The Complete Hammer's Slammers: Volume I

285 Pages·2009·2.16 MB·English

by  David Drake

The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 1
David Drake
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and
any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by David Drake.
"Introduction" © 2006 by Gene Wolfe.
"Foreword: Becoming a Professional Writer by Way of Southeast Asia" © 1988 by David
Drake. Originally published in The Butcher's Bill.
"Under the Hammer" © 1974 by David Drake. Originally published in Galaxy, November 1974.
"The Church of the Lord's Universe" © 1979 by David Drake. Originally published in
Hammer's Slammers.
"But Loyal to His Own" © 1975 by David Drake. Originally published in Galaxy, October,
1975.
"Powerguns" © 1979 by David Drake. Originally published in Hammer's Slammers.
"Caught in the Crossfire" © 1978 by David Drake. Originally published in Chrysalis 2.
"Cultural Conflict" © 1979 by David Drake. Originally published in Destinies, January, 1979.
"The Bonding Auth" © 1979 by David Drake. Originally published in Hammer's Slammers.
"Hangman" © 1979 by David Drake. Originally published in Hammer's Slammers.
"Table of Organization and Equipment, Hammer's Regiment" © 1979 by David Drake.
Originally published in Hammer's Slammers.
"Standing Down" © 1979 by David Drake. Originally published in Hammer's Slammers.
"Code-Name Feirefitz" © 1984 by David Drake. Originally published in Men of War.
"The Interrogation Team" © 1986 by David Drake. Originally published in There Will be War
Vol. 5.
"The Tank Lords" © 1986 by David Drake. Originally published in Far Frontiers Vol. 6.
"Liberty Port" © 1987 by David Drake. Originally published in Free Lancers.
"Night March" © 1997 by David Drake. Originally published in The Tank Lords.
"The Immovable Object" © 1998 by David Drake. Originally published in Caught in the
Crossfire.
"The Irresistible Force" © 1998 by David Drake. Originally published in The Butcher's Bill.
"A Death in Peacetime" © 2005 by David Drake.
"Afterword: Accidentally and by the Back Door" © 2005 by David Drake.
A Baen Book
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com
ISBN: 978-1-4391-3309-5
Cover art by Kurt Miller
First Baen printing, October 2009
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: t/k
Baen Books By David Drake
The RCN Series
With the Lightnings
Lt. Leary, Commanding
The Far Side of the Stars
The Way to Glory
Some Golden Harbor
When the Tide Rises
In the Stormy Red Sky
Hammer's Slammers
The Tank Lords
Caught in the Crossfire
The Butcher's Bill
The Sharp End
Paying the Piper
The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Volume 1
Independent Novels
and Collections
The Reaches Trilogy
Seas of Venus
Foreign Legions, ed. by David Drake
Ranks of Bronze
Cross the Stars
The Dragon Lord
Birds of Prey
Northworld Trilogy
Redliners
Starliner
All the Way to the Gallows
Grimmer Than Hell
Other Times Than Peace
Patriots
The Undesired Princess and The Enchanted Bunny
(with L. Sprague de Camp)
Lest Darkness Fall and To Bring the Light
(with L. Sprague de Camp)
The General Series
Warlord with S.M. Stirling (omnibus)
Conqueror with S.M. Stirling (omnibus)
The Chosen with S.M. Stirling
The Reformer with S.M. Stirling
The Tyrant with Eric Flint
The Belisarius Series
with Eric Flint
An Oblique Approach
In the Heart of Darkness
Belisarius I: Thunder Before Dawn (omnibus)
Destiny's Shield
Fortune's Stroke
Belisarius II: Storm at Noontide (omnibus)
The Tide of Victory
The Dance of Time
Belisarius III: The Flames of Sunset (omnibus)
Edited by David Drake
The World Turned Upside Down
(with Jim Baen & Eric Flint)

Introduction
BY GENE WOLFE
It is remarkable—though never remarked—how few writers have been soldiers in wartime. Kipling,
who wrote of soldiers and soldiering as well as anyone ever has, was never himself a soldier. I believe I
am correct in saying that Hemmingway was never a soldier, although he drove an ambulance and was
wounded in combat. Avram Davidson presents a peculiar case; as a Marine medic in World War Two
he was technically a sailor, although he wore a Marine uniform and treated wounded Marines in the
South Pacific. Subsequently he jumped through all sorts of legal hoops to stay out of the Israeli Army
while fighting Arabs, since service in the army of a foreign nation would have cost him his US
citizenship.
Such are the exceptions—some of the few writers at the edge of military service who were, or may
have been, shot at. The Red Badge of Courage is often called the greatest of all war novels; Stephen
Crane did not take part in the Civil War, although he interviewed many men who did.
David Drake is a writer of the rarest kind. He knows soldiers because he has been one, and knows
war because he has been there. He knows more: he knows how to speculate plausibly about the future
of soldiering and the future of war.
People who know as little of science fiction as most science fiction writers know of war believe that
the business of science fiction is to predict the future—to extrapolate rationally from present trends,
and, especially, present fads.
We should thank God that it is not. Rational extrapolation is a pistol, effective only at short ranges
and not very effective there. The duty of science fiction is to tell us not what will be, but what might be,
what the future may hold, what human reactions to it are likely, and what results are apt to ensue—
socially, economically, militarily, romantically, and in every other department of life.
More and better than any other writer, David Drake does this for the wars of the future and the men
and women who will fight them. Like every science fiction writer, he assumes that certain
technological developments have taken place. He also assumes, as all who write science fiction are
forced to, that certain others have not taken place. (He is, of course, fully capable of making a different
set of assumptions and writing a good story around those.) Self-appointed experts may disagree with
the assumptions of the Hammer's Slammers stories. They know exactly what war in the far future will
be like. That there will be no war, or that wars will be fought entirely by robots while human beings sit
around hoping not to die at the end. Or whatever. We should ask them and all such experts whether
they have made their fortunes in the stock market. If there really were people capable of predicting
what life—and death—will be like a thousand years from now, they would be capable of predicting
what those things will be like just a few years from now, wouldn't they? Of predicting it and making
shrewd investments. After all, there are men who can jump a one-foot ditch but cannot jump a three-
foot ditch; but there are no men who can jump a three–foot ditch but cannot jump a one-foot ditch.
Prediction is a rifle, less accurate as the range increases.
We can argue with any assumption found in any science fiction story. It will give us a good bull
session, and perhaps even a bit of enlightenment. Still, we cannot rationally deny these assumptions. In
science, it is the happy fate of human kind to know what is possible but not what is impossible. In
1946, anyone who said that all the wars to come in the Twentieth Century would be non-nuclear would
have been laughed to scorn.
On what basis, then, can we judge a science fiction writer's assumptions? (Assuming that they seem
relatively plausible.) Reading any story in this book will supply the answer. Good science fiction
assumptions are those that lead to a good science fiction story.
Ah, but what is a good science fiction story? That is a question we might debate endlessly. I can no
more give you a definitive answer than the next reader of David Drake's next book can. But by
references to Dave's stories in this one, I can illustrate my own opinions. I will try to do it without
hurting those stories for you—the last thing I want to do is deprive you of the pleasures this book
affords.
First, a good science fiction story gives us that famed sense of wonder. The intricacies of future
tank warfare do that for me, and you will find plenty of those here.
Second, a good science fiction story gives us a place to stand on, something that checks with our
own experience. At some point in the story, we need to say to ourselves, "Why, I've been there!" Or, "I
knew her!" Or, "That's just how it was for me!"
I find a number of these in the stories in this book, and so will you. My favorites—my own dear
pets among them all—are the open-topped combat cars the Slammers use for recon. I rode in open
APCs (Armored Personnel Carriers) once, you see, and hunkered down as the shells banged and
boomed outside and the shrapnel screamed overhead.
Third, a good science fiction story must be a good story, just as a good crime story must be a good
story. It must give us someone to like who has problems we want to read about; Colonel Hammer and
Danny Pritchard are obvious examples. They may be smarter than we are, and braver than we are; but
they are anything but alien to us. They are human beings, and recognizably so. We like them, and can
imagine ourselves standing in their boots.
Here I am going to set off on a private rant—stop me if you can. War stories written by people who
know nothing of wars and even less of the men and women who fight them often tell us at great length
that those men and women are dehumanized, and try their damnedest to show them like that. Soldiers
are often tired enough to drop, and people tired enough to drop are seldom as quick with a quip as the
cast of M*A*S*H. But if that level of fatigue dehumanizes them, we can forget about the next guy who
gets lost in the woods for three days. After the second day he is no longer human, so why should we
care?
I have known one man, a fellow soldier long ago, whom I considered dehumanized. He grasped his
rifle tightly just about all the time, and although we tried to keep ammunition away from him, it was
impossible where we were: that rifle almost always had a round in the chamber, and the safety was
always off. Looking ahead, and looking left and right, and looking behind him without cease, he
repeated: "There ain't no Chinks around here, I want to go back to Baker Company. I want to go back
to Baker, there ain't no Chinks around here. There ain't no Chinks around here, I'm goin' back to Baker
Company, ain't no Chinks around here." We had him instead of Baker Company because we were
about a mile behind the Main Line of Resistance just then, while Baker Company was on line and
manning outposts.
Also because the guys in Baker Company were threatening to kill him before he killed them. He
was suicidally courageous, would never remove the filthy fatigue cap he wore under his helmet, and
had other peculiarities. I once met him on a dusty road as he walked along muttering to himself and
kicking a human head as boys used to kick tin cans. (If I had been as quick as I like to pretend, I would
have suggested he take it to the Battalion Intelligence Officer for questioning.) When we, too, began
threatening to kill him, the brass at last concluded that he was not simply angling for a Section Eight.
The point of all this is that this one soldier was unlike anyone else in our company, and was in fact
certifiably and dangerously psychotic. And that he was a lone exception among the hundreds of
soldiers I fought behind, beside, and now and then in front of. Ken Clough was perhaps the sanest man
I have known. I watched him one day when he was caught in a mortar barrage; and just when I felt
certain he had been killed, he rolled onto his back and lit a cigarette. Lieutenant Wilcox, who killed
thirteen enemy in one day with a thirty-eight, was thoroughly human and as fine an officer as I ever
saw.
I have been telling you about all this, because I know that some of you will not know it. I would not
tell David Drake the same thing because I know that he knows it already. You will find it here, in every
story he writes. Men and women do not stop being women and men because they are out where the
metal flies, and that is the wonderful, the truly miraculous, thing about them. Now and then the
experience even knocks a bit of the pretence and pettiness out of them, and that is the glorious thing
about a real shooting war, otherwise such a mess of pain and waste.
I sat in on a late-night party once in which the subject of friendship came up, and I listened in
dumbstruck incredulity as one man explained that his friends had to like the same things he did—that
they must not only read the same books and magazines he did, and listen to the same music, but pretty
much share his opinions of all those things. He was followed by an attractive young woman who
insisted that her friends had to be of her social and economic class. At that point I made all of them shut
up while I explained that a friend is someone who will give you a drink from his canteen and watch
while you sleep.
You will find the waste and horror and cruelty of war in the pages that follow, and the glory of it,
too, as well as the friendships formed when there's little cover or none and the enemy has the range.
Now go to it!
FOREWORD

BECOMING A PROFESSIONAL WRITER
BY WAY OF SOUTHEAST ASIA
Some years ago my son took an undergraduate history course in the Vietnam Era. He mentioned
that his father had been drafted out of law school in 1969. The other students and their twenty-seven-
year-old professor were amazed; they "knew" that college students weren't drafted.
I was in the Duke Law School Class of 1970 when LBJ removed the graduate student deferment in
1968 and I was drafted along with nine more of its hundred and two guys. There were only two women
in our class, a sign of the times that changed abruptly afterwards.
I'd been a history and Latin major as an undergraduate. I'd been against the war in a vague sort of
way but I'd never protested or done anything else political except vote once, since the voting age was
twenty-one. There was never any real question about me refusing to serve, though believe me I wasn't
happy about it.
While a student I'd sold two fantasy short stories for a total of $85. I used what I knew about:
historical settings and monsters based on H. P. Lovecraft's creepy-crawlies. I was proud of the sales,
but writing was just a hobby.
Because I scored high on an army language aptitude test I was sent to Vietnamese language school
at Fort Bliss, then for interrogation training at Fort Meade. Finally to Nam, where I was assigned to the
Military Intelligence detachment of a unit I'd never heard of: the 11th ACR, the Blackhorse Regiment.
My service wasn't in any fashion remarkable, and nothing particularly bad happened to me. I was in
the field for a while with 2nd squadron just after the capture of Snuol; then with 1st squadron; and for the
last half of the tour I was back in Di An, probably the safest place in Viet Nam, as unit armorer and
mail clerk. The Inspector General was due, and apparently I was the only person in the 541st MID who
knew how to strip a .45 down to the frame. (Military Intelligence doesn't seem to get many people who
shot in pistol competitions in civilian life.)
And then I went back to the World. Seventy-two hours after I left Viet Nam I was sitting in the
lounge of Duke University Law School, preparing to start my fourth semester. Because nothing awful
had happened to me, I was honestly convinced that I hadn't changed from when I went over.
As I sat there, two guys I didn't know (my class had already graduated) were talking how they were
going to avoid Viet Nam. One of them had joined the National Guard, while the other was getting into
the Six and Six program that would give him six months army in the US, followed by five and a half
years in the active reserves.
These were perfectly rational plans; I knew better than they did how much Nam was to be avoided.
But for a moment, listening to them, I wanted to kill them both.
That gave me an inkling of the notion that maybe I wasn't quite as normal as I'd told myself I was.
I finished law school and got a job lawyering. I kept on writing, which after the fact I think was
therapy. I didn't have anybody to talk to who would understand, and I'm not the sort to go to a shrink. I
don't drink, either (which I think was a really good thing).
I had much more vivid horrors than Lovecraft's nameless ickinesses to write about now. I wrote
stories about war in the future, assuming that the important things wouldn't change. The stories weren't
like earlier military SF. Instead of brilliant generals or bulletproof heroes, I wrote about troopers doing
their jobs the best way they could with tanks that broke down, guns that jammed—and no clue about
the Big Picture, whatever the hell that might be. I kept the tone unemotional: I didn't tell the reader that
something was horrible, because nobody had had to tell me.
It was very hard to sell those stories because they were different. They didn't fit either of the
available molds: "Soldiers are spotless heroes," or the (then more-popular) "Soldiers are evil monsters."
Those seemed to be the only images that civilians had.
But the funny thing is, when the stories were published they gained a following. Part of it was guys
who'd been there, "there" being WW II, Korea, and later the Gulf as well as Viet Nam. Some of the
fans, though, were civilians who could nonetheless tell the difference between the usual fictions and
stories by somebody who was trying to tell the truth he'd seen in the best way he could.
Some civilians really wanted to understand. I guess that as much as anything helped me get my own
head straighter over the years.
After I got back to the World I'd just done what was in front of me. I didn't think about the future,
because I suppose I'd gotten out of the habit of believing there was one. When I raised my head enough
to look around—almost to the day ten years after I rode a tank back from Cambodia—I quit lawyering
and got a part-time job driving a city bus while continuing to write. I didn't quit lawyering "to write"
(though I'd already had two books published) but because I realized the work was making me sick.
At this point something unexpected happened. Publishers were setting up new SF lines. Editors
already knew that I would write them a story that people wanted to read; my first book, Hammer's
Slammers, had succeeded beyond the editor's wildest dreams. (I didn't realize that for some years
afterwards.) I got literally all the work I could do. The only limitation on how many books I could sell
was the number of books I could write.
I've told you that Nam gave me a need to write and also gave me something real to write about. It
gave me a third thing: service with that unit I'd never heard of; the 11th ACR. I'd been part of a
professional outfit whose people did their jobs with no excuses, no matter what the circumstances.
There are writers who spend more time making excuses for why they can't write than they do
writing. I could've become one of them, but that attitude wouldn't have cut any ice in the Blackhorse.
Instead I just got on with my job, and since 1981 I've supported my family as a full-time freelance
writer.
I'm successful now because I learned professionalism in the Blackhorse and carried that lesson over
to the work I do in civilian life—which happens to be writing SF. The lessons people learned in Nam
probably cost more than they were worth—even to the folks like me who got back with nothing worse
than a couple boil scars from the time I was in the field. They were valuable lessons nonetheless.
If any of the folks reading this were with Blackhorse, thank you for what you taught me. I'm proud
to have been one of you.
Dave Drake
david-drake.com
UNDER THE HAMMER
"Think you're going to like killing, boy?" asked the old man on double crutches.
Rob Jenne turned from the streams of moving cargo to his unnoticed companion in the shade of the
starship's hull. His own eyes were pale gray, suited like his dead-white skin to Burlage, whose ruddy
sun could raise a blush but not a tan. When they adjusted, they took in the clerical collar which
completed the other's costume. The smooth, black synthetic contrasted oddly with the coveralls and
shirt of local weave. At that, the Curwinite's outfit was a cut above Rob's own, the same worksuit of
Burlage sisal that he had worn as a quarryhand at home. Uniform issue would come soon.
At least, he hoped and prayed it would.
When the youth looked away after an embarrassed grin, the priest chuckled. "Another damned old
fool, hey, boy? There were a few in your family, weren't there . . . the ones who'd quote the Book of the
Way saying not to kill—and here you go off for a hired murderer. Right?" He laughed again, seeing he
had the younger man's attention. "But that by itself wouldn't be so hard to take—you were leaving your
family anyway, weren't you, nobody really believes they'll keep close to their people after five years,
ten years of star hopping. But your mates, though, the team you worked with . . . how did you explain
to them why you were leaving a good job to go on contract? 'Via!' " the priest mimicked, his tones so
close to those of Barney Larsen, the gang boss, that Rob started in surprise, "you get your coppy ass
shot off, lad, and it'll serve you right for being a fool!"
"How do you know I signed for a mercenary?" Jenne asked, clenching his great, calloused hands on
the handle of his carry-all. It was everything he owned in the universe in which he no longer had a
home. "And how'd you know about my Aunt Gudrun?"
"Haven't I seen a thousand of you?" the priest blazed back, his eyes like sparks glinting from the
drill shaft as the sledge drove it deeper into the rock. "You're young and strong and bright enough to
pass Alois Hammer's tests—you be proud of that, boy, few enough are fit for Hammer's Slammers.
There you were, a man grown who'd read all the cop about mercenaries, believed most of it . . . more'n
ever you did the Book of the Way, anyhow. Sure, I know. So you got some off-planet factor to send
your papers in for you, for the sake of the bounty he'll get from the colonel if you make the grade—"
The priest caught Rob's blink of surprise. He chuckled again, a cruel, unpriestly sound, and said,
"He told you it was for friendship? One a these days you'll learn what friendship counts, when you get
an order that means the death of a friend—and you carry it out."
Rob stared at the priest in repulsion, the grizzled chin resting on interlaced fingers and the crutches
under either armpit supporting most of his weight. "It's my life," the recruit said with sulky defiance.
"Soon as they pick me up here, you can go back to living your own. 'Less you'd be willing to do that
right now?"
"They'll come soon enough, boy," the older man said in a milder voice. "Sure, you've been ridden
by everybody you know . . . now that you're alone, here's a stranger riding you, too. I don't mean it like
I sound . . . wasn't born to the work, I guess. There's priests—and maybe the better ones—who'd say
that signing on with mercenaries means so long a spiral down that maybe your soul won't come out of
it in another life or another hundred. But I don't see it like that.
"Life's a forge, boy, and the purest metal comes from the hottest fire. When you've been under the
hammer a few times, you'll find you've been beaten down to the real, no lies, no excuses. There'll be a
time, then, when you got to look over the product . . . and if you don't like what you see, well, maybe
there's time for change, too."
The priest turned his head to scan the half of the horizon not blocked by the bellied-down bulk of
the starship. Ant columns of stevedores manhandled cargo from the ship's rollerway into horse- and ox-
drawn wagons in the foreground: like most frontier worlds, Burlage included, self-powered machinery
was rare in the back country. Beyond the men and draft animals stretched the fields, studded frequently
by orange-golden clumps of native vegetation.
"Nobody knows how little his life's worth till he's put it on the line a couple times," the old man
said. "For nothing. Look at it here on Curwin—the seaboard taxed these uplands into revolt, then had to
spend what they'd robbed and more to hire an armored regiment. So boys like you from—Scania?
Felsen?—"
"Burlage, sir."
"Sure, a quarryman, should have known from your shoulders. You come in to shoot farmers for a
gang of coastal moneymen you don't know and wouldn't like if you did." The priest paused, less for
effect than to heave in a quick, angry breath that threatened his shirt buttons. "And maybe you'll die,
too; if the Slammers were immortal, they wouldn't need recruits. But some that die will die like saints,
boy, die martyrs of the Way, for no reason, for no reason . . .
"Your ride's here, boy."

The suddenly emotionless words surprised Rob as much as a scream in a silent prayer would have.
Hissing like a gun-studded dragon, a gray-metal combat car slid onto the landing field from the west.
Light dust puffed from beneath it: although the flatbed trailer behind was supported on standard
wheels, the armored vehicle itself hovered a hand's-breadth above the surface at all points. A dozen
powerful fans on the underside of the car kept it floating on an invisible bubble of air, despite the
weight of the fusion power unit and the iridium-ceramic armor. Rob had seen combat cars on the
entertainment cube occasionally, but those skittering miniatures gave no hint of the awesome power
that emanated in reality from the machines. This one was seven meters long and three wide at the base,
the armored sides curving up like a turtle's back to the open fighting compartment in the rear.
From the hatch in front of the power plant stuck the driver's head, a black-mirrored ball in a helmet
with full face shield down. Road dust drifted away from the man in a barely visible haze, cleansed from
the helmet's optics by a static charge. Faceless and terrible to the unfamiliar Burlager, the driver guided
toward the starship a machine that appeared no more inhuman than did the man himself.
"Undercrewed," the priest murmured. "Two men on the back deck aren't enough for a car running
single."
The older man's jargon was unfamiliar but Rob could follow his gist by looking at the vehicle. The
two men standing above the waist-high armor of the rear compartment were clearly fewer than had
been contemplated when the combat car was designed. Its visible armament comprised a heavy
powergun forward to fire over the head of the driver, and similar weapons, also swivel-mounted, on
either side to command the flanks and rear of the vehicle. But with only two men in the compartment
there was a dangerous gap in the circle of fi re the car could lay down if ambushed. Another vehicle for