Hammer's Slammers

Hammer's Slammers is a series of Military Science Fiction short stories and novellas written by David Drake, based loosely off of various historical models and his time in the 11th Armored Cavalry during the Vietnam War.

The Slammers are a futuristic mercenary group under the command of Colonel Alois Hammer, who leads the toughest mercs who ever killed for a dollar. According to Word of God, partly based on the French Foreign Legion in the 1950s, when that service had a large proportion of former SS in its ranks, but also loosely based on the Vietnam-Era 11th Armored Cavalry regiment, with fusion-powered hovercraft "panzers" replacing tanks and smaller combat cars replacing M113 cavalry vehicles.

The series consists of the following works: Two more novels are set in the same universe but not directly involving the regiment:
 * Hammer's Slammers - A series of short stories describing the core characters of the Slammers and the beginning and end of the tank regiment.
 * At Any Price - Another collection of short stories. The titular story describes the Slammers fighting an unconventional war with aliens who can teleport.
 * Counting the Cost - Based on the suppression of the Nika riots, with a Slammers officer taking the place of Narses (Belisarius' role is played by an officer from another mercenary unit working with the Slammers).
 * Rolling Hot - The Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War retold in the Slammerverse.
 * The Warrior - Another short story collection. The titular story recounts the one-sided rivalry between Slick Des Grieux and Luke Broglie, two Slammers tank aces.
 * The Sharp End - Rewrite of Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest on a Crapsack World in the Slammerverse, except that the hero is leading one of Colonel Hammer's contract teams.
 * Paying the Piper - The Macedonians against the Aetolian League In Space! Okay, on a planetary surface. (Happy now?) Available free here.
 * Cross the Stars: a retelling of the Odyssey In Space with former Slammer Major Donald 'Mad Dog' Slade as the Odysseus character. Colonel Hammer plays Zeus off-screen. Available free here.
 * The Voyage: Re-write of the Jason and the Argonauts myth in the Slammerverse. The nephew of 'Mad Dog' Slade from Cross the Stars is the viewpoint character. Colonel Hammer again is cast as Zeus, but with only a brief message as an appearance.

The first five stories were repackaged in a three book set:
 * The Tank Lords - Available free here.
 * Caught in the Crossfire
 * The Butcher's Bill

The entire series (excepting Cross the Stars and The Voyage) were repackaged (again!) by Nightshade Books (and again by Baen Books) as The Complete Hammer's Slammers, in three volumes. This included several novellas not included in the previous collections.

This series provides examples of:

""And sometimes a fellow who does one job well can see where his job has to be done, even though a better man has overlooked it. Anyhow, Secretary, there always was one thing you and I could agree on -- lives are cheap.""
 * Ace Pilot: Slick Des Grieux and Luke Broglie from The Warrior definitely qualify. Broglie is also The Ace, while Des Grieux is is not. Word of God says that their rivalry is based on Hector and Achilles.
 * Agent Peacock: Major Joachim Steuben.
 * Also Sergeant Johann Vierziger (see Mind Screw below). At one point, a Mook comments that Vierziger "looks like a fairy!" He promptly finds himself with the muzzle of Vierziger's pistol crushing his lips, and the sergeant explains that he looks like a fairy because he is a fairy. "Do you have a problem with that?" The mook proves he's not totally stupid by replying, "No sir! No sir!"
 * Beam Spam: One of the staple weapons in the novels is the vehicle-mounted tribarrel, a weapon with three rotating barrels that shoots energy blasts (called "bolts") so fast that the bolts leaving the weapon appear to be a solid line - not individual bolts. The weapons scale up, too - his tanks in the series have both a tribarrel and a 20cm "main gun" that can literally cook mountainsides with one shot.
 * The tribarrel is based on a cross between the real-life MG 42 machine gun and the Gatling gun, both of which have beam-spam-class rates of fire.
 * Comm Links: Each soldier is fitted out with a tiny communicator that's implanted in the jawbone. It's activated by clenching the teeth and can even pick up subvocal speech. Handy things.
 * The Conscience: Danny Pritchard ends up as Colonel Hammer's conscience, as Hammer's been too hardened by war to recognize when he's gone over the line.
 * Cycle of Revenge: Played with in the short story Cultural Conflict. A Slammers soldier shoots what he thinks is a dumb animal. It isn't. The primitive natives and Slammers begin to skirmish with each other in an escalating cycle of violence, ending with the decimated Slammers nerve-gassing their nests and wiping out almost all the breeders. The remaining native males prepare for one final Zerg Rush just as the Slammers landing craft arrives.
 * Extended Disarming: A variant occurs near the end of the story At Any Price, when a mercenary genuinely forgets to remove the small knife he keeps up one sleeve. He actually blushes when reminded that he hasn't disarmed completely.
 * Fighting For a Homeland: The Slammers are from many worlds, but the goal is to eventually have a place of their own.
 * Hollywood Tactics: Brutally Averted. Weapons and tactics are (usually) intelligently used by both sides, to the point that an intelligence operative recommends nuking a rebel stronghold rather than trying to dig them out.
 * Hover Tank: The main equipment for the Slammers is their fusion-powered air-cushion tanks. Each lift fan has its own armored nacelle to protect it from anything that damages another fan; "while a single broken track block would deadline a tracked vehicle, a wrecked fan only made a blower a little more sluggish."
 * Mind Probe: Partially Subverted, particularly the story called " The Interrogation Team". There, the mind probe is semi-painless and takes the form of a directed hallucination. BOTH the interrogator and the person being interrogated are given the drug, and a second interrogator asks questions while the first, in rapport with the victim, experiences his/her memories as the questions are asked. The drug in question is a combination truth serum and hallucinogen, and is described by the first interrogator as akin to a drug high. In this particular story, the interrogated person comes from a heavily defended town, a "red-pill target" - and when the authorization to nuke the town is given, the interrogator shares one last vision with the interrogated person - as he envisions his baby girl's eyeballs melted by the nuclear blast. Both the interrogator and the interrogated individual were disconnected from the machine when it happened. David Drake does not write nice stories - perhaps because he WAS a interrogator assigned to the 11th Cavalry during Vietnam.
 * Mind Screw: In The Sharp End, Sergeant Johan Vierziger inspires this. He looks like a younger version of Major Joachim Steuben, girlishly pretty, but blond where Joachim was dark. He says he signed up with the Slammers seven years to the day after Major Steuben was murdered -- and there's no doubt Steuben died; Danny Pritchard saw it happen. He's as gay and as deadly as Joachim Steuben ... and the pistol he carries matches the description of Joachim's favored weapon. And toward the end of the book he speaks as if he knows Hammer personally -- and closely. So what is the story with Johann Vierziger? Is he Joachim cloned, or Joachim somehow revived, or what? That's never explained.
 * Obligatory War Crime Scene: Usually by way of doing whatever victory required. In one of the stories, Colonel Hammer catches some flak from rear-echelon types for dealing with an insurgency by having family members of known insurgents ridding on Slammers' vehicles while moving through hostile territory; ambushes of Slammers armor columns dropped, and several attempted ambushes failed because, "somebody noticed their wife or kid on the lead vehicle." Also, gassing a village being used as a heavily fortified base by those insurgents, using gas rather than a nuke only because a gas attack could be done without drawing the attention of reporters. Hammer's actions are about par for the course in the setting.
 * Private Military Contractors: While Drake mostly uses them to tell stories based on historical events, their mercenary nature plays an important role in their characterization. In the series background, war has become so very expensive that mercenaries are common, and usually the most competent soldiers. The Slammers interact with other mercenary companies and are sometimes shortchanged by their employers. At other times, they play both sides off against each other.
 * The mercenaries and their employers are kept in line by the Terran Bonding Authority, which forces both sides to stick to their agreed contracts. Mercenaries which break their contracts are declared outlaw and hunted down. The Slammers' political maneuvering usually consists of sticking to the letter of the contract while violating the spirit.
 * Psycho Sidekick: Major Joachim Steuben is in love with Colonel Hammer -- and there's nothing so awful he wouldn't do it if he feels it'd benefit the colonel.


 * Shoot the Dog: Oh, so very much. It is war, after all.
 * Standard Sci-Fi Army: With fusion-powered hovertanks and hovercars armed with directed energy weapons, Hammer's forces are state of the art.
 * Tank Goodness: Most of the Slammers stories revolve around their panzers and combat cars. Other mercenaries also use blower tanks, although wheeled and tracked vehicles are common for low-end units.
 * The Unfettered: Joachim Steuben, whose Unfetteredness is dedicated to Alois Hammer's use; and Don "Mad Dog" Slade of the Hammer's Slammers books and Cross the Stars.