The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

A toolkit/ammo pouch on the left side of Vierziger’s belt balanced the weight of the pistol he carried on the right. He took out a spanner and turned the white, shimmering barrel off the weapon’s receiver and dropped it on the floor. Rapid fire had eroded the iridium to half its original thickness. The remainder of the refractory metal was so hot that it deformed when it bounced on the cast flooring.

Vierziger fitted a fresh barrel—the kit held two—and reloaded the pistol, then holstered it again. The process of replacing the shot-out barrel had taken less than thirty seconds.

The house stank of ozone and bodies ripped apart and half-burned. The plasticizer of the grenade had a pungent reek, unpleasant and probably poisonous in a confined space. Vierziger ignored it.

Some of the men’s clothing was afire. An arc of garbage centered on the grenade explosion burned also, though all the fires seemed likely to smolder out rather than build into a major conflagration.

Vierziger’s attaché case was just inside the living area, where he’d set it behind a pile of trash when he entered the house behind Suterbilt. He opened the case and took out a cylindrical blasting device twenty centimeters across and half that in depth. He peeled the protective layer off one end, stuck the charge on the front wall near the door, and twisted the dial of delay fuze to one hour.

Vierziger had printed a message on a card before he left Hathaway House. He stuck that to the wall just below the explosive device, then surveyed the room for one last time.

One of the bodies twitched like a decorticated frog. The burning clothes had smothered themselves in veils of bitter smoke. Behind the gray, the hologram danced, more enticing for the partial coverage than it had been when the performers’ tired flesh was uncompromisingly revealed.

Vierziger opened the door. The card on the wall read:

REMOVE THE AMBIANCE AND GET BACK ASAP

“All right, I’ll tell him!” the Frisian called over his shoulder as he stepped outside.

Standing with his hand on the door he held ajar, Vierziger said to the sensor tech, “Daun, they’re having problems with the hue of their hologram projector. I told them you could fix it in three minutes at the outside.”

He gestured Niko toward the doorway. “Get at it. I don’t want to wait longer than I have to.”

“Say!” said the factor. “I don’t want to wait at all! I’ve already wasted half an hour.”

Vierziger closed the door behind Daun and stood with his back to it. “Relax,” he said. “Remember, you said you needed to use the ambiance more often anyway. Besides, if those turds don’t have the projector to amuse them, who knows what they’ll get up to?”

Suterbilt sighed. “Yes, I suppose there’s that,” he agreed.

He grimaced. The van’s headlights were on. This far out of town, their sidescatter was the only illumination. “Do you really think expensive changes will be necessary?” the factor asked.

Vierziger shrugged. “It’s really a pair of changes,” he said. “Part of the guard force has to be outside. Not really to do anything—just to be a tripwire so that if they’re killed, the men inside have warning of an attack. But you also have to provide firing ports for the guards inside.”

“That’s impossible!” Suterbilt said. “You can’t cut holes in these walls!” He slapped one to underscore his point.

“It’s not impossible,” the Frisian said. The lighted half of his face drew up in a deliberate sneer. “It’s simply very expensive— as I said. And necessary. I’ll have a detailed plan for you in two days.”

The door began to swing open. Vierziger stepped forward, moving Suterbilt back a pace. “Any trouble, Daun?” Vierziger asked over his shoulder.

Niko looked at his fellow Frisian. “No,” he said. “No, I took care of my end.”

He didn’t say anything more during the drive back to the TST offices, and he only once looked directly at Johann Vierziger.

Vierziger smiled at him.

“Stay in the car,” Coke ordered harshly. He thrust his sub-machine gun at Pilar. Her hands wouldn’t close on the dense metal and plastic. The weapon slipped into her lap. “If anybody gives you trouble, shoot them. It’s off safe and there’s one up the spout. Just fucking use it.”

He’d stopped the port operations van in front of a six-story structure on the spaceport end of Potosi. Except for the location, the building was very similar to the one which held the Ortegas’— which held Pilar’s—apartment. The ground floor was a club, The Red Rooster, which was beginning to get under way for the evening.

The doorman/bouncer realized that Coke intended to leave the vehicle parked in front while he went up the stairs beside the club’s entrance. The doorman stepped toward Coke and shouted, “Hey dickhead!”

Coke pointed his left index finger at the man’s face. His right hand hung out at his side. The hand was crooked on a level with the butt of his pistol.

“Don’t even think about it,” the Frisian warned. The flat assurance of his voice was more threatening than a snarl.