"David Drake - Hammer's Slammers - Counting the Cost" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

He met Tyl's calm eyes. "No matter how well you know them, you don't know them that well. Here. And don't go out except wearing your uniform. They don't bother soldiers, especially meres; but somebody might make a mistake if you were in civilian clothes."

Their vehicle was headed for the notch in the sea cliffs. It was a river mouth as Tyl had assumed from the spaceport, but human engineering had overwhelmed everything natural about the site.

The river was covered and framed into a triangular plaza by concrete seawalls as high as those reinforcing the corniche.

Salt water from the tide-choked sea even now gleamed on the plaza, just as it was streaming from the spaceport. Figures - women as well as men, Tyl thought, though it was hard to be sure between the spray and the loose costumes they wore here - were pouring into the plaza as fast as the water had left it.

For the most part the walls were sheer and ten meters high, but there were broad stairs at each apex of the plaza - two along the seaside east and west and a third, defended by massive flood works, that must have been built over the channel of the river itself.

"What's the problem?" Tyl asked calmly. From what he'd read, the battle lines on Bamberia were pretty clearly drawn. The planetary government was centered on Continent One - wealthy and very centralized, because the Pink River drained most of the arable land on the continent. All the uniquely-flavorful Bamberg tobacco could be barged at minimal cost to Bamberg City and loaded in bulk onto starships.

There hadn't been much official interest in Continent Two for over a century after the main settlement. There was good land on Two, but it was patchy and not nearly as easy to develop profitably as One proved.

That didn't deter other groups who saw a chance that looked good by their standards. Small starships touched down in little market centers. Everything was on a lesser scale: prices, quantities, and profit margins....

But in time, the estimated total grew large enough for the central government to get interested. Official trading ports were set up on the coast of Two. Local tobacco was to be sent from them to Bamberg City, to be assessed and transshipped.

Some was; but the interloping traders continued to land in the back country, and central government officials gnashed their teeth over tax revenues that were all the larger for being illusory.

It didn't help that One had been settled by Catholic Fundamentalists from Germany and Latin America, and that the squatters on Two were almost entirely Levantine Muslims.

The traders didn't care. They had done their business in holographic entertainment centers and solar-powered freezers, but there was just as much profit in powerguns and grenades.

As for mercenaries like Alois Hammer - and Tyi Koopman... They couldn't be said not to care, because if there wasn't trouble, they didn't have work.

Not that Tyl figured there was much risk of galactic peace being declared.

Desoix laughed without even attempting to make the sound humorous. "Well," he said, "do you know when Easter is?"

"Huh?" said Tyi. "My family wasn't, you know, real religious... and anyway, do you mean on Earth or here or where?"

"That's the question, isn't it?" Desoix answered, glancing around the empty cabin just to be sure there couldn't be a local listening to him.

"Some folks here," he continued, "figure Easter according to Earth-standard days. You can tell them because they've always got something red in their clothing, a cap or a ribbon around their sleeve if nothing else. And the folks that say, 'We're on Bamberia so God meant us to use Bamberg days to figure his calendar... ,' well, they wear black.

"And the people who wear cloaks, black or red," Desoix concluded. "Make sure they know you're a soldier. Because they'd just as soon knock your head in as that of any policeman or citizen - but they won't, because they know that killing soldiers gets expensive fast."

Tyl shook his head. "I'd say I didn't believe it," he said with the comfortable superiority of somebody commenting on foolishness to which he doesn't subscribe. "But sure, it's no screwier than a lot of places. People don't need a reason to have problems, they make their own."

"And they hire us," agreed Desoix.

"Well, they hire us to give 'em more control over the markets on Two," Tyl said, not quite arguing. "This time around."

Their vehicle was approaching the plaza. It stood two meters above the channel, barely eye-height to the men in the back of the hovercar. A pontoonmounted landing stage slid with the tides in a vertical slot in the center of the dam blocking the river beneath the plaza; the car slowed as they approached the stage.

"If they dam the river - " Tyl started to say, because he wouldn't have commanded a company of the Slammers had he not assessed the terrain about him as a matter of course.

Before Desoix could answer, slotted spillways opened at either end of the dam and whipped the channel into froth with gouts of fresh water under enough pressure to fling it twenty meters from the concrete. The hovercar, settling as it made its final approach to the stage, bobbed in the ripples; the driver must have been cursing the operator who started to drain the impoundment now instead of a minute later.