Helfort's War Book 4: The Battle for Commitment Planet (3 page)

He turned his attention back to the Hammer task group. The three Hammer ships were in trouble, the two dreadnoughts pressing home their attack with remorseless force, their massive armor absorbing everything the Hammer ships threw at them. Already
Vigilant
had pulled out of the battle, reeling back from
Red River
’s exquisitely coordinated missile and rail-gun attack; spewing reaction mass from maneuvering thrusters and with main engines at emergency power, the Hammer heavy cruiser tried to get clear before the next wave of Fed missiles and rail-gun slugs arrived to finish her off. Behind
Vigilant, Vindicator
and
Virtue
were also in trouble, their flank armor stripped away—in places right down to the titanium frames to expose their inner pressure hulls—by the fusion warheads fitted to the Fed’s Merlin missiles, their bows smashed into a shambolic mess of craters by a well-crafted rail-gun attack. Even now, missiles with conventional chemical explosive warheads plunged into the Hammer ships, targeting the weak spots in the ships’ armor that would allow lances of plasma deep into their guts, hunting the fusion plants powering the ships’ main engines.

The Fed missiles found what they were looking for.

Explosive plasma jets cut through secondary armor, slicing through ceramsteel containment vessels and magnetic flux fields to expose the unimaginable temperatures and pressures at the heart of every fusion plant, unleashing balls of energy so intense that the Hammer ships disappeared, engulfed by spheres of blue-white gas, any lifepods launched by the ships swallowed by a hellish brew of heat and radiation that raced away into the darkness, leaving tumbling masses of heat-scoured armor and heavy equipment held in precarious embrace by shock-twisted titanium frames, with a few pods the only evidence that the ships had ever existed.

Michael watched the cruisers die with mixed feelings; even though these were Hammer ships and deserved everything his ships threw at them, the thought of all the spacers doomed to die that day unsettled him. His earlier elation had evaporated. Poor bastards, he thought. How many more had to die before
this damn war was over? he asked himself for the thousandth time. The unemotional tones of Warfare dragged his attention back to the job at hand.

“Command, Warfare. Launching ground assault.”

“Command, roger. Advice. Suggest
Red River
take station on
Redwood
and detach
Redress
to recover survivors.” If there are any, he said to himself. The Hammers had waited a long time to abandon ship.

“Warfare, roger. Concur. Will advise time to complete.”

Michael commed Kallewi. “Good luck, Janos.”

“Thank you, sir. We’ll be quick.”

“Hope so. Command, out.”

Michael sat back to watch, patching one of the combat information center’s huge screens into the holovid feed coming from Kallewi’s helmet-mounted high-definition holocam, the image so real that for an instant Michael might have been there with the marines.
Redwood
’s heavy assault lander, captained by Lieutenant Kat Sedova and blessed with the name
Alley Kat
, was on final approach to the asteroid. Sedova was a natural pilot, one of the few able to hand fly a lander to its limits, handling the ugly mass with rare precision and grace; true to form, she dropped the lander dirtside without the flashy maneuvering so many lander pilots regarded as an essential part of the job.

Kallewi and his marines wasted no time. They spilled out of the lander the instant
Alley Kat
’s ramp went down, a stream of black-armored shapes powering across the asteroid’s surface toward the shattered remains of the station’s main personnel access portal, a swarm of gas-powered tacbots leading the way, a small convoy of cargobot sleds bringing up the rear.

The marines made short work of the access air lock, its doors blown open to release a blizzard of ice-loaded air out into space. Balawal-34’s small security team, a platoon-sized force of planetary ground defense troops, clumsy in combat space suits, proved no match for the marines. After a short, vicious firefight, the Hammers capitulated; soon a sorry procession wended its way back to
Alley Kat
, leaving the way clear for the marines to work their way down to the heart of the station: massive storage arrays holding terabytes of electronic intercepts.

The marines’ quiet efficiency always impressed Michael. With the security team dealt with, Kallewi split his force into teams, calm, unhurried, and methodical. One started to tear out the storage arrays, piling them onto cargobots for the trip back to the lander. A second started to flush out the civilians who operated the station, a bewildered and shocked group of men conspicuous in their Day-Glo orange emergency space suits. The third team—Kallewi called them his scroungers—ransacked the station for anything of interest to the intelligence analysts, and the fourth laid demolition charges around the station’s fusion plant.

Less than thirty minutes after the marines blasted their way into the station, Kallewi commed Michael.

“Command, assault.”

“Go ahead.”

“We’re done here, sir. Pulling back now. Demolition charges set to fire in twenty minutes.”

“Roger that. Nice job. Command out.”

Satisfied that the ground assault was running to plan, Michael turned his attention back to the command plot. That looked as it should.
Red River
hung motionless a kilometer from
Redwood
, its gigantic shape cutting a black hole out of the star-curtained immensity of deepspace.
Redress
was on her way back to rejoin the rest of the squadron, the last of the Hammer lifepods recovered. Best of all, no Hammer ships appeared on the threat plot. The Nyleth squadron was alone.

Michael sat back. If all went well, they should be on vector back to Nyleth within the hour.

   Michael climbed out of his combat space suit, his body stiff and uncooperative. Breath hissed through clenched teeth as he struggled to ease his left leg free of the suit’s awkward bulk, the stabbing pain impossible to ignore. You would think, he said to himself, finally free, that the goddamned thing had had more than enough time to get over it. His shipsuit was a sweat-sodden wreck thanks to the stress of combat. Tossing it into the recycler, he prepped his combat space suit before allowing himself the luxury of a long hot shower and a fresh shipsuit.
He ignored the demands of duty. He should walk through the ship to make sure that
Redwood
and her crew had come through okay, but the effort that demanded was beyond him. He slumped into an armchair, the last few dregs of the euphoric high of combat draining away the instant he turned his mind to the crisis that threatened to overwhelm him. He still did not have the faintest idea what to do about it.

A knock on his cabin door announced the arrival of his executive officer.

“Come in, Jayla,” Michael said to the XO, waving her into a chair. “Drink?”

“Coffee, sir, thanks,” she said.

Michael waited until the drinkbot served Ferreira her coffee. “So, Jayla,” he said when the bot withdrew, “I’ve scheduled the hot wash-up for 18:00. Any initial thoughts?”

Ferreira looked at him for a long time before responding. “Sir,” she said at last, “may I speak freely?”

Michael’s eyebrows shot skyward. This was a first. “Yes, of course. What’s on your mind?”

“You, sir,” Ferreira said.

The determined set of her jaw unsettled Michael. “Me?” he said.

“Yes, you. Something’s bothering you, sir. I’ve racked my brains, and I can’t work out what it is, but I do know this. You’re not the same person who took us into battle at Devastation Reef. Not the same person at all.”

Michael’s heart pounded; were his personal concerns that obvious? “How, Jayla? How am I different?” he said, with an effort keeping his voice casual.

“You’re tired, you’re easily distracted, you lose focus, and—with the greatest respect, sir—I don’t think you’re … I don’t think you are handling the squadron the way you used to. Today was a good example. We were lucky, damn lucky, that only three Hammer heavy cruisers waited for us. We knew we had a problem, but we ignored it. We should have taken the time to make another reconsat run, but we didn’t even though we had all the time in the world. That was wrong, sir, and it risked this ship and the lives of all onboard. It’s not the first time, either.
The Barcoola operation. Grendell and Tyrlathi before that. Too many chances taken, too many corners cut. I’m sorry, sir, but this cannot go on.”

“Shit, Jayla,” Michael muttered. “Now, that’s what I call speaking freely.”

“Well, sir, I’m your executive officer, and I did ask your permission,” she said. “I have a duty to be straight with you, and I wouldn’t be much of an exec if I wasn’t.”

“True,” Michael said, wondering how to fix a situation fast spinning out of control. He understood Ferreira well enough to know she was worked up about something right now, and he was that something.

A long and uncomfortable silence followed before Ferreira spoke. “I’ve checked Fleet Regulations, sir”—her voice hardened into a flat monotone—“and specifically section 34, subsection 15, Duties and Responsibilities of the Executive Officer.”

“Ah,” Michael said. “I see.”

And he did. He knew where this was heading. One part of him wanted to rip Ferreira’s head off, another wanted to tell her to do whatever the hell she liked, and a third wanted to curl up in some dark corner until the demons went away. Truth was, he did not know himself how much longer he could go on. The unseen burden on his shoulders was killing him, and now that Ferreira knew something was wrong, the load was close to unbearable.

“May I continue, sir?”

“Yes, yes. Go on,” Michael said.

“Well, sir. We both know what my responsibilities are. 3415 is clear. If I have reasonable doubts—”

Michael raised a hand to stop her. “I know, Jayla,” he said. “I know what 3415 says. If you have reasonable doubts about my fitness for command, you are obliged to report that fact to the relevant authorities. It is your duty. I understand that.”

A long silence followed before Ferreira spoke again.

“I will, sir,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I will meet my obligations under 3415. This cannot go on because if it does, well … ah, let’s say that I think there is a better way.”

“Well, then,” Michael said, rubbing eyes gritty with stress,
“I suppose … I suppose I’d better tell you what the problem is.”

Ferreira looked right at him, eyes narrowed, mouth set in a stubborn line that brooked no dissent. “Yes, sir,” she said. “I think you should.”

Michael sighed, a sigh of capitulation, a sigh of resignation, the sigh of a sinner brought to repentance. “Okay, okay, I will,” he said. “Watch this. It’s a personal vidmail I received from one of my Hammer friends. It’s self-explanatory.”

“Okay, sir,” Ferreira said, face screwed up into a look of pure bewilderment.

“Here we go, then,” he said comming the vidmail file to the bulkhead-mounted holovid screen.

A man appeared, dressed in the black high-necked uniform and woven silver badges of a senior DocSec officer, a thin smile doing nothing to soften a face dominated by eyes of pale, washed-out amber.

“What the hell?” Ferreira hissed softly.

Michael’s heart pounded, kicked into frantic life by an ugly mix of fear and hatred. He could never forget the eyes of a man devoid of compassion, the eyes of a killer, the eyes of a man who had seen so much suffering that he had lost all capacity to care.

Ferreira sat transfixed, silent, unmoving, eyes locked on the holovid screen as the man started to speak.

“Hello, Lieutenant Helfort, or may I call you Michael?” the black-uniformed man said. “Do you remember me? Yes, I’m sure you do, but just in case you’ve forgotten, I’m Colonel Erwin Hartspring, Doctrinal Security, Section 22. You made me look like such a fool the last time we met, so I’ve certainly not forgotten you. I know you think we Hammers are a bunch of clods, but we’re not. So when an opportunity as good as Lieutenant Anna Cheung falls into our laps, we know what to do with it. She made a big mistake, talking about you openly the way she does.

“So, Michael,” Hartspring continued, “we know how you feel about Lieutenant Cheung, and since we’ve been having such trouble getting to you what with all those damned security
drones, we decided it would be much easier if you came to us. Our chief councillor is so insistent. He wants to shake your hand before we … well, let’s leave that bit to your imagination, shall we?

“So this is what I propose, Helfort,” the man said, “and it’s nonnegotiable, so don’t waste time or energy trying to wriggle out of it. You’ve got three months to present yourself to our embassy on Scobie’s World. Three months. If you’re even a day late, just one, the first Lieutenant Cheung will know about this little plan of mine is when I collect her from her cozy little prisoner of war camp for handover to some of my more … now, let me see, how can I put it? Um … yes … for handover to some of my more high-spirited and energetic troopers for a week of fun and games. They’ve seen holovids of her, and let me tell you, they are very, very keen for the party to start. They love the way Fed women are so perfect, and I must say your Anna is one of the prettiest. They can hardly wait. Did I mention that there’ll be ten of my boys at the party? No? Oh, well, now you know. Anyway, I don’t think she’ll look quite so attractive when the week’s over, so I think I’ll send her to one of my firing squads.

“Of course, by then she’ll be begging to die, so having her shot is not much of a threat, but I mention it just so you have the full picture. I think I might even command the firing squad myself. It will be fun to watch the single most important person in your life die. Ah, revenge; it is such a sweet thing. And yes, talking of watching, I forgot. We’ll have holocams film every minute of the last week of Lieutenant Cheung’s life. I’ll be sure to send you a copy. I think you’ll enjoy it. I know I will. So there it is. Just so we’re absolutely clear, our embassy on Scobie’s World in three months or Anna dies a death you do not even want to think about. I’ll be waiting for you, so be sure to ask for me.