The Tank Lords (14 page)

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. Air forced 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 pointblank 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 drivers 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.

Which was pretty much what Cooter had in mind for Speed Riddle.

He lumbered across the ground, burdened by his armor and half-blinded by dust despite his lowered visor. Cooter was a big man, but no man was significant in an area packed with the huge, slowly-maneuvering masses of armored vehicles.

Logistics section—the warehouses, truck park, and bunkered sleeping quarters for the associated personnel—formed the boundary between the Slammers' positions and the remainder of Camp Progress. Sappers who'd gotten through the Yokel defenses had bombed a parts shed and shot up a few trucks, but the Red section's counterattack put paid to the Consies here before they'd really gotten rolling.

The doss—half dug into the berm, half sandbagged—was undamaged except for six plate-sized cups which a tribarrel had blasted from the front wall. There was a gap in the line of glassy impact craters where one round had splashed a Consie sapper instead of hitting the sandbags.

Chief Lavel stood in the doorway. He gestured to Cooter but hunched his way into the doss before the lieutenant arrived.

Chief tried to give himself a little advantage when there was anything tricky to do, like negotiating the double step that put the floor of the doss below ground level for safety. He got around amazingly well for a man missing his left arm and leg, though.

Outside the bunker, armored vehicles filled the evening with hot lubricant and the sharpness of ozone arcing away from dirty relays. The bunker's interior stank of human waste.

"What the . . . ?" Cooter muttered as he followed Chief down the narrow hallway along the front wall of the structure. A glowstrip was tacked to the ceiling; Cooter's helmet scraped it. He swore, ducked, and then straightened to bump again.

Board partitions made from packing cases divided the doss into rooms—decent-sized ones for Lavel and his permanent staff and, at the far end, tiny cubicles to house transients like the drivers making supply runs. The rooms were empty; the personnel were either involved with the departure or watching it.

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 topcover.

"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.