The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

Scratchard wore a knife along his right calf. Most of the sheathed blade was hidden within his boot but the hand-filling grip was strapped to mid-calf. "Pistols jam on you, happen," the big man half bragged,half explained. "This'n never did."

His face hardened. "Though they got me pretty much retired to Admin now with my bum knees."

"Didn't look that quiet a billet just now,"Tyl said, pitching his voice lower than the civilians, scurrying on their own errands, could have overheard. "Down in the plaza just now, the enforcers in cloaks . . . And I was talking to a UDB lieutenant landed the same time I did."

"Yeah,you could maybe figure that,"Scratchard said in a voice too quietly controlled to be really neutral. "Open your leg pocket, sir, and stand real close."

Tyl, his face still, ran a finger across the seal of the bellows pocket on the right leg of his coveralls . He and the noncom pressed against one of the door pillars, their backs momentarily to the crowd moving past them. He felt the weight of what Scratchard had slipped into his pocket.

Tyl didn't need to finger the object to know that he'd been given a service pistol, a 1cm powergun. In the right hands, it could do as much damage as a shotgun loaded with buck.

Tyl's were the right hands. He wouldn't have been in the Slammers if they weren't. But the implications . . . .

"We're issuing sidearms in Bamberg City, then?" he asked without any emotional loading.

Scratchard, an enlisted man reporting to an officer, said stiffly,"Sir, while I was in charge of the Transit Detachment, I gave orders that none of the troopers on port leave were to leave barracks in groups of less than three. And no, sidearms aren't officially approved. But I won't have men under my charge disarmed when I sure as blazes wouldn't be disarmed myself. You can change the procedures if you like."

"Yes, Sergeant Major, I can," Tyl said with just enough iron to emphasize that he was well aware of their respective ranks. "And if I see any reason to do so, I will."

He smiled, returning the conversation to the footing where he wanted to keep it. "For now, let's get me to the barracks and see just what it is the colonel has on line."

Pray to the Lord that there'd be orders to take over E Company again.