The Battle of the Hammer Worlds

by Graham Sharp Paul

  Michael nodded. “Yes, sir! First cut of the COMEX by 16:00 Friday.”

  “Good. Now, it’s a big job, so I’ve detailed Chief Petty Officer Ichiro and Petty Officer Bettany to help. Make the most of them. They are very good people.”

  Wednesday, July 7, 2399, UD

  Gravity Research Station Lima-5, deepspace

  Fleet Admiral Jorge left the fast courier ship and brushed past the small gaggle of officers who made up the formal welcoming party. A casual salute was his only acknowledgment.

  Professor Wendt was waiting for him by the door of the conference room.

  “Professor,” Jorge said curtly. “Ready?”

  “Yes, sir,” Wendt replied, ushering Jorge into a cramped room that was brilliantly lit and sparsely furnished. Jorge ignored the rest of Wendt’s team, a mixed bunch of men in white lab coats, their faces a mix of fear, tension, and exhaustion. Professor Wendt and what he had to say were the only things that mattered to him. He took his seat. “Let’s go.”

  “Right, sir. The purpose of this meeting is—”

  “Professor! I know why I’m here, so get to the point,” he snarled.

  Wendt gulped. “Yes, sir.” He took a deep breath before continuing. “As you know, the only thing delaying operational deployment of the Mark-48G warhead was the unacceptably high failure rate of its antimatter container.”

  Jorge’s eyes narrowed. He knew that. Why, he wondered, did people like Wendt find it so hard to cut to the chase?

  “Now,” Wendt continued, “we know we cannot make a fail-safe antimatter warhead. So our design objective has been to develop a warhead with an acceptably low risk of accidental detonation, even though that risk can never come even close to zero.”

  Jorge nodded. There was no avoiding it: Antimatter warheads were much more dangerous than the fusion and chemex warheads fitted to the missiles now in frontline service with Hammer warships. He waved for Wendt to continue.

  Wendt reached into a plasfiber box on the table in front of him. “And here it is.” He pulled out a metallic object the size of a shoe box. Its mirror-finished metallic surface was deeply scarred, and at some point it had been subjected to intense heat; one end was badly discolored by blue-black streaks.

  “This is the antimatter container from a Mark-48G warhead,” Wendt said, unable to keep the pride out of his voice. “This is a live operational container. It’s fully charged with antihydrogen, there’s no external power, and it’s still maintaining full containment. We recovered this one from a missile we test-fired last night, and as you can see, it has survived not only launch but impact with the target.”

  “Holy Mother of Kraa, Professor,” Jorge said finally. “Well done. All of you. By Kraa! Well done!” Then Jorge was on his feet, his face split side to side by a huge grin, his arm across the table to shake the hands of Wendt and his team. “By Kraa! This is great news, Professor.” His voice hardened. “This is for real? This is the real thing?”

  “Yes, it is,” Wendt said triumphantly. “Now, if you would like to look at the holo—”

  Jorge’s hand stopped Wendt in his tracks. “One second. Give it to me.”

  Wendt pushed the lump of metal across the table. Jorge picked it up. It was surprisingly heavy. He turned it over in his hands, marveling at the ingenuity of Wendt and his engineers, shocked that something so small could contain so much destructive energy. He shook his head in wonder. Then, without any warning, his arm went back, and he hurled the object into the rock wall behind Wendt, the heavy metal shape barely missing the man’s head. As the object crashed to the floor, Wendt and every member of his team flinched instinctively away from the threat, their faces white with shock.

  “Kraa!” one of them hissed softly. Wendt just stared in horror at Jorge as he struggled to recover his equilibrium.

  Jorge laughed out loud at the sight of grown men cringing in front of him. He nodded slowly as he sat down. “You know what, Professor? I think I believe you. I think it really is a live container from a 48G.”

  “It is, sir. Trust me, it is.”

  When the fast courier unberthed, Jorge allowed himself the luxury of a smile. It had been a good day, one of the best for a long time.

  But Wendt’s success told only part of the story. Ironically, the Feds—Kraa damn them—had played their part, and an important part, too. Jorge had no illusions about the Feds. Fed warships would thrash Hammer warships in most head-to-head fights. Their ships were too good, their sensors were too good, their weapon systems were too good, their people were too good, and they were not afraid to use their Kraa-damned AIs to devastating effect. Any way he looked at it—it pained him to have to admit the fact—the Feds were better than good. When it came to space warfare, they were the best in humanspace, and by a very respectable margin.

  Sadly for the Feds, there was a catch. Yes, the Feds were good and they knew it, but over time, that knowledge was highly but insidiously corrosive. After a while, success sapped the will to do better. Success blunted the urge to try harder. Success stifled innovation. Success encouraged politicians and politicking. Success made hard decisions easy to avoid, and why not? After all, with the best space fleet in humanspace, there was always time to stab your peers in the back before fixing things later. Wasn’t there?

  So, for a raft of reasons, antimatter had never been a high priority for the Feds, and Jorge had seen the intelligence reports to prove it. Even better, the Feds had no idea how successful the Hammer’s work on antimatter had been. That work was buried so deep that only a tiny handful of people outside the project knew of its existence; many of them had no idea how close the project was to success. Jorge had seen the internal security reports to prove that, too. He was pleased to know the Feds had not the faintest suspicion that tucked away on an obscure planet-sized asteroid in deepspace many light-years distant from the settled Hammer Worlds, antimatter labs and a production plant were working flat out to make the Fed’s much-vaunted military technology obsolete.

  Well, Jorge thought, trying not to feel too smug, those Kraa-damned Feds were about to find out what a terrible mistake that had been.

  Operation Cavalcade was on.

  Monday, July 19, 2399, UD

  FWSS Ishaq, Vijati Reef

  “Sensors, gravitronics.”

  “Sensors,” the duty sensor officer replied. She sounded bored.

  “Sir, we have a positive gravitronics intercept. Estimated drop bearing Red 5 Up 2. Designated track 775101. One vessel. Grav wave pattern suggests pinchspace transition imminent. Vector is nominal for Earth-FedWorld transit. Traffic schedule indicates the vessel is the Fed cargo ship Treaty of Paris en route Old Earth to Terranova, mixed cargo and passengers.”

  “Confidence?”

  “It’s 99.99 percent, sir.”

  “Helfort?” the duty sensor officer asked, looking to Michael for confirmation.

  “Confirmed, sir.” Michael was confident. The Treaty of Paris was on schedule to the minute.

  Satisfied, the duty sensor officer nodded. “Roger. Red 5 Up 2. Watch track 775101.”

  “Aye, aye, sir. Watch 775101.”

  The duty sensor officer looked as bored as she sounded. “Well,” Michael grumbled under his breath, “fair enough—maybe.” It was some ungodly hour in the early morning, the middle watch had dragged interminably, and the intercept would be the latest in an unbroken and utterly predictable succession of merchant ships. One by one, they had dropped out of pinchspace in a brief flash of ultraviolet to cross Vijati Reef, a rip in space-time hundreds of light-years wide and high but less than 800,000 kilometers deep, the gravitational anomaly creating a barrier in pinchspace no ship could ever cross.

  Michael pushed his holovid range scale out to a billion kilometers, well past Vijati Reef. The sight of the two hundred or so merchant ships making the crossing was breathtaking. Michael failed to understand how anyone could be bored with such a spectacle. Well, okay, he conceded. It might be a slow-moving show, but it still had a
fascination, even a magic about it. The ships’ positions were a mass of green diamonds painted onto black emptiness, their vectors probing out into interstellar space. Well beyond them, thrown out in a protective shell, were ranged a small array of tiny surveillance satellites, their simple optronics suites keeping an eye on the proceedings. Michael patched his neuronics into the master surveillance AI. All nominal, he noted. He turned back to the ships.

  On they came, one after another. Ships of all sizes—always spherical to maximize internal volume—from a hundred different planets of registration. They carried every material good known to humankind, along with thousands of people shuttling endlessly between the planets of humanspace.

  Of all the grav anomalies that infested humanspace, the Vijati was the most active, with tens of thousands of ships dropping out of pinchspace each year to make the crossing. It was nothing short of a miracle that accidents around the Vijati were so rare. Some merchant ship captains seemed to regard accurate navigation as an optional extra, something to do when more important problems—like scratching their asses—had been taken care of.

  “Sensors, gravitronics.”

  “Sensors.”

  “Track 775101 is about to drop. Stand by . . . there she is. Drop confirmed nominal for Earth-FedWorld transit.”

  Michael’s holovid brightened for a second with the ultraviolet flare of a starship dropping into normalspace. Within seconds, the sensor management center’s AI had integrated the information flooding in from Ishaq’s active and passive sensors to confirm that the latest arrival was indeed the Treaty of Paris. Michael had nothing more to do than listen in as the duty sensor officer made the ritual report confirming the drop to Ishaq’s combat information center.

  Michael stretched. In fifteen minutes, he could hand over the watch. That done, he would head straight for his bunk. What with the COMEX project given to him by Fellsworth and a twenty-four-hour duty as second officer of the day starting at 08:00, not to mention all the other crap junior officers in large capital ships were burdened with, sleep had been in short supply lately. He intended to make the most of the three hours he would get.

  Well, time to get his handover brief sorted out.

  Tuesday, July 20, 2399, UD

  Hammer Warship Obsidian, interstellar space

  From the combat information center of the deepspace light patrol ship Obsidian, Commodore Monroe watched the proceedings, his eyes fixed on the holovid tracking his six new q-ships. He would be damn glad when they got back to Kasprowitz. Hanging around in deepspace had never been his idea of a good time. Worse, the Obsidian’s ability to defend her new charges was limited. Yes, their new rail-gun systems worked, but he did not have the people to operate them. Until he did, his new acquisitions were big fat sitting ducks.

  The latest additions to the Hammer order of battle, their spherical bulk marking them out as merships, hung in interstellar space 70 light-years out from and due galactic south of Damnation’s Gate. With all navigation lights off, their anonymous dirt-gray hulls were barely visible as black cutouts etched from millions of stars scattered in all directions with dazzling extravagance. The only activity was the steady shuttling to and fro of Obsidian’s four space attack vehicles and two landers. Monroe’s fingers tapped out his impatience; transferring the q-ships’ Hammer crews was going well, but he could not help himself. He just wanted to be done and on his way.

  Monroe pushed away a momentary pang of anxiety. He had to admit that the chances of running into anyone else were tiny. The small sphere of deepspace they occupied was a long way from anything even remotely interesting to the rest of humankind. That, of course, was why it had been picked in the first place, and operational security had been tight.

  So far, so good.

  “Commodore, sir.”

  It was his chief of staff. “Yes, Captain?”

  “Just to let you know, sir. We’re ahead of schedule on the crew transfers, and I have confirmation from the engineers that all ships are online. We’ll be ready for vector realignment to set up for the jump back to Kasprowitz Base at 06:15.”

  “Good! The sooner we’re out of this Kraa-damned place, the better. Send to all ships. From commodore, stand by to execute ops plan Kilo Yankee Five at time 06:15.”

  “Roger, sir. Stand by to execute ops plan Kilo Yankee Five at time 06:15.”

  Monroe sat back as his small staff got things moving. Things were going well, though he wondered how long that would last. He hoped Fleet Admiral Jorge and his political masters knew what they were getting the Hammer into. The Feds were going to be awfully, awfully pissed when his ships started to rip the guts out of their interstellar trade routes.

  Saturday, July 24, 2399, UD

  FWSS Ishaq, Karovic Reef

  The forenoon watch had been pretty much the same as all the other watches Michael had stood, though he had been promoted. Deemed competent, he now ran the entire sensor management center when—somewhat to Michael’s surprise given that they were supposedly out hunting pirates—Ishaq was at cruising stations, two full levels of readiness below general quarters. He would have been more than happy with the promotion had it not been for the fact that it put him firmly in the firing line when Constanza came looking for someone to kick. Still, he consoled himself, at least he did not have to defer to officers who did little to conceal their lack of interest in the job at hand.

  By Michael’s rough calculations, he had watched well over four hundred merchant ships go through the routine of dropping out of pinchspace. The endless procession of spherical ships transiting this or that reef before jumping back into pinchspace had been interrupted only by the other ships of Task Group 225.2 as they and the Ishaq patrolled the FedWorld–Old Earth trade route. Michael sighed. Antipiracy patrols in response to a threat as vague as the one supposedly posed by the Karlisle Alliance—pirates nobody thought actually existed—were boring, and it was becoming a real struggle to stay keen and enthusiastic.

  Things on board Ishaq were not getting any better. On any other ship, Michael’s latest stint as second officer of the day would have been just a matter of trailing around behind the officer of the day. In theory, it gave him the chance to observe firsthand how more experienced officers skillfully defused the minor crises that beset ships as large as the Ishaq.

  That was the theory, anyway. To be fair, most of the day had been routine enough to allow Michael to put in some serious time on his COMEX project. That had all changed in a hurry. Michael, tired of work, had been passing the last dregs of the evening away in the wardroom with Aaron Stone when an urgent comm from the officer of the day had dispatched him to take charge of the ship’s internal security patrol. A vicious brawl had broken out on one of the junior spacers’ mess decks, and it had to be stopped before half the ship joined in.

  Order had been restored eventually, but it had been one hell of a job, with Michael twice calling for reinforcements. When the dust settled, eight spacers were in the ship’s sick bay, another ten had been dragged to the cells struggling like wildcats, and thirty were subject to further investigation. It took the internal security patrol well over two hours to get to that happy state of affairs, another hour to clean up the damage, and Michael another three hours to debrief the patrol, review Ishaq’s internal security holocam footage, and write up the official report for the executive officer. All in all, it had been a horror night. Michael had the bags under his eyes and the wandering concentration to prove it.

  “Sensors, gravitronics.”

  “Sensors.” Michael started. Had he been asleep on watch? Christ, he hoped not.

  “Don’t like the look of this one, sir. Here. It’s only just painting on gravitronics and the AI’s making a mess of it, but it looks to me like inbound on Green 10 Down 2.”

  “Not on the traffic schedule, I take it.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Okay. Call it in.”

  Michael’s heart began to pound as the gravitronics operator formally reported the suspect
contact. No ship should be joining the traffic stream from that angle. That would put it on the wrong side of the traffic lane running galactic north toward the Federated Worlds. Depending on the new arrival’s vector, it could mean chaos as fully loaded merchant ships, probably the most sluggish things in deepspace, made desperate attempts to avoid a collision. “Unbelievable,” Michael muttered. Billions of cubic light-years of space to work in, yet here was some clown looking to get up close and personal. The son of a bitch should be shot.

  The sensor management center was no longer the relaxed place it had been. In seconds, Michael had every available sensor on the task of working out what was about to drop and, much more important, what its vector was. If the ships transiting Karovic Reef were to have any chance of avoiding a rogue crosser, they needed good vector data, and fast.

  The tension rose and, as quickly, ebbed away. To Michael’s relief, the bearing of the gravitronics intercept started to move across Ishaq’s bows, dropping as it did so. It was a rogue for sure, no doubt about it. The ship had no flight plan logged into the traffic control AIs and was about to make an illegal entry into restricted space. Thankfully, it was not a dangerous rogue. All Michael could hope for was that eventually the ship would fall into the hands of the International Admiralty Court, though there was not much chance of that. According to the sensor AI’s best guess, the ship was probably in transit from the Rogue Worlds across humanspace to one of the Marakoff Consortium Planets. Because neither system paid much—if any—regard to the institutions of international space justice, he did not think the ship would ever be caught.

  “Sensors, gravitronics. Track 781553 is dropping. Estimate drop datum at Green 5 Down 15, range 55,000 kilometers.”