Graham Paul: The Battle of the Hammer Worlds

On they came, one after another. Ships of all sizes-always spherical to maximize internal volume-from a hundred different planets of registration. They carried every material good known to humankind, along with thousands of people shuttling endlessly between the planets of humanspace.

Of all the grav anomalies that infested humanspace, the Vijati was the most active, with tens of thousands of ships dropping out of pinchspace each year to make the crossing. It was nothing short of a miracle that accidents around the Vijati were so rare. Some merchant ship captains seemed to regard accurate navigation as an optional extra, something to do when more important problems-like scratching their asses-had been taken care of.

“Sensors, gravitronics.”

“Sensors.”

“Track 775101 is about to drop. Stand by. . there she is. Drop confirmed nominal for Earth-FedWorld transit.”

Michael’s holovid brightened for a second with the ultraviolet flare of a starship dropping into normalspace. Within seconds, the sensor management center’s AI had integrated the information flooding in from Ishaq ’s active and passive sensors to confirm that the latest arrival was indeed the Treaty of Paris. Michael had nothing more to do than listen in as the duty sensor officer made the ritual report confirming the drop to Ishaq ’s combat information center.

Michael stretched. In fifteen minutes, he could hand over the watch. That done, he would head straight for his bunk. What with the COMEX project given to him by Fellsworth and a twenty-four-hour duty as second officer of the day starting at 08:00, not to mention all the other crap junior officers in large capital ships were burdened with, sleep had been in short supply lately. He intended to make the most of the three hours he would get.

Well, time to get his handover brief sorted out.

Hammer Warship Obsidian, interstellar space

From the combat information center of the deepspace light patrol ship Obsidian, Commodore Monroe watched the proceedings, his eyes fixed on the holovid tracking his six new q-ships. He would be damn glad when they got back to Kasprowitz. Hanging around in deepspace had never been his idea of a good time. Worse, the Obsidian ’s ability to defend her new charges was limited. Yes, their new rail-gun systems worked, but he did not have the people to operate them. Until he did, his new acquisitions were big fat sitting ducks.

The latest additions to the Hammer order of battle, their spherical bulk marking them out as merships, hung in interstellar space 70 light-years out from and due galactic south of Damnation’s Gate. With all navigation lights off, their anonymous dirt-gray hulls were barely visible as black cutouts etched from millions of stars scattered in all directions with dazzling extravagance. The only activity was the steady shuttling to and fro of Obsidian ’s four space attack vehicles and two landers. Monroe’s fingers tapped out his impatience; transferring the q-ships’ Hammer crews was going well, but he could not help himself. He just wanted to be done and on his way.

Monroe pushed away a momentary pang of anxiety. He had to admit that the chances of running into anyone else were tiny. The small sphere of deepspace they occupied was a long way from anything even remotely interesting to the rest of humankind. That, of course, was why it had been picked in the first place, and operational security had been tight.

So far, so good.

“Commodore, sir.”

It was his chief of staff. “Yes, Captain?”

“Just to let you know, sir. We’re ahead of schedule on the crew transfers, and I have confirmation from the engineers that all ships are online. We’ll be ready for vector realignment to set up for the jump back to Kasprowitz Base at 06:15.”

“Good! The sooner we’re out of this Kraa-damned place, the better. Send to all ships. From commodore, stand by to execute ops plan Kilo Yankee Five at time 06:15.”

“Roger, sir. Stand by to execute ops plan Kilo Yankee Five at time 06:15.”

Monroe sat back as his small staff got things moving. Things were going well, though he wondered how long that would last. He hoped Fleet Admiral Jorge and his political masters knew what they were getting the Hammer into. The Feds were going to be awfully, awfully pissed when his ships started to rip the guts out of their interstellar trade routes.

FWSS Ishaq, Karovic Reef

The forenoon watch had been pretty much the same as all the other watches Michael had stood, though he had been promoted. Deemed competent, he now ran the entire sensor management center when-somewhat to Michael’s surprise given that they were supposedly out hunting pirates- Ishaq was at cruising stations, two full levels of readiness below general quarters. He would have been more than happy with the promotion had it not been for the fact that it put him firmly in the firing line when Constanza came looking for someone to kick. Still, he consoled himself, at least he did not have to defer to officers who did little to conceal their lack of interest in the job at hand.

By Michael’s rough calculations, he had watched well over four hundred merchant ships go through the routine of dropping out of pinchspace. The endless procession of spherical ships transiting this or that reef before jumping back into pinchspace had been interrupted only by the other ships of Task Group 225.2 as they and the Ishaq patrolled the FedWorld-Old Earth trade route. Michael sighed. Antipiracy patrols in response to a threat as vague as the one supposedly posed by the Karlisle Alliance-pirates nobody thought actually existed-were boring, and it was becoming a real struggle to stay keen and enthusiastic.

Things on board Ishaq were not getting any better. On any other ship, Michael’s latest stint as second officer of the day would have been just a matter of trailing around behind the officer of the day. In theory, it gave him the chance to observe firsthand how more experienced officers skillfully defused the minor crises that beset ships as large as the Ishaq.

That was the theory, anyway. To be fair, most of the day had been routine enough to allow Michael to put in some serious time on his COMEX project. That had all changed in a hurry. Michael, tired of work, had been passing the last dregs of the evening away in the wardroom with Aaron Stone when an urgent comm from the officer of the day had dispatched him to take charge of the ship’s internal security patrol. A vicious brawl had broken out on one of the junior spacers’ mess decks, and it had to be stopped before half the ship joined in.

Order had been restored eventually, but it had been one hell of a job, with Michael twice calling for reinforcements. When the dust settled, eight spacers were in the ship’s sick bay, another ten had been dragged to the cells struggling like wildcats, and thirty were subject to further investigation. It took the internal security patrol well over two hours to get to that happy state of affairs, another hour to clean up the damage, and Michael another three hours to debrief the patrol, review Ishaq ’s internal security holocam footage, and write up the official report for the executive officer. All in all, it had been a horror night. Michael had the bags under his eyes and the wandering concentration to prove it.

“Sensors, gravitronics.”

“Sensors.” Michael started. Had he been asleep on watch? Christ, he hoped not.

“Don’t like the look of this one, sir. Here. It’s only just painting on gravitronics and the AI’s making a mess of it, but it looks to me like inbound on Green 10 Down 2.”