And toed the foot-trip.
Warrior rocked with the trained lightning of its main gun. The display blanked in a cataclysm: pure blue plasma; metal burning white hot; and red as tonnes of warheads and solid rocket fuel exploded simultaneously. The truck and everything within a hundred meters of it vanished.
Des Grieux shifted his sights to what he thought was the Republican command post. He was smiling.
He fired. Sandbags blew outward as shards of glass. There were explosives of some sort within the bunker, because a moment after the rubble settled, a secondary explosion blew the site into a crater.
Concussion from the first blast had stunned or killed the crew of the single calliope on Hill 504. The weapon was probably unserviceable, but Des Grieux's third bolt vaporized it anyway.
"I told you bastards . . ." the tanker muttered in a voice that would have frightened anyone who heard him.
Dust and smoke billowed out in a huge doughnut from where the truckload of rockets had been. The air-suspended particles masked the remaining positions on Hill 504. Guns and bunker sites vanished into the haze like ships sinking at anchor. The main screen provided a detailed vision of whorls and color variations within the general blur.
"Booster,"Des Grieux said. "Feed me targets." Warrior's turret was supported by superconducting magnetic bearings powered by the same fusion plant that drove the fans. The mechanism purred and adjusted two degrees to starboard, under control of the artificial intelligence recalling the terrain before it was concealed. The hollow pipper remained centered on the gunnery screen, but haze appeared to shift around it.
The circle pulsed. Des Grieux fired the 20cmgun.Even as the tank recoiled from the bolt's release, the AI rotated the weapon toward the next unseen victim.
"Booster!" Des Grieux snarled. His throat was raw with gunnery fumes and the human waste products of tension coursing through his system. "Show me the bloody—"
The pipper quivered again. Des Grieux fired by reflex. A flash and a mushroom of black smoke penetrated the gray curtain. "Targets!"
The main gun depressed minutely. To Des Grieux's amazement, a howitzer on Hill 504 banged a further shell toward the Federal positions. Warrior's AI obediently supplied the image of the weapon to Des Grieux's display as it steadied beneath the orange circle.
A bubble of gaseous metal sent the howitzer barrel thirty meters into the air.
With only one calliope to protect them, the Reps on 504 had dug in somewhat better than their fellows on Hill 661.Despite that,there was still a suicidal amount of ready ammunition stacked around the fast-firing guns. The tank's data banks fed each dump to the gunnery screen.
Des Grieux continued to fire. The haze over the target area darkened, stirred occasionally by sullen red flames. A red 0 replaced the green numeral 1 on the lower right corner of the screen. The interior of the fighting compartment stank like the depths of Hell.
"I told you bastards . . ."Des Grieux repeated, though his throat was so swollen that he had to force the words out. "And I told that bastard Lindgren."
"Sarge?" Kuykendall said.
Des Grieux threw the charging lever to refill the ready magazine. Just as well if he didn't use the main gun until the bore was relined; but the status report gave it ten percent of its original thickness, a safe enough margin for a few bolts, and you did what you had to do . . . .
"Yeah," he said aloud. "Get us somewhere outa the way. In the morning we'll rejoin. Somebody."
Kuykendall adjusted the fans so that they bit into the air instead of slicing through it with minimum disruption. She'd kept the power up while Warrior was grounded. In an emergency, they could hop off the mesa with no more than a quick change of blade angle.
The smoke-shrouded ruin of Hill 661 was unlikely to spawn emergencies, but in the four hours remaining till dawn some Rep officer might muster a tank-killer team.No point in making trouble for yourself.There were hundreds of kilometers of arid scrub which would hide Warrior until the situation sorted itself out.
And there were no longer any targets around here worthy of Warrior's guns. Of that, Des Grieux was quite certain.
Kuykendall elected to slide directly over the edge of the mesa instead of returning to the logistics route by which they had attacked. The immediate slope was severe, almost 1:3, but there were no dangerous obstacles and the terrain flattened within a hundred meters.
There were bound to be scores of Rep soldiers on the road, some of them seeking revenge. A large number might fly into a lethal panic if they saw Warrior's gray bow loom through the darkness. A smoother ride to concealment wasn't worth the risk.
"Sarge?" asked Kuykendall. "What's going on back at 541 North?"
"How the hell would I know?" Des Grieux snarled. But he could know, if he wanted to. He reached to reconnect the commo buss . . . and withdrew his hand. He could adjust a screen, and he started to do that—manually,because his throat hurt as if he'd been swallowing battery acid.
Instead of carrying through with the motion, Des Grieux lifted the crash bar to open the hatch and raise his seat to cupola level. The breeze smelled so clean that it made him dizzy.
Kuykendall eased the tank toward the low ground west of Hill 661.With a swale to shelter them, they could drive north a couple kays and avoid the stragglers from the Republican disaster.
For it had been a disaster. The Federal artillery on Hill 541N was in action again, lobbing shells toward the Rep staging areas. Fighting still went on within the encampment, but an increasing volume of fire raked the eastern slope up which the Reps had carried their initial assault objectives.
The weapons which picked over the remnants of the Republican attacks were machine guns firing white tracers, standard Federal issue; and at least a dozen tribarreled powerguns. A platoon of Slammers' combat cars had entered the Federal encampment and was helping the defenders mop up. The relief force had finally arrived.
"In the morning . . ." Des Grieux muttered. He was as tired as he'd ever been in his life.
And he knew that he and his tank had just won a battle single-handedly.
Warrior proceeded slowly up the eastern slope of Hill 541 North. The brush had burned to blackened spikes. Ash swirled over the ground, disintegrating into a faint shimmer in the air.
Given the amount of damage to the landscape, there were surprisingly few bodies; but there were some.They sprawled,looking too small for their uniforms; and the flies had found them.
Half an hour before dawn,Des Grieux announced in clear, on both regimental and Federal frequencies, that Warrior was re-entering the encampment. The AI continued to transmit that message at short intervals, and Kuykendall held the big vehicle to a walking pace to appear as unthreatening as possible.
There was still a risk that somebody would open fire in panic. The tank was buttoned up against that possibility.