The battle at the Moons of Hell hw-1 Read online

  Michael couldn’t see much, and what he could see did not look good.

  There was very little left of Ribot, Hosani, and Holdorf, only a few pathetic shreds of shattered flesh and pieces of heat-seared gray-black space suit slowly turning back to orange as combat chromaflage settings wore off. On the port side, he recognized Armitage, whose suit looked surprisingly intact, though the body was slumped over at an awkward angle. Armitage was being ignored by the medics, so she must be dead, Michael thought without emotion.

  As he pushed past the shattered chaos that once had been 387’s combat information center, he could see no sign of Kapoor. Must have been in the hangar, poor bastard, he thought.

  It took all the willpower he possessed, but finally Michael was settled in the wardroom, itself badly damaged both by the slug as it had torn through one bulkhead en route to the combat information center and by the shock from Weapons Power Charlie going up on the other side of the heavily armored bulkhead. Thank God for blast venting, Michael thought, and for the designers and engineers who had put it in 387.

  As Mother ran Michael through the tactical situation, his heart sank as his badly battered brain slowly came to grips with what was happening to 387 and, even worse, what was about to happen. With much of the ship’s forward armor now stripped, most of her short-range laser capability destroyed, and her long-range lasers degraded by the loss of Weapons Power Charlie, even six missiles and their attendant decoy swarm would be a handful.

  Despite the pain and after a careful look at the tactical plot, Michael knew instinctively what had to be done.

  He commed Chen. 166’s skipper was the boss now that Ribot was gone, so it would be his call.

  Jaruzelska watched the command plot, her thoughts a mix of professional satisfaction and private pity.

  No matter how hard she tried, she could never take any pleasure from the spectacle of spacers dying in the pitiless hard vacuum of space, whether they were Hammers or not. She sat back in her chair struggling to get comfortable, her combat space suit heavy and uncooperative. Christ on the Cross, she thought, I’m getting too damn old for this sort of thing. She watched in silence as the task group’s first rail-gun salvo finished its 150,000-kilometer journey to drop a hailstorm of platinum/iridium death onto the Hammer’s fixed defenses and the hapless ships of Rear Admiral Pritchard’s flotilla as they struggled to get going.

  Jaruzelska hissed through clenched teeth as the slugs smashed home, the surface of Hell-8 disappearing behind a roiling, churning mass of pulverized dirt. The Hammer ships, their shapes sharply black against massed stars, were spewing clouds of ceramsteel and reactive armor into space.

  “Caught the bastards asleep, Martin.” There was no triumph in Jaruzelska’s voice.

  Her chief of staff nodded somberly. “True. But I doubt that even our ships could get going from a cold start in ten minutes, never mind four.”

  “God, is it only four minutes?” To Jaruzelska it felt like hours.

  Oblivious to all else, Jaruzelska watched as the damage assessments flowed in. If she didn’t think too much about the human cost of it all, the news was good. The heavy cruisers Verity and Integrity and the light cruisers Cordoba and Camara had been damaged but were still assessed as combat-effective. The heavy escort Titov had been hit hard and probably was combat-ineffective. So, she thought, it’s really started.

  “Sir, priority vidlink from 166. Will you take it?”

  “Of course.”

  Two seconds later the vidlink connected.

  “Jaruzelska.”

  The tortured face of Lieutenant Chen filled her neuronics as he made his request for help. Jaruzelska reviewed with mounting horror the damage and threat assessments commed through to the flag AI by 166 and 387.

  “Chen, okay. Stop. I’ll do it,” she said, cursing herself for losing sight of the big picture to such an extent that she had forgotten the unequal struggle being waged by two of her ships. It was a classic example of why people were still in command, not AIs.

  Her ships, her people, her responsibility.

  She wasted no time, and in seconds the task group’s massive laser batteries had switched away from the New Dallas and the Shark to fill the void between the two light scouts and the onrushing missile salvo with a lethally focused curtain of light. The lasers first blinded and then shredded the missiles into pieces as their microfusion plants were turned into spectacular balls of rolling white-yellow light.

  The threat to 166 and 387 was over.

  With a final prayer that the two light scouts would get home safely, Jaruzelska turned her attention back to the Hammer ships.

  As the cruisers switched their heavy antiship lasers back to New Dallas and Shark, the next round of damage assessments scrolled across Jaruzelska’s neuronics.

  Titov was confirmed destroyed, the ship having erupted in an enormous ball of flame, probably as a result of a direct hit on her main engine fusion plant as it powered up to get the ship under way. The flotilla base’s fixed missile batteries and phased-array missile control radars had almost all been destroyed. Verity, Integrity, Cordoba, and Camara, no change: damaged but combat-effective.

  The news from Hell Central was even better.

  The administrative center of the Hell system was lightly defended and stood no chance against the four heavy and two light cruisers of Commodore Molefe’s task group, its fixed defenses wiped out in the first seconds of the attack. Two Hammer light scouts unfortunate enough to be caught alongside had fared no better. They had disintegrated as rail-gun slugs had ripped them apart, their fusion plants erupting in huge secondary explosions to send two shattered hulks spinning off into space. As they tumbled away, the hulls began to spit out a pathetically small cluster of lifepods, their characteristic double-pulsed orange strobes winking like demented fireflies; the international distress band was busy with radio beacons pumping out cries for help.

  “Flag, flag AI. Shark combat-ineffective.”

  “Flag, roger.” The light cruiser Shark; that was good. New Dallas could ill afford to lose her and her firepower. And it was a surprise. For all the awesome power of antiship lasers, they did not have a high kill probability against ships as large as light cruisers. Too big, too much armor, and, in this case, at 320,000 kilometers getting very close to the maximum effective range of the system. But the Shark had been turning, and the task group had been able to catch her side on where her armor was thinner. Good laser beam formation and tight coordination had done the rest. And for that she had the 387 and the 166 to thank, a debt of gratitude she hoped they would survive long enough to be repaid.

  Jaruzelska sat back to watch the arrival of her second rail-gun salvo.

  The Hammer’s last missile attack disintegrated around Michael and his scratch command team.

  With 387’s short-range lasers largely inoperative and its chain guns overwhelmed, a few of the missile fragments made it through. The laser-shredded, heat-warped remains of the Hammer’s heavy missiles and their decoys smashed into 387 at over 280,000 meters per second, their kinetic energy strong enough to punch deep gashes in the ship’s armor. The ship’s hull shuddered as the last of its battered and torn reactive bow armor struggled to protect the inner hull.

  But finally all was quiet, and for the first time in what seemed like hours the plot showed no immediate threats to the battered hulk that was 387. Michael slumped back in his seat, so tired that he wanted to crawl somewhere quiet and sleep. He forced himself back to the task at hand.

  “Command, Mother. Shark combat-ineffective.”

  Michael sat up. “Command, roger. Put it up.”

  Michael and his team watched in awe as the holocams zoomed in on the huge bulk of the light cruiser Shark, one of the Hammer’s newest warships. Its bottomless black shape was riven along one side by a long gash, venting ship’s atmosphere to space; the humid air turned instantly to an ice cloud that was visible in 387’s low-light holocams as a scintillating plume writhing its way into nothingnes
s. Then, as Michael watched, a secondary explosion racked the stricken ship, a huge cloud of yellow-red plasma boiling out of the hull.

  “Jesus,” Michael muttered, suddenly conscious that he had a ship to command, a ship to get out of Hell nearspace with all onboard. It was now his personal responsibility to bring them to safety.

  “Mother, Command. Main laser battery power status.”

  “Seventy-five percent. I’ve switched targeting back to New Dallas, and 166 has done the same. We’re on a stern-crossing vector, so the angle of attack is very good. I am rerouting power from propulsion and will have both lasers back to 100 percent shortly.”

  That was what Michael wanted to hear, and with the much simpler and more straightforward tactical situation firmly in Mother’s capable hands, he turned his mind to what had to be done to get 387 out of its current mess. First, he needed to talk to Chen, now senior officer of a very battered two-ship task group. Second, he needed an XO to look after getting the ship jump-worthy. Then he needed to make sure that Cosmo Reilly was getting on top of the enormous job of producing a ship capable of getting them home safely.

  The comm to Chen was short and sharp, and Chen’s plan was simple: Keep lasers on New Dallas for as long as they could, make 166 and 387 jump-worthy, and then get the fuck out of the Hell system as soon as possible.

  Direct orders from Admiral Jaruzelska, Chen said, and Michael saw no reason to argue. In the meantime, Chen was bringing 166 alongside to get his medics onboard to help clear 387’s backlog of casualties.

  After a brief pause to watch as 387’s and 166’s lasers reignited the glowing red speck on New Dallas’s stern just outboard of her starboard heat dump, Michael commed the medics to expect help any time now. Then he commed the next most senior person left alive in the chain of command and, effective immediately, his new XO, Chief Harris from Warrant Officer Ng’s team, to meet him in the surveillance drone hangar.

  Mother commed Michael as he and Chief Harris started their survey of the battered wreck that was 387.

  “Command, Mother.”

  “Command, go ahead.”

  “Patch neuronics into primary holocam.”

  “Roger, patching.”

  Mother didn’t need to tell him where to look. What he saw staggered him.

  What had been just a small, dull red speck, a mere pinprick on the vast expanse of New Dallas’s stern, had grown in the space of only a few minutes into a searingly bright spot. Even as Michael watched, the spot began to spew a small jet of plasma, molten metal, and debris out into space as the ships’ lasers chewed their way remorselessly into the hull. Shit, Michael thought. He was seeing ship’s atmosphere venting to space.

  “By Jesus, their hull integrity’s breached,” he said. Michael could hardly breathe, the tension of the moment gripping his heart like an iron band. He had trouble believing what he was seeing, but something deep inside told him there was more to come.

  “Mother, I have a feeling about this. I want everyone who can to watch.”

  “Roger.”

  When the end came, it came horrifyingly fast. In a matter of seconds, the jet of material pouring out of the hole in New Dallas’s stern exploded into a searing plume of incandescent gas hundreds of meters long as the lasers finally broke through deep into the ship’s hull.

  And then, in a single searing flash, the antiship lasers finally connected with something big, and the entire starboard quarter of the huge ship erupted in a massive explosion. Its force punched New Dallas into a slow, tumbling stern-over-bow spin, furious jets of reaction mass spewing fore and aft as maneuvering systems struggled to bring the heavy cruiser back under control.

  Mother provided the commentary this time. “According to the TECHINT briefings we’ve been given, there’s an auxiliary fusion power plant aft of the propulsion power compartments that feeds the after rail-gun batteries. I think that’s what’s gone up. She won’t be destroyed, but she will be combat-ineffective for a while until they sort things out.”

  Michael could hardly speak, wishing that Ribot and all the other 387s could have been there to witness something that would go down in the record books.

  Chen commed him.

  “We did it, Michael, we did it.”

  “Hard to believe, sir. But by God, we’ve paid a price.” Michael stopped, choked with emotion.

  “You did. I’m calling a halt. It’s time we got jump-worthy and went home. And Michael!”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You’re 387’s skipper now, so for fuck’s sake stop calling me ‘sir.’ It makes me nervous. Call me Bill,” Chen said, his voice soft with compassion.

  Michael managed a laugh. “Sorry, sir-er, Bill.”

  “And one more thing, Michael. Get yourself to the sick bay. You need attention.”

  “All in good time. There are things I need to do first.”

  Flanked by her senior staff, all standing dumbstruck, Vice Admiral Jaruzelska stared open-mouthed at the holovid.

  She’d known that 387 and 166 had kept up their laser attack on New Dallas but had tucked that information away in the back of her mind, where she parked stuff that wasn’t significant, bits and pieces that didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things for which she was responsible.

  Therefore, it took a good long time before she and the rest of the flag staff believed what they were seeing: a huge ship slowly falling out of the line of attack, the massive explosion on her starboard quarter pushing her into a slow spiraling spin to nowhere.

  And then the cheers from the ship’s company of Al-Jahiz and from her own flag staff drove home the extent of what the two little ships had achieved. “By God, that was one for the record books,” Jaruzelska muttered, disabling a ship hundreds of times their size. Finally, order prevailed and the flag staff turned their attention back to the rest of the battle now under way across hundreds of billions of cubic kilometers of Hell nearspace. The command plot was now showing the Hell nearspace component of Operation Corona in its entirety. Along with the two heavy assault forces tasked with reducing the flotilla base, Hell Central, and any warships unlucky enough to be on station to dust, the command plot now tracked Task Group 256.3, under the command of Commodore Pinto in the heavy cruiser Repudiate together with four heavy patrol ships as they ran in on Hell-5, one of the three moons holding those of Mumtaz’s passengers and crew who had not been sent to Eternity.

  Much farther out, Commodore Yu Genwei in the heavy cruiser Ulugh Beg and the fourteen other ships of Task Group 256.4 had dropped out of pinchspace on schedule and were tracking in toward three of Hell system’s outer moons. Hell-16 and Hell-18 held the rest of the Mumtazers, and the third, Hell-20, held the overly trusting and no doubt thoroughly disillusioned hijackers of the Mumtaz.

  Satisfied with the big picture and after a final check that the Hammer forces in orbit around the system’s home planet of Commitment were still showing no signs of moving, Jaruzelska collected her thoughts. “Flag AI, flag. Message to the captains and crews of DLS-387 and DLS-166.”

  She paused for a moment, conscious that what she said would go down in history and wanting to get it right. Not for her own sake but for the sake of those who needed to understand, to know at what a terrible price the freedoms long enjoyed by the Worlds came.

  She took a deep breath. “In the face of appalling odds, crippling damage, and severe casualties, your unrelenting attack on vastly superior forces is in the highest traditions of the Federated Worlds Space Fleet. With you, we mourn the loss of your comrades. The ultimate sacrifice they have made to protect the freedoms we all hold so dear will never be forgotten. I and every other member of Battle Group Delta salute you all. Signed, A. J. Jaruzelska, vice admiral, Federated Worlds Space Fleet, Commander, Battle Group Delta.”

  Jaruzelska braced herself for what was to come as she counted down the seconds to the arrival of what the flag AI assured her would be the first and last missile salvo launched at her ships from the shattered flotilla base.

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sp; Jaruzelska hadn’t much enjoyed missile engagements with the Hammer the last time around and didn’t expect to now. It had been nearly twenty years since she’d been shot at seriously by the bastards, and she wasn’t looking forward to repeating the experience, a view shared by her chief of staff as he exercised his authority to shut down the excited chatter and get the flag staff to focus on what came next.

  “All stations, command. Missile salvo inbound. One minute.”

  Only half-aware of what she was doing, Jaruzelska hunched down in her seat and struggled to bring her breathing under control, if only to give her fogged-up visor a chance to clear. As always, her space suit was uncomfortable, the helmet neck ring heavy on her shoulders as she watched the massive attack make its way inexorably toward them.

  Jaruzelska completely approved of Captain van Meir’s caution in going to full suits. Unlike some heavy cruiser captains, the Al-Jahiz’s skipper insisted that visors be closed and suit checks completed as an attack became imminent. Heavy cruisers rarely depressurized for combat. They were too big and too tough, and the loss of personal communication was too keenly felt, particularly by command teams under pressure. But not shutting up suits as an attack approached risked the lives of anyone caught in a compartment suddenly open to hard vacuum.

  As Jaruzelska checked and rechecked that nothing had been overlooked, the tactical plot showed an ugly and menacing sight.

  The flag AI’s latest estimate was that there were upward of 750 Sparrowhawk missiles in the attack, though based on what she’d seen so far, Jaruzelska thought that the AI’s assumptions about Hammer missile availability were too pessimistic. She snorted dismissively. The Sparrowhawk was so old that it used hypergolic fuels for its launch stage, for God’s sake. But it didn’t matter who was right. They’d soon find out one way or the other. What really mattered was how well the task group’s sensors had separated the missiles from the myriad decoys and jammers sent along to confuse, baffle, and divert the attention of the antimissile defenses.