The battle of Devastation reef hw-3 Read online

  Tipping off the Hammers that an attack was imminent was not a risk she would be allowed to take. Michael understood why; he also knew who would pay the butcher’s bill.

  Michael had paid attention during his military history classes at Space College. Poor intelligence had doomed more military operations to failure than he liked to think about. He only hoped that Operation Opera would not be one of them.

  Sunday, January 21, 2401, UD

  Operation Opera headquarters, Comdur Fleet Base

  Vice Admiral Jaruzelska was her normal brisk self, bustling in to take her seat. Not for the first time, Michael wondered how she kept going. “Morning, everyone. Seats, please,” she said. “Everyone here?” she asked, turning to her chief of staff.

  “Yes, sir,” Captain Tuukkanen replied.

  “Let’s get on. Right, Captain. Let’s look at the results of the latest simulations and see what they tell us about our chances of pulling this one off.”

  Michael sighed softly. The chances of Operation Opera succeeding? If the sims were right, they were not good, not good at all.

  “… so what we’re seeing, Admiral, is consistent. Using multiple task groups to divert the Hammer defenses before the dreadnoughts destroy the plant’s nearspace defenses is the only way to give the assault group-the ships tasked with actually destroying the antimatter plant-a clear run in. Any way we look at it, that is the right way, the best way … I think the only way.”

  Captain Tuukkanen paused for a moment. “We cannot assume that the Hammers will leave Assault Group alone,” he continued. “This is one of the best-defended facilities in humanspace. It will be hard to crack its defenses, and anyone heading for the antimatter plant is going to get attacked. That much we know, and that’s why the sims are showing us failing more often than not. But even though they suffer heavy losses, the dreadnoughts leading the attack get through practically every time, while Assault Group does not. That leaves us in control of the space around the antimatter plant but not with the assets to destroy it. All too often, those assets are in an Assault Group that fails to get through. It foll-”

  A voice cut Tuukkanen off. It was Perkins. “I cannot agree, Captain. Why should the dreadnoughts get through and Assault Group not? It does not make any sense.” Perkins glanced around the room, a half smile on his face making it clear that what he had said was so obvious that it really did not need any justification.

  “Sir, if I may?” Michael said. Jaruzelska waved him to continue. Perkins scowled his disapproval; Michael ignored him. “The dreadnoughts get through because they can survive attacks that a conventional heavy cruiser cannot. That’s been proved not just in endless design reviews but in the sims and in combat. The data cannot be argued with. Therefore, the most likely outcome of Opera is that dreadnoughts make it through when nobody else does. That means they must have the tools to finish the job if Assault Group does not get through.”

  When he finished, Michael wondered if he might not have been a tad too firm given that he was arguing with an admiral. Screw it, screw Perkins, he decided. Destroying the Hammer antimatter plant was far too important to worry about the man’s feelings.

  “Admiral Perkins?” Jaruzelska said, a faint smile ghosting across her face.

  Perkins scowled some more. “I firmly believe, Admiral, that if the dreadnoughts make it, so will Assault Group. That means we can finish the job. I think what we have here is something we’ve all seen before. In the end, simulations are just mathematical models, and we can pretty much make them say what we want. What we have here is just that. Too many negative assumptions producing unrealistically high probabilities of failure. Who knows why, but the sims are wrong. Assault Group will get through.”

  “Excuse me, sir,” Tuukkanen said, glaring at Perkins, his voice choked with outrage. “Are you suggesting the sims have been rigged to make the dreadnoughts look good? If you are, sir, I strongly-”

  “That is enough, Captain Tuukkanen,” Jaruzelska said firmly, “I’m sure that is not what the admiral is suggesting.”

  “Pig’s ass,” Michael muttered. “That’s precisely what Perkins was suggesting.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Perkins said. “Like I was saying, we all know overly pessimistic assumptions can-and usually do-lead to more fallback planning, more resources diverted away from the mission to provide ‘just in case’ backup, and a loss of focus on the main game. If we make this thing too complicated, it’ll fall apart just because it is too complicated. And just so we are clear, Captain Tuukkanen, I am not suggesting the sims have been rigged to make dreadnoughts look good … though some might think that.”

  Michael watched intently. Setting aside Perkins’s cheap shot about rigging the sims to favor the dreadnoughts, his main point was a good one. Yes, of course Perkins wanted to reduce the dreadnoughts’ role in Opera to a bare minimum-for all the wrong reasons-but some of what he said made sense. He was an experienced combat commander; he knew from firsthand experience that complexity sowed the seeds of failure just as much as oversimplification did. But keeping Opera simple by assuming that Assault Group would always make it through would be dumb. They might not; that possibility must be allowed for.

  Michael was pleased to see that Jaruzelska agreed; she turned to Perkins.

  “Simplicity is a virtue, Admiral,” she said, “but only up to a point. To assume that either Assault Group gets through to the plant or nobody does would be a serious mistake. The sims show there is always the chance that Assault Group is interdicted by the Hammers, and if it is interdicted, the dreadnoughts must be able to complete the mission.”

  Michael enjoyed Perkins’s response, that of a man who had just sucked a large and bitter lemon. “Admiral!” Perkins protested, “the operation is overly-complex as it is. It would be a mistake to make it even more complicated.”

  “I agree, I absolutely agree. So we need a simple solution to the problem, one that has no impact outside the dreadnoughts themselves, one that requires no detailed planning and that has no command overhead. Any ideas?”

  There was an awkward pause. Afterward, Michael could not explain why his discussion with Sedova about the role of Caesar’s Ghost came to mind, but it did.

  “Yes sir,” he said. “Assault Group’s mission remains unchanged. If they get through, they will destroy the Hammer plant. If they fail to get through, the dreadnoughts will have to take over. We already carry an assault lander. Give us a platoon of marines and a demolition team. They will be a last resort, but it’s better than nothing.”

  “Umm,” Jaruzelska said. “Admiral Perkins?”

  “I still believe it is unnecessary,” Perkins said ungraciously, “but …” His voice trailed off.

  “I’ll assume that is a yes, shall I?” Jaruzelska said drily. “So that puts your complement up to … yes, up to fifty-one. Michael?”

  “No problem, sir,” Michael said. “Temporary accommodation modules. The marines will not be onboard long enough for it to be a problem.”

  “Good. You have twenty-four hours to work up a detailed proposal. Now, to other issues.”

  Wednesday, January 24, 2401, UD

  Neu Kelheim, New Hartz Mountains, Jascaria planet

  The village of Neu Kelheim might have been lifted in its entirety from Old Earth, every part of it as authentically German as Fed technology could make it, or so the public relations people said. Sadly, it was far from authentic; not one molecule of the place had ever been near Old Earth. But it was perfect, even if had ended up a theme park version of the real thing: too perfect. Not that he cared much. Fake or not, it was a pretty place: Its main street ran between bars, shops, cafes, and restaurants interspersed with guesthouses and hotels, the buildings a mix of styles under pitched roofs loaded with snow, all marked with the angular black slashes, extravagant swirls, and decorative diamond shapes of Fraktur script.

  Best of all was the air: Bitterly cold under a violet sky fast darkening into night, it was generously laced with the smells of fres
h bread, roasting coffee, wood smoke, beer, and a hundred other more subtle aromas from restaurant kitchens.

  His senses overloaded, Michael picked his way carefully along a sidewalk covered with recent snow toward the station. With not long to go before Opera kicked off, Jaruzelska had decided a short break would do the troops good. By some miracle-Michael suspected the intervention of a higher power, namely, Damishqui’s executive officer-Anna had wangled a couple of days off at the same time. Michael needed a rest badly. What with planning meetings, simulator sessions, and working long hours to get the new dreadnought squadron commanders up to speed, not to mention trying to persuade Fleet to cough up the marines he needed, sleep had become an optional extra. He was bone-tired, his state of mind not helped by the awful knowledge that he would soon be throwing Reckless and the rest of the dreadnoughts right down the throats of the Hammers. The prospect gnawed at him. Even when he was busy, images of rail-gun-firing Hammer ships would reach down out of his subconscious to twist his stomach into a knot. When he did manage to get to his bunk, sleep came only with the help of the behavioral therapies loaded in his neuronics by Indra’s postcombat trauma teams backed up by drugbots. Worst of all, the same awful nightmare had returned to torment him night after night.

  “Goddamnit,” he swore despairingly. It would be one hell of a weekend if he could not stay awake during the day only to thrash around escaping imaginary ships all night. Anna would not be impressed.

  On time to the second, the train flowed out of the forests that surrounded Neu Kelheim and glided into the station, coming to stop with a soft hiss. Moments later, Anna fell into his arms. Michael buried himself in her neck, overwhelmed by her warmth, her smell, the feel of her skin silk-soft against his mouth, the touch of her hair across his face.

  Eventually, Anna pushed him away. She looked him full in the face. “Hello, Michael,” she said softly.

  Michael and Anna walked out of the restaurant onto Neu Kelheim’s main street. It was quiet, streetlights throwing soft puddles of light onto sidewalks blanketed with welltrampled snow under a moonless black sky thick with stars. Michael breathed in deeply and then wished he had not, his lungs seared by the brutal cold. He said a short prayer of thanks to the geniuses who had made his cold-suit while it sealed itself around him, only a small patch of his face left exposed to the bitter night air.

  “Come on, slowcoach,” Anna said cheerfully.

  Michael suppressed a groan when they set off hand in hand. His suggestion-that it was time for bed-had been shot down out of hand. So, with a full stomach topped off with a bottle of decent Riesling, Michael followed Anna through the snow on a freezing cold night too dark to see anything not illuminated by streetlights.

  Anna seemed to know where she was heading, so Michael followed dutifully across snow crunching underfoot, made brittle by the day’s sun, resigned to his fate. They made their way up the main street, across the town square with its impressively large bell tower, and into Neu Kelheim’s cliff gardens, hectares of geneered plants from hundreds of planets, all shapeless under heavy blankets of snow.

  Just when Michael started to protest, Anna turned. “Here we are,” she said, “Neu Kelheim’s Pavilion of the Winds. Very famous, something you’d know if you’d done your homework.” She pointed to a small pavilion, a simple structure of hand-carved timber set hard up against the cliff edge, the path to its entrance marked by a string of firefly lights.

  “Bit bloody cold for this sort of thing, don’t you think?” Michael grumbled past his cold-suit, trying not to think of a warm room, never mind an even warmer bed.

  “Not at all,” Anna said, her tone of voice making it clear that Michael did not have much say in the matter. “Come on.”

  When his eyes adjusted slowly to the dark, Michael saw why Anna had wanted to come to this place. The pavilion was built to screen out the light from the park behind them. A single bench ran across its open face, looking out into the void, a sheer drop falling the best part of 2,000 meters down fractured basalt cliffs into the rain forests that carpeted the foothills of the New Hartz Mountains. The air was so clear, the horizon was visible: a rough-edged black shape sawed out of the stars, the only light coming from the soft orange splashes of the towns and villages scattered over the blackness of the forest.

  For a long time they sat there, unmoving, silent. “We’ll be all right, won’t we?” Anna said finally.

  Michael swore wordlessly; talk about the 10 million Fed-Mark question.

  “Think so,” he said after a while. “Damishqui will be in the right place covering the withdrawal, and the dreadnoughts can take pretty much anything the Hammers can dish out. It’s the rest of the poor bastards I worry about. Too many of them will not be coming home. But like I say, the dreadnoughts will be fine.”

  “I wish I believed that. I’ve been through the operations order, Michael. I know what you’re up against. I’m worried it’ll be a bloodbath.”

  “Listen, Anna,” Michael said fiercely. “I cannot predict what’ll happen any more than you can. But we have a few things going for us. The Hammers have no idea we’re coming, dreadnoughts are tougher than anything the Hammers ever sent into space, and Jaruzelska is running the show. The way I see it, we have better cards than the Hammers, and if we play them well on the day, yes, we’ll come through this. When it comes to the dreadnoughts, they’re not indestructible; no ship is. But I’ve taken them into action enough times to know that the Hammers still have not worked them out. They’re faster, accelerate better, turn quicker, have better armor, and I’ll have twenty-nine of the ugly bastards to back me up. They can take a lot of punishment, so I really think we’ll be okay.”

  “Like I said, I wish I believed that.” Anna squeezed his hand hard. “No, that’s wrong. I guess I do believe it, if only because I have to. Otherwise, what the hell’s the point?” She sighed. “Come on, that’s enough sightseeing. Let’s get back. If it gets any colder, my nose is going to freeze and drop off.”

  “Can’t have that,” Michael said as they walked back through the gardens. “It’s such a pretty nose even if it is a bit on the large-”

  Whatever else Michael planned to say vanished when Anna scraped a handful of bitterly cold snow off a small wall and shoved it into his mouth.

  Sunday, January 28, 2401, UD

  FWSS

  Reckless,

  Comdur nearspace

  “Captain, sir.”

  “Yes, Jayla?”

  “The up-shuttle’s just docked. The self-loading cargo’s big on green shipsuits, so I think Lieutenant Kallewi and his marines have arrived … finally.”

  Michael grinned. “Pleased to hear it. It’s about time. I hope we don’t ever need them, but it’ll be good to have them just in case. Tell Kallewi I’d like to see him when he has dumped his kit.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When are we embarking the demolition charges?” “The special weapons security group has just confirmed we’ll have them this afternoon: 15:00 sharp.”

  “Okay.”

  Five minutes after Michael dropped the com with his executive officer, there was a soft knock on his door.

  “Come!”

  It was Kallewi. Michael stood up to shake hands, the marine’s thickset frame towering over him. Marines came in one of two equally lethal models: tall and heavily muscled or small and wiry. Kallewi was definitely one of the former.

  “Have a seat,” Michael said, “and welcome to Reckless. It’s Janos, isn’t it?”

  “It is, sir.”

  “Right, Janos. Anything I need to know?”

  “No, sir. I’ve got a full team, thirty regular marines augmented by an assault demolition team. We were picked because we’ve just completed a month’s assault training together on the close-quarter combat ranges on Comdur.”

  “Zero g and full grav?”

  “Both, sir. And they let us cook off an obsolete demolition charge on one of the deepspace firing ranges. An old Mark 34. Impressive.”


  “A Mark 34? What’s that? Two megatons?”

  “Shade under, 1.7. We have the Mark 40 now, 2.1-megaton yield. Big enough to give the Hammers a headache.”

  “I’d say so. Anything you need to know?”

  “Well, actually, sir, there is. All we were told was to report onboard Reckless. I’ve asked why, what our tasking was, more than once, but I never did find anyone authorized … or willing … to answer the question.”

  Shocked, Michael felt his face twisting into a frown. “Are you telling me you don’t know why you’re here?”

  “Yes, sir. That’s exactly what I’m saying. Apart from the obvious-that something seriously big involving the Hammers is going down-no, we don’t know.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Janos. Let me fix that. Operation Opera is why you’re here. We will be part of Battle Fleet Lima under the command of Vice Admiral Jaruzelska, and we are going to kick the Hammers … hard.”

  Kallewi smiled, a thin, hungry smile that made Michael glad the marine was on his side. “I’ll have some of that, sir.”

  “Okay. Let me run you through the operation as it stands at the moment.” He put a schematic summarizing the operation onto the holovid screen that dominated an entire bulkhead of his day cabin. “Here’s the target. It’s an asteroid right in the middle of a shit-awful mess of gravitational rips called Devastation Reef; we don’t know what the Hammers call it, but it’s where the Kraa-loving bastards manufacture the antimatter in their missile warheads.”

  “Oh, shit,” Kallewi hissed through clenched teeth, visibly shocked. “I guessed we were getting into something important, but nothing quite that big. Hell, that’s big.” The marine sounded stunned.

  “It is, and they don’t come much bigger. Let me run you through the time line and explain why we might need marine assault demolition teams.”