Ribot had watched impassively as the Hammer ships had finally swung bows onto 387.
Now we’re in for it, he thought. Any moment now, any moment now. It looked like the heavy patrol ship Gore would be first to get a rail-gun firing solution. She was, followed a good twenty seconds later by Arroyo and MacFarlane. But Gore’s command team, clearly at one and the same time overexcited and overconfident, couldn’t wait. They should have.
“Command, Mother. Rail-gun launch from Gore. Target 387.”
“Why 387?” Ribot mumbled as fear crunched his stomach into a tightly packed ball. This was getting horribly serious. “Command, roger.”
“Command, Mother. Rail-gun launches from Arroyo, target 387, and MacFarlane, target 166.”
“Command, roger. I don’t think they like us,” Ribot said, mouth dry and heart pounding at the thought of what the rail-gun swarms launched by Gore and Arroyo could do to 387.
Hosani nodded. She could hardly think given the terrible certainty that she was eking out her last minutes, that she and everyone onboard were doomed. It was only by an enormous effort of will that she kept going. “You can say that again, skipper. I have the horrible feeling that we are going to get more than our fair share,” she said shakily.
“Command, Mother. Multiple rail-gun launches. Shark, target 387. Cougar, target 166.”
“So where the fuck is New Dallas?” Holdorf asked rhetorically. “Surely she doesn’t want to miss the party.”
“Give the fat bitch time, Lucky, give the fat bitch time. I’m sure she’ll get to us.” Maria Hosani’s voice was tight. By her calculations, they had six Hammer missiles and hundreds of thousands of rail-gun slugs inbound, all due on target in a matter of minutes. Each slug had a kinetic energy equal to damn near 600 kilograms of high explosive and was focused on an area considerably smaller than the end of her little finger. That made-her brow furrowed as she did the math-200 kilotons of high explosive give or take, and all heading for her. She cursed silently. With the best will in the world, she couldn’t see how 387 was going to get out alive, a conclusion absolutely reinforced by an unshakable conviction that even if 387 made it, she wasn’t going to.
Hosani damned her Iranian ancestry. Too many mystics in the bloodline.
“Command, Mother. Speed now 80,000 kph. At pinchspace jump speed in three minutes.”
“Command, roger. Warn propulsion that I’m going to jump 387 and 166 together as soon as we can.”
“Mother, roger.”
“If we live that long, that is,” Hosani commed Holdorf.
“I’m not called Lucky for nothing, Maria, so have faith,” Holdorf commed back.
“Command, Mother. Vector analysis of incoming salvos confirms very low probability of slug impact. 166’s AI concurs. Time on target has been inadequately synchronized. Ripple timing and swarm geometry are very poor. Confirms THREATSUM assessment that Hammer fire control discipline is weak.”
“Command, roger.”
Ribot took a deep breath to try to slow his body down. Hammer fire control discipline might be weak, but just how 387 was going to duck and weave its way clear of the incoming rail-gun slugs was a question he could only hope Mother had a damn good answer to. Apart from a nearly overwhelming urge to run away and hide, he sure as hell didn’t.
In her flag combat data center deep within the heavy cruiser Al-Jahiz, Vice Admiral Jaruzelska came to her feet as she cleaned up after the pinchspace drop, her eyes fixed on the command plot as the flag AI got the tactical situation settled down into some semblance of order.
She couldn’t believe what she was seeing, but there it was, plain as day.
Her chief of staff interrupted her shocked study of the command plot. “Do you see what I see, sir?”
“I do, and I don’t believe it. The crazy, crazy bastards.” Jaruzelska could not keep the intense pride she felt out of her voice as she watched the hopelessly one-sided battle unfolding on the other side of her primary target, Hell’s flotilla base.
“But thank God for it, Admiral. If they hadn’t gone in, those fuckers might have had us on toast. We could have dropped right into a rail-gun swarm. I’ve ordered the task group to engage with lasers. The rail guns and missiles can take care of the flotilla base.”
“Concur. I just hope it helps.”
Any hope that New Dallas’s rail-gun swarm would be delayed until after her missiles had arrived died as the huge ship finally completed its turn.
Eyes fixed on the New Dallas, Michael felt like a small child watching a cobra. The laborious and painfully slow maneuver had taken a lifetime, the maneuvering systems spewing furious jets of reaction mass as they pushed the ship’s unwieldy bulk around to bring her forward rail-gun batteries to bear on 387 and 166.
Heavy cruisers had many advantages in the business of space warfare, but agility was not one of them, Michael thought.
As the huge black bulk of the New Dallas settled onto her attack vector, brief flashes of reaction mass spurting out as she fine-tuned her rail-gun launch, Ribot zoomed 387’s holocams in close. He could see every detail of the two pinlike rows of rail-gun and decoy ports stretching from one side to the other across the otherwise black nothingness of the Hammer ship’s stealth bows. They were all pointed directly at 387 and 166. Ribot’s heart pounded. Who’s going to get it? he wondered. Then New Dallas fired the swarm, searing blue-white dots rippling out from the ship’s centerline.
“Command, Mother. Rail-gun launch from New Dallas. Swarm split to target 387 and 166.”
“Thank you, you Hammer motherfucker, thank you very much,” Michael cursed under his breath. But at least the stupid bastards had split the swarm, and that meant that only 96,000 slugs were heading their way, spread out by the time they arrived at 387 across a 40-square-kilometer front. Taking them for granted? he wondered. How stupid could you get. Try that in a Fed command exercise and you would get your ass kicked hard and justifiably so. Nonetheless, add in thousands of decoys and Mother was going to have her work cut out to keep 387 out of trouble.
Holdorf’s excited shout beat Mother to it. “I don’t believe it, skipper,” he yelled. “They’re turning; the bastards are bloody well turning away. They’ve fallen for Kawaguchi’s decoy attack.”
Ribot’s heart thudded in his chest as hope flared for the first time since the Hammers had dropped. “Shit, Leon! Are you sure?” Ribot stared at the command plot, desperately praying that 387’s navigator was right. “By God,” he said finally. “I think you’re right. Mother, you confirm?”
“Confirmed, command. But not Gore. She remains on targeting vector.”
“Command, roger. Mother, any chance the New Dallas and the heavy escorts will get off a salvo from their stern batteries?” Ribot tried unsuccessfully to keep the edginess out of his voice. Together, the three heavy ships in the Hammer group could fire close to 400,000 slugs from their after rail-gun batteries. Even if they targeted both of the light scouts and got their swarm geometry and ripple timing only half-right, it really would be all over.