" . . . onsider yourselves under my command as the ranking National officer in the sector!" the headphones ordered Ranson as her AI found the frequency on which the major was broadcasting. "Halt your vehicles now until I can provide ground guides and reform my defensive perimeter."
"Local officer," Ranson said, trusting her transmitter to overwhelm the handheld unit even if the Yokel was still keying it,"this is Captain Ranson,Hammer's Regiment. That's a negative. We're just passing through."
The Yokel major was out of sight behind Warmonger. A ridiculous little man with creased trousers even now, and a coating of dust on his waxed boots and moustache.
A little man who'd held la Reole with a battalion of recruits against an attack much heavier than that which crumpled three thousandYokels at Camp Progress. Maybe not so ridiculous after all . . . .
"Local officer," Ranson continued, "I think you'll find resistance this side has pretty well collapsed. We'll finish off anything we find across the river. Slammers out."
La Reole had been an attractive community of two-and three-story buildings of stuccoed brick. Lower floors were given over to shops and restaurants for bridge traffic. Shattered glass from display windows now jeweled the pavement, even where shellfire had spared the remainder of the structures.
The highway kinked into a roundabout decorated with a statue, now headless; and kinked again as it proceeded to the bridge approaches. The buildings on either side of the dogleg had been reduced to rubble. The Consie gunners hadn't been able to get a clear shot at the bridge with their direct-fire weapons or to spot the shells their mortars and howitzers lobbed toward the span.
"No! No! No!" shouted the major, his voice buzzy and attenuated by interference from drive fans."You're needed here! I order you to stop—and anyway, you can't cross the bridge, it's too weak. Do you hear me! Halt!"
Another landing vehicle sheltered in a walled forecourt with its diesel idling. The gunner lifted his helmet to scratch his bald scalp, then saluted Ranson. He was at least twice the age of any of the six kids in the vehicle's open bay, but they were all armed to the teeth and glaring out with wild-eyed fury.
The Consies had attempted a direct assault on la Reole before they moved their heavy weapons into position. That must've gotten interesting.
A few civilians raised their heads above window sills, but they ducked back as soon as any of the mercenaries glanced toward them.
"Local Officer," Ranson said as echoes of drive fans hammered her from the building fronts, "I'm sorry but we've got our orders. You'll have to take care of your remaining problems yourself. Slammers out."
She split her visor to take the remote from the new lead tank. The controls had reverted to direct view when transmission from Deathdealer ceased.
The bridge at la Reole was a suspension design with a central tower in midstream and slightly lower towers on either bank to support the cables. Consie gunners had battered the portions of the towers which stuck up above the roof peaks. They had shattered the concrete and parted the cable on the upstream side.
The span sagged between towers, but the lowest point of its double arc was still several meters above the water. The downstream cable continued to hold, although it now stretched over piles of rubble instead of being clamped firmly onto the towers. A guardpost of Marines with rocket launchers, detailed to watch for raft-borne Consies, gaped at the huge tank that approached them.
"Willens," Ranson ordered her driver, "hold up."
The lower half of her visor swayed as the tank moved onto the raised approach.
"All Tootsie units, hold up. One vehicle on the bridge at a time. Take it easy. Six out."
The lead tank was taking it easy. Less than a walking pace, tracking straight although the span slanted down at fifteen degrees to the left side. Flecks of gravel and dust flew off in the fan draft, then drifted toward the sluggish water.
There were cracks in the asphalt surface of the bridge. Sometimes the cracks exposed the girders beneath.
the Yokel major was shouting demands at June Ranson,but she heard nothing. Her eyes watched the bridge span swaying, the images in the top and bottom of her visor moving alternately.
"Just drive through it, kid," snarled Warrant Leader Ortnahme as he felt Herman's Whore pause. Close to the bridge, la Reole had taken a tremendous pasting from Consie guns. Here, collapsed buildings cascaded bricks and beams from either side of the street.
The tank seemed to gather itself on a quivering column of air. "Like every bloody body else did!" Ortnahme added in a raised voice.
Simkins grabbed handfuls of his throttles instead of edging them forward in the tiny increments with which he normally adjusted the tank's speed and direction. The pause had cost them momentum, but Herman's Whore still had plenty of speed and power to batter through the obstacle.
Larger chunks of building material parted to either side of the blunt prow like bayou scum before a barge. Dust billowed out from beneath the skirts in white clouds. It curled back to feed through the fan intakes.
Behind the great tank, wreckage settled again. The pile had spread a little from the sweep of the skirts, but it was built up again by blocks and bits which the
thunder of passage shook from damaged buildings.
"Sorry, sir," muttered Simkins over the intercom.
The kid's trouble wasn't that he couldn't drive the bloody tank: it was that he was too bloody careful. Maybe he didn't have the smoothness of, say, Albers from . . .
Via. Maybe not think about that.
Simkins didn't have the smoothness of a veteran driver, but he had plenty of experience shifting tanks and combat cars in and out of maintenance bays where centimeters counted.
Centimeters didn't count in the field. All that counted was getting from here to there without delay, and doing whatever bloody job required to be done along the way.
Ortnahme sighed. The way he'd reamed the kid any time Simkins brushed a post or halted in the berm instead of at it, he didn't guess he could complain now if his technician was squeamish about dingin' his skirts.
Simkins eased them to a halt just short of the bridge approach. Cooter's blower was making the run—the walk, rather—and bleedin' Lord 'n martyrs, how the hell did they expect that ruin to hold a tank?
The near span rippled to the rhythm of Flamethrower's fans, and the span beyond the crumbling central support towers still danced with the weight of the car that'd crossed minutes before. This was bloody crazy!
The Yokels guarding the bridge must've thought so too, from the way they stared in awe at Herman's Whore.
Ortnahme, hidden in the tank's belly, glared at their holographic images. They'd leaned their buzzbomb launchers against the sandbagged walls of their bunker.