The hovel disintegrated into burning debris under the touch of the cyan bolts. The Consie dropped flat and continued firing, sheltered by the rocky irregularity of the ground. Another set of muzzle flashes sparkled yellow from closer to the streambed. A bullet rang on Warmonger's hull.
The long span between the concrete guardrails of the bridge had been narrowed by coils of concertina wire, reducing the traffic flow to a single lane past the central checkpoint. A round, pole-mounted signal board, white toward the east and presumably red on the other face, reached from the kiosk.
An attendant bolted out of the kiosk, waving his empty hands above his head. He was running toward the armored vehicles rather than away, but he didn't have a prayer of reaching safety in either direction.
The flash of Deathdealer's main gun ended the possibility of a threat lurking within the kiosk and crisped the attendant on his third stride.
"All Tootsie!" Ranson shouted. "Watch the left of the near side, there's bandits!"
The gunners on her combat cars were momentarily blind as they bucked out of the fireball to which they had reduced the trucks. That made them a dangerously good target for the riflemen firing from the downslope.
Those Consies were good. Caught completely by surprise, hideously outgunned—and still managing to make real pests of themselves. Hammer could use more recruits of their caliber—
To replace the troops this run was going to use up.
Sparks cascaded in all directions as Deathdealer entered the bridge approach and Albers, the only experienced tank driver in the task force, dropped his skirts so low they scraped. The truck-width passage across the bridge was too narrow for the blowers, and there wasn't time for the lengthy spooling and restringing of the barriers that would've been required during a normal down-time move.
June Ranson felt the satisfaction common to any combat soldier when circumstances permit him to use the quick and dirty way to achieve his objective. But that didn't mean there weren't risks . . . .
Deathdealer hit the first frame and smashed it to kindling while loops of wire humped like terrified caterpillars. Strands bunched and sparkled. The tank slid forward at forty kph, grinding the concertina wire between the guardrail and the vehicle's own hundred and seventy tonnes.
The wire couldn't stop a tank or even a combat car, but any loop that snaked its way into a fan intake would lock up the nacelle as sure as politicians lie. A bulldozer with treads for traction was the tool of choice for clearing this sort of entanglement; but, guided by a driver as expert as Albers, a tank would do the job just fine.
Warmonger followed Deathdealer at a cautious fifty meters, in case a strand of wire came whipping back unexpectedly. Willens drove with his hatch buttoned up above him, while Ranson and her two gunners crouched behind their weapons. The blades of a drive fan weren't the only thing you could strangle with a loop of barbed wire.
Steel rubbed concrete in an aural counterpart of the hell-lit road the task force had left behind them. Sparks ricocheted in wild panic, scorching when they touched. Ranson smelled a lock of her hair that had grown beyond the edge of her helmet.
Deathdealer's tribarrel fired. Ranson didn't bother remoting an image of Sparrow's target, and there was nothing to see from behind the tank's bulk now.
"Six," said her commo helmet, "Blue One. The bus 'n truck 're—"
Deathdealer swung onto the western approach, pushing as well as dragging tangled masses of concertina wire. The tank shook herself like a whore waggling a come-on. A touch of her skirts pulverized half a meter of bridge abutment.
"—civvie, no threat. Over."
As Albers accelerated forward, Deathdealer's stern rebounded from the concrete and slapped the three-axled truck that had been waiting to cross the bridge. The lighter vehicle danced away from the impact with the startled delicacy of a horse shying. Ten meters from the pavement, the crumpled wreckage burst into flame.
"All Tootsie elements," Ranson relayed. "Vehicles at the west approach are no threat, repeat, no threat. Six out."
Warmonger blasted through a cloud of powdered concrete as Willens pulled them clear of the bridge. Blue One fired its tribarrel into the houses to the right. There was no sign of hostile activity or even occupation. A ball of wire still dragged twenty meters behind the tank, raising a pall of dust.
one of the tires of the overturned bus revolved lazily. The vehicle lay on both its doors. Figures were climbing out of the windows. They flattened as Warmonger swept by behind the tank.
Stolley's tribarrel snapped over the civilians as he fired across the river, trying to nail the Consie riflemen from this better angle. Rock flashed and gouted, but the muzzle flashes bloomed again.
A trooper screamed on the unit push.
Junebug Ranson's eyes were glazed. Her mouth was open.
Ozone and matrix residues from her tribarrel flayed her throat as she fired into the village, shattering walls and roofslates.
It was very beautiful in the hologram of her mind.
Five-year-old Dickie Suilin screamed, "Suzi!" as his older sister squeezed his nostrils shut and clapped her other hand over his mouth. The flames arcing over the skirts of Flamethrower roared their laughter.
He could breathe after all.A mask of some sort had extended from the earpieces of the commo helmet as soon as the inferno waved an arm of blazing diesel fuel to greet the combat car plunging toward it. Suilin could breathe, and he could see again when overload reset his visor from thermal display to optical.
Though there wasn't much to see except flames curling around black steel skeletons, the chassis of trucks whose flammable portions were already part of the red/orange/yellow/white billows.
Even steel burned when Suilin raked it with his tribarrel. Faces bloomed into smears of vapor and calcined bones . . . .
Blue Two grunted head-on down the road, spewing a wake of blazing debris to either side. Cooter's driver followed, holding Flamethrower at a 45° degree angle along the edge of the cut.
The slant threw the men in the fighting compartment toward the fire their vehicle was skirting.Gale clung to the starboard coaming. Cooter must have locked his tribarrel in place, because he was frozen like a statue of Effort on its grips.
And Dick Suilin, after a hellish moment of feeling his torso swing out and down toward the bellowing flames, braced his feet against the inner face of the armor and grabbed Cooter by the waist. If the big lieutenant minded, they could discuss it later.