The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

Broglie smiled again, thinly. "That was ten minutes I was real glad to have, sir," he said.

Hammer stared up and down at Des Grieux. The colonel's expression did not change. "So, you think he's a good soldier, do you?" he asked softly.

"I think," said Broglie, "that . . . if he'd learn to obey orders, he'd be the best soldier I've ever seen."

"Fine, Mister Broglie," Hammer said. "I'll tell you what . . . ."

He continued to look at Des Grieux as if daring the tanker to move or speak again.Major Steuben was gone,but the White Mice at the outer doorway watched the discussion with their hands on the grips of their submachine guns.

"I'll let you have him, then," Hammer continued. "For Broglie's Legion."

Broglie grimaced and turned away. "No," he muttered. "Sorry, that wouldn't work out."

Hammer nodded crisply."Hareway,"he said to the Adjutant, "have Des Grieux here put in the lockup until we lift. Then demote him to trooper and put him to driving trucks for a while.Ifhe cares to stay in the Slammers, as I rather hope he will not."

The lobby had a terrazzo floor. Hammer's boot-heels clacked on it as he strode off, arm and arm with Broglie. Their figures shrank in Des Grieux's eyesight, and he barely heard the orderly sergeant shout, "Watch it! He's fainting!"

Part III

The Slammers' lockup was a sixty-meter shipping container. The paired outer leaves were open, and the single inner door had been replaced by a grate. The facility was baking hot when the white sun of Meridienne cast its harsh shadows across the landscape. At night, when the clear air cooled enough to condense out the dew on which most of the local vegetation depended, the lockup became a shivering misery.

If the conditions in the lockup hadn't been naturally so wretched, Colonel Hammer would have used technology to make them worse. A comfortable detention facility would be counterproductive.

"Rise'nshine,trooper,"called the jailor,a veteran of twenty-five named Daniels. "They want you there yesterday, like always."

Daniels' two prosthetic feet worked perfectly well—so long as they were daily retimed to match his neural outputs. He had the choice of moving to a high-technology world where the necessary electronics were available, or staying with the Slammers in a menial capacity. Since Daniels' only saleable skill—firing a tribarrel from a moving jeep—had no civilian application, he became one of the Regiment's jailors.