The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

It’d taken skill to hit the running man and not nail a couple of the bystanders. Though it could as easily have been dumb luck: he didn’t suppose either the trooper or Major Steuben would’ve cared if some of the other prisoners had lost limbs.

Huber reached the hatch in the rear of the command car. It opened before he rapped it with the barrel of his powergun. The two men inside had their backs to him as they watched a high-resolution image of prisoners moving steadily through the chute to the shipping containers.

Joachim Steuben was as dapper as if he’d spent the past three days in Base Alpha instead of making a thousand kilometer run over difficult terrain. His companion was blond and in his thirties; Grayle’s chief civil aide, Huber recalled, the one who’d disappeared between the Assembly meeting and the time Captain Orichos found incriminating papers in the files that had been under the aide’s control.

“That one!” the aide said. What was his name? Patronus; that was it. “He’s Gerd Danilew. He was in charge of off-planet weapons purchases!”

“That one,” Steuben said, his amplified voice damped to silence when the hatch closed behind Huber. The pipper of the cab-mounted tribarrel framed the face of the sallow, moustached prisoner walking nervously between the barriers of razor ribbon.

The man looked up. Instead of trying to run, he fell in a faint as limp as if the tribarrel had decapitated him—as the slightest additional pressure of Steuben’s finger on the trigger control would’ve made it do.

“Well, carry him, then,” Steuben ordered into the pickup for the external speakers. He looked over his shoulder at Huber and raised an eyebrow in delighted amusement, then turned back and added, “Now!”

The procession resumed. Patronus kept his face rigidly forward as if he thought that by refusing to acknowledge Huber, he could deny what was going on.

Steuben rotated his full-function chair to smile at Huber. “So, Lieutenant,” he said. “I thought I’d use this opportunity to see if you’re still happy with a line command.”

Instead of the slot in the White Mice that he offered me three weeks ago, Huber thought. He shrugged and said, “Yeah, I’m happy. We did a good job here.”

He guessed he’d made that sound like a challenge, which wasn’t the smartest sort of attitude to show when you were talking to a weasel like Joachim Steuben. Huber didn’t care much at the moment.

“Indeed you did,” Steuben said, nothing in his tone but mild approval. “Both the task force and you personally …which is why my offer is still open.”

He cocked an eyebrow.

“I said I was happy!” Huber said. Via, he was going to have to watch himself. It’d be a hell of a note to come through a mission like this one and then be shot because he mouthed off to a stone killer like Joachim Steuben.

He smiled—at himself, but it was probably the right thing to do because the major giggled in response.

“That one!” Patronus said, pointing at the image. His hands were clean but he’d chewed his fingernails ragged.

Major Steuben’s right hand moved minutely, then clicked the switch that controlled the laser marker. Huber didn’t see him look around, not even a quick glance, but the pipper was centered on the forehead of the grim-looking man who’d brushed his full moustache in an attempt to cover the scar on his cheek. “That one,” Steuben repeated into the PA system.

In a quick voice, bobbing his head to his words, Patronus continued, “That’s Commander Halcleides, he took over after Commander Fewsett—that is, when he died.”

“What happens next?” Huber asked. He didn’t exactly care, but he knew Deseau’d ask when he got back to Fencing Master and he wanted to have an answer. “You’ll shoot them?”

Patronus turned with a furious expression. “They’re traitors!” he snarled. “They deserve to die!”

Steuben made a peremptory gesture with his left hand. His head didn’t turn, but Huber saw his eyes flick toward the former aide.

“Master Patronus,” Steuben said without raising his voice, “I’d appreciate it if you’d attend to your duties while the lieutenant and I speak like the gentlemen we are. I don’t want the bother of replacing you.”

He giggled again. To Huber he added, “Though shooting him would be no bother at all, eh, Lieutenant? For either of us, I suspect.”

Patronus was on a seat that folded down from the sidewall. He turned again to face the screen across the front of the compartment, pointedly concentrating on the prisoners shambling through the identification parade. His face flushed, then went white.

Huber looked at the man who’d first planted evidence on his friends and now was fingering his closest colleagues for probable execution. In a good cause, of course: the Regiment’s cause. But still …

“No, Major,” Huber said. “It wouldn’t be much bother.”