The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

Desoix's submachine-gun wasn't for show either. Providing air defense for frontline units meant you were right in the middle of it when things went wrong . . . and they'd twice gone wrong very badly to a battery Charles Desoix crewed or captained.

Though it shouldn't come to that. The seven of them were just another group in a night through which armed bands stalked in a truce that would continue so long as there was an adequacy of weaker prey.

The warehouses fronted the bay and the spaceport across the channel, but their loading docks were in the rear. Across the mean street were tenements. When Desoix's unit shrugged its way out of the cramped passage, they found every one of the windows facing them lighted to display a cross as large as the sashes would allow.

"Partytime,"one of the troopers muttered.Some of the residents were watching the events from windows or rooftops, but most of them were down in the street in amorphous clots like those of white cells surrounding bacteria. There were shouts, both shrill and guttural, but Desoix couldn't distinguish any of the words.

Not that he had any trouble understanding what was going on without hearing the words. There were screams coming from the center of one of the groups . . . or perhaps Desoix's mind created the sound it knew would be there if the victim still had the strength to make it.

A dozen or so people were on the loading dock to the unit's right, drinking and either having sex or making as good an attempt at it as their drinking permitted. Somebody threw a bottle that smashed close enough to Kekkonan that the sergeant's cloak flapped as he turned; but there didn't appear to have been real malice involved. Perhaps not even notice.

Party time.

"All right,"Kekkonan said just loudly enough for the soldiers with him to hear. "There's an alley across the way, a little to the left. Stay loose, don't run . . . anddon'tbunch up, just in case. Go."

Except for Lachere, they were all veterans; but they were human as well. They didn't run, but they moved much faster than the careless saunter everybody knew was really the safest pace.

And they stayed close, close enough that one burst could have gotten them all.

Nothing happened except that a score of voices followed them with varied suggestions, and a woman naked to the waist stumbled into Charles Desoix even though he tried his best to dodge her.