Graham Paul - The battle for Commitment planet

The lay-up point was a chaotic fall of rocks at the head of a thickly wooded dry valley, one of thousands incised into the foothills of the Branxton Ranges. Behind the boulder fall lay a small complex of caves, smaller than Chiaou would have wanted but the best for many kilometers around and proof against all but a direct hit, which was an unlikely event; for all their overwhelming numbers, not even the Hammers could carpet bomb every square centimeter of the Branxtons, though they seemed intent on trying.

It took a lifetime before the endless pounding of the Hammer air attack died away. B Company had survived, the nearest bombs falling too far away to cause any casualties. Shaking a head thick with the aftereffects of repeated shock, his mouth dry with limestone dust blasted off the cave walls, Chiaou ordered recon teams out to make sure the Hammers were not waiting for them. Impatiently, he waited for word back. When it came, it was bad news. The Hammers had dropped blocking forces to the west; the air was thick with recon drones, their black shapes wheeling endlessly overhead. The protective forest had been reduced to matchwood, more marines were sweeping toward them from the coast, and the first of the Hammers' attack drones had been spotted, their lasers and fuel-air bomblets already at work, pounding anything remotely resembling an NRA formation.

After a quick briefing, Chiaou ordered his troopers out of hiding. He swore under his breath when he emerged into the morning light; even though the Hammers seemed to have no idea where he and his troopers had holed up, the situation did not look good. B Company had one chance: Whatever the cost, it would have to break through the Hammer containment lines and run for the safety of the forest beyond. If they stayed and fought out in the open, the Hammers would grind them to dust.

So be it, Chiaou thought, resigned to whatever fate had in store for him and B Company.

With an efficiency born of quiet desperation, the troopers formed up and moved off. Chiaou's plan laid no claim to subtlety. Outgunned and outnumbered, all he had left was surprise, speed, and ferocity. "Faster, faster," he screamed over his shoulder, waving his troopers into a sprint that slammed B Company into the containment line blocking their retreat to the west. For all the battlefield intelligence pouring down from the recon drones overhead, the marines were slow to react to the onslaught, letting B Company get far too close. When they did react, their response was a terrible thing, a blizzard of rifle and machine gun fire pouring into the NRA's ranks. Heedless, the survivors closed on the marines, the terrible losses ignored as they clawed their way into the marines' hastily prepared positions.

Shock, sheer momentum, and a suicidal disregard for personal safety did what lack of numbers could not; in only minutes, B Company had punched a hole through the Hammers' lines. Chiaou's orders had been clear: Anyone who made it through was to keep going, and so they did, those who could.

Those too badly wounded to follow whispered their farewells and prepared to die the only way they knew how. Only minutes after B Company had smashed into the Hammers' containment line, a microgrenade finished off the last NRA trooper still fighting, but not before she took a good many Hammers with her. When the trooper died, less than thirty of B Company had survived. Chiaou had not; with manic bravery, he and a handful of troopers had fought their way into the marines' command post, and there they, too, had died, along with most of the battalion's senior staff.

As silence fell, the Hammer battalion's new commander walked the ground, shaken by the ferocity of the morning's events and embittered by the loss of so many of his men. He had refused to believe his intelligence officer when told the battalion had faced a single reinforced NRA company. He shook his head as he studied the latest casualty report. Only a reinforced company? How could that be? He had never seen anything like it, and this was not the NRA's only operation that day. It had launched attacks on targets all across Maranzika: a factory manufacturing inertial navigation units, another producing air-to-air guided missiles, a third assembling heavy lander fusion power plants. They had assaulted DocSec security posts and support facilities, planetary ground defense supply depots, and a marine recruit induction center. It was unbelievable, every operation stamped with what were fast becoming the NRA's trademarks: audacity, speed, ferocity, and a willful disregard for self.

The battalion commander kicked the ground with the toe of his boot. Today was his first in combat against the NRA, a day he had not enjoyed. Something told him it would not be his last.

"Sir," one of his sergeants said.

"Yes?"

"Major Schmidt's compliments, sir. He has the prisoners ready for you."

"How many?"

"Five, sir."

"Five?" the battalion commander said, looking up sharply, his eyes narrowed in astonishment. "You sure? Five? That's all?"

"Yes, sir. I'm sure. Five."

"Kraa! So few. Okay, lead on."

The man followed his sergeant to a small rock-backed hollow in the valley wall. There lay the five NRA prisoners. They were a pitiful sight: every one badly wounded, combat overalls blood-drenched, wounds dressed with hastily applied field dressings. But it was their eyes that took his attention; wounded or not, hate blazed from all of them.

Schmidt came over to meet him. "Hard to believe, sir, but that's the lot. The rest are either dead or got away."

"They going to tell us anything useful?"

"Doubt it, sir. They won't say a word, any of them. Get too close, and all they do is spit at you."

"Kraa-damned sonsofbitches," the battalion commander said, voice harsh. "Screw them. We have better things to do. Shoot the bastards."

Schmidt's eyes flared wide in surprise. "Sir?"

"You heard me, Major. Shoot them. Then we pull out; planetary defense after-action teams are on their way to clean up."

"Sir!" Schmidt's voice rose in protest. "I don't believe that is a legal-"

"I'm not interested in what you believe, Major Schmidt. Either we shoot them or DocSec does. What difference does it make? So do it. That's an order."

"What DocSec does is their business and doesn't alter the fact that we are not permitted to shoot prisoners out of hand. I'm sorry, sir, but that's a fact."

The battalion commander stepped back a pace and unbuttoned the flap over the pistol at his waist. "You're sorry? You're sorry?" he said, voice rising as shock and stress let anger take control. "This is a battlefield, not a courtroom. It is for me, not you, to decide what is legal and what is not," he shouted, all self-control gone, spittle gathering white in the corners of his mouth. "Obey my order, Major. Obey it now, or I'll shoot you and then I'll shoot them myself. Make up your Kraa-damned mind, Major!"

The silence hung heavy, the major's mouth hanging half-open in stunned disbelief. "I'll make sure it's done, sir," he said at last, his head dropping in defeat.

The battalion commander holstered his pistol, turned, and walked away. He had gone only a few meters when the air behind him crackled with a short burst of rifle fire. The silence was broken by a single defiant shout of protest cut off in midsentence by one last shot. A soft moan of pain trailed off into silence.

The battalion commander walked on. Monday, August 20, 2401, UD FWSS Redwood, in orbit around Nyleth-B

"Okay, folks, let's get into it," Michael said. "Before I kick things off, any burning issues we need to talk about first… No? Good. Right, first the situation on Commitment, and in a word, it's good… good for us, that is. Not so good for Chief Councillor Polk and his government. Now, if you look at the holovid…"