The battle at the Moons of Hell

Fleet warships, 387 was the one with the Mod 45 navigation AI. The second was that the Mod 45 would drop 387 into the Revelation System as precisely as its designers claimed it would. The third was that they’d get away with it. It had been a long time since a Fed warship had swanned through Hammer space as brazenly as 387 was going to.

But that left them with the first problem they had to solve. The huge amount of driver mass used up making the vector change to line 387 up for the pinchspace jump to Revelation had ruled out any option for 387 to loiter in the vicinity of Hell’s Moons in the Revelation System and then Eternity planet in the Judgment System.

Michael sighed in frustration. Any way he cut it, a conventional recon profile meant stranding 387 in hostile Hammer space out of driver mass, easy pickings for even the most incompetent Hammer captain of the least efficient rail-gun-fitted Hammer warship. Even Fleet, hard-nosed though they could be, wouldn’t ask that of any of its captains, and Michael didn’t think Ribot was going to volunteer. Anyway, Fleet hadn’t specified the time. No, this would have to be a quick-very quick-and dirty fly-by of both systems.

There were a few other problems besetting 387 and its command team.

Dropping in-system was one thing. Just how to do that without squandering too much driver mass on the one hand and taking too much time on the other was the first question Ribot wanted answered. The Hammer’s long- range ultraviolet flash detectors were poor; provided that 387 dropped more than 18 million kilometers from the nearest detector arrays, it was pretty safe, according to Mother.

So that was okay unless, of course, the Hammer had a warship out deep, in which case it would be all over. But based on the latest THREATSUM, Fleet reckoned that the chances of a Hammer warship being that far out were vanishingly small, an assessment Michael was prepared to agree with. Remote sensors were a risk, but the Hammer usually didn’t deploy them deep-field. Actually, nobody did; there was simply too great a volume of space to cover unless, of course, the Hammer knew where and when 387 was coming. But he couldn’t worry about that. If they did, they did. He couldn’t see how they could know, but it didn’t matter.

However, even if 387 was lucky and the Hammers were all safe in orbit somewhere, that still left 387 to make a ten-day, 36-million-kilometer transit at 150,000 kph past Hell’s Moons. If they tried to speed things up, that meant a main propulsion burn that even the Hammer couldn’t miss. To add to 387’s woes, to drop accurately out of pinchspace and as close to the 18-million-kilometer detection threshold as possible, 387 would have to do the jump at 150,000 kph. Any faster and 387 risked dropping inside the threshold, and that could make for a bad day all around.

All that was why, Michael thought savagely, the fighting instructions stressed the importance of giving ships undertaking covert operations all the time they needed to slip in and slip out without having to resort to too many main propulsion burns and the like. But time was one thing they did not have.

Then a thought came to him. What if…Yes, Michael said to himself. That might do it. After a quick check, it looked okay to him, so with some hesitation he decided to see what the rest of the team thought. To look at them, they weren’t having much luck so far.

Michael’s hesitant voice broke the awkward silence. “Um, Captain, sir. What if we dropped well short, did a main engine burn to get our speed up, got our alignment spot-on, and then microjumped the last little bit so that the loss of jump accuracy didn’t matter so much.”

Ribot thought for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders. “Nice idea, Michael, but a main propulsion burn is something you cannot hide without Krachov shrouds, and those we don’t have. The Hammers might not see it immediately, but there is too much risk they would see it, and then they would know we had come visiting.”

Ribot sounded troubled. Michael felt for him. There was no obvious way out of this one, time was running out, and nobody, not even Mother (not that AIs were any good at solving problems like this), seemed to have the answers Ribot needed.

Another long moment of silence was interrupted, this time by Hosani. “Actually, sir, Michael’s got most of the answer. There might be a way. Look here,” she said as she commed the two outermost planets of the Revelation system to come up on the command plot. “We could do what Michael suggested if we dropped behind Revelation- III. God knows, the bloody thing is big enough to hide a burn, and we know the Hammer have no dirtside or orbital surveillance assets there. We could then fire main engines without the Hammer seeing us, slingshot around the planet, get lined up for Hell’s Moons, and get the microjump all nicely set up. Might work, and God knows, I think we’d all be a lot happier doing a fly-by of Hell’s Moons at 300,000 kph rather than 150,000.”

Ribot was silent for a moment, and then he turned to Michael with a smile. “Michael, you might not have had all of the answer, but by God, you had enough of it. And Maria, well done for thinking it through. Leon, that’s a beer you owe me for not getting there first!”

“You’re a hard man, sir,” Leon said, his smile even broader than Ribot’s. Michael knew why. They were all happy that there might be a way to do what had to be done without getting themselves killed in the process.

“Okay. So far, so good, but there is one problem left: Will we have enough driver mass to do all this plus the fly-by of Eternity planet or whatever the Hammer call the damn place and still get back to the FedWorlds safely?” Ribot paused, a slight edge of concern in his voice as Holdorf consulted Mother.

Holdorf shook his head emphatically. “In a word, sir, no. The vector change to get lined up for Judgment system and Eternity planet after we have done the fly-by of Hell’s Moons is very much in our favor, and Mother can fine-tune it a bit to reduce it to almost nothing, I suspect. So we’re okay there. But the vector change when we depart the Judgment system would be extreme.” Holdorf paused as Mother crunched the numbers. “Yes, as I thought, roughly Red 150 and Up 20. And we’ll be doing 300,000 kph with no large planets to hide behind when we do our burn. There is a fourth planet in the Judgment system, but it’s not close enough to be useful.”

A heavy silence descended as the group absorbed the latest problem. Armitage broke the quiet this time. “It’s staring us in the face. Keep on keeping on. Go straight through to Frontier and mass up at Jackson’s World. Mother says the vector change would be…yes, Green 30 Up 10, which sounds okay. We can do it once we get well clear of Eternity nearspace.”

Ribot thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, I think that might do it, and we can probably adjust the fly-by of Eternity planet to reduce it some more. But”-Ribot held up his hands-“I think that leaves us dropping into Frontier space at 300,000 kph with not enough mass”-another pause to confirm with Mother-“to drop our speed as we come in-system to match orbits with wherever they send us. The delta-v needed to drop into Clarke orbit is too great. The damn planet’s coming toward us instead of away, and we’re going to be coming at a very steep angle to Jackson’s World’s orbital plane.”

Ribot paused for a moment.

“That means a mass driver replenishment as soon as we drop into Frontier space just in case we miss badly; otherwise we may never stop, though that’s unlikely,” he said confidently.

Too confident, Michael thought. Much too confident. Matching vectors to complete driver mass replenishment was difficult enough, but 387 would be arriving in-system after a pinchspace jump made at 300,000 kph. Although the navigation AI’s accuracy with the Mod 45 upgrade was much improved, it was optimized for the standard jump velocity of 150,000 kph. At a jump speed of 300,000 kph, the accuracy of the nav AI dropped off dramatically, and that meant 387 could end up missing its planned drop point by millions of kilometers. Ribot would have to talk to Fleet again; Michael could see that.

But, all those were things that could be overcome, and Michael felt a sudden surge of confidence. If Fleet could preposition ships downrange from the planned pinchspace drop point, 387 would have enough driver mass to adjust its vector to make the rendezvous point closest to wherever it was they finally dropped. Yes, as long as they didn’t run into any Hammer warships, and Mother’s THREATSUM said that was very unlikely, it would work.

Ribot interrupted what threatened to become a very long silence.

“Sorry, folks. Just making sure it all hangs together, and I think it does. Leon, I want you and Maria to work up the final nav plan with Mother based on what we’ve talked about. Oh, and work in the surveillance drone deployments as well. Michael, you work with Leon and Holdorf on that. As soon as that’s firm, we’ll pinchcomm the plan through to Fleet and I’ll speak to Fleet operations about setting up our safety net at Frontier. Jacqui, you can do the final alignment checks ready to jump once I’ve okayed the plan.

“I think that the main issues have been addressed. Any more things we need to consider now?” Ribot,