The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 1

A DEATH IN PEACETIME

The brothel was too upscale to have an armored street entrance, but the doorman was a wall of solid muscle beneath a frock coat in the latest style. He frowned when the nondescript aircar hummed to a halt in front of the door.

Four hard-looking men got out. Hesitating only long enough to press the button warning those upstairs to keep an eye on the closed-circuit screen, the doorman stepped into the street. "I'm sorry, gentlemen," he said, "but we're closed tonight for a private party. Perhaps—"

"We're the party, buddy," one of the men said, placing himself alongside the doorman while his partner took the other side. The other two men faced the street in opposite directions. All four wore short capes which concealed their hands and whatever they might be holding.

A fifth man, small and dapper, followed the others out of the car. His suit was exquisitely tailored. The fabric had tawny dappling on the shoulders which faded imperceptibly into the gray undertone as one's eye travelled downward.

The man nodded pleasantly toward the doorman and started toward the stairs. Movement lifted the tail of his jacket enough to disclose the pistol holstered high on his right hip.

"I'm sorry, sir!" the doorman said. "We don't allow guns—"

He tried to step in front of the little man. The guards to either side of him—they were obviously guards—shoved him back against the wall.

"You're making an exception tonight," the little man said. His shoes touched the stair treads with the tsk-tsk-tsk of a whisk broom sweeping up ashes; the men who'd initially stayed with the car followed him. "I promise I won't tell anybody."

Madame opened the upper stairway door to let the little man into the parlor. Straight-backed and dressed in severe black, she was the only woman in the establishment. In the muted lighting which the mirrors diffused rather than multiplied, she might've been anything from forty years old to twice that age.

Her face was stony and her tone coldly furious. "You have no business here!" she said. "We have all our licenses. Everything is perfectly legal!"

Six youths had been reclining on couches of plush and dark wood. They'd sprung to their feet when the doorman gave the alarm. Though Madame had gestured them back to their places, they still had the look of startled fawns.

The barman and waiter had retreated into their small lounge off the parlor. The usher had slipped into the back hallway so recently that the door was still swinging shut.

All three had the size and hard features of the doorman. The waiter in particular looked upset at being ordered away, but Madame had reacted instantly when she recognized the visitor in the closed-circuit image from the street door. No matter how badly things went, she knew she'd make things worse if she used force.

It was possible that things were going to go very badly.

"Everything legal?" the little man said. He giggled. "Oh, I very much doubt that, my dear. I suspect that we wouldn't have to search very hard to find drugs that're illegal even in these unsettled times, and . . ."

He stepped past Madame and traced his left index finger along the jawline of a youth as slim as a willow sapling. The boy didn't flinch away, but when the finger withdrew he shuddered. His head was a mass of gleaming black ringlets; all other hair had been carefully removed from his nude body.

" . . . I'm quite sure that some of your staff is under age."

He turned and faced Madame. "That's why I'm here, you see. I've come on your business, not mine, and I assure you my money's good."

The boy he'd caressed looked like an ivory carving against the red velvet upholstery. His expression was unreadable. "You're Joachim Steuben," he said.

"Rafe!" said Madame in a harsh, desperate whisper.

"You kill people," Rafe said. He didn't seem to have heard Madame. His eyes were locked with the little man's. "You killed thousands of people other places, and now you're on Nieuw Friesland."

"Rafe, if you don't—" Madame said.

"I'll quiet him!" the waiter said. He stepped out of the lounge, his fists bunched.

The little man made a barely perceptible gesture. One of the guards who'd come up with him clipped the waiter behind the ear with the edge of his hand, dropping him in a boneless heap.

"I don't know about 'thousands', Rafe," the little man said without glancing back at the waiter. "I'm Joachim Steuben, though."

He giggled. "And perhaps thousands, yes. One loses track, you know."

Rafe rose in an eel-like wriggle. Joachim held out his hand, but the boy slipped past and through the door into the back hall.

Madame stood transfixed, her mouth open, then closing again. Touching her lips with her tongue she said at last, "Sir, I'll bring him back if you'll permit me. Rafe's new here, you see, and a little. . . ."

She didn't know how to end the phrase, so her voice trailed off.

Another boy rose as if to follow. He was black-haired also, but his skin was darker and he was probably several years older.