"Because she flakes out!" Wager snapped. "Because she goes right off into dreamland in the middle a' talking."
He looked at the disk of sky speeding past his open hatch.It didn't seem perceptibly brighter, but he could no longer make out the stars speckling its sweep.
"At least," said Holman with a touch more emotion than her previous comment, "Captain Ranson isn't so much of a flake that she'd go ahead with the mission without her tanks."
"Yeah," said Sergeant Hans Wager in resignation. "Without us."
Camp Progress stank of death: the effects of fire on scores of materials; rotting garbage that had been ignored among greater needs; and the varied effluvia each type of shell and cartridge left when it went off.
There was also the stench of the wastes which men voided as they died.
It was a familiar combination to Chief Lavel, but some of the newbies in his work crew still looked queasy.
A Consie had died of his wounds beneath the tarp covering the shells off loaded from the self-propelled howitzer. It wasn't until the shells were needed that the body was found. The corpse's skin was as black as the cloth of the uniform which the gas-distended body stretched.
They'd get used to it. They'd better.
Lavel massaged the stump of his right arm with his remaining hand as he watched eight men cautiously lift a 200mm shell, then lower it with a clank onto the gurney. They paused, panting.
"Go on," he said, "One more and you've got the load."
"Via!"said Riddle angrily.There were bright chafe lines on both of the balding man's wrists. "We can rest a bloody—"
"Riddle!"Lavel snapped."If you want to be wired up again,just say the word. Any word!"
Two of the work crew started to lower their clamp over the remaining shell in the upper of the two layers. The short, massive round was striped black and mauve.Ridges impressed in the casing showed where it would separate into three parts at a predetermined point in its trajectory.
"Not that one!" Lavel ordered sharply. "Nor the other with those markings. Just leave them and bring the—bring one of the blue-and-whites."
Firecracker rounds that would rain over four hundred anti-personnel bomblets apiece down on the target area. No good for smashing bunkers, but much of the Consies' hasty siege works around la Reole lacked overhead cover. The Consies'd die in their trenches like mice in a mincer when the firecracker rounds burst overhead . . . .
Lavel stumped away from the crew, knowing that they could carry on well enough without him. He was more worried about the team bolting boosters onto the shells already loaded onto the hog. A trained crew could handle the job in a minute or less per shell, but the scuts left at Camp Progress when the task force pulled out . . . .
Scuts like Chief Lavel, a derelict who couldn't even assemble artillery rounds nowadays. A job he could do drunk in the dark a few years ago, back when he'd been a man.
But he had to admit, he felt alive for almost the first time since Gresham's counter-battery salvo got through the net of cyan bolts that should've swept it from the sky. It wasn't any part of Lavel's fault, but he'd paid the price.
That's how it was in war. You trusted other people and they trusted you . . . so when you screwed up—
—and Chief knew he'd screwed up lots of times in the past, you couldn't live and not transpose a range figure once—
—it was some other bastard got it in the neck.
Or the arm and leg. What goes around, comes around.
Lavel began whistling "St.James' Infirmary" between his teeth as he approached the self-propelled howitzer. His self-propelled howitzer for the next few hours.
Craige and Komar,transit drivers who hadn't been promoted to line units after a couple years service each, seemed to have finished their task. Six assembled rounds waited on the hog's loading tray.
Between each 200mm shell (color-coded as to type) and its olive-drab base charge was a white-painted booster. The booster contained beryllium-based fuel to give the round range sufficient to hit positions around la Reole.
Lavel checked each fastener while the two drivers waited uneasily.
"Allright,"he said atlast,grudging them credit for the task he could no longer perform. "All right. They should be coming with the next load now."
He climbed the three steps into the gun compartment carefully. The enclosure smelled of oil and propellant residues. It smelled like home.
Lavel powered up, listening critically to the sound of each motor and relay as it came live. The bank of idiot lights above the targeting console had a streak of red and amber with a green expanse: the traversing mechanism failed regularly when the turret was rotated over fifteen degrees to either side.
Thank the Lord for that problem. Without it, the howitzer wouldn't 've been here in Camp Progress when it was needed.
Needed by Task Force Ranson. Needed by Chief Lavel.
He sat in the gun captain's chair, then twisted to look over his shoulder. "Are you clear?" he shouted to his helpers. "Keep clear!"
For choice, Lavel would have stuck his head out the door of the gun compartment to make sure Craige and Komar didn't have their hands on the heavy shells. That would mean picking up his crutch and levering himself from the chair again . . . .
Level touched the execute button to start the loading sequence.
The howitzer had arrived at Camp Progress with most of a basic load of ammunition still stowed in its hull. For serious use, the hog would have been fed from one or more ammunition haulers, connected to the loading ramp by conveyor belts.
No problem. The nineteen rounds available would be enough for this job.
Seventeen rounds. Two of the shells couldn't be used for this purpose. But seventeen was plenty.
The howitzer began to swallow its meal of ammunition, clanking and wobbling on its suspension. Warrant Leader Ortnahme had ordered the shells off loaded and stored at a safe distance—from him—as soon as the hog arrived for maintenance. That quantity of high explosive worried most people.
Not Chief Lavel, who'd worked with it daily—until some other cannon-cocker got his range.
CLUNK. CLUNK. The first six rounds would go into the ready-use drum, from which the gun could cycle them in less than fifteen seconds.
CLUNK. CLUNK. Each round would be launched as an individually targeted fire mission. The hog's computer chose from the ready-use drum the shell that most nearly matched the target parameters.
For bunkers, an armor-piercing shell or delay-fused high explosive if no armor piercing was in the drum.Soon down the line until,if nothing else were available, a paint-filled practice round blasted out of the tube.
CLUNK. The loading system refilled the ready-use drum automatically, until the on-board stowage was exhausted and the outside tray no longer received fresh rounds. Lavel could hear the second gurney-load squealing closer.
CLUNK.
The drum was loaded—six green lights on the console. He could check the shell-types by asking the system, but there was no need. He'd chosen the first six rounds to match the needs of his initial salvo.