The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

“You only get away with crossing me if you’re right, Lieutenant!” Hammer said; and smiled again, minusculely. “Which you are this time. Kreutzer, got any suggestions?”

“Yancy in L-2’s senior enough,” Kreutzer said. He shrugged. “We’ll see if she can handle it. There’s not a lot of choice, not now.”

“Not a bloody lot,” Hammer agreed. “All right, and we’ll transfer—Algren, isn’t it? The newbie we put in F-3 to L-2. Get on with it.”

He pushed past Huber. The S-4 locked down his faceshield and passed the orders on, his voice muffled by his helmet’s sonic cancellation field. Huber fell in behind the Colonel, heading back to the surface and an aircar to take him to wherever platoon F-3 was

while the movement orders were being cut. Lieutenant Arne Huber was going home.

Huber could’ve held a virtual meeting, but for his first contact with F-3 since his medevac he preferred face-to-face. The platoon could still scramble in thirty seconds if they had to; as they well might have to….

Fox Three-eight was straight out of Central Repair and hadn’t been named yet. Until this moment Huber hadn’t seen either the vehicle or its crew, three newbies commanded by a former tank driver named Gabinus who’d just been promoted to sergeant.

Its forward tribarrel, tasked to sector air defense, ripped a burst skyward. One of the newbies jumped.

“Relax, trooper,” Sergeant Deseau said, making a point of being the blasé veteran. “They’re just sending over a round every couple hours to keep us honest. If one ever gets through, then they’ll start shelling us for real.”

Nothing would get through while elements of the Slammers were stiffening the defenses of Benjamin. This shell popped above the northern horizon, leaving behind a flag of dirty black smoke. The sun was low above the trees, though it’d be three hours before full dark. Three hours before the start of the mission.

“For those of you who don’t know me …” Huber said. Because Three-three had been knocked out in his absence, eight of the wary faces were new to him. “I’ve been at Central for the past three weeks, and I’m glad to be back with F-3 where I belong.”

“And we’re bloody lucky to have you back, El-Tee,” Deseau muttered. “It’s going to be tough enough as it is.”

It’s going to be tougher than that, Frenchie, Huber thought, but aloud he said, “We’re part of Task Force Highball—” the whole Regiment had been broken up into task forces for this operation; Captain Holcott of M Company was leading Task Force Hotel “— with F-2, Battery Alpha, and the infantry of G-1 riding the hogs and ammo haulers. We’ll have a tank recovery vehicle, but it’ll be carrying a heavy excavator. If a car’s hit or breaks down so it can’t be fixed ASAP, we combat loss it and proceed with the mission. Got that?”

A couple of the veterans swore under their breath; they got it, all right. An operation important enough that damaged vehicles were blown in place instead of being guarded for repair meant the personnel involved couldn’t expect a lot of attention if they were hit, either.

“I’m in command of the task force,” Huber continued. “Lieutenant Messeman of F-2 is XO. We’ve got six cars running, they’ve got four. There’ll be six hogs—” self-propelled 200-mm rocket howitzers “— and eleven ammo vehicles in the battery, and G-1 has thirty-five troops under Sergeant Marano.”

“Thirty-five?” Sergeant Tranter said. “I’d heard they were down to two squads after the holding action at Beecher’s Creek.”

“Sergeant Marano got a draft from Base Alpha an hour ago,” Huber said grimly. “They’ve all had combat training even if they’ve been punching keys for the past while. They’re Slammers, they’ll do all right.”

“So what’s the mission, El-Tee?” Deseau said. “We’re going to hit the hostiles that’re pushing Benjamin?”

“Come full dark, we’re going to break through the Solace positions around Benjamin,” Huber said. “Other units will continue to defend the city. When we’re clear, we’ll strike north as fast as we can run.”

“What d’ye mean, ‘north’?” asked a sergeant Huber didn’t know. He was a grizzled veteran with a limp, probably transferred back to a line slot under the same spur of necessity that had returned Huber to F-3. “How far north?”

“All the way to the middle of Solace,” Huber said flatly. “We’re going to take Port Plattner before Solace gets its latest hires into action. We’ll cut all Solace forces off from their base and leave them without a prayer of resupply.”

“Blood and Martyrs,” the sergeant said; Deseau was one of several who muttered some version of “Amen to that!”

“That’s what we’re going to do, troopers,” Huber said. The left side of his body was trembling with adrenaline and weakness. The future spun in a montage of bright shards, no single one pausing long enough to be called a hope or a nightmare.

“That’s what we’re going to do,” he repeated, “or we’ll die trying.”

He laughed, and half the veterans around him joined in the laughter.