The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

“I don’t …” Huber said, then realized that among the things he didn’t know was how to end the sentence he’d begun. He let his voice trail off.

“Recent events have demonstrated that you’re smart and that you’re willing to use your initiative,” the major said. His fingers were tented before him, but his wrists didn’t quite rest on the touchpad beneath them.

The smile became amused again. He added, “Also, you can handle a gun. You’ll have ample opportunity to exercise all these abilities in A Company, I assure you.”

“Sir …” said Huber’s lips. He was watching from outside himself again. “I don’t think I have enough …”

This time he stopped, not because he didn’t know how to finish the sentence but because he thought of Steuben’s hell-lit smile the night before. The words choked in his throat.

“Ruthlessness, you were perhaps going to say, Lieutenant?” the major said with his cat’s-tongue lilt. “Oh, I think you’ll do. I’m a good judge of that sort of thing, you know.”

He giggled again. “You’re dismissed for now,” Steuben said. “Go back to Logistics—you’ll have to break in your replacement no matter what you decide. But rest assured, you’ll be hearing from me again.”

Arne Huber’s soul watched his body walking back down the hallway. Even his mind was numb, and despite the closed door behind him he continued to hear laughter.

The Political Process

The air above Fencing Master sizzled just beyond the visual range; some of the farm’s defenders were using lasers that operated in the low-ultraviolet. Lieutenant Arne Huber sighted his tribarrel through his visor’s thirty percent mask of the battlefield terrain and the units engaged. He swung the muzzles forward to aim past Sergeant Deseau’s left elbow and gunshield.

If Huber fired at the present angle, the powerful 2-cm bolts would singe Deseau’s sleeve and his neck below the flare of his commo helmet. He wouldn’t do that unless the risk to his sergeant was worth it—though worse things had happened to Deseau during his fifteen years in Hammer’s Slammers.

“Fox Three-one,” Huber said; his helmet’s artificial intelligence cued Foghorn, another of the four combat cars in platoon F-3. “Ready to go? Fox Six over.”

A rocket gun from somewhere in the Solace defenses fired three times, its coughing ignition followed an instant later by the snap-p-p! of the multiple projectiles going supersonic. At least one of the heavy-metal slugs punched more than a hole in the air: the clang against armor would have been audible kilometers away. No way to tell who’d been hit or how badly; and no time to worry about it now anyway.

“Roger, Six, we’re ready!” cried Sergeant Nagano, Foghorn’s commander. He didn’t sound scared, but his voice was an octave higher than usual with excitement. “Three-one out!”

Huber figured Nagano had a right to be excited. Via, he had a right to be scared.

“Costunna, pull forward,” Huber ordered his own driver, a newbie who’d replaced the man whom a buzzbomb had decapitated. “Three-one, rush ’em!”

The Northern Star Farm was a network of cornfields crisscrossed by concrete-lined irrigation canals. In the center were more than twenty single-story buildings: barns, equipment sheds, and barracks for the work force. The layout was typical of the large agricultural complexes with which the nation of Solace produced food not only for her own citizens but for all the residents of Plattner’s World— when Solace wasn’t at war with the Outer States, at any rate.

Technically, only the United Cities were at war with Solace at the moment. Everybody knew that the other five Outer States were helping fund the cost of hiring Hammer’s Regiment, but Solace couldn’t afford not to look the other way.

The civilians had fled, driving off in wagons pulled by the farm’s tractors. The buildings and canals remained as a strongpoint where a battalion of Solace Militia and a company of off-planet mercenaries defended howitzers with the range to loft shells deep into the UC.

Colonel Hammer had sent Task Force Sangrela, one platoon each of tanks, combat cars, and infantry, to eliminate the problem.

Fencing Master began to vibrate as Costunna brought up the speed of the eight powerful fans which pressurized the plenum chamber and lifted the combat car for frictionless passage over the ground. The thirty-tonne vehicle didn’t slide forward, however. “Go, Costunna!” Huber screamed. “Go! Go! G—”

Finally Fencing Master pulled up from the swale in which she’d sheltered during her approach to the target. Huber’s helmet careted movement all along the canal slanting across their front at thirty degrees to their course: Solace Militiamen rising to fire at Foghorn, which was already in plain sight.