Michael and the rest of the command team looked on in horror while Lenski proved what a great captain she was. Ignoring damage control’s reports of major hull penetration around the upper cargo air lock and serious casualties, she did what Eridani had been ordered to do: keep Jennix distracted. Eridani did exactly that, getting a full missile salvo away as the four heavy escorts dropped to join the party. Holding out for as long as she could, Lenski smashed the red Emergency Jump button barely seconds before a salvo of Jennix’s Eaglehawk missiles arrived to rip her apart.
Five minutes later, the heavy escorts jumped back into pinchspace. They, too, had done what they had come to do. They jumped, leaving the Jennix a twisted, bleeding wreck tumbling slowly end over end, spitting orange-strobed lifepods in all directions. The luckless Jennix was headed for the scrap yard, the shortest commission in Hammer Space Fleet history, Michael had suggested at the postmission debriefing with a grim, humorless laugh.
In the end, Eridani got off pretty lightly, much better than she deserved in fact. Nobody killed, thank God, but eight spacers went straight into regen tanks, with fifteen more walking wounded, one of whom needless to say was Petty Officer Bienefelt, though she was only scratched.
Michael shook his head. It had not been Eridani’s finest hour, and even Lenski’s heartfelt apology for not taking him and his sensor team more seriously could not obscure the fact that one bad call had put Eridani seconds away from total destruction. There was not a heavy scout built that could survive a sustained short-range encounter with a Hammer heavy cruiser. The fact that Jennix’s first rail-gun salvo had failed to cripple Eridani’s pinchspace jump capability was pure undeserved luck, as was Jennix’s delay in getting her first missile salvo away; that delay had been long enough to allow Eridani to launch her own missiles and jump clear. Even then the danger had not been over. With her mass distribution model distorted by the ceramsteel armor blasted off by the Jennix’s rail-gun attack and only enough time for engineering to do a first cut recalculation, it had been touch and go whether the Eridani could ever drop safely back into normalspace. Waiting for the drop had been one of the worst and longest moments of Michael’s life, a life, as he had pointed out to Bienefelt, that had seen more than its fair share of bad moments.
Still, they had made it in the end, and the news was not all bad. The damage to Eridani had been beyond the Koh’s ability to fix, and that meant they would score time off while Comdur’s yards repaired the upper cargo air lock.
Even as he relived Eridani’s run-in with the Jennix, Michael was keeping a close eye on Eridani’s slow progress through Comdur’s defenses. To his and no doubt Lenski’s relief, they were safely through the minefields. They were now passing the massive bulk of one of the nine battle stations that made up Comdur’s second line of defense, the space beyond them filled with jump disrupters that would force any attacker to drop well outside the minefields and fight its way in. Michael whistled softly at the thought. In three wars against the Hammer, there had not been a single successful attack against Comdur. God knew, the Hammer had tried. At one point in the Second Hammer War, they had thrown every ship they could scrape together into an attack that had cost them so dearly that they had never tried again.
“Captain, sir, officer in command.”
“Yeah, go ahead, Michael.”
“We’ll be clear of the jump disrupters shortly. Intend initiating final deceleration burn as soon as we do.”
“Good. Have we heard from Comdur when we’ll be moving into the yard?”
“No, sir, not yet. I’ll chase them up.”
“Do that. I would rather go straight in than hang around in orbit if that’s possible.”
“Leave it with me, sir.”
When Michael had Eridani’s final low-g deceleration burn adjusted to his satisfaction, he contacted control. Much to his surprise, they came straight back with the answer Lenski wanted to hear. There was a berth waiting for them; they were to go straight in.
Three hours later, Eridani, its mass firmly held by Comdur’s hydraulic docking system, was being lowered slowly down the shaft that led to the repair yards kilometers below Comdur’s desolate, airless, gray-black surface.
Monday, April 10, 2400, UD
FWSS Eridani, berth Bravo-10, Comdur Fleet Base Repair Facility
The first few hours after they berthed had been frantic.
Michael had kept well clear. Despite the shock loading Eridani’s precious sensors had endured when the Hammer rail-gun slugs had smashed home, they were all fully operational. So, he decided, he would tidy up a few loose ends, and unless he was grabbed for some shitty little job or other—he was only a junior lieutenant, after all—he would go ashore to check up on Bienefelt’s progress. Needless to say, what she had assured all and sundry was only a minor scratch turned out to be a deep laceration to her left arm. When Eridani’s exasperated medic had found out, he had sent her straight to the base hospital on the grounds that the medics there were bigger and uglier than he was and might have more luck getting Bienefelt to cooperate.
Pleased to discover that Bienefelt had actually allowed the medics to fix her injured arm with a minimum of coercion and that she would be back on board later that day, Michael left the base hospital. His next stop was the venerable Arcturus, one of only four Regulus class heavy cruisers still operational, berthed across from the Eridani in berth Charlie-6.
After being handled roughly by a pair of Hammer heavy cruisers during an abortive attempt to take out one of Commitment’s space battle stations, the Arcturus was not going anywhere soon, and that meant he would be able to catch up with Charles Mbeki. He had not seen Charles since graduation day, and it would be good to chat with him.
Michael could not get over how much the man in front of him had changed.
The Charles Mbeki he remembered from Space Fleet College had been an easygoing man, always cheerful, never taking life too seriously. This was not that man. Mbeki’s face, normally a rich mahogany, had a waxy gray sheen to it, and he had not smiled once since they had sat down in a quiet corner of Arcturus’s wardroom.
Michael listened in tight-lipped silence as Mbeki unloaded. Things had been bad for the ship right from the word go, with Arcturus living up to her reputation as an unlucky ship. It all sounded horribly familiar to Michael as Mbeki told of a ship cursed with a weak captain, a divided wardroom, an unhappy ship’s company, and unreliable systems that were the legacy of eighteen long years of hard service, systems that had failed when Arcturus had needed them most.
Finally he was finished. “So there you have it, Michael.” He sat back and rubbed a tired face with hands the size of dinner plates. “We were fucked. Completely. The Hammers hit us on the port quarter. Two Eaglehawks, one after the other. Weaps Power Echo. Pow!” He shook his head in despair. “That was that. I suppose we were lucky to get away at all. If the Seiche and Refulgent had not been there to cover our ass, the Hammers would have finished us off.”
Mbeki looked away for a moment, his eyes focused on something a long way away. He looked back at Michael. “Ninety-seven dead, Michael. Ninety-seven! Jesus! I was in the damn power control room only two minutes earlier. None of them made it. Not one. I didn’t even get scratched. I knew them all. Every single one.”
Michael struggled to work out what to say. What could he say?
“Charles?”
“Yeah?”
“Charles, my friend. Listen to me—”
Michael was cut off by the insistent wail of Arcturus’s klaxon. For a second, he and Mbeki looked at each other, their confusion total. The Arcturus was berthed, for God’s sake, so why would the ship go to general quarters?
“What the hell?” Michael blurted, looking around as he came to his feet.
“Don’t ask me,” Mbeki said helplessly, a tremor in his voice.
Then the penny dropped. “Shit!” Michael said. “Has to be a Hammer attack on Comdur; has to be. I’m off. See you.”
Michael ran hard
for the gangway, dodging and weaving through the Arcturus’s crew as they rushed to their stations. He barely made it off the ship before Arcturus’s massive air lock doors thudded shut behind him. Pausing only to grab a skinsuit from an emergency locker, he pounded down the rock-cut passageway until, after rounding a corner, he finally made it to Eridani.
Damn, damn, damn, he told himself. He was too late. The Eridani was closed up tighter than a duck’s ass, and she would stay that way until the immediate drama was over.
He commed Eridani.
Eridani’s exec took the comm. “Wait one, Michael,” a harried Malik Aasha said brusquely.
Michael did as he was told, trying without any luck to find out what the hell was going on. His security clearance was not good enough to get him into Comdur’s BattleNet, so in the end all he could do was stand there and wait. Finally, Aasha’s avatar reappeared in his neuronics. The exec did not waste any time. “Michael! Hammer attack is all we know. Go to the system command center. They may be able to use you. There’s nothing we need you for on board. We’re not going anywhere. Come back when it’s all over.”
With that, Aasha was gone. Michael wasted no time, spinning on his heel and setting off at a sprint for the nearest drop tube.
Five minutes later, he skidded to a halt at the marine security post controlling access to Comdur’s huge system command center. His heart sank. Behind outer plasglass security doors, the center’s plasteel blast doors were closed.
“Shit,” he cursed aloud. The doors would stay shut until the attack was over. He did not bother asking the marine security detail if he could get in. He would have to be the president herself to have any chance.
Oh, well, he thought, at least he had tried. Disconsolately, he turned away, only to run right into a small but rather chunky commander, the man barreling around the corner right into him, dropping them both to the ground.
“Shit! Oh, sorry, sir,” Michael apologized as the two picked themselves up.
“No harm done, son,” the man replied. “We locked out?”
“Afraid so, sir.” Michael waved at the doors. “Looks like it’ll stay that way. I haven’t asked the marines, but—”The commander put his hand up. “No, don’t waste your time. If the command center’s buttoned up, then I can’t get in, so you definitely won’t.” He looked at Michael for a moment, frowning. Then light dawned. “Aha,” he announced, obviously pleased with himself. “I know you. You’re the famous Helfort, aren’t you?”
Michael shrugged his shoulders. “Sir.”
The man bobbed up and down in delight. “Excellent, excellent. Good to meet you.” He took Michael’s hand and shook it vigorously.
Michael sighed to himself. Dollars to doughnuts, he knew what was coming next. He was right.
“Knew your parents. Say hello from me when you see them next. John Baker. They’ll remember.”
“Will do, sir,” he replied resignedly. Was there anyone above the rank of lieutenant commander who did not know his parents?
Baker frowned. “Now, we need to know what’s going on out there.” He pursed his lips and whistled softy. “Ummm . . . let me see. Yes, that should do it. Good, I’m patched in.”
Michael’s pleading look did not go unnoticed. Baker held up a hand. “Yes, hang on. Okay, right. I’ve authorized you to access BattleNet as well.”
Michael patched in his neuronics. What he saw made his heart stand still. Coming in from galactic north was the largest force of ships he had ever seen. The Hammer must have scraped the bottom of the barrel to get so many hulls into space at the same time. Suddenly it all made sense; this was why the Eridani had seen so few ships in Hammer nearspace.
Hundreds of ships or not, it still did not make sense. Comdur’s defenses, backed up by the Fleet units now getting under way, would chop the attackers to pieces. It did not matter how many Hammers there were. It was only a matter of time.
He looked again. There was another odd thing. When the Hammer ships had dropped—they had dropped a long way out—the Hammers had launched a missile salvo, but it had been small. The tightly grouped formation undoubtedly was the usual deceptive mix of Eaglehawks bundled with active decoys and jammers, preceded by what looked like a poor copy of the Fed’s Krachov shroud. Their version of the Krachov might not be up to Fed standards, but the thick mass of tiny disks was doing a good enough job of deflecting the intense barrage of laser fire being thrown at the missile salvo by Comdur’s defensive platforms, encasing the salvo in what looked like a swarm of brilliantly lit scintillating diamonds. Michael looked across at Baker questioningly.
Baker shrugged his shoulders. “Strange. Never seen anything like this before,” he muttered, obviously puzzled. “This is something new. Wonder what the rabble are up to now.”
They got the answer an instant later. The missiles exploded as one, a single fleeting blue-white flash that was so fast, so transient, that Michael was not even sure he had seen it. The missiles were gone, leaving only thin spheres of ionized gas to mark their passing. Then came the awful sound of radiation alarms, their racket bouncing off the walls of the rock-cut passageway.
Baker went white. “Oh, sweet Jesus. Oh, no. It can’t be,” he whispered, his voice cracking. Michael stared. The man was beginning to panic. Why? he thought desperately. What was going on?
Then the space mines standing in the way of the Hammers blew, radiation-overloaded fission warheads filling the entire sector with thousands of brilliant blue-white balls of flame shot through with scarlet-red threads. An instant later, they too vanished, leaving only tenuous balls of ionized gas expanding into nothingness.
“Oh, Jesus,” Baker croaked to himself as Michael strained to hear what he was saying. “Intense gamma radiation flux. Has to be. Those damn things are supposed to be fail-safe, for God’s sake.”
Baker’s obvious fear was infectious, and Michael felt an ice-cold dread beginning to roll over him. “Sir! What is it? Tell me!”
Baker’s hand went up. “One sec. I need to isolate a single warhead detonation from the datastream so I can see the weapon-specific radiation profile, so hang on . . . Oh, Holy Mother. Oh, my God. It is.” Baker’s voice trembled with shock. “It bloody well is.”
“Is what, sir?” Michael asked desperately.
“Antimatter. Shit. Intense gamma radiation, double spike profile. Textbook example. First spike at 84 attoseconds, second one around 6 nanoseconds, but smaller. All gamma radiation. Oh, God help us all. We are screwed. Those clever sons of bitches. Goddamn it, who would have thought?” Baker shook his head, his voice an uncomfortable blend of grudging admiration and shocked disbelief.
“Sir. I don’t understand,” Michael said urgently, struggling to understand what Baker was talking about.
“Antimatter warheads. They’ve worked out how to weaponize antimatter. We’ve always thought it was too difficult.”
“Oh, shit!” Michael was stunned, the fear of something he did not fully understand pulling at him. Physics had never been one of his strong suits, but he knew enough about antimatter to know that even a tiny amount coming into contact with normal matter would release a prodigious amount of energy. With a sinking heart, he turned his attention back to BattleNet.
Out in Comdur nearspace, the tactical situation went from bad to catastrophic.
A second Hammer missile salvo followed the first. It was small, too, a tightly packed cluster of Eaglehawk missiles, decoys, and jammers. Ten thousand kilometers short of the nearest space battle station, the only thing left standing between the oncoming Hammers and Comdur, the salvo exploded in a single intense flash. Then, to Michael’s horror, the battle station’s armor turned white-hot and started to boil off, writhing jets of ceramsteel plasma lancing out into space, the battle station itself starting an almost imperceptibly slow roll out of station. Then the third salvo was on its way in, but this time the salvo was huge. The missile swarm, thousands and thousands strong, drove through the gap blown in Comdur’s outer defenses, past th
e dying battle station, and toward the Fed ships coming out to meet the oncoming Hammer attack.
Michael watched hypnotized by the awful sight. He could barely breathe. Something terrible was about to happen.
The missiles closed in on the Fed ships. One by one, missiles began to die under a hail of defensive fire. Missiles and lasers weeded out the decoys to hack missiles into shattered pieces of tumbling wreckage.
Baker whistled in disbelief as he watched. “How the hell are they doing that?” he muttered.
“What?” Michael asked.
“Maintaining warhead integrity. How do they stop the warheads from exploding even though the missiles have been shredded around them? They should fail, for God’s sake. Shit,” he added despairingly. “We have got a lot to learn, that’s bloody obvious.”
Not all the missiles died. Closing in past 10,000 kilometers, the survivors erupted in a single tightly coordinated flash that seemed to vanish even before it appeared. The Fed ships accelerating out hard to meet the Hammer attack began to die as the double pulse of gamma radiation turned their armor first white-hot and then into a seething mass of boiling ceramsteel spewing out and back to envelop the ships in death shrouds of white plasma. Deep inside the ships, spacers followed their ships into death as the wall of gamma radiation punched impulse shock waves through the armor and into the inner titanium hulls, vicious shards of metal spalling off to cut spacers into bloody pulp. Those spared the slashing of razor-sharp metal started to die a slow death from radiation poisoning as their ships’ grossly overloaded quantum traps collapsed, gamma radiation sleeting through unprotected bodies.
Then the Hammers jumped.
The Battle of the Hammer Worlds Page 29
