Via, why not admit it? Because he’d really wished he’d had the helmet the night before. He couldn’t change the past, couldn’t have all his gear handy back then when he needed it; but he could sure as hell have it on him now for a security blanket.
There was a 1cm pistol in Ortnahme’s hip pocket as well. He’d never seen the face of the Consie who’d chased him with the bomb, but today the bastard leered at Ortnahme from every shadow in the camp.
The singer moaned something exceptionally dismal. Ortnahme backed off his multitool, now that he had a sufficient section of channel cleared. He reached for a meter-long strip charge.
Simkins, who should’ve been buffing the channels while the warrant leader bolted in charges, had disappeared minutes after they’d parked Herman’s Whore back in her old slot against the berm. The kid’d done a bloody good job during the firefight—but that didn’t mean he’d stopped being a bloody maintenance tech. Ortnahme was going to burn him a new asshole as soon as—
“Mr. Ortnahme?” Simkins said. “Look what I got!”
The warrant leader turned, already shouting. “Simkins, where in the name of all that’s holy have—”
He paused. “Via, Simkins,” he said. “Where did you get that?”
Simkins was carrying a tribarrel, still in its packing crate.
“Tommy Dill at Logistics, sir,” the technician answered brightly. “Ah, Mr. Ortnahme? It’s off the books, you know. We set a little charge on the warehouse roof, so Tommy can claim a mortar shell combat-lossed the gun.”
Just like that was the only question Ortnahme wanted to ask.
Though it was sure-hell one of ’em, that was God’s truth.
“Kid,” the warrant leader said calmly, more or less. “What in the bloody hell do you think you’re gonna do with that gun?”
From the way Simkins straightened, “more or less” wasn’t as close to “calmly” as Ortnahme had thought.
“Sir!” the technician said. “I’m gonna mount it on the bow. So I got something to shoot, ah . . . you know, the next time.”
The kid glanced up at the blaring recorder. He was holding the tribarrel with no sign of how much the thing weighed. He wouldn’t have been able to do that before Warrant Leader Ortnahme started running his balls off to teach him his job.
Ortnahme opened his mouth. He didn’t know which part of the stupid idea to savage first.
Before he figured out what to say, Simkins volunteered, “Mister Ortnahme? I figured we’d use a section of engineer stake for a mount and weld it to the skirt. Ah, so we don’t have to chance a weld on the iridium, you know?”
Like a bloody puppy, standin’ there waggling his tail—and how in bloody hell had he got Sergeant Dill to agree to take a tribarrel off manifest?
“Kid,” he said at last, “put that down and start buffing this channel for me, all right?”
“Yes, Mister Ortnahme.”
The klaxon blurted, then cut off.
Ortnahme and every other Slammer in the compound froze. Nothing further happened. The Yokels must’ve been testing the system now that they’d moved it.
The bloody cursed fools.
“Sir,” the technician said with his face bent over the buzz of his own multitool. “Can I put on some different music?”
“I like what I got on,” Ortnahme grunted, spinning home first one, then the other of the bolts that locked the strip of explosive and steel pellets into its channel.
“Why, sir?” Simkins prodded unexpectedly. “The music, I mean?”
Ortnahme stared at his subordinate. Simkins continued to buff his way forward, as though cleaning the channel were the only thing on his mind.
“Because,” Ortnahme said. He grimaced and flipped up the faceshield of his helmet. “Because that was the kinda stuff they played in the bars on Esperanza, my first landfall with the regiment. Because it reminds me of when I was young and stupid, kid. Like you.”
He slid another of the strip charges from its insulated packing, then paused. “Look,” he said, “this ain’t our tank, Simkins.”
“It’s our tank till they send a crew to pick it up,” the technician said over the whine of his brush. “It’s our tank tonight, Mister Ortnahme.”