The glowing husk of what had been Deathdealer settled to the ground. Where the hull overlay portions of the skirt,the thick steel plates melted from the iridium armor's greater residual heat.
The entire event was over in three seconds. It would be days before the hull had cooled to the temperature of the surrounding air.
The thunderclap, air rushing to fill the partial vacuum of the plasma's track, rocked the thirty-tonne combat cars. Suilin's breastplate rapped the grips of his tribarrel.
Across the river, Consie positions danced in the light of hundreds of bomblets. They looked by contrast as harmless as rain on a field of poppies.
"All units," said Suilin's helmet. "Remount and move on. We've got a job to do. Six out."
Another combat car slid between Deathdealer and the figure of the tank's driver. He'd been running away from his doomed vehicle until the initial blast knocked him down. He rose to his feet slowly and climbed aboard the car whose bulk shielded him both from glowing metal and remembrance of what had just happened/almost happened.
Flamethrower rotated on its axis so that all three tribarrels could cover stretches of the bunker line the task force had just penetrated.
"We're the rear guard," Cooter said. "Watch for movement."
The lieutenant triggered a short burst at a figure who stumbled along the ridgeline—certainly harmless since he'd crawled from a shattered bunker; probably unaware even when the two cyan bolts cut him down.
Suilin thought he saw a target. He squinted. It was a tendril of smoke, not a person.
He wasn't sure he would have fired anyway.
Other cars were advancing toward the town, but it took some moments for the crews of the surviving tanks to reboard. One of the tanks jolted forward taking Deathdealer's former place at the head of the column.
The fat maintenance officer who captained Herman's Whore was still climbing into the cupola of the other giant vehicle. His belt holster flapped loosely against his thigh.
"Here," said Gale, handing Suilin an open beer.
Cooter was already drinking deeply from a bottle. He fired a short burst with his left hand, snapping whorls in the vapor above the ridge.
The Consie siege lines were gray with blasted earth and the smoke of a thousand fires. There must have been survivors from the artillery and the pounding, bunker-ripping fury of the powerguns, but they were no longer a danger to Task Force Ranson.
Suilin's beer was cold and so welcome to his parched throat that he'd drunk half of it down before he realized that it tasted—
Tasted like transmission fluid. Tasted worse than the plastic residues of the empty cases flung from his tribarrel. He stared at the bottle in amazement.
Flamethrower spun cautiously again and fell in behind Herman's Whore. Cooter dropped his bottle over the side of the vehicle. He began talking on the radio, but Suilin's numbed ears heard only the laconic rhythm of the words.
Gale broke a ration bar in half and gave part to the reporter. Suilin bit into it, feeling like a fool with the food in one hand and a horribly spoiled beer in the other. He thought about throwing the bottle away, but he was afraid the veteran would think he was spurning his hospitality.
The ration bar tasted decayed.
Gale, munching stolidly, saw the reporter's eyes widen and said, "Aw, don't worry. It always tastes like that."
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, grimy with recondensed vapors given off when his tribarrel fired. "It's the Wide-awakes, you know." He fished more of the cones from the pouch beside the cooler, distributing two of them to Cooter and Suilin.
Suilin dropped the cone into a sidepocket. He forced himself to drink the rest of his beer. It was horrible, as horrible as everything else in this bleeding dawn.
He nodded back toward Deathdealer, still as bright as the filament of an incandescent lightbulb. "Is it always like . . .? Is it always like that?"
"Naw, that time, they got the fusion bottle, y' know?" Gale said, gazing at the hulk with only casual interest.
Internal pressures lifted Deathdealer's turret off its ring. It slid a meter down the rear slope before welding itself onto the armor at a skew angle. "S' always differ'nt, I'd say."
"Except for the guys who buy it," Cooter offered, looking backward also. "Maybe it's the same for them."
Suilin bit another piece from the chalk-textured, vile-flavored ration bar.
"I'll let you know," he heard his voice say.
"Blue Two,"said Captain June Ranson, watching white light from Deathdealer quiver on the inner face of her gunshield,"this is Tootsie Six.You're acting head of Blue Section. Six out."
"Roger, Tootsie."
Sergeant Wager's nameless tank, now the first unit in Task Force Ranson, was picking its way through rubble and shell craters at the entrance to la Reole. It had been a new vehicle at the start of this ratfuck. Now it dragged lengths of barbed wire—and a fencepost—and its skirts were battered worse than those of Herman's Whore.
The tank's newbie driver swung wide to pull around a pile of bricks and roof tiles. Too wide. The wall opposite collapsed in a gout of brick dust driven by the tank's fans. Uniformed Yokels, looking very young indeed, scurried out of the ruin, clutching a machine gun and boxes of ammunition.
Warmonger slid into the choking cloud. Filters clapped themselves over Ran-son's nose. Janacek swore. Ranson hoped Willens had switched to sonic imaging before the dust blinded him.
Dust enfolded her in a soft blur. Static charges kept her visor clear, but the air a millimeter beyond the plastic was as opaque as the silicon heart of a computer.
Sparrow was dead, vaporized; out of play. But his driver had survived, and she could transfer him to Blue Three. Take over from the inexperienced driver—or perhaps for Sergeant Wager, also inexperienced with panzers but an asset to the understrength crew of One-six.
Mix and match. What is your decision on this point, Candidate Ranson . . .?
Something jogged her arm. She could see again.
The tracked landing vehicle had backed into a cross-street again, making way for the lead tank. The dust was far behind Warmonger. The third car in line was stirring it back to life.
A helmeted major in fatigues the color of mustard greens—a Yokel Marine—waved toward them with a swagger stick while he shouted into a hand communicator.
"Booster, match frequencies," Ranson ordered.
She saw through the corners of her eyes that Stolley and Janacek were exchanging glances. How long had her eyes been staring blankly before Stolley's touch brought her back to the physical universe?