The battle at the Moons of Hell

and back to the big picture.

She shivered as she thought of what the salvo was going to do to the unprepared warships of the Hell Flotilla and its fixed defenses. She wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of a ten-slug salvo, let alone one with millions of the mean ugly bastards. For all their massive bulk and enormously thick frontal armor, the flotilla flagship Verity and its sister heavy cruiser Integrity were doomed, and the two light cruisers Cordoba and Camara wouldn’t be long in following. It was just a matter of time, and with a bit of luck the Hammers would soon be without the massive phased-array radars that provided targeting data for the base’s missile and antiship laser systems and would have to fight back half-blind.

Five seconds after the rail-gun swarm had departed, the characteristic ripping-metal buzz of a full missile salvo launch ran through Al-Jahiz. The ship’s massive hydraulic missile dispensers rammed a full salvo of Merlin heavy missiles clear of the ship in only a matter of seconds.

“Flag, flag AI. Force missile salvos away.”

“Flag, roger.” Jaruzelska could do nothing now but watch the flag combat data center’s command plot as the task group’s two salvos reached out toward the Hammer, their vectors thin green lines of death stark against deep black.

No, that wasn’t right. There was something she could do, and she should have done it long before. If she didn’t, Gore would be the death of 387 and 166.

“Flag AI, flag. Hostile Gore. Engage with force lasers.”

The flag AI didn’t even blink at the sudden change in mission priorities.

Within seconds, the cruisers had turned their antiship lasers away from New Dallas and onto the distant form of the Gore. The intense beams of coherent light quickly began the process of tunneling a hole into Gore’s ceramsteel side armor; high-definition targeting holocams were focusing the task group’s antistarship lasers down onto a single point on the Hammer ship’s hull.

It took a desperate combination of high-g maneuvering and good work with the ship’s defensive systems to save 387.

Close-range rail-gun engagements had been described as something akin to high-speed four-dimensional chess, with swarm after swarm trying to checkmate the target, herding it into a position where it had nowhere to move except into the path of the oncoming slugs. Then it was just a matter of the weight of metal as the slugs ripped away armor to allow the slugs following them to punch through into the hull. At that point it was checkmate.

But Ribot knew full well that there was a lot of space out there and how very small warships were in the grand scheme of things. Therefore, a well executed rail-gun attack, as much a matter of art as of science, needed very precise timing, close coordination of the swarm patterns, and good swarm design, all based on what could only be described as an intuitive understanding of how the target would behave. Those were all things the Hammers had yet to demonstrate they were capable of. The simple fact that 387 had survived a 96,000 -slug rail-gun attack was all the proof needed that the Hammers didn’t have their shit together. One thing was for sure: If the ships attacking 387 and 166 had been Feds, they’d be dead by now.

Even so, it was scary stuff. Ribot couldn’t remember being so terrified. Ever.

Leaving 387’s long-range antiship lasers on target as long as possible in the hope of doing some serious damage to New Dallas, Mother finally brought their awesome power to join the ship’s short-range defensive lasers in time to try and fend off the few slugs from Shark that posed any threat. Shark’s swarm had been bigger, better aimed, and more carefully timed than those from Gore and Arroyo, forcing 387 to move down and across the path of the final four slugs to the point where Ribot would have been prepared to swear on his life that three of the four had passed close enough to graze 387’s outer stealth coat.

But the fourth was luckier. It hit 387 almost directly where her armor was thickest. The slug vaporized in a nanosecond to blow a huge crater in 387’s armor, the massive explosion smashing the ship down and into a slow spiraling turn, spewing rolling, twisting clouds of vaporized ceramsteel. Great gouts of reaction mass poured from her maneuvering thrusters as Mother struggled to bring the ship back on vector, artgrav screaming as it absorbed the shock waves that racked it from end to end.

“Christ Jesus protect us. That was way, way too close,” Holdorf said, desperately wishing he could unsuit and wipe away the ice-cold sweat running down his spine.

“Maria! Get Helfort and one of his team out there. I want that impact damage repaired.”

“But sir,” Hosani protested, “the next salvo’s due any minute now.”

Ribot’s voice was brutal. “I know, Maria. But if we get another slug where that one hit, it’ll go through us end to end and we’ll all be dead. And it’s too close to Weapons Power Charlie. I can’t take the chance. That crater has to be filled.” He held a hand up even as Hosani started to protest his callous indifference. “Okay, okay. Hold them back until the next salvo’s passed. There’s not time for them to make a difference, anyway.”

“Sir.” Hosani sounded relieved as she commed the warning order to Michael.

Ribot sat back. He’d come as close as he could to condemning Helfort and his surveillance drone team to death, but what choice did he have?

“Command, Mother. 166 reports single grazing impact. Minor damage only to hull armor, no loss of hull integrity.”

“Command, roger.” Bastards. Ten points to the Shark and Cougar. It seemed that the Hammer might actually be getting its act together.

“How long, Maria?”

“Fifteen seconds, sir.”

“Warn the troops.”

“All stations, command. Stand by next rail-gun swarm. Ten seconds. Out.”

As the incoming swarm had approached, Michael had unconsciously pulled his head down into his shoulders, his already tense stomach contracting even further into a tight knot. He’d never seen a command plot, even in the worst tactical exercise scenarios thrown at him during his college time, as bad as the one he was looking at now.

The instant Shark’s swarm had passed, Mother had thrown the ship even farther off vector before the cone of 96,000 slugs buried somewhere inside a huge cloud of decoys from New Dallas shut down her options even more. But with only seconds between salvos and a lot of mass to shift, Mother didn’t have enough time and maneuvering power to get it right. Her desperate attempt to get 387 clear between salvos was not enough to move the ship completely clear of danger.

Michael cursed wordlessly as Mother updated the command plot, the primary threat vector turning a deep red as the impact probability approached 100 percent. This couldn’t go on. If rail guns didn’t get them, missiles might. And if missiles didn’t, the lasers slowly chewing away at 387’s hull eventually would break through, and people would begin to die. The frustrating thing was that they would be at jump speed any minute now. So close and yet so far.

But maybe he should be thankful for small blessings, Michael thought as he stared almost mesmerized at the time-on-target clock counting off the seconds. Gore must have a problem with her rail guns; she still hadn’t fired again. This early in an engagement, she should have gotten her second rail-gun salvo away in under two minutes or so if her crew and systems were up to scratch, but it was now well past that. If Gore didn’t fire soon, 387 and 166 would jump, provided that they weathered the incoming storm of slugs from New Dallas. If they could do that, the ships would vanish into pinchspace, leaving the one and only missile salvo fired at them nothing more than an ultraviolet flash to home in on.

Michael started to pray really, really hard. They were so close to safety, it hurt. The wait was pure torture. And now, as if the wait wasn’t bad enough, Ribot wanted him outside to fix the damage caused by the last slug.