Hartlepool didn’t know how he’d expected Vierziger to react to the notice of transfer, but he’d expected some reaction. The lieutenant felt as if he’d tried to climb one more step than the staircase had.
“It doesn’t really concern me, sir,” Vierziger said. “I’ll serve in any capacity to which my superiors choose to assign me.”
Vierziger’s voice was without expression, and his face was a skull.
If the man was what he appeared to be, he was a tool like the pistol in his belt holster or the knife whose hilt projected from his boot top…. But guns and knives will not act of their own accord. Nobody could watch images of the previous night without wondering whether Vierziger was at heart as uncontrolled as he was unstoppable when he went into action.
“Yes, well,” Hartlepool said. “Good luck in your assignment, wherever it is, Sergeant.”
Vierziger threw him a crisp salute. He looked like a boy in uniform—or a girl—as he turned on his heel and left the office.
“He isn’t human,” Sergeant Malaveda said. He could have been remarking on the quality of the local beer. His eyes swung toward the doorway now that Vierziger was gone, though he hadn’t looked at the man while they were together in the small room.
“He’s a hell of a gunman, though,” Hartlepool said, as if he were disagreeing. “Well, we’ll see what they make of him on a survey team. He’ll be going to Cantilucca as part of the security element.”
Malaveda raised an eyebrow.
“Via, yes, I know what his assignment is!” the lieutenant snapped.
He looked toward the empty doorway himself. “Major Steuben was like that. From the stories, at least. And the same kind of eyes. But Joachim Steuben’s been dead for a long time.”
Sergeant Malaveda stared at him. There seemed to be a chill in the room.
Earlier: Lawler
Though Vierziger, the trooper driving Sergeant Malaveda’s air-cushion jeep, was a newbie to the Frisian Defense Forces, he obviously had a lot of time in other armies on his clock. Malaveda guessed he was on the wrong side of thirty standard, but it was hard to be sure. Vierziger had the sort of baby-faced cuteness that some men keep from early teens to sixty.
It was one more reason for Malaveda, who shaved his scalp to hide the fact his hair was receding at age twenty-six, to dislike Vierziger.
“Pull up here,” Malaveda ordered as they eased toward the mouth of the alley by which they’d approached the rear of the target building. “And don’t get out where the street light’ll show us up.”
The newbie obeyed with the same delicate skill he’d shown while navigating the alley in the dark. In light-amplification mode, the visors of Frisian commo helmets increased visibility to daytime norms, but they robbed terrain of the shadings, which the human brain processed into relative distances. Vierziger was a good driver, Malaveda had to admit—
To himself. There was no way he was going to praise the little turd out loud.
Vierziger switched off the fans. The hollow echo that filled the alley even on whisper mode drained away.
“Who the hell told you to shut down?” Malaveda snarled.
The newbie turned and looked at him. Vierziger’s expression was blank but not tranquil. Malaveda felt ice at the back of his neck.
“Nobody did, Sergeant,” Vierziger said. His voice was low-pitched, melodious, and just enough off-key to reinforce the chill Malaveda felt in his glance. “Would you like me to light the fans again?”
Malaveda scowled. “That’s not what I said. Just remember, you may think you’re something, but you’re serving with the best, now!”
Vierziger faced the alley mouth again. He drew his 2-cm shoulder weapon from the butt clamp that held it vertical beside his seat and checked the magazine. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.
Malaveda scowled, but he didn’t restart the discussion for the time being.
Lawler was a highly developed world with a population of nearly forty million. Even so there should have been enough room and resources for everybody.
The ostensible cause of—not-quite-war, but soon—was that the central provinces of the occupied continent wanted to retain links with Earth, while the coastal provinces wanted a Lawler that was independent and, coincidentally, ruled by coastal-province oligarchies.
The Junta of Central Province Governors had faced a planet-wide vote which would have been dominated by their opponents’ political machines. They forestalled it by raising their own army— and hiring two armored brigades from the Frisian Defense Forces.
The Junta couldn’t afford to pay the mercenaries forever just to stand around and look tough. Malaveda figured there’d be a riot pretty soon in one of the border cities. The Planetary Front—the thugs from the coasts—would kill people putting the riot down, or anyway the Junta would say they had.
And the Junta would respond, with FDF panzers the cutting edge of the blow.
For the time being, Malaveda and the rest of 3d Squad, 1st Platoon, A Company, 105th Military Police Detachment (Lawler), had a problem which didn’t in the least involve local politics. A trooper named Soisson had been guarding a warehouse in Belair, the Junta’s capital. Soisson shot the fellow on duty with him, then ran off with a truckload of powergun ammunition.
The ammo was probably an afterthought—the most valuable thing the bastard could grab after he’d nutted. It had to be recovered, though, and Soisson had to be brought back dead or alive. The tradition of the White Mice, the field police of Hammer’s Slammers, was that dead was preferable.
Soisson was supposed to be hiding in a front apartment of the three-story building across the street. Malaveda waited in a backstop position thirty meters from the rear door. Lieutenant Hartlepool would take the main part of the squad in by the front and catch Soisson in bed—if everything went as planned. The lieutenant had stationed Malaveda there just in case.
Malaveda waited with a newbie who obviously thought he was hot stuff, even though he didn’t actually say so. Malaveda lifted his sub-machine gun to his shoulder, aimed it at the apartment building’s back door, and clocked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
He lowered the weapon and looked again at his driver. “I guess you think you’ve seen action, don’t you?” he said.
Vierziger turned, raised an eyebrow, and turned back. “I’ve seen action, yes,” he said softly.
“Well let me tell you how it is, buddy,” Malaveda said. “You haven’t seen anything till you’ve seen it with the FDF. Lieutenant Hartlepool, the Old Man? He was in the White Mice when Major Steuben commanded them. He was a friend of Major Steuben’s.”
Vierziger looked at him. “Joachim Steuben didn’t have any friends,” he said. His tone was as bleak as the space between stars.
Malaveda waited for the newbie to take his glacial eyes away before saying, “You know a lot—for a guy who enlisted three months ago!”
“I know too much,” Vierziger said, almost too quietly to be heard. “I know way too much. Now, let’s just watch and wait, like we’re supposed to. All right, Sergeant?”
As if a fucking newbie could tell a sergeant what to do! But Malaveda didn’t feel like saying anything more. He’d had a creepy feeling about Vierziger from when the bastard was assigned to the squad. Vierziger made everybody’s skin crawl. Being alone with him in a jeep was like, was like—
There was a sound in the alley behind them. Malaveda, keyed up, started to swing his sub-machine gun toward the noise. Vierziger—
Malaveda didn’t see the newbie move. There was the sound, and Vierziger was—
standing in the jeep—
facing backward—
his 2-cm weapon in his left hand, held at the balance, a hand’s breadth from his hip—
where it counter-weighted the pistol pointing in his right hand, a gleam of polished metals, the iridium barrel and gold and purple scrollwork on the receiver.