The Battle of the Hammer Worlds hw-2 Page 26

  Three hours later, the captain slid into her seat between Michael and Kidav. “Ignore me, guys,” she said. “How’s Mother going on Phase 2?”

  “Another two hours, sir,” Kidav replied. “We’ve got a short list of possible targets, but I agree with Mother. We should watch things a bit longer. There’s no rush.”

  “Agreed.” She turned. “So, Michael. An old friend of yours over there, I think.” Lenski waved a hand in the general direction of the plot.

  “The Bravery you mean, sir?”

  “The same.” Lenski leaned closer. “You did well, Michael,” she said softly. “Hell’s Moons. Must have been hard.”

  It was not a question; Michael just nodded.

  “You know,” Lenski said conversationally, sitting back, “I think we underestimate the Hammer sometimes. Bravery is a good example. I went through the Hell’s Moons after-action reports. The Bravery’s skipper knew what he was doing. Her drop in-system was as good a piece of work as I’ve seen. Quick to set up, quick to get salvos away.”

  “It was; I’ll give them that,” Michael agreed. “Though five seconds too slow, thank God. And yes, I do think we underestimate them. Much as I hate the fuckers”-Michael’s voice hardened noticeably-“they aren’t all corrupt, incompetent fools. That’s something worth remembering.”

  The depth of emotion in Michael’s voice did not surprise Lenski. His service record had left her stunned; there would be few in the Fleet who had been through what he had been through. She had also talked at length to Bienefelt when the petty officer-the largest woman Lenski had ever met-had joined Eridani. Bienefelt and Michael, not to mention the rest of 387’s crew, had done it tough, topped off in Michael’s case by having Ishaq blown out from underneath him, followed by surviving a stay with DocSec and then waging a one-man war against the Hammer before somehow getting off-planet and safely home. He had paid a price for surviving. That much was obvious, a price that was part survivor’s guilt and part an intense obsession to get even with the Hammer.

  Whenever the Hammers came up in conversation, Michael’s eyes spelled out what he really thought of them. The burning hate was obvious, the intensity impossible to hide. She needed to watch him, she reminded herself. A degree of hate was fine; she had no problem with that. It was necessary to do the job. God knew, she hated the Hammers, too, but a man who hated too much could endanger her ship and the lives of her crew. She was going to watch him closely until she knew where judgment stopped and blind hatred took over.

  “Okay, team. I’m going walkabout.”

  “Sir.”

  The insistent demands of Eridani’s klaxon as it drove the crew to general quarters could not be ignored any longer. Michael reluctantly abandoned the safe, warm, dark place he had toppled into as soon as he had collapsed into his bunk.

  Running on autopilot, he swung himself out of his bunk. Moving with practiced efficiency, he was into his space suit. Pausing only to grab his gloves and then his helmet, he was out of his cabin, pounding along a crowded corridor and then up a ladder to the combat information center. When he arrived, the place was bedlam as the rest of the command team arrived, some still struggling into suits. With Eridani’s usual efficiency, bedlam was replaced swiftly by quiet calm.

  Michael quickly confirmed that his team was closed up and online. He sat back as the reports flowed in from the rest of the ship. Malik Aasha, the Eridani’s executive officer, was hounding and harrying the laggards to their posts. Finally it was done, and Aasha, an extremely tall, dark man with the sharp-edged face of his Somali forebears, was satisfied.

  “Captain, sir,” Aasha reported formally, “the ship is at general quarters in ship state 1, condition zulu.”

  “Good. Shut down artgrav and depressurize. All stations, depressurizing in one, so final suit checks. Dropping in two minutes. Hold on to your hats, folks. This could be a rough ride.”

  Hell, Michael grumbled to himself. He understood why Lenski was depressurizing the ship before they dropped, but that meant being buttoned up in his combat space suit when his stomach did its usual backflip and triple somersault. Oh, well, he consoled himself, better a small accident inside his space suit than a big one outside. Normally, Eridani and every other ship in the Fleet maintained an internal pressure of 80 percent of normal with the oxygen levels raised to compensate. Even that translated into 8 tons per square meter pressing on the pressure hull, something one could do without when shoring up battle-damaged bulkheads.

  When Eridani dropped, Michael and his team did not have time to worry about what lay ahead. They worked frantically to confirm that the threat plot looked much as it had when they had jumped out-system two hours earlier and in particular that no Hammer heavy cruiser was waiting for them as they dropped. Michael sighed with relief, pleased to see that the plot was unchanged and the potential targets they had identified from 90 million kilometers out were still pretty much where they had left them. The only difference was that this time the plot did not revert to a more comforting orange. It was dominated by an uncompromisingly angry mass of red vectors tagged by Mother as hostile force Tango Golf One. Those contacts were the primary threat to the Eridani, a mixed task group of heavy and light warships led by a single heavy cruiser, though at 102,000 kilometers, they were too far away to be an immediate problem.

  “Command, sensors. Threat plot is confirmed.”

  “Command, roger. Weapons?”

  “Targets confirmed.”

  “This is command. Launch missile salvo one.”

  “Roger. Launching missile salvo one.”

  With the tearing buzz of hydraulically powered dispensers ramming missiles into space, Eridani deployed her first salvo of Mambas, the antistarship missiles escorted by a cloud of decoys and active jammers driving away on pillars of searing white-blue light. Ahead lay their targets: four hapless Hammer merships hauling slowly out-system, ships the system commander unwisely had allowed to stray way too far out before jumping to the safety of pinchspace. Lenski had tasked two Mambas to each mership; the rest she kept back. She had other plans for them.

  The Hammer task group did not sit back and watch the Eridani at work. Even as the Mambas hit home, with the doomed merships erupting into gigantic balls of red-white plasma as their main engine fusion plants lost containment, antiship lasers from the Hammer task group found the Eridani and were beginning to flay the ceramsteel armor off her starboard bow. Quick work, Michael thought as he scanned the data coming in from the AI that was monitoring the integrity of Eridani’s armor. Good work, too. The lasers were tightly grouped, with the Hammer’s master fire controller holding the beams steady on the target point on Eridani’s hull, forcing Lenski to start rolling the ship to minimize the damage to her forward armor.

  Despite himself, Michael was impressed. The Hammer’s laser beam formation and targeting was better than anything Michael had seen reported in the technical intelligence summaries pushed out by Fleet. Not for the first time, he reminded himself not to take the Hammers for granted.

  “Command, Mother. Rail-gun launch from hostile Tango Golf One. Target Eridani. Time of flight 2 minutes 12.”

  In an instant Michael’s stomach knotted, the taste of sour bile rising up into his throat. He hated rail guns. Christ, with the Eridani barely 100,000 kilometers from the Hammer warships, it was going to be tight. He glanced forward to where Lenksi sat flanked by her two senior warfare officers. She did not move as the report was acknowledged. Michael turned back to the job at hand, his team watching intently as the sensor AI sorted through the mass of onrushing slugs in a desperate attempt to eliminate the decoys. To Michael’s horror, at one point during the planning, the command team had seriously considered riding out any rail-gun attack if the swarm geometry gave them a good chance of survival. Jesus Christ, he had thought, staring in horror as the idea was batted around. Survive a few Hammer rail-gun attacks and then see how you feel about that idea, he had said to himself.

  In the end, Michael had not needed to
object. Much to his relief, Lenski had killed the idea stone dead.

  This Hammer rail-gun swarm was good. In a matter of seconds, four heavy cruisers from the Hammer task group had gotten a well-coordinated, tightly grouped rail-gun salvo away that left Eridani with absolutely nowhere to hide. Her only chance was to jump into pinchspace. Michael counted the clock down as Eridani’s missile crews worked frantically to get the next salvo away. The instant the missiles were deployed and on their way, joined by the missiles held back from the first salvo, their targets two 10,000-ton Diamond class light patrol ships running exposed on the edge of the task group, Lenski gave the order.

  After barely two minutes in Hammer nearspace, the Eridani jumped, leaving behind the ionized remnants of four merships and two Diamond class light patrol ships fighting for their lives as the Eridani’s missiles fell on them.

  The mood in Eridani’s combat information center was upbeat, not that anybody had any illusions about the mission they had just completed. Hit-and-run attacks made little difference to the strategic balance of the war. In truth, all they did was put the Hammer on notice that they weren’t going to have things all their own way while preparations for the invasion of the Hammer’s home planet moved ponderously forward. But Eridani was now officially blooded, and four Hammer merships had been destroyed and two light patrol ships had been attacked and probably damaged. All in all, it was a creditable tally for her first combat patrol.

  After a while, with the ship safely in pinchspace, Michael slipped quietly out of the combat information center. He had mixed feelings. Yes, the Eridani had performed well; it was always good to hit the Hammer.

  But there were some negatives from the day’s operation. First, the Hammers he had seen were a step above the rabble that had opposed them at Hell’s Moons-a big step, too. Something had changed, but what? Second, where were all the Hammer’s ships? If the Feds had come calling in force, it would have been all over in a matter of hours. The Hammers would simply not have had the ships to oppose a full-scale attack. So they were taking a chance-a big chance-and to Michael’s way of thinking, there had to be one hell of a big payoff to justify exposing the planet from which all Hammer power flowed.

  Michael made his way to the Eridani’s canteen. He had promised to buy Bienefelt a beer; the opportunity to have a quiet chat with her was something he never passed up. Over a couple of beers, she would tell him more about what was really going on below decks than ten years of ship’s management meetings could. He whistled scornfully. Management meetings! Hot air fests, more like it, another opportunity for the ship’s officers and senior spacers to be treated to the latest pompous lecture from the resident gasbag in chief, Pavel Duricek. The man was a pain in the ass.

  He would catch up with Bienefelt; then he would sleep on the problem of the missing Hammer warships. If by some miracle he was struck by a blinding revelation, he would talk to Kidav about it in the morning. Otherwise he would bury the problem. After all, it could simply be nerves, and he had plenty of those to go around. He sighed. They were stuck in pinchspace until they got to the mobile forward operating ship positioned in deepspace 100 light-years out from the Hammer system, so there was nothing he could do no matter what brilliant insights he might come up with.

  Tuesday, March 28, 2400, UD

  FWSS Eridani, berthed on Federated Worlds Warship Koh (SVL-407), interstellar space

  With the gentlest of bumps, Eridani berthed. Hydraulic locking arms pulled her in tight to the huge bulk of the light support vessel.

  “All stations, this is command. Hands fall out from berthing stations. Revert to ship state 3, condition x-ray.”

  Michael hit the ground running. He did not want to waste any time. Lenksi had left him in no doubt that Eridani’s error-prone ultraviolet detector arrays were to be working by the time the ship undocked in twelve hours’ time. He was on his way to make sure the maintenance team standing by to fix the problem actually was waiting for him as promised. If it was, he could get on with the main business of the day.

  To his relief, two spacers from Koh were there waiting when Eridani’s massive hangar doors opened. Two minutes was more than enough for Michael to be completely convinced that there was nothing he could offer two experienced technicians except gratuitous advice and general aggravation. They did not need either; they would do a much better job without him peering over their shoulders and being a pain in the ass. His conscience was clear. Leaving the techs firm instructions to keep him informed, he told Mother where he was going and set off on his second mission of the day, a mission that he had allowed Bienefelt to talk him into, the nervous excitement beginning to build inside him.

  He smiled at the memory. Petty Officer Bienefelt, humanspace’s only cyborg agony aunt! Now, there was a truly bizarre thought.

  Massing over 800,000 tons, the Koh was enormous, and getting to berth 4-Lima was an exercise in itself. At last he made it, stopping at the end of the personnel access tube to clear security. With a deep breath, he set off down the tube, wondering as he did whether he was about to make a terrible mistake.

  Befitting a heavy cruiser, immaculate spacers infested Damishqui’s gangway. Michael was only another anonymous shipsuited junior lieutenant; he was completely ignored. Fair enough, he thought as he made his way to the quartermaster; he was happy to be ignored. In peacetime, he would have been shot for daring to cross the gangway dressed so casually, but wartime or not, some things did not change, and he took great care to salute the ship in the best college style as he crossed the brow, thankfully without stumbling; some considerate soul had synced Damishqui’s and Koh’s artgravs.

  “Sir. Can I help you?” the quartermaster asked, returning the salute.

  “Yes. Could you comm Junior Lieutenant Cheung to the gangway, please?”

  “Can do, sir. Identity check, please.”

  The young leading spacer watched patiently as Michael’s identity was confirmed. “Thank you, sir. I’ll comm her now. . okay, sir. Done. All right, she’s on her way.” The quartermaster leaned forward. “Probably a good idea to wait clear of the gangway,” he whispered conspiratorially. “Commodore Perkins and enough brass to sink the ship are due any minute.”

  “Thanks, Leader, will do.” Michael grinned. He felt greatly relieved. He would not have been the least bit surprised if Anna had told him to piss off. Tucking himself out of the way, he stood and waited.

  Anna wasn’t long. Michael caught his breath as she appeared, a slight, shipsuited figure almost lost in the ebb and flow of Damishqui’s crew as they readied the ship for combat.

  “Hi, Michael,” she said flatly. “Follow me. I know somewhere we can talk. But I’ve only got a few minutes.”

  “Fine,” Michael said to Anna’s back as she led the way off Damishqui, down the access tube, and into an empty compartment a few meters inside the Koh. The door hissed shut behind them as she turned, arms folded across her chest. Michael’s heart sank. He knew defensive body language when he saw it. Suddenly, he did not know what to do or say, so he stood silent, unmoving, staring into Anna’s eyes, as always lost in their green depths.

  Anna sighed despairingly. She shook her head. “God above, Michael. You don’t change. What the hell am I going to do with you?”

  Michael shrugged. “Um, well, maybe we could, you know, sort of start again. .” He trailed off as Anna’s cheeks flared red with sudden anger.

  “Start again!” she hissed fiercely. “What makes you think I want to start again? What makes you think we can start again after all we’ve been through? Christ, Michael! It’s not that simple.”

  “Look, Anna,” Michael said desperately. “I know it’s not. But the fact is I love you. Yes, I can live without you if I have to, but I really don’t want to.”

  Anna stared at him in silence for a long, long time before she spoke. “That’s not the problem,” she said finally. “Problem is whether I want you in my life anymore. You can stand there all you like telling me how much you love me, bu
t it makes no difference. I know all that. I just don’t know what I want. I need more time.”

  “Anna, look-”

  “No! Enough! We can talk forever, and it’s not going to help one little bit. I’ve got to work out what happens next, so let me do that and we’ll talk again. Now look, I really have to go.” She turned to go.

  “Anna!” Michael protested. “Can’t we sort-”

  “No, we damn well can’t, Michael!” Anna snapped, turning back. “Oh, shit,” she said gently. “Sorry. Look, Michael. Leave things with me. We’ll meet up next chance we can, see how we feel then. Promise. Now, I really have to go. You be careful.” She stepped close to kiss him on the cheek. Michael’s heart pounded as her familiar scent brought memories cascading down. “Very careful. You hear?”

  With that she was gone.

  Michael stood for a moment, her all-too-quick farewell kiss still warm on his cheek.

  He sighed deeply, wearily rubbing eyes gritty from too little sleep and too much stress. The good news was that it could have been a hell of a lot worse. The bad news was that it could have been a hell of a lot better. Still, Anna was talking to him, had agreed to see him again, and had kissed him good-bye. Michael allowed himself to think that maybe, when the latest fracas with the Hammer was over, they could put things back on the rails.

  Anyway, he had stolen enough of Eridani’s time; with his tame maintainers reporting good progress, he wanted to be there when they did their final tests on the recalcitrant ultraviolet detector arrays. He had learned the hard way that all maintainers had an uncanny knack of making systems work perfectly as long as they were there to twiddle the knobs, only to have everything fall apart the second they left.

  If that happened, Lenski would kick his ass from breakfast time to Christmas.