The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

The big logistics specialist started down the ramp, drawing the others after him. Vierziger moved immediately to the front. Each member of the survey team carried a concealed pistol, but they were under Coke’s strict orders not to draw their weapons unless he ordered them to.

Coke was uncomfortable. This wasn’t either a combat operation or a routine change of station. He didn’t know how he was supposed to feel.

Cantilucca’s starport was a square kilometer bulldozed from the forest and roughly leveled. The earth had been compressed and stabilized.

There hadn’t been a great deal of maintenance in the century or so since the port was cleared. Slabs of surface had tilted in a number of places, exposing untreated soil on which vegetation could sprout. The jets of starships landing and taking off limited the size of the shrubbery, at least in the portion nearer the terminal buildings.

There were twenty-three ships in port at the moment. Most of them were freighters of around 20 KT displacement, like the Norbert IV. Gage was big business, and Cantilucca grew the best gage in the universe.

Niko Daun chuckled. He was toward the rear of the straggling line—Lieutenant Margulies alone walked behind him, looking frequently over one shoulder, then the other.

“Here we all are in civilian clothes and everything,” the young sensor tech said. “We look like a bunch of businessmen.”

Coke glanced back at Daun. “That’s right,” he said wryly. “We are businessmen. Or ambulance-chasing lawyers, that might be closer.”

The survey team’s luggage, two pieces for every member except the one-armed Moden, had static suspension systems. When the systems were switched on, they generated opposing static charges in the bottom of each case and the surface beneath it. The cases floated just above the ground and could be pulled along without friction.

On terrain as broken as that of the untended starport, that was only half the problem. Because of their contents and their armored sidewalls, the cases were extremely heavy. They wobbled on their narrow bases of support, threatening to fall over unless the person guiding them was relentlessly vigilant. The poor illumination didn’t help either.

“Not bad training for life,” Coke muttered.

“Sir?” Sten Moden said, turning his head back.

“Just talking to myself,” Coke explained. “Sorry.”

A bus pulled away from the terminal area. Its wheels were driven by four separate electric motors. One of the drives shrieked jaggedly as the bus headed toward the gate of the port compound.

“It’s a lot easier,” Sten Moden said without emphasis as he watched the bus go, “to replace a bearing than it is to replace a driveshaft and a bearing.”

The bus didn’t have headlights. A spotlight jury-rigged to the driver’s side window swept the road and a stretch of the fence surrounding the compound. The forest beyond was a black mass. The sky had some color still in the west, but it no longer illuminated the land beneath it.

“Let’s hope the soldiers aren’t any better than the mechanics,” said Robert Barbour.

Coke didn’t have any more of a handle on the intelligence specialist than he did on Vierziger. Based on Barbour’s personnel file, he was an easy-going man who was brilliant in his field. He had a bright career ahead of him, despite a lack of ambition outside his professional specialty.

There was no question about Barbour’s qualifications. Coke had thought he himself knew his way around a sensor console, until he saw what Barbour could do casually with one.

In the flesh, though, the young lieutenant was withdrawn and apparently miserable. The file would have indicated if Barbour had survived a close one, as had happened to Daun. Maybe he’d had trouble with a woman. The Lord knew, there was plenty of that going around.

“They don’t have soldiers here, Lieutenant,” Johann Vierziger said. “On Cantilucca they have thugs, gangsters.”

“We’re not going to prejudge the situation,” Coke said sharply. “Our report on the quality of potential allies and opposition is just as important as whether we recommend Nieuw Friesland accept an offer of employment here in the first place.”

“Sorry, sir,” Vierziger said. He didn’t sound ironic, but neither was he making any effort to appear contrite.

The sergeant had made a statement which he knew, and which Coke knew, was correct on the basis of the score or more similar planets they’d both seen. Coke didn’t know what Vierziger’s background was—his file began at the point he enlisted in the FDF; but he knew the little gunman had a background. Nobody got as good as Vierziger was by spending his time at the target range.

Coke laughed. “Hold up,” he called to Moden and Vierziger. He stopped where he was, set down the cases he was pulling, and motioned his team closer.

Lights from the terminal brightened that side of the faces watching Coke, but even there the flesh was colorless. Opposite the terminal, the team’s features lacked detail.