The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

“They went back!” Mendes said. “They came, yes, but they went back! We have nothing here, only the guns; and no tractors to move them!”

Bloody hell, that was true! Ruthven’d assumed he wasn’t getting signatures from heavy equipment during E/1’s approach simply because nothing was running at the moment, but the shanties scattered within the compound would make it impossible for even a jeep to move through them.

“Right,” said Ruthven. “Then I’ll need a labor party from your men, Captain. We have a few power augers, but there’s a great deal of work to do before nightfall. For all our sakes. However the first requirement is to garrison that knob.”

He gestured toward the high ground. When Mendes didn’t turn his head, Ruthven put his hand on the Royalist’s shoulder and rotated him gently, then pointed again.

“It’s not safe to give the enemy that vantage point,” Ruthven said. To any real soldier, that’d be as obvious as saying, “Water is wet,” but real soldiers were bloody thin on the ground on Pontefract.

And it seemed they all wore Slammers uniforms.

“Oh, we can’t do that!” Mendes said. “That is too far away!”

“Together we can,” Ruthven said. “I’ll put a squad there, and you’ll supply a platoon. We’ll rotate the troops every day. Dug in and with fire support from here, they’ll be an anvil that we can smash the rebels if they try anything.”

“Oh,” said Mendes. “Oh. Oh.”

He wasn’t agreeing …or disagreeing, so far as Ruthven could tell. He sounded like a man gasping for breath.

“Right!” Ruthven said cheerfully, clapping the Royalist on the shoulder. “Now, let’s get to your ops room and set up the assignments, shall we?”

He’d put Rennie’s squad on the ridge the first night, though he might also take Sellars’ up for the afternoon to get the position cleared. He could only hope that the Royalists would work well under Slammers’ direction; that happened often enough on this sort of planet.

“Top?” Ruthven said to Hassel over the command push as he walked Mendes toward the trailers. He’d cut the whole platoon in on the discussion through the intercom, though he was blocking incoming messages unless they were red-tagged. “Take charge here while I get things sorted with our allies.”

He paused. Because Mendes could theoretically hear him …in fact the Royalist officer appeared to be in shock …Ruthven chose the next words carefully: “And Top? I know what you’re thinking because I’m thinking the same thing. But this is going to work if there’s any way in hell I can make it work. Six out.”

“Good morning, Hank,” a professionally cheerful voice said. “Oh! Were you napping? I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“Just thinking, Lisa,” Ruthven said, opening his eyes and smiling at Lisa Mahone, the Frisian recruiting officer. Apologetically he added, “I, ah …I haven’t gotten around to the papers, yet.”

He thought he saw Mahone’s eyes harden, but she sat down on the side of his bed and patted his right leg in a display of apparent affection. She said, “Well, I’ve used the time to your advantage, Hank. I told you I hoped I’d be able to get Personnel to grant you a two-step promotion? They’ve agreed to it! I’m authorized to change the recruitment agreement right now.”

She leaned forward to take the folder from the side table, her hip brushing Ruthven’s thigh. “How does that sound, Captain Ruthven?”

“It’s hard to express, Lisa,” Ruthven said, forcing a smile to make the words sound positive. He slitted his eyes so that they’d appear closed. In truth he didn’t know what he thought about the business; it seemed to be happening to somebody else. Maybe it was drugs still in his system, though Drayer’d sworn that they’d tapered his dosage down to zero thirty-six hours ago.

Ruthven watched silently as Mahone amended the recruitment agreement in a firm, clear hand. She was an attractive woman with dark, shoulder-length hair and a perfect complexion. Her pants suit was severely tailored, but the shirt beneath her pale green jacket was frilled and had a deep neckline.

The gold-bordered folder not only acted as a hard backing for Mahone’s stylus, it recorded the handwritten changes and transmitted them to the hospital’s data bank. There they became part of the regimental files, to be downloaded or transmitted by any authorized personnel.

Mahone wasn’t as young as Ruthven’d thought when she approached him three days earlier, though. Perhaps the drugs really had worn off.

“I have to admit that I didn’t have to do much convincing,” she said in the same bright voice as she appeared to read the document in front of her. “My superiors were just as impressed by your record as I am. Very few graduates in the top ten percent of their class join mercenary units straight out of the Academy.”

“I wanted to be a soldier,” Ruthven said. This time his wry smile was real, but it was directed at his naive former self. “I thought I ought to learn what being a soldier was really about. I wanted to see the elephant, if you know the term.”