Graham Paul: The Battle of the Hammer Worlds

The magazine door was the first door the marines did not blow off. A plasma cutter was brought to bear, and a hole big enough to admit a space-suited marine was cut with infinite care. Once they got inside, the doors were opened easily by the emergency override. The marines were in.

Michael had seen plenty of missile magazines. This one looked no different from any other, but it still took his breath away. The magazine was filled with the dull black shapes of Eaglehawk missiles racked from deck to deckhead in hydraulically powered cradles. There were hundreds of the damn things in this section of the magazine alone. Above the racks were the hydraulic rams that moved missiles into the salvo dispenser that sat behind sliding blast doors. Everywhere shock-damaged pipes spawned tiny globules of hydraulic fluid. Little rainbow spheres shimmered, iridescent in the light from the marines’ torches as they floated across the magazine.

The major whose holocam Michael was patched into did not waste any time looking around. Once through the door, he was up into the missile racks, looking carefully at the closest missile’s warhead. It did not take long for him to find what he was looking for, a small RFID-radio frequency identity-tag fixed to the nose of the missile with a thin plastic tie. He waved up one of his team, who pulled out what looked like a small handgun and put it to the tag. There was a long pause as the two huddled over the missile. Michael prayed that they knew what they were doing. The thought that they might be only centimeters from an antimatter warhead, probably shock damaged, possibly unstable, and potentially liable to explode, taking everything with it- Adamant included-made his stomach flip. Thank God he had aborted the missile strike. If he had not. . Well, suffice it to say, he and his crew would not be watching Xiong’s marines stealing Hammer missiles.

Finally, they were done. A thumb went up. Michael’s privileges as captain did not extend to being able to patch in to the major’s voice circuit, but he did not need to. The man’s body language spoke volumes.

The marines had found the antimatter warheads they had been looking for.

Michael felt acutely embarrassed as he crossed the brow to board the Seigneur. He had not thought to bring dress blacks for what was supposed to be a simple transit assignment. A shipsuit was all he had to wear. A clean shipsuit, true, but it was still only a shipsuit. He stopped, coming to attention as the bosun’s mates piped him on board, the main broadcast announcing his arrival with the traditional “Attention on deck, FWWS Adamant .”

The ritual that accompanied the arrival on board of a captain in command completed, Michael stepped forward to take Captain Xiong’s outstretched hand.

“Welcome aboard, Helfort, welcome aboard. Meet my officers, and then we’ll debrief you on your trip from Comdur.”

Duty done, Michael was ensconced in a comfortable chair in Xiong’s day cabin, a welcome glass of beer in his hand. There was a moment’s companionable silence as Xiong took her own glass from the drinkbot. She put it carefully on the table before sitting down.

Xiong looked across at the young man sitting opposite her. Considering Helfort’s reputation, he was not that impressive at first sight. For a Fed, he was small. Probably to compensate, he was heavily built, with well-defined shoulder and chest muscles pushing hard against his shipsuit. It was the face that impressed her. It had the stretched look she had seen in so many spacers fresh from combat. His eyes, a striking hazel color, were sunk deep, framed by a gray-black dusting of fatigue and stress, and were half covered by lanky brown hair falling down across his face, the lines of a much older man beginning to cut their way out from eyes and mouth.

“What made you abort the missile strike, Michael?” Xiong asked.

“Luck, sir, to be honest,” he said after a moment’s thought. “Aborting the missiles suddenly seemed like a good idea. Can’t really say why. I don’t know why. Instinct? Fear, maybe.”

Xiong’s eyebrows went up in surprise. She took another sip of her beer. “You know, Michael, I would have put a million FedMarks down that you would have spun me some yarn or other.”

Michael shook his head. “You know what, sir?”

“What?”

“Well,” he declared, his voice a crude parody of Pavel Duricek at his pompous best, “between us cruiser captains. .”

Xiong’s head went back as she roared with laughter. “Us cruiser captains. Oh, my. . us cruiser captains. Now, that’s a good one,” she gasped, struggling to draw breath. “God’s blood, Michael. If you can make jokes at a time like this, maybe there’s hope for the rest of us. Sorry. You were saying?”

“Well, the truth is I just did it. But what if I’d been wrong? What if they’d gotten a full salvo away? What if the salvo had been targeted on Terranova?”

Xiong shook her head. “If, if, if. Sometimes I think it’s the worst word in the English language. Actually, Michael, it would not have been a problem. Fleet’s pulled back most of the heavy units to cover the home planets. A two-ship attack probably would not have gotten through.” She sighed heavily. “I’m not sure I can say the same thing for a full-scale attack like the one on Comdur, but. .” Her voice trailed off. The thought of the Hammer dropping an antimatter attack on the Fed Worlds was too much to think about.

Michael nodded. He looked relieved.

Xiong regathered her thoughts. “Anyway, enough of that. I have new orders for you and your crew.”

Michael looked up.

“Yes, Michael. Orders. We’re going to keep the Adamant here as a temporary base until we’ve offloaded the Eaglehawk missiles. Needless to say, our esteemed government doesn’t want the damned things anywhere near Terranova. A courier ship is on its way; you’ll transfer to that. Now, this may change, but at this stage you’ll get some leave, and then it’s back to the Eridani with another combat command hash mark to add to the one you already have. And that, my boy, is one more than me.” Captain Xiong raised her glass in a mock salute. “Fleet has commed me the authorization already, so next time you’re in dress blacks, make sure you’re properly dressed.”

Michael blinked. The thought of hash marks obviously had not occurred to him.

“Oh,” was all he could say.

Michael watched the holovid intently as the battered wrecks of the McMullins and the Providence Sound fell away.

Behind the fast courier, the orange strobes of shuttles transporting captured Eaglehawk missiles across to cargo drones flashed brilliantly against the star-dusted blackness of deep space. Now and again, a searing white flash flared up as a drone and its precious cargo accelerated away to what Michael would have bet his life was, after centuries of willful neglect, a seriously reenergized interest in all things antimatter.

Around the two Hammer ships but pulled well back out of harm’s way in case a missile exploded, were the Fed ships, their hulls visible only as bottomless black shapes cut out of the stars. Now they were home to a small team of defense scientists and engineers laboring desperately to try to work out how the Hammers had done what every Fed scientist would have sworn was impossible.

Hope they’re dispensable, Michael thought. It seemed to him that poking around antimatter was the quickest way to get a one-way ticket straight into the great unknown.

Michael closed his eyes as a sudden wave of tiredness broke over him. Antimatter was going to change a lot of things, and space warfare would be one of them. What those changes were he would be happy to wait to find out.

Soon he was asleep.