The Complete Hammer's Slammers: Volume 3 (31 page)

Angel sat heavily on the bed, clutching the liquor bottle to him as if it were the only warmth in a world of ice. “Look, El-Tee,” he said to the wall, “I just want you to know I’ve got it under control now. I’m fine, and in a day or two I’ll have all my gear strac. I just want you to know that.”

“I’m glad to hear that, Angel,” Mary Margulies said as she rose to her feet. “I’d better check on the major. I’ll see you around.”

Twenty-odd L’Escorial gunmen lounged in the open barracks, laughing and talking. The general volume lowered as Margulies left the cubicle, but she heard some pointed gibes.

She didn’t look to either side as she walked to the stairs at the other end of the room. If she looked at the men, she would kill them all.

It wasn’t the liquor or the stench of Angel’s room that made Margulies want to vomit. It was the vision of what her driver had become. . . .

And the warning of what might become of Mary Margulies herself, if she ever tried to reenter civilian life.

Wind kicked dust and litter down the street. The eastern horizon was a mass of cloud, though the late afternoon sun still shone onto Potosi.

Coke drove one of the rented jitneys to the street from the walled courtyard at the rear of Hathaway House. Margulies waited for him at the head of the alley. The angles of a weapon in a patrol sling distended her light cape.

Coke disengaged the torque converter and braked beside her. “I don’t need a guard, Mary,” he said. “I’m just going to run up to the port and send a capsule off.”

Margulies squatted to put her face on a level with his. Her smile was crooked; she hadn’t said much since the pair of them left the meeting in L’Escorial headquarters that morning.

“You could lower the top and squeeze your cyclo into the back of the port van,” she said. “I guess that’s what you’re planning to do. But I could also drive it back myself and save you the trouble. What do you figure?”

Coke looked at the security lieutenant. “Yeah,” he said. “That sounds like a good idea. Hop in.”

The jitney had four seats in back, facing outward in pairs from the central spine. Margulies sat crossways, so that she looked forward over Coke’s right shoulder.

“I felt like getting out of Potosi for a bit,” she explained quietly. “This isn’t much out, but it’s out.”

“What the hell is that?” Coke said. He had started to reengage the drive train. Instead, he took his hand from the knob and touched the 2-cm weapon he’d thrust muzzle-down between his seat and the spine in back.

Three red-painted vehicles drove down the road from the spaceport at 30 kph, their sirens blowing. The first and last were armored trucks of the sort the team had seen before. The convoy’s pace was probably governed to their best speed.

An air-cushion limousine drove between the two escorts. The vehicle was fitted with appliqué armor—which couldn’t have been very heavy or the battery-powered drive fans wouldn’t have been able to keep the car floating on a bubble of air. A scarlet film darkened the windows so that they were nearly opaque from the outside, but Coke thought the driver was the only occupant.

Coke switched his commo helmet to channel one, the command push. “Stand by,” he ordered. “Over.”

He didn’t know what was happening. He didn’t think it was an immediate problem, but by definition he couldn’t be sure of that. There was a tiny click behind him as Margulies took her sub-machine gun off safe.

L’Escorial gunmen spilled out of the gateway, thronging the street from which the sirens had driven all civilian traffic. Engines started up in the courtyard of Astra headquarters, but none of the Guzman personnel showed themselves.

The wind gusted again, promising the storm would sweep over Potosi in a few minutes. The open-sided jitney wasn’t much protection, but it wouldn’t be the first time Coke got soaked in the line of duty.

He keyed the command channel again. “Bob,” he ordered, sure that Barbour would be at the console. “Upper right quadrant, feed me a composite of what’s going on across the street. Over.”

“Roger,” the intelligence officer replied. A quarter of Coke’s faceshield brightened with the scene in front of L’Escorial HQ, viewed by miniature cameras Daun had emplaced on the other side of the convoy. “Audio?”

“Negative,” said Coke, “but maybe later. Out.”

The Lurias, father and son, walked stiffly through the gateway. Raul leaned on Ramon’s arm and used a cane with his other hand.

The sirens wound down to silence. The leading armored car fired a warning burst up the street past Astra headquarters. The tribarrel functioned properly, chugging out twenty bolts of deep cyan before the gunner took his thumbs off the butterfly trigger.

The limousine’s doors lifted simultaneously like gull wings. A slim man got out on the other side of the vehicle. Without being ordered to, Barbour manipulated the camera view to give Coke a close-up of the newcomer’s face. The man was young and handsome, with features as fine-boned as those of a bird of prey.

“Pepe!” Ramon Luria called.

Raul walked/staggered two steps forward and embraced his grandson. “You’ve come at a good time, my boy,” the Old Man said.

The sound of the wind rasped syllables away from the words the men across the street spoke. Lightning flashed behind the cloudbank, but there was as yet no audible thunder.

“Bob, patch in the audio,” Coke directed in a whisper. “Out.”

“Trouble with our neighbors?” said Pepe Luria with liltingly ironic tones that now came through Coke’s helmet. “Well, it had to come sometime, didn’t it? I brought some toys that may come in useful.”

Pepe reached back inside the limousine. When he straightened again, the camera showed that he had buckled on a belly-pack controller. He was holding a sphere some twenty centimeters in diameter in his hands.

“Bloody hell,” Margulies whispered. “That’s a firefly. All we need is a few of those things flying around.”

“Watch!” Pepe commanded triumphantly.

The sphere floated out of his hands. A corona of purple sparks bathed its lower surfaces. Coke’s commo helmet crackled minusculely in response to the discharge. The crowd of gunmen let out a collective wheeze of surprise.

“They won’t last long,” Coke muttered. “Who are you going to get to maintain fireflies on Cantilucca?”

“They’re six to a set,” Margulies said “Do you suppose he’d have brought more than one set?”

“I can direct them. . . .” Pepe continued. He worked one of the tiny joysticks on his belly pack. The firefly danced and staggered nervously.

“He’s not very good at it,” Margulies said.

“Nobody can use those stock control sets,” Coke said. “Not even one bird at a time.”

“Bet Barbour could thread needles with it if he had to,” Margulies replied.

“Or I can let them act for themselves on programmed instructions!” Pepe said.

He took his hands away from the controls. The firefly sailed up the street at a smooth walking pace, two meters in the air. The sphere kept the same face forward at all times. It only appeared to rotate because of the spinning static discharge which supported it.

“I hate those bastards,” Coke murmured. “With a man, you can watch his eyes or his hands. I always refused to serve around the fireflies in the field.”

The device was now a hundred meters up the street. It stopped and began to turn very slowly on its axis.

Pepe’s belly pack projected a holographic view of what the firefly “saw.” “I can watch things with them,” he announced. He poised his finger on the control lever.

“And I can do more than watch!”

He pressed the lever in. The firefly lighted the facades around it with the rapid-fire flashes of five pistol-caliber powergun bolts. The bar adjacent to where the device hovered was The Blue Ox, an Astra hangout. The sign over its armored door disintegrated in flame and molten plastic.

The firefly turned another ninety degrees and drifted purposefully back. A man stuck his head out of The Blue Ox, gaped up at the blasted sign, and ducked inside again.

Pepe Luria stood arms akimbo, facing up the street toward the returning firefly. “Widow Guzman!” he cried. “I have six of them, Widow! And I can tell them to attack men wearing any color I choose, just the color! Do you hear me, Widow?”

Only the wind answered.

Pepe linked arms with his father and grandfather. He walked with them into the L’Escorial courtyard, laughing with bubbling promise. A red-clad subordinate jumped into the limousine to drive it and its cargo within.

The firefly’s ammunition was expended. It trailed along behind its master. The glow of its iridium barrel faded.

“Let’s get to the port,” Coke said, but he stepped off the driver’s saddle and motioned Margulies to take his place. “You drive. I’ve got to make some additions in the message I’m sending home.”

The first drops of the storm hit, cratering the dust. The temperature had dropped ten degrees, but Coke felt colder than the weather justified.

Cantilucca: Day Five

The telephone in the Hathaways’ private quarters rang. Coke, lying in a haze of almost-sleep directly above the sound, snapped awake.

Moments later someone hammered on the hotel’s front door. “Quick, open up!” a man called from the street. “I have to see the Frisian major at once! The Old Man needs him!”

It was three hours before dawn. Coke pulled on his commo helmet and switched it to the command channel. “Stand to,” he ordered, probably needlessly, as he slid his feet into his boots. “Out.”

He keyed channel five, the push Barbour chose as a patch to Cantilucca’s land-line communications. The transceiver Niko Daun had placed in the Hathaways’ handset was the size of a matchhead and far more reliable than the phone to which it was attached.

Coke already wore his trousers and tunic. The night before was the first time on Cantilucca he’d taken his boots off to sleep. He guessed he’d return to field SOP from here on out.

“Hello?” Georg Hathaway croaked into the phone receiver. The innkeeper sounded both nervous and disoriented.

“Quick, you old fool and don’t start arguing about it!” ordered the voice on the other end of the line. “Tell that hireling Coke that he’s to come at once to Astra headquarters. At once! This is Adolpho Peres. And I warn you, little man, if there’s any delay in Coke arriving, I’ll take it out of your hide!”

“But—” Hathaway gasped.

“At once!” Peres shouted. He broke the connection with a bang.

Barbour had been sleeping beside his console in the lobby. Coke met the rest of the team, armed and ready, in the upstairs corridor. Below, Mistress Hathaway was talking to the L’Escorial messenger through the viewport in the door.

“I’ll take care of the Astras,” Johann Vierziger volunteered. Like Coke, he wore a cape over his weapons. “Peres feels we’re soulmates, after all.”

His smile was as thin as the corona of a collapsed star.

Evie Hathaway ran up the stairs. “Major Coke!” she called. “Major Coke!”

“Right,” said Coke. “I’ll take L’Escorial. Sten, you’re in charge here—”

He flicked a quick finger at Margulies, forestalling the comment poised between her open lips.

“—and no, I don’t want company, I want a reaction force. If both sides are calling us, there’s probably no immediate danger, but I want all of you ready to move as needed.”

The Hathaways had stopped at the head of the stairs as they saw the Frisians were up and alert.

“Please, Major—” Georg began.

Coke waved his hand. “It’ll be taken care of,” he said. “We’re on our way.” He slid between the locals with more haste than courtesy, though that would have been the Hathaways’ choice had they been asked.

“There’s an envoy from Delos,” Bob Barbour called as Coke and Vierziger passed him. “A Madame Yarnell from the gage cartel on Delos, and she is not amused. From the way the Astra leaders talk, she’s the cartel’s troubleshooter—with the emphasis on ‘shooter.’”

“Why can’t they do this stuff at a decent time of day?” Coke muttered as he helped the sergeant pull open the heavy door.

“Because they’re not decent people, Matthew,” Vierziger said. “Of course, neither are we.”

“You’re the major?” the L’Escorial messenger said as Vierziger pushed past him. Then to Coke, “You’re the major.”

“Right,” Coke agreed, striding across the street. Vierziger headed for Astra HQ at a gliding pace, not quite a jog.

“What’s he doing?” the L’Escorial bleated, running to catch up with Coke but glancing toward Vierziger.

“Minding his own business,” Coke said. “Pray to the Lord that you never find yourself his business.”

He’d expected to find the L’Escorial courtyard full of armed men. Instead, half-dressed L’Escorials were trying to back their armored trucks into the garage beneath the headquarters building. The second-floor barracks was lighted. Coke could hear Pepe Luria shouting for his gunmen to get out by the back way at once.

Ramon Luria stood in the building’s doorway, looking alternately inside and out toward the courtyard. The messenger scampered up to him.

Ramon raised his hand to strike. “You idiot, Pierro!” he shouted. “I told you to bring the Frisian major!”

“He’s—” Pierro shrieked.

“I’m here,” Coke said. The courtyard was indifferently lighted, primarily by the headlights of the armored vehicles. The Frisian in his gray cape was a moving shadow.

“Coke!” Luria cried. “Thank the Lord you’re here! Look, you have to stop your troops coming. At once! You have to hold them back until Madame Yarnell has left Cantilucca!”

“Nobody at Camp Able’s going to make a decision until they have your money in hand, Luria,” Coke said harshly. “According to your paymaster, Suterbilt, that’s still several days. You needn’t have kittens.”

Despite his aggressive tone, Coke felt cold inside. His daily message capsules were shipped by first available transport to Nieuw Friesland, but there was at least a week between sending and receipt. Coke wondered what the Lurias would do to him if they knew he had recommended against taking the proffered contract, whether or not Suterbilt came through with the earnest money.

The Old Man lurched along the hallway toward his son. Gunmen, groggy with drink and gage, were being hastened onto the back stairs by their more alert fellows. Pepe Luria fought his way down the stairwell through them. He wore the firefly controller, but none of the spheres were themselves in evidence.