The Battle of the Hammer Worlds Read online

  To my parents,

  from whom I inherited my love of books.

  Wish you could have been here

  to read this one, Pa.

  OUT OF THE FRYING PAN

  Michael was in the wardroom, deep in the middle of a subdued discussion of the morning’s extraordinary events with Aaron Stone, when a quiet voice interrupted.

  “Helfort. Come with me.” It was the provost marshal. The man’s tone was quiet but firm.

  “Yes, sir. What’s up?” Michael asked, climbing to his feet.

  “You’ll find out. Come on, let’s go.”

  When they left the wardroom, one of Ishaq’s marines was waiting outside, the man falling in behind them as they made their way up two decks to the ship’s regulating office. When they got there, Armstrong waved Michael into his office, telling the marine to wait outside.

  “Sit!”

  Armstrong looked right at Michael while he gathered his thoughts. He had been a cop for a long time. He had more experience than he cared to think about, and every bit of that experience argued that the business at hand wasn’t right. Sadly, for the moment at least, his hands were tied. There was a process to follow even if that meant trampling all over two officers who, by all accounts, had always tried to do their duty and—in Helfort’s case at least—had the scars to prove it.

  “Right, then.” Armstrong’s voice was flat, unemotional. “I’m going to comm you a document. It’s a preliminary charge sheet alleging that you and Lieutenant Commander Fellsworth entered into a conspiracy to mutiny.”

  Acknowledgments

  As ever, my thanks to my wife, Vicki, for her encouragement, tolerance, and support. Thanks also to my agents, Russ Galen and Tara Wynne, without whom none of this would have happened, and to my editor, Liz Scheier, for her drive, unsparing advice, and commitment to deadlines.

  Saturday, June 19, 2399, Universal Date (UD)

  Holterman system Merchant Ship Constancy, outbound from Korovin system

  “Cargo’s stowed, Captain. Just doing my final walk around now.”

  The flat, uninterested voice of the Constancy’s first officer dragged Captain Curtis Karangi away from a review of the options he’d have if the Feds discovered the containers the Constancy had just loaded. Karangi was not a happy man; it had been a depressing exercise. The plain fact was that if the Feds did intercept his ship, being neurowiped was probably the best offer he was going to get.

  Karangi picked up the old-fashioned hand mike. “Captain, roger. We’ll get under way shortly.”

  “Righto,” the first officer replied dismissively.

  “Righto! Righto! I’ll give you righto, you disrespectful son of a bitch,” Karangi muttered as he smashed the mike back into its cradle.

  Karangi sighed despairingly as he patted the stun pistol that never, ever left his hip. If the damn Feds didn’t get him, his crew probably would, every last one of them an insubordinate, money-grubbing ratbag. And if his crew didn’t get him, Constancy would. The bloody ship was clapped out, a death trap, her every transit through pinchspace a roll of life’s dice. But he was trapped. He owed money—mountains of money—to a Hammer-backed finance company, and until it was paid off, he would do exactly what they wanted him to do.

  Goddamn the Hammers. A more evil bunch of people he hoped never to meet. If it were up to him, he’d have nuked them all to hell years earlier. After all the grief the Hammers had dished out over the years, why the Feds hadn’t done just that he would never understand. Anyway, it mattered not—they had him by the balls, so if they wanted him to captain a blockade runner, that was exactly what he was going to do. Besides, they might be complete assholes, but they paid their blockade runners handsomely. He would keep slipping contraband past the Feds and into Hammer space—something he fancied he was very good at—until he had repaid every cent he owed.

  Well, Karangi consoled himself. Look on the bright side. Two more runs would see his debt paid off in full, with interest. Then, finally, he would be off the hook, and the Hammers could go screw themselves.

  Five decks below the bridge, Constancy’s first officer gave the brilliantly lit cargo bay a last look-see. Satisfied that all was as it should be, he slipped behind a wall of contraband containers. Safely out of sight of the ship’s surveillance holocams, he concentrated on the task at hand. He would not get another chance; if he wasn’t on the bridge for Constancy’s departure out of the Korovin system, Captain Karangi would want to know where he had been and what he had been up to.

  It was the work of moments to connect a thin cable into the ship’s emergency data network. Impatiently, the first officer waited as the covert access routines loaded into his neuronics burrowed their way through the layers of security that protected Constancy’s master AI. Finally, he was in. Disguised as a diagnostic logging subroutine, he downloaded the ship’s navigation plan buried in a mass of other ship data. Moments after that, the entire plan—now an anonymous collection of heavily encrypted data packets—was on its way via the ship’s communications hub down to Korovin’s planetary net.

  Where the data packets had gone, the first officer did not know, nor did he much care. He would be well paid for what amounted to less than a couple of minutes’ work, and that was all he cared about.

  With a final check to make sure nobody else was around, he was on his way up to the bridge.

  At 17:23 Universal Time, the massive bulk of Constancy began to accelerate slowly away from Korovin planet. According to the flight plan lodged with Korovin nearspace control, its destination was the obscure planet of al-Harrani, 425 light-years distant.

  Wednesday, June 23, 2399, UD

  Federated Worlds Warship Ishaq, berthed on Space Battle Station SBS-44, in orbit around Jascaria planet, Federated Worlds

  Junior Lieutenant Michael Helfort’s posting to the Haiyan class heavy cruiser Ishaq started badly.

  Michael’s left leg was on fire. He swore under his breath as a white-hot sliver of pain cut its way through his thigh. It had been months since a razor-sharp piece of titanium blasted off the hull of the light scout DLS-387 by a Hammer rail-gun slug had ripped into him; his leg was still not right. Stubbornly, the pain refused to go away despite the best efforts of a host of Fleet surgeons and their prodigious armory of medical geneering, targeted drugbots, psychotropic pain inhibitors, and neuronics blockers. The pain stayed, a dull ache in the background until provoked into the open to explode in snarling fury.

  Like now, and fool that he was, he had not bothered to get his drugbots replenished.

  Rigidly at attention, Michael stood in front of a tall, sour-faced man. He had been there for a good five minutes. His weight drove down into a thigh muscle that protested every second it was held immobile. He kept his eyes locked in approved Fleet style on the man in front of him, unmoving because that was the last order he had been given.

  Michael’s tormentor was Ishaq’s officer of the day. The man was turned out in immaculate dress blacks; medal ribbons, unit commendations, and combat command hash marks were conspicuously absent. The name tag read LIEUTENANT XING. Michael wondered what the man’s problem was. He sure as hell seemed to be having a bad day, though why Xing seemed so determined to take it out on him was a mystery.

  Michael needed every ounce of self-control to stand in silence while he let Xing’s tirade run its vitriolic course. He tried to explain that he was late because the up-shuttle had suffered a main engine defect. Xing had not been interested. He had cut Michael off with a contemptuous order to speak only when instructed to do so. You pompous, stuck-up moron, Michael thought, his face a frozen mask, eyes on his tormentor’s face.

  “You haven’t heard the last of this
, Helfort. Let me see . . . yes. The executive officer is expecting you at 10:00, so try not to be late. The ship’s administration office will comm you the rest of your induction program. Now get out of my sight.” With a dismissive flick of the wrist, Xing turned away.

  For a moment Michael stood there, unsure what to do. He might be only a lowly junior lieutenant, but long-standing Fleet tradition dictated that one member of the duty watch be detailed by Xing to carry his gear to his cabin. God knows, there were plenty of duty spacers to call on; they stood ranged against a bulkhead. To a spacer, they avoided Michael’s eye. He suppressed a sudden urge to smile at the sight of the long line of spacers, apparently all engaged in studious examination of the air lock’s overhead wiring. He realized that no order was going to come from Xing, to whom Michael seemingly no longer existed.

  Bugger it, Michael thought. The time had come to show Xing and the rest of Ishaq’s crew that he was not going to take any more crap than he absolutely had to.

  He turned to the quartermaster. Throughout Xing’s tirade, she had not moved a muscle.

  “Leader, when you get the chance, can you arrange for my gear to be dropped off ? My cabin is down in, let me see—”

  The quartermaster—Leading Spacer Petrovic according to her name tag—did not let him finish. “Not a problem, sir, not a problem.” Petrovic smiled warmly. “I know where you’re billeted. I’ll have your stuff there in five. Oh, and welcome aboard, sir. Leading Spacer Bienefelt and I went through basic training together. She’s told me all about you.”

  Michael smiled, pleased to find that he had at least one ally onboard Ishaq. “All good, I hope?”

  Petrovic’s face crinkled into a broad grin. “Not for me to say, sir. Matti would tear my arms off if I did.”

  Michael laughed. He knew she could; Leading Spacer Matthilde “Matti” Bienefelt was big enough to tear the arms off a geneered gorilla. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lieutenant Xing’s spine stiffen. Clearly, the man was undecided as to whether Michael was best ignored or a challenge to his authority that needed to be dealt with firmly on the spot.

  Michael decided to save Xing the trouble of choosing. The man was a complete jerk—probably that was being generous—but it was not a smart move to upset him even more. He should go.

  With a quiet word of thanks to Petrovic, Michael walked out of the personnel air lock. He could only hope that the rest of Ishaq’s officers were not like Xing.

  Thursday, June 24, 2399, UD

  Federated Worlds Warship Kapteyn’s Star, in deepspace

  “Okay, ops. Let’s go to general quarters.”

  “Sir!”

  Lieutenant Commander Marco Gianfranco, captain in command of the Federated Worlds Warship Kapteyn’s Star, sat back and watched as the combat information center dissolved around him into controlled chaos, combat space-suited spacers hurrying into their positions, chased along by the urgent demands of the ship’s klaxon. He had a good team; in less than a minute, chaos had been replaced by the low murmur of a combat information center crew bringing the ship to full combat readiness.

  “Captain, sir,” Gianfranco’s executive officer and second in command reported formally moments later, “the ship is at general quarters in ship state 1, closed up to airtight condition zulu.”

  “Roger. Boarding party?”

  “Loaded; assault lander is at immediate notice to launch, sir.”

  “Good. Let’s hope we see some action this time.”

  “Oh, please, let it be,” Gianfranco’s executive officer said with a grimace. “I’m going walkabout.”

  “Off you go,” Gianfranco said, waving the man away. “All stations, this is command. Depressurizing and shutting down artgrav in two minutes.” They might be up against only a couple of smugglers, but Gianfranco was not one to take chances. If anyone started shooting back, he would rather not have them punching holes in a hull under pressure, and leaving his artificial gravity on would make him vulnerable to detection even by commercial gravitronics sensors.

  “Command, Mother. Kruger, Markeb, and Alioth report ready in all respects.”

  “Roger.” There was nothing more Gianfranco needed to say. If Mother—the AI that ran Kapteyn’s Star’s mission-critical systems—said the four deepspace heavy scouts that constituted Task Unit 950.5.3 were ready, they were ready. And so they should be. To a spacer, everyone knew exactly what had to be done, and he was not going to waste their time and his going over it again. He sat back, content to let Mother and his two senior warfare officers—operations to his left, threat assessment to his right—attend to the details of what some creative genius in operations planning had called Operation Final Blocker.

  For the umpteenth time that long morning, Gianfranco scanned the massive holovid screens that curtained the combat information center in front of him. Nothing had changed. Passive sensors from the four ships of the task unit, relentlessly crunching data sucked by the terabyte from billions of cubic kilometers of space, reported nothing unusual; this particular blob of interstellar deepspace was completely empty and had been that way for a very long time.

  Gianfranco suppressed a sigh. The Kapteyn’s Star had been part of the Federated Worlds’ blockade of the Hammer Worlds for six long months now; he had lost count of the number of times they had been dispatched—always in response to reliable intelligence, of course—to some featureless point in deepspace to intercept blockade runners that never turned up.

  He reckoned he had good grounds for thinking that this time would be a bust like all the rest. Though as an optimist at heart, he could always hope he might be wrong.

  The minutes dragged by. Gianfranco cursed under his breath. This was shaping up to be yet another wild goose chase. He shifted restlessly in his seat, his combat space suit stiff and uncomfortable. He turned to his operations officer.

  “Well, Tamu, what do you reckon? Another bu—”

  The matter-of-fact voice of Kapteyn’s Star’s sensor officer cut him off. “Command, sensors. Positive gravitronics intercept. Estimated drop bearing Green 25 Up 5. One vessel. Grav wave pattern suggests pinchspace transition imminent. Designated hostile track 885001.”

  Well, well, well, Gianfranco thought exultantly. Finally. “Command, roger. Okay, folks, let’s do this right. Threat! I want confirmation of this one’s identity as fast as you can.”

  “Roger that, sir.”

  “Mother, anything from the other ships?”

  “Triangulating now. Stand by . . . consensus drop datum is at Green 23 Up 4, range 50,000 kilometers.”

  Bingo, Gianfranco thought. Close but not too close. For once, the intel they had been given was on the money.

  “Roger.”

  “Command, sensors. Track 885001 dropping now. Confirm drop datum at Green 23 Up 4 at 45,000 kilometers.”

  Gianfranco watched the command holovid intently as a fleeting flare of ultraviolet betrayed the inbound ship’s drop out of pinchspace. Yes, he said to himself exultantly, finally.

  “Command, sensors. Hostile track 885001 confirmed as Constancy, Holterman system registration.”

  “Threat concurs.”

  “Command, roger.” Gianfranco breathed out a sigh of relief. Game on.

  Ten long minutes later, the second piece of the puzzle dropped into place. Gianfranco and the rest of the combat information center crew watched with bated breath as the task unit’s sensors tracked what should be an incoming Hammer ship as it dropped out of pinchspace in a flash of ultraviolet radiation. And then the ground underneath Operation Final Blocker shifted.

  “Command, sensors. Hostile track 885002 is the Hammer Diamond class deepspace light patrol ship Adamantine.”

  “Threat concurs.”

  “Oh, shit,” Gianfranco murmured. This was definitely not standard operating procedure for Hammer blockade runners. The Constancy’s cargo had to be something the Hammer really, really wanted for them to send a light patrol ship to pick it up. This operation was not going to be the walk in
the park he had planned. Diamond class ships were rail-gun-armed, and rail guns could do his ships some very serious damage.

  “Mother! To all ships,” he snapped, “maintain current vectors, stand by revised tacplan.”

  Gianfranco watched the command holovid intently, the two blockade runners now marked by blazing red icons. His rules of engagement were crystal clear. It might be utterly improbable for two ships to be in close proximity in the middle of nowhere, but he could not fire so much as a peashooter at them without unequivocal holocam evidence that Constancy had transferred cargo to a Hammer ship contrary to the flight plan her captain had lodged with Korovin nearspace control. Well, Gianfranco consoled himself, at least this time no smart-ass lawyer was going to stand up in court to argue that the Adamantine was anything but a Hammer ship.

  Here we go, he said to himself as the first container crossed the gap between the two ships to disappear slowly into Adamantine’s cargo bay, the handlers visibly struggling with the container’s awkward bulk. Gianfranco had seen enough.

  “Mother. To all ships. Weapons free. Acknowledge.”

  “Stand by . . . all ships acknowledge weapons free.”

  “To all ships, execute to follow, Kilo Tango 45, I say again, Kilo Tango 45.”

  “Mother, roger.”

  “Ops! Ready?”

  “As we’ll ever be, sir,” Gianfranco’s operations officer replied, teeth behind the plasglass visor of his combat space suit bared in anticipation.

  Nerves jangling, Gianfranco waited until Constancy’s second container was making its final approach to the Adamantine, a third and a fourth close behind. Now, he thought, let the damn lawyers argue their way out of this one.

  “Mother. To all ships. Kilo Tango 45, stand by, stand by . . . execute!”

  As one, the four ships of Task Unit 950.5.3 fired their main engines, pillars of white-hot flame driving them toward the two blockade runners. A second later, the ripbuzz of missile dispensers announced the deployment of a warning salvo of Mamba antistarship missiles, the ASSMs accelerating hard away from the incoming ships and toward the hapless smugglers.