Flamethrower slowed as Blue Two entered the woods ahead. When the trees closed about the combat car, Dick Suilin could no longer see the flames.
Memory of the fire began to dull. Only a minute. Only a few seconds . . . .
"Trust me, turtle," Gale added with a chuckle. "You stick with us and it won't be the last time, neither."
Chapter Eight
Birdie Sparrow curled and uncurled his hands, working out the stiffness from their grip on the gunnery joysticks.
Gases from the breech of the main gun swirled as if fleeing the efforts of the air-conditioning fans which tried to scavenge them. The twisted vapors picked up the patterns glowing in the holographic screens, mixed and softened the colors, and turned the turret interior into a sea of gentle pastels.
The radio crackled with reports of damage and casualties. That didn't touch Birdie. Deathdealer's finish had been scratched by a bullet or two, and there were some new dents in her skirts; but the Consies hadn't so much as fired a buzzbomb.
Tough about the crew of One-six, but a combat car . . . what'd they expect? That was worse 'n ridin' with your head out the cupola.
DJ Bell pointed from a wisp of mauve vapor toward the yellow warning that had just blinked alive in the corner of Screen Two.
Sparrow hit the square yellow button marked automatic air defense—easy to find now,because it started to glow a millisecond after the Aircraft Warning header came up on the gunnery screen. The tribarrel in the cupola whined, rousing to align itself with the putative target.
Piss off, DJ, Sparrow thought/said to the phantom of his friend that grinned until the inevitable change smeared its features.
Aloud,certainly aloud,Sparrow reported, "Tootsie Six, this is Blue One.Aircraft warning. Sonic signature only."
He was reading off the data cascading in jerks down the left edge of his screen like the speeded-up image of a crystal growing.The pipper remained in the center of the holofield, but the background displayed on the screen jumped madly. The tracking system was trying to find gaps that would permit it to shoot through the dense vegetation.
"AAD has a lock but not a window." Sparrow paused then pursed his lips. "Signature is consistent with a friendly recce drone. We expectin' help? Over."
The bone-deep hum of Deathdealer grinding her way southward was the only response for several seconds.
"Blue One," Captain Ranson's voice said at last, "it may be friendly—but let your AAD make the choice. I'd rather shoot down a friendly drone with a bad identification transponder than learn the Terrans were giving some smart-help to their Consie buddies. Out."
The pipper jumped and quivered among the tree images, like an attack dog straining on its leash.
"No, sweat, snake," whispered DJ Bell. "It's all copacetic. This time . . . ."
"Blue Two lock,"said Ranson's headset as the B2 designator glowed air-defense yellow in her multi-function display.
Warmonger went airborne for an unplanned instant. Willens boosted his fans when he realized the ground had betrayed him, but the car landed again like a gymnast dropping three meters onto a mat.
The three mercenaries in the fighting compartment braced for it, splay-legged and on their toes. Shock gouged the edge of Ranson's breastplate into the top of her thighs.
"Blue Three, ah, locked," said Sergeant Wager, but the designator didn't come on, not for a further five seconds.
Wager, the recent transfer from combat cars, was having problems with his hardware. Understandable but a piss-poor time for it. His driver, that was Holman, she wasn't any better. The nameless Blue Three kept losing station, falling behind or speeding up to the point the tank threatened to overrun the car directly ahead of it.
"Janacek!" Ranson snapped. "Don't point your gun! Now! Lower it!"
"Via, Cap'n—" the wing gunner said fiercely.Histribarrel slanted upward at a 30° angle on the rough southwest vector he'd gleaned from seeing Deathdealer's cupola gun rouse.
"Lower it, curse you!" Ranson repeated. "And then take your cursed hands away from it. Now!"
There was almost nil chance of a hand-aimed tribarrel doing any good if three tank units failed on air-defense mode. There was a bloody good chance that a human thumb would twitch at the wrong time and knock down a friendly drone whose IFF handshake had passed the tank computers, though . . . .
Deathdealer had to be the leading panzer. Blue Three in the rear-guard slot wouldn't tear gaps the way it did in the middle of the line, but Wager's inexperience could be an even worse disaster there if the task force were hit from behind. Maybe if she put Deathdealer's driver in the turret of Blue Three and moved an experienced driver from one of the cars to—
Command exercises. Arrange beads of light in a chosen order, then step back while the grading officer critiques your result.
"Tight-ass bitch,"the intercom muttered.Hand-keyed,Janacek or Stolley,either one, or even Willens.
Veterans don't like to be called down by their new CO. But veterans screw up too, just like newbies . . . just like COs who drift in and out of an electronic non-world, where the graders snarl but don't shoot.
Ranson thought she heard the aircraft's engine over the howl of Warmonger's fans and the constant slap of branches against their hull. That was impossible.
"Six, it's friendly!" Sparrow called, echoing the relayed information that flashed on the display which in turn cross-checked the opinion of the combat car's own electronics. And they could all be wrong, but—
The aircraft was friendly. Its data dump started.
Maps and numerals scrolled across the display, elbowing one another aside as knowledge became chaos by its volume. Ranson was so focused on her attempt to sort the electronic garbage with a combat car's inadequate resources that she didn't notice the drone when it passed overhead a few seconds later.
The Slammers' reconnaissance drones were slow, loping along at less than a thousand kph instead of sailing around the globe at a satellite's ninety-minute rate. On the other hand, no satellite could survive in a situation where the enemy had powerguns and even the very basic fire-direction equipment needed to pick up a solid object against the vacant backdrop of interstellar space.
Stolley whispered inaudibly as the drone flicked past, barely visible against the slats of the trees. The aircraft had a long, narrow-chord wing mounted high so as not to interfere with the sensors in its belly.
The drone's high-bypass turbofan sighed rather than roared, and the exhaust dumped from its twin outlets was within fifty degrees C of ambient. Except for the panels covering the sensor bays,the plastic of the wings and fuselage absorbed radio—radar—waves, and the material's surface adapted its mottled coloration to whatever the background might be.