The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

The three Frisians broke for the door. Coke’s finger on Daun’s wrist gave the sensor tech guidance he might or might not have needed.

A third truck drove into the warehouse and collided with the second. The drivers shouted at one another, and the rest of the convoy stopped in confusion on the approach road.

Coke led his men toward the gap he’d cut in the fence. “I think we’d best stay in the woods and hump our way back,” he explained. “I’m not thrilled about walking the six klicks into Potosi, but L’Escorial is going to see the flames before too long and come out with guns blazing.”

“Does Peres realize that?” Niko Daun asked. The point had obviously escaped the tech himself.

“Here, wait by the jitney,” Vierziger said.

“We can’t drive it back through the forest,” Coke objected. “It’s not a skimmer. We’ll just have to abandon it.”

“Sten’s going to pick us up in a moment,” the gunman explained. He looked at the sensor tech. “Niko,” he went on, “the Astras don’t know the gage is burning yet. Whether they’ll realize that a fire here will call the owners’ attention is an open question.”

An unlighted aircar slid low over the treetops. Sten Moden was at the controls. He dropped vertically to hover on fan thrust directly behind the jitney.

Coke half-climbed, half-tripped his way into the vehicle’s other front seat. Vierziger and Daun got into the back.

“Is there anything else you ought to have told me?” Coke demanded in a loud, generally directed voice.

“Well, you didn’t want to walk either, did you, Major?” Sten Moden said as he pulled the joystick toward him to add power. “Esteban was still doing tests on the Stellarflow, so I asked if he’d mind me putting it through its paces tonight. Does pretty well, don’t you think?”

The Stellarflow was too massive to accelerate quickly, especially with a load that included the logistics officer, but it had a good deal of power. Starlit glimpses of the treetops close beneath suggested their speed was 200 kph and rising. Moden swept them in a broad arc that would approach Potosi from the north, opposite to where all the commotion was occurring.

“Look, I’m not going to argue with success,” Coke said after a moment “But the next time, don’t pull this sort of thing behind my back, all right? You guys act like a team, and I’ll promise not to act like a little tin god.”

He realized as he spoke that something very basic had changed in the structure of this survey team; and that he was pretty sure it had changed for the better.

They were out of sight of the warehouse at this altitude, but the whole sky behind them glowed red from the swelling inferno.

Matthew Coke’s bedroom had a window which opened out onto the alley beside Hathaway House. When he leaned his elbows on the ledge, he could watch the building across the street. As a result, he wasn’t surprised to hear his commo helmet click, then warn in the voice of Lieutenant Barbour, “Matthew, two men are walking toward us from L’Escorial headquarters. There isn’t any other exceptional behavior from that direction.”

The breeze blew from the south. Even at this distance it carried with it a whiff of burned vegetation, burned plastic, and—present only if you knew it was there—burned flesh.

Coke lifted himself back from the ledge. One of the approaching visitors was garbed in an ensemble of scarlet and vermilion, a well-tailored outfit and clearly expensive. The two close hues made his plumpish figure seem to shimmer.

The other man wore a red beret, but the remainder of his clothing was khaki. The garments looked a great deal like Frisian battle dress.

“Right,” Coke said as he snatched the gray cape from the hook by his bed. “Action stations, though I doubt there’ll be trouble. I’m coming down.”

The shooting had gone on south of town until nearly dawn. The fact that it hadn’t spread to Potosi proper meant the syndicates really didn’t want the lid to blow, despite all their deadly posturing. That might change when the L’Escorials realized just how badly they’d been hurt by the fire.

Margulies slammed down the stairs ahead of Coke. She slid her left hand along the balustrade against the possibility of her heel catching on a tread as she jumped the steps three at a time. Vierziger was already with Barbour in the lobby, his proper location.

Georg Hathaway stood by the door and wrung his hands. “I’m sure there won’t be any trouble,” he murmured. His voice sounded like that of a dying sinner claiming confidence in his salvation.

“Johann, take the upstairs today,” Margulies ordered as her boots hit the tile floor.

Vierziger raised an eyebrow. He looked spruce and trim. Somehow he’d managed to scrub away all the soot and matrix residue which had settled on him during the firefight.

“This is—”he began.

“Not today, Sergeant!” Mary Margulies snapped. “We’re trading today.”

She flashed a near-smile of apology to her subordinate, then to Coke.