The battle at the Moons of Hell hw-1 Page 35

  “Further, as required by the Convention, you are hereby advised that the objectives of the Limited War are the rescue of the passengers and crew of the Mumtaz from illegal detention on Eternity and various moons of the Revelation-II planetary system, the arrest of Brigadier General Digby and all other persons reasonably believed to be responsible for the planning and execution of the hijack to face trial in the courts of the Federated Worlds, the safe recovery of the Mumtaz and as much of its cargo as possible, and the safe departure of Federated Worlds forces from Hammer space. Upon the satisfactory achievement of these objectives or 07:00 Universal Time on the nineteenth day of November 2398 Universal Date, whichever is the later, the State of Limited War shall cease. Thereafter, a Demand for Financial Restitution shall be served.

  “As required by the Convention, the Statement of Facts relating to this matter is attached to the Declaration, having been attested to by Corinne Bhose, Chief Observer of the Federated Worlds.

  “Delivered to the hand of Tae Uk Yoon, Ambassador of the Worlds of the Hammer of Kraa to the Federated Worlds, at 04:05 Universal Time on the nineteenth day of November 2398 Universal Date by my authorized delegate, Giovanni Pecora, Federal Minister of Interstellar Relations.

  “Signed, Reshmi Diouf, President, Federated Worlds, and dated the nineteenth day of November 2398 Universal Date.”

  Councillor Albrecht put the piece of paper down on the table. Probably Merrick’s most committed supporter, he was the first to break the stunned silence that followed. His voice was harsh and his face grim as he looked up the table directly at Merrick.

  “True or not, Jesse? True or not?”

  Merrick sat there, unmoving.

  Fear and frustration that the man on whom his life depended could have been so stupid drove Albrecht’s voice into a cracked scream. “True or not? Tell me, Kraa-damn it! Is it true?”

  “Answer the question, Merrick.” Polk was unable to keep the satisfaction out of his voice.

  The pause was a long one.

  Finally, Merrick nodded once and sat back in his seat as if to say, Do what you want. He could have argued the point, tried to bluff his way out of it. Ten years earlier, he would have. Polk as usual overestimated the strength of his position even if it was probably strong enough to see Merrick at the bottom of a DocSec lime pit. No, he was tired, bone-tired, utterly spent. He really didn’t care anymore.

  Despite the fact that his own life had been put in jeopardy by the unilateral actions of the man at the head of the Council table, Albrecht’s voice softened. He had always respected Merrick, and certainly the man had been better than most chief councillors of recent times. “Why, Jesse? Why? This is not how we do business. You should know that better than anyone.”

  Merrick waved a hand uncertainly. “I…I had my reasons, but I suspect that most of you don’t want to hear them,” he muttered as Polk looked on, his face hard with triumph.

  Polk knew there would never be a better time, and he struck. “No, we don’t, Merrick. You can explain it to Doc-Sec. I move that Jesse Merrick be removed as chief councillor and held for trial by the investigating tribunal. All those in favor.”

  The vote was a formality, with every hand in the air within seconds. Polk’s lip curled in a half sneer; they had good reason to be quick, he thought, especially Merrick’s men. He would take his time about it, but they would know the meaning of the word fear before many months were out.

  The next step followed as surely as day follows night. As Merrick was bundled away, hands tied behind his back with the ubiquitous plasticuffs so loved by DocSec, with three heavily built troopers towering over the bent and broken figure, the councillors were not able to keep the shock and surprise from their eyes. Moments later, the motion to appoint Polk as chief councillor was carried unanimously.

  Polk savored the moment for a long minute, the shattered remnants of Merrick’s supporters silent and still, faces white with shock at the awful suddenness of it all. Then the orders flowed: the immediate announcement of Merrick’s arrest for dereliction of duty, his replacement by Polk, full holovid coverage of the outrageous Fed assault, military funerals for those killed, an immediate purge of the senior ranks of the military, a board of inquiry to look into the disaster, and a warrant for the arrest of Brigadier General Digby.

  If there had been any doubt about who was in control, there was none anymore.

  Then the meeting was over. As councillors fled with unseemly haste, Polk moved to the chief councillor’s chair at the head of the Council table. He sat down, exultant, his victory complete. The one order he hadn’t given-to hunt down and exterminate every influential supporter of Jesse Merrick-could wait until tomorrow. He was inclined not to talk up Merrick’s role in the Fed attack. He had a feeling that the more he could portray the Feds as unprincipled aggressors, the more pressure he could bring to bear on the insurgents who plagued Faith.

  If the Feds thought that the fallout from the Mumtaz affair was now a matter for the diplomats, they’d badly underestimated Jeremiah Polk. After all, centuries of human history had shown that there was nothing better than an external threat when it came to crushing internal dissent. He didn’t think he would have much trouble convincing his people-he liked that, “his people”-that the Feds’ real agenda was the destruction of the Hammer Worlds. And even if it took ten years, he would make sure the Feds suffered for the humiliation they had heaped on the Hammer of Kraa.

  The tiny fires lit by the news of Merrick’s arrest and transfer to McNair State Prison smoldered for a while before bursting into life and spreading like wildfire.

  Within the hour, people began to emerge onto the streets of the sprawling industrial suburbs to the south of McNair, small groups coalescing first into large groups and then into mobs, the anger building as leaders emerged to whip emotion into action. The message was the same, hurled out by angry and defiant men at angry and defiant people in hundreds of impromptu street meetings: Merrick was one of them, he’d come from the same mean streets as they had, and they’d be damned if they would allow an off-worlder like Polk to take over.

  By late morning, smoke began to darken the sky over McNair, the air split with the sirens of DocSec convoys deploying to cordon off the city center. Their instructions were clear and simple: Stop the mobs converging on McNair State Prison. At any cost.

  Thursday, November 19, 2398, UD

  DLS-387 and DSLS-166, Hell Nearspace

  Michael and the tattered remnants of his crew had worked like they’d never worked before.

  With 166 alongside, the crash bags of the living had been ferried across to 166’s sick bay and those of the dead had been transferred to external storage containers for the long ride home. Michael’s heart was sick as his neuronics updated the casualty list as medics worked feverishly to stabilize the injured and get them into regen for the long ride to the base hospital. The toll kept mounting as the casualties from 387’s combat information center were triaged.

  The list was awful; Michael had to struggle to understand the enormity of the disaster that had hit 387.

  Ribot, Armitage, and the rest of the officers except Cosmo Reilly were all gone. Strezlecki, Leong, Carlsson, and Athenascu were gone. Ng was gone. Most of the combat information center crew, gone. Half the galley crew, unlucky enough to be caught at their damage control station in the cross-passage just outside the combat information center, gone. The entire crew of 387’s lander, Jessie’s Hope, gone. Two engineers working on a trivial problem with Weapons Power Charlie’s local AI as it went up, gone. There’d barely been enough of them left to put in a coffee cup.

  Chief Kemble interrupted. “Command, sick bay. We’re done here, sir, and 166 is almost finished with our overflow. I’ve commed you the final casualty list: twenty-eight dead, sixteen seriously injured, but according to the regen AIs, they’ll all be okay, though I’m still a bit worried about Bienefelt and one of Warrant Officer Ng’s team, Petty Officer Gaetano. And twelve walking wounded, you included.�
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  “Thanks, chief. Let me know if there’s any change. A bad business.”

  “It is, sir. Didn’t think I’d ever see something as bad as this. One more thing, sir. I know Mother’s given up nagging you, but you really must come down so we can take a look at you. You’re not going to drop dead on us or anything, but you’ve lost a lot of blood despite the best efforts of your suit, and woundfoam’s only good up to a point, especially if you won’t stay still. So, sir! For the last time or I’ll send a team to get you, sick bay now!”

  Michael had to laugh at Kemble’s earnest firmness. “All right, all right. Just give me ten minutes. I need to see how my new XO is doing with the ship repairs, then I’ve got to talk to the skipper of 166, and then I’ll turn myself in. Promise.”

  Kemble grunted. “If you can do all that in ten minutes, fine. If not, I’m coming to get you.”

  “Yes, chief,” Michael said meekly.

  Harris and his team, more 166s than 387s, Michael noted, were hard at it. Emergency generators were pumping white-gray foamsteel to secure the footings of a crude framework of steel crash beams that had been jury-rigged across the huge hole blown out of 387’s hull when Weapons Power Charlie had lost containment. The hole now was jammed with spacers welding steel bracing into place, the brilliant blue-white light from the welding arcs bleaching the color out of their orange suits.

  “How’s it going, chief?”

  Harris waved an arm at the chaos around him. “It may not look like it, sir, but we are getting there. This is the bad one, but Mother’s confirmed that the design of our repair is good even if it looks like something kids dreamed up. She’s happy that the steel crash bracing will hold the foamsteel plug in place. We’ve just got to get it all in there, and that’s a slow process, what with cutting the braces to size and all. The rest aren’t so bad. I never thought I’d have anything good to say about a rail-gun slug, but at least they don’t leave huge holes like this. 166’s XO is down sealing the lander hangar now, and then we’ll do the surveillance drone hangar. Another two hours, tops.”

  “Good. If you need anything, let me know.”

  “Sir.”

  As promised, Michael made it to the sick bay inside Chief Kemble’s deadline after a short comm with Chen. The captain of 166 had sounded relieved to get a finish time for the repairs to 387. Clearly, hanging around in hostile Hammer space was not something he wanted to do any more than Michael did. Cosmo Reilly had cleared 387 to maneuver, the final rail-gun slug shaking the main engines up a bit, but nothing that a bit of recalibration couldn’t fix. Even better, Reilly and his team were well on the way to getting the ship jump-capable. With detailed designs for the emergency repairs uploaded to Mother, she should have the new ship mass distribution model completed within the hour. Terranova might be a distant 270 light-years away, but Michael was beginning to allow himself to believe that they’d be dropping in-system inside six days.

  As he looked into the sick bay, the thought of going home almost overwhelmed him, and at that instant he would have given almost anything to be in Anna’s arms, to be home with the people he loved. He’d felt physically sick when he saw that Damishqui had been hit, but thank God, Anna had not been on the casualty list. Please God, get her home safely, he prayed.

  As the sick bay air lock safety lights switched to green, Michael firmly shoved all thoughts of Anna into a distant corner of his mind. Like it or not, he was the skipper of 387, and he had a ship and what was left of 387’s crew to get home safely first.

  The instant he stepped into the sick bay, Chief Kemble and her team were on him like a rash. Michael had been dreading what he might find, so he was pleased to see that the crash bags with the ship’s dead had been moved to the cargo containers for the trip home. The way he felt, it was bad enough just thinking about them. Seeing the physical evidence, seeing a line of crash bags, would have been too much.

  It was the work of only moments for Kemble’s team to strip Michael’s suit off, leaving him standing in a ship suit saturated with a gruesome mix of reddish-black blood and bright green woundfoam. As he looked down at himself, he found it hard believe that he’d lost so much blood. He was drenched in it. But he stood only for a second until the accumulated insult and injury done to his long-suffering body finally overwhelmed him.

  With a tired sigh, Michael’s eyes rolled up into his head, and he crumpled like an empty sack to the deck.

  Michael was swimming in a strange sort of pool, the water deep, thick, and red. Something heavy was holding him back.

  Slowly, doggedly, he fought his way to the surface, and as he did, the everyday sounds of a ship began to seep into a head stuffed full of cotton wool. But eventually he made it, opening his eyes to see Chief Kemble leaning over him, her face a mixture of amusement and concern.

  “Hello, sir. The AI said you were coming back to us.”

  “Try and keep me away,” Michael mumbled, his mouth thick.

  “That’s what I said. Okay. How are you feeling?”

  “Like shit. And sore all over.”

  Kemble nodded sympathetically. If it were up to her and the medical AI, she’d have had Michael in a regen tank immediately, but she wasn’t going to waste her time asking. If her years in the Fleet had taught her anything, it was not to try to persuade a ship’s captain to put self first and duty second.

  “You will be, I’m afraid. You have very severe bruising to your lower back and ribs and a lot of tendon damage. That will account for most of the pain. You managed to break your nose, but not too badly, but the rest of the face is just bruised. The base hospital will take care of that and make it look pretty again. Your left leg is the real problem. It’s a real mess, and I’m not at all sure how you’ve even been able to walk. Pity we didn’t get to it a lot sooner. It’s been sliced up pretty badly, so the medibots have been busy putting it all back together again, and we’ve transfused repairbots in to try to repair the muscle and tendon damage. It’s going to hurt like hell, but it’ll mend in time. You’ll just need to go easy on it. I’ve held off the painkillers until you surfaced, but we’ve loaded you up with drugbots, so just comm them when the pain gets to be too much.”

  Michael nodded as he tried to take it all in. All he knew was that the longer he was awake, the more everything seemed to hurt.

  Kemble offered him a large beaker with pale blue fluid in it. “Now drink this. We need to get you rehydrated. You’ll feel a lot better in a moment.”

  Gratefully, Michael brought the large beaker of fluid that Kemble was holding up to his mouth, suddenly craving every sweet drop. “More. Please.”

  Two more beakers later, Michael did indeed feel better. Much better, in fact, to the point where as Kemble turned to put the beaker back, he sat himself up. Wincing, he quickly wished he hadn’t, bruised ribs and back screaming in protest as the movement pulled at torn ligaments and ripped muscles. Ignoring the pain, he swung himself off the bunk to stand, swaying slightly, looking around for his suit, his left leg sore and stiff under the plasfiber bandages. He commed the drugbots to give him painkillers and sighed in relief as the pain evaporated almost instantly.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” Kemble protested as she turned back and saw what he was up to. “Where are you going, sir?”

  Michael stared at her in astonishment. It had never occurred to him to do anything other than get back to work.

  “Things to do, chief. What time is it?”

  “Time? It’s 08:20. Now get back on that bunk. That leg’s not good for much just yet.”

  Michael shook his head. “Chief, I’ll get back on the bunk if you swear to me that I’ll do myself irreparable damage by walking on it, but if not, then I’ve got things to do.”

  “No, I can’t swear to it, but you’ll see more of the inside of the base hospital than you’ll like if you don’t give the leg time to recover. As it is, you should be in regen. Moving it is going to undo a lot of what we’ve had to do.”

  “Sorry, chief, you’ll have
to forgive me. But I do promise to take it easy.” And with that Michael, pleased to see that someone had thought to bring him a new one, was struggling to get a very uncooperative left leg into his space suit.

  “Fuck’s sake, sir. Let me give you a hand,” Chief Kemble said resignedly. “And let me see if I can find you something to lean on.”

  The minutes dragged past, and Michael was acutely aware of the growing risk that the Hammer would finally get off their asses and do something about them.

  Despite the best efforts of Commodore Kawaguchi’s pinchcommsat killers, the Hammers clearly had a working pinchcomms data channel with Commitment, so a response had to be coming soon. But the work had been frustratingly slow as Harris and his teams struggled to fill the holes punched in 387’s hull. The gaping void left by the failure of Weapons Power Charlie was proving to be a real problem as bracing, bracing, and more bracing was tap welded into place to try to give the foamsteel plug the strength it would need to hold back thousands of kilograms of air pressure.

  Michael was smart enough to know that hassling Chief Harris wouldn’t cut one second off the time needed to make 387 jump-worthy.

  Foot up, as firmly instructed by Chief Kemble, he sat, surrounded by the shattered remnants of 387’s command team, and watched the tactical picture on the holovid. The vectors marked the last three groups of ships left in Hammer space inching their way slowly forward, the seconds running down to Chief Harris’s best estimate of when 387 would be jump-ready with painful slowness. Michael stared obsessively at the countdown timer in the bottom left-hand corner of the holovid, willing the digits to change faster with every ounce of willpower he possessed but without any effect. If anything, the damn things seemed to go more slowly.

  It was a relief when Chief Harris interrupted his zombielike focus on the timer.