The battle at the Moons of Hell hw-1 Page 29

  Seven hundred meters farther on they were at the rendezvous point, joining the huge throng of Mumtazers waiting nervously in the dark, the night air sibilant with half-whispered conversations.

  Kerri hoped they wouldn’t have to wait long.

  High on Humpback Hill, Digby had stayed alone with his thoughts for much longer than usual. His driver would be wondering what in Kraa he’d been up to. Screw it, he thought, that’s enough for tonight. As he levered himself up off his rock, his comms unit chirped, announcing a priority call. Odd, he thought. The camp was quiet, so why the priority call? Everything looked okay.

  And then it hit him and hit him hard.

  The Feds were coming, and they were coming now. Nobody needed to tell him. He just knew.

  As he took the call, Digby turned and started to half walk, half run down the hill.

  Even as the alarm came through on his earpiece, Corporal Erdem sat bolt upright in his seat, boredom gone and heart pounding as he brought the half-track’s gyro-stabilized low-light holocam to bear.

  It took seconds for him to identify the black shapes coming in from the west on final approach as military assault landers. They definitely weren’t commercial. The holocam was zooming in to pick up every detail of the lead vehicle, its wings flexing alarmingly as it bounced and shook and drove its way down through the rough air rolling off the hills. They’d been caught, he thought as he locked the holocam to autotrack the incoming lander, and now there would be hell to pay.

  Erdem didn’t hesitate as years of military training kicked in. The only time to hit a lander was before it landed, and even if he had only a single 30-mm hypersonic light cannon, he was going to have a go. Shouting to Korda to get set up, he gunned the half-track sharply forward, swinging it south toward the runway to get clear of the long ridge that ran down from Humpback Hill.

  As Erdem hammered the half-track down the slope toward the runway, Korda’s microvid told him the system had a firing solution on the lead lander. It was closing rapidly, wheels coming down as it approached the threshold, nose pitching up as belly-mounted mass drivers fired to slow the massive ship for landing. Without waiting, Korda opened up, the laser-guided fire control system putting him precisely on target, the high-explosive cannon shells smashing into the lander’s belly armor, splashes of red-gold stitching their way across the hull. For a moment, Korda would have sworn that the lander flinched before it settled again. Erdem actually cheered as Korda hammered away, the cannon shells spalling thin shards of ceramsteel armor off the lander, the pieces whipped away by the airflow howling turbulently past the lander’s less-than-aerodynamic hull.

  But Erdem and Korda had forgotten that landers were built to survive much worse than 30-mm cannon and not simply by absorbing whatever was thrown at them.

  Within seconds, an escorting ground attack lander had tracked the shells back to their point of origin and had passed the data to its fire control system. Microseconds after that, it had a valid firing solution, and then, happy that there was no more pressing threat that needed looking after first, it directed the full fury of its forward laser batteries onto the hapless half-track and its crew, pausing only to switch targets to hack the last few shells out of the sky as they raced in toward the lander Korda was trying so hard to bring down.

  Moments later, all that was left of the half-track was a charred wreck. Even the wreckage didn’t last long as the half-track’s microfusion bottle gave up the unequal struggle to hold on to plasma hotter than any sun before exploding in a shattering, searing blast that picked Digby up and threw him brutally onto his back as he ran in.

  Seconds later the first lander thumped down on the runway. The liberation of Eternity Base and its unwilling guests was just a matter of time.

  For more than an hour, almost a thousand Mumtazers had huddled miserable and afraid in the darkness of a damp Eternity night as all hell had broken loose to the east and south, the darkness lit by the flashes of grenade explosions and the ripping sound of small arms fire.

  Kerri Helfort, with Sam never farther than a foot away the entire time, had walked through the group, settling people down, calming the nervous, reassuring everyone that all was under control even if the flow of information from the marines who’d slipped them out of the camp right under the noses of the Hammer had dried up completely.

  To Kerri’s relief, the wait finally came to an end.

  A group of shifting, shapeless blurs emerged cautiously from the broken ground between her and the huge slab sides of the bioplant supplies and driver mass buildings. Close as they were, they were barely discernible even under the floodlights that swamped the base in orange light. It took them no time at all to get to her position, but as they got close enough for her to make them out, Kerri was pleased to see that just as they were quick, they were also watchful; their heads and carbines swung ceaselessly from side to side, and from time to time they turned to walk backward.

  As the marines approached, Kerri rose slowly to her feet. She saw the marines spread out to take covering positions around the Mumtazers, chromaflage reducing them in seconds to just another part of the rock-strewn ground that surrounded Eternity Base. One of the leading marines, flipping his battle helmet’s visor up to reveal a disarmingly young face, made his way over to where Kerri and Sam were standing.

  “Commodore Helfort? I’m Major Krasov, sir. Colonel Musaghi’s compliments. It’s time to go home.”

  Kerri just nodded.

  Holding Sam tightly by the hand, she waved the watching Mumtazers to their feet. “You heard the man. Let’s get out of here!”

  Without a look back, they set off down the long road home.

  The last two FedWorld heavy assault landers sat patiently on the apron, anticollision lights on full power throwing splashes of orange light across the ground.

  The air was thick with tension as Colonel Musaghi and his battalion staff watched the infuriatingly slow process of herding the last of the Hammers in sullen flexicuffed silence up the ramp of Clarion Call, a well-used assault lander with plenty of scars to show for it.

  Musaghi snorted disapprovingly. Where did the Fleet get its lander names from? The second lander rejoiced in the sobriquet of Nervous Nellie, for Christ’s sake. No such nonsense allowed in the marines, thank God.

  “Not a happy bunch, Colonel.” Musaghi’s operations officer, a tall lanky Suleimani, waved a dismissive hand at the dejected line of men.

  Musaghi nodded. He’d have much preferred to leave every single one of the Hammer scum dirtside, but orders were orders. “Not quite what the bastards expected, I’m sure. How many to go?”

  “That’s the lot, Colonel. Apart from the dead ones.”

  “I’m sure as hell not taking them,” Musaghi said, lifting his breather mask for a second to spit on the ground for effect. “Sterilization teams?”

  “On schedule, sir. All the major facilities have been seeded, and those teams are back; just the minor support systems to go and we’re done.”

  Musaghi grunted.

  Not for one second had he allowed himself to forget that they were deep inside Hammer space, and the minute they pinchjumped out-system wouldn’t be soon enough. In the interests of completing the operation sooner rather than later, he had wanted simply to blow up the entire base, but he had been emphatically overruled. Some lunatic, probably some useless seat polisher in interstellar relations, clearly thought that Eternity Base would be reactivated some day, and to that end teams had fanned out to seed every system in the place with software that would turn millions of FedMarks worth of AIs into so much solid-state junk. Never in a thousand years would the Hammer be able to reactivate the enormously complex systems that could turn a dirtball of a world like Eternity into a place fit for humans in a matter of years.

  Musaghi grunted again, this time much more emphatically. He didn’t give a toss for Eternity, and it would be one hell of a long time before the Hammers would allow anyone back to pick up where Brigadier General Digby and his
unholy crew of jailbirds had been forced to leave off. If ever.

  A flurry of comms interrupted his thoughts. Eternity Base was now officially useless, and the last of the sterilization teams, job done, were pulling back, the protective wall of marines surrounding them following them into the landers.

  As the last techs disappeared up the ramp of Nervous Nellie, Musaghi followed them into the cavernous hold. A final head count and they could go, their job done and done well.

  The lander climbed out of Eternity Base at an impressively steep angle under full military power.

  An impassive Digby sat unmoving, eyes fixed on the holovid, which was still locked on Eternity Base fast disappearing into the dark behind them. He’d been the last to board, kept on the lower deck well away from the rest of the Hammers, surrounded by an impressively large honor guard of marines. From the safety of Humpback Hill, he’d been watching the systematic takeover of everything he had built when a snatch team had emerged from the ground around him, carbines emphatically making the point that this was not the time for heroics. Slowly, reluctantly, Digby had raised his hands as, for the second time in his life, he had surrendered to the enemies of the Hammer of Kraa.

  But this time, he had the blood of innocents on his hands, and the Feds knew it. For a moment his resolve had failed as he wondered whether he’d ever be allowed to walk free again.

  As the lander thundered its way into orbit, Digby closed his eyes and put his head back, the helmet ring of the survival suit biting into his neck. He’d done what he could; he’d done his best. If that wasn’t good enough, then so be it. All he wanted was to be able to hold Jana one last time, and then the Feds could do what they liked with him. As he drifted off to sleep, he knew somehow that even if the Feds chose to treat him like a common criminal and hang him from the nearest tree, he finally had laid the ghosts of his past to rest.

  Thursday, November 19, 2398, UD

  DLS-387, Hell-14

  387’s long wait for the start of Operation Corona came to a shattering and totally unexpected end.

  “Command, this is Mother. I have a positive gravitronics intercept. Six vessels. Grav wave pattern indicates pinchspace transition imminent. Estimated drop bearing Red 30 Up 5. Initial drop vector suggests ships inbound for Hell Flotilla Base.”

  Ribot’s heart turned in an instant to a block of ice. He struggled to breathe. Just as he had begun to hope that Mr. Murphy would not crash the party, the son of a bitch had arrived with a vengeance. He’d always known that it might come to this. Hell-14 was close to the primary approach axis for ships transiting from Commitment, and there had always been a chance that the two light scouts would have to do more than provide forward surveillance, precisely why they’d been on Hell-14 in the first place. But where the hell had six Hammer ships come from? Not from Commitment, that was for damn sure; otherwise he’d have been told, been given plenty of time to deploy his missiles to ambush the warships as they dropped and then get the hell out.

  “Shit.” Ribot paused to think for a second. “All hands to general quarters, Maria. And depressurize as well.”

  Hosani shot him a worried look as she commed the necessary orders through the ship.

  Ribot commed Chen, whose anxious face gave him all the confirmation he needed.

  “Bill, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “I suspect I am. We can’t just sit here and let the Fleet Base attack group just drop into their laps.”

  “No, we can’t. We’ve gone to general quarters, so let’s get our heads together and see what we can do. We’ve got a little time before the bastards drop. Though I think it’s going to be real simple. Throw ourselves at them and pray that they can’t shoot straight.”

  “I’m rather afraid that’s right. Wonder where they came from.”

  “God knows. The surveillance reports from Commitment nearspace showed no ships boosting out-system for Hell, and we’ve had no reports of military traffic inbound from any of the other planetary systems.” Ribot sighed in frustration. “I suppose they’ve been in deepspace somewhere. God knows there’s plenty of it, so I guess we can’t blame fleet intelligence for not knowing. Reconvene in five. Ribot out.”

  “All stations, this is the captain. We’ve gone to general quarters early because we have Hammer ships dropping at Red 30, six of them, and from the quality of the grav array intercept, they look to be dropping very close. I’ll be honest with you all. It’s going to be rough, very rough. But God willing, we’ll come through. That is all.”

  “All stations, command. Ship will depressurize in five, repeat, five minutes.”

  Michael and his surveillance drone team were struggling into their suits, chromaflage skins already darkening from their normal Day-Glo orange down to combat gray-black.

  Michael felt like a marathon runner closing in on the finish line only to be told that he had to run another 40 kilometers. The whole business had gone on for so long that he could barely remember any life other than the waking nightmare he was in. If all had gone well-and Michael had spent hours obsessively going through the Corona time line to the point where he knew the plan down to the second-the marines would have Mom and Sam safe by now and soon Dad would know that. But just as he had begun to think about getting home, this had to happen. For the life of him he couldn’t begin to imagine how two light scouts were going to be able to hold up six Hammer ships, and for an instant a terrible icy hand clamped itself around his heart at the thought that death for him and everyone else onboard 387 might be only minutes away.

  Michael pushed the fear away with a conscious effort as he settled his helmet onto the neck ring, the seal locking with its usual quiet hiss. With a final quick look at the tense faces of his team, Strezlecki’s deep brown stress-narrowed eyes staring deep into his, Michael smacked his visor down, commed the nitro-purge autoject, and started his suit checks. He consoled himself with the thought that even if they weren’t going home, they might take some of the Hammers with them.

  He quickly said a little prayer for Anna, who’d be dropping in-system in Damishqui in fifteen minutes or so, and then concentrated on the job at hand.

  “Command, this is Mother. Sensors confirm pinchspace drop of hostiles at 68,500 kilometers Red 30 Up 5. Six ships: one Hammer City Class heavy cruiser provisionally identified as New Dallas, two Panther Class deepspace heavy escorts, Cougar and Shark, and three heavy patrols, Gore, Arroyo, and MacFarlane.”

  Anonymous behind the visor of her space suit and struggling to steady her ragged breathing, Hosani flicked Ribot a glance. Fear had soaked into every fiber of her being; her heart was pounding, and her breathing was shallow and ragged. Somehow, and she couldn’t work out why or how, she knew this was it for her. She wouldn’t be going home. She wondered how Ribot felt sending 387 and 166 and all onboard to an almost certain death, and she thanked God it was he and not she making the decisions. She wasn’t sure she could have done what he was doing.

  As the last suit check came in, she forcibly turned her mind to business.

  “All stations, command. Depressurizing in one minute, repeat, one minute.”

  “Permission to step across, sir?” The unexpected voice of Warrant Officer Ng cut across Hosani’s thoughts.

  “Yes, of course, Warrant Officer Ng. What can we do for you?”

  “Word with the captain, sir.”

  “Sure. Captain, sir? Warrant Officer Ng.”

  Ribot nodded. Hosani was happy to have her captain doing something better than worry about the less than encouraging results of Mother’s latest quick and dirty sim. The prohibition on nukes set by Corona’s rules of engagement were reducing to zero what little chance the two light scouts had of causing the Hammers some grief.

  Ribot waved Ng across the thick yellow and black goofers line.

  “Warrant Officer Ng. Desperate business,” Ribot said flatly.

  Ng nodded her agreement. “It is, sir. I realize my team are just supernumeraries now, but from what I can see, you�
��re going to need all the help you can get. So I’d like to spread them around. With the damage control parties would probably be the best.”

  “Good idea, Doc. Should have thought of it first,” Ribot said apologetically. “Talk to the XO and tell her it’s fine by me so far as your team is concerned. But I want you to walk the ship for me. You know, steady people down, that sort of thing. They’re very young, most of them, and I don’t think any of them ever thought this would be happening to them.”

  “No problem, sir. I’ll do that.”

  387 and 166 had not wasted the precious few minutes that had been given them.

  Ribot had slowly pulled the ships back away from Hell-14. With a bit of luck, he hoped to be able to convince the Hammer after-action analysis teams that the two light scouts had been drifting slowly in-system rather than sitting dirtside right under the Hammers’ noses the whole time.

  And then a lot happened in a very short time.

  First, the Hammer sensors were fed carefully crafted dummy data telling them that two light scouts had gone active, apparently to launch four Merlin antistarship missiles directly at the installations that had been so carefully and painstakingly neutralized by Warrant Officer Ng and her team; the sensor towers duly disappeared in a searing blue-white flash as the massive demolition charges laid by Michael’s teams were fired by tightbeam laser command. Ribot smiled for a second as he imagined the Hammer after-action analysis teams struggling to work out just how 387 and 166 had managed to get so close without being detected by Hell-14’s sensors. The bastards would be even more puzzled as they tried to work out how two light scouts had apparently each gotten four Merlin antistarship missiles onboard. After all, everyone knew that Federated Worlds light scouts could carry only a maximum of twelve of the smaller and much less capable Mamba missiles.