Free Helfort's War Book 4: The Battle for Commitment Planet by Graham Sharp Paul Page B

life.
    Except, except …
    The brutal truth was that diverting the three dreadnoughts would make no difference to anything. For reasons that made no sense, in the face of everything the dreadnoughts had achieved against appalling odds, Fleet had decided they would play no significant part in the war. That was why they had been sent to Nyleth, their war reduced to pointless attacks on soft Hammer targets in an unimportant sector of space. Like children given a tool they did not understand and could not use, Fleet first mocked it as useless and then discarded it.
    Michael gave a snort of disgust. Who were the fools? Not he and the crew of
Redwood
. Yes, nobody would think what he was about to do made any sense. He would be branded a traitor and a fool. He would be a pariah for as long as he lived. He would never be forgiven. But as long as there was a chance that helping Anna also would help the poor bastards fighting the Hammers on the ground—and they were the only ones capable of toppling the Hammers—then it was the right thing to do.
    Because one thing was for sure. Nothing Fleet was doing right now was going to win this war.

Thursday, August 9, 2401, UD

West coast of central Maranzika, Commitment

    The heavily wooded foothills of the Branxton Ranges sprawled away from the coast, shrouded in mist. Thin tendrils of moisture twisted their way through the predawn gloom, gray wraiths pushed by a gentle westerly breeze down the valleys toward the coastal highway linking Daleel to the northand Besud to the south. Ghostlike, chromaflaged shapes had come out of the mountains. Now they slipped through the trees, easing into position around the kill zone, a sweeping bend in the highway cut into the shallow hillside and flanked by sharp outcropping headlands that dropped sheer into the sea below.
    Major Chiaou, the assault commander, pronounced himself satisfied, pleased that his troopers had followed the plan as briefed though still concerned at what his force was being asked to do. He settled down to wait.
    A long hour dragged past, and Chiaou began to worry in earnest. He had much to worry about: that the convoy taking the best part of a marine battalion and its equipment to the Besud marine base might be a figment of some intel spook’s overheated imagination, that the arrival of daylight might expose his painfully small force, that the endless succession of Hammer recon drones scanning the highway for anything unusual might detect a momentary lapse of chromaflage discipline by one of his troopers, and, worst of all, that marine landers might already be on their way to turn the hillside into a shock-ravaged and flame-blasted wasteland scoured clean of all life by the Hammers’ favorite weapon, the simple but cruelly effective fuel-air bomb, engineered to give an explosive yield greater than battlefield tacnukes without the political cost that bedeviled all nuclear weapons.
    Thirty minutes, Chiaou decided, another thirty minutes, and then he would order the withdrawal. He could not risk his troopers any longer than that.
    With less than ten of those thirty minutes left, the waiting ended. Word arrived that the targets were on their way, and Chiaou passed the order to stand to. It seemed a lifetime before the convoy swung into view around the headland to the north, preceded by a pair of recon drones zigzagging through the air overhead, searching for anything unusual with mindless diligence. Chiaou breathed in sharply, air hissing in through clenched teeth to fill his lungs. This was no ordinary convoy. No, this was a Hammer marine convoy, a succession of soft-skinned cargobots protected by light tanks front and rear, with a command half-track and more tanks in the convoy’s center.
    Chiaou did not like what he saw. Marines made him nervous;marine armor, even light armor, terrified him. It had been long-standing NRA policy to leave the marines well alone, and for good reason. So why me? he asked himself. Why was his company