The Battle of the Hammer Worlds

Thursday, December 16, 2399, UD

Federated Worlds Embassy, city of McNair, Commitment

Insistent chiming announced an incoming priority comm; it dragged Amos Bichel out of the blackness of sleep. The man responsible for FedWorld field intelligence and covert operations on the Hammer Worlds shook himself awake. Head more or less clear, he answered the comm.

Seconds later he was out of bed, pulling his clothes on with frantic urgency, ignoring sleepy complaints from his wife. No matter how hard he tried, he simply could not believe what he had just been told. He shook his head in disbelief. Survivors from the Ishaq? Unbelievable. What on earth would the Hammers do next? They must have a death wish because one thing was for sure: The brown stuff was really going to hit the fan now.

He commed the duty officer back.

“Marty! Are you sure about this?”

The duty officer’s voice left no room for doubt. “Boss, I’ve been through it ten times,” he explained patiently. “It’s clear as day. There are survivors from the Ishaq, and they’re here on Commitment.”

“How did they get the message out?”

“Followed standard operating procedures. An officer called Helfort did the job. Posted a message on a public bulletin board, using one of our accounts. We check regularly in case there’s anything, but this is a first, I have to say.”

“Right. I’ll be over in five. We’ll go through it one last time to be one hundred and ten percent sure. Then I’ll call the ambassador. Jesus! I don’t think he’s going to be too happy about all this.”

Friday, December 17, 2399, UD

Town of Barkersville, Commitment

“Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be, sir,” Yazdi replied, her voice betraying a barely controlled mix of excitement and nerves. She held up the knife she had stolen from the house, its edge honed razor-sharp after hours of effort. “Let’s get it on.”

Michael held up his knife and put on a voice laced with solemn pomposity. “Right. By the powers vested in me, blah, blah, blah, I hereby declare war on all Hammer fuckpigs who get in our way. Let’s go.”

Yazdi carefully engaged the clutch and rolled the truck out of the small copse in which they had been hiding. Slowly, she drove down the lane into the outskirts of Barkersville. If it had been quiet when they had driven through the day before, it was completely dead now; the entire town was in bed, asleep, they hoped, despite the fact that it was broad daylight. Yazdi slowed the truck to a stop on a side street one block short of a grim one-story plascrete building and parked in the shadows. Michael had a good look around, pleased to see that there was not another living soul in sight. No surveillance holocams either.

Yazdi patted Michael on the shoulder. “Right. Stick to the plan and we’ll be fine. Let’s do it!”

Climbing out of the truck, she turned the corner and walked briskly into the Barkersville police station. Michael waited the minute Yazdi had asked for before he followed her in, nerves jangling and hands wet with sweat. He pushed through a grubby plasglass door and into the reception area. The place could have been any police station on a thousand worlds. Old and tired, it smelled of defeat and beaten-down people. The bare concrete room, its walls broken by pin boards papered with drooping and tattered notices, was dominated by a single counter behind which stood Yazdi with an evil smile on her face, a finger to her lips. Waving him on, she turned and went through a door Michael assumed must lead to the back of the station.

He followed, swallowing hard as he stepped over the body of a middle-aged police sergeant facedown on the plascrete floor, a thin dribble of blood slowly winding its way out from underneath his body, stun-gun holster empty.

Michael had guessed right. Beyond the door was a corridor that ran clear through to the back of the station. Yazdi had not wasted any time. Two policemen manning radios-a worn sign above the door said this was the incident control room-were slumped forward on their desks, and the only sound was the desultory chatter from bored officers out on patrol. Yazdi was moving quietly back down the corridor, checking each office as she went.

“Gotcha,” Michael heard her mutter as she ducked into one of the last rooms on the left before a cross- corridor. He followed her in. The room was small, with a shelf on one wall holding a single multichannel holocam recorder, the machine laughably antique to look at.

“We’ll come back when we’re done,” she whispered. “Prefer not to have any holovid of what we’ve been up to.”

Michael could only nod. He could not speak; his stomach was heaving in protest. He felt awful. If he showed it, Yazdi either did not care or had better things to think about. She waved him to check right while she looked left. Heart in mouth, knife held tight in a hand slippery with sweat, he moved silently down the corridor, checking each of the offices in turn.

Empty. Empty. Empty.

Then his heart sank. The last one was occupied. Taking a deep breath to steel himself, he walked straight in. The man behind the desk, a youngish officer, looked up in baffled surprise. A small engraved sign on the desk read DETECTIVE SERGEANT H. K. KALKOV.

Michael moved around the desk and extended his right arm as if to shake hands with Kalkov. Taken completely by surprise, the man sat unmoving, mouth slightly open. Michael stepped in close. With no fuss or bother, he slipped the knife in his left hand under the man’s ribs and up into his heart. With a soft whoooof, the air rushed out of Detective Sergeant Kalkov’s lungs. His eyes bulged and then rolled up into his head, and he slumped back in his chair, head falling back, mouth open in surprise. Michael tried not to look. Quickly, he relieved Kalkov of his stun gun and small handheld radio before spinning on his heel and running from the room. The man’s face was seared into his memory now, and Michael knew with sickening certainty that it was something he would never be able to forget.

The rest of the corridor was still clear as Michael rejoined Yazdi. “Five more minutes, no more,” she whispered.

Michael nodded. He did not want to think about what he had done, what he probably would have to do again. Then all doubt vanished. A black jumpsuited DocSec trooper appeared, his back toward them as he turned to lock his office. Michael beat Yazdi to the trooper, his hand pulling the man’s head to one side, his knife slicing up deep into the throat. It was too easy. The man twitched for a second, then dropped to lie crumpled awkwardly on the floor. It was messy; there was blood everywhere, a pool spreading fast, red-black and thick, the air filling with a sickly copper smell.

Stepping away, Michael felt ill, his self-control crumbling under waves of nausea. He forced his body back under control, stepping back to take the trooper’s weapon, a compact machine pistol worn in a thigh holster, and two spare magazines.

They moved on. More offices and then a corridor leading on to the cells. Yazdi shook her head. They were running out of time. It would have been good to find the armory wide open, but even provincial Hammer policemen were not that slack. She circled her finger. With a brief detour to grab the holocam recorder, they were through and out of the reception area. Yazdi stopped only for a second to take a pair of battered binoculars off a low shelf, and they were back on the street, walking sedately back to the truck. There was not a soul in sight.

Safely around the corner, Michael almost made it to the truck before he lost control of his stomach. In a spectacular series of gut-wrenching heaves, he dumped every gram of food he had eaten in the last few hours onto the pavement.

Yazdi grabbed him and hustled him into the truck. “Time for that later,” she whispered. Seconds later, they were on their way, just another old truck passing through a quiet country town.