in Fleet. The woman was a born foot soldier. He might think he knew Anna better than anyone else alive, but still she had the capacity to surprise. Happy that she was doing a job he never could, he leaned against the front wall of the trench, eyes scanning the ground for any sign of enemy activity. Not that there was any; as far as Michael could tell, the vicious battle being fought by 12 Brigade in the distance had sucked in every Hammer capable of moving, the air over the battle flicker-flashing in a never-ending display of pyrotechnics, the noise of combat rolling across the broken ground like thunder. He wondered how Mokhine's attack on the Hammer's headquarters was going; being only a humble grunt, he did not have the right privileges to access that level of the tactical plot.
To his surprise, Anna slid under the chromaflage net and into the trench. 'Good to see a proper fighting position, Lieutenant,' she said.
'Gee thanks, Sarge,' Michael said, refusing to rise to the bait and keeping his eyes out front.
'We'll make a soldier of you yet, and I was right. You can shoot even if you had no idea what was going on, none at all.'
'Yeah, well?' Michael said with a shrug. 'I'm a spacer, remember? Not some dirt-munching grunt.'
'Spacer or not, here's the plan.'
'We get to go home?' Michael asked hopefully.
'Focus, Lieutenant, focus.'
'Sorry.'
'As you can see, the assault on the Hammers covering the valley to the east and west of Juliet-24 by 12 and 5 Brigades has gone well. They took them by surprise, they retain tactical advantage, and they are giving the Hammers a great deal of grief. ENCOMM has ordered them to keep going until the Hammers break.'
'Jeez,' Michael hissed. 'What if they can't?'
'They have to,' Anna said flatly. 'They have to.'
'Okay. And our mission?'
'To hold this position until 12 Brigade withdraws. Hrelitz says that elements of 12 Brigade have penetrated the Hammer positions so far that they'll be forced to pull back through our positions. That means we'll be staying here until they've withdrawn. Once they're clear, we'll screen them all the way to Juliet-24. If we can't make it back there, our fallback egress route is through the vehicle park to the emergency accesses. They're marked Juliet-24 Alfa on your tactical plot.'
Michael frowned. 'It all sounds tricky.'
'It's called a rearward passage of lines, and yes, it's tricky. How tricky depends on how much pressure the Hammers put us under. Anyway, can't worry about that. Now, what else? Oh, yes. The rest of the battalion didn't just destroy the Hammer's command post; Colonel Mokhine went and captured his very own major general of Hammer marines. The prick's on his way to ENCOMM already.'
'Good one.'
'Don't think the Hammer general would agree. Anyway, once they've handed over their prisoners, A and B Companies will move up to reinforce our position.'
'And Fifth Brigade?'
'Is going well, according to Hrelitz. Same deal. The plan is to keep fighting, break the Hammers, then withdraw, but that's someone else's problem. Anyway, got to go. There'll be a detailed briefing in an hour. Keep your eyes open. I'm off to talk to the rest of the section.'
'Just one more.'
Anna sighed. 'One more and that's it.'
'Why are we being left alone? We're in the middle of thousands of Hammers, we've shot the shit out of their heavy equipment park, Colonel Mokhine's captured their command post, and nobody's come calling. Makes no sense.'
'Hrelitz was wondering the same thing. Several reasons, we think. First, those fuel-air charges cut the guts out of the Hammers' reserves. She thinks their casualties have run into the thousands. Second, the attacks by 5 and 12 Brigades seem to have sucked in every Hammer available unit not committed to local security duties. Third, like you said, their c-cubed has had its head lopped off. Those Hammers out there'-she waved a hand at an eastern horizon alive with the light and fury of combat-'have their own battles to fight, and none of them has the big picture. We're being ignored, and long may it continue. Now let me get on.'
'Yes, Sergeant.'
Anna started to climb out of the trench, then stopped and turned. 'You did well, Michael, but not well enough. You took too many risks. Don't get so tied up. Try to keep one eye on the target and one eye on the big picture. If you don't, someone's going to pop up and blow your damn head off before you even see them coming. Okay?'
Michael nodded. 'Yes, Sergeant,' he said, reassured by Anna's obvious competence even though still worried sick. Attacking the Hammers was one thing; disengaging when the time came to pull back was quite another.
'Things are quieting down over there,' Sadotra muttered scanning the horizon.
'They are,' Michael said. 'Any word from ENCOMM?'
'No, not yet, but I don't think it can be-'
Both flinched as a savage explosion bleached the eastern sky white, so searingly bright that Michael's eyes watered. A few seconds later, the shock wave arrived, accompanied by a crackling rumble.
'Main battle tank fusion plant, I reckon,' Sadotra said. 'And since the NRA doesn't own any Aqaba main battle tanks, that means it's one of the Hammers'.'
Michael nodded. 'One less coming our way when 12 Brigade pulls out,' he said as the sky lit up again and again. 'No, make that three less.'
The thought of taking on Hammer heavy armor bothered Michael. The 2/83rd might be a tough, battle- hardened battalion, but stopping Aqaba main battle tanks with command-detonated mines, Stabber antiarmor missiles, claymores, machine guns, and assault rifles was one hell of a big ask, not to say downright impossible. Stopping them required Sampan medium antiarmor missiles; ever the optimist, Mokhine had asked ENCOMM for some. He was told none were available of course. The Aqaba was a brute: fast, maneuverable, well armored, armed with an autoloaded 95-millimeter hypervelocity gun, missile pods, and defensive lasers. Capable of remote operation, taking real-time battlefield intelligence from recon drones, and supported by ground-attack landers and attack drones, it was a formidable threat. The Feds had long abandoned the main battle tank-too big, too clumsy, too expensive, too vulnerable to mines and missiles-in favor of a mix of light armor and combatbots, but the Hammer military still loved the things. Anna reckoned it was because the hulking black shapes matched the Hammers' national character: all brute force and no finesse.
Michael's neuronics burst into life. 'Stand to, contact sector 4, stand by… friendlies, say again, friendlies.'
At last, Michael thought. The wait had been killing him; he grinned when the image popped into his neuronics. The chromaflaged shapes were too scruffy to be Hammer marines, their capes so well used that some were more holes and tears than fabric. Shifting his optronics down into the infrared, Michael checked their IFF patches.
'Positively identified as NRA, Corp,' he said to Sadotra.
'Roger. Hammers won't be far behind.'
With a final check to make sure he was ready, Michael eased his rifle into the tiny gap between the chromaflage net overhead and the sandbagged parapet. He knew every square centimeter of the ground in front of his position. He should; he had spent a long time looking at it. C Company's three platoons were dug in along the eastern perimeter of the Hammer vehicle park, their left flank secured by a towering wall of rock. Positioned to enfilade a Hammer advance down the track through the middle of the valley as it passed the vehicle park, C Company's mission was simple: to ensure a Hammer attack could not flank B Company, which was dug in on the right and straddling the track as it dropped down from a small ridge. A Company had been held back in reserve.
The result was a killing zone constricted by the rock wall on the far side of the valley to Michael's right and the vehicle park on the left, the ground in between seeded with command-fired mines to stop the armor in its tracks and claymores to break up any dismounted attacks. That much Michael did understand, even if the chances of a single understrength battalion with no air support and precious few attack drones stopping a serious Hammer armored assault had to be slim, even slimmer if the Hammers supported the attack with landers.
The new arrivals had been cleared through the battalion's forward positions and were moving past Michael's position. To his inexperienced eyes, they looked to be in good order, the company-strength unit moving down the road in column, heads and weapons scanning left and right in a ceaseless search for Hammers.
