The battle at the Moons of Hell

“Hey, hey, hey,” Kemble protested as she turned back and saw what he was up to. “Where are you going, sir?”

Michael stared at her in astonishment. It had never occurred to him to do anything other than get back to work.

“Things to do, chief. What time is it?”

“Time? It’s 08:20. Now get back on that bunk. That leg’s not good for much just yet.”

Michael shook his head. “Chief, I’ll get back on the bunk if you swear to me that I’ll do myself irreparable damage by walking on it, but if not, then I’ve got things to do.”

“No, I can’t swear to it, but you’ll see more of the inside of the base hospital than you’ll like if you don’t give the leg time to recover. As it is, you should be in regen. Moving it is going to undo a lot of what we’ve had to do.”

“Sorry, chief, you’ll have to forgive me. But I do promise to take it easy.” And with that Michael, pleased to see that someone had thought to bring him a new one, was struggling to get a very uncooperative left leg into his space suit.

“Fuck’s sake, sir. Let me give you a hand,” Chief Kemble said resignedly. “And let me see if I can find you something to lean on.”

The minutes dragged past, and Michael was acutely aware of the growing risk that the Hammer would finally get off their asses and do something about them.

Despite the best efforts of Commodore Kawaguchi’s pinchcommsat killers, the Hammers clearly had a working pinchcomms data channel with Commitment, so a response had to be coming soon. But the work had been frustratingly slow as Harris and his teams struggled to fill the holes punched in 387’s hull. The gaping void left by the failure of Weapons Power Charlie was proving to be a real problem as bracing, bracing, and more bracing was tap welded into place to try to give the foamsteel plug the strength it would need to hold back thousands of kilograms of air pressure.

Michael was smart enough to know that hassling Chief Harris wouldn’t cut one second off the time needed to make 387 jump-worthy.

Foot up, as firmly instructed by Chief Kemble, he sat, surrounded by the shattered remnants of 387’s command team, and watched the tactical picture on the holovid. The vectors marked the last three groups of ships left in Hammer space inching their way slowly forward, the seconds running down to Chief Harris’s best estimate of when 387 would be jump-ready with painful slowness. Michael stared obsessively at the countdown timer in the bottom left-hand corner of the holovid, willing the digits to change faster with every ounce of willpower he possessed but without any effect. If anything, the damn things seemed to go more slowly.

It was a relief when Chief Harris interrupted his zombielike focus on the timer.

“Command, XO.”

“Go ahead, chief.”

“The team from 166 has completed testing the hangar breach, and it’s 100 percent; with your permission, I’d like to return them to their ship. I’m sure Lieutenant Chen will be happy to have them back. I’ve got everyone I need.”

“Make it so, chief. How’s the rest going?”

“Pretty good, sir. The damage to the surveillance drone hangar has been sealed finally, and we are just running the ultrasonics across the plug to make sure there are no flaws, but so far it’s looking good. Say another ten minutes and we should be done. I’ve sent the foamsteel generators up to the blowout from Weapons Power Charlie to get started up there. We’ve started to get the final bracing in place, so I’d say we’re looking good for being jump-ready by 09:30 at the very latest. Should be earlier with a bit of luck.”

“Well, the engineers have got everything right at their end, so earlier would be good, chief.”

“Working on it, sir.”

Thursday, November 19, 2398, UD

DLS-387, Hell Nearspace

Michael’s heart lurched in shock at the news. For the first time that day, the Feds could expect some serious opposition.

The surveillance drones in orbit around Commitment had just reported the departure of twenty-three Hammer ships led by a heavy cruiser positively identified as the Hammer Warship Bravery. It had taken the Hammers an inordinately long time to get a proper response together, but finally they had. And contrary to plan, it looked like 387 would still be in Hammer space when the bastards dropped in-system.

“Damn, damn, damn,” he muttered as he commed Mother to run a formal threat assessment even as Jaruzelska ordered 166 and 387 to turn away from the threat.

Fear mixed with frustration in equal measures whipped his stomach into a mass of churning acid bile. 387 wasn’t that far away from being ready to jump, and now this. Well, there had to come a time when the Hammers finally got their shit together, and maybe he should be grateful that it had taken them this long.

“Not what we wanted, sir,” said Cosmo Reilly. The voice of 387’s chief engineer was thick with concern as he and Michael watched Mother’s threat assessment. Her conclusions were brutally simple. The last Fed ships in Hammer space were very badly exposed, and their destruction was assured if they didn’t jump into the safety of pinchspace soon. The two heavy cruisers Al-Jahiz and Sina were beginning to run short of missiles. Even with the Crossbow and Bombard in support and assuming they had time to get two salvos away, the four ships could put only 1,300 missiles down the throats of the Hammers. That wouldn’t be enough even if they got lucky and timed a rail-gun salvo to hit the Hammers as the missiles closed in.

Not that rail-gun slugs fired across hundreds of thousands of kilometers at a drop datum of extremely doubtful accuracy would make the Hammers sweat. Things were not looking good.

Michael looked across at Reilly. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Cosmo?”

“I’m afraid I am, sir. We can’t hold everyone back just to save our skins.”

Michael nodded, the fear and frustration turning to fatalistic resignation. He’d been through too much to waste energy on things he couldn’t control. “I’ll make the call. You go. Do what you can to speed things up.”

Reilly nodded. He paused for a moment, patted Michael on the shoulder, and left without another word.

Michael took a deep breath as he put the comm through to Chen.

“Bill, I’m not going to fuck around on this. You cannot wait for 387 any longer. Mother tells me that you’ll be ready to jump any moment now. So jump when you’re ready. For God’s sake, don’t wait.”

Chen’s tortured face filled Michael’s neuronics.

“Michael. I can’t do that. 387 is one of my ships now.”

Michael laughed. He hadn’t expected Chen to behave any differently. “Thought you’d say that, so it’s only fair to let you know that my next call is to Admiral Jaruzelska.”

Chen couldn’t quite conceal the faint flush of relief that crossed his face. “Okay, Michael. Make the call. Your right as a captain in command.”

“Go with God, Bill.”

Michael put 166 out of his mind as he put the comm through to Jaruzelska. He didn’t waste words as her face, gray-tinged with fatigue and stress, came up on his neuronics.

“Yes, Helfort.”

“Admiral, sir. As you know, our battle damage is pretty severe, so we’re going to be around for a while. Sir, I cannot allow the rest of the task group to be put at risk just on our account, so please, jump. We’ll take care of