The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

“It isn’t always this bad,” Pilar said apologetically. Her hands were stiff on the control yoke. “Both the gangs have been hiring recently and bringing men in from the fields. It’s, it’s worse than any time in the six years we’ve lived here.”

Coke didn’t bother to ask whether “years” meant standard or the shorter Cantiluccan rotation.

“These are farmers?” he said, frowning at two bands of a dozen each, kitty-corner from one another at an intersection and only ten meters apart. The gangs glowered at one another as they postured.

A short man with a blue beret hopped up to the side of the van. He braced himself on the window ledge and shouted, “Dog vomit!” at the red-clad gang on the opposite corner.

Niko Daun clutched beneath his tunic. Sergeant Vierziger raised his left index finger to prevent his fellows in the back of the van from moving. His eyes were on the opposite side of the vehicle, however, ready to react if a L’Escorial thug decided to shoot through the vehicle at the challenger.

None of them did. The van rumbled on.

Pilar swallowed, showing that she too recognized how dangerous the past instant had been.

“I meant guards from the fields,” she said, watching the roadway. “Some of them were farmers. Some of them were sailors who jumped ship or were discharged on Cantilucca for bad behavior. Many of them are just, just badmen. They’ve come to Cantilucca because word’s out that the syndicates are willing to hire anybody who’ll carry a gun and swagger.”

“But there’s no formed units of mercenaries on Cantilucca?” Coke asked.

“No,” said Pilar. “No, we’ve at least been spared that.”

So far, Coke thought. But only so far.

The van passed a three-story building on the right, set back in a walled courtyard. The structure was painted entirely blue, although several different shades had been mixed promiscuously. The whole facade was sheathed in concrete, and there were firing slits on each level in place of normal windows.

“Astra headquarters?” Coke asked. He thumbed toward the building, but he kept his hand below the level of the van’s window so that only Pilar could see it.

“Yes,” she said curtly—without looking toward the garish structure.

There were half a dozen guards at the courtyard gate, staring at everything which passed in the street. Their scrutiny drove pedestrians crowding to the left, the way a plume of cloud forms downstream of a hilltop.

Nobody looked at the guards. Nobody. Just for the hell of it, Coke turned deliberately to the right. His face wore a blank smile. The Astras glowered, but they were doing that anyway.

The guards were in full blue uniforms instead of wearing tags and scraps of the color. An elite force, then; and if those slope-browed slovens were the syndicate’s elite, the Astras at least should be willing to pay for professional support.

“I’d think,” Coke said in a neutral tone, “that there might be advantages to a dwelling closer to your place of work.”

“Yes, I’ve thought of that too,” Pilar said, giving Coke a brief smile. She was obviously glad of human contact. “But the part of Potosi past the two headquarters buildings is much quieter. The side toward the port is, well, you’ve seen it.”

“Seen enough to imagine the rest,” Coke agreed.

Somebody had sprayed scarlet paint on the pavement four hundred meters beyond Astra HQ. On the left side of the road, a group of twenty or so thugs sauntered from a heavily fortified building, also red, and surged across the street to form a cordon. They called to one another and jeered the civilians they blocked.

Pilar touched her crucifix with the tip of her right index finger and whispered a prayer. She stopped the van and cramped her wheels for a tight turn back the way they’d come.

“What is this?” Coke said. He opened his door and stepped out onto the running board. His eyes scanned front and to both sides, looking for the glint of a pointed weapon or the flash of a shot. His being was centered in his body, ready to send it in any direction.

The van’s rear doors slid back as the rest of the team readied for action. Margulies’ boots thumped on the roof.

“It’s nothing, it’s just a game they play every once in a while,” Pilar said. She tried to ease the van into a turn, but the crowd recoiling from the cordon held the vehicle fast. “We’ll have to go back and try to circle off the road—oh!”

“The idea seems to have caught on with our friends in blue,” Margulies called from the roof of the van. “They’ve got the road blocked behind us now.”

“Do you have any orders, Matthew?” Johann Vierziger asked in a voice as sharp and lethal as a cat’s white eyetooth.

“No!” Coke said. Not the guns, not yet. “Mistress Ortega! What’s the best way through?”

A three-wheeled jitney stopped at the cordon. The driver might have turned as more distant traffic did, but a thug pointed his sub-machine gun at the little vehicle.