The Battle of the Hammer Worlds

wondered how she did it. He had had quite enough for one day, the seconds dragging by until the characteristic buzz-rip announced the launch of Eridani’s last missile salvo.

“Thank Christ for that,” Michael muttered. “Time to go home.”

Thankfully, Commodore Perkins agreed.

“Command, Mother. Commodore to all ships. Stand by to jump.”

“Command, roger. All stations. Stand by to jump. Engineering, confirm safe to jump.”

“Confirmed. Mass distribution recomputed; model is nominal.”

“Command, roger.”

Lenksi wasted no more time, bringing the main engines up to full power to drive Eridani to jump speed, the maneuvering jets firing furiously to put the ship on vector for home.

For once, Michael had no problem with the jump. The accumulated tension fell off him as he sat back, conscious for the first time of the sweat that had turned the shipsuit under his combat space suit into a sodden, ice-cold rag.

“Jeez,” Michael said. “That was fun.”

“I suppose that’s one way to describe it,” Lenski said laconically. “Okay. All stations, this is command. Secure from general quarters. Revert to defense stations, ship state 2, airtight integrity condition yankee. Engineering, repressurize. Starboard watch has the watch. Command out.”

Monday, April 3, 2400, UD

Offices of the Supreme Council for the Preservation of the Faith, city of McNair, Commitment

“Send him in!”

Polk did something he had not done since becoming chief councillor. He got up and went around his massive desk to shake the hand of the man who entered his office before waving him, more than a little surprised, into a seat.

“Well, Admiral. Looks like we’re actually going to do it.” Polk went back to his own seat.

Fleet Admiral Jorge smiled. “Well, sir. If you mean give the Feds a damn good kicking they won’t forget for a long time, then yes, I think we are. And I think we’ll get them to the negotiating table.”

Polk leaned back and looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling.

“You know, Admiral, I have to be honest”-You lying jerk, Jorge thought; Polk had never been honest in his life. He would not be chief councillor if he had; that was for sure-“When we started down this road, I really thought that it would all fall apart. Like so many things the Hammer has tried to do over the years,” he added bitterly.

Jorge shook his head emphatically. “We all have doubts, sir. We need to. Our contingency planning would be nonexistent otherwise, but this time, I think Fleet can do what it has been asked to do. We certainly have the means to drive the Feds to the negotiating table.”

“Your antimatter warheads?”

“Exactly so, sir. It makes every Fed ship vulnerable and their tactics obsolete. You recall the briefing from defense intelligence?” Polk nodded. “I do. We have a lead of three, more like five, years over the Feds.”

“I’ve told the planners to work on three. On the warhead front, I cannot see how they can duplicate what took us the best part of thirty years in less time. Think of the production infrastructure alone. Not to mention catching up on the fundamental research. So that’s how long we’ve got to get the monkey off our back. I hope, well, I just. .”

Polk leaned forward with a smile. “Hope those useless sons of bitches at foreign relations can negotiate the result we need. I think that’s what you wanted to say.”

“Well, not quite the words I would have used, sir, but close enough,” Jorge conceded. “I’m sure we can hold the Feds for three years. I think we can probably hold them for five. After that. .”

“Kraa!” Polk sneered, his lip curling in disdain. “I’ll tell you something, Admiral. If the councillor for foreign relations hasn’t wrapped up negotiations with the damn Feds before next year is out, then you’ll be seeing a new face at the council table, I can assure you.”

Jorge had no trouble believing Polk, just as he had no trouble believing that his own life-and the lives of his wife and only son-would be forfeit if the warships assigned to Operation Damascus did not eliminate the threat posed by the Fed fleet.

“Now, enough of that,” Polk continued. “I recall we had some other matters to deal with.”

“Well, sir. Let me start with the biggest problem I’ve got: the admiral commanding the Fortitude system, Rear Admiral. .”

Sunday, April 9, 2400, UD

FWSS Eridani, Comdur Fleet Base, nearspace

“Dropping.”

With a lurch, Eridani dropped into normalspace. The command plot bloomed with a thick mass of green icons as the ship went online to Comdur’s battle management AI.

Comdur command center was not taking any chances. By the time it had confirmed that Eridani really was who she said she was, the ship had been stood down from general quarters and Michael had taken over the watch. In his opinion, the identification process had taken an inordinate amount of time in that it was only one damned AI talking to another. Finally, Eridani’s navplan for its entry in- system was authorized, and she was given her final approach instructions.

It was time to start the slow process of decelerating into orbit around Comdur.

Comdur was not any old system, and Lenski was not taking any chances. The Fleet base’s outer defenses were a shell of defensive platforms, each an ugly lattice of plasteel girders festooned with double-redundant fusion microplants, a phased-array radar, and the usual clutter of comm dishes, and armed with Lamprey antistarship lasers backed up by containerized Merlin missile launchers. The gaps between the platforms were filled with clouds of randomly shifting deepspace mines.

Lasers and missiles Lenski could cope with. It was the mines she worried about. The two-meter-diameter black stealthed spheres were equipped with a simple optronics/laser fire control system, a 10-kiloton directed fission warhead, and a liquid nitrogen-powered reaction jet maneuvering system. They were basic, nasty, and extremely cheap. In theory the mines knew how to distinguish between the good guys and the bad guys. Even so, Fleet doctrine was absolutely emphatic: Under no circumstances was a starship captain to trust the things. After all, contractors bidding wholly on price had made every part of them.

“Okay, Michael. You have the ship. Take her in, and for Christ’s sake, stick exactly to the navplan,” Lenski ordered as she climbed out of her chair.

“Sir,” Michael replied. He would; Lenski could depend on it.

Michael turned Eridani end for end. After carefully checking that the ship’s vector was good, he fired her main engines in a long burst. She would drop in-system carefully, even if it did add a few hours to the process.

Michael looked around to see if Lenski had managed to get clear of the combat information center without being held up. She had not. “Captain, sir,” he called out.

Lenski looked up from what looked like a heart-to-heart conversation with an engineer who Michael knew was in the middle of an ugly divorce. “Yes?”

“Initial deceleration burn completed. Vector is nominal for drop in-system.”

“Good.” Lenski looked intently at the command plot for a good few minutes. It was as if she were committing the positions of the thousands of space mines that lay between Eridani and Comdur to memory. Finally, she seemed satisfied that Michael was not going to run into anything unpleasant. “When I’m done here, I’m off. I’ll be in my cabin if you need me.” She turned back to resume her interrupted conversation.