by David Drake
"Well, then we have to move our tank to a new location," Franciscus said. He looked at Father Renaud, less for counsel than to indicate he wasn't attempting to give the priest orders. "Boukasset, I think? Even if they find us again, it'll take them days to mount an attack there. And even reinforced, none of those patrol posts can stop us."
He patted Hoodoo's iridium flank with a proprietary gesture that made Lamartiere momentarily furious. He knew it was stupid to give in to personal dislike in a crisis like this, but he also knew human beings were much more than cold intellects in a body.
Aloud Lamartiere said, "We can break through, I'm pretty sure. But the villagers can't escape, and the government troops won't leave without doing all the damage they can. I'm afraid they'll blow up the mine entrances this time."
Befayt grimaced. "Yeah," she said. "I figure that, too."
She nodded toward Hoodoo. "They're scared of this thing. If they don't have it to fight after all, well, they'll find some other way to work off their energy."
"I'll get back to work," Clargue said simply. He put his hand on the boarding ladder.
"And I'll put my people in place at the crossing," Befayt said. "I don't know that we can slow them up much, not a battalion, but they'll know they been in a fight before they get across the Lystra."
"Wait," said Lamartiere. He pointed to the guerrilla carrying the powergun. "Captain, you've got several soldiers with 2cm guns, don't you? Give me all their ammunition. I can hand-feed it into the tribarrel's ready magazine and use the tanks gunnery system to aim and fire."
The guerrilla looked shocked at the thought he should surrender the weapon that gave him status in any gathering of fighters. Befayt nodded to him and said, "Yeah, do what he says, Aghulan. You can keep the gun. Just give him the ammo."
She smiled bitterly and added, "I'd say you could have it for your tombstone, but I don't guess there'll be enough of any of us left to bury in a couple hours."
The aide was a man in his sixties. He looked at the hills and said, "Well, I said I never wanted to leave this valley. Guess I'll get my wish."
He spat on the coal-blackened ground.
"Right," said Franciscus. "I'll man the tank's gun."
"No," said Lamartiere before Clargue could step away from the ladder. "I need the doctor with me. He understands the parts of the systems that I'll need but don't know anything about."
Clargue looked at Lamartiere in surprise. Both of them knew that was a lie.
Franciscus glared at Lamartiere and rang the edge of his fist angrily on Hoodoo's skirt. "I should have infiltrated the base myself," he snarled, accepting the statement at face value. "Then we'd have somebody who knew what he was doing!"
Father Renaud looked at the colonel sharply. "Emmanuel," he said. "Glory will come to those who strive for the Lord, but neither glory nor martyrdom is an end in itself. Sometimes I fear that you forget that."
"Sorry, father," Franciscus muttered.
"And, Captain?" Lamartiere added as another idea struck him. The sky over the western hills was fully dark now. "Can your men make me up flash charges with about three meters of wire leads on each? As many as you can. And I'll need a clacker to set them off."
"Why?" Franciscus demanded. "What do you think you're going to do with them?"
If Franciscus hadn't spoken first, Befayt might have asked the same question. As it was, she gave the colonel a flat glare and said, "Yeah, I'll put a couple of the boys on it while the rest of us go wait at the crossing."
She looked at Renaud and added, "Father? I'd appreciate it if you'd bless us all before we go. It don't look like there'll be another chance."
There was a reconnaissance drone overhead. Darkness and altitude hid it, but the hum of its turbofan occasionally reached the ground.
"I'm going to button up," Lamartiere said over Hoodoo's intercom. He grimaced to hear himself deliberately using jargon to prove he was a real tanker. "I'm going to close the hatches, I mean," he added. "Make sure you're clear of yours."
He touched the switch on the compartment's sidepanel; both hatches slid closed with cushioned thumps. One thing Lamartiere had proved he wasn't, was a tanker. The damage Hoodoo's skirts had taken on the run from Brione suggested he wasn't much of a tank driver either, though he supposed he'd call himself adequate given haste and the condition of roads through the mountains.
"Denis, you know that I can't operate these weapons, don't you?" Dr. Clargue said. When the tank was sealed, the vehicle intercom was good enough for parties to hear one another even over the roar of the fans, though for greater flexibility on operations the mercenaries always wore commo helmets. Lamartiere had a momentary daydream of what he could do if he had all the equipment of Hammer's Regiment under his control.
He might not be able to do anything. Hardware was wonderful, but the training to use it was more wonderful still. He should have asked a few more questions when he worked for the mercenaries. He might have been exposed and shot, but at least the civilians of Pamiers would face less risk.
"I know that," Lamartiere said aloud. "We'll change places when we get to the crossing and I'll take over the gun. I just couldn't afford to have Franciscus in the turret. He doesn't know any more about the equipment than you do, and he wouldn't trade with me."
He started the fans, bringing the blades up to speed at a flat angle so that they didn't bite the air. The driver's compartment had two displays, one above the other. On default the lower screen was a 360-degree panorama with a keyboard overlay, while the upper one showed the view forward with system readouts overlying the right and left edges. By touching any gauge, Lamartiere could expand it to half the screen.
The fans and power system were within parameters. They shouldn't give any trouble on the three kilometers between here and the Lystra River.
The truck that had brought supplies was ferrying the last of the guerrillas to the defensive positions at the crossing. Befayt had allowed Franciscus to go with the first group. Tonight she wasn't about to turn away anyone with a gun and a willingness to die.
"You don't have to change places, you know," Clargue said. "Unless you want to, of course. You can control the weapons from your compartment by touching Star-Gee."
"What?" said Lamartiere, taking his hands off the control yoke. "I didn't know . . ."
He pressed *G on the keyboard. The display had no more give than the bulkhead, but the orange symbols of a gunnery screen replaced the center of the panorama. The crossed circle to the right of the display was a trigger.
"Oh . . ." Lamartiere whispered. For the first time he thought that the bluff he planned might actually work.
He checked the command bar on the left side of the display, chose seek, and raised the search area to ten degrees above the horizon. The tarpaulin covered the region selected, so for the moment neither the pipper on the screen nor the tribarrel in the cupola reacted.
"Hang on," he called to the doctor. "We're going to just move out a little ways."
Leaving the gunnery display set, Lamartiere adjusted fan angle with the right grip and slid Hoodoo onto clear ground. Dust and pebbles spun outward in the spray of air escaping beneath the edge of the plenum chamber.
Lamartiere let Hoodoo settle. The gunnery display appeared to scroll down past the pipper until vague motion quivered in the center of the crosshairs. In the turret Clargue exclaimed when the tribarrel also moved.
Lamartiere expanded his image. The target was a drone with long slender wings and a small engine mounted on a pylon above the fuselage. The default option was auto; Lamartiere switched to manual because he simply didn't have the ammunition to spare the burst a computer might think was necessary to make sure of the target. He tapped the trigger once.
In the closed-up tank, the 2cm weapon merely whacked as it sent a bolt of ionized copper skyward at light speed. The main display compensated automatically for the burst of intense light; unless set otherwise, the AI used enhancement and thermal imaging to keep the apparent
illumination at 100 percent of local daylight.
There was a cyan flash on the gunnery display, though. The lightly built drone broke apart in a flurry of wing panels and a mist of vaporized fuel. There was no fireball. The drone had been operating at too high an altitude for atmospheric pressure to sustain combustion.
"It worked!" Clargue shouted. "You made it work!"
"Mother God!" Lamartiere said as he fumbled to modify the screen. He was shaking. After a moment's confusion he realized that of course Clargue had been able to echo the gunnery display on his own screens. "You understand this so much better than I do, Doctor."
"No," said Clargue. "And even if I did, you are a man of war, Denis. As I will never be."
Lamartiere reduced the image and switched from seek to protect. When the map display came up, he expanded the region from the default—a ten-meter fringe surrounding Hoodoo—to include the whole area of Pamiers.
He touched auto. The civilians were under cover, deep in the mines, but an incoming round might shatter rock and bring down a traverse on huddled forms. One of them might have been his sister Celine.
Taking the yoke in both hands again, Lamartiere drove toward the eastern exit from the valley at a sedate pace. He didn't need to rush to get into position, and high speed on this terrain would waste precious ammunition when the AI responded to incoming artillery.
Because he concentrated on his driving, Lamartiere heard the whine of the cupola before he noticed motion on the gunnery screen. The tribarrel fired: three rounds, two, three more. Cyan and the dull red light of high explosive quivered on the gunnery screen.
Hoodoo's sensors and AI permitted her to sweep shells from the sky when they were still so far away that the explosions couldn't be seen by the naked eye. Given a vantage point and enough 2cm ammunition, this tank could defend the whole area from horizon to horizon.
The sticking point now was the ammunition.
The second salvo came over just before Hoodoo reached the mouth of the valley. The shells were fired out of the northwest, probably from guns in the government base at Ariege. The tribarrel hummed and crackled, rotating barrels between rounds so that the polished iridium bores had a chance to cool. The powergun bolts detonated the shells when they were barely over the horizon.
Driving with one hand, Lamartiere adjusted the gunnery screen. He hoped the gunners wouldn't waste any more of their expensive terminally guided rounds. They didn't have direct observation of the results since the drone had been knocked down, but observers with the mechanized battalion would tell them their fire was fruitless.
"I'm setting the gun only to respond to shells aimed at us from now on, Doctor," he explained to Clargue. He supposed he was trying to pass on the burden of the choice he'd just made. "We're down to seventy-seven rounds. If I keep covering the village, we'll use up all the ammunition and then we lose everything."
"Yes," Clargue said. He sounded cool; certainly not judgmental. "Rather like triage."
"Pardon?" Lamartiere said. "Triage?"
Driving Hoodoo with the electronics working was infinitely less wearing than the trip Lamartiere had made in the early hours of the morning, trying to pick his way over narrow, half-familiar roads in the dark. The screens showed the path as though in daylight, and the tank's microwave imaging ignored dust and the mist beginning to rise in low points where aquifers bled through the rocks.
"When there are many injured and limited medical facilities," Clargue explained, "you divide the casualties into three groups. You ignore the ones who aren't in immediate danger so you can concentrate on helping those who will survive only if they get immediate help. And you also ignore those who will probably die even if you try to help them."
He coughed to clear his throat. "It's a technique of setting priorities that was developed during wartime."
Hoodoo crested a rise and entered the floodplain of the Lystra River. Except in springtime, the Lystra ran in a narrow channel only a few hundred meters wide—though deep and fast-flowing. There was only one ford on the upper river, and the bridges that spanned it during peace had been blown early in the rebellion.
The ford was a dike of basalt intruding into the surrounding limestone, raising the channel and spreading it to nearly a kilometer in width. One of the bridges had been here. The abutments and two pillars still stood, but the tangle of dynamited girders had tumbled out of sight downstream last year when the snow melted.
Befayt's troops were hidden in fighting holes, covered with insulating blankets that dispersed their thermal signatures. They'd learned to be careful eight months before, when elements of the Slammers began accompanying government units who entered the mountains.
The guerrillas had been wary of the mercenaries' firepower. They'd quickly learned that the sensor suites of the vast iridium behemoths were even more of a threat.
Given a little time, Dr. Clargue could put those sensors in the hands of the rebels. Clargue—and Hoodoo—just had to survive this night.
Lamartiere found the spot he'd noticed on previous visits to Pamiers, a shallow draw that carried overflow from the channel during the spate. He took Hoodoo over the edge; gently, he thought, but bank broke away and the tank rushed to the bottom of gravel and coarse vegetation with a roar. A geyser of dust rose.
Hoodoo's skirts dug into the ground, sealing the plenum chamber for an instant before the pressure rose enough to pop the tank up like a cork from a champagne bottle. The plume of debris followed the breeze upstream, settling and dissipating while the echoes of Lamartiere's ineptitude slowly faded.
"Befayt's people must think I'm an incompetent fool," Lamartiere muttered. "And they're right."
"What they think," Dr. Clargue replied with his usual dispassion, "is that the most powerful machine on Ambiorix is on their side. And they are indeed right."
Lamartiere revved his fans. He took Hoodoo slowly back up the slope until the cupola and its sensors peeked over crest to view the ford. Then he shut down again and studied the display.
"Doctor?" he said, wishing he could see Clargue's face as he spoke. "I'm going to try to bluff the Synod troops into thinking Hoodoo has her full armament. A 2cm round doesn't have anything like the power of the main gun, but it's no joke. I'm hoping if there's a big flash here, they'll think whatever hits them is from the 20cm gun."
"Ah," said Clargue, quick on the uptake as always. "So these little bombs Lieutenant Aghulan put in the compartment with me are to make the flashes. You want me to throw them out one at a time for you to detonate when you fire the tribarrel."
"That's right," said Lamartiere, "but you'll have to detonate them yourself when I call, 'Shoot'. Do you know how to use a clacker?"
"Of course I know how to use a clacker," Clargue said with frigid disdain. "I was born in Pamiers, was I not? But have you forgotten how to turn on the radios, Denis? The timing will be more accurate if you do both things yourself; and as for the remaining blasting caps, the transfer chamber for the big gun will provide a Faraday cage to shield them."
"Mother God," said Lamartiere in embarrassment. "Yes, Doctor, that's a much better idea. I'm very sorry."
He heard the cupola hatch open. "I've placed the first bomb," Clargue said mildly. "You have a great deal to think about, Denis. You are doing well."
I wish I were a million light-years away, Lamartiere thought as he concentrated on his displays. But he wasn't, and the rebellion would have to make do with him for want of better.
Hoodoo's sensors indicated the government battalion had halted on the reverse slope of the ridge north of the Lystra River. Their commander had the same problem as a hunter who thinks he's trapped a dangerous animal in a deep cave: the only way to be sure is to go straight in.
If the rebels were going to defend Pamiers, the ford was the obvious location. On the other hand they might well have drifted higher in the mountains, leaving behind booby traps and snipers instead of trying to stop a force they knew was unstoppable. That had generally been the case in the
past when the government focused its strength.
Besides, months of battering by government units supported by mercenaries had virtually eliminated the Mosites' ability to mass large forces of their own.
But now there was a tank, a devouring superweapon, which the rebels might have in operating condition. All the battalion from Ariege knew for sure was that they had been ordered to assault Pamiers and eliminate the stolen tank at all cost.
Lamartiere grinned despite himself as he considered his enemy's options. The government troops knew one other thing: they, and not the brass in Carcassone, would be paying that cost.
He could have felt sorry for them if he hadn't remembered the villages Synod troops had "cleansed" after a nearby ambush. Of course, there'd been the garrisons of overrun government bases left with their genitals sewn into their mouths. In the name of God. . . .
An 8-wheeled "tank" accelerated over the crest and bounced down the road to the crossing at too high a speed. The driver was afraid of a rebel ambush, but nothing the Mosites could do would be worse than flipping the 30-tonne vehicle to tumble sideways into the river.
The hidden rebels didn't respond.
The tank slowed, spraying gravel from its locked wheels. It pulled off the road at the end of a switchback and settled into a hull-down position from which its long 10cm coil gun could cover the crossing.
Three more tanks came into sight one after another, following the first without the initial panicked haste. They all took overwatch positions on the forward slope. They weren't well shielded—one of them was in a clump of spiny shrubs that wouldn't stop small arms, let alone a 20cm bolt—but at least there was psychological benefit for the crews.
The government tanks had good frontal protection and powerful electromotive guns that could throw either HE or long-rod tungsten armor-piercers. Local technology couldn't carry the gun, the armor, and the banks of capacitors which powered the weapon, on an air-cushion chassis of reasonable size, though.
The Slammers' 30-tonne combat cars, like their tanks, had miniaturized fusion powerplants. The Government of Ambiorix would have had to import fusion units at many times the cost of the gun vehicles as completed with locally manufactured diesels. The 8-wheeled chassis was probably the best compromise between economics and the terrain.
