Where did I put my Hammer?

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

As a result of divine indigestion, the universe twitches one day, and two men who happen to share the same surname find themselves in each others' shoes, swapped through dimensions and time.

You can probably guess who one of them is.

Materialising at the head of an armoured regiment in the twenty-ninth century, however, is Inspector Sledge Hammer, LAPD- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sledge_Hammer! war fetishist and maniac cop extraordinaire.

Who just got the worst deal? Which of the two has a more casual attitude regarding collateral damage? Remember, Alois has actually had people nerve gassed and nuked- actually so has Sledge, but it wasn't intentional.

Can Sledge's near cartoon physics like shooting skills actually beat Joachim Steuben to the draw? How does Alois' heir apparent and operations officer, Danny Pritchard, react- how well does he control this situation with a twentieth century lunatic arriving on their iridium armoured doorstep?

Sledge is, for all his faults and they are legion, a cop to the very core of his being. How much do the Slammers' operations, contract being the only law they recognise, disturb him- how much is it going to take to get him to realise there is such a thing as too much violence? Will a city fight with powerguns do it? Are they even going to let him near a weapon?

He has a very limited grasp of physics, may understand ballistics but that's about it. He will have no clue how he got there.

On the other end- how well does Alois Hammer cope with being dropped into the situation of a man who may be his own great to the twenty-somethingth grandfather? (I love this idea, it's so ridiculously appropriate.)

At a conservative estimate he has at least double the IQ of his fellow time- swap victim and possible ancestor; a ruthless realist and man of brilliantly applied violence, not really remotely policelike.

Assume this happens while both of them are in their respective offices- command car, actual office. Trunk and Doreau are present. The two men are very physically different- Sledge is taller, thinner, fair haired. Instantly obvious something's happened.

How does the clash of personalities between Alois and Trunk go? Bad enough to make Trunk actually miss Sledge, who at least occasionally tried to arrest people, whereas the man from the future turns out to be even more bloodthirsty- no, that's not fair, it was always a matter of indifference, of getting the job done- and vastly more competent?

How does Alois react when he adds it up and realises it's five years or so before the founding of the Way, that the Universal Church he and most of his mercenaries swear by doesn't even exist yet? Can Sledge's people stop Alois turning the world upside down- would they, even?

[Skgoa]

You can probably guess who one of them is.

No I fucking can't.


edit: I will say that I loved Sledge Hammer when it was on TV, though.

[evilsoup]

I think he's referring to the Hammer's Slammers military sci-fi books ... but I only know those by name.

[Simon_Jester]

He clearly is: Sledge Hammer/Hammer's Slammers crossover.

Unfortunately, being familiar only with the Slammers I can't comment intelligently. Though I do find the idea amusing.

Sorry, ECR.

[Master_Baerne]

What Simon said. If pressed for details, I'd probably say that replacing a cop prone to excessive force with an amoral, but competent mercenary might actually reduce present-day casualties; since a cop's job is to protect people, the future hammer would be a lot more likely to prevent unnecessary deaths than he is in his own time.

[Darth Fanboy]

Oh this thread has helped me rediscover Sledge Hammer! In a very big way. What I wouldn't give to see Sledge Hammer team wup with DAN STARK from the Good Guys.

Crime would collectively shit itself.

[Simon_Jester]

What Simon said. If pressed for details, I'd probably say that replacing a cop prone to excessive force with an amoral, but competent mercenary might actually reduce present-day casualties; since a cop's job is to protect people, the future hammer would be a lot more likely to prevent unnecessary deaths than he is in his own time.

Baerne, Alois Hammer is prone to things like massacring demonstrators if that's what the contract calls for; he's not a cop by inclination.

[Master_Baerne]

Put another way, he's a man who follows his contracts in lieu of ethics. Since cops are expected not to go around shooting people who annoy them, maybe he'd default to the cop code of conduct?

[Imperial Overlord]

Put another way, he's a man who follows his contracts in lieu of ethics. Since cops are expected not to go around shooting people who annoy them, maybe he'd default to the cop code of conduct?

That's not true. When Hammer was hired to install a dictator on his home world he did overthrow the old order . . . and then had his client killed in a way that couldn't be laid at his feet and took over instead. He calls Danny Pritchard out of retirement after he does it because he does want to unfuck things and not just be a dictator and warlord. Hammer is hard and Hammer is ruthless and the penalties for a mercenary unit caught violating contract are severe, but Hammer does have a sense of ethics independent of what he is contracted to do. First and foremost he is loyal to his own.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

I'm fairly sure that, "-but loyal to their own," was the title of one of the early stories- and in one of the later set stories, but while they're still the Slammers, before Hammer's accession to the presidency, one of his men- Arne Huber, I think- says something along the lines of "The regiment doesn't pick its clients based on morality. Just as well, because if they did there'd be cursed few able to meet our standards."

Drake lampshades nothing, and it's worryingly easy to be carried along by the flow of the stories into not reading closely enough what's actually going on, how many buses full of refugees crossing their line of sight are turned into pink mist or townships blasted to clear out the line of march- and I agree with IO there, us and them is very much the basis of their code as I read it. Us being the regiment, and the entire rest of the human universe being them, albeit of varying gradations of readiness to blow them up. It reads to me as if they have a higher opinion of their enemies than their clients at times.

When Alois Hammer calls Pritchard back, he more or less says in so many words that he's lost the ability to tell when he's gone too far, and he needs a conscience more than he needs another gunman.

And no, both men being sentient beings (although it may be possible to doubt Sledge at times), it's not simply how would they do in each others' places; both of them will realise, and the people around them will realise, that something has gone very strangely wrong. Neither of them would necessarily want to fill the others' shoes, although it may be easier for a man from the future to find his way around the past than a man from the past to grasp the future. Note easier, not easy.

The people who know and work with them are where the other has to start, and I think Alois would stand a better chance of explaining himself to Captain Trunk and Detective Doreau than Sledge would to Joachim Steuben. Doreau occasionally functions as Sledge's conscience, but more often as his attention span.

Which- oh, an aside; in one of the collected volumes there's a story which is basically a homage to A Fistful of Dollars, with a survey team in place of the man with no name; one of the survey team either is, or is astonishingly like, Steuben- to the point where there are only two explanations, he somehow cheated death (and there are a few hints to that effect), or Drake wanted to go into more detail exploring a character he had earlier bumped off and made up someone exactly like him.

Sledge may be a good man- approximately- and a good gunman, but I really do not think he'd make a good colonel of mercenary armour, and I doubt Pritchard would think he would.

[Simon_Jester]

Which- oh, an aside; in one of the collected volumes there's a story which is basically a homage to A Fistful of Dollars, with a survey team in place of the man with no name; one of the survey team either is, or is astonishingly like, Steuben- to the point where there are only two explanations, he somehow cheated death (and there are a few hints to that effect), or Drake wanted to go into more detail exploring a character he had earlier bumped off and made up someone exactly like him.

Read it. It was published as an independent novel once, but yes.

Well, I'm prone to accept mystical explanations, but "Steuben back from beyond the grave here to redeem himself by doing the only thing he knows, which is shooting people very efficiently" strikes me as the most consistent interpretation of the story. Even if it's mysticism, it's still a much more reasonable explanation of his talk about redemption and allusions to knowing what Hell really is.

And who says Drake can't be mystical at times? He did write a major fantasy series, not so?

Sledge may be a good man- approximately- and a good gunman, but I really do not think he'd make a good colonel of mercenary armour, and I doubt Pritchard would think he would.

Absolutely not. If he can stop Steuben from killing him, he'll probably just go- I don't know where, but the Slammers wouldn't accept him in command and he wouldn't want the job even if he could. I don't know much about him at all, but I'm quite sure of that much.

[Andras]

Danny Pritchard would take over the Slammers, just because Sledge shares the name doesn't mean he'll get to run the show. Alois was also the President of Friesland. Sledge might be able to get a job as a cop if he doesn't want to change careers.

'-but loyal to their own' is no joke for the Slammers. In Cross the Stars he threatened to raze a planet to glass if one of his ex-tankers wasn't released alive:

Margritte mentally communicating with the Terzia, chief executive of the planet Terzia

"You have to release Don Slade. We order it."

"Do you think he is kept in a cage?" the Terzia blazed "He has everything..."

"Bring Don Slade here, Margritte said. "Put him on line with me. Have him tell me himself that he doesn't see the bars..."... "Or let him go, lady. You have no other choice"

"Do you think you could take him from me?" the Terzia demanded. [she mentally projected an image of the space port defenses]

Margritte Pritchard's eyes were as cold as her smile. "Do you think that Hammer's Slammers haven't dropped on a hot landing zone before?" Stadtler Field went black and red and saffron. Through it all spiked the blazing cyan of powerguns. Landing craft sprayed the perimeter from their guntubs as the blunt iridium bows of the tanks slid through cargo doors to hunt in a burning city.

"That was M Company clearing an LZ on Cronenbourg." ..."Don Slade was in the lead tank." Then she added, "Our panzers will bring him out of here alive, lady. Or they will sear this world to glass. I swear it, and Colonel Hammer swears it."

[wautd]

What Simon said. If pressed for details, I'd probably say that replacing a cop prone to excessive force with an amoral, but competent mercenary might actually reduce present-day casualties; since a cop's job is to protect people, the future hammer would be a lot more likely to prevent unnecessary deaths than he is in his own time.

In the pilot episode, didn't Sledge level an apartment block in order to get a bad guy?