make it home one day had kept him going, her quiet strength fueling his determination to hang in no matter what the Hammers and a hostile planet threw at them. Now he would have to do it on his own. How, he had absolutely no idea.
For a long, long time he sat there mourning her loss.
At last he knew it was time to go. With great care, he closed Yazdi’s eyes and crossed her arms on her chest. He pulled the chromaflage cape up to cover a face now strangely peaceful. He hated the thought of some damn wild animal tearing her apart, so patiently and methodically, he collected stones and rocks to cover her body, small ones to start with, then larger and larger until the hollow was filled in and she could sleep undisturbed. Finally, he took his knife and, using a stone, slowly and with great care hammered out her epitaph in crude uneven letters on the rock.
MR0854771 CORPORAL NOORANGIZ YAZDI FWMC
KILLED IN ACTION DECEMBER 20, 2399
A TRUE COMRADE
An age later his fingers were in agony from the hammering, but he was finished. He sat back to have a look. He nodded. It was good. It was not much, but it was all he could give her.
Picking up packs and gun, and putting his chromaflage cape over his head, he crawled out of the hollow. Standing up, and with a quick look to make sure the valley was still deserted, he turned and walked away a few meters before stopping. Turning, he made absolutely sure he would know where to come back to. Then, as he looked down at Yazdi’s grave, its headstone another rock on a lonely hillside, he swore an oath.
He would not rest until the Hammer was destroyed. Completely and utterly.
“Sleep well, Corporal Yazdi,” he said softly, his eyes filling with tears. “We will be back to take you home. I promise.”
Michael turned and climbed on. He never looked back. Five minutes later, with the rain that had been threatening all day finally settling into a thin sleeting drizzle, he crossed the saddle Yazdi had died trying so hard to reach and dropped into the next valley.
He was going north to McNair. How he would get there, what he would do if he did make it, he had no idea. He could not think of anything better to do, so McNair it was. Head down to protect his face from rain that was slanting down hard and cold, he set off.
Thursday, December 23, 2399, UD
Ripped from nightmare-riddled sleep by a callused hand clamped across his mouth, Michael started violently. The knife held to his throat was already drawing blood.
“Move and you die,” a voice hissed in his ear.
With an effort, Michael made himself relax.
“That’s much better,” the voice whispered, the hand lifting slightly. “Who are you?”
“Who’s asking?”
Michael winced as the point of the knife went in deeper.
“Smart-ass! Who are you?”
Suddenly Michael was too tired to care anymore. Whoever owned the voice, it did not sound like a DocSec trooper.
“Junior Lieutenant Helfort, FC0216885, Federated Worlds Space Fleet. And who the fuck are you?” he added belligerently.
The man laughed softly. “Aha!” he whispered. “Now, Junior Lieutenant Helfort, there’s a Hammer marine recon patrol due to walk right across you in about thirty minutes, and I strongly suggest you don’t want to be here when that happens. So get your stuff and follow me.”
“But who-”
“Later. Just call me Uzuma. Come on!”
Still groggy, Michael stumbled around, picking up the gear he had scattered around the small hollow the previous night; his gun had gone. He’d barely had time to eat the meager meal he’d allowed himself from his fast- dwindling reserves before passing out. The effort of a long forced march over broken hilly ground had been too much for his overworked, underfed, and badly abused body. He had started at last light and had kept going throughout a long Commitment night until he could walk no more. Even with some sleep, a desperate tiredness still threatened to overwhelm him, the grinding fatigue evidence of how hard he had pushed himself.
Moments later, they were off, and Michael had to struggle to keep up with the relentless pace set by the vague chromaflageshrouded shape ahead of him. With a shock, he realized as he looked around that the man was not alone. In the gloom, he could see more dark shapes, mostly armed with what looked like standard-issue Hammer assault rifles. But there was one with a heavy machine gun slung casually over one shoulder and another carrying what was unmistakably a small missile launcher with a four-round reload pack on his back.
Who in God’s name were these people?
Endless hours later, Michael collapsed onto the ground as his captors finally called a halt. The group holed up in a cave Michael had not spotted until they were right on top of it.
To Michael’s surprise, they had not stopped at dawn. They had marched on well into the day, seemingly unconcerned about being caught in the open in broad daylight. Apart from two brief halts, one to eat and one to wait as a wandering surveillance drone meandered slowly past overhead, they had not stopped. They did not stop even when a battlesat’s laser incinerated something high on the hillside above them, the splitting crack making Michael cringe; his captors’ confidence in the effectiveness of chromaflage capes was not something he shared.
Now, finally, they had stopped. Michael did not bother with food. A quick drink, and then, crushed by fatigue, he found a quiet spot at the back of the cave and without a word lay down. He was asleep in seconds.
Warily, Michael opened his eyes.
Without moving his head, he looked cautiously around. Except for a single dim chemstick, the cave was dark, its floor covered by huddled sleeping shapes. Michael got up slowly, trying to ignore the pain in overworked legs as he crept carefully down the cave. Ducking past a blanket screening the cave from the outside world, he almost fell over a man crouching over a small holovid linked to a couple of low-light holocams that had been set up to watch the approaches to the cave.
The man looked up. It was Uzuma.
“Not thinking of leaving, are we?”
Michael shook his head. “State my legs are in, I wouldn’t get far. No. I need to take a leak.”
Uzuma pointed back into the cave. “Go back in as far as you can. Come out here when you’re done. We need to talk. I’ll get you something to eat and drink. It’s going to be another hard day.”
Hooray, Michael thought. Just what he and his tortured body needed: another hard day to add to the endless stream of hard days that had started when he had banged out of the dying
Five minutes later, Uzuma watched silently as Michael, suddenly ravenous, tore into the food in front of him. Surprisingly, it was good and not at all what he had expected the raggedy-assed mob he had fallen in with to be eating: some sort of spiced flatbread stuffed with meat and peppers washed down with a thick, slightly sweet drink that seemed to recharge his body instantly. It was better than anything he had had in a long time. Hunger finally sated, he sat back and belched softly. Uzuma laughed.
“Feeling better, I take it.”
“Oh, yeah,” Michael responded gratefully. “Much, thanks.”
“Well, Michael, make the most of it. We don’t often eat that well. Now, down to business.”
“Shoot.”
“We’ve been following you for a few days. For a skinny little runt, you sure work hard. Must be that fancy Fed
