HWS Quebec-One, pinchspace
Michael could not work it out.
Why would that damn dog not leave him alone? All he wanted to do was sleep; the warm, fuzzy, welcoming darkness kept pulling him down to a safe place away from all the pain and disappointment of the world. The dog was persistent; it kept licking his face, its cold wet tongue dragging him back from the warm, safe depths toward a cold light burning fiercely far above him. And the dog was winning; bit by bit, the light got stronger and stronger.
He opened his eyes and screamed in agony. Blinding white light drove red-hot slivers of pain into his skull. He dropped back into the darkness, but not for long. Slowly, the darkness seeped away, the cold and light returning until he was fully conscious again.
This time he opened his eyes slowly. The overhead lights were searingly bright, and a blue-white glare hammered into a head suddenly splitting with pain. He closed his eyes and lay still for a moment, his entire body jangling and fizzing with little shocks of pain. Shit. He remembered now. Stun guns; the bastards had stun-gunned him, but who were they, for God’s sake? He could not even remember what they looked like.
Cautiously, he opened his eyes again. Standing above him was a shipsuited figure, black against the blinding brightness overhead, his face covered by some sort of mask. Michael’s eyes hurt. He could not make the man out. Where was he? He started to turn his head.
“Ah, ha, you little Fed wart. Awake, are we? Get up. Now!”
Michael did his best, but nothing would work properly. His legs collapsed under him as he tried to struggle to his feet.
“You idle piece of crap. Get the fuck up,” the shipsuit ordered, reinforcing his words with a full-blooded kick to the ribs.
Michael screamed as the boot hit home, the pain almost overwhelming him as something inside his chest tore with a crackling rip. The agony was almost unbearable. He could barely breathe, but at least it had cleared his head. He could think now. He commed his neuronics to dump painkillers into his system. Instantly, the pain receded; after a huge effort, he managed to get to his feet, hand clamped to a pipe to keep himself upright. He stood swaying in front of the anonymous shipsuited figure. He stared at a pair of pale blue-green eyes, the only thing visible through two slits in the hood, a crudely made piece of cloth like a small bag draped loosely over the man’s head. I’m going to call you Shithead, Michael decided.
“Good,” Shithead said. “Walk!” He waved Michael toward a hole in a wire cage crudely erected across one corner of what looked like the empty cargo bay of a merchant ship. “I’ll tell you where to go.”
Michael began an unsteady shuffle out of the cage. Apart from the two of them, the huge bay was completely empty, an echoing shell. Where in God’s name were the rest of his lifepod? Where were Yazdi, Murphy, and the rest? While he walked, Michael carefully checked himself out. He had been searched roughly; his shipsuit had been left a tattered wreck, pockets torn off and badges gone. His boots had gone, too, but a furtive check confirmed that his escape kits were still in place, thank God. Something told him he was going to need them.
Once he was out of the cage, Shithead waved him on; they came to an airtight door. “Go through, turn left. Keep going and don’t stop until I tell you,” Shithead called from somewhere close behind his right shoulder.
Michael turned to him. “But who-”
He had barely opened his mouth when Shithead whipped a short club from behind his back. Stepping to one side, he smashed the club backhanded into Michael’s stomach. It was so quick, so unexpected, Michael could do nothing to avoid the blow. The club drove the wind out of him, doubling him over with an oooofff as the air in his lungs exploded out of his mouth.
Shithead stood back, watching in silence. Michael slowly recovered, his mouth working desperately as he fought to refill lungs screaming for air. It took a while, but eventually he was able to stand upright with great difficulty, the pain in his lungs, stomach, and ribs coming and going in great searing waves.
Shithead put the tip of the bat into Michael’s face. “You don’t talk unless I ask you a question. Got it?”
Michael stood there, not saying a word. Shithead could go screw himself.
“Well? You understand?” Shithead swung the bat back, but this time Michael was ready for him. He ignored the pain from his ribs and stomach as the simple routines drilled into him by Corporal Yazdi kicked in. Michael’s arm went up. Half turning under the oncoming blow, he deflected the club away from him. Shithead lost his balance as he followed through. As he twisted, Michael stepped behind him and with delicate precision kicked the man hard in the crotch, the arch of his foot hitting home with a deeply satisfying crunching thump. Dropping the club, Shithead collapsed to the deck, screaming in pain. Michael grabbed the club off the deck. He was going to beat the son of a bitch to a pulp.
He never got the chance. A stun shot on full power hit him square in the back, dropping his body to the deck alongside the moaning Shithead. He writhed in a futile attempt to escape from the exquisite agony of tortured nerve endings, the club slipping from his fingers to clatter away across the plasteel deck panels.
Michael lay in a twisted heap, lungs heaving as he struggled to breathe, the aftereffects of the stun-gun shot driving bolts of molten pain up and down every nerve in his body. A second shipsuited figure appeared over him, this one a fat, dumpy man with pitiless eyes. He looked down at Michael through the slits in his hood. “I don’t suggest you try that again, sonny. If you do, I’ll ask the boss if I can space you. And you know what? I’m sure he’ll agree. Understand?”
Michael’s mouth tried to shape the words, but nothing in his body seemed to be working properly. His brain was, though; he was going to call this one Porky.
Porky leaned down. “I think you understand,” he whispered. He stood upright, stepped back, and kicked Michael casually in the kidneys for emphasis. He waved over the men who had followed him into the cargo bay.
Porky pointed at Michael. “Right. Two on this one. Interrogation room for him,” he ordered. “And two on this sad fucking apology for a spacer,” he sneered, pushing the toe of his boot into Shithead, who by then was lying flat on his back, legs drawn up against his chest, whimpering softly. “Take him to the sick bay. I think he’s going to need to have his nuts iced.” He prodded Shithead in the ribs with the muzzle of his stun gun. “Oh, yes. Iced nuts for you.” He laughed.
In a flash, the joke took root and started to flower. “Iced nuts,” Porky bellowed; the laughter turned to hysteria as the men around him joined in. “My favorite! Iced nuts,” he roared, slapping his thighs, tears beginning to run down his face.
His captors staggered about, to a man overcome by demented laughter. Michael lay there, wondering what the hell was going on. These were seriously dangerous people, he decided. So who were they? Idiot, he told himself after a moment’s thought. Run the damn voice analyzer and see what it says. Even as he put his neuronics to work, a new voice cut across the raucous laughter echoing around the cargo bay.
“What the hell is going on here?”
Nerve ends jangling with pain, Michael twisted his head around to have a look at the latest arrival. He might have known it: yet another hooded, shipsuited figure, but this one was different. He radiated a dangerous calm, an almost hypnotic authority, and in an instant his captors fell silent. He would call this one Snake, Michael decided.
“That’s better.” Snake walked over to Michael. “Name, rank, and serial number,” he demanded.
“Helfort, Michael Wallace,” Michael mumbled. “Junior Lieutenant, Federated Worlds Space Fleet, serial number FC0216885, and that’s all you’re getting from me, you murder-”
Snake’s boot flashed out, catching him under the ribs, the kick strong enough to lift him bodily off the deck. It was as much as Michael could do to roll away, a scream whistling out through clenched teeth as pain swamped him.
“Ah, yes, I see the problem now.” Snake looked thoughtfully down at Michael. He bent over to pick up Shithead’s club. “I think we’ve got a smart-ass on our hands.” He squatted down next to Michael, prodding him with the club for emphasis. “Your daddy should have warned you to be more careful with that mouth of yours, young man. It’ll get you into trouble one day. Now, here’s the deal.” Another poke, a hard one this time, into ribs already begging for mercy. “You behave, you answer my questions, and you stop the backchat. Do all that, and I won’t space you. That’s the deal, and it’s the only deal on offer, so I suggest you take it. Understand?”
Snake’s arm started to take the club back, so Michael nodded, flinching away. The man was right. His mouth would get him into trouble, and this was getting him nowhere. He also had a feeling that dropping Shithead to the deck, deeply satisfying though it had been at the time, might be something he would live to regret.
“Understood,” he conceded reluctantly.
Snake hit him anyway. Michael saw the blow coming but was too slow to move out of the way. The club slashed down onto his left cheek, opening a gash, his mouth filling with the coppery taste of blood. Michael stifled a scream; even dulled by the painkillers in his system, the pain was almost too much to bear.
Snake stood up. “Good. Now I think you see where I’m coming from. You two!” He waved two men over. “Take this one to interrogation. Now!”
Hands went under his armpits to drag him away. Michael’s neuronics pinged softly. The voice analyzer had a preliminary result. Michael’s heart turned to ice as he read the report.
The men were Hammers.
Michael was hustled through a bewildering succession of corridors.
His escorts probably enjoyed the trip much more than Michael did, bouncing him off anything that caught their eyes along the way; Michael hissed with pain as new insults overlaid old injuries. By the time they got to the interrogation room-a small, brilliantly lit compartment-Michael was beginning to wonder how much more abuse he could take. His body was now one huge mass of pain, and the long gash on his back had opened up; he could feel it leaking blood again.
The two Hammers dragged him through the door and slammed him into a simple metal chair bolted to the deck. Michael screamed as the pain from his damaged ribs overwhelmed him. In seconds, they had his arms and legs plasticuffed to the chair. Immobilized, Michael sat there trying to recover, comming his neuronics to dump more painkillers into his tortured system. Trying to move was pointless, so he did not bother.
The painkillers cut in, a cool, soft wave washing through his body. Soon he was able to straighten up a bit and look around. The brilliantly lit compartment was bare except for a steel table behind which was an empty seat. No doubt it was intended for yet another hooded, shipsuited anonymity, Michael thought.
He did not have to wait long. Someone new appeared, this one a tall man, his shipsuit hanging down loose over a thin and stringy frame. Staying well clear of Michael, he made his way around the table. He stood there for a moment and looked down, his eyes beady, glittering in the harsh light. Michael decided to call this one Stork.
“So,” Stork murmured softly as he sat down, rearranging the old-fashioned paper pad in front of him. Has to be the Hammer, Michael thought. Who else could it be? The rest of humanspace had stopped using paper centuries earlier. Stork looked him straight in the eye as he pulled out a pen. A bloody pen! Michael almost laughed. He was in some bizarre time warp.
“Right,” Stork said finally. “Let’s get started. Name, rank, and serial number.”
“Helfort, Michael Wallace. Junior Lieutenant, Federated Worlds Space Fleet, serial number FC0216885.”
Stork looked up at him in surprise. “Say that again!” he barked.
Michael sighed. This was getting tedious. His body was seriously damaged, his head felt like it had been hit with a shovel, he was exhausted, he felt sick inside at the thought of how many of Ishaq’s spacers must have been lost, and all this Hammer pig wanted was stuff he had already told them. Didn’t they talk to each other?
“Helfort, Michael Wallace. Junior Lieutenant, Federated Worlds Space Fleet, serial number FC0216885.”
“What ship?”
Michael shook his head. “Can’t answer that.”
Stork nodded and sat back. He looked at Michael for a long, long time. He nodded again before leaning forward to write out Michael’s details in longhand on the paper pad. He then ripped the top sheet off. He put it carefully to one side and wrote something else. Michael struggled to read it, but he could not see well enough. It was too far away, and his eyes refused to focus. Stork got up and went to the door. There was a murmur of conversation, and then Stork was back, but without the paper. He’s sent a message to someone, Michael said to himself; that’s what he’s done.
Stork stood over him. He shook his head slowly.
“Helfort, eh? I remember you. You had some part to play in what you Fed pigs call the Battle of Hell’s Moons. I remember you from the holovid news. Bit of a fucking hero, I seem to recall. Well, that won’t help you now, you sad sack of Fed shit. Not one little bit.” With another shake of the head, Stork was gone, leaving Michael alone in the bleak plasteel compartment.
Michael’s heart sank. If they thought for a moment he was important, they would watch him like a hawk. Goddamn it, he thought. Any chance he might have of escaping had gone up in smoke. He had a terrible feeling that the Hammers were going to be more than a bit interested in him, but what use could he be? He had been a small cog in a huge machine. More than that, the Hammers were taking great care to conceal who they were. That meant they did not want anyone to know that they had been behind the attack on Ishaq. That meant. . An icy-cold hand took Michael’s heart and squeezed it hard. Oh, God, he thought. That means we are dead. That is why they were trying to hard-kill the lifepods. No survivors meant no witnesses. No witnesses meant no exposure of the Hammers’ part in whatever crazy game they were playing.
Michael found it hard to think straight but forced himself to go on. There could not be much time, and he had to work out a way to save himself and those few of the Ishaq’s crew lucky enough to have made it this far. He took a deep breath to steady himself, ignoring the pain beginning to burn back through the painkillers. There had to be a way. There must be a way. He thought and then thought harder, harder than he had ever thought before. His life depended on getting this right.
A buzz of voices announced the arrival of whoever it was Stork had called down. The new man, dressed like everyone else Michael had met, walked in quickly. Slamming the door, he sat down. The body language screamed senior officer, Michael thought. The man had that indefinable something that all brass projected. His eyes did, too. Startlingly blue, they were old eyes, the lines radiating out from them visible through the crude slits. They were the eyes of a man who had seen too much, who had watched death and destruction all his life. Suddenly, Michael felt very frightened. These were the eyes of a man to be afraid of.
The silence dragged on. Unaware he was even doing it, Michael pulled back from the man. His embryonic plan, which had looked so good only a moment before, appeared to be distinctly shaky. Well, he thought philosophically, it was all he had. Maybe the new man-Kingpig he was going to call him-would go for it.
Kingpig leaned forward. “So,” he hissed venomously, “you’re the famous hero of the Battle of Hell’s Moons?”
Michael sat silently. Even if he had largely ignored it up to now, FedWorld training was emphatic on many things, especially on how to behave when under interrogation. Stay quiet as long as possible. Speak only when the level of physical duress becomes unbearable, and then say as little as possible. Repeat ad nauseam until the cavalry came over the hill, shot the bad guys, rescued the good guys, and everyone lived happily ever after.
Yeah, right, Michael thought cynically. Somehow, he did not think the cavalry would get there in time.
He decided to throw the accumulated wisdom of the FedWorld’s interrogation experts into the bin. He had to take the risk.
He nodded, then wished he hadn’t. Christ, his head hurt. “I am, sir, though I think hero is overdoing it. I did my duty, just like you do yours.”
“Ah, duty.” Kingpig sat back. “Duty. It is such a convenient word. Duty-it covers so many sins, don’t you think?”
Michael shook his head carefully. “I don’t agree, sir. Not for us Feds. Maybe where you come from.”
A narrowing of Kingpig’s eyes warned Michael not to push too hard. Never forget this man is dangerous, he reminded himself. He took a deep breath. The time had come for the first roll of the dice.
“By the way, sir. We know who you are. You’re Hammers. You’re-”
“What? No, we are not!” Kingpig cut him off, his voice flat with barely controlled anger, his hands curling into fists pushed down onto the table. No, not just anger. There was something else there, Michael thought. Fear? What could this man be afraid of?
Well, Mister Kingpig, you are a bad liar, Michael thought, a really bad liar. He fought to keep his voice calm, even businesslike. He was not fighting for his life. His body was not a bruised, battered wreck. No. He and Kingpig were talking about the next flame-tree harvest. Businesspeople. Man to man.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Michael insisted, “but you are Hammers. We know you are. First, your accents are a dead giveaway. It’s pretty hard to mistake, you know.” He paused to see how Kingpig would respond. The man did not move, but his eyes did, closing to narrow slits. Slowly, Michael cautioned himself, slowly. It was time for the big lie.
“Second, sir, the Ishaq got an intelligence report a few weeks back. I must admit, it was pretty vague, but it did raise the possibility of a Hammer operation against allied traffic. Converted merchant ships fitted with rail guns. I don’t remember the rest, but Fleet did not rate the report highly, so it was pretty well ignored. In retrospect, that was one big mistake, I think.” Michael forced an angry bitterness into his voice. There may well have been such a report floating around the bureaucratic back blocks of Fleet, not that he or anyone else on board Ishaq had ever seen one. The only thing Ishaq had been given was all that crap about the Karlisle Alliance.
Michael watched Kingpig closely. His eyes had opened a fraction as Michael spoke. Bull’s-eye, he thought. The man had bought it, he decided, so it was time for the next big lie.
“So you see, sir,” Michael said, keeping his voice matter-of-fact, “it’s only a matter of time before Fleet connects the dots, puts the Hammer in the frame for what’s happened, and then I would say it’s probably all over. Stand by to receive boarders, and they won’t be coming for a chat over coffee and biscuits,” he added cheerfully. He did not feel cheerful at all. His heart was pounding. If Kingpig believed him, it would be in his personal interest to look after Michael and the rest of the captured Ishaqs. The Feds took an extremely dim view of Hammers who spaced prisoners of war, pursuing those responsible to the ends of humanspace with a relentless, cold-burning fury, and every Hammer knew it. But if Kingpig did not believe him, his prospects were not good.
Kingpig sat unmoving.
Say something, you Hammer asshole, Michael thought. For Christ’s sake, say something. But Kingpig was silent. Without another word, the man got to his feet and left the compartment, slamming the door behind him.
Michael was left alone for a long, long time. Unwilling to use the few painkiller drugbots he had left, he allowed the pain to return to his shattered body, wave after wave rising up until he began to drift in and out of consciousness. The Hammers must have done more damage than he realized, he thought as he started to slide into darkness.
He was jolted awake by the crash of the door opening. Three hooded men entered. His heart sank. He recognized two of them: Porky and Shithead. Without a word, the men cut away the plasticuffs before dragging him out of his seat and across the floor and then slamming him hard against the bulkhead. Michael’s mouth was dry with fear as his arms were forced over his head, new plasticuffs pulled brutally tight to lock his wrists to the pipework. Then his legs were forced apart and tied off. He was defenseless. All he could do was hang there as the three men stood in front of him. Oh, no, he thought. They all held what looked like baseball bats, and his old friend Shithead, his eyes closed to the thinnest of thin slits, did not look like he was there to offer Michael batting tips.
Michael slowly emerged out of the darkness into a world of agony. His eyes would not open. Everything hurt badly except for the parts he could not feel. His left leg was dead. His groin was numb. The left side of his face was not there. Pain was everywhere else.
Slowly he got himself back under control. Comming the last of the painkillers into his system, he waited until the blessed wave of cool softness worked its magic. That was good, he thought. The only problem was that that was the end of them, and the way things were going, he would need a truckload more, and soon. With a huge effort, he started to put his hands up to his face. He had to see.
“Sir, sir!” The voice was urgent, demanding. “Sir, sir!” There was a muttering of voices; he could feel hands working on him. He could not make out what they were saying. Goddamn it! Why could he not see?
Another voice, much closer. “Sir! Lie back. We’re just cleaning you up.” Someone was shouting in the distance. Something about water. It made no sense.
“Mmmphhthh,” he tried, but he could not speak. His mouth was full of something foul. It tasted coppery, metallic. His tongue was thick; the damn thing would not do what it was told. Michael lay back. God, he was tired. He slipped back into the darkness.
When he awoke, he felt better, though not much; everything still hurt like hell, but at least his head was clearer. Cautiously, he opened his eyes, the sudden bright light making him wince with pain. He lay there for a moment. All he could see through slitted eyes was a distant deckhead hung with the usual confused mess of pipework, cables, lights, and gantries. That did not tell him much. One deckhead looked much like any other. He was in a hangar or cargo bay probably. Suddenly a face appeared. Michael’s eyes would not focus properly, and so he had no idea who it was. The face was a blur.
The face spoke. Thank God, Michael thought. It was not another damn Hammer. “Ah! Good, you’re awake. How do you feel?” the man asked.
“Uuurghhh.” Michael tried to get his tongue to move properly. It felt thick, like an old wool sock. “Water,” he croaked.
“Here you go,” the face whispered gently.
Michael drank greedily. The water was cold, and there was plenty of it. It felt good. “Thanks,” he mumbled gratefully.
“Tell me if you want more. You want more?”
Michael shook his head.
“So how do you feel?”
“Run over,” Michael croaked. “By a truck. Hurts everywhere.”
“Where mostly?”
“Ribs. Face. Bad.”
“Okay. Lie there while I have another look at you.”
Michael nodded weakly. Whoever the man was, he knew his stuff as he quickly and expertly checked Michael over, his fingers probing, prodding, and manipulating. When he was done, he leaned over.
“I know you won’t believe me, but you’re going to be fine, well, eventually. The damage is mainly superficial. So far as I can tell, no concussion, eyes and vision okay, no major bones broken, though your left cheekbone is in a bad way. Might be broken; can’t tell. Nothing too serious internally that I can see. Plenty of cuts and bruises, a lot of ligament damage, especially to the ribs, and some broken teeth. Oh, and someone kicked you in the groin. There’s a lot of swelling down there in all the wrong places, but that’ll mend.”
“Shithead.”
“What?” The man sounded baffled. “Who? Me?”
Michael shook his head. “No, no. Not you. Shithead did that. After I did it to him. One of the Hammers.”
The man looked confused. “Hammers? What Hammers?”
Michael struggled up into a sitting position. He quickly wished he had not; his ribs responded to the insult with a vicious stabbing wave of pain. “Holy Mother of God!” he whistled through clenched teeth. He waited until the pain receded a bit. “The men who’ve taken us. They’re Hammers.”
The man looked like he had been kicked. “Hammers. Oh, fuck!”
Michael nodded. “ ‘Oh, fuck’ is right. What’s your name?”
“Kaufmann, sir. Leading Spacer.”
“Medic?”
“Not exactly, sir. I’m a comm tech, but I do have emergency first aid training.”
“Ah, good. Thank God for that.”
Michael looked around carefully for the first time, struggling to get his eyes to focus properly. It seemed he was one of about fifty spacers being held in a wire cage. Most looked okay, though some clearly were not. A couple in particular looked to be in a bad way, each with a small group around him doing what they could to help. He turned back to Kaufmann. “Who’s senior here?”
“You are, sir. A couple of cadets are the only other officers; the rest are all spacers.”
“Shit.” The last thing Michael felt up to was doing the senior-officer-in-charge bit. “Okay. Who’s the senior spacer here?”
“Warrant Officer McGrath, sir, but we don’t think he’s going to last. The ship’s doctor has had a look. Severe head injuries, third-degree burns, internal injuries. He’s in a really bad way. We’re trying to keep him comfortable until, well, until. .” Kaufmann looked down at the deck as his voice trailed off.
The rage roared up in Michael, obliterating everything else. “What!” he shouted, ignoring the screams of protest from his ravaged body. “The fucking doctor says he’s dying, and he’s just left him here? Get a guard here. Now! You and you!” He pointed to two young spacers sitting against the wire of the cage close to him, their faces white with the shock of it all. “Get me up.”
With their help, Michael stood at the gate, hands locked into the wire to stay upright. “You,” he shouted at one of the guards, “get over here. Get over here now or by God, you’ll regret it.” To Michael’s surprise, the man, shipsuited and hooded like all the rest, did not need much persuading; he slouched over to see what Michael wanted.
“Yeah? Waddya want?”
“Right, you fucking piece of Hammer filth,” he shouted furiously, “listen to me. You go now and get whoever’s in charge of this circus. Tell him Helfort wants to see him. Now!”
The man stepped back in astonishment. Without another word, he spun on his heel and was gone.
Kaufmann was impressed. “Bugger me, sir. Don’t fool around, do you?”
“Yeah, well. What has to be done and all that,” he whispered as he slid down the wire and onto the deck.
When Michael shuffled painfully out of the interrogation room, he felt a brief moment of elation.
He did not know who Kingpig was, but the man was not all bad even if he had allowed him to be beaten to a bloody pulp. It turned out that the doctor had not bothered to inform Kingpig that some of his unwilling guests were dying and that more would die without proper medical attention. Kingpig had been visibly angry when Michael told him. Michael was glad he was not the doctor. It looked like the man’s casual attitude toward his duties would cost him dearly. Even better, it seemed that Kingpig had bought the story that the Feds could soon be on to them. Michael did not know who they were, but there must be other officers in other cages, and they would have run the same analysis as Michael, and so they must know it was the Hammers they were up against.
The only flaw in Michael’s hastily constructed position was the fictitious intelligence report. Kingpig had told him that all the other officers he had interrogated had flatly denied that any such thing existed. Kingpig must have attributed that to their unwillingness to reveal classified information; the possibility that they actually might be telling the truth did not seem to have occurred to him. So they were safe, for the moment at least.
When Michael was pushed back into the cage, he was pleased to see the Hammers already stretchering away the worst of the casualties. It seemed that Kingpig really was the man in charge or at least a man who could make things happen. Michael was exhausted. He had to sleep. He waved Kaufmann over.
“Sir?”
“Tell whoever is next senior after me that they’re in charge. I can’t do this mu. .”
With that, Michael slumped to the deck before rolling slowly onto his side. Two seconds later, he was asleep.