The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

Its powerguns lit the parallel street in a constant reminder of its lethal presence. A burst quivering like a single blue flash showed Suilin a hump on what should have been the straight slope of a barracks roofline across the next intersection.

The reporter fired; the empty clip ejected with thechoonkof his weapon.

Before Suilin's grenade had completed its low-velocity arc toward its target, the figure fired back with a stream of tracers that looked the size of bright orange baseballs. They sailed lazily out of the flickering muzzle flashes, then snapped past the reporter with dazzling speed.

The splinter shield above Suilin rang,and impacts sparkled on the iridium side armor.How could the Consie have missed—the reporter thought.

A tremendous blow knocked him backward.

His grenade detonated on the end wall of the building, a meter below the machine-gunner. Cooter, screaming curses or orders to their driver, squeezed his trigger button. Cyan fire ripped from both the weapon he gripped and the left wing gun, slaved to follow the point gun's controls.

Suilin didn't hurt, but he couldn't feel anything between his neck and his waistband.He tried to say,"I'm all right,"to reassure himself,but he found there was no air in his lungs and he couldn't breathe. There were glowing dimples in the splinter shield where the machine-gun had hammered it.

I'm dead, he thought. It should have bothered him more than it did.

His grenade had missed the Consie. Tracers sprayed harmlessly skyward as the fellow jumped back while keeping a death grip on his trigger.

Cooter's powerguns lit and shattered roof tiles as they sawed toward, then through, their target. The machine-gun's ammunition drum blew up with a yellow flash.

Suilin's hands hurt likehell. "Via!" he screamed. A flash of flaming agony wrapped his chest and released it as suddenly, leaving behind an ache many times worse than what he remembered from the time he broke his arm.

Both the mercenaries,faceless in their visored helmets,were bending over him. "Where you hit?" Cooter demanded as Otski lifted the reporter's right forearm and said, "Via! But it's just fragments, it's okay."

Cooter's big index finger prodded Suilin in the chest. "Yeah," he said. "No penetration." He tugged at something.

Suilin felt a cold, prickling sensation over his left nipple. "What 've you—" he said, but the Slammers had turned back to their guns.

The car must have paused while they checked him. Now it surged forward faster than before.