The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 1

Lamartiere guided the tank past the cones straggling as they followed a seam in the bedrock. Overlying sand kept the water from evaporating. He knew that lemons from the Boukasset had a reputation for flavor, but because he'd never visited the region he hadn't wondered how terrain so barren could grow citrus fruit.

Hoodoo had slowed to a crawl when she was still a hundred meters from the high walls of the shrine. Lamartiere cut his fan speed but angled the nacelles sternward again. The tank slid the remainder of the way forward under perfect control.

Lamartiere ruefully congratulated himself on his skill. He was probably the only person in the Boukasset who knew how difficult it was to drive a 170-tonne air-cushion vehicle.

He slid open his hatch. What looked from a distance like the shrine's entrance had been closed by sandstone blocks many years in the past. A woman leaned over the battlements. Beside her, a basket hung on a crane extending from the wall. A great geared wheel within raised and lowered it. The basket was apparently the only way in and out of the shrine.

"Tell your leader that we need help to spread the camouflage cover over this tank," Lamartiere called to the woman. "Otherwise we'll be spotted if the government overflies us."

Men and women were approaching from the lemon orchard, though the sprawled extent of the plantings meant it would be half an hour before the more distant folk reached the shrine. There were hundreds of people, far more than Lamartiere had expected.

"The Brothers have been sheltering refugees," Clargue realized aloud. He sat on the edge of his hatch, his legs dangling down the turret's smooth iridium armor.

Lamartiere looked up at his companion and hid a frown. The doctor had always seemed frail. Now he was skeletal, worn to the bone by strain and the frustration of not being able to find the command that would transfer ammunition and permit Hoodoo to use her devastating weaponry.

"Go away!" the woman shouted. Her left hand was bandaged. "Go back to the hell you came from and leave us alone!"

An old man in black robes and a pillbox hat appeared on the battlements beside her. He and the woman held a brief discussion while Lamartiere kept silent.

The woman unpinned the gearwheel, letting the basket wobble down. The man held his hat on with one hand as he bent forward. "Please," he said. "If you gentlemen will come up, it will be easier for us to discuss your presence."

Lamartiere looked at Clargue. "One of us should stay with . . ." he said.

The doctor smiled. "Yes, of course," he said, "but you should carry out the negotiations. I wouldn't know what to say to them."

"And you think I do?" Lamartiere said; but he knew Clargue was right. The doctor was smarter and older and better educated; but this was war, and Clargue was utterly a man of peace.

Denis Lamartiere was . . . not a man of peace. He and Clargue were operating in a world at war, now, however much both of them might hate it.

Lamartiere got into the basket. He let the sway of it ratcheting upward soothe his tension.

The basket was still several feet below the stone coping when the pulley touched the fiber cage connecting the rim to the draw rope. The old man helped Lamartiere onto the battlements. Normally Lamartiere would have scrambled over easily by himself, but his head was swaying with fatigue even though the basket was steady again.

The old man wore a clean white tunic with a red sash under the black robe. Though his beard was gray, not white, his face bore the lines of someone much older than Lamartiere would have guessed from a distance.

"Sorry, ah, Father?" Lamartiere said. "You're in charge of the shrine?"

"I'm Father Blenis," the old man said. "We try to work cooperatively here in the presence of the Blessed Catherine, but because of my age the others let me speak for us all."

"It's not your age!" the woman said. She'd pinned the ratchet, locking the wheel so that a breeze didn't send the basket hurtling down uncontrolled. She looked at Lamartiere and continued: "Father Blenis is a saint. He's taken us in after your kind would have let us all die—once you'd stolen everything we had."

"Marie," Father Blenis said. "This gentleman—"

He looked at Lamartiere and raised an eyebrow.

"Lamartiere, Denis Lamartiere," Lamartiere said. "Dr. Clargue and I won't stay any longer than we need to, ah, do some work on Hoodoo. On our tank."

Three of the people coming in from the field were nearing the base of the walls. A thin younger man was pushing ahead of a woman while a much larger fellow clumped along close behind.

"It's the job of whoever last comes up the walls to lift the next person," Marie said with a challenging glare at Lamartiere. He first guessed she was well into middle age, but she might be considerably younger. Hunger and hard use could have carved the lines in her face.

And anger. Anger was as damaging to a woman's appearance as a spray of acid.