“It’s been an honor, Major Moore. Let’s go, Sergeant Shinoda.”
They moved slowly, ducking out of sight whenever the microdrones screening their advance warned of a DocSec patrol or a passing surveillance drone. Five kilometers from the temple complex through nearly deserted streets, they reached the safe house. The office on the fringe of McNair’s commercial district was a tired, decaying monument to the economic cost of the Hammer’s commitment to decades of war.
Tucked away behind an abandoned cluster of reeking dumpsters, Michael scanned the area around the building. He spotted a broken crate tossed into the weed-infested remnants of a flower bed “There’s the telltale,” he whispered to Shinoda. The crate was red: The building had been checked by an NRA countersurveillance team some time in the last two hours and was clean.
“Looks good,” Shinoda murmured. “Bavalek, Mallory, Go make sure.”
The two troopers eased themselves out of cover and slid down the road to the building, shapeless blurs oozing and rippling across the cracked ceramcrete. They disappeared, one through the front doors and the other around the back.
Ten minutes later, the doorway shimmered, its frame softening for an instant. Michael waited. Precisely thirty seconds later, the same thing happened.
“We’re in,” Shinoda said. “Let’s go.”
An hour later, Michael gave a nod of satisfaction “That’s it,” he said. “We’re online to ENCOMM. Okay, let’s see what’s been happening. Here we go.”
The sheet of holopaper Shinoda had tacked to the wall came to life as ENCOMM’s latest summary of operations appeared. The OPSUM was a complex display of icons splashed across the approaches to McNair. “Not going so well,” Shinoda said, pointing to icons marking the NRA’s front line. “Army Group South should have taken Perkins by now.”
Michael nodded. Shinoda was right. Perkins was one of the largest planetary ground defense bases in the McNair basin. It anchored the western end of the Hammer’s front line. The NRA had to take it before any full-scale assault on McNair.
“But look at this,” Michael said. He pointed to the front line between McNair and the Velmars. “Army Group East is way ahead of schedule.”
“Wah!” Shinoda hissed. “They’ve torn the Hammers apart. They’ve already taken Yallan.”
“They have, and I can see why.” Michael tapped the icons showing the positions of the Hammer units defending McNair. “The Hammers have screwed up. They’ve pulled forces away from the Valmars to reinforce the Branxton front. No wonder the NRA’s having trouble taking Perkins.”
“Which changes things.”
“It does. We don’t have as much time as we thought. The way things are going, Army Group East could be in McNair before the end of the month.”
“Maybe, sir, but they’ll have one hell of a job getting across the Oxus River. What’s ENCOMM saying about Team Victor?”
“Wait one,” Michael said. He drilled down though the datafeeds that summarized everything ENCOMM thought it knew about the Hammer’s order of battle. “Last report I got from ENCOMM put them here in McNair, which is why we’re sitting in this dump. Right; here we are … shit! Hartspring’s not in McNair anymore.”
“So where is the scumsucker?”
“Hold on … Okay, a data intercept put Team Victor at Cooperbridge six hours ago.”
“Cooperbridge,” Shinoda said, looking thoughtful. “So where’s the 120th?”
Michael’s finger stabbed at the display. “Here, at Yallan.” He shook his head. “I’d bet my ass that Colonel Balaghi used the 3rd Battalion to take the Yallan planetary defense base. Do you believe in coincidences, sergeant?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Nor do I. Team Victor and Hartspring aren’t sitting in Cooperbridge to do some fishing. They’re there because Cooperbridge is the closest river crossing to Yallan.”
“I agree.” Shinoda paused to study the display. “I think we’ve got two choices, sir,” she went on. “We can go to Hartspring in Cooperbridge, or we can stick to plan A and wait for him to come to us.”
“What do you think?”
“I think we should go to him, sir. We know where he is, and we know why he’s there. In a week’s time?” Shinoda shrugged. “Hartspring could be anywhere.”
“Rats and sinking ships?”
“You got that right,” Shinoda said. “Hartspring will cut and run. It’s only a matter of time.”
“MARFOR 21’s dug in around Cooperbridge,” Michael said. “We’d have to get through them.”
“If we could make it as far as Kumasi,” Shinoda said, pointing to a small town 15 or so kilometers short of Cooperbridge and the Oxus River, “that’d be a start.”
Michael thought the options through. Cooperbridge or McNair. Cooperbridge, he decided finally. That was where Hartspring was, Anna was across the river, and Shinoda was right. Hartspring’s time was running out, and he’d know it. If the man had any sense, he’d head for the hills before the mob ripped him apart.
“I agree, but first we’ve got to get to Kumasi.”
There was an awkward silence as Michael and Shinoda digested the awkward fact that they had a serious problem on their hands. “Bloody hell,” the sergeant muttered. “Why don’t we just catch a fucking taxi?”
Michael stiffened. “Now there’s a thought,” he said, a thoughtful look on his face.
“I was joking, sir,” Shinoda said with a scowl.
“Hold on … Where the hell did I put it?”
“Put what?”
“This!” Michael said, pulling a card out of his pack with a huge grin. “It’s one of the cards I used on Scobie’s, and it’s still got over forty-five grand on it. Think that’ll get us a lift to Kumasi?”
Shinoda grinned back. “I reckon.”
“Let’s find ourselves a truckbot and a greedy dispatcher.”
“The McNair Logistics Center is the place to start. I’ll get a couple of our drones over there.”
Ten minutes later, the holovid feeds from the microdrones stabilized. “Shiiiiit! It’s huge,” Michael said.
“It has to be. It supplies the entire Branxton front.”
Michael stared at the screen. “I don’t think this is an option,” he said. “It’s too busy, too complicated. Where would we start? And we’d have to get across town without being stopped, which won’t be easy. I’m not so worried about DocSec-we know they tend to leave marines alone-but without military IDs and proper orders, we won’t fool the military police.”
“All of which was we why decided to wait for Hartspring in McNair,” Shinoda said, glum-faced.
“Let’s stew on it,” Michael said. “I’d like to see if Major Moore has convinced Calverson to cooperate.”
It was the work of seconds to tune into the holovid broadcast net and a few more to find what passed for a news channel. The news anchor-as always with Hammer newsvids, a blond woman groomed to within an inch of her life-filled the screen.
“… a spokesman for General Barrani said. UNMILCOMM has since confirmed that our forces are making a strategic withdrawal across the Oxus River east of the city after heavy fighting around Yallan and Cooperbridge, though they still hold Paarl and the strategically important town of Ahenkro Junction. South of the city, the heretic advance has been stopped on a line from Perkins through Lukhet Junction to Jarrenburg, again after extremely heavy fighting that inflicted what the spokesman said were unsustainable losses of men and equipment on the heretics.
“The UNMILCOMM spokesman went on to say that a counteroffensive would be launched within days but refused to confirm where the thrust of that operation would be. Our military analysts, however, remain certain that the NRA … ah, I’m sorry, I should have said the heretic offensive north from the Branxton Ranges still remains the
