The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 1 (hammer's slammers)

by David Drake

  "Pietro," Father Blenis said, "bring up Rasile and your sister, please."

  To Lamartiere he went on, "Pietro's strength has been a great help to our community since he and Louise arrived last month."

  Marie turned and sniffed. Her good hand played with the stained dressings of the other.

  "Look, Father," Lamartiere said. He spoke toward his hands in his lap because he was too tired to raise his eyes as he knew he should. The rhythmic squeals of the winch were starting to put him to sleep. "I don't mean to disturb your peace, but we have to stay here until we get in touch with Maury."

  He shook his head again. It didn't help him think. "Or with the Council in Goncourt if they've got a better idea," he said. "We're going to need food and water, and if you don't help us get Hoodoo under cover you're going to learn how much the government cares for your neutrality as soon as the first drone comes over."

  With Pietro's strength on the crank, the basket had already reached the battlements. The slim man and the woman, Louise, got out on opposite sides with the tense hostility of rival dogs. They looked remarkably fit in contrast to Marie, but neither was a person Lamartiere would have chosen to know in peacetime. He supposed that pimps and hard-faced whores sometimes became refugees also.

  "Carcassone doesn't fly anything over the Boukasset," Rasile said. Lamartiere blinked in surprise to hear so throaty and pleasant a voice coming from the rat-faced civilian. "If they do, Maury shoots them down. Or de Laburat does it himself."

  Marie stepped forward. "Look, you don't belong here!" she said harshly to Lamartiere. "We'll give you water, and you can have food, too. I suppose you'll like the taste even better because you're snatching it out of the mouths of widows and orphans, won't you? But take your tank and your war away from us—or die, that would be fine. That would be even better!"

  "Marie," Father Blenis said. His tone was sharper than Lamartiere had heard from him previously, though it was still mild after the rasping anger of the others who'd been speaking. "Mr. Lamartiere has come as a distressed traveler. You can see how tired he is. The Blessed Catherine has never turned such folk away in the past, as you well know."

  "He's a soldier!" she said. "He came in a tank!"

  "We won't let him bring weapons within the walls," Blenis replied. With the gentle humor Lamartiere was learning to recognize, he added, "Especially his tank. But he and his companion are welcome to the hospitality we offer to anyone passing by."

  Houses two and three stories high were built around the interior of the shrine. The rooms had external staircases and windows opening onto the central courtyard where an herb garden grew. Lamartiere could see two well copings and, at the upper end of the courtyard, a stone trough into which water trickled from an ancient bronze pipe.

  Several younger women holding infants stood in the doorways, watching the group around the winch. All of them had the same worn look that Lamartiere had noticed in Marie. A woman alone—and worse, a woman with small children—would have had a tough time crossing a wasteland ruled by rival gangs. There were, quite literally, fates worse than death, because the dead didn't wake from a screaming nightmare before every dawn.

  The basket was tight against the pulley. Pietro still held the crank, possibly because nobody'd told him to do otherwise. Someone shouted from below. Pietro looked at Louise, who snapped, "Yes, yes, bring the next one up. For God's sake!"

  "Louise?" Blenis said.

  The woman grimaced. She might have been attractive once, but the glint of her eyes was a worse disfigurement than the old scar on her right cheek. "Sorry, Father," she said. "I'll watch my language."

  Lamartiere tried to stand. He didn't belong in a place where people worried about taking the name of God in vain.

  "Look, the hell with you," he said. He was furious because of frustration at his inability to accomplish anything he could feel good about. "We'll go, just get us water."

  The world went white. Lamartiere was lying on the stone battlements. He didn't remember how he got there. "We'll leave you alone," he tried to whisper.

  "Marie, make a bed for Mr. Lamartiere here," Father Blenis murmured through the buzzing white blur. "Later on we can consider the future."

  Lamartiere awoke to see Father Blenis rearranging a slatted screen so that the lowering sun didn't fall on the sleeper's face. The rattle and flickering light had brought Lamartiere up from the depths to which exhaustion had plunged him. Near the winch a young woman nursed her infant while an older child played at her feet.

  "Oh God, help me," Lamartiere groaned. There was nothing blasphemous in the words. His every muscle ached and his head throbbed in tune with his heartbeat, though the haloes of light framing objects settled back to normal vision after a few moments.

  "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you," Blenis said. "Can you drink something, or. . . ?"

  "Please," Lamartiere said. He sat up, ignoring the pain because he had to get moving. He had no traumatic injury, just the cumulative effects of a day and a half spent as a component of a tank.

  Hoodoo's metal, seals, and insulation became worn in the course of service. A bearing in Number 7 drive fan would be repacked if the vehicle were in Brione for depot maintenance, and the lip of the skirts needed recontouring if not replacement.

  The crew needed downtime also, but they wouldn't have gotten it in the field any more than the tank itself would. Heth and Stegner would have gone on until the mission was accomplished or something irretrievably broke.

  Lamartiere was in the same situation, except that by now he was quite certain his mission—defeat of the Carcassone government—could never be accomplished. The only question was whether he or Hoodoo fell to ruin first.

  Father Blenis held out a gourd cup. Lamartiere took it from the old man and drank unaided. The contents were milk, not water; goat's milk, he supposed, since he'd seen goats scrambling about the hillsides nearby. It was hard to imagine that the Boukasset had enough vegetation even for goats. No doubt they, like the shrine's human residents, had simple tastes.

  Lamartiere looked over the wall coping. The camouflage tarp was stretched between poles and hooks hammered into wall crevices, so from this angle only Hoodoo's bow was visible. The fabric provided a radar barrier and a sophisticated matrix which mimicked the thermal signature of the materials to either side. Aerial reconnaissance would show only a blotch of rock against the wall of the shrine.

  Most of the residents were at work again in the orchard, either picking ripe lemons or building additional drystone shelters. The latter work was performed by gangs of refugees, but a black-robed Brother oversaw each group.

  A few civilians sat or stood near Hoodoo's bow. Dr. Clargue was in the driver's hatch, draining the sore on a child's shin while the mother looked on. A slightly older girl stood on a headlight bracket and, with a self-important expression, held the exiguous medical kit Clargue had brought with him from Pamiers. The equipment would have slipped down the bow slope if the doctor had laid it directly on the armor.

  "I've got to go down and spell Clargue," Lamartiere said. "Has he been awake all the time?"

  "In a moment," Father Blenis said. He smiled. "Your companion has been a godsend. We've never had a doctor in residence here, and some of the distressed folk coming for shelter recently have needed help beyond what I and the other Brothers are trained to provide. Regrettably, medical supplies don't reach us here."

  Lamartiere scowled. He got carefully to his feet by bracing himself on the stone. As he slept the residents had slid a blanket-wrapped mattress of springy brush beneath him. It was the best bed that Lamartiere had had since he thundered out of Brione in the stolen tank.

  Lamartiere's discomfort came from being shaken for over a day in the strait confines of Hoodoo's driving compartment. Dr. Clargue understood the tank's software better than Lamartiere could ever hope to do, but driving a tank was a specialized skill that Clargue had never learned. They couldn't switch positions during the high-speed run into the Boukasset.
>
  Lamartiere paused; he'd intended to climb into the basket, but his body wasn't quite ready. "You're in regular touch with the rest of Ambiorix, then?" he asked.

  "A truck comes every week to pick up our lemons and bring us the things we've ordered with the proceeds," Blenis explained. "An aircraft would be better but as Rasile said, no one flies in the Boukasset. Maury and de Laburat both import very sophisticated weaponry, much of it by starship. Not medical supplies, though; at least not to share with us."

  He shook his head. "I'm not complaining," he said. "God has poured Her bounty over us with great generosity. We give thanks daily that She allows us to help so many of Her afflicted."

  "I'll go down now and send the doctor up," Lamartiere said. "He needs sleep at least as much as I did."

  He stepped into the basket. The woman moved the slung infant to her right hip so that she could grip the crank.

  "You know, all people really need is peace," Father Blenis said. "I regret that this isn't understood more widely. Ambiorix would be a better place."

  Lamartiere walked to Hoodoo's bow, feeling stronger with each step. He wasn't looking forward to getting inside again, but perhaps he wouldn't have to if he stayed close to the hatch.

  Dr. Clargue was rebandaging Marie's hand. "The dry air is an advantage," he said, pitching his voice to greet Lamartiere as well as speaking to his patient. "Germs don't find it any more attractive than I do. Though I'd prefer to have a greater supply of antibiotic cream as well."

  Rasile, Louise, and the woman's dimwitted brother—if Pietro really was her brother—loitered near the tank. Unlike Marie, none of them had any obvious medical problems.

  "You three," Lamartiere ordered harshly. Whatever they were doing, it wasn't together: Louise and Rasile liked each other as little as Lamartiere liked either one of them. "Get out of here. Either out in the orchard or inside the shrine, I don't care which."

  Pietro was in a different category. You couldn't dislike him any more than you could dislike a rock, though a rock could be dangerous enough in the wrong circumstances.

  "Who do you think you are, giving me orders?" Rasile said.

  "The guy who's going to be testing Hoodoo's drive fans in a moment," Lamartiere said as he hopped onto the bow slope. "If you're within a hundred meters when I crank up, there won't be anything left of you but a smear by the time I shut down again. Just a friendly warning."

  If trouble started, Lamartiere needed to be in the driver's seat. He wished Clargue weren't there now, but the doctor wouldn't have been able to work on his patients from the cupola.

  The refugees drifted toward the orchard instead of pushing matters. Louise and Pietro walked together, while Rasile stayed twenty meters distant in space and a lot farther away in spirit.

  Lamartiere supposed they'd been hoping to steal equipment. Tanks in the field were generally festooned with gear, but Heth and Stegner had stripped Hoodoo to be loaded on a starship before Lamartiere drove her out of the base. He and Clargue had only the clothes they stood in, but Lamartiere still didn't want the likes of those three rummaging around inside the tank.

  Clargue got out of the compartment very stiffly. "I'm sorry, Denis," he said. "I should have been working on the software, but I found I was a doctor before I was a tank crewman."

  "Go get a bath and some sleep, Doctor," Lamartiere said. "There's plenty of water here, for our purposes anyway."

  He gripped Clargue's hand to permit him to negotiate the iridium slope under control. "You did just what you should've done. I wish I could say the same."

  Clargue trudged toward the basket, carrying his medical kit. Marie still stood close to the tank. "I'll leave in a moment," she said. "I wanted to apologize for what I said when you arrived. Dr. Clargue is a good man, and he tells me that you are, too."

  Lamartiere snorted. "Then he knows something I don't," he said. He squatted on the edge of the hatch instead of lowering his body inside. The driver's seat had almost infinite possible adjustments, but at the end of the long run there was no part of Lamartiere's body that hadn't been rubbed or pounded.

  "Look," he said, "I'm sorry we're here. I'm sorry about a lot of things, though I know that doesn't make them any better. If Maury can get us ammo, then we'll go back across the mountains to where we can maybe do something about the war. Or whatever the Council decides it wants."

  "Maury won't give you anything unless there's advantage in it for him," the woman said. "The last thing he wants is for the war to end. He and de Laburat are making too good a thing about being the only authorities in the Boukasset."

  Despite Marie's initial comment, she didn't show any sign of wanting to leave. Lamartiere was glad of her company.

  "They manufacture drugs, you know," Marie said. She glared at Lamartiere as though he was responsible for the situation. "Most of the output goes off planet, but I suppose there's enough left over for Ambiorix as well."

  "I wasn't aware of that, no," Lamartiere said evenly. It made sense, though.

  He should have wondered what Maury traded to the smugglers in exchange for his gang's weaponry. Goat-hair textiles or even the subtly flavored lemons of the Boukasset didn't buy many powerguns and antiaircraft missiles.

  "I was at one of the factories for three months," Marie said. Her tone was harsh, but Lamartiere now saw the misery in her eyes. "Not as staff—they have off-planet technicians for that. As entertainment. Until they raided some other family of refugees and replaced me with someone who was in better shape. I came to the shrine instead of dying in the desert."

  "I'm responsible for the things I've done," Lamartiere said. He deliberately met the woman's fierce glare. "I won't apologize for things other people have done. However much I may regret them."

  Marie nodded. Her expression relaxed slightly. "I just wanted you to know the sort of people you'll be dealing with," she said. "And don't misunderstand me: de Laburat's gang ran the factory where I was held. But they're both the same. They and all their men are demons."

  The sun was almost on the rim of the western hills. The shrine's residents were coming back from the lemon orchard, carrying their tools. Some of them were even singing.

  Over the southern horizon roared a score of vehicles, both wheeled and air-cushion. They bristled with weapons. Dust mounted in a pall that turned blood red in the light of the lowering sun.

  The rulers of the Boukasset were paying a call on Hoodoo.

  Lamartiere slid into the driver's hatch. His body no longer ached. He switched on the fans and checked the readouts. All were within parameters except Number 7, and that bearing wasn't of immediate concern. He blipped the throttle once, then let the blades drop to a humming idle.

  A blast of fine grit sprayed beneath the skirt at the pressure spike in the plenum chamber. It staggered Marie as she backed away from the vehicle. Lamartiere was sorry, but he didn't have a lot of time. Worse things were likely to happen soon anyway.

  The vehicles approaching in line abreast were already within a klick of the shrine. Even without magnification Lamartiere could tell that they were overloaded, wallowing over irregularities in the desert's surface.

  He brought up the gunnery controls on the lower of the compartment's two displays. It was impossible for one person to drive and handle Hoodoo's armament simultaneously, but though he was prepared to move the tank Lamartiere didn't expect to need to.

  He hoped he wouldn't be shooting either, not when he had only seven 2cm rounds in the tribarrel's ready magazine and no ammunition at all for the main gun.

  In the middle of the oncoming vehicles was a three-axle truck which flew a pennant of some sort. The windshield was covered with metal plates; the driver could only see through a slit in his armor. That was just barely better than driving blindfolded. If Lamartiere had been in either of the adjacent vehicles, he'd have given the truck at least fifty meters clearance to avoid a collision.

  The truck's bed was armored with flat slabs of concrete, a makeshift that would stop small ar
ms but not much more. Three launching tubes were bracketed to either side; Lamartiere couldn't tell whether they held antitank missiles or unguided bombardment rockets. On top was a turret that must have come from a light military vehicle: it mounted an automatic cannon and a coaxial machine gun, both of them electromotive weapons.

  The remainder of the vehicles were similar though smaller: four- and six-wheeled trucks, massively overloaded with men, weapons, and armor, as well as half a dozen air-cushion vehicles of moderate capacity. The latter weren't armored or they wouldn't have been able to move. The wheeled vehicles' panoply of mild steel and concrete was next to valueless anyway.

  Lamartiere had fought among the guerrillas of the Western District before the Council picked him to steal a tank for the rebellion. The rebels had tried to convert civilian trucks into armored fighting vehicles, but they'd immediately given up the practice as a suicidal waste. In combat against purpose-built military equipment, makeshifts were merely tombs for their crews. They were good for nothing but to threaten civilians and rival groups of undisciplined thugs.

  Which was obviously what these were being used for.

  Well, Denis Lamartiere was neither of those things. He rested his hands on the control yoke. His index finger was a centimeter away from the firing control on the screen in front of him. To his surprise, he was smiling.

  The vehicles halted near the base of the shrine, disgorging men and a few women. Their clothing was a mixture of military uniforms, the loose robes of the Boukasset, and tawdry accents of Carcassone finery. A band of pirates, Lamartiere thought; about two hundred of them all told.

  The residents still at a distance either stopped where they were or returned to the orchard which provided concealment if not shelter. Civilians who'd already reached the shrine squeezed against the walls, their eyes on the armed gang.

  The basket was descending; Dr. Clargue was in it, doing what he saw as his duty. Lamartiere wished the doctor had stayed safe in the fortress, but there was no help for it now.