by David Drake
The Consie sapper rose from his crouch, silhouetted by the flaming shed he'd just bombed. He carried a machine pistol in a harness of looped rope, so that the weapon swung at waist height. His right hand snatched at the grip.
"Lookie, Speed!" Platt cackled. "He's just as bald as you are! Lookie!"
"Lookie!" Riddle called. He threw up his arms and fell backward with the effort.
The machine pistol crackled like the main truss of a house giving way. Its tracers were bright orange, lovely orange, as they drew spirals from the muzzle. One of them ricocheted around the interior of the truck box, dazzling Riddle with its howling beauty. He sat up again.
"Beauty!" he cried. Platt was thrashing on his back. Air bubbled through the holes in his chest.
The machine pistol pointed at Riddle. Nothing happened. The sapper cursed and slapped a magazine into the butt-well to replace the one that had ejected automatically when the previous burst emptied it.
The Consie's body flung itself sideways, wrapped in cyan light as a powergun from one of the combat cars raked him. The fresh magazine exploded. A few tracers zipped crazily out of the flashing yellow ball of detonating propellant.
"Beauty," Steve Riddle repeated as he fell backward.
Platt's chest wheezed.
"—a medicomp when it bit 'em on the ass!"
Air from the medicomp wheezed in and out of Platt's nostrils.
"Screw you!" called a supply tech with shrapnel wounds in his upper body.
"Then get 'em over to the Yokel side!" Cooter said. "They got facilities. Look, I'm not lookin' for an argument: we're movin' out at sunset, and none of my able-bodied crew are stayin' to bloody screw around here. All right?"
"Yeah, all right. One a' the newbies had some training back home, he says." Rogers stood up and gave a pat to the sleeping Otski. "Hey, how long we gonna be out?"
"Don't bloody ask," Cooter grunted bitterly. "Denzil, where's your driver?"
The left wing gunner from Sergeant Wylde's blower turned his head—all the motion of which he was capable the way he was wrapped. "Strathclyde?" he said. His voice sounded all right. The medicomp kept his coverings flushed and cool with a bath of nutrient fluid. "Check over to One-one. He's got a buddy there."
"Yeah,well,One-five needs a driver,"Cooter explained."I'm going to put him on it."
Shorty Rogers looked up. "What happened to Darples on One-five?" he asked.
"Head shot. One a' the gunners took over last night, but I figure it makes sense to transfer Strathclyde for a regular thing."
"Cop," muttered Rogers. "I'll miss that snake." Then, "Don't mean nuthin'."
"Riddle!" Cooter snarled. "What the bloody hell are you doing still here? Get your ass moving, or you won't bloody have one!"
Riddle walked out of the medical tent. The direct sunlight made him sneeze, but he didn't really notice it.
Bright orange tracers, spiraling toward his chest.
He reached his combat car, Deathdealer. The iridium armor showed fresh scars. There was a burnished half-disk on the starboard wall of the fighting compartment—copper spurted out by a buzzbomb. The jet had cooled from a near-plasma here on the armor. Must've been the round that took out Otski . . . .
Riddle sat on the shaded side of the big vehicle.No one else was around.Cooter and Rogers had their own business. They wouldn't get here for hours.
Otski wouldn't be back at all. Never at all.
Bright orange tracers . . . .
Riddle took a small cone-shaped phial out of his side pocket. It was dull gray and had none of the identifying stripes that marked ordinary stim-cones, the ones that gave you a mild buzz without the aftereffects of alcohol.
He put the flat side of the cone against his neck, feeling for the carotid pulse. When he squeezed the cone, there was a tiny hiss and a skin-surface prickling.
Riddle began to giggle again.
Troops were moving about the Slammers' portion of the encampment in a much swifter and more directed fashion than they had been the afternoon before, when Dick Suilin first visited this northern end of Camp Progress.
The reporter glanced toward the bell—a section of rocket casing—hung on topof the Tactical Operations Center. Perhaps it had rung, unheard by him while he drove past the skeletons of National Army barracks . . .?
The warning signal merely swayed in the breeze that carried soot and soot smells even here, where few sappers had penetrated.
Suilin had figured the commo gear would be at the TOC, whether Captain Ranson was there or not. In the event, the black-haired female officer sat on the back ramp of the vehicle, facing three male soldiers who squatted before her.
She stood, thumping out her closing orders, as Suilin pulled up; the men rose a moment later. None of the group paid the local reporter any attention.
Suilin didn't recognize the men. One of them was fat, at least fifty standard years old, and wore a grease-stained khaki jumpsuit.
"No problem,Junebug,"he called as he turned away from the meeting."We'll be ready to lift—if we're left alone to get ready, all right? Keep the rest a' your people and their maintenance problems off my back—" he was striding off toward a parked tank, shouting his words over his shoulder "—and we'll be at capacity when you need us."
Suilin got out of his truck. They called their commanding officer Junebug?
"Yeah,well,"said another soldier,about twenty-five and an average sort of man in every way.He lifted his helmet to rub his scalp, then settled the ceramic/plastic pot again. "What do you want for a call sign? Charlie Three-zero all right?"
Ranson shook her head. "Negative. You're Blue Three," she said flatly.
Blue Three rubbed his scalp again. "Right,"he said in a cheerless voice. "Only you hear 'Charlie Three-zero,' don't have kittens, okay? I got a lot to learn."
He turned morosely, adding, "And you know, this kinda on-the-job training ain't real survivable."
Suilin stood by, waiting for the third male mercenary to go before he tried to borrow the Slammers' communications system to call Kohang.
Instead of leaving, the soldier turned and looked at the reporter with a disconcertingly slack-jawed, vacant-eyed stare. The green-brown eyes didn't seem to focus at all.
Captain Ranson's eyes followed her subordinate's.She said angrily, "Who the bloody hell are you?"
It wasn't the same face that Suilin had been interviewing the night before.
There were dark circles around Ranson's eyes, and her left cheek was badly scratched. Her face, her hands, and her neck down to the scallop where she'd been wearing armor were dingy with fouling spewed from the breeches of her tribarrel when jets of nitrogen expelled the empty cases.
Ranson had been angry at being forced into an interview. She'd known the power was in the reporter's hands: the power to probe for answers she didn't want to give; the power to twist questions so that they were hooks in the fabric of her self-esteem; the power to make a fool out of her, by the words he tricked her into saying—or the form into which he edited those words before he aired them.
Now . . .
Now Suilin wondered what had happened to Fritzi Dole's body. He was almost certain that this small, fierce mercenary wouldn't shoot a reporter out of hand to add to the casualty count, no matter how angry and frustrated she was now . . . .
"I'm, ah," he said, "Dick Suilin. I'm, ah, we met yesterday when the—"
"The reporter,"Ranson said."Right, the bloody fool who didn't know t' hit the dirt for incoming. The interview's off."
She started to turn. "Beat it," she added.
"It's not—"Suilin said."Captain Ranson,I need to talk to somebody in Kohang, and your commo may be the—"
"Buddy," said Ranson with a venom and disgust that shocked the reporter more than the content of the words did, "you must be out of your mind. Get out of here."
The other soldier continued to watch without expression.
"Captain, you don't understand," Suilin called to Ranson's back. "I need to make sure my sister'
s all right."
The woman bent to reenter the immobile command blower.
"Curse it! She's the wife of the District Governor. Now will you—"
Ranson turned. The reporter thought he'd seen her angry before.
"The District Governor," she repeated softly. "The District Bleeding Governor."
She walked toward Suilin. He poised, uncertain as to what the female officer intended.
She tapped him on the chest as she said, "Your brother-in-law doesn't have any balls, buddy." The tip of her index finger was like a mallet.
"Captain—"
"He's got a brigade of armor," Ranson continued, "and maybe ten battalions of infantry and gendarmes, according to the order of battle in my data banks."
She tapped even harder. Suilin backed a step. "But no balls a'tall."
The reporter set his leg to lock him into place. "Captain, you can't—"
Ranson slapped him, forehand and then back across the other cheek. Her fingers were as hard as the popper of a bullwhip. "And he's got an ass, so we're going to get our ass shot off to save his!"
She spun on her heel. "Sparrow, get him out of my sight," she called over her shoulder as she entered her TOC.
Suilin viewed the world through a blur of tears. Sparrow put a hand on his shoulder and turned him with a detached gentleness that felt like compassion to the reporter at the moment.
"S'okay, turtle," the mercenary said as he walked Suilin toward the truck he'd borrowed. "We just got orders to relieve the District Governor ourself, and we got bugger-all t' do it with."
"What?" the reporter said. "In Kohang?"
His right cheek burned,and his left felt as if someone had flayed the skin from it. He wondered if Ranson had been wearing a ring. "Who's relieving Kohang?"
Sparrow waved an arm as deliberately as a stump speaker gesturing. "You're lookin'at it,turtle,"he said."Three tanks, five cars . . . and maybe crews for most of 'em."
The veneer of careless apathy dropped away. Sparrow shivered. He was tall and thin with an olive complexion several shades darker than Suilin's own.
"Via," the mercenary muttered. "Via!"
Sparrow turned and walked, then trotted in a loose-limbed way toward the tank across the enclosure from the TOC. He climbed the shallow steps up its skirts and battered hull, then popped into the turret with the haste of a man boarding under fire.
The hatch clanged loudly behind him.
Dick Suilin sat in his truck, blinking to clear his eyes and mind. He started the vehicle and turned it in a tight circle, heading back toward National Army Headquarters.
His own gear had been destroyed in the firefight, but he thought the barracks in which Fritzi Doyle was billeted had survived. The cameraman had worn fatigues. One of his spare sets would fit Suilin well enough.
Fritzi wouldn't mind.
The corpse of a National Army sergeant was sprawled at the doorway of a bombed-out building. He'd thrown on a uniform shirt, but he had no shoes or trousers. His left arm was outstretched while his right was folded under his face as though cushioning it from the ground.
He'd been carrying a grenade launcher and a satchel of reloads for it. They lay beside his body.
Suilin stopped the truck, picked up the weapon and ammunition, and set the gear on the passenger seat. As an afterthought, he tried to lift the dead man. The body was stiff and had already begun to blacken in the bright sun.
Someone whose job it was would deal with the sergeant. Not Dick Suilin.
Suilin's hands felt slimy. He accelerated away, kicking gravel over the corpse in his haste to be shut of it.
"Blue One,"said Captain June Ranson,checking the artificial intelligence in her multi-function display. A digit on the holographic map blinked twice in yellow, then twice more in blue light when the transponder in Deathdealer answered the call automatically.
"Go ahead, Tootsie Six," said Sergeant Sparrow's voice.
"Linkage check," Ranson said. "Blue Two."
Deathdealer led the line-to-be, quivering on its fans just ahead of Ranson's Warmonger.
There wasn't enough room in the Slammers' end of the encampment to form up completely until the blowers started to move south, toward the gate. Sound, re-echoing from the berm and the sloped iridium sides of the vehicles, vibrated the flesh of everyone around.
Exclusion circuits in Ranson's commo helmet notched out as much of the fan's racket as possible, but the sound of multiple drive nacelles being run up to speed created an ambiance beyond the power of electronics to control.Airforced beneath the lips of eight plenum chambers picked up grit which ricocheted into standing waves where the currents from two or three blowers intersected.
Deathdealer's turret was already buttoned up. Nothing wrong with that—it'd be quieter inside, though the fan-driven chaos would penetrate even the massive iridium castings that stopped all but direct point-blank hits by the largest powerguns.
Ranson had never seen Birdie Sparrow man his tank from the open cupola. A tank's electronics were better than human senses, even when those senses were augmented by the AI and sensors in a commo helmet. The screens within a panzer's turret gave not only crisper definition on all the electro-optical bands but also gave multiple simultaneous options.
That information glut was one of the reasons most tank commanders chose to fight their vehicles from the cupola instead of the closed turret whenever possible.
It was difficult to get experienced crewmen to transfer from combat cars to the panzers, even though it usually meant promotion. Most tank commanders were promoted from driver, while the driver slots were filled by newbies with no previous combat experience in the Slammers.
Ranson had checked Birdie Sparrow's personnel file—this afternoon; she'd had no reason to call up the records from Central's database before . . . .
Before Colonel Hammer handed her command of a suicide mission.
Sparrow had five standard years, seven months, service with the Regiment.All but the training in the first three months had been in line companies, so there was no need to wonder how he handled combat: just fine or he wouldn't 've lasted out his fourth month. Hammer's Slammers weren't hired by people who needed them to polish their gear in barracks.
A few problems on stand-down; a more serious one with a platoon leader in the field that had cost Sparrow a pay-grade—but it was the lieutenant who'd been transferred back to Central and, after the discreet interval required for discipline, out of the Slammers. Sparrow had an excellent record and must have been in line for his own platoon—
Instead of which, he'd been sent down here to the quiet south for a little time off.
Junebug Ranson had an even better service record than Sparrow did.She knew curst well what she was doing down here at Camp Progress.
Task Force Ranson was real lucky to have a company commander as experienced as Junebug Ranson to lead the mission, and a tanker as good as Birdie Sparrow to head up the unit's tank element.
The trouble was, they were both bughouse bleeding crazy, and Ranson knew it.
It was her job to know it, and to compensate the best way she could.
"Roger, Tootsie Six,"said her helmet in the voice of Warrant Leader Ortnahme as the digit 2 flickered on the map display.
"Linkage check," responded Captain Ranson. "Blue Three."
Needs must, when the Devil drives.
"Cooter,"said Chief Lavel over the commo helmet's Channel 3.It was a lock-out push normally reserved for vehicle intercoms, so that even Tootsie Six couldn't overhear without making a point of it. "I found 'im. The sonuvabitch."
Flamethrower shuddered violently and began to skid as the tank to starboard ran up its fans to full pitch and thrust for a test.
The panzer's driver had his nacelles vertical,so the hundred and seventy tonnes of tank simply rose a hand's breadth off the ground. The air bleeding beneath the skirts was at firehose pressure, though; the smack of it pushed the lighter combat car away until Shorty Rogers grounded Flamethrower to
oppose the friction of steel on soil to the blast of wind.
Cooter keyed Channel 3 and said,"Can you get him here, Chief? We're gonna get the word any time now."
"Cooter," said his friend, "I think you better take a look at this one yourself."
Chief Lavel had been a gun captain. He knew about time and about movement orders; and he knew what he was saying.
"Cop!" Cooter swore. "He in his doss, then?"
The tank, the nameless one crewed by a couple newbies, settled back onto its skirts. The sergeant in the cupola looked down at Cooter. In formation, they'd be running well ahead of Flamethrower's Tailass Charlie slot.
"Negative," said Chief. "He's in his buddy's bunk—you know, Platt's? In the Logistics doss."
Night fell like an axe at Camp Progress. Except for the red blur on the western horizon, the sun had disappeared completely in the past three minutes.
Cooter switched his visor to enhancement and checked to make sure the nameless tank was between him and Tootsie Six, then cut back to standard optical.
Depth perception was never quite as good on enhanced mode. There were enough lights on in the encampment for Cooter to find his way to the Logistics bunker/barracks.
Cooter tapped the shoulder of Gale, the right wing gunner from Tootsie One-four, transferred to Flamethrower now that Otski and the other blower had both become casualties. Speaking on 12, the other lock-out push, to be heard over the fan noise, Cooter said, "Hold the fort, Windy. I'll be back in a couple minutes max."
"We'll be bloody gone in a couple minutes, Cooter," Gale replied.
He was an older man, nearly thirty; not a genius, but bright and competent enough that he'd 've had a blower of his own years before had he not adamantly refused the promotion.
"Yeah, well," Cooter said, climbing awkwardly past Speed Riddle's clamshell and helmet stacked in front of the left tribarrel. "We're last in line. Worst case, Shorty'll have to make up a little time."
Worst case, Captain Ranson would notice her second-in-command hadn't pulled out on time and would check Flamethrower's own sensors. If she found Cooter gone from his post now, she'd have him dragged behind a blower all the way back to Camp Progress as soon as the mission was over.