The Battle of the Hammer Worlds

later, the brew would have cured into thin sheets of tough but flexible waterproof material, perfect for making crude but serviceable tents. The fifth produced the resinous glue needed to hold everything together and waterproof seams. The only items not made on site were the escapees’ chromaflage ponchos; good though Fed geneering might be, it was not up to the job of making ponchos out of bacteria. Those were supplied by the kits, ready-to- wear. As for cold-weather clothing, the Ishaqs had the Hammers to thank; the gear they had supplied had been good quality, and there had been plenty of it.

Aided by the Hammers’ total lack of interest in what the Ishaqs were up to, the manufacturing process had gone well, though to Fellsworth’s horror, the glue brew had been tested by the camp commandant during one of his rare tours inside the wire. Strolling through the kitchen, tureens of geneered bacteria in full view everywhere, he had to try the glue. Well, it certainly smelled delicious. A spoon was called for, and the mix was tested. Needless to say, the vile taste and gummy consistency of something he was assured was a FedWorld favorite left him shaking his head even as he discreetly parked the unwanted morsel in his handkerchief. He would never understand those Feds, he said to his second in command as they left the hut to inspect the latrines. What strange people they were to eat such vile food.

Finally, from the kitchen, the materials went to small manufacturing groups set up in each hut. From there the hundred and one items the Ishaqs would need to survive in the bitterly cold wilderness that surrounded the camp flowed in an endless stream, to be taken out and buried in caves cut into the five-meter-high snowdrifts that filled the lower part of the camp compound.

Fellsworth was not simply planning to survive. She meant to get the Ishaqs home. She had allocated three months for the group to get clear of the worst the Carolyn Ranges could throw at them. That meant a lot of walking each day, every day, and for months. It was a huge task at first sight, but a close look at the high-resolution maps loaded into every Ishaq’s neuronics showed that it could be done.

Fellsworth had picked the Hammers’ weak spot, a weakness that showed up every day in their complete indifference to what actually was going on inside I-2355. The Hammers had a simple view of things. They thought that there was no point escaping. That was why the prisoner of war camps from the last war were where they were.

I-2355 had been built deep in the heart of the Carolyn Ranges, the mountains at the southeastern end of Maranzika, a 16,000-kilometer-long landmass and Commitment’s largest continent. Apart from the isolation camps used by DocSec to lock away its prisoners, the nearest civilization was the small fishing village of Penrhyn, more than 1,200 kilometers away in a direct line across snow-covered mountains, their serried ranks reaching up past 10,000 meters. Safety in the form of the FedWorlds embassy in McNair was a truly demoralizing 7,000 kilometers north of Penrhyn.

As far as the Hammers were concerned, escaping was just another way of dying, slowly and painfully. If hypothermia did not do the job, starvation surely would, and only a fool would risk that.

Fellsworth took a different view. She had set up a small working party as soon as she had arrived at I-2355. Working in secret, their job was to find a way to get everyone out of the camp and a way for the escapees to survive long enough to get clear of the Carolyn Ranges. Once clear, the main group would go to ground, living wild off the plentiful game that roamed the northwestern foothills of the Carolyn Ranges; smaller groups would strike out toward McNair. All they needed was a computer with access to the Hammer’s public net. Twenty minutes was more than enough time to post a message on the right public bulletin board, and their job would be done. In theory, at least, the embassy would pick up the message and decrypt it. The decryption would tell them where the Ishaqs were and how many of them there were. How the embassy got them out safely was another problem, but that was their problem, and Fellsworth was not going to worry about it.

Fellsworth and her planners also believed the Hammers would expect them to head for the coast; God knew, only a lunatic would head deeper into the mountains. She relied on the Hammers looking coastward-to that end, an elaborate false trail had been constructed running in the wrong direction-as she led the Ishaqs up the narrow valley that cradled I-2355 and across a 4,300-meter-high pass before dropping down into the valley of the Upper Gwyr River as it ran down to the O’ksander Valley, a thickly wooded temperate rain forest rich with game. That was Fellsworth’s initial target. There the group would rest until the Hammers had given up looking for them before embarking on the next and most dangerous part of the plan: leaving the O’ksander Valley to travel down the Gwyr and disappear into the untracked vastness of the Forest of Gwyr.

It was at this stage in Fellsworth’s briefing that Michael had come close to admitting that the doubters might have a point. It was not much of a plan. Taking advantage of Commitment’s long nights and the invariably foul weather that prevailed across the Carolyn Ranges to screen them from surveillance satellites and marauding landers was one thing. Cutting down trees to make crude rafts before floating, huddled under chromaflage ponchos, down a river thick with broken ice and rock-strewn rapids did not look like a recipe for success. It was more like a recipe for mass drowning in his opinion.

But Fellsworth’s was the only one they had. To Michael’s way of thinking, anything but anything was better than being a prisoner of the Hammer. If the plan worked, they would be down out of the Carolyn Ranges well below the snow line, safe in the Forest of Gwyr, where ten million Hammers would never, ever find them. God knew, they had all the time in the world to get there.

So here he was, safely through the shallow tunnel, one of two laboriously cut by hand under the razor wire- topped fences that surrounded I-2355, belly down in a deep snowdrift overlooking the camp, well clear of security holocams and movement detectors. Michael shivered as he waited for the rest of his stick, trying to ignore the cold slowly seeping into his body, only his eyes showing under the thin chromaflage poncho. To the casual observer, there was nothing to see. Only snow, snow, and more snow, the slowly drifting flakes warning of the coming blizzard.

Michael whistled softly with relief as the last three spacers in his stick finally appeared, the three spacers squirming and wriggling past him to follow the rest of the stick already on their way to the rendezvous point one kilometer up the small creek that cut down past the camp. Once they were safely clear, they would have at least eighteen hours of darkness to press on hard, ten before the Hammers discovered they had no takers for morning roll call. Michael intended that his stick would be at least fifteen kilometers away from the camp by then. He would push until two hours before dawn, and then they would dig in to sit out the long Commitment day before moving off again. It was going to be tough. The snow was deep, and more was due. But they had little choice, and Michael was confident they would hit their initial objective. Fellsworth’s training regimen had been brutally tough, and the Ishaqs were as ready as they would ever be.

Well, things were off to a good start. They were safely outside the wire, and he had his full complement of seven spacers, well, spacers and marines. To his surprise, Fellsworth had allowed the leaders to pick their own teams, figuring that they would perform better than would complete strangers thrown together at the last minute; she changed people around only if she thought the teams were seriously unbalanced in some way. Michael had gotten the people he wanted: Stone, Yazdi, Murphy, Ichiro, and Petrovic, plus a couple more he had not met, including a junior spacer named Jamie Piccione, possibly the youngest and most frightened of all the Ishaqs he had come across. His slender form made him look like a baby up against Murphy’s massive bulk. Fellsworth had had a quiet word with Michael before they left, making it clear that even if he did not make it, she expected Piccione to. One of the privileges of leadership, she had said, and she was not joking.

With a deep breath, Michael set off behind Murphy as he bulldozed his way into the worsening blizzard, the rest of the stick falling in behind. It was going to be a long, hard night.

Tuesday, November 30, 2399, UD

Koenig’s High Pass, Carolyn Ranges, Commitment

Above 4,000 meters, the wind was a maelstrom of vicious, stabbing knives. The cold sliced through weatherproof clothing as if it were made of rice paper.

Michael had not felt his feet or his hands for well over an hour. He assumed they were still there; he was able