Graham Paul: The Battle of the Hammer Worlds

“Thank you, sir. As I was saying, a heavy cruiser will have a crew of only ten spacers. Not thirteen hundred as now. Every bit of redundant equipment will be ripped out. Anything not required to maneuver the ship, to operate its sensors, to fire its weapons, and to keep its crew alive-it will all go.”

“I get it, sir!” Michael’s voice cracked with excitement. “That’ll give us a heavy cruiser, but she’d be lighter, faster, and more maneuverable. Jeez, wouldn’t that be something?”

“Doesn’t stop there, Michael,” Jaruzelska said. “Everything we take out allows us to give the crew the armor and shock protection they’ll need to survive an antimatter attack at very close ranges. And you’ll be the first captain in command of what Commander Baker likes to call the new dreadnoughts.”

Michael gulped. “Shit. . sorry, sirs, but this is a lot to take in.”

“Yes, it is,” Jaruzelska said patiently, “but it has to work first, so let’s not be counting our chickens. Now, before I hand you back to Commander Baker for a more detailed briefing on what we’re up to here, do you have any questions?”

“No, sir. . oh, wait, just one, if I may.”

“Go on.”

“Why me, sir? Why have I been picked?”

Jaruzelska laughed out loud. “Thought you’d ask that. I happen to think that experience can be a bad thing sometimes. Every officer with formal command training, and that means every captain of a Fed warship, has been brought up to fight battles with fully crewed ships. By the time they get to command a heavy cruiser, they’ve had decades of doing business that way, and that’s not what I want. What I want is officers trained from the ground up to fight battles with what are-near as damn it-uncrewed ships. I want no preconceptions, no bad habits, no ‘this is not the way we do things.’Understand?”

“I do, sir. But why me?”

“You’ve already done what Commander Baker and I have in mind. You took Adamant into battle against two Hammer heavy cruisers and won. Yes, yes”-her hand went up to stop Michael’s protest-“I know things went your way that day, but believe me when I say you do deserve a lot of credit. I’ve been through the datalogs, and it wasn’t all luck. That’s why you’re here.” Jaruzelska leaned forward and looked Michael right in the face. “You are the only Fleet officer ever to command what was effectively an uncrewed warship in action,” she said fiercely. “You selected yourself.”

“Got it, sir,” Michael said, a little shaken by Jaruzelska’s sudden intensity. “No more questions.”

“Good. Off you go. Commander Baker will fill you in on the rest of the plan. We’ve laid on welcome drinks for you in the unit’s mess at six. Oh, and make sure you’re properly dressed”-Jaruzelska tapped her shoulder-“otherwise it’ll be the most expensive party you’ve ever been to.”

Michael reddened with embarrassment. “Sir.”

“Sorry, sir. My fault,” Baker said. “Forgot to pass on the news.”

“Drinks on you, then.”

“You are a hard woman, sir.”

Jaruzelska laughed. “Go! I’ve got work to do. See you tonight.”

“We’ll be there, sir,” Baker said. “Come on, Michael. We’ve got a lot to see, and then it’s into the sims for you. We have to rewrite the Fighting Instructions from the ground up.”

Inwardly, Michael groaned. Sims! Why was he not surprised?

It was the end of a long day.

Michael still could not believe it all, and for good reason. What he had been told was close to heresy-no, it was heresy. Baker’s proposal not only overturned the most sacred of all of Fleet’s sacred cows, it had kicked it to death before chucking it out the window.

Michael shook his head.

Jaruzelska had told him only the half of it. He had discovered that Baker was not a man who thought small. Oh, no. Baker’s plans for him went far beyond command of a converted heavy cruiser. For each manned ship, he planned to deploy between four and nine unmanned cruisers-“dreadnoughts” he insisted they be called-operating under the manned cruiser’s direct control. In Baker’s view, the dreadnoughts would be so tough that they would be able to drive into the heart of any Hammer formation and rip it to shreds, antimatter missiles or not. Provided that he did not screw up in the sims, Michael would take the First Dreadnought Squadron into action when-not if, Michael noted with interest-negotiations with the Hammers collapsed.

The turnaround was incredible. Since its inception, Fleet policy had consistently favored manned warships to the point where the policy was so entrenched in Fleet thinking that to challenge it was a career-threatening move. To be fair, there never had been an AI-commanded warship capable of taking on and beating a manned warship. Endless sims had proved that. Humans made better decisions under the stress and confusion of space war than AIs could; it was as simple as that. Despite the billions of FedMarks invested in AI research and development, FedWorld AI technology, good though it was, had never been able to replicate the human brain.

And there things would have stayed if the Comdur Disaster had not left the Fleet with many more ships than it could find crews for and the Hammers with a weapon those ships could not defeat.

So here he was, Michael thought. Fate had put him at the tip of the sword intended for the Hammer’s heart, and he meant to be there when the chance to drive it home came. It would come; he was sure of that. The Hammers wanted much too much and were too sure that they had such an advantage over the Federation that they would not have to make concessions to get it. Well, he might be only a newly promoted lieutenant, but he agreed with Baker: It was only a matter of time before the negotiations collapsed and the Fourth Hammer War started.

He prayed for that day to come-the Hammer had debts to pay.