The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2 полностью

"Don't you know why we hire mercenaries, Governor?" said Dick Suilin in a voice trembling like a fuel fire. "Don't you know?"

He stepped closer; felt the massive conference table against the front of his thighs, felt it slide away from his advance.

"Dick!" called Suzi, the word attenuated by the pounding walls of the tunnel.

"Because they fight, Governor!" Suilin shouted. "Because they win, while your rear-echelon pussies wait to be saved with their thumbs up their ass!"

Kung's face vanished. Suilin could see nothing but a core of flame.

"They saved you, you worthless bastards!" he screamed into the blinding darkness. "They saved us all!"

The reporter floated without volition or sight."Reaction to the Wide-awakes," he heard someone, Cooter, murmur. "Had a pretty rough time . . . ."

A door closed,cutting off the babble of sounds.The air was cool,and someone was gently holding him upright.

"Suzi?" he said.

"You can't let 'em get t' you," said Cooter. His right arm was around Suilin's shoulders.His fingers carefully detached the grenade launcher from the reporter's grip. "It's okay."

They were back in the hallway outside the conference room. The walls were veneered with zebra-patterned marble, clean and cool.

"It's not okay!" screamed Dick Suilin. "You saved all their asses and they don't care!"

"They don't have t' like us, snake," said Lieutenant Cooter, meeting Suilin's eyes. "They just have t' make the payment schedule."

Suilin turned and bunched his fist. Cooter caught his arm before he could smash his knuckles on the stone wall.

"Take it easy, snake," said the mercenary. "It don't mean nothin'."

The tribarrel in the cupola ofWarrior,the tank guarding the northwest quadrant of Hill 541 North, snarled in automatic air-defense mode. The four Slammers in Lieutenant Lindgren's bunker froze.

Sergeant Samuel "Slick" Des Grieux,Warrior's commander, winced. He was twenty-one standard years old, and a hardened veteran of two years in Hammer's Slammers. He kneaded his broad, powerful hands together to control his anger at being half a kay away from where he ought to have been: aboard his vehicle and fighting.

The incoming shell thudded harmlessly, detonated in the air.

Sergeant Broglie had counted out the time between the tribarrel's burst and the explosion. "Three seconds," he murmured.

The shell had been a safe kilometer away when it went off. The howl of its passage to an intersection withWarrior's bolts echoed faintly through the night.