"David Drake - Hammer's Slammers 10 - Paying The Piper" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

Huber heard a siren wind from somewhere deep in the forest community. It wasn't going to do a lot of
good.

The dirigible's stern, roaring like a blast furnace, struck the terminal building. Some of those inside ran
out; they were probably screaming, but Huber couldn't hear them over the sound of the inferno. One
fellow had actually gotten twenty meters from the door when the mass of airship and building exploded,
engulfing him in flames. He was a carbonized husk when they sucked back an instant later.

Huber sighed. That pretty well put a cap on the day, he figured.
***

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
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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