Farrisport Island Prison
“It’s time.”
Michael got to his feet. “I’m ready,” he said. It was a complete and utter lie. Only the last dregs of courage and self-control allowed him to keep a body torn by fear under control.
Two guards stepped forward. Hands locked onto his arms. They escorted him down a succession of short corridors. Kallewi and a posse of observers fell in behind, his lawyer too. Erica Malvern’s eyes were brimful of tears. Michael was led into a room. Its walls were seamless sheets of blindingly white plasteel, its only furniture a single chair bolted to the floor, its back, arms, and legs fitted with broad plasfiber restraints.
Michael’s heart hammered at the walls of his chest. He was eased forward, turned, and pushed gently down into the chair. The guards worked fast to secure the restraints. The awful, unstoppable inevitability of the process threatened to break him apart. With all that remained of his self-control, he made himself stay still.
“Prisoner is secure, sir,” one of the guards said, moving back.
Colonel Kallewi stepped forward to stand right in front of Michael, a single sheet of paper in her left hand. She leaned forward. “Hang in there, spacer,” she whispered.
Michael said nothing. He was too terrified to speak, even now unable to believe what was about to happen to him.
Kallewi cleared her throat before speaking. “Michael Wallace Helfort. Your final appeal for clemency having been denied by the president of the Federated Worlds in presidential order J-557, a physical copy of which document I have witnessed in person and further confirmed by direct comm with the president herself …”
Michael turned his mind inward. His neuronics cycled through his favorite holopix of Anna, pictures of the best times in his life, pictures rich in hope and happiness. But all of a sudden, it was too much, too painful, and Michael could not take any more. He shut his neuronics down. He opened his eyes and waited for Colonel Kallewi to finish.
“… and now, by the authority vested in me as the superintendent of Farrisport Island Prison, sentence of death will be carried out.” Kallewi stepped back. “Proceed,” she said.
A guard-she looked very young and very nervous-wheeled a small trolley to where Michael sat. On it rested a plasfiber cylinder from which two corrugated hoses led to a face mask. With well-rehearsed efficiency, the guard placed the face mask over Michael’s face, tightening the straps behind his head to form an airtight seal.
“Face mask is secure, sir,” the woman said.
“Confirm system is nominal.”
The guard’s fingers flickered across a small touchpad set below a status screen. “System is nominal.”
“Close the vent. Set the system to recirculate.”
“Vent closed. System set to recirculate. Carbon dioxide scrubber is active, sir.”
“Sentence will now be carried out,” Kallewi said.
This is it, Michael thought, knowing with each inhalation that he was one step closer to death as his body burned the oxygen in the system until too little remained to sustain life. It was strange. He felt disconnected from what was going on. As if it were already over. As if he were …
Quietly and with no fuss, the end came, and Michael slipped away into unconsciousness, falling down into the darkness, down to where death awaited.
Why could he not feel anything? Why was did the darkness feel so thick? Why was the silence so absolute?
Was this what it was like to be dead? He was dead, so it had to be.
None of it made any sense, so he lay unmoving until a soft voice reached down to where he drifted. It called him back up from the infinite blackness that cradled his being, urging him to come back to the light. He did not want to go, but the voice was insistent; it nagged at him until he had to leave the warmth and security of the darkness. He drifted up toward a faint point of light. It strengthened as he rose; its brilliance grew and grew until it pushed the darkness aside, and then a blinding whiteness enveloped him, a whiteness so bright that he had to screw his eyes shut against the glare. His head filled with sudden stabbing agony, his heart thrashed at his chest, nausea roiled his stomach.
“Can you hear me?” a voice asked.
He wanted to answer, but his mouth was too dry, his throat too constricted to let the words come. With an effort, he drove air from his lungs and past his lips. “Yes,” he croaked.
“Good,” the voice said. “You had us worried. That damn drug is dangerous. We’re transfusing more nanobots to mop up the last of the toxins in your system. I’m afraid you’ll feel like shit until they’re gone, but it won’t be long, so hang in there.”
“Head hurts,” he mumbled. The pain was terrifying in its intensity; it radiated out from behind his forehead in swirling waves of red-hot agony, each more powerful than the last.
“How bad?”
“Bad, real bad.”
“Bloody cataleptic drugs,” the voice said. “Hold on … okay, I’ve upped your painkillers.”
The pain roared to new heights. He bit down on his lower lip to choke down the scream that built in his throat, his mouth filled with the coppery taste of fresh blood.
“Better?”
He shook his head. A mistake; shards of pain slashed razor-edged through his head. “Stop!” he screamed. “Stop it now! Please!”
“Hang in there.”
But he could not. With brutal force, the pain bludgeoned him back to where he had come from.
In an instant, he was awake. He stared up at the ceiling, which was white and featureless except for a single light panel turned down low. He looked around. Judging from the medibot beside his bed, it had to be a hospital, he decided.
But why was he in a hospital? His mind was blank. Panic engulfed him. He could not remember anything, not a damn thing: who he was, where he was, why he was here. All he knew was what his senses were telling him right there and then.
That was it.
Beyond the immediate lay … nothing. Hard as he tried, he could not see past the nothingness. His mind said he existed, but that was the totality of his universe. He had no idea what lay beyond the Spartan confines of his room; that terrified him. But why? He did not know. But he did know one thing for certain: Outside the door lay unimaginable horrors, horrors that would destroy him with casual, uncaring cruelty, horrors that even now might be coming for him. With fear-fueled desperation, he tried to find a way out, to escape, but he could not move.
Without warning, the door opened. A scream of primal terror boiled up from deep inside, a scream that died before it reached his lips. The man who had entered the room was a marine medic, a corporal, there to help him.
He knew all that without thinking. But how did he know? What was a marine? What was a corporal? Why was the man here to help him? None of it made any sense.
“The medibot told me you were conscious,” the medic said; he leaned over to look him in the face. “How are you feeling?”
“Confused,” he said after a moment’s thought.
“Can’t remember anything?”
“No. Who am I?
“You’re Michael Helfort.”
That did not help. Who the hell was Michael Helfort? “Where am I?”
“A place called Karrigal Creek.”
“Never heard-”
With all the shocking impact of a dam bursting, memories exploded inside Michael’s head, a torrential, confused kaleidoscope of people, places, and events, a churning mess of sensations that Michal struggled to make sense of. His heart lurched as he remembered with an awful clarity the moment when the prison guard had slipped the mask over his face.
“I’m alive,” he whispered. He felt stupid the instant the words came out. Of course he was alive. That had been Colonel Kallewi’s promise to him. He’d wanted so badly to believe the woman, but he never had, not even for a second. Throughout those last awful days, he had convinced himself the woman had only wanted to make the inevitable less terrible. But she had been telling him the truth.
“You sure are, spacer,” the medic said with a cheerful grin. “Now, let’s get you hydrated,” he went on, handing Michael a beaker of pale blue fluid. “Get that down you.”
All of a sudden aware of how thirsty he was, Michael took the beaker and drained it in one long swallow. “Thanks, Corporal,” he said. “Any chance of another one?”
“As many as you like,” the man said. “I’ll go get a refill.”
“Thanks,” Michael said. He put his head back and closed his eyes, happy just to luxuriate in the sudden rush of energy surging through his body.
The door opened.
“That was damn quick, Corporal,” Michael said. He opened his eyes and looked up, and there she was, a tall, spare figure in Fleet black. “You,” he hissed at the sight of Admiral Jaruzelska. “What are you doing here?”
“Hello, Michael,” Jaruzelska said, closing the door behind her. “Welcome to Karrigal Creek.”
“I am going to kill you,” Michael shouted, fists clenching and unclenching as rage surged hot through him, “and that’s a fucking promise you can depend on.”
“Hold your horses,” Jaruzelska said, a trace of iron in her voice. “There’s a lot you don’t know, so you need to listen before you kick my head in.”
“Why the hell should I?” Michael shouted, his voice hoarse. “You lied to me, and then you betrayed me. Do you have any idea-” He tried to sit up, hands reaching out for Jaruzelska. “-what I’ve been through? Well, do you? No, you don’t, you callous bitch! If it’s the last thing I ever do, I will kill you.”
Jaruzelska said nothing. Michael, unable to hold himself upright any longer, collapsed back onto the bed. “Everything that’s happened has happened for a good reason,” she said.
“So you say,” Michael said, his face twisted into a furious mask.
“I do say. Now I’ll stand here as long as you like, but in the end you’ll have to hear me out,” Jaruzelska said, her voice all steel now, “so stop wasting my time. Believe me, I have better things to do.”
“Go fuck yourself,” he muttered.
“Last chance.”
Unwilling to trust her, Michael hesitated. His body trembled as he struggled to regain his composure. “Okay, I will,” he said at last, unable to find enough energy to be angry anymore, “though it had better be damn good.”
“Oh, it will be. Right, we’ve a lot to get through, so let’s get started,” Jaruzelska went on, brisk and businesslike. She pulled up a chair and sat down. “First, I would all like to apologize for what you have been put through. It was as unforgivable as it was necessary, and I’m sorry.”
“Keep talking,” Michael said, grim-faced.
Jaruzelska sighed. “Okay, bear with me as I do this one step at a time,” she said. “First, have a look at this holovid clip.”
A wall-mounted holovid screen burst into life. It took Michael a few seconds to work out what he was seeing: a flame-shot pillar of smoke that climbed from the blazing wreckage of what looked like a suborbital shuttle. “What’s that?” he asked.
“That’s all that’s left of the shuttle taking your body from Farrisport Island after your execution. As you can see, there could have been no survivors, and your mortal remains are now well and truly incinerated. In fact, my people tell me that the fire was so intense that the recovery team will be lucky to find anything more than a puddle of molten slag.”
“But why … Ah, right, I get it,” Michael said. “Okay, what’s next?”
“Watch this.”
The holovid came to life again. It juddered and jumped. Michael struggled to work out what he was watching because the image was so poor, so unsteady. Then it clicked. He was looking at a heavy cargo shuttle, its flame-scorched skin free of any identification markings. The camera moved toward a loaderbot trundling a gray shipping container out of the shuttle’s cavernous cargo bay. The letters on the side of the container said: government of the pascanici league. The camera continued on to where a man in a coldsuit stood, his face thrown in harsh relief by overhead lights.
There the vid paused to leave the man’s mouth frozen half open.
“What the hell was that about?” Michael asked. “That’s the worst vid I’ve ever seen.”
“It came from dustcams.”
Michael frowned. He’d never heard of dustcams.
“And before you ask, dustcams are low-res speck-size cameras that record three-sixty-degree vid before squirting it back to us via a microsat. We dropped millions of them over a lump of rock on Commitment the Hammers call Hendrik Island. We got plenty of vid, almost all of it useless. But some came through for us, and this is best we have. The analysts think it settled on someone’s jacket as he walked past that shuttle.”
Michael sat up. “So he tells us something?” he said, studying the man’s face with care.
“That piece of slime,” Jaruzelska said, pointing a finger at the screen, “is Professor Arnoldsen, and he is the Pascanicians’ best magnetic flux engineer. He’s probably the best in humanspace as well.”
Michael’s heart tripped over itself; now he knew why Jaruzelska was showing him the vid clip. “Oh, shit,” he whispered. “Antimatter production is all about magnetic flux containment.”
“It is.”
“Which makes Hendrik Island the Hammer’s new antimatter manufacturing plant, and the fact that Arnoldsen is there proves that the Pascanicians are helping them. Looks like the NRA’s intelligence reports really were on the money. But how did you know about Hendrik Island?”
“We analyzed Commitment’s orbit-to-earth and suborbital traffic for the last ten years.”
Michael turned to stare at Jaruzelska, wide-eyed. “You’re kidding me. That’s petabytes of data.”
“Exabytes, actually.”
Michael shook his head; he still didn’t understand. “But how?”
“After you and your dreadnoughts destroyed the Hammer’s antimatter production plant at Devastation Reef in March ’01, we all knew the Hammers had to replace the plant. The problem was figuring out where they’d put it. After a lot of debate, our intelligence guys decided that the Hammers would have to locate their new plant as close to home as possible-”
“Of course!” Michael blurted out. “Where the defenses are most concentrated; that way we couldn’t take it out again.”
“And you can’t get much closer to home than dirtside on Commitment.”
“So you looked for changes in their traffic patterns,” Michael said; over and over, his forefinger stabbed out in his excitement. “You looked for shuttles. Lots of shuttles, all going somewhere they’d never gone before!”
“And that somewhere was Hendrik Island. When we crunched the data, it stuck out like the proverbial dog’s balls. Hendrik Island was home to a small research station; it used to have one shuttle a month, if that. Now it’s getting hundreds, many of them from the Pascanici League. So now we have hard evidence that proves what the Hammers are up to. That’s the good news. The bad news is that none of what you’ve seen made the slightest impression on the government. Moderator Ferrero and her Worlds First Party always wanted a peace treaty with the Hammers, and nothing was ever going to stop them from getting it.”
“I know,” Michael said, stony-faced. “I watched the holovid of the signing ceremony. It’s a disaster.”
“More than you know. One of the terms of the peace treaty was that both parties would halt all antimatter research and production. We, of course, complied. As we now know, the Hammers did not.”
“Surely Ferrero insisted that the Hammers prove they weren’t in breach of the treaty.”
“No, she didn’t. She said that would be a betrayal of the bond of trust she’d established with the Hammer of Kraa.”
“So the government won’t do anything. What happens next?”
“We take direct action. If we sit around and wait, we’ll all wake up one day to find Federated Worlds nearspace full of Hammer starships armed with antimatter missiles, and then it’s game over. Inside a week, we’ll be a vassal state of the Empire of the Hammer of Kraa with Jeremiah Polk our emperor. We don’t have a choice. We must stop him.”
“But how can you do that? With the greatest respect, I cannot-”
“Can you walk?” Jaruzelska said, cutting him off.
“I guess,” Michael said.
“If you can-” Jaruzelska’s tone left Michael in no doubt that not being able to walk was not an option. “-I’ll get Corporal Wei to find you some clothes and bring you through to the command center.”
“Yes, sir,” Michael said to her departing figure, a tiny corner of his brain still wondering why he hadn’t tried harder to kill the woman.
Light-headed from the effort it took to stay upright, Michael followed Corporal Wei through a security post manned by armed marines. He emerged into a brightly lit space humming with disciplined activity, its walls dominated by holovid screens busy with live video feeds and maps overlaid with thick clusters of tactical icons, along with status boards. The air was buzzing with nervous energy underscored by the buzz of quiet conversations from twenty or so shipsuited spacers and marines.
Admiral Jaruzelska waved him over. “Michael,” she said, “it’s good to see you up.”
“What is this place?” Michael murmured even though he knew. This was a command center, a big one, and it was a command center in the middle of a live operation. But Karrigal Creek? He didn’t know where Karrigal Creek was, but he was pretty sure that it formed no part of the Federated Worlds’ massive network of command and control centers.
“Ah, good,” Jaruzelska said when a man in faded marine greens spotted her and came over. “This is General Adam Nwosu.”
“General Nwosu,” Michael said, confused. “I’m sorry, but what are you doing here? I thought you’d retired.”
“I had,” Nwosu said; he was a chunky, well-muscled man, ebony-faced, with soft brown eyes under a wild thatch of arctic-blond hair. “But these are dangerous times, and when Admiral Jaruzelska asked for my assistance-” He shrugged. “-how could I say no?”
They shook hands. Michael was wondering why Jaruzelska would need a superannuated Marine Corps general when a third person-this one in planetary defense uniform-saw them from across the room. “General,” Jaruzelska called out. She waved at a tall, cadaverous woman with a bleak and emotionless face illuminated by penetrating blue eyes to come over. “General Fahriye Yilmaz, meet Michael Helfort.”
“Good to meet you, sir,” Michael, even more puzzled now, said as they shook hands. What was a pair of long-retired generals doing in Karrigal Creek? None of this made any sense, and his confusion was made all the worse by the abrupt change in his fortunes. It was so abrupt that he had to keep reminding himself that it was real, that it was no dream no matter how bizarre and unexpected it seemed.
“And you, Michael,” Yilmaz said, her face transformed by the sudden warmth of her smile. “You’ve done well. We owe you an enormous debt.”
“Not really, General,” Michael said, bobbing his head, embarrassed.
“We’ll catch up later, Fahriye, Adam. Michael, this way,” Jaruzelska said. She threaded her way through the controlled confusion and into a small room off to one side. “Sit!” she said, pointing to a chair.
“I get it now,” Michael said as Jaruzelska found her seat. “All of that out there-” He waved a hand in the direction of the command center. “-that’s the planning team for a military coup. You’re going to kick Ferrero out and take over, aren’t you?”
“I wish we could,” Jaruzelska said, laughing, “but no, sadly, we’re not. That was our initial thought, but we realized that a coup would tell the Hammers that something was up. No, we want them to think that nothing has changed right up to the point when it’s too late to stop us.”
“You’re going back to Commitment?”
“We are.”
“But there’s no way to do that without the government knowing, surely. It’s impossible!”
“We don’t think so. You should know that. After all, you stole three dreadnoughts from under Fleet’s nose. We’re planning to do the same, only on a larger scale.”
“Hijacking three ships is one thing,” Michael protested. “Making off with an entire battle group is quite another, and that’s what you’ll need. It can’t be done. The operation to get the support the NRA needs will be huge. It’ll involve tens of thousands of people and fifty, sixty ships, maybe more. There’s no way you can maintain operational security. Someone will talk.”
“All good points, but stay with me while I go back a bit. I need to give you the full story.” Jaruzelska was quiet for a long time. “Did you ever wonder,” she continued, “why I threw you to the wolves?”
“A million times a day,” Michael said with a flash of resentment, “and don’t think for a second that I’ve forgiven you for that, because I never will.”
“We had our reasons.”
“Which were?”
“We needed Fleet in particular and the marines and planetary defense as well to see Caroline Ferrero and her government for what they were: lackeys of the Hammers, puppets dancing as Jeremiah Polk pulled the strings. And to do that, I needed to turn you from villain to victim.”
“Villain to victim?” Michael shook his head. “That makes no sense.”
“Oh, but it does,” Jaruzelska assured him, “and here’s why. When you stole those three ships, nobody in Fleet agreed with what you’d done. Many felt your arrest was a good thing. They thought it wiped away one of the worst stains on Fleet’s record. But a few things changed that. The first was your speech in mitigation at your trial.”
“My speech? World News called it … let me see if I can remember their exact words … yes, ‘a tissue of self-serving lies.’”
“Well, since the Hammers were paying them at the time, what else would they say? But I can tell you this: I have heard a lot of speeches in my time, but yours was a work of genius. Do you know how many times it has been downloaded?”
“No.”
“Over a half a billion times, and that’s just here on the Federated Worlds. Your speech is famous, Michael, right across humanspace.”
“It wasn’t me,” Michael said, his cheeks reddening with embarrassment. “The credit should go to my dad. I told him what I thought, what the rest of the team thought, why we did it. He was the one who turned all that into something worth hearing.”
“He didn’t tell you that your speech was put together by the best psycholinguistics team in human history?” Jaruzelska asked with a half smile.
“It was?”
“Oh, yes,” Jaruzelska said with a nod. “Their job was to craft the most persuasive speech ever written. You had to convince everyone that even though you were as guilty as hell, you didn’t hijack those dreadnoughts because you were a lovelorn fool. You did it because your motives were good, because you could see what the rest of us were too slow, too stubborn, too self-interested to see: that it was only a matter of time before the Hammers smashed us into the dust. And guess what? It worked. Right across the Federated Worlds and especially in the military, your approval rating soared. It’s never dropped, and we’re making sure it never will. You are a genuine hero, Michael, and you might as well get used to it.
“The death sentence was the second step, and we made sure there was plenty of commentary pointing out that execution is a barbaric institution that has no place in a civilized society. We also made sure that everybody knew that your sentence was imposed because that was what the government wanted.”
“Despite the fact that it was handed down by a court? The judge wouldn’t have been too happy.”
“Let’s just say that she is a friend of ours,” Jaruzelska said. “We owe her big time.”
“You didn’t stop there, though, did you?” Michael said. “You spread the idea around that the government pushed for the death penalty only because that was what the Hammers wanted. Am I right?”
“Ferrero the puppet having her strings pulled by Polk the puppet master,” Jaruzelska said. “You know what? I think we’ll make you a psyops man of you yet,” she added with a smile.
“I don’t have your sneaky, devious mind, sir. Niccolo Machiavelli would have been proud of you, though. So what came next?”
“The final step was persuading President Diouf to-”
“Whoa, hold on, sir! The president is in on this?”
“No, she’s not. All you need to know is that a mutual friend, a man whose advice and guidance Diouf has relied on for most of her adult life, convinced her that the Federated Worlds would be at grave risk if she did not turn down your request for clemency. The president was told only as much as she needed to understand why she was being asked to do something … so extraordinary. In the end she agreed to go along with us, but only when we convinced her that you would not actually be executed.”
Relief flooded through Michael; he had not been wrong to trust Diouf.
“And that was when things got very dirty,” Jaruzelska went on. “When Diouf turned you down, we had to convince the Worlds that you had been unfairly treated. The Hammers helped us there. We have holovid of the dumb bastards trying to bribe Diouf to let your execution go ahead. Twenty million FedMarks they offered her. She refused it, of course, but we slipped a story to the trashpress saying that she had taken the money. To muddy the waters a bit more, we concocted another story that the Hammers were so pissed by Diouf’s refusal that Polk forced Moderator Ferrero to blackmail Diouf into turning down your appeal for clemency.”
“Diouf’s the closest thing I know to a saint,” Michael said; he looked incredulous. “How do you blackmail a saint?”
“Easy. You cook up a story, backed by lots of seemingly credible evidence, that Diouf financed a child slavery racket operating out of the Rogue Planets in the ’50s, and then …”
Michael grimaced; that would have hurt Diouf.
“… you give it to the trashpress and tell them that Ferrero was using it to blackmail the president. The story was so juicy, so hot, they just couldn’t resist the temptation. They went public with it the day you were executed. The timing could not have been better.”
“Then what?”
“The story’s already been retracted-needless to say, that’s seen by some as part of the government’s cover-up-and Ferrero and Diouf are going to sue for defamation. But that still leaves people wondering if they’ll ever get the truth. Was the president bribed by the Hammers? Did Ferrero blackmail her into abandoning all her principles? And if Diouf wasn’t bribed or blackmailed, then why did she go against all her principles and allow your execution to go ahead? Not that it matters, not now. We’ve got what we need. We’ve turned you from villain to victim, and the process has seriously undermined Ferrero’s credibility, so much so that the average Fed now thinks her appeasement of the Hammers will come back and bite the Federated Worlds in the ass. They don’t know how, they don’t know when, but they think it will. And that’s the environment we need to support what we’re trying to do here.”
Michael shook his head. “That’s really … I was about to say clever, but maybe evil would be a better word.”
“I prefer to call it a work of genius,” Jaruzelska said with a touch of smugness.
“Maybe it was,” Michael snapped. Jaruzelska’s conceit angered him, and it showed. “I understand why it had to be done, but from where I’m sitting, it looks much more like a work of bloody-minded torture. I thought I was about to be executed. You could have told me it was all an elaborate hoax. You should have!”
“But we did,” Jaruzelska protested. “We made sure Colonel Kallewi told you.”
“Hah!” Michael snorted with derision. “That was way too late. By then I wanted to believe what she was saying, but I couldn’t. When they strapped me down, I knew for a fact that I was about to die. Didn’t matter what anyone had said. I thought they were just trying to make things easier.”
“I’m sorry,” Jaruzelska said, her voice soft, “really I am.”
“You damn well ought to be. You should have told me sooner. And there’s one more thing you should know.”
“Oh?”
“I got a message from Chief Councillor Polk.”
“From Polk?” Jaruzelska’s stared at Michael, eyes wide with disbelief. “How could you?”
“One of the guards smuggled it in. I wish I could show it to you, but it was one of those damn one-time messages.”
“What did it say?”
“That Polk had authorized my old friend Colonel Hartspring to set up a team to snatch Anna; Team Victor he’s called it, and that’s a v for ‘vengeance’ in case you’re wondering.”
“I remember Hartspring,” Jaruzelska said, “but why would they do that?”
“Polk was happy that I was to be executed, but not that happy. If he couldn’t have me killed his way, then he wanted to me to die knowing that Hartspring was going after Anna, knowing what would happen to her once Hartspring got his hands on her, and-” Michael broke off, unable to speak anymore.
“Oh, Michael,” Jaruzelska whispered; she stretched out her hand to take his. “We had no idea. Why didn’t you tell us?”
“What difference would it have made?” Michael said. “I’ll tell you: none. After all, what was I? Just another pawn in the game.”
“We should have told you earlier,” Jaruzelska conceded, “but the group was concerned it would take the edge off what had to be the performance of your life. I’m sorry, but there was a lot at stake, and before you ask, your parents-”
“Shit! I’d forgotten. They think I’m dead! Anna too.”
“I’m sorry about Anna. There’s no way we can tell her what’s really going on, but your folks are both in on the conspiracy, have been for a while now, so don’t worry.”
Michael’s head went down; he was quiet for good minute. “I don’t think there’s much to be gained in going over this anymore,” he said at last, looking up. “What’s done is done. All that matters to me now is making sure Anna is alive and stays that way. Well, that and hunting down Polk and Hartspring and killing them when I find them. And I will,” he added, his voice raw with anger. “But do me a favor, please. All that Team Victor stuff-can you keep it to yourself? Hartspring is my problem, and I’ll deal with him. And I don’t want Anna to find out. She has enough to worry about.”
“I won’t tell anyone. Now, any more questions before we move on?”
“Yes, one. You said there weren’t many spacers who agreed with what I did … not to start off with, I mean.”
“Yes. Most of Fleet thought you were nothing more than a criminal.”
“But what about you? Did you agree with that?”
“Initially, yes, of course I did. Mutiny is mutiny, and we needed those three dreadnoughts you smashed into Commitment planet. But as I read and reread your message telling me what you were doing and why, I began to understand. Then it became obvious that Ferrero would form the next government sooner than anyone thought. When I worked out what that meant, I realized that you and your people had been right and I had been wrong.”
“So when you came to Asthana looking like you wanted to tear my head off, that was all an act?”
“Yes.”
Michael shook his head. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.
“You will be, almost certainly,” Jaruzelska said with a faint smile. “Now, here’s how we’re going to do this. Juggernaut, we call it, and it starts with …”
Michael sat tucked out of the way, a welcome cup of scalding hot coffee in hand, content to let the fear-induced stress of the past months leach out of his abused psyche. It felt good to know that the controlled chaos around him marked the beginning of the end for the Hammer of Kraa, that soon he would be on his way back to rejoin Anna, that the time when he would stand over Polk and Hartspring and see the terror in their eyes before he killed them both was coming.
Oh, yes, he thought as he took a sip of coffee, I do feel good … not that I don’t have my doubts.
What Jaruzelska and her fellow conspirators planned to do was mind-boggling in its size and complexity. For all her reassurances, for all her confidence, for all her steely determination not to fail, Michael was struggling to believe they could pull it off. There were a million things that could go wrong, and Michael was in no doubt that his old friend Mister Murphy would be hard at work to make sure they did.
Even if everything did go right, none of it would count if Anna did not make it; he wished he knew how she was. What with her joining the NRA to fight the Hammers and the fact that Hartspring and Team Victor were after her, her life was hanging by a thread. He sighed in frustration. Jaruzelska had promised him a detailed briefing on the situation back on Commitment but wasn’t sure when that would happen, so he would have to wait.
Michael put the mug to his lips only to choke on the burning hot coffee, distracted by the arrival of a familiar figure. “I don’t believe it,” he muttered. He got to his feet and threaded his way across to where a woman in dark gray one-piece shipsuit had followed General Yilmaz into the room.
“Lieutenant Commander Fellsworth!” Michael said, putting out his hand, a broad grin splitting his face.
“Hey, Michael! Admiral Jaruzelska told me I’d find you here,” the woman said, taking his hand before folding him into a crushing bear hug. She pushed Michael back and put her hands on his shoulders, then looked right into his face. “It’s good to see you,” she went on. “I really thought you were a goner this time.”
“You and me both.”
“I take it you know each other?” Yilmaz said with a good-natured smile.
“Sorry, sir,” Fellsworth said. “This man saved my ass back on Commitment. And not just mine. He saved the lives of my people. I … we owe him.”
“I remember,” Yilmaz said. “After the Ishaq was ambushed, right?”
“Yes,” Fellsworth replied; her face twisted with pain for an instant. Michael understood. Pain had nothing to do with it; guilt did.
“I’ll catch up with you later, Captain,” Yilmaz said. “I need to see Admiral Jaruzelska before she heads back.”
“Sir,” Fellsworth said.
“Captain?” Michael said when Yilmaz had gone, spotting Fellsworth’s rank badges for the first time. “I’m sorry. I didn’t notice. Congratulations. Well deserved, I’m sure.”
“Thanks, though it has little to do with my talent, such as it is. No, we’ve lost a lot of good people, too many, so promotion’s been fast.”
“A bloody war and a sickly season,” Michael said.
“An old saying but a good one, and it’s certainly been a bloody war. But if those Hammer pigs think we’ll let them come out on top after all we’ve been through, they’re damn fools. Right, enough of that. The admiral says I’m to answer any questions you have, but before I do, are you hungry?”
With a start, Michael realized he was, ravenously so. He had lost a good ten kilos since his arrest. Now his body was telling him it was time to put the weight back. “Since you mention it, I am.”
“Me too. Come on; the canteen’s this way.”
“That’s better,” Fellsworth said, pushing her tray away. “So how’s Anna?”
“Anna? Wish I knew,” Michael said. “That bloody woman always was a wannabe marine, and now she is one. Last time I heard from her, she was a captain in the NRA’s 120th Regiment, so she’ll be in the thick of things.” Michael sighed. “She always is. Oh, and we’re married now. It’s Anna Cheung Helfort now.”
“I’ll be. Well, congratulations and all that. The bride wore white, I hope.”
“Combat fatigues, actually. Weddings back on Commitment are low-key affairs.” The pain in Michael’s voice was obvious.
“It must be hard,” Fellsworth said, her voice soft. “Leaving her, I mean.”
“It was. It still is. But what’s worse is knowing that she’ll think me dead, though at least I can see a way through now.” His eyes locked onto Fellsworth’s. “Will it work?”
“Hmm,” Fellsworth replied, “that’s the only question that matters, of course, but before I answer, I need to check something. Can you sit tight for a moment?”
“Sure,” Michael said, mystified.
Five minutes later Fellsworth was back. “I was right,” she said, dropping into her seat. “Jaruzelska’s authorized your security clearance, but I can’t talk to you until we’ve uploaded a bomb into your neuronics.”
“A neuronics bomb?” Michael’s eyes flared wide with alarm. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Nope,” Fellsworth said with an emphatic shake of her head.
“But a neuronics bomb? Talk about extreme.”
“We can’t afford any leaks, so every last member of the conspiracy has one loaded.”
“That’s as may be, but if anyone puts a neuronics probe into me or I leak any information to anyone not cleared, then pffft-” Michael snapped his fingers. “-my brain implodes and I’m dead.” He shivered at the thought. “But you’re right,” he went on when he saw the sense in it. “There’s too much at stake to worry about someone screwing up and dropping dead.”
“There is. Jaruzelska’s told you what we’re planning?”
“She has.”
“Well, in that case you already know too much. We need to get that bomb uploaded right away.”
“Do I have to? Jaruzelska didn’t drop dead. If you can trust her, I think you can trust me.”
“She is one of a tiny handful of exceptions. She has to be able to talk to people outside the conspiracy without her head imploding. But you won’t be doing that. You’re dead, remember?”
“Oh, yes, I am, aren’t I?”
“You are, so let’s get that bomb into your neuronics.”
Michael shivered again; he had been too close to death to want this even though he knew full well he had to do it. “Go on, then,” he said with obvious reluctance.
Uploading the bomb was the work of seconds; a few more seconds and a tiny green spot appeared in front of his eyes to confirm that he was talking to someone with the right clearance.
“You good to go?” Fellsworth asked. “See the green spot?”
“Yes,” Michael said; he licked lips that were suddenly dry.
“Remember, never give or transmit any operational information to anyone unless that green spot is showing. If it turns red, the neuronics bomb will arm; any breach of security after that and it will trash your brain, and you’ll be dead two seconds later. If it’s flashing amber, you are outside a secure facility and must talk neuronics to neuronics, nothing out loud. Got all that?”
Michael nodded; he didn’t trust himself to speak.
Fellsworth laughed. “Cheer up. You’ll get used to it, I promise.”
“I hope so.”
“Right, you asked if what we’re planning will work. Your question is actually two questions. The first is whether we can keep Juggernaut secure until we are ready to launch.”
“And can we?”
“It’s a huge ask, but yes, I think we can. As you now know, everyone involved has a neuronics bomb uploaded; all mission information is security-tagged, even the lowest of low-grade stuff; and the overall environment is very good.”
Michael shook his head. “The environment?”
“The people we work with, even if they are not part of the conspiracy.”
“Ah, you mean Jaruzelska’s psyops campaign.”
“It’s worked, a bit to my surprise. Fleet and the Marine Corps are where they need to be, not every last one of them of course, but enough to put a shell around Juggernaut that Ferrero’s people will find almost impossible to penetrate.”
“But Ferrero’s not alone in this, is she?”
“No, she’s not. The police are … well, they’re the police, so they’re being kept completely in the dark, and so are the intelligence services.”
“What about planetary defense?”
“Well, they’ve never had to fight the Hammers face to face, so they are much more equivocal. Like most Feds, they now see you as a bit of a hero, and they think Ferrero’s gone too far to keep the Hammers happy, but they’re also frightened enough not to want to rock Ferrero’s boat.”
“Which is why General Yilmaz is onboard.”
“Yes. Her first job is to convince the planetary defense brass that the Hammers are not to be trusted; her second is to persuade them to stand back and stay out of our way.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it,” Fellsworth said, her voice flat. “They’ll stick their heads up their fat butts while Fleet and the Marine Corps take all the risks and do all the dying, but as long as that’s all they do, then that’s enough.”
Michael nodded. “Okay. Next question. Let’s assume that we can maintain operational security. What are Juggernaut’s chances of success?”
“Not good enough. The last simulation we did says we have a fifty-fifty chance of meeting our mission objectives.”
Michael blinked. “Wah!” he said softly. “That’s not good. Why?”
“Thanks to the goddamned peace treaty, the Hammers have been able to withdraw most of their fleet to home space. They are many more ships around Commitment than when you dropped dirtside with your three dreadnoughts. But we’re working on it.”
“Kat Sedova. What’s happened to her? And Cortez and Hok.”
“Sedova’s tucked away safely. We’ve relocated her to … well, let’s just say somewhere the Feds and the Hammers won’t find her.”
“Good. I was worried. Cortez and Hok. What about them?”
“They are an integral part of the Juggernaut planning team, right here in Karrigal Creek. They’re running a sim at the moment, but they’ll catch up with you as soon as they can. The admiral’s asked them to brief you on the situation back on Commitment. Now, I should get back to work. You have somewhere to get your head down?”
“I do, thanks.”
“Good. We’re doing another sim of Juggernaut tomorrow morning. Since you’re the only person who’s actually planned and executed an opposed landing on Commitment, the admiral wants you to sit in.”
“Love to.”
“08:00, Conference 4.”
“I’ll be there.”
Michael lay on his bunk and stared at the ceiling.
His mind raced as he churned through all that had happened that incredible day. He shook his head. Dead man walking one minute, alive and kicking the next. So why did he feel so disheartened? No, it was worse than that. He felt terrible, his mind blanketed with a sick, flat feeling, a feeling that everything he had done, all he had been through, all he had put Anna and his family through, none of it mattered a damn.
But he knew why. Anna; that was why. While he was out saving humankind-not that the vast majority of them knew it, and even if they did, they probably wouldn’t gave a shit-she could well be lying dead in the mud back on Commitment with a bullet in her brain, yet another life wasted in the century-old battle to defeat the Hammer of Kraa.
And for all Jaruzelska’s cautious optimism that Juggernaut would succeed, Michael was not so sure. When he had ridden his dreadnoughts down to their fiery deaths on Commitment, the Hammers had been preoccupied fighting the Feds to a standstill. And nobody had ever seen an operation like his Operation Gladiator. Nobody-not the Hammers, not the Feds-would have imagined sacrificing three good ships in a Trojan horse assault the way he had.
Gladiator had succeeded, in part at least, because it had never been done before. So for all Jaruzelska’s talk of diversionary operations, surprise, weight of numbers, superior technology, and so on, the Hammers would never allow it to happen again.
Still, he reminded himself, Jaruzelska was the Federated Worlds’ most experienced combat commander. All he could do was hope that she would find a way. She had to. If she did not, he would never see Anna again.
Exhaustion washed over him, and he closed his eyes. Sleep was beginning to claim him when there was a knock at his door. “Goddamn it,” he muttered, forcing his eyes to open. “Yes, come in,” he called out, forcing an unwilling body to its feet.
The door opened. It was Cortez and Hok. For a moment, they all stood staring at one another. Then Cortez stepped forward and folded Michael into a bone-crushing embrace that left him gasping for breath by the time the NRA general released him. “Michael,” Cortez said, his voice soft, “we owe you.”
Michael flushed, his head bobbing with embarrassment. Then it was Major Hok’s turn to take him in her arms, her body soft and welcoming where Cortez’s had been solid and unyielding; just the smell of her-the soft scent of flowers-was almost overwhelming. For a moment, there was nowhere Michael would rather be, the hard, tangled knot of fear and uncertainty in his stomach easing for the first time since he had been abducted from Asthana.
Hok let him go and stepped back. “Like the general says, we owe you.”
Michael could only shrug his shoulders; he did not trust himself to speak.
“I’ll catch you later,” Cortez said. “Admiral Jaruzelska wants to talk to me.”
“I won’t ask how you’ve been,” Hok said once Cortez had left.
“Just look at me,” Michael said, finding his voice with an effort. “I feel like I look: a million years old.”
Hok broke the awkward silence that followed. “I know it’s late,” she said, “but I was born a Hammer, so I need coffee and lots of it. I’ll fill you in on what’s been happening back home while we get our fix.”
“That would be good. Lead on.”
Michael stared at the holovid screen long after Hok had finished speaking. It was an ugly sight, the cordon of red around the Branxton Ranges speaking more than words ever could of the pressure the Hammers were putting on the NRA’s heartland bases. “That doesn’t look good,” Michael said.
“From a purely military point view, no, it doesn’t,” Hok said, “but we shouldn’t be too pessimistic.”
“Hard not to be.”
“Look at this way. First of all, the Hammers still have not been able to penetrate our perimeter. Two months ago, the Hammer’s MARFOR 3 tried here-” A finger stabbed at the screen. “-with massive support from Fleet assets in low-earth orbits, and the NRA handed them their asses. All the marines had to show for their efforts was rubble and a shitload of casualties.”
“Just like the last time,” Michael said. “Slow learners, those people.”
“Come, come,” Hok chided, “be fair. We both know it has a lot more to do with the fact that our bases in the Branxton Ranges are close to invulnerable. We have hundreds of kilometers of caves and tunnels buried deep below tens of thousands of acres of limestone karst. They can drop all the bunker busters they like, but in the end they’ve got to come in after us. And when they do, we both know they’ll never get more than a few klicks inside, ’cause that’s when we blow the roof down on them.”
“Which is why we are all here,” Michael said. “Thanks to its bases, the NRA can survive until hell freezes over, but it cannot defeat the Hammers. Well, not unaided, that is, and that’s what Juggernaut is all about.”
“Exactly. But there’s one more thing working in our favor, and that’s the way Chief Councillor Polk and his cronies like to deal with the threats facing them.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Michael said with a shake of the head. “From where I sit, Polk’s tactics have been spectacularly successful. He’s screwed the Federated Worlds over every which way, and he’ll do the same to the rest of humanspace if we’re not careful.”
“All true, but he’s been able to screw you over only because your government played to his strengths.”
“Let me guess: Polk’s willingness to use massive force?” Michael said.
“The Feds believe him capable of anything, even destroying an entire system and killing billions,” Hok replied after a moment’s thought. “Not that he has to go that far. The threat is enough. He fires a couple of antimatter missiles into Terranova nearspace to make the threat real. That scares the crap out of your people, so they elect Caroline Ferrero as moderator, and she promptly folds. In the end, Ferrero gave Polk what he wanted without him actually having to use force.”
Michael grimaced. “He would if he had to.”
“Don’t doubt it. Power is all he cares about. And Polk takes the same approach with his own people: kill thousands to put the fear of Kraa into billions. But he’s a fool. Our assessment is that Polk would have won a free and open election in the first few weeks after the peace treaty simply because people believed that things would change for the better with the war over. Well, they were wrong. Things did not get better; they got worse. Four weeks after the treaty was signed, Polk not only ordered the biggest crackdown on dissidents in Hammer history, he told DocSec to purge the marines and planetary defense as well.”
“What, again? I’m surprised there’s anyone left to purge. Why the hell would he do that?”
“Simple: He doesn’t need them anymore. Oldest trick in the dictator’s handbook.”
“Because if he didn’t, they’d go from asset to threat?’
“Exactly. Anyway, it took DocSec a while to get organized, but when they got going, they really got going. We don’t have accurate figures, but we think the arrests run into the tens of thousands on Commitment alone, and there are a lot more to come.”
Michael shivered. “I suppose that means the DocSec firing squads have been busy?”
“Oh, yes,” Hok said. “They arrested fifty officers from the 5th Marine Brigade three weeks ago; two days later, after a mass show trial lasting all of five minutes, they were all taken out and shot.”
“Okay, I get it,” Michael said. “By cracking down on the minority, Polk thinks he can bluff the majority into falling into line.”
“Precisely.” Hok shook her head. “Bloody man is a fool. If he’d eased up, the Revival would have lost much of its political legitimacy in the eyes of the average Hammer, and the flow of recruits the NRA depends on would have dried up, along with money and supplies. We’d have withered on the vine, and our Branxton bases would have dropped into Polk’s hands without him having to send in the marines. Instead, our support has never been stronger.”
Michael looked skeptical. “That doesn’t help much, surely,” he said.
“It does. Let me tell you; when we launch Juggernaut, we’ll be pushing on an open door. Polk won’t last a month, and that’s because the marines and planetary defense will refuse to fight. Deserters are telling us that the marines are close to mutiny and planetary defense is the same.”
“So why isn’t Polk worried? He should be.”
“Yes, he should. But we think he’s decided that they don’t matter anymore. The marines and planetary defense have both let him down: the marines by failing to destroy our Branxton bases, planetary defense because they let us escape. Now, thanks to the Pascanicians, he will have his antimatter missiles sooner rather than later, and when he does, nobody in humanspace will be able to stand up against him. To rule humanspace, all he needs is the Hammer Space Fleet, and he’s being nice to them … for the moment, at least. So who needs the marines? Who needs planetary defense? Polk doesn’t, not anymore.”
“The man’s insane,” Michael said.
“Maybe, but thank Kraa for it. Makes our job easier.”
“I hope so,” Michael said with obvious feeling.
“Which brings us to the subject of your Anna.”
Michael’s gut twisted. “Ah, yes,” he said, trying not to sound as anxious as he felt, “I was about to ask.”
“Relax. Major Anna Cheung Helfort is fine.”
Michael’s eyebrows shot up. “Major?” he said, incredulous. “I thought she was a captain.”
“Oh, she was.” Hok chuckled. “But we’ve just had word she’s been promoted.”
“What a surprise.” Michael sighed. “I always wondered why she didn’t join the marines, since being a grunt is obviously what she likes doing.”
“She has a gift for it, that’s for sure.”
“Has she stayed with the 120th?” Michael asked, hoping against hope that she’d been transferred somewhere safer.
“She has. She’s been given command of a company.”
Michael’s gut twisted some more. “Good for her,” he forced himself to say. “The 120th is still in the Velmar Mountains?”
“They are, along with the 443rd and the 22nd. They’ve taken a lot of pressure off the Branxtons and have tied down an entire planetary defense division. The latest intelligence summaries say that those Hammers have been hit so hard that only a handful of their formations are fully combat effective.”
Michael knew he should take some comfort in the fact that Anna was up against second-rate troops, but he couldn’t. Anna being Anna, she’d be in the thick of it. “Good to hear,” he said. ”I just wish she knew I was okay.”
“Shit! I’m so sorry, Michael; I meant to tell you earlier. I know what Admiral Jaruzelska said, but General Cortez overruled her. He’s made sure she knows.”
Relief flooded Michael’s body. “That was good of him.”
“Least we could do.”
“Don’t let me forget to thank him.”
“I won’t,” Hok said, getting to her feet. “Now, I’ve got some things I need to do, and if you’re half as tired as you look, I think you should turn in.”
“You’re right, Major,” Michael said, all of a sudden conscious of just how exhausted he was. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“You will.”