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Admiral Huen jerked involuntarily as the processor shut down the optics focused on Grissom Base – or what used to be the base. Bridge control boards flickered and some of the crew cursed, tapping at their consoles.
“I thought I said to make sure we were out of range of EMP,” Huen said mildly. He was not the type to raise his voice, which made his admonition all the more embarrassing.
“Sorry, sir,” the helmsman replied. “The explosion was much stronger than predicted for those weapons. Our hardening should have been enough.”
“Maybe the enemy forces contained something that created the spike,” mused the weapons officer. “Extra fissionables, or deuterium-tritium fuel.”
“Or even antimatter,” Sensors chimed in.
“In any case, in the future I expect more care,” Huen said. “Are we functional?”
“Yes, sir. Backups are effective.”
“Bring us in slowly over the...crater.”
Hovering ten kilometers up in the slight gravity, the large but fragile ship floated into position only a short distance off to one side of the hole in the ground that had replaced the center of the base. Some outlying buildings, and a lot of the Aardvark pads, had survived, but everything that had made Grissom base itself was gone. The central park, the Quarter, the Marine and Aerospace barracks, the family housing units and recreation spaces: annihilated. The heavy weapons emplacements in a ring around the base were twisted and melted, though their control centers beneath might have survived.
“Find a place to set us down, helm. Make sure it’s firm. That heat and shock might have destabilized the ground.”
“Aye aye, sir. I’ll be ready to lift us if we settle too much.”
“Perhaps the Aardvark pads would make for a firmer landing...at your discretion.” Huen knew he was micromanaging, but his confidence in his helmsman had been rattled, and he found it difficult not to.
“Aye aye, sir.”
Almost half an hour of careful hunting went by before they settled slowly onto Callisto near the most intact piece of the base. Guns had enjoyed a small workout as scattered enemies popped out from behind cover or dug themselves out of holes and fired at Artemis. While her lasers were small for a warship, they still outranged and overpowered the hand weapons or even the beetle turrets of the handful of survivors, and so quickly fried every one of them.
“Stay vigilant, Guns. We can’t be sure there aren’t more of them.” Huen sat back in the Chair and thought. “Get our Marines out there for a recon in force. I want every one of those things dead. And get me the XO.”
“Auxiliary control here,” the executive officer answered over the comm a moment later.
“Ms. Rikard, stand down auxcon and get a team together to plan and execute actions to restore as much function to whatever’s left of this base you can, and start figuring out how we’ll safely open up those bunkers. Artemis will have to do some heavy lifting again, and they’ll be depending on us.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Now Sensors,” Huen went on, “see what you can get us off the EarthFleet net and check the battle status. And Schaeffer, now that we’re down, go to my quarters and brew the bridge some tea and some coffee. I suspect we are in for a long day.”
Schaeffer pressed his lips together. “What about Shan, sir?”
Huen held his steward’s eyes for a moment. “We will mourn our dead later. For now, do your duty.”
