Graham Paul - The battle for Commitment planet

Unless General Vaas had something magical hidden up his sleeve, the NRA would be fighting its way out of Perdan when the end came.

If the tactical nightmare that was Perdan was worrying Corporal Fenech, he did not let it show. "That's it for me, sir," he said cheerfully when they reached the shattered remains of a small, low-rise ware house complex beyond which Perdan's outer suburbs reached out to the forest. "This is 120th's sector. If you'd wait here, one of the regimental staff will be with you shortly."

"Thanks, Corporal. Good luck and keep your head down," Michael said, resisting the urge to comm Anna.

"Trust me, I will," Fenech said with a broad smile.

Michael and the rest sat down to wait, the minutes dragging by until broken by a familiar voice.

"Well, well, well," Kallewi said. "Look what the cat's dragged in. Didn't expect to see you guys. You all okay?"

"We are. Widowmaker's not, I'm sorry to say. How are you lot?"

"We came through okay. The PGDF put up bit of a fight, but it was halfhearted. We've had casualties. Anna's one of them, I'm afraid." Michael's heart came up into his mouth. "No, nothing serious," Kallewi added hastily when he saw the look on Michael's face. "She caught a bullet in her upper arm. She'll be fine."

"Where is she?"

"Battalion aid station. Follow me. Rest of you, coffee's that way. Go grab some. I'll meet you there."

Michael followed Kallewi through the darkness, picking his way through the chaotic mess of discarded equipment littering the ground around the 120th's rear positions. Kallewi might think it had not been much of a fight, but it did not look that way. The aid station was tucked away under a chromaflaged canopy pinned to the wall of a badly damaged building. They found Anna sitting propped against a handy block of fallen plasfiber, eyes closed, her face deathly pale in the station's cool white lights, her bandaged left arm resting on an ammunition box. Michael dropped to his knees alongside her.

"Hello, trooper," he said softly.

Anna started, her eyes flicking open. For a moment, confusion reigned before she worked out what she was looking at. "Oh, hi, Michael," she said, her voice slurred.

"What have you been doing?"

"Hammer sonofabitch was a bit too fast for me. I was the better shot, though," she said, closing her eyes, her mouth twisting into a small crooked smile. "Getting to be a habit, this."

"What?"

"Hanging around you getting shot. This is the second time, you bastard."

"Yeah, yeah. Let me see how you are." Heart pounding, Michael interrogated Anna's neuronics, relieved to see that she was okay. The wound to her arm-he winced when Anna commed him images of an ugly, raking gash across her upper arm-looked worse than it was, all her vitals were 100 percent, and when the drugs and shock wore off, she would be sore but fine. Knowing Anna, she would be grumpy, too, but he refused to worry about that now.

"How do you feel?"

"Bit dazed thanks to the medication; Hammer drugs don't screw around. I'll be fine. The medics stitched me up and told me to take an hour off, so if you don't mind."

Michael did not have time to reply before Anna's head rolled back and she was asleep.

"So what's next?"

Anna, still pale but looking better than when Michael had first set eyes on her, looked at him, puzzled. "You don't know?" she asked, taking a long pull at her coffee.

It was Michael's turn to look puzzled. "Know? Know what?"

"Ah, of course, I see the problem," Anna said. "You lander types didn't need to know. Operational security and all that."

"Operational security? About what?"

"I'm not sure you've got clearance."

"Anna!" Michael snapped. "Stop talking in riddles and tell me what the fuck you're on about. Oh, shit, sorry," he added. "It's just… just that I can't…"

"Look who's talking in riddles," Anna said. "Let me guess. You're not stupid; well, most of the time you're not, that is."

"Gee, thanks."

"Don't mention it, spacer. Anyway, I take it you've worked out that a hut in the middle of the desert would be easier to defend than Perdan. Am I right?"

Michael nodded. "I had, and it's been bothering me. The thought of you trapped here…" His voice trailed off.

"You are such an idiot, Michael Helfort."

"Me? Why?"

"Well, for not having faith in ENCOMM, that's why. I know they'll throw troopers at the Hammers, but the sacrifice has to be justified by the payoff, so trying to hold on to a town like this… well, Vaas and his staff aren't that dumb."

"They're not? What happened to all that 'hold at all costs' stuff they included in our briefing?"

Anna snorted. "Window dressing."

"Had us fooled," Michael muttered.

"Can't be helped; it was meant to, and if it convinces the Hammers, fooling a dim-witted Fed flyboy will have been well worth it."

Michael did not know whether to laugh or scream, so he contented himself with a stern look. "Anna! Tell me what the plan is or I'll… I'll…"

"What, flyboy? What will you do?" Anna said, her face lit by a mischievous grin. "Do tell."

"Anna, please," Michael said, trying with no success to keep the pleading out of his voice. "I hate it when you do this to me. Come on! I've been worried sick about you."

"Okay, okay. Simple fact is we're not staying here. We're not going to try to hold Perdan."

"What? You're not?"

"No, we're not. See them over there?" she said, pointing at a small collection of plasfiber crates.

"Yeah. Mortar rounds, judging from their markings. So?"

"They're not what they seem. Each one of those holds a nasty little NRA invention. They call it the area denial weapon, ADW for short."

"Never heard of it."

"Nor had we until last week. Here, let me send you some vid. It shows one in action."

Half closing his eyes, Michael ran the vid Anna commed him. The clip started with a close-up shot of what looked like a large beach ball, its silver skin marred by mounting brackets and junction boxes sprouting a mix of power and data cables. It looked familiar, but try as he might, Michael could not work out what it was. Four pairs of hands reached into frame and, with an obvious effort, lifted the ball bodily and dropped it onto a foamalloy insert inside a case. A pair of hands connected a cluster of wires coming from a small gray box mounted inside the case to wires from the beach ball, then put a foam-padded lid in place. The image pulled back to a long shot as the handlers withdrew; Michael now saw that the box was sitting alone in a small clearing surrounded by trees. A voice started a countdown. At zero, the holocam shook violently, overwhelmed by a savage flash of white. When vision returned, Michael was shocked to see the results: For hundreds of meters all around, trees had been stripped of their leaves, trunks flayed back to bare wood, smaller branches torn off and hurled outward.

"Holy shit," Michael said, stunned. "What is that?"

"Neat, eh? That, my flyboy friend, was a microfusion plant stripped out of a truckbot. Impressive, eh?"

"You're kidding me!"

"No, I'm not. Hammers must have been confused, wondering why so many truckbots have been stolen in the last few months."

"How the hell were they shipped in? You can't backpack them in. They weigh a ton." Something clicked. "Oh, shit," he said. "Don't tell me. Those containers we brought in this morning. They weren't… Tell me Widowmaker hasn't airlifted in tons of stolen mobibot microfusion plants. Please tell me."

"Yeah, you did." Anna grinned and nodded her head. "You're not so dumb, after all."

Michael's head went down. "Oh," was all he could say.

There was a long silence while Michael struggled to decide whether to be angry at the NRA's deceit or impressed by its ingenuity. Since he and the rest of Widowmaker's crew had survived-how he had no idea; the Hammers had a relaxed attitude to safety, and their truckbot engineering was a good fifty years behind the Fed's-he picked the latter.