Group turned to follow.
Endgame time, Michael whispered to himself, endgame time. If the Hammer commander had not shot himself in despair-or been shot for incompetence, something the Hammers were inordinately fond of doing-he would see now where the real threat to his antimatter plant lay. If Opera had been a bloodbath so far, it was going to get a whole lot worse when the Hammers focused their efforts to keep the dreadnoughts out. With fear chewing away at his guts, Michael shivered at the awful prospect of the hours still to be spent deep inside Hammer space before the job was done and they could all go home.
“Command, Sensors. Group South reports positive gravitronics intercept. Estimated drop bearing Green 60 Up 3. Multiple vessels, range 155,000 kilometers. Gravity wave pattern suggests pinchspace transition imminent. Designated hostile task group Hammer-4. Initial vector analysis suggests incoming ships tasked to intercept Decoy Group Two.”
“Command, roger. Confirm vector soonest.
“Here we go,” Michael whispered. With the arrival of reinforcements, the real fight had started; the tactical advantage was back with the Hammers. Keeping one eye on the battle still raging off the dreadnoughts’ port side between Group North and the Hammer ships protecting the northwestern approaches to the plant, he watched the threat plot while it updated to show the incoming Hammer reinforcements.
“Command, sensors. Hammer task group designated Hammer-4 dropped. Mixed force: twelve heavy, fifteen light cruisers, ten heavy escorts, plus seven other ships. Vector nominal to intercept Decoy Group Two.”
“Time to engagement range?”
“Ten minutes.”
“Command, roger.” Those ten minutes were precious; they gave his dreadnoughts some time to run in toward SuppFac27 unopposed, ten minutes before the new arrivals worked out that they had been suckered into another attack on a bunch of Fed decoys, ten minutes before the Hammers turned to deal with the real threat to their plant. Michael swore softly. An hour would have been better, but he would take what he could get. One thing was for sure. Hammer-4 was just the first batch of reinforcements; more were certain to be on their way. He saw it in his mind’s eye: Ignoring the elaborate web of diversionary attacks staged by the Feds right across Hammer space, attacks intended to delay reinforcements for as long as possible, Hammer ships would be scrambling in a desperate race to come to SuppFac27’s defense.
In stark contrast to the terrifying intensity of the battles raging to the north and south, the Hammers had ignored the dreadnoughts and Assault Group so far, their commander still too short of ships to head them off. He would be having kittens, no doubt praying to his beloved Kraa for reinforcements and soon.
The rest of Battle Fleet Lima was doing it tough. Twenty thousand kilometers to port, Group North was still slugging it out with the Hammers, exchanging missile and rail-gun salvos, ships either blown or dropping out of the engagement, bleeding air and lifepods into space. One hundred thirty thousand kilometers to starboard, the newly arrived Hammer ships headed for the diversionary attack mounted by Decoy Group Two. Fifty thousand kilometers beyond them to the south, the engagement between Group South and the Hammers covering the southern approaches was grinding its way to a blood-soaked conclusion, the Feds’ superior missile and rail-gun launch rates giving them the advantage.
Michael scanned the damage reports and forced himself not to think of the thousands of spacers dying on the blood-drenched altars of Hammer ambition. Only one thing mattered: that Groups North and South did their jobs- running interference, keeping the Hammer defenders pinned in place and away from the dreadnoughts, their sacrifice buying Michael and his ships the time they needed to smash a path through SuppFac27’s defenses, opening the way through for Assault Group.
And what a job they were doing. Ignoring their losses, the Fed ships pressed home the attack until the Hammers could take no more. One ship after another, the Hammers broke and ran.
“Command, Warfare. Group South reports Hammers withdrawing. Group North reports Hammer ships to the north also withdrawing, assessed combat-ineffective, though they expect harassing attacks from ships still operational. Flag has ordered Group North to detach all available units to support Assault Group.”
“Command, roger. Units to be detached?”
“Stand by … heavy cruisers
Michael shook his head in despair that Group North could spare so few ships.
“Command, Warfare. Task group Hammer-4 has engaged Decoy Group Two. Expect Hammers to break away shortly.”
“Command, roger.” Michael stared at the command plot. When the ships of Hammer-4 discovered that the second decoy group was yet another Fed diversion-and it would not take them long-where would they go? They would pull back, Michael decided after careful consideration; they would pull back to defend SuppFac27. That created a new problem straightaway: Pulling back would put the Hammer ships on vector to intercept Assault Group, and Hammer-4 had enough ships to give Admiral Perkins and Assault Group a headache.
Everything told Michael that Opera was close to its tipping point. He had seen it before: the point where an operation started to slip out of control and into instability, where the assumptions underpinning the operations plan started to fall apart, where those old enemies, fear, uncertainty, and doubt began to take over, where one wrong decision was all it took to ruin an entire operation.
Michael needed to know how close they were to the moment of crisis. He commed Rao, Machar, and his AIs into a conference; together they ran the numbers.
On the Fed side, Assault and Dreadnought groups, augmented by a handful of battered survivors from Group North, were established on vector, heading right for SuppFac27. Between them and their goal stood SuppFac27’s fixed defenses: space battle stations deployed around an inner ring of semiautonomous defense platforms-all tough and resilient but unable to move and lacking the ship-killing power of rail guns-augmented by Hammer ships pulling back from their abortive intercepts of the two decoy attacks, all supported by the SuppFac27’s last line of defense: fixed missile and laser batteries emplaced on the surface of the asteroid itself.
All that was bad, but the more he studied them, the more Michael liked the odds, and so did the rest of his team.
“We can finish this,” Machar said.
“Yes, we can,” Rao added.
Michael agreed with them. The dreadnoughts would blow the fixed defenses aside, and their rail guns would drop a hailstorm of slugs to destroy anything and everything on the asteroid’s surface. As for the Hammer ships pulling back to defend the antimatter plant, they were strong but not strong enough to withstand the weight of missiles and rail-gun slugs thrown at them by the dreadnoughts and the ships of Assault Group.
Yes, the dreadnoughts could clear the way into SuppFac27. Provided that nothing changed, it was game over … provided that nothing changed.
Michael watched and waited.
Seventy-two minutes into the operation and less than thirty minutes before the dreadnoughts smashed through the defenses around SuppFac27, Michael allowed himself to believe that the worst was over.
Then things changed.
“Warfare, Command, Sensors. Positive gravitronics intercept. Estimated drop bearing Green 45 Down 1. Multiple vessels, range 60,000 kilometers. Assault Group confirms intercept. Gravity wave pattern suggests pinchspace transition imminent. Designated hostile task group Hammer-5. Initial vector assessment suggests Hammer-5 has been tasked to intercept Assault Group. Stand by vector confirmation.”
“Confirm Green 45, 60,000?” Michael said, baffled. That should not be possible. As far as he knew, the Hammer ships were going to drop right into Devastation Reef, and even Hammers were not that stupid. Their ships would be torn apart.
“Drop datum for task group Hammer-5 is confirmed, Green 45, 60,000.”
“Goddamnit,” Michael said, frustrated and concerned at the same time. According to the intelligence briefings, gravity rips stopped Hammer reinforcements from dropping this close to SuppFac27. But the Hammers obviously did not read Fed intelligence briefings, so there they were, a major threat he did not need. “Command, roger,” he said struggling to keep his voice under control. “Confirm vector soonest.”
“Warfare, Command, Sensors. Hammer-5 dropping … stand by … task group Hammer-5 dropped. Mixed force, thirty-five cruisers, sixty escorts. On vector to intercept Assault Group, time to engage ten minutes.”
