The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

"I knew the swine were betraying me,"Delcorio shouted. "I should never have let them live, never!"

"We can cover the way out if you move fast enough," Tyl said aloud. "Ten minutes, maybe."

What he'd seen in the Consistory Room and heard from Desoix's terse report on the way back to the Palace convinced him that Delcorio, not Thom Chastain, was responsible for the present situation. Butwhydidn't matter anymore.

"Allright,"the President said calmly."I've already packed the seal and robes of state. I had to do it myself because they'd all run, even Heinrich . . . ."

"No," said Eunice Delcorio."No!"

"Eunice," begged Anne McGill.

"Ma'am," said Tyl Koopman desperately. "There's no way."

He was unwilling to see people throw themselves away. You learn that when you fight for hire. There's always another contract, if you're around to take it up . . . .

"I've been mistress of this city, of this planet," the President's wife said in a voice that hummed like a cable being tightened. "If they think to change that, well, they can burn me in the Palace first."

She turned to stare, either at her husband or at the smoldering night beyond him. "It'll be a fitting monument, I think," she said.

"And I'll set the firesmyself

—" whirling, her eyes lashed both the mercenary officers "—if no one's man enough to help me defend it."

Anne McGill fell to her knees, praying or crying.

"Madam," said Major Borodin, entering from the hall unannounced because there was no greeter in the building to announce him.

The battery commander looked neither nervous nor frustrated. There was an aura of vague distaste about him, the way his sort of officer always looked when required to speak to a group of people.

This was a set speech, not a contribution to the discussion.

"I urge you," Borodin went on, reeling the words off a sheaf of mental notes, "to use common sense in making personal decisions. So far as public decisions go, I must inform you that I am withdrawing my battery from the area affected by the present unrest, under orders of my commander—and with the concurrence of our legal staff."

"I said—" John Delcorio began, ready to blaze up harmlessly at having his nose rubbed in a reality of which he was already aware.

"No, ofcoursewe can defeat them!" said Eunice, pirouetting to Borodin's side with a girlish sprightliness that surprised everyone else in the room as much as it did the major.