David Drake - Hammer's Slammers 07 - The Voyage

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David Drake

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The author of Time Safari assembles an entertaining crew for this novel about a young mercenary's

entrance into manhood. Ned Slade wants to make a name for himself, and a voyage on the spaceship

Swift provides his opportunity. Captained by the capable, attractive Lissea Doormann and manned by 20

hired killers, the spaceship Swift sets out for the Lost Colony of Pancahte to retrieve a stolen capsule that

will vault Lissea to the head of Doormann Trading, one of the galaxy's most powerful businesses. The

crew deals efficiently with a number of dangerous landings along the way, retrieves the capsule and

returns triumphantly to the Swift 's home port of Telaria, where they face their bloodiest battle.

Meanwhile, Ned earns his comrades' respect and Lissea's attention with his combination of

sharpshooting and intelligence. Vivid, often gruesome battle scenes abound, but the quieter chapters

contain the most intriguing episodes, as Ned and his crewmates witness the planetary devastation

wreaked by others of their kind. Drake sometimes overstates his case, and his constant praise of the

Swift 's crew eventually grows stale, but he injects depth into a fast-moving tale to create that most

elusive of hybrids: an SF adventure with a conscience.

edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In a bold attempt to claim her rightful place as one of Telaria's leaders, Lissea Doorman accompanies a

crew of toughened mercenaries to a distant planet to recover a stolen fortune. Set in the same universe as

his popular "Hammer's Slammers" series, Drake's latest sf action-adventure offers top-quality military

action and a generous dose of political intrigue. Although his characters run the gamut of mercenary

stereotypes, from raw recruit to seasoned veteran to hardened cynic, each has a... read more --This

text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Customer Reviews

Avg. Customer Review:

very good except for the language, June 28, 1998

Reviewer:

This is a very good book with a lot of action. I do not like the frequent use of the "F word" and other

foul language. I find it unessecary. I think it would have been better without the bad language.

Excellent!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, June 17, 1998

Reviewer:

A sci-fi masterpiece!!!!! This book surpasses anything and everything I had come to expect from a

sci-fi novel in every way. It was utterly unreal, but very down to earth. I am currently trying to get my

hands on the other titles in this series. I reccomend this to anyone, sci-fi fan or not.

One of, if not the best works Drake has out., May 14, 1998

Reviewer:

The "Hammer's Slammer's" series first hooked me on David Drake. "The Voyage" is a fantastic epic,

encompassing all the gunplay and military sci-fi aspects of the afforementioned books. In addition, a

plethora of devious and extremely clever plots exist throughout as the crew of the Swift surmounts

seemingly impossible obstacles. Near non-stop action, I couldn't put this one down.

An epic quest in the "Hammer's Slammers" universe, March 21, 1997

Reviewer:

A group of mercenaries and an aristocrat go on a journey to find a lost ultra-tech artifact. Their

action-packed journeys from planet to planet roughly parallel the Greek epic poem "The Odyssey." The

combat scenes are fairly graphic, but well-executed, with a "you-are-there" sense of details. Probably the

best "Slammers" book yet

Contents

Telaria

Ajax Four

Mirandola

Paixhans’ Node

Burr-Detlingen

The Sole Solution

Buin

Pancahte

Wasatch 1029

Kazan

Celandine

Dell

Telaria

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Telaria

AS NED SLADE walked toward the dockyard building with the

HEADQUARTERS—PANCAHTE EXPEDITION sign on the door, a line of six human males and a

squat, shaggy alien from Racontis jogged past

“You wonder why I’m a private,” the leader sang.

“And why I sleep in the ditch,” sang-wheezed the remaining joggers in several keys. The Racontid had

a clear, carrying voice which would better have suited an angel than a creature which could pull a strong

man apart with its bare hands.

A metal saw shrilled within the starship in the adjacent frames, overwhelming the song. Ned’s mind

supplied the words anyway: “It’s not because I’m stupid, but I just don’t want to be rich...”

The door was ajar. Ned knocked, but he couldn’t hear the rap of his own knuckles over the saw, so

he let himself in.

“Shut the curst thing!” ordered the man at the electronic desk, cupping a palm over his telephone

handset. He was paunchy and at least sixty standard years old. “I can’t hear myself think!”

As he spoke, the sawblade coasted back to silence. The fellow at the desk returned to his call. The

rangy, somewhat younger man leaning against the office wall prevented Ned from swinging the door to.

“Leave it, kid,” the man said. “I like the ventilation.”

Ned looked from one stranger to the other. Neither of them paid him any attention. “No,” the older

man said into his handset, “I’m Adjutant Tadziki, but it will not help if you call back when Captain

Doormann is here. She’s already made her decision on a supplier.”

Tadziki looked like a bureaucrat. The other fellow wore a stone-pattern camouflaged jumpsuit with

WARSON, T over the left breast pocket. Ned didn’t recognize the uniform, but War-son was as

obviously a soldier as the men and the Racontid jogging around the starship outside were. Warson

continued to gaze out the window, singing under his breath, ‘ I could’ve been a general and send out

folks to the...”

“No,” said the adjutant, “since she’ll be eating the rations herself, your offer of saving

three-hundredths per kilo isn’t very important to her—and it bloody well isn’t important to me!”

“But the sort of things a general does,” Ned murmured, watching the soldier, “they make me want to

cry.”

Warson turned sharply. “You know the song?” he asked.

Tadziki slammed down the handset. “Fucking idiot!” he said.

“Yeah, but in an armored unit it’s ‘You ask why I’m a trooper,’ “Ned said. “That’s the way I learned

it.” “Where?” Tadziki asked. “And for that matter, who the hell are you?’

“On Nieuw Friesland,” Ned said. “In the Frisian Defense Forces. I’m Reserve Ensign Slade, but I’m

from Tethys originally.”

“Slade?” Warson said in amazement. “You’re Don Slade? Via, you can’t be!”

Ned’s lips tightened. “You’re thinking oI’my uncle,” he said stiffly. “I’m not Don Slade, no.”

The voices of the jogging troops became faintly louder.

They were making circuits around the vessel under construction. Warson nodded disdainfully toward

the window and said, “Heroe Lordling’s got us doing an hour’s run each day to shape us up. They’re

singing that to piss him off.”

“Lordling’s a general?” Ned asked.

“He was a colonel,” Warson said. “He sapissant, is what he really is. Sure you want to join a

rinky-dink outfit being run by a pissant, kid?”

“Lordling isn’t running anything,” Tadziki said sharply. “Captain Doormann gave the order, and she

gives all the orders.”

He suddenly smiled. “Via, Toll,” he added, patting his gut. “I’m twenty years older than you and I’d

never run across a room before this stuff started. It’s still a good idea.”

‘ I could have been a colonel,” the joggers chorused, “but there it is again...”

“I want to join the Pancahte Expedition, yeah,” Ned said, handing an identification chip across the

desk to the adjutant. “Whoever’s running it.”

“We’re pretty full up,” Warson said without emotion. He could have been commenting on the color of

the Telarian sky, pale white with faint gray streaks.

“The plush seats colonels sit on, they tickle my sensitive skin...”

“The captain makes all those decisions, Toll,” said the adjutant as he watched the data his desk

summoned from Ned’s ID. “Especially those decisions.”

“I never met your uncle,” Toll Warson said, eyeing Ned with quiet speculation. His look was that of a

man who had absolutely nothing to prove—but who would be willing to prove it any way, any time,

anywhere, if somebody pushed him a little too far.

Ned recognized the expression well. He’d seen it often enough in his uncle’s eyes.

The door to the inner room opened. A man in fluorescent, extremely expensive clothing looked out

and said, “Did you say Lissea had . . . ?” He seemed to be about Ned’s age, twenty-four years standard.

A quick glance around the outer office, empty save for the three men, ended his question.

Tadziki answered it anyway. “Sorry, Master Doormann,” he said. “I’m sure she’s coming, but I’m

afraid she must still be in the armaments warehouse with Heroe.”

The young man grimaced in embarrassment and disappeared behind the closed door again.

“Lucas Doormann,” Tadziki explained in a low voice. “He’s son of Doormann Trading’s

president—that’s Karel Doormann—but he’s not a bad kid. He’s trying to help, anyway, when his father

would sooner slit all our throats.”

“Didn’t have balls enough to volunteer to come along, though,” Warson said, again without emotional

“Via, Toll, would you want him?” Tadziki demanded. “He maybe knows not to stand at the small end

of a gun.”

Warson shrugged. “Different question,” he said.

The phone rang. Tadziki winced. “Toll,” he said, “how about you play adjutant for half an hour and I

take Slade here over the Swift? Right?”

Warson’s smile was as blocky as ice crumpling across a river in spring. He reached for the handset.

“You bet,” he said. “Does that mean I get all the rake-off from suppliers, too?”

Tadziki hooked a finger to lead Ned out of the office. ”Try anything funny,” he growled, “and you’ll

save the Pancahtans the trouble of shooting you.”

Warson laughed as he picked up the phone. Ned heard him say, “Pancahte Expedition, the Lord

Almighty speaking.”

The adjutant paused outside the office and looked up at the vessel in the frames. She was small as

starships went, but her forty meters of length made her look enormous by comparison with the

fusion-powered tanks Ned had learned to operate and deploy on Friesland.

“What do you know about this operation, kid?” Tadziki asked.

“I know,” Ned said carefully, “that I prefer to be called Slade, or Ned, or dickhead... sir.”

Tadziki raised an eyebrow. “Touchy, are we?” he asked.

Ned smiled. “Nope. When I get to be somebody, maybe I’ll get touchy, too. But since it was you I

was talking to, I thought I’d mention it.”

“Yeah, don’t say anything to Toll Warson that he’s likely to take wrong,” Tadziki agreed. “Do you

know about him?”

Ned shook his head.

“Well, this is just a story,” Tadziki said. “A rumor. You know, stories get twisted a lot in the telling.”

“... could’ve been an officer,” sang the joggers as they rounded the nose of the vessel. They moved at

a modest pace, but one that would carry them seven or eight kilometers in an hour if they kept it up. The

Racontid ran splay-legged, like a wolverine on its hind legs.

“But I was just too smart...”

“Seems Toll and his brother Deke had a problem with a battalion commander on Stanway a few

years back,” Tadziki said.

“They stripped away my rank tabs...”

“One night the CO pushed the switch to close up his command car—“

“When they saw me walk and fart!”

“—and the fusion bottle vented into the vehicle’s interior,” Tadziki said. He cleared his throat. “Toll

and Deke turned out to have deserted a few hours before, hopping two separate freighters off-planet.

Some people suggested there might have been a connection.”

He nodded to the boarding bridge to the hatch amidships. “Let’s go aboard.”

They walked in single file, the adjutant leading. Power cables and high-pressure lines snaked up the

bridge and into the snip, narrowing the track.

“He looks like the kind who’d play hardball,” Ned said with deliberate calm, “Toll Warson does. But

that’s what I’d expect from people who’d—respond to Lissea Doormann’s offer.”

Tadziki laughed harshly as he ducked to enter the vessel. He would have cleared the transom anyway,

unlike Ned who was taller by fifteen centimeters. ”You don’t know the half of it, Slade,” he said. “The

battalion commander was their own brother. Half brother.”

The inner face of the airlock projected a meter into the vessel. Tadziki gestured around the vessel’s

main bay, crowded now by workmen in protective gear operating welders and less identifiable tools.

“Welcome to the Swift, trooper,” the adjutant said. ”If you decide to go through with your application,

and if you’re picked, she’ll be your home for the next long while.”

Tadziki looked at Ned. ”Maybe the rest of your life.”

“It’ll do,” Ned said. “Anyway, it’s roomier than a tank.”

The bay was filled with bunks stacked two-high on either side of a central aisle. The pairs were set

with a respectable space open between them, because they gimballed in three axes to act as acceleration

couches. That meant there was no storage within the bay except for the narrow drawer beneath each

mattress.

There were two navigation consoles forward, still part of the open bay. Astern were two partitioned

cubicles and, against the heavy bulkhead separating the bay from the engine compartment, an alcove

holding a commode. Workmen were installing a folding door to screen the commode.

“That was my idea,” Tadziki explained with a glance toward the alcove. ”Lissea said she didn’t need

special favors. I told her she might think she was just one of the guys, but things were going to be tense

enough without her dropping her trousers in front of everybody on a regular basis.”

Ned nodded to show he was listening while he scanned the confusion to count places. There were

sixteen bunks, plus the pair of navigation couches and the private cubicles for— presumably—the captain

and adjutant. It was possible but very unlikely that there were bunks in the engine compartment as well.

“Twenty places,” Tadziki said in confirmation. “Six of them for snip’s crew—sailors. A few of the

others can double in brass. lean.”

He looked sharply at Ned. “I gather from the curriculum in your ID you know something about ships

yourself?”

Ned shrugged. “I’ve had a course in basic navigation,” he agreed. “In a pinch, I’d be better than

punching in coordinates blind, I suppose. And fusion bottles are pretty much the same, tanks or

starships.”

The saw began to shriek again as a workman shortened the mounting stanchion of the pair of bunks

which had to clear the airlock’s encroachment. The sound was painful. Despite the tool’s suction hood,

chips of hot steel sprayed about the bay.

Ned backed out onto the boarding bridge a moment before the adjutant gestured him to do so. When

the workman shut the saw down, Ned said, “I was at home in Slade House on Tethys when Captain

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摘要：

DavidDrakeEditorialReviewsFromPublishersWeeklyTheauthorofTimeSafariassemblesanentertainingcrewforthisnovelaboutayoungmercenary'sentranceintomanhood.NedSladewantstomakeanameforhimself,andavoyageonthespaceshipSwiftprovideshisopportunity.Captainedbythecapable,attractiveLisseaDoormannandmannedby20hiredk...

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