Ferreira shot out of the lander, her maneuvering pack driving her hard and fast toward the door of the personnel access facility, the spacers of her scratch assault team strung out behind her in an untidy, wavering line. Chief Chua and Lomidze brought up the rear, crash bags held tight.
Making his way up to the Ghost’s flight deck, Michael commed Kallewi.
“Okay. Ferreira and a team of spacers are on their way to help out. Call sign Alfa Bravo. She’ll let you know when they’re in place. On your mark, they’ll attack the blocking force from behind. Disengage, get your guys past, and all run like hell for the Ghost. Ferreira will leave demolition charges to slow the Hammers down. Okay?”
“Roger that, sir. Sounds like one hell of a plan,” Kallewi said, unable to conceal his relief.
“Yeah, it is. Just make it work,” Michael said, dropping into a spare seat and strapping in.
There was nothing more to be done to help the beleaguered marines, so he turned his attention back to the command and threat plots. There were no surprises there. The latest Hammer task group sent to protect SuppFac27 had dropped precisely where Carmellini had said it would; now the ships were turning inward to point their bows directly at Reckless. Ranged around the task group hung a cloud of missiles that was growing in size with every new missile salvo dumped into space. Michael drew a long, ragged breath. It would not be long before those missiles were committed to the attack; he prayed Reckless kept the Hammers’ attention long enough for them to get away. He tried not to think what the Hammers would do to him if he fell into their hands.
Michael commed Warfare. “All set?”
“Reckless is under way.”
“Good luck,” Michael said, realizating that when Reckless was destroyed-and she would be-he and his crew would be alone, marooned in Hammer space, deep inside an uncharted reef with only a heavy assault lander to get them home. He was no believer in miracles, but he was beginning to think he was going to need a bag of them to pull this one off. Disconsolate, he watched Reckless pull away, her only protection a cloud of decoys inside a Krachov shroud, rail guns her only weapons.
Michael watched sickened as Reckless’s massive bulk dwindled into the distance, the ship going to emergency power as soon as she was clear of Caesar’s Ghost, accelerating away on twin pillars of flame. She was a good ship; he would be sorry to lose her and even sorrier to lose Warfare and the rest of the AIs. He had built relationships with all of them. Mother, Warfare, Kubby, and Kal might not be human, but they were characters in their own right, and it was hard not to feel a sense of loss.
He patched his neuronics into one of the tacbots covering the lobby. Kallewi’s problem was obvious. A large force of Hammer planetary defense troopers had pushed back the marines Kallewi had positioned to keep his exit route clear; they now controlled the lobby, firing indiscriminately at the marines from behind the cover of the security station. To attempt to cross the lobby was to commit suicide. Kallewi was stalemated. That was the bad news. The good news was that Ferreira’s team was in place.
“Assault Leader, Alfa Bravo,” Ferreira said. “We’re in position. Ready to go on your mark.”
“Alfa Bravo, stand by,” Kallewi replied. “On three, go, go, go!”
Ferreira’s attack took the Hammers by surprise, grenades exploding among their tightly packed ranks with devastating effect, the carnage made worse when her team followed up with sustained bursts of rifle fire, the rounds ripping with brutal ease through troopers blown out of cover. Kallewi did not hang around to watch the slaughter. His marines broke cover in a desperate dash for the safety of the passageway leading back to the asteroid surface. They nearly made it, but a Hammer trooper managed to squeeze off a burst that took one of Kallewi’s marines in the leg, spinning her out of control and into the laser-cut rock wall of the lobby a few meters short of the exit.
Ferreira did not hesitate. Emptying her rifle at the Hammer, she lunged forward, her momentum unchecked by a lucky shot that ripped through her left arm. Throwing her gun away, she grabbed the marine with her bad arm and the safety line with her good one, pulling the two of them out of the firefight and into safety, the legs of the marine’s suit spewing gas, blood, and lurid green wound foam in equal measures.
“Withdraw,” Ferreira shouted, “withdraw! Bienefelt, Carmellini, set those charges. And someone slap a patch on our suits before we run out of gas.”
The spacers needed no encouragement. Not all the Hammers had been cut down, and reinforcements were arriving. Recovering their composure, Kallewi’s marines began to fight back, pouring rifle fire into the lobby, their bullets smacking into the rock walls. Shielded by a second shower of grenades, the Feds pulled back past the hunched figures of Bienefelt and Carmellini while they packed demolition charges into the frame around the inner air lock door.
“Charges set,” Bienefelt said. “Fused twenty seconds.”
“Fire them and get the hell out,” Ferreira said, her voice tight with pain, pushing the wounded marine at Chief Chua.
Bienefelt and Carmellini wasted no time, clearing the personnel access facility close behind Lomidze and Chua as they struggled to push the marine into the safety of a crash bag and get back to the lander at the same time. When the last spacer had crossed the threshold into the lander’s cargo bay, the personnel access facility shivered, a transient cloud of smoke and flame boiling out of the doors before vanishing into space.
Sedova wasted no time closing the cargo bay ramp.
“Hold on,” she shouted the instant Trivedi confirmed that everyone had made it back safely. Without any urging from Michael, she rammed the Ghost’s engines to full power, driving the lander in a skidding turn to place the asteroid’s massive bulk between them and the Hammers before heading into Devastation Reef.
Michael patched his neuronics into the reconsats tracking Reckless as he made his way up the Ghost’s flight deck, throwing himself into a spare seat. It was a heartbreaking sight; around the doomed ship-the last of Battle Fleet Lima to fight and die that awful day-space sparkled as Reckless fought its final battle, salvo after salvo falling on the dreadnought, the searing heat of proximity-fused fusion warheads stripping armor off, rail-gun slugs slamming home to blow huge craters into her armor, her hull wreathed in a ghastly death shroud of ionized armor.
Michael cut the holovid feed. He could not watch anymore, so he turned his attention back to the threat plot, the latest Hammer arrivals an ugly splash of red sprawled across the screen. The big question still sat there, unanswered: Would they come after Caesar’s Ghost?
Michael took a long, careful look at the plot. Whatever the reason, the Hammers showed not even the slightest interest in Caesar’s Ghost. The ships of Hammer-7 focused on Reckless; every missile and rail-gun slug they fired had just that one target. Not that Michael blamed them: He would be concentrating on a heavy cruiser with a death wish inbound under emergency power; that much suicidal mass could inflict an awful lot of damage. The Hammers did not even bother to lock the Ghost up with fire control radar, nor did they send a few missiles its way. Not that worrying what the Hammers might do made any difference; if they came after Caesar’s Ghost, there was nothing he could do about it. Heavy landers were tough but not tough enough to keep out even a small salvo of Eaglehawk missiles. Their best bet was to run, hoping Reckless convinced the Hammers that they had better things to do than chase after a single fleeing assault lander that was doomed to die in the uncharted wastes of Devastation Reef.