If the mercenary commander surrendered now, while his position was tenable and his employers were still fighting, the Thunderbolt Division would forfeit the performance bond it had posted with the Bonding Authority on Terra. That would end the division as an employable force—and shoot the career of its commander in the nape of the neck.
H271 quivered as its fans spun at idle. The tank was ready to go at a touch on the throttle and pitch controls."Sarge?"Flowers asked over the intercom channel. "Are we gonna move out soon?"
"Kid," Des Grieux said as he watched holographic dots crawling across holographic terrain, "when I want to hear your voice, I'll tell you."
If he hadn't been so concentrated on the display, he would have snarled the words.
The Thunderbolt Division's employers weren't exactly fighting, but neither had they surrendered. The Hashemite Brotherhood was no more of a monolith than were their Sincanmo enemies; and Hashemite troops were concentrated on the plains, where their mobility seemed an advantage. Des Grieux suspected that the Hashemites would have surrendered by now if they'd had enough organization left to manage it.
Broglie's armored elements on what had been the Hashemite right flank, now cut off from friendly forces by the collapse of the center, formed a defensive hedgehog among the sandstone boulders. The terrain gave them an advantage that would translate into prohibitive casualties for anybody trying to drive them out—even the panzers of Colonel Hammer's tank companies. Broglie's Legion wasn't going anywhere.
But Broglie himself had.
Within thirty seconds of the time artillery defense had collapsed in the center of the Hashemite line, four tank destroyers sped from the Legion's strong point to reinforce the Thunderbolt infantry. There was no time to redeploy vehicles already in the line, and Broglie had no proper reserve. These tank destroyers were the Legion's Headquarters/Headquarters Platoon.
The move was as desperate as the situation itself. Des Grieux wasn't surprised to learn Broglie had figured the only possible way out of Colonel Hammer's trap, but it was amazing to see that Broglie had the balls to put himself on the line that way. Des Grieux figured that Broglie obeyed orders because he was too chicken not to . . . .
By using gullies and the rolling terrain,three of the low-slung vehicles managed to get into position. The single loss was a tank destroyer that paused to spike a combat car five kilometers away on the Slammers' right flank. A moment later, the Legion vehicle vanished under the impact of five nearly simultaneous 20cm bolts from Slammers' tanks.
Tribarrels on the roofs of the three surviving tank destroyers ripped effectively at incoming artillery, detonating the cargo shells before they strewed their bomblets over the landscape. The tank destroyers' 15cm main guns were a threat nothing, not even a bow-on tank, could afford to ignore. The leap-frog advance of Slammers' units toward the gap in the enemy center slowed to a lethal game of hide-and-seek.
But it was still too little, too late. The Hashemite and Thunderbolt Division troops were broken and streaming northward. All the tank destroyers could do was act as a rear guard, like Horatius and his two companions.
There was no bridge on their line of retreat, but the only practical route down from the Knifeblade Escarpment was through the Notch. Task Force Kuykendall and tank H271 had that passage sealed, as clever-ass Colonel Luke Broglie would learn within the next half hour.
Des Grieux began to chuckle hoarsely as he watched beads ooze across a background of coherent light. The sound that came from his throat blended well with the increasingly loud mutter of gunfire from south of the Escarpment.
"Shellfish Six to all Oyster and Clam elements," Des Grieux's helmet said.
Des Grieux had ignored the chatter which broke out among the Slammers' vehicles—the combat cars were code named Oyster; the tanks were Clam—as soon as Carbury gave the alarm. He couldn't ignore this summons, because it was the commander of Shellfish—Task Force Kuykendall—speaking over a unit priority channel.
"All blower captains to me at Golf Six-five ASAP. Acknowledge. Over."
This was no bloody time to have all the senior people standing around in a gully, listening to some bitch with lieutenant's pips on her collar!
There were blips of static on Des Grieux's headset. Several commanders used the automatic response set on their consoles instead of replying—protesting—in person.
"Clam Six to Shellfish Six . . ." said Lieutenant Carbury nervously. The tank-platoon commander was not only beneath Kuykendall in the chain of command, he was well aware that she was a ten-year veteran of the Slammers while he had yet to see action. "Suggest we link our vehicles for a virtual council, sir. Over."
"Negative,"Kuykendall snapped."I need to make a point to our employers and allies, here, Clam Six, and they're not in the holographic environment."
She paused,then added in a coldly neutral voice."Break.This means you,too, Slick. Don't push your luck. Shellfish Six out."
Des Grieux cursed under his breath. After a moment, he slid his seat upward and climbed out of the tank. He'd grabbed a grenade launcher and a bandolier of ammunition at the depot; he carried them in his left hand.
He didn't acknowledge the summons.
Occasional flashes to the south threw the Knifeblade Escarpment into hazy relief, like a cloud bank lighted by a distant storm. Sometimes the wind sounded like human cries.
The gullies at the base of the butte twisted Task Force Kuykendall's position like the guts of a worm. Two combat cars and a tank were placed between H271 and Kuykendall's vehicle, Firewalker, in the rough center of the line. The gaps between the Slammers' units were filled by indigs in family battlegroups.
The restive Sincanmos had let their campfires burn down. The way through the gullies was marked by metal buckets glowing from residual heat. Men in bright, loose garments fingered their personal weapons and watched Des Grieux as he trudged past.
There was a group of fifty or more armed troops—all men except for Kuykendall and one of the tank commanders, and overwhelmingly indigs—gathered at Firewalker when Des Grieux arrived. Kuykendall had switched on the car's running lights with deep yellow filters in place to preserve the night vision of those illuminated.
"Glad you could make it, Slick," Kuykendall said. She perched on cargo slung to the side of her combat car. It was hard to make out Kuykendall's words over the burble of Sincanmo conversation because she spoke without electronic amplification. "I want all of you to hear what I just informed Chief Diabate."
The name of the senior Sincanmo leader in the task force brought a partial hush. Men turned to look at Diabate, white-bearded and more hawk-faced than most of his fellows. He wore a robe printed in an intricate pattern of black/russet/white, over which were slung a 2cm powergun and three silver-mounted knives in a sash.
"Colonel Hammer has ordered us back ten kays," Kuykendall continued. Two crewmen stood at Firewalker's wing tribarrels, but the weapons were aimed toward the Notch. The air of the gathering was amazement, not violence. "So we're moving out in half an hour."