They nosed through the gap they'd plowed in pursuit of the Ralliers. Lamartiere drove carefully; there were civilians moving behind the smoke. He didn't see anyone holding a weapon, though there were plenty of guns strewn across the ground. Dr. Clargue squatted near the walls, bandaging a child's leg.
"Sir?" Lamartiere asked.
"I'm no fucking officer, kid," Heth said, at least half-serious. "Anyway, 'Sarge' was good enough when you were an LSP at the base, wasn't it?"
"That was a long time ago, Sarge," Lamartiere said. Five calendar days, and a lifetime. "Anyway, I was wondering what the command was to transfer ammo to the ready magazines. Dr. Clargue's searched the data banks up, down, and crosswise and he can't find it. Couldn't find it."
Heth laughed himself into another fit of coughing. "Oh, blood and martyrs, was that the problem? Steg and me knew there must be something going on why you didn't use the main gun, but we couldn't on our lives figure out what it was!"
Lamartiere nestled the tank against the shrine. He shut down the fans. The jeep with Trooper Stegner was still a minute or two distant. "Well, what was it then?" he said sharply. There were worse things happening than Heth laughing at him, but it was still irritating.
The sergeant had cocked the turret to the side; the 20cm barrel was no longer glowing, but heat waves still distorted the air above the iridium. He climbed out of the cupola and slid down beside the driver's hatch. Lamartiere raised his seat, but for the moment he was too exhausted to get out of the vehicle.
"Hey, simmer down," Heth said. "I'm just laughing because of how lucky we were. Not that I'm not going to have some explaining to do about why Hoodoo's late joining the regiment on Beresford, but at least you didn't turn Carcassone inside out with the main gun."
The jeep wound between a pair of truck chassis. The open flames had died down, though the wreckage still smoldered. Stegner, a tall man with wispy hair and a face like a rabbit's, waved to them.
"Transfer isn't a software process," Heth went on. "It's hardwired. There's a thumb switch on the firing lever. To recharge the ready magazines you roll it up for the tribarrel and down for the main gun."
"Oh," Lamartiere said. "Yeah, that explains why the doctor couldn't find the command."
He put a boot on the seat and lifted himself out of the compartment. Heth steadied him till he'd settled on the open hatch.
"Kid," the sergeant said. "There's maybe three million parts in one of these suckers. How were you supposed to know what every one of them is, and you not even through proper training?"
He patted Hoodoo with an affectionate hand. "You did plenty good enough with what you had. I watched you chew up that mechanized battalion at the Lystra, remember? I'll tell the world!"
The sergeant's torso was badly scraped besides being half-covered in oil, but apart from occasionally rubbing his elbow he showed no signs of discomfort. Lamartiere's chest hurt badly, particularly where the mob gun had recoiled into his ribs when he fired, but he thought the damage was probably limited to bruising.
"Did you see the holes in the skirt, Sarge?" Stegner called as he stood scowling at Hoodoo's flank. "Must be about a hundred of 'em. Nothing very big but I don't want to drive back to Brione with her mushing like a pig."
"She sagged left," Lamartiere said. "I had to tilt the nacelles to keep her straight, but it wasn't as bad as the damage we took at the Lystra."
"Probably the warhead that flipped my truck over on me," Heth said judiciously. "Well, we can use the truck's bed for patching. Do they have a welder here, kid?"
Half the residents had returned to the shrine. They were crying in amazement and horror at the carnage. Many others still hid among the stone shelters of the orchard, waiting to be sure that it was safe to show themselves. Lamartiere couldn't blame them for their fear.
"I doubt it," he said. He thought for a moment. "There's mastic, though. I saw some where they're tiling the chapel entryway. It'll work for a patch on the inside of the skirts, since air pressure tightens the seal."
"Yeah, that'll work," said Stegner approvingly. He walked to the overturned truck and kicked it, judging the thickness of the body metal by the sound.
"Sergeant Heth," Lamartiere said, looking at the stone wall of the shrine. "Are you going to hand me over to the government, or . . .?"
He turned and gestured toward the body of the old man Maury's thugs had shot as a warning to Dr. Clargue—a few moments before they and all their fellows died also.
"Hey, we don't work for the government of Ambiorix anymore, kid," Heth said. "The only reason Steg and me are still on the planet is we really didn't want to explain to Colonel Hammer how we managed to lose one of his tanks. Do you have any idea what one of these costs?"
He patted Hoodoo again.
Marie's body lay at the foot of the wall. Her upturned face was peaceful and unmarked, but there was a splotch of blood on her upper chest. Lamartiere supposed a stray bullet had hit her. There'd been enough of them flying around.
"I know what it costs," he said. "I know what it cost these people."
"Yeah, that's so," Heth agreed. "And I'm not arguing with you. But you might remind yourself that things may be a little better for the folks here now that the gangs are out of the way. I don't say it will, mind you; but it may be."
He spat accurately onto the corpse of one of Maury's men; the one who'd held the hostage for his partner to shoot, Lamartiere thought.
"I don't work for the government, like I told you," Heth said quietly. "But sometimes I do things on my own personal account. War isn't a business where there's a lot of obvious good guys, but sometimes the bad guys are pretty easy to spot."
Lamartiere put a hand on Heth's shoulder so that the mercenary would look him straight in the eye. "Sergeant," Lamartiere said, "am I free to go? Is that what you're telling me?"
Heth shrugged. "Sure, if you want to," he said. "But Steg and me was hoping you might like to join the Slammers. The colonel's always looking for recruits."
Stegner morosely rubbed a dimple in the hull surrounded by a halo of bright radial scratches. A high-explosive shell had burst there against the armor. "If we bring you along," he said, "maybe we can get a few of these extra dings passed off as training accidents, you know?"
"And you might like to be someplace there wasn't a price on your head," Heth said, rubbing the armor with his thumb. "Nobody at the port's going to think twice if there's three of us boarding a ship for Beresford along with Hoodoo, here."
Lamartiere looked toward the battlements. Father Blenis knelt in prayer. A pair of young women, one of them holding an infant, were with him. At the base of the wall three laymen and a Brother worked with focused desperation to jury-rig a platform in place of the shattered basket.
"I guess I don't have a choice," Lamartiere said.
Trooper Stegner looked up from the side of the tank. "Sure you got a choice," he said in a hard, angry voice. Lamartiere had thought of the trooper as a little slow, but invariably good-humored. "There's always a choice. I coulda stayed on Spruill sniping at Macauleys till one of the Macauleys nailed me!"
"For me," said Sergeant Heth, "the problem was her father and brothers. I decided that joining the Slammers was better than the rest of my life married to Anna Carausio."
He smiled faintly in reminiscence. "I still think I was right, but who knows, hey?"
Lamartiere nodded. "Yeah, who knows?" he said.
He looked at Marie's silent body. Maybe she was in the arms of God; maybe Celine was there, too, and all the others who'd died since Denis Lamartiere stole a tank. It would be nice to believe that.