Hard to believe that ten-kilo missiles could really damage something with the size and weight of armor of Herman's Whore, but Henk Ortnahme believed it. He'd rebuilt his share of tanks after they took buzzbombs the wrong way—and, regretfully, had combat-lossed others when the cost of repair would exceed the cost of buying a new unit in its place.
There were costs for crew training and, less tangibly, for the loss of experience with veteran crewmen; but those problems weren't in Ortnahme's bailiwick.
"Sir?" the intercom asked. "The . . . you know, the guns they been hitting this place with. Wasn't that a, you know, an awful lot?"
"Don't worry about it, kid,"the warrant leader said smugly."Our only problem now's this bloody bridge."
Ortnahme adjusted his main screen so that the panorama's stern view was central rather than being split between the two edges.The shattered bunkers were hidden by the same buildings that'd protected the bridge from Consie gunfire. Smoke, turgid and foul, covered the western horizon.
"Ah, sir?"Simkins said."What I mean is, you know,we been fighting guerrillas, right? But all this heavy stuff, this was like a war."
A Yokel jeep jolted its way over the rubble pile in the wake of Task Force Ran-son. The driver was young and looked desperately earnest. The Marine major who'd gestured in fury as Herman's Whore swept into la Reole at the end of the Slammers' column sat/stood beside the driver.
The officer was covering his mouth and nose with a handkerchief in his left hand while his right gripped the windshield brace to keep his ass some distance in the air. The jeep could follow where air cushions had taken the Slammers, but the wheeled vehicle's suspension and seat padding were in no way sufficient to make the trip a comfortable one.
"This war's been goin' on for bloody years, kid," Ortnahme explained.
His thumb rotated the panorama back to its normal orientation. Bad enough watching the bridge sway, without having the screen's image split Flamethrower right down the middle that way.
"They got, the Consies, they been hauling stuff outa the Enclaves all that time, sockin' it away. Bit by bit till they needed it for that last big push. All that stuff—"Ortnahme nodded toward the roiling destruction behind them, though of course the technician couldn't see the gesture "—that means the Consies just shot their bolt."
Ortnahme scratched himself beneath the edge of his armor and chuckled. "Course, it don't mean they didn't hit when they shot their bloody bolt."
Cooter's blower had just reached the far end of the bridge—safely, Via! but this tank weighed five, six, times as much—when the image on the main screen changed sharply enough to recall the warrant leader from his grim attempt to imagine the next few minutes.
Though Herman's Whore pretty well blocked the bridge approach, the driver of the Yokel jeep managed to slide around them with two wheels off on the slope of the embankment.As the jeep gunned its way back onto the concrete,its image filled a broad swath of Ortnahme's screen.
What the bloody hell?
The major threw down his makeshift dust filter, rose to his full height, and began to shout and gesture toward the tank. The young Marines at the bunker beside Herman's Whore snapped to attention—eyes front,looking neither toward the tank nor their screaming officer.
Ortnahme could've piped the Yokel's words in through a commo circuit, scrubbed of all the ambient noise. Thing was, whatever the fellow was saying, it sure as hell wasn't anything Warrant Leader Henk Ortnahme wanted to hear.
"Simkins!" he said. "Can you get by these meatballs?"
"Ah . . . Without hitting the jeep?"
"Can you get bloody by, you dickhead?"
Herman's Whore shifted sideways like a beerstein on a slick, wet bar. The fan note built for a moment; then, using all his maintenance-bay skills, Simkins slid them past the jeep closer than a coat of paint.
The wheeled vehicle shrank back on its suspension as the sidedraft from the plenum chamber buffeted it, but metal didn't touch bloody metal!
That Yokel major was probably still pissed off. When the jeep bobbed in the windthrust, he fell sideways out of his seat. Let him file a bloody complaint with Colonel Hammer—in good time.
The left side of the tank tilted down, but that didn't bother the warrant leader near as much as the motion.It'd been bad watching the bridge sway when another vehicle was on it. The view on Ortnahme's screens hadn't made his stomach turn, though, as the reality bloody well did. Blood and martyrs, they were—
They were opening wide cracks in the asphalt surface as they passed over it.The tank's weight was stretching the underlying girders beyond their design limits.
The cracks spread forward,outrunning Herman's Whore in its sluggish progress toward the supporting pier in the center of the estuary.
And that bloody fool of a major had climbed back into his jeep. His driver had two wheels and most of the jeep's width on the narrow downstream sidewalk, using the span's tilt to advantage because it prevented the tank's sidedraft from flipping the lighter vehicle right through the damaged guardrail.
Those sum'bitch Yokels were trying to pull around the tank and block it on this shuddering nightmare of a bridge.
"Kid," Ortnahme began, "don't let 'em—"
He didn't have to finish the warning, because Simkins was already pouring the coal to his fans.
The water of the Santine Estuary was sluggish and black with tannin from vegetable matter that fed it on the forested hills of its drainage basin. Glutinous white bubbles streaked the surface, giving the current's direction and velocity. The treetrunks, crates, and other solid debris were more or less hidden by the fluid's dark opacity.
Ortnahme had a very good view of the water because of the way Herman's Whore tilted toward it.
They were approaching the central pier now while the span behind them flexed like the E-string of a bass guitar. The jeep, caught in the pulses and without the tank's weight to damp them, bounced all four wheels off the gaping roadway while the two Yokels clung for dear life.
Consie shells and the bolts from their one bunkered powergun had reduced the central towers to half their original height. The Yokels at the guardpost there were already climbing piles of rubble to be clear of the oncoming tank. Herman's Whore wasn't rocketing forward, but a tank head-on at twenty kph looks like Juggernaut on a joyride.
Their speed was four times what Ortnahme had planned, given the flimsy structure of the bridge. He just hadn't realized how bloody flimsy.
They had to go fast!