'Well, for not having faith in ENCOMM, that's why. I know they'll throw troopers at the Hammers, but the sacrifice has to be justified by the payoff, so trying to hold on to a town like this… well, Vaas and his staff aren't that dumb.'
'They're not? What happened to all that 'hold at all costs' stuff they included in our briefing?'
Anna snorted. 'Window dressing.'
'Had us fooled,' Michael muttered.
'Can't be helped; it was meant to, and if it convinces the Hammers, fooling a dim-witted Fed flyboy will have been well worth it.'
Michael did not know whether to laugh or scream, so he contented himself with a stern look. 'Anna! Tell me what the plan is or I'll… I'll…'
'What, flyboy? What will you do?' Anna said, her face lit by a mischievous grin. 'Do tell.'
'Anna, please,' Michael said, trying with no success to keep the pleading out of his voice. 'I hate it when you do this to me. Come on! I've been worried sick about you.'
'Okay, okay. Simple fact is we're not staying here. We're not going to try to hold Perdan.'
'What? You're not?'
'No, we're not. See them over there?' she said, pointing at a small collection of plasfiber crates.
'Yeah. Mortar rounds, judging from their markings. So?'
'They're not what they seem. Each one of those holds a nasty little NRA invention. They call it the area denial weapon, ADW for short.'
'Never heard of it.'
'Nor had we until last week. Here, let me send you some vid. It shows one in action.'
Half closing his eyes, Michael ran the vid Anna commed him. The clip started with a close-up shot of what looked like a large beach ball, its silver skin marred by mounting brackets and junction boxes sprouting a mix of power and data cables. It looked familiar, but try as he might, Michael could not work out what it was. Four pairs of hands reached into frame and, with an obvious effort, lifted the ball bodily and dropped it onto a foamalloy insert inside a case. A pair of hands connected a cluster of wires coming from a small gray box mounted inside the case to wires from the beach ball, then put a foam-padded lid in place. The image pulled back to a long shot as the handlers withdrew; Michael now saw that the box was sitting alone in a small clearing surrounded by trees. A voice started a countdown. At zero, the holocam shook violently, overwhelmed by a savage flash of white. When vision returned, Michael was shocked to see the results: For hundreds of meters all around, trees had been stripped of their leaves, trunks flayed back to bare wood, smaller branches torn off and hurled outward.
'Holy shit,' Michael said, stunned. 'What is that?'
'Neat, eh? That, my flyboy friend, was a microfusion plant stripped out of a truckbot. Impressive, eh?'
'You're kidding me!'
'No, I'm not. Hammers must have been confused, wondering why so many truckbots have been stolen in the last few months.'
'How the hell were they shipped in? You can't backpack them in. They weigh a ton.' Something clicked. 'Oh, shit,' he said. 'Don't tell me. Those containers we brought in this morning. They weren't… Tell me Widowmaker hasn't airlifted in tons of stolen mobibot microfusion plants. Please tell me.'
'Yeah, you did.' Anna grinned and nodded her head. 'You're not so dumb, after all.'
Michael's head went down. 'Oh,' was all he could say.
There was a long silence while Michael struggled to decide whether to be angry at the NRA's deceit or impressed by its ingenuity. Since he and the rest of Widowmaker's crew had survived-how he had no idea; the Hammers had a relaxed attitude to safety, and their truckbot engineering was a good fifty years behind the Fed's-he picked the latter.
'I think I get it now,' he said at last. 'Perdan is seeded with the nasty little fuckers, especially around the airport. Meanwhile, convinced that the NRA will fight to the death, the Hammers scrape together all the troops and armor they can lay their hands on. Just before they attack, the NRA sneaks away, leaving behind some brave sucker to fire the ADWs. The Hammers discover Perdan is theirs, walk in, put landers down after their combat engineers have made sure the city isn't littered with claymores-nobody would think to worry about old mortar boxes-and then, while they are all standing around scratching their nuts, wondering what the hell the NRA was playing at… bingo. Up go the ADWs, taking with them the best part of the Perdan relief force.'
'There you are,' Anna said. 'I keep telling everyone you're not as dumb as you look!'
'You are a heartless bitch, Lieutenant Anna Helfort.'
'Respect, flyboy, respect. Trooper Anna Cheung Helfort, please.'
'Sorry,' Michael said.
'Come on, help me up here. Once I've checked in with the medics, I need to get back. Don't want my section leader thinking I'm loafing.'
Late that night, Michael lay alongside Anna, the pair of them curled under her chromaflage cape, incessant rain driving cold out of an overcast sky, fingers of water worming their way past his defenses to soak into his clothes. It was miserable, and Michael would not have swapped it for anything.
For the umpteenth time, he wondered about ENCOMM's plan for Perdan. If the deception held, the NRA was going to hand the Hammers their bloodiest defeat ever. It was a breath-takingly ambitious plan, and Michael prayed with every fiber of his body that it worked.
But…
For all its ingenuity, for all the damage it would do, for all the lives it would snuff out, the victory ENCOMM hoped to achieve at Perdan spoke volumes for the fundamental weaknesses of the NRA, weaknesses that condemned them never to be able to hold their battlefield gains outside the Branxtons. That was what troubled Michael to the point where a corrosive mix of self-doubt and guilt was beginning to eat away at him.
Even if the Hammers recaptured Perdan, even if its recapture cost the Hammers thousands of PGDF and marine lives, ENCOMM's victory would be a hollow one; it would contribute nothing to ending the war. Tuesday, November 20, 2401, UD Perdan, Commitment
A shape slithered out of the darkness. 'Helfort,' it whispered.
Michael started to reply before realizing belatedly that he was not the only Helfort around.
'Yes, Corp?' Anna said.
'Pull back to Papa Golf in five minutes,' the shape said softly. 'You're the last to leave in this sector, so for Kraa's sake, keep quiet. The Hammers have settled down for the night, and we want it to stay that way. Trip wires and claymores set?'
'Yes, Corp. All armed.'
'Good. Five minutes.'
'Roger that.' The figure slithered away. 'Michael,' Anna said. 'You ready?'
'Yes,' Michael said, trying not to think about the fact that less than 500 meters separated where he and Anna were holed up and the Hammer's forward defenses-a shifting chain of slugs backed up by sensors linked to fixed defenses: mines, claymores, autofiring cannon, and microgrenade launchers all programmed to scour the ground clean of anything that moved. Behind them, dug in along the banks of a small stream, was a battalion of PGDF soldiers, and farther back was what ENCOMM intelligence reports said was a company of heavy artillery. It was a terrifying proposition to be so close to such overwhelming force, to be so alone, with only a handful of slugs for support if the Hammers tried anything.
The seconds ticked away, one eternity at a time. 'Time,' Anna hissed at last. 'You go first.'
Michael started to protest, then decided not to. Anna was ten times the foot soldier he would ever be. Taking firm hold of his rifle, he adjusted his chromaflage cape and backed out of the foxhole on his belly, eyes scanning the ground toward the Hammer front line for the slightest movement. There was none, and Anna followed, a shapeless blur of black oozing its way backward.
It was a long, painful crawl; finally, Anna signaled Michael to stop. 'That's enough. We can walk out from here but stay low. Come on.'
With that, she was off, leaving Michael to wonder how she kept going. Jeez! She had been wounded only days before, and here she was, acting like nothing had happened. Anna might look like a china doll, but underneath she was pure unalloyed steel, and he should never forget it.
Papa Golf was the section rally point, a small rock outcrop thrusting up out of the forest 100 meters from the
