The Complete Hammer's Slammers: Volume 3 (17 page)

“Good evening, sir,” Coke said to the presumed L’Escorial leader. He let go of the hand-grips of his luggage.

The blond man pointed his sub-machine gun into the air and shot off half the magazine in a single ripping burst. A cone of cyan bolts flicked toward the stars.

As their leader fired, most of the other L’Escorials in the cordon followed suit in a ragged volley. They carried a wide variety of weapons, though high-quality powerguns predominated. The night was a bedlam of whacks, hisscracks, and propellant flashes of red, orange, and yellow supplementing the powerguns’ saturated blue.

Not all the gunmen aimed skyward. A burly, bare-chested man wearing garnet-studded nipple rings with a chain slung between them pointed his chemically powered fléchette gun at the front of Hathaway House. He fired twice.

The crashing reports of the hypervelocity weapon rattled shutters and screens against the windows they protected. The building’s facade was concrete containing very coarse aggregate. The tungsten fléchettes blew out craters in sprays of yellow-green sparks. A piece of gravel the size of Coke’s clenched fist flew back across the street. It smacked the wall fronting L’Escorial headquarters.

The gunman rocked with each round from his high-recoil weapon. He was lowering the muzzle for a third shot when the L’Escorial leader batted him across the temple with the sub-machine gun’s barrel.

“Fuckhead!” the leader shouted as his henchman sprawled facedown on the pavement. The victim’s hair, scorched by the white-hot iridium, stank obscenely. “You want to kill us all?”

He’d knocked the fellow unconscious. From the eyes of the man with the fléchette gun, he’d been flying so high on gage and other drugs that he probably wouldn’t remember the lesson in the morning anyway, though he’d feel it.

The L’Escorial leader turned. He waggled the glowing muzzle of his powergun in Coke’s face. “Where do you come from, dickhead?” he demanded.

“We’re businessfolk from Nieuw Friesland,” Coke said quietly. “Though the last stage of our voyage was through Delos.”

“Everybody comes through Delos if they’re coming here, dickhead,” the leader snarled. He pointed his weapon one-handed at one of Coke’s suitcases. “Open that. Now!”

“I’m sorry,” Coke lied, “but they were hold baggage on shipboard, so they’re time-locked. They can’t be opened for another day and a half.”

“Want to bet?” the gunman said. He fired.

The survey team’s luggage was plated with 40-laminae ceramic armor beneath a normal-looking sheathing. The thin laminae shattered individually without transmitting much of the shock to deeper layers. A few rounds from a 2-cm weapon would have blown any of the cases apart, but the burst of 1-cm pistol charges from the sub-machine gun only pecked halfway through the plating.

Furthermore, the ceramic reflected a proportion of the plasma. The spray of sun-hot ions glazed Coke’s trouser legs—the business suit was much more utilitarian than its stylish cut implied.

The L’Escorial gunman’s bare knees blistered instantly, and the fringe of his shorts caught fire. He screamed, dropped his weapon, and began batting with his bare hands at the flames.

The case started to fall over. The burst of gunfire had smashed the forward static generator in a shower of sparks.

Coke grabbed the handle of the case. “Please, sirs!” he cried in a voice intended to sound terrified. “We’re businessmen! Please!”

“Fuck you!” a tall man with a pair of pistols cried. “You’re dancers, that’s what you are!”

He fired twice into the pavement at Coke’s feet. Glass and pebbles from the compressed-earth roadway spattered Coke’s legs above his shoe tops. Coke staggered forward, lifting the front of the damaged case in his left hand. He squeaked in simulated terror.

The fear was real, but not terror, not anything that prevented Matthew Coke from acting in whatever fashion was necessary.

He didn’t know whether or not the actions he’d set in motion were survivable. It was like a free-fall jump. Once you’d committed, you could only hope the support mechanism—static repulsion, parachute, or whatever—would work as intended. The team couldn’t change its collective mind now.

A 2-cm bolt blew off the lower back corner of the damaged case and the rest of the static suspension. With the plating and the hardware inside, the case weighed nearly a hundred kilos. Coke lurched onward with it, bleating. He was through the cordon, but a bullet could flick through the back of his head and take his face off at any gunman’s whim.

Mary Margulies touched the latch of her tight-band case with a finger so swift that the luggage appeared to have flown open by accident. Frilly underwear and lounging garments flew out onto the roadway.

“Hey lookee-lookee-lookee!” shouted a gunman. He grabbed a teddy and modeled it against his scarred chest.

The cordon collapsed into a rush for loot. The clothing had no value except as a matter of amusement, but that’s all the cordon was to begin with: a way for men with a childish mindset to amuse themselves.

“Hey, sweetie!” a gunman cried. He grabbed, not very seriously, for Margulies’ crotch. The lieutenant weaseled past with her remaining suitcase. “Stay with me! I’ll give you more dick than all five of them pussies together!”

The door of Hathaway House opened in front of Coke. His left arm felt as though the shoulder tendons would snap with the weight of the case they supported. He stepped aside to check on his team.

“Get in, curse your eyes!” Johann Vierziger shouted. “I’ll handle—”

Vierziger slid one of his cases into the doorway with a sweep of his left arm.

“—this!” and he sent the second case after the first, skidding like driverless cars.

Though the static suspension balanced the weight of the luggage, its inertia was unchanged. Vierziger’s movements, as smooth and practiced as those of an expert lawn-bowler, required strength that one wouldn’t assume in someone as pretty as the little man.

A voice yelped from inside the hotel. The door started to close, but Barbour was there, using the mass of his cases to slam the panel fully open. He twisted aside. Niko Daun followed him in.

A pair of L’Escorial gunmen were dancing. One wore a pair of delicate panties as a crown; his partner had thrust his arms into leggings whose multiple shimmering colors shifted as they caught varied light-sources. Other L’Escorials cheered and clapped, or pawed through the open case for their own trophies.

Coke pointed Margulies in. She obeyed at a hasty rush, aware that her presence as a woman made the risk to every member of the team greater. The expression on her face was set and terrible.

Sten Moden tossed his huge case after her, picked up both of Coke’s cases in his one hand and tossed them; and wrapped his arm around Coke’s waist. Moden swept the major with him into the lobby of Hathaway House. Coke could as well have wrestled an oak tree for the good his protests did.

Somebody had to be last in; and yeah, that was probably a job for the security detail, for Sergeant Vierziger, but it didn’t seem right . . .

The sixtyish woman with orange hair started to push the door closed. Daun and Barbour were already doing that. Vierziger danced backward through the opening.

The panel clanged against its jamb. It rang again an instant later: a L’Escorial had fired a powergun into the armor as a farewell. The door’s refractory core, lime or ceramic, absorbed the discharge without damage.

The woman swept her hair out of her eyes. She was healthy looking though on the plump side. A man of similar age with a luxuriant, obviously implanted, mane of hair stood to the side, wringing his hands.

Several tables stood in a saloon alcove off the foyer. A few men were seated in the shadows there. They stared pointedly at their drinks rather than at the newcomers. The silence within the hotel was a balm after the noisy violence of the street.

The woman planted her arms akimbo, fists on her hips. “Welcome to Cantilucca, mistress and sirs,” she said. “Now, if you’re smart, you’ll head right back to the port and take the next ship out of this pigsty!”

“Oh, Evie, it’s not so bad as that,” the man said. “It’s just with the, you know, with the syndicates on edge like they are, there’s more, ah . . .”

“More murderous bandits in town than usual?” the woman snapped. “Yes, there are, and it’s an open question whether they kill everybody else off before they kill each other or after!”

“I’m Georg Hathaway,” the man said, bowing to Moden— probably because the logistics officer was the most imposing presence of this or most other groups. “This is my wife Evie, and I’m sorry for this trouble, usually things are better, it’s just there are so many of the patrolmen in Potosi these last few months, and you know, the boys will let off steam.”

“Usually things are almost bearable,” Evie Hathaway said sharply. “That hasn’t been the case since the bandits began gearing up to fight—and they don’t fight, they just squeeze decent citizens harder yet. When will it stop, I’d like to know?”

“Evie, now, don’t upset the gentlemen and lady,” Georg Hathaway said. “They’ve had a difficult time already, we mustn’t make it worse. Are you the Coke party, then, booking from Nieuw Friesland?”

Moden gestured, palm up. “This is Master Coke,” he said. “You have rooms for us?”

“Oh, we have rooms, all right,” Evie said. “What we don’t have is patrons who can pay us for them. Since this trouble started three months ago, nobody with money and sense comes anywhere near Potosi.”

She stared fiercely at Coke. “And we have our standards. Are you here on behalf of the gage cartel on Delos, Master Coke?”

“No,” Coke said, “we don’t have anything to do with gage.”

Hathaway House was a two-story building. The lobby, saloon, and service quarters were on the ground floor, while the guest rooms were up a flight of stairs. Judged from outside, the protective concrete wall was of equal thickness all the way up, so Coke didn’t see any need for special arrangements.

“Speaking of gage,” said Niko Daun hopefully, “I don’t suppose this would be a good time to have a cone or two?”

Moden looked at the younger man with an icy fury that shocked Coke. “No,” the big man said in a voice as still as death, “it would not. Not so long as the operation is going on.”

Daun blushed. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said, looking toward the lower wall molding, gray against the lobby’s general peach decor. “I just thought that since we had a break after, well, after . . .”

“There’s no breaks until we lift out of here, T-tech, Niko,” Sten Moden said more gently. “But I’m sorry, it wasn’t mine to speak—”

He nodded formally toward Coke.

“—and I’m sorry for my tone. I—wouldn’t care for others to make such a mistake as I made in the past, thinking I could let down.”

Margulies and Vierziger had conferred briefly. The lieutenant trotted upstairs to check protection and fields of fire there, while Vierziger prowled the ground floor. The Hathaways watched him askance but neither of them spoke—even when he disappeared into their own quarters.

“Bloody hell,” Coke muttered. He peeked out of the door’s triangular viewport.

The cordons were still in place. The L’Escorials had rolled an armored truck into the street to face the Astra line. It looked like a four-wheeled van covered with so many metal and concrete panels that it could barely move. The vehicle mounted tribarrels in a cupola and in a sponson to either side. There were firing slits as well, though Coke judged that they did little but weaken the already-doubtful protection.

Robert Barbour opened one of his cases. The interior was packed with electronics. He began to extend the case into a full-featured communications module.

“Come on, Daun,” he said. “We need to get some information if we’re going to do our job.”

Niko Daun gave the room a bright smile. “We’re going to need information if we’re going to survive the tour, I’d say,” he remarked cheerfully.

The sensor tech unlatched a case of his own. It too was full of gear. He took out a series of sensors, broad-band optical and radio frequency, whistling under his breath.

Clothing hadn’t been a high priority for a team operating out of range of support—save for the suitcase Margulies had insisted on bringing as a decoy, and that thought had earned her a commendation if Coke lived to write it.

“Ah, would you gentlefolk not like some refreshment?” Georg Hathaway suggested. “We have what we like to think is a very good beer, I brew it on the premises myself, and there’s local cacao as well, good enough to export, if it weren’t that no one cares for anything but gage on Cantilucca.”

“Gage and killing,” his wife said bitterly. “And mostly killing. I don’t think it’ll stop before there’s only one of the bandits left.”

“About how many men do the gage syndicates employ, mistress?” Coke asked as he continued to look out the viewport. Barbour and Daun would give him much more precise data in a moment, but in some ways there was nothing to equal the naked eye.

“Too many,” Evie said. “And they’re hiring more every day.”

Georg—eyeing the array of devices the tech specialists were assembling—said cautiously, “Sirs, I’d judge that Astra and L’Escorial have at least a thousand, ah, employees each. They aren’t all in, ah, the patrol branch, but most of them are.”

“Usually most of them are out in the fields, bullying the growers,” Evie Hathaway said. “But they’ve been bringing them into Potosi since the trouble started.”

She raised her arms and combed her fingers through her artificially bright hair. She looked tired and frustrated, a woman near the end of her tether. “I hope the growers are getting some benefit. Because it’s hell here for decent folk.”

The makeshift armored truck revved its air-cooled diesel engine. The separately bolted body panels vibrated at different frequencies, creating a grinding rattle. For the crew, it must have been like riding in a cement mixer—but maybe they were so stoned that they wouldn’t feel the effects of their silliness until the next morning.

Niko darted up the stairs to arrange his equipment from high vantage points. Margulies came down, wearing a satisfied expression, and gave Coke a thumbs-up. The upper floor and roof were secure in her—expert—estimation.