FWSS
Tufayl,
Fortitude planetary farspace
Junior Lieutenant Kat Sedova’s face popped onto the command holovid. The Ghost’s command pilot appeared nervous, her tongue flicking out across dry lips. For a moment, he wondered if he had been right to send Tufayl’s lander across to the Iron Duke. Michael pushed the concern away. Either Sedova coped or she did not. Either way, he could not worry about it. He had done his bit; it was up to her.
“All set?”
“We are, sir. This is one big ship. Kind of spooky being here on our own.” She stopped. “But we’ll be fine. We’ve simmed the mission, and we’re just setting it up to run it again with a few problems thrown in. But I’m confident.”
“Good. Follow the plan and you’ll be fine.”
“Roger that, sir. Ghost, out.”
“Sensors. Where are we up to with the threat plot?”
“We’re downloading data from the reconsats,” Leading Spacer Carmellini said from the sensor management workstation. “I’ll have the threat plot updated shortly.”
“Roger.” Michael was relieved. For some reason, the relay satellite collating data from the far-flung web of reconnaissance satellites thrown around Fortitude was not where it was supposed to be. With time running out, it had been a frantic business trying to locate it without using any active sensors; the fact that the dreadnoughts’ heat dumps were radiating the prodigious amounts of waste heat accumulated in their pinchspace jump was all the advertising he was prepared to tolerate.
Michael watched the threat plot while it updated. Some update. It was time-stamped hours earlier. “Shit,” he muttered. Tactical intelligence that old was worthless. It made no difference; his dreadnoughts would be going into this attack cold. The Hammers might have deployed their entire fleet across their path when the time came to attack, and he would not know it.
“Warfare. Weapons free. You have command authority.”
“Roger, I have command authority,” the battle management AI replied, its voice, as always, calm and measured. “All ships, Warfare. Weapons free. Execute to follow, Foxtrot-1. I say again execute to follow, Foxtrot-1. Acknowledge.”
Michael listened with half an ear while the acknowledgments flowed in. It was an impressive roll call: Orion, the oldest ship in the squadron, proudly bearing a list of battle honors longer than that of any other ship in the Fed order of battle; Iron Knight, blooded in the Fourth Hammer war and sister ship to the Iron Duke; Sina, Qurrah, Khaldun, and Al-Khayyam, all sister ships to the Tufayl; Rebuke and Rebut, the youngest ships in the squadron.
One thing all those ships had in common was the Battle of Comdur. Far too many spacers and marines had been killed or injured in those ships, and more than ever before, the awful pressure to avenge those casualties weighed heavily on him.
Warfare gave the order. “All ships, command. Foxtrot-1, stand by … execute!”
In a blaze of ultraviolet, the squadron jumped, and Operation Blue Tango was under way in earnest.
A tiny fraction of a second later, the squadron erupted into Hammer space, proximity alarms screeching to let Michael know his threat plot was seriously out of line with reality. Michael ignored them while he watched the threat plot firm up, the blazing red icon of the Hammer space battle station dead ahead of them, surrounded by a gaggle of Hammer ships. Iron bands squeezed his chest hard, making breathing difficult; he counted five heavy cruisers, supported by many times that number of smaller ships, ranging from light cruisers to heavy scouts. “Goddamnit,” he murmured. That was a lot of firepower; even though his dreadnoughts were tough, this was going to be one hell of a fight.
“Command, Warfare. Threat plot confirmed.”
The squadron wasted no time. Things moved so fast that the ships had to be under Warfare’s direct control, the comforting-to humans, at least-rituals of order and acknowledgment giving way to laser tightbeam commands that welded ten dreadnoughts into a single offensive weapon. Truth be known, the human crews were along only for the ride, there to step in if the AIs made a mistake blatant enough for a slow-moving human brain to pick it up.
Radiating every transmitter they carried at full power-some joker at one of the planning meetings called this the “hello, please shoot at us” signal-the dreadnoughts dumped full missile salvos overboard, more than three thousand Merlin ASSMs opening out on vectors to send them far enough away to survive the inevitable Hammer antimatter attack. Deception formed no part of Blue Tango. The exact opposite, in fact. Michael wanted the Hammers to know they had a serious problem heading their way. Going in fast and loud seemed to him to be the best way to achieve that; if he could have sent a cheer squad on ahead in Day-Glo space suits, he would have done just that. He wanted to ratchet the pressure up, to force the Hammer commander to react without thinking, to make mistakes.
With the dreadnoughts now driving in hard toward the Hammers, Warfare held the rail guns back. To fire this far out meant having the dreadnoughts’ missile salvo arrive long after the rail-gun slugs had arrived on target, setting a defensive problem even the dumbest Hammer commander would have little problem dealing with.
It was not easy, sitting there, Tufayl’s combat information center silent while the ships closed on the Hammers. Adrenaline took effect. Heart thumping, Michael forced himself not to fidget, his eyes locked on the threat plot. If the Hammers did not respond soon …
“Command, sensors. Multiple missile launches. Eaglehawk ASSMs. No targeting assessment possible at this range. Initial salvo pattern suggests antimatter attack highly probable. Time to target 5 minutes 23.”
“Command, roger. All stations. Brace for antimatter missile attack.”
Michael zoomed the holovid in to focus on the incoming attack. Antimatter missiles were precious; they had to be husbanded, and the Hammers did that. To ensure that every one counted, Hammer antimatter attacks were always the same. An outer layer of sacrificial decoys and missiles carrying conventional chemex and fusion warheads led the way. They had only one task: to distract the Feds’ medium-range antimissile defenses. If they made it through to their targets, that was a bonus. Following on came more missiles, some-but not all-fitted with antimatter warheads mixed with yet more decoys, the whole attack formed into a hemispherical mass. It was so unmistakable that the Hammer commander might as well have sent a message en clair telling the dreadnoughts antimatter missiles were on their way.
Michael had trouble breathing; the bands around his chest refused to ease. He checked the threat plot, looking at it the way a man watches a cobra about to strike. It was a truly terrifying sight, missile vectors fused into a single tangled mass of red that came down to a single point: the tiny bubble of space occupied by the First. The Hammers were good, very good, without exception getting their missiles away barely seconds after the squadron dropped, then accelerating away from the battle station before adjusting vectors to turn bows on to the incoming Fed ships.
Michael did not care. His ships had one target-space battle station HSBS-372-and the Hammers essentially had left it to look after its own defense. There was a Hammer commander with altogether too much faith in antimatter missiles, he thought; Michael enjoyed the prospect of teaching the man the error of his ways.
“Command, Warfare. Hammer missiles will be inside our mission abort blast damage radius in three minutes. If they haven’t fired their missiles before then, I intend to jump the squadron.”
“Command, roger.” Michael had no option but to agree. It would have been good to see this phase of the operation through, but not if it meant rendering his squadron ineffective. His ships were tough enough to withstand an antimatter attack, but not if the warheads blew too close. There was always nex-
Afterward, Michael would swear that the entire universe turned an incandescent white, a white beyond white, a white so bright that his eyes refused to open for many minutes afterward. An instant later, the Tufayl was thrown backward when its artificial gravity failed, slamming Michael hard against his safety harness. Even through the radiation-resistant layers of the armored combat space suit designed specifically for dreadnought crews, he sustained heavy bruises across his shoulders that lasted for weeks.
The Tufayl’s combat information center dissolved into bedlam, radiation alarms shrieking to tell Michael what he already knew-that they had been on the receiving end of a wall of gamma radiation intense enough to make a dreadnought feel like it had run into a brick wall. He breathed out with relief and shut the alarms off. He was alive, and so was the rest of Tufayl’s crew, even though his neuronics screamed blue murder about the amount of radiation he had received. Not that he cared; Tufayl carried medibots purpose-built to deal with just that problem, and he and everyone else onboard would live more than long enough to use them.
“Command, Warfare. Missile salvo one is nominal; no significant damage from antimatter attack. Launching second missile salvo. Deploying decoys and Krachov shrouds.”
“Roger.” Anxiously, he scanned the damage reports flowing in from the squadron. The ships had absorbed a prodigious amount of energy in a short span of time, the wall of gamma radiation blasting off hundreds of tons of bow armor before the shock wave drove into the dreadnoughts’ titanium inner hull and frames. But ships and crews had survived. Not bad, he said to himself. The hundreds of design changes had done their job.
He ran down the list of ships. One of his ships had come out badly: Iron Knight’s starboard missile launcher rams were damaged and nonoperational, cutting her ASSM salvo capability by 50 percent. As for the rest, Khaldun and Orion suffered damage to the fusion plants supplying their antiship lasers. Tufayl, Rebuke, and Qurrah, had some damage to their starboard main propulsion. And that was it; the rest of the squadron had minor problems but none worth worrying about.
Michael turned his attention back to the command plot, making sure it tallied with the mental image of the operation he carried in his head. Things looked good. Accelerating hard, his ships were now close enough to the Hammers to deny them the option to fire a second salvo of antimatter missiles. Doing so might kill the Fed ships, but they would destroy themselves in the process. The decoys were doing the job of convincing the Hammer ships screening the battle station that they were the primary target for the Fed attack. His squadron’s second missile salvo was on its way, and if Warfare’s calculations were right, his ships would fire their rail guns before the Hammer ships could get their own second missile salvo away. All of that meant the Hammers’ one chance of doing any serious damage was to fire a well-targeted rail-gun attack before the Feds jumped.
Edgily, Michael watched the distance close. It was the hardest thing about his job, to sit back and wait, even though that was what he should be doing.
“Command, Warfare. Firing rail guns … now!”
Tufayl shuddered when the forward rail-gun batteries threw a full salvo at the Hammer battle station. Michael nodded his approval; the rail-gun swarm was tightly grouped, its timing impeccable. The squadron’s missiles would arrive on target seconds after the rail-gun slugs smashed home, hoping to exploit any weaknesses blasted into the battle station’s armor by the slugs.
“Command, Warfare. Hammer ships turning in. Rail-gun attack imminent.”
“Roger,” Michael replied, trying in vain to keep his stomach under control, the sweat running cold down his spine. He swore under his breath. He would be happy never to see another Hammer rail-gun salvo ever again.
“Command, Warfare, sensors. Multiple rail-gun launches. Impact in sixty seconds. Stand by impact assessment.”
“Roger.”
“Command, sensors. Vector assessment on rail-gun salvo. Targets are Sina and Rebuke. Impact fifty seconds.”
“Command, Warfare. All ships, stand by to jump.”
“Warfare, hold. Reconfirm mass distribution models.” Michael knew they had the time, so why not recheck the one thing that might really screw up the operation.
“Stand by … confirmed. All ships report mass distribution recomputed and nominal. Safe to jump.”
“Roger. Command approved to jump when ready.”
“All stations, Warfare. Jumping.”
Poorly supported by the warships of a defensive screen more interested in looking after themselves, the battle station had no chance of survival. Focused, unstoppable, the Fed attack overwhelmed the station; it reeled as the massive shock of a well-timed rail-gun salvo racked its frame and fusion warheads flayed armor off by the meter, allowing missiles carrying conventional chemex warheads to punch lances of white-hot gas deep into its guts. For a while, the station hung there, seemingly untroubled, the only movement that of thin skeins of smoke boiling off into space from puddles of white-hot ceramsteel armor. It could not last; their defenses breached by Fed missiles, the station’s two primary fusion power plants lost containment. A microsecond later, the unimaginable power of their explosion blew the massive armored sphere into a ball of white-hot gas seeded though with a million pieces of blast-shattered wreckage.
Phase 1 of Operation Blue Tango was over, Fed reconsats its only witnesses.
The universe twisted in on itself, and Tufayl dropped out of pinchspace. Michael tried to ignore jangling nerves and a protesting stomach, more interested in the flurry of activity while Tufayl’s crew made sure they had not dropped into the arms of a waiting Hammer task group.
“Command, Warfare. Threat plot confirmed green.”
“Command, roger. Warfare. Weapons still free; you retain command authority.”
“Warfare, roger.”
Michael allowed himself to relax a fraction; he watched the proceedings, more than happy to see the mass tankers where they were supposed to be and relieved when the tankers dumped their passive sensor intercept logs across to Tufayl, confirming that no other ships were operating within billions of kilometers. He allowed himself to relax.
“Jayla, you have the ship. Stand down from general quarters. Restore ship’s atmosphere and artgrav. Take us in. Oh, yes, tell our wandering lander it can come home.”
“Roger, sir. They’ll be pleased,” Ferreira said.
“I reckon. Bit lonely over there.”
Michael left the combat information center, happy to breathe ship’s air in place of the moisture-laden muck that cycled around his suit over and over again, happy to get out of his combat space suit, and even happier to be able to ditch a sweat-soaked shipsuit. Back in his cabin, he stripped off, prepared his combat space suit for its next outing, showered, and was back in the combat information center freshly shipsuited in a matter of minutes.
“Sir, ship is at defense stations.”
“Thanks, Jayla.” Michael settled down to watch the squadron decelerate to take station on the tankers.
“Er, sir,” Ferreira said.
“Yes?”
“Sick bay, sir, if you don’t mind. The medibots need to take care of the radiation damage.”
“Ah, yes,” Michael said, embarrassed that he had forgotten.
“Thought you might have,” Ferreira said, a look of stern disapproval on her face.
“Okay, okay. On my way. Just make sure you get to the sick bay, too.”
“Taken care of, sir. The coxswain’s there; soon as she’s done, she’ll cover for me.”
“Good. I’ll go walkabout when I’m finished.”
Michael set off to the sick bay. After ten uncomfortable minutes at the hands of nano-sized medibots relentless in their determination to repair the subcellular damage caused by a fraction of a nanosecond’s exposure to intense gamma radiation, he was free.
His first stop was engineering. Climbing down the ladder into the starboard engine room, he spotted the lower half of Chief Petty Officer (Propulsion) Chua. The man lay flat on his back, most of his body buried deep inside the armored casing of the main driver mass supply feed, with the rest of Tufayl’s engineering team huddled around him.
Michael waited patiently until Chua slid back out of the access port, his face and body black with driver pellet residue. “Any joy, chief?” he asked.
Chua shook his head. “No, sir. I think we’ve found the problem, though. Shock damage to one of the transporter bearing sets. Nothing fatal, but …” Chua stopped.
“Go on.”
“Well, sir. There’s a risk we might lose the whole feed if one of the bearings fails. Not a big risk, but a risk. If we’re under even half power at the time, that’d probably take out the whole engine room. There’s a lot of mass coming down that feeder tube.”
“Fixable?”
“No, sir. Yard job. Not a big one, but it’s beyond us, I’m afraid.”
“Was afraid it might be.” Michael masked his disappointment, though he was not surprised. The dreadnoughts’ limited ability to fix battle damage was one of their biggest weaknesses. “Rebuke and Qurrah?”
“Looks to be the same problem, sir. But without spacers to crawl inside”-Chua waved a hand at the access port-“we can’t be sure. Their repairbots aren’t in yet.”
Michael nodded. Another weakness of the dreadnought design: When it came to getting into awkward places to find out just what the hell was going on, spacers were hard to beat. “Okay. So my starboard engine is power-limited?”
“That’s right, sir. You can have 90 percent if you need it and full power if the Hammers start breathing down our necks, but don’t be surprised if we lose the whole starboard engine. Ten minutes at full power, tops. You can have emergency power if you override the safety interlocks, but I would not recommend doing that unless we’re going to die anyway.” Chua’s tone of voice might be lighthearted, but underneath the dirt, his face was grim.
“Ten minutes at maximum power. Avoid emergency power. Understood.” He looked in turn at the rest of the engineering department. “Any other problems? Petty Officer Morozov?”
“Well, sir, the honey pot’s a bit shaken up, but apart from a bit of blowback from the crappers”-Michael winced theatrically while the rest of the engineers laughed-“which the housebots are cleaning up, we’re fine.”
“Pleased to hear it. Let me guess. I know the exec has nagged you guys to death, but none of you have been to the sick bay? Am I right?”
Sheepishly, the engineers nodded their heads.
“Well, guys. I need you fit and well, so get your asses up there pronto. If I can do what Lieutenant Ferreira tells me, so can you!”
“Sir,” they chorused.
“Right, I’m off.” Comming Bienefelt to meet him, Michael left the starboard engine room, encouraged by the attitude of the engineers and even more by the news that he could have full power if he needed it, not to mention emergency power if things turned really bad. Emerging from the engine room’s armored air lock, he made his way forward through the echoing emptiness of the hangar, the backup lander-Sedova had christened it Creaking Door, and he reminded himself for the umpteenth time find out why-its sole occupant. Well, the place was empty only if one ignored the enormous bulk of Chief Petty Officer Bienefelt.
“Sir?” she said.
“Matti. I want to see for myself how the forward compartments survived the Hammer attack.”
“I guessed that’s what you wanted, sir. That’s why I brought this.” Effortlessly, Bienefelt waved the bulky shape of a handheld material scanner that Michael would have had trouble lifting with two hands.
“Ah, good,” Michael mumbled. “I was just going to, er … you know …”
“Let me guess, sir … You were going to peer at them?”
“Peer at them? Yes, I think that’s the technical term,” Michael said, a touch embarrassed. The idea of doing a proper survey by using a scanner capable of detecting minute cracks never occurred to him.
“Honestly, sir.” Bienefelt rolled her eyes and shook her head. “What would you ever do without senior spacers?”
“Screw things up?”
“You said it, sir, not me.” She grinned at Michael, the bond between them palpable. “Shall I lead on?’
“Please do, Chief Petty Officer Bienefelt, please do,” Michael said with exaggerated deference, thankful, not for the first time, that he had spacers like Bienefelt to rely on, “I’m not sure I could find my way without you.”
With scanner held in an enormous hand, she set off, a muted “hmphhhh,” her only response.
Tufayl’s forward compartments were an uncomfortable sight, their rawness a stark reminder of what the dreadnought had gone through at Comdur. Not that any trace of the spacers who had died up there remained. No, it was the crude roughness with which the salvagebots had stripped the compartments, the hastily installed reinforcing to the ship’s frames, and, right forward, the wall of ugly gray ceramsteel armor slabs, thousands and thousands of tons of them, cut with millimeter accuracy to fill the ship’s bows right up to the original armor, the slabs secured by welds and makeshift bracing.
Michael gave the work no points for aesthetics, but that aside, the compartments were in good shape. The impulse shock from the wall of gamma radiation had left the area untouched.
“All looks pretty good, Matti,” he said. “What’s the scanner show?”
“We have some minor stress fractures around some of the welds but nothing that’ll affect structural integrity. The bracing’s good. I think the Tufayl’s done okay. That was one hell of a bang she took.”
“It was. I’ll leave you to it. Let me know if you find anything.”
“I will, sir, though I’m pretty sure the engineers did it right. Certainly looks that way.”
“Let’s hope so. Let me know when you’re done. The XO tells me the Ghost is inbound, so I’ll be down in the hangar.”
“Sir.”
Reassured that Tufayl was okay and leaving Bienefelt to finish the survey, Michael made his way back to the hanger while Caesar’s Ghost cycled through the air lock. Once the lander was secure, he made his way over and waited until Sedova emerged.
“How was it, Kat?” Michael said as the Ghost’s command pilot jumped down.
“Well, sir. To be honest, bloody terrifying.” Sedova smiled, but it was forced. She unlatched her helmet and took it off, running a hand through sweat-soaked hair.
“Troops handle it okay?”
“No probs, sir. They’re fine. I shut down Iron Duke’s artificial gravity and kept the Ghost in the hover until the attack was over, so we missed the impulse shock altogether, but we have a couple of radiation-induced glitches I’d like the engineers to have a look at.”
“Okay. Keep me posted. To save the executive officer having to nag you, get everyone up to the sick bay like yesterday.”
“Will do, sir. Never seen my dosimeter read so far into the red. My neuronics are telling me I don’t have long to live. Talk about scary.”
Michael nodded. It had been. Without nanobots to repair the radiation damage, he and the rest of Tufayl’s crew would all be dead inside forty-eight hours. “Right. I’m off back to the CIC. Let me know when the Ghost is 100 percent.”
“Sir.”
“How are we doing?” Michael asked when he climbed back into the command seat.
“Good timing, sir. Stand by …” Ferreira said as the subdued rumbling of the Tufayl’s main engines cut out. “We’re in station. The drone is launching its shuttles. Estimate squadron will complete remassing on schedule.”
“Good.” Quickly he scanned the threat plot-still green-before double-checking what the ship’s passive sensors were picking up, pleased to see nothing out of the ordinary. Leading Spacer Carmellini had the sensor watch; Michael walked over to him and patted him on the shoulder. “Am I missing anything?”
Carmellini shook his head. “No, sir.”
Michael dropped into a seat alongside Carmellini’s workstation, the better to see his face. “Way I like it.”
“Me, too, sir,” Carmellini said with feeling.
“You okay?”
“I am, sir. The first time back in action, well … that was pretty hard after, you know, after …” Carmellini’s voice faded away. “But it’s better this time, though it’s still tough. But tough or not, it’s what we are all about,” he said, recovering his composure, “so I’m happy to be here. We owe those Hammer sonsofbitches big time.”
“We sure do. You’re doing well, son. Very well,” Michael said, pleased to see Carmellini every bit as steady as he sounded.
“Thank you, sir. Remember Comdur.”
“Remember Comdur,” Michael replied.
He returned to his seat to watch the remassing, a slow-motion space ballet performed by chunky black boxes fitted with simple thrusters shuttling to and fro to dump their loads of driver mass pellets into the dreadnoughts’ depleted bunkers.
It was a pleasant, even soothing, sight, but even though Michael was tempted to relax-with the adrenaline leaching fast out of his system, he was tired-not for one microsecond did he let his guard down. Dreadnought Squadron One was in deepspace light-years from the Hammers-so far from anything that its chances of being detected and attacked were infinitesimal-but that did not matter. Captain Constanza, Ishaq’s skipper, had assumed her ship was safe, and the Hammers had gone and ambushed it at Xiang Reef. Her reward? To have her ship blown apart around her, killing her along with hundreds of Ishaq’s crew, dumping Michael and close to three hundred other survivors into Hammer hands.
Not on my watch, he said to himself, counting the minutes down until the First returned to Faith nearspace for the second phase of Operation Blue Tango.
“Shiiiiit,” Michael hissed through clenched teeth, reflexes forcing his body right back in its seat in a vain attempt to get away from the disaster bearing down on them, a disaster he could do nothing to avert.
The command holovid filled with the awful sight of a Hammer ship-the light escort O’Connor-closing with horrifying speed, Tufayl’s bows aimed right into her flank. Michael cursed his luck. Tufayl had dropped so close to O’Connor that there was no way either ship could avoid the looming disaster. A collision was inevitable. He swore again; of all the billions and billions of cubic kilometers of space O’Connor might have been in, it had to pick the same tiny bubble Tufayl would be in seconds after it dropped out of pinchspace.
“Another first for the dreadnoughts,” he said sardonically, “a ramming.”
“All stations,” Warfare said laconically. “Brace for collision.”
With nearly superhuman effort, Michael forced himself to look away. There might be only seconds before Tufayl was ripped apart, but he still had a squadron to think about, a squadron right in the middle of an attack on the small Hammer task group-designated Hammer-1-in loose formation close to OHMP-344, one of the orbital heavy maintenance platforms in Clarke orbit around Faith planet. Needless to say, neither the Hammer task group nor the unfortunate O’Connor had been anywhere near OHMP-344 when the dreadnoughts had departed from Hammer space to remass before returning for the second phase of Blue Tango. Murphy, Michael reminded himself, was very fond of military operations.
“Warfare. Status?”
“Own missile and rail-gun salvos have ten seconds to impact. Targets still turning; probability of first strike kill on Novo City and Jarramshia is high. Hammer missile salvo inbound from OHMP-344’s defensive platforms, time to impact four minutes, targets Rebuke and Sina. Iron Duke adjusting vector to take station on Tufayl for casualty recovery; Caesar’s Ghost and Creaking Door are at Launch 1.”
“Command, roger.” He had not needed to ask-Warfare’s report matched Michael’s mental plot of the operation-but it was never a bad thing to know for certain that nothing had been overlooked.
Turning back to look at the holovid and the relentlessly closing O’Connor, Michael promised himself that never, ever again would he allow the First to be thrown into an attack on the basis of old, stale intelligence. Never, and if the admirals did not like it, they could go screw themselves.
The last few seconds to impact ran off with glacial slowness. For fuck’s sake, Michael swore; it was like being back in the eighteenth century! One ship ramming another. What next? All hands to boarding stations? Issue cutlasses? And if that was not bad enough, nobody could tell him whether Tufayl would survive what would be the first recorded collision in space combat. Michael hoped she would survive. Tufayl outmassed the hapless O’Connor by a big margin, and her reinforced bow armor should make short work of the light escort’s thinly protected flanks, but that was a long way from being sure. What if the O’Connor’s fusion plants lost containment? What if she carried antimatter miss-
With a sickening, tearing crash that picked the ship up and shook it, Tufayl plowed into O’Connor about one-third of the way back from her bows, the impact dragged out into a series of grating crunches as Tufayl tore through the hapless Hammer ship, overloaded metal frames squealing in protest, bending and twisting under the stress of the collision. Horrified, Michael and the rest of Tufayl’s crew watched the dreadnought slice the Hammer ship apart, forcing its hull wide open, air dumped into space in a shivering, scintillating white mass of ice crystals. Nausea twisted Michael’s guts into a tangled knot: The cloud wasn’t just ice. It was seeded through with small, tumbling shapes blown bodily out of the ship by explosive decompression, some space-suited, most not, thin shipsuits no protection against the hard vacuum of space.
Michael shivered; Tufayl was not the only one taken by surprise.
Even as Michael allowed himself to hope that Tufayl might escape unscathed, the ship was picked up again, only to be smashed bodily to starboard, overstressed frames screeching as it was blown away from the fractured corpse of O’Connor. One of the Hammer ship’s auxiliary fusion plants probably, Michael reckoned. Might have been worse. The Tufayl might not have survived if one of the Hammer ship’s main propulsion plants had exploded.
Damage reports flooded in. Michael’s face turned grim while he studied them. He commed Ferreira. Her face spoke volumes.
“Not looking good, sir,” she said. “We don’t have the spacers to deal with half the problems we’re facing. And we’re no longer jump-capable.”
Michael nodded; he knew Tufayl was in serious trouble. “Can we save her?”
“No, sir,” Ferreira said emphatically. “She either blows up or O’Connor does the job for us. Either way, chances of saving her are nil.”
“I agree. I’ll give the order. Get your people into Creaking Door.” Michael did not waste any more time. There were plenty more ships to go around. It was spacers Fleet could not replace.
“All stations, command. Abandon ship. I say again, abandon ship. All hands to the lander! Command, out.” Michael’s space-suited finger struggled with the black and yellow cover over the abandon ship alarm, but he forced it open finally. His finger stabbed down, and the ship filled instantly with an unmistakable whoop whoop whoop, the combat information center filling with the lurid red flashes of emergency strobes.
Michael commed Ferreira. “Sir?” she said.
“I won’t be far behind you, but if it all goes to shit, you are not to wait for me, understand?”
“Sir, I-”
“That’s a direct order, Ferreira. Just do it. Captain, out.”
“Command, Warfare. Have Iron Duke ready to receive survivors.”
“Warfare, roger,” the AI replied, quite unruffled by the fact that it had only minutes left to live. Michael suppressed a stab of guilt. It was just an AI, after all, and anyway, its clone and those of Kubby and Kal were all safely aboard the Iron Duke, ready to take over the instant Tufayl was destroyed. He would miss Mother, though; she was not going home, and there was no time to say goodbye.
“Command, Warfare. Iron Duke acknowledges. Closing on Tufayl. Second missile salvo away, targets Hammer light cruisers Machuca, Fram, and Carlucci.”
“Command, roger,” Michael said. He took one last look at the command and threat plots to make sure nothing had been overlooked and headed for the hangar, an awkward shuffling run made difficult by an uncooperative combat space suit and by what felt horribly like the imminent failure of Tufayl’s artificial gravity. He redoubled his efforts. If the ship lost artificial gravity, he would never make it. Desperately he hurled himself into the drop tube, plummeting down to the hangar deck. To his surprise and relief, he was met by Bienefelt and Carmellini on the end of safety lines rigged back to Creaking Door. They wasted no time. Without a word, they grabbed Michael under the arms and rushed him back to the lander, throwing him bodily through the starboard access door, Carmellini slapping the handle down to close the hatch behind them while the lander accelerated hard into space, away from the doomed Tufayl.
“Jeeeeez!” Michael hissed. “Jayla,” he said to Ferreira, struggling to recover his composure, “tell me we have everyone.”
“We do, sir. Ten souls.”
“Good,” Michael said, much relieved. He strapped himself in. “Who’s flying this thing?”
“Sedova and her team, sir, by datalink.”
“Good. Okay, back to work.” He had an operation to run. He closed his eyes and switched his neuronics to the command and threat plots. A quick check reassured him that apart from the imminent loss of Tufayl, the operation was going well. The squadron, trailed by Iron Duke, bored in toward the Hammer task group, already two ships down as Novo City and Jarramshia death-rolled out of the fight, with air, smoke, and flame belching from multiple missile and rail-gun impacts. His mouth tightened into a savage snarl at the sight. The Hammer task group was not going to survive this encounter.
But the primary target, OHMP-344, was still intact. Michael had an idea. Since the Tufayl was well and truly in the ramming business, she ought to go out with a bang. “Warfare, command.”
“Warfare.”
“Set Tufayl’s vector to impact the platform, main propulsion to full power,” Michael said, adding a silent prayer that Tufayl’s starboard main driver mass supply feed had held up. “Set all fusion plants to self-destruct at impact plus two seconds.”
“Warfare, roger. Adjusting Tufayl’s vector,” the warfare AI replied calmly. “Stand by … vector set, ship at full power.”
“Command roger.” The chances of Tufayl surviving long enough to get through to OHMP-344 were fifty-fifty at best, but it was worth the effort, if only to distract the platform’s defenses. The sight of a heavy cruiser with a death wish heading right at them would attract the undivided attention of OHMP-344’s defenders, that was for sure.
“All stations, warfare. Stand by Hammer missile salvo impact three minutes.”
Michael urged the Door on; getting caught in a light assault lander in the middle of a Hammer missile attack was not conducive to a long and happy life.
“Roger. Warf-”
Without any warning, Creaking Door staggered, a bone-jarring bang throwing the light lander off vector, hurling the crew of Tufayl across the lander’s cargo bay in a tangle of space-suited arms and legs. Michael hit the bulkhead with sickening force. He bounced off, crashing into Bienefelt’s enormous bulk, his left arm-held out in a futile effort to protect himself-giving way with a dry crack when he hit. Dazed, he ignored the stabbing pain from his arm. Comming his neuronics to dump painkillers into his system, he found his feet when the Door’s artificial gravity came back online. He commed Sedova.
“Sitrep,” he said thickly as the painkillers worked their magic, the pain receding fast but leaving him light-headed with shock.
“The Door’s finished. Lucky shot from an antiship laser blew out the starboard auxiliary fusion plant, I think. I’m on my way. Get the ramp down so we can take you off. We don’t have much time.”
“Roger that,” Michael replied; he commed Ferreira to take over the transfer. He still had a battle to run. A quick check confirmed that nothing much had changed except that the clock was running down fast. Sedova would have to work quickly.
She did. Tufayl’s crew hung clustered around the ramp, watching Caesar’s Ghost, her ramp down, belly thrusters firing and decelerating savagely, come to a dead stop barely a meter away from the gaping hole in Creaking Door’s stern, jets of reaction mass spewing into space while Sedova realigned the lander for the run back to Iron Duke. A figure-Sedova’s loadmaster, Petty Officer Trivedi, according to Michael’s neuronics-shot across the gap, maneuvering pack on her back, trailing a thin recovery line. Nobody needed to be told what to do. Without waiting, spacers clipped in and started to pull themselves to safety.
“Ghost, loadmaster. That’s the lot. Go, go, go,” Trivedi shouted when everyone was hooked on.
Sedova did not hesitate. Leaving Creaking Door to tumble away into space, the timers on her self-destruct charges running, she fired the main engines in a short, sharp burst that sent the lander heading back to Iron Duke, spacers flailing out behind, clinging desperately to the recovery line while unseen hands inside the Ghost reeled them in. Trivedi’s maneuvering units were spitting jets of nitrogen as she pushed from behind.
After what they had been through, the rest of the transfer turned out to be a welcome anticlimax. Once inside, Michael was more than happy to lie on the floor of the cargo bay, leaving Trivedi to push the last spacer into Caesar’s Ghost and slam the ramp shut. He was even happier when Sedova piloted the lander inside the protective armor of Iron Duke, acutely aware that they had made it by a dangerously small margin.
Impatiently, he waited. Finally, Caesar’s Ghost came to a dead stop in the Iron Duke’s cavernous hangar, armored air lock doors slamming shut behind them. The instant the lander stopped, he leaped out, cradling his injured arm and running hard, eyes half closed while he watched the battle unfold on his neuronics, the rest of his crew in hot pursuit.
Chest heaving from the effort, Michael burst into the combat information center, throwing himself into the command seat with only seconds to spare before the Hammer missile attack fell on the Fed dreadnoughts, fumbling one-handed to strap himself in. With the Hammer task group all but destroyed and lacking rail guns-orbital installations such as space battle stations and maintenance platforms did not carry them, only missiles, lasers, and chain guns-the platform’s attack never troubled the Feds. One by one, missiles were hacked out of space by the carefully coordinated efforts of the dreadnoughts, the missiles unable to penetrate the blizzard of fire from medium-range and close-in defensive weapons, missile fusion plants, and warheads exploding in blue-white balls of flame.
It was over; barely a handful of missiles sneaked through, the damage to Iron Duke limited to a few patches of vaporized armor.
“Warfare, Command. Priority targets now ships of Hammer-1 and OHMP-344.”
“Warfare, roger.”
Michael forced himself to sit back, to assess the tactical situation dispassionately. Even though it seemed like hours, they had been in Hammer space for only a matter of minutes. The question was how much longer they should stay. Michael scanned the threat plot. The Hammers had reacted quickly to the First’s incursion; a group of Hammer ships-designated task group Hammer-2-accelerated hard toward them and would be within rail-gun range soon. Their first missile salvos were already on their way, heading toward the dreadnoughts. Not long, Michael decided. The First only had minutes to finish up and get the hell out.
“Warfare, Command. We’ll go for one more missile and rail-gun salvo before we jump.”
“Warfare, roger.”
Utterly engrossed, Michael watched the battle unfold. A swarm of rail-gun slugs joined the dreadnoughts’ second missile salvo; together they fell on the ships of the hapless Hammer task group around OHMP-344-what was left of them. The Hammer ships’ desperate efforts accounted for too few of the incoming missiles. In seconds, the attack slammed home, the three Hammer light cruisers reeling under the impact. Michael watched transfixed as a tear opened up across the cruiser Carlucci’s hull, a sinuous line, thin and impossibly bright. When the rip reached Carlucci’s stern, it exploded into a flare that stabbed flame out into space, and the ship staggered. An instant later, the blinding flash of runaway main fusion plants swallowed the doomed ship.
Warfare wasted no time. Missiles held back in reserve throttled up to full power, streaking in to hit the two ships in their thinly armored flanks before they could turn away. Machuca and Fram spewed reaction mass in a desperate attempt to pull out of the attack, spitting lifepods in all directions, until they, too, vanished into the hellish hearts of exploding fusion plants.
The Hammer task group was finished.
“Command, Warfare. Missiles away. Target OHMP-344. Time to target 3 minutes 15. Stand by, command … rail-gun salvo launched from task group Hammer-2. Time to target 2 minutes 10.”
“Command, roger.” The Hammers had fired early; despite the extreme range, the rail-gun swarm was big and its geometry appeared good enough to force the dreadnoughts to turn to meet the Hammer attack-taking a rail-gun swarm in the flanks was never a good idea-and ride it out if they were to get one more rail-gun salvo away.
Michael cursed some more; the Hammers were fighting smart, and things were getting complicated. The Hammers were avoiding the perennial weakness that afflicted so many of their commanders-shooting first and thinking second-and it became obvious that the salvos from OHMP-344 and the ships of Hammer-2 were timed to arrive on target to the second. Thanks to Hammer-2’s arrival, the squadron was under attack from two different directions at once, something that the Fighting Instructions advised Fleet captains to avoid at all costs.
So here he was, about to be caught in exactly that position. The safest thing would be to jump the squadron clear, but that risked letting OHMP-344 off the hook. For a moment, Michael sat paralyzed by indecision before the time-to-impact counter galvanized him back into action. He emptied his lungs slowly to settle his nerves and made his decision. The Hammers were not going anywhere. He could always come back another time.
“Warfare, Command. End of operation. Adjust vectors for Comdur. Jump when ready.”
“Warfare, roger.”
The decision made, Michael waited for the squadron to adjust vectors for home. The Hammers were going to be pissed. The commander of Hammer-2 would have liked his chances of taking out at least a couple of the dreadnoughts. Well, he was not going to get the opportunity, and the more missiles he wasted on the doomed Tufayl, the better.
Satisfied that the squadron was safe to jump and with mass distribution models checked and rechecked, Warfare gave the order, and the dreadnoughts vanished into the safety of pinchspace, leaving the missiles from OHMP-344 and Hammer-2 to rip through the tangled knuckles of space-time left behind by Dreadnought Squadron One. Frustrated, the missiles attempted to turn to attack the Tufayl, but she was too far ahead. One by one, the missiles’ second-stage engines flamed out. Unable to acquire a target, the salvo self-destructed in a spectacularly wasteful display of pyrotechnics.
But the battle for OHMP-344 was far from over.
With only one ship to deal with, the next missile salvo enjoyed the benefit of a solid target datum; they turned into the attack. As they did, Tufayl’s antimissile defenses filled the fast-closing gap with a lethal mixture of missiles, lasers, and depleted-uranium rounds fired by hypervelocity chain guns. One after another, Hammer missiles died in fireballs of exploding warheads and failed microfusion plants, but enough survived the slaughter to press home the attack. Joined by a second rail-gun swarm from Hammer-2, a wave of missiles and slugs plunged into Tufayl; her bows vanished behind great roiling clouds of ionized ceramsteel armor when warheads punched deep, the doomed ship staggering under the repeated impacts, the few slugs to hit adding to the carnage.
With time to turn bows on to the rail-gun attack, Tufayl survived thanks to her reinforced armor, but she was left a bleeding, crippled wreck. Another missile and rail-gun attack would finish her off, but the Hammers were out of time. Shrugging off the damage the Hammer defenders had inflicted on her, Tufayl closed in on OHMP-344. The platform fought to keep her out. Frantic crews labored to get the next long-range missile salvo away while close-in defenses tried to deflect the oncoming ship. Tufayl’s hull flared white-hot as lasers probed for weaknesses in the armor, missile strikes punched gouts of yellow-red armor out into space, and chain-gun rounds speckled the bows with flashes of fierce white flame.
To no avail. With the ships of Hammer-2 unable to get another rail-gun salvo away in time, the Hammers broke and ran. All of a sudden, OHMP-344 spewed lifepods in every direction, swarms of strobes double-flashing orange pleas for help, fireflies in a desperate flight to get clear of the unfolding catastrophe.
With impressive precision, Tufayl smashed into OHMP-344, her battered bows driving directly into the platform’s spherical heart, explosive decompression of the platform’s atmosphere hurling sheets of plasteel into space, tumbling away inside an ice-crystal cloud filled with splintered plasglass, furniture, equipment, and those of OHMP-344’s crew too slow to get to the lifepods.
With her hull buried deep in the platform’s guts, Tufayl’s fusion plants blew, and the ship died. The explosion ripped OHMP-344 apart, sending the smashed remains of the platform out into space, its intricate framework of girders, some with ships undergoing repair still berthed on them, twisting and buckling into a blackened mess of warped plasteel that tumbled away to nowhere.
With Iron Duke safely in pinchspace and ignoring the mounting pain from his arm-the painkillers were fast wearing off-Michael made it to the captain’s cabin only to collapse into a chair, worn out by the aftereffects of combat but more by the certain knowledge that he had come within seconds of dying as Sedova fought to get Caesar’s Ghost back to Iron Duke and safety. He sat for a long time. Not that he had much choice. Even if he wanted to move, he could not; his legs refused to work, his arm hurt like hell, and he was beyond exhausted.
“Captain, sir.” It was Ferreira.
“Yes,” he croaked. “What?”
“I’m getting an alarm from your neuronics. Your vitals are crap, and it seems you have a broken arm. Why didn’t you say something? I’m on my way.”
Michael wondered if he should tell her to leave him alone but decided against it.
The cabin door banged open, and Ferreira burst in, closely followed by Bienefelt. The pair knelt beside him.
“For chrissakes, sir,” Bienefelt said; she gently removed his helmet. “What are you doing?”
Just having the world’s biggest spacer there made Michael feel better. “What? Can’t I even have a sit-down when I want one?” he said. “What the hell’s the point of being captain of this tub if I can’t do that? Come on, you two. Help me up. I need a shower.”
“Sick bay first, sir, if you don’t mind,” Ferreira said. “That arm needs fixing.”
Michael started to argue, but the determined look on Ferreira’s face told him that this was not the time. “Okay,” he said, resigned, “come on, get me out of this damn chair.”