David Drake - The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 1

Council members got to their feet and moved quickly to the capsule's exit. Guards stationed there opened the doors of the room itself onto the corridor. Aides waited there with additional guards and a number of the people who ordinarily worked in the building.

The locations of privy council meetings were kept secret from all but the attendees and were never held in the same place twice in succession. The first the staff of the site knew what was happening was when workmen arrived an hour ahead of time to erect the privacy capsule that sealed the meeting from the eyes and ears of non-participants.

Half the councillors dressed in civilian clothes; the other half were in uniform, either Slammers khaki or the blue-piped gray of the Frisian Defense Forces. Hammer himself wore a civilian tunic and breeches, but he'd deliberately had them tailored in the style that'd been popular when he left Nieuw Friesland half a lifetime ago.

Hammer's wife Anneke, nee Tromp, was present as the Director of Social Welfare. "Shut the door!" he called to her as she went out.

Anneke turned, met her husband's eyes, and walked on through to the corridor without responding. A guard swung the panel closed, sealing the capsule again.

Hammer sighed. "Now listen, both of you," he said in a voice that didn't hold the same key from word to word. "I'll make a decision on the detention policy when I'm ready to. Nobody—neither of you—will say another word to me on the subject till then. Do you hear me?"

"As you wish, Alois," said Joachim Steuben.

Danny Pritchard grimaced. "Yes sir, I hear you," he said.

"Pritchard, I mean it!" Hammer said in sudden fury.

"I've never doubted your word, Colonel," Danny said, letting his anger show also. "Don't you start doubting mine now!"

"Via, I'm not getting enough sleep," Hammer muttered. He put his left hand over Danny's right, squeezed it, and stepped out of the capsule.

Danny made a wry face and gestured to the exit. "After you, Baron," he said.

Joachim grinned and walked out ahead of the other man. Without turning he said, "I wouldn't shoot you in the back, Mister Pritchard."

Danny laughed. Workmen moved into the meeting room behind him to tear down the privacy capsule for use in another few days or a week. It was simply a framework with an active sound-cancellation system between two layers of light-diffusing membrane.

"Joachim, we've known each other too long for nonsense," Danny said. It was battlefield humor, but this was surely a battlefield. "You'd shoot me any way you felt like at the moment."

Joachim giggled. They'd reached the hallway, but guards had formed a bubble of space around them without being directed to.

Margritte had been standing with the rest of the aides and clerks. They'd gone off with the remaining council members, leaving her alone. She was as still-faced as a statue in a wall niche.

"If I thought it was necessary, I suppose I would at that," Joachim said. "As you would do in similar circumstances. Wouldn't you, Daniel?"

Danny looked at the shorter man. They'd known each other for such a long time . . .

Aloud he said, "If you mean, 'Would I shoot you if I thought that was necessary to bring an end to policies that I'm sure will destroy the government?' then the answer is apparently, 'No.' Even though I believe that if I don't kill you, nobody in that council meeting is going to die in bed. None of us."

"You have your beliefs," Joachim said, shrugging. "I have mine. I don't believe that I should wait to see if a man who threatens the president is really serious; or if maybe he'll change his mind before acting; or if he's simply too incompetent to carry through with that threat."

"Joachim . . ." Danny said. He and the other man were so focused on one another that the bustle of the hallway could have taken place on another planet. "You know I'm right. You can follow a chain of consequences as far as anybody I've ever met."

"Yes, Daniel," Joachim said. "And so can you, which is why you know that I'm right also."

He giggled. "A pity that we can't run the experiment both ways before we make our decision, isn't it?" he said. "Well, perhaps in another universe Nieuw Friesland is being governed according to other principles. For now . . . well, go to your wife, Daniel. The only thing I know about is killing."

Danny opened his mouth, then closed it and smiled. He said, "That's been our job for a long time, Joachim. Maybe you're right and it still is. If so, the Lord help us."

Joachim frowned. "I left my hat," he said, stepping back into the meeting room.

"Watch it!" a workman shouted as he and his partner swung one of the last panels of the privacy capsule out of its frame. When the fellow looked over his shoulder and saw who he'd spoken to, the panel slipped from his hands.

Joachim ignored him and bent to retrieve the saucer hat on the frame bracing the chair legs. He turned with a smile and called to Danny, "You have to remember, Daniel, that dying in bed has never been a goal of mine."

One of the west-facing windows shattered in a cyan flash. The bolt caught Joachim between the shoulder blades. His body fluids flashed into steam, flinging his trim figure in a somersault that landed him face-up at Danny's feet. The shot had torn the right arm from his torso, but his cherubic face was still smiling.

Mister Daniel Pritchard wasn't carrying a gun, but his reflexes were still in place. He threw himself to the floor, snatched the pistol from the cutaway holster on Joachim's right hip, and rose. He fired three times out the window through which the shot had come.

Danny didn't expect to hit anything but empty sky, but he'd gotten to be a veteran by learning that you always shot back instantly. At the worst it wasn't going to do their aim any good, and every once in a while you might nail the bastard.

People were shouting and running. The meeting room's other high vitril windows cascaded in splinters as guards smashed them out with gun butts. They began raking shots along the distant hills.

Danny lifted himself into a crouch to get a better view. A trooper wearing body armor, one of Joachim's White Mice, landed on his back and flattened him again.

"Keep the fuck down, sir!" she shouted. "We already lost the major!"

"Roger!" Danny said, trying to breathe against the weight of the trooper protecting him with her own body. "I'll stay down!"

The guard got up and scuttled to join her fellows as they fired into the distance. Danny didn't have commo, so he could only hope that the captain commanding the security detail was doing something more useful than the nearest personnel were.

"What happened?" said a voice nearby. He looked back, expecting to see Margritte. She was in the corridor under a guard twice her size.

President Hammer hunched at Danny's side. In one hand he held the pistol he'd worn in a shoulder holster, but the fingers of the other traced Joachim's cheek with a feather-light touch.

"A two-see-em bolt through the window," Danny said, gesturing with his pistol. The inlays winked festively, reminding him whose weapon it'd been. "One round only, so the shooter was either really good or really lucky."

He set the gun down. A floor tile crack ed, broken by the glowing iridium barrel.

"Joachim wouldn't have given him more than one round," Hammer whispered. His face was set, but tears ran down his cheek. "I never thought I'd see this. Never."

Hammer holstered his own pistol and rose to his knees. The guards had stopped shooting. Under a sergeant's bellowed orders they backed away from the windows and stood shoulder to shoulder, a living wall between the direction of the shot and the men they were here to protect.

The bolt had blown the remainder of Joachim's tunic away. His chest was as white and hairless as an ivory statue.