Graham Paul - The battle for Commitment planet

"Command, Alley Kat. Locked in to Red River. Off-loading pax and cargo. Will keep you posted on progress."

"Command, roger. Out."

Michael switched the holovid to Red River's hangar deck. Kallewi had wasted no time. Already the cavernous space was a hive of activity. Repairbots had started to cut redundant equipment away from the ship's hull; while their laser cutters worked away, Kallewi's marines dragged what was little more than expensive junk across the hangar deck before piling it into untidy heaps close to the main hangar air lock doors. The sight of what amounted to the wholesale trashing of a perfectly good dreadnought made Michael's heart sink, even if it was all in a good cause.

Michael turned his attention to the second of the teams rigging Red River for the assault on Commitment. He commed Acharya, who was at work deep inside one of the starboard driver mass bunkers.

"How's it going, Dev?"

"Getting there, sir," Acharya said, his helmet-mounted light splashing across the grimy figures of the rest of his team; their space suits were coated with dust from crushed driver pellets. "I never imagined I'd be using what they taught me on my basic demolition course to blow holes in the hull of one of Fleet's finest, but there you are. Needs must."

Michael laughed. "Quite so. Any problems?"

"Only this damn dust," Acharya said, "of which there is an endless supply. We have to make sure we keep it out of the cable connectors; otherwise the firing sequence is screwed."

"And can you?"

"We can, sir, thanks to these." Acharya raised a small cylinder. "Compressed air. Works a treat."

"Good," Michael said. "Let me know how you're doing, but take your time. I want those charges rigged right, not rigged quickly."

"Roger that, sir. They will be."

"Good. Command, out."

Michael allowed himself to relax a fraction. Preparing the three dreadnoughts for Operation Gladiator was scheduled to take the best part of two days, time well spent, Michael knew, because it kept everyone's mind off the coming battle. Happy that there was nothing more to be done, he commed his neuronics to bring up the time line for Gladiator. Not that he needed to-he knew the plan by heart-but given what was at stake, he would not take the chance that something, however small, might have been missed. Friday, September 7, 2401, UD FWSS Redwood, in deepspace

Michael was relieved when Redwood finally jumped into pinchspace. It had been a long, hard two days. Like everyone else onboard, he was exhausted thanks to the combined effects of no sleep and long hours of hard physical work, not to mention the stress of knowing that they would drop into Hammer farspace in little over a week's time. Not that the 411-light-year transit to Commitment offered any respite. Redwood's crew still had two more days of hard labor loading the landers with all the equipment and supplies to go dirtside; once that was done, Michael had scheduled an intensive program in the simulators. Gladiator was not the most complex operation of all time, but no operation in all the history of the Federation had been played for such huge stakes. Gladiator had to succeed, and if that meant spending hours and hours in the sims, so be it.

After a last check that all of Redwood's systems were nominal and that she was established on a stable pinchspace vector, Michael turned to Ferreira.

"Okay, Jayla. You have the ship. I'm off down to the hangar deck to see how the marines are getting on before I turn in. Who's your relief?"

"The coxswain, sir," Ferreira said, her face a gaunt, exhausted mask. "I stood her down to get some shut-eye before she takes over at midnight."

"Let me guess. It needed a direct order?"

Despite her obvious tiredness, Ferreira grinned. "Sure did. You know Chief Bienefelt."

Michael returned the grin. "I know Chief Bienefelt," he said. "I'll see you later."

"Sir."

Michael made his way down to the hangar deck. The process was a painful one; his overused muscles protested every step of the way, his leg, as always, protesting more than all the rest of his body put together. "Goddamn thing," he muttered as he negotiated a ladder steeper than his leg liked. When was it ever going to be right? With one more deck to go, he had to stop, the pain from his leg forcing him to wait. Leaning against the bulkhead, he eased the weight off his bad leg, the relief immediate, the pain abating to a dull, nagging ache, leaving his mind free to roam after the hours of relentless activity prepping Redwood and her sister ships for the jump to Commitment.

What a life, he thought, looking down the empty, echoing passageway, riding the best warship ever built on its last voyage, a one-way trip into flaming oblivion, from which he and the rest of the Redwoods would escape at the last minute to snatch Anna and the rest of the prisoners of war incarcerated in Camp J-5209, whether they liked it or not, before flying off into the arms of a grateful NRA, dodging missiles and vengeful Hammer fliers. He shook his head and smiled wryly. It was comicvid stuff, it really was.

He checked to see what time it was with Anna: just past midnight, according to his neuronics. He smiled again as he remembered what nights were like in a Hammer POW camp: a long shed filled with serried ranks of bunks, each filled with the huddled shapes of sleeping spacers, the air full of the small noises people made: coughs, moans, soft cries, the occasional half-heard word blurted out from the depths of a dream.

Michael thought of Anna. Was she sleeping like all the rest? If she was, what was she dreaming about? And if she was awake, maybe she was thinking of him, wondering how long it would be before they saw each other again. Michael shook his head. More likely, she was wondering what the hell she was going to do with another long, empty day behind Hammer razor wire, a day like every other day, one day closer to freedom for sure, but how much closer?

As long as things went to plan, sooner than you think, Anna, he thought, thankful she had no idea what the consequences of his failure might be. He found them hard enough to bear; imagining how Anna would react when-no, if-Hartspring's thugs came calling was almost too much; his stomach turned over as he pictured the terror on her face as the colonel spelled out what the last week of her life had in store for her in excruciating detail. And he would, Michael knew he would, rage washing through him in an incandescent wave. If Anna died, he would hunt Hartspring down to the very ends of humanspace if need be, and then the man would die a death even more terrible than Anna's.

"Jesus, Michael," he muttered out loud, "get a grip. Come on, you've got work to do." Forcing himself upright, he gingerly eased his weight back onto his bad leg, relieved to find that the bloody thing had decided to behave for once. Stepping onto the ladder, he started down again.

When he got to the hangar deck, Michael looked around. He spotted a handful of marines securing the last of the untidy piles of scrap cut out of the ship by the repairbots while Kallewi and Sergeant Tchiang busied themselves running cables to the small mounds of sandbagged explosive charges that would blast the scrap out into space as Redwood approached reentry. Michael hung back to let them finish.

Finally, Kallewi pronounced himself satisfied with the last of the charges. He stood up, stretching hard. "Hello, sir," he said when he spotted Michael. "Come to see what real work looks like?"

"I was about to commend you for your diligence and devotion to duty, Lieutenant Kallewi," Michael said, stern-faced. "But since you've just done that for yourself, I won't bother."

Kallewi laughed. "Ouch," he said. "Anyway, we're done here."

"Just hope it all works."

"Oh, it will," Kallewi said. "When these babies go off"-he kicked one of the sandbags-"all that scrap has only one way to go, and that's out the door. The Hammers won't know what the hell is happening."