The threat was clear. Worse, despite all the posturing by the Feds’ so-called allies threatening the Hammers with all sorts of retribution if they did attack the Feds-none of which amounted to a row of beans; the rest of humanspace were allies in name only-he knew the Hammers were more than capable of carrying out their threat. After being soundly thrashed in three wars by the Feds, the Hammers had come out on top thanks to their antimatter warheads and the brutal defeat they had inflicted on the Fed Fleet at Comdur. So why would the Hammers give up?
For the Hammers, success was at hand.
If Rear Admiral Perkins had his way, and the dreadnoughts did not work …
Friday, November 3, 2400, UD
FWSS
Achernar,
Commitment planetary farspace
The air was thick with tension, the eyes of all present locked on the massive holovid display that curtained the front bulkhead of Achernar’s combat information center.
“Shiiiiit,” an anonymous voice said softly from the back of the compartment.
“Quiet!” Achernar’s captain snapped. Boris Andermak was not enjoying this operation any more than his crew was. It had been an ordeal from the word go, and the sooner it finished, the happier he would be.
The cause of all the angst filled the command holovid. Moving slowly from left to right was what any first-year cadet would identify readily as an Eaglehawk, a long-range, two-stage antistarship missile. It was an ugly brute of a thing, the backbone of the Hammer fleet’s offensive missile capability. Matte black, it was big, dwarfing the space-suited handlers shepherding it away from the Achernar, and-to Fed eyes at feast-crudely assembled and poorly finished. Not that it mattered how the thing looked. Eaglehawks might be slower and less capable than the Merlin ASSM, their Fed equivalent, but they worked and had killed more than their fair share of Fed ships over the years. The Eaglehawk was a nasty piece of ordnance and definitely not something to be taken for granted.
And that was before the Hammers went and fitted antimatter warheads to the Eaglehawk, turning it into the weapon that had snuffed out much of the Fed space fleet at the Battle of Comdur. Achernar’s captain was not a praying man, but he prayed now. Antimatter was the stuff of nightmares, and here he sat, meters from enough of it to vaporize him and his ship.
Andermak would be damn glad when the two Eaglehawk missiles he had been ordered to deploy cleared his ship and were on their way back to their makers. Watching the missiles, he wondered how they had fallen into Fleet’s hands; he guessed they were two duds left over from the Comdur attack. But, however it had found them, Fleet refused to let on. The fact they had them at all was classified so highly that he and his crew were scheduled for selective neurowiping the instant they returned home, a process Andermak was not looking forward to.
The deployment took forever, but at long last it was done, the handlers back inboard safely. Achernar, sealed up, waited, ready to jump. The two Eaglehawk missiles hung in space, drifting away from the Achernar toward Commitment, home planet of the Hammer Worlds and seat of the Hammer of Kraa government. Slowly, the gap between the Achernar and the missiles opened. Andermak suppressed a shiver, not at all sure-despite all the assurances he had been given by the brass, none of whom would be within light-years of the missiles when he sent them on their way-that the damn things would work.
It took a long time, but finally the two Eaglehawks moved safely outside Achernar’s antimatter blast damage radius. Andermak allowed himself to relax just a fraction.
“Ops.”
“Sir?”
“Send those evil sonsofbitches on their way.”
“Sir. Stand by … missile launch sequence initiated, missiles nominal … missile first stages firing … missiles on their way, vectors nominal.”
Stiff with nervous tension, Andermak watched while the two missiles streaked away toward Commitment on thin pillars of blue-white flame, more relieved than he cared to admit. “Thank goodness for that. My money was on them blowing us all to hell. Let’s go home.”
“Amen to that, sir,” the Achernar’s operations officer replied with considerable and all too obvious feeling.
Many hours after the Eaglehawk missiles had been sent on their way, the traps containing their antihydrogen payload collapsed, and the two warheads exploded in unison. In less than a billionth of a second, a bubble of gamma radiation expanded outward at the speed of light, its twin-peaked signature providing the Hammers with unarguable proof of matter/antimatter annihilation.
The Hammers would have no option but to conclude that the Feds had antimatter weapons.
Saturday, November 4, 2400, UD
Offices of the Supreme Council for the Preservation of the Faith, McNair
“No! No, they can’t have,” Chief Councillor Polk croaked at last, his face ashen. “This cannot be. What …” His voice drained away to nothing; he sat paralyzed, staring wide-eyed at the black-uniformed man sitting opposite him.
“Sir, I’m afraid it’s true,” Fleet Admiral Jorge said. He paused to steady himself. “Sir,” he continued, his voice as firm as his jangling nerves allowed, “the Feds might have antimatter weapons, but they are not our equals, not after Comdur. Their offensive capability has been all but destroyed, their-”
“So you say, Admiral,” Polk hissed, his face twisted into a vicious sneer, “so you say.”
Fear had turned Jorge’s mouth dry as ashes. He knew Polk well enough to recognize when the man was about to lose all self-control. If Polk did, he was as good as dead. “What matters is how we win,” he said, keeping his voice quietly confident, “how we keep the Feds off balance, demoralized, ineffective, until we have secured our political objectives.”
“Yes, Admiral, that is what matters.” Polk said, bitter with disappointment. “We have to win this. If we don’t, there is no future for the Hammer Worlds. And,” he added, voice dripping with venom, “no future for you, Fleet Admiral Jorge.”
“No, sir, there’s not.” Nor for you, you psychopathic dirtbag, Jorge wanted to say; wisely, he did not. “So we need to strike and strike hard,” he continued. “Yes, the Feds can destroy us, but we can destroy them, too. So we won’t, and neither will they. Mutually assured destruction. We might not like it, but history shows it works.”
For an age, Polk stared thoughtfully at the man who controlled the Hammer’s enormous military. Jorge was relieved to see the man’s rage begin to subside, the angry red flush across both cheeks fading slowly. Polk’s silence gave Jorge his opening. He leaned forward. “If they destroy our home planets, we’ll destroy theirs, sir,” Jorge said, repeatedly stabbing a finger into the desk to emphasize the point. “And why would we do that, sir? Kraa! We’re not a bunch of suicidal fundamentalists.”
“No, Admiral, we’re not,” Polk said. “That much we can agree on. So let’s cut to the chase, shall we. What is it you want?”
Jorge steadied himself. “Well, sir. We cannot beat them at the negotiating table. We need to take the fight back to them. Beat them the hard way.”
“And we can do that? Even if they have antimatter weapons?” Polk’s face had tightened into a skeptical frown.
Jorge made sure he sounded convinced; his life depended on it. “After Comdur, we can,” he said. “Antimatter missiles are just another weapon. We need to keep our nerve. We have a plan to escalate offensive operations, and we need to stick to it. It’s the only way we can bring the Feds back to the negotiating table. We have the strategic advantage … we can force them back. We can and we will.”