The battle at the Moons of Hell

Hell, and we’ve had no reports of military traffic inbound from any of the other planetary systems.” Ribot sighed in frustration. “I suppose they’ve been in deepspace somewhere. God knows there’s plenty of it, so I guess we can’t blame fleet intelligence for not knowing. Reconvene in five. Ribot out.”

“All stations, this is the captain. We’ve gone to general quarters early because we have Hammer ships dropping at Red 30, six of them, and from the quality of the grav array intercept, they look to be dropping very close. I’ll be honest with you all. It’s going to be rough, very rough. But God willing, we’ll come through. That is all.”

“All stations, command. Ship will depressurize in five, repeat, five minutes.”

Michael and his surveillance drone team were struggling into their suits, chromaflage skins already darkening from their normal Day-Glo orange down to combat gray-black.

Michael felt like a marathon runner closing in on the finish line only to be told that he had to run another 40 kilometers. The whole business had gone on for so long that he could barely remember any life other than the waking nightmare he was in. If all had gone well-and Michael had spent hours obsessively going through the Corona time line to the point where he knew the plan down to the second-the marines would have Mom and Sam safe by now and soon Dad would know that. But just as he had begun to think about getting home, this had to happen. For the life of him he couldn’t begin to imagine how two light scouts were going to be able to hold up six Hammer ships, and for an instant a terrible icy hand clamped itself around his heart at the thought that death for him and everyone else onboard 387 might be only minutes away.

Michael pushed the fear away with a conscious effort as he settled his helmet onto the neck ring, the seal locking with its usual quiet hiss. With a final quick look at the tense faces of his team, Strezlecki’s deep brown stress-narrowed eyes staring deep into his, Michael smacked his visor down, commed the nitro-purge autoject, and started his suit checks. He consoled himself with the thought that even if they weren’t going home, they might take some of the Hammers with them.

He quickly said a little prayer for Anna, who’d be dropping in-system in Damishqui in fifteen minutes or so, and then concentrated on the job at hand.

“Command, this is Mother. Sensors confirm pinchspace drop of hostiles at 68,500 kilometers Red 30 Up 5. Six ships: one Hammer City Class heavy cruiser provisionally identified as New Dallas, two Panther Class deepspace heavy escorts, Cougar and Shark, and three heavy patrols, Gore, Arroyo, and MacFarlane.”

Anonymous behind the visor of her space suit and struggling to steady her ragged breathing, Hosani flicked Ribot a glance. Fear had soaked into every fiber of her being; her heart was pounding, and her breathing was shallow and ragged. Somehow, and she couldn’t work out why or how, she knew this was it for her. She wouldn’t be going home. She wondered how Ribot felt sending 387 and 166 and all onboard to an almost certain death, and she thanked God it was he and not she making the decisions. She wasn’t sure she could have done what he was doing.

As the last suit check came in, she forcibly turned her mind to business.

“All stations, command. Depressurizing in one minute, repeat, one minute.”

“Permission to step across, sir?” The unexpected voice of Warrant Officer Ng cut across Hosani’s thoughts.

“Yes, of course, Warrant Officer Ng. What can we do for you?”

“Word with the captain, sir.”

“Sure. Captain, sir? Warrant Officer Ng.”

Ribot nodded. Hosani was happy to have her captain doing something better than worry about the less than encouraging results of Mother’s latest quick and dirty sim. The prohibition on nukes set by Corona’s rules of engagement were reducing to zero what little chance the two light scouts had of causing the Hammers some grief.

Ribot waved Ng across the thick yellow and black goofers line.

“Warrant Officer Ng. Desperate business,” Ribot said flatly.

Ng nodded her agreement. “It is, sir. I realize my team are just supernumeraries now, but from what I can see, you’re going to need all the help you can get. So I’d like to spread them around. With the damage control parties would probably be the best.”

“Good idea, Doc. Should have thought of it first,” Ribot said apologetically. “Talk to the XO and tell her it’s fine by me so far as your team is concerned. But I want you to walk the ship for me. You know, steady people down, that sort of thing. They’re very young, most of them, and I don’t think any of them ever thought this would be happening to them.”

“No problem, sir. I’ll do that.”

387 and 166 had not wasted the precious few minutes that had been given them.

Ribot had slowly pulled the ships back away from Hell-14. With a bit of luck, he hoped to be able to convince the Hammer after-action analysis teams that the two light scouts had been drifting slowly in-system rather than sitting dirtside right under the Hammers’ noses the whole time.

And then a lot happened in a very short time.

First, the Hammer sensors were fed carefully crafted dummy data telling them that two light scouts had gone active, apparently to launch four Merlin antistarship missiles directly at the installations that had been so carefully and painstakingly neutralized by Warrant Officer Ng and her team; the sensor towers duly disappeared in a searing blue-white flash as the massive demolition charges laid by Michael’s teams were fired by tightbeam laser command. Ribot smiled for a second as he imagined the Hammer after-action analysis teams struggling to work out just how 387 and 166 had managed to get so close without being detected by Hell-14’s sensors. The bastards would be even more puzzled as they tried to work out how two light scouts had apparently each gotten four Merlin antistarship missiles onboard. After all, everyone knew that Federated Worlds light scouts could carry only a maximum of twelve of the smaller and much less capable Mamba missiles.

Even as Ribot enjoyed the prospect of angry and confused Hammers, hatches whipped open on the flanks of the two ships, and in a matter of seconds hydraulic missile dispensers had deployed 387’s full complement of short-range Mambas. Moments later, the two ships deployed a small cloud of active ship decoys, each one mimicking the emissions profiles of 387 and 166.

Forlorn though it might be, the attack was on.

Ribot grunted in satisfaction as he watched the holovids blank out as the intense light of a swarm of exhaust plumes momentarily overwhelmed the holocams, mass drivers lighting off to accelerate the salvo and its decoy cloud toward New Dallas. He knew full well that it wasn’t much of a salvo as salvos went, but at least they’d give the Hammers in New Dallas something to think about.

Mother’s emotionless tones reported the launch. “Missiles away. Target New Dallas.”

Ribot intervened. “Mother, hold lasers until they’ve woken up. If we go active now, they’ll pick us out of the decoy cloud.” Fed active ship decoys were very good but not so good that they could mimic the awesome power of an antistarship laser.

“Mother, roger.”

Then it was time for 387 and 166 to show their hands.

Flanked by ship decoys doing their best to look like the real thing, the two ships erupted into life, main engines spewing blue-white tails of driver efflux, speed rapidly building under the thrust of a maximum-g tactical burn.

With his neuronics patched into the command plot, Michael waited, suited up with nowhere to go and nothing to do. All he could do was sit and worry, watching anxiously as the four antiship lasers mounted by 387 and 166 slowly chewed away at New Dallas.

He sighed in frustration as Mother faithfully reported the near futility of it all. The lasers were doing their job,