The battle of Devastation reef

“Roger, sir … Serhati nearspace control, this is Caesar’s Ghost. Life support status now critical. Estimate one zero, I say again one zero minutes remaining. Main engine flameout in five. Will attempt v-max reentry. Request immediate clearance into Norton Field. We don’t have the driver mass to go anywhere else. Wish us luck, Serhati”-nice touch that, especially the panicky tremble Sedova injected into her voice; or maybe it was for real, Michael thought-“we’re going to need it. Caesar’s Ghost, over.”

“Stand by, Caesar’s Ghost, stand by. Out.” Michael tried not to laugh. Eyes screwed up and lips puckered into a grim slash as if someone had shoved the blunt end of a pineapple up his ass, the duty controller was an unhappy man, a man in considerable pain. He was not having a good shift.

“Main engine cut off … now”-the Ghost fell silent-“Serhati control, am committed to a v-max reentry direct to Norton Field. Request emergency services to meet on arrival. Caesar’s Ghost, out. All stations. Visors down and make sure you are well strapped in. For those of you who’ve not been paying attention, we’re doing a v-max reentry, so this will be rough.”

Michael flipped his visor down and waited patiently until a row of green lights confirmed that he had a good suit. He commed the seat to tighten his straps as far as they could go, the crash-resistant seat molding itself around his head and body until he could barely move. Not that it made any difference to his chances of survival; if Caesar’s Ghost broke up while traveling too fast to allow crew and passengers to eject- and there was a significant chance it would-they were all dead.

“Command, loadmaster. All suits are green, cargo compartment, casualties, and pax secured for reentry, ejection systems armed.”

“Command, roger,” Michael said. “Admiral, sir. We’re good for reentry.”

“Roger,” Jaruzelska said calmly.

“Over to you, Kat.”

Sedova just nodded, her whole attention focused on turning Caesar’s Ghost nose on for reentry.

“Caesar’s Ghost, Serhati nearspace control. Reentry approved”-yes, Michael thought exultantly. Not that it made much difference; the lander was committed, so it did not matter what the Serhatis said, but at least they were not shooting at them-“stand by reentry plan for landing at Norton Field. You are warned that any deviation …”

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Michael murmured to himself, tuning out; we’ve called that bluff. He concentrated on watching Sedova’s every move. Not that he had anything to offer her. Sedova had graduated in the top 5 percent of her command pilot class at combat flight school. If a v-max reentry was beyond her capabilities, it was definitely beyond his. Compared to Sedova, he was a rank amateur.

Sedova pitched the Ghost’s nose up for reentry. Plunging planetward, the lander started to feel the first tenuous threads of Serhati’s upper atmosphere. A thin high-pitched whistle developed rapidly into a full-blooded scream as Caesar’s Ghost ripped the air apart in its plunge to Earth, nose and belly armor glowing first red, then white-hot as ablation started in earnest, leaving a fiery tail to mark its passing. Hands locked tightly onto the arms of his seat, Michael prayed-hard-that Caesar’s Ghost would get through this. At normal reentry speeds, any lander could complete ten reentries a week without breaking a sweat. V-max reentries were another matter; heated by massive compression, Serhati’s atmosphere would reach 13,000 Kelvin as it tore past, too much for the lander’s armor to resist, the excess heat carried away by ablation of the carbon-impregnated ceramsteel, the lander tracing a blazing arc across the sky as it dropped to earth.

In the end, a v-max reentry was a race to see which happened first: a successful transition to winged flight or ablation of the armor until none was left. Without armor, Caesar’s Ghost would not survive two minutes before superheated plasma broke through her inner titanium skin and she disintegrated into a flaming shower of burning wreckage.

Trailing fire, Caesar’s Ghost plunged deeper into Serhati’s atmosphere. The lander shook violently as the aerodynamic stress built, its artificial gravity struggling to absorb deceleration, pushing the lander’s frame to its limits.

“Approaching max g,” Sedova announced, her voice calm. “Stand by pitch down. Hold on, folks.”

Michael braced himself, hands locked onto the arms of his seat. This was the most critical, the riskiest phase of the reentry; in a v-max reentry, this was the point where the command pilot risked her life and those of her passengers and crew. Reducing pitch minimized the g forces acting on the lander but exposed more of the lander’s lightly armored nose to superheated air, increasing the risk of thermal breakthrough into the hull. When v-max reentries went to shit, it was during pitch down, and everybody knew it.

When-after a lifetime-Sedova pitched the nose back up, Michael allowed himself to breathe out. Slowly the lander’s speed bled off. Maybe, just maybe, they might make it, he thought.

The rest of the flight turned out to be an anticlimax, not that Michael was complaining. He’d had all the excitement he could take. Extending the wings in small increments as the lander’s speed decayed, Sedova flew a perfect engine-off approach into Norton Field, kicking the engines back into life only when the Ghost neared the threshold. Dropping steeply and still traveling at speed, she extended the lander’s huge triple-slotted flaps, the landing gear locking down with a muffled, metallic thunk, then pulled Caesar’s Ghost sharply back onto its tail in the vomit-inducing maneuver called-without any affection at all-“walking the blowtorch.” With the lander now held up entirely by the power of its main engines, its nose pointing nearly vertically into the sky, Sedova rammed the belly-mounted thrusters to full power, killing the Ghost’s speed. Crossing the threshold, Sedova eased back on the throttles and rotated the Ghost’s nose forward and down, dropping the lander with a crunching thud onto the runway. Braking gently, she let the lander run before turning off the runway and coming to a stop. Caesar’s Ghost was surrounded immediately by what had to be the best part of Serhati’s planetary defense forces.

Sedova broke the stunned silence.

“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for flying Sedova Space Lines”-Michael noticed that her voice shook ever so slightly-“and welcome to Serhati. You may disembark now. And make it quick, please. I’ve set the self-destruct charges to blow in five minutes.”

Wednesday, April 4, 2401, UD

McNair

Chief Councillor Polk damned the vaulting ambition that had driven him to the chief councillorship, clawing his way up every blood-drenched step of the ladder. He damned the stupidities that had turned the Hammer Worlds into a crippled, corrupt shambles. He damned the incompetent fools he was forced to work with. He damned a military that once again had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. He damned the Feds for wriggling out of the death grip the Hammers had on their throats.

But most of all, he damned his nemesis, a man with an uncanny ability to be there every time the Feds kicked the Hammers in the balls.

Helfort … Lieutenant Michael Wallace Helfort, Federated Worlds Space Fleet, may Kraa damn his evil heretic soul, the man responsible more than any other for the loss of the Hammer’s precious antimatter plant.

He asked himself for the thousandth time why he was so stupid. Why had he ever allowed one miserable man to get so far under his skin? Kraa knew how hard he attempted to keep Helfort in perspective, but no matter how hard he tried, it made no difference. Not a day went by without him thinking about the man. He had even started to dream about the son of a bitch, for Kraa’s sake!

Was he asking too much? No, he did not think so: He wanted the man dead, one miserable, no-account human being dead; that was all. With the full resources of the Hammer Worlds at hand, why was that so hard? Well, he decided, maybe things were going to get easier; Helfort’s luck had run out … finally. Fate had given the Hammers the best chance they were ever going to get, and Polk intended to make sure the bungling blockheads who worked for him took it. If those useless Serhatis tried to dick him around, he would kick their Kraa-damned asses. He would give them a week to transfer the Feds back.