He pulled at an access plate on the wreck's quarter panel. It didn't come till he took a multitool from his belt and gave the warped plastic a calculated blow.
The local policeman looked at the sky again and fingered his lapel communicator. He didn't try to prod the dispatcher, though. 'There was an anonymous call that the car had been circling up here and just dropped outa the sky,' he explained. 'D'ye suppose it was maybe, well ... suicide?'
'No,' said Huber. 'I don't think that.'
'That's good,' said the cop, misunderstanding completely. 'Because you guys might not know it, but this lady was from a bloody important family here in the UC. I don't want to get caught in some kinda scandal, if you see what I mean.'
'I see what you mean,' Huber said. His eyes drifted across Tranter for a moment, then resumed scanning their surroundings. They were within ten klicks of the center of Benjamin, but the forest was unbroken. Trees on Plattner's World had enough chlorophyll in their bark to look deep green from a distance. Their branches twisted like snakes, but the leaves were individually tiny and stuck on the twigs like a child's drawing.
The cop grimaced. 'I wish the Commander Miltianas would get the lead outa his pants and take over here,' he went on. 'Of course, he probably doesn't want to be mixed up in this either -- but curse it, it's what they're paying him the big bucks for, right?'
'There's four fuel cells in this model,' Tranter said, his head inside the vehicle's stern section. 'The back three are disconnected and there's a puncture in the forward cell.'
He straightened, looking puzzled and concerned. 'El-Tee,' he said. 'It looks to me like -- '
'Drop the subject for now, Sergeant,' Huber said. He gestured to their own vehicle, a ten-place bus rather than the little runabout Tranter had used to ferry Huber alone. Four troopers in combat gear would've been a crowd and a burden for the smaller car. 'We'll talk on the way back to the office.'
'But -- ' said Tranter.
Deseau rapped the side of Tranter's commo helmet with his knuckles. 'Hey!' Deseau said. 'He's the man, right? He just gave you an order!'
Tranter looked startled, then nodded in embarrassment and trotted for the bus. There were three aircars approaching fast from Benjamin. Two had red strobe lights flashing, but they weren't running their sirens.
Huber turned to the cop. 'Thanks for letting us look over the site,' he said. 'We'll leave you to your business now. And we'll get back to our own.'
'Yeah, right,' said the local man with a worried frown. 'I sure hope I don't wind up holding the bucket on this one. A death like this can be a lot of trouble!'
'You got that right,' Huber muttered as he got into the cab with Tranter. The tech already had the fans live; now he boosted power and wobbled into the air, narrowly missing a line of trees.
Kelso would have done a better job driving, but this was no longer business for civilians. Huber locked his faceshield down.
'Unit, switch to intercom,' he ordered. Nobody but the three men in the car with him could hear the discussion without a lot of decryption equipment and skill. 'Tranter, I'm leaving you in the circuit, but I'm not expecting you to get involved. You'll have to keep your mouth shut, that's all. Can you handle that?'
'Fuck not being involved,' Tranter said. His hands were tight on the control yoke and his eyes were straight ahead; a degree of hurt sounded in his voice. 'I knew the deputy better than you did, sir. She was a good boss; and anyway, she was one of ours even if she didn't wear the uniform. Which I do.'
'Right,' said Huber. 'Deseau and Learoyd, you don't know the background. I figure her brother killed her or one of his thugs did. It was probably an accident, but maybe not. She'd have gone to see him, threatening to tell the world he was an agent for Solace. She maybe even guessed he'd set up the ambush at Rhodesville.'
Sergeant Deseau made a sound loud enough to trip the intercom. In something like a normal voice he went on, 'We gonna take care of him, then?'
'He's got a lot of pull,' Huber warned. 'I went to Major Steuben about him and got told to mind my own business. It's going to make real waves if somebody from the Regiment takes him out. Real waves, about as bad as it gets.'
'El-Tee?' Learoyd said, frustration so evident in his tone that Huber could visualize the trooper trying to knuckle his bald scalp through his commo helmet. 'Just tell us what to do, right? That's your job. Don't worry about me and Frenchie doing ours.'
Learoyd was correct, of course. He had a simple approach of necessity, and he cut through all the nonsense that smarter people wrapped themselves up with.
'Right,' Huber repeated. 'There'll be a gang of thugs at the guy's townhouse, and they'll have guns available even if they aren't going out on the street with them just yet. It could be that he'd got a squad of Harris's Commando on premises. I doubt it because of the risk to him if it comes out, but we've got to figure we're going up against people who know what they're doing.'
He paused, arranging his next words. The aircar was over Benjamin now, but Tranter was taking them in a wide circuit of the suburbs where the tree cover was almost as complete as over the virgin forest beyond.
'For that reason,' Huber said, 'I figure to borrow Fencing Master for the operation. There's a detachment leaving Central Repair for Base Alpha tonight. We'll tag onto the back and trail off when we're close to the bastard's compound. If we can, we'll duck back to CR when we're done -- but I don't expect to get away with this, troops.'
'I been shot at before,' Deseau said calmly. 'I can't see anything worse'n that that's going to happen if they catch us.'
Learoyd didn't bother to speak. Huber heard the clack as the trooper withdrew his sub-machine gun's loading tube, then locked it back home in the receiver. Like he'd said, he was getting ready to do his part of the job.
'Sergeant Tranter,' Huber said, turning to the tech beside him. 'Now that you know what we're talking about, I think it'd be a good night for you to spend playing cards back at the billets. You're a curst good man, but this really isn't your line of work.'
Tranter's face was red with suppressed emotion. 'Guess you'll need a driver, right?' he snapped. 'Guess I've driven the Lord's great plenty of combat cars, shifting them around for repair. I guess it bloody well is my line of work. Sir.'
'Well in that case, troopers ...' Huber said. 'We'll leave our billets for Central Repair at twenty hundred. Start time for the draft is twenty-one hundred, but they'll be late. That'll make the timing about right.'
Tranter muttered, 'Roger,' Deseau grunted, and Learoyd said as little as he usually did. There wasn't a lot to say at this point.
Huber wasn't frightened; it was all over but the consequences.
Senator Patroklos Graciano was about to learn the consequences of fucking with Hammer's Slammers.
The racket of drive fans made every joint in the girder-framed warehouse rattle and sing. There were two other combat cars besides Fencing Master; all three thirty-tonne monsters were powered up, their fans supporting them on bubbles of pressurized air. From the way the interior lights danced, some of the overhead fixtures were likely to be sucked down into the intakes unless the cars either shut down or drove out shortly.
'Are they going to get this bloody show on the road?' Sergeant Deseau muttered. His faceshield was raised and he wasn't using intercom. Huber wouldn't have understood the words had he not been looking into Deseau's face and watching his lips move.
'Can it!' Huber snapped. 'Take care of your own end and keep your mouth shut.'
Deseau grimaced agreement and faced front again. They were all nervous. Well, three of them were, at any rate; Learoyd seemed about as calm as he'd been a couple hours before, when he'd been methodically loading spare magazines for his sub-machine gun.
'Seven Red, this is Green One,' ordered the detachment commander -- an artillery captain who happened to be the senior officer in the temporary unit. If the move had been more serious than the five kilometers between Central Repair and Base Alpha, the detachment would've been under the control of a line officer regardless of rank. 'Pull into place behind Five Blue. Eight Red, follow Seven. Unit, prepare to move out. Green One out.'
'Tranter, slide in behind the second blower,' Huber ordered. 'Don't push up their ass, just keep normal interval so it looks like we belong.'
Chief Edlinger had put Huber and his men on the list for admission to Central Repair, but that was easily
