The taller man gave a short snap of his head. He said, "No, it'll never be over—not any place you are." He spread his hands, then clenched them. He was staring at his knuckles because he would not look at his commander. "Right now we're chasing van Vorn's guards like rabbits, shooting 'em down or sticking 'em behind wire where they're not a curse a' good to you or themselves or this planet."
He faced Hammer, the outrage bubbling out at a human being, not the colonel he had served for all his adult life. "And the ones we kill—doesn't every one a' them have a wife or a brother or a nephew? And they'll put a knife in a Slammer some night and be shot the same way because of it!"
"All right," said Hammer calmly. "What else?"
"How about the Social Unity Party, then?" Pritchard blazed. "Maybe the one chance to get this place a work force that works instead of the robots the Great Houses've been trying to make them. And does anybody listen? Hell, no! The Council tinkers with the franchise to make sure they don't get a majority of the Estates-General; van Vorn outlaws the party and makes their leaders terrorists instead of politicians. And you, you ship them off-planet to rot in state-owned mines on Kobold!"
"All right," Hammer repeated. He sat down again, his stillness as compelling as that of the shattered room around him. "What would you do?"
Pritchard's eyes narrowed. He stretched his left hand out to the wall, not leaning on it but touching its firmness, its chill. "What do you care?" he asked quietly. "I didn't say the Slammers couldn't keep you in power here the rest of your life. I just don't want to be a part of it, is all."
Without warning, Hammer stood and slammed his fist into the wall. He turned back to his aide. His bleeding knuckles had flecked the panel more brightly than the remains of the Iron Guards. "Is that what you think?" he demanded. "That I'm a bandit who's found himself a bolt hole? That for the past thirty years I've fought wars because that's the best way to make bodies?"
"Sir, I . . ." But Pritchard had nothing more to say or need to say it.
Hammer rubbed his knuckles. He grinned wryly at his subordinate, but the grin slipped away. "It's my own fault," he said. "I don't tell people much. That's how it's got to be when you're running a tank regiment, but . . . that's not where we are now.
"Danny, this is my home." Hammer began to reach out to the taller man but stopped. He said, "You've been out there. You've seen how every world claws at every other one, claws its own guts, too. The whole system's about to slag down, and there's nothing to stop it if we don't."
"You don't create order by ramming it down peoples' throats on a bayonet! It doesn't work that way."
"Then show me a way that does work!" Hammer cried, gripping his subordinate's right hand with his own. "Are things going to get better because you're sitting on your butt in some farmhouse, living off the money you made killing? Danny I need you. My son will need you."
Pritchard touched his tongue to his lips. "What is it you're asking me to do?" he said.
"Do you have a way to handle the Unionists?" Hammer shot back at him. "And the Iron Guards?"
"Maybe," Pritchard said with a frown. "Amnesty won't be enough—they won't believe it's real, for one thing. But a promise of authority . . . administrative posts in education, labor, maybe even security—that'd bring out a few of the Unionists because they couldn't afford not to take the chance. Most of the rest of them might follow when they saw you really were paying off."
The brown-haired man's enthusiasm was building without the hostility that had marked it before. "The Guards, that'll be harder because they're rigid, most of them. But if you can find some way to convince them there's nothing to gain by staying out, and—Hell, there'll be counter-protests, but work the ones who turn over their guns into the civil police. Not in big dollops, but scattered all over the planet. They'll feel more secure that way, and you can keep an eye on them easier anyhow."
Hammer nodded. "All right, bring me a preliminary assessment of both proposals by, say, 0800 Tuesday. No, make that noon, you're going to waste the rest of today watching a wedding from the front row. You'll have the backing you'll need, but these are your projects—I've got too much blood on my hands to run them." His eyes held Pritchard's. "Or don't you have the guts to try?"
The taller man hesitated, then squeezed Hammer's hand in return. "I rode your lead tank," he said. "I ran your lead company. If you need me now, you've got me." His face clouded. "Only, Colonel—"
Hammer tightened. "Spit it out."
"I'm not ashamed of anything. But I swore to Margritte I'd never wear another uniform or carry another gun. And I won't."
Hammer cleared his throat. "Right now I don't need a major as much as I do a conscience," he said. He cleared his throat again. "Now let's go. We've got a wedding to get to."
Cosimo Barracks was a fortress in the midst of estates which had belonged for three hundred years to the family of the late President van Vorn. The Slammers had bypassed Cosimo in the blitzkrieg which replaced van Vorn with Theismann, their employer. But now, a month after van Vorn had poisoned himself in Government House and three weeks after someone else had burst Theismann's skull with a powergun, the fortress still refused to surrender. Sally Schilling, leading a "battalion" made up of S Company and six hundred local recruits, was on hand to do something about the situation.
A burst of automatic fire combed the rim of the dugout, splashing Captain Schilling with molten granite. "Via!" she snapped to the frightened recruit. "Keep your coppy head down and don't draw fire."
The sergeant who shared the dugout with Schilling and the recruit shook his own head in disgust. In her mind, Schilling seconded the opinion. To police a planet, Hammer needed more men than the five thousand he had brought with him. He wanted to give the new troops at least a taste of combat in the mopping-up operations. Schilling could understand that desire, but it was a pain in the ass trying to do her own job and act as baby-sitter besides.
She looked again through the eyepiece of her periscope. The machine gun had ceased firing, though cyan flickers across the perimeter showed someone else was catching it. The Iron Guards were political bullies rather than combat soldiers, but their fortress here was as tough as anything the Slammers had faced in their history. The fiber-optic periscope showed Cosimo Barracks only as a rolling knob. The grass covering the rock was streaked yellow in fans pointing back to hidden gunports. The ports themselves were easy enough targets, but the weapons within were on disappearing carriages and popped up only long enough to fire. The rest of the fortress, with an estimated five hundred Iron Guards plus enough food, water, and ammunition to last a century, was deep underground.
Schilling glanced down at her console. On it Cosimo Barracks showed as a red knot of tunnels drawn from plans found in Government House. "Sigma Battalion," she said, "check off." Points of green light winked on the screen, an emerald necklace ringing the fortress. Each point was a squad guarding nearly one hundred meters of front. That was adequate; the infantry was on hand primarily to prevent a breakout.
"Fire Central," Schilling said, "prepare Fire Order Tango-Niner."
"Ready," squawked the helmet.
"Ma'am," said the recruit, "w-why don't the tanks attack instead of us?"
"Shut it off, boy!" the sergeant snapped.
"No, Webbert, we're supposed to be teaching them," Schilling said. She gestured toward the knob. The recruit automatically raised his head. Webbert shoved him back down before another burst could decapitate him. The captain sighed. "Mines're as thick up there as flies on a fresh turd," she said, "and they've got more guns in that hill than the light stuff they've been using on us.