"Gun it!" Des Grieux snarled. "Keep your foot on the throttle, bitch!"
It didn't occur to him that there was another way to give the order. All Des Grieux knew was that Warrior had to move as he desired, and the commander's will alone was not enough to direct the vehicle.
Kuykendall touched Warrior to the ground, rubbing off some of the backing inertia against the sand. She rotated the attitude control of the drive fans,angling the nacelles so that they thrust Warrior forward as well as lifting it again onto the air cushion.
The huge tank slid toward the edge of the encampment in front of a curling billow of dust. Size made the vehicle seem to accelerate slowly.
"Oyster Leader to Oyster Two," said Lieutenant Lindgren over the platoon's commo channel. "Hold your position. Break. Oyster four—" Hawes "—move up to support Oyster Two. Over."
The note of Warrior's fans changed. Massive inertia would keep the vehicle gliding forward for a hundred meters, but the sound meant Kuykendall was obeying the platoon leader's orders.
"Driver!" Des Grieux shouted. "Roll it! Now!" Kuykendall adjusted her nacelles obediently. Warrior slid on momentum between a pair of bunkers as the fans swung to resume their forward thrust.
The Federal positions were dugouts covered by transportation pallets supported by a single layer of sandbags. Three or four additional sandbag layers supplied overhead protection, though a direct hit would crumple the strongest of them. The firing slits were so low that muzzle blasts kicked up sand to shroud the red flashes of their machine guns.
Warrior's sensors fed the main screen with a light-enhanced 120° arc to the front. The tank's AI added in a stereoscopic factor to aid depth perception which the human brain ordinarily supplied in part from variations in light intensity.
The screen provided Des Grieux with a clear window onto the Republican attack. A two-man buzzbomb team rose into firing position at the inner edge of the wire. Instead of launching their unguided rockets into the nearest bunkers, they had waited for the tank they expected.
Des Grieux expected them also.He stunned the night with a bolt from Warrior's main gun.
Des Grieux used his central display for gunnery. It had two orange pippers, a 2cm ring and a 1cm dot for the main gun and tribarrel respectively. The sensor array mounted around Warrior's cupola gave Des Grieux the direction in which to swing his weapon. As soon as his tank rose into a hull-down position that cleared the 20cm powergun, he toggled the foot-trip.
Because the tribarrel was mounted higher, Des Grieux could have killed the Reps a moment sooner with the automatic weapon; but he wanted the enemy's first awareness of Warrior to be the cataclysmic blast of the tank's main gun.
The cyan bolt struck one of the Rep team squarely and converted his body into a ball of vapor so hot that its glowing shockwave flung the other victim's torso and limbs away in separate trajectories. The secondary explosion of the anti-tank warheads was lost in the plasma charge's flashcrash.
Honking through its intakes, Warrior thundered down on the Republican attack.
Guns in dozens of Federal bunkers fired white tracers toward the perimeter of mines and wire. Heavy automatic weapons among the Republican support battalions answered with chains of glowing red balls.
The Federal artillerymen in the center of Hill 541 North began slamming out their remaining ammunition in the reasonable view that unless this attack was stopped, there was no need for conservation. Because of their hilltop location, the guns could not bear on the sappers. To reach even the Republican support troops, they had to lob their shells in high, inaccurate arcs. The pair of calliopes on Hill 661 burst many of the Federal rounds at the top of their trajectory.
Instead of becoming involved in firefights, the Rep sappers did an excellent job of pathclearing for the main assault force. A few of the sappers fell, but their uniforms of light-absorbent fabric made them difficult targets even now that Federal starshells popped to throw wavering illumination over the scene.
A miniature rocket dragged its train of explosive across the perimeter defenses. The line exploded with a yellow flash and a sound like a door slamming. Sand and wire flew to either side. Overpressure set off a dozen anti-personnel mines to speckle the night.
There were already a dozen similar gaps in the perimeter. An infiltration team had wormed through the defenses before the alarm went off.one of its members hurled a satchel charge into a bunker, collapsing it with a flash and a roar.
Warrior drove into the wire. Bullets, some of them fired from the Federal bunkers, pinged harmlessly on the iridium armor. A buzzbomb trailing sparks and white smoke snarled toward the tank's right flank. Five meters out,the automatic defense system along the top edge of Warrior's skirts banged. Its spray of steel pellets ripped the buzzbomb and set off the warhead prematurely.
The tank rang like a bell when its defensive array fired, but the hollow whoomp of the shaped-charge warhead was lost in the battle's general clamor. Shards of buzzbomb casing knocked down a sapper. He thrashed through several spasms before he lay still.
Warrior passed the Federal minefield in a series of sprouting explosions and the spang of fragments which ricocheted from the skirts. The pressure of air within the tank's plenum chamber was high enough to detonate mines rigged to blow off a man's foot. They clanged harmlessly as a tocsin of the huge vehicle's passage.
The tank's bow slope snagged loops of concertina wire which stretched and writhed until it broke. Republican troops threw themselves down to avoid the unexpected whips of hooked steel. Men shouted curses,although the gap Warrior tore in the perimeter defenses was broad enough to pass a battalion in columns of sixteen.
Des Grieux ignored the sappers.They could cause confusion within the bunker line, but they were no threat to the ultimate existence of the Federal base. The assault battalion, and still more the thousands of Republican troops waiting in reserve, were another matter.
Warrior had two dual-capable gunnery joysticks.Most tank commanders used only one, selecting tribarrel or main gun with the thumbswitch. Des Grieux shot with both hands.
He'd pointed the main gun 30° to starboard in order to blast the team of tank killers. Now his left hand swung the cupola tribarrel a few degrees to port. He didn't change either setting again for the moment. Not even Des Grieux's degree of skill permitted him to aim two separate sights from a gun platform travelling at fifty kph and still accelerating.