The Battle of the Hammer Worlds

You can go.”

Monday, September 13, 2399, UD

Secure Interrogation Facility Bravo-6, Commitment

Michael awoke with a start as the door to his cell crashed open with a bang. He had fallen asleep where he had been sitting and was stiff and sore. Sometime during the night he had toppled over without waking up, ending up curled into a fetal ball on the cold plascrete floor.

Oh, no, Michael thought as he looked up through sleep-fogged eyes still clogged with blood, cringing away from the black-uniformed figure towering over him. Not another beating. Please, God, not another beating. He was not sure he could take much more of this.

“Hello, Helfort. I’m Colonel Erwin Hartspring, Section 22, Doctrinal Security Service,” the man declared pleasantly, tapping his thigh with what looked like a short riding crop held in his left hand.

The man was tall, his body lean, muscles whipcord taut under an immaculately pressed tight black uniform with woven silver badges and a small row of medal ribbons on the left breast. His face was long and gaunt, with wrinkle-cut skin stretched tight over prominent cheekbones, windburned to a reddish-brown and sharpened by a straight nose dropping to a fine pencil mustache above thin, bloodless lips. His hair was cut down to a fine black stubble. It was the man’s eyes that made Michael’s heart sink. They were a pale, washed-out amber. They looked empty, pitiless. They were the eyes of a man who had seen too much to care about the battered, blood-soaked body at his feet. The man was a trashpress parody of a cold-blooded killer.

Michael shivered.

Hartspring leaned forward, the better to look at Michael, poking him with his riding crop. He winced, nose wrinkling in disgust.

“Oh, dear!” The man stepped back. “You are a bit of a mess, and to say you smell bad is an understatement. Really,” he added conversationally, “I keep telling my troopers to be more careful, but you know what?” Michael looked up at him suspiciously.

Hartspring paused.

Michael was obviously supposed to answer, so he shook his head. “No, sir,” he mumbled.

“I tell them, Michael, not to damage the goods, but you know what? I don’t think they listen to me.” He shook his head in mock despair. “Very coarse people, you know, these DocSec troopers. Most of them are not very bright and much too fond of the sight of blood for my liking. Other people’s blood, of course. They hate seeing their own. Oh, well, can’t be helped, I suppose.” He sighed in resignation.

He turned and shouted through the open cell door. “Sergeant!”

A well-built, powerfully muscled man a good head and a half shorter than Hartspring appeared in an instant. “Sir?”

“This is Sergeant Jacobsen, Helfort. Sergeant Jacobsen?”

“Sir?”

“Say good morning to Junior Lieutenant Helfort. He’s the hero of the Battle of Hell’s Moons, you know. If Fed holovids are to be believed.”

Jacobsen’s face was completely blank. He did not look at Michael. “Good morning, sir,” he barked at the far wall of the cell.

Hartspring smiled. “See how polite we can be, Helfort? Remember that, won’t you.”

He turned back to Jacobsen. “Now, Sergeant. This is what I want you to do. Doctor first. Tell that lazy scab- lifting son of a bitch that this is one of my Class A prisoners. Tell him that if I find that my very important Class A prisoner hasn’t been fixed up properly, then I’ll be fixing him up. Permanently. Got that?”

“Sir!” Jacobsen’s face was impassive.

“Good. When the doctor’s finished, take Helfort to Suite 517. I want him stripped, searched again, and then cleaned up. Bath, clean clothes, something to eat. You know the routine. When he’s done, give me a call.”

“Sir.”

With that, Colonel Hartspring was gone. Jacobsen reached down. Taking Michael by the collar of his tattered shipsuit, he lifted him effortlessly to his feet and bundled him out of the cell.

The whole business was completely unreal.

Without warning, Michael had risen from a living hell into a bizarre fantasy world, a world a million light-years away from the squalid brutality of plascrete cells and sullen thugs seemingly committed to making his every conscious minute a pain-filled nightmare.

In front of him were the remains of breakfast, probably the best Michael had ever enjoyed despite the pain eating involved. Michael, his appetite more than restored by the fact that some DocSec thug was not about to give him a good kicking, had demolished the spread as fast as his wrecked mouth and face would allow.

Comfortably bloated, he sat back. To all intents and purposes, he was in a luxury suite that would not have disgraced a five-star hotel. In fact, it was better than anything Michael had ever stayed in. Well, up to a point. The place was a luxury suite only if one ignored the fact that the door was plasteel and locked, the windows were plasglass and sealed, and his every move was watched by holocams covering every cubic centimeter of the suite. He could not even take a crap without being watched, for God’s sake. He laughed mirthlessly at the thought he might become a star of Hammer holovids. Michael Helfort takes a dump, now live on Channel 43!

Oh, and there was not a single thing in the whole apartment he could use to commit suicide. Nothing. He knew. He had looked everywhere.

Not that he planned to commit suicide, but it was always an option if things got too tough, he supposed. He could break out one of his escape kits, the one with the handy length of monofil line, but the thought of it slicing his head off if he tried to hang himself was more than he could bear. Worse, if he did, the Hammers would know about the kits, and that would screw things up big-time for everyone else. A sudden shiver ran up his spine. For all he knew, the Hammer had shot the rest of the Ishaqs out of hand. Maybe they were all in the lime pits. Maybe he was the last-

Michael forced himself to stop. Wondering what might have happened to the rest of the Ishaq’s crew would get him nowhere. He had done what little he could. What he should be thinking about now was himself.

Things were going to get tough again. He knew that. Michael was no fool. He knew what Colonel Hartspring was up to. He knew why Sergeant Jacobsen had been paraded in front of him. Good cop, bad cop. Soft man, hard man. Pampered one minute, beaten half to death the next. Michael shivered. It was all so cliched; he knew exactly where this was all heading, and if he could not find a way out, he might end up so badly damaged that he would be better off dead.

Some Hammer genius had decided that he had something to offer. Clearly, the Hammers being the Hammers, they would do whatever it took to get what they wanted. That much was for sure.

He did not know if he could hold out long enough to convince them he would never, ever cooperate. Would they stop before they killed him in the process? Would they even care? Probably not, he suspected.

He shivered, the sudden rush of sour fear turning his stomach over and over and over as he bolted out of his chair. He just made it to the toilet, where he lost the breakfast he had enjoyed so much, his ribs screaming in pain as spasm after violent spasm racked his body. Jeez, he thought, slumping to the floor to recover, that was fun.

Cleaning himself up, Michael came out of the bathroom, and there he was. Colonel Hartspring stood silent in the middle of the room, a half smile on his face, riding crop in hand. Sergeant Jacobsen, face as inscrutable as ever, stood half a pace behind him and to one side.

“Not feeling too well, Michael?”

Michael stared for a second. Then he snapped. “Fuck you, Hartspring!” He did not stop to think, his body speaking for him, his system suddenly fear-charged with enough adrenaline to get across the gap to Hartspring in an instant. If he was lucky, he might rip the colonel’s eyes out before Sergeant Jacobsen beat him to death.

Hartspring did not move, though his eyes narrowed in a sudden flash of anger. Michael took a deep breath, fighting to get himself back under control. Careful, Michael reminded himself, careful. Hartspring was a DocSec