To Lamartiere's surprise there was an air-cushion jeep in the middle of the column. It pulled out of line almost at once and vanished behind an outcrop too slight to hide a vehicle of any size.
A lightly loaded air-cushion vehicle can sail across water because its weight is spread evenly over the whole surface beneath the plenum chamber. Government APCs carried too high a density of armor and payload for that. They sank, but where the bottom was as shallow and firm as it was here they could pogo across without flooding their fans. Even so, the Lystra was dangerously high. Only a crisis could induce a battalion to force the crossing now instead of waiting for the load of melting snow to recede for another week.
Rather than driving straight into the water as Lamartiere expected, the APCs formed three lines abreast well short of the bank. Their turret guns nervously searched the hills across the river, and troops pointed personal weapons from the open hatches in the vehicles' top decks.
Four more tanks closed the battalion's line of march. They drove past their fellows in overwatch positions to halt at the river's edge. A pair of crewmen got out of each vehicle and erected a breathing tube over the engine vents. While they worked, the third crew member closed the coil gun's muzzle with a tompion.
The crews got back in their waterproofed tanks and drove slowly into the river. The initial drop-off brought water foaming over the tops of the big wheels, but the slope lessened. The vehicles were nearly at the Lystra's midpoint before their turrets went completely under, leaving only the snorkel tubes and occasionally the raised muzzle of a coil gun to mark their progress.
The first rank of APCs bounded into the river with a roar and wall of spray like that at the base of a waterfall. They had waited so that their boisterous passage didn't swamp the tanks while the latter were still in deep water.
"Here we go," Lamartiere warned Clargue. He fed power to the fans and lifted Hoodoo several meters higher up the swale, exposing her turret and main gun to view of the government forces.
The tanks across the river fired before Hoodoo came to rest. Two shells landed ringing hammer blows against the turret and a third exploded just short, flinging half a tonne of dirt over the bow slope. If Lamartiere had been looking out of his hatch, the blasts would have decapitated him.
The government vehicles had fired HE, not armor-piercing shot. That meant they hadn't really expected to meet the Slammers' tank here. They must be terrified already . . .
Lamartiere laid the pipper on the gun mantle of the tank on the left. He was too busy to be frightened now.
Befayt's guerrillas and the APCs were firing wildly. Government automatic weapons stitched the night together with golden tracers. Rebel coil guns showed only puffs of fluorescent mist, the ionized vestiges of the projectiles' driving bands.
Lamartiere tapped his trigger while his left index finger clicked the radios on and off. Light more brilliant than the shell bursts lit Hoodoo's turret. Remnants of the copper leads bled blue-green across the flash of aluminized slurry. Simultaneously the tribarrel's bolt struck at the base of the target's electromotive gun, cratering the armor and stripping insulation from the tube's windings.
"Another charge!" Lamartiere screamed.
The guerrillas were concentrating on tank snorkels and the APCs which had entered the stream. A line of bullets tore out the side of an APC's skirts. The vehicle rolled over on its back, spilling soldiers through the open hatches. The weight of their gear sucked them down.
The government tanks fired again. The tank Lamartiere had damaged dissolved in a sizzling short circuit. The current meant to accelerate a kilo of tungsten to 4000 kph instead ate metal. Everything flammable in the interior ignited, including the flesh of the crew.
The other three rounds missed Hoodoo. The gunners had switched to AP, but in their haste they'd forgotten to correct for the much flatter trajectory of the high-velocity shot.
"Ready!" Clargue called. Lamartiere hit the second tank exactly where he'd nailed the first. A 2cm bolt couldn't penetrate the government tanks' frontal armor, but accurately used it put paid to their armament. This time, the hatches flew open and the crew bailed out as soon as the bolt hit.
The government command vehicles carried hoop antennas that set them apart from the ordinary APCs. A guerrilla hit one with a shoulder-launched buzzbomb. The shaped-charge warhead sent a line of white fire through the interior and triggered a secondary explosion that blew the turret off.
In his triumph the rebel forgot the obvious. He reloaded and rose again from the same location. At least a dozen automatic cannon chewed him to a fiery memory.
Lamartiere laid his pipper on the third target. He didn't have time to shoot: the crew was already abandoning their untouched vehicle.
The APCs of the first wave were mostly bogged in the Lystra, though one had managed to wallow back to dry land with riddled skirts. An air-cushion vehicle could move with a leaking plenum chamber, but the fans shed their blades if they tried to push water.
Three of the fording tanks were only ripples on the surface of the river. The fourth had started to climb the south bank. Its bow and turret were clear, but the engine compartment was still under water when rebels had shot the breathing tube away. The bodies of the three crewmen lay halfway out of their hatches.
Lamartiere settled his pipper on the last of the overwatching tanks. The government driver backed and turned sharply, trying to retreat the way he had come. Lamartiere hit the vehicle in the middle of the flank, blowing the thin armor into the capacitor compartment. This time the short circuit was progressive rather than instantaneous as with the first victim, but the tank's ultimate destruction was no less complete.
The surviving APCs roared up the north slope of the valley, going back the way they'd come. Some of them had reversed their turrets and were spraying cannon shells southward, but they no longer made a pretense of aiming. Several vehicles stood empty, though without magnification Lamartiere couldn't see any signs of damage.
There were a dozen brush fires on the south side of the river, and almost that many burning vehicles on the north. It had been a massacre.
Guerrillas sniped at soldiers who were still moving, but some of Befayt's people were already splashing into the water to gather loot from the nearest tank. There was a cable bridge slung underwater a kilometer upstream. Organized parties of guerrillas would cross to sweep the northern bank in a few hours.
The jeep Lamartiere had forgotten suddenly accelerated out of cover, heading uphill. Lamartiere slapped his pipper on it for magnification rather than in a real attempt to shoot.
The vehicle jinked left and vanished before he could have shot. He was almost sure from the brief glimpse that the two figures aboard were wearing Slammers' uniforms.
Lamartiere heard the tribarrel whine under the AI's guidance. It began firing short bursts: the artillery in Ariege was shelling again. The gunners hadn't had enough warning to support the crossing with the concentrations they must have prepared in case of rebel resistance.
"They could have crushed us, Doctor," Lamartiere said in wonder. "They could have gone right through except they panicked. We won because we frightened them, not because we beat them."
"In my proper profession," Clargue said, "a cure is a cure. I don't see a distinction between the psychological effect of a placebo and the biological effect of a real drug—so long as the beneficial effect occurs."
He paused before adding, "I find it difficult to view this destruction as beneficial, but I suppose it's better than the same thing happening to Pamiers."