The Complete Hammer's Slammers: Volume 3 by David Drake Page A

requirements do you have?”
    “None,” Daun said, meeting the section head’s eyes. “None at all.”
    Avenial smiled again. “Fine,” he said. “That tells me what I’ve got to work with. Plenty for the purpose, plenty.”
    He touched his keypad, changing screens in sequence after only a second or two of scanning the contents of each.
    “The lady said she could assign me to a Frisian unit,” Daun explained, “but once I was out in the field, the needs of the service prevail. If the—the unit commander decided I was the only one who could do a job, it didn’t matter what I thought about it. And in my specialty, they might well put me in a sector staffed by indigs who couldn’t handle the hardware themselves.”
    “She told you the truth,” Avenial agreed approvingly.
    Enlisted people expected to be crapped on and lied to. It seemed to Avenial that some of them almost begged for it. It went with the image. He’d had troopers make false statements about a pending assignment, statements they must have known were false, in the obvious hope that by saying nothing Avenial would give their lie validity.
    Avenial didn’t do that, and nobody in Avenial’s section did it more than once that Avenial heard about. He was funny that way; but then, he slept at night without knocking himself into a coma on booze or gage. Life has a lot of trade-offs.
    Avenial’s finger paused on the next screen key. “Umm,” he said. He looked up at Daun. “What do you know about survey teams, kid?” he asked.
    “I can learn,” Daun said crisply. His expression changed slightly. “So it’ll be out of sensors after all?”
    “Hell, no, they need sensor techs,” Avenial replied. “Now, mind, everybody on a survey team better be able to do more than their base specialty. How’s your marksmanship?”
    Daun shrugged, smiled—a little wryly. “I’ve been practicing since my last assignment on Maedchen. Not great, but I’m getting better.”
    The lines of Daun’s face flowed naturally into smiles, but this was the first time his nervousness had permitted one. He hadn’t believed Avenial when he said that it was going to be all right. Well, they’d been lied to and lied to, why should they expect this warrant leader to be different?
    “You see, kid,” Avenial explained, “your specialty’s too valuable for me to, say, reclassify you as a cook. Besides, if you’re that good at running sensors—”
    Daun smiled again. He’d loosened up, sure enough.
    “—then it’s what you like to do, so why should we fuck with it? Right?”
    “No argument, mister,” Daun said.
    “So the trick’s to put you somewhere that you’re under Frisian command at all times,” Avenial continued. “That’s a survey team. Until the survey team makes its assessment, there’s no indig employers to report to. Even if your unit commander’s an asshole,
    he can’t out-place you. You see?”
    Daun nodded enthusiastic agreement.
    “Now, the catch is,” Avenial said, “you’re out with—”
    His eyes scanned for a figure on the screen.
    “—five other guys, FDF troops. That’s not like being in the middle of an armored battalion. There’s not supposed to be any shooting going on, shooting at you, I mean. But I can’t tell you it’s safe.”
    He raised an eyebrow at the technician.
    Daun shook his head and smiled. “Mister Avenial,” he said, “I’m not . . .”
    His hands flipped palms-up, then down again, in a Macht nichts gesture.
    “I could have gotten a job with a communications firm, I could have found something safe,” he said. “I wanted the, you know, the travel.”
    Daun meant danger, but he was ashamed to say it. Smart enough to be ashamed that he was a young man who wanted to be able to say he’d been there, the place civilians hadn’t been. Ashamed to be proud of being what he was, a member of the finest military force in the human universe.
    But proud nonetheless, as surely as Jumbo Avenial was.
    Daun swallowed.