The battle at the Moons of Hell

pallor.

“Let’s hope so, Michael. Now, we’ve got things to do, so let’s leave it at that. I’ve got to tell the crew what’s going on.”

“Fine, sir. And thanks.”

“No problem,” Ribot said. “Command out.”

Petty Officer Strezlecki stood for a moment, acutely aware of the fact that everything Ribot had just said applied only if 387 wasn’t caught.

“Holy Mary, mother of God!” Holdorf couldn’t contain himself, earning a look of savage disapproval from Ribot as the threat plot suddenly blossomed with the bright red lines of a pinchspace gravitronics intercept.

“Command, this is sensors. I have a positive gravitronics intercept. One vessel. Grav wave pattern indicates pinchspace transition imminent. Estimated drop at Green 60 Down 2. Appears to be headed for Hell Central.”

Ribot cursed savagely under his breath. 387’s track had been carefully chosen to keep it well clear of Hammer ships dropping out of pinchspace, which they usually did on the sunward side of Hell planet. Now this bastard was coming in almost at right angles and from God only knew where.

Outwardly unconcerned, Ribot acknowledged the report. “Roger that. Nothing much we can do, folks. Let’s hope they are slow to set up after the drop and we’ll be past and gone.”

Ribot’s voice was calm and measured as he offered up a silent prayer of thanks that almost all of the Hammer ships in-system were at the flotilla base on Hell-8, almost 400,000 kilometers away and way outside the radar detection threshold against a stealthed light scout. Even better, they were still showing absolutely no sign of moving.

But this warship was different.

If the Hammer ship was dropping in-system, heading for Hell Central, it would drop when 387 was about 200,000 kilometers away and as a result well inside the radar detection threshold. If the Hammers reset sensors as quickly as they should after a pinchspace drop, if their equipment was working, and if the operators were on top of their jobs, there was a reasonable chance that one of them would pick up 387. That was a lot of if’s, true, but not too much to expect of any half-decent warship crew. Ribot knew all too well how the Hammers always reacted to unidentified warships in Hammer space. Without exception, an immediate rail-gun barrage or missile salvo first and questions, if anything was left to question, second. In that case, there was only one way out: an immediate jump into the safety of pinchspace.

If that happened, he might as well send them an autographed, framed holopic of 387, he thought glumly.

But for the moment, there was little he could do apart from curse his luck that 387 hadn’t been thirty minutes earlier and hope that the Hammers were slow to reset their sensors. Mother would fine- tune the ship’s active chromaflage coat to make sure the hull was doing what it was designed to do-look like an asteroid, closely enough, he hoped to fool the Hammer’s infrared and optical analysis-but apart from that, they were relying on the power of prayer, sadly a notoriously unreliable nostrum.

Ribot hoped he’d done the right thing. Going active was always a risk, and like all warship captains, he hated taking risks until the shooting started. The alternative of relying on 387’s stealthcoat to absorb the Hammer’s radar was asking for trouble. The Hammer warship’s grav arrays would tell it something was out there; when its radars couldn’t see anything, there would be only one reason why: a stealth warship-so stand by missile attack.

“Command, sensors. Drop datum confirmed at Green 60 Down 1 at 200,000.”

“Roger, Mother. All stations, Captain. We have a Hammer ship dropping 200,000 k’s at Green 60, and we’ll be within range of their sensors when they do. There’s nothing much we can do, but if we detect a rail-gun or missile release, we’ll be jumping immediately, so stand by.”

Ribot took a deep breath. He’d allowed himself to believe they would get through this fly-by undetected. “Propulsion, command. Stand by emergency jump.” The atmosphere in the combat information center was thick with tension as he sat back in his chair, fighting hard to look both confident and unconcerned. His father had often said that leadership was as much acting as anything else, and for once Ribot couldn’t agree more.

As he waited for the inbound Hammer ship to drop, Ribot cursed long and hard under his breath. One decent radar paint, one decent grav intercept, one decent optronics image, and it was game over. Fleet would have little or no chance of getting the Mumtaz back.

“Command, sensors, contact dropping now. Datum confirmed Green 62 Down 2, range 210,000 kilometers. Stand by vector.”

“Command, roger.” Ribot wanted to do something, but he couldn’t. There was nothing 387 could do. She just had to ride it out. The tension in the combat information center was palpable, and it wasn’t just tension. It was fear as well, gut-churning fear, the product of decades of demonizing the Hammer, fear strong enough to drive 387’s command team down into shapes hunched over workstations. Their ship was a long way from home, alone deep in Hammer space, and about to have a close encounter of the worst kind with what could only be a Hammer warship, and everybody knew it.

“Command, sensors. Contact confirmed as Triumph class heavy cruiser, Carswell. Vector confirmed. Inbound for Hell Central.”

“Command, roger.” Terrific, Ribot thought, just terrific. A goddamm heavy cruiser. A quick check. Yes, he’d remembered it right. The Carswell was one of the oldest cruisers in the Hammer order of battle, but she was an adversary to be feared nonetheless. Any slipup now and 387 was toast, and very badly charred toast at that. Sweat began to trickle cold and slimy down his spine. He shivered. He looked around; even through closed faceplates he could see the tension on every face.

Ribot turned back to the command plot, which now showed the red icons that marked the Carswell’s position and vector. It was not a pretty sight. The Hammer ship was way too close for comfort. And then the command plot blossomed with a new icon, a long stabbing line reporting the fact that Carswell’s planar arrays had deployed and its long-range search radar was painting the 387 with a torrent of radio frequency (RF) energy.

Ribot sighed in fatalistic resignation. What would be, would be. Right about now the Hammer command team should be working out that the unknown contact 200,000 kilometers away wasn’t all it seemed to be at first sight.

Thanks to 387’s active chromaflage skin, Carswell’s optronics would report it as nothing more than another insignificant S-type siliceous asteroid, one of the countless asteroids that wandered the cosmos. But even allowing for the fact that 200,000 kilometers was a very long way even for Fed gravitronics systems, especially against a small target like 387, the mass analysis provided by the Carswell’s grav arrays would tell her captain that the object’s density was way too low for an asteroid. First red flag. Then, to bang another nail into 387’s coffin, infrared would report the object as fractionally too warm. Second red flag. True, 387’s heat sinks were so good that it would be only by a tiny amount, but together with the other inconsistencies, any warship captain worth his salt wouldn’t ignore two red flags. He’d dump a missile salvo down the threat axis, sit back, and see what happened. Ribot knew he would.

Ribot’s virtual finger twitched over the bright red virtual emergency jump button. Any second now, any second now. Barely breathing, he sat unmoving, waiting for the inevitable: the tightly focused beam of a missile fire control radar followed by the infrared blooms of an inbound missile salvo.

Time slowed to a crawl for Ribot, his shipsuit now cold, saturated with sweat under a space suit suddenly tight and constricted, the helmet ring digging into shoulders that were taut with tension. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered. Surely the Hammers must have worked it out. What in God’s name were they up to? The most inexperienced captain would have launched missiles by now. Hell, even a first-year cadet at Space Fleet College would be on to them; they were fed simple tactical problems like the one facing the Carswell for breakfast.

If it were possible, time slowed down even more until Ribot began to entertain the hope that Carswell might just be more than an old heavy cruiser. She might be an old and unreliable heavy cruiser, and the more he thought about it, that was the only thing that made any sense. If Carswell’s sensors had been 100 percent online, 387 would