“Colonel Shirazi to Marvelan Command!” a voice cried over one of the commo helmet’s open channels. “We’re laying down our arms! I repeat, we’re laying down our arms! We claim the right of exchange under Bonding Authority regulations! We’re laying d—”
Coke cut away from the Heliodoran commander’s bleating.
“Team One to all Team elements,” he ordered. His throat felt as though somebody’d scaled it with a wood rasp. “Cease fire, but hold your positions. When the other side’s sorted itself out a little better, I’ll have them leave their weapons in place and march to the west end of the port reservation. Cease fire unless you’re in danger. One out.”
Coke switched to a general push to contact Colonel Shirazi. Sudden dizziness made him sag against the receiver of his tribarrel. The air above the glowing iridium shimmered. Through the heat waves, Coke saw Johann Vierziger looking back at him anxiously.
Pilar gripped Coke’s shoulder, trying to keep him from falling. Silent tears cleared tracks across the grime on her face.
Sten Moden stared out at the barren killing field. There was no telling how many people had died. There would never be a certain figure: the secondary explosions had been too general and too powerful. Hundreds, perhaps over a thousand; in as little time as it takes to open a poached egg….
“It could have been worse,” the logistics officer said. “It could have been us.”
Niko Daun was talking sixteen to the dozen in the light of a lantern hanging over the nearby mess table. He wasn’t bragging. In fact, he didn’t seem to be aware of the presence of the members of the expeditionary force seated with him.
Many of the ex-Slammers were veterans of a score of incidents as hot as the one the young technician had just survived. They listened tolerantly as they ate.
“He’s coming along, Matthew,” Johann Vierziger said with mild amusement. “And the next time he won’t make the mistake of pointing his gun at a pair of thugs and telling them to surrender.”
The lantern illuminated only half of Vierziger’s face. Shadows hollowed the killer’s perfect features into the agony of a fourteenth century Pietà.
“Is mercy a mistake, Johann?” Coke asked. They sat on an empty mortar case near the edge of the expeditionary force’s Night Defensive Position.
“I used to think so,” Vierziger said. He smiled. “Thinking a gun’s a magic wand that you wave—that is a mistake. When those Astra stragglers stumbled onto the van, he should have cut them down immediately.”
The wired-in southwest corner of the port reservation was ablaze with floodlights. The Heliodorus Regiment, disarmed and under the guard of four combat cars, would be repatriated as soon as possible.
One of the transports the regiment landed in was still operable. Several days of work were necessary to repair two more, however.
Three transports would suffice to carry all the survivors comfortably.
“Niko did all right,” Coke said. “A lot of veterans would have frozen when somebody shot them square in the chest. Thank the Lord for body armor.”
Vierziger stretched his slim, hard form, still smiling. “It has its uses,” he said, rather than agreeing.
Coke turned toward the eastern horizon, though there was nothing immediately visible save dark forest which had so recently flamed with the directed lightning of powerguns. “Thanks for taking over organizing a citizens’ watch in Potosi,” he said. “I’ve got a platoon backing them up as a reaction force, but the gunmen seem pretty much willing to come in peacefully.”
Vierziger nodded. “Sten had some friends in town,” he said. “Solid people, for civilians. It’s not hard to set a structure up if you’ve got good material. And the locals want a structure.”
Matthew Coke’s spirit osmosed through the flesh and hovered above the scene. He was aware of sensory stimuli—the laughter of troops relaxing after an action of exceptionally concentrated violence; long-molecule soot from smoldering plastic, masking but not completely hiding the stench of burned flesh; the touch of a breeze on a night that was beginning to turn cool—the way he would have been aware of readings on a console display.
“The Marvelans should’ve sent along a civil administration unit with the troops,” his voice said.
“They didn’t have time,” Vierziger said. “Alois wasn’t going to wait for civilians to get their end together when he already had clearance to deal with the military side.”
Vierziger spoke with almost proprietary satisfaction; the tone of a long-time veteran or even friend of President Alois Hammer. Coke looked at the sergeant and said nothing.
“I think, Matthew,” Vierziger added mildly, “that you have a visitor coming.”
Coke’s mind was one again with his body, aches and stresses complete. Pilar’s solid figure walked toward the NDP from the terminal building. She’d insisted on trying to put the facilities to rights immediately. It was hard to see that being possible, given the disruption the Heliodorans had caused and the damage from the exploding starship.
They had decisions to make in the near future, both of them.
Coke stood up. “Johann?” he said. “It’s quiet now, but the Marvelans will pull us out of here in a few weeks at the longest. Do you think the civilians here will do any better the next time?”
“That’s up to them, Matthew,” Vierziger said. “The only thing that matters to our souls is what we’ve done ourselves.”
“You believe in souls, then?” Coke snapped.
Vierziger nodded. His smile reminded Coke that Lucifer was a fallen angel. “Oh, yes,” the little killer said. “I believe in souls.”
Matthew Coke turned and walked to meet Pilar at the guard-post. By his own orders as Commanding Officer, troops of the Cantilucca Expedition were required to carry weapons with them at all times.
Coke’s sub-machine gun and holstered pistol remained on the crate where he’d been sitting.
The Sharp End
To Larry Barnthouse, who long ago as another 96 C 2 L 94 was missed by all the same bullets that missed me.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book involved computer adventures unusual even for me, The Man Who Kills Computers. (Three dead within two weeks.) My son Jonathan, Mark Van Name, Karen Zimmerman, Allyn Vogel, and my wife Jo, were of particular importance in making it possible for me to continue working.
This book required a lot of attention by Dan Breen, my first reader. I’m very fortunate to have him.
PAYING THE PIPER
A Background Note from the Author
I’ve always found it easier to use real settings and cultures than to invent my own. No matter how good a writer’s imagination, the six or seven millennia of available human history can do a better job of creating backgrounds.
More than ten years ago I finally took the advice my friends Jim Baen and Mark Van Name had been giving me and did an afterword, explaining where I got the details of the book I’d just completed. I’d resisted this, feeling that it was bad art—the book should explain itself—and anyway, it was unnecessary. It was obvious to any reader that I was using historical and mythological backgrounds, so why should I bother to tell them?
It still may be bad art, and I may have been correct about readers in general seeing what I was doing without me telling them explicitly, but reviewers suddenly discovered that my fiction utilizes literary, historical and mythological material. I’ve kept up the practice, though generally not with straight Military SF like the Hammer series—but in this case I thought it might be useful, because the background I’ve used is from a backwater of history.