The Battle of the Hammer Worlds

by Graham Sharp Paul

  “All stations, this is the captain. As you are all aware, we have reversed vector and are now on our way back toward Terranova. We have orders to rendezvous with a deepspace fast courier, DFC-667.We’ll be meeting her once we transit Paderborn Reef. I have no other information to give you at this stage, so bear with it. I do not know why we have been retasked, but all will be revealed when we rendezvous. Captain out.”

  Michael turned Constanza’s words over in his mind. He might have been imagining it, but Constanza’s voice did not seem to be the usual self-assured mix of arrogance and confidence.

  Suddenly light dawned. Ishaq’s orders were brief because they involved Constanza. Fleet was relieving her. There could be no other reason. He sat up so quickly that he cracked his head on the built-in cupboard above him. Cursing, he hopped out of his bunk, forcing himself into a tangled, recalcitrant shipsuit. He had to see Fellsworth. This was too good not to share.

  Friday, September 3, 2399, UD

  HWS Quebec-One, Xiang Reef

  Commodore Monroe’s mouth tightened into a bloodless slash. Face grim, he stared at the command holovid. When his final rail-gun salvo ripped into the FedWorld merchant ship Betthany Market, he bared his teeth for a second. Satisfied, he sat back.

  Monroe had to give credit where credit was due.

  The captain of the Betthany Market had tried his best to escape from the trap. With merships exploding all across Xiang Reef, he had pushed his main engines far beyond their manufacturer’s limits; Monroe had expected the mership’s fusion power plants to lose containment. By some miracle of FedWorld engineering they had not, but nothing was going to help the doomed Betthany Market and her ill-fated crew. Fully loaded, sluggish, and unwieldy, the mership had no chance of evading a rail-gun salvo fired at close quarters, and Quebec-One had been so close that her optronics had picked out every last dent and scratch on the hard-worked mership’s hull.

  In the end, Betthany Market died like all the rest of the merships ambushed by Monroe’s ships that bloody morning. Rail-gun slugs sliced through her thin plasteel hull. Punched deep into the ship, two slugs reached the engine room to release the enormous energy bottled up inside her fusion power plants. Microseconds later, the ship exploded into a gigantic ball of incandescent plasma that writhed away into the emptiness of deepspace.

  The command team of Quebec-One sat silent around Monroe. They stared in horrified fascination at the command holovid. The mership had vanished. Only a gas cloud and a few shattered fragments of the ship remained; the cloud twisted away into nothing, cooling fast, its dance of death a fading memorial to mership and spacers now dead.

  Monroe’s ships had executed the operation with brutal efficiency. Most of their victims knew nothing of the attack before death engulfed them. The hellish fires of runaway fusion plants consumed the few lifepods launched. The last witnesses to the latest in a long line of Hammer atrocities survived only a few seconds before they, too, were wiped out.

  The operation had been easy. No, Monroe thought, it had been too easy. Twenty-seven merships destroyed in less than an hour. Cold-blooded murder was what it was.

  Monroe broke the spell when the last traces of the Betthany Market disappeared. He had pushed his luck far enough; they should have been long gone by now. He turned to his chief of staff. “Time we were on our way. To all ships, immediate execute—”

  The sensor officer’s voice broke in, urgent with alarm. “Sir, we have a positive gravitronics intercept. Designated track 220547. Stand by . . . estimated drop bearing Red 3 Up 1. One ship. Grav wave pattern suggests pinchspace transition imminent. Vector is nominal for Earth-FedWorld transit. Sir! This one’s not on any schedule. Military, sir. It has to be military.”

  Monroe wasted no time. Every instinct told him his sensor officer was right. The new arrival must be a FedWorld warship. The Old Earth Alliance never patrolled deepspace this far out; the Xiang Reef gravitation anomaly was too remote. If it turned out to be an Alliance warship, bad luck; he needed to survive before he worried about that possibility.

  “Designate track 220547 hostile,” Monroe barked. “Immediate to all ships, stand by rail-gun salvo. Targeting data to follow. Kraa’s blood! Sensors! Get me the drop data . . .come on, sensors, come on! I need a drop time, position, and vector. Now, Kraa damn it!”

  The sensor officer’s voice shook under the stress. “Stand by . . . okay, sir. Here it comes. She’s close. Confirmed Red 3 Up 1 at 85,000 kilometers. Stand by . . . targeting data confirmed and passed to all ships.”

  “Roger.”

  Monroe checked the command plot. Impatient, he drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair. The rail-gun crews were taking too long to reload. He forced himself to sit still. Nothing he said or did was going to speed things up.

  “Sir! All ships confirm valid firing solutions on the drop datum, full rail-gun salvos loaded, ready to engage.” His chief of staff ’s voice cracked in the heat of the moment.

  Monroe wasted no time. “Command approved to fire!”

  “All rail-gun salvos away, sir.”

  “Roger that,” Monroe snapped. He forced himself to breathe normally, to ignore the iron bands that crushed his chest with sudden force. If his ships failed to destroy the new arrival the instant it dropped and it really was a FedWorld warship, they were all dead. He buried the thought. You ought to have more faith, he chided himself. A six-ship rail-gun attack would overwhelm the unfortunate ship.

  Monroe allowed himself to relax a little. Quebec-One and her sister ships might be fitted with obsolete Buranan rail guns, but the engagement geometry weighed heavily in favor of the attackers.

  Crucial to their chances, the target would drop close and broadside on to three of his ships; it would be the perfect ambush. Provided that his ship’s firing solutions were accurate, the tightly grouped swarms of platinum/iridium alloy slugs should sweep through the drop datum only seconds after the target dropped into normalspace. True, most of the slugs were destined to disappear into the void. That was the fate of almost all rail-gun slugs, but proximity had allowed his ships to tighten the swarm grouping to put more slugs on target. Monroe checked the command plot again. He liked what he saw. Quebec-One’s warfare officer predicted a first strike of more than three hundred slugs. Monroe smiled. The raw numbers looked good. Where the slugs might impact looked even better.

  If the attack went according to plan, slugs from the first two salvos would hit where the armor thinned back from the bow. Seconds later, slugs from the third salvo should smash into the target toward its stern, the most vulnerable part of any warship. After it was hit there and hit hard, its chances of survival were close to zero. If everything went well, the final salvos would be redundant, their contribution limited to finishing off an already dying ship.

  The seconds melted away with glacial slowness. Monroe struggled to keep his breath under control. The atmosphere in Quebec-One’s combat information center thickened until it threatened to choke him. Monroe cursed under his breath. He had seen action throughout the last war; he should be used to combat by now.

  “Sir! Track 220547 is dropping. Confirm drop data nominal.” The sensor officer sounded ecstatic. He deserves to, Monroe thought. The man had done well under intense pressure. Targeting data from commercial-grade gravitronics were unreliable at best, but this time the system had worked and worked well. Monroe’s ships had solid firing solutions; the new arrival was condemned to drop right into the path of the oncoming rail-gun salvos. Without a miracle—and Monroe put no faith in miracles—the hapless ship was trapped. She would have little time to react before the massive rail-gun attack fell on her.

  Commodore Monroe sat back and waited.

  Friday, September 3, 2399, UD

  FWSS Ishaq, pinchspace

  Under strict instructions from Commander Pasquale, Fellsworth had wasted no time getting the warfare training department back on its feet. The routine weekly team meeting had been in full swing for over an hour when it was interrupted b
y the main broadcast announcing five minutes to the drop for the transit through the Xiang Reef.

  Fellsworth knew when to quit. From long experience, she knew she could never compete with a pinchspace drop, and so she was not about to try. “Okay, folks. Take a break. We’ll reconvene once the drop’s over.”

  Michael stood up, stretching. It was strange to be back at work, to sit around a table for the weekly team meeting, with everyone acting as though nothing had happened. To make things even more uncomfortable, Fellsworth had reverted to her normal standoffish self. Any and every attempt by Michael to talk things over was rebuffed politely but firmly. It was as though Fellsworth had forgotten that they were still under open arrest and that the charges had not been withdrawn by Constanza even if she and the rest of the ship knew they would be. With a mental shrug of the shoulders, Michael went to the cooler to get some water. He was going to need it. God, he hated pinchspace drops.

  “Sir?”

  It was Bettany.

  “What’s up, Morris?”

  “There’s something to see you. Too big to be human, so it must be either a cyborg or a marine. Oh, and a small marine as well.”

  Michael laughed as he went to the door. Had to be Yazdi and Murphy. Who else could it be?

  It was. Christ, Murphy is huge, Michael thought. His neck ached trying to look the man in the face. “Corporal Yazdi, Marine Murphy. Come to arrest me?”

  Yazdi’s face reddened. “Hell, no, sir,” she muttered. “Just wanted a word.”

  “Okay. Can’t be too long. I’ve got a meeting after we drop. Got your bag? Don’t want you chucking all over the table.”

  Yazdi waved a bag in silent reply. The two marines followed Michael through to one of the small meeting rooms. “Take a seat, guys.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Well, sir.” Yazdi stopped; she looked faintly embarrassed. “Well,” she continued, “we wanted to say that we’re pleased it all worked out for you in the end. I know it’s not official yet, but it seems pretty clear what’s going to happen.”

  “Thank you. You’re right. It has all worked out in the end. Oh, shit. Hold on, guys.” With that, Ishaq’s alarms sounded and the universe turned itself inside out as the ship dropped into normalspace.

  After the drop, Michael and the marines cleaned themselves up quickly.

  “Right, where were we? Oh, yes. I was—” Michael was stopped dead by the strident urgency of the ship’s klaxon driving the crew to general quarters.

  “What the hell?” Michael shouted. Acting on instinct, he and the two marines erupted from their seats to join the crowd of spacers trying to get out of the department’s one and only door at the same time. With maddening slowness, the jam cleared.

  When Michael got to the door, with Yazdi and Murphy close behind, the world erupted around him, a sudden tornado of smoke and flame ripping the ship apart around him before disappearing as fast as it had come. Oh, shit, Michael thought despairingly. Rail-gun slugs; it had to be. God above, he prayed, not again; please, God, not again. For a moment, he did not think he could take it, his hands turning cold and clammy when he remembered the last time. Desperate now, he knew that duty was his best defense against the bowel-churning panic threatening his tenuous grip on reality. Michael clawed his way to a survival station, with Yazdi and Murphy following. With frantic energy born of a desperate hope that somehow Ishaq and her crew were going to survive, Michael tore open the doors and began to hurl skinsuits into the mass of people behind him. Murphy’s huge mass forced some semblance of discipline on what was close to a panicstricken mob. When there were only three suits left, Michael threw two to Murphy and Yazdi before grabbing the last one for himself. In a matter of seconds, he was secure inside it, the plasglass helmet sealing onto the neck ring with a satisfying ssssssffffftt as the shapeskin molded itself to his body. He watched carefully as the suit ran its start-up diagnostics. Thank God, he thought. All green. He had a good suit.

  Michael looked around, cold sweat beading on his face. He wondered what the hell he could do that would make the slightest difference in a situation that seemed to be going from bad to catastrophic faster than he could think and faster than Ishaq seemed able to react. Hesitating, he stood there, and then another rail-gun salvo hit home. This time there was serious damage. All of a sudden, the air around Michael was a tortured mass of smoke and flame. The shock wave from a close pass by a rail-gun slug punched him hard against the nearest bulkhead. We’re dead, he thought as he staggered back to his feet. Whoever was attacking was good enough—and close enough—to have the Ishaq on toast.

  In seconds the smoke was so dense, Michael could not see an arm’s length in front of him. Underneath him, the deck bucked and heaved as more slugs smashed home. He cursed silently, pushing the fear and panic that threatened to overwhelm him back down where they had come from. Secondary explosions were beginning to rip Ishaq apart; massive shock waves were hammering through the ship, and the artgrav was losing the unequal struggle. Around him, skinsuited shapes came and went, looming out of the smoke before disappearing to God only knew where, the spacers staggering and slipping like drunks. Frantically, Michael patched his neuronics into the ship’s main AI only to find to his horror that it was dead. That meant one thing: Ishaq was in serious trouble. No matter which channel he tried to patch his neuronics into, there was nothing. The calm, rational voice of authority, of someone—anyone—who knew enough to take charge of the situation and mobilize the Ishaq’s crew was completely absent.

  For a moment he was baffled. He stood, with an arm wrapped around a stanchion the only thing keeping him on his feet as Ishaq bucked and heaved like a mad thing under his feet. He did not understand it. How could a ship the size and power of the Ishaq become a useless wreck in the space of a few minutes? The massive shape of Murphy appeared out of the gloom with what looked like Yazdi close behind. Murphy’s massive hand came out of the murk, clamping his and Michael’s helmets together. “What do we do, sir? What do we do?” Murphy yelled hoarsely.

  “I don’t know. I’m trying to find out what—”

  The voice booming out of his skinsuit speakers came as a complete shock. “All stations, this is command. Abandon ship, I say again, abandon ship. All stations, this is command. Abandon ship, I say again, abandon ship. Sitrep on neuronics channel 45 Bravo. Sitrep on neuronics channel 45 Bravo. Go with God. Command out.”

  “There’s your answer, Murphy. Go. Go now.” A frantic check with his neuronics showed him the way to the nearest lifepod station. “8-November’s our best bet, so let’s go.”

  Michael and the two marines began to run, making their way to the nearest lifepod station. Michael patched his neuronics into channel 45 Bravo, apparently the only one of Ishaq’s hundreds of internal comm channels that was working. Whoever was responsible deserved a bloody medal, Michael thought as finally he got access to channel 45 Bravo. It was not what he expected. No situation reports there. The channel accessed the Ishaq’s event log, raw data from hundreds of ship systems, all chronicling Ishaq’s catastrophic fall from operational warship to dying hulk. He pounded along, the vast bulk of Murphy forcing a way past smashed bulkheads, wrecked equipment, and fallen cables; hydraulic pipes were spewing fluid onto decks already slippery with the blood of broken bodies awkwardly twisted across the passageway. He kept running with the event log scrolling in front of him, his neuronics skimming through each of Ishaq’s major systems in turn. He began to get some sense of the calamity that had befallen the Ishaq, and it was grim reading.

  There was far too much unprocessed data for him to get any real understanding of it, and so it would have to wait. Comming an order to dump the entire event log into his neuronics for later, he turned his mind back to the more pressing matter of survival. From what he had seen so far, it was only a matter of time before Ishaq’s main fusion plants blew, and if they were not a long way clear when that happened, that would be it.

 
; Murphy skidded to a halt. Turning with surprising speed for such a large man, he shot his arm out to grab Yazdi and Michael before hurling them unceremoniously into the access hatch of one of the few lifepods still left at station 8-November. Michael offered up a quick prayer of thanks. He had missed the hatch, and without Murphy he would have wasted precious seconds finding it.

  “Stay there!” Murphy barked. “I’ll make a final check, and then we’ll go. If I’m not back in one minute, go without me. I’ll get the next bus.” He disappeared back into the filthy gray-black murk that choked Ishaq’s passageways from deck to deckhead.

  Michael did as he was told, clawing his way across the sill and as far into the pod as he could get. Huddled at the far end were three spacers, two women and a man, all still alive from what he could see, but barely. The man looked to have been caught without a skinsuit too close to an explosion. His face and upper body were a mass of reddish-brown blisters streaked with black charring, and his mouth a hideous grinning parody of a smile with white teeth against blackened lips; his one-piece shipsuit was a tattered wreck, ripped and torn almost to his waist. The other two were unconscious. Michael could get only a quick look at them before Murphy returned. He hurled two more spacers bodily into the pod, then climbed in, dragging two more after him. Michael watched openmouthed as Murphy reached back out of the air lock to grab another two. The pod was now full, and without hesitating, Murphy flipped the black-and-orange safety cover on the launch panel, put the selector to automatic, and mashed the red jettison switch with a fist the size of a large ham before collapsing onto the deck, chest heaving.

  A second later, the lifepod’s solid fuel motors ignited with a thudding jolt. The pod’s artgrav trembled as it struggled to compensate for the massive acceleration pushing it clear of the doomed ship. Even as the lifepod’s artgrav stabilized, a second giant blow smashed into it, picking it up and hurling it into space.

  It was a blast wave.