The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

Ryan knelt and began speaking into the handset, glancing sometimes up at the hospital's shattered facade and sometimes back at the Slammers captain. The only color on the priest's face was a splotch of someone else's blood.

Trimer walked to the aircar, arm in arm with President Delcorio.

Borodin and Drescher had already boarded. Neither of them would let their eyes focus on anything around them.When Pedro Delcorio squeezed in between them, the two officers made room without comment.

Father Laughlin would have followed the Bishop, but Eunice Delcorio glanced at his heavy form and gestured dismissingly. Laughlin watched the car lift into a hover; then, sinking his head low, he strode in the direction of the east stairs.

Tyl Koopman stood between his sergeant major and the UDB lieutenant. He was beginning to shiver again.

"What's it mean, d'ye suppose?" he whispered in the direction of the main stairs.

"Mean?"said Charles Desoix dispassionately. "It means that John Delcorio is President—President in more than name—for the first time. It means that he really has the resources to prosecute his Crusade, the war on Two, to a successful conclusion. I doubt that would have been possible without the financial support of the Church."

"But who

cares!" Tyl shouted."D'ye mean we've got jobs for the next two years? Who bloody cares? Somebody'd 've hired us, you know that!"

"It means," said Jack Scratchard, "that we're alive and they're dead. That's all it means, sir."

"It's

gotto mean more than that," Tyl whispered.

But as he looked at the heapsandrowsof bodies, tens of thousands of dead human beings stiffening in the sun, he couldn't put any real belief into the words.

Chapter Thirty-Six

The Slammers were gone.

Ambulances had carried their wounded off,each with a guard of other troopers ready to add a few more bodies to the day's bag if any of Trimer's men seemed less than perfectly dedicated to healing the wounded. Desoix thought he'd heard the sergeant major say something about bivouacking in the House of Grace, but he hadn't been paying much attention.

There was nothing here for him. He ought to leave himself.

Desoix turned. Anne McGill was walking toward him. She had thrown off the cloak that covered her in the cathedral and was wearing only a dress of white chiffon like the one in which she had greeted him the day before.

Her face was set. She was moving very slowly, because she would not look down and her feet kept brushing the things that she refused to see.