Michael was swimming in a strange sort of pool, the water deep, thick, and red. Something heavy was holding him back.
Slowly, doggedly, he fought his way to the surface, and as he did, the everyday sounds of a ship began to seep into a head stuffed full of cotton wool. But eventually he made it, opening his eyes to see Chief Kemble leaning over him, her face a mixture of amusement and concern.
“Hello, sir. The AI said you were coming back to us.”
“Try and keep me away,” Michael mumbled, his mouth thick.
“That’s what I said. Okay. How are you feeling?”
“Like shit. And sore all over.”
Kemble nodded sympathetically. If it were up to her and the medical AI, she’d have had Michael in a regen tank immediately, but she wasn’t going to waste her time asking. If her years in the Fleet had taught her anything, it was not to try to persuade a ship’s captain to put self first and duty second.
“You will be, I’m afraid. You have very severe bruising to your lower back and ribs and a lot of tendon damage. That will account for most of the pain. You managed to break your nose, but not too badly, but the rest of the face is just bruised. The base hospital will take care of that and make it look pretty again. Your left leg is the real problem. It’s a real mess, and I’m not at all sure how you’ve even been able to walk. Pity we didn’t get to it a lot sooner. It’s been sliced up pretty badly, so the medibots have been busy putting it all back together again, and we’ve transfused repairbots in to try to repair the muscle and tendon damage. It’s going to hurt like hell, but it’ll mend in time. You’ll just need to go easy on it. I’ve held off the painkillers until you surfaced, but we’ve loaded you up with drugbots, so just comm them when the pain gets to be too much.”
Michael nodded as he tried to take it all in. All he knew was that the longer he was awake, the more everything seemed to hurt.
Kemble offered him a large beaker with pale blue fluid in it. “Now drink this. We need to get you rehydrated. You’ll feel a lot better in a moment.”
Gratefully, Michael brought the large beaker of fluid that Kemble was holding up to his mouth, suddenly craving every sweet drop. “More. Please.”
Two more beakers later, Michael did indeed feel better. Much better, in fact, to the point where as Kemble turned to put the beaker back, he sat himself up. Wincing, he quickly wished he hadn’t, bruised ribs and back screaming in protest as the movement pulled at torn ligaments and ripped muscles. Ignoring the pain, he swung himself off the bunk to stand, swaying slightly, looking around for his suit, his left leg sore and stiff under the plasfiber bandages. He commed the drugbots to give him painkillers and sighed in relief as the pain evaporated almost instantly.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Kemble protested as she turned back and saw what he was up to. “Where are you going, sir?”
Michael stared at her in astonishment. It had never occurred to him to do anything other than get back to work.
“Things to do, chief. What time is it?”
“Time? It’s 08:20. Now get back on that bunk. That leg’s not good for much just yet.”
Michael shook his head. “Chief, I’ll get back on the bunk if you swear to me that I’ll do myself irreparable damage by walking on it, but if not, then I’ve got things to do.”
“No, I can’t swear to it, but you’ll see more of the inside of the base hospital than you’ll like if you don’t give the leg time to recover. As it is, you should be in regen. Moving it is going to undo a lot of what we’ve had to do.”
“Sorry, chief, you’ll have to forgive me. But I do promise to take it easy.” And with that Michael, pleased to see that someone had thought to bring him a new one, was struggling to get a very uncooperative left leg into his space suit.
“Fuck’s sake, sir. Let me give you a hand,” Chief Kemble said resignedly. “And let me see if I can find you something to lean on.”
The minutes dragged past, and Michael was acutely aware of the growing risk that the Hammer would finally get off their asses and do something about them.
Despite the best efforts of Commodore Kawaguchi’s pinchcommsat killers, the Hammers clearly had a working pinchcomms data channel with Commitment, so a response had to be coming soon. But the work had been frustratingly slow as Harris and his teams struggled to fill the holes punched in 387’s hull. The gaping void left by the failure of Weapons Power Charlie was proving to be a real problem as bracing, bracing, and more bracing was tap welded into place to try to give the foamsteel plug the strength it would need to hold back thousands of kilograms of air pressure.
Michael was smart enough to know that hassling Chief Harris wouldn’t cut one second off the time needed to make 387 jump-worthy.
Foot up, as firmly instructed by Chief Kemble, he sat, surrounded by the shattered remnants of 387’s command team, and watched the tactical picture on the holovid. The vectors marked the last three groups of ships left in Hammer space inching their way slowly forward, the seconds running down to Chief Harris’s best estimate of when 387 would be jump-ready with painful slowness. Michael stared obsessively at the countdown timer in the bottom left-hand corner of the holovid, willing the digits to change faster with every ounce of willpower he possessed but without any effect. If anything, the damn things seemed to go more slowly.
It was a relief when Chief Harris interrupted his zombielike focus on the timer.
“Command, XO.”
“Go ahead, chief.”
“The team from 166 has completed testing the hangar breach, and it’s 100 percent; with your permission, I’d like to return them to their ship. I’m sure Lieutenant Chen will be happy to have them back. I’ve got everyone I need.”
“Make it so, chief. How’s the rest going?”
“Pretty good, sir. The damage to the surveillance drone hangar has been sealed finally, and we are just running the ultrasonics across the plug to make sure there are no flaws, but so far it’s looking good. Say another ten minutes and we should be done. I’ve sent the foamsteel generators up to the blowout from Weapons Power Charlie to get started up there. We’ve started to get the final bracing in place, so I’d say we’re looking good for being jump-ready by 09:30 at the very latest. Should be earlier with a bit of luck.”
“Well, the engineers have got everything right at their end, so earlier would be good, chief.”
“Working on it, sir.”
Thursday, November 19, 2398, UD
DLS-387, Hell Nearspace
Michael’s heart lurched in shock at the news. For the first time that day, the Feds could expect some serious opposition.
The surveillance drones in orbit around Commitment had just reported the departure of twenty-three Hammer ships led by a heavy cruiser positively identified as the Hammer Warship Bravery. It had taken the Hammers an inordinately long time to get a proper response together, but finally they had. And contrary to plan, it looked like 387 would still be in Hammer space when the bastards dropped in-system.
“Damn, damn, damn,” he muttered as he commed Mother to run a formal threat assessment even as Jaruzelska ordered 166 and 387 to turn away from the threat.
Fear mixed with frustration in equal measures whipped his stomach into a mass of churning acid bile. 387 wasn’t that far away from being ready to jump, and now this. Well, there had to come a time when the Hammers finally got their shit together, and maybe he should be grateful that it had taken them this long.
“Not what we wanted, sir,” said Cosmo Reilly. The voice of 387’s chief engineer was thick with concern as he and Michael watched Mother’s threat assessment. Her conclusions were brutally simple. The last Fed ships in Hammer space were very badly exposed, and their destruction was assured if they didn’t jump into the safety of pinchspace soon. The two heavy cruisers Al-Jahiz and Sina were beginning to run short of missiles. Even with the Crossbow and Bombard in support and assuming they had time to get two salvos away, the four ships could put only 1,300 missiles down the throats of t
he Hammers. That wouldn’t be enough even if they got lucky and timed a rail-gun salvo to hit the Hammers as the missiles closed in.
Not that rail-gun slugs fired across hundreds of thousands of kilometers at a drop datum of extremely doubtful accuracy would make the Hammers sweat. Things were not looking good.
Michael looked across at Reilly. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Cosmo?”
“I’m afraid I am, sir. We can’t hold everyone back just to save our skins.”
Michael nodded, the fear and frustration turning to fatalistic resignation. He’d been through too much to waste energy on things he couldn’t control. “I’ll make the call. You go. Do what you can to speed things up.”
Reilly nodded. He paused for a moment, patted Michael on the shoulder, and left without another word.
Michael took a deep breath as he put the comm through to Chen.
“Bill, I’m not going to fuck around on this. You cannot wait for 387 any longer. Mother tells me that you’ll be ready to jump any moment now. So jump when you’re ready. For God’s sake, don’t wait.”
Chen’s tortured face filled Michael’s neuronics.
“Michael. I can’t do that. 387 is one of my ships now.”
Michael laughed. He hadn’t expected Chen to behave any differently. “Thought you’d say that, so it’s only fair to let you know that my next call is to Admiral Jaruzelska.”
Chen couldn’t quite conceal the faint flush of relief that crossed his face. “Okay, Michael. Make the call. Your right as a captain in command.”
“Go with God, Bill.”
Michael put 166 out of his mind as he put the comm through to Jaruzelska. He didn’t waste words as her face, gray-tinged with fatigue and stress, came up on his neuronics.
“Yes, Helfort.”
“Admiral, sir. As you know, our battle damage is pretty severe, so we’re going to be around for a while. Sir, I cannot allow the rest of the task group to be put at risk just on our account, so please, jump. We’ll take care of ourselves. The Hammer is bound to drop short, and I’ve got full driver mass bunkers, so catching 387 will be hard for them.”
Jaruzelska’s eyebrows shot up as Michael spoke. As a rule, junior lieutenants were not in the habit of telling vice admirals what they would or would not allow. But on this occasion, she’d make an exception. Helfort was absolutely right. Sacrificing four capital ships for the sake of one badly battle-damaged light scout and its already depleted crew was not a sensible option. But in her heart she knew full well that abandoning 387 to the Hammer would be the right decision only if 387 survived. If it was destroyed, she would be known forever as the commander who left a defenseless ship to the Hammer. She took a very deep breath. So be it. The ability to make the hard decisions was why she was a vice admiral.
“I agree, Helfort. I’ll comm orders to 166 to jump as soon as she’s ready. I’ll hold my ships back until we can get full missile and rail-gun salvos away, and then we’ll jump. You’ll be on your own then.”
“Sir, I understand. It’s the only sensible option. Let’s do it.”
Jaruzelska had to smile. Helfort might only be a junior lieutenant, but he had balls like titanium coconuts. Even better, he thought straight under pressure. She hoped to God he survived.
“Thank you, Helfort,” she said wryly. “I do appreciate your endorsement.”
Michael flushed as he realized that he’d been speaking to a full vice admiral rather more firmly than protocol allowed. “Oh fu—Uh, sorry sir. Shit. I, er—”
Jaruzelska cut him off with a smile. Her voice softened. “Enough, Michael. Do what you have to do and you’ll get home safely. Go with God.”
“Thank you, sir.”
With the comforting presence of Jaruzelska and her ships gone, Michael had never felt so alone. Judging from the faces of his scratch combat information center crew, the rest of 387’s crew probably felt the same way.
Jaruzelska’s final efforts on his behalf had come to nothing. A coordinated rail-gun salvo from the four heavy ships had duly ripped through the Hammer’s predicted drop point datum. The only small problem was that the Hammer commander, clearly no fool, had neutralized the salvos by dropping short and low and splitting his ships into two groups. The swarm was now just another forgotten entry in the knowledge base of space navigation hazards as it disappeared at 3.6 million kilometers per hour into the void.
The follow-up missiles were no more effective. Three salvos in all, they were too spread out, too small, and too far from the drop point to trouble the Hammer ships much. But worst of all was the fact that for once that day the Hammers seemed to know what they were doing. A good clean drop, warships well positioned, sensors up smartly, and their first salvo away quickly—all spoke of a commander who could be relied on to get things right.
Time was running out for 387 and fast, Michael thought, and the worst thing about it was the simple brutal fact that he personally could do absolutely nothing more to get 387 jump-ready. Chief Harris and his damage control teams were doing as much as any humans could do, and no amount of nagging from him would or could speed things up.
Michael was discovering that the hardest thing for any commander to do was nothing when that was the right thing to do.
“Command, Mother.”
“Go ahead.”
“Hammer forces redeploying.”
“Roger,” Michael said, now resigned to his fate. “They’re going to try to box us in, I suppose.”
“Confirmed.”
Michael nodded. Mother had been driving 387 hard away from the Hammers, but in the end, they had the numbers, and now, with only one small target to focus on, the Hammer commander could afford to spread his net wide. That was exactly what he was doing, the holocams picking up the flaring of main engines as the Hammer ships began to open out.
“How much time?”
“Estimate thirty minutes. They’ll have us enveloped then. I expect a single coordinated rail-gun salvo.”
“To finish us off,” Michael said, completing Mother’s sentence for her. He commed Chief Harris, who took the news impassively. Michael successfully resisted an almost overwhelming urge to tell him to hurry up.
The minutes ticked by as 387’s every change of vector was matched instantly by the Hammers, the deadly net closing inexorably around the fleeing ship. Michael toyed with the idea of surrendering to the Hammers but dismissed it almost as quickly as it had come. History showed that the Hammers never accepted such offers when they had the upper hand, and Michael was not going to give them the satisfaction of refusing. Now they had less than two minutes before the Hammers were in position. The Hammer ships already were turning to match bearings. Allowing five minutes’ time of flight for the rail-gun salvo, and 387 had less than seven minutes to live.
“Command, XO.” It was Harris, and Michael began to pray harder than he’d ever prayed before, his heart pounding in his chest as he struggled to steady his voice.
“Go ahead, chief,” he said, barely able to squeeze the words out.
“Sir, we’ve finished. The hull is jump-worthy. The engineers are running the final numbers into the mass distribution model now, so it’s up to them.”
Relief flooded through Michael like a warm wave. “Chief, you are a fucking star. Oh, and thanks.”
“Any time, sir, any time,” Harris replied matter-of-factly.
“Okay. We might have to jump without the mass distribution model 100 percent right, in which case it might be a rough ride, so I want everyone and everything battened down real tight.”
Michael grimaced. A rough ride. That was an understatement. If the navigation AI got the ship’s mass distribution wrong by more than one part in a hundred thousand, 387 would never make it home. Where it would go, Michael had no idea, nor would the navigation AI. Nobody had ever come back from a badly set up jump, and for all he knew, 387 would tumble through pinchspace for eternity. He put that awful thought aside. He’d take his chances in pinchspace because one thing w
as sure: At least they might survive, whereas staying in Hammer space would be 100 percent fatal.
He commed Reilly and was not reassured by his chief engineer’s worried face.
“Cosmo, just to let you know. We’ve got five minutes or so and—”
Mother’s urgent tones cut across him. “Command, Mother. Multiple rail-gun launches from Hammer task group. Vector analysis confirms target 387. Time of flight four minutes twenty-four. Probability of survival zero, repeat, zero.”
Oh, sweet Jesus, Michael thought, so soon. “Cosmo, did you copy?”
“I did, sir.”
“Okay. I’m going to jump anyway whether you’re happy with the mass distribution model or not. We have to take the chance. But I’ll leave it as late as I can. I’ll execute a crash jump from here, so make sure everything’s ready to go.”
Cosmo’s face seemed to crumple as he worked out that 387’s survival now depended on him. He visibly caught his breath before replying.
“Well, sir, I guess that’s all we can do. We’re pretty close now, and I’ll run the numbers as long as we can. If I don’t see you again, it’s been an honor.”
“Same here, Cosmo. Same here. Command out.”
Michael commed Mother to adjust vectors to set 387 up for a jump direct to Terranova, gave command authority to override the safety locks that in normal circumstances would never have allowed 387 to jump, and then sat back. He felt strangely calm as he commed his crew for the last time.
“All stations, this is the captain. We’ll be jumping shortly, ready or not. It’ll be rough, so hold on. May God watch over us this day. Captain, out.”
Michael waited as long as he could, the wait agonizing as he watched the incoming Hammer attack remorselessly close in. Then he could wait no more. 387 jumped.
Five seconds later, the Hammer’s massive rail-gun swarm ripped through a small knuckle of tangled and warped space-time, all that was left to mark 387’s presence in Hammer space.
Under the arch of a velvety star-speckled sky of a beautiful Commitment night, high-intensity floodlights streamed into the execution yard, drenching the small group of Doc-Sec troopers in a harsh white glare.
Helfort's War: Book 1 Page 36