A branch slapped Suilin's helmet; he cursed with doubled bitterness. "If Coraccio'd taken the enclaves thirty years ago, there wouldn't be any trouble now."
"Dream on, turtle," Gale said over the mouth of his own beer.
"Coraccio couldn't take the WG's actual bases," Cooter remarked, quickly enough to forestall any angry retort. "The security forces couldn't hold much, but they sure-hell weren't givin' up the starports that were their only chance of going home to Earth."
Gale finished his beer, belched, and tossed the bottle high over the side. The moonlit glitter seemed to curve backward as Flamethrower ground on, at high speed despite the vegetation.
"You shoulda hired us,"he said."Well, you know—somebody like us. But we'll take yer money now, no sweat."
Suilin sluiced beer around in his mouth before he swallowed it. "Only a fraction of the population supported the Consies,"he said."The Conservative Action Movement's just a Terran front."
"Only a fraction of the people here 're really behind the Nationals, either," Cooter said. He raised his hand, palm toward Suilin in bar. "All right, sure—a bigger fraction. But what most people want's for the shooting to stop. Trust me, turtle. That's how it always is."
"We've got a right to decide the government of our own planet!" the reporter shouted.
"You bet,"agreed the big lieutenant."And that's what you're paying Hammer's Slammers for.So their fraction gets tired of havin' its butt kicked quicker'n your fraction does."
"They're payin' us," said Gale, caressing his tribarrel again, "because there's no damn body in the Yokel army who's got any balls."
Suilin flushed. His hand tightened on his beer bottle.
"All Tootsie elements," said a voice from Suilin's commo helmet. "We're approaching Phase Line Mambo, so look sharp."
The reporter didn't fully understand the words, but he knew by now what it meant when both mercenaries gripped their tribarrels and waggled the muzzles to be sure they turned smoothly on their gimbals.
Dick Suilin dropped the bottle with the remainder of his beer over the side. His hands were clammy on the grips of his weapon.
That was the trouble with his learning to understand things. Now he knew what was coming.
When Henk Ortnahme rocked forward violently, he reacted by bracing his palms against the main screen and opening his mouth to bellow curses at Tech 2 Simkins.
Herman's Whore didn't ground 'er bloody skirts, though, as Simkins powered her out of the unmanned gully between Adako Creek and the Padma River . . . and Warrant Leader Ortnahme wouldn't a' been bouncing around the inside of his tank like a pea in a whistle if he'd had brains enough to strap himself into his bloody seat.
He didn't shout the curses. When he rehearsed them in his mind, they were directed as much at himself as the kid, who was doing pretty good. Night, cross-country, through forested mountains—pretty bloody good.
"All Tootsie elements," boomed the command channel. "We're approaching Phase Line Mambo, so look sharp."
Phase Line Mambo: Adako Beach, and the only bridge for a hundred kays that'd carry tanks over the Padma River. Consie defenses for sure. Maybe alerted defenses.
Simkins wasn't the only guy in Herman's Whore who was getting a crash course tonight in his new duties.
"Company," said somebody on the unit push, musta been Sparrow, because the view remoted onto Ortnahme's Screen Three had the B1 designator in its upper left corner.
The lead tank overlooked the main east-west road through the forest; Sparrow must've eased forward until Deathdealer was almost out of the trees. Half a dozen light vehicles were approaching from the east, still a kilometer away. They were moving at about fifty kph—plenty fast enough for anything on wheels that had to negotiate the roads in this part of the continent.
A dull blue line began jumping through the remoted image, three centimeters from the right edge of the screen. Nothing wrong with the equipment: Death-dealer's transmission was just picking up interference from another circuit, the one that aligned the tank's main gun . . . .
"Don't Shoot!" June Ranson snarled on the command channel before she bothered with proper communications procedures.
Then, "Tootsie Six to all Tootsie elements. Form on Blue One, east along the roadcut. Don't expose yourselves, and don't shoot without my orders. These 're probably civilians. We'll wait till they clear the bridge, then we'll blast through ourselves while the guards 're relaxing."
Herman's Whore rocked as Simkins shifted a bit to the left, following the track of the car ahead. They'd intended to enter the roadcut in line ahead, where the slope was gentlest; now they'd have to slide down abreast.
A sputter of static on the commo helmet indicated one of the subordinate leaders, Sparrow or Cooter, was talking to Tootsie Six on a lock-out channel.
Ranson didn't bother to switch off the command push to reply,"Negative, Blue One. Getting there twenty minutes later doesn't matter. The bridge guards'll 've seen the truck lights too; they'll be trigger-happy until they see there's no threat to them."
No big deal. Line abreast was a little trickier for the drivers, but it was about as fast . . . and it put Task Force Ranson in a perfect ambush position, just in case the trucks weren't civilian after all.
Herman's Whore nosed to the edge of the trees, swung to put her port side to the roadcut, and halted. She quivered in dynamic stasis.
Ortnahme cranked up the magnification on his gunnery screen, feeding enhanced ambient light to his display. He had a better angle on the trucks than Blue One did, and when he focused on the figures filling the canvas-topped bed of the lead vehicle—
Blood 'n martyrs!
"Tootsie Six," hissed the general unit push before Ortnahme could call his warning, "this is One-six. They ain't civilians."
The leading truck had National Army fender stencils and a Yokel crest on the passenger door, but the troops in back wore black uniforms. Ortnahme scanned their faces at a hundred magnifications.Bored,nervous—yeah,you could be both at the same time, he knew that bloody well himself. And very bloody young.
"Roger," said the command channel crisply. "All Tootsie elements, I'm highlighting your primary targets. On command, take 'em out before you worry about anybody else."
That truckload wasn't going to get much older.
Ortnahme's remote screen pinged as the view from Deathdealer vanished and was replaced by the corner tag R6, for Red Six, and a simple string of magenta beads, one for each truck. The second bead from the end was brighter and pulsing.