'Why?'
'The Karavakis-4 cave complex is part of our inner defensive line,' Anna said. 'If Six Brigade's there, that means the Hammers have broken through this sector's main defensive positions and we've fallen back.'
'Shit.'
The pair ran on in silence for a while, two more anonymous figures in a stream of anonymous troopers running hard around them.
'How?' Michael said, beginning to breathe hard as he tried to keep up with Anna. 'How did they get in? I thought ENCOMM had all the access tunnels mined.'
'They did, every last one, big or small, so I don't know. Only thing I can think of is that they blew their way in. Bring in high-powered laser rock borers and plenty of explosive, and even limestone won't stand in your way for long. Once they broke into the inner caves, then…'
'No more mines.'
'Yup.'
They ran on. Rounding a corner, they could run no more, their path blocked by the bloodstained clutter of a battalion aid station, fresh casualties arriving even as they threaded their way through the mess of stretchers. Anna stopped one of the walking wounded. 'Where's the brigade command post?' she asked a trooper sporting a bloody bandage across half his face.
'Keep going. One hundred meters on your left.'
'Thanks.'
'Good luck,' the trooper said with a cheerful grin, waving an arm wrapped in bloodstained dressings. 'Kick some Hammer ass for me.'
'We will,' Anna promised.
The brigade command post occupied a cramped room cut out of the cave wall. 'Wait here,' she said. 'I'll get our orders.'
'Yes, sir,' Michael said to Anna's back. She was not gone long.
'Hope you're feeling lucky, flyboy,' she said, waving him to follow.
Michael's heart sank. 'That doesn't sound too good.'
'They were real happy to see us.'
'Why?'
'Because we're Feds, the Feds have low-light processors in their neuronics, and the NRA's desperately short of imaging equipment. Brigade wants us to guide an attack into position behind the Hammer front line. Come on, pick up the pace. Lieutenant Colonel Mokhine and the Second Battalion, 83rd NRA, await.'
'Terrific.'
Michael had shut down his neuronics transmitter in case the Hammers had scanners; it made the isolation total, his assault rifle his only comforter. Before Mokhine called a halt, Michael had spent hours working his way through the near darkness of a cave so tortuous and narrow that progress was measured in centimeters at times. Now that darkness pressed down on him with an oppressive, almost physical force that squeezed the air out of his lungs until he had to fight to breathe, knowing with absolute certainty that each lungful might be his last. He hated it; every second was a struggle to keep claustrophobia-fueled panic under control, to ignore the terrible fact that billions of tons of rock lay between him and fresh air, to reject the conviction that he was about to die in this awful place. This was nothing like being in space: so empty, so clean, so sterile, ship sensors reaching out hundreds of thousands of kilometers, pulling data back by the terabyte until there were no secrets left, the risk of death quantified to five decimal places.
Unlike this grim place, a narrow passage water-dissolved through limestone. All he knew was what he could hear, smell, or feel. His awareness reached no farther than those senses did. It was a bad sensation; a rockfall might be seconds away, a Hammer ambush might lie in wait ten meters farther on, and nobody would know until rocks fell or assault rifles ripped air and bodies to shreds.
Worst of all, he had no way of talking to Anna. An hour earlier, Mokhine had divided his command into two; Anna had led her group into a narrow cleft in the rock, heading for the other side of Karavakis-2, a massive cavern connecting the Hammer front line to the outside world, a cavern now only meters ahead of him.
The minutes dragged by until Michael began to think Mokhine would never give the word. Then an unseen hand tapped his heel. Michael turned, the colonel's face an ethereal speckled gray in the gloom.
'Brigade's given the word,' Mokhine hissed. 'There's a Hammer battalion moving up the line, so let's go.'
'Sir.'
Michael steeled himself; much as he hated the darkness of the cave, it was a safer place than the cavern up ahead. Part of a much larger complex of caves, Karavakis-2 looked to be an awful place, a nightmarish jumble of rocks through which Hammer reinforcements moved up in a steady stream while casualties flowed back for evacuation. Flicking on a tiny helmet-mounted infrared beacon for Mokhine's troopers to follow and powering up his rifle's optronics, he took a deep breath and started to slide forward.
A sustained burst of heavy machine gun fire triggered the ambush, and Michael exploded into action.
His neuronics found the first target, dropping a red target indicator icon onto a startled Hammer marine. The man turned toward him, moving in slow motion, his mouth widening into an O of surprise. A double tap took the man in the neck; he dropped, mouth still open in bewilderment and confusion. Michael wanted to tell the man it was nothing personal, but the indicator was shifting target. Burying all emotion, Michael followed the red lozenge and dropped the next marine, then the next, and the next, never looking at their faces, his focus locked on to the target indicator.
He was not human anymore; he was a machine, a killing machine, an automaton armed with a stolen Hammer assault rifle doing what killing machines were supposed to do: crush the life out of the enemy. The flat metallic racket of heavy machine guns and the crash-bang of microgrenades were all ignored, and Michael followed the rest of the battalion when they broke cover and charged toward the Hammers, their bulky, body-armored shapes black in the firefly lights the Hammers had rigged to mark the way up to the front line.
Hit broadside on, the Hammers wilted in the face of an unstoppable wave of hate-fed anger. Confident the NRA had been forced back, they had not taken the trouble to secure their flanks. Now they paid for that mistake, the NRA attack forcing the marine column to break apart into small groups fighting in a frenzied, scrambling race to escape the blizzard of death the NRA poured out of the darkness. The Hammer battalion disintegrated, its ranks shredded by rifle and machine gun fire, every attempt to regroup or take cover smashed apart by salvos of microgrenades that tossed bodies across the ground.
The Hammers had nowhere to run, and one by one the marines died amid the jumble of broken rocks and boulders that ran back to cavern walls invisible in the darkness. Taken by surprise, they were overwhelmed by the shocking brutality of the NRA attack. Finally, only a handful were left. Trapped, they fought hard until overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers, and then they, too, died.
Mokhine wasted no time celebrating victory.
Splitting his force in three, he positioned a heavy weapons platoon to secure the narrow exit from the cavern that led deeper into the NRA base, their positions protected by rows of claymores. A second platoon moved through the Hammer casualties; methodically they started to strip weapons and ammunition off the marines, anyone still alive unceremoniously rolled over and-to Michael's surprise; he had expected any Hammer survivors to be shot out of hand-plasticuffed, those still able to talk dragged to one side for interrogation. The rest of the battalion set off toward the tunnel that led to the outside world and the Hammer support areas.
Michael found Anna amid the throng. 'Officially, we're done,' he said. 'What now? Go with Mokhine or stay?'
'We go,' Anna said, her face glistening in the faint light. 'It'll take us hours to find the 120th, and I'm sure Mokhine will find something for us to do. You okay with that?'
'Sure am,' Michael said, adrenaline-charged excitement and blood lust still running hot and strong.
'Let's go, then.'
Together they ran after Mokhine's troopers. The NRA colonel's plan was simple: Keep going, don't stop, shoot anything that moves, use heavy weapons to deal with any Hammer light armor, and move on. Not much of a plan, Michael reckoned, but good enough since the Hammers would still not know what the hell was going on, their fiber-optic comms lines having been cut moments before the attack started.
Ahead of them, Mokhine's troopers were disappearing into a tunnel that did not appear on Michael's maps.
