Graham Paul - The battle for Commitment planet

On and on they went, Michael's neuronics counting off the meters with agonizing slowness, past the cross-tunnel, its mouth all but invisible behind a huge boulder-the temptation to turn away from the Hammers and into the sanctuary it offered was almost irresistible-until the absolute darkness ahead started to break up into tiny patches of gray light. About time, he said to himself, squeezing himself through the last few meters until he could move forward no more. No wonder the damn Hammers weren't paying this tunnel any attention, he thought. A mouse would have trouble getting through.

He tried to pull back but could not. He was jammed tight, and no matter how hard he pushed, he could not move. For one awful moment, he knew with heart-pounding certainty that he was never going to get out. Near panic, he wriggled and squirmed until the rock relented and allowed him to pull back.

"Holy shit," he hissed, chest heaving as the panic subsided. "I hate this place."

"You okay?" Anna said, easing her way alongside him.

"Yeah," he said, even though he was far from okay. "Bastard tunnel closes in. We're maybe 3 meters short. We need cameras."

"Let me talk to Tek."

"Do it and tell her we need people to start clearing this rock away."

"Okay."

Michael lay facedown and tried not to think too much about the millions of tons of blast-fractured rock hanging only a few centimeters over his head. To his relief, Anna was back quickly, Tek close behind. "Here you are," she said, pushing a pair of holocam wands into his hand. "Off you go."

"Mind the damn cables," Tek hissed. "Those holocams are the only ones I've got."

"Okay." Michael wanted more than anything to ask Anna to place the holocams, but he did not; the last vestiges of pride and self-respect forced him back the way he had come. He stripped down to his T-shirt and took a deep breath to steady jangling nerves and trembling muscles; then he set off toward the gray patches that marked where the cave debouched into Juliet-24. This time, he was in and out in no time at all, the two wands jammed forward into clefts so that their wide-angle lenses could see all of the portal.

By the time he made it back, the cameras were online, Anna and Tek huddled over holovid screens that painted the tunnel a ghostly blue and the troopers beyond them an anonymous black as they struggled in complete silence to clear away the rockfall. Peering over Anna's shoulder, Michael did not like what he saw. The portal was a heart-stopping sight. He watched in shocked silence, the scale of the Hammers' commitment to taking the NRA's Branxton Base obvious. Jammed with marines, the place was a hive of activity as the Hammers prepared their counterattack, the sound of rifle fire punctuated by grenade explosions clearly audible.

Michael watched an Anvil armored vehicle move up to the mouth of the Hammer's tunnel, twin cannon mounted in blister turrets pouring sustained bursts of fire at the oncoming NRA attack. How were Mokhine's troopers ever going to withstand-

In a shocking blast that shivered the rocks Michael was lying on, the Hammer vehicle exploded.

"Yes!" Tek whispered, punching the air.

"Stabbers?" Anna asked.

"Yup. The frontal armor on an Anvil is no match for them. Just wish the colonel had a few more of them. Lot more Anvils where those came from."

And there you have it, Michael thought, the NRA's problem summed up in a few short sentences.

The loss of the vehicle kicked the Hammers into frantic activity bordering on pandemonium; combat engineers worked frantically in the face of renewed NRA fire to move the blazing wrecks out of the way, and the medics dragged away the casualties from around the cave mouth. The NRA fire never slackened, and soon Hammer marines were in place returning the compliment as fresh armor-a light tank this time, an Akkad, judging from its low-profile main turret-moved into place, its gun adding to the appalling racket that had the walls of Juliet-24 shaking.

"Dickheads," Tek said dismissively. "That Akkad is wasting its time."

"Only if Mokhine's pulled his people back," Michael muttered.

"He will have."

"Stalemate," Anna whispered. "An Akkad's too damn fat to fit down that tunnel of theirs. I think they're just there to make sure we don't break through. The Hammers aren't going anywhere for a while."

Anna was dead right. The Hammers had been thrown back on the defensive, their attack had stalled, and the frustration showed in the body language of marine NCOs and officers. This was not the way they expected things to turn out, that much was obvious.

Across the valley floor outside the portal, more heavy ordnance waited: Anvil cannon-armed urban attack vehicles with a scattering of Akkad light tanks and drone launchers. Beyond them, Michael could see yet more marines and more armor, a lot more. How the NRA was ever going to defeat them he could not even begin to imagine. He flicked a glance at Anna; she stared unmoving at the holovids. Michael wondered what she was thinking.

"Shit," Tek murmured. "That's a lot of Hammers. Just what we want. Okay, I've seen enough." She slid back and turned to her comms man, a lance corporal responsible for laying the single stand of plasfiber-armored optical fiber that connected her platoon to the outside world. "Comms," she whispered.

Without a word, the trooper passed Tek the connector. Try as he might, Michael could not hear what she was muttering into her whisper mike. Whatever the reply, Tek seemed happy with it. She passed the connector back and waved Michael and Anna in close.

"Much as I'd like to kick those assholes back where they came from, we don't have what it takes. So here's the plan. You"-she tapped Michael on the arm-"stay here with Lance Corporal Chengkiz. Your job is to keep an eye on our Hammer friends, and for Kraa's sake, make sure they don't hear you."

"Roger that."

Tek turned to Anna. "Sergeant, you're going to lead the rest of us back the way we came, but only as far as that access tunnel. Brigade is sending up combat engineers with fuel-air guns"-barbecues, Michael reminded himself; that was what the NRA called them-"and it'll be up to us to clear as much of this damn rock as we can so we can get the guns up easily."

"And this rockfall while you're at it," Michael said. "Otherwise the charges won't work so well."

"You're right," Tek said. "I'll ask the colonel to send up a second platoon. Anyway, once the barbecues are in position, ENCOMM will fire them. All being well, they should clean out the portal."

"What about the marines outside, in the valley?" Anna asked.

"Thank Kraa for caves and sinkholes. We're infiltrating barbecues into position below the cliff top overlooking the valley. They'll drop a pattern onto the portal approaches. Should make our lives a bit easier."

"Shit. Those Hammers aren't going to know what hit them."

"No, they're not. Anyway, once the barbecues have thinned the Hammers out a bit, ENCOMM will send in 5 and 12 Brigades to take out what's left. It seems this is one of their main lines of attack. They look committed, so ENCOMM wants to persuade them they are wasting their time. We'll wait in the access tunnel and then go once the charges are fired."

Michael could not help himself. "There are thousands of Hammers out there. How's ENCOMM going to get the 5th and 12th out there?"

Tek shook her head. "You Feds," she said softly. "Questions, questions, always questions. Let's just say we have tunnels accessing the valley that the Hammers don't know about, sally ports we call them. Nice old-fashioned touch, I've always thought. There'll be NRA troopers appearing out of the rock in the thousands, coming from nowhere far as the Hammers are concerned. Not that there'll be many left to see them coming."

"Let me guess," Michael said. "More barbecues?"