The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

Well, that answered a question which, despite Deseau’s certainty, had remained open in Huber’s mind. Frenchie didn’t have much to do with women like Daphne Priamedes.

He grinned. Neither did Arne Huber, if it came to that.

“The alliance of nations on Plattner’s World which hired your Regiment,” Daphne said, switching subjects with the grace of a mirror trick, “will continue to operate the port as a common facility rather than a part of Solace. We’ll be raising the price of Moss and of Thalderol base to pay for port renovations.”

She looked at Huber and grinned coldly.

“Which will be extensive, as you might imagine.”

“Yeah,” Huber said, “I can.”

Just clearing wrecked equipment would be a bitch of a job: the melted hull of a two-hundred-tonne tank wasn’t going to move easily, and thousands of plasma bolts had not only scarred the surface but also shattered the concrete deep into the pad’s interior.

The terminal building was gone, and the guidance pods which humped at regular intervals across the pad were scarred by shrapnel from the firecracker rounds if they hadn’t been blasted by stray powergun bolts.

“Your backers are agreeing to the price rise?” Huber said. “The planets who funded us the second time, I mean.”

“Their rates will go up ten percent,” Daphne said primly. “They’re quite comfortable with that. The rate to Nonesuch will go up thirty percent.”

She looked at Huber and added, “I suppose you’re surprised that we don’t refuse to sell Thalderol base to Nonesuch regardless of the price?”

“No ma’am,” Huber said, fighting to control his grin. What a question to ask a mercenary soldier! “I’m not surprised. I’d say it was a good plan to keep Nonesuch from getting so desperate that they’d try a rematch despite all.”

Daphne smiled wryly. “Yes,” she said, “I suppose it is at that, though I don’t believe anyone was thinking in those terms when we came to the decision. We just wanted to set the rate at the maximum we thought they’d pay. We need the money rather badly, you see.”

They both laughed; the tension of moments before was gone and nothing was hiding in the background so far as Huber could tell. Well, no conflict, anyway.

The aircar was five hundred meters above the ground, mushing along at about eighty kph. They’d flown beyond the wheatfields; below was pasture in which large roan cattle wandered in loose herds. Brush and small trees grew in swales, green against the rusty color of the grass at this season. Fencelines occasionally glinted from one horizon to the other, but there were kilometers between tracts.

Huber took off his commo helmet and set it in the compartment behind him. He probably wasn’t going to be back in the hour he’d told Tranter, and that was all right too.

“A nice day,” he said, stretching in his seat before he put an arm over Daphne’s shoulders.

“Yes,” she said, setting the aircar’s autopilot as she leaned toward Huber. “A nice day for normal things instead of with guns and destruction.”

They kissed, wriggling closer in their bucket seats.

In his mind, Port Plattner blazed with plasma bolts and the rich, red light of burning tents. But for me, Huber thought as he raised his hand to her breast, guns and destruction are what’s normal.

THE DARKNESS

“Hi, Lieutenant,” someone said as he walked into Ruthven’s room. “Good to see you up and around. I gotta do a few tests with you back in the bed, though.”

On the electronic window, a brisk wind was scudding snow over drifts and damaged armored vehicles. Ruthven turned from it; a jab of pain blasted the world into white, buzzing fragments. It centered on his left hip, but for a few heartbeats it involved every nerve in his body.

“Your leg’s still catching you?” said Drayer. He was the senior medic on this ward. “Well, it’ll do that for a while, sir. But they did a great job putting you back together. It’s just pain, you know? There’s nothing wrong really.”

Pain like this isn’t nothing, thought Ruthven. If he hadn’t been nauseous he might’ve tried to put Drayer’s head through the wall; but he had no strength, and anyway, there was no room for anger just now in the blurred gray confines of his mind.

He eased his weight back onto his left leg; it reacted normally, though the muscles trembled slightly. The agony of a few moments past was gone as thoroughly as if it’d happened when he was an infant, twenty-odd years earlier.

“Anyway, come lie down,” Drayer said. “This won’t take but

a …”

He noticed the window image for the first time. “Blood and Martyrs, sir!” he said. What d’ye want to look at that for? You can set these panels to show you anyplace, you know? I got the beaches on Sooner’s World up on all my walls. Let me tell you, walking to my quarters across that muck is plenty view of it for me!”