The battle at the Moons of Hell

edge, and the bloody man hadn’t liked what he’d seen. But Merrick had better get used to it because the next time he wasn’t going to let him back away.

With a stomach acid-bitter with defeat, Merrick had no option but to move the meeting on. He had needed that inquiry to give himself the best possible chance of shifting the blame away from himself and onto Herris and, by extension, Polk. But Polk knew that as well as he did, and so did the rest of the Council. Much as they hated Polk, they needed him if only to keep Merrick in check.

Merrick cursed silently.

He shouldn’t have been surprised. Things had changed, and maybe Jesse Merrick was no longer a man to be feared. But Polk was.

Saturday, October 31, 2398, UD

DLS-387, Hell-14

No matter how hard he tried, Ribot’s neuronics refused to let him sleep. The piercing comm alarm relentlessly dragged him up from the depths of a wonderfully dreamless slumber, his first in a long time.

Groggy, Ribot commed his bunk light on, oriented himself, and accepted the call.

Helfort had the watch. His voice was hoarse with stress, and his avatar made him look like shit. “Captain, sir. Officer in command. Sorry to bother you, but I thought you would like to know.”

“No problem, Michael,” Ribot muttered groggily. “What is it?”

“The interceptbots, sir. They’ve finally broken in, and we have just begun getting good-quality datastreams. The intercept AI is just starting its analysis of the Hammer’s data structures, and we’ll have a definitive data model shortly to allow us to attack the knowledge base. I’ll draft a message to Fleet for your release, sir.”

Ribot’s mind was a mass of wet concrete, and he had to struggle to think straight. “Uh, no, Michael,” he said after a moment’s thought. “Wait. Hang on for a moment. I’d like to go to Fleet with specific data rather than the promise of specific data, in particular the first of the Mumtazers we can identify, where they are, and so on. Otherwise, we’ll just get another damn pinchcomm urging us to try harder. You know how twitchy they’re getting.”

“Oh, okay, sir. That’ll take us at least three or four days, maybe more. Makes sense, though. They have been nagging us somewhat.”

“Understatement, Michael. No, sit tight for the moment. We’ll put a pinchcomm through to Fleet as soon as we have something specific. Anything else now that I’m awake?”

“Not really, sir. The Hammer’s pretty quiet tonight. The light escorts Regan and Bates moved from Fleet base to Hell Center two hours ago and are now alongside the planetary transfer station. Verity and the rest of the Hell flotilla are alongside at the flotilla base, though Mother thinks that at least four of them are preparing to get under way. The usual premission stuff: sensor testing and so on. There’s one light cruiser, two heavy escorts, and a heavy scout doing a lot of systems testing, all fire control systems but not much else, so Mother’s not sure what they’re up to, but we’ll know more in the morning. Hammer ships tend not to unberth much before 08:00. Loads of commercial traffic as always, but Mother’s watching the vectors pretty closely, and there’s nothing unusual going on.”

“Okay. Let me know if we get anything specific out of the interceptbots. Night.”

“Night, sir.”

Ribot commed the light off and lay back. For once, sleep came quickly, and in minutes he was down somewhere deep and black, snoring lightly.

Monday, November 2, 2398, UD

City of McNair, Commitment Planet

“The Feds have done what?” Merrick roared. “Put a ship into orbit around one of our planets? And sent a lander dirtside? I don’t fucking believe it! What in Kraa’s name do those stupid bastards think they are doing? I want a full report together with your recommended response within the hour!”

Merrick slammed the phone down on his long-suffering councillor for war and external security. As if he didn’t already have enough to worry about.

Kraa-dammed Feds. The bastards had put an Abydos class deepspace heavy patrol ship in orbit around Hammer 14-1. It was way too big for a genuine survey operation, as the Feds claimed it was, but not small enough to be pushed around.

Why, for Kraa’s sake, why? What were the Feds up to now?

Maybe he’d missed something. Merrick grunted as he pulled up the file on the planet 14-1. He snorted derisively as he quickly scanned the data. No, he hadn’t missed anything. It was a miserable apology for a planet. Thanks to a severely elliptical orbit, it was a frozen inhospitable waste most of the time, scoured by endless storms that ripped its methane/ nitrogen atmosphere apart, the sky thick with the sulfurous smoke and dust belched out from the thousands of active volcanoes that punctuated a planetary surface wracked with endless earthquakes triggered by two massive moons orbiting far too close for comfort. A worthless piece of dirt.

And yet, and yet. Slow down, Merrick, and think this through, he told himself.

It was becoming harder and harder for him to ignore the possibility that somehow the Feds had found out about the Mumtaz and were about to do something about it. In fact, that was the only scenario that made sense. The problem was that all he knew for a fact was that the Feds were mounting an operation code-named Corona under the command of a Vice Admiral Jaruzelska. Exactly what Corona was, nobody could tell him. But if Corona really was about the Mumtaz, he was stuck. The mountain of deceit he had erected around the whole affair had trapped him. To admit that he knew what the Feds might be up to would be to put a bullet in his head.

Polk and his gang would see to that.

So why should he take the chance unless he had to? There was always the possibility that the Feds were simply trying it on. They had been known to put pressure on the Hammer for no good reason at all. No, he had no choice. He had to keep quiet and try to hold things together until the time was right to announce the success of the Eternity project and reap the enormous political and social rewards that would follow. In fact, maybe it was time to call Digby back to start constructing the elaborate cover story that would be needed if he was to be able to claim that it was the Hammer and the Hammer alone that was responsible for the successful and speedy terraforming of Eternity. And if word had leaked…

The more Merrick thought it through, the clearer the way forward became. Get something heavy to Hammer-14 to make it clear to the damn Feds that they’d be blown to hell if they didn’t withdraw. In the meantime, get the usual pointless exchange of protest notes going and use the incident to take people’s minds off what was going on in Kantzina. But stretch things out. Kraa’s blood. He needed as much time as he could get.

The necessary calls having been made to put the wheels in motion, Merrick turned his attention back to the unhappy subject of the civil unrest on Faith. Despite its impressive bulk, the report from Major General Barbosa, COMGEN-MARFOR-3, was unable to conceal the simple fact that even with the dispatch of an additional battalion of marines, the situation on Faith was slowly but surely sliding out of control. Resistance was hardening as the locals began to realize that although marines were tough, very well trained, and very dangerous, they were not invincible. With thorough preparation, good leadership, and a bit of luck, all underwritten by a willingness to accept heavy casualties, they could be taken on with some success.

The previous week had seen a major heretic assault in Kantzina’s eastern suburbs, the first attack that showed signs of careful planning based on accurate intelligence supported by good staff work. Even though the attack had had no chance against the well-dug-in marines of 5 Brigade, for once prepared with their own accurate and timely intelligence, the butcher’s bill had been too high, with the heretics leaving no fewer than 245 marine casualties behind them as they were finally thrown back in bloody confusion. That had happened only because 5 Brigade’s reserve armor had sliced deep into the northern flank of the attack to leave the heretics, cut off and