Birthright: Chapter 7
The Hammer of God -By Jeff Barrett
Conrad was dazedly aware of someone yelling, “A new record!” with every drink. Unfortunately, he wasn’t very concerned with that. Across the small crew lounge table, a rather large man stared more-or-less right at him, over a large pile of overturned shot glasses.
It was a standard rite of passage in the Confederate Resistance Fleet. A new recruit squared off against a seasoned veteran, usually a large alcoholic, in a test of intestinal integrity. The first contestant who couldn’t get any more down without bringing any up or passing out loses.
No matter what the outcome, the new recruit was accepted into the group. Too bad they are rarely aware of this at the time.
“Take this un’, Bubba!” Conrad said, his voice slurred. He swirled his glass around, tipped his head back, and drained the contents into his mouth. He dropped the glass, letting it drop to the floor. He couldn’t remember ever drinking alcohol, and he was beginning to doubt he ever would again.
“The name’s…” said “Bubba,” as his voice trailed off into another drink. He was easily two meters tall, and probably weighed upwards of one hundred fifty kilograms.
“A new record!” someone shouted again.
“Shaddap!” Conrad said. His had wobbled from side to side as he slugged down yet another drink. Quite suddenly, there were two Bubbas sitting before him, neither of them fairing very well.
Conrad closed his eyes, and rubbed his burning throat. Before he could open his eyes, he heard a dull thud, followed by the sound of two hundred empty shot glasses falling to the floor and a wild cheer rising from the officers assembled. It was the last thing Conrad heard as he slipped from his chair.
***
So this is a hangover… Conrad thought. He made a silent vow never to drink anything again.
He was lying on his back on the floor next to a bunk somewhere in the crew cabins on the Darkhammer. The featureless ceiling slowly pivoted above his head.
“They had you drinking with Lieutenant Roher, didn’t they?” asked a nearby voice.
Conrad slowly twisted his throbbing head to find Admiral Calhoon standing nearby, staring down at him. The wall behind her was adorned with a vivid array of knives. “Huh?” Conrad said.
Calhoon held her hands out, indicating Lieutenant Roher’s girth. “Ah! Bubba!” Conrad said. “New fleet record, you know.”
“Good, great, wonderful.” Calhoon said. “Now, get out of my quarters.”
Conrad staggered to his feet, and regarded his surroundings. “How did I get here?” he said dumbly.
“Don’t worry about it.” Calhoon said. “The last guy found himself stuffed into the bomber bay of a Firestorm.” She grabbed Conrad by the arm, and roughly shoved him out of the room. “Get sobered up, and come back so I can yell at you.”
***
“One hundred thirty-two rounds?” Calhoon said, her mouth open in mock astonishment. She looked across the meeting room at Conrad.
“That’s what the official score keeper said.” King replied.
“If its all right with you, Admiral, I’m here now, could you just get on with yelling at me so I can get back to work?”
Calhoon’s eyes flashed, “Don’t use that tone with me, smartass!”
“Apologies, Admiral. But you should know that anyone who takes Lieutenant ‘Bubba’ in a drinking contest for a hundred thirty-two rounds is decidedly not a smartass.” Conrad said.
“I get it!” Calhoon yelled. She turned to King, and tugged at his sleeve. “I get it!” she repeated, “You think your smart, don’t you?”
“I just said…” Conrad started.
Calhoon held up a hand. “Joe, could you excuse us for a minute?” she said. King got up and left quickly.
In one swift motion, Calhoon swung her raised arm to slap Conrad. Faster than her eyes could track, Conrad caught her arm and spun her halfway around. “A great deal smarter than you seem to think, Admiral,” he whispered in her ear.
Calhoon grunted, and threw off Conrad’s grip. She turned to face him. Reaching behind her back, she smiled, and withdrew a small switchblade. She waved the knife at Conrad menacingly.
“Go ahead,” Conrad said. “I’m unarmed.”
Calhoon sighed, and tossed the knife on the table. Its blade automatically retracted. She turned away from Conrad as he began to head for the door. A second later, she looked back at him, and said, with an ironic smile, “You’re just like Duran, you know? You’re all just like Duran…”
Conrad shook. He spun, and lunged at Calhoon, pinning her against the far wall with his forearm and hip. The knife danced across the table and leapt to his hand. He flipped the blade open and rested the tip on Calhoon’s nose.
Calhoon froze in terror. Conrad was almost nose to nose when he said, quietly, “Like Duran how? Did he ever do this to you?” He gripped the knife tighter. “Listen well, Alia,” he said, committing a potentially capital crime just by using her first name. “If you ever think to pull a weapon on me ever again, be prepared to use it. I have no compunctions about slitting your throat, should you make it necessary.”
He released her and exited to the bridge, pocketing her knife along the way. He paused in the open door, stepped back, and waited for the door to slide shut.
Turning back, he saw Calhoon huddled on her knees, staring at him.
“He was infested, you know?” he said, “Duran, I mean.” He nodded sympathetically, and left.
***
The cybernetic construct, commonly called Hal as some obsolete and utterly meaningless joke, peered into the inside of the small white ship. Thomas Kane looked over his shoulder, as if afraid he was going to steal something.
The construct’s scope-eye extended several centimeters, and lights flashed across his cranial panel. “It looks like the entire interior was laced with charges of some sort.” His organic eye closed, as the mechanical one extended further. “And some kind of chemical spray… Whatever manner of pilot there was, its body is totally dissolved.”
Kane snorted. “Why would anyone rig their own ship to kill its pilot?”
Hal stood, his servos whirring. “You are of the Dominion. I don’t see why I have to answer that question.”
It was common practice for Dominion Intelligence to equip fighter craft with a centimeter long poison-laced needle, extending from a sheltered part of the control panel. A pilot would press the palm of his hand over the needle before allowing himself to be captured, thus destroying whatever knowledge they carried.
“These aliens go a step further, and actually destroy most of the useful technology aboard at the same time.”
The ship that had given them so much trouble had been dragged aboard a Confederate science vessel, and was being picked apart under Kane’s supervision. When the crew had wrenched the cockpit open, the entire interior was completely ruined. The remains of the pilot, little more than a thick organic sludge, covered every surface.
“You’re sure it isn’t Protoss?” Kane asked, yet again.
“Definitely, decidedly, certainly not Protoss,” Hal snarled, scowling with the organic part of his face.
***
Infested… Calhoon thought…
She turned the hot water on even further, and leaned against the wall of the shower.
Does this mean I’m infested now? she thought. Or, maybe that was just in the movies.
She had returned late to her quarters to find that Conrad had broken in, and left her knife on a table. With it were sufficient documents to convince her that Duran may have been infested before he allied with the UED.
She scrubbed furiously at her skin. She could feel the microscopic Zerg… somethings crawling all over her.
She wasn’t sure how long she had been standing here… and she wasn’t very concerned about how long it would be until they moved. As far as she cared, the universe could come apart at the seams, and she would simply stay where she was.
***
Conrad looked at his bridge. The lights were dim, and would have to stay that way. Even after weeks of upgrades, the shipyard crew couldn’t balance all of the systems at once. In the glass display case, he had placed a three-hundred-year-old book, stolen from the officer’s library on the UED flagship three years ago. The book’s crinkled pages were forever preserved in a thin polymer-resin film. On the cover, inlaid with gold leaf, was the word MACBETH.
The last repair crew had left only hours before, and had left a schematic of the completed repairs and upgrades on the bridge screen. It was late: 0200 by the fleet’s time, but sleep hadn’t been a serious concern for Conrad in three years. Instead, he now fiddled with controls, making the schematic turn, rotate, expand, and move around on the screen.
He didn’t know much about battlecruiser design, and the only modification that was readily apparent was a bulge along the bottom of the ship, where the hull had been reformed to accommodate a Yamato Cannon.
There were only two crewmembers on the bridge this early, and one of them gasped, “General, there are Dominion Wraiths approaching our position!”
Conrad slapped his com panel, bent over and spoke into the device, “Wake up call. All hands to battle stations.” Turning to the two officers, he said, “Red alert.”
He sighed. Time to see what this thing can really do.
“Direct hit to engine one.”
Kane’s head spun. He had been half-asleep on his bridge, when the Gentry suddenly fell under attack. “Where did those Wraiths come from?” he yelled.
The officer at the sensor console to his right, hesitated. “As far as anyone can tell… nowhere. The Kel-Morian listening posts doesn’t detect any large Dominion craft in the system.”
“Open fire. Send a general distress call to the shipyards.” Kane ordered.
***
General Domes cackled at the screen. His group of Wraiths danced around Dominar Kane’s sluggish ship. “Have they detected us yet?” he asked no one in particular.
“No sir. They haven’t even thought to scan for large cloaked ships.”
Domes smiled broadly, his thin white lips stretching until they looked like they would snap.
He watched as another cruiser joined Kane’s. It was a matter of seconds before the Dominion force was overwhelmed, but Kane’s ship was clearly crippled.
Laughing, he said, “Send out wave two!”
***
“Report!” Conrad yelled.
“Minor damage to engines two and four. Laser battery six is firing off target.”
“Get Admiral Calhoon on,” he said. “You’re sure there aren’t any Dominion ships out there?”
No carriers, no cruisers, no frigates, nothing that could possibly have carried a wing of Wraiths into combat.
King’s face appeared on the screen. “What did you say to the Admiral?” he demanded. “She’s locked herself in her quarters!”
“General, there’s another Dominion force converging on the Darkhammer.”
“Captain, I suggest you brace for impact.” Conrad said.
King cocked an eyebrow at him, “Excuse me General?”
Conrad hung up on him. “How is the Gentry?”
Yet another anonymous voice replied, “They aren’t sending out any signals. It looks like their engines have broken loose.” After a slight pause, he added, “They have a major hull breach behind their hangar bay.”
Conrad sighed. “Take us to the Darkhammer. They probably need help too.”
***
Calhoon lay in the bottom of the shower. The water had long since shut itself off, but she didn’t feel like moving. Infested… she thought, for the nth time.
The room rattled around her, jarring panels loose from the walls. She sighed heavily. Probably another war… Maybe if she stayed where she was, everything would just go away.
The com on the wall beeped. “Admiral?” said King’s voice, “You’re needed on the bridge.”
“Whatever,” she said.
“We’re under attack, Admiral.” King pleaded.
“No shit,” she said, perfectly calmly.
***
General Domes laughed out loud. The entire plan was working perfectly. “Send in another wave, now. Just for the fun of it all!” he said, spinning his chair around to see the whole bridge. “Firestorms, this time. Take out the shipyards,” he added, laughing.
He watched the newest group of ships pass through the outer reaches of the Norad VI’s cloak. He had been skeptical when Mengsk’s science advisor offered to build such a device in exchange for keeping his life, but it was working beautifully.
The Wraiths split from the new wing, falling on a gunship like a swarm of locusts. The firestorms sped on toward the shipyards.
Domes pounded the arm of his chair. “I can’t stand this any longer,” he said. “Drop the cloak. Prepare to attack!”
***
King grunted. He had just tried to rouse Admiral Calhoon again, but she replied with a stinging Braxian oath. He rubbed his temples. Behind him, an officer said, “Um… Captain?” He ignored him. “Captain!”
“What?” he said, softly.
“Um… I don’t know… Just look!” the officer replied.
King looked up, and saw a large ship slowly shimmering into existence in front of the Darkhammer. His lips traced out the words, “What in hell?” but no sound came out.
“Sir, a wing of Firestorms is attacking the shipyards.”
“On screen.”
The image switched to that of fifteen large one-man ships screaming in out of space. They seemed to be traveling “down,” with their bellies turned to their flight path. Doors opened on their bottoms.
“Launch the Valkyries,” King said. The Firestorms each fired small rockets on their undersides, slowing them while the large bombs in their bowels continued on at the same speed. The Valkyries cut off their escape, but before King saw the resolution of the battle, the view switched itself back to the new cruiser that had just appeared. A red glow was beginning to congeal on its bow.
“Brace for impact,” King said.
***
“Fire the Yamato Cannon!” Conrad said, finally fulfilling a secret childhood fantasy.
The Norad VI fired its cannon first, striking the Darkhammer below the bridge, an uppercut to the jaw. The running lights on the Darkhammer flickered briefly, and finally died. Behind the Macbeth, the wrecked shipyards burned, slowly falling from orbit.
The lights went out on the bridge, and the air circulators cut out briefly. On the screen, the massive red beam sliced into the Norad, nearly intersecting a blast from its second Yamato Cannon. As the Macbeth’s Yamato fire vanished, the lights returned to their normal, but still dim level, and the air circulators began to come online again.
The blast from the Norad hit at that instant. Conrad closed his eyes, and felt his rehabilitated ship pitch up under him. When he opened his eyes, the bridge was filled with smoke, and the lights were out again. On the screen, General Domes’s ship split apart, and exploded, eliciting a round of cheers on the bridge.
***
General Domes laughed. He saw the blast coming, but it didn’t concern him greatly. Nothing really mattered in life, not when you have made plans. He pushed a small red button, mounted on a panel welded haphazardly to his command chair.
As the Norad VI disintegrated around him, General Domes died a fitting death.
Laughing.
Three light years away, in deep space, a long abandoned satellite sprang to life. Eight gantries folded back, like a deadly flower opening from a bud. It released a long, slender seed. Along this seed were emblazoned the words “Confederate Suppression Arsenal.” Six steel fins glistened in the dim interstellar light. The engines fired, producing an invisible plasma trail that scorched and melted the satellite behind it.
It was the infamous “Hammer of God.”
***
“Are there any ships in the system that can move?” Conrad asked.
“None,” replied King, “The ones that were left went down with the shipyards.” He nodded off the screen at another display that Conrad couldn’t see. Not that he needed to.
The massive Umojan shipyards had been knocked out of their orbit. The Firestorm salvo had taken out the docking controls, effectively trapping all the ships attached to the yards. For three hours, Conrad had watched a projection of the shipyards move ever closer to a projection of the planet, until they finally crashed, leaving a two hundred mile long swath of destruction across the smallest continent and continuing out under the sea. He tried to imagine what it was like, watching death coming at you for hours like that.
“Did anyone make sense of Domes’s little stunt?” Conrad asked.
King shrugged. “Domes isn’t the brightest military leader ever,” he said, “It was probably a brilliant plan in his head.”
“Well… We all have a lot of work to do. Conrad out.” Conrad said, closing the transmission.
He turned to the battered crew. “Report?” he said.
The crew scrambled around. Conrad held up a hand. “Never mind, I know. Everything’s broken. I’ll save you the time.”
During the following three hours, the Darkhammer was forced to jettison all four engines, and vent most of its fuel into space. The plume of fuel passed over the Macbeth.
Conrad broke the tedium by opening a channel to King, “Hey, watch where you’re spraying that shit.” Both crews gave feeble, polite laughs.
“You never answered my question,” King said. “What did you say to the Admiral? She’s still locked in her quarters.”
Conrad cringed. He hadn’t realized he’d upset her that much. “I just cleared up an issue concerning a mutual friend of ours,” he said. “Has anyone looked in on her? Maybe she got hurt.”
“She’s fine. I talked to her a few minutes ago.”
“What did she have to say?”
King laughed, “She told me to go suck myself.”
This time, the crew laughed for real, at least on the Macbeth. The Darkhammer crew dared not move.
After several more hours, Conrad said out loud to his crew that he wished something, anything would happen, just for a little variety. Damn, he thought immediately after, I hope I don’t regret saying that.
Only a minute later, one of his officers was sorry to announce that his wish was answered. “I’m picking up an object entering the system,” he said.
“What is it?” Conrad asked. God, these people make me mad when they don’t give the specifics, he thought, No wonder the Protectorate fired them.
“I don’t know, sir.”
Conrad tapped open a channel to King. “Captain, point your cameras out system. Do you see something moving out there?”
After a brief pause, not realizing his mike was still hot, King said, “Oh my God…”
“Captain?” Conrad said, “Something bad I assume?”
“It’s… ah… an Apocalypse-class missile,” the Captain replied.
“Aw, shit,” Conrad said. “I knew I’d regret saying that. Just one?” One wasn’t “that bad,” but it was sufficient to level a city.
“Just one,” the officer said.
“Ensign!” he said, looking down the engineering pit at the back of the bridge. “Do we have any propulsion at all?”
The ensign shook his head. “Just docking thrusters.”
Conrad frowned thoughtfully. “What kind of acceleration do those provide?”
“Point one g, if we push them,” the ensign said.
Conrad snapped around. “Helm, trace the path of the missile, and plot a recursive course along its trajectory.”
His new first officer stepped up. It was the first time Conrad had noticed him, let along talked to him. “General, a word if I may?”
“Piss off,” Conrad said. “Helm, when that’s done, start us along that course as fast as the docking thrusters can take us.”
The first officer became very emphatic, “General! Please?”
“Didn’t I just tell you to piss off?” Conrad said. “Are we moving yet? Good.” He stepped up to the front of the bridge, and looked back across it. He sighed heavily. “Abandon ship,” he said. None of his childhood fantasies ended this way…
His first officer approached him again, but Conrad raised his hand. “Before you say anything…”
“Yes sir,” the officer said, utterly resigned, “Pissing off sir.”
“And abandon ship while you’re at it.” No wonder the Protectorate canned these guys… Conrad thought as the first officer left the bridge.
***
The crew was gone. Conrad felt oddly at home in the early morning, with the lights barely working, on an empty ship. At least the ship wasn’t actively trying to kill him this time.
He didn’t feel at home knowing that the plutonium equivalent to a gigaton of dynamite was hurtling towards him. But if all went well, he wouldn’t be aware of that soon.
He keyed the electronic lock on the glass display case, and removed the book. It looked perfectly normal, but it felt like a block of plastic in his hands. He jumped down into the engineering pit. He had noticed one of the officers drinking down here, and he knew that the bottle was still there.
After finding the bottle of Morian grain-whiskey and his book, he abandoned his vow never to drink again, and climbed up to the main bridge. Taking the captain’s chair, he quickly tapped a minor course correction out on the keypad, took a long swill of whiskey, and opened the book.
***
“Admiral,” said the wall-mounted intercom. The admiral ignored it. Nothing mattered anyway, after all. “Admiral,” the device insisted.
“Why don’t you go…” she stopped short. What was the point?
“Admiral, please listen. General Conrad’s flipped. He’s intent on killing himself, it seems, and he won’t reply to me.” King’s voice said. “Admiral? Are you listening?”
Calhoon wasn’t listening, but she seemed to recall hearing a familiar name in there someplace. “Go on,” she said.
King explained the Dominion attack, the incoming missile, and finally Conrad’s apparent death plunge at
he missile. “He refuses to respond when either I or Tom hail him. Maybe he’ll listen to you.”
Calhoon sighed heavily. Her mind assembled one of the longer and more elaborate Braxian blasphemies, but she didn’t feel like taking the requisite deep breath. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said.
***
The com beeped again. Conrad ignored it again. He was very engrossed in his book, trying to take his mind off the near future. The com beeped more insistently.
Conrad hissed, and slapped the controls. “I told you both to go to hell. Now leave me alone,” he said, immediately hanging up on whoever it was.
The com continued to beep. A small amber light declared that a visual image was waiting for him. “Listen Captain, I don’t want to see your damn face again. Now leave me alone.”
The beeping stopped, and the lights were dark. Conrad returned to his book with a self-satisfied smirk.
The lights returned, the beeping was a buzz this time, and a red light indicated that the message was about to complete whether he liked it or not. Conrad swore, and closed the book, keeping a finger in his page.
The face that appeared a second later was not Captain King, or Dominar Kane, but Calhoon. “Stand down, General.” Her hair was a mess, drawn halfway back, then giving up halfway and falling into a tangle. Her uniform was buttoned wrong, two buttons protruding over her collar with no holes to match them.
“Admiral,” he said. “You look like you need more sleep.”
Again, Calhoon assembled an oath the likes of which only a few brilliant Braxians could concoct. She started to tell him where to stick this-or-that, but gave up again at the futility of it.
“Stand down. It’s only one missile,” she said.
“Tell me, what exactly is the yield on an Apocalypse-class warhead?” Conrad asked.
Calhoon shrugged, and seemed to doze off. Conrad didn’t bother, they both knew the figure was well over the gigaton mark. “Who cares. So a few thousand people are going to die. Do you know how many hundreds of people have already died today?”
Conrad frowned, lowered his head. He flipped his book open and continued reading, ignoring Calhoon. After a while, he looked back up, and whispered, “They know peace.” Calhoon didn’t hear, or didn’t care.
“I never realized what I said would have that much of an effect. I assume the rumors were true then?” he said with a malicious smile.
Calhoon’s face began to form a venomous glare, but gave up. She gave him a half-hearted rude gesture, and closed the transmission. Conrad felt slightly disconcerted about ‘leaving’ with a guilty conscience. Making one last course correction, he uncapped the whiskey bottle. He tried to read, but couldn’t focus his eyes. After a few more minutes and a lot more drinks, he drifted off to sleep.
