by David Drake
Moving in unison with a tank in the lead, the Slammers of Task Force Kuykendall howled off into the night. Their powerguns, main guns as well as tribarrels, lashed the Notch in an unmistakable farewell gesture. The sharp crack of the bolts and the dazzling actinics reflected back and forth between the Escarpment and the sheer face of the mesa.
For Des Grieux, the huge vehicles had a beauty like that of nothing else in existence. They skated lightly over the soil, gathering speed in imperceptible increments. Occasionally a skirt touched down and sparked, steel against shards of quartz. Then they were gone around the mesa, leaving the sharpness of ozone and the ghost-track of ionized air dissipating where a main gun had fired at the Hashemites.
Des Grieux felt a sudden emptiness; but it was too late now to change, and anyway, it didn't matter. He slid down into H271 and tried his gunnery controls again. Added weight resisted the turret motors briefly, but this time it was only gravel and smaller particles which could rearrange themselves easily.
The sight picture on H271's main screen rotated: off the blank wall of the butte and across open desert, to the Notch that marred the otherwise smooth profile of the Knifeblade Escarpment. Des Grieux raised the magnification. Plus twenty; plus forty, and he could see movement as Hashemites crawled forward, over rocks split and glazed by blue-white bolts, to see why the punishing fire had ceased; plus eighty—
A Hashemite wearing a turban and a dark blue jellaba swept the night with the image-intensifying sight of his back-pack missile.
He found nothing. Des Grieux stared at the Hashemite's bearded face until the man put down his sight and called his fellows forward. His optics were crude compared to those of H271, and the Hashemite didn't know where to look.
Des Grieux smiled grimly and shut down all his tank's systems. From now until he slammed home the main switch again, Des Grieux would wait in a silent iridium coffin.
It wasn't his turn. Yet. He raised his head through the cupola hatch and watched.
Because of the patient silence the Sincanmos had maintained, Des Grieux expected the next stage to occur in about half an hour. In fact, it was less than five minutes after the Slammers' armored vehicles had noisily departed the scene before one of the outposts switched the minefield controls to Self-destruct.Nearly a thousand charges went off simultaneously, any one of them able to destroy a 4x4 or cripple a tank.
An all-wheel drive truck laden with towel-heads lurched over the lip of the Notch and started for the plains below.
The locals on both sides were irregulars, but the Sincanmos in ambush had something concrete to await. All the Hashemite guards knew was that a disaster had occurred south of the Escarpment, and that they had themselves been released from a danger unguessed until the Slammers drove off through the night. They saw no reason to hold position, whatever their orders might be.
Three more trucks followed the first—a family battle group, organized like those of the Sincanmos. One of the vehicles towed a railgun on a four-wheeled carriage. The slope was a steep twenty percent. The railgun threatened to swing ahead every time the towing vehicle braked, but the last truck in the group held the weapons barrel with a drag line to prevent upset.
The Sincanmos did not react.
A dozen more trucks grunted into sight. H271's sensors could have placed and identified the vehicles while they were still hidden behind the lip of rock, but it didn't matter one way or the other to Des Grieux. Better to keep still, concealed even from sensors far more sophisticated than those available to the indigs.
More trucks. They poured out of the Notch, three and four abreast, as many as the narrow opening would accept. Forty, sixty—still more. The entire outpost was fleeing at its best speed.
The Hashemites must have argued violently. Should they go or stay? Was the blocking force really gone, or did it lurk on the other side of the butte, waiting to swing back into sight spewing blue fire?
But somebody was bound to run; and when that group seemed on the verge of successful escape, the others would follow as surely as day follows night.
There would be no day for most of this group of Hashemites. When their leading vehicles reached the bottom of the slope, the Sincanmos opened up with a devastating volley.
The two-kilometer range was too great for sidearms to be generally effective, though Des Grieux saw a bolt from a semiautomatic powergun—perhaps Chief Diabate's personal weapon—light up a truck cab. The vehicle went out of control and rolled sideways. Upholstery and the driver's garments were afire even before ammunition and fuel caught.
Mostly the ambush was work for the crew-served weapons. For the Sincanmo gunners, it was practice with live pop-up targets. Dozens of automatic cannon punched tracers into and through soft-skinned vehicles, leaving flames and torn flesh behind them. Mortars fired, mixing high explosive and incendiary bombs. Truck-mounted lasers cycled with low-frequency growls, igniting paint, tires, and cloth before sliding across the rock to new targets.
A pair of perfectly aimed bombardment rockets landed within the Notch itself, causing fires and secondary explosions among the tail end of the line of would-be escapees. The smooth, inclined surface of the Escarpment provided no concealment, no hope. Hashemites stood or ran, but they died in either case.
Des Grieux smiled like a sickle blade and pulled the hatch closed above him. He continued to watch through the vision blocks of the cupola.
Truckloads of Sincanmo troops drove up out of their concealment, heading for the loot and the writhing wounded scattered helplessly on the slope.
Have fun while you can, wogs, Des Grieux thought. Because you won't see the morning either.
Thirty-seven minutes after Chief Diabate sprang his ambush, Sincanmo troops in the Notch began firing southward. The shooters were the bands who'd penetrated farthest in their quest for loot and throats to cut. Other bright-robed irregulars were picking over the bodies and vehicles scattered along the slope. When the guns sounded, they looked up and began to jabber among themselves in search of a consensus.
Des Grieux watched through his vision blocks and waited. H271's fighting compartment was warm and muggy with the environmental system shut down, but a cold sweat of anticipation beaded the tanker's upper lip.
Half—apparently the junior half—of each Sincanmo battle group waited under camouflage film in the gullies to provide a base of fire for the looters. The Sincanmos were not so much undisciplined as self-willed, and they had a great deal of experience in hit-and-run guerrilla warfare.
The appearance of a well-prepared defense was deceptive, though. The heavy weapons that were effective at a two-kilometer range had expended much of their ammunition in the first engagement; and besides, the irregulars were about to find themselves out of their depth.
They were facing the first of the retreating Thunderbolt Division troops. The Thunderbolts weren't much; but they were professionals, and this lot had Luke Broglie with them . . . .
At first the Sincanmos in the Notch fired small arms at their unseen targets; automatic rifles pecked the night with short bursts. Then somebody got an abandoned Hashemite railgun working. The Notch lighted in quick pulses, the corona discharge from the weapon's generator. The crack crack crack of hyper-velocity slugs echoed viciously.
A blue-white dazzle outlined the rock surfaces of the Notch. A Legion tank destroyer kilometers away had put a 15cm bolt into the center of the captured outpost. Two seconds later the sound reached Des Grieux's ears, the glass-breaking crash as rock shattered under unendurable heat stresses.
Three Sincanmo survivors scampered down the Escarpment. One man's robe smoldered and left a fine trail of smoke behind him. The men were on foot, because their trucks fed the orange-red flames lighting the Notch behind them.
The Sincanmo irregulars had gotten their first lesson. A siren on Chief Diabate's 8x8 armored car, halfway up the slope, wound slowly from a groan to a wail. Exhaust blatted through open pipes as the indigs leaped aboard their vehicles and started the engines.
The first salvo howled from the Thunderbolt Division's makeshift redoubt to the southeast. The shells burst with bright orange flashes in the empty plains, causing no casualties. The Sincanmos were either in the gullies well north of the impact area or still on the slope, where the height of the Knifeblade Escarpment provided a wall against shells on simple ballistic trajectories.
Indig vehicles grunted downslope as members of their crews threw themselves aboard.Another four-tube salvo of high explosives truck near where the previous rounds had landed. One shell simply dug itself into the hard soil without going off. Casing fragments rang against the side of a truck, but none of the vehicles slowed or swerved.
The camouflage film fluttered as indigs in the gullies packed their belongings. The trucks were both cargo haulers and weapons platforms for the battlegroups. When the Sincanmos expected action, they cached non-essentials—food, water, tents, and bedding—beside the vehicles, then tossed them aboard again when it was time to leave.
Another round streaked across the Escarpment from the southwest. The Sincanmos ignored the shell because it didn't come within a kilometer of the ground at any point in its trajectory.
Broglie's Legion had a single six-gun battery, very well equipped as to weapons (self-propelled 210mm rocket howitzers) and the selection of shells those hogs launched. The battery's first response to the new threat was a reconnaissance round which provided real-time images through a laser link to Battery Fire Control.
Had Des Grieux powered up H271, his tribarrel in Automatic Air Defense mode could have slapped the spy shell down as soon as it sailed over the Escarpment. It was no part of the veteran's plan to give the tank's presence away so soon, however.
At least thirty guns from the Thunderbolt Division opened fire according to target data passed them by the Legion's fire control. Spurts of black smoke with orange hearts leaped like poplars among the Sincanmo positions, shredding camouflage film that had not deceived the Legion's recce package.
A truck blew up. Men were screaming. Vehicles racing back from the slope to load cached necessities skidded uncertainly as their crews wondered whether or not to drive into the shellbursts ahead of them.
The Legion's howitzers ripped out a perfect Battery Three, three shells per gun launched within a total of ten seconds. They were firecracker rounds. The casings popped high in the air, loosing approximately 7,500 bomblets to drift down on the Sincanmo forces.
For the most part, the Sincanmo looters under Chief Diabate didn't know what hit them. A blanket of white fire fell over the vehicles which milled across the plain for fear of Thunderbolt shells. Thousands of bomblets exploded with a ripping sound that seemed to go on forever.
For those in the broad impact zone, it was forever. Smoke and dust lifted over the soil when the explosive light ceased. A dozen Sincanmo vehicles were ablaze; more crashed and ignited in the following seconds. Only a handful of trucks were under conscious control, though run-while-flat tires let many of the vehicles careen across the landscape with their crews flayed to the bone by glass-filament shrapnel.
Fuel and munitions exploded as the Thunderbolt Division continued to pound the gully positions.A pair of heavy caliber shells landed near H271, but they were overs—no cause for concern. The indigs dying all across the plain provided a perfect stalking horse for the tank in ambush.
Chief Diabate's armored car—the only vehicle in the Sincanmo force with real armor—had come through the barrage unscathed. It wallowed toward the eastern flank of the butte with its siren summoning survivors from the gullies to follow it to safety. Sincanmo 4x4s lurched through the remnants of the camouflage film, abandoning their cached supplies to the needs of the moment.
Sparks and rock fragments sprang up before and beside the armored car. Diabate's driver swerved, but not far enough: a second three-round burst punched through the car's thin armor. A yellow flash lifted the turret, but the vehicle continued to roll on inertia until a larger explosion blew the remainder of the car and crew into pieces no larger than a man's hand.
Leading elements of the Thunderbolt Division had reached the Notch. One of them was a fire-support vehicle, a burst-capable 90mm gun on a half-tracked chassis. The gun continued to fire, switching from solid shot to high explosive as it picked its targets among the fleeing Sincanmo trucks. Other mercenary vehicles, primarily armored personnel carriers with additional troops riding on their roofs, crawled through the Notch and descended the slope littered by the bodies of indigs locked in the embrace of death.
It was getting to be time. Des Grieux closed his main power switch.
H271's screens came alive and bathed the fighting compartment with their light. Des Grieux lifted his commo helmet, ran his fingers through his close-cropped hair, and lowered the helmet again. He took the twin joysticks of the gunnery controls in his hands.
"Booster,"Des Grieux said to the tank's artificial intelligence. "On Screen One, gimme vehicles on a four-kay by one strip aligned with the main gun."
The topographic map of the main battle area flicked out and returned as a narrow holographic slice centered on the Notch. The APCs and other vehicles already north of the Knifeblade Escarpment were sharp symbols that crawled down the holographic slope toward—unbeknownst to themselves—H271 waiting at the bottom of the display.
The symbols of vehicles on the other side of the sandstone wall were hollow, indicating the AI had to extrapolate from untrustworthy data. The electronics, pumps, and even ignition systems of Thunderbolt and Hashemite trucks had individual radio-frequency spectrum signatures which H271's sensor suite could read. Precise location and assignment was impossible at a four-kilometer range beyond an intervening mass of sandstone, however.
One vehicle was marked with orange precision: the Legion tank destroyer which had huffed itself to within five hundred meters of the Notch. The tank destroyer's tribarrel licked skyward frequently to keep shells from decimating the retreating forces. The lines of cyan fire, transposed onto the terrain map in the tank's data base, provided H271 with a precise location for the oncoming vehicle. The other two tank destroyers were at the very top of the display, where they acted as rear guard against the Slammers.
They would come in good time. As for the closest of the three—it would have been nice to take out the tank destroyer with the first bolt, the round that unmasked H271, but that wasn't necessary. Waiting for the Legion vehicle to rise into range would mean sparing some of the half-tracks that drove off the slope and disappeared into swales concealed from the tank.
Des Grieux didn't intend to spare anything that moved this night.
The gunnery screen shrank in scale as it incorporated both orange pippers, the solid dot that marked the tribarrels target—the leading APC, covered by the flowing robes of a score of Hashemites riding on top of it—and the main gun's hollow circle, centered at the turret/hill junction on the fire-support vehicle which still, from its vantage point in the Notch, covered the retreat.
Des Grieux fired both weapons together.
It took a dozen rounds from the tribarrel before the carrier blew up. By then, the screaming Hashemite riders were torches flopping over the rocks.
The main gun's 20cm bolt vaporized several square meters of the fire-support vehicle's armor. Ammunition the Thunderbolts hadn't expended on Sincanmo targets were sufficient to blow a passing APC against the far wall of the Notch; the crumpled wreckage then slid forward, down the slope, shedding parts and flames.
Nothing remained of the fire-support vehicle except its axles and wheels, stripped of their tires.
Des Grieux left his main gun pointed as it was. He worked the tribarrel up the line of easy targets against the slanted rock, giving each half-track the number of cyan bolts required to detonate its fuel, its on-board ammunition, or both. Secondary explosions leaped onto the slope like the footprints of a fire giant.
Nothing more came through the Notch after the 20cm bolt ripped it, but Screen #1 showed the Legion tank destroyer accelerating
at its best speed to reach a firing position.
Des Grieux's face was terrible in its joy.
So long as H271 was shut down and covered by broken rock, it was virtually undetectable. When Des Grieux opened fire, anybody but a blind man could call artillery in on the tank's position. A number of Thunderbolt Division personnel survived long enough to do just that.
Four HE shells landed between ten and fifty meters of H271 as Des Grieux walked 2cm bolts across an open-topped supply truck with armored sides. His sight picture vanished for a moment in the spouting explosions. A fifth round struck in a scatter of gravel well up the side of the mesa. It brought down a minor rockslide, but no significant chunks landed near the tank.
Des Grieux ignored the artillery because he didn't have any choice. He'd ignited alleight of the supplytruck's low-side tires with the initial burst. When the debris of the shellbursts cleared, the vehicle was toppling sideways. Its cargo compartment was full of wounded troops who screamed as they went over.
Twenty or thirty shells landed within a dozen seconds.A few of the Thunderbolt gun crews had switched to armor piercing, but none of those rounds scored a direct hit on the tank. A heavy shell burst on H271's rock-covered back deck. The shock made all the displays quiver. The air of the fighting compartment filled with dust shaken from every minute crevice.
Screen #1 showed the Legion tank destroyer's orange symbol entering the Notch from the south side. The heavy vehicle had collided with several Thunderbolt Division APCs in its haste to reach a position from which it could fire at the Slammers' tank.
Des Grieux slapped the plate that set his tribarrel on Automatic Air Defense. He said in a sharp,clear voice,"Booster,sort incoming from the southeast first," as his foot poised on the firing pedal for the main gun.
The 20cm weapon was already aligned. The eighty-times magnified tube of the tank destroyer's gun slid into the hollow circle on Screen #2. More shells burst near H271, but not very near, and the tribarrel was already snarling skyward at the anti-tank rounds which the Legion battery hurled.