The Battle of the Hammer Worlds

by Graham Sharp Paul

  Then the lander hit hard. The impact was much harder than Michael had expected, the shock whipping him violently from one side to the other, his unprotected head slamming back into the headrest with sickening force as the lander bounced one last time before coming to a stop. Blood from a new cut to his head ran down the side of his face. For a moment he teetered on the edge of unconsciousness, waves of foggy blackness threatening and then receding. Head spinning and ears ringing, he struggled out of his harness, slapping the emergency button to blow out the lander’s doors and hatches. Yazdi was slumped forward in her harness. She looked half-dead, a long gash in the side of her head gushing blood all over the place.

  Michael ripped her harness off. Grabbing her, he half dragged, half carried her to the ladder. With one hand on her collar, he pushed her through the hatch, hanging on as long as he could before her dead weight took over. He dropped her—he did not have much choice—and she fell with a dull thud to the main cargo deck below.

  Pausing only to retrieve their packs and the long-dead DocSec trooper’s gun, Michael dropped into the payload bay. Somehow he got outside, the air stinking of burned rock and acrid with explosive residue, hot gas and steam still rising from the glassy black patch of flame-scorched ground below the lander. Michael looked around in frantic, heart-pounding desperation. Kingfisher air superiority fighters might not have been built for ground attack, but they carried cannon. He and Yazdi had to get clear—now.

  Michael found what he was looking for: a small copse upstream, a wind-battered collection of pines clustered around a large boulder-strewn outcrop. It would have to do. With strength born of desperation, he heaved Yazdi over his shoulder, thanking God that she was so small as he struggled onehanded to get his chromaflage cape across them.

  With a deep breath, he set off in an awkward shuffling run, head down, with one hand holding Yazdi firmly on his shoulder, the other gripping their packs and his gun. His lungs were heaving as he forced himself to keep going. The terrible fear of falling into the Hammer’s hands again drove him on.

  They barely had made it to the copse when the first Kingfisher howled overhead. The rest followed a minute later, the air above ripped into ear-shattering shreds as one after another they climbed under full power over the smoking wreckage of the lander. Trusting that his chromaflage cape would keep the two of them safe from the Kingfishers’ optronics, he staggered on, heart pounding and legs burning, scrambling and scrabbling over broken rocks up into the heart of the copse. A massive slab had split off to form a shallow, flatroofed cave, its entrance protected by the huge boulder keeping it off the ground. It would have to do, and Michael gratefully dumped Yazdi’s dead weight onto the ground, sliding around her to pull her inert body into the cave.

  He could not see the lander, only a small patch of sky; he watched the Kingfishers run up the valley in line ahead. One after the other, they raked the lander with withering cannon fire until, with a blinding flash of ultraviolet and an earthshattering crump, the lander’s fusion plants lost containment and the entire craft went up in a towering pillar of gray-white smoke. For one awful moment, Michael thought the huge slab of rock would drop onto their heads, as the shock wave lifted the slab up a few centimeters before dropping it back. After one last pass and more cannon fire for good measure, the Kingfishers left, climbing nearly vertically under full power, their sound and fury fading slowly into the distance.

  For a full two minutes—it seemed like a lifetime—he lay still. He did not want to leave, and only the nagging fear of being recaptured got him moving again. He turned to see how Yazdi was doing. She groaned; her eyes opened, unfocused and glazed, as she struggled to get a grip on reality.

  “Corp, Corp!” Michael hissed urgently. “Corporal Yazdi! We’ve got to go.”

  Slowly, Yazdi came to. She stared up at him, her face a waxy gray under a thin sheen of sweat cut through by red-black trails of blood from a badly gashed forehead.

  “Fuck,” she croaked, “you look like I feel.”

  “Welcome back, Corp,” Michael whispered. He struggled to keep the concern out of his voice. Yazdi did not look good. “Don’t worry about me. Only a few cuts. How do you feel?”

  Yazdi took a long time to reply, her voice slurred and faltering when she finally spoke. “Piss weak. Headache. Can’t see too well. Ribs bad. Feel sick. Give me a minute. I’ll be okay.” She tried to sound confident but failed miserably.

  “Let me check.” He accessed her neuronics, then wished he hadn’t. Her vital signs were all in the red. A brain bleed probably, Michael thought. Yazdi needed a regen tank, and soon. Michael smashed a fist onto the ground. There was not a damn thing he could do to help her.

  “Corp,” he said. “We can’t stay here. We’re too close to the crash site. We have to go. Can you walk?”

  “Probably not,” Yazdi said, a crooked smile breaking through her pain, “but I am a marine, so I will, anyway. Help me out of this stinking rat hole.”

  A few minutes later and after a drink of water, Yazdi was as ready as she would ever be. Leaning heavily on Michael, she started to walk.

  They almost made it out of the valley.

  Yazdi struggled from the start. Approaching the shallow saddle that led away from the crash site, her body sagged heavier and heavier against him. Michael could feel her strength ebbing away with terrible speed. He pushed on, desperate to get clear.

  Without warning, Yazdi slipped out of his grasp and slumped to the ground. The climb had been too much for her. “Sorry,” she said softly. “Sorry, can’t do this. Got to . . .” Her eyes closed, her head rolling to one side.

  A quick look and Michael knew they could not go on. Yazdi’s face was a dirty gray death mask, her breathing shallow and ragged as she drifted in and out of consciousness, mumbling incoherently.

  Michael cursed savagely under his breath as he dragged her into the shelter of a hollow protected by two creeperdraped boulders.

  Quickly, with Yazdi settled, he pulled his cape off his shoulders. Dragging Yazdi’s cape out of her pack, he lay down beside her, pulling the two chromaflage capes across their bodies. A quick check confirmed that the capes looked like the dirty gray dirt below them. He lay back. There was nothing more he could do now—not for Yazdi, not for himself. Michael did not like their chances. If they were found, they would not see another Commitment day; after the humiliation they had inflicted on the Hammer, a quick shot to the head was probably the only offer they would get from DocSec. He smiled grimly. Truth was, a shot to the head probably would be for the best. He could do without another meeting with Colonel Hartspring and his sadistic sergeant. What was his name? Oh, yes, Sergeant Jacobsen, may he rot in hell. He closed his eyes and tried to doze off.

  All too soon the sound of heavy-lift transporters began to fill the valley.

  Sunday, December 19, 2399, UD

  Branxton Ranges, Commitment

  “What a waste of fucking time.” The DocSec trooper’s voice was bitter.

  “Don’t tell me.” The second trooper sounded equally pissed. “Tell that useless moron in charge. What in Kraa’s name does he think we’re going to find? For Kraa’s sake, just look at the damn lander. How the hell does Major Dickwad think anyone could get out of that alive? Asshole.”

  There was a long pause. One of the troopers, clearing his throat of a troublesome obstruction, spit down into the delicately flowered creeper that was Michael’s only protection.

  “Yeah, what an asshole.”

  Another long silence.

  Michael could hardly breathe. The two DocSec troopers had been standing on the rock directly above the hollow hiding him and Yazdi for a good five minutes. Go away, he urged them silently.

  The troopers’ radios crackled into life. “All units, this is Eagle One. End of search. Return to crash site. All units, acknowledge. Over.”

  Michael allowed himself to hope as, one by one, the Doc-Sec search units responded.

  “About time.” The trooper spit again. �
��What a clusterfuck. Come on, let’s go.”

  “Yeah.”

  The two troopers jumped down to make their way back to the crash site, accompanied every step of the way by a vociferous and unflattering commentary on the doubtful ancestry of all DocSec officers in general and the major in charge in particular. As they walked away, Michael offered up a small word of thanks. The on-scene commander had not been well briefed. The man clearly thought that the lander had exploded on impact and had concluded, not unreasonably, that whoever had hijacked the lander had died in the crash. More important, so had his troopers. The search was a token effort; it was an exercise in ass covering, nothing more, nothing less, and the DocSec troopers forced to walk their overweight and unfit bodies up and down the hillsides knew it.

  At long last, heavy lifters carrying the DocSec search teams away climbed into the evening sky, and Michael and Yazdi were safe. Well, Michael thought, for the moment at least. It had been a close thing.

  By the time DocSec finally had left, Michael had fallen asleep, the stress of the long day demanding that he rest. He woke with a start an hour later, lying absolutely still as he listened for anything unusual. There was nothing. The only sound was the wind, whistling softly as it moved through the grass and scrubby vegetation. Reassured, he slipped out from under the chromaflage cover and crawled to the mouth of the hollow for a look around. The valley was empty, and the light was fading fast. The Hammers had not put guards on the wreckage, but that happy state would not last. They had to be back to clean up sometime. Michael had no doubt what he and Yazdi had to do: get clear of the area and then hole up until she was well enough to resume their desperate push north. After a final long, careful look around, he decided they really were alone. DocSec had gone. Even better, there was no sign of any surveillance drones, and he doubted the idle bastards would have bothered to deploy remote holocams. If all went well, they should be able to get clear unseen.

  Michael crawled back into the hollow and pulled back Yazdi’s chromaflage cape. He shook her gently. She had been asleep for hours. Michael could only hope she had recovered enough to be able to walk out.

  Michael frowned. He shook Yazdi again, but she seemed strangely unresponsive, her head drooping to one side, hair falling down across her face. When he shook her one more time, something terrible, something icy, took his heart in its hand and squeezed it hard. Desperately, he shook her again before putting his face down to hers, praying he would feel a faint warmth as she breathed out. There was nothing. He felt her face. She was cold and clammy, her skin a waxy gray. He swept her hair back off her face, and all he could see was her eyes. They were wide open, staring at something Michael could never see, empty and accusing. Frantically, praying that he had gotten it wrong, he checked for a signal from her neuronics. There was nothing.

  Corporal Yazdi was dead.

  Michael rocked back on his heels, barely able to take it all in, the terrible realization that he was now completely alone crushing the last faint hope that he might make it off this godforsaken shithole of a planet. He had always known their chances were slim to nonexistent, but Corporal Yazdi’s unwavering confidence that they would make it home one day had kept him going, her quiet strength fueling his determination to hang in no matter what the Hammers and a hostile planet threw at them. Now he would have to do it on his own. How, he had absolutely no idea.

  For a long, long time he sat there mourning her loss.

  At last he knew it was time to go. With great care, he closed Yazdi’s eyes and crossed her arms on her chest. He pulled the chromaflage cape up to cover a face now strangely peaceful. He hated the thought of some damn wild animal tearing her apart, so patiently and methodically, he collected stones and rocks to cover her body, small ones to start with, then larger and larger until the hollow was filled in and she could sleep undisturbed. Finally, he took his knife and, using a stone, slowly and with great care hammered out her epitaph in crude uneven letters on the rock.

  MR0854771 CORPORAL NOORANGIZ YAZDI FWMC

  KILLED IN ACTION DECEMBER 20, 2399

  A TRUE COMRADE

  An age later his fingers were in agony from the hammering, but he was finished. He sat back to have a look. He nodded. It was good. It was not much, but it was all he could give her.

  Picking up packs and gun, and putting his chromaflage cape over his head, he crawled out of the hollow. Standing up, and with a quick look to make sure the valley was still deserted, he turned and walked away a few meters before stopping. Turning, he made absolutely sure he would know where to come back to. Then, as he looked down at Yazdi’s grave, its headstone another rock on a lonely hillside, he swore an oath.

  He would not rest until the Hammer was destroyed. Completely and utterly.

  “Sleep well, Corporal Yazdi,” he said softly, his eyes filling with tears. “We will be back to take you home. I promise.”

  Michael turned and climbed on. He never looked back. Five minutes later, with the rain that had been threatening all day finally settling into a thin sleeting drizzle, he crossed the saddle Yazdi had died trying so hard to reach and dropped into the next valley.

  He was going north to McNair. How he would get there, what he would do if he did make it, he had no idea. He could not think of anything better to do, so McNair it was. Head down to protect his face from rain that was slanting down hard and cold, he set off.

  Thursday, December 23, 2399, UD

  Branxton Ranges, Commitment

  Ripped from nightmare-riddled sleep by a callused hand clamped across his mouth, Michael started violently. The knife held to his throat was already drawing blood.

  “Move and you die,” a voice hissed in his ear.

  With an effort, Michael made himself relax.

  “That’s much better,” the voice whispered, the hand lifting slightly. “Who are you?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  Michael winced as the point of the knife went in deeper.

  “Smart-ass! Who are you?”

  Suddenly Michael was too tired to care anymore. Whoever owned the voice, it did not sound like a DocSec trooper.

  “Junior Lieutenant Helfort, FC0216885, Federated Worlds Space Fleet. And who the fuck are you?” he added belligerently.

  The man laughed softly. “Aha!” he whispered. “Now, Junior Lieutenant Helfort, there’s a Hammer marine recon patrol due to walk right across you in about thirty minutes, and I strongly suggest you don’t want to be here when that happens. So get your stuff and follow me.”

  “But who—”

  “Later. Just call me Uzuma. Come on!”

  Still groggy, Michael stumbled around, picking up the gear he had scattered around the small hollow the previous night; his gun had gone. He’d barely had time to eat the meager meal he’d allowed himself from his fast-dwindling reserves before passing out. The effort of a long forced march over broken hilly ground had been too much for his overworked, underfed, and badly abused body. He had started at last light and had kept going throughout a long Commitment night until he could walk no more. Even with some sleep, a desperate tiredness still threatened to overwhelm him, the grinding fatigue evidence of how hard he had pushed himself.

  Moments later, they were off, and Michael had to struggle to keep up with the relentless pace set by the vague chromaflageshrouded shape ahead of him. With a shock, he realized as he looked around that the man was not alone. In the gloom, he could see more dark shapes, mostly armed with what looked like standard-issue Hammer assault rifles. But there was one with a heavy machine gun slung casually over one shoulder and another carrying what was unmistakably a small missile launcher with a four-round reload pack on his back.

  Who in God’s name were these people?

  Endless hours later, Michael collapsed onto the ground as his captors finally called a halt. The group holed up in a cave Michael had not spotted until they were right on top of it.

  To Michael’s surprise, they had not stopped at dawn. They had marched on well into th
e day, seemingly unconcerned about being caught in the open in broad daylight. Apart from two brief halts, one to eat and one to wait as a wandering surveillance drone meandered slowly past overhead, they had not stopped. They did not stop even when a battlesat’s laser incinerated something high on the hillside above them, the splitting crack making Michael cringe; his captors’ confidence in the effectiveness of chromaflage capes was not something he shared.

  Now, finally, they had stopped. Michael did not bother with food. A quick drink, and then, crushed by fatigue, he found a quiet spot at the back of the cave and without a word lay down. He was asleep in seconds.

  Warily, Michael opened his eyes.

  Without moving his head, he looked cautiously around. Except for a single dim chemstick, the cave was dark, its floor covered by huddled sleeping shapes. Michael got up slowly, trying to ignore the pain in overworked legs as he crept carefully down the cave. Ducking past a blanket screening the cave from the outside world, he almost fell over a man crouching over a small holovid linked to a couple of low-light holocams that had been set up to watch the approaches to the cave.

  The man looked up. It was Uzuma.

  “Not thinking of leaving, are we?”

  Michael shook his head. “State my legs are in, I wouldn’t get far. No. I need to take a leak.”

  Uzuma pointed back into the cave. “Go back in as far as you can. Come out here when you’re done. We need to talk. I’ll get you something to eat and drink. It’s going to be another hard day.”

  Hooray, Michael thought. Just what he and his tortured body needed: another hard day to add to the endless stream of hard days that had started when he had banged out of the dying Ishaq.

  Five minutes later, Uzuma watched silently as Michael, suddenly ravenous, tore into the food in front of him. Surprisingly, it was good and not at all what he had expected the raggedy-assed mob he had fallen in with to be eating: some sort of spiced flatbread stuffed with meat and peppers washed down with a thick, slightly sweet drink that seemed to recharge his body instantly. It was better than anything he had had in a long time. Hunger finally sated, he sat back and belched softly. Uzuma laughed.