The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

The column of orderlies had stopped and flattened like the troops they were facing, but there were three men erect at the new head of the line. One carried a shoulder-pack radio; one a bull-horn; and the man in the middle was a priest with a crucifix large enough to be the standard that the whole column followed.

Tyl looked at the priest,wondering if he could grab the butt of his slung weapon fast enough to take some of them with him if the words the priest murmured to the man with the bull-horn brought a blast of shots from the guns aimed at the Slammers captain.

The burning trucks roared. Sealed parts ruptured with plosive sounds and an occasional sharp crack.

"Go on,get out of here,"the bull-horn snarled,its crude amplification making the words even harsher than they were when they came from the orderly's throat.

Tyl spun and brandished his lightwand. "Third Squad," he ordered. "Move!"

A dozen of his troopers picked themselves up from the ground and shambled across the street behind him—toward the guns leveled on the mob from the levee's top. The first two squads were deployed there with the advantages of height and a modicum of cover if any of the locals needed a lesson about what it meant to take on Hammer's Slammers.

Tyl's timing hadn't been quite as bad as he'd thought. Hard to tell just what might have happened if the column from the House of Grace had arrived before Tyl's company had a base of fire across the street.

Two more squads were moving together. The leaders of the mob's other arm, bawling their way up the river road, had already reached the south corner of the City Offices. The cries of"Freedom, Freedom!"were suddenly punctuated with screams as a dozen or so of the leaders collapsed under a burst of electrostatic needles fired by one of the policemen inside.

Tyl heard the shots that answered the stunner, slug throwers as well as powerguns, but the real measure of the response was the barely audible clink of bottles shattering.

Then the gasoline bombs ignited and silhouetted the building from the south.

Tyl stood on the pedestrian way atop the levee, wondering when somebody would get around to taking a shot at him just because hewasstanding.

"Three and four," he ordered as the heavily laden troops scrambled up the steps to join him. "Across the river, climb over the barges. Kekkonan, you lead 'em, set up a perimeter on the other side.

"Andwait!" he added, though Kekkonan didn't look like the sort you had to tell that to.