Ribot waved Ng across the thick yellow and black goofers line.
“Warrant Officer Ng. Desperate business,” Ribot said flatly.
Ng nodded her agreement. “It is, sir. I realize my team are just supernumeraries now, but from what I can see, you’re going to need all the help you can get. So I’d like to spread them around. With the damage control parties would probably be the best.”
“Good idea, Doc. Should have thought of it first,” Ribot said apologetically. “Talk to the XO and tell her it’s fine by me so far as your team is concerned. But I want you to walk the ship for me. You know, steady people down, that sort of thing. They’re very young, most of them, and I don’t think any of them ever thought this would be happening to them.”
“No problem, sir. I’ll do that.”
387 and 166 had not wasted the precious few minutes that had been given them.
Ribot had slowly pulled the ships back away from Hell-14. With a bit of luck, he hoped to be able to convince the Hammer after-action analysis teams that the two light scouts had been drifting slowly in-system rather than sitting dirtside right under the Hammers’ noses the whole time.
And then a lot happened in a very short time.
First, the Hammer sensors were fed carefully crafted dummy data telling them that two light scouts had gone active, apparently to launch four Merlin antistarship missiles directly at the installations that had been so carefully and painstakingly neutralized by Warrant Officer Ng and her team; the sensor towers duly disappeared in a searing blue-white flash as the massive demolition charges laid by Michael’s teams were fired by tightbeam laser command. Ribot smiled for a second as he imagined the Hammer after-action analysis teams struggling to work out just how 387 and 166 had managed to get so close without being detected by Hell-14’s sensors. The bastards would be even more puzzled as they tried to work out how two light scouts had apparently each gotten four Merlin antistarship missiles onboard. After all, everyone knew that Federated Worlds light scouts could carry only a maximum of twelve of the smaller and much less capable Mamba missiles.
Even as Ribot enjoyed the prospect of angry and confused Hammers, hatches whipped open on the flanks of the two ships, and in a matter of seconds hydraulic missile dispensers had deployed 387’s full complement of short-range Mambas. Moments later, the two ships deployed a small cloud of active ship decoys, each one mimicking the emissions profiles of 387 and 166.
Forlorn though it might be, the attack was on.
Ribot grunted in satisfaction as he watched the holovids blank out as the intense light of a swarm of exhaust plumes momentarily overwhelmed the holocams, mass drivers lighting off to accelerate the salvo and its decoy cloud toward New Dallas. He knew full well that it wasn’t much of a salvo as salvos went, but at least they’d give the Hammers in New Dallas something to think about.
Mother’s emotionless tones reported the launch. “Missiles away. Target New Dallas.”
Ribot intervened. “Mother, hold lasers until they’ve woken up. If we go active now, they’ll pick us out of the decoy cloud.” Fed active ship decoys were very good but not so good that they could mimic the awesome power of an antistarship laser.
“Mother, roger.”
Then it was time for 387 and 166 to show their hands.
Flanked by ship decoys doing their best to look like the real thing, the two ships erupted into life, main engines spewing blue-white tails of driver efflux, speed rapidly building under the thrust of a maximum-g tactical burn.
With his neuronics patched into the command plot, Michael waited, suited up with nowhere to go and nothing to do. All he could do was sit and worry, watching anxiously as the four antiship lasers mounted by 387 and 166 slowly chewed away at New Dallas.
He sighed in frustration as Mother faithfully reported the near futility of it all. The lasers were doing their job, burning off heavy frontal armor, but only by the centimeter, and the Hammer ship had meters of the damn stuff. All the while, New Dallas was turning ponderously toward them, untroubled by the light scouts’ attack. The x-ray antiship lasers carried by light scouts were good, and their beam diffusion was minimal at such close range. But Hammer ceramsteel armor was also good, and the heavy cruiser had plenty of it to spare.
Well, Michael consoled himself, all 387 had to do was keep the Hammer ships’ attention away from the incoming Fed warships and it would have done its job.
The good news was that the lights scouts’ armor was holding up well despite the best efforts of the Hammer ships to burn their way through it, which by rights they should have been well on their way to doing. By Fed standards, the performance of the Hammers’ lasers was very poor, to the point where, as Holdorf put it, they were giving 387’s bows only a light all-over tan rather than the third-degree burns they should have been dishing out.
To cap it all, 387’s Krachov microshrouds, pumped out in a never-ending stream from forward-mounted dispensers, were having some success in attenuating the lasers’ destructive force even if the tiny disks lasted only seconds before the lasers overwhelmed them. But thankfully, there were an awful lot of disks.
That man Krachov was a fucking genius, Michael thought gratefully. He would make a point of buying him a beer if he ever emerged alive from what was beginning to look worryingly like a suicide mission. Michael felt powerless as nail by nail the Hammers slowly banged down the lid on 387’s coffin, a strange sense of resignation coming over him as he faced the inevitability of his death.
Mother broke his thoughts. “Command, Mother. Missile launch from New Dallas. Estimate twelve missiles plus decoys. Initial vector analysis shows salvo split equally between 166 and 387.”
“Command, roger.” Ribot’s confusion was obvious to Michael. “Confirm missiles twelve.”
“Confirmed. Missiles twelve. Six on 166 and six on 387.” Mother was emphatic.
Michael banged Petty Officer Strezlecki on the shoulder. “Stupid Hammer fuckheads have split the salvo, Strez. And the salvo’s badly underweight. Only twelve missiles. They could have launched hundreds of the damn things, for God’s sake. I wonder why.” Michael couldn’t conceal his relief. Six missiles gave them a chance at least, whereas without a miracle, a full missile salvo from New Dallas would have been the end.
Then it hit Michael. A small split salvo might be Hammer stupidity, but there was another, much less encouraging explanation.
Obviously Ribot had just had the same awful thought. “Mother, command. Could these be nukes?”
“Negative, command. Best estimate is conventional warheads. Hammer standard operating procedures preclude use of nuclear warheads this close to friendly installations. Electromagnetic pulse and residual radiation unacceptably high.”
Michael gratefully offered up a silent prayer of thanks. 387 might be small, but she was very tough, her inner titanium hull shock-mounted and her artgrav and active quantum-trap radiation screens good enough to shield the crew from the transient shock and radiation produced by a nuclear warhead burst as long it wasn’t too close. But nobody liked nukes, and if one got close enough, it was all over.