While Buntz waited for Myrtle Six to reply, he echoed a real-time feed from Hole Card's on a section of his own main screen, then called up a topographic map and overlaid it with the courses of all the Brotherhood vehicles. On that he drew a course plot with a sweep of his index finger.
"Lamplight, this is Myrtle," Lieutenant Rennie said at last. The five cars had formed into a loose wedge, poised to sweep north through the Brotherhood anti-armor teams and the remaining APCs."All right, Buntz, we'll be your anvil. Next time, though, we get the fun part. Myrtle Six out."
"Four-seven, this is Four-two," Buntz said, using the channel dedicated to Lamplight; that was the best way to inform without repetition not only Sergeant Cabell but also the drivers of the two tanks. "Four-two will proceed on the attached course."
He transmitted the plot he'd drawn while waiting for Rennie to make up his mind. It was rough, but that was all Lahti needed—she'd pick the detailed route by eyeball. As for Cabell, knowing the course allowed him to anticipate where targets might appear.
"I'll nail them if they hold where they are, and you get 'em if they try to run, Cabell," he said. "But you know, not too eager. Got it, over?"
"Roger, Four-two," Cabell replied. "Good hunting. Four-seven out."
Lahti had already started Herod down the slope, using gravity to accelerate; the fans did little more than lift the skirts off the ground. Their speed quickly built up to forty kph.
Buntz frowned, doubtful about going so fast cross-country in a tank. Lahti was managing it, though. Herod jounced over narrow, rain-cut gullies and on hillock which the roots of shrubs had cemented into masses a hand's breadth higher than the surrounding surface, but though Buntz jolted against his seat restraints the shocks weren't any worse than those of the main gun firing.
The fighting compartment displays gave Buntz a panoramic view at any magnification he wanted. Despite that, he had an urge to roll the hatch back and ride with his head out. Like most of the other Slammers recruits, whatever planet they came from, he'd been a country boy. It didn't feel right to shut himself up in a box when he was heading for a fight.
It was what common sense as well as standing orders required, though. Buntz did what he knew he should instead of what his heart wanted to do.When he'd been ten years younger, though, he'd regularly ridden into battle with his torso out of the hatch and his hands on the spade grips of the tribarrel instead of slewing and firing it with the joystick behind armor.
"Boomer Three-niner-one, this is Myrtle Six," Lieutenant Rennie said, using the operation's command channel to call the supporting battery."Request targeting round at point Alpha Tango one-three, five-eight. Over."
Herod tore through a belt of heavy brush in the dip between two gradual rises. Ground water collected here, and there might be a running stream during the wet season. The tank's skirts sheared gnarled stems, and bits that got into the fan nacelles were sprayed out again as chips.
Hole Card fired. Buntz had been concentrating on the panoramic screen, poised to react if the tank's AI careted movement. Now he glanced at his echo of Cabell's targeting display. The bolt missed, but a Brotherhood APC fluffed its fans to escape the fire spreading from the scar which plasma'd licked through thirty meters of grass.
Cabell fired again. Maybe he'd even planned it this way, spending the first round to startle his target into the path of the second. The APC flew apart. There was no secondary explosion because the infantry had already dismounted,taking their munitions with them.
A shell from the supporting rocket artillery screamed out of the southern sky. While the round was still a thousand meters in the air, a tribarrel fired from near the predicted point of impact. Plasma ruptured the shell, sending a spray of blue smoke through the air. It'd been a marking round, harmless unless you happened to be exactly where it hit.
Herod had just reached the top of another rise. The APC that'd destroyed the shell was behind a knoll seven kilometers away, but Buntz fired, Cabell fired, and two combat cars on the east end of Rennie's wedge thought they had a target also.
None of them hit the target, but Buntz got a momentary view of a Brotherhood soldier hopping into sight and vanishing again. He'd leaped from his cupola, well aware that it was only a matter of time—a matter of a short time—before the Slammers' concentrated fire hit the vehicle that'd been spared by such a narrow margin.
Lahti boosted her fans into the overload region to lift Herod another centimeter off the ground without letting their speed drop. The side-slopes were harsh going: the topsoil had weathered away, leaving rock exposed. Rain and wind deposited the silt at the bottom of the swales, so the Brotherhood troops waiting on the other side of the hill would expect Herod to come at them low.
Buntz'd angled his main gun to their left front, fully depressed. The cupola tribarrel was aimed up the hill Herod was circling. He saw the infantry on the crest rise with their buzzbombs shouldered. Before his thumb could squeeze the tribarrel's firing tit, his displays flickered and the hair on the back of his neck rose. The top of the hill erupted, struck squarely by a bolt from Hole Card's main gun. Cabell's angle had given him an instant's advantage.
Twenty-odd kilometers of atmosphere had spread the plasma charge, but it was still effective against the infantry. There'd been at least six Brotherhood soldiers,but when the rainbow dazzle cleared,a single figure remained to stumble downhill.Its arms were raised and its hair and uniform were burning.The fireball of organic matter in the huge divot which the bolt blasted from the hilltop did most of the damage, but the troops' own grenades and buzzbombs had gone off also.
Cabell'd taken a chance when he aimed so close to Herod at long range, but a battle's a risky place to be. Buntz wasn't complaining.
Herod rounded the knob, going too fast to hold its line when the outside of the curve was on a downslope. The tank, more massive than big but big as well, skidded and jounced outward on the turn. The four Brotherhood APCs sheltered on the reverse slope fired before Herod came into sight, willing to burn out their tribarrels for the chance of getting off the first shot. The gunners knew that if they didn't cripple the blower tank instantly they were dead.
They were probably dead even if they did cripple the tank. They were well-trained professionals sacrificing themselves to give their fellows a chance to escape.
Two-cm bolts rang on Herod's bow slope in a brilliant display that blurred several of the tank's external pickups with a film of redeposited iridium. The Brotherhood commander hadn't had time to form a defensive position; his vehicles were bunched to escape the tank snipers far to the west, not to meet one of those tanks at knife range. Three vehicles were at the bottom of the swale in a rough line-ahead; the last was higher on the slope.