Outside Cooperbridge, Commitment
“I think we’re hooked in,” Shinoda said, “so stand by … Okay, the link’s up. We’re into ENCOMM … and we have the latest OPSUM.”
Michael skimmed the high-level summaries, pleased to see that the battle for McNair was going well for the NRA, and no wonder. The Hammers’ planetary councillors were still refusing to release the marine divisions they needed to keep a lid on civil unrest; UNMILCOMM was not getting the reserves it needed to contain a rampaging NRA.
If I were Chief Councillor Polk, Michael said to himself, I think I’d be making plans to get as far away from Commitment as I could.
He turned his attention to the mass of data summarizing the disposition of NRA and Hammer units along what ENCOMM was now calling the Yallan Salient, both happy and concerned to see that the 120th had been pulled out of the line and into reserve. There’s only one reason for that, he thought. Anna’s battalion has been taking heavy punishment.
Michael burrowed down into the OPSUM. He located Team Victor; Hartspring was still in Cooperbridge. He closed the OPSUM. But one thing bothered him; it had been bothering him for a while.
The Hammer of Kraa’s survival, the fate of billions, the future of humanspace-they all hung in the balance. Compared with that, Team Victor was an irrelevance. So why did ENCOMM always know exactly where it was? Michael was no expert, but he knew how fast changing, how chaotic combat was, and good as the NRA’s intelligence system was, surely it wasn’t that good. He was missing something; he was sure of it.
Shinoda broke his train of thought. “I see Team Victor hasn’t moved,” she said. “I’ll get the team ready to move out.”
“Hold on for a second,” Michael said. “I’ve been thinking about things.”
“And?”
“It’s up to me now. I can’t ask you to go with me into Cooperbr-”
“Whoa!” Shinoda said. “Hold it there just one fucking second, sir. I don’t know about the rest of the team, but I haven’t come all this way to stop now. I want Hartspring almost as much as you do.”
“Look, sergeant. I appreciate the sentiment, but you’ll have to tell me how we’d get past the military police. We’re talking about going into a combat zone without valid orders. We belong to a unit that does not appear in the Hammer order of battle, and we have IDs we know are useless. They’ll nail us in a heartbeat.”
“And you do have valid orders to show the MPs?” Shinoda said. She looked exasperated. “And which unit do you belong to? Show us your ID; who are you, exactly?”
Michael put his hands up in defeat. “I know, I know, but one man on his own has a chance of getting through. Five don’t.”
“That is a complete crock, sir, and you know it. If we go as marines, then you’re right. We will get nailed. But a bunch of civilians has a chance. The marines are not DocSec. They won’t give a shit who we are. Even if they look at our IDs-which they won’t-they won’t check them out. They have better things to do.”
Michael knew all that. He’d just been hoping that Shinoda wouldn’t pick up on the flaws in his argument. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Decision’s made. I’m going in on my own while you guys go to ground until the NRA gets here.”
“What? You want me to sit around on my ass waiting?” Shinoda shook her head dismissively. “Forgive my language, sir, but fuck that.”
“This is my fight, Sergeant Shinoda, not yours. So butt out and let me fight it, okay?”
“My fight’s killing Hammers, sir, and I’m not too fussy about which ones, so this is what we’re going to do: We’ll go to Cooperbridge, find Hartspring, and when we do, you can kill him. Okay?”
Michael’s head dropped; he could see the determination on Shinoda’s face and knew when he was defeated. “Why can’t you just do as you are ordered?”
Shinoda grinned at him. “I’ll take that as a yes, shall I?”
“Suppose you’d better. Go talk to the guys, make sure they’re okay with it, then we’ll move out. We need-” His fingers plucked at his combat fatigues. “-to find something to replace these.”
Michael checked to make sure his assault rifle was safely tucked away under his coat. It was. He turned to look at Shinoda. He threw an admiring glance at the heavy skirt and embroidered blouse favored by older Hammer women. “I must say, you do look very fetching, Sergeant Shinoda,” he said. “All those rough, tough Hammer marines will not be able to keep their hands off you.”
“You may be a colonel now, sir,” Shinoda growled, “but that won’t stop me from belting you. Besides, you look like a pig farmer fallen on hard times.”
Michael laughed. Shinoda was right; he did. “We all set?”
“We are.”
“Let’s go, then.”
Michael followed Shinoda and the rest of the team down the road out of the village to the junction with the Cooperbridge-Kumasi highway, the ceramcrete road already hot in the midmorning sun. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Dressed in clothes dragged from the shattered ruins of a small village mall, they were a sorry-looking lot. But so were all the other civilians they had seen, and Michael knew they’d be all but invisible to the Hammer marines.
Because they were lost amid the flow of Hammer truckbots forcing their way down a road clogged with civilians, the walk into town was uneventful. The Hammer military police showed not the slightest interest in their small group. Since they were the only people heading into Cooperbridge while every other civilian was getting the hell out, Michael had thought they would. But they hadn’t. The marines were content to wave them through without even the most cursory check of their IDs.
Michael called a halt just short of Cooperbridge’s plaza. Like all Hammer towns, it was a massive space dominated by the inevitable temple. It was still intact, but its facade was badly scarred by shrapnel. The buildings on either side lay in ruins, now just piles of smoking rubble.
Michael waved the team to close in. “Right,” he said, “you’ve all got your search areas. We meet at the corner of Herriot and Chang in eight hours. Keep an ear on channel 643; any problems, let everyone know. And remember, if you locate the target, call it in, get as many holocams set up as you can, then bug out. I do not want Hartspring getting spooked. Any last questions? … No? Okay, let’s move out, and remember, keep your heads down and try to stay clear of the surveillance cameras. There’s a lot of them, but they’re very easy to spot.”
The team split up, and Michael set off. He tried not to be daunted by the size of the task that lay ahead. Cooperbridge was a big place. Finding Colonel Hartspring’s unit would have been difficult at the best of times, let alone amid the chaos of the last major town before the front line. And it was chaos. Hammer units-some in good order and going up the line, others tattered, some badly mauled, coming back down-clogged the streets. Truckbots hauling supplies made the confusion worse. They forced their way through the mayhem, weaving around the debris from destroyed buildings and between armored, air-defense, and antitank units parked and waiting to move.
Something tells me, Michael thought, that the Hammers are not planning to give Cooperbridge up without one hell of a fight.
Michael walked down the shattered remnants of what must once have been an attractive tree-lined boulevard. His eyes never stopped moving in the search for surveillance cameras. He was relieved to see that he was not the only one with a death wish. There weren’t many civilians around, but enough for him not to stand out. They were a sad-looking bunch, poorly dressed and dirty. They all had looks of shocked disbelief on their faces.
Michael rounded a corner and was confronted by the sight of a Goombah air-defense battery. Its tracked launch vehicle, power plant, and command trailer all but filled the road. He started to make his way toward the battery. The screeching of a siren brought him to a stop; he wondered what it meant. And then he realized. Frantic now, he turned and threw himself over a small wall in a desperate attempt to reach the safety of a small concrete enclosure. He crashed into the ground and slid to a stop. He clamped his hands over his ears even as the world around him was torn apart by the savage back blast from missiles screaming skyward. Rocket motor efflux hit the ground and exploded outward. Fingers of hot gas lashed his body, scorching his hands and neck.
The silence that followed was shocking in its intensity. Michael lay there for a minute, breathing air bitter with the acrid smell of burned propellant. He stumbled to his feet. He shook his head to clear the ringing from his ears and tried to ignore the pain from his burned hands, his body racked by coughs as it fought to expel the crud from his lungs.
It wasn’t until a hand fell on his shoulder that Michael realized somebody was talking to him. It was a while before he could make sense of what the hulking Hammer marine was saying.
“Can’t you read, you idiot?” the man was saying, pointing to a small dust-coated sign sitting a good 50 meters away.
“Sorry,” Michael mumbled, “didn’t see it.”
The marine shook his head. “Fucking civilians,” he said. “You are damn lucky you weren’t killed … Kraa! Look at your hands!”
Michael did, then wished he hadn’t. No wonder my hands hurt, he thought as he looked at the blistered red skin.
“Go down there,” the marine went on, pointing along the street, “about 300 meters. You’ll find an aid post. They’ll fix you up. What are you waiting for?” he said when Michael hesitated. “Go on. It’ll be okay. Tell them Sergeant Jalevi from the 654th Air Defense sent you.”
A marine aid post was the last place Michael wanted to go, but with the man so insistent, he didn’t have much choice.
“Thanks,” he muttered, setting off.
“And stay away from our batteries, you hear?” the man called out. “By the way, just what the hell are you doing around here?”
Michael just waved a hand and kept walking. With an effort, he resisted the urge to break into a run; a quick glance confirmed that the marine was still watching him, the man’s face set in a suspicious frown. Michael found the aid post; it was hard to miss the olive drab tent marked with massive red crosses. “Bastard Hammers,” Michael muttered under his breath when he saw a battalion command and control half-track parked so close that no NRA landers would attack it for fear of hitting the aid post.
Resisting the temptation to toss a microgrenade at the half-track, Michael went inside the tent. “What the fuck do you want?” one of the medics said, looking up. “We don’t treat civilians.”
“Sergeant Jalevi of the 654th Air Defense sent me,” Michael said. He waved hands now scarlet and spotted with suppurating blisters.
“Oh, did he?”
“Yes,” Michael said, reining in the urge to kick the man in the crotch. “I got a bit close to one of his missile launches.”
“What a fucking idiot.” The man got to his feet with a sigh. “Come on, then.”
With the use of his hands restored thanks to thin sheets of burnskin, Michael stepped out of the aid center and looked around. The medic had turned out to be anything but an asshole. Mostly the man was pissed. Without ever actually saying so, he seemed convinced that things were going badly for the Hammers.
That was all Michael managed to get out of the man. Even after a lot of bullshit about finding his uncle-a mythical civilian liaison officer with a joint DocSec-marine unit-he had learned nothing that might help him track down Hartspring.
“Shit!” he hissed when he spotted Sergeant Jalevi. He was coming his way flanked by four marines, a determined look on his face. Michael didn’t wait. Turning away, he sprinted down the street, head down and arms pumping.
“Hey!” Jalevi shouted. “Stop or I’ll blow your damn head off!”
Michael kept moving, weaving from side to side. With a good 20 meters still to go before he reached the safety of the next cross street, a burst of rifle fire shredded the air around his ears.
“Last chance, asshole,” Jalevi called, sending another burst Michael’s way.
“Okay, okay,” Michael shouted back. He raised his hands in the air and slowed to a trot. He risked a glance over his shoulder. Jalevi and his marines had slowed too; their guns no longer pointed his way.
With 10 meters to go to the corner, Michael took a deep breath and exploded into a sprint and ran for his life. He’d barely made the corner before Jalevi’s men sent a furious volley of rifle fire down the street. A well-aimed round plucked at the sleeve of his jacket as Michael skidded around the store on the corner.
“Oh, shit!” he muttered. Up ahead, a platoon of marines was scattered across the road in untidy confusion. “Help me! Heretics!” he shouted, pointing back to the corner store, which was being chewed apart by sustained bursts of rifle fire. “Heretics, coming this way! Get up, get up!”
The marines needed no encouragement. They leaped to their feet, unslung their weapons, and stampeded past. Michael slipped a microgrenade out of his pocket; he turned and tossed it high in the air. The small black shape dropped right into the mass of men and exploded with a flat crack that dropped marines to the ground screaming in pain, with the rest of the platoon skittering outward. The men nearest the corner needed no prompting to return fire at the oncoming Jalevi and his men, the noise rising to a crescendo as both sides hosed fire up and down the street.
By the time common sense prevailed and the shooting died away, Michael was five blocks away, holed up in the ruins of a small office building. He lay back, chest heaving as oxygen-starved lungs fought for air, and cursed his luck. It would take the Hammers a while to sort out the shambles he had left behind, but sort it out they would. And when they did, they would come looking for a scruffy man in civilian clothes, of medium height, with a stocky build and unruly brown hair.
There wouldn’t be many of those in Cooperbridge.
At best he had a day. Almost certainly, the marines would assume the man they were looking for was a deserter, which meant DocSec would get involved. And if they did, it was only a matter of time before Colonel Hartspring knew that the man Chief Councillor Polk wanted so badly to get his hands on was in Cooperbridge.
At that point the shit would really hit the fan. He groaned out loud. He was screwed. So much for his plan to slip into the town unseen, find Hartspring, and send him to join the rest of his Kraa-loving buddies kissing ass in Kraa heaven. Much as he wanted to have his revenge, a small shred of common sense told him that this was neither the time nor the place. It was time to abort and get the hell out while they still had a chance.
Hartspring would have to wait for another time.
He was fumbling for the transmit switch on his radio when his earpiece burst into life. It was Kleber. “Banjo, this is Two. Tango located in building southeast corner Harkness and N’debele. Putting surveillance cams in place. Will withdraw to Papa-Six. Acknowledge.”
“Two, Banjo, Tango at Harkness and N’debele, acknowledged,” Michael said, exultant, any thought of aborting the mission gone. “Niner Niner, this is Banjo,” he went on. “Implement chromaflage discipline now. Move to Papa-Six when ready. Acknowledge.”
One by one Shinoda and the rest of the team acknowledged the order. Michael slipped into a burned-out shop and put on his chromaflage cape. After a careful check to make sure that nothing more than a tiny slit across his eyes had been left exposed, he set off to Papa-Six, a derelict factory ten blocks from where Hartspring was quartered.
Tucked away out of sight behind a pile of scrapped machinery, Michael and the team watched the holovid feed from the holocams Kleber had set up.
Hartspring’s unit was billeted in a school; like many of Cooperbridge’s buildings, it was damaged, though not as badly as some. It still had most of its roof and walls. The yard in front was clear of debris, filled instead with marine all-terrain vehicles mounted with a mix of crew-served weapons: heavy machine guns, light antiarmor and air-defense missiles, and 120-millimeter mobile mortar launchers along with microdrone, grenade, and infrared smoke launchers. As Michael watched, the crews were busily throwing chromaflage netting across all the ATVs.
“Looks like they’ve just gotten back,” Shinoda said, shifting the holocam down into the infrared. “Yup, lot of heat coming off those vehicles.”
Michael nodded, trying to stay positive and failing. “That’s good, I guess,” he said. “Means they should be around for a while.”
“Probably, but we need to do this fast, sir. The cart’s been kicked over. The Hammers will be coming after us.”
“They will. What’s this?” Michael added as a small convoy of truckbots pulled up, black jumpsuited figures spilling out of the back.
“DocSec,” Shinoda said. “Wonder what they’re doing here.”
Mallory leaned forward to look at the screen. “I know what they are,” she said. “You’re looking at a DocSec search team.”
“How do you know that?” Michael asked.
“I worked with them once … in another life. See those boxes?”
Michael nodded. The DocSec troopers were manhandling plasfiber crates out of the trucks and carrying them into the schoolyard.
“The large boxes are perimeter security equipment: laser trip wires and so on. The small ones will be full of searchbots. Let me see … Yes, looking at how many boxes they’ve got, they’ve got enough to seal off and search a couple of city blocks at a time.”
Michael swore. Searchbots were like sniffer dogs, only smarter and with better noses, and they never tried to hump your leg. They hunted for traces of carbon dioxide in the air; no matter where you hid, they’d find you. The only way to dodge them was to wear one of the absorbent face masks the special forces teams used. Since he didn’t have any masks at hand, the only other option was to stop breathing, and even then the bots would find him thanks to sensors capable of detecting warm bodies, body odor, and the smell of fear.
Michael swore some more. He did not like what he was seeing. He did not know what it meant, but his instincts told him it was not good. But what he did know, even if he could not explain why, was that it was time for him to go it alone. He could not-he would not-risk the lives of his team any longer.
Michael swung around. “Okay, guys,” he said. “This is nonnegotiable, so don’t argue with me, because if you do-” He reached into his belt and pulled out his laser pistol, a squat, ugly weapon good only for killing at very short range. “-I’ll shoot each one of you in the damn foot and keep shooting until you do as I say. Understood?”
The shocked silence was total.
“I’ll take that as a yes, then,” he went on. “Sergeant Shinoda, the team’s yours. If you leave now, there’s half a chance you’ll get out of the city before the DocSec search teams get rolling. Go and go now. And yes, that is an order.”
Shinoda stared back at Michael for a moment. Then she nodded. “Yes, sir,” she said. She turned to the team. “Okay, everyone. We’ll head down Velici to Juliet-Two. Chromaflage capes on until we get there and move slowly; there’ll be surveillance drones over us for sure. From Juliet-Two down Armada until we hit the Kumasi road, then head south. Don’t forget your countersurveillance drills. If we get separated, the initial rally point is Quebec-Four. If that’s been compromised, then head for Mike-Nine. Questions? None? Good. Kleber, go check that our egress is clear. The rest of you wait for me by the old generator room. Go!” she snapped when nobody moved.
“I’m staying, sarge,” Delabi said, her face a hard, stubborn scowl.
“No, you’re not, trooper. You heard the colonel; you’re going even if I have to shoot you myself.”
Delabi gave a reluctant nod and got to her feet. She looked at Michael. “DocSec killed both my grandparents and my brother,” she said, “so I want you to kill the motherfucker for me.”
“I will,” Michael replied. I’m not sure how, though, he thought. Not anymore.
“Good luck, sir,” Kleber said, and with that the troopers turned and left.
“I don’t like this, sir,” Shinoda said.
“Nor do I do, sergeant, but I might have a chance on my own. You’d best go.”
Shinoda put her hand on Michael’s shoulder. “Just make sure you come back, okay? I don’t want to have to explain to Anna what happened.”
Her words ripped at Michael’s soul. He cursed his one-eyed pursuit of Hartspring. All logic said he should be leaving with Shinoda and the rest. He’d have done better riding shotgun on Anna, and he knew it, just as he knew he’d never rest until Hartspring and Polk were dead. “I’ll be okay,” he said, his voice soft. “I’m a survivor.”
“That you are, sir. Good luck.”
“Thanks. Get the team back safely.”
“I will.”
With that, Shinoda left, leaving Michael feeling more alone than ever. He shook his head. Shinoda hadn’t asked what his plan was. Why would she? She knew full well he didn’t have one unless hoping to evade the DocSec search teams long enough to kill Hartspring was a plan. Who was he kidding? That was just make it up as you go along.
Something will turn up, he thought as he turned his attention back to the holoscreen. It always has.
The Hammers had been busy. The truckbots had parked. The boxes with the tiny searchbots had been opened. The ground was cluttered with small turtlelike shapes, the shells studded with small antennas, stubby sniffer probes, and infrared and acoustic sensors. And for every ten turtles, there was a command bot with comm lasers and antennas on its back to control its flock and provide a datalink to the search commander’s drones orbiting overhead.
As he looked at the scene, something bothered him the way the fact that ENCOMM always knew where Hartspring and Team Victor were did. It was him they were after; that much was obvious. But he could have been anywhere in Cooperbridge. So why were the search teams setting up their bots at Team Victor’s headquarters when they had a whole city to search? It didn’t seem a very efficient way to do business. Michael could only assume that Hartspring was the man in charge of the search, and that was what he wanted.
The more he thought about it, the more his confidence returned. All he had to do was be careful, take his time, and stay clear of the DocSec search teams as they ground their way block by block across Cooperbridge. As long as he did that, he would be safe. And his time would come. Cooperbridge might not have been in the front line, but it was too juicy a target for the NRA to leave alone. They’d attacked it already, and they would go on attacking it. And that was when he would get his chance. He would slip through the chaos and confusion, kill Hartspring, and be gone before the last NRA lander had unloaded its bombs.
An hour later, there was a flurry of activity. Twenty or so of the DocSec troopers dropped what they were doing and grabbed the boxes containing perimeter security equipment. The troopers followed the boxes into the back of the trucks. The truckbots roared off. The minute they’d gone, a DocSec officer-a major from his rank badges and probably the man in charge, Michael reckoned-sprinted across the yard and disappeared inside the school.
Now, what is this all about? Michael wondered.
Ten minutes later, the DocSec major reappeared, waving his senior NCOs over into what was clearly a briefing. The major did a lot of talking, even drawing a mud map in the dust of the yard. Finally heads nodded, and the group dispersed, moving now with clear purpose, the men galvanized into action with much shouting and waving of arms.
The school’s front door opened, and there he was. Michael’s heart kicked hard when he saw the familiar figure of Colonel Hartspring, dressed like the rest of the DocSec troopers in black fatigues under a combat vest and carrying a stubby machine pistol. He strode out into the yard followed by what Michael assumed were the marines of Team Victor. They made their way to their ATVs and climbed in, Hartspring getting into an APC.
That’s his command vehicle, Michael thought, looking at its array of aerials and datacomm lasers. Fusion plants came online.
After a short pause, the vehicles set off, some turning right to head west along N’debele and the rest turning left to go east. A moment later, the search teams followed on foot. Again, half went left and half went right.
Now Michael really was confused. If their plan was to start searching the city, they’d have all gone off together and they’d have gone in truckbots. No, they had something more specific in mind, and it was close. They-
It hit Michael like a brick between the eyes.
You are a fucking idiot, he raged at himself. They’re not searching all of Cooperbridge. They don’t need to; Hartspring knows where I am.
Michael’s heart turned to ice. Somebody’s chromaflage discipline must have slipped long enough for a DocSec surveillance holocam to pick up the mistake as the team-or me, thought Michael-made its way to Papa-Six. That was the only explanation.
Good thing I ordered Shinoda and the rest to go when I did, he consoled himself. My conscience is bad enough without adding them to the list of people I’ve gotten killed.
Now Michael could see Hartspring’s plan as if it had been drawn on the ground in front of him. It was obvious. Backed up by Team Victor’s firepower, DocSec would throw a cordon of laser trip wires around the area, one even a flea couldn’t get through. When the perimeter was secure-it already is, he realized-Hartspring would send in the search teams to flush him out. And they would. It was only a matter of time.
Michael’s time had all but run out. He had to find a way out of the trap Hartspring had laid for him. The man had played him for a fool, and what a fool he was.
Of course ENCOMM always knew where Team Victor was. Hartspring had made sure of that. And he’d changed his strategy. Kidnapping Anna might have been his original plan, but that would have been all but impossible in the chaos of combat. So instead of going after Anna-or Michael, come to that-he had sat back and waited for Michael to come to him. Which he had just done.
Michael cursed his stupidity, his pride, his arrogance.
He took a deep breath. Beating himself up was only wasting time. He had to get out. But how? A careful look around the ruined warehouse provided no options. It was built on a ceramcrete slab, and so there was no way into any sewers or drains that might run below it. The building’s simple plasfiber-covered frame and handful of offices offered nowhere to hide, and even if they had, the searchbots would sniff him out. Make a run for it? No, that wouldn’t work. He had delayed too long. He’d never get past DocSec’s trip wires.
With fear now threatening to turn to panic, Michael cast about in a desperate search for a way out. But no matter how hard he looked, there was none. As if he were looking for divine intervention, his head went back. That was when he spotted the control cabin on the massive gantry crane spanning the warehouse. Wait, he thought with mounting excitement. My breath is warm, and warm air rises, which means the searchbots won’t be able to detect the carbon dioxide I exhale. It’ll mix with the sun-heated air under the ceiling and escape through the holes in the roof.
“Yes!” he hissed, exultant now that he had a real chance to escape Hartspring’s trap. He should be safe. Searchbots couldn’t climb ladders as far as he knew. Better still, their infrared sensors would not see him. The metal cabin would be so hot that any heat his body added would go unnoticed.
If the Hammers wanted to find him, they’d have to climb the ladder, and even then they had to spot him under his chromaflage cape. But Michael hoped they wouldn’t even bother to look for him in a place so exposed, so obvious.
He did not wait. Jumping to his feet, he ran hard for the ladder, pulling himself up rung by rung, wincing as flame-seared hands took his weight; then he moved along the access catwalk and into the cabin, its interior hot in the sun-baked air.
Forcing the safety gate half shut, Michael went to the very back of the cabin and slumped to the floor, all but his boots and head tucked away out of sight behind a large junction box. Pulling his cape over his body, he did the only thing he could do: wait.
Michael awoke with a start, for a moment confused by the unfamiliar surroundings. Then it all flooded back; he cursed his lack of discipline. This was not the time to be snoring his head off; searchbots had all the senses except touch, and so they would hear him if he did.
His heart thudded in his chest when he heard a skittering, scratching sound: the sound of dry leaves being blown gently along, the sound of a searchbot legs as they made their way across the ceramcrete floor of the warehouse. And not just one set of legs; there were lots, and for all its gentleness, it was a truly frightening sound: the sound of mindless machines hunting for him.
There was a heavier sound now: the noise of boots. “Dubcek, Carmichael, take that end,” a voice boomed, rattling and echoing around the warehouse, “Mishra, Kowalski, the other.”
Don’t look up, Michael prayed, heart pounding and mouth ash-dry with fear. Please do not look up.
The boots crashed their way up and down. “Nothing, sarge,” one of the men said.
“Okay, outside. Mishra?”
“Nothing here. The bots say the place is clean.”
“Fine.”
Michael had been holding his breath so long that his chest burned in protest; exhaling in a long, slow silent hiss, he let a tiny flame of hope spring to life.
It did not last, snuffed out by a few simple words. “What about up there?” the corporal said.
“Kraa’s blood,” a voice protested. “Nobody’s going to hide up there.”
“Get your fat ass up that ladder, Kowalski, and make sure that’s the case.”
“Oh, come on, corp. What’s the point?”
“The point, Marine Kowalski, is that I will kick you from here to sunset if you don’t. Now move!”
“Yes, corp.”
“What the fuck are you doing, Kowalski? Take the damn probe with you.”
“Do I have to?” the voice whined. “Those things are heavy.”
“Kowalski!” the corporal roared; his voice was incandescent with rage.
“Okay, okay. I’ll take it.”
Michael looked around, frantic now. His chromaflage cape might fool Kowalski; nothing would fool the probe. At best he had thirty seconds left before the marine found him, and then his life was over.
Defeat swamped him. He slumped back. Thirty seconds or thirty years; it made no difference. This was the end, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it except raise his pistol and wait, peering at the door to the control cabin through the tiniest of gaps in his cape.
He counted down the seconds as booted feet clumped along the catwalk. The man stopped. “Like I said, Corporal Shit-for-Brains,” he muttered when he looked in, “there’s not a damn thing up here.”
For one glorious moment, Michael thought the man would leave it at that. But it was not to be.
With a grunt, Kowalski lifted the probe-a bulky box, its front studded with sensor wands-and balanced it on the safety gate. Buttons were punched; a soft hum told Michael that the machine had started to work.
Michael let the cape slip away from his face. It took Kowalski a few seconds to notice; by then Michael had his pistol pointing right at the man’s face. He put his finger to his lips. “Shhhhh,” he hissed.
The man stiffened. He blinked and stared back but said nothing. But only for a few seconds. “Corporal!” the man shouted, starting to back away.
Michael shot Kowalski between the eyes. The crack of the laser pulse sounded horribly loud. Dropping the pistol, Michael scrambled to his feet. He lunged out even as the body started ever so slowly to fall away from him. Hampered by the gate, Michael was not fast enough. His hands flailed the air, but now Kowalski was toppling to one side, his head and chest already over the guardrail, the rest threatening to follow. With one last desperate effort, Michael locked one hand into the man’s assault vest, the other grabbing the probe an instant before Kowalski’s hands let it slip.
“What’s up now, Kowalski?” the corporal shouted.
“Having trouble with this damn probe, corp,” Michael said, wincing at his piss-poor attempt to copy the man’s voice. He pulled Kowalski back and let the body slump forward over the safety gate. “I’ll be a while.”
Michael might have been unhappy with his impersonation, but the corporal wasn’t. “Just get a move on, you fat fuck,” he yelled.
“Yes, corp.”
The boots walked away; Michael urged him on. He let a minute drag past. Gun in hand, he ran along the catwalk, half climbing, half sliding down the ladder until his feet crashed into the ground. He turned and headed for the door, then stopped.
Killing Kowalski had changed nothing. He was still trapped with nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
Corporal Whatever-His-Name would be waiting outside, wondering what the hell had happened to Kowalski. He would come back, Michael would shoot him too, and then all hell would break loose as the rest of Team Victor came crashing in and shot the shit out of him.
The corporal did come back. “Kowalski, you useless toe rag, what the-”
Michael shot him, the racket of the assault rifle shockingly loud, then dived for cover. “Come on, you fucking Hammer bastards,” he shouted. “You want me, you come and get me.”
The silence was complete. It dragged on. Michael wondered what was going on. Where were they?
He got his answer soon enough. A series of flat cracks preceded the arrival of more microgrenades than Michael could count. The small black shapes arced through the warehouse door and landed on the ceramcrete floor, bouncing for a few meters before bursting into boiling clouds of smoke.
Oh, shit, he thought as the clouds rolled across the floor toward him. They’re gassing me. It’s over. Survival; that’s all that matters now. He ripped off the chain holding the gold sunburst Vaas’s troopers had taken from Hartspring and tossed it away. Then his lungs caught fire, and the lights went out.
Pain hammered at Michael’s skull, his mouth and throat burned, and his chest was a searing ball of flame. When he tried opening his eyes, he wished he hadn’t. It just made things worse.
A pair of hands dragged him upright; the pain redoubled. “Come on, you little bastard. I know you’re awake. Throw some water on him, sergeant.”
The water hit Michael full in the face. A hand followed, a stinging slap hard across his cheek. He cringed back, hands coming up to keep his unseen attacker away.
“Open your Kraa-damned eyes, Helfort, or I’ll make you wish you had.”
Michael did, squinting through agony-filled eyes at a face he had hoped to see only on a dead man, a face dominated by eyes so pale that only a hint of amber remained, the eyes of a killer.
“Fuck you, Hartspring,” Michael whispered, “you asshole.”
Hartspring’s fist lashed out, stopping only millimeters from Michael’s face. For an instant, it hung there, utterly still. Then it pulled back. “You are lucky, Helfort, that Chief Councillor Polk has ordered me to deliver you to McNair without a single scratch on that pretty face of yours.”
“Good for Mister Polk, you piece of Hammer sh-”
This time Hartspring’s fist did not stop. It smashed into Michael’s stomach with tremendous force, hitting just below the ribs to blast the air out of his lungs. The enormous power of the blow lifted him bodily into the air to drop with a sickening crash on the floor.
Thin, bloodless lips pressed tight in a sneer of disdain, Hartspring leaned over Michael as he lay on his back with his mouth working to drag air back into tortured lungs. “Unfortunately for you, Helfort,” he said, “Chief Councillor Polk said nothing about not hurting you.” He straightened up. “Let’s get you cleaned up, and then I’ll tell you what happens next. I’ll come back in an hour, and when I do, I suggest you cooperate. If you don’t, I will hurt you, and I will go on hurting you until you do.”
“Screw you,” Michael whispered to Hartspring’s back.
“A public trial?” Michael said.
Hartspring nodded. “That’s what I said. A public trial in front of the full bench of the Supreme Tribunal for the Preservation of the Faith.”
“Why bother? Everyone will know it’s a farce.”
“We both know that,” Hartspring said, “though I’d prefer, let me see … yes, I’d prefer to call it a piece of political theater. You’re a celebrity, you see, a bit of hero to many, so we can’t just shoot you out of hand. We need to be seen to be doing things in the right way.”
“What a crock.”
“It certainly is a crock, but what do I care? There will be a trial, you will be found guilty, and you will be sentenced to death, only this time your friends won’t be there to help you escape justice. Oh, no; when the Hammer of Kraa sentences someone to death, they die.” Hartspring paused. “The only difference with you,” he continued, “is that you won’t be shot. No, that’d be too quick. No, we’ll make sure you die the slowest, the most painful death a man can suffer …”
Michael shivered, the fear all-consuming.
“… because after all you have done to us, it’s the least we can do to you. Now, enough talk. We leave for McNair in an hour.”
“Where am I being taken?” Michael asked the man sitting opposite him as they waited for the armored personnel carrier to take him to McNair. As much as he could like any Hammer, he liked Corporal Haditha. He was one of the few marines to treat him with any consideration, not that he deserved any. He had shot one of Team Victor right between the eyes, after all.
Haditha took a while to answer. “The Gruj,” he said at last. “Where else?”
Of course, thought Michael, his pulse accelerating as a frisson of fear shivered its way up his spine. Where else? He had spent long enough with the NRA and the Revivalists to know all there was to know about the Councillor Carlos C. Grujic Building. There were precious few born on the Hammer worlds who did not know some poor unfortunate who had been through the place-there had been tens of millions of them over the years-and every last one of them feared and hated it.
The Gruj’s reputation as the very heart of the Hammer’s all-pervading system of state terror was well deserved.
Michael had talked to an NRA trooper who’d been through the place, one of the very few to survive the experience. Her story had been one of pure horror, and Michael was not looking forward to sharing the experience.
Below what looked like an office block no different from any other lay a cold world, a world silent apart from the subdued hiss of an air-conditioning system set to maintain a temperature not far above freezing, a world that never slept, a world created for the endless stream of black trucks that shuttled DocSec’s prisoners into the Gruj.
Hounded mercilessly from the arrival dock down bleak corridors, the new arrivals were fed through the heavily armored security post, then down to the first of four levels of unpainted, bare-floored plascrete rooms and into the massive in-processing center on Level A. There the bewildered and terrified sweepings of three worlds were stripped naked, searched with callous indifference, doused in icy water, and microchipped before being bundled, dripping wet and shaking with cold, into orange coveralls and plasfiber boots, their identities torn away along with their clothes and dignity, their identity a number stenciled front and back.
From Level A, prisoners would be herded down to the holding cells on Levels B and C by silent but always brutal guards who were never slow to use their plasteel batons. There they would stay, sometimes for minutes, sometimes for days, sometimes for weeks. But in the end, they all ended up being dragged to Level D for interrogation in rooms harshly lit by banks of halogen overheads that threw a pitiless white light from which there was no escape. The rooms were bleak and functional, fitted only with chairs and a simple metal table bolted to a plascrete floor pierced by a small drain to make it easier for blood to be hosed away.
The process was so assured, a guilty finding so certain, that the lucky few released without charge-and they were very few-were often violently sick on the pavement outside the Gruj as they waited for someone to pick them up. DocSec troopers called them boomers, because they always came back. The troopers had never been good losers, and every boomer was a challenge to their infallibility. And DocSec’s view of things was simple in the extreme: Everyone who ended up in the Gruj was guilty of something even if DocSec hadn’t yet worked out what that thing was.
For the overwhelming majority, the next stop on their journey through the bowels of the Gruj was preordained. In the interests of efficiency, the Gruj had its own investigating tribunal tucked away in a corner of Level A, the last stop but one for most prisoners and the only area underground that was even close to being comfortably warm.
Staffed twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, the tribunal was an organization intensely proud of its ability to listen to the evidence presented by the DocSec prosecuting officer and hear the accused’s response-if the tribunal could be bothered, though it rarely was-before bringing down the required verdict of guilty and recommending the sentence. The efficiency experts had decreed that the process should take five minutes if everyone did his job properly, and to nobody’s surprise, almost every case was dealt with in less. The record, proudly held for more than ten years by Investigating Tribune Corey MacMasters, was fifty-seven seconds from the moment the state prosecutor opened the proceedings to the handing down of the sentence.
Because of DocSec’s unshakable belief in guilt by association, it was rare for a case not to involve at least two hapless Hammer citizens. The record, once again held by the energetic MacMasters, was the trial of the entire crew of the Verity-Class heavy cruiser Jossarian, more than a thousand of them, their only crime having been to serve with a handful of crew members who complained too loudly about the conduct of Marshall Fench, Jossarian’s protector of doctrine and a man so irredeemably corrupt that even DocSec had been forced to bring him to account, but only once the misguided spacers had been consigned to the Hammer penal system after a trial in front of a tribunal temporarily set up in one of the Gruj’s huge underground garages.
MacMasters had finished the entire process in less than three minutes.
The final stop for the guilty was outprocessing, and then their journey through the Gruj’s little slice of hell would end where it started, back at the loading dock. There DocSec guards would ram the guilty into the back of black trucks, some for McNair State Prison and an appointment with the DocSec firing squad, some for the living death of the Hell system’s mass driver mines, most for the hard labor camps scattered the length and breadth of the three settled planets of the Hammer Worlds.
Michael shivered again. Hartspring had told him he was to be treated like any other DocSec prisoner. It was his misfortune to know in cold, clinical detail what that meant.
The door banged open, and a marine stuck his head in. “The APC is here, corp,” he said.
“Get the escort lined up,” Haditha said. “On your feet, Helfort. Let’s go.”
Michael’s journey down into the hell they called the Gruj had started.