The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 1

The stranger put a small data cube beside the image of Joachim Steuben. "This will run in your inventory reader," he said. "It contains the full plan. I suggest you take the machine off-line before you view it, though. It's unlikely that the Directorate of Security would be doing key-word sweeps detailed enough to pick up the contents, but—"

His laugh was like bats quarrelling.

"—it would only take once, wouldn't it? So better safe than sorry."

"How are you going to manage it?" Whitey demanded, angry because he was so nervous. He's been shot at many times; he knew how to handle himself in a firefight. The thing that was happening now made him feel as though the ground was streaming away beneath his feet. "You say 'here's the plan', but what d'you know about this kinda job? You think it's easy?"

Spencer looked at the stranger's smoky features, pursed his lips, and said to his partner, "Whitey, we'll take a look at it—"

He prodded an index finger in the direction of the cube.

"—and make our go, no-go on what we think."

He shifted his gaze back to the stranger. "That's how Whitey and me've always worked, buddy," he said, raising his voice slightly. "If we don't like the mission, we don't take it. We figure we're not paid to commit suicide, we're paid to kill other people. And we're bloody good at it!"

"I know, Sergeant," the stranger said; there was more real humor in his voice now than there had been in his previous cracklings of laughter. "That's why I'm here."

His blurred visage turned to Whitey. Occasionally his eyes glinted through the polarizing fabric.

"Next week there'll be privy council meeting in the Maritime Commission building on Quetzal Point, Trooper Bernsdorf," the stranger said. "There's a knoll three kilometers west of the building. When the meeting breaks up, the sergeant will have a shot."

The distortion cape rippled as he gestured through it toward the data cube.

"The details are in there. If you decide there's anything else you need—a tribarrel, for example, or perhaps a vehicle—hang a white rag on your rear doorlatch. I'll come back to get the details."

Spencer rose and walked to the degreasing tank in which air bubbled through a culture of petroleum-eating bacteria. "I don't need a tribarrel," he said, reaching into the tank and coming out with a long, sealed tube. "You want to knock down a wall, a tribarrel does the job a treat. But if you're just trying to drop one man—"

He twisted the top off the container and slid a shoulder-stocked powergun onto the workbench. It should've been turned in when Spencer retired from the Slammers. An unassigned weapon, picked up in the bloody shambles that'd been an Iron Guard barracks, had gone into the armory in its place.

"—this old girl has always done the job for me."

Spencer shook his head as he lifted the weapon. The stubby iridium barrel's 2cm bore channeled plasma released from precisely aligned copper atoms in the breech. The bolts were as straight as light beams and remained lethal to a human at any range within the curvature of a planet's surface.

"I don't remember how many times I've rebarreled her," Spencer said affectionately. "She never let me down."

"Five-hunnert-an-three kills," Whitey said proudly. "Planned shots, I mean, not firefights where you never know who nailed what."

"I'll use a sandbag rest," Spencer said, facing the hidden figure. "Whitey'll spot for me and pull security, like always. I don't see any bloody thing but what's in my sight picture when I'm waiting, and at three klicks that's not very much. If there's a shot, I'll take it."

He was a different man with the big weapon cradled in his arms. The change wasn't so much that Spencer projected confidence as that he'd become an utterly stable thing: a boulder or a tree with centuries of growth behind it.

"All right, Sergeant," the stranger said. "That appears satisfactory. I don't suppose I'll be seeing you again."

He touched the vertical door handle, then reached back beneath the cape and did something hidden. When his gloved hand came out again, it held a coin of gold-colored crystal that'd been pierced for a chain. He dropped it on the bench between the sack of credit chips and the image of Joachim Steuben.

"This is my lucky piece," he said. He chuckled. "If you ever get to Newland I suppose it's still worth a hundred wreaths, but I think you're going to need the luck more than you will the money."

He closed the door behind him, a shadow returning to the night's other shadows.

Whitey carried the data cube to the inventory computer in the service port between the work bay and the front office. "If he gets you a clear line of sight, you don't need luck, Spence," he said.

Spencer didn't reply. He was sliding a twenty-round tube of ammunition into the butt-well of his weapon.