The battle of Devastation reef hw-3 Read online

  Algal Springs, Serhati

  Michael was not in good shape.

  It was hot in the morning sun. It was dry. Food was running short. Water from the nearest spring was limited, its miserable flow delivering only enough to keep thirst at bay, never enough to clean up, to wash away some of the filth that encrusted his body. He stank: a sour mix of sweat, blood, burned rock, gun smoke, and dust. His body hurt, all of it. He was exhausted, his reserves of energy drained by the constant need to stay vigilant, to change their hiding place every night, to keep moving. With every fiber in his body, Michael wanted nothing more than to lie back and daydream the day away, but he would not trust the Hammers farther than he could spit. Nothing would convince him they had given up.

  So he stood his watches: four hours on, eight hours off, the tumbled fall of rock in front of his position soon so deeply imprinted on his mind, he probably could draw it with his eyes closed. Bored he might be, but inattentive he was not. With scrupulous care, he scanned the approaches to their position endlessly.

  For the fourth day in a row, nothing moved except dust devils and the occasional bird turning slowly in the hot morning air. Even the surveillance drones had gone home. He had not seen one for two days.

  A shower of pebbles from behind him made him start; he swung around, raising his rifle, even though he knew it was Kallewi.

  “Relax,” the marine said, sliding into position alongside him, Willems following close behind.

  “I will,” Michael said sourly, “when we get off this godforsaken planet.”

  “Well, in that regard, I have good news. In ten hours, a Fed task group will jump in-system, beat the shit out of the Keflavik Bay, and drop a marine assault force onto Hajek Barracks to recover the survivors from Operation Opera. And apparently the Serhatis will be happy to see us go, so happy that they won’t be lifting a finger to stop us.”

  “I’m pleased to hear it,” Michael said, “but what about us? I trust the plan extends to recovering us, too?”

  Kallewi nodded. “It sure does. When the assault commander has the Serhatis under control, a pair of landers will be on their way to pick us up. Get the map of the local area up on your neuronics. Our exfiltration won’t be easy, and we need to finalize our pickup point.”

  Michael’s eyes narrowed. “Can’t we just make our way down to the base of the rocks and wait there until the landers came?”

  “That would not be smart, and I am not a trusting person. I know we haven’t seen the Hammers for days, but I don’t think they’ve given up. Their last chance to nail us is when we leave the protection of these rocks. So if I was the Hammer commander, I would have organized covert observation points”-his virtual finger stabbed down on the map-“covering all the main exit points, just on the off chance that we would be dumb enough to walk out into the open to meet whoever came to take us home.”

  Under the grime, Michael’s face reddened with embarrassment. “Ah,” he said, “that never occurred to me.”

  “Nor me,” Willems added.

  “Well, that’s what you have marines for. The pickup point will be well clear to the northwest. Let me explain my thinking, and then we’d better get going. We have a lot of ground to cover. Now …”

  For the hundredth time, Michael scanned the ground around the pickup point and the route they would follow down through the rocks and out onto the gravel pan, hunting for the shimmering blur of chromaflage capes. But even with the optronics processor embedded in his neuronics analyzing the raw optical feed, he saw nothing except sun-blasted rock, gravel, and sand.

  Something caught Michael’s eye. Far in the distance, a tiny speck appeared, followed by another and another until close to twenty plunged out of orbit. Michael stared. He grabbed the binoculars, and the specks swam into view. His heart raced, the relief overwhelming. The specks were Fed assault landers, and the only target of interest in that direction was the Serhati base and its unwilling crop of internees.

  He called Willems and Kallewi. The pair scrambled into position alongside him. “Landers,” he said, handing Kallewi the binoculars. “I think it’s started.”

  “Not just any old landers, our landers,” Kallewi whispered after a moment. “Something tells me we may not have much longer to spend on this abortion of a planet. Here, have a look”-he handed the glasses to Willems-“while I see if I can get the satcom to give us a voice link direct to the assault commander.”

  “When you get through, ask the marines to get a move on,” Michael said.

  Michael was having another look at the landers when Kallewi returned. “Okay, guys, we’re on. Pickup point is confirmed, and we’ve got twenty minutes to get there, and the landers will not wait more than two minutes for us, so move out. Single file. I’ll take point. Michael, you go last. For God’s sake, keep your eyes open. I don’t want us blundering into any Hammers, and always assume they’re down there waiting for us. If we run into problems, we’ll disengage if we can, pull back, and regroup. Neuronics off? Good. Questions? No? Right, let’s go.”

  The group set off, the routine-move, pause, scan, move, pause, scan-now second nature; Michael’s head swiveled from side to side in an unending 360-degree search for anything out of place in the chaotic jumble of broken rock and tumbled boulders around them. Slowly, they worked their way down until, with only meters to go before clearing the rocks, Kallewi’s fist went up. Michael froze. What the hell?

  For an age, the group did not stir. Kallewi started to inch back and to his right, every movement so slow that it took him a good two minutes to get off the line of advance. He ignored Michael and Willems, his hand working its way slowly behind his back to retrieve the satcom handset. Hard as he strained, Michael could not hear what Kallewi said. Frustrated, he stood there immobile, muscles screaming at the enforced idleness. Kallewi finished saying whatever it was he was saying. Returning the handset to its pouch, he turned slowly and eased his way back to where Willems waited. Finally, hand signals told the story: ambush, ten o’clock, 50 meters.

  “Fucking Hammers,” Michael said softly. “Not so dumb, after all.”

  Kallewi signaled them to withdraw. Michael needed no encouragement; turning slowly, he moved back up the tortuous path they had spent so much time negotiating.

  Two hundred meters back, Kallewi called a halt in the shelter of a large overhang of rock protected by boulders the size of heavy landers.

  “Hammer mothers,” he said softly. “Ambush, up ahead. I only spotted them because their ’flage is crap. Another few meters and they’d have had us all. I think the Hammers have staked out every path out of these damn mountains for God knows how many klicks both sides of Algal Springs. Shit! You really can’t take the buggers for granted.”

  “What happens next?” Michael asked.

  “Spoke to the air assault commander. Gave him their position and ours. He’s going to drop a truckload of ordnance on them, so they will not be a problem for long. But there’ll be more Hammers out there, and the landers cannot carpet bomb the whole place. So here’s the plan.”

  Michael forgot his pain-wracked body when he heard the characteristic sound of landers, the scream of fusion-powered mass drivers unmistakable.

  Kallewi flicked a glance back at him. “Any second. Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  Pushing and shoving, Michael wriggled his way as far back undercover as he could. Seconds later, he was glad he had: The rocks around him shuddered, the ground trembling, shock waves shaking the earth, blast-smashed splinters of rock screaming through the air overhead. The noise appalled him, a brain-numbing, body-shaking thunder, as the Fed landers walked a neat pattern of fuel-air bombs across the Hammers’ positions.

  The instant the bombing stopped, Kallewi moved. Michael leaped to his feet; heedless of the risks, he followed Kallewi and Willems in a wild, galloping run down through rocks still smoking from the attack, the air thick with powdered rock. Ahead of him, the landers made their final approach; belly thrusters blasted huge clo
uds of gravel-loaded dust into the air as they came into a brief hover before they dropped heavily onto their landing gear, their massive bulk blurred into black shapes by dust drifting slowly to the ground. Ramps crashed down, and marines in combat armor fanned out to take up position around the landers.

  Michael ignored everything except the nearest lander’s ramp, barely noticing the sudden banging of rifle fire as Hammers clear of the bomb-damaged area opened up. He drove himself on, the sudden slap-tear of bullets passing close to his head drowned out by the terrible crackling tear of the landers’ lasers as they suppressed Hammer positions.

  Thighs burning, lungs heaving, heart hammering, Michael had barely reached the line of marines when a giant fist smashed into his left side. An instant later, another hammered into his left leg, the shock of the two impacts enough to knock him off his feet; he hit the ground in an untidy sprawl of arms and legs and tumbled to a stop, then lay there too stunned to think, too shocked to move, his whole left side completely numb.

  “Oh, shit,” he whispered. He was confused. Why was he so cold? Why could he not see properly? Michael closed his eyes. Ever so slowly, he started to drift away from the light, down into darkness.

  Two marines grabbed him under the arms and dragged him up the ramp. Minutes later, the belly thrusters fired, pushing the lander off the ground. The command pilot wasted no time making the transition to forward flight. Transferring power to the main engines, he let the lander build up speed before pulling the nose up to drive the lander nearly vertically into space, closely followed by the second lander, but not before it dropped another pattern of bombs on the Hammers.

  Friday, April 13, 2401, UD

  FWSS

  Orca,

  in pinchspace

  “Hello, sailor,” a friendly voice said gently. “Welcome back.”

  Squinting against the light, Michael’s eyes opened. He peered up at the face of the medic leaning over him. “Uh,” he whispered hoarsely, “drink … drink, please.”

  “Here you are,” the medic said, slipping a straw into his mouth.

  Michael took it and drank deeply. The cool, slightly sweet liquid made him feel better immediately. “Thanks,” he said gratefully. He glanced around; he soon worked out that he was lying in a warship sick bay. He had seen his share; the bloody places were all the same.

  “Where am I?”

  “You’re onboard the Orca. We’re twelve hours out from Serhati on our way back to Terranova. Be there in five days, give or take.”

  “Oh, right. What’s happened to me?”

  “I think I’d better get the boss. She’ll explain things.”

  “Righto.”

  Orca’s surgeon commander arrived promptly. “Lieutenant Helfort, morning,” she said. “I’m Commander Ghella. Good to see you awake. How do you feel?”

  “Believe it or not, sir, I feel pretty good. Nothing hurts.”

  Ghella laughed. “After all the drugbots we’ve pumped into you, I should hope not.”

  “Ah. Knew I felt too well. So what’s the story?”

  “Well, it’s bit of a list, I’m afraid. Cuts and bruises everywhere, but nothing to worry about. You’ve suffered some blast damage to your brain, but it’s minor. Your helmet did a good job protecting your skull, so there’ll be no long-term problems, just headaches for the next few days. The big problem’s two gunshot wounds, one just below and behind the armpit, the second in the upper thigh, at the back, about ten centimeters below your left buttock.”

  Michael thought about that for a moment before replying. “Jeez,” he said, “that’s okay.”

  Obviously baffled, Ghella shook her head. “What’s okay?”

  “Not getting shot in the ass,” Michael said with a smile. “I’d never live that down, never. Trust me, sir. A wound stripe for being shot in the butt is not something to be proud of.”

  “Oh, I see,” Ghella said with a look that showed she did not understand and probably never would. “The news gets better, I’m happy to say. Your body armor took most of the sting out of the first round. You have massive bruising, cartilage damage, superficial lacerations, some internal damage and bleeding, but none of that is too serious. And”-she pulled a small packet out of her pocket-“here it is,” she said triumphantly, “the bullet in question, well, what’s left of it. We found it in your body armor.”

  Michael took the packet and shook the contents into his hand: a single bullet, deformed by impact into a crumpled cylinder. “Must have been my lucky day,” he said. A cold shiver ran through him; a few centimeters up and forward, and it would have been all over. The bullet would have come in under his armpit and trashed his upper chest so badly, it would have been beyond anything Fed medicine, for all its awesome power over the human body, could ever hope to repair.

  “My lucky day,” he said somberly.

  “It was,” Ghella said. “It really was. The second round did a fair bit of damage to the muscles at the back of your left thigh, in one side and out the other, tearing things up as it went. We see from your records that your left leg has been injured before.”

  “Yes. November ‘98. Shrapnel from a Hammer rail-gun slug. Sliced it up pretty badly.”

  “Well, it’s been sliced up again, I’m sorry to say. Fortunately, no bone damage, and it missed all the major blood vessels. We’ve fixed up what we can with surgery and transfused nanobots to start putting it all back together again, but it will be a while before it’s right. You’ll be laid up for a week or so; then you should be able to get around using a legbot to support the leg while it heals.”

  “Terrific,” Michael said under his breath. Legbots might get him back on his feet quickly, but they were a pain. “Thanks, Doc.”

  “Don’t thank me. Thank the marines; their medics did all the hard work. So,” she said briskly, “you up for visitors?”

  “Sure am.”

  “Hang on … right, your XO and coxswain are on their way. I’ll check on you later.”

  “Thanks, sir.”

  Commander Ghella had barely left his bedside when the pair appeared. It was good to see them. “Hi, Jayla; hi, Matti. Well, we made it, eh?”

  “Yes, we did, but Jeez, you’re a worry, sir,” Bienefelt said with a shake of the head. “You sure Fleet is the career for you?”

  “Hell, yes. I’m as sure as I can be, Matti,” Michael said. “Jayla, tell me everyone made it off Serhati okay.”

  “We did,” Ferreira said, “every last one.”

  “Pleased to hear it. Serhati’s one place I don’t ever want to see again.”

  Long after the last of a steady stream of visitors departed, Michael lay back exactly the way they had left him, eyes locked on a sprinkler set into the deckhead over his bed.

  More focused than he had ever been in his life, he struggled to come to grips with the crisis that was on him.

  He shook his head in despair.

  Crisis? More like an ocean-a large ocean-of crises. Where the hell was he supposed to start? He had not received a single vidmail from Anna despite all the pressure put on the Hammers to honor their responsibilities under the Geneva Conventions. His left leg was months away from full recovery. The board of inquiry into Operation Opera had been convened, doubtless with him as its star witness. Perkins had lodged formal charges against him, alleging insubordination in combat. The Fed trashpress had picked up Perkins’s line that the ship losses suffered during Opera-they preferred to call it “the Battle of Devastation Reef” were mostly his fault. To cap it all, the Hammer Worlds wanted him dead so badly, they had started sending assault landers to hunt him down.

  How much worse could things get?

  Not that he cared much about himself, boards of inquiry, Fleet, the trashpress, or even the Hammers. The doctors would fix him up; the rest would sort itself out, of that he was sure. He had made the right decisions, and he had enough faith in Fleet to believe that the truth would emerge eventually. If the gutter scum producing the rivers of crap spewed out by the tr
ashpress gave him a hard time along the way, so be it. Their day would come.

  What he cared about most of all was Anna. But caring was not enough to get her back safely, and even if he did get her back, that left the problem of the Hammers doing what they did best: corrupting, killing, destroying. No, he had to resolve both problems at the same time if he was ever to shake off the ghosts of all those he had promised to avenge: the dead from the Mumtaz, DLS-387, and Ishaq, Corporal Yazdi, over whose lonely grave on a hostile Hammer planet he had sworn an oath he could never walk away from, not to mention the thousands of spacers killed in the endless wars inflicted on humanspace by the Hammers.

  But quite how he was going to rescue Anna and destroy the Hammers at the same time, he had absolutely no idea.

  Thursday, April 19, 2401, UD

  City of McNair, Commitment

  The moon threw a thin light across the city of McNair.

  The streetscape was washed of all color: flame-blackened buildings, crude barricades smashed apart in the night’s fighting, smoke drifting from shops and government offices, from the wrecked cars, mobibots, and buses that littered the streets-all were painted in shades of gray splashed with daubs of black.

  DocSec troopers in black jumpsuits and body armor, visors down and riot shields up, stood in small groups at crossroads, with more in front of those government offices as yet undamaged, stun guns and gas-grenade throwers cradled in their arms, assault rifles slung across their backs. Close at hand, half-tracks and troop carriers were parked in neat rows. They struck an incongruous note, their good order in stark contrast to the chaos around them.

  The rioters had been forced out of the city center, harried and harassed every step of the way by DocSec; the streets were deserted. Nothing moved except smoke and ash.

  The city waited, silent, still, an edgy calm settling over devastated streets.

  Chief Councillor Polk stared out of the armored plasglass window of the flier while it climbed away from the brutal ceramcrete bulk of the Supreme Council building. From the air, McNair was an ugly sight. All across the city, piles of burning plasfiber spewed pillars of protest up into a gray sky, every greasy black plume of smoke a stark reminder that his grip on power might be slipping away.