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

  Perec nodded. “Well, after all the ships we lost last time around from poorly contained fusion plants going up, they had to do something, and it’s good to see that it really does work.” He turned to the rest of his staff.

  “This meeting’s canceled. I’m going down to meet them.”

  As Perec strode from the room, nobody even noticed the fact that he was doing something unheard of. Commodores in command of space battle stations never met ships as small and insignificant as a light scout. They just didn’t.

  After a short pause as 387’s cruelly torn lander was off-loaded into the care of the station’s cargobots, the salvage tugs started 387’s slow move in to berth. Her brilliant orange anticollision lights were the only signs that the scout was a operational warship and not just some battered and abandoned hulk.

  Michael had received two vidmails that mattered.

  One was from Anna, who, miracle of miracles, was already berthed and somehow had wrangled leave from Damishqui from 18:00. The second was from his father, reporting the imminent arrival home of his mother and Sam.

  Michael sat in his makeshift combat information center bathed in a wonderfully warm glow of happiness. Surrounded by his scratch command team sitting incongruously on the cheerfully patterned chairs of the wardroom, Michael watched as the bulkhead-mounted holovid showed the meters running off as 387 made her final approach. As instructed by Chief Kemble and in no uncertain terms, Michael had his foot up as he tried hard not to keep thinking about Anna, though with little success.

  None of them had much to do except keep an eye on things as the salvage tugs slowly and with infinite care maneuvered 387 alongside and then into one of the station’s berthing stations. Hydraulic locking arms reached out from SBS-1 to hold the ship firmly on the pad that would frame and seal its entire hangar door.

  “Command, Mother. Berthed.”

  “Command, roger. All stations, this is command. Hands fall out from berthing stations. Revert to harbor stations, ship state 4, airtight integrity condition zulu.”

  “Command, Mother.”

  “Yes, Mother?”

  “Message from the station, Commodore Perec is on his way down.”

  Michael went pale. Somehow it had never occurred to him that anyone apart from the station’s engineers would be interested in poor old 387. “What? The commodore? Oh, shit. Tell the XO. We’ll-”

  Mother interrupted Michael’s moment of panic at the thought of having to organize the ceremony that normally accompanied a commodore’s visit, the scale of the crisis magnified in Michael’s mind by a complete lack of notice and magnified again by Space Fleet’s enduring love of and abiding commitment to ceremony.

  “Command,” Mother said patiently, “the commodore has specifically instructed that there be no ceremony, and he’ll wait until the medevac teams have gotten all the regen tanks off.”

  Michael whistled with relief. “Oh, ah. Right. Okay. Thank God for that. Warn Chief Harris anyway and get him to meet me down in the hangar. Oh, and by the way, enough of the ‘command’ stuff. We’re alongside now, so it’s Michael. Just Michael please.”

  “Yes, Michael.”

  Michael got painfully to his feet. By Christ, he was sore all over, and his leg was worse today. There was no use comming painkillers, as the drugbots had run out the previous night and he hadn’t gotten around to getting more from Chief Kemble; that probably was the least smart thing he’d done all week. Add that to the list of things to do, he thought ruefully, still amazed at how much the captain of a ship had to stay on top of even with all the help that Mother provided.

  Not that the routine things bothered him, not at all.

  In fact, he quite enjoyed them. They could be listed, prioritized, and dealt with, each humdrum task a small reminder that there was an ordinary world out there somewhere.

  No, it was the painful task of putting together the personal vidmails to the families of 387’s lost crew. Every one had hurt more than he had ever thought possible, and though Michael did his best, working and reworking each one for hours, he never felt that they were right. In the end, sheer exhaustion, the million and one other things he had to attend to, and the stress of running a ship badly shorthanded had forced him to finish the job, well or poorly. With the forlorn hope that they might in fact be at least all right, he had commed them through to the station’s next of kin support team and prayed for the best.

  Michael finally made it to the hangar, white-faced and glistening with sweat from the pain of dragging an increasingly aching leg past the shattered wreck that had once been 387’s combat information center and down two sets of ladders into the hangar. Without the lander, the huge space was echoingly empty, its deck a buzz of activity as station work crews carefully maneuvered the heavy and awkward regen tanks through the forward air lock door, down to the hangar deck, and out across the grav interface; the whole process was managed by a spiderweb of AI-controlled winches and lines.

  Michael stood back out of the way in the door leading aft out of the hangar and into the power control room, the sight of the regen tanks bringing back to him what he’d lost, what he might lose even now. Despite Kemble’s assurances that Bienefelt was indestructible, she was still worried about her, and it didn’t escape Michael’s notice that Kemble had watched like a hawk as Bienefelt’s regen tank had left the ship. Don’t die now, cyborg woman, Michael prayed, don’t die.

  “Michael, Mother.”

  “Go ahead, Mother.”

  “Warrant Officer Morgan and the casualty-handling team are here. He requests approval to commence transfers.”

  “Yes, tell them to go ahead. No, no…Wait.”

  Once the shock of having to cope with a visit by the resident commodore had faded, Michael’s happiness at the thought of seeing Anna and knowing that Sam and Mom were safe had come flooding back. Now it disappeared in an instant, replaced by a feeling of dread that hollowed out his stomach. He was left with a sick, empty feeling, part loss and part fear. It didn’t seem right that the people who had been such an important if short part of his life should leave the ship this way, unseen and unacknowledged, like so much cargo to be off-loaded.

  “Mother.”

  “Yes, Michael?”

  “How many more regen tanks to go?”

  “The one going off now is the last.”

  “Okay. Tell the casualty-handling team this from me, and it’s nonnegotiable. I want to know the name of each person before, and I mean before, they move them from the ship. Understood?”

  “Yes, Michael.”

  “And I want them to wait. I’ll tell them when to start, and please, ask them if they can arrange it so that Warrant Officer Ng is second to last off and then the captain.”

  “Understood. Stand by…The casualty-handling team confirms that’s understood.”

  “Good. Okay. I want all of 387’s crew in the hangar, now. No exceptions. There’s nothing that can’t wait, agreed?”

  “Agreed, Michael.”

  “And get the external cameras to cover the transfers, please. Put the feed up on the hangar holovids.”

  “Will do.”

  Michael quickly commed the commodore, who had been waiting patiently but grim-faced outboard as the regen tanks came aboard his station in an awful procession.

  “Commodore Perec, sir, Junior Lieutenant Helfort, acting captain in command, DLS-387, reporting.”

  “Welcome home, Captain. Request permission to come aboard.”

  “Please, sir, come aboard. That’s the last of the regen tanks. But sir, I have a request. I’d like to muster my crew. My casualties are about to leave the ship, and I want to acknowledge that fact, so you’ll have to bear with us for a while.”

  “My boy, it will be an honor to stand beside you. Coming aboard now.”

  Five minutes later Perec watched the pathetic remains of what was left of 387’s crew and Warrant Officer Ng’s covert operations support team, two ranks of gaunt-faced and hollow-eyed men and women, with
the rocklike figure of Chief Harris out front fussing over the lines until they were just so.

  Once he was satisfied, Harris called the crew to attention before turning to face Michael and, flanking him, Cosmo Reilly and Commodore Perec. Harris stepped smartly forward. His salute was textbook in its precision and timing. “Deepspace Light Scout Three Eight Seven present and correct, sir!”

  Michael came to attention and returned the salute, desperately trying to keep the weight off an increasingly painful left leg. The hiss of a sharp intake of breath as a jagged stab of agony shot up into his heavily bruised back and ribs was not unnoticed by Commodore Perec. Michael was beginning to rethink his decision to trust a left leg that was showing every sign of giving up on him. Maybe he should have brought Chief Kemble’s makeshift cane along, after all, he thought, even if it didn’t feature anywhere in the dress code for Space Fleet officers.

  “Very good, chief.” He paused to take a deep breath before lifting his head high to look at the tattered remnants of his crew full in the face.

  “387s. There is nothing about this in the Manual of Space Fleet Ceremonial. But when I thought about the people we’ll never see again, I just couldn’t let them leave without saying goodbye, and I was sure you’d feel the same. That’s why I wanted you all here. Let’s not forget them.”

  Michael took another deep breath. “Mother, the casualty-handling team can start.”

  They stood stiffly to attention, Michael calling out the names one by one as the casualty-handling team with infinite care and patience slowly unloaded 387’s awful cargo. To Michael, the terribly slow process as crash bags were extracted from the cargo bays seemed to take hours to complete. Tears ran openly down his face and the faces of every one of his crew as the names of people who had been so much a part of them were read out one by painful one.

  Finally, there were only two names left for Michael to call.

  “Warrant Officer First Class Jacqueline Pascale Maria Ng, officer in command, Covert Operations Support Team Twelve. Go with God.”

  The final, agonizing wait was almost more than Michael could take, the pain in his left leg, now a mass of white-hot agony, nearly impossible to bear. But then it was almost over as the last crash bag was brought slowly out into the harsh glare of xenon floodlights.

  “Lieutenant Jean-Paul Gerard Augustine Ribot, captain in command, Deepspace Light Scout Three Eight Seven. Go with God.”

  As Ribot left the ship, his anonymous crash bag escorted by the two spacers, the bulky space-suited figure of Warrant Officer Morgan turned to make a stiff-armed but nonetheless regulation salute before silently following the heart-wrenchingly sad train of bright orange crash bags away into the darkness.

  With a deep breath, Michael got himself under control. “Chief Petty Officer Harris!”

  “Sir.”

  “Dismiss Deepspace Light Scout Three Eight Seven.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  For a man well-known for his no-nonsense approach to life, Commodore Perec had been deeply moved, much more than he ever would have expected. As he’d watched in silence, he’d had to blink away the tears that had welled up in his eyes. The unadorned tragedy spelled out by the terrible procession of crash bags had hit him hard.

  But now it was time once more to be Commodore Perec, commodore in command, Space Battle Station 1.

  As Michael turned away from his crew, his left leg dragging noticeably, Perec took him by the arm, moving him out of the way of the engineering teams flooding onboard to start the formal damage assessment and take over what remained of 387 from its exhausted crew.

  “Michael, I don’t think you are going to like what I am about to say. But at the end of the day, I’m a commodore and you’re not, so pay attention.”

  Michael nodded. He was so tired, so emotionally drained, that all of a sudden nothing mattered anymore.

  “Captain Baktiar, my principal medical officer, tells me that you are in very bad shape. The delays in getting your leg treated are causing real damage. He wants you in the base hospital for treatment, and he wants you there right now. Now, I can’t order you off your ship. You are the legally appointed captain in command and supreme under God until relieved by proper authority. However, you are doing irreparable harm to yourself, and I’m not prepared to allow you to do that. So even though I can’t order you, I strongly suggest that you do as Captain Baktiar suggests. And unless you don’t particularly want a long and successful career in the Fleet, I can assure you that listening to the requests of commodores is generally considered to be a very good thing.”

  Michael had to smile at Perec’s forthright use of carrot and stick. “It’s all right sir, say no more. I’m convinced. To be honest, sir, I actually don’t think I can stand up much longer.”

  “Good man. I’ll tell Captain Baktiar that you are on your way. I know your XO. Chief Harris is a good man. He’ll manage fine until the base teams have taken over, and I’ll make sure that 387 gets everything it needs.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Michael said quietly with a half smile.

  He stood there for a second. As he turned toward the station, his left leg finally gave way and he crumpled unceremoniously to the deck.

  Monday, December 7, 2398, UD

  Federated Worlds Space Fleet Barracks, Foundation, Terranova Planet

  Michael’s stomach was a churning mass, and the fact that he hadn’t been able to eat anything for days didn’t help settle the worst attack of nerves he had ever experienced.

  Michael had taken up position well clear of the milling mass of spacers crowded onto the huge parade ground that lay at the heart of Foundation’s sprawling Space Fleet barracks. He watched in silence as Chief Harris, aided and abetted by the ever-imperturbable Cosmo Reilly, quickly and efficiently brought order out of 387’s tiny part of the chaos. The morning sun of another brilliant Terranova day struck dazzling shards off medals and gold badges stark against dress black.

  A firm hand on his shoulder brought him back to earth.

  “For God’s sake, Michael, try not to look so nervous!”

  Bill Chen’s cheerful face was the best thing Michael had seen all day. His dress uniform was immaculate, the deep crimson ribbon around his throat supporting the gold Valor in Combat starburst, the award bright with newness and brilliant against the black of his dress uniform. In comparison, the silver Hell’s Moons campaign medal hanging on a blue and yellow ribbon studded with a tiny gold command star that hung on his left breast looked washed out. On his left sleeve, a thin gold hash mark close to the cuff recorded 166’s unit citation for the Corona operation, and on his right was stitched his first combat command hash mark, also in gold.

  Michael took a deep breath, his right hand moving without his knowing it first to check that his own Valor in Combat starburst was in place and then down to the two unit citations on his left arm. Truth was, he felt very overdressed, almost gaudy.

  “Oh, hello, Bill. Can’t help it, sorry. Don’t much like crowds, and my damn leg still hurts.”

  The captain of DLS-166 smiled indulgently. “Hang in there. It’ll all be over before you know it.”

  Michael sighed deeply. “I know. I just wish 166 could be up front alongside us. God knows you earned it.”

  “You know the rules, Michael. Order of ships in parade is determined by losses, so you’ll forgive me when I tell you I’m happy to be well back in the parade with most of my crew intact. We were lucky, damned lucky, and to this day I still don’t how I lost so few when that Hammer slug came inboard.”

  “I wish we’d been lucky. None of this”-Michael waved an arm across the assembled spacers-“makes up for it.”

  “No, it doesn’t and it never will,” Chen said, his voice heavy with sympathy. He couldn’t begin to understand what Michael had been through. “Michael, I’d better go. We’re behind the Al-Jahiz and the Damishqui, and the funeral AI’s getting fractious. I’ll catch up with you afterward.”

  “Will do, Bill,” Michael said
as Reilly and Chief Harris, finally satisfied that they had the surviving crew members of 387 where they needed to be, made their way over.

  In deference to the occasion, Harris’s salute was stiff and formal, the silver-gray T’changa badge on his left shoulder bright in the morning sun, the ribbon holding his gold Valor in Combat starburst glowing richly in the yellow light. “Deepspace Light Scout Three Eight Seven present and accounted for, sir.”

  Michael’s salute was equally formal. “Thank you, chief. And thanks for sticking with us.”

  Harris nodded. “No problem, sir. No problem at all. It’s been an honor, and I think it’s what the Doc would have wanted.”

  Michael looked across at Reilly. “Cosmo, you okay?”

  “Well enough, skipper. Though it’s damned hard. I never thought I’d miss them as much as I do.”

  Michael could only nod. There was a short awkward pause.

  “I’m not looking forward to this, either,” Michael said, bobbing his head at the mass of Federated Worlds spacers neatly formed up behind the 387s.

  Reilly and Chief Harris both smiled.

  “As if we couldn’t tell,” Reilly said. “We’ll be right behind you, and the AI will make sure it all goes off all right. Don’t worry.”

  Michael nodded. Easy to say, but in a few minutes he’d be the one out in front of hundreds of thousands of Worlders. And thanks to World News Network’s epic four-hour holovid of the entire Corona operation screened in prime time and reportedly watched by nearly every FedWorlder able to stand, every one of them would know who he was and what he’d done. It was not a thought he relished; the idea that he might be somebody famous was completely at odds with his natural inclination to blend into the background. He’d never been one to seek the spotlight. The opposite, in fact. His mother always used to say that if you wanted to know where Michael was at any public occasion, look behind the back row. And now he would be at the head of the biggest public display the Fleet had put on in decades.

  “You’re right as usual, Cosmo. Okay, chief. Let’s do the final walk-around and then we’ll be set.”