michael lay there, any temptation to join in completely negated by the brutal, ruthless efficiency of it all. The whole business was over in a matter of minutes; the ambushers already were beginning to pull back. The NRA might be a bunch of raggedy-assed guerrillas, but they could fight, by God. He was no expert, but it all looked pretty textbook to him, with the Hammers first caught between the jaws of the ambush and then, unable to reach cover, butchered where they had been pinned down.
After the echoes from the last shot had died away, the silence was broken only by the sounds of the river and the metallic clicking of rapidly cooling engines. As Michael panned slowly across the ambush site, he noticed that something was wrong, something was missing. He had not noticed it before, but there were only three DocSec APCs: two at the front of the convoy but only one at the rear, where there should have been two. Before he could ask Tabor where the missing half-track was, the man stood up.
“Time to go,” Tabor ordered.
Michael decided that the question of the missing APC could wait for another day. Tabor obviously had forgotten about it. He had turned and, in a half run, was making his way down to the river. Without hesitating, he plunged in and was across, climbing up to the road. He paused to make sure Michael was close behind.
“One klick that way.” He pointed down the road. “Ravine to the right will get us off the road. Let’s go. Fast.”
They took off. Michael knew that the surveillance drone would have gotten a contact report out even as it plunged to its death on the rock-strewn slopes below. That meant ground attack aircraft from Perkins Planetary Defense Base would be on their way any minute now.
They had crossed the river and were on the road when proof that things did not always go the NRA’s way turned up. The missing DocSec APC, clearly in a hurry to catch up, came around the corner, bearing down on them almost before they were aware of it. Acting on instinct, Michael, with Tabor close behind, leaped for the safety of the shallow ditch even as the APC succumbed to a single missile launched by the downstream cut-off group. Michael flinched as the backblast from the explosion battered his ears. A second missile drove the APC off the road, the shattered wreck coming to a crunching halt against the rock wall. Michael offered up a quick prayer of thanks that someone in the ambush force was paying attention even as he cursed the ambush commander for not warning Tabor that there was one more APC on the way.
Tabor waved Michael up and out of the ditch. “Come on, Michael. We’ve got people to meet.”
Michael scrambled out of the ditch and onto the road. As he and Tabor ran past the smoking ruin of the APC, the rear doors banged open and a black-jumpsuited DocSec trooper half crawled, half fell out of the APC onto the road.
Tabor did not hesitate. He reacted first, but Michael was only a half second behind, the two men pouring a hail of fire into the hapless trooper. Michael grunted in satisfaction at the sight of the bullet-riddled body sprawled awkwardly across the road.
Tabor peered into the APC. Reaching in, he effortlessly dragged out a bulky DocSec officer, black woven rank badges on his combat jumpsuit marking him out as a major. Dumping him on the road, Tabor reached in and dragged out a second officer, this one a lieutenant.
“Convoy commander,” Tabor grunted. “Must have gotten held up. Should have turned around and run, stupid man.” The major suddenly moaned, his eyes opening, glazed and unseeing.
Tabor did not hesitate. He stepped back a meter and carefully put a single shot into the man’s forehead. “DocSec trash,” he hissed, leaning forward to spit with great care into the dead man’s face. He waved Michael forward. “Check the other one while I clean out this one’s pockets.”
Michael did as he was told. The DocSec lieutenant was still alive. Michael did not hesitate. “That’s for Corporal Yazdi, you piece of DocSec filth,” he whispered viciously, his gun coming up to fire two shots in quick succession.
“You’re learning,” Tabor muttered approvingly as he stood up. “Come on. We need to go.”
Michael nodded. Two DocSec down, millions more to go, but it was a start.
Tabor unclipped a grenade and casually underhanded it into the APC. By the time the grenade blew the inside of the vehicle apart, Michael and Tabor were safely down the road on their way to the safety of the scrub-filled ravine.
After a lung-burning climb, Michael and Tabor cleared the ravine and were across the saddle on their way down the other side when the two ground attack aircraft belatedly arrived from Perkins. Michael and Tabor dived for cover as first one and then a second howled overhead before disappearing up the valley to begin their search.
“That’s good”-Tabor struggled to refill oxygen-starved lungs-“235s with full loads. Klaxons, I think you Feds call them. They’ll beat the area up a bit and then piss off, hopefully well before DocSec can drop in a ground force to pin us down. If they even try, which I doubt.” Tabor had to fight to get the words out between gasps. “DocSec has no stomach for a fight. They’ll take their time; they’ll wait for PDF or marine armor to secure the road first. Gutless pigs.” Tabor spit, his contempt for DocSec obvious.
For a good forty-five minutes the Klaxons circled over the ambush site. Michael hoped that the sustained bursts of cannon fire and the dull thudding whump of fuel-air bombs going off were more in hope than in expectation. Twice, one of the Klaxons, obviously convinced it had located a cave full of heretics, climbed to 10,000 meters before dropping a bunker buster, the rocket-powered, case-hardened projectile going hypersonic before driving deep into the rock, the ultra-low-yield tacnuke warhead exploding deep underground with a sharp crack that made the earth shake. Michael shook his head; only the Hammers would use nukes on their home planet.
“Those clowns will claim they’ve wiped out an entire heretic brigade by the time they’ve finished, I suppose?” Michael asked.
Tabor nodded. “They will. If you believe Portillo, his ground attack fliers have wiped out more NRA soldiers than there are people living in McNair.” He spit dismissively.
Tabor tipped his head to one side and listened intently for a moment. “Sounds to me like they’re moving east. Shit, I hope the team got away. Anyway, it’s good news for us. When I’m sure, we’ll move out.”
“What about drones? Surely they’ll have those over the top of us.”
“They will, but we’re going in the wrong direction. Safety for the NRA is that way”-Tabor pointed southeast-“and the Hammers know it, so that’s where the drones will go. We’re going that way,” he said, pointing northwest, “but we do need to get below the tree line as fast as we can. So keep your eyes open. Remember, if they come over the top of us, lie still, and I mean still. Let your chromaflage do the work.” He paused. “Right, I think they’ve gone.”
With one last check that the Klaxons really were gone, Tabor was on his way, Michael in hot pursuit.