Which Sienkiewicz sprayed with half a magazine, because nobody’d spoken from there, and anybody in concealment was fair game. Splinters flew away from the shots like startled birds, but there was no cry of pain.
Starships or no, the Khalians weren’t high tech by human standards. In a human installation, even back in the sticks, there’d have been a computer data bank.
Here, data meant marks on paper; and the paper was burning in several of the open file drawers. The air was chokingly hot and smoky, but it takes a long time to destroy files when they’re in hard copy.
The man half-hidden by the door stepped aside, his hands covering his face where Kowacs had smashed him with the panel.
He didn’t wear a red sleeve, but there was a tag of fabric smoldering on one of the burning drawers.
What had the bastard thought he was going to gain by destroying the records?
Kowacs was reaching toward the prisoner when the man said, “You idiots! Do you know who I am?”
He lowered his hands and they did know, all three of them, without replaying the hologram loaded into their helmet memories. Except for the freshly cut lip and bloody nose, the Honorable Thomas Forberry hadn’t changed much after all.
“Out,” Kowacs said.
Forberry thought the Marine meant him as well as the non-coms. Kowacs jabbed the civilian in the chest with his rifle when he started to follow them.
“Sir?” said the sergeant doubtfully.
Kowacs slammed the door behind him. The latch was firm, though smoke drifted out of the gouge next to the jamb.
“They’ll wipe the chips,” Kowacs said.
“Sir, we can’t wipe the recorders,” Bradley begged. “Sir, it’s been tried!”
“We won’t have to,” Kowacs said. He nodded to Sienkiewicz, lifting the plasma weapon with its one remaining charge. “We’ll leave it for the brass to cover this one up.”
And they all flattened against the wall as Sienkiewicz set the muzzle of the big weapon against the hole in the door of the camp administrator’s office.
WHEN THE DEVIL DRIVES
A Story of The Fleet
“Captain Miklos Kowacs?” asked whoever was sticking his hand through the canvas curtain to tap Kowacs on the shoulder as he showered with his men. “Could I have a quick minute with you?”
“Whoo! I dropped the soap, sweetie,” called one of Kowacs’ Marines in a falsetto. “I’ll just bend over and pick it up!”
Kowacs lifted his face to the spray of his shower for an excuse not to look at the guy interrupting. The horseplay of his unit, the 121st Marine Reaction Company—the Headhunters—was as relaxing to him as the steamy hammering of the water. He didn’t want to think about anything else just now, and he didn’t see any reason why he should.
“If I was Nick Kowacs,” he said, “I’d have just spent six hours in my hard suit, picking through what used to be the main spaceport on this mudball. Bug off, huh?”
He turned his head slightly. Some of the water recoiling from him spurted through the gap in the canvas to soak the intruder in its rainbow spray.
“Yeah, that’s what I wanted to check,” the voice continued flatly. “I’m English—I’ve got the Ninety-Second—and we—”
“Hell and damnation!” Kowacs muttered in embarrassment as he slipped out through the canvas himself. The decontamination showers were floored with plastic sheeting, but the ground outside the facility had been bulldozed bare and turned to mud by overflow and the rain. It squelched greasily between his toes.
“Sorry, Captain,” he explained. “I thought you were some rear echelon mother wanting to know why I hadn’t inventoried the week’s laundry.”
“S’okay,” English said. “The Haig’s about to lift with us, and I needed to check one thing with you about the port.”
The Ninety-Second’s commander didn’t carry Kowacs’ weight; but he was a hand’s breadth taller, with curly hair and the sort of easy good looks that made him seem gentle to somebody who didn’t know English’s reputation.
Kowacs knew the reputation. Besides, he’d seen eyes like English’s before, pupils that never focused very long on anything because of the things they’d seen already.
Kowacs had eyes like that himself.