The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

The south face, toward Gun Three and the seafront, was decorated with the miracles of Christ: the sick rising from their beds; the lame tossing away their crutches; loaves and fishes multiplying miraculously to feed the throng stretching back in low relief.

On the opposite side were works of human mercy: the poor being fed and lodged in church kitchens; orphans being raised to adulthood; medical personnel with crosses on their uniforms healing the sick as surely as Christ did on the south face.

But over the works of human mercy, the ascetic visage of Bishop Trimer presided in a coruscance of sun-rays like that which haloed Christ on the opposite face. A determined man, Bishop Trimer. And very sure of himself.

"Look,"Desoix repeated as he reined in his wandering mind."In the first place, it's a bad location because the gun can only depress three degrees and that'd leave us open to missiles skimming the surface."

Karsov opened his mouth as if to argue, but a snarled order from Sergeant Blaney shut him up. Lieutenant Desoix was easy-going under normal circumstances; but he was an officer and the Battery XO . . . and he was also hard as nails when he chose to be, as Blaney knew by longer experience than the private had.

"But more important . . ." Desoix went on with a nod of approval to Blaney. "Never site a gun in a spot where you can't drive away if things really get bad. Do you expect to ride down in the elevators if a mob decides what they really ought to do tomorrow is burn the hospital?"

"Well, they wouldn't . . ." Karsov began.

He looked at the wreckage and smoke near the plaza stairs and thought the better of saying what a mob would or wouldn't do.

"Were you on Shinano, Sergeant?" Desoix asked Blaney.

"Yes sir," the noncom said. "But I wasn't in the city during the riots, if that's what you mean."

"I was a gun captain then," Desoix said with a smile and a biting voice, because it was always nice to remember the ones you survived. "The Battery Commander—this was Gilt, and they sacked him for it—sited us on top of the Admin Building. Ten stories in a central park.

"So we had areallygood view of the mob, because parts of it were coming down all five radial streets with torches. And they'd blown up the transformer station providing power to the whole center of town."