The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

Distortion through the window pane caused the gunner to aim his initial burst high. Chunks blew off the facades of the buildings to either side, hiding the alley mouth for an instant in a cloak of brick dust. Other projectiles burst in vivid red florets on the walls and among the garbage well behind the jeep.

The gunner didn’t get a chance to correct his aim.

Surrounded by the blam!blam!blam! of projectiles and whizzing bits of casings mixed with brick chips, Malaveda spun and aimed. He walked a line of cyan flashes across ten centimeters of wall, up the transom, and into the window—

As Vierziger reholstered his glowing pistol. He’d drawn and fired twice in an eyeblink. His bolts had punched the gunner in the face, one to either side of the nose. The barrel of the machine gun tilted up and vanished as the gunner slumped.

“Watch our back!” Vierziger repeated. He slammed the jeep’s control yoke forward. The little vehicle skittered ahead. It held its alignment but slid slightly to the right when it emerged from the alley and met a breeze down the main boulevard.

The manhole cover hadn’t budged since Vierziger shot the man who’d lifted it. Malaveda kept the steel disk at the corner of his eyes as his conscious mind followed what his partner was doing.

Vierziger’s holster was metal or a temperature-stable plastic, because it didn’t melt or burn from contact with the pistol’s glowing iridium muzzle. Judging from the way he’d drawn it both times that speed was an absolute essential, the richly decorated handgun was Vierziger’s weapon of choice.

He nonetheless handled the heavy 2-cm powergun with an ease that belied his slight frame, as well as with flawless accuracy; and it was with the shoulder weapon presented that he waited now.

The jeep was too light to be stable without a man aboard. Its flexible skirts hopped on irregularities in the pavement, spilling air from the plenum chamber.

Vierziger fired twice as the vehicle bobbled its way toward the building. His first bolt ignited the interior of a room whose window had shivered away in the bomb blast. Malaveda hadn’t seen a human target, but Vierziger probably had, and the baby-faced killer had hit everything he’d aimed at this night.

The flare of cyan plasma filled the enclosed space momentarily. An instant later everything flammable, including the paint, was a mass of orange flame. The transom belched a great fireball when something, munitions or an accelerant, added its energy to the inferno.

Vierziger’s second shot was into the window from which the machine gun had fired. Malaveda hadn’t noticed additional movement there until the bolt hit the muzzle of the automatic weapon just lifting back over the transom to fire. Plasma converted fifteen centimeters of the gun’s steel barrel to gas. The superheated metal erupted in a red secondary flame as it mixed with air.

How had Vierziger hit a target so small at thirty meters, with an off-hand shot?

The jeep crashed into the half-open doorway at 50 kph. That was fast enough to crunch the front of the vehicle pretty thoroughly, though without doing serious damage to the building. The jeep’s plastic frame fractured in a series of angry clicks.

Vierziger fired the remaining three 2-cm rounds into the wreckage. He picked his spots, blowing open a pair of fuel cells with each squeeze of the trigger.

The hydrocarbon fuel normally realized its energy in a cold process using an ion-exchange membrane. Now it blazed outward, enveloping the jeep in fire hot enough to involve the body panels and upholstery as well. The mushroom of flame rose roof high. It barred the building’s rear street door as effectively as the presence of a tank could have done.

And that freed Vierziger and his partner for other activities.

Malaveda thought he saw the manhole cover move. He fired, rattling the disk in its coaming as the powergun bolts blew divots off the top of the steel.

Vierziger stripped in a fresh clip, then tossed Malaveda his bandolier of 2-cm ammo. “Follow me, swap guns and load when I tell you!” he ordered. “Now!”

The newbie had no business giving a non-com orders, but the present situation ignored what the Table of Organization might say. “Yessir!” Malaveda shouted.

Vierziger wasn’t wearing body armor; he’d claimed it would interfere with his driving. Now he reached left-handed into one of his tunic’s front bellows pockets and drew out a red-banded grenade that he had no business carrying.

He struck the safety cap off against the side of the building with casual ease. Malaveda had seen troopers trying to arm a grenade that way, proving how macho they were. He’d never seen anybody succeed so perfectly, and with such little concern, as Vierziger did now.