The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

Sten Moden’s face was blank. Niko Daun looked questioningly from the hovercraft to his commander, taut as the hammer spring of a cocked pistol. Moden, seeing the same danger that Coke did, put his hand firmly on the sensor tech’s right wrist.

Niko was desperately eager to do the right thing, but he hadn’t a clue as to what the right thing was under these circumstances. That was a bad combination….

“Glad to learn there’s something to talk about,” Coke said easily as he got to his feet.

“He’ll be okay, then?” Daun murmured to Moden as the hovercraft drove away with the major.

“He’s got as good a chance as any of the rest of us,” the logistics officer said. He finished his beer in a single mighty draft, then banged the mug down. “Another?” he asked.

Daun shook his head with an impish smile. “I’m meeting a friend in twenty minutes,” he said. His expression segued into a frown. “Unless you think, you know, with the major and all?”

Moden shrugged. “He’ll call us if he needs us,” he said. “Don’t get yourself so fucked up you can’t function, that’s all. But you can’t be a hundred percent on all day forever.”

“Yeah, well, this is nothing serious,” the younger man said casually. “She’s a nice enough girl, but it’s just passing the time.”

He glanced at Moden from the corners of his eyes. “Suppose the major’s getting anywhere with the lady from the port office, sir?”

The logistics officer looked at Daun hard. “Do you suppose that’s any of our business?” he asked.

Daun laughed without embarrassment. So far as he was concerned, there was no rank when guys talked about women. “Not business at all, sir,” he said. “Though the Lord knows Potosi isn’t short of that kind of business establishment.”

Moden laughed also. “Yeah, well, we could ask Bob,” he said. “But I think we won’t, okay?”

The big man got to his feet. “Twenty minutes is time enough for a beer, kid. Sounds like you need to be slowed down some anyhow.”

Pepe had raised the hovercraft’s window even before Coke could open the passenger door. The youngest Luria’s feelings about Coke were a complex blend of disdain, the hostility of a dominating male for a rival, and fear. Pepe was smart enough to know that Matthew Coke was someone he should fear.

Coke’s feelings about Pepe were much simpler: Pepe was a scorpion Coke had found in his boot, to be dealt with directly—in both senses of the word.

The hovercraft wallowed into a turn and proceeded north, toward the spaceport. The chassis was a standard civilian model. With the full four passengers aboard and the armor added by some custom shop on Delos, the vehicle was seriously underpowered. It was a toy, just as Ramon had said.

“Here’s the earnest money,” Raul said abruptly. He extended a quivering hand between the front seats to pass Coke a credit chip.

“Now, how quickly can you get your gunmen here?” Ramon asked. “Madame Yarnell will be leaving Cantilucca in six days, maybe seven.”

Coke took the chip and held it in his hand.

A pair of jitneys was passing in opposite directions in the street ahead. There was room for the hovercraft to fit between them, but the vehicle’s damping program hadn’t been upgraded to take account of the weight of the armor.

Pepe steered left. The car had by now accelerated to 45, perhaps 50 kph. The back end swayed outward, continuing the vector of the directional change after the driver centered his wheel again.

The left-side jitney carried a farm family—two adults, four children, and a vast burden of produce piled on top. The hovercraft sideswiped it with a bang and screech of metal. Three-meter-long stalks of sugar cane slapped the car’s windshield. They left syrupy blurs across the film-darkened glass.

Pepe cursed viciously. He continued to overcorrect for the next hundred meters. The car fishtailed up the street, its paint scarred beyond the capacity of anyone on Cantilucca to match.

“The times are the same they’ve always been,” Coke said. “Seven sidereal days, plus or minus, to get the message to Nieuw Friesland. A day to load the companies. Five days to get them here since the troopship will come direct. Plus whatever time it takes Camp Able to decide whether or not to take the contract. If they take the contract.”

“You’ll send the message now,” Pepe said in a rasping whisper. “We’re carrying you to the port to do that. And you’ll see to it that your mercenaries do arrive on schedule, Master Major, or it will be very unfortunate for you and your friends. You don’t expect to leave before all the business with Astra is completed to our satisfaction, do you?”

“Now, Pepe,” Ramon said nervously. “We don’t want the major to think that we don’t trust him.”

“I trust him,” Pepe sneered. “Because he knows he’s a dead man if he doesn’t do what he’s promised to do.”