The battle of Devastation reef hw-3 Read online

  Michael emptied his lungs in a long slow hiss of relief. The approaches to SuppFac27 lay wide open.

  Reckless, the last ship of Battle Fleet Lima still engaged in Operation Opera, turned end for end and started to decelerate, its main engines firing across space toward the tiny asteroid that was home to SuppFac27, blazing pillars of driver mass reaching down to a surface scrubbed clean by the dreadnoughts’ relentless rail-gun salvos.

  There was one more thing to do before Michael turned his attention back to the thorny problem of destroying SuppFac27. “Warfare, command.”

  “Warfare.”

  “Launch Cleft Stick under your control. Looks to me like there’ll be lifepods left in Hammer space by the main force. I want them picked up. When that’s done, set the Stick on vector east away from SuppFac27 across the reef. We’ll rendezvous with her when we leave this goddamn place. Any problems with that?”

  “Stand by … no, none, sir. The only lifepods not recovered are drifting east away from the main force; they are well clear of any Hammer forces. Stick has the driver mass to pick all of them up. The Hammers are not showing any interest. They have their own problems.”

  “Good. Make it so.”

  “Warfare, roger.”

  Michael turned his attention back to the business at hand. “Caesar’s Ghost, command.”

  Sedova’s face popped into his neuronics. “Ghost.”

  “As I’m sure you’ve worked out, it’s up to us to finish the job, so stand by to launch. I’ve commed you the ops plan.”

  “Ghost, roger. Standing by.”

  “Command, roger. Assault Leader?”

  Kallewi’s avatar replaced Sedova’s. “Sir?” he said.

  “Well, seems like you’re going to get your chance, after all. Demolition team ready to go?”

  “They are, sir. Didn’t think it would come to this.”

  “I hoped it wouldn’t,” Michael said, “I really did, but it has. So good luck. I’m telling you something you already know, but for chrissakes, make it fast. There are more Hammers on the way for sure, and I want to be gone before they turn up. So if you get stalled, set the charges and get the hell out.”

  “Roger that, sir. I hate this damn place already,” Kallewi said. “Remember Comdur. Assault Leader out.”

  “Command, Warfare. Reconbots launched and nominal, now on vector for SuppFac27.”

  “Roger.”

  Michael turned his attention back to the command holovid, which had been switched to take its video feed from the reconbots running toward SuppFac27. The asteroid was a dismal sight, its surface ripped and scarred by rail-gun slugs fired to wipe out the radar installations, missile and laser batteries, and other surface infrastructure that protected the plant. All that remained were a few lucky buildings, spared by random perturbations in the rail-gun swarms, lonely islands of ceramcrete in a sea of shattered wreckage hurled across the asteroid’s surface, the nearspace overhead filled with yet more junk thrown out into space by the appalling force of repeated rail-gun attacks, the asteroid’s microgravity too weak to claw the debris back to ground.

  Michael was not interested in gloating over the damage his rail guns had done. What he needed to confirm-and quickly-was the location of the main access down into SuppFac27. The schematics stolen from the Hammers showed a gaping tunnel cut down into the asteroid to allow the installation of heavy plant and equipment, and he needed to find it. The stolen schematics had identified the access as a pair of heavily armored doors framed by a massive plascrete portal, but where the hell was it?

  Carmellini spotted it first, smacking a target icon on the main access a full five seconds before the optronics AI decided that yes, it really had found what it was looking for. Warfare wasted no time; the initial group of missiles fired their first stages, accelerating toward the portal. Molded into a single weapon, the missiles hit home, the plascrete framing the armored doors no match for chemex warheads blasting thin pillars of plasma deep into the asteroid, blowing enough rock away to leave a gaping crater that completely undermined one side of the portal.

  Warfare sent the next missile on its way. Michael and the rest of the combat information center crew watched engrossed as it headed for the center of the crater, a gaping void bleeding thin skeins of vaporized rock back into space. With just meters left to run, the fusion warhead exploded. The flash of the blast boiled meters and meters of rock, plascrete, and armor off the portal, vaporizing hundreds of tons of mass into a massive ball of white-hot gas erupting back out into space. When it cleared, the blast had left the portal completely undermined on one side by a hellish inferno of red-hot molten rock spewing gouts of flaming gas into the vacuum.

  “Aaaah,” Michael hissed softly, teeth bared in a rictus of savage joy when the holocam confirmed that the armored doors had been forced wide open by the blowback of exploding gas. The access tunnel into SuppFac27 lay open.

  The remaining missiles followed in a line heading right for the tunnel entrance. Michael’s plan was simplicity itself. Destroying the antimatter plant by using missiles was impossible-it was buried too deep-but dropping missiles one after another as far down the main access tunnel as they would go before firing their fusion warheads would give SuppFac27’s defenders one hell of a shake, to the point, he hoped, where most would decide that self-preservation was the order of the day and flee for safety, leaving Kallewi and his marines a clear run in.

  An instant before the first missile disappeared into the portal’s gaping blackness, Michael could not help himself. “Fire in the hole,” he shouted, and its warhead exploded, a seething cloud of rock and gas veined white-red by twisting jets of flame erupting outward.

  One by one, the remaining missiles followed. By the time the last missile exploded, the access tunnel had been transformed into a hellish white-hot crater hundreds of meters across, belching vaporized rock out into space. “Oh, yeah,” Michael whispered, reveling in the sheer brute force of the attack. The poor bastards inside SuppFac27 would be suffering as tremor after tremor after tremor shook the rock tunnels close to the point of collapse in an unending earthquake. If that did not induce an overwhelming desire to flee in the minds of SuppFac27’s defenders, nothing ever would. He knew he would not be hanging around for tea and biscuits.

  “Command, Warfare. Reckless in station. Clear to launch Caesar’s Ghost when ready.”

  Michael checked quickly. Reckless was in station, her enormous bulk hanging motionless less than half a kilometer above the blasted surface of the asteroid. “Command, roger.” He flicked the command holovid to take the holocam feed from the reconsats.

  Warfare had retasked them to keep tabs on one of SuppFac27’s personnel access stations. Michael liked the look of what he saw. The station’s squat shape-one of the few buildings to survive the dreadnoughts’ devastating rail-gun attacks-spewed an ice-loaded cloud. That meant only one thing: The shock waves from the missile attack on the main access portal had destroyed SuppFac27’s airtight integrity; the plant was venting humid air into space. Then a panicked flood of figures dressed in Day-Glo orange emergency space suits started to pour out of the building, bounding away in giant leaps; soon hundreds of orange blobs bounced across the asteroid’s surface like a collection of demented rubber balls. Where the hell were they all going? It was such a bizarre sight that Michael could not stop himself from laughing any more than the rest of the combat information center’s crew could.

  “Enough, people,” he said, wishing he could wipe the tears from his eyes. “Ghost? We have confirmation that the personnel access station’s air lock is open. You ready?”

  “Caesar’s Ghost is ready to go.”

  “Roger, launch. Good luck.”

  “Thanks. Launching,” Sedova replied laconically.

  “Sensors.”

  Carmellini swung around. “Sir?”

  “We’re not out of the woods yet. If more Hammers come calling-and they sure as hell will-we’re going to need all the notice you can give us if w
e’re to have any chance of getting clear.”

  “Roger that, sir.”

  Caesar’s Ghost cleared Reckless and made a long swinging turn down to the asteroid’s surface before Sedova pulled the nose up sharply. She fired the belly thrusters, their efflux picking up orange blobs and tumbling them away in long, looping arcs, arms and legs flailing in desperate attempts to get back dirtside. Sedova made it look easy, the lander’s massive bulk coming to a dead stop scarcely a meter above the asteroid, right alongside the personnel access station. The instant it came to a halt, the rear cargo access door dropped, and Kallewi’s marines spilled out, the bulky black shapes of the three nuclear demotition charges strapped to their powered sleds close behind, a small swarm of gas-powered tacbots leading the way, the little spheres working overtime to zap the surveillance holocams that infested the place.

  After a quick check of the threat plot to make sure the Hammers were not creeping up on him unannounced, Michael switched the command holovid over to Kallewi’s helmet-mounted holocam. The marines were already through the outer air lock, an unwilling Hammer tethered to the largest marine in Kallewi’s squad, a man even bigger than Sergeant Tchiang if that was possible. Michael grinned; the poor bastard obviously had been coerced into the role of guide. The marines paused long enough to set and fire small charges to wreck the air lock’s outer doors before moving inside. The inner doors already hung open, immobilized. Inside was a large lobby, its security post empty. Ignoring the dwindling stream of survival-suited Hammers fleeing the facility, the marines flew down the central passageway; Michael was thankful to see that the facility’s artificial gravity had failed and looked like it would stay that way. Kallewi’s marines trained to operate in zero gravity; he doubted SuppFac27’s defenders did. According to intelligence reports, only second-tier planetary defense troops protected the antimatter plant. Michael pitied them; Kallewi’s marines would tear the defenders apart, something whoever had planned SuppFac27’s defense clearly had never anticipated. Using planetary defense troops was a baffling decision given the plant’s importance. Maybe not so baffling, Michael decided after a moment’s thought; hubris and policy were the reasons. The Hammers had put altogether too much faith in the ability of their spaceborne defenses to hold off any Fed attack, and as a matter of long-standing policy, Hammer marines were never used to protect fixed installations.

  Just before the next air lock-open like all the rest so far-the marines stopped before what had to be another lobby. Something was up. Kallewi waved a section forward, led by the unmistakable bulk of Sergeant Tchiang, with the marines taking up position around the frame of the lobby access air lock. Another pause. When Michael patched his neuronics into the vid feed from the leading tacbots, the problem became obvious. A plasglass-fronted security post dominated the lobby, and floating around in front of it, standard Hammer-issue assault rifles Velcroed to their chests, were ten, maybe twelve planetary defense troops, part of SuppFac27’s internal security force. There were still some Hammers doing what they were paid to do; these did not look as demoralized and panic-stricken as he’d hoped.

  For Kallewi and his marines, navigating their way through the maze of passageways and drop tubes that made up SuppFac27 with an old high-level schematic stolen from the hard-rock tunneling contractor and a reluctant Hammer to show them where to go was bad enough. Doing all that while fighting their way past Hammer troopers, and pretty pissed ones at that-even if they were only planetary defense force troopers-was a complication he wanted to avoid.

  Kallewi was not letting any of that worry him. The marines around the air lock erupted into action. Fragmentation grenades hurled into the Hammers exploded soundlessly in the vacuum, spalling shards of rock off the tunnel walls, and the marines fell on what was left of the defenders. The firefight was short, vicious, and one-sided, the Hammers flailing around while they struggled to bring their guns to bear. Kallewi waved his marines on, two staying back to bag the few Hammers still living, plasfiber cocoons snapping taut with enough air to keep the occupants alive for two hours. Michael had insisted that anyone with a chance of survival be bagged, pointing out that there was a good chance the marines would be cornered somewhere deep inside SuppFac27 and that he did not want them shot out of hand for leaving wounded Hammers to die a painful death from asphyxiation. In the end, a reluctant Kallewi had agreed, but not before Michael had forced him to admit he had not volunteered for a suicide mission.

  Satisfied that Kallewi had things under control, Michael turned back to check the command and threat plots. He was relieved to see nothing had changed. To the west, the tattered remnants of the Fed forces that had run interference for the dreadnoughts had cleared Hammer space, the ships of Assault Group under Commodore Jun’s command the last to leave. They had done a good job recovering survivors; Michael was pleased to see that only a few wayward lifepods from the two northern task groups had slipped through the net. Beyond the Feds’ reach and ignored by the Hammers, they drifted out of control into the confused maze of gravity rips to the east of SuppFac27, chased by Cleft Stick. It was lucky for them, he had persuaded Jaruzelska to let him keep his light lander, Michael thought. Without it, he had no way of getting them back; he had no doubt that the Hammers would have left them to die.

  Michael turned back to check Kallewi’s progress. He was doing well, the marines racing into the heart of SuppFac27, the Hammer opposition weak and fragmented, brushed aside by the single-minded ferocity of Kallewi’s attack.

  The marines stopped before another air lock door. Machinelike in their precision, they overwhelmed its security post and planetary defense troops in a matter of seconds. Leaving the medics to deal with the wounded and a handful of marines to cover their withdrawal, they were quickly on the move again.

  “Command, Assault Leader. Update,” Kallewi said. “One hundred meters ahead, there’s a passageway to the left. According to our guide, twenty meters farther on is a drop tube that accesses SuppFac27’s power distribution center, and beyond that are the primary fusion power plants. According to the schematics, the rock wall is about five meters thick. Our guide says the access doors are too heavily armored for us to shoot our way in, and I’m inclined to believe him. We’ve run some quick and dirty sims, and we have a 100 percent chance of breaching the plants’ containment if we can get the demolition charges down there. So my plan is to do just that and get the hell out.”

  “Command, roger. Concur. Any sign of organized defense yet?”

  “Sadly, yes. The Hammers have worked out what we’re up to, but they’re struggling to get their people in the right places. I suspect their c-cubed is shot to shit, they don’t have any holovid coverage of our attack, and there are a lot of panicky technicians getting in their way. I’ve stationed marines to cover our exit route; they’ll make sure we aren’t ambushed when we pull back, but it’s going to be tight. Estimate egress inside thirty minutes. Timers on the demolition charges will be set for forty.”

  “Command override on the charges?”

  “Will be suppressed. There’s no going back on this. Once they’re triggered, they’re going to blow, and we’ll leave proximity-fused claymores behind to discourage the Hammers from getting too close.”

  Michael shivered; claymores fired down rock passages would shred any Hammers unlucky enough to get in the way. “Roger. We’ll be waiting here for you.”

  “Hell, I hope so. There are will be some very pissed Hammers looking for a piece of my ass when this is all over. Kallewi out.”

  Kallewi’s avatar disappeared, and Michael sat back to think things through. He hated leaving the marines with all the heavy lifting. He studied the scorched surface of the asteroid for a moment before comming Sedova. He had an idea. “You copy Kallewi’s update?”

  Sedova nodded. “Yes, sir. Wish I could do something to help.”

  “You can. See that heat dump, fine on your port bow at about 500 meters?” Michael positioned a target indicator over the remnants of a ceramcrete tower. />
  “Yes, sir,” Sedova said. She sounded puzzled.

  “Okay, this is not in the plan, but we need to take some of the pressure off Kallewi. Get your lander across there. There’s bound to be a personnel access, probably a hatch, somewhere close. You have demolition charges in your ready-use lockers?”

  “Yes, sir, we have.”

  “Good. Find the hatch, blow it open, and send your load-master across to lob a couple of charges in. I’m hoping we can persuade the Hammers that we’re sending in another assault party.”

  “Roger that, sir.”

  “One proviso. Any time things start to go wrong, get the hell back here. I don’t want to leave Kallewi without a lift home,” Michael said. He suppressed a flicker of anxiety. Maybe dispatching Cleft Stick to pick up wandering life-pods had not been the smartest move he had ever made. Having a backup lander might have been the prudent thing.

  “On it,” Sedova said, a quick blip on the maneuvering thrusters lifting Caesar’s Ghost off the asteroid before another burst sent the lander in a shallow arc across to the heat dump.

  Something made Michael look across at Carmellini, a sudden cold shiver slithering its way up his spine. The spacer was hunched over his holovid, and his body language spoke volumes: Something was up. Michael forced himself to sit tight. Carmellini would tell him what was going on when he was ready.

  “Command, Warfare, sensors,” Carmellini said, his voice tense. “Positive gravitronics intercept. Estimated drop bearing Red 10 Up 5. Multiple vessels. Gravity wave pattern suggests pinchspace transition imminent. Designated hostile task group Hammer-7.”

  “Damn, damn, damn,” Michael cursed. Another half hour and they would have been on their way out of this godforsaken place. Not that the Hammers were so incompetent as to leave him alone for that long. Two lots of reinforcements had dropped in-system already; there would be more, and they would not be long coming.