Without knowing it, Michael's mouth tightened into a savage rictus of sheer animal ferocity. He watched as the rail-gun slugs smashed into Commitment's upper atmosphere, transforming it into an incandescent flaming mass of ionized air.
"Suck that, you bastards," he hissed, fierce joy engulfing his body in an exultant flood. After the stress of the last weeks, it felt so good to be striking back, even though he knew the slugs were too small to achieve much except a spectacular if shortlived fireworks show. But they would pressure the Hammer's inflexible and rule-bound commanders, commanders for whom the price of failure was always the same: a DocSec lime pit. Everything the dreadnoughts did was designed to make those commanders stop, wonder just what the hell was going on, worry that they had missed something important, keep the awful image of lime-filled graves in their mind's eye.
So he hoped. Michael needed all the confusion he could get; Gladiator's success depended on it.
"Command, Warfare, sensors," the AI responsible for integrating the dataflows from the three dreadnoughts' sensors arrays said calmly. "Multiple missile launches from McNair missile defense system. Estimate one thousand Goshawk ABM missiles plus decoys now inbound. Attack is designated Golf-1. Time of flight 3 minutes 40. Task groups Hammer-1 and Hammer-2 downgraded, assessed no threat."
"Command, roger," Michael said, thankful for small mercies.
That still left the missile defense shield protecting McNair, the capital of the Hammer Worlds and a scant 100 kilometers from Camp J-5209; it was the major threat. Funded by a Hammer leadership concerned to the point of paranoia that renegade officers inside missile defense command might launch an attack on the seat of all Hammer power, it was the most elaborate antiballistic missile defense system in humanspace. The damage they could inflict on his ships made Michael cringe; massive confusion was the dreadnoughts' only defense.
"Command, Warfare, sensors. Multiple missiles from Space Battle Station 138. Confirmed Eaglehawks. Salvo designated Echo-3. Times of flight 3 minutes 36. SBS-155 downgraded, assessed no threat."
"Command, roger. Bastards," he muttered. So much for confusing the Hammer's commanders; their counterattack was the best the battle's geometry allowed, and quick, worryingly so. The dreadnoughts would still be in space by the time the ABMs from McNair arrived on target; the Eaglehawk missiles fired from the closest battle station would arrive two seconds later. Somebody in Hammer nearspace control was paying attention. That meant they faced a thousand Goshawk ABM missiles and 350 Eaglehawks, a lot of missiles for three ships to fight off in the space of two seconds. Suddenly the chances of making a success of Gladiator did not look quite so good.
He forced himself to sit back, to do nothing. If one believed the trashvids, space warfare was all action. The sad truth? It was mostly inaction, waiting for incoming missiles to crawl their way across thousands of kilometers of space. When they hit home, it was all action, but that usually lasted less than a minute. Lifetimes of anticipation, seconds of terror, his mother always said.
Warfare was doing its best to make sure the Hammers' missiles would not have an easy run in. The dreadnoughts' massive antistarship lasers had begun the job of disrupting the attack, but there were too many missiles and decoys to deal with, a rare success marked by a sudden flare when a missile's fusion drive plant lost containment and blew, a racking sound announcing the launch of Redwood's second missile salvo, this one pushed out well clear of the incoming Hammer attack. Seconds later the characteristic metal-on-metal crunching announced the after batteries' second rail-gun salvo, the swarm pattern tightened to throw the largest possible number of slugs down the line of the incoming ABM missiles. Might as well throw pebbles at flies, Michael thought.
The slugs lived a short but incandescent life. A handful were lucky enough-and that was all it was, pure, blind luck-to rip a Hammer ABM missile apart, spawning a brief flash as mass converted mass to pure energy, before the rest ripped into Commitment's upper atmosphere, the slugs exploding in a dazzling fireworks display. Michael hoped they were not a metaphor for Gladiator: a short, brilliant, but ultimately pointless exercise.
"Command, Warfare, sensors. Multiple missile launches from McNair missile defense system. Estimate one thousand Goshawk ABM missiles plus decoys. Designated Golf-2. Time of flight 1 minute 58. Salvo Golf-1's time to target is 1 minute 30."
"Command, roger. Targets identified?"
"Stand by… affirmative. Initial vector analysis suggests that the Hammers are targeting Red River and Redress."
"Redwood?"
"No indication we have been targeted yet."
"Yes," Michael muttered under his breath, much relieved. Red River and Redress were the bait Michael had dangled in front of the Hammers. And the Hammers had taken the bait by targeting their initial missile salvo-certain to be carrying fusion warheads-on the two leading dreadnoughts. Unless the Hammer nearspace commander was insane, there would be no more fusion warheads coming their way. The Hammer regime might be utterly disinterested in the welfare of its people, but even it had limits it could not ignore: Cooking off hundreds of high-yield fusion warheads inside Commitment's atmosphere was an absolute no-no, which meant the odds of the three landers getting through to Commitment unscathed had improved dramatically.
He turned to Ferreira. "Jayla."
"Sir?" Behind the armor plasglass of her visor, her face was pale, sweat beading on her forehead to run down her cheeks.
"We ready with our homemade decoys?" he asked.
"Yes, sir. Let's hope they work as well as they're supposed to."
Michael nodded. So much of Gladiator was in the "great idea, sounds good, but will it work?" category that no rational military commander would have sanctioned the operation.
The Hammer missiles closed, and the dreadnoughts' medium-range area defense weapons got to work. With agonizing slowness, pulsed lasers and missiles ground down the Hammer attack, the space between ships and missiles filling with the flares of missiles as they died violent deaths. Inevitably, some made it through; now they had to run the gauntlet of the dreadnoughts' close-in defenses-lasers, short-range missiles, and chain guns-before the survivors closed in and proximity-fused warheads exploded.
Michael flinched when the holovid screens went blank, the holocams overwhelmed by a hellish wall of radiation that flayed the armor off Red River and Redress. Desperately, he waited for telemetry from the two ships to be restored; the two dreadnoughts had to survive for Gladiator to work. An age later, the links came back online. Fatally wounded by a lethal combination of radiation and shock, Red River and Redress were a heartbreaking sight. In less than a second, Hammer missiles had turned the two ships into incandescent wrecks spewing ionized gas into space from armor that was white-hot from the intense radiation flux. But they remained intact, and, protected by meters-thick secondary armor and massive shock mountings, their main engines still functioned, decelerating the ships atop pillars of fire; that was all that mattered.
Redwood celebrated their survival by sending a third rail-gun salvo on its way, followed by the last of her missiles shrouded in every decoy she could launch into space.
"Command, Warfare. Hammer ABM salvo has thirty seconds to run. Targets Red River, Redress. Executing emergency shutdown of Red River and Redress main engines."
"Command, roger."
Red River and Redress were the sacrificial lambs; Michael hated to think of them that way, but that was their job. Any weapon still working was tasked to keep Hammer missiles away from Redwood even if that meant their own death.
With their main engines shut down, the two dreadnoughts pulled away, Redwood dropping astern, still decelerating hard. Now Michael prayed in earnest. Gladiator involved more risks than he cared to think about; the biggest was that the Hammers might decide that Redwood was their most pressing problem and divert missiles from their second Goshawk ABM salvo to deal with her. He forced himself to stay calm: The die was cast. Nothing would change what was about to happen. Either the daunting sight of two dreadnoughts with a death wish plunging headlong toward their capital city had convinced the Hammers that Red River and Redress were the real threat or it had not.
Michael knew what he would be doing if he were the poor bastard unlucky enough to be in the Hammer commander's chair. He smiled. Right now, he would be trying to work out how the hell to avoid a DocSec firing squad.
Dreadnoughts and Hammer missiles closed on each other, and again the space between them filled with the flares of dying missiles hacked out of the attack by the dreadnoughts' medium-range defenses. The missiles that survived plunged into the hulls of the ships, warheads packed with chemical explosive lancing through what little armor remained to reach deep down into the guts of the ships, searching for the vulnerable fusion plants.
But the two dreadnoughts' fusion plants had been shut down, the vast residual energy in their containment vessels blown out into space in long jets of white-hot ionized gas. The missiles tore at the carcasses of the ships, blowing debris off their frames and out into space, a shambolic mass of scrap tumbling toward Commitment. Now it was Redress's turn to suffer, her hull shaking while her short-range defenses worked frantically to keep out the few Goshawk missiles that had made it past the combined defenses of the three dreadnoughts, space filling with the violent flares of missile fusion plants as they died.
A few penetrated the dreadnought's defenses; Redwood trembled when three Goshawks plunged into her hull, their warheads wasted on armor untouched by the first missile salvo.
When the attack petered out, Michael entertained a fleeting touch of sympathy for the Hammer commander. Gladiator had to be the stuff of his worst nightmares. This was an attack like nothing the man had ever faced. Ironically, the more successful his missiles were, the worse his problems became, with the dreadnoughts disintegrating into thousands and thousands of pieces, the larger fragments indistinguishable from missiles.
Not that the Hammer commander gave up trying.
"Command, Warfare, sensors. Multiple missile launches from McNair missile defense system. Estimate 940 Goshawk ABM missiles plus decoys. Salvo designated Golf-3. Time of flight 40 seconds."
"Command, roger." This was it; Michael's hands tightened their grip on the arms of his seat, sweat pooling ice-cold at the base of his spine. "Confirm own missile status."
"Missile losses 26 percent. Remainder will start terminal phase deceleration in 38 seconds. Dreadnoughts on vectors for Gwalia, Perkins, and Yallan Planetary Ground Defense Force bases."
"Roger," Michael said, pushing away a wonderful image of the dreadnoughts-not to mention hundreds of Merlin missiles-plowing into the three Hammer bases that protected the city of McNair, thousands of tons of unstoppable mass moving at terrible speed.
The Hammers' last Goshawk salvo smashed into Red River and Redress. The bleeding carcasses of the dreadnoughts reeled from the furious assault. Missile after missile slipped past shock-damaged defenses, blasting huge chunks of armored hull off titanium frames to tumble away into space. Again the few missiles to survive clawed their way across space to Redwood, and again they died, their warheads wasted.
Michael watched the number of uncommitted ABMs run down until it reached zero. The attack was over. The shattered remnants of his sacrificial ships were seconds away from reentry. He might hate the idea of leaving the safety and security of Redwood's bulk and armor, but he knew he had no choice. Soon, the doomed dreadnought would be a flaming mass, plunging earthward to its death. It was time to go to work. He commed Sedova and Acharya; their faces were painted with fear, stress, and anticipation. "All set?"
The heavy lander pilots nodded. "Yes, sir," Sedova said. "Can't say I've enjoyed the last few minutes, so it'll be good to get into it."
Michael had to agree. "We'll be executing phase Alfa-6 on schedule, so good luck. See you all on the other side. Command, out."
Michael commed Kallewi. "You copy that?"
"Yes, sir."
"Don't have to ask if the green machine is ready, do I?"
"No, sir. Foaming at the mouth, they are," Kallewi said. "The Hammers won't know what hit them."
Michael watched the seconds run off; he gave the order. "Alley Kat, Hell Bent, this is Widowmaker. Immediate execute Alfa-6. Stand by… execute!"
A great many things happened in a short space of time.