The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

“Bloody hell,” Coke whispered. He didn’t shoot the girl, the third of the assassins. At this point, it wouldn’t do any good.

“Four-Two to Six,” Sergeant Lennox reported gleefully. “We’ve done all there is to do here, boss, so we’re heading back to the barn. Out!”

Bradkopf’s sightless eyes stared toward the split display of the carnage achieved by the troops who, by his orders, should have been guarding his own person. In that professionally significant aspect, Coke’s gamble hadn’t paid off after all.

Tannahill

Limping slightly, Lieutenant Mary Margulies entered the orderly room for the first time in seven months.

“Hey, El-Tee,” called Kerry, the 305th Military Police Detachment’s first sergeant. “Good to see you. You look like you’re getting around okay.”

Margulies grimaced. “Twinges, that’s all,” she said, “but the bastard medics put me on a profile anyhow. I’m being transferred out, Top. Stuck behind a desk, I suppose.”

She was a stocky woman whose black hair was her only affectation. She’d removed padding from her commo helmet so that she could coil a longer braid when she was on duty. As a platoon leader in a war zone, she had been on duty virtually all the time, awake or sleeping, until a routine convoy escort went sour.

“Ah …” said Kerry. “You suppose? You got a copy of the actual orders, didn’t you?”

“Oh, I got them all right,” Margulies said with a wan smile. “Long enough to see I was being transferred back to Camp Able. Then I threw the chip and reader right through the window. I don’t belong on Nieuw Friesland. Curst if I don’t think I’ll put in my resignation if that’s what they want from me.”

She nodded toward the detachment commander’s door. “The Old Man in?”

“Ah …” Sergeant Kerry said. “No, Major Yates had an Orders Group at Tannahill Command this morning. Ah …”

Margulies smiled harshly. “Go on, Top, say it if that’s what you’re thinking. A crip like me shouldn’t be in the field where she could get good people killed because she’s hobbling around.”

“No sir,” Sergeant Kerry said. “Hell no, sir. What I meant—and I know that nobody but the recipient reads assignment orders until the recipient’s signed off on them—”

Margulies laughed, this time with genuine good humor. “Top, you’ve got seventeen years in the FDF and the Slammers before them. Let’s take it as read that you knew my orders before I did, all right?”

Kerry grinned. “For the sake of argument …” he said.

His fingers touched keys on his desk; the integral printer hummed. “I guess there’s no harm in me giving you a hardcopy replacement of the assignment orders you lost, is there?” he said.

A flimsy spooled out of the printer slot. Kerry tore off the document and handed it to the lieutenant without looking at the contents. “I think you’ll find,” he continued, “that Camp Able on Nieuw Friesland is just a transit stop, where you’ll join your new unit. You’ve been assigned as security to a survey team, El-Tee. You’re not supposed to be in combat; but if things were peaceful, a survey team wouldn’t be there trolling for business.”

“Well I’ll be hanged,” Margulies said, reading the data through for the first time. “I was so scared they were going to stick me at a desk that I …”

Kerry affectionately scratched the corner molding of his desk as though the piece of furniture were a living creature. “Different strokes, El-Tee,” he murmured. “Personally, I don’t find I miss getting shot at in the least.”

“Well, I’ll be hanged,” Margulies repeated with changed emphasis. “Do you know where this survey team—”

She blinked. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, sure you know where we’re going.”

“Cantilucca,” Kerry said, returning the smile. “I looked it up. West Bumfuck is more like.”

His lips pursed in sudden concern. His fingers started to summon Margulies’ personnel data, then realized doing so now couldn’t help the situation. “Ah—don’t tell me you come from Cantilucca, El-Tee?” he added.

“Not me,” said Margulies with a broad grin. “But I know somebody who does ….”

Earlier: Tannahill

“Sarge …” Lieutenant Mary Margulies said as Angel Tijuca slid their two-seat air-cushion jeep between a pair of road trains. The huge vehicles had accelerated slowly, but they were maintaining 50 kph now and there was just enough clearance to spare the jeep’s paint. “If you don’t take it easy, you’re not going to survive the last three days of your enlistment.”

Margulies didn’t sound concerned. Her eyes continued to search the roadsides instead of glaring at her driver.

Angel laughed infectiously. “Now, Missie Mary,” he said. “Don’t get your bowels in an uproar. And anyway, it’s not three days, it’s two and a wake-up.”

In public Sergeant Tijuca was never less than deferential to his superior officer, but he and Margulies had gone through a lot in the year he’d been driving her. Angel was ending his enlistment in the Frisian Defense Forces, and Margulies was curst sorry to see him go.