Graham Paul - The battle for Commitment planet

"We'd better go."

"Yeah. Try me next week. I'll be better." Kallewi's head fell back, and his eyes closed.

Michael flicked a glance at Anna, his face twisted with concern. "Okay," he said. "Next week, then."

Kallewi said nothing, a nod of the head his only response.

"See you later," Michael said softly as they left.

Anna's hands slapped the tabletop with a flat crack that echoed around the empty canteen.

"For chrissakes, Michael," she said fiercely. "It's not your fault. Janos is a big boy. He makes his own decisions. He's here because he decided this was where he should be, fighting the Hammers, not because you forced him. He's a marine. Killing Hammers is his job, and that's what he's been doing."

"Yes, but-"

"Don't 'yes but' me!" Anna snapped. "There's no buts about it, so stop it. You are not responsible for any of this. Anyway, what's happened has happened. It's history now, and you can't change it. So stop trying to."

"Okay, okay," Michael said, raising his hands in defeat. "I get it, I get it." He rubbed eyes gritty with stress and tiredness. "I want another coffee, then let's go. You?"

"No, I'm fine."

Michael made his way across to the drinkbot; by some miracle of Hammer engineering, the battered relic produced the excellent coffee every Hammer needed to get through the day.

Anna was right, he thought as his mug filled, but only up to a point. Yes, Janos and the rest of Redwood's crew had made up their own minds to be part of this whole insane project. So yes, he bore no responsibility for what might happen to them, but what about the prisoners of war from J-5209? They were a different matter altogether. He had given them no time at all to think through the question: stay a prisoner or come with us. What a choice! Of course they came; as far as they knew, the rescue was a Fleet operation, not some lunatic scheme dreamed up by mutinous spacers. Now some of those prisoners were dead; for them he bore absolute responsibility, and nothing Anna said would change his mind about that.

In the end, it was simple. It was up to him to honor that responsibility by returning them home, and the only way to do that was by finding a way to end what he, along with an increasing number of the Feds, was beginning to think of as a war without end. Shaking his head at the arrogant stupidity of it all, he took his mug and walked back to rejoin Anna.

Talk about hubris, he said to himself as he sat down, disheartened by the enormity of the problem he felt compelled to resolve.

"Right, then," he said, forcing good humor into his voice. "Where to now?"

"Well, remember that place we went to last month?"

"The cave with the pool? I sure do," he said, leering at her.

"Don't be such a pig, Michael. Anyway, I've checked with my contact in Juliet sector security. It's ours until Monday, so what are we waiting for? Come on, drink up."

Michael did just that, his heart soaring at the thought that for a few precious days he and Anna could pretend that the rest of humanspace did not exist. Sunday, January 6, 2402, UD Sector Juliet, Branxton Base, Commitment

The rest of the universe had faded away into irrelevance; for the first time in a very long while Michael felt at peace. Feet propped up on a handy rock, he lay flat on his back, looking up into the thick canopy of tangled branches that concealed the small cave and its idyllic spring-fed pool of cold, crystal-clear water. Alongside him, Anna slept, curled into a ball and snoring softly. She had been much more tired than she had let on; she had slept much of the weekend. When not sleeping, she seemed content to let the hours slide past nestled into Michael's shoulder in between breath-catching dips in the rock pool.

Not that Michael minded. The absolute quiet of the place had allowed him to think his way through the tangled mess of guilt and emotion that cluttered his thinking. For the first time in days, he knew he was thinking straight; it was a good feeling, even if the conclusions he had reached were nothing to celebrate.

"Screw it," he muttered. So what if the NRA was bogged down in an unwinnable war? He was alive, Anna was alive, both of them dragged back from the brink of horrific deaths at the hands of Colonel Hartspring. Even if they were on borrowed time, even if every day might be their last, being alive and together was better than being dead. As for the future, it would take its own path; he might as well get used to the fact that he could only do his best to nudge it in the right direction. If things did not work out, then so be it.

Anna stirred. She rolled over and lifted her head. "Morning," she said, peering at him from sleep-clouded eyes. "I think. Where's my frigging coffee, flyboy?"

"What did your last house bot die of?" Michael grumbled. Climbing to his feet, he went back into the cave to get the stove going.

Twenty minutes and two cups of coffee later, Anna was sitting up, her back against the wall of the cave. Michael's spirits soared at the sight of her. All the tension had gone from her face, her skin restored to the honey-gold he loved, her eyes glittering with life, two pools of spark-shot jade.

"Mmm, that's better," she said. "So what's for breakfast?"

Michael rolled his eyes. Anna was not a morning person, and he knew from bitter experience that she had to be humored until coffee and food had time to work their magic.

"Coming up," he said, face set in a resigned frown, getting back to his feet.

"I should hope-hey, what the hell is that?" Anna said leaning forward, eyes narrowed as she scanned the trees that framed the mouth of the cave.

The rumble was so faint that Michael was not sure what he was hearing. Then he was, a sudden stab of fear forcing his heart to skip a beat. Without thinking, he reached back and grabbed his assault rifle. Anna followed suit. She slithered across to him, head tilted to one side.

Anna's face went ashen. "Those are landers, Michael. Landers, and a lot of them!"

Acting on instinct alone, Michael reacted, every neuron in his brain screaming at him to get away. "Back, back!" he shouted, grabbing Anna's hand and dragging her bodily after him. Frantic now, they fled deep into the cave, on and on, scrambling across rockfalls and through squeezes heedless of grazed hands and knees. Michael's eyes watered with pain when a moment's inattention allowed his head to smack into an unseen protrusion.

"Screw this fuc-"

The whole cave seemed to lift under their feet, a photoflash of intense light searing an image of white rock and black shadows into Michael's retina; an instant later, a thunderous crack ripped the air around them apart a second ahead of a shock wave that turned the air into a wall of steel, hurling them both off their feet and onto the floor of the cave, shock-blasted splinters of rock spalling off the cave walls and into their bodies. There was another, and another, until Michael had to fight to hang on to consciousness, his only link to reality Anna's hand clutching his in a death grip as dust and splinters filled the air.

The explosions stopped. Anna and Michael lay unmoving facedown in the dirt for a long time, a steady shower of shattered rock raining down. "Shit," Anna said at last, her voice muffled.

"I think the Hammers have come calling," Michael said, rolling over and shaking his head in a vain attempt to dampen the savage ringing in his ears.

"You think it's their big push?"

"Has to be," Michael said. "So much for the NRA's much-vaunted contacts inside DocSec and the PGDF. Seems the Hammers managed to keep a lid on things this time. You okay?"

"Think so. Bit bruised, bit woozy, but otherwise fine. Glad we got as far in as we did. I think the sonsofbitches just dropped every last kinetic and fuel-air bomb they could muster. I'm surprised they didn't nuke us."