The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

Cooter shrugged. "After a couple days," the big man said, raising his arm absently to block a branch swishing past his gunshield, "it don't help anymore. And your ears ring like a sonuvabitch about that long after. Better 'n getting your ass blown away."

"Hey," said Gale cheerfully. "Promise me I'll bearoundin a couple days and I'll drink sewage."

Suilin set the cone and squeezed it. There was a jet of cold against his skin, but he couldn't feel any other immediate result.

Flamethrowerbroke into open terrain, a notch washed clean when the stream below was in spate. The car slid down the near bank, under control but still fast enough that their stern skirts sparked and rattled against the rocky soil. Water exploded in a fine mist at the bottom as Rogers goosed his fans to lift the car up the far side. They cleared the upper lip neatly, partly because the bank had already been crumbled into a ramp by the passage of earlier vehicles.

Blue Two had been visible for a moment as the tank made its own blasting run up the bank. NowFlamethrower

was alone again, except for sounds and the slender-boled trees through which the task force pushed its way.

"Lord, why can't this war stop?" Dick Suilin muttered.

"Because," said Cooter, though the reporter's words weren't really meant as a question, "for it to stop, either your folks or the World Government has gotta throw in the towel. Last we heard, that hadn't happened."

"May a' bloody happened by now," Gale grunted, looking sourly at the sky where stars no longer shared their turf with commo and recce satellites. "Boy, wouldn't that beat hell? Us get our asses greased because we didn't know the war was over?"

"It'snottheWorldGovernment," the reporter snapped. "It's the Terran Government, and that hasn't been the government on

thisworld for the thirty years since we freed ourselves."

Neither of the mercenaries responded. Cooter lowered his head over his multifunction display and fiddled with its dials.

"Look, I'm sorry,"Suilin said after a moment. He lifted his helmet and rubbed his eyes. Maybe the Wide-awake was having an effect after all."Look, it's just that Prosperity could be a garden spot, a paradise, if it weren't for outsiders hired by the Terrans."

"Sorry, troop,"said Gale as he leaned past Suilin to open the cooler on the floor of the fighting compartment. "But that's a big negative."

"Ninety percent of the Consies' rebornon Prosperity," Cooter agreed without looking up. "And I don't mean in the enclaves, neither."