by David Drake
Except for the last cubicle, where Speed Riddle lay sprawled on a cot with a broad smile. The balding gunner had fouled himself thoroughly enough that waste was dripping from his pants leg onto the floor.
Riddle's fingers held a drug phial. Two more empties lay beside his hand.
Cooter stared at the gunner for several seconds. Then he turned around and strode back down the aisle.
His helmet brushed the glowstrip. He punched upward with his knotted right fist, banging the flat fixture against the ceiling of steel plank and causing grit to drift down through the perforations from the sandbagged top cover.
"Coot!" Lavel called, stumping along behind him. "Hey Coot. Slow down."
"Chief," Cooter said without slowing or turning, "I want that bastard tied up until he can be delivered to Central.With wire.Barbed wire'd be fine.Somethin' happens to me, you take care of the Court Martial, right?"
The end of Lavel's long crutch shot across the doorway, blocking Cooter's exit. " Wait a bloody minute!" Chief said.
Lavel was leaning against the right wall. The crutch was strapped to his stump, since he didn't have a left hand with which to grip it. He lowered it, a slim wand of boron monocrystal, when Cooter turned at last to face him.
"Going to use one of the newbies in Riddle's place?" he asked.
Cooter shook his head violently, as much to clear it as for a gesture. "Put the last one I could trust on One-five for a driver," he said. "I'll be better off watching that side myself than trusting some hick who's still got both thumbs up his ass."
"Take me, Cooter," said Chief Lavel.
Cooter looked at his friend with a cold lack of passion. Chief was so tall that he also had to duck to clear the ceiling. His shoulders were massive. Lavel had been thin when he was a whole man, but the inertia of his years of injury gave him a grotesque pot belly.
"Please, Coot," he said. "You won't regret it."
"I need you here, Chief," Cooter said as he turned. "You take care of Riddle, you hear?"
" Coot? "
"Gotta go now," Cooter muttered as he took both steps to the exterior with one stretch of his long, powerful legs.
The armored vehicles were snorting, running up the speed of their fans again; and, as Cooter strode toward Flamethrower, a tank fired its main gun skyward.
There were too bloody many vehicles in too little space, and the bloody drivers had too much on their minds.
A combat car was drifting toward Herman's Whore. The lighter vehicle was already so close that Ortnahme had to crank down his display to read the number stenciled on its skirts. "Tootsie One-two!" he snarled. "You're fouling—"
The tank lurched. For an instant, Ortnahme thought Simkins was trying to back away from the oncoming car. That wouldn't work, because Herman's Whore had rotated in place and her skirts were firmly against the berm.
"—us, you dickheaded—"
The man in the fighting compartment of Tootsie One-two turned, his face a ball of blank wonder as he stared at the tank looming above him. He was probably gabbling to his driver over the intercom, but there was no longer time to avoid the collision. The skirts of both vehicles were thick steel, but the combined mass would start seams for sure.
"—fool! Watch your—"
The bow of Herman's Whore lifted slightly. Simkins had run up his fans and vectored them forward. The tank couldn't slide backward because of the berm, so its bow skirts blasted a shrieking hurricane of air into the combat car.
Tootsie One-two, Flamethrower, pitched as though it had just dropped into a gully. The trooper in the fighting compartment bounced off the coaming before he could brace himself on the grips of two of the tribarrels.
Why in blazes was there only one man in the back of Flamethrower when the task force was set to move out?
The combat car slid two meters under the thrust of the tank's fans before Shorty Rogers dumped his own ground effect and sparked to a halt on bits of gravel in the soil.
The figure in the fighting compartment stood up again and gave Herman's Whore an ironic salute. "Blue Two," said Ortnahme's helmet. "Sorry 'bout that."
"Tootsie One-two," the warrant leader responded. He felt expansive and relieved, now that he was sure they wouldn't be deadlined at the last instant by a stupid mistake. "No harm done. It's prob'ly my bloody fault for not seeing your nacelles were aligned right when we had time to screw with 'em."
Herman's Whore settled, a little abruptly. Their skirts gave the ground a tap that rattled Ortnahme's teeth and probably cut a centimeter-deep oval in the hard soil.
"Simkins—"the warrant leader began, the word tripping the helmet's artificial intelligence to intercom mode.
"Sir, I'm sorry," his driver was already blurting. "I let the sucker—"
"Blood'n martyrs,Simkins,"Ortnahme interrupted,"don't worry about that! Where dja learn that little maneuver, anyhow?"
"Huh?" said the helmet. "Sir, it was just, you know, the leverage off the berm . . .?"
He sounded like he thought Ortnahme was gonna chew his head off. Which had happened maybe a little too often in the past . . . but bloody hell, you had t' break 'em in the start . . . .
"Sir?" Simkins added in a little voice.
"Yeah?"
"Sir, I really like tanks. D'ye suppose that—"
"Like bloody hell!"the warrant leader snapped."Look,kid,you're more good to me and Colonel Hammer right where you bloody are!"
"Yes sir."
Which, come t' think about it, was driving a panzer. Well, there'd be time t' worry about that later.
Or there wouldn't.
The turret interior had darkened as the sky did,because the main screen was set on direct optical. Ortnahme frowned, then set the unit for progressive enhancement, projecting images at sixty percent of average daylight ambiance.
The visual display brightened suddenly, though the edges of the snarling armored vehicles lacked a little of the definition they would have had in unaided sunlight.No matter what the sky did—sun, moons, or the Second Coming—the main screen would continue to display at this apparent light level until Ortnahme changed its orders.
Henk Ortnahme knew tanks. He knew their systems backward and forward, better than almost any of the panzers' regular crews.
Line troops found a few things that worked for them. Each man used his handful of sensor and gunnery techniques, ignoring the remainder of his vehicle's incredibly versatile menu. You don't fool around when your life depends on doing instinctively something that works for you.
The maintenance chief had to be sure that everything worked, every time. He'd spent twenty years of playing with systems that most everybody else forgot. He could run the screens and sensors by reflex and instantly critique the performance of each black box.
What the warrant leader hadn't had for those twenty years was combat experience . . . .
"Sir," said the helmet. "Ah, when are we supposed to pull out?"
A bloody stupid question.
Sunset,and Simkins could see as well as Ortnahme that it was sunset plus seven. Captain Ranson had said departure time would be coordinated by Central, so probably the only people who knew why Task Force Ranson was on hold were a thousand kilometers north of—
Screen Two, which in default mode—as now—was bore sighted to the main gun, flashed the orange warning director control. As the letters appeared, the turret of Herman's Whore began to rotate without any input from Warrant Leader Ortnahme.
The turret was being run by Fire Central, at Headquarters. Henk Ortnahme had no more to say about the situation than he did regarding any other orders emanating directly from Colonel Hammer.
"Sir?" Simkins blurted over the intercom.
"Blue Two—" demanded at least two other vehicles simultaneously, alerted by the squealing turret and rightly concerned about what the hell was going on. Screwing around with a tank's main gun in these close quarters wasn't just a bad idea.
"Simkins," Ortnahme said. His fingers stabbed buttons. "It's
all right. The computer up in Purple's just took over."
As he spoke, Ortnahme set his gunnery screen to echo on Screen Three of the other tanks and the multi-function displays with which the combat cars made do. That'd answer their question better 'n anything he could say—
And besides, he was busy figuring out what Central thought it was doing with his tank.
The warrant leader couldn't countermand the orders coming from Firebase Purple, but he could ask his own artificial intelligence to tell him what firing solution was being fed to it. Screen Three obligingly threw up the figures for azimuth, elevation, and range.
"Blood 'n martyrs," Henk Ortnahme whispered.
Now he knew why the departure of Task Force Ranson had been delayed.
They had to wait for the Terran World Government's recce satellite to come over the horizon—
Herman's Whore fired its main gun; cyan lightning and a thunderclap through the open hatch, a blast of foul gases within the turret.
—so they could shoot it down.
The unexpected bolt didn't blind Cooter because his visor reacted in microseconds to block the intense glare.The shock stunned him for a moment anyway; then the big man began to run through the mass of restive vehicles.
A tank— Deathdealer ,Blue One—slid forward.When the big blower was clear, entering the Yokel area between the demolished shed and a whole one, Captain Ranson's Warmonger fell in behind it. It was as though the echoing blast from Herman's Whore had triggered an iridium avalanche.
The third vehicle, another combat car,sidled up to the line of departure.That'd be One-five, its driver a newbie on whom Cooter had decided to take a chance. The fellow was matching his blower's speed to that of the leading vehicles, but he had his bow pointing 30°° off the axis of motion.
Some dickhead Yokel had parked a light truck just inside the Slammer's area. One-five's tail skirts managed to tap the little vehicle and send it spinning halfway up the berm, a graphic illustration of the difference between a tonne at rest and thirty tonnes in motion.
Cooter reached his car panting with exertion, anger, and a relieved awareness of how bloody near that asshole Riddle had made him cut it. One-one was already pulling into line for the run through Camp Progress, though the second and third combat cars would spread left and right as outriders as soon as they left the gate.
A Yokel wearing fatigues cut for somebody shorter put a hand on Cooter's shoulder as he set his foot on Flamethrower's skirt. The fellow carried a slung grenade launcher, a kitbag, and a satchel of ammunition.
Cooter had never seen him before.
"Who the hell are you?" he snarled over the fans' intake howl. The skirts were quivering with repressed violence, and the nameless Blue Three was already headed into the Yokel compound.
"I'm Dick," the fellow shouted. "From last night. Lieutenant, can you use a grenadier for this run?"
Cooter stared at him a second, five seconds . . . ten. One-six was pulling out . . . .
"You bet your ass I can, turtle," Cooter said. "Welcome aboard!"
Chapter Six
The upper half of June Ranson's visor showed a light-enhanced view of her surroundings. It flicked from side to side as her head bobbed in the nervous-pigeon motions of somebody with more things to worry about than any human being could handle.
Deathdealer led the column. Even from 200 meters ahead, the wake of the tank's vast passage rocked Warmonger's own considerable mass. Willens was driving slightly left of the center of Deathdealer's track, avoiding some of the turbulence and giving himself a better direct view forward. It raised the danger from mines, though; the tank would set off anything before the combat car reached it, if their tracks were identical . . . .
She let it go for now. The roadway between Camp Progress and the civilian settlement over the ridge had been cleared in the fighting the night before.
Stolley had his tribarrel cocked forward, parallel to the car's axis of motion instead of sweeping the quadrant to the left side like he ought to. Stolley figured—and they all figured, Junebug Ranson as sure as her wing gunner—that first crack at any Consies hereabouts would come from the front.
But a ninety percent certainty meant one time in ten you were dead. Deathdealer and the bow gunner, June Ranson, could handle the front. Stolley's job—
Ranson put her fingers on the top barrel of Stolley's weapon, well ahead of the mounting post, and pushed.
The wing gunner's hands tightened on the grips for a moment before he relaxed with a curse that he didn't even try to muffle. The gun muzzles swung outward in the direction they ought to be pointed.
Stolley stared at his commanding officer. His face was a reflecting ball behind his lowered visor.
"If you don't like your job,"Ranson said,speaking over the wind noise instead of using intercom, "I can arrange for you to drive. Another blower."
Stolley crouched behind his gun, staring into the night.
Ranson nodded in approval of the words she'd been listening to, the words coming from her mouth. Good command technique—under the circumstances, under field conditions where it was more important to be obeyed than to be liked. This crew wasn't going to like its blower captain anyway . . . but they'd obey.
Ranson shook her head violently. She wasn't an observer, watching a holographic record from command school on Friesland. She was . . .
The images on the lower half of her visor wobbled at a rate different from that of the combat car and didn't change when Ranson darted her head to the left or right. She'd slaved its display to that of the sensors on Deathdealer in the lead. The tank's intakes sucked the tops of low bushes toward her from the roadside. Then, as Deathdealer came alongside, the air leaking beneath her skirts battered them away.
Moments later, Warmonger swept by the bushes. The top of Ranson's visor repeated the images of the lower section as if on a five-second delay.
Ranson shook her head again. It didn't help.
By an emergency regulation—which had been in place for fourteen years—there were to be no private structures within two kilometers of a military base. Colonel Banyussuf had enforced that reg pretty stringently. There'd been drink kiosks all along the road to within a hundred meters of the gate, but they were daylight use only.
Since the panzers swept through the night before, nothing remained of the flimsy stands but splinters and ash that swirled to the passage of Task Force Ranson.
Permanent civilian dwellings, more serious entertainment—whores, hard drugs,gambling—as well as the goods and services you'd normally find in a town the size of Camp Progress, were in Happy Days. That settlement was just over the ridge the road climbed as it ran southeast from the camp. Technically, Happy Days was within the two-kilometer interdict; but out of sight, out of mind.
Being over the ridge meant line-of-sight bolts from the Slammers' powerguns wouldn't 've hurt the civilians. The National Army might 've dropped some indirect fire on Happy Days during the fighting, but Ranson doubted the Yokels had been that organized.
Janacek had taped a red-patterned bandanna to the lower rear edge of his commo helmet. At rest, it kept sun from the back of his neck, but when the car was moving, it popped and fluttered like a miniature flag.
When Task Force Ranson got beyond the settlement, they could open their formation and race cross-country through the night; but the only practical place to cross the wooded ridge was where the road did.
There were probably Consies hidden among the civilians of Happy Days. One of them might try a shot as the armored vehicles howled past . . . .
The lead tank crested the rise in a cloud of as hand charredwood.There'd been groves of mighty trees to either side of the road. Panels of bright silk strung from trunk to trunk sectioned the copses into open-air brothels in fine weather.
Before. During the previous night, return fire and the backblasts of bombardment rockets had torched the trees into ash and memories. That permitted Deathdealer's driver to swing abruptly to the right, off the
roadway and any weapons targeted on it, just before coming into sight of Happy Days.
Debris momentarily blanked the lower half of Ranson's visor. It cleared with a view of the settlement. The ground across the ridge dropped away more steeply than on the side facing Camp Progress, so the nearest of the one-and two-story houses were several hundred meters away where the terrain flattened.
Happy Days was a ghost town.
Deathdealer was proceeding at forty kph, fractionally slower than her speed a few moments before. Warmonger started to close the 200-meter separation, but Willens throttled back and swung to the left of the road as the combat car topped the rise. Ranson's left hand switched her visor off remote; her right was firm on the tribarrel's grip.
Happy Days hadn't been damaged in the previous night's fighting. The buildings crowded the stakes marking the twenty-meter right of way, but their walls didn't encroach—another regulation Banyussuf had enforced, with bulldozers when necessary.
Half the width was road surface which had been stabilized with a plasticizer, then pressure-treated. The lead tank slipped down the incline on the right shoulder behind a huge cloud of dust.
Nothing moved in the settlement.
A few of the structures were concrete prefabs, but most were built of laths covered with enameled metal. Uncut sheets already imprinted with the logos of soups or beers gleamed in an array more colorful than that of a race course. Behind the buildings themselves, fabric barriers enclosed yards in which further business could be conducted in the open air.
The lead tank was almost between the rows of buildings. Ranson's visor caught and highlighted movement of the barred window of a popular knocking-shop across the street and near the far end of the strip. She switched her display to thermal.
Stolley swung his tribarrel toward the motion.
"No!" June Ranson shouted.
The wing gunner's short burst snapped through the air like a single streak of cyan,past Deathdealer and into a white coruscance as the window's iron grillwork burned at the impacts.