at one of the well-cushioned cane chairs arranged in the shade of a huge, spreading fig tree. 'Drink?'
'Beer, make it two, and make it quick,' the man said, easing himself into a chair with a grunt of relief, fleshy fingers wiping away the sweat beaded under black-bagged eyes. 'Jeez, Jeremiah, this town of yours is hot. Can't understand why anybody would want to live here.'
Polk's eyes narrowed. He did not like the Kallian one bit. The man was rude, intemperate, interested only in money, and happy to tell anyone who cared to listen that the Hammer of Kraa was a crock of shit. Worst of all, he was not frightened by Polk and they both knew it.
If van Luderen had not been one of only two men he trusted to keep the far-flung pieces of what he called his retirement fund connected, Polk would have had him shot, off-worlder or not. He waited in silence until the drinkbot delivered the man's beers.
The first beer was gone in seconds; picking up the second, van Luderen belched softly as he smacked the empty bottle down onto the table. 'That's better. You wanted to see me?'
'I did,' Polk said. 'I have a consignment for you.'
'Oh? Wondered why you'd dragged me all this way. Still, it's your money.'
'Yes, Marten,' Polk said through gritted teeth. 'It is my money.' He pushed a battered briefcase over to van Luderen. 'Here's 250 million dollars in stored-value cards.'
'Ah,' van Luderen said, eyes lighting up, 'now I see why you wanted me to come to this asshole of a planet.'
'Watch it, Marten,' Polk growled.
'Yeah, yeah, whatever,' van Luderen said. 'Why so much?'
'Insurance.'
'Insurance?' van Luderen said with a skeptical frown. 'Things not going so well, eh?'
'No, the exact opposite. Things are going extremely well.'
'That's not what I hear, Jeremiah. Those Feds have been giving your people a lot of grief, the NRA's doing well, and most of those poor suckers you call your loyal citizens want the Nationalists to take over. Doesn't sound to me like things are going well at all.'
'You are misinformed, Marten,' Polk said. 'A few minor setbacks, that's all. Trust me. Things are going well.'
'You think so?' van Luderen said. 'I have very good sources. They don't think things are so good. The way I see it, there's something you're not telling me.'
'Maybe, maybe not,' Polk said. 'If you need to know something, I'll tell you.'
'Okay,' van Luderen said with a shrug. 'I think you've just given me millions of reasons for thinking things are not going well, but maybe I'm wrong.'
'You are, Marten, you are. Like I said, it's just insurance. Now, I want that money working for me, not sitting in some trust account. Any ideas?'
'Oh, yes,' van Luderen said, throwing off the mantle of indifference and disinterest, his eyes sparkling into sudden life. 'Oh, yes.'
'So tell me.'
'Get me another beer and I'll tell you about the Buranan Federation and a cozy little cartel that's making so much money, it's indecent. I think with 250 million to play with, we can make them an offer they won't refuse even if they are not going to like it very much.'
'One beer coming up.'
'Make it two, Jeremiah, make it two. Fuck, this poxy place is hot!' Wednesday, November 14, 2401, UD Sector Oscar, Branxton Base, Commitment
The final briefing for the crews of the three Fed landers broke up in the usual welter of conversation. Sedova leaned over. 'Hope this one gets a better result than the last time the NRA visited Perdan.'
Michael nodded. 'Let's hope so.'
He wanted desperately for Operation Tappet to be a success, if only to douse the smoldering embers of doubt that so troubled him. Had the whole Commitment business been the biggest mistake of his life? He hoped not. Not that Sedova and Acharya seemed to share his doubts; few of the Feds did. If the two command pilots were any guide, most had seized the chance to inflict some serious damage on the Hammers with both hands, any doubts they might have had had been swamped by the relentless pace of operations. True, the Fed landers had had a golden run. They had completed almost fifty operations, destroying targets right across the hinterland around McNair in slashing hit-and-run operations that minimized the risks they faced from the Hammer's air-defense Kingfishers and their Alaric missiles.
There was a problem, though, a problem that the Feds, absorbed in the business of killing Hammers, were happy to ignore. Hit-and-run operations were fine, but only up to a point; they had their limitations, too.
They made the Hammer's lives miserable. They encouraged the never-ending plague of civil disobedience all across the Hammer Worlds. They eroded morale in the Hammer military. They sapped DocSec's confidence.
But hit-and-run operations could never end this war. That happy day would come only when the NRA broke out of the Branxtons and took McNair. In theory at least, today's operation was the next step in that long and bloody process. This time, for the first time, the Fed landers were not running diversionary attacks; ENCOMM intended them to be an integral part of the operation to take Perdan from the Hammers and keep hold of it in the face of a furious and sustained Hammer counterattack.
Privately, Michael was increasingly persuaded that the NRA had little chance of succeeding. Yes, they would take Perdan. It was garrisoned by planetary defense troops, and they had no stomach for the NRA's shock tactics. So Perdan would fall to the NRA; Michael was sure of it. Great propaganda for the NRA and the Nationalists but a military dead end. To cap it all, Anna and the 120th would be in the thick of it, which was fine, but this operation, like all the others, would end the same way: The Hammers would send in reinforcements, backed up by ground- attack fliers, and take it back.
With a quiet prayer that he would be proved wrong, that Operation Tappet-the most complex, far-ranging, and ambitious operation ENCOMM had ever planned-would deliver and that Anna would come back alive, Michael followed the rest of the Fed lander crews out of the briefing room.
Widowmaker sat waiting for him, its massive brooding shape filling the tunnel. Michael patted it affectionately before he started his preflight walk-around. Strictly speaking, the whole business was unnecessary-Widowmaker's AIs had already told him everything worth knowing about the lander's flight status-but he was old-fashioned. He liked to see things for himself, so he walked around, checking everything he could see and touch.
The lander-brand new when delivered to Redwood-was fast losing its pristine good looks, the ceramsteel armor scarred by shrapnel from Hammer missiles that had come too close. They had been lucky; none had made it past the lander's defenses, thankfully, but for how much longer? The Hammers must be getting very pissed by now, and in Michael's experience, pissed people could be very creative. Somebody out there would be spending a great deal of time and effort trying to work out a way to hack the Fed landers out of the sky.
Michael worked his way methodically around and underneath the lander before climbing the ladder to check the upper hull. It was a tight squeeze, the armored blisters housing Widowmaker's electronic warfare equipment and defensive lasers close to scraping the roof of the limestone tunnel. A quick scan confirmed that nothing was untoward. Widowmaker was in good shape: not the 100 percent he wanted, more like 95 percent, but with the nearest Fed heavy maintenance team hundreds of light-years away, that had to suffice. A final check confirmed that the tug assigned to drag the lander to its new launch position was hooked up and ready to go. Michael commed Ferreira.
'Sir?' she replied.
'My walk-around's done,' he said. 'No surprises. Okay to confirm we're ready to go?'
'Affirmative. All systems are nominal except the port cooling pump. It's holding up, but Chief Fodor says don't be surprised if it blows.'
'Roger, that. I think we'll have to strip it out after this mission. I don't fancy flying ops on one engine. Call us in when ready to launch,' he said. 'And while you're at it, download any crew mail.'
'Uh, ENCOMM won't like that, sir,' Ferreira said. 'We're only authorized to access operations bandwidth.'
'Screw it,' Michael said; the NRA's rules were too petty for him to worry about. 'Just do it. Who knows,' he added, 'you might have something from that ugly NRA captain who's been stalking you.'
Ferreira face creased into an indignant scowl. 'Sir!' she spluttered. 'Captain N'duma isn't ugly. Well, yes he is…
