The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

Lift fans howled through the shutdown sizzle of the landing engines. The rounded prow of a combat car burst through the fringe of forest which remained between the survey team and the LZ. The vehicle’s wing tribarrels covered the sides, but the commander’s weapon forward pointed straight at the van.

Coke stepped clear of the others, waving his sub-machine gun butt-upward. The combat car dropped to idle a meter from his feet. The legend on its scarred bow read Cutting Edge.

More vehicles deployed through the forest to either side. They were accompanied by squads of infantry riding one-man skimmers.

The commander of the leading car tilted up his tribarrel and raised his visor so that he could face Coke directly. “I’m Captain Garmin,” he announced, “with my C Troop, First of the First and L Troop, Third of the First for infantry. I’m in acting command, but I’m supposed to turn the force over to Major Coke if he hasn’t been incapacitated when we land. Are you Coke?”

You’re supposed to fucking what?

Aloud Coke said, “I’m Coke, but what are you doing here?” With a company of combat cars and a company of FDF infantry!

Garmin grinned broadly. Coke remembered him vaguely from back in the days of the Slammers, a non-com who’d gotten a field commission.

“The colonel took your initial reports and cut a deal with the Marvelan Confederacy,” Garmin explained. “We’re to clean a couple gangs off Cantilucca for them. Orders didn’t say anything about the Heliodorus Regiment, but I don’t guess that’ll change anything important.”

“I’ll be …” Coke muttered. He didn’t finish the thought because he didn’t know what the finish should be. “You’ve got just the two companies?”

“Yessir, but we’re not cadre and trainees,” Garmin said. “Most everybody in both troops wears the pin.”

The captain tapped the left side of his breast with an index finger. His clamshell armor didn’t show citations, but his meaning was clear: the expeditionary force was made up of Slammers veterans and soldiers with whom the veterans felt comfortable to serve. That was still true for much of the 1st Brigade of the Frisian Defense Forces.

“Right,” said Coke as the next sequence of actions cascaded through his mind. “Your troopers are ready to go, Captain?”

“My troopers are gone, Major,” Garmin corrected with justifiable pride. “Both troops have completed disembarking.”

He coughed and added, “The Obadiah is armed and has her own security element, sir. I’d figured to get to work with my entire force—if you hadn’t been around.”

“Right, hit them before they get organized,” Coke agreed. “Bob, set up in—”

He looked to his side. The intelligence officer had already re-erected his console, backing it against the parked van.

Barbour glanced up from a display of the Potosi area including the spaceport. Mauve icons denoted the Heliodoran forces. A platoon-sized Heliodoran detachment was probing Potosi, but the bulk of the regiment milled around the vessels on which it had landed.

“This’ll do, sir,” Barbour said. “I’m already patching data to the main com room of the ship. You can access it from there.”

He nodded up to Captain Garmin. “We’ve got sensors throughout the area of operations,” Barbour explained to the newcomer. “I’ll hand you targets on a plate.”

Garmin blinked in surprise. The officer who’d unloaded two troops inside of three minutes could appreciate professionalism in another man too.

“Niko, stay with Bob as security and a gofer,” Coke ordered. “The rest of us’ll need a car.”

Who ever heard of running central intel from a shade tree? But Barbour was right, so long as he had a link to the nearby ship, it was as good a place as the next. “You others—”

“I’ll drive,” said Johann Vierziger. “It’s not my favorite slot, but I’m good enough at it.”

“I’ll give you my XO’s command car,” Captain Garmin said. “It’s—”

“Negative, Captain,” Coke interrupted. “You will give me a combat car. The one you’re in will do fine. If you want to ride into a firefight closed up in a can, be my guest—but I don’t.”

Coke hopped onto the skirts of Cutting Edge. “ASAP, Captain!” he prodded. Moden and Margulies were beside him—the logistics officer still shouldering his brace of heavy missiles. Vierziger mounted the bow slope and thumbed out the car’s surprised driver.

“I—” Garmin began, then swallowed a protest that he knew wasn’t going to do the least bit of good. “Yes sir,” he said as he swung over the far side of the fighting compartment. He took with him only his personal weapon—a grenade launcher—and an AWOL bag of possessions.

A good man. And willing to be a good subordinate.

Niko Daun looked up in disappointment as the team’s combat veterans crewed their new vehicle. Somebody had to keep an eye on the immediate surroundings while Barbour concentrated on his console. The sensor tech was the right person for the job …but he’d rather have been going along.