Wrists flexicuffed to leg restraints, Michael watched Hartspring’s second armored personnel carrier reverse up to the hospital’s prisoner transfer dock. He wasn’t bored anymore; the opposite, in fact. His heart pounded as he contemplated his return to the Gruj and the start of his trial the next day.
It was the beginning of the end. He knew that. After all the humiliation and embarrassment he had heaped on Chief Councillor Polk and the Hammers, they would finish him this time. Their determination was obvious; an APC blocking the access ramp to the transfer dock was just the start. Outside, in the harsh glare of massed floodlights, waited four all-terrain vehicles, cannon- and missile-armed, their crews dressed in full combat gear and carrying assault rifles. Beyond them were two more APCs. Decoys, Michael supposed, and probably packed with yet more marines.
It would take an entire NRA battalion to get him free of the Hammers.
Hartspring was taking nothing for granted. His briefing over, he was walking the line of vehicles to have a final word with each of the commanders. Michael could understand the man’s obsessive attention to detail. If Hartspring let Michael get away, Chief Councillor Polk would tear his heart out with his bare hands.
Hartspring took a final look around; he nodded and walked back where Michael waited. “Mount up,” he shouted, waving a hand. “Sergeant Lojenga! What the hell are you waiting for? Get that bloody man into my APC!”
“Sir!”
Lojenga pushed Michael down the ramp to the waiting vehicle. Too hard. Unable to move his feet fast enough, Michael stumbled a few halting steps before gravity took over, dragging him down in an awkward, twisting fall that his flexicuffed hands could not break. His body crashed into the ceramcrete dock, tumbled down the ramp, and came to a stop at Hartspring’s feet, newly healed injuries screaming in protest.
“You bastards,” Michael hissed through clenched teeth.
Hartspring ignored him. He pulled out his pistol and stepped over Michael. In a single fluid movement, he ran up the ramp, put the pistol to Lojenga’s head, and pulled the trigger. The shot echoed around the transfer dock, a flat crack that faded into the silence.
The DocSec sergeant stood for a while, eyes wide open in shocked surprise. With a sigh, he crumpled to the ground at Hartspring’s feet. “You always were a useless turd, Sergeant Lojenga,” Hartspring said. He spit on the black-jumpsuited body and stood back. “You! Rajith, Craxi!” His finger stabbed out at two DocSec troopers. “Get that bloody man on his feet and into the APC. Move!”
The two men sprinted down the ramp. They dragged Michael to his feet and bundled him into the APC, and none too carefully. They ignored Michael’s protests and followed him in. It was hot; the air smelled of hydraulic fluid, burned gun oil, and spent ammunition and was filled with the muted chatter of radio circuits. The interior was cluttered with weapons racks, storage boxes, comm equipment, and workstations. The marine operators looked like they’d much rather be somewhere else; the glances they threw at the two troopers were loaded with contempt.
The men pushed him into a crash seat and strapped him in, securing his arms and legs to small rings on the bulkhead and the floor, the restraints pulled so cruelly tight that he could barely move. “Thanks so much, you pair of DocSec dipshits,” Michael muttered.
One of the troopers put his face close to Michael’s. “Enjoy the ride, you Fed cocksucker. Where you’re goi-”
With all the force he could muster, Michael smashed his forehead into the bridge of the man’s nose. The blow hit with a terrible crunching thud that sent the man howling back across the cramped compartment with his hands to his face and into one the marines, who pushed him to the deck with a curse. The man sat whimpering, blood spurting scarlet from between his fingers.
“Big mistake,” Michael said, smiling though the pain.
The smile did not last. The second trooper whipped his stun pistol out and jammed it into Michael’s stomach. The charge jolted Michael’s body rigid, his entire nervous system screaming in protest.
“What the Kraa is going on?” It was Hartspring. Even through pain-slitted eyes Michael could see he was seriously pissed.
“The prisoner attacked Trooper Rajith, sir,” the DocSec trooper said. “I have the situation under control.”
“You’d better, Corporal Craxi. Rajith, get your useless hide out of here. I’ll deal with you later.”
Hartspring ignored Michael. He made his way up the compartment and slipped on a headset and boom mike. He climbed into the commander’s position behind the driver, a center-mounted crash seat flanked by two large holovid displays; fingers flew across a small control console.
Finally Hartspring nodded, obviously satisfied that everything was as it should be. “Tango Niner, this is Box Cutter,” he said. “Move out.”
The APC lurched forward. Michael craned his head to look at Hartspring’s displays. They were clearly readable in the subdued light. “You’re not taking any chances, are you?” he said under his breath when he worked out what the clutter of icons meant. And Hartspring wasn’t. His APC was accompanied by three more. Two ATVs led the convoy, two brought up the rear, and two more covered the flanks. Surveillance and attack drones orbited overhead.
It was an impressive amount of firepower to keep one man in plasticuffs and leg restraints in custody. Michael allowed himself a moment of satisfaction. Better all those assets and men were tied up escorting him across McNair than facing the NRA, he thought.
Satisfaction turned to jubilation when Hartspring opened out the range scale to reveal an ugly red line slashing down across the northeastern suburbs of the city.
His jubilation vanished. Behind the front line, red icons marked the positions of the attacking NRA units. And there was the only icon that mattered, the icon for a mechanized infantry battalion: a rectangle enclosing a cross, the symbols | | above, and the numbers 3/120 to the right.
Knowing she was that close almost tore him apart. She might as well have been a million klicks away.
Michael forced himself to look away. His head went back, and his eyes closed in despair. He was slipping into sleep when, with no warning, the brakes slammed on, bringing the APC to a shuddering halt.
The colonel’s body language told the same story. He sat crowbar-straight in his seat, one hand locked into a grab handle and the other stabbing at the command display while he muttered orders into his boom mike. Whatever Hartspring was saying got the APC moving again, only this time it was really shifting. It swayed from side to side, its tires scrubbing as it was pushed hard into corners. And over the noise of the APC came the heavy concussive thud of bombs, the metallic racket of heavy machine guns, the heavy thump of cannon fire.
Without any warning, a single massive explosion picked up the APC and tossed it high into the air. The blast crushed Michael down into his seat and drove the back of his head hard into the headrest. For a moment, the APC hung weightless. Then it rolled onto its side and plunged back to earth, hitting in a sickening crunch that tossed men around the crew compartment like so many straw dolls.
The last thing Michael remembered was the butt of an assault rifle hurtling toward him before it punched into his forehead and sent him spinning down into darkness.
Michael ignored a blinding headache and opened his eyes. Groggy with pain, he looked around the APC. It was a shambles, a terrible sight in the feeble glow of emergency lights. The front of the crew compartment was jammed with bodies. They lay one atop another, piled in awkward disarray against the side of the APC in a tangle of arms and legs. The air was filled with moans of pain. Michael thought the two DocSec troopers and most of the
