David Drake - Hammer's Slammers 13 - The Sharp End

THE SHARP END

by David Drake

DEDICATION

To our architect and builder Derwood Schrotberger

Writing a novel and moving to a new house are both stressful occupations. The fact that I was able to

combine them is a comment on Derwood's consummate skill, which reminds me that architect originally

meant Master Builder.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Those of you who notice echoes of TheGlass Key andRedHarvest by Dashiell Hammett in this book

are correct. Those of you who don't should go off and read Hammett's splendid novels at your earliest

convenience.

When I'm at a crux in my plotting, I tend to talk at those around me. When I did that this time on the

way to the state fair with friends, my wife, Jo, and Mark Van Name made suggestions which were

precisely on point. I adopted both.

NIEUW FRIESLAND

The room housing the Officers Assignment Bureau was spacious enough to have three service cages and

seats for twenty around the walls of colored marble. Nobody was waiting when Major Matthew Coke

entered, though a single officer discussed alternative assignments with a specialist.

Coke stepped into an empty cage. A clerk rose from her desk in the administrative area across the

divider and switched on the electronics,

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"Yes sir?" the clerk said pleasantly. "Is there a problem with your assignment?"

The Frisian Defense Forces reassigned scores of officers every week. Normally the operation was

impersonal, a data transfer to the officers present station directing him or her to report to a new posting,

along with details of timing, transport, and interim leave.

This office handled problems. President Hammer, in common with other leaders whose elevation owed

more to bullets than ballots, felt most comfortable with a large standing army under his direct control.

Professional soldiers are expensive, and unless they are used, they either rust, or find ways to employ

themselves — generally to the detriment of the established government.

Hammers answer to the problem was to hire out elements of the Frisian Defense Forces as mercenaries.

This provided training for the troops, as well as defraying the cost of their pay and equipment.

Sometimes the troops engaged were merely a fewadvisers or specialists. When somebody, a planetary

government or the rebels opposed to it, hired a large force, however, the OAB would be standing room

only.

Officers on Nieuw Friesland knew that the only sure route to promotion was through combat

experience. The Frisian Defense Forces had sprung from Hammer's Slammers, a mercenary regiment

with the reputation for doing whatever it took to win . . . and a reputation for winning.

So long as Alois Hammer was President and the commanders of the Frisian Defense Forces were the

officers who'd bought him that position in decades of bloody war, bureaucratic 'warriors' weren't on the

fast track to high rank. You paid for your rank sometimes in blood, and sometimes with your life; but all

that was as nothing without demonstrated success at the sharp end, where they buried the guys in second

place.

Not everybody was comfortable with Hammers terms of employment, but the Forces were volunteer

only and the volunteers came from all across the human universe; just as they had to Hammer's Slammers

before. A certain number of men, and a lower percentage of women, would rather fight than not. Alois

Hammers troops had always been the best there was at what they did: killing the other fellow, whoever

he was.

A draft going out to a hot theater was a ticket to promotion. Officers would crowd the Assignment

Bureau, begging and threatening, offering bribes and trying to pull rank to get a slot. Mostly it didn't

work.

The Table of Organization for a combat deployment was developed by the central data base itself.

Changes had to be approved by President Hammer, who was immune to any practical form of

persuasion. The Assignments Bureaus were open because people prefer to argue with human beings

instead of electronic displays, but that was normally a cosmetic rather than significant touch.

You could also appeal to Hammer personally. In that case, you were cashiered if you didn't convince

him. Old-timers in the Assignment Bureau said that the success rate was slightly under three percent, but

every month or so somebody else tried it.

There were no large-scale deployments under way at the moment, but there were always glitches,

clerical or personal, which had to be ironed out. The clerk smiled at Coke, expecting to leam that he'd

been assigned to a slot calling for a sergeant-major, or that he was wanted for murder on the planet to

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which he was being posted.

Coke's problem was rather different.

"I'm here to receive sealed orders," Coke said, offering the clerk his identification card with the

embedded chip. He smiled wryly.

The clerk blinked in surprise. There were various reasons why an officer's orders would be sealed within

the data base, requiring him or her to apply in person to the bureau to receive them. Coke didn't look like

the sort to whom any of the special reasons would apply. He looked — normal.

Matthew Coke was 34 standard years old — 29 dated on Ash, where he was born, 51 according to

the shorter year of Nieuw Friesland. He had brown hair, eyes that were green, blue, or gray depending

on how much sunlight had been bleaching them, and stood a meter seventy-eight in his stocking feet. He

was thin but not frail, like a blade of good steel.

Coke was in dress khakis with rank tabs and the blue edging to the epaulets that indicated his specialty

was infantry. He wore no medal or campaign ribbons whatever, but over his left breast pocket was a tiny

lion rampant on a field of red enamel.

The lion marked the men who'd served with Hammers Slammers before the regiment was subsumed into

the Frisian Defense Forces. Its lonely splendor against the khaki meant that, like most of theother

Slammers veterans, Coke figured that when you'd said you were in the Slammers, you'd said everything

that mattered.

Considering that, the clerk realized that Major Coke might not be quite as normal as he looked.

"Face the lens, please, sir," the clerk said as she inserted the ID card into a slot on her side of the cage.

Electronics chittered, validating the card and comparing Coke's retinal patterns with those contained in

the embedded chip.

A soft chime indicated approval. Coke eased from the stiff posture with which he had faced the

comparator lens. He continued to smile faintly, but the emotions the clerk read on his face were sadness

and resignation,

"Just a moment," the clerk said. "The printer has to warm up, but —"

As she spoke, a sheet of hardcopy purred from the dispenser on Coke's side of the cage. Coke read the

rigid film upside down as it appeared instead of waiting for the print cycle to finish so that he could clip

the document.

His face blanked; then he began to laugh. The captain at the next cage glanced at him, then away. The

clerk waited, hoping Coke would explain the situation but unwilling to press him.

Coke tapped the cutter, then tossed the sheet across the counter to the clerk. "It says my new

assignment is Category Ten Forty-seven," he said as the clerk scanned the document. "That's survey

team, isn't it?"

The clerk nodded. "Yessir," she said. "You'll be assessing potential customers for field force

deployments."

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She didn't understand Major Coke's laughter. "Isn't this what you were expecting, sir?" she asked as she

slid back the hardcopy.

"What I was expecting . . ." Coke explained, ". . . after the way I screwed up my last assignment on

Auerstadt . . ." He was smiling like a skull, as broadly and with as little humor.

"... was that they'd fire my ass. But I guess the Assessment Board decided I couldn't get into much

trouble on a survey team."

He began to laugh again. Despite the obvious relief in Coke's voice, the sound of his laughter chilled the

clerk.

Earlier: AUERSTROT

There was a party going on in the extensive quarters of General the Marquis Bradkopf, National Army

commander of Fortress Auerstadt. Next door in the Tactical Operations Center, Major Matthew Coke

of the Frisian Defense Forces was trying to do his job — and General Bradkopf's job — through a

realtime link to the pair of combat cars in ambush position thirty kilometers away.

The combat cars were namedMother Love andThe Facts of Life. They and their crews were Frisians;

and the sergeants commanding them were, like Coke, former members of Hammer's Slammers, the

mercenary regiment whose ruthless skill had transformed Colonel Hammer into Alois Hammer, President

of Nieuw Friesland.

"We're getting major movement into Hamlet Three, sir,"said 4-4 — Sergeant-Commander Dubose in

Mother Love, stationed for the moment on a dike south of the three hamlets called Parcotch for

administrative purposes."Nearly a hundred just from the direction of Auerstadt. Most of them are

carrying weapons, too"

The three clerks in the TOC with Coke were National Army enlisted personnel, two women and a male

who looked fifteen years old. They were chattering in a corner of the open bullpen. One of the women

had brought in a series of holovision cubes of Deiting, the planetary capital, where she'd gone on leave

with her boyfriend, a transport driver.

There was a National Army officer listed asCommander of the Watch, but whoever it was hadn't put

in an appearance this evening. In all likelihood, the fellow was at General Bradkopf's party.

That was fine with Coke. The best a National officer could do was to keep out of the way of the advisor

hired from the Frisian Defense Forces.

Though all the raw data was provided by the combat cars, processing by the base unit in the TOC

added several layers of enhancement to what the troops on the ground could see. Coke checked the

statistical analysis in a sidebar of his holographic display and said, "There's a hundred and seventeen up

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the Auerstadt Road. They're all armed, and ninety percent of them are in spatter-camouflage uniforms."

"Bloody hell,"said Sergeant-Commander Lennox fromThe Facts of Life. "We've got regulars from

the Association of Barons? Then it's really going to blow!"

"And Four-Two has spotted another eighty-four coming down from Hamlet One and points north,"

Coke continued, watching his split-screen display. "The only thing I can imagine from an assembly this

large is that they're planning to attack the fortress itself in a night or two."

Two companies, even of fully equipped regulars, weren't a threat to a base the size of Fortress

Auerstadt; but Parcotch was only one village of the ninety or a hundred within comparable distance of the

base.

The direct views from sensors in the combat cars filled the lower right and left quadrants of Coke's

display. The top half of the screen looked down at an apparent 30° on a panorama extrapolated from the

separate inputs and combined with map data.

Mother Lovewas a klick to the south and east of Hamlet 3.The Facts of Life was within 500 meters of

the hamlets west edge, and that was the problem. Lennox's vehicle was only 500 meters east of Hamlet 2

as well, where the incoming troops had parked a launching trailer full of short-range guided weapons.

The combat cars were in perfect position to do a number on the enemy concentration in Hamlet 3, but

Coke wasn't willing to put Lennox between two fires.

"Any chance the Nationals might send us some support?"Sergeant Dubose said wistfully.

"Any chance the tooth fairy is making a run by your car tonight?"Sergeant Lennox retorted tartly. She

was a lanky woman who shaved her head and was just as tough as she looked."Sir," she continued,

"let's do it. If we rip this one, the locals'll get their heads out of the sand."

"Not in your present location, Four-Two," Coke said. "If they salvo the full load of missiles, there's no

way you're going to survive. Particularly with what-ever's happening in Three."

"Sir,look," Lennox said."The personnel are going to be in Three with the others, getting a pep talk

or whatever the hell they're doing. The launchers no threat!"

"We don't —" Coke started to say.

A mortar fired just outside the TOC.

"Hold one!" Coke shouted, spinning from the console and grabbing the sub-machine gun he'd slung over

the back of his chair. The National Army clerks jumped up also. They'd been frightened by Coke's

reaction rather than the mortar's flash and hollowCHUG! through the TOC's doorway. The vacationer's

glittering holoviews spilled onto the floor.

Cheers and laughter from outside the TOC told Coke there was no danger. The shell popped thousands

of meters in the air, casting harsh magnesium light across Fortress Auerstadt. General the Marquis

Bradkopf was using parachute flares to provide fireworks for his party.

Which suggested a way out of Cokes immediate problem.

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In theory, Coke's console was linked to the NationalArmy net. Rather than go through the complicated

handshake procedures, however, Coke turned to the rack system at the adjacent bay.

He switched the unit from standby to operations and waited a moment for it to warm up. When the light

went from amber to green, Coke keyed the address of the heavy battery of the artillery battalion attached

to the fortress defenses. The clerk responsible for the communications bay watched Coke in concern

from across the room, but she didn't attempt to interfere.

Marquis Bradkopf began hectoring a subordinate outside the door of the TOC. Drink and anger slurred

his words so that Coke couldn't make them out, A woman's voice wove a descant around Bradkopf's.

"Battery Seven," a man said. "Yeah?"

"This is Fortress Command," Coke said crisply. "I have an immediate fire mission for you." As he spoke,

his left hand addressed a target information packet on the Frisian console. "This will require seeker shells,

so I'm authorizing you to release them from locked storage."

"What!" said the soldier on the other end of the line. "What? Look, I'll get Chief Edson."

Theoretically, the Frisians were in advisory capacity without direct control of National Army forces. As

with other large organizations, somebody who was willing to claim authority was more than likely to be

granted it.

The mortar fired again, lofting a second flare into the night sky. There was static on the land line, masking

a half-audible conversation at the battery end.

National Army heavy equipment was generally of off-planet manufacture, ranging from good to very

good in design. The local personnel were of low quality, however, and virtually untrained. Coke didn't

dare call an ordinary fire mission to support units within half a klick of the intended.impact area. Battery

7's200-mm guns were capable of nail-driving accuracy at thirty kilometers, but the crews were as apt as

not todrop their heavy shells directly onThe Facts of Life.

Technology could eliminate the problem. The battery was issued four Frisian-manufactured seeker

rounds, one per tube. These self-steering warheads were designed for use against ill-defined or moving

targets, and combined with satellite photos of Parcotch Hamlet 2 they would obviate the friendly-fire risk.

"Chief Edson," a businesslike voice said. "Who is this?"

"Major Matthew Coke," Coke said, "acting Fortress Command. Where's your battery commander?"

"Who the fuck knows?" said the chief, the battery's ranking enlisted man. "Look, Major, I don't care

about your authorization — I flat don't have the codes to open the special locker. Maybe Captain

Wilcken does, maybe the Marquis does — maybe nobody. Forget the seeker warheads, they're just for

show."

"Prepare the battery," Coke snapped. "I'm on my way."

He dropped the handset onto its cradle and rose. More figures drifted through the shadows of the split

screen. Lennox and Dubose held their silence, as Coke had directed them at last transmission.

Coke settled his commo helmet, slung the sub-machine gun over his shoulder, and started for the door.

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General Bradkopf and his entourage burst through from outside.

"Coke!" the Marquis roared. "Where's — there you are!" He pointed an index finger at Coke's face.

"What's happened to my tanksP'

Bradkopf was in his mid-fifties. His body was fleshy but powerful, since swimming and exercise

machines controlled the grosser results of the dissipation nonetheless evident on his face.

"Sir, you and I discussed using the combat cars for an ambush patrol," Coke half-lied. His mouth was

dry, and his palm was sweating on the grip of his sub-machine gun.This could get him reprimanded. If

Bradkopf was angry enough, he could even have Coke recalled to Friesland.

The group oozing into the TOC behind the Marquis included most of the higher male officers of Fortress

Auerstadt's complement. Among them was Captain Wilcken, a 20-year-old of excellent family and the

titular commander of Battery 7.

Each of the men had a woman in train. The redhead on the Marquis' arm was approximately a third of

his age.

"You said you wanted to send out one of the tanks with a patrol," Bradkopf said, his memory

unfortunately quite accurate. "For communications."

For stiffening, actually, but the lie was a harmless one.When he'd gotten down to serious planning, he

realized that he didn't dare saddle Frisians —his troops — with any of the National Army units in the

fortress. The locals lacked noise discipline, fire discipline, and target identification skills. A Frisian combat

car was the largest thing around and therefore the most likely target for the National troops who did

manage to shoot.

Furthermore, the locals lacked guts.

"Isaid I'd think about it," Bradkopf said, "and now I find you've stripped me of all my protection! Are

you a traitor?"

"No sir," Coke said, "I'm not a traitor. I —"

Iscrewed up badly,but Bradkopf wasn't the man to admit that to. Coke had taken the chance that the

Marquis wouldn't notice the two combat cars — not tanks — normally parked near his quarters were

missing. If Bradkopf hadn't decided to shoot off flares for his party, Coke would have gotten away with

it.

If.

Coke couldn't quarrel with Bradkopfs assumption that the commander of an 8,000-troop base was

unprotected if two foreign combat vehicles left his presence. It was just that protectingthis commander

was in no sense a military priority for Coke.

"Six, this is Four-Four,"Sergeant Dubose reported tensely through Coke's commo helmet."The troops

are moving out of Three in civilian trucks and wagons. Over."

"General Bradkopf!" Coke said. "Association forces are maneuvering to attack this base tonight."

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Not in a few days: in a fewhours.

Fear of a bad rating in his personnel file had turned Coke's skin hot and prickly. The prospect of

imminent combat washed him cool again. Major Matthew Coke was a professional and an employee;

but first of all he was a soldier.

"What?" blurted the Marquis, sounding amazingly like the gunner on phone watch at Battery 7. "An

attackwhere? Have you gone mad?"

"Six,this is Four-Two"Sergeant Lennox reported. There was a lilt, almost a caress in her voice despite

the flattening of spread-band radio communication."The rocket pod's moved out of Two. It's being

pulled by a tractor, now, I'd say it was time, boss. Over"

The partygoers gaped without understanding at the multidirectional byplay. Most of them were drunk or

nearly drunk. Captain Wilcken was white-faced but sober. The glance he exchanged with Colonel Jaffe,

equally well-born and head of the garrison's supply department, held more terror than confusion.

Coke keyed his helmet. "Sixto Four elements" he said."Take th—"

He didn't get the last word,'them,' out of his mouth before the split display behind him ignited with

gunfire and explosions,

"I'm sounding the general alarm," Coke said calmly as he turned his back on the Marquis. He uncaged

and pressed one of the special-use switches at the side of his consoles keyboard. The artificial

intelligence sent an alert signal to every node on Fortress Auerstadts communications network. The siren

on the roof of the TOC began to wind.

The holographic display shimmered with the cyan hell engulfing Parcotch.

A Frisian combat car mounted three tribarrels in its open fighting compartment. Each weapon fired 2-cm

powergun ammunition at a cyclic rate of about 500 rounds per minute. Because the barrels rotated

through the firing position and had time to cool between shots, a tribarrel could fire sustainedly for several

minutes before burning out. In that time, the powerful bolts of ionized copper atoms could peck halfway

through the side of a mountain.

NothingMother Love andThe Facts of Life faced at Parcotch had armor protection. The targets,

unprepared Association soldiers and the civilian helpers driving the vehicles, wilted like wax in a

blowtorch.

The Facts of Life'stwo wing guns hit the trailer of anti-tank rockets and the tractor towing it. That was

overkill — a single tribarrel should have been sufficient — but the rocket pod was the only real danger to

the Frisian vehicles, and Lennox hadn't survived to become a veteran by taking needless risks.

Cyan bolts licked the pod. The solid rocket fuel burned in a huge yellow ball, technically not an

explosion but wholly destructive of everything within its 10-meter diameter.

At least one of the missile warheadsdid detonate. The white flash of 40 kilos of HE punctuated the

saffron fireball. The tractor-trailer combination blew apart. Blazing debris rained across the landscape,

igniting the houses of Hamlet 2 and the heads of the ripe grain in the paddies.

On the other side of the display,Mother Love's three tribarrels clawed the infantry packed into the

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civilian vehicles. Ammunition and grenades went off in secondary explosions, but the stabbing cyan

plasma itself did most of the damage. The Association troops were too crowded to fight or flee in the first

instants of the ambush, and those instants were all that remained to scores of them.

A stray bolt ruptured the fuel tank under a truck cab. Kerosine, superheated and atomized by the

plasma, expanded into an explosive mixture with the surrounding atmosphere —

And flash ignited, just as it would normally have done when injected into the cylinders of the truck's

diesel engine. Bodies and body parts flew up in the mushrooming flame, but most of the Association

troops had already been killed by gunfire.

"You wanted to know what?" Coke shouted over the wail of the siren. He gestured to the screen which

glowed with the light of the scenes it displayed."That's what, General, and there's a lot more Association

units out there tonight than those."

An automatic cannon opened fire from a bunker on the perimeter of Fortress Auerstadt. The gunners

probably didn't have a real target. They were snooting at shadows or livestock.

That was the right response to the present circumstances. With the base fully alerted, any attack

Association troops made would be fragmentary instead of coordinated and overwhelming. In all

likelihood there would beno attack. At daybreak the National Army would be able to concentrate on

scattered companies of their opponents.

"Why that's . . ." the Marquis said, staring at the console display. "That's a massacre!"

Coke was surprised that his nominal superior had enough military knowledge to make that perfectly

accurate assessment of what was happening in Parcotch.

As soon as the shooting started, the combat cars' drivers fed full power to the lift fans. Howling like

banshees as the fans sucked in vast quantities of air to pressurize the plenum chambers, spraying water

and soupy mud in all directions from beneath their skirts, the 50-tonne behemoths accelerated toward

Parcotch Hamlet 3 from two directions.

While her wing gunners destroyed the rocket launcher, Sergeant Lennox had opened fire on the

community itself. Lennox didn't have a line of sight to the vehicles leaving the hamlet eastward fromThe

Facts of Life's starting position half a klick distant. Instead she shot up the buildings.

The structures had thatch walls and roofs of corrugated plastic sheeting, supported by wood or plastic

frames. All the construction materials were flammable at the temperature of copper plasma. Houses, the

school building, and the community center all burst into flame, spreading panic and confusing the enemy.

Everything moving this night was a foe and a target. The Frisians' only chance was to hit hard and keep

on hitting before the enemy forces could organize their superior numbers. In the morning, every corpse in

Hamlet 3 would be tagged as an Association soldier or an Association supporter. Like other forms of

history, after-action reports are written by the survivors.

Mother Lovebounced onto the Auerstadt Road from the dike which had concealed the vehicle in the

darkness. The gunners depressed their tribarrels, raking the troops who'd jumped into the fields to either

side of the causeway. A gout of steam flew up at each bolt, whether it hit a flooded paddy or

superheated the fluids within a soldier's body.

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The flames enveloping the hamlet rolled in redoubled fury, whipped byThe Facts of Life's powerful

drive fans. The combat car bellied through the blaze at a walking pace, firing continuously from all three

weapons. Cyan bolts cut down the soldiers who had jumped from wagons and truck beds to run toward

the fancied safety of the buildings.

Lennox made a point of destroying each of the stalled vehicles. Blazing fuel geysered over the paddies,

igniting rice and troops alike.

"GoodLord!" the Marquis said. He turned from thedisplay to Coke and continued, "Get those tanks

back herenow, you fool! How dared you leave me at risk at a time of such danger?"

"Yessir," Coke said. "They're on their way back now."

The Facts of Lifebulldozed burning wreckage off the causeway, clearing the route by which to return to

Fortress Auerstadt. The driver was buttoned up within his compartment, using the curved bow slope to

butt aside a truck festooned with corpses.

The tribarrels continued to fire. The visors of Frisian commo helmets could be switched to either light

enhancement or thermal imaging modes. The latter could pick up bodies even through the shallow water

of the paddies.

Captain Wilcken blurted something, clawed his personal sidearm out of a white patent leather holster,

and pointed the small-bore projectile pistol at General the Marquis Bradkopf. Colonel Jaffe was drawing

his pistol also.

Part of Coke's mind reasoned:

Wilcken and Jaffe were supporters of the Association of Barons. They intended to assassinate Bradkopf

in conjunction with the attack, leaving Fortress Auerstadt leaderless at the moment of crisis. In panic,

Wilcken has gone ahead with the plan even though circumstances have obviously changed. . . .

That was with the conscious part of his mind. Reflex thumbed off the safety of Coke's sub-machine gun

as his left hand slapped the fore-grip and his finger took up the slack in the trigger.

The first bolt blew plaster from the wall above the TOC's doorway. The next four hit Wilcken in the

chest and neck at point-blank range, virtually decapitating him.

Officers and their gorgeously clad mistresses screamed and threw themselves down. Coke

body-checked the Marquis, knocking him to the side and clearing Coke for a shot at Colonel Jaffe.

Jaffe's pistolwas only half out of its holster. To Cokes adrenaline-speeded reactions, the colonel didn't

seem to be moving at all.

The air stank of burned flesh and vaporized blood. Wilcken toppled backward, his head dangling onto

his chest by a tag of skin. The pupils of the dead man's eyes had tilted up into the skull.

Cokes second burst winked cyan on Jaffe's corneas. The colonel's chest burst like a blood-filled

sponge. The pistol in his hand fired a single shot into the floor. The bullet moaned away in sparks and a

spurt of powdered concrete.

"Traitors!" gasped the Marquis, half-sprawled where Coke had knocked him, supporting his torso on

the spread fingers of his right hand. "They were —uh!"

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David Drake - Hammer's Slammers 13 - The Sharp End

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