The actual firing sequence required only one man to pick the targets. The howitzer's AI and electromechanical drives did the rest.
It didn't even require a whole man. A ruin like Chief Lavel was sufficient.
He glanced at the panoramic screen mounted on the slanted armor above the gun mantlet. A light breeze had dissipated much of the smoke from the sustainer charges. They burned out in the first seven seconds after ignition. High in the heavens, streaking south were dense white trails where the ramjet boosters cut in.
The beryllium fuel was energetic—but its residues were intensely hygroscopic and left clouds thick enough to be tracked on radar.
The residues were lethal at extreme dilution as well . . . but the boosters ignited at high altitude, and it wasn't Alois Hammer's planet.
Besides, Via! this was a war, wasn't it? There was always collateral damage in war.
"Ah . . ." said Craige. "Sir? When are you going to shoot off the rest?"
"When I get the bloody update from the task force, aren't I?" Lavel snarled. He patted the console. "It's thirty-three seconds to splash from here. We don't fire the last five rounds till we see what still needs to be hit and where the bloody friendlies are!"
The console in front of Lavel began to click and whine. He had a voice link to the task force, but the electronically sensed information, passed from one AI to another, was faster by an order of magnitude.
It was also less subject to distortion, even when, as now, it had to be transmitted over VHF radio.
Besides, the crews of Task Force Ranson had plenty to occupy them without spotting for the guns.
The new data swept all the previous highlights from the targeting overlay. Green splotches marked changes in relief caused by shellbursts and secondary explosions. Denser pinheads of the same hue showed where bolts from the 20cm powerguns of tanks had glazed the terrain, sealing firing positions whether or not the bunkers themselves were destroyed.
No worthy targets remained on the west side of the Santine.
Lavel's light pen touched a bunker on the near bank of the estuary anyway. It had been built to hold a heavy gun, though the AI was sure nothing was emplaced in it yet. That accomplished, Lavel checked the eastern arc of the siege lines.
The east side was lightly held, because most of the Consie forces across the Santine were concentrated on Kohang. The Marine Unit in la Reole could probably have broken out—but in doing so, they would have had to surrender the town and the crucial crossing point. Somebody—somebody with more brains and courage than any of the Yokels at Camp Progress—had decided to hold instead of running.
Lavel had two high-explosive shells, one target solid, and a firecracker round remaining. He chose three east-side bunkers for the HE and the solid. The solid was intended to test the air-defense system of friendly units, but its hundred and eighty kilos weren't going to do anybody it landed on any good. He set his firecracker round to detonate overhead ten seconds after the others splashed.
The console chittered, then glowed green.
Green for ready. Probably the last time Chief Lavel would ever see that message.
He sighed and slapped execute.
The door to the crew compartment was open.Craige wasn't wearing a commo helmet, but she got her hands to her ears at the chunk! of the ignition charge expelling the first round from the tube.
The seven-second ROAR-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R! of the sustainer motor shook the world.
The remaining four rounds blasted out at one-a-second intervals like beads on a rosary of thunder.Their back blasts shoved the howitzer down on its suspension and raised huge doughnuts of dust from the surrounding soil.
All done. The fire mission, and the last shred of meaning in Chief Lavel's life.
There was still a green light on the ready-use indicator.
"Booster!" Lavel snapped. "Shell status!"
"One practice ready," said the console in a feminine voice. "Zero rounds in storage."
Lavel turned, rising from his seat with a face like a skull. "You!" he said to Craige. "How many rounds did you load this last time?"
"What?" said Craige. "How . . .? Six, six like you told us. Isn't that—"
"You stupid bastards!" Lavel screamed as his hand groped with the patch to Task Force Ranson,changing it from digital to voice."Those last two shells were anti-tank rounds with seeker heads! You killed 'em all!"
All the displays of Herman's Whore pulsed red with an Emergency Authenticator Signal. A voice Ortnahme didn't recognize bellowed, "Task Force! Shoot down the friendly incoming! Tank Killer rounds! Ditch your tanks! Ditch!"
Ortnahme pushed the Air Defense selector. It was already uncaged. He'd been willing to take the chance of bumping it by accident so long as he knew it would be that many seconds quicker to activate when he might need it.
Like now.
"Simkins," he said, surprised at his own calm, "cut your fans and ditch. Soonest!"
His calm wasn't so surprising after all. There'd been emergencies before.
There'd been the time a jack began to sink—thin concrete over a bed of rubble had counterfeited a solid base. Thirty tonnes of combat car settling toward a technician. The technician was dead, absolutely, if he did anything except block the low side of the car with the fan nacelle he'd been preparing to fit.
Ortnahme had said,"Kid,slide the fan under the skirt now!"—calmly—while he reached under the high side of the car. The technician obeyed as though he'd practiced the movement—
And for the moment that the sturdy nacelle supported the car's weight, Warrant Leader Ortnahme had gripped Tech 2 Simkins by the ankle and jerked him out of the deathtrap.
The kid was all thumbs when it came to powertools, but he took orders for a treat. Herman's Whore stuttered for a moment as the inertia of the air in her intake ducts drove the fans.The big blower grounded hard and skidded a twenty-meter trench in the soil as she came to rest.
Ortnahme's seat was raising him, not as fast as a younger, slimmer man could've jumped for the hatch without power assist—but Henk Ortnahme wasn't bloody young and slim.
He squeezed his torso out of the cupola hatch. The tribarrel was rotating on its Scarf ring, the muzzles lifting skyward in response to the air-defense program.
Blood and martyrs! It was going to—
The powergun fired.Ortnahme couldn't help but flinch away.Swearing,bracing himself on the coaming, he tried to lever himself out of the hatch as half-melted plastic burned the back of his hands and clung to his shirt sleeves.
He stuck. His pistol holster was caught on the smoke grenades he'd slung from a wire where he could reach them easily when he was riding with the hatch open.
Blood and martyrs.