The Battle of the Hammer Worlds

jumping into and out of pinchspace. Around him, the combat information center burst into life as half the command team stood down, the inevitable buzz of conversation bringing the equally inevitable order to keep it quiet. Michael waited until the rush was over before stripping off his space suit and changing seats. When the ship was at defense stations-its second-highest alert state-he was one of the two warfare officers in the combat information center, and it made more sense to be sitting close to his partner, in this case Lieutenant Tanvi Kidav, Eridani’s senior warfare officer.

Michael liked Kidav a lot. At first, her implacably taciturn exterior had put him off. But after a few days, he had discovered that there was much more to Kidav than met the eye. It turned out she was an engaging woman with a quiet, dry sense of humor allied with an ability to deliver one-liners to devastating effect. Her speciality was deflating the more pompous of Eridani’s crew. Michael knew. He had seen her do it to the ship’s senior engineer, Pavel Duricek, a pompous windbag who clearly believed he was the most important person on board, a view that, needless to say, Kidav did not agree with. Pope Pavel, she called him. Duricek hated it.

Kidav smiled as he sat down. “Hi, Michael. Nice and quiet out there, thank God.”

Michael nodded. “Way I like it.”

“Me, too. Right. You keep an eye on the drone launch; I’ll watch the rest.”

“Sir.”

Truth be told, launching surveillance drones and a pair of pinchcomm satellites was not the most difficult task in Eridani’s mission inventory. Michael was pretty sure that Eridani’s drone team would do it with the smooth efficiency he was beginning to expect from everyone on board. He could not speak for Carlos Galvan, Eridani’s drone officer, but with Petty Officer Bienefelt to back Galvan up, he knew things would go as they should. Eridani’s captain, Lieutenant Commander Dana Lenski, seemed to have something that the late and unlamented Captain Constanza did not: the ability to get the best out of her people.

“Command, drones.” Galvan’s voice was matter-of-fact.

“Command.”

“Ready for drone deployment.”

“Command, roger. Stand by.” Michael did a quick final check of the threat and command plots to make sure nothing had slipped past him. Nothing had. “Deployment approved.”

“Roger.”

Michael watched intently as the drone handlers spilled out of the forward upper air lock, their chromaflage space suits dialed down to a dirty gray-black all but invisible in the miserable light coming from Commitment’s orange-red dwarf sun more than 150 million kilometers away. Bienefelt’s huge bulk was easy to spot. Michael nodded appreciatively as he watched the team.

The drone team knew what they were doing. Splitting into two, they quickly had the massive cargo bay doors open, and a steady stream of drones started to appear. Finally, two much larger pinch comsats appeared, and the cargo bay doors were closed. Michael heaved a sigh of relief. The Eridani was hard for Hammer radar or optronics to see, but only when fully stealthed with her skin chromaflage activated. Two bloody great sharp-edged cargo bay doors rather spoiled the effect, increasing Eridani’s radar cross section dramatically.

Now the handlers were pushing the drones clear of Eridani, and Michael watched as one by one the drones’ diagnostics confirmed they were ready to go. The two pinchspace comsats were following close behind like two sheepdogs.

“Command, drones.”

“Command.”

“Ready to launch. Passing control to Mother.” Michael did another check. The threat plot was unchanged. A quick look at the drones confirmed that they were ready to go. There was no need to keep the handlers out any longer, and with Eridani slipping through space at more than 40 kilometers per second, they should be back inside, where bumping into a piece of dirt no bigger than a pinhead was not a lifethreatening event. Michael knew. He had been there.

“Roger. Recover teams.”

“On our way.”

From the first time he had seen her working, Michael knew Bienefelt was good, but Eridani’s handlers were every bit her match. With economical elegance, they swarmed back to the air lock, stopping precisely with only centimeters to go before dropping neatly back into the ship. Well, not all of them, Michael noted with a smile. Carlos Galvan was as clumsy as Michael had been when he had been the drone officer in 387. Even so, it took only a minute and they were all back, the air lock closing behind them.

“Surveillance, command. Nicely done. Thank you.”

“Roger that.” Galvan sounded pleased. He should, Michael thought. Surveillance drones had minds of their own, and once they started to get out of control, things could get dicey in seconds.

Michael turned his attention back to the drones. Mother was happy with them, her own checks confirming that she had good birds.

“Captain, sir, command.”

“Captain.”

“Drones and pinchspace comsats deployed, sir. All nominal. Ready to launch.” Michael half smiled. Lenski knew all that or she was not the skipper he suspected. But tradition was tradition: AIs were not to be trusted, so keep humans in the loop and all that.

“Launch authorized.”

“Sir.”

Michael watched intently as Mother drove the drones slowly clear of Eridani before methodically aligning each one along its intended vector. The pinchspace comsats followed, leaving Eridani coasting along alone. Then, as one, engines powered by hypercompressed nitrogen came to life, thin whiskers of gas driving the drones away from Eridani and toward Commitment, the comsats angled away to take up their positions well outside Commitment nearspace, where a wandering Hammer ship on antidrone patrol was unlikely to trip over them.

Three hours later, the captain slid into her seat between Michael and Kidav. “Ignore me, guys,” she said. “How’s Mother going on Phase 2?”

“Another two hours, sir,” Kidav replied. “We’ve got a short list of possible targets, but I agree with Mother. We should watch things a bit longer. There’s no rush.”

“Agreed.” She turned. “So, Michael. An old friend of yours over there, I think.” Lenski waved a hand in the general direction of the plot.

“The Bravery you mean, sir?”

“The same.” Lenski leaned closer. “You did well, Michael,” she said softly. “Hell’s Moons. Must have been hard.”

It was not a question; Michael just nodded.

“You know,” Lenski said conversationally, sitting back, “I think we underestimate the Hammer sometimes. Bravery is a good example. I went through the Hell’s Moons after-action reports. The Bravery’s skipper knew what he was doing. Her drop in-system was as good a piece of work as I’ve seen. Quick to set up, quick to get salvos away.”

“It was; I’ll give them that,” Michael agreed. “Though five seconds too slow, thank God. And yes, I do think we underestimate them. Much as I hate the fuckers”-Michael’s voice hardened noticeably-“they aren’t all corrupt, incompetent fools. That’s something worth remembering.”

The depth of emotion in Michael’s voice did not surprise Lenski. His service record had left her stunned; there would be few in the Fleet who had been through what he had been through. She had also talked at length to Bienefelt when the petty officer-the largest woman Lenski had ever met-had joined Eridani. Bienefelt and Michael, not to mention the rest of 387’s crew, had done it tough, topped off in Michael’s case by having Ishaq blown out from underneath him, followed by surviving a stay with DocSec and then waging a one-man war against the Hammer before somehow