In the next few seconds, the commander of the armored battalion would decide whether he wanted to meet allied mercenaries—or light the fuse that would certainly detonate in a battle more destructive than any a citizen of Prosperity could imagine. He was being tested . . . .
The two sharp green beads of Lieutenant Cooter's element settled into position.
She heard a whisper in the southern sky. Incoming.
"All right, Holman, move us hull-down," Hans Wager ordered as his driver whined, "They're shooting at us! They're shooting at us!" over the Allied Common Channel and the scream of the incoming salvo wrote its own exclamation point in four crashing impacts on the valley below.
The nameless tank lifted, scraped, and hopped forward—up and out of its stand-by hide to a position so near the crest of Chin Peng Rise that the turret and sensor arrays had a clear sight across Kawana to the slumping mass of Sugar Knob beyond.
The hamlet had never been prepossessing. It was less so now that the ill-aimed Consie salvo had shaken down several shacks. Raider Camp Creek roiled with the muddy aftermath of the shell that had landed on it, and the footbridge paralleling the ford had collapsed into the turbid current.
Men and women in the sugarbush fields dropped their tools to run for their homes. The sandy rows in which the bushes were planted would've given better protection than the board walls of the shanties.
That much came toWager's eyes from the direct view of his main screen.Screen Three displayed the data his chuckling AI processed, a schematic vision of the terrain behind Sugar Knob and the unseen Yokel tanks showing themselves to Wager's sensors.
A sidebar on the main screen noted an incoming second salvo, ten rounds but very ragged—even for Yokel artillery.
The Yokel vehicles were diesel-powered, so Wager's tank couldn't locate them precisely from sparkcoil emissions; but their diesels had injector motors whose RF output could be pinpointed by the Slammers' sensors.
Without the added shielding of Chin Peng Rise to block Blue Three, the crosshatched blur south of Sugar Knob on Screen Three began to coalesce into bright red beads: Yokel tanks, located to within a few meters.
Their disposition explained why the second salvo was so scattered. The Consies were using the 130mm howitzers on ten of their tanks to supplement regular artillery firing from the vicinity of Kohang.
For indirect fire,these tanks were concentrated in a tight arc along Upper Creek. They'd run their bows up on the north bank in order to get more elevation for their howitzers than their turret mechanisms would permit.
The tank shells scattered around Kawana, detonating with white flashes and the hollow whoomps characteristic of shape-charge anti-tank warheads. Sand spewed in great harmless fountains.
The store where the unpaved road forded the creek flung its walls sideways at a direct hit. Half a body arced into the water and sank.
"Six, this is Blue Three!" Wager shouted. "Am I clear to shoot?"
Then, though Ranson could see it herself as easily as Wager could if the crazy bitch saw anything, "Six, there's ten tanks a kilometer south of the Knob, just off the road, but the rest of the bastards are moving onto the crest!"
The Yokels were moving into direct-fire positions covering Kawana . . . and which covered the tank on Chin Peng Rise with no more cover than the fuzz on a baby's ass.
The saplings on Sugar Knob shifted with the weight of black masses behind them, the dark-camouflaged bows of Consie tanks.
Two, three; seven tanks highlighted by Wager's AI. Their high-velocity 60mm cannons quested toward Kawana like the feelers of loathsome crustaceans. There were men in black uniforms riding on each turret.
If Wager fired, the plasma jolt from his powergun would blind and deafen the sensors on which the combat cars depended.
One of the long-barreled cannon suddenly lifted and turned. The tank commander had seen the gray gleam of the real enemy lurking behind Chin Peng Rise.
Red location beads were still appearing on Screen Three,the same view that was being remoted to the combat car AIs, but surely Ranson had enough data to—
"Tootsie Six!" Hans Wager cried, "Can you clear us?"
"Sarge, I'm backing—" Holman said.
"All Tootsie units," said the voice of Captain Ranson. "Take 'em."
The muzzle flash was a bright yellow blaze against the dark camouflage. The tungsten-carbide shot rang like a struck cymbal on the turret of Wager's nameless tank.
"Willens," said June Ranson, converting the holographic map on her display into a reality more concrete than the stems of young trees around her, "steer one-twenty degrees. West element, conform to my movements."
"Why we doin' this?" Stolley shouted, grabbing the captain's left arm and tugging to turn her.
Off to the left, only slightly muffled by intervening vegetation, the flat cracks of high-velocity guns sounded from the crest of Sugar Knob.
Ranson slipped her arm from the wing gunner's grip. "Thirty seconds to contact," her voice said.
Warmonger's artificial intelligence had given her a vector marker. Her eyes were on it, waiting for the vertical red line to merge with a target in her gunsights.
Stolley cursed and put his hands back on the grips of his tribarrel.
The gunfire from Sugar Knob doubled in intensity. Warmonger and the two cars accompanying it were headed away from the knob on a slanting course. As Warmonger switched direction, the AI fed another target vector to each gunner's helmet.
A wrist-thick sapling flicked Ranson's tribarrel to the side. Her hands realigned the weapon with the vector. They acted by reflex, unaided by the higher centers of her brain which slid beads of light in a glowing three-dimensional gameboard.
Her solution to the Yokel attack had been as simple and risky as Task Force Ranson's lack of resources required. She was using Slammers' electronics and speed to accomplish what their present gunpower and armor could not.
So, Candidate Ranson. You've decided to divide your force before attacking a superior concentration. Rather like Colonel Custer's plan at the Little Big Horn, wouldn't you say?
But there was no choice. The Yokels would deploy along the ridge. Only by hitting them simultaneously from behind on both flanks could her combat cars roll up six or seven times their number of hostile tanks.
So, Candidate; you're confident that the opposing commander won't keep a reserve? If he does, it's your force—forces, I should say—that will be outflanked.
The Yokels hadn't held back a reserve . . . but the ten tanks lobbing shells over the knob from a kilometer to the rear would act as a reserve—if they weren't eliminated first.
Guns fired from Sugar Knob a kilometer away, guns on the Yokel left flank that Ranson had decided to bypass only thirty seconds before—
Warmonger burst into a clearing gray with powdersmoke and dust kicked up by the ten stubby howitzers firing at high angles.