The Battle of the Hammer Worlds

suffered. The light units were not as lucky. A light cruiser, the Kapali, started a slow rolling turn out of line, a massive plume of ice-crystal-loaded gas scintillating in the intense sunlight confirming that her hull had been breached. She was followed by a second, the Berithsen, also breached, her entire port bow a mass of broken ceramsteel blown outward by what must have been an auxiliary fusion plant losing containment. A string of smaller ships followed the Kapali and the Berithsen out of the line of battle.

In seconds, Fed missiles held back from the initial attack fell on the crippled ships to finish them off, warheads driving explosive lances of incandescent gas deep into their guts. One after another, the Hammer ships disintegrated in huge balls of blue-white plasma as their main engine fusion plants lost containment. Rapidly expanding clouds of ionized gas peppered with orange-strobed lifepods provided the only evidence that they had ever existed.

Michael forced himself to breathe out through teeth clenched tight with stress. It was carnage. Surely they had done enough damage for one day.

“Command, Mother. Hammer task force now estimated to be 65 percent effective.”

“Roger that. Nice work,” Lenksi said dispassionately. “That’ll teach the Hammers to fuck with us.”

Michael looked across at Lenksi. She stiffened in her chair. Aha, Michael thought, mentally crossing his fingers. That would have to be Perkins calling for a bit of chat.

It was.

“All stations, command. Quick update. We have orders from the commodore. He believes we retain the tactical advantage, so the task group will launch two more salvos, one missile and one rail gun. Depending how that goes, we may jump, but don’t bank on it. Command out.”

Michael groaned softly, as, he suspected, did most of the spacers packed into Eridani’s combat information center. Commodore Perkins was going in for the kill, clearly hoping his antistarship lasers and follow-up missile and rail-gun salvos would disable enough of the Hammer ships to make their task group completely combat-ineffective. Michael sat there waiting for the buzz-rip of hydraulic rams launching Eridani’s next missile salvo. He turned his full attention to the command plot, watching in awed fascination as the missiles, thousands of them, streaked across the gap toward the Hammer. With only seconds left to run, the missile salvo was overtaken by the task group’s rail-gun salvo, the two carefully coordinated to arrive on target at precisely the same time.

It was a massacre.

The Hammer ships reeled under the sheer weight of the ordnance thrown at them. One after another, they began to fall out of the line of battle. The first to go were the few light units that had survived the first attack, their thinner armor and less capable close-in defenses simply not able to absorb the enormous weight of metal thrown at them. In quick succession, most lost the unequal fight. One ship after another disappeared into huge balls of plasma, leaving behind five units, damaged but still mostly intact, venting gas to space as they struggled to get to safety.

They did not get far before scavenging missiles smashed home and they, too, vanished in searing white-hot explosions. Then the first capital ship went.

The City class heavy cruiser Morristown, its port bow slashed wide open into a tangled mass of metal by a failed auxiliary fusion plant, rolled out of line into a stately, slow corkscrewing turn. The battle management AI in Damishqui did not miss the chance, and a handful of missiles that had been loitering in reserve were sent in to finish the job, hitting home precisely where the previous attack had opened up the Morristown’s bows. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, with a blinding flash, the entire front half of the Morristown blew apart, followed a few seconds later by the rest of the ship as missile warheads gutted it from end to end, blowing the main engine fusion plants apart into incandescent balls of blue-white plasma.

In quick succession, four more heavy cruisers followed the Morristown. The N’debele trailed the Witness of Kraa, the Concorde, and the Restitution as they death-rolled out of the line of battle. Two more light cruisers, the Williams and the Chen, followed close behind, their battered and broken hulls bleeding long streams of ice-laden air into space as they tumbled planetward. All around the disintegrating Hammer task group, space was thick with orange-strobed lifepods blossoming outward in a ghastly slow-motion fireworks show.

Michael turned his attention back to the threat plot. Every bone in his body told him that the Hammers would be sending reinforcements. God knew, they had the ships, and so it was only a matter of time. His instincts were confirmed when the threat plot erupted; two ugly splashes of red announced the arrival of two Hammer task groups. Immediately, Michael’s team was buried in the task of confirming who and what the new arrivals were. Backed by the massive processing power of the task group’s AIs, it was a quick process, helped by the fact that the Hammer ships were making no attempt to conceal their identities. Every active sensor they possessed was transmitting on full power. Why? Michael wondered as he confirmed the plot.

Lenksi answered his unspoken question. “They want us to leave, I think.”

Michael nodded. That made sense, though the Hammer ships had a lot of space to cover before they posed a serious threat.

He held his breath. The Hammers had been handled roughly, but they were still a sizable force, and now help was on the way. Commodore Perkins had only seconds left to decide whether to jump or stay and ride out the next Hammer attack.

Perkins chose to stay. His orders were brief: “Close and destroy the enemy.”

For the first time that day, and much to Michael’s surprise, the leaden cloak of fear he had carried into the battle fell away. Perkins’s decision made sense. If the Hammer was to be beaten, this was what it would take: standing toe to toe and slugging it out blow for blow, salvo for salvo, until they could not take any more. With a quick prayer asking whoever it was in charge of the universe to look after Damishqui, he checked that his team was not allowing another Hammer task force to creep up on them. Satisfied that everything was under control, he turned back to the command plot. Once more, it was the Hammer’s turn. Perkins’s ships might have inflicted serious damage, but combat-ineffective they were not. Yet.

“Command, Mother. Multiple missile launches. Estimate 2,300 heavy and 500 light missiles plus decoys. Targets not known.”

Michael braced himself. This was the moment of truth. If the Eridani survived this, she would be in at the kill. If not. .

“Command, Mother. Rail-gun launch. Targets Damishqui, Resplendent, Renown, Secular.”

Michael flinched as he watched the awful sight of Damishqui and her fellow cruisers disappearing behind huge, boiling clouds of ionized armor, the ships visibly recoiling as the Hammer slugs dumped massive amounts of kinetic energy into their hulls. He held his breath until one by one the ships reemerged, anxiously watching the Damishqui to make sure she was not badly hit. Michael allowed himself to relax a bit. She seemed okay, but it was hard to tell.

All hell broke loose. For the second time that day, Eridani fought desperately to keep out the wave of missiles that fell on her. This time around, not a single missile got through. Facing a much smaller salvo, Eridani was able to pick off the missiles one by one, a pattern largely repeated across the task group, although by some accident of Hammer fire control, the Renown got more than her fair share, allowing two Eaglehawk missiles to make it through. They, too, were defeated by the Renown’s immensely thick frontal armor, exploding harmlessly deep in the heavy armor protecting the cruiser’s bows.

Perkins now split the task group. The rail-gun-fitted ships were tasked to finish off the last of the Hammer ships. The light units were ordered to dump a last missile salvo and then open out to fall back so that they could protect the ships recovering the lifepods from the Marie Curie and the Kaminski. Then, Michael thought, it would definitely be time to get the hell out of Dodge; otherwise, the two full-strength Hammer task groups now accelerating hard toward them would have them by the throat. He half turned to look across at the captain. For some reason, she turned at the same time, smiling broadly at Michael before turning her attention back to the command plot, apparently relaxed and unconcerned. Michael