The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

But you can't borrow commo without expecting the folks who loaned it to be listening in; and if Tyl did have to stay in Bamberg City with the transit detachment, he didn't want the locals to know that he'd been begging Central to withdraw him.

The screen darkened into a man's face."Captain Koopman?" said the voice in his helmet. "I appreciate your sense of timing. I'm glad to have an experienced officer overseeing the situation there at the moment."

"Sir!" Tyl said, throwing a salute that was probably out of the restricted field of the pickup lens.

"Give me your appraisal of the situation, Captain," said the voice of Colonel Alois Hammer. His flat-surface image wobbled according to the vagaries of the upper atmosphere.

"At the moment . . ." Tyl said.He looked away from the screen in an unconscious gesture to gain some time for his thoughts.

The House of Grace towered above him. At the top of the high wall was the visage of Bishop Trimer enthroned. The prelate's eyes were as hard as the stone in which they were carved.

"At the moment, sir,it's quiet,"Tyl said to the screen."The police cracked down hard, arrested about fifty people. Since then—"

"Leaders?" interrupted the helmet in its crackling reproduction of the colonel's voice. Hammer's eyes were like light-struck diamonds, never dull—never quite the same.

"Brawlers,street toughs,"Tyl said contemptuously. "A lot of 'em, is all.But it's been quiet, and . . ."

He paused because he wasn't sure how far he ought to stick his neck out with no data, not really—but his commanding officer waited expectantly on the other end of the satellite link.

"Sir," Tyl said, determined to do the job he'd been set, even though this stuff scared him in a different way from a firefight. There heknew

what he was supposed to do. "Sir, I haven't been here long enough to know what's normal, but the way it feels out there now . . ."

He looked past the corner of the hospital building and down into the plaza. Many of the booths were still set up and a few were lighted—but not nearly enough to account for the numbers of people gathering there in the twilight. It was like watching gas pool in low spots, mixing and waiting for the spark that would explode it.

"The only places I been that felt like this city does now are night positions just before somebody hits us."