The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 1 (hammer's slammers)

by David Drake

  "Blood and Martyrs!" Jolober said as he continued to back, not entirely because the door required it.

  "You run a tight base here, Commandant," said Colonel Alois Hammer as he stepped into the waiting room. "Do you know my aide, Major Steuben?"

  "By reputation only," said Jolober, nodding to Joachim Steuben with the formal correctness which that reputation enjoined. "Ah—with a little more information, I might have relaxed the prohibition on weapons."

  Steuben closed the door behind them, moving the heavy panel with a control which belied the boyish delicacy of his face and frame. "If the colonel's satisfied with his security," Joachim said mildly, "then of course I am, too."

  The eyes above his smile would willingly have watched Jolober drawn and quartered.

  "You've had some problems with troops of mine today," said Hammer, seating himself on one of the chairs and rising again, almost as quickly as if he had continued to walk. His eyes touched Jolober and moved on in short hops that covered everything in the room like an animal checking a new environment.

  "Only reported problems occurred," said Jolober, keeping the promise he'd made earlier in the day. He lighted the hologram projection tank on the counter to let it warm up. "There was an incident a few hours ago, yes."

  The promise didn't matter to Tad Hoffritz, not after the shootings; but it mattered more than life to Horace Jolober that he keep the bargains he'd made.

  "According to Captain van Zuyle s report," Hammer said as his eyes flickered over furniture and recesses dim under the partial lighting, "you're of the opinion the boy was set up."

  "What you do with a gun," said Joachim Steuben softly from the door against which he leaned, "is your own responsibility."

  "As Joachim says," Hammer went on with a nod and no facial expression, "that doesn't affect how we'll deal with Captain Hoffritz when he's released from local custody. But it does affect how we act to prevent recurrences, doesn't it?"

  "Load file Ike One into the downstairs holo," said Jolober to Central.

  He looked at Hammer, paused till their eyes met. "Sure, he was set up, just like half a dozen others in the past three months—only they were money assessments, no real problem.

  "And the data prove," Jolober continued coolly, claiming what his data suggested but could not prove, "that it's going to get a lot worse than what happened tonight if Red Ike and his Dolls aren't shipped out fast."

  The holotank sprang to life in a three-dimensional cross-hatching of orange lines. As abruptly, the lines shrank into words and columns of figures. "Red Ike and his Dolls—they were all his openly, then—first show up on Sparrow-home a little over five years standard ago, according to Bonding Authority records. Then—"

  Jolober pointed toward the figures. Colonel Hammer put his smaller, equally firm, hand over the commandant's and said, "Wait. Just give me your assessment."

  "Dolls have been imported as recreational support in seven conflicts," said Jolober as calmly as if his mind had not just shifted gears. He'd been a good combat commander for the same reason, for dealing with the situation that occurred rather than the one he'd planned for. "There's been rear-echelon trouble each time, and the riot on Ketelby caused the Bonding Authority to order the disbandment of a battalion of Guardforce O'Higgins."

  "There was trouble over a woman," said Steuben unemotionally, reeling out the data he gathered because he was Hammer's adjutant as well as his bodyguard. "A fight between a ranger and an artilleryman led to a riot in which half the nearest town was burned."

  "Not a woman," corrected Jolober. "A Doll."

  He tapped the surface of the holotank. "It's all here, downloaded from Bonding Authority archives. You just have to see what's happening so you know the questions to ask."

  "You can get me a line to the capital?" Hammer asked as if he were discussing the weather. "I was in a hurry, and I didn't bring along my usual commo."

  Jolober lifted the visiplate folded into the surface of the counter beside the holotank and rotated it toward Hammer.

  "I've always preferred nonhumans for recreation areas," Hammer said idly as his finger played over the plate's keypad. "Oh, the troops complain, but I've never seen that hurt combat efficiency. Whereas real women gave all sorts of problems."

  "And real men," said Joachim Steuben, with a deadpan expression that could have meant anything.

  The visiplate beeped. "Main Switch," said a voice, tart but not sleepy. "Go ahead."

  "You have my authorization code," Hammer said to the human operator on the other end of the connection. From Jolober's flat angle to the plate, he couldn't make out the operator's features—only that he sat in a brightly illuminated white cubicle. "Patch me through to the chairman of the Facilities Inspection Committee."

  '"Senator Dieter?" said the operator, professionally able to keep the question short of being amazement.

  "If he's the chairman," Hammer said. The words had the angry undertone of a dynamite fuse burning.

  "Yessir, she is," replied the operator with studied neutrality. "One moment, please."

  "I've been dealing with her chief aide," said Jolober in a hasty whisper. "Guy named Higgey. His pager's loaded—"

  "Got you a long ways, didn't it, Commandant?" Hammer said with a gun-turret click of his head toward Jolober.

  "Your pardon, sir," said Jolober, bracing reflexively to attention. He wasn't Hammer's subordinate, but they both served the same ideal—getting the job done. The ball was in Hammer's court just now, and he'd ask for support if he thought he needed it.

  From across the waiting room, Joachim Steuben smiled at Jolober. That one had the same ideal, perhaps; but his terms of reference were something else again.

  "The senator isn't at any of her registered work stations," the operator reported coolly.

  "Son," said Hammer, leaning toward the visiplate, "you have a unique opportunity to lose the war for Placida. All you have to do is not get me through to the chairman."

  "Yes, Colonel Hammer," the operator replied with an aplomb that made it clear why he held the job he did. "I've processed your authorization, and I'm running it through again on War Emergency Ord—"

  The last syllable was clipped. The bright rectangle of screen dimmed gray. Jolober slid his chair in a short arc so that he could see the visiplate clearly past Hammer's shoulder.

  "What is it?" demanded the woman in the dim light beyond. She was stocky, middle-aged, and rather attractive because of the force of personality she radiated even sleepless in a dressing gown.

  "This is Colonel Alois Hammer," Hammer said. "Are you recording?"

  "On this circuit?" the senator replied with a frosty smile. "Of course I am. So are at least three other agencies, whether I will or no."

  Hammer blinked, startled to find himself on the wrong end of a silly question for a change.

  "Senator," he went on without the hectoring edge that had been present since his arrival. "A contractor engaged by your government to provide services at Paradise Port has been causing problems. One of the Léégèère's down, in critical, and I'm short a company commander over the same incident."

  "You've reported to the port commandant?" Senator Dieter said, her eyes unblinking as they passed over Jolober.

  "The commandant reported to me because your staff stonewalled him," Hammer said flatly while Jolober felt his skin grow cold, even the tips of the toes he no longer had. "I want the contractor, a nonhuman called Red Ike, off-planet in seventy-two hours with all his chattels. That specifically includes his Dolls. We'll work—"

  "That's too soon," said Dieter, her fingers tugging a lock of hair over one ear while her mind worked. "Even if—"

  "Forty-eight hours, Senator," Hammer interrupted. "This is a violation of your bond. And I promise you, I'll have the support of all the other commanders of units contracted to Placidan service. Forty-eight hours, or we'll withdraw from combat and you won't have a front line."

  "You can't—" Dieter began. Then all muscles froze, tongue
and fingers among them, as her mind considered the implications of what the colonel had just told her.

  "I have no concern over being able to win my case at the Bonding Authority hearing on Earth," Hammer continued softly. "But I'm quite certain that the present Placidan government won't be there to contest it."

  Dieter smiled without humor. "Seventy-two hours," she said as if repeating the figure.

  "I've shifted the Regiment across continents in less time, Senator," Hammer said.

  "Yes," said Dieter calmly. "Well, there are political consequences to any action, and I'd rather explain myself to my constituents than to an army of occupation. I'll take care of it."

  She broke the circuit.

  "I wouldn't mind getting to know that lady," said Hammer, mostly to himself, as he folded the visiplate back into the counter.

  "That takes care of your concerns, then?" he added sharply, looking up at Jolober.

  "Yes, sir, it does," said Jolober, who had the feeling he had drifted into a plane where dreams could be happy.

  "Ah, about Captain Hoffritz . . ." Hammer said. His eyes slipped, but he snapped them back to meet Jolober's despite the embarrassment of being about to ask a favor.

  "He's not combat-fit right now, Colonel," Jolober said, warming as authority flooded back to fill his mind. "He'll do as well in our care for the next few days as he would in yours. After that, and assuming that no one wants to press charges—"

  "Understood," said Hammer, nodding. "I'll deal with the victim and General Claire."

  "—then some accommodation can probably be arranged with the courts."

  "It's been a pleasure dealing with a professional of your caliber, Commandant," Hammer said as he shook Jolober's hand. He spoke without emphasis, but nobody meeting his cool blue eyes could have imagined that Hammer would have bothered to lie about it.

  "It's started to rain," observed Major Steuben as he muscled the door open.

  "It's permitted to," Hammer said. "We've been wet be—"

  "A jeep to the front of the building," Jolober ordered with his ring finger crooked. He straightened and said, "Ah, Colonel? Unless you'd like to be picked up by one of your own vehicles?"

  "Nobody knows I'm here," said Hammer from the doorway. "I don't want van Zuyle to think I'm second-guessing him—I'm not, I'm just handling the part that's mine to handle."

  He paused before adding with an ironic smile, "In any case, we're four hours from exploiting the salient Hoffritz's company formed when they took the junction at Kettering."

  A jeep with two patrolmen, stunners ready, scraped to a halt outside. The team was primed for a situation like the one in the alley less than an hour before.

  "Taxi service only, boys," Jolober called to the patrolmen. "Carry these gentlemen to their courier ship, please."

  The jeep was spinning away in the drizzle before Jolober had closed and locked the door again. It didn't occur to him that it mattered whether or not the troops bivouacked around Paradise Port knew immediately what Hammer had just arranged.

  And it didn't occur to him, as he bounced his chair up the stairs calling, "Vicki! We've won!" that he should feel any emotion except joy.

  "Vicki!" he repeated as he opened the bedroom door. They'd have to leave Placida unless he could get Vicki released from the blanket order on Dolls—but he hadn't expected to keep his job anyway, not after he went over the head of the whole Placidan government.

  "Vi—"

  She'd left a light on, one of the point sources in the ceiling. It was a shock, but not nearly as bad a shock as Jolober would have gotten if he'd slid onto the bed in the dark.

  "Who?" his tongue asked while his mind couldn't think of anything to say, could only move his chair to the bedside and palm the hydraulics to lower him into a sitting position.

  Her right hand and forearm were undamaged. She flexed her fingers and the keen plastic blade shot from her fist, then collapsed again into a baton. She let it roll onto the bedclothes.

  "He couldn't force me to kill you," Vicki said. "He was very surprised, very . . ."

  Jolober thought she might be smiling, but he couldn't be sure since she no longer had lips. The plastic edges of the knife Vicki took as she dressed him were not sharp enough for finesse, but she had not attempted surgical delicacy.

  Vicki had destroyed herself from her toes to her once-perfect face. All she had left was one eye with which to watch Jolober, and the parts of her body which she couldn't reach unaided. She had six ribs to a side, broader and flatter than those of a human skeleton. After she laid open the ribs, she had dissected the skin and flesh of the left side farther.

  Jolober had always assumed—when he let himself think about it—that her breasts were sponge implants. He'd been wrong. On the bedspread lay a wad of yellowish fat streaked with blood vessels. He didn't have a background that would tell him whether or not it was human normal, but it certainly was biological.

  It was a tribute to Vicki's toughness that she had remained alive as long as she had.

  Instinct turned Jolober's head to the side so that he vomited away from the bed. He clasped Vicki's right hand with both of his, keeping his eyes closed so that he could imagine that everything was as it had been minutes before when he was triumphantly happy. His left wrist brushed the knife that should have remained an inert baton in any hands but his. He snatched up the weapon, feeling the blade flow out—

  As it had when Vicki held it, turned it on herself.

  "We are one, my Horace," she whispered, her hand squeezing his.

  It was the last time she spoke, but Jolober couldn't be sure of that because his mind had shifted out of the present into a cosmos limited to the sense of touch: body-warm plastic in his left hand, and flesh cooling slowly in his right.

  He sat in his separate cosmos for almost an hour, until the emergency call on his mastoid implant threw him back into an existence where his life had purpose.

  "All units!" cried a voice on the panic push. "The—"

  The blast of static which drowned the voice lasted only a fraction of a second before the implant's logic circuits shut the unit down to keep the white noise from driving Jolober mad. The implant would be disabled as long as the jamming continued—but jamming of this intensity would block even the most sophisticated equipment in the Slammers' tanks.

  Which were probably carrying out the jamming.

  Jolober's hand slipped the knife away without thinking—with fiery determination not to think—as his stump kicked the chair into life and he glided toward the alley stairs. He was still dressed, still mounted in his saddle, and that was as much as he was willing to know about his immediate surroundings.

  The stairs rang. The thrust of his fans was a fitful gust on the metal treads each time he bounced on his way to the ground.

  The voice could have been Feldman at the gate; she was the most likely source anyway. At the moment, Jolober had an emergency.

  In a matter of minutes, it could be a disaster instead.

  It was raining, a nasty drizzle which distorted the invitations capering on the building fronts. The street was empty except for a pair of patrol jeeps, bubbles in the night beneath canopies that would stop most of the droplets.

  Even this weather shouldn't have kept soldiers from scurrying from one establishment to another, hoping to change their luck when they changed location. Overhanging facades ought to have been crowded with morose troopers, waiting for a lull—or someone drunk or angry enough to lead an exodus toward another empty destination.

  The emptiness would have worried Jolober if he didn't have much better reasons for concern. The vehicles sliding down the street from the gate were unlighted, but there was no mistaking the roar of a tank.

  Someone in the China Doll heard and understood the sound also, because the armored door squealed down across the archway even as Jolober's chair lifted him in that direction at high thrust.

  He braked in a spray. The water-slicked pavement didn't affect his control, sin
ce the chair depended on thrust rather than friction—but being able to stop didn't give him any ideas about how he should proceed.

  One of the patrol jeeps swung in front of the tank with a courage and panache which made Jolober proud of his men. The patrolman on the passenger side had ripped the canopy away to stand waving a yellow light-wand with furious determination.

  The tank did not slow. It shifted direction just enough to strike the jeep a glancing blow instead of center-punching it. That didn't spare the vehicle; its light frame crumpled like tissue before it resisted enough to spin across the pavement at twice the velocity of the slowly advancing tank. The slight adjustment in angle did save the patrolmen, who were thrown clear instead of being ground between concrete and the steel skirts.

  The tank's scarred turret made it identifiable in the light of the building fronts. Jolober crooked his finger and shouted, "Commandant to Corporal Days. For the Lord's sake, trooper, don't get your unit disbanded for mutiny! Colonel Hammer's already gotten Red Ike ordered off-planet!"

  There was no burp from his mastoid as Central retransmitted the message a microsecond behind the original. Only then did Jolober recall that the Slammers had jammed his communications.

  Not the Slammers alone. The two vehicles behind the tank were squat armored personnel carriers, each capable of hauling an infantry section with all its equipment. Nobody had bothered to paint out the fender markings of the Division Léégèère.

  Rain stung Jolober's eyes as he hopped the last five meters to the sealed facade of the China Doll. Anything could be covered, could be settled, except murder—and killing Red Ike would be a murder of which the Bonding Authority would have to take cognizance.

  "Let me in!" Jolober shouted to the door. The armor was so thick that it didn't ring when he pounded it. "Let me—"

  Normally the sound of a mortar firing was audible for a kilometer, a hollow shoomp! like a firecracker going off in an oil drum. Jolober hadn't heard the launch from beyond the perimeter because of the nearby roar of drive fans.