Voyage Across the Stars - By David Drake Page 0,2

words as well as his story. I’ll never be the writer Homer was (nobody else will either, but that’s another matter), but I’m better for having read him than I would have been without his example.

Dave Drake

david-drake.com

ACROSS

THE

STARS

DEDICATION

To Jim Baen,

for ten years of making me a better writer,

and for acting as a friend.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This novel began in discussions with Glenn Knight, while we were some thousands of miles apart. Jim Baen and Bernadette Bosky were of inestimable help in matters of direction. Karl Wagner—kindly old Doc Wagner—provided technical data as always. When my nerves were frazzled, Sharon Pigott spent an evening keying in the last of the rough draft and saving me a further day and a half of crushing work. And my wife, Jo, made friendly, dispassionate, enormously helpful comments on that rough.

Blessings to you all.

CHAPTER ONE

A hologram of a tank, bow-on as it plowed through a brushfire, filled most of the wall behind President Hammer’s desk. Either by chance or through Hammer’s deliberation, the tank was Two Star—Danny Pritchard’s unit twenty years before, when he had been a sergeant in the Slammers and not Hammer’s chosen successor.

“Hey, snake,” the President called cheerfully when he saw it was Pritchard who had entered the office unannounced.

Hammer tilted away the desk display which he had been studying. He had not let age and the presidency blunt all the edges of his appearance. If Hammer’s hair was its natural gray now, then it was still naturally his own. His shoulders and wrists would have done credit to a larger, younger man. There was a paunch below desk height that had not been there five years before, however. No practical amount of exercise could wholly replace the field work of the lifetime previous. “Had a chance to glance over the proposal from Dominica?”

“Glance, yes,” Danny said, perching himself on the arm of an easy chair instead of the seat. The fabric responded to his weight, squirming in an attempt to mold itself to his contours. Pritchard preferred a solid bench, so he gave as little purchase as possible to the luxury with which Hammer disarmed visitors. “I like the idea of having somebody else pay for part of our army, sure . . . and, well, train it while things are quiet here on Friesland. But I think Dominica’s too far if we—needed the guns back in a hurry.”

Danny popped the rolled notes he held against his knee. It was a sign of the nervousness which he otherwise controlled. “Thing is, Alois,” he continued to the older man, “that isn’t what was on my mind right at the moment.” He smiled. “Even though it should have been.”

Hammer snorted. He spun his desk display toward his Adjutant and heir presumptive. “Teitjens sent this over as background before he briefs me on the slump in heavy equipment export projections. I’d sooner listen to you, on the assumption that I’ll at least understand your problem when you’ve finished.”

“Yeah, well,” the younger man agreed. “The problem’s easy.”

He slid down into the cup of the chair after all. The office walls were a slowly-moving fog-blue, almost a gray. Pritchard slitted his eyelids. The hologram behind the President could have been a real tank on a skyswept plain. “We got a homeworld query on one of our veterans. Do you remember Captain Don Slade?”

Hammer nodded calmly over his clasped hands. “Mad Dog Slade? Sure, I remember him. He was the one man I really wanted who insisted on retiring when he heard his father’d died. Home to Tethys, wasn’t it? The Omicron Eridani Tethys, I mean. I offered him a duchy here on Friesland, too, Danny.”

“Via, he was a duke back home, Colonel,” Pritchard said to the blurred man and to the tank. “He was the next thing to a king there if he’d wanted to be.” The Adjutant opened his eyes again and sat as erect as the cushions would permit him. “We were—well, he did me a favor. We were friends, Don and me. Tell the truth, he didn’t much like to be called Mad Dog.”

“Well,” Hammer said with a laugh, “if he’ll come back, I’ll call him Duke Donald or any curst thing he chooses. Not because he’s a friend of yours, Danny—though that too—but because you can’t have too many people like Slade on your side.” The President did not precisely frown, but his face lost most of its laughter. “Among other reasons, because if they’re on your side, they aren’t on the other guy’s.”

“I think Don