The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2 полностью

Three troopers wearing Slammers khaki and commo helmets waited at the defensive perimeter. One of them was a woman. They carried submachine-guns in patrol slings that kept the muzzles forward and the grips close to their gunhands.

They'd been sitting on the hillside when Des Grieux first noticed them. They stood asWarriorapproached.

"Driver," Des Grieux said, "you can pull up here."

"I figured to,"Kuykendall replied without emotion. Dust puffed forward, then drifted downhill as she shifted nacelles to brakeWarrior's slow pace.

Des Grieux climbed from the turret and poised for a moment on the back deck. The artillery shell that bounced fromWarrioron Hill 661 had dished in a patch of plating a meter wide. Number seven intake grating ought to be replaced as well . . . .

Des Grieux hopped to the ground. One of the White Mice sat onWarrior's bow slope and gestured directions to the driver. The tank accelerated toward the encampment.

"Come on, Sunshine,"said the female trooper. Her features were blank behind her reflective visor. "The Man wants to see you."

She jerked her thumb uphill.

Des Grieux fell in between the White Mice. His legs were unsteady. He hadn't wanted to eat anything with his throat feeling as though it had been reamed with a steel-bore brush.

"Am I under arrest?" he demanded.

"Major Steuben didn't say anything about that," the male escort replied. He chuckled.

"Naw,"added the woman."Hejust saidthat if you give us any crap,we should shoot you. And save him the trouble."

"Then we all know where we stand," said Des Grieux. Soreness and aches dissolved in his body's resumed production of adrenaline.

The encampment on Hill 541 North had always been a wasteland, so Des Grieux didn't expect to notice a change now.

He was wrong. It was much worse, and the forty-odd bodies laid in rows in their zipped-up sleeping bags were only part of it.

The smell overlaid the scene. Explosives had peculiar odors. They blended uneasily with ozone and high-temperature fusion products formed when bolts from the powerguns hit.

The main component of the stench was death. Bunkers had been blown closed, but the rubble of timber and sandbags didn't form a tight seal over the shredded flesh within. The morning sun was already hot. In a week or two, a lot of wives and parents were going to receive a coffin sealed over seventy kilos of sand.

That wasn't Des Grieux's problem,though; and without him, there would have been plenty more corpses swelling in Federal uniforms.