The battle at the Moons of Hell

burning off heavy frontal armor, but only by the centimeter, and the Hammer ship had meters of the damn stuff. All the while, New Dallas was turning ponderously toward them, untroubled by the light scouts’ attack. The x-ray antiship lasers carried by light scouts were good, and their beam diffusion was minimal at such close range. But Hammer ceramsteel armor was also good, and the heavy cruiser had plenty of it to spare.

Well, Michael consoled himself, all 387 had to do was keep the Hammer ships’ attention away from the incoming Fed warships and it would have done its job.

The good news was that the lights scouts’ armor was holding up well despite the best efforts of the Hammer ships to burn their way through it, which by rights they should have been well on their way to doing. By Fed standards, the performance of the Hammers’ lasers was very poor, to the point where, as Holdorf put it, they were giving 387’s bows only a light all-over tan rather than the third-degree burns they should have been dishing out.

To cap it all, 387’s Krachov microshrouds, pumped out in a never-ending stream from forward-mounted dispensers, were having some success in attenuating the lasers’ destructive force even if the tiny disks lasted only seconds before the lasers overwhelmed them. But thankfully, there were an awful lot of disks.

That man Krachov was a fucking genius, Michael thought gratefully. He would make a point of buying him a beer if he ever emerged alive from what was beginning to look worryingly like a suicide mission. Michael felt powerless as nail by nail the Hammers slowly banged down the lid on 387’s coffin, a strange sense of resignation coming over him as he faced the inevitability of his death.

Mother broke his thoughts. “Command, Mother. Missile launch from New Dallas. Estimate twelve missiles plus decoys. Initial vector analysis shows salvo split equally between 166 and 387.”

“Command, roger.” Ribot’s confusion was obvious to Michael. “Confirm missiles twelve.”

“Confirmed. Missiles twelve. Six on 166 and six on 387.” Mother was emphatic.

Michael banged Petty Officer Strezlecki on the shoulder. “Stupid Hammer fuckheads have split the salvo, Strez. And the salvo’s badly underweight. Only twelve missiles. They could have launched hundreds of the damn things, for God’s sake. I wonder why.” Michael couldn’t conceal his relief. Six missiles gave them a chance at least, whereas without a miracle, a full missile salvo from New Dallas would have been the end.

Then it hit Michael. A small split salvo might be Hammer stupidity, but there was another, much less encouraging explanation.

Obviously Ribot had just had the same awful thought. “Mother, command. Could these be nukes?”

“Negative, command. Best estimate is conventional warheads. Hammer standard operating procedures preclude use of nuclear warheads this close to friendly installations. Electromagnetic pulse and residual radiation unacceptably high.”

Michael gratefully offered up a silent prayer of thanks. 387 might be small, but she was very tough, her inner titanium hull shock-mounted and her artgrav and active quantum-trap radiation screens good enough to shield the crew from the transient shock and radiation produced by a nuclear warhead burst as long it wasn’t too close. But nobody liked nukes, and if one got close enough, it was all over.

Ribot had watched impassively as the Hammer ships had finally swung bows onto 387.

Now we’re in for it, he thought. Any moment now, any moment now. It looked like the heavy patrol ship Gore would be first to get a rail-gun firing solution. She was, followed a good twenty seconds later by Arroyo and MacFarlane. But Gore’s command team, clearly at one and the same time overexcited and overconfident, couldn’t wait. They should have.

“Command, Mother. Rail-gun launch from Gore. Target 387.”

“Why 387?” Ribot mumbled as fear crunched his stomach into a tightly packed ball. This was getting horribly serious. “Command, roger.”

“Command, Mother. Rail-gun launches from Arroyo, target 387, and MacFarlane, target 166.”

“Command, roger. I don’t think they like us,” Ribot said, mouth dry and heart pounding at the thought of what the rail-gun swarms launched by Gore and Arroyo could do to 387.

Hosani nodded. She could hardly think given the terrible certainty that she was eking out her last minutes, that she and everyone onboard were doomed. It was only by an enormous effort of will that she kept going. “You can say that again, skipper. I have the horrible feeling that we are going to get more than our fair share,” she said shakily.

“Command, Mother. Multiple rail-gun launches. Shark, target 387. Cougar, target 166.”

“So where the fuck is New Dallas?” Holdorf asked rhetorically. “Surely she doesn’t want to miss the party.”

“Give the fat bitch time, Lucky, give the fat bitch time. I’m sure she’ll get to us.” Maria Hosani’s voice was tight. By her calculations, they had six Hammer missiles and hundreds of thousands of rail-gun slugs inbound, all due on target in a matter of minutes. Each slug had a kinetic energy equal to damn near 600 kilograms of high explosive and was focused on an area considerably smaller than the end of her little finger. That made-her brow furrowed as she did the math-200 kilotons of high explosive give or take, and all heading for her. She cursed silently. With the best will in the world, she couldn’t see how 387 was going to get out alive, a conclusion absolutely reinforced by an unshakable conviction that even if 387 made it, she wasn’t going to.

Hosani damned her Iranian ancestry. Too many mystics in the bloodline.

“Command, Mother. Speed now 80,000 kph. At pinchspace jump speed in three minutes.”

“Command, roger. Warn propulsion that I’m going to jump 387 and 166 together as soon as we can.”

“Mother, roger.”

“If we live that long, that is,” Hosani commed Holdorf.

“I’m not called Lucky for nothing, Maria, so have faith,” Holdorf commed back.

“Command, Mother. Vector analysis of incoming salvos confirms very low probability of slug impact. 166’s AI concurs. Time on target has been inadequately synchronized. Ripple timing and swarm geometry are very poor. Confirms THREATSUM assessment that Hammer fire control discipline is weak.”

“Command, roger.”

Ribot took a deep breath to try to slow his body down. Hammer fire control discipline might be weak, but just how 387 was going to duck and weave its way clear of the incoming rail-gun slugs was a question he could only hope Mother had a damn good answer to. Apart from a nearly overwhelming urge to run away and hide, he sure as hell didn’t.

In her flag combat data center deep within the heavy cruiser Al-Jahiz, Vice Admiral Jaruzelska came to her feet as she cleaned up after the pinchspace drop, her eyes fixed on the command plot as the flag AI got the tactical situation settled down into some semblance of order.

She couldn’t believe what she was seeing, but there it was, plain as day.

Her chief of staff interrupted her shocked study of the command plot. “Do you see what I see, sir?”

“I do, and I don’t believe it. The crazy, crazy bastards.” Jaruzelska could not keep the intense pride she felt out of her voice as she watched the hopelessly one-sided battle unfolding on the other side of her primary target, Hell’s flotilla base.

“But thank God for it, Admiral. If they hadn’t gone in, those fuckers might have had us on toast. We could