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  “That’s with three months and pre-planning. If Riis tries to do anything on his own, that many of his own men are going to be short sidearms—they’re all issued by serial number, Lord take it!—and a blind Mongoloid could get enough proof to sink the Regiment.”

  “You think we don’t understand,” said Kruse in a quiet voice. He transferred his musket to his left hand, then slapped Pritchard across the side of the head. “We understand very well,” the civilian said. “All the mercenaries will leave in a few days or weeks. If the French have powerguns and we do not, they will kill us, our wives, our children…. There’s a hundred and fifty villages on Kobold like this one, Dutch, and as many French ones scattered between. It was bad before, with no one but the beasts allowed any real say in the government; but now if they win, there’ll be French villages and French mines—and slave pens. Forever.”

  “You think a few guns’ll save you?” Pritchard asked. Kruse’s blow left no visible mark in the tanker’s livid flesh, though a better judge than Kruse might have noted that Pritchard’s eyes were as hard as his voice was mild.

  “They’ll help us save ourselves when the time comes,” Kruse retorted.

  “If you’d gotten powerguns from French civilians instead of the mercs directly, you might have been all right,” the captain said. He was coldly aware that the lie he was telling was more likely to be believed in this situation than it would have been in any setting he might deliberately have contrived. There had to be an incident, the French civilians had to think they were safe in using their illegal weapons…. “The Portelans, say, couldn’t admit to having guns to lose. But anything you take from mercs—us or Barthe, it doesn’t matter—we’ll take back the hard way. You don’t know what you’re buying into.”

  Kruse’s face did not change, but his fist drew back for another blow. The mayor caught the younger man’s arm and snapped, “Franz, we’re here to show him that it’s not a few of us, it’s every family in the village behind…our holding him,” van Oosten nodded around the room. “More of us than your colonel could dream of trying to punish,” he added naively to Pritchard. Then he flashed back at Kruse, “If you act like a fool, he’ll want revenge anyway.”

  “You may never believe this,” Pritchard interjected wearily, “but I just want to do my job. If you let me go now, it—may be easier in the long run.”

  “Fool,” Kruse spat, and turned his back on the tanker.

  A trap door opened in the ceiling, spilling more light into the cellar. “Pauli!” a woman shouted down the opening, “Hals is on the radio. There’s tanks coming down the road, just like before!”

  “The Lord’s wounds!” van Oosten gasped. “We must—”

  “They can’t know!” Kruse insisted. “But we’ve got to get everybody out of here and back to their own houses. Everybody but me and him”—a nod at Pritchard—“and this.” The musket lowered so that its round black eye pointed straight into the bound man’s face.

  “No, by the side door!” van Oosten called to the press of conspirators clumping up toward the street. “Don’t run right out in front of them.” Cursing and jostling, the villagers climbed the ladder to the ground floor, there presumably to exit on an alley.

  Able only to twist his head and legs, Pritchard watched Kruse and the trembling muzzle of his weapon. The village must have watchmen with radios at either approach through the forests. If Hals was atop the heap of mine tailings—where Pritchard would have placed his outpost if he were in charge, certainly—then he’d gotten a nasty surprise when the main gun splashed the rocks with Hell. The captain grinned at the thought. Kruse misunderstood and snarled, “If they are coming for you, you’re dead, you treacherous bastard!” To the backs of his departing fellows, the young Dutchman called, “Turn out the light here, but leave the trap door open. That won’t show on the street, but it’ll give me enough light to shoot by.”

  The tanks weren’t coming for him, Pritchard knew, because they couldn’t have any idea where he was. Perhaps his disappearance had stirred up some patrolling, for want of more directed action; perhaps a platoon was just changing ground because of its commander’s whim. Pritchard had encouraged random motion. Tanks that freeze in one place are sitting targets, albeit hard ones. But whatever the reason tanks were approaching Haacin, if they whined by in the street outside they would be well within range of his implanted transmitter.

  The big blowers were audible now, nearing with an arrogant lack of haste as if bears headed for a beehive. They were moving at about 30 kph, more slowly than Pritchard would have expected even for a contact patrol. From the sound there were four or more of them, smooth and gray and deadly.

  “Kruse, I’m serious,” the Slammer captain said. Light from the trap door back-lit the civilian into a hulking beast with a musket. “If you—”

  “Shut up!” Kruse snarled, prodding his prisoner’s bruised forehead with the gun muzzle. “One more word, any word, and—”

  Kruse’s right hand was so tense and white that the musket might fire even without his deliberate intent.

  The first of the tanks slid by outside. Its cushion of air was so dense that the ground trembled even though none of the blower’s 170 tonnes was in direct contact with it. Squeezed between the pavement and the steel curtain of the plenum chamber, the air spurted sideways and rattled the cellar windows. The rattling was inaudible against the howling of the fans themselves, but the trembling shutters chopped facets in the play of the tank’s running lights. Kruse’s face and the far wall flickered in blotched abstraction.

  The tank moved on without pausing. Pritchard had not tried to summon it.

  “That power,” Kruse was mumbling to himself, “that should be for us to use to sweep the beasts—” The rest of his words were lost in the growing wail of the second tank in the column.

  Pritchard tensed within. Even if a passing tank picked up his implant’s transmission, its crew would probably ignore the message. Unless Pritchard identified himself, the tankers would assume it was babbling thrown by the ionosphere. And if he did identify himself, Kruse—

  Kruse thrust his musket against Pritchard’s skull again, banging the tanker’s head back against the cellar wall. The Dutchman’s voice was lost in the blower’s howling, but his blue-lit lips clearly were repeating, “One word….”

  The tank moved on down the highway toward Portela.

  “…and maybe I’ll shoot you anyway,” Kruse was saying. “That’s the way to serve traitors, isn’t it? Mercenary!”

  The third blower was approaching. Its note seemed slightly different, though that might be the aftereffect of the preceding vehicles’ echoing din. Pritchard was cold all the way to his heart, because in a moment he was going to call for help. He knew that Kruse would shoot him, knew also that he would rather die now than live after hope had come so near but passed on, passed on….

  The third tank smashed through the wall of the house.

  The Plow’s skirts were not a bulldozer blade, but they were thick steel and backed with the mass of a 150 tonne command tank. The slag wall repowdered at the impact. Ceiling joists buckled into pretzel shape and ripped the cellar open to the floor above. Kruse flung his musket up and fired through the cascading rubble. The boom and red flash were lost in the chaos, but the blue-green fire stabbing back across the cellar laid the Dutchman on his back with his parka aflame. Pritchard rolled to the floor at the first shock. He thrust himself with corded legs and arms back under the feeble protection of the bunk. When the sound of falling objects had died away, the captain slitted his eyelids against the rock dust and risked a look upward.

  The collision had torn a gap ten feet long in the house wall, crushing it from street level to the beams supporting the second story. The tank blocked the hole with its gray bulk. Fresh scars brightened the patina of corrosion etched onto its skirts by the atmospheres of a dozen planets. Through the buckled flooring and the dust whipped into arabesques by the idling fans, Pritchard glimpsed a slight figure c
linging lefthanded to the turret. Her right hand still threatened the wreckage with a submachinegun. Carpeting burned on the floor above, ignited by the burst that killed Kruse. Somewhere a woman was screaming in Dutch.

  “Margritte!” Pritchard shouted. “Margritte! Down here!”

  The helmeted woman swung up her face shield and tried to pierce the cellar gloom with her unaided eyes. The tank-battered opening had sufficed for the exchange of shots, but the tangle of structural members and splintered flooring was too tight to pass a man—or even a small woman. Sooty flames were beginning to shroud the gap. Margritte jumped to the ground and struggled for a moment before she was able to heave open the door. The Plow’s turret swung to cover her, though neither the main gun nor the tribarrel in the cupola could depress enough to rake the cellar. Margritte ran down the steps to Pritchard. Coughing in the rock dust, he rolled out over the rubble to meet her. Much of the smashed sidewall had collapsed onto the street when the tank backed after the initial impact. Still, the crumpled beams of the ground floor sagged further with the additional weight of the slag on them. Head-sized pieces had splanged on the cot above Pritchard.

  Margritte switched the submachinegun to her left hand and began using a clasp knife on her captain’s bonds. The cord with which he was tied bit momentarily deeper at the blade’s pressure.

  Pritchard winced, then began flexing his freed hands. “You know, Margi,” he said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with a gun before.”

  The commo tech’s face hardened as if the polarized helmet shield had slipped down over it again. “You hadn’t,” she said. The ankle bindings parted and she stood, the dust graying her helmet and her foam-filled coveralls. “Captain, Kowie had to drive and we needed Rob in the cupola at the gun. That left me to—do anything else that had to be done. I did what had to be done.”

  Pritchard tried to stand, using the technician as a post on which to draw himself upright. Margritte looked frail, but with her legs braced she stood like a rock. Her arm around Pritchard’s back was as firm as a man’s.

  “You didn’t ask Capt. Riis for help, I guess,” Pritchard said, pain making his breath catch. The line tanks had two-man crews with no one to spare for outrider, of course.

  “We didn’t report you missing,” Margritte said, “even to First Platoon. They just went along like before, thinking you were in The Plow giving orders.” Together, captain and technician shuffled across the floor to the stairs. As they passed Kruse’s body, Margritte muttered cryptically, “That’s four.”

  Pritchard assumed the tremors beginning to shake the woman’s body were from physical strain. He took as much weight off her as he could and found his numbed feet were beginning to function reasonably well. He would never have been able to board The Plow without Sgt. Jenne’s grip on his arm, however.

  The battered officer settled in the turret with a groan of comfort. The seat cradled his body with gentle firmness, and the warm air blown across him was just the near side of heaven.

  “Captain,” Jenne said, “what d’we do about the slopes who grabbed you? Shall we call in an interrogation team and—”

  “We don’t do anything,” Pritchard interrupted. “We just pretend none of this happened and head back to….” He paused. His flesh wavered both hot and cold as Margritte sprayed his ankles with some of the apparatus from the medical kit. “Say, how did you find me, anyway?”

  “We shut off coverage when you—went into your room,” Jenne said, seeing that the commo tech herself did not intend to speak. He meant, Pritchard knew, they had shut off the sound when their captain had said, “Sal.” None of the three of them were looking either of the other two in the eyes. “After a bit, though, Margi noticed the carrier line from your implant had dropped off her oscilloscope. I checked your room, didn’t find you. Didn’t see much point talking it over with the remfs on duty, either.

  “So we got satellite recce and found two trucks’d left the area since we got back. One was Riis’, and the other was a civvie junker before that. It’d been parked in the woods out of sight, half a kay up the road from the buildings. Both trucks unloaded in Haacin. We couldn’t tell which load was you, but Margi said if we got close, she’d home on your carrier even though you weren’t calling us on the implant. Some girl we got here, hey?”

  Pritchard bent forward and squeezed the commo tech’s shoulder. She did not look up, but she smiled. “Yeah, always knew she was something,” he agreed, “but I don’t think I realized quite what a person she was until just now.”

  Margritte lifted her smile. “Rob ordered First Platoon to fall in with us,” she said. “He set up the whole rescue.” Her fine-fingered hands caressed Pritchard’s calves.

  But there was other business in Haacin, now. Riis had been quicker to act than Pritchard had hoped. He asked, “You say one of the infantry’s trucks took a load here a little bit ago?”

  “Yeah, you want the off-print?” Jenne agreed, searching for the flimsy copy of the satellite picture. “What the hell would they be doing, anyhow?”

  “I got a suspicion,” his captain said grimly, “and I suppose it’s one we’ve got to check out.”

  “Michael First-Three to Michael One,” the radio broke in. “Vehicles approaching from the east on the hardball.”

  “Michael One to Michael First,” Pritchard said, letting the search for contraband arms wait for this new development. “Reverse and form a line abreast beyond the village. Twenty meter intervals. The Plow’ll take the road.” More weapons from Riis? More of Barthe’s troops when half his sector command was already in Portela? Pritchard touched switches beneath the vision blocks as Kowie slid the tank into position. He split the screen between satellite coverage and a ground-level view at top magnification. Six vehicles, combat cars, coming fast. Pritchard swore. Friendly, because only the Slammers had armored vehicles on Kobold, not that cars were a threat to tanks anyway. But no combat cars were assigned to this sector; and the unexpected is always bad news to a company commander juggling too many variables already.

  “Platoon nearing Tango Sigma four-two, three-two, please identify to Michael One,” Pritchard requested, giving Haacin’s map coordinates.

  Margritte turned up the volume of the main radio while she continued to bandage the captain’s rope cuts. The set crackled, “Michael One, this is Alpha One and Alpha First. Stand by.”

  “God’s bleeding cunt!” Rob Jenne swore under his breath. Pritchard was nodding in equal agitation. Alpha was the Regiment’s special duty company. Its four combat car platoons were Col. Hammer’s bodyguards and police. The troopers of A Company were nicknamed the White Mice, and they were viewed askance even by the Slammers of other companies—men who prided themselves on being harder than any other combat force in the galaxy. The White Mice in turn feared their commander, Maj. Joachim Steuben; and if that slightly-built killer feared anyone, it was the man who was probably traveling with him this night. Pritchard sighed and asked the question. “Alpha One, this is Michael One. Are you flying a pennant, sir?”

  “Affirmative, Michael One.”

  Well, he’d figured Col. Hammer was along as soon as he heard what the unit was. What the Old Man was doing here was another question, and one whose answer Pritchard did not look forward to learning.

  The combat cars glided to a halt under the guns of their bigger brethren. The tremble of their fans gave the appearance of heat ripples despite the snow. From his higher vantage point, Pritchard watched the second car slide out of line and fall alongside The Plow. The men at the nose and right wing guns were both short, garbed in nondescript battle gear. They differed from the other troopers only in that their helmet shields were raised and that the faces visible beneath were older than those of most Slammers: Col. Alois Hammer and his hatchetman.

  “No need for radio, Captain,” Hammer called in a husky voice. “What are you doing here?”

  Pritchard’s tongue quivered between the truth and a lie. His crew had been covering for him, and he
wasn’t about to leave them holding the bag. All the breaches of regulations they had committed were for their captain’s sake. “Sir, I brought First Platoon back to Haacin to check whether any of the powerguns they’d hijacked from Barthe were still in civvie hands.” Pritchard could feel eyes behind the cracked shutters of every east-facing window in the village.

  “And have you completed your check?” the colonel pressed, his voice mild but his eyes as hard as those of Maj. Steuben beside him; as hard as the iridium plates of the gun shields.

  Pritchard swallowed. He owed nothing to Capt. Riis, but the young fool was his superior—and at least he hadn’t wanted the Dutch to kill Pritchard. He wouldn’t put Riis’ ass in the bucket if there were neutral ways to explain the contraband. Besides, they were going to need Riis and his Dutch contacts for the rest of the plan. “Sir, when you approached I was about to search a building where I suspect some illegal weapons are stored.”

  “And instead you’ll provide back-up for the major here,” said Hammer, the false humor gone from his face. His words rattled like shrapnel. “He’ll retrieve the twenty-four powerguns which Capt. Riis saw fit to turn over to civilians tonight. If Joachim hadn’t chanced, chanced onto that requisition….” Hammer’s left glove shuddered with the strength of his grip on the forward tribarrel. Then the colonel lowered his eyes and voice, adding, “The quartermaster who filled a requisition for twenty-four pistols from Central Supply is in the infantry again tonight. And Capt. Riis is no longer with the Regiment.”

  Steuben tittered, loose despite the tension of everyone around him. The cold was bitter, but Joachim’s right hand was bare. With it he traced the baroque intaglios of his holstered pistol. “Mr. Riis is lucky to be alive,” the slight Newlander said pleasantly. “Luckier than some would have wished. But Colonel, I think we’d best go pick up the merchandise before anybody nerves themself to use it on us.”