by David Drake
"Holman!" Wager cried. "Open season! Get us hull-down again."
They grounded heavily. Wager thought of the strain the tank's huge weight must be putting on the skirts and wondered if they were going to take it. Still, Holman wasn't the first tank driver to get on-the-job training in a crisis.
Anyway, the skirts'd better take it.
Chin Peng Rise had been timbered within the past two years. None of the scrub that had regrown on its loose, rock-strewn soil was high enough to conceal Blue Three's skirts, but the rounded crest itself would protect the hull from guns firing from the wooded knob across the valley.
The thing was, Holman had to halt them in the right place: high enough to clear their main gun but still far enough down the backslope that the hull was in cover.
Shells boomed among the shacks of Kawana. The residents wouldn't 've had any idea that two armies were maneuvering around them until the artillery started to land.
Innocent victims weren't Hans Wager's first concern right now. Via, it was their planet, their war, wasn't it?
His war too.
A plume of friable soil spewed from beneath the skirts as Holman fed power to her fans. Wager felt Blue Three twist as she lifted. The silly bitch was losing control, letting 'em slide downhill instead of—
"Holman!" he shouted. "Bring us up to firing level! They need us over—"
As Wager spoke the tank lifted—there'd been no downward motion, just the bow shifting. They climbed the 20° slope at a walking pace that brought a crisp view of Sugar Knob onto both the main and gunnery displays.
Shot and shells from Yokel cannon ripped the crest beside Blue Three, where the Slammers vehicle had lain hull-down before—and where they'd 've been now if Holman hadn't had sense enough to shift before she lifted them into sight again.
Wager could apologize later.
He'd locked his main and cupola guns on the same axis. His left hand rotated the turret clockwise with the gunnery screen's orange pipper hovering just above the projected crest of Sugar Knob. When the dark bulk of a Yokel tank slid into the sight picture, needlessly carated by the artificial intelligence, Wager thumbed his joystick control and laced the trees with cyan bolts from the tribarrel.
A bolt flashed white on the screen as it vaporized metal from the Yokel tank. Wager stamped on the pedal to fire his main gun.
Two more Yokel shots hit and glanced from Blue Three. Their impact was lost in the crash of the 20cm main gun firing.
Across the valley, the rear end of the Yokel tank jumped backward as the front became a ball of glowing gas.
Wager's main screen was highlighting at least a dozen targets, now. The Yokels had moved into positions overlooking Kawana so their direct fire could finish the tattered survivors of Task Force Ranson as soon as the artillery began to impact.
Some of the tank gunners were still focused on the innocent hamlet. Through the corner of his eye, Wager could see spouting tracks in the valley below as automatic cannons raked shacks and the figures running in terror among the sugarbushes they'd been tending.
Dirt blasted up in front of Blue Three an instant before the turret rang to a double hammerblow. Not all the Yokels were deceived as to their real enemy.
There wasn't time to sort 'em out, to separate the immediate dangers from the targets that might catch on in the next few seconds or minute. Hans Wager had to kill them all—
If he had time before they killed him.
Wager let the turret rotate at its own speed,coursing the further crest.He aimed with the cupola gun rather than the electronic pipper. During his years in combat cars, he'd gotten into the habit of hosing a tribarrel onto its target.
When things really drop in the pot, habit's the best straw to snatch.
Ignoring the shots that hit Blue Three and the shots that blasted grab-loads of dirt from the barren crest around them, Wager stroked his foot-trip again—
A tank exploded.
Again.
Too soon. The 20cm bolt ignited a swathe of forest beside the Yokel vehicle, but the tank's terrified crew was already bailing out. Wager's tribarrel spun their lifeless bodies into the blazing vegetation as his turret continued to traverse.
A huge pall of smoke leaped skyward from somewhere south of Sugar Knob. It mushroomed when the pillar of heated air could no longer support the mass of dirt, scrap metal, and pureed flesh it contained.
The ground-shock of the explosion rolled across Kawana in a ripple of dust.
Something hit Blue Three. Three-quarters of Wager's gunnery screen went black for a moment. He rocked forward on his foot-trip. The main gun fired, shocking the sunlight and filling the turret with another blast of foul gases from the spent case.
The screen brightened again,though the display was noticeably fuzzier.Another of the tanks on Sugar Knob had become a fireball.
The Yokels were running, backing out of the firing positions on the hillcrest that made them targets for Wager's main gun. He didn't know how the combat cars were doing, but there were columns of smoke from behind the knob where his own fire couldn't reach.
The cars'd have their work cut out for them, playing hide 'n seek with the surviving Yokels in thick cover.At point-blank range,the first shot was likely to be the last of the engagement and the tanks' thick frontal armor would be a factor.
A target backed in a gout of black diesel exhaust as Wager's sight picture slid over it. He tripped his main gun anyway, knowing that he'd hit nothing but foliage. His turret continued to traverse, left to right.
the Yokel tank snarled forward again, through the trees the twenty-centimeter bolt had vainly withered. That sonuvabitch hadn't run, he'd just ducked back to shoot safe—
In the fraction of a second it took Hans Wager to realize that this target had to be hit, that he had to reverse the smooth motion of his turret, yellow light flashed three times from the muzzle of the Yokel's cannon.
Hot metal splashed Wager and the interior of the turret. The cupola blew off above him. The tribarrel's ammunition ripped a pencil of cyan upward as it burned in the loading tube.
The gunnery screen was dead, and the central half of the main screen pulsated with random phosphorescence. Motors whined as the turret began tracking counterclockwise across the landscape Wager could no longer see.
" Blue Three, this is Tootsie Six— "
Thousand one, thousand two—
"— we had to bypass the east-flank hostiles. Cross the valley and help us soonest. "
Wager trod his foot-trip. The gunnery screen cleared—somewhat—just in time to display the Yokel tank disintegrating with an explosion so violent that it snuffed the burning vegetation around the vehicle.
"Roger, Tootsie Six," Hans Wager responded. "Holman, move us—"
But Holman was already feeding power to her fans. You didn't have to tell her what her job was, not that one . . . .
Four more artillery shells burst in black plumes across the sandy furrows which Blue Three had to cross. The remains of Blue Three's cupola glowed white, and there was no hatch to button down over the man in the turret.
Hans Wager's throat burned from the gases which filled his compartment.
He didn't much care about that, either.
"Willens, bring us—" June Ranson began, breaking off as she saw the Yokel tank.
It was crashing through the woods twenty meters to Warmonger's right, on an opposite and almost parallel course. The 60mm cannon was pointed straight ahead,but the black-clad guerrilla riding on the turret screamed something down the gunner's open hatch as he unlimbered his automatic rifle.
Janacek's tribarrel was on target first. Half the burst exploded bits of intervening vegetation uselessly, but the remaining bolts sawed the Consie's legs off at the knee before hammering the sloped side of the turret.
The outer facing of the armor burned;its ceramic cores palled inward,through the metallic backing. It filled the turret like the contents of a shotgun loaded with broken glass. Smoke puffed from the hatche
s.
The tank continued to grind its way forward for another thirty seconds while Janacek fired into the hull without effect. The target disintegrated with a shattering roar.
Ranson's multi-function display indicated that both the remaining blowers in her element were within fifty meters of Warmonger, but she couldn't see any sign of them.
She couldn't feel them. They were real only as beads of light; and the red beads of hostile tanks were no longer where Blue Three had plotted them before the Yokels began to retreat . . . .
A tank ground through the screening foliage like a snorting rhinoceros, bow on with its cannon lowered. June Ranson willed a burst through the muzzles of her tribarrel . . . .
Cyan bolts slashed and ripped at glowing steel.
Stolley swung forward. His bolts intersected and merged with the captain's. The cannon's slim barrel lifted without firing and hurled itself away from the crater bubbling in the gun mantle.
"No!" Ranson screamed at her left wing gunner. "Watch your own—"
Another Yokel tank appeared to the left, its gun questing.
"—side!"
Leaves lifted away from the cannon's flashing muzzle. The blasts merged with the high-explosive charges of the shells which burst on Warmonger's side.
The combat car slewed to a halt. The holographic display went dead; Ranson's tribarrel swung dully without its usual power assist.
For the first time in—months?—June Ranson truly saw the world around her.
the Yokel tank was within ten meters. It fired another three-round burst—shot this time. The rounds punched through the fighting compartment in sparkling richness and ignited the ammunition in Janacek's tribarrel.
The gunner bellowed in pain as he staggered back. Ranson grabbed the bigger man and carried him with her over the side of the doomed vehicle. Leaf mould provided a thin cushion over the stony forest soil, but Warmonger's bulk was between them and the next hammering blasts.
"Stolley," Janacek whispered. "Where's Stolley and Willens?"
June Ranson looked over her shoulder. Dunnage slung to Warmonger's sides was ablaze. The thin, dangerous haze of electrical fires spurted out of the fan intakes and the holes shots had ripped in the hull. Where Janacek's tribarrel had been, there was a glowing cavity in the iridium armor.
Willens had jumped from his hatch and collapsed. There was no sign of Stolley.
Ranson rose in a crouch. Her legs felt wobbly. She must have hit them against the coaming as she leaped out of the fighting compartment. She staggered back toward Warmonger.
Shots rang against the armor. A chip of white-hot tungsten ripped through both sides to scorch her thighs.
She tried to call Stolley, but her voice was a croak inaudible even to her over the roar of the flames in Warmonger's belly.
The handgrips on the armor were hot enough to sear layers from her hands as she climbed back into the fighting compartment.
Stolley lay crumpled against the bulkhead. He was still breathing, because she could see bubbles forming in the blood on his lips. She gripped his shoulders and lifted, twisting her body.
The synthetic fabric of her trousers was being burned into her flesh as she balanced. Janacek crawled toward them, though what help he could be . . .
Because her back was turned, June Ranson didn't see the tank's cannon rock back and forth as it fired, aiming low into Warmonger's hull. She felt the impacts of armor-piercing shot ringing on iridium—
But only for an instant, because this burst fractured the car's fusion bottle.
Dick Suilin was looking over his shoulder toward the bow of Flamethrower when the center of his visor blacked. Through the corners of his eyes, there porter saw foliage withering all around him in the heat of the plasma flare. His hands and the part of his neck not shielded by visor or breastplate prickled painfully.
The gout of stripped atoms lasted only a fraction of a second. Warmonger's hull, empty as the shell of a fossil tortoise, continued to blaze white.
The Yokel tank, its cannon nodding for further prey, squealed past the wreckage.
Suilin's tribarrel was still pointed to cover the car's rear quadrant. Cooter's burst splashed upward from the tank's glacis plate, blasting collops from the sheath and ceramic core.
Before the tribarrel could penetrate the armor at its point of greatest thickness, the tank's 60mm gun cracked out a three-round clip. Dick Suilin's world went red with a crash that struck him like a falling anvil.
The impact knocked him forward. He couldn't hear anything. The fighting compartment was brighter, because cannon shells had blown away the splinter shield overhead. The sun streamed down past the bare poles of plasma-withered trees.
The ready light over his tribarrel's trigger no longer glowed green. Suilin rotated the switch the way Gale had demonstrated a lifetime earlier. The metal felt cool on his fingertips.
The cannon's muzzle began to recoil behind a soundless yellow flash. Warmonger shuddered as Suilin's thumbs pressed his butterfly trigger. Cyan bolts roiled the bottle-shaped flare of unburned powder, then carved the mantlet before the 60mm gun could cycle to battery and fire again.
Steel blazed, sucked inward, and blew apart like a bomb as the tank's ready ammunition detonated.
Suilin's tribarrel stopped firing. His thumbs were still locked on the trigger. A stream of congealed plastic drooled out of the ejection port. The molten cases had built up until they jammed the system.
The hull of the vehicle Dick Suilin had destroyed was burning brightly.Another tank crawled around it. The Consie on the second tank's turret was mouthing orders down the open hatch.
The long cannon swung toward Flamethrower.
Lieutenant Cooter rose to his hands and knees on the floor of the fighting compartment.His helmet was gone.There was a streak of blood across the sweat darkened blond of his hair. He shook himself like a bear surrounded by dogs.
Gale sprawled, halfway out of the fighting compartment. A high-explosive round had struck him between the shoulder blades. It was a tribute to the trooper's ceramic body armor that one arm was still attached to what remained of his torso.
Suilin unslung his grenade launcher, aimed at the tank thirty meters away, and squeezed off. He couldn't hear his weapon fire, but the butt thumped satisfyingly on his shoulder. His eye followed the missile on its flat arc to the face of the tank's swivelling turret.
The grenades were dual purpose. Their cases were made of wire notched to fragment, but they were wrapped around a miniature shaped charge that could piece light armor.
Armor lighter than the frontal protection of a tank. The guerrilla flung his arms up and toppled, his chest clawed to ruins by shrapnel, but the turret face was only pitted.
The tank moved forward as it had to do, so that as the turret rotated, the long gun would clear the burning wreckage of the sister vehicle.
Cooter dragged his body upright. He was still on his knees. The big man gripped the hull to either side of his tribarrel, blocking Suilin from any chance of using that weapon.
No time anyway. The reporter's grenades burst on the turret, white sparks that gouged the armor but didn't penetrate, couldn't penetrate.
Two hits, three—not a hand's breadth apart, remarkable rapid-fire shooting as the turret swung.
Suilin thought he could hear again, but the bitter crack of his grenades was lost in the howl of an oncoming storm. The ground shook and made the blasted trees shiver.
The last round in Suilin's clip flashed against the armor as vainly as the four ahead of it. The cannon's 60mm bore gaped toward Flamethrower like the gates of Hell.
Before the gun could fire, the great, gray bow of Blue Three rode downhill onto the rebel tank, scattering treeboles like matchwood.
The clang of impact seemed almost as loud to Dick Suilin as that of the shells ripping Flamethrower moments before. The Slammers' tank, ten times the weight of the Yokel vehicle, scarcely slowed as it slid its victim sideways across the scarred forest.
&n
bsp; A tread broke and writhed upward like a snake in its death throes. The hull warped, starting seams and rupturing the cooling system and fuel tanks in a gout of steam, then fire.
Metal screamed louder than men could.Blue Three's skirts rode halfway up the shattered corpse of the rebel tank, fanning the flames into an encircling manacle. The Slammers driver twisted the hundred and seventy tonnes she controlled like a booted foot crushing an enemy's face into the gutter.
Cooter stood up. Shorty Rogers raised his head from the bow hatch, glanced around, and disappeared again.A moment later, Flamethrower shuddered as her fans spun up to speed.
Blue Three backed away from the crackling inferno to which it had reduced its victim. Nothing else moved in the forest.
Dick Suilin's fingers were reflexively loading a fresh clip into his grenade launcher.
Chapter Thirteen
Task Force Ranson, consisting of one tank and four combat cars under Junior Lieutenant Brian Cooter,was within seven kilometers of the outskirts of Kohang when it received word that Consie resistance had collapsed.
The Governmental Compound within the city was relieved a few minutes later by elements of the 12th and 23rd Infantry Brigades of the National Army.
Chapter Fourteen
Dick Suilin looked at Kohang with eyes different from those with which he'd viewed the fine old buildings around the park and Governmental Compound only days before.
The stone facades were bullet-pocked now, but Suilin had changed much more than the city had during the intervening hours.
"Good thing we didn't have to fight through these streets," he said.
His voice was a croak from breathing powergun residues. He didn't know whether he'd ever regain the honey-smooth delivery that had been his greatest asset in the life of his past.
Tents had sprouted around the wheeled command vehicles in the central park fronting the Compound. There was a line of tarpaulin-covered bodies beside the border of shattered trees, but for the most part, the National Army soldiers looked more quizzical than afraid.
