The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

"Up here is where we learn what's happening,"Desoix said reasonably, nodding toward the elevator's ceiling. "Or at least as much as anyone in the government knows," he added with a frown which echoed the doubt in his words.

The car stopped with only a faint burring from its magnetic drivers. The doors opened with less sound even than that. Tyl strode into the Consistory Room.

He was Colonel Hammer's representative and the ranking Slammer on this continent. So long as he remembered that, nobody else was likely to forget.

There were fewer people in the big room than there had been in the morning, but their degree of agitation made the numbers seem greater. Marshal Dowell was present with a pair of aides, but those three and the pair of mercenaries were the only men in uniform.

The Chastain brothers smiled with frozen enthusiasm when Tyl nodded to them.They wore dark suits of conservative cut—and of natural off-planet fabrics that gave them roughly the value of an aircar. Everyone else in the room was avoiding the Chastains. Backs turned whenever one of the twins attempted to make eye contact.

Berne, the City Prefect, didn't have even a twin for company. He huddled in the middle of the room like a clothes pole draped with the green velour of his state robe.

"Where are—" Tyl began, but he'd already lost his companion. Lieutenant Desoix was walking briskly toward the large-framed woman who seemed to be an aide to the President's wife. Neither the President nor Eunice Delcorio were here at—

Servants opened the door adjacent to the elevator. John Delcorio entered a step ahead of his wife, but only because of the narrowness of the portal. Eunice was again in a flame-red dress. This one was demure in the front but cut with no back at all and a skirt that stretched to allow her legs to scissor back and forth as she moved.

Tyl hadn't found a sexual arrangement satisfactory to him on the freighter that brought him to Bamberia, and there'd been no time to take care of personal business since he touched down.He felt a rush of lust.It was a little disconcerting under the circumstances—

But on the other hand, it was nice to be reminded that there was more to life than the sorts of things that'd been going on in the past few hours.

"You there!" President Delcorio said unexpectedly. He glared at Tyl, his black eyes glowing like coal in a coking furnace. "Do you have to wearthat?"

Tyl glanced down at where Delcorio pointed with two stubby, sturdy fingers together.