The Complete Hammer's Slammers: Volume 3

by David Drake

  She was wearing hospital slippers. Ruthven got up quickly and gripped her shoulder to keep her from stepping in the glass she probably couldn’t see. Axbird threw her arms around him.

  “Oh, Lord, El-Tee!” she said. “There’s nobody who’ll understand! There’ll never be anybody!”

  Ruthven held the sobbing woman. His eyes were closed. He was remembering E/1’s second and last night in Fire Support Base Courage. Nobody’ll ever understand.

  “El-Tee!” said Rennie in a hoarse whisper. “Sir, wake up. The bastards’re bugging out!”

  Ruthven jerked upright. He’d been sleeping in the rear compartment of the command car while Rennie sat at the console with the sensor readouts and commo gear. The squad leaders each took a two-hour watch, debriefing Ruthven when they were relieved or if anything significant appeared.

  As it’d done, apparently.

  Melisant’d been sleeping on top of the cab; her boots clunked against armor as she slid down behind the controls. The tone of Rennie’s voice through the open hatch had snapped her awake, so she was heading for her action station like the good trooper she was.

  Rennie had the sensor display filling most of the holographic screen; commo was a narrow sidebar, unimportant for the time being. People . . . hundreds of people . . . were clustered at the firebase entrance. They were leaving on foot, heading eastward along the road. From the south, west, and north other groups of people were approaching.

  Those coming toward the base were rebels of the Lord’s Army, armed to the teeth. Judging from the lack of metal for the magnetic sensors to pick up, the Royalists had left their weapons behind.

  “Them wogs’re just walking outa the base!” Rennie said. “They musta been talking to the rebs, don’t you guess?”

  “More to the point, they’re walking out on us,” Ruthven muttered. “Rouse the platoon . . . but quiet, don’t let the locals know we’ve tumbled to what’s going on.”

  He uncaged and pressed the panic button that automatically copied all platoon communications to Base Hammer, through the satellite net if it was up or by bouncing off cosmic ray tracks if it wasn’t. It was faster than making a separate transmission to Regiment, and there was bloody little time. The rebels’d be climbing over the wall in a few minutes, and when that happened it’d all be over for E/1.

  Ruthven raised the platform to put his head and shoulders through the roof hatch. Using his helmet’s thermal imaging, he could see that the howitzer crews were gone too. The guns hadn’t been disabled: explosions or the roar of thermite grenades would’ve warned the Slammers. In all likelihood, the Lord’s Army had offered the Royalists their lives, in exchange for all their arms and for the Slammers who’d been sent as reinforcements.

  It was at best an open question as to whether the rebels intended to honor their bargain. They’d left the road clear for half a klick from the firebase entrance, but the figures concealed in the brush there to either side looked to Ruthven like a kill zone placed far enough out that the victims couldn’t run back to safety.

  On the other hand, the Royalists hadn’t exactly delivered Platoon E/1 into the Prophet’s hands either.

  “Unit, listen up,” Ruthven said. The troopers in the firebase were gathered close enough that his helmet intercom reached them unaided, but the command car’s powerful transceivers were relaying the signal to Sergeant Sellars’ squad on the knoll to the northeast. “We can’t hold this place, it’s too big, but we can break out and join Second Squad. All together in a tight perimeter we can hold till help comes.”

  Via, what was the closest friendly unit? Maybe G Troop’s combat cars, based with a regimental howitzer battery at Firebase Groening? But that was forty klicks away, and it wouldn’t be safe for them to come direct by the road.

  “I’m taking the car out by the entrance,” he continued aloud. “We can’t get over the wall or through it. Wegelin, your jeeps follow me.”

  Maybe a tank could push a hole in the tangle of treetrunks, but a command car couldn’t and overloaded jeeps certainly couldn’t. Nor did they have enough excess power to climb the irregular surface.

  “The rest of you lift over the wall in the zero to forty-five-degree quadrant,” Ruthven said. That’d spread the troopers enough that they wouldn’t get in each other’s way while awkwardly jumping the trees. “The skimmers can do it if you’re careful. I’ll call a fire mission on the rebs coming from the north. When it lands, that’s our signal to roll. Any questions?”

  “El-Tee, I was a redleg on Andersholz before I joined the Regiment,” said Wegelin. “I can fire them one-twenties. The wogs keep’em loaded but powered down, you see.”

  Ruthven tried to make sense of what Wegelin had just said. He hadn’t known the Heavy Weapons sergeant had been an artilleryman, but he didn’t see what difference it made now. They could startle the rebs and cause casualties by firing the Royalist guns in their faces as they climbed the wall, but it sure wouldn’t drive them away.

  “What I mean, sir,” Wegelin continued, “is a charger of five HE rounds’ll give us a hole any bloody place you want to go through the wall. Not at the gate where they’ll be expecting us, I mean, over.”

  “Can you manage that in two minutes, over?” Ruthven said as he dropped into the van’s interior. Rennie’d vacated the console and was on his way out of the compartment, returning to his squad.

  Ruthven checked the display. Rennie’d prepped fire missions on each of the four rebel concentrations; three moved as the company-sized groups advanced on the firebase.

  “We’re on our way, out,” the sergeant responded. As he spoke, icons on Ruthven’s display showed the jeeps sprinting to the northernmost howitzer; the sound of their fans burred faintly through the open hatches. The big gun wasn’t far from where Wegelin’s squad was to begin with, but he obviously wanted them all to be able to jump into the jeeps as soon as they’d set up the burst.

  “Unit,” Ruthven said. He placed his right index finger on the terrain map image of the firebase wall, exporting the image to all his troopers. “Adjust the previous order. The car and jeeps will be leaving the firebase here. I don’t know what the shells are going to do . . .”

  One possibility was that they’d blast the existing tangle into something worse, so that the skimmers couldn’t get over or through either one. It was still the best choice on offer.

  “ . . . and if you want to follow me through what I hope’ll be a gap, that’s fine. But don’t get in the way, troopers, this car’s a pig. We’re going to be a full honk, and we won’t be able to dodge. Questions, over?”

  Nobody spoke, but three green icons blipped onto the top of the display. Via, they’re pros, they’re the best platoon in the bloody regiment, they really are. . . .

  “Six, we got the tube ready!” Sergeant Wegelin said as his icon lit also. “Five rounds, HE, and I’ve programmed her to traverse right three mils at each round. We’re ready, over!”

  The Royalist howitzers had their own power supplies to adjust elevation and traverse; they could even crawl across terrain by themselves, though very slowly. The northern weapon was now live, a bright image on Ruthven’s display and a whine through the hatch as its pumps pressurized the hydraulic system.

  “Fire Central, this is Echo One-six,” Ruthven said, calling the Regiment’s artillery controller but distributing the exchange to his troopers on an output-only channel. “Request Fire Order One . . .”

  Targeting the rebels approaching from the northeast. They were coming uphill by now. That plus the stumps and broken rocks of the roughly cleared terrain had slowed them.

  “ . . . HE, repeat HE only, we’re too close for firecracker rounds, time of impact fifty-five, repeat five-five seconds from . . .”

  His index finger tapped a marker into the transmission.

  “ . . . now, over.”

  “Roger, Echo One-six,” replied a voice barely identifiable as female through the tight compression. She was so calm she sounded bored. Then, “On the w
ay, out.”

  “Echo One-Four-six,” Ruthven said. I probably sound bored too. “This is Six. Take the wall down in three-five, I repeat three-five, seconds. Break. Unit, wait for our hogs, don’t get hasty. Then its time to kick ass, troopers, out!”

  The command car’s fans were howling. The vehicle slid forward; forty tonnes accelerates slowly, so Melisant was getting an early start. They’ll hear us, but screw’em. They’ll hear more than our fans real soon.

  Ruthven started to close the back ramp but Melisant had already taken care of that. He went up through the roof hatch and took the tribarrel’s grips in his hands.

  There were a lot of reasons to stay down in the body. Communications with E/1 and Central were better inside; he could operate the gun just as well from the console and had a better display than his visor gave him; and the vehicle’s armor, though light, might save him from shrapnel or a bullet that’d otherwise rob the platoon of its commander. There wasn’t a trooper in E/1 who’d think their El-Tee was a coward if he stayed in the compartment.

  But Ruthven himself’d worry that he was a coward in the dark silences before dawn, especially if he survived and some of his troopers didn’t. And somebody was going to die. That was as sure as sunrise, even if E/1 got luckier than any veteran expected.

  The long-barreled 120-mm howitzer belched a bottle-shaped yellow flash toward the perimeter wall; companion flares spewed out and back from both sides through the muzzle brake’s baffles. The tube recoiled and the blast slapped Ruthven. The commo helmet’s active sound cancellation saved his hearing, but the shockwave pushed him against the hatch ring. Even at this distance, unburned powder grains speckled his throat and bare hands.

  The wall erupted, leaking the shellburst’s red flash through the treetrunks it blew apart. Royalist shanties flattened, flung outward in a cone spreading from the howitzer. A huge dust cloud rose from the shock-pummeled compound.

  The command car hit the ground, plowing a track through the hard soil. The steel skirt rang, scattering sparks when it hit embedded stones as the vehicle bucked and pitched.

  Either the shockwave had startled Melisant into chopping her throttles, or she’d realized it’d be a disaster to get in front of the howitzer while it was still firing. The Regiment used rocket howitzers rather than tube artillery. She probably hadn’t expected the muzzle blast of a long-range gun to be so punishing.

  Ruthven hadn’t expected it either. Being told something by an Academy lecturer wasn’t the same as being hit by what felt like a hundred-kilo sandbag in the field.

  The howitzer returned to battery and slammed again, then again, again, and again. The interval between shots was less than two seconds. The last shell screamed toward the northwest horizon as the gun fell over on its side. Rapid fire at zero elevation had lifted the recoil spades at the end of the gun’s trail.

  Between the third round and the fourth, the salvo from the hogs at Firebase Groening burst outside the encampment as a white glare which silhouetted the flying treetrunks. Central’d fused the shells to go off just above the surface instead of burying themselves before exploding.

  Fragments of casing screeched across the hillside in an interlocking web more deadly than any spider’s. A large chunk . . . maybe the baseplate of a Royalist shell . . . howled through Firebase Courage in a flat red streak. It didn’t miss the command car by much, but it missed. . . .

  “Go!” Ruthven shouted. “Go! Go! Go!”

  The car was accelerating again. After Melisant’d gotten them stopped the first time, she’d gimbaled the nacelles vertical and kept the fans at maximum output. They’d been hovering at ten centimeters on a pillow of air, not exactly flying—the vehicle remained in ground effect—but shuddering to every shockwave.

  The elevation, though slight, gave the car a gravity boost when Melisant shoved the steering yoke forward. They gathered speed quickly despite ticks and bounces from debris scattered across the interior of the firebase. Flames spurted beneath the plenum chamber when they crossed the former perimeter; the 120-mm shells had started small fires in the wood, and the drive fans whipped them into hungry enthusiasm.

  There were some larger chunks for them to kick aside, but the trees no longer formed an interlocked mass that could resist a forty-tonne battering ram. Showers of sparks and blazing torches flew ahead of the skirts. Then the car was through and heading down the slope into what remained of a company of the Lord’s Army.

  Ruthven snapped a short burst at what looked in his visor’s thermal image like a rebel kneeling only twenty meters away. The car skidded enough to throw his bolts wide, but before he could correct he realized that he was shooting at a legless, headless torso impaled on a sapling.

  Cyan bolts snapped through the night, igniting the brush. Nobody could aim accurately from a skimmer at speed, but in the corner of his eye Ruthven saw a secondary explosion. A trooper’d gotten lucky, hitting a rebel’s buzzbomb and detonating the warhead.

  Red tracers and muzzle flashes danced in the darkness also, but most of the rebels firing were in the companies to the south and east. The party on which the hogs had unloaded were largely silent, dead or stunned by the 20-cm shells. One rebel opened up from a gully to E/1’s left front, but at least a dozen powerguns replied to the chattering rifle. Either somebody hit the reb, or he decided that huddling out of sight was a better idea than martyrdom for the Prophet after all; at any rate, the shooting stopped.

  The command car reached the ground slope rising toward Second Squad. The brush and canes hadn’t been cleared here; they averaged maybe two meters high, and there were occasional much taller trees.

  Melisant kept moving, but she had to slow to twenty kph. They’d drawn well ahead of the jeeps and skimmers on the downhill run, but now the smaller vehicles were able to slip between clumps which the car had to fight through.

  For a wonder, Sergeant Sellars was keeping her Royalists from shooting down at Ruthven’s force. Maybe Second Squad was holding the locals at gunpoint to enforce fire discipline . . . and then again, maybe that detached platoon’d bugged out when the shooting started. Either way, Ruthven was going to put Sellars in for both a medal and a promotion when this was over.

  If I’m around to make the recommendation. If she’s around to get it.

  Badly aimed rifle fire had been zipping overhead since the beginning of the breakout, but now a machine gun on a fixed mount cut branches nearby. Ruthven rotated his tribarrel to the right. Bullets whanged off the car’s high side. The machine gunner was part of the unit that’d been waiting down the road for the Royalist garrison. He was bloody good to hit a moving target at 600 meters, even with the advantage of a tripod.

  Ruthven fired a short burst. His tribarrel was stabilized, but the lurching car threw him around violently even though the weapon held its point of aim. His bolts vanished into the night, leaving only faintly glowing tracks on their way toward interplanetary vacuum.

  Ruthven took a deep breath, letting the car bump into a small depression. When they started up the other side, into a belt of canes trailing hair-fine filaments, he fired. This time his shots merged with the muzzle flashes of the rebel machine gun. Plasma licked a white flare of burning steel.

  Got you, you bastard! Ruthven thought. Three rebels with buzz-bombs rose out of the swale ten meters ahead of the car.

  Ruthven swung the tribarrel back toward the new targets. The rebels to left and right fired: glowing gas spurted from the back of the launching tubes, and the bulbous missiles streaked toward the vehicle behind quick red sparks.

  The car’s Automatic Defense System banged twice, blasting tungsten pellets from the strips just above the skirts. They shredded the buzzbombs in the air, killing one of the rebels who happened to be in the way of the remainder of the charge.

  Ruthven shot before his gun was on target, hoping his blue-green bolts chewing the landscape would startle the rebels. The remaining rebel fired. Because the car’s bow was canted upward, the third buzzbomb approached fro
m too low to trip the ADS. The warhead burst against the skirts, punching a white-hot spear through the plenum chamber and up into the driver’s compartment.

  Several lift fans shut off; pressurized air from the remaining nacelles roared through the hole blown in the steel. The car grounded, rocked forward in a near somersault, and slammed to rest on its skirts.

  The first impact smashed Ruthven’s thighs against the hatch coaming; pain was a sun-white blur filling his mind. When the car’s bow lifted, it tossed him onto the bales of rations and personal gear in the roof rack. Ruthven was only vaguely aware of the final shock hurling him off the crippled vehicle.

  He opened his eyes. He was on his back with the landscape shimmering in and out of focus. He must’ve been unconscious, but he didn’t know how long. The car was downslope from him. One of its fans continued to scream, but the others were silent. Black smoke boiled out of the driver’s compartment.

  He tried to stand up but his legs didn’t move. Have they been blown off? They couldn’t be, I’d have bled out. He’d lost his helmet, so the visor no longer protected his eyes from the sky-searing bolts of plasma being fired from the knoll above him. The afterimages of each track wobbled from orange to purple and back across his retinas.

  Ruthven rolled over, still dazed. Pain yawned in a gaping cavern centered on his right leg. He must’ve screamed but he couldn’t hear the sound. When the jolt from the injured leg sucked inward and vanished, his throat felt raw.

  “It’s the El-Tee!” somebody cried. “Cover me, I’m going to get him.”

  Another buzzbomb detonated with a hollow Whoomp! on the right side of the command car. Momentarily, a pearly bubble swelled bigger than the vehicle itself. The jet penetrated the thin armor, crossed the compartment, and sprayed out the left side.

  Ruthven started crawling, pushing himself with his left foot and dragging his right as though the leg were tied to his hip with a rope. He couldn’t feel it now except as a dull throbbing somewhere.