The Complete Hammer's Slammers: Volume 3 (82 page)

Either way, the car and both troopers were going to be in combat very shortly—unless the UC faced reality and surrendered. The Colonel’d have to throw everything in to stop the Solace juggernaut, and it wouldn’t be enough.

The building’s open window had screens whose static charge repelled dust. The door with the stenciled sign SIGNALS 2 wasn’t screened, so Huber stepped inside quickly and closed it behind him. Three troopers looked at him through the displays of their specialized consoles.

“Is Lieutenant Basime here?” Huber asked. “I was told—”

Doll Basime stepped out of a side office, looking elfin although she wore issue fatigues without the tailoring some rear-echelon officers affected. “Arne! Come on in. Yeah, I’ve been at Central the past three weeks. Are you okay, because from what I’d heard . . .?”

“Hey, I’m walking around,” Huber said with a laugh. “That’ll do for now.”

Doll’s office was really a cubicle, but it had a door as a concession to her rank. She closed it behind Huber and motioned him to the chair behind the console, taking the flip-down seat on the wall for herself.

“You’re going to be a REMF like me from now on, Arne?” she asked, smiling but obviously concerned. She and Huber had been good friends at the Academy, a relationship simplified by the fact that neither had any sexual interest in men.

“Just for now,” he said as he sat down carefully. “I’m getting movement back day by day, and it doesn’t hurt much anymore.”

He shrugged, wishing he could truthfully say more. It felt really good to take the weight off his left leg, and that scared him. “A trade representative arrived from Nonesuch for a meeting with the Colonel and wound up in the wrong place. I got to bring him back here.”

Doll’s face went grim. “Do you know anything about what’s going on, Arne?” she asked. She patted her console. “Because I wasn’t about to eavesdrop on the Colonel’s private meetings.”

“Could you?” Huber said, interested.

She grinned, a more familiar expression. “Yeah,” she said, “but I couldn’t do it without leaving a trail that the counterintelligence people could follow. I don’t want to discuss that with Joachim Steuben.”

“It’d be a short discussion,” Huber said, also with a smile of sorts. Major Steuben was as pretty as Doll herself. Frequently his duties involved killing somebody, a task at which Steuben was remarkably good. Inhumanly good, you might say.

“I don’t know anything about Lindeyar except he seemed to expect a red carpet and wasn’t best pleased not to have one,” Huber said. He rubbed his neck; Doll gestured to the box of tissues on the console.

“Doll?” he went on, meeting her eyes. “Do you know how bad it is out there?”

She shrugged in turn. “I know it’s not good,” she said. “My section’s job is to keep up the links with friendly units, so I see all the traffic whether I want to or not.”

“Solace is pushing us everywhere,” Huber said. He was glad to talk to somebody. Misery wanting company, he supposed, and he knew he could trust Doll. “We’re just trying to block their advances.”

He shrugged again and went on, “The Waldheim Dragoons are landing at Port Plattner in a day’s time. They’re mechanized and brigade strength, maybe a thousand combat vehicles. They’ve got powerguns and there’s three 5-cm cannon in each platoon. Those’ll take out a tank at short range, and a combat car’s toast any time they hit it.”

Doll made a moue and patted her tight black hair with her fingertips as she absorbed the information. “I can tell you,” she said, staring toward the bulldozed wasteland past the slanting louvers, “that the UC isn’t expecting the arrival of any significant reinforcements in the next ten days. I’d have been warned to make sure there’d be circuits clear.”

“It wouldn’t matter,” Huber explained. “Solace is landing the Dragoons in a single lift. In a week or less they’ll be organized and move out. It’d take a month to unload a brigade in what passes for spaceports in the UC, and it’d take longer than that to put the dribs and drabs together as a fighting force. Via, what we’ve got now isn’t a coherent force except for the Regiment!”

“Could Nonesuch do anything?” Doll asked. “They’re the major player in this arm of the galaxy.”

“Lindeyar isn’t somebody whose good will I’d want to depend on,” Huber said. He chuckled at the thought. “But I sure don’t see a better hope.”

He was still wearing his commo helmet out of habit. The faceshield was raised, so the attention signal chimed in his ear instead of being a flashing icon. At the same time Doll’s switched-off console lit under Central’s control.

Colonel Hammer’s face coalesced out of pearly light. He looked grim, though that was normal for the few times Huber had seen the Colonel make a Regiment-wide announcement.

“Listen up, troopers,” Hammer said. Huber and Basime stared at the display. Hammer’s hard gray eyes were locked with theirs, despite the varied angles, and with those of everyone else who viewed the transmitted image. “Orders’ll be coming down in two hours. Be ready to move with your field kit. This means everybody. There’ll be reassignments of rear echelon personnel to line slots where they need to be filled.”

The Colonel rubbed his forehead; for a moment he looked very tired. His expression hardened again and he went on, “You’ve been the best soldiers every place you’ve fought. It’s no different here. Do your jobs, troopers; and if I do mine as well as you’ve always done yours, we’re going to pull this off yet!”

The image shrank and vanished; the memory of the Colonel’s words hung a moment longer in the small office. Huber got to his feet.

“Going to get your kit together, Arne?” Doll said as she squeezed aside to let him past.

“That’s next,” Huber said. “First I’m going to see the Colonel.”

He grinned at Doll as he opened the door. He felt numb, and there was a glowing wall in his mind that blocked off all the future except the next five minutes or so.

“First . . .” Huber said as he stepped into the outer office. “I’ve got to make sure I’m going back to the line!”

Huber strode toward the TOC entrance, his left leg stiff but not slowing him up a bit. He didn’t know how he was going to bluff his way through the guards, but as it chanced he didn’t have to. They’d heard the Colonel also, and they knew a lot of people were going to be moving fast on Regiment business.

Half a dozen figures came up the ramp from the TOC at the same time as Huber reached the wire going the other way. He unhooked the gate and pulled it open, then closed it behind him when they’d passed.

The last one through was the civilian, Lindeyar. He reached back and caught Huber’s arm over the wire. “You, Lieutenant!” he cried. “There’s to be a vehicle to carry me to Benjamin!”

Huber hooked the wire loop to the gate’s frame. He pulled his arm away, suppressing a momentary desire to slap the civilian back on his haunches with the same movement. He nodded to the guards and shuffled down the ramp, keeping to the right side as three more officers came out of the buried trailers with set expressions. They were on their way to duties that weren’t limited to staring at a display as other people fought a war. . . .

Huber grabbed the door before it closed; the air puffing from the interior was cool. The man coming out now was Colonel Hammer himself, with Major Kreutzer—the S-4 Personnel Officer—just behind him. Kreutzer’s arm was raised; he was in an agony of wishing he dared to physically restrain his commanding officer.

“Sir!” said Huber, stepping in front of Hammer.

“Not bloody now!” the Colonel snarled. He looked as though he might bull past. Huber braced himself, but there was no contact.

“Sir, you said you owe me,” Huber said, pitching his voice loudly enough to be heard over the sound of vehicles spinning up all around the base. “I’m collecting now. I want to go back to the field.”

Behind Kreutzer were three other officers, trying to catch Hammer before he went off without answering their questions. Warrant officers sat at consoles to either side of the narrow aisle, immersed in their displays.

“Huber?” Hammer said. His face thawed like ice breaking up on the surface of a river. “Via, yeah, you’re going back if you’re able to walk.”

He looked over his shoulder at the personnel officer. “Kreutzer, you wanted a CO for L Company?” he said. “All right, put Huber in the slot. And brevet him captain when you get a chance.”

“No sir!” Huber said. He’d expected the fury in Hammer’s expression, so it didn’t slow him down as he continued, “Sir, I’ve never commanded infantry and this is no time for on-the-job training. Send me back to F-3.”

“You only get away with crossing me if you’re right, Lieutenant!” Hammer said; and smiled again, minusculely. “Which you are this time. Kreutzer, got any suggestions?”

“Yancy in L-2’s senior enough,” Kreutzer said. He shrugged. “We’ll see if she can handle it. There’s not a lot of choice, not now.”

“Not a bloody lot,” Hammer agreed. “All right, and we’ll transfer—Algren, isn’t it? The newbie we put in F-3 to L-2. Get on with it.”

He pushed past Huber. The S-4 locked down his faceshield and passed the orders on, his voice muffled by his helmet’s sonic cancellation field. Huber fell in behind the Colonel, heading back to the surface and an aircar to take him to wherever platoon F-3 was

while the movement orders were being cut. Lieutenant Arne Huber was going home.

Huber could’ve held a virtual meeting, but for his first contact with F-3 since his medevac he preferred face-to-face. The platoon could still scramble in thirty seconds if they had to; as they well might have to. . . .

Fox Three-eight was straight out of Central Repair and hadn’t been named yet. Until this moment Huber hadn’t seen either the vehicle or its crew, three newbies commanded by a former tank driver named Gabinus who’d just been promoted to sergeant.

Its forward tribarrel, tasked to sector air defense, ripped a burst skyward. One of the newbies jumped.

“Relax, trooper,” Sergeant Deseau said, making a point of being the blasé veteran. “They’re just sending over a round every couple hours to keep us honest. If one ever gets through, then they’ll start shelling us for real.”

Nothing would get through while elements of the Slammers were stiffening the defenses of Benjamin. This shell popped above the northern horizon, leaving behind a flag of dirty black smoke. The sun was low above the trees, though it’d be three hours before full dark. Three hours before the start of the mission.

“For those of you who don’t know me . . .” Huber said. Because Three-three had been knocked out in his absence, eight of the wary faces were new to him. “I’ve been at Central for the past three weeks, and I’m glad to be back with F-3 where I belong.”

“And we’re bloody lucky to have you back, El-Tee,” Deseau muttered. “It’s going to be tough enough as it is.”

It’s going to be tougher than that, Frenchie, Huber thought, but aloud he said, “We’re part of Task Force Highball—” the whole Regiment had been broken up into task forces for this operation; Captain Holcott of M Company was leading Task Force Hotel “— with F-2, Battery Alpha, and the infantry of G-1 riding the hogs and ammo haulers. We’ll have a tank recovery vehicle, but it’ll be carrying a heavy excavator. If a car’s hit or breaks down so it can’t be fixed ASAP, we combat loss it and proceed with the mission. Got that?”

A couple of the veterans swore under their breath; they got it, all right. An operation important enough that damaged vehicles were blown in place instead of being guarded for repair meant the personnel involved couldn’t expect a lot of attention if they were hit, either.

“I’m in command of the task force,” Huber continued. “Lieutenant Messeman of F-2 is XO. We’ve got six cars running, they’ve got four. There’ll be six hogs—” self-propelled 200-mm rocket howitzers “— and eleven ammo vehicles in the battery, and G-1 has thirty-five troops under Sergeant Marano.”

“Thirty-five?” Sergeant Tranter said. “I’d heard they were down to two squads after the holding action at Beecher’s Creek.”

“Sergeant Marano got a draft from Base Alpha an hour ago,” Huber said grimly. “They’ve all had combat training even if they’ve been punching keys for the past while. They’re Slammers, they’ll do all right.”

“So what’s the mission, El-Tee?” Deseau said. “We’re going to hit the hostiles that’re pushing Benjamin?”

“Come full dark, we’re going to break through the Solace positions around Benjamin,” Huber said. “Other units will continue to defend the city. When we’re clear, we’ll strike north as fast as we can run.”

“What d’ye mean, ‘north’?” asked a sergeant Huber didn’t know. He was a grizzled veteran with a limp, probably transferred back to a line slot under the same spur of necessity that had returned Huber to F-3. “How far north?”

“All the way to the middle of Solace,” Huber said flatly. “We’re going to take Port Plattner before Solace gets its latest hires into action. We’ll cut all Solace forces off from their base and leave them without a prayer of resupply.”

“Blood and Martyrs,” the sergeant said; Deseau was one of several who muttered some version of “Amen to that!”

“That’s what we’re going to do, troopers,” Huber said. The left side of his body was trembling with adrenaline and weakness. The future spun in a montage of bright shards, no single one pausing long enough to be called a hope or a nightmare.

“That’s what we’re going to do,” he repeated, “or we’ll die trying.”

He laughed, and half the veterans around him joined in the laughter.

A battalion of UC militia held the portion of the Benjamin defenses a klick to F-3’s southwest. From there scores of automatic carbines snarled unrestrainedly. The electromagnetic weapons used by all the Outer States fired with a sharper, more spiteful sound than chemical propellants; the fusillade sounded like a pack of Chihuahuas trying to pull down an elephant. Occasionally a ricochet bounced skyward, a tiny red spark among the gathering stars.

“What’ve they got to shoot at?” asked Padova from the driver’s compartment. Rita Padova had proved solid when it came down to cases, but she didn’t like twiddling her thumbs and waiting for the green light. “Did somebody jump the gun, d’ye think?”