The Complete Hammer's Slammers: Volume 3 Page 4

  Angel’s battle dress smoldered in a score of places. He squinted, fired again, and again, and again.

  At the fourth bolt, the coupling parted with the sound of a shattered bell. The overturned segment slid a meter from the remainder of the burning vehicle.

  Margulies knelt at the top of the mine crater and waved her arms. She knew what Angel intended to do, knew also that she couldn’t stop him as she wished she could. But if the guerrilla gunners concentrated on her, then there was at least a chance Angel would succeed.

  The light cannon shifted aim toward Margulies. It had a three-round charger, so the tracers snapped out in trios. They left tight gray helices in the air, like the tailings of a metal drill.

  Angel ran toward the road train’s open cab. The machine gun pursued him, bullets flickering against the chassis and treads a half-step behind. The cargo boxes breathed blowtorch flames from every shell hole.

  An explosive bullet buried itself in the rim of loose dirt beneath Margulies and detonated. The shock threw her back as though she’d been hit by a medicine ball. She lay at the bottom of the crater, wheezing and blinking at the sky for a moment before she resumed crawling upward.

  When Margulies regained the crater lip, the only combat car she could see had been hit in the skirts by a shoulder-launched rocket. Air gushing through the jagged hole in the plenum chamber slowed the vehicle’s motions to those of a half-crushed cockroach, but the tribarrels were still in action.

  The two-segment road train staggered across the cleared ground like a drunken streetwalker. When one bogie or another found a soft spot the gigantic vehicle lurched, but each time inertia dragged it from the potential bog.

  Angel was steering toward the guerrillas’ automatic cannon.

  Three buzzbombs like the one that had disabled the combat car burst on the road train’s bow. The shaped-charge warheads went off with hollow thocks, like the sound of boards being slapped together. The cannon, the machine gun, and at least a dozen guerrilla riflemen were firing at the vehicle.

  Ricochets and explosive shells danced across the cab like a fireworks display. The protective windows were starred white, the armor was holed in a hundred places, and gray smoke or coolant trailed back from the power plant to mix with the flames shooting from the cargo boxes.

  The cab door opened fifty meters from the treeline. Angel somersaulted from the vehicle. He splashed into a muddy trench gouged by a main-gun bolt in the earlier ambush. He didn’t move. A machine gun had hosed the side of the cab as the Frisian left it.

  A guerrilla stood up in plain view to aim her buzzbomb at the road train. Smoke spurted from the back of the launcher as a rocket motor lobbed the missile into a near-side bogie. The warhead’s pearly flash enveloped the running gear for an instant. The track broke, shedding links behind it and pulling the vehicle slightly to the left as it continued to trundle onward.

  A single cyan bolt winked past the guerrilla’s face. She dropped her useless rocket launcher and unslung the automatic rifle from her back. Angel’s second pistol shot hit her in the chest. She spun as she fell to the ground.

  The road train kept up a walking pace as its battered bow crunched through the stunted trees. A guerrilla leaped desperately for the cab, caught his sandal in metal torn by gunfire, and toppled screaming beneath the second set of bogies. It wouldn’t have made much difference if he’d set his feet properly, because an instant later the munitions in the second segment exploded.

  The first charge bulged the sides of the cargo box. Margulies ducked in time, before the shock wave compressed the mass of burning propellants and detonated them. A blast hugely greater than that of the guerrilla mine flattened vegetation in a hundred-meter radius and sent tonnes of excavated soil skyward on an orange fireball.

  The surface waggled, flipping Margulies like a pancake. She hit the ground again and bounced onto her back, stunned but no more severely injured than the mine had left her. Dirt rained down for tens of seconds.

  All the shooting from the left side of the roadway ceased. A guerrilla, stark naked and bleeding from nose and ears, ran out of the trees. A tribarrel on the combat car roaring forward from the rear of the convoy cut the man in half.

  The Frisian vehicle swung around the bogged second road train, ripping the right treeline with its full firepower. The guerrillas on that side were already disengaging. Hoses of cyan plasma devoured the few snipers trying to provide a rear guard for the main body.

  Artillery shells began to land on both treelines. They were late as Margulies had feared, but at least they were accurate.

  She saw a Brigantian carbine, dropped or flung on the ash ten meters from the crater. She crawled toward the weapon, ignoring the pain in her legs.

  Halfway between her and the smoking gap in the treeline, a man in Frisian khaki rose on one arm and waved his muddy pistol at Margulies. Her eyes filled with tears of joy, but she continued to crawl.

  Nieuw Friesland

  The door opened and a full colonel stepped unexpectedly into the anteroom. Sten Moden rose to his feet and saluted crisply.

  “Captain Moden?” the colonel said. “Could I speak with you for a moment?”

  Which, when asked down a gradient of three steps in rank, was a rhetorical question if Moden had ever heard one.

  “Yes sir,” Moden said, sounding as alert and ready as he knew how. His tailored dress uniform was brand new; he’d had his hair cut that morning—he’d showered afterward to wash away the clippings; and for the first time in his military career he was wearing all—all but one—of the medal ribbons to which he was entitled.

  Not even for this purpose would Sten Moden wear the most recent citation for bravery. That would be too much like drinking the blood of his own troops.

  Moden followed the colonel, Dascenzo according to his name tape but not somebody Moden knew or knew of, into a comfortable office. One wall was a holographic seascape. Waves surged from horizon to horizon without a hint of land.

  The view could have been from Dascenzo’s home-world. Moden’s suspicion was that the view was intended as a soothing backdrop for interviews by an officer with a medical rather than personnel specialty.

  Moden wasn’t worried about his physical profile. If that was the only determining factor, the Frisian Defense Forces would give him a new assignment with no difficulty. The fact that he was talking to a colonel instead of an enlisted clerk proved what Moden was afraid of: there was a problem with his psychiatric evaluation.

  “Please, sit down,” Colonel Dascenzo said. He gestured toward a contour-adapting chair. “This isn’t anything formal, Captain. I’d just like to chat with you.”

  The chair into which Moden lowered himself was the only piece of furniture in the office, save for Dascenzo’s own console with integral seat. Moden wondered how many sensors were built into the chair or focused on its user from the surrounding walls.

  Captain Sten Moden had given the Frisian Defense Forces valued, even heroic, service, so no invasive methods would be used on him. Apart from that, however—

  The FDF would recompense its veterans for past service, but the organization had to look to the future as well.

  “I’ve gone over your file, of course, Captain,” Dascenzo said. “I must say I’m impressed by it.”

  Moden decided a slight smile was appropriate. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “All I’m looking for now is a chance to continue serving Col-C-President Hammer for the foreseeable future.”

  “Well, that’s what I wanted to check with you about,” Dascenzo said. He looked serious, though he wasn’t scowling. His expression was probably as calculated as Moden’s own. “You do realize that you qualify for a pension at one hundred percent pay?”

  “Yes sir,” Moden agreed with a measured nod, “and I very much appreciate the honor implicit in that offer. But I’m still able to provide the FDF with useful service, and I’d like to stay on the active list for as long as that’s true.”

  “The extent of your inj
uries . . .” Dascenzo said, letting his expression darken into a frown. His voice trailed off, forcing the captain to decide what the question really was.

  Moden decided to take a chance. He rose slowly to his full enormous height. “Sir,” he said as he gripped the arm of the heavy chair with his right hand, “my injuries were extensive. What remains of me, however—”

  Moden’s biceps muscles flexed, threatening the weave of his uniform jacket. He pulled with the inexorable strength of a chain hoist.

  “—is more than you’ll find filling most of the slots in the FDF!”

  The chair jerked upward with the sound of ripping metal. Only then did Moden realize that he’d been tugging against the conduits serving hard-wired sensors rather than merely gravity.

  “Sorry, sir,” he said ruefully, looking at the wreckage of a piece of very expensive equipment in his hand. He’d made the point he was trying to make. If he’d blown his psych profile off the map, then he may as well hung for a sheep as a lamb. “But strong and stupid has a place in an army too.”

  “Bloody hell, man,” Colonel Dascenzo murmured. “Look, put that thing down before you drop it on your foot and do yourself some real damage.”

  His expression softened as Moden obeyed him. The chair balanced awkwardly on the ends of tubes which had stretched and twisted before they broke. “You really do want to stay in the service, don’t you?” Dascenzo said softly.

  “Yes sir,” Moden said, standing formally at ease. “I really do.”

  “There’s a team being formed to survey a planet called Cantilucca,” Dascenzo said. “They’ll need an officer with a logistics background. Do you want the slot?”

  “Yes sir,” Moden said. “I’d like that very much.” He heard his voice tremble with the relief he felt.

  “You’ve got it,” Dascenzo said matter-of-factly. He touched the keyboard of his console. “Assignment orders will be waiting for you in your quarters.”

  The colonel threw another switch, then looked up at Moden again. “Captain,” he said, “you don’t have to believe me, but I just turned off all the recording devices. Would you answer me a question, just for my personal interest?”

  “Yes sir,” Moden said. He flexed his right hand behind his back. Now that it was over, he too was surprised at the amount of force his body had been able to deliver to the task he had set it.

  “Why do you want to stay in uniform so badly?” Dascenzo asked.

  Moden smiled, amused at himself. “Because I screwed up,” he said. “I therefore owe a debt. For a while I thought I should kill myself—I suppose you know that?”

  Dascenzo nodded, tapping the data-gorged console without taking his eyes off Moden’s.

  Moden nodded also. “I decided that wouldn’t pay anybody back,” he continued. “I don’t know who I owe, you see, but that wouldn’t help anybody. I—I believe that if I’m given duties to perform, then someday I’ll be able to . . . balance the account.” He barked a humorless laugh. “Does that make me crazy, Colonel?” he asked.

  “Captain Moden,” Dascenzo said, “‘crazy’ isn’t a term I like to use when discussing professional soldiers. What I do know, however, is that if all you want is a chance to do your duty—I’d be a traitor to Nieuw Friesland if I took you out of her service. You’re dismissed, Captain.”

  Dascenzo rose and extended his right hand across the desk to shake Moden’s hand. The psychiatrist was smiling sadly.

  Earlier: Trinity

  The sound dived into the night of his mind, twisting deeper like a toothed whale hunting squid in the darkness a thousand fathoms down. It found him, gripped him, and tore him back to surface consciousness from the black gage coma in which he slept.

  He didn’t know his name. He didn’t know where he was. But the whine of the base unit to which he’d plugged his commo helmet was the call of duty, and not even the half-dozen stim cones of the past evening could deny his duty.

  He stabbed the speaker button, cueing the unit to continuous operation. “Go ahead,” he croaked.

  He couldn’t see anything. Existence was a white throb shattered by jagged bands of darkness.

  “Cap’n, it’s Filkerson,” a man said, his voice pitched high and staccato. “That load of local-manufacture pyrotechnics that arrived today, I can hear the crates, they’re chirping, and I don’t like it a bit!”

  Shards of light spun. They reformed suddenly into present surroundings and the past life leading up to them:

  He was Captain Sten Moden, Base Supply Officer serving the regimental field force of Frisian troops on Trinity. He was in semi-detached quarters, three rooms and a bath connected by a dogtrot to the Base Intelligence Officer’s suite.

  The earthen berm surrounding Trinity Base’s ammo dump was 400 meters to the west of the officers’ lines. Filkerson was sergeant of the dump’s guard detachment tonight, which meant this was a real problem.

  “Right,” Moden said. “Alert the emergency team. Start dousing the crates now, don’t take any chances. Are they in a bunker?”

  Spasms wracked his muscles, but the aftereffects of the gage would pass shortly. It was like being dropped into ice water while soundly asleep. Why in hell did a crisis have to blow up the one night out of a hundred that he overdid it on stim cones?

  “Blow up” wasn’t the most fortunate thought just now.

  “No sir, there wasn’t time!” Filkerson said with an accusatory tone in his voice. “This is the batch that came in after hours, and you told us to accept it anyway!”

  “I know what I did,” Moden said flatly. He’d donned his trousers and tunic while talking. Now he pulled on his boots and sealed their seams. He didn’t bother with the strap-and-buckle failsafe closure. “Handle your end, Sergeant. I’ll be with you as soon as I make a call. Out.”

  He broke the contact by lifting his commo helmet from the base unit. He settled the helmet on his head with one hand as he switched the base to local and keyed a pre-set.

  As he waited for the connection, Moden shook himself to rid his muscles of the last of the gage tremors. He was coldly furious, with Loie Leonard and more particularly with himself because of what he’d let Loie talk him into doing.

  “Yes, what is it?” a woman said. She sounded irritated—as anybody would be, awakened two hours before dawn—but also guarded, because very few people had this number.

  “Loie,” Moden said, “it’s Sten. I need you here at the base soonest with manufacturing records for everything in that load of flares and marking grenades you just sent us. There’s a problem, and part of it’s your problem.”

  He squeezed the desk support hard so that the rage wouldn’t come out in his voice. Tendons rippled over the bones of his hands. Moden was a big man, so tall that almost anybody else would have claimed the finger’s breadth he lacked of two meters. He had difficulty finding boots to fit him, though now that he was in logistics, it was a lot easier than it had been with a line command.

  “Sten, I’m at home in bed,” Loie said in irritation. “I don’t have any records here, and I don’t see what there is that couldn’t wait for dayli—”

  “Soonest, Loie!” Moden said. “Soonest, and I mean it!”

  He switched off the base unit so violently that the stand overset. He ignored the mess and started for the door.

  Sten Moden had held his present position for thirteen standard months. Most of the field force’s munitions were shipped from Nieuw Friesland. The expense was considerable, but powergun ammunition and self-guided shells for the regiment’s rocket howitzers had to be manufactured to the closest tolerances if they were to function properly.

  Supplies of other material were available cheaper and at satisfactory quality on Trinity. Because the local government had hired the Frisians at a monthly flat rate, cost cutting had a direct, one-toone effect on President Hammer’s profit margin. Sten Moden was responsible for procuring food, bedding, soft-skinned vehicles, and hundreds of other items on the local economy.

  Tr
ip flares and smoke grenades were high usage items for the field force. Forges de Milhaud had underbid other suppliers on the past three contracts. In the course of his duties, Moden had gotten

  to know Loie Leonard, the woman who owned the company.

  Know her very well.

  Moden didn’t have a vehicle at his quarters, and he didn’t want to waste time summoning one from the motor pool. He began to jog toward the munitions dump, letting his long arms flap instead of pumping them as he ran. The floodlights illuminating the fourmeter-high berm emphasized the yellow-green cast of the local soil.

  This afternoon Forges de Milhaud had delivered a load of pyrotechnics after working hours. Indig labor crews had to be off-post at sundown, so deliveries couldn’t be properly sorted and inspected for quality.

  According to standard operating procedure, Moden should have refused to accept the load until the next working day when it could be processed properly. This was an 8th Night, so delivery would take place after the weekend.

  In normal circumstances, Moden might or might not have followed SOP. He didn’t like red tape, but it was a fact of life in any complex organization. The field force had a twelve-day supply of flares and grenades on hand, so there was no duty-related reason for the supply officer to cut corners.

  But Loie called him, explaining that she needed acceptance now in order to meet her payroll. Moden had called Filkerson, telling him to let the drivers dump their cargo where it could be sorted in the morning of 1st Night.

  And Moden had visited Loie at a hotel near the Forges offices. Later she went home to her family, and Captain Sten Moden, exalted by gage, returned to Trinity Base.

  “Sir! Sir!” Filkerson screeched over the helmet earphones. “We’ve got a fire, a real fire, in the center of the pile. We can’t get to it with the hoses!”

  Moden broke into a full run. He switched his helmet to override the carriers of all his subordinates. “Supply Six to all personnel in the dump area. Get outside the berm now! Run for it! There’s nothing inside the berm that’s worth your life!”