Hammer's Slammers is a 1979 collection of military science fiction short stories by author David Drake.

The reader is also introduced to recurring characters such as Joachim Steuben, Hammer's bodyguard and later commander of the Slammers' military police, a gay sociopath and master marksman devoted to his colonel; Sergeant (later Major) Danny Pritchard; recruit (later Sergeant-Commander) Rob Jenne; Margritte DiManzio, whose husband is killed by mercenaries from a different regiment and signs on with the Slammers; and Sergeant "Ripper Jack" Scratchard, who shows how the Slammers infantry ties in with the regiment's combat cars and hovertanks.

The novel is split into a series of short stories which follow various characters and their interactions with the Hammer's Slammers regiment.

After several Friesland units were unable to suppress Melpomene resistance to Friesland's attempt to control the production and export of "bluebright" (a valuable pharmaceutical plant and the main product of the planet), Hammer was directed to raise a mercenary regiment and recruit non-Friesland individuals with military experience.

He orders Hammer to bring the entire mercenary regiment to the spaceport where it will be disbanded under the supervision of the Guards, who have been brought to Melpomene by Tromp for that purpose.

Hammer, unwilling to have his men disarmed (and most likely executed afterwards), attempts to change Tromp's mind by suggesting that Friesland hire out the Slammers to other planets.

Tromp is unmoved by this argument, stating that this would destabilize the current interstellar political system; and that Hammer should remember his loyalty to Friesland, which is more important that any promises he made to his men.

The Slammers tanks and artillery in the hills around the spaceport begin destroying the Guards' armored vehicles, exposed on the open landing field.

The story ends with Tromp looking at Steuben's hands, not believing that his slim wrists could possibly support the weight of the heavy pistol he holds.

The enemy mercenaries have dug in there intentionally, knowing the Slammers' employers won't allow the Regiment to attack the site.

New recruit Rob Jenne undergoes a brutal baptism of fire on his first day with the Regiment while temporarily assigned as a gunner on a combat car commanded by an experienced sergeant ferrying him to the training unit.

A Slammers outpost including Ripper Jack Scratchard and Rob Jenne is attacked by the indigenous aliens who are defending the tree-homes that hold the souls of their people.

This story shows that the Slammers have the ability to employ poison gas in combat, mainly but not exclusively in artillery shells.

Margritte DiManzio's husband is killed by a patrol from another mercenary regiment after he objects to their village being used as bait to lure a Slammers column into an ambush.

Rejected by her fellow villagers because in their culture women are supposed to nurture life, not kill, Margritte stands before the alerted Slammers combat cars and admits to her deeds before insisting that she should come along because "You can use my sort, soldier."

It also includes the Regiment's field police company, the "White Mice," mounted on combat cars and commanded by the dedicated and deadly Major Joachim Steuben, thought of by some in the know as Hammer's personal hatchetman.

It is suggested Colonel Hammer is able to do this because Major Joachim Steuben assassinated the politician who had hired the Regiment with a head shot from a pistol at a range of more than two kilometers.

A Bonding Authority official investigating what had happened in this case accepts the Slammers' explanation that their patron had unfortunately caught a pistol bolt from a building being cleared that had a line of sight to where he had been standing on a balcony.

Dave Langford reviewed Hammer's Slammers for White Dwarf #67, and stated that "Such are the lauded military virtues of the Slammers that (fearful that chicken-heartedness will prejudice their future contracts) they nobly disobey their own horrified employers' orders to stop slaughtering people and detonating irreplaceable shrines.