With a start, Polk realized how dumb he must look. He turned to the latest in a long line of commanders in chief standing alongside him, his face drawn tight with shock.
'How, Admiral Belasz? How could this have happened?'
Belasz licked his lips; Polk could see a small tic working under the man's left eye. Given that his predecessor had been consigned to a DocSec lime pit for the last disaster, he had every right to be nervous.
'Well, sir,' Belasz said, choosing his words with great care, 'overwhelming force directed with great precision is how. If the Feds choose to drop hundreds of thousands of tons of armored heavy cruiser onto us, I'm afraid there's very little we can do to stop them. That much mass moving that fast…' Balasz shrugged his shoulders. 'It's unstoppable.'
Polk resisted the urge to have the man arrested on the spot. 'They'd waste ships doing that?' he demanded. 'Why? It makes no sense, especially given they are so short of frontline units.'
'We don't know the answer to that, sir,' Belasz said, 'and I agree it doesn't make sense. Yes, they've caused us great damage, but it's all to the PGDF. They haven't reduced Fleet's capacity to wage war on them in any way. I'm sorry, sir. I wish we knew, but it's a mystery, and without the crews of the three ships to tell us, we may never work it out.'
'Do we know the names of the ships?'
'Yes, sir. We do. They were three R-Class heavy cruisers: Redwood, Red River, and Redress.'
Polk swung around. 'Redwood!' he barked. 'Did you say Redwood?'
The raw ferocity in Polk's voice made Belasz flinch. 'Yes, sir,' he stammered. 'Redwood was one the ships destroyed in the attack. It hit Perkins.'
Redwood, Kraa damn it! With a terrible, cold certainly it all made sense to Polk. 'Admiral, get your people to confirm the status of J-5209.'
'J-5209?' Belasz said with a frown. 'The prisoner of war camp? I don't under-'
'Yes, you imbecile. J-5209, the Fed prisoner-of-war camp. Now!'
'Yes, sir.'
Belasz returned a minute later. 'J-5209 was attacked shortly after the three PGDF bases were hit. Fed landers took out the defenses before leaving with all the Fed prisoners. Kingfisher fighters from Ojan took them out off the coast southwest of McNair. We found no survivors.'
Polk was silent. Redwood meant Helfort; it had to be him. Who else would have staged such an elaborate diversionary attack? Who else had enough of a motive? So why would he go to all that trouble only to die in the storm-wracked seas, victim of the Kingfishers' Alaric missiles and of a complete lack of fallback planning? It was not like Helfort at all; that meant…
'Admiral.'
'Yes, sir?'
'Humor me,' Polk said. 'I'm not convinced. When the weather allows, I want the crash site checked again, including a seabed survey this time. I want concrete proof those landers were shot down, and I want it soon.'
Belasz's eyes opened wide in surprise. 'Yes, sir. Will be done.'
'Good. Keep me informed.' Polk waved his chief of staff over. 'I've seen enough.'
'Yes, sir.'
As his flier climbed away, leaving behind a scene of utter desolation, Polk patched through a call to Viktor Solomatin.
'Anything from the Feds?' he asked when the unlovely face of his councillor for foreign relations appeared in his personal holovid.
'Yes, sir. In short, they are claiming that rogue elements acting outside the Federated Worlds' chain of command were responsible for the attack. Details to follow.'
'I take it, Councillor, that you are not convinced?'
'Me?' Solomatin said with a scowl. 'No, I'm not. I think it's the usual Fed bullshit. They planned it, they executed it, and in some way they intend to profit from it. How, we have no idea, but rogue elements? The Feds? Never!'
'Okay, Councillor. Let's wait for their full response before we do anything. That's all.'
Polk cut the call, Solomatin's openmouthed surprise at Polk's evenhanded reaction fading away into nothingness. He stared out of the window as the flier approached McNair, the city's ugly sprawl reaching out to meet them.
'Chief Councillor?' his chief of staff said.
'Yes?'
'Councillor de Mel for you, sir.'
'Okay. Yes, Councillor, what can I do for you?'
'Word of the attack on the PGDF bases is out, sir. The NRA is claiming responsibility, of course, so the mobs have hit the streets. Faith's particularly bad. DocSec's gone to red alert for all cities and towns across all three systems. I think it's going to be a bad forty-eight hours, Chief Councillor.'
'Fine,' Polk said with a dismissive wave of the hand. 'Keep me informed.'
'One more thing, sir,' de Mel said with a small shake of his head, openly puzzled by Polk's lack of interest.
'What?'
'Like I said, sir, DocSec thinks we're in for a bad forty-eight hours, and I agree. They've asked for marine backup, but General Baxter is refusing to move even a single marine without an operational directive from the Defense Council.'
Polk almost shrugged his shoulders-right now, he could not care less what Baxter might or might not be doing- but thought better of it. He had to act his part in the elaborate charade that was Hammer politics even if all that mattered to him right now was the undeniable fact that Helfort had rubbed his face in dog shit again. 'I'll convene an emergency meeting of the Council,' he said. 'You'll get your marines.'
'Thank you, sir,' de Mel said, the relief obvious.
'Anything else?'
'No, sir. I'll keep you posted.'
'You do that, Councillor. You do that.'
Why do I bother? Polk asked himself. Not even twenty-four hours earlier, he had the Hammer Worlds and its tangled affairs as much under control as any one human being could. Now one man, one small, insignificant man, had thrown a huge monkey wrench into the works, leaving him thrashing around in a vain attempt to stay on top of things.
Was this his fate, he asked, doomed to reach out for the things that mattered to him, to the Worlds, only to have lowlife scum like Helfort rip them from his grasp? If it was, he said to himself, what in Kraa's name was the point of being chief councillor? Friday, September 21, 2401, UD Branxton Ranges, Commitment
It had been an hour since they broke camp, and Michael's left leg was letting him know it resented the punishing pace. Uphill or down, nothing seemed to bother Farsi and his patrol; the pace was the same: fast, relentless, a five-minute break every hour the only respite. Still Farsi refused to say how much farther they had to go: 'You'll know when we get there' was all he ever said, every other question treated the same way, with a silent shrug of the shoulders. Michael had tried to get Farsi's second in command, T'chavliki, to talk, but she was just as uncommunicative. The rest of the patrol was no better; all day they marched in complete silence.
'So be it,' Michael muttered while he followed Adrissa through trees filling the bottom of a narrow gully that climbed to a small crest before, presumably, it dropped away into yet another valley. Of the Hammers there had been no sign; judging by Farsi's relaxed attitude to patrol discipline-all he seemed to care about was maintaining the pace-there would not be. Kallewi had asked Farsi about the Hammers; true to form, Farsi's reply had been yet another shrug of the shoulders.
So the day wore on, the routine unfaltering, the pace unyielding, until only the fast-fading dregs of willpower kept Michael moving, hoping against hope that the day might finish and soon. His left leg had long since dissolved into a molten mass of white-hot pain, and it demanded every gram of willpower he possessed to keep up, his eyes locked on Adrissa's back. She marched ahead of him, troubled by neither the pace nor the hours. How did she do it? he wondered. The bloody woman had been locked up in a prison camp for months, for chrissakes.
Farsi's fist lifted ten long, hard hours after they had set off but only minutes before Michael knew he would have to fall out. Without a word, the man turned and waved everyone off the path they had been following through
