“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 attacks, the asteroid’s microgravity too weak to claw the debris back to ground.
Michael was not interested in gloating over the damage his rail guns had done. What he needed to confirm-and quickly-was the location of the main access down into SuppFac27. The schematics stolen from the Hammers showed a gaping tunnel cut down into the asteroid to allow the installation of heavy plant and equipment, and he needed to find it. The stolen schematics had identified the access as a pair of heavily armored doors framed by a massive plascrete portal, but where the hell was it?
Carmellini spotted it first, smacking a target icon on the main access a full five seconds before the optronics AI decided that yes, it really had found what it was looking for. Warfare wasted no time; the initial group of missiles fired their first stages, accelerating toward the portal. Molded into a single weapon, the missiles hit home, the plascrete framing the armored doors no match for chemex warheads blasting thin pillars of plasma deep into the asteroid, blowing enough rock away to leave a gaping crater that completely undermined one side of the portal.
Warfare sent the next missile on its way. Michael and the rest of the combat information center crew watched engrossed as it headed for the center of the crater, a gaping void bleeding thin skeins of vaporized rock back into space. With just meters left to run, the fusion warhead exploded. The flash of the blast boiled meters and meters of rock, plascrete, and armor off the portal, vaporizing hundreds of tons of mass into a massive ball of white-hot gas erupting back out into space. When it cleared, the blast had left the portal completely undermined on one side by a hellish inferno of red-hot molten rock spewing gouts of flaming gas into the vacuum.
“Aaaah,” Michael hissed softly, teeth bared in a rictus of savage joy when the holocam confirmed that the armored doors had been forced wide open by the blowback of exploding gas. The access tunnel into SuppFac27 lay open.
The remaining missiles followed in a line heading right for the tunnel entrance. Michael’s plan was simplicity itself. Destroying the antimatter plant by using missiles was impossible-it was buried too deep-but dropping missiles one after another as far down the main access tunnel as they would go before firing their fusion warheads would give SuppFac27’s defenders one hell of a shake, to the point, he hoped, where most would decide that self-preservation was the order of the day and flee for safety, leaving Kallewi and his marines a clear run in.
An instant before the first missile disappeared into the portal’s gaping blackness, Michael could not help himself. “Fire in the hole,” he shouted, and its warhead exploded, a seething cloud of rock and gas veined white-red by twisting jets of flame erupting outward.
One by one, the remaining missiles followed. By the time the last missile exploded, the access tunnel had been transformed into a hellish white-hot crater hundreds of meters across, belching vaporized rock out into space. “Oh, yeah,” Michael whispered, reveling in the sheer brute force of the attack. The poor bastards inside SuppFac27 would be suffering as tremor after tremor after tremor shook the rock tunnels close to the point of collapse in an unending earthquake. If that did not induce an overwhelming desire to flee in the minds of SuppFac27’s defenders, nothing ever would. He knew he would not be hanging around for tea and biscuits.
“Command, Warfare. Reckless in station. Clear to launch Caesar’s Ghost when ready.”
Michael checked quickly. Reckless was in station, her enormous bulk hanging motionless less than half a kilometer above the blasted surface of the asteroid. “Command, roger.” He flicked the command holovid to take the holocam feed from the reconsats.
Warfare had retasked them to keep tabs on one of SuppFac27’s personnel access stations. Michael liked the look of what he saw. The station’s squat shape-one of the few buildings to survive the dreadnoughts’ devastating rail-gun attacks-spewed an ice-loaded cloud. That meant only one thing: The shock waves from the missile attack on the main access portal had destroyed SuppFac27’s airtight integrity; the plant was venting humid air into space. Then a panicked flood of figures dressed in Day-Glo orange emergency space suits started to pour out of the building, bounding away in giant leaps; soon hundreds of orange blobs bounced across the asteroid’s surface like a collection of demented rubber balls. Where the hell were they all going? It was such a bizarre sight that Michael could not stop himself from laughing any more than the rest of the combat information center’s crew could.
“Enough, people,” he said, wishing he could wipe the tears from his eyes. “Ghost? We have confirmation that the personnel access station’s air lock is open. You ready?”
“Caesar’s Ghost is ready to go.”
“Roger, launch. Good luck.”
“Thanks. Launching,” Sedova replied laconically.
“Sensors.”
Carmellini swung around. “Sir?”
“We’re not out of the woods yet. If more Hammers come calling-and they sure as hell will-we’re going to need all the notice you can give us if we’re to have any chance of getting clear.”
“Roger that, sir.”
Caesar’s Ghost cleared Reckless and made a long swinging turn down to the asteroid’s surface before Sedova pulled the nose up sharply. She fired the belly thrusters, their efflux picking up orange blobs and tumbling them away in long, looping arcs, arms and legs flailing in desperate attempts to get back dirtside. Sedova made it look easy, the lander’s massive bulk coming to a dead stop scarcely a meter above the asteroid, right alongside the personnel access station. The instant it came to a halt, the rear cargo access door dropped, and Kallewi’s marines spilled out, the bulky black shapes of the three nuclear demotition charges strapped to their powered sleds close behind, a small swarm of gas-powered tacbots leading the way, the little spheres working overtime to zap the surveillance holocams that infested the place.