The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

“Grayle claims that the votes in the last election were falsified and that she should’ve been elected Speaker of the Assembly,” Orichos went on. “She’s threatening to take by force what she claims her Freedom Party lost by fraud. Everybody knows that the reason most Assemblymen are residents of Midway is because Moss rangers can’t be bothered to vote!”

“Ma’am,” said Arne Huber, “I wouldn’t know about that. But if the lady thinks she’s going to use force while we’re in Midway—”

He turned his head toward her again and patted the receiver of his tribarrel.

“—then she’ll have another think coming. Because force is something I do know about.”

“Amen to that, El-Tee,” said Frenchie Deseau. He didn’t raise his voice on the intercom, but his words had the timbre of feeding time in the lion house.

It was four hours to dawn; the sky was a hazy overcast through which only the brightest stars winked. The car’s vibration and buffeting wind of passage—seventy kph, a little more or a little less— drew the strength out of the troopers who’d been subjected to it for the past half-day.

Huber sat cross-legged beside the left gun, watching the shimmering holographic display. He was too low to look out of the fighting compartment from here, but the range of inputs from Fencing Master’s sensors should provide more warning than his eyes could even during daylight.

Body heat, CO2 exhalations, and even the bioelectrical field which every living creature created were grist for the sensors to process. They scanned the gullied slopes a full three kilometers ahead, noting small animals sleeping in burrows and the scaly, warm-blooded night-flyers of Plattner’s World which curvetted in the skies above.

Tranter was sleeping—was curled up, anyway—under the right wing gun on a layer of ammo boxes. Orichos squatted behind him with her back to the armor, looking as miserable as a drenched kitten. Learoyd had just taken over the driving chores from Deseau, awake but barely as he hunched over the forward tribarrel. Huber didn’t worry about how the sergeant’d react to an alarm— Deseau was enough of a veteran and a warrior both to lay fire on a target in a sound sleep—but he certainly wasn’t going to raise the alarm.

That would be Arne Huber’s job. As platoon leader he wasn’t taking a turn driving, but neither did he catch catnaps like the rest of the crew between stints in the driver’s compartment. Fencing Master was the combat car in White Section during this leg, so Huber had the sensor suite on high sensitivity.

Task Force Sangrela was running the part of the route which Solace forces might have been able to reach for an ambush. Central hadn’t warned of enemy movement, but there could’ve been troops already in place in the region. Technically they were still within Solace territory, not that anybody was likely to stand on a technicality during wartime.

“Bloody fuckin’ hell,” Sergeant Deseau growled over the intercom. He clung to the grips of his tribarrel as though he’d have fallen without them to hold onto …which he might well have done. High-speed driving over rough terrain at night was a ten-tenths activity, many times worse than the grueling business of surviving the ride in the fighting compartment. “I wish somebody’d just shoot at us for a break from this bloody grind.”

“There’s nobody around to shoot, Frenchie,” Huber said; and as he spoke, he saw he was wrong.

Keying the emergency channel with the manual controller he’d been using to switch between sensor modes, Huber said, “White Six to Sierra, we’ve got locals waiting for us ahead. It’s six-three, repeat six-three—” the display threw up the numbers in the corner; he sure wasn’t going to have counted the blips overlaying the terrain map that fast “—personnel, no equipment signatures. Looks like dispersed infantry with personal weapons only.”

A company of infantry with small arms would be plenty to wipe out White Section if they’d driven straight into the ambush. Mind, knowing about the ambush didn’t mean there was no risk remaining, especially to the scouts on point.

“Sierra, this is Sierra Six,” Captain Sangrela snapped. His voice sounded sleep-strangled, but he’d responded instantly to the alert. “Throttle back to twenty, repeat two-zero, kay-pee-aitch. Charlie Four-six—” The sergeant commanding the infantry of White Section “—take your team ahead while they’re listening to the cars and see if you can get a sight of what we’re dealing with. Six out.”

Deseau, now wakeful as a stooping hawk, stretched his right leg backward without looking. He kicked Tranter hard on the buttocks, bringing him out of the fetal doze as the alarm call had failed to do.

Swaying, drunk with fatigue, Tranter took his place behind the right gun. He didn’t look confident there.

“Charlie Four-six,” responded a female voice without a lot of obvious enthusiasm. On Huber’s display, the four beads of the skimmer-mounted fire team curved to the right, up the slope the column was paralleling. “Roger.”