Daun hit the ground again. He was still tied to the mast. Sandbags collapsed over him.
Individual shells detonated during the next fifteen seconds, some of them at a considerable distance where the initial explosion hurled them. The first Democrat was cursing. The blast had knocked him skidding in the mud.
“There’s one!” cried his partner. Two machine pistols fired together. Daun felt the whack of little bullets against the sandbags over him, but he wasn’t the target. The moans of the soldier on the other side of the wall ended in a liquid gurgle.
“Hey, lookit!” shouted the second member of the Democrat clean-up team. He was standing beside Daun, but the Frisian could see only a triangle of cloud through the jumble of collapsed wall. “Look at this!”
“Bloody hell!” said the first man. “That’s a bloody powergun. The Cents don’t have bloody powerguns!”
“I do,” said his jubilant partner. A bolt of cyan plasma lanced skyward.
“You cursed fool!” the first Democrat said. “Don’t do that! Somebody’ll shoot us! Besides”—his voice changed slightly into that of a hustler calculating his chances—“it’s not worth anything much ’cause we can’t get ammo for it. Look, though—just for the hell of it, I’ll give you two hundred lira for it. For the curiosity.”
“Fuck you,” said his partner. “This is mine.”
The two Democrats stepped onto the bags covering Daun. They hopped from him over the fallen antenna mast.
“Look,” the first man was saying, “half of it is mine anyway….”
Daun’s lungs burned, but he was afraid to breathe. The detached part of his mind noted that the second Democrat should be very careful about standing with his back to his partner this night. Otherwise he might die for the trophy, as surely as Sergeant Anya Wisloski had died.
Lawler
The platoon leader’s door was open. Trooper Johann Vierziger paused in the day room and raised his knuckles to knock on the jamb.
“Come on in, Vierziger,” called Lieutenant Hartlepool in false jollity. “You haven’t been with us long enough to know, but we’re not much on ceremony in this outfit.”
Vierziger had been transferred to the 105th Military Police Detachment on Lawler as soon as he’d completed basic training with the Frisian Defense Forces. He’d arrived a week ago, and had seen action—with the FDF—only once according to his records. That action had occurred the night before.
“Thank you, sir,” Vierziger said. He was a short man, dainty except for telltale signs like the thickness of his wrists. Pretty, Hartlepool thought when the fellow was assigned to his platoon, and a nance.
Hartlepool had nothing against queers, not so it got in the way of his duties, but this was ridiculous. The One-Oh-Fifth wasn’t some parade-ground unit for show. They, and particularly 1st Platoon, A Company, were in firefights at least once a week.
Hartlepool couldn’t imagine who’d thought his platoon was the place to stick an effeminate newbie. He’d liked to have met the bureaucrat in an alley.
“Sit down, sit down,” Hartlepool said, gesturing to the seat in front of his desk. Malaveda, who now commanded First Squad, was in the room’s third chair, backed against the wall to one side.
Platoon leaders didn’t rate a lot of space at the best of times. Hartlepool had a glorified broom closet, but he knew there were lieutenants in the 105th who shared comparable quarters. Accommodations in Belair were tight. Expectation of war brought people to the capital, either for its fancied safely or because they believed there was money to be made.
“Thank you, sir,” Vierziger said. His face bore a slight smile, but he obviously didn’t intend to volunteer anything unasked. He sat down gracefully without touching the chair with his hands.
Vierziger reminded Hartlepool of somebody, but the lieutenant couldn’t place who.
“Well, we’ve got some good news for you, Vierziger,” Hartlepool said. The cheerful tone was wearing thin, but he didn’t know what other persona to adopt. “To begin with, Sergeant Vierziger. On the basis of Sergeant Malaveda’s report—”
He nodded to the non-com. Malaveda’s forehead glistened with sweat. He stared at the wall across the desk without acknowledging the remark.
Hartlepool cleared his throat. “Based on that,” he resumed, “and my analysis of both yours and Malaveda’s helmet recorders from last night’s incident, I requested that Lawler Command grant you an immediate field promotion. I’m pleased to say that they’ve agreed.”
“Thank you, sir,” Vierziger said. He reached across the desk to take Hartlepool’s proffered hand. His grip was firm and dry, almost without character.
“And thank you, Sergeant Malaveda,” Vierziger added, glancing at the non-com. “I trust your promotion will come through quickly also. You deserve it.”
He was perfectly appropriate in words, tone, and expression, but Hartlepool got the feeling that Vierziger was laughing at them. It was like watching a master artist accept the congratulations of a six-year-old on the quality of his painting.
Vierziger’s faint smile made memories click into place: another man, dark rather than blond, but small and pretty and queer …
“Ah, Vierziger?” the lieutenant asked. “Do you—did you happen to have a relative in the FDF? In Hammer’s Slammers, actually?”
Vierziger shook his head easily. “Not me,” he said. “No relatives at all, I suspect, though it’s been a very long time since I was home.”
Hartlepool thought of asking where Vierziger called home. He decided not to.
“I, ah …” he said. “I met Major Joachim Steuben once. He was an interesting man.”
He raised an eyebrow, an obvious demand that Vierziger reply to the non-question.
Vierziger smiled wider. The expression was as unpleasant as a shark’s gape. The lieutenant had been playing games with him. The lieutenant would never do that again. “So I gather,” Vierziger said. “Hammer’s hatchetman, wasn’t he? Until someone shot him in the back.”
“Bodyguard, as I heard it,” Hartlepool said. He chewed on his tongue for a moment to stimulate the flow of saliva in his dry mouth. “Well, he’s been gone for some while now. Almost since Colonel Hammer’s accession to the Presidency.”
“Seven years,” Vierziger said. “Seven years to the day I joined the Frisian Defense Forces. Or so they told me.”
Vierziger’s battle dress uniform was perfectly tailored. That wasn’t surprising, since Frisian MP units were traditionally strac, even on field duty. On Vierziger, however, the garb hung so perfectly that he might have modeled for the tailor.
Hartlepool cleared his throat again and tried on a brisk, businesslike expression. “Along with the promotion, Vierziger,” he said, “you’ve been reassigned. You’re, ah, quite remarkable. Of course you know that. Somebody seems to have decided you’re too valuable for a line unit here on Lawler.”
He was betting that Vierziger was too new to the FDF to know that the statement was utter nonsense. Nobody got transferred so quickly unless his commanding officer made a “This or I resign!” point of it with echelon.
From Vierziger’s icy smile, he knew exactly why he was being transferred. Hartlepool had been shocked speechless by the images recorded by the new recruit’s helmet cameras the night before.
Granted that Johann Vierziger was a valuable member of the FDF, the fellow was still too dangerous for Hartlepool to risk having him around. It was just that simple.
“Very well, sir,” Vierziger said. “My service with you has been interesting. I wish you the best of luck in the future.”
As if he were a commanding general speaking to his staff as he stepped down.
Vierziger stood up. “Am I dismissed, then, sir?” he added calmly.
“What?” said Hartlepool. “I, ah—I’d tell you your new assignment if I knew what it was, of course.”