by David Drake
Gangbuster II's main gun continued to rotate on target. One of the three vans already sparkled with electrical shorts, while another puffed black smoke from the holes the powergun had blown across its flank.
"Blue Leader to Blue Three," Captain Broglie cried across the crackling, all-band static of powergun discharges. "Abandon your vehicle immediately! Anti-tank rounds are incoming on your location!"
"Screw you, Broglie!" Des Grieux screamed as his main gun slammed a bolt into the central command track, the one that was bow-on with its thicker frontal armor toward Gangbuster II's tribarrel. The 20cm bolt blew out the vehicle's back and sides with a piston of vaporized metal which had been the glacis plate a microsecond earlier.
The Legion tank destroyer entering the square from the west snapped a bolt from its 15cm powergun into Gangbuster II's turret. The tank rocked backward under the impact.
Des Grieux slammed into the seat. The screens and regular lighting went out, but the inner face of the turret armor glowed a sulphurous yellow.
Heat clawed at the skin of Des Grieux's face and hands. He started to draw in a breath. The air was fire, but he had to breathe anyway.
Gangbuster II's nacelles stopped bucking in the stripped plenum chamber when the power shut off. Now the tank shuddered with heat stresses.
Des Grieux punched the reset switch. A conduit across the turret burst with a green flash. The holographic displays quivered to life, then went blank.
A salvo of shells landed near enough to rock the tank with their crump crump crump-CRUMP! They were HE Common, not anti-tank. The rounds had been in flight before the battery commander knew there was a hole blasted in the Legion's artillery defenses.
The seat controls were electrical; nothing happened when Des Grieux tugged the bar. He reached up—his ribs hurt almost as much as his lungs did—and slid the cupola hatch open manually.
Buildings around the market square were burning. Smoke mingled with ozone from the powerguns, organic residues from propellants and explosives, and the varied stench of bodies ripped open as they died.
It was like a bath in cool water compared to the interior of the tank.
The iridium barrel of Gangbuster II's main gun was shorter by eighty centimeters. That was what saved Des Grieux's life. At this range, the tank destroyer's bolt would have penetrated if it had struck the turret face directly.
The stick of shells that just landed had closed the boulevard entering the square from the west. The tank destroyer that hit Gangbuster II wriggled free of collapsed masonry fifty meters away. The vehicle was essentially undamaged, though shrapnel had pecked highlights from its light-absorbent camouflage paint, and the cupola machine gun hung askew.
Bodies, and the wreckage of equipment too twisted for its original shape to be discerned, littered the pavement of the square.
Des Grieux set the tribarrel's control to thermal self-powered operation. It wouldn't function well, but it was better than nothing.
The manual traverse wheel refused to turn; the 15cm bolt had welded the cupola ring to the turret. The elevating wheel spun, though, lowering the triple muzzles as the tank destroyer's own forward motion slid it into Des Grieux's sight picture.
Cargo shells popped open high in the heavens. Des Grieux ignored the warning. He squeezed the butterfly triggers to rip the tank destroyer's skirts. Bolts which might not have penetrated the vehicle's heavy iridium hull armor tore fist-sized holes in the steel.
Des Grieux got off a dozen rounds before his tribarrel jammed. They were enough for the job. The tank destroyer vented its air cushion through the gaps in the plenum chamber and grounded with a squealing crash.
Des Grieux bailed out of Gangbuster II, carrying his carbine. He slid down the turret and hit the pavement on his feet, but his legs were too weak to support him. He sprawled on his face.
The anti-tank submunition, one of three drifting down from the cargo shell by parachute, went off a hundred meters in the air. The whack! of the blast knocked Des Grieux flat as he started to get up. The supersonic penetrator which the explosion forged from a billet of depleted uranium had already punched through the thin upper hull of Gangbuster II.
Ammunition and everything else flammable within the tank whuffed out in a glare that seemed to shine through the armor. The fusion bottle did not fail. The turret settled again with a clang, askew on its ring.
Secondary explosions to the east and further west within Morobad marked other effects of the salvo, but none of the submunitions had targeted the disabled tank destroyer. Des Grieux sat up and crossed his legs to provide a stable firing position. He wasn't ready to stand, not quite yet. Heat from his tank's glowing hull washed across his back.
What sounded like screaming was probably steam escaping from a ruptured boiler. Humans couldn't scream that loud. Des Grieux knew.
He pointed his carbine.
The tank destroyer's forward hatch opened. The driver started to get out. Des Grieux shot him in the face. The body fell backward. Its feet were still within the hatch, but the arms flailed for a time.
The hull side-hatch—the tank destroyer had no turret—opened a crack. Des Grieux covered the movement. Cloth—it wasn't white, just a gray uniform jacket, but the meaning was clear—fluttered from the opening.
"We've surrendered!" a woman called from inside. "Don't shoot!"
"Come on out, then," Des Grieux ordered. His voice was a croak. He wasn't sure the vehicle crew could hear him, but a woman wearing lieutenant's insignia extended her head and shoulders from the hatch.
Her face was expressionless. When she saw that Des Grieux did not fire, she climbed clear of the tank destroyer. A male commo tech followed her. If they had sidearms, they'd left them within the vehicle.
"We've all surrendered," she repeated.
"Baffin's surrendered?" Des Grieux asked. He had trouble hearing. He wanted to order his prisoners closer, but he couldn't stand up and he didn't want them looking down at him.
"Via, Colonel Baffin was there," the lieutenant said, gesturing toward the three command vehicles.
The center unit that Des Grieux hit with his main gun was little more than bulged sidewalk above the running gear.
She shook her head to clear it of memories. "The Legion's surrendered, that's what I mean," she said.
"We must've lost ten percent of our equipment from that one salvo of artillery. No point in just getting wasted by shells. There'll be other battles . . . ."
The lieutenant's voice trailed off as she considered the implications of her own words. The commo tech stared at her in cow-eyed incomprehension.
Des Grieux leaned against a slope of shattered brick. The corners were sharp.
That was good. Perhaps their jagged touch would prevent him from passing out before friendly troops arrived to collect his prisoners.
Regimental HQ was three command cars backed against a previously undamaged two-story school building. Flat cables snaked out of the vehicles, through windows and along corridors.
The combination wasn't perfect. Still, it provided Hammer's staff with their own data banks and secure commo, while permitting them some elbow room in the inevitable chaos at the end of a war—and a contract.
"Yeah, what is it?" demanded the orderly sergeant. The lobby was marked off by a low bamboo barrier. Three Han clerks sat at desks in the bullpen area, while the orderly sergeant relaxed at the rear in the splendor of his computer console. Behind the staff was a closed door marked headmaster in Hindi script and adjutant/hammer's regiment in stenciled red.
Des Grieux withdrew the hand which he'd stretched toward the throat of the Han clerk. "I'm looking for my bloody unit," he said, "and this bloody wog—"
"C'mon,c'monback,"the orderly sergeant demanded with a wave of his hand. "Been partying pretty hard?"
Des Grieux brushed a bamboo post and knocked it down as he stepped into the bullpen. The local clerks jabbered and righted the barrier.
"Wasn't a party," Des Grieux muttered. "I been in
a POW camp the past week."
The orderly sergeant blinked."A Han POW camp,"Des Grieux amplified."Our good wog buddies here—" he kicked out at the chair of the nearest clerk; the boot missed, and Des Grieux almost overbalanced "—picked me up when they swept Morobad. Baffin's troops got paroled out within twenty-four hours, but I got stuck with the Hindi prisoners 'cause nobody knew I was there."
The orderly sergeant's name tag read Hechinger. His nose wrinkled as Des Grieux approached. The Han diet of the POW camp differed enough from what the Hindi prisoners were used to that it gave most of them the runs. Latrine facilities within the camp were wherever you wanted to squat.
"Well, why didn't you tell them you were a friendly?" Hechinger asked in puzzlement.
Des Grieux's hands trembled with anger. "Have you ever tried to tell a wog anything?" he whispered. "Without a gun stuck down their throat when you say it?"
He got a grip on himself and added, more calmly, "And don't ask me for my ID bracelet. One of the guards lifted that first thing. Thought the computer key was an emerald, I guess."
Hechinger sighed. "Mary, key data," he ordered the artificial intelligence in his console. "Name?"
"Des Grieux, Samuel, Sergeant-Commander," the tanker said. "H Company, 2nd Platoon, Platoon Sergeant Peres commanding. She was commanding, anyhow. She may've bought it last week."
The console hummed and projected data. Des Grieux, standing at the back of the unit, could see the holograms only as refractions in the air.
"One of our trucks was going by and I shouted to the driver," Des Grieux muttered, glaring at the clerks. The three of them hunched over their desks, pretending to be busy. "He didn't know me, but he knew I wasn't a wog. I could've been there forever."
"Well,"said the orderly sergeant,"three days longer and you'd sure've been finding your own transport back to the Regiment. We're pulling out. Got a contract on Plessy. Seems the off-planet workers there're getting uppity and think they oughta have a share in the shipyard profits."
"Anyplace," Des Grieux said. "Just so long as I've got a gun and a target."
"Well, we got a bit of a problem here, trooper," Hechinger said as he frowned at his display. "Des Grieux, Sergeant-Commander, is listed as dead."
"I'm not bloody dead," Des Grieux snarled. "Blood'n Martyrs, ask Sergeant Peres."
"Lieutenant Peres, as she'll be when she comes off medical leave," the orderly sergeant said, "isn't a lotta help right now either. And if you're going to ask about—" he squinted at the characters on his display "—Sergeant-Commander Medrassi, he bought the farm."
Hechinger smirked. "Like you did, y'see? Look, don't worry, we'll—"
"Look, I just want to get back to my unit," Des Grieux said, hearing his voice rise and letting it. "Is Broglie around? He bloody knows me. I just saved his ass—again!"
The orderly sergeant glanced over his shoulder. "Captain Broglie we might be able to round up for you, trooper," he said carefully. He nodded back toward the Adjutant's office.
"Anyhow,"Hechinger continued,"he was captain when he went in there. Don't be real surprised if he comes out with major's pips on his collar, though."
"That bastard . . ." Des Grieux whispered.
"Captain Broglie's very much the fair-haired boy just now, you know, buddy," Hechinger continued in his careful voice. "He stopped near a brigade of Hindi armor with one tank platoon. It was kitty-bar-the-door, all the way back to Xingha, if it hadn't been for him."
The office door opened. Sergeant Hechinger straightened at his console, face forward.
Des Grieux looked up expecting to see either the Adjutant or Broglie—
And met the eyes of Major Joachim Steuben, as cold and hard as beads of chert. Hammer's bodyguard looked as stiffly furious as Des Grieux had ever seen a man who was still under control.
Des Grieux didn't think that Steuben would recognize him. It had been years since the last time they were face to face. There was crinkled skin around the corners of the major's eyes, though his was still a pretty-boy's face if you didn't look closely; and Des Grieux just now looked like a scarecrow . . . .
Joachim was more than just a sociopathic killer, though the Lord knew he was that. He looked at the tanker and said, "Well, well, Des Grieux.Seeking our own level, are we?"
The way Joachim shot his hip could have been an affectation . . . but it also shifted the butt of his pistol a further centimeter clear of the tailored blouse of his uniform. Des Grieux met his eyes. Anyway, there was no place to run.
"Well, I understand your decision, Luke," said Colonel Hammer as he came out of the Adjutant's office with his hand on the arm of the much larger Broglie. The moonfaced Adjutant followed them, nodding to everything Hammer said. "But believe me, I regret it. Remember you've always got a bunk here if you change your mind."
Broglie wore no rank insignia at all.
Hechinger had to say something to avoid becoming part of the interchange between Steuben and Des Grieux. Nobody in his right mind—except maybe the colonel—wanted to be part of Joachim's interchanges, even as a spectator.
"Okay,Des Grieux,"he said in a voice just above a whisper. "I'll cut you some temporary orders so's you can get chow and some kit."
Broglie heard the name. He glanced at Des Grieux. His face blanked and he said, in precisely neutral tones, "Hello, Slick. I didn't think you'd make it back from that one."
"Oh, you ought to show more warmth than that, Mister Broglie," Joachim drawled.He didn't look at Broglie and Hammer behind him."After all,without Sergeant Des Grieux here to create that monumental screw-up, you wouldn't have been such a hero for straightening things out. Would you, now?"
"What d'ye mean screw-up?" Des Grieux said, knowing that Steuben was looking for an excuse to kill something. "I'm the one who blew the guts outa Baffin's Legion!"
"That's the man?" Hammer said, speaking to Broglie.
The colonel's eyes were gray. They had none of the undifferentiated hatred for the world that glared from Major Steuben's, but they were just as hard as the bodyguard's when they flicked over Des Grieux.
"Yes sir," Broglie murmured. "Joachim—Major Steuben? I'm not taking the job the Legion offered me out of any disrespect for the colonel. If you like, I'll promise that the Legion won't take any contracts against the Slammers so long as I'm in charge."
Joachim turned as delicately as a marionette whose feet dangle above the ground. "Oh, my . . ." he said, letting his left hand dangle on a theatrically limp wrist. "And a traitor's promise is so valuable!"
"I'm not—" said Broglie.
"Joachim!" said the colonel, stepping in front of Steuben—and between Steuben and Broglie, though that might have been an accident, if you believed Colonel Alois Hammer did things by accident."Go to the club and have a drink. I'll join you there in half an hour."
Steuben grimaced as though he'd been kicked in the stomach. "Sir," he said. "I'm . . ."
"Go on,"Hammer said gently,putting his hand on the shoulder of the dapper killer. "I'll meet you soonest. No problem, all right?"
"Sir," Steuben said, nodding agreement. He straightened and strode out of the headquarters building. He looked like a perfect band-box soldier, except for his eyes . . . .
"And as for you, Luke," Hammer said as he faced around to Broglie again, "I won't have you talking nonsense. Your first duty is to your own troops. You'll take any bloody contract that meets your unit's terms and conditions . . . and I assure you, I'll do the same."
"Look,sir,"Broglie said. He wouldn't meet Colonel Hammer's eyes."I wouldn't feel right—"
"I said,"Hammer snapped,"put a sock in it! Or stay with me—the Lord knows I'm going to have to replace Chesney anyway, after the lash-up he made when the wheels came off at Morobad."
Des Grieux was dizzy. The world had disconnected itself from him. He was surrounded by glassy surfaces which only seemed to speak and move in the semblance of people he had once known. "Major Chesney—" Broglie began.
"Major Chesney had to b
e told twice,"Hammer said,"first by you and then by me, a thousand kays away with 3d Operational Battalion, to set his flanking tank platoons to cover artillery defense forthecenter.You shouldn't have had to hold Chesney's hand while you were organizing Han troops into a real defense."
Broglie smiled. "Their laser-vehicles were mostly bogged," he said, "so they couldn't run. I just made sure they knew I'd shoot 'em faster than the Hindis could if they tried to run."
"Whatever works," said Hammer with an expression as cold as the hatred in Joachim's eyes a moment before.
The expression softened. "Listen to me, Luke,"Hammer went on. "People are going to hire mercenaries so long as they're convinced mercenaries are a good investment. Having the Legion in first-rate hands like yours is good for all of us in this business. I'll miss you, but I gain from this, too."
Broglie stiffened. "Thank you, sir," he said.
"Listen!" Des Grieux shouted. "I'm the one who broke them for you! I killed Baffin."
"Oh, you killed a lot of people, Des Grieux," Colonel Hammer said in a deceptively mild voice. "And way too many of them were mine."
"Sir," said Broglie. "The disorganization in the Legion's rear really was Slick's doing. We pieced it together in post-battle analysis, and—"
"Saved about ten minutes, didn't it, Broglie?" the colonel said. "Before the flanking units closed on Morobad?"
Broglie smiled again, thinly. "That was ten minutes I was real glad to have, sir," he said.
Hammer stared up and down at Des Grieux. The colonel's expression did not change. "So, you think he's a good soldier, do you?" he asked softly.
"I think," said Broglie, "that . . . if he'd learn to obey orders, he'd be the best soldier I've ever seen."
"Fine, Mister Broglie," Hammer said. "I'll tell you what . . . ."
He continued to look at Des Grieux as if daring the tanker to move or speak again.Major Steuben was gone,but the White Mice at the outer doorway watched the discussion with their hands on the grips of their submachine guns.
"I'll let you have him, then," Hammer continued. "For Broglie's Legion."