Warfare wasted no time. Missiles held back in reserve throttled up to full power, streaking in to hit the two ships in their thinly armored flanks before they could turn away. Machuca and Fram spewed reaction mass in a desperate attempt to pull out of the attack, spitting lifepods in all directions, until they, too, vanished into the hellish hearts of exploding fusion plants.
The Hammer task group was finished.
“Command, Warfare. Missiles away. Target OHMP-344. Time to target 3 minutes 15. Stand by, command … rail-gun salvo launched from task group Hammer-2. Time to target 2 minutes 10.”
“Command, roger.” The Hammers had fired early; despite the extreme range, the rail-gun swarm was big and its geometry appeared good enough to force the dreadnoughts to turn to meet the Hammer attack-taking a rail-gun swarm in the flanks was never a good idea-and ride it out if they were to get one more rail-gun salvo away.
Michael cursed some more; the Hammers were fighting smart, and things were getting complicated. The Hammers were avoiding the perennial weakness that afflicted so many of their commanders-shooting first and thinking second-and it became obvious that the salvos from OHMP-344 and the ships of Hammer-2 were timed to arrive on target to the second. Thanks to Hammer-2’s arrival, the squadron was under attack from two different directions at once, something that the Fighting Instructions advised Fleet captains to avoid at all costs.
So here he was, about to be caught in exactly that position. The safest thing would be to jump the squadron clear, but that risked letting OHMP-344 off the hook. For a moment, Michael sat paralyzed by indecision before the time-to-impact counter galvanized him back into action. He emptied his lungs slowly to settle his nerves and made his decision. The Hammers were not going anywhere. He could always come back another time.
“Warfare, Command. End of operation. Adjust vectors for Comdur. Jump when ready.”
“Warfare, roger.”
The decision made, Michael waited for the squadron to adjust vectors for home. The Hammers were going to be pissed. The commander of Hammer-2 would have liked his chances of taking out at least a couple of the dreadnoughts. Well, he was not going to get the opportunity, and the more missiles he wasted on the doomed Tufayl, the better.
Satisfied that the squadron was safe to jump and with mass distribution models checked and rechecked, Warfare gave the order, and the dreadnoughts vanished into the safety of pinchspace, leaving the missiles from OHMP-344 and Hammer-2 to rip through the tangled knuckles of space-time left behind by Dreadnought Squadron One. Frustrated, the missiles attempted to turn to attack the Tufayl, but she was too far ahead. One by one, the missiles’ second-stage engines flamed out. Unable to acquire a target, the salvo self-destructed in a spectacularly wasteful display of pyrotechnics.
But the battle for OHMP-344 was far from over.
With only one ship to deal with, the next missile salvo enjoyed the benefit of a solid target datum; they turned into the attack. As they did, Tufayl’s antimissile defenses filled the fast-closing gap with a lethal mixture of missiles, lasers, and depleted-uranium rounds fired by hypervelocity chain guns. One after another, Hammer missiles died in fireballs of exploding warheads and failed microfusion plants, but enough survived the slaughter to press home the attack. Joined by a second rail-gun swarm from Hammer-2, a wave of missiles and slugs plunged into Tufayl; her bows vanished behind great roiling clouds of ionized ceramsteel armor when warheads punched deep, the doomed ship staggering under the repeated impacts, the few slugs to hit adding to the carnage.
With time to turn bows on to the rail-gun attack, Tufayl survived thanks to her reinforced armor, but she was left a bleeding, crippled wreck. Another missile and rail-gun attack would finish her off, but the Hammers were out of time. Shrugging off the damage the Hammer defenders had inflicted on her, Tufayl closed in on OHMP-344. The platform fought to keep her out. Frantic crews labored to get the next long-range missile salvo away while close-in defenses tried to deflect the oncoming ship. Tufayl’s hull flared white-hot as lasers probed for weaknesses in the armor, missile strikes punched gouts of yellow-red armor out into space, and chain-gun rounds speckled the bows with flashes of fierce white flame.
To no avail. With the ships of Hammer-2 unable to get another rail-gun salvo away in time, the Hammers broke and ran. All of a sudden, OHMP-344 spewed lifepods in every direction, swarms of strobes double-flashing orange pleas for help, fireflies in a desperate flight to get clear of the unfolding catastrophe.
With impressive precision, Tufayl smashed into OHMP-344, her battered bows driving directly into the platform’s spherical heart, explosive decompression of the platform’s atmosphere hurling sheets of plasteel into space, tumbling away inside an ice-crystal cloud filled with splintered plasglass, furniture, equipment, and those of OHMP-344’s crew too slow to get to the lifepods.
With her hull buried deep in the platform’s guts, Tufayl’s fusion plants blew, and the ship died. The explosion ripped OHMP-344 apart, sending the smashed remains of the platform out into space, its intricate framework of girders, some with ships undergoing repair still berthed on them, twisting and buckling into a blackened mess of warped plasteel that tumbled away to nowhere.
With Iron Duke safely in pinchspace and ignoring the mounting pain from his arm-the painkillers were fast wearing off-Michael made it to the captain’s cabin only to collapse into a chair, worn out by the aftereffects of combat but more by the certain knowledge that he had come within seconds of dying as Sedova fought to get Caesar’s Ghost back to Iron Duke and safety. He sat for a long time. Not that he had much choice. Even if he wanted to move, he could not; his legs refused to work, his arm hurt like hell, and he was beyond exhausted.
“Captain, sir.” It was Ferreira.
“Yes,” he croaked. “What?”
“I’m getting an alarm from your neuronics. Your vitals are crap, and it seems you have a broken arm. Why didn’t you say something? I’m on my way.”
Michael wondered if he should tell her to leave him alone but decided against it.
The cabin door banged open, and Ferreira burst in, closely followed by Bienefelt. The pair knelt beside him.
“For chrissakes, sir,” Bienefelt said; she gently removed his helmet. “What are you doing?”
Just having the world’s biggest spacer there made Michael feel better. “What? Can’t I even have a sit-down when I want one?” he said. “What the hell’s the point of being captain of this tub if I can’t do that? Come on, you two. Help me up. I need a shower.”
“Sick bay first, sir, if you don’t mind,” Ferreira said. “That arm needs fixing.”
Michael started to argue, but the determined look on Ferreira’s face told him that this was not the time. “Okay,” he said, resigned, “come on, get me out of this damn chair.”
Thursday, January 18, 2401, UD
FWSS
Iron Duke,
in orbit around Comdur Fleet Base
“So, Michael. What do you reckon?”
“I didn’t think it would happen.”
Vice Admiral Jaruzelska nodded. “Did wonder myself sometimes,” she said.
“Any chance of getting the additional dreadnought squadrons, Admiral?”
Jaruzelska shook her head. “I know we need them, but no, none at all. Three’s our lot. I had formal confirmation of that from Fleet only this morning. So, apart from the ships held back as operational reserves, what you see is all we get.”
Inside, Michael wanted to scream out his frustration. It made no sense. Fleet had heavy cruisers laid up in parking orbits around every one of the Federated Worlds, fully functioning warships except for one important thing: After the Battle of Comdur, there were no crews to take them back into combat. Leaving them there unused at a time when Fleet faced a resurgent Hammer was beyond dumb; sadly, there was not a thing he-or, more significantly, Vice Admiral Jaruzelska-could do about it.
Across the forward bulkhead of Iron Duke’s combat information center, the holo
vid flared while one after another the ships of Dreadnought Squadrons Two and Three dropped into Comdur normalspace, twenty converted heavy cruisers in all, followed after a short pause by Tufayl’s replacement, Reckless.
With mounting excitement, Michael watched the ships decelerate, the shuttles tasked to remove their transit crews already closing in. By any standard, the twenty-one converted R-Class heavy cruisers were an impressive sight.
Surely, he told himself, this was the beginning of the end. The dreadnoughts of the First Squadron had more than proved themselves against Hammer antimatter missiles, and in the freewheeling chaos of close-quarters space combat, that was the sort of fighting to be done if the Hammers were ever to be defeated. With three full squadrons of dreadnoughts, the slow, grinding business of destroying the Hammer space fleet could get under way. Once that was done, invasion of the Hammer Worlds could follow. For a brief moment, Michael allowed himself the luxury of imagining what life might be like without the unending threat of yet more death and destruction at the hands of the Hammers, a threat hanging over humanspace for more than a century. He stifled the idea. There was a long way to go; there was a lot more killing to be done before that happy day arrived.
“Okay, Michael,” Jaruzelska said. “I’ve seen enough. Let my shuttle know I’m on my way.”
“Stand by … It’s ready when you are, sir.”
“Fine. I’ll see you at the squadron commanders’ conference tomorrow.”
“Looking forward to it, Admiral. It’ll be good to get all the squadrons operational.”
“It will, though I don’t think the Hammers will be quite so happy.”
“I hope not,” Michael said with a feral grin. “I plan to make them extremely unhappy.”
“I bet. Though I should remind you that we have a lot of work to be done before this lot”-Jaruzelska waved a hand at the holovid-“are up to the standard of the First.”
“Just a matter of time, sir,” Michael said.
“It is. I know we’ve set a target of three months, but you understand my concerns. We might need anything up to six, but we’ll see. Before I go,” she said when they had left the combat information center, “I’ve got a couple of admin matters for you. First, how’s that arm?”
Michael waved his left arm in the air. “Good, sir. It’ll be a hundred percent within a week.”
“Pleased to hear it. Another wound stripe, I suppose?”
“Absolutely, sir. You know me. Too much gold is not enough.”
Shaking her head, Jaruzelska laughed. “Have you heard anything from the Bachou police?”
“Yes, sir. We received formal notification this morning that the federal prosecutor’s office has decided not to proceed against me, so that’s that. Anna’s off the hook, too. The full decision has been posted on the net if you’re interested in the legal gymnastics.”
Jaruzelska snorted in derision. “Oh, no, not me. I hate that stuff.”
“Bit of a close thing, though,” Michael said. “The bad guys might have been a bit more obvious that it was me they came for before I actually started firing, so there was an argument that the courts should be allowed to decide whether the first killing was justified or not. But get this, sir. If I’d waited until they started shooting, I would have had no case to answer at all.”
Jaruzelska snorted again. “Lawyers! Anyway, I’m glad you’re off the hook. You’ve got better things to do than waste your time defending yourself against a charge of homicide. Second, how is Anna?”
“Fine, sir. She sounded well in her last vidmail.”
“Good. I think Damishqui missed her.”
Michael laughed. “I bet they did, sir,” he said, “though I’d be a lot …” His voice trailed away.
Jaruzelska turned to look Michael full in the face. “Don’t even think it, Michael. You’ll come through this, and so will Damishqui, trust me.”
“Yes, sir.”
Michael followed Jaruzelska into the drop tube that would take them to Iron Duke’s personnel air lock. He appreciated her confidence, but not even admirals as competent and experienced as Jaruzelska could be so sure that things would turn out okay. The Hammers had not survived by being pushovers, and Damishqui-along with every spacer and marine onboard-was as much at risk as any other ship in the Fleet.
Jaruzelska watched the Iron Duke dwindle into nothing against the stars. The arrival of the dreadnoughts brought the force up to its authorized strength; that was the good news. The bad news was that there would be no more. Once the three dreadnoughts in reserve had entered service, she would have no more ships to replace combat losses. Even convincing Fleet to release the Reckless had taken far more of her dwindling stock of political capital than she cared to think about.
She would need all the capital she had left. The fight inside Fleet over dreadnoughts was getting dirty. The overwhelming majority of the Fleet agreed with Rear Admiral Perkins’s view that dreadnoughts were a disaster waiting to happen. If that was not bad enough, more details of the fight over the dreadnoughts had leaked through Fleet’s normally watertight security; the trashpress was beginning to sniff around, looking for an angle that would allow them to make the most of the disagreement without looking unpatriotic.
She let out a long sigh: part frustration, part fatigue, part anger. The dreadnought argument long ago had crossed the line that separated rational argument from emotional slanging match-encouraged, she had no doubt, by Rear Admiral Perkins’s diligent if so far covert efforts to undermine her and her ships-and that meant things were going to get a lot worse.
A depressing assessment of what that would mean for her workload was interrupted by a priority com. Closing her eyes, she read the message, then read it again to be sure.
Elation pushed depression aside. Yes, she thought, finally. After months of effort and billions of FedMarks, the Hammer antimatter manufacturing plant had been located. “Now comes the endgame,” she whispered, her elation turning to anticipation. With the source of their strategic advantage gone-she had no doubts, none at all, that her dreadnoughts could bludgeon their way in close enough to destroy the plant-the Hammers were finished.
It would only be a matter of time.
She commed her chief of staff. The commander in chief had scheduled the preliminary planning conference for the next morning; she and her staff had a lot of work to get through to be ready.
Friday, January 19, 2401, UD
FWSS
Reckless,
in orbit around Comdur Fleet Base
“Attention on deck. FWSS Retrieve, FWSS Recognizance.”
Immaculate in dress blacks, Reckless’s side party snapped to attention and the time-honored ritual of piping the side played out under the watchful eye of the coxswain: Bosun’s calls squealed, hands snapped to foreheads in salute, the two new captains in command saluting in turn when they crossed the bow to board Reckless. Michael returned their salute. When the carry-on was piped, he stepped forward, arm extended.
“Captains. Welcome to Reckless and welcome to the Dreadnought Force.”
“It’s good to be here, sir,” Kelli Rao said, shaking Michael’s hand. “I think.”
Michael smiled. “I’m sure it’s a bit overwhelming, being a junior lieutenant in command of a heavy cruiser like Retrieve. I felt the same in Adamant. But you’ll get used to it. Welcome,” he said to Nathan Machar. “How’s Recognizance?”
“I think you just said it, sir. Overwhelming. She’s a big ship.”
“She sure is. If you’d follow me. Thank you, Chief Bienefelt, impeccable as always.”
“My pleasure, sir,” Bienefelt replied, smiling.
Michael led the way along empty passageways. The emptiness of the place disturbed him. There was a time when Reckless had echoed to the sounds of hundreds of spacers and marines, their noise transforming the ship into a living thing: voices, laughter, activity, boots on decks, tools on metal, doors thudding shut, the soft hiss of air flowing through high-pressure lines, the wh
ine of hydraulics opening and closing armored hatches. Their absence produced a quiet that was palpable, a quiet much more than the absence of noise, a powerful reminder of the changes inflicted on dreadnoughts; worse, it drained too much of the life from Reckless itself, leaving the ship an uncomfortable shadow of the heavy cruiser it once had been.
Shrugging aside his unease, Michael ushered the new arrivals into his cabin. Settled into a comfortable armchair, he studied his two new captains with a critical eye while the drinkbot served coffee. One thing was shockingly evident: how young both Rao and Machar were. Michael knew he was hardly a candidate for senior citizen of the year, but, those two were babies. Rao reminded him a bit of Anna: the same honey skin, a fall of fine black hair cut into a fashionable bob to frame a face dominated by pink-dusted cheeks and a firm, full nose. The similarities stopped there; Rao was much taller, heavily built, and with eyes so dark that they were almost black. Machar’s bloodlines were pure African; he had the blue-black skin, height, rangy frame, whipcord muscles, and tightly-curled hair of his Nuer ancestors, migrants in the second great wave of the diaspora from Old Earth. Like most Feds, Machar was deeply proud of his links to Old Earth, links that had survived separation measured not in days and meters but in centuries and trillions of kilometers. The four small scars on his forehead bore testament to his distant roots in drought-stricken, violence-wracked Sudan.
Michael had studied their service records in detail.
Rao had seen combat in the heavy scout Aldebaran, Machar in the light escort Sarissa. They were the cream of the young officers coming out of Space Fleet College: natural leaders, technically sound, quick-thinking, and steady under pressure. Both were instinctive tacticians, their fitness for their new roles confirmed by weeks of cruelly intensive assessment under the critical eyes of Jaruzelska and her staff.
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