"David Drake - Hammer's Slammers 06 - The Sharp End" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

of men, and a lower percentage of women, would rather fight than not. Alois Hammers troops had always been the
best there was at what they did: killing the other fellow, whoever he was.
A draft going out to a hot theater was a ticket to promotion. Officers would crowd the Assignment Bureau, begging
and threatening, offering bribes and trying to pull rank to get a slot. Mostly it didn't work.
The Table of Organization for a combat deployment was developed by the central data base itself. Changes had to
be approved by President Hammer, who was immune to any practical form of persuasion. The Assignments Bureaus
were open because people prefer to argue with human beings instead of electronic displays, but that was normally a
cosmetic rather than significant touch.
You could also appeal to Hammer personally. In that case, you were cashiered if you didn't convince him. Old-
timers in the Assignment Bureau said that the success rate was slightly under three percent, but every month or so
somebody else tried it.
There were no large-scale deployments under way at the moment, but there were always glitches, clerical or
personal, which had to be ironed out. The clerk smiled at Coke, expecting to leam that he'd been assigned to a slot
calling for a sergeant-major, or that he was wanted for murder on the planet to which he was being posted.
Coke's problem was rather different.
"I'm here to receive sealed orders," Coke said, offering the clerk his identification card with the embedded chip. He
smiled wryly.
The clerk blinked in surprise. There were various reasons why an officer's orders would be sealed within the data
base, requiring him or her to apply in person to the bureau to receive them. Coke didn't look like the sort to whom any
of the special reasons would apply. He looked тАФ normal.
Matthew Coke was 34 standard years old тАФ 29 dated on Ash, where he was born, 51 according to the shorter year
of Nieuw Friesland. He had brown hair, eyes that were green, blue, or gray depending on how much sunlight had been
bleaching them, and stood a meter seventy-eight in his stocking feet. He was thin but not frail, like a blade of good
steel.
Coke was in dress khakis with rank tabs and the blue edging to the epaulets that indicated his specialty was infantry.
He wore no medal or campaign ribbons whatever, but over his left breast pocket was a tiny lion rampant on a field of
red enamel.
The lion marked the men who'd served with Hammers Slammers before the regiment was subsumed into the Frisian
Defense Forces. Its lonely splendor against the khaki meant that, like most of the other Slammers veterans, Coke
figured that when you'd said you were in the Slammers, you'd said everything that mattered.
Considering that, the clerk realized that Major Coke might not be quite as normal as he looked.
"Face the lens, please, sir," the clerk said as she inserted the ID card into a slot on her side of the cage. Electronics
chittered, validating the card and comparing Coke's retinal patterns with those contained in the embedded chip.
A soft chime indicated approval. Coke eased from the stiff posture with which he had faced the comparator lens. He
continued to smile faintly, but the emotions the clerk read on his face were sadness and resignation,
"Just a moment," the clerk said. "The printer has to warm up, but тАФ"
As she spoke, a sheet of hardcopy purred from the dispenser on Coke's side of the cage. Coke read the rigid film upside
down as it appeared instead of waiting for the print cycle to finish so that he could clip the document.
His face blanked; then he began to laugh. The captain at the next cage glanced at him, then away. The clerk waited,
hoping Coke would explain the situation but unwilling to press him.
Coke tapped the cutter, then tossed the sheet across the counter to the clerk. "It says my new assignment is Category Ten
Forty-seven," he said as the clerk scanned the document. "That's survey team, isn't it?"
The clerk nodded. "Yessir," she said. "You'll be assessing potential customers for field force deployments."
She didn't understand Major Coke's laughter. "Isn't this what you were expecting, sir?" she asked as she slid back the
hardcopy.
"What I was expecting . . ." Coke explained, ". . . after the way I screwed up my last assignment on Auerstadt . . ." He
was smiling like a skull, as broadly and with as little humor.
"... was that they'd fire my ass. But I guess the Assessment Board decided I couldn't get into much trouble on a
survey team."
He began to laugh again. Despite the obvious relief in Coke's voice, the sound of his laughter chilled the clerk.