Maybe the course was deliberate. Maybe Daisy Belle would take care of the other tanks . . . .
Suilin saw tank tracks slanting toward the crest an instant before he saw the tank itself, backing the way it had come. There was a guerrilla on the turret, hammering at the closed hatch. The Consie shouted something inaudible.
Suilin fired, aiming at the Consie rather than the tank. He missed both; his bolts sailed high to shatter trees on the crest.
That didn't matter. Cooter's helmet had given him the same target. The lieutenant's tribarrel focused on the hull where flowing script read Queen of the South. Paint blazed an instant before the armor collapsed and a fuel tank ruptured in a belch of flame.
Beyond Queen of the South, backing also, was a command vehicle with a high enclosed cab instead of a turret. Suilin caught only a glimpse of the vehicle before Gale's tribarrel punched through the thin vertical armor of the cab.
The rear door opened. Nothing came out except an arm flopping in its black sleeve.
They had almost reached the top of the knob. If Daisy Belle fired at them, the bolts would hit on Gale's side; but if Flamethrower was closing with the three cars in Captain Ranson's elements—
Dick Suilin aimed downhill because the glowing line directed him that way, but the artificial intelligence was using data now minutes old. The Consie tank was above them, backing around in the slender trees. It swung the long gun in its turret to cover the threat that bellowed toward it in a drumbeat of secondary explosions.
Suilin tried to point at the unexpected target. Cooter was firing as he swung his own weapon, but that tribarrel didn't bear either and the lash of cyan bolts across treeboles did nothing to disconcert the hostile gunner.
The cannon steadied on Flamethrower's hull.
A 20cm bolt from Blue Three across the valley struck, and the whole stern of the light tank blew skyward.
The Yokel tank's shot was a white streak in the sky as it ricocheted from the face of Blue Three's turret.
Ragged blotches appeared on Wager's main screen as if the hologram were a mirror losing its silver backing. Booster spread the load of the damaged receptor heads among the remainder; the image cleared.
Hans Wager didn't see what was happening to his screen because he was bracing his head against it. He hadn't strapped himself into his seat, and Holman's attempt to back her hundred and seventy tonnes finally succeeded in a rush.
Wager wasn't complaining. His hatch was open and he could hear the crack-crack of two more hypersonic shots snapping overhead.
The Yokels' armor-piercing projectiles were only 43mm in diameter when they dropped their sabots at the gun's muzzle, but even here, a kilometer and a half away, they were travelling at 1800 meters per second. The shot that hit had smashed a dish-sized concavity from the face of Blue Three's armor.
"Holman!" Wager cried. "Open season! Get us hull-down again."
They grounded heavily. Wager thought of the strain the tank's huge weight must be putting on the skirts and wondered if they were going to take it. Still, Holman wasn't the first tank driver to get on-the-job training in a crisis.
Anyway, the skirts'd better take it.
Chin Peng Rise had been timbered within the past two years. None of the scrub that had regrown on its loose, rock-strewn soil was high enough to conceal Blue Three's skirts, but the rounded crest itself would protect the hull from guns firing from the wooded knob across the valley.
The thing was, Holman had to halt them in the right place: high enough to clear their main gun but still far enough down the backslope that the hull was in cover.
Shells boomed among the shacks of Kawana. The residents wouldn't 've had any idea that two armies were maneuvering around them until the artillery started to land.
Innocent victims weren't Hans Wager's first concern right now. Via, it was their planet, their war, wasn't it?
His war too.
A plume of friable soil spewed from beneath the skirts as Holman fed power to her fans. Wager felt Blue Three twist as she lifted. The silly bitch was losing control, letting 'em slide downhill instead of—
"Holman!" he shouted. "Bring us up to firing level! They need us over—"
As Wager spoke the tank lifted—there'd been no downward motion, just the bow shifting. They climbed the 20° slope at a walking pace that brought a crisp view of Sugar Knob onto both the main and gunnery displays.
Shot and shells from Yokel cannon ripped the crest beside Blue Three, where the Slammers vehicle had lain hull-down before—and where they'd 've been now if Holman hadn't had sense enough to shift before she lifted them into sight again.
Wager could apologize later.
He'd locked his main and cupola guns on the same axis. His left hand rotated the turret clockwise with the gunnery screen's orange pipper hovering just above the projected crest of Sugar Knob. When the dark bulk of a Yokel tank slid into the sight picture, needlessly carated by the artificial intelligence, Wager thumbed his joystick control and laced the trees with cyan bolts from the tribarrel.
A bolt flashed white on the screen as it vaporized metal from the Yokel tank. Wager stamped on the pedal to fire his main gun.
Two more Yokel shots hit and glanced from Blue Three. Their impact was lost in the crash of the 20cm main gun firing.
Across the valley, the rear end of the Yokel tank jumped backward as the front became a ball of glowing gas.
Wager's main screen was highlighting at least a dozen targets, now. The Yokels had moved into positions overlooking Kawana so their direct fire could finish the tattered survivors of Task Force Ranson as soon as the artillery began to impact.
Some of the tank gunners were still focused on the innocent hamlet. Through the corner of his eye, Wager could see spouting tracks in the valley below as automatic cannons raked shacks and the figures running in terror among the sugarbushes they'd been tending.
Dirt blasted up in front of Blue Three an instant before the turret rang to a double hammerblow. Not all the Yokels were deceived as to their real enemy.
There wasn't time to sort 'em out, to separate the immediate dangers from the targets that might catch on in the next few seconds or minute. Hans Wager had to kill them all—
If he had time before they killed him.
Wager let the turret rotate at its own speed,coursing the further crest.He aimed with the cupola gun rather than the electronic pipper. During his years in combat cars, he'd gotten into the habit of hosing a tribarrel onto its target.
When things really drop in the pot, habit's the best straw to snatch.
Ignoring the shots that hit Blue Three and the shots that blasted grab-loads of dirt from the barren crest around them, Wager stroked his foot-trip again—