by David Drake
Huber shifted his sights onto another Solace vehicle. It exploded before he could squeeze the trigger. Flames and black, roiling smoke marked the opposite ridgeline, each the pyre of an armored car and most of its crew.
A car of the advance party near the river was still firing, its bolts gouging the hillside; the panicked gunner was shooting low. His bad aim had kept him from being an immediate threat—and therefore target—but now half a dozen tribarrels converged on the car. The rear hatch flew open. Three black-clad Solace Militiamen sprang out, throwing themselves into the brush to hide as their vehicle sank into a sea of fire behind them.
For a moment Huber thought they were going to survive, at least for now, but one of Messeman’s gunners switched to thermal imaging that let him see through the thin brush. The third man ran into the open after short bursts incinerated his companions; the single shot that decapitated him was bragging.
“Fox units withdraw!” Huber ordered. “All units withdraw at speed!”
It was war; those three desperate Militiamen were enemies who’d wanted to kill Huber and his troopers. But Huber’d still just as soon they’d been allowed to hide….
Fencing Master shuddered as Padova cranked the nacelles forward. Once Fencing Master’d gotten over the crest, she’d let inertia and gravity take them downslope with the fans vertical, supplying lift but no thrust. It was time to get the hell out; in a fire-fight that meant backing so that the thicker bow armor and all three tribarrels continued to face the enemy.
Their skirts touched, a jar but not a disorienting crash. Padova got control again and Fencing Master began to slide backward up the hill again.
Huber fired a short burst over the opposite crest. He didn’t have a target at the moment, but his faceshield indicated a Solace armored car was driving up the reverse slope. He wanted the hostile driver to hesitate until the Slammers were back under cover.
There were vehicles advancing behind the whole length of the opposite ridge. At least fifty Solace armored cars were in line, and there were others forming behind to replace casualties. The Solace commander might not have a subtle grasp of tactics, but there was nothing to fault in his courage or that of his troops. And with odds of ten to one in favor of the Militia, they’d win a slugging match against eight surviving combat cars if Huber were dumb enough to try one.
Fencing Master snorted and scraped, reaching the ridgeline and then dropping with more enthusiasm than control onto the reverse slope. Huber checked his icons; all the cars had made it back except Three-zero, Flame Farter. He’d seen two men bail out. The driver was surely dead, but maybe the fourth crewman—
Reality returned, smothering hope like clouds covering the moon. The fourth crewman was dead also, dead when the follow-up bolts had vaporized the fighting compartment even if the initial hit hadn’t killed him. The survivors must’ve gone to ground with the infantry. For now that was a better choice than trying to scramble back over the crest while a lot of very angry Solace gunners were looking for targets.
Learoyd was unfastening his clamshell armor, moving awkwardly because his right arm didn’t seem to be working. Deseau turned to help. What in hell had happened to Learoyd?
But that was a problem for later; first Huber had to make sure there’d be a later. A storm of 3-cm bolts ripped from the other side of the river, blasting trees twenty meters above the concealed combat cars. The Solace commander had decided to take no chances whatever: his gunners started shooting before they could see the crest, let alone the Slammers below it.
“All Highball units,” Huber ordered. He’d have liked to transmit in clear so that the Militia commander might hear him, but that would be too obviously phony to risk. “Withdraw to the southwest along the plotted course. X-Ray elements lead, Fox elements follow as rear guard in present order. Six out!”
The forest was already burning fiercely. There were fires in the Salamanca Valley also, but the brush was green and the flood-swept slopes weren’t covered with leaf litter and humus to get a real blaze going in the next half-hour. The smoke and sluggish flames would help conceal the infantry in ambush; or at least Huber prayed they would.
Crossing at an upstream ford wasn’t a real option now that the Solace forces knew the location of Task Force Huber. By the time the Slammers could grind seven kilometers through forest and rough terrain, the enemy would’ve flown in at least a platoon of infantry. The availability of aircars here on Plattner’s World meant that light forces could be shifted very quickly; light forces with buzzbombs and 2-cm powerguns were quite sufficient to turn a truckload of artillery ammunition into an explosion that’d clear everything in a half-klick radius.
The withdrawal would look real, though; a maneuver forced by desperation on Slammers who had to cross the river and who’d failed to shoot their way through at their first attempt. The Solace commander would certainly have sent a report and request for support back to his superiors, but he’d also be looking for revenge. The 1st Cavalry Squadron would follow the retreating Slammers— cautiously, because the Militiamen had learned how dangerous the combat cars could be—in hopes of closing the door behind them when other Solace troops had blocked the way forward.
Of course for Huber’s plan to work, the Solace commander had to know what the Slammers appeared to be doing.
“All Highball units,” Huber said. “When enemy scouts appear, shoot to miss, I repeat, miss them. We want the wogs to know that we’ve cut and run. Six out.”
His helmet buzzed with a series of callsigns followed by “Roger.” The ball was in the Solace court. Huber could only hope his opposite number would act sooner rather than later; which was a pretty fair likelihood, given the way he’d responded to the initial exchange.
The artillery vehicles were taking longer to get turned around than they would’ve done if this had been a real change of plan, but the delays and seeming clumsiness were perfectly believable. The hogs were bloody awkward under the best conditions, and the ammunition haulers rarely operated very far off a road. The maintenance vehicle was larger and heavier still, but its driver was used to maneuvering anywhere a combat vehicle could go—and become disabled.
Huber brought up the C&C display again to check the location of his vehicles. “Padova,” Huber ordered, “get us moving but not fast.”
The X-Ray portion of the task force was half a klick south and west of the combat cars. The last hog in line wasn’t moving yet, but it would be before Fencing Master closed up. The forest fire was getting serious enough to pose a danger, especially to Lieutenant Messeman’s cars at the end of the line.
Padova eased Fencing Master into motion, picking a line close to the crest. The fire was bloody serious, but more so downslope where Solace bolts had flung most of the flaming debris.
Huber looked at his gunners again. Learoyd’s body armor lay on the ammo boxes at the back of the compartment. Deseau’d sliced off Learoyd’s sleeve with his belt knife and was covering the shoulder with bright pink SpraySeal, a combination of replacement skin with antiseptic and topical anesthetic. Learoyd tried to watch, but because of the angle his eyes couldn’t both focus on something so close.
“Bert’s all right!” Frenchie said over the intake noise. He gestured with the can of SpraySeal. “Make a fist, Bert! Show him!”
Learoyd obediently clenched his right fist. His thumb didn’t double over the way it should have. Frowning, he bent it into place with his left hand.
“A chunk of Flame Farter spattered him,” Deseau explained. “It was still a bit hot, but Bert’s just fine. A little bad luck is all.”
Learoyd opened his hand again. This time the thumb worked on its own, pretty well. The molten iridium had hit mostly on the back of his clamshell, but some splashed his upper arm where nothing but a tunic sleeve protected the flesh.
Frenchie needed to believe Learoyd wasn’t seriously injured. Learoyd being who he was, that was probably true: another man who’d been slammed by a quarter-kilo of liquid metal might well have
gone into shock, but apart from stiffness and the fact his shoulder was swelling, Learoyd seemed to be about what he always was.
“Learoyd,” Huber asked. He nodded toward the clamshell behind him. “Can you get your armor back on over that?”
“I guess,” Learoyd said. He worked his fist again; the thumb still didn’t want to close. Doubtfully he went on, “Frenchie, will you help me?”
“Sure, Bert, sure!” Deseau said, his voice as brittle as chipped glass.
He snatched up the armor, holding the halves apart for Learoyd to fit his torso into. The fabric covering the right shoulder flare had been melted down to the ceramic core; in its place was a wash of rainbow-hued iridium, finally cool after flying from Flame Farter’s hull to strike Learoyd thirty meters away.
“Good,” said Huber as he turned deliberately back to the C&C display. “Because we’ve still got work to do today, and I want you dressed for it.”
That blob of white-hot metal could as easily have hit Huber himself between helmet and body armor, burning through his neck …or it could’ve missed Fencing Master and her crew entirely. You never knew till it was over.
Task Force Huber was moving at last. Padova held Fencing Master twenty meters off the stern of the last hog in line. More debris flew from beneath the skirts of a self-propelled howitzer than even a combat car threw up.
Huber grinned. It could be worse: following a tank closely was a good way to get your bow slope sandblasted to a high sheen. Of course if Huber had a platoon of tanks with him right now, he’d be dealing with the Solace cavalry squadron in a quicker fashion….
The C&C display warned of new movement on the Solace side of the river. “Fox elements!” Huber said. “Four wog aircars are lifting; it looks like they’re going to swing around us to east and west in pairs. Remember, shoot to miss.”
A thought struck him, almost too late, and he added, “And make sure your guns aren’t in Air Defense Mode! Put your guns on manual, for the Lord’s sake! Six out.”
The cars’ gunnery computers couldn’t be programmed to miss. If a gun was on air defense—and one on each combat car normally would be while the column was in march order—then the Solace scouts were going to vanish as quickly as they appeared. That’d almost certainly be before they could report back.
Frenchie and Learoyd lifted the muzzles of their tribarrels, tracking blips on the inside of their faceshields. Fencing Master was now weaving through forest that hadn’t been cleared by plasma bolts and the fires they ignited. The gunners were tracking on the basis of sensor data because the low-flying aircars were screened by bluffs and undamaged treeboles. When metal finally showed through a gap in the foliage, they were going to be ready.
The hog immediately ahead wobbled through the forest, moving at about twenty kph but seeming even slower than that. The leading vehicles had rubbed the bark to either side of the route, leaving white blazes a meter high on the treetrunks. Often their skirts had gouged brushes of splinters from deep into the sapwood.
Tribarrels volleyed from the tail of the column; an instant later Deseau and Learoyd fired together, their guns startling Huber out of his concentration on the display of sensor data overlaid on a terrain map. He jerked his head up as the upper half of a tree thirty meters toward the northwest burst into red-orange flames. The blasts of plasma had shattered the trunk, blowing it into spheres of superheated organic fragments which exploded when they mixed with oxygen-rich air a few meters distant.
In the sky a kilometer away, a diving aircar flashed its belly toward the column. Deseau sent another burst into empty sky; some of the artillerymen were firing sub-machine guns from the cabs of their hogs.
Huber checked his display again. Three of the scouts had flattened themselves close to the Salamanca’s surface. The fourth—
“Six, this is Two-six,” Lieutenant Messeman reported in a clipped, cold voice. “I regret to report that we hit one of the aircars. The other should’ve gotten a good look at us before it escaped, though. Two-six over.”
“Roger, Two-six,” Huber said. “Proceed as planned.”
This was even better than if all the scouts had gotten away: it made the Slammers’ response look real. Messeman would be talking to the shooter when things had quieted down, though. Hitting the car had been a screwup, and a battle at these odds was dangerous enough even when all your people executed perfectly.
Huber’s gunners had blown apart a tree in order not to hit their pretended target. It now finished toppling to the ground with a crash and ball of flaming debris. Undergrowth ignited immediately, reminding Huber that his cars would be driving back through a full-fledged forest fire. That couldn’t be helped.
And a forest fire was a hell of a lot less dangerous than what came next, anyway.
“All Highball elements,” Huber said, “reverse and hold until ordered to take assault positions.”
He’d have liked to put his cars under the hillcrest right now, but he didn’t dare do so with the fire so bad on the slope where they’d have to wait. It was one thing to drive through the inferno at speed, trusting nose filters and the temperature-stable fabric of the Slammers’ uniforms. Those weren’t enough protection that troopers could twiddle their thumbs in Hell and still be ready for action, though.
“And troopers?” he added. “Those scouts had their only free pass. If they come back for another look at us, shoot fast and shoot to kill! Six out.”
Fencing Master slowed to a halt, then rotated deliberately on its axis without touching the ground. Huber wasn’t sure whether Padova was showing off or if she was simply so good that she executed the difficult maneuver without thinking about it.
“Six, this is Two-six!” Lieutenant Messeman said excitedly on the command channel. “They took the bait! They’re coming, it looks like four waves! Two-six over!”
Messeman’s Fandancer was a half-kilometer closer to the enemy than Fencing Master, so its sensors provided a sharper picture than Huber’s of what was going on across the river. The Command and Control unit synthesized inputs from every vehicle in the task force, though, so Messeman’s report—while proper—wasn’t news to Highball Six.
“Roger,” Huber said, feeling a familiar curtain fall between him and his present surroundings. His hands were trembling, but that’d stop as soon as he placed them back on his tribarrel’s grips. “Break. All Highball units, reduce speed to ten kay-pee-aitch but continue on the plotted course. The wogs must have some kind of sensors, and I want any data they get to show we’re still moving southwest for as long as possible.”
He took a deep breath and continued, “They’re coming, troopers.
India elements, we’re depending on you—but you can count on the rest of us to help as soon as you stick it to them. Six out.”
He grimaced and rubbed his palms on his body armor. He wanted to grab the tribarrel, but it wasn’t time yet. Lord! he was keyed up.
“Hey El-Tee,” Deseau said over the intercom. “Learoyd and me got a bet on who gets the most wogs this time. You want a piece of it? A case of beer to the winner.”
“Hell, yes!” Huber said, grinning with the release of tension. “Though one case isn’t going to cut the thirst I’m working up on this run.”
He turned his gaze back on the C&C display. Nineteen armored cars had driven down the slope and were crossing the Salamanca, in some confusion because the ford wasn’t wide enough to take them all in a single passage.
Huber’d expected the Solace hovercraft to be able to skitter across the water’s surface, but though they weighed much less than his combat cars, their power-to-weight ratio wasn’t as high either. They needed to be able to touch their skirts to the bottom. When two on the upstream end had gotten deeper than that, they’d stalled.
A second line of twenty-three armored cars had just pulled over the crest to follow. The remainder of the squadron, forty vehicles— a mixture of armored cars and headquarters vehicles—lined the far ridgeline with only a meter or two between their
bulging skirts.
Under other circumstances Huber would’ve kept his combat cars where they were and delightedly called in artillery, but the target was too close for Battery Alpha and Central’s movement orders had made it clear that every task force was on its own. The operation was more important than the problems of any individual element.
The first wave of armored cars started up the southern slope. For the most part they advanced at the speed of a walking man, but several of the drivers seemed to think speed was protection and drew ahead. They were wrong, of course, but their timid fellows weren’t going to survive the morning either if things went the way Huber planned.
“All Fox units,” he ordered, “reverse course and take up attack positions. X-Ray units, reverse but hold in place till ordered. Execute. Six out!”
Fencing Master rotated smoothly. Padova dipped the skirts to the ground this time so that she wouldn’t run Fencing Master up the stern of Foghorn whose driver had bobbled the maneuver.
Huber wrung his hands together, wishing he had real-time imagery from the other side of the ridge. Red beads moving on a landscape of green contour lines didn’t give him the feel of big vehicles shouldering their way through the scrub, their fans whirling sluggish fires to new life as their paired 3-cm cannon probed the crest above them. The Solace gunners would be ready to shoot if a cloud blew across their sight picture; they’d remember the way a dozen cars like their own had been reduced to flaming wreckage a few minutes before.
Fencing Master began to accelerate, holding interval. Both platoons were returning to the positions they’d held on the reverse slope before the initial skirmish. Foghorn roared through what had been a burning treetop before the six cars ahead had driven over it. Now it was a swirl of sparks, eddying out from beneath her skirts and curling back through the intakes into the plenum chamber again. Sergeant Nagano and his crew hunched over their guns, their hands clamped into their armpits for protection.
