The Battle of the Hammer Worlds

“Well, that’s the problem. The provost marshal has formally advised the captain that the charges are unsupported by the available evidence and must be withdrawn, um, er. .” Morrissen’s voice trailed off into an uncomfortable silence. Fellsworth sat back, arms folded. Michael stepped up to the plate.

“Sir, is there a problem? Surely all the captain has to do is sign a piece of paper.” Michael leaned forward, a look of innocent inquiry on his face even though he knew full well what the real stumbling block was.

Morrissen nodded. “That’s correct, Helfort. That is all she has to do. The problem is that until we return to port and the matter is formally taken over by the Fleet provost marshal, she is the only one who can withdraw the charges. That’s her right under military law, and I’m afraid it’s a right that I cannot, umm, well, er. .”

Michael finished the sentence for him. “. . persuade her not to exercise?”

Morrissen nodded glumly. “Yes.”

Fellsworth leaned forward to look Morrissen full in the face. “So that means we’re still under close arrest?”

Morrissen’s hands went up as if to fend her off. Before he could speak, Pasquale got in first.

“I have told the captain that would be inappropriate, and she has agreed. Right, Jack?”

“Correct. You will be under open arrest. A formality. You are free to go anywhere you like on board, though for the time being you’ll not be standing watches.”

“Some good news, then, sir.” Michael grinned, happy that his run of unbroken nights would not be ending.

Morrissen ignored Michael’s feeble attempt at a joke. He looked at Fellsworth. “I know you aren’t happy about any of this, but believe me, neither am I. You’ll have to trust me, Karla. I know I could-should-have done more. Believe me when I say I regret that bitterly, but I can assure you that standing between a captain in command and her rights is a bad place to be. So, unless there is-”

Fellsworth’s hand went up to stop him. “Sir! I know that,” she interrupted, her voice softening. “I don’t think I can judge you-or anyone else involved, come to that-without being in the same position as you all were in. So why don’t we leave it at that? What more is there to say?”

“Not a lot.” Morrissen shook his head. “So thanks. I’ll keep pushing, but in the end Fleet will have to step in. Oh, talking of Fleet, I forgot something. I think I can safely say that there will be a formal apology from Fleet once this is all sorted out. Okay. I’ll see you all later. I’ve commed the necessary orders to Armstrong. You’ll lose the marines effective immediately.”

“Thank you, sir,” Fellsworth and Michael chorused.

Morrissen nodded, stood up, and left without another word. Michael thought he looked terrible; the stress of the COMEX affair on top of all the shit Constanza had piled on him would have made anyone look terrible.

Pasquale started to get up but thought better of it. She sat back down.

“You two okay?” she asked.

Fellsworth and Michael both nodded.

“Hang in there. So there are no doubts, I can promise you this: The charges will be dropped. You will get the formal apology from the commander in chief personally. There will also be-” Pasquale stopped abruptly. Michael looked at her curiously. She had been about to say something but must have thought better of it.

Pasquale gathered her thoughts before continuing. “That’s it. Let me know if you have any problems. You shouldn’t. Word’s out. That’s it. I’ll see you both in the wardroom: 12:30 sharp. I want you both to have lunch with me.” She stood up. “Think of it as rehabilitation if you like,” she added with a small smile. “I’ll see you then.”

“Sir.”

Once the door closed behind Pasquale, Fellsworth let out a long sigh. “Well, Michael. There it is.” Her voice was flat, emotionless.

“Never a dull moment, sir.”

Fellsworth looked curiously at Michael for a moment. “You haven’t picked up on it, have you?”

Michael was baffled. “Picked up on what?”

“Oh, Michael!” Fellsworth complained despairingly. “For a bright boy, you can be awfully thick sometimes. Think!”

He thought long and hard, but whatever Fellsworth was talking about, he did not get it. “Sorry,” he murmured, hands held out wide in an embarrassed apology.

“Well, please do not repeat this, but I think we’re in for a change of command.”

“Oh!” Michael sat stunned. He had wondered what Pasquale had been about to say. Now he knew.

Michael was jerked awake by the ship’s main broadcast.

“What the f. .” he mumbled as he struggled to get his sleep-clogged brain back in gear.

“All stations, this is command. Stand by for unscheduled drop in ten, repeat ten, minutes. Command out.”

Strange, Michael thought. Something had gone wrong with one of Ishaq’s mission- critical systems, or the ship had received a pinchcomm with a change of plans. Which was it?

Michael patched his neuronics into the ship’s management system. A quick check told him that all Ishaq’s systems were nominal. So, he thought, no systems problems; it had to be a pinchcomm. Now, that would be most unusual. Getting through to a ship in pinchspace was a difficult and uncertain business involving multiple slaved pinchcomm transmitters sending at maximum power. If the beam formers were good enough to focus the message-essentially a coded modulation of pinchspace itself-onto the same piece of pinchspace occupied by Ishaq, she would get the message, a laboriously transmitted four-letter group repeated over and over. Nine times out of ten, pinchcomm messages sent to ships in pinchspace did not get through; that was why Fleet doctrine reminded planners emphatically not to rely on them at any time. Any way one looked at it, Ishaq had been lucky to get it. Must be damned important for Fleet to go to all that trouble, he thought.

With no duty to attend to, Michael thought briefly about getting out of his bunk to see what was going on. On second thought, he decided, he might as well stay right where he was. He lay in the half darkness, neuronics patched into the ship’s holovids to see what was going on, until the ship duly dropped out of pinchspace.

For a while, nothing much happened. Getting the full pinchcomm message, Michael thought. Then furious jets of reaction mass began to roll the ship slowly end over end. They were turning back, Michael thought. What in God’s name was going on?

Once positioned, what started as a gentle trembling grew into a ship-shaking rattle. Ishaq’s main engines came up to full power, the aft holocams whiting out in the face of a glare as bright as any sun as driver mass accelerated at 40,000 g blasted out of Ishaq’s two main engines, the ionized driver mass ripping its way through space. Ishaq decelerated slowly, but the main engines stayed at maximum power even as she came to a dead stop. For a moment, Ishaq seemed to hang motionless in space. Then, her fabric groaning under the 5-g acceleration, the main engine burn started to drive the ship back to jump speed.

Twenty-three minutes and a lot of driver mass later, Ishaq was ready to jump on a vector back the way she had come. Michael was impressed. Must be one hell of a set of new orders to justify something so drastic, he thought.

“All stations, this is command. Stand by to jump in five minutes.”

While Ishaq settled down after the ordeal of jumping, Captain Constanza came up on main broadcast.

“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.