Then he relaxed. He dared not hold the meeting without two gunmen behind him, and if the mercenaries' public scorn was the price of those gunmen—so be it. Alexander Radescu had thought a long time before he requested this duty from his uncle. He was not going to second-guess himself now.
"Got your gear over here, Profile," said the mercenary who had opened the crude cell and stepped inside the similar—unbarred—unit beside it. He came out again, carrying a heavy suit of body armor on either arm.
The men who had just been freed took their equipment, eyeing Radescu. The young general stared back at them, expecting the sneering dismissal he had received from other mercenaries. What he got instead was an appraisal that went beneath the muck and his uniform, went deeper into Alexander Radescu than an outsider had ever gone before.
It was insufferable presumption on the part of these hirelings.
Lieutenant Hawker was a large, soft-looking man. There were no sharp angles to his face or frame, and his torso would have been egg-shaped in garments which fit closer than the floppy Slammers battledress. He swung the porcelain clamshell armor around himself unaided, however, an action that demonstrated exceptional strength and timing.
His eyes were blue, and the look in them made Radescu wonder how many of the six Oltenians Hawker had killed himself.
Profile, presumably Sergeant Bourne,was no taller than Colonel Hammer and was built along the lines of Radescu's own whippy thinness rather than being stocky like the mercenary commander. His bold smile displayed his upper incisors with the bluish tinge characteristic of tooth buds grown in vitro.
There was a scar on the sergeant's head above his right temple, a bald patch of keloid that he had tried to train his remaining hair to cover, and a streak of fluorescent orange wrapping his bare right forearm. Radescu thought the last was a third scar until he saw that it terminated in a dragon's head laid into the skin of Bourne's palm, a hideous and hideously obtrusive decoration . . . and a sign of scarring as well, though not in the physical sense.
Bourne locked shut his body armor and said,"Well, this is the lot of it, Major?" to the graying adjutant.
That mercenary officer grimaced, but said, "Give them their guns, Luckens."
The Slammer who had brought the armor had already ducked back from the storage container with a submachine gun in either hand and ammunition satchels in the crooks of both elbows, grinning almost as broadly as Sergeant Bourne.
The lieutenant who had just been freed had no expression at all on his face as he started to load his own weapon. His left hand slid a fresh magazine into the handgrip of his powergun, a tube containing not only the disks which would liberate bolts of energy but the liquid nitrogen which worked the action and cooled the chamber between shots. As his hands moved, Hawker's eyes watched the Oltenian general.
"I'll need to brief you men in private,"Radescu said,managing too verride the unexpected catch in his throat. "I'm General Radescu, and the two of you are assigned at my discretion." How private the briefing could be when Hammer listened to discussions in the Tribunal Palace was an open question . . . but again, it didn't matter what the mercenary command knew.
"Major Stanzas," said Hawker to the adjutant, only now rotating his face from the Oltenian,"do you see any problem with me borrowing back my jeep for the, ah, duration of the assignment?"
"General,"said the adjutant, thumbing a switch in the oral notepad he pointed toward Radescu,"do you accept on behalf of your government the loan of a jeep with detection gear in it?"That gave Hammer somebody to bill if something went wrong . . . and they must already have a record of the level to which the Tribunes had authorized Radescu's authorization.
"Yes,yes, of course,"the general snapped,noticing that Bourne had anticipated the question and answer by striding toward a saucer-shaped air-cushion vehicle. It had been designed to hold four people, but this one had seats for only two because the back was filled with electronics modules.
"You may not be real comfortable riding on the hardware that way," Hawker said, "but it beats having a Molt pop out of the air behind you." He turned his head slowly, taking in the arc of nondescript landscape he could not have seen through the barred front of his cell."Not,"headded,"that we'll see action around here."
Radescu gave the big mercenary a brief,tight smile."You don't think so,Lieutenant? I wouldn't have come to Colonel Hammer for someone to drive me and—" he appraised Hawker in a different fashion, then made a moue which flapped the wings of his beauty patch before he concluded "—bring me tea at night."
Hawker spat on the ground. He would probably have dropped the conversation even without Sergeant Bourne spinning the jeep to an abrupt halt between the two officers and calling cheerfully, "Hop in, everybody." His submachine gun was now carried across his chest on an inertia-locked sling which gave him access to the weapon the instant he took his right hand from the tiller by which he now guided the jeep.
The general settled himself, finding that the modules had been arranged as the back and sides of a rough armchair, with room enough for his hips in the upper cavity. The handles for carrying the modules made excellent grips for Radescu; but there was no cushion,only slick,hard composite,and he hoped Bourne would not play the sort of game with the outsider which he in fact expected.
"Get us a short distance beyond this position and stop," the Oltenian said, bracing himself for an ejection-seat start. He thought of ordering Hawker to trade places with him, but he was sure such a demand would also turn into an embarrassment for him. "I'll brief you there."
Instead of a jackrabbit start, the mercenary sergeant powered up the jeep in an acceleration curve so smooth that only the airstream was a problem to Radescu on his perch. The Oltenian snatched off his glistening, metalized cap and held it against his lap as he leaned forward into the wind.
Bourne was driving fast, but with an economy of movement on the tiller and such skill that the attitude of the jeep did not change even when it shot up the sloping inner face of the berm around the firebase and sailed above the steep outer contour in momentary free flight. He wasn't trying to dump Radescu off the back: Bourne took too much pride in his skill to drive badly as a joke.
"Colonel won't like the way you're speeding in his firebase," Lieutenant Hawker said mildly to the sergeant.
"What's he going to do?"Bourne demanded. "Sentence me to death?" But he slacked off the trigger throttle built into the grip of the tiller.
Between the encampments, Oltenian and mercenary, was a wooded ridge high enough to block shots fired from either position toward targets in the no man's land between. Radescu had understood the forces were integrated, but obviously the situation in the field had changed in a fashion which had not yet been reported to the Tribunes in Belvedere. Bourne threaded his way into a copse of broad-leafed trees on the ridge while Radescu held his seat firmly,aware that even at their present reduced speed he would be shot over the front of the vehicle if the driver clipped one of the boles around which he maneuvered so blithely.
It was without incident, however, that Bourne set the jeep down out of direct sight of either encampment.He turned and looked up at Radescu with a sardonic grin; and Hawker, still-faced, looked as well.
Radescu laughed harshly. "I was wondering," he said to the surprised expressions of the mercenaries, "whether I'm speaking to you from the height of a throne—or of a cross." He swung himself to the ground, a trifle awkwardly because the padding in his uniform trousers to exaggerate his buttocks had not been sufficient to prevent the hard ride from cutting blood circulation to his legs.