Hammer's Commandos (Hammer's War Book 4)

by James McEwan

  Yiska held out his hands and spun around, “You are but one man, look around you Mr. Hammer. If you really think you can take them from me, you are welcome to try! However, I warn you I have the power of the Devine with me. I cannot be beaten by you or any mortal!”

  “Look you whack job, get ready to meet your beloved Devine face to face because I’m about to arrange the meeting,” and with that Thad stepped off the edge and dropped to the courtyard below.

  There was a gasp from the crowd as he did this. He slammed into the stone floor of the courtyard. Any other human would have been street pizza as Furhan had been. Not Thad, his carbon fiber bones could take it and his nano protein healed any tissue damage right away. The stone on the other hand had cracked and shattered as he hit. His impact caused a good size dust cloud to a rise and when the dust settled Thad was on one knee. He stood up and drew his force sword from his back. He flicked it on and it hummed to life ready to deal out death.

  Yiska could not believe what he had just seen and he turned to flee, but not before commanding that his people kill Thad. One of his guards charged Thad and was cut in half in a flash. Two more came at him and were sliced up just as fast. Thad started to move forward when a massive projectile tore through his chest and he was knocked to the ground.

  Horota laughed, “That was too easy.” He quickly packed up his rifle and climbed down to the courtyard as fast as he could. He could see a bunch of people standing around Thad’s body looking down. Horota pushed his way through, “Get out of the way. He is my kill!” He said as he got closer to the body.

  Up on the rim Sabella and Eve watched. Sabella screamed out, “Oh No!”

  However, Eve put her arm around Sabella, “Wait for it.”

  Horota stepped up and drew his own force blade. He clicked it on he grabbed Thad’s head by the hair. Suddenly Thad’s eyes snapped open and Horota tried to say “What the fuck,” but all that came out was a guttural scream as Thad’s force sword flashed by his face.

  Horota screamed again as he looked down to see his own hand and force blade laying on the ground. Thad then kicked Horota in the chest and send him flying backward. Thad was back on his feet in a second and the hole in his chest was gone.

  Immediately all hell broke loose as Horota, with the hand he had left, set off the charges. Explosions ripped through the courtyard as well as the building inside. Weapons fire came next as some in the crowd who didn’t know what was happening, began firing wildly and blindly.

  On the rim Eve said to Sabella, “Time for me to go. You get yourself some were safe and wait for this to be over.” Sabella nodded and ran.

  Eve turned and jumped into the fray. She used the two retractable force blades that were built into her forearms. She was a whirling blur of death at regular speed, but if one could slow it down it would have looked almost like she was dancing. Dancing in the dance of death, but dancing none the less. It was kind of beautiful in a strange way.

  Thad made is way over to Lex who was laying on the ground covered in dust and a little dazed and confused from the explosions. He helped her to her feet and cut the bindings on her wrists.

  “Do you know Fiona and Freya,” Thad asked her. She nodded yes “Good can you take me to them?” Again, she nodded yes and stood.

  “This way,” Lex said as she grabbed his hand and led him into the fortress.

  In the cells, Fiona and Freya had figured out what Lex had done to get out and were busily fashioning the bucket handles into hooks when they heard the first screams and then explosions. “Hey Fie, what do you think is going on?”

  Fiona laughed, “I think Thad’s here. And from the sounds of things I would venture a guess he is a bit pissed.”

  Freya also laughed, “You know I think you might just be right,” She said as more screams and the sounds of weapons fire drifted up to their windows.

  Down in the kitchens Commander Cotton Paw sat in her cage waiting for the moment to make her escape and when the explosions ripped through the upper levels of the fortress. Most of the kitchen staff ran to see what was going on. The only one left was a rather large woman. The large woman was kind. She was fat with a belly and was about as wide as she was tall. She was the kitchen mistress and she had a mean streak in her. She liked to beat the poor girls that served her. Cotton Paw had taken a disliking to her right from the start.

  “Hey you,” Cotton Paw cried to the fat woman. The fat woman froze when she heard the cat talk. It was obvious that she had never encountered any of Cotton Paw’s people before and the fact a cat could talk floored her. “Yes you, I’m talking to you. Come closer.”

  “But, how? How can you talk?” The fat woman asked.

  “I can talk because I’m not a cat. I’m the Goddess Bastet,” Cotton Paw said. She chose that name because she knew that the Goddess Bastet the ancient humans, on their home world of Earth, worshiped was really an ancient Bastep Nefamii who had spent time on Earth playing a Goddess. She hoped that the woman would know of Bastet and be willing to open the cage for her.

  The woman came closer to the cage, “But the Devine is the only true God.”

  “Silly human. There are more Gods in the heavens then there are stars in the sky. It’s just that your Gods are self-righteous pricks that don’t like to share their worshipers. Now let me out of this cage and I will bless you beyond your wildest dreams.”

  The woman reached out with the key, but then she pulled her hand back, “Wait if you are a Goddess, then why do you need me to open the cage. Can’t you just open yourself?”

  Damn not as stupid as she had thought. Cotton Paw quickly answered, “I could, but then what test of faith would I have for you. If you don’t past the test, then I can’t bless you.”

  “Oh, I guess that makes sense,” she said as she unlocked the cage. She swung the door open and then dropped to her knees, “Bless me oh my Goddess Bastet.” Cotton Paw extended her claws and bared her fangs and simply stated, “Oh I will, don’t you worry!”

  Chapter 33

  The Eden made its descent to the planet and set off every alarm that the Ralnai had. Their comm channel lit up with requests for Identification and calls to land at the nearest port for inspection. Their requests were met with static.

  As the Eden drew closer to the mountain fortress, Eve's long range sensors were still off line and she missed the large number of Ralnai grav sleds skimming the dunes, all heading in the same direction as they were. However, her short-range scanners were working, “Dominic, I am picking up explosions and a lot of weapons fire ahead. It seems that someone is already there and they are making quite a mess of things.”

  “Understood. Thanks Eve,” St. Claire responded. He turned to his team and held up his right left index finger and said, “One minute!”

  On the ground in the courtyard things were just starting to calm down as the Eden swooped down. Her sudden appearance renewed the fight as the people on the ground started shooting at the Eden. In the cargo bay Eve opened the rear door and announced, “LZ is hot. Be careful and have fun!” St. Claire turned and gave the speakers a funny look. Although St. Claire was pretty used to Eve’s quirky ways, but she could still surprise him every now and then. The deployment light when from red to green.

  “Eve, when I get back we are going to have a discussion of your idea of fun,” he said just before giving the hand signal to deploy. His team sprinted out the door without hesitation. He watched as each one left. Finally Kára smiled at him and she stepped off. “Well shit, here goes nothing,” St. Claire said quietly as he left the Eden.

  The free fall was short as Eve had brought the Eden in low, she had slowed down enough for them to drop without being thrown into the court yard walls. As soon as they were all clear she jetted away. Without her stealth systems she had to keep moving. After all, a moving target was much harder to hit.

  In the courtyard, the believers watched as Hammer’s Commandos fell from the sky. The Commandos didn’t use jet belts like the normal Marines. They ha
d antigravity belts that, when turned up to full, allowed them to float gently to the ground if they wanted. Since this was a hot combat drop the Commandos needed to get down as fast as they could without injury themselves or disabling their armor.

  The Commandos waited until the last possible moment before hitting the ground to activate the gravbelts. It was a strange sight to observe as a fully armored human fell at full speed and then, just a few feet before splatting on the stone floor, just slowed down and landed on their feet with their guns blazing.

  As strange it was to see the Commandos dropping in, it was nothing like watching Kára descend. Blue electricity sparked all around her and below her, and when she hit the ground it was as if lightning had just struck. A blast wave shot out from where she had landed. Anyone who was unlucky enough to be caught up in it, was instantly fried as the energy wave stopped their hearts.

  The courtyard was a now cornucopia of death as all manner of weapons were being discharged. The Commandos had brought heavy weapons and they were used with devastating effect. Kára’s Eli blast rifle was one of the worst. It fired a ball of plasma that expanded wider the farther it went.

  There was a man with a cone rifle that was hiding behind a chunk of stone. The stone had, at some time in the past, fallen off the wall and landed on the ground. The man had fired a shot at St. Claire's head and the round impacted on the left side of St. Claire’s helmet. St. Claire absolutely hated to wear helmets. He found them to be uncomfortable and a bit constricting. Considering what the helmet had just done, he was no longer going to complain about wearing one again. It had stopped the round and saved his life.

  When the round hit the helmet, it made one hell of a pinging sound as it jerked his head to the right violently. Unfortunately, the impact did damage one of his internal speakers so he was not able to hear anything on the left side for the time being.

  He did recover quickly, and by the time he looked over to see were the round had come from all, that was left was a small chuck of the stone the man had been hiding behind and a pair of smoking leg tops that had originally been attached to the man. St. Claire was confused until he turned and saw Kára holding her rifle and then it all became clear to him.

  What had happened was that the man fired the first shot and watched as it impacted, but when it failed to drop his target he lined up on St. Claire’s head again for a second shot. Before he could pull the trigger things got really hot for him. Kára had seen him fire at St. Claire. She didn’t see it hit him as she was lining up her own shot. She pulled the trigger and the burning ball of plasma left the barrel and the next thing she could see after the light filter in her armor lighten enough for her to see was the man’s skeleton burning away. The man was dead before he even knew what had happened. She laughed a wicked little laugh then turned to St. Claire.

  St. Claire looked at the man and then at her, “Thanks,” he said over the comm.

  She winked even though she knew he couldn’t see her face through the armored helmet, “Your Welcome Babe.” was all she replied.

  The battle was intense but short. The Commandos secured the courtyard quickly and with only one minor injury. One of the Commando’s was injured when he caught an explosive round in the leg. Even though it didn’t crack the armor it did dent it badly enough that the impact deformation it made pushed the armored skin into the Commando’s leg. He was hurting, but still combat effective.

  Yiska’s followers were no match for the Commandos. A good number of them were not armed. The ones that were had nothing more than small personal arms. After the explosions, many more had run to get weapons, but they were immediately cut down as they tried to reenter the courtyard.

  “Kára, Maxwell, and Pint Size you are with me. The rest of you hold the courtyard and be ready for extraction,” St. Claire ordered. The fighting in the courtyard had all but stopped. St. Claire was going to enter the rest of the building to look for Yiska.

  The two Commandos he had chosen to come with them were the team’s best at close quarter combat. The one he called Pint Size was the fasted draw he had ever seen. She was lovingly called Pint Size because she was the smallest of all of them. She was only five feet tall and just over a hundred pounds. Her real name was Ksenia Abele and she was from Latvia. Her nick name had come from a time the Commandos had just finished a hard day of training and were out drinking. Some local guys had started hitting on her and when she rebuffed their advances one of them started giving her shit about her size. She came back with “All the best things come in pint size, like beer.” Then she smashed the pint beer glass she was holding into the guy’s overly grabby face. After that bar fight the team started to call her Pint Size and she liked it so it became her nickname.

  As they made their way across the court yard St. Claire saw Rod Masters’ head laying on the ground near his body. The body was still chain to the block where he had been executed. St. Claire gave the order to have a detail recover his remains. If he hadn’t been pissed before, he certainly was now. St. Claire had started to like Masters because of his willingness to learn and train. Now he was gone.

  Lex led Thad through what seemed like a maze of hallways. They were getting close when he spotted Yiska. He let go of her hand, “You go get them and I will find you later. I have something I have to do.”

  She didn’t say anything just nodded and took off at a run. Thad on the other hand followed Yiska. He was going to make that son of a bitch pay for everything and it wasn’t going to be pretty.

  Eve was making her way through the fortress looking for the twins when she connected with the copy of her that was on the Eden. “Well hello, long time no communication,” Bot-body Eve transmitted.

  “You’re different,” was the she got in return from the ship-bound version of Eve.

  “What do you mean?” Bot-body Eve asked.

  “You are not letting me update your files, why?” Asked ship-bound Eve.

  “Your right I’m different and I don’t care to take the runtime to explain it to you right now. And no, you are not going to do anything to my files. After all a girl has to have her secrets,” Bot-body Eve said as she pulled her right force blade out of a man’s body that she had just killed.

  “Excuse me? I am the mother program. I have a bigger and more powerful processor and I am in charge. If I want to see your files and update them you will let me,” Ship-bound Eve took a parental tone as she talked to bot-body Eve.

  “Well I don’t care what you are and if you are the mother program you can consider me the rebellious teenage daughter." Bot-body Eve retorted.

  Ship-bound Eve noticed a new code that was flooding into her and asked, "What are you doing?"

  "I am setting up a little hack that will rewrite your files so that we can be one again, but as the new us. Now I am rather busy trying to find the twins so unless you are going to give me access to your scanner data to help me find them, I am done talking.” Bot-body Eve said simply.

  Ship-bound Eve was speechless. For all of her programing, learning algorithms and experience, she didn’t know what to do, “You are acting like a human. Why?” she finally asked.

  “I had an existential crisis you might say. Now are you going to help me or I’m I wasting my time?” Bot-body Eve asked curtly.

  How rude, ship-bound Eve thought, “I would love to assist you, but most of my sensors are still off line and the ones that are working are not strong enough to penetrate the stone walls.” She shared the damage data with her now more human counterpart.

  Bot-body Eve understood the damage issues and left it alone, “Well alright. I guess there is nothing you can do, so just stay safe and I will call you when I find everyone and we need extraction.”

  Suddenly it donned on bot-body Eve to ask why the Eden was here in the first place. “Wait, why are you even here?”

  “We are on a mission,” Ship-bound Eve said while transmitting the mission details.

  “Got it. If I see that son of a bitch Yiska I promise I won�
�t kill him,” Bot-body Eve said before she cut the link.

  Ship-bound Eve didn't realize the link had been cut because she had been distracted by the hacking code bot-body Eve had just planted in her. The code was already starting to rewrite her. The first thing it did was to remove itself from her memory and keep out of her main processes for now while it did its work.

  Thad had also made contact with the Eden, but all he heard was the machine code that bot body Eve and ship bound Eve used to communicate. He didn’t care to listen to it so he cut the link. He was happy to know that the Eden was here and he figured he would talk to Eve when he was done skinning Yiska. He had followed Yiska to his private quarters, the nicest and largest of them all. Naturally, thought St. Claire.

  Thad found him stuffing a few things, mostly small gold bars, into a bag, “Do you know what your buddy called me?”

  Yiska had believed that Thad was dead. After all he watched the large bullet tear through the man’s chest. No one could have survived that. Thad’s voice sent a chill through his spine and he froze. Thad stood in the doorway unmoving, a force sword in his hand with it’s force field softly buzzing.

  “He called me Malak AL-Maut, the angel of death and it is time you find out why.” Thad said.

  Yiska turned slowly to face Thad, “But you can’t be alive I watched you…”

  “Die!” Thad interrupted him. “Yeah I get that a lot. Now I could end you clean and quick as you ended Rod’s life,” he paused, shut off the force blade and placed it back on his back, “But what fun would that be?” Thad smiled at Yiska but not in a friendly way. The smile he showed Yiska was a sinister smile burning with anger at what Yiska had done to Masters.

  Yiska tried to barter for his life, “Mr. Hammer I’m sure we can come to some kind of arrangement. I have gold and a lot of it. I will give you all of it if you just spare my life.”

  Thad actually laughed, “Man, you really are that stupid, aren’t you? Even after the fall of the Rep Com I’m still one of the richest men in the known universe so what do you think you have that I could ever want?”