The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

Tyl didn't want company, so when the door slid open behind him, he turned his whole body.That way his slung submacbine-gun pointed,an "accident" that he knew would frighten away anyone except his own troopers—whom he could order to leave him alone.

Lieutenant Desoix's woman stopped with a little gasp in her throat, but she didn't back away.

"Via!" Tyl said in embarrassment, lifting the gun muzzle high and cursing himself in his head for the dumb idea. One of those dandies, he'd figured, or a smirking servant . . . except that the President's well-dressed advisors seemed to have pretty well disappeared, and the flunkies also.

Servants were getting thin on the ground, too.

"If you'd like to be alone? . . ." the woman said, either polite or real perceptive.

"Naw, you're fine," Tyl said, feeling clumsy and a lot the same way as he had a few months ago. Then he'd been to visit a girl he might have married if he hadn't gone off for a soldier the way he had. "You're, ah—Lady Eunice's friend, aren't you?"

"That too,"said the woman drily.She took the place Tyl offered at the railing and added, "My name's Anne McGill. And I believe you're Captain Koopman?"

"Tyl," the soldier said. "Rank's not form—" He gestured. "Out here."

She didn't look as big as she had inside. Maybe because he had his armor on now that he was standing close to her.

Maybe because he'd recently watched five big men put looted cloaks on over their guns and armor to go off with Lieutenant Desoix.

"Have you known Charles long?" she asked, calling Tyl back from a stray thought that had the woman wriggling out of her dark blue dress and offering herself to him.

He shook his head abruptly to clear the thought. Not his type, and hesure

wasn't hers.

"No," he said, forgetting that she thought he'd answered with the shake of his head. "I just got in today, you see. I don't recall we ever served with the UDB before. Anyhow, mostly you don't see much of anybody's people but your own guys."

It wasn't even so much that he was horny. Screwing was just something he could really lose himself in.

Killing was that way too.

"It's dangerous out there, isn't it?" she said. She wasn't looking at the city because her face was lifted too high. From the way her capable hands washed one another, she might well have been praying.

"Out there?" Tyl repeated bitterly. "Via, it's dangeroushere, and we can't do anything but bloody twiddle our thumbs."

Anne winced, as much at the violence as the words themselves.