Graham Paul: The Final Battle

Sunday, March 24, 2402, Universal Date

Commitment planetary nearspace

Hell Bent was in a race it could never win, and Michael Helfort knew it. “How long?” he asked the battered lander’s command pilot.

“Provided the battlesats don’t get us first,” Kat Sedova replied, “the first missile salvo will be inside hard kill radius in two minutes.” Her voice was barely audible over the racket of pulsed antiship lasers chewing away at Hell Bent ’s ceramsteel armor.

Fear churned Michael’s guts. It would be five minutes before Hell Bent could jump safely into pinchspace. “I guess this is it, then,” he said.

“I’ll jump us just before the salvo gets that close. We might get lucky.”

Michael glanced across Hell Bent ’s cargo bay. He threw a smile at Shalini Prashad, the best political mind in the New Revolutionary Army’s political wing, the Revival; she stared back at him, eyes wide with terror. He turned to the two NRA officers who were sitting alongside him. “We still have a good chance,” Michael said, making himself sound confident, “even this deep inside Commitment’s gravity well.”

“Let’s hope so,” General Cortez replied, grim-faced. “If we don’t make it …” His voice trailed off into silence.

Major Hok said nothing, her face grim.

Nothing more needed to be said. After more than a century of brutal, bloody conflict between the Hammer of Kraa and the Federated Worlds-a conflict fueled by the Hammers’ religious fundamentalism-humanspace teetered on the edge of the abyss, and every soul onboard knew it.

The Hammers had been the only polity to weaponize antimatter. None of the other major systems of humanspace had even tried. They had judged it impossible, only to find how wrong they had been when in a single brutal attack the Hammers had used missiles with antimatter warheads to destroy much of the Feds’ fleet at the Battle of Comdur.

Now the Hammers were constructing a new antimatter plant-with help from the Pascanicians-to replace the one the Feds had destroyed at Devastation Reef. Once it was on-stream, the Hammers would have the antimatter warheads they needed to defeat not just the Feds but every last system in humanspace. Nothing could stop them. Billions would be plunged into slavery, their only task to serve the all-powerful Empire of the Hammer of Kraa.

Michael closed his eyes. He told his neuronics to bring up his favorite picture of Anna. He sat back and waited for the end.

Monday, March 25, 2402, UD

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

“They’d have had a damn good reason to waste one of their precious landers like that,” Jeremiah Polk said. “The NRA and the Revival are gambling and gambling big, and we don’t know why.”

“Let’s be realistic, Chief Councillor,” Viktor Solomatin, the Hammer of Kraa’s councillor for foreign relations, said. “The only people who can help that heretic scum are the Federated Worlds, but with Caroline Ferrero as moderator, that will never happen.”

Polk leaned forward to look Solomatin right in the face. “Care to back that up, Councillor?” he said.

“That’s why I wanted to see you, Chief Councillor. The Fed charge d’affaires has just forwarded me a personal message from Caroline Ferrero. She wants to know whether we would agree to a cease-fire.”

“Kraa! The woman hasn’t wasted any time,” Polk said. He took a deep breath to control a sudden rush of excitement. “She’s been moderator for what … a week?” He paused to think. “Two questions,” he went on. “Why would the Feds propose a cease-fire, and why would we agree to one?” Again he stopped, a finger tapping his lips. “That said,” Polk said, “I think we know the answer to the first question.”

“One of my staff members summed it up nicely: Caroline Ferrero is the right appeaser at the right time.”

“So it seems, but should we agree to a cease-fire?”

“The Feds always believed they would defeat the Hammer of Kraa. It was an article of faith, but when we dropped antimatter warheads into Fed nearspace-” Solomatin’s voice was animated now, his eyes glistening, his excitement unmistakable. “-we destroyed that belief. Ferrero doesn’t think the Feds can win, not anymore. That gives us the leverage to accept their offer, but on our terms, not-”

Polk’s hand came up. “What terms?” he said.

“The Feds must halt their fleet rebuilding program; they must terminate all research into weaponizing antimatter and agree to verification inspections.”

Polk frowned, unconvinced. “The Feds will never agree to that,” he said. “Even they aren’t that stupid.”

“They’re frightened. Trust me; they’ll agree.”

“Morons,” Polk said; he shook his head dismissively. “The Fed fleet’s still a serious threat; given enough time to rebuild, it could defeat us. So I cannot understand why Ferrero’s being so lily-livered. She doesn’t have to be.”

“It doesn’t matter why. We need to negotiate hard to keep the Feds as weak as possible until the Hendrik Island antimatter plant comes online, which it will as long as we keep the Pascanicians happy.”

Polk looked hard at Solomatin. “I though we were keeping them happy,” he said.

“Oh, we are,” Solomatin replied. “We can’t afford not to.”

“No, we can’t,” Polk said, his eyes glittering in anticipation, “and if we have to tolerate those bloodsucking assholes to get our new antimatter plant, then that’s what we’ll do. And when it’s operational, the Federated Worlds will never threaten the security of the Hammer of Kraa Worlds again.”

Saturday, April 6, 2402, UD

Clevennes, Asthana planet

The young woman put the mug of steaming hot coffee down on the table beside the man’s bed and leaned over to look him right in the face. “Feel better?” she asked.

“Yes.” The voice was scarcely a whisper.

“You had us worried. Those comatropic drugs are very unpredictable.”

“Who are you?”

“Marnie Bakker,” she said. “I’m with the Revival. We handle things here on Asthana. It’s good to meet you, Michael.”

“Ah, yes,” Michael mumbled. He looked around. “Where am I?”

“You’re now in one of our safe houses. A Revival team smuggled you out of Haaken Military Hospital.”

“I don’t remember that. Where’s Kat Sedova? Is she okay?”

“She’s somewhere else. Better that way. This planet is infested with Hammer agents. Everybody knows a Fed lander dropped into Asthana nearspace, so they’ll be out looking for you.”

Michael’s eyes flared wide with alarm. “Looking for me? They don’t know I was onboard, do they?”

Bakker shook her head. “Don’t worry; they don’t. They just like to get their hands on any Feds who end up here.”

“What about your people?”

“Cortez and Hok are okay. Prashad didn’t make it. The Revival will miss her.”

Michael said nothing for a moment; Prashad’s death was a serious blow. “We needed her,” he went on. “I didn’t know her well, but everyone said she had the sharpest political mind of any Hammer. Sorry. You don’t like to be called Hammers.”

“No, we don’t, even though we were all born Hammers. ‘Revivalists’ will do. Anyway, here’s the plan. As soon as the doctor says you’re okay to be moved, we’ll relocate you to another safe house.”

“Cortez and Hok will be there?”

“They will. Sedova, too.”

“I hope Admiral Jaruzelska’s in a good mood,” he said. “We’re screwed if she refuses to help us get the Fed government to back the NRA.”