And then there it was, the sight bringing a lump to Michael’s throat and tears to his eyes: the final resting place for the
The marine honor guard and firing party stood to attention as Michael led the surviving
For a moment, Michael had to smile to himself as a picture of Athenascu, objecting strenuously that the marines she so loved to hate were handling the last of her mortal remains, flashed across his mind’s eye.
Michael watched the sad sight of golden urns one after another being put in position alongside each of the burial plots. As the last one was set in place, he looked across the little hollow to where his family was standing, his parents rigidly at attention in the front row of the stand. Between them stood Sam, her face a frozen mask as she struggled to absorb the full meaning of this, the final act in a tragedy that had been unthinkable just a few short months earlier. Her plain gray-black dress stood in drab contrast to the dress blacks, loud with medals, unit citations, combat command stripes, and rank badges, that flanked her. Behind his family, Michael picked out Vice Admiral Jaruzelska and, with a shock, the president herself, her mass of chalk-white hair standing out starkly like a beacon in a sea of Space Fleet black, marine green, and the dark grays and blacks of the crew’s families. Also there were Moderator Burkhardt, Minister Pecora, and most of the cabinet. But Anna, the one person he most wanted to see, the one he most wanted to have with him, was not there. Her place was with the
As the last gun carriage pulled away, the senior spiritual guide to the Federated Worlds Space Fleet stepped forward. In somber tones, she recited the formal address for the fallen in battle, its archaic language and complex sentences somehow exactly right for the occasion. But it mostly washed over Michael as he enjoyed the simple pleasure of standing still, careful to keep almost all his weight off his tortured left leg.Finally, the spiritual guide had finished. Michael stepped forward to perform his final duty as captain in command of
At precisely midday, he removed his dress cap and in a voice firm with a confidence he didn’t feel gave the order that would consign what little remained of
It was all but over. Michael replaced his cap and, saluting, gave the final blessing.
“
He was finished. With
He was plain ordinary Junior Lieutenant Michael Wallace Helfort again.
And even if part of him yearned to be just plain ordinary Mr. Helfort, he knew that when the day of reckoning with the Hammer came, and it surely would, he would be there to do his part.
Monday, February 15, 2399, UD
As Giovanni Pecora looked across the table at his Hammer counterpart, he knew in his heart that the chances of settling the
The Hammer’s councillor for foreign relations, the unlovely Claude Albrecht, sat directly opposite Pecora. He was flanked on one side by Pius Sodje, his undercouncillor for Federated Worlds relations, and on the other by Viktor Solomatin, officially the undercouncillor for departmental security but in fact the man put into Albrecht’s department by Doctrinal Security to keep an eye on things. According to the latest intelligence briefings, Solomatin was under Polk’s control now that the head of DocSec, Austin Ikedia, reportedly had jumped ship, abandoning what little was left of the Merrick/Commitment faction.
Given the typically ruthless way Polk had been consigning Merrick’s followers to DocSec lime pits, Pecora had been surprised to see Albrecht still holding his position. He shook his head in despair. Trying to understand the Hammer was made nearly impossible by the endless infighting that went on as faction struggled with faction for supremacy, as the winners took advantage of their position to cull as many of the losers as they could until, inevitably, the tables were turned. Then losers became winners, winners became losers, and the whole ghastly blood-drenched process started again.
Pecora sighed. Hammer politics could best be described as a blood-soaked mass of lies and deceit liberally laced with treachery, backstabbing, and appalling brutality. Exactly what was going on inside the Hammer was anyone’s guess.
Pecora turned his attention back to the group in front of him.
When not participating in the role-play sims so beloved of Fed management experts, he had spent much of the previous week reviewing everything the Feds knew about the trio on the other side of the conference table. It had been a depressing exercise.
The three men were survivors, the fittest that Hammer society could produce, God help it and its oppressed citizens. They had clawed their way to the top of the Hammer heap over the broken and bleeding bodies of ordinary Hammer citizens, with the corpses of more than a few competitors tossed in for good measure.
Solomatin in particular was a nasty piece of work. His file was full of examples of his sadistic and brutal approach to DocSec business. He was rumored to have personally shot more than two hundred so-called heretics during his time as DocSec commander on Fortitude, but never with one clean shot. No. That would have been too easy. Solomatin preferred multiple shots: two to wound, one in each thigh, and then, after an agonizing wait as the victim writhed in agony on the ground, another shot to finish it all when Solomatin got bored and it was time to move on to the next victim, who was invariably kept close at hand to heighten the terror of those last few awful moments of life. Pecora felt sick as for probably the tenth time he wiped his hand down the side of his trousers as if to rub away the contamination from Solomatin’s clammy handshake.
And even if Sodje and Albrecht weren’t as bad as Solomatin, it was probably only for lack of opportunity. Pecora had little doubt that they, too, would have just as little compunction about putting a bullet into the back of his head.
As he waited for Nikolas Kaminski, the Old Earth Alliance secretary for interstellar relations and as decent a man as Albrecht and his crew were psychopathic killers, to bring the meeting to order, Pecora knew deep down that the ten weeks set aside by the Hammer and Federated Worlds governments for mediation brokered by Old Earth were going to be the longest weeks of his life. He just hoped that they wouldn’t be the most wasted.
A small cough from Kaminski announced the start of the meeting, and with a sigh Pecora settled back in his chair to listen to the mediator’s opening statement. Pecora knew it would be a worthy speech. It would be full of pleas for common sense to prevail, for the standards of civilized behavior to apply, and so on. But no matter how worthy the sentiments, Pecora’s view of the Hammer would not change. They were so far beyond the bounds of decency that Kaminski might as well piss on a forest fire for all the good it would do.
Wednesday, February 24, 2399, UD
