The Complete Hammer's Slammers: Volume 3 (101 page)

There was a tearing hiss above. Ruthven jerked his head up. The foliage was sparse on this steep slope, so he was able to catch a glimpse of a green ball streaking across the sky from the west.

“Is that a rocket?” said Ruthven. Then, “That was a rocket!”

“It wasn’t aimed at us, Lieutenant,” Lyauty said wearily. “Anyway, our bunkers’re on the reverse slope, though we’ve got fighting positions forward too if we need them.”

“I just thought . . .” Ruthven said. “I thought we, ah . . . I thought that incoming artillery was destroyed in the air.”

“They can’t hit anything with bombardment rockets,” Lyauty said. “Anyway, they can’t hit us. To use the tribarrel in the command car for air defense, we’d have to shift it into a clearing. That’d make it a target.”

“We’re infantry, Lieutenant,” Rennie said over his shoulder. “If you want to call attention to yourself, you ought to’ve put in for tanks.”

Ruthven opened his mouth to dress the trooper down for insolence. He closed it again, having decided it was Lyauty’s job properly since he hadn’t formally handed over command of the platoon.

“We can hit hard when we need to, Lieutenant,” Lyauty said. “But until then, yeah . . .keeping a low profile is a good plan.”

“Who you got with you, Rennie?” a voice called from the darkness above them.

Ruthven looked up. He couldn’t see anybody, just an outcrop over which a gnarled tree managed to grow. His torso beneath the clamshell body armor was sweating profusely, but his hands were numb from gripping wet rocks and branches.

“Six’s come up, Hassel,” Rennie said. “And we got the new El-Tee along.”

“Sir?” said a man kneeling beside the outcrop. “Come on up but keep low. If you stand here, the Wops get your head in silhouette. I’m Hassel, First Squad.”

“It’s Hassel’s bunker, properly,” Lyauty said. “I asked the other squad leaders to come here tonight so I can introduce you.”

Another man stepped into the night; this time Ruthven saw his arm sweep back the curtain of light-diffusing fabric hanging over a hole in the side of the hillside. “This the new El-Tee?” he said.

“Right, Wegs,” said Lyauty. “His name’s Ruthven. Lieutenant, Sergeant Wegelin’s your Heavy Weapons squad leader. Come on, let’s get under cover.”

“Yessir, two tribarrels and two mortars instead of three of each,” said Wegelin as he held the curtain for Hassel, then Ruthven after a directive jab from Lyauty’s knuckles. “And if you think that’s bad, then we only got three working jeeps. It don’t matter here since we offloaded the guns, but we’ll be screwed good if they expect us to displace on our own.”

Ruthven hit his head—his helmet, but it still staggered him— on the transom, then missed the two steps down. He’d have fallen on his face if the tall man waiting—he had to hunch to clear the ceiling—hadn’t caught him.

“Have you heard something about us displacing, Wegs?” the man said, stepping back when he was sure Ruthven had his feet. “Because I haven’t. Talk about getting the shaft! E/1 sure has this time.”

“Troops, this is Lieutenant Ruthven who’s taking over from me,” Lyauty said. “Lieutenant, that’s van Ronk, your platoon sergeant, Axbird who’s got Second Squad . . .”

“How-do, Lieutenant,” said a short woman who at first seemed plump. When she lifted her rain cape to pour a cup of cacao from the pot bubbling on a ledge cut into the side of the bunker, Ruthven realized she was wearing at least three bandoliers laden with equipment and ammunition.

“And that’s Purchas there on watch,” Lyauty said, nodding to the man in the southeast corner. “He’s Third Squad.”

Purchas was on an ammo box, using a holographic display which rested on a similar box against the bunker wall. He didn’t turn around.

“We pipe the sensors through optical fibers,” Lyauty explained, gesturing to the skein of filaments entering the bunker by a hole in the roof. Rain dripped through also, pooling on the floor of gritty mud. “Below the ridgeline there’s a microwave cone aimed back at the command car. We need the car for the link to Central, but other than that we’re on our own here.”

Everybody’d raised their faceshields; Ruthven raised his too, though the bunker’s only illumination was that scatter from the sensor display. My eyes’ll adapt. Won’t they?

“If you’re wondering, there isn’t a separate command bunker,” Lyauty said. “You can change that if you want, but I feel like moving to a different squad each night keeps me in the loop better.”

Everybody was looking at Ruthven. Well, everybody but Purchas. They expected him to say something.

Ruthven’s lips were sticking together. “I . . .” he said. “Ah, I see.”

“Well, I’ll leave you to it, then,” Lyauty said. “This is as good a platoon as there is in the Slammers, Ruthven. You’re a lucky man.”

He turned toward the curtained entrance. “Ah, excuse me, sir,” Ruthven said. How do I address the man? Oh Lord, oh Lord! “Ah, my sleeping bag is with my other gear. Ah, in the jeep.”

“No sweat, Lieutenant,” said Trooper Rennie, pointing to the bag roughly folded on a wall niche. The outside was of resistant fabric; beneath were layers of microinsulation and a soft lining. This cover was torn, and from what Ruthven could see, the lining was as muddy as the floor. “There’s an extra in each of the squad bunkers. You and me won’t both be sleeping at the same time.”

Lyauty cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, “keep your heads down, troopers. I’ll be thinking about you, believe me.”

He muttered something else as he stepped back into the rain. Ruthven thought he heard, “I’ve got half a mind . . .” but it might not have been that.

The bunker was cold and it stank. Sweat and rain water were cooling between Ruthven’s skin and his body armor, and he was sure he’d chafed blisters over his hipbones. Another rocket screamed through the sky; this time it hit close enough to shake dirt from the bunker ceiling.

Ruthven looked at his new subordinates. Their expressions were watchful, hostile, and in the case of Purchas completely dismissive.

He wished he were back on Nieuw Friesland. He wished he were anyplace else but here.

Lieutenant Henry Ruthven wished he were dead.

There was a knock on a door down the corridor. “El-Tee, is that you?” somebody called. Ruthven, his face blanking, stepped quickly around the bed to get to the door.

Muffled words answered unintelligibly. “Sorry,” said the familiar voice. “I’m looking for Lieutenant Ruthven and . . .”

“Axbird, is that you?” Ruthven said, stepping into the corridor. “Via, Sergeant, I thought you’d already shipped out! Come on in . . . I’ve got a bottle of something you’ll like.”

“Don’t mind if I do, El-Tee,” Axbird said. “Tell the truth, there isn’t a hell of a lot I don’t like, so long as it comes out of a bottle. Or a can . . .I’m democratic that way.”

E/1’s former platoon sergeant had gained weight . . . a lot of weight . . .since her injury, though that hadn’t been but . . . well, it’d been four months. Longer than Ruthven would’ve guessed without thinking about it. But still, a lot of weight.

The skin of her face was as smooth as burnished metal. Her eyes had the milky look of a molting snake’s, and she had an egg-shaped device clipped above each ear.

Ruthven backed into his room and rotated the chair for Axbird, primarily to call it to her attention. A buzzbomb had hit the side of the command car while she was inside with her faceshield raised. The jet from the warhead’s shaped charge had missed her . . . had missed everything, in fact; patched, the car was still in service with E/1 . . . but it’d vaporized iridium from the opposite bulkhead. That glowing cloud had bathed her face.

Axbird entered with the careful deliberation of a robot. She wasn’t using a cane, but she held her hands out at waist height as though preparing to catch herself. When she reached the chair, she put one hand on the back and tapped the device above her right ear. “How do you like them, El-Tee?” she said with a plastic smile. “I always wanted to have black eyes. Didn’t say they shouldn’t be lidar transceivers, though. That’s what you get for not specifying, hey?”

“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.

As it’d done, apparently.

Melisant’d been sleeping on top of the cab; her boots clunked against armor as she slid down behind the controls. The tone of Rennie’s voice through the open hatch had snapped her awake, so she was heading for her action station like the good trooper she was.

Rennie had the sensor display filling most of the holographic screen; commo was a narrow sidebar, unimportant for the time being. People . . . hundreds of people . . . were clustered at the firebase entrance. They were leaving on foot, heading eastward along the road. From the south, west, and north other groups of people were approaching.

Those coming toward the base were rebels of the Lord’s Army, armed to the teeth. Judging from the lack of metal for the magnetic sensors to pick up, the Royalists had left their weapons behind.

“Them wogs’re just walking outa the base!” Rennie said. “They musta been talking to the rebs, don’t you guess?”

“More to the point, they’re walking out on us,” Ruthven muttered. “Rouse the platoon . . . but quiet, don’t let the locals know we’ve tumbled to what’s going on.”