Helfort's War Book III Read online

  “Anna. Flier. Go!” he commed. He did not wait for her, feeding power into the mass driver, the air around the flier erupting into a confused cloud of steam billowing up into the night. He lifted the flier into hover, holding it half a meter off the ground until Anna burst through the murk and threw herself into the passenger seat alongside him. The instant she was in, Michael rammed the mass driver to full power. The flier bolted upward, and he pulled it onto its tail, forcing the little machine backward off the ridge before turning it into a stomach-churning drop nose first into the valley below and away from the ridge, accelerating hard.

  “Holy shit,” Anna said, her voice shaking while she struggled to strap herself in, “where the hell did you learn that little stunt?”

  “I just made it up,” Michael replied, throwing her a grin, easing off on the power.

  Anna shook her head. “Now what?”

  “Well, the baddies are still on the ground—well, those still breathing, that is. So I think we’ll pay their flier a visit. If we can disable it, they can’t get away. It’s time you were my door gunner. Get the window open. Here, take my gun, too. Make sure you’ve full magazines and get the silencers off if you can. Hate to waste good muzzle velocity. Think you can manage one in each hand?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Anna said with a wolfish smile.

  “Thought so. Ready.”

  “One second,” Anna muttered while she forced recalcitrant silencers off. “Okay, ready,” she said, twisting in her seat, both guns out the window.

  “Right, here we go. Hold on,” Michael said, pulling the flier back into a steep climb and turning until the rock outcrop lay right ahead of them, on it the squat shape of the killers’ flier. “Okay, there it is. I’ll make one run low and fast, and then we’re out of here.”

  “Roger that.”

  Level with the top of the outcrop, Michael pushed the flier’s nose down and brought the mass driver up to full power. Shaking under the acceleration, the craft rocketed past the massive pile of rock, the hostiles’ flier clearly visible against a star-studded sky. Anna let go with both barrels; the cabin reverberated with the appalling racket of unsilenced machine pistols and filled with the acrid stench of burned propellant. They drove out hard across the ridge and over the valley before Michael, throttling back, pushed the flier into a slow turn, straining his eyes to see how the opposition fared. He was disappointed to see nothing but darkness, his night vision degraded by muzzle flash.

  “What do you reckon?”

  “Not sure,” Anna said, busy changing magazines. “It all happened a bit too fast. One more pass uphill of them, a bit slower this time, and we’ll get clear to wait for the cops.”

  “You sure?” Michael replied. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Come on, I think we’ve done enough.”

  “No bloody way, pal,” she said fiercely. “Don’t chicken out on me. These fuckers came to kill us. I’ll be damned if we let them get away. So let’s do it.”

  “Okay,” Michael said, resigned. He banked the flier back toward the bluff. “In we go.”

  The flier turned hard and started its run in. Once again, the outcrop and the flier stood out, looming black shapes against the stars, growing fast as Michael fed power to the mass driver, punching the craft forward.

  “Slow down, slow down,” Anna yelled. “Not so fast, Michael.”

  He ignored her. This was getting dangerous. They had had the advantage of surprise the first time. This time the bad guys would be expecting them. With less than a hundred meters to run, he was proved right when guns opened up from broken ground upslope of the bluff, muzzle flashes lighting up the ground around what had to be two shooters.

  “Steady!” Anna called.

  A burst of ground fire found its mark, slicing through the windscreen and into the cabin roof. “Shit!” Michael flinched away from the blizzard of plasglass that filled the cabin, stray shards slashing cuts into his face. He wiped away the blood dripping into his eyes. He pushed the mass driver to emergency power, the cabin once again filling with muzzle flash and racket and acrid smoke as Anna emptied her guns into the attacker’s flier, a metallic phock phock phock telling him that they had been hit again.

  The noise stopped. “Oh, shit,” Anna said, her voice barely audible over the noise of air ripping through the shattered windscreen.

  Michael paid no attention, his attention focused on getting them safely away. He steadied the flier on vector away from the Palisades and handed control over to the AI, ordering it to get to Bachou. He turned to Anna.

  She lay back in her seat, head slumped to one side, hair thrashed wildly across her face by the blizzard of cold air pouring into the flier’s cabin. Michael commed on the cabin lights, shocked by what he saw. Her skin was pale under thin skeins of blood from plasglass cuts, her mouth a tight, pain-twisted slash. Michael’s stomach lurched. “Anna,” he said frantically, shouting to make himself heard over the noise of the air buffeting the flier, “what’s up? Tell me!”

  “Not sure. I think one of them hit me.” Her voice was faint.

  “Where, Anna, where?” Michael yelled. Desperately, he threw off his straps and knelt in his seat to get closer. “Where are you hit?”

  “Up here, I think.” Feebly she pointed to her chest, high up on the right-hand side. Michael’s heart skipped a beat; he saw the blood spreading across her chromaflage cape. He reached up to the overhead stowage to grab the first-aid kit.

  “Nothing anywhere else?” he said.

  “Don’t think so.”

  Michael patched into her neuronics. She had a single wound to the shoulder; that was the good news. The bad news was that her shoulder was a mess and she was bleeding internally. Quickly, Michael packed the entry and exit points and commed Bachou Hospital. In seconds, the trauma AI connected to Anna’s neuronics and downloaded her vitals. The AI’s air of calm confidence did wonders for Michael’s state of mind, and it soon had him ransacking the first-aid kit for the unholy mix of drugs and nanobots it wanted pumped into Anna. The AI kept him so busy that the flier’s announcement that they were about to land at Bachou caught him by surprise.

  He left the flier’s AI to it. Hands shaking, heart racing, and racked by guilt that he had allowed this to happen to Anna, he was in no fit state to pilot a flier. The instant they landed, the system took over; the paramedics had Anna out, in a trauma tank, and on her way to the hospital before he even left his seat. Not that he wanted to get out; he was exhausted, at a loss what to do next. He had trouble believing what he and Anna had just been through. Not even two hours ago, she had been in bed asleep and he had been lying on his back looking at the stars, wondering how to keep his life under control. It was total madness, he realized with a sudden flash of anger. What the hell was the world coming to?

  A soft cough interrupted his thoughts.

  “Michael Helfort?”

  It was a tall rangy man in plain clothes. “Yes?” Michael said.

  “Lieutenant Hartcher, Bachou police. I think we need to talk. You okay?”

  “Yeah, think so. Minor cuts,” he said, wiping eyes gummy with congealed blood. “But I need to get to the hospital.”

  “Yes, you should. You need to get checked out first, and we can get an update on Ms Cheung’s progress. I’ve spoken to the hospital, by the way; the surgeons are ready to start work on her when she arrives, but the initial report from the paramedics is that she should be fine. The trauma tank has her stabilized. Your parents are already there. Miss Cheung’s are on their way. You okay to go?”

  “Yeah, think so,” Michael said, voice shaking.

  He forced himself to follow Hartcher as the policeman headed for a small mobibot. Michael swore softly: The instant he showed himself, a small but determined group of holocam-toting media brushed aside the police holding them back and made straight for him. Ignoring Lieutenant Hartcher’s protests, they surrounded him, the questions thrown so thick and fast that he had no idea who wanted to know what.

  �
�I’m sorry, folks,” Michael said, raising his voice to cut through the racket, hands up in a vain attempt to keep the holocams out of his face. “There’s nothing I can say. I need to get to the hospital. There’ll be a statement from my agent later. Thank you.”

  Following Hartcher’s lead, Michael dropped his head and barged a way though the milling mob, the media’s strident demands for answers ignored while he fought his way to the safety of the mobibot.

  “Let’s go over it again one more time.”

  Michael stared at Hartcher. It had been a long day, and postcombat fatigue had set in with a vengeance, the energy draining out of his body as adrenaline burned off. But no matter how many times he told the police lieutenant what had happened, the man always wanted to hear it one more time. Something inside snapped. He shot to his feet, his chair skidding back into the wall. “Enough, Lieutenant! Enough! Tell you what, I’ll just give you my complete neuronics records. Uncut, unedited, the lot. Will that do?”

  Hartcher’s eyebrows shot up, his surprise obvious. “We normally have to go to court for those, but if that’s what you want to do, fine. Com them over, but before you do, let me just confirm that you have understood the caution I gave you earlier.”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Michael snapped. “I know my rights.”

  “Don’t tear my head off, Michael,” Hartcher said patiently. “People died today, and by your own admission, you killed at least one of them. You and Ms. Cheung might be facing homicide charges.”

  Michael glared at Hartcher. “Justifiable, don’t you think, Lieutenant?”

  Hartcher shook his head. “Maybe, maybe not. It’s not for me to say. You know that. It’s a matter for the prosecutors and for the courts to decide if it ever gets that far. Anyway, com me your records and we’re done.”

  Michael did, cursing his stupidity. If he gave Bachou police access to his full neuronics records, they would see every thought, emotion, and sensation, everything his brain had experienced during the attack. His mind would be laid bare for total strangers to poke and peer at, its every secret open to their examination. It was a deeply unsettling idea. No wonder there was a flourishing black market in full neuronics records; no wonder pornovid stars made so much money. What he was doing was something no sane person should ever do for free. He gave himself a mental shake; what was done was done. There was no point wasting any more time agonizing over it.

  Hartcher nodded. “Okay, received. Thanks. You can go. I’ll arrange a mobibot to take you back to the hospital. We’ll need to talk to Ms. Cheung, of course, but that can wait.”

  “Of course.”

  “By the way, the hospital’s been in touch. The surgery’s gone well. Ms. Cheung will be fine. A bit stiff and sore until the nanobots finish putting her shoulder back together again, but otherwise okay.”

  Overwhelmed for a moment, Michael was unable to speak, unable to forgive himself for risking Anna’s life. He just nodded.

  “Come on, Mr. Helfort,” Hartcher said. “Let’s get you back to the hospital.”

  Anna’s eyes flickered, two bottomless pools of green staring unfocused up at the ceiling; her skin, normally honey-gold below pink-dusted cheeks, was a dirty, washed-out gray.

  “Welcome back, Anna,” Michael whispered. “How are you feeling?”

  It was a while before she answered. “Tired,” Anna said finally. “Sore. What the hell happened?”

  “Well, we nailed the bad guys, crippled their flier, and left them for the police to pick up. That’s the good news. Bad news is they managed to get a round into your shoulder. Did a bit of damage.”

  “Oh,” Anna mumbled. “Since I’m talking to you, I assume I’ll be okay.”

  “That’s what the doctors are saying. Give it a few weeks, and Damishqui will be expecting you back.”

  “Bugger Dami—” Anna’s eyes rolled back up into her head, and she was asleep.

  Four hours later, Anna woke up to demand a bowl of ice cream, then another and another.

  “Jeez, Anna! Enough already,” Michael protested even as he commed the foodbot for more.

  “Up yours, Michael,” Anna said. “I’ve got one hell of a sore throat, and ice cream is ten times better than those damn drugbots.”

  “It’s on its way,” Michael said, stoic in the face of Anna’s determination.

  When the ice cream arrived, it did not last long. “Mmm, that’s better,” she said, pushing the bowl away.

  “Feeling better?”

  “Am.”

  “Your folks called. They’ll be here first thing in the morning.”

  Anna rolled her eyes. “Oh, great. Something tells me I’m in for the mother and father of all lectures. Wish they’d stop treating me like some sort of china doll.”

  “Well, you are small and perfectly formed, apart from your nose of course, so what’s the … ow!” Michael yelped when Anna backhanded the empty ice cream bowl into his temple. “Temper, temper,” he said, rubbing the side of his head. “That hurt.”

  “It was supposed to; you deserved it. You are a rude bastard,” she said. “Shit, shouldn’t have done that. My shoulder’s killing me.” Anna lay back. After a while, she reached out and folded his hand into hers.

  “Anna,” he said, his voice faltering. “Anna, look, I—”

  “Michael, Michael, Michael,” Anna said. She squeezed his hand gently. “You don’t have to explain. You are the single most accident-prone man in humanspace. Being around you is like standing next to an unexploded Eaglehawk missile.” She shook her head, her eyes filling with sudden tears. “Loving you is a hundred times worse, and not a day goes by without me asking why I do. But here I am.”

  “Anna—”

  “Shh,” she said, lifting her hand to Michael’s lips. “You know what? You are what you are, and I might as well get used to it.”

  Michael had no idea what to say, so he said nothing. He squeezed Anna’s hand hard, watching her slip away into unconsciousness.

  Michael stayed with Anna while she slept, her face framed by jet-black hair stark against white linen, the faintest of faint blushes of pink across high cheekbones marking the start of her return to health.

  For a long time he sat there. His vigil was interrupted when his mother stuck her head through the door. “How is she?”

  “Hi, Mom. She’s fast asleep.”

  “Good. Come on, Michael. You’re no good to her dead on your feet. We’re going home. Dad has supper for you. We’ll be back first thing tomorrow to meet Anna’s parents. The hospital will call you if there are any developments.”

  A sudden wave of exhaustion swamped him. Kissing Anna on the forehead, he raised his hands and conceded defeat. “Okay, okay. Let’s go.”

  Monday, September 18, 2400, UD

  Dreadnought Project Conference Room,

  Comdur Fleet Base

  Vice Admiral Jaruzelska called the weekly project meeting to order.

  “Morning, everyone. Michael?”

  “Sir?”

  “You look like a sack of shit, but since you’ve managed to turn up for work, may I assume you’re okay?”

  “Gee, thanks, sir,” Michael said over the laughter. “But yes. Bit battered, bit bruised, but I’ll be fine, which is more than I can say for the opposition.”

  “Quite,” Jaruzelska said drily as laughter turned to cheers. “More to the point, how’s Anna?”

  “Recovering well, sir, thank you. She’ll be fine.”

  “Glad to hear it. Bad business,” Jaruzelska said, her face grim. “Police making any progress?”

  Michael shook his head. “No, sir. Dead end. All they know is that the attackers were a bunch of lowlifes recruited from the gutters of Torrance City. Someone they had never seen before threw them a load of money and told them to get on with it. The operation was thrown together in a rush, which was why we escaped. With more time to prepare …”

  “Know what? I’d still bet good money you’d get out alive, Michael,” Jaruzelska said with a broad smile
. “You have a knack in that regard, I have to say.”

  Michael squirmed in embarrassment. Jaruzelska stopped to let a good-natured mix of cheers, boos, and clapping fade away.

  “Okay, okay. Before I hand over to the chief of staff to cover the routine items on the agenda, I want to brief you on the results of our meeting with the brass back at Fleet.” Jaruzelska paused for a moment. “I’m sure you know that Captain Tuukkanen and I met with the chief of the defense force and the commander in chief. You also know that this was an important meeting, one we asked for to get rid of the roadblocks in our way. Right up front, you need to know that while we had some wins, we also had some losses.”

  Jaruzelska paused again while a soft murmur of concern washed across the room. Her hand went up. “Nothing to get too oxygenated about, folks. Project’s on track, and the time line for Dreadnought Squadron One to go operational still stands. But our plans for the follow-on squadrons have changed. Captain Tuukkanen will be distributing a detailed report of what those changes are, together with the things we need to do in response. But in essence, the changes are these. First, there won’t be the six dreadnought squadrons I recommended, but three.”

  A soft groan filled the room. Like everyone else present, Michael knew of Jaruzelska’s firm view that sixty dreadnoughts was the minimum number needed to take the fight back to the Hammers and, more important, to defeat them and their antimatter weapons.

  Jaruzelska ignored the disquiet. “Second, Fleet has downgraded the specifications for the ships of the follow-on squadrons. These will be designated Block 2 dreadnoughts. They will be heavier and slower, but at least they will be dreadnoughts. Obviously, only the ships of the First Squadron will have the full Block 1 dreadnought conversion.”

  This time there was not a sound. “Oh, shit,” Michael murmured. That was two losses for Jaruzelska.

  “Third, I have agreed with Fleet that our crew numbers for the Block 1 dreadnoughts are too low. So rather than the crew of ten we suggested, we’ll be going with a crew of fifteen. That’s the largest crew we can accommodate without compromising the Block 1 design specifications. Crew levels for the Block 2 dreadnoughts are still under review, but I anticipate a final complement of around thirty or so. Michael?”