The battle at the Moons of Hell hw-1 Page 34

  If the task group got that right, they’d come through this pretty much unscathed. If they didn’t…

  After a quick check that everything on the command plot was as it should be, Jaruzelska forced the grim prospect of a successful Hammer attack out of her mind as she turned her attention back to the tactical plot.

  The Hammer had adopted what the missile attack tacticians called a standard doughnut formation, or do-form. The doughnut formation was exactly what it sounded like. After the launch and second stages burned out, the missiles would open out into a thick ring of missiles around an open center, with the attack axis running right through the middle of the hole. As the range shortened, the missiles would fire their third-stage maneuvering engines to collapse the doughnut inward onto the Fed ships, accelerating fiercely as they closed. The do-form was standard Hammer tactics for antistarship missile attacks, and Jaruzelska was not surprised to see it coming at her. It was exactly what the THREATSUM had predicted. Well done, boys and girls at Fleet intelligence, she thought.

  That was fine up to a point. They had simmed such attacks to death, so Jaruzelska had little to do but sit back and watch as her warships closed in to a tight, closely packed ring, the ships’ heaviest armor facing outward at the approaching missiles. In a missile-only attack, it was a good defensive formation, although it took only one ship in the ring to fumble its defense and missiles would slip past to smash directly into the thin upper armor of ships in the rest of the ring. Not for nothing was the formation considered a great test of mutual trust, Jaruzelska thought.

  But despite all the sims, facing one for real was a very different matter, as the fist of fear and tension that gripped her stomach proved.

  All of a sudden, the tactical plot erupted as the Hammer missiles reached the maximum effective range of the task group’s medium-range area defense missiles. In seconds, the command plot was thick with tracks as missiles streaked out, eating up the 50,000-kilometer gap at better than 330,000 meters per second.

  Barely more than two intensely frightening minutes later and with hundreds of missiles and countless decoys and jammers expended, the Hammer attack was over.

  But not without cost.

  A power failure on an overloaded weapons power fusion plant deprived Damishqui of an entire battery of close-range defensive lasers just as flag AI handed over two Hammer missiles that somehow had made it through the outer defensive cordon wrongly classified as decoys, and as such well down the pecking order, for the attention of Damishqui’s close-in weapons. The belated efforts of Damishqui’s chain guns had been too late to destroy the missiles, and despite her enormous bulk, Damishqui had shuddered as the first missile hit home, the armored warhead combined with the missile’s massive kinetic energy punching effortlessly through the upper armor, cutting right through the ship before venting its fury to space. The result was nine compartments breached, four dead, and twenty-seven injured, but no mission-critical systems degraded. The second missile had scraped through, impacting Damishqui’s bows at a shallow angle almost exactly where the armor was thickest. Apart from an enormous gouge across Damishqui’s hull, the damage was minimal.

  Two missiles made Al-Jahiz suffer, though not close to the extent to which 387 and 166 had suffered. Losses on that scale in a ship the size of Al-Jahiz would have been unthinkable.

  With its warhead’s circuitry fried by lasers and a close-range antimissile missile ripping its third stage apart in a brilliant flash of blue-white, the tattered fragments of a single Hammer missile had squeezed past the task group’s defenses to crash into Al-Jahiz’s bow armor. But the second missile got a better result.

  A serious datastream error allowed the missile to get lost in the flood of data being handled by the task group’s AIs, an error that in theory couldn’t happen but did, one of the hazards of volume defense using laser-based high-speed datastreams to shuffle information between ships. The missile slid down a gap between Zuhr and Searchlight before crashing into Al-Jahiz, the warhead reaching into the ship to destroy an auxiliary fusion plant, with the massive explosion shaking Al-Jahiz bodily as the blast vented to space. A few anxious moments followed until the warship’s damage control crews sealed off the damage and reported no mission abort problems. Considering the enormous forces unleashed when a magnetic plasma containment bottle ruptured, casualties were relatively light at nine dead and sixty-six injured.

  As Jaruzelska ran her eyes across the final damage assessments, she was relieved to see that the rest of the task group had gotten off lightly. Any missiles that had made it past the area antimissile defenses had been ripped apart by the carefully crafted layers of close-in point defense weapons systems, short-range missiles, then antimissile lasers, and finally, for last-ditch defense, chain guns. Apart from Blue- fish, which had lost its long-range search radar to an inert missile, the only damage suffered was from missile fragments chewing up small sections of hull armor.

  The Hammers’ next effort turned out to be a total waste of ordnance. Close to half a million rail-gun slugs fired from extreme long range in three separate salvos gave the flag AI enough time to calculate vectors to enable the task group to slide effortlessly out of the way. In the end, it was all a bit of an anticlimax. The relief in the flag combat data center was reflected in a sudden upsurge of nervous chatter as the task group maneuvered to allow the slugs to pass harmlessly clear.

  As the task group moved relentlessly in, Jaruzelska sat and watched, grim-faced and silent, as her attack ground the Hammer forces into dust. It didn’t take long, and then it was all over. Rear Admiral’s Pritchard’s two bases and his twenty-strong flotilla were no more, their only monuments blackened, slowly tumbling wrecks of ships. Hell nearspace was thick with the orange anticollision lights of rescue and recovery craft as they started the long process of gathering in the scores of lifebots spewed into space by the stricken ships.

  What came next would be the Hammer’s last throw of the dice, a moderately serious missile attack compared to their first effort, which even she would call serious. Jaruzelska’s neuronics scrolled through the list of incoming attacks. The report showed seven missile salvos on their way in from the New Dallas task group, thousands of missiles in all. They wouldn’t be as easy to avoid as the rail-gun swarms had been. Jaruzelska sucked her teeth.

  The command plot was not a pretty sight as it tracked the onrushing salvos.

  Not for the first time that day, Jaruzelska cursed her luck that five Hammer heavies had chosen that morning to drop in-system. In all the sims they had done, it was not far off the worst-case scenario, and it was only the desperate attack by 387 and 166 that had diffused the threat they posed. Also, they carried the new Eaglehawk antistarship missile, not obsolete Mohawks. By Fed standards, the Eaglehawk was still a relatively crude piece of engineering, but it was a big improvement on its predecessor. It was faster, had a much improved terminal guidance system, had good antijamming capability, and was topped with a high-gain shaped-charge warhead: a very nasty piece of work and definitely not to be taken for granted.

  But there was some good news.

  The salvos were well separated and minutes apart. There was only one threat axis, and Hammer ship-launched missiles had no better off-bore capability than did Fed ship-launched missiles. That meant Jaruzelska could place her sixteen cruisers in a loose wall, the ships in two tiers in line abreast, bows and bow armor facing the missiles coming at them but positioned close enough to provide overlapping fields of fire even if the Hammers had been smart enough to focus their salvos onto one ship or maybe two. If the Hammers went for two ships, and that was the flag AI’s prediction based on what she’d observed so far, that left plenty of firepower in reserve. The greatest risk was that the Hammer would be smart enough to go for only one of the light cruisers and lucky enough to pick one that she had been stupid enough to leave exposed and unsupported on one flank.

  That was something she had no intention of doing.

  “All stations, command. Missil
e salvo inbound. Two minutes.”

  “Here we go. A small one to get us started and then some serious stuff,” Jaruzelska muttered.

  And then, in a flash, Verity’s missiles were upon them, every one targeting Al-Jahiz as she rode at the center of the task group. But the combined firepower of sixteen cruisers was more than enough to rip the missiles out of space, leaving Al-Jahiz to be troubled only by scattered fragments of missile debris, with the impacts triggering only tiny puffs of reactive armor.

  Jaruzelska settled her breathing down. Her turn now, she thought, and a short pause in the action while her missiles fell on the unfortunate ships of the New Dallas group.

  “Flag, flag AI. Missile salvo on New Dallas group in one minute.”

  “Flag, roger.”

  Jaruzelska watched as the missiles from her ships, their arrival carefully timed and their final vectors orchestrated to stretch and overwhelm the defenses of their targets, did what they had been sent to do.

  For a brief few seconds, the holovid was filled with brilliant white flashes as the Hammer ships’ close-in defenses reached out to destroy the early arrivals before the sheer weight of numbers allowed missile after missile to smash home, burying warheads deep into armor. Plasma jets reached inside until one by one hulls were ripped open, spilling debris and molten metal into space. The crippled New Dallas was the last to go, but eventually, for all her enormous size, the numbers were against her and she, too, succumbed.

  Jaruzelska felt sick as she watched.

  It had to be done, and she had no doubts about doing it. In any case, the Hammer was still trying to do to her what she had done to the unfortunate New Dallas and its task group. But it was still butchery, and she didn’t have to like it.

  “All stations, command. Missile salvo inbound. Two minutes.”

  And so it started again, only this time the salvos were larger, and just as the flag AI had predicted, all were targeted on just two ships. The first three salvos were aimed at Damishqui, and the last three at Al-Jahiz, though Jaruzelska and the flag AI could find no logical reason why they had been picked other than that they rode in the center of the task group. But the missile attacks were doomed to failure; the enormous defensive firepower of sixteen cruisers was simply too much to overcome.

  Then the Hammer attack was spent. After more than half a million rail-gun slugs and thousands of missiles, it was all over. Jaruzelska settled down with little more to do than watch as the four task groups responsible for the rescue of the Mumtaz’s passengers and crew swept in on their targets.

  As the order to relax visors came through, Jaruzelska leaned back in her suit and squirmed her body around to try to relieve a persistent itch in the small of her back. She hoped that there would be no more surprises like New Dallas.

  Jaruzelska cursed the Hammer for its willingness to sacrifice good ships and spacers for no possible gain. Unbelievably, Commitment had dispatched the heavy cruiser Ascania and the heavy escort Perez. Picked up by surveillance drones in orbit around Commitment, the two ships jumped out of pinchspace directly into Jaruzelska’s missile salvos.

  She had taken no pleasure in what followed. It was far too close to cold-blooded murder for her liking. The two Hammer ships never had a chance.

  Still struggling to set up after the drop, the Hammers saw the missiles coming only when it was far too late to do anything effective. The space around the two ships turned into a blazing mass of defensive laser fire, with missiles and chain-gun fire clawing at the Merlins as they raced in, the sheer size of the attack overwhelming the Hammer ships’ tracking and fire control systems. The space around the two ships sparkled with the red-gold blooms of their few successes.

  Ascania took the brunt of the attack. Close to a hundred Merlin antistarship missiles slipped past her defenses, hitting home in the space of only two seconds. Perez did better but not well enough, absorbing forty-two direct hits, a nearly impossible number for a cruiser to deal with, never mind a heavy escort. The two doomed ships heaved as nose cones of vanadium/tungsten-hardened steel cut deep before explosive warheads unleashed a storm of white-hot gas and shrapnel that scoured the life out of every compartment; the hapless crews were incinerated where they sat.

  Sickened, Jaruzelska watched as the warheads finally found what they were looking for: the fusion plants that powered the ships’ propulsion and weapons systems. The appalling energy within them was unleashed as the magnetic bottles containing the fusion plasma gave way, successive blasts ripping huge holes in the sides of the two ships.

  “Abort remaining missile salvos,” Jaruzelska said flatly. The butchery was done.

  Jaruzelska rubbed her face wearily. She now had status reports from all of her subordinate commanders. Thankfully, they’d gotten what they’d come for: the 158 passengers and crew taken from the Mumtaz and 22 of the 30 hijackers. The rest were dead. And she’d had the pinchcomm from Rear Admiral Kzela confirming the successful recovery of the Mumtazers marooned on Eternity.

  Could have been a hell of a lot worse, she thought, though the price paid by 387 had been far too high. But considering that the premission sims had shown a strong chance that Battle Group Delta would lose at least one major fleet unit with heavy casualties, they had been lucky. She shivered. With only a pair of heavy cruisers close to any one of the battle group’s four drop points, the losses could have been even worse. Still, the only real surprise had been the New Dallas and the ships of her task group. Thank God they’d dropped well short and, even more important, that 166 and 387 had been there to lure them into turning away for those critical few minutes as the battle group dropped.

  But that didn’t help 166 and 387, which were still a good two or more hours away from being jump-capable. Jaruzelska had no intention of leaving them alone in Hammer space. A minute’s consideration and she knew what she would do. She’d keep Al-Jahiz and Sina together with Crossbow and Bombard back in support of 166 and 387 until they jumped.

  For everyone else, it was time to go home.

  Thursday, November 19, 2398, UD

  Offices of the Supreme Council for the Preservation of the Faith, City of McNair, Commitment Planet

  Merrick had been dragged from sleep by the news of the Feds’ attack on Hell, and it had taken him only a few sleep-befuddled seconds to work out precisely why they were doing what they were doing.

  From that moment on, he knew he was a dead man.

  Desperately, he scoured his mind to work out some way, any way, of surviving the storm that was about to break over his head, but there was none. He’d gambled, risking everything he’d had to play with, and the gamble had failed. That was it, and there was no way back, no way out.

  Now the moment of judgment had come, and Merrick could do nothing but sit at the Council table and await the executioner’s ax. He would at least go with as much dignity as the circumstances allowed, fighting every step of the way as he’d done all his life.

  The hastily convened meeting of the Supreme Council finally came to order as Polk and Albrecht hurried into the room. Close on their heels followed a disheveled and very anxious Councillor Kando the newly appointed councillor for intelligence. He was obviously half-panicked by the early hour and worried sick that something had happened that his department should have known about but hadn’t. Merrick managed a wry smile in spite of himself.

  Let the charade begin, Merrick thought as he looked down the table. Time for one last bluff. “Good morning, everyone. We are here to decide what immediate actions we must take in response to the unprovoked attack by the Federated Worlds on the Hell planetary system. I suggest we start by asking the councillor for war and external security for an-”

  Polk held a hand up, stopping him dead. “I think not, Merrick, I think not.”

  Merrick couldn’t stop himself, half rising to his feet as he spoke. “How dare you, Councillor Polk,” he barked, “how dare you! I am the chief councillor, and you will address me as such or you will face the consequences.”

&
nbsp; Polk’s voice was silky smooth, “I don’t think so, Merrick. And what consequences might those be, anyway?” He waved a hand dismissively in Merrick’s general direction. “I don’t care what you think anymore. What we should do is hear from the councillor for foreign relations about what you have been up to behind the backs of the Council.”

  The assembled councillors could do nothing but stare open-mouthed. Something terrible was about to happen and they had absolutely no idea what it was. In the circumstances, all they could do was sit, their minds desperately trying to work out how best to survive the coming storm.

  Claude Albrecht, the councillor for foreign relations, looked like he was trying to bring up a half-digested meal of broken glass. “Thank you, Councillor Polk. I have here,” he mumbled, waving a single sheet of paper, “a diplomatic note from the Federated Worlds which I shall read to you in its entirety. It goes as follows.”

  Albrecht paused, his extreme discomfort obvious to all.

  “Get on with it, you Kraa-damned bastard,” Merrick muttered.

  “To the Government of the Worlds of the Hammer of Kraa.” There was another pause as Albrecht struggled to stop the quaver in his voice. With a visible effort, he got himself back under control.

  “You are hereby served Notice that a State of Limited War is hereby declared and shall exist between the peoples of the Federated Worlds and the Worlds of the Hammer of Kraa with effect from 04:15 Universal Time on the nineteenth day of November 2398 Universal Date.

  “In accordance with the New Washington Convention, you are hereby advised that the Affirmed Basis of this Declaration is the hijacking of the Federated Worlds Commercial Ship Mumtaz, registration number FWCS-700451-G, hereinafter known as the Mumtaz, on the eleventh day of September 2398 Universal Date for the express purpose of diverting its cargo to the terraforming of the planet Judgment-III, hereinafter known as Eternity. This illegal act was directed by Brigadier General Digby, Hammer of Kraa Marines, under the direct orders of Jesse Merrick, Chief Councillor of the Worlds of the Hammer of Kraa.