Helfort's War Book III Read online

  He loved Anna, and she loved him: He owed it to her to stay alive.

  There was a war on: Walk away from his duty as a serving Fleet officer? Unthinkable.

  His family had suffered more than any family should, at times his parents wracked to the point of utter despair: He owed it to them not to get himself killed.

  That left the demands of honor. He had made promises, and he was old-fashioned enough to think that promises should be kept once made; otherwise, why make them? The problem was that every single one of those promises involved making the Hammers pay for all the pain they had inflicted … on him, on the family, on the crews of DLS-387 and Ishaq, on the Fed Fleet at the Battle of Comdur.

  Michael was no fool. He knew that keeping those promises did little to increase his life expectancy, but what else was he to do? Walking away from them would make his mom and dad happy, Anna, too, probably. But he could never live with himself if he did. Jeez, what a mess, he said to himself. Soon Anna would be on her way back to Damishqui, and he to Comdur, doing what he always did—going with the flow, hoping for the best, and trusting that fate would allow him to deliver on his promises without getting killed in the process.

  He pushed back against the rock and stared up at stars strewn in profligate confusion across the sky. He was there a long time, the warmth seeping out of his body, his mind churning without getting anywhere before a combination of cold and tiredness drove him to his feet.

  Time to get back, he said to himself.

  He scarcely made it off the scree slope before, through the treetops, a tiny, fleeting flicker of black smeared a path across the stars. He stopped, staring up. Whatever it was, it felt wrong—why he was not able to say—so, without thinking, he slid under the cover of a small overhang of rock.

  Unable to see much, Michael chided himself for jumping at shadows when, with scarcely a soft hiss to mark its passing, a black shape leaped from the darkness below the ridge and shot overhead before disappearing back into the night. What the hell, he wondered, was an unlit flier doing this far from civilization in the middle of the night?

  He had a bad feeling about this; whatever the flier was up to, it was probably nothing good. Had the flier spotted him? If it had done a high-level reconnaissance, it might have picked up his infrared signature. He hoped he had moved before they had.

  Every instinct told him not to risk it, to get as far away as possible, to ask questions later. But he could not: Anna was back in the house asleep, and he refused to take the chance that the flier was just out joyriding the night away, even if that was the most rational explanation. Gambling that the flier would take its time before turning back, he started to run through the trees back to the house.

  He had gone less than a hundred meters when the slashing hiss of a flier with its noise-reducing shroud deployed brought him skidding to a halt; he turned to see what was happening. The flier had returned, but this time the black shape, nose high in the air to kill its forward momentum, headed for the rock outcrop. Slowing into a hover, it spewed superheated steam into the cold night air, the blast driving pebbles skittering and tumbling into space while it came in to land.

  Michael did not wait to see what would happen next; it was not hard to guess. The flier was small; assuming the pilot stayed where he was—he certainly would if he had any sense—the chances were that three, maybe four people would be on his heels before much longer. He ran, his mind desperately trying to work out how he could get himself and Anna safely off a ridge of rock bounded on all sides by cliffs he would think twice about climbing down even in broad daylight. Any way he looked at it, he and Anna were trapped, their escape route cut off by assailants certain to be well armed and invisible under chromaflage capes.

  He sprinted down the track and did the obvious thing: commed a desperate call for help to the Bachou police. Find somewhere safe to hide, the cops said; an armed response team was on the way and would be there inside an hour. “We’ll all be dead by the time they arrive,” Michael said tersely before he cut the com. His next was to the sleeping Anna. To Michael’s frustration, she refused to wake up, but finally she responded, sleepy and confused, far too slow to understand the seriousness of the situation. Suddenly she worked it out. Snapping awake, she listened without a word while Michael laid out the only plan he could think of.

  Michael broke out of the timber. He ran past his flier sitting silent on the landing pad and across the track that dropped into the valley in a series of horrific hairpin bends cut into sheer walls of rock. No escape that way, not on foot; too exposed, he decided. Pity they did not have a mobibot: He and Anna would have been well on their way to safety. Without stopping, he commed the flier’s fusion microplant to go online—shut down for most of the week, it would be a good ten minutes before it was flight-ready—and prayed that they would live long enough to use it. He prayed even harder that overconfidence would persuade the new arrivals not to disable it.

  Without stopping, he ran straight into the house. “Anna! Anna!”

  “Here, Michael,” Anna said, no more than her head visible in the gloom, the rest of her body unseen below a hunter’s chromaflage cape. She shoved a second cape and a thin-bladed ten-centimeter kitchen knife into his hands. “Now, if you think I’m going to mmmfff—”

  Michael placed his hand across her mouth. “Anna,” he hissed, “I know you’re marine-trained and I’m not, but we don’t have time to argue this. I love you, so trust me. If it’s me they are after, and I’m damn sure it is, it’s up to me to deal with it. Let me find out what they’re up to, then we can decide what happens next. Okay?”

  Anna’s mouth tightened into a slash of disapproval; she nodded, anyway.

  “Good,” Michael whispered, relieved that she was not going to argue the point. “No neuronics for the next ten minutes; they are bound to have scanners running. Set them to standby so they think we’re sleeping. Done that?”—Anna nodded again—“Good. Ten minutes from now, that’ll be at 03:55 exactly, turn them on for ten seconds, I’ll update you, and we’ll take it from there. If you don’t hear from me, go back to standby, wait another five minutes, try again, and so on.”

  If I’m still alive to com you, that is, Michael wanted to add, his stomach churning with fear. Anna nodded again.

  “Good. Go!” A fleeting kiss, a quick hug, and Anna left, a shapeless blur under her chromaflage cape disappearing into the darkness.

  Michael ran out of the house and sprinted hard up the track. Past the lander and he was back into the trees; he kept moving along the path for as long as he dared, gambling that whoever these people were, they would take their time to get close to the house. Why would they hurry on what ought to be a simple job? Provided that they had not picked up his infrared signature from the bluff, they would think he and Anna lay in bed asleep, alone in an unlocked house with no security alarms in the middle of nowhere, with no place to run.

  Michael prayed that the attackers—he had no doubts, none at all, that they had come there to kill him—assumed exactly that. The more they believed this was going to be a quick and easy operation, the less prepared they would be when he tore their guts out.

  Renewed fear banded Michael’s chest; for a moment he struggled to breathe. He and Anna would have been the softest of soft targets. He just hoped that was what the bad guys reckoned.

  An easy job. Remote location. A slow, careful entry. Locate the bedroom. Find the bed. Two shots to his head, two to Anna’s. Couple more for luck. Confirm they were both dead. Withdraw. Fly away. How difficult could it be?

  Far enough, he decided. Ahead, the ridge narrowed to a neck that brought the cliffs in close on both sides, forcing the path to negotiate a way through a small tangle of boulders. The attackers were compelled to come this way; they had no choice.

  Carefully, Michael positioned himself off the path, his ambush position screened by the boulders at his back. His attackers would have to turn around to see him when they came past. Arranging the chromaflage cape to leave
just his eyes exposed, he settled down, knife in one hand and a large rock in the other.

  The wait seemed a long one, though it probably was not. Michael was relieved when a faint chink of stone on stone broke the stillness. His heart was racing now, the adrenaline pouring into his bloodstream. All of a sudden, the tiny patch of dirt and rock visible through the slit in his cape became the only thing that mattered in the entire universe. Michael slowed his breathing, exhaling softly downward to minimize the heat signature rising from his body. Please do not turn around, he prayed, his body poised to explode into action; please keep moving.

  The first attacker drifted into view, a distorted blur. It appeared to be a man, a worryingly big man, broad-shouldered, tall, dressed in a commercial chromaflage cape—not a good one, thankfully; Michael’s neuronics had no trouble locking on to him—and carrying a small machine pistol sticking out from under his cape and clearly visible, a bulky silencer screwed to the muzzle. Sloppiness like that could get him killed, or so Michael hoped. Head and gun swinging from side to side, the man walked past Michael and on down the track. Michael stopped breathing, but the man never turned to check behind him. Anxiously, Michael waited; there had to be someone backing up the man on point.

  There was, and he was not far behind. Backup was a chromaflaged blur in the darkness, his machine pistol visible, swinging slowly from side to side, just like Point’s. Thankfully, he did not look back. More sloppiness. These two were rank amateurs; they deserved to have their asses kicked. But he had a problem. The two men were in sight of each other, so he would get only the one chance. He had another problem. Should he wait to see if there was a third member of the team?

  “Shit, shit, shit,” he muttered. The longer he waited, the closer the attackers got to Anna. But if he went too early and there was a third man, he risked a shot in the back.

  Michael decided to go with what he knew. He needed to make his move. If he waited and found himself with three men to deal with, his chances of rolling them up one after the other without being detected were nil.

  Steeling himself, he stood up; with infinite care, he eased himself onto the path behind Backup, a quick glance back confirming that there was no third man. Reassured, Michael knew he had to get this right. He did not have the luxury of wasting time. The second he neutralized Backup, Point’s neuronics would go ballistic, telling him there was something seriously wrong with Backup’s health. If Michael did not have Backup’s machine pistol pointing at Point when he turned around to see what was up, things were going to get difficult.

  Michael closed the gap, but something must have warned Backup. The man started to turn, but Michael was ready for him. He moved quickly, his arm already up, the rock in his right hand slashing down brutally hard and fast, hitting the side of the man’s head with sickening force, the impact barely audible. For a moment, Michael worried that he had not done enough. But he had: Backup crumpled slowly to the ground with a soft “ooohhhh,” folding forward from the waist, twisting when he fell. Michael lunged for the machine pistol but could not tear it from Backup’s hands before the man hit the ground, dragging Michael down with him, the pair landing on the track in a confused jumble of arms and legs, the dead weight of Backup pinning him to the ground.

  Point glanced back, his confusion obvious. “Jed,” he hissed, “what’re you doing, you dumb son of a bitch?”

  For an instant, Michael wondered why the man did not shoot. At that distance, he could not miss. Belatedly, the reason dawned on him. Point could not see him. He would think he was looking at the unlucky Jed, a crumpled shape on the ground under a chromaflage cape. Michael snatched his chance.

  “Aaahhh,” he moaned softly, waving his free arm at Point. “Aaaahhh … shit … sorry … tripped … head.”

  “What’s up?” Point whispered. “For chrissakes, you clumsy sack of shit. We don’t have time for this. We need to kill Helfort and get the hell out of here.” He moved a few steps back along the track toward Michael.

  Michael had not been lying there wasting time. Concealed under Backup’s body, he worked frantically to get the man’s fingers off the trigger guard.

  Point stopped. Michael’s heart did, too, when the attacker’s gun swung up.

  “Hang on,” Michael mumbled. “Hurts … head.” His fingers closed around the trigger; with a convulsive heave, he rolled Backup’s dead weight off his arm and pulled the gun clear. The instant it came free, he fired one-handed, the machine pistol firing with a stuttering phuttt, rounds stitching a wavering line through the air before hitting Point’s body, knocking him backward off his feet and onto his ass.

  “Oh,” Point said softly, sounding puzzled.

  With a frantic shove, Michael pushed himself away from Backup, rolled off the track, and fired a second burst. The rounds struck Point high across the chest, pushing the man onto his back, arms thrown out wide. He did not move.

  “Shit,” Michael muttered, trying to control a sudden trembling before vomiting violently into the bushes. Jeez, Michael, he chided himself, wiping his mouth; finish the damn job first. He checked the time, astonished to see that less than ten minutes had passed since he and Anna had split up. Galvanized into action, he stripped both bodies of their capes, taking their small backpacks and Point’s machine pistol. Backup groaned, forcing him to waste more time while he dug around in the backpacks, hoping to find plasticuffs to tie the man up. Thankfully, he did; the hit team might be sloppy, but they came prepared. With Backup trussed and both bodies rolled off the path behind a boulder—Michael resisted the temptation to tip them over the edge of the cliff—he set off, running hard and turning on his neuronics.

  On time to the second, Anna’s neuronics came back online. “You safe?” he said.

  “Yes, Michael. Wha—”

  “Listen, don’t talk. Two of the attackers are down. There may be more. I’ve taken their guns. Meet me at the house. Now! And turn your neuronics off.”

  Michael ran fast, feet pounding down the track and onto the road. Relief swamped him when he saw Anna’s slight shape, a blur crossing the yard to the house, and then he was in her arms.

  “Oh, Michael, what the hell is this all about?” she said, her voice shaking, pushing him back to talk.

  “Hit team, I think. Bunch of fucking amateurs, thankfully. They’re after me,” he said, lungs heaving. “Two options. Stay here and wait or go back up the track to the flier”—he waved a machine pistol back the way he had come—“and see if we can get away. Who knows, we might be able to take out a few more before we go.”

  Anna shook her head in despair. “No wonder trouble keeps finding you. You bloody well go looking for it.” Her voice hardened. “But I don’t like people who creep through the night carrying guns, and I certainly don’t like the idea of them getting away, so if you want to have a go, I’m with you.”

  Michael hugged her again. “Right,” he said, “I agree. Let’s teach the murderous bastards a lesson. You stay back 10 meters or so. Keep me in sight at all times; close up if you lose me. Watch your six o’clock. Keep the gun under your cape and look behind as much as you look around. If you see anyone who’s not me, shoot the sonofabitch,” he said handing her a machine pistol and a pair of spare magazines. “Know how to use one of these, sweetheart?”

  “Smart-ass!” Anna snorted scornfully, grabbing the gun. “Just try me.”

  “Good. If things get too hot, we’ll go left off the track and hide. The damn cops can sort things out. If they ever get here,” he added. “Let’s go.”

  Moving fast while still staying quiet, the pair moved off. They reached the flier pad without incident. Stopping short, Michael waved Anna to the ground while he wormed his way off the path and forward to the edge of the clearing. He moved slowly, careful not to make any sudden movements, scanning the low scrub that bordered the landing pad. The pad was clear; he beckoned Anna up to join him.

  “Anna,” he whispered, “pad looks okay, but if there’s more of them, this is a good place f
or them to be, over there, just off the path back toward their own flier. I’ll work my way to ours and power up. Don’t move until I call you over. Keep an eye on the scrub. Let me know if anything moves. Neuronics on now.”

  “On? You sure?”

  “We have to take the chance. We need to be able to talk to each other. They’ll know something’s gone wrong.”

  “Roger that.”

  Michael eased his way around to put the lander between him and where he thought the bad guys might be before setting off through the short grass that covered the pad. He was dangerously exposed. If the bad guys caught him out here, he was finished. It took an age to cross the ground, his skin crawling at the thought of the damage a burst of machine pistol fire would inflict on his unprotected body, but finally he was at the flier. Trembling with a mixture of fear and excitement, he had stopped to recover when Anna commed him.

  “Michael. Three o’clock from the flier. Where we thought. There’s someone there.”

  He stopped and lay unmoving. With great care, he checked the scrub. No movement, none of the rippling blurry distortion of a chromaflage cape, nothing. “Anna, I can’t—”

  He saw movement, just a flicker. Anna was right.

  “Okay. Let me indicate it to you.” Michael commed the image to her neuronics overlaid with a scarlet target icon. “Is that it?”

  “Yup, that’s the one. Small bush left of the pair of boulders.”

  “Okay, on my mark, hit it hard while I go for the flier. On three. One, two, three!”

  With ruthless efficiency, Anna fired two quick bursts into the small bush; she was rewarded by a scream of agony, and then a chromaflaged shape burst out of hiding before collapsing onto the ground, unmoving.

  With a convulsive leap, Michael was in the flier, ordering the mass driver to power up. It was a lifetime before the flier’s AI confirmed that yes, it really was him, and yes, he was authorized to pilot the flier, and another lifetime until the engine was flight-ready. Michael sat hunched down in the pilot’s seat, waiting for the ax to fall on his naked neck. “About bloody time,” he muttered when the AI confirmed that the flier was good for takeoff.