The car rocked as its skirts clipped high spots and debris flung from the buildings. The draft of Flamethrower's fans and passage shouldered the smoke aside, but there was still nothing to see except hot rubble.
Cooter and Gale fired, their bursts producing sharp static through Suilin's headset. The helmet slipped back and forth on the reporter's forehead.
In desperation,Suilin flipped up his visor.Glowing smoke became black swirls, white flames became sullen orange. The bolts from his companions' weapons flicked the scene with an utter purity of color more suitable for a church than this boiling inferno.
Suilin thumbed his trigger, splashing dirt and a charred timber with cyan radiance. He fired again, raising his sights, and saw a sheet of metal blaze with the light of its own destruction.
They were through the settlement and slowing again. There were armored vehicles on either side of Flamethrower. Gale fired a last spiteful burst and put his weapon on safe.
Suilin's hands were shaking. He had to grip the pivot before he could thumb the safety button.
It'd been worse than the previous night. This time he hadn't known what was happening or what he was supposed to do.
"Tootsie Six to all Tootsie elements,"said the helmet."March order,conforming to Blue One. Execute."
The vehicles around them were moving again, though Flamethrower held a nervous, greasy balance on its fans. They'd move out last again, just as they had when Task Force Ranson left the encampment.
Minutes ago.
"How you doing, turtle?" Lieutenant Cooter asked. He'd raised his visor also. "See any Consies?"
Suilin shook his head. "I just . . ." he said. "I just shot, in case . . . Because you guys were shooting, you know?"
Cooter nodded as he lifted his helmet to rub his scalp. "Good decision. Never hurts t' keep their heads down. You never can tell . . . ."
He gazed back at the burning waste through which they'd passed.
Suilin swallowed. "What's this 'turtle' business?" he asked.
Gale chuckled through his visor.
Cooter smiled and knuckled his forehead again. "Nothin' personal," the big lieutenant said. "You know,you're fat,you know? After a while you'll be a snake like the rest of us."
He turned.
"Hey," the reporter said in amazement. "I'm not fat! I exercise—"
Gale tapped the armor over Suilin's ribs. "Not fat there, turtle," the reflective curve of the veteran's visor said. "Newbie fat, you know? Civilian fat."
The tank they'd followed from Camp Progress began to move. "Watch your arcs, both of you,"Cooter muttered over the intercom. "They may have another surprise waiting for us."
Suilin's body swayed as the combat car slipped forward. He still didn't know what the mercenaries meant by the epithet.
And he was wondering what had happened to all the regular inhabitants of Happy Days.
"Go ahead, Tootsie,"said the voice of Slammer Six, hard despite all the spreads and attenuations that brought it from Firebase Purple to June Ranson's earphones. "Over."
"Lemme check yer shoulder,"said Stolley to Janacek beside her."C'mon, crack the suit."
"Roger," Ranson said as she checked the positioning of her force in the multifunction display."We're okay, no casualties, but there was an ambush at the Strip settlement just out the gate."
Blue One was ghosting along 200 meters almost directly ahead of Warmonger at sixty kph. That was about the maximum for an off-road night run, even in this fairly open terrain.
One-one and One-five had taken their flanking positions, echeloned slightly back from the lead tank.The remaining four blowers were spaced tank-car,tankcar, behind Warmonger like the tail of a broadly diamond-shaped kite.
Just as it ought to be . . . but the ratfuck at Happy Days had cost the task force a good hour.
"We couldn't 've avoided it," Ranson said, "so we shot our way through."
If she'd known, known,there was a company of Consies in Happy Days,she'd 've bypassed the place by heading north cross-country and cutting east, then south, near Siu Mah. It'd 've been a hundred kilometers out of their way, but—
"Look, bugger off," said Janacek. "I'm fine. I'll take another pill, right?"
"Any of the bypass routes might 've got you in just as deep,"said Colonel Hammer, taking a chance that, because of the time lag, his satellited words were going to step on those of his junior officer. "It's really dropped in the pot, Captain, all the hell over this country. But you don't see any reason that you can't carry out your mission?"
The question was so emotionless that concern stuck out in all directions like barbs from a burr. "Over."
"Quit screw'n around,Checker,"Stolley demanded."You got bits a'jacket metal there. I get 'em out and there's no sweat."
Ranson touched the scale control of her display. The eight discrete dots shrank to a single one, at the top edge of a large-scale moving map that ended at Kohang.
Latches clicked.Janacek had opened his clamshell armor for his buddy's inspection.A bullet had disintegrated on the shield of Janacek'stri barrel during the run through Happy Days; bits of the projectile had sprayed the wing gunner.
Ranson felt herself slipping into the universe of the map, into a world of electronic simulation and holographic intersections that didn't bleed when they dropped from the display.
That was the way to win battles: move your units around as if they were only units,counters on a game board.Do whatever was necessary to check your enemy, to smash him, to achieve your objective.
Commanders who thought about blood, officers who saw with their mind's eye the troops they commanded screaming and crawling through muck with their intestines dangling behind them . . . those officers might be squeamish, they might be hesitant to give the orders needful for victory.
The commander of the guerrillas in this district understood that perfectly. Happy Days was a deathtrap for anybody trying to defend it against the Slammers.There was no line of retreat,and the vehicles' power guns were sure to blast the settlement into ash and vapor, along with every Consie in it.
The company or so of patriots who'd tried to hold Happy Days on behalf of the Conservative Action Movement almost certainly didn't realize that; but the man or woman who gave them their orders from an office somewhere in the Terran Government enclaves on the North Coast did. The ambush had meant an hour's delay for the relief operation, and that was well worth the price—on the North Coast.
Men and munitions were the cost of doing business.You needed both of them to win.
You needed to spit them both in the face of the enemy. They could be replaced after the victory.
Stolley's handheld medikit began to purr as it swallowed bits of metal that it had separated from the gunner's skin and shoulder muscles. Janacek cursed mildly.
Colonel Hammer knew the rules also.