The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

"Like hell,"said the sergeant major with a grin that seemed to double the width of his grizzled face. "I might, except for my knees. You're going to stay bloody here, in charge like you're supposed t' be."

His lips pursed. "Kekkonan'll take 'em. He won't buy into anything he can't buy out of."

Tyl clapped the noncom on the shoulder."Round 'em up,"he said as he stepped into the hall. "I'll tell Desoix. This is the sort of thing that should've been done, you know, last week."

As he walked down the hall, the Slammers officer keyed his helmet to learn where Desoix was at the moment. Putting this sort of information on open channels didn't seem like a great idea, unless you had a lot more confidence in the Bamberg army than Tyl Koopman did.

Asking for volunteers in a business like this was a waste of time. They were veteran troops, these; men and women who would parrot "never volunteer" the way they'd been told by a thousand generations of previous veterans . . . but who knew in their hearts that it was boredom that killed.

You couldn't live in barracks, looking at the same faces every waking minute, without wanting to empty a gun into one of them just to make a change.

So the first five soldiers Scratchard asked would belt on their battle gear with enthusiasm, bitching all the time about "When's it somebody else's turn to take the tough one?" They didn't want to die, but they didn't think they would . . . and just maybe they would have gone anyway, whatever they thought the risk was, because it was too easy to imagine the ways a fort like the Palace of Government could become a killing bottle.

They were Hammer's Slammers. They'd done that to plenty others over the years.

Tyl didn't have any concern that he'd be able to hand Desoix his bodyguards, primed and ready for whatever the fire-shot night offered.

And he knew that he'd give three grades in rank to be able to go along with them himself.

Chapter Eighteen

The porch off the Consistory Room didn't have a view of anything Tyl wanted to see—the littered courtyard and, across the river, the shell of the City Offices whose windows were still outlined by the sullen glow in its interior. The porch was as close as he could come to being outside, though, and that was sufficient recommendation at the moment.

The top of the House of Grace was barely visible above the south wing of the Palace. The ghost of firelight from the office building painted the eyes and halo of the sculptured Bishop Trimer also.