The Final Battle (36 page)

An hour later, his body had made it clear that enough was enough. Five more minutes, he told himself, and then he would stop. For the umpteenth time, he reached the wall and turned, but as he did, the floor shivered, a fleeting tremor that was gone almost before he realized what was happening. An instant later, the air filled with a heavy rumble that rolled on and on. Puzzled, Michael stopped, his head swinging from side to side as he tried to work out what the noise was and where it was coming from. It was an impossible task with the heavy plasglass windows and the thick ceramcrete walls robbing the sound of all life. There was a short pause; then the noise returned, louder, and this time it did not stop, building into an irregular thudding that shook Michael’s cell.

His mind raced. Only one thing made that noise: high explosive and tons of it. It had been almost two weeks since Hartspring’s men had captured him; could the
NRA
have broken through the Hammer’s defensive line along the Oxus River since then? They must have; why would the
NRA
be using its precious air assets over McNair if they hadn’t?

Without any warning, the door banged open. “Stand back!” the DocSec sergeant in charge of Michael’s security detail barked. Lojenga was the man’s name. Like every other DocSec trooper Michael had ever met, he was a brutal psychopath who was way too fond of using his baton and stun pistol.

Michael did as he was told, and Hartspring appeared. The colonel looked down his nose at Michael for a good minute. He made Michael feel like he was a piece of dog shit on the sole of one of his mirror-polished boots. Finally he nodded. “He’ll do,” he said, turning to Lojenga. “Talk to—”

“Wait, Colonel,” Michael said. “I’ll do for what?”

Hartspring’s lips thinned to bloodless slashes. “Did I speak to you?” he hissed.

“I don’t give a shit whether you did or not,” Michael snapped. He stepped back as Lojenga unholstered his stun pistol. “What will I do for?”

Hartspring waved Lojenga away. “Your trial starts tomorrow,” he said.

“No way. The doctor said I couldn’t be moved for at least another three days.”

“The doctor?” Hartspring smiled. “You think I care what the doctor says? Now shut your damned mouth or I’ll let the sergeant’s stun pistol finish this conversation.” He turned to Lojenga. “Have him ready to move out in ten minutes.”

“Yes, sir.”

• • •

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.

Yes, yes, yes
, Michael thought.
The
NRA
has broken the Hammers’ defensive line between Yallan and Cooperbridge to cross the Oxus
.
Now it’s only a matter of time before the Hammer of Kraa is history.

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.
That’s Anna’s battalion
, Michael thought,
and they are only 10 kilometers outside McNair
.

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.

Something is up
, Michael thought,
and I’ll be it’s something Hartspring hasn’t planned for
.

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.

I’ll be a son of a bitch
, Michael thought.
Hartspring’s convoy is being gone over by
NRA
ground-attack landers
. An image of a smart bomb coming down through the roof of the APC right into the man flashed across Michael’s mind.

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 marines were dead.

He realized how lucky he had been. Unlike the crew, he had been strapped in tightly when the APC was blasted skyward by what must have been a very close miss, his hands and feet restrained, his head and body cradled by the crash seat. Michael reckoned a glancing blow from a wayward rifle was a small price to pay for surviving the mayhem.

But surviving had left him with a small problem. The crash seat and restraints might have saved him, but he had to get out before help arrived. But how? He twisted his head around to look at Hartspring’s body. Was the man alive? If he was, Michael wanted to be long gone before he woke up. Michael could see no way to get free. He swore long and hard under his breath, his frantic attempts to wrench his arms free only making bruised muscles protest in pain.

He swore some more when the side hatch opened. The sound of cannon fire and explosions flooded in. A head sporting a bloodstained field dressing appeared. “Anyone alive in here?” it shouted over the racket.

It was Corporal Haditha. “Just me, I think,” Michael called up. “Rest are either dead or unconscious.”

“Hold on.” Haditha’s feet replaced his head. The marine lowered himself. He looked around. “Kraa!” he hissed. “What a fucking mess.”

“Can you get me out before this thing goes up?”

“It won’t,” Haditha said. He was already checking for survivors. “I’ve shut everything down.” He paused, turning to Michael. “Besides, why would I help you? What I should do is blow your fucking head off, you piece of Fed crap.”

Hope vanished, replaced not by fear but by anger. “You think this is what I want?” Michael shouted. “It’s not. I just want you fucking Hammers to stop killing each other and to leave the rest of us alone.” His head slumped back. “I don’t care what you do,” he muttered, closing his eyes. And he didn’t. He had given all he could; he had nothing left.

Haditha worked his way over to Michael. “You think I’m just another stupid Hammer, don’t you?”

“Piss off,” Michael muttered. “If you don’t kill me now, that son of a bitch Hartspring will, so what do I care?”

“Believe me, nothing would make me happier than to kill you.”

“So do it.”

Haditha sighed. “No,” he said. “I won’t. You can give me a hand to see who’s alive, and then I don’t give a shit what you do. This fucking war’s over—” They both flinched as a second explosion punched the wrecked APC bodily to one side. “—and there’s the proof. I never thought I’d see the day the
NRA
would be bombing the shit out of McNair. But today’s the day, and it is. Now shut up and let me get you out of there.”

It was the work of only seconds for Haditha to cut away the restraints. “That’s it,” the marine said. He threw off the safety harness that had kept Michael alive. “Now help me see who’s still breathing. You can start with your friend, the colonel. I’ll take the humans.”

Michael wanted to kiss the man. Instead he grabbed a medical kit off the bulkhead. He pushed past Haditha to where Hartspring lay, moaning softly. For an instant, Michael’s hands were around the man’s throat, but sense prevailed, and he let his hands fall away.