Graham Paul - The Battle of the Hammer Worlds

In the absence of any nuclear threat, Constanza had adopted what space warfare strategists called the shell. She withdrew the bulk of her forces to be close to Terranova in planetary nearspace, concentrating her ships where they could best support one another. Out deep along the most likely attack vectors were smaller groups of ships made up of heavy escorts with a scattering of light escorts to fill in the numbers. Constanza was hoping to get lucky. If she did, the escorts would get close enough to ambush the Hammers as they dropped out of pinchspace. Luck was not all she was relying on, though. Constanza would use a far-flung network of remote sensors to give her enough warning to allow her to move her ships within the shell around Terranova to meet the oncoming attacks head on. All standard stuff and fine so long as one was facing a standard attack.

Oh, well, Michael thought resignedly, Fellsworth and the warfare training department had done their best. Now it was up to Constanza.

All of a sudden, things began to happen, and fast.

“Command, sensors.”

“Command.”

“Multiple positive gravitronics intercepts, Sector 2. Grav wave pattern suggests pinchspace transition imminent. Vector appears nominal for grazing run past Terranova.”

“Command, roger.”

Michael watched, fascinated. Constanza and her team began the intricate game of three-dimensional chess that was space warfare. She would assume this first attack was not the major attack. Most likely, the ships would drop and unload every piece of ordnance they could, their fire control solutions based on targeting data acquired from surveillance drones loitering out in farspace. Then, before the forces converging on them got close enough to pose a problem, the attackers would jump back into pinchspace. Standard operating procedure for a Hammer attack and intended to sound out the opposition, so no surprises there. Chief Ichiro had pointed out that one of the great weaknesses of the Hammer was its military commanders’ fondness for standard operating procedures, an assumption that Constanza had been more than happy to accept without challenge.

“Command, sensors. Multiple ship drops Sector 2, range 250,000 kilometers. Thirty-five ships. Stand by identification.”

Within seconds, sensor AIs on hundreds of FedWorld ships began turning terabytes of raw data vacuumed out of space by their active and passive sensors into useful tactical data. It was a quick process; the result was an ugly mass of bright red vectors painted on the flag combat data center holovids. The Hammer attack quickly took shape; feverishly, Constanza and her team worked to make sure Ishaq ’s fleet battle management AI had the situation under control. Orders poured out across laser tightbeam tactical networks to move ships into position, coordinate missile and rail-gun salvos, integrate radar and laser jamming, and manage the flood of decoys on their way to baffle and confuse the incoming Hammers.

“Command, sensors. Multiple positive gravitronics intercepts, Sector 3. Grav wave pattern suggests pinchspace transition imminent. Vector is nominal for grazing run past Terranova.”

Michael could almost see Constanza relax.

Hammer standard operating procedures would have this as the main attack, though one of their more creative commanders might have thrown in a few more diversionary attacks to keep the opposition under pressure and off balance. So far, Constanza had not gone too far wrong. For once, her usual urge to override her subordinate commanders seemed well under control, and, with the usual chivvying all AIs needed to get it right, the fleet battle management AI had the right ships going to the right places to deal with the two attacks now driving hard toward Terranova.

“Command, sensors. Multiple ship drops Sector 3, range 260,000 kilometers. Seventy-five ships. Stand by identification.”

By then, Constanza’s body language was easy to read. “This has to be it,” she announced confidently to one of her team as the holovids arrayed around the combat information center blossomed with a new set of red vectors. “This is the primary attack.”

Ship sensors were tracking upward of a hundred Hammer ships as they ran planetward, wave after wave of missiles and decoys behind walls of rail-gun slugs driving on ahead. Their ceramsteel armor was beginning to boil off as FedWorld antistarship lasers flayed their hulls.

In response, Ishaq ’s external holocams showed the hundreds of FedWorld Merlin long-range heavy missiles on their way to meet the attackers, the mass of searingly white-bright shafts of fire driving the Merlins onward, punctured by yellow-red blooms of ionized gas as Hammer lasers and area defense missiles began to rip missiles out of space. Closer in, Hammer missiles began to die, too, as Fed missiles started to chop the Hammer attack to pieces.

Slowly the tide began to swing in favor of the Feds. Missiles and rail-gun salvos clawed their way through the storm of defensive fire put up by the Hammer ships. The Hammer’s close-in defenses-short-range missiles, antimissile lasers, and chain guns-were being overwhelmed by a combination of speed and coordination overlaid by carefully crafted jamming and spoofing to blind and confuse them.

Then the Hammers began to lose ships. The first to go was a Jackson class light cruiser. A single Merlin missile tore a gaping hole in the ship’s ceramsteel armor left damaged by an earlier rail-gun salvo, the warhead’s plasma jet striking deep to reach a fusion power generator. Milliseconds later, the generator lost containment. Half a second after that, the hull gave way under the enormous pressure and the aft end of the ship blew wide open, spewing ice-crystal clouds out into the vacuum of space. The ship was dying now. As it died, it began to spit lifepods in all directions.

More Hammer ships began to die as the Fed response ground the Hammer attack into ionized gas, the counterattack relentless. The space around the Hammers became a mass of shattered ships surrounded by lifepods, like so many fireflies with their double-pulsed orange strobes. Constanza could not contain herself. Getting out of her chair, she overrode the fleet battle management AI. “Too cautious,” she muttered, “too damn cautious. Time to go in hard for the kill.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, without any attempt to consult her team or the battle management AI, she threw her reserves in the attack and ordered the last of her heavy units to engage. Her fist punched the air. Every shred of body language betrayed her conviction that this was the time to destroy the Hammer attack.

Michael leaned across to Fellsworth. “Even though she doesn’t know what we know, surely that’s a mistake, sir? She’s committed all the forces she needed to deal with the Hammer attack. There’s no need to assign more. Now she’s got very little in reserve.”

Fellsworth nodded, her face impassive.

With her remaining heavy cruisers accelerating hard toward the incoming Hammers, the sensor management center crashed Constanza’s party.

“Command, sensors. Multiple positive gravitronics intercepts, Sector 6. Grav wave pattern suggests pinchspace transition imminent. Vector is nominal for grazing run past Terranova.”

Constanza stiffened. “Sensors. Confirm Sector 6.”

“Confirmed. Sector 6.”

Constanza shifted to a private circuit. Michael would have to access the voicecomm datalogs after the COMEX to see what was said, but it was clear from the command team’s body language that nobody could work out what the new attack meant. Coming from below Terranova’s orbital plane, it was developing at right angles to the attacks that were in progress. Confusingly, whatever this attack was, it was not consistent with normal Hammer operating procedures.