The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3 (hammer's slammers)

by David Drake

  “I’m buying for both of you for what you’ve done tonight,” Huber said, thinking of the coming interview. “And I just wish you could carry it the rest of the way with the major, but that’s my job….”

  Major Steuben wasn’t available through the regimental net at dawn plus thirty, at noon, or at any of the other times Huber checked for him into mid-afternoon. Huber didn’t leave a message—he was sure Steuben would learn about the calls as soon as he wanted to know—and it didn’t even cross his mind to talk to some other member of the White Mice. Little as Huber liked the major, this was no time to bring a subordinate up to speed on the problem. He began to wonder if he was going to reach Steuben before 1800 hours, close of business for the regular staff.

  Huber smiled at his own presumption; he’d gotten to think that Steuben would be there any time he wanted him—because the major had been in his office the times he summoned Huber. Why his mind should’ve reversed the pattern was just one of those mysteries of human arrogance, Huber supposed. It wasn’t like Log Section didn’t have work to do, after all.

  Now that more crews and vehicles were on the ground, the Regiment was setting up a second operations base outside Arbor Palisades, the second-largest of the United Cities and located on the northeast border with Solace. Two platoons from L Troop plus support vehicles would be leaving Base Alpha tonight for the new location. Huber with the approval of the S-3 shop had decided to send a column of thirty wheeled vehicles along with them. The civilian trucks could’ve moved on their own—the UC and Solace weren’t at war despite the level of tension—but it gave both the troopers and the civilian drivers practice in convoy techniques.

  “Via, El-Tee,” Sergeant Tranter said, shaking his head in amusement. “You better not let anybody in L Troop catch you in a dark alley. The trip’ll take ’em four times as long and be about that much rougher per hour besides.”

  “Right,” said Huber. “And nobody’s shooting at them. Which won’t be the case if we have to do it for real, as we bloody well will when those trucks start supplying forward bases inside Solace territory as soon as the balloon goes up.”

  Huber didn’t take lunch, though he gnawed ration bars at his desk. Most people claimed the bars tasted like compressed sawdust, but Huber found them to have a series of subtle flavors. They were bland, sure, but bland wasn’t such a bad thing. The commander of a line platoon had enough excitement in his life without needing it in his food.

  At random moments throughout the day, Huber checked in with the Provost Marshal’s office. At 1530 hours instead of a machine voice announcing, “Unavailable,” Major Steuben himself said, “Go ahead.”

  “Sir!” Huber said. His brain disconnected but he’d rehearsed his approach often enough in his head to blurt it out now: “May I see you ASAP with some information about the Rhodesville ambush?”

  “If by ‘as soon as possible’ you mean in fifteen minutes, Lieutenant …” Steuben said. He had a pleasant voice, a modulated tenor as smooth and civilized as his appearance; and as deceptive, of course. “Then you may, yes.”

  “Sir, on the way, sir!” Huber said, standing and breaking the connection.

  “Tranter!” he shouted across the room as he rounded his console; he snatched the 2-cm powergun slung from the back of his chair. “I need to be in front of Major Steuben in fifteen minutes! That means an aircar, and I don’t even pretend to drive the cursed things.”

  Huber waved at Hera as he followed the sergeant out the door. “I’ll be back when I’m back,” he said. “I don’t expect to be long.”

  The good Lord knew he hoped it wouldn’t be long.

  He and Tranter didn’t talk much on the short flight from Benjamin to Base Alpha. The sergeant turned his head toward his passenger a couple times, but he didn’t speak. Huber was concentrating on the open triangle formed by his hands lying in his lap. He was aware of Tranter’s regard, but he really needed to compose himself before he brought this to Major Steuben.

  This time when Huber got out of the car in front of the Provost Marshal’s, he reflexively scooped the 2-cm shoulder weapon from the butt-cup holding it upright beside his seat. If he’d been thinking he’d have left the heavy weapon in the vehicle, but since he was holding it anyway he passed it to the watching guard along with his pistol and knife.

  “Expecting some excitement, Lieutenant?” said the man behind the mirrored faceshield as he took the weapons.

  “What would a desk jockey like me know about excitement?” Huber said cheerfully as he opened the main door.

  He wondered about his comment as he strode down the hallway. It struck him that it was the first interaction he’d had with the guards that wasn’t strictly professional. As with so much of his life since he’d landed on Plattner’s World, Huber had the feeling that he was running downhill in the darkness and the only thing that was going to save him was pure dumb luck.

  Major Steuben nodded him into the office. Huber closed the door behind him and without preamble said, “Sir! Three of the techs in Central Repair are living at Senator Graciano’s townhouse. That is, Patroklos Graciano, the—”

  “I know who Patroklos Graciano is,” Steuben said through his cold smile. “Continue.”

  “Right,” said Huber. He was blurting what he knew in the baldest fashion possible. He understood Major Steuben too well to want to exchange empty pleasantries with the man. “We checked—Chief Edlinger and a former tech in my section, that is—checked the combat car they were working on. There’s an extra control chip in the air defense board with an antenna for external inputs. I think it was meant to send the tribarrels berserk while the car was in the middle of Benjamin.”

  “You’ve disconnected the chip?” Steuben said. For a moment there was a spark from something very hard glinting in his voice.

  “Yes sir, but that’s all we’ve done thus far,” Huber said. His muscles were tight across his rib cage and his tongue seemed to be chipping out the words. In a firefight he wouldn’t have been this tense, because he’d have known the rules….

  “Good,” said the major, smoothly unconcerned again. “You’ve properly reported the matter and your suspicions, Lieutenant. Now go back to your duties in Logistics and take no more action on the matter. Do you understand?”

  Huber felt the anger rise in his throat. “No sir,” he said. He spoke in a normal voice, maybe even a little quieter than usual. “I don’t understand at all. Senator Graciano is certainly a traitor, probably the traitor who set up me and my platoon at Rhodesville. We can’t leave him out there, looking for another place to slide the knife into us. One more chance may be just the one he needed!”

  Steuben didn’t rise, but he leaned forward very slightly in his seat. He wore his 1-cm pistol in a cutaway holster high on his right hip. Inlays of platinum, gold, and rich violet gold-uranium alloy decorated the weapon’s receiver, but the pistol was still as deadly as the service weapon Huber had left with the guards outside the building.

  And the dapper little man who wore it was far more deadly than Huber had ever thought of being.

  “You’ve shown initiative, Lieutenant,” Steuben said. “Because of that, I’m going to politely point something out to you instead of treating your insolence as I normally would: even if everything you believe regarding Senator Graciano is true, he remains Senator Graciano. He has a large following in the United Cities and is in some ways more influential in the remainder of the Outer States than any other UC politician, his father included. Probably the best way to boost his standing still further would be for off-planet mercenaries to accuse him of being a traitor.”

  “Sir, I lost friends at Rhodesville!” Huber said.

  “Then you were lucky to have friends to begin with, Lieutenant,” the major said, rising to his feet. “Friendship is an experience I’ve never shared. Now get back to Log Section and your duties. Or submit your resignation from the Regiment, which I assure you will be accepted at the moment you offer it.”

  Huber’s lips
were dry. He didn’t speak.

  “I asked you before if you understood,” Steuben said, his left fingertips resting lightly on the desk top. “You chose to discuss the matter. Now the only thing for you to understand is this: you will go back to your duties in Log Section, or you will resign. Do you understand?”

  “Sir!” Huber said. “May I return to my duties now?”

  “Dismissed, Lieutenant,” the major said. “And Lieutenant? I don’t expect to see you again until I summon you.”

  As Huber walked down the hallway, his back to the door he’d closed behind him, he kept thinking, It’s in the hands of the people who ought to be handling it. It’s none of my business anymore.

  The trouble was, he knew that at the level of Steuben and Colonel Hammer it was a political problem. Political problems were generally best solved by compromise and quiet neglect.

  Huber didn’t think he’d ever be able to chalk up the sound of Kolbe’s body squishing down Fencing Master’s bow slope to political expedience, though.

  “Got any plans for tonight, El-Tee?” Sergeant Tranter asked as he followed Huber up the stairs to Log Section. “There’s a game on in the maintenance shed.”

  The paint on the stairwell walls had been rubbed at the height of children’s shoulders; it was a reminder of what the building had been. Whether it’d ever be a school again depended on how well the Slammers performed. If things went wrong, the Outer States—at least the United Cities—would be paying reparations to Solace that’d preclude luxuries like public schooling.

  “I’m thinking about throwing darts into a target,” Huber muttered. “And don’t ask whose picture I’m thinking of using for the target!”

  Hera wasn’t at her desk. In her absence and Huber’s, a senior clerk named Farinelli was in titular charge—and he obviously had no idea of how to deal with the two armed Slammers who stood before his console. Their backs were to the door and the remainder of the staring locals.

  “Can I help you gentle—” Huber began, politely but with a sharp undertone. A stranger listening could have guessed that he didn’t much like aggrieved troopers making personal visits to Log Section when a call or data transmission would get the facts into his hands without disrupting the office. Midway in Huber’s question, the troopers turned.

  “Deseau!” Huber said. “And you, Learoyd! Say, they didn’t reassign you guys too, did they?”

  The troopers smiled gratefully, though Learoyd knuckled his bald scalp in embarrassment and wouldn’t meet Huber’s eyes. “Nothing like that, Lieutenant,” the sergeant said. “We’re here to take Fencing Master back to the unit as soon as they assign us a couple bodies from the Replacement Depot. I figured you wouldn’t mind if we stopped in and saw how you were making out.”

  From the way Deseau spoke and Learoyd acted, they weren’t at all sure that Huber wouldn’t mind. They were line troopers, neither of them with any formal education; the only civilians they were comfortable with were whores and bartenders. It must have been a shock to come looking for the lieutenant who’d been one of them and find themselves in an office full of well-dressed locals who stared as if they were poisonous snakes.

  Huber thought suddenly of the ropes of 2-cm bolts sending the dirigible down in fiery destruction over Rhodesville. There was never a poisonous snake as dangerous as either of these two men; or as Arne Huber, who was after all one of them.

  “Mind?” he said. “I’m delighted! Sergeant Tranter—”

  Huber took his men by either hand and raised his voice as his eyes swept the office. “Everybody? These are two of the people who kept me alive at the sharp end: my blower captain Sergeant Deseau and Trooper Learoyd, my right wing gunner. That won’t mean much to you civilians, but you can understand when I say I wouldn’t have survived landing on Plattner’s World if it weren’t for these men!”

  Learoyd muttered something to his shoes, but he looked pleased. Deseau’s expression didn’t change, but he didn’t seem to mind either.

  “Do you have plans for tonight?” Huber asked. “Ah, Sergeant Tranter? Do you think we could find these men a billet here in the compound?” He switched his eyes back to Deseau and Learoyd, continuing, “There’s usually a card game, and I think I can promise something to drink.”

  “And if he couldn’t get you booze, I can,” Tranter said cheerfully. “Sure, we can put you guys up. It’s best the El-Tee not go wandering around, but you won’t miss Benjamin.”

  “If I never see Warrant Leader Niscombe,” Learoyd said to his boots, “it’ll be too soon.”

  “Niscombe runs the enlisted side of Transient Depot, sir,” Deseau explained. “He figures that something bad’ll happen if he lets folks passing through from field duty just rest and relax. He’ll find a lot of little jobs for us if we bunk there.”

  “Something bad’ll happen to Niscombe if he ever shows his face out in the field,” Learoyd muttered with a venom Huber hadn’t expected to hear in that trooper’s voice. “Which he won’t do, you can be sure of that.”

  “Right,” said Huber. “I’ll send a temporary duty request for the two of you through channels, but for now consider yourselves at liberty.”

  He glanced at Hera’s empty desk. “Ah, does anybody know when Deputy Graciano’s due back?” he asked the room in a raised voice.

  Everybody stared at him; nobody answered the question, though. It struck Huber that all this was out of the locals’ previous experience with the Slammers. When Captain Cassutt was director, there hadn’t been troopers with personal weapons standing in the middle of the office.

  “Sir?” said Kelso from the back of the room.

  “What?” said Huber. “Via, if you know something, spit it out!”

  “Yessir,” said Kelso, swallowing. “Ah, I don’t know when the deputy’s coming back, but she went out as soon as I gave her the information you requested, sir.”

  “Information?” Huber repeated. For a moment he didn’t know what the local was talking about; nonetheless his stomach slid toward the bottom of an icy pit.

  Then he remembered. “You mean the previous employment data.”

  “Yessir!” said Kelso, more brightly this time. “None of those techs had worked at the places they put down. Not a soul remembered any one of the three!”

  Huber opened his mouth to ask another question, but he really didn’t have to. He’d given Kelso the full applications including the applicants’ home addresses. That’s what Hera had seen, and she wouldn’t have had to check to recognize the address of her brother’s townhouse. The fact that the men’s listed employment records were phony would be a red flag to anybody with brains enough to feed themselves.

  “What’s the matter, sir?” Tranter said.

  “I screwed up,” Huber said. His face must’ve gone white; he felt cold all over. “It’s nobody’s fault but mine.”

  Hera could’ve gone to her father with the information; she could’ve gone to the civil authorities—though Huber wasn’t sure the United Cities had security police in the fashion that larger states generally did; or she could even have gone to Colonel Hammer. Any of those choices would have been fine. The possibility that scared Huber, though, was that instead—

  His helmet pinged him with an Urgent call. Huber wasn’t in a platoon and company net, so the sound was unexpected. He locked down his faceshield to mute the conversation and said, “Fox Three-six, go ahead!”

  In his surprise—and fear—he’d given his old call signal. Somebody else was leader of platoon F-3 nowadays.

  “Arne, this is Doll,” said Lieutenant Basime’s voice. “We don’t exactly monitor the civil police here, but we are a signals liaison section. Ah—”

  “Say it!” Huber snapped.

  “There was a police call just now,” Doll said mildly. She was a solid lady, well able to stand up for her rights and smart enough to know when that wasn’t the best choice. “There’s an aircar down west of town. The driver and sole occupant is dead. Initial report is that it’s your
deputy, Hera Graciano.”

  “Right,” said Huber. He felt calm again, much as he’d been as he watched the stern of the blazing dirigible slide slowly into the terminal building. The past was the past; now there were only the consequences to deal with. “Can you download the coordinates of the crash site?”

  “You’ve got ’em,” Doll said. There was an icon Huber hadn’t noticed in the terrain box on his faceshield. “Anything more I can do, Snake?”

  “Negative, Doll,” Huber said. “I’ll take it from here. Three-six out.”

  He broke the connection and raised his faceshield. “Trouble, El-Tee?” said Sergeant Tranter. Tranter had been in the field, but he didn’t have a line trooper’s instincts. Deseau and Learoyd stood facing outward from their former platoon leader; their feet were spread and their sub-machine guns slanted in front of them. They weren’t aiming at anything, not threatening anybody; but they hadn’t had to ask if there was trouble, and they were ready to deal in their own way with anything that showed itself.

  The civilian clerks looked terrified, as they well should have been.

  “Tranter, I need a ride,” Huber said. “West of town there’s been an aircar crash. I’ll transfer the coordinates to the car’s navigation system.”

  “We’re coming along,” Deseau said. He continued to watch half the room and the doorway, while the trooper watched the clerks on the other side. “Learoyd and me.”

  “You go relax,” Huber said in a tight voice. “This is Log Section business, not yours.”

  “Fuck that,” said Deseau. “You said we’re at liberty. Fine, we’re at liberty to come with you.”

  “Right,” said Huber. He was still holding his big shoulder weapon; he hadn’t had time to put it down since he entered the office. “You—Farinelli? You’re in charge till I get back.” He thought for a moment and added, “Or you hear that I’ve been replaced.”