Base Alpha—regimental headquarters on every world that hired the Slammers was Base Alpha—was a raw wasteland bulldozed from several hectares of forest. The clay was deep red when freshly turned, russet when it dried by itself to a form of porous rock, and oddly purple when mixed with plasticizer to form the roadways and building foundations of the camp.
The aircar and driver that’d brought Huber from Rhodesville to Base Alpha were both local, though the woman driving had a cap with a red ball insignia and the words
Logistics Section
Hammer’s Regiment
marking her as a Slammers’ contract employee. Colonel Hammer brought his own combat personnel and equipment to each deployment, but much of the Regiment’s logistics tail was procured for the operation. Supplies and the infrastructure to transport them usually came from what the hiring state had available.
Huber stopped in front of the building marked provost marshal and straightened his equipment belt. The guards, one of them in a gun jeep mounting a tribarrel, watched him in the anonymity of mirrored faceshields. The tribarrel remained centered on Huber’s midriff as he approached.
The orders recalling Lieutenant Arne Huber from F-3 directed him to report to the Provost Marshal’s office on arrival at Base Alpha. Huber had left his gear with the clerk at the Transient Barracks—he wasn’t going to report to the Regiment’s hatchetman with a dufflebag and two footlockers—but he hadn’t taken time to be assigned a billet. There was a good chance—fifty-fifty, Huber guessed—that he wouldn’t be a member of the Slammers when the present interview concluded.
He felt cold inside. He’d known the possibilities the instant he saw the first bolts rake the dirigible, but the terse recall message that followed his report had still made his guts churn.
Nothing to be done about it now. Nothing to be done about it since Sergeant Jellicoe shifted her aim to the dirigible and thumbed her butterfly trigger.
“Lieutenant Huber reporting to the Provost Marshal, as ordered,” he said to the sergeant commanding the squad of guards.
“You’re on the list,” the sergeant said without inflexion. He and the rest of his squad were from A Company; they were the Regiment’s police, wearing a stylized gorget as their collar flash. In some mercenary outfits the field police were called Chain Dogs from the gorget; in the Slammers they were the White Mice. “You can leave your weapons with me and go on in.”
“Right,” said Huber, though the order surprised him. He unslung his belt with the holstered pistol, then handed over the powerknife clipped to a trouser pocket as well.
“He’s clean,” said a guard standing at the read-out from a detection frame. The sergeant nodded Huber forward.
The Slammers were used to people wanting to kill them. Major Joachim Steuben, the Regiment’s Provost Marshal, was obviously used to the Slammers themselves wanting to kill him.
Huber opened the door and entered. The building was a standard one-story new-build with walls of stabilized earth and a roof of plastic extrusion. It was a temporary structure so far as the Slammers were concerned, but it’d still be here generations later unless the locals chose to knock it down.
It was crude, ugly, and as solid as bedrock. You could use it as an analogy for the Slammers’ methods, if you wanted to.
The door facing the end of the hallway was open. A trim, boyishly handsome man sat at a console there; he was looking toward Huber through his holographic display. If it weren’t for the eyes, you might have guessed the fellow was a clerk. . . .
Huber strode down the hall, staring straight ahead. Some of the side doors were open also, but he didn’t look into them. He wondered if this was how it felt to be a rabbit facing a snake.
I’m not a rabbit. But if half the stories told about him were true, Joachim Steuben was a snake for sure.
Before Huber could raise his hand to knock on the door jamb, the man behind the desk said, “Come in, Lieutenant; and close it behind you.”
A holographic landscape covered the walls of Joachim Steuben’s office; flowers poked through brightly lit snow, with rugged slopes in the background. The illusion was seamless and probably very expensive.