by David Drake
Fencing Master followed into a surge of heat with occasional prickles where sparks found bare skin. It was like being in a swamp full of biting insects, frustrating and unpleasant but not life-threatening, not unless you let it drive the real dangers out of your mind. Beyond the first obstacle was what had been a glade and now was so many vertical pillars of flame; they drove through that also. In another thirty seconds, it would be time.
Huber kept his attention on the C&C display, pretending to ignore the distortions that flying debris threw across the holographic imagery. The Solace headquarters group, twelve vehicles armed with only light weapons, left the slope. The second wave was mostly across the Salamanca, and the first was nearing—
The flicker of a plasma bolt through gaps in the blazing forest could’ve been overlooked, but the zzt! of RF interference through the commo helmet was familiar to any veteran. A moment later a column of burning hydrocarbon fuel mushroomed from the other side of the ridge, vividly orange and much brighter than the smoky red flames of the well-watered forest.
One of the Slammers infantry had fired his 2-cm weapon into an armored car, picking his spot. At point blank range the powerful bolt had burst the car’s fuel tank and turned the vehicle into a firebomb. Huber hoped the shooter hadn’t been caught in his own secondary explosion, but he had more important concerns just now.
“Fox elements, do not engage!” he shouted. “Hold in your attack positions! Do not—”
Though the combat cars weren’t back to their start positions, Huber was afraid that one or more of his vehicle commanders would react to the shooting across the crest by piling into it instantly. That was a good general response for any trooper in the Regiment, but right now timing would be the difference between survival and not.
“—cross the ridgeline!”
At least a hundred 3-cm powerguns fired at or over the quarter kilometer of hillcrest which was already scarred and glazed by previous bolts. The lighter crack! of infantry weapons was lost in the roar of cannons volleying at where the gunners thought the enemy must be. Another fuel tank detonated, lifting ten square meters of glass-cored aluminum armor with it; the magazine explosion a heartbeat later burned so vividly cyan that the light seemed to seep through solid rock.
Fencing Master reached its start position and rotated ninety degrees counterclockwise, putting its bow to the ridgeline and the enemy. Flames licked up behind and beside the car, but the trees close by had been burned and blasted into a bed of coals rather than towers that might topple.
The Solace cavalrymen were shouting over at least six channels. Huber’d set his C&C box to give him a graph of the number of Solace transmissions. He could’ve listened to them as well—most of the hostiles were too panicked to bother with encryption—but Huber already knew what they’d be saying: “Help!” and “Where?” and “You’re shooting at us, you idiots! Cease fire!”
Especially “Cease fire!” from the armored cars on the south slope who knew there was nobody on the ridge immediately above them. Therefore the shots that’d destroyed their fellows had to be bolts misaimed by the cars blazing away from across the river.
The storm of bolts fired at empty rock slowed, then ceased. Apart from anything else, the Solace cars must’ve exhausted their ready magazines and heated their guns dangerously hot by sustained fire. The squadron commander would be starting to reassert control; in a moment somebody would realize how the leading wave had been ambushed.
“Fox elements …” ordered Arne Huber as his hands settled on his tribarrel’s familiar grips. “Charge! Take ’em out, troopers!”
Fencing Master lifted with the ease of a balloon slipping its tether. By judicious adjustment of nacelle angles Padova kept the hull nearly horizontal despite the slope, so that all three tribarrels came over the ridge together.
Huber squeezed his trigger as his muzzles aligned with an armored car on the opposite ridgeline, its twin guns glowing white. Huber’s burst walked down the barbette and blew the glacis plate inward. Fire and black smoke burst from the car’s seams; the hull settled into the plenum chamber and began to burn.
Huber’s faceshield careted his next target, also an overwatching armored car, but before he could fire it blew up on the skewer of Learoyd’s gun. There’d been more Solace vehicles on the far ridge than there were tribarrels in Huber’s two understrength platoons, but the combat cars had destroyed both their primary and secondary targets without taking a single additional casualty. Some of the Solace cannon had burst in vivid rainbows even before Huber counterattacked; they’d been fired so fast and so often that the overheated bores finally gave way.
The timing worked the way Huber’d hoped and prayed. The Solace gunners, confused and half-disarmed by the number of rounds they’d fired into emptiness, couldn’t react to the sudden appearance of real targets; and the Slammers didn’t miss.
Fencing Master continued forward and over the hill. An armored car was stalled ten meters ahead, its guns traversed to the right. The gunner had tried to reply to the pair of troopers with shoulder weapons lying belly-down on the slope as they blew holes in the thin-walled plenum chamber. The vehicle’s cannon couldn’t depress low enough to hit them, and the five Solace infantrymen who’d leaped out of the rear compartment lay in a bloody tangle just beyond the hatch. This close, a 2-cm bolt vaporized a human torso and flung the head and limbs in separate parabolas.
Huber put a three-round burst into the car’s barbette; 3-cm ammunition in the loading tray gang-fired, devouring the breeches and mountings.
The cannon barrels tilted down. He didn’t bother firing into the hull. The Solace driver and gunner might well be unharmed, but they were no longer a danger to the task force.
Arne Huber didn’t kill people for pleasure: that was simply an aspect of his business.
His faceshield careted the smoke-shrouded net of air roots supporting a copse of thin trunks. He didn’t see a target—maybe he would’ve in infrared—but he mashed his trigger with both thumbs. His chain of cyan bolts reached out, spinning eddies in the white haze. A Solace armored car drove out, its hatches blown open and spewing oily black smoke. Huber’s nose filters were in place, but he nonetheless smelled cooking flesh as Fencing Master passed downwind of the target.
The smoke grew thicker. He switched from normal optics to thermal imaging.
An armored car stood broadside and motionless; had its crew already bailed out, hoping to be ignored and to survive? The AI called the vehicle a target, so Huber’s bolts punched at the forward compartment until something shorted and the car started to burn.
A man in a black Solace uniform ran in front of Fencing Master. Huber didn’t shoot him but somebody did, a single bolt; probably an infantryman who didn’t see any reason to quit just because the combat cars had joined the fight. Vehicles blew up, some of them so violently that the smoke now covering the valley surged and rippled like a pond in a hailstorm.
Fencing Master reached the river, its bank broken down by the armored cars which had recently crossed. At least a dozen were burning in the water or just beyond it. Huber’s faceshield cued the far slope. He elevated his tribarrel, noticing that the muzzles glowed white though he’d been trying to keep his bursts short.
Some of the Solace Command vehicles were trying to escape. They couldn’t be allowed to. This battle had been a victory for Task Force Huber by anybody’s standards, but the fragments of the Solace squadron were still sufficient to do serious damage to the artillery vehicles if anybody got them organized.
Fencing Master plunged into the Salamanca, bucking forward in a rainbow of mist. Even drops of water could dissipate a powergun’s jet of plasma. Huber waited for the car to lift, concurrently flattening the curtain of spray, before he squeezed the trigger.
His burst struck the squared rear end of a communications van. The plating was so thin that the second round ignited the interior through the hole the first had blown; the three bolts that followed were probably overkill.
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nbsp; There was still shooting, some of it probably at real targets, but Huber’s faceshield didn’t highlight anything for his gun. Strung out to the right of the commo van, other headquarters vehicles belched smoke and flame. Tribarrels had ripped them open even more easily than they did the armored cars.
Via! That one was an ambulance. Well, worse things happen in wartime….
“X-Ray elements, proceed across the ford at your best speed,” Huber ordered. He was panting and for a moment his vision blurred. “Fox Three elements, take overwatch positions on the north ridge. Fox Two elements, wait on the south side and escort X-Ray. India elements, recover to the X-Ray vehicles and mount up. You did a hell of a job.”
Fencing Master swerved right, then left, to avoid a pair of burning vehicles. Something whumped inside one; a crimson geyser blew debris out of the driver’s hatch. It would’ve been attractive in its way if Huber hadn’t realized the tumbling object was a shriveled human hand.
“Via, troopers …” he said, looking back across the valley as his combat car swung into position on the crest. Despite the filters, his eyes watered and the back of his throat felt raw. “We all did a hell of a job! Six out.”
Smoke, gray and becoming black, blanketed the ford. In some places it bubbled above a particular vehicle, but for the most part it hung silently. Because Huber’s faceshield was still set for thermal imaging, he could see through the pall to the wreckage littering the valley. The smoke would make a good screen against sniping by Solace survivors, in the unlikely event that any of those survivors wanted to continue the battle.
The tank recovery vehicle carrying the excavator in its bed grunted over the south crest and drove slowly into the smoke. It was the first of the X-Ray units, but a hog was close behind and then two ammo haulers. Infantry swung aboard the big vehicles, dragging their skimmers up behind them.
Tribarrels continued to snarl, and once Huber thought he heard the sharp hiss of a Solace rocket gun. The ford wasn’t perfectly safe, but this was a war and nothing was perfect. Better to run the noncombat vehicles through immediately than wait to completely clear the area and give the enemy time to respond.
Huber eyed the flame-shot wasteland again. “A hell of a job,” he repeated.
And a job of Hell.
“Six, this is Three-five,” reported Sergeant Tranter; he was pulling drag on this leg of the run, while Fencing Master was in the center of the column between a pair of ammo haulers. “We’ve got three aircars incoming just like planned, all copacetic. Three-five over.”
Huber examined the data from Fancy Pants on his C&C box. Three-five’s sensors had picked up the aircars while they were still over the southern horizon. Their identification transponders indicated they were the resupply mission which Central’s transmission had said to expect, and they were within ninety seconds—early—of the estimated time of arrival, but still …
“Highball elements,” Huber said, “we’ll laager for ammo resupply for ten minutes at point—”
The AI threw up an option, a knob half a klick ahead and close to the planned route. It wasn’t quite bald, but the trees there were stunted and would allow the tribarrels enough range for air defense.
“—Victor Tango Four-one-two, Five-five-one. Take your guns off automatic but keep alert. The wogs could’ve captured aircars with the IFF transponders and they might just’ve gotten lucky on the timing. Six out.”
Fencing Master bumped a tree hard enough to throw those in the fighting compartment forward. Padova’d gotten over the reflex of growling every time the driver—Deseau was in front at the moment—didn’t meet her standards, but this one made her wince.
“It’ll be good to stand on the ground again,” Padova said, bending forward to massage her calf muscles. She looked up at Huber in concern. “Ah—we will be dismounting, won’t we?”
“We’ll have to,” Huber said, forcing himself to grin. “Those ammo boxes aren’t going to fly out of the aircars. We’ll be humping ’em.”
He was bone tired, but he wasn’t going to take another popper just now. Task Force Huber had a long way to go, and he’d need the stimulant worse later on.
The C&C box projected halt locations in the temporary laager to all the drivers. Fencing Master growled up the slight rise, then pulled into scrub forest which the bigger X-Ray vehicles ahead in the column were scraping clear. The place the AI had chosen for Fencing Master was across the circle of outward-facing vehicles. They brushed the massive wrenchmobile closer than Huber would’ve liked, but it was all right. Frenchie wasn’t a great driver and it was near the end of his two-hour stint anyway. They hadn’t collided, and this wasn’t a day Arne Huber needed to borrow trouble.
Deseau set them down and almost immediately climbed out the driver’s hatch. He wasn’t under any illusions about his driving, though he didn’t complain about the duty. Learoyd ought to take the next session, but …
Huber looked at Padova. “You up for another shift?” he asked. “It’s not your turn, I know.”
“You bet I am,” she said, nodding briskly. “You bet your ass!”
“Highball, we’re coming in,” an unfamiliar female voice said. “Three aircars at vector one-one-nine degrees to your position. Action Four-two out.”
“Roger, Action,” Huber said. “Highball elements, hold your fire. Six out.”
He knew he was frowning. He’d expected the resupply to be carried out by Log Section, maybe even UC civilians under contract to the Regiment. “Action” was a callsign of the White Mice.
The recovery vehicle had ground the brush in the center of the laager to matchsticks, then shoved the debris into a crude berm. The aircars came low over the treetops, circled a moment to pick locations, and landed. All showed bullet scars. They each carried two troopers, but the guard on one lay across the ammo boxes amidships, either dead or drugged comatose.
“Fox elements,” ordered Sergeant Tranter, acting as first sergeant for the task force, “each car send two men to pick up your requirements. India elements, two men per squad. Also we’ll transfer the dead and wounded to the aircars. Three-five out.”
“Frenchie,” Huber said, “hold the fort. I’m going to learn what’s going on back at Base Alpha.”
He swung his legs over the coaming, paused on the bulge of the plenum chamber, and slid to the ground. He almost crumpled under the weight of his clamshell when he landed. Via! he was woozy.
The troopers in the aircars were loosing the cargo nets over their loads; they looked as tired as Huber and his personnel. The woman with sergeant’s pips on her collar was working one-handed because the other arm was in a sling.
“Tough run?” Huber asked, sliding out a case of 2-cm ammo for Learoyd, who took it left-handed. There were spare barrels too, thank the Lord and the foresight of somebody back at Central.
“Tough enough,” she said, not quite curt enough to be called hostile.
“How are things at Base Alpha?” Huber asked, passing the next case to Padova. He didn’t know who was defending the base with so many of the combat-fit Slammers running north. He was sure it wasn’t a situation anybody was happy about.
“We’ll worry about fucking Base Alpha,” the sergeant snarled. She met his eyes; she looked like an animal in a trap, desperate and furious. “You worry about your job, all right?”
“Roger that,” Huber said evenly, taking a case of twelve 2-cm gunbarrels to empty the belly of the car. “Good luck, Sergeant.”
“Yeah,” the woman said. “Yeah, same to you, Lieutenant.”
The three dead infantrymen and the incapacitated—three more infantry and Flame Farter’s left wing gunner—had been placed in the aircars. Flame Farter’s driver and commander were ash in the remains of their vehicle.
The sergeant settled back behind the controls and muttered something on her unit push, the words muffled by circuitry in her commo helmet. Nodding, she and the other drivers brought their fans up to flying speed again.
“Action Four-two outboun
d,” crackled her voice through Huber’s commo helmet. The White Mice took off again, their vector fifteen degrees east of the way they’d arrived. Their approach might’ve been tracked, so they weren’t taking a chance on overflying an ambush prepared in the interim.
“Bitch,” said Padova, who’d been close enough to hear the exchange.
Huber stepped to Fencing Master and paused before swinging the spare barrels to Deseau waiting on the plenum chamber. The case of fat iridium cylinders was heavy enough in all truth; in Huber’s present shape, it felt as if he were trying to lift a whole combat car.
“Got it, El-Tee,” Learoyd said, taking the barrels one-handed before Huber had a chance to protest. He shoved them up to his partner in a movement that was closer to shot-putting than weight lifting.
Huber stretched, then quirked a grin to Padova. “I guess even the White Mice are human,” he said, grinning more broadly. “We all do the best we can. Some days—”
He held his right arm out straight so that she could see he was trembling with fatigue.
“—that’s not as good as we’d like.”
“Mount up, troopers,” Sergeant Tranter ordered. He gave Huber a thumbs-up from Fancy Pants’ fighting compartment. “Fox Three leads on this leg.”
Padova scrambled down the driver’s hatch. Huber climbed the curve of the skirts and lifted himself into the fighting compartment without Deseau’s offered hand. He seemed to have gotten his second wind.
As the fans lifted Fencing Master in preparation to resume the march, Deseau said, “Glad they brought the barrels, El-Tee. We were down to two sets after what we replaced after that last fracas. I don’t guess that’s the last shooting we’ll do this operation.”
“I don’t guess so either, Frenchie,” Huber said. For a moment he tried to visualize the future, but all his mind would let him see was forest and stabbing cyan plasma discharges.