of coffee, Michael sat down beside Anna. For a while there was silence. Spooning the last of the gruel into his mouth, he set his plate down before taking a sip of coffee, as always amazed at how good it was. Under the circumstances, it was close to miraculous.
'So, Anna,' he said. 'I know I'm just a grunt, but this operation… well, it looks like a recipe for disaster. It's going to be dark, we're outnumbered n thousand to one, Mokhine's splitting his forces into two, and we'll be attacking in two directions at once. I have to say-'
Anna frowned. 'Yeah, well, you may be right. Probably are right, but needs must. When the 5th and 12th jump off, anything we can do to take the pressure off them has to help. As to the fuckup factor, what can I say? Yes, it'll all go to shit, but so what? As long as we're creating mayhem, we'll be doing our job, and if the Hammers think they're under attack from two directions at once, that'll be a bonus. Remember this. We don't have to beat them. We only have to convince them they are wasting their time.'
'Not a recipe for a long and happy life, though, is it?'
'Nope,' Anna said. 'It's not, but so be it. I'm here, I hate the damn Hammers, and I'll kill as many of them as I can and hope they don't kill me.'
'Wish you wouldn't say that.'
'Sorry,' Anna said, taking his hand. 'Look, Michael. Keep your head down and your wits about you and you'll come through. And if we're confused, the Hammers are going to be even more so. Okay?'
'Yes, Sarge.'
'Right, company orders group awaits,' Anna said, climbing to her feet, 'and I am told that Hrelitz does like people to be on time. I'll see you in twenty. Just hope the damn plan's not changed. I just want this to get started.'
'Over would be better,' Michael said softly as Anna worked her way through the crowd milling around the mobile canteen. What a life, he said to himself as he made his way over to refill his coffee mug. Anna was right, of course. Get in there, wreak havoc, and survive if possible. What more was there?
At least the plan was simple; what Michael knew about infantry operations was not worth knowing, but he did know one thing: Keeping operations as simple as possible was one of the cardinal military virtues.
When ENCOMM fired the fuel-air demolition charges, 5 and 12 Brigades would launch their attacks on the Hammers in the valley. Amid the confusion, C Company, supported by combat engineers, would slip out of Juliet-24. Its objective was the equipment park holding the Hammers' heavy tunneling equipment, 300 meters to the east of Juliet-24. Once there, their job was to destroy the hardware, wire up demolition charges to take out the fusion power plants, then move into a blocking position across the crudely constructed road connecting Juliet-24 with the Hammer's forward lander base to the east. While all that was going on, the rest of Second Battalion would head for the Hammer's command post; ENCOMM liked their chances of cutting the head off the Hammer operation around Juliet-24.
So what could be easier?
Yes, Michael decided, put like that, it was pretty simple… until you factored in all the problems: It would be dark, the NRA's comms were not the best, the Hammers outnumbered them by a large margin, the NRA was desperately short of heavy weapons, they had no artillery or air support, the attacks launched by the 5th and 12th might fall apart, the… Michael stopped there; there was no point listing the NRA's weaknesses. Anyway, maybe they were not that important; maybe the NRA's incredible fighting spirit outweighed all of them.
He would soon find out, he thought as he climbed to his feet and looked around to see where Lance Corporal Sadotra had gotten.
'Confirm radio and tightbeam lasers set to receive only, infrared beacon off,' Sadotra said. 'And any transmitters connected to those damn neuronics of yours.'
Michael fumbled with the unfamiliar controls on his tactical data unit, the thin box strapped to his left forearm one of thousands churned out by Chief Chua's microfabs to a Rogue Worlds design. Compared to a Fed marine's, it was primitive, but it was a huge advance on the disorganized grab bag of gear the NRA had been using. Even better, Chua's people had produced a version that connected with his neuronics, so he could dispense with the awkward microvid screen and earbud worn by NRA troopers.
'Confirmed,' he said. 'All set to stand by.'
'Good. Not long now.'
Michael nodded, his mouth and throat dust-dry, horribly aware of how unprepared he was. For the thousandth time he asked himself what he was doing there when all he had ever wanted to be was the command pilot of an assault lander. He had not joined Fleet to end up a grunt fighting in the mud and muck of ground combat, yet here he was, about to do just that. He scanned the operation order uploaded into his neuronics one last time; the tactical schematics showed the ground outside Juliet-24 in muted greens and browns, the whole place infested with red icons marking Hammer positions. He knew that the detached precision of the display did nothing to convey the horrors that awaited Second Platoon. With a quiet prayer that he would not let Anna and the rest of the platoon down, he reset the display to show only C Company's part in the overall operation; what Colonel Mokhine and the other two companies of the 2/83rd needed to do to capture their objective-the Hammer's headquarters-was none of his business.
The atmosphere was tense as the clock ran down. With seconds to go, Michael breathed in hard, his eyes locked on Anna, just another body-armored shape amid the packed ranks of NRA troopers waiting to go into action, her face invisible behind the plasglass faceplate of her helmet.
With a bang, the barbecues fired and their fuel-air charges exploded, the air filled with a thunderous whump whump followed an instant later by the shock wave, a giant fist smashing into the tunnel, its walls and roof shaken bodily, rock shards spinning down onto the waiting troopers.
'Holy crap,' Michael muttered, shaking his head to try to clear his mind. It was going to be chaos out there, and the last thing he wanted was to be cut off from Anna and the rest of the platoon.
Hrelitz was on her feet. 'Go, go, go,' she shouted before turning and running into the dust-loaded air. As one, C Company pounded after her in a disciplined rush. With a silent prayer that Second Platoon's new commander would keep her pretty little head down when the shooting started, Michael followed Sadotra and the rest of Anna's troopers through the blast door and down the tunnel toward the portal, the air stinking with the acrid smell of burned fuel and something else he struggled to identify, sickly, sweet, like, like… His stomach heaved as he fought to keep his last meal down, mouth open to keep the smell of burned flesh out of his nostrils.
Emerging from the tunnel and into the portal was the work of moments. When he emerged, Michael stumbled to a stop, appalled by the sight that greeted him. 'No time for sightseeing, trooper,' Sadotra barked. 'Keep moving!'
Michael did as he was told, running hard, doing his best not to stand on the flame-seared bodies of dead Hammers. They lay everywhere, more than he cared to count, still smoking and tossed into charred heaps by the force of the blast, armored vehicles thrown bodily back against the rock walls of the portal. It had been a massacre; Michael could see not one living Hammer marine among the hundreds carpeting the ground. If any of it bothered the NRA troopers around him, it did not show. Stopping short of the portal's mouth, Hrelitz and her squad leaders marshaled the platoon into formation.
Captain Hrelitz's head swung left and right; her hand dropped, and C Company was on the move, trailed by combat engineers heavily laden with demolition charges.
Emerging into the gloom of late evening, Michael was shocked to see how far the damage extended. Barbecues firing from the plateau above had dropped a fan-shaped wave of destruction onto the Hammers' beachhead; all human life for hundreds of meters had been obliterated. It was carnage, yet more bodies flung with careless abandon across the valley floor as far as the rock wall rising sheer on the other side. Wounded lay everywhere, untended, ignored, small islands of agony and suffering, the air filled with screams for help that rose and fell over a soft murmur of moans, sobs, prayers, and cries.
Michael had seen his share of death but had never seen anything like this. This was Armageddon writ small; for the first time he allowed himself to believe that Hrelitz's optimism was justified.
C Company pushed on into the night, moving fast. Reaching the dead ground leading up to the vehicle park's western perimeter, Hrelitz halted First and Second Platoons, the platoon commanders repositioning their troopers ready for the attack. Then Third Platoon peeled off and headed southeast to establish the initial base of fire, their chromaflaged shapes swallowed quickly by the night, a thin tendril of reinforced optical fiber their only link back to Hrelitz.
