The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

“Why do you want to stay in uniform so badly?” Dascenzo asked.

Moden smiled, amused at himself. “Because I screwed up,” he said. “I therefore owe a debt. For a while I thought I should kill myself—I suppose you know that?”

Dascenzo nodded, tapping the data-gorged console without taking his eyes off Moden’s.

Moden nodded also. “I decided that wouldn’t pay anybody back,” he continued. “I don’t know who I owe, you see, but that wouldn’t help anybody. I—I believe that if I’m given duties to perform, then someday I’ll be able to …balance the account.” He barked a humorless laugh. “Does that make me crazy, Colonel?” he asked.

“Captain Moden,” Dascenzo said, “‘crazy’ isn’t a term I like to use when discussing professional soldiers. What I do know, however, is that if all you want is a chance to do your duty—I’d be a traitor to Nieuw Friesland if I took you out of her service. You’re dismissed, Captain.”

Dascenzo rose and extended his right hand across the desk to shake Moden’s hand. The psychiatrist was smiling sadly.

Earlier: Trinity

The sound dived into the night of his mind, twisting deeper like a toothed whale hunting squid in the darkness a thousand fathoms down. It found him, gripped him, and tore him back to surface consciousness from the black gage coma in which he slept.

He didn’t know his name. He didn’t know where he was. But the whine of the base unit to which he’d plugged his commo helmet was the call of duty, and not even the half-dozen stim cones of the past evening could deny his duty.

He stabbed the speaker button, cueing the unit to continuous operation. “Go ahead,” he croaked.

He couldn’t see anything. Existence was a white throb shattered by jagged bands of darkness.

“Cap’n, it’s Filkerson,” a man said, his voice pitched high and staccato. “That load of local-manufacture pyrotechnics that arrived today, I can hear the crates, they’re chirping, and I don’t like it a bit!”

Shards of light spun. They reformed suddenly into present surroundings and the past life leading up to them:

He was Captain Sten Moden, Base Supply Officer serving the regimental field force of Frisian troops on Trinity. He was in semi-detached quarters, three rooms and a bath connected by a dogtrot to the Base Intelligence Officer’s suite.

The earthen berm surrounding Trinity Base’s ammo dump was 400 meters to the west of the officers’ lines. Filkerson was sergeant of the dump’s guard detachment tonight, which meant this was a real problem.

“Right,” Moden said. “Alert the emergency team. Start dousing the crates now, don’t take any chances. Are they in a bunker?”

Spasms wracked his muscles, but the aftereffects of the gage would pass shortly. It was like being dropped into ice water while soundly asleep. Why in hell did a crisis have to blow up the one night out of a hundred that he overdid it on stim cones?

“Blow up” wasn’t the most fortunate thought just now.

“No sir, there wasn’t time!” Filkerson said with an accusatory tone in his voice. “This is the batch that came in after hours, and you told us to accept it anyway!”

“I know what I did,” Moden said flatly. He’d donned his trousers and tunic while talking. Now he pulled on his boots and sealed their seams. He didn’t bother with the strap-and-buckle failsafe closure. “Handle your end, Sergeant. I’ll be with you as soon as I make a call. Out.”

He broke the contact by lifting his commo helmet from the base unit. He settled the helmet on his head with one hand as he switched the base to local and keyed a pre-set.

As he waited for the connection, Moden shook himself to rid his muscles of the last of the gage tremors. He was coldly furious, with Loie Leonard and more particularly with himself because of what he’d let Loie talk him into doing.

“Yes, what is it?” a woman said. She sounded irritated—as anybody would be, awakened two hours before dawn—but also guarded, because very few people had this number.

“Loie,” Moden said, “it’s Sten. I need you here at the base soonest with manufacturing records for everything in that load of flares and marking grenades you just sent us. There’s a problem, and part of it’s your problem.”

He squeezed the desk support hard so that the rage wouldn’t come out in his voice. Tendons rippled over the bones of his hands. Moden was a big man, so tall that almost anybody else would have claimed the finger’s breadth he lacked of two meters. He had difficulty finding boots to fit him, though now that he was in logistics, it was a lot easier than it had been with a line command.

“Sten, I’m at home in bed,” Loie said in irritation. “I don’t have any records here, and I don’t see what there is that couldn’t wait for dayli—”

“Soonest, Loie!” Moden said. “Soonest, and I mean it!”

He switched off the base unit so violently that the stand overset. He ignored the mess and started for the door.