Staying close to Lance Corporal Sadotra, Michael threw himself down behind the shattered trunk of a tree only to come face to face with a dead Hammer marine, arms thrown out wide, head back, helmet ripped half-off, mouth open in a rictus of agony, empty black pits of eyes staring right into Michael's. On top of the stench in the air, it was too much, and his stomach rebelled, emptying itself in a series of convulsive heaves all over the ground.
'Oh, hell,' he murmured. He wiped his mouth, ignoring the urge to take a swig from his canteen. Somehow he did not think Sadotra would approve. He shivered. Compared to the remote, clinical precision of space warfare, this was a waking nightmare.
Forcing a rebellious body back under control, Michael scanned the area around their position, looking for any Hammers who might have survived the fuel-air charges' appalling combination of heat and blast. But nothing moved on the shock-scoured killing ground.
A blurred shape appeared out of the gloom, whispered something to Sadotra, and then disappeared. Sadotra rolled toward Michael. 'Stand by. Jump off at minute 25,' she whispered. 'Go pass the word to the section. Minute 25.'
'Minute 25. Got it.' Grateful that he had something better to do than lie around thinking about all the Hammers waiting to blow his head apart, Michael slithered around Yankee section before making his way back to Sadotra. 'Yankee section's ready to go,' he said.
'Any problems?'
'No. Everyone's good.' Better than me, he wanted to say.
Sadotra nodded, her helmeted head blurred by its chromaflage skin into an elusive, shifting gray shape barely visible against the black background.
Minute 25 arrived at last. Without a single word being said, Sadotra and the rest of Second Platoon rose to their feet and moved up the slope toward the northwestern edge of the vehicle park. Then all hell broke loose; without thinking, Michael dived for the ground, scrabbling at the dirt in a frantic search for cover. Ahead and to the right of them, the searing flashes of microgrenades bleached black into white, and wandering lines of tracer fire and the streak of lasers slashed lines of white, gold, and red across the night sky, the racket of rifle and heavy machine gun fire broken by bone-jarring crump of mortars.
Michael had never experienced anything like it. His every sense was overwhelmed. Swamped by light and noise and shock and fear, his brain froze for an instant. Then a residual grain of common sense told him that nobody was shooting at him… yet. Belatedly, he realized that what he was seeing was 12 and 5 Brigades' attacks kicking off, and now it was C Company's turn. To Michael's right, Third Platoon opened up on the Hammer's left flank, a wall of tracer chewing away at the Hammer positions, golden lines interlaced with the red streaks of Stabber squad antiarmor missiles as they hunted out and destroyed a pair of Akkad light tanks. Embarrassed, he scrambled back to his feet and ran to catch up with Sadotra, praying she had not noticed his moment of weakness.
Michael did what Anna had told him to do: keep going, stay in position, and watch for any sign of life, but there was none, only shattered trees interspersed with wrecked Hammer support positions, and everywhere dead and wounded marines. Third Platoon's fire pounded away, but there was no response.
The hulking black shapes packed into the Hammer's heavy equipment park were obvious now. Michael kept moving, heart pounding and skin crawling, certain that somewhere ahead a Hammer must have him in his sights. Then, without any warning, tracer rounds exploded out of the darkness. Streaking past his head, they slashed the air apart in yellow-gold lines that came and went in an instant. Instinctively he spun away, hurling himself to the ground and into cover. His neuronics computed the target data, and he rolled to one side to return fire at the unseen enemy, the assault rifle's recoil pounding his shoulder as hypervelocity rounds ripped away into the darkness, the searing flash of a microgrenade imprinting an image of a Hammer marine frozen in the air as he was blown out of his foxhole.
The equipment park erupted.
Michael was frightened now. The darkness between him and the Hammers had filled with a lethal blizzard of rifle and heavy machine gun fire punctuated by the flat crack of microgrenades. All hope he might have had of getting out of this awful place alive was stripped away by the ferocity of it all. He lay paralyzed by the sheer weight of fire coming his way before he belatedly realized that the Hammers were firing blindly, wandering lines of tracer fire hosing the night sky wildly in all directions; anything coming his way was an accident.
To his dismay, the rest of the platoon had already worked that out. While First Platoon pounded the Hammer positions, Second Platoon stayed on its feet, swinging left to flank the enemy's positions. With a euphoric rush, adrenaline overwhelmed fear, and Michael climbed to his feet even though the whip crack of rifle fire was dangerously close, then closer still, and fear replaced euphoria. Flinching as a burst tore past his head with a flat slap, Michael knew he was losing his grip on the situation; unable to keep his mind focused, he was distracted and confused, head swinging wildly as he tried to work out what to do next. He struggled to control his frustration; he might have been a dreadnought captain once, but now he was just another NRA trooper, utterly dependent on Sadotra. He was no foot soldier; he had no idea how anyone could understand, let alone react effectively to, the chaos that had engulfed him.
Michael might have been confused; Anna and the rest of her platoon were not. As they stopped short of the razor wire protecting the vehicle park's western edge, breaching charges were slung under the wire, Second Platoon untroubled by random fire wandering uselessly overhead. The Hammers and their hostile fire indicators were being swamped by the furious fire being thrown at them by the rest of C Company. With a dull crump, to Michael's ear almost inaudible amid the racket of rifle and heavy machine gun fire, the way was clear and section by section the charges exploded, shredding the razor wire, and Second Platoon was into the vehicle park proper.
Now what? Michael's neuronics gave him the answer, a red target indicator lozenge popping into view over a blurred shape scuttling away down a line of vehicles, the man moving too fast for his chromaflage to compensate. Without thinking, Michael dropped the Hammer in his tracks.
'Radios and lasers on,' Anna barked. 'They know we're here now.'
Michael's neuronics burst into life as voice networks came online, orders flowing quick and fast, the platoon breaking into sections to start cleaning out any Hammers holed up among the equipment packed into the vehicle park. A quick glance at the updated tactical plot confirmed what Michael wanted to see: First Platoon had broken through the wire south of Second Platoon and was now working its way into the columns of vehicles, hounding and harassing Hammers out of cover; Third Platoon was on the move on the right flank of the attack, proceeding fire team by fire team along the park's southern edge, channeling the fleeing Hammers away to the east, sustained heavy fire lashing them as they retreated.
For the first time, Michael began to understand fully why Hrelitz had been so optimistic. Stunned and demoralized by the tremendous blast from the fuel-air charges that opened the attack, their commanders distracted by the attacks launched by 5 and 12 Brigades, the rear-echelon marines tasked with securing the vehicle park had no stomach for a fight. With little attempt at organized resistance, their defense collapsed into a series of isolated firefights. Outmaneuvered, outgunned, outfought-these were firefights the Hammer marines had no chance of winning.
Meter by meter, Sadotra's section worked its way along the northern perimeter. Michael shut out the bedlam around him, lost in the mindless business of killing, his assault rifle pounding his shoulder as he fired short bursts into every target his neuronics presented, his entire existence reduced to one simple task: putting the sights of his assault rifle onto the red target icons and pulling the trigger. So absorbed was he that it came as a shock when the platoon reached the eastern edge of the vehicle park and Anna called a halt, the orders flowing thick and fast as she deployed troopers to consolidate their position.
Lungs heaving and heart still thumping, Michael stood for a moment, shocked to find that he was still alive.
Second Platoon had dug itself into defensive positions around the vehicle park's eastern edge. After Sadotra's trenchant criticism of his first attempt, Michael was now the proud owner of a regulation fighting position, well concealed under chromaflage micromesh netting-another product of Chief Chua's burgeoning industrial empire-and invisible to passing Hammer recon drones.
Anna's grip on her platoon was viselike; with ruthless efficiency, she had sent the platoon's handful of prisoners back to Juliet-24, transferred her wounded to the casualty collection point, walked the ground forward of the platoon, made sure the remote holocams covered all possible enemy lines of approach, checked fighting positions, briefed her section commanders on the next phase of the operation, and a whole lot more, none of which would ever have occurred to him, in a bravura performance that made Michael realize that the love of his life was wasted
