The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

The L’Escorial armored car revved and backed slowly away, its tribarrels pointing toward the Astras. While turning to the courtyard, the vehicle’s right rear fender bashed a gatepost. The engine stalled. The car rolled forward a meter.

Gunmen in the cordon hooted and catcalled at the vehicle’s crew. The driver started his engine again with a cloud of black smoke. He advanced into the middle of the street and cramped his wheels to get a running start at the entrance. There was plenty of room, but the single side mirror wasn’t adequate for backing so clumsy a vehicle.

The armored car lurched into reverse. It roared backward in a shower of sparks and concrete powdered from both the vehicle and the gatepost it scraped. The gunmen clapped and cheered ironically.

Johann Vierziger sat on a stuffed chair with his hands crossed in his lap, watching the scene in the holographic display. His face wore a grim smile.

The sensor tech had returned from upstairs. He shook his head and said, “I told them I’d never work with wogs again. Lord knows that was the right decision.”

He grinned. Coke had read the kid’s file. Daun was obviously as resilient as he was skilled in his specialty; but then, he was young too.

“Master Hathaway?” Coke said. “I under—”

“Georg,” the host said, nodding. “Please, call me Georg.”

“Georg, then,” Coke said. “I understand that there are no professional military units on Cantilucca—no mercenaries, that is. Is that your understanding as well?”

“Well,” Hathaway said, “both syndicates have Presidential Guards. They’re mostly soldiers from off-planet.”

“But not off-planet units?” Coke pressed. The guard forces in full uniform might be individually more skillful than the ruck of ex-farmers and ex-sailors carrying guns, but they obviously lacked the discipline necessary to carry out complex maneuvers.

“No, not that I’ve heard of,” Hathaway said. “That would be much more expensive, surely?”

“That depends on what you’re assigning values to,” said Mary Margulies.

Coke had thought the cordons might disperse when the armored vehicles left, but a score of red-clad gunmen remained. Traffic was picking up slightly. The citizenry had decided that the gunmen didn’t mean serious trouble.

“They can’t bring mercenaries onto Cantilucca,” Evie Hathaway said unexpectedly. “Because of the Confederacy.”

“We’d heard the Marvelans left Cantilucca pretty well alone,” Sten Moden said quietly.

“The Confederacy doesn’t care anything about law and order here, so long as they’re paid their money,” Evie said. “Blood money, I call it. But they won’t let a proper army onto Cantilucca. For fear they’d take over and the Confederacy wouldn’t be able to drive them out.”

Georg Hathaway looked at his wife in surprise. “What’s that, Evie?” he said. “I hadn’t heard that.”

She turned slightly away. In a less forceful voice she said, “When the Marvelan delegation was on Cantilucca a year and a half ago, the overflow from the High Commissioner’s residence stayed here. One of the aides explained that to me when, when I was complaining to him.”

“Aides …” Georg repeated in a flat tone. “That would be young Garcia-Medina, I suppose you mean?”

“It might have been!” said Evie. “I was complaining about the horrible situation, that was all!”

“We have,” Johann Vierziger said, “a war of sorts outside. I don’t think adding one inside is necessary at the moment.”

“No, no,” Georg said. The innkeeper’s forced smile quickly asserted its own reality over his personality. “That’s old business and nothing to it, not really, not even then. Pardon me, mistress and masters, for letting the stress of the moment get the better of me.”

The whole team was assembled in the lobby of the hotel. Coke grinned wryly at his people. With the corner of his eye still tracking developments in the street peripherally, he said, “Well, what do the rest of you think? Niko?”

The sensor tech grinned and flipped his hands palms-up in a noncommittal gesture. “I can set you up to count the change in the pocket of anybody in town, sir. Just tell me what you want.”

Coke nodded. “Bob?”

Barbour looked through the space occupied by his holographic display. His hands hovered over the console keyboard, not quite touching it.

“There’s something over six hundred powerguns live in the three-klick radius,” he said. “Given the ratio of powerguns to other weapons outside, that roughs in well with a total of a thousand shooters in town at present.”

He looked at Coke; his eyes focused again. “What else would you like to know, Matthew?”

“That’ll do,” Coke said. He’d deliberately kept the parameters of his question vague. The team members were answering each to his own specialty, just as they should. “Sten?”

The logistics officer nodded twice before he spoke, as though his mind were a pump and he was priming it. “Yes,” he said. “What Mistress Hathaway says rings true. If so, we’ll either have to infiltrate the personnel or arrange a combat landing. I doubt we’ll be able to get the Bonding Authority to cover either option.”