The battle at the Moons of Hell

engineering and warfare officers into two specialized streams. The merits of that decision still were hotly argued, a never-ending debate and one that Michael was sure went on in every mess in the Fleet most nights of the week.

Kapoor just couldn’t resist. “I remember one time on the old Zube-”

“Don’t you mean the Zuben-el-Genubi?” Reilly interrupted indignantly. “You bloody warfare types can’t even get the names of your ships right.”

The rest of the officers broke out laughing. Michael just smiled. Clearly, teasing Reilly by shortening ship names was one of those long-running gags that made small ship life bearable. Michael reckoned that Reilly played up to the rest of them by putting on the personality of a cantankerous old space dog.

“Enough of this,” Reilly said, waving the debate to a halt as he climbed to his feet. “Time for a walk-around. Can’t let the masses think management isn’t paying attention.” Michael was beginning to suspect that Cosmo Reilly was only half joking; of all the officers onboard, he was the most old-fashioned and almost always had an authoritarian tone to his voice. Be interesting to see what the troops think of him, Michael mused as Reilly left the mess.

Kapoor’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Michael, you’re far too quiet. Get your fat ass over here and tell us what you think so far. But before you do, refill these glasses.”

As instructed, Michael refilled the two port glasses at the little bar before sitting next to the fireplace, which, if it had been real, would have fried the lot of them long before.

Soon he was deeply involved in a debate about the merits or otherwise of the Honorable Valerie Burkhardt, the Fed Worlds’ current moderator, whether she and the New Liberals had any chance of being reelected to the government in the forthcoming elections, and whether Space Fleet would be better off with a new federal minister of defense given the view commonly held in the Fleet that the present incumbent was a party hack promoted not because she had any talent for the job but because she had a hold over Valerie Burkhardt. Soon the debate sucked in Armitage and Hosani, and by the time Reilly returned from his rounds, the wardroom was well into an appraisal of how the Space Fleet had had to put up with an endless succession of ambitious but not necessarily capable ministers and so on and so on.

Probably, Michael thought as he sat back to let the debate rage around him, if you did a survey, four or five topics would account for 80 percent of all conversation in officers’ messes across the Fleet, and this was surely one of them.

Finally, he’d had enough. “If you’ll excuse me, people, I am going to make this an early night. Big day tomorrow.” He rose to his feet.

“Can’t persuade you to step ashore to sample the delights of the Fleet O club? I think everyone else is up for it.” Hosani’s suggestion was tempting in the extreme, but Michael shook his head.

“Not this time, sir.”

“Okay. Get your beauty sleep. God knows you need it.”

“Night all, see you in the morning.” With that, Michael turned and left. He really must vidmail his parents and reply to Anna’s last comm before they left.

As the wardroom door hissed shut behind Michael, the group was quiet for a moment.

“What do you think of our latest recruit, Jacqui?” Holdorf looked at the XO, his face quizzical.

“Too soon to say. But he looks like he’ll be okay. He did well enough today for his first time out, and he took the obligatory dressing down without complaint. Remember McPherson’s first cargo op?” Armitage laughed as she recalled the three-ring circus that Michael’s predecessor had managed to create. “And he turned out okay.”

“What do you think, Maria?” Armitage asked.

“Like you said, not too bad for the first day. And he’s certainly not hard on the eyes. Pity he’s in the chain of command,” Hosani said, aiming a playful wink at Armitage, who winced. An improper relationship in the chain of command? Now, that was the best definition of an XO’s nightmare Armitage could think of.

Kapoor came to his feet. “Look, you lot! Enough. Time is getting on, and the O club calls. Are we on or not?” His insistent voice made everyone grin.

“I can’t see any reason to hurry, can you? Time for a few more drinks?” Holdorf teased, “Unless of course there is a certain someone that John feels the need to get close to.”

“Bastard. You know there is. So can we go?” Kapoor said, standing up. “Because if not, I’m off. Night, Cosmo. Keep her safe.”

Tuesday, September 1, 2398, UD

DLS-387 Berthed on Space Battle Station 20, in Orbit around Anjaxx

“All stations, this is command. Stand by to drop in fifteen minutes.”

The captain’s voice jerked Michael back to reality. He and his team, now morphed from cargo handlers into 387’s emergency extravehicular activity team, were assembled in the surveillance drone hangar, fully suited up with uniforms chromaflaged to Day-Glo orange and personal maneuvering units locked into position on their backs. The wait was beginning to tell on the team. The full EVA outfit added more than 30 kilos to each spacer’s body mass. The only thing to do was to hunch forward and let the suit’s inherent stiffness take some of the weight. We must look like a bunch of hunchbacked trolls, Michael thought, and big lumpy orange ones at that.

The team had been split into three groups. Two of Michael’s team crew members stood by the forward personnel air lock, two waited aft, and the rest-four in all, including Michael, personal call sign Alfa-waited inside the big surveillance drone deployment air lock. Arranged around each group were emergency repair packs and laser cutting equipment. As he stood there, Michael wondered when an EVA team had last been needed in earnest.

He checked his neuronics. Ten minutes to go. “EVA team, this is Alfa. Close up suits, report when nitrogen- free,” he commed, to be rewarded by the solid clunks of seven armored plasglass faceplates shutting. His followed quickly as the suit integrity check reports came in from the team.

“Command, this is Alfa. EVA team suit integrity checks complete. Suits nominal.”

Helped by an autojected nitrogen-purge chemical cocktail that Michael didn’t like to think about and by the suit’s 100 percent oxygen atmosphere, the suit AI reported his body nitrogen-free less than a minute later. They were ready to decompress from 387’s ambient pressure down to a suit pressure of 0.2 atmospheres if required to deploy, something Michael fervently hoped would not be necessary. The minutes dragged past until Michael could have sworn that he now carried not 30 kilos on his back but 300.

“All stations, this is command. 387 is go for launch. May God watch over us this day.” And with that, there was a gentle push as SBS-20’s hydraulic locking arms pushed 387’s fully loaded mass away from the space battle station and down its designated departure pipe.

The seconds passed, and Michael began to relax. He had a busy morning ahead of him before standing his first watch in the combat information center at 12:30. By that time they should be clearing the clutter in orbit around Anjaxx and beginning to align 387 for its high-g burn toward its pinchspace jump point.

Two hours or so later and a good ten minutes early for his 12:30 watch, Michael stood at the back of combat information center, ready to understudy Hosani as officer in command.

A bit under 10 meters square, the compartment had as its focus the command chair, which was in the middle of the room in front of a massive high-definition holovid screen 3 meters wide and 2 high that carried the full command plot. Its job was to present the captain and the two warfare officers seated beside him with a complete picture of what was going on. Two command plot operators sat in front of the captain, but below his line of sight so that he had an uninterrupted view of all the bulkhead-mounted screens around him.

Flanking the command plot were two smaller screens, the local or tactical plot to the left and the threat plot-known very unofficially as the “oh shit” plot-to the right. Smaller holovid screens arranged above workstations completed the combat information center’s displays.

Moving aft, the workstations on the starboard side managed the 387’s hugely comprehensive sensor suite: search and fire control radars, high-definition targeting holocams, laser trackers, grav