by David Drake
Four days before, he'd thought of the place as just another of the sleazy Strips that served army bases all over Prosperity—all over the human universe. Now it was a roiling pit, as smoky as the crater of a volcano and equally devoid of life.
"Blue Two,"said a voice in Suilin's earphones, "this is Tootsie One-two.We're comin' through right up yer ass, so don't change yer mind, all right?"
It was probably Cooter speaking,but the reporter couldn't be sure.The helmets transmitted on one sideband, depriving the voices of normal timbre, and static interrupted the words every time a gun fired.
"Roger that, Tootsie One-two," said a different speaker. "Simkins, you heard the man. Keep yer bloody foot in it, right?"
Suilin's visual universe was a pattern of white blurs against a light blue background. The solidity and intensity of the white depended on the relative temperature of the object viewed.
I put it on thermal for you, Gale had said as he slapped a commo helmet onto the reporter's head with the visor down.
The helmet was loose, slipping forward when Suilin dipped his head and tugging back against its chin strap in the airstream when the combat car accelerated uphill. There was probably an adjustment system, but Suilin didn't know where it was . . . and this wasn't the time to ask.
Their own car, Flamethrower, slid over the crest and slowed as a billow of dust and ash expanded from the bow skirts like half a smoke ring. The driver had angled his fans forward; they lifted the bow slightly and kicked light debris in the direction opposite to their thrust against the vehicle's mass.
The tank had offset to the right on the hilltop as Flamethrower pulled left. Now it blew forward a similar but much larger half-doughnut. The arc of dust sucked in on itself, then recoiled outward when the cannon fired. The gun's crash was deafening to Suilin, even over the howl of the fans.
There was nothing to see on the flank Suilin was supposed to be guarding except the slight differential rate at which rocks, gravel, and vegetation lost the heat they'd absorbed during daylight. He risked a look over his shoulder, just as the tank fired again and Cooter ripped a burst from his tribarrel down the opposite side of what had been the settlement.
A combat car was making the run through Happy Days. The preceding vehicles of the task force waited in line abreast on the rising ground to the east of the settlement. Their hulls, particularly the skirts and fan intakes, were white; the muzzles of their powerguns were as sharp as floodlights.
The settlement was a pearly ambiance that wrapped and shrouded the car speeding through its heart. A gout of rubble lifted. It had fused to glass under the impact of the tank's 20cm bolt.
Suilin couldn't see any sign of a target—for the big gun or even for Cooter's raking tribarrel. The car racing through the wreckage was firing also, but the vehicles waiting on the far side of the gauntlet were silent, apparently for fear of hitting their fellow.
The road was outlined in flames over which smoke and ash swept like a dancer's veils. Molten spatters lifted by the tank cannon cooled visibly as they fell. There was no return fire or sign of Consies.
There were no structures left in what had been a community of several thousand.
The tank beside Flamethrower shrugged like a dog getting ready for a fight. Dust and ash puffed from beneath it again, this time sternward.
"Hang on, turtle!" a voice crackled in Suilin's ears as Flamethrower began to build speed with the deceptive smoothness characteristic of an air-cushion vehicle.
Suilin gripped his tribarrel and tried to see something–anything—over the ghost-ring sight of the weapon. The normal holographic target display wasn't picked up by his visor's thermal imaging. The air stank of ozone and incomplete combustion.
The car rocked as its skirts clipped high spots and debris flung from the buildings. The draft of Flamethrower's fans and passage shouldered the smoke aside, but there was still nothing to see except hot rubble.
Cooter and Gale fired, their bursts producing sharp static through Suilin's headset. The helmet slipped back and forth on the reporter's forehead.
In desperation,Suilin flipped up his visor.Glowing smoke became black swirls, white flames became sullen orange. The bolts from his companions' weapons flicked the scene with an utter purity of color more suitable for a church than this boiling inferno.
Suilin thumbed his trigger, splashing dirt and a charred timber with cyan radiance. He fired again, raising his sights, and saw a sheet of metal blaze with the light of its own destruction.
They were through the settlement and slowing again. There were armored vehicles on either side of Flamethrower. Gale fired a last spiteful burst and put his weapon on safe.
Suilin's hands were shaking. He had to grip the pivot before he could thumb the safety button.
It'd been worse than the previous night. This time he hadn't known what was happening or what he was supposed to do.
"Tootsie Six to all Tootsie elements,"said the helmet."March order,conforming to Blue One. Execute."
The vehicles around them were moving again, though Flamethrower held a nervous, greasy balance on its fans. They'd move out last again, just as they had when Task Force Ranson left the encampment.
Minutes ago.
"How you doing, turtle?" Lieutenant Cooter asked. He'd raised his visor also. "See any Consies?"
Suilin shook his head. "I just . . ." he said. "I just shot, in case . . . Because you guys were shooting, you know?"
Cooter nodded as he lifted his helmet to rub his scalp. "Good decision. Never hurts t' keep their heads down. You never can tell . . . ."
He gazed back at the burning waste through which they'd passed.
Suilin swallowed. "What's this 'turtle' business?" he asked.
Gale chuckled through his visor.
Cooter smiled and knuckled his forehead again. "Nothin' personal," the big lieutenant said. "You know,you're fat,you know? After a while you'll be a snake like the rest of us."
He turned.
"Hey," the reporter said in amazement. "I'm not fat! I exercise—"
Gale tapped the armor over Suilin's ribs. "Not fat there, turtle," the reflective curve of the veteran's visor said. "Newbie fat, you know? Civilian fat."
The tank they'd followed from Camp Progress began to move. "Watch your arcs, both of you,"Cooter muttered over the intercom. "They may have another surprise waiting for us."
Suilin's body swayed as the combat car slipped forward. He still didn't know what the mercenaries meant by the epithet.
And he was wondering what had happened to all the regular inhabitants of Happy Days.
"Go ahead, Tootsie,"said the voice of Slammer Six, hard despite all the spreads and attenuations that brought it from Firebase Purple to June Ranson's earphones. "Over."
"Lemme check yer shoulder,"said Stolley to Janacek beside her."C'mon, crack the suit."
"Roger," Ranson said as she checked the positioning of her force in the multifunction display."We're okay, no casualties, but there was an ambush at the Strip settlement just out the gate."
Blue One was ghosting along 200 meters almost directly ahead of Warmonger at sixty kph. That was about the maximum for an off-road night run, even in this fairly open terrain.
One-one and One-five had taken their flanking positions, echeloned slightly back from the lead tank.The remaining four blowers were spaced tank-car,tankcar, behind Warmonger like the tail of a broadly diamond-shaped kite.
Just as it ought to be . . . but the ratfuck at Happy Days had cost the task force a good hour.
"We couldn't 've avoided it," Ranson said, "so we shot our way through."
If she'd known, known,there was a company of Consies in Happy Days,she'd 've bypassed the place by heading north cross-country and cutting east, then south, near Siu Mah. It'd 've been a hundred kilometers out of their way, but—
"Look, bugger off," said Janacek. "I'm fine. I'll take another pill, right?"
"Any of the bypass routes might 've got you in just as deep,"said C
olonel Hammer, taking a chance that, because of the time lag, his satellited words were going to step on those of his junior officer. "It's really dropped in the pot, Captain, all the hell over this country. But you don't see any reason that you can't carry out your mission?"
The question was so emotionless that concern stuck out in all directions like barbs from a burr. "Over."
"Quit screw'n around,Checker,"Stolley demanded."You got bits a'jacket metal there. I get 'em out and there's no sweat."
Ranson touched the scale control of her display. The eight discrete dots shrank to a single one, at the top edge of a large-scale moving map that ended at Kohang.
Latches clicked.Janacek had opened his clamshell armor for his buddy's inspection.A bullet had disintegrated on the shield of Janacek'stri barrel during the run through Happy Days; bits of the projectile had sprayed the wing gunner.
Ranson felt herself slipping into the universe of the map, into a world of electronic simulation and holographic intersections that didn't bleed when they dropped from the display.
That was the way to win battles: move your units around as if they were only units,counters on a game board.Do whatever was necessary to check your enemy, to smash him, to achieve your objective.
Commanders who thought about blood, officers who saw with their mind's eye the troops they commanded screaming and crawling through muck with their intestines dangling behind them . . . those officers might be squeamish, they might be hesitant to give the orders needful for victory.
The commander of the guerrillas in this district understood that perfectly. Happy Days was a deathtrap for anybody trying to defend it against the Slammers.There was no line of retreat,and the vehicles' power guns were sure to blast the settlement into ash and vapor, along with every Consie in it.
The company or so of patriots who'd tried to hold Happy Days on behalf of the Conservative Action Movement almost certainly didn't realize that; but the man or woman who gave them their orders from an office somewhere in the Terran Government enclaves on the North Coast did. The ambush had meant an hour's delay for the relief operation, and that was well worth the price—on the North Coast.
Men and munitions were the cost of doing business.You needed both of them to win.
You needed to spit them both in the face of the enemy. They could be replaced after the victory.
Stolley's handheld medikit began to purr as it swallowed bits of metal that it had separated from the gunner's skin and shoulder muscles. Janacek cursed mildly.
Colonel Hammer knew the rules also.
"Slammer Six," June Ranson's voice said, "we're continuing. I don't know of any . . . I mean, we're not worse off than when we received the mission. Not really."
She paused, her mouth miming words while her mind tried to determine what those words should be. Hammer didn't interrupt. "We've got to cross the Padma River. Not a lotta choices about where. And we'll have the Santine after that, that'll be tricky. But we'll know more after the Padma."
Warmonger's fans ruled the night, creating a cocoon of controlled sound in which the electronic dot calling itself Junebug Ranson was safe with all her other dots.
Her chestplate rapped the grips of the tribarrel. She'd started to doze off again.
"Tootsie Six, over!" she said sharply. Her skin tingled, and all her body hairs were standing up straight.
There was a burst of static from her headset, but no response.
"Tootsie Six, over," she repeated.
Nothing but carrier hum.
Ranson craned her neck to look upward, past the splinter shield. There was a bright new star in the eastern sky, but it was fading even as she watched.
For fear of retribution,the World Government had spared the Slammers'recon and comsats when they swept the Yokels' own satellites out of orbit. When Alois Hammer raised the stakes, however, the Terrans stayed in the game.
"Now a little Spray Seal," Stolley muttered, "and we're done. Easier 'n bitchin', ain't it?"
Task Force Ranson was on its own now.
But they'd been on their own from the start. Troops at the sharp end were always on their own.
"Awright, then latch me up, will ya?" Janacek said. Then, "Hey, Stolley. When ya figure we get another chance t' kick butt?"
Warmonger howled through the darkness.
Chapter Seven
"I think it's a little tight now,"Suilin said,trying gingerly to lift the commo helmet away from his compressed temples.
"Right," said Cooter. "Now pull the tab over the left ear. Just a cunt hair."
"Time t' stoke the ole furnaces,"said Gale, handing something small to Cooter while the reporter experimented with the fit of his helmet.
When Suilin drew down on the tab as directed, the helmet lining deflated with an immediate release of pressure. It felt good—but he didn't want the cursed thing sliding around on his head, either; so maybe if he pulled the right tab again, just a—
"And one for you, buddy," Gale said, offering Suilin a white-cased stim cone about the size of a thumbnail. "Hey, what's your name?"
"Dick," the reporter said. "Ah—what's this?"
Cooter set the base of his cone against the inner side of his wrist and squeezed to inject himself. "Wide-awakes," he said. "A little something to keep you alert. Not much of a rush, but it beats nodding off about the time it all drops in the pot."
"Like Tootsie Six," Gale said, thumbing forward with a grin.
The front of the column was completely hidden from Flamethrower. Task Force Ranson had closed to fifty-meter separations between vehicles as soon as they entered the forest, but even Blue Two, immediately ahead of them, had been only a snorting ambiance for most of the past hour.
"Junebug's problem ain't she's tired," Cooter said with a grimace. "She's . . ." He spun his finger in a brief circle around his right ear. "It happens. She'll be okay."
"But won't this . . .?" Suilin said, rolling the stim cone between his fingers. "I mean, what are the side effects?"
As a reporter, he'd seen his share and more of burn-outs, through his business and in it.
Cooter shrugged. "After a couple days," the big man said, raising his arm absently to block a branch swishing past his gunshield, "it don't help anymore. And your ears ring like a sonuvabitch about that long after. Better 'n getting your ass blown away."
"Hey," said Gale cheerfully. "Promise me I'll be around in a couple days and I'll drink sewage."
Suilin set the cone and squeezed it. There was a jet of cold against his skin, but he couldn't feel any other immediate result.
Flamethrower broke into open terrain, a notch washed clean when the stream below was in spate. The car slid down the near bank, under control but still fast enough that their stern skirts sparked and rattled against the rocky soil. Water exploded in a fine mist at the bottom as Rogers goosed his fans to lift the car up the far side. They cleared the upper lip neatly, partly because the bank had already been crumbled into a ramp by the passage of earlier vehicles.
Blue Two had been visible for a moment as the tank made its own blasting run up the bank. Now Flamethrower was alone again, except for sounds and the slender-boled trees through which the task force pushed its way.
"Lord, why can't this war stop?" Dick Suilin muttered.
"Because," said Cooter, though the reporter's words weren't really meant as a question, "for it to stop, either your folks or the World Government has gotta throw in the towel. Last we heard, that hadn't happened."
"May a' bloody happened by now," Gale grunted, looking sourly at the sky where stars no longer shared their turf with commo and recce satellites. "Boy, wouldn't that beat hell? Us get our asses greased because we didn't know the war was over?"
"It's not the World Government," the reporter snapped. "It's the Terran Government, and that hasn't been the government on this world for the thirty years since we freed ourselves."
Neither of the mercenaries responded. Cooter lowered his head over his multifunction display and fidd
led with its dials.
"Look, I'm sorry,"Suilin said after a moment. He lifted his helmet and rubbed his eyes. Maybe the Wide-awake was having an effect after all."Look, it's just that Prosperity could be a garden spot, a paradise, if it weren't for outsiders hired by the Terrans."
"Sorry, troop,"said Gale as he leaned past Suilin to open the cooler on the floor of the fighting compartment. "But that's a big negative."
"Ninety percent of the Consies' rebornon Prosperity," Cooter agreed without looking up. "And I don't mean in the enclaves, neither."
"Ninety-bloody-eightpercent of the body count,"Gale chuckled. He lifted the cap off a beer by catching it on the edge of his gunshield and thrusting down. "Which figures, don't it?"
He sucked the foam from the neck of the bottle and handed it to Cooter.When he opened and swigged from the second one, Gale murmured, "I'll say this fer you guys. You brew curst good beer."
He gave the bottle to Suilin.
It was a bottle of 33, cold and wonderfully smooth when the reporter overcame his momentary squeamishness at putting his lips on the bottle that the mercenary had licked. Suilin didn't realize how dry his throat was until he began to drink.
"Look," he said, "there's always going to be malcontents. They wouldn't be a threat to stability if they weren't being armed and trained in the enclaves."
"Hey, what do I know about politics?" Gale said. He patted the breech of his tribarrel with his free hand.
A branch slapped Suilin's helmet; he cursed with doubled bitterness. "If Coraccio'd taken the enclaves thirty years ago, there wouldn't be any trouble now."
"Dream on, turtle," Gale said over the mouth of his own beer.
"Coraccio couldn't take the WG's actual bases," Cooter remarked, quickly enough to forestall any angry retort. "The security forces couldn't hold much, but they sure-hell weren't givin' up the starports that were their only chance of going home to Earth."
Gale finished his beer, belched, and tossed the bottle high over the side. The moonlit glitter seemed to curve backward as Flamethrower ground on, at high speed despite the vegetation.
