The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

"Huh?" said Tyl. "My family wasn't, you know, real religious . . . and anyway, do you mean on Earth or here or where?"

"That's the question, isn't it?" Desoix answered, glancing around the empty cabin just to besurethere couldn't be a local listening to him.

"Some folks here," he continued, "figure Easter according to Earth-standard days.You can tell them because they've always got something red in their clothing, acapora ribbon around their sleeve if nothing else.And the folks that say,'We're on Bamberia so God meant us to use Bamberg days to figure his calendar . . . well, they wear black."

"And the people who wear cloaks, black or red," Desoix concluded. "Make sure they know you're a soldier. Because they'd just as soon knock your head in as that of any policeman or citizen—but they won't, because they know that killing soldiers gets expensive fast."

Tyl shook his head. "I'd say I didn't believe it," he said with the comfortable superiority of somebody commenting on foolishness to which he doesn't subscribe."But sure,it's no screwier than a lot of places.People don't need a reason to have problems, they make their own."

"And they hire us," agreed Desoix.

"Well, they hire us to give 'em more control over the markets on Two,"Tyl said, not quite arguing. "This time around."

Their vehicle was approaching the plaza.It stood two meters above the channel, barely eye-height to the men in the back of the hovercar. A pontoon-mounted landing stage slid with the tides in a vertical slot in the center of the dam blocking the river beneath the plaza; the car slowed as they approached the stage.

"If they dam the river—" Tyl started to say, because he wouldn't have commanded a company of the Slammers had he not assessed the terrain about him as a matter of course.

Before Desoix could answer, slotted spillways opened at either end of the dam and whipped the channel into froth with gouts of fresh water under enough pressure to fling it twenty meters from the concrete. The hovercar, settling as it made its final approach to the stage, bobbed in the ripples; the driver must have been cursing the operator who started to drain the impoundment now instead of a minute later.