Vaas. Urgent message for Mutti Vaas. Please respond, over.'
'Screw it,' he muttered under his breath. The comsats transmitted on all the frequencies Fed intelligence said the NRA used for tactical communications, but was anybody listening?
'NRA, NRA, this is Helfort, Helfort. Personal message for Mutti-'
A man replied. 'Unknown station calling NRA. Identify yourself.' The flattened vowels, chopped syllables, and staccato delivery were pure Hammer. Michael shivered at the flood of memories the words triggered.
'NRA, this is Michael Helfort,' he replied. 'Mutti Vaas knows me. Stand by burst transmission, but I need authentication. Send me the name of the man who took me to see Vaas and I'll transmit.'
After a brief pause, the voice responded. 'Understood. Stand by, out.'
Michael sat back. Telling the NRA what he was doing was not mission-critical, but if he was ever to bring Vaas onside, he needed to be open and up front. 'Update, Jayla,' he said, scanning the threat plot, which was thick with the red icons of Hammer air-defense radars.
'All landers on reentry vector, all systems nominal. You can see'-she waved a space-suited hand at the plot-'that there's one hell of a lot of radar and missile activity, but that's what we planned for. What matters is that so far none of them are showing any interest in us. The Hammers are doing what we expected.'
'Wasting missiles hacking big, useless lumps of metal out of the sky, you mean?' Michael said with a grin.
Ferreira grinned back. 'Precisely, and by the thousand. It's worse than chaos. We've overloaded them. What's left of poor old Red River is getting some attention. The Hammers fired an entire salvo of Gomers into what was left of her.'
'Better Red River than us,' Michael said; at the mention of Gomers, something cold grabbed his heart and squeezed. Big, fast, and agile, the Hammer's Gomer hypersonic air-defense missiles were lethally dangerous. A lander's chances against one were not good; Michael prayed and prayed hard that the Hammers stayed distracted long enough for them to get close to the dirt.
Michael forced himself to relax. Either Widowmaker made it or a missile hacked her out of space, and no amount of worrying would change anything.
'Passing 90,000 meters,' Mother said matter-of-factly. 'Stand by pitch up.'
Michael braced himself; the lander's nose lifted, the 40-degree angle of attack putting Widowmaker's hull belly- into the air ripping past the hull with such force that the lander's artificial gravity struggled to compensate for the g forces generated.
With terrible slowness, the lander's speed bled off and the altimeter unwound the meters.
'Tac, you ready?' Michael asked.
'Decoy on standby, sir.'
'Roger.'
Ignoring standard operating procedures, Mother tipped the nose of the lander over until the forward holocams filled with an endless rumpled mat of ugly cloud, the top of the tropical depression sitting across McNair painted a dirty gray-black by the low-light optronics processors. 'Holy shit,' he whispered, his gloved hands squeezing the arms of his seat with desperate force. Trailed by Alley Kat and Hell Bent, Widowmaker plummeted down in a desperate race to get clear of the Gomers' engagement envelope before the Hammers started to wonder why some of the crap falling out of the skies was not in free fall.
Michael watched the altimeter unwind with frightening speed; with one eye on the altimeter, he started to reach for the side stick controller-Widowmaker was frighteningly close to the sea-when Mother lifted the nose sharply and fired Widowmaker's fusion plants to emergency power. Every gram of thrust was diverted to the lander's belly thrusters in a desperate attempt to slow its reckless rush into the ocean, foamalloy wings rammed out into the rushing air to help brake the fall.
An instant later, the lander plunged out of the murk into the rain-lashed darkness of a Commitment night. 'Too fast, too fast,' Michael hissed; without knowing it, he steeled himself for the inevitable.
'Brace, brace, brace,' Ferreira shouted, the altimeter still unwinding at a sickening rate: 600, 500, 400, 300, 200, 150, 100, 90, 85, 80… Michael allowed himself to breathe again only when the lander slowed to a halt. Mother had stopped Widowmaker only 75 meters above the sea, its mass sitting on top of twin plumes of flame that boiled seawater into huge, roiling clouds of steam ripped away by the gale into the night. 'Nice one, Mother,' he whispered. It had been a beautifully executed, if terrifying, piece of lander flying.
If Mother had been at all concerned, she refused to let it show. 'Transitioning,' she said calmly, warping the lander's variable-geometry wings for maximum lift. Dropping the nose, she progressively shifted power away from the thrusters and back to the main engines, accelerating Widowmaker hard out of the hover and into winged flight. 'Closing to take station on Alley Kat,' the AI said.
'Command, roger,' Michael said, his voice shaking, the full realization of just how close to disaster the Widowmaker had come beginning to sink in. If they'd had Gomers to deal with as well, who knew how they would have survived. 'Confirm when on track and let me know our estimated time of arrival at Point Lima.'
'Roger.'
He checked the command plot, happy to see Alley Kat and Hell Bent on track and heading for Camp J-5209. Then he scanned the threat plot; it was thick with the icons of radio frequency intercepts-it seemed that the Hammers had every radar they owned operating at full power-but for once, every intercept had been downgraded to a comforting orange. Widowmaker was now all but invisible thanks to the appalling weather and her active stealth systems, the enormous plumes of incandescent gas pouring from her main engines screened from view by the impenetrable cloud cover overhead. Michael suppressed the urge to laugh. Here they were, flying deep inside Hammer space-any deeper and they would be underwater-and the threat plot showed not one red icon. That had to be a first; for the moment at least, they were safe.
In close formation, Alley Kat and Hell Bent ran on ahead of Widowmaker, the landers invisible, the only sign of their passing twin trails of wave tops shredded white by the shock wave from the landers as their massive hulls bludgeoned their way through the rain-filled night. When Widowmaker's AI eased the lander over to pass Alley Kat, Michael commed Sedova.
'Had us worried there for a while,' Sedova said. 'We were sure you guys were going to take an unscheduled bath.'
'Wasn't a good moment, Kat, I have to say.'
'I bet. All systems are nominal, and we're on track. We'll hit 5209 on schedule.'
'How are my marines?'
'The usual,' Sedova said with a grin. 'Complaining about the ride and busting for a fight. I don't envy the Hammers. Kallewi and his marines will tear them new ones.'
Michael laughed. 'You don't say? You've copied our systems status?'
'Have, sir. Pleased to see you'll be able to do your bit after all.'
'Don't be cheeky, Lieutenant Sedova. Anyway, good luck. Widowmaker, out.'
When he dropped the comm, Michael glanced at Ferreira. 'You okay?'
'Apart from nearly shitting myself, yes, I think so.'
'Know what you mean,' Michael said. 'Hold on while I update the troops. All stations, command. Well, folks, we're good to go, and there are no changes to the ops plan. At the moment we are about 60 kilometers to the southeast of McNair, heading east. In two minutes' time, we'll cross the coast. There we'll leave Alley Kat and Hell Bent to head for the lay-up point, Point Lima, to drop off Chief Bienefelt and her team before rejoining the rest of the team for the final assault on the camp. Command, out.'
Michael settled back, happy to leave Widowmaker in the capable hands of Mother, the lander rattling and banging its way through the turbulence toward the coast.
Bienefelt commed him. 'Command, LALO leader.'
'Command. Why so formal, Matti?'
'Just wanted to say, sir, that if you ever put me through anything like this again, I'll… I'll, well, I'll just have to do something about it,' she finished lamely.
'Sorry, Chief,' Michael said, grinning, 'but it can't be helped. Anyway, the lander's fine, I'm fine, and so, by the sounds of it, are you.'
'Yeah, yeah,' Bienefelt grumbled.
'Joking aside, you set?'
'Yes, sir. All drop pods are nominal, and the sooner you can get us all on the ground, the better.'
