by David Drake
Even steel burned when Suilin raked it with his tribarrel. Faces bloomed into smears of vapor and calcined bones . . . .
Blue Two grunted head-on down the road, spewing a wake of blazing debris to either side. Cooter's driver followed, holding Flamethrower at a 45° degree angle along the edge of the cut.
The slant threw the men in the fighting compartment toward the fire their vehicle was skirting.Gale clung to the starboard coaming. Cooter must have locked his tribarrel in place, because he was frozen like a statue of Effort on its grips.
And Dick Suilin, after a hellish moment of feeling his torso swing out and down toward the bellowing flames, braced his feet against the inner face of the armor and grabbed Cooter by the waist. If the big lieutenant minded, they could discuss it later.
Something as soft-featured and black as a tar statue reached out of the flames and gripped the coaming to either side of Suilin's tribarrel. The only parts of the figure that weren't black were the teeth and the great red cracks writhing in what had been the skin of both arms. The thing fell away without trying to speak.
Only a shadow. Only a sport thrown by the flames.
"Help me, Suzi," the reporter whispered. "Help me, Suzi."
Blue Two sucked fire along with it for an instant as the tank cleared the ambush site. Then the return flow,cool sweet air, pistoned Hell back into its proper region and washed Suilin in its freedom as well.
This car was Flamethrower. For the first time, Suilin realized how black was the humor with which the Slammers named their vehicles.
The driver brought them level with a violence that banged the skirts on the roadway. Suilin grunted. He reached for the grips of his tribarrel, obeying an instinct to hang onto something after he lost his excuse to hold Cooter.
Powerguns punctuated the night with flashes so intense they remained for seconds as streaks across the reporter's retinas. His mind tried desperately to process the high-pitched chatter from the commo helmet—a mixture of orders, warnings, and shouted exclamations.
It was all meaningless garbage; and it was all terrifying.
The downslope to the left of the roadway was striped orange by the firelight and leaping with shadows thrown from outcrops anchored too firmly in the fabricof the planet to be uprooted when the Padma River flooded.Muzzle flashes pulsed there, shockingly close.
A bottle-shaped yellow glow swelled and shrank as the gunman triggered his burst. The gun wasn't firing tracers, but the corner of Suilin's eyes caught a flicker as glowing metal snapped from the muzzle.
Specks of light raked the car ahead of Blue Two. Red sparks flashed up the side armor.
On the commo helmet, someone screamed lord lord lord.
The tribarrel wouldn't swing fast enough. Dick Suilin was screaming also. He unslung his grenade launcher.
Blue Two's main gun lit the night. Rock and the damp soil beneath it geysered outward from the point of impact, a white track glowing down the slope for twenty meters.
Flamethrower's driver flinched away from the bolt, throwing the thirty-tonne car into a side-step as dainty as that of a nervous virgin.
Blue Two and the combat car both accelerated up the bridge approach. The tank's turret continued to rotate to bear on the cooling splotch which its first bolt had grazed. If it fired from that angle, the bolt would pass within ten meters of Flame—
The tribarrel in Blue Two's cupola fired instead of the main gun.
Suilin straightened and fired a burst from his own tribarrel in the same general direction. He'd dropped the grenade launcher when he ducked in panic behind the hull armor. He was too rattled now to be embarrassed by his reaction—
And anyway, both the veterans sharing the fighting compartment had ducked also.
You couldn't be sure of not being embarrassed unless you were dead. The past night and day had been a gut-wrenching exposition of just what it meant to be dead. Dick Suilin would do anything at all to avoid that.
Traces of barbed wire clung to the cast-in guardrail supports. Large sections of the rail had been shattered by gunfire or smashed at the touch of behemoths like Flamethrower. Blue Two swung its turret forward again, releasing a portion of the fear that knotted Suilin's stomach, but only a portion.
Gale fired his tribarrel over Flamethrower's stern. Bolts danced off the left guardrail and streaked through the ambush scene. Their cyan purity glared even in the heart of the kerosene pyre which consumed the trucks and their cargo. The bolts vanished only when they touched something solid.
Flamethrower was the last vehicle in the column. Suilin turned also and hosed the fire-shot darkness, praying that there would be no wobbling muzzle flashes to answer as a Consie rifleman raked Flamethrower as he had the car ahead of them.
They slid past the further abutments at fifty kph. There'd been a blockhouse there, but it lay in steaming ruins licked by rare red tongues of flame. A truck burned brightly, well down the steep embankment supporting the approach to the bridge.
On its side, between Flamethrower and the truck, lay a tipped-over bus. A Consie gunman silhouetted by the truck, aimed at Suilin from a bus window.
Liquid nitrogen sprayed into the chambers of Suilin's tribarrel as it cycled, kicking out the spent cases and cooling the glowing iridium of the chamber before the next round was loaded. The gas was a hot kiss blowing back across the reporter's hands as he horsed his weapon onto the unexpected threat. The tribarrel was heavy despite being perfectly balanced on its gimbals, and it swung with glacial torpor.
"Not that—" screamed Suilin's headset. Two-cm bolts ripped across the undercarriage of the bus, bright flashes that blew fuel lines, air lines, hydraulic lines into blazing tangles and opened holes the size of tureens in the sheet metal.
The line of bolts missed by millimeters the man whose raised hand had been shadowed into a weapon by the flames behind him. The civilian fell back into the interior of the bus.
No-no-no—
Suilin's screams didn't help any more than formal prayers would have done if he'd had leisure to form them.
When it first ignited, the ruptured fuel tank engulfed the rear half of the bus. The flames had sped all the way to the front of the vehicle before any of the flailing figures managed to crawl free.
Somebody patted the reporter's forearms; gently at first, but then with enough force to detach his death grip from the tribarrel.
" S'okay, turtle," a voice said. "All okay. Don't mean nothin'."
Suilin opened his eyes. He'd flipped up his visor, or one of the mercenaries had raised it for him. Cooter was holding his forearms, while Gale watched the reporter with obvious concern. He wasn't sure which of the veterans had been speaking.
The river lay as a black streak behind them as the road climbed. Adako Beach was a score of dull fires, big enough to throw orange highlights on the water but nothing comparable to the holocaust of the truck convoy.
And the similar diesel-fed rage which consumed the bus.
"No sweat," Cooter said gently. "Don't mean nothin'."
"It means something to them!"the reporter screamed. He couldn't see for tears, but when he closed his eyes every terrified line of the civilian at the bus window cleared from the surface of his mind. "To them!"
"Happens to everybody, turtle,"Gale said."There's always somebody don't get the word. This time it was you."
"It won't matter next century," Cooter said. "Don't sweat what you can't change."
Flamethrower slowed as Blue Two entered the woods ahead. When the trees closed about the combat car, Dick Suilin could no longer see the flames.
Memory of the fire began to dull. Only a minute. Only a few seconds . . . .
"Trust me, turtle," Gale added with a chuckle. "You stick with us and it won't be the last time, neither."
Chapter Eight
Birdie Sparrow curled and uncurled his hands, working out the stiffness from their grip on the gunnery joysticks.
Gases from the breech of the main gun swirled as if fleeing the effo
rts of the air-conditioning fans which tried to scavenge them. The twisted vapors picked up the patterns glowing in the holographic screens, mixed and softened the colors, and turned the turret interior into a sea of gentle pastels.
The radio crackled with reports of damage and casualties. That didn't touch Birdie. Deathdealer's finish had been scratched by a bullet or two, and there were some new dents in her skirts; but the Consies hadn't so much as fired a buzzbomb.
Tough about the crew of One-six, but a combat car . . . what'd they expect? That was worse 'n ridin' with your head out the cupola.
DJ Bell pointed from a wisp of mauve vapor toward the yellow warning that had just blinked alive in the corner of Screen Two.
Sparrow hit the square yellow button marked automatic air defense—easy to find now,because it started to glow a millisecond after the Aircraft Warning header came up on the gunnery screen. The tribarrel in the cupola whined, rousing to align itself with the putative target.
Piss off, DJ, Sparrow thought/said to the phantom of his friend that grinned until the inevitable change smeared its features.
Aloud,certainly aloud,Sparrow reported, "Tootsie Six, this is Blue One.Aircraft warning. Sonic signature only."
He was reading off the data cascading in jerks down the left edge of his screen like the speeded-up image of a crystal growing.The pipper remained in the center of the holofield, but the background displayed on the screen jumped madly. The tracking system was trying to find gaps that would permit it to shoot through the dense vegetation.
"AAD has a lock but not a window." Sparrow paused then pursed his lips. "Signature is consistent with a friendly recce drone. We expectin' help? Over."
The bone-deep hum of Deathdealer grinding her way southward was the only response for several seconds.
"Blue One," Captain Ranson's voice said at last, "it may be friendly—but let your AAD make the choice. I'd rather shoot down a friendly drone with a bad identification transponder than learn the Terrans were giving some smart-help to their Consie buddies. Out."
The pipper jumped and quivered among the tree images, like an attack dog straining on its leash.
"No, sweat, snake," whispered DJ Bell. "It's all copacetic. This time . . . ."
"Blue Two lock,"said Ranson's headset as the B2 designator glowed air-defense yellow in her multi-function display.
Warmonger went airborne for an unplanned instant. Willens boosted his fans when he realized the ground had betrayed him, but the car landed again like a gymnast dropping three meters onto a mat.
The three mercenaries in the fighting compartment braced for it, splay-legged and on their toes. Shock gouged the edge of Ranson's breastplate into the top of her thighs.
"Blue Three, ah, locked," said Sergeant Wager, but the designator didn't come on, not for a further five seconds.
Wager, the recent transfer from combat cars, was having problems with his hardware. Understandable but a piss-poor time for it. His driver, that was Holman, she wasn't any better. The nameless Blue Three kept losing station, falling behind or speeding up to the point the tank threatened to overrun the car directly ahead of it.
"Janacek!" Ranson snapped. "Don't point your gun! Now! Lower it!"
"Via, Cap'n—" the wing gunner said fiercely.Histribarrel slanted upward at a 30° angle on the rough southwest vector he'd gleaned from seeing Deathdealer's cupola gun rouse.
"Lower it, curse you!" Ranson repeated. "And then take your cursed hands away from it. Now!"
There was almost nil chance of a hand-aimed tribarrel doing any good if three tank units failed on air-defense mode. There was a bloody good chance that a human thumb would twitch at the wrong time and knock down a friendly drone whose IFF handshake had passed the tank computers, though . . . .
Deathdealer had to be the leading panzer. Blue Three in the rear-guard slot wouldn't tear gaps the way it did in the middle of the line, but Wager's inexperience could be an even worse disaster there if the task force were hit from behind. Maybe if she put Deathdealer's driver in the turret of Blue Three and moved an experienced driver from one of the cars to—
Command exercises. Arrange beads of light in a chosen order, then step back while the grading officer critiques your result.
"Tight-ass bitch,"the intercom muttered.Hand-keyed,Janacek or Stolley,either one, or even Willens.
Veterans don't like to be called down by their new CO. But veterans screw up too, just like newbies . . . just like COs who drift in and out of an electronic non-world, where the graders snarl but don't shoot.
Ranson thought she heard the aircraft's engine over the howl of Warmonger's fans and the constant slap of branches against their hull. That was impossible.
"Six, it's friendly!" Sparrow called, echoing the relayed information that flashed on the display which in turn cross-checked the opinion of the combat car's own electronics. And they could all be wrong, but—
The aircraft was friendly. Its data dump started.
Maps and numerals scrolled across the display, elbowing one another aside as knowledge became chaos by its volume. Ranson was so focused on her attempt to sort the electronic garbage with a combat car's inadequate resources that she didn't notice the drone when it passed overhead a few seconds later.
The Slammers' reconnaissance drones were slow, loping along at less than a thousand kph instead of sailing around the globe at a satellite's ninety-minute rate. On the other hand, no satellite could survive in a situation where the enemy had powerguns and even the very basic fire-direction equipment needed to pick up a solid object against the vacant backdrop of interstellar space.
Stolley whispered inaudibly as the drone flicked past, barely visible against the slats of the trees. The aircraft had a long, narrow-chord wing mounted high so as not to interfere with the sensors in its belly.
The drone's high-bypass turbofan sighed rather than roared, and the exhaust dumped from its twin outlets was within fifty degrees C of ambient. Except for the panels covering the sensor bays,the plastic of the wings and fuselage absorbed radio—radar—waves, and the material's surface adapted its mottled coloration to whatever the background might be.
Task Force Ranson could still have gulped the drone down with the ease of a frog and a fly. The Consies operating here weren't nearly as sophisticated—
And that was good, because even a cursory glance at the downloaded data convinced June Ranson that the task force was cold meat if it continued along the course she'd planned originally.
Information wriggled on her multi-function display.Task Force Ranson didn't have a command car, but the electronics suite of one of the panzers would do about as well . . . .
"Blue One,"she ordered,"how close is the nearest clearing where we can laager for—half an hour? Six over."
That should be time enough. There were wounded in One-six to deal with besides. Cooter could shift crews while she—
"Six," said Sparrow in his usual expressionless voice, "there's a bald half a kay back the way we came. It'll give us a clear shot over two-seventy, maybe three-hundred degrees. Blue One over."
"Roger, Blue One," Ranson said. Weighing the alternatives, knowing that the grader would demonstrate that any decision she made was the wrong one, because there are no right decisions in war.
Knowing also that there is no decision as bad as no decision at all.
"All Tootsie elements," her voice continued, "halt and prepare to reverse course."
Warmonger bobbed, its fan chuffing as Willens tried to scrub off momentum smoothly while his eyes darted furiously over the display showing his separation from the huge tanks before and behind him.
"Tootsie, One-two, lead on the new course as displayed." Better to have a tank as a lead vehicle, but there wasn't much chance of trouble here in the boonies, and it was only half a kilometer . . . .
Warmonger touched the ground momentarily,then began to rotate on its axis.A twenty-centimeter treebole, thick for this area, this forest, this planet, obstructed the turn. Wi
llens backed them grudgingly to the altered course.
Anyway, she wasn't sure she wanted Blue Two leading. Ortnahme didn't have much field experience either.
"We'll laager on the bald. Break. Blue Three, I'll be borrowing your displays. I want you to take over my position while we're halted. Over."
"Roger, Tootsie Six. Blue Three out."
"All Tootsie elements, execute new course. Tootsie Six out."
She'd get an eighty percent for that. Down on reversing, down on halting, down on not swapping Cooter's combat car for one of the panzers. But she'd be down on those points whichever way she'd chosen . . . .
Ranson rubbed her eyes, vaguely surprised to find that they were open. Her body braced itself reflexively as Willens brought Warmonger up to speed.
She'd use Blue Three's displays. And she'd use the tank's commo gear also, because that was going to get tricky.
Of course, it was always tricky to talk with Colonel Hammer.
The bald was a barren, hundred-meter circle punched in the vegetation of a rocky knoll by fire,disease,orthechemistry of the underlying rock strata. Flamethrower scudded nervously across the clearing and settled, not to the ground on idle but in a dynamic stasis with its fans spinning at high speed.
Cooter spoke to his multi-function display, then poked a button on the side of it. Suilin's tribarrel shivered.
"Just let it be," the big lieutenant said, nodding toward the weapon. "I put all the guns on air defense." He gripped the rear coaming and swung his leg over the side of the vehicle.
"There's not much chance of 'em helping, using car sensors," he added. "But it's what we got till the panzers arrive."
As Cooter spoke,Blue Two came bellowing out of the trees.The tank's vast size was emphasized by the narrow compass of the bald. The warrant leader from Maintenance, his bulky form unmistakable, waved from the cupola as his driver pulled to a location 120° around the circle from Warmonger. Further vehicles were following closely.
