Des Grieux braced his feet against the cupola coaming and used his leg muscles to shove at a block of sandstone the size of his torso. Thrust overcame friction. The slab slid across a layer of gravel, then toppled onto H271's back deck.
The upper surfaces were clear enough now that Des Grieux could rotate the turret.
Lieutenant Carbury's Paper Doll was an old tank, frequently repaired. An earlier commander had painted kill rings on the stubby barrel of the main gun. Holographic screens within the fighting compartment illuminated Carbury from below. His fresh, youthful face was out of place peering from the veteran vehicle.
"Sergeant Des Grieux," the lieutenant said. His voice was pitched too high for the tone of command he wished to project. "You're acting like a fool by staying here, and you're disobeying my direct orders."
Carbury spoke directly across the twenty meters between himself and tank H271 instead of using his commo helmet. The hoosh of lift fans idling almost washed his voice away. In another few seconds, minutes at most, Des Grieux would be alone with fate.
The veteran brushed his palms against the front of his jumpsuit. He had to be careful not to rub his hands raw while moving rocks. He'd need delicate control soon, with the opening range at two kays.
"Sorry,sir,"he called."I figure the accident's my fault.It's my duty to stay with the tank since I'm the one who disabled it."
A combat car spat at the Notch. The Sincanmos, still under their camouflage film, were keeping as quiet as cats in ambush while the two platoons of armored vehicles maneuvered out of the gullies.
The Sincanmos didn't take orders real well, but they were willing to do whatever was required for a chance to kill. Des Grieux felt a momentary sympathy for the indigs, knowing what was about to happen.
But Via! if they hadn't been a bunch of stupid wogs, they'd have known, too.
They weren't his problem.
"Clam Six," said Lieutenant Kuykendall remotely, "this is Shellfish Six." She used radio, a frequency limited to the Slammers within the task force. "Are all your elements ready to move? Over."
Carbury stiffened and touched the frequency key on the side of his commo helmet. "Clam Six to Six," he said. "Yes sir, all ready. Over."
Instead of giving the order, Kuykendall turned to look at Des Grieux. She raised the polarized shield of her visor. "Goodbye, Slick," she called across the curtain of disturbed air. "I don't guess I'll be seeing you again."
Des Grieux stared at the woman who had been his driver a decade before. They were twenty meters apart, but she still flinched minutely at his expression.
Des Grieux smiled. "Don't count on that, Lieutenant-sir," he said.
Kuykendall slapped her visor down and spoke a curt order. Fan notes changed, the more lightly loaded rotors of the combat cars rising in pitch faster than those of the tanks.
Moving in unison with a tank in the lead, the Slammers of Task Force Kuykendall howled off into the night. Their powerguns, main guns as well as tribarrels, lashed the Notch in an unmistakable farewell gesture. The sharp crack of the bolts and the dazzling actinics reflected back and forth between the Escarpment and the sheer face of the mesa.
For Des Grieux, the huge vehicles had a beauty like that of nothing else in existence. They skated lightly over the soil, gathering speed in imperceptible increments. Occasionally a skirt touched down and sparked, steel against shards of quartz. Then they were gone around the mesa, leaving the sharpness of ozone and the ghost-track of ionized air dissipating where a main gun had fired at the Hashemites.
Des Grieux felt a sudden emptiness; but it was too late now to change, and anyway, it didn't matter. He slid down into H271 and tried his gunnery controls again. Added weight resisted the turret motors briefly, but this time it was only gravel and smaller particles which could rearrange themselves easily.
The sight picture on H271's main screen rotated: off the blank wall of the butte and across open desert, to the Notch that marred the otherwise smooth profile of the Knifeblade Escarpment. Des Grieux raised the magnification. Plus twenty; plus forty, and he could see movement as Hashemites crawled forward, over rocks split and glazed by blue-white bolts, to see why the punishing fire had ceased; plus eighty—
A Hashemite wearing a turban and a dark blue jellaba swept the night with the image-intensifying sight of his back-pack missile.
He found nothing. Des Grieux stared at the Hashemite's bearded face until the man put down his sight and called his fellows forward. His optics were crude compared to those of H271, and the Hashemite didn't know where to look.
Des Grieux smiled grimly and shut down all his tank's systems. From now until he slammed home the main switch again, Des Grieux would wait in a silent iridium coffin.
It wasn't his turn. Yet. He raised his head through the cupola hatch and watched.
Because of the patient silence the Sincanmos had maintained, Des Grieux expected the next stage to occur in about half an hour. In fact, it was less than five minutes after the Slammers' armored vehicles had noisily departed the scene before one of the outposts switched the minefield controls to Self-destruct.Nearly a thousand charges went off simultaneously, any one of them able to destroy a 4x4 or cripple a tank.
An all-wheel drive truck laden with towel-heads lurched over the lip of the Notch and started for the plains below.
The locals on both sides were irregulars, but the Sincanmos in ambush had something concrete to await. All the Hashemite guards knew was that a disaster had occurred south of the Escarpment, and that they had themselves been released from a danger unguessed until the Slammers drove off through the night. They saw no reason to hold position, whatever their orders might be.
Three more trucks followed the first—a family battle group, organized like those of the Sincanmos. One of the vehicles towed a railgun on a four-wheeled carriage. The slope was a steep twenty percent. The railgun threatened to swing ahead every time the towing vehicle braked, but the last truck in the group held the weapons barrel with a drag line to prevent upset.
The Sincanmos did not react.
A dozen more trucks grunted into sight. H271's sensors could have placed and identified the vehicles while they were still hidden behind the lip of rock, but it didn't matter one way or the other to Des Grieux. Better to keep still, concealed even from sensors far more sophisticated than those available to the indigs.
More trucks. They poured out of the Notch, three and four abreast, as many as the narrow opening would accept. Forty, sixty—still more. The entire outpost was fleeing at its best speed.
The Hashemites must have argued violently. Should they go or stay? Was the blocking force really gone, or did it lurk on the other side of the butte, waiting to swing back into sight spewing blue fire?
But somebody was bound to run; and when that group seemed on the verge of successful escape, the others would follow as surely as day follows night.