The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

“All right,” said Huber. “Sierra, this is Fox Three-six. I’ll be accompanying the liaison officer into the red buildings across the way. If anything pops, you’ll know where to come and get me.

Three-six out.”

“Roger that, Three-six,” growled Captain Sangrela. “Six out.”

Huber looked at the Gendarmery captain. “Why me?” he said.

“Let’s go,” Orichos said, nodding to the doorway. “A recording team from the Speaker’s staff is joining us outside.”

They went out. The ushers were backed against the walls, watching Huber and Orichos with silent concern.

“I want you rather than someone from the Point …” Orichos said, showing that she wasn’t ignoring Huber’s question after all. “Because Grayle knows that her Volunteers outnumber the Gendarmery by several times. Your regiment’s an unknown quantity, so she’ll be less inclined to resort to violence.”

Huber noticed that she said “ …the Gendarmery …” rather than “ …from my organization….” Orichos was a member of the police force only as a matter of administrative convenience. In their own self-image, intelligence personnel are a breed apart—and generally a law unto themselves as well.

Two black-haired young women waited on the porch with lens wands and satchels of recording equipment. One technician was plumpish with a broad mouth, the other razor-thin with three vertical blue lines on her right cheek. Huber couldn’t tell whether the marks were tattoos or makeup.

Grayle and her entourage were walking back across the Axis to their compound. The older male was speaking into a hand communicator as he gestured forcefully with the other arm. The compound gates were open; the squad waiting there wore red headbands and carried carbines openly.

“Come along,” Orichos said to the recording technicians as she strode past and started down the steps. They fell in behind obediently, looking excited but not frightened. They obviously didn’t have any conception of what they were about to get into.

Trooper Learoyd waved from Fencing Master; Huber nodded in response. He was operating on trained reflex now. His intellect had dug itself a hole from which it viewed its surroundings in puling terror, but the part of him that was a soldier remained fully functional.

If things broke wrong, Task Force Sangrela couldn’t get Huber out of the Freedom Party headquarters. The whole Regiment in line couldn’t do that, though it could pulverize the buildings and everybody in them easily enough.

That wouldn’t help Huber while he was inside. He wasn’t going to fight his way out through the hundreds—at least—of armed Volunteers inside with him, either. Well, it’d be what it’d be….

On the lowest of the three terrace landings, Orichos turned her head and said, “This is of course dangerous, Lieutenant; but I don’t want you to imagine that it’s a suicide mission.”

Huber shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what I think,” he said. “It’s my job.”

Oddly enough, the words brought him a degree of comfort. They reminded him that he was here by choice, however dangerous “here” turned out to be. And by the Lord—Arne Huber couldn’t clear out the compound alone, but if push came to shove the Volunteers who took him down’d know they’d been in a fight.

The road surface was more irregular than it’d seemed while Huber was riding over it in a combat car; repeatedly his foot slipped in a rut or scuffed a ridge he hadn’t noticed because his attention was where it belonged, on the armed guards waiting for him in the gateway. He imagined taking this same route while mounted on Fencing Master. The thought made him grin, and maybe because of that expression the solid phalanx of Volunteers parted to let Huber and his companions through without jostling.

Orichos looked over her shoulder and said, “Begin recording now,” to the technicians.

The thin one sniffed and replied tartly, “We’ve been recording since you came out of the building, ma’am. We have orders from our supervisor.”

Orichos nodded without evident emotion. Huber wondered if she were nervous or if like him she was following by rote the path she’d planned while there was time for cool reflection.

They entered the compound. Melinda Grayle stood with the older male assemblyman in the doorway of the building ten meters ahead of them. Grayle was still in the white and red outfit she’d come from the Assembly with, but her companion had changed into black battledress set off by a red headband; he carried a carbine and wore a powergun in a belt holster.

Huber didn’t see the blond assemblyman. He might be inside the building, of course. Aircars, mostly battered-looking private vehicles— the large trucks were garaged in an annex outside the walls—filled the grounds within the compound. They were parked so tightly that except for the path between the gate and the central building, anyone walking across the tract would have to worm his way through and sometimes over cars.