The battle at the Moons of Hell

Ten minutes later, Ribot sat alone in his cabin.

The message had finally come through, with the glacially slow data rate of the pinchcomms message broadcast transmission doing nothing for his nerves. The message was short and to the point: 387’s mission had been aborted, and they were now on their way into Hammer space. Something had gone seriously wrong somewhere, and he had a nasty feeling that 387 was about to get very close to that something, whatever it was.

Taking time only to tell Mother to acknowledge safe receipt of the message from CINCFEDWORLDSFLT, Ribot commed Holdorf.

“Leon. Captain.”

The navigator’s avatar popped up in a flash.

“Leon. I want a new nav plan for Revelation-II, and I want it yesterday. I’ve commed you the system identifier.”

“Revelation-II?” Leon’s voice was heavy with disbelief. “But that’s in Ham-”

Ribot cut him off. “I know it’s in Hammer space, and no, I don’t know why yet. I have to speak to Fleet.”

Holdorf’s avatar hung there, mouth half-open.

“Leon, for fuck’s sake, stop standing there like a pregnant goldfish! Get on with it,” Ribot snapped impatiently. “You and Mother get started and get back to me when you’ve got an 80 percent plan good enough to initiate the burn for the vector change. We’ll fine-tune the plan once I have a better idea from Fleet what they want to achieve. Now go. I need to speak to Fleet.”

“Sir.” With his normally taciturn face working overtime to express a mixture of doubt, anxiety, and fear- Hammer space was absolutely to be avoided at all costs, and the prospect of jumping little 387 direct to Revelation-II was enough to make the bravest person think twice-Holdorf’s avatar disappeared.

Ribot commed Mother. “Mother, set up a priority pinchcomm vidlink to Fleet and let me know when you are through to the duty operations officer. I’ll take it in the pinchcomms shack. Oh, and warn Cosmo that I’ll be using as much ship’s power as I need to keep the data rate up. I don’t want him finding out only when the lights go out.”

“Roger, command.”

As Ribot got to his feet to make his way to the pinchcomms shack, Holdorf commed him back.

“Yes, Leon?”

“Sir, I have the first cut of the nav plan, and we are realigning the ship, ready to commence the burn. The burn’s going to be a right bastard, skipper.”

Ribot wasn’t surprised. Warships were never intended to do hard left turns at 150,000 kph.

“Okay, do it.”

“Sir.”

A good twenty minutes later, the protracted pinchcomms conference with Fleet operations finally wound up, and Ribot sat back. He couldn’t put off the evil moment any longer. He commed Michael. After the briefest pause, Michael’s avatar popped up, the excitement of the urgent changes to 387’s plans plain to see. At least one of the crew relished the thought of a punch-up with the Hammers, Ribot thought.

“Michael, pinchcomms shack now, please.”

You poor bastard, Ribot thought as Michael, face flushed with the excitement of it all, appeared in the doorway. He’d be seeing it all as some sort of huge adventure. “Come in, Michael. Shut the door and sit down.” Puzzled, Michael did as he was told, wondering what the hell all of this had to do with him. Ribot took a deep breath before he spoke. “Michael, I have some bad news. You, like everyone else onboard, are wondering what the hell is going on. Well, it appears that the Hammers are going to hijack the Mumtaz, and Fleet has confirmed that your mother and sister are onboard. Michael, I’m so sorry.”

The blood drained from Michael’s face, his skin turning a dirty shade of gray, his mouth working to say words that wouldn’t come.

Finally, but only with a huge effort, Michael forced himself to speak. “Are they okay? Have they been hurt? Are they coming back? Why-”

Ribot interrupted what threatened to become a flood of words. “Michael, we have one unconfirmed report that the hijacking is going to take place when Mumtaz drops out at the Brooks Reef around midday on the eleventh. But as yet Fleet has no independent verification, none at all. That’s why our mission has been scrubbed and why we have been diverted to Hammer space. We need to establish what really has happened.

“Michael, we’ve got a lot to do, so I need to cut this short, but I wanted you to know first. It’ll be difficult for you, but I need you to be at your best. And believe me, I think Fleet means it when they tell me that nothing-and I mean nothing-is going to stop us from getting every soul back. And be thankful that however bad the Hammers are, they do tend to treat women civilians well. So Michael, can you do what I need you to do?”

The anguish in Michael’s eyes was replaced by a steady cold-burning anger. “Sir. Of course. Does my father know?”

“No. Fleet’s keeping this very tight in case it’s just the Hammer trying to make trouble. Let’s hope that’s all it is. Now, get your team mustered and get Petty Officer Strezlecki checking and double-checking every one of those birds of yours. I want them all 100 percent. We are going to need them. When you’ve got them started, you can join the think tank in the combat information center.”

“Sir.”

Ribot finished summarizing the detailed CINCFEDWORLDSFLT briefing he’d received and sat back.

Michael sat unmoving, still white-faced with shock, his mind churning as he struggled not to think about what might be happening to Mom and Sam. Think, Michael, think, he scolded himself. The best thing he could do right now was help 387’s command team work out a plan that would get things started.

It was a somber, grim-faced group that sat around the combat information center conference table digesting the full import of what they’d just been told, struggling to answer the challenges Ribot had just put to them. They knew what had to be done. Now the question was how, and the profound silence around the conference table more than demonstrated that those answers would not come easily.

With a huge effort, Michael pushed family to the back and duty to the front. Half closing his eyes, he turned his mind inward, comming his neuronics to bring up the standard Fleet mission planning template. Shit, he thought as he took a good hard look at what 387, the only Fleet unit within hundreds of millions of light-years, was being asked to do.

The mission was clear enough, its objectives spelled out in brutally simple and unemotional language by Ribot.

One, make a covert entry into the Revelation Star System.

Two, deploy surveillance assets around the second planet, Revelation-II, or Hell, as the Hammers called it.

Three, confirm whether the Mumtaz had in fact dropped into the Revelation-II/Hell System to off-load Mumtaz’s crew.

Four, once Mumtaz’s arrival was confirmed, recover surveillance assets, make a covert departure, and jump to the Judgment System for a fly-by of the planet Eternity to see just what the hell the Hammers were up to.

Five, leave Eternity and jump out of Hammer normalspace.

Oh, Michael had almost forgotten. There was a six, a very important six: Under no circumstances get caught.

He breathed out unevenly, his body still hyped by shock and stress. The mission objectives were easy to list. They sounded straightforward, but Michael had done enough combat sims to know that space warfare was never that simple, and the Hammers could never be underestimated.

The easiest part of the new mission-the initial vector change burn, all thirteen rattling, banging, and shaking minutes of it-had been accomplished. 387, now many tons of driver mass lighter than when she had set off from SBS-20, was aligned for the jump to the Revelation System, a jump Ribot had said must be the best and most accurate 387 had ever made.

Michael already had offered up three silent prayers. The first was to thank the Good Lord that of all the many