The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

Around them the citizens of Midway noisily celebrated their release from Freedom Party domination. In the street below whirled a round dance with hundreds of participants. A fiddler stood on a raised platform in the middle of the circle; beside him, occasionally crowding his elbow, gyrated a young woman wearing only briefs. Huber didn’t think she was professional—just exuberant and very happy. As far up and down the Axis as Huber could see there were similar dances as well as free buffets, speakers on makeshift podiums, and crowds of people drinking and singing in good fellowship.

“The Volunteers are gathering at their base on Bulstrode Bay on the northern coast,” said Danny Pritchard’s holographic image. “They call it Fort Freedom, and it’s going to be a tough nut to crack.”

Aircars spun and swooped overhead, often with sirens blaring. The drivers were as excited and as generally drunk as the people in the street. Huber had seen two collisions and heard a worse one that sent a car crashing to the ground on the other side of the Mound.

“Why us, sir?” Captain Sangrela asked. His voice was calm, but the way his hands tightly gripped the opposite elbows indicated his tension.

“Because you can, Captain,” Pritchard said simply. “Because we can’t leave ten thousand armed enemies in a state whose support we need. And because the locals can’t do it themselves—”

He grinned harshly.

“—which is generally why people hire the Slammers, right?”

The Gendarmery had been conspicuous by its absence during the events of the afternoon. Now the Point’s gray-uniformed police were out in force, though they seemed more to be showing themselves than making an effort to control the good-natured partying that was going on. The Gendarmes on foot patrol carried only pistols; those in the cruising aircars may have had carbines but they weren’t showing them.

“Ten thousand of ’em, sir?” said C-1’s platoon sergeant, a rangy man named Dunsterville. He sounded incredulous rather than afraid at what he’d heard. “You mean the guys with red sweatbands?”

“The Volunteers, yes,” Pritchard agreed with a grim nod. “You won’t have to deal with all of them—indeed, that’s why we’ve decided to move on Fort Freedom immediately. We expect that at least half of Grayle’s Volunteers will decide to stay home in the woods if they know that joining her means facing tanks. If we withdraw from the Point and the Volunteers don’t have anybody to worry about except the locals, then they’ll everyone of them march back into Midway and this time loot the place.”

When Pritchard said “we’ve decided,” he meant Colonel Hammer and his Regimental Command group. The “we” who’d be carrying out the operation meant Call-Sign Sierra, ten vehicles and less than a hundred troopers under Captain Sangrela. Huber was a volunteer, and he knew that the senior officers had all been at the sharp end in their day too …but Via! Fifty to one was curst long odds!

“Here’s a plan of Fort Freedom,” Pritchard continued. The image of his body disappeared, leaving his head hovering above a sharply circular embayment viewed from the south at an apparent downward angle of forty-five degrees. The sea had cut away the northern third of the rock walls and filled the interior. “Bulstrode Bay’s an ancient volcano. The walls average a hundred meters high and are about that thick at the base. There’s normal housing inside of the crater, but the Volunteers have also tunneled extensively into the walls.”

“Have they got artillery?” Huber asked. He was still trying to get his head around the notion of going up against five thousand armed hostiles …or maybe ten thousand after all, because staff estimates were just that, estimates, and Sierra would be facing real guns.

“The Volunteers don’t have an indirect fire capacity so far as we can tell,” Pritchard said, nodding at a good question. “Not even mortars. What they do have—”

The holographic image transformed itself into a gun carriage mounting eight stubby iridium barrels locked together in two banks; each tube had its own ammo feed. The chassis was on two wheels with a trail for towing the weapon rather than being self-powered.

“—are calliopes. We’ve traced a lot of twenty purchased by Grayle’s agents nine months ago, and it’s possible that there’ve been others besides.”

Calliopes, multi-barreled 2-or 3-cm powerguns, provided many mercenary units with the air defense that the Slammers handled through their own armored vehicles. The weapons were extremely effective against ground targets as well. A short burst from a calliope could shred a combat car and turn its crew into cat’s meat….

Pritchard’s full figure replaced the image of the calliope. “I’m not making light of the job you face,” he said. “But I do want to emphasize that the Volunteers are not soldiers. Most of them have only small arms, they aren’t disciplined, and they’ve never faced real firepower. If you hit them hard and fast they’ll break, troopers. You’ll break them to pieces.”