from surveillance drones loitering out in farspace. Then, before the forces converging on them got close enough to pose a problem, the attackers would jump back into pinchspace. Standard operating procedure for a Hammer attack and intended to sound out the opposition, so no surprises there. Chief Ichiro had pointed out that one of the great weaknesses of the Hammer was its military commanders’ fondness for standard operating procedures, an assumption that Constanza had been more than happy to accept without challenge.
“Command, sensors. Multiple ship drops Sector 2, range 250,000 kilometers. Thirty-five ships. Stand by identification.”
Within seconds, sensor AIs on hundreds of FedWorld ships began turning terabytes of raw data vacuumed out of space by their active and passive sensors into useful tactical data. It was a quick process; the result was an ugly mass of bright red vectors painted on the flag combat data center holovids. The Hammer attack quickly took shape; feverishly, Constanza and her team worked to make sure
“Command, sensors. Multiple positive gravitronics intercepts, Sector 3. Grav wave pattern suggests pinchspace transition imminent. Vector is nominal for grazing run past Terranova.”
Michael could almost see Constanza relax.
Hammer standard operating procedures would have this as the main attack, though one of their more creative commanders might have thrown in a few more diversionary attacks to keep the opposition under pressure and off balance. So far, Constanza had not gone too far wrong. For once, her usual urge to override her subordinate commanders seemed well under control, and, with the usual chivvying all AIs needed to get it right, the fleet battle management AI had the right ships going to the right places to deal with the two attacks now driving hard toward Terranova.
“Command, sensors. Multiple ship drops Sector 3, range 260,000 kilometers. Seventy-five ships. Stand by identification.”
By then, Constanza’s body language was easy to read. “This has to be it,” she announced confidently to one of her team as the holovids arrayed around the combat information center blossomed with a new set of red vectors. “This is the primary attack.”
Ship sensors were tracking upward of a hundred Hammer ships as they ran planetward, wave after wave of missiles and decoys behind walls of rail-gun slugs driving on ahead. Their ceramsteel armor was beginning to boil off as FedWorld antistarship lasers flayed their hulls.
In response,
Slowly the tide began to swing in favor of the Feds. Missiles and rail-gun salvos clawed their way through the storm of defensive fire put up by the Hammer ships. The Hammer’s close-in defenses-short-range missiles, antimissile lasers, and chain guns-were being overwhelmed by a combination of speed and coordination overlaid by carefully crafted jamming and spoofing to blind and confuse them.
Then the Hammers began to lose ships. The first to go was a Jackson class light cruiser. A single Merlin missile tore a gaping hole in the ship’s ceramsteel armor left damaged by an earlier rail-gun salvo, the warhead’s plasma jet striking deep to reach a fusion power generator. Milliseconds later, the generator lost containment. Half a second after that, the hull gave way under the enormous pressure and the aft end of the ship blew wide open, spewing ice-crystal clouds out into the vacuum of space. The ship was dying now. As it died, it began to spit lifepods in all directions.
More Hammer ships began to die as the Fed response ground the Hammer attack into ionized gas, the counterattack relentless. The space around the Hammers became a mass of shattered ships surrounded by lifepods, like so many fireflies with their double-pulsed orange strobes. Constanza could not contain herself. Getting out of her chair, she overrode the fleet battle management AI. “Too cautious,” she muttered, “too damn cautious. Time to go in hard for the kill.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, without any attempt to consult her team or the battle management AI, she threw her reserves in the attack and ordered the last of her heavy units to engage. Her fist punched the air. Every shred of body language betrayed her conviction that this was the time to destroy the Hammer attack.
Michael leaned across to Fellsworth. “Even though she doesn’t know what we know, surely that’s a mistake, sir? She’s committed all the forces she needed to deal with the Hammer attack. There’s no need to assign more. Now she’s got very little in reserve.”
Fellsworth nodded, her face impassive.
With her remaining heavy cruisers accelerating hard toward the incoming Hammers, the sensor management center crashed Constanza’s party.
“Command, sensors. Multiple positive gravitronics intercepts, Sector 6. Grav wave pattern suggests pinchspace transition imminent. Vector is nominal for grazing run past Terranova.”
Constanza stiffened. “Sensors. Confirm Sector 6.”
“Confirmed. Sector 6.”
Constanza shifted to a private circuit. Michael would have to access the voicecomm datalogs after the COMEX to see what was said, but it was clear from the command team’s body language that nobody could work out what the new attack meant. Coming from below Terranova’s orbital plane, it was developing at right angles to the attacks that were in progress. Confusingly, whatever this attack was, it was not consistent with normal Hammer operating procedures.
Constanza had a big problem. She had committed her reserves to meet an attack that already had been well contained. Now those forces were heavily engaged, pinned down by the incoming Hammer ships, and unable to disengage without presenting their relatively thin stern and flank armor to Hammer missile, rail-gun, and laser attack. Constanza did what she could. She threw the last of her ships, none of them heavier than a light escort, into the breach, with the fleet battle management AI pumping out the orders to position her limited assets to meet the new attack. Time to start praying, Michael thought.
“Command, sensors. Multiple ship drops Sector 6, range 160,000 kilometers. Forty-five ships. Stand by identification.”
Constanza’s confusion visibly deepened. Michael sympathized. Forty-five ships was too small a number for a primary attack. If this was not the primary attack, what was the point of another diversion? The main attack was well developed already. More confusing still was the fact that by dropping into Terranova’s gravity well only 200,000 kilometers out, those ships soon would be inside the 150,000-kilometer threshold for a jump back into pinchspace. Unless they jumped inside twenty minutes or so, they would be in Terranova nearspace for at least two hours, more than enough time for them to be mopped up.
None of it made any sense to
Then the game changed. The Hammer went nuclear.
Constanza’s face turned ash-gray as she watched her defense of Terranova fall apart. Earlier, her task force AI had highlighted the fact that a surprisingly large number of the Hammer’s Eaglehawk missiles seemed to be going nowhere in particular. A quick discussion among the command team had put it down to poor Hammer technology. One even had gone so far as to say that the useless pricks could not hit a barn door at five paces. Constanza had made her decision. Missiles without targets were missiles without a job to do, so they were to be ignored. And they were; the missiles were left untouched to continue their drive toward Terranova.
It soon became clear that the Hammer’s missiles were doing exactly what was asked of them. One by one in blindingly quick succession, the multimegaton fusion warheads fitted to the missiles detonated. In seconds, an immense wall of gamma radiation was expanding toward Terranova.
The combat information center went quiet as alarms were muted. “Oh shit,” Constanza muttered, her voice hoarse with stress, before her training kicked in, driving her into a desperate attempt to cope with a situation that
