The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 1

Lamartiere hung the garland around his neck. Some child had picked the flowers as the only gift she could offer the man she thought had saved her. It would please that child to see him wearing them.

"I see," Lamartiere said. He heard his voice catch, but his mind was detached, dispassionate. "Celine wasn't the sort to refuse when called to duty, Father. She would have sacrificed herself as quickly for faith alone as for me. As I would very willingly have sacrificed myself for her."

He bowed and stepped past Renaud.

"Denis?" Renaud called. "If there is anything I can offer. . . ?"

"Your faith needs Hoodoo in working order, Father," Lamartiere said without looking around. "I'm going to go take care of that now."

Hundreds of civilians crowded around the tank; the vast metal bulk dwarfed them. The superweapon, the machine that would win the war. . . .

"Let me through!" Lamartiere said. People stepped aside when they saw who was speaking. "I have to get the tank repaired immediately. Everyone get back to the tunnels!"

Franciscus stood on Hoodoo's turret. He called something; Lamartiere couldn't hear him over the crowd noise. The colonel was everything a military hero needed to be: trim, armed to the teeth, and willing to sacrifice anything to achieve his ends.

Dr. Clargue sat nearby on a man-sized lump of tailings, rubbing his temples. He looked as tired as Lamartiere felt.

Lamartiere climbed up Hoodoo's bow slope. "Doctor," he called. "Get everyone out of here. It's very dangerous to be here!"

"Lamartiere!" Franciscus said. "I want you to teach me how to operate the guns. We can start right now, while the repairs are being done."

"Yes, all right," said Lamartiere, slipping into the driver's compartment. He threw the switch closing the cupola hatch before Franciscus could get in.

"Sorry, wrong button," he called over the colonel's angry shout. "Just a moment. Let me start the fans and I'll open it."

He didn't want Franciscus inside Hoodoo's turret. Lamartiere still owed something to the rebellion; and Celine had, after all, sacrificed herself for the purpose of stealing the tank.

The civilians were drifting away, but some were still too close. Lamartiere revved the fans with the blades flat. They made a piercing whine as unpleasant as fingernails on a blackboard.

Children shrieked, holding their hands over their ears. They and their mothers scampered away. Clargue chivied them with a fierceness that suggested he guessed what was about to happen.

Franciscus shouted, "You idiot, what are you trying to do?"

Lamartiere looked up at the man on the turret. "Good-bye, Colonel," he said. "Give my love to Celine if you meet her."

He closed the driver's hatch over himself. He wasn't doing this for Celine, because Celine was already dead; but perhaps he was doing it so that Colonel Franciscus wouldn't create any more Celines.

Lamartiere switched on Hoodoo's radios. The simultaneous blast of the six bombs on Franciscus' bandoliers barely made the tank shudder.

M2A4 TANK

THE IRRESISTIBLE FORCE

Lamartiere sat in the driver's compartment of the supertank Hoodoo, which he'd stolen from Hammer's Slammers as the mercenaries left Ambiorix for Beresford and another contract. The tank's 20cm main gun could smash mountains; the fully automatic 2cm tribarrel in the cupola defended her against incoming artillery as well as packing a sizable punch in its own right. She was the most powerful weapon within twenty light-years.

In theory, at least. Hoodoo's practical value to the sputtering remnants of the Mosite Rebellion would have to wait until Lamartiere and Dr. Clargue figured out how to transfer ammunition from the tank's storage magazines in the hull to the ready magazines in the turret.

"The reconnaissance drone has turned east," Clargue said over the intercom. "The AI predicts it's completed its search pattern, but I suppose we should wait a short time to be sure."

"Right," Lamartiere said, wondering if he'd fall asleep if he closed his eyes for a moment. "We'll wait."

Even with Hoodoo at rest in a narrow gorge, her internal systems and the hum of the idling drive fans made her noisy. It would have been difficult to shout directly through the narrow passage between the fighting compartment and the driver's position in the bow. The Slammers would have used commo helmets to cut off the ambient noise, but Lamartiere hadn't bothered with frills the night he drove Hoodoo out of the spaceport at Brione.

The Government of Ambiorix had decided the Mosite Rebellion was broken, so they'd terminated the mercenaries' contract to save the cost of paying for such sophisticated troops and equipment. Hoodoo was the last piece of Slammers' hardware on the planet. An electrical fault had held it and its two-man crew back when the rest of the regiment lifted for Beresford, 300 light-years away.