Graham Paul - The battle for Commitment planet

"Slimy, money-grubbing scum," Sedova said, grim-faced.

"Understatement," Michael said. "What a mess, what a bloody mess."

Sedova laughed. "For chrissakes, Michael, stop complaining," she said, slapping him on the shoulder. "Lighten up, for fuck's sake."

"Easy for you to say," Michael said. "You have to be humanspace's biggest optimist."

"You know what?" Sedova said, all traces of humor gone from her face. "I have to be. This damn war would destroy me otherwise. Besides, you think Adrissa and Cortez can do this on their own?"

"Yes, I do."

"So what's bothering you?" Sedova said. "Okay, you won't be in charge, but Adrissa still needs you. This business will not turn out the way it's planned to. Things never do. Too much at stake, too little time, too many players, too little trust. You know how it goes."

Michael just shook his head.

"Ah," Sedova said softly. "It's not the mission. It's not that at all, is it?"

"No," Michael conceded reluctantly.

"It's Anna, isn't it?"

"Yes," Michael said, his face twisted into a bitter scowl. "I asked Adrissa if she could come with me. Never seen her so angry. Shit!" he added, the scowl replaced by a grin of rueful embarrassment. "When I told Anna, she was even angrier. I thought her head was going to explode; she was that fired up."

"Michael!" Sedova shook her head in despair. "You know what? For a very bright boy, you can be so dumb sometimes, Michael."

"Yeah, yeah, I know, but I came here because the Hammers would have killed Anna if I hadn't, so I could be with her whatever happened. Now I'm pissing off and leaving her. I can't even say goodbye properly."

"The 120th's out doing its bit again?"

"Yeah. ENCOMM's infiltrated them into the Velmar Mountains northeast of McNair. Hit-and-run operations. Part of Long Shot's deception plan"

"Shit! The Velmars? That's a long way to go."

"It is. Once Long Shot's over, the 120th will establish a base of operations there. Anna says ENCOMM wants to put more pressure on the marine bases at Beslan and Amokran. Like the Branxtons, the Velmars are karst-millions of hectares of limestone, countless caves, and none of it mapped by anyone-so I'm hoping they'll be safe. Can't say I'm happy about it, though, not that there's much I can do about it. Did I tell you Anna's been promoted?"

"What, again?" Sedova said, eyebrows arched in surprise. "That has to be a record."

"Maybe, but when you have to throw back an attack involving a hundred thousand Hammer marines, you end up a bit short of officers. She's a captain now, second in command of First Battalion's H Company."

"Jeez. She's going to end up running the whole damn NRA the way she's going, but H Company? That's good, isn't it?"

"You'd think so. I assume a headquarters company is a safer place to be. Knowing Anna, though…"

Sedova nodded. "She likes a fight, that one."

"She does," Michael said. "I keep telling her to keep her head down, and she just tells me to piss off. I wish-"

"Listen to me, Michael," Sedova said, chopping him off. "Anna believes in what she's doing, and she's a Fed, so she'll do things the best way she knows how. Leave it at that and let the fates decide how this whole shitty business turns out. Just do your job. What more can you do?"

"I know, I know. You're right, not that it makes things any easier."

"No, it doesn't. I have the same problems with my man. Never thought I'd feel that way about another human, never mind a Hammer."

"Shouldn't that be ex-Hammer, Nationalist, or whatever?" Michael said.

"You know what I mean. Anyway, that's enough of this soul-searching. Where the hell are Cortez and the rest of his team? The tug's due any minute."

"I'll go check," Michael said. "You chase up the tug. General Vaas will kick our asses if we hold things up."

"All stations, this is command," Kat Sedova said. "We're at the departure point, and the tug is disconnecting now. So faceplates down and make sure you're well strapped in. Don't have to tell you that this could get rough. Command out."

Michael took a sip of water to moisten bone-dry lips before slapping the plasglass faceplate of his helmet down into position. He hated being tucked away down in the cargo bay with nothing better to do than to keep an eye on the three very unhappy people seated opposite him.

Unhappy was an understatement. Nothing would have prepared them for the ordeal to come. Major Hok's face was dead white, her lips compressed to a single laser-thin line, and General Cortez looked as if he was about to lose his last meal, his eyes casting left and right in an endless hunt as if looking for a way out. The Nationalists' political affairs commissioner, Shalini Prashad, a scrawny woman with stringy brown hair that hung down to bony shoulders, already looked dead: hunched down in her seat, unmoving, head down, eyes closed, face a death-mask gray.

Not that he felt much better. His body was doing what it always did before combat: His stomach seethed and boiled and churned with a fear-fueled fire that stabbed acid up into his throat, his chest had tightened to a point where breathing became labored, his mouth had dried to dust, and his face was slick with a thin veneer of sweat.

"How are you doing, General?" Michael forced himself to say.

"Kraa's blood," Cortez croaked. "I did not join the NRA for this."

"Nor me," Hok muttered. "I never liked landers."

Michael smiled. "Don't worry about it, sirs," he said, forcing a cheery confidence into his voice. "Hell Bent is a good machine, Sedova's a good pilot, and Long Shot is a good plan. We'll be fine."

"Don't bullshit me, Lieutenant," Cortez growled. "I've sat through every sim of this mission. I know the odds of us surviving, and they are a lot less than I'd like them to be."

Michael's stomach churned some more; Cortez was dead right. "Sims always overstate the risks, General. That's why we use them: to make sure that we don't take things for granted, that we are ready for every eventuality." For chrissakes, shut up, Michael told himself, conscious he was beginning to sound like a salesman.

"Humph," was Hok's response. Cortez looked sick. Prashad moaned softly but still did not move.

Michael decided that anything he said would only make everyone more stressed. No matter what the sims said, deep down Michael had faith in the operational plan. Thanks to the chaos inside the Hammer military, he was pretty sure their response would be slow, ill coordinated, and in effective.

Who needs the NRA? Michael wondered. Chief Councillor Polk was doing a great job wiping out the Hammer's armed forces all on his own.

"All stations, this is command. Stand by… launching now."

Hell Bent's main engines burst into life to kick the lander from its hiding place with a heavy metallic thud up and out into the rain-lashed air of late evening. Then Sedova rammed the engines to emergency power and turned hard away from the portal's rock walls, foamalloy wings deploying as the lander accelerated down the valley, speed building fast through Mach 1 and beyond, faster and faster until Michael's hands locked onto the armrest of his seat in a death grip, hypnotized by the awful sight of rock walls screaming past in a blur of limestone so close that the lander's wingtips looked certain to hit. The forest beneath Hell Bent's nose was speed-smeared into a chaotic mess of greens and browns and grays, on and on, the lander twisting and turning to follow the valley south.

Michael switched his neuronics to the threat plot, unable to watch anymore. He knew to the last second what Hell Bent and the rest of the forces involved in Long Shot should be doing. What he did not know was how the Hammers would react. Nobody did.

If the Hammers got it right, if they destroyed the lander before it reached the safety of pinchspace, Long Shot was over. The Hammers would crush the Federated Worlds and the rest of humanspace, system after system after system blasted into the maw of a rampant Hammer empire by the irresistible force of antimatter weapons until all that was good and decent and honest had vanished.