The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

“You’re getting around very well, Axbird,” Ruthven lied. He squatted to rummage in the cabinet under his side table. There was only one glass, and the brandy was too good to pour into the plastic tumbler by the water pitcher.

“I’m still getting used to them,” Axbird said. “Dialing ‘em in, you know? They say I’ll get so I can tell the numbers, but right now I’m counting doorways.”

“There’s a linen closet in the middle of the corridor,” Ruthven said apologetically. He offered her the glass, wondering if she could see his expression. Probably not; probably never again.

Axbird drank the brandy without lowering the glass from her lips. “Via, I needed that,” she muttered, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She forced another grin and said, “How are you doing, sir? I heard you guys really got it in the neck.”

“It was bad enough,” Ruthven agreed carefully. He’d hesitated a moment, but he took the glass and refilled it for her. “Thank the Lord for Fire Central.”

“You can’t trust wogs,” Axbird said. Her voice rose. “We might as well kill’em all. Every fucking one of ’em!”

“There’s better local forces and worse ones, Sergeant,” Ruthven said with deliberate formality. “I’d say the Royalists here were pretty middling. They’d do well enough if they got any support from their own government.”

“Yeah, I suppose,” Axbird said. She was trembling; she held the glass in both hands to keep from spilling. “You trust your buddies and screw the rest, every one of ’em.”

A rebel sapper had gotten close enough to nail the command car with a buzzbomb because the Royalists holding that section of the perimeter had all been asleep. The car’s Automatic Defense System hadn’t been live within the compound; it wouldn’t have been safe with so many friendlies running around.

“Sorry, El-Tee,” Axbird said. She seemed to have gotten control of herself again. “Yeah, remember on Diderot where our so-called allies were trying to earn the bounties the Chartists were offering on a Slammer’s head?”

“Umm, that was before my time, Axbird,” Ruthven said, sitting on his bed. He held the brandy bottle but he didn’t think a drink would help him right now. “I joined on Atchafalaya, remember.”

“Oh, right,” said Axbird. She drank, guiding the glass to her lips with both hands. “Right, Diderot was back when I was a trooper.”

For a moment she was silent, her cloudy eyes staring into space. Ruthven wondered if he should say something …and wondered what he could say …but Axbird resumed: “They got a great spot lined up for me, El-Tee. The Colonel did, I mean: a condo right on the beach on San Carlos. It’s on Mainland because, well …until I get these dialed in better, you know.”

Her right hand gestured toward the lidar earpiece, then quickly closed again on her empty glass.

“And for maintenance at first, I don’t want to be out on my own island,” she continued in a tone of birdlike perkiness. “But I can be. I can buy my own bloody island, El-Tee, I’m on full pay for the rest of my life! That’ll run to a lotta brandy, don’t you know?”

“Here, I’ll fill that,” Ruthven said, leaning forward with the bottle. He took the glass in his own hand before he started to pour. “Are you from San Carlos originally, then?”

“Naw,” Axbird said. “I’m from Camside, sir. Haven’t been back since I enlisted, though, twelve years.”

She stared off into space. Her eyes moved normally; Ruthven wondered how much sight remained to them. Probably no more than being able to tell light from dark, though that’d be some help when she was on her own.

“I thought of going back, you know?” she said. “My pension’d make me a big deal on Camside, leastways unless things’ve changed a bloody great lot since I shipped out. But I thought, who do I know there? There’s nobody, nobody ever who’d understand what it means to be a Slammer. What do I care about them?”

Axbird drank convulsively, dribbling brandy from the corners of her mouth. She started to lower the glass and instead dropped it. It bounced once, then shattered.

“Oh Lord, sir!” she said, her voice rising into a wail. She lurched to her feet. Tears were streaming from beneath the lids of her ruined eyes. “What do I care about wogs, on Camside or any bloody place?”

She was wearing hospital slippers. Ruthven got up quickly and gripped her shoulder to keep her from stepping in the glass she probably couldn’t see. Axbird threw her arms around him.

“Oh, Lord, El-Tee!” she said. “There’s nobody who’ll understand! There’ll never be anybody!”

Ruthven held the sobbing woman. His eyes were closed. He was remembering E/1’s second and last night in Fire Support Base Courage. Nobody’ll ever understand.

“El-Tee!” said Rennie in a hoarse whisper. “Sir, wake up. The bastards’re bugging out!”

Ruthven jerked upright. He’d been sleeping in the rear compartment of the command car while Rennie sat at the console with the sensor readouts and commo gear. The squad leaders each took a two-hour watch, debriefing Ruthven when they were relieved or if anything significant appeared.