The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

“We’re businessfolk from Nieuw Friesland,” Coke said quietly. “Though the last stage of our voyage was through Delos.”

“Everybody comes through Delos if they’re coming here, dickhead,” the leader snarled. He pointed his weapon one-handed at one of Coke’s suitcases. “Open that. Now!”

“I’m sorry,” Coke lied, “but they were hold baggage on shipboard, so they’re time-locked. They can’t be opened for another day and a half.”

“Want to bet?” the gunman said. He fired.

The survey team’s luggage was plated with 40-laminae ceramic armor beneath a normal-looking sheathing. The thin laminae shattered individually without transmitting much of the shock to deeper layers. A few rounds from a 2-cm weapon would have blown any of the cases apart, but the burst of 1-cm pistol charges from the sub-machine gun only pecked halfway through the plating.

Furthermore, the ceramic reflected a proportion of the plasma. The spray of sun-hot ions glazed Coke’s trouser legs—the business suit was much more utilitarian than its stylish cut implied.

The L’Escorial gunman’s bare knees blistered instantly, and the fringe of his shorts caught fire. He screamed, dropped his weapon, and began batting with his bare hands at the flames.

The case started to fall over. The burst of gunfire had smashed the forward static generator in a shower of sparks.

Coke grabbed the handle of the case. “Please, sirs!” he cried in a voice intended to sound terrified. “We’re businessmen! Please!”

“Fuck you!” a tall man with a pair of pistols cried. “You’re dancers, that’s what you are!”

He fired twice into the pavement at Coke’s feet. Glass and pebbles from the compressed-earth roadway spattered Coke’s legs above his shoe tops. Coke staggered forward, lifting the front of the damaged case in his left hand. He squeaked in simulated terror.

The fear was real, but not terror, not anything that prevented Matthew Coke from acting in whatever fashion was necessary.

He didn’t know whether or not the actions he’d set in motion were survivable. It was like a free-fall jump. Once you’d committed, you could only hope the support mechanism—static repulsion, parachute, or whatever—would work as intended. The team couldn’t change its collective mind now.

A 2-cm bolt blew off the lower back corner of the damaged case and the rest of the static suspension. With the plating and the hardware inside, the case weighed nearly a hundred kilos. Coke lurched onward with it, bleating. He was through the cordon, but a bullet could flick through the back of his head and take his face off at any gunman’s whim.

Mary Margulies touched the latch of her tight-band case with a finger so swift that the luggage appeared to have flown open by accident. Frilly underwear and lounging garments flew out onto the roadway.

“Hey lookee-lookee-lookee!” shouted a gunman. He grabbed a teddy and modeled it against his scarred chest.

The cordon collapsed into a rush for loot. The clothing had no value except as a matter of amusement, but that’s all the cordon was to begin with: a way for men with a childish mindset to amuse themselves.

“Hey, sweetie!” a gunman cried. He grabbed, not very seriously, for Margulies’ crotch. The lieutenant weaseled past with her remaining suitcase. “Stay with me! I’ll give you more dick than all five of them pussies together!”

The door of Hathaway House opened in front of Coke. His left arm felt as though the shoulder tendons would snap with the weight of the case they supported. He stepped aside to check on his team.

“Get in, curse your eyes!” Johann Vierziger shouted. “I’ll handle—”

Vierziger slid one of his cases into the doorway with a sweep of his left arm.

“—this!” and he sent the second case after the first, skidding like driverless cars.

Though the static suspension balanced the weight of the luggage, its inertia was unchanged. Vierziger’s movements, as smooth and practiced as those of an expert lawn-bowler, required strength that one wouldn’t assume in someone as pretty as the little man.

A voice yelped from inside the hotel. The door started to close, but Barbour was there, using the mass of his cases to slam the panel fully open. He twisted aside. Niko Daun followed him in.

A pair of L’Escorial gunmen were dancing. One wore a pair of delicate panties as a crown; his partner had thrust his arms into leggings whose multiple shimmering colors shifted as they caught varied light-sources. Other L’Escorials cheered and clapped, or pawed through the open case for their own trophies.

Coke pointed Margulies in. She obeyed at a hasty rush, aware that her presence as a woman made the risk to every member of the team greater. The expression on her face was set and terrible.

Sten Moden tossed his huge case after her, picked up both of Coke’s cases in his one hand and tossed them; and wrapped his arm around Coke’s waist. Moden swept the major with him into the lobby of Hathaway House. Coke could as well have wrestled an oak tree for the good his protests did.