The battle of Devastation reef

groups combat-ineffective. Own losses heavy: sixteen ships destroyed, four ships seriously damaged and combat- ineffective. Casualties: six wounded, two serious, in regen tanks. Retrieve and Recognizance abandoning ship. Kill those Hammer bastards. Remember Comdur. Retrieve, out.”

“Command, roger. Reply: To Retrieve and Recognizance, thanks, job well done. Good luck. Get home safely. Reckless out.”

“Warfare, roger. Message sent … stand by … missile launch from SuppFac27 ground defenses.”

“Command, roger.” Michael was unconcerned. SuppFac27’s missile and laser batteries were well camouflaged and hard to eliminate, space battle stations were tough, and defensive platforms were expendable, but that was about all SuppFac27 had going for it. It had an Achilles’ heel: None of its defenses could maneuver, which made them the sort of target every rail gunner dreamed about, and his rail guns bettered any in humanspace. His dreadnoughts would make short work of SuppFac27’s defenses; millions of rail-gun slugs had already pulverized the surface of the asteroid and everything on it into a finely milled cloud of dust, the destruction systematic and unrelenting. Now his ships had to survive the Hammer missile attack pushing through his outer defensive screen of medium-range missiles at over 1,000 kilometers per second.

“Command, Warfare. Update. Assault Group reports task group Hammer-6 combat-ineffective”-well done, Rear Admiral Perkins, Michael thought acidly; you are good for something, after all-“surviving Hammer units scattering to the north, assessed no threat.”

“Command, roger. And Assault Group?”

“Combat-ineffective. Heavy losses, including Seiche”-this was turning out to be a bad day for flag officers, Michael said to himself, trying to ignore an image of Perkins being bundled ignominiously into a lifepod, a glorious moment of unalloyed schadenfreude-“Flag has passed to Sephardic; Commodore Jun has operational command. Assault Group conducting lifepod recovery. Flag advises that Assault Group will withdraw on completion.”

“Roger that. Request Flag to recover landers with survivors from Retrieve and Recognizance.”

“Roger … Flag confirms landers will be recovered. Stand by, message from Flag … Message reads: Personal from Commodore Jun for captain in command, FWSS Reckless. Your actions in keeping with highest traditions of Fleet. Well done. Regret in no position to assist you. All ships combat-ineffective. Good luck. Remember Comdur. Jun out.”

Michael sat for a moment, stunned. He had more friends in high places than he knew. “Send to Flag: Thanks, Reckless out.”

Much as he appreciated Jun’s vote of confidence, her confirmation that he could expect no support from Assault Group was a blow, not unexpected but disappointing nonetheless. Of all the ships committed to Opera, only his could finish what Opera had set out to achieve: the destruction of SuppFac27.

It was a lonely feeling, not least because success or failure rested on a single pair of shoulders: his.

“All stations, Warfare, brace for missile impact.”

Reckless reverberated with the familiar racket of close-in defensive weapons systems fighting to keep a Hammer attack at bay, the noise underscored by a crunching thud when Reckless fired her rail guns, the job of reducing SuppFac27’s defenses not forgotten. After the terrifying brutality of the earlier Hammer engagements, the attack launched by SuppFac27’s defenses was an anticlimax: There were simply too few missiles attacking too many ships. Without the mindless violence of a rail- gun attack to break open their defenses, the dreadnoughts could focus every weapon they had on the incoming missiles while they clawed their way across tens of thousands of kilometers of space. The noise died away finally, the last Hammer missile blown apart hundreds of kilometers short of its target.

Turning his attention back to the battle damage assessment, Michael took stock. His last salvo had inflicted enormous damage but not enough to finish the job. The defensive platforms might have been scoured out of space, but the Hammer battle stations still stood; they were a much tougher proposition altogether. Though badly damaged, they had survived to launch another missile salvo, their antistarship lasers still working hard to strip the frontal armor off the inbound dreadnoughts. Enough, Michael decided, enough. What came next broke his heart, but it had to be done. He did not have the time-or the missiles-to do this the hard way.

“Warfare, command. Commit the dreadnoughts. Send them in.”

“Warfare, roger.”

The unmanned dreadnoughts responded. Pushing their main engines to emergency power, the ships accelerated away from Reckless on vectors direct for the Hammer battle stations, their defensive weapons scouring the Hammer’s last missile salvo out of existence with contemptuous ease. Outnumbered, the battle stations never stood a chance. Shrugging off everything an increasingly desperate Hammer defense threw at them, the ships smashed headlong into the armored spheres, ripping them open before joining them in incandescent balls of plasma when their main propulsion fusion plants exploded.

Michael emptied his lungs in a long slow hiss of relief. The approaches to SuppFac27 lay wide open.

Reckless, the last ship of Battle Fleet Lima still engaged in Operation Opera, turned end for end and started to decelerate, its main engines firing across space toward the tiny asteroid that was home to SuppFac27, blazing pillars of driver mass reaching down to a surface scrubbed clean by the dreadnoughts’ relentless rail-gun salvos.

There was one more thing to do before Michael turned his attention back to the thorny problem of destroying SuppFac27. “Warfare, command.”

“Warfare.”

“Launch Cleft Stick under your control. Looks to me like there’ll be lifepods left in Hammer space by the main force. I want them picked up. When that’s done, set the Stick on vector east away from SuppFac27 across the reef. We’ll rendezvous with her when we leave this goddamn place. Any problems with that?”

“Stand by … no, none, sir. The only lifepods not recovered are drifting east away from the main force; they are well clear of any Hammer forces. Stick has the driver mass to pick all of them up. The Hammers are not showing any interest. They have their own problems.”

“Good. Make it so.”

“Warfare, roger.”

Michael turned his attention back to the business at hand. “Caesar’s Ghost, command.”

Sedova’s face popped into his neuronics. “Ghost.”

“As I’m sure you’ve worked out, it’s up to us to finish the job, so stand by to launch. I’ve commed you the ops plan.”

“Ghost, roger. Standing by.”

“Command, roger. Assault Leader?”

Kallewi’s avatar replaced Sedova’s. “Sir?” he said.

“Well, seems like you’re going to get your chance, after all. Demolition team ready to go?”

“They are, sir. Didn’t think it would come to this.”

“I hoped it wouldn’t,” Michael said, “I really did, but it has. So good luck. I’m telling you something you already know, but for chrissakes, make it fast. There are more Hammers on the way for sure, and I want to be gone before they turn up. So if you get stalled, set the charges and get the hell out.”

“Roger that, sir. I hate this damn place already,” Kallewi said. “Remember Comdur. Assault Leader out.”

“Command, Warfare. Reconbots launched and nominal, now on vector for SuppFac27.”

“Roger.”

Michael turned his attention back to the command holovid, which had been switched to take its video feed from the reconbots running toward SuppFac27. The asteroid was a dismal sight, its surface ripped and scarred by rail-gun slugs fired to wipe out the radar installations, missile and laser batteries, and other surface infrastructure that protected the plant. All that remained were a few lucky buildings, spared by random perturbations in the rail- gun swarms, lonely islands of ceramcrete in a sea of shattered wreckage hurled across the asteroid’s surface, the nearspace overhead filled with yet more junk thrown out into space by the appalling force of repeated rail-gun