The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

The Slammers were used to people wanting to kill them. Major Joachim Steuben, the Regiment’s Provost Marshal, was obviously used to the Slammers themselves wanting to kill him.

Huber opened the door and entered. The building was a standard one-story new-build with walls of stabilized earth and a roof of plastic extrusion. It was a temporary structure so far as the Slammers were concerned, but it’d still be here generations later unless the locals chose to knock it down.

It was crude, ugly, and as solid as bedrock. You could use it as an analogy for the Slammers’ methods, if you wanted to.

The door facing the end of the hallway was open. A trim, boyishly handsome man sat at a console there; he was looking toward Huber through his holographic display. If it weren’t for the eyes, you might have guessed the fellow was a clerk….

Huber strode down the hall, staring straight ahead. Some of the side doors were open also, but he didn’t look into them. He wondered if this was how it felt to be a rabbit facing a snake.

I’m not a rabbit. But if half the stories told about him were true, Joachim Steuben was a snake for sure.

Before Huber could raise his hand to knock on the door jamb, the man behind the desk said, “Come in, Lieutenant; and close it behind you.”

A holographic landscape covered the walls of Joachim Steuben’s office; flowers poked through brightly lit snow, with rugged slopes in the background. The illusion was seamless and probably very expensive.

“You know why you’re here, Huber?” Steuben asked. Everything about the little man was expensive: his manicure, his tailored uniform of natural silk, and the richly chased pistol in a cut-away holster high on his right hip.

The only chair in the office was the one behind Steuben’s console.

“I’m here because of the ratfuck at Rhodesville, sir,” Huber said. He held himself at attention, though the major’s attitude wasn’t so much formal as playfully catlike.

Instead of staring at the wall over Steuben’s shoulder, Huber met the major’s eyes directly. If he hadn’t, he’d have been giving in to fear. Because Major Joachim Steuben scared the crap out of him.

“Close enough,” Steuben said as though he didn’t much care. “What’s your excuse?”

“Sir!” Huber said, truly shocked this time. “No excuse, sir.”

It was the Nieuw Friesland Military Academy answer, and it was the right answer this time beyond question. Platoon F-3’s commander had started to disembark his unit without waiting to issue sidearms and to cycle ammunition for the vehicles’ tribarrels up from their storage magazines. Five troopers had died, a sixth had lost her left arm to a ricocheting slug, and it was the Lord’s mercy alone that kept the damage from being worse.

Steuben raised an eyebrow and smiled faintly. His console’s holographic display was only a shimmer of light from the back side, so Huber didn’t know whether the major was really viewing something—Huber’s file? A stress readout?—or if he just left it up to make the interviewee more uncomfortable.

Which would be a pretty good trick, as uncomfortable as Huber felt even before he entered the office.

“A fair number of people in the United Cities think it’d be a mistake to go to war with Solace, Huber,” Steuben said calmly. “They want to use the way you gutted Rhodesville as an excuse to cancel the Regiment’s contract and go back to peaceful negotiation with Solace over port fees. Do you have any comment about that?”

Huber licked his lips. “Sir,” he said, “everything my platoon did at Rhodesville was by my direct order. No blame whatever should attach to any of my troopers.”

Steuben laughed. It was a horrible sound, a madman’s titter. “Goodness,” he said. “An officer who has complete control of his troops while he’s driving a damaged combat car? You’re quite a paragon, Lieutenant.”

Huber licked his lips again. He had to pull his eyes back to meet Steuben’s. Like looking at a cobra….

“For the time being,” the major continued, suddenly businesslike and almost bored, “you’ve been transferred to command of Logistics Section, Lieutenant Huber. Your office is in Benjamin proper, not Base Alpha here, because most of your personnel are locals. You have a cadre of six or so troopers, all of them deadlined for one reason or another.”

He laughed again. “None of the others have burned down a friendly community, however,” he added.

“Yes sir,” Huber said. He felt dizzy with relief. He’d thought he was out. He’d been pretending he didn’t, but he’d walked into this office believing he’d suddenly become a civilian again, with no friends and no future.

Major Steuben shut down his display and stood. He was a small man with broad shoulders for his size and a wasp waist. From any distance, the word “pretty” was the one you’d pick to describe him. Only if you were close enough to see Steuben’s eyes did you think of snakes and death walking on two legs….