“I’m glad you made it, Lieutenant Huber,” she said in a voice as pleasantly sexy as the rest of her. “I’m your deputy, Hera Graciano.”
“Ma’am,” Huber said, shaking the woman’s hand gingerly. Was he supposed to have kissed it? There might be something in the briefing cubes that he’d missed, but he doubted they went into local culture at this social level. It wasn’t the sort of thing the commander of a line platoon was likely to need.
“Sergeant Tranter, sir,” said the non-com. He didn’t salute; saluting wasn’t part of the Slammers’ protocol, where all deployments were to combat zones and the main thing a salute did was target the recipient for any snipers in the vicinity. “This is Trooper Bayes, he’s helping me go over the vehicles we’re offered for hire.”
Hera looked ready to step in and introduce her staff too. Huber raised his hand to forestall her.
“Please?” he said to get attention. “Before I try to memorize names, Deputy Graciano, could you give me a quick rundown of where the section is and where it’s supposed to be?”
He flashed the roomful of people an embarrassed smile. “I intend to carry my weight, but an hour ago I couldn’t have told you anything about Log Section beyond that there probably was one.”
“Of course,” Hera said. “We can use your office—” she nodded to a connecting door “—or mine,” this time indicating a cubicle set off from the rest of the room by waist-high paneling.
“We’ll use yours,” Huber said, because he was pretty sure from what he’d heard about Captain Cassutt that useful information was going to be in the deputy’s office instead. “Oh—and I don’t have quarters, yet. Is there a billeting officer here or—?”
“I’ll take care of it, sir,” Tranter said. “Do we need to go pick up your baggage too?”
“It’s out in front of the building,” Huber said. “I—”
“Right,” said Tranter. “Come on, Bayes. Sir, you’ll be in Building Five in back of the vehicle park. They’re temporaries but they’re pretty nice, and engineering threw us up a nice bulletproof wall around the whole compound. Just in case—which I guess I don’t have to explain to you.”
Chuckling at the reference to Rhodesville, the two troopers left the room. Huber smiled too. It was gallows humor, sure; but if you couldn’t laugh at grim jokes, you weren’t going to laugh very much on service with the Slammers.
And it wasn’t that Tranter didn’t have personal experience with disaster. The nonskid sole of his mechanical foot thumped the floor with a note distinct from that of the boot on his right foot.
“I’m impressed by Sergeant Tranter,” Hera said in a low voice as she stepped into her alcove after Huber. Though it seemed open to the rest of the room, a sonic distorter kept conversations within the cubicle private by canceling any sounds that crossed the invisible barrier. “As a matter of fact, I’m impressed by all the, ah, soldiers assigned to this section. I’d assumed that because they weren’t fit for regular duties. . . .”
“Ma’am,” Huber said, hearing the unmeant chill in his voice. “We’re the Slammers. It’s not just that everybody in the Regiment’s a volunteer—that’s true of a lot of merc outfits. We’re the best. We’ve got the best equipment, we get the best pay, and we’ve got our pick of recruits. People who don’t do the job they’re assigned to because they don’t feel like it, they go someplace else. By their choice or by the Colonel’s.”
“I’m sorry,” the woman said. “I didn’t mean . . .”
Her voice trailed off. She had meant she expected people on medical profile to slack off while they were on temporary assignment to ash and trash jobs.
Huber gave an embarrassed chuckle. He felt like an idiot to’ve come on like a regimental recruiter to somebody who was trying to offer praise.
“Ma’am,” he said, “I was out of line. I just mean the folks who stay in the Slammers are professionals. Sergeant Tranter, now—he could retire on full pay. If he didn’t, it’s because he wants to stay with the Regiment. And I’d venture a guess—”