The Complete Hammer's Slammers: Volume 3

by David Drake

  That’s a hell of a thing to be hit with out of the blue. Jim had always known that he was socially awkward and that he not infrequently rubbed people the wrong way, but it wasn’t something we discussed. (And it’s obviously not a subject on which I could be of much help.)

  If I’d been a different person, I’d have started out by listing the things he did right: for example, that I’d never met a more loving father than Jim was to his two daughters. Being me, I instead answered the question a number of us ask ourselves: “How can you like a person who’s behaved the way you know I have?” I said that his flaws were childish ones, tantrums and sulking; not, never in my experience, studied cruelty. He agreed with that.

  And then I thought further and said that when I was sure my career was tanking—

  “You thought that? When was that?”

  In the mid Nineties, I explained, when Military SF was going down the tubes with the downsizing of the military. But when I was at my lowest point, which was very low, I thought, “I can write two books a year. And Jim will pay me $20K apiece for them—”

  “I’d have paid a lot more than that!”

  And I explained that this wasn’t about reality: this was me in the irrational depths of real depression. And even when I was most depressed and most irrational, I knew in my heart that Jim Baen would pay me enough to keep me alive, because he was that sort of person. He’d done that for Keith Laumer whom he disliked, because Laumer had been an author Jim looked for when he was starting to read SF.

  I could not get so crazy and depressed that I didn’t trust Jim Baen to stand by me if I needed him. I don’t know a better statement than that to sum up what was important about Jim, as a man and as a friend.

  Table of Contents

  Inextricable Disengagement: The War Games of David Drake

  THE SHARP END

  Nieuw Friesland

  Earlier: Auerstadt

  Tannahill

  Earlier: Tannahill

  Nieuw Friesland

  Earlier: Trinity

  Nieuw Friesland

  Earlier: Maedchen

  Lawler

  Earlier: Lawler

  Mahgreb

  Earlier Mahgreb

  Cantilucca: Day One

  Cantilucca: Day Two

  Cantilucca: Day Three

  Cantilucca: Day Five

  Cantilucca: Day Six

  Cantilucca: Day Seven

  Cantilucca: Day Eight

  Cantilucca: Day Nine

  Cantilucca: Day Ten

  Cantilucca: Day Seventeen

  The Sharp End: Dedication & Acknowledgements

  PAYING THE PIPER

  A Background Note from the Author

  Choosing Sides

  The Political Process

  Neck or Nothing

  THE DARKNESS

  JIM