The Battle of the Hammer Worlds

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“Cargo’s stowed, Captain. Just doing my final walk around now.”

The flat, uninterested voice of the Constancy’s first officer dragged Captain Curtis Karangi away from a review of the options he’d have if the Feds discovered the containers the Constancy had just loaded. Karangi was not a happy man; it had been a depressing exercise. The plain fact was that if the Feds did intercept his ship, being neurowiped was probably the best offer he was going to get.

Karangi picked up the old-fashioned hand mike. “Captain, roger. We’ll get under way shortly.”

“Righto,” the first officer replied dismissively.

“Righto! Righto! I’ll give you righto, you disrespectful son of a bitch,” Karangi muttered as he smashed the mike back into its cradle.

Karangi sighed despairingly as he patted the stun pistol that never, ever left his hip. If the damn Feds didn’t get him, his crew probably would, every last one of them an insubordinate, money-grubbing ratbag. And if his crew didn’t get him, Constancy would. The bloody ship was clapped out, a death trap, her every transit through pinchspace a roll of life’s dice. But he was trapped. He owed money-mountains of money-to a Hammer-backed finance company, and until it was paid off, he would do exactly what they wanted him to do.

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