Manivi River, an exit route cut through the encircling Hammers and kept open only after a series of bloody engagements had persuaded the Hammers they had better things to do than worry about a few NRA troopers getting away from certain defeat. Anna and Michael were the last to arrive, her section corporal waving her on.
'Where the hell have you been, Helfort? Come on, for Kraa's sake!'
'Yes, Corp.'
With that, the last of the NRA slipped south and away into the night. Behind them, Perdan was empty save for a few brave souls waiting for the Hammers to arrive.
'What the hell do you want?' the Hammer general charged with retaking Perdan growled, glaring from sleep- gummed eyes at the man standing over his cot. 'Kraa's blood! What time is it?'
'It's 00:15, sir,' the young officer said, nervously. Major General Horovitz, Hammer Planetary Ground Defense Force, was a man who held the unshakable view that military operations should not get in the way of a good night's sleep.
'This better be good.'
'Chief of staff's compliments, sir, and would you please come to the operations center?'
'If I must.'
'This seems too good to be true, General. I think we need to be careful.'
General Horovitz snorted in derision. Kraa! Why was his chief of staff so damn cautious? 'It's obvious, man. Those NRA scum know they can't hold on to to Perdan, so they've done what they do every time. Run away like the gutless cowards they are. Get things moving. I want to tell the chief councillor that Perdan is back in our hands before daybreak.'
'Sir,' Horovitz's chief of staff said.
An hour later, Hammer kinetics fell on Perdan's outer defenses, a storm of high-velocity tungsten-carbide slugs that reduced earth and equipment to a rolling cloud of ionized gas and dust. Before it had even cleared, Hammer forward elements moved into the outer suburbs, the air ripped apart by ground-attack landers orbiting overhead. Screened by marine heavy armor, they moved along the main highway heading for the center of town. The city was deserted. Not a soul moved amid the debris of war, the only sounds the periodic flat crack as a main battle tank's hypervelocity gun replied to some imagined threat and the occasional crackle of rifle fire from nervous patrols flanking the main advance, both underscored by the never-ending howl of patrolling marine landers.
It was hours before General Horovitz allowed himself to be convinced that Perdan was his. Now he was. The NRA had gone, every last one of them. Satisfied, he called Chief Councillor Polk to give him the good news.
Call over and basking in Polk's approval, Horovitz waved his chief of staff over. 'Colonel Madani. You said General Baxter wanted to speak to me?'
'Yes, sir. He does,' Madani said.
'Fucking marines,' Horovitz said, his good humor evaporating fast. 'What in Kraa's name does he want?'
'I don't know for sure, sir,' Madani said. 'He refuses to talk to me. I suspect he wants his marines back.'
'Oh, he does, does he? Didn't think he wanted to congratulate me. Well, he can have them back. Get onto it. I want orders cut withdrawing them back to the airport. They can damn well wait there until their landers arrive to take them home.'
'Is that wise, sir?'
'Wise?' Horovitz barked, rage reddening his face. 'Why would it not be?'
'We've not swept the airport, sir. Kraa knows what the NRA has left lying around.'
Horovitz waved a dismissive hand. 'The marines can look after themselves. They have combat engineers, don't they?'
'Ah, no they don't, General. Combat engineering support is our responsibility, planetary defense's responsibility.'
Horovitz waved his hand again. 'Well, that's not my problem. Ours have better things to do than sanitizing an airport. Anyway, the NRA aren't miracle workers. Even they can't mine Kraa knows how many hectares of ceramcrete, and if they did, even the dumbest marine could see what they'd been up to. Provided the marines stay well clear of the buildings and don't touch anything, I can't see a problem. Kraa, what am I saying? They should know that.'
'Yes, sir.'
Horovitz waited patiently while his chief of staff went off to issue the orders to the marines. 'Done?' he said when the man returned.
'Yes, sir. They'll start pulling back inside the hour. They're not happy about the lack of combat engineering support, but Brigadier Agnelli says he can cope.'
'Pleased to hear it,' Horovitz said venomously. 'I'd be happy if we never worked with those arrogant pricks ever again. How are we doing interdicting the NRA withdrawal?'
'Well, sir. We are dropping blocking forces right across their egress routes back to the Branxtons as we speak, backed up by ground-attack fliers-'
'Do I detect a note of disapproval?' Horovitz said. 'Yes, Colonel… yes, I think I do.'
'No, sir,' Madani protested. 'I made my point at the time, sir. You made your decision, I accepted it then, I accept it now. There's nothing more to say.'
Horovitz glared at his chief of staff. He refused to trust the man any farther than he could spit. The fact that Colonel Madani belonged to a clan with higher-placed connections than his was a constant irritation. He would have gotten rid of him months ago otherwise. Horovitz's nephew, a young and ambitious man, was ideal for the position, and it galled him that he had not been able to persuade the PGDF's commanding general to sack Madani.
'Don't think I don't know what you're thinking, Colonel,' Horovitz said finally. 'I know you wanted the blocking forces dropped into position early. In my opinion, that was too risky. We needed to secure Perdan first. I thought I had made myself clear.'
'Yes, sir, you did.'
'Good. If I hear my decision being criticized, I'll know whom to blame. So, you were saying?'
Loneliness threatened to overwhelm Trooper Chou; he had never felt so cut off, so isolated, so exposed, his only connection to the small handful of NRA troopers left behind in Perdan a hastily buried fiber-optic cable. Tucked away under his chromaflage cape, he was hidden in rubble around a fire-damaged ware house positioned on a small ridge overlooking Perdan's airport, a tangle of ceramsteel beams balanced overhead to form a precarious roof. The airport's sprawling ceramcrete aprons were a shambolic mess of abandoned equipment scattered between the blast-blackened wrecks of planetary defense trucks and light armor. Long after the last of the NRA had pulled out, nothing had moved except for the rain dropped by a passing monsoonal rainstorm. Soon afterward, a gray light announced the arrival of a new day. Recon drones arrived overhead, then attack drones, and then the first chromaflaged shapes drifted into view, indistinct blurs that Chou struggled to identify. Backed up by armor, some moved past the shattered ruins of the airport's terminal buildings before spreading out to secure a perimeter while the rest made their way out onto the aprons and taxiways. Hammer marines, Chou decided, judging by their obvious discipline and efficiency.
Some time later, things began to pick up. First, a second convoy of marine armor arrived, followed by a steady stream of marine units on foot until the airport apron was crowded. Heart in mouth, Chou watched one marine start to rearrange a pile of mortar-shell boxes into the makings of a crude shelter. He did not get far before a passing corporal yelled at him, abuse pouring down much like the rain. Chou smiled. The corporal was dead right. Fiddling with battlefield debris that had not been declared safe by the combat engineers was bad for one's health. Relieved, he watched the corporal harangue the miscreant to rejoin the rest of his unit.
Chou waited. Hour after hour, unit after unit, the marines kept coming until the ceramcrete aprons were thick with marines sprawled out in untidy lines as they waited for their rides home, a sea of combat-armored bodies interrupted by laagers of every vehicle in the marines' air-mobile inventory. Chou licked his lips, his throat parched ash-dry. He had never seen this many Hammer marines in one place before; it was a frightening sight. 'Kraa help us,' he whispered as an awful truth hit him. What he was staring at was a small part, a tiny fraction, of the Hammer war machine the NRA faced. The NRA could kill every last marine sitting on the airport aprons, and what difference
