The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

"Either way," Desoix said, putting a hand on the other man's shoulder—in comradeship as well as direction. "This is just the mechanical room for the locks except—"

Desoix leaned over so that his lips were almost touching Tyl's ear and said, "Except that it's the altar of Christ the Redeemer, if you ask anybody here. Ireallyput my foot in it when I tried to get permission to site one of my guns on it. Would've been a perfect place to cover the sea approaches, but it seems that they'd rather die here than have their cross moved.

"Of course," the UDB officer added, a professional who didn't want another professional to think that he'd done a bad job of placing his guns, "I found an all-right spot on a demolition site just east of here."

Desoix nodded toward the thronged steps at the eastern end of the plaza."Not quite the arc of fire, but nothing we can't cover from the other guns. Especially now we've got Number Five back."

In the time it had taken the hovercar to navigate from the spaceport to the mainland, a city of small shops had sprung up in the plaza. Tyl couldn't imagine the development could be orderly—but it was, at least to the extent that a field of clover has order, because the individual plants respond to general stimuli that force them into patterns.

There were city police present, obvious from their peaked caps, green uniforms, and needle stunners worn on white cross-belts . . . but they were not organizing the ranks of kiosks. Men and women in capes were doing that; and after a glance at their faces, Tyl didn't need Desoix to tell him how tough they thought they were.

They just might be right, too; but things have a way of getting a lot worse than anybody expected, and it was then that you got a good look at what you and the rest of your crew were really made of.

Traffic in the plaza was entirely pedestrian. Vehicles were blocked from attempting the staircases at either seafront corner by massive steel bollards, and the stairs at the remaining apex were closed by what seemed to be lockworks as massive as those venting the river beneath the plaza. They'dhaveto be, Tyl realized, because there needed to be some way of releasing water from the top of its levee-channeled course in event of an emergency.

But that wasn't a problem for Captain Tyl Koopman just now.Whatheneeded was somebody wearing the uniform of Hammer's Slammers, and he sure as blazes didn't see such in all this throng.

"Ah," he said, "Lieutenant . . . do you—"