The Battle of the Hammer Worlds

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.

Ishaq was gone.

Michael and the two marines, the only occupants of the lifepod who were not injured, had managed to restore a semblance of order.

The three worst casualties-two weapons techs and an ordnance petty officer-were beyond help. It had been the work of moments to strip them before bundling them into one of the emergency regen bags secured to the lifepod’s bulkheads. There was nothing more Michael or anyone could do for them. They would live long enough to be rescued or they wouldn’t. It was as simple as that.

The rest of the lifepod’s complement was a pretty sorry-looking bunch, but they would survive. The onboard bulkhead-mounted medibots were working like demented little demons, debriding, cutting, suturing, injecting, hydrating, and dosing. Michael’s only contribution to the process was to lift and shift spacers around so that the bots could get in to finish the job. Finally, it was his turn, and it surprised him when the medibots told him in no uncertain terms to strip his skinsuit off so that they could clean and stitch a cut on his back he had thought was just a bruise.

He patched his neuronics into the medibot’s holocam to see what was going on and winced when he saw the jagged, shallow gash across his back running down from his shoulder. “I didn’t even feel that,” he murmured. He should pay more attention to his suit integrity alarms, he thought. Canceling them without checking for damage was probably not a life-extending strategy.

Corporal Yazdi looked impressed. “Nice one, sir. You know what?”

Michael rolled his eyes. “What?”

“Should have been a marine.” Yazdi grinned. “Not a scratch on either one of us.”

“Hmmph!” Michael winced as a suture went in too deep. “That hurts. Tell you what, Corporal Yazdi. Stand behind Marine Murphy; that’s the moral of the story. He’d stop a tacnuke at forty paces.”

Yazdi smiled. “He bloody well would. You ready for an update, sir?”

Bugger, Michael thought. He had forgotten: Once an officer, always responsible, or so the saying went. The time had come to display the leadership qualities three expensive years at Space Fleet College had ground into him, even though all he really wanted to do was to curl up in a corner and go to sleep.

His hyperexcited, adrenaline-fueled high was beginning to drop away. The full impact of what had happened had sunk in, dragging his spirits down as it did. He could not see how more than a handful of Ishaq’s crew could have gotten away, and that meant a lot of people he knew might be gone. Stone, Fellsworth, Ichiro, Bettany. “Christ,” he muttered aloud. That was for starters. How many more would there be? The list would be meters long.

“Sir?” Yazdi prompted gently.

Michael started as he came to earth. “Shit. Sorry. Daydreaming again. Fire away, Corporal.”

“We’re in trouble, sir.”

“Trouble? Of course we’re in trouble.” Michael looked baffled. Talk about stating the blindingly obvious.

Yazdi shook her head. “I don’t mean it like that, sir,” she replied patiently. “Have a look at the holovid. I’ve slaved it to the external holocam.”

Michael did as he was told. He stared at the holovid, but it did not make any sense. “Who is that?” All he could see was a single merchant ship closing in on them. He looked closer. “Who is he?”

Yazdi shrugged. “Don’t know, sir. It looks like he doesn’t want us around. Here, sir.”

“Stand by one.” Overriding the lifepod’s automatic pilot, Michael frantically spun the pod to point its armored nose at the unknown attacker. It was not much, but every little bit helped. “Right, Corp. Sorry. Go on.”

“No worries. Here, sir. Have a look.” Michael looked on intently as Yazdi zoomed the holocam in as close as it would go. For a moment, what he was seeing did not make sense. The ship was using chromaflage to conceal something, but what? An icy hand clamped itself around his heart as it came to him.

“Oh, Jeez! Are those what I think they are?”

“They are, sir. Those are rail-gun ports. That’s what took the Ishaq out. That’s-”The holovid flared with the brilliant flash of a rail-gun broadside. An instant later, the lifepod was slapped backward, the hull screeching in protest, a massive crunch announcing a rail-gun slug strike. It was over in an instant, so quickly that Michael did not have time to feel any fear. Desperately, he checked for damage.

“Lucky, lucky, lucky,” he muttered as he ran the pod’s diagnostics. The slug had punched into the lifepod’s bow and ripped its way along the outer skin without penetrating the inner hull, leaving only a blazing white-hot furrow spewing ionized gas to record its passing. They had survived by pure, blind chance; a hit dead center would have gutted the pod. He took a deep breath. A lifepod was a small target, but even small targets got hit. His stomach knotted at the thought.

“Christ! Now it all makes sense. Those are the bad guys, Corporal.”

“They sure as hell are, sir.”

“Hang on a moment. Let me have a look at something.” Michael patched his neuronics into the Ishaq’s event log he had downloaded in the awful near-panicked rush to get to the lifepods before the ship blew. The data were raw and there were terabytes to look at, so it took a while, but he found it in the end: data from Ishaq’s infrared sensors acquired in the moments before the rail-gun attack had hit home. There it was. Michael could not be sure, but it looked to him like the characteristic heat signature of a ship that had lost fusion containment and exploded. He looked again. Not one ship, either-lots of ships. Ishaq had not died alone. Other ships had died that day. Why? None of it made any sense.

“Shit. This changes things bigtime.” Michael sat back to think. “Right, this is what we need to do, Corporal. First, I’m going to comm you and Murphy here a data file-a big data file. It’s the Ishaq’s event log, and if we live long enough, we’ll need it to convict these people of piracy. I’m going to put a neuronics block on it, so whoever these people are, you can’t tell them it exists. Okay?”

The two marines nodded. “Good.” There was a short pause as the transfer went through. “Right! Now we need to get our escape kits tucked away and then our skinsuits back on in case they get lucky and punch a hole in us. Anything else?”

Yazdi shook her head. “No, sir. Got to say, I don’t fancy our chances. They’re either going to blow us to hell or it’s some damn prison camp somewhere.”

Michael nodded. Yazdi was right. If they were going to be blown to hell, there was nothing he could do to stop it. And if they were about to be captured, they would need the little escape kits tucked away safely under synthskin patches: two under the upper arms, one low on each buttock, and one behind each thigh above the knee. Neuronics blocks made it impossible for any Fleet spacer to reveal the kits’ existence to anyone not positively authenticated as serving Fleet personnel, so their captors would never find out. Whoever they were.

“Right,” he said forcefully as a quick check of the holovid showed their attacker closing in. “Let’s get the escape kits out and make a start. We may not have much time.” He stood up to reach a small panel high on one bulkhead, pressing his finger down on the access control. A small prick signaled that his DNA had been sampled, and then the panel clicked open, revealing a tightly packed mass of small white packets.

They were in business.