The battle of Devastation reef

Unseen, Dreadnought Squadron One-ten ships arrayed in an extended line abreast across hundreds of thousands of kilometers of space-coasted in toward Commitment, the distant home planet of the Hammer of Kraa Worlds. All around the ships, countless millions of stars hung in great cascading sheets, diamond-sharp pinpricks of light strewn in careless profusion across the black of deepspace. For a moment, Michael Helfort forgot himself, overwhelmed by the sight, its glorious extravagance in stark contrast to the wretched self-serving schemes that preoccupied most of humankind most of the time. Michael stretched to ease stress-tightened muscles, wondering just what the hell the point of it all was. The cosmos did not care whether the Federated Worlds or the Hammer of Kraa came out on top, that much was for sure.

“Command, Warfare.” The steady voice of the artificial intelligence responsible for battle management dragged Michael’s attention back to the job at hand.

“Command,” he replied.

“Threat plot is confirmed. Hammer task group designated Hammer-1 has four heavy cruisers, six light cruisers, plus escorts and multiple auxiliaries. The Hammer task group’s orbit is nominal for Commitment nearspace defense. Mission prime directives met. We are go for the operation.”

“Command, roger. Wait.”

Michael stared at the threat plot. Warfare might be happy with the tactical situation, but he was not. The problem was the Hammer task group his ships had been sent to attack. For a force tasked with nearspace defense, it had too many auxiliary ships. With plenty of support and maintenance platforms in Clarke orbit to support the Hammer warships protecting Commitment planet, auxiliaries would be an unnecessary complication, something no half-competent commander would want in a task group intended to stop a Fed attack in its tracks, yet there they were. Why?

The Hammers were up to something: There had to be a reason why the commander of the Hammer task group had been saddled with a bunch of thin-skinned and poorly armed auxiliaries. What that reason might be, Michael had no idea, and neither did Warfare. Without any better ideas and with nobody else to talk to, he would take all the time he had in the hope of finding out. If the threat plot looked the same when it came time to launch the attack, so be it. He would have done his best, and all the admirals in the Federated Worlds Space Fleet could not ask for more than that.

“Warfare, command,” Michael said. “We’ll maintain formation until 22:00 and then jump as planned.”

“Warfare, roger.”

Michael sat back, frustrated. The dreadnought concept was all very well in theory, even if it had been forced on a reluctant Fleet by the appalling loss of spacers at the Battle of Comdur. But the simple fact remained that artificial intelligence worked only up to a point. When it came down to it, AIs were no substitute for the human brain, of which the ten heavy cruisers of Dreadnought Squadron One had only his to call on. Not enough, he was sure; he had a horrible feeling that his brain could not get the job done on its own. Not for the first time he wished he had a combat information center crewed by real live spacers to talk to before making the hard decisions. But it was not to be-too many good spacers had died at Comdur to allow Fleet the luxury of deploying fully crewed warships-and he might as well get used to that fact.

Eyes half closed, Michael began the slow and tedious process of reviewing the raw sensor data spilling through his neuronics. His only hope-the faintest of faint hopes-was that he would get lucky and uncover whatever it was the Hammers were up to.

* * *

“Stand by to drop.”

Michael started, his attention dragged away from a nearly obsessive review of the threat plot. It was a good thirty minutes out of date, the time the dreadnoughts needed to jump clear of Commitment and reverse vector to make a single, slashing run back through Hammer nearspace before heading for home and safety, having, he hoped, consigned the Hammer task group to Kraa, that damned god of theirs. He offered up a silent prayer that-please, just this once-things would go his way.

The week had consisted of an endless stream of tactical simulations, and a bad week for him it had been. Sadly, if his instincts were right, things would not improve. Each and every tactical simulation exercise was marred by mistake after mistake, all his. It was humiliating. Despite his best efforts, controlling the Tufayl and the nine other heavy cruisers of Dreadnought Squadron One had been like trying to juggle soap bubbles: at best impossible, at worst a complete disaster, a point of view expressed that very morning with some vigor by Vice Admiral Jaruzelska, director of the dreadnought project and his boss.

He breathed in slowly to steady himself. Going into combat a raggedy-assed bundle of nerves would not improve his already slim chances of turning the squadron into an effective fighting force. Jaruzelska had made it clear: Failure was not an option. The Hammer of Kraa would tear the Federated Worlds apart if the Feds did not come up with an effective counter to their dammed antimatter missiles. Dreadnoughts were the only answer at hand, the only ships tough enough to have any chance of surviving an antimatter missile attack. There was no choice; they had to work.

“Command, roger,” he acknowledged, mouth dry with tension, stomach tightening into a twisted ball of acid. “Warfare. Confirm weapons free. You have command authority.”

“Warfare, roger. Weapons free. I have command authority.”

Michael settled into his shock-resistant seat. He commed the AI to tighten his safety straps and waited for the Tufayl and her sister ships to drop out of pinchspace, one last check confirming that the ten dreadnoughts under his command were fully operational.

“Command, Warfare, stand by, dropping … now.”

In an instant, space-time turned itself inside out, the ten dreadnoughts erupting into normalspace, intense flashes of ultraviolet radiation marking their transition from pinchspace.

Michael held his breath as alarms told him his laboriously assembled threat plot was worthless. By the time they jumped and reversed vector into Hammer space for the attack, the Hammer task group he had been sent to destroy had split into two and opened out. A single glance told him that much, but what did it mean? Which of the two groups presented the real threat? Desperately, Michael scanned the torrent of data pouring in from the dreadnoughts’ sensors even though he knew full well he could never make sense of it before Tufayl’s AIs did.

The warfare AI entertained no doubts which of the two groups of Hammer ships posed the greater threat. “Command, Warfare. Primary threat axis is Red 10 Up 3, Hammer auxiliaries and escorts designated Hammer-2. Stand by … missile salvos away.”

While Tufayl’s hydraulic launchers dumped a full missile salvo outboard, Michael ignored the rest of the AI’s report, acting on adrenaline-fueled instinct alone. The AI had to wait; maneuvering the dreadnoughts into position to survive the inevitable Hammer counterattack could not. He had to act. Everything told him that Warfare had made a terrible mistake. Struggling to bring order out of chaos, the warfare AI had ordered the dreadnought squadron to turn toward what it believed to be the primary threat: Hammer-2, the Hammer ships directly up-sun. Michael scowled with frustration, certain he had spotted the AI’s mistake. The sunward ships consisted of the auxiliaries along with a handful of light escorts, screened by decoys pumping out enough electromagnetic radiation to fool the unwary into thinking they were heavy cruisers. Was Warfare dumb enough to fall for it?

Yes, it was.

Michael swore out loud. Auxiliaries did not have the firepower to kill a dreadnought. The real threat was the cruisers in the second group of Hammer capital ships-task group Hammer-1-now sitting 40 degrees off Tufayl’s port bow; already they had launched their Eaglehawk long-range antiship missiles toward the dreadnoughts. The bastards were close; it would not be long before they flung rail-gun salvos at his ships. If he did not get them before they turned to meet the attack …

He hesitated for a second. Should he split his forces? Should he attack both Hammer task groups? No, he decided. Go for the primary threat, deal with the rest later.

“Command override. All ships, come left, emergency turn to threat axis Red 40 Up 3. Close and engage task group Hammer-1,” Michael said, his voice half choked by stress. Warfare’s order to ignore the Hammer cruisers was plain wrong: They orbited closer; they carried missiles, rail guns, and long-range antiship lasers. Of course they posed the primary threat!

“Command, Warfare. Roger,” the AI replied calmly. “Redesignating targets … stand by rail guns.”