The battle at the Moons of Hell

have been on the receiving end of a missile attack long before now. She wasn’t being attacked, so Carswell must be having problems. Sensors, maybe? Or the data analysis and integration software? Operator error? Anyway, it didn’t matter why. The fact was, it was beginning to look very much like 387 had gotten away with it.

Ribot put a sudden burst of optimism firmly away. He’d wait another five agonizingly long and slow minutes before he’d allow himself that luxury. In the meantime, his virtual finger would stay firmly over the emergency jump button, his eyes locked on the plot for any sign of a Hammer missile launch.

It would be a long five minutes.

Michael and everyone else onboard heaved a huge sigh of relief as Mother downgraded the threat from the the aging and seemingly unreliable Carswell. The threat plot now was a mass of orange symbols and a reassuring change from the lurid reds of just a few moments earlier.

For one awful moment, like everyone else onboard, Michael had thought it was all over, sick at the thought that the Hammers might get not just him but Mom and Sam as well. He couldn’t begin to imagine how his dad would cope with a disaster of that magnitude.

When Mother identified the new arrival as a deepspace heavy cruiser, it should have been game over.

But for some reason, they had survived undetected.

Anyway, it was all academic now, and Michael didn’t have enough emotional energy left to worry why. The threat analysis teams back at Fleet would get the datalogs. Let them work out why 387 had gotten away with it. Getting safely through the outer ring of surveillance satellites that circled Hell at 3 million kilometers was the next job. In theory, that shouldn’t be a problem because 387 would have to pass well inside 100,000 kilometers for a Hammer surveillance satellite to have any chance of picking up something that well stealthed and deceptive. Once well clear, 387 would maneuver to recover its surveillance drones and then jump to Eternity planet to confirm that part two of the Hammer plan was as reported. That should be a piece of cake compared to what we’ve just been through, Michael thought, unless it really is a trap. That was a possibility he’d found out was running at odds of fifty to one in the strictly unofficial book being run by Leading Spacer Miandad in propulsion.

But judging by the swarm of activity waiting for Mumtaz at Hell-13, it was no trap. Everything pointed to the Mumtaz being turned around and sent on her way to Eternity planet long before 387 got far enough out to jump out-system without being detected.

As soon as Holdorf stood the ship down from general quarters and restored its artgrav and atmosphere, Michael left the drone hangar. It was time to get out of his truly rancid, sweat-soaked, foul-smelling space suit for a long and well-earned shower followed by a good night’s sleep. Six more days would see them fly by Eternity, an undertaking he earnestly hoped would be a great deal less stressful than the Hell fly-by if Fleet’s THREATSUMs were to be believed. Then another week to get to Frontier planet and the job would be done.

It would be interesting, Michael thought as he went down the ladder, to see the effect Ribot’s report had on Space Fleet and the politicians.

Thursday, September 17, 2398, UD

Federated Worlds Space Fleet Headquarters, Foundation, Terranova Planet

With 387’s pinchcomms message confirming the hijacking of the Mumtaz, the full seriousness of the situation finally had sunk in. All of them, from flag officers on up, sat silent as they worked out the full implications of what the Hammer had done.

Up to that point, the frantic work of Battle Fleet Delta’s hastily appointed staff had had a strange air of unreality about it, as if there still were some chance that the whole thing was an elaborate hoax and in the end the Mumtaz would drop out of pinchspace safely, on vector and decelerating into one of Jackson’s two planetary transfer stations. Angela Jaruzelska also had felt the fear in everybody’s mind, the terrible fear that once again the Federated Worlds would have to go to war against its most long-standing and bitter enemy.

At fifty-six, she was old enough to have been through the last round with the Hammer in the late ’70s, and it was not an experience she would ever want to repeat. But then, she had chosen the Fleet and it had chosen her. With God’s help, she would do her best to make sure that this time around the Hammers would be repaid tenfold for their stupidity and greed.

A glass of very fine Anjaxxian Pinot Noir cradled in her left hand, its heady perfume washing over her, Jaruzelska settled into her favorite chair on the broad timber deck that overlooked the sky-shaded lights of Foundation that were spread out below her.

Midnight was fast approaching. It had been another very long day.

Getting approval for the operation to recover the Mumtaz-Operation Corona it was now officially called-had not been easy. The preliminary concept of the operation had shocked the cabinet with its complexity, unavoidably so, given the mission objectives set. But what had really stunned the inner cabinet had been the risk assessment with its sobering estimates of the ships and lives that could be lost. For a moment, Jaruzelska had been surprised by the impact her casualty estimates had had.

What did they think?

That the Fleet could waltz into Hammer space, retrieve the hostages, and waltz out again while the Hammers sat on their big fat asses and let it all happen?

But in the end, the cabinet’s go-ahead had been emphatic and unequivocal. She had thought there might be some of the weaseling around one expected from politicians, but there had been none. Jaruzelska strongly suspected that whichever Hammer genius had thought up the Mumtaz hijacking plan had completely misunderstood the Worlds in general and the ruling New Liberal government in particular. Despite the fact that it had ended nineteen years earlier and even though people no longer talked about it as much as they once had, apart from the Veterans of Interstellar Wars, of course, the most enduring legacy of the Third Hammer War was a deeply held hatred of the Hammer and total distrust of all its works.

So if she was to be totally cynical, maybe the politicians understood that and thought the idea of a nice clean war against a despised enemy on clear-cut and unambiguous moral grounds would be a good thing politically.

She sighed as she brought the wineglass to her lips. She was sure there was no such thing as a nice clean war. However, tomorrow she would have her staff rework the concept of operations to see if they could get a bit closer to a risk-free operation, something that could exist only in the minds of politicians.

Friday, September 18, 2398, UD

Offices of the Supreme Council for the Preservation of the Faith, City of McNair, Commitment Planet

Chief Councillor Merrick leaned back in his chair as he finished reading Digby’s latest report fresh from the courier drone.

As usual, it was brief and very much to the point. More important, it made Merrick happy for once. Unlike most of the self-serving rubbish that crossed his desk, it made for good reading. The holovid clips of the new base were good to see, too, and made it all real. Not only had Digby’s team pulled it off, security remained tight. How had his long-dead father put it? Oh, yes, tight as a duck’s ass. Merrick smiled as the half-forgotten phrase came back to mind. No, so far so good, and there was no sign of any leak to the Feds, and that was what mattered above all. If the news leaked, he was a dead man. But if all went well, he would be able to announce the successful start of Eternity’s terraforming at a time and place of his choosing and with certain-how could he put it? — elements of the plan carefully concealed. The idea was intoxicating, and for a brief moment he enjoyed the thought of how it would feel as he announced to his fellow Hammers that there was hope for them, the hope of a new planet on which to grow and flourish under Kraa’s beneficence.