The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

Pilar stuck her head out the side window. “Matthew!” she called. “Madame Yarnell’s back, and she’s come with a regiment of mercenaries! She says they’re going to clear the syndicates off Cantilucca and set up new factors before Marvela has time to react. Matthew, get in! They’ll kill you too, I’m sure of it!”

“Bloody hell!” Lieutenant Barbour blurted over the commo net. “One, this is Four and she’s right, I wasn’t monitoring the port. Four transports have set down and there’s another requesting landing instructions. It’s the Heliodorus Regiment and I’d estimate—”

A pause for instant mental synthesis of data that a normal interpretation team would have required an hour to complete.

“—over two thousand troops. I don’t know the equipment standard; it isn’t in my data base. Over.”

“Mary, you drive,” Coke ordered as he got in on the passenger side of the van. “Pilar, get into the back, it’ll be safer. How much fuel is there in the tank?”

“Matthew, I’m really sorry,” Barbour added. The needless and unprofessional comment showed how nervous he was. “I should have been watching the port. Four over.”

Barbour had run up to six fireflies simultaneously from a console that hadn’t been built for the purpose. Who did he think he was? The Lord God Almighty, that he should be omniscient?

“The Heliodorus Regiment’s light infantry,” Johann Vierziger said as he swung open the van’s rear door and sat, cradling his 2-cm weapon. The van now had a sting in its tail. “Wheeled transport, no fighting vehicles; coil guns with explosive bullets.”

“The tank’s about half full,” Pilar said. Instead of getting into the back as ordered, she slid to the middle of the front seat where her thigh pressed Coke’s. “The gauge doesn’t work, but there should be enough fuel to go a hundred kilometers or more.”

“And there’re about three thousand bodies on the TO and E,” Coke said to Vierziger as Margulies gunned the van forward. Data that hadn’t been downloaded into the intelligence officer’s console for lack of need bubbled to the surface of the combat veterans’ minds. “Not that anybody ever landed with his complete table of organization strength.”

Verbally keying the AI in his helmet, he continued, “Four, this is One. We’ll pick up you and the eastern element, then keep going as far as we’ve got fuel for. Which apparently isn’t very fucking far, the roads being what they are, but maybe we can improve our transport on the way. Break. Two and Five, do you copy? One over.”

“One, this is Two,” Sten Moden replied. His voice was breathy. “We’ll join you at L’Escorial HQ. We left the launcher there, and we may need the rounds we’ve got left. Over.”

“One, this is Four,” Barbour said. “I’m packing the console for travel now. Out.”

The intelligence officer shouldn’t have been able to override his commanding officer’s transmission—which is what he’d done, stepping on Coke’s attempt to protest about Moden’s plan. On the other hand, if Barbour couldn’t control the net, he wouldn’t have been as good as he’d repeatedly proved himself.

Coke sighed. “Roger both of you,” he said. “One out.”

He’d intended to run with a minimum of equipment. They would hide in the forest—if possible—until the situation changed or at least became more clear. If the survey team dropped off the map, Camp Able would send a follow-up mission.

In three weeks or a month, the FDF would send a follow-up mission. And while the Heliodorus Regiment was an organization of professionals, they were low-end professionals and the Cantilucca operation had to be handled without Bonding Authority oversight.

The Heliodorans just might carry out an order to execute captured Frisians. And there was no question in Coke’s mind that Madame Yarnell would give such an order.

Pilar’s hand lay beside his on their joined thighs. Coke squeezed it, then resumed compulsively counting the loaded magazines in his remaining bandolier. A moment before the van came in sight, Coke had wanted to find a hole and curl up in it for a week of sleep. Now he had a second wind, but he felt as though something could snap at any moment and leave him a pile of constituent atoms….

Margulies stopped in front of the L’Escorial building without killing the van’s engine. Daun and Barbour ran from Hathaway House across the street. Both men were heavily laden. The intelligence officer carried his console, packed again into its integral case, while Niko staggered along ahead of the lieutenant with a wicker hamper.

“Daun, we don’t have room for your …” Coke called. Clothing? Housewares? What in hell did the kid have in the basket?

“Beer!” Niko shouted as he slammed the hamper down in back of the van. “Master Hathaway’s best! And if you’re as dry as I am, it’s better than ammo!”

Sten Moden, carrying so much equipment that he looked like a forklift, waddled from what had been L’Escorial’s courtyard. Besides the launcher with two tubes ready, his hand gripped a pair of ammunition boxes. He’d slung additional weapons from his shoulder.