The Tank Lords (23 page)

Two of the work crew started to lower their clamp over the remaining shell in the upper of the two layers. The short, massive round was striped black and mauve. Ridges impressed in the casing showed where it would separate into three parts at a predetermined point in its trajectory.

"Not that one!" Lavel ordered sharply. "Nor the other with those markings. Just leave them and bring the—bring one of the blue-and-whites."

Firecracker rounds that would rain over four hundred anti-personnel bomblets apiece down on the target area. No good for smashing bunkers, but much of the Consies' hasty siegeworks around la Reole lacked overhead cover. The Consies'd die in their trenches like mice in a mincer when the firecracker rounds burst overhead . . .

Lavel stumped away from the crew, knowing that they could carry on well enough without him. He was more worried about the team bolting boosters onto the shells already loaded onto the hog. A trained crew could handle the job in a minute or less per shell, but the scuts left at Camp Progress when the task force pulled out. . . .

Scuts like Chief Lavel, a derelict who couldn't even assemble artillery rounds nowadays. A job he could do drunk in the dark a few years ago, back when he'd been a man.

But he had to admit, he felt alive for almost the first time since Gresham's counter-battery salvo got through the net of cyan bolts that should've swept it from the sky. It wasn't any part of Lavel's fault, but he'd paid the price.

That's how it was in war. You trusted other people and they trusted you . . . so when you screwed up—

—and Chief knew he'd screwed up lots of times in the past, you couldn't live and not transpose a range figure
once
—

—it was some other bastard got it in the neck.

Or the arm and leg. What goes around, comes around.

Lavel began whistling "St. James' Infirmary" between his teeth as he approached the self-propelled howitzer.
His
self-propelled howitzer for the next few hours.

Craige and Komar, transit drivers who hadn't been promoted to line units after a couple years service each, seemed to have finished their task. Six assembled rounds waited on the hog's loading tray.

Between each 200mm shell (color-coded as to type) and its olive-drab base charge was a white-painted booster. The booster contained beryllium-based fuel to give the round range sufficient to hit positions around la Reole.

Lavel checked each fastener while the two drivers waited uneasily.

"All right," he said at last, grudging them credit for the task he could no longer perform. "All right. They should be coming with the next load now."

He climbed the three steps into the gun compartment carefully. The enclosure smelled of oil and propellant residues. It smelled like home.

Lavel powered up, listening critically to the sound of each motor and relay as it came live. The bank of idiot lights above the targeting console had a streak of red and amber with a green expanse: the traversing mechanism failed regularly when the turret was rotated over fifteen degrees to either side.

Thank the Lord for that problem. Without it, the howitzer wouldn't 've been here in Camp Progress when it was needed.

Needed by Task Force Ranson. Needed by Chief Lavel.

He sat in the gun captain's chair, then twisted to look over his shoulder. "Are you clear?" he shouted to his helpers. "Keep clear!"

For choice, Lavel would have stuck his head out the door of the gun compartment to make sure Craige and Komar didn't have their hands on the heavy shells. That would mean picking up his crutch and levering himself from the chair again. . . .

Level touched the execute button to start the loading sequence.

The howitzer had arrived at Camp Progress with most of a basic load of ammunition still stowed in its hull. For serious use, the hog would have been fed from one or more ammunition haulers, connected to the loading ramp by conveyor belts.

No problem. The nineteen rounds available would be enough for
this
job.

Seventeen rounds. Two of the shells couldn't be used for this purpose. But seventeen was plenty.

The howitzer began to swallow its meal of ammunition, clanking and wobbling on its suspension. Warrant Leader Ortnahme had ordered the shells off-loaded and stored at a safe distance—from him—as soon as the hog arrived for maintenance. That quantity of high explosive worried most people.

Not Chief Lavel, who'd worked with it daily—until some other cannon-cocker got his range.

CLUNK. CLUNK. The first six rounds would go into the ready-use drum, from which the gun could cycle them in less than fifteen seconds.

CLUNK. CLUNK. Each round would be launched as an individually-targeted fire mission. The hog's computer chose from the ready-use drum the shell that most nearly matched the target parameters.

For bunkers, an armor-piercing shell or delay-fused high explosive if no armor piercing was in the drum. So on down the line until, if nothing else were available, a paint-filled practice round blasted out of the tube.

CLUNK. The loading system refilled the ready-use drum automatically, until the on-board stowage was exhausted and the outside tray no longer received fresh rounds. Lavel could hear the second gurney-load squealing closer.

CLUNK.

The drum was loaded—six green lights on the console. He could check the shell-types by asking the system, but there was no need. He'd chosen the first six rounds to match the needs of his initial salvo.

A touch threw the target map up on the screen above the gunnery console. The drone's on-board computer had processed the data before dumping it.

Damage to buildings within la Reole—shell-burst patterns as well as holes—provided accurate information as to the type and bearing of the Consie weapons. When that data was superimposed on the raw new siege works, it was easy for an artificial intelligence to determine the location of the enemy's heavy weapons, the guns that were dangerous to an armored task force.

One more thing to check. "TOC," Lavel said to his commo helmet.

No response for ten seconds, thirty. . . . The first shell of the new batch clanged down on the loading ramp.

"Tech 2 Helibrun," a harried voice responded at last. "Go ahead, Yellow Six."

Yellow Six. Officer in command of Transit. Lavel's lips curled.

"I'm waiting for the patch to Tootsie Six," he said, more sharply than the delay warranted. "Why haven't I been connected?"

"The bl—" the commo tech began angrily. He continued after a pause to swallow. "Chief, the patch is in place. We don't have contact with the task force yet, is all. From the data we've got from Central, it'll be about an hour before they're on ground high enough that we can reach them from here."

Another pause; instead of an added,
you cursed fool
, simply, "We'll connect you when we do. Over."

Lavel swallowed his own anger. He was getting impatient; which was silly, since he'd waited more than seven years already. . . .

"Roger," he said. "Yellow Six out."

Another shell dropped onto the ramp. There would be plenty of time to load and prepare all seventeen rounds before the start of the fire mission.

Over an hour to kill, and to kill. . . .

The lower half of June Ranson's visor was a fairy procession of lanterns. They hung from tractor-drawn carts and bicycles laden with cargo.

"Action front!" Ranson warned. She was probably the only person in the unit who was trying to follow a remote viewpoint as well as keeping watch on her immediate surroundings.

The reflected cyan crackle from
Deathdealer
's stabilized tribarrel provided an even more effective warning.

The main road from the southwest into la Reole and its bridge across the Santine Estuary was studded with figures and crude vehicles. Hundreds of civilians, guided—guarded—by a few black-clad guerrillas, were lugging building materials uphill to the Consie siege lines.

The lead tank of Task Force Ranson had just snarled into view of them.

Sparrow's first burst must have come from the bellowing darkness so far as the trio of Consies, springing to their feet from a lantern-lit guardpost, were concerned. The guerrillas spun and died at the roadside while civilians gaped in amazement. Without light-enhanced optics, the tank cresting a plowed knoll 500 meters away was only sound and a flicker of lethal cyan.

Civilians flung down their bicycles and sought cover in the ditches beside the road. Bagged cement; hundred-kilo loads of reinforcing rods; sling-loads of brick—building materials necessary for a work of destruction—lay as ungainly lumps on the pavement.

The loads had been pushed for kilometers under the encouragement of armed Consies. Bicycle wheels spun lazily in the air.

A rifleman stood up on a tractor-drawn cart and fired in the general direction of
Deathdealer
. Sparrow's tribarrel spat bolts at a building on the ridgeline, setting off a fuel pump in a fireball.

Ranson, Janacek, and at least two gunners from car One-five, the left outrider, answered the rifleman simultaneously.

The Consie's head and torso disappeared with a blue stutter. The canned goods which filled the bed of the cart erupted in a cloud of steam. The tractor continued its plodding uphill progress. Its driver had jumped off and was running down the road, screaming and waving his arms in the air.

There were no trucks or buses visible in the convoy. The Consies must have commandeered ordinary transport for more critical purposes, using makeshifts to support the sluggish pace of siegework.

In the near distance to the east of Task Force Ranson, the glare of a powergun waked cyan echoes from high clouds. One of the weapons which the Consies had brought up to bombard la Reole—a pedestal-mounted powergun. The weapon was heavy enough to hole a tank or open a combat car like a can of sardines. . . .

"Booster!" Ranson shouted to her AI. "Fire mission Able. Break. Tootsie Three, call in Fire Mission Able directly—in clear—as soon as you raise Camp Progress. Break. All Tootsie elements, follow the road. They can't 've mined it if they're using it like this. Go! Go! Go!"

Warmonger
bucked and scraped the turf before clearing a high spot. Willens had wicked up his throttles. Though he'd lifted the car for as much ground clearance as possible,
Warmonger
's present speed guaranteed a bumpy ride on anything short of a pool table.

Speed was life now. These terrified civilians and their sleepy guards had nothing to do with the mission of Task Force Ranson, but a single lucky slug could cause an irreplaceable casualty. Colonel Hammer was playing this game with table stakes. . . .

In the roar of wind and gunfire, Ranson hadn't been able to hear the chirp of her AI transmitting.

If it
had
transmitted. If the electronics of a combat car jolting along at speed were good enough to bounce a transmission a thousand kays north from a meteor track. If Fire Central would relay the message to Camp Progress in time. If the hog at Camp Progress . . .

Two men shot at
Warmonger
from the ditch across the road.

Ranson fired back. Bolts ripped from the rotating muzzles of her powergun and vanished from her sight. It wasn't until the lower half of her visor blacked momentarily and the upper half quivered with cyan reflections that she realized that she'd been aiming at the remote image from
Deathdealer
.

Part of June Ranson's mind wondered what her bolts had hit, might have hit. The part in physical control continued to squeeze the butterfly trigger of her powergun and watch the cyan light vanish in the divided darkness of her mind. . . .

The night ahead of Dick Suilin was lit spitefully by the fire of the other armored vehicles. He clung to the coaming of
Flamethrower
's fighting compartment with his left hand; his right rested on the grip of his tribarrel, but his thumb was curled under his fingers as if to prevent it from touching the trigger.

There were no signs of Consies shooting back, but a farm tractor had collapsed into a fuel fire that reminded Suilin of the bus after his bolts raked it.

Oh dear Lord. Oh dear Lord.
 

Gale was lighting his quarter with short bursts. So far as the reporter could tell, the veteran's bolts were a matter of excitement rather than a response to real targets. Lieutenant Cooter gripped the armor with both hands and shouted so loudly into his helmet microphone that Suilin could hear the sounds though not the words.

Both veterans had a vision of duty.

Dick Suilin had his memories.

When the armored vehicles prickled with cyan bolts, they re-entered the reporter's universe. It had been very easy for Suilin to believe that the three of them in the back of
Flamethrower
were the only humans left in the strait bounds of existence. The darkness created that feeling; the darkness and the additional Wide-awake he'd accepted from Gale.

Perhaps what most divorced Suilin from that which had been reality less than two days before was the buzzing roar of the fans. Their vibration seemed to jelly both his mind and his marrow.

Since the driver slid his throttles to the top of their range,
Flamethrower
's skirt jolted repeatedly against the ground. Suilin found the impacts more bearable than the constant, enervating hum of the car at moderate speed.

Task Force Ranson swung raggedly at an angle to the left. Each armored vehicle followed a separate track, though the general line was on or parallel to the paved highway.

Suilin had ridden the la Reole/Bunduran road a hundred times in the past. It was easy to follow the road's course now with his eyes, because of the fires lit by powerguns all along its course. The truckers' cafe and fuel point at the top of the ridge, three kilometers from la Reole, was a crown of flames.

Flamethrower
lurched over a ditch and sparked her skirts on the gravel shoulder. The driver straightened his big vehicle with port, then starboard sidethrusts. The motion rocked Suilin brutally but seemed to be expected by the veterans with him in the fighting compartment.