The Hive Invasion- The Complete Trilogy

by Jake Elwood

  Hammett smiled his thanks and lowered himself into a chair. Quiet electric motors hummed as the chair reshaped itself to fit his body, and he sighed quietly. He was as comfortable as a man could be while facing almost all of the senior admiralty in Spacecom.

  "I assume you know you've performed brilliantly and done your planet a great service," Castille said, and smiled. "However, you might want to know that we've noticed. You have our gratitude and our congratulations."

  "Thank you, Sir." They were kind words, but they had the feel of a spoonful of sugar designed to prepare him for a dose of bitter medicine.

  The smile disappeared. Here it comes, Hammett thought.

  "I hope you've had a chance to rest a bit," Castille said, "because I'm afraid your work is not done." He made a gesture and a star map appeared above the table. "The alien invaders—the media are calling them 'The Hive' for reasons I haven't been able to figure out—have been driven away for the moment, but they most certainly have not been defeated."

  Hammett nodded. He was pretty sure Castille was right.

  "We have learned from them," Castille said, "but they have also had the opportunity to learn from us. You and your crew have reported instances where they modified their tactics in response to an earlier encounter."

  "Yes, Sir. They learn and adjust."

  "When we face them again, it will be a very different sort of fight. We are going to find out who can learn and adapt more quickly."

  It was a sobering thought. Hammett didn't speak, just waited for the admiral to tell him which science facility he was going to be consigned to.

  "You're the only captain in the fleet with direct, successful experience against these creatures," Castille said. "You've also demonstrated that you can learn and adjust and think on your feet. Therefore, we think you'd be wasted here on Earth. You'll be going back into space, just as soon as we can complete an emergency refit on the corvette Tomahawk."

  Hammett felt his jaw drop open, and quickly closed it.

  "The ship has its own wormhole generator, and it's being fitted with extra weapons. You'll be leaving within forty-eight hours," she continued. "It isn't prudent, but we're under tremendous pressure to get a ship to Naxos and protect the colonists there. Your assignment will be to fly immediately to Naxos and assess the situation, then remain on station until a support fleet can reach you."

  The Naxos system lit up on the holo-map, and Hammett stared at it, trying to figure out if he was horrified or delighted. You're going to get me killed. But I'll die in space. I'll die fighting those things.

  Castille said, "When the fleet reaches you, you will continue with the next phase of your mission. It won't be a very large fleet, I should warn you. It will be the ships we will be able to refit within a week or so."

  "Not all the ships we'll be able to refit," another admiral interrupted. "Somebody has to protect the Earth."

  Castille nodded impatiently. "A small fleet," he repeated. "With that fleet you will repair Gates Four and Five, and travel through Gate Five if it functions."

  Hammett felt his pulse increase as Deirdre lit up on the map.

  "You will retrace the path the invaders took on their way to Earth. You will engage and destroy whatever enemy forces you encounter. You will work your way from system to system until you reach Calypso, and then you will look for clues to the original source of these attacks. By this time I hope that the Gate system will once again be online, and we will be able to directly supply and reinforce you. You will carry on regardless. You will not stop, and you will not return, until you have tracked the enemy back to their hive and destroyed them."

  STARSHIP TOMAHAWK

  CHAPTER 1 - HAMMETT

  Captain Richard Hammett sat in a booth in the darkest, furthest corner of the Blazing Rocket, the least-popular of the three bars on Port Kodiak. The music was terrible, but there were no screens showing his face as "Earth's hero", and not many people to recognize and pester him. His implants were still fried, which meant anyone wanting to bother him would have to track him down in person. The shadowy booth was providing him with almost the first quiet time he'd had since returning to Earth eight days earlier.

  At least he was off-planet. Earth was 36,000 kilometers below him. The endless reporters, camera bots, and legions of morons wanting autographs were mercifully out of reach. He had a glorious few hours of solitude before he'd have to step into a pressure cooker of a different kind.

  A beer sat by his elbow, slowly growing warm as he sipped it. He would have loved to knock it back and chase it with another, but he needed a clear head. This was wartime. The call of duty could come at any time.

  A strident voice caught his attention, and he turned, giving an annoyed glance at a group of sailors a few tables away. A news feed flickered above their table, and Hammett could see the familiar profile of Jeff Acton, a bombastic politician quickly rising into prominence in the aftermath of First Contact.

  Hammett turned away, trying to tune out the man's voice, but a different voice began to speak, and he felt himself smile. He tapped the controls on his table, scrolled through the menu, and found the same feed.

  A woman of thirty or so stared into the camera, her face serious and a bit stern. Hammett grinned into her unseeing eyes. He'd seen her cheerful, playful side, but he knew she could be every bit as tough as her current demeanor suggested. If he was seeing her on a major feed like this, she had to be doing well. He was glad.

  "… Rhetoric of anger and fear." Janice Ling scowled, a hand coming up to chop the air for emphasis. "Critics say that Jeff Acton is playing to our lowest impulses. He's taking a crisis and using it to gain personal power, and he's doing it by turning human beings against each other, just when humanity most needs to be united."

  "You tell 'em, Janice," Hammett murmured, lifting his glass to her projected image. He took a sip.

  "While centrist leaders like Statsminister Saretsky call for international cooperation to meet this alien threat, Acton continues to speak of blame. He paints Saretsky and her followers as enemies of humankind, in a heavy-handed attempt to rally angry, frightened people behind his banner." Janice leaned forward, her face suddenly filling the projection. "But make no mistake. Jeff Acton doesn't care about responding to the Hive threat. Jeff Acton cares about gathering power for Jeff Acton."

  The feed switched to market analysis, and the rise of military contracting in the face of war. Hammett killed the projection and leaned back in his chair. He stared at the space where Janice's face had been and shook his head. "Not exactly clinging to your journalistic impartiality, are you, Janice?" Well, she hadn't been impartial on the Alexander, either. She'd stepped up and organized the civilian passengers into a volunteer corps that had helped keep the ship alive. She did what needed to be done.

  Now, it seemed, she'd decided that Acton needed to be stopped.

  Not my problem, Hammett decided. He'd never paid attention to politics, and he wasn't going to start now. He glanced down at his captain's uniform. The Navy had been the compass guiding his entire adult life. He was an officer. It was how he defined himself. A secret part of him was even glad for the war, because it kept him in the uniform that meant so much to him. Part and parcel of it was acceptance of the chain of command.

  Power and responsibility flowed downward. Hammett was responsible for the people under his command, and that was enough for any man. Jeff Acton was someone else's problem.

  A young woman in a commander's uniform came into the bar, pausing just inside the doorway and peering into the gloom. She had pale brown skin and hair as black as space itself. Her hair might have been the tiniest bit longer than regulations allowed. Even more unusual, she wore a plain silver bracelet around her right wrist, and a very small knife at her waist. She spotted Hammett and started toward him.

  Hammett looked at his beer, wondering if he should finish it quickly while he had the chance. He decided, reluctantly, not to.

  The commander stopped in front of Hammett's
table, standing very erect. "Captain Hammett?"

  For a moment Hammett thought about denying it, just for the hell of it. Instead he said, "Yes. What can I do for you, Commander?"

  "I hope you'll accompany me to the Tomahawk, Sir. She's almost ready to launch."

  I wanted to sit here and enjoy my beer. I've barely had a moment's peace since I got back to Earth, and now you want me to …. His heart wasn't in the complaint, he realized. The meetings are over. The endless debriefing, the planning, the thousand and one petty administrative details. It's all over. I've got a ship again.

  He stood. "Lead the way."

  They left the bar, heading into the crowded corridors of Spacecom's biggest station. Military personnel and civilians filled the place in equal numbers. Hammett had never seen the station so full. There was more security than he was used to, as well. Sailors with sidearms guarded doorways, or patrolled the corridors in pairs, eyes scanning the crowd. What are they watching for? Hammett wondered. We're at war with aliens, for God's sake. It's not as if there could be infiltrators.

  "You're Commander Kaur?" he said.

  "Yes, Sir." Kaur spoke stiffly, not looking at Hammett.

  "You were captain of the Tomahawk until the Battle of Earth."

  Kaur's head turned for just an instant, her dark eyes flashing. "Yes, Sir." The Tomahawk, along with the rest of the fleet, had flown bravely into battle and been almost instantly disabled by an alien EMP weapon. Kaur would have spent the whole fight staring at the walls of the bridge, unable to do anything but wait, unable even to watch.

  "It wasn't my idea to take her away from you."

  That earned him another glance, this one a bit less fierce. "I don't blame you, Sir."

  "Of course you do," said Hammett. "But I need you to get over it. We'll be working together for months, and I'll need your knowledge of the Tomahawk. I'll need your help."

  When she looked at him again the stiffness was gone from her face. "You'll have it, Sir."

  "Good."

  They passed through a security checkpoint, unsmiling sentries watching as they pressed their hands to scanners. Beyond the checkpoint there were no more civilians, and the crowds were noticeably thinner. They climbed a staircase toward the docking level, Hammett puffing a bit by the second flight of stairs. I really need some exercise. Kaur, he was irritated to note, wasn't out of breath at all.

  "How'd you find me?" Hammett said.

  She raised a sooty eyebrow. "Commander Carruthers suggested I try the station bars. He said to start with the Blazing Rocket and work my way up."

  Hammett grinned. He and Carruthers had served together for a long time, and knew each other entirely too well. After fifteen years as a lieutenant, Carruthers had finally made Commander. Plenty of Navy men held the rank of Lieutenant for their entire careers, but the Hive invasion had brought promotions along with a tsunami of other changes.

  "Scuttlebutt says he'll command a corvette in the relief fleet," Kaur said.

  Hammett nodded. It made sense. Spacecom was refitting ships with admirable speed, but only three corvettes were ready for action. Those three ships would leave immediately. They were officially a task force with a numerical designation. Unofficially, they were known as the attack fleet.

  The relief fleet was the next batch of ships to finish refitting. There would be anywhere from five to twenty ships in the relief fleet, depending on when the fleet launched. Carruthers, as one of only a handful of officers with experience successfully fighting the Hive, was a logical choice to command a ship in the relief fleet. The only better use for his talents might be to send him along with the attack fleet, but Spacecom had decided to keep him Earthside for a while longer.

  In case we all die five minutes after we arrive at Naxos, Hammett thought sourly. They want to keep at least a little bit of expertise at home.

  Clear signs in the corridor pointed the way to Docking Bay Nine, but the two officers, acting on a common impulse, turned off and walked into a shadowy viewing lounge. Floor-to-ceiling windows gave a view of the arm of the station stretching out beside them, with the Tomahawk stuck on the end like a marshmallow on a stick. Other ships hovered in the void beyond the station, and the cloudy curve of the Earth filled one side of the sky, but Hammett only had eyes for one thing.

  His new ship.

  The Tomahawk was fifty-five meters from stem to stern but only ten meters across, with two decks. Her standard crew complement was fourteen, but she would have nineteen on board after the refit, to allow for manual operation of her guns and thrusters. It would be crowded in there, Hammett thought. It was going to be a claustrophobic voyage.

  She was a corvette, designed originally for border patrols and customs duties. She was small and quick and maneuverable, built for police work, not war. Hammett looked her over and tried not to frown. She seemed insubstantial, fragile, and he longed for the reassuring bulk of the Alexander and the other cruisers and battleships he'd served on. Proper warships, that could take a pounding and keep on flying.

  Of course, a corvette might offer some strategic options other than plodding into range and getting pounded. In a ship like the Tomahawk he might actually be able to avoid some incoming fire.

  "I'd still rather have a cruiser," he grumbled.

  "She's a good ship," Kaur said tartly.

  "Of course." Hammett felt himself redden. I'm taking her command and now I'm disparaging the ship I'm taking away from her. Brilliant leadership there, Richard. He gave Kaur a sheepish grin. "Old dogs, new tricks."

  Kaur raised an eyebrow, managing to imbue that simple act with volumes of haughty displeasure.

  Hammett turned back to the window. "This is the first time I've seen her," he said, desperate to change the subject. "I can't believe how busy they've kept me. I've seen every detail of the refit, and her original specs. But I haven't actually laid eyes on her until now."

  "It's been quite a week," Kaur admitted.

  Eight days had passed since the Hive fleet had reached the skies over Earth and been driven back—barely—by the Alexander and the EMP-blasted remains of Spacecom's defensive fleet. During those eight hectic days an astonishing amount of work had been done. The Alexander was orbiting scrap now, but she provided the template for a feverish fleet-wide refit.

  No amount of EMP shielding had protected humanity's ships from the Hive's mysterious weapon. The only reliable response was manual control of weapons and navigation. The Tomahawk and her sister ships, Bayonet and Achilles, had modern navigation and targeting systems, but they also had telephone handsets with copper wire connecting them. Every weapon could be aimed and fired manually. There were manual controls for navigation thrusters, and redundant firmware for wormhole jumps.

  Kaur said morosely, "I still can't believe what they did to her hull."

  The bridge was on the second deck, close to the aft end of the ship. A wide section of hull plating was gone from either side of the hull, replaced by steelglass. The bridge crew would be able to see out on either side. Other, smaller windows gleamed here and there around the corvette.

  "You don't know what it's like in a bridge with no working screens," Hammett said. "You just sit there, wondering what's happening outside."

  "Actually, I do know what it's like."

  Hammett winced. "Sorry. You were there, last week."

  "I can see the logic of it," Kaur said. "But there's something about several inches of steel plates that's deeply comforting when someone is shooting at you."

  Hammett chuckled. "I take your point."

  "The new guns are spoiling her lines," Kaur continued. "Oh, I know I'll be glad to have them when we're in the thick of things. But she was so beautiful before."

  The Tomahawk's original laser turrets remained, one on the tip of the ship's nose and two more on the underside of the hull. Now matched rail guns bristled on either side of the hull just forward of the engines at the back. Fresh welds showed as silver streaks against the ship's gray paint. Hammett thought the s
tubby gun barrels had their own lethal elegance, but he didn't comment.

  Kaur sighed. "I'd like to stay out here and just look at her, but they'll be waiting for us." She led the way back to the main corridor and followed the signs to Docking Bay Nine.

  "Hammett. There you are." A blocky, sharp-featured man with black hair going silver stood before the docking ring connecting the Tomahawk to the station.

  "Admiral Castille." Hammett drew himself up. Kaur, beside him, did the same.

  Castille gave Hammett a sharp look. "The Bayonet and the Achilles are ready to launch. We're just waiting on the Tomahawk. And the Tomahawk is waiting on you."

  And in the last two days the refit team has given me estimates ranging from 72 hours to three weeks before the ship would be ready to launch. Hammett didn't voice the thought. Arguing with admirals rarely ended well. He said, "I'm here now, Sir."

  "I expect you to launch within the hour."

  Hammett thought briefly of the beer sitting unfinished on the table in the Blazing Rocket. He wouldn't be seeing another beer for a long time. Well, when the war ended they'd no doubt usher him into a quick retirement. He'd have all the time he wanted to loaf in bars getting drunk and talking about the glory days.

  Today, he had work to do.

  "I'll launch as soon as we're ready," he said.

  "Good." Castille's expression softened. "A lot of people are counting on you, Richard. I wish I could tell you to be careful, but this is war, and you're the tip of the spear. You understand that as well as just about anyone."

  Hammett nodded.

  "I'm putting you in harm's way. I don't like it, but it needs to be done, and you're the man for the job." His eyes searched Hammett's face. "Good luck, Captain. Keep yourself safe."

  "I will, Sir."

  "Commander," said Castille, and Kaur, already rigid, stiffened more. "She's still your ship. I know I can count on you to keep her in one piece."

  "Yes, Sir."

  Castille nodded and turned away. Hammett watched him go, then turned, ducked through the hatch, and stepped onto the Tomahawk.