The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

"Rate the players, Captain," said Hammer's voice as his face on the screen flickered and dimmed with the lights of an aircar whining past, closer to the roof than it should have been for safety.

The vehicle was headed toward the plaza. Its red and white emergency flashers were on, but the car's idling pace suggested that they were only a warning.

As ifheknew anything about this sort of thing, Tyl thought bitterly. But the colonel was right, he could give the same sort of assessment that any mercenary officer learned to do of the local troops he was assigned to support. It didn't really matter that these weren't wearing uniforms.

Some of them weren't wearing uniforms.

"Delcorio's hard but he's brittle,"Tyl said aloud."He'd do all right with enough staff to take the big shocks, but what he's got . . ."

He paused, collecting his thoughts further. Hammer did not interrupt, but the fluctuation of his image on the little screen reminded Tyl that time was passing.

"All right," the Slammers captain continued. "The police, they seem to be holding up pretty well. Berne, the City Prefect, don't have any friends and I don't guess much support. On that end, it's gone about as far as it can and keep the lid on."

Hammer was nodding, but Tyl ignored that too. He had his data marshalled, now, and he needed to spit things out while they were clear to him. "The army, Dowell at least, he's afraid to move and he's not afraid not to move. He won't push anything himself, but Delcorio won't get much help from there.

"And the rest of 'em, the staffs—" Tyl couldn't think of the word the group had been called here "—they're nothing, old men and young kids, nobody that matters . . . ah, except the wife, you know, sir? Ah, Lady Eunice. Only she wants to push harder than I think they can push here with what they got and what they got against 'em."

"The mob?" prompted the colonel. Static added a hiss to words without sibilants.

Tyl looked toward the plaza. The sky was still blue over the western horizon, behind the cathedral's dome and the Palace of Government. The sunken triangle of the plaza was as dark as a volcano's maw, lighted only by the sparks of lanterns and apparently open flames.

"Naw,not the mobs," Tyl said,letting his helmet direct his voice while his eyes gathered data instead of blinking toward his superior. "Them, they'd handle each other if it wasn't any more. But—"