The Complete Hammer's Slammers: Volume 3 (27 page)

An internally lighted button controlled each lock-plate from the inner face of the door. Coke thumbed the buttons in turn, switching them from green to red.

“No problem,” he said without emphasis. He donned the cape again. His hands and the needle stunner vanished beneath the gray shimmer.

“Matthew?” Pilar said. “Please? Call me when you’ve gotten back to Hathaway House safely.”

Coke looked over his shoulder at her. “I’ve got various business tonight,” he said. “If it goes well, I’ll probably see you tomorrow when I send another message capsule off from the port.”

Pilar caught the door behind him and kept it from swinging to. She watched through the crack.

Instead of going down to the street, Coke started up the stairs toward the brothel.

Moden and Esteban Rojo could have finished the job in an hour and a half, if they’d had good luck and the right tools. They had neither.

Removing the Stellarflow’s lower electronics module required either special equipment or great care. Moden was careful, but years of vibration had crystallized a plastic bearing. The joint snapped, and then they had to cut the other three straps as well because the clamps had frozen.

Four hours after they’d started—straps replaced with pieces cut from sheet stock, bearing freed in a sonic bath from the multitool, and journals cannibalized from one of the pair of redundant trunk-lid cantilevers—Esteban ran the fans up and down in perfect unison before shutting off the power.

“As good as new!” he announced.

Moden stretched mightily. “Which means,” he said, “it’s almost as good as a Frisian aircar that would have cost half as much free-onboard . . . but Via, some people have to have their Terran technology.”

He’d acted in place of a hydraulic jack when the bow of the car had to come up twenty centimeters. Judging from the weight, Stellarflow had used iridium for the frame. Moden ached, but it felt good to have been doing physical labor again.

“Will you eat with us, Sten?” Esteban asked. He tossed a rag to Moden so that the big man could wipe his—hand. Esteban’s mouth opened in embarrassment

Moden pinned the rag between his knees and dragged his hand through it determinedly. “Got the big chunks off,” he said.

He looked at the mechanic. “At your apartment, you mean, Esteban? I don’t want to be in the way.”

“We have a cafe,” Esteban said with dignity. The Frisian had skirted as delicately as possible the question of whether Esteban could afford to feed guests, but the well-meant concern still rankled. “My wife and children run it, Pito and our daughter Annunciata; and I help when there’s time. But I ask you there as a guest, not a customer, please?”

“Then I’d be honored,” Moden said. He flicked the rag through the air, caught it in a fold; and folded it a second time, into a square, against his thigh.

Rojo’s cafe was on the building’s second floor, with the entrance and sign—The Sacred Heart—near the mouth of the alley down which Moden had walked to reach the garage behind. A dozen locals were present in the single small room, two families with children as well as individual adults. The food odors were piquant and wonderful.

The girl who shuttled plates from the serving window was in her early teens and strikingly beautiful. “My daughter, Annunciata,” Esteban said proudly. “Nunci, I want you to meet Master Sten Moden!”

The girl dropped into a curtsy, though she carried a serving plate in either hand and there wasn’t, Moden would have thought, space enough for her knees to dip as they did.

The patrons of The Sacred Heart sat at a single table supported on six pillarlike legs. The table was of native wood with a subtle grain, polished by use into an attractive brazen patina. Seating was on the pair of full-length benches. There was barely enough room between the cafe’s walls and the ends of the table for patrons to edge by to the side away from the door—the side from which Nunci served.

“Rosaria!” Esteban called. A woman, older and much fatter than Annunciata, stuck her head out of the serving window.

The mechanic gestured to the cafe’s patrons, all of whom were staring at him and his huge companion already. “Everyone! This is our great good friend, who repaired the aircar which had me tearing out my few remaining hairs. Rosa, your special chicken and rice for our guest—and plenty, he has the strength of ten men and no doubt he eats like ten!”

“Well, I’ll be able to do justice to the meal,” Moden said. The undoubted virtues of Hathaway House didn’t include the cooking of Master Hathaway, who attempted that task.

Esteban led the Frisian to the open seat in the center of the table, facing the door. Moden’s knees straddled the table’s central leg. There was a general shifting and good-humored discussion to create a second place into which Esteban squeezed himself.

Pito popped out of the door to the kitchen and presumed living quarters, carrying a basket into which he dropped dirty dishes. They were plastic and crude, locally pressed from exterior sheeting.

Esteban whispered in his daughter’s ear. She passed the message to her mother at the window and received two small glasses with a bottle of ruby liqueur, three-quarters full.

“From my father-in-law’s farm,” Esteban said as he poured. “That’s where we get the food as well.”

Annunciata reached past to put a serving platter, not a normal dish, of chicken with rice and a variety of heavily processed vegetables on the table before Moden. “Grandpa Mordechai won’t grow gage,” she said. “He says people must eat, mustn’t they?”

“To your health!” Esteban said, raising his glass.

“And yours,” the Frisian responded. He jostled the neighbor on his right in grabbing his glass. The liqueur was thick, almost a syrup, with a fruity flavor. Not unpleasant, and there was enough alcohol to bite the back of Moden’s tongue.

“Both syndicates have been after Mordechai,” Esteban said with a frown. “L’Escorial pushed him off his old farm, so he terraced a hillside that nobody claimed. I helped, the whole family helped, and his neighbors too. He’s stubborn. I agree with him, but I worry.”

The food was delicious. “Have things gotten worse recently with the sides arming?” Moden asked through a bite.

“No, no,” Esteban said. “Since so many of the gunmen came here to Potosi, there’s fewer left to bother the farmers. Most of the farms grow food for themselves, but they grow gage too for one syndicate or the other. So that they’ll be protected.”

A family got up to leave. The wife paid Rosaria with three separate credit chips. From the prices chalked beside the serving window, the five dinners totaled less than ten pesos—one and a half Frisian thalers. The citizens of Potosi didn’t have easy access to credit terminals which could have combined the small amounts into a single chip for convenience.

The outer door opened. The chatter stilled. Three men wearing blue shouldered in. All carried powerguns: a pair of sub-machine guns and the third man festooned with four separate holstered pistols as well as a selection of knives.

Esteban stood up, awkwardly since he had to step over the bench to do so. Citizens—his neighbors—slid to either side, half-crouching toward the ends of the room.

“Gentlemen,” Esteban said, “this is not a bar. I’m sure you’ll find better entertainment elsewhere.”

The leader of the Astra gunmen appeared to be the man with the pistols. “You got a red sign downstairs,” he said. “We thought we’d check the place out.”

“The sign is the sacred heart of our lord Jesus Christ!” Rosaria blurted from the serving window. “We have nothing to do with L’Escorial here!”

“Nunci,” Esteban said in a low voice. “Go help your mother in the kitchen.”

“She stays,” ordered an Astra. He wagged the muzzle of his sub-machine gun to emphasize the point.

“They used to have a red sign,” the gunman to the leader’s other side tittered. “It had a little accident when we come by it.”

The trio moved further into the cafe. The local patrons flowed behind them on both sides and out the door, like damping fluid when a shock absorber compresses.

Moden wore a pistol in a belt holster. He wasn’t a particularly good shot. He certainly wasn’t good enough to drop three men in the fraction of a second he’d have before the sub-machine gun aimed at him blew his head off.

“Please,” Esteban said. “This is just a cafe. We have no sides, we are poor people.”

The leader took the bottle of liqueur and drank directly from it, eyeing Moden past the plane of sluggish red fluid. He handed the bottle to the man aiming at Moden. “Who’s the crip?” he asked.

“My name’s Sten Moden,” the Frisian answered calmly. His hand lay on his lap. The closed flap of his holster was in sight of the gunmen. “I’m from Nieuw Friesland, a businessman.”

“He’s a leftie!” said the Astra who’d warned Nunci not to leave. “Get it? A leftie!”

Without warning he triggered a single shot. The cyan bolt struck near the top of the kitchen door. Wood blew outward in blazing splinters, leaving a hole the size of a soup plate in the thin panel.

Rosaria screamed. Nunci stood transfixed, and Esteban’s fists balled.

Sten Moden gripped the table’s central leg. He lifted and hurled forward the massive piece of furniture with all his strength. Both sub-machine guns fired, into the tabletop and ceiling as the huge club pistoned toward the three Astras. Moden felt the shock of the bolts through his hand, but the table was too solid for the light charges of a pistol or sub-machine gun to tear it apart.

The tabletop hit the far wall, or almost, with a soggy thump. Moden pulled back, then slammed his weapon toward the wall again with his shoulder behind it.

There was a gurgling cry. When Moden withdrew the table the second time, sub-machine guns and other accoutrements clattered to the floor behind it.

Annunciata screamed. She threw herself into her father’s arms.

Moden gave a convulsive gesture that slammed the table back down on its six legs. He was trembling all over. He had to brace his hand on the scarred top in order to continue standing. Powergun bolts had blown smoldering craters in the wood.

Moden didn’t try to look over the table to see what had become of his victims, though he knew he ought to. One of the Astras might still have enough strength to pull a trigger. . . .

But probably not.

The Rojo family spoke or cried in four vocal ranges, all of them incoherently. The Frisian closed his eyes and opened them, drawing deep breaths.

The cafe’s outer door flew open.

Mary Margulies lunged in behind a sub-machine gun. Niko Daun followed her with a set expression and another sub-machine gun.

The would-be rescuers looked at Moden, then looked at their feet. “Blood and martyrs,” Niko said.

Margulies straightened from her crouch. She put her weapon on safe and cleared her throat. “Ah,” she said. “Barbour, you know he monitors the audio from the helmets. He thought you might need a hand.”

Sten Moden looked at his palm. His adrenaline-charged grip had left white valleys where it held the corners of the table leg.

“No,” Moden said. “One was enough.”

Cantilucca: Day Three

The outer fence surrounding L’Escorial’s gage warehouse was woven wire, five meters high and topped with a Y of razor ribbon. The forest had grown to and entwined with the wire despite evidence of desultory attempts to burn it back. The diamond teeth of Coke’s powered cutting bar opened a man-sized hole with one sweep of his arm.

The vegetation in the four meters between the fencelines was cut to knee-height scrub. There was a single row of buried toe-poppers, located so that the mower could straddle them. Daun marked a safe pathway with white tape.

The sensor-controlled directional mines placed every ten meters along the inner fence were even less of a danger. Daun turned them all off with a deactivation signal, just as the watchmen would have done while mowing or carrying out other maintenance operations.

“Who do these bozos think they’re dealing with?” the sensor tech muttered disdainfully to Coke.

“Bozos like the Astras behind us,” Coke replied.

Well behind them. Coke had decided he and Daun would breach the defenses alone. Vierziger wasn’t happy to be a kilometer back in the forest along the road, but that was the only way Coke could be sure the Astras would stay where they belonged.

The last thing Coke wanted was a line of trucks to come driving up while he and Niko were in the middle of the wire. He’d seen relief in the sensor tech’s eyes when they went over the plan the first time. Daun had more reason than most to doubt the competence of indig forces.

“Wait here, sir,” Daun said crisply.

The sensor tech darted across the cleared area to the nearest directional mine, a lump against the inner fence. After a moment’s manipulation there, he moved ten meters down the line to another lump. He tossed something to the ground.

“All right, sir,” Daun said, this time using helmet intercom. “I’ve pulled the fuzes. I didn’t want somebody turning them on again at a bad time. It can happen by accident, even, lightning or a plasma discharge.”

“No, we wouldn’t want that,” Coke agreed under his breath.

He was smiling. He remembered he’d had doubts about how the kid would perform after the experience which got him transferred to a survey team. Just fine, so long as Daun could be confident of his backup . . . and for that, so far, so good.

The warehouse was a huge hangar constructed primarily of structural plastic, but strengthened at the corners by pillars of reinforced concrete. A bank of lights on the roof was intended to flood the interval between the fencelines. Many of the bulbs had failed without being replaced.

It didn’t really matter. The guards didn’t patrol the exterior, and there were no windows in the building proper from which to observe their surroundings.

The gage syndicates had achieved parity of incompetence. That was fine until somebody arrived who knew his ass from a hole in the ground.

Daun set a small transducer close to the nearest of the inner fencepoles. He stepped swiftly toward the next support, holding a similar transducer and unreeling the thin cable which tied it to the box he’d set on the ground.