The battle of Devastation reef hw-3 Page 14

  “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-gu
n 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 detecti
ng 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.”