The Complete Hammer's Slammers: Volume 3 (80 page)

After he took a leak . . .

“Lieutenant Huber?” called the receptionist as he pushed open the door to the rest room. Huber ignored him. To his surprise, the door opened again as he settled himself before the urinal. The receptionist, a middle-aged warrant officer with signals flashes on his epaulets, had followed him in.

“Sir?” the fellow said. “There’s a woman out front to see you. She’s been waiting, but I told her nobody disturbed the personnel on duty.”

“I’ve been disturbed ever since I was assigned here,” Huber muttered, “but that’s nothing new. Who is she and what’s she want?”

His tension and frustration drained away as he emptied his bladder. Was it that simple? All the trouble in life was just a matter of physical discomfort?

No, there were still the Colonel Sipajis of this world. They might have no more value than a bladderful of urine, but they weren’t as easy to void.

“Her name’s Daphne Priamedes, sir,” the receptionist said. “I don’t know what she’s got in mind, but she’s a looker, that I know.”

She must be, to get a plump, balding veteran this excited. Well, the receptionist hadn’t spent the past fourteen hours talking to the commanders of mercenary units who had an amazing number of variations on the theme of, “No, I think I should do something else instead.”

“Never heard of her,” Huber said. Right now the only thing that was going through his mind was that if he let her, she’d slow him down on his way back to the barracks and a bed. He didn’t plan to let her. He turned, closing his fly. “There a car out front to take me home?”

“She’s got a car, sir,” the receptionist said. “A big one, brand new.”

Huber started to swear and realized he didn’t have the energy for it. The receptionist got out of the way as Huber lurched toward the doorway and down the hall.

Huber hadn’t been able to find a comfortable position to sleep in, and being tired made his left leg drag worse than it would’ve anyway. Slivers of metal from both the frangible shot and the bits it’d gouged from Floosie’s bow armor had spattered him from knee to pelvis, and even the most expert nanosurgery did additional damage in removing the tiny missiles.

A striking black-haired woman stood between Huber and the outside door. She was within a centimeter of his height; her gaze was as direct as it could be without being hostile.

“Lieutenant Huber?” she said in a pleasant contralto. “I heard you tell Chief Warrant Leader Saskovich that you needed a ride. I have a car, and if you’ll permit me I’ll also buy you a better meal than you’re likely to get on your own.”

“Ma’am . . .” said Huber. He wondered if she was going to jump out of his way like the receptionist—Saskovich, apparently, and this woman had not only noticed the fellow’s name but she’d gotten his rank right—or whether Huber would shoulder her aside on his way to the door. “The only bloody thing I know is that my job doesn’t include talking to civilians. Find somebody in the public affairs section or talk to your own government; I don’t have the time or the interest.”

Through the glass front door of the building Huber could see a combat car on guard—there were no unit numbers stenciled on the skirts; it was an unassigned vehicle from Central Repair—and two aircars. One was a battered ten-place van with a Logistics Section logo on the side; a local contract employee chewing tobacco in the cab. The other was a luxury vehicle.

“My government is the Republic of Solace,” the woman said. She stiff-armed open the swinging door and held it for him. “My father is Colonel Apollonio Priamedes. You saved his life at Northern Star Farms where he’d been in command when you attacked. I want to thank you in person before I accompany him back to Solace in tomorrow’s prisoner exchange.”

Huber’s mouth opened, then closed as he realized that all the several things he’d started to say were a waste of breath. He remembered the Solace colonel limping out of the smoke to surrender, just as straight-backed as this woman who said she was his daughter.

Huber knew now what that erect posture had cost Priamedes. Because of that, and because Daphne Priamedes really was a stunner, he said, “Ma’am, I don’t want company for dinner. But if you’ll run me back to my barracks down in the warehouse district, I’ll buy you a drink on the way.”

“Yes, of course, Lieutenant,” the woman said. “And I’d appreciate it if you’d call me Daphne, but I understand that you may prefer a more formal posture. Perhaps you’re uncomfortable with the attitude toward hostilities we have on Plattner’s World.”

She strode past and opened the limousine’s passenger door for him. That was a little embarrassing, but there wasn’t a lot Huber could do about it in his present condition. Walking upright was about as much as he could manage at the moment. He braced his hands on the door and side of the vehicle to swing himself onto the seat, noticing the inlays of wood and animal products on the interior panels.

“I’m not uncomfortable, ah, Daphne,” he said, “since it’s the same attitude we mercenaries have toward each other: we may be enemies today and fighting on the same side tomorrow, or the other way around. Either way the relationship’s professional rather than emotional. But I didn’t expect to see a Solace citizen traveling openly in the UC capital when there’s a war on.”

Daphne Priamedes got in behind the control yoke and brought the car live. The vehicle had six small drive fans on each side instead of the normal one at either end; it was noticeably quieter than others Huber had ridden in.

Aircars were uncommon on most planets, but special circumstances on Plattner’s World made them the normal means of personal transportation. The per capita income here was high, the population dispersed, and the preservation of the forests so much a religion—the attitude went beyond awareness of the economic benefit—that people found the notion of cutting roadways through the trees profoundly offensive.

Only in the Solace highlands where trees were sparse and not parasitized by Moss was there a developed system of ground transportation. There a monorail network shifted bulky agricultural produce from the farms to collection centers from which dirigibles flew it to the Outer States and returned with containers of Moss.

“There’s ten generations of intercourse between Solace and the Outer States,” Priamedes said. “This trouble—this war—is only during the past six months. We need each other on Plattner’s World.”

Her eyes were on the holographic instrument display she’d called up when she started the motors; it blinked off when she was comfortable with the readouts. She twisted the throttle in a quick, precise movement.

As the car lifted, she glanced over at Huber and went on, “Besides, for the most part it’s you mercenaries fighting—not citizens. We in Solace tried to fight with our own forces at the beginning, but we learned that wasn’t a satisfactory idea.”

She smiled. Her expression as bright and emotionless as the glint of cut crystal.

“War’s a specialist job,” Huber said, keeping his tone flat. The car was enclosed and its drive fans were only a hum through his bootsoles. “At least it is if you’ve got specialists on the other side. We are, the Slammers are, and the other merc units are too even if they don’t necessarily have our hardware.”

He paused, then added, “Or our skill level.”

“As I said, we recognized that,” Priamedes said. “A disaster like Northern Star Farms rather drives the point home, particularly since it was obvious that things could have gone very much worse than even they did. Instead we’re mortgaging ten years of our future hiring off-planet professionals to do what the Solace Militia couldn’t.”

Huber didn’t speak. He regretted getting into the car with this woman, but he regretted a lot of things in life. This wasn’t his worst mistake by any means.

Northern Star was a collective farm that’d been turned into a firebase under Colonel Priamedes. He commanded an infantry battalion and an artillery battery from the Solace Militia, with a company of mercenaries whose high-power lasers were supposed to be the anti-armor component of the force.

Huber’d led the combat cars in the company-sized Slammers task force that had punctured the defenses like a bullet into a balloon. The Militia were brave enough and even well trained, but they weren’t veterans. The cars’ concentrated firepower had literally stunned them, and the mercenary lasers were too clumsy to stand a chance against 20-cm tank guns which had virtually unlimited range across flat cornfields.

In retrospect it hadn’t been much of a battle, though it’d seemed real enough to Arne Huber as he watched scores of Militiamen rise from a trench and aim at his oncoming combat cars. And all it takes is one bullet in the wrong place and you’re dead as dirt, no matter how great your side’s victory looks to whoever writes the history books.

Priamedes shook her head in inward directed anger, then turned a genuinely warm smile toward Huber. “I’m sorry,” she said. “The situation frustrates me, but that isn’t your fault and it’s not what I came to see you about. Will this place do for our drink? I like it myself.”

She banked the car slightly and gestured through her window. On Plattner’s World, there was forest even in the cities. She was pointing toward a three-story structure shaded by trees on all sides. On the roof were open-air tables, half empty at this hour, and a service kiosk in one corner with an outside elevator rising beside it. Above, a holographic sign, visible from any angle, read GUSTAV’S. The letters changed from dark to light green and back in slow waves.

“That’s fine,” Huber said. “Anywhere’s fine. I don’t know much about Benjamin.”

He’d been on seven planets besides Nieuw Friesland where he was born, and he didn’t know much about any of them. He remembered the way powergun bolts glinted among the ice walls on Humboldt and the way the whores on Dar es-Sharia dyed their breasts and genitalia blue; those things and scores of similar things, little anecdotes of existence with nothing connecting them but the fact they were fragments from the life of Lieutenant Arne Huber.

Priamedes brought them around in a tight reverse instead of angling the fans forward to slow them. The car dropped between the treetops to level out just above the gravel roadway. The elevator was descending with a pair of well-dressed men in the glass cage.

Dust puffed as Priamedes landed smoothly in a line of similar cars. City streets in the Outer States were for parking and delivery vehicles. They were almost never paved, because that would speed storm-water runoff and decrease the amount of water that penetrated the soil to nourish vegetation.

Huber reached for his door release; parts of his body decided to protest, cramping when they were directed to move. He gasped with pain, then tried to cover his weakness with a blistering curse.

“Wait, I’ll—” Priamedes said.

Snarling under his breath, Huber shoved the door open before his hostess could get around the vehicle to help him. He hopped out, forcing his left leg to work even though it felt as if somebody had turned a blowtorch on the hip joint.

She paused, turning her head away politely, and waited for Huber to join her so that they could walk to the waiting elevator together. “My father was injured in the fighting before he was captured,” she said in a neutral tone. “He got off crutches a few days ago and should make a full recovery.”

Huber laughed as the cage rose. “So will I,” he said, more cheerfully than he felt. “Look, mostly I’m just stiff from sitting at a console all day. I’m not used to desk duty, that’s all.”

That was part of why he was stumbling around, all right; and he was tense from frustration at the people he had to deal with, which was another part of the problem. But at the back of Huber’s mind was the awareness that the fragments he’d caught when the shot struck might have done damage that even time and the best medical treatment couldn’t quite repair. That he might never again be fit for a field command. . . .

“Lieutenant?” the black-haired woman said in concern.

Via, what had his expression been like? “Sorry,” Huber said, forcing a smile. “I was klicks away, just thinking of the work I’ve got to do in the morning.”

He must have sounded convincing, because Priamedes’ features softened with relief. To keep away from the subject of his health, Huber made his way to a table near the wickerwork railing and pulled out a chair for the woman. It was with considerable relief that he settled across from her, though.

A waitress approached with an expectant look. The dozen other customers were glancing covertly at them as well, their eyes probably drawn by Huber’s uniform and possibly his limp. There were a lot of mercenaries in Benjamin now, but the Slammers’ khaki and rampant lion patch were the trappings of nobility to those who were knowledgeable. On a planet as wealthy and interconnected as Plattner’s World, that meant most people.

Because of that perfectly accurate perception and because of the perfectly normal human resentment it engendered in other mercenaries, the United Cities were going to lose the war. A single armored regiment couldn’t defeat several divisions worth of enemies, many of whom were themselves highly sophisticated; and the other UC mercenaries weren’t cooperating with the Slammers the way they’d need to do to win.

“Lieutenant?” said Daphne Priamedes, loudly enough to penetrate Huber’s brown study. They were waiting for his order, of course. . . .

He swore in embarrassment. “Ah, there’s corn whiskey? I don’t remember the name for it here, but my sergeant when I was in Log Section . . .?”

Priamedes nodded understanding and said to the waitress, “Zapotec—and water, I believe, unless . . .?”

“That’s fine,” Huber said in reply to her raised eyebrow. “Anything’s fine, really.”

He didn’t know whether Zapotec was generic or a brand name; if the latter, it was probably the best available unless he’d misjudged Daphne Priamedes. Huber suddenly realized that he knew very little about anything beyond what he needed to do his job well. He and his fellow troopers wouldn’t have been nearly as effective if they hadn’t focused so completely on their jobs, but when he thought about it he felt lonely.

The waitress trotted away. Priamedes glanced around the covered patio, slapping the eyes of the others back to their own proper concerns. When she and Huber were as private as one ever is in open air, she said, “My father told me what happened at Northern Star, Lieutenant. At the end, I mean. He said it would’ve been much easier for you to kill him and his men than to capture them, but you took a considerable risk to spare their lives.”