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Graham Paul: The battle at the Moons of Hell

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Graham Paul The battle at the Moons of Hell

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“Because I know what I really want, and I’m not going to let a pack of low-life creeps put me off track. Besides, as Bukenya said, irrespective of who touches a lander’s controls, it was my responsibility as command pilot.”

This time Michael did not try to stop the torrent of words; he figured that it was not a bad thing to have the team think that Bukenya was being a smart-ass even though in their hearts they all knew Bukenya was right. Michael sat back, jammed into the corner, and enjoyed the residual warmth from Bukenya’s whiskey until the flood subsided. He let the silence stretch until he had the team’s full attention.

“So this is what we are going to do. Fuck them all, I say. The Dog and Duck at 20:00 to celebrate my survival. Be there on pain of death. And for God’s sake, one of you make sure I get home okay. I don’t want another session in front of the admiral ever again.”

Anna stared at him as if he were mad. They all did. And then she flung herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck so tightly that for a moment Michael thought he might choke.


The provost marshal’s neuronics chimed softly, interrupting a deep and meaningful, if slightly one-sided, conversation with two first-year cadets guilty of the unspeakable crime of not moving from A to B with sufficient speed. “Go. Don’t do it again,” he said to the two cadets, who left in a hurry, astonished not to have picked up an unwelcome load of demerits.

The admiral’s avatar bloomed in his neuronics as he accepted the comm, her AI-generated image absolutely faithful right down to the steely look in her eyes. It was a look that marked Rear Admiral Jan Fielding as a woman not to be trifled with.

“Admiral, sir. What can I do for you?”

“Vasili. You’ve heard the news about Helfort?”

“I have, sir. And I’m pleased to hear that the Fleet won’t lose him, after all. He’s a good lad.”

“I agree. But Vasili, I am concerned that tempers are running high and that there may be trouble. I think it would be better if…well, if certain people were on duty tonight.”

“Would those be the people I have just detailed off for spaceport patrol tonight, sir?”

“If the patrol includes d’Castreaux and Narayan, then yes.” What a pleasure it was, the admiral thought for a moment, to work with people who were ahead of her.

“Done, sir. And my spies tell me that the Dog and Duck is the focus of tonight’s activities, so I’ll have Petty Officer Nu’lini and the shore patrol close at hand just in case. And I’ll keep an eye out to make sure things stay under control.”

“You are a good man, Vasili.” The admiral chuckled. “Just make sure Petty Officer Nu’lini understands that there are to be no defaulters at the commander’s table tomorrow. None. Well, not from the vicinity of the Dog and Duck, that is.”

“Understood, sir. None it will be.”

“Good night, Vasili.”

As the landlord of the Dog and Duck shoveled a disheveled and very drunk Michael and the rest the team out the front door and into the early hours of a cool clear Terranovan night, the singing started.

“Oh, back of Casmirati, where the waters runs deep…”

But it was sad and mournful, all anger gone, for the moment at least.

The provost marshal grinned as he commed Petty Officer Nu’lini before gunning his jeep down the side road back to his house and his sleeping wife.

“Make sure they get home okay, Jack.”

“Will do, sir.”

Thursday, July 16, 2398, UD

Offices of the Supreme Council for the Preservation of the Faith, City of McNair, Commitment Planet

“Chief Councillor?”

The old-fashioned intercom on the massive paper-strewn desk interrupted Jesse Merrick’s concentrated study of the substantial document in front of him. Not for him the convenience of face-mounted microvid screens. Like most Hammers, he preferred to read paper and always had.

“Kraa-damn it, Jackson, I said no interruptions.” Merrick’s face was dark with irritation; he had hoped to sign off the half-yearly review of the budget for the Hammer of Kraa Worlds that afternoon. It was a job he hated not least because every year it was the same old story: a hopelessly optimistic budget to start off with, approved by a compliant and craven People’s Assembly without so much as a single critical question, economic shortfalls almost from the first day of the new fiscal year in January, a crisis by March (a bad year) or May (a good year), and an emergency budget review in June before a whole new mess of cobbled-together emergency measures went back to the assembly for approval. And always against a background of simmering civil unrest.

If the business of running the Hammer Worlds wasn’t so serious, it would be a farce.

The only problem was that each year the farce got blacker as the Hammer Worlds stumbled farther and farther into an economic quagmire. No matter where he looked or how hard he tried, no matter how much he put the fear of Kraa into the bureaucrats, no matter how much he lashed Jeremiah Polk, councillor for the economy and finance, he could not see any way to change the situation. Unless the prohibitions on geneering and artificial intelligence (AI) were lifted, a proposition that would have him condemned to death by the Supreme Tribunal for the Preservation of the Faith if he ever spoke it aloud, the Hammer economy would stay stuck in second gear.

No. Geneering was absolutely proscribed by the Hammer’s founding charter, and the ban on AI was the product of five bloody years of civil war. It didn’t matter that the chief councillor privately thought that there had to be some way to reconcile the two with the demands of doctrine. Neither ban would change-ever. Removing those two pillars of the faith was as likely as Bodger, his faithful if rather dim-witted dog, becoming chief councillor.

And talking of contenders for his job, he wished he could say that Jeremiah Polk’s chances were as bad as Bodger’s, but increasingly the bloody man was looking like a real threat, he thought wearily. There had been a time when one of his favorite pastimes had been to encourage Polk to think that one day he would sit at the chief councillor’s desk. It had pleased him to see the pompous son of a bitch take his sarcastic goading seriously, although in retrospect maybe all he’d done was encourage the Kraa-damned bastard.

Maybe you’re not as smart as you think you are, Merrick, he told himself.

“Yes, Jackson. What do you want?”

“I thought you might like to know that Brigadier General Digby has arrived, sir.” The confidential secretary’s voice was flat and without emotion.

“Have him wait.” Merrick’s voice showed no trace of apology even though he belatedly remembered that he had specifically asked the long-suffering Jackson to tell him when Digby arrived.

After taking care to mark his place in the massive budget document and making a fruitless attempt to bring some order to his desk, Jesse sat back in his chair and wearily rubbed his eyes. By Kraa, he was tired, and he shouldn’t have been. He was only fifty-three years old and in the prime of his life, yet he felt an enormous weight of responsibility on his shoulders, a burden that only death would allow him to put down. There had never been such a thing as a happily retired chief councillor, and given the blood-soaked nature of Hammer politics, there probably never would be. Well, he consoled himself, at least I won’t have to live as long as all those heathen bastards out there. They were welcome to survive for 150 years; he’d be more than content with his Kraa-allotted 100.

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